“Listen, did you hear that? I am sure I heard a bell. Yes, a tinkling bell!”
And so a search might began, a frenzied search to discover the source of that lonely sound.

Many years ago In a bygone era before the embalming process was practiced it was the customary to dig up the remains of the dead after a period of time and the bones would be gathered and placed in a container and another body would be buried in the same ground.

(This is still practiced in some countries today.)

It was as a result of this practice that it was discovered that there were those rare instances that people had in fact been buried alive. Naturally the remains could not tell the story of horror but the evidence was to be found in the broken fingernails and the torn lining of the coffin. A tale of horror, of the frantic efforts of the awakened dead to escape the inescapable.

What an unimaginable death awaited the pathetic and tragic human who found himself in this predicament.

There have been times when an individual went into a comatose state unrecognizable from death itself, only to awaken later to resume a normal and healthy life but to awaken to find yourself buried alive? There could hardly be a more horrible experience imagined than this.

This occasion happened often enough to give rise to the sexton’s bell.

One of the jobs of the sexton, other than that of burying the dead and caring for the church property was to listen for the tinkling of what was known as, “the dead bell.”

A cord was tied around the wrist of the unfortunate and on the other end of that cord, above ground, was a bell. Upon hearing the frantic ringing of the bell the sexton dug up the recently awakened.

Writers are not unlike those sextons of old in the sense that we are always listening for the bell of inspiration to alert us to a story that needs to be unearthed and given life.

As a writer you must know in your heart of hearts that you possess the gift of life. Some call this gift, ‘talent’, others refer to it as creativity, whatever it is called everyone has it to a lesser or greater degree. Know that you are unique and that you have something important to say.

Our job as writers is to listen for the bells of inspiration and by the light of the lantern of the imagination we will take up our shovel of research and craft and liberate the buried story.

Listen, did you hear it? A tinkling bell in the darkness of the night!

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