Lou’s View – July 31, 2014
A Night at Cedar Hill
by Lou Bernard
You hear about these contests all the time—Whoever stands and holds their hands on a car the longest wins the car. The person to stay awake dancing for the longest wins a thousand dollars. The person to make a total jerk of themselves on television wins a million.
This is not really a new concept. Bizarre contests have been around since the first Native Americans got curious about who could fire an arrow furthest. And one night in May of 1920, a local woman got involved in an interesting one.
The headline was in the Clinton County Times, May 14: “Spends Night In Cemetery Handcuffed and Chained.”
In 1920, the manager of the Garden Theater at 232 East Main Street, where the county Garden Building now stands, was a man named Myers. He offered a range of prizes for a contest in May of that year, because let’s face it, things occasionally got a little slow in 1920. The prizes ranged from twenty-five dollars to a hundred dollars, depending on gender and race, but they all had the same condition: The winner had to spend a night in a cemetery, handcuffed to a cot.
Exactly how Myers came up with this plan is not clear. He admitted at the time that he expected nobody to sign up for this, and expected to donate the prize money to the charitable Community House fund. He really didn’t think anyone would take him up on his offer, though I’ll admit it sounds like my idea of a good time. But seriously, who wants to spend a night in a cemetery? A lot of people, apparently, because at least fifty people applied, among them two adult females.
The person accepted finally was Clara Bryan, a young woman from Flemington. Her name was selected among the stack of applications, probably by the method of sliding one out of the pile at random. She was taken to local doctor W.E. Welliver and examined, because there’s no point in saving up prize money if someone’s going to just have a heart attack anyway. But Clara got a clean bill of health, and on to the cemetery she went.
These days, I feel the need to point out, this would have involved a stack of waivers, probably a camera crew, and certainly a whole battalion of lawyers. But back then, one check-up and they called it good. Myers took Clara out to Cedar Hill Cemetery, handcuffed her to cot, and told her he’d be back in the morning.
He did leave her a little bit of defense—The Times reported,”Miss Bryan was given a revolver to use if anyone molested her.” Oh, and they left a camera to film her, as well, with the promise that she’d be shown the movies later.
Again—A woman left alone in a cemetery with a loaded gun, filmed, on the promise of money. I cannot stress enough today how this might enrage the lawyers. Or be perfect for a reality TV show, that too.
So Clara waited on the cot, sitting around and earning her money. The article said,”She said that she only slept about half an hour, and outside of hearing the chugging of an engine and seeing what she thought was a black cat, she saw no spooks.” Which sounds like a pretty disappointing night to me, actually, but at least she got paid for it.
And she waited until five AM, when the sun began to rise and Myers came back with the key to retrieve her. It was a Wednesday morning, and presumably, Clara went home, washed up, and got some rest in her bed, where she probably wasn’t handcuffed.
But she was up and around by Wednesday evening, however. Because she reported to the Garden Theater on time, and was presented with her seventy-five dollars, and then Clara and the audience got to watch the film of her in the cemetery, waving around a revolver.
You know, this really would be perfect for a reality television show. Anyone want to sponsor it? I’ll volunteer to be the first contestant.
