The deceased came to life in the coffin of history. Revived after death




Legends are associated with him, novels are written about him. Probably, it is difficult to find any other phenomenon with which so many prejudices and superstitions are associated. The correct idea of ​​lethargic sleep must be at least just to broaden your horizons.

Lethargic sleep or lethargy (oblivion, inaction) is a state of pathological (painful) sleep with a more or less pronounced weakening of all manifestations of life, including immobility, a significant decrease in metabolism, a weakening or lack of response to sound and pain stimuli, as well as to touch. There is a lethargic sleep with hysteria, general exhaustion, after intense excitement. The changes that occur in the human body during lethargic sleep have not been sufficiently studied.

Lethargic sleep myths

The myths about those buried alive, being in lethargic sleep, come from ancient times and have a certain basis. Once in the crypts and underground, the dead were found with torn shrouds, and hands broken in blood, which were trying to escape from the coffins. Sometimes such people were lucky, and they were rescued by cemetery thieves who dug up graves to rob the deceased, or simply people passing by who heard noise from the grave (unless, of course, they ran away in horror). In England, for many years there has been a law (it is still valid today), according to which in all morgues there must be a bell with a rope so that the revived one can call for help.

It is known that Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was very afraid of being buried alive and therefore asked his loved ones to bury him only when there were obvious signs of decomposition of the body. However, in May 1931, during the liquidation in Moscow of the cemetery of the Danilov Monastery, where the great writer was buried, during the exhumation it was found that Gogol's skull was turned to one side, and the coffin's upholstery was torn.

The case with the famous Italian poet of the 14th century Petrarch would have been exactly the same, but it ended happily. At the age of 40, Petrarch fell seriously ill and "died", and when they began to bury him, he woke up and said that he was feeling great.

What does a person who is plunged into a lethargic sleep look like?

In severe, rare manifestations of lethargy, there is indeed a picture of imaginary death: the skin is cold and pale, the pupils almost do not react to light, breathing and pulse are difficult to detect, blood pressure is low, severe pain irritations do not cause a reaction. For several days, patients do not drink, do not eat, the excretion of urine and feces ceases, weight loss and dehydration occur.

In mild cases of lethargy, there is immobility, muscle relaxation, even breathing, sometimes flinching of the eyelids, rolling of the eyeballs. The ability to swallow remains, in response to irritation, chewing and swallowing movements follow. The perception of the environment can be partially preserved.

Lethargy attacks start suddenly and end suddenly. There are cases with precursors of lethargic sleep, as well as disorders of well-being and behavior after awakening.

The duration of lethargic sleep is from several hours to several days or even weeks. Some observations of long-term lethargic sleep with persisting ability to eat and the administration of physiological acts are described. Lethargy is not life-threatening.

Forensic Lethargic Sleep

In severe cases of lethargy, especially in forensic practice, when examining a corpse at the scene, the question arises of establishing the certainty of death. In this case, if lethargy is suspected, the patient is urgently sent to the hospital.

The question of the danger of burying alive persons in a state of lethargy has long lost its significance, since burial is usually carried out 1-2 days after death, when reliable cadaveric phenomena (signs of decomposition) are already well expressed.

Along with cases of true lethargy, there are also cases of its simulation (usually in order to hide the crime or its consequences). In this case, the person is being monitored in the hospital. It is very difficult to simulate lethargy symptoms for a long time.

Help with lethargic sleep

The treatment for lethargic sleep is peace, clean air, vitamin-rich food. If it is impossible to feed such a patient, food can be administered in liquid and semi-liquid form through a probe. Saline and glucose solutions can be administered intravenously. A person in a state of lethargic sleep requires careful care, otherwise bedsores will begin on the body with prolonged lying, an infection will join, the condition will become sharply complicated.

Dying is the worst thing that can happen to a person. At least we think so. Although, perhaps worst of all, when you are mistaken for dead, with all the ensuing consequences.

1. The teenager woke up at his own funeral

The idea of ​​attending your own funeral is pretty universal, especially in movies where people fake death and have a fake funeral. Fortunately, most of us have not had this experience. But 17-year-old Indian teenager Kumar Marevad has experienced it himself. He had a severe fever after being bitten by a dog and stopped breathing. Kumar's family prepared his body, placed it in a coffin and went to cremation. It's good that the guy woke up in time before becoming a handful of ash.

2. Nacy Perez was buried alive, but she died after she was rescued from the grave

Nacy Perez - a pregnant girl from Honduras suddenly fell down dead and stopped breathing. The family buried Nacy and her unborn child, but the next day, when the girl's mother came to her grave, she heard sounds from within. Nacy was dug up and she seemed to be saved! But fate had other plans. Several hours after her release, she did indeed pass away and returned again to where she had recently been rescued.

3. Judith Johnson was sent to the morgue without noticing her breath

Judith Johnson was admitted to the hospital with what she considered indigestion, but soon went straight to the morgue. Unfortunately, what she thought was indigestion was a heart attack, and resuscitation did not help her. She was rescued by a mortuary worker who discovered that Judith was still breathing. The poor thing did not die, but as a result her psyche suffered catastrophically. The grave does not let people go so easily.

4. The Miracle of Walter Williams

Walter Williams died in 2014 at the age of 78. The body of the old man was taken to the morgue, but when the worker began to embalm, Walter began to breathe. The family considered this return to life a miracle. However, science has its own explanation, called Lazarus syndrome, when a dead person can suddenly come to life again. This syndrome is a very rare occurrence, but a sudden resurrection after a recorded death is also possible.

5. Eleanor Markham, who was nearly buried alive

Eleanor Markham was 22 years old when she passed away in 1894 in New York. It was July heat, so the inconsolable family mourned the girl and decided to bury her as soon as possible. As the coffin was carried to the cemetery, sounds were heard from within. The lid was removed, and then there was a furious dialogue between the revived Miss Markham and the attending physician who accompanied her on her last journey. According to a local newspaper publication, their conversation sounded something like, “Oh my God! Cried Miss Markham heart-rendingly. "You bury me alive!" Her doctor coolly replied, “Hush, hush, you're all right. It's just a mistake that can be easily fixed. "

6. Lonely Mildred Clark

Living alone is not scary. It is scary to die alone and be found by neighbors by the characteristic smell. This was the case with 86-year-old Mildred Clarke, who was found by the landlord lying cold and dead on the floor. The old woman was taken to the morgue, where her body awaited its turn to go to the funeral home and then to the cemetery. In the morgue, her frozen legs began to twitch, and the attendant noticed that the deceased was barely breathing. So old and lonely Mildred Clark came back to life again.

