And there is another horror story.

The fate of being buried alive can befall each of us. For example, you may fall into a lethargic sleep, relatives will think that you are dead, drink jelly at your funeral and hammer a nail into the lid of your coffin.

The worst option is when a person is deliberately buried in a coffin in order to scare or get rid of him: according to some rumors, the famous Yaponchik loved to do so.

Maybe that's why all the "bohemia" and hangouts talked so nicely with him?

Many of us watched the movie Buried Alive, where the main character wakes up and finds that he is buried alive in a wooden box, where oxygen gradually runs out. You could hardly imagine a more dire situation. And those who have watched this film to the end will agree with this.
Horror stories about how a person was buried alive have been around since the Middle Ages, if not earlier. And then they were not horror stories, but real facts. The level of development of medicine was too low and such cases could well happen. Rumor has it that a similar terrible situation happened with the great writer Nikolai Gogol, and not with him alone.

As for our time, there is practically no chance of being buried alive. The fact is that curious doctors, for some reason, are extremely fond of specifying what this or that person died from, and for this they open it up, examine the organs and, upon completion, neatly sew it up. You understand that you won't be able to wake up in a coffin in this situation; rather, the pathologist's conclusion will contain the line “The cover showed that the death occurred as a result of an autopsy”.

How to be saved if you woke up in a coffin, and above you there is a boarded up lid and a couple of meters of earth? How to get out of the coffin
First, don't panic! Seriously, panic can drastically reduce the amount of time you have to survive. In a state of panic, you will use oxygen more actively. Usually you can live in a coffin for one or two hours - provided you don't panic. If you know how to meditate, do it immediately. Relaxing as much as possible will help you think more clearly.

Check if you can call. These days, people are often buried with cell phones, tablets, or other means of communication. If this is the case for you, try to contact family or friends. Once you have done this, relax and meditate to conserve oxygen.

No mobile phone? Okay ... Considering that you are still alive in a limited air coffin, you were recently buried. This means that the ground should be soft enough.

Use your hands to loosen the lid in the cheapest fiberboard coffins, you can even make a hole (with a wedding ring, a belt buckle ...)
Cross your arms over your chest, grabbing your shoulders with your palms and pull off your shirt or T-shirt up, tie it in a knot over your head, hanging with a bag on your head, it will protect you from suffocation when the ground hits your face.

If your coffin is not yet damaged by the weight of the earth, use your feet to punch a hole in the coffin. The best place for this there will be the middle of the lid.

After you have successfully broken open the coffin, use your hands and feet to push the ground entering the hole to the edges of the coffin. Fill the coffin with earth as much as possible, tamping it down so that you don't lose the ability to stick your head and shoulders through the hole.

By all means try to sit down, the earth will fill the empty space and shift in your favor, do not stop and continue breathing calmly.
After you've tamped as much earth as you can inside the coffin, use all your strength to stand up straight. It may be necessary to make a larger gap in the lid, but this should not be difficult with a cheap coffin.

After the head is on the surface and you are able to breathe freely, do not hesitate, let yourself panic a little, even scream if necessary. If no one came to your aid, pull yourself out of the ground, wriggling like a worm.

Remember the soil in a fresh grave is always loose and “it is relatively easy to deal with it”, it is much more difficult to get out during the rain: wet soil is denser and heavier. The same can be said for clay.

If your relatives are not curmudgeons and have buried you in a stainless steel coffin, the best thing to do in this case is to try to make loud sounds from the coffin by pressing the lid where it is attached or knocking on the coffin with a belt buckle or something similar. Perhaps someone is still standing near the grave.

Note that lighting a match or lighter, if you have one, is a bad idea. An open fire will destroy the entire oxygen supply very quickly.

Buried alive

It is no coincidence that almost all peoples customarily hold the burial ceremony not immediately, but after a certain number of days after death. There were many cases when the “dead” came to life at the funeral, and there were also cases when they woke up inside the coffin. Since ancient times, people have been afraid to be buried alive. Taphophobia - the fear of being buried alive is observed in many people. It is believed that this is one of the basic phobias of the human psyche. Intentional burial of a person alive according to the laws of the Russian Federation is considered a murder committed with special cruelty and is punished accordingly.

