Dowser digs up old graves
Posted 17 days ago
An Otterville dowser has painted a picture of the past and life surrounding a Port Burwell-area church.
Controversy has surrounded the Estherville Baptist Church cemetery since a barn was erected next door last fall.
Area residents - led by Wanda Hoshal of Straffordville - contend the cemetery is larger than currently thought. Although there are no graves under the barn, because that is where the church is believed to have been, vehicles driving beside the barn would be driving over graves.
Mae Leonard has dowsed the site and shared results at a recent Bayham council meeting.
Leonard has a proven track record and successfully located graves in an old Otterville cemetery a few years ago.
By grave dowsing - a process where the dowser walks over the ground with a rod - at the site, she found 289 graves at the cemetery site.
Although she didn't go on private property to grave dowse the area between the barn and Plank Line, she did learn more about it from map dowsing.
It's a process where Leonard uses a pendulum and map or aerial photo to detect graves and former structures.
"I don't think it's explainable, but it's picking up cosmic energy," Leonard said.
Through map dowsing, she determined the location of another 200 to 250 people buried in 13 rows of graves in that area. In addition there is a line of graves behind a horse barn to the rear of the church. Leonard believes that is where the early black settlers were buried.
"This was the procedure in many of the early black cemeteries in Oxford County, the blacks were buried in a separate spot," she said.Adjacent to that row is another row of graves that Leonard thought could possibly contain the bodies of paupers or people that died while at sea.
Bayham council has forwarded Leonard's information, along with new information Hoshal found regarding the deed on the land, to the province's cemetery division. They are waiting to hear back from provincial officials.
Hoshal hopes the province will order Leonard, or an archeologist, or both to assess the property between the barn and Plank Line. It is currently owned by Alice Csinos.
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