Speaker 1: Bunch of roses.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, this kind of looks like wisteria growing up
Speaker 2: over these two are.
Speaker 3: That is definitely whysteria.
Speaker 2: It's morning in late April. My producer Rebecca and I
Speaker 2: are in an old cemetery in downtown Jackson, Mississippi, with
Speaker 2: Wayne Lee. Wayne's grandfather was one of the seven thousand
Speaker 2: former patients buried on the grounds of the Mississippi State Asylum.
Speaker 2: But his grandfather's not buried here. We're in this particular
Speaker 2: cemetery for something else. Wayne's a taller guy, early seventies.
Speaker 2: His full head of snow white hair is a bit
Speaker 2: windswept as he heads towards us. Each time we meet him.
Speaker 2: He has on some variation of hiking pants cinched up
Speaker 2: around a plaid, short sleeved shirt. And there's one other
Speaker 2: thing we haven't told you about.
Speaker 4: Wayne. I'm Wayne Lee. I'm a dawser.
Speaker 2: If you like me, grew up on reruns of Gilligan's Island.
Speaker 5: Mister, how what do you think of my new divine
Speaker 5: w then you might.
Speaker 2: Have a vague idea of what dowsing is. It's an
Speaker 2: ancient tradition where practitioners use a forked branch or metal
Speaker 2: rods to find things hidden underground, most commonly water underground wells,
Speaker 2: but people dows for all sorts of things, minerals, oil, gemstones,
Speaker 2: and graves, which is where Wayne comes in.
Speaker 3: Wayn is a grave dowser.
Speaker 2: This means he believes he's able to find and identify
Speaker 2: unmarked graves. He takes his direction from two long, thin
Speaker 2: pieces of metal called divining rods. We'll come back to
Speaker 2: those later. See The Asylum Cemetery and its thousands of
Speaker 2: unmarked graves was a big story, but the issue of
Speaker 2: unmarked graves and forgotten cemeteries isn't a new one. In
Speaker 2: the South, the landscape is peppered with the graves of
Speaker 2: soldiers from both sides of the Civil War, hastily buried
Speaker 2: at the sites of major battles. And of course there
Speaker 2: were millions of people in slavery on plantations, buried by
Speaker 2: enslavers who weren't eager to spend money on something as
Speaker 2: permanent or respectful as a granite headstone. But time is
Speaker 2: the biggest enemy of all grave sites, even the marked ones.
Speaker 2: People move away, Rain, humidity, and sun wipe out the
Speaker 2: landscape's memory. Kudzoo and BlackBerry vines topple and bury any
Speaker 2: markers that are left.
Speaker 4: Well. I don't want to see anyone disrespected. I'll work
Speaker 4: in a lot of cemeteries, cleaning up cemeteries. They're not
Speaker 4: my relatives, They're just people that have been forgotten. And
Speaker 4: by using the divining rods, I can help find people.
Speaker 4: Sometimes their headstones are just under the surface. I can
Speaker 4: find them and upright them to show respect to those people.
Speaker 4: These are just forgotten souls, and I want to do
Speaker 4: everything I can to try to write that.
Speaker 2: It's like doctor Didlake said in our first episode, honoring
Speaker 2: the dead is baked into the Southern ethos so Waine.
Speaker 2: He keeps busy, and he doesn't discriminate. He answers the
Speaker 2: call of Civil War buffs that day.
Speaker 4: I think eleven soldiers and they were in a line,
Speaker 4: just like a trench.
Speaker 2: He works with the descendants of people enslaved by plantation
Speaker 2: owners in the Confederacy.
Speaker 4: Maybe it's because my ancestors had slaves, so I almost
Speaker 4: felt like they're reaching out to me, Hey, you know,
Speaker 4: help us out. I made crosses for every person that
Speaker 4: I found in that cemetery and marked it and had
Speaker 4: the names inscribed in the days they were born and died.
Speaker 4: And my hope is that someday, when somebody's trying to
Speaker 4: their ancestors, that was a slave might run across that.
Speaker 4: That's my hope. I'm just showing respect.
Speaker 3: Respect.
Speaker 2: Wayne's own grandfather was a patient at the State Asylum,
Speaker 2: which means that his body lies right now in an
Speaker 2: unmarked grave. His burial nearly one hundred years ago might
Speaker 2: sound like distant past, but for Wayne, that lack of
Speaker 2: resolution in his grandfather's story remains an open wound, and
Speaker 2: he's looking for a sense of closure.
Speaker 4: I can walk around the room and say, father, can
Speaker 4: you direct me to Larius, Father, please direct.
Speaker 5: Me to Larius.
Speaker 4: Oh please us.
Speaker 3: I'm Laris and Campbell.
Speaker 2: And this is under Yazoo Clay, the site of the
Speaker 2: old Asylum, the site that's now the Medical Center for
Speaker 2: the University of Mississippi, holds seven thousand unmarked graves. That's
Speaker 2: seven thousand lives lived and tens of thousands more lives
Speaker 2: connected to those. So how did this cemetery get forgotten?
Speaker 2: The first bodies were buried at that site in the
Speaker 2: middle of the eighteen hundreds, and for the next half
Speaker 2: century plus, the story of this graveyard proceeded in a
Speaker 2: straight line. Patients were interred, markers were laid, some stone,
Speaker 2: mostly wood, and the cemetery grew, often tended to and
Speaker 2: maintained by people in the asylum. So when the asylum
Speaker 2: closed in nineteen thirty five and the state transferred those
Speaker 2: patients to the new hospital outside of Jackson, the trajectory shifted.
Speaker 2: Now the cemetery didn't belong to the hospital. There was
Speaker 2: no hospital there. It became part of the fabric of Jackson.
Speaker 2: The best glimpse I've gotten of the asylum in those
Speaker 2: years was from the writer you Dora Welty, who was
Speaker 2: also a great.
Speaker 3: Photographer, and the foreground of her.
