A Man's Fear of Being Buried Alive Turns to Horror | "The Premature Burial", Edgar Allan Poe horror - Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome Weirdos. I'm Darren Marler and this is Weird Darkness.
Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore,
the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained.
Coming up, I'm bringing back the Master of the macab

(00:30):
Edgar Allan Poe with his story The Premature Burial, originally
published in the Philadelphia Dollar newspaper in eighteen forty four.
Fear of burial alive was deeply rooted in Western culture
in the nineteenth century when this was originally printed, and
Poe was taking advantage of the public's fascination with it
as well as their fears about it. Hundreds of cases

(00:52):
were rumored to have taken place in which doctors mistakenly
pronounced people dead, although very few of these have been
verified to have actually occurred. Still, the terrorizing idea was
enough for people to take precautions. During this time, Coffins
occasionally were equipped with emergency devices to allow the corpse
to call for help should he or she turn out

(01:14):
to still be living. It was such a strong concern
victorians even organized a Society for the Prevention of People
being buried alive. Belief in the vampire and animated corpse
that remains in its grave by day and emerges to
prey on the living at night has sometimes been attributed
to premature burial. Poe's story emphasizes this fascination by having

(01:38):
the narrator state that truth can be more terrifying than
fiction than reciting actual cases. In order to convince the
reader to believe the main story, you'll hear the narrator
complain of attacks of the singular disorder, which physicians have
agreed to term catalepsy. For those unfamiliar with the term,
catalepsy is a nervous condition characterized by muscular rigidity and

(02:01):
fixture of posture regardless of external stimuli, as well as
decreased sensitivity to pain. The condition will cause the person
to randomly fall into a death like trance, leaving them
with a variety of possible symptoms, including a rigid body,
rigid limbs, limbs staying in the same position when moved,
loss of muscle control, and even slowing down of bodily

(02:23):
functions such as breathing. It can look so much like
true death that having this condition leads to the narrator's
true fear of being buried alive. Poe was obviously fascinated
with the idea of being buried alive. He included the
idea in other works of his such as Berenice, The
Cask of Amontelado, The Fall of the House of Usher,

(02:45):
and The Black Cat. Now the Premature Burial by Edgar
Allan Poe. So bult your doors, lock your windows, turn
off your lights, and come with me into the weird darkness. Yes,

(03:20):
there are certain themes of which the interest is all absorbing,
but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of
legitimate fiction. These the mere romanticist must chue if you
do not wish to offend or to discust. They are
with propriety handled only when the severity and majesty of
truth sanctify and sustain them. We thrill, for example, with

(03:43):
the most intense of pleasurable pain, over the accounts of
the passage of the Beresina, of the earthquake at Lisbon,
of the plague at London, of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew,
or of the stifling of the one hundred and twenty
three prisoners in the black Hole at Calcutta. But in
these accounts, it is the fact, it is the reality.

(04:05):
It is the history which excites as inventions, we should
regard them with simple abhorrence. I have mentioned some few
of the more prominent and august calamities on record, But
in these it is the extent, not less than the
character of the calamity, which so vividly impresses the fancy.

(04:25):
I need not remind the reader that from the long
and weird catalog of human miseries I might have selected
many individual instances more replete with essential suffering than any
of these vast generalities of disaster. The true wretchedness, indeed,
the ultimate woe, is particular, not diffuse that the ghastly

(04:47):
extremes of agony are endured by man the unit, and
never by man the mask. For this, let us thank
a merciful God. To be buried while alive is beyond question,
the most terrific of these extremes, which has ever fallen
to the lot of mere mortality, that it has frequently,

(05:09):
very frequently so fallen, will scarcely be denied by those
who think the boundaries which divide life from death are
at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the
one ends and where the other begins. We know that
there are diseases in which occur total cessations of the

(05:30):
all apparent functions of vitality, and yet in which these
cessations are merely suspensions, properly so called, they are only
temporary pauses, and the incomprehensible mechanism a certain period elapses
in some unseen mysterious principle again sets in motion the
magic pinions and the wizard wheels. The silver cord was

(05:52):
not forever loosed, nor the golden bowl irreparably broken, but
where meantime the soul Apart, however, from the inevitable conclusion
a priory that such causes must produce such effects that
the well known occurrence of such cases of suspended animation

