Chapter 18 buried alive

Buried alive Some topics are very fascinating, but it is too scary to write a novel seriously.If one does not wish to be outraged or repugnant, such subjects should be avoided by the pure Romantic writer, and properly dealt with only when backed up by serious and authoritative truth.We often shudder and feel "pleasurable pain" when we read certain texts, such as the forced crossing of the Beretsna River, the Great Earthquake in Lisbon, the Black Death in London, the massacre of St. Twenty-three prisoners suffocated to death can give people such a reading feeling.However, the reason why such a narrative is exciting is that it exposes the truth, exposes the truth, and connects history.We resent the horror if it is purely fictional.

I have mentioned several cataclysms in recorded history, all so distinguished and so awe-inspiring, but in these cases the magnitude of the disaster is more impressive than the nature of the disaster.It is not necessary for me to remind the reader that from the continual stream of extraordinary catastrophes of mankind I could list many individual disasters which are in their nature more miserable than these large-scale catastrophes.In fact, true misery—ultimate sorrow—is unique, not universal.Terrible, ultimate suffering is always borne by individuals, not by groups—let us thank good God for that!

Of all the ultimate catastrophes that befall mortal beings, there is no doubt that being buried alive is one of the most horrific.Almost no one who can think will deny that people are buried alive all the time.The boundary line separating life and death is vague and fuzzy. Who can tell where life ends and death begins?We know that some diseases can terminate the apparent vital functions of the patient, but properly speaking, this termination is only a pause, a temporary cessation of vital mechanisms that we have not yet understood. After some time some unseen and mysterious law would turn those magic little cogs into motion again, those great magic flywheels, and the silver chain would not be permanently slack, nor would the golden bowl be broken beyond repair.But in the meantime, where does the soul reside?

However, putting aside this inevitable inference, aside from this reasoning from cause to effect, the suspension of life will lead to the occurrence of the well-known event of burial alive. Live examples in medicine and daily life can prove a large number of Instances of burial alive do exist.If necessary, I could give hundreds of real examples at once.An incident of an unusual nature occurred just recently, in the nearby city of Baltimore, which caused a painful, violent, widespread commotion.This may still be fresh in some readers' minds.The wife of a very respectable burgher—a distinguished lawyer and wife of a member of Congress—suddenly fell ill with an inexplicable illness.The disease left her doctors completely at a loss as to what to do.After a lot of torture, she died, or so people thought she was.Indeed, no one doubted, or had reason to doubt, that she was not really dead.Outwardly, she presented all the features of ordinary death: the contours of her face were shrunk and sunken; her lips were marble-pale; her eyes had lost their luster.She didn't have a trace of body temperature, and even her pulse stopped beating.The body lay there for three days, becoming as rigid as stone.In any case, the funeral was hastily carried out in view of the rapid decomposition of the body.

The lady's body was deposited in the family vault, which was not reopened for three years.At the end of the three-year period, the tomb was finally opened because a sarcophagus was to be placed.But my God, when the husband suddenly opened the door of the tomb himself, one can imagine what a terrible scene of shock awaited him!The door of the tomb swung open, and a white object fell into his embrace with a clacking sound.It was his wife's skeleton.Her white shroud has not yet rotted. Upon closer inspection, she apparently came back to life two days after being placed in the tomb.As she struggled inside the coffin, it toppled from its stand and broke, allowing her to climb out of it.A lamp inadvertently left in a tomb, its full supply of oil having dried up, may have evaporated.At the top of the steps leading into the tomb was a large fragment of a coffin, with which she seemed to have hammered on the iron door in a desperate attempt to attract attention.Perhaps as she struck, she fell into a swoon or died in agony of terror; and as she fell, her shroud caught on the inward projection of the iron gate.So, she rotted, but still stood upright.