Speaker 2: Photo is waste high grass. Behind that a thick jumble
Speaker 2: of tall trees, and right in the center, peeking through
Speaker 2: a gap in the branches, looms the decaying turret of
Speaker 2: the old asylum, isolated, haunting, beautiful. The state tore down
Speaker 2: what remained of the building in the nineteen fifties. By then,
Speaker 2: the cemetery had been swallowed by the woods from Welty's photograph,
Speaker 2: and Jackson residents began to find other uses for it.
Speaker 6: And you know, for a long time people in the
Speaker 6: community knew that there was a cemetery there. You know,
Speaker 6: it comes up again and again when I talked to
Speaker 6: people who live in this area, they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 6: when I was a teenager, I rode horses there. Or
Speaker 6: it apparently used to be the place where people would
Speaker 6: go parking.
Speaker 2: For those of you who've never been to a shop,
Speaker 2: that's sixty speak for a makeout session in a car.
Speaker 2: And that wasn't the only thing people got up to
Speaker 2: in the woods.
Speaker 6: I know that there was a moonshine operation that got
Speaker 6: busted back in there at one point. There were reports
Speaker 6: of a lot of vandalism, you know, just people hanging
Speaker 6: out doing stuff they shouldn't do.
Speaker 2: The woods were home to plenty of grated activities too.
Speaker 2: Kids would explore, adults would take long walks under the trees.
Speaker 3: One of those is Bill Lee.
Speaker 2: He's a cousin of Wayne's, the descendant and gravedolz Aer.
Speaker 2: Bill's lived in the Jackson area for over sixty years
Speaker 2: and he's a history buff the way that.
Speaker 3: A lot of older Southern men are.
Speaker 5: Well. I lead tours in Normandy. Oh really, yeah, I
Speaker 5: got a tour in company.
Speaker 7: I am pleased that your children are interested in World
Speaker 7: War two.
Speaker 3: They are very interested.
Speaker 5: Well, that's fantastic.
Speaker 2: Bill lives in a lakeside condo outside of Jackson. We'd
Speaker 2: gone to his place to meet up with Wayne, who
Speaker 2: driven down from North Carolina, but it turned out that
Speaker 2: Bill also had something relevant to this story. It sits
Speaker 2: by his front steps, right where other condo owners would
Speaker 2: place a stone, pelican or hang an anchor. A headstone,
Speaker 2: white marble, maybe eighteen inches high, a foot or so across,
Speaker 2: an inch thick, propped up right by the front door.
Speaker 2: The story for how he got it starts more than
Speaker 2: half a century ago, on a walk through those woods
Speaker 2: with his young son.
Speaker 5: We'd just go walking in the woods and we parked
Speaker 5: somewhere around there, and I thought it was just as
Speaker 5: far as just a wooded area over there. He was
Speaker 5: so small he couldn't walk. I had to put him
Speaker 5: up on.
Speaker 7: Neck and we just started walking, and all of a
Speaker 7: sudden I looked down and there was a headstone. I said,
Speaker 7: wait a minute, what is this? And all of a sudden,
Speaker 7: and I walked a bit further and I started looking
Speaker 7: the hall around and there were scores of headstones over
Speaker 7: a sprawling area. I said, this is a big cemetery.
Speaker 2: Now, these stone markers weren't on every grave. Most patients
Speaker 2: were buried with painted wooden markers. Families with means could
Speaker 2: pay extra for stone.
Speaker 7: It was like a forest, and there was not a
Speaker 7: lot of underbrush because those tree canopies kept that sunlight
Speaker 7: from the grounds. I could see the whole cemetery, see
Speaker 7: all those markers out there, scores of them. Well, what
Speaker 7: do they say, seven thousand bodies out there or more?
Speaker 2: Being a history buff the image of the cemetery stayed
Speaker 2: was built. It felt wrong that, in the space of
Speaker 2: just over thirty years, all these graves in the center
Speaker 2: of his city could just be forgotten, especially after he
Speaker 2: heard that the state had plans to remove the remaining
Speaker 2: stone markers. By the way, I haven't been able to
Speaker 2: find any record of this plan in the state archives
Speaker 2: or newspapers, but other people have told me they heard
Speaker 2: about it too, and the headstones have been gone for decades.
Speaker 2: So Bill and a friend stage to rescue.
Speaker 7: I said, I don't want to be able to tell people, yes,
Speaker 7: that's a cemetery out there, and yes they were markers,
Speaker 7: and here's the evidence of it right here.
Speaker 5: Because I knew it. First of all, I said, I
Speaker 5: can't take them all.
Speaker 7: If I could, I would have taken them all, okay,
Speaker 7: But I said I.
Speaker 5: Can take one. I can do that.
Speaker 7: So this is the one I'm going to take right here.
Speaker 7: And I just wanted to save it for posterity. Said yeah, hey,
Speaker 7: you say they didn't no cemeteries, there were no markers.
Speaker 4: But here's one right here.
Speaker 7: I got evidence, SOAVI it for.
Speaker 2: Goodness shop That evidence has followed Bill to every house
Speaker 2: he's lived in since. When we paid Bill a visit
Speaker 2: at his condo. It was the first thing Wayne pointed out, this.
Speaker 4: Is the first evidence I was telling you about.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, can.
Speaker 4: You imagine the first time I met Billy and I
Speaker 4: come to his house and I said, what are you
Speaker 4: doing with the headstone?
Speaker 3: Will you read the headstone to me?
Speaker 4: This is Timothy o'reardon died May the thirtieth, eighteen ninety three,
Speaker 4: aged sixty three years And Laida she checked it out,
Speaker 4: and he was a patient there and he was buried
Speaker 4: in the cemetery.
Speaker 3: And it's a good shape it is.
Speaker 4: It's sitting there for since in the seventies.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's been out.
Speaker 2: I reckon, right, Yeah, years thirty years old. Bill this
Speaker 2: was a rescue mission to protect his state's history, even
Speaker 2: if the state itself I might not.
Speaker 3: See it that way.
Speaker 2: It's unclear why the headstones would be moved. Institutional memory
Speaker 2: on this is surprisingly short in a state that still
Speaker 2: celebrates Confederate History Month. I did hear some markers had
Speaker 2: been broken, and there were concerns about vandalism. Regardless of
Speaker 2: the reason, the results the same. The headstones are gone.
