The Grave of Doctor Timothy Clark Smith

Most graves in this cemetery look ordinary. One does not. Set into a low mound is a small square of glass, a window looking down into a grave.

It belongs to Doctor Timothy Clark Smith, who died in the late eighteen hundreds. Smith suffered from a very particular terror, the fear of being buried alive, a dread common enough in his century that it had a name. So he arranged his own burial with care.

Accounts say his face was positioned beneath a cement tube that rises from the coffin to that pane of glass at the surface, so that anyone could look in. Stories say he was laid to rest with a bell in his hand and a hammer and chisel on his chest, tools to signal or to dig his way out if he ever woke in the dark. The glass is clouded now, but visitors still stop and peer down.