Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear

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crowyhead, December 23, 2008 (view all comments by crowyhead)
I enjoyed this cultural history of the fear of being buried alive, the often-foggy definitions of death (and methods of determining death) through the ages, and the scientific methods developed to ensure that individuals weren't buried alive. I was a little frustrated with the organization of the book, though. Bondeson starts out with horrifying stories of people being buried alive, and then goes directly into the historical reasons people might have had reason to fear live burial. This is all very interesting; doctors often weren't available to confirm that a patient was dead, so a comatose patient with a faint heartbeat might easily be mistaken for dead by family members. Moreover, doctors themselves weren't always certain how to define death, since patients sometimes revived after apparently ceasing respiratory and cardiovascular function (this was particularly a problem in the days before stethoscopes). Bondeson then moves back into tales of live burials, or near-live burials. It seems it wasn't unheard of for individuals to revive while being prepared for burial, which of course led to fears of people reviving AFTER burial. This led in some countries, like Germany, to the construction of death houses, where corpses were kept until clear signs of putrefecation were seen, and where they were linked to complex alarm systems that would alert watchmen to a corpses revival (of course, given a corpse's tendency to shift as it putrefies, there were many false alarms...). From the death house of Munich we move to patented survival coffins with alarms, and various other instruments sold to the paranoid.

Then, FINALLY, Bondeson comes back to the question of whether people were really being buried alive. The answer? Probably not, or at least not often, and it's even less likely that people were waking up in their coffins. He finally examines the reasons that observers might assume disinterred corpses had been buried alive, and discredits most of the scare stories. I found this sort of tease kind of annoying, since his introduction is filled with so many lurid tales that he never thoroughly examines until the end of the book.

Overall, this is a pretty good book, though, and it's some fascinating history.

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Product Details

ISBN:

9780393322224

Author:

Bondeson, Jan

Publisher:

W. W. Norton & Company

Location:

New York, N.Y.

Subject:

History

Subject:

Death

Subject:

Death & Dying

Subject:

Medical errors

Subject:

Proof and certification

Subject:

Death, Apparent.

Subject:

Burial, Premature.

Subject:

Popular Culture - General

Subject:

Death -- Proof and certification.

Subject:

Health and Medicine-History of Medicine

Copyright:

2001

Edition Description:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Series Volume:

116

Publication Date:

20020331

Binding:

TRADE PAPER

Grade Level:

General/trade

Language:

English

Illustrations:

More than 50 illustrations

Pages:

320

Dimensions:

8.27x6.15x.89 in. .88 lbs.