July 22, 1943

July 22, 1943, marks the official burial of Timmy Baterman, a twenty-year-old soldier from Ludlow who had been killed in Italy while charging a machine-gun nest and posthumously awarded the Silver Star. His body, shipped home on what the army's Graves and Registration officer called a "mystery train," was interred in Pleasantview Cemetery with full military honors. The funeral was well attended; half the town turned out. But the ceremony was a lie. Within days, Timmy Baterman was seen walking the roads of Ludlow, resurrected by his father Bill Baterman through the same Micmac burying ground beyond the Pet Sematary that Jud Crandall would later show to Louis Creed.

The Burial and Its Immediate Aftermath

Timmy Baterman's coffin arrived at the Orrington loading depot on a freight train. Four railroad men, including Jud Crandall, unloaded it. Bill Baterman stood by, his face "stony and kinda dry," weeping no tears. The army officer from Graves and Registration never got off the train; he was found drunk in a boxcar still containing twelve other coffins. Two days later, on July 22, 1943, Timmy was buried in Pleasantview Cemetery. But Bill Baterman, who had lost his wife and a second child years before and had no other family, had already decided what he wanted to do. He knew about the Micmac burying ground, and he had determined to use it.

The Resurrection and Its Consequences

Four or five days after the burial—around July 26 or 27—the mailwoman Marjorie Washburn saw Timmy walking up the road toward York's Livery Stable. She was so frightened she drove off the road, returned to the post office, tossed her undelivered mail on the desk, and went home to bed. Other sightings followed. Timmy was described as pale, dressed in old chino pants and a faded flannel shirt despite the ninety-degree heat, his hair sticking up in spikes, his eyes "like raisins stuck in bread dough." He walked back and forth along the Pedersen Road, a mile east and a mile west of his father's house, all day and presumably all night. He spoke to people, revealing secrets he could not have known—the postmaster's grandson's greed, the fire chief's wife's infidelity, Jud Crandall's visits to a Bangor whorehouse. He spoke only of the bad, never the good. The thing that had come back was not Timmy Baterman but something that wore his body, something sly and malevolent.

The End of the Baterman Affair

The situation escalated until the postmaster, the second selectman, and the fire chief confronted Bill Baterman at his home. Timmy stood in the yard, his face orange in the setting sun, stinking of the grave. He taunted each man with his darkest secrets. Two nights later, the Baterman house burned flat. Range oil had been splashed from one end to the other. Inside, Bill Baterman was found in his easy chair, a Colt .45 in his hand, his head destroyed by a bullet. Timmy lay on the bed, shot twice in the chest. The county medical examiner determined that Timmy Baterman had been dead for two or three weeks.

Narrative Significance

Jud Crandall told Louis Creed this story on the night before Gage's burial, hoping to dissuade him from attempting the same terrible experiment. The date July 22, 1943, anchors the only known case of a human being resurrected through the Micmac burying ground—a case that ended in murder, suicide, and fire. It stands as the definitive warning against the power of that place, a warning Louis ultimately failed to heed.