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Buried Alive: Premature Burial (Fears; Incidents; Precautions)

That was . . . :cross eye . . . very informative, thank you, LordF . . .

Carole
 
I recently read Jessica Mitford's 'The American Way of Death Revisited' and learned, with what they used to call horrified fascination, the various drawbacks of embalming.

If a corpse is embalmed and placed in an airtight coffin, it will eventually become covered in spiky growths of brightly coloured mould. :eek:

This is known because of past exhumations.

And yes, I did put my sandwich down while I read that chapter.
 
Many thanks for all that, I've duly ordered that Death Acre book from my library to join my current back log of 12 or so books.

I also read an article about the exhaumations in a church in Spitalfields in London in the mid 1990's. Absolutely fascinating in that they found all kinds of new evidence about our 18th century forebearers but the bit that struck me was the mention that the archaelogists all had to undergo counselling before, during and after to cope with the sight of not only many, many bugs and creepy crawlies but also the effect of seeing upteem human remains. Such a thing never occured to me but i suppose some people might need some such counselling.
 
When I was a lad, a tale was told that Balham tube station took a direct hit during the Blitz, and that hundreds of people were buried below the station in a mass grave.

Probably bollocks.
 
A simmilar thing happened on Durning road in Liverpool's kensigton district to a comunal shelter when it was bombed by landmines in WW2 resulting in britains worst war time civilan tragedy. it is only in the last 2 years that developers have been given permission to build new houses on the site. There is a memorial to the victims in st Cyprians church on the corner of edge lane and durning road a few doors down the road.

However this is off topic because the thread is not about the hoffific tragadies when hundreds get buried alive at once it's about people hundreds getting burried alive independently before modern medical science and if worrys of such occorances were based on reality.

I've a sad fealing I'll be fighting a looseing battle to stear this thread back on track though because it is all a facinateing topic.
 
The body Farm book is a good one - I was happy when I stumbled across it in my local library. I also recommend Mary Roach's "Stiff" (hmmmm that doesn't sound quite right):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0141007451/

both got glowing reviews.

Lord_Flashheart: OK back on topic (sort of). Adipocere formation (which is almost definitely why the bodies seemed so well preserved) is so widespread that it is starting to be a major problem for graveyard management across Europe. As we have finite space attempts are being made to prevent its formation or draw up provisions for when it occurs. As it can last for hundreds, and in some circumstances thousands, of years then clearly this will cause problems in reusing old graveyards - I'll try and dig out more resources but there are some good links here (in the bottom half - although some links are broken. Also check out the photo pages if you have a strong stomach):

http://adipocere.homestead.com/links.html

with this in mind I suppose it should be no suprise that, depending on various conditions (age, watertable, type of coffins, etc.), a bombed graveyard might turn up a lot of well preserved corpses. The clawing of the inside of the coffin lid is also explainable through natural processes.

Although burial alive has happened the fear that it is more widespread (and that it it was prevalent in the past) is due to a lack of understanding about natural decompositional processes and taphonomy.

I did do a quick search on Google but couldn't turn up any specific examples of a bombed graveyard which matches this story and it might be that it evolved from the various legends about plague pits, etc. or it may have come from a case of an old graveyard being cleared (I know of one case and there was only one very well preserved body).

I have tonnes more material on this kind of thing - I'll dig some out.

Emps
 
Pensioner fits coffin with built-in alarm

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1160966.html

Ananova:

Pensioner's coffin features alarm

A pensioner with a life-time fear of being buried alive has designed a coffin with an in-built alarm system.

Frenchman Angel Hays, 87, has suffered from taphephobia - the fear of being buried alive - since he was 20.

He was involved in a traffic accident that left him so badly injured his family believed he was dead.

Now the octogenarian has built his own coffin that will ensure his survival if he is buried prematurely.

It features an alarm system that can be heard from up to 500 metres away if there is the slightest movement within the coffin.

It also contains a water holder, food, a ventilation system and a mini bar with 87-year-old Hays' favourite tipple - Ouzo.

Hays told French daily Aujourd'hui: "I was so badly hurt in the accident all those years ago that a coffin had even been delivered to my family's house before I was able to move to let them know I was alive.

"I want to make sure nothing like that will happen again."

Now I find the concept of being burried alive to be particularly scary, but this is going a bit too far...?

:confused:
 
I'm sure there were real Victorians who insisted on being buried with a device to toll a bell, if they woke up.

If it had been any use and caught on, the churchyard would be like a desk full of telephones.

