Buried alive. Can a person come to life after death? Living Dead Real Cases

Scientists have managed to develop a technique for reviving people a day after their death.According to resuscitation expert Sam Parnia, if resuscitation is carried out correctly, brain cells do not die five minutes after cardiac arrest, as previously thought.

Today, in the case of using special manipulations and necessary equipment, the human brain is capable of living for several hours after recorded death. This period of time can last up to 72 hours.

According to the specialist, if the patient’s body is cooled to a temperature of 34 to 32 degrees Celsius, he can remain in this state for up to 24 hours. With a decrease in body temperature, the brain uses less oxygen, the formation of toxic substances stops, which, in turn, prevents the death of cells and gives doctors a chance to “pull a person out of the other world.”
At the same time, Parnia especially notes that for successful work method, it is necessary to strictly perform all resuscitation procedures, because even one small mistake can lead to death or brain damage.
The doctor also recalled cases of “resurrection” in modern medicine. Thus, doctors were able to bring English Bolton midfielder Fabrice Muamba back to life. The athlete lost consciousness on March 17, 2012 in an FA Cup match with Tottenham, his heart didn't beat for about 1.5 hours.

July 2, 2009 Haaretz reported that an elderly Israeli man "came to life" after an ambulance team issued his death certificate and was about to send his body to the morgue.
Arriving on an urgent call to the apartment of an 84-year-old resident of the city of Ramat Gan, ambulance doctors found him lying on the floor without signs of life. Attempts to resuscitate the old man were considered unsuccessful, and doctors signed official documents confirming his death. However, when the doctors left, the policeman who remained in the apartment noticed that the “deceased” was breathing and moving his hands. By the time the ambulance arrived again, he had already regained consciousness.

August 19, 2008 Reuters reported that the baby, who was born in an Israeli hospital as a result of a forced abortion, showed signs of life after a five-hour stay in the refrigerator.
A girl weighing only 600 grams was born on August 18. Her mother had to have an involuntary abortion due to severe internal bleeding at 23 weeks of pregnancy. Doctors, considering the severely premature baby dead, put him in a refrigerator, where the girl spent at least five hours. Signs of life in the newborn were noticed by her parents, who came to pick her up for burial.
According to doctors, the temperature inside the refrigerator slowed down the child's metabolism, and this helped him survive. The child was admitted to the intensive neonatal care unit.

IN early 2008A Frenchman who suffered a myocardial infarction and whose cardiologists declared cardiac arrest “came to life” on operating table, as surgeons began removing his organs for transplant.
A 45-year-old man, who did not follow the regimen prescribed by doctors, suffered a massive myocardial infarction at the beginning of the year. An ambulance arrived and took him to a nearby hospital. However, when the man arrived at the hospital, his heart was not beating. Doctors decided that it was “technically impossible” to help him.
According to the law, in such cases of cardiac arrest, patients can automatically become organ donors. However, when surgeons began the operation, they found signs of breathing in the potential donor and suspended operations.

In November 2007A resident of the American city of Frederick (Texas, USA), 21-year-old Zach Dunlap was pronounced dead in a hospital in Wichita Falls (Texas), where he was taken after a car accident. Relatives have already given consent to the use of organs young man for transplantation, but during the farewell ceremony he suddenly moved his leg and hand. Then those present pressed Zach's nail and touched his foot with a pocket knife, to which the young man immediately reacted. After the “resurrection,” Zach spent another 48 days in the hospital.

In October 200573 year old pensioner from Italian city Mantov unexpectedly came to life 35 minutes after doctors declared him dead.
An elderly Italian man was lying in the cardiology department of the Carlo Poma Hospital in Mantova when an echocardiograph indicated that his heart had stopped. All attempts by doctors to resuscitate the man were useless: cardiac massage and artificial ventilation did not produce results. Doctors recorded death. However, suddenly the line on the echocardiograph began to move again: the man was alive. Soon the man, already declared dead, began to move and then began to recover.
As the doctors stated after the test, the equipment worked perfectly and the only plausible explanation is the assumption that a person is able to endure cardiac ischemia for such a long period.

