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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.
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We'll see you next time. available on qualifying orders retail sales only some exclusions apply see store for details Hey weirdos, I'm Ash.
And I'm Alayna. And this is Morbid. It's finally morbid buried alive time.
Yay! Friday morbid, a feel good morbid, just, you know, bury yourself alive.
A feel good, you know, everybody's phobia.
I'm pretty sure we're bringing it here to the forefront.
Yeah. Today on this Friday. What? What? that in your brain was like, ooh, yeah.
Like what made you think of that? You know what it was?
I was reading some other case And there was another article I saw or no, excuse me.
There was a book I saw that was like about buried alive.
And I was like, I want that book. And I looked at it and I was like, oh, that's like a fucked up book.
Then I was like. I'm going to buy that book.
And then I bought that book and then I started reading it and.
Holy hell. It is like the complete, in fact, let me tell you what the book is because everybody should read it.
Hold your horses, everybody. I hoped you held all of those horses because I looked it up because I don't know where the actual physical book is.
It's not in my general vicinity right now.
But it's called Buried Alive, the terrifying history of our most primal fear.
And it's by Jan Bondeson, PhD. Oh, right.
A PhD? Oh, Jan, look at you. A PhDizzle.
She was never like Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.
She was like PhDizzle. Exactly. There you go.
And it's an amazing book. It's terrifying.
It is all encompassing. It'll feel like you're being buried alive by like the scariest information ever.
Every time you say buried alive, I don't know if you've noticed, but I literally have to take a deep breath.
You're going to have a problem with this episode, though.
I feel like I'll probably have a panic attack.
Because I got about 10 pages of talking about being buried alive.
That sounds awesome. Thanks for signing me up for that.
Well, in case you were wondering, the phobia, the name of the phobia for... fear of premature burial is taphophobia.
Taphophobia. Because... Taphos is from the Greek word meaning tombs or graves and phobia is obviously like a deep fear dread all right yeah that just reminded me of my big fat greek wedding absolutely because he says like all words derive from oh there you go yeah that makes sense that makes sense there it is there it is got you Gotcha.
You got me. I was like, how? Tell me how.
He's like driving in his 20s, like comes from the Greek word.
You're right, actually. I love that movie.
And I feel like it's true. It is. Because I feel like every time we go into something like that, we're like, well, it derives from the Greek word.
A lot of things derive from Greek words and Latin words.
Yeah, exactly. So there you go. The more you know.
Yeah, don't leave a review and say I'm dumb because I'm not.
Maybe I am because I'm like, what? How does that happen?
No, our brains just work in the most different ways.
They truly, truly do. So also, I think everybody can agree that it very closely goes with like claustrophobia yeah you know of course because I think part of the whole thing is fear of tight spaces.
You're being closed in inside of the earth.
Yeah. I also think it's like the fear of just like choking on dirt and that's how you die.
That too. I mean you would hope that yeah I mean you would hope you'd be in a coffin so you wouldn't choke on dirt but you just kind of suffocate on no oxygen I mean, either way, it's really not fun.
I just don't like it. It's really not fun.
And I actually in the book that I'm writing, I have like I had to do a ton of research into this particular topic. thing because of something in that book oh yeah and the more i read about it way to work your way around that the more i the more i read about it the more i realized that the like there's such a science to it too like with how long you could survive with however much oxygen you have in there.
Like a very small amount. It's like smaller people are going to survive longer because...
There's more oxygen, there's more space around them in the box, so there's more oxygen to take.
It's like if you're in better shape, you're going to... Well, fuck me, right?
Go listen to that new mad. I'm working on it, okay?
Call him out 2021, I suppose. I don't know.
It's like I'm calling myself out. Honestly, during this pandemic, like, I don't think any of us are We're not going to do great in a box right now.
I think we're all going to be in trouble.
People who suffer from these things obviously tend to have like panic attacks or panic symptoms. whenever they are in enclosed spaces because it feels like they are being buried or are going to be forgotten in a room or something of that nature.
I literally have that on elevators. I can't do elevators.
I hate elevators. They freak me out. They're also I think of not only like getting stuck in one because that's literally happened to me.
I think of getting murdered in one and I think of I lost my train of thought.
It dropping. It dropping. And I always think of how fucking dirty they are.
Yeah. Because I feel like elevators are filthy.
Well, they're just like a little germ pool.
Just a little cube of Petri dishness. A little vestibule of nasty.
There you go. That's way better than mine.
I like that. But yeah, I'm always scared of those weird... videos you'll see where someone goes to walk out of an elevator and it drops and they get like cracked in half or something yeah it's terrible it do be like that But one of the most well-known or what people think is the most well-known taphophobic is Edgar Allan Poe.
And there really isn't a lot of concrete evidence to say that he was absolutely taphophobic in life.
People rely a lot on his stories being so heavily focused on this idea, but I think that maybe It was something, one, he was just interested in writing about, and two, it was a common fear of the time, especially that time.
So he knew it was going to resonate with readers.
I think it was just him thinking of the scariest thing he could think of.
Because that's back when they would do like the bells.
Oh, honey, we're going to get all into it.
Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, we're going to get all into it.
It's also said that he was afraid of the dark.
A lot of people say that. Which may have also led people to put that along with a possible phobia of tight spaces and Bada boop, bada beep.
He's taphophobic now. Oh, okay. He also did have a story... about being buried alive.
But again, he's a horror writer. That's a scary thing.
It doesn't necessarily mean it's your fear, but you know it's a lot of other people's fear.
Right, exactly. Actually, this woman, Susan Archer Weiss, was the one who claimed she knew Poe in his last few years of life.
And she said that he was definitely taphophobic.
She wrote a book called Home Life of Poe about him.
Don't worry, for anybody who knows Poe very well and knows this name and is like, what the fuck?
There is, she's not totally to be relied upon, just so you know.
But I wanted to put it in here because this might have been the reason why people hang on to the fact that he was, like, such a well-known topophobic.
So in that book, Home Life with Poe, she wrote, Mr. John McKenzie, in speaking of Edgar, wrote, bore witness to his high spirit and pluckiness in occasional schoolboy encounters. and also to his timidity in regard of being alone at night and his belief in and fear of the supernatural.
He had heard Poe say, when grown, that the most horrible thing he could imagine as a boy was to feel an ice cold hand laid upon his face in a pitch dark room when alone at night. or to awaken in semi-darkness and see an evil face gazing close into his own. and that these fancies had so haunted him that he would often keep his head under the bed covering until nearly suffocated Now, this is what people point to to be like, oh, he's afraid of the dark.
And it's like, no, I think he's just afraid of nightmare shit in the dark.
I think he just can't shut his writer brain off.
Exactly. And it's like, those are pretty, like, yeah, those are... the most terrifying things I can imagine.
And I'm not really phobic of the dark. No, and those are also just like really common fears.
