Subject: Buried alive
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 05:04:58 GMT

   Interesting blurb in the latest issue (February 21) of _The New Republic_,
   in an article dealing with the definition of death:

   "People used to harbor a very real fear that they might be declared dead
   and put in the ground while still alive.  And the macabre eighteenth-
   century tales about exhumed corpses found to have clawed at the interior
   of the casket were not wholly fanciful: graveyard excavations reveal that
   nearly 2 percent of those interred before the advent of embalming in the
   twentieth century were buried alive."

 - snopes

Subject: Re: Buried alive
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 18:53:43 GMT

snopes@netcom.com (snopes) quotes TNR:
> "People used to harbor a very real fear that they might be declared dead
> and put in the ground while still alive.  And the macabre eighteenth-
> century tales about exhumed corpses found to have clawed at the interior
> of the casket were not wholly fanciful: graveyard excavations reveal that
> nearly 2 percent of those interred before the advent of embalming in the
> twentieth century were buried alive."

[ TNR?  Who or what is that? ]

There is a wonderful book about this stuff, Paul Barber's "Vampires, Burial
and Death" (Yale University Press).  It relates folkore about the dead with
the physiological facts of decomposition.  Assertions like the above are
the sort of thing he debunks.  The evidence for those people having buried
alive is things like them moving around in their coffins, trying to burst
them open, making noises and so on.  Unfortunately for the legend, dead
people don't stay still.  Gas pressure can achieve some _very_ surprising
things.  I was particularly taken with the image of a field strewn with
thousands of decomposing corpses all grunting like pigs.

From: acase@wam.umd.edu (Justin Case)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Buried alive
Date: 15 Feb 1994 21:56:16 GMT

Jack Campin <jack@cee.hw.ac.uk> wrote:
>Unfortunately for the legend, dead people don't stay still.

Russell Braddon (sp?) in _The_Naked_Island_ (about survival in a Japanese
POW camp) relates the story of a prisoner whose task it was to burn the
bodies of dead prisoners. He was a more than slightly twisted individual,
and enjoyed lighting his cigarettes (no more than two at a time, I'm
sure) using burning sticks from the pyre. One day, his cigarette
in his lips, he reached down to pick up a light. A corpse, its
muscles contracting due to the heat of the fire, sat up and thrust a 
burning hand into his face. Of course he went nuts and scampered off
into the forest, never to be seen again.

The story has a mild air of UL - The mad bad guy gets his comeuppance
in a particularly appropriate way and all that.

Are there other versions circulating?

......Andrew "The Surgeon General has determined..." Case

From: keithk@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Buried alive
Date: 16 Feb 94 23:25:31 -0500

In article <5307@tekgen.bv.tek.com>, hibob@interceptor.cds.tek.com (Bob Hiebert CDS) writes:
> In article <CLA4HK.1ss@cee.hw.ac.uk> jack@cee.hw.ac.uk (Jack Campin) writes:
>>snopes@netcom.com (snopes) quotes TNR:
>>> "People used to harbor a very real fear that they might be declared dead
>>> and put in the ground while still alive.  And the macabre eighteenth-
>>> century tales about exhumed corpses found to have clawed at the interior
>>> of the casket were not wholly fanciful: graveyard excavations reveal that
>>[...]
> 
> I don't care if it's true or not. Easily a third of E.A. Poe's works
> would not have been written if this 19th century U.L. had not ... existed. 

Whether true or not, the fear of it happening was real.  In the 
nineteenth century numerous patents were given in England and the US 
for devices by which the elect could decline the nomination, either by 
signalling to people on the outside (bells, flags, electric lights 
activated from inside the coffin) or escaping on their own.  One very 
common device was a bell mounted on the coffin lid, with a string 
running down inside the coffin which the corpse could pull to call for 
room service.  A bell like this figures at one point in Nicholas 
Meyer's book "The Great Train Robbery" (a light-fiction work with 
great period details, BTW).

ObCoffinFact: One posited explanation for the clawed-casket stories 
was post-death contractions of the muscles of the deceased, occurring 
inside the casket after burial.  Corpses were not embalmed, and were 
therefore planted pretty soon after bucket-kicking; in a few cases the 
bodies may have contracted and then later been found in a position not 
the same as that in which they were buried, apparently having moved 
around inside the coffin.  (Makes little sense: rigor mortis sets in a 
few hours after death and locks the muscles in whatever position they 
are in at that time; the muscles relax 12-24 hrs after that, when the 
first stage of decomposition softens them to the point that they 
cannot hold the bones in place, and of course they cannot move or 
contract again at this point.)

