Mysterious Moving Monuments
What unseen forces are rotating massive granite balls weighing thousands of pounds each in cemeteries? By guest columnist Matthew Gryczan
In science it is well known that no hypothesis or theory in any field accounts for 100 percent of the phenomena under investigation. This “residue problem” means that no matter how comprehensive a theory is there will always be a residue of anomalies for which it cannot account. Weird things happen. Why? We do not always know, so it is okay to admit as much. “I don’t know” and “I could be wrong” are phrases that should be uttered more often in science, especially if we want to earn back the trust of the public, which has eroded in recent years.
The problem is that the human mind abhors a vacuum of explanation, no matter how improbable, and this often includes paranormal and supernatural forces purported to be a work in mysterious ways. A case in point are the massive and heavy rotating granite balls in cemeteries in the midwest and New England, which upon first glance appear to have no natural explanations. This has led to a number of conjectures about spooky forces at work, but as this week’s guest Skeptic columnist Matthew Gryczan notes, with a bit more probing and investigation a rational explanation emerges. The skeptical principle at work here can be articulated thusly:
Before you say something is out of this world, first make sure that it is not in this world.
And when a this-worldly explanation is on offer, we owe it to the public to make it known, if for no other reason than to show that withholding judgement until all the facts are in—also known as skepticism—is a virtue, and so is changing your mind when the facts change.
Matthew Gryczan has been a professional journalist for more than 20 years, specializing in science and technology writing. He is the author of Carnival Secrets, the definitive book on the science behind midway games, and a contributor to Make magazine. He holds separate bachelor's degrees in journalism, business and engineering.
Mysterious Moving Monuments
Matthew Gryczan
To the amazement of visitors to cemeteries scattered throughout the Midwest and New England, unseen forces are rotating granite balls weighing thousands of pounds each, as if those honored by the monuments were unhappy with their situation.
The force required to turn these stone spheres is substantial, so much so that cemetery superintendents have ruled out jokesters moving the balls through manpower alone. The highly polished balls don’t bear marks of prybars or power equipment, and in some cases, the pins that hold them in place have been sheared off.
This remarkable phenomenon first documented more than 120 years ago in the United States has been attributed to the spirit world, the rotation of the earth, micro-earthquakes, the Moon’s gravitational pull or the Earth’s magnetism.
But by sharpening Ockham’s Razor, it appears that the cause of these mysterious rotations is none other than the astonishing forces of nature using water and changing temperatures to patiently set things right by gravity.
Newspaper and eyewitness accounts describe 22 sites in Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, and South Dakota where boulder-sized granite orbs have turned from their set positions. No doubt there are other sites yet undocumented, as I discovered two moving globes just by visiting graveyards with the thought in mind to check such monuments for shifts from their original positions.
The trend to adorn grave monuments with large granite balls gained popularity in the United States in the early 1890s, accelerated by the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, where an exhibit by the Granite Manufacturers Association of Quincy featured a huge ball made from granite quarried in that Massachusetts city.[1] The next year the Lyons Granite Co. in Quincy commissioned a gargantuan lathe that could turn granite blocks into spheres as large as 6 feet in diameter.
By 1896, advertisements started popping up in trade publications such as Monumental News that promoted the new elegance of large stone spheres that contrasted so markedly from the classic Greek style monuments.
Wealthy individuals who admired that more modern look commissioned stone spheres ranging in size from 2 feet in diameter to an impressive 76-inch diameter ball weighing 22,000 pounds that marks the Robinson family graves in Chippiannock Cemetery, Rock Island, Ill.[2]
As more people ordered the monuments, some patrons noticed that the balls ranging in size from 2 feet to 3 feet in diameter gradually moved of their own accord. The balls rotated on a roughly horizontal axis, so that the rough spots meant to contact the pedestal became visible. Some of the balls set in place with pins continued to rotate after the pins sheared off, and they seemed to be particularly more active in colder months.[3]
Ohio seems to be the moving ball capital of the nation, with 8 reported examples of the phenomena. The most famous of these moving globes is the Merchant Ball, a strikingly beautiful black granite globe about 3 feet in diameter that can be found in the Marion Cemetery in Marion, Ohio.
