S2 Ep38: Hello, James.

Summary

A listener known as TM, an office manager at a Catholic parish along the upper Mississippi River, recounts her experience digitizing cemetery records by walking the rows with a camera and politely greeting the dead. She discovered a grave that appeared nowhere on the cemetery's plot map: a boy who drowned in the river in 1936, whose stone bore fresh flowers despite there being no office file on him. One July afternoon, something unseen made its presence known to her, suggesting the forgotten boy did not want to be overlooked.

Key takeaways

• 1Listener TM worked as office manager at a Catholic parish in the upper Mississippi River region and digitized the cemetery's paper records
• 2She photographed graves row by row and spoke aloud to the dead, explaining her purpose
• 3One grave, belonging to a boy who drowned in the river in 1936, was missing from the cemetery's plot map and had no file in the parish office
• 4Fresh flowers were regularly found at the unrecorded boy's stone
• 5On a July afternoon, an unseen presence made itself known to TM at the cemetery
• 6Related references include Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 1032 (prayer for the dead), All Souls' Day, St. John Chrysostom, Duffy's Cut, the Bell Witch, and Electronic Voice Phenomena

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