The Rise of a Corpse

by Erin Doane, Senior Curator

Autumn is my favorite season with the cooler weather, beautifully changing leaves, warm comforting foods, and, of course, Halloween. While most horror movies are too much for me, I do enjoy reading scary stories. More than ten years ago, I came across an article in the Elmira Telegram published on November 13, 1892. It told the tale of a local undertaker who had a terrifying experience. In the spirit of the season, I will now share that story with you.

Elmira Telegram, November 13, 1892

The article began with the Telegram reporter in conversation with a well-known Elmira undertaker who would only tell his story upon the express condition that he was not named in the article. “The majority of people are inclined to deny or disbelieve supernaturalism, and attribute tales of dead people returning to life as either a fraud or delusion of the nerves,” he said. “I don’t enjoy being called a fool.” With the reporter’s assurance of anonymity, the undertaker launched into his tale.

A few months earlier, the undertaker was called to the Erie Railroad station to collect a body that had been shipped to Elmira. It had been a long, busy day so it was already quite late when he picked up the corpse in his ambulance and brought it to his undertaking rooms. There were two funerals scheduled the next morning and his assistant was tired, so the undertaker sent him home. That was around midnight. Once the assistant had left, the undertaker locked the street doors to his office and went about preparing the newly-arrive body for burial. At this point in the article, he made sure to let the reporter know that he was not superstitious and had “not the least particle of dread of a corpse.” He went so far as to tell about the finely polished skeleton he kept in his own bedroom. He said he would often pat its bony skull or shake its fleshless hand, thus proving that he was not at all afraid of the dead. 

Continuing the tale, the undertaker said he removed the body from the casket and laid it upon the preparation table. The corpse was in rough shape and he thought he “detected the effluvia of decay” as he unwrapped its shroud. He washed the body then took his trocar needle and began injecting embalming fluid into the cadaver. He explained that there is a vessel that “if rightly touched will raise the sunken eyes or cheeks to their normal fullness” so that the individual would look as they did before sickness and death. 

Just as the undertake inserted the needle into the corpse’s face near its eye, it suddenly sat up! “It seemed to me as the flash of an electric current, the body raised up in a sitting posture, throwing me back by the contact and driving the needle far into the eye socket.” At the same time, the deceased’s lips twitched and it let out a breathy, unintelligible sound. “To say that for once in my life I was frightened out of my wits does not fittingly describe the situation.” He ran out of the operating room and into the office, expecting to be chased by the suddenly-reanimated corpse. 

The undertaker dropped into a chair, feeling terribly weak with great beads of perspiration rolling down his forehead. He was “so wrought up” that when he finally mustered the courage to look back toward the embalming room, he thought he saw the cadaver peeking through the black muslin curtain that covered the door. He rushed to the front door, unlocked it, and ran out to the street in search of a policeman. 

The officer he found thought at first that the undertaker was drunk, but agreed to accompany him back to the undertaking rooms. The two man found the corpse face down on the floor with both hands outstretched. Though the policeman seemed skeptical of the undertaker’s tale, he helped return the body to the operating table. The pair reexamined the body for signs of life and even summoned a nearby doctor who applied his galvanic battery to the corpse to make sure it was indeed deceased. The doctor pronounced the subject “stone dead” and advised the undertaker to take something for his nerves. 

When the undertaker finally returned to his home early that morning, his wife asked if he had been ill. He told her he wasn’t feeling well but didn’t tell her about his terrifying experience as she was “a very nervous woman.” He supposed that no one would believe his story and that he would be “sneered at by all of the jesters in the town,” but he assured the reporter that it actually happened. 

“It will probably remain a fact or phenomenon that cannot be explained,” the undertaker said. “Psychometery, visions, voices, table movements, automatic writing, trance speaking all may be accounted for, but when a dead man rises up and fairly speaks, with a trochar (sic) inserted three inches into his brain, the greatest searcher after psychical knowledge is puzzled.”

The article concludes: “The Telegram reporter shrugged his shoulders and looked around the undertaker’s office to see that no uncanny corpse was about to grab him, and bade the undertaker good-night.”

There were a half dozen undertakers working in Elmira in the early 1890s. Any one of them could have been the source of this chilling tale. We’ll never know. I’m just glad that one of them trusted the Telegram reporter enough to share it.

 

Ghost Walk 2025

Thank you! by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

We want to thank all the volunteers, actors, and guides who helped us put this event on!

Cathleen Koons Wiggs as Julia Reynolds

It takes a dedicated group to make it work and the success shows when we sell out. This is the 19th year we’ve held the Ghost Walk, and over the years it has grown in scope and popularity.

