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Grave Goings-On

FelixAntonius

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Aug 8, 2001
Messages
1,178
Mystery grave

A few villages away from me, a new "unauthorised" grave has been found in the local grave yard!!!!

From the "Biggleswade Chronicle" of 22nd November 2002:-

Mystery grave may have to be dug up.

An apparently unauthorised grave in Gamlingay may have to be dug up to find out whose body lies within.

Checks with local undertakers and churches have left Gamlingay Parish Council none the wiser as to whom has been buried without permission in the village cemetery.

If the registrar's paper-work checks draw another blank the grave will have to be dug to check for a name plate on the coffin.

If there is no name on the coffin, it will have to be opened.

Parish clerk Lesley Mayne says it is a professionally dug grave. She is working with the coroner to solve the mystery.

Mrs Mayne said: "Whoever is in there has a family. It is a pity really."
 
I believe it was quite common in England in the 1600's for the families of excommunicants (?) to break into churchyards at night and secretly bury their loved ones so they could lie in consecrated soil.

We tend now to think of excommunication as being a punishment for heresy. However you could actually be punished in this way for petty misdemeanours such as not going to church regularly and not paying your tithes, so I imagine the problem was fairly widespread.

If it's a new grave maybe they were just trying to avoid burial costs. Dying costs a bloody fortune these days.
 
The latest news, is that the Parish Council have found the bloke who owns the grave plot & he's very much alive. His wife when told of the unauthorised burial is supposed to have commented: "I suppose they are keeping it warm for him."

So a exhumation certificate has been issued by the coroner & the council are going to dig the grave up during the week, to see if they can find who is down there!!!!
 
Fascinating!

Keep us informed, David.
 
Very strange - you get squatters in houses, but I've never heard of one in a grave before . . .

Carole
 
How do we know it's a person buried there? Could be something entirely different. Perhaps it's someone's idea of a joke.
 
Here's another graveyard story to put you off your breakfast -

Night of the falling dead comes to Brazilian home
Link is dead. The MIA webpage can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:


https://web.archive.org/web/20030313205504/https://in.news.yahoo.com/021125/137/1yf48.html

Here's the text:
Night of the falling dead comes to Brazilian home
Bones, coffins and crosses crashed through the kitchen wall of a Brazilian home over the weekend after a torrential rain washed out part of a neighboring cemetery, officials said on Monday.

"It happened during the rain on Saturday night. Part of the cemetery wall fell and earth mixed with body parts, coffins and pieces of tombstones invaded the house that is located down the hill," said an official at the cemetery on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, who did not want to be named.

Cemetery officials said the residents had to tolerate the remnants of the dead in their kitchen for the rest of the weekend. A funeral home in the area was expected to clean up the "haunted" house on Monday.

The residents could not be reached for comment. Brazil's Extra tabloid newspaper showed a picture of a woman living in the house holding up a hip bone and a piece of a skull, with a pile of earth and a huge opening in a wall in the background.

Eww!
 
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A similar thing happened in Manchester in the middle 19th century. It is graphically described in the museum of, um, drains, graves, backyards and outside lavatories there.
 
Come to think of it, it happened in Falmouth too. The town is built on a steep hill sloping down to the harbour, and there are several underground springs which sometimes burst out. This happened in the old graveyard by the church. Eventually it was closed (New Street runs through the middle of the site now) and a new cemetery was opened on the outskirts of town, down by Swanpool.
 
In Scotland, if a member of the parish died he was buried in a christian way in the burial ground. They were all buried in the same position. East to west with their ID on the stone facing the holy land. Any additional carvings are to be found on the reverse of the stones. As such the embelishments face the west.

When a dubious member of the community died and his or her burial was a problem. Quite often he/she would be buried north to south or reversed from the usual way.

His ID could point in the opposite direction from his fellow cadavers. He may have been buried slightly outside the churchyard. Most well populated towns have old church yards whose volume of burials has meant a certain increase in the boundries of the grave yards. This means that many of the unchristian burials are now inside the present day boundries of the yard.

Another problem is the dubious, heretical characters actual status in the community and how the communitymay have stood by his burial. Quite often in Scotland, those people who were unacceptable to the church were actually upheld as wise or good characters whose death came as a blow to the good christians of the town. They were sometimes responsible for making sure that the heretic recieved a place in the burial ground.
 
I once read a lovely story about a person who was, for some reason, buried just outside the churchyard, to their family's great despair.
In the night the locals moved the graveyard fence so that it enclosed the new grave.
Anyone else heard this one?
I don't even know which country it was in!
 
escargot said:
How do we know it's a person buried there? Could be something entirely different. Perhaps it's someone's idea of a joke.

