Sometime between 1812 and 1820 West Indian Folklore recalled this story which has mystified and confused people ever since. It tooks place in a tomb owned by the Chase family. The tomb stands at the entrance to the Christ Church Graveyard in Barbados and is built of large cemented blocks of coral. It measures 12 feet by 6 feet and is sunk halfway into the ground.
Nothing happened for the first two burials on 31st July 1807 (Mrs Thomasina Goddard) and 22 February 1808 (an infant Mary Anna Maria Chase), but, on 6 July 1812 the tomb was opened to bury Dorcas Chase. It took several men to open the heavy door and they found that the two coffins already there had been flung against the wall. As both coffins were encased in lead a great force was needed to do this. They buried Dorcas Chase and returned the other two coffins to their original positions.

On subsequent burials the same sight greeted the pallbearers. Each time the coffins were found flung against the walls. It was believed that people had been breaking into the tomb and moving the coffins, though when the burial of Thomasina Clarke took place on 17 July 1819 the Governor of Barbados, Viscount Combermere, supervised the sealing of the vault. Nine months later he returned to check the state of the tomb and again found it in disarray. Yet the seals on the door that he had personally put there remained intact.

In 1820 the vault was emptied without the mystery of the "creeping coffins" being solved. The coffins were all reburied in another place. There are no known scientific observations recorded around the time. The Chase vault still exists in the Christ Church Graveyard and remains empty.



The Event: THE MOVING OF THE COFFINS OF BARBADOS


The vault was becoming infamous. The next funeral, this time for one Samuel Brewster, drew a large crowd of more than 1,000 people, some from Cuba and Haiti. During a wild storm, the lead coffin was carried by 4 black slaves to the vault, where the same bone-chilling scene lay before their eyes--coffins, standing on end, were strewn about the interior.


At this point, the governor of the island, Lord Combermere, became involved. He personally attended the next funeral, that of Mrs. Thomasina Clarke, daughter of Thomasina Goddard, whose coffin had always remained on the shelf where it had been put. Combermere inspected the vault, sounded for a subterranean passage (there was none), and ordered the workmen to replace the upended coffins before bringing in the new one. Then he had the floor covered with fine sand and had a new lock put on the door. Finally, the door was sealed with a coating of cement. Combermere and others stuck their signet rings in it while it was still wet, making permanent impressions.


On April 18, 1820, a sunny day, Combermere opened the vault for the last time. The cement on the door had not been disturbed. After masons broke through it, they were prevented from opening the door more than half an inch by something leaning against it. When they forced the door open, a heavy object fell down the interior steps with a crash--it was a coffin, of course. As they entered the vault, the masons saw a bony arm, that of Dorcas Chase, sticking out through a hole in the side of the coffin. All the other coffins, including that of Mrs. Goddard, were scattered around the vault in complete disorder. Combermere gave up. He had the dead removed elsewhere for burial.


Possible Solutions: Researchers from the London Science Museum and the Society of Psychical Research investigated the mystery of the Barbados coffins but came up with no answers.


It seems unlikely that the coffins were disturbed by earth movements because the vault was located on a bed of coral. There was no underground passage and no entry to the vault except through the front door. Governor Combermere, in his final sealing of the vault, had eliminated any possibility that someone had entered the vault secretly. Jewelry which was placed in the vault was left undisturbed, so it is unlikely that the coffins were being disturbed by grave robbers. Nevertheless, the Elliott vault was abandoned as a final resting place for the Barbados dead.

Looks like an excellent candidate as an example of a genuine haunting.

Yes, I for one can't find any rational explanation to this one...

Sounds really creepy to me and a haunting could be the cause IMO.

Check out this thread. It talks about this too.

u know what would be really freaky....the dude takes out all the coffins and burries it somewhere else...seals the vault with no coffins in it...then opens the vault a year later...and there would be a coffin in there..and when they look at the barial site...its gone id never go on that island ever..if that happens

It sure is a creepy place, no matter what!

Now that's creepy! I wonder if they happened to built this tomb on top of a sacred place used by natives long ago, or maybe a location where executions of convicts were held?

ZOMBIES!

dead man walking..!

What did you call me?

That certainly is strange, creepy, and well disturbing considering the condition they found the coffins in on each occassion.

A 12 foot by 6 foot tomb is really not that big when you consider the average size of a coffin. The only open space would be where there were no shelves, which would not be a very big area I don't think. Not an easy spot to manipulate coffins in, especially since it would have required more than one person and great force to toss them about as they were.

And odd that the door opens in rather than out, as wouldn't it have to be on top seeing the tomb was half-way into the ground? Unless there were steps going down to it. Ugh not a very good visual at all, and no matter how you look at it, it is baffling. With how the events unfolded it sure makes it sound like there were unseen forces at work. At least those poor souls were moved to a place where they can rest in peace.

I wonder if anyone volunteered to spend the night in there to see if they could solve the mystery?

This has the ring of a genuine unexplained mystery!! Sounds like a haunting to me...

A haunting is one possible reason but others could be as simple as a poorly made tomb whose walls are moving, Or perhaps localised seismic activity, or possibly someone felt like playing a joke.


But i admit it seems quite strange and warrents investigation, however it is important to conduct this investigation with a grain of salt as there may be other explanations.

Perhaps it would be clever to conduct a geological survey of the area to see if thier may be gas producing minerals under the tomb, these could cause some disturbances to the coffins as could minor seismic activity.


All in all thou a very interesting mystery that gets more so every time i hear of it.........

Since the Chase vault is still in sound shape after standing open for 175 years, and receiving uncounted thousands of visitors, I think we can rule out poor construction.