And to me, him putting her saying like he would go under the bed covering until nearly suffocated.
I don't think he was taphophobic if he could do that.
Well, that's the other thing. How can you say that he did that and then he was tapophobic?
So she was often said to be kind of a liar when it comes to how close she was with him.
Ah. But either way, that seems to be why a lot of people point to it.
It was like a Poe groupie. So I think she was a Poe groupie.
But that's just a little interesting tidbit because a lot of people when talking about Buried Alive, they immediately go to Poe.
Yeah, because of his stories, but like it's really not that much of a connection.
So let's start at 1670 shall we? Let's do it.
Let's do it. Let's go girls. There is a book Entitled.
And I'm just starting back here because this is like the beginning of people being like really fucking worried about what's happening in a grave. after people die.
Really fucking concerned about that. Like obviously shit happens. before this but like this is when people were just starting to go like really crazy about it you know the 1600s were truly a time It was the time when people just started getting like real worried about everything.
Yeah. They're just like, whoa, let's concentrate on stuff.
Meanwhile, like we should be worried about everything right now.
Well, yeah, and I think it's like overkill now.
It's like we flipped completely around. But there was a book called... No, I'm going to butcher this and I apologize.
De Miraculous... Mororium. De Miraculous Mororium.
And it was by Christian Frederick Garman.
Now this had a wild chapter in this book.
It was a wild, wild chapter. The chapter discussed a thing called masticatio moratorium.
Uh-huh. which is supposedly and i butchered that i'm sorry i think you did a good effort which is supposedly the tendency of a corpse to eat its death shrouds and try to eat its own fingers and arms and shit after death.
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The sale ends 831. Don't miss it. What happens is you'll be walking past a tomb.
I will be. As one does. You will be. And suddenly you'll hear like a groan, which is normally when you call ghost hunters, but...
Not this time. Or when you just like dip.
Because after this groan, you will hear loud chewing and smacking sounds as this corpse begins to eat it. itself.
This would send me to the moon because I have misophonia and I can't stand chewing sounds.
So this would be me being like, bye. Like I would just leave because I couldn't handle that sound.
But that's the real that's I mean, that's the real nightmare for me.
But like for others, it might be the fact that there is a corpse eating itself.
You gave me like secondhand misophonia. Yeah.
And even hearing the like term smacking sounds all of a sudden I started.
I know. I can't even think of it. But this book cited instances where people would exhume corpses and find that they had chewed on themselves.
But how is there any evidence that they chewed on themselves?
Because in some of these sources, they would find bits of flesh in their teeth and shit.
It was apparently a sign of bad luck coming, like famine or disease or some shit.
Something terrible coming. That's crazy.
Okay. let me be devil's advocate and this is just like a straight up question could like insects eat you and then go into your mouth and like leave bits of like flesh that they had eaten elsewhere or like animals even and No.
No? I mean, that would be a stretch. Yeah.
For them just to like crawl in your mouth and leave a scrap of flesh.
I don't know. It seems like a stretch. stretch to eat yourself after you die i think a lot of this was probably exaggerated yeah But there are weird instances.
And this was the first beginning of people saying, Well, wait a second.
So are people alive when they're being buried and they're like going so crazy under there that they start like gnawing at their own arms and shit?
Yeah. So this is the first, like, whoa, wait a second.
So in 1679, a guy named Philip Rohr, who was... a popular theologian at the time, published a 24-page dissertation, basically.
And It was called Mastication Mortorium.
Okay. Or the chewing of the dead. Oh, that.
Now, this was also in the vampire panic time.
Ooh. So this is in the time when everyone is assuming there's vampires just running about trying to eat people.
There is. And people were sure that those who died would also suddenly come to life and start chewing on themselves. everything around them, and then come out and start chewing on your dumb ass.
So to make sure this didn't happen, they would put a large rock or coin or something like that in the corpse's mouth And then they would sew all around it, like sew your mouth shut around a giant rock.
Like Billy. Like Billy in Hocus Pocus. Yeah.
Except for a totally different reason. It was just a guy I knew.
Just like Billy. Yeah. Like old Billy there.
Fucking Billy. Remember when they did that to him?
Like old Billy the Butcher back there. Remember that?
Yeah, except for very different reasons.
Because Billy's mouth was sewn shut with a dull needle.
So that he couldn't tell his secrets even in death.
Okay. And also because like didn't he like cheat on fucking Winnie with Sarah?
Well, that was the reason he got it, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then she says so he couldn't tell her secrets even in death.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was not a good... He was not a good boyfriend.
He was wild. He wasn't. But she also wasn't a good sister.
But we're not going to get into that. That's a whole different episode.
That's a whole different episode. but yeah so they would literally sew your mouth shut around this giant rock in your mouth And skulls are found with giant rocks in their fucking mouths because of this.
Which is nuts to me. Did they like break their jaws to get like a huge ass rock in there?
No, it was like a... One that you could at least put your mouth around, but it would lock your jaw around this, and then they'd sew the flesh shut around it, so it was just...
A huge rock. I want to stretch my mouth, but I have TMJ and then you'll hear all my cracks.
And it was so that if you woke up and you were like, I'm ready to vampire this.
I'm going to twilight all over. You couldn't.
I'm about to go nimmily bimmily twilight and go sparkle in her.
Bite people. That's what they do, right?
The fuck? So you wouldn't be able to do that.
No, you'd have a big giant rock in your mouth.
So you'd just be like, well, guess I give up.
Wow. That's the thing too. I'm like, is that what we assume?
They just wake up with this giant rock in their mouth and like...
Darn it. Not going to utilize any tools to get it out.
Boiled again. Like, it's just like, that's it.
You've got me. Like, nothing else. But either way.
Along the same lines of this whole thing, in 1793, a German doctor named Michael Ranft published Treaties Concerning the Screaming and Chewing of Corpses in Their Graves, which bad name I call it. big concerns there concerning the chew screaming and chewing of corpses in their graves So already people are thinking shit really goes down after you die and are buried in the ground.
For real. People could not handle that it just ends or that you just decay.
I don't want to handle that. They were positive that once that last scoop of dirt... was thrown onto you, like that's when the party begins.
You were about to just like rave in your coffin.
Like you were just waiting. Coffin rave.
Just waiting for that moment, a blood rave, if you will.
Like you were just ready to do this. Deceased first rave, it's hard to say.
Now, Tataka, so that's like the beginning of just like the, like that's the kind of thinking that is happening here.
Right. That we have. chaos. We have vampires waking up in graves.
We have corpses just waking up and chewing on themselves and eating their burial shrouds in the middle of the night.
As corpses do. Yeah, as corpses do. So already we have this like, what, what?
What are you all thinking? Yeah. So of the time... there was some evidence that people would like, even famous historical figures as we'll see, like George Washington, put in their wills little stipulations to make sure that they were not prematurely buried.
I'm gonna do that after this. Because it was a huge fear of this time.