"Who is that now?"

"Oh, let it ring. Enough digging for one afternoon!"

:eek:
 
Okay, so he's fitted this thing, and he'll be burried. What if the moisture of being that far underground makes the thing go off?

We await a mysterious ringing graveyard thread any year now...
 
James Whitehead said:
I'm sure there were real Victorians who insisted on being buried with a device to toll a bell, if they woke up.

Yes, i recall a design was patented and marketed. I'll see if i can find a link.
 
George Bateson was an inventor in 19th century England who devised a device for preventing death in cases of premature burial (a common fear of the time). The Bateson Life Revival Device (or "Bateson's Belfry," as it was known) consisted of an iron bell mounted in a miniature campanile on the lid of a casket, the bellrope connected to the presumed corpse's hands through a hole in the coffin lid. A Victorian gentleman may have hoped that, should he revive in his padded coffin, the sinister underground knelling from the Belfry would call some attentive gravedigger to the rescue. Despite the success of his device, which sold well, George Bateson later became more and more preoccupied with the horrors of premature burial. He built increasingly complicated alarm systems for his own coffin. Not trusting even his own apparatus, he later rewrote his will, instead asking to be cremated. Finally, the wretched man became quite insane and feared that his directions would not be followed; in a fit of desperation, he doused himself with linseed oil and set himself ablaze in his workshop, preferring a premature cremation to the lingering risk of premature burial.

Culled from: Buried Alive:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/039332222X/
 
Then his relatives wreck the whole plan by having him cremated...
 
Buried alive: The Max Hoffman story

I'm sure forteans know this story:

In 1865, in a small town in Germany, a little boy was very sick. His name was Max Hoffman.

"Will our son die?" Max's parents asked the doctor.

"Maybe" the doctor said quickly. "Stay with Max, keep him warm. That's all you can do."

For three days Max lay in his bed. Then he died. He was only five years old. Max's parents buried their son in the town cemetery. That night Max's mother had a terrible dream. She screamed that Max was moving in his coffin. She screamed in her sleep.

"It's all right. You had a bad dream."

The next night Max's mother screamed in her sleep again. She had the same terrible dream.

On the third night Max's mother had another bad dream. She dreamed that Max was crying. She got out of bed and got dressed. "Quick! Get dressed." She told her husband. "We're going to the cemetery. I want to see Max. I want to dig up his coffin."

At four o'clock in the morning Max's parents and a neighbor hurried to the cemetery. They dug up Max's coffin and opened it. There was Max. He looked dead. But he wasn't lying on his back. He was lying on his side.

Max's father carried Max home. Then he ran to get the doctor. for an hour the doctor rubbed whisky on Max's lips and warmed his body. Then Max opened his eyes. Max was alive! A week later he was playing with his friends.

Max Hoffman died- really died- in the United States in 1953. He was 93 years old.

or:

Deceased: Max Hoffman, a 5-year-old boy living in the U.S. in the 1860s.

News Of His Death: In 1865, a cholera epidemic swept the town where Hoffman lived; he became infected and as far as anyone could tell, died. Soon afterwards, he was given a proper funeral and was buried.

Resurrection: For two nights after his funeral, his mother had such incredibly vivid nightmares of him still being alive that she insisted that her husband dig up the coffin. Perhaps just to ease his wife's fears, Mr. Hoffman did just that, and when he pried open the coffin he saw signs of life and was able to revive his son. Five-year-old Max made a full recovery, lived to the age of ninety, and kept the handles from the coffin as a keepsake for the rest of his life.

Every account I read of this incident is very light on the details. Did this really happen or was this a too good to be true story cooked up at Fate magazine or the like and later passed on as fact?
 
Interesting story I can't find it mentioned in the Unexplained (Liivng Burials) or in Jan Bondeson's "Buried Alive" (at least the index) or anywhere else and as it is so impressive I would have thought that someone dealing with the subject would have mentioned it but then again you'd think they'd mention it in passing even if just to dismiss it.

Three days is a long time to be buried and brain damage is likely to have set in by that time due to lack of oxygen.

Got the sources of those quotes?
 
but if they were in a comatose state they would not have needed much oxygen
 
What would a "proper funeral" have been in the midwest US in the 1860's anyway, 6ft under the ground?

where would the oxygen supply have come from if they were buried in the ground and in a coffin?

no wait! that's a stupid question because someone might come back with "a gap in the wood of the coffin that lead straight to a fissure in the ground leading up to the surface, allowing an oxygen supply cos you never know... that might just happen".
 
