9. Margorie McCall
Possibly the most dubious story on the list is an Irish folk tale dating from the 18th century, albeit one the good folk of Ireland swear is based on fact, so we’ll treat it as such. It concerns a wealthy landowner named Margorie McCall, who died from a fever. She was hastily buried in the local ceremony, to the extent that her fingers were still swollen when her distraught husband tried to remove her wedding ring. Foiled, the funeral was completed and Margorie laid to rest – for a while. Local grave-robbers, circling like vultures around a fresh, rich corpse, dug her up and stared to remove her ring by cutting off her finger.
Unfortunately, as the story goes, poor Margorie was slightly less than dead and woke up mid-cut. Her hysterical screaming scared off the robbers, as you’d imagine and alerted her husband. Sadly for Mr. McCall, the sight of his ‘dead’ wife running towards him, dripping blood gave his heart such a jolt that he dropped dead on the spot. The Irish are anything but wastrels – Margorie used her own shallow grave to bury her husband.
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