Originally published in Terrific Register (Sherwood, Jones, and Co.; 1825).
An intelligent tourist who visited the city of Bremen, in Germany, in 1774, says, there is one peculiarity belonging to this city, of the reality of which nothing but occular demonstration could have convinced me. Under the Cathedral church, is a vaulted apartment, supported on pillars; it is near sixty paces long, and half as many broad. The light and air are constantly admitted into it by three windows, though it is several feet beneath the level of the ground, Here are five large oak coffers, each containing a corpse, which without being embalmed, have suffered no corruption. I examined them severally for near two hours.
The most curious and perfect, is that of a woman. Tradition says, she was an English countess, who dying at Bremen about two hundred and fifty years ago, ordered her body to be placed in this vault uninterred, in the apprehension that her relations would cause it to be brought over to her native country. Though the muscular skin is totally dried in every part, yet so little are the features of the face or skin changed, that nothing is more certain than she was young, and even beautiful. It is a small countenance, sound in its contour: the cartilage of the nose and the nostrils have undergone no alteration: her teeth are all firm in the sockets, but the lips are drawn away from over them. The cheeks are shrunk in, yet less than I ever remember to have seen in embalmed bodies. The hair of her head is more than eighteen inches long, and very thick, and so fast, that I heaved the corpse out of the coffin by it: the colour is a light brown, and as fresh and glossy as that of a living person. That this lady was of high rank seems evident from the extreme fineness of the linen which covers her body; but I in vain endeavoured to procure any light into her history, her title, or any particulars, though I took no little pains for that purpose.
The landlord of the inn, who served as my conductor, said he remembered it for forty years past, during which time there is not the least perceptible alteration in it.
In another coffer is the body of a workman, who is said to have tumbled off the church, and was killed by the fall. His features evince this most forcibly. Extreme agony is marked in them: his mouth is wide open, and his eye-lids the same; the eyes are dried up. His breast is unnaturally distended, and his whole frame betrays a violent death.—A little child who died of the small-pox, is still more remarkable. The marks of the pustules, which have broken the skin on his hands and head, are very discernible; and one would suppose, that a body, which died of such a distemper, must contain, in a high degree, the seeds of putrefaction.—The other corpses are likewise very extraordinary.
There are in this vault, likewise, turkeys, hawks, weasels, and other animals, which have been hung up here, from time immemorial, some very lately, and are all in the most complete preservation, and unaltered in their parts. The cause of this phenomenon is doubtless the dryness of the place where they are laid. It is in vain to seek for any other. The magistrates do not permit any fresh bodies to be brought here, and there is no subterranean chamber which has the same property. It would have made an excellent miracle two or three centuries ago in proper hands; but now mankind are grown too wise.