Claudia Horton

#HumansofArlington

Claudia+Horton

Alec McCreary, Staff

“I moved away from Arlington when I was a little girl. I got married in 1972 and moved back. At that time, the only way you could get a house was to find someone who was getting a divorce or that passed away. We knew about a house where the family was getting divorced and we knew the son and the grandmother that had died. We thought oh well we’ll take that one. We got a phone call from the current owner and we purchased the house for $7,000. The house was a wreck. All of the deceased grandmothers items were still there and the refrigerator had food in it. I was sweeping a hole in the floor near the fireplace when my sister yelled “you need to come see this.” Outback there were two little shacks that used to be a cook shop and a coal shop. Leading up to the wooden shacks were wooden steps. We attempted to lift the 70+ year old wood and it fell apart. Underneath were two tombstones. We thought this was very spooky. We pulled them apart and looked at them. The first tombstone read Angeles and the second read Maggie. My two daughters are named Angela and Maggie Kristen. We did some research and found a death notice for the little girl who was actually 12 months old. We were unable to find anything about Angeles. Based off of when my house was built it was impossible for the children to be buried in my yard. We took the tombstones to a cemetery off of Chambers Chaplin road and placed them next to the grandparents. When we arrived back home, there room that was usually cooler than the others was normal temperature. Later on, we visited the graves at the cemetery where we found a $1 bill laying on the ground. The grass cutters had just mowed which seemed odd they didn’t see it. So we figured the money was for us. When we got home, we looked at our phone bill, and it was 98 cents.”