(06:12):
must naturally give rise now and then to premature interments.
Apart from this consideration, we have the direct testimony of
medical and ordinary experience to prove that a vast number
of such interments have actually taken place. I might refer
at once, if necessary, to one hundred well authenticated instances,

(06:35):
what a very remarkable character, and of which the circumstances
may be fresh in the memory of some of my readers,
occurred not very long ago in the neighboring city of Baltimore,
where it occasioned a painful, intense, and widely extended excitement.
The wife of one of the most respectable citizens, a
lawyer of eminence and a member of Congress, was seized

(06:57):
with a sudden and unaccountable illness which completely baffled the
skill of her physicians. After much suffering, she died, or
was supposed to die. No one suspected, indeed, or had
reason to suspect, that she was not actually dead. She
presented all the ordinary appearances of death. The face assumed

(07:20):
the usual pinched and sunken outline, the lips were of
the usual marble pallor. The eyes were lustreless. There was
no warmth. Pulsation had ceased for three days. The body
was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired a stony rigidity.
The funeral, in short, was hastened on account of the

(07:42):
rapid advance of what was supposed to be decomposition. The
lady was deposited in her family vault, which for three
subsequent years was undisturbed. At the expiration of this term,
it was opened for the reception of a sarcophagus, but
alas how fearful, a shock awaited the husband, who personally

(08:03):
threw open the door. As its portals swung outwardly back,
some white apparelled object fell rattling within his arms. It
was the skeleton of his wife in her yet unmolded shroud.
The careful investigation rendered it evident that she had revived
within two days after her entombment, that her struggles within

(08:23):
the coffin had caused it to fall from a ledge
or shelf to the floor, where it was so broken
as to permit her escape. A lamp, which had been
accidentally left full of oil within the tomb, was found empty.
It might have been exhausted, however, by evaporation. On the
uttermost the steps which led down into the dread chamber

(08:44):
was a large fragment of the coffin, with which it
seemed that she had endeavored to arrest attention by striking
the iron door. While thus occupied, she probably swooned or
possibly died through sheer terror, and in failing her shroud
became intent in some iron work which projected anteriorly. Thus
she remained, and thus she rodded direct. In the year

(09:10):
eighteen ten, a case of living in humation happened in France,
attended with circumstances which go far to warrant the assertion
that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. The heroine of
the story was a mademoiselle Victorine Laforceide, a young girl
of illustrious family, of wealth, and of great personal beauty.

(09:30):
Among her numerous suitors was Julian Bossuet, a poor literature
or journalist of Paris. His talents and general amiability had
recommended him to the notice of the heiress by whom
he seems to have been truly beloved, But her pride
of birth decided her finally to reject him and to
wed a monsieur Renelle, a banker and a diplomatist of

(09:53):
some eminence. After marriage, however, this gentleman neglected and perhaps
even more positively ill treated her. Having passed with him
some wretched years, she died, at least, her condition so
closely resembled death as to deceive everyone who saw her.
She was buried not in a vault, but in an

(10:14):
ordinary grave in the village of her nativity. Filled with
despair and still inflamed by the memory of a profound attachment.
The lover journeys from the capital to the remote province
in which the village lies, with the romantic purpose of
disinterring the corpse and possessing himself of its luxuriant tresses.
He reaches the grave at midnight. He unearths the coffin,

(10:37):
opens it, and is in the act of detaching the
hair when he is arrested by the unclosing of the
beloved eyes. In fact, the lady had been buried alive,
vitality had not altogether departed, and she was aroused by
the caresses of her lover from the lethargy which had
been mistaken for death. He bore her frantically to his
lodgings in the village. He employed certain powerful restips oratives

(11:00):
suggested by no little medical learning. In fine she revived,
She recognized her preserver. She remained with him until, by
slow degrees, she fully recovered her original health. Her woman's
heart was not adamant, and this last lesson of love
sufficed to soften it. She bestowed it upon Bassuette. She

(11:22):
returned no more to her husband, but concealing from him
her resurrection, fled with her lover to America. Twenty years Afterward,
the two returned to France in the persuasion that time
had so greatly altered the lady's appearance that her friends
would be unable to recognize her. They were mistaken, however,
for at the first meeting, Monsieur Renelle did actually recognize

(11:46):
and make claim to his wife. This claim she resisted,
and a judicial tribunal sustained her in her resistance, deciding
that the peculiar circumstances, with the long lapse of years,
had extinguished not only equitably but legally the authority of
her husband. The Chururgical Journal of Leipsic, a periodical of

(12:07):
high authority in merit, which some American bookseller would do
well to translate and republish, records in a late number,
a very distressing event of the character in question, an
officer of artillery, a man of gigantic stature and of
robust health, being thrown from an unmanageable horse, received a
very severe contusion upon the head, which rendered him insensible

(12:30):
at once. The skull was slightly fractured, but no immediate
danger was apprehended. Trepanning was accomplished successfully. He was bled,
and many other of the ordinary means of relief were adopted. Gradually, However,
he fell into a more and more hopeless state, a stupor,
and finally it was thought that he died. The weather

(12:51):
was warm, and he was buried with indecent haste in
one of the public cemeteries. His funeral took place on Thursday,
on the Sunday foure. The grounds of the cemetery were,
as usual much thronged with visitors, and about noon an
intense excitement was created by the declaration of a peasant that,
while sitting upon the grave of the officer, he had

(13:12):
distinctly fell a commotion of the earth, as if occasioned
by someone struggling beneath. At first, little attention was paid
to the man's deservation, but his evident terror and his
dogged obstinacy with which he persisted in his story, had
at length their natural effect upon the crowd. Spades were
hurriedly procured, and the grave, which was shamefully shallow, was

(13:35):
at a few minutes so far thrown open that the
head of its occupant appeared. He was then seemingly dead,
but he sat nearly erect within his coffin, the lid
of which in his furious struggles he had partially uplifted.
He was forthwith conveyed to the nearest hospital, and there
pronounced to be still living, although in an asphytic condition.

(13:58):
After some hours he revived, recognized individuals of his acquaintance,
and in broken sentences, spoke of his agonies in the grave.
From what he related, it was clear that he must
have been conscious of life for more than an hour
while inhumed, before lapsing into insensibility. The grave was carelessly

(14:20):
and loosely filled with an exceedingly porous soil, and thus
some air was necessarily admitted. He heard the footsteps of
the crowd overhead, and endeavored to make himself heard in turn.
It was the tumult within the grounds of the cemetery,
he said, which appeared to awaken him from a deep sleep.
But no sooner was he awake than he became fully

(14:41):
aware of the awful horrors of his position. This patient
is recorded was doing well and seemed to be in
a fair way of ultimate recovery, but fell a victim
to the quackeries of medical experiment. The galvatic battery was applied,
and he suddenly expired in one of those ecstatic paroxysms,
which a key it superinduces. The mention of the galvatic

(15:04):
battery nevertheless recalls to my memory a well known and
very extraordinary case in point where its action proved the
means of restoring to animation a young attorney of London
who had been interred for two days. This occurred in
eighteen thirty one, and created at the time a very
profound sensation wherever it was made the subject of converts.

(15:28):
The patient, mister Edward Stapleton, had died apparently of typhus fever,
accompanied with some anomalous symptoms which had excited the curiosity
of his medical attendance. Upon his seeming decease, his friends
were requested to sanction a post mortem examination, but declined
to permit it. As often happens when such refusals are made,

(15:49):
the practitioners resolved to disinter the body and dissect it
at leisure in private. Arrangements were easily affected with some
of the numerous corps of bodies mats with which London abounds,
and upon the third night after the funeral, the supposed
corpse was unearthed from a grave eight feet deep and
deposited in the opening chamber of one of the private hospitals.

(16:13):
An incision of some extent had been actually made in
the abdomen, when the fresh and undecayed appearance of the
subject suggested an application of the battery. One experiment succeeded another,
and the customary effects supervened, with nothing to characterize them
in any respect, except upon one or two occasions a
more than ordinary degree of lifelikeness in the convulsive action.

(16:36):
It grew late, the day was about to dawn, and
it was thought expedient at length to proceed at once
to the dissection. A student, however, was especially desirous of
testing a theory of his own, and insisted upon applying
the battery to one of the pectoral muscles. A rough
gash was made and a wire hastily brought in contact.
When the patient, with a hurried but quite unconvulsive moment,

(17:00):
rose from the table, stepped into the middle of the floor,
gazed about him uneasily for a few seconds, and then spoke.
What he said was unintelligible, but words were uttered. The
syllaplification was to state, having spoken, he fell heavily to
the floor. For some moments. All were paralyzed with awe,

