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Personal Reflection and Mental Health Reminder
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Welcome to Case of the Sunday Scaries, where the only thing scarier than Monday is the story I'm about to tell you. I know we're all here for spooky stories this time of year, but there is a few things more terrifying than the idea of being buried alive.

Elyse: Just you, six feet under, in a box, no light, and being slowly deprived of oxygen. I don't suffer from claustrophobia or taphophobia, that's the fear of being buried alive, but I am a little scared of the dark. So the idea of just being stuck in a dark box with no outside sound, beyond your own labored breaths? No, no thank you.

I mean obviously no thank you, nobody wants to be buried alive, but it's the reason I can't even go [00:01:00] snorkeling or scuba diving without really being in the right frame of mind because just the sound of your own breath,

but knowing that slowly those breaths are going to stop, terrifying. And I know this is not probably a rational fear these days, but throughout history there are real cases of this happening.

Today we're getting into the dark history of people being buried alive, the terrifying medical mishaps, and some absolutely wild stories of people trying to claw their way back to life. So get cozy, unless you're listening in a tight, enclosed space. And in that case, Well, good luck before we dive in, make sure that you subscribe, follow, and rate this podcast on your favorite streaming platform so that you don't miss an episode. And I just learned this. I guess it doesn't really help to have someone just listen to the episode with the algorithms the way they are always changing.

You actually have to follow the show on Apple podcasts so if you aren't already, go ahead and click the follow button on the Case of the Sunday Scaries page on your [00:02:00] streaming platform. But that's enough business.

Let's jump into some real life cases of people being buried alive.

Elyse: If you remember back to the Nursery Rhymes episode I did, I think it was two episodes ago, where I discussed the Black Death, you might remember that doctors didn't have a great understanding of what a germ was, much less how disease was spread.

But by the 1700s, they were starting to catch on a bit. So in 1705, when an Irish woman named Marjorie McCall passed away from a fever, they wanted to bury her quickly, so whatever she succumbed to wouldn't be spread or infect other people. Unfortunately, Miss Marjorie had, um, Well, she puffed up a little bit while she was sick, and so her husband could not remove a very valuable ring that was on her finger because her hands were just too swollen, and we've all been there, right?

Someone must have talked about that ring, because grave robbers were pretty common place at the time, and once night came, [00:03:00] they came into the graveyard, digging up her fresh gravesite. When they opened Marjorie's casket, They wanted to steal her ring, obviously, but just like her husband, they weren't able to just easily slide it off her hand. I'm sure you're guessing where this is going. And, uh, what's a grave robber to do? Because they are always of such moral high ground. They decided, eh, she's dead, this won't hurt her, let's just cut off her finger. Yeah, let that sink in.

You bury your loved one during this time and someone is making off with not only their valuables, But also their body parts. So they go in to remove her finger, but as they cut into her finger, Marjorie sits up in her coffin, she's screaming and the grave robbers probably pissed their pants and you know what?

That serves them right. They take off running, hopefully to their local church, cause they have some confessing to do. Marjorie is pretty confused as you can imagine and she's taking a little look see around and going Well, this isn't my bedroom. Why [00:04:00] am I waking up from a nap with people standing over me trying to cut my finger off in a graveyard? I mean, that would be so scary.

What probably happened is Marjorie was in a coma from her high fever. But back then, they didn't have all the gizmos and gadgets we have now. So if the person didn't appear to be waking up when you shook them, called their name, and you really didn't see them breathing, off to the graveyard they went.

Marjorie walked all the way home. She knocks on her own door, And her husband answers, and probably got the shock of his life when his wife was standing there in the clothes that he buried her in, blood dripping from her finger. Can you imagine the fight that went on between those two that evening?

Like, okay, John, I don't want to hear about dinner not being done when you come home ever again. Because remember that time you buried me alive? Yeah, you go ahead and cook dinner, honey. she has the one up on him for every argument for the rest of their lives. And they must have made up at some [00:05:00] point, though, because Marjorie even went on to have another child and lived many more years.

When she passed away, she was buried in the same plot, and her grave still remains, and in front of the original gravestone is a plaque that reads, Marjorie McCall lived once, buried twice. And if that's not the most badass thing you've ever heard, I don't know what is.

This next story is horrifying, and honestly, I could've talked about it myself, but I think that I'm just going to read it straight from the headlines of a February 1884 Dayton, Ohio newspaper, because the way they describe it, it's very much of the time, and I'm going to let you form your own opinion.

The article was called Buried Alive. A special from Dayton, Ohio, to the Chicago times says a sensation has been created here by the discovery of the fact that miss Hawkwalt, a young woman of high social connections who was supposed to have died suddenly on January 10th. Was buried alive. The horrible truth was discovered a few [00:06:00] days ago.

