The Unquiet Grave of Harry Spitz
Some stories are just plain hard to explain, such as this one, from West Virginia1Charleston Gazette, WV. 5/14/1976:
It was discovered July 1, 1975, by Glenn Pierce, the aging caretaker of Oak Grove Cemetery in Morgantown. The sod was pushed up about eight inches, leaving a dark hole on one side. Pierce hesitantly focused the beam of a flashlight inside, then jumped back at the sight of a concrete vault with a broken lid about six feet down.
Pierce’s superiors were inclined to put it down as vandalism, but when Morgantown police could find no shovel marks or any other signs of tampering, the discovery took on new dimensions. It was obvious the ground had been pushed up from the inside. A gas company inspector could find no evidence of methane or sewer gas.
A funeral director suggested gas from a decaying body might be the answer. Looking at the grave marker standing at an angle a few feet away, however, seemed to dispel this. It indicated the occupant was 3-year-old Harry Spitz, who had died in 1912. His body would have been too small and it was long past the time of gaseous decay.
Morgantown Police Chief Bennie Palmer and Lt. William Hughes looked on while diggers hauled up the vault and casket. The concrete vault came out in seven pieces. The wooden casket was intact. The cloth covering the lid was rotting but there was no signs of mildew or dampness. The stem of a flower and a metal name plate lay undisturbed in a small indentation in the lid.
Suspecting a clue might be inside the casket itself, Pierce unlatched the lid and cautiously opened it with a shovel.
Inside was the surprisingly well-preserved body of a child. His long, blond hair glowed in the noonday sun.
“He was almost as perfect as the day they put him there,” Pierce remarked.
On his chest was a flower stem and a metal piece with the inscription “Our Darling”. At the feet was a black and white teddy bear.
Monongalia County records indicate the child died of cholera. Dr. Otis Fansler, pathologist and head of the morgue at University Medical Center, wondered if anerobic organisms had survived and possibly infected the onlookers.
Fansler took skin samples from the hands, throat and nose of the body and turned them into cultures. He found them to be sterile. The same day the body and casket were placed in a new vault and returned to the ground.
After geologists discounted earth displacement, Mrs. Marion Stone, secretary-treasurer of Oak Grove Cemetery Assn., declared, “I think it was an act of God.”
News of the phenomenon brought out droves of curious passersby, who negotiated the narrow cemetery road to stare at the grave.
Fundamentalists opened Bibles to Thessalonians 4:16-17 and proclaimed the explanation: “For the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; And the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”
A woman psychic from Pittsburgh, Pa., declared a love bond existed between the child and his mother and that his love had burst from the grave and rushed to his mother. The 91-year-old mother still lives in a nursing hone at Terra Alta, Preston.
Harry’s father, Henry, was born in Holland, and his mother, Desiree, was born in Belgium. The family appeared on the 1920 US Census in Morgantown, WV. Harry and his family rest in the Oak Grove Cemetery in Morgantown
Though the disturbance of the ground around Harry’s grave is decidedly odd, his ‘well-preserved’ state may not as unique as might be thought. In the case of General Anthony Wayne of Revolutionary War fame, after thirteen years, his body was still in very good condition, but you’ll have to read that story to learn how his condition affected his family members!