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Dowsing, modern technology used to search for graves
By Derek Hodges
Alvin Frady said he saw a "dream come true" last Friday (Jan. 28) as high-tech equipment was brought in to locate graves at the old County Home cemetery.
Frady, who said that he and his family members have been working on preserving the cemetery for nearly 30 years, was on hand when students from Western Carolina University arrived with modern tools they used to help locate graves on the site.
Rob Young, associate professor of geosciences and natural resource management at Western Carolina University, center, reviews possible gravesites with Alvin Frady, second from right, and Tom Stewart, right. Frady and Stewart, members of the Jackson County Cemetery Society, had been dowsing for bodies at the site for several months. With the help of WCU students Chris Means, left, and Katie McDowell, second from left, Young attempted to plot the graves using ground-penetrating radar. Also pictured, in the background, is Ashley Evans, who works in the WCU public relations department. – Herald photo by Derek Hodges.
"I love it," Frady said. "I'm excited that we're proving our point. I'm just really enthused."
Frady and Tom Stewart, a teacher at Smoky Mountain High School, had been using the ancient technique of dowsing to locate the graves.
Dowsing is a technique that some believe has been used for thousands of years to help find things concealed in the earth. In its best-known use, dowsing is one method of finding water hidden underground.
The American Society of Dowsers' Web site describes a dowser as "someone who communicates with the universe through the use of mind, body and tools."
In dowsing – which is called by several other names, including divining and "witching" – tools such as rods or pendulums are used to find objects buried a few feet, such as human remains, to things that may be as much as several hundred feet below the surface, such as water.
Frady and Stewart, who offers his dowsing as a professional service, use what the Society calls "L-rods," thin cylinders of metal that are L-shaped. The user holds on to the small part of the rods, while movement, or lack thereof, of the longer parts gives them clues about the location of the object(s) they are hunting for.
Modern science provides another method of finding buried objects. Several WCU students, under the direction of Rob Young, an associate professor in the school's geosciences and natural resource management department, instead used ground-penetrating radar to help locate the graves.
The radar equipment was mounted on a thin sheet of plastic that acted as a sled, allowing the students to drag it across the ground. It sent radar waves into the ground as Young and the students moved it around the cemetery.
Those radar waves bounce off underground objects and return to the machine. The return waves are tracked and plotted on a laptop computer attached to the device. An image of the objects and their location is given on the computer's screen.
In addition to the high-tech grave-finding tools coming to the site, Frady had another reason to be happy on Friday, as he said he was finally "satisfied" with a county proposal to maintain the cemetery.
Frady has been asking the county to sell the property to his Jackson County Cemetery Society. County officials refused, saying the group needed to gain recognition by the state as an official non-profit organization before it could have the land.
Spurred by Frady and the need to do something to maintain the site and other cemeteries in the county, commissioners proposed starting a Jackson County Cemetery Board, which would operate under their supervision.
According to the proposal, five at-large members would be appointed to the board by the commissioners in addition to one representative each from the Jackson County Historical and Genealogical societies.
The board would be given $5,000 for the maintenance of the county's cemeteries.
Frady first opposed the plan, calling it "illegal" and saying that the commissioners would be better off to simply deed the property to his society.
Commissioners' Chairman Stacy Buchanan, who first presented the proposal during the board's Jan. 16 meeting, defended the proposal's legality.
"We're as by the book as the book comes," Buchanan said.
Buchanan and Frady have continued their talks, working toward a compromise on the cemeteries.
After discussions with Buchanan, Frady said he is now "pretty much satisfied" with the proposal.
"The society members want to work with the county to make sure we all do what's best for the cemetery," Frady said.
Though he vowed to fight the proposal during a Feb. 15 hearing on the matter, Frady said he has now changed his plans.
"I'm not going to oppose the board now," Frady said, adding that he believes the county is "within all legal rights" to act on the proposal.
Buchanan has said he hopes Frady and some of his society members will be able to serve on the cemetery board.
Frady agreed that cooperation between the county and the society is important.
"We'll be there for anybody that needs anything," Frady said.
He said that he would be "more than willing" to serve on the board if asked to do so.
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