The missing coffin.
 

This is probably the strangest and most unexplainable thing I've ever witnessed.

About 20 years ago a family friend lost their daughter to a childhood illness. She was 11 at the time and as you can imagine it was devastating for the entire family. The daughters grandfather had done well in life and he ordered a very expensive Italian made granite coffin.... (Valued at around $100,000 AU) So they bury the little girl and install a granite head stone plus cover stone and the family begins to slowly heal.

Around 18 months later the mother of the deceased daughter starts to have vivid dreams that her daughter was telling her she was cold and wet. Some time passes but the dreams are only get stronger and more vivid. Eventually she decided to have her daughters grave dug up. This had been going on for about 4 years and she needed peace. Can you imagine the stress that something like this would cause a family? They go through a formal legal process and hire specialised contractors to do the excavation. They also hired a modern archaeology to be part of the team. So they remove the top stone and start digging. They eventually come across the little girls body but the $100,000 coffin was gone. After removing her body they continued to dig until they were well past the depth of the original grave dig.

After the team had finished the search they documented everything. They then placed the little girl into a new coffin and reburied her. A priest conducted a service at the time of reburial. (I attended both burials) I'm sure you can guess the rest... But the mother now sleeps well with no dreams about her daughter.

Your initial response may be that it's just a dream and the mother was missing her daughter. I initially told myself the same thing but it doesn't explain the little girl complaining that she was cold and wet in the dreams. Were would the mother get that from?

I'm close to the mother and I spoke to her often as the family was going through this process. I talked to her and her husband at a family gathering this afternoon. They are doing well.

I struggle with an after life all the time. It certainly does make you think.

The way I explain this to myself that makes the most sense.

1. The people that stole the coffin are in the funeral trade and they know they could resell the coffin. (Most likely over and over again.) They also have the lifting/digging equipment to get the coffin out of the grave. All they'd have to do is surveil the family and steal the coffin when the family goes on holiday or they're out of town. A solid granite coffin would be easy to clean, polish and refurbish to look like new.

2. The mother may have dealt with someone who was on the team of coffin thieves at the time of her daughters death. And for whatever reason she may have sensed something was off but dismissed it or couldn't recognise it because she was grieving. As she recovered from her daughters death the dreams start because subconsciously she knows there was something off about that person she spoke to.

We all know grave robbing has been going on for thousands of years. Why wouldn't it still be happening now? Especially considering that in this case there was a very expensive coffin just sitting there under the ground. I've seen people do some horrible things for a few dollars. What would they do for $100,000?

But if you ask the mother she'll tell you her daughter was talking to her from the grave.
... And good luck trying to convince her that there may be a reasonable explanation.

A mother/daughter have a connection that no one else understands, and that I don't have with my son. My wife and daughter finish each other's sentences, so I have no doubt of the spiritual, and physical kismet.

Great summary, especially #3....

Nothing unusual for me in your story. Members of my family often "know " things before they should. When we were younger and our friends were having their families, I would advise my wife of the sex of the baby expected. At one point, I had "guessed " 13 out of 14 correctly. Seven years ago when our daughter was struggling to tell us of her pregnancy, I was sure it would be female. I wrote a song for her and sang it to her when she was two hours old.
Some say we are humans trying to become spiritual. Others say we are spiritstrying to become human.
I don't have the answers.
Best
Les

Unless the family watched the coffin be completely buried, I'd bet the coffin was snatched before the dirt was completely filled in/ or at some point early in the burial timeline. Perhaps before it was even lowered.

At every funeral I've seen, the family leaves, and doesn't stick around to watch the backhoe fill in the hole. Drop the coffin in the ground, perhaps throw on a few shovels worth of dirt for effect, and everyone walks off. Most of the time (every one I've seen at least), the coffin hasn't even been lowered in the ground when the family leaves. Especially if there was the enclosed tent around the site, easy for the grounds keepers to do what ever they wanted after the family left. extensive lowering device, which would seem really important for a heavy granite coffin. They would have full control of the area.

