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

Well, the story goes that Vlad the Impaler's older brother had his eyes burned out,, then he was buried alive.

Ever notice that these stories of people waking up in the mortuary almost all come from Greece? A few from Italy, but mostly Greece?

Greek doctors are some of the worst in the world. There are many good ones, too, but there are some real losers there.

A doctor I knew said that decomposition is the only infallible proof of death.

Too add to the jolly tone, during the American Civil War, if a patient came in unconcious and unresponsive, the surgeon would pour choroform over the patients testicles-if they reacted, treatment continued, if not, off to the dead pile.

Y'know, I'm beginning to think this war business is really a bad idea?
 
What is the supposed effect of pouring chloroform on someone's testicles? :?

Is it meant to be similar to ralgex or something?
 
OneWingedBird said:
What is the supposed effect of pouring chloroform on someone's testicles? :?

Is it meant to be similar to ralgex or something?

I remember being drunk at a party once and sprinkling dried garlic on a guy to see if he was undead.
 
OneWingedBird said:
What is the supposed effect of pouring chloroform on someone's testicles? :?

Is it meant to be similar to ralgex or something?

Stings like hell and causes the top layer of skin to dry out and eventually peel off.
 
Cancer victim 'came back to life' in her grave
Visitors to a cemetry in Greece claim they heard a woman shouting from inside her coffin and dug her up, only for her to die for a second time
By Rory Mulholland, Paris
10:06PM BST 26 Sep 2014

Shocked visitors to a Greek cemetery were left horrified when they heard banging and muffled calls for help coming from the grave of a woman who just been buried.
Police said a cemetery worker and two people visitors [?] heard a woman’s voice from inside the 49-year-old cancer patient’s grave on Thursday.
The sounds were reportedly heard by the passers-by shortly after the last relatives of the deceased had left her funeral in the northern town of Peraia.

They are believed to have dug up the grave to try to save her, but by the time they got her out of the ground she had suffocated inside the coffin, according to Greek media.

A doctor summoned to the cemetery pronounced her dead, but dismissed claims that she had revived and had called for help.
“I just don’t believe it,” Dr Chrissi Matsikoudi told a local television news station. “We did several tests including one for heart failure on the body.”
It would have been impossible for “someone in a state of rigor mortis to have been shouting and hitting the coffin like that,” she said.

The mother of two, who has not been named, was declared dead before her funeral at a private clinic on Thursday in Thessaloniki, Greece’s main city in the north. A coroner will examine the body.

Relatives of the dead woman in Peraia, a picturesque seaside town next to Thessaloniki international airport, were reported to be considering suing the doctors responsible for her treatment at the cancer clinic

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... grave.html
 
Visitors to a cemetry in Greece

Shocked visitors to a Greek cemetery were left horrified when they heard banging and muffled calls for help coming from the grave of a woman who just been buried.

Really, the standard of journalism these days is very low. Tsk.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Really, the standard of journalism these days is very low. Tsk.
Ditto the standard of Greek medicine, if the story is true.

(A point that's been raised elswhere, methinks)
 
I find myself remiss in failing to reply to the effect of chloroform applied to the stones....

It was supposed to make any live patient twitch(boy, howdy!). Rough and ready medicine for desperate times.

Remember, this was when medical school lasted a year.

The only absolute test for death is decomposition. Alexander's body didn't decay-not by divine favor, but because he wasn't dead, yet, a coma profound enough is easily mistaken for death. The stethoscope was not yet known.

A man I knew once attended a funeral in West Virginia, where attendees complained it was so hot the corpse was sweating-yep, that ol' boy got buried alive.

A little chloroform on the gonads would have told the tale.

You are born. You grow up, grow old and die. Then the worms eat you.

Be glad it happens in that order.
 
