Pilgrims Rest Cemetery is located at approximately 791 West Granada Boulevard (State Road 40), near the corner of Granada Boulevard and Nova Road in Ormond Beach. Its origins connect to the Tomoka Settlement along the Tomoka River in the mid-1800s, where pioneer families—including the Bennetts, Winns, Harpers, Campbells, and Groovers—organized a Primitive Baptist congregation and cemetery around 1879. The church also served as a one-room schoolhouse. After freezes in the 1890s destroyed local orange groves, the families relocated farther east. In 1906, Walter Campbell and William Bennett Jr. acquired the present site and moved the church building roughly four and a half miles on logs pulled by mule teams. The first recorded burial at the new location occurred in 1908: four-year-old Kansas Bennett (daughter of William and Lucinda Grover Bennett), believed to have died of chicken pox. The cemetery holds graves of early Ormond-area settlers, including at least seven Confederate veterans (a monument listing them was placed in 2011). It remains an active, privately maintained burial ground (recently under the care of Brenda and Steve Fecher, continuing a multi-generational family stewardship) and is open from dawn to dusk. The Ormond Beach Historical Society hosts an annual “Tales from Pilgrims Rest Cemetery” lantern-lit tour with costumed reenactors and a Civil War-era cannon firing.
Reported Hauntings and Folklore
A specific paranormal claim appears in accounts from the Daytona Beach Paranormal Research Group (associated with investigator Doris “Dusty” Smith) and is included in Encyclopedia of Haunted Places (2005). The group reported that an African American man was hanged from a tree in the back corner of the property before the land was used as a cemetery; he was later found to have been innocent of the crime of which he was accused. The same area is described as a “hot spot” where investigators recorded temperature increases of 20–40 degrees, photographed strange mists, and noted dead small animals (birds and squirrels) on multiple occasions. A photograph purportedly showing an anomaly was attributed to this location. These reports originate from one investigative group and have not been widely corroborated by independent sources or long-standing local oral tradition. The cemetery’s primary public association is historical rather than paranormal; the annual tours emphasize pioneer and Civil War-era stories rather than ghost encounters.
Relevant links
Occult World: Pilgrims Rest Cemetery entry
Ormond Beach Historical Society: Cemetery Tour
Find a Grave: Pilgrims Rest Cemetery
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