Brigadier General Egbert Ludovicus Viele was appointed by the City of New York in 1857 to be the engineer-in-chief of the Central Park project. He had been a U.S. Army cavalry officer in Texas after the Mexican War and a Union officer during the Civil War. He later represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives.

General Viele was an amateur Egyptologist who believed that he would be restored to life. The photo above shows the tomb in which he and his second wife were buried at West Point Military Cemetery. What you can't see is the button inside the door which he insisted be installed so that he could summon the caretaker when he came back to life. Generations of West Point cadets tormented generations of cemetery caretakers by sneaking down there and ringing the bell in the middle of the night. Finally, the call system was disabled. I don't know who decided he wasn't coming back, but it was probably a caretaker who got tired of being summoned.