Case file · Haunting
McDowell's Cave and the girl in the copper coffin
Hannibal physician Joseph Nash McDowell bought a Missouri cave in the late 1840s, used it as a laboratory, and reportedly placed the body of his dead daughter there in a copper and glass cylinder to test whether the cave would petrify her.
1849 CE · 39.69, -91.33 · status: account
The account
Townspeople were said to visit the body until the family moved it. The cave, as 'McDougal's Cave', is where Tom Sawyer and Becky are lost in Mark Twain's 1876 novel, and it was renamed after the author in 1880.
The sceptical view
The daughter story comes from local accounts and McDowell's eccentric reputation; ghost tales grew around it.