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Strange grave marker

Started by HorrorRetro, November 25, 2012, 10:56:09 PM

HorrorRetro

Awhile back, I biked into an old state psychiatric hospital's grounds.  They have a cemetery for the residents.  I was walking through, and I saw this grave marker.  I've never seen one with three dates on it before.  Does anyone know what it signifies?  Is the middle date perhaps when she was "born again" religiously?  I just thought it was odd looking.


ziznak

admittance date?  whats the 639?

HorrorRetro

I'm not sure what the 639 is.  I'm guessing it's like a plot number or something.  None of the other graves in the cemetery had the three dates. 

ChewMouse

This is fascinating. It's in Washington state?

HorrorRetro

Yep.  It's at Eastern State Hospital, just outside of Spokane.

ChewMouse

I've been Googling stuff and of course I got lost in various things. I love mysteries like this.

Here's one idea:

Do you suppose she was obviously born in 1913, buried in 1944 but presumed to have died in 1938? As in: perhaps there was no body to bury before 1944. Maybe she had run away from the hospital, or vanished in the woods.

HorrorRetro

Quote from: ChewMouse on November 25, 2012, 11:25:48 PM
I've been Googling stuff and of course I got lost in various things. I love mysteries like this.

Here's one idea:

Do you suppose she was obviously born in 1913, buried in 1944 but presumed to have died in 1938? As in: perhaps there was no body to bury before 1944. Maybe she had run away from the hospital, or vanished in the woods.

Well, it's an interesting theory.  I really have no idea.  I like to explore older cemeteries, and I've never encountered this before, so I just don't know.   I just did a little more digging, and someone mentioned that the middle year is a marriage date.  I've never heard of that being done.   ???

Eddie Coyle

 
        Oddly, the title track to David Bowie's Aladdin Sane has a parenthetical (1913-1938-197?)

           I mention it only because of the rather weird 1913-1938 conicidence.

HorrorRetro

Quote from: Eddie Coyle on November 25, 2012, 11:32:31 PM

        Oddly, the title track to David Bowie's Aladdin Sane has a parenthetical (1913-1938-197?)

           I mention it only because of the rather weird 1913-1938 conicidence.

That is odd lol. 

Nucky Nolan

Quote from: ziznak on November 25, 2012, 11:08:46 PM
admittance date?  whats the 639?

Ziznak likely explained it. It made perfect sense. Still, it's strange that they felt the need to include that fact (if Ziznak's explanation is correct). It made for a maudlin and melancholy puzzle, in any event.

Eddie Coyle

 
     639...6+3+9=18   
       18 divided by 3?  6 times!

         There you go. It's a satanic reference. There is deviltry afoot.

ziznak

I actually believe I've seen something similar in one of the "cems" around where I grew up... spent a lot of time in the local cemetaries as kids and then as a teen.

Juan

There's a cemetery on North Carolina's Outer Banks in which the gravestones of two children show that they died before they were born.

McPhallus

According to my cursory Google search, a third date could be a marriage date.  So maybe she got married then cast aside or somehow spurned and ended up in the loony bin to die only a few years after.  Many possibilities. 


ChewMouse

Maybe her body was donated to science upon her death in 1938, and she was subsequently buried in 1944.

HorrorRetro

All interesting theories.  I would think that if it was an admittance date, the other graves would have admittance dates as well.  But this was the only one we saw like this. 

Kaiborg

Quote from: McPhallus on November 26, 2012, 03:21:50 PM
According to my cursory Google search, a third date could be a marriage date.  So maybe she got married then cast aside or somehow spurned and ended up in the loony bin to die only a few years after.

I think you mailed it with this one.  That's most likely a marriage date.

MV/Liberace!

whatever the dates mean, it's sad to consider the real human story behind the headstone and how this individual might have come to end up there.  nobody envisions that as their ultimate demise.

coaster

Maybe the person who made the grave marker was drunk.  :o

Sardondi

I would vote with ziznak. I can easily see a family, perhaps they had some status in their community, who were in turmoil over a daughter who was "different". Maybe she was quiet to the point of muteness, in her own world. Or maybe she didn't like "girlie" things and seemed more like a boy.Idgie comes to mind, but is it a coincidence her name was Ruth? It certainly makes me think of Fried Green Tomatoes.

At any rate, she may have been an embarrassment to one or both of her parents. Perhaps one day she was caught in a situation which went beyond what the family could take, and with the help of the longtime family physician and the local judge of probate, who had been a friend and ally for decades, she was committed to the state mental hospital as hopelessly insane...in 1938, as "patient" number 639. There she languished, warehoused and in virtual custody. Perhaps she was unable to communicate with anyone in the outside world, never again able to see anyone she knew before the doors closed behind her. Until, one day in 1944 her body gave out, perhaps of pneumonia in those days before antibiotics were widely available, or perhaps by her own hand.

