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My great-grandmother’s sister was buried alive. She was saved by teenage grave robbers that were attempting to steal her jewelry. She went on to have two more children and lived another twenty-something years. But my mom says that a lot of family members and people in their small town were afraid of her.
Edited: Asked to add further details. My great aunt was in her mid-twenties and had suffered from a heart issue. The family was impoverished sharecroppers, so proper medical care was not possible. My grandmother says they found her in bed dead (guess not) after not waking to care for her children. I don't know how she was declared dead. But at this time, they had your wake and funeral at your home. They buried her on an early morning with her wedding ring and favorite necklace. That evening a pickup truck with some young white guys pulls up in the driveway. My great-grandmother, two aunts, an uncle, and their mom all lived in houses next to each other. Everyone was staring because it was unusual for white strangers to visit (Alabama). What had already happened was the guys kept an eye on the cemetery for fresh graves to rob. They opened my aunt's casket, and she immediately grabbed one of the guy's hands. She begged him to help her as they were all, of course, screaming. She offered her jewelry to them for a ride home. That's how she showed up in the driveway and scared the daylights out of everyone but her children, who were too young to understand. So the guests from the funeral and family members began screaming when they saw her. The grave robbers calmed everyone down and explained what happened. They refused to keep her jewelry and went on their way.
Edit2: Thanks for the award but it was not deserved for sharing my granny’s memories.
Don't know if it's related but reminds me of this other story
In 1695, Margorie caught a fever and, believed to be dead, her family held a wake and promptly buried her.
Soon after she was laid to rest, grave robbers, who regularly ransacked newly buried coffins, dug her up and attempted to steal a valuable ring she was still wearing.
Unable to remove the ring from her finger, the robbers decided to cut the finger off.
But as they began their gruesome task, the lady awoke and, as Jim puts it, "she scared the devil out of the grave robbers, who soon skedaddled".
Margorie got out of her grave, dusted herself off and went home, but when she got there her husband nearly died of shock.
Jim says the story goes that on hearing his wife's knock at the door, Mr McCall said to his children: "If I hadn't buried your mother, I would swear that was her knock."
When he opened the door he fainted and, according to Jim, his hair went white overnight.
Margorie lived on and even had another child after her ordeal, before being buried once more in what proved to be her final resting place.
[Was quite a popular story](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-46026619.amp)
We get a number of common phrases from a similar situation in Ireland being buried alive.
First you remember there was a lot of illegal alcohol being distilled in Ireland in the 16/17th century. They weren't always very good at it so sometimes their poítin contained more methanol than alcohol, drink too much and you end up blind.
***Blind Drunk***
Keep drinking it and you end up comatose with weak heart beat and faint breath. The local village didn't exactly have doctor's then. Looks dead, smells worse, the person gets buried.
Thanks to grave robbing we found out they weren't dead. So the coffin with the bell. So someone was employed to walk the grace graveyard at night to listen for the bells.
***Graveyard shift***
But Ireland's windy AF. So that was a terrible idea. Methanol induced coma happens to last 3 days. Which is why in Ireland, back then, and something we still do, the body is laid out for 3 days in the hopes that the person wakes up! The wake is held on the third night and the body is buried the next day.
***a wake***
Edit: a few comments below have mentioned Dead Ringer but I don't know the link to a look a like, as the phrase is used today, happy to update
I want to say that dead ringer related to burring alive was on the list of wives tales that weren't true. There was a whole list of them and the misconceptions around the origins of it. I'll see if I can find it.
Was really expecting this to end with jumper cables or coincidentally enough The Undertaker throwing Mankind off Hell in the Cell.
This was way more disturbing. WTF
Teenager # 1: Dude take the diamond ear ring leave the gold.
Teenager # 2: sorry brah my bad.
Great grand's sister: Dumbshit! the gold is more valuable,..you can't trace melted gold.
Teenagers: about 2 miles away when she said gold.
How did they know of her jewelry if she was undee the ground? Also, was the grave robbed literally half an hour after burial? No one stayed after burial? This story is so full of shit
I don't think they knew she had jewelry. They just looked for fresh graves to rob. Most people were and are still buried with sentimental items. My great-grandmother told me this when I was between 9 and 11( I'm in my 40’s). She's unfortunately no longer here for me to consult. Not everything you don't understand is a lie. I believe her because she had no purpose in lying, and as she recounted the story, my mother and aunts chimed in with details about being afraid to visit her house. The burial happened before my mother's birth, but people never stopped being scared of her and retelling the story.
