19-year-old Angelo Hays died tragically in a motorcycle accident in 1937. Or rather, everyone thought so. He hit the brick wall head first. The insurance agent had some doubts about the death of a young motorcyclist. Two days after the funeral, the young man's body was exhumed.
Angelo was alive. He fell into a coma - this is what helped him survive the monstrous ordeal. The body uses less oxygen. After rehabilitation, Hayes told the story of his imprisonment in a coffin. He became a French celebrity and even invented a special coffin equipped with a radio transmitter, a supply of food, a library and a chemical toilet in case someone repeats his fate.
Woke up in the morgue
Popular
In 1993, Sipho William Mdletshe and his fiancée were involved in a horrendous car accident. His injuries were so severe that he was mistaken for dead, taken to the Johannesburg morgue and placed in a metal container to await burial.
The man woke up two days later and found himself locked in the dark. His screams attracted the attention of the staff, and the man was released.
Relations with the bride could not be restored - she was convinced that her ex-fiance was now a zombie and was pursuing her.
Old lady in a body bag
In 1994, 86-year-old Mildred Clarke was found in her living room. She wasn't breathing and her heart wasn't beating. The old woman was placed in a body bag, planning to deliver the body to the morgue.
She woke up 90 minutes later, shocking and scaring the mortuary staff into hiccups. The woman lived another week before truly dying. We believe that this time the doctors spent more time checking.
Baby spent 8 days underground
In 2015, a couple in China had a baby with a cleft palate. The guy and the girl were not ready for a child "with problems", they panicked and decided to get rid of the unwanted child in any way. So, they put him in a cardboard box and buried him in a shallow grave in the cemetery.
Lu Fenglian was picking herbs in the vicinity of the cemetery and heard a cry coming from the ground. By that time, eight days had passed. She dug up the grave and found a baby there, who survived only because the cardboard let air and water through. Unfortunately, due to lack of evidence, the couple could not be arrested - the baby's parents argued that their own parents wanted to kill their son. No one believed, but it was not possible to prove the involvement of the parents.
The official got out of the grave
A woman visiting the graves of her relatives in 2013 in a small Brazilian town suddenly saw a man ... who was getting out of the grave. His head and arms were free, but he couldn't pull his lower body out of the ground. A witness to the beginning of the zombie apocalypse brought workers to help the man free himself. It turned out to be an employee of the city council.
Before burying the poor fellow, he was severely beaten, so that he did not even remember how he was buried (probably for the better).
Record: 61 days underground
In 1968, Mike Meaney broke the world record set by the American Digger O'Dell (who stayed underground for 45 days). Mini allowed himself to be buried in a coffin, which had air holes with access to food and water, as well as a telephone.
After 61 days, Mini emerged from the ground exhausted, but in good physical shape.
The half-educated wizard almost died
British "wizard" Anthony Britton (Antony Britton) presumptuously declared that he was able to repeat the feat of Harry Houdini, but instead of a miraculous rescue, he almost died right underground. Britton insisted that he be handcuffed and buried in damp loose earth.
Despite careful preparation, which took 14 months, Britton was not ready for the real weight of the earth. “I almost died,” said Houdini, “I was literally seconds away from death. It was scary. The pressure of the soil literally hit me. Despite the fact that I found the air bag, the earth kept falling and falling on me. I almost passed out and couldn't do anything."
Indian girl buried in the field
In 2014, in northern India, a couple asked their neighbors to take their little daughter to a fair where she really wanted to go. Instead, she ended up in a grave. The neighbors took the baby to the field, where they dug a hole, and threw the girl into it.
Fortunately, several people noticed the brawl, and when the man and woman emerged from the sugar cane without the child, the witnesses were frightened and hurried to check where the baby had gone.
Fortunately, the girl almost immediately lost consciousness and did not remember anything about the tragedy.
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.
), where the protagonist wakes up and finds that he is buried alive in a wooden box, where oxygen is gradually running out. You can hardly imagine a worse situation. And those who watched this movie to the end will agree with this.
A still from the movie "Buried Alive", directed by Rodrigo Cortes.
So, let's look at a few simple rules that would help you survive if you get into a similar situation. I would like to hope that this will never happen to any of us, but it is worth remembering a few rules and relying only on yourself.
- Don't waste your air. In a classic coffin, the air supply is for an hour, a maximum of two. Inhale deeply, exhale slowly. After inhaling, do not swallow, this causes hyperventilation. Do not light matches or a lighter, it takes away oxygen, but it is not forbidden to use a flashlight. Do not scream: screaming increases panic, heart rate and breathing become more frequent, and hence air consumption.
- Loosen the cover with your hands; in the cheapest fiberboard coffins, you can even make a hole (wedding ring, belt buckle ...)
- Cross your arms over your chest, grabbing your shoulders with your palms and pull your shirt up and tie it in a knot over your head; hanging like a bag on your head, it will protect you from suffocation if it hits the face of the earth.
- Knock the lid off with your feet. Cheap coffins have time to break under the weight of the earth immediately after they are buried!
- As soon as the lid breaks, direct the earth from the head to the feet, when there is not enough space, try to press the earth with your feet in different directions.
- By all means try to sit down, the earth will fill the empty space and shift in your favor, do not stop and continue to breathe calmly.
- Get up!
Buried alive
It is no coincidence that almost all peoples decided to hold the burial ceremony not immediately, but after a certain number of days after death. There were many cases when the "dead" came to life at the funeral, and there were also cases when they woke up inside the coffin. Since ancient times, man has been afraid of being buried alive. Taphophobia - the fear of being buried alive is observed in many people. It is believed that this is one of the basic phobias of the human psyche. Deliberate burial of a person alive according to the laws of the Russian Federation is considered a murder committed with special cruelty and is punished accordingly.Imaginary death
Lethargy is an unexplored painful condition that is similar to ordinary dreaming. Even in ancient times, the absence of breathing and the cessation of the heartbeat were considered signs of death. However, in the absence of modern equipment, it was difficult to determine where the imaginary death was and where the real one was. Now there are practically no cases of burial of living people, but a couple of centuries ago it was a fairly common phenomenon. Lethargic sleep usually lasts from several hours to several weeks. But there are cases when lethargy lasted for months. Lethargic sleep differs from coma in that the human body maintains the vital functions of organs and is not in danger of death. There are many examples of lethargy and related issues in the literature, but they are not always scientifically justified and are often fiction. So, the science fiction novel by H. G. Wells "When the Sleeper Wakes" tells about a man who "slept" for 200 years. This is, of course, impossible.Terrible awakening
There are a lot of stories when people plunged into a state of lethargic sleep, let's focus on the most interesting ones. In 1773, a terrible incident occurred in Germany: after the burial of a pregnant girl, strange sounds began to be heard from her grave. It was decided to dig the grave and everyone who was at the same time were shocked by what they saw. As it turned out, the girl began to give birth and from this she came out of a state of lethargic sleep. She was able to give birth in such cramped conditions, but due to lack of oxygen, neither the baby nor his mother managed to survive.
Premature burial, Antoine Wirtz (1806-1865).
Another story, but not so terrible, happened in England in 1838. One official was always afraid of being buried alive and, unfortunately, his fear materialized. The respected man woke up in a coffin and started screaming. At that moment, a young man was walking through the cemetery, who, having heard the voice of a man, ran for help. When the coffin was dug and opened, people saw the dead man with a frozen, terrible grimace. The victim died a few minutes before the rescue. Doctors diagnosed him with cardiac arrest, the man could not withstand such a terrible awakening to reality.
There were people who perfectly understood what a lethargic dream was and what to do if such a disaster overtook them. For example, the English playwright Wilkie Collins was afraid that he would be buried during his lifetime. There was always a note by his bed telling him what to do before his burial.
Method of execution
As a method of death penalty, burial alive was used by the ancient Romans. For example, if a girl broke her vow of virginity, she was buried alive. A similar method of execution was used for many Christian martyrs. In the 10th century, Princess Olga gave the order to bury the Drevlyansk ambassadors alive. In the Middle Ages in Italy, unrepentant murderers were waiting for the fate of people buried alive. The Zaporizhian Cossacks buried the killer alive in a coffin with the person he had killed. In addition, the methods of execution through burial alive were used by the Germans during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. With such a terrible method, the Nazis executed Jews.Ritual burials
It is worth noting that there are cases when people voluntarily find themselves buried alive. So, among certain peoples of South America, Africa and Siberia, there is a rite in which people bury the shaman of their village alive. It is believed that during the ritual of "pseudo-burial" the healer receives the gift of communication with the souls of dead ancestors. 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 lethargic sleep, all life processes also freeze, and it is quite difficult to distinguish real death from imaginary (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 getting ready to drive nails into the lid of the coffin, 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 as decomposition did not occur, the family rejected the ceremony, and after the expiration of the said period, the life of the supposedly dead was restored. In Bergerac in 1842, a patient took a sleeping pill, 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 upside down and showed signs of a struggle."
This is only a small part of such cases - lethargic sleep is actually quite common.
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 event 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 saved - 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 informed Irina Andreevna that her son had died of sudden cardiac arrest.
As expected, Mikhail was buried on the third day, a wake was held ... 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 in an instant with horror. 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.
A resident of the town of Bereznyaki near Solikamsk, Elena Ivanovna Duzhkina, 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 was afraid more than anything in the world 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 came over me, my heart and pulse stopped beating.
After the death of the writer, his will was not heeded and buried 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 even 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 at 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. From shock and fright, the pathologist himself died on the spot ...
Another similar case was described in the Biysk Rabochiy 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 attendants 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 worlds unknown to mere mortals.
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, accompanied by ritual singing, was lowered into a grave arranged in the center of the family cemetery. 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 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 believe 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 ...
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)
