Mystery over bodies from former cemetery as developers move in

A FORMER cemetery is missing up to 400 bodies as developers target the land for townhouses.

Images of landscape gardeners playing cricket in the Field of Mars Cemetery along with generic shots.

A FORMER cemetery is missing up to 400 bodies as developers target the land for townhouses.

Between 300 and 400 black Americans were thought to have been buried in the cemetery in Deerfield Beach, Florida as far back as the 1800s but their bodies have disappeared, the Sun-Sentinel reports.

Two studies, one in 1986 and 2005, have confirmed there are no longer bodies buried on the site.

But Benjamin Miller, 83, said he saw at least three funerals at the cemetery when he was a child. “I saw it with my own eyes, I am a living eyewitness,” Miller told the Sun-Sentinel.

He said if someone had relocated the bodies, “they didn’t notify me, and they didn’t notify my mother, and they didn’t notify my daddy.”

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The dispute over the land dates back to 1974 when the first plans to build on it were proposed, but then halted by angry residents.

Mayor Jean Robb of Deerfield Beach City Commission said the bodies had been moved to another cemetery decades ago, but this was not able to be confirmed. The tombstones were bulldozed back in 1974.

The council are now considering new plans to develop the “vacant” block of land into townhouses.

“There are no bodies there,” Mayor Robb has said previously. “It’s been undeveloped for years. It will add to the tax rolls. Why leave it empty?”

But some residents still don’t like it: “My father said if they ever build on that gravesite, that the building will be haunted, spirits will walk in, and they will always regret they put a building up there,” one 73-year-old woman said.