University of Virginia Library

20. The Dead Alive.

“We Doctors sometimes meet with strange adventures,”
once said to me a distinguished physician, with whom I
was on terms of intimacy.

“I have often thought,” I replied, “that the secret history
of some of your profession, if written out in detail,
would make a work of thrilling interest.”

“I do not know that I exactly agree with you in regard
to detail,” rejoined my friend; “for we medical men, like
every one else, meet with a great deal that is common
place, and therefore not worthy of being recorded; but
grant us the privilege of you novelists, to select our
characters and scenes, and work them into a kind of plot,
with a view to a striking denouement, and I doubt not
many of us could give you a romance in real life, comprising
only what we have seen, which would equal, if not
surpass, any thing you ever met in the way of fiction. By-the-by,
I believe I never told you of the most strange and
romantic adventure of my life?”

“You never told me of any of your adventures, Doctor,”

I replied; “but if you have a story to tell, you will find
me an eager listener.”

“Very well, then, as I have a few minutes to spare, I
will tell you one more wildly romantic, more incredibly
remarkable, if I may so speak, than you probably ever
found in a work of fiction.”

“I am all attention.”

“Twenty-five years ago,” pursued the Doctor, “I entered
the medical college at F—as a student. I was then
quite young, inexperienced, and inclined to be timid and
sentimental; and well do I remember the horror I experienced,
when one of the senior students, under pretence
of showing me the beauties of the institution, suddenly
thrust me into the dissecting-room, among several dead
bodies, and closed the door upon me; nor do I forget how
my screeches of terror, and prayers for release from that
awful place, made me the laughing-stock of my older
companions.

“Ridicule is a hard thing to bear: the coward becomes
brave to escape it, and the brave man fears it more than he
would a belching cannon. I suffered from it till I could
stand no more; and wrought up to a pitch of desperation,
I demanded to know what I might do to redeem my
character, and gain an honorable footing among my fellow-students.

“ `I will tell you,' said one, his eyes sparkling with mischief;

`if you will go, at the midnight hour, and dig up
a subject, and take it to your room, and remain alone with
it till morning, we will let you off, and never say another
word about your womanly fright.'

“I shuddered. It was a fearful alternative; but it
seemed less terrible to suffer all the horrors that might be
concentrated into a single night, than to bear, day after
day, the jeers of my companions.

“ `Where shall I go? and when?' was my timid inquiry;
and the very thought of such an adventure made my blood
run cold.

“ `To the Eastern Cemetery, to-night, at twelve o'clock,'
replied my tormentor, fixing his keen, black eyes upon me,
and allowing his thin lips to curl with a smile of contempt.
`But what is the use of asking such a coward as you to
perform such a manly feat?' he added, deridingly.

“His words stung me to the quick; and without further
reflection, and scarcely aware of what I was saying, I
rejoined, boldly:

“I am no coward, sir, as I will prove to you, by performing
what you call a manly feat.'

“ `You will go?' he asked, quickly.

“ `I will.'

“ `Bravely said, my lad!' he rejoined, in a tone of
approval, and exchanging his expression of contempt for
one of surprise and admiration. `Do this, Morris, and

the first man that insults you afterward makes an enemy
of me!'

“Again I felt a cold shudder pass through my frame, at
the thought of what was before me; but I had accepted
his challenge in the presence of many witnesses—for this
conversation occurred as we were leaving the hall, after
listening to an evening lecture—and I was resolved to
make my word good, should it even cost me my life: in
fact, I knew I could not do otherwise now, without the
risk of being driven in disgrace from the college.

“I should here observe, that in those days there were
few professional resurrectionists; and it was absolutely
necessary to have subjects for dissection, the unpleasant
business of procuring them devolved upon the students;
who, in consequence, watched every funeral eagerly, and
calculated the chances of cheating the sexton of his charge
and the grave of its victim.