In 1810, there was a living burial in France, and people all took it for granted that the truth was stranger than fiction.The hero of the story is a young lady named Viktorshina.La Forgarde, she was born, extremely rich, and beautiful.Among the many suitors, there is a poor literati or poor reporter in Paris-Julian.Bossuet.His brilliance and friendliness attracted the heiress, and he seemed to have won her heart; but in the end, her natural arrogance made her decide to reject him.She was married to Mr. Henley, a distinguished banker and diplomat.After marriage, the gentleman ignored her, perhaps even abused her.After living miserably with him for a few years, she died—or at least she was in a deathlike state, and everyone who saw her was blinded by appearances.She was buried—but not in a crypt, but in an ordinary grave in the village of her birth.The reporter was devastated.In his memory, the fire of deep love has been burning.The infatuated person set off from the capital Paris and trekked across mountains and rivers to that remote provincial village.He has a romantic idea in his heart, to dig up the body of his sweetheart from the grave, and cut a bunch of beautiful hair for collection.He reached the cemetery and dug the coffin around midnight.He opened the coffin lid.Just as he started to remove her hair, he found that the person he loved opened his eyes.In fact, the lady was buried alive.Life hadn't quite left her.Her lover's touch woke her from her stupor.Her coma was misunderstood as death.He frantically carried her back to his residence in the village, and with his rich medical knowledge, gave her some tonics.Finally, she came back to life.She recognized the man who had saved her life.She continued to stay with him, and slowly, she regained her old health completely.Her woman's heart was not made of stone, and it taught her a final lesson in love, enough to soften her heart.She never returned to her husband, nor did she let him know about her resurrection.She gave her heart to Bossuet and left for America with her lover.Twenty years later, the two return to France, convinced that time has changed her face so much that no friends will recognize her anymore.They were wrong, however, and upon meeting, Mr Henalay recognized his wife and demanded her return.She refused, and the court decision upheld it.It is said that their situation is special, so many years have passed, and the privilege of being a husband has ended according to reason and law.

The Journal of Surgery in Leipzig is an authoritative and valuable periodical, and some booksellers in the United States always translate it and republish it economically.In the latest issue of this journal, a very tragic incident is recorded, which in its nature fits the living burial in question. A tall and well-built artillery officer fell from an unruly horse and lost consciousness on the spot with a severe head injury.He suffered a mild skull fracture but was not in immediate danger.The craniotomy was successfully completed.He was bled and given other routine pain relief.Gradually, he fell into a coma, which became more and more incurable.

People thought he was dead. Because of the warm weather, he was hastily buried in a cemetery on Thursday.But on that Saturday, a large number of tourists gathered in the cemetery as usual, and around noon, a farmer said that when he sat on the grave of an officer, he clearly felt the ground tremble, as if someone was struggling underground.His words caused a commotion.Of course, people didn't pay attention to his words at first, but he was terrified and stubbornly insisted on his statement.In the end, his words naturally had an impact on people.A shovel was hastily brought in immediately.The grave was shallow and indecent, and was dug up in a matter of minutes.The head of the person in the tomb is exposed in broad daylight.At that moment, he appeared to be dead, but sat up almost upright in the coffin.Due to his desperate struggle, the coffin lid was pushed open by him.

He was rushed to the nearest hospital where doctors declared him alive but asphyxiated.A few hours later, he woke up.He recognized the faces of people he knew, and he spoke in fragments of his own torment in the grave. It is evident from his account that he must have been conscious for more than an hour after being buried in the grave before he fell into a coma.The grave was hastily filled, and the soil was loose because there were many small holes for ventilation.He also breathed the necessary air.Hearing the footsteps of the crowd above him, he frantically scrambled to make people hear the voices in the tomb.He said that the loud voices in the cemetery woke him from his deep sleep, but once he woke up, he was fully aware of his horror.