Speaker 2: The wooden markers went the way of the Yazoo clay,
Speaker 2: and the memories were buried with them. The morning after
Speaker 2: we saw the headstone at Bill Lee's condo, we headed
Speaker 2: over to Greenwood Cemetery to meet up with Wayne for
Speaker 2: a dowsing demonstration. The cemetery sits in the middle of
Speaker 2: downtown Jackson, a small sea of tall waving grass and
Speaker 2: old shade trees and view of the state capitol. We
Speaker 2: waited for Wayne under a live oak. The sun was dapple,
Speaker 2: the birds were the mowers were in full swing, so
Speaker 2: you may hear one or two of those. Once Wayne
Speaker 2: pulled up and it's bright blue. Prius, it was down
Speaker 2: to business.
Speaker 7: To go.
Speaker 8: You have a.
Speaker 3: Way you like to get started.
Speaker 4: Or yeah, and I'm going to do a little demonstration
Speaker 4: with the divining rods.
Speaker 2: Wayne's dowsing materials consist of two thin steel rods bent
Speaker 2: into an L shape. The short end's got a piece
Speaker 2: of PVC pipe around it. That's the part he's holding.
Speaker 2: The PVC means he's not touching the metal, that it
Speaker 2: can move free and clear.
Speaker 4: And I like this to be able to move freely
Speaker 4: that way. You know, if he's spent all the way around,
Speaker 4: I'm not touching the metal at all, And so I
Speaker 4: don't want anybody thinking, yeah, he's making that turn and
Speaker 4: I can't make it turn.
Speaker 2: When he locates the grave, the two rods swing toward
Speaker 2: his chest and over each other. When he steps off
Speaker 2: the grave, the rods swing back out. It's a dynamic
Speaker 2: X marks the spot kind of operation. If you're wondering
Speaker 2: just what the hell kind of metal can do this,
Speaker 2: the answer is any You could take.
Speaker 4: A coat hanger. You can be done with a loan.
Speaker 4: It can't be done with copper.
Speaker 2: This is just.
Speaker 4: Metal that came from like home depot or blows.
Speaker 2: The rods may not need to be endowed with specific qualities,
Speaker 2: but the dowser does. Wayne calls this a gift granted
Speaker 2: by his creator. It's one he said, became apparent the
Speaker 2: first time he picked up divining rods, which surprised even him.
Speaker 2: Real dowsers, he explains, are rare.
Speaker 4: It was very scary for me.
Speaker 5: I stopped.
Speaker 4: I looked around. I'm like, am I going nuts? Nobody
Speaker 4: wants to think about that. But the thing that has
Speaker 4: happened from me by using the divining rods, it has
Speaker 4: strengthened my faith. It has told me that just because
Speaker 4: you don't understand something doesn't mean it's not real. And
Speaker 4: there's so much in this world I think that we
Speaker 4: don't know and we don't know about. It's told me
Speaker 4: that we all have a creator, no matter what you
Speaker 4: want to call you a creator, where you want to
Speaker 4: call it God or Buddha or whatever, we have a
Speaker 4: creator that's in charge and the miracles that happen every day,
Speaker 4: just because we don't always know it. I've had several
Speaker 4: miracles happened in my life, this being one of them
Speaker 4: that I've gained this ability to do this.
Speaker 2: When Wayne tells us that he's one of the few
Speaker 2: who can do this, I'm a little skeptical. But Wayne
Speaker 2: is so sweet and earnest that it doesn't feel like
Speaker 2: he's trying to pull one over on us. I mean
Speaker 2: he offered to demonstrate.
Speaker 4: So I'm going to walk over to this first series
Speaker 4: of graves.
Speaker 2: Here he trapes through the overgrown grass to a line
Speaker 2: of headstones. Then, holding a bent metal rod in each hand,
Speaker 2: he bowed his head.
Speaker 4: First of all, I'm just gonna ask God to help
Speaker 4: me use these divining rods today. Please let your Holy
Speaker 4: Spirit work through me and let me do a good
Speaker 4: job with us today. So when I step over a grave,
Speaker 4: the rods will cross over. When I step off, the
Speaker 4: rods will open up.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 2: He steps over the graves and the rods make an X.
Speaker 2: But it's not just the locations of graves.
Speaker 4: I was told by a dowser a few years ago
Speaker 4: when I first started dowsing, that he could determine the
Speaker 4: depths that the person was buried. I've never dug anyone up,
Speaker 4: so I don't know that to be a fact. So
Speaker 4: first and we'll walk to the grave crosses over, I
Speaker 4: wait for it to reopen. When they cross over again,
Speaker 4: it's how deep the person is. So the distance from
Speaker 4: here to there, which is probably around six feet.
Speaker 2: They can point to the head of the body.
Speaker 4: Fally, can you direct me to the head of this person? Fally,
Speaker 4: can you direct me to the feet of this person.
Speaker 3: They can deduce gender on a place.
Speaker 4: One rod over her. If it's a woman, the rod
Speaker 4: would turn toward her feet. If it's a man, the
Speaker 4: rough to turn toward the head.
Speaker 2: And in one of the more awe inspiring feats, they
Speaker 2: can even lead Wayne to a specific person.
Speaker 4: Let's say, ask for Mary Louise. Father, I'm looking for
Speaker 4: Mary Louise. Can you help me find Mary Louise? And
Speaker 4: it's not going to cross over again until I get
Speaker 4: to Mary Louise, Mary Louise. But I have the confidence
Speaker 4: and God has revealed to me that I can find
Speaker 4: people only even know who they are.
Speaker 2: Skepticism aside, it's easy to see how the ability to
Speaker 2: not just locate but identify graves could be useful, especially
Speaker 2: when you have something like a state owned site with
Speaker 2: seven thousand unmarked graves. In fact, Wayne has dowst at
Speaker 2: the Asylum cemetery and he believes he's located his own
Speaker 2: grandfather's grave.
