The Buried Crosses

The Buried Crosses

Psi Encyclopedia article by Michael Tymn

In 1914, a California medium named Violet Parent began receiving information about the location of relics that her ‘spirit communicators’ said had been buried in rural locations.  Over a period of nine years, she and her husband Gregory tracked down some 1,500 such objects, most in the form of crude crosses, said to have been made by Aztec Indians and buried in religious rituals.  After the Parents died the items were handed to Hamlin Garland, an investigator of mediumship, along with 22 notebooks in which Gregory Parent recorded the communications and details of the search.  

Intrigued by the relics and their mysterious provenance, Garland, then in his seventies, decided to seek out more of them.  He sought help from Sophia Williams, an independent voice medium, and through her was directed to the whereabouts of other artifacts. Not all of his subequent searches were successful, but he was able to find 16 relics similar in substance and design to those collected by the Parents, in 10 widely separated locations throughout California and Mexico.  Some were in deep gullies, others high on cactus-covered hills far from the highway.  One was hidden in a ledge of sandstone behind a wall of cactus plants which Garland had to chop away.