Key West Cemetery

Key West Cemetery is a 19-acre city cemetery, established in 1847 after an 1846 hurricane washed bodies out of the island's earlier burial ground. It holds an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 graves, many of them whitewashed above-ground vaults of the kind more often associated with New Orleans, and its sections include memorials to the sailors of the USS Maine, Cuban independence fighters and Confederate Navy sailors. It is also known for its epitaphs, including B.P. Roberts's "I told you I was sick." Key West ghost tours treat it as the island's most haunted historic site, and its best-known story is that of Elena Hoyos, a young woman who died of tuberculosis in 1931 and whose body was taken from her tomb by Carl Tanzler, the hospital technician who had treated her; he kept it for years until he was discovered in 1940. Her family and the community have long regarded the episode as a violation, and it is told here with respect for her.