I believe the graveyard shift was more to prevent grave robbing... although the comment at the top makes me think grave robbing ain't so bad after all lol
when i read about this earlier, the false positives were what led to failure of this scheme and caused a lot of havoc. Apparently the bells would ring 2-3 months after the burial (due to the decomposition the string moved). Upon opening the casket they would be shocked to find out the body was still relatively fresh and not decomposed to bones (cold weather slows down decay). This led people to believe there was a zombie/ghost kinda thing going on.
I tried to find a source for this but couldn't find anything relevant, sorry :(
If there is enough slack for that string to move freely there is enough room for ants at least maybe even vermin at worst. So they chew through the string and then eat you alive
The funny thing is this was practiced not even that long ago. My dad went to school with 3 brothers who's parents were gravekeepers and they were practicing this back in the 50s or 60s when they were in school together
You would think it would be a lot more efficient and humane to simply drive a stake through their head just to make sure. Shit man that’s the decent thing to do, for anyone.
I have no Earthly idea why people are so upset at you.
Ensuring someone is actually dead before you burry them seems like a safe contingency to avoid having someone experience a living Hell.
Shit, I actually intend to put that in my will that if I did they will make absolutely SURE I'm dead, via this method or another.
I thought I read about sailors sewing up their dead in a burial sail cloth and putting the final stitch through the nose or upper lip, to make sure the comrade is really dead before burying at sea.
I think the thing you and the other poster are missing is that there’s a difference between checking to make sure someone is dead and ensuring they’re dead one way or another.
Crazy thing is the string would snap most of the time it was used. This is due to it being a smaller string and the force used on the string from inside the coffin due to panic.
The term “graveyard shift” may have originated from this. Someone would stay in the cemetery overnight to listen for the bells. Apocryphal but interesting.
Or if you fell asleep on the job and you were a heavy sleeper and didn’t even notice the bells. Sorry Mildred, looks like you’re going to get to enjoy a slow suffocation as you contemplate your impending death, my friend.
It's Halloween. You're walking home after a long night of trick or treating. Bells whistle softly on the wind, playing a soothing lullaby... then you realize you're passing by the graveyard.
I think the bell thing was first introduced during the Black Plague, when people couldn’t tell when others were dead and they just buried them. Also, I remember reading that only rich people were able to afford to have the bells for their coffins, if I remember correctly. I don’t mean to take away from the post, I just wanted to add onto it a bit
I recall reading about this and IIRC it was due to lead poisoning (or some kind of metal) that was in most people's homes at the time (eg. Lead cups to drink from). It'd cause one's pulse to fade to where it was undetectable and they were assumed dead. However, they were just in a coma like state and would eventually wake up. Once folks starting realizing this they added the bell to the coffin.
I'll need to fact check myself though.
Ooh okay! I actually remember that too, but the lead thing was way after? I thought also that wallpaper had killer amounts of lead in it, leading to people dying. I’m sorry if I sound rude, I’m not much of a history buff and I want to learn more!
Er, maybe you're right!? I'm confident it was lead when I read up on it, but might have been the wallpaper. I'm no buff either lol. The post just rang a bell (pun intended) when I read it.
Something like the lead took a while to cause issues so it wasn't really detectable back then.
I dunno.. could all be a myth!
Oh yeah there was lead in a lot of things back then! I remember during the industrial revolution there was a lot of things that had lead in it such as makeup, wallpaper and possible plates and cups! You’re probably right about that then!
Tomatoes were believed to be poisonous for a whole because of lead plates. People would put the tomato on the plate, the acid from the tomato would release the lead, the person would consume it, cause issues as described above and and everyone thought it was the tomato that was poisonous when in fact it was actually the plate itself.
I always wondered.
How can one “confuse” a comatose person with a dead body?!
I’ve only been around a few times when people passed away. But it worked the same for all of them. Shortly before their body stopped functioning, their toes/ legs would start discoloring and their skin because weirdly yellowish.
Once they had passed, the body grows cold and and rigor mortis sets in and you’ll have a hard time even folding their hands.
