Walking through Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery, it is easy to become distracted by the enormous monuments, ancient live oaks, and Spanish moss hanging over the graves. Some monuments are so elaborate that the smaller details around them almost disappear.

That is exactly what can happen at the grave of Charles F. Mills.

His large stone monument immediately draws the eye. But near the ground beside it is a much smaller object that may be far more interesting.

It is a bell.

And according to the history surrounding the Mills grave, that bell had a very specific purpose.

If Charles Mills woke up after being buried, it was supposed to help him tell someone that he was still alive.

A Very Real Fear in the 1800s

Today, the idea of accidentally being declared dead and waking up inside a coffin sounds like the plot of a horror movie.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, however, fear of premature burial became surprisingly widespread. It eventually gained a name: taphophobia, the fear of being buried alive.

Medicine was very different from what it is today. Doctors did not have modern heart monitors, brain scans, or many of the other tools now used to evaluate patients. Stories circulated in newspapers about people supposedly being pronounced dead only to awaken later.

Many of those stories were exaggerated or simply untrue, but the fear they created was genuine.

Even famous people worried about it. George Washington reportedly asked that his body not be placed in a vault until at least three days after his death. Hans Christian Andersen was so concerned about being mistaken for dead that he reportedly kept a note beside his bed saying that he only appeared to be dead.

Inventors soon realized there was a market for solving the problem.

Their solution was the safety coffin.

If You Wake Up, Ring the Bell

Safety coffins came in an astonishing variety of designs.

Some included breathing tubes. Others incorporated flags, escape hatches, spring-loaded lids, or mechanical alarms. More than 30 different safety-coffin designs were patented in Germany alone during the latter half of the 19th century.

One of the simplest ideas involved a bell.

A cord could extend from the person inside the coffin through a pipe leading to the surface. If the supposedly deceased person awakened underground, movement or pulling the cord would ring a bell above the grave.

Someone in the cemetery would hopefully hear it.

The concept wasn’t merely folklore. Inventors actually patented devices built around it. Franz Vester’s 1868 burial-case design, for example, included a tube extending above the grave, a ladder and a cord connected to a bell.

Which brings us back to that little bell in Savannah.

Charles F. Mills’ Grave Bell

Charles F. Mills was a prominent Savannah businessman who operated a line of steamers on the Savannah River and served as president of the Marine Bank of Georgia. He died at age 74 and was buried at Bonaventure Cemetery in April 1876.

Beside his massive monument is a pipe extending only a short distance from the ground.

Sitting on top is the bell.

According to the history of the grave, the bell was part of a system connected by strings or wires to the person inside the burial space. Movement could cause the bell to ring. The pipe also provided a means of supplying fresh air while someone above ground worked to free the unfortunate person below.

There is another detail that makes Mills’ bell particularly unusual.

It may have survived largely because of what it was made from.

Accounts of Bonaventure Cemetery report that grave bells once existed at the graves of a number of the cemetery’s wealthier residents. Many were made from less durable or more readily salvaged metals and eventually disappeared. Mills reportedly insisted upon a bronze bell, and his is described as the last intact grave bell remaining at Bonaventure Cemetery.

More than 150 years later, it is still sitting beside his grave.

Thankfully, there is no indication that Charles Mills ever needed to ring it.

Did These Bells Actually Save Anyone?

Here the story becomes a little less spooky.

Despite all the inventions, patents and fear surrounding premature burial, there is little evidence that safety coffins actually rescued people.

A modern medical review of the history notes that 19th-century safety devices included breathing pipes, bells, alarms, glass lids and escape mechanisms. Yet evidence of widespread accidental burial was far weaker than the frightening stories of the period suggested. One remarkable example comes from waiting mortuaries in Württemberg, where approximately one million bodies reportedly passed through between 1828 and 1849 without a single person awakening.

The bells also had an unfortunate design problem.

Bodies can move during decomposition.

That meant a device intended to announce “I’m alive!” could potentially ring for an entirely different and considerably more unpleasant reason.

As medicine improved and embalming became more common, the great fear of premature burial gradually faded. Doctors became better at recognizing and confirming death, making elaborate safety coffins increasingly unnecessary.

What About “Saved by the Bell”?

There is a tempting story connected with grave bells that has been repeated for years.

You may hear that the expression “saved by the bell” originated with people being rescued after ringing bells from their coffins. Similar stories attempt to connect burial bells with expressions such as “dead ringer” and even “graveyard shift.”

They make fantastic cemetery stories.

Unfortunately, they aren’t considered reliable explanations for the origins of those expressions.

That distinction is worth making because the actual history doesn’t need embellishment. People really did fear premature burial. Inventors really did design safety coffins. Bells really were incorporated into some of those designs.

And a surviving grave bell really is sitting in Savannah today.

That’s strange enough.

Sometimes the Smallest Thing Tells the Best Story

Bonaventure Cemetery contains some of the most elaborate cemetery monuments in the South. The huge Mills monument certainly looks like something worth stopping to photograph.

But the most fascinating object in the photograph may be only a few inches tall.

Look near the ground beside the monument, and there it is.

A small bronze bell installed for a possibility Charles F. Mills apparently hoped would never happen: waking up after everyone else thought he was dead.

It is an easy object to walk past without giving it another thought.

Once you know why it is there, however, it might be the one thing in the cemetery you never forget.