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Once Buried

Chris and Pete had discovered the spot back when they were thirteen years old andhad been Boy Scouts together at Camp Iroquois. They’d wandered off to explore the woods. While walking along the top of a narrow ridge, Pete slipped on loose shale and tumbled into a deep pit. He wasn’t badly hurt because the ground was covered with a thick mat of pine needles and dense ferns. It was while he was climbing back up to the ridge, looking for footholds, that he stepped on the white stone jutting out of the earth. As soon as he pulled himself up, he saw another one just a few feet higher. When he looked down he saw the writing on the stone beneath his shoe.

Chris helped Pete loosen and pull out one of the carved slabs, and decided to carry it back to the camp. Years later, the young men would disagree about what was carved on it. Pete thought it had read, “Our Kathleen– With the Angels” while Chris remembered it saying, “Kathleen–Our Angel,” but they both agreed she had died in 1877.

The reason neither of them could remember the exact wording on the grave marker was because they had been forced to abandon it along the trail after they realized they were lost. The boys had spent most of the night sitting on a fallen tree trunk, swatting at mosquitos, until the bobbing flashlight beams through the trees let them know that their rescuers had arrived.

Scoutmaster Ralph Shuck was furious with them and in no mood to listen to the story of their exciting discovery. He was in no mood to listen to them at all. After a giving them a lecture about the dangers of wandering off in the woods without telling anyone, he sent them home in the park ranger’s truck.

The two didn’t have an opportunity to reminisce about the strange vertical graveyard in the woods until more than a decade later, when they ran into one another in a sports bar in Harrisburg. By then, Chris had obtained his undergraduate degree in geology from the University of Scranton and Pete was trying to find a use for his business degree from Penn State.

“Sometimes I wonder if I only dreamed we found those gravestones in the woods,” said Pete. “I’d need to see them again to convince myself it really happened.”

“I’ve always wanted to go back there again, too,” said Chris. “Let’s do it!”

And so, over a dozen bottles of Rolling Rock, they made their plans. Chris would research the history of the area and obtain maps, Pete would collect excavating tools and camping gear. They plotted out ten days in early April for their expedition.

Early April is a poor time to go camping in the Endless Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania, but it’s a good time if one hopes not to encounter other people. It rained a lot, and the young men slogged through mud in ever-widening circles in the area around Camp Iroquois, which was closed for the season. They finally located the pit Pete had fallen into, an oval -shaped depression about thirty feet long and fourteen feet wide. The men set up camp nearby and started digging in the floor of the pit. They soon uncovered the gravestone of a baby named Samuel. Layers of tree litter and rich, damp soil had protected the epitaph: “Budded on Earth to Bloom in Heaven.”

“You know, I think we may have found Sommerville!” said Chris.

“What’s Sommerville?”

“It was a short-lived coal-mining community of Welsh and Scottish miners. It doesn’t appear on any map. There was some kind of a disaster, the mine closed, and everybody left. It was lost, but we found it! This is an important discovery!”

Pete soon uncovered another marker. “This is nuts!” he said. “Did someone try to deny that this place existed? Why would somebody bury these gravestones? What were they trying to hide?”

“No one buried them,” said Chris. “This area was heavily undermined for coal. When a tapped-out tunnel collapses, it can cause a sinkhole. That’s what happened here. The ground fell into the space below, and the graves above it slid into the depression. That’s how we were able to find those gravestones sticking sideways out of the cliff.”

They unearthed twelve gravestones and some human bones and skulls. Many of the stones marked the same date–November 10, 1890. Chris figured that must have been the date of the disaster that had closed down the mine.

They hauled the grave markers to the surface with a block and tackle system and stacked them near their campsite in a pile in the woods, with no real idea of what they would do with them. Pete suggested they might sell them on e-Bay, but Chris thought they should record their information and present it to a historical society. That was the extent of their discussion, until Chris found the diamond wedding ring in the soil, and then, an amethyst brooch.

“I wish we had one of those soil-sifting rigs archaeologists use,” said Pete. “I’ll bet there’s lots of jewelry buried here.” And he lifted a shallow shovelful of dirt and spread it in a fan-shape before him. “It’s too bad everything’s all jumbled up together. If we knew where the bodies were, we’d know exactly where to look for loot.”

Chris surveyed the sides of the pit. “You know, if we started digging horizontally at about this level, we could probably find some burials. Want to try?”

“I think we’re entitled.” said Pete, grinning.

“What do you think the stuff we’ve found is worth?”

“Not much. Maybe a couple hundred dollars. But that’s not the point, is it? It’s just fun!”

“The idea of us being grave robbers doesn’t bother you?” asked Chris.

“Anybody who ever would have cared about any of these graves has been dead for a century. Who’s going to complain?” And Pete drove his shovel into the wall of the pit.