Now, George Washington was terrified of it, and he told his secretary Colonel Tobias Lear, when he was dying, quote, I am just going.
Have me decently buried and do not let my body be put into the vault in less than three days after I am dead.
And his secretary said, I bowed assent for I could not speak.
He then looked at me again and said, do you understand me?
And I replied, yes, tis well, said he. Wow.
So he didn't want to be put in the vault for three days because he was worried that If they put him in there right away that he was going to wake up and that was it.
So he was like, wait three days, make sure I'm really dead.
And then you can put me in the vault. They could have made a really heavy metal Hamilton song about that.
They really could have. They really should have.
I'm a little disappointed Lin-Manuel. Lin-
Lynn, excuse me, can we retroactively add that?
Can we get on the horn, Lynn? Can we talk about this real quick?
Really cool. Wow, that would be really awesome.
Halloween-themed Hamilton. Lynn, I'm ready.
Bitch, I have ideas. Let's do this together.
We are ready. Zoom meeting? I'll send you the password.
Now, another one that people might know, composer Frederick Chopin wrote a note. at the end, at least, of his life.
He was suffering from tuberculosis at the time.
So at the end, he would have a note that says, the cough is suffering.
Swear to make them cut me open so I won't be buried alive.
So another one, Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, which most people will know that name.
Yes. he would always, even before he was sick or ailing or anything, he would always carry around a note that said, I am not really dead.
Imagine finding him actually dead, though.
And he would sleep with it next to his bed.
Oh my gosh. Because she was so worried that he would be like in a deep sleep or someone and somebody would think he was dead.
Not actually dead. And what's weird is at the time, people would go into these like weird trances sometimes.
Like they would have like, cause a lot of illnesses were going on.
A lot of weird shit was going on. I mean, look at the Salem witch trials and like the Urgot shit. and all that, which I believe is the reason why we're not going to get into that.
There was all kinds of things that would make people go into what we now know are comas.
But at that point, they didn't realize that you weren't dead.
You were just in a deep, deep coma. Right.
So people would go into these comas and they'd be like, oh, because a lot of times in a coma, like, you know, your body is trying to survive.
So everything comes and there's like shallow breathing shallow breathing your your heartbeat can be hard to hear Your pulse is hard to find.
Your pulse is hard to find. And they're not able to hook up a bunch of machines to these people.
They don't have them. Why not? So all they're able to do is take some fingers and put them on there.
And if you can't feel anything, whoop. Guess they're dead.
Back then they were probably using their damn thumbs.
Exactly. So that it happened a lot. Right.
People would think they were dead and they weren't.
It makes sense. Now, Alfred Nobel, the one who created the Nobel Prize.
Yeah, him. And he created that by leaving a ton of money in his will to fund those who contribute the greatest things to society, which I love. that so much yeah he put in his will and i quote It is my express wish, spresh wish, my express wish that following my death my veins shall be opened, and when this has been done incompetent doctors have confirmed clear signs of death,
My remains shall be cremated in the so-called crematorium.
I love that he specified competent doctors.
Yeah. Not just doctors. I would like you to find some competent ones.
And when the competent ones say that I am dead, then you can cremate me.
Thanks, thanks, thanks. Now, it was during the 19th century that a man named C.A.
Reid of Newton, Massachusetts. Also put in his will, he left $500 for a doctor to cut off his head. to make sure that he was dead.
I love that he was like, take this and chop my fucking head off.
Also like 500 bucks. Capital. I feel like 500 bucks for like a post-mortem decapitation doesn't feel...
But when was it? It was in the 19th century.
That's all we know. Okay. Now... In the 1880s, and this is really interesting to me.
So we're going up to the 1880s now. Yeah, we're getting like almost modern.
We're almost there. But we... I wanted to put those in there just so you could see that really no... Like...
People who, known people of the time were worried about this.
This wasn't just people running around being crazy, This was people who people trusted, people who people knew, who created things that we've all seen and loved that were very, very scared of being buried alive because it was like a...
It was an insane fear at the time. It was like satanic panic, but buried alive panic.
But it was also like... pretty justified because shit was happening at the time.
They're finding all this shit. In the 1880s in Germany, they created these things called waiting mortuaries.
And these were literally morgues where they supposedly dead people would lie in state for a few days to make sure that they were really dead before proper burial commenced.
Now the trays that they would lay on, and they would lay in like a line, the trays were zinc and were filled with antiseptic.
And all of this was done to make sure no infection would set in in case these people were alive.
And they would also pump steam into the room to hasten the decomposition process so they could like quickly see if they were really dead.
Wow. That is actually very cool. But the smell.
Yeah. The smell. If y'all are straight up dead, it's about to stank up in there.
There is a line... of dead bodies and you were just pumping steam into the room and then like you think like the bugs that start to come that's That's shag nasty.
But this is super interesting though because they would cover the perimeter of the trays with fresh and fragrant flowers.
And this would be to mask the smell. And it is said to be where the tradition of putting flowers at the graves of dead people and also bringing them to funerals and bring flowers came from.
That's cool. Isn't that interesting? Smarty pants.
Isn't that cool? Yeah, I love that. They would also be attached... These people would be attached to an alarm and a bell system so that if there was any movement... the people working would be alerted very quickly.
Wake they ass up. Unfortunately, as with the safety coffins that we're going to talk about in a minute, They weren't completely up on the movement that it can occur once you're really dead.
People sit straight There's literally like swelling, releasing gases, going through rigor, all that.
So these... I mean, rigor happens, rigor breaks.
There's going to be some movement. There's going to be some shifting.
Sometimes they say. And so these alarms would go off a lot and leave a lot of people disappointed because they would think that their loved one is waking up.
Oh, that's so sad. Now someone would be working there at all hours in case someone woke up.
And apparently people would pay to walk through there and just look at the bodies.
That's like the Paris Morse. Yeah, it literally is.
And according to the history collection, sources say between 1822 and 1840, 445, 465,000 people were taken to these waiting mortuaries. and not one of them woke up from their deaths.
Yeah, so it wasn't as common as people thought.
No. Now, one way that is wild that was actually used to determine if someone was really dead and this is so interesting to me, was to use invisible ink made of acetate lead.
Now, invisible ink was made like way back in like, you know, Roman times.
It was like super early. but they would use this acetate lead that reacts with sulfur dioxide and becomes visible.
Now, they would actually write in invisible ink, I am really dead on a piece of paper.
They would then place this piece of paper under the dead person's nose on their face.
And the theory was if they were really dead, then the gases emitted after death while rotting would activate the invisible ink.
And boom, now they know they have a dead person.
All of a sudden, I am really dead would come onto the paper.
I love how like just fucking spooky and metal this is.
The most macabre. The most. It's Halloween all the time over there.
It is. I love it. And it sounds pretty solid, except that bad dental hygiene can produce the gases needed to activate the invisible ink dirt and And during this time, teeth were not exactly top priority.
