Edgar Allan Poe’s (1809–1849) stories captured the imaginations of audiences with his tales of people being buried alive. These stories achieved such success because the fear of being buried alive was common in the early nineteenth century. This fear came from the many legends and tales of live burials that were partly true. Medical and funerary practices in the nineteenth century occasionally, if rarely, worked to produce instances of premature burial. During the Victorian Age, patents were issued to cover a variety of caskets with an air supply and/or alarms to alert others to a premature burial.
Some notable accounts of people being buried alive came to light when victims’ caskets were opened for different reasons, such as grave robbers collecting fresh corpses for medical schools. Thomas à Kempis’s body was found in a coffin with scratches on the inside lid, indicating he was trying to escape his coffin when he was buried.
Many stories of premature burials predate modern embalming procedures, but even in the present day, live victims turn up in hospital morgues and funeral homes. In February 2014 Walter Williams awoke in a body bag after being declared dead by a coroner. Some, like Williams, were buried alive but survived to tell their tales. Premature Burial: How It May Be Prevented includes many stories of buried alive survivors and victims. The book, reissued in 2013, discusses the great lengths to which some people go to ensure they won’t wake up in a casket underground. Some insist they be stabbed in the heart before burial so that they won’t have to wake up buried. Other methods include special caskets fitted with devices inside to alert those above the earth by the ringing of a bell or waving of a flag. Since bodies do continue to decompose in buried caskets, natural movements sometimes cause the signals to go off above ground, falsely indicating someone has been buried alive.
Some claim that the sayings “dead ringer” and “saved by the bell” refer to someone ringing a bell inside a grave after being buried alive. Some also claim that the saying “graveyard shift” is derived from those employed to watch over fresh graves at night to listen for ringing bells. The terms “dead ringer,” “saved by the bell,” and “graveyard shift” did not come, however, from fears of being buried alive. The idea of a “wake” after a person has died, when friends and family members visit to express condolences, did arise from fears of premature burial, though. Loved ones stayed with the body until burial, just in case the person awakened.
Urban Legends generally represent widespread anxieties. Most people can empathize with the fear of being buried alive, and thus understand how horror stories about this phobia might arise. The safety coffin pictured here represents an attempt to cash in on such fears. Patented in Germany in 1878, this invention was thought to eliminate the possibility of accidentally burying someone alive. Built into the tombstone is an airshaft leading down to the coffin. An electric wire is attached to the hands of the dead, and the slightest movement triggers an alarm bell and opens the lid of the airshaft. (Three Lions/Getty Images)
Stories of premature burials are rarely true, but they tap into deep-seated fears that are common in all cultures. With the advent of modern medical and mortuary practices, such fears are irrational and yet their persistence attests to the importance of buried alive legends in American folklore and popular culture. Rather than serving as cautionary tales, these accounts can create unimaginable horror in the present day, and filmmakers have drawn from these legends and these fears in recent films like The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), The Vanishing (1988), and The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009).
Linda Urschel
See also Urban Legends/Urban Belief Tales; Zombie Legends
Further Reading
Bondeson, Jan. 2001. Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear. New York: W. W. Norton.
Hadwen, Walter, William Tebb, and Edward Perry Vollum. 2013. Premature Burial: How It May Be Prevented. London: Hesperus Press.
Venning, Annabel. 2013. “Let Me Out of My Coffin, I’m Still Alive: New Book Reveals Spine-Chilling True Stories of Premature Burial.” Daily Mail Online. March 6, 2013. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2289355/Let-coffin-Im-alive-New-book-reveals-spine-chilling-true-stories-premature-burial.html#ixzz2wcdwUBRH. Accessed August 24, 2015.
Wright, Jemimah. “Girl Survived Tribe’s Custom of Live Baby Burial.” The Telegraph. June 22, 2007. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1555339/Girl-survived-tribes-custom-of-live-baby-burial.html. Accessed August 24, 2015.