Which means that there are probably a bunch of other missing coffins at the same venue.

Sorry to hear. Not fun for the family at all.

This why you shell out $700 for cremation and be done with it.

Halloween is coming! Good warmup here

That was my thought. Since it was granite, my guess is that it was never in the ground. I always thought that sort of thing was placed, then the body in another container was placed inside.

My MIL "felt" the presence of Nick, one of her older deceased brothers, while sitting at the kitchen table for dinner. He had a son that was in his late teens, and she states that Nick told her the "Nickie" was in trouble.

Shortly after, that same night, they got a call from a local PD. Nickie was in jail for speeding, racing and possession.

People working at that graveyard stole the casket or were complicit in its theft. I would make them famous if it were me.

What is wrong with you? Seriously, you are consistently insensitive and inappropriate. Your mother must be proud

Not knowing any of the parties involved and certainly not wanting to disparage anyone, but the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Maybe not in this case but here goes anyway. And I apologize if anyone is insulted.

Mom was in on the coffin theft and her conscience got to her.

I know her well and I really don't think this happened but I can see why you suggested it.

The one thing I keep learning over and over again: We don't really know anyone.

Well, people in the funeral trade are like any other profession, 99.9% are there to serve the public. But on the other hand, even in a little town in Western Colorado...

Montrose funeral home owner who allegedly sold hundreds of bodies without families’ consent is federally indicted

https://coloradosun.com/2020/03/17/megan-hess-sunset-mesa-funeral-body-parts-indictment/

Likely this. Many people would do a lot of things for part of a 100K.

I watched a British mystery from the 90s the other day that was basically about this very thing. A funeral home had someone purchase a top of the line expensive casket, and they would dig that casket up, clean it up and sold it over and over again.

In the case in the video, the corrupt person hid in a casket than ended up being cremated by a deaf guy that didn't hear the guy screaming "let me out".

Toeman,
We now have a bunch of stories of premonitions and graveyard shenanigans. What’s inappropriate or insensitive, kind of an oddball arent you.

You want to remove all doubt, get a cremation. Even then who knows if the ashes you get are your loved one.

My guess is that the mom is NOT in on it. Reselling used goods in the funeral industry, while not common, isn't unheard of either.

There was a cemetery near Chicago that had a major scandal a few years ago. Basically, they would resell grave sites after a number of years. Sometimes they'd just bury someone on top of someone else, sometimes they'd dig up the old grave and toss the old body in a mass grave, and sometimes they didn't get around to making a new mass grave. IIRC, it was discovered when someone went to visit a family member's grave after a number of years and couldn't find it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr_Oak_Cemetery#:~:text=2009%20scandal,-Incident&text=On%20July%2011%2C%202009%2C%20Cook,b ack%20at%20least%20five%20years.

I would not say likely. Plausible.

My thoughts are why would the funeral business people try to sell a distraught women on an illegal scheme when they could pull it off without her involvement.

Now if she said "I hate my grandfather (who paid for the casket) and I want to screw him out of money" and the funeral people just happened to have this great plan and facilitated her wish, ok.

On the supernatural aspects, I am a James Randi fan, but I read and hear things that are pretty eerie and believable. That Fastfreddie basement story was creepy a while back.

or even if they are of a body

More than likely- grandad did it. :)

naw- I bet she had some fear about this happening. Somewhere along the line, whether somebody said something, or she saw something on the internet about coffins being a hot theft item, perhaps even a tv show plot, or something, planted a seed of concern in her brain.

She had a fear. Someone could have stolen her kid's coffin, leaving her kid wet and cold beneath the earth. Never mind the coffin wasn't heated, so the complaint should have been simply "wet", or, "damn, it used to be just cold in here, but now I'm cold AND wet...and dirty..." , the fear was there, and wet and cold would have been the complaints.

Good thing I'm not buried, because I'd complain about everything. "Damn maggots eating my brain... Can't scratch my back... I'm hungry... Dark in here..." I'd be someone else's worse nightmare. They'd dig me up and kill me again to shut me up. But enough about me.


