When you go to the hospital, you shouldn’t have to worry about being accidentally pronounced dead and buried alive. (The key word there is shouldn’t.)
The fear of being buried alive wasn’t irrational at one point in history. Before the invention of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and other life-saving medical procedures, it didn’t take much to pronounce someone as dead. As a result, there were cases of people being put in the grave prematurely. (In fact, in Victorian times, there were precautions taken to prevent it from happening.) In 1905, there were reported to be 368 live to near-live burials in England. That’s more than one live burial per day of the year.
Although it’s a lot more rare now, it shockingly still happens.
A Date That Ended In Death
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Mina El Houari, a 25 year old French woman, decided to dabble in the world of online dating. After spending the night with a man she met online at his home in Morocco, she suddenly collapsed. The man believed her to be dead. Afraid that the authorities wouldn’t hear him out, he decided to take matters into his own hands and bury Mina in his backyard. Apparently, she was just in a diabetic coma. Unfortunately, she died of suffocation before the authorities found her.
The Unintentional Grave
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Stephen Small was a wealthy media mogul who was kidnapped. His captors hoped to collect ransom money of $1 million. They kept Small below ground and was fed air and water through a small tube. Unfortunately, at some point sand got into the tube and he died before the kidnappers could collect the ransom.
Screams From Below
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A 45-year-old woman from Northern Greece was pronounced dead after a long battle with cancer. Hours after her burial, visitors of the cemetery heard her screams coming from the grave. By the time they got the casket open however, the woman was dead.
A Live Man In The Morgue
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Angelo was 19 years old when his motorcycle hit a curb in his French village. The accident caused his face to be so disfigured that his parents couldn’t view the body. He was pronounced dead and taken to the morgue. It wasn’t until insurance inspectors examined the body that they realized that Angelo was still alive. He was rushed to the hospital and revived. He later invented a bell system that was placed in graves just in case the buried are actually still alive.
The Brazilian “Zombie”
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A woman in Brazil was visiting a cemetery when she saw the ground move. Then, she witnessed a man emerge from the Earth like a any zombie from a classic horror movie. She alerted the authorities, who helped the man out of his grave. Apparently, he had gotten into a fight the night before and lost. His attackers presumed him dead and dug a quick grave to get rid of his body.
As a claustrophobic person, this is probably the most frightening thing I can think of. All caskets could come equipped with a cell phone (or at least an air horn).