In January 2004In the northern Indian state of Haryana, an Indian man was brought back to life after spending several hours in a morgue refrigerator.
The man was taken to the morgue by police, who found him lying by the road with injuries. The doctors of the hospital where he was taken, based on the results of the examination, wrote down: “dead at the time of arrival” - and identified the “body” to the morgue immediately after they handed over all the necessary papers to the police.
However, after a few hours, the “deceased” began to move, leaving the morgue staff in a state of shock. Morgue workers immediately took him back to the hospital.

January 5, 2004Reuters reported that a funeral director in New Mexico found Felipe Padilla, who had been pronounced dead at the hospital, breathing. The man “came to life” just minutes before Padilla’s body was to be embalmed. Felipe Padilla, 94, was taken to the same hospital where he was previously pronounced dead. However, a few hours later the old man died in the hospital.

In January 200379-year-old pensioner Roberto de Simone was taken to the cardiology department of the Cervello Hospital in almost hopeless condition. The patient was immediately connected to cardiac and cerebral activity support systems. Roberto de Simone's heart stopped for two minutes. Doctors attempted to restore the heart's function using adrenaline, but despite all efforts, death was recorded after some time. The doctors decided that the patient had died and handed over his body to his relatives so that they could say goodbye to him before the funeral. De Simone was taken home as if dead.
When everything was ready for funeral ceremony and they were about to close the coffin, Simone opened his eyes and asked for water. The relatives decided that a “miracle” had happened and called the family doctor. He examined the patient and ordered to take him to the hospital. This time with a diagnosis of pneumology - a serious respiratory disease.

In April 2002 the man “came to life” a few hours after doctors in the Indian city of Lucknow (the capital of the state of Uttar Pradesh) issued his relatives a death certificate.
A resident of one of the villages of the state, 55-year-old Sukhlal was taken to the hospital with a diagnosis of tuberculosis. The prescribed course of treatment did not work positive results, and one day the doctors had to declare the patient’s death. The patient's son was given a death certificate. When preparations for cremation were completed, the son came to the morgue to pick up his father's body, and then discovered that he was breathing. He immediately called doctors, who felt the “corpse’s” pulse and demanded that his son return the death certificate. Only thanks to the persistence of journalists, the hospital management undertook an internal investigation into this incident. However, the attending physician Mehrotra rejected all doubts about his professionalism; in his opinion, the case of the “revived” Sukhlal was a “miracle” that happened for the first time in his practice.
This is only a small part of the “miraculous” resurrection.

19-year-old Angelo Hays died tragically in a motorcycle accident in 1937. Or rather, that's what everyone thought. He hit the brick wall head first. The insurance agent had some doubts about the death of the 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 terrible ordeal. The body consumed less oxygen. After his 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, food supplies, 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 terrible car accident. His injuries were so severe that he was taken for dead, taken to a Johannesburg mortuary 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 staff and the man was released.
The relationship with the bride was never restored - she was convinced that her ex-fiance Now the zombie is chasing 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 take the body to the morgue.

She woke up 90 minutes later, shocking and scaring the morgue staff into hiccups. The woman lived another week before truly dying. We believe that this time the doctors spent more time checking.

The baby spent 8 days underground

In 2015, a couple in China had a baby with a cleft palate. The guy and 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 it in cardboard box and buried in a shallow grave in the cemetery.

Lu Fenglian was collecting herbs in the vicinity of the cemetery and heard crying coming from underground. By that time, eight days had already passed. She dug up the grave and found a baby there, who survived only because the cardboard allowed air and water to pass through. Unfortunately, due to a lack of evidence, it was not possible to arrest the couple - the baby’s parents argued that their own parents wanted to kill their son. No one believed it, but it was never possible to prove the parents’ involvement.

The official crawled out of the grave

A woman visiting the burials of her relatives in 2013 in a small Brazilian town suddenly saw a man... crawling out of the grave. His head and hands were free, but he could not pull out bottom part bodies from underground. A witness to the beginning of the zombie apocalypse brought workers to help the man free himself. It turned out to be a city council employee.

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 American Digger O'Dell (who stayed underground for 45 days). Mini allowed himself to be buried in a coffin that 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 arrogantly declared that he was capable of repeating the feat of Harry Houdini, but instead miraculous salvation almost died right underground. Britton insisted that he be handcuffed and buried in damp, loose earth.

