The Graveyard Wager (Elizabeth Gaspard)

## Legend Summary

A group of girls were having a slumber party and at night they decided to share some ghost stories they knew. One of the girls claimed to have heard there was a man who died earlier in the week and had been buried alive in the graveyard down the street. She had said if you went up to his grave sight and tried, you could still hear him scratching on the lid of the coffin. The other girls did not believe it and told her she would’ve done it. She had first said she was too scared to do it that night, but after a lot of peer pressure she finally gave in. Since she was going alone and had to prove to the others she went, she was supposed to take a stake with her and stick it in the ground by the grave sight so the next day the girls could drive by and see she actually did it. She headed to the grave sight, stake in her hand, but never returned. Her friends at the sleepover assumed she “chickened out” and had just gone home scared. The next morning when the girls went to see if the steak was by the grave they saw her at the old man’s grave. She had accidentally staked her nightshirt to the ground and when she tried to run from the grave and couldn’t, she died of fright (Storyteller).

## Legend History

This urban legend varies widely from storytelling to story telling, but the basic story remains the same. An old man in a grave who supposedly won’t stay dead, a dare to go up to the man’s grave is given to a person who everyone knows will not go, and she stakes her clothing down and dies of fright. This story goes as far back as the European Middle Ages. The first story was in 1947 when it was in a comic book. The name of the story was called “New Kind of Murder” (Chapman).

## Adaptation of the Legend

There are two good adaptations to this legend. One of them being about a girl named Sue who lived on the edge of the graveyard that the angry man had been buried in. The girls at her school swore he was so mean that nothing could keep him down, even death. They told Sue that if you went up to his grave at midnight, the old man would reach up out of the grave and grab your ankle. They mainly teased her knowing she would never do it. Eventually the teasing got out of hand and she agreed to sneak out of the house one night while it was dark to do the dare since she lived so close to the graveyard. At midnight she was to go to the grave and leave a knife in the ground to prove that she went. Knowing that she was backed into a corner, Sue waited on a moonless night and snuck out among the graves, clutching the steak knife. As she was walking among the graces growing bolder and bolder, she finally found the old man’s grave. She saw nothing wrong so she knelt down and put the knife into the soft ground. However, Sue was in shock when she turned around and felt something clutching her down to the grave. Struggling to get up and run, she realized she was trapped and became so frightened she literally died of fright. When her friends went to see if the knife was by the grave, they saw a sad sight. Sue was lying dead, her skirt pinned to the grave by a steak knife (Katie and Katie). The second adaptation was a story called “New Kind of Murder”, a comic book based on “The Graveyard Wager”. To prove his bravery, a man agrees to drive a stake into a certain grave at midnight. He died of fright after unknowingly driving the stake through his own coat (Chapman).

## Analysis of Adaptations

The adaptation to the legend changes that instead of girls having a sleepover and sharing ghost stories, they told us a girl named Sue lived close to a graveyard a mean man in their town was supposedly buried alive at and a man who just wanted to prove his bravery.  Also, in the original, this story happened within a night, but the adapted version happened throughout a few days. The rumor of what the dead man would do at the grave was different too. In the original, all you would do was hear him scratching on the top of his coffin, but in the second version the old man would come up from the ground and grab your ankle. Another small detail that was different was in the original the girl used a stake to prove she went, but in the second they used a knife. I think they created this version of the legend to make it more modern. They mentioned school, they added that the old man would actually come out and grab them, and instead of a wooden stake they included a kitchen knife.

## Works Cited

1. Chapman, Brian. The Graveyard Wager (Comic Book Variant, 1947), legendsrumors.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-graveyard-wager-comic-book-variant.html. Accessed 11 Oct. 2023.
2. Katie, and Katie. “Graveyard Wager.” Horrific Knits, 2014, redcrowgreencrow.wordpress.com/tag/graveyard-wager/.
3. Storyteller. “The Graveyard Wager.” Urban Legends Online, 16 Feb. 2010, urbanlegendsonline.com/the-graveyard-wager/.