Like it wasn't like we were like, there was no like, you know, Aspen Dental, like around, you know what I mean?
So like... No Colgate. No Colgate. People had some tough teeth situations and some sulfur dioxide was definitely leaching out of those holes in their face.
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So we're definitely going to get into some methods for determining if death actually occurred in a minute, so don't worry.
But they would also do this one in a scarier way, too, which I think is a scarier way.
How? would use silver nitrate to brush the words I am dead in silver nitrate on a on a pane of glass placed over the coffin. would stay invisible until the gases from the decomposing body would suddenly make I am dead show up on the fucking cough That's kind of like really cool and I feel some type of way about feeling like this.
It's awesome. Awesome! I want them to still do that, please.
I feel like there's like a movie or a book there somewhere and i don't know where but i gotta i gotta suss it out should we like that in our wills like like for real it's so cool that's really cool it's crazy though but again This didn't work a lot because people just weren't up on what was coming.
I'm just kidding. you're like no but no it's like honest because it comes out of people's mouths when they're when they have bad dental hygiene.
So there were times when those words would show up and it was just, you had stanky breath.
You got rinked. Now let's get into further what they would do to try to make sure you were dead. now everyone let us hold on tight to your butts in 1752 antoine lewis was like
Maybe we can like blow a ton of tobacco smoke up the dead guy's ass.
For why? That would probably make him wake up, right?
Correct? I don't know, sir. Yeah, so they would do that.
They would just blow a bunch of tobacco smoke up their ass and then they were like, whoop, they're still dead.
I want to know whose job it was to blow the tobacco into somebody's booty hole.
How do you decide? You know what, dad? You know what I want to be when I grow up?
I'm going to blow tobacco smoke up someone's asshole.
Yeah. We got to make sure they're really dead, Dad.
I'm doing the Lord's work here. I was literally just going to say I'm doing the Lord's work.
Well, don't worry. Because in 1854, another Frenchman was like, no.
Maybe don't do smoke. I think a red hot poker would work better.
To which I say yes, it would. It's just like, isn't it like sodomizing a dead body?
Well, that's why I'm like, whoa, guys. Ah!
I feel like this is bad. clenching my sphincter.
This is really bad. So then in the same year, another Frenchman was like, No, I got it.
He didn't, though, did he? And he invented the pince-ma-melon. or nipple pincher.
Stop. And it did what it says. And it was supposed to wake up anyone that was just trancing.
Just really excite you. You were trancing?
Just a little foreplay. You would wake up and be like, ah!
Like, you just didn't, you were like, whoa!
That's funny. fucking hilarious. Like, how many people woke up and were like, not my kink!
Oh my god! Oh my god. Or a few people woke up and were like, how'd you know?
Oh, you want to go out tonight? Like the nipple pincher.
That's funny. I love that he had to invent that as well.
Like you couldn't just send someone to like pinch the nips.
Yeah, he sure did. Now, between 1720 and 1722, there was a great plague in Marseilles, which I looked it up.
You said a great play. It was a great play.
A great plague. In Marseilles, and 50,000 people died.
Oh, shit. Not in France, by the way, in case you couldn't tell.
50,000 people died of this plague. Now, this place called Observance Monastery was used for the burial place.
And it was excavated in 1994 because they were doing, you know, shit we do.
We just dig shit up and build more things over it.
Deforestation. Now, two corpses were found at this site that had long brass pins inserted under their big toes.
They're big toenails. Don't do that to me.
Don't. This was another old timey way to make sure someone was really dead.
Make it quick. Again. Make it quick. That's going to be.
That's going to wake me up. If I'm just trancing, it's going to wake me up.
Now, here's some other things that we could do.
Oh, don't ask. One said... One... thing that I read said the person's nostrils should be, quote, irritated by introducing stimulants. juices of onions, garlic, and horseradish.
Okay, no, I can take that. Which I was like, that just sounds awesome.
I love the smell of all that stuff. So I'd probably wake up and be like, are we having a sandwich?
Like, what's going on? Let's get it. Is there a charcuterie around here?
Oh, bitch. you could also tickle them with a quill of a pen do it You could.
They're like not my kink all over again.
I love that. They're like, we'll tickle you with the quill of a pen or we'll. thrust a sharp pointed pencil right up your nose.
Oh no, that's weird. We could also rub your gums with garlic.
Okay, I'll take it. That would burn, I feel.
You think? Oh, yeah. Yeah? Yeah, it definitely would.
You could fuck up the skin with whips and nettles.
I fucking hate nettles. Your intestines could be fucked up with some enemas that they could do.
Ooh, ouch. They could violently pull on all your limbs.
No. Can we be nice to the We could shock the ears with, quote, hideous shrieks and excessive noises, which would be the thing to wake me up.
I fucking hate loud noises. It freaks me out.
Yeah, I don't like loud noises either. Hideous shrieks and loud noises, no.
But that would definitely wake me up. Yeah.
You could also pour vinegar and pepper into the person's mouth.
That's just terribly rude. And also they wrote, quote, where that cannot be had because you can't find vinegar and pepper.
It is customary to pour warm urine into it. which has been observed to produce happy results.
I doubt that. I'm gonna go ahead and be the first to doubt that.
Then you could also cut their feet with razors, thrust needles and pins under their toenails, and pour boiling Spanish water. wax on their forehead.
Oh, so all those things you could do to make, you know, we got to make sure you're really good.
I guess so. I don't want you to just be trancing all over the place.
What if they just did, like, all of those things at once?
Well, if you're really dead, it won't matter.
But if you're not, you'll wake up, I suppose.
You'll wake up real mad. Real mad, real sticky, real smelly.
Get on the way to get a lawyer. Yeah, a lot.
Now, a guy named William Tebb was a social reformer and in 1896 he, along with Walter Hadwin, and a doctor who was almost buried alive himself, named Edward Perry Vollum.
They created premature burial and how it may be prevented with special reference to trance, cataplexy, and other forms of suspected animation, published in 1896.
This book basically lays out a ton of real instances where someone was buried while still alive.
And it also tries to understand how to prevent it from happening in the future.
People were like really into William Tebb.
All right. Tebb, excuse me. The same year, Teb, along with Walter Hadwin, founded the London Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial.
So this was huge. Whoa. They use this association to disperse the book that we just talked about. and also other books from other social reformers and people who were basically as paranoid and scared of premature burial as they were.
And they basically campaigned to make sure the signs of death were absolutely concrete and were dead set, pun intended, on stopping the epidemic of premature burials that they saw was going to be like the end times.
We were just gonna all be buried into the world.
Now when Tebb himself died in 1917, he put in his own will that quote, unmistakable evidence of decomposition should be visible.
So he was cremated a week after his death.
