Buried Alive!

Imagine being woken by the soft thud of loose soil falling on wood. Lying in the darkness you wonder where you are or how you got there, but as you try to move you realise you’re confined in a narrow box. Then the full horror of the situation hits you, but your screams are muffled as the earth continues to pile onto your coffin and you desperately scratch at the lid…

Vivisepulture – or being buried alive – is a pretty universal fear, and so I’ve unearthed two tales of premature burial with surprise twists…

Lived Once, Buried Twice: Helena Fritsch (Hungary, 1906)

Helena Fritsch was the beautiful daughter of a rich farmer in Egerozeg in Hungary. When she died, her burial was a lavish ceremony and Helena’s body was dressed in her finest clothes and with her collection of precious rings on her fingers.

Later that evening long after the mourners had gone, the gravedigger heard a gentle tapping on the window of his cottage. There he saw the face of the girl he had buried earlier that day. Blood dripping from her hand left a dark trail behind her, all the way back to her grave…

Helena later revealed what had happened to her. She had suddenly become aware of an intense pain in her hand, and then realised that she was lying in a coffin, the lid of which had been smashed. She saw two men – grave robbers – climbing a ladder out of the grave. Three fingers on her right hand – and the rings on them – were gone.

It was then that the girl climbed out of the grave and went in search of help, finding the gravedigger who had not long since buried her. The story was depicted in the Illustrated Police News as seen at the top of this post.

The grave robbers cutting her fingers off to steal her ring had saved her life by waking her from a death-like trance it was supposed. Helena was returned to her family home.[i]

However, although widely reported in the press in 1906, this story seems to be a version of the urban legend sometimes called ‘The Lady Returned to Life’ or ‘The Lady and the Ring’.[ii] The legend generally features a rich woman buried prematurely with her jewellery who is roused in her coffin by gravediggers trying to cut off her finger to steal her ring. In some versions, the grave robber gets his just deserts and dies of fright when the woman’s eyes open.

An Irish version of the legend gives the woman the name Margorie McCall, though this telling has a dark twist. After coming round in the grave to find a graverobber trying to cut off her finger, Margorie leaves the churchyard and makes her way home. When her husband opens the door to see the wife he had just buried standing there in her grave clothes with blood dripping from her hand, he drops dead from the shock. He is buried in the grave Margorie has left vacant.

Or so the dubious story goes. There’s no evidence that Margorie’s tale is true, though there is a gravestone in Shankill Cemetery in Lurgan that says ‘Margorie McCall, Lived Once, Buried Twice’. However, the stone was created in 1860, over a century after the events were supposed to have happened.[iii]

Versions of the legend are found all over Europe as well as in the USA, Turkey and beyond. Although this story may be a legend, the following is all too true…

A Grave Error of Judgement: Clement Passal (Paris, 1929)

Clement Passal, a former criminal who went by the assumed name of the Marquis de Chamaubert, was a haunted man. Passal was being persecuted by a mysterious secret society that had sent threatening letters to both him and his mother.

In September 1929, the secret society finally exacted a terrible vengeance on Passal. After abducting and torturing him, they buried him alive.

This was revealed in a letter to Passal’s friend M. Gryvallet which described his awful fate and gave directions to where the coffin was buried. The letter said that Passal would have starved to death by this time.

Gryvallet accompanied the police to a forest near St Germain and they soon found the grave. After removing the earth they came across a wooden coffin that was nailed shut. Curiously it had a pipe attached to it, as if to allow air through.

Inside the coffin, dressed in only his shirt was the dead body of Passal.

But all was not as it seems. Police investigations revealed that the anonymous letters from the secret society had been typed on Passal’s own typewriter. Police interrogated three of Passal’s friends, including Gryvallet, and they made a remarkable confession.

Passal had invented the story of the secret society persecuting him. He asked his friends to bury him alive with a breathing tube in the coffin so that he could be dramatically rescued, and forged the letter about his abduction, torture and burial to his friends. It did not go to plan. It seems he died from asphyxiation, though some reports say he died in an agony of starvation.

Why would anyone carry out such a crazy stunt? Well, Passal had a book to sell. Or he would if he could get a publisher, and the sensational story of being buried alive by a nefarious secret society and melodramatically saved in the nick of time would be perfect publicity.

Near the coffin were some notes that Passal had written for the contents of his criminal memoir. He had been the lover of a countess at 13 years old. He had committed a number of sensational robberies and made a fortune. He had duelled with American police. He had a fiendish plan to topple the Eiffel Tower. And he had discovered an invisible death ray.[iv]

Or so he claimed…

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[i] ‘A Young Girl’s Resurrection’, Illustrated Police News, 7 May 1904, p.2

[ii] K. M. Briggs, (1964) ‘Historical Traditions in English Folk-Tales’, Folklore, 75(4), pp.225-242, https://doi.org/10.1080/0015587X.1964.9716971

[iii]  https://strangeremains.com/2016/10/02/halloween-horror-post-2-the-woman-who-lived-once-but-was-buried-twice/

[iv] ‘Buried Marquis’s Memoirs’, Liverpool Echo, 9 October 1929, p.6; ‘Criminal Buried Alive’, Illustrated Police News, 10 October 1929, pp.2-3