Imaginary death

Lethargy is an unexplored, painful condition that resembles a common dream. Lack of breathing and cessation of heartbeat were considered signs of death in ancient times. However, in the absence of modern equipment, it was difficult to determine where the imaginary death was and where the real one was. Now there are practically no cases of burials of living people, but a couple of centuries ago it was a fairly common phenomenon. Lethargic sleep usually lasts from several hours to several weeks. But there are cases when lethargy lasted for months. Lethargic sleep differs from coma in that the human body supports the vital functions of the organs and is not under the threat of death. There are many examples of lethargic sleep and related moments in the literature, but they do not always have a scientific basis and are often fictional. For example, HG Wells' science fiction novel When the Sleeper Wakes up tells about a man who "slept" for 200 years. This is certainly impossible.

Terrible awakening

There are a lot of stories when people plunged into a state of lethargic sleep, let's dwell on the most interesting ones. In 1773, a terrible incident happened in Germany: after the burial of a pregnant girl, strange sounds began to come from her grave. It was decided to dig the grave and everyone who was there was shocked by what they saw. As it turned out, the girl began to give birth and from this came out of the state of lethargic sleep. She was able to give birth in such cramped conditions, but due to a lack of oxygen, neither the baby nor his mother managed to survive.
Another story, but not so terrible, happened in England in 1838. One official was always afraid of being buried alive and, as luck would have it, his fear materialized. A respected person woke up in a coffin and started screaming. At that moment, a young man walked through the cemetery, who, hearing the man's voice, ran for help. When the coffin was dug and opened, people saw the deceased with a frozen grimace. The victim died a few minutes before the rescue. Doctors diagnosed him with cardiac arrest, the man could not withstand such a terrible awakening to reality.

There were people who perfectly understood what a lethargic dream was and what to do if such a misfortune overtook them. For example, the English playwright Wilkie Collins feared that he would be buried while he was still alive. There was always a note near his bed, which told about the measures to be taken before his burial.

Method of execution

As a method of capital punishment, burial alive was used by the ancient Romans. For example, if a girl broke her vow of virginity, she was buried alive. A similar execution technique was used for many Christian martyrs. In the 10th century, Princess Olga gave the order to bury the Drevlyan ambassadors alive. In the Middle Ages, in Italy, unrepentant murderers faced the fate of people buried alive. The Zaporozhye Cossacks buried the murderer alive in a coffin with the man whom he took his life. In addition, the Germans used methods of execution through burial alive during the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945. In this terrible method, the Nazis executed Jews.

Ritual burials

It is worth noting that there are cases when people of their own free will find themselves buried alive. So, certain peoples of South America, Africa and Siberia have a ritual in which people bury the shaman of their village alive. It is believed that during the "pseudo-burial" ritual, the healer receives the gift of communication with the souls of deceased ancestors.

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Taphophobia, or fear of being buried alive, is one of the most common human phobias. And there are good enough reasons for that. Due to the mistakes of doctors or the illiteracy of the inhabitants, such cases occurred quite often before the normal development of medicine, and sometimes they happen in our time. In this article 10 incredible, but absolutely real stories people buried alive who still managed to survive.

Janet Philomel.

The story of a 24-year-old French woman named Jeanette Philomel is most typical of most of these cases. In 1867, she fell ill with cholera and died a few days later, as everyone around her thought. The girl was a local priest in accordance with all the rules of the burial, her body was laid in a coffin and buried in the cemetery. Nothing unusual.

The oddities began when, a few hours later, the cemetery worker was finishing the burial. Suddenly he heard a knock coming from underground. They began to dig the coffin, along the way sent for a doctor. The physician who appeared did indeed reveal a weak heartbeat and breathing in a girl raised from her own grave. And on her hands were fresh bruises from the fact that she was trying to get out. True, this story ended tragically. A few days later, the girl still died for real. Most likely due to cholera. But perhaps because of the nightmare she experienced. This time, the doctors and priests tried to make sure that she was really dead.

Unknown from Sao Paulo.