According to records, the patient improved and seemed to be on track for a complete recovery, but fell victim to medical experiments by quack doctors.They used battery current therapy.In an accidental accident, he suddenly fell into a coma and died suddenly. But when it comes to battery current therapy, I am reminded of a famous example.It's remarkable: Electromagnetic therapy has brought back to life a young London lawyer who had been buried for two days.This happened in 1831.At that time, as long as someone talked about this matter, it would cause a great commotion. The patient's name was Edward.Stapleton, who apparently died of a typhus fever, accompanied by unusual symptoms that even the doctors found strange.When he appeared dead, doctors asked his friends for permission to perform an autopsy but were refused.After being refused, as always happens, the medical staff decided to exhume the body and conduct a secret autopsy in peace.London's body-snatching gangs innumerable, and they had no trouble making a deal with one of them.Three days after the funeral, the supposed body was exhumed from an eight-foot-deep grave and placed on the operating table at a private hospital.

After a long incision was made in the abdomen of the deceased, no rot was found in the flesh, so the doctor thought of using electric current.Hitting again and again, the corpse remained the same as before, and from all aspects, there was no abnormality.Only once or twice came convulsions, stronger than usual, that showed signs of life. Late at night.Dawn is approaching.Finally, they decided that it would be best to perform an autopsy right away.But one student, wanting to test his theory, insisted on passing an electric current through one of the deceased's pectoral muscles.After a rough slash, the wires were hastily connected.The sick man moved jerkily, but not convulsively—he sprang from the table and walked into the middle of the room.He looked around uneasily for a moment, then spoke.What he said was slurred, but he did spit out the words, and the syllables were clearly divided.As soon as the words fell, he fell to the ground with a bang. For a while, people were dumbfounded and half paralyzed with fright—but the situation was urgent, and their consciousness quickly returned to normal. Apparently, Mr Stapleton was still alive, just relapsed into a coma.With ether, he revived and recovered quickly.He returned to the circle of friends again.However, after confirming that the condition would not relapse, he revealed to them that he had brought himself back to life.It can be imagined that the friends were naturally inexplicably amazed, and at the same time extremely ecstatic. The most sensational aspect of the case, however, is Mr. Stapleton's own account.He claimed that his consciousness was not completely lost for a moment-he was in a trance all the time, but in a trance, he knew everything that happened to him, from the time the doctor pronounced him dead to the moment when he finally fell to the ground. "I'm still alive" - ​​this is the sentence that no one understood what he tried to say when he found himself in the dissecting room. Many such stories could easily be told, but I am not going to tell any more.Live burials happen all the time, but we really don't have to prove it.When we consider how rare it is to be aware of such things happening, we must admit that they may have happened frequently without our knowledge.In fact, when people occupy a tomb, regardless of the purpose or the size of the area, skeletons can almost always be found, and they all maintain a terrifying and terrifying posture. This kind of doubt is indeed terrible-but even more terrible is doom.Undoubtedly, there is no experience that brings to such a culmination of spiritual and physical misfortune as burial alive.The oppression of the lungs is unbearable, the dampness of the soil is suffocating, the shroud is wrapped around the body, the coffin is cramped and surrounds itself tightly, the absolute darkness of the night is covered by the silence of the deep sea, the insects can't see it, but they can feel it Thinking of them conquering everything—plus remembering the air and the grass overhead; remembering good friends, thinking they'd fly to our rescue if they learned of our doom, yet realizing they couldn't know This; the only thing that makes us despair of fate is real death.This is the mixture of thoughts and feelings in the tomb, bringing great terror to the still beating heart, which is both appalling and unbearable. No matter how bold the imagination is, it is difficult to reach this state. We don't know of anything more tormenting in the world--and we can't even dream of the horrors of hell, and we can't think of anything half as horrible as it.Thus, any narrative on this topic can arouse a deep interest, but, in view of people's reverence for this topic, this interest depends precisely on whether we are convinced of the truth of the events described.What I am going to tell now is my own true feelings - purely