What would you think if someone ordered a coffin…with locks on the inside?

That chilling idea lies at the heart of a forgotten 1860 Gothic tale called “A Musical Mystery,” published in The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine. It’s a story that would strike fear in any Victorian reader.

A Stranger’s Peculiar Request

The story opens in the showroom of an undertaker’s shop. A group of young men sit around a stove, smoking their pipes and chatting among rows of gleaming coffins.

Their conversation is interrupted when a tall, corpse-like stranger walks in and calmly asks for a coffin, one fitted specifically for his body. Not only that, he wants it to look like a cello case and be equipped with a lock on the inside. Because, he says, he was once buried alive.

Buried Alive: A Realistic Victorian Fear

This story was published only a few years after a deadly cholera epidemic. Cholera could kill within hours, and many victims were mistakenly pronounced dead and buried quickly to prevent spreading disease. Victorian newspapers frequently reported cases of coffins discovered overturned from the inside.

So when the stranger says he has been buried alive once already, Victorian readers would have felt a very real shudder.

The Grim Reality of Victorian Graveyards

After delivering the bizarre coffin, the undertaker follows the stranger to a crypt in the town cemetery. In the 1860s, burials were often shallow, and coffins could burst open from internal pressure of gasses in decomposing bodies. Bones were even sometimes visible near the ground’s surface.

Inside the crypt, the undertaker hears something impossible: a full orchestra tuning somewhere underground. Among the eerie murmurs of violins and flutes, one instrument rises above the rest — a double bass, groaning out a sorrowful melody.

And when he calls out, the cello-shaped coffin slams shut with supernatural force. Then cracking wood and blinding light tears the crypt to pieces.

Whether the stranger is a ghost, a cursed musician, or something else entirely, the story leaves the questions unanswered.

Want More Forgotten Gothic Tales?

I’m starting a new series exploring lost Gothic tales from Victorian magazines — the strange, the sensational, the supernatural, and the beautifully absurd.

If you’d like more stories like this uncovered and explained, make sure to follow me on TikTok and subscribe to my newsletter.

And tell me below: Have you ever read a coffin story quite like this one?