Wow. And it kind of made me think immediately of The Wizard of Oz, you know, the corner in The Wizard of Oz. when they say that the witch is dead, and they're like, she is morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably, and reliably dead.
Yes. I think that's literally how they live their life.
I love that. the song of the coroner when he's like, as coroner, I must avert a thoroughly examined her and she's not only me dead she's really most sincerely dead do do do do do do do do your memory is i like any other when i was little but uh And yeah, so they were just talking about like, I'm pretty sure they were probably thinking about William Tebb.
They were just preaching his gospel in that flick, really.
I think they were. Now, there's also a publication. that really fed into people's fears at the time called The Undertaker's and Funeral Director's Journal.
Ooh, was it real though? Was it though? They had a story in it that goes a little something like this.
Once upon a time. Mrs. Lockhart of Berkhill, who died in 1825, used to relate to her grandchildren the following anecdote of her ancestor.
Sir William Lindsay of Covington towards the close of the 17th century.
Sir William was a humorous and noted moreover for preserving the picturesque appendage of a beard at a period when the fashion had long passed away so they're like he had a beard when it wasn't cool to have one what a weird what a cool way to know him by He had been extremely ill and life was at last supposed to be extinct.
Though, as it afterwards turned out, he was merely in a, quote, dead faint or trance.
The female relatives were assembled for the chesting the act of putting a corpse into a coffin with the entertainment given on such melt melt why can't i speak with the entertainment given on such melancholy occasions. in a lighted chamber in the old tower of Covington, where the bearded knight lay stretched upon his bier,
But when the servants were about to enter to assist in the ceremonies...
I just lost my place, excuse me. Isabella Somerville, Sir William's great-granddaughter and Mrs. Lockhart's grandma. than a child, creeping close to her mother, whispered into her ear, beard is wagging.
The beard is wagging. Mrs. Somerville upon this looked to the beer in a observing indications of life in the ancient night, made the company retire, and Sir William soon came out of his faint.
Her hot bottles were applied and cordials administered, and in the course of the evening, he was able to converse with his family.
They explained that they had believed him to be actually dead and that arrangements had even been made for his funeral.
In answer to the question, have the folks been warned?
Invited to the funeral, I mean. He was told that they had, that the funeral day had been fixed, an ox slain, and other preparations made for entertaining the company.
You know, you slay a Oxford for entertaining company.
Sir William then said, All is as it should be.
Keep it a dead secret that I am in life and let the folks come.
So he's like, let everybody come to my funeral.
I love it. Let's do this. Because he wanted to see who would show up.
Yeah. His wishes were complied with and the company assembled for the burial at the appointed time.
After some delay occasioned by the non-arrival of the clergyman as was supposed, and which afforded an opportunity of discussing the merits of the deceased, the door suddenly opened, when to their surprise and terror, in stepped the knight himself, pale in countenance and dressed in black, leaning on the arm of the minister of the parish of Covington, having quieted their alarm and explained matters, he called upon the clergyman to conduct an act of devotion, which included thanksgiving for his recovery and escape from being from being buried alive.
This done, the dinner succeeded. A jolly evening after the manner of time was passed, Sir William himself presiding over the carousels.
Wow. So he was like, come to my whole ass funeral.
Actually, it's a surprise party. Actually it's a feast in celebration of my life which continues on.
Yeah. But it was, you know, all or move.
Exactly. And you know what? But stories like that. which were relayed as, because nobody knows if that's true or not, but they were relayed as truths in the time where people were like, see?
This guy was about to be put into the fucking earth.
So the idea of all this is that before your ass is interred into your final resting place beneath pounds of earth, it would behoove any doctor... in the area to make sure that you are definitely dead.
To make sure your beard is wagging. If the beard wags... you stay up here damn it I thought I had something in there if the beard wags All I can think of right now is... If the beard wags, no body bags.
That's what we gotta say, right? If the beard wags, I like it.
All I could think of was Never Been Kissed.
If the thing is a rocket, don't come a knocking.
Yes. That's what it is. If the beard wags, my body brain works.
Now, here are some methods they used because, you know, the heart... is so unreliable always as many country music songs will confirm I was like, what?
It took me a minute. No, that was funny.
I'm just like... We'll go with safety coffins.
We'll talk about those first. The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.
But lately, life on the coast has taken a strange turn. the town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption.
His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant.
Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting.
I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos.
As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, I would like to address you all.
Legal proceedings have been initiated. Join me, Anna Richardson, and journalist Leo Schick for The Mystic and the Mayor as we investigate a story of power, corruption...
Binge all episodes of The Mystic and the Mare exclusively and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.
Start your free trial in Apple Podcasts Spotify or the Wondery app.
There's a lot of safety coffins that were made.
I picked a few that I could find the patents for.
I went on a patent search. Who would? Number 81437 was granted to Franz Wester on August 25th, 1868 for, unquote, improved burial case.
Now this one was complicated. It had a ladder. a bell and an open airway in it.
Basically, the ladder was above the person's head, and if they awoke, they were supposed to climb the ladder to the surface, but if they were too tired or weak from like dying to climb the ladder, there was a safety measure for that too.
In the corpses' hands they put a length of rope, and that rope led to a bell on the outside of the grave.
If they couldn't bring themselves up the ladder, then they could just pull the rope to ring the bell and let everyone... who happened to be passing by that there was a living person in the ground.
So that's a pretty good one. I think that's great.
Just like kind of complicated. Options. These ones are complicated too, though.
I don't think any of them are like very chill.
They're all like very intense. This one is patent number 268.
And it was granted on December 5th, 1882, to John Crickbaum for, quote, a... device for indicating life in buried persons.
This one has a more advanced indicator above the ground to let people know what's happening underneath.
It's not just a bell. It's like a whole contraption to say, hey.
I'm not dead yet. Okay. So this one isn't a coffin itself, but it's actually something you place in the coffin and above it.
So you have to get your own coffin. BYOC.
I love that we just You have to cut a hole in the top of your coffin you choose, and then you thread this T-shaped tube into it.
It's like what you would hold looking through a periscope.
Okay. Like the two things on the side. Sure.
This tube that is placed on the corpse's chest can be turned by their hands if they wake up.
Like you're revving like a vroom vroom. Yeah.
You're revving a vroom vroom. Yeah. You're repping a motorcycle.
Look at me, fast and furious. Vroom, vroom.
When the tube is stirred. When the tube is turned, it will engage a part of the mechanism that is above the ground.
Now the part above the ground is attached by a series of interconnected tubes and appears like a box. scale on the surface, like a scale that's just like a box shape.
Sure. When the tube is turned in the corpse's hands, it will make the marker on the scale move. to indicate to those above the ground that there is movement of the tube inside of the coffin.
Okay. If the person, and it says quote, in the actual patent it says quote, If the person then should turn in the coffin or make any more violent motion, He will push the pipe upwards and push the cover off the box. the catch on the sleeve will be pushed over the flanged collar and hold it up so that nobody from the outside can push the cover down again. a supply of air sufficient for allowing the person in the coffin to breathe freely, enters the coffin through the pipes and will keep them alive until help arrives.