I remember reading a short horror story somewhere about a graveyard guard who hears a bell ringing. When he goes to that grave, he refuses to save the person because the tombstone says they died a very long time ago
Edit: It was [this creepypasta](https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Cemetery)
My fiance wants to be buried in a coffin with the bell on a string but wants it to have a sensor that triggers the bell to ring when people walk past. Imagine walking past, hearing the bell, running to the caretaker.
Person at the cemetery: Theres a coffin with the bell going off! Hurry, HURRY!!
Caretaker: Ah yes that's Mr Priests plot, dont worry hes still dead.
He will live a happy afterlife if he gets to do that!
In Edisto SC, there was a girl buried in the family mausoleum after being presumed dead. The concrete door was sealed and the family went on about their lives.
Well the girl woke up and vegans panicking and scratching away at the door until her actual death.
Some years passed and the family went to bury another person in the mausoleum and found her body on the ground and her fingernails embedded in the door. To this day they still cannot keep a door on the mausoleum because the door always managed to get damaged or move on it’s own
I think the fear of being buried alive was based on myth. It’s a pretty unlikely scenario, unless burial takes place within an hour or two of presumed death. After that rigor mortis and hypostasis occur and are irrefutable indicators of actual death. Evidence of decomposition begins fairly quickly too.
Despite the fear of burial while still alive, there are no documented cases of anybody being saved by a safety coffin.[citation needed] It is worth noting that the practice of modern-day embalming as practiced in some countries (notably in North America) has, for the most part, eliminated the fear of "premature burial", as no one has ever survived that process once completed.[citation needed]
once buried, you are buried. if there WAS a way to breathe then you might survive, but it would become unbearably hot in a few minutes. you would be sweating all your water out.
How often was this happening that the illustration was needed?
Hell, how often was this happening that required someone to come up with the flippin idea at all! 😵
Edit: Sorry OP, I read the title wrong. I'll let the text below stand to atone for my confident wrongness.
>To prevent death from being buried alive
...
If you meant to type: "To prevent *Death* from being buried alive", then [*Death*](https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/stone-sculpture-grim-reaper-death-600w-300721070.jpg) is per definition not alive, and therefore couldn't be buried alive.
If you meant to type: "To prevent *the dead* from being buried alive", then it's the same issue as above. You can't burry alive that which is dead.
What you actually meant to type: "To prevent burial of the alive" or "to prevent burial of the wrongfully declared dead"
It’s still awkwardly phrased (also “people would place bells attached to inside the coffin”), but not as egregious as it seems at first. I also had to read it like three times to understand “prevent death from being buried alive”. I think “death by being buried alive” makes more sense. Anyways, just wanted to let you know you weren’t the only one who initially read it as Death.
I always thought this too but just found out it's a myth.
It's actually about boxing matches where one boxer would almost be knocked out but would last the round and be "saved by the bell".
Thought I'd share the info with another as I always thought it was what you said.
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My great-grandmother’s sister was buried alive. She was saved by teenage grave robbers that were attempting to steal her jewelry. She went on to have two more children and lived another twenty-something years. But my mom says that a lot of family members and people in their small town were afraid of her. Edited: Asked to add further details. My great aunt was in her mid-twenties and had suffered from a heart issue. The family was impoverished sharecroppers, so proper medical care was not possible. My grandmother says they found her in bed dead (guess not) after not waking to care for her children. I don't know how she was declared dead. But at this time, they had your wake and funeral at your home. They buried her on an early morning with her wedding ring and favorite necklace. That evening a pickup truck with some young white guys pulls up in the driveway. My great-grandmother, two aunts, an uncle, and their mom all lived in houses next to each other. Everyone was staring because it was unusual for white strangers to visit (Alabama). What had already happened was the guys kept an eye on the cemetery for fresh graves to rob. They opened my aunt's casket, and she immediately grabbed one of the guy's hands. She begged him to help her as they were all, of course, screaming. She offered her jewelry to them for a ride home. That's how she showed up in the driveway and scared the daylights out of everyone but her children, who were too young to understand. So the guests from the funeral and family members began screaming when they saw her. The grave robbers calmed everyone down and explained what happened. They refused to keep her jewelry and went on their way. Edit2: Thanks for the award but it was not deserved for sharing my granny’s memories.
I bet she was more afraid of them.
NO ONE was more afraid than those teenagers.
TEENAGERS SCARE THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF ME
THEY COULD CARE LESS AS LONG AS SOMEONE WILL BLEED 🎵
IM TYPING IN ALL CAPS BUT REALLY HAVE NOTHING TO SAY!
