BURIAL OF JAMES MERCHANT

By: Kerry Ross Boren

 

 

T0 BE BURIED WHILE ALIVE IS, BEYOND question, the most terrific of the extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality. That it has frequently, very frequently, so fallen will scarcely be denied by those who think. The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? We know that there are diseases in which occur total cessastions that are merely suspensions, properly so

called. They are only temporary pauses in the incomprehensible mechanism. A certain period elapses, and some unseen mysterious principle again sets in motion the magic pinions and the wizard wheels. The silver cord was not for ever loosed, nor the golden bowl irreparably broken. But where, meantime, was the soul?"

So begins Edgar Allan Poe, master of the macabre, in his treatise on The Premature Burial. Yet Poe recounts several actual cases to give substance to his pallor tale. The first occurred in Baltimore, during Poe's lifetime, when the wife of an eminent lawyer and member of Congress was seized with a sudden and unaccountable illness. After much suffering, during with her physicians were baffled, she died and was so pronounced by those skilled doctors who attended her final hours. For three days the body was preserved unburied, and rigor mortis was rigidly apparent. To prevent rapid decomposition, the funeral was hastened.

The corpse was deposited in the family vault where it lay undisturbed for three years. At that time, upon the occasion of the death of another family member, the husband of the previously deceased woman threw open the doors of the crypt. Into his arms fell the skeleton of his wife!

A careful investigation revealed that the woman had revived within two days of her entombment. Her struggles within the coffin had caused it to fall from a shelf to the floor, where it broke open, permitting her escape. A lamp left within the tomb was found, empty of oil; on the steps leading down into the chamber was a large fragment of the coffin, apparently used by the woman in an effort to attract attention by striking the iron door. Her shroud became entangled in some iron-work, and there she at last died, possibly from starvation, or sooner, from sheer terror. "Thus she remained," wrote Poe, "and thus she rotted, erect."

Poe also quotes the case of living inhumation which occurred in France in 1810. Mademoiselle VictorineLaFourcade was a rare beauty of a prominent and wealthy family. Among her numerous suitors was Julien Bossuet, a poor journalist of Paris, whom Victorine loved truly, but whom her family rejected. She was eventually compelled to wed an eminent banker, Monsieur Renelle. The man proved to be a neglectful and abusive husband and after several unhappy years the lovely Victorine died and was buried in an ordinary grave in the village of her birth.

Julien Bossuet, his memory still inflamed with passionate love for Victorine, arrived at the village shortly after the funeral. At midnight he stole into the cemetery and unearthed the coffin, with intentions of cutting the luxuriant tresses of hair of his departed love, and carrying them off as a souvenir of what might have been.

As Julien lifted the hair to cut it, Victorine's eyes suddenly opened! Not altogether dead, she had been revived by her lover's caresses. He bore her away and she fully recovered her original health. She did not return to her husband, but fled with her lover to America. Twenty years later, believing that time had so altered her appearance as to make her unrecognizable, the two returned to France. Her husband did recognize her, however, and made claim to her. A judicial tribunal eventually sustained her, stating that the peculiar circumstances, with the lapse of years, had extinguished, both equitably and legally, the authority of the husband.

The Chirurgical Journal of Leipzig, Germany, tells the story of an officer of artillery, a giant of a man, who was thrown from an unmanageable horse and knocked unconscious from a fractured skull. Trepanning (the removal of bone by use of a circular saw) was employed successfully, and he was bled, in the fashion of the day. He gradually fell into a deep stupor and was finally declared dead.

His funeral took place on a Thursday in one of the public cemeteries. He was buried with indecent haste, in a grave shamefully shallow. On the Sunday following, the grounds of the cemetery were filled with visitors, when, about noon, a peasant was sitting on the grave and reported a commotion of the earth beneath him. Spades were hurriedly procured and the layer of dirt hastily removed, exposing his face; he immediately sat up in the grave.

Rushed to the nearest hospital, he recovered sufficiently to relate his agonies in the grave. He had been conscious, though unable to move or speak, when he was buried; after about an hour of terror-filled silence, he passed into merciful unconsciousness. The soil was so loosely packed upon his shallow grave that air was able to reach his coffin, It was the tumult and footsteps of the crowd overhead, he said, which seemed to awaken him from his deep sleep, and he was able to push up slightly the lid of his simple coffin.

His story ended even more tragically, however. He was on his way to full recovery when he fell victim to the quackeries of medicine. The galvanic battery was applied--electric shock-and he died from ecstatic paroxysms brought on by the severe voltage.