7. Sipho William Mdletshe nicknamed "Zombie"

Once in South Africa, 24-year-old young man Sipho William Mdletshe died. He lay in the morgue for two days, and then woke up in a metal box and started screaming loudly. Fortunately, the guy was rescued, and he immediately ran to his family and bride. However, the girl rejected him, considering the revived groom a real zombie.

8. Alice Blanden, woman buried alive TWICE

Alice Blanden was an obese woman who loved brandy, and one day in 1675 she died and was buried. A few days later, the children heard sounds from the grave. The grave was excavated, but Alice was still dead, although it was evident that she was beating inside and calling for help. The body was examined and it was decided to bury it again before the arrival of the medical examiner. When the coroner finally arrived and the grave was reopened, Alice's clothes were torn and her face was bloody. She was buried alive a second time. Alas, fate did not give her a third chance. The coroner finally pronounced her dead.

It is not for nothing that in almost all countries of the world, funerals are usually held not immediately after death, but only after a few days. There are many examples when the "deceased" suddenly came to life before the funeral, or, what is most terrible, already directly in the grave, being buried alive ...

Imaginary death

The ritual of "pseudo-funeral" takes an important place among the servants of shamanic cults. It is believed that by lying alive in the grave, the shaman is given the gift of communication with the spirits of the earth, as well as with the souls of deceased ancestors. It seems that certain channels are opening in his mind through which he connects with unknown mere mortals, other worlds.

Naturalist and ethnographer E.S. Bogdanovsky was lucky in 1915 to witness the ritual funeral of a shaman of one Kamchatka tribe. In his memoirs, Bogdanovsky wrote that before the burial, the shaman fasted for three days, and did not even drink water. After that, the assistants, using a bone drill, made a hole in the shaman's crown, which was then sealed with beeswax. Then the body of the shaman was rubbed with incense, wrapped in a bear skin and, under ritual singing, was lowered into the grave, which was arranged in the center of the ancestral cemetery. A long reed tube was inserted into the shaman's mouth, which was brought out, and his motionless body was covered with earth. Several days later, during which ritual actions were continuously performed over the grave, the buried shaman was taken out of the grave, washed in three running waters and fumigated with incense. On the same day, in the village, the second birth of a respected fellow tribesman was magnificently celebrated, who, having visited the "kingdom of the dead", took the top step in the hierarchy of ministers of the pagan cult ...

Recently, a tradition has emerged to put a charged mobile phone next to the deceased - suddenly it’s not death at all, but a dream, suddenly a dear person comes to his senses and calls his loved ones - I’m alive, dig me back up ... But so far this has not happened - in our time, since perfect diagnostic devices, in principle, it is impossible to bury a person alive.

However, people do not trust doctors and try to protect themselves from the terrible awakening in the grave. In 2001, a scandalous incident occurred in America. Los Angeles resident Joe Barten, terribly afraid of falling into a lethargic sleep, bequeathed to make ventilation in his coffin, leave food and a telephone in it. And at the same time, his relatives could receive an inheritance only on the condition that they call his grave 3 times a day. It is curious that Barten's relatives refused to receive the inheritance - the process of making calls seemed quite creepy to them ...

"Secrets of the XX century" - (Golden Series)

It is no coincidence that in almost all countries and all peoples it is customary to bury the body not immediately after death, but only after a few days. There were many cases when the "dead" suddenly came to life before the funeral, or, worst of all, right inside the grave ...

Imaginary death

Lethargy (from the Greek lethe - "oblivion" and argia - "inaction") is an almost unexplored morbid condition, similar to sleep. Cessation of heartbeat and lack of breathing have always been considered signs of death. But during lethargic sleep, all life processes also freeze, and it is rather difficult to distinguish real death from imaginary (as lethargic sleep is often called) without modern equipment. Therefore, earlier cases of burial of people who did not die, but who fell asleep in a lethargic sleep, took place quite often, and sometimes with famous people.
If now the burial alive is already a fantasy, then 100-200 years ago the cases of the burial of living people were not so rare. Very often, gravediggers, digging a fresh grave in old graves, found twisted bodies in half-rotted coffins, which showed that they were trying to get out. They say that in medieval cemeteries, every third grave was such a terrible sight.

Fatal sleeping pill

Helena Blavatsky described strange cases of lethargic sleep: “In 1816 in Brussels, a respected citizen fell into deep lethargy on Sunday morning. On Monday, as his companions prepared to hammer nails into the lid of the coffin, he sat in the coffin, rubbed his eyes and demanded coffee and a newspaper. In Moscow, the wife of a wealthy businessman lay in a cataleptic state for seventeen days, during which the authorities made several attempts to bury her; but since decay did not occur, the family rejected the ceremony, and at the end of the said period, the life of the pretended dead was restored. In Bergerac in 1842, the patient took sleeping pills, but ... did not wake up. They bled him: he did not wake up. Finally he was pronounced dead and buried. A few days later, they remembered taking sleeping pills and dug up the grave. The body was turned over and bore signs of a struggle. "
This is only a small part of such cases - lethargic sleep is actually quite a frequent occurrence.

Terrible awakening

Many people tried to protect themselves from being buried alive. For example, the famous writer Wilkie Collins left a note at his bedside with a list of measures to be taken before he was buried. But the writer was an educated person and had a concept of lethargic sleep, while many ordinary people did not even think of something like that.
So, in 1838, an incredible incident occurred in England. After the funeral of a respected person, a boy was walking through the cemetery and heard an indistinct sound from under the ground. The frightened child called the adults who dug the coffin. When the lid was removed, the shocked witnesses saw that a terrible grimace froze on the face of the deceased. His hands were freshly bruised, and his shroud was torn. But the man was already actually dead - he died a few minutes before salvation - from a broken heart, unable to withstand such a terrible awakening to reality.
An even more dire incident occurred in Germany in 1773. A pregnant woman was buried there. When screams began to be heard from under the ground, the grave was dug up. But it turned out that it was already too late - the woman died, and moreover, the child who had just been born in the same grave died ...

