The Old Cemetery at Letchworth Village

[GeekOnTheWing]

This was a difficult video to shoot for many reasons, including the steel grave markers, as well as the profound sadness of the place.

I also have a ghost story, with video evidence to back it up; but am hesitant to share it. You'll probably think I'm nuts when I describe what happened without the video to back it up; but what the video would illustrate would be that one of the decedents didn't want their tombstone recorded. So publishing it seems... wrong.

I may obscure the identifying information and publish the video when I have the time, but it would be quite a chore because of the erratic nature of the drone's behavior in front of that one stone.

Most of the drone's quirky behavior while I was shooting in the cemetery can be explained by magnetic disturbance from the hundreds of markers. A few minor moments of weirdness seemed more like child ghosts playing with the drone.

But one grave seemed to react violently to the drone, eventually attempting to pull it toward the stone from about six feet (two meters) away to destroy it. I wound up landing it in the grass inches in front of the stone because pulling back on the stick did nothing and the OA didn't kick in.

The controller and the drone have been calibrated. I've had no problems with the controls other than at that one grave, which defied multiple efforts to record the stone. I'm not aware of anything about a granite stone that would throw off a drone's systems and override the OA. So take it for what it's worth.

 

[GeekOnTheWing]

Barring some really strange combination of magnetic distortions, GPS problems, and momentary failure of the OA all happening simultaneously....

The ghost of this 14-year-old boy tried in more gentle ways to tell me to leave his tombstone out of my video. When my dense self didn't listen, he tried to land my drone; and when I still didn't listen, he tried to crash it into his tombstone.

 

[Rubik3x]

How sad that so many people were reduced to numbers. Granted, the key stone at the beginning gave the key to the numbers, but, still, a rusting iron number marker is all they get at their grave? Sad...
It's possible that the casket of the anonymous grave of the 14-year old was made of a strong magnetic material.

 

[GeekOnTheWing]

Thank you. I was trying to convey the profound sadness of the place as well as the sheer number of people buried there. And mind you, these are only the people buried through 1967 whose families didn't claim the bodies. The institution built a new cemetery in 1967 which was used until shortly before Letchworth Village closed in 1996.

The big memorial stone only has the names of those buried there. I haven't gotten a straight answer about whether they've matched the numbers to names yet. It was hard enough figuring out who was buried there, from what I understand, much less in which plots.

The state funded only numbered markers at the old cemetery, supposedly for confidentiality reasons. The newer cemetery has headstones, I'm told; but I haven't been there yet.

Most of the families who installed headstones removed the steel markers. A few left the steel markers in place when they added the stones.

I thought about magnetic casket material causing the disturbances. I don't know what they used. The drone flying on its own and nearly hitting the headstone is still hard to explain, though. The OA is optical. I can't think of a reason why ferrous metals would throw it off.

I went back to the Village yesterday in hope of shooting another building, but it was too blasted hot to stand out in the sun for long. Also, a lot of them are obscured by vegetation. I probably can get much better footage in the winter.

I did take a few still pictures inside a girls' dorm, with no ghostly objections. They can be found at Creative Commons here.