Hey, y’all, it’s Weird Wednesday! Where on some Wednesdays, I blog about weird stuff and give writing prompts.

Today: Corpse Roads and Coffin Stones

Welcome to Weird Wednesday! Today we’re wandering weird roads that go to graveyards. Sound fun? Let’s go!

Corpse roads are paths over which one carries a coffin to its final resting place. Like crossroads, corpse roads are physical places with metaphysical properties, according to folklore. Such pathways are found all over the world, but the origin of corpse roads in Great Britain is a little more political than you might expect.

Back in late medieval times, the population was growing, so people were building new churches and their associated graveyards. Some established churches insisted that new outlying churches were under their spiritual (and financial) control. Thus, they had to use the graveyards of the mother church, even though they were sometimes quite a distance away.

So how to get the dearly departed to their final destination? Unless you had money for transportation, you and a few friends had to carry the coffin. Thus, paths sprung up between far flung churches and central cemeteries. These paths were called corpse roads, funeral roads, coffin walks, lych ways (lych or lich is a Germanic word for corpse), and other similar names. Eventually, the outlying churches did break away and make their own cemeteries, so corpse roads ceased to be used, though some are still preserved today as footpaths.

Often, corpse roads were as straight as possible through rough terrain, because, well, coffins are pretty heavy. In fact, sometimes large stones along the way were used as places to rest the dearly deceased for a while. These are called “coffin stones.”

But there may have been other reasons for straight roads and resting stones. 

Check out the blog post for the whole story and some writing prompts, such as:

The long and winding road. Not all stories about a corpse road have to be creepy. You could have a family drama that takes place in one scene: the hours-long journey over a corpse road. Let the reader glean the family’s backstory: its loves, arguments, history, and future. All crystalized around the death of someone central to the family, and the difficult march where they share the burden of carrying the coffin.

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ The Vampire Haven erotic romance series ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

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This month in 1906 the E.F. Benson story The Bus-Conductor was published in Pall Mall Magazine. It’s one of the earliest appearances of the urban legend Room For One More?

The story goes like this: a traveler is staying the night at a friend’s house. Shortly after midnight, a sound from outside brings them to the window. On the driveway below, the traveler sees a hearse pull up. There is no coffin inside, but instead a group of living people. The hearse driver, a man with a sinister appearance, looks up at the traveler in the window and says, “There’s room for one more.”

Shaken, the traveler returns to bed, and in the morning, dismisses the creepy encounter as a dream. But later that day the traveler goes to board a bus, and finds the driver looks exactly like the hearse-driver from the night before. And he repeats his invitation— “There’s room for one more.” 

Terrified, the traveler backs away from the bus, letting it leave without them. A moment later, a truck slams into the bus, killing everyone on board.

Read all about it on my blog, and get writing prompts, such as:

Let’s talk about the driver. Who is this creepy dude? Is he a real person who is doomed along with his fellow travelers? Or maybe he’s a psychopomp (I love that word so much), who is there to guide his passengers to the Other Side. Maybe he’s a man under a bad luck curse, who really should not be getting onto crowded elevators, or a murderous bus driver who wants to cause a crash. Maybe the storyteller is the only one who sees him—if so, why are they lucky enough to get a warning?

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ The Vampire Haven erotic romance series ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers