Chase Vault

According to the story, each time the heavily sealed marble vault had been opened for the burial of a family member including 1808, twice in 1812 and in 1816 and 1819, all of the lead coffins had changed position.

The vault was then regularly closed; the door (a massive stone which required six or seven men to move) was cemented by masons; and though the floor was of sand there were no marks of footsteps or water.

Was it an earthquake which occasioned it, or the effects of an inundation in the vault?Different versions of the story appeared over the years, with other accounts published in 1844 and 1860.

[4] According to author Jerome Clark, the story of the Chase Vault appears to originate from anecdotes told by Thomas H. Orderson, Rector of Christ Church during the 1800s.

[6] After combing through existing documentation to determine the veracity of the Chase Vault stories, Lang reported that he could find nothing to substantiate them, either in the burial register of Christ Church or in contemporary newspapers on Barbados, aside from an "unpublished firsthand account" by a Nathan Lucas, who claimed to be present at the opening of the vault in April 1820.

Examining the interior of the vault in 2019, Radford observed that the bricks were intact, showing no damage from lead-lined, moving coffins.