The tradition of burying the dead with things that may be useful to them in the afterlife already existed in ancient Egypt. Ten and a half years ago, several residents of the South African Cape Town, who were afraid to fall asleep under the influence of the witchcraft of ill-wishers and be buried alive, asked to put phones with spare batteries in coffins in the hope of waking up and calling for help.
In America, cases have been recorded when corpses were even cremated with phones. Fulfilling the last will of the deceased, relatives and friends stuffed cell phones into their pockets without informing the workers of the crematoria. This arbitrariness can lead to trouble, because batteries tend to explode at high temperatures.
Fears of eccentrics being buried alive are not groundless. No one knows exactly how many people who fell into a lethargic sleep were buried. No one has ever kept such statistics, but without much risk of making a mistake, one can assume that the number goes into the thousands!
Sailors have long had the custom of sewing up the dead man in a shroud and throwing it into the sea. In order not to accidentally bury a living person, the last stitch was made through ... the nose of the deceased. If there was no reaction, the body was thrown into the water.
Mummy in the museum
People have always been afraid of being buried alive, but in the 18th-19th centuries this fear turned into real hysteria. Panic seized not only illiterate peasants, but also very educated people. First President of the United States George Washington, for example, demanded to bury himself no earlier than two days after the doctors declared him dead.
There were originals who insisted that before burial they ... cut off their heads. All, perhaps, outdone Miss Beswick, a resident of Manchester, who died at the end of the 18th century. She wrote to her doctor in her will 20,000 guineas, very large money for those times, but set one condition: her body should not be interred. The old woman wanted the doctor to embalm her, put her in his operating room and carefully examine her every day for signs of life. For several years, the poor fellow honestly fulfilled a terrible condition. When his patience came to an end, he hid the mummy in a huge grandfather clock. After the death of the doctor, the embalmed body of the eccentric was kept for some time in the Manchester Museum, after which it was interred.
The fear of being buried alive reached its apogee in the middle of the 19th century. In 1846, a competition was even organized, the participants of which competed in the invention of a reliable way to determine whether a person died or fell into a lethargic sleep. One Frenchman made pincers, which were to pull the corpse with all his might by the nipples. Wild pain, in his opinion, should have raised even the dead from the grave. An inventor from Sweden advised launching insects into the ear of a dead person. The French doctor Bosho was recognized as the winner of the competition. He received 1.5 thousand gold francs for a completely reasonable offer - to check shortly before that with a stethoscope invented, whether the dead man's heart is beating.
The coffins were equipped with a wide variety of devices and devices that allowed the "living" dead to report that they were alive. The bell tower of the British engineer was very popular Bateson. A rope with a bell was tied to the hand of the corpse. When a person came to his senses, he pulled the rope, resulting in a ringing. The Bateson bell tower was such a success that its inventor even received the Order of the British Empire from the hands of Queen Victoria. Alas, the fate of the engineer himself was sad. By the end of his life, he went crazy from the same fear. First, Bateson stopped trusting his own invention, then asked to be cremated. Fearing that his request would not be fulfilled, he doused himself with linseed oil and set himself on fire.
The Germans approached the solution of the problem with their inherent pedantry. They were in no hurry with the funeral and kept the coffins in the mortuary until the bodies began to decompose - until the end of the 19th century, decomposition was considered the main evidence of irreversible death.
The fashion hobby did not bypass Russia either. In 1897 Count Karnissky, a former chamberlain of Nicholas II, presented a modernized coffin to the Parisians. It was equipped with a long tube that went to the surface, a bell and a red flag. When the deceased came to his senses and began to move, the tube automatically provided oxygen access. At the same time, the bell began to ring loudly and the flag to sway.
The inventor thought of everything but one detail. He did not take into account the fact that during decomposition, some “stirring” also occurs. The result of this omission was hundreds of cases when cemetery workers ran to the ringing, dug up the coffin and found a half-decomposed body in it.
Super coffins of the 20th century
Although with the modern development of medicine, the probability of being buried alive is practically reduced to zero, such cases still occasionally occur today.
