Spider Gates

Massachusetts · United States · Execution site

The name comes from the web pattern worked into the iron gates. Everything else attached to this place was invented by people who should have left it.

The Quaker burial ground at Leicester, Massachusetts is known to every teenager in central Massachusetts as Spider Gates, after the web pattern in the ironwork of the gates.

The stories attached to it are extensive: that it is one of the gates of hell, that there is a hanging tree, that there are altars in the woods.

None of it is true. It is a Quaker cemetery, still owned by the Friends, still used, and the people buried in it are the families of a plain and pacifist congregation who wanted nothing less than this.

It has been badly damaged by visitors over the years. Stones have been broken and the town has had to police it.

The woods around it are genuinely disorienting and there is a river at the far end, which accounts for a good deal of what people report.

It is private property, it is closed after dark, and the closure is enforced.

FAQ

Where is Spider Gates located?

Spider Gates is in Massachusetts, United States.