Chase Mausoleum and Christ Church Graveyard
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The graveyard of Christ Church, Barbados boasts a huge, underground vault built entirely of large blocks of white coral, with a heavy, marble door. It dates back to the beginning of the 18th Century, when it was built by the Waldron family, wealthy owners of a sugar plantation. Records suggest that James Elliott, the husband of one of the Waldron daughters, was buried there in 1724, though when the tomb was opened in 1807 to admit the coffin of Thomasina Goddard, it was found to be empty. The following year, the Chase family bought the coral crypt and buried two-year-old Mary Anna Maria Chase there. Dorcas Chase, her older sister, followed her in 1812, amid rumours that she had died of self-starvation brought on by the stress inflicted on her by a cruel father. A mere month later the father of the family also died, and at his funeral, the pallbearers were shocked to discover that the younger sister's coffin was lying, face down, in the opposite corner of the crypt to which it had been placed. The coffins were placed in a dignified arrangement and the blame was placed on the shoulders of the father's servants, as it was assumed that they would have wanted to take revenge on him for his cruelty to them. Four years later, the funeral of an eleven-month-old Chase baby revealed that the coffins in the mausoleum had been scattered chaotically across its interior with considerable violence - enough to shatter one of them, which was made of wood. The same happened in 1819 and 1820, despite the fact that the tomb's structure was carefully checked on each occasion and white sand was scattered on the floor at the penultimate interment there, only to prove free of footprints at the final funeral, when the six coffins inside were found broken, spread about and even balanced against the walls. The mausoleum is no longer in use and stands empty - an unsolved mystery and a local legend.
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