Crying soul

In the fall of 2002, a misfortune happened in the family of a resident of Krasnoyarsk Irina Andreevna Maletina - her thirty-year-old son Mikhail unexpectedly died. A tough, athletic guy who never complained of health died at night in his sleep. The body was opened, but the cause of death could not be established. The doctor who drew up the conclusion about the death told Irina Andreevna that her son had died of sudden cardiac arrest.
As expected, Mikhail was buried on the third day, a commemoration was celebrated ... And suddenly the next night the deceased son dreamed of his mother crying. In the afternoon, Irina Andreevna went to church and lit a candle for the repose of the soul of the newly departed. However, the crying son continued to appear to her in a dream for another week. Maletina turned to one of the priests, who, after listening, said disappointing words that the young man might have been buried alive. Irina Andreevna had to make incredible efforts to get permission to carry out the exhumation. When the coffin was opened, the grief-stricken woman instantly turned gray with horror. Her beloved son was lying on his side. His clothes, ritual coverlet and pillow were torn to shreds. There were numerous abrasions and bruises on the hands of the corpse, which were not present during the funeral. All this eloquently testified that the man woke up in the grave, and then died long and painfully.
Elena Ivanovna Duzhkina, a resident of the town of Bereznyaki near Solikamsk, recalls how once in her childhood she and a group of children saw a coffin from nowhere during the spring flood of the Kama River. The waves washed him ashore. The frightened children called the adults. People opened the coffin and with horror saw a yellowish skeleton, dressed in decayed rags. The skeleton lay prone, legs tucked under it. All the same darkened from time to time, the lid of the coffin was covered with deep scratches from the inside.

Live Gogol

The most famous such case was the terrible story associated with Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. During his life, he several times fell into a strange, absolutely immobile state, reminiscent of death. But the great writer always quickly came to his senses, although he managed to pretty much scare those around him. Gogol knew about this peculiarity of his and was more than anything in the world afraid that one day he would fall into a deep sleep for a long time and would be buried alive. He wrote: “Being in the full presence of memory and common sense, here I am setting out my last will. I bequeath my body not to bury until there are clear signs of decay. I mention this because even during the illness itself they found moments of vital numbness on me, my heart and pulse stopped beating. "
After the writer's death, they did not listen to his will and was buried as usual - on the third day ...
These terrible words were remembered only in 1931, when the reburial of Gogol from the Danilov Monastery to the Novodevichy cemetery was carried out. According to eyewitnesses, the lid of the coffin was scratched from the inside, and Gogol's body was in an unnatural position. At the same time, another terrible thing was discovered that had nothing to do with lethargic dreams and burials alive. Gogol's skeleton was missing ... a head. According to rumors, she disappeared in 1909, when the monks of the Danilov Monastery were restoring the grave of the writer. Allegedly, the collector and rich man Bakhrushin persuaded them to cut it off for a considerable amount, with whom she remained. This is a wild story, but it is quite possible to believe in it, because in 1931, during the excavation of Gogol's grave, a number of unpleasant events took place. Famous writers who were present at the reburial literally stole from the coffin "as a keepsake" some of the shreds of clothes, some of the shoes, and some of Gogol's rib ...

Call from the other world

Interestingly, in order to protect a person from being buried alive, a bell with a rope still exists in morgues in many Western countries. A person who was considered dead can wake up among the dead, get up and call him. The ministers will immediately come running to his call. This bell and the revival of the dead are very often played out in horror films, but in reality such stories almost never happened. But during the autopsy, the "corpses" came to life more than once. In 1964, in one of the New York morgues, an autopsy was performed on a man who died on the street. As soon as the pathologist's scalpel touched the abdomen of the "dead man", he immediately jumped up. From shock and fright, the pathologist himself died on the spot ...
Another similar case was described in the newspaper Biysk Rabochy. An article dated September 1959 described how, during the funeral of an engineer in one of the Biysk factories, while delivering mourning speeches, the deceased suddenly sneezed, opened his eyes, sat in a coffin and “almost died a second time, seeing in what environment located". A thorough examination at the local hospital of the man who rose from the coffin did not reveal any pathological changes in his body. The same conclusion was given by the Novosibirsk doctors, to whom the resurrected engineer was sent.

Ritual burials

However, people are not always buried alive not of their own free will. So, some African tribes, peoples of South America, Siberia and the Far North have a ritual in which the healer of the tribe buries a relative alive. For a number of nationalities, this rite is also carried out for the qualities of the initiation of boys. In some tribes it is used for and for certain diseases. In the same way, the elderly or the sick are prepared for the transition to another world.
The ritual of "pseudo-funeral" takes an important place among the servants of shamanic cults. It is believed that by lying down alive in the grave, the shaman receives the gift of communication with the spirits of the earth, as well as with the souls of deceased ancestors. It seems as if certain channels are opening in his mind through which he connects with unknown mere mortals worlds.
Naturalist and ethnographer E.S. Bogdanovsky was lucky in 1915 to witness the ritual funeral of a shaman of one of the Kamchatka tribes. In his memoirs, Bogdanovsky writes that before the burial, the shaman fasted for three days, did not even drink water. Then the assistants, using a bone drill, made a hole in the shaman's crown, which they then sealed with beeswax. After that, the body of the shaman was rubbed with incense, wrapped in the skin of a bear and, with ritual singing, lowered into the grave arranged in the center of the ancestral cemetery. A long reed tube was inserted into the shaman's mouth, which was brought out, and his motionless body was covered with earth. A few days later, during which rituals were continuously conducted over the grave, the buried shaman was taken out of the earth, washed in three running waters and fumigated with incense. On the same day, in the village, the second birth of a respected fellow tribesman was magnificently celebrated, who, having visited the "kingdom of the dead", took the top step in the hierarchy of ministers of the pagan cult ...
In recent years, a tradition has emerged to put charged mobile phones next to the deceased - suddenly it’s not death at all, but a dream, suddenly a dear person comes to his senses and calls his loved ones - I’m alive, dig me back up ... But so far, such cases haven’t happened - in ours days, with perfect diagnostic devices, in principle, it is impossible to bury a person alive.
But nevertheless, people do not trust doctors and try to protect themselves from the terrible awakening in the grave. In 2001, a scandalous incident occurred in the United States. Los Angeles resident Joe Barten, terribly afraid of falling into a lethargic sleep, bequeathed to make ventilation in his coffin, put food and a telephone in it. And at the same time, his relatives could receive an inheritance only on the condition that they called him in the grave three times a day. Interestingly, Barten's relatives refused to receive the inheritance - the process of making calls to the other world seemed too creepy to them ...

