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Look for a tomb in front of a cage that surrounds a smaller stone. It'll say "Sarah Ann - died June 18, 1852." The reason the cage is there is because her parents thought she died from a vampire bite and caged her grave so she couldn't get out and join the undead. There's supposed to be a tree right behind the cage, green and growing on the right side and dead on the left.
That's the legend. Interesting, but not true! The cemetery is really called Old Mt. Zion and was used by the Mt. Zion Methodist Church until their new church and cemetery was built in 1874.
The cages look like birdcages fitted over the graves. Yes, I said graves. There are actually two caged graves in this small, rural cemetery. One is on the grave of Sara Ann, wife of Ransloe Boone. (Sara being the traditional vampire) The other is over the grave of Asenath, wife of John F. Thomas. There even used to be a third cage that was, according to a news article in the 1960's, removed in the 1930's because it was in a dangerous state of disrepair, but it is not clear whose grave it was over.
It was probably over the grave of Rebecca Clayton. She died a few weeks before Sara and Asenath and was related to them. Rebecca and Sara were cousins. Asenath was the wife of Sara's brother.It is likely that this was the source of the vampire legend - but if this were the case then the vampire would have been Rebecca, who would have returned and attacked her two kinswomen...
but Sara is the traditional vampire - is it just because the cage on Rebecca's grave was gone while Sara's remained?
And why were they caged? No one knows for sure, but more mundane theories include to keep people from walkingon the graves, to keep animals out, and to protect the graves from bodysnatchers (big problem in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - a fresh cadaver could bring as much money as a typical person earned in months)
The graves around the cathedral in Glasgow, Scotland are under complex cages. This was to protect the graves from bodysnatchers. The grave of Billy the Kid in New Mexico is protected by a cage because the footstone was stolen several times. In England, there is a grave in the north side of the churchyard of East Mersea, Mersea Island in Essex - the grave of Sarah Wrench.
Some say that this iron cage was put there to deter body snatchers - but no other graves were protected this way.. which has led to the local legend that Sarah was a witch and that the cage was put over her grave to stop her from rising! The grave is in the north side of the churchyard and that was traditionally the area set aside for suicides and wrongdoers. But would a witch be buried in consecrated ground?
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