Homo Aves said:
but if they were in a comatose state they would not have needed much oxygen

I have looked around for information on this and it is a tad scanty - it is reckoned that brain damage would probably set in after about a day. The best yogis have been able to do under relatively controlled conditions is 10 hours. See the start of chapter 3 in Wade Davis' "Passage of Darkness" for an overview of this kind of thing - some great stuff lie Colonel Townsend who was able to reduce heartrate until he was declared dead (he then recovered - otr it wouldn't be very remarkable). The main source seems to be (the second link has a lot of 1 pence so....):

Romeo Error: Matter of Life and Death
Lyall Watson (1974)

www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0340191368/
www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/034019989X/
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385097670/

If anyone has any extra informaiton on this I'd be very interested to hear it.
 
Emperor said:
Got the sources of those quotes?

Just whatever I could find on the web, but I distinctly remember reading the account in those Impossible......Yet It Happened!-style books when I was a kid.
 
Ogopogo said:
Emperor said:
Got the sources of those quotes?

Just whatever I could find on the web, but I distinctly remember reading the account in those Impossible......Yet It Happened!-style books when I was a kid.

OK cheers - I ran across a couple of similar accounts online - they've clearl been lifted from somewhere but, as you say, sources seem elusive.
 
A few more links I found:

http://members.fortunecity.com/dracula1/ghost.htm

At the age of five Hoffman was an unfortunate victim of cholera in Germany.He was diagnosed dead and dully buried.On the same night his mother woke up and to her amazement she saw Hoffmans body(astral body)standing near her bedside,the astral body told her that he was not dead and that she should reopen his grave and save him,he also described the way that he was lying in his grave. The mother woke up her husband but the projection was already gone.This event reoccurred every night for four nights until the mother was persuaded and she reopened the grave.Hoffman was found as he described it and was shortly reanimated.In this case astral projection saved his life.

http://www.funtrivia.com/playquiz.cfm?q ... 42&origin=

Max Hoffman was born in 1860. He was buried in 1865 at the age of 5. What makes Max so interesting?

He was exhumed 34 hours later and found to be alive



http://www.owensbororotary.org/impetus/01nov3.htm

Joe Ford entertained Owensboro Rotarians on Halloween by telling some true stories and some ghost stories. Mr. Ford is no stranger to Owensboro or Rotary. He has broadcasted weekly radio programs, written weekly and monthly newspaper columns, published several books, helped establish the Owensboro Area Museum in 1966 and retired as Director in 1987. He and his wife, Grace, presently host a monthly topical television broadcast on Channel 51. He also writes columns for the Messenger-Inquirer and the McLean County News. Joe told stories about people being buried alive in the 1800's, and in particular the story about little Max Hoffman, a five-year-old cholera victim. After Max was pronounced dead and buried, his mother kept dreaming he was alive. His mother insisted that the grave of Max be opened. Max was indeed alive! He was revived and lived until he was 87 years old.
 
Max's father carried Max home. Then he ran to get the doctor. for an hour the doctor rubbed whisky on Max's lips and warmed his body. Then Max opened his eyes. Max was alive! A week later he was playing with his friends.

the story relies on the child being deeply comatose for his being mistaken for dead and his survival inside the coffin. so how is it that he comes out of the coffin healthier than he was when he went in it? he's been in a deep coma, probably deprived of oxygen, and then suddenly he's well enough that he wakes up immediately.
 
We don't seem to have a thread dedicated to this although some UL s are addressed here:

www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13966

www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20062

Madurai: 80 held for bizarre burials of infants alive



Madurai, April 14: The Tamil Nadu police has booked cases against 80 persons for participating in the bizarre ritual of burying infants alive as a means of fulfilling their vows, near Rajapalayam in Virudhunagar district.

The age-old ritual Kuzhimattru, which literally means changing pits, was performed on Monday as part of the annual festival at the Muthumariamman temple at Chatrapatti Ayyanapuram near Rajapalayam. The Keelarajakularaman police registered cases against 80 persons on Tuesday for participating in it.

The ritual is performed in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu, particularly in the Mariamman temples, by people from different communities. It is done by couples who take a vow to bury alive their firstborn if they are blessed with a child.

To fulfil the vow they bury children who may be less than a year old in two-foot-deep pits which are then covered with neem leaves and a sprinkling of earth in the courtyard of temples.

The priest performs certain ceremonies and steps across the pits. It is only then that the children are taken out and laid prostrate before the deities.