my own personal experience. For several years now I have been plagued by a disease which, in the absence of a more precise name, has been unanimously called catalepsy by the doctors.Although the direct cause of the disease and even the exact symptoms are not yet clear, its distinctive superficial features are well understood.Its changes seem to be mainly manifested in the degree of depth.Sometimes the patient falls into an unusually lethargic state for only one day or shorter periods of time.During this period, he was completely unconscious, apparently motionless, but he could still vaguely feel his weak heartbeat.There was still some warmth on his body, and a faint blush hung on his cheeks.If you hold the mirror to his lips, you can feel the slow, irregular, hesitant movement of his lungs.Then, this lethargic state lasts for weeks, even months, and no amount of careful observation or rigorous medical testing can determine the difference between the patient's state and the absolute death we imagine, There is no real difference.Very often, he was saved from being buried alive only by relying on what his friends knew about him—knowing that he had suffered from catalepsy before, which led to doubts, and more importantly, relying on the fact that his body had not yet decayed.Fortunately, this disease is gradual. Although the symptoms are obvious at the first onset, it will not be vaguely misunderstood as sudden death.Next, the attacks will become more severe and last longer each time.Because of this, it was possible to escape the danger of being buried alive.If someone is unlucky enough to have a rare first attack, it is almost inevitable that he will be carried to the grave alive. My condition is not much different from what is described in medical books.Sometimes, without any apparent reason, I would gradually slip into a semi-consciousness, or unconsciousness.In this state, I felt no pain, could not move, and, strictly speaking, had no thought, but in my dull slumber I was conscious of life, of those who surrounded my bed. The presence.I remained half unconscious until the crisis passed and I regained full consciousness.Sometimes, I would be struck by the illness again, nauseated, numb, shivering, dizzy, and collapsed in an instant.Then came weeks of blankness, darkness and silence.The whole world is nothingness.The feeling of utter extinction cannot be overstated.My recovery from the latter coma was slow, very slow, inversely proportional to the suddenness of being hit.As the dawn slowly descends on a beggar who is homeless and helpless in the cold and long winter's night--so slowly and joyfully the light of the soul returns. But apart from this lethargic symptom, my health is not bad.I don't see what this recurring disease does to my body—unless a feature of my daily sleep is really considered a complication of it.When I wake up from sleep, I don't always regain full consciousness immediately, but I have to be confused for several minutes in a row-the thinking is usually absolutely still, and the memory is completely blank. All that I have experienced, there is no physical pain, but the spiritual sadness is boundless.In my imagination, all the places where the bones are parked.I always talk about "worms, graves and epitaphs."I fell into the fantasy of death and couldn't extricate myself.The thought of being buried alive took over my mind and I couldn't get rid of it.The horror I faced haunted me day and night.During the day, the pain of overthinking is unbearable; at night, it is even more excruciating.When the savage darkness fell over the land, all kinds of terrible thoughts came to me unexpectedly, and I couldn't help shaking--like the quivering feathers on the hearse.I could no longer bear the torture of being awake, and I always struggled to fall asleep--for I shuddered at the thought of waking up and possibly finding myself in the grave.In the end, when I finally fell asleep, it was just an instant plunge into a world of hallucinations.The idea of ​​being buried alive is above everything else, it spreads its huge black wings that cover the sky and the sun, hovering for a long time. Countless images just oppressed me in the dream.Let me pick a unique scene and record it.I think I'm in a longer and heavier catalepsy than usual.Suddenly, a cold hand touched my forehead, and an impatient voice hurriedly whispered to me: "Get up!" I sit up straight.It was dark all around.I can't see the person who woke me up.I can't remember when I fell into a coma or where I was.When I was motionless and meditating, the cold hand grabbed my wrist fiercely and shook it roughly. The urgent voice sounded again: "Get up! Didn't I order you to get up?" "So who are you?" I asked. "I have no name where I live," replied the voice mournfully, "I was once alive, but I am now a ghost. I was once cruel, but now I am merciful. You can feel me trembling My teeth are chattering as I speak, not because the night is long and cold, but because the smell of terror is unbearable. How can you sleep