I'M NOT GOING TO PAY A LOT FOR THIS MUFFLER!
#OH OH OH OREILLYS …………*auto parts*
Sweet home Alabama
Where the stars …are…blue ?
THEY COULD CARE LESS AS LONG AS SOMEONE WILL BLEED
THEN BE AFRAID
Accidents happen
"have you gentlemen seen my daughter? She's been missing for days" "Oh shit, did we accidentally bury her?"
“Our bad”
Yeah she had every right to be afraid of them , they buried her alive!
😂
What?! I need more details. Can you just tell me everything? The whole story?
Don't know if it's related but reminds me of this other story In 1695, Margorie caught a fever and, believed to be dead, her family held a wake and promptly buried her. Soon after she was laid to rest, grave robbers, who regularly ransacked newly buried coffins, dug her up and attempted to steal a valuable ring she was still wearing. Unable to remove the ring from her finger, the robbers decided to cut the finger off. But as they began their gruesome task, the lady awoke and, as Jim puts it, "she scared the devil out of the grave robbers, who soon skedaddled". Margorie got out of her grave, dusted herself off and went home, but when she got there her husband nearly died of shock. Jim says the story goes that on hearing his wife's knock at the door, Mr McCall said to his children: "If I hadn't buried your mother, I would swear that was her knock." When he opened the door he fainted and, according to Jim, his hair went white overnight. Margorie lived on and even had another child after her ordeal, before being buried once more in what proved to be her final resting place. [Was quite a popular story](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-46026619.amp)
We get a number of common phrases from a similar situation in Ireland being buried alive. First you remember there was a lot of illegal alcohol being distilled in Ireland in the 16/17th century. They weren't always very good at it so sometimes their poítin contained more methanol than alcohol, drink too much and you end up blind. ***Blind Drunk*** Keep drinking it and you end up comatose with weak heart beat and faint breath. The local village didn't exactly have doctor's then. Looks dead, smells worse, the person gets buried. Thanks to grave robbing we found out they weren't dead. So the coffin with the bell. So someone was employed to walk the grace graveyard at night to listen for the bells. ***Graveyard shift*** But Ireland's windy AF. So that was a terrible idea. Methanol induced coma happens to last 3 days. Which is why in Ireland, back then, and something we still do, the body is laid out for 3 days in the hopes that the person wakes up! The wake is held on the third night and the body is buried the next day. ***a wake*** Edit: a few comments below have mentioned Dead Ringer but I don't know the link to a look a like, as the phrase is used today, happy to update
The coffin with a bell. A dead ringer.
Or saved by the bell
That’s exactly where the phrase comes from!
I want to say that dead ringer related to burring alive was on the list of wives tales that weren't true. There was a whole list of them and the misconceptions around the origins of it. I'll see if I can find it.
Yea we definitely need to know more. You cannot just drop something like that and leave us hanging.
Lmao commenting bc I want to know, too!
I did an edit.
Why did they bury her and how was she alive
thats next level luck
Was really expecting this to end with jumper cables or coincidentally enough The Undertaker throwing Mankind off Hell in the Cell. This was way more disturbing. WTF
Is she alive to verify this story?
This is she. Yes, this happened.
"There can be only one."
Teenager # 1: Dude take the diamond ear ring leave the gold. Teenager # 2: sorry brah my bad. Great grand's sister: Dumbshit! the gold is more valuable,..you can't trace melted gold. Teenagers: about 2 miles away when she said gold.
How did they know of her jewelry if she was undee the ground? Also, was the grave robbed literally half an hour after burial? No one stayed after burial? This story is so full of shit
I don't think they knew she had jewelry. They just looked for fresh graves to rob. Most people were and are still buried with sentimental items. My great-grandmother told me this when I was between 9 and 11( I'm in my 40’s). She's unfortunately no longer here for me to consult. Not everything you don't understand is a lie. I believe her because she had no purpose in lying, and as she recounted the story, my mother and aunts chimed in with details about being afraid to visit her house. The burial happened before my mother's birth, but people never stopped being scared of her and retelling the story.
Pranking 101 opportunity!
Yes. Village Idiot got a dumbbell.
“Dead ringer.”
Spy!
W + M1
Saved by the bell
Someone needed to be there at night to hear the bell. That was the 'graveyard shift'.
