Our last scary passage – we hope you’ve enjoyed this feature! Happy Halloween!

The Resurrection Man* – to use a byname of the period – was not to be deterred by any of the sanctities of customary piety.  It was part of his trade to despise and desecrate the scrolls and trumpets of old tombs, the paths worn by the feet of worshippers and mourners and the offerings and the inscriptions of bereaved affection.  To rustic neighbourhoods, where love is more than commonly tenacious, and where some bonds of blood or fellowship unite the entire society of a parish, the body-snatcher, far from being repelled by natural respect, was attracted by the ease and safety of the task.  To bodies that had been laid in earth, in joyful expectation of a far different awakening, there came that hasty, lamp-lit, terror haunted resurrection of the spade and mattock.  The coffin was forced, the cerements torn, and the melancholy relics, clad in sackcloth, after being rattled for hours on moonless byways, were at length exposed to uttermost indignities before a class of gaping boys.