Undertaker Locked in Tomb With Many Corpses

1920

Locked in Tomb With Many Corpses, Undertaker Has Thrilling Half Hour

MILFORD, Mass. — Locked in a tomb with a score of corpses about, in a cemetery far removed from habitation and almost submerged in snow and ice, and without any apparent means of escape, was the horrifying experience of Walter W. Watson, a local undertaker.

For nearly half an hour, alternately shouting in a desperate but vain effort to attract help and trying with an iron bar to pry open the tomb door, Mr. Watson said he was confronted with a situation that sorely tried his soul and gave him a thrill whose memory will always stay with him.

It was 2 o'clock in the afternoon when Mr. Watson went to the receiving tomb in Vernon Grove Cemetery. He had to work in the chamber for some little time, and thought to draw the door nearly to its fastenings, the better to be protected from the cold. To draw the heavy door over the blocking ice he threw all his strength into the pull, and to his amazement the door closed and the strong latch fell into its catch.

Watson looked about for means to force the door. When he espied a heavy iron bar he thought luck was with him. But all his efforts failed to stir open the door. Vigorously he applied the iron bar, but to no avail. Then he shouted through a 10-inch-wide ventilator in the rear of the vault. The only answer that came to him was the echo of his own voice.

With hope abandoned from this quarter, Watson determined to force his body through the small opening in the wall. A stout, well-built man, he has much difficulty in driving his shoulder through the ventilator. But persistent effort finally, after a labor of about thirty minutes, brought him safely to the outside of the tomb.

"Not for all the money in the movies would I again go through such an experience' said Mr. Watson when his thrilling experience became known to his fellow citizens.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 20, 1920, page 1.