Can You Dig It?

premature burials. In the past. For example, we've covered safety coffins built with bells and other mechanisms to let those on the surface know the person below them was not, in fact deceased. We've also told stories of people who were accidentally buried alive and rose from the dead to scare the pants off their living relatives. John McIntyre, however,

is a different kind of burial story entirely. He lived in Edinburgh in the early eighteen hundreds, a time when body snatching was an easy way for ne'er dwells to make the money. People, often men, would dig up freshly deceased bodies and sell them to medical schools which were in desperate need of cadavers for educational purposes. It was a competitive industry and body thieves or resurrection men as they were called, resorted to inventive ways to pilfer corpses

without anyone noticing. For example, one method involved digging a hole about twenty feet away from the grave that was big enough for a person to fit through. The digger would then tunnel his way to the coffin, pry off the foot or the head, and then pull the body through the tunnel to the surface. Once they were out, they would replace the dirts and fill in the hole, and everybody, especially the families of the dead, would still

believe that their loved one was six ft under. Once body snatching became a big enough problem, though, those closest to the deceased would stay in the cemetery before and after the burial to watch over the plot, you know, just in case someone with a shovel happened to be waiting nearby. John McIntyre, however, didn't have anyone watching over him. Around mid April of eighteen twenty four, he had been feeling sick, struggling with a fever and feelings of sluggishness.

Within days, he couldn't lift a finger. The prognosis was grim, and McIntyre didn't see any point in going on, he heard someone crying beside his bed, and then a nurse pronounced him dead. He passed with his eyes still open, having lacked the ability to close them in his final moments. McIntyre's father closed them for him. His home remained open to the public for three days so that friends and

family could pay their final respects. Then, on April fifteenth, he was placed in a coffin and carted to the cemetery, where he was finally laid to rest. Dirt was shoveled back into the grave, filling the hole and covering the coffin for good. At least that was the plan, you see, not long after he'd been buried, McIntyre was exhumed by grave robbers looking for a fast buck. They hauled him

out and sold him to a local anatomy school. He was stripped of his burial clothes and hoisted onto an operating table where a doctor stood over his body, knife in hand. An audience of medical students looked on from the perimeter of the room as the doctor pressed the blade to the man's skin and drew blood. McIntyre, as if freed from the bonds that had rendered him immobile, all this time, sprang to life in front of everyone. People gasped and screamed. The dead had risen before their eyes.

Well sort of. John McIntyre hadn't really been dead. Whatever illness he had nearly succumbed to had simply placed him in a trance. He couldn't lift his arms or move his legs. He couldn't even blink his eyelids. He'd heard the crying at his bedside and the nurse announcing his death. He had heard every person who had come to say goodbye to his corpse. He remembered being placed in the coffin and being lowered into the ground, and he had heard them throwing dirt over his casket, a sound he

described as far more tremendous than thunder. McIntyre had heard and felt nearly everything that had happened to him from the time at which he had died, all the way up until when he finally woke up on the operating table. When the doctors realized that he was still alive, they helped him with all the tools at their disposal, and, according to McIntyre's own account, in the course of an hour,

I was in full possession of all my faculties. It's terrifying to think what might have happened had the body statures not dug him up. How he would have perished alone, trapped below the soil, unable to call out for help. Crime doesn't pay, but every once in a while they can evidently save a life. Most of us are familiar with the seven deadly sins lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride, and the seventh is the one that most people think sits at the root of most evil in

the world. Greed. It can lead to theft and robbery, exploitation, extortion, and even murder. Luckily, for William Schmidt, he didn't have to deal with any of that. All greed did to him was give him one heck of a workout. Born in Rhode Island in the mid eighteen hundreds, William Schmidt sadly grew up to see nearly all of his family wiped out by tuberculosis or consumption as it was called

back then. He decided to try his luck out west, moving to California to prospect for gold in a place aptly named Last Chance Canyon, located in the Mojave Desert among the El Paso mountains. The area yielded exactly what he'd been looking for. In other words, he struck gold. Unfortunately, that wasn't very convenient for him because his mind was on the north side of the mountain, while the smelter

resided on the south. In order to get his gold to the smelter, he had to load up his two burrows with all of the golden supplies and then trek down a hard to navigate path crossing over difficult terrain. So William had an idea. He decided to create a shortcut from his dig site to the smelter by way of a tunnel. Using his hand tools and dynamites, he got to work tunneling his way through the solid granite mountain, which was hard to get through on his own. This

was partly due to his lack of experience. William, you see, wasn't a miner by trade, and he was also just using antiquated tools like simple picks and hammers. Even in nineteen there were modern alternatives that made the act of tunneling through a mountain a little easier. Unfortunately, those tools were out of his price range, so he would chip away at the walls and load up canvas bags with broken pieces of rocks. Once they were full, he would haul them out of the mine and dump them out

before starting again. Eventually, he replaced the bags with the wheelbarrow until he was able to install a mine car on tracks which he actually laid himself. This so called shortcut became his life's work and obsession that even earned him a nickname Burrow. William kept to himself, mostly choosing not to get married or have children. Some say that he remained childless so as to have passing down consumption to his offspring, although it was possible that he simply

was just too busy with his pet project. He spent very little money in the process, choosing to burn cheap twopenny candles instead of kerosene. Each night. When he ripped his clothes, he would patch them with pieces of flour sack. He fixed his shoes with crushed cans. His daily menu was also pretty limited. William didn't eat much more than sardines, rice, and onions, which he cooked on a cast iron stove

in his tiny cabin. He was so frugal, in fact, that he used short fuses on his dynamite to save money. That also meant that when he lit them. He only had seconds to get out of range of the blast. It wasn't uncommon for William to hobble out of the tunnel, bloodied and hurt from falling rocks caused by the explosion. Those who knew him thought that he was suffering from a mental illness, perhaps even a breakdown of some kind. After all, who would subject themselves to such punishment all

to save a few hours on donkey back. But at a certain point it is no longer about making a shortcut. The tunnel became something more. It became a testament to his unbreakable will It became a legacy. In that legacy was put to the test when a road was created between the canyon and Mojave, covering the exact ground William had been trying to bypass with his tunnel, but he didn't let it stop him. He'd already been digging for

twenty years and saw no point in stopping now. He continued to chisel and carve his way through the mountain for another eighteen years. By the time he finished in ninety eight, his tunnel measured half a mile long. He moved nearly six thousand tons of granite by himself, all for nothing. The new road had already given minors easy access to the smelter in the south, but William didn't care. He'd already gone too far to just stop, and after the tunnel was finished, he didn't even end up using

it for himself. He sold the rights to it to another minor. Was it the best use of his time and energy? Probably not, but that doesn't mean it wasn't curious. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership

with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.