She worried. Over time, it festered and grew, reflected in the ever worsening spiral nightmares, until action was required to fix it, and it confirmed her worst fear.

fancy burials are for the ones alive, the dead don't know
stick me in a recycled amazon box and incinerate the box with me in it.

In my lawyer days, I once handled a case involving crematoriums and improper handling of corpses. To some people in the funeral trade, the body of your loved one is nothing at all.

This. Work around corpses for 40 years, and they can become nothing more than a source of making money from the family, legit or not.

It is just money.

Remember this very well. Lots of hurting and pizzed off people after discovering their loved ones were not where they thought or had not been buried at all.
Slimeballs in every area of life. These dirtballs are only exceeded by those who steal from churches & the infirm. If I were a believer, I would expect that a "special" corner of hell is reserved for them.

My father was a French polisher by trade. He was also an accomplished wood carver. Worked at a funeral home and actually made caskets for some time. He'd finish his caskets to perfection. If he made a casket for a child, he would hand carve their name into the wood. He would also carve the child's favorite animal into the lid. He always said back then that grave robbers were alive and well. He said they would generally pick Italian graves, as the women were often buried with all their jewellery. So not surprised by this at all.

Is your father still with us? He sounds like a good bloke.

A lot of graves in the Catholic section, West Terrace cemetery were robbed back in the 70s and 80s.

One of my buddies grew up in a house next door to a family owned funeral home, much like the HBO series 6 feet under. Of course it was not nearly as nuts as the TV show. He was over there all the time since he was the same age as one of the sons of the funeral family.

My buddies first job was driving a hearse and picking up bodies to bring back to the funeral home. He said at first it was creepy, then it became just a job.

This is a nice case of an unquantifiable reality...

A lot of supposition on this one from the peanut gallery.

The theft is another matter...File a police report and see an attorney to sue everyone in sight.. go to the media on this one.. create a bigger stink than a dead body rotting n the noon day sun. fk em..

People working in the HC industry can not be emotionally involved with all the patients or they would be emotional wrecks.. They have to have some sort of emotional detachment..to all the death and misery that they see.

At the same time, if you were a parent and this was for your deceased child, you may really not want that event to be your primary focus and constantly discussed for the months that it would take to sue someone.

this is a cold case.......

as it happened 20yrs ago ;)

Just like you are guessing. No doubt if the family has deep pockets and a very thick skin they can sue. All they can really do is question the reputation of the of the funeral home. They were likely sold long ago and are now part of the mega large funeral home businesses.

https://247wallst.com/investing/2011/01/13/the-ten-companies-that-control-the-death-industry/

Those companies likely will fight and drag out any lawsuit for decades.

Sadly not. Died a long time ago. He retired due to cancer. When he was a couple of months from death, he went back to the funeral home and made his own casket. He didn't want to the other guys he'd spent years with getting upset while making it. He also made my mothers casket. I was a kid. I do remember it was white with hand carved and painted red roses. As I got older I imagined how hard it must have been for him to make that casket a few weeks before her death. Makes me tear up every time I think about it.
Yep...it was the late 70's, early 80's. Cheltenham Cemetery also used to get robbers back then as well. Dad used to say they'd pinch the really large headstones, and then run them through a machine and take off the engravings. They'd then have a nice clean piece of marble or granite to start again.

Just an aside. Quiet possibly one of the best things my dad did for me was calling me into his work one day. I'd just got my learners permit so I caught the bus. He said I could drive home. When I got there, he said "come with me". We went into the cold room. I was really freaked out. He called me over to a body with a sheet over it. He pulled the sheet back. It was a kid slightly older than me. Driving to fast and hit a tree. Killed instantly. I can still see that poor boys face even today. But it worked. I never really drove like an idiot. He had the families blessing to show me their broken son. I didn't know him but out of respect I attended his funeral. The devastation on his family was the thing that struck me most.