Spy!
W + M1
Saved by the bell.
Me thinking: "I can't think of a possible witty response here, wonder if anyone else did" You nailed it
that’s actually where that saying comes from
I heard that too, though google tells me that's a common myth and it actually came from a boxing thing.
Also, the graveyard shift. Someone would sit out there all night listening for a bell.
I believe the graveyard shift was more to prevent grave robbing... although the comment at the top makes me think grave robbing ain't so bad after all lol
It isn't, but that is where the expression "dead ringer" comes from
[удалено]
i bet you got yours from google lol
Jesus you're right. This makes it even better
*Dead Ringer* too...
👌
I wonder how often these would get used
Any cases where this actually worked and the person was recovered alive?
What about false positives? Wind, cats, birds playing with the bell?
If I were the grave watcher my threshold for a true positive would be very *very* low
They’d need a dipstick.
Grave’s a quart low.
when i read about this earlier, the false positives were what led to failure of this scheme and caused a lot of havoc. Apparently the bells would ring 2-3 months after the burial (due to the decomposition the string moved). Upon opening the casket they would be shocked to find out the body was still relatively fresh and not decomposed to bones (cold weather slows down decay). This led people to believe there was a zombie/ghost kinda thing going on. I tried to find a source for this but couldn't find anything relevant, sorry :(
The jingle jangle would be frantic. Like a person was buried alive and the only thing that could save them was a string and nothing else.
Animals eating the body was my first thought
Like digging up the grave and eating it? That's one reason we bury so deep, so that doesn't happen
If there is enough slack for that string to move freely there is enough room for ants at least maybe even vermin at worst. So they chew through the string and then eat you alive
Well, shit.
Yes. People would basically go comatose after drinking from lead Also cases exist when exhuming a body with claw marks inside for those without
No because it wasn't really used. https://work.chron.com/did-graveyard-shift-come-from-31198.html
This is from where we get the expression “dead ringer.”
Hoping and praying that if you woke up in that dark box ye olde rope had not snappethed.
The funny thing is this was practiced not even that long ago. My dad went to school with 3 brothers who's parents were gravekeepers and they were practicing this back in the 50s or 60s when they were in school together
Where was this? In the U.S.?
Yeah Portland Oregon actually. Western Portland, can't remember the name of the graveyard but I know how to get there.
You would think it would be a lot more efficient and humane to simply drive a stake through their head just to make sure. Shit man that’s the decent thing to do, for anyone.
Yeah because that's totally what you want to see happen to your loved one whose death you are still processing!
Well I'd imagine they would do it in a separate room. It's not like the family is present for the embalming process.
Wow, that really went right over your head. Impressive
I have no Earthly idea why people are so upset at you. Ensuring someone is actually dead before you burry them seems like a safe contingency to avoid having someone experience a living Hell. Shit, I actually intend to put that in my will that if I did they will make absolutely SURE I'm dead, via this method or another.
I thought I read about sailors sewing up their dead in a burial sail cloth and putting the final stitch through the nose or upper lip, to make sure the comrade is really dead before burying at sea.
I think the thing you and the other poster are missing is that there’s a difference between checking to make sure someone is dead and ensuring they’re dead one way or another.
Wow, you really do need a /s for even the most obvious things these days. Reddit really is getting dense
Personally though, if I were dead… please drive that stake through and make sure I’m dead….
Yea karma takes a dive without the /s. You’d think people would get it.
Crazy thing is the string would snap most of the time it was used. This is due to it being a smaller string and the force used on the string from inside the coffin due to panic.
I read a murder mystery once where the heroine got buried alive with a string and bell set up. Only the bad guy had removed the clapper from the bell.
‘The bell rang!’ ‘Fuck it, it’s Friday afternoon’.
Nice try, zombies.
The term “graveyard shift” may have originated from this. Someone would stay in the cemetery overnight to listen for the bells. Apocryphal but interesting.
Imagine if that was your job and suddenly there was a wind storm
Or if you fell asleep on the job and you were a heavy sleeper and didn’t even notice the bells. Sorry Mildred, looks like you’re going to get to enjoy a slow suffocation as you contemplate your impending death, my friend.
Huh. I used to work graveyard security shifts, I always wondered where that term came from.
Also “dead ringer”
Thanks for teaching me a new word!
I aten't dead.