Despite careful preparation that took 14 months, Britton was unprepared 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 collapsed on me. Despite the fact that I found the air bag, the earth kept falling and falling on me. I almost lost consciousness and couldn’t do anything.”

Indian girl buried in a field

In 2014, a couple in northern India asked their neighbors to take their little daughter to a fair that she really wanted to go to. But instead she ended up in a grave. The neighbors took the baby to a field where they dug a hole and threw the girl there.

Fortunately, several people noticed the scuffle and when the man and woman came out of the sugar cane without the child, the witnesses got scared and rushed 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 our school days the frightening stories of literature teachers about Gogol, buried alive, who suffered from periodic falls into lethargic sleep.

And there were so many mysteries, rumors and other fables around this terrible story that it is not completely known whether it was true, or whether the historians embellished it a little. But today we will tell you far from the sad fate of Gogol. We'll tell you real stories people who experienced the horror of a confined space under the lid of a coffin. You wouldn't wish this on anyone. Creepy is not the right word!

1. Octavia Smith Hatcher

At the end of the 19th century, an outbreak of an unknown disease occurred in Kentucky that claimed many lives. But the most tragic incident happened to Octavia Hatcher. Her infant son Jacob died in January 1891 of unknown causes. Octavia then became depressed, spending all her time in bed supine position. Time passed, but the depressive state 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.

Embalming was not practiced at that time, so Octavia was quickly buried in a 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 townspeople fell into a coma. But with only one difference - after some time they woke up. Octavia's husband began to fear the worst and worried that he had buried his wife too early, 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 raw, and her face was twisted in horror. The poor woman died conscious in a coffin many meters deep.

Octavia's husband reburied his wife and erected a majestic monument over her grave, which still stands today. Doctors later suggested that this comatose state was caused by the bite of the Tsetse fly and is known as sleeping sickness.

2. Mina El Khouari

When a person goes on a date, he always thinks about how it could all end. It's great to be prepared for the unexpected, but no one prepares to be buried alive. A similar story happened in May 2014 with Mina El Houari from France. The 25-year-old girl corresponded online with her lover for many months before she decided to go to him in Morocco for a personal meeting. She arrived at a hotel in Fez on May 19 to meet the man of her dreams, but her plans were not destined to come true.

Mina, of course, met her lover, but suddenly she felt bad and 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 didn't actually die. As is often the case, Mina had undiagnosed diabetes, which causes episodes of diabetic coma. Several days passed before her family filed a missing person report for their daughter. They flew to Morocco to try to find her.

Moroccan police tracked down the would-be groom and broke into his house. They found soiled clothing and a used shovel before discovering a horrific burial in the garden. The man confessed to his crime and was convicted of manslaughter.

3. Mrs. Boger

In July 1893, tragedy struck Charles Boger's family: his beloved wife, Mrs. Boger, died suddenly of unknown causes. Doctors confirmed her death, so the burial took place very quickly. This could have put an end to 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 of burying his wife alive 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 broken, and shards were scattered all over her body. The skin was bloody and covered with scratches, and the fingers were completely missing. Supposedly, Mrs. Boger chewed off her fingers in a hysterical fit, trying to free herself. What happened next to Charles Boger is unknown.

4. Angelo Hayes

Some of the most scary stories premature burials are those in which the buried victim miraculously manages to survive. This is what happened to Angel Hayes. In 1937, a carefree 19-year-old boy, Angelo, was riding 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 it weren't for the insurance company's suspicions, no one would have known the real truth. A few weeks before the accident, Angelo's father insured his son's life for £200,000. The insurance company filed a complaint and an inspector began an investigation.

An inspector exhumed Angelo's body to determine the real reason death of the boy. And imagine the surprise of the inspector and doctors when, under the shroud, they discovered the warm body of a boy with a barely perceptible heartbeat. At the same moment, Angelo was taken to the hospital, several operations and the necessary resuscitation were performed to put the guy on his feet. All this time, Angelo was unconscious due to a serious head injury. After a rehabilitation course, the boy began to produce coffins from which one could easily escape in the event of a premature burial. He toured with his invention and became something of a celebrity in France.