We couldn’t do it without the loyal support of our members and visitors. What started as a humble idea to share local history now brings in over 500 people on 20 tours for a truly unique experience. 

Amanda Bailey as Lucy Diven

Since 2007, despite rain, snow, fog and even moonlight, we have shared nearly 100 different stories from the past. 

Cameron Dumas as Dr. William F. Goodman
David Gang as Dr. Nathaniel R. Seeley

      

And if you like the Ghost Walk, consider joining us for

David Wiggs as Captain R.R. Dumars
Scott Geiss as Henry Dumars

Ghosts in the Museum: Three Weddings and a Funeral on February 7th. Think of it as a Ghost Walk inside the museum. Tickets may be purchased online through our website, and we’re offering a 10% discount on any tickets purchased before December 1, 2025.

Lastly, be sure to catch the special Smithsonian Institute Traveling Exhibition Services exhibit Voices and Votes: Democracy in America at the museum from Oct 3 to Nov 15 at the museum. We have a talk on Tuesday, October 21st by Dr. Lempert on The Voting Rights Act of 1965: Past Present and Future followed by Game Night on October 23rd, an evening of games and conversations connecting to the exhibit. For more details, see our website ChemungValleyMuseum.org and thanks again for your support!

CCHS Archivist Rachel Dworkin

 

Introducing the Chemung County Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection

 By Rachel Dworkin, archivist

The Woman Suffrage Party of Chemung County was established in 1916 with the goal of securing women the vote. It was not the first pro-suffrage organization to be established in Elmira but, thanks to their efforts, it would be the last. In 1917, New York passed a ballot initiative granting women the right to vote. The Woman Suffrage Party played an important role in ensuring that the initiative passed. The group was an important part of our local history and, earlier this year, we received a grant to digitize their records.

Becoming a member in the Woman Suffrage Party was simple. All one had to do was sign their name to the membership slip and donate 25 cents to the cause. The work of the Woman Suffrage Party, however, was anything but simple. During 1917, they met weekly and worked tirelessly to for the cause. Members volunteered as military census takers and Liberty Bond saleswomen, going door-to-door to hundreds of Chemung County homes to do important war work and promote women’s suffrage. They lectured at local churches, clubs, and factories, even bringing in foreign language speakers to speak to different immigrant groups. The club maintained a booth at the Chemung County Fair where they handed out leaflets and free soft drinks. They also hosted market days where they distributed literature and sold flowers, fruit jellies, and cakes to raise money for their efforts. On November 3^rd, three days before the election, they held a rally and downtown parade. On election day, 111 members served as poll watchers.

How do we know about these activities? We were donated the records of the organization by the descendants of the Party’s recording secretary, Mildred Sheely Scharf. The collection includes the minutes from May 11, 1916 through May 17, 1918; programs for events hosted by the Party; handbills; newspaper clippings; correspondence; and pieces of letterhead. And we recently digitized all of it. You can view that collection here: https://nyheritage.org/collections/chemung-county-womens-suffrage-collection

 

First page of the minutes of the Woman Suffrage Party of Chemung County

The collection is hosted by New York Heritage, a collaborative project hosted by the eight of the nine New York Library Councils. The website documents New York state history through maps, yearbooks, directories, photographs, oral histories, and more. These items come from over 430 archives, libraries, and museums across the state, including us! At present, we have 12 different digital collections up on New York Heritage including county atlases, high school yearbooks, city directories, and three different oral history projects. Some of these collections were developed in partnership with the Chemung County Library District and the Corning Museum of Glass. All our various collections are available here: https://nyheritage.org/organizations/chemung-county-historical-society

 This spring, we applied for and received a grant to digitize the Woman Suffrage Party papers, along with other suffrage-related material in our collections including photographs of local suffragists, handbills from earlier suffrage campaigns, and writings for and against by local authors. We will be adding that material to the digital collection over the course of the rest of the year.

The grant was through the South Central Regional Library Council and funded the purchase of a new scanner to replace our old one. Our new scanner is an Epson Perfection V850 Pro. In addition to doing documents, the new scanner has attachments to scan slides, film, and even large-form glass plate negatives. As part of the grant, we are required to digitize and share at least one collection with it each year. We have a lot of options to choose from for our next project. Tell me, gentle reader, which would you prefer: a collection of glass-plate negatives of American LaFrance products from the early 1900s or a collection of film negatives of houses demolished for urban renewal in the 1960s and 70s?

Our new scanner!