HALIFAX, N.S. — At 2:31 a.m. on Oct. 19, two biology students revived the body of George Ramsay, ninth earl of Dalhousie and Dalhousie University’s namesake. This marks the first time he’s been alive since 1838.
The body of Lord Dalhousie was buried in Midlothian, Scotland. He was recently dug up and transported to the cadaver lab in Dal’s Sir Charles Tupper Medical Building.
The move was facilitated as part of a new initiative from Amazon called “Prime for Dead Bodies,” which promises same-day delivery for any corpse, anytime — no questions asked.
“The request was originally a computer error,” says Mary Wollstone, a third-year molecular biology student. “The default value for any name field on a Dal form is George Ramsay — we were actually trying to get the body of Mitch McConnell.”
Wollstone and Shelley Godwin, a third-year biochemistry student, attempted the experiment — only referred to as “the big one” — in the cadaver lab after regular hours. During this experiment, they tried to bring life to a dead body by replicating the cooking scene in the first act of Ratatouille as neither of them had read Frankenstein.
“When lightning struck the metal rod stabbed in his forehead, a wave of understanding came over me that this entire thing was incredibly wrong and gross,” says Godwin. “Luckily, that guilt dissipated as soon as the body sat up perfectly upright.”
Lord Dalhousie has been quick to get his groove back since his return to the land of the living. Unfortunately, his groove is racism. Lord Dalhousie was deeply saddened to see his school filled by people from around the world.
“I mean chaperoning him is like trying to keep Chevy Chase in line,” says Wollstone. “At least Chevy doesn’t have a goddamn school named after him.”
Godwin says she’s disappointed in the experiment’s outcome.
“I expected this was gonna be more of a fun, spooky Halloween vibe, but this guy just fucking sucks.”
While Dalhousie’s communications team attempted to media-train Lord Dalhousie, sources close to the project said it was a huge failure. Lord Dalhousie became enamoured with the projector powering the presentation and kept going on about how he could’ve used this technology to relay orders and further his colonization of India.
Then after yet another attempt to exasperatedly explain to a first-year macroeconomics class that “All of this would be easier if you just had free labour,” he was tased by campus security.
“This is probably how Victor Frankenstein felt after his monster kidnapped that poor woman and climbed the Empire State Building to fight those planes,” says Godwin.
Following the incidents, Lord Dalhousie was placed on a temporary psychiatric hold by Dal admin in the Dentistry Building. During his stay, he was glued to third-year commerce student Bryan Rainbow, who was scrolling Instagram Reels on his phone. Rainbow is a particularly big fan of what he would call “ironic racism,” which is “very different from the real thing.”
A particularly problematic video caught Lord Dalhousie’s eye, and he found it so funny that he laughed at the top of his lungs to the point of exhaustion, rendering him deceased once again.
Godwin and Wollstone released a joint statement via Facebook:
“Rest. Just stay down.”
Following Lord Dalhousie’s second death, Dal admin released a statement to students warning them of the consequences of performing any “Frankenstein-type endeavours,” and listed what to avoid doing as not to risk any spectral form reappearing and showing you their Truth Social feed. The list includes:
- Perform a séance in the Wardroom
- Say “Daddy Dalhousie” three times into any mirror on campus
- Using any pre-1960s Ouija Boards
- Reading aloud the cat naming section in the Necronomicon