West Salem, Wis. (AP) -- Errol Kindschy has 12 crosses to care for. They' re of various shapes and sizes, and Kindschy can' t be too sure where they come from. Considering Kindschy' s line of work, though, that isn' t necessarily a bad thing.
Mystery of the Buried Crosses
[Original headline: Crosses show Garland' ' s fascination with occult]
Kindschy, a retired history teacher, directs the West Salem Historical Society, an organization that promotes the La Crosse County town' s most famous son, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Hamlin Garland.
But the 12 crosses -- which Kindschy persuaded Garland' s granddaughter, Victoria Jones, to donate to the society -- show a side of the writer that does not always come up when elementary schoolers tour his homestead.
Despite the writer' s reputation as a chronicler of rugged prairie life, Garland dabbled in the occult and even wandered the California desert in search of the supernatural.
These experiences are recounted in the last of Garland' s 52 books, " The Mystery of the Buried Crosses -- A Narrative of Psychic Exploration, " published in 1939. In the book, Garland described his encounter with a medium who escorted him to 1, 500 buried crosses, offering Garland a tangible connection to another realm.
" I still find it difficult to believe in an intangible universe, a fourth-dimensional plane from which these inexplicable voices appear to come, " Garland wrote. " And yet ... I am convinced -- momentarily -- of their reality."
Garland wanted to examine the crosses more thoroughly, but the medium and her husband, also well-versed in the occult, died before they had the chance. The 12 crosses that now belong to the West Salem Historical Society share few common traits. They range in size from a few inches long to a full foot.
Little is known of each individual cross. The largest one, which weighs at least five pounds, bears an inscription, " Passed Here, " and then becomes indecipherable.
Garland wrote that he contacted the dead medium through another guide, and he said the seances also let him commune with writers such as Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle and Henry Fuller, who was one of Garland' s close friends before his death in 1929.
Fuller and the Spanish explorer Coronado, Garland wrote, led him across the desert to find 16 more crosses, and helped him discover that the crosses were from the pre-Christian Indians of South America.
The crosses' new overseer is in no hurry to prove or disprove Garland' s ideas about the crosses.
" As far as I' m concerned, we will leave them alone and let people speculate, " Kindschy said. " It' s more fun that way."
Some visitors to Garland' s homestead, near where he was born and lived for about 20 years, say they can sense the author, who died in 1940 at age 80. Lamps have been known to fall down for no apparent reason, doors have been seen slamming, and some guests get the impression that Garland' s bed had been slept in the night before.
Garland, after all, is nearby. He spent his last years in Hollywood, living across from Charlie Chaplin, but his remains are buried by the homestead.
The sense of mystery surrounding the crosses is consistent with Garland' s life. He was fascinated -- some would say obsessed -- by the occult, but he never claimed to have all the answers.
" I find myself still a doubter, still the investigator, demanding proof and still more proof, " he wrote in his last book.
[Source Star Tribune published - October 24 1999]
