Reginald Campbell Thompson: The child of the grave

There is a curious story current in Mosul about a woman who died and was buried before her child was born. This story I heard in Mosul, and I learnt that it was also told in Baghdad when I was there, and curiously enough, when at Luxor some time after, an Arab boy told me that a near relation of his, his father or uncle, who was a native of Mosul, had also repeated it to him. The story goes that after the womand was buried in a tomb, her son was born and lived and grew up in that tomb for about ten years, when he was found by a man digging into the grave. The boy was taken out, fed and clothed, and lived to a good old age. It is therefore to be presumed that during his childhood in the tomb the boy was fed in some supernatural manner that would seem to imply the return of the mother's spirit.