An overgrown, historic cemetery nestled in a corner of Philadelphia is for sale for $1 million — and comes with some 33,000 dead tenants.
In addition to the corpses, the 26-acre’s of Mount Vernon Cemetery in Northeast Philly is also complete with swarms of ticks, poison ivy, creepy stuffed animals that inexplicably appear overnight and ghost hunters looking to connect with the other side, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Purchasing the 168-year-old cemetery would certainly be a fixer-upper — but it’s not likely to sell to a private developer.
The property is under conservatorship with the Philadelphia Community Development Coalition (PCDC) — meaning any sale must be court-approved and posting it for sale was legally required, according to the Inquirer.
Brandon Zimmerman, volunteer coordinator with Friends of Mount Vernon, said the listing — which went viral on the popular “Zillow Gone Wild” social media account — caused a panic among the cemetery’s supporters.
“They got afraid [prospective buyers] will move the bodies and it will become a Walmart. That will not happen,” Zimmerman told the paper.
“There are 33,000 people here and we don’t have accurate maps and records. You would have to do ground-penetrating radar over 26 acres to find everybody. There are infinitely cheaper and easier places. If you’re looking for the site of your next distribution center, Mount Vernon ain’t it,” he added.
The cemetery first opened in 1856 at a time when there was a national movement to have bucolic, park-like spaces to bury the dead rather than crammed churchyards or plots on private properties, according to the cemetery’s website.
New plots have not been sold at the cemetery since 1968.
Decades of inattention have led to a wild, truly haunting landscape among the tombstones.
“The overgrowth is like nothing you’ve ever seen. You can cut vegetation and two weeks later, it’s up to your waist,” Zimmerman said. “I describe it as supernatural, it’s unreal.”
Zimmerman said a fellow volunteer once stopped a group of old women at the front gate believing the cemetery was “a portal to another plane of existence.”
Stuffed animals have also suddenly appeared on graves in the locked cemetery. Foxes will take the toys and drag them back to their dens, Zimmerman said.
There’s also a man who frequently tosses candles over the fence asking the dead to help him with some “pretty lewd things” that “would make you blush,” he said.
Dozens of historical figures are buried in the cemetery, including a family plot which contains generations of the famous Drew and Barrymore acting families. It was also notably a whites-only burial ground.
The PDCD has held conservatorship over the property since 2021 after its former owner, A Washington D.C.-based attorney Joseph Dinsmore Murphy, let the property fall into complete disrepair.
The cemetery’s headstones and pathways have been largely overrun with brush, critters and litter for decades.
When no owner could be found to take over the property the Mount Vernon Cemetery Company (MVCC).
PCDC said its “hope and expectation” is that MVCC will be able to raise enough money to approve court transfer of the property — but first the nonprofit needs to raise $300,000 to manage and maintain the cemetery.
The court would approve the property sale to MVCC for just $1, according to the Inquirer.
“We wanted to be assured we had money to do that before we receive the cemetery,” MVCC manager Thaddeus Squire said. “We don’t want an asset we can’t care for either and caring for it is just a matter of money.”
However, to date donors have only pledged $65,000 towards its goal. Squire described it as a “chicken-and-egg problem.”
“The court needs us to have the money but nobody wants to give us the money until we have the cemetery,” Squire told the paper. “If we can’t raise money and if there is no buyer I don’t know what happens, then we’re in a pickle.”