Idle traveling is great, but traveling with a purpose has its definite attractions too. As paranormal fiction writers, whenever we find ourselves in a new locale, we make sure we have time to check out the local paranormal lore.

On a recent trip to Key West, we discovered a mother lode of stories, and also stumbled on the horrific (literally) linguistic history of the phrases “dead ringer” and “saved by the bell.”

First things first. One from the mother lode. Love that transcends death in an unexpectedly physical way.  In Key West, we saw the desiccated but still preserved corpse (well, okay, it was a replica of a corpse, but we didn’t know that at first) of Elena Milagro “Helen” de Hoyos in the local horror history museum. Turns out, Helen was a notorious beauty and had among her ardent suitors Count Carl von Cosel, a military radiologist stationed in Key West, who by the luck of the draw, was treating her for the consumption.

Tragically, she died, young and still beautiful, and this is where the love story gets truly weird. The Count swiped the corpse and (ewwww) lived with it for seven years in his creepy house. Finally, Helen’s sister came calling on her former brother-in-law, and sensing (sniffing?) that something was wrong, found her dead decaying sister hanging out at the dining room table. And yes, it turns out, the Count had been having his nocturnal way with Helen for seven years too.

Our odd-bird Key West tour guide relished telling us the story of Helen the defiled corpse but he liked sharing the history of the phrases mentioned above even more. Apparently, back in the day before embalming and before modern medicine could detect a faint pulse with a bunch of fancy equipment, people were regularly prematurely pronounced dead and buried alive.

The frequency of a bad diagnosis caused those in the 1% back then to invent Rube Goldberg-like contraptions for custom made coffins. If they woke up to find themselves encased in quilted satin six feet under, with their oxygen going down fast, they could pull the string that would ring a bell up on the surface. Hence, the rise of the phrases “saved by the bell” and “dead ringer.”

Do you think those young stars of the hit 1980s sitcom knew that little fact? Maybe that was a different bell.

While we spend time investigating the number of people who were actually saved by the bell from hysterical suffocation six feet under, check out the other ghost story we collected while traveling: Robert the Doll.и продвижения сайтов