In 2013, a woman living in São Paulo came to her family's gravestone in the cemetery and witnessed a truly terrifying scene. Nearby, she noticed a man desperately trying to get out of the grave. He did it with difficulty. The man had already freed one hand and head by the time local workers arrived.

After the unfortunate man was completely dug up, he was taken to the hospital, where it turned out that he was an employee of the mayor's office. It is not known for certain how it happened that the man was buried alive. It is assumed that he was the victim of a fight or attack, after which he was presumed dead and buried to get rid of evidence. Relatives claimed that after the incident, the man suffered from mental disorders.

Baby from Dongdong Province.

In a remote Chinese village in Dongdong province, there lived a pregnant girl named Lu Xiaoyan. With medicine in the village it was really bad: there are no doctors of their own, the nearest hospital is a few kilometers away. Naturally, no one followed the girl's pregnancy. Around the fourth month, Lou suddenly felt contractions. Everyone expected the child to be born dead. And so it happened: the baby was born did not show signs of life.

After giving birth, the girl's husband realized that she would most likely need professional medical assistance, so he called an ambulance. While Lou was being driven to the nearest hospital by car, her mother was burying her baby in a field. However, at the hospital it turned out that the girl was not in her fourth, but in her sixth month of pregnancy and the doctors, suggesting that the child could survive, demanded to bring him. Lou's husband returned, dug up the tiny girl and took her to the hospital. Surprisingly, the girl managed to get out.

Mike Mayney.

Mike Mainey is a famous Irish bartender who asked to be buried alive to set a kind of world record. In 1968, in London, Mike was placed in a special coffin equipped with an opening through which air entered there. Through the same hole, food and drink were passed to the man. It's hard to believe, but in total, Mike was buried for 61 days. Since then, many have tried to beat this record, but none have succeeded.

Anthony Britton.

Another magician who voluntarily allowed himself to be buried in the ground in order to get out of the grave on his own. However, unlike Mike, he was buried without a coffin, at a standard depth of 2 meters. In addition, his hands were handcuffed. As planned, Anthony was supposed to repeat Houdini's trick, but everything did not go according to plan.

The magician spent almost nine minutes underground. For the rescuers on duty from above, this was the extreme threshold for starting active operations. They quickly dug up the poor fellow, who was in a half-dead state. Britton was pumped out. Subsequently, in various interviews, he said that he could not complete his trick because his hands were pressed against the ground. Worst of all, after each exhalation, the earth continued to squeeze his chest harder and harder, preventing him from breathing.

Baby from Compton.

Most recently, in November 2015, two women were walking in the park of Compton, a small town in California. Suddenly, while walking, they heard a strange crying of children, as if coming from under the ground. Frightened, they immediately called the police.

The arriving law enforcement officers dug up a very young child, no more than two days old, under the asphalt of the bicycle path. Fortunately, the police promptly took the little girl to the hospital and her life was saved. Interestingly, the baby was wrapped in a hospital blanket, which allowed detectives to quickly determine when and where she was born, as well as to establish the identity of the mother. An arrest warrant was issued immediately. Now she is accused of attempted murder and leaving the child in danger.

Tom Guerin.

The Irish potato famine of 1845-1849 resulted in a huge number of deaths. The gravediggers in those days had a lot of work, there was not enough space to bury everyone. They had to bury many and, naturally, sometimes mistakes happened. Such, for example, with Tom Guerin, a 13-year-old boy who, mistakenly, mistaken for dead, was buried alive.

The boy was pronounced dead, brought to the cemetery, like many others, and began to bury him, accidentally breaking his legs with shovels in the process. It is surprising, but the boy not only survived, but also managed to get out of the grave with broken legs. Witnesses claim that later Tom Guerin limped on both legs until the end of his life.

A child from Tian Dong.

The horrifying story took place in May 2015 in one of the southern Chinese provinces. A woman who was collecting herbs near the cemetery suddenly heard a barely audible cry of children. Frightened, she called the police, who found a baby buried alive in the cemetery. The baby was quickly taken to the hospital, where he soon recovered.

During the investigation, it turned out that parents who did not want to raise a child born with a hare lip put the baby in a cardboard box and took it to the cemetery. After several days, the relatives came to the cemetery and, thinking that the child was already dead, buried him at a shallow depth of several centimeters. As a result, the boy spent 8 days underground and survived only due to the fact that oxygen and water penetrated through the layer of mud. Police said that when the boy was dug up, the child literally coughed up dirty water.

