On March 20, the Union County Historical Society had a full house with guest speaker Arthur M. Bohanan. He is an internationally award-winning patented inventor, researcher, lecturer and writer, a Certified Latent Print Examiner, a certified FEMA Mass Fatality Course Instructor and a certified police instructor with 55 years in study and practical application of forensics in thousands of violent crime scenes.
Bohanan showed a film and spoke of his experiences as a forensics scientist, and of his invention the “HuReLo,” The Human Remains Locator. This is a device he has invented to locate graves in cemeteries with no markings. With much research he is now able to identify if it is a male or female or a child grave.
Bohanan is the author of several books and spoke of one, “Who are you walking on,” which I have, and have taken information from on how he became interested in the graveyard forensics.
Bohanan is the son of a Baptist Minister who was born in Big Greenbrier Cove which is now part of the great Smoky Mountains National Park. He, with his family, would return to the Plemmons and Friendship Cemetery each year to clean off graves before decoration. His dad taught him to never, ever walk on a grave. That it was very disrespectful to the person buried beneath the ground.
Bohanan’s research of the Human Remains Locator began in the spring of 2015, at the old cemetery in downtown Dandridge, with Shelia Evens, a retired teacher and historian. He walked the hallowed grounds of the cemetery with her as she demonstrated how her dousing rods work. Shelia showed him some gravestones with no markings and some with information and some with not even a field stone to indicate a grave was there.
Bohanan told her he recalled that a distant cousin Glenn Cardwell (Mayor of Pittman Center) had told him years ago of how the dousing rods work. When they hiked to his grandfather’s old homeplace in Greenbrier in the Smoky Mountains, Cardwell got two pencil-sized wood sticks from a tree on the ground and showed where the old barn once stood.
Cardwell explained to Bohanan how anything laying on the earth for a long period of time or where the earth has been disturbed down to eighteen inches or more will change the magnetic field that will never be the same. He also said we can only trace a space as a grave size but there is no way to determine if in fact it is a grave or just where the earth has been disturbed.
Cardwell gave Bohanan the sticks and said, “You have it or you do not.”
Bohanan took the sticks and traced the old, now gone 75-year-old barn just as he had done, and replied, “I reckon I have it.”
Dousing has been used for hundreds of years. Bohanan preferred his process as Divining, as God’s source of power, and some people can do this, others cannot—this is God’s gift to only some.
Bohanan was challenged to know who was in the ground—Is there actually a method, outside of ground penetrating radar (which in his opinion is still in the developing stage)?
He called his friend Dr. Bill Bass, Dr. Rick Snow and others he respected in the forensic field, and of course no one knew. He read his Bible, meditated, and remembered the human body has a magnetic energy field, then he got to work on his research. After a lot of hard work and research, he came up with a device and named it HuReLo.
The HuReLo device has had 99% accuracy of results in over 300-plus graves with some 200-year-old stones that may be in the wrong place. Remember the old song “There is Power in the Blood. There is Power in the Blood.”
Bohanan also talked of his experiences of working with the World Trade Center, with the UT Body Farm and showing how the body decays and how to identify how long the victim has been dead. He has worked with disaster victims such as in Hurricane Katrina, air disasters such as United Flight 823 in Parrottsville, Tennessee, in July of 1964 with 39 people aboard, and Hurricane Rita (Mississippi River area and Gulf shores), with 350-plus dead and 1200-plus caskets floating.
After his speech he had a question-and-answer session with everyone eager to participate.
Bohanan had a display table for his books and information on his invention of which he holds a patent for “Method and Apparatus for Detecting Fingerprints on Skin.”
Genesis 2:7 “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living soul.” (KJV)
Note: As stated in Bohanan’s book, “The reason for this is a ‘soul’ never dies.”
Arthur Bohanan’s books can be purchased by contacting him at printsofaman@gmail.com or Arthur.bohanan@gmail.com as well as Facebook.
The Union County Historical Society meets on the third Sunday of each month at the Union County Museum at 2 p.m. located at 3824 Maynardville Hwy. in Maynardville TN 37807. Everyone is invited to attend and hear interesting speakers. Look in this publication and on Historical Union County.com website for upcoming events.
Citation Note: Information for this article was taken from an in-person event by Arthur Bohanan, speaking at the Union County Historical Society meeting and from Bohanan’s book, “Who Are You Walking On.”