Three Knocks On The Tomb

Weary men, what reap ye? Golden corn for the stranger.

What sow ye? Human corpses that wait for the avenger.
Fainting forms, Hunger—stricken, what see you in the offing
Stately ships to bear our food away, amid the stranger's scoffing.
There's a proud array of soldiers—what do they round your door?
They guard our master's granaries from the thin hands of the poor.
Pale mothers, wherefore weeping? 'Would to God that we were dead—
Our children swoon before us, and we cannot give them bread.
~Jane Francesca Elgee

A heavy quiet settled over the little white chapel as six burly morose men slowly made their way to the front of the building. Each felt a deep sadness as they held the pine casket level and steady between them.

None had been coerced to take on this grisly task. It was the very least they could do for someone who had been there for each and every difficult event this harsh land had dealt them.

They had been promised before leaving Ireland they were moving to a prolific land filled with boundless opportunities. They would have a chance to give their families a better life, own a piece of land, form a home with possibility of being successful.

As a result, there had been a deluge of immigrants clamoring for an escape from certain death in Ireland. The homeland was overcome by famine, fathers and mothers helpless to save their starving children. Disease had run rampant. Millions were dying.

Blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during this time of destitution. The impact and human cost was devastating. One-third of Ireland was entirely dependent on the potato for food. Their trials were exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors which were intolerable for many.

Irish Catholics had been prohibited by the penal laws from owning land, from leasing land; from voting, from holding political office; from living in a corporate town or within five miles of a corporate town, from obtaining education, from entering a profession, and from doing many other things that are necessary in order to succeed and prosper in life. So the axiom "land of milk and honey" seemed to be true to these farmers when Louisiana sugar cane and cotton plantation owners promised them land of their own and a good life across the ocean in exchange for working for them for three to five years.

Avarice of the plantation owners changed the reality of the Irishmen's dreams once they arrived on the shores of this new land.

Paddy O'Reilly arrived exhausted and hungry with great expectations. He and his wife Bridget had lost two bairns in Ireland, but here it would be different.

Bridget's memory raced back to the time of their arrival in the balmy port on the Gulf of Mexico.

The austere surroundings of the tiny cottage seemed filled with hope compared to the environment they had left behind. It was shared with another family due to dire financial need, but cramped was better than what they'd left.

Paddy reached out and gently brushed a tendril of Bridget's hair out of her face.

"Aye, my love, I will take away some of the harshness, the hurt you've endured," he whispered in her ear. "I promise that our own wee ones will not only have a full belly at night, they will have all the toys the privileged do."

"Aye, and I'm thrice blessed to have you as my very own, Paddy O'Reilly, as are our children. We shall work hard and have our own home in a few years."

Bridget found work as a servant cleaning Mr.Godchaux's newly built department store. A rich Frenchman, he also used her services to clean one of his many plantation homes as well. The work was drudgery, but it was a start for them.

Day by day Paddy walked the city looking for work. The plantation wanted him only to do the dangerous work of digging ditches or work on the canal. The plantation owners didn't want their valuable slaves to be injured or killed. The canal was going to open up trade with cities north of Lake Pontchartrain and the cities on the Gulf of Mexico. As a result they hired the Irish to do these jobs.

Paddy finally got a job digging the canals where many of the Irish immigrants were working on the new basin canal. The work was arduous and low-paying, but was work. Paddy's Irish pride was being trampled upon in the new land just as it had been in the old one. Neither place seemed to be able to provide he and Bridget a good living no matter how earnestly they tried.

Paddy had gone with some of the other workers only yesterday to deliver news to Joseph O'Malley's wife she would not even have a body for burial. An alligator had gotten him while they were digging out one of the swampy areas for the canal that was supposed to be good for everyone. He couldn't see how it was helping the Irish do anything except die.

Death seemed to be all he could find. The famine in Ireland, the alligators, snakes and disease in this land that was their last hope.

Head hung down in desperation, Paddy made his way toward the squalid living quarters he and Bridget had to resort to out of dire poverty. Aye, and my Bridget is a fine bæn. She knows all the right things to say to make me feel I'm still a man, still the head of me own household. She always has a smile for me. Aye, she is as fine a wife as a man could have.

"It will be better, Paddy, you'll see." Bridget rubbed his shoulders and neck. They were so knotted up from sheer hard labor. "I'll dress your foot, my love."

"I'm not knowin' my darlin' how I'll keep on working if my feet rot off. The swamp water is so dirty, so vermin infested. Ya' never know whether the poisonous serpents or the alligators are goin' to get ye. And if they don't the cholera, malaria, or yellow fever will."

"We'll have one another, Paddy. We'll have one another. We were starvin' and dyin' in Ireland with no hope. We may be working for near nothing and bellies aren't full, but we have some hope."

"Aye, one another and hope." Paddy kissed his wife and they clung to one another as they slept fitfully.

Paddy arose the next morning with hopes the future would be brighter if they just kept to it. His step was a little lighter making his way to the canal today. He still had a limp, yet the pain was less.

Today Paddy and fourteen other Irishmen had been chosen to harvest bald cypress trees in the area. These trees would be used in building new houses for the rich citizens. The trees would be cut down and brought to the city near the river by floating them down the canal.

