Big Snag for Miss. Project: Discovery of 1K Bodies

The University of Mississippi needs to put up a parking garage for its dental school, but radar scans of the proposed construction area have provided 1,000 good reasons to build elsewhere, reports Yahoo News. That's how many bodies are estimated to be buried in unmarked graves beneath what is now a grove of trees, reports the Clarion-Ledger. Creepier still, the bodies are believed to be former patients of the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum—its official name—which opened at the site before the Civil War and closed in the 1930s. The school estimates it would cost $3 million to remove the bodies, which means that the unofficial cemetery will remain undisturbed and the parking garage will go elsewhere. (More University of Mississippi stories.)