The Merchant Ball in Marion, Ohio is the most famous case of all the reported incidents in the United States of huge granite balls moving by their own accord. Marion Cemetery Superintendent Jim Riedl said the gravesite has drawn a number of paranormal investigators.
Sometime after he erected the monument in 1896 to mark his family plot, Charles B. Merchant complained to cemetery trustees that someone had rotated its ball upwards about 14 inches on its south side to expose a 6-inch diameter rough spot that contrasted strongly with the rest of the ball’s polished surface.[4]
The Merchant Ball gained notoriety after cemetery staff were unsuccessful at stopping the ball’s rotation, and by August of 1904 hundreds of people were showing up to view the curiosity. “Of course, there are those who are talking about ‘spirits,’” a Sandusky, Ohio newspaper mused. “But they are far and few between.” Even though the source of the movement was attributed to weather conditions, newspapers across the nation ran stories about the mysterious moving ball as a remarkable phenomenon.
The Merchant Ball stories touched off finds in other cities. In January of 1905, the Huron Daily Huronite, Huron, S.D. reported that a globe monument in Riverside Cemetery was “moving in the same manner” as the famous Ohio ball.[5]
The Merchant Ball gets rediscovered every generation as an unexplained mystery. During the 1930s, it was popularized through Ripley’s Believe it or Not columns in newspapers, and then in the 1950s and 60s through radio programs of Paul Harvey and Frank Edwards. It’s now making the rounds on YouTube channels and blogs about the paranormal and mysterious.
Other “moving tombstones” in the country were less famous than the Merchant Ball, but they didn’t lack the power to stir people’s imaginations and fear of the unknown—particularly since they occur in graveyards.
The Miller Ball comes to mind as one. In 1910, a boy noticed that the 3-foot-diameter granite ball in the Memphis Cemetery in Memphis, Mich. had rotated, and “with visions of midnight spiritual visitors that caused his hair to stand upright, the lad ran for the village and brought several grown-ups to see the ‘miracle.’ Many came, saw and wondered,” the Detroit News Tribune reported.[6]
Soon after, that grave monument erected to Eli Miller in 1904 caused a “state of agitation” in the village, with some townspeople speeding past the cemetery in their horse-drawn buggies at night or taking detours altogether for fear of meeting a ghost.
But Maria Miller, widow of Eli who visited the grave several times every year since it was erected, wasn’t fazed by the odd movement. She, her son John, and his wife “were not impressed with the strangeness of the thing, not stopping in wonder as to what caused the movement,” a Port Huron, Mich. newspaper reported.[7]
Now more than a century later, the Miller Ball has been dubbed the “Witch’s Ball” in books and on websites catering to mysteries and unique local attractions in Michigan.[8] Other moving sphere gravemarkers such as the Augustus Houghton family monument in Putnam, Conn.[9] and the Richardson Adams monument in Oak Hill Cemetery of Taylorville, Ill.[10] also have picked up supernatural overtones over the decades.
A visitor to the McManus gravesite in Greenwood Cemetery, Petoskey, Mich. examines the rough spot on the polished sphere that was exposed when it rotated. Greenwood Cemetery Superintendent Karl Crawford said the ball sheared its first pin, was reset, and sheared a second pin years ago.
In the book Weird Illinois: Your Travel Guide to Illinois' Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets, the authors closes with the statement: “The mystery remains unsolved.”
That would be news to Albert Richards, if he were alive today.
Richards, a monument craftsman from Quincy, Mass., wrote observations in an encyclopedia for monument dealers where he stated freeze and thaw action was the source of the movement and the rotation could be stopped by preventing water from seeping underneath the ball.[11]
The beauty of Richards’ remarks was that he was able to deduce the source of the rotation from his work and observations of two balls of similar size and composition in the same cemetery, the Cohasset Central Cemetery in Cohasset, Mass.