Maybe all she was was different; or maybe a savant, maybe autistic. Or maybe she preferred the company of women or someone of another race. But if family put her away was it because of their own shame and inability to reconcile their own feelings of ambivalence, because their sense of community shame was unfortunately stronger than their natural love? Hard to know.

But someone definitely remembered Ruth, and mourned her. Maybe it was a sister. Or maybe a friend. It might not have been until many years after Ruth died, so that no family who had abandoned her was left alive to object. But whoever mourned Ruth made sure she was remembered, and did it in such a way that some might come to understand that Ruth had the tragic misfortune of having died twice.

ziznak

Its sad but yeah... sardondi probly has it right... as somebody that regularly hangs in "cems" I can safely say yeah... this poor soul was most likley submitted at such a date and then burried such a date... its kinda fucked up but family's way back when did shit like this.... you had a lil brother you never knew and he lived at the farm where all the dogs you had went when they were no longer needed... wtf are you supposed to say right? who knows? daddy where did sparkles go? oh he's running free at the farm where we put grandmah n shit.

Nucky Nolan

Sardondi has a great imagination. I also think that the middle date and the third date show her figurative death and her real demise, respectively. I'll remember Sardondi's bleak narrative when my life seems horrible. His dismal story reminds me that it could be worse.

HorrorRetro

Just to round out the story, here are a few pics of the grounds.  The hospital itself is still in use.  The bldgs. I took pics of are empty now, but there are newer facilities in other areas of the hospital campus. 







The entrance to the cemetery:



ziznak

hehe... anybody know anything about byberry? its a local hospital here in philly that closed down back n the day and legend has it many patients were just let go... its kinda tru tho I've heard local legends that there were patients there held for years because they spoke a different language and when the hospital lost funding it shut down and crazy people were let lose in local forests... fun stuff

ziznak

many NE philly kids used to visit the abandoned buildings to smoke weed and spray paint n shit... of course i wasnt part of this but... yeah... true stuff

Sardondi

Yeah, heard about Byberry, which seems like it could be ground zero for the multitude of haunted-mental-hospital stories. Sounds like a truly spooky place.

Another thing you mentioned, about hanging out often in cemeteries. I grew up in a small fairly rural area with a large extended family, and we our own family cemetery, which is 200 years old this year. we have some 6 generations of my family, plus friends and neighbors from the community. Each Summer we have a family "memorial day" which amounts to our annual family reunion. The cemetery is the focal point of the event. Some of my earliest memories are of walking through and even playing among the markers. I've always felt a close and very real connection to the people whom the markers represent, and didn't know until I was in college that most people are creeped out by cemeteries.

A few years ago we built a cabin right across from the gates, about 50 feet from the nearest graves. We use it to house family memorabilia, and to gather when the weather is bad. It's intended to represent a dwelling from about 150 years ago. It's not 100% authentic (of course we have power, HVAC and water) but it's close, and it has a fantastic huge stone fireplace. My nuclear family and my first cousins (about 30 of us) gather there on Christmas Eve, and that fireplace throws wonderful long shadows.

I'd move there in a heartbeat if my wife would go along with it and the rest of my family didn't object. It doesn't bother me in the least it's sited almost among the graves. I'm sure I'd feel different if it was a "strange" cemetery, but it feels like home to me. If my wife ever kicks me out, I might take a quilt and just pile up in front of a big fire, and listen for the owls hooting from among the graves.

ziznak

as a child and even now I feel at home in the cemetarys where i grew up... the area is actually the only point in the world where 4 cemetaries meet at an intersection apparently.  The history there is overwhelming though.  All of the streets in the area have their names from the buried.  There's a very memorable grave that I will never forget of a child who lived one day.  Civil war heroes have awesome mosoleums there that I used to climb on to watch the sun set.  In my younger teenage years I actually made a map of the one place.  Had one of my most memorable acid trips there as well.  Had madd sex in various cars as well lol... When you break it down to some people the things that normally repulse and scare can sometimes be thought of much differently to others.  the most peaceful place you can find is in a cemetary... i think everybody should try it.  If you can get over the BS it's actually a really good place to think.

The General

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=cr&CRid=76891&CScn=LakeView+Memorial+Park&CScntry=4&CSst=50&

Who wants to find out the real story?


Lakeview Memorial Park
Dept of Social and Health
PO Box 800
Medical Lake WA 99022
509-299-1995

ziznak

wheres yer noory stache damnit?
got a hit on a richard norndorf... but still... whats the 3 dates about i wanna know

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