It is no coincidence that in almost all countries and all peoples it is customary to bury a body not immediately after death, but only after a few days. There were many cases when the "dead" suddenly came to life before the funeral, or, worst of all, right inside the grave …
Imaginary death
Lethargy (from the Greek lethe - oblivion and argia - inaction) is an almost unexplored morbid condition, similar to sleep. Cessation of heartbeat and lack of breathing have always been considered signs of death. But during lethargic sleep, all life processes also freeze, and it is rather difficult to distinguish real death from imaginary (this is how lethargic sleep is often called) without modern equipment.
Therefore, earlier cases of burial of people who did not die, but who fell asleep with a lethargic sleep, took place quite often, and sometimes with famous people. For example, a similar terrible incident happened to the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca. One day he fell seriously ill and fell into a lethargic sleep during a crisis. He was considered dead and was about to be buried. He woke up almost during the position of the coffin in the ground. Fortunately, everything ended well, and after this terrible incident the poet lived for another 40 years.
But not always everything ended so happily. Sometimes lethargic sleep led to terrible consequences - the person fell into unconsciousness, and came to himself inside the coffin, under the thickness of the earth, from under which he could no longer get out …
If now burial alive is already a fantasy, then 100-200 years ago cases of the burial of living people were not so rare. Very often, gravediggers, digging a fresh grave in old graves, found twisted bodies in half-rotted coffins, which showed that they were trying to get out. They say that in medieval cemeteries, every third grave presented such a terrible sight …
Promotional video:
Fatal sleeping pill
Helena Blavatsky described strange cases of lethargic sleep: “In 1816 in Brussels, a respected citizen fell into deep lethargy on Sunday morning. On Monday, as his companions prepared to hammer nails into the lid of the coffin, he sat in the coffin, rubbed his eyes and demanded coffee and a newspaper.
In Moscow, the wife of a wealthy merchant lay in a cataleptic state for seventeen days, during which the authorities made several attempts to bury her; but since decay did not occur, the family rejected the ceremony, and after the said period the life of the pretended dead was restored.
In Bergerac in 1842, the patient took sleeping pills, but … did not wake up. They bled him: he did not wake up. Finally he was pronounced dead and buried. A few days later, they remembered taking sleeping pills and dug up the grave. The body was turned over and bore signs of a struggle."
This is only a small part of such cases - lethargic sleep is actually quite a frequent occurrence …
Death in the grave
Many people tried to protect themselves from being buried alive. For example, the famous writer Wilkie Collins left a note at his bedside with a list of measures that should be taken before he was buried … But the writer was an educated person and had a concept of lethargic sleep, while many ordinary people did not even think something like that …
So, in 1838, an incredible incident occurred in England. After the funeral of a respected person, a boy was walking through the cemetery and heard an indistinct sound from under the ground. The frightened child called the adults who dug the coffin. When the cover was removed, the shocked witnesses saw that a terrible grimace was on the face of the deceased. His hands were freshly bruised, and his shroud was torn. But the man was already actually dead - he died a few minutes before salvation - from a broken heart, unable to withstand such a terrible awakening to reality …
An even more dire incident occurred in Germany in 1773. A deceased pregnant woman was buried there. When shouts began to be heard from under the ground, the grave was dug up. But it turned out that it was already too late - the woman died, and moreover, the child who had just been born in the same grave died …
Live Gogol
The most famous such case was the scary story associated with Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. During his life, he several times fell into a strange, absolutely immobile state, reminiscent of death. But the great writer always quickly came to his senses, although he managed to pretty much scare those around him.
Gogol knew about this peculiarity of his and was more than anything in the world afraid that one day he would fall into a deep sleep for a long time, and he would be buried alive. He wrote: “Being in the full presence of memory and common sense, here I am setting forth my last will. I bequeath my body not to bury my body until obvious signs of decomposition appear … I mention this because even during the illness itself they found moments of vital numbness on me, my heart and pulse stopped beating”…
After the writer's death, they did not listen to his will, and was buried as usual - on the third day …
These terrible words were remembered only in 1931, when the reburial of Gogol from the Danilov Monastery to the Novodevichy cemetery was carried out. According to eyewitnesses, the lid of the coffin was scratched from the inside, and Gogol's body was in an unnatural position … At the same time, another terrible thing was discovered that had nothing to do with lethargic dreams and burials alive. Gogol's skeleton was missing … a head.
According to rumors, she disappeared in 1909, when the monks of the Danilov Monastery were restoring the grave of the writer. Allegedly, the collector and rich man Bakhrushin persuaded them to cut it off for a considerable amount of money, with whom she remained. This is a wild story, but it is quite possible to believe in it, because in 1931, during the excavation of Gogol's grave, a number of unpleasant events occurred. The famous writers who were present at the reburial were literally taken from the coffin "for memory" - who is a shred of clothes, who are shoes, and who is Gogol's rib …
Call from the other world
Interestingly, in order to protect a person from being buried alive, a bell with a rope still exists in morgues in many Western countries. A person who was considered dead can wake up among the dead, get up and call him. The ministers will immediately come running to his call. This bell and the revival of the dead are very often played out in horror films, but in reality such stories almost never happened. But during the autopsy, the "corpses" … came to life more than once. In 1964, an autopsy was performed on a man who died on the street in one of the New York morgues. As soon as the pathologist's scalpel touched the abdomen of the "dead man", he immediately jumped up. The pathologist himself died of shock and fright on the spot …
By the way, in recent years there has been a tradition of putting charged mobile phones next to the dead - suddenly it’s not death at all, but a dream, suddenly a dear person comes to his senses and calls his loved ones - I’m alive, dig me back up … days, with perfect diagnostic devices, in principle it is impossible to bury a person alive …
But, nevertheless, people do not trust doctors and try to protect themselves from the terrible awakening in the grave. In 2001, a scandalous incident occurred in the United States. Los Angeles resident Joe Barten, terribly afraid of falling into a lethargic sleep, bequeathed to make ventilation in his coffin, put food and a phone in it. And at the same time, his relatives could receive an inheritance only on the condition that they called him in the grave three times a day. Interestingly, Barten's relatives refused to receive the inheritance - the process of making calls to the other world seemed too creepy to them.
Natalia Trubinovskaya