And since then it has been the talk of the city. The circumstances of Ms. Hockwalt's death were peculiar. It occurred the morning of the marriage of her brother to Miss Emma Schwind at Emanuel's Church.

Shortly before six o'clock, the young lady was dressing for the nuptials and had gone into the kitchen. A few moments afterward, she was found sitting on a chair with her head leaning against the wall, And apparently lifeless. Medical aid was summoned and Dr. Jewett, after examination, pronounced her dead. Mass was being read at the time in Emmanuel's church, and it was proposed that they postpone the wedding. But Father Hayne thought best to continue and the wedding was consummated in gloom by low mass.

An examination showed that Anna was of excitable temperament, nervous, and afflicted with sympathetic palpitation of the heart. Dr. Jewett thought that this was the cause of death. The following day, the girl was interred in woodland. The friends of Ms. Hockwalt were unable to forget the terrible [00:07:00] impression, and several ladies observed that her ears bore a remarkably natural color, and could not dispel the idea that she was not dead. They conveyed their opinion to Anna's parents and the thought preyed upon them so that the body was taken from the grave. It is stated that when the coffin was opened, it was discovered that the supposed inanimate body had turned upon its right side.

The hair of the head had been torn out in handfuls and the flesh of the fingers had been bitten from the bones. The body was reinterred and efforts made to conceal the case. But there are those who state that they saw the body, they know the truth of the facts narrated here. I can't imagine the guilt that that family must have felt, and if the guilt didn't haunt them, I bet she sure did.

Maybe I'm just petty, but I would be causing a ruckus in my family home being a little ghosty ghost if someone buried me alive. She definitely suffered a very tragic death. but don't you think that those ladies who thought, hmm, [00:08:00] she looks like she has some pink in her ears and some color in her cheeks, should have said something before they buried her?

The whole thing is odd, but the way that they wrote it is just hysterical. Like, oh, she was an excitable young woman, so it makes sense that she died on her brother's wedding day, just dropped dead from excitement. People sure had interesting opinions of women back then. We're gonna skip over to Ireland now because in the mid 18 hundreds, the people of Ireland were suffering through the great famine, a time of such starvation and disease that would eventually kill over 1 million people, as you can imagine, because of how quickly people were dying. They were being buried as quickly as possible.

A family member could even be the one to declare them dead. It didn't have to be a priest or someone with medical training. Your brother, your sister, your aunt, your uncle, your wife could say, they croaked and people took it as fact. And honestly, now that I say that out loud, can you [00:09:00] imagine how easy it was to get away with murder during this time?

Like, oh yeah, well, You know Earl, my abusive drunkard of a husband? Mm hmm. Well, he died. At home. Alone. Starved to death. It's such a tragedy. Oh, you saw him last week and he looked fine? Well, you know, we don't have enough food and off he went. So, uh, we buried him the same day. I'm gonna have to look into this actually because If you could just declare anyone you wanted dead and no one's looking into it, hmm,

Anywho, there was a three year old little boy named Tom who they believed had died and was quickly buried. And what they believed happened was that a gravedigger, not robber, gravedigger was doing what they do.

And they actually struck Tom's little toddler legs with their shovel and got the surprise of a lifetime when they heard a wail. Coming from little Tom. Tom ended up with a permanent handicap from his injury, but he went on to live for another 50 [00:10:00] years. And It just makes me think, like, next time I go to a visitation, I almost want to just give him a little pinch to make sure, you know?

I wouldn't. Of course I wouldn't, but makes you wonder. The next case happened less than a hundred years ago.

. In 1937, a 19 year old boy named Angelo Hayes got into a horrible motorcycle accident, = and his head took the brunt of the injuries. He was declared dead and was buried by his family three days later. Three days after he was pronounced dead.But his father had recently taken out life insurance on his son.

So the insurance company got a little suspicious and asked for Angelo's body to be exhumed. Two days after the funeral. So, Angelo has been presumably dead for five days now. But when they exhumed his body, he didn't pop up like our other stories, but they noticed that his body was still warm to the touch. He had been in a coma, which is probably how he survived without much air the whole time. He was just doing small, shallow breaths. They [00:11:00] probably didn't even look like he was breathing.

But they got him right back to the hospital and he actually survived. Obviously, a wee bit scared of this ever happening again, he went on to construct his own security coffin that had an air ventilation system, a small oven, And a cassette player. not sure how or why he thought if he was ever buried alive again, that he would be buried with food this time.

But hey, if he was, he was ready to do some six feet below casseroles, I guess. Could you imagine what that cooking show would be like to watch? But while researching this case, I found a story from 1976 involving 1926 Children being buried alive, but I'm going to save that for another episode.

It's going to be soon. I promise, but stay tuned because that story is absolutely insane. In the 18th and 19th centuries, before modern embalming practices were common, people got pretty nervous about the possibility of being buried alive. And as we can see. They had a very good reason to be [00:12:00] fearful of that, and some of them went to extremes to make sure that it would never happen to them. Starting in the late 1700s, there was a rise of something called the safety coffin.

It was invented by Dr. Johann Gottfried Taberger in 1829. He was a German doctor who figured, Hey, why not just install a little bell inside the coffin that when the quote unquote dead person, well, if they woke up, they could just ring the little bell. Simple enough, right? It had strings that ran from the hands, feet, and even head of the corpse up through the dirt to a bell above ground.

So if there was any movement at all, the bell would start ringing and alert the caretakers of the cemetery or gravediggers. just imagine You're strolling through the cemetery to visit your great aunt Bertha or whoever. And you start to hear a bell ringing off in the distance. And come to think of it, time is kind of of the essence, wouldn't you say? So it's interesting that they didn't rig something a bit louder than a little bell.

You probably couldn't even hear that from the other side [00:13:00] of the cemetery. But if you did, what do you do? Just grab a shovel that just happens to be nearby and hope for the best as you dig six feet down to somebody's grandpa?

I don't quite think that this plan would have really been effective. And some inventors must have agreed with me because they got fancy with their designs and were actually meant to stop burial before it even took place. In the mid 1800s, Franz Wester, a German American, came up with a design that featured a glass panel inside the coffin lid.

so family members could check if you were, you know, You know, still dead for a few days. If the person opened their eyes, or maybe the glass fogged up a little bit with their breath, well, She's back! Then there were the models that came with air pipes. One of the most well known was a design by Christoph Lyon. His coffin came with a tube leading from the coffin up to the surface allowing fresh air to reach the unfortunate soul buried inside. Some versions even had [00:14:00] whistles built in, so the buried person could blow into the pipe and alert people above ground

And I get the thought process behind this one. It makes sense. They're kind of taking the bell and adding a little bit more time by putting some ventilation in it.

But also if you think of decomposition and let's say it rains. And water's getting into the coffin, well, that would make for a very, very smelly cemetery. one of the more dramatic options, shall I say, was the spring loaded coffin. This coffin, patented in 1843 by Dr. Johann Georg von Hoisting, had a lid designed to pop open if the person inside started moving. And it didn't just crack open either, nope, it fully flung itself open. The idea was that if you somehow woke up underground, you wouldn't have to claw your way out.

You'd be propelled out of the coffin with a literal spring.

But what if this thing went off by accident? You're walking through the [00:15:00] cemetery and suddenly, boom, coffin explosion. Someone's great uncle just shoots up like a cannon from the ground. My god, I think cemeteries are actually a pretty calming place. But back then, you literally had bells, whistles, and spring loaded corpses.

So fast forward 20th century. As technology evolved, so did the methods of escape. William Teb, a British man who probably suffered from TA Phobia decided he needed a no Bearing Alive Club. So in 1896, he co-founded the London Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial and even advocated for installing telephones inside of coffins. If you woke up underground, you'd just dial out, let somebody know you'd like to be unburied, please, and thank you so much for taking my call. How do you even start that call?

Like, hey, so, um, operator, small problem. I'm in a coffin, and I'd really like not to be, so if you could send someone over, and then where do you tell them to [00:16:00] go? I just thought of that. Like, how do you know where you're buried? , Plat 42A. Weird. But not everyone trusted this new technology, so in many parts of Europe, they had what was known as a corpse house.

Basically, they would just keep the body in these corpse houses a few days until it began showing signs of decomposition so that they could bury the body without fear of making a mistake.

Obviously, today, with embalming and cremation in many parts of the world being common practices, we don't have to worry about being buried alive, but it's pretty fascinating to know that it wasn't too long ago that not only was it a very real fear, but something that could actually happen. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure to subscribe and follow along for more spooky season episodes.

And if you're watching on YouTube and don't want to miss the next episode, be sure to ring the bell. Okay, maybe that one was a little too soon, but it felt fitting. I will be back next week with a Halloween episode, but be sure to keep your [00:17:00] eyes out for the tale of the 26 children that were buried alive.

Spoiler alert, they do survive, but it's an incredible story that you won't want to miss. And if you're going out this weekend to celebrate Halloween, please be safe out there. Send me pictures of your costumes, of your children's costumes. I would love to see them over on Case of the Sunday Scaries Instagram.

But as always, until then.