(17:21):
but the urgency of the case soon restored them their
presence of mind. It was seen that mister Stapleton was alive,
although in a swoon. Upon exhibition of ether, he revived,
and was rapidly restored to health and to the society
of his friends, from whom, however, all knowledge of his
resuscitation was withheld until a relapse was no longer to

(17:43):
be apprehended. Their wonder, their rapturous astonishment, may be conceived.
The most thrilling peculiarity of this incident, nevertheless, is involved
in what mister s himself asserts. He declares that no
period was he altogether insensible, that duly and confusedly, he

(18:05):
was aware of everything which happened to him, from the
moment in which he was pronounced dead by his physicians
to that in which he fell swooning to the floor
of the hospital. I am alive, were the uncomprehended words which,
upon recognizing the locality of the dissecting room, he had
endeavored in his extremity to utter. It was an easy

(18:26):
matter to multiply such histories as these, but I forbear,
for indeed, we have no need of such to establish
the fact that premature interments occur when we reflect, how
very rarely from the nature of the case we have
it in our power to detect them. We must admit
that they may frequently occur without our cognizance, scarcely in truth,

(18:48):
as a graveyard ever encroached upon for any purpose, to
any great extent, that skeletons are not found in postures
which suggest the most fearful of suspicions. Fearful indeed the suspicion,
but more fearful the doom. It may be asserted without hesitation,
that no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire

(19:10):
the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is
burial before death, the unendurable oppression of the lungs, the
stifling fumes from the damp earth, the clinging to the
death garments, the rigid embrace of the narrow house, the
blackness of the absolute night, the silence like a sea

(19:32):
that overwhelms, the unseen but palpable presence of the conqueror worm.
These things, with the thoughts of the air and grass above,
with memory of dear friends who would fly to save
us if but informed of our fate, and with consciousness
that of this fate. They can never be informed that
our hopeless portion is that of the really dead. These considerations,

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I say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates a
degree of a appalling and the intolerable horror from which
the most daring imagination must recoil. We know of nothing
so agonizing upon earth. We can dream of nothing half
so hideous in the realms of the nethermost health. And

(20:16):
thus all narratives upon this topic have an interest profound,
and interests nevertheless, which, through the sacred awe of the
topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly depends upon our
conviction of the truth of the matter narrated. What I
have now to tell is of my own actual knowledge,

(20:37):
of my own positive and personal experience. For several years
I had been subject to attacks of the singular disorder
which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy in default of
a more definitive title. Although both the immediate and the
predisposing causes, and even the actual diagnosis of this disease

(20:59):
are mysterious, its obvious and apparent character is sufficiently well understood.
His variations seem to be chiefly of degree. Sometimes the
patient lies for a day only, or even for a
shorter period. In a species of exaggerated lethargy, he is
senseless and externally motionless, but the pulsation of the heart

(21:21):
is still faintly perceptible. Some traces of warmth remain, a
slight color lingers within the center of the cheek, and
upon application of a mirror to the lips, we can
detect a torpid, unequal, and vacillating action of the lungs.
Then again, the duration of the trance is for weeks,
even for months, while the closest scrutiny in the most

(21:44):
rigorous medical tests fail to establish any material distinction between
the state of the sufferer and what we conceive of
absolute death. Very usually he is saved from premature interment
solely by the knowledge of his friends that he has
been previously subject to catalepsy, by the consequence suspicion excited,

(22:04):
and above all by the non appearance of decay. The
advances of the malady are luckily gradual. The first manifestations,
although market are unequivocal. The fits grow successively more and
more distinctive, and endure each for a longer term than
the preceding In this lies the principal security from inhumation.

(22:27):
The unfortunate, whose first attack should be of the extreme
character which is occasionally seen, would almost inevitably be consigned alive.
To the tune. My own case differed in no important
particular from those mentioned in medical books. Sometimes without any
apparent cause, I sank little by little into a condition

(22:50):
of semi syncopy or half swoon. And in this condition,
without pain, without ability to stir, or strictly speaking, to think,
but with a dull, lethargic consciousness of life, and to
the presence of those who surrounded my bed, I remained
until the crisis of the disease restored me suddenly to
perfect sensation. At other times I was quickly and impetuously smitten.

