Buzz
At times, death offers no rest. In more recent history, this could mean wild dogs disturbing your remains, as was frequently seen in early 1900s Australia. Or perhaps it involved ghouls, disguised in men’s clothing, wielding shovels to defile your freshly dug burial site.
In the past, cemeteries were often met with suspicion, believed to attract undesirable individuals and unwanted attention. Whether driven by mischief, greed, or other motives, many unsavory characters did their best to transform final resting places into anything but peaceful havens, as shown by these ten disturbing cases.
10. Obstructing the Path
In 1903, while workers in Charleston, South Carolina were digging trenches for new water pipes, one accidentally broke through the top of a coffin. Exposed were the bones of an arm and part of a skull, prompting the worker to drop his pick and hastily retreat from the eerie discovery. When the supervisor arrived to investigate, he concluded that they had uncovered an old, long-forgotten pioneer cemetery.
Not wanting to delay the work or hinder the city’s progress, the supervisor instructed the men to resume digging. As they continued, more bodies were uncovered. Their skeletal remains were discarded into the street and later hauled away like discarded trash.
This wasn’t an isolated incident in the United States. As modernization advanced, more and more skeletal remains were unearthed. In 1916, workmen in Tucson, Arizona stumbled upon an old settler cemetery. Rather than respectfully collecting the bones, they were casually tossed into the street, where children gathered them to play with.
9. Playing With the Dead
In 1930, Kingston upon Hull, England had its own problem with local children. Boys and girls, aged nine to 17, would frequent the old cemetery, playing with the bones of the deceased.
The tombs were ancient and deteriorating, allowing children easy access to the remains inside. The mischievous children were often seen running through the cemetery, chasing each other while holding bones. Boys would sometimes chase the girls, who would scream in exaggerated terror as they were pursued by skeletal limbs.
The situation became so problematic that neighbors began to lodge complaints. According to the vicar of the nearby church, the issue was that the cemetery spanned two separate police jurisdictions. The officers from one division could only pursue the children within their designated area, and once the kids crossed into the other division's territory, the chase would come to an abrupt end.
Eventually, the cemetery fell under the authority of a single police department, allowing officers to finally catch a few of the mischief-makers who had been digging up bones from their resting places.
8. A Relic of the Past
Children weren’t the only ones with a fascination for human bones. Adults, too, couldn’t resist, though their motivations were often far different from those of the younger generation.
In 1929, workers excavating the grounds of the old jail in Melbourne unearthed the remains of Ned Kelly, the infamous leader of the Kelly Gang and notorious bushranger. He had been hanged in 1880 and buried in the yard along with other men who had met the same fate. The workers, thrilled by the discovery, eagerly took a bone or two as keepsakes of the historical find.
When the Penal Department of Melbourne caught wind of the incident, they issued a notice warning that anyone caught taking Ned Kelly’s bones would face felony charges. They requested the return of the stolen bones for proper reburial.
7. Knights of the White Death
Naturally, there were various motives behind stealing the bones of the deceased, though none of them were for noble reasons.
In 1908, Chicago residents were rattled by a series of disturbing letters sent through the mail. These letters, accompanied by human bones and, oddly, coffin handles from old graves, contained chilling threats. The letters demanded large sums of money, or else death would follow. All were signed by the group known as the “Knights of the White Death.”
The police, along with the post office’s chief inspector, took the situation very seriously. After several weeks of investigation, they were able to identify the perpetrator.
William J. Pollard, a 22-year-old butcher and the son of a sexton, was a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writings and claimed that the “Red Hand” inspired his letters and threats. He had stolen bones and coffin pieces from old graves at the Calvary cemetery to add an extra element of terror to his messages. Pollard later admitted it was all a prank, with his main goal being to annoy the police and get his name in the news. In that, he succeeded.
6. Never Threaten the Hearing Impaired
Some individuals will go to extreme lengths for a quick buck. Take, for example, a former grave robber from Louisiana in 1897, who believed he had devised a foolproof way to make some extra money.
Returning to his old trade, the man dug up the body of a recently buried woman from a local cemetery in the Washington, DC, area. He then transported her corpse to the stable of a wealthy elderly man, waiting for the man’s return.
When the elderly man arrived, the former grave robber approached him, claiming there was a woman’s body in his stable. For the right amount of money, the robber offered to dispose of the body so the man wouldn’t have to deal with the authorities. The elderly man, nearly deaf, barely understood what the robber was saying, so the robber decided to show him the body.
Naturally, the sight disturbed the old man, who stated he would contact the police. The robber tried to persuade him again, warning that the police might suspect the old man of committing murder. But nothing the robber said seemed to get through, so he was forced to leave, taking the woman’s remains with him before the authorities could arrive.
