BURIED ALIVE

Posted on October 25, 2019October 28, 2019 by vlaw759

Fear of being buried alive is called taphephobia. Also known as live burial, premature burial, and vivisepulture, it’s been around forever—and is with us still! Those buried alive often die of asphyxiation, dehydration, starvation, or hypothermia. If fresh air is available, the buried person can last days.

This guy seems pretty happy about the situation.

Fear of being buried alive reached a peak in 19th century England. More than 120 books in at least five languages were written about it, as well as methods to distinguish life from death. (See below.)

Harry Clarke’s illustration for Premature Burial by Edgar Allen Poe

A Fine Literary Tradition

Consider Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial,” The Fall of the House of Usher, and Berenice. More recently, Stephen King’s 1987 novel Misery includes Paul Sheldon’s Misery’s Return, a book within a book.

Farinata and Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti in Level 6 of the Inferno, painted by Suloni Robertson

Dante’s Inferno references several classes of sinners punished with some form of eternal burial:

The Sullen in Level 5 are kept just below the waters of the River Styx, forever near drowning.
The Heretics in Level 6 are trapped in flaming tombs.
Murderers in Level 7 are covered by a river of boiling blood.
In Level 8 (where all types of fraud are punished)
- Flatterers are encased in human excrement.
- Simonists are buried head-first while flames burn their feet.
- Fraudulent Counselors are encased in flames.
The Treacherous in Level 9 are buried in ice of varying levels depending on their sin.

Accidental or Unintentional Burial

It’s easier to handle if you bring a buddy along.

Reports of being buried alive date back to the fourteenth century. In spite of hype and hysteria, as late as the 1890s patients have been documented as being declared dead and accidentally sent to a morgue or encased in a steel box, only to “come back to life” when the coffin is dropped, the grave is opened by grave robbers, or embalming or dissection has begun.

“Life preserving coffin in doubtful cases of actual dead,” a safety-coffin model by Christian Eisenbrandt

During centuries when embalming wasn’t common practice, coffins were mostly for the rich, and rapid burial was the norm especially during major pestilences such as cholera, bubonic plague, and smallpox. In these cases, rapid burial was an attempt to curb the spread of the disease.

Several medical conditions can contribute to the presumption of death: catalepsy, coma, and hypothermia.

How to Know When Someone Is Really Dead

Snoring is a pretty good sign. (This is actually the Fourpence Coffin flophouse, the first homeless shelter in London.)

Jan Bondeson, author of Buried Alive, identified methods of verifying death used by 18th and 19th century physicians. (Personal reaction: shudder!) The methods were any acts the physician thought would rouse the unconscious patient, virtually all imaginatively painful.

Soles of the feet sliced with razors
Needles jammed under toenails
Bugle fanfares and “hideous Shrieks and excessive Noises”
Red hot poke up the rectum
Application of nipple pincers
A bagpipe type invention to administer tobacco enemas
Boiling Spanish wax poured on patients’ foreheads and warm urine poured into the mouth
A crawling insect inserted into patient’s ear
A sharp pencil up the presumed cadaver’s nose
Tongue pulling (manual or mechanical) for at least three hours

The traditional Irish wake was (and is) an occasion for family and friends to celebrate the life of the deceased while watching the body for signs of movement.

Most agreed that the most reliable way to be sure someone was dead was to keep an eye on the body for a while. To that end, waiting at least 72 hours from apparent death to burial was mandated. In the mid-1800s, Munich had ten “waiting mortuaries” where bodies were stored awaiting putrefaction. Each body was rigged to bells to summon an attendant should the corpse come back to life.

Waiting morgues, like this one in Paris, were often left open to the public for macabre entertainment

We presume that modern science has surpassed this sort of mistake, defining death as brain death. Even so, earthquakes and other natural disasters often result in people being accidentally buried alive.

In 2010, 33 miners in Chile were rescued after being buried alive for 69 days by a collapse in the mine.

Victims of the 2018 tsunami in Nepal were not so fortunate.

But Wait: Sometimes People Are Buried Alive on Purpose!

Sometimes live burial is a method of execution. Documented cases exist for China, German tribes, Persia, Rome, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Russia, Netherlands, Ukraine, and Brazil.