As reports filtered in that a similar ritual would take place at M. Pudupatti village in Virudhunagar, the police proceeded to the village and warned the people against performing it. The ritual was consequently abandoned. The police suggested to the villagers that if the parents wanted to fulfill their vows, they could lay the infants on the floor and walk across them.

About three years ago, a minister for local administration in the Tami Nadu government, Mr C. Dorairaj, was dismissed by chief minister Jayalalithaa for participating in such a ritual at Perayur in Madurai district. The government also brought in an ordinance banning the bizarre ritual.

A law, called the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Ritual and Practice of Burying Alive of a Person Act, 2002, came into force on November 18, 2002. The punishment under the legislation includes imprisonment up to three years with or without a fine of Rs 5,000.

Advocate T. Lajapathi Roy, who was part of a team from the Soco Trust Madurai, which investigated the Perayur incident, said that the team had discovered that there are no doctors or other medical facilities available at the venue when the ritual is performed. Though casualties have not been reported in this ritual, he said that chances of the infants dying of suffocation could not be ruled out.

When contacted, Virudhunagar district collector Mohamed Aslam said those who had been booked had earlier been warned against going ahead with the ritual but had not listened. "These people contend that no harm will come to the children during the ritual, which has been performed for many decades. We are trying to create awareness and prevent it from taking place. But it is only in some villages like M. Pudupatti that we are able to persuade the people listen to us," he said.


---------------------
-The Asian Age

Source
 
Messalina~ said:
"I also read an article about the exhaumations in a church in Spitalfields in London in the mid 1990's....[T]he bit that struck me was the mention that the archaelogists all had to undergo counselling before, during and after to cope with the sight of not only many, many bugs and creepy crawlies but also the effect of seeing upteem human remains. Such a thing never occured to me but i suppose some people might need some such counselling."

Archaeologists are used to examining bodies which have been dead 1000 - 7000 years. Whatever was going to happen to those corpses happened a VERY LONG time ago. But the bodies in Christ Church, Spitalfields, were all less than 300 years old, with the most recent being interred as recently as the 1860s. So there were many bodies STILL DECAYING. Some of the workers lasted only DAYS before they had to give up.

There was considerable forboding about this beforehand. This was apparently the first time ithat such a major archaeological excavation had been carried out involving the RECENT dead. Archaeological education and training simply doesn't cover that.

(The nearest thing previously was excavating the basement of Des Plaines (Chicago), Illinois, serial killer John Wayne "Pogo the Clown" Gacy in early 1979. The archaeolgists pressed into service on that one also had a rough time of it. And that involved "only" 33 or 34 bodies.

The two main questions I have:

1. Christ Church, Spitalfields, was built as recently as the early 18th Century. The health dangers of interior church vaults was widely known, and the practice was ALREADY ILLEGAL for that very very reason. So why was the law ignored?

2. The reason the vaults were clearned out in the 1990s was so that they could be converted into a medical clinic for the poor! Exactly whose bright idea was this disgusting brainstorm? One thing I DO know - whether it's in the UK or the United States, if some "lucky" batch of souls is going to be assigned to receive their "health" (!) care in a cleared-out burial pit, it's going to be the poor and not the rich.
 
2. The reason the vaults were clearned out in the 1990s was so that they could be converted into a medical clinic for the poor! Exactly whose bright idea was this disgusting brainstorm? One thing I DO know - whether it's in the UK or the United States, if some "lucky" batch of souls is going to be assigned to receive their "health" (!) care in a cleared-out burial pit, it's going to be the poor and not the rich.

I lived about a hundred yards from Christ Church, Spitalfields for several years. Not sure about the VAULTS being a "medical clinic for the poor"... The CRYPT has long been a drop-in centre for the homeless alcoholics (something synonymous with Spitalfields/Whitechapel for hundreds of years) in the area, and first aid/hygiene issues were certainly catered for there. I believe, in fact, that the church trust has opened a new outreach/help facility nearby called Acorn House. In any case, the poor and rich are catered for admirably (and I speak from experience) by the free-at-the-point-use NHS at Bart's Hospital and The Royal London Hospital just down the road. The crypt is certainly still in use as some sort of centre of help for the homeless, though now maybe just in the winter months.

on this picture
http://www.ferdinando.org.uk/images/Spi ... church.jpg

the entrance to the crypt is just to the right of the Citroen parke in the street on the left.

