Grave Bells and Bombs

Taphophobia, or the fear of being buried alive, is common fear today, though often classified as irrational. Outside of murder and perhaps even the Lazarus Effect, there is little risk of premature burial in the era of modern medicine. Such was not the case in earlier centuries. Cases of premature burial range back to the 13th century and were exacerbated in the 18th and 19th century, where the prevention of such a grisly fate became an area of industry.

Historians credit the repeated cholera pandemics of the 19th century as compounding people’s fears about premature burial. Some of the earliest designs of preventative burial techniques, or safety coffins, were created in the late 18th century, and early 19th century. These early designs fitted coffins with signals attached to the corpse, a bell or a flag, that could be used to alert those above ground that the grave contained a live person. Many of these designs were imperfect, neither taking into account how decaying bodies shift and can set off the signal, nor providing oxygen to the person. Should someone be mistakenly buried, they weren’t likely to live long.

Those living in the 19th century had little left to the imagination when it came to the prospect of premature burial. Historic accounts of 13th century Johannas Duns Scotus, whose disinterred remains were found outside his coffin with evidence of clawing and torn fingers, and the imaginings of Edgar Allan Poe, whose work showed a particular preoccupation with the subject, easily fueled the public’s fear. Living in an era of mourning (One of Queen Victoria’s deepest influences on the period) and less than modern medical advancements, Victorians lived fairly closed to death. Poverty increased this familiarity in Europe and America. In the East End of London (notably during the reign of Jack the Ripper), approximately 50% of children died before the age of five. The many cholera pandemics of the 19th century caused such frequent and supposed “sure” deaths that many where buried alive, put in wooden coffins so expediently that they could be heard kicking to get out, and often left to die.

Industry and redesigns to prevent being buried alive ran through into the 20th century. Aristocrats and wealthy businessmen often financed elaborate devices to save them from the terrible fate. Safety coffins also spawned special burial vaults that could be opened from the inside by those trapped within. One created for businessman Martin Sheets of Indiana in 1910 was wired with a telephone inside, so he might call his relatives to open the vault should he be mistakenly entombed. The coffins themselves developed varied designs throughout the period, including ones where a tube leading down to the casket could deliver air to the imprisoned beneath and the smell of decay to the local pastor, who would be obliged to check for evidence of death. Other designs included a window and trapdoor that would give evidence of decay, and then drop the corpse down into the grave.

Though the fear is diminished today, there are still commercial solutions within the funerary business to allay the fears of any customer. If you are worried about being buried before your time, arrangements for an alarm system, probably more automated than its ancestors, can be installed.




While Victorians were concerned with being trapped in the grave, equally disturbing was the need to protect what was in the grave. Grave robbing, or more accurately, body snatching, was a problem in the 18th and 19th century. The burgeoning medical field needed a supply of study cadavers, but cutting up the human body was sacrilegious and decidedly illegal. Body snatchers, or ressurectionists, could make a good living off supplying medical schools with the dead for dissection. Demand and methods used to prevent body snatching led to murders, as ressurectionists were paid more for fresher corpses. The result was the Anatomy Act that was passed in 1832, allowing for dissection in Great Britain, before that supply was dependant on executed criminals.
The US took a different approach to deterrence, developing a grave torpedo. Post civil war, the number of medical colleges in the US nearly doubled and the competition between these programs increased cadaver demand, but the US was not the UK, and supplies were still satisfied by either by the legal use of executed convicts, or the black market. The public outcry spawned the grave torpedo, essentially a spring activated bomb buried with the coffin.

Filled with lead balls and gunpowder, moderate disturbance of the grave triggered the torpedo, and the body snatcher might find himself on the dissection table. Patented in 1881, the grave torpedo was in use until laws relaxed in the US and legal cadavers met the supply of the growing medical education market. But there is no telling how many bombs might be buried in 19th century graves across the U.S. Tread lightly.

Food for the Dead – Vampires in Rhode Island

The first case of New World vampirism I was ever exposed to was that of Nellie Vaughn, who died of pneumonia in 1889 at age 19. The loose facts of this case were given in the book The New England Ghost Files by Charles Turek Robinson; the entry mostly revolved around Nellie’s ghost supposedly haunting the West Greenwich Cemetery where she is buried.

The account depicts the classic ghost rendering of a woman dressed in fashion from another period, interacting with visitors to the graveyard and generally behaving oddly before evaporating. The proposed impetus for the haunting is that Nellie was at the time of her death believed to be a vampire, and the ghost is trying to clear its name. The engraving on the headstone “I am watching and waiting for you”, adds an extra, sinister element to the atmosphere. But ghosts aside, there is actual history surrounding Nellie Vaughn, and what’s most interesting is not just that the accusation of vampirism is false; it’s also a case of mistaken identity.