In the late 90s, a British doctor mistakenly declared dead Daphne Bank, the wife of a farmer from Cambridgeshire. It is not known how the case would have ended if it were not for the observant undertaker. Arriving at the morgue for the body, he noticed that the corpse's leg was twitching slightly, and heard a barely audible snoring. In the case of Daphne, who is now alive and well, everything ended well. Alas, there are many more tragic stories.
Two days after the funeral, the Guinean Mbaswa woke up from sleep and with all his might began to beat on the lid of the coffin. The poor man was saved, but the “second birth” did not bring him happiness. Considering him "marked" with death, not only friends and acquaintances turned away from him, but also relatives with the bride.
Ali Abdel Rahim Mohammed, an Arabic teacher from Egypt, suddenly passed out while on vacation in the Mediterranean. The doctor from the first-aid post on the beach did not find any signs of life in him and decided that he died suddenly from sunstroke. Five hours later, Ali's body was removed from the refrigerator and taken for an autopsy. On the operating table, the teacher... woke up. After spending several hours in the refrigerator, he was so cold that he could not speak. The pathologist, whom the “dead man”, like a vise, grabbed by the hand, ran out of the operating room in horror. Ali stood up with difficulty and hobbled to look for a phone to inform his family that the rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated.
The pathologist from Alexandria was lucky. The same cannot be said about another Egyptian doctor who heard screams coming from the mortuary refrigerator. The heart of a doctor who saw the resurrected corpse could not stand it, and he collapsed dead. In February 2000, a businessman James McCarthy suddenly got sick. On the way to the hospital, he fell into a coma. Deciding that James had died and now they had nothing to do in the hospital, the relatives turned around and went to the morgue.
When McCarthy was taken out of the refrigerator the next day, he was dead, but his entire body was bruised. Waking up, James tried to get out of the refrigerator, but could not free himself and eventually froze to death.
Of course, people who were afraid of being buried alive did not stop fighting in the 20th century. In the 70s, fancy coffins worth $7,500, which had almost everything necessary to sustain life, gained popularity among wealthy Americans. An impressive supply of provisions made it possible to live underground for a long time. A complex control panel regulated the air supply. If the "deceased" was stuffy, he could even turn on the fan. For the administration of natural needs, the supercoffin was equipped with a chemical toilet. In addition to these vital things, ingenious undertakers provided an electric alarm clock, a shortwave transmitter, a telephone and a small television. Particularly demanding customers were offered, for an additional fee, a miniature oven, a refrigerator, and even a tape recorder, which were not included in the standard set.
Not a single case of rescue of the owner of the supercoffin was recorded. There is nothing particularly surprising here. On the one hand, all the owners of super-coffins most likely did not fall asleep, but died for real. On the other hand, it is not very clear why a person who wakes up in such a coffin should strive back to the sinful earth?
Modern science is working hard to solve one of the few problems of mankind that directly prevents us from living... Taxes. Joke. For thousands of years, people have been looking for the key to immortality, and so far it is somewhere out there far from our understanding. Now we can already cheat death by freezing ourselves, uploading our minds into a computer, changing DNA, etc. But for now, these are all games with death, and so far it is winning us dry. Or not?Luz Miraglos Veron
Analia Bouter was pregnant with her fifth child when she went into labor 12 weeks prematurely. After the birth, the doctors told her that the child was dead, and her husband was given a paper in which the fact of the death of the child was recorded. But the parents decided to return 12 hours later to see their daughter's body, which by that time was already lying in the morgue's cold store. All doctors after childbirth diagnosed death, but when the parents opened the refrigerator box, the child began to cry, and they realized that their daughter had come to life. The girl was named Luz Miraglos (Wonderful Light) and the latest data about her say that the girl has grown stronger and is completely healthy.
Alvaro Garza Jr.
Alvaro Garza Jr. was born and lived in North Dakota, USA. He was 11 years old when he fell through the ice. Rescuers got to the place for a very long time and by the time they arrived, Alvaro had already been under water for 45 minutes. When he was pulled out of the river, the doctors declared clinical death: he had no pulse, and his body temperature dropped to 25 degrees. When he was brought to the hospital, he was connected to a heart-lung machine and he revived.
