Help, there’s a dead guy buried in my backyard

Powerhouse Museum Collection

Working in my overgrown backyard a few years ago, my shovel hit a metal container buried under a tree — the cremated remains of some guy who died in 1988. I thought about calling the city, but would I want to spend eternity on some shelf in the Los Angeles Hall of Records, or just be thrown in a dumpster? His ashes weren’t hurting anyone, and I didn’t really want to desecrate his resting spot. So I put him back in the ground. When I sell this house, am I obligated to tell potential buyers that there’s a guy buried here? It’s not like there’s a skeleton or tombstone, just a little box of ashes and bone fragments buried under a tree. — Very Worried in Eagle Rock.

Somebody who once lived in your little house loved it enough to want his remains placed there forever. That’s sad enough. Or his wife or kids or distant relatives didn’t know what else to do with the cheap urn after the estate sale, so they buried it in a shallow grave where the dog pooped. Sadder still. Either way, the final physical traces of this human were intentionally buried beneath a tree in the backyard, your backyard.

Maybe it was the guy’s favorite tree. Maybe he planted it back in 1953 or so, and in his later days would sit under its shady branches, reading Sunset magazine and worrying about Sputnik or the Mexicans. Maybe he died right there, who knows.

You are concerned about the legal consequences of less-than-full disclosure. I am not a lawyer, legally, so I cannot advise you one way or the other. What I can do is tell a story as ancient as time itself, which I read in either the Bible or an AARP magazine at the dentist’s office a few years ago.

The Peasant’s Rebuke

There once lived a man in the green hills of Glendale, or Glendale adjacent. He died of either gout or gang violence, but still had enough hobbit doubloons left over for a cremation. Within about a year of the Spring Equinox, his kin placed the charred remains in an oak bole, and then everyone attended a Renaissance Faire in Irwindale, where folke consumed goblets of mead and eated many-a-corn dog.

Later, some guy moved into the dead man’s house and happened upon the bony remains in a slender tin box sequestered beneath the earth’s surface. The guy was all, “I’m fifty grand underwater on this dump, and now I’ve got an INDIAN BURIAL GROUND in the backyard, just cold full of Poltergeists? I don’t think so,” and then verily he cornholed a narrow shaft into his neighbor’s yard, by night, just under the fence, and did entomb the remains right there, about three cubits from the original location, which is totally fine and pleasing to one and all gods.

Here’s another story, a true one: I was trying to sell a house a couple of years ago, right before the Entire Global Economy collapsed, because of houses. But nobody wanted to buy my house. This was a problem for many people at the time, and that’s why there were many news articles on the Internet about a new craze called “Jamming St. Joseph head first into the soil of your garden.”

You get a plastic St. Joseph — the actual father of Jesus! — and point his skull into the dirt. Pound him in, with a hammer or plain fear or whatever you’ve got, and say a prayer over his shameful grave for seven or ten days. Then you’ll sell the house, especially if you slash the price down to what people can actually afford.

Do you tell the new buyers that you’ve pounded a three-and-three-quarter-inch action figure of St. Joseph into the soil in a pagan ceremony? NO ARE YOU INSANE?

I’m having regrets about everyone in the world talking on a cell phone. Remember when you were terrified of calling a girl as a teenager because her neck-vein-popping Dad might answer the phone? Teens these days just call each other directly. Also, remember when you’d call your friend and have a nice chat with his roommate/mom/girlfriend/etc? Never happens anymore. How do I get back to that drive-by conversation feeling I’ve lost? — M. Roston, off off Wall Street, New York.

That girl probably got married and re-married about a dozen years ago, and she doesn’t even like boys anymore. You can’t go on blaming mobile telephones forever. Sure, fine, the cellphone is just one more assault on what’s left of the human soul. But it doesn’t matter if you click Next on ChatRoulette for the rest of your life, you’ll never see her again.

Send your important questions to ask.layne@gmail.com. But if you have a REAL problem, call the police or something, as Ken Layne will not really help you at all. This is just a web page on the Internet.