5. Mr. Cornish

Cornish was the beloved mayor of Bath, who died of fever 80 years before the publication of Snart's work. As was customary at that time, the body of the deceased was quickly buried. When the gravedigger had almost finished his work, he decided to take a short break and have a drink with friends passing by. While they were talking, heartbreaking groans were suddenly heard coming from the newly 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 dug the coffin out from under the buried soil, it was too late. Mr Cornish's elbows and knees were bloodied and abraded. This story terribly frightened Cornish's half-sister, so she asked to be beheaded after her death so that she would not suffer the same fate.

6. Surviving 6-year-old child

The very thought of a premature burial seems terrible, let alone burying a child who is still alive. 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, the neighbor's married couple told the child that her mother asked to bring the girl to a neighboring village for a fair. On the way, the couple, for an unknown reason, decided to strangle the girl and bury her right there.

Fortunately, local residents, who were working in the field at that time, suspected something was wrong when the couple came out of the thicket without the child. They found the spot 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 kidnappers.

The girl did not remember that she was buried alive. Police do not know the reasons why the couple wanted to kill the child. Moreover, the suspects have not yet been caught. It is a great blessing that this story did not end in tragedy.

7. Buried alive of his own free will

Humanity knows of cases when people tried to deceive fate and even challenge it. Today you can even buy practical guides to help you get out of your grave if you were buried alive.

Moreover, many people like to tickle their nerves, believing that after this 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.

After asking a friend for help, the man dug himself a grave outside Blagoveshchensk, where he placed a homemade coffin, a piece of water pipe, a bottle of water and a mobile phone.

After the man lay down in the coffin, his friend covered the coffin with earth and left. A few hours later, the deceased called a friend and said that he felt great. But when the friend returned in the morning, he found a corpse in the grave. It probably rained at night, which blocked the supply 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 unknown how many people died this way.

8. Lawrence Cawthorne

There are many stories of premature burials that seem to be nothing more than a legend that is difficult to believe. A similar story is about a London butcher named Lawrence Cawthorne, who was terminally ill in 1661. The owner of the land where Lawrence worked expected his early 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 screams and moans from the newly buried grave. They rushed to tear up Cawthorne'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 person, and the story was passed on from generation to generation for a long time.

9. Sipho William Mdletshe

In 1993, a 24-year-old South African guy and his fiancee were involved in a serious car accident. His fiancee survived, but Sipho, who suffered extensive injuries, was pronounced dead. The guy's body was taken to the Johannesburg mortuary, where it was 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 captivity. Confused, he began screaming for help.

Fortunately, the morgue workers were nearby and were able to help the guy get out of captivity. Having escaped 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. Bad luck for the poor guy((

10. Stephen Small

In 1987, wealthy media heir Stephen Small was kidnapped and buried alive in a makeshift coffin near Kankakee. 30-year-old Denny Edwards and 26-year-old Nancy Risch planned to kidnap Steven, bury him underground and demand a ransom of $1 million from his relatives. The kidnappers took care of Steven's minimal needs for air, water and light using pipes. But despite this, the man suffocated.

Police were able to locate Mr. Small from his burgundy Mercedes, which had been left near the burial site. Despite the fact that Denny and Nancy were convicted, for a long time there were discussions about whether it was a premeditated murder or not. In any case, this crime is terrible, and the kidnappers will spend another 27 long years behind bars.

The tradition of burying the dead with things that could be useful to them in the afterlife existed already in ancient Egypt. A dozen years ago, several residents of Cape Town, South Africa, who were afraid of falling asleep under the influence of the witchcraft spells of ill-wishers and being buried alive, asked to put phones with spare batteries in coffins in the hope of waking up and calling for help.

In America, cases have been recorded where corpses were even cremated with telephones. Carrying out last will of the deceased, relatives and friends stuffed cell phones into their pockets without informing the crematorium workers. This arbitrariness can lead to trouble, because batteries tend to explode at high temperatures.

The eccentrics' fears of being buried alive are not unfounded. No one knows exactly how many people were buried who fell into a lethargic sleep. No one has ever kept such statistics, but without much risk of error we can assume that the count goes into the thousands!