The explanation for this whole story lies in the fact that Alvaro fought for his life for several minutes before going under the ice. During this time, the body realized that there was a struggle for life, the body temperature dropped and the need for oxygen dropped to almost zero. Four days after the incident, he was already able to communicate, and after 17 days he was discharged. At first, the limbs did not obey him well, but gradually everything returned to normal. Now he is completely healthy.
Resurrection at the polling station
Ty Houston, a Michigan nurse, was filling out her ballot in 2012 when she heard a cry for help. Having run up to the crowded place, the nurse saw an unconscious man. He had no pulse and no breathing. She began to do artificial respiration and after 10 minutes the man came to life. And his first phrase was: "Haven't I voted yet?"
Resurrection in the Morgue Fridge
In July 2011, the owner of a mortuary in Johannesburg, South Africa, received the body of a man who appeared to be dead. He was placed in a refrigerator while waiting for his relatives to pick him up. Twenty-one hours later, the dead man woke up and started screaming. It is clear that the owner of the morgue did not expect this at all. Frightened, the owner called the police and waited for her to arrive. The police opened the cell and pulled out a "dead" man who showed signs of life in full. He was rushed to the hospital. The man made a full recovery, and the owner of the morgue was treated by a psychiatrist.
Calvin Santos
Calvin Santos, a two-year-old boy from Brazil, died after complications from bronchial pneumonia that caused him to stop breathing. He was placed in a body bag and returned to his relatives three hours later. When his aunt came up to say goodbye to him, the body, as she said, began to move, after which the boy sat in his coffin in front of the whole family, and asked his father for a sip of water. The family thought he was resurrected, but unfortunately he immediately lay down again and died again. He was taken to the hospital, but doctors pronounced him dead a second time.
Carlos Camejo
Carlos Camejo was 33 when he got into a highway accident. He was declared dead and taken to the local morgue. His wife was notified of the death and invited to identify the body. The pathologists had already begun the autopsy when they realized that something was wrong. Blood came out of the wound. They began to sew up, and at that moment Carlos woke up, as he said, from the fact that the pain was unbearable. When his wife arrived, he was already conscious and was sent to the hospital. He fully recovered (judging by the photo)
Erica Nigrelli
Erica Nigrelli, an English teacher from Missouri, was 36 weeks pregnant when she became ill and passed out on the job. Her husband Nathan, a teacher at the same school, called 911 to report that Erica was having a seizure. Erica's heart stopped. The ambulance arrived and took Erica to the hospital. The heart was also silent. The decision was made to save the child. After an emergency C-section, Erica's heart began to beat again. She was kept in an induced coma for five days, and as a result, she was found to be suffering from a heart condition known as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. She had a pacemaker installed. After some time, Erica and her daughter, Elania, were discharged alive and well.
Incident at the MaNdlo Hotel
In March of this year, prostitutes in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, stopped showing signs of life while "working" in a MaNdlo hotel room. An ambulance and police arrived to ascertain death. A crowd of onlookers gathered around. She was already put in a metal coffin, when suddenly the prostitute began to scream: "You want to kill me!" Naturally, onlookers immediately became much smaller. The client served by the girl wanted to run away, but he was stopped and explained that the authorities and the hotel had no claims against him. And from the hotel he received a big discount for staying in a room. So if you are staying at a hotel and want to get a big discount, let a prostitute die in your room and come to life in front of everyone.
Li Xiufeng
Li Xiufeng was 95 years old. And one morning, a neighbor found her lifeless on her own bed. The neighbor then called the police, who pronounced him dead. The grandmother's body was placed in a coffin and left until the day of the funeral. On the day of the funeral, relatives came and found that the coffin was empty. A minute later she was found in the kitchen drinking tea. As it turned out, this "death" was the result of a head injury suffered two weeks earlier.
Ludmila Steblitskaya
Lyudmila was also diagnosed with death, placed in the morgue, where she later woke up. What makes her different from the guy who spent 21 hours in the morgue, she spent three whole days in the cell.
In November 2011, her daughter Nastya went to the hospital to visit Lyudmila, she was greeted by a nurse who said that her mother had died. The body was in the morgue, and the morgue was closed. It was already Friday evening. The daughter prepared for the funeral, invited 50 people. To pay for the funeral, the daughter borrowed about $ 2,000. On Monday, Nastya entered the morgue with the opening and found her mother in perfect health. After this discovery, the daughter ran out of the morgue screaming. The hospital declined to comment on the incident.
