The Coffin Story and the Lobotomist

It is definitely true that the truth can be - and often is - stranger than fiction. It can also be creepier than fiction. Take tonight, for example. It is 10:30 p.m. and I should be in bed, nodding off to sleep. Yet I can't sleep because I can't get the images out of my mind of the coffin story and the lobotomist. It should be Halloween, then all this would be so apropos.

I never thought I would hear such a gruesome true story tonight at a surprise birthday party of all things. We are all antiques dealers in the same co-op, so I guess it is not surprising that a tale of an antique coffin containing a murdered woman would come up. I just wish it had been at a time when I wasn't around. This is one story I didn't need to hear. I will tell you, though; it makes me glad I have decided to be cremated.

The birthday girl was telling everyone of a stuffed buzzard that she had finally sold after purchasing it a few years before as a gag gift. A few of us got squeamish upon hearing about the stuffed buzzard. (I'm too much of an animal lover to enjoy dead ones-no matter how well preserved). The conversation took a dark turn when a dealer I don't personally know piped up and said, "That's nothing. I sold a coffin with a skeleton in it seven years ago".

Supposedly this skeleton was that of a young woman who was murdered at the turn of the century. He did not know how, but her coffin ended up in the medical department of an undisclosed Ivy League school. He did not know how long the coffin and victim were on campus until they were stolen by a fraternity. They had been using her ornate Victorian coffin as a coffee table. The things they had done with her skeleton were despicable. We were all looking at this antiques dealer with disgust, but he is convinced that he did the right thing by taking her off the fraternity's hands.

He said he ended up selling her and her coffin the morning before an antiques show down in New York City. The guy who bought her paid around $2700. I didn't have much of an appetite at dinner. I kept thinking about this poor soul who had been murdered, laid to rest and then disturbed and dug up, sold to a medical school, stolen by a fraternity, defiled, and then sold again. Probably to some creep with a fetish. If ever a haunting was deserved or invoked, this was a case.

My dinner didn't go down to easily. I kept thinking how awful it would be to have that happen to me when I died. I wouldn't wish that set of circumstances on anybody! That poor woman was murdered as it was and couldn't even find peace after death. How could anyone deserve such awful treatment in life and after death?

I got home and turned on the television. I needed something else to think about. It was 9:45 p.m. - fifteen minutes before the news. I automatically turned to the public television station. I figured I would find something educational to focus on. I have a hard time with most of the new programs on television today because I always feel stupid after watching them, sort of along the "killing brain cells" theory of drinking too much alcohol.

You guessed it. The public television show about the life and times of Dr. Walter Freeman, the neurosurgeon that perfected the lobotomy here in the United States. He performed over 2,900 lobotomies in his lifetime! The pictures of neglected mental hospital patients were even more disturbing. (Look up The Lobotomist on Pbs.org if you want to see this disturbing documentary for yourself).

Thoughts and images of the coffin story and the lobotomist will probably keep me up or cause me to have nightmares all night. And this is the first time I have heard either story. Sadly, I can guarantee it will not be the last time I will be disturbed by them.