A real life Stephen King story has hit the University of Mississippi Medical Center after 1000 dead bodies were found directly where a State Lunatic Asylum once stood.
Aside from the overall creepiness of the situation, the recent finding of forgotten corpses also throws a gorilla wrench in the university’s plans to build a parking garage to accommodate their prestigious dental school.
Reports Clarion Ledger:
Future progress for the state’s longtime medical school has collided with the ghosts of Mississippi’s past — the discovery of a 1,000 bodies buried on its campus and the likelihood of more.
Officials of the fast-growing University of Mississippi Medical Center had planned to build a parking garage east of the dental school, where a grove of trees now sits.
Medical center officials had hoped to use the property west of the dental school for future expansion, but Keeton said they might have to rethink that approach, because other bodies may lie beneath the earth — former slaves, TB victims and possibly even Civil War dead.
The UMMC ground on which Keeton and Gov. Phil Bryant recently stood to announce construction of the $11 million American Cancer Society Hope Lodge is believed to contain yet more bodies.
When asked why they won’t take their Walking Dead set to another location, Dr. James Keeton, dean of the medical school simply said it was a matter of money.
“Paying for reburials elsewhere would cost about $3,000 apiece, or $3 million total, he told the Clarion Ledger. “We can’t afford that.”
The cost of living is even pricey in death. Check the gallery for pics of Mississippi’s recently uncovered burial plot.
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Photo: Clarion Ledger
