2 morbid mysteries

Fisherman and photographer Scott Owens came upon an empty casket a few weeks ago in the woods near Slidell, Lousiana. “At first I thought it was junk, a refrigerator.” Reasoning that it may have been unearthed from a nearby graveyard that was flooded during Hurricane Katrina, he brought it to the attention of a local news reporter who notified authorities and aired a story about the discovery. Within a couple of days, the coroner's office determined that the grave had been flooded by a 12' to 14' surge that swamped Brookter Cemetery, a family graveyard. The woman who had once rested in the casket had been reburied without being identified, even through DNA analysis, but her casket was abandoned at the rear of the private property. Owens had succeeding in ensuring that the woman's family had not been paying their respects at an empty tomb.


Artist John Lankenau found a gravestone a few years ago on the streets of New York City. It was leaning against a fire hydrant in Manhattan on East Fourth St. between Avenues C and D, and he was afraid it would be defiled by a dog lifting its leg (he was walking his own at the time). “It once meant something to somebody. I just couldn’t imagine someone’s life sitting on the street.” Although it was 2 1/2' tall and weighed several hundred pounds, he carted it home for safekeeping. Besides the name of the deceased and the date of death, most of the writing on the tombstone was in Hebrew. Over the years, Lankenau canvassed local synagogues, called Jewish genealogical societies, and even ordered a copy of a likely birth certificate, but to no avail. The details of her life were finally pieced together by a New York Times reporter, the city's records commissioner, and a genealogist. Hinda Amchanitzky was a widow who had emigrated from Russia c. 1895 and had died in New York in 1910 at age 60. The stone, however, had never marked her grave at the local United Hebrew Community, although there are now plans to install it. It had been removed from a nearby building that once contained a monument maker’s workshop. Artist Andrew Castrucci found it and deliberately propped it up outside the townhouse - which housed an artists' collective, a burial society, and a small synagogue for Ukrainian immigrants - owned by fellow artist Dorothea Tyler and her husband. “It was late at night, and I put it in front of Dorothea’s building as a surprise.” But the biggest surprise is that the woman commemorated on the stone wrote the 1st book of Yiddish recipes to be published in America. “It’s so cool that I would find the stone of a woman who wrote a cookbook,” said Lankenau, who is himself a part-time cook.

Mysterious spheres

Imagine the surprise of the kids at Eagle Point (1st image) when they discovered a very large unexplained granite sphere (2nd image) outside the front door of their elementary school (3rd image)! When they returned from Thanksgiving break, the sphere was lying at their doorstep, where security footage showed it rolling to a stop. The president of the neighborhood association attempted to move it so he could locate and return it to the owner, but the ball could not be budged. Grounds crews from the school district hefted the ball across the street to the bottom of the steep hill leading to Eagle Hill Cemetery, and from there the mystery was solved. Andrew Van Acker, a church member and the cemetery's volunteer caretaker, quickly discovered that the stone sphere was missing from a monument. It had been vandalized, as had signs and the air vents of a vacant mausoleum used as a shed. Van Acker reasoned that the ball had been pushed off by pranksters and rolled down the hill, although he joked, "Sometimes the elderly up there like to bowl." So although the vandals haven't been caught, this mystery has been solved. But the strange movements of a granite sphere in an Ohio cemetery (4th image) remain a mystery...

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And I can imagine your surprise when you tuned in to Quigley's Cabinet and found that it had been updated even though I announced less than a week ago that I would be posting only on "odd" days. Well, that imposed restriction was driving me nuts and wasn't saving me any time, so I am resuming my normal morning schedule and working on revising my book manuscript in the afternoons and evenings!

Whipple Bartlett

I just received my e-newsletter from the Association for Gravestone Studies and it included the story behind the mysterious marker above, which I summarize for you here:

Located on private property in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, is a rather tall (5'), crudely carved marker. The stone - with its “S” in reverse - memorializes the puzzling actions of 28-year-old Whipple Bartlett. Bartlett was a miser by disposition and was finding it impossible to collect on loans he had made to Nathaniel Snow (about $25) and Asher Rice ($2 or $3). To make a point, he decided to take their lives and his own. He bought a load of seasoned wood in nearby New Braintree and had it delivered to a neighbor's pasture under the pretense that he was unable to store it elsewhere because his rental of a house had fallen through. He then packed up his belongings, hired a horse and wagon, and proceeded to a neighborhood tavern. On the way, he sold his ax and fishing spear to his brother, insisting that he receive payment on the spot. At the tavern, he fed the horse and himself, and insisted on the return of a watch he had loaned his sister, who resided at the establishment, and she obliged.