Taphophobia, or fear of being buried alive, is one of the most common human phobias. And there are good enough reasons for that. Due to the mistakes of doctors or the illiteracy of the inhabitants, such cases occurred quite often before the normal development of medicine, and sometimes they happen in our time. This article contains 10 incredible, but absolutely real stories of people buried alive, who still managed to survive.

Janet Philomel.

The story of a 24-year-old French woman named Jeanette Philomel is most typical of most of these cases. In 1867, she fell ill with cholera and died a few days later, as everyone around her thought. The girl was a local priest, according to all the rules of the burial, her body was laid in a coffin and buried in the cemetery. Nothing unusual.

The oddities began when, a few hours later, the cemetery worker was finishing the burial. Suddenly he heard a knock coming from underground. The coffin began to be dug up, along the way they sent for a doctor. The physician who appeared did indeed reveal a weak heartbeat and breathing in a girl raised from her own grave. And on her hands were fresh abrasions received from the fact that she tried to get out. True, this story ended tragically. A few days later, the girl nevertheless died for real. Most likely due to cholera. But perhaps because of the nightmare she experienced. This time the doctors and priests tried to make sure that she was really dead.

Unknown from Sao Paulo.

In 2013, a woman living in São Paulo came to her family's gravestone in the cemetery and witnessed a truly terrifying scene. Nearby, she noticed a man desperately trying to get out of the grave. He did it with difficulty. The man had already freed one hand and head by the time local workers arrived.

After the unfortunate man was completely dug up, he was taken to the hospital, where it turned out that he was an employee of the mayor's office. How it happened that the man was buried alive is not known for certain. It is assumed that he was the victim of a fight or attack, after which he was presumed dead and buried to get rid of evidence. Relatives claimed that after the incident, the man suffered from mental disorders.

Baby from Dongdong Province.

In a remote Chinese village in Dongdong province, there was a pregnant girl named Lu Xiaoyan. With medicine in the village it was really bad: there are no doctors of their own, the nearest hospital is a few kilometers away. Naturally, no one followed the girl's pregnancy. Around the fourth month, Lou suddenly felt contractions. Everyone expected the child to be born dead. And so it happened: the baby who was born did not show signs of life.

After giving birth, the girl's husband realized that she would most likely need professional medical assistance, so he called an ambulance. While Lou was being driven to the nearest hospital by car, her mother was burying her baby in a field. However, at the hospital it turned out that the girl was not in her fourth, but in her sixth month of pregnancy and the doctors, suggesting that the child could survive, demanded to bring him. Lou's husband returned, dug up the tiny girl and took her to the hospital. Surprisingly, the girl managed to get out.

Mike Mayney.

Mike Mainey is a famous Irish bartender who asked to be buried alive in order to set a kind of world record. In 1968, in London, Mike was placed in a special coffin equipped with an opening through which air entered there. Through the same hole, food and drink were passed to the man. It's hard to believe, but in total, Mike was buried for 61 days. Since then, many have tried to break this record, but none have succeeded.

Anthony Britton.

Another magician who voluntarily allowed himself to be buried in the ground in order to get out of the grave on his own. However, unlike Mike, he was buried without a coffin, at a standard depth of 2 meters. In addition, his hands were handcuffed. As planned, Anthony was supposed to repeat Houdini's trick, but everything did not go according to plan.

The magician spent almost nine minutes underground. For the rescuers on duty from above, this was the extreme threshold for starting active operations. They quickly dug up the poor fellow, who was in a half-dead state. Britton was pumped out. Subsequently, in various interviews, he said that he could not complete his trick because his hands were pressed against the ground. Worst of all, after each exhalation, the earth continued to squeeze his chest harder and harder, preventing him from breathing.

Baby from Compton.

Most recently, in November 2015, two women were walking in the park of Compton, a small town in California. Suddenly, while walking, they heard a strange crying of children, as if coming from under the ground. Frightened, they immediately called the police.

The arriving law enforcement officers dug up a very small child, no more than two days old, under the asphalt of the bicycle path. Fortunately, the police promptly took the little girl to the hospital and her life was saved. Interestingly, the baby was wrapped in a hospital blanket, which allowed detectives to quickly determine when and where she was born, as well as to establish the identity of the mother. An arrest warrant was issued immediately. Now she is accused of attempted murder and leaving the child in danger.

Tom Guerin.

The Irish potato famine of 1845-1849 resulted in a huge number of deaths. The gravediggers in those days had a lot of work, there was not enough space to bury everyone. They had to bury many and, of course, sometimes mistakes happened. Such, for example, with Tom Guerin, a 13-year-old boy who, mistakenly, mistaking for the dead, was buried alive.

The boy was pronounced dead, brought to the cemetery, like many others, and began to bury him, accidentally breaking his legs with shovels in the process. It's amazing, but the boy not only survived, but also managed to get out of the grave with broken legs. Witnesses claim that later Tom Guerin limped on both legs for the rest of his life.

Child from Tian Dong.

The horrifying story took place in May 2015 in one of the southern Chinese provinces. A woman who was collecting herbs near the cemetery suddenly heard a barely audible cry of children. Frightened, she called the police, who found a baby buried alive in the cemetery. The baby was quickly taken to the hospital, where he soon recovered.

During the investigation, it turned out that parents who did not want to raise a child born with a hare lip put the baby in a cardboard box and took it to the cemetery. After several days, the relatives came to the cemetery and, thinking that the child was already dead, buried him at a shallow depth of several centimeters. As a result, the boy spent 8 days underground and survived only due to the fact that oxygen and water penetrated through the layer of mud. Police said that when the boy was dug up, the child literally coughed up dirty water.

Natalia Pasternak.

A terrible incident occurred in May last year in the city of Tynda. Two local residents, Natalya Pasternak and her friend Valentina Gorodetskaya, traditionally collected birch sap near the city. At this time, a four-year-old bear came out of the forest to Natalia, who, considering the woman her prey, attacked her.

The bear partially removed her scalp, left a deep wound in her thigh, and seriously injured her neck. Fortunately, Valentina managed to call rescuers. By the time they arrived, the bear had already buried Natalia, who was in shock, as they usually do with their victims, in order to leave them for later. Rescuers had to shoot the beast. Natalia was dug up and taken to the hospital. Since then, she has undergone many operations, her recovery is still ongoing.

