Thousands Of Bodies Found On Grounds of Former Mississippi Mental Hospital

[From article]
Officials now believe there may be as many as 2,000 century-old graves underneath the soil.
Archaeologists have been studying grave sites discovered on the UMC campus for some time; several dozen grave sites were discovered last year.
[. . .]

'The property that the University of Mississippi Medical Center is located on used to be the location of the state insane asylum, which operated from 1855 to 1935,' Mazurak said.
'Historically we knew that there were a lot of graves, many of which were not marked. In the '90s, we took the handful of marked graves and reinterred them in a designated cemetery area,' he said.
[. . .]
'We're guessing because there's no personal remains, no clothes, not even really any buttons or pins or anything, that they were probably residents of the asylum and either buried in a shroud or not buried with anything, so that would put them probably around in the mid to late 1800s to early 1900s,' said Anderson.
[. . .]

Moving the bodies would reportedly cost about $3 million so the University has said it will probably look at alternate sites for construction, rather than try to relocate the graves.
The expansion will most likely be relocated to another location on the 164-acre campus.
It's possible there could be more unmarked graves belonging to tuberculosis patients, former slaves, or possibly even Civil War dead, according to the Clarion-Ledger.
The State Lunatic Asylum opened on the site in 1855, housing 150 patients.
After the end of the Civil War, it expanded to house more than 300 residents in a district known as Asylum Hill.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2556767/Workers-discover-1-000-corpses-site-old-mental-asylum.html

What lies beneath? Gruesome find as workers discover more than 1,000 corpses at site of old Mississippi mental asylum
University of Mississippi Medical Center had planned to build a parking garage east of the dental school
Testing in the area revealed 1,000 bodies, believed to have been patients at the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum a century ago
Future expansion plans might be halted because other bodies may lie beneath the earth including former slaves, TB victims and possibly even Civil War dead
Staff have always known there was a cemetery associated with the old asylum somewhere on the property, but no one knew for sure where it was until now
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 10:36 EST, 11 February 2014 | UPDATED: 12:14 EST, 11 February 2014