The Virginian

Singular effect of fright—We have heard of many instances wherein fright, it is said, has produced very strange effects upon the human system—The following anecdote we give from the authority of a highly respectable medical gentleman resident in London. At the time of the funeral of his late Royal Highness the Duke of York, a gentleman well known to his acquaintance, whose name we withhold, lest it should wound the feelings of his friends, was present at Windsor, where the interment had taken place, and busily engaged in copying inscriptions from various monuments. While thus engaged and absorbed in his employment at night, he heard the door of the cemetery close with a deep, dull sound, the turning of the key in the lock, and he remained petrified by the knowledge of his situation, entombed like the dead, but without the power to pull up the trap which was soon extinguished by the noisome damp, and imagining that the cemetery would not be re-opened until the royal interment should take place: and that he must soon be hemmed in with the dead.—He swooned, and remained senseless for some time.

At length recovering himself, he rose upon his knees, laid his hand upon a mouldering coffin, and to use his own words, 'felt strength to pray.' A recollection had darted across his mind, that he had heard the workmen say, that early next morning they should visit the cemetery, and take away some planes, which they left there. This idea called up his spirits. Soon after 12 o'clock he heard the door turn upon their grating hinges; he called for assistance, but was soon conveyed to the region of day. His clothes were sodden and a horrible dew hung on his hair, which in the course of half an hour turned from black to grey, and soon after to white. The pains which he felt in the skull during the period of his incarceration he described to our informant as most acute. This is perhaps the most authenticated account on record of a man's hair turning grey from fright.

Macclesfield Courier.