“Forty-Nine Beans”

Back in the 1930s, during the process of moving graves from a private burial ground along Rockvale Road in Lancaster County to a plot at Longenecker’s Meeting not far away, the men at work uncovered an old wine bottle. Its cork was rotten and inside was a scummy-looking liquid that contained forty-nine coffee beans — they counted them. According to the late Reuben Harnish, who witnessed it, the men were “spooked,” thinking their discovery to be a relic of local witchcraft.