Speaker 4: When I found my grandfather there to cemetery and they
Speaker 4: hadn't started zooming bodies. Yet that was the beginning of
Speaker 4: some closure for me. It's like, maybe you forgot about him,
Speaker 4: and maybe you didn't put up a marker that's still there.
Speaker 4: But I'm going to put up a marker.
Speaker 2: As I said, the science here is iffy at best,
Speaker 2: and that's at all with the very science based identification
Speaker 2: approach of Asylum Hill and the University Medical Center, which
Speaker 2: is probably why when the medical Center found out that
Speaker 2: we and Wayne and a bunch of audio equipment were
Speaker 2: heading out to the Asylum Cemetery to record Wayne dowsing
Speaker 2: for his grandfather's grave, they politely but firmly told us
Speaker 2: to leave the tree.
Speaker 4: Are you trying to take pictures or something?
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 2: We wanted to show us where he believes his grandfather's
Speaker 2: grave is.
Speaker 6: Oh well, yeah, I'm sorry, but I can't.
Speaker 3: He just not talk about it and not like.
Speaker 2: Physically go there, which is how we all wound up
Speaker 2: at the very marked graves of Greenwood Cemetery. But there
Speaker 2: is an upside to dowsing at a cemetery where graves
Speaker 2: are marked. There might be confirmation bias, but it's easy
Speaker 2: to see if it's working. So I asked if I
Speaker 2: could give it a shot.
Speaker 3: Does this work for everybody?
Speaker 2: Can anybody do you do this?
Speaker 4: I've shown several people. Some people can do it, some
Speaker 4: people can do it a little bit, some people can't
Speaker 4: do it at all.
Speaker 3: May I try?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 2: Actually it turned out I was one of the people
Speaker 2: in that latter category, that's after the break.
Speaker 4: And back up and go come forward to help them
Speaker 4: just a little more level, a little more so.
Speaker 3: It's not the rod's barely moved.
Speaker 2: Maybe this just meant I hadn't mastered the wrist tilt.
Speaker 2: I tried adjusting my hands.
Speaker 4: I don't think I have you know what, Like I said,
Speaker 4: this is swimming and guy, and I said, God, you know,
Speaker 4: help me. I always pray before I do it.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have a meditative money to help me, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to try it again.
Speaker 3: Sure, I tried again.
Speaker 4: I don't think I have it.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, guess the rods moved slightly toward each other.
Speaker 3: Over your hand or you're kind of a love.
Speaker 4: All right, let's try it.
Speaker 2: Maybe that was something, or maybe it was just that
Speaker 2: they were sitting inside hollow PVC tubes alas no dice
Speaker 2: If this was some sort of gimmick that Wayne was
Speaker 2: pulling off. It was an impressive one. Rebecca, the producer,
Speaker 2: seemed to share my doubt, which may be why I
Speaker 2: handed her the rods. Next, do you want to give
Speaker 2: it a try? Hand me all this stuff and the headphones.
Speaker 4: Now come toward me and get straightened.
Speaker 2: Up with me.
Speaker 4: Now walk toward me. Oh all right, I told you alive.
Speaker 4: Well that's my asking a question. You can't ask what
Speaker 4: a person's head is. But like I said, I pray
Speaker 4: and I ask God to help me do this. M
Speaker 4: He asked with the with the head of Mary Louise.
Speaker 1: Where's the head of Mary Louise?
Speaker 2: Inexplicably, the rod swung clipsed, then open, then around to
Speaker 2: point the way to Mary Louise mcgheee h.
Speaker 3: Wow. I think I think you might be a natural.
Speaker 4: You got it. You're the first person that I know
Speaker 4: of that has done this.
Speaker 3: Well, no, you're like a natural.
Speaker 2: Audio as a medium has its limitations. So I'm just
Speaker 2: going to describe Rebecca's face at this moment. Her eyes
Speaker 2: are wide, she's blushing a little, like someone who's been caught.
Speaker 2: Her expression is a mixture of awe and surprise and
Speaker 2: bewilderment with just a touch of horror. To be honest,
Speaker 2: neither of us knows what to make of grave dowsing.
Speaker 2: Is it a warping of energies, a communing with something
Speaker 2: beyond ourselves? Is it the power of the subconscious or
Speaker 2: maybe a well timed fluke. I can't say, but I'm
Speaker 2: not sure it matters, because whether or not this is real,
Speaker 2: I do believe that there's something mystical about cemeteries, energy
Speaker 2: changes places, and is there any type of land that
Speaker 2: has seen more emotion over the years than a cemetary?
Speaker 2: For Wayne, all this is driven by faith.
Speaker 4: It's not an exact science. Will say, you know it's
Speaker 4: not real or you're making it happen. I'm not, but
Speaker 4: I can file it up. You know it's real and
Speaker 4: it works, but I can file it up. I don't
Speaker 4: do it for money. It's good to help you. I'm
Speaker 4: doing to try to show some respect for those people
Speaker 4: that are buried out there. Not just my grandfather, but
Speaker 4: for everyone that's buried out there.
Speaker 2: All this premised on the absolute belief that his God
Speaker 2: won't lead him astray, that the Rod's point and cross true.
Speaker 4: It's like another realm out there.
Speaker 2: This is just.
Speaker 4: Temporary, because I know when his voice told me to
Speaker 4: do this, do that. You know it's real, but anybody
Speaker 4: wants to believe it or not.
Speaker 2: There's something about a physical site, a place where you
Speaker 2: can imagine your loved one is present. But finding this
Speaker 2: place wasn't the end of Wayne's search.
Speaker 3: Well that's nice, that's really beautiful. But this must be
Speaker 3: the reservoir.
Speaker 4: Kist a bunch of boats.
Speaker 2: That brings us back to cousin Bill's condo, the same
Speaker 2: one where we saw that headstone.
Speaker 7: Well, listen, welcome to my little adoble.
Speaker 3: Thank you, this is wonderful, Thanks so much for hosting.
Speaker 2: We sat on two over stuffed plaid chairs in Bill's
Speaker 2: living room, looking out over a marina full of pontoon boats.