“There had been a funeral, that day, of a poor orphan
girl, who had been followed to the grave by very few
friends; and this was considered a favorable chance for the
party whose turn it was to procure the next subject, as
the graves of the poor and friendless were never watched
with the same keen vigilance as those of the rich and
influential. Still, it was no trifling risk to attempt to
exhume the bodies of the poorest and humblest—for not
unfrequently persons were found on the watch even over

these; and only the year before, one student, while at his
midnight work, had been mortally wounded by a rifle ball;
and another, a month or two subsequently, had been rendered
a cripple for life by the same means.

“All this was explained to me by a party of six or eight,
who accompanied me to my room—which was in a building
belonging to the college, and rented by apartments to
such of the students as preferred bachelor's hall to regular
boarding; and they took care to add several terrifying
stories of ghosts and hobgoblins, by way of calming my
excited nerves, just as I have before now observed old
women stand around a weak, feverish patient, and croak
out their experience in seeing awful sufferings and fatal
terminations of just such maladies as the one with which
their helpless victim was then afflicted.

“ `Is it expected that I shall go alone?' I inquired, in a
tone that trembled in spite of me, while my knees almost
knocked together, and I felt as if my very lips were
white.

“ `Well, no,' replied Benson, my most dreaded tormentor;
`it would be hardly fair to send you alone, for
one individual could not succeed in getting the body from
the grave quick enough; and you, a mere youth, without
experience, would be sure to fail altogether. No, we will
go with you, some three or four of us, and help you dig
up the corpse; but then you must take it on your back,

bring it up to your room here, and spend the night alone
with it!'

“It was some relief to me to find I was to have company
during the first part of my awful undertaking; but
still I felt far from agreeable, I assure you; and chancing
to look into a mirror, as the time drew near for setting
out, I fairly started at beholding the ghastly object I saw
reflected therein.

“ `Come, boys,' said Benson, who was always, by general
consent, the leader of whatever frolic, expedition, or undertaking
he was to have a hand in: `Come, boys, it is time
to be on the move. A glorious night for us!' he added,
throwing up the window, and letting in a fierce gust of
wind and rain: `the very d—I himself would hardly venture
out in such a storm!'

“He lit a dark-lantern, threw on his long, heavy cloak,
took up a spade, and led the way down stairs; and the
rest of us, three besides my timid self, threw on our cloaks
also, took each a spade, and followed him.

“We took a roundabout course, to avoid being seen
by any citizen that might chance to be stirring; and in
something less than half-an-hour we reached the cemetery,
scaled the wall without difficulty, and stealthily searched
for the grave, till we found it, in the pitchy darkness—the
wind and rain sweeping past us with dismal howls and

moans, that to me, trembling with terror, seemed to be
the unearthly wailings of the spirits of the damned.

“ `Here we are,' whispered Benson to me, as we at
length stopped at a mound of fresh earth, over which one
of our party had stumbled. `Come, feel round, Morris,
and strike in your spade, and let us see if you will make
as good a hand at exhuming a dead body as you will some
day at killing a living one with physic.'

“I did as directed, trembling in every limb; but
the first spade-full I threw up, I started back with a
yell of horror, that, on any other but a howling, stormy
night, would have betrayed us. It appeared to me as if
I had thrust my spade into a buried lake of fire—for the
soft dirt was all aglow like living coals; and as I had
fancied the moanings of the storm the wailings of tormented
spirits, I now fancied I had uncovered a small
portion of the Bottomless Pit itself.

“ `Fool!' hissed Benson, grasping my arm with the gripe
of a vice, as I stood leaning on my spade for support, my
very teeth chattering with terror; `another yell like that,
and I'll make a subject of you! Are you not ashamed of
yourself, to be scared out of your wits, if you ever had any,
by a little phosphorescent earth? Don't you know it is
often found in graveyards?'