(23:15):
I grew sick and numb, and chilly and dizzy, and
so fell prostrate at once. Then for weeks all was
void and black and silent, and nothing became the universe.
Total annihilation could be no more. From these latter attacks.
I awoke, however, with a gradation slow in proportion to

(23:38):
the suddenness of the seizure, just as the day dawns.
To the friendless and houseless beggar who roams the streets
throughout the long desolate winter night. Just so tardily, just
so wearily, just so cheerily, came back the light of
the soul to me. Apart from the tendency to trance, however,

(23:59):
my general health appeared to be good, Nor could I
perceive that it was at all affected by the one
prevalent malady, unless indeed, an idiosyncrasy in my ordinary sleep
may be looked upon as superinduced. Upon awaking from slumber,
I could never gain at once thorough possession of my senses,

(24:19):
and always remained for many minutes in much bewilderment and perplexity.
The mental faculties in general, but the memory in especial,
being in a condition of absolute abeyance. In all that
I endured, there was no physical suffering, but of moral
distress and infinitude. My fancy grew carnal. I talked of

(24:42):
worms and tombs and epitaphs. I was lost in reveries
of death, and the idea of premature burial held continual
possession of my brain. The ghastly danger to which I
was subjected haunted me day and night. In the former,
the torture of meditation was excessive in the latter supreme.

(25:04):
When the grim darkness overspread the earth, then with every
horror of thought, I shook, shook, as the quivering plumes
upon the hearse, when nature could endure wakefulness no longer.
It was with a struggle that I consented to sleep,
for I shuddered to reflect that upon waking I might
find myself the tenant of a grave. And when finally

(25:26):
I sank into slumber, it was only to rush at
once into a world of phantasms, above which, with vast
sable overshadowing wing covered predominant the one sepulchral idea from
the innumerable images of gloom, which thus oppressed me. In dreams,
I select for record but a solitary vision. I thought

(25:47):
I was immersed in a cataleptic trance of more than
usual duration and profundity. Suddenly there came an icy hand
upon my forehead, and an impatient, gibbering voice forred the
word arise within my ear. I sat erect. The darkness
was total. I could not see the figure of him

(26:08):
who had aroused me. I could cold a mind, neither
the period at which I had fallen into the trance,
nor the locality in which I then lay. While I
remained motionless and busied in endeavors to collect my thought,
the cold hand grasped me fiercely by the wrist, shaking
it petulantly, while the gibbering voice said again, arise, Did

(26:29):
I not bid thee arise? And coom? I demanded? Art thou?
I have no name in the regions which I inhabit,
replied the voice mournfully. I was mortal, but am fiend.
I was merciless, but am pitiful. Thou dost feel that
I shudder, my teeth chatter as I speak. Yet it
is not with the chilliness of the night, of the

(26:50):
night without end. But this hideousness is insufferable. How canst
thou tranquility sleep? I cannot rest for the cry of
these great agonies, these sights on more than I can bear.
Get THEE up, Come with me into the outer night,
and let me unfold to thee the graves. Is not
this a spectacle of woe? Behold? I looked, and the

(27:13):
unseen figure, which still grasped me by the wrist, had
caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind,
and from each issued the faint phosphor ingredients of decay,
so that I could see into the innermost recesses, and
their view the shrouded bodies and their sad and solemn
slumbers with the worm but less. The real sleepers were

(27:35):
fewer by many millions than those who slumbered not at all.
And there was a feeble struggling, and there was a
general sad unrest, And from out the depths of the
countless pits there came a melancholy rustling from the garments
of the buried, and of those who seemed tranquility to repose.
I saw that a vast number had changed in a

(27:56):
greater or less degree, the rigid and uneasy position which
they had originally been entombed. And the voice again said
to me, as I gazed, is it not, Oh, is
it not? Oh? A pitiful sight? But before I could
find words to reply, the figure had ceased to grasp
my wrist, The phosphoric lights expired, and the graves were

(28:16):
closed with a sudden violence, while from out them a
rose a tumult of despairing cries, saying, again, is it not,
Oh God, is it not? A very pitiful sight? Fantasies
such as these presenting themselves at night extended their terrific
influence far into my waking hours. My nerves became thoroughly unstrung,

(28:39):
and I fell a prey to perpetual horror. I hesitated
to ride, or to walk, or to indulge in any
exercise that would carry me from home. In fact, I
no longer dared trust myself out of the immediate presence
of those who were aware of my proneness to catalepsy.
Last falling into one of my usual fits, I should
be bare worried before my real condition could be ascertained.

