- A cemetery is like a library with very heavy books.

(laughs) - [Betty] Okay, who is it?

- And it should be respected like a library because it's a library holding the history of people that no longer exist.

- [Pamela] The history of Carlo and Betty Mencucci of Burrillville also reads like a book.

Their retirement hobby is resurrecting the past lives and final resting places of 130 historic cemeteries in their hometown.

- About 14 years now, we did 45.

I don't think we're gonna live long enough to do 'em all.

(laughs) - The Mencuccis were college sweethearts.

Married almost 50 years, they built their log cabin by hand.

Betty currently is president of the Burrillville Historical Society, Carlo vice president.

Preservation is a shared passion since they first met.

Did you ever think in those days that you would end up working side by side in a hobby in cemeteries?

- Never, never, never, never, never, never (laughs) would I ever thought that.

- [Pamela] That's because Betty's career was teaching high school computer science, and her husband was an electronics technician.

This grave business began while visiting the town's historic cemeteries.

- So what did this cemetery look like when you first got here?

- We came down here, and every stone was laying on the ground.

A lot of 'em were buried.

It looked like a bomb hit 'em.

You know, everything's down.

Everything's broken.

Everything's smashed.

And it just seemed like this is terrible.

From years of neglect and sometimes vandalism, the cemeteries were a mess.

- It's kind of disrespectful what we saw.

That's the last vestiges of somebody that once lived on this planet that is no more, except scratches on a worn out piece of marble or slate.

That's it.

That's all that's left of that guy's existence that ever was.

- And we went, "Ah, does it have to be like this?

Can something be done?"

We knew nothing.

- [Pamela] So they took classes at the Association of Gravestone Studies.

Now they teach local volunteers in caring for burial grounds.

The state's Advisory Commission on Historic Cemeteries says there are about 3,200 family plots in the Ocean State, often abandoned and inaccessible.

And Rhode Island has a higher density of these grave sites than any other Atlantic coast state.

- It goes back to Roger Williams.

- Because why?

- Separation of church and state.

- [Pamela] That meant physically as well as philosophically Rhode Island's founding principles of parting religion and politics meant there were no village commons with a town office sharing the same space with a church graveyard.

- People were buried in their backyards.

So every time there's a farm, there's gonna be a cemetery associated with it, and it's probably figured that there's probably a cemetery almost every square mile in the entire state.

- [Pamela] But many disappeared when families left the farm.

The Mencuccis say it's more than moving rocks.

It's restoration and conservation.

In addition to finding, researching, and recording the graveyards, they first have to clear the brush.

This historic marker on this overgrown lot in a neighbor's backyard was barely visible.

Today it's being readied for restoration.

First step, the stones have to be washed with a non-toxic product.

(tool scraping) - So everything has to be cleaned, and then you have to assess the damage and what needs to be done.

You kind of have to let the stone talk to you, and it tells you what it needs.

- [Pamela] Betty uses her handmade probe to find missing gravestones based on genealogy records.

She says families were usually buried in a row, so if there's a gap, it's a clue.

- It's kind of like finding treasures, like I found somebody, you know, when you get all excited and try to figure out where things go.

So we spend a bunch of time figuring out, you know, what needs to be done.

This needs an epoxy repair.

This just needs a simple reset.

(Carlo grunts) - It takes muscles to keep these memorials in shape.

They find broken pieces and mend them with special compounds that won't mar the lettering or weaken the stone.

Then they cement the headstones on sturdy bases.

It may seem macabre, but it takes a little grave digging.

- I dig out the bases.

I dig out stones that are on the ground.

We lift them up.

We put it on pieces of dunnage, just old pieces of wood, so it's up off the ground.

- You'd be surprised the things that are written on some of the stones that we've come across.

- [Pamela] Such as this one, a girl named Cinderrila, whose life did not have a fairytale ending.

- Cinderrila, and found out was a 16-year-old girl that died in 1860.

- She died from injuries from fire.

- [Pamela] There is more than Cinderrila's story engraved here.

The cemeteries contain a community's history.

This woman's husband was a Revolutionary War pensioner.

Here lies a Civil War veteran.

This man perished in the collision of the steamer Narragansett.

There is artistry, a sculpted hand pointing towards heaven, lambs atop the double tombstone of baby brothers, etchings and epitaphs that read like poetry: "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away," and, "Weep not for me."

The Mencuccis say their work is heartwarming, not spine-chilling.

But people have to come up to you and say, "Oh, this is creepy."

- Yeah, we get that a lot.

- You never get goosebumps?

- Never.

- No.

- [Pamela] Not even when they cared for the tombstone of the Burrillville woman who could easily make the most haunted list, Bathsheba Sherman.

She died in 1885, accused of being a demonic baby-murdering witch, causing scary episodes at the old Arnold Farm in town, made famous in the horror movie series "The Conjuring."

- Bathsheba!

(chilling music) (Bathsheba exhales) - [Pamela] While she may have put the town of Burrillville on the paranormal map, the Mencuccis say she got a bad rap.

- We want her to rest in peace.

We want people to leave her alone.

She's an ordinary woman, lived an ordinary life in an ordinary farmhouse in this ordinary town.

- [Pamela] They say Bathsheba Sherman lived a distance away from the old Arnold Estate and died of paralysis, probably a stroke in her '70s.

They also believe she's been made an undeserving villain in death.

- If your grandmother's name happened to be Bathsheba, and somebody walked into the cemetery and oh, there's a satanic-sounding name, and started this myth about your grandmother, how would you feel?

- [Pamela] Bathsheba's marble tombstone was tipped over so many times it severed.

They've since restored it and hidden it in an undisclosed location to protect the marker from thrill-seeking souvenir hunters.

Interest in Bathsheba is so intense, a GoFundMe page raised $2,100 for this recently erected granite marker bearing the same inscription as the original, trinkets and a lantern proof it still lures the curious about the mysterious from all over the country.

The Mencuccis find their own enchantment with their hobby, sometimes spending eight hours a day with what they say are their newfound friends.

- Make sure it's level.

(tool thuds) - It's very, very peaceful.

We have a very peaceful picnic in every cemetery that we've ever worked in.

- I enjoy it because I'm working with my wife.

(Betty laughs) (gate creaks) - [Pamela] And as fate would have it, the couple has an historic cemetery right on their own property, which they are also currently restoring.

As for their own final plans, they say they wish to be buried as they have lived, side by side.

And Carlo has already chosen what he wants his tombstone to say.

- "Leave me the heck alone.

(laughs) I'm resting."

(Betty laughs)