Okay. Now when things have gone the other way and the person really is dead, you would wait a sufficient amount of time.
And they don't tell you how long is sufficient, but I suppose that's for everyone to decide.
Five minutes. And then you can remove this entire apparatus only leaving the T-shaped tube in the coffin.
Okay. So the T-shaped tube is a one-time use, but it looks like the rest can be reused.
We love that. Yeah. Reduce, reuse, recycle.
Next one. Patent number 32. 229495 was granted on November 3rd, 1885 to Charles Seeler and Frederick Born Traeger for a, quote, burial casket.
Okay. This one's wild. I'm ready. It's so complex and intense and awesome.
So calling this one a burial casket is like very humble of them.
Like, this is not just a burial casket. There are fans, feathers. four stair mechanisms in this one.
There's a cord attached to the dead person's hand.
If there's movement of their hands, it will trigger into motion a clockwork gear mechanism that will run a fan. this fan will force breathable air down into the coffin.
So this person just gets blasted with oxygen, which might be a little scary.
But like, hey, that might be exciting if you can't breathe.
You're just like, I can see breathe. Now the air is here.
Wow. Wow. Yeah. I know. Vroom vroom. Vroom vroom.
On the other end of the coffin. They have another tube where a lamp is passed down.
Under it will be a reflective device, like a mirror. that will throw light onto the face of the person in the coffin.
So if you look down the tube from the surface, see them you will see the person's face so that they can be like hi hey i'm awake uh that's that's no that's a no for me i like that one but that's also not all connected to another wait there's more is another chord that when any movement happens, it will force a rod through the earth.
And attached to that rod will be a flag with feathers on it or something else that will indicate someone is alive under there.
And that's not all. By moving their hands, they will also already have a wire attached to their thumb and running to a battery.
And when they move their thumb, it will trigger a legit alarm system that goes off.
Once the circuit is complete between the ground, the person, and the alarm.
I see that they spent a lot of time on this and said, like, let's help. cover all our bases, but it also feels like a lot could like short circuit here.
The battery could die, the feathers might blow away.
Yeah, you know what? bells and whistles it has it's like a car the more shit you have on it the more shit that can go wrong yeah It's like a high efficiency dryer, if you will.
Yeah, it really is. Fuck those. It's again, it's like you start adding all this crazy stuff onto it, more stuff is going to break.
Yeah. And also, I don't want to install that shit onto my loved one's coffin.
No, it's a little too much for me. That's a lot.
And then I feel like even if I'm installing that, then forever I'll be hopeful that like something might come of it.
Yeah, exactly. And then my loved one won't be dead.
And then nothing happens and you've just done all that.
You know, what happens when they really die and you got to do that all over again?
Exactly. It's expensive. It does. It gets expensive.
It gets labor intensive. I know you start wondering, what am I here for?
Right. You start getting existential. I was literally just going to say that.
Going into a crisis. I mean, I don't want any of that.
Fuck it. Well, one of the safety coffins that a lot of people know about and like actually kind of like... took on some steam a little bit, was by Count Michael de Carnice Carnicki. who was the Chamberlain to Nicholas II of Russia.
Now, he was stressed out to make this because he had seen a young girl almost buried alive.
Oh God. This came out of stress. That'll change you.
He said after hearing her screaming to be let out from her own grave, He was obsessed to make sure it never happened to anyone again.
Now this was in 1897 and so this one had a tube which came from inside the coffin up above ground.
At the coffin end of this tube, there was a glass ball hanging over the dead person's chest.
Any movement, any breath or anything would make this delicate glass ball move in the air. and this would automatically set off a spring-loaded mechanism that opened the top of the tube to allow air to come into the coffin immediately.
Like the burial casket, once this was all triggered, a bell would go off and a flag would shoot out from the ground four feet up into the air. oh damn to let people know shit was going down for real and down down there And in case you are bummed to be interred into the ground in the dark and haven't heard anyone say like, hey, are you dead in there or not?
Like you haven't heard the parade of like, I'm not dead yet happen. there's a lamp that will burn when it gets dark.
So you can fully comprehend the nightmare situation you are in of being trapped, unable to move in a coffin. the ground do i get to like pick the style of my nightlight no All right, I'm out.
See? It's important to have a sense of when it's nighttime while in this position because then you can really soak in the terror. of being alone in your own grave in a cemetery surrounded by dead bodies in the middle of the night, I feel.
No. I feel like it's very important to like, be like, oh, like the light comes on.
It's just like, boop. It's like one of those automatic timed lights.
And you're like... Oh, cool. It's nighttime.
I'm in a cemetery in the ground in my coffin at nighttime.
No, thank you. Oh, good. Party. Okay. So, another positive for this one though was that it was hermetically sealed. so that if the person did start rotting from like actual death, the gases wouldn't be rising out of the pipes because that would be bad.
At least they thought of that. Yeah, you don't want like dead people gases just like floating around.
Can't say I do. You could also reuse this one if the person wasn't really dead.
Again, recycling. So one problem though is that any slight movement of the glass ball would trigger the alarm and sometimes, like we said, Corpses bloat.
They swell. They move weirdly. Gases emit.
Shit will move. A snake could get in there.
Sometimes they could move over onto their side because of just shifting.
That's wild. Shit can happen in there. And of course, at this point, they just weren't aware of all the shit that happened.
We didn't have body farms back then. Like Bill Bass was the one who was like, hey, look at the shit that happens when you die, guys.
For real. We needed Bill. Where were you, Bill?
Bill. Bill. Bill. Except a different one.
Oh, I love you, Bill. There's a lot of good Bills out there.
Right? There really is. There is. Yeah, you're right.
So he was determined to get this to be like the norm coffin.
He was like, I want this to be everyone's coffin, not just like people would choose it.
Everyone should have this. And he would go around to conferences and talk about this.
And at one, he said, quote, According to the declarations made by gravediggers of the great cities of all countries, when at the end of five years the dead are removed from the common grave, They find in the coffins convulsed skeletons with fists clenched, which is like, okay, we now know that that's not how that goes.
Twisted and raised to the jaws. In every part of the world, there is not a community of any importance, town or village where some memory is not preserved of people buried alive and this memory remains like a permanent terror through all time.
And he like, I should say there's an exclamation point at the end of that because he was like, no!
Like he was like Dwight Schrute at like the sales conference when he's doing all those like famous speeches.
You'll get me office people. Yeah. this was the one everyone was real psyched about after these conferences they were like yeah Everyone should have it.
Everyone should have this. Let's mass produce these.
I guess this really esteemed French physiologist named Charles Richet He said, the problem is solved.
Lethargy is vanquished. Which, yeah. I'm obsessed.
