The Gift Exchange

I was reading an article the other night about an urban legend that was actually true, and how from it arose an expression we still use today. The urban legend goes like this: Some poor soul has been pronounced dead and has been laid to rest in a coffin even though he is actually still alive. Later on during an exhumation, there are scratch marks found inside the coffin lid as well as other desperate signs of someone trying to escape. Creepy huh?

Apparently it happened so often back in the days of yore, that an invention called the “safety coffin” was offered to those wealthy enough to afford one. It allowed the person inside the coffin to pull a string that was fed through a long tube up to the surface of the ground, and ring a small bell that was attached on the other end. It signaled to the outside world that someone was buried alive, and hopefully a rescue would follow. Thus the expression “saved by the bell” was born. Fascinating stuff! Do you know of any urban legends that turned out to be true?

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.