It seems quite possible escargot, the police have apparently probed the grave this morning & claim to have found nothing but earth. While the local gosip in the pub last night, was that the grave digger dug a grave in the wrong place early in the year & filled it in, without telling anyone. Having chucked in a few planks to reduce subsidence!!!!!!

Seems rather a let down, it even made the front page of a national paper this morning!!!!:(
 
Do you have the paper?

Get the paper!

Fortean specialises in archiving such stories.

I want a copy for a start!

Do you have a scanner?

Lets see some pics....pleeeeease?

What paper/s?
 
Link dis'ny work, mate!

Its gettin' late to acquire todays paper....do you not have one?
 
Haha, I was right, there ain't no body!!!!!!!

I wish now I'd said more about my first impression, which was that as the grave was 'professionally' dug, I thought that meant it was either a. 2 blokes digging at night who knew what they were doing (speed & accuracy) or b. a mechanical digger in broad daylight, exactly as graves are ordinarily dug, which would have looked unsuspicious at the time.

An existing grave is a bad choice for hiding a body, though I have certainly heard of undertakers accepting bribes to secrete murder victims' corpses in customers' graves. (Or was that in 'The Godfather'?)

The tone of the original article gives clues about what's really gone on. The 'professionally dug' grave hints at a mistake by the gravediggers, and the grave owner's wife's joke about keeping the grave warm for her husband suggests that nobody really suspected foul play, and that the 'secret' is probably widely known locally.

All in all a good funny story for a cold winter night, with the joke on the gravedigger and the police, all of whom knew what was going on, and no harm done!
 
escargot said:
I wish now I'd said more about my first impression, which was that as the grave was 'professionally' dug, I thought that meant it was either a. 2 blokes digging at night who knew what they were doing (speed & accuracy) or b. a mechanical digger in broad daylight, exactly as graves are ordinarily dug, which would have looked unsuspicious at the time.

I don't know about the graveyard in question, but there are plenty of graves still dug by hand rather than by mechanical digger.

I met someone a while ago who has been convicted of grave robbing- he did it in daylight while wearing a fluorescent jacket in order to look like a council worker. Probably less likely to arouse suspicion than doing it at night.
 
Grave robbing????????????????
Grave robbing?????????????????????

I'm sorry, but there are far more important questions at stake here than mere accidentally-dug graves.
We want to know about the grave-robbing, NOW, please.
 
My local churchyard, which dates back 1000 years, was plagued by grave robbers 150 years ago. It got to be such a problem that steps had to be taken. Like many churchyards across Scotland, some of the graves were armed with mort-safes. These giant cages are rare now but can still be seen in some yards. They enclose the grave underground and above ground and are eventually removed when the cadaver is beyond use to robbers.

Many were sold to Glasgow University for study and presentation.
I have my own theory that many were also sold to the Freemasons. At present there is a skull in every lodge. There are 50,000 lodges in the world. The math is freaky!

In my churchyard, there was such a problem with grave robbers at night that a strange tollbooth on wheels was set up and could be seen trundling up and down the graves at night. The man inside was just another community member taking his turn and his fellow parishioners would supply food and drink. Unfortunatly it became an excuse for secret binges with mates and graves were robbed regardless.

There are still many shot marks where actual robbers and idiots were chased. They are on the stones and the church itself.

There was also a fear of live burial across scotland at this point. It was due to just one or two actual occurences elsewhere.

This was combatted by attaching a string to the toe or the fingure of the corpse and allowing it to surface though a tube...ugh! this was, in turn, tied to a bell which was supported by a little bracket.

So...picture the scene.......there is a phantom tollbooth moving silently and slowly through the moonlit graveyard and all of a sudden a toe bell rings and the tollbooth speeds up. After realising that it was a cat you notice someone digging a grave down the avenue of stones and you shoot his ass with the blunderbuss.

It started out atmospheric and tailed off to be just sore.
 
Forgot to mention.......

Lord Justice Boyle was born next to the Graveyard and presided at the trial of Burke and Hare the bodysnatchers.

His statue is one of the most hated things in Irvine. There are only two statues in the whole town. One of Robert Burns and of Lord Justice Boyle.

Boyle hung a little boy because he stole a loaf of bread. His statue was ordered by the people of Irvine, to be moved away from the main street about 100 years ago.
 
I remember reading that in 1804 a child of 7 was hung for stealing bread. At the time I had a niece aged 7 and I wept at the thought. Wonder if this was the same child as Boyle hung?

The bodysnatching scandal was fascinating- there are many books about it and I've seen TV progs too. Never seen any antibodysnatching devices in churchyards round here though, maybe because it's too far from city medical schools.

You'd think bodysnatching was a thing of the past, and that it couldn't happen now or people wouldn't care anyway.