Which, hell yeah. As soon as I saw that, I was like, I don't even know, but it needs to be in there.
Yeah. The problem is solved. Lethargy is vanquished.
You're going to love it. Yes. I'm here for it.
And our dude William Tebb, he endorsed this as well.
All right. He was like on board. Everybody's gearing up together for this afterlife.
Unfortunately. unfortunately he went on tour to demonstrate this coffin sweetie what happened During one of the demonstrations, the person in the box couldn't trigger it properly, and they had to hastily dig the person out.
People immediately were like, welp, I'm done with that.
Like, nope. I'm a hero. Which is dumb. But it was really... There's problems with everything.
And the newspapers immediately latched onto it and just destroyed it.
And did they make fun of him forever? Yeah, like his reputation was like ruined.
But... It was really that and the idea that if it was triggered by something like normal post-mortem movement or swelling, that you would be digging up a ton of corpses for nothing. no reason all the time like it was just gonna cause a lot of people to get dug up Now, I thought these safety coffins were a thing of the past.
When we talk about this, we're like, yeah.
That was back then. Yeah. We know now. But I'm reminded of that clip of Madison from American Horror Story when she says, surprise, bitch.
I bet you thought you saw the last of me.
Yes. Because I searched patents for more devices like these.
I was like, I just want to see. I found one from 1921 okay and it's called quote an exclusively owned Post-mortis reactive screen to prevent premature burial.
Wow. There isn't any real information on this.
I think it's just a screen that is supposed to be like... in the coffin that you can see the person and you'd be like oh look they're waking up let's go get them So they're not buried six feet under anymore?
I think they had no idea how to make this.
They just had something that they wanted. they had like some way that they were going to have either like a viewing screen where you could actually look into it and watch the person, You know, like some kind of thing.
I know. And it's like, that's like really... Pretty ingenious.
There's another one from 2014. Bitch, that's when I graduated high school.
Wow. Moving on from that. It's US Patent 884768B2.
You know it. I've heard of it. Yeah. You believe it.
I live it. I love it. Yeah. It's a portable alarm system for coffins and the portable alarm system for coffins is a system that enables a person who has been mistakenly interred to transmit a signal that indicates that he or she is alive.
The system includes a signal-transmitting structure removably secured in the coffin or tomb.
A lamp or light source provides illumination for the tomb or coffin to allay the effect of panic for the entombed person. a receiving device is located in a prominent place whereby the transmitted signal may be readily and quickly observed by security or other personnel.
After a predetermined period, the system can be easily removed from the coffin for reuse.
Which I'm going to be honest. I think that's kind of awesome.
I like it a lot. Why not? Let's do it. I mean, why not? what's the harm what is it we're just you know why not it's just like everything will be fine don't worry if they're really dead we have it's like if you're really dead you have nothing to worry about prove it Prove it to me.
Prove it. Yeah. What? You don't want to prove it?
So that's 2014. That's crazy. So it's still very real.
Real enough that U.S. patents are being awarded for new inventions to prevent this from happening.
Crazy. I was not expecting 2014. So we're going to end this on a few examples of people that were buried alive.
Hey, I thought we might. Yeah. In Pineville, Kentucky, 1891. a 20-year-old woman named Octavia Hatcher.
She's probably one of the best known, especially in Kentucky.
Hello, Kentucky. You know who I'm talking about because there's a statue of her there.
Oh, bitch. She gave birth to her first child, who was a son named Jacob.
Unfortunately, Jacob died almost immediately after birth.
As a result, Octavia fell into a deep depression and eventually sunk into a coma from illness that same year.
On May 2nd of that year, she died. Seems like a really sad and pretty straightforward story, right?
No. It was not. You are correct. Because you see around this time a bunch of other people in the town.
It was apparently like a extremely hot place. year too, like the heat was crazy.
So they were burying people very quickly. like within 20 like people got to get in the ground we can't let them sit above ground smart because it's not like refrigeration it's like let's just throw them in a morgue it's like we let's get them in the ground let's not let them rot up here so she was boom buried But then all of a sudden a bunch of people in town are falling victim to this swooning kind of bullshit. where it appeared they were comatose or unconscious, but they were just like swooning really hard.
Okay. Like just fainting and going into a coma.
Swoon, full swoon. They believe it may have been due at this time, actually, now that they've looked back.
They think it might have been due to mosquito-borne encephalitis.
Oh, I thought you were just going to say heat stroke.
I mean that too, but they think it might have been an encephalitis thing that was causing like comas.
Crazy. So once all of this started happening, people who knew Octavia were like, oh, shit. they had her dug up because they were like, oh my god, like, what if she's one of these people?
What they found was a nightmare. Her fingernails were ground down to dust and bloody.
There were claw marks and the fabric lining of the coffin was shredded. i remember i know this one um her face was twisted into like a terrible like mask of terror And it was clear that she had woken up in her grave.
Her husband, James Hatcher, actually had a coffin made specifically for him that would prevent his own premature burial.
I don't blame him. And it is also said that he was buried with a bell attached to his finger in case he was buried alive.
He also had a beautiful statue built of her and it's still there.
I love that. all these like rumors that like you know every year on the anniversary of her death the statue will turn to face away from the town and Like she's turning her back on the town for letting it happen.
Wow. But then like people think kids are just assholes and turn the statue around.
Oh, would do that but it's interesting yeah February 8th, 1884.
The New York Times ran a story about the premature burial of Anna Hochwalt.
Now apparently January 9th, 1884, the day that it happened, was her brother's wedding day.
And yeah, in the New York Times article, it says, quote, the young lady was dressing for the nuptials and had gone into the kitchen.
A few moments afterwards, she was found sitting on a chair with her head leaning against a wall and apparently lifeless.
Medical aid was summoned in. Dr. Jewett, who after examination pronounced her dead.
The examination showed that Anna was of excitable temperament, nervous and affected with sympathetic palpitation of the heart.
Dr. Jewett thought that this was a cause of her supposed death.
They literally got married still that day, by the way.
That's a little fucked up. And the next day they had a funeral for Anna, but everyone who saw her said they couldn't shake the feeling that she was so alive looking.
And it appeared that blood was running through her veins.
She had color, like life in her eyes. And so her parents were freaked out enough hearing the amount of people saying this.
They were like, yeah, something's not right about this.
So they had her exhumed. And it says, quote, it was stated that when the coffin was opened, it was discovered that the supposed inanimate body had turned upon its right side.
The hair had been torn out in handfuls and the flesh had been bitten from the fingers.
The body was reinterred and effects made to suppress the facts. but there are those who state that they saw the body and know the facts to be narrated.
It'd be as narrated, excuse me. So yeah, so she was found, the flesh had been bitten from the fingers.
I wonder why it is that like, like what in psychology, like in the psychology of your brain makes you do that.
I assume it's just panic. Blind panic and terror, you'll go hysterical and mad.
