| A Word Edgewise
by Mary Joe Clendenin |
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This seems to be the year of the vampire. Books on the Best Seller lists, favorite movies, reveal yet again the taste for the bizarre. These stories are re-runs from days when my generation went to the movies to see Count Dracula rise from his coffin to satisfy his bloody appetites I wonder if the youngsters now get the same thrill of being scared as we did. I wonder if we covered our fear with as much bravado as they do now.
The infectious chill and scare that stories and movies of dead bodies possessed with unnatural movement, life without souls, seems universal. Are they all creations of imagination? Do mysterious roots in facts lie buried in the deep past? Whatever the answers to floods of questions about the roots, the stories continue to flourish, be resurrected and live to frighten each new generation.
Scare, for most people, of a dead body, or of mistaking a live body for a dead one linger with tales of such accidents really happening. Before technical advances brought machines to measure brain activity, to determine without doubt when a person was actually dead, being buried alive was a real threat. I can remember stories of bodies being exhumed and the discovery that the corpse had wood splinters under the fingernails from trying to scratch its way out of the coffin. I doubt very much such stories being true--rather, they were just more inventions to instill that chill by fear. But sometimes fact really is stranger than fiction.
Even the trusty Empire-Tribune reported a story in 1926 of some one being buried alive. The headline proclaims: "General Lee Was Born More Than a Year After Mother's Burial, Says a Story in a Louisiana Publication." The story was first carried in "Home and Church", and testifies that this was one of the most astonishing cases of resuscitation known in the world.
Mrs. Lee, General Robert E. Lee's mother who lived in Stratford, Virginia, had been in poor health so long that a doctor was in almost constant attendance. She suffered from catalepsy, a trance-like affliction. During a long trance when she was pronounced dead, the lady was prepared for burial and on the third day, after the funeral, was placed in the family vault at the cemetery. The sexton, while cleaning up and placing some flowers on the casket, heard a faint noise. He listened intently and detected a faint call for help. He opened the casket and found Mrs. Lee Alive!
Mrs. Lee slowly regained her health. Her son, born for fame, came into this world more than a year and a half after she was placed in her tomb.
Perhaps the fear of being buried alive was not unreasonable in those days before morticians. In the early1600's burials generally took place on family land with friends and neighbors present. The women prepared the corpse, dressing the body in its Sunday best and placing it in a homemade coffin. Perhaps mistakes could be made. In fact the possibility was so great that many devices to cheat death were invented.
In 1893, a man designed and patented a device for his burial that would give him a second chance. In his design, a cord connected the "deceased" in his or her buried coffin with an alarm bell above ground. If, by chance a mistake had been made, the lively corpse could pull the cord to ring a bell in a box shelter above ground. He wasn't taking any chances.
Of course, Count Dracula never needed a coffin for a permanent dwelling. He only used his during the daylight hours. When grandson visited last week we saw another version of the old favorite with a little humor added. In order to protect the fair young maiden, garlic was not only worn as a necklace, but the entire room was decorated with garlands of garlic. I still haven't decided if the movie was actually funny, or just had two or three funny scenes in it.
From such stories grow folklore and legends to puzzle and entertain through the years. Perhaps our failure to understand death is at the root of such stories and fears. We choose, at least some times, at least some of us do, to make light of the very serious, the very deepest mysteries of life. With me, it is not a sign of irreverence, nor a making fun of, more than that it is an acknowledgment of the unexplainable. Death, itself, is most natural--and indeed, a blessing. It is the fear of death, of the dead that intrigues. Maybe the word macabre describes the notion.
In that vein of thought, I leave you with this verse by Ambrose Bierce:
Whether on the gallows high
Or where blood flows the reddest,
The noblest place for man to die--
Is where he dies the deadest.