A YOUNG LADY BURIED ALIVE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 430, 30 September 1869, Page 3

A YOUNG LADY BURIED ALIVE.

About a month ago New Orleans was thrown into a state of excitement about the mysterious circumstances under which a young lady, very well connected, had been buried. The young lady, upon returning, from early mass on a Sunday morning, was suddenly taken ill of disease of the heart, and, as was supposed at the time, was suffocated to . death owing- to her unusual fleshiness. A physician, her own uncle, had attended her in her last moments, and pro-, nounced her dead. She had died about'one o'clock in the morning, and the funeral occurred at five in Hie evening. So far there is nothing remarkable. That same evening the sexton of the graveyard, having some business to attend to in town, left his son, of mature age, in charge of the keys, with the instruction to close the gates at the usual hour, after making his rounds through the cemetery, in order that no visitor might be accidentally confined inside. About dusk the sexton's soay while going his round, passing near the tomb in which the young lady had been buried scarcely an hour before, heard low and heartrending moanings coming from behind the marble slab. Losing his self-possession, and overcome with fear, he - hurriedly left the scene, and, closing the main gate of the cemetery, went home, and it was not until morning that he related the circumstances to his horror-striken family. Information of the facts was immediately sent to the bereaved family of the deceased, and workmen were soon engaged in opening the tomb and breaking open the coffin inclosing the remains of the young lady. The spectacle was too horrible to describe. Her face and body were in a terrible state of distortion, and her hair torn from the roots. In the terrible convulsions which had preceded her death, she had literally harrowed, her beautiful face with her nails, and her clenched fists in contact -with her foaming Kps showed the traces of her teeth. It. in unnecessary to say that life was entirely extinct.