The following night - April 4th, 1840 - Bartlett called at Mr. Rice's house to ask for the money due him. Rice was unable to pay, but managed to push Bartlett out the door when he pulled a pistol. Following the same scenario at Mr. Snow's house, Bartlett did get off a shot and fled when he saw the man fall and heard him groan. Bartlett drove the wagon to the woodpile he had prepared, and unhitched and covered the horse. He added all his previously packed worldly possessions to what would become his funeral pyre. He set the wood alight, positioned himself above it, and shot himself in the head. Bartlett succeeded in killing but not burning himself, as his body fell to the side of the pile rather than squarely on it. As a correspondent described in the Boston Mercantile Journal a week later, "In this situation he was found next day, with one hand burnt off and one side of his face burnt to a coal. It appears that he was to have destroyed himself and all his property, even to the last cent. And as his axe and spear would not burn, he sold them for money. In the ashes of the fire were found about 14 oz. of melted silver, and in his pockets 70 or 80 dollars in bills, and his two watches....Of course, I cannot detail to you all the circumstances of this strange affair, which has broken in upon our quiet town, like a thunder clap from a clear sky."

Bartlett's subsequent funeral was attended by his 2nd intended victim, who had survived when the bullet deflected off a metal button on his vest. Though Bartlett was known to love only money and was never seen to smile, his actions were not attributed to insanity or inebriation. His choice of the pasture of James Abbott to end his life may have been due to a rumored affair with Abbott's wife Azubah. It was she who, a year after her husband's death in 1864, compelled young returning Civil War veteran George Avery Tucker to carve and erect a memorial to Bartlett on the farm. There Azubah lived until her own death in 1871. The following year, her daughter sold the land, with this addition to the deed on file: “Always reserving the right for a stone monument to stand as now erected on the northeasterly part of said premises and marked — Bartlett Suicide 1840 no person is to remove said stone.” And although the farm has changed hands several times, no one has.

Lone wolf

"Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes," he is quoted as saying - but that didn't apply to the pursuit of the wolf that had killed some 70 of his sheep and goats in the spring of 1743. The whelps had been killed, but the wily she-wolf had escaped from traps and dogs numerous times. Her undoing came when she left part of a paw in a trap and the blood trail allowed the man and his neighbors to track her to her lair. They sent in the dogs, but they retreated with whines and wounds. They threw in burning straw and sulfur, but still the wolf held her ground. The farmer, Israel Putnam (1718-1790) - who later distinguished himself as a general in the American Revolutionary War - bravely volunteered to go in after her himself: "...stripping off all superfluous garments, he crawled into the cave. After ascertaining by the light of a birch-bark torch the whereabouts of the wolf, whose fiery orbs glared upon him out of the darkness, he was drawn out so hurriedly that he was severely cut and bruised. Loading his musket carefully, he went in again and shot the wolf. After being drawn out he went in a third time and emerged dragging the creature out by the ears." As it turns out, Putnam (1st image) had just killed the last wolf in the state of Connecticut. The wolf's den (2nd image) is still marked in Mashamoquet Brook State Park. The future General Putnam had saved the area's livestock - and had also spared the state's dead from being disturbed.

Retro gravestone

American anthropologist and archaeologist James Deetz (2nd image) died in 2000, age 70, but is just now getting the gravestone of his choice. An expert on the Colonial settlements of Massachusetts, in particular the Plymouth Colony, Deetz coauthored the paper, "Death's Heads, Cherubs and Willow Trees: Experimental Archaeology in Colonial Cemeteries." He was especially fond of these 18th c. "light bulb heads," as he called them (see example, 4th image) and had always wanted a period-style grave marker, remembers one of his sons. Close ties with the Deetz family inspired historic preservationist David Wheelock to take up the challenge of carving his mentor's favorite stone, that of Elizabeth Tillson, which marks the Colonist's grave on Plymouth's Burial Hill. Without any experience in carving, Wheelock (2nd image) took up a chisel and, after 1,000 hours of research and a hunt for just the right blue stone, carved the skull, the crossbones, and the wings (3rd image). He is ready to etch the traditional epitaph, "Remember me as you pass by, as you are now so once was I. As I am now you soon will be, prepare yourself to follow me," and plans to place the marker on Deetz's grave in St. Peter’s Cemetery, Westernport, Maryland, next month. Although it has taken him a couple of years, Wheelock is glad he did it. His successful effort is all the more remarkable for the fact that his only previous foray into stone carving was to make a marker for a family poodle that passed away!