Nastya recovered from the shock for a long time, and Lyudmila gave the money in the amount of $ 2,000 from her salary for a long time. About a year later, she again "died" for an hour. Now the daughter has decided to wait at least a week before admitting her mother's death.
It is no coincidence that in almost all countries and among all peoples it is customary to bury the body not immediately after death, but only after a few days. There were many cases when the "dead" suddenly came to life before the funeral, or, worst of all, right inside the grave...
Imaginary death
Lethargy (from the Greek lethe - "oblivion" and argia - "inaction") is a little-studied painful condition, similar to sleep. Signs of death have always been considered the cessation of the heartbeat and the absence of breathing. But during a lethargic sleep, all life processes also freeze, and it is quite difficult to distinguish real death from an imaginary one (as lethargic sleep is often called) without modern equipment. Therefore, earlier cases of burial of people who did not die, but fell asleep in a lethargic sleep, took place quite often, and sometimes with famous people.
If now burial alive is already a fantasy, then even 100-200 years ago, cases of burying living people were not so uncommon. Very often, gravediggers, digging a fresh grave at ancient burial sites, found twisted bodies in half-decayed coffins, which showed that they were trying to get free. They say that in medieval cemeteries every third grave was such a terrible sight.
Fatal sleeping pill
Helena Blavatsky described strange cases of lethargic sleep: “In 1816, in Brussels, a respected citizen fell into deep lethargy on a Sunday morning. On Monday, when his companions were preparing to hammer nails into the coffin lid, he sat down in the coffin, rubbed his eyes and demanded coffee and a newspaper. In Moscow, the wife of a wealthy merchant lay in a cataleptic state for seventeen days, during which the authorities made several attempts to bury her; but since decomposition did not occur, the family rejected the ceremony, and after the expiration of the said period, the life of the allegedly dead was restored. In Bergerac in 1842, the patient took sleeping pills, but ... did not wake up. They let him bleed: he did not wake up. Finally he was declared dead and buried. A few days later, they remembered taking sleeping pills and dug up the grave. The body was turned over and bore signs of a struggle. ”This is only a small part of such cases - a lethargic dream is actually quite a frequent occurrence.
Terrible awakening
Many people tried to protect themselves from being buried alive. For example, the famous writer Wilkie Collins left a note by his bed with a list of measures to be taken before he was buried. But the writer was an educated person and had the concept of a lethargic dream, while many ordinary people did not even think of something like that. So, in 1838, an incredible incident occurred in England. After the funeral of a respected person, a boy was walking through the cemetery and heard an indistinct sound from under the ground. The frightened child called the adults who dug the coffin. When the lid was removed, the shocked witnesses saw that a terrible grimace had frozen on the face of the deceased. His arms were freshly bruised and his shroud was torn. But the man was already actually dead - he died a few minutes before being rescued - from a broken heart, unable to withstand such a terrible awakening to reality. An even more terrible incident occurred in Germany in 1773. A pregnant woman was buried there. When screams began to be heard from under the ground, the grave was dug up. But it turned out that it was already too late - the woman died, and moreover, the child who had just been born in the same grave died ...
crying soul
In the fall of 2002, a misfortune happened in the family of Irina Andreevna Maletina, a resident of Krasnoyarsk - her thirty-year-old son Mikhail unexpectedly died. A strong athletic guy who never complained about his health died at night in his sleep. The body was autopsied, but the cause of death could not be determined. The doctor who drew up the death report told Irina Andreevna that her son had died of sudden cardiac arrest. As expected, Mikhail was buried on the third day, a wake was celebrated ... And suddenly the next night the dead son dreamed of his mother crying. In the afternoon, Irina Andreevna went to church and lit a candle for the repose of the soul of the newly deceased. However, the crying son continued to appear to her in a dream for another week. Maletina turned to one of the priests, who, after listening, said disappointing words that the young man might have been buried alive. Irina Andreevna had to make incredible efforts to obtain permission to carry out the exhumation. When the coffin was opened, the grief-stricken woman turned gray with horror in an instant. Her dearly beloved son lay on his side. His clothes, ritual veil and pillow were torn to shreds. There were numerous abrasions and bruises on the hands of the corpse, which were not present at the time of the funeral. All this eloquently testified that the man woke up in the grave, and then died long and painfully. Elena Ivanovna Duzhkina, a resident of the city of Bereznyaki near Solikamsk, recalls how once, in her childhood, she and a group of children saw a coffin floating from nowhere during the spring flood of the Kama. The waves washed him ashore. Frightened children called adults. People opened the coffin and were horrified to see a yellowish skeleton dressed in decayed rags. The skeleton lay prone, legs tucked under it. The entire lid of the coffin, which had darkened from time to time, was dotted with deep scratches from the inside.
Live Gogol
The most famous such case was the terrible story associated with Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. During his life, he several times fell into a strange, absolutely immobile state, reminiscent of death. But the great writer always quickly came to his senses, although he managed to pretty scare others. Gogol knew about this peculiarity of his and more than anything in the world was afraid that one day he would fall into a deep sleep for a long time and be buried alive. He wrote: “Being in the full presence of memory and common sense, I state here my last will.
I bequeath my body not to be buried until clear signs of decomposition appear. I mention this because even during the illness itself, moments of vital numbness found on me, my heart and pulse stopped beating. ”After the writer’s death, they did not heed his will and buried him as usual - on the third day ...
These terrible words were remembered only in 1931, when Gogol was reburied from the Danilov Monastery at the Novodevichy Cemetery. According to eyewitnesses, the lid of the coffin was scratched from the inside, and Gogol's body was in an unnatural position. At the same time, another terrible thing was discovered that had nothing to do with lethargic dreams and burials alive. Gogol's skeleton was missing... a head. According to rumors, she disappeared in 1909, when the monks of the Danilov Monastery restored the grave of the writer. Allegedly, they were persuaded to cut it off for a considerable amount by the collector and rich man Bakhrushin, with whom she remained. This is a wild story, but it is quite possible to believe in it, because in 1931, during the excavation of Gogol's grave, a number of unpleasant events occurred. Famous writers, who were present at the reburial, literally stole from the coffin "as a keepsake" some pieces of clothing, some shoes, and some Gogol's rib...
Call from beyond
Interestingly, in order to protect a person from being buried alive, in many Western countries there is still a bell with a rope in morgues. A person who is considered dead can wake up among the dead, get up and call him. The servants will immediately come running to his call. This bell and the revival of the dead are very often played out in horror films, but in reality such stories almost never happened. But during the autopsy, the "corpses" came to life more than once. In 1964, a New York mortuary performed an autopsy on a man who died on the street. As soon as the pathologist's scalpel touched the "dead man's" stomach, he immediately jumped up. The pathologist himself died of shock and fright on the spot... Another similar case was described in the Biysk Rabochy newspaper. An article dated September 1959 told how, during the funeral of an engineer of one of the Biysk factories, while delivering mourning speeches, the deceased suddenly sneezed, opened his eyes, sat down in a coffin and “almost died a second time, seeing the situation in which located". A thorough examination at the local hospital of the man who had risen from the coffin did not reveal any pathological changes in his body. The Novosibirsk doctors, to whom the resurrected engineer was sent, gave the same conclusion.
Ritual burials
However, people are not always buried alive against their will. So, among some African tribes, the peoples of South America, Siberia and the Far North, there is a ritual in which the healer of the tribe buries a relative alive. In a number of nationalities, this rite is also carried out as the initiation of boys. In some tribes, it is used for and for certain diseases. In the same way, the elderly or the sick are prepared for the transition to another world. The ritual of “pseudo-burial” occupies an important place among the ministers of shamanic cults. It is believed that, lying alive in the grave, the shaman receives the gift of communication with the spirits of the earth, as well as with the souls of dead ancestors. Some channels seem to open in his mind, through which he communicates with unknown mere mortal worlds. Naturalist and ethnographer E.S. Bogdanovsky was lucky in 1915 to witness the ritual funeral of a shaman of one of the Kamchatka tribes. In his memoirs, Bogdanovsky writes that before the burial, the shaman fasted for three days and did not even drink water. Then the assistants, using a bone drill, made a hole in the crown of the shaman, which was then sealed with beeswax. After that, the body of the shaman was rubbed with incense, wrapped in the skin of a bear, and lowered into a grave arranged in the center of the family cemetery, accompanied by ritual singing. A few days later, during which rituals were continuously performed over the grave, the buried shaman was taken out of the ground, washed in three running waters and fumigated with incense. On the same day, the village celebrated the second birth of a respected fellow tribesman who, having been in the “kingdom of the dead”, occupied the top step in the hierarchy of pagan cult ministers...
