These markers are strange even before you know the legend. Look closely at the hands, the dates and the names—then look for Lida's actual grave nearby. The unusual Bentley family markers at Mountain View Cemetery inspired a local legend that Pardon and Lida Bentley were witches. Stories claimed the concrete imprisoned their souls, the downward-pointing hands condemned them to hell, and even the unfinished date on Pardon's marker became part of the lore. The documented history is different. Pardon Bentley was a cemetery sexton, and the downward-pointing hands are a traditional funerary symbol representing God reaching down to lift the deceased to heaven. Pardon reportedly had a difficult relationship with the stonemason who created the monument. After Pardon died, the mason never completed his death date—giving rise to the story that the stonemason got the last laugh. Their young son C.S. Bentley, who died in 1885, is memorialized here but cemetery records indicate he is not buried beneath this monument. Lida and Pardon later separated. She remarried and lived until 1926, when she was buried nearby under her later name, Lida Farlow. That leaves Lida with two markers in the same cemetery—but only one actual grave. A wonderfully strange example of how unusual cemetery symbolism, incomplete information and time can turn history into legend.