Being buried alive, for many people, is the scariest thing imaginable. But it's not necessarily
a death sentence. Here are 12 amazing true stories about people who were buried alive
and lived to tell the tale.
Back in 1915, the "modern" part of modern medicine was still lagging behind a bit, and
our understanding of epilepsy as a neurological disorder was fairly primitive.
According to author Jan Bondeson, when Essie Dunbar, a 30-year old woman in South Carolina,
suffered a sudden epileptic attack, the doctor who attended her found no signs of life and
declared her dead. Dunbar's body was placed in a simple wooden coffin, and the funeral
was scheduled for late the next morning in order to give her sister time to travel there.
Although the ceremony was fairly lengthy, Dunbar was lowered into the ground before
her sister arrived. Dunbar's sister is said to have showed up just a few minutes after
the burial and pleaded with the ministers to dig up the body so she could say her final
goodbyes, which they agreed to do. When the coffin lid was removed, Dunbar sat up and
smiled, apparently unaware of what had happened to her.
To say there was pandemonium would be an understatement. The other mourners thought they were seeing
a ghost and fled, screaming, and the ministers fell into the open grave and suffered severe
injuries. Dunbar never quite lived it down, with some in town regarding her as a zombie
of sorts — but she lived another 47 years, passing away peacefully in 1962.
If you're worried about being buried alive, you might start walking around with a lot
of flashy jewelry on display. That strategy worked for Margorie McCall back in 1695.
As reported by BBC News, McCall's grave in Belfast sports an unusual note — "Lived
once, buried twice." McCall caught a fever, and in the late 17th century a fever was a
lot more dangerous than it is today, so when her condition declined rapidly and she stopped
being responsive, everyone simply assumed she was dead. Her family quickly organized
a funeral and buried her in Shankill Graveyard.
According to the MyHeritage Blog, McCall was buried wearing a very valuable ring that she
often sported, and that detail didn't escape the attention of local thieves who made their
living robbing recent graves. Shortly after McCall was in the ground, the thieves came
and dug her up. They tried to remove the ring from her finger but it wouldn't budge, so
they prepared to cut off her finger in order to get it. That's when McCall woke up and
screamed, scaring them off.
"They took a knife and tried to cut it off, and as soon as they drew blood — she'd been
in a coma, and she rose from the dead again." "She wasn't dead at all." "Wasn't dead at
all."
She apparently climbed out of the coffin, went home, and nearly scared her husband to
death. She had another child and lived ten more years, being buried for one last time
in 1705.
According to Innovative History, Angelo Hays was a passionate motorcycle lover from a very
young age. By the time he was 19 years old in 1937, he rode his motorbike constantly.
You can probably guess where this is going — one day he crashed his bike, smashing
into a brick wall.
Hays was sent flying, and when people rushed to his aid he was so badly disfigured apparently
everyone on the scene just assumed there was no way he could have survived. The doctors
wouldn't even let his parents see the body because it was so upsetting, and so he was
buried.
As Forbes notes, his father had recently taken out a large life insurance policy on his son
— which was lucky for Hays, because the insurance company got suspicious.
They demanded he be exhumed — at which point he was discovered to be alive, just in a very
deep coma. After surgery he made a full recovery.
As author Jan Bondeson tells us, Hays designed a high-tech coffin with a music player and
other comforts and went on tour with it, briefly becoming a celebrity in France due to his
ordeal. Hays finally died for real in 2008.
As you might imagine, most of the time when someone is buried alive it's either a tragic
accident or a terrifying crime. But not always! As BBC News tells us, sometimes it's done
on-purpose.
Antony Britton is a self-described "escapologist," and in 2015 he attempted to do something his
idol Harry Houdini had once attempted but never managed to pull off — be handcuffed
and buried under 6 feet of dirt, without any breathing apparatus or other assistance — and
escape. Houdini attempted the trick in 1915, and another professional escape artist, Alan
Alan, tried it in 1949, also almost dying in the process.
On Saturday, September 5th, 2015, Britton was handcuffed then lowered 6 feet into the
earth. Dirt was piled on top of him, and 6 feet worth of dirt is pretty heavy stuff.
"It is no easy task. I am having over six tonne of soil squeezing the life out of me."
As noted by NPR, Britton started off well, getting his hands free, and began the process
of excavating himself from the grave. But the dirt shifted, pinning his arm, and he
realized he was trapped. He lost consciousness, and only the quick action of his team saved
his life.
As The Guardian reports, Britton was mocked pretty soundly for the failed trick, but he
also claimed to have had a near-death experience in which he saw his grandfathers speaking
to him as though he was still a child.
While you can imagine that being buried alive under any circumstances is pretty terrifying,
some of those circumstances are more terrifying than others, even if you survive. Such is
the case with a young boy named Ibrahim who lives in Nigeria.
As Face 2 Face Africa reports, the young boy was at home with his parents and three siblings
when shots rang out in their peaceful village. The terrorist group, Boko Haram, who have
killed thousands and displaced millions in Nigeria and surrounding countries, had come.
In the terrified confusion, Ibrahim's mother fled with his siblings in one direction, while
Ibrahim and his father ran in the opposite direction.