Essie Dunbar.

Essie, 30, died in 1915 from a severe epileptic seizure. At least that's what the doctors said. The girl was pronounced dead and preparations for the funeral began. Sister Essie really wanted to attend the ceremony and categorically forbade starting the burial until she personally said goodbye to the deceased. The priests delayed the service as much as they could.

The coffin had already been lowered into the grave when Sister Essie finally arrived. She insisted that the coffin be lifted and opened so that she could say goodbye to her sister. However, as soon as the coffin lid opened, Essie stood up and smiled at her sister. Those present at the funeral rushed from there in panic, believing that the girl's spirit had risen from the dead. Even many years later, some townspeople believed that she was a walking corpse. Essie lived until 1962.

What to do if you are buried alive in a coffin September 12th, 2017

Remember, we found out, but there is another horror story.

The fate of being buried alive can befall each of us. For example, you may fall into a lethargic sleep, relatives will think that you are dead, drink jelly at your funeral and hammer a nail into the lid of your coffin.

The worst option is when a person is deliberately buried in a coffin in order to scare or get rid of him: according to some rumors, the famous Yaponchik loved to do so.

Maybe that's why the whole "bohemian" and hangout talked so nicely with him?

Many of us have watched the movie Buried Alive, where the protagonist wakes up and finds himself buried alive in a wooden box where oxygen is gradually running out. You can hardly imagine a more dire situation. And those who have watched this film to the end will agree with this.
Horror stories about how a person was buried alive have been around since the Middle Ages, if not earlier. And then they were not horror stories, but real facts. The level of development of medicine was too low and such cases could well happen. Rumor has it that a similar terrible situation happened with the great writer Nikolai Gogol, and not with him alone.

As for our time, there is practically no chance of being buried alive. The fact is that curious doctors, for some reason, are extremely fond of specifying what this or that person died from, and for this they open it up, examine the organs and, upon completion, neatly sew it up. You understand that you won't be able to wake up in a coffin in this situation; rather, the pathologist's conclusion will contain the line “The cover showed that death occurred as a result of an autopsy”.

How to be saved if you woke up in a coffin, and above you there is a boarded-up lid and a couple of meters of earth? How to get out of the coffin
First, don't panic! Seriously, panic can drastically reduce the amount of time you have to survive. In a state of panic, you will use oxygen more actively. Usually you can live in a coffin for one or two hours - provided you don't panic. If you know how to meditate, do it immediately. Relaxing as much as possible will help you think more clearly.

Check if you can call. These days, people are often buried with cell phones, tablets, or other means of communication. If this is the case for you, try to contact family or friends. Once you have done this, relax and meditate to conserve oxygen.

Don't have a cell phone? Okay ... Considering that you are still alive in a restricted air coffin, you were recently buried. This means that the ground should be soft enough.

Loose the lid with your hands in the cheapest fiberboard coffins, you can even make a hole (with a wedding ring, a belt buckle ...)
Cross your arms over your chest, grabbing your shoulders with your palms and pull off your shirt or T-shirt up, tie it in a knot over your head, hanging with a bag on your head, it will protect you from suffocation if the ground hits your face.

If your coffin is not yet damaged by the weight of the earth, use your feet to poke a hole in the coffin. The best place to do this is in the middle of the lid.

After you have successfully broken open the coffin, use your hands and feet to push the ground entering the hole to the edges of the coffin. Fill the coffin with soil as much as possible, tamping it down so you don't lose the ability to stick your head and shoulders through the hole.

By all means try to sit down, the earth will fill the empty space and shift in your favor, do not stop and continue to breathe calmly.
After you've tamped as much earth as you can inside the coffin, use all your strength to stand up straight. It may be necessary to make a larger gap in the lid, but this should not be difficult in the case of a cheap coffin.

After the head is on the surface and you can breathe freely, do not hesitate, let yourself panic a little, even scream if necessary. If no one came to your aid, pull yourself out of the ground, wriggling like a worm.

Remember the soil in a fresh grave is always loose and "it is relatively easy to fight with it", it is much more difficult to get out during the rain: wet soil is denser and heavier. The same can be said for clay.

If your relatives are not curmudgeons and have buried you in a stainless steel coffin, the best thing to do in this case is to try to make loud sounds from the coffin by pressing on the lid where it is attached or knocking on the coffin with a belt buckle or something similar. Perhaps someone is still standing near the grave.

Note that lighting a match or lighter, if you have one, is a bad idea. An open fire will destroy the entire oxygen supply very quickly.

Buried alive

It is no coincidence that almost all peoples customarily hold the burial ceremony not immediately, but after a certain number of days after death. There were many cases when the "dead" came to life at the funeral, and there were also cases when they woke up inside the coffin. Since ancient times, people have been afraid to be buried alive. Taphophobia - the fear of being buried alive is observed in many people. It is believed that this is one of the basic phobias of the human psyche. Intentional burial of a person alive according to the laws of the Russian Federation is considered a murder committed with special cruelty and is punished accordingly.

Imaginary death

Lethargy is an unexplored, painful condition that resembles a common dream. In ancient times, the absence of breathing and the cessation of the heartbeat were considered signs of death. However, in the absence of modern equipment, it was difficult to determine where the imaginary death was and where the real one was. Now there are practically no cases of burials of living people, but a couple of centuries ago it was a fairly common phenomenon. Lethargic sleep usually lasts from several hours to several weeks. But there are cases when lethargy lasted for months. Lethargic sleep differs from coma in that the human body supports the vital functions of the organs and is not under the threat of death. There are many examples of lethargic sleep and related moments in the literature, but they do not always have a scientific basis and are often fictions. So, the science fiction novel by H.G. Wells "When the Sleeper Wakes up" tells about a man who "slept" for 200 years. This is certainly impossible.

Terrible awakening

There are a lot of stories when people plunged into a state of lethargic sleep, let's dwell on the most interesting ones. In 1773, a terrible incident happened in Germany: after the burial of a pregnant girl, strange sounds began to be heard from her grave. It was decided to dig the grave and everyone who was there was shocked by what they saw. As it turned out, the girl began to give birth and from this came out of the state of lethargic sleep. She was able to give birth in such cramped conditions, but due to a lack of oxygen, neither the baby nor his mother managed to survive.
Another story, but not so terrible, happened in England in 1838. One official was always afraid of being buried alive and, as luck would have it, his fear materialized. A respected person woke up in a coffin and started screaming. At that moment, a young man walked through the cemetery, who, hearing the man's voice, ran for help. When the coffin was dug and opened, people saw the deceased with a frozen grimace. The victim died a few minutes before the rescue. Doctors diagnosed him with cardiac arrest, the man could not withstand such a terrible awakening to reality.

