Little Mary’s Grave Doesn’t Contain Her Remains: So Where Are They?

The Legend of Little Mary is undoubtedly Jackson's most famous ghost tale.
First, the backstory:

Mary McNaughton was born in 1884. In 1892 an outbreak of typhoid and diphtheria hit Jackson and spread throughout the city, infecting residents. In an attempt to avoid infection, Mary’s mother Elizabeth took her four daughters away from the city. All seemed to escape catching the disease.....except for Mary. The disease got to such an extent that it caused Mary’s appendix to rupture.

Mary’s condition gave her the appearance of death, and the ladies went back to Jackson to bury Mary in the McNaughton family plot at Hillcrest Cemetery.

Get our free mobile app

That night, finally able to get to sleep, Elizabeth experienced an extreme nightmare, to which she woke herself up by screaming. The nightmare convinced her that her little Mary had been buried by mistake. Convincing her husband to order the grave dug up and coffin opened, they succeeded in getting it exhumed.

Without going into the graphic detail – which I find too disturbing myself – Elizabeth’s worst fear was confirmed. Little Mary had indeed been buried alive, evidenced in part by scratch marks on the coffin lid and the condition of her fingers.

The story spread throughout Jackson, made even more legendary by the rumor that if you walked near the plot, you could hear the sounds of scratching coming from Mary’s grave. Some claim to hear crying and some sort of apparition hovering over the grave.

For well into the 1900s, thrillseekers would go back into the family plot, booze it up, litter, vandalize, and totally disrespect the dead. Because of this, the old graveyard section was cut off from the public with only relatives allowed to visit. The old graveyard is now overgrown with weeds, trees, bushes, and foliage that makes it creepier than usual.

Now if you are getting the notion to attempt a visit to Mary’s grave.....well, I hate to burst your bubble, but that little marker that has the engraving of “Mary” in it marks an empty grave. Mary is not buried there. This probably is upsetting to those who have already visited that marker, thinking it was her grave and trying to capture some kind of paranormal phenomenon. Sorry, but if you did, it wasn’t from Mary. I’ll tell you how I know:

In the very early 1970s I visited the cemetery one windy October night after midnight with two others. I had been to Mary’s original plot days before, but now we were visiting the new half of the cemetery, a good distance from the original. As we walked by a few flat gravestones, I heard a scratching sound coming from the ground. I shined my flashlight down in the direction of the sound but saw nothing. The scratching sound continued and I stooped down to look closer at the flat unmarked gravestone from which the sound was coming from. There was no name, no dates, no lettering, no numbers of any kind; just a plain blank slab of concrete...or marble. And the sound of scratching did not let up.
Was a leaf blowing across it? NO.
Was some sort of bug crawling across it? NO.
I was looking straight at this stone while the scratching continued…”where is this coming from?” I kept asking the other two. I got down on my hands & knees and put my face INCHES FROM THE STONE and saw absolutely NOTHING as the scratching sound continued! It was a definite scratching and we never determined the source…..we saw NOTHING.

A few months later, we went back and talked with the caretaker. He told us that years ago, Mary's remains were moved to an unmarked grave in the cemetery's new section...which was where we were when I heard the scratching on the gravestone.

So yes, Mary’s remains are protected to this day in an unmarked grave in the “new” cemetery section...and I happened to stumble on it by pure luck...