Step forward the good doctors of Alder Hey.........
 
escargot said:
We want to know about the grave-robbing, NOW, please.

As I understand, it was about 20 years ago, and he collected bones for artistic reasons. He was caught in the act and went to prison for it, no idea how long for.
 
The grave-robber sounds like someone I used to know!
I lived in the country and foolishly invited a couple to stay as they were temporarily homeless.
They necked all my food & drink, wrecked my home and had stand-up battles all round the village.
One night they planned to dig up a grave in the churchyard for a skull- they didn't get round to it as the police caught up with them over something else and they left in a hurry.

Wonder if they ever did dig up a skull...............
 
Follow up story, with photo of grave's owner!
Link is dead. The MIA webpage can be accessed at the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/2003042.../news/story/sm_716663.html?menu=news.quirkies

NOTE: The photo is MIA. According to the photo caption, the owner's name is spelled 'Hibbatt'.

The plot had been booked by postman Sid Hibbitt, 54, who wanted to be buried next to one of his former neighbours.
He said was shocked to discover that someone else appeared to have been buried in his grave.
 
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Grave Robbing

Visitor To Local Cemetery Encounters Frightening Grave-Side Sight


Reported by: Andrea Canning
Web produced by: Stacy Puzo
Photographed by: 9News
2/16/04 1:37:07 PM

A Cincinnati woman, still in mourning, made a horrific discovery this weekend next to her boyfriend's grave.

She found a human foot and other bones, but not below the ground, where they were supposed to be.

Tamika Johnson met 9News reporter Andrea Canning at the 100-year-old Beechgrove Cemetery on Fleming Road in Springdale Township Monday morning.

There everyone saw the disturbing sight, a foot sticking out of the ground.

"I'm still in shock, I can't believe it," Johnson said.

When Johnson went to visit her boyfriend of five years who was murdered in December what she found next to his grave was a foot and some bones that resembled vertabrae sticking out of a mound of soil.

"I got in the car and I sat there for about a half hour shocked, so I went to the store and got a camera and came back and took pictures," said Johnson.

Together, Johnson and 9News reporter Andrea Canning called the Springfield Township Police.

They sent over the chief and several detectives, searched the grounds for more bones and took aerial photos in case it was criminal, although right now they said it doesn't appear to be.

"I can't believe what we're seeing here," said Chief David Heimpold, Springfield Township Police Department.

"For some reason they've dug up old graves and left body parts on top of the ground," Heimpold continued.

The caretaker and the pastor of the Bethel AME Church, who oversees the cemetery eventually arrived and looked through records to try and determine who the deceased is.

Both declined to go on camera but police said the caretaker told them the dug up dirt, like that left over from Johnson's boyfriend's burial, is left in a pile on purpose because it eventually evens out with the ground because of all the water in the soil.

The director of a local funeral home said prior to 1990 people were buried in just a casket. In 1990 a law was passed that required the deceased to be buried in a casket and a cement vault.

Police said that could explain why the body and what appeared to be pieces of a casket were dug up with the dirt.

"This is someone's loved one. How would they want their family to be when they pass away. Not like this," Johnson said.

Police do not believe there is anything criminal about the incident, but perhaps bad maintenance, they will go to the department of commerce that oversees cemeteries.

The trustees of the cemetary said they are shocked and steps will be taken to prevent this from ever happening again saying it will be maintained with dignity and respect.

http://www.wcpo.com/news/2004/local/02/16/cemetery.html
 
mmm...
So you'd buy a disposable camera, and find a news reporter before you went to the police?:hmph:
Some people would do anything for their 15 minuits.
 
*raises hand*

I thought I'd make some comments here, since I work as a graveyard caretaker... (although I think "gravegigger" has a better ring to it, don't you think?)

This seems to be one of those cases there the innocent public is subjected to the reality of day-to-day graveyard routines. In my (swedish) graveyard, we do things that's technically illegal, but it has to be done. Graves gets dug up all the time, intentionally or not, and that's just how it is. You gotta pay the rent for your grave as well as anything else...

You have to leave a mould of earth on top of new graves, because when the coffin collapses the ground sinks, leaving a hole. And many graveyards prefer to use earth from within the cementary, because, a) it's cheaper, and b) it's the whole "blessed earth" that keeps you from importing earth from outside. And since most of the earth have someone buried in them, well...

Of course, on my job we strain the earth first, just to keep this from happening.

Sure, someone have made a grave (ahem) mistake here but geez.... They do not know that they're speaking about.
 
Chigrima: Excellent thanks for that professional insight. Very interesting.

A guy just called itno the radio and was discussing what he did (gardener in Britain's largest cemetry) and he says a danger can be the opposite of this - 'sinkers' where old graves collapse in on itself - is that a big issue?

Emps
 
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