There were people who perfectly understood what a lethargic dream was and what to do if such a misfortune overtook them. For example, the English playwright Wilkie Collins feared that he would be buried while he was still alive. There was always a note by his bed, which told about the measures to be taken before his burial.

Method of execution

As a method of capital punishment, burial alive was used by the ancient Romans. For example, if a girl broke her vow of virginity, she was buried alive. A similar method of execution was used for many Christian martyrs. In the 10th century, Princess Olga gave the order to bury the Drevlyan ambassadors alive. In the Middle Ages, in Italy, unrepentant murderers faced the fate of people buried alive. The Zaporozhye Cossacks buried the murderer alive in a coffin with the man he took his life. In addition, the Germans used methods of execution through burial alive during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. In this terrible method, the Nazis executed Jews.

Ritual burials

It is worth noting that there are cases when people of their own free will find themselves buried alive. So, certain peoples of South America, Africa and Siberia have a ritual in which people bury the shaman of their village alive. It is believed that during the "pseudo-funeral" ritual, the healer receives the gift of communication with the souls of deceased ancestors.

Sources:

Scientists managed to develop a method for reviving people a day after their death.According to an expert in the field of resuscitation Sam Parnia, if resuscitation is carried out correctly, brain cells do not die off at all five minutes after cardiac arrest, as was previously thought.

Today, in the case of using special manipulations and the necessary equipment, the human brain is able to live for several more hours after the recorded death. This period of time can last up to 72 hours.

According to the expert, if the patient's body is cooled to a temperature of 34 to 32 degrees Celsius, then he can stay in this state for up to 24 hours. With a decrease in body temperature, the brain uses less oxygen, the processes of formation of toxic substances stop, which, in turn, prevents the death of cells and gives doctors a chance to "pull a person out of the afterlife.
At the same time, Parnia emphasizes that for the method to work successfully, it is necessary to clearly follow all resuscitation procedures, because even one small mistake can lead to death or brain damage.
The doctor also recalled cases of "resurrection" in modern medicine. So, doctors were able to bring back to life the midfielder of the English “Bolton” Fabrice Muamba. The athlete lost consciousness on March 17, 2012 in the FA Cup match with Tottenham, his heart did not beat for about 1.5 hours.

July 2, 2009 The Ha'aretz newspaper reported that the elderly Israeli "came to life" after a team of ambulances issued a death certificate and was about to send the body to the morgue.
Arriving on an urgent call to the apartment of an 84-year-old resident of the city of Ramat Gan, ambulance doctors found him lying on the floor with no signs of life. Attempts to resuscitate the old man were considered unsuccessful, and the doctors signed official documents on his death. However, when the doctors left, the policeman who remained in the apartment noticed that the "deceased" was breathing and moving his hands. By the second arrival of the ambulance, he had already regained consciousness.

August 19, 2008 Reuters reported that the baby, who was born in a hospital in Israel as a result of an involuntary abortion, showed signs of life after a five-hour stay in the refrigerator.
A girl weighing only 600 grams was born on August 18. Her mother had to have an involuntary abortion due to severe internal bleeding in the 23rd week of pregnancy. Doctors, considering the severely premature baby dead, put him in the refrigerator, where the girl spent at least five hours. The signs of life in the newborn were noticed by the parents who came to take her for burial.
According to doctors, the temperature inside the refrigerator slowed down the child's metabolism, and this helped him to survive. The child was admitted to the intensive neonatal care unit.

V early 2008a Frenchman who had suffered a myocardial infarction, to whom cardiologists diagnosed a cardiac arrest, "came to life" on the operating table, when surgeons proceeded to remove his organs for transplantation.
A 45-year-old man who did not follow the medically prescribed regimen suffered a massive myocardial infarction at the beginning of the year. An ambulance arrived and took him to a nearby hospital. However, when the man was admitted to the hospital, his heart did not beat. The doctors decided that it was "technically impossible" to help him.
According to the law, in such cases with cardiac arrest, patients can automatically become organ donors. However, when the surgeons began the operation, they detected signs of breathing in the potential donor and paused.

In November 2007a resident of the American city of Frederick (Texas, USA), 21-year-old Zach Dunlap was pronounced dead in a hospital in Wichita Falls (Texas), where he was taken after a car accident. The relatives have already agreed to the use of the young man's organs for transplantation, but during the farewell ceremony, he unexpectedly moved his leg and palm. Then those present pressed on Zach's nail and touched his foot with a pocket knife, to which the young man instantly reacted. After the "resurrection" Zak spent 48 more days in the hospital.

In October 2005The 73-year-old pensioner from the Italian city of Mantova suddenly came to life 35 minutes after doctors pronounced him dead.
An elderly Italian man was lying in the cardiology department of the Carlo Poma hospital in Mantova when an echocardiograph indicated his cardiac arrest. All the doctors' attempts to resuscitate the man were useless: heart massage and artificial lung ventilation did not yield any results. Doctors recorded death. However, unexpectedly, the line on the echocardiograph began to move again: the man was alive. Soon the man, already declared dead, began to move, and then began to recover.
As the doctors said after the test, the equipment worked perfectly and the only plausible explanation could be the assumption that a person is able to endure cardiac ischemia for such a long period.

In January 2004In the northern Indian state of Hariyana, an Indian came back to life after spending several hours in a morgue refrigerator.
The man was taken to the morgue by the police, who found him lying by the road with injuries. The doctors of the hospital where he was taken, according to the results of the examination, recorded: "dead at the time of arrival" - and identified the "body" in the morgue immediately after they handed over all the necessary papers to the police.
However, after a few hours, the "deceased" began to move, leaving the morgue staff in a state of shock. The morgue workers immediately took him back to the hospital.

January 5, 2004Reuters reported that a New Mexico funeral bureau official found a certain Felipe Padilla, pronounced dead while in the hospital, breathing. The man "came to life" just a few minutes before Padilla's body was to be embalmed. Felipe Padilla, 94, was sent to the same hospital where he had previously been pronounced dead. However, a few hours later the old man died in the hospital.

