There you are, with your eyes closed, unable to move. You hear everyone crying for your death, you hear how they all talk about you, reminding you with affection. You even feel yourself moving down, a really strange feeling, since you may perceive that you are inside something, but you do not know what it can be. You hear something like earth falling on something and after a few moments everything is in absolute calm.
They spend a few hours and wake up from nowhere. You only see a wooden lid very close to you. Trying to understand well what happens, take a look and strangely see that you are very well dressed, as for a special occasion. You try to move but you feel the space is hopelessly small. You feel that in such a small place the air will run out very quickly so you begin to realize that it will be very difficult to get out of there. You despair and you start screaming for help, you move violently in an attempt to escape from that dark wooden prison, You spend a good time until you realize that nothing is going to get you out of there, that any call is useless. That's when you understand where you really are. It is there that the most absolute despair and horror grows. The air slowly begins to fail, you lose your senses again, little by little the light of your eyes disappears, while in your face the expression of the purest horror is clearly shown. Little by little the silence is gaining ground in that scene, the light goes out and the darkness is total.
That silence that dominated that place returns once more. The mortuary silence reigns again. From that point on, you are already part of that place where life has been for some time now. That place where only those who have left this world rest. Of course, that unlike them, you came alive, locked in that wooden cage without being able to do anything, to shortly after, to pass to the world of the dead being thus another case, of buried alive
Being buried alive ... without doubt is one of the worst deaths that can be suffered. And it is that throughout history, precisely that has been the greatest fear of some, since previously many cases had been registered of people who had been buried alive, almost always due to a bad medical diagnosis, which took to the Families to believe that in reality the person had died, burying her while she was alive, when in fact it was a case of catalepsy or apparent death as it is also known, where all vital signs are minimized including breathing being this Very little noticeable. There have even been cases where the person who is in this apparent state of death, may be aware of everything that happens around him, yes, without being able to move a single muscle.
Even science has been able to verify, through the exhumation of corpses, that certainly many human beings have been buried alive.
But ... What happens when a person is in a state of catalepsy and why is it so difficult to detect this?
Well, the symptoms that a person presents in this state are:
Body stiffness, the subject does not respond to stimuli; Breathing and pulse become very slow, skin becomes pale. The sum of all the symptoms produces the impression of being in front of a real corpse. It is by the last symptom that the person is believed to have died. It has happened many times, that they have buried with life to people who had not died, to think that they were dead exactly because they presented these symptoms.
In the face of this, numerous cases over time have occurred. At this point I want to share a few real cases of people who were buried even though they were still alive and that time later this fact was verified.
Octavia Smith Hatcher
In late 1800, a strange and unknown virus hit the village of Pikeville, Kentucky. And one of the most tragic cases was that of Octavia Smith Hatcher.
After her little son died in January 1891, Octavia fell into a deep depression that led to the coma. On May 2 of that year, she was pronounced dead by the strange disease that had arrived at the place.
Octavia was quickly buried in the local cemetery. But what nobody suspected, is that from this moment on, it would really start the creepy case.
One week after the death, many people began to get sick the same way as the woman, and ended up in a coma. The difference? After a while, they began to wake up.
Octavia's husband began to fear that he had hurried to bury his beloved, so he decided to unearth the corpse.
What he saw after opening the coffin was worthy of a scene from the most horrifying horror film: His nails were broken and bathed in blood, and the coffin inside was totally scratched.
Octavia was still alive at the moment of being buried. In fact, there was still an expression of terror on his face. After the incident, Octavia's husband again buried her in the same place, but he placed a monument in honor of the horrible death that the woman found. The statue remains in place until today.
Rufina Cambaceres
In 1903 Rufina Cambaceres, a beautiful girl of the Argentine aristocracy who on May 31 of that year was preparing to celebrate her 19th birthday. She was found by a servant without life in her room. The doctors said that "his heart had stopped", reason why they officially decreed his death.
Her disconsolate family decided not to watch her and buried her in the mausoleum of the family. One day later one of the caretakers heard persistent noises from inside, so he entered the place and found Rufina's coffin lightly run from his shelf, so he immediately gave notice to his family.
When the coffin was ordered to be reopened, the girl's body was on her back and with several scratches on her face, apparently the product of the desperation of being buried alive.
Rosario Zuazagoitía
When Rosario "died," in 1832, her sister Carmen, who later married the widower, tied her hands in a handkerchief to simulate that she was praying.
When Carmen passed away, they united their remains with those of Rosario to be introduced later in the family mausoleum. When they opened the tomb, they found their hands untied, their body in another position, even found pieces of nail embedded in the urn.
Angelo Hays
In 1937, in France, a 19-year-old boy from the town of St Quentin de Chalais, identified as Angelo Hays, died after suffering a serious accident on his motorcycle. The young man had hit a concrete wall, which partially disfigured his face. His family was not allowed to see the body, and authorities officially declared him dead. Three days later he was buried.
However, an insurance company managed an exhumation of the corpse on learning that Angelo's father had taken out his son's life insurance for about 200,000 francs at the time.
When the coffin was opened, it was found to everyone's surprise that the young man's body was still hot: Hays was not dead, but was in a coma caused by his head injury. Doctors said that despite being buried alive, because of the same head injury that had left him in a coma, his body no longer needed the normal amount of oxygen needed for survival, which allowed him to survive underground .
