As an avid detectorist I am always on the lookout for places to explore. I really enjoy getting outdoors and searching for old coins and relics of the past. A friend of mine called one evening to tell me about a small abandoned graveyard located on a hilltop deep in the South Carolina woods. He had stumbled upon it while exploring a new deer lease that his hunting club had recently aquired. He thought that I might be interested in checking it out with my detector and gave me permission to be on the property. I jotted down the GPS coordinates of the site and told him that I would check it out during the upcoming weekend.
I left early saturday morning and drove the forty miles to the property. I grabbed my backpack and detector from the truck and headed into the woods in search of the graveyard. After hiking a good mile or so I located the wooded knoll that held the small burial ground. The graves were shallow depressions in the ground, some with flat rocks serving as headstones. They were arranged in a circular fashion with a giant oak tree standing in the center of the circle. I would never dig over a grave but I didn't see any harm in detecting around that oak tree. There just has to be something good around that tree. For the next thirty minutes I swung my coil low and slow around the base of that oak but had come up with nothing. I figured that I would stay a few more minutes and than head back to the truck. Then I heard it. The faint sound of a deep silver coin was barely audible in my headphones. The next twenty minutes were spent digging around large roots and wiping sweat from my eyes. Each time that I scanned the hole with my detector the faint signal seemed to be in a slightly different place but still there. All of a sudden I had the
feeling that someone was looking over my shoulder as I was kneeling down there digging. I'm not sure exactly how to explain it but the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I just knew that someone was standing over me. I jumped up from my knees and spun around expecting to see someone behind me but there was no one. Still startled I turned around three hundred and sixty degrees looking for whoever was there. No one was there other than myself and the dead that lay in the depressions around me. A cool wind seemed to come up out of nowhere and the sky began to darken with clouds. The temperature suddenly dropped twenty degrees amd I noticed that I was starting to shiver. I also noticed how gloomy the woods had suddenly become. I hurriedly gathered my gear and made tracks out of there. I reached the truck exhausted and briar torn from running for most of the way back. As for the silver coin? I guess its still there.....if it ever was at all.
I left early saturday morning and drove the forty miles to the property. I grabbed my backpack and detector from the truck and headed into the woods in search of the graveyard. After hiking a good mile or so I located the wooded knoll that held the small burial ground. The graves were shallow depressions in the ground, some with flat rocks serving as headstones. They were arranged in a circular fashion with a giant oak tree standing in the center of the circle. I would never dig over a grave but I didn't see any harm in detecting around that oak tree. There just has to be something good around that tree. For the next thirty minutes I swung my coil low and slow around the base of that oak but had come up with nothing. I figured that I would stay a few more minutes and than head back to the truck. Then I heard it. The faint sound of a deep silver coin was barely audible in my headphones. The next twenty minutes were spent digging around large roots and wiping sweat from my eyes. Each time that I scanned the hole with my detector the faint signal seemed to be in a slightly different place but still there. All of a sudden I had the
feeling that someone was looking over my shoulder as I was kneeling down there digging. I'm not sure exactly how to explain it but the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I just knew that someone was standing over me. I jumped up from my knees and spun around expecting to see someone behind me but there was no one. Still startled I turned around three hundred and sixty degrees looking for whoever was there. No one was there other than myself and the dead that lay in the depressions around me. A cool wind seemed to come up out of nowhere and the sky began to darken with clouds. The temperature suddenly dropped twenty degrees amd I noticed that I was starting to shiver. I also noticed how gloomy the woods had suddenly become. I hurriedly gathered my gear and made tracks out of there. I reached the truck exhausted and briar torn from running for most of the way back. As for the silver coin? I guess its still there.....if it ever was at all.