Speaker 2: Wayne so believes in everything that he's doing, not just
Speaker 2: his dowsing, but understanding his grandfather's story, and he wanted
Speaker 2: to get it right for us. He laid out a
Speaker 2: whole spread of newspaper clippings, photos, and articles on Bill's
Speaker 2: white tile counter, most of them in sheet protectors. Perched
Speaker 2: on a barstool, he bounced his knee as he talked.
Speaker 4: The only thing I knew was our grand dator was
Speaker 4: put in a middle institution, and that they said he
Speaker 4: was crazy. I didn't have all the diagnosis and all that.
Speaker 4: I didn't know him, But then, you know, was there
Speaker 4: a problem. I feel like even though the hospital did
Speaker 4: all they could to help take care of him, I
Speaker 4: feel like they did they should have kept better records.
Speaker 4: It shouldn't be that years go by and people say, well,
Speaker 4: we didn't even know they were there. We just build
Speaker 4: over them. You know, it's not important. They're dead. It
Speaker 4: didn't matter.
Speaker 2: We started out talking about Wayne's grandfather, the little Wayne
Speaker 2: had been told about him. The family's narrative had always
Speaker 2: been somewhat simple. Quayne's grandfather wasn't crazy, he was starving.
Speaker 2: To the modern ear, maybe that sounds like denial, but
Speaker 2: a century ago in rural Mississippi, it was real. Historically,
Speaker 2: there were lots of reasons people were called insane, and
Speaker 2: the causes of what we consider mental illness weren't all
Speaker 2: the same as they are now. One of the biggest
Speaker 2: drivers of patients to the state hospital wasn't even what
Speaker 2: we now consider mental illness.
Speaker 3: It was malnutrition.
Speaker 4: Well, since he died in thirty two and I wasn't
Speaker 4: born until fifty two. I didn't know a lot about him,
Speaker 4: you know, had met him. All that I knew was that,
Speaker 4: you know what our mother had told us when she
Speaker 4: was eighteen. They were very poor sharecroppers in Mississippi. There
Speaker 4: were five children. They didn't have any food to eat,
Speaker 4: and he basically gave them his food. He got really sick,
Speaker 4: He got very delusional. He had swords on his hands
Speaker 4: and feet, and they didn't know what was wrong with him.
Speaker 4: They were supported, they'd have a car, they couldn't take
Speaker 4: him to a hospital. And so the story that we
Speaker 4: were told was that a neighbor contacted the sheriff and said,
Speaker 4: you need to take this man to the hospital. Said,
Speaker 4: you know, he's very paranoid. He thinks someone's coming to
Speaker 4: get him. So the sheriff came, and then my mother
Speaker 4: was the oldest, she was eighteen. She signed the paperwork
Speaker 4: for the sheriff to take him to the mental hospital.
Speaker 4: According to my mom, they didn't know he was going
Speaker 4: to a mental hospital. She thought they were just taking
Speaker 4: him to the hospital. And the story that we always
Speaker 4: heard was they didn't find out until like six months
Speaker 4: later that he had died. Affected her a lot, and
Speaker 4: it also caused some risks in the family from what
Speaker 4: I understand, because she supposedly signed the paperwork for the
Speaker 4: sheriff to take her father. The youngest child was ten,
Speaker 4: and my mom always said that some of the younger
Speaker 4: ones held it against her, that you know, she'd sent
Speaker 4: her father off and need to come.
Speaker 3: Back, and that was it.
Speaker 2: The end of his grandfather's life stayed shrouded in mystery.
Speaker 2: But in the nineteen seventies, Wayne's brother decided his family
Speaker 2: needed answers.
Speaker 4: My brother James Lee called him Tom. He had polio
Speaker 4: when he was three. It always made him a little
Speaker 4: more of a homebody. He had got into studying all
Speaker 4: of our family history. When he was a teenager. He
Speaker 4: was writing the hospital. I've got a copy of a
Speaker 4: letter that he said in seventy seven, which he wouldn't
Speaker 4: have been a teenager then, but not far from it,
Speaker 4: asking about our grandfather. And he had called down there
Speaker 4: to the hospital and asked about our father and grandfather
Speaker 4: and they said, well, we don't know where he is.
Speaker 4: We can't send you any medical records against the law,
Speaker 4: and that he might be buried under one of these
Speaker 4: buildings out here. Owner a street we don't know. And
Speaker 4: so my brother was pretty persistent about that through the years,
Speaker 4: and he got me interested probably about fifteen years ago.
Speaker 4: And so my brother passed away two years ago some
Speaker 4: kind to kind of carry on what he had started.
Speaker 4: It was very important, a lot more important to him
Speaker 4: all those years that he's spent on it that it
Speaker 4: was to me. I was just a kid and I
Speaker 4: didn't didn't know.
Speaker 2: At this point, seventy five years had passed and they
Speaker 2: had nothing to go off of but their mother's teenage memories.
Speaker 2: Wayne knew the answers about his grandfather existed. They lay
Speaker 2: in those medical records his brother had tried to get
Speaker 2: back in the seventies.
Speaker 4: In every step of the way, they were always said no, no, no,
Speaker 4: we're not giving out any records.
Speaker 2: Knowing the answers were there, only to have someone say
Speaker 2: you can't have them. It ate at Wayne, but getting
Speaker 2: them would require waiting into an ethical and bureaucratic mess
Speaker 2: only the Deep South can cook up. This wasn't just
Speaker 2: some clerk being difficult to understand why Wayne couldn't get
Speaker 2: those records. We have to talk about how the state
Speaker 2: views the bodies laid to rest at Asylum Hill for starters.
Speaker 2: They don't call them bodies. Here's doctor Ralph Didlake, the
Speaker 2: mind behind the Asylum Hill Project.
Speaker 1: We have, in a way inherited these patients, and we
Speaker 1: want to care for in the very best way we can.
Speaker 1: We need to set a standard, we need to be
Speaker 1: an example, and we need to treat these as our patients.
Speaker 2: This perspective, though, complicates things because the medical center can't
Speaker 2: share patient records without patient consent, which presents a problem
Speaker 2: in this case because the patients have all passed on.
