Margorie McCall 1705
The story of Margorie McCall is much more recent than some others on this list and yet it remains little more than legend with very little proof to the tale. It has become a bit of Lurgan folklore and a story that continues to be told despite the fact that researchers have been unable to recover any records of a woman bearing the name of Margorie McCall or of her burial. Whatever the truth may be, the story that has committed Margorie McCall into legend began in 1705.
Margorie McCall was a young Irish wife who had fallen victim to a fever and it claimed her life. The others in the village decided that it would be best to dispose of the body quickly before the deadly disease had a chance to spread. She was placed in a coffin and her worldly possessions removed from her body, all except for a very valuable ring. The disease had caused Margorie’s fingers to swell and therefore her husband was unable to remove the ring from her finger.
The period was well known for body snatchers who would dig up fresh graves to sell the corpses and perhaps find loot that had been buried with the bodies. In the dark of night on the day Margorie was buried the thieves made their move. They quickly dug up the soft dirt and found the body of the poor woman. They first attempted to remove the ring from her finger, but they failed just as her husband had. The men gave up trying to pry the ring off and decided it would be easier and faster to just cut off the finger.
It was the blade cutting into her finger that shocked the woman back to life. The grave robbers fled and Margorie McCall, dirty and bloody made her way back home. She knocked on the door and when her husband answered and saw her disheveled bloody figure, he fell down dead on the spot. Margorie returned home to her children and her dear husband was buried in the plot that she had vacated. Margorie McCall remarried and had several more children before finally being buried once again the same cemetery she had been freed from years before.