Rock of Ages granite quarry

Quite a few years ago, I roped my Mom and my friend Cris into driving from Mom's bed & breakfast in Connecticut to Barre, Vermont, on a daytrip. It took longer than expected to get there and it started snowing, so the return trip was a bit treacherous, but the objective was met - I wanted to see the largest granite quarry in the world! At 50 acres and 600' deep, with a combined quarrying, manufacturing, and retail operation, that claim to fame belongs to the Rock of Ages quarry, and that quarry continues to produce great numbers of gravestones, among other things. Here is a gallery of Rock of Ages markers and memorials, with color swatches of the granite types available from other quarries. The history of the quarry dates back to 1885, but the Rock of Ages name was taken in 1914, when the company undertook a major advertising campaign to promote its granite for memorials that were guaranteed against checking, cracking, and discoloration. Within a decade, name-brand recognition had people flocking to see the Rock of Ages quarry. Visitors then were escorted to a platform overlooking the "hole"; visitors now - more than 100,000 per year - may take a guided quarry tour and a self-guided tour through the visitor's center and the memorial design studio (video here). Granite is the most durable of all natural rocks and is used around the world in cemeteries, some of which only allow granite markers. This post was prompted by a visit from a friend named Sally, who works in the local cemetery. I am deaccessioning some of my artifacts as my Mom and I pull together my "museum" in its new location, and I gave Sally the collage I made from photos I took during that daytrip to the quarry, along with a core sample of the distinctive gray Barre granite. I kept the square sample engraved with a "Q."

Follow-ups

Mexican novelist Mario Bellatin wearing one of his designer prostheses.

I want to follow up on my posts, but the news items and comments are coming so fast and furious that I have opted to discontinue my time-consuming practice of many small illustrations in favor of the one I consider the best, so be sure to check all the links for associated photographs. Enjoy!

The narwhal 8/19/09 Here are some extraordinary images of an ocean photographer's encounter with a 50' humpback whale in the South Pacific.

Leonardo's lion 8/17/09 Relating to my post about Leonardo da Vinci's inventions is this Smithsonian slideshow of the instruments of discovery used and improved upon by Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), including another of my favorite words to say - the astrolabe.

Mona Lisa(s) 8/12/09 Among these replications of Leonardo da Vinci's iconic painting, I forgot to include the work of Scott Wade - Mona Lisa's image on a dirty window.

Victor Noir 8/10/09 Speaking of sex symbols, Marilyn Monroe can be your postmortem bunkmate. The woman whose husband's body is entombed above hers at Westwood Village Memorial Park in L.A. is moving his body and auctioning off the crypt on e-bay to settle her Beverly Hills mortgage. (Thanks to reader Elena for the link!)

Jaws in 1916 8/8/08 Thanks to reader Michael Keighery for this link to an Australian mystery from 1935. The Shark Arm Case followed 3 shark deaths off the coast of New South Wales. A 3.5M tiger shark was caught and put on live display at the Coogee Aquarium Baths. The visitors who flocked to see the man-killer were not disappointed - it disgorged a tattooed human arm. But the owner of the arm was the victim of a murder rather than the shark...

Eunuchs 8/7/09 In India, thousands of male members of a cult devoted to Radha dress as this female lover of Krishna, baffling religious leaders.

Stain 8/6/09 My former boss Jim Schaefer sent me this link to an incredible story and slideshow of photographs of Hiroshima taken by the Physical Damage Division of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey and accidentally rediscovered in a pile of junk on a Watertown, Massachusetts, street. On this year's anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, a piano that had survived Hiroshima was played at a performance in Tokyo.

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Death worm and bloodworm 8/5/09 Follower Kent Schnake liked the worm post and recommended the film Dune. He also points out that the guinea worm and similar parasites common in Africa are - even though they don't spit acid and shoot lightning out of their ass - horrible in their own way.

Weird watercolors 8/1/09 This post mentions the painting Rembrandt did as a child. Here you can listen to a piece of music written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) at the age of 7 or 8.

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Hummingbirds 7/28/09 Follower Megan McCabe said this post reminded her to tell me about the work of graffiti artist Dan Witz, who paints lifelike hummingbirds in public spaces.