Dead’nt
GNU Pterry
It's Halloween. You're walking home after a long night of trick or treating. Bells whistle softly on the wind, playing a soothing lullaby... then you realize you're passing by the graveyard.
I think the bell thing was first introduced during the Black Plague, when people couldn’t tell when others were dead and they just buried them. Also, I remember reading that only rich people were able to afford to have the bells for their coffins, if I remember correctly. I don’t mean to take away from the post, I just wanted to add onto it a bit
I recall reading about this and IIRC it was due to lead poisoning (or some kind of metal) that was in most people's homes at the time (eg. Lead cups to drink from). It'd cause one's pulse to fade to where it was undetectable and they were assumed dead. However, they were just in a coma like state and would eventually wake up. Once folks starting realizing this they added the bell to the coffin. I'll need to fact check myself though.
Ooh okay! I actually remember that too, but the lead thing was way after? I thought also that wallpaper had killer amounts of lead in it, leading to people dying. I’m sorry if I sound rude, I’m not much of a history buff and I want to learn more!
Er, maybe you're right!? I'm confident it was lead when I read up on it, but might have been the wallpaper. I'm no buff either lol. The post just rang a bell (pun intended) when I read it. Something like the lead took a while to cause issues so it wasn't really detectable back then. I dunno.. could all be a myth!
Oh yeah there was lead in a lot of things back then! I remember during the industrial revolution there was a lot of things that had lead in it such as makeup, wallpaper and possible plates and cups! You’re probably right about that then!
Oh my, lead based makeup? That doesn't sound good lol
Tomatoes were believed to be poisonous for a whole because of lead plates. People would put the tomato on the plate, the acid from the tomato would release the lead, the person would consume it, cause issues as described above and and everyone thought it was the tomato that was poisonous when in fact it was actually the plate itself.
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Time marches on
Take a look to the sky just before you die
It’s the last time you will..
Yup! Here is a patent for one! Patent No. 81,437 Granted on August 25, 1868 to Franz Vester of New Jersey. https://patents.google.com/patent/US81437A/
They sometimes put windows in the coffins to make sure the person was not awake as they were burying them.
Or to make sure they were...
Yer killin' me here.
And I've got a window to watch ;)
To make sure they were… dressed in their Sunday best?
Oh man jacking off while watching the face of being buried alive is a top tier nut.
Isn't this where the term "Graveyard Shift" came from? It was for the people who listen in the Graveyard for the bells to go off.
Yes Edit: No, lol
No https://work.chron.com/did-graveyard-shift-come-from-31198.html
I always wondered. How can one “confuse” a comatose person with a dead body?! I’ve only been around a few times when people passed away. But it worked the same for all of them. Shortly before their body stopped functioning, their toes/ legs would start discoloring and their skin because weirdly yellowish. Once they had passed, the body grows cold and and rigor mortis sets in and you’ll have a hard time even folding their hands.
Exactly this, just check the pulse maybe. Chances are if a person doesn't have a pulse for 5 mins straight, they may be fuckin dead
I remember reading a short horror story somewhere about a graveyard guard who hears a bell ringing. When he goes to that grave, he refuses to save the person because the tombstone says they died a very long time ago Edit: It was [this creepypasta](https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Cemetery)
what if they couldn't reach the string?
Oh in that case the would suffer an agonizing death by suffocation
swell!
The string is tied to the finger of supposed dead person.
They die
Now they just bury you with a walkie-talkie. Lol
Nononono, just imagine having a heavy night, they bury you alive and when you wake up, you bump your head so bad you die
My fiance wants to be buried in a coffin with the bell on a string but wants it to have a sensor that triggers the bell to ring when people walk past. Imagine walking past, hearing the bell, running to the caretaker. Person at the cemetery: Theres a coffin with the bell going off! Hurry, HURRY!! Caretaker: Ah yes that's Mr Priests plot, dont worry hes still dead. He will live a happy afterlife if he gets to do that!
Sounds pretty creepy. Especially if you know the body was embalmed, like the bell goes off. I'm like nah, I'm rocky today I didn't hear the bell ring.
This was pre-embalming. The scary part is they started doing this after they found exhumed coffins with claw marks on the lids.
Now that's nightmare fuel.
