10 Horrifying Stories Of People Who Were Buried Alive

 

Just the idea of premature burials is extremely horrifying.

Believe it or not, there are a whole lot of creepy tales of premature burials as recent as this year. If you were never scared of being buried alive, it might be your greatest fear by the time you’re done reading these stories.

1. Octavia Smith Hatcher

image source- Flickr

In Pikeville, Kentucky, in the late 1800s, the entire town was enveloped in an unknown disease of which the most tragic case was that of Octavia Smith Hatcher. Octavia went into a depression following the death of her infant son Jacob in 1891. She eventually fell ill and slipped into a coma. On the 2nd of May, 1891 she was declared dead in her bed.

Octavia’s body was buried immediately since embalming was not yet in practice. A week after her burial the same disease spread all over the town and people fell into a state of coma. However, these people eventually woke up. In fear, Octavia’s husband got her grave dug up to find the lining on the inside of her coffin had been scratched and torn to pieces. Her nails were covered in dried blood and broken, and her face held a look of fear. Octavia had been buried alive and eventually died in the ground.

Octavia’s husband got her body reburied and build a monument over her grave that still stands today. It was later speculated that the illness was caused by a Tsetse fly that comes from Africa and causes a disease called sleeping sickness.

2. Mina El Houari

25-year-old Mina El Houari had been chatting with a man online for months before she decided to make a trip to Morocco to meet him in May 2014. They met and were having a lovely evening together when she collapsed. In fear, the man made a quick decision and instead of calling an ambulance he took her home and buried her in his garden. However, Mina was not really dead. She had been suffering from undiagnosed diabetes and was in a diabetic coma when she collapsed. A few days later, Mina’s parents filed a missing persons report and came down to Morocco to find their daughter. The man was found and confessed to the crime. He was charged with manslaughter.

 

3. Mrs. Boger

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Charles Boger and his wife were living on their farm in Pennsylvania when Mrs. Boger died a sudden death. Doctors confirmed her death after which she was buried. Such a confirmation should have been the end of the story, but sometime after the death, a friend of theirs told Charles that his wife had suffered from hysteria before he met her and it was possible that she was not actually dead.

This entire idea haunted Charles so he got a few friends to help him dig up her grave. What the found was terrifying? The body was turned over and her robes were shredded to pieces; the glass lid of the coffin was broken and blood stains covered her body, and all her fingernails were entirely missing.

4. Angelo Hays

In 1937, 19-year-old Angelo was riding his motorcycle when he was thrown from his bike and thrown headfirst into a wall. The doctors declared Angelo dead and the boy was buried. Three days after the death, Bordeaux – an insurance company, started to get suspicious since Angelo’s father had recently got the boy’s life insured for 200,000 francs and so the matter was investigated.

The inspector had the body of Angelo dug up two days after the burial to find that they boy still had a faint heartbeat and his body was still warm. Angelo was then rushed to a hospital where he went through surgery and recovered completely.

Angelo grew up and invented a coffin with bells and whistles in order to prevent premature burial.

5. Mr. Cornish

image source- wikimedia commons

In 1817, Mr. Cornish the mayor of Bath died of a fever. He was buried fairly quickly after the doctors declared he was dead. The gravedigger was halfway done with his work when he decided to get a quick drink with some visitors. While they were talking, they could hear stifled moans coming from the direction of the grave Mr. Cornish was in.

It occurred to them that the man might have been buried alive so they hurried to try and save him before he suffocated. By the time they got the coffin out, Mr. Cornish had suffocated in his own grave. His knees and elbows were covered in blood. The story of Mr. Cornish scared his half-sister so much that she requested her relatives to cut her head off when she died in order to not suffer the same fate of suffocating in her own coffin.

6. The 6 year old who survived

Being buried alive is scary enough to think about but it becomes extremely horrific when the victim happens to be a child. In Uttar Pradesh, India in 2014, a couple told a 6 year old girl from their neighborhood that their mother wanted her to accompany them to a fair close by. However, they took the child to a sugarcane field and started to strangle and bury her for reasons that are still unknown.

When the couple left without the child, some villagers started to get suspicious and went out to search for her. They found her unconscious and not breathing in a shallow grave inside the field. The child was then rushed to the hospital where she recovered and identified her kidnappers however she does not remember being buried. Till today the police have not found the suspects, and no-one knows why the neighbours wanted the girl dead.

7. Buried alive voluntarily

image source- wikimedia commons

There are all sorts of people these days who try to defy fate. There are even tutorials online that tell you what to do if you find yourself six feet under. In 2011, a 35 year old man in Blagoveshchensk, Russia believed if he buried himself for 24 hours he would be lucky for the rest of his life. He went well prepared with a coffin that had air piping, a mobile phone, and a bottle of water.

The man got into the casket and got his friend to cover him with 1 foot of dirt. The friend says he got a call once in the night to tell him that the man was doing alright however, when he opened the casket the next morning he found the man dead. Apparently, an overnight rain blocked the air pipes which left the man to suffocate.

While this is an extremely tragic story, internet trends show buried alive was a popular trend in Russia at the time so no-one really knows how many others suffered such a fate.

8. Lawrence Cawthorn

In 1661, a butcher in London by the name Lawrence Cawthorn fell fatally ill. In order to get all his possessions, his landlady declared him dead without consulting a doctor and had the body buried in a chapel nearby. Not long after the burial, visitors could hear screams and shrieks from the grave but by the time they dug up Cawthorn’s coffin it was too late. His shroud was completely shredded, his eyes were swollen and his head was beaten up beyond recognition from where he’d hit it against the lid of the coffin while trying to escape.

9. Sipho William Mdletshe

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In 1993, 24 year old Sipho William Mdletshe and his fiancé were involved in a car accident. Although Sipho’s fiancé survived, Sipho was declared dead and his body was taken to the Johannesburg mortuary where it was placed in a metal box for burial. However, Sipho was not really dead, he was just unconscious. After two days and nights he woke up confused and started to scream.

Some of the workers were around and helped him out of the box. While he was lucky to have survived the entire episode, the unfortunate part is his fiancé sends him away because she refuses to believe he is alive and believes he is a zombie.

10. Stephen Small

In 1987, the heir of a publishing and media house – Stephen Small was kidnapped and buried alive by Danny Edwards and his girlfriend. Their plan was to keep him hostage until they received $1 million in ransom from his family. They provided Small with water, air and light through tubes however, he still ended up suffocating after his breathing tube failed.

Both Edwards and his girlfriend were caught and imprisoned. There has still been some debate regarding whether the two really intended for Small to die in the coffin or not.

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