Creative cremains 7/24/09 I heard from a reader who offers another creative alternative to stashing ashes in a columbarium - adhering a small portion of them to a photograph - an "ashprint," as she calls it on her blog Final Photograph. In other ashen news: Earlier this month, a man in Vershire, Vermont, borrowed a wheelbarrow, disinterred the cremated remains of his father, and brought them - along with the man's headstone - home with him, a crime punishable by a prison sentence of up to 15 years and a fine of up to $10,000.

Happy Father's Day! 6/21/09 In a follow-up to my Father's Day post, I referenced this story about fighting finches. I just learned that partridge-fighting is a popular gambling sport in Afghanistan.

Placing of rocks 6/20/09 I had not heard of the Durdle Door in Dorset, England, until I researched this post, but once seen, it is most recognizable. It has been used, however, to lure tourists to a resort in Dubai.

Bog bodies 6/19/09 Workers at Gilltown bog in Co. Kildare, Ireland, uncovered a 3,000-year-old oak barrel of butter. Museum director Padraig Clancy calls the Iron Age practice of sinking the butter in the bog "piseogary."

Obama likeness 6/5/09 A similarity to Michael Jackson is seen in this Egyptian statue at Chicago's Field Museum.

Elusive animals 6/4/09 Researchers have just discovered that the Tasman booby is not extinct after all - it has been masquerading as the masked booby for years!

Barnacle geese 5/30/09 A sea monster with writhing tentacles that washed up on shore in Wales turned out to be a seething mass of goose barnacles attached to a log!

Cave paintings at Lascaux 5/25/09 Archaeologists believe they have identified the earliest map - a 14,000-year-old representation of the area landscape found on a tablet in a Spanish cave.

Birds! 5/21/09 Like the goose flying upside-down in this post, here is a remarkable photo of an eagle (unsuccessfully) attacking a goose larger than itself in mid-air.

Mortsafes 5/20/09 My friends Valerie and Roger were vacationing in Scotland recently and send me this snapshot from one of the graveyards indicating how the caretakers have responded to a gravestone that apparently fell over on someone.

Species named after Stephen Colbert 5/8/09 Related to this post only because it's about a bug, here's a story about the discovery of the rarest insect on earth, not seen in 70 years - the 6" Lord Howe Island stick insect, also known as the "land lobster." The article was written by fan Dylan Thuras of Curious Expeditions and Atlas Obscura.

Bears in the news 4/24/09 There have been numerous stories in the news of bears being struck and killed by cars, but here is a more uplifting item (with video) of a bear that took a swim in a residential pool in San Dimas, California.

Robo-animals 4/9/09 A duck with a fractured leg that healed badly has been outfitted with a sandal. A Thai elephant that stepped on a landmine 10 years ago now has a prosthetic; here's another article about "Motola" with a few more photos. An elephant suffering from abscesses in an English zoo has received a pair of slippers. And a wetsuit has been tailored for a featherless penguin.

Flannery O'Connor 4/9/09 After roaming free for 6 weeks in the town in which I grew up - Springfield, Illinois - 2 peacocks have been reunited with their owner.

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Taxidermy art 4/6/09 I recently made the on-line acquaintance of artist Lisa Wood - check out her wonderful website here.

Poisonous plants 3/30/09 A German supermarket has removed all bags of mixed salad after a customer found a poisonous weed called groundsel in with the greens.

Rosamond Purcell 3/22/09 I have attached this story to my post about Rosamond Purcell because she photographs such collections. Almost 300 rare tropical birds have been stolen from cabinets in the Natural History Museum in Tring, Hertsfordshire, England. Police believe the irreplaceable specimens may be ripped apart so their colorful feathers can be used to make jewelry and fishing lures.

Designer legs 3/15/09 Like amputee Aimee Mullins, who owns several pairs of designer legs, Mexican novelist Mario Bellatin has more than a dozen attachments for his prosthetic arm.

Seahorses and sea dragons 3/14/09 Researchers at the University of Zurich found that male seahorses choose the largest females as mates, which contradicts earlier assumptions that the females do the choosing.

Footprints 2/28/09 Paleontologists from the Natural History Museum in Basel, Switzerland, have discovered - halfway up a mountain in the Alps - the largest dinosaur footprints to be found to date in Europe. My Dad and stepmother Sarah recently happened on a dinosaur museum while traveling through Blanding, Utah, so I have uploaded them here.

