For the Love of Supernatural Mystery

[thedeadlyhook]

Got a letter from Grandma M yesterday, with an interesting note about the Channel 4 archeology dig programme, Time Team, on the near-York town of Nether Poppleton. Spent a bit of time picking around that site this morning - ye gods, what a fascinating project to conduct nationwide, having people pick through their backyards just to see what relics might turn up. Of course, if you did that in the States, you're more likely to come up with '70s beer can pop-tops and the occasional plastic toy than Roman glass or Medieval flagstone, although in our neighborhood in SF I'd be scared to dig - heard too many tales of relocated cemeteries and ghosts in public libraries. Brr.

Never seen a ghost myself. Had some mysterious slamming-door issues when we first moved into this apartment, although that later turned out to be weird air flow issues, suction yanking the doors closed, like Backdraft without the fire. Creepy enough, though, at 1:00 am in a new place.

Oh, Sci-Fi Channel. Sometimes you know just what a body needs. All-day Night Stalker-thon. Praise be.

Comments

[magista.livejournal.com]

Nether Poppleton. Hee. I love English place-names. Sounds like a fascinating show.

Mostly Native American artifacts here, I suspect. I did hear James Delgado (Sea Hunters) speak about some of what he's excavated in SF, though, and there could be more there than you think. He was describing how many ships, abandoned by their gold-seeking crews in the 1840s, were turned into floating hotels or warehouses or businesses - only to end up partly burned and then covered over with earth after the great fire. 1906, wasn't it? He told the tale of one excavation of an entire hull of a ship well inland from the current bay shoreline. Cool stuff.

Mmm... Night Stalker. ::walks away whistling::

[thedeadlyhook.livejournal.com]

I think I remember when they found that ship. It was on the waterfront, near the Embarcadero. A lot of that area is actually built on those sunken ships, since several blocks after New Montgomery are actually landfill. The Marina too, is largely built on landfill of wreckage from the '06 quake.

But my neighborhood, the Richmond? Originally sand dunes and cemeteries. I'm sure there's stuff to be found, but the idea of hitting someone's old gravesite, and one barely over a hundred years old at that? Yeeks. They do have some great Native American finds in the museums here, though - some lovely photographs too, of what the area looked like before the Gold Rush, very tiny town, lots of Native American settlement in the area, mostly for fishing in the bay.