There is an angel standing in Oakland Cemetery in Iowa City, Iowa.
She is more than eight feet tall. Her wings are spread. Her face is solemn. And over the decades, her bronze surface has turned an eerie, almost black color.
Naturally, people decided she was CURSED.
This is the story of the Black Angel — one of Iowa’s creepiest cemetery legends.
The monument was commissioned by Teresa Feldevert as a memorial to her family and erected in 1912. There’s a perfectly ordinary explanation for the statue’s dark appearance: the bronze oxidized over time. But that explanation hasn’t stopped generations of visitors from creating some wonderfully disturbing folklore around her.
Touch the Black Angel, and some versions of the legend say you’ll die within seven years.
Kiss her, and supposedly you have only seven weeks.
Kiss her at MIDNIGHT?
According to one particularly nasty version of the story, you might not survive the next 24 hours.
And then there’s the bizarre full-moon legend involving kissing someone beneath her wings…
So tonight, we’re digging into the actual history of the Black Angel, the family buried beneath her, how an ordinary bronze monument became one of the Midwest’s most infamous cemetery landmarks, and where all those stories about her deadly kiss came from.
Just remember: if you ever visit her yourself, maybe admire the statue from a respectful distance.
There are plenty of people in this world worth kissing.
Cemetery monuments do not need to be on that list.
If you enjoyed this strange little trip into cemetery folklore, please LIKE the video, SHARE it with somebody who appreciates creepy history, and SUBSCRIBE for more weird, paranormal, macabre, and forgotten stories.
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SOURCES:
City of Iowa City — Oakland Cemetery / Black Angel history
University of Iowa Libraries — Ghosts and Black Angels: Local Hauntings
The Daily Iowan — historical coverage of the Black Angel
Atlas Obscura — The Black Angel of Oakland Cemetery
#BlackAngel #OaklandCemetery #IowaCity #HauntedIowa #CemeteryLegends #UrbanLegends #Paranormal #Halloween #NoKissingStatues #SevenDaydIsTooSoon
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