A friend posted a most unusual photo on Facebook today: it’s a gravesite in a cemetery, but in front of the headstone, there’s an iron “cage” of sorts. The cage is sunken into the ground on all sides, and through the iron straps, you can see where grass has been growing, protected from mowing for many years.

Accompanying the photo is the caption, “I’d like to know the back story….”

I very much wanted to make a joke about it being the burial site of a vampire, zombie, or other undead creature, but I was curious and started googling.

This appears to be a mortsafe. Basically, a cage intended to make it difficult for anyone who might try to disturb the grave (apparently there was a lively trade in corpses for sale to medical schools). Normally, they were only left in place for six to eight weeks until the body had decomposed and would no longer be in a state to be saleable. This one appears to have been left longer.

Probably because that’s where they buried a vampire, zombie, or other undead creature.