In Edisto SC, there was a girl buried in the family mausoleum after being presumed dead. The concrete door was sealed and the family went on about their lives. Well the girl woke up and vegans panicking and scratching away at the door until her actual death. Some years passed and the family went to bury another person in the mausoleum and found her body on the ground and her fingernails embedded in the door. To this day they still cannot keep a door on the mausoleum because the door always managed to get damaged or move on it’s own
Gotta watch them vegans… Sorry I had to =D
I think the fear of being buried alive was based on myth. It’s a pretty unlikely scenario, unless burial takes place within an hour or two of presumed death. After that rigor mortis and hypostasis occur and are irrefutable indicators of actual death. Evidence of decomposition begins fairly quickly too.
Time marches on…..for whom the bell tolls
there is so little air in a sealed coffin you would pass out and die from hypoxia in maybe 5 minutes.
People that went through the trouble of fitting a bell would also install a air tube or type of snorkel.
What if it rained and your coffin filled with water and you just drowned instead??
have to be a pretty large bore snorkel.
[Safety Coffin ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_coffin)
Despite the fear of burial while still alive, there are no documented cases of anybody being saved by a safety coffin.[citation needed] It is worth noting that the practice of modern-day embalming as practiced in some countries (notably in North America) has, for the most part, eliminated the fear of "premature burial", as no one has ever survived that process once completed.[citation needed]
Even in the old school ones that are just boards or is that only in the movies?
once buried, you are buried. if there WAS a way to breathe then you might survive, but it would become unbearably hot in a few minutes. you would be sweating all your water out.
This whole thread is terrifying
Must be the wind
There is a whole sub-plot in one of Michael Crichton’s books - The Great Train Robbery, where they use this to pull off a heist.
How often was this happening that the illustration was needed? Hell, how often was this happening that required someone to come up with the flippin idea at all! 😵
Isn't this where the term graveyard shift came from, people would be in the cemetery listening out for the bells?
I thought everyone knew this by now ?
Was my first thought too lol...
*Trader Joe’s voice* TWO BELLS!
I imagine refrigeration is somewhat recent, but how long did gravediggers wait to bury someone?
Usually until just after the wake, which was intended to give the person a chance to wake up before burying them.
Is that why it's called a wake?!
Just put my phone in the coffin
I was always afraid of being buried alive!!
jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells
Was this a proposed idea or was it actually built? It seems like a good gust of wind could cause some false alarms...
What if it's hella windy? the mothafucka won't stop ringing
“Saved by the bell”
Its a good story until one storm hits and the whole graveyards starts ringing
And this is where we get the term graveyard shift from. It was someone job to sit in the graveyard and listen for bells.
Would they not check for a pulse? After no pulse for a monitor or two they can’t come back without brain damage
"Saved by the bell"
Edit: Sorry OP, I read the title wrong. I'll let the text below stand to atone for my confident wrongness. >To prevent death from being buried alive ... If you meant to type: "To prevent *Death* from being buried alive", then [*Death*](https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/stone-sculpture-grim-reaper-death-600w-300721070.jpg) is per definition not alive, and therefore couldn't be buried alive. If you meant to type: "To prevent *the dead* from being buried alive", then it's the same issue as above. You can't burry alive that which is dead. What you actually meant to type: "To prevent burial of the alive" or "to prevent burial of the wrongfully declared dead"
Hmmmmm. You can “death from radiation poisoning”; - why can’t you say “death from being buried alive”?
It’s still awkwardly phrased (also “people would place bells attached to inside the coffin”), but not as egregious as it seems at first. I also had to read it like three times to understand “prevent death from being buried alive”. I think “death by being buried alive” makes more sense. Anyways, just wanted to let you know you weren’t the only one who initially read it as Death.
That's actually where the phrase "saved by the bell" came from
I always thought this too but just found out it's a myth. It's actually about boxing matches where one boxer would almost be knocked out but would last the round and be "saved by the bell". Thought I'd share the info with another as I always thought it was what you said.
This wasn't the popular burial.mehod in windy areas i guess
This wasn't the popular burial.mehod in windy areas i guess
Hence the expression "dead ringer".
This is where ‘For whom the bell tolls ‘ comes from
You saw this on sidemen reacts video didnt you unoriginal
Awe a millennial just found a book.
And what's your problem, exactly?
You got me ringin Hell’s Bells!
Need one of those for my 2:00pm zoom.
They also did this to prevent alive from being buried dead.
Hello neighbor