Halifax's John Edwards is freed from coffin after three days
25 July 2016

A recovered drug addict and charity worker has been released from a coffin after spending three days buried underground.
John Edwards, 61, was buried on Friday in Halifax and resurfaced on Monday.
He said he had "brought words of light from the grave" in a bid to reduce the number of addicts' funerals he has to attend.
The Walking Free charity founder works with suicidal addicts and their families.

Mr Edwards streamed his incarceration live via a smartphone and also was in contact on social media.
He said he had talked to "people all over the world".
He thanked his supporters and said he felt a bit "woozy" after his time confined to the 8ft long, 3.5ft high and 4ft wide (2.4m x 1m x 1.3m) coffin.
Mr Edwards said he was "looking forward to using a toilet and having a shower".

During his stay he received food and water through a pipe and a second pipe was connected to a caravan toilet.

...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-36890083
 
The family of a Brazilian woman have claimed she was buried alive and may have spent 11 days trying to fight her way out of a coffin.

Rosangela Almeida dos Santos, 37, was pronounced dead and a funeral was held for her in the town of Riachao das Neves in the northeast of Brazil.

But her family dug up her grave after reportedly being told by people living nearby that they heard screams and moans coming from the cemetery, according to Brazilian news site G1.

Video footage shows a wooden coffin being lifted by a group of men from its resting place and being opened.

Relatives claimed that when she was dug up, there was evidence of a struggle, such as wounds on her hands and forehead that they believe were not there when she was put to rest.

Her mother told the news site that nails inside the casket had been loosened as if she had been trying to escape.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...ys-rosangela-almeida-dos-santos-a8213646.html

(Pics in this video indicate it was an above-ground grave, hence she'd be audible)
 
Snopes is disputing the validity of one famous 'nearly buried alive' story - that of Essie Dunbar, who was found to be alive when her coffin was re-opened at the graveside in 1915.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/essie-dunbar-funeral-discovery/

Jan Bondeson's 2001 book Buried Alive is cited as the primary source for online citations of the tale.
 
I recall reading something many years ago (i.e. pre-internet) about the clearance of a Paris cemetary. This was done as a result of the modernisation of Paris city centre and the building of grand boulevards leading out from it.
Supposedly; 1 in 20 of the coffins opened held remains of people who had been buried alive.

(I also associate the 1 in 20 figure with the dead following the battle of Waterloo. Supposedly the same ratio of combatents were found there to be women masquerading as men).

Incidentally, I have no knowledge of the veracity of either of the above.
 
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.

On the other hand, doctors still to this day place patients in medically induced comas in order to allow the body to repair itself without the individual suffering through pain, trauma, etc. Couldn't this be a similar, natural, effect?
 
Practical advice for if you find yourself buried alive

aburiedalive.jpg
 
Jan Bondeson's 2001 book Buried Alive is cited as the primary source for online citations of the tale
I asked him (in person at the last year's Edinburgh Fortean Society Conference) if he'd consider producing an updated edition. He didn't rule it out...

@Swifty - "This is where the term 'saved by the bell' comes from"....really? Not from the boxing ring? Or, perhaps, metaphysically, from the redemptive tolling of church Passing Bells?

Coffin escape bells are a bit too specialist, surely, for this to have been the root etymology.
 
... @Swifty - "This is where the term 'saved by the bell' comes from"....really? Not from the boxing ring? ...

You're right - there's no evidence for the phrase "saved by the bell" dating earlier than the late 19th century and from the context of boxing.

In fact, the expression is boxing slang and it came into being in the latter half of the 19th century. A boxer who is in danger of losing a bout can be 'saved' from defeat by the respite signalled by bell that marks the end of a round. The earliest reference to this that I can find is in the Massachusetts newspaper The Fitchburg Daily Sentinel, February 1893:

"Martin Flaherty defeated Bobby Burns in 32 rounds by a complete knockout. Half a dozen times Flaherty was saved by the bell in the earlier rounds."​
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/saved-by-the-bell.html

Folk etymology has suggested that perhaps the phrases "saved by the bell", "dead ringer" and "graveyard shift" come from the use of safety coffins in the Victorian era; however, these have been dispelled as urban myth, attributed to a linguistic e-mail hoax Life in the 1500s. The "saved by the bell" expression is actually well established to have come from boxing, where a boxer who is still on their feet but close to being knocked down can be saved from losing by the bell ringing to indicate the end of the round.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_coffin#"Saved_by_the_bell"_expression

See Also:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/life-in-the-1500s/
 
I asked him (in person at the last year's Edinburgh Fortean Society Conference) if he'd consider producing an updated edition. He didn't rule it out...