In recent years, a tradition has appeared to put charged mobile phones next to the dead - suddenly it’s not death at all, but a dream, suddenly a dear person comes to his senses and calls his relatives - I’m alive, dig me back ... But so far there have been no such cases - in our days, with perfect diagnostic devices, in principle it is impossible to bury a person alive. Nevertheless, people do not trust doctors and try to protect themselves from a terrible awakening in the grave. In 2001, a scandalous incident occurred in the United States. A resident of Los Angeles, Joe Barten, who was terribly afraid of falling into a lethargic sleep, bequeathed to make ventilation in his coffin, put food and a phone in it. And at the same time, his relatives could receive an inheritance only on the condition that they call his grave three times a day. Interestingly, Barten's relatives refused to receive an inheritance - the process of making calls to the other world seemed too creepy to them ...
Probably, each of us remembers from school times the frightening stories of literature teachers about Gogol buried alive, who suffered from periodic falling into a lethargic sleep.
And around this terrible story there were so many mysteries, rumors and other tales that it is not completely known whether this was true, or historians embellished a little. But today we will tell you not about the sad fate of Gogol. We will tell you the real stories of people who experienced the full horror of the enclosed space under the lid of the coffin. You don't wish this on anyone. Terrible, not the right word!
1. Octavia Smith Hatcher
In the late 19th century, there was an outbreak of an unknown disease in Kentucky that claimed many lives. But the most tragic incident happened to Octavia Hatcher. Her young son Jacob died in January 1891 of unknown cause. Then Octavia fell into a depression, spending all her time in bed in a supine position. Time passed, but the depression only worsened, and, in the end, Octavia fell into a coma. On May 2, 1891, doctors officially declared her dead, without specifying the cause of death.
At that time, embalming was not practiced, so Octavia was quickly buried in the local cemetery due to the sweltering heat. Just a week after the funeral, an outbreak of the same unknown disease was recorded in the city, and many citizens fell into a coma. But with only one difference - after a while they woke up. Octavia's husband began to fear the worst and worried that he had buried his wife too soon, while she was still breathing. He had the body exhumed, and his fears were confirmed. The top lid of the coffin was scratched and the fabric was torn to shreds. Octavia's fingers were bloody and torn, and her face was contorted in horror. The poor woman died conscious in a coffin at a depth of many meters.
Octavia's husband reburied his wife and erected a majestic monument over her grave, which has survived to this day. Doctors later suggested that a similar coma was caused by the bite of a tsetse fly and is known as sleeping sickness.
2. Mina El Houari
When a person goes on a date, he always thinks about how everything can end. Being prepared for the unexpected is great, but no one is prepared to be buried alive. A similar story happened in May 2014 with Mina El Houari from France. The 25-year-old was chatting online with her lover for months before she decided to visit him in Morocco for a face-to-face meeting. She arrived at a hotel in Fes on May 19 to meet the man of her dreams, but she was not destined to fulfill her plans.
Mina, of course, met with her lover, but, suddenly, she became ill, and she lost consciousness. The young man, instead of calling the police or an ambulance, made a hasty decision to bury his beloved in a small grave in the garden. The only problem was that Mina hadn't actually died. As is often the case, Mina had undiagnosed diabetes causing bouts of diabetic coma. Several days passed before her family filed a missing persons report. They flew to Morocco to try and find her.
The Moroccan police tracked down the unfortunate groom and broke into his house. They found soiled clothes and a used shovel, and then discovered a horrific burial in the garden. The man confessed to his crime and was convicted of manslaughter.
3. Mrs Boger
In July 1893, a tragedy struck the family of Charles Boger: his beloved wife, Mrs. Boger, suddenly died of an unknown cause. Doctors confirmed her death, so the burial went very quickly. This could have ended this story if Charles's friend had not told him that before meeting him, Mrs. Boger suffered from hysteria. And this could be the reason for her sudden "death".
The obsessive thought about the living burial of his wife did not leave Charles, and he asked his friends to help him exhume the body. What Charles saw in the coffin shocked him. Mrs. Boger's body was turned face down. Her clothes were torn to shreds, the glass lid of the coffin was shattered, and pieces were scattered all over her body. The skin was bloodied and covered with scratches, and the fingers were completely absent. Presumably, Mrs. Boger chewed her fingers in a fit of hysteria, trying to free herself. What happened next to Charles Boger is unknown.
4. Angelo Hayes
Some of the worst stories of premature burial are those in which the buried victim miraculously survives. This is what happened to Angel Hayes. In 1937, the carefree 19-year-old Angelo rode his motorcycle. Suddenly, he lost control and crashed into a brick wall, hitting his head.
The guy was buried 3 days after the accident. If not for the suspicions of the insurance company, no one would have known the real truth. A few weeks before the accident, Angelo's father had insured his son's life for £200,000. The insurance company filed a complaint and the inspector launched an investigation.
The inspector exhumed Angelo's body to determine the real cause of the boy's death. And what was the surprise of the inspector and the doctors when, under the shroud, they found the warm body of a boy with a barely perceptible heartbeat. At the same moment, Angelo was taken to the hospital, underwent several operations and the necessary resuscitation to put the guy on his feet. All this time, Angelo was unconscious due to a serious head injury. After the rehabilitation course, the boy began to produce coffins, from which one could easily get out in case of premature burial. He toured with his invention and became a kind of celebrity in France.
5. Mr. Cornish
Cornish was the beloved mayor of Bath, who died of a fever 80 years before the publication of Snart's work. As was customary at the time, the body of the deceased was quickly buried. When the gravedigger had almost finished his work, he decided to take a break and have a drink with acquaintances passing by. While they were talking, suddenly there was a heart-rending groan coming from a freshly filled grave.
The gravedigger realized that he had buried a man alive and tried to save him before the oxygen supply in the coffin ran out. But by the time the gravedigger had dug out the coffin from under the layer of covered soil, it was too late. Mr. Cornish's elbows and knees were bloodied and worn away. This story terribly frightened Cornish's half-sister, so she asked to be beheaded after death so that she would not suffer the same fate.
6 Survivor 6 year old
The very thought of premature burial seems dreadful, not to mention the burial of a still-living child. In August 2014, a little 6-year-old girl found herself in such a situation in the small Indian village of Uttar Pradash. According to the girl's uncle, a neighboring couple told the child that her mother asked to bring the girl to the neighboring village for the fair. On the way, the couple, for some unknown reason, decided to suffocate the girl and immediately bury her.
Luckily, the locals who were working in the fields at the time became suspicious when the couple walked out of the bush without the baby. They found the place where they found the girl's lifeless body in a shallow grave. The girl was immediately taken to the hospital, where, thanks to a miracle, she woke up and was able to tell about her captors.
The girl did not remember that she had been buried alive. The police do not know the reasons why the couple wanted to kill the child. Moreover, the suspects have not yet been caught. I'm glad this story didn't end in tragedy.
7 Buried Alive Of His Own Will
Mankind knows cases when people tried to deceive fate and even challenge it. Today, you can even purchase practical manuals to help you get out of the grave if you've been buried alive.
Moreover, many people like to tickle their nerves, believing that after that they will be happy for the rest of their days. In 2011, a 35-year-old Russian man decided to play with death, but tragically died.
Asking for help from a friend, the man dug a grave for himself outside Blagoveshchensk, where he placed a makeshift coffin, a piece of a water pipe, a bottle of water and a mobile phone.
After the man lay down in the coffin, his friend threw earth over the coffin and left. A few hours later, the buried man called a friend and said that he was feeling great. But when the friend returned in the morning, he found a corpse in the grave. It probably rained at night, which blocked the access of oxygen, and the man simply suffocated. Despite the tragedy of the situation, such “entertainment” was popular in Russia at one time, and it is not known how many people died in this way.
