Buried Alive

Your worst nightmare. But it’s happened, quite a few times.

Just last month, a Greek woman with cancer was buried alive “by accident”; waking up to find herself in a coffin, only to die before being rescued. Cemetery visitors heard banging and muffled shouting from inside the gave, an hour after her funeral. When they eventually dug her up, doctors said she had been dead for hours. By the way, this wasn’t in medieval times, when healthcare was a sad state of affairs – this was September 2014.

Some people are luckier. One astounding case happened in 1915, when a 30-year-old South Carolinian woman, Essie Dunbar suffered a fatal epileptic attack… well, everyone thought she did anyway. Her sister arrived late to the funeral, to see the last heaps of dirt being thrown onto the grave. She demanded to see her sister one last time and ordered the soil to be removed. When they opened the coffin lid, Essie raised up and smiled at the mourners around her – a sight that pretty much scared the living hell out of every person there. She went on to live for another 47 years.