In the early 1800s in London, something strange was happening every night for decades.

People would attend a funeral for a loved one.

They would watch the coffin be buried and say their goodbyes.

Then they would return the following day, maybe to visit or to place flowers,

only to discover the dirt disturbed and the body simply gone.

And surprisingly, this wasn't a rare phenomenon.

Entire graveyards were actually being emptied out.

Day in, day out, bodies would go missing in the nights.

But maybe strange of all was that everyone knew this was happening, and yet it happened anyway.

And eventually, this practice would escalate into something much more sinister.

So in this video, we're going to go over what this strange phenomenon was, why it was

happening, and the truly disturbing things it would eventually lead to. As always, viewer

discretion is strongly advised. In the early decades of the 19th century, many people in Britain feared something that might seem strange to us today.

Funerals at the time were not always the end of the story for those who had passed away.

In cities like London and Edinburgh, families often worried that the freshly buried bodies

relatives might not remain in the ground for very long.

Instead, there was a very real possibility that someone might dig them up in the middle

of the night and carry them away, and this was no urban legend. This was the reality of the times, and the reason for this might seem decidedly unreal to us today.

The men who did this were known as Resurrectionists, though most people used simpler and less flattering names.

They were called body snatchers, sack em-up men, or sometimes night doctors, but whatever anyone preferred

to call them, their purpose was always the same.

They made money by digging up corpses and selling them to medical schools.

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