 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Welcome Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. If you're new here, welcome to the show and while you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to connect with me on social media and more. Coming up, it's Thriller Thursday and I'm bringing back the master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe, with his story The Premature Burial, originally published in the Philadelphia Dollar newspaper in 1844. Fear of burial alive was deeply rooted in western culture in the 19th century when this was originally printed and Poe was taking advantage of the public's fascination with it as well as their fears about it. Hundreds of cases were rumored to have taken place in which doctors mistakenly pronounced people dead, although very few of these have been verified to have actually occurred. Still, the terrorizing idea was enough for people to take precautions. During this time, coffins occasionally were equipped with emergency devices to allow the corpse to call for help, should he or she turn out to still be living. It was such a strong concern, Victorians even organized a society for the prevention of people being buried alive. Belief in the vampire and animated corpse that remains in its grave by day and emerges to prey on the living at night has sometimes been attributed to premature burial. Poe's story emphasizes this fascination by having the narrator state that truth can be more terrifying than fiction, then reciting actual cases in order to convince the reader to believe the main story. You'll hear the narrator complain of attacks of the singular disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy. For those unfamiliar with the term, catalepsy is a nervous condition characterized by muscular rigidity and fixture of posture regardless of external stimuli as well as decreased sensitivity to pain. The condition will cause the person to randomly fall into a death-like trance, leaving them with a variety of possible symptoms including a rigid body, rigid limbs, limbs staying in the same position when moved, loss of muscle control and even slowing down of bodily functions such as breathing. It can look so much like true death that having this condition leads to the narrator's true fear of being buried alive. Poe was obviously fascinated with the idea of being buried alive. He included the idea in other works of his such as Berenice, the casque of Amantolado, the fall of the House of Usher and the Black Kent. Now, the premature burial by Edgar Allan Poe. So, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Hey Weirdos, every year during the month of October we celebrate Weird Darkness's anniversary and our way of doing that is to have a campaign to help people who struggle with depression, anxiety, thoughts of self-harm and suicide and we call it overcoming the darkness. And once again, I have a few people that I would like to thank for donating over the last 24 hours or so. A huge thanks to Matt, who gave $20. Robin gave $25. Kelly came in with $25 as well. Dan sent $20. Nicholas sent $30. Thank you very much, Nicholas. Brian sent $50. Robert sent $10. And I love it when somebody who doesn't think they can give, gives anyway. Shawna gave $5. That doesn't sound like a lot, but $5, if every single person gave just $5 or even $1, everybody who hears my voice right now, we would blow our campaign goal out of the sky. So, thank you so much, Shawna, for that $5 donation. You have no idea how much it means to me when I see the smaller donations come in like that because I know money doesn't come easy to anybody nowadays, especially somebody who's able to give even just $5. I do not take that for granted. Thank you so much. If you've not donated yet, you can still do so. Just go to the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. That's WeirdDarkness.com. Please donate and save a life today. We all know somebody who struggles with depression or anxiety. If you don't think you do, well, you do now because I started this campaign because I'm somebody who does struggle with depression. And I know how important it is to have these resources available for those who are out there who don't know where else to look. That's what the Hope in the Darkness page is all about. So, learn more about the campaign, about all of the resources that are available if you or somebody you know does struggle with depression or thoughts of suicide. And also, if you'd like to make that donation, you can do it at WeirdDarkness.com slash Hope. And thank you in advance. 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 eschew if you 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 Bersina, of the earthquake at Lisbon, of the plague at London, of the massacre of St. Arthurolomu, or of the stifling of the 123 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 on 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 catalogue 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 mask. 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 the all 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, a priory 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 it once if necessary to a hundred well-authenticated instances, what a 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 of the usual marble pallor, the eyes were lusterless, it 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, he 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 appareled object fell rattling within his arms. It was the skeleton of his wife in her yet unmolded shroud. The 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 utter most of the steps which led down into the dread chamber was a large fragment of the coffin, 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 failing, her shroud became entangled in some iron work which projected interiorly. Thus she remained, and thus she rotted, erect. In the year 1810, a case of living inhumation happened in France, attended with circumstances which go far to warrant the assertion that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. The heroine of the story was Amemoiselle Victorine La Forcée, the young girl of illustrious family of wealth and of great personal beauty. Among her numerous suitors was Julian Basouet, 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 a manchur ranel, 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 disinterring the corpse and possessing himself of 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 Basouette. She returned no more to her husband, but concealing from him her resurrection fled with her lover to America. Twenty years afterward, 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 Rinal 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 her husband. The Chorurgical Journal of Leipzig, a periodical of high authority and merit which some American bookseller 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 within decent haste in one of the public cemeteries. His funeral took place on Thursday. On the Sunday following, the grounds of the cemetery were, as usual, much thronged with visitors. 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 reservation, but his evident terror and his dogged obstinacy with which he persisted in his story had at length their natural effect upon the crowd. Spades were hurriedly procured, and the grave which was shamefully shallow was at 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 asphatic 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 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 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 battery was applied and he suddenly expired in one of those ecstatic paroxysms which occasionally it super induces. 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 1831 and created at the time a very profound sensation wherever it was made the subject of converse. The patient, Mr. Edward Stapleton, had died, apparently of typhus fever, accompanied with some anomalous symptoms which had excited the curiosity 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 disinter the body and dissect it at leisure in private. Arrangements were easily affected with some of the numerous corpse 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 in the opening chamber of one of the private hospitals. An incision of some extent had been actually made in the abdomen when the fresh and undecayed appearance of the subject suggested an application of the battery. One experiment succeeded another and the customary effects superveined, with nothing to characterize them in any respect except upon one or two occasions a more than ordinary degree of life likeness 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 unconvulsive moment 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 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 Mr. 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 raptuous astonishment may be conceived. The most thrilling peculiarity of this incident, nevertheless, is involved in what Mr. S himself asserts. He declares that at no period was he altogether insensible, that duly 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 was 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 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 as a graveyard ever encroached upon for any purpose to any great extent, the 