Buried Alive? Saved by the Bell?

Esperanza,

You mentioned someone's grandmother buried alive? Do you know more about that? How did they discover that?

When I was studying Italian, our instructor, a native of Italy, told us that she never wanted to be embalmed, that they didn't do that in Italy because of known cases where someone thought to be deceased was buried alive. How they knew that I don't know.

I also read in one of my genealogy newsletters, I can't remember which, about the origin of the term "Saved by the Bell". It seems that back before embalming was common, people buried alive could summon help with a bell. People would be buried with a cord tied around their hands, and if they came to after being comatose, their thrashing around in the coffin would cause the cord to pull on a bell hung on the cross above their grave, and someone would know to come and unearth them.

I also heard from a boyfriend of my sister's who was raised in the Dominican Republic next door to Haiti where they had voodoo witch doctors who would go into such deep trances that they were thought to have died and be buried and would awaken later underground and start scratching. Apparently, this guy's grandfather was such a case. He said there was evidence his grandfather had come to in the grave because the lining of his casket was scratched and torn right above where his hands had been. He probably suffocated. I never found out why they had unearthed him in the first place.

Is this all just folklore? How do people find out about people being buried alive?

Emilie Garcia
Port Orchard, WA ---