Buried Alive—Primary Document
Buried Alive Accounts in the New York Times (1884–1886)
In the nineteenth century, gothic horror stories imagined many different kinds of terrible deaths. Occasionally, the real world produced horrific death stories to give these tales a sense of realism, and newspapers put them in wide circulation. In the following New York Times reports, victims of premature burial were disinterred and produced horrific scenes that imprinted on the memories of loved ones. Many of the grisly features of the gothic horror story are in these real-world accounts: evidence of wrestling inside the casket, scratches on the coffin lid, and hair pulled out from the scalp.
DAYTON, Feb. 8 [1884].—A sensation has been created here by the discovery of the fact that Miss Hockwalt, a young lady of high social connections, who was supposed to have died suddenly on Jan. 10, was buried alive. The terrible truth was discovered a few days ago, and since then it has been the talk of the city. The circumstance of Miss Hockwalt’s death was peculiar. It occurred on the morning of the marriage of her brother to Miss Emma Schwind at Emannel’s Church. Shortly before 6 o’clock the young lady was dressing for the nuptials and had gone into the kitchen. A few moments afterward she was found sitting on a chair with her head leaning against a wall and apparently lifeless. Medical aid was summoned in, Dr. Jewett who, after examination, pronounced her dead. Mass was being read at the time in Emannel’s Church and it was thought best to continue, and the marriage was performed in gloom. The examination showed that Anna was of excitable temperament, nervous, and affected with sympathetic palpitation of the heart. Dr. Jewett thought this was the cause of her supposed death. On the following day, the lady was interred in the Woodland. The friends of Miss Hockwalt were unable to forget the terrible impression and several ladies observed that her eyes bore a remarkably natural color and could not dispel an idea that she was not dead. They conveyed their opinion to Annie’s parents and the thought preyed upon them so that the body was taken from the grave. It was stated that when the coffin was opened it was discovered that the supposed inanimate body had turned upon its right side. The hair had been torn out in handfuls and the flesh had been bitten from the fingers. The body was reinterred and efforts made to suppress the facts, but there are those who state they saw the body and know the facts to be as narrated.
ASHEVILLE, N.C., Feb. 20 [1885].—A gentleman from Flat Creek Township in this (Buncombe) County, furnishes the information that about the 20th of last month a young man by the name of Jenkins, who had been sick with fever for several weeks, was thought to have died. He became speechless, his flesh was cold and clammy, and he could not be aroused, and there appeared to be no action of the pulse and heart. He was thought to be dead and was prepared for burial, and was noticed at the time that there was no stiffness in any of the limbs. He was buried after his supposed death, and when put in the coffin it was remarked that he was as limber as a live man. There was much talk in the neighborhood about the case and the opinion was frequently expressed that Jenkins had been buried alive. Nothing was done about the matter until the 10th inst., when the coffin was taken up for the purpose of removal and internment in the family burying ground in Henderson County. The coffin being wood, it was suggested that it be opened in order to see if the body was in such condition that it could be hauled 20 miles without being put in a metallic casket. The coffin was opened, and to the great astonishment and horror of his relatives the body was lying face downward, and the hair had been pulled from the head in great quantities, and there was scratches of the finger nails on the inside of the lid and sides of the coffin. These facts caused great excitement and all acquainted personally with the facts believe Jenkins was in a trance, or that animation was apparently suspended, and that he was not really dead when buried and that he returned to consciousness only to find himself buried and beyond help. The body was then taken to Henderson County and reinterred. The relatives are distressed beyond measure at what they term criminal carelessness in not being absolutely sure Jenkins was dead before he was buried.
WOODSTOCK, Ontario, Jan. 18 [1886]—Recently a girl named Collins died here, as it was supposed, very suddenly. A day or two ago the body was exhumed, prior to its removal to another burial place, when the discovery was made that the girl had been buried alive. Her shroud was torn into shreds, her knees were drawn up to her chin, one of her arms was twisted under her head, and her features bore evidence of dreadful torture.
Source: The New York Times.