“His explanation re-assured me; though I was now too
weak, from my late fright to be of any assistance to the

party; who all fell to with a will, secretly laughing at me,
and soon reached the coffin. Splitting the lid with a
hatchet, which had been brought for the purpose, they
quickly lifted out the corpse; and then Benson and another
of the party taking hold of it, one at the head and the
other at the feet, they hurried it away, bidding me follow,
and leaving the others to fill up the grave, that it might
not be suspected the body had been exhumed.

“Having got the corpse safely over the wall of the
cemetery, Benson now called upon me to perform my part
of the horrible business.

“ `Here, you quaking simpleton,' he said; `I want you
to take this on your back, and make the best of your way
to your room, and remain alone with it all night! If you
do this bravely, we will claim you as one of us to-morrow,
and the first man that dares to say a word against your
courage after that, shall find a foe in me. But, hark you!
if you make any blunder on the way, and lose our prize, it
will be better for you to quit this town before I set eyes
on you again! Do you understand me?'

“ `Y-ye-ye-yes!' I stammered, with chattering teeth.

“ `Are you ready?'

“ `Y-ye-ye-yes,' I gasped.

“ `Well, come here, where are you?'

“All this time it was so dark that I could see nothing
but a faint line of white, which I knew to be the shrond

of the corpse; but I felt carefully round till I got hold of
Benson, who told me to take off my cloak; and then rearing
the cold dead body up against my back, he began
fixing its cold arms about my neck—bidding me take
hold of them, and draw them well over, and keep them
concealed, and be sure and not let go of them, on any
consideration whatever, as I valued my life.

“Oh! the torturing horror I experienced, as I mechanically
followed his directions! Tongue could not describe
it!

“At length, having adjusted the corpse so that I might
bear it off with comparative ease, he threw my long, black
cloak over it, and over my arms, and fastened it with a
cord about my neck, and then inquired:

“ `Now, Morris, do you think you can find the way to
your room?'

“ `I-I-do-do-don't know,' I gasped, feeling as if I
should sink to the earth at the first step.

“ `Well, you cannot lose your way, if you go straight
ahead,' he replied. `Keep in the middle of this street or
road, and it will take you to College Green, and then you
are all right. Come, push on, before your burden grows
too heavy; the distance is only a good half mile!'

“I set forward, with trembling nerves, expecting to
sink to the ground at every step; but gradually my terror,
instead of weakening, gave me strength; and I was soon

on the run—splashing through mud and water—with the
storm howling about me in fury, and the cold corpse, as I
fancied, clinging to me like a hideous vampire.

“How I reached my room, I do not know—but probably
by a sort of instinct; for I only remember of my
brain being in a wild, feverish whirl, with ghostly phantoms
all about me, as one sometimes sees them in a dyspeptic
dream.

“But reach my room I did, with my dead burden on my
back; and I was afterwards told that I made wonderful
time; for Benson and his fellow-student, fearing the loss
of their subject—which, on account of the difficulty of
getting bodies, was very valuable—followed close behind
me, and were obliged to run at the top of their speed to
keep me within hailing distance.

“The first I remember distinctly, after getting to my
room, was the finding myself awake in bed, with a dim
consciousness of something horrible having happened—
though what, for some minutes, I could not for the life of
me recollect. Gradually, however, the truth dawned upon
me; and then I felt a cold perspiration start from every
pore, at the thought that perhaps I was occupying a room
alone with a corpse. The room was not dark; there were
a few embers in the grate, which threw out a ruddy light;
and fearfully raising my head, I glanced quickly and
timidly around.

“And there—there, on the floor, against the right hand
wall, but a few feet from me—there, sure enough, lay the
cold, still corpse, robed in its white shroud, with a gleam
of firelight resting upon its ghastly face, which to my
excited fancy seemed to move. Did it move? I was
gazing upon it, thrilled and fascinated with an indiscribable
terror, when, as sure as I see you now, I saw the lids
of its eyes unclose, and saw its breast heave, and heard a
low, stifled moan.

“ `Great God!' I shrieked, and fell back in a swoon.