Perhaps this would give him a chance to talk to some of these citizens. Just maybe someone could use him for helping to construct the new homes. This would pay a little more and at least his feet would not rot off from swamp water.

As his mind wandered along this trail of thought, he heard a scream. Turning toward the sound, he saw a tree falling in the opposite direction it was intended to fall. As fast as he could move he raced to shove his buddy out of the way of the falling tree.

Men ran in every direction. Several were caught up in the limbs of the huge tree as it was felled. They began to clamber out of the debris some injured worse than others. Danny Boy O'Sullivan had a broken arm and was moaning loudly. Ryan Smith was helping get a count of the workers when they realized Paddy was not to be found.

The men found Paddy unconscious underneath a huge limb with a ragged, bleeding gash on his head. They could not rouse him.

The doctor came to the small room the O'Reilly's called home. He bled Paddy, stitched up the deep wound on his head and they waited. Gradually, however, Paddy fell into a more and more hopeless state of stupor.

The doctor had done all he could, but Paddy had not awakened. Now Bridget, the six men carrying his coffin, and a host of friends with memories of a man who had helped them all at one time were in the cemetery to lay Paddy's body to rest in one of the above ground tombs New Orleans would become famous for. This would be the burial place for the O'Reilly family for generations to come.

~~~~~~~~~

Emerging from total unconsciousness into the first feeble and indefinite sense of existence, Paddy opened his eyes just a slit. Total darkness. He looked to his left, then his right. It was too much of an effort. He drifted back into a state of unconsciousness.

A sluggish uneasiness clawed at his insides. Paddy had a sense of dull pain. He felt something was very wrong. He always slept on his side, so why was he lying flat of his back. Still in and out of consciousness, he dozed again. He awoke to a ringing his ears; then, after a lapse still longer, a prickling or tingling sensation in the extremities. There was a brief re-sinking into an ethereal state; then a sudden recovery.

Immediately, terror clutched at his intestines. Blood rushed with a swift violence from his temples to his heart. He desperately tried to remember. Where was he? Where had he been? And now a partial and ephemeral success. His memory is regaining strength. He felt he was not awaking from ordinary sleep. And now, at last, he realized he was in a dark blacker than night. His arms were placed uncomfortably, unnaturally over his chest. His head pounded as if a giant were inside his skull with a sledge hammer.
He made an attempt to turn over and realized that he was inside the confines of a small space.

He tried to scream through parched lips. No sound came forth. He swallowed hard and tried again.

"Where am I? Someone. Bridget! Anyone!" Profound utter silence and dark; it is so dark.

Paddy's heart palpitated as he struggled to breath. He couldn't move his arms. He was tightly packed in a wooden box as tight as a...Oh, my God, I am in a coffin! Panic overtook his senses. He remembered the tree falling toward him, but no other thoughts past that.

Surely, he had not been buried alive. Truth was inevitable when the heat became unbearable. He could only be inside a tomb. He kicked as much as he could within the confines of the small space with no results. He kicked and kicked. He reached as far as he could with his hands scratching the wooden box. He slept when he could not move due to exhaustion, only to wake later and try again to escape.


He had no idea of time. How long had he been here? The darkness was such as not to be able to distinguish time. Not a single ray of light entered his present abode. In an instant, he became a man possessed, fighting, kicking, screaming, yet still trapped. One more kick. Paddy felt something give. Hope seeped within his consciousness. He kicked again and the screws holding the coffin together gave way. After what seemed to be an infinite struggle, he was able to slide the top over and get a leg over one side of the casket.

He wretched and went into a fit of dry heaves. The heat was stifling. He reached and felt stone. Stone! He knew he was in an above ground tomb. With a deep shudder he knew he was doomed. Unless he could make someone hear him on the outside there was no hope. With his palm open he hit the side of the concrete structure. Once. Twice. Three times.

Over and over he hit the wall.

~~~~~~~~~~

Bridget worked every day and eventually had her children half grown. She met a good Irish man, rough around the edges, yet gentle. They married and he too died after they had been married five years. The tomb was opened to add another body to the family tomb and it was evident to all present Paddy O'Reilly had been buried alive. His skeleton was found outside the coffin, arm bones and hand resting as he died pounding on the walls of the concrete eternal house.

~~~~~~~~~~

Fast forward to the twentieth century. Halloween night teens trying to out-spook one another go to the cemetery. They have heard all their lives of the tomb so many say they hear what sounds like three knocks from inside. One of the girls claimed to hear it in a nano second and was ready to leave. The boys were a little braver. Some thought they heard it. Some didn't. All were afraid, but would never admit it. They didn't tarry long though.

After much talk of ghosts in the ancient graveyard, paranormal experts were called out by a group in New Orleans to see if anything could be detected. Paranormal equipment was set up and left in the graveyard at the tomb where so many had reported hearing a knocking noise coming from inside.

For two nights the experts themselves stayed all night in the eternal resting place of those departed. None heard more than normal night noises of mice scrambling over and under rustling leaves, an owl's eerie hoot in the distance and even a dog howling, but no knocking on the concrete vault holding the bones of twenty five Irish bones and ash.

The tape that had been left in the area recording for five days was played back and every twelve hours on the minute three distinct knocks could be heard. One. Two. Three. Truth is at times stranger than fiction.


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