People are dying to get in, literally, to the Lake Helen-Cassadaga Cemetery, but old, unreliable grave plotting is making it extremely difficult to determine where to bury them.
“We had an incident just a week ago when individuals wanted to be buried next to another individual, and our records show that the other individual was actually buried in two separate places,” Lake Helen City Administrator Lee Evett told the Lake Helen City Commission Nov. 2.
Three people are currently trying to buy plots, including one adult in hospice, Evett said, but the city isn’t sure what land is occupied.
“We have no confidence in where the bodies are buried,” Evett said at an earlier City Commission meeting, Oct. 12.
With the situation somewhat dire, Evett asked the City Commission at the November meeting to approve a $19,038 contract with a Minnesota-based company to update the old maps. With the caveat that the city attorney will send the company, Cemetery Updating Services, a new, legally tighter contract, the commission approved the motion unanimously.
Mapping of the cemetery is complicated by the cemetery’s long history, differing overseers, and several destructive vandalism incidents.
For many years (from 1922 to the ’40s, then again from the ’60s to the ’80s), the cemetery was overseen by a private cemetery association, until Lake Helen took over maintenance, burial arrangements, and clerical work for the land, which is in an unincorporated plot right outside of the city’s southern limits, bordering Cassadaga.
There are two sections of the cemetery — the older section is to the east, and a newer section lies to the west. While the older section has mapping that is particularly unreliable, Public Works Director Ricky Mullen said, the new section hasn’t been properly plotted either.
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN — Pictured above at left are the headstones of William and Nellie Finn. A 1946 announcement in the DeLand Sun News (the precursor to The West Volusia Beacon) announced “Lake Helen Man Claimed By Death,” in the case of William. Modern obituaries are considerably less melodramatic.
“I don’t have any confidence in the new sections. There are plots in the road, some are outside of the fence… they are in what should be the walkways,” Mullen said. “I do the best I can.”
“We don’t even really know where the road is supposed to be there,” Mullen added. “It’s just a mess.”
Evett added that despite Mullen’s best efforts, it’s gotten to the point where they have so little confidence they don’t want to sell any plots.
“He’s hesitant — a gentleman claimed that he [Mullen] has put poles through caskets,” Evett said.
A land survey for the new section, done by DeLand-based company Blackwell & Associates Land Surveyors, adds $5,400 to the total and will be undertaken immediately in order to ensure residents can be buried expeditiously.
The Minnesota-based company, Cemetery Updating Services, is the only one city staff could find, Evett said. They’ll travel to Lake Helen and spend several weeks walking the cemetery and sifting through shoe boxes of old records, finally providing the city with an updated map and digitized records.
The contract is pending rewrite by the city attorney, and acceptance of the updated contract by the company.
Veterans
Veterans of the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, and more are buried at the Lake Helen-Cassadaga Cemetery. National Wreaths Across America Day, an occasion where wreaths are placed at the graves of veterans, will be held Dec. 16 this year. The ceremony will begin at Lake Helen-Cassadaga Cemetery and move to Suber Memorial Gardens Cemetery, the African American cemetery located across Interstate 4, directly after.
Vandalism and Halloween hot spot
The Lake Helen-Cassadaga Cemetery is one of the oldest in West Volusia, estimated to have been established in the 1800s. It is particularly well known for “The Devil’s Chair,” an urban legend revolving around a memorial sculpture located in the cemetery. Sit in the chair at midnight, the tale goes, and the devil will appear to you.
BUMP IN THE NIGHT — A persistent rumor that the devil will appear if one sits in this memorial sculpture at the Lake Helen-Cassadaga Cemetery at midnight is a source of consternation for city officials and police officers. The Police Department has long contended with late-night thrill-seekers who have various amounts of respect for the dead.
“Ever since she sat in The Devil’s Chair… she hasn’t been the same,” one local man was overheard saying at WalMart a few days before Halloween this year.
The persistent rumors and reputation as a Halloween hot spot led to some high-profile incidents in the 1980s and ’90s, including a 1984 vandalism incident that ripped out headstones and removed a portion of a skull from one grave. Stetson students were charged on that occasion after “police found the skull rolling around in the trunk of one student’s car,” according to a DeLand Sun News article.
A 1982 incident involving three juvenile Lake Helen residents also saw some 38 headstones toppled, and a skull removed. A severed squirrel skull was also found atop one crypt then, prompting then-Police Chief Tom Ling to declare “We have not found any evidence that would indicate to me that a cult was involved,” according to another DeLand Sun News article at the time.
Ultimately, the trouble with vandalism and late-night hijinks led to the city taking full control of the cemetery, erecting a fence, and posting special police details, particularly during the month of October.
Has Lake Helen considered using Ground Penetrating Radar to locate unknown grave sites? It has been used very successfully in the old sections of Greenwood Cemetery in Orlando. I’m not sure Blackwell offers that service but they could refer, if not. I imagine the city budget would not allow bearing the cost but perhaps the residents of Lake Helen and Cassadaga would consider holding fund raising events for the purpose of restoring history and respect to those put to rest.