The monument erected to Allen Collier Bates (1845-1899) had a ball that did not move, while the monument erected to James W. Nichols (1826-1904) did.[12] Richards, who had to reset the Nichols Ball twice, noted that it moved in the same direction as the Merchant Ball, from northwest to southeast.
“When my attention was first drawn to this, I said it was the frost,” Richards wrote. “You will notice that when winter first comes, there is water under the ball. This freezes and the expansion lifts the ball. In melting, the southeast side melts first and drops back on the die, but does not get back as far as it was before freezing.”
He noted that Bates Ball “never moves, as it is set on brackets which allow no water to come in contact with the ball.”
In many published reports on the rotating spheres, the weight of the balls often is overestimated, which makes the weather theories of movement even more plausible. For example, it has been reported that the Merchant Ball with a 3-foot diameter weighs 5,200 pounds, but its actual weight is probably less than 3,000 pounds. A ball with a 2-foot diameter is probably 1,100 pounds or less, depending on the density of the granite.[13]
And the spheres themselves may not be balanced correctly in their set positions because the granite they are made from isn’t uniform throughout. The monument company that erected the Merchant Ball attributed its movement to mineral deposits within the ball that offset its center of gravity from its geometric center.[14]
When friction is reduced on their bases, the balls seek equilibrium. Ice forming and thawing in cold weather can perform that function. A 1911 postcard on the Merchant Ball noted that the “movement is much faster in winter than any time of the year,” always in directions of north to south due to freezing and thawing.
A 3,000-pound stone resting on a bowl base of more than 28 square inches is no match for the tremendous pressure that water can exert on surfaces as it changes from liquid to ice, reaching as high as 30,000 pounds per square inch.[15]
“Families are always accusing us of hitting their monuments, but it’s really the freezing and thawing that lifts the monument dies (decorative top) off the base, especially if the seals are worn out,” said Todd Slater, who has been cemetery manager for the city of Moline, Ill. since 1991. “I couldn’t go just out out and move these dies myself.”[16] Riverside Cemetery in Moline is reported to have several balls that have moved spontaneously.[17]
On top of that, a ball warmed by a sunny winter day can form a thin layer of liquid between it and the ice of its base, greatly decreasing its friction. Researchers at the Sorbonne University in Paris recently discovered that such a layer is 1/100th of the thickness of a strand of hair. [18]
The 35-inch diameter ball atop the Culhane monument in St. Michael's Cemetery, Port Austin, Mich. has shifted nearly 4 inches since it was set, as indicated by the outline of the base. Cemetery officials were not aware of the movement.
There are reports that the balls can move in summer months as well. Henry E. Sinnock, an arborist in Massillon, Ohio, noticed in 1907 that a the 800-pound red Scotch granite ball on his family’s monument in the city’s cemetery rotated in both summer and winter.[19] He and monument craftsmen and cemetery superintendents have proposed that movement also can be caused when the balls are warmed on their southern exposures by the sun.
Cemetery superintendents, who are probably the next closest people to the moving monuments after the deceased, take all the hubbub in stride.
“I can tell you I’m not going out there with a crowbar,” Jim Riedl, superintendent of the Marion Cemetery Association who worked there since 1977, said with a laugh. “It moves about a quarter inch a year now, but it’s enough to bring visitors.” Some who are paranormal investigators have arrived at the ball with magnetometers and microphones to discern supernatural sounds in the cemetery.[20]
What probably remains as the real mystery is why so many people who have written on or “investigated” the topic conveniently ignore the explanations given by cemetery superintendents and monument craftsmen, the very people whose livelihood depends on understanding and controlling the phenomena.
When we use Ockham’s razor and prefer the simpler explanation as the best, there’s nothing “weird” or “creepy” about boulder-sized balls moving themselves in graveyards—it’s amazing in itself to see how nature finds ways to put things at rest in graveyards.
References
[1] Condensed Official Catalogue of the World’s Columbian Exhibition, Interesting Exhibits and Where to Find Them (Chicago: W.B. Conkey Co., 1893), p. 78.
