menu_book Chapter 7

chapter seven of creepy tales by edgar allan poe the premature burial 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 eschew if he do not wish to offend or to disgust they are with propriety handled only when the severity and majesty of truth sanctify and sustain them we thrill for example with 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 st bartholomew or of the stifling of the hundred and twenty-three prisoners in the black hole at calcutta but in these accounts it is the fact it is the reality 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

i need not remind the reader that from the long and weird catalogue 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 extremes of agony are endured by man the unit and never by man the mass 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 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 all the apparent functions of vitality and yet in which these cessations are merely suspensions properly so called

there are only temporary pauses in the incomprehensible mechanism a certain period elapses and some unseen mysterious principle again sets in motion the magic pinions and the wizard wheels the silver cord was not for ever loosed nor the golden bowl irreparably broken but where meantime was the soul apart however from the inevitable conclusion a priori that such causes must produce such effects that the well-known occurrence of such cases of suspended animation 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 a hundred well-authenticated instances one of 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 neighbouring 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 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 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 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 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 unmoulded shroud a careful investigation rendered it evident that she had revived within two days after her entombment that her struggles within 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 of the steps which led down into the dread chamber was a large fragment of the coffin with which it seemed that she had endeavoured 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 entangled in some ironwork which projected interiorly thus she remained and thus she rotted erect in the year eighteen ten a case of living inhumation 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 lafourcade a young girl of illustrious family of wealth and of great personal beauty among her numerous suitors was julien bossuet a poor litterateur 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 m renel a banker and a diplomatist of 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 every one who saw her she was buried not in a vault but in an 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 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 restoratives 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 bossuet she 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 m renal did actually recognize 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 the husband the chirurgical journal of leipsic a periodical of high authority and 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 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 of stupor and finally it was thought that he died the weather was warm and he was buried with indecent haste in one of the public cemeteries his funeral took place on thursday on the sunday following 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 distinctly felt a commotion of the earth as if occasioned by one struggling beneath at first little attention was paid to the man's asseveration but his evident terror and the 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 in 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 ascetic condition 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 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 aware of the awful horrors of his position this patient it is recorded was doing well and seemed to be in a fair way of ultimate recovery but fell the victim to the quackeries of medical experiment the galvanic battery was applied and he suddenly expired in one of those ecstatic paroxysms which occasionally its super induces the mention of the galvanic 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 converse the patient mr 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 the practitioners resolved to disinter the body and dissect it at leisure in private arrangements were easily effected with some of the numerous corps of body snatchers 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 an incision of some extent had actually been 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 life-likeness in the convulsive action 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 movement arose 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 syllabification was distinct having spoken he fell heavily to the floor for some moments all were paralyzed with awe but the urgency of the case soon restored them their presence of mind it was seen that mr 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 be apprehended their wonder their rapturous astonishment may be conceived the most thrilling peculiarity of this incident nevertheless is involved in what mr s himself asserts he declares that at no period

was he altogether insensible that dully and confusedly he 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 were an easy 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 is 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 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 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 i say carry into the heart which still palpitates a degree of appalling and 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 hell and thus all narratives upon this topic have an interest profound an interest 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 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 are still mysterious its obvious and apparent character is sufficiently well understood

its 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 is still faintly perceptible some traces of warmth remain a slight colour lingers within the centre 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 and the most 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 consequent suspicion excited and above all by the non-appearance of decay the advances of the malady are luckily gradual the first manifestations although marked 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

the unfortunate whose first attack should be of the extreme character which is occasionally seen would almost inevitably be consigned alive to the tomb 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 of hemi syncope 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 of 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 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 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 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 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 an infinitude my fancy grew charnel i talked of worms of 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

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 i sank into slumber it was only to rush at once into a world of phantasms above which with vast sable overshadowing wing hovered 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 methought 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 whispered the word arise within my ear

i sat erect the darkness was total i could not see the figure of him who had aroused me i could call to 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 endeavours to collect my thought the cold hand grasped me fiercely by the wrist shaking it petulantly while the gibbering voice said again arise arise did i not bid thee arise and who 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 night without end but this hideousness is insufferable how canst thou tranquilly sleep i cannot rest for the cry of these great agonies these sights are more than i can bear

get thee up come with me into the outer night and let me unfold to thee the graves is this not a spectacle of woe behold i looked and the 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 phosphoric radiance of decay so that i could see into the innermost recesses and there view the shrouded bodies in their sad and sullen slumbers with the worm but alas the real sleepers were 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 tranquilly to repose i saw that a vast number had changed in a greater or less degree the rigid and uneasy position in which they had originally been entombed and the voice again said to me as i gazed is it not oh is it not 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 closed with a sudden violence while from out them arose 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 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

lest falling into one of my usual fits i should be buried before my real condition could be ascertained 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 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 listen to no reason would accept no consolation i entered 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 extended far into the tomb would cause the iron portal to fly back there were arrangements also for the free admission of air and light and convenient receptacles for food and water with 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 body would be sufficient to set it at liberty beside 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 the uttermost agonies of living inhumation a wretch to these 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 with a tortoise gradation approached the faint grey dawn of the cycle 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 ears then after a lapse still longer a prickling or tingling sensation in the extremities then a seemingly eternal period of pleasurable quiescence during which the awakening feelings are struggling into thought then a brief re-sinking into nonentity then a sudden recovery at length the slight quivering of an eyelid and immediately thereon an electric shock of a terror deadly and indefinite which sends the blood in torrents from the temples to the heart and now the first positive effort to think and now the first endeavour 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 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 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 despair alone urged me after long irresolution to uplift the heavy lids 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 intense and utter raylessness of the night that endureth for evermore 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 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 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 amid all my infinite miseries came sweetly the cherub hope for i thought of my precautions i writhed and made spasmodic 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 for ever and a still sterner despair reigned triumphant for i could not help perceiving the absence of the paddings which i had so carefully prepared and then too there came suddenly to my nostrils the strong peculiar odour 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 it was they who had buried me as a dog nailed up in some common coffin and thrust deep deep and for ever 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 in this second endeavour i succeeded a long wild and continuous shriek or yell of agony resounded through the realms of the subterranean night hello hello there said a gruff voice in reply what the devil's the matter now said a second get out o that said a third what do you mean by yowling in that ere kind of style like a catimount said a fourth and hereupon i was seized and shaken without ceremony for several minutes by a junta 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 accompanied by a friend i had proceeded upon a gunning expedition some miles down by 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 mould afforded us the only available shelter we made the best of it and passed the night on board i slept in one of the 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 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 awaking from slumber the men who shook me were the crew of the sloop and some labourers engaged to unload it from the load itself came the earthy 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 endured however were indubitably quite equal for the time to those of actual sepulture they were fearfully they were inconceivably hideous but out of evil proceeded good for their very excess wrought in my spirit an inevitable revulsion my soul acquired tone acquired temper i went abroad i took vigorous exercise i breathed the free air of heaven i thought upon other subjects than death i discarded my medical books buccan i burned i read no night thoughts no fustian about churchyards no bugaboo tales such as this

in short i became a new man and lived a man's life from that memorable night i dismissed for ever my charnel 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 the imagination of man is no carathis to explore with impunity its every cavern alas the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful but like the demons in whose company afrasiab made his journey down the oxus they must sleep or they will devour us they must be suffered to slumber or we perish the premature burial