Marvel at the coffins that know how to run

Nearly three centuries have passed, the mysterious story surrounding the Chase family's tomb in Barbados remains unanswered. The culprit is said to be groundwater, earthquake, violent thieves or even a mysterious supernatural force.

The coffins know how to run

The Chase family tomb is a building built in the Oistins church cemetery in the Barbados island nation around the 1720s. At first glance, it is a rather modest, semi-submerged structure floating on the ground and nothing stands out from the surrounding tombs. But the mysteries that it has stored for hundreds of years are worth paying attention to.

The coffin knows how to run, the mystery has no solution

Chase's catacombs.
(Photo: pacoblog.over-blog.com)

The first person to " settle down " in the crypt was Thomasina Goddard, who was buried in July 1807, then to Mary Ann Maria Chase, in turn between 1808 and 1812. Until then, Nothing has happened yet. But only a few days later, when the tomb was opened for the fourth time to receive the bodies of the two girls, all the mourners were taken aback because the sisters' small coffins Maria Chase had been removed. removed from the original position. Even her coffin was erected, the head of the dead turned to the ground. Given that there was an intruder, people carried the coffins back to their old places, then used a very large stone to block the entrance to the tomb and sealed them with mortar.

However, in 1819, when the Chase family had people died and the rock at the tomb door was moved to put the body in, the mystery continued. The coffins in the crypt all left their original positions and were in a mess like in a warehouse. Meanwhile, the plaster in the door is still intact, the sand in the tunnel does not have any strange marks and everything is burnt.

And the story is not over yet. Because even though the Chase family members have found every way to protect the family's crypt, every time they bury a loved one, they have to watch the coffins run away from the previous location. they have placed them.

The incident caused a stir in the public opinion that Barbados governor at that time personally came to the site to consider and mount the grave entrance with his seal. A few months later, when I returned, I noticed that there was no unusual expression, the punctuation marks had no trace, the governor assured me to open the crypt door to check. Surprisingly, the situation is still chaotic. Only Thomasina Goddard's decayed wooden coffin is still in place. All the rest were significantly shifted, the stand, the lying, not in any order. No trace, even the smallest, shows an intrusion from outside.

After the event, the Chase family transferred all of their relatives' coffins to other places to be buried. Tombs are abandoned and become a tourist destination so far.

The hypotheses are not convincing

The first hypothesis was thought to have been a deliberately destructive hand of outsiders. The Chase family has many members who are soldiers in the British army, who have been treated by indigenous people as invaders, so it is understandable that someone wants to harass their thousands of years of sleep. But no one has shown any traces showing an intrusion from outside. Moreover, the tomb is located in a position that is easy to observe. After successive strange stories happened, it became the most noted place in Barbados. It was hard for someone to break into without being caught.

Mr. Eric Frank Russell
(Photo: sfhomeworld)

Another theory is that flooded water can push coffins away from their positions. But the tomb is 30 meters above sea level and always dry. So where does the water come from?

There are also people who believe that the cause is seismic . But Barbados is not within active volcanic range. Besides, if earthquakes, why are all the tombs adjacent to them unaffected?

Eric Frank Russell in the book The Greatest Mysteries of the World (1957) argues that the culprit is a magnetic force that causes the coffins of lead to spin around a certain axis. But lead is not the material affected by normal magnetic forces, so this explanation is not convincing. The mystery of running coffers continues to haunt the tourists who visit Chase's catacombs.