Preserved in amber 2/24/09 A new species of an ancient gecko was found in the forest of Myanmar (Burma) preserved in amber in 2008. The amber preserved its toes, with their characteristic sticky hairs, and part of its tail. Here is another article about all of the new species discovered in the Himilayas.

Man on Wire 2/23/09 A priest dressed in traditional garb took part in a daredevil stunt in East Sussex, England, to raise money for charity - he walked a tightrope 80' in the air with no net and no training.

Corpse flower 1/30/09 I haven't specifically blogged about carnivorous plants, but here's a story too good to pass up: a newly discovered species of pitcher plant large enough to eat a rat!

Ancient animals 1/19/09 "Billy," a 110-year-old Galapagos tortoise, has finally mated with 47-year-old "Tammy" after spurning her advances for 15 years! Their 7 eggs are due to hatch in 8 to 12 weeks.

Follow-ups and followers 1/9/09 In the follow-up to my frozen reindeer post, I added the photo of the moose that got strung up on a telephone pole. In the weird news recently was the story of a live ram that was rescued from a telephone pole in Norway when his horn got caught and he abseiled down the wire!

Internal decapitation 12/28/08 Chris Stewart, a 14-year-old boy from Hampshire, England, is the first person to completely recover from (and only the 6th to survive) having his skull separated from his spine, and is back on the track - but in a go-kart rather than a racecar.

Albinos 11/18/08 More albino animals: A porcupine named "Blondie" lives with her sister at the London Zoo. A rare albino swallow made an appearance in Aberdeenshire, England.

Fatal tiger maulings 11/10/08 The 2 brothers who survived the Christmas Day 2007 tiger attack described in this post were arrested earlier this month on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol and giving false identification to police after they were stopped when swerving on the highway and found with an open bottle of vodka in the car.

Zeppelin 10/26/09 Here is a great slideshow of the construction and destruction of the dirigible Hindenburg.

Amputation 10/19/08 Riam Dean of London has won an employment suit against Abercrombie & Fitch. The 22-year-old amputee had been taken off the sales floor and made to work in the stockroom because her prosthetic arm did not meet with the store's image.

Alive! 9/25/09 The survivors of the plane crash in the Andes, whose survival cannibalism was documented in books and films, are urging fellow Uruguayans to sign up for a government-run organ donation program.

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Phew, I've got to do my follow-ups more often...

Cenotaph

What do these 3 seemingly disparate images have in common? Cenotaphs. A cenotaph is a memorial - often in a cemetery - that does not mark a grave. The word comes from the Greek kenotaphion, an empty tomb. The 1st is a watercolor drawing by French architect Etienne-Louis Boullee (1728-1799) of a cenotaph that was never built. Intended to memorialize English mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), it was designed to be a giant perfect sphere with a dark interior illuminated only by holes in the walls that would simulate the stars to represent the night sky. "The confines of the space would disappear and the visitor would be engulfed by the vastness of the universe." While researching cenotaphs, I learned that there are many in India because they are a basic component of Hindu architecture. Called chhatris [canopies], they may consist only of a dome atop 4 pillars or several domes over a basement with several rooms. Hence the 2nd image, which shows a boy jumping into the Betwa River in Orchaa, an Indian town known for its chhatris (there is one in the background). The 3rd image shows the many cenotaphs placed in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., to honor 120 members of congress who died in office. These cenotaphs were designed by British-born American architect Benjamin Latrobe (1764-1820), who also designed the U.S. Capitol. From the photograph, it's easy to see why cemeteries are sometimes called silent "cities of stone." And with 50 senators and 435 representatives in office at any one time, it's easy to see why the practice of erecting cenotaphs didn't continue.

Tempest fugit

The winged hourglass occasionally depicted on Colonial gravemarkers is the visual equivalent of the saying, "Tempest fugit [Time flies]." It supposedly graces the gravestone of Lt. John Parker in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, who died in 1763 (or 1774). Without having seen that stone or a photograph of it, just a rubbing, I decided on September 11, 2002, that I needed that image etched on my arm, so I got a tattoo. Just now, I searched again, hoping to find a photo of the Parker gravestone. Instead, I found this beautiful, award-winning quilt with images from New England stones, including the winged hourglass. Artist Judy Coates Perez was just finishing the quilt on September 11, 2001, and was so unsettled that she was unable to show it for a year.