Trick or treat! Here's a pre Halloween post of a Weekend Cemetery tour we did recently. Have you ever heard the old saying "Loud enough to wake the dead"? This idiom has been around since the mid 1800's, but no one seems to know the exact origin. We experienced that this weekend during a small cemetery tour where they fired a civil war canon at the end of the tour.
There's a few old fables and similar beliefs around canons and dead people. In the book "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", one chapter describes how they were using a canon on a ferry boat attempting to raise Huck's "dead" body out of the river.
While it is theoretically possible for the concussion of a canon to perhaps loosen a body lightly stuck in the weeds and have it float out, it would not have the effect that some used to believe of bursting the persons gall bladder and causing them to float from the bottom of the lake or pond. It is true that some dead bodies emit gases during the putrification process that could cause a previously sunken body to float. That may be part of the reason that caused propagation of the myth.
**No bodies were raised during the firing of this canon. Although maybe later.... check your doors.
This is the signage to the cemetery entrance. The cemetery was built near a small church sometime in the 1800's. The church was later moved to a different location to preserve the original building.
There are at multiple confederate (southern) soldiers buried on the site. These brick tombs have a different story. Apparently the family, especially the mother had a phobia of her face being covered by dirt, so the family was entombed above ground inside these small brick and mortar enclosures.
The old hickory trees with the spanish moss hanging down provide an even spookier feel at night.
And then of course there was the canon. Who doesn't love a canon? As the second picture shows, they fired the canon. And Yes, it was loud enough to wake the dead! I just hope none of them followed us home.
