Alternate origin story for "graveyard shift"

[Wilson Gray]

On Aug 13, 2005, at 1:04 PM, James Callan wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       James Callan <jabeca at DRIZZLE.COM>
> Subject:      Alternate origin story for "graveyard shift"
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>
> Last night I went on the Seattle Underworld Tour, the risqué, 21+
> version of Seattle's famous Underground Tour. Among the many anecdotes
> told was the story of how, when the first Seattle Cemetery was moved
> during the 1884 regrade project, bodies were moved in the middle of the
> night to avoid disturbing people or otherwise causing a scandal. And
> that, the guide asserted, is where the term "graveyard shift" came
> from.
>
> I found one Web reference to the story on King County's history site,
> historylink.org
> (http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=969 ):
>
>> Given the conditions under which Shorey was striving to make the
>> removals, it would not be surprising if he had missed a few burials,
>> and so he did. During the final regrading of Denny Hill, in which the
>> land on which the Seattle Cemetery had stood was lowered about 60
>> feet, several bodies were purportedly found, probably Indian graves,
>> as the regraders washed away the hill. Because it would have disturbed
>> people and possibly caused a scandal, it is said that these bodies
>> were removed to some unspecified place during the middle of the night,
>> when supposedly no one would notice. Local legend has it that this
>> incident is the origin of the term "graveyard shift" for work done
>> during the middle of the night.
>
> I would've been skeptical of this story even if the tour didn't repeat
> the "Thomas Crapper invented the toilet" story. In fact, the first time
> I took the Underground Tour, I had to double-check that the term "skid
> row" originated in Seattle -- and was pleased to discover that that, at
> least, was true.
>
> As origin stories go, this one for "graveyard shift" doesn't seem
> nearly as popular as the "sitting in the cemetery listening for bells"
> tale. Has anyone else heard it?
>
>         -- James Callan
>

FWIW, except for "day shift," the names of the shifts vary. At the Los
Angeles Department of Water and Power, the swing shift is called the
"peak" shift. In the now-defunct U.S. Army Security Agency, the
graveyard shift was rather prosaically known as the "middle" shift.

-Wilson Gray