Strange New EnglandA Field Guide to New England's Legends, Folklore, Curious History & Weird Destinations

The Eighth Gate to Hell!

^{In Leicester Massachusetts on a forgotten dirt road lies an old Quaker cemetery that has developed quite a reputation. The proper name for this place is ‘Friend Cemetery’ and the Worcester Pleasant Street Friends Meeting owns it. The fact that there is no marker or nameplate showing its name; visitors have dubbed it Spider Gate Cemetery due to the spider web like pattern that adorns its beautiful wrought iron gate.}

^{Spider Gate has many interesting stories attached to it. It has an altar in the center used by Satanist. A young boy hung himself in the cemetery. There is a second cemetery near by that can be found only once. There is an area in the cemetery where no grass will grow. If you walk around Marmadukes gravestone 10 times at midnight and say ‘Marmaduke speak to me,’ kneel down and place your head on the gravestone, he will speak to you. White stuff oozes from the ground. There is a cave near by that a young girl had been killed and dismembered in. If you turn over rocks in an area outside the cemetery wall, you will find runes etched on them. Most frightening of all, is that the cemetery is considered to be the Eighth Gate to Hell!}

^{You didn’t have to twist my arm to get me to investigate this one. With nine different things to investigate, I could only believe I’d find some scrap of evidence that verified or explained one of these stories. I charted and packed for the trip in a day and was off. Finding the dirt road was fairly easy. To protect myself form being devoured by the living dead, and watch my back for Satan’s Minions, I dragged along my friend Tyler.}

^{This investigation started off on an odd beat. As I darted down the trail talking to Tyler, I soon noticed he had stopped responding. When I turned back to check on him, He was gone! Had he already been abducted for the next devilish sacrifice. Scanning the area, I saw he was still at the gate at the beginning of the road. He had a strange look of concern and hesitation on his face. I wondered, is there something he had noticed that I had missed? I waved him and and he soon followed.}

^{The hike down the road was very brief and the cemetery was easy to find. Once at the gate, I could see the tree where the young boy had supposedly hung himself from. Stories I heard spoke of a noose being found still hanging from the branch. There was no sign of it this visit. Scanning around the cemetery, I noticed several stone posts outside the wall. I thought that maybe this is where the 2nd cemetery was or might be where the stones with runes on it were. I found nothing of interest there. I moved on to the next thing on my agenda, the cave. I began to search the outer perimeter of the cemetery. On the back side I found a trail that ran down to the river. Following the trail like a eager hound dog, I came upon the remains of what must have been an old Quaker mill.}

^{The rest of the afternoon proved to be uneventful. No cave, no Satanic cults and Marmaduke wasn’t in the mood to talk. As for the white stuff oozing from the ground, By the looks of it, white stuff oozed all over Leicester and the entire east coast that day! Unfortunately, the most frightening thing I discovered at the cemetery was a group of mischievous teens looking for ghosts. With a feel of great frustration I bid the Eighth Gate to Hell a due and headed back to my car. If that is what previous visitors considered a Gate to Hell, then they’ve never been visited the registry.}

^{Out of the nine different tale, only one of them could be possibly explained. There were fields populate by cows not far form the cemetery. On a late evening the resonating sound of a cows moos and grunts could prove to be a very eerie and distressing sounds.}

^{Maybe if I visited Spider Gate in autumn I might have a bit more luck stirring up something interesting. We’ll just have to wait and see!}

_{~ Strange New England}

Links to other sources:

These are the 30 most ‘haunted’ places in Massachusetts

Quaker Cemetery

Spider Gates Cemetery: The Eighth Gate to Hell?