In January 2003The 79-year-old pensioner Roberto de Simone was taken to the cardiology department of the Cervello hospital in an almost hopeless condition. The patient was immediately connected to the systems for providing cardiac and brain activity. Roberto de Simone's heart stopped for two minutes. Doctors made an attempt to restore the work of the heart with the help of adrenaline, but, despite all efforts, death was recorded after a while. The doctors decided that the patient was dead and handed his body over to his relatives to say goodbye to him before the funeral. De Simone was brought home as deceased.
When everything was already ready for the funeral ceremony and had to close the coffin, Simone opened his eyes and asked for water. The relatives decided that a "miracle" had happened and called the family doctor. He examined the patient and ordered to take him to the hospital. This time with a diagnosis of pneumology - a serious respiratory illness.


In April 2002 the man "came to life" a few hours after doctors in the Indian city of Lucknow (capital of the state of Uttar Pradesh) issued a death certificate to his relatives.
A resident of a village in the state, 55-year-old Sukhlal was taken to hospital with a diagnosis of tuberculosis. The prescribed course of treatment did not give positive results, and one day the doctors had to ascertain the death of the patient. The patient's son was given a death certificate. When preparations for cremation were completed, the son went to the morgue to retrieve his father's body, and then found that he was breathing. He immediately called the doctors, who felt the pulse of the "corpse" and demanded that his son return the death certificate. Only thanks to the perseverance of journalists, the hospital's management undertook an internal investigation of this incident. However, the attending physician Mehrotra rejected all doubts about his professionalism, in his opinion, the case with the "revived" Sukhlal is a "miracle" that first happened in his practice.
This is only a small part of the "miraculous" resurrection.


Incredible facts

Real life is sometimes worse than fiction.

And some horrific stories about a premature burial are chilling in the veins even more than the stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

In the late 1800s, the American city of Pickewill, in the state of Kentucky, was shocked by an unknown illness, and the most tragic case was that of Octavia Smith Hatcher.

After her little son passed away in January 1891, Octavia was overcome with depression, she did not get out of bed, became very ill and fell into a coma... On May 2 of the same year, she was pronounced dead for an unknown reason.

Embalming was not practiced at that time, so the woman was quickly buried in the local cemetery due to the sweltering heat. Just a week after her funeral, many of the townspeople were struck by the same disease, as a result of which they also fell into a coma, with the only difference that after a while they woke up.

Octavia's husband began to fear the worst and worried that he had buried his living wife. He ordered the exhumation of her body, and, as it turned out, worst fears were confirmed.

The linings on the inside of the coffin were scratched, the woman's nails were broken and bloody, and a stamp of horror was forever frozen on her face. She died while being buried alive.

Octavia was reburied, and her husband erected over her grave very majestic monument that still stands today. It was later suggested that the mysterious disease was caused by the tsetse fly, an African insect that can cause sleeping sickness.

People buried alive

9. Mina El Houari

When a person goes on a first date, he always thinks about how it will end. Many are faced with an unexpected ending to a date, but hardly anyone expects to be buried alive after dessert.

One of these horrifying stories happened in May 2014, when 25-year-old Frenchwoman Mina El Howari was talking with a potential groom on the Internet for several months, before deciding to travel to Morocco to meet him.

On May 19, she checked into a hotel room in Fez, Morocco to go on her first real date with the man of her dreams, but she was not destined to leave the hotel.

Mina met a man live, they spent a wonderful evening together, at the end of which she collapsed dead on the floor. Instead of calling the police or an ambulance, the man thought that Mina died, and decided to bury her by burying her in his garden.

Everything would be fine, but Mina did not really die. As is often the case with people with diabetes, Mina fell into a diabetic coma and was buried alive. Several days passed before the girl's family reported missing and flew to Morocco to try to find her.

The Moroccan police managed to find this poor fellow. Before the discovery of the grave in the yard, they had our dirty clothes and a shovel in his house, with which he buried the girl. The man confessed to the crime and was charged with murder.

8. Mrs. Boger

In July 1893, farmer Charles Boger and his wife were living in Whitehaven, Pennsylvania, when Mrs Boger died suddenly for some unknown reason. Doctors confirmed that the woman was dead and was buried.

This was supposed to be the end of the story, but some time after her death, a friend told Charles that before meeting him his wife suffered from bouts of hysteria, and she may not have died.

The very thought that he could bury his wife alive, did not give Charles rest until he himself fell into hysterics.

The man could not live with the thought that his wife was dying in a coffin and, with the help of his friends, exhumed his wife's body to confirm or deny his fears. What he found shocked him.

Mrs Boger's body was turned over. Her clothes were torn, the glass coffin lid was shattered, and fragments flew all over her body. The woman's skin was bloody and covered with wounds, and there were no fingers at all.

She was supposed to gnaw them in a hysterical fit as she tried to free herself. No one knows what happened to Charles after the terrible find.

Stories buried alive

7. Angelo Hays

Some of the scariest stories of being buried alive are not so dire because the victim miraculously managed to escape.

This was also the case with Angelo Hayes. In 1937, Angelo was an ordinary 19-year-old boy living in Saint-Quentin de Chalet, France. Angelo was riding his motorcycle one day lost control and hit a brick wall.

Without hesitation, the boy was pronounced dead and buried three days after the accident. In the neighboring city of Bordeaux, an insurance company suspected something was wrong after learning that Angelo's father had recently insured his son's life for 200,000 francs, so an inspector went to the scene.

The inspector requested the exhumation of Angelo's body two days after the funeral in order to confirm the cause of death, however, faced with a complete surprise. The boy was not really dead!

When the doctor took off the boy's funeral clothes, his body was still warm, and his heart was barely beating. He was immediately taken to hospital, where Angelo underwent several more surgeries and a course of general rehabilitation before he fully recovered.

During all this, he was unconscious, because he received serious head injury... After his recovery, the guy began to release coffins, from which it was possible to get out in case of premature burial. He toured with his invention and became somewhat of a celebrity in France.

6. Mr. Cornish

Cornish was the beloved mayor of Bath, who died of a fever about 80 years before Snart published his work.

As was the custom at the time, the body was buried fairly quickly after death was announced. The gravedigger was almost halfway through his work when he decided to take a break and have a drink with passing acquaintances.

He walked away from the grave to chat with visitors, when suddenly they all heard choking groans coming from the grave of the half-buried Mr. Cornish.

