Emily Chan
When a crew of workers were digging in a garden plot on Egypt Plantation in Cruger, Mississippi, in the summer of 1969, they stumbled across an old glass and metal coffin.
Through the glass, the body of the individual who lay inside the coffin could be seen clearly. It was a woman with long, brown hair, wearing a red velvet dress, a cape, white gloves, and square-toed boots with buckles. Her clothing indicated that she had died during the mid-1800s.
The corpse was not decomposed, as the coffin had been filled with preservative alcohol and sealed tightly.
The freakiest part was that the young woman looked as if she had died only yesterday, even though it was estimated that she had been dead for over 75 years. At the time of her death, she appeared to have been in her twenties or thirties.
The workers at the farm discovered the coffin during a project for a new septic tank line. After the backhoe operator hit the coffin, the glass shattered, spilling the preservative alcohol and exposing the woman’s body to the elements.
Decades later, her identity is still a mystery that has left historians scratching their heads in puzzlement, and she has become known as the Lady in Red.
According to her clothing, she had died sometime before the Civil War. Her coffin was fancy and expensive, which suggested that she was someone with high societal status.
However, her grave was in an area that was unoccupied at the time of her death. The coffin she was buried in is called a Fisk Iron Casket.
Those types of caskets were popular in the mid-1800s. They kept the body preserved, allowing it to be transported over long distances.
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