"The Back Yard Slab"

Out in my backyard, is this stone slab. It is flat to the ground, made of probably limestone, and is six ft. long by approximately 3 1/2 ft. wide. I had noticed it since the first day I moved into this house back 4 years or more ago, and when I asked about it, the owners said it was part of the foundation on which once sat a house trailer. So, I never really thought much about it... at first.

But about a week after I moved in I needed to mow the back yard, and of course, had to mow around the edges of this slab. It was then that I noticed there was an inscription carved on it. Looking closely, and although it was pretty weathered, I could make out letters of a name and partial dates, as well as the words: born, and died. So it was then that I first discovered that this slab was not just some piece of stone, but actually a marker of some sort. It was either a memorial, or, a grave site!

Intrigued that it might actually be a burial site on my property, the first thing I did was inquire from the people who sold me the house. They were totally clueless. It seems that in the several years they'd lived there, they'd never given it much thought and didn't have the slightest idea as to "whom" it might be if indeed someone was buried in the back yard. So, my next step was to ask the owner of the local bookstore because the house once belonged to his grandmother. Perhaps he had some answers. But once again, I came up empty. He recalled playing in that backyard as a child, and remembered seeing the slab, but his grandmother never told him whose names were carved upon it, and with her being dead several years now, my questions were still coming up unanswered.

This has only made me more and more curious about this ingraved slab.

So here this week I got out in the back yard at the slab site and took a garden hoe and cleared all the grass off the top of it where it had taken seed. I used weed killers around it to keep the edges cleared off, swept and scrubbed it with cleaners, hosed it off and tried to inspect it further. The first thing I noticed since my original inspection is that the names seem fainter than I'd originally seen them. Plus, it seems that the slab has now cracked all the way across dead center. But the biggest discovery this time is that I've now made out two seperate names ingraved upon it! The names "appear" to be:


William (something) Wilson, AND Willis (something) Wilson. So, what do we have here? Brothers perhaps? And the death date seems to be 1941 or or '42, which leads me to believe they may have both died during World War II and this is, instead of a grave, a memorial to them.

Oddly, as I sat there, I began to get a headache. The same type of headaches I've occasionally gotten inside the house. Is there paranormal activity going on here? I don't know; probably just a coincidence. But I'm determined to learn all I can about this mystifying slab of stone now!

I'm making inquiries through the local historic organizations and county seat to see if I can find any birth or death records regarding the names associated with the death date.

I'll keep this updated as I discover what I can.

~D.Puck'.