The Living Dead Woman

In Wytgaard near Leeuwarden in 1762 Mistress Reinou Aukema, a merchant’s wife, young and beautiful, suddenly died. The doctor pronounced her dead, and within two days she was buried with all her gold rings on her fingers — for her husband wished her to go in honour. The gravedigger, a poor man with six children, saw the rings glittering as the lid was nailed down.

That same night the gravedigger went back to the churchyard with a spade and a crowbar. He dug up the coffin, opened the lid, and tried to pull the rings from her fingers. As he gripped the first ring, Mistress Reinou opened her eyes and screamed. Apparent death. The gravedigger fled screaming, leaving coffin, rings and spade behind.

Mistress Reinou rose from the coffin by herself, climbed out of the grave, and walked in her shroud through the night streets of Wytgaard to her own house. Her husband opened the door, fainted, and recovered later. Mistress Reinou lived another twenty-five years.

The gravedigger was found dead the next morning in front of his own door. No wound, no illness — heart-stopped from fright. Mistress Reinou paid his widow a life pension out of gratitude: without his ring-thieving she would have suffocated in her coffin. Since that day, they say in Wytgaard, every Frisian merchant’s wife sleeps with her gold rings on her fingers, but at her death they are first laid for three days on her pillow. For perhaps she is not dead, and may need them still.