Live Free, Die Haunted | New Hampshire

Season 2 Episode 37

In the quiet hills of New Hampshire, two small burial grounds hide some of the most persistent and unsettling folklore in all of New England. This episode of The Grim opens the gate on Pine Hill Cemetery in Hollis, known to locals as Blood Cemetery, and Gilson Road Cemetery in Nashua, where the stories go deeper and stranger than any single legend can contain.

Pine Hill was established in 1769 on land donated by Benjamin Parker Jr., and nearly three hundred souls rest beneath its weathered stones. The cemetery's infamous nickname traces not to murder or massacre, but to a single grave: Abel Blood, a Christian philanthropist whose surname proved too unsettling for local imagination to ignore. For decades, visitors have reported a phantom child along the roadside, malfunctioning cameras and electronics within the gates, sudden temperature drops, and a pointing hand carved in stone that some claim shifts direction after dark.

Then there is Gilson Road, less than an acre, easy to overlook, and according to paranormal researcher Fiona Broome, the most active cemetery in the state. Here, the graves of infant children draw quiet offerings from strangers, a headstone bears an unexplained hole drilled cleanly through its center, and a legend tied to a Colonial-era woman named Betsey Gilson has haunted the roadside for generations. A banished medicine man. A glowing headstone. A dark rider, some call the Watcher. At Gilson Road, no single story dominates, only an accumulation of dread that visitors carry home long after the gate is behind them.

Featured Stories

Pine Hill Cemetery (Blood Cemetery), Hollis, NH — The origin of the "Blood Cemetery" nickname, the legend of Abel Blood's shifting grave marker, reports of a phantom child along the roadside, and decades of paranormal encounters documented by researcher Fiona Broome.

Gilson Road Cemetery, Nashua, NH — The mysterious drilled headstone of five-year-old Walter Gilson, the legend of Betsey Gilson and the ritual visitors still attempt after dark, and why investigators call this the most haunted cemetery in New Hampshire.

Descending once more into the hauntings of history, on The Grim.