The sound of a jingling bell fills the fridge cemetery air.
The caretaker holds up his lantern and scans the gravestones.
In the back row he can make out the movement of a little brass bell swinging back and forth
from a string draped over a recently dug grave.
Oh no, he thinks.
We’ve buried another one alive.
This may seem like a scene out of a horror story, but in the not so distant past waking
up buried alive in a coffin was a real concern.
It didn’t happen all the time, but enough to make people think of ways to alert the
world of the living that they had been buried alive by mistake.
We are going to look at some of the most terrifying stories of people who were presumed dead and
woke up in a coffin six feet underground.
It wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century that medical advances made identifying death
more reliable.
Sometimes doctors mistook things like a coma or paralyzation as death.
However, physicians tried their best to ensure someone was actually dead before making a
final determination.
How they did this could be pretty messed up.
In the 18th century there were unique ways of checking if someone was dead or not.
Some doctors pinched the nipple of the corpse to see if there was any reaction.
However, this was not as reliable as one of the more uncomfortable methods.
Some doctors inserted a hot poker into the rectum of the deceased.
If there was no discernible sign of life after that it was pretty safe to assume the person
was dead.
To be fair, if a patient was alive when this happened, they probably would have wished
they were dead.
Now let’s look at some of the most crazy cases of people allegedly being buried alive.
The fear of being buried alive is called taphephobia, so if this is you, the rest of this video
is going to be a little rough.
We start our tales of horror with the shoemaker.
The year was 1822 in a small town in Germany.
The local shoemaker had recently passed away.
It was his family who first discovered his body, and by the looks of it, the shoemaker
seemed dead.
However, upon examination of the body, rigamortis had yet to set in.
This was odd, but no one could awake the shoemaker, so he was presumed dead.
The funeral ended and dirt was thrown on the coffin.
The family retired from the cemetery to a reception as the gravedigger continued his
work of filling in the hole.
However, as he approached the last few shovelfuls of dirt, the gravedigger heard what he thought
was knocking from under the ground.
He quickly plunged his shovel back into the earth and dug out the coffin.
When the gravedigger opened the wooden box to check on the man inside his arms were raised
up in front of him.
The physician was called in to try and help bring the man fully back to life, but he had
been buried in his airtight coffin for too long.
The shoemaker was most likely asphyxiated as he pounded on his coffin lid to be let
out.
When the doctor declared the shoemaker dead for the second time he was absolutely sure
the shoemaker would not be coming back to life.
Our next creepy story is about Philomèle Jonetre.
She was a 24 year old French woman who supposedly died in 1867.
Philomèle had contracted cholera and was bed ridden for days.
Eventually she stopped responding altogether and was presumed dead.
The priest was quickly brought to the house where he administered her last sacraments.
In those uncertain times the body needed to be removed from the house and buried quickly
to stop the spread of disease.
16 hours after her last sacrament she was put in a coffin and buried.
As dirt was shoveled on top of the wooden coffin the muffled sound of fists pounding
on wood could be heard.
Philomèle was still alive, and trying to escape her early grave.
When the coffin was dug back up the doctor lit a candle and placed it under Philomèle’s
nose to see if she was breathing, but the flame stayed lit; indicating there was no
air in the lungs.
Then something strange happened.
The corpse began to twitch slightly and the eyelids seemed to move.
The doctor tried to awaken Philomèle, but failed.
She was officially pronounced dead the following day.
Philomèle may have been buried alive the first time, but this time there was no knocking
heard from within the coffin.
This next case is more recent, and much more sinister, as the men who buried Stephen Small
actually knew he was alive.
In 1987 Stephen Small was abducted and held for ransom.
The 39 year-old businessman owned and renovated properties, which had made him pretty wealthy.
On the night of his abduction, the kidnappers called Stephen’s wife at 3:30 a.m. to tell
her they had her husband.
They said if she wanted him back alive, she needed to pay a ransom of one million dollars.
Due to a poor connection Nancy Small couldn’t understand what the men on the other line
were saying, and therefore, did not move quickly to contact the police or secure the ransom
money.
The kidnappers had put Stephen Small in a homemade wooden box and buried it underground.
They hooked the box up to a breathing tube and even put water in the makeshift coffin.
It seemed as if the kidnappers planned on keeping the man alive, at least until the
ransom was paid.
However, things went terribly wrong.
The breathing tube failed, and Stephen Small died from lack of air in the small wooden
box.
He was buried alive not by accident, but by negligence of the kidnappers.
The men who buried Stephen were caught and convicted of first degree murder.
But this came as no comfort to the man who was buried alive and died under the cold dirt
shoveled on top of his makeshift coffin.
Some people who are buried alive get lucky and survive the ordeal.
