History & local legend
The 1972 flooding caused by Hurricane Agnes devastated Forty Fort Cemetery, carrying graves and remains into the surrounding landscape. Eighteen years later, Elaine Egolf recalled a newspaper photograph she had seen in the aftermath, when a neighbor called her over to examine it.
It was an aerial view of the damaged cemetery. Among the wreckage, Egolf thought she could see a figure bending over a sack, viewed from above and behind. She remembered an extremely thin body, a bare head and dark material around its waist.
Egolf described the image in an October 1990 online discussion. Although she had kept other disaster clippings, she had not saved that photograph and regretted it.
Sources
- Elaine Egolf, DEJAVU discussion, October 26, 1990, post 1347.8, personal recollection of the photograph
- Forty Fort Cemetery Association, historic meetinghouse and the effects of the Agnes flood
- Forty Fort Cemetery Association, Lost Graves Memorial inscription and coordinates, HMdb
- Wilkes University Archives, independent collection documenting the aftermath at this same cemetery
