EchaSez
Hope is the thing with feathers.
Cleveland Butler's stunned relatives snapped photos of the mystery limb in the beloved grandfather's grave.
(COURTESY BUTLER FAMILY)
Mourning gave way to the macabre at a New Jersey cemetery where a beloved grandfather’s burial uncovered a moldering bare foot from an adjoining grave.
The devastated family of Cleveland Butler, 85, received a second and unexpected jolt when the body part appeared from the dirt as his blue casket was lowered into the ground at Mount Holiness Memorial Park.
“This was a very traumatizing situation, first dealing with losing my father and then this,” daughter Sandra Butler told the Daily News.
After a graveside eulogy and a few prayers, the scene morphed quickly from silence to Stephen King with the appearance of the foot.
“We all looked down and we were looking at what apparently was a human foot and leg wrapped in plastic, with cloth wrapped around it, sticking out on top of my father’s casket,” said Alonzo Butler, 53, an MTA bus driver.
One of the mourners snapped a cellphone photo of what looks like an outtake from “The Walking Dead.”
Relatives later griped the cemetery workers ignored the dangling foot and quickly filled in the grave.
“They heard it was a leg on the casket and they didn’t even try to investigate it,” Alonzo said.
The bizarre burial also included one worker accidentally dropping a pack of cigarettes and his phone into the open grave, relatives said.
The worker fished both out with a rake before relatives saw the foot in the grave....
...cemetery caretaker Bill Plog, who started at Mount Holiness in 1983, said he was surprised such incidents were so rare.
“There was a casket,” he said. “It deteriorated. You can purchase a concrete vault, but people don’t. That grave there is from 1969 . . . It’s unfortunate that this happened, but this is a graveyard.”
Plog, 59, said the decision to quickly fill the open grave was just common sense, not a coverup.
“People are grieving,” he explained. “The last thing you want to do is get into an argument with people. Honestly, I wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.”...
...Alonzo Butler first visited the Jersey cemetery for his mother’s burial in September 1995, and returned every year since to visit her on the holidays.
The image of the long-dead limb stays with Butler, and he worries whether the corpse’s family is even aware of the indignity. Only a well-worn piece of plywood covered the grave Thursday.
“We were shocked,” he recalled of the incident. “All we could say was ‘Wow,’ because that was a human, someone else’s loved one. I feel guilty seeing someone else’s family member like that.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...ing-family-bury-grandfather-article-1.3401379
Last edited:
