BURIED ALIVE
I have a story about being buried alive which I would like to share on this site with everyone.
I was born in Longobucco, the Cosenza province of Calabria, Italy. This is a story that my mother told me. My mother is 93 years old, she was born in Longobucco in 1916. This story she told me took place there in 1929. They had neighbors who were a husband and wife with children. I am not sure of the children’s ages though.
One day, the husband had come home after work, to find his wife lying on the floor – she was dead. They called the doctor who pronounced her dead, then they called the priest to administer the last rites. At that time and region it was the family who personaly washed the dead. They would then put the body into a coffin and take it to the chapel. (The dead were not guarded at the house). The chapel is situatated next to the caretaker’s house. The cemetary is located 40 km away. The body was placed in the chapel, and that night the caretaker started to hear noises and someone screaming. The caretaker, was too afraid to go and look, as he probably thought that it was the “undead”.
The next morning, the caretaker waited until everyone had come for the ceremony to pay their respects for the deceased. The caretaker told the priest what he had heard the following night. The priest asked the family to open the coffin. They opened it and found the woman covered in blood! She had scratch marks all over her face, and had torn out most of her hair. She had woken during the night, she wasn’t dead and I imagine that she realized where she was and that she had been buried alive. They didn’t know if at that time if she died of suffication or if she had a heart attack from fright.
Today in Italy, to avoid being buried alive, they now keep the dead at home for 3 days (they don’t embalm). If you don’t want to keep the body, they will take it to the chapel to wait until the service and funeral.
This is a true story that my mother has told me. I would like to know if anybody else has ever heard of anyone being buried alive?
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By Giuseppe, copyright Giuseppe, 2009 @World Mysteries And True Ghost Tales.
Pic by Wayne Ridsdel, copyright, Wayne Ridsdel, 2009 @World Mysteries And True Ghost Tales.
Oooooh that story gave me chills! No I have never heard of anything like that. It just sounds so horrible to be buried alive like that. I can’t even imagine the fear, and the panic.
I’ll stop so someone who knows a similar story can comment. Giuseppe, thank you for sharing that story.
Eyepriestess, I was able to get on here in your forum. I’ll visit as long as my computer lets me.
That is so scary!
Just the thoughts of that would give me cold chills.
My Mother told me of a incidence in her family. She had a five year old cousen that they thought died of the measles . My Mother’s family is Irish and they always had wakes, instead of funnerals. Usually the deceased were kept in the Parlor for several days ,so the family and friends could visit. While they were all sitting around visiting one of the Aunts noticed the childs eye lids flickering. My Mom said that she jumped up and leaned over the child and felt breath on her cheek. The child woke up and they don’t know what happened, but they think she might have been in a deep coma. Anyway I met her before my son was born, when she came to visit my Mom. She was in her ninties when she died.
I told my kids that I want to be enbalmed, because I want to be real dead before they put me in the Ground! LOL
It is pretty gruesome. Gosh that is everyone’s worst nightmare!
I once heard of a true story and i think it was located in Belgium, where someone was buried alive. The family held a seance one evening and got the person who was buried alive through, who told them to check the grave.
Soon afterwards they did this and there was evidence that the person had struggled to get free from the grave too.
It’s just too hideous to think of!
Glad you got in Scary
Hi Nancy,
that is terrible did the child live on? or was she really dead bless her.
Yes she lived to her ninties.
They think she had a high fever and went into a coma. She might have died and came back to life, but I doubt it. She probably was in a deep coma and they thought she had died.
Wow Giuseppe, that is scary, I’ll bet she die of fright. That caretaker should of looked to see what was wrong.
My Grandfather , had said that when he was a boy,he was at a wake and the corpse lying in the coffin, opened his eyes and looked at him,then closed them! I don’t know how to explain that but that’s what he said!
C**p! That gave me the creeps too!!! It makes you think how many people this could have happened to. Thanks for sending this in Giuseppe.
Just re-read it in the morning and i see that now Nancy. Wow!
Thank-you all for the comments,I do have some other stories to share that happend to my brothers-in law,when they were cleaning out an old monastery.
Gosh! if the stories are anything like this one, don’t keep us waiting will you
I would love to hear about the monastery!
I found this on Wikipedia.
“Fear of being buried alive is the fear of being placed in a grave while still alive as a result of being incorrectly pronounced dead. The abnormal, psychopathological version of this fear is referred to as taphophobia (from Greek taphos, meaning “grave”), which is translated as “fear of graves”.[1]
Before the advent of modern medicine the fear was not entirely irrational. Throughout history there have been numerous cases of people being accidentally buried alive. The 18th century had seen the development of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and crude defibrillation techniques to revive persons considered dead, and the Royal Humane Society had been formed as the Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Dead.[2] In 1896 an American funeral director, T.M. Montgomery, reported that “nearly 2% of those exhumed were no doubt victims of suspended animation.”[3]
There have been many urban legends of people being accidentally buried alive. Legends included elements such as someone entering into the state of sopor or coma only to wake up years later and die again a horrible death. Another legend tells of coffins opened to find a corpse with a long beard or corpses with the hands raised and palms turned upward. Of note is a legend about the premature burial of Ann Hill Carter Lee, the late wife of Henry Lee III.[4] On his deathbed in 1799, George Washington made his attendants promise not to bury him for three days.”
Thanks for that Virgo. There’s some fascinating and really disturbing information there, especially that funeral director saying that 2% of people exhumed had been found to be possible victims.
Edgar Allen Poe wrote something about it, i’ll have to find it.
This is one story from Edgar Allen Poe’s true stories of the undead:
“In the year 1810, a case of living inhumation happened in France, attended with circumstances which go far to warrant the assertion that truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction. The heroine of the story was a Mademoiselle Victorine Lafourcade, a young girl of illustrious family, of wealth, and of great personal beauty. Among her numerous suitors was Julien Bossuet, a poor litterateur, or journalist of Paris. His talents and general amiability had recommended him to the notice of the heiress, by whom he seems to have been truly beloved; but her pride of birth decided her, finally, to reject him, and to wed a Monsieur Renelle, a banker and a diplomatist of some eminence. After marriage, however, this gentleman neglected, and, perhaps, even more positively ill-treated her. Having passed with him some wretched years, she died, — at least her condition so closely resembled death as to deceive every one who saw her. She was buried — not in a vault, but in an ordinary grave in the village of her nativity.
Filled with despair, and still inflamed by the memory of a profound attachment, the lover journeys from the capital to the remote province in which the village lies, with the romantic purpose of disinterring the corpse, and possessing himself of its luxuriant tresses. He reaches the grave. At midnight he unearths the coffin, opens it, and is in the act of detaching the hair, when he is arrested by the unclosing of the beloved eyes. In fact, the lady had been buried alive. Vitality had not altogether departed, and she was aroused by the caresses of her lover from the lethargy which had been mistaken for death. He bore her frantically to his lodgings in the village. He employed certain powerful restoratives suggested by no little medical learning. In fine, she revived. She recognized her preserver. She remained with him until, by slow degrees, she fully recovered her original health. Her woman’s heart was not adamant, and this last lesson of love sufficed to soften it. She bestowed it upon Bossuet. She returned no more to her husband, but, concealing from him her resurrection, fled with her lover to America.
Twenty years afterward, the two returned to France, in the persuasion that time had so greatly altered the lady’s appearance that her friends would be unable to recognize her. They were mistaken, however, for, at the first meeting, Monsieur Renelle did actually recognize and make claim to his wife. This claim she resisted, and a judicial tribunal sustained her in her resistance, deciding that the peculiar circumstances, with the long lapse of years, had extinguished, not only equitably, but legally, the authority of the husband.”
Oh Guiseppe……..these stories are True for sure. Your Mother has lived at a time when this accident of Buried Alive was common maybe. There is NO other reason for the scathes in-side the coffins..how terrible to try to dig your way out of your own grave. My Father told Me when His Great-Grandfather died & the body was laid out on the dinning table as was the custom back in the Day, touched His hand as He liked the old Man when He was alive. My Father said His hand was warm as it was in Life. Now My Father at the time was about 5 years old so did not know that the hand should have been cold & stiff so of course said nothing. It was only years later when We all as a Family was watching a show on TV about people being buried alive that He re-called this from His childhood. His Sister Aunt Catherine was visiting Us at that time & She said She remembers the same touching His hand as well. She would have been 7 years old. Such a shame the kids did not know that the hands should have been cold & alerted some adults to the fact! This type story is Why they statred to put a rope In the coffin with a bell attacked to the out-side to ring if the corspe woke up & could be recovered from the coffin………I know several more 1st hand accounts…to be continued
They’ve often found coffins from ages ago with scratch marks on the lids from people who had been buried alive desperatly trying to get out. It would be horrible.
That’s why I’ve decided when I’m dead I want to be buried with a bell attached to my coffin. It’s an idea from the victorian times. There’s a bell above ground attached to some rope that goes down a shaft and into the coffin in the ground. That way, if by some random chance I am buried alive, I can just ring for help.
Same here Samantha, thought of hardly anything else all day!
I’ve never heard of a bell being attached to the coffin, makes you wonder just how many people must of been mistakenly buried alive, for them to have invented that.
Well…Here I go.
I have one question about this story. I have never known locks to be placed on coffins, so why didn’t the woman just lift the lid?
Sorry, I just had to ask.
HI, Liderien, I’m taking that you live in the U.S.? In Italy at that time they put screws or “nails” into the coffin. That’s what they do.
I thought they put nails in coffins all the time, even now. There’s that saying when you do something wrong, ‘that’s one more nail in your coffin’.
Surely the mound of soil on top of the coffin would make it impossible to open, unless it is placed in a mauseleum.
Verna,
that is freaky about the hand being touched.
Sorry, only just noticed I hadn’t replied to you
Hi everyone, the author of this story is my husband, I can tell you that I have lived here in Europe for 10 years now, and unfourtunatly have been to funerals of family memebers, they always “drill” or “screw” the coffin shut, I know that this is not common practice in the U.S. as I am from there. Once they bury the body , the coffin is then covered with a layer of cement. And still to this day they don’t have the machine but still lower the coffin into the ground by ropes. I live in France.
I know they used to screw the coffin shut here in the UK too (must be a European thing), but couldn’t be certain if they still do, will have to check.
Wow…
Who knew? I guess everyone but me…lol!! That practice hasn’t been done in many many years. And only if you were poor or a criminal. Coffins used in the Us are extremely intricate. The lid is naturally heavy (not too heavy to lift) so there is no need to nail it shut.
Thank you fro answering my question…it wasn’t making sense.
I found on google that they still lock the coffin!
Someone on google said to watch the movie oceans eleven pay attention to the surprise ending to find out why coffins are sealed!
I’ve never seen that movie, even though it’s been out a while. Well, I have got to watch it now you’ve said that Karen!
Well…I guess here in the mid-west, they dont lock them.
Liderien, well if the worst happens at least you can have a better chance of getting out
Just tell them not to bury you too deep… don’t want all that soil hampering you, lol
LOL!
What I really want is to be put in a boat and a flaming arrow shot in it while it drifts away. but its illegal in the US. Stupid laws.
Liderien, really was that on the film cause I haven’t seen it , I’m trying to telecharge it now, anyway on google you will find that also in the U.S. they do seal coffins:)
Damn that sucks..As the caretaker. he should of manned up and went and checked on that coffin
I agree Vanessa!
I’ve heard stories just like this, but I’ve never heard of one ever happening near my area. Gosh that is creepy.
Hi Peter,
It’s the creepiest thing that could ever happen, I think.
You live near there do you? bet that freaked you out even more.
I t was a common thing for people to be buried alive in the early part of the twentieth centry,embalming was not always practiced and the laws were very lax about the disposal of the dead.
Sure they buried people alive by accident many times. Where do you think the expression, working the graveyard shift came from? Back years ago, when they buried someone they would tie a string to their finger and bury the body. The other end of the string would be attached to a bell. Then there would be a person who would sit in the cemetery all night to listen for the sound of the bell and to dig them up if need be. Working the graveyard shift.
It’s funny you should bring that up because Isis (a member on here) just sent me an anecdote about the graveyard shift and the bell attached. Never realised it meant for this reason though until this thread was started.
The term “dead ringer” was coined because of this type of thing. My uncle Matt’s wife had a family member who died during a terrible winter in the eastern United States. The ground was so hard during the winters, they did not bury their dead until early spring. The family member, a child, along with other descendants were placed in the cellar of the caretakers residence until a burial could take place. When spring came, they started the burial process. As they were taking the child’s coffin out of the cellar they dropped it on it’s side, exposing the body of the little girl. The inside of the coffin was filled with scratch marks, and fingernails were stuck firmly in the wood. Needless to say the family was devastated.
As this became a more frequent occurrence, the care taker would be seated outside of the coffin (or grave depending on the season) for a few days, both day and night, so that if the bell attached to a string rang, the person would be able to be saved promptly. It is a sad and unfortunate occurrence, and still happens to this day…. But is very rare.
You’re right Britnee, about the term ‘dead ringer’.
Thanks for sharing that very interesting story. Poor child! It’s bad enough to think of anyone suffering like that, but when it’s a child it’s too sad to think about.