The structure has a name that sounds like a bad joke: mortsafes. They appeared in the 18th and 19th centuries, when fresh graves were worth more to surgeons than gold.
Medical schools were desperate for cadavers, and “resurrection men” dug up the newly dead, sold their bodies, and vanished before sunrise. Families, powerless and terrified, fought back with iron.
Those cages weren’t superstition; they were armor against scalpels and shovels. The bars stayed until the body decayed beyond “use,” then were removed, ready for the next terrified family. Standing before that grave now, you’re not just looking at metal. You’re looking at proof that even in death, people were hunted. The cemetery suddenly feels different: less a place of peace, more a battlefield where the living once defended their dead with cold, unyielding steel.