It is well known that the author of The Inspector General, Dead Souls and other immortal works of classical Russian literature was terrified of dying alive, there is also documentary evidence of this. There is a popular story that Gogol allegedly "scratched", "tossed and turned" in the coffin after he was buried.
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol died on March 3, 1852. On March 6, 1852, he was interred in the cemetery near the Danilov Monastery. According to the will, no monument was erected to him - Golgotha towered over the grave. But 79 years later, the writer's ashes were recovered from the grave: by the Soviet government, the Danilov Monastery was transformed into a colony for juvenile delinquents, and the necropolis was subject to liquidation. Only a few burials were decided to be transferred to the old cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent. Among these “lucky ones”, along with the Yazykovs, Aksakovs and Khomyakovs, was Gogol … The entire bloom of the Soviet intelligentsia was present at the reburial. Among them was the writer V. Lidin. It was to him that Gogol owes the emergence of numerous legends about himself. One of the myths concerned the writer's lethargic sleep. According to Lidin, when the coffin was removed from the ground and opened,then bewilderment seized those present.
In the coffin lay a skeleton with a skull turned to one side. Nobody found an explanation for this. I recalled the stories that Gogol was afraid of being buried alive in a state of lethargic sleep and seven years before his death he bequeathed: “My body should not be buried until there are obvious signs of decomposition. I mention this because even during the illness itself they found moments of vital numbness on me, my heart and pulse stopped beating. " What he saw plunged those present into shock. Did Gogol really have to endure the horror of such a death? It is worth noting that later this story was criticized. The sculptor N. Ramazanov, who took off Gogol's death mask, recalled: “I did not suddenly decide to take off the mask, but the prepared coffin … finally, the constantly arriving crowd of people who wanted to say goodbye to the dear dead man made me and my old man,who pointed to the traces of destruction, hurry … "There was an explanation for the turn of the skull: the side boards were the first to rot at the coffin, the lid lowers under the weight of the soil, presses on the dead man's head, and it turns to the side on the so-called" Atlantean "vertebra.
Associate Professor of the Perm Medical Academy Mikhail Davidov said that the exhumation of the remains of Nikolai Gogol took place 80 years later - both the corpse and the domino by that time had decayed so much that it was absolutely impossible to make out whether the deceased had "scratched", even taking into account the ultra-modern technologies (which, by the way did not exist then).
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Several years ago, the most popular British daily newspaper The Guardian published a historical study of this phenomenon, reflected, in particular, in the work of the forefather of detectives Edgar Alan Poe (The Fall of the House of Usher). The newspaper quotes excerpts from Jean Bonderson's "Buried Alive: Horrific Stories of Our Primal Fear." Bonderson describes socio-cultural situations when in various countries there was a tendency to punish by means of a similar method of killing the punished.
At the beginning of the last century, the British reformer William Tebb, "turned" on the topic of premature burial, reported hundreds of such cases, he even founded the London Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial. The Guardian wrote: later it got to the point that in Great Britain and in other countries patented coffins with periscopic breathing tubes and breakable glass panels connected with bells and whistles above the ground, used automatic alarm mechanisms that recorded the slightest movement of the buried body.
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Perhaps the most famous case of the "resurrection" of the laid in the coffin was associated with the Polish beekeeper Josef Guzi, which occurred 8 years ago, the British "Times" wrote about this. Guzi was diagnosed with a heart attack after a bee sting, the death of his 76-year-old grandfather was confirmed by a physician. They say that the pulse of the "deceased" was felt by the employee of the funeral services bureau, who removed the watch from the "corpse".
In Kazan, 7 years ago, the 49-year-old "heart" Fagil Makhamedzyanov was almost "buried" - all the ritual preparations have already been completed, the doctors issued a certificate of death. And the woman, when they began to mourn her, revived - her heart began to work, a pulse appeared, she “seemed to” also cried … But all this did not last long - on the same day the patient died completely.
Doctors explain such a near-death reaction precisely as a reflection of an involuntary reaction of the body, which often happens after death.
Several years ago, the Italian Corierra de la Sera reported on the alleged death of a 79-year-old pensioner, also a "core". He had already been dressed for his last journey and put in a coffin when his grandfather woke up and asked for a drink. It is reported that then the doctors confused the disease for which the old man was being treated. In many such cases, this very reason was the main one for the "resurrection".
Nikolay Syromyatnikov