Essie Dunbar was declared dead in 1915 at 30 years old.
She had suffered from epilepsy, and one of the seizures was so strong it was thought
to have killed her.
The doctors examined Dunbar’s body and declared her dead.
The next day her body was placed in a coffin and a funeral service was held.
The coffin was buried, but before the final dirt could be thrown on the grave Dunbar’s
sister arrived after being delayed in her travels.
Dunbar’s sister still wanted to pay her last respects and was in hysterics until the
grave was dug up, and the body exhumed so she could say goodbye.
When the coffin lid was opened Essie Dunbar sat straight up and smiled at everyone who
was gathered around.
The funeral party most likely was shocked and horrified at almost burying the poor woman
alive, but it was a relief that she had not died within the coffin itself.
Essie Dunbar lived another 47 years until she finally passed away for real this time.
Angel Hays crashed his motorcycle in 1937 sending him crashing headfirst into a brick
wall.
This accident severely disfigured Angelo’s face and everyone presumed he was dead on
impact.
The coroner decided that the face was too badly disfigured for the parents to view the
body, so he declared Angelo deceased and preparations were made for his burial.
Three days after the accident Angel Hays was buried.
But the insurance company still had questions and needed the body exhumed in order to complete
the filing of his accident.
Two days after the burial of Angel Hays the coffin was dug up and opened.
To the surprise of the medical examiners, the body was still warm.
Instead of being dead, Hays was in a deep coma, which actually saved his life.
The coma had allowed for Hays’ body to need less oxygen to survive.
This meant that even though he had been buried alive for two days, he did not asphyxiate
to death.
The body was immediately taken to the hospital where surgery was conducted.
It was a success, and Angelo Hays made a full recovery.
He became somewhat of a celebrity in France and people traveled from all over the country
to hear his story.
The rest of our tales of being buried alive do not have happy endings, so prepare yourself
for some gruesome accounts.
Anna Hockwalt was in the dressing room getting ready for her brother’s wedding when she
sat down and didn’t get back up.
When she was found, her head was leaning against the wall and she appeared to be dead.
Medical help arrived at the scene and tried to revive the young woman.
But when all attempts to resuscitate her failed, Anna Hockwalt was declared dead.
It was assumed that Anna suffered a heart attack due to a preexisting condition of heart
palpitations.
However, this didn’t sit well with her friends who said that her face still seemed to have
color and her ears were pink, which may have indicated blood was still passing through
them.
Anna was buried the following day.
At the funeral her friends told Anna’s parents what they had noticed.
This was enough to convince them to dig up the coffin and examine their daughter’s
body one last time.
To their horror, when the coffin was opened, Anna’s body was no longer lying on its back,
but instead turned on its side.
The skin and muscle on her finger tips had been almost completely torn off.
The bone poked out from her fingers as a result of furiously scratching the coffin lid.
In frustration Anna had pulled out clumps of her own hair, which now lay next to her
lifeless body after being buried alive.
We have reached our final story.
It is the most terrifying of all.
Ovtavia Smith Hatcher was married to a wealthy Kentucky man named James Hatcher.
In 1889 she gave birth to her first baby, a son named Jacob.
However, Jacob did not survive very long, and died in infancy.
When Octavia lost her son, she went into a deep depression.
She couldn’t get out of bed for several months.
Eventually she caught a mysterious illness that began to deteriorate her condition even
further.
Octavia eventually entered a coma-like state from which no one could rouse her.
Only a few months after her son’s death, Octavia was declared dead herself.
Since it was a hot May day the decision was made to bury the body quickly before it began
to decompose and smell.
Final preparations were made and Octavia was buried.
Then something strange happened.
Other people in the town began falling ill with symptoms similar to what Octavia had
exhibited.
They began to fall into a similar coma-like state with shallow breathing.
The difference was that after a few days, most people seemed to get better and recover.
To James Hatcher’s horror, he thought that maybe his wife just needed more time to recover
from the illness, and she was not actually dead.
The body of Ovtavia Smith Hatcher was exhumed.
When the lid of the coffin was lifted dread filled the onlookers.
The lining of the coffin had been shredded; Octavia’s fingernails were covered in blood.
Her face was twisted into a look of terror, as if she had died while screaming for someone
to help her.
James Hatcher had his wife's corpse reburied for a second time and erected a lifelike statue
of his deceased wife above her grave.
Whether every detail of this story is true, or if parts are just an urban legend, is still
disputed.
But if you talk to community members of Pikeville, Kentucky where Octavia’s grave and statue
reside they will tell you it all really happened.
Now watch “What To ACTUALLY Do If You Are Buried Alive.”
Or check out “Walled up Alive - Worst Punishment in the History of Mankind.”