In the late 1820s, the inhabitants of Poznan were paralyzed with panic. Fear of a lifetime burial. And all - because of a terrible find in one of the local cemeteries. The result of mass psychosis was the construction of an unusual building called the "porch of death", or - a house for the allegedly dead.
The shovels were slowly losing their rhythm. The choking, sticky air spreading over the cemetery complicated every movement of the people gathered at the graves. The sight of the whitening human bones and half-rotted clothes scattered among the wooden fragments of the coffins did not contribute to inspiration. For the gravediggers, such "landscapes" were not something out of the ordinary, but it seems that they were also pretty fed up with all this.
Cemetery workers were called to Vinyary (a former village on the outskirts of Poznan, now one of the urban areas) to retrieve the remains of human bodies buried in the local cemetery. The Prussian government urgently ordered to evict all the inhabitants of the village to Poznan, and to raze the village itself to the ground, so that not a trace of it remained. All the remains were planned to be reburied in one of the city cemeteries, and on the site of Vinyar - to build a huge powerful citadel. It was in the late spring of 1828.
An entire village was sacrificed for the construction of the citadel.
Suddenly, the monotonous and unhurried work of the gravediggers was interrupted by an unusual sight. After excavating the next coffin, they stumbled upon a solid skeleton. It seems to be nothing unusual, but … The human skeleton was turned upside down. They dug up a few more graves - the same thing. A quiet whisper was heard among the gravediggers. So people are not buried, something is not right. Either some unknown force changed the position of the dead bodies, or … they themselves turned over.
The news flew with lightning speed around the area. The whole town was gossiping about the unusual discovery. And the more people were involved in these conversations, the more the conviction grew - the unfortunate were buried alive, woke up in pitch darkness underground, made unsuccessful attempts to get out of their graves and, as a result, died of suffocation, hunger and fear. Panic horror came to the streets of Poznan.
Rumors of the incident reached Count Rachinsky's ears. The eccentric count, known for his mystical and fatalistic judgments, was struck by this fact.
So people are not buried!
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The fear of intravital burial has always been present in the history of mankind. In Poland, such a fact (of course, not the first, but the first that was officially recorded) was learned at the end of the 17th century.
A certain Piotr Skarga, a pious preacher and priest, died in 1612 in Krakow. Several decades later, Catholic priests began a long and very complex process of beatification, the result of which was to be canonized (canonization) of the preacher. To perform this action, several important, from the point of view of religion, procedures had to be performed, one of which was the opening of the grave. The coffin was dug up, opened and … A terrifying picture opened up in front of the church dignitaries crowding around the coffin. The remains of Peter Skarga lay in an unnatural position, and the lid of the coffin was completely scratched with nails.
Medical experts, after a thorough examination of the remains, came to the only correct conclusion - the priest was buried in a state of clinical death, some time after the burial - he woke up and began to fight hard for his life. As it turned out - to no avail. The process of beatification of the holy father was immediately interrupted, because even the most notorious pious people suspected with a high degree of probability that at such a horrifying moment the priest could well have descended to blasphemy.
The first official mention of an intravital burial dates back to the 17th century.
In the 19th century, such stories became almost the main topic of the day. They were repeated on the streets, they were printed with pleasure in the newspapers, they were overgrown with new terrifying facts and mysticism, diluted with witchcraft. Even eminent writers did not disdain this delicate topic. Recall at least the founder of the book "horror films" Edgar Alan Poe, who described the burial alive in one of his stories. The more the topic of lifetime burial became inflated, the more people thought about how to avoid it.
There are "innovative" techniques that make it possible to verify the true death of a person. The simplest ones are moxibustion with a hot iron, or pouring with boiling water. But the point is that these methods were not justified at all in the case of lethargic sleep - the skin was covered with blisters from burns, and the "dead" did not rise again. Pressing the mirror to the mouth of the "deceased" also did not seem convincing. But there were also more complex manipulations, for example, Degrange's test (pouring hot vegetable oil into the nipple), or Beloglazov's test (pupil reaction to variable lighting). But none of the above methods of diagnosing death gave a 100% guarantee. Anxiety smoldered in the hearts of people. Later, scientists will call this phenomenon tafephobia.
Tafephobia is a fear of a lifetime burial.