The galvanic battery had been used successfully in a number of cases to revive catatonic patients, notably, in 1831, one Edward Stapleton who supposedly died of typhus fever. Stapleton had been interred in the grave three days when friends had his body exhumed for an autopsy to determine exact cause of death. He was laid out upon the dissecting table and the autopsy began. An incision was started in his stomach when bleeding was noted

uncommon for a corpse. The galvanic battery was applied, when the patient, with a hurried movement, arose from the table, stepped nude into the middle of the floor, gazed about him uneasily for a moment, and then uttered , "I am alive!"

My own experience with this most unusual occurrence, albeit second-hand, was nonetheless astonishing. When I was still in my teens, my grandmother, Ida May (Potter) Schofield, passed away and was summarily buried in the little pioneer cemetery at Manila, Utah. Not long after her funeral, I discovered my grandfather, Willard Schofield, kneeling near the head of her grave. At first sight, I thought perhaps he was merely praying, not an unlikely assumption under the circumstances. But as I watched, he bent and placed his ear to the ground, as though listening for. . . something.

I had a deep admiration of my grandfather, and it was disconcerting to believe that the death of my grandmother may have unbalanced him. I approached the old man gingerly, and when he at last became aware of my presence, he appeared a little flustered, even embarrassed. "I thought maybe she just might be still alive," he said haltingly. So it was true, I thought. My grandfather had gone over the edge of reality. He could see in my expression that I was questioning his sanity. "I'm not crazy," he assured me. "Let me show you something."

We walked along a line of headstones, some of them buried in tumbleweeds, and came to stop at one quite larger than those surrounding. The name inscribed on the stone monument was "JAMES MERCHANT." The name was not totally unfamiliar to me: Jim Merchant was some kind of uncle, or cousin, or some-such, as I had heard the family talk about him. As though he was reading my mind, Grandad said, "Jim Merchant was your grandmother's brother-in-law." He soon explained that Merchant had married "one of the Twitchell girls," whose brother had married my grandmother's sister. So far all of these explanations explained very little and I said as much.

We sat down upon Jim Merchant's grave, and Grandad told me his incredible story. James Merchant had come from Beaver, Utah, in the fall of 1895, with the same wagon-company which brought my grandfather, the Potters, Twitchells, and a number of other families. The two men had worked side-by-side that fall, digging potatoes on the Birch Springs Ranch. As they worked, Merchant suddenly collapsed in the furrow and was only revived with difficulty. They attributed it to weakness from the influenza which he had only recently had, or from overexertion, or both.

The next spring, Merchant built a loghouse in the center of Lucerne Valley, the first of many homes to follow which would comprise the little community they called, appropriately, "Sandtown." In 1898, following Admiral Dewey's victory in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War, the name of the town was changed to "Manila," by which it is still known.

Merchant's log house was n the eastern side of what was, at the turn of the century, the town's main street, on the western side of which was his barn, corrals, and out-buildings. He was of a habit of arising each morning before the dawn and crossing the dirt street to do his chores, while his wife prepared breakfast. It was a routine which never varied.

Thus, when one morning Merchant failed to return for breakfast, his concerned wife went to find out the cause. Merchant had been milking his cow, and his wife found him in the barn, sprawled on the din floor, obviously fallen from his milk-stool. Finding no signs of life in him, Mrs. Merchant ran screaming for help. The first house she came to, a short distance to the northwest, was that of my grandfather, Willard Schofield. She pounded on the door and upon gaining admittance, frantically told her story.

Willard gathered several nearby friends-Mark Anson, Uncle Hank Twitchell, Charles Potter, John Despain, and one or two others-and rushed to the barn. At first they thought perhaps the cow had kicked him, but there were no apparent marks or bruises. They carried his body across the street and laid him out in his bed. The community had no doctor, so the best they could do was to hold an impromptu coroner's inquest and confirm that James Merchant had died from "unknown causes."

In those days, and in that place, there was no method of embalming; the preparation of a body was left to the attention of the women of the community. The body was laid out on the kitchen table, washed, shaved, and wrapped with linen soaked in nepsom salts or carbolic acid to retard rapid decomposition.. The corpse was then dressed in his "Sunday best" and placed in a homemade pine coffin. In the case of James Merchant, the under-side of the coffin lid was lined with linen, acquired by utilizing several fine table-cloths.

There was but a makeshift Mormon church, built in a marshy swamp a few hundred yards east of the Merchant home, accessible only by planks laid across the marsh, and here the funeral was held. Afterwards the cortege accompanied the body to the little pioneer cemetery about a mile northeast of the town, beneath a sandstone formation which, ironically, was shaped like a human skull, with the added detail of a weather-worn hole through the eye socket of the profile.

