Wednesday, 6 June 2012

Mystery of a vault

Hawera & Normanby Star
"A tale of the mysterious movement of coffins in a sealed vault in the parish of Christchurch, Barbados, has long been told in the island. Fresh authentic evidence (1908) just brought to light and published this week in the West India Committee's Circular, confirms the story, and renders it mysterious in the extreme. On successive occasions when the  Chase family vault in the churchyard near Ostins Town was opened the coffins were found to be disarranged. A manuscript account by the Hon. Nathan Lucas, who witnessed the opening of the vault in 1820, has been unearthed. The document states that the vault was opened several times for the interment of bodies in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Each time the coffins were found in extraordinary positions, and after a burial in 1819.  Mr Lucas was discussing it with friends in 1820, and they decided there and then to see if the coffins had moved again. They found the heavy slabs over the entrance' untouched, and no marks of violence were anywhere visible. But in the vault itself the six coffins were once again disarranged, lying on top of each other and at certain angles. The vault was in such a position that waterr or which there were no signs could not have flooded it. There had been no earthquake to account for the mystery and no attempt to rob the corpses".


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