Speaker 1: Even in the pediatric world, parents don't give consent for
Speaker 1: their children. They give permission for their children. That's the
Speaker 1: modern bioethics theories at the moment.
Speaker 2: On Mississippi politics for years, so I'm used to state
Speaker 2: institutions hiding information behind arcane laws and statutes, and I
Speaker 2: can imagine why they'd want to keep these records hidden.
Speaker 2: In many cases, they won't paint a rosy picture of
Speaker 2: life and the state asylum. So I was pretty surprised
Speaker 2: to find out that the push to unveil these medical
Speaker 2: records came from a state sponsored institution, the Asylum Hill Project.
Speaker 2: But if you want to release records, first you've got
Speaker 2: to find someone to release them too. That means finding
Speaker 2: next of ken. How exactly do you do that? When
Speaker 2: all the graves are unmarked and the last one was
Speaker 2: Doug more than eighty years ago, that's.
Speaker 3: When we come back.
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Speaker 2: The University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson is heading
Speaker 2: up an archaeological excavation as.
Speaker 9: Part of a program called the Asylum Hill Project, and
Speaker 9: today representatives from a UMC came to the Wayne County
Speaker 9: Library to invite locals to get involved in that project.
Speaker 1: We have spoken at libraries and rotary clubs and anyone
Speaker 1: who would stand still and listen all over the state
Speaker 1: to try to get the message out so they can
Speaker 1: inform us and we can inform them.
Speaker 2: The Asylum Hill Project basically went on a statewide tour
Speaker 2: across Mississippi, hell bent on tracking down any descendants they could.
Speaker 2: If you'd even heard a whisper in your family of
Speaker 2: someone who'd been sent to the Old Asylum, they wanted
Speaker 2: to talk.
Speaker 5: To you one.
Speaker 1: They have the old history of the families, They have
Speaker 1: the documents, they have the photographs. We would like to
Speaker 1: archive all of that. They need to sign off on
Speaker 1: what we are doing, so we have that community engagement piece.
Speaker 1: We also want to be fully transparent. We don't want
Speaker 1: anyone in any part of the state to feel that
Speaker 1: we're up here doing this without informing everyone.
Speaker 2: This is where that Southern ethos comes back in that
Speaker 2: reverence for the grave.
Speaker 5: We want this.
Speaker 1: To bring these people who have been in this unmarked cemetery.
Speaker 1: We want to bring them back into the community in
Speaker 1: some way, and we think that preserving those stories, if
Speaker 1: the family desires, that helps us fill in the gaps
Speaker 1: of the story of the institution and memorializes them in
Speaker 1: some way. We have the ethical standing to do what
Speaker 1: we're doing. Have we entered into an ethical calculus, Absolutely,
Speaker 1: because the needs of our future patients are our ethical
Speaker 1: burden and we have to weigh that against the interests
Speaker 1: of the individuals buried there in the descendant community.
Speaker 2: But even after clearing the ethical hurdles, there were still
Speaker 2: legal issues. If you've ever filled out a form in
Speaker 2: a doctor's office, you've probably heard of HIPPA. It's that
Speaker 2: law that keeps medical records from being seen by anyone
Speaker 2: who is in either the patient or the provider. That
Speaker 2: stays in effect until the patient's been dead for fifty years.
Speaker 2: Mississippi had a second law in the books for mental
Speaker 2: health records that shielded them like until the end of time.
Speaker 3: Hey, privacy is privacy.
Speaker 6: In order to get individual patient records, they had to
Speaker 6: sign an affidavid and have a witness and all of
Speaker 6: that that they are the people who should be getting
Speaker 6: these records, you know. And that's just something that was
Speaker 6: just worked I mean recently, like within the past two
Speaker 6: months that we've worked out. The Center for Bioethics and
Speaker 6: Medical Humanities does have custody now of many of the
Speaker 6: old individual patient records. I'm very sensitive about those. I
Speaker 6: try not to gawk. Would I want anybody looking at
Speaker 6: my mental health records? No, and so I try to
Speaker 6: be very respectful.
Speaker 2: And then there was the logistical quagmire. There are more
Speaker 2: than one thousand boxes of records, all jumbled together, no
Speaker 2: rhyme or reason, newly rescued from a storage unit. The
Speaker 2: only way to parse through them all is to parse
Speaker 2: through them all, box by box, page by page, and
Speaker 2: not just anybody can do it. Remember our old friend Hippa.
Speaker 2: Some of the patients whose records are in those boxes
Speaker 2: could have died in the last fifty years. So in
Speaker 2: order to look through any of these records, you've got
Speaker 2: to have special Hippa training. So for many of the
Speaker 2: families of these former patients, the suspense will be building
Speaker 2: for a while.
Speaker 6: You know, I'm very sensitive about like who gets to
Speaker 6: see those But they're all together, they're not separated by years.
Speaker 6: I think I estimated that it would take five years,
Speaker 6: given our current staffing, to just get everything indexed and separated.
Speaker 2: Wayne, though, is one of the lucky ones.
Speaker 4: And so finally a month ago, I get a copy
Speaker 4: of those medical records. So I'm getting closure.
Speaker 3: In terms of length.
Speaker 2: His grandfather's file fell somewhere in the middle sixty two pages.
Speaker 2: He'd laid them all out for us to see on
Speaker 2: his cousin Bill's kitchen counter.
Speaker 3: What is legible in them?
Speaker 10: Is there anything that you think is like worth.
Speaker 3: Sharing with us?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll share it all with you. What's legible. And
Speaker 4: some of it wasn't legible until I went through and
Speaker 4: connected the dots.
Speaker 2: These were files from the nineteen thirties. The originals were
Speaker 2: handwritten by nurses and doctors, and nurses and doctors in
Speaker 2: a hurry. Add on to that the fact that they
Speaker 2: were digitized in the earliest days of scanning technology. And
Speaker 2: you realize Wayne wasn't speaking figuratively when he said connect
Speaker 2: the dots. Wayne painstakingly went through the records, cross referencing
Speaker 2: with Laida to figure out medical terms from the era.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that is said there at
Speaker 4: the end of a couple of the reports, like where
Speaker 4: the nurse said, you know, he had a good day,
Speaker 4: he had a bad day or whatever. A couple of
Speaker 4: times they said acted stupid today. There was a clinical
Speaker 4: term that he just didn't agnrmal today. Most of the
Speaker 4: days they said he was well they said from the
Speaker 4: beginning that he causing problem. He was very paranoid. He
Speaker 4: wouldn't get out of there. He couldn't get out of bed.