My grandfather was one of those who dug the grave, served as a pall-bearer, and covered the grave after the mourners departed. Jim Merchant had been one of his closest friends. Everyone involved then turned their attentions to consoling the bereaved widow. But she was not to be consoled.

Three days after the funeral, Mrs. Merchant came pounding on the door of Willard's house once again, highly agitated and almost incoherent. She. told an incredible story. Her husband, she swore, had come to her in a dream and told her pleadingly that he was not truly dead. She insisted that her husband's coffin should be exhumed immediately. Willard conferred with other local community leaders who all more or less agreed that the widow Merchant was merely experiencing traumatic bereavement. She, however, remained 'adamant in her demand and assured them if they did not secure an official exhumation, she would perform the deed herself Under pressure of this threat, the men relented and secured the

exhumation order, if for no other reason than to put the poor woman's mind at ease.

Grandfather Schofield, who had been one of the burial party, now became one of the exhumation party, as the coffin of Jim Merchant was removed from the grave. As I sat upon Merchant's grave, and Grandad recounted the story to me, little beads of nervous perspiration emerged upon his brow, which he perpetually wiped away with his handkerchief.

At first glance, he said, the coffin appeared intact and normal, at least to all outward appearances. One by one the nails were removed from the lid, and it was carefully removed. Immediately they could see something was amiss; the' linen lining of the underside of the lid was ' ripped to shreds, and there was blood among the linen pieces and blood smeared on the lid.

Inside the coffin itself, Merchant's corpse lay upside down, having completely turned over; his hands were extended, like claws, near either side of his head. When they turned him over, his open eyes stared upward toward them, his face distorted into a permanent mask of horror. His hands, made into claws, were bloody and emaciated, the skin and flesh from his fingertips having been worn down to the bone. It was painfully apparent that he had been buried alive!

Later it would be determined that Merchant suffered from catalepsy. No one can explain this singular disorder better than Edgar Allan Poe.

"Although both the immediate and the predisposing causes, and even the actual diagnosis, of the disease are still mysterious, its obvious and apparent character is sufficiently well understood. Its variations seem to be chiefly of degree. Sometimes the patient lies, for a day only, or even for a shorter period, in a species of exaggerated lethargy. He is senseless and externally motionless; but the pulsation of the heart is still faintly perceptible; some traces of warmth remain; a slight color lingers within the centre of the cheek; and, upon application of a -mirror to the lips, we can detect a torpid, unequal, and vacillating action of the lungs. Then again the duration of the trance is for weeks----even for months; while the closest scrutiny, and the most rigorous medical tests, fail to establish . any material distinction between the state of the sufferer and what we conceive of absolute death. Very usually he is saved from premature interment solely by the knowledge of his friends that he has been previously subject to catalepsy-the unfortunate whose first attack should be of the extreme character which is occasionally seen, would almost inevitably be consigned alive to the tomb."

Of this gruesome fate, which James Merchant suffered, Poe has further to say:

"It may be asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial before death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs-the stifling fumes from the damp earth--the clinging to the death garments--the rigid embrace of the narrow house--the blackness of the absolute Night silence like a sea that overwhelms-the unseen but palpable presence of the Conqueror Worm--these things, with the thoughts of the air and grass above, with memory of dear friends who would fly to save us if but informed of our fate, and with consciousness that of this fate they can never be informed-that our hopeless portion is that of the really dead these considerations, I say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a degree of appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth-we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell. And thus all narratives upon this topic have an interest profound; an interest, nevertheless, which, through the sacred awe of the topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly depends upon our conviction of the truth of the matter narrated."

Listening to my grandfather recount the horrible tale of James Merchant, I was of the truth of it convinced enough to finally understand his concern about the welfare of his own recently departed wife; convinced enough to remove my prone form from atop Jim Merchant's grave, with prickles of uncertainty shaking my spine.

The story is absolutely true. James Merchant might have lived to tell of it, had he been wiser in revealing his malady to his friends.

So, when you go to bed tonight, and shades of slumber weigh heavily upon your lids, note with some concern the surroundings of your chamber-no telling where you might wake up.

Sources:

1. Personal reminiscences of Willard Schofield, Sr. 2. History and interviews among members of the Merchant family

3. Interview with Mark A. Anson, and eye-witness 4. complete Tales &Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Dorset Press,New York, 1989:The Premature Burial, pp 532-542