# Coffin with air vent and bells



## hedg12 (Jul 6, 2008)

My wife and I spent the day in Atchison, KS friday (supposedly the most haunted town in KS - wife's a big ghost hunters fan...) Took a trolley tour of the town that went by the "haunted" locations, but didn't actually get to go in. We were going to take the "paranormal" tour of the Sallie house where a young girl who died in a horribly botched appendectomy supposedly still haunts, but it was sold out for the day 
Anyway, there wasn't much of interest to photograph, other than this.








(The rest of my pictures didn't come out - too much glare.)

This is a youth sized "plague" or "viewing" coffin. Apparently when someone died from the plague they worried that the disease could still be passed from the corpse & wanted to limit the exposure to those viewing the body, so the coffin had a viewing port for the head. There was also a constant fear that someone would be buried alive, so a vent tube was added & bells from a horses harness were attached to a string & tied to the body's wrist to alert someone if the coffin's occupent woke up.

I know it's been discussed here before, but I thought this was too cool not to share.

(Oh, & if you ever find yourself in Atchison, eat at Pete's steak house. Kind of a little hole in the wall, but the food is fantastic!)


----------



## RoxyBlue (Oct 6, 2008)

That would make a great scene for someone doing a funeral home/mortuary haunt.


----------



## MapThePlanet (Nov 12, 2010)

You guys should have came by, I'm less than 2 miles from I35! and I totally agree about Pete's!


----------



## fontgeek (Jul 24, 2006)

"There was also a constant fear that someone would be buried alive, so a vent tube was added & bells from a horses harness were attached to a string & tied to the body's wrist to alert someone if the coffin's occupent woke up."
Family members and close friends took shifts sitting near the graves for several days after the burial. That is where the term "Graveyard Shift" came from.


----------