Confucian scholars were buried alive while their books were burned in 3rd century BCE

Interestingly, most of the laws demanding live burial as a form of execution were for crimes committed by women. Men convicted of comparable crimes were more likely to be beheaded.

Vestal Virgins were sealed in caves for breaking their vow of chastity, as shown in this painting by Pietro Saja

When death was not enough, often a spike was driven through the body of the person executed by live burial, perhaps as a way to prevent the person from becoming an avenging, undead Wiedergänger.

In some parts of the world, live burial is still practiced as a means of execution. Often, the victim is buried upright with only their head above ground. In these cases, death is very slow and painful, often the result of dehydration or wounds caused by animal scavengers.

And sometimes live burials are another horrific act of war.

Serbian officials buried Bosnian and Bulgarian civilians alive during the Balkan Wars.
During World War II, Japanese soldiers buried Chinese civilians alive. (See Nanking Massacre.)
Also during World War II, live burials were used by the Germans against Jews in Ukraine and Belarus.
During the Vietnam War, live burials were documented in the Massacre at Huê in 1968.
During the Gulf War, American soldiers in tanks knowingly buried Iraqi soldiers alive.
In 2014, ISIS buried Yazidi women and children alive, attempting to annihilate the entire minority group.
There are accounts of Khmer Rouge using live burials in the Killing Fields.
Live burial was a form of execution during Mao Zedong’s regime, particularly during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution..

Codice Casanatense, a Portugese artist, recorded this scene of a Hindu widow being sent alive to her husband’s grave.

Very rarely people willingly arrange to be buried alive, for any number of reasons. Sometimes it is to demonstrate their ability to survive it. The Indian government has made voluntary live burials illegal because the people who try it so often die. In 2010, a Russian man was buried to try to overcome his fear of death, but was crushed to death by the weight of the earth over him.

There are even performances in which people have an opportunity to be buried alive for fifteen or twenty minutes. As a publicity stunt for the opening of the 2010 film Buried, a lottery was held for a few fans to have a very unique viewing experience. Four winners were blindfolded, driven to the middle of nowhere, and buried alive in special coffins equips with screens on which they could watch the film. (A 2003 episode of “Mythbusters” demonstrated that, even if a person buried alive was able to break out of a coffin, they would be crushed or asphyxiated by the resulting dirt fall.)

There is now a monument to Mick Meaney on Kilburne Street.

Irish barman Mick Meaney remained buried under Kilburne Street in London for 61 days in 1968, mostly to win a bet. Tubes to the surface allowed air and food to reach him in his temporary, underground prison.

Parents are often unwillingly volunteered for vivisepulture on the beach.

Bottom line for writers: consider a character being buried alive—or being threatened with it—as a way to up the tension.

Live burial isn’t the only attention-worthy aspect of dead bodies. For more, check out books such as these.

Writers Readers Want to Be

Posted on February 28, 2017February 28, 2017 by vlaw759

50 shades of cabernet facebook hop writers readers want

This past weekend I participated in a Facebook Hop to help promote the 50 Shades of Cabernet mystery anthology which is about to be published. It was a first for me. People were encouraged to hop from one FB page to the next and register for whatever that person was offering. It seems to have been very popular.

My giveaway was signed copies of my books. In order to qualify, I asked people to answer the question, “If you could be reincarnated as any writer, any time, anywhere, who would it be? Why?” Given that this was associated with a mystery anthology, it isn’t surprising that many people cited mystery writers. But not all! Here, in alphabetical order, are all the writers mentioned.

Jane Austen—who can count the reasons?

Agatha Christie—a classic choice by several for reasons from youth reading, to she went to exotic places, to she solved crimes before technology

Beverly Cleary—even though she’s still alive

Blaise Clement—b/c her pet sitting books are great

Jackie Collins—b/c her books are fun

Michael Creighton—b/c the reader learns something new in every book

Tim Dorsey—b/c he seems to really enjoy his life

James D. Doss—writes clean mysteries with hilarious acerbic asides

Jessica Fletcher—b/c she is fictional and will live forever!

Dick Francis—b/c he got to ride horses, worked for the Queen, and lived a long life

Robert Frost—b/c his poetry is wonderful

Homer—and who needs a reason?

