This is a picture of the Whitt/Varney Cemetery. It used to be up on the hill behind the house in which Walter E. Whitt, my father-in-law was born, now it is just up on the hill. The house, long since gone was built by Papa Walter's grandfather, Nickolas Varney for his wife Matilda Williamson. Papa Walter burned the house down after his parents, Scott and Ida Whitt died. He was burning brush out close to the wash house and the wind must have blown the flames into the house. Papa next bought a trailer and parked it where the house used to be and a floor washed it down the creek.

Papa's sister Winnie died in 1929 and they built a mausoleum in the little cemetery on the hill, in which they placed Winnie's casket. She was very young and beautiful and had only been married a short time before her death. They said that people from everywhere came to her funeral. There were many stories about the mausoleum on the hill. Some said that the casket was made of gold. After the house burned, the highway put a road just below the hill where the graves are and Papa sold some of the property to Magic Mart. Their parking lot was adjacent to the trail up the hill to the graves, making it easy for kids and vandals to get up close to the cemetery. Papa Walter had a fence put in with a locked gate but he started worrying about someone disturbing the mausoleum. By this time Great Scott and Great Mom was in the Mausoleum with Winnie. Papa had the funeral home people come out and move Winnie and Great Pop and Great Mom to a grave where he thought they could rest without people sneaking up to the cemetery.

Just as the old farm house that Papa had revered was his for a short time before it burned to the ground, and just as the trailer Papa bought to live in so he could enjoy some of the fruits of his childhood under familiar trees washed down the valley, the hollowed ground in which Papa's dear sister Winnie would rest was to be more vulnerable than the Mausoleum. How in the world someone got a truck up that steep hill and then in the dead of night dig Winnie's grave up is beyond me. Evidently the cruelest of thieves couldn't get the vault opened so they just took the vault out of the grave and loaded it on to a truck which would have been a difficult task in the light of day. No one knows who did this or why or where they were going but on the way to what would have could have been hell the vault slid out of the truck and over an embankment. When this happened the casket opened and Winnie fell out on the ground. A few days later a hunter found her. This incident was on the news and the police were requesting that people in that area to check the cemeteries to see if a grave had been disturbed.

We live a good three hours away and while the thought crossed my mind when I heard this, I just shoved it off into the unthinkable realm of horror. Really, who would think that this could happen? The state police called us on the phone and ask if we had a picture of Winnie and if we could come to Pike County. My husband's only uncle was in Florida at the time but his son lived closer and did the DNA testing to make sure that it was our Winnie. They said that Winnie was very well preserved and still had her diamond wedding ring on. This ghastly turn of events broke Winnie's only living brother's heart and horrified the rest of us.

Winnie is back in her grave where our much loved Papa Walter thought she would stay. The grave robbers are still out slithering amongst us causing humanity to shiver.