Midnight Mary

Let me tell you the true story of Mary Hart, who long ago died at the stroke of midnight.

Back in the late 1800s, science was not what it is now; doctors could not always tell if someone had died. Too often, people would wake up eight feet under, undead and buried underground. It happened so much that “Waiting Mortuaries” were established to ensure the dead were truly dead. Decomposition was the only sure sign of death and many believed that it only began after the soul had fully departed from the body.

But fear of contagion and superstition led to even more drastic measures. To test for life, people stuck pins under the deceased’s fingernails and placed live cockroaches into their ears and nostrils.

Faces and feet were slashed with razors. Long, narrow knives were inserted up noses or into eyes. They even designed devices like nipple pincers and hand-cranked tongue-pulling machines. All to find out if the person was still alive. Surely, no one would wake from that.

The rich did not want to take any chances, so a new invention became quite popular: the safety coffin. Strings were tied to the person’s arms and neck to a bell outside, so even the slightest movement would pull the bell above ground and alert anyone nearby.

However, such was not the case for Mary Hart.

In October 1872, Mary was at home with her aunt getting ready for work when she suddenly collapsed onto the floor. She never woke up. At midnight, she was pronounced dead and buried the following day.

Her aunt was devastated; she had taken care of Mary since she had lost her parents at sea when she was twelve years old. That same night, she had a chilling nightmare: Mary was still alive, trapped inside her coffin underground.

The next morning, she pleaded with the church officials to unearth Mary’s coffin at once. As they did, the lid creaked open and they saw Mary’s lifeless face, disfigured with horror; her fingernails were broken and bloody, and the lining of the coffin was torn to shreds.

She had awakened inside the coffin just to realize that everyone thought she was dead and that no one would hear her scream, fighting for her life. Madness took over as she clawed at the wood as if it were sand.

You can find her grave in Evergreen Cemetery in Connecticut. The epitaph on her gravestone reads: “THOU SHALL BE TROUBLED AT MIDNIGHT AND PASS AWAY.” And so according to the curse, anyone around the cemetery at midnight will die by the following day.