I first heard about the Chase Vault when I was about 8 or 9. I checked out one of those "true ghost story" books at the local library and read it cover to cover. Somewhere in those pages was a story about a crypt in Barbados where the coffins wouldn't sit still. It isn't really the story that sticks out in my mind today, it's the picture that went along with it. I remember a dreary gray charcoal drawing of a jumbled mess of coffins in a dingy hole, a couple broken open. Sometimes I would stare at the black openings, moving my head side to side, trying to peer in. What that stubborn blackness concealed inside was invisible to me. It was the same blackness that filled my room at night -- under the bed, in the closet. I would read and read during the day alright, but when the night came and I went to bed and turned off the light, I regretted it. I didn't want to peer into the blackness then.
One thing did comfort me though, lying there under the covers. I had looked up Barbados once in the encyclopedia, it was 2000 miles away, across the ocean. Flash forward 15 years.
June 18th, 1999.
Before I get too far into the story, I have something to mention. Barbados. For 15 years I had read about the Chase Vault and its restless coffins. For 15 years I had pictured a decrepit old crypt, glinting in the pale light of a full moon. An abandoned island graveyard, the wind blowing leaves past its moldy door, a low mournful howling through its cursed, empty belly. What better way for me to finally arrive there, then, than on board the Carnival Cruise Line M.S. Fascination on a family vacation?
Barbados was the last island on our itenerary. I was really looking forward to finally getting to an island that had something more to offer than the ubiquitous three dollar t-shirt. Shrugging off the expensive and constrictive ship-run tour options, we passed through the "port authority" on the dock and were soon set upon by a barking mass of taxi drivers who smelled tourist in the air. We stopped to talk to the first driver who got to us, a smallish guy with a loud tropical shirt and aviator sunglasses. "I will be your driver for today sir. I am the best driver on the island. My name is Horace. Excuse me one moment please." Horace turned to another cab driver who had walked up behind us. I'm not sure what it was all about but apparently there was some disagreement among them as to who would have the distinct priviledge of taking us out across the island. Horace won, apparently. He then turned back and asked where we wanted to go. I named a couple of places I had read about in my Fodor's guide, Harrison's Cave and the St. John Parish Church. "Any other place sir?" inquired Horace. "Oh yeah," said your humble narrator. "There is this crypt, on the south of the island, where the coffins moved sometime in the early 1800's" I said, half asking. Horace's response was a swift "That's the Chase Vault. I know the place." We were on our way.
Harrison's cave was interesting, with the dripping water that was like underground rain and the hard hats lined with paper towels we all had to wear. St. John Parish Church had a good view of the Atlantic side of the island. We also stopped at a scenic vista point complete with horses, zebras, chickens, and a couple of green monkeys. We saw a bamboo house built by Rastafarians and the low-lying central part of the island with its sugar cane fields. There were a few colonial plantation houses scattered around as well. Here I was, 2200 miles from home on a tropical Caribbean island, riding with my family in a bus, sitting next to a Bajan taxi driver who was playing a Patsy Cline tape and bellowing loudly in accompaniment. We were going to a graveyard.
It was about 1:00 pm -- our last stop: the Vault. The roads in the south of Barbados were pretty winding, coming from the gently rolling sugar cane hills of the interior to the congested and bustling south coast. "I've never taken anybody to the Vault before, but I know the church where it's at," Horace had been reassuring me all morning long. I have to admit I was a little nervous about our chances of acutally finding the Vault. Considering my family was interested in more conventional ways of spending our vacation time, I knew not to expect much support from them if an extended search was necessary. My spirits were lifted when I heard Horace dutifully announce "There it is." There was the church on the left. There were two entrances -- Horace took the second one, behind the church. Luckily I had brought along a picture of the Vault from the Reader's Digest Strange Stories, Amazing Facts because the cemetery was not small by any means. We drove around a little on the tiny roads within the graveyard, looking in all directions for anything that looked like the picture. Unfortunately, practically all of the graves were marked by large above-ground crosses and flat cement blocks. "If anybody would've thought that I'd be in a cemetery at this time of day..." Horace quipped. "Maybe we should find somebody to ask," I said. The place was deserted except for a couple of gravediggers in the distance. Horace pulled up alongside them and asked where the Vault was. One shirtless guy with a shovel pointed back toward the church, near the first entrance. It made perfect sense to me at that point that such an old crypt would be near the church's entrance. Back out we went and pulled over to the side near the church door. To the right was a concrete path that led out into the cemetery. About 100 feet down, I saw a familiar set of chained posts surrounding a massive, weathered white crypt.
The Chase Vault.
The Vault awaits...