THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510290053
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 132 lines
Debbie Brocus and her neighbors used to compare living in their London Bridge development to being on the set of the movie ``Poltergeist.''
``We used to joke around and say, `They're heeere,' '' remembers Brocus, whose Woods of London Bridge townhouse may stand atop a sprawling burial ground.
``But I don't take it seriously,'' Brocus says. ``I'm not the least bit superstitious.''
Not so her husband, Richard Pearson, whose close encounters with unearthed corpses in the neighborhood have given him a case of the heebie jeebies.
A block away, just behind the community tennis courts, a crypt containing one man's putrefied earthly remains has lain open to wind, weather and the stares of the curious for three years.
And across the field behind the Pearson-Brocus home is a cement slab marking the last resting place of a corpse that was dismembered and strewn about the neighborhood as Halloween 1992 approached. Though Pearson and Brocus eventually succeeded in getting what little remained of that body reburied, they're just never sure who, literally, is going to turn up next.
Family plots abound in Virginia Beach, remnants of a time not so long ago when families buried their dead on their own land.
Pearson says he's been told by old-timers that the land under his house was part of a graveyard used by black settlers.
``It was all farmland - big chicken and hog farms back then,'' Pearson says. ``When people died, they just picked a spot.
``It may be bodies our homes are planted on,'' he says.
Speaking in a reverent whisper, Pearson says that sometimes, late at night, he hears sounds.
``It's not the wind,'' he says. ``It's the kind of sounds that wake you up out of a dead sleep.''
Then, ``it's like someone is sitting in the room with you,'' he says in a hushed tone. ``You lie in bed and think someone is sitting there watching you.''
The strapping father of four clearly is no shrinking violet. He's a waterman by trade, weighs 235 and stands 6-foot-3, and not much scares him.
Pearson first got spooked after he peered into an open coffin in the nearby London Pointe development in the summer of 1992. He'd stepped out into his back yard one evening when seemingly out of nowhere a black man in a checkered shirt appeared. But in the few seconds Pearson looked askance, the man vanished, he says.
Then, about a year ago, Pearson was sitting on his back porch when he distinctly ``heard someone walking,'' yet he could find no one about.
With a look of dark foreboding, Pearson hesitantly agrees to point out the open crypt in the wooded area near the end of Lake Havasu Court.
The white of the concrete burial vault lies in stark contrast to the dull brown of the forest floor.
The irregular edges of a 30-inch hole atop the mounded crypt frame a picture of death: The mud-and-debris-caked head and chest float in the murky water collected inside the chamber. The head is turned at a 90-degree angle over the right shoulder, and the jaw juts upward. Curled near the left shoulder is the dark ball of a fisted hand.
As the engraved letters and numbers at the foot of the vault are scrubbed free of sticks and soil, the grisly scene acquires a humanity.
Benjamin Mitchel Jr. died in 1966 at the age of 71. No more about him could be learned.
``If it was my body, I'd like them to take care of me,'' says Pearson, looking into the gaping hole.
The woods around Mitchel's grave are strewn with rectangular indentations, which appear to be the sunken remains of other burials. It is difficult to skirt the hollows and, at the same time, duck below the barbed and tangled branches as one hurries to keep pace with Pearson, who is clearly anxious to finish the tour.
About 10 feet from Mitchel's crypt, a stone slab juts upward from the ground.
Nearby, another concrete surface vault - this one apparently intact - holds the remains of Edna Dozier, who died in 1966.
A small clearing near the graves is dotted with more hollows, partially filled with trash. In the sprawling branches overhead are the remains of a tree house.
``This is where the kids used to play until the parents got wind of the graveyard,'' says Pearson.
A path leads out of the woods past a deep ravine.
``There's two bodies down there,'' says Pearson, parting some branches. ``And there's some on that island over there. But you don't want to go down there. Water moccasins.
``This ain't nothing,'' says Pearson as he skirts Mitchel's open grave and strides out into the bright sunshine. ``That other body, they took completely out.''
In 1992, Pearson discovered another open grave near his house in what is now the London Pointe condominium development.
Property owner Pace Construction eventually poured a concrete slab over what was left of the body. But after a year of vandalism, there wasn't much left, Pearson says.
When Pearson first looked into the pried-open vault, the man's body lay intact with hands folded across his chest.
``He had skin, hair and a watch and ring,'' remembers Pearson.
But when next he looked into the vault, the man's head was gone. Two weeks later, Pearson again checked it. To his horror, he found ``teeth, bones, fingers'' strewn about on the ground.
``His watch and his ring were gone,'' remembers Pearson, pointing out the restored grave in the small, curbside cemetery amid the condo units.
A few gravestones from the last century stand next to surface vaults of six people buried around the middle of this century. Plastic flowers decorate the markers.
Pearson and Brocus say that the open graves have had a lot to do with what they see as a disintegration of their neighborhood.
``A lot of homeowners got disgusted with it and moved,'' says Pearson.
The couple say that they are not alone in their misgivings about what lies above - and below - ground in the 14-year-old development.
Neighbors, past and present, have heard strange sounds and are disturbed by the fact that their homes, like Brocus', appear to be shifting and sinking, says Brocus. But they ``don't want to get involved,'' she says.
While Pearson and Brocus realize that there's not much that can be done about the graves that may lie under streets and buildings, they think that someone should take care of the ones already discovered.
But it seems there's no place to turn for help. The Department of Health told the couple three years ago that the corpses posed no health hazard, and, though police cordoned off Mitchel's crypt for a while after it was discovered in 1992, ultimately, ``they said there was nothing they could do,'' says Pearson.
Brocus hopes that someone will find a solution to Mitchel's open grave. She also worries about another Halloween drawing close.
``You never know,'' she says. ``Every Halloween since, you wonder if you're going to find something in your front yard.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
CHARLIE MEADS/The Virginian-Pilot
Jessica Brocus, left, and her mother, Debbie Brocus, examine a
vandalized tomb.
by CNB