Hey Steemers, as I told you yesterday, today I’ll tell about

The Chariot of Death

This is a well known story in Venezuela, I know there’s lots of variations of this same story but that’s because it has the same origin, but the truth is, in Venezuela it’s more than just a simple story, it’s widely known in towns and small cities, and most of them still believe in its presence.

Plague doctors: Source

In Europe, on the XIV century, on repeated occasions, there was a pandemic case of Black death that was known as The Plague. It’s considered to be the biggest and most devastating pandemic in the world, killing one third of Europe’s population. Imagine living in Europe from 1320 to 1490, with a massive epidemic attack in 1348. Of every three people you knew, one of them would die.
With the death toll rising day by day, Little time was left for religious funerary rites and families had to get rid of the bodies of their loved ones quick, and then every city had to hire a chariot that would cross the whole city or town at night taking the dead bodies, in the same way you take out the thrash every morning. People left their corpses on the Street and the chariot took them to mass graves.

Funeral chariot: Source

If that wasn’t terrible enough, some of the corpses weren’t dead, so they woke up surrounded by corpses and they, as weak as they were due to the plague, had to crawl their way out of the pit, and walk all the way back to their homes. That experience must have made lots of them insane for life.

Eventually The Plague pandemic ended, however, lots of the townsmen never stopped listening to the big, heavy, noisy wooden wheels, crossing the stone Streets for the rest of their lifes.

In Venezuela things weren’t different. The plague came in late XIX or early XX century, on a considerable lower scale tan Europe, but strong enough for governors and mayors to have to hire the chariots to pick the corpses on the streets, and even, like in Europe and still today, people say that sometimes at night you can listen to the loose, cracking wheels of a chariot, dragging chains, announcing the arrival of death.

The Chariot of Death: Source

Tomorrow: Colonial burials.