Yesterday, a witch and experts on witchcraft rebutted any allegations that followers of the religion were behind the desecration.
Symonds had been buried at the Bible Hill Cemetery, a small, isolated graveyard surrounded by forest and located on a closed road between Bible Hill and Beard Brook roads. According to cemetery trustee Ray Barker, the yard's caretaker noticed Friday afternoon that logs closing Beard Brook Road had been moved. He went to investigate and called the police about 5 p.m.
Two Hillsboro police officers, caretaker Matt Brissette and town business administrator Jim Coffey went to the cemetery and found that Symonds's grave had been dug up. The grave was unearthed with a perfectly rectangular hole 5.5 feet deep, the police said. The human remains were gone, and there was material mixed with the unearthed dirt indicating decayed wood, likely pine from a coffin.
The police said the grave had been dug up sometime in the previous four days, a time frame encompassing Halloween. The only other item disturbed was a monument unrelated to Symonds's grave that had been knocked down but then leaned back up onto its base, the police said. Hillsboro Police Lt. Darren Remillard said the grave robbers must have been familiar with burial practices because they knew to dig behind the headstone, not in front of it.
"This could be a sick prank or someone misusing some sort of religion," Remillard said. It is also a felony.
Although no one knows the motive behind the grave robbery, theories have abounded. Remillard told WMUR on Tuesday that the police were looking at whether it was done by someone who believed in witchcraft, who might believe that stealing a skull on Halloween granted a person powers. Yesterday, after getting angry calls from witches, Remillard apologized, saying, "I offer my apology to all witches and certainly did not intend to offend anyone by insinuating this was done by a witch or witchcraft." He told the Monitor: "It's not witchcraft."
Kim Burke of Hillsboro, who has practiced witchcraft for more than 20 years, said the one law of witchcraft is to harm no one and nothing. When Burke heard about the vandalism, "my first thought was someone dug up their ancestors, but if they were really educated, an educated witch wouldn't desecrate a grave," she said. "It's disrespectful, and you're harming someone."
Burke said she has never heard of using a skull to obtain powers. "To be labeled like this, it's stereotypical," she said. "It's like saying anyone who rides a Harley must be a dirtbag. Just because you put on a black cape or robe and sit in front of an altar with candles burning doing a prayer for someone . . ."
Burke said she knows about 30 witches in Hillsboro and does not believe any pagan would do such a thing. "I think it's teens pulling a prank to get scared on Halloween," she said.
Dawn Whiting, owner of Pachamama, a metaphysical shop in Concord, called witchcraft a "gentle religion."
"The creed for witchcraft is do thee no harm," she said. "This would harm the family of the woman, and it's sacrilegious to dig up a body."
She compared the rituals of witchcraft, such as lighting candles or using incense, to those of Christianity and said witchcraft is a recognized religion like any other.
"People hear witch and witchcraft and think person with a long nose, hat and cauldron brewing something up insidious, which is a mistaken image," Whiting said. "In the brew could be medicine to help a neighbor." Whiting said she has had customers who consider themselves satanists, which she called an extremist group not recognized as a religion. She suggested that grave digging could be a satanic ritual.
But Aaron Daniels, an assistant professor of clinical psychology at New England College who studies magical traditions, said that, to his knowledge, digging up a grave is not part of Wiccan or satanic traditions.
Witchcraft, Daniels said, is being positive about life, and he called most witches "pro-nature, crunchy, tree-hugging, lovely people." satanism, he said, is about getting ahead and looking after oneself with no interest in being a nice person.
There are some obscure references to grave-digging in magical traditions, Daniels said. But he said a more likely motivation is an internet market for old bones and skulls. "I know far more people interested in finding real human bones and displaying them as a curiosity than anyone has the idea of doing something magical or ritual with a skeleton."
Remillard requested that anyone with family history on Symonds or information on the incident should contact him at 464-5512.
Symonds, one of six children, was born March 29, 1794, and died June 21, 1824, said Christina Chadwick, president of the Hillsborough Historical Society.
"There's every indication that they were really a rather conservative orthodox sort of people, so you wonder about this whole episode, how bizarre it really is," said Gil Shattuck, a state legislator and curator of a historical Hillsboro photo collection.
Shattuck said Symonds was the granddaughter of Joseph Symonds, who came to Hillsboro from Massachusetts in the early 1770s. The family lived in a colonial farmhouse on Bible Hill Road, a street that got its name because Joseph Symonds, a deacon, had the only large Bible in town. Joseph Symonds was a wealthy farmer who donated money to build the town's first meetinghouse, Shattuck said. Symonds's father, William, was born in 1756 and moved to Hillsboro with his parents.
Less is known about Sarah Symonds, who never married. Shattuck said she was one of three founders in Hillsboro of a Congregationalist Sabbath school, what would now be called a Sunday school. In those days, Shattuck said, town and church life was intertwined. Town fathers were church fathers, residents chose their minister at town meeting, and property tax bills had a line for a preacher's tax.
Bible Hill Cemetery was used for burials from the late 1700s until about 1850. Although it is town maintained, most residents chose to be buried in a larger town cemetery, so Bible Hill became a burial ground mainly for members of the Symonds family and a few other neighborhood families, Shattuck and Chadwick said.
Longtime residents said they never heard of a grave being dug up in Hillsboro before. "It would appear someone knew exactly what they were doing, knew who they were looking for . . . and knew exactly where to dig," Shattuck said.
Article from http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071108/FRONTPAGE/711080306
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