Sailors have long had the custom of sewing a dead man into a shroud and throwing him into the sea. In order not to accidentally bury a living person, the last stitch was made through... the nose of the deceased. If there was no reaction, the body was thrown into the water.

Mummy in the museum

People have always been afraid of being buried alive, but in XVIII-XIX centuries this fear turned into real hysteria. Panic gripped not only the illiterate peasants, but also very educated people. First US President George Washington, for example, demanded that he be buried no earlier than two days after the doctors declared him dead.

There were originals who insisted that before burial... their heads would be cut off. Perhaps everyone was outdone by Miss Beswick, a resident of Manchester who died in late XVIII century. She wrote 20 thousand guineas to her doctor in her will, a lot of money at that time, but set one condition: her body should not be buried. The old woman wanted the doctor to embalm her, put her in his operating room and carefully examine her every day for signs of life. For several years the poor fellow honestly fulfilled the terrible condition. When his patience came to an end, he hid the mummy in a huge grandfather clock. After the doctor’s death, the eccentric woman’s embalmed body was kept for some time in the Manchester Museum, after which it was buried.

The fear of being buried alive reached its apogee in mid-19th century century. In 1846, a competition was even organized in which participants competed to invent a reliable way to determine whether a person had died or fallen into a lethargic sleep. One Frenchman made pliers that were used to pull the nipples of a corpse with all his might. Wild pain, in his opinion, should have raised even the dead from the grave. An inventor from Sweden advised throwing insects into the ear of a dead person. The French doctor Bosho was recognized as the winner of the competition. He received 1.5 thousand gold francs for a completely reasonable proposal - to check with a recently invented stethoscope whether the heart of the deceased was beating.

Coffins were equipped with a wide variety of devices and devices that allowed the “living” dead to report that they were alive. The bell tower of the British engineer was very popular Bateson. A rope with a bell was tied to the corpse's hand. When the person came to his senses, he pulled the rope, resulting in a ringing sound. Bateson's bell tower was such a success that its inventor even received the Order of the British Empire from the hands of Queen Victoria. Alas, further fate The engineer himself turned out to be sad. Towards the end of his life he went crazy from the same fear. At first, Bateson stopped trusting his own invention, then he asked to have his body cremated. Fearing that his request would not be fulfilled, he doused himself with linseed oil and set himself on fire.

The Germans approached the solution of the problem with their characteristic pedantry. They were in no hurry with the funeral and kept the coffins in the mortuary until the bodies began to decompose - until late XIX centuries, decomposition was considered the main evidence of irreversible death.

The fashion craze has not spared Russia either. In 1897 Count Karnissky, former chamberlain of Nicholas II, presented a modernized coffin to the Parisians. It was equipped with a long tube extending to the surface, a bell and a red flag. When the deceased came to his senses and began to move, the tube automatically provided oxygen access. At the same time, the bell began to ring loudly and the flag began to flutter.

The inventor thought of everything except one detail. He did not take into account that during decomposition some “stirring” also occurs. The result of this omission was hundreds of cases when cemetery workers ran to the ringing, dug up a coffin and found a half-decomposed body in it.

Super coffins of the 20th century

Although when modern development medicine, the probability of being buried alive is practically reduced to zero, similar cases still occur occasionally today.

In the late 90s, a British doctor mistakenly declared her dead Daphnu Bank, the wife of a farmer from Cambridgeshire. It is unknown how the matter would have ended if not for the observant undertaker. Arriving at the morgue to pick up the body, he noticed that the corpse’s leg was twitching slightly and heard a barely audible snoring. In the case of Daphne, who is now alive and well, everything ended well. Alas, tragic stories much bigger.

Two days after the funeral, the Guinean Mbaswa woke up from sleep and began pounding on the coffin lid with all his might. The poor man was saved, but his “rebirth” did not bring him happiness. Considering him “marked” for death, not only his friends and acquaintances, but also his relatives and his fiancée turned away from him.

