Published January 13, 2015
A worker readying a home for a sewer line replacement made an eerie discovery: a walkway made from face-down grave markers inscribed with names and biographical details.
Brian Darwin pulled nine of the about 60 granite pavers out of the ground Wednesday night, The Ann Arbor News reported. When he flipped one of the 100-pound slabs over a day later, he was stunned.
An inscription read: "Beloved Wife, Mother Viola T. Bagnasco, 1901-1969."
Bob Knight, the owner of Dexter-based Knight's Grading & Excavating Inc., said he's "never seen anything like it."
Caryl Arnet, owner of monument maker Arnet's Inc., says the markers might have been used as a walkway because they contained misspellings or other errors. She says stones sometimes aren't picked up after being ordered.
"It's a great material," Arnet said. Similar 6-inch-thick slabs currently start at $445. Arnet said she recently had someone come see her who was looking for cast-off granite for a garden wall.
The years of death on the stones are from the 1960s. Current homeowner David Barsan recently bought the 1941 colonial, and he said he's not sure whether he wants to keep the walkway's stones.
"We just moved in Saturday, and now, five or six days in ... I would hope that these were just misspellings or whatever, but I don't know," Barsan said.
However the markers got to be a walkway, Knight said he hoped nothing untoward had happened.
"May they rest in peace," he said.
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https://www.foxnews.com/story/workers-find-walkway-made-from-grave-markers