The shale-rich earth was easy to dislodge, and the men quickly located a rotted coffin. They dug through the bones and found a pair of pearl-drop earrings, a gold wedding band, and even antique coins in excellent condition.

“I guess she thought she could take it with her,” Pete snickered.

They unearthed two more adult burials, finding more rings, and a watch and fob, but their discoveries were haphazard. Chris suggested they check out some gravestones they had found in the woods near their camp. The largest of these was a toppled obelisk about ten feet long, buried under moss and ferns. Upon turning it over, they found it was the grave of Joseph Sommer.

“Do you suppose this guy is the one the town was named after?” asked Pete.

Chris nodded. “He was probably the owner of the mine, as well.”

Pete said, “Then he must have been rich. Let’s go for it.”

It took the entire day to reach the coffin. Digging down through tree roots was more time-consuming and difficult than digging through the loose shale in the pit. When the hole they were digging was as deep as their shoulders, Pete had to rig a rope ladder and bucket-and-pulley arrangement for removing the soil. At about nine feet, their shovels scraped against something hard. They had to enlarge the pit then, to clear the entire surface and sides of the casket, which proved a lot more work than it appeared to be on all those TV shows where caskets are unearthed.

“Is it made out of lead?” asked Pete.

“Iron, I think. What do you think we’ll find?”

“I don’t know. Diamond cuff links? A preserved corpse?”

A preserved corpse. That gave Chris pause. All of the other coffins and their contents had been completely decayed. He had suffered no guilt pangs, raking through the dirt for baubles amid bones, but this burial felt different. Joseph Sommers had purchased this expensive casket because he expected it would be impenetrable. He had wanted his final resting place to be inviolate. What did they call it? The sanctity of the tomb? Until now, he and Pete had been scavengers. Now they were something else.

Chris thought about suggesting that they call it a day, pack up the camp, hike to the car, find a cheap motel with a hot shower, a laundry, and then, cold beer—but the look of determination on Pete’s face told him his idea might not fly.

“You know, Pete, this casket weighs a ton. There’s no way we’re going to be able to lift it up there without help,” he said, motioning to the section of blue sky at the opening of the narrow shaft three feet above their heads. “Maybe we should just take pictures of it and tell someone at the University.”

Pete turned and stared at him.

“Are you kidding? After all the work we’ve done? And what do you think they’d do if we did that? They’d call us ghouls and chew us out for messing around with an archeological site! Hell, this is protected state land. We might even go to jail.” He returned to his work. “Don’t forget, man. Keep thinking about diamond cufflinks, Chris!”

Chris climbed up the rope ladder to the surface and pulled up several buckets of dirt. For a brief moment he had a vision of a circle of mourners standing where he was now, watching as Joseph Sommers’ expensive metal casket was lowered into this very grave. He saw their expressions and wondered how many of them had been widows of the miners killed that day, November 10, 1890.

As if he had heard his partner’s thoughts, Pete called up to him, “Hey, what was it that actually closed this guy’s mine? An explosion? Poisonous gas? A fire?”

“Apparently, nobody knows,” said Chris, “Maybe the tunnel collapsed.”

Pete had been hammering with their camp hatchet at the metal hasps holding the casket lid. Finally, he hit the sweet spot, and the clamps fell loose.

“Get down here!” Pete yelled.

Chris clambered into the shaft and with Pete, he straddled the narrow casket. “What if, when we open this sucker up, we find a corpse with a stake through its heart?”

Chris had meant it as a joke, but his friend gave him a sharp look.

“Not funny, man.”

“We don’t have to open it, you know,” said Chris.

“Yes, we do,” said Pete “Are you ready?”

They dug their fingers into the groove at the join of the casket, and said, “One, two, three!” With all their strength and a creak of rusted metal, they were able to open the lid a few inches.

Instantly, the stench of death assaulted them, stronger than they could have imagined. Chris’ eyes watered. Even when he tried to breathe through his mouth the taste of rot was there. Pete vomited this morning’s breakfast over the Celtic cross that decorated the casket’s lid.

“Out of here!” Chris managed to sputter, as he grabbed for the rope ladder. Pete was right behind him.

Perhaps the weight of the two men at the same time was too much for the ladder. It failed, or maybe it was something else entirely. No matter how fast they clawed at the walls of the shaft, it seemed as if they stayed in the same place.

Pete yelled, “Sink hole!”

But his voice was muffled almost immediately by a shower of shale chips and damp earth.

Chris struggled upward, only to see the first of the gravestones they had stacked begin to slide into the widening, deepening hole. He knew in that instant that they would soon be buried under hundreds and hundreds of pounds of stone. And in the receding circle of light above him, he thought he saw the faces of mourners, looking down.