And you'll just probably start doing crazy things.
Biting your own finger. Now, again, in February of 1885, a man named Jenkins got sick.
That's what we only know him by J. Jenkins.
A man named Jenkins. Just a guy named Jenkins.
His name was Jay Jenkins in the article.
I feel like that happens in Spongebob. What happens in Spongebob 2?
I don't know exactly, but I'm transported to a time when there's a guy named Jenkins and like he's it's like a grave and they're like it's like a haunted episode or something.
Oh my God, I thought even like they eat the flesh off their bones when they die.
No, no, no. And I was like, whoa, what episode is that?
That doesn't happen. You're like, maybe I will watch SpongeBob after all.
So Jay Jenkins had a fever. He was cold and clammy.
He couldn't speak. And they tried to wake him.
They couldn't wake him up. And when they felt for a pulse and a heartbeat, they couldn't feel him. which as we know, not super reliable.
So because it was 1885 and no one could actually be there to officially name someone dead, they were like, Welp, he's dead.
They had him buried because you have to throw that guy in the ground quick. because that's how plagues start yeah so they're like get this dude in the ground get him out of here So they did, and they buried him.
Now, before he was thrown into the earth, people around him did note that he was not stiff.
Which was weird. Yeah. But they were like...
Whatever. It's fine. It's probably fine.
I got to go to dinner tonight. Now, 10 days later, they had to dig up his coffin.
Not because they thought he was still alive, but because they were going to, it was like a wooden coffin, I guess.
And they were transporting this wooden coffin 20 miles to the family burial grounds.
That was like a thing. Uh, they inspected the coffin and then they discovered that Jenkins inside was on his stomach.
He was facing down and most of his hair had been torn out of his head and claw marks were on the lid.
Is there any instances where the person gets saved, Elena?
There was, but I didn't include them. Wow, you suck.
So the last one we're going to talk about. is in 1937 a 19 year old from france named angelo hayes now this is 1937 did everyone hear that Not too long ago.
He went for a motorcycle ride and ended up crashing his bike and his head into a brick wall.
His head was literally like mangled, like bad.
And they wouldn't even let his parents see him.
He was buried three days later and so then insurance had to get involved because this was a motorcycle accident.
And he had to be exhumed a couple of days later.
So he had been in the ground for a few days. he was warm when they got him out.
And to their astonishment, he was alive still.
Oh, okay. So the medical part of this Thank you. is that the trauma that his body had gone through had forced his body to put himself into a coma. basically to shut down all the major organs, shut down all the major processes to try to heal. which is actually what happened when I had the twins and I went into like kidney failure.
How, because I lost like, I don't know if I've told the story before, but I like lost a ton of blood when I had the twins.
And like they had to give me a few transfusions and all that.
Dude. And my kidneys shut down, like just started shutting down.
The doctor literally told me afterwards, like your body was shutting down because like you were dying.
So your body shuts down to try to preserve yourself. energy and try to preserve all the things it needs to try to get you back.
Yeah. Which was horrifying to hear afterwards, but so interesting.
Horrifying to hear. I love you so much. You should have seen yourself.
I people like totally aside here, I walked into that room with my aunt and we looked at each other and we were like. is she okay yeah it was like it was pretty I like looked at the nurse and I was like making eye contact with her like like trying to like get her to hear my thoughts.
And I'm like, you look beautiful. I've never seen someone look so good after giving birth.
Oh my God. Mama bear. And then I was like, is she going to make it?
Like, what the fuck? I was scared. Is she going to make it?
What the fuck? I was gray. We all went home and were like, so she's good, right?
She's good, right? They're not going to do anything else?
It was a real trip. You had two blood trips.
Yeah, two full blood transfusions. And then finally my kidneys were like, ah, here we are.
I'll give you one if you ever need one. I appreciate that.
I would give you one of mine too. I don't know if you want it.
I don't know if I want yours, but actually the more I think of it, you probably don't want mine.
I've done a lot of damage to this pod. I appreciate the thought.
That's all that matters. If they're good, I'll get them checked for you first.
Thanks. I think it's standard. They're doing their thing now, so it's cool.
I rebirthed them. But I think it's fascinating that, like, your body will just...
Try to save you. Like, that it knows to go into survival mode.
Bodies are wild. And then it will just, like, shut the fuses down.
Like, it's just like, whoa. Shut everything down.
We gotta make this person survive. I wish they could perfect it.
The bods. I wish the bodies could perfect it so that we could just go on and on and on and on.
And just keep shutting everything down just enough to get it back to working on it a little bit.
Yeah. Well, that's what happened to Angelo here because he went into like a trance-like coma.
Because his body was like, whoa, shit's going down.
Well, we gotta save our energy. Yeah, exactly.
So it was requiring very little oxygen for him to stay alive.
So when they brought him to the hospital after digging him up they were thinking you know what he's probably gonna be gone in like a minute because he's been in that fucking box, but he didn't need a lot of oxygen.
Right. He was revived. Oh, so you did include one.
Thank goodness. I was like, you little biatch.
He survived and he thrived, guys. See, I'm leaving you on a good note.
And then did he have to have surgery? Because you said he was found mangled.
Yeah, he definitely was. He had to have tons of stuff done, but he thrived so much, in fact, that he invented a security coffin with an oven, a fridge, and a thing to play music. music So he just wanted to live underground.
And he toured all over France showing it.
I want to see it. You want to pick? I don't have a pick.
But... Those are also, it was like rumored that it had a fridge and an oven and all that, but I think it's funny.
Just FYI, that's all based on rumor. I think it's funny though.
But he did survive. He did survive. That's just an underground apartment.
Do you want an apartment coffin? Come on up.
See the apartment coffin. I want it to be real.
I want it to be real. I want it to be real.
I'd buy one of those even if I was dead.
I'm going to chill in the afterlife. It sounds awesome.
I'm all for it. But yeah, so that is my little, A little snippet into the world of being buried alive and the fear of premature burial.
I got to tell you, like that was like very dark and morbid, obviously, because the high were morbid. um but that was like a really good episode oh thank you i really liked that It was very different than anything we've ever done, I feel.
That's what I was thinking. It would be something different.
And I really, it went well. But I think it's something everybody can relate to.
I don't think anybody's really psyched to be buried alive.
I don't think that's. I mean, if you're into that, like.
Go off. I'm not shaming you. That's fine.
But like. I just like, I feel like that's what you said.
Yeah. But yeah, I think we can all be like, whoa, yeah, I want a safety cuff.
Yeah, great job. I really liked it. Hope you guys dug it.
Yeah. All right. Well, if you did, we hope you keep listening.
Yeah. And we hope you. Keep it weird. But not so weird that you get buried alive.
Yeah. Yeah. And not so weird that you invent too complex of a safety coffin.
Keep it all weird. Just keep working on it.
Keep it simple, stupid. Thank you. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.
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