An Unusual Exhuming

There has always been, according to superstition, a belief that anything out of the ordinary happening to dead bodies, forecast a coming calamity.

Before the automobile hearse came to be used, it was thought that horses balking during a funeral procession meant someone else in family was sure to follow. If a horse drawing one of the carriages in the procession balked or raredrare is a variant of the intransitive verb rear, referring generally to an animal rising up on its hind legs. According to , it is a usage originating in the Southern United States. up, one of the occupants of that particular carriage would soon follow in death.

A new omen, which has found it'sits way into the multitudinous group of superstitions already known, was introduced in Jacksonville in 1928, when the casket inclosedFor inclose as an alternate spelling of enclose, see the . within a hemeticallyhemetically in place of hermetically. We do not find the form (used here and also in the following paragraph) documented in dictionaries, but do encounter instances in other texts. See, for instance, the 1870 : "in the interior of the said converting ovens, retorts, or closed and hemetically sealed receptacles" (page 35 of the section "A.D. 1869, 16th August. N° 2440"). sealed vault washed up and floated in a spring in Memorial Cemetery.

It happened that a heavy continuous rainfall of several daysday's duration, caused an old spring to rise on the cemetery lot owned by a family named Muse. The bodies of the father and mother of the family, Merritt and Sarah Muse, had previously been buried on the lot and two graves had been cemetedcemented within a voultvaultThe document reads voult, which the registers as a valid spelling of voult, reflecting its origins in Old French voulte. However, we find no documentation of that form being used in the twentieth century, and because we read vault in this same sentence, we have regarded this as a typographical error. beneath the ground, with only the top of the vault visible above ground. WhemWhen Mayme Delyons White, — a married daughter of the family — died, her body was placed be–side the cemented vault of her father and mother. Her casket was in–closed within a hemetically sealed vault.

It had never been noticed before that any upheaval or sinking of earth around about the vault had occured, although the parents had been buried there a long time; — to be exactitexact, it had been thirteen years Page 2 Due to a technical limitation, we are not currently able to right-align this header, nor the one on the following page. Jacksonville Viola B. Muse since the father had died and the same number of years that the two graves had been cemented within the vault. Heavy steady rains had fallen before the occasion mentioned, yet the spring had not shown any evidence of havenhaving risen, as the lot never had a sunken place on it , such as was left at this particular time.

Now, the occasion which caused superstition to creep into the story, and for some to think a supernatural thing had happened, was the fact that following the day that the casket washed up and floated on the water, a son, Levi J. Muse, died agterafter an illness of five days.

A neighbor in the vicinity of Memorial cemeteryCemetery who con–stantly visited there saw the vault floating about in the water and became very much perturbed and at once notified a local un–dertaker, who by incident happened at that very time , to be handl–ing the body of Levi J. Muse, son of Meritt and Sarah. The under–taker in turn notified the members of the family, and another grave was quickly dug on a friendsfriend's lot and the casket interred tempora–rily.

Friends and hearers of the happening began talking of signs they had heard of and also introducing new theories concerning the incident in question. Some of them were sure that the washing upwashing-up of the casket containing the body of the daughter was a true sign, which foretold the death of the son.

Although many heavy lengthy rains have fallen since that time, the care takercaretaker of the cemetery recently said, when a member of the Muse family inquired as to whether he had noticed the spring Page 3 Jacksonville Viola B. Muse rising after other heavy continued rains, that he had not seen it happen during the few years he has been care takercaretaker of the cemetery. He further added that it was only recently that he filled in the large hole which was left after the casket washed up and the spring receded. The Muse family had not attended to the filling of the hole, it seems, because of the many theories advanced concerning what would happen should anyone of the family attend to it.