Stepney Cemetery

Stepney Cemetery is at 21 Pepper Street, in the Stepney village of Monroe, Connecticut, laid out beside the Stepney Green in 1794 and also carried as Birdsey's Plain or Beardsley Plain Cemetery. Its two most visited graves are recent ones: Ed Warren, buried in August 2006, and Lorraine Warren, buried on 24 April 2019, under a single black granite obelisk with WARREN cut into the base and, on the lowest step, the line "Sunday, Monday, Always". The ghost belongs somewhere else. The Warrens' own organisation says the White Lady of Union Cemetery, a few miles away in Easton, "has been spotted near both locations". Ray Bendici, who put Stepney into print in 2008, went at dusk with a film camera, found "nothing unusual" on the negatives, was ambushed in the dark by a large goose, and asked in the same paragraph "how anyone would be able to know if it's the same White Lady or another one". The oldest headstone is usually given as Nathaniel W. Knapp, died 1787. The W.P.A. transcription of the stones reads "died Mar. 7, 1797", and records an earlier death still: Betsey Sherman, five years and ten months old, 19 January 1794.

Stepney Cemetery occupies the corner of Pepper and Green streets, in the Stepney section of Monroe, Fairfield County, Connecticut. The Monroe Sun places it "a stone's throw from the historic Stepney Green at the corner of Main and Pepper streets". Find a Grave, which lists 1,471 memorials in it, gives the address as "21 Pepper Street, Monroe, Connecticut, USA 06468" and the coordinates 41.32250, -73.26330. The ground also answers to Birdsey's Plain Cemetery and Beardsley Plain Cemetery, and the funeral trade and the Connecticut press have buried people in it under a fourth name, Stepney Village Cemetery. Almost everything printed about the place descends from one evening. At 20:35 on 4 January 2008 a Wikipedia editor signing as 2112guy uploaded to Wikimedia Commons a photograph captioned "The entrance to Stepney Cemetery, Monroe, CT", taken on 16 August 2007; three minutes later, at 20:38, he created the Wikipedia article. That first version supplied the 1794 founding beside the Stepney Green, the alternative names, the chapel next door, and the sentence that has travelled furthest: "the oldest headstone belongs to Nathaniel W. Knapp (d. 1787)", and none of it carried a citation. Eighteen years on, the Warrens' own organisation reproduces that paragraph on its Stepney page with "died 1787" intact, and the photograph 2112guy uploaded that night is the one at the head of this file. The stones themselves were transcribed long before. The Connecticut State Library describes the Charles R. Hale Collection as "a project done in the 1930s that sought to document all legible headstones in Connecticut for that time", and dates it: "Vital information from headstone inscriptions in over 2,000 Connecticut cemeteries was recorded in a W.P.A. project directed by Charles R. Hale ca. 1932-5." The Stepney section of the Monroe volume runs to 787 entries, and the Knapp line in it reads "Knapp, Nathaniel W., died Mar. 7, 1797." — a decade after the date in circulation, and three years after the founding instead of seven years before it. The earliest death in the whole transcription belongs to a child: "Sherman, Betsey, daughter of Walker and Anna, died Jan. 19, 1794, age 5 years and 10 months." Betsey Sherman was buried in the January of the year the ground is said to have opened. Behind her come "Nichols, Amelia, died April 3, 1800, age 1 month.", "Beardslee, Jared, died Nov. 26, 1802." and "Beardsley, Priscilla, wife of Elihu, died Sept. 9, 1803, age 25 years." Hale's copyists recorded what was still legible in the 1930s, so the transcription sets a floor for the cemetery's age rather than a census of it. When Betsey Sherman was buried the land lay in Huntington, "incorporated in 1789 as Huntington" out of Stratford. The town around the graves came later: Connecticut Humanities records that "The General Assembly granted incorporation in 1823 and named it for then-president James Monroe." A few doors down the same street, at 15 Pepper Street, stands Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel, which describes itself as "A sanctuary for Catholics seeking the traditional Latin Mass since 1973". Its priest for decades was Robert McKenna. On 17 March 1998 the Hartford Courant reported him performing what he called "a solemn exorcism" on a ten-year-old boy in Manchester, and carried the Roman Catholic reply in the same column: Monsignor Thomas Ginty, chancellor of the Archdiocese of Hartford, said the rite had not been sanctioned and that exorcisms are "a last resort", while "the diocese of Bridgeport, however, said Monday that McKenna is not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church." McKenna told the reporter he worked where the church would not — "Generally speaking of the establishment, it's something that they avoid. They've lost the faith." — and put his own count at "more than 125 exorcisms over the past 15 years". The investigator who handed him the evidence in that case, Keith Auriemme, had "studied for roughly three years under well-known 'ghostbusters' from Monroe, Ed and Lorraine Warren." The Warrens ended up in the ground beside the chapel. Their monument is a black granite obelisk under a cross, WARREN cut into the base, and on the lowest step two lines in script: "Sunday, Monday, Always" and "Their hearts were full of spirits". The inscribed panel reads EDWARD WARREN MINEY / BORN SEPT. 7, 1926 / DIED AUG. 23, 2006 / HIS BELOVED WIFE / LORRAINE RITA MORAN / BORN JAN. 31, 1927 / DIED APR. 18, 2019. They had founded the New England Society for Psychic Research in 1952. Lorraine Warren's funeral was held on Wednesday 24 April 2019 at St. Stephen's Church, 6948 Main St., Trumbull, and the funeral home's notice closes: "Interment will follow in Stepney Village Cemetery, Monroe."

Stepney Cemetery is at "21 Pepper Street, Monroe, Connecticut, USA 06468", on the corner of Pepper and Green streets, off Route 25; its Find a Grave entry gives the coordinates 41.32250, -73.26330. The Monroe Sun locates it "a stone's throw from the historic Stepney Green at the corner of Main and Pepper streets". The photograph on this page shows the entrance in August 2007: two stone gateposts, a paved drive running straight in between the obelisks, a flagpole with guy wires, and wooded hills behind. The burial ground is private and its upkeep is volunteer. The Monroe Sun reports that "Volunteers from the Stepney Burial Ground Association work hard to maintain the grounds", while Police Capt. Keith White told the same paper in February 2022 that "Our Lady of the Rosary Chapel is responsible for the maintenance of the cemetery." Kate Chase is the sexton, and complaints reach the Monroe Police Department through her. Neither the association nor the chapel publishes opening hours: as of 7 September 2026 the cemetery's Find a Grave page carries the address, the coordinates and 1,471 memorials, and where its description should be it says the cemetery has none. There is no visitor centre, no admission charge and no tour on the site. After the February 2022 vandalism the police added the cemetery to their patrol round. "We've been trying to be more visible in the area of all our commercial businesses and locations, which will now include Stepney Cemetery," White said, and asked for help: "If people see something out of the norm or suspicious, please contact us at that time." The association said it planned to install security cameras. The chapel at 15 Pepper Street is a working place of worship — "A sanctuary for Catholics seeking the traditional Latin Mass since 1973" — and runs on a Mass schedule. The Warren monument is the black granite obelisk with WARREN cut into the base. Photographs on its Find a Grave memorial show a hanging basket of pink begonias on a shepherd's hook, bedding flowers planted around the plinth and a glass devotional candle standing at its foot. Union Cemetery, the White Lady's home ground, is a separate burial ground under separate management in Easton, 6.2 km to the south-west by the two pins in this catalogue; it closes at sundown and the Easton police enforce that, and neither the closing time nor the enforcement applies here.