Three years after Nellie’s death, in rural Exeter, Rhode Island, Mercy Brown, also age 19, died of Tuberculosis and was buried on the grounds of the Exeter Baptist Church. She was the third member of the Brown family to die of consumption in a handful of years. Both her mother Mary and sister Mary Olive had died in preceding years. At the time of her death, Mercy’s brother Edwin was suffering from the endemic disease. Prior to global acceptance of a vaccine in the 1940s, it was not uncommon for consumption to wipe out large portions of or sometimes entire families.


Though it was understood by the 1880s that TB was a contagious disease, it seems the folklore of Rhode Island won out in the case of Mercy Brown. To these good country folk, consumption was more of a spiritual disease, and when the sickness began working its way through a family, blame was placed on the already dead members of the family as opposed to the germ. Those already taken down were believed to be sapping the life force of those still living, causing their consumption from the grave. It was decided that this was what had killed Mercy, and what was now killing her brother Edwin, a literal vampirism.

There were prescribed measures for defeating this kind of vampirism, but evidence was needed first. George Brown and several other townspeople exhumed the bodies of Mary, Mary Olive and Mercy in March of 1892 (Mercy had been buried in January). Both mother and sister were in advanced stages of decomposition, but Mercy’s body showed little signs of it (hardly surprising since she was buried in winter and exhumed before the spring thaw).

Folklore states that the body had turned over in the grave, and the most telling evidence was that there was still blood in Mercy’s heart. It was concluded that she was a vampire, and responsible for her brother’s illness. To save Edwin, George Brown had Mercy’s heart cut out and burned on a stone. The ashes were then mixed with water and fed to Edwin. This was believed to end the vampiric hold Mercy had on the family. She was again buried in the church yard. Edwin followed her two months later.

In 1967, a Coventry school teacher told his students about the case, possibly without mentioning names or specific places. It’s likely that the students, in trying to locate the vampire’s grave, decided that Nellie Vaughn’s grave fit the bill (due to the sinister interpretation of the headstone engraving). Reports of ghostly activity vary, including no grass growing near the stone. This is hardly surprising considering the amount of traffic the grave receives thanks to the local vampire legend. The cemetery is now a hub for occult activity and vandalism. Because of repeated attempts by visitors to exhume Nellie’s body, her stone was removed. Area historians, caretakers, town officials and law enforcement do what they can to discourage interest (since it so often leads to vandalism) and to correct the inaccuracies in local history.

Mercy Brown’s grave is also frequently chipped and scarred, with objects littering the area around the stone. Her story is well publicized now, reported on by Yankee Magazine, and the subject of an (excellent) book by folklorist Michael Bell of Vampire Grasp (see Food for the Dead: On the Trail of the New England Vampire). Even more fascinating, Mercy isn’t the only Vampire in Rhode Island. There are other cases, even outside the New England area. Given the deeply rooted superstitions of rural America, there may be vampires everywhere in our country.

Amun Her Kepesh-ef of Egypt and Middlebury, VT

A lot of us have beheld Egyptian royalty, usual on display at a traveling or permanent museum exhibition. But most have never seen the final resting place of any of the Egyptian monarchy, Unless you’ve visited the West Cemetery in Middlebury, VT. While some pharaohs and their progeny are allowed to remain in their tombs, others lie in state under thick glass, viewable for admission.

But in the 19th century, archeology had more in common with grave robbing than it (arguably) does today. Many of ancient Egypt’s relics were plundered from tombs and sold in the West to museums, university, collectors, or anyone else who would pay. Henry Sheldon, the eccentric collector and founder of his own Vermont museum and house of attraction, was such a man. He became the owner of the mummified body of two-year old Amun Her Kepesh-ef (not to be confused with the second child of Nefretiti by the same name).

Purchasing the mummy sight-unseen in the 1890s, Sheldon was reportedly so disappointed with its condition that he never displayed it, but sent it to his attic archive where it wasn’t discovered until well after his death in 1945. It was discovered after years of fluxuating Vermont weather had caused the body to decompose. The then-curator of the museum George Mead had the remains cremated and given a “Christian Burial” in his own family plot in Middlebury. The headstone bears both the Christian cross and Egyptian ba and ankh. Mead was clearly playing both sides of the spiritual fence here.

In researching, Mead discovered that the King’s tomb had been raided by grave robbers in the mid 1800s, before archeologists could unearth it, and the child’s body had been pawned throughout the antiquities circuit until it reached Paris, and then to the United States. His father, Sen Woset III, ruled during the 12th Dynasty during the middle Kingdom some 4,000 years ago. The tombstone indicates that the child died in 1883 B.C, which was about six years before his father became Pharaoh. His mother is not officially listed as one of Sen Woset’s consorts, nor Kepesh-ef as one of his children, perhaps because he was born and died before his father’s reign. The tombstone reads.

Amun Her Kepesh-ef
2 Years Old
Son of Sen Woset III, King of Egypt and Hator Hopte
Died 1883 B.C.

And if you want to see it, you can just visit rural Vermont. No visa required.