Comments (7)

1. 

   AdiKavidasa  |  March 4, 2015 at 12:19 pm

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   I take Karate twice a week for an hour each time across the street from the cemetery on the way to the temple. One day I went to the cemetery just to see what it was like. There is a sign by the building we use for karate stating the road going past the temple is the oldest main road in Florida. You wouldn’t know it otherwise since it isn’t very busy today.
   So I went to the back of the cemetery eventually looking for the oldest graves. I looked back toward the temple road and saw gravestones on Both sides of the street. I was very much surprised since I never saw them before on the other side of the road but there they were.
   My karate teacher told me last night that on the side of the road where we take karate, there are many unmarked graves of former slaves. In fact a society bought some land outside the cemetery where many had been laid to rest that way.
   When I was at the back of the cemetery I got a strange feeling there were souls around who hadn’t left their bodies yet. I found an unmarked grave, it looked like the oldest around, and started actually tasting death in my mouth and smelling dead bodies too. Strange winds started circling around and it was getting dark. And I was seeing those graves that did not exist. I left that cemetery and headed off to the temple but that taste still stayed in my mouth for a whole week afterwards, it tasted like a dead body. That was a few months ago.
   So last week I parked my car on the grass at the karate school and the teacher said look where you parked your car, it is on a grave. I moved my car and sure enough there was a six foot long or so indentation in the ground a few feet wide, no markings, but definitely sunk in. I told my teacher about seeing graves there from the other side of the road just last night before we had class again. Native Americans used to live in Alachua as well, in fact that is where the town got it’s name from, it means Low Lying Land? But they were all killed or chased away. The sign by the side of the road said hundreds of years ago the town used to be called Newnansville. If you didn’t read the sign you would never even have heard of it.

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     lori  |  March 7, 2018 at 7:58 pm

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     I dont know if you will see this comment being that your post was 3 years ago. I lived in Alachua for more than 22 years. I truly believe that the whole side of that town (maybe the entire town) is on some sort of burial grounds. I lived in Alachua Hills and my baby girl at the age of 2 started screaming one day that she was seeing a “scary man” in the window. I never saw anything. It got so bad with her that I had our house blessed and prayed over by our preacher. After one night when she was so upset I just prayed my heart out with her and told God to protect my family while holding my precious daughter. Her whole body was shaking. I screamed for this “man” to leave us alone and that we didn’t want it here and then it was gone! She remembers it to this day and she is 27 years old. I don’t think it was the house. I believe it was the land. Numerous people have lived in that house. and in that neighborhood. Terrible things have happened to people we knew there that is too scary the think about. Anyway…. my cousin was killed in a car accident in 1997 and is buried in sec. A. He was the sweetest boy. i used to babysit him when he was little. It worries me that he is there and that there is so much talk that this resting place is one of the most haunted places in Florida. I don’t know what I believe but I know Ive saw things and experience things in that house I lived in that isn’t too far from this cemetary that would blow a persons mind. I just think that there are things in this world that is beyond our realm of thinking and I cant explain it but I do know that I don’t want to go through it again. I also will tell you that I will NEVER forget it. If I were you I would not go there again. I know that you may be curious but the unknown things could be very dangerous. Im sure you are talking of the Hera Krishna farm, right? I know its not far from Newnansville. Be careful with your curiosity. You could open doors that you may wish you hadn’t.

2. 

   Dan Laird  |  October 14, 2018 at 1:04 pm

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   As a child in the 1940s I several times with my grandmother, Clara Stephens, when she would drive from Alachua to the Newnansville Cemetary. One feature of every visit was her angry complaint about the man owning the lot directly behind hers. At their adjoining corner he had a Palmetto palm about three feet tall which always laid a dead frond across the line on her lot. At her burial the palm was healthy save for one dead frond across the line. When my wife and I visited about six months later we observed the palm twisted off about a foot above ground Nothing else in the cemetery was touched or damaged. We are convinced she came back and took care of business.

3. 

   Tanya Griffin  |  April 5, 2019 at 12:55 pm

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   I just recently learned many of my family members are buried in that cemetery. To name a few my great grandfather Silas Jones b. 1885 d.1970 and my great grandmother Julia Jones b.1896 d.1968. I want to come see where they are laid to rest but have been told that not much of the cemetery remains and that most of the headstones were removed when parts of the cemetery was sold. I wouldn’t be surprised if houses or even businesses are built on top of graves. Sad and disrespectful!!!!!

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     Debra S  |  May 5, 2019 at 5:45 pm

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     Hi Tanya,
     I don’t live far from there and have been there many times. The cemetery is very well maintained. People are still being buried there. There are some very old graves that have no headstones or ones so worn you can’t read the names. But most are readable. You might check out the Alachua County Virtual Cemetery Project’s website. They have photographed lots of gravestones and you might find your great grandparents there.

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     Don  |  October 19, 2019 at 2:47 pm

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     Tanya, an excellent book: “Lest We Forget, A Town, Newnansville, Florida by Mary Lois Douglas Forrester is available for purchase at Jim Douglas Chevrolet in High Springs. The book lists people buried there and a map of the cemetery. There are Jones listed in it, but not the ones you named.

4. 

   Debra S  |  May 5, 2019 at 5:49 pm

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   Hi Tanya,
   I don’t live far from there and have been there many times. The cemetery is very well maintained. People are still being buried there. There are some very old graves that have no headstones or ones so worn you can’t read the names. But most are readable. You might check out the Alachua County Virtual Cemetery Project’s website. They have photographed lots of gravestones and you might find your great grandparents there.