peacefully? This wail of excruciating pain makes me unable to Sleep. The sight here is more than I can bear. Arise, and come with me, and look out into the dark night. Let me uncover the graves for you. Look! Isn't this a sad sight?" I looked up.That invisible phantom that still grips my wrist has pried open the grave of all mankind.The faint, decaying phosphorescence of each tomb allowed me to see the shrouded corpses in the depths of the crypt, each one mournfully and solemnly sleeping with the insects.well!There are millions and millions fewer true sleepers than there are sleepless ones.Weak struggles, tragic turmoil, deep in the depths of countless tombs, the rustling of the shrouds of the buried is sad.I saw that those who seemed to be at rest have more or less changed the stiff and restless posture they had when they were buried.As I gazed, the voice said to me again: "Oh! Isn't this a pitiful sight?" Before I could find the right words to answer, the ghost let go of my wrist, the phosphorous fire went out, and the tomb It snapped shut, and at the same moment there was a commotion from within, and a voice cried out in despair: "Oh, God! Isn't this a very pitiful sight?" Such hallucinations appeared every night, and the horrible feeling filled my waking hours.My nerves became very weak, I was knocked down by fear, and I couldn't stand up for a long time.I hesitate to ride a horse, take a walk, or do any outdoor activity.To be honest, I dare not leave my relatives and friends who know that I will suffer from the disease, for fear that if the symptoms of the past show up, I will be buried alive before the truth is revealed.I am also skeptical about the care and loyalty of my closest friends.I feared that in some stupor which lasted longer than usual, they might be persuaded that I would not wake up.I was even afraid that, because I had caused so much trouble, they might gleefully consider a particularly prolonged episode of mine as sufficient reason to get rid of me.They solemnly promised that this would not be the case, but they did not reassure me at all.I compel them to take the most sacred oath, that I shall not be buried till my flesh is so rotten that it can no longer be preserved.Even so, I was dying of fear, unable to listen to any reason, and all comforts were useless.I began to take a series of careful precautions. For one, I remodeled the family vault so that opening it from the inside was effortless.I stuck a long pole into the tomb, and with a single touch, the iron gate burst open.Ventilation and lighting facilities have also been arranged.Adjacent to the coffin were placed convenient containers with food and water within easy reach.The lining of the coffin is soft and warm, and the lid of the coffin is designed on the same principle as the door of the tomb. It is equipped with springs, and a slight movement of the body is enough to spring it open.Also, from the top of the tomb, hung a huge bell, and the rope was so designed that it passed through a hole in the coffin, and was held tightly in the dead body's hand.But alas!A person's fate has its own destiny, so what's the use of being armed to the teeth?Even these painstakingly invented safety measures did not prevent the excruciating pain of being buried alive.This pain is a preordained misfortune. A new era had come in my life - as it had often happened before - and I found myself emerging from complete unconsciousness into that first faint and vague awareness of being.Slowly—slowly as a snail crawls—were approaching the gray dawn of the spirit.A slow restlessness.A feeling of indifferently enduring a dull pain.Nothing to worry about - nothing to want - nothing to do.Then, after a long pause, there was a ringing in the ears, then, after a longer period of time, a tingling sensation in the extremities, and then, a seemingly eternal stillness, pleasant, in the During this period, the waking sensation struggles into consciousness, then falls again into nothingness for a short time, and then suddenly wakes up.In the end, the eyelids trembled slightly, and an inexplicable and strong shock of fear immediately struck, and the blood quickly rushed from the temples to the heart.It was only then that I began to definitely try to think hard, to try hard to remember, and only then to achieve that fleeting partial success, and only now did the memory come alive again, and to some extent I became aware of my situation.I feel like I'm not waking up from ordinary sleep.I remembered that I had suffered from catalepsy.At last, it seemed, under the pounding of the raging waves of the sea, that my trembling soul was overwhelmed by a severe danger--overwhelmed by the haunting thought of that ghostly visitation. During the few minutes that this vision seized me, I did not move.Why?I just can't muster the courage to move.I dare not try to believe in my destiny - but deep within me a voice whispers that it is so. Despair--no other misfortune can create such despair--it alone pushes me to open my heavy eyelids after a long