Cape Cod is old. I work in a library, and part of that library was built in 1644. Something I've learned about old settlements: they lack standardized approaches to death. There are graves everywhere. There is one on the side of the road in Harwich by my parents' house. Three stand in a wooded glade by Bell's Neck Swamp. You can walk through the woods (what's left of them) and find random headstones or burial markers. It's nuts. Contemporarily, we think of death as being pretty straight forward. You get an obituary, a casket, a death certificate, and a headstone in a marked cemetery.

Not so, back in the day. The easiest way to illustrate this is by talking about Reverend John Lothrop, who was the guy who lived in my library when it used to be a house...

Lothrop is famous on Cape Cod. He was the second reverend of Barnstable, many people give him credit for the village becoming a village, and a ton of presidents and famous people are related to him. People come by the library asking where he's buried. They want to see the grave. I have to tell them the only reference to his burial place lists it as a "calves pasture" and no one really knows where it's located.

They look shocked. I shrug and point them towards our Lothrop memorabilia in the Library's gift shop. Retail therapy occasionally soothes those disappointed in never finding their great-great-great(x9) grandfather's grave.

The graves in this story stood behind my childhood friend's house, beneath, as you can guess, a decrepit water tower. Last thing I knew, they were renovating the land and were talking about digging up the graves. I lost contact with that friend, so I have no idea what was beneath the stones, or if my theory on curses is accurate.