Natalia Pasternak.

A terrible incident took place in May last year in the city of Tynda. Two local residents, Natalya Pasternak and her friend Valentina Gorodetskaya, traditionally collected birch sap near the city. At this time, a four-year-old bear came out of the forest to Natalya, who, considering the woman her prey, attacked her.

The bear partially scalped her, left a deep wound in her thigh, and seriously injured her neck. Fortunately, Valentina managed to call rescuers. By the time they arrived, the bear had already buried Natalia in a state of shock, as they usually do with their victims, in order to leave them for later. Rescuers had to shoot the beast. Natalia was dug up and taken to the hospital. Since then, she has already undergone many operations, her recovery is still ongoing.

Essie Dunbar.

Essie, 30, died in 1915 from a severe epileptic seizure. At least that's what the doctors said. The girl was pronounced dead and preparations for the funeral began. Sister Essie really wanted to be present at the ceremony and categorically forbade the burial to begin until she personally said goodbye to the deceased. The priests delayed the service as best they could.

The coffin had already been lowered into the grave when Sister Essie finally arrived. She insisted that the coffin be lifted and opened so that she could say goodbye to her sister. However, as soon as the coffin lid opened, Essie stood up and smiled at her sister. Those present at the funeral rushed from there in panic, believing that the girl's spirit had risen from the dead. Even many years later, some townspeople believed that she was a walking corpse. Essie lived until 1962.

It is not for nothing that in almost all countries of the world, funerals are usually held not immediately after death, but only after a few days. There are many examples when the "deceased" suddenly came to life before the funeral, or, what is most terrible, right in the grave, being buried alive ...

Imaginary death

The ritual of "pseudo-funeral" takes an important place among the servants of shamanic cults. It is believed that by lying down alive in the grave, the shaman is given the gift of communication with the spirits of the earth, as well as with the souls of deceased ancestors. It seems that certain channels are opening in his mind through which he connects with unknown mere mortals, other worlds.

Naturalist and ethnographer E.S. Bogdanovsky was lucky in 1915 to witness the ritual funeral of a shaman of one Kamchatka tribe. In his memoirs, Bogdanovsky wrote that before the burial, the shaman fasted for three days, did not even drink water. After that, the assistants, using a bone drill, made a hole in the shaman's crown, which was then sealed with beeswax. Further, the body of the shaman was rubbed with incense, wrapped in a bear skin and, with ritual singing, lowered into the grave, which was arranged in the center of the ancestral cemetery. A long reed tube was inserted into the shaman's mouth, which was brought out, and his motionless body was covered with earth. A few days later, during which ritual actions were continuously performed over the grave, the buried shaman was removed from the grave, washed in three running waters and fumigated with incense. On the same day, in the village, the second birth of a respected fellow tribesman was magnificently celebrated, who, having visited the "kingdom of the dead", took the top step in the hierarchy of pagan clergymen ...

Recently, a tradition has emerged to put a charged mobile phone next to the deceased - 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 out ... perfect diagnostic devices, in principle, it is impossible to bury a person alive.

However, people do not trust doctors and try to protect themselves from the terrible awakening in the grave. In 2001, a scandalous incident occurred in America. Los Angeles resident Joe Barten, terribly afraid of falling into a lethargic sleep, bequeathed to make ventilation in his coffin, leave food and a telephone in it. At the same time, his relatives could receive an inheritance only on condition that they call his grave three times a day. It is curious that Barten's relatives refused to receive the inheritance - the process of making calls seemed to them quite creepy ...

"Secrets of the XX century" - (Golden Series)

At the end of December 2009, an Indian who was seriously injured in an accident and was declared dead, suddenly "came to life" on the table of a pathologist in a morgue in eastern India.

