The lady in the coffin

By Chanuga Rollins

Three days before Halloween two friends and I were heading home from an evening of prowling the streets, at 14 years old I had a nine-o-clock curfew, and it was already half past eight.   

On our way home we had to pass Hornet’s Funeral Parlor, the funeral home was a mansion built in the late 1800s. As we were passing the funeral parlor we could hear screams coming from inside. Next, we saw a rush of people climbing over one another trying to get out of the funeral home, they were even climbing out of the ground-floor windows.

Next came the police, a few ambulances, and a fire truck… With the ongoing chaos, the guys and I started conversing with one of the men who ran out of the funeral parlor. This man told us that the deceased was an old woman and that she sat up in the coffin, we couldn’t believe what this guy was telling us. He also mentioned that an elderly woman was kneeling when the deceased moved.

Weeks later I read in the newspapers that Hornet’s Funeral home was being sued for negligence and a few other things, that old woman who was kneeling when the deceased moved died, she had a massive heart attack and died at the scene.

The end