Rural areas of Maine are dotted with graves long forgotten. It’s quite possible to have driven past or even walked over the remains of someone buried decades or centuries ago.
This is not the plot of the next novel by Maine horror writer Stephen King. But it is the reality in a state with an abundance of abandoned farms and family burial grounds.
That means for anyone working the land on a homestead or farm, there is a chance that one of those graves could be uncovered. If that happens, there are steps the landowner can take to legally and ethically handle any human remains that turn up.
“I’m surprised it does not happen more often than it does,” said Chuck Lakin of the Funeral Consumer Alliance of Maine and home funeral educator. “I bet you can’t drive five miles in some parts of rural Maine and not pass a burial ground — whether people know it’s there or not.”
In Maine it is legal to bury human remains on your own property, Lakin said. It’s a relatively simple procedure.
All a property owner needs to do is establish a family burial ground, fence it off and record it with a town clerk or county register of deeds. Once that is done, that designated spot remains the property of the person who established it, even if the land is sold.
That’s why Lakin recommends looking at your property deed if you uncover any remains on your land. The presence of a burial ground has to be recorded on that deed, so it will tell you just who is spending eternity under the ground on your property.
But that is only helpful for graves going back several decades when the state established home burial statutes.
“Before that, Maine was a bunch of small farms and in one corner of a field there was a family burial ground,” Lakin said. “None would be recorded on any deed.”
That means the identity and age of the remains may well be an unsolved mystery.
Some clues to the age of the grave can come from any marker that is present. A rotted wooden marker could indicate a grave that’s decades or even centuries old. Stone markers could indicate a relatively newer grave. But it’s really difficult to tell without scientific dating methods if there is no date etched in the marker.
“If there are some bones that have been decomposing for years, it’s probably a family grave,” Lakin said. “But if it’s a fresh body or an entire skeleton, it could mean it’s the product of a nefarious process and the police are going to want to know about it.”
The age of any human remains does not matter, according to state law enforcement officials. The first call you should make is to your local police department, county sheriff’s department or state police.
Assuming the remains are not the result of a crime and the police do not need to get involved, it’s really up to the landowner what to do next.
Lakin recommends a combination of sensitivity and pragmatism.
“It’s a good idea to gently rebury any remains,” he said. “Then make a note on your property deed that it appears there is a family burial ground on the property.”
