DO DEAD PEOPLE TURN IN THEIR COFFINS?

Inangahua Times, Volume VII, Issue 1121, 25 August 1882, Page 2

DO DEAD PEOPLE TURN IN THEIR COFFINS?

♦ A correspondent of a Bath newspaper stated the following singular circumstance a week ago : — Having occassion last week to inspect a grave in one of the parishes in this city, in which two or three members of my family had been buried some years since, and which lay in very damp ground, I observed that the upper part of the coffin was rotted away, and had left the head and bones of the skull exposed to review. On enquiring of the grave-digger how it came to pass that I did not observe the usual sockets of the eyes 'in the skull, he replied that what I saw was the hind part of the head (called the occiput, I believe, by anatomists) atfd that the face was turned, as usual, to the earth. Not exactly understanding the phrase "as usual," I enquired if the body had been buried with the face upwards, as in the ordinary way ; to which he replied, to my astonishment, in the affirmative, and adding that in the course of decomposition the face of every individual turns to the earth; and that in the experience of three-and-twenty years in his situation, he had never known more than one instance to the contrary. A writer in Notes and Queries, commenting on this strange, story, says that notwith- , standing his three-and-twenty years' experience, the worthy grave-digger . must have been mistaken, unless there is something peculiar in the bodies of Bath people. But if the face turns down in any instance, as asserted, it would be right to ascertain the cause, and why this change is not general.'