hesitation.I opened my eyes.Darkness—darkness everywhere—I knew the fit was over. I know that the critical point of the disease has long passed.I know that my visual function is now fully restored—but there is darkness—darkness everywhere—the constant darkness of a long night, intensely black, completely black. I screamed with all my might—my lips and my scorched tongue convulsively worked hard, but my empty lungs couldn’t make a sound, as if a mountain was firmly pressed against it, and with the beating of my heart Panting, throbbing, struggling to breathe. When I tried to cry out, my jaw moved, and I realized that they were immobilized, as people usually do with the dead.I also felt like I was sleeping on something hard.There are similar things oppressing on both sides of the body. I hadn't dared move my limbs until now, but then I jerked my arms up -- they were lying flat with the wrists crossed.My arm hit something hard and wooden, and it spread out over me, no more than six inches from my face.I no longer doubt that I am still sleeping in a coffin. And now, in the midst of my boundless wretchedness, step by step the angel of hope—I think of my own precautions. I writhed, with a convulsive effort, to push the coffin lid: it didn't budge.I groped around my wrist for the string that tied the bell: but could not find it.Now the comforter turns and flees, and never visits me again; despair grows stronger and reigns supreme.Because I found that there was no soft cushion that I had carefully prepared in the coffin—and, moreover, a strong smell unique to wet soil suddenly rushed into my nostrils.The conclusion is irresistible.I'm not in the family vault.I was not at home when I was unconscious, but among strangers.But when and how it all happened, I can't remember.They buried me like a dog.They nailed me into an ordinary coffin, and buried me deep in an ordinary unmarked grave, to be buried there forever. I am convinced of this.But once again I struggled to cry out as this terrible fact penetrated into the deepest recesses of my soul. This second effort was successful.A long and frenzied scream of pain, or wail, cut through the long underground night. "Hey! Hey! What's the matter!" A hoarse voice responded. "What's the matter?" said the second. "Don't be so loud!" said a third. "What's the matter with you howling like a cat just now?" said the fourth.I was then grabbed by a rough-looking gang and shaken violently for a few minutes.They didn't wake me from my stupor—because I was fully awake when I screamed—but they did restore my memory. The adventure happened near Richmond, Virginia.I went hunting with a friend.We walked a few miles along the James River.As night fell, we encountered a storm.A small sloop full of flower mud was moored by the river, and the cabin became our only shelter from the wind and rain.We made the most of it and spent the night on board.I slept in one of the only two berths on board, a sloop of sixty or seventy tons, and the cabins were of course mediocre. My bunk has no bedding and is no more than eighteen inches wide.The distance from the bunk to the deck above was exactly eighteen inches.It took a lot of effort to stuff myself in.I slept soundly though.Because I have no dreams and no nightmares, all the phantoms naturally come from the environment I am in, from my paranoid thoughts, and from the situation I mentioned earlier-when I wake up, I always have a long time. Concentration, especially difficulty recalling memories.Those who shook me were the crew of the sloop, and some unloading men.The smell of soil comes from the flower mud loaded on the boat.The cloth band that bound my chin was a silk handkerchief, and as I was not wearing my accustomed nightcap, I wrapped it around my head. However, what I suffered was indistinguishable from a real burial.They are terrible--horrible beyond all imagination. However, misfortune and fortune depend on it.The extreme pain instead awakened my mind inexorably.My soul strikes a harmonious tune—it acquires a certain resilience.I go abroad.I exercise vigorously.I breathe the free air of heaven.I think about other issues than death.I discarded medical books.I burned the "Bakken".I don't read Night Thoughts anymore--no more cemetery bombasts--no more ghost stories like this one.In a word, I was renewed and lived a human life.After that memorable night, those eerie imaginings were forever banished to me.My catalepsy symptoms also disappeared.Perhaps, the reason why I fell ill was because I thought too much about eerie things in my mind, rather than because of the illness, I had eerie imaginations in my heart. Sometimes, even to the sober eye of reason, our human wretched world bears a resemblance to Hell, but the human imagination is not Calatis, probing every cavern with impunity.well!The mass of tomb-like horrors cannot be regarded as fanciful imagination--but, like those demons who followed Afrasbu's voyage on the Oxus, must sleep, or they would devour us-- They must be put to sleep, or we shall perish. (1850)