Speaker 4: And it says large stool, that kind of thing, small stool,
Speaker 4: visually bad day, restless, and then you get to hear
Speaker 4: one three bath giving back dress, sleeping, very restless. Sure
Speaker 4: what that is? Expired? He had a half glass of
Speaker 4: milk inspired at one on the third.
Speaker 2: A man's death noted in the same breath as the
Speaker 2: sleeping habits. But in spite of the faint writing, the
Speaker 2: outdated vocabulary, all the things that made these records almost indecipherable,
Speaker 2: Wayne still got the answer that he needed the most one.
Speaker 2: It turns out the state had tried to give Wayne's
Speaker 2: brother back in the seventies.
Speaker 4: This is from the hospital to my brother James Teelee.
Speaker 4: Dear mister Lee, the Medical Record Department has received your
Speaker 4: letter concerning John Benedict Whitfield. We regret regret that we
Speaker 4: will not be able to provide a copy of your
Speaker 4: grandfather's hospital record, as State Statute forty one twenty one
Speaker 4: ninety seven prohibits release of medical records. However, we can
Speaker 4: understand your family's concern with the circumstances of your grandfather's death.
Speaker 4: The cause of this was peleagra, which is a clinic
Speaker 4: deficiency syndrome and of course is not an inherited disease.
Speaker 4: It may be helpful for you to know that the
Speaker 4: record indicates that JB. Whitfield's father, Joseph Whitfield, died at
Speaker 4: the age of ninety of old age. It has also
Speaker 4: stated that there was no history of mental illness in
Speaker 4: the family. We hope the information would be meaningful to
Speaker 4: you and your family. Sincerely, Fay Thomas, Medical Record Department.
Speaker 2: Cause of death polagra. Like Fay's letter mentioned, it was
Speaker 2: a nutrient deficiency, not a mental illness. We'll come back
Speaker 2: to palagra later on. It plays a large role in
Speaker 2: the old asylum story. As for Wayne, a palagra diagnosis
Speaker 2: was sweet, sweet relief.
Speaker 4: See, I grew up with a little bit of the
Speaker 4: stigma of they thought your grandfather was crazy. They put
Speaker 4: him in an insane asylum. You know, was he was?
Speaker 8: He not?
Speaker 4: Our mom said he wasn't crazy, he was just starving.
Speaker 4: And so it was great to get the medical records
Speaker 4: a month ago, which clearly says he has plagra. He
Speaker 4: had symptoms of that that caused these effects. There was
Speaker 4: no male illness in the family, and so you know,
Speaker 4: there's some closure with that.
Speaker 2: He sounded relieved on us that he was in there
Speaker 2: for differently, Okay, Wayne had driven about twelve hours straight
Speaker 2: from Durham, North Carolina to Jackson, Mississippi, just to speak
Speaker 2: with us. He wanted to make sure his grandfather's story
Speaker 2: got told. But then Wayne told us.
Speaker 4: His I always knew that my youngest son had some issues.
Speaker 4: He was a really sweet kid, good kid, but always
Speaker 4: had a fear that maybe he had inherited something from
Speaker 4: his mom. He was a teenager, he started developing mintal
Speaker 4: illness and became homeless when he was like seventeen eighteen.
Speaker 4: We lived on the street, off and on. My first
Speaker 4: wife had mental problems, Her mother had mental problems, her
Speaker 4: grandmother had mental problems, and one time she kind of
Speaker 4: threw it up to me, where your grandfather had mental problems?
Speaker 2: Like So, anyway, Wayne and his first wife had children together,
Speaker 2: two boys. When those boys were thirteen and nine years old,
Speaker 2: Wayne got full custody. It was the end of a rough,
Speaker 2: brutal divorce.
Speaker 4: I knew that she definitely had the mental illness because
Speaker 4: she would make up all this stuff in her mind,
Speaker 4: she would believe it. But anyway, I've had to deal
Speaker 4: with some madal illness.
Speaker 2: Things settled down for a while after that, but once
Speaker 2: Wayne's youngest hit his late teenage years, things took a turn.
Speaker 4: He robbed a bank when he was nineteen. So he
Speaker 4: walked in the bank, handed them a note, said I
Speaker 4: need eighty five thousand dollars and they laughed and said, yeah,
Speaker 4: me too. He said, no, I think you might have
Speaker 4: misunderstood me. I need eighty five thousand dollars. This is
Speaker 4: a hold up, and I have a weapon. Well he didn't,
Speaker 4: but anyway, they gave him the money. He went to
Speaker 4: prison for three and a half years his terrible experience.
Speaker 2: When as sun got out, he emerged with a diagnosis
Speaker 2: paranoid schizophrenia. Wayne learned that his son had been hearing
Speaker 2: voices since his twenties.
Speaker 4: If somebody walked in a room, a lot of times,
Speaker 4: he would just start laughing and I couldn't figure out
Speaker 4: what he was laughing about, And I said, what are
Speaker 4: you laughing about? Oh nothing, And it would just be uncontrollable,
Speaker 4: and in time, one day it finally came out that
Speaker 4: like if a woman walked in the room, he said,
Speaker 4: the voice would say, boy, she has big And so
Speaker 4: then it made sense that every time we went somewhere
Speaker 4: in public somebody comes walking up, he just looked and
Speaker 4: he'd laugh and he put his head down. And then
Speaker 4: sometimes he just had to walk out of the room.
Speaker 4: But he was hearing voices.
Speaker 2: The time Wayne's son spent in prison did nothing to
Speaker 2: help his mental illness.
Speaker 4: Prisons are basically to punish, and so he got out.