@Swifty - "This is where the term 'saved by the bell' comes from"....really? Not from the boxing ring? Or, perhaps, metaphysically, from the redemptive tolling of church Passing Bells?

Coffin escape bells are a bit too specialist, surely, for this to have been the root etymology.
I'd always though "saved by the bell" came from boxing as well ?... I don't know?, perhaps it was later appropriated for boxing ? .. one for mythconceptions ..
 
Bone-chilling footage from a funeral shows a corpse in Indonesia appear to wave from the casket to mourners, sparking fears the person was mistakenly buried alive, according to a report.

The eerie moment was caught on camera May 5 as the family gathered to say a final farewell to their loved one in the city of Manado.

Footage shows what appears to be a hand moving under the coffin’s glass panel as a priest reads prayers during the service.


“God has said in the Book of John, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, he will live even though he is dead,'” the priest said.

It was then that what was believed to be the deceased person’s hand appears to wave, or touch the lid of the coffin, the outlet reported.

No one noticed the purported incident at the time, but others pointed it out when the clip was shared on social media, according to the report.

“Yes, he waved, maybe he was still alive and try to dig his way out,” one person reportedly wrote.

Experts debunked the theory that the corpse was still kicking, saying simple rigor mortis was to blame.

https://nypost.com/2020/05/13/eerie-video-shows-moment-corpse-waves-during-burial-service/

maximus otter
 
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OK, this is another one of my childhood fears. Remind me to ask to be buried in a cheap coffin and with a penknife.
 
OK, this is another one of my childhood fears. Remind me to ask to be buried in a cheap coffin and with a penknife.
Most people are now being cremated.
 
Most people are now being cremated.
Being cremated alive could be a new fear. And I was just watching 'Diamonds are Forever' the other night.


Actually I have a space reserved in the local cemetery.
 
This new Express article summarizes the history of taphophobic concerns and provides some details on selected examples of the "safety coffins" inventors devised to allow prematurely buried people to survive and signal their plight.

People feared being buried alive so much they invented safety coffins
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1454734/frisk-burial-alive-safety-coffins
 
I'd always though "saved by the bell" came from boxing as well ?... I don't know?, perhaps it was later appropriated for boxing ? .. one for mythconceptions ..

Of course it is! How many boxers have been spared a prolonged drubbing by the end-of-round bell, compared to the numbers saved from a a premature burial by a gadget? :chuckle:

As a kid I'd watch the boxing on TV and heard the exact expression used occasionally.
 
alive.jpg


CASE OF LIVING BURIAL REPORTED IN LORRAINE

Evidences of a Fearful Struggle Are Discovered When the Grave is at Last Opened.

Special Cable, Dispatch to The Inter Ocean.

BERLIN, Sept. 28.-A case of a man being been buried alive comes from Kausen, in Lorraine. The grave digger of the cemetery there was busy digging a grave when he heard a mysterious noise. Approaching the spot, he was astounded to hear appeals for help coming from a grave in which a man had been recently buried.

The grave digger informed the vicar, and the latter speedily appeared in the cemetery with the burgomaster [Teutonic mayor -T.]. The grave was opened and it was found
that the man bad been buried alive.

The body was covered with blood, and It was concluded that the man had emerged from his lethargic stale and had endeavored to get out of the coffin, but had died shortly afterward trom suffocation

The Chicago Inter Ocean, 29 Sept 1907, p1
 
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