"The story, which I'm afraid has Tim Burton written all over it, apparently dates from 19th-century Russia, a period when anti-Semitism might be said to have been the national pastime, and Jewish brides-to-be were sometimes kidnapped and murdered (before they could produce any more Jews) and then buried in their bridal gowns.

One day (if I may slip into the folk-tale idiom for a moment), a young man on his way to be married stops in a forest and, spotting a fingerlike stick protruding from the ground, playfully slips onto it the wedding ring intended for his fiancée. The "stick" turns out actually to be the skeletal finger of a murdered bride; she leaps to life, shakes the worms out of her hair, and declares that she and he are now, in fact, married. She is most insistent. You can imagine the complications."