“To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality.” — Edgar Allan Poe
Well Edgard Allan Poe was right being buried alive is definitely one of the most horrific ways to die. So horrific, in fact, that the irrational fear of experiencing such is quite common and is called taphophobia. Fortunately today, it is indeed irrational to fear being buried alive, but it was not always so.
Back in the 18th century many were falsely proclaimed dead, only to wake up underground, and die in their coffins. Premature burials had a significant impact on western culture.
Many urban legends spawned from it, including the one “Lady with the Ring”, a tale of a grave robber mistakenly digging up a live lady. Even George Washington himself made sure he wasn’t buried for 2 days after his death.
Literature soon followed suit, and many works were written on this topic. Most notably, Edgard Allan Poe had written short stories, such as “The Premature Burial”, which is about a person suffering from taphophobia being buried alive, and “The Fall of the House of Usher”.
Another good example would be Hans Christian Andersen, also known as the author of “The little mermaid”, who suffered from taphophobia himself. He was so obsessed with it he often left a letter saying “I only appear to be dead” on his bedside table. Then again, he was also terrified of dogs and eating pork, so perhaps being terrified of a pretty gruesome death wasn't the weirdest thing about him.
But how did people find out whether someone was buried alive in the first place? It’s not like we can dig up a skeleton and ask how they died.
Most stories include finding skeletons in awkward positions, like knees tucked in, or their burial clothing torn. But herein lies our next problem: people who are apparently dead don’t move. So how could they mistake clearly alive people for corpses?
Catalepsy, for example, is a state where one’s muscles become rigid, fixed and lose the ability to move while feeling very little pain. Back then, one could mistake this for the patient dying.
Finally, as always solutions were found, but not quite what we would expect. Coffins dubbed “safety coffins” were developed. The first recorded one was made in 1792. It had a window, an air tube, and was fitted with a lock the dead person could open from inside, in case he woke up.
Later a German priest called P.G. Pessler came up with the idea to attach a cord to the church bells from each coffin. This is where the term “dead ringer” comes from.
In the early 19th century, multiple more complex designs were made, such as attaching cords to the limbs on a corpse that rang a bell, which then alerted the nightwatchman.
The small problem is that we don’t have an actual record in history where any of these safe coffins saved someone.
Fortunately today, modern medicine is more than capable of avoiding sending live people to the morgue. Cases of modern premature burial are extremely rare, despite this, taphophobia is still present in many people even today.
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