History is full of cases involving dead bodies being dug up out of the ground. Some of the accounts are worse than others, a few are truly heartbreaking, and once in a great while there was a love story.
He Could Not Live Without Her
Eliza Scalisi was a beautiful young women in Naples, Italy, and it was only fitting that she was engaged to be married to a man who loved her dearly. In a cruel twist of fate, Miss Eliza became ill and passed away a few days before her wedding in 1907.
Her lover and husband-to-be, Alessandro, was incredibly distraught over the loss of his true love. Shortly after his fiancée was buried, he went out in the middle of the night and dug her back up. He immediately embalmed her body in his home and dressed her in her bridal clothes.
For days, Alessandro kept his beloved in his home until the neighbors became suspicious. One neighbor was brave enough to peek in through Alessandro’s window and there saw the love sick man seated beside Eliza’s corpse, holding her hand. [1]
Faked His Death
Harry Brenn of St. Louis, Missouri was in a world of trouble back in 1922. The police believed that he had stolen over sixteen thousand dollars from a company he was connected to, and were ready to prove his crime. Of course, Harry Brenn was not ready to face his crime and did the next best thing. He attempted to fake his own death.
One night, Brenn went to the local cemetery and dug up a freshly buried body, that of Celestin Snyder, an 18-year-old. He then placed the body in his garage and lit his house on fire. He had hoped the police would believe that he was dead, but they were not so easily deceived.
It was quickly discovered that there was a missing body at the local cemetery and the police were back on the chase, and Mr. Brenn was in even more trouble than he was before. [2]
Buried in the Sand
In April, 1886, little 4-year-old Artie Frazer went missing from his home in San Francisco. The community was distraught and the search began for the little boy. His parents believed Artie was taken from them. A reward was offered for the boy’s safe return, but no one came forward.
Months went by and no one heard a word about little Artie or where he might be until laborers began digging in the sand near his parent’s home. There, within a sand bank, they found Artie’s small body. They believed he was playing in the sand when the bank fell in on him. [3]
Left Naked and in the Mud
Grave robbing was always a problem in the early 1900s. People would dig up the dead to sell their bodies to medical students or to strip the bodies of their meat and make them into skeleton displays. However, it was sometimes what was buried with the body that became the target of interest.
In 1916, two school boys were walking to school one morning when they saw fresh dirt turned up at a gravesite. Naturally, the boys went over to check out what had happened, and they discovered the “partly decomposed body of a woman in a casket that had had the lid torn off. Mud and water surrounded the casket, and the body lay nude and exposed to the rainy weather.”
The body happened to be that of a wealthy woman in West Virginia. She had been buried in fine jewelry and it was rumored that money was sewn into her death gown. [4]
Baby Bodies in Philly
Several boys, determined to go fishing, were in an empty Philadelphia lot back in 1875, digging up worms for fish bait. However, they found something none of them would ever forget.
While digging, the boys discovered the body of an infant. The police were immediately called to the scene and the coroner, smart as a whip, decided to investigate the scene further. The bodies of two more infants were found.
Were these babies the victims of a baby farm? Were they unwanted babies, buried by a parent? Being as there was no DNA testing and no foolproof way to determine the identities of the babes, we will never know. [5]
The Poor were Fair Game
In 1871, two medical students thought it would be a great idea to dig up two dead bodies from the county house burial ground in Albany, NY. However, as the two young men were driving off with the bodies, they were captured by the local police who took them before a judge.
Unfortunately for the diligent police, the medical students were freed. Apparently there were no laws on the books that prevented medical students from taking the unclaimed bodies of paupers and using them for dissection. [6]
Dug Up the Wrong Body
The Chicago Tribune reported a story about a soldier’s widow back in 1896. The middle aged woman would often visit her departed husband, Henry, in the old cemetery near her home. As the years went by, she noticed that his grave plot was starting to cave in and she felt that it was her solemn duty to get her husband a better plot in the soldier’s cemetery nearby.
The widow paid the cemetery men to dig up her husband’s remains and place them in the new plot. As before, the woman would visit her husband and bring him flowers until one day a man approached her and accused her of having dug up the body of his wife.
Naturally, the man was upset and had threatened to sue the widow. The widow, on the other hand, was upset that she had been placing flowers and flags on a dead woman’s grave. However, after the two widows got to know each other, they fell in love and were married.
In this one case, digging up the wrong dead body turned out pretty well for the living. [7]
Accused of Vampirism in Rhode Island
This story of digging up the dead is simply too fantastical to retell. Here is the original newspaper article published on March 23, 1892 in The Indiana State Sentinel. [8]
Failed to Return to Life
In 1920, it was reported that a Long Island mother and her children were sitting in their kitchen during a severe thunderstorm. Lightening struck, a vivid light filled the room, and when it faded, two of mom’s young children were lifeless on the floor.
The mother began to scream at the sight, and her husband and a neighbor ran to her aid. In a frantic mess, the adults lifted the bodies of the children, went out into the storm, and buried their little bodies in the mud right up to there necks.
It was an old superstition that said that if a person was struck by lightning, burying them in the ground would somehow remove the electric charge and bring them back to life. Tragically, the superstition did not work and the two children were given a proper burial a few days later. [9]
