The Premature Burial by Edgar Allan Poe — Complete Gothic Horror Reading

One of my favorite memories of scaring myself as a child was getting a compilation book of Edgar Allan Poe's stories from my elementary school library. It brought me so much fear and so much excitement. I remember running home from school with that book in my backpack as the sky was dark and a storm was coming. I was in my childhood living room, but I wasn't alone. I had a pizza and the books of Poe. Every so often I'll bring you a tale of Poe, and I hope it gives you that scary fun sense, just the same as it does for me.

When the clock strikes midnight, the story will begin. Premature Burial by Edgar Allan Poe. 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 issue 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, at the plague at London, of the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, or of the stifling of the one 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 upon 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 catalog 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, they 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 forever loosed, nor the golden bowl irreparably broken, but where meantime was the soul. Apart, however, from the inevitable conclusion ah 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 neighboring 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 the usual marble paler, 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 skeletal remains of his wife in her yet unmolded 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 uppermost of the steps which led down into the dread chamber, was a large fragment of the car often, with which it seemed that she had endeavored to arrest attention by striking the iron door While thus occupied, she probably swooned or possibly died through sheer terror, and in falling her shroud became entangled in some iron work 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 ascertation that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

The heroine of the story was a mademoiselle Victorine Laforcade, a young girl of ille illustrious family, of wealth and of great personal beauty. Among her numerous suitors was Julien Bossuet, a poor literature 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 Monsieur Renelle, 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 everyone 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 disintearing the corpse and possessing himself of it 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 afterwards, 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, Monsieur Renelle 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 Chirogical Journal of Leipzig, a periodical of high authority and merit which some American booksellers 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, and 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 someone struggling beneath.

At first, little attention was paid to the man's asservation, 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 heard, 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 asphytic 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 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 a victim to the quackeries of medical experiment. The galvanic battle was applied, and he suddenly expired in one of those ecstatic paroxysms which occasionally it superinduces. 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 twenty one, and created at the time a very profound sensation whenever it was made the subject of converse. The patient, mister Edward Stapleton, had died, apparently of typhus fever, accompanied with some anomalous symptoms which had excited the curiosity city 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 dissenter the body and dissect it at leisure in private arrangements. Were easily affected with some of the numerous cores 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 into the operating chamber of one of the private hospitals.

An incision of some extent had been actually made in the abdomen when the fresh and un decayed 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 lifelikeness 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 unconclusive 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 the 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 mister 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 rapturious astonishment, may be conceived. The most thrilling peculiarity of this incident, nevertheless, is involved in what mister 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 upon 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 of 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 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 peculit uliarily depends upon our conviction of the truth of the matter narrated.

What I have now to tell you 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 mysteries, 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 color lingers within the center of the cheek, and upon application of a mirror to the lips, we can detect 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 can 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 busy, 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 proceed eve 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 awakening 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 and 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 in 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, like 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 awaking 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 sepucural 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. I sat erect. The darkness was total. I could not see the figure of whom 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 endeavors to collect my thoughts, the cold hand grasped me fiercely by the wrist, shaking it petulantly, while the gibbering voice said again, arise. Did I not bid thee arise? And who I demanded? Art? Thou? I am called shadow 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 tranquility 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 not this a spectacle of woe? Behold? I looked, and the unseen figure, which still grasped me by the wrist, had cause to be thrown the open 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 shri routed bodies in their sad and solemn 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 tranquility 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 entuned. 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, O God? Is it not a very pitiful sight? Phantasies 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 irrevocable. 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 further 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 portals to fly back.

There were arrangements also for the free admission of air and light, and convenient receptacles for food and water 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 spring so contrived that the feeblest movement of the body would be sufficient to set it at liberty. Besides 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 say from the uttermost agonies of living inhumation a wretched to these agonies foredoomed. There arrived an epic, 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 gray 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 pricking or tingling sensation in the extremities.

Then a seemingly eternal period of pleasurable acquiescence, during which the way 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 thereupon an electric shock of terror, deadly and indefinite, which sends the blood in torrents from the temples of the heart. And now the first positive effort to think, and now the first endeavor to remember, and now a partial and evanescent success. And now the memory has so far regained its dominion. 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 any 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 life 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 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 forevermore. 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 posed within a coffin.

At last, and now amid all my infinite miseries, came sweetly the cherub of 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 forever, 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 odor 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 forever 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 endeavor I succeeded. A long, wild and continuous shriek or yell of agony resounded through the realms of the subterene night.

Hello, Hello, there said a gruff voice in reply. What the devil is the matter? Now? Said a second. Get out of that, said a third. What do you mean by yawling in that air kind of style like a catymount? Said a fourth. And hereupon I was seized and shaken without ceremony for several minutes by a junto 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 pursued upon a gunning expedition some miles down 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 mold, 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 seventy 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 laborers engaged to unload it. From the load itself came the earthly 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 actual sepulty. They were fearfully they were inconceivably hideous, but out of evil proceded 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, Buchan I burned. I read no night thoughts, no fustian about church yards, 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 forever my charnel apprehensions, and with them vanished the cat eleptic 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 intellect of man is no carathis to explore with impunity. It's every cavern alas the grim legion of sepucural terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful, But like the demons in whose company Afrosiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us.

They must be suffered to slumber, or we perish