The Ghost of Whipple Cemetery

Whipple, a small cemetery northeast of Griswold, Iowa, was in the 1850’ and 60’s, a small settlement. Then it boasted a school, a church, a post office, a general store, a blacksmith, and a few other buildings. It was right along the stage line and was in fact a stagecoach stop! It lasted but just a decade or so after being passed over by the railroad. Now all that remains is just a lonely graveyard bordered by tall evergreen trees. Not much happens there now, just an occasional funeral and people visiting the graves of their loved ones.

But on one night in the year of 1909 there was a ghost roaming the graveyard at the top of the hill! Arthur F. Sasse, a local young man who would become my grandpa someday, saw it. Also Jake, a man of color who was passing through the area by doing farm labor by the day saw it.

Jake had always been real scared of ghosts and the like since he was a child! No one knew why, but he was terrified of the dark things that moved in the shadows and especially scared of cemeteries.

Well, to go on with the story, on a warm summer evening in 1909, Art and Jake were returning from a house dance west of the Whipple Cemetery. To go home they had to pass the graveyard in their horse-drawn wagon. As they drew closer to the cemetery, Jake became more nervous and frightened until, when they finally did pass by the side of the evergreen trees, he was shaking in his shoes!

Then suddenly from behind a tombstone in the northwest corner of the cemetery arose a white figure making the most terrible wailing sounds ever heard in those parts! Art Sasse yelled “GHOST’ and Jake’s heart almost stopped! He leaped from the wagon seat and ran like the wind the two miles to the farm where he was staying, screaming all the way!

Poor Jake never said much about that night and he moved on shortly afterwards. But it is certain that he never forgot the night when his fears became reality and he saw he real ghost!

Arthur Sasse never forgot that night neither and he related the story to his son Lawrence who later told me. Funny thing though, Art was never scared of the ghost. Why? Because all the time he knew it was just his older brother Fred Sasse hiding in that cemetery that night with a white sheet over his head!

By the way, you can still visit Fred out at the old Whipple cemetery. He died and was laid to rest there in 1973, 64 years after he was a ghost! His tombstone stands just a few feet from the spot where he “scared the dickens” out of poor Jake in 1909!

But this is only one tale from the “Sasse files!”