The One Who Lived Once But Was Buried Twice

Does the story remind you of the two gravediggers who open a grave to get the ring of the dead and while they cut her finger, she opens her eyes, anything but dead? If so, then you will be surprised to hear that this is a true story. If your interests include except for reading spooky stories playing games you can have a look at NetBet Casino.

Before we begin to tell the particularly creepy story of The Lady with the Ring, try to let yourself relax and look back at old memories. Try to remember the scary stories you heard as children, with a face pale with terror, but without wanting to let your friends think you are a chicken. Maybe one of all that comes to mind is that of a woman where she is buried with her fancy precious ring, and that same night, when the gloomy darkness spreads in the cemetery, two gravediggers open her grave and cut her finger to take the ring from her, but find out she is alive? If so, then this is the right time to rekindle your childhood nightmare, informing you that this story is anything but a fairy tale to frighten those who put their eyes on the bounties of the dead…

The dive into the past is not as great as one would expect. The paradoxical case of Margorie McCall takes us back to 1705, in a small town in Ireland, Lurgan. Although there was some rudimentary medical knowledge at the time, we must not forget that just a decade earlier, women in Salem had been condemned as witches because they believed that the herbs they collected practiced dark magic and maintained dealings with Satan. So when Margorie suddenly developed a fever and fell into a coma, the doctors in the area, including her husband, believed that her life had ended abruptly, leaving behind a devoted husband and young children.

Burial procedures were very fast. With memories of the inguinal plague period still alive, they believed that by burying her quickly, they would let any deadly microorganism that had killed her die under the ground before she could infect her loved ones and spread terror in little Lurgan.

Margorie’s relatives washed her lifeless body, combed her hair, dressed her in her elegant Sunday clothes and put her in the coffin with tears. But there was a small problem. The precious wedding ring on Margorie’s finger was not going to come out. Her finger was swollen and any attempt to remove it was in vain. Her husband, although he would like to keep it to remember her or to prevent the gravediggers from visiting her at night and removing it, chose not to cut it off from her hand and let it accompany her to her last residence.

As the family went to Shankill Cemetery for burial, news of the precious ring was soon spread in the area. Thieves, relatives, neighbours, novices, friends and adventurers could not stop talking about the little treasure that would soon be buried five meters below the ground. This news for some gave birth to an idea for a midnight mission in the moonlight…

Margorie’s family said their last goodbyes, the funeral procession followed, the coffin was closed, and she finally disappeared under the fluffy soil. Overwhelmed by the unjust loss, relatives gathered at Mr. McCall’s widow’s home to comfort him and his children that sad night.

While the family mourned Margorie’s death, some people did not grieve so much over her death. Instead, it was a lottery for them. It is not clear whether they were professional gravediggers or just undertakers or novices who wanted to supplement their meagre income. The only sure thing was that they had heard the story about the ring and would do anything to get it, even if it meant opening her grave.

Without worrying that the corpse would have started to smell or take into account the stories of ghosts roaming the cemetery when the living left, as soon as it got dark two men entered the cemetery in the direction of a very specific grave. With the darkness hiding their unholy act, they took out their shovels and easily removed the still fluffy soil. As soon as the surface of the coffin was visible, they jumped on the grave and opened the lid.

Margorie was as her relatives had left her, lying in the wooden coffin with her face down and expressionless. Without much emotion, the gravediggers grabbed her hand and tried to pull out her ring. With her husband and other relatives already failing to do so, the two men were not much luckier. The fancy ring that would surely cost a lot of money in the market, was very well wedged in the finger of the dead. But this small obstacle would not make them give up their mission. They had already opened the coffin and looted the tomb. The ring would not weigh too much on them when they were called to account to God for the deeds of that night. So they did what Mr. McCall did not want to do to his beloved wife. They pulled out a knife to cut off her ring finger. Margorie was dead anyway. It wouldn’t hurt either, but most of all, she wouldn’t need the ring wherever she went.

The professional gravediggers put their finger in their pocket and prepared to jump out of the tomb and close it again, forever covering their sacramental act. But things did not go exactly as planned.

It is said that either one of them was stopped and died on the spot, or they both literally ran as if the devil was chasing them with all his cavalry as soon as Margorie sat down in the coffin and pale, with eyes rolled in terror, perhaps bigger than theirs, looked at them and screamed. Because Margorie had not really died but had fallen into a coma. Her family had buried her alive, misinterpreting her coma to death.

As we would see in a classic horror movie, Margorie in a state of shock and utter confusion crawled out of her grave and stumbled across the graveyard, her hair tangled, and the dirt stuck to her skin. She crossed the deserted streets of the city and went to the only place she could think of at that moment, home.

At that moment, around the fireplace were gathered relatives who were trying to comfort Margorie’s children who had seen – or at least thought so – the hard face of life or death in this case, having lost their beloved mother. Their muffled words and lamentations were interrupted by somebody knocking on the door three times. The widow, or rather the former widow, raised his face sadly and said to his children, “If your mother were alive, I would swear that this was her knocking.” Puffing at the thought of his unfortunate wife, as the master of the house, he got up slowly to open the door to the stranger who had decided to visit them at such a time.

When he opened the door he realized that the visitor was anything but unknown. At the door, his wife was standing, as she had been left a few hours ago in the dark coffin. Margorie, with her severed finger still dripping with blood, had returned from the dead. The shock that Mr. McCall suffered at that time was such that he died, but this time literally, without return. In a mixed atmosphere of joy and sorrow, the family buried Margorie’s husband in the same coffin and grave from which she had escaped earlier.

Margorie, although without a finger and a husband, did not let the life she was given to be wasted. She remarried and had other children with her new husband. We do not know if she lived to a ripe old age. The only thing for sure, however, is that when she returned to the cold soil of Shankill Cemetery, she did not go out to visit her family, at least not as a human being.

If you are in Ireland, you can visit her grave, where the tombstone with the inscription “Lived Once, Buried Twice” leaves its bizarre history to haunt us to this day.

STORY BY LUKE WHITE