The woman’s body was eventually discarded into the Potomac River, and the burglar’s deception went unchallenged until later, when he was sitting in a Baltimore jail for a different offense and confessed the story to another inmate.
5. Army Allowance Supplement
In 1917, a widow in Kassel, Germany, began receiving letters demanding money. She initially ignored them, but as time passed, the letters grew increasingly threatening, causing her great distress. One day, she received a letter insisting she bring money to a specified location, with the dire warning that if she didn’t comply, the dead would suffer for her inaction.
The widow immediately took the letter to the police, who, after her deadline for the drop-off passed, discovered that her late husband’s coffin had been broken into, and his body had been looted for the gold jewelry he had been buried with.
The police responded by organizing a sting operation to catch the culprit. It was soon revealed that Lieutenant Karl Eisler of the 34th Regiment, along with a group of blackmailers, had been sending out threats and collecting blackmail payments from various victims for several months.
In court, Eisler defended his actions, claiming that the reason he resorted to blackmail and grave robbing was that his army allowance wasn’t sufficient to meet his needs and desires.
4. Bones for the Seance
In 1952, six college students were arrested in Virginia for engaging in grave robbing activities.
As the story goes, four young men and two women were conducting seances and required props. The easiest source was a family burial plot, where they dug up a casket and took a skull and a few bones. After using the bones as props in three of their seances, the group was caught and arrested for their foolishness.
3. Have A Heart
In 1945, a cemetery in Camden, New Jersey, became the site of a rather macabre discovery.
Someone broke through the concrete slab covering the grave of a 60-year-old woman who had just passed away a week earlier. The intruder then managed to pry open the woman’s coffin, used surgical bone clippers to tear open her chest, and removed her heart.
The police speculated that the perpetrator was driven by madness, but it’s also possible that the individual either knew the woman or was a determined medical student looking for a fresh body to work with.
2. Father’s Ghost
In the past, it wasn’t uncommon for someone who passed away to supposedly return to haunt the living.
One such case from 1923 comes from a Bosnian village, where a father died and was buried properly. However, that night, his wife claimed he appeared to her and kept her awake. The following night, his spirit visited again, this time haunting both his sons and his wife, leaving everyone restless and unable to sleep.
Worried that their father might continue his spectral visits and cause chaos throughout the village, the brothers exhumed his body, cremated it, and placed the ashes back into the coffin for reburial. This seemed to calm the spirit, and there were no more reports of his nocturnal disturbances.
1. Total Depravity
Occasionally, while reading through old newspaper clippings, you come across articles that completely shatter your belief in humanity. One such article from 1875 reported a shocking and vile act involving a young corpse in Kentucky.
Eva Mullen, a young woman, was enjoying her dinner when she suddenly became paralyzed and passed away soon after. She was buried just two days later, but a strange discovery was made shortly after her burial. A pair of women’s undergarments was found near her freshly covered grave. Initially, no one thought much of it, but when the news reached local authorities, they decided to investigate the grave site.
Something felt wrong, so a search was conducted around the grave, and a shoe knife was found. With shovels in hand, the men began digging deeper, and just 5 centimeters (2 inches) under the soil, they uncovered a full set of women’s clothing. Digging even further, they came upon her coffin, which had been pried open and broken in half.
Inside the coffin lay Eva’s body. All her clothes had been removed except for her stockings. The dirt had filled her coffin and covered her remains.
The men carefully lifted the coffin out of the hole and onto a board, rolling Eva’s body out. Her friends proceeded to clean her body, wrapping it in a white sheet. The coffin was cleaned and repaired, and Eva was reburied once again.
However, the case didn’t end there. The police were determined to uncover the truth behind this disturbing incident. Initially, they suspected that local medical students might have been involved in the grave desecration, but when the young men in question came forward, they vehemently denied any involvement.
The investigation then shifted to the shoe knife, and after questioning local cobblers, the police uncovered the name Hillis. Hillis had been involved in a previous crime where he murdered a prostitute in Indiana, claiming it was an act of self-defense. Despite the questionable nature of his defense, he had escaped punishment. This time, however, there would be no self-defense argument when it came to a corpse.
A search of Hillis’s property revealed a dirt-covered chisel in his toolbox, and once again, Eva’s coffin was exhumed. The marks left on the coffin lid matched those from the chisel. Medical professionals examined Eva’s remains and confirmed that her body had been severely violated.
Hillis was apprehended, and many believed he would face execution for his horrific crimes. However, no further reports surfaced about his trial or any hanging, likely due to the public’s overwhelming anger and the fear of a lynch mob forming.