Speaker 4: I got him Section eight housing and got him more jobs,
Speaker 4: but nothing ever lasted. You know, got him medical care,
Speaker 4: but you can't make somebody take a medication. If they
Speaker 4: have mental problems. You know, hopefully you can help them,
Speaker 4: but you can't make them.
Speaker 2: Wayne's son went in and out of prison, off then
Speaker 2: back on to the street. This went on for more
Speaker 2: than a decade. At the end of it, Wayne's son
Speaker 2: was killed by another man near his age, also suffering
Speaker 2: from mental illness.
Speaker 4: And when he died, you know, that night it was
Speaker 4: terrible and I was praying about it, and I couldn't sleep,
Speaker 4: and I said, God, I said, don't let me go
Speaker 4: to the dark side. Don't let me be better, help
Speaker 4: me through this, and I got through it. I had
Speaker 4: no remorse toward that family, toward the man that did it.
Speaker 4: I felt sorry for him and his family because it
Speaker 4: could have been my son. That could have been the
Speaker 4: other way around. And so that's how I have That's
Speaker 4: why I guess I have certain feelings about me wellness.
Speaker 4: It's because I've moved through it with people. Never in
Speaker 4: my family other than my son, but with my ex
Speaker 4: wife and her family. Illness is a tough thing. But
Speaker 4: always knew, you know, we had been hearing that Pelegro
Speaker 4: was involved in it, but I just never got it
Speaker 4: official until you know, reading all these medical records and
Speaker 4: just from the research that I had done on Palegro,
Speaker 4: you know, it said it causes these problems, and yeah,
Speaker 4: and whether he was or he wasn't, I've never looked
Speaker 4: at it like, well, that's not a reflection on me.
Speaker 4: But like you said, it could be traced or passed down.
Speaker 2: So when you said that your ex wife used to say, well,
Speaker 2: you know you have this in your family. Was it
Speaker 2: in the context of your son that she would say
Speaker 2: that or.
Speaker 4: Yeah? And it's like, yeah, that's.
Speaker 3: The past, that's the past.
Speaker 2: The past that can be left in the ground or
Speaker 2: brought back to life that can bring pain or bring comfort,
Speaker 2: or a mix of both. Wayne's closure doesn't just lie
Speaker 2: in the diagnosis and how that connects to present and
Speaker 2: future generations of Wayne's family. That lies in those brief
Speaker 2: moments in notes the nurses outlined in knowing that the
Speaker 2: asylum staff, even with their limited resources, had tried to
Speaker 2: help his grandfather, it showed that this man hadn't been
Speaker 2: locked away and forgotten. And what does it mean to
Speaker 2: have like for somebody who has died, what does it
Speaker 2: mean for them to have a memorial.
Speaker 10: Just acknowledging that that person r relative than that this
Speaker 10: was their life, This is when they were born and died,
Speaker 10: and this is where they're lived show in respect.
Speaker 2: What is the value if you have died of being
Speaker 2: acknowledged by the living?
Speaker 4: I don't think is there anything for the deceased? Maybe
Speaker 4: it is, I don't know.
Speaker 7: Oh well, It's like Evil Peron when she was dying,
Speaker 7: they said what is your greatest wish?
Speaker 5: And she said, I want to be remembered. I want
Speaker 5: to be remembered.
Speaker 7: That's the reason I'm putting a stone over in this
Speaker 7: cemetery over here, that it is.
Speaker 5: We all want to be remembered for goodness sake.
Speaker 4: And I thought, you know, this is the man I
Speaker 4: never met. You know, I'm not sure about the afterlife,
Speaker 4: and I'm not sure if he's up in heaven he's
Speaker 4: cheering me on. But in the last couple of days,
Speaker 4: I was thinking, you know, maybe he's just there saying, hey, guys,
Speaker 4: this is my grandson. He's trying to tell the world
Speaker 4: that we're here and where I am. And I love
Speaker 4: them for that.
Speaker 2: As Southerners were predisposed to make meaning from our histories,
Speaker 2: probably more than we should. Our regions unwillingness to move on,
Speaker 2: our tendency to continually valorize the past its offen our
Speaker 2: Achilles heel. But on a small scale like one cemetery
Speaker 2: and it's keepers. Maybe holding the past close can help
Speaker 2: you move on Wherever you believe people go when they're gone,
Speaker 2: whatever you believe should be done with their remains. What
Speaker 2: better memorial than to tell their stories, to remember their lives.
Speaker 6: So Initially, of course, what brought about this project was
Speaker 6: the need for UMMC to reclaim the land, but it
Speaker 6: has turned into more of a commitment. I think to
Speaker 6: tell these stories, to tell the stories of the descendants,
Speaker 6: and a lot of people that we're trying to give
Speaker 6: voice to the patients. Giving voice seems to pushy to me.
Speaker 6: I think if we are quiet enough and we learn
Speaker 6: enough about what was going on, we could hear their voices.
Speaker 6: We don't need to give them voice. The voices are there.
Speaker 2: The voices are there, and sometimes the story they tell
Speaker 2: it's not the one you thought you were going to hear.
Speaker 2: That's next on under Yazuklay.
Speaker 4: I mean my suspicion there is the silence is the
Speaker 4: response to the shame, and it gets.
Speaker 8: Arried down so deep that any kind of scratch of
Speaker 8: the surface bubbles up this uncontrollable emotional response that then
Speaker 8: has to be tamped down quickly.
Speaker 2: Under Yazuklay is executive produced by the Mississippi Museum of
Speaker 2: Art in partnership with pod People. It's hosted by me
Speaker 2: Larison Campbell and written and produced by Rebecca Schasson and
Speaker 2: myself with help from Angela Yee and Amy Machado, with
Speaker 2: editing and sound design by Morgan Fus and Erica Wong,
Speaker 2: and thanks to Blue Dot Sessions for music. Special thanks
Speaker 2: to Betsy Bradley at the Mississippi Museum of Art, as
Speaker 2: well as Leida Gibson at the Center for Bioethics and
Speaker 2: Medical Humanities at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Visit
Speaker 2: Jackson and Jay and Deny Stein.