Pop Goes The Bishop The Exploding Bishop of St. Augustine

Warning: This story may not be for the squeamish.

St. Augustine, Florida, is one of the oldest cities in the United States. Some parts of the city feel like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean. It is also home to the alleged fountain of youth (I might do a future story on it. Today, however, I want to tell a story in a small cemetery called Tolomado Cemetery. Out of all the cemeteries there, it is the one that piques my interest the most. The well-kept cemetery is only open one day out of the month. Sadly, I'm not on the right day whenever I'm in St. Augustine. There are ghost stories and legends that circulate in that little cemetery. Stories range from an almost premature burial of a yellow fever victim, a ghost of a little boy that roams the ground, and a bishop with a bizarre funeral situation. In the back of the cemetery sits a pristine white chapel, which houses the possibly splattered remains of bishop Jean Marcel Pierre Auguste Vérot. Yes, I said splattered!

I first learned about this story through a bus ghost tour when visiting St. Augustine in 2015. The guide on the tour talked about different ghost stories in St. Augustine. One area she spoke of Bishop Verot served as St. Augustine's first bishop from 1870 to 1876. He passed away in June 1876, and the church was expected to have an extended viewing of mourners saying their final goodbyes to him. The church and embalmers knew the body could not withstand the Florida summer heat, so they devised a solution. They made a metal coffin lined with ice and sawdust. A glass cover was put on so viewers could still see the corpse. This would help preserve the bishop, which unfortunately wouldn't be the case. His body would end up being a ticking time bomb as three days went by being in the chapel and the heat getting higher and higher. 

I want to make a quick analogy using a weird cooking habit when I was young. At that age, my only cooking skill was making ramen; other than that, I had atrocious culinary skills that were so bad Gorden Ramsey could have nuked me. One is either lunch meat or raw eggs in the microwave, usually for a minute. I would hear popping sounds from the food I was "cooking.” When it was done, there was splatter everywhere. Let's draw similarities: egg-bishop, microwave-metal glass coffin, microwave heat-Florida heat, and 1 minute - 3 days.

On the third day, mourners started hearing hissing and popping noises coming from the coffin. Within seconds to minutes of hearing the sounds, a loud boom came from the front of the chapel. The bishop was now in the coffin and all over the front of the chapel, including the congregation. Immediately, people screamed and fled the chapel. Those who did not have a weak stomach were tasked to gather what remained of the bishop and put the pieces back in the coffin. 

The bishop was then interred in Tolomado Cemetery's white chapel. Then, what got even stranger was that he was dug up years later. The splatter was still as fleshy as if the ordeal just happened that day. 

I tried looking more into the bishop online to see if the stories were true. The results mainly showed Jean Marcel Pierre Auguste Vérot's biography and other articles about him. So, while the articles about his life didn't mention the incident, there was no statement denying it either. I hope no one was eating while reading this article.