A Medicine Hat woman is waging a battle with a city graveyard after discovering a stranger is buried in her family plot.

Joyce Woolley says her grandfather purchased the spots over a century ago – but somehow someone else has been interred in her resting place beside three generations of her family members.

A city spokesperson tells The Calgary Sun their records show the plots were sold sometime before 1997, and she no longer owns them.

But Woolley says it’s just a case of poor record keeping.

Officials have offered to inter Woolley’s ashes with her parents, or bury her in a plot six metres away, free of charge.

They say there’s no proof the plots are hers, but mistakes are occasionally made.