After this unusual event and awakening from coma, Hays became a national celebrity in France, and many people traveled hundreds of miles to see him and talk to him. Many years after his accident, Hays would invent a security coffin, created for others who might be buried alive by mistake. It had a food cabinet, an oxygen supply, a chemical WC, radio transmitter, alarm signals and even a library. At least he lived to tell it.
Lawrence Cawthorn
It happened in London in the year 1661, when a butcher named Lawrence Cawthorn "died" after being a sick time. The owner of the house where she lived was anxious, since the law allowed her to inherit her possessions, so she buried it quickly, without consulting a doctor.
When the mourners visited the tomb, they began to hear desperate and heart-rending cries coming from the coffin. They quickly tried to rescue him, however, by the time they managed to open the coffin, Cawthorn was already dead.
His head was bathed in blood from the head that the man gave himself to try to get out. His eyes were completely swollen.
The woman was accused of having buried him prematurely, and the case became a legend for hundreds of years.
Seeing the dates of these stories, which are quite old, one is tempted to think that these cases were problems of previous centuries and that considering the technology that we have today, it is very difficult that these cases continue to occur ... but if not? What if this kind of thing still happens? Let's look at some cases that date from years not very distant.
Sipho William Mdletshese
In 1993, a 24-year-old South African named Sipho William Mdletshese was involved in a serious traffic accident. He went with his girlfriend, who survived, but Sipho was left with such serious injuries that he was pronounced dead.
The body was taken to the mortuary of Johannesburg, and placed in a metal box and then buried. But the young man was not dead, he had only been unconscious from the shock. It was two days before he woke up inside the coffin, and in complete confusion he began to scream desperately for help.
Fortunately, some of the morgue workers listened to him, and they took him alive. But to increase the dose of bad luck in the case, when he went to his partner's home, he was angrily dismissed that the woman thought it was a zombie. As if being buried alive was not enough ..
Buried alive voluntarily
So far we have reviewed cases in which people were buried or by mistake, or by the intervention of third parties. But what happened in Russia in 2011 escapes from all logic, since it was the same person who asked to be buried. It happened in the city of Blagoveshchensk, place where a 35 year old decided to test his courage, in addition to attracting good luck.
But what he achieved was something very different. With the help of a friend, he dug a hole in his yard, and created a pretty handmade coffin. He worried about adding tubes for some oxygen, and buried next to a cell phone and a bottle of water. Within a few minutes of the burial, the subject called the man underground, and found that it was in good condition.
Russians at last.
Isaac Ramirez Perez
He was 27 years old. He was pronounced dead in the Hospital of the West after performing a gallbladder surgery on October 7, 2009.
After being considered dead, he was veiled by his family for several hours. Once he was buried (in the cemetery of Azacualpa, village of La Unión, Copán), the guards changed the turn to the companions of the night. During the night, they heard terrified blows and voices from a niche:
"Get me out of here! Get me out of here! Noelia, Mom!"
This happened on October 8, 2009.
"We always make rounds, here little sleep. Sometimes with so much history and solitude it is normal to hear things, but that night was heard well when the boy shouted. "One of the watchmen said.
"They were screams of anguish, but we were afraid. We spent all night thinking about what we had heard," said one of the sentinels.
When it was daylight and the guards made the change of turn, they told what happened to their companions and then they learned that the day before they had buried Isaac.
Immediately the news ran in the village and warned the relatives. At eight o'clock in the morning, Isaac's brothers and neighbors came to the cemetery. The relatives, armed with a bar, opened the tomb and took out the coffin.
Isaac's body was sweaty, the shirt his mother chose to bury him was unbuttoned and his chest had several scratches.
He had sweat on his forehead, his body was supple and warm
.
"When we opened the coffin, Isaac was sweating, it was hot and he opened one eye. We could not believe what was happening, "said the brother.
Four hours later the doctor certified the death of Isaac for the second time in 24 hours, but this time by asphyxiation.
Niurka Berenice Guzmán Reyes
July 2011.
Niurka Berenice Guzmán Reyes, 23, was transferred to a hospital in Bonao, Dominican Republic, with respiratory problems. His sister, Rosa Robles, explains that he has not received adequate care, and according to the doctors would have died of a heart attack. The corpse was transferred to his house, but both the family and his friends noticed that his body was limp, but was later buried. Days later, a friend and companion of the deceased said that she felt that Niurka was alive. The mother believed him and demanded the exhumation.
At the request of the relatives the body was exhumed and a legal doctor who examined it determined that it was certainly buried alive and died of suffocation inside the coffin.
"My daughter was buried alive, I am convinced of that," said Andrea Reyes, mother of Niurka.
When the rumor in the village runs that the corpse of the dancer would be exhumed, because this one was alive, hundreds of people crowded around the Municipal Cemetery to see with its own eyes the event.
However, although the girl's body was still soft and with slight signs of sweating, the doctor who came to the holy camp declared her dead, but reported that she died of suffocation inside the coffin, which caused hysteria and bitterness Of their relatives and friends.
And like these, there are many more recorded cases ...
To this day, even this continues to occur despite advances in medicine, since human error or simple negligence will always be a factor that will be present and can play a determining role in making a diagnosis.
And what do you think? Do you think these cases can happen in your country?
For now that's all.
Until the next post, people!
- Lxs