tales from the crypt

Big day today on the dig. Dr. Schuler has been waiting for this moment for a long time, and it finally happened on Tues. Glen our soft spoken tomb expert has been working on this one project now for three years. What he has been doing is digging down a burial chamber that he discovered to see what is under the sarcophagus that is in there. You see last year he found the sarcophagus with the bones of what looks to be an entire family all buried together. This tomb is located at the front of the church and just off to the left a little. In Leduc and Didsbury it would be located right where the pulpits are. The big mystery is...why would there be a burial chamber in a Christian church in this place. Apparently it wasn't uncommon to bury someone of honor in the church, and in fact there is another tomb that was found in a previous year which Dr. Schuler supects held the remains of a holy lady of some sort...but this other one creates quite the mystery. So anyway last year right at the end of the dig, Glen reached down under the sarcophagus housing the family, and came up with a handful of nails. Hmmm. What could be under there, perhaps another cofffin of some sort. Well that is the note that last year ended on, and the excitment of getting the tomb re-dug and lifting the sarcophagus out has been palpable since we met up with the team.
Lifting this out would not be easy as Glen and Dr. Schuler estimated that the sarcophagus weighs about 2600 pounds. We would need help. Fortunately, we have the services this year of a backhoe on site and Dr. Schuler assured us that this fellow could give any one of us a clean shave with the bucket if he wanted to. All work stopped on the site as the straps were wrapped around the sarcophagus and attached to the bucket on the front of the backhoe. Dr. Schuler isn't a slave driver, but he does expect us to always be dilligently working as the dig season is only 4 weeks long, but for this he ordered us all to stop what we were doing and come look.
The plan worked to perfection as the 2600 pounder saw the light of day for the first time in 1500 years. Cheers and congratulations were abundant as everyone crept closer to see what was down there. On first sight nothing more than more dirt, but the trained eyes of Dr. Schuler and Glen were already spotting bones and such. Who is down there? Stay tuned.