There is a vault deep in the jungles of Barbados where the coffins refuse to stay put. Today, this mystery vault lies vacant, but it lies vacant for a reason. The vault appears no different from the others that surround it, yet locals tell stories about the coffins the vault once housed. But they were no ordinary coffins. Unknown forces are at work. But why? Just what is going on with these strange coffins? This is the story of a vault like no other…
Deep Inside the Deep Dark Vault
The Chase Family never imagined living beyond death. They emigrated to what was then the West Indies (now Barbados) from England in the 18th century. They built a family vault in 1724, which I must say, would have proved a popular Christmas gift for the children.
As members of the family died of natural causes, they began to be interred in the vault. It was semi-submerged and made of massive blocks of stone quarried from the local coral and cemented together so firmly it looked as if it were hewn out of solid rock.
As Sir Algernon Edward Aspinall wrote in 1915:
‘[The entrance is sealed with] a ponderous slab of blue Devonshire marble, which, when removed, reveals many steps leading down the vault proper.’
The walls of the vault slop inwards to create an arched roof over the 12-foot long by six-and-a-half-foot wide space. The first internment happened in 1808, Mary Anna Chase. She died in infancy. Her body was placed in a lead coffin and placed inside the vault.
Her sister, Dorcas, soon joined her sister in 1812, alongside a woman named Mrs Goddard. Mary and Dorcas’s father, Thomas, was interred a year later. At first, there was nothing out of the ordinary.
But when that Devonshire blue marble stone was removed from the vault’s entrance to place Thomas’s coffin inside the vault, the undertakers were met with a shocking scene.
The coffins had come to life…
The Mayhem of Coffins
There were six caskets in the vault. But when the undertakers came to inter Thomas, all six caskets were strewn about in disarray. All the coffins were ‘violently disturbed’. James Edward Alexander described the coffins as ‘confused’ and:
“Apparently tossed from their places.”
It wasn’t the work of thieves. The entrance stone had not been moved and no valuable items were taken. The undertakers, and the family, were confused. Nevertheless, they restacked the coffins neatly and made sure to reseal the vault even better than before.
Now the entrance to the vault required heavy tools and lots of manpower to breach. Simply put, it was impenetrable.
Or so they thought…
The vault was opened again in 1816 and once more, the coffins were everywhere. They had been tossed like ragdolls but once again, there was no evidence of thieves and nothing else was untoward.
In fact, it took the undertakers more than eight hours to break through the seal of the vault. If this was the work of robbers, how could they have done this in the dead of night with no one noticing?
Once more, the coffins were restacked and left neatly in place. But when the vault was opened again in 1819, once more, the coffins were everywhere. The Chase family were baffled. As were the authorities.
But they had a secret weapon: night watchmen. And what they heard chilled them to the bone…
The Baffling Case of the Dancing Caskets
In the early 1820s, night watchmen were on guard near the vault when they heard a noise. And that noise was no ordinary noise. That noise was coming from the infamous Chase vault. And what was that mysterious noise?
Scrapping sounds. As if something trapped inside was trying to get out…
Violating every rule of every horror movie, they went to investigate and there they saw… nothing. No intruders. No evidence of tampering. No evidence of thieves. Everything was just as it was only minutes earlier when they had walked by the vault.
And that strange sound stopped.
Lord Combermere ordered the vault to be opened. And yes, you guessed correctly, the coffins were askew, scattered like ashes. In fact, every time they put the coffins back, neatly stacked, only to open the vault later, the coffins were always in disarray, like a deck of cards tossed onto a table.
The authorities suspected vandals. And so they did everything they could to stop the tampering. A thicker, more impenetrable entrance door. Fine sand was laid around and inside the vault to show any footprints. They even placed a thick layer of cement around the edge of the entrance slab, making it IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to breach the vault.
And yet, not long after these measures were implemented, a new internment at the vault found, once more, the coffins awry. And as for the sand? Not a single footprint. Of course, this could just mean a burglar armed with a rake showed up…
The authorities had had enough. The Governor of Barbados, a friend of the Chase family, ordered the vault to be unsealed. And yes, the caskets were all over the place, once more. He directed that all the coffins be interred in various locations across the cemetery.
And with that, the vault was left empty and abandoned, now still there, all these years later, open to the elements but its secrets still locked inside…
The Scramble to Unearth the Truth
A few of the locals suspected this was the work of the supernatural. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle proposed that the ‘restless spirits’ of Dorcas and Thomas wrought havoc in the vault because they committed suicide.
Researchers have spent more than 200 years trying to figure out just what happened in the Chase vault. The work of earthquakes seems like an obvious solution, but it was not the work of earthquakes. There weren’t any in Barbados at the time. And if this was the work of earthquakes, then these earthquakes would have had to have been substantial.
Other researchers believe that water is to blame. Because the coffins are airtight, they may have floated during times when the semi-submerged vault filled with water and ended up scattered. But again, nobody has found any evidence to prove this theory.
However, the vault likely became flooded with heavy rains, forcing the coffins to drift around. The fact they are made of lead is irrelevant. This theory, however, doesn’t explain how the sand both inside and outside the vault remained undisturbed nor what those strange sounds were.
Researcher Joe Nickell believes the story was made up to serve as an allegory for Freemasons. He bases this theory on the language employed in the earliest known versions of the story, which contain Masonic symbols.
It’s also possible none of this happened. Now, we know the Chase vault exists and there are death records for all those who were interred there. But were they interred in this exact vault?
The story of the vault was first told by the then-rector of the church to which the vault belonged, Thomas Harrison. Perhaps he was prone to a myth or two. The lonely rector wandering his graveyard conjuring stories of the unknown…
The Dazzling Coffins of the Strange Vault
All of the coffins were removed from the vault a long time ago. To this day, the vault stands open, filled with nothing but ghost stories. And with no coffins, the malicious spirits, thieves… or possibly pranksters, no longer have any way to make themselves known.
So does that mean they’re gone?
What are the unknown forces at work? Is it really the supernatural or simple flooding? Perhaps with a Masonic allegory thrown in for good measure? Perhaps. Or perhaps the Chase family had a few secrets of their own, secrets they thought they could take to their graves. But their graves had other ideas.
Just what is going on with these strange coffins? Perhaps we will never know. Or perhaps just before you die, you might want to make sure there is nothing left unsaid…
I give this tale a mark of 1439.74 using my patented Mystery-o-Meter, putting it 6th in the list of 197, between the Mary Celeste and the Serpent of Gloucester, with Lusca bottom and The Buzz of the UVB-76 holding the top spot.
The Moving Coffins of Barbados. A fascinating mystery indeed.
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Post Sources
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-chase-vault-oistins-barbados, https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/creepy-vaults-barbados-coffins-mysteriously-27646413, https://magazine.keycaribe.com/experience/the-mysterious-moving-coffins-of-chase-vault-in-barbados/, https://www.stronghold-nation.com/history/myth/the-moving-coffins-of-barbados, https://barbados.org/chase-vault.htm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Vault#:~:text=The%20last%20time%20the%20vault,island%20has%20this%20ever%20occurred., https://the-line-up.com/chase-vault-moving-coffins-barbados, https://theghostinmymachine.com/2019/08/28/encyclopaedia-of-the-impossible-the-moving-coffins-of-chase-vault-christ-church-oistins-barbados/, https://associationofparanormalstudy.com/2017/05/20/moving-coffins-the-mystery-of-the-chase-vault-in-barbados/, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0015587X.2019.1637561
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