[2] T. Nelson Dale, Commercial Granites of New England (Washington D.C.: United States Geological Survey, 1923), pp. 320, 327.
[3] Excel spreadsheet developed by author.
[4] “Sun is Moving Huge Stone Ball,” Sandusky Daily Register, Sandusky, Ohio, September 04, 1904, p. 2.
[5] “Peculiar Effect of Heat and Cold on Granite,” Huron Daily Huronite, Huron, S.D., January 03, 1905, p. 2.
[6] “Memphis Mystery is a Moving Tombstone; Read and Guess It,” Detroit News Tribune , Detroit, Mich., November 13, 1910, p. 67.
[7] “4000 Pound Granite Ball on Memphis Tombstone Revolves And all Memphis Wonders,” Times Herald, Port Huron, Mich. November 25, 1910, p. 3.
[8] “Spooky, Scary! The Mysterious Case of Michigan’s Moving Gravestones,” WKFR 103.3, published by Lauren Gordon, October 5, 1922. https://wkfr.com/why-are-michigan-gravestones-moving/
[9] “Putting a Spin on Things,” Weird New England: Your Travel Guide to New England's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets. Volume 1 of Weird Series. Joseph A. Citro, Editors Mark Moran, Mark Sceurman: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., 2005, p. 222.
[10] “Oak Hill’s Mysterious Spinning Sphere,” Weird Illinois: Your Travel Guide to Illinois' Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets, Troy Taylor, Mark Moran, Mark Sceurman. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., 2005, p. 209.
[11] “A Moving Granite Ball Surmounting A Monument” Monument Dealer’s Manual: The Monument Man’s Ecyclopedia (sic): Omar H. Sample: Allied Arts Publishing Co., 1919 edition, pp. 93-94.
[12] Field investigation and photos provided by Rick Towle, President of Cohasset Central Cemetery.
[13] Calculations by author on cubic feet of stone using formula 4/3πr3 for volume times density of granite at average 175 pounds per cubic foot.
[14] “The Spontaneously Moving Stone Ball—(Merchant Ball)” brochure titled Surrounding Marion’s Heritage with Beauty published and provided by Marion Cemetery Association, p. 2.
[15] “Explaining Ice: The Answers Are Slippery” New York Times, Kenneth Chang, Feb. 21, 2006, https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/21/science/21ice.html
[16] Author’s phone interview with Slater.
[17] “Digging into Q-C cemeteries” Rock Island Dispatch Argus, by John Marx and Kate Woodburn, Oct. 4, 1998.
[18] “Scientists Thought They Knew Why Ice Was Slippery, but Researchers Found Surprises,” SciTech Daily, November 6, 2019, https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-thought-they-knew-why-ice-was-slippery-but-researchers-found-surprises/
[19] “What Makes The Big Ball Move?” Massillon Ohio Evening Independent, Massillon, Ohio, July 17, 1907, p. 6.
[20] Author’s personal interview with Riedl.
I remember there was a spherical monument in the Singapore Botanical Gardens that you were meant to rotate with your bare hands. This was achieved by having the monument also be a fountain so that the huge stone sphere was continually covered in a thin layer of water. And thanks to that water you could easily spin this sphere in any direction with just a bit of force. A great demonstration of just how effective water can be at reducing friction.
A fun example of "mysterious" movement, created by tiny increments of displacement accumulated over time. Welcome to the world of geology, especially structural geology and tectonics, disciplines that deal with displacement and deformation of rocks, from micro to global scales.
One-quarter inch per year is actually within the range of moving tectonic plates, though some are a bit faster. North and South America move westward, relative to Europe and Africa, at a rate of about 1 to 2 inches per year. That's not noticeable between your east and west-bound flights, or even over a typical human lifetime, even if the Atlantic Ocean has gotten 12 feet wider. But when tectonic boundaries--and motions--are closer to home (literally) people notice.
BTW, we should indeed hear and say "I don't know" more often. In fact, if somebody claims to be a scientist and never utters those words, you should question their expertise. Now, I would like to hope we could also hear that from politicians, but that might be crazy.