Ali Abdel-Rahim Mohammed, an Arabic teacher from Egypt, suddenly collapsed while on vacation in the Mediterranean. The doctor from the first aid station on the beach found no signs of life in him and decided that he died suddenly from sunstroke. Five hours later, Ali’s body was taken out of the refrigerator and taken for an autopsy. On the operating table, the teacher... woke up. After spending several hours in the refrigerator, he was so cold that he could not speak. The pathologist, whose hand was grabbed by the “dead man” like a vice, ran out of the operating room in horror. Ali stood up with difficulty and hobbled to look for his phone to tell his family that rumors of his death had been greatly exaggerated.

The Alexandria pathologist was lucky. The same cannot be said about another Egyptian doctor who heard screams coming from the morgue refrigerator. When the doctor saw the resurrected corpse, his heart could not stand it, and he collapsed dead. In February 2000, a businessman James McCarthy suddenly it became bad. On the way to the hospital, he fell into a coma. Deciding that James had died and there was nothing for them to do in the hospital, the relatives turned around and went to the morgue.

When McCarthy was taken out of the refrigerator the next day, he was dead but bruised all over his body. When James woke up, he tried to get out of the refrigerator, but was unable to free himself and ended up freezing to death.

Of course, people who were afraid of being buried alive did not stop fighting in the 20th century. In the 70s, fancy coffins costing $7.5 thousand, which contained almost everything necessary to sustain life, gained popularity among wealthy Americans. An impressive supply of provisions made it possible to live underground for a long time. A complex control panel regulated the air supply. If the “deceased” was stuffy, he could even turn on the fan. To perform natural needs, the supercoffin was equipped with a chemical toilet. In addition to these vital items, the inventive undertakers provided an electric alarm clock, a short-wave transmitter, a telephone and a small television. Particularly demanding clients were offered for an additional fee not provided for in standard set a miniature oven, a refrigerator and even a tape recorder.

Not a single case of rescue of the owner of a supercoffin was recorded. There is nothing particularly surprising here. On the one hand, all the owners of supercoffins most likely did not fall asleep, but died for real. On the other hand, it is not very clear why a person who has woken up in such a coffin would strive to return to the sinful earth?

Incredible facts

Real life is sometimes scarier than fiction.

And some horrific stories of premature funerals are even more chilling than the stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

In the late 1800s, the American town of Pikeville, Kentucky, was shaken unknown disease, and the most tragic incident happened with Octavia Smith Hatcher.

After her little son passed away in January 1891, Octavia was overcome by depression, she did not get out of bed, became very ill and fell into a coma. On May 2 of that year, she was declared dead of unknown causes.

Embalming was not practiced then, so the woman was quickly buried in a local cemetery due to the sweltering heat. Just a week after her funeral, many of the townspeople were stricken with the same disease, which also resulted in them falling into a coma, the only difference being that after a while they woke up.

Octavia's husband began to fear the worst and worried about what he had buried living wife. He ordered the exhumation of her body, and, as it turned out, worst fears confirmed.

Overlays for inside the coffins were scratched, the woman’s nails were broken and bloody, and the stamp of horror was forever frozen on her face. She died after being buried alive.

Octavia was reburied, and her husband erected a grave over her grave very majestic monument, which still stands today. It was later suggested that the mysterious illness was caused by the tsetse fly, an African insect that can cause sleeping sickness.

Buried alive people

9. Mina El Houari

When a person goes on a first date, he always thinks about how it will end. Many people face an unexpected ending to a date, but hardly anyone expects to be buried alive after dessert.

One of these horror stories happened in May 2014, when 25-year-old French woman Mina El Houary communicated with a potential groom on the Internet for several months, before deciding to travel to Morocco to meet him.

On May 19, she checked into a hotel room in Fez, Morocco, to go on her first real date with the man of her dreams, but she was not destined to leave the hotel.

Mina met a man in person, they spent a wonderful evening together, at the end of which she collapsed dead on the floor. Instead of calling the police or ambulance, the man thought that Mina died and decided to bury her in his garden..

Everything would be fine, but Mina didn’t actually die. As often happens with people suffering from diabetes, Mina fell into a diabetic coma and was buried alive. Several days passed before the girl's family reported her missing and flew to Morocco to try to find her.

The Moroccan police managed to find this poor fellow. Before discovering the grave in the yard, they found dirty clothes and the shovel with which he buried the girl in his house. The man confessed to the crime and was charged with murder.

