The Floating Dead

Interesting news story about coffins washed out of their crypts in Louisiana:

In Louisiana, the dead float and the living must chase after their fleeing coffins.

Or at least that's what happened at one Baptist cemetery in the tiny parish of West Feliciana north of Baton Rouge.

Raging flood waters on Tuesday swept through a church burial plot and lifted the heavy stone lids on several crypts and washed one casket several hundred feet down stream.

In parts of Louisiana, the water table is so high that coffins cannot be buried six feet under the ground. Coffins were known to burst back through the ground after it stormed and the ground water rose.

Instead, Louisianans long ago took to entombing their dead in crypts and mausoleums above ground, which protected them from the water beneath the surface.

Unfortunately, as the floating coffin at the Magnolia Baptist Church cemetery proved -- it makes the coffins vulnerable to floods.