Incidentally, the entrance to the crypt is the other side of Fournier street from the Ten Bells pub, well know to ripperologists.

http://www.casebook.org/victorian_london/tenbells.html
 
Last edited by a moderator:
An interesting article by the excellent Prof Jan Bondeson, RFT contributer and popular UnConvention speaker, whose also got a book out on the subject. Shades of Poe's Premature Burial...


Lifting the lid on the macabre history of those buried alive
By Professor Jan Bondeson
Last updated at 9:57 AM on 12th March 2010


The horrific tale of Lawrence Cawthorn, a butcher from Newgate Market in London, was published in a pamphlet called The Most Lamentable And Deplorable Accident, in 1661.

It was just one of many stories about premature burial avidly read by the public at the time.

Cawthorn had fallen ill sometime that year. In the 17th century, little more than the apparent absence of a heartbeat or breath were considered to constitute proof of death - and few were seen by a doctor in their final illness.

It was often left to lay people to pronounce someone deceased. And, as it happened, Lawrence's wicked landlady - eager to inherit his belongings - saw to it that he was hastily declared dead and then buried.

But at the chapel where Cawthorn was interred mourners were horrified by a muffled shriek from the tomb and a frenzied clawing at the coffin walls.

Although it was quickly dug up, it was too late. Cawthorn's lifeless body was a horrid sight: the shroud was torn to pieces, the eyes hideously swollen and the head battered and bleeding. The story concluded: 'Among all the torments that Mankind is capable of, the most dreadful of them is to be buried alive.'

Even more sinister was the story, published in 1674, of Madam Blunden from Basingstoke, described as 'a fat, gross woman who liked to drink brandy'.

Feeling ill one evening, she ordered some poppy water from her local apothecary. After drinking it she fell into a death-like stupor. When the apothecary was called, he claimed Blunden had overdosed on the poppy water.

Her husband William, a wealthy malt dealer, arranged her funeral, but two days after the burial, some schoolboys playing in the churchyard claimed they heard 'fearful groanings and dismal shriekings' from the grave. Terrified, they went to get their schoolmaster.

She was exhumed and appeared to be dead, although her body had fresh bruises and scratches - injuries that were thought to be self-inflicted as she had tried to escape.
By the late 1700, paranoia about premature burial had reached such a peak that many doctors thought the only reliable sign of death was decomposition
Just to be on the safe side, after the body was wrapped in a new burial sheet the church warden suggested the grave be left open overnight, watched by some custodians. But it rained and the custodians closed the coffin and sought shelter.

The next morning, when the lid was opened, to everyone's horror it was seen that Madam Blunden had revived for a while, tearing off her winding sheet, and scratching her face and mouth until she drew blood.

Although we cannot know for sure how many people, like Cawthorn and Madam Blunden, have been buried alive it's no surprise that premature burial was something of an obsession for people in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

But such extraordinary episodes are not confined to the distant past. Only last month a 76-year-old Polish beekeeper named Josef Guzy - certified dead after a heart attack - narrowly escaped being buried alive when an undertaker noticed a faint pulse as he prepared to seal his coffin. Just weeks later, Mr Guzy was back tending his bees.

While modern advances in medical expertise have largely eradicated that kind of mistake, three centuries ago, such was the threat from diseases like bubonic plague and cholera that hasty interrment was the norm.

Ascertaining death was an inexact science. Aside from the basic check for a heartbeat and breath, in the 18th century additional tests included whipping the corpse's skin with nettles, bellowing in the ear and sticking needles under the toenails.

There were still many tales of near escapes. One from Dole in France, published in the 1700s, was confirmed by a professor of medicine in Besancon.
A troop of soldiers had been allowed to make camp in a churchyard. While some of them were strolling among the graves, they heard a faint cry coming from one of the vaults.

These soldiers broke down the vault door and rescueda young servant girl who had been interred a few hours earlier.

The girl had been gravely ill for some time and her mistress - too mean to call a doctor - had presumed her dead.

By the late 1700, paranoia about premature burial had reached such a peak that many doctors in Europe subscribed to the idea that the only reliable sign of death was putrefaction (decomposition).

In Germany, >Leichenhauser, 'hospitals for the dead' became widespread and were still in use in the 1950s. These heated mortuaries were designed to hold corpses until it was obvious they had started to rot.

Some Leichenhauser were filled with fragrant plants to try to mask the smell. All were staffed with watchmen who had to supervise the bodies for signs of life.

By the 1790s, another way of safeguarding against the dreaded premature burial was gaining popularity: the security coffin, designed to allow anyone who woke to find they had been prematurely interred to attract attention or escape.