Kevin "for cryin' out loud, don't you guys ever check a pulse?!" T. 
Keith

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: dsf3g@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (David Salvador Flores)
Subject: Re: Buried alive
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 1994 03:02:44 GMT

In article <snopesCL924B.3Lr@netcom.com>, snopes <snopes@netcom.com> wrote:
>   Interesting blurb in the latest issue (February 21) of _The New Republic_,
>   in an article dealing with the definition of death:
>
>   "People used to harbor a very real fear that they might be declared dead
>   and put in the ground while still alive.  And the macabre eighteenth-
>   century tales about exhumed corpses found to have clawed at the interior
>   of the casket were not wholly fanciful: graveyard excavations reveal that
>   nearly 2 percent of those interred before the advent of embalming in the
>   twentieth century were buried alive."
>
> - snopes


If you go down to Guanajuato Mexico (near where I grew up!) you can visit
a rather macabre museum stocked in its entirety with dead corpses. These
are the famous "momias de Guanajuato." For one reason or another the mineral
content of the local soil is such that corpses buried in it often mummify.
Cemetery plots there are sold for five year spans. If, after the five years
your family chooses not to buy another five years, you are exhumed and, if
suitably preserved, placed on display for all the world to see. Its rather
gruesome really. After some time the lower jaw drops back and the corpse
assumes a permanent "death scream." Also, body hair and fingernails continue
to grow for some time after death. All the male corpses have stubble on their
faces. The museum also boasts of several "world records" (though I'm not
sure if Guinness has actually checked these out) such as having the youngest
mummy on earth: a six month old fetus that was buried along with its deceased
mother and later removed. In earlier years the mummies were simply placed
against the walls of the museum out in the open air. Now they are placed
inside glass cases and sarcophagi. Its been said (perhaps an UL) that this
was done because visitors to the museum would quite often snap off the
fingers of the mummies to take back home as a "memmento" of their trip.
It is truly "fun for the whole family" (and yes, tours of the museum tend
to be family affairs).

Anyways, according to the curators of said museum, occasionally a person
turns out to have been buried alive. This is at least suspected to be the
case when grave-diggers, upon exhuming yet another corpse to add to the
collection, discover scratch-marks on the inside lid of the coffin. (The
expression on the face of the mummie is no useful guide, since, as I've 
already pointed out, they all *look* like they've been buried alive.)

Big_Dave

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: jack@cee.hw.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Subject: Re: Buried alive
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 1994 10:37:20 GMT

keithk@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu wrote:
> ObCoffinFact: One posited explanation for the clawed-casket stories 
> was post-death contractions of the muscles of the deceased, occurring 
> inside the casket after burial.  Corpses were not embalmed, and were 
> therefore planted pretty soon after bucket-kicking; in a few cases the 
> bodies may have contracted and then later been found in a position not 
> the same as that in which they were buried, apparently having moved 
> around inside the coffin.  (Makes little sense: rigor mortis sets in a 
> few hours after death and locks the muscles in whatever position they 
> are in at that time; the muscles relax 12-24 hrs after that, when the 
> first stage of decomposition softens them to the point that they 
> cannot hold the bones in place, and of course they cannot move or 
> contract again at this point.)      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

Wrongo.  This is exactly the point Paul Barber's book refutes.  Gas
pressure from decomposition can exert forces you'd be hard put to achieve
by muscle power.  It is entirely possible for a corpse to twist around,
scrabble at the coffin, break it open and scream with nothing more sentient
than bacteria and maggots at work.

== Jack "this posting dedicated to the memory of Andrei Chikatlo" Campin ==

Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Buried alive
From: <DGGARDNE@MIAMIU.BITNET>
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 1994 11:14:57 EST

Embalming did not become common in the United States until the late 19th
century, after the Civil War. Though most of the war's dead were buried on
the battlefield, to be dug up after the war and reburied in the new National
cemetaries if Union, or in local cemetaries if Confederate, a few officers
and so on were embalmed and sent home. Lincoln was also embalmed, and the
way he held together, as it were, during his lengthy trip back to Illinois with
several public viewings, seems to have impressed many. One of the sales
pitches that undertakers made in favor of embalming was that one could be sure
that an embalmed loved one was actually dead and would not be buried alive.

Doug "does Jack Daniels work as embalming fluid?" Gardner