The gravedigger realized that he had buried the man alive and tried to save him while the oxygen was still in the coffin. But by the time they had scattered all the dirt and managed to remove the lid of the coffin, it was already too late, because Cornish died, scratching his elbows and knees bloody.

This story so scared the elder half-sister of Cornish that she asked her relatives after her death to chop off her head so that she would not suffer the same fate.

People buried alive

5. Surviving 6-year-old child

To bury a person alive is terrible, but it becomes unimaginably scary when a child becomes a victim of such a catastrophe. In August 2014, this is exactly what happened to a six-year-old girl, a resident of the Indian village of Uttar Pradesh.

According to the girl's uncle, Alok Awasthi, a couple living nearby, told her that her mother had asked them to take the baby to a nearby village. The girl agreed to go with them, but when they reached the sugarcane field, the couple decided for an unknown reason. strangle the girl and bury her on the spot.

Fortunately, some people working in the field saw the couple go out without the girl. They found her unconscious in a shallow grave whipped up right in the middle of a field.

At the very last moment, caring people managed to take the baby to the hospital, and when the girl regained consciousness, she was able to tell about her captors.

The girl does not remember that she was buried alive. The reasons why the couple decided to kill the girl are not known to the police, and the suspects have not yet been found.

As luck would have it, the story did not end tragically.

4. Buried alive of his own free will

As long as a person is alive, fate will be challenged. Nowadays, there are even textbooks that tell you what to do if you are buried alive, and how to avoid death.

Moreover, people go so far that they voluntarily bury themselves in order to play with death. In 2011, a 35-year-old resident of Russia did just that, and, unfortunately, died tragically.

It is not customary for many peoples of the world to bury the dead immediately after death - funeral rituals last several days. And this is no coincidence. There are many known cases when the dead regained consciousness before burial.

Imaginary death

"Lethargy" is translated from Greek as "oblivion" or "inaction." Science has studied this state of the human body very superficially. The external signs of the disease are simultaneously similar to sleep and death. With the onset of lethargy, the usual life processes stop in the human body.

With the development of technology and the advent of modern equipment, cases of burial alive are almost impossible. However, even a century ago, during the excavation of ancient graves, cemetery workers found bodies in rotted coffins that lay in an unnatural position. From the remains it was possible to determine that the person was trying to get out of the coffin.

Unexpected awakening

The religious philosopher and spiritualist Elena Petrovna Blavatsky described unique cases of deep "oblivion". So, on a Sunday morning in 1816, a Brussels man fell into a lethargic sleep. The next day, grief-stricken relatives had already prepared everything for burial. However, the man suddenly woke up, sat down, rubbed his eyes and asked for a book and a cup of coffee.

And the wife of a Moscow businessman was in lethargy for 17 days. Several attempts were made by the city authorities to bury the body, but there were no signs of decomposition. For this reason, the relatives postponed the ceremony. Soon the deceased regained consciousness.

In 1842, in French Bergerac, a patient took sleeping pills and could not wake up. The patient was prescribed a blood transfusion. After a while, the doctors pronounced him dead. After the funeral, they remembered taking medications, the grave was opened. The body was turned upside down.

Bad morning

In 1838, an amazing case was recorded in one of the cities of England. One boy, passing along the graves in one of the cemeteries, heard sounds uncharacteristic for this quiet place - someone's voice came from under the ground. The child brought his parents to the scene. One of the graves was opened. When the coffin was opened, it became clear that there was an unusual grin on the face of the corpse. Fresh wounds were also found on the corpse, and the burial shroud was torn apart. It turned out that the mock-dead was alive when he was buried, and his heart stopped before the opening of the coffin.

A more impressive incident occurred in Germany in 1773. A pregnant girl was buried in one of the cemeteries. Passers-by heard groans coming from her grave. Not only did the woman wake up after a lethargic sleep in a coffin, but she gave birth there, after which she died along with the newborn.

Some people were very afraid of such a fate and tried to foresee the details of their death in advance. So, the English writer Wilkie Collins feared his own burial alive, so when going to bed there was always a note next to his bed. In it, the points were mentioned the measures that must be taken before considering him dead.

Gogol's lethargy

The great Russian writer Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol also suffered from lethargy. To protect himself from an untimely funeral, he recorded on paper the possible incidents that happened to him. “Being in the full presence of memory and common sense, I expound my last will. I bequeath my body not to bury until there are clear signs of decay. I mention this because even during the illness itself they found moments of vital numbness on me, my heart and pulse stopped beating, ”Gogol wrote.

However, after the death of the writer, what he had written was forgotten, and the burial ceremony was performed, as expected, on the third day. Gogol's warnings were remembered only by 1931, during his reburial at the Novodevichy cemetery. Eyewitnesses said that there were noticeable scratches on the inside of the coffin lid, the corpse was lying in an unusual position, and it also had no head. According to one of their versions, the skull of the writer was stolen by the order of the famous collector and theatrical figure Alexei Bakhrushin by the monks of the St. Daniel Monastery during the restoration of Gogol's grave in 1909.

Revived corpse

In 1964, an autopsy of a man who died on the street took place in a New York morgue. The pathologist, having completed all the necessary preparation for the procedure, had only managed to bring the scalpel to the patient when he woke up. The doctor died from fright.

And in the famous newspaper "Beysky Rabochiy" in 1959, a unique case was described that occurred at the funeral of one engineer. At the moment of uttering the mourning speech, the man woke up, sneezed loudly, opened his eyes and almost died a second time when he saw the environment around him.

In order to avoid the burial of living people in many countries, the presence of a bell with a rope is provided in morgues. A person who is considered dead can wake up, get up and call him.

Ritual burials alive

Many peoples of South America, Siberia and the Far North resort to ritual burials of living people. Some peoples carry out burials alive in order to cure deadly diseases.

In some tribes, shamans themselves tend to lie in the grave in order to have the gift of communication with the spirits of the dead. According to ethnographer E.S.Bogdanovsky, the burial ritual was practiced by the Kamchatka aborigines. The scientist managed to observe such a terrifying sight. After a three-day fast, the shaman was rubbed with incense, a hole was drilled in his head, which was sealed with wax. After that, he was wrapped in a bear skin and buried. To make it easier for the shaman to survive the confinement, a special tube was inserted into his mouth with which he could breathe. A few days later the shaman was “released” from the grave, fumigated with incense and washed in water. It was believed that after that he was born again.