“How long I lay unconscious I do not know; but when
I came to myself again, it is a marvel to me, that, in my
excited state, I did not lose my senses altogether, and
become the tenant of a mad-house; for there—right before
me—standing up in its white shroud—with its eyes wide
open and staring upon me, and its features thin, hollow
and death-hued—was the corpse I had brought from the
cemetery.

“ `In God's name, avaunt!' I gasped. `Go back to
your grave, and rest in peace! I will never disturb you
again!'

“The large, hollow eyes looked more wildly upon me—
the head moved—the lips parted—and a voice, in a somewhat
sepulchral tone, said:

“ `Where am I? Where am I? Who are you? Which
world am I in? Am I living or dead?'

“ `You were dead,' I gasped, sitting up in bed, and
feeling as if my brain would burst with a pressure of
unspeakable horror; `you were dead and buried, and I
was one of the guilty wretches who this night disturbed
you in your peaceful rest. But go back, poor ghost, in
Heaven's name! and no mortal power shall ever induce
me to come nigh you again!'

“ `Oh! I feel faint!' said the corpse, gradually sinking
down upon the floor, with a groan. `Where am I? Oh!
where am I?'

“ `Great God!' I shouted, as the startling truth suddenly
flashed upon me; `perhaps this poor girl was
buried alive, and is now living!'

“I bounded from the bed and grasped a hand of the
prostrate body. It was not warm—but it was not cold.
I put my trembling fingers upon the pulse. Did it beat?
or was it the pulse in my fingers? I thrust my hand upon
the heart. It was warm—there was life there. The
breast heaved; she breathed; but the eyes were now
closed, and the features had the look of death. Still it
was a living body—or else I myself was insane.

“I sprung to the door, tore it open, and shouted for
help.

“ `Quick! quick!' cried I: `the dead is alive! the dead
is alive!'

“Several of the students, sleeping in adjoining rooms,

came hurrying to mine, thinking I had gone mad with
terror, as some of them had heard my voice before, and all
knew to what a fearful ordeal I had been subjected.

“ `Poor fellow!' exclaimed one in a tone of sympathy;
`I predicted this.'

“ `It is too bad!' said another; `it was too much for
his nervous system!'

“ `I am not mad,' returned I, comprehending their
suspicions; `but the corpse is alive!—hasten and see!'

“They hurried into the room, one after another; and
the foremost, stooping down to what he supposed was a
corpse, put his hand upon it, and instantly exclaimed:

“Quick! a light and some brandy! She lives! she
lives!'

“All now was bustle, confusion and excitement—one
proposing one thing, and another something else, and all
speaking together. They placed her on the bed, and gave
her some brandy, when she again revived. I ran for a
physician, (one of the faculty,) who came and tended upon
her through the night, and by sunrise the next morning she
was reported to be in a fair way for recovery.

“Now what do you think of my story so far?” queried
the Doctor, with a quiet smile.

“Very remarkable!” I replied; “very remarkable,
indeed! But tell me, did the girl finally recover?”

“She did; and turned out to be a most beautiful creature,
and only sweet seventeen.”

“And I suppose she blessed the resurrectionists all the
rest of her life!” I rejoined, with a laugh.

“She certainly held one of them in kind remembrance,”
returned the Doctor, with a sigh.

“What became of her, Doctor?”

“What should have become of her, according to the well-known
rules of poetic justice of all you novel-writers?”
returned my friend, with a peculiar smile.

“Why,” said I, laughing, “she should have turned out
an heiress, and married you.”

“And that is exactly what she did!” rejoined the
Doctor.

“Good heavens! You are jesting!”

“No, my friend, no,” replied the Doctor, in a faltering
voice: “that night of horror only preceded the dawn of my
happiness; for that girl—sweet, lovely Helen Leroy—in
time became my wife, and the mother of my two boys.
She sleeps now in death, beneath the cold, cold sod,” added
the Doctor, in a tremulous tone, and brushing a tear from
his eye: “and no human resurrectionists shall ever raise
her to life again!”