Case One
Not long ago, in the neighbouring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a painful, intense, and widely extended excitement.
The wife of one of the most respectable citizens - a lawyer of eminence and a member of Congress - was seized with a sudden and unaccountable illness, which completely baffled the skill of her physicians. After much suffering, she died, or was supposed to die. No one had suspected or had reason to suspect, that she was not actually dead.
She had presented all the ordinary appearances of death. The face assumed the usual pinched and sunken outline. The lips were of the usual marble pallor. The eyes were lustreless. There was no warmth. Pulsation had ceased.
For three days the body was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired a stony rigidity. The funeral, in short was hastened, on account of the rapid advance of what was supposed to be decomposition.
The lady was deposited in her family vault, which for three subsequent years, was undisturbed.
At the expiration of this term, it was opened for the reception of a sarcophagus - but alas! how fearful a shock awaited for the husband, who had personally, threw open the door. As its portals swung outwardly back, some white-apparelled object fell rattling within his arms. It was the skeleton of his wife in her yet unmouldered shroud.
A careful investigation rendered, it was evident that she had revived within two days after her entombment - that her struggles within the coffin had caused it to fall from a ledge, or shelf to the floor, where it was so broken as to permit her escape.
A lamp which had been accidentally left full of oil, within the tomb was found empty. It might have been exhausted however, by evaporation. On the uppermost of the steps which led down into the dread chamber was a large fragment of the coffin, with which it seemed that she had endeavoured to arrest attention, by striking the iron door.
While thus occupied, she probably swooned, or possibly died, through sheer terror and, in falling, her shroud became entangled in some ironwork which projected in the interiors. Thus she remained, and thus she rotted, erect.
