Lived Once, Buried Twice

2020-10-16 18:46:00 Written by Legends of Margorie McCall

Margorie McCall

Lived Once, Buried twice!!

After succumbing to a fever of an unknown origin in 1705, Irish woman Margorie McCall of Lurgan, was rapidly buried to avoid the spread of whatever infection had killed her.

Margorie was buried with a precious ring, which her spouse and many mourners at her wake had been unable to remove from her finger, due to the fact it had swollen significantly since she had passed away. This made her an even better prey for body snatchers, who could cash in on both the carcass and the ring, and news that she had been laid to rest with her costly gold wedding ring had become known to some regional body snatchers.

 

Wake up

 

After the wake which was traditionally a try to prevent sudden burial as the family of the deceased would sit and watch over the body for a few days to see if the person waked up, Marjorie was buried in Shankill Graveyard.

The evening after she was laid to rest before the soil had even settled, the grave-robbers showed up and started digging, working under cover of dusk they wrestled in the mud until they entered and opened her coffin. True to the rumour, the ring was still on her finger. Before eliminating the body, they tried to remove the expensive ring, but it wouldn't budge. Determined to avoid the ring making its way to the surgeon's table, and since she couldn't get any deader, they agreed to cut off her finger to free the ring. As soon as blood was drawn, Margorie waked up from her coma, sat straight up and cried like a banshee.


What  happened next

 

The fortune of the grave-robbers stays unknown. One story says the men dropped dead on the place, while another claims they disappeared for their lives and never returned to their selected profession.

Margorie climbed out of the hole and made her way back to her home. Her husband John, a doctor, was at home with the children when he listened to a knock at the door.

He told the children, “If your mother were still alive, I’d swear that was her knock.”

When he opened the door to find his wife standing there, outfitted in her funeral clothes, blood flowing from her finger but very much alive, he fell dead to the ground.

Happiness and sorrow in equal measure for the rest of the family. Margorie alive and fairly well, but John deader than Margorie ever was. He was laid to rest in the plot Margorie had recently vacated.

 

 Death

Margorie went on to re-marry and have many children.

When she did eventually die, she was returned to Shankill Cemetery in Lurgan, Ireland, where her gravestone still stands.

It bears the caption “Lived Once, Buried Twice.”