The Village of Groveport, Ohio ran into a disconcerting issue recently. When cemetery staff opened what was supposed to be a new grave, they found a century-old unrecorded burial.

Village history mentions surreptitious burials in connection with an 1830s cholera epidemic; legend says that families would not mention the death, then bury their loved one at night, without benefit of a marked, recorded plot. Carla Cramer of the Groveport Heritage Society says the village knows basically where the “cholera section” is though.

There are plans to map the cemetery using ground-penetrating radar, but those ahve been put on hold for at least a year due to current economic conditions.