To understand how much people were afraid of being buried alive, let us tell you a story. In 1880, one of the courtiers of Tsar Alexander III, suffering from taphobia, ordered a unique device from the master's coffin files - a coffin with a special opening, to which a flexible pipe several meters long was connected. The idea is very simple - the pipe simultaneously served as both a device for supplying oxygen and a kind of resonator through which one could shout so that the cemetery onlookers' blood would freeze in their veins. Well, of course, they would immediately run after the policeman and the buried alive would be found in time and rescued from underground captivity. Unfortunately, we do not know what happened to this courtier as a result. But if we take into account those troubled times, then we can assume that this wonderful design know-how was hardly useful to him. Most likely, he was struck by a stray bullet from some tipsy sailor, who imagines himself a revolutionary pioneer. But that's not the point.
Let's return to our eccentric aristocrat. Count Edward Raczynski was a famous and important figure. Veteran of the Napoleonic War, traveler, historian, generous philanthropist and a very great original. He walked the length and breadth of Asia Minor in search of the legendary Troy, planned the structure of an airplane from ordinary swamp reeds, and on the lake in his family estate Zanemysl organized costumed reenactments of famous sea battles. And, of course, he ended his life - as if following a script. Suicide. Shot to the head. From … a cannon.
Raczynski was extremely impressed by the events in Poznan.
But all this will happen in the future, but for now, the shocking aristocrat, who before the cemetery incident lived a very rich and social life, plunged into a dark depression. For some reason it seemed to him that he would definitely be buried alive. For several years, Raczynski literally destroyed himself with such thoughts, and in the end, pulling himself together, allocated a huge sum of money for the construction of a "porch of death" on the territory of the Poznan Cemetery of Merited Wielkopolyans.
Rachinsky pulled himself together and decided to build a "porch of death."
The fact is that until the 19th century, people left for another world mainly at home. From there, the dead were immediately sent to the cemetery and buried in the graves. No one demanded documents confirming the very fact of death, which often led to such terrible cases of intravital burial. And only in the second half of the 19th century, the first morgues began to appear at cemeteries and medical institutions. Not without the influence of Count Rachinsky.
Edward Raczynski commissioned the famous professor Karol Liebelt to create detailed instructions for an employee of the "posthumous" institution. The site for the construction was the hill of St. Wojciech, on which the city cemetery was located. Rachinsky undertook to fully finance all construction work and maintain the morgue for 6 years, after which he transferred it to the balance of the city government.
Soon the project of the future morgue was ready, but the construction did not move in any way. Raczynski caught fire with other ideas - the construction of the Golden Chapel in the main cathedral of Poznan. And then - depression, detachment from the world and fatal suicide. The construction of the morgue was taken up by his son, Roger Rachinsky. Eventually, the building was inaugurated on January 1, 1848.
The construction of the morgue was completed by the son of Count Rachinsky.
It was a small building, divided into three rooms. A trained worker was constantly on duty in one room. The other two were intended separately for men and women. In each room were huge baskets covered with soft blankets. Bodies were piled in them. A morgue worker, using ropes and ornate knots, tied a special bell to the fingers of each "potential corpse". The sound of the bell served as a sure sign that its "lucky owner" had returned to life. As soon as the morgue worker heard the sound of the bell, he was forced to immediately go for the doctor on duty, who, in turn, carefully examined the "patient" and, if necessary, performed urgent resuscitation. Resuscitation was a very entertaining sight. First, a small amount of oil was dropped on the tongue of the "resurrected"rubbed their nose with alcohol, and only then - did a heart massage.
The reanimation of the 19th century is a very entertaining sight.
Was it possible to return to life at least one of the allegedly dead? Unfortunately, not known. Gradually, the panic in the city began to subside. Residents were distracted by more pressing problems (times were troubled, oh troubled!). 4 years after the opening, the "death porch" was liquidated by the decision of the city authorities. Construction materials went under the hammer, and the proceeds went to help the poor. At the end of the 19th century, the cemetery itself was closed, forbidding any burials on it.
Today the Cemetery of the Merited Wielkopolyans is one of the historical sights of Poznan. Tourists love to stroll along quiet alleys along ancient tombstones, reflecting on eternity. There was nothing left of the “porch of death”. And only the silent stone angels raise their hands to the sky and cry inaudibly with invisible tears.