In Northumberland county, Pennsylvania, legend holds that there lies an unmarked grave—not remarkable on its own, for there lie many unnamed graves there, in the many cemeteries in the area. But this grave is special: legend has it that it belonged to a man with a wolf spirit. The legend goes that a community of sheepherders was having a wolf problem; one day, a strange man entered the town and became infatuated with a young girl named May. While he was around, May, her family, and her flock of sheep remained untouched by the wolves, while other families had their livestock ravaged. One lone night, hunters in the area shot and killed a large wolf. When they followed the blood trail to reclaim the body, they found not a wolf, but a man. His body was subsequently buried in Schwaben Valley, Northumberland county, remembered under the local legend of the Wolfman’s Grave.

Our journey to Wolfman’s Grave started out uneventful. The four of us packed into my car and we drove out to Schwaben Valley as a general starting point, with a few marked cemeteries to look out for based on our research. On the way—not at all relevant to the legend, but noteworthy nonetheless—we stopped at a Planet Fitness to use the bathroom, and in doing so found out that the “Lunk Alarm” was a real thing. Who knew.

Anyways, we planned to stop at a few cemeteries and look around, either for the grave of May, the girl from the story, or for the unmarked Wolfman’s Grave, of which we had little more than a vague physical description. It was more difficult than we anticipated; we drove in circles, through sparsely populated woodland and farmland, searching in vain for our next destination. At one point, once we crossed off our first few primary locations, we simply started looking in any cemetery we passed, desperately hoping we may stumble onto the grave by chance. The legend research we did left us with a vague area of where the grave might be, but no definite address. Our best guesses led us to a few cemeteries along Schwaben Creek, which was, according to legend, where the wolfman was originally sighted.

One of our stops, the Wolf’s Cross Road Church and cemetery, was our most hopeful. The name itself made us think we were getting close; and, as it turns out, we were. We just didn’t know it at that time.

After looking around, we realized that the grave wasn’t there. Dejected, having spent a few hours at this point driving around, we decided to stop at a local antique store for help. We figured if anyone would know about local legends, it would be the owners of an antique store. So, in Sunbury, we stopped and entered a quaint little store and asked the owners for advice. They pointed us towards Himmel’s Church, where legend has it the wolfman was sighted at a nearby bridge in werewolf form. We did take our time leaving the store. It had a lot of old Pennsylvania Dutch items, cool crystals and minerals, as well as items from other local legends.

Eventually—after a lunch stop at a Burger King nearby—we packed back in my car again and set off for the final destination of our trip. It was about thirty minutes deeper into rural Pennsylvania than we already were. By that point, the only thing along the main road were churches, cemeteries, and the occasional home. Side roads ran out to farms, but other than that, it truly felt like we were out there all alone. When we got to Himmel’s Church, we expected a challenge, or at least a bit of a hike, to find the alleged bridge. Instead, it was visible from the parking lot of the church. However, our first stop was the Himmel’s Church cemetery.

We spent some time investigating the cemetery, which had many unmarked graves. It seemed our legend trip couldn’t come to a full conclusion; we wouldn’t have definitive proof of wolfman’s grave no matter how hard we looked. Instead, we visited the bridge, satisfied to have seen at least a little of the legend, and headed home.

Following the rules was definitely difficult. We had to have the antique store owners write down the directions for us, and even finding the antique store was tricky; we had to drive around town, hoping we’d eventually stumble upon an antique store. Even leaving became tricky. Since our eventual destination was outside of what we planned for, we had to ask a couple we saw on the side of the road for directions towards the highway so we could find our way back home. And, even if we wanted to use our phones, we were so far out into the boonies that none of us had service.

I do think it enhanced my experience on the legend trip. I was able to fully focus on what was going on and throw myself into the fun of it all. I think I would have researched more thoroughly had I really realized what “no phones” meant. Without asking locals for directions, I don’t know that we would have made it to Himmel’s Church. It would have saved definitely a few hours had we known that from the get-go; our trip ended up being ~6 hours, when we all expected it to take around 3-4. I definitely don’t regret it, though! Getting lost kind of made the end result when we did find the bridge and the cemetery all the sweeter.