— Future progress for the state's longtime medical school has collided with the ghosts of Mississippi's past — the discovery of a 1,000 bodies buried on its campus and the likelihood of more. The State Lunatic Asylum opened on the site in 1855, housing 150 patients. But those officials have faced a steep cost — $3,000 to exhume and rebury each body, as much as $21 million total. (Photo: Special to The Clarion-Ledger) 
 
 Before the asylum, those suffering from mental illness were chained in jails and even attics, said Dr. Luke Lampton, chairman of the state Board of Health. After the Civil War ended, the facility expanded to house 300 patients, and the area became known as “Asylum Hill,” a neighborhood that included houses, a school and Cade Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, a church for former slaves. At its height, about 6,000 patients stayed at the asylum, and the facility provided many jobs to the area, which saw construction of a fertilizer factory, a Baptist orphanage and a sanatorium for those suffering from tuberculosis. In 1935, Mississippi moved the asylum to the present location of the State Hospital at Whitfield. Two decades later, construction started on the University Medical Center, and officials dubbed the area "Education Hill." During 2012 construction on the crossing of East University Drive and University Drive on campus, workers discovered the first of 66 pine coffins that held bodies, leading UMMC to contact state archives and Mississippi State University. (Photo: Rick Guy, The Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger) Story Highlights University of Mississippi Medical Center had planned to build a parking garage east of the dental school 
 
 Testing in the area revealed 1,000 bodies, believed to have been patients at the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum a century ago 
 
 Future expansion plans might be halted because other bodies may lie beneath the earth %u2014 former slaves, TB victims and possibly even Civil War dead 
 
 JACKSON, Miss. She said a total of 9,000 died there, with about 6,000 of them buried in the asylum cemetery. 1,000 bodies may have been asylum patients; more might be revealed on campus. Read or Share this story: http://on.thec-l.com/2pSwHE3
– On some 20 acres of the 164-acre University of Mississippi Medical Center campus, there's something unexpected underfoot: bodies. The Clarion-Ledger reports there are as many as 7,000 bodies buried on the campus, and they likely belong to patients of the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum, which in 1855 opened as the state's first mental institution. During the course of 2012 road construction, 66 bodies were uncovered on campus. "In size, they are fairly uniform," wrote the school of the pine coffins that were discovered, "about six feet long but alarmingly narrow, as if each held a pair of stilts instead of a human skeleton." The newspaper in 2014 reported a subsequent 1,000 were found when the school did radar testing in preparation for the construction of a parking garage in a wooded area near the dental school. The number of coffins verified by radar is now double that figure, with estimates topping out at 7,000. The number is the problem: Engaging an outside company to handle the exhumations and reburials would cost $3,000 each, or up to $21 million. So UMMC is weighing doing it itself in an 8-year effort that would cost closer to $3 million. It's possible that in addition to a memorial, a lab would be created that would allow researchers to study the remains and gain insight into asylum living; the asylum was operational until 1935, and the school opened 20 years later.