VIDEO: Searching For Bodies At West Neck Cemetery

As recently as 52 years ago, and as long ago as 150 years ago, people bought plots at , with the hopes of having their families buried there.

And then it was forgotten. The families moved on or moved away, abandoning the cemetery and the plot. That left the cemetery and its association with more than 140 empty sites, which would likely remain empty forever.

That also left John Morgan, the secretary and treasurer of the cemetery association, and David Tracy, the caretaker of the cemetery, in a tough spot. With interest rates at an all-time low, there was barely enough money produced by the association’s endowment fund to keep the cemetery maintained. Yet at the same time, there were more than 140 empty spots, owned by people who haven’t had any contact with the cemetery for at least 50 years.

Morgan and Tracy have asked the attorney general and hosts of other lawyers if they can take over a likely-abandoned lot, and so far have not received an answer. The fear is they sell the lot, and then a long-lost relative finds the original deed to the plot and wants to be buried there, Tracy said.

“This is all to make the cemetery more viable,” Tracy said.

Morgan said the people are “highly unlikely” to come back and ask for the plot, and he is only looking at sites where there has been no contact with the owner for at least 50 years. He said if people do come out asking for the lot, the cemetery association will accomodate them, he said.

“We can not overlook that there is a lot of unused real estate that someone in this generation would appreciate,” said Morgan, who added that several people have asked him if there are empty spots in the cemetery.

Thursday Morning

The cemetery is technically full, with all the spots sold. But as mentioned, approximately 140 spots have been abandoned, so it would be a big benefit for the cemetery to have those, Morgan said, who volunteers his time at the association.

Before selling those spots though, Morgan and Tracy needed to make sure there was nobody buried there. Sometimes, if a family didn’t have money for a headstone, people would be buried in unmarked graves, Morgan said.

He contacted the state archeology department, which has a program where they use a radar machine to determine if there is somebody buried in the ground. On Thursday afternoon, a team showed up, radar machine-in-hand, ready to search for bodies.

The team consisted of Bruce Greene of the office of state archeology and two federally-employed soil scientists, Jim Doolittle and Debbie Surabian. Doolittle and Surabian generally use the radar machine to search for bedrock and water tables, but the department of archeology does work for them, so they sometimes do work for it, Doolittle said. Plus, it is more fun, he said.

“You get more of that instant gratification,” Doolittle said. “It is sort of like treasure hunting.”

The machine can detect if soil was dug up and then filled back in, although it is not perfect on graves more than 100 years old and graves without coffins, Doolittle said. Still the machine did find a few bodies that were either unmarked or not where the headstone said it would be.

However many of the plots were empty, as Morgan predicted. Now the question remains what to do with that land, he said.

Suggestions

There are still many cremation spots at the front of the cemetery, Tracy said. There, people are given a memorial stone that sits even with the ground, to make the yard maintenance of the cemetery more manageable, he said.

What could happen is the cemetery could sell a cremation spot, but then put a head stone in another spot, Tracy said. That way, if a long-lost relative did come out of nowhere demanding his or her spot back, only the head stone would have to be moved, he said.

However, there is a problem with that, Tracy said. People want the stone to be where the actual body is buried, he said.

“People can’t deal with it,” he said. “There would need to be a psychological shift.”

What is more likely is that the association will just take over the spot again and then resell it, Morgan said. There are several people to want to be buried there, and it is a shame to have it just sit there unused forever, he said.

It cost about $2,500 a year to maintain the cemetery, Tracy said. There is an endowment fund of about $50,000, but with interest rates being so low money is tight, he said. Some people do donate to the association, but it barely makes enough money to pay for everything, Tracy said.