Colleen Hoover—b/c she is just damned AWESOME

P.D. James—insert your own reasons

Carolyn Keene—b/c she was a favorite youth read (for more than one responder)

alexander mccall smith the woman who walked in sunshine

Alexander McCall Smith—b/c he’s charming, witty, and down-to-earth (listed here b/c his last name is McCall Smith)

Margaret Mitchell—b/c of Gone With the Wind and loving the Civil War

L. M. Montgomery—b/c she lived on Prince Edward Island

Edgar Allen Poe—b/c of his fascinating imagination

Mary Roberts Rinehart—b/c she was such an interesting woman

Nora Roberts—b/c I love her book

harry potter sorcerer's stone j.k. rowling

J. K. Rowling—right before she became famous for Harry Potter

Ann Rule—b/c she has a really special mindset

Dr. Seuss—b/c of his wonderful imagination

Anna Sewell—wrote Black Beauty, etc.

J. R. R. Tolkien—b/c he has a rich imagination

Laura Ingalls Wilder—b/c she wrote what she lived

Virginia Woolf—b/c she felt so deeply and expressed those feelings wonderfully

I’ve edited some of the responses to fit the “because” format, but tried to keep the meaning. All of these come recommended. Why not pick up an author you haven’t read?

Today is the 207th Anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s Birth

Posted on January 19, 2016January 19, 2016 by vlaw759

Poe was a writer, literary critic, and editor, the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living exclusively through writing. In spite of his prolific output, he didn’t earn enough to support himself, let alone live comfortably.

Complete Stories and Papers of Edgar Allan Poe — Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

Although Poe died at the age of forty, this book contains 119 short stories and poems and one novel. His literary criticism isn’t represented at all in this volume, nor are his essays on writing, such as “The Philosophy of Composition,” “The Poetic Principle,” and “The Rationale of Verse.” His first publications were poetry, and he published 53 of them, but his work covers a much broader spectrum: 27 tales of mystery and horror; 25 stories of humor and satire; 14 that veer toward fantasy and science fiction. His novel is an adventure yarn. “Eureka” is a disquisition on the nature of the universe, and his vision has been largely confirmed by science, for example the Big Bang Theory.

wheel of misfortune at Poe's Birthday Bash — Wheel of Misfortune

Vivian Lawry inside coffin at Poe Museum during Poe's Birthday Bash — I’m buried alive at Poe’s Birthday Bash

Despite the breadth of his writing, he is best known for poetry and suspense/horror. He is often called the father of detective fiction—preceding Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins by decades—while his contributions to cosmology and cryptography are known to relatively few. Besides being brilliant, Poe was a fine athlete. (He once set a broad jump record of 21’6″.) But he is most remembered as a man who suffered bouts of depression, whose career and life were burdened if not destroyed by gambling and alcohol, and who was plagued by scandals ranging from his marriage to his 13-year-old cousin to courting multiple women simultaneously.

To this day his death is shrouded in mystery. Where had he been for the previous several days? What was he doing? Why was he wearing someone else’s clothes? And who was the “Randal” he called out for from his deathbed?

Nevertheless, he is celebrated and honored across the country, including an annual Birthday Bash in Richmond, Virginia.

Poe's Birthday Bash at the Poe Museum — Poe’s Birthday Bash at the Poe Museum, Richmond, Virginia

Poe's Birthday Bash! flyer — Poe’s Birthday Bash flyer

This year the event included a panel presentation and book signing by members of two local chapters of Sisters in Crime. Among other things, we spoke about Poe’s influence on our writing.

Sisters in Crime at Poe Museum for Poe's Birthday Bash — Sisters in Crime
Left to right: Rosemary Shomaker, Teresa Inge, Vivian Lawry, Heather Weidner, Maggie King, Yvonne Saxon

Sisters in Crime presenting Virginia is for Mysteries at Poe Museum for Poe's Birthday Bash, Edgar Allan Poe — Virginia is for Mysteries signing table
Seated, left to right: Teresa Inge, Maria Hudgins, Vivian Lawry; standing, left to right: Yvonne Saxon, Rosemary Shomaker, Maggie King, Heather Weidner

This is the biggest celebration of Poe’s birthday, the events and fun running from noon till midnight. Let Poe’s lights shine on!

Evenfall at the Poe Museum, Richmond, Virginia