(29:03):
I doubted the care the fidelity of my dearest friends.
I dreaded that, in some trance of more than customary duration,
they might be prevailed upon to regard me as irrecoverable.
I even went so far as to fear that as
I occasioned much trouble, they might be glad to consider
any very protracted attack as sufficient excuse for getting rid

(29:26):
of me altogether. It was in vain they endeavored to
reassure me by the most solemn promises. I exacted the
most sacred oaths that under no circumstances they would bury
me until decomposition had so materially advanced as to render
farther preservation impossible. And even then my mortal terrors would

(29:47):
listen to no reason, would accept no consolation. I added
into a series of elaborate precautions. Among other things, I
had the family vault so remodeled as to admit of
being readily opened from within. The slightest pressure upon a
long lever that I extended far into the tomb would
cause the iron portal to fly back. There were arrangements

(30:09):
also for the free admission of air and light, and
convenient receptacles for food and water within immediate reach of
the coffin intended for my reception. This coffin was warmly
and softly padded, and was provided with a lid fashioned
upon the principle of the vault door, with the addition
of springs so contrived that the feeblest movement of the

(30:31):
body would be sufficient to set it at liberty. Besides
all this, there was suspended from the roof of the
tomb a large bell, the rope of which it was
designed should extend through a hole in the coffin, and
so be fastened to one of the hands of the corpse.
But alas what avails the vigilance against the destiny of man.
Not even these well contrived securities sufficed to save from

(30:55):
the uttermost agonies of living inhumation, a wretch to the
agonies foredoomed. There arrived an epoch, as often before there
had arrived, in which I found myself emerging from total
unconsciousness into the first feeble and indefinite sense of existence. Slowly,

(31:16):
with a tortoise gradation approached the faint gray dawn of
the day, a torpid uneasiness, an apathetic endurance of dull pain,
no care, no hope, no effort. Then, after a long interval,
a ringing in the years, then after a lapse still longer,
a prickling or tingling sensation in the extremities, than a

(31:38):
seemingly eternal period of pleasurable quiescence, during which the awakening
feelings are struggling into thought, that a brief re sinking
into nonentity, then a sudden recovery at length, the slight
quivering of an eyelid, and immediately thereupon an electric shock
of terror, deadly and indefinite, which sends the blood in

(32:00):
torrents from the temples to the heart. And now the
first positive effort to think, and now the first endeavor
to remember, and now a partial and evanescent success. And
now the memory has so far regained its dominion that
in some measure I am cognizant of my state. I
feel that I am not awaking from ordinary sleep. I

(32:21):
recollect that I have been subject to catalepsy. And now,
at last, as if by the rush of an ocean,
my shuddering spirit is overwhelmed by the one grim danger,
by the one spectral and ever prevalent idea. For some
minutes after this fancy possessed me, I remained without motion.
And why I could not summon courage to move, I

(32:44):
dared not make the effort which was to satisfy me
of my fate. And yet there was something at my
heart which whispered me. It was sure despair, such as
no other species of wretchedness ever calls into being. Along
urged me. After long irresolution to uplift the heavy lids

(33:05):
of my eyes. I uplifted them. It was dark, all dark.
I knew that the fit was over. I knew that
the crisis of my disorder had long passed. I knew
that I had now fully recovered the use of my
visual faculties. And yet it was dark, all dark, the

(33:29):
intense and utter raylessness of the night that endureth forevermore.
I endeavored to shriek, and my lips and my parched
tongue moved convulsively together in the attempt, but no voice
issued from the cavernous lungs, which oppressed, as if by
the weight of some incumbent mountain, gasped and palpitated with
the heart at every elaborate and struggling inspiration. The movement

(33:52):
of the jaws in this effort to cry aloud showed
me that they were bound up, as is usual with
the dead. I felt, too, that I lay upon some
hard substance, and by something similar, my sides were also
closely compressed. So far I had not ventured to stir
any of my limbs. But now I violently threw up

(34:13):
my arms, which had been lying at length with the
wrists crossed. They struck a solid, wooden substance which extended
above my person, at an elevation of not more than
six inches from my face. I could no longer doubt
that I reposed within a coffin at last, and now
made all my infinite miseries came sweetly, the cherub hope.