According to a relative of the victim, on December 25, 30-year-old Susanta Deo was riding a motorcycle and crashed into a tractor trailer. He suffered a head injury and a broken leg and was taken to a nearby hospital unconscious. The doctor on duty decided that the man had died and sent the body to the morgue. When the pathologist prepared his autopsy instruments, he was surprised to find that the 30-year-old "deceased" was showing signs of life. After that, Susanta was urgently taken to the hospital in the regional center of Kattak. The police opened a criminal case against the doctor for negligence.

This is far from the only case of this kind, and sometimes doctors argue that it is not their mistake at all.

July 2, 2009the Ha'aretz newspaper reported that the elderly Israeli "came to life" after a team of ambulances issued a death certificate and was about to send the 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 with no signs of life. Attempts to resuscitate the old man were considered unsuccessful, and the doctors signed official documents on 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 a hospital in Israel 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 in the 23rd week of pregnancy. Doctors, considering the severely premature baby dead, put him in the refrigerator, where the girl spent at least five hours. The signs of life in the newborn were noticed by the parents who came to take her 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.

However, despite attempts by Israeli doctors to save his life, the baby died.

Early 2008a Frenchman who had suffered a myocardial infarction, to whom cardiologists diagnosed a cardiac arrest, "came to life" on the operating table, when surgeons proceeded to extract his organs for transplantation.

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 was admitted to the hospital, his heart did not beat. The 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 the surgeons began the operation, they detected signs of breathing in the potential donor and paused.

In November 2007 a 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 agreed to use the organs young man for transplantation, however, during the farewell ceremony, he unexpectedly moved his leg and palm. Then those present pressed on Zach's nail and touched his foot with a pocket knife, to which the young man instantly reacted. After the "resurrection" Zak spent 48 more days in the hospital.

In October 2005 The 73-year-old pensioner from the Italian city of Mantova suddenly came to life 35 minutes after doctors pronounced him dead.

An elderly Italian man was lying in the cardiology department of the Carlo Poma hospital in Mantova when an echocardiograph indicated his cardiac arrest. All the doctors' attempts to resuscitate the man were useless: heart massage and artificial lung ventilation did not give results. Doctors recorded death. However, unexpectedly, the line on the echocardiograph began to move again: the man was alive. Soon the man, already pronounced dead, began to move, and then began to recover.

As the doctors said 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 2004 In the northern Indian state of Hariyana, an Indian came back to life after spending several hours in a morgue refrigerator.

As SkyNews reported, the man was taken to the morgue by the police, who found him lying by the road with injuries. The doctors of the hospital where he was taken, according to the results of the examination, wrote down: "dead at the time of arrival" - and identified the "body" in the morgue immediately after they handed everything required papers the police.

However, after a few hours, the "deceased" began to move, leaving the morgue staff in a state of shock. The morgue workers immediately took him back to the hospital.

January 5, 2004 Reuters reported that a New Mexico funeral bureau official found a certain Felipe Padilla, pronounced dead in hospital, breathing. The man "came to life" just a few minutes before Padilla's body was to be embalmed. Felipe Padilla, 94, was sent to the same hospital where he had previously been 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 an almost hopeless condition. The patient was immediately connected to the systems for providing cardiac and brain activity. Roberto de Simone's heart stopped for two minutes. Doctors made an attempt to restore the work of the heart with the help of adrenaline, but, despite all efforts, death was recorded after a while. The doctors decided that the patient was dead and handed his body over to his relatives to say goodbye to him before the funeral. De Simone was brought home as deceased.

When everything was already ready for the funeral ceremony and had 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 illness.

In April 2002 the man "came to life" a few hours after doctors in the Indian city of Lucknow (the capital of Uttar Pradesh) issued a death certificate to his relatives.

A resident of a village in the state, 55-year-old Sukhlal was admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of tuberculosis. The prescribed course of treatment did not give positive results, and one day the doctors had to state the death of the patient. The patient's son was given a death certificate. When the preparation for cremation was completed, the son went to the morgue to collect his father's body, and then found that he was breathing. He immediately called the doctors, who felt the pulse of the "corpse" and demanded that his son return the death certificate. Only thanks to the perseverance of journalists, the hospital management initiated an internal investigation of this incident. However, the attending physician Mehrotra rejected all doubts about his professionalism, in his opinion, the case with the "revived" Sukhlal is a "miracle" that first happened in his practice.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources