The Premature Burial
by Edgar Allan Poe
What is the scariest thing in the world? Each person has their own fears. Some people fear heights, Acrophobia(or at least a fear of hitting the ground). Some people fear animals like spiders, Arachnophobia. Some fear suffocation in small places, Claustrophobia. Some fear smelly people, Autodysomophobia. Some people fear everything, Pantophobia. If you want to hear more about fears click on here to hear what Lucy and Charlie Brown have to say about it.
Everyone is scared of something, and there is something that everyone is scared of. Edgar Allan Poe, the master of all things terrible, delves into this shared fear through factual occurrences of the realized fear of burial before death. Poe maintains that tragedies of major proportions affecting many people like tornados and earthquakes are less horrible than the cases that affect only one person like burial before death. Imagine the horror of awaking six feet under with the heavy knowledge that no one will come and no one will know your true fate. The factual stories in this piece are solid. Cases of premature burial have been found throughout time. If you truly want to read the extreme of Edgar Allan Poe's dark horrifying stories, The Premature Burial is a good place to start. Some fortunate people have been found alive in their graves. One had his body donated to science and while he was on the dissecting table he awoke enough to let the doctors know he was in fact alive. Another man was buried in a shallow grave and heard by a worker late at night and dug up. Others weren't as lucky. In the first account discussed by Poe a women buried in a crypt and was found with evidence of trying to escape before eventual suffocation. All accounts presented are horrible, but one has a happy ending of sorts. A women was married off to a man that she didn't love. Tragically the man she loved was separated from her. One day she died or so everyone thought. When she was discovered alive her widowed husband wasn't told, and she ran of to marry her true love. That was a good ending, but Poe doesn't hold back when detailing the ones that have died from being buried alive. This short story makes for a very good scary story to tell around the campfire, that's probably why he wrote it.
