Taphophobia (from
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
τάφος - ''taphos'', "grave, tomb"
and φόβος - ''phobos'', "fear"
) is an abnormal (
psychopathological
Psychopathology is the study of abnormal cognition, behaviour, and experiences which differs according to social norms and rests upon a number of constructs that are deemed to be the social norm at any particular era.
Biological psychopathol ...
)
fear
Fear is an intensely unpleasant emotion in response to perceiving or recognizing a danger or threat. Fear causes physiological changes that may produce behavioral reactions such as mounting an aggressive response or fleeing the threat. Fear ...
of being
buried alive
Premature burial, also known as live burial, burial alive, or vivisepulture, means to be buried while still alive.
Animals or humans may be buried alive accidentally on the mistaken assumption that they are dead, or intentionally as a form of t ...
as a result of being incorrectly pronounced
dead
Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...
.
Before the era of modern medicine, the fear was not entirely irrational. Throughout history, there have been numerous cases of people being buried alive by accident. In 1905, the English reformer
William Tebb
William Tebb (22 October 1830 – 23 January 1917) was a British businessman and wide-ranging Reform movement, social reformer. He was an anti-vaccinationist and author of anti-vaccination books.''Bodily Matters: The Anti-Vaccination Movement in E ...
collected accounts of premature burial. He found 219 cases of near live burial, 149 actual live burials, 10 cases of live dissection and 2 cases of awakening while being embalmed.
The 18th century had seen the development of
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation
Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, a form of artificial ventilation, is the act of assisting or stimulating respiration in which a rescuer presses their mouth against that of the victim and blows air into the person's lungs. Artificial respiration ta ...
and crude
defibrillation techniques to revive persons considered dead, and the
Royal Humane Society
The Royal Humane Society is a British charity which promotes lifesaving intervention. It was founded in England in 1774 as the ''Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned'', for the purpose of rendering first aid in cases of near dro ...
had been formed as the Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned.
In 1896, an American funeral director, T. M. Montgomery, reported that "nearly 2% of those exhumed were no doubt victims of suspended animation",
although folklorist Paul Barber has argued that the incidence of burial alive has been overestimated, and that the normal effects of decomposition are mistaken for signs of life.
[Barber, Paul. ''Vampires, Burial and Death: Folklore and Reality''. Yale University Press, 1988.]
There have been many
urban legend
An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...
s of people being accidentally buried alive. Legends included elements such as someone entering into the state of
sopor Sopor may refer to:
* Sopor (sleep)
* Sopor Aeternus, musical project
* Methaqualone, by the trade name ''Sopor''
See also
* Sopore
Sopore, known as Suyyapur in antiquity, is a city in the Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir, India. It i ...
or
coma, only to wake up years later and die a horrible death. Other legends tell of coffins opened to find a corpse with a long beard or corpses with the hands raised and palms turned upward.
Of note is a legend about
Anne Hill Carter Lee
Anne Hill Carter Lee (March 26, 1773 – June 26, 1829) was the First Lady of Virginia from 1791 to 1794 as the wife of the ninth governor, Henry Lee III. She was the mother of the general-in-chief of the Confederate States of America, Robert E. ...
, the wife of
Henry Lee III
Henry Lee III (January 29, 1756 – March 25, 1818) was an early American Patriot and U.S. politician who served as the ninth Governor of Virginia and as the Virginia Representative to the United States Congress. Lee's service during the Amer ...
. According to the story,
in 1804 Mrs. Lee took ill and apparently died; she was rescued from the burial vault by a
sexton who heard noises coming from her casket.
Several notable historical figures are thought to have been afraid of live burial, including
Frédéric Chopin (who requested that his heart be cut out to ensure his death),
George Washington
George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...
(who requested that his body be laid out for three days), and
Hans Christian Andersen and
Alfred Nobel (who both asked to have their
arteries
An artery (plural arteries) () is a blood vessel in humans and most animals that takes blood away from the heart to one or more parts of the body (tissues, lungs, brain etc.). Most arteries carry oxygenated blood; the two exceptions are the pu ...
cut open).
Literature found fertile ground in exploring the natural fear of being buried alive. One of
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (; Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is wid ...
's horror stories, "
The Premature Burial," is about a person suffering from taphophobia. Other Poe stories about premature burial are "
The Fall of the House of Usher
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in ''Burton's Gentleman's Magazine'', then included in the collection ''Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque'' in 1840. The short story ...
" and "
The Cask of Amontillado
"The Cask of Amontillado" (sometimes spelled "The Casque of Amontillado" ) is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in the November 1846 issue of ''Godey's Lady's Book''. The story, set in an unnamed Italian city at ca ...
"; and, to a lesser extent, "
The Black Cat."
Fear of being buried alive was elaborated to the extent that those who could afford it would make all sorts of arrangements for the construction of a
safety coffin
A safety coffin or security coffin is a coffin fitted with a mechanism to prevent premature burial or allow the occupant to signal that they have been buried alive. A large number of designs for safety coffins were patented during the 18th and 1 ...
to ensure this would be avoided (e.g., glass lids for observation, ropes to bells for signaling, and breathing pipes for survival until rescued).
It is sometimes claimed that the English phrases "
saved by the bell
''Saved by the Bell'' is an American television sitcom created by Sam Bobrick for NBC. The series premiered, in primetime, on August 20, 1989, a Sunday night. Targeted at kids and teens, ''Saved by the Bell'' was broadcast in the United States ...
" and/or "
dead ringer" are in some way related to such safety bells; but such is not the case.
Although greater public confidence in the medical profession and its ability to diagnose death accurately has seen a reduction in fear of premature burial after the early 20th century there have been periods of public alarm in recent decades after medical errors in diagnosing death were reported.
Taphophobia may remain common in some parts of the world. For example, a study of Pakistani women found severe taphophobia in one third of subjects with mental illness and a mild degree of this fear in half of the controls.
Although rare in the developed world, a recent study reported three cases of taphophobia among older people in the west of Ireland.
See also
*
List of phobias
The English suffixes -phobia, -phobic, -phobe (from Greek φόβος ''phobos'', "fear") occur in technical usage in psychiatry to construct words that describe irrational, abnormal, unwarranted, persistent, or disabling fear as a mental dis ...
References
[φόβος](_blank)
Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek-English Lexicon'', on Perseus
[τάφος](_blank)
Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek-English Lexicon'', on Perseus
["Just Dying to Get Out"](_blank)
from Snopes.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Taphophobia
Death
Phobias