Читать книгу More Haunted Hoosier Trails - Wanda Lou Willis - Страница 16

November 1903. Most areas were experiencing single-digit temperatures. It was bitterly cold. The ground was frozen. These were the conditions mourners coped with as they laid Irwin Yoder to rest in Union Center Cemetery. A young man just twenty-three years old—his dreams and promises of a happy and prosperous future ended.

The epitaph chosen was a fond farewell for those who knew and loved him:

Farewell. Dear Friends, From Thee I Am Gone.

My Sufferings Now Are O’er. My Friends Who Knew

and Loved Me Will Know Me Here No More.

The tombstone bore a photograph of the young man. A transparent cover protected his image from the weather—but not from vicious vandals. Irwin Yoder’s rest was disturbed. His picture was struck with something hard enough to break the seal. The mystery of why or who would do such a terrible thing has never been solved.

Sometime after the vandalism, visitors to the site noticed a dark, tear-shaped stain on Yoder’s cheek. An Elkhart Truth reporter wrote in 1984, “If you look closely, you can see the darkening under Yoder’s photograph. Some say it’s just moisture. But others say the desecration of his grave marker caused Yoder to weep.”

Irwin Yoder’s Weeping Tombstone is well known throughout the community. Many who never knew him now pay him a visit and wonder: Could it be a tear? A ghostly tear from beyond the grave?

Visit Irwin Yoder in the Union Center Cemetery located at the intersection of County Road 11 and County Road 50 near Nappanee, and decide for yourself.