One type was fitted with a tube rather like a ship's speaking trumpet. The idea was that local parson could take a stroll through the churchyard every morning and have a quick sniff down the tube to see if the putrefaction of the body was sufficiently well advanced to permit the tube to be withdrawn. If there was a lack of odour, the coffin should be opened after a few days.

In the second half of the 19th century, the obsession with security coffins continued and their design became more advanced. Alarm bells were replaced with firecrackers, sirens and even rockets which could be set off from inside the coffin.

Britons who wanted to guard against being buried alive in the 19th century could order coffins equipped with the Bateson Life Revival Device, an iron bell mounted in a miniature belltower on the lid of the casket, the bell rope attached to the hands of the body through a hole in the coffin lid.

Bateson's Belfry was patented in 1852 - and quite a few were sold. George Bateson was even awarded a medal by Queen Victoria for his services to the dead.

Today we know much more about physiology than the 19th century inventors did. A person enclosed in a normal-sized airtight coffin would perish within 60 minutes because of lack of oxygen - so any coffin that lacked a fresh air supply would be pretty useless no matter how many bells or sirens it was fitted with.

We also know that the putrefactive changes to a corpse are accompanied by swelling of the abdomen and some contractures of the arms and legs.

This process no doubt set off many of the coffins' alarm mechanisms - leading to many panicked scenes in cemeteries as ringing bells, waving flags and rocket explosions were hastily investigated.

Thanks to a slew of alarmist pamphlets that were being circulated in the 19th century (some which falsely claimed that more than one tenth of humanity was buried alive) the danger of premature burial had become one of the most feared perils of everyday life.

Many upper-class English people left legacies to their family physicians to protect themselves against this gruesome fate. Francis Douce, an antiquarian, gave 200 guineas to his surgeon to see that his heart was taken out after his death.

Lady Dryden of Northamptonshire, left an eminent physician £50 to slit her throat before burial; Mrs Elizabeth Thomas of Islington asked for her physician to pierce her heart with a long metal pin while the writer Harriet Martineau left her doctor ten guineas to see that her head was amputated.

Probably the most remarkable 20th-century incidence is that of Angelo Hays, from the village of St Quentin de Chalais in France. In 1937, when he was 19 years old, he was thrown from his motorcycle and hit a brick wall head first. Angelo Hays was declared dead and three days after the accident was buried.

But in nearby Bordeaux, an insurance firm found that Hay's father had recently insured his son's life for 200,000 francs. An inspector was called to investigate - and demanded to have the body exhumed two days after burial to confirm the exact cause of death.

When the doctor in charge of the autopsy removed the shroud, Hays was found to be warm. He was taken to hospital - and after several operations and a long period of rehabilitation recovered completely. His head injury had caused him to slip into deep unconciousness.

In 1995, 61-year-old Cambridgeshire farmer's wife Daphne Banks was certified dead by her family doctor after taking a drugs overdose on New Year's Eve. Three hours later, the undertaker loading her into a refrigerated drawer saw a vein twitch and heard her snore. Mrs Banks survived.

And it can still happen - as we saw with Josef Guzy a few weeks ago.

• Adapted Buried Alive: The Terrifying History Of Our Most Primeval Fear by Jan Bondeson, published by Norton at £10.95. Jan Bondeson 2010. To order a copy (p&p free), call 0845 155 0720.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0hxpLKBjm
 
This thread has been quiet for a while. No longer. The real deal, with video.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...e-man-hauled-out-of-brazil-grave-8930508.html

Buried alive: Man hauled out of Brazil grave

Video: A woman made the shocking discovery when visiting the grave of a relative

The Independent. Heather Saul. 09 November 2013


Disturbing video footage has emerged of a buried man being dragged out of a grave after a mourner realised he was still alive when she heard him struggling to get free.

Footage obtained by Brazil's Record TV appears to show paramedics and emergency services scraping dirt of the man's body before pulling him out of a grave, which was partly filled with earth, in the Ferraz de Vasconcelos area of Sao Paulo.

The woman is understood to have made the discovery while visiting the grave of a relative about a week ago.

It remains unclear as to how he ended up in the grave, but reports suggest he may have been attacked and then dumped there.

The unidentified man was later admitted to hospital and treated for minor injuries. Sao Paulo State Health Service confirmed he had been seen by a doctor and a psychiatrist.

:shock:
 
This thread has been quiet for a while. No longer. The real deal, with video.

That's progress for you. :lol:
 
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