(34:36):
For I followed my precautions. I writhed and made sposmatic
exertions to force open the lid. It would not move.
I felt my wrists for the bell rope. It was
not to be found. And now the comforter fled forever,
and a still sterner despair ranged triumphant, for I could
not help perceiving the absence of the paddings which I

(34:57):
had so carefully prepared. And then there came suddenly to
my nostrils the strong, peculiar odor of moist earth. The
conclusion was irresistible. I was not within the vault. I
had fallen into a trance while absent from home, while
among strangers. When or how I could not remember. And

(35:19):
it was they who had buried me as a dog
kneeled up in some common coffin and thrust deep, deep,
and forever into some ordinary and nameless grave. As this
awful conviction forced itself thus into the innermost chambers of
my soul, I once again struggled to cry aloud, and

(35:39):
in the second endeavor I succeeded a long, wild and
continuous shriek or yell of agony resounded through the realms
of the subterranean night HILLO. Hello, there said a gruff
voice in reply, What the devil's the matter? Now? Said
a second? Get out of that? Said a third, What
do you mean by yowling in that air kind of style?

(36:02):
Like a catamount? Set a fourth, And hereupon I was
seized and shaken without ceremony for several minutes by a
juno of very rough looking individuals. They did not arouse
me from my slumber, for I was wide awake when
I screamed, but they restored me to the full possession
of my memory. This adventure occurred near Richmond in Virginia.

(36:23):
Accompanied by a friend, I had proceeded upon a gunning
expedition some miles down the banks of the James River.
Night approached and we were overtaken by a storm. The
cabin of a small sloop, lying at anchor in the
stream and laden with garden mold, afforded us the only
available shelter. We made the best of it and passed
the night on board. I slept in one of the

(36:45):
only two berths in the vessel, and the berths of
a sloop of sixty or twenty tons need scarcely be described.
That which I occupied had no bedding of any kind.
Its extreme width was eighteen inches, the distance of its
bottom from the deck overhead was precisely the same. I
found it a matter of exceeding difficulty to squeeze myself in. Nevertheless,

(37:08):
I slept soundly, and the whole of my vision, for
it was no dream and no nightmare, arose naturally from
the circumstances of my position, from my ordinary bias of thought,
and from the difficulty to which I have alluded of
collecting my senses, and especially of regaining my memory for
a long time after awakening from slumber. The men who

(37:29):
shook me were the crew of the sloop, and some
laborers engaged to unload it. From the load itself came
the earthly smell. The bandage about the jaws was a
silk handkerchief in which I had bound up my head
in default of my customary nightcap. The tortures ended, however,
were indubitably quite equal for the time to those of

(37:50):
actual sepulture. They were fearfully, they were inconceivably hideous, but
out of evil proceeded good. Their very excess wrought in
my spirit and inevitable revulsion. My soul acquired tone, acquired temper.
I went abroad, I took vigorous exercise. I breathed the

(38:13):
free air of heaven. I thought upon other subjects than death.
I discarded my medical books, Bukhan I burned. I read
no night thoughts, no fostian about churchyards, no bugaboo tales
such as this. In short, I became a new man,
and I lived a man's life. From that memorable night,

(38:34):
I dismissed forever my carnal apprehensions, and with them vanished
the cataleptic disorder of which perhaps they had been less
the consequence than the cause. There are moments when, even
to the sober eye of reason, the world of our
sad humanity may assume the semblance of a hell. But

(38:55):
the imagination of man is no carethus to explore with impunity.
It's every cavern alas the grim legion of Sepulcher terrors
cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful. But like the demons
in whose company A frosiab made us voyage down the Oxus,
they must sleep or they will devour us. They must

(39:16):
be suffered to slumber, or we perish. Thanks for listening.

(39:36):
If you like the show, please share it with someone
you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters,
or unsolved mysteries like you do. The premature Burial was
written by Edgar Allan Poe Weird Darkness as a production
and trademark of Marler House Productions, Copyright Weird Darkness. And
now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave

(39:57):
you with a little light mark twelve verses twenty eight
B through thirty. One. Of all the commandments, which is
the most important? The most important one, answered Jesus, is
this hero Israel, the Lord, our God. The Lord is one.
Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and
with all your soul, and with all your mind, and
with all your strength. The second is this, love your

(40:20):
neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.
And a final thought from Plato, never discourage anyone who
continually makes progress, no matter how slow. I'm Darren Marler.
Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.

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A Man's Fear of Being Buried Alive Turns to Horror | "The Premature Burial", Edgar Allan Poe horror

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}A Man's Fear of Being Buried Alive Turns to Horror | "The Premature Burial", Edgar Allan Poe horror