I read that the tradition of the vigil or "wake" originated from the need to wait and see if the person was indeed dead. Sometimes they would pick up a drunk man that was passed out on the street and assume he was dead and so they laid him out for a few days, "just in case." I heard of a woman who had been entombed in the family crypt and years later when then opened it they saw her skeleton crumpled by the door as if she had awakened and, unable to open the door, probably died of starvation. Creepy!

Emilie Garcia wrote: 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 ---