According to The United Nations Refugee Agency, the terrorists caught up to them and killed
Ibrahim's father, then hit him in the head with a machete. Thinking him dead, they buried
poor Ibrahim in a shallow grave and left him there.
When his sister and other relatives returned to look for him a few days later, they discovered
brave little Ibrahim because of the flies that were swarming around his head, which
had become exposed, leaving the rest of his body still buried under the sandy soil.
Not many of us have "be buried alive" on our bucket list — in fact, most people have
it on their anti-bucket list, the list of things you intend to avoid at all costs for
the rest of your life. But then, you're not Nicholas Taylor.
As Taylor writes in The Guardian, he experienced a great deal of grief and tragedy in his life,
going deaf at a young age and suffering through his parents' bitter divorce. As he grew older,
he lost his father and two close friends and experienced what he describes as a "nervous
breakdown."
He discovered meditation, and that set him on a path to spirituality and healing — a
path that led him to engage in a "shamanic" ritual that involved digging his own shallow
grave and being buried overnight.
As Taylor explains, he and 18 others met nightly to build trust and dig the graves. He admits
to being terrified as he lay down, the grave covered with planks of wood and then several
feet of dirt, leaving just an air hole the size of an orange.
He says he emerged the next morning cleansed, and that the experience of being buried alive
saved his life.
There are bad days, and then there are days that end with you being buried alive. Back
in 2013, one man in Brazil had an extremely bad day.
According to Business Insider, a former government employee in Sao Paulo got into an altercation
with some other men and was beaten so badly he lost consciousness. The attackers transported
him to a local cemetery — whether to hide their crime, because they thought he was dead,
or some other reason — and tossed him into an empty grave.
A local woman later went to her family's tomb to pay her respects. While she was at the
cemetery, she witnessed the man apparently digging himself out of a nearby grave. The
woman fled the scene, as you’d expect, and contacted the local authorities.
Emergency workers arrived, and they managed to free the man from the grave and get him
medical attention. According to reports, the man was understandably freaked out. He survived
his ordeal, but reportedly experienced psychological problems later on.
Let's say you're a 33-year old builder in a small town in Ireland, and you're looking
for a way to become famous. Let's say it's 1968 and, bizarrely, there's a bit of a fad
for being buried alive, and an American named Digger O'Dell held the record — 45 days
underground. Because you were once buried accidentally in an accident and came through
pretty well, you figure you can beat that.
It might sound crazy, but as reported by the Journal, that's exactly what happened when
Mick Meaney announced he was going to break the record for being buried alive. Meaney
took the stunt seriously, training hard for the big day to ensure he would be physically
capable. The local media began covering his preparations, and on February 21, 1968, when
Meaney was lowered into the ground inside a specially made coffin, a huge crowd showed
up to watch. Meaney was a celebrity.
The Irish Post tells us Meaney shattered the record, lasting 61 days. Sadly, no one showed
up from The Guinness Book of World Records, so no official record was recorded. Meaney
managed to exercise and keep himself occupied in the coffin by reading. He emerged a huge
celebrity, but it didn't last — a few years after his stunt he was largely forgotten,
even in his hometown. He lived another 35 years in relative obscurity.
Staying on the Emerald Isle, The Great Hunger in Ireland, also known as the Irish Potato
Famine, remains a lesson about over-reliance on a single crop. Poor tenant farmers in Ireland
in the 1840s were almost completely dependent on the potato for sustenance, so when the
potato crops failed due to a fungal disease, many people lost their livelihoods, their
homes — and literally starved to death.
The sheer numbers of people dying put immense pressure on society to process them. At the
same time, hunger brought ill health to many, weakening people to a point where they collapsed
and fell into comas. These two facts converged on one poor young boy named Tom Guerin. Guerin
was just 3 years old when he suffered an illness exacerbated by malnutrition and fell into
a coma that was mistaken for death. He was placed in a mass grave and buried.
According to the Irish Examiner, Guerin was discovered some time later alive among the
thousands of corpses. His legs had been broken, possibly during the burial process, and he
was very weak — but also very alive. He was pulled from the grave and lived for another
62 years.
Guerin became a local character who walked with a permanent limp and made his living
as a beggar. He embraced his local celebrity and happily reminded everyone that he was
the boy who'd been buried alive.
Did you know that bears sometimes bury their food to preserve it from other predators,
sort of the way we humans will write our name on our lunch in the break room fridge? One
person who knows this is Natalya Pasternak, because she was partially buried — alive
— by a bear
As reported by the Siberian Times, Pasternak went into the forests near her hometown in
southeastern Russia with a friend to collect sap from the local birch trees. The pair came
across a wild bear, which attacked them.
Pasternak's friend was raked by the bear's claws but managed to run off. Unfortunately,
Pasternak was not so fast, and the bear brutally mauled her. Which is bad enough, but then
the bear, thinking she was dead, proceeded to bury her under dirt and leaves in order
to hide her from other animals and preserve her as a meal for later.
According to NBC News, a search party alerted by Pasternak's companion went out looking
for her and came across her buried up to her arms in the woods. They were forced to shoot
the bear, which was perturbed that its dinner was being rescued, and Pasternak was taken
to the local hospital with severe injuries. She lived to tell the tale, however, saying
that it reminded her "how beautiful life is."
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