A long time ago, when it was night it was dark. You may be thinking: so what? It’s dark at night now. But in the time I’m talking about the most frequent light anybody had to travel by was moonlight, and on the night I’m telling you about there was no moon. But there was a fellow traveling home through the darkness on that moonless night. He decided to take a shortcut through the town graveyard.
There he was, walking along through the cemetery, and whoosh! He fell into a newly dug grave. Well, he did what most of us would do, he tried to jump out. He’d jump up, get a fingerhold, and then dirt would give way and he’d slip back down. Jump up, get a fingerhold, slip back down. Jump up. Slip down. Over and over again he tried to jump out, until he was exhausted.
Then he began calming himself down, “I’m going to be all right. I’m just going to have to spend the night here, that’s all. People don’t dig graves for no reason. Tomorrow, there’s bound to be a funeral. After the funeral folks will come out here for the burying. They’ll find me. They’ll fetch a ladder and help me out.” He breathed slowly and deeply. “I’m going to be all right. Just spend the night here. That’s all.” In the darkness, he felt his way down to one end of the grave. Once there, he sank down into the corner and curled in on himself to keep warm. Finally, he did indeed feel warm, and he drifted off to sleep.
Later that same night there was a second fellow headed home in the darkness. As fate or luck would have it, that second fellow made the same decision as the first fellow: “I believe I’ll take a shortcut through the town cemetery.”
There he was traveling along when whoosh! He fell into the very same newly dug grave. Just like the first fellow, he tried to jump out. He’d jump up and get a fingerhold. The dirt would give way and he would slip. He too tried over and over again until he was exhausted.
But then, he didn’t work on calming himself down like that first fellow had. No, that second fellow took to hollering, “Help! Help! I’ve fallen in a grave. Somebody come get me out of here! Help! Help, help, help!”
He made such a racket that he woke up that first fellow who was sleeping down in the end of that grave. When that sleeping fellow woke up, he peered through the darkness in the direction all that racket was coming from and said, “No sense yelling and hollering like that. You can’t jump out.”
He was wrong. (Ending 1)
When the fellow who was hollering heard that voice in the darkness, he gave one jump, “Aaah!!!” and he was out of that grave and on his way home. (Ending 2)
I understand he was moving real fast too. (Ending 3)
I first encountered this story as “The Men in the Open Grave,” in Ghosts Along the Cumberland by William Lynwood Montell.1 He reported four versions of this tale, one each from Mercer County, collected by John Short in 1965; Monroe County, collected by Lynwood Montell in 1958; Green County, collected by Jerry Powell in 1964; and Clark County, collected by Viola Burgess in 1964.
In my retelling of the story, I did just as most folks will do. I kept the core of the story. I chose to avoid drinking as a reason for either person to fall in, as given in two of the reported versions. I also emphasize the darkness of the night in the time before security lights became common, as they are in many town and rural cemeteries today. My audiences are contemporary, often students or school-age children and their parents, so most of my listeners have grown up when very few cemeteries are poorly lit.
You no doubt noticed I marked three endings for this story. I vary the endings depending on audience reaction. Ending 1 was inspired by John Benjamin, actor, director, and arts education program coordinator for the Kentucky Arts Council, who heard me tell the story using the second ending. In 2010 John told me his great uncle Will Agnew, who was originally from Virginia but lived in Atlanta for the last years of his life, told it to him. John recalled:
The punch line was that the man who fell into the grave tried and tried to get out, but to no avail. Exhausted, he crumbled to the ground to catch his breath. From the other end of the grave came a voice, “It’s no use. You can’t get out.”
But he did.2
John had told me about hearing the story several years before our 2010 email exchange. I remember him saying that when he first heard the story he was so young he had to think about what that meant. Later, he could delight in the understatement as he heard the story again and again over the years. When I first began using the “He was wrong” ending, I thought I was using the exact ending John told me he had heard growing up. Based on our correspondence, I’m now inclined to believe the “He was wrong” ending was more inspired by (instead of taken from) John’s discussion of the tale. Most adult audiences react to this brief ending. It also works well in most mixed-age audiences.
Ending 2 was the ending I used before John told me about his experience with the story. Now, I use the first ending, pause, and add information if there is little to no reaction or a mixed reaction from my audience. Usually, I also accompany the telling of the man leaving the grave with a gesture—picture starting with hands held horizontally, palm to palm, at around waist level. The lower hand stays in place to serve as the ground at the bottom of the grave. The upper hand rises quickly to illustrate the man jumping in fright. Once the hand rises, the arm can also be extended to suggest the man making a quick getaway. The timing goes something like this: During the “Aaah!” the hand goes up. The arm extends during the “and on his way home” (said at the same time as the arm extends). Sometimes I’ll even use these gestures after the first ending, but not say a single word during the gestures.
Ending 3 is for audiences in need of a little more information before they begin laughing. I deliver it as a very understated afterthought. For audiences of elementary school children, this detail is sometimes just the bit of confirmation they need to help them accept the picture in their minds and laugh. My experience has been that listeners in homogeneous-aged audiences often react differently than the same aged listeners in a mixed-age audience.
Yes, listeners do indeed make a difference in how a story is retold. Sometimes they give me information, as John Benjamin did, which results in better future tellings. Other times, my observations of their reactions as they listen prompt the change needed to make the telling suit the particular audience in front of me.