It's not sesmic activity because arbados doesn't get earthquakes a lot. Just recently they had one and I think it's their first in quite a few years. My dad is from barbados so he grew up with this legend. He even went to the school next to the church where it's at! He said they used to sit on the tombstones in the graveyard, but they say it was sealed and they kept moving and how could someone play a joke if it was sealed off with no other passages? I'm just saying I think it's a haunting or something. I even heard Tomasina Goddard was a vampire so who knows.

I will have to read more on this later, I'm about to leave work. Yay!

Not to be a party pooper, but is this in the correct topic?

This is one of those cases which just leave you scratching your head. The most reasonable explanations just don't seem to be applicable in this case.

interesting..but not fitting the ancient mysteries/ alternative history forum...more fitting the ghosts and paranormal forum

Did anyone rule out flooding. I know it said that the coffins were made of lead, but does anyone know how much water could fill the vault to move coffins. Would it be possible?

I don't think it would be flooding cuz wouldn't the sand and stuff move and how would all be upright? Something seriously strange was happening in that place. The next time my dad carries me to barbados I'm gonna ask him if we can visit and check it out for myself eventhough you can't really enter the vault itself so idk how good that will be.

Apparently per the "Chase Vault" webserch I just did, due to depth of the vault below ground and a high water table, the vault was abandoned due to period flooding, which in fact disturbed the coffins and left the sand on the floor appear to be 'undisturbed'.

i guess i would get mad if i was encased in a place, maybe we have a case of a costrophobic ghost? aslo this makes me wonder, how much power would a spirit have to have to chuck coffins around, dont poltergeist normally have that kind of power?

Sort of a dead topic but I'm surprised no one brought this up. Maybe there was more lead in the bottom ends of the coffins and some sort of natural Earth magnetism drew them to a stand, perhaps? In any case, that's creepy as hell.

Lead is diamagnetic, a lead coffin shouldn't be meaningfully affected by the Earth's magnetic field.

If, however, the coffins were well sealed, the flooding idea makes sense - although the narrow shape of a coffin wouldn't allow it to float by itself (especially made of lead!) if it was well sealed with a significant air pocket inside perhaps that air could give it a degree of flotation, say enough to get off of it's shelf - then, if there was indeed more lead at one end or the other, it's entirely plausible that that end would end up on the bottom and the coffin leaning against the wall when the water receded.

The only problem with this theory is that I don't see how the sand inside could look undisturbed after flooding - water does not magically appear then disappear. There would have to be inlets into the tomb, and if that was the case, wouldn't those inlets leave conspicious marks in the sand?

As for the seismic theory - I'm a skeptic, but come on. How is the idea that an area 6x12 feet gets miniature earthquakes just powerful enough to orient lead coffins in unusual ways even given any attention at all?

I'm not sure what else to say about this one, although I am leaning towards the flood idea even with the sand discrepancy.

Or it's ghosts. That'd be more fun.

How would flooding get these things to stand upright? Couldn't you safely assume the water filling the tomb would rise and decrease at an even level? If that were the case wouldn't the coffins come back down laying flat? If one end was heavier than the other, it could explain how it rose in an upright fasion, but that would mean one end was so heavy it didn't float and therefore (I'm assuming) it shouldn't then be able to move across the floor.

Also, shouldn't they have been able to find some traces of water having filled the tomb if that were the case?

The sand would appear smooth and evenly distributed as the water first seeped in to flood the tomb, then likewise receded, much the way a beach looks perfectly smooth when the water 'smooths over' disturbed sand...

Very strange story.

I was thinking that the coffin would still be able to float, but just barely, such that it was floating near the ceiling (or neutrally buoyant) with the heavier end at the bottom and only came into contact with the floor when the water receded.




My thoughts exactly.



That's a false analogy. With a beach, the tide ebbs and flows as one (more or less) even line of water washing over the sand. Since this tomb is essentially a building, it's extremely unlikely that water is going to seep through a wall evenly; there would most likely be rivulets of water carving pathways in the sand which would most likely remain even if the entire tomb filled with water then drained again. The only way the fine sand could be undisturbed in appearance after flooding is if the water came up through the floor, slowly and uniformly - and that's a bit farfetched. Unfortunately the sand remains a wrench in the gears of an otherwise plausible explanation.

Well, the water WOULD enter the tomb uniformly thru the floor and disperse the same way, due to ebb and flow of the level of the ground water table; not from a higher elevation such as run-off would....hence, even disbursement of sand across the floor, even after the coffins came to rest.

Assuming that the tomb was that poorly built, yes. I would imagine some effort was made to keep the water out and was assuming a concrete floor although no real information about the floor was given. But if the floor wasn't sealed, or it was and failed on all four sides evenly - then yes, even water dispersion could occur. But I don't believe it was just a dirt floor because that would make sprinkling sand seem sort of ridiculous - and if it was sealed, I'd say it would leak at the junction between wall and floor, in which case I still think rivulets of some kind would occur because I wouldn't expect that junction to fail evenly all the way across.

Edit: After re-reading the OP, I wonder if maybe the coral brick walls would be permeable to water? Because if so, the pores in the bricks would probably give pretty even water distribution.

It never happened. It's just a folktale that was actually transplanted from England. There is no actual written record of it. Nothing in the papers at the time. Zilch. Andrew Lang even went through all the vault records of the cemetery and found the interments didn't fit the story at all.

Well hell.

The original story came out of Suffolk. Here you are:

http://www.onesuffolk.co.uk/Stanton/History/

At the time they attributed it to flooding.

okay but for the sake of IF..IF it happened in Barbados I would vote that it was voodoo and the answer would be found in the family history where a great grandfather mouthed off at a witch while she was napping and never let the family rest in peace again. wooooooooooooooooooo