Here’s another old horror legend remembered by a reader. This one was sent to me by Vonnie Shepherd of Bloomington, Indiana, who writes, “I grew up hearing this story in a small town in central Kentucky:
“Several girls were sleeping over at one girl’s home while the parents were away. After the lights were out, they started talking about the recent burial of an old man in the nearby cemetery. A rumor was going around that the man had been buried alive and had been heard trying to claw his way out.
“One girl laughed at the idea, so they dared her to go out and visit the grave. As proof that she had gone, she was to drive a stake into the earth above the grave.
“They sent their friend off on her errand and shut off the lights again, expecting her to return right away.
“But an hour passed, and then another, without any sign of the girl. The others lay awake, gradually growing terrified. Morning came, and she still hadn’t returned.
“Later that day, the girl’s parents arrived home, and parents and friends went together to the cemetery.
“They found the girl lying on the grave—dead. When she squatted down to push the wooden stake into the ground, she drove it through the hem of her skirt. When she tried to stand up and couldn’t, she thought the dead man had grabbed hold of her—and she died instantly of fright.”
This is a nicely modernized version of a narrative that is so old and widespread that we folklorists even have a number for it.
In The Types of the Folktale
, a standard index of folk-narrative plots, the story is listed as “Type 1676B, Clothing
Caught in Graveyard.” Usually, though, we folklorists just call it “The Graveyard Wager.”
Variations on the basic theme have been recorded since the Middle Ages in Europe and have migrated to much of the world. It’s one of those stories that no one really believes—would anyone actually die “of fright”? But the story keeps going around, nevertheless.
In some versions, a soldier bets that he has the courage to remain overnight in a cemetery, but he dies from fright after plunging his sword through his long cloak. In others, a drunken man drives his dagger through the hem of his overcoat. Sometimes the person visiting the grave is told to drive a nail into a wooden cross, and the nail goes through part of his garment.
In a few versions the graveyard visitor suffers just a good scare and a cold night in the cemetery, rather than death.
Vonnie Shepherd’s version updates the story so it depicts girls at a sleepover party. It is convincing: a rumor about a man buried alive is the kind of thing teen-agers will talk about once the lights are out.
The references to a person buried alive and a stake plunged into a grave, though, make it sound as if these girls have been reading too much Edgar Allen Poe or watching vampire films.
A more elaborate update of “The Graveyard Wager” story was sent to me recently by G. L. Maclean, a professor at the University of Natal, Republic of South Africa. He says he first heard it twenty or thirty years ago, when university students there were still required to wear academic gowns at their evening meals.
“One evening at dinner,” Professor Maclean wrote, “three medical students at the University of Cape Town were talking about a body they had seen lying on the mortuary slab at the hospital adjacent to the medical school
.
“They dared each other to take a knife, sneak into the mortuary in the dark, and plunge the knife into the corpse. One student accepted the dare, and the others waited outside while he went in.
“A few minutes after he entered the mortuary, they heard a scream, and fled in terror.
“The next morning their colleague was found lying dead on the floor, the knife firmly plunged into the corpse, and also through the long sleeve of his black academic gown. The fright of thinking he was being pulled back by the corpse caused him to die of a heart attack.”
Professor Maclean suggests that by substituting a white lab coat for the academic gown, the story might fit medical students anywhere in the world.
Although I have never encountered such a form of “The Graveyard Wager,” I won’t be surprised if I do. This traditional story has successfully made the leap into urban legendhood.
And, as several readers pointed out to me, “The Graveyard Wager” was also the inspiration for an episode of the popular television series “Twilight Zone.” I am endebted to Michael A. Garoutte of Belmont, California, for sending me photocopies of pages 219-220 of The Twilight Zone Companion
(New York: Bantam, 1982), which indicate that the episode was originally broadcast on October 27, 1961, and included Lee Marvin in the role of the man found dead beside the grave with his knife stuck through his coat and into the earth above a grave.