1,000 Bodies Found Buried in University of Mississippi Campus Ground

It may sound like the beginning of a
horror movie, but burial sites found on a
college campus have created a potential
nightmare for administrators.
While surveying land for a new parking
lot at the University of Mississippi
Medical Center, officials made a grisly
discovery: more than 1,000 bodies
thought to have been patients at the old
Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum.
The unnamed, century-old graves
present a problem for the university,
whose expansion plans could be halted
over the cost of relocating the bodies.
Dr. James Keeton, dean of the medical
school, said that moving the remains to a
new burial site would cost an estimated
$3 million — that's $3,000 per body.
"We can't afford that," Keeton said,
according to USA Today.
Instead of moving the bodies, the
expansion will most likely be relocated to
another location on the 164-acre
campus. It's possible there could be
more unmarked graves belonging to
tuberculosis patients, former slaves, or
possibly even Civil War dead, according
to the Clarion-Ledger.
Experts think that future additions to the
medical center and other buildings on
campus will have to be reconsidered.
Opened 1855, the Mississippi State
Lunatic Asylum operated on the UMMC
site until 1935, when it moved to its
present location at Whitfield, according
to USA Today.