8. Mrs. Boger

In July 1893, farmer Charles Boger and his wife were living in Whitehaven, Pennsylvania, when Mrs. Boger died suddenly from an unknown cause. Doctors confirmed that the woman was dead and she was buried.

This should have been the end of the story, but some time after her death, a friend told Charles that before meeting him his wife suffered from bouts of hysteria and may not have died.

The very thought that he could bury his wife alive haunted Charles until he himself fell into hysterics.

The man could not live with the thought that his wife was dying in a coffin and, with the help of his friends, exhumed his wife’s body to confirm or refute his fears. What he discovered shocked him.

Mrs. Boger's body was turned over. Her clothes were torn, the glass lid of the coffin was broken, and fragments scattered all over her body. The woman's skin was bloody and covered with wounds, and there were no fingers at all.

It was assumed that she chewed them off in a hysterical fit when she tried to free herself. No one knows what happened to Charles after the terrible discovery.

Stories of those buried alive

7. Angelo Hays

Some of the worst stories of being buried alive are not so horrific because the victim had a miraculous escape.

Such was the case with Angelo Hayes. In 1937, Angelo was an ordinary 19-year-old guy living in St. Quentin de Chalets, France. One day Angelo was riding his motorcycle, lost control and hit a brick wall.

Without hesitation, the boy was declared dead and buried three days after the accident. In the neighboring city of Bordeaux Insurance Company suspected something was wrong when she learned that Angelo’s father had recently insured his son’s life for 200,000 francs, so an inspector went to the scene.

The inspector requested the exhumation of Angelo's body two days after the funeral to confirm the cause of death, but was met with a complete surprise. The boy wasn't really dead!

When the doctor took off the guy’s funeral clothes, his body was still warm and his heart was barely beating. He was immediately taken to the hospital, where Angelo underwent several more surgeries and general rehabilitation before making a full recovery.

During all this he was unconscious because he received severe head injury. After recovery, the guy began producing coffins from which one could escape in case of premature burial. He toured with his invention and became something of a celebrity in France.

6. Mr. Cornish

Cornish was the beloved mayor of Bath, who died of fever some 80 years before Snart published his work.

As was customary at the time, the body was buried fairly quickly after death was declared. The gravedigger was almost half finished with his work when he I decided to take a break and have a drink with friends passing by.

He walked away from the grave to talk with the visitors, when suddenly they all heard suffocating moans coming from the grave of the half-buried Mr. Cornish.

The gravedigger realized that he had buried a man alive and tried to save him while there was still oxygen in the coffin. But by the time they had scattered all the dirt and managed to remove the coffin lid, it was already too late, because Cornish died with his elbows and knees scratched until they bled.

This story so frightened Cornish's older half-sister that she asked her relatives to cut off her head after her death so that she would not suffer the same fate.

People buried alive

5. Surviving 6-year-old child

Burying a person alive is terrible, but it becomes unimaginably scary when a child becomes the victim of such a catastrophe. In August 2014, this is exactly what happened to a six-year-old girl, a resident of the Indian village of Uttar Pradesh.

According to the girl's uncle, Alok Awasthi, a couple who lived nearby told her that the mother had asked them to take the baby to a neighboring village. The girl agreed to go with them, but when they reached the sugar cane field, the couple decided for an unknown reason strangle the girl and bury her on the spot.

Luckily, some people working in the field saw the couple leave without the girl. They found her unconscious in a shallow grave made in a quick fix right in the middle of the field.

Caring people managed to deliver the baby to the hospital at the very last moment, and when the girl came to her senses, she was able to tell about her kidnappers.

The girl does not remember that she was buried alive. Police do not know the reasons why the couple decided to kill the girl, and the suspects have not yet been found.

Luckily, the story did not end tragically.

4. Buried alive by choice

As long as a person lives, there will be challenges to fate. Nowadays there are even textbooks that tell you what to do if you find yourself buried alive and how to avoid death.

Moreover, people go so far that they voluntarily bury themselves in order to play with death. In 2011, a 35-year-old resident of Russia did just that, and, unfortunately, died tragically.