What is it like to be buried alive?

A woman told Leeds Crown Court this week was buried alive in a box. This is a scenario that evokes our most primal fears

Michelina Lewandowska

paralyzed Leeds Crown Court this week, he described clawing your way through 10 cm or more above the ground after being buried alive in a cardboard box. No wonder: the fear of premature burial or alive is, despite its rarity, one of our most powerful fears and amplified by the tales of Edgar Allan Poe as The Premature Burial and The Fall of the House of Usher and widespread want your own name doctor taphe-(o-tapho) phobia.

According to Jan Bondeson's Buried Alive: The terrifying story of our fear most primitive, direct burial always used particularly cruel method of execution: in medieval Italy, murderers who have refused to repentance were buried alive, a practice mentioned in Dante's Inferno. Women convicted of murdering her husband suffered the same fate - known as "The Pit" -. 17th century in Russia, and there are pictures of Chinese civilians were buried alive by Japanese soldiers during the Nanking Massacre

But it is the fear of being buried after being pronounced dead wrong that concerned us. Until recently, more than 100 years, medical science meant that there was a concern quite irrational among the recommended methods for the diagnosis of death in the 18th century were tickled with a feather, flogging with nettles, mouthwashing with needles sticking in urine and nails. The rich pay their doctors to cut the throat or pierce his heart before the funeral.

Horror stories abound

: pregnant women who gave birth six feet underground, open coffins to find corpses with torn fingers itch when desperate, an aristocratic lady woke up in his grave by a grave robber trying to cut his hand rings. In 1905, the social reformer William Tebb documented 219 cases of burial live near, and 149 actual cases (horrified Tebb London founded the Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial and specified before his death, in 1917, that " clear evidence of decomposition "to be visible before being incinerated).

To allay the fears of the population, Victorian England and inventors also patented boxes with snorkels as the periscope and fragile glass panels fanfare associated above ground and automatic warning devices that detect movements chest. And even today, almost errors occur: last year alone, a beekeeper of 76 years, Polish, Josef Guzy, declared dead after a heart attack, narrowly escaped being buried alive in a weak pulse been regarded as his coffin was sealed. Be warned.

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