8. Lawrence Cawthorne
There are many stories of premature burials that seem to be nothing more than a legend that is hard to believe. Similar is the story of a London butcher named Lawrence Cawthorne who was terminally ill in 1661. The owner of the land where Lawrence worked was expecting his speedy death because of the large inheritance that she wanted to receive. She made every effort to have him declared dead and quickly buried in a small chapel.
After the funeral, mourners heard squeals and groans from the freshly dug grave. They rushed to tear up Chowrne's grave, but it was too late. Lawrence's clothes were torn, his eyes were swollen, and his head was bloody. The woman was accused of premeditated murder of a man, and the story was passed down from generation to generation for a long time.
9. Sipho William Mdletshe
In 1993, a 24-year-old South African boy and his fiancée were involved in a serious car accident. His fiancée survived, and Sipho, who received extensive injuries, was presumed dead. The guy's body was taken to the Johannesburg morgue, where they were placed in a metal container for burial. But in fact, Sipho was not dead, he was only unconscious. Two days later he woke up in prison. Frustrated, he started screaming for help.
Fortunately, the morgue workers were nearby and were able to help the guy get out of prison. Having got rid of the horror of the death chamber, Sipho went to his bride. But she decided that Sipho was a zombie, and drove him away. Not only was the guy buried alive, but the girl also rejected him. Unlucky poor fellow
10. Stephen Small
In 1987, wealthy media corporation heir Stephen Small was kidnapped and buried alive in a makeshift coffin near Kankakee. Denny Edwards, 30, and Nancy Rish, 26, planned to kidnap Stephen, bury him underground and demand a $1 million ransom from relatives. The kidnappers took care of Stephen's minimum needs for air, water and light with pipes. But despite this, the man suffocated.
The police managed to find Mr. Small by his maroon Mercedes, which was left near the burial site. Despite the fact that Denny and Nancy were convicted, there were still discussions for a long time about whether this was a premeditated murder or not. In any case, this crime is terrible, and the kidnappers will spend another 27 long years behind bars.
It is not for nothing that in almost all countries of the world, it is customary to carry out funerals not immediately after death, but only after a few days. There are many examples when the "dead" suddenly came to life before the funeral, or, worst of all, already directly in the grave, being buried alive ...
Imaginary death
The ritual of "pseudo-burial" occupies an important place among the attendants of shamanic cults. It is believed that, lying alive in the grave, the shaman is given the gift of communication with the spirits of the earth, as well as with the souls of dead ancestors. Some channels seem to open in his mind, through which he communicates with other worlds unknown to mere mortals.
Naturalist and ethnographer E.S. Bogdanovsky was lucky in 1915 to witness the ritual funeral of a shaman of a Kamchatka tribe. In his memoirs, Bogdanovsky wrote that before the burial, the shaman fasted for three days and did not even drink water. After that, the assistants made a hole in the crown of the shaman's head with a bone drill, which was then sealed with beeswax. Then the body of the shaman was rubbed with incense, wrapped in the skin of a bear and lowered into the grave, which was arranged in the center of the family cemetery, accompanied by ritual singing. A long reed tube was inserted into the shaman's mouth, which was brought out, and his motionless body was covered with earth. A few days later, during which ritual actions were continuously carried out over the grave, the buried shaman was taken out of the grave, washed in three running waters and fumigated with incense. On the same day, the village celebrated the second birth of a respected fellow tribesman, who, having been in the "kingdom of the dead", occupied the top step in the hierarchy of pagan worshipers...
Recently, a tradition has appeared to put a charged mobile phone next to the deceased - suddenly it’s not death at all, but a dream, suddenly a dear person comes to his senses and calls his loved ones - I’m alive, dig me back ... But so far this has not happened - in our time, with perfect diagnostic devices, in principle it is impossible to bury a person alive.
However, people do not trust doctors and try to protect themselves from a terrible awakening in the grave. In 2001, a scandalous incident occurred in America. A resident of Los Angeles, Joe Barten, who was terribly afraid of falling into a lethargic sleep, bequeathed to make ventilation in his coffin, leave food and a telephone in it. And at the same time, his relatives could receive an inheritance only on the condition that they call his grave 3 times a day. It is curious that Barten's relatives refused to receive an inheritance - the process of making calls seemed rather creepy to them ...
"Secrets of the XX century" - (Gold series)
