Bernadette Soubirous died in 1879 at the age of 35, the girl who had seen the apparitions at Lourdes twenty years earlier. She was buried in a damp vault at the convent in Nevers, France. Thirty years later, in 1909, the Church opened the coffin as part of her cause for sainthood. Two doctors were present. They expected bones.
They found her whole. The skin was dry, the face slightly sunken, but the body was intact, the arms and legs flexible, the rosary rusted in her hands while the hands themselves had not decayed. The nuns washed and reclothed her and put her back. In 1919 they opened the coffin again. Same result. In 1925 a third examination removed her ribs for relics and found the liver still soft, which the attending surgeon wrote was not something he could explain by natural causes.
Today she lies in a glass case in the chapel at Nevers. A thin layer of wax covers the face and hands, applied in 1925 because the skin had darkened. Under the wax is Bernadette.
She is one of more than a hundred so called incorruptibles, bodies the Catholic Church has documented as resisting decay without embalming: Saint Zita, dead since 1272, Saint Catherine of Bologna, seated upright in her chair since 1475. Some have been explained by dry crypts and lime. Some have not. A body in a wet vault for thirty years should not come out flexible. What do you think?
What do you think about this? The carrier USS Hornet, docked in Alameda, lost more than 300 men in service. Her museum crew logs sailors in passageways who vanish, hatches slamming alone, and a voice from an empty compartment saying “I’m still here.” Old steel, or a crew still aboard?
What do you think about this? In 1995 more than a thousand animals in Puerto Rico were found dead in six months, each with puncture wounds and no blood left. A witness described a four foot upright creature with spines and gray skin. Mangy dogs came later. What drained the goats?
What do you think about this? The wall at Sacsayhuamán above Cusco is built of stones up to 120 tons, cut with twelve angles and fitted so tight a sheet of paper will not slide in. The Inca told the Spanish an earlier people built it. Lost skill, or a civilization we have not named?
What do you think about this? In 1969 explorer Juan Moricz swore under oath that a cave in Ecuador’s jungle held thousands of stamped metal plates. In 1976 an expedition with Neil Armstrong went in and found pottery, not plates. Moricz died without giving the spot. Still down there?
What do you think about this? On October 11, 1973, two men fishing the Pascagoula River said three gray creatures with claws floated them into a craft. Deputies left them alone with a hidden recorder, expecting a confession. It caught them terrified and praying. Hoax, or the real thing?
What do you think about this? The Dropa Stones, 716 grooved stone discs said to be found in Chinese caves in 1938 beside small bodied skeletons, telling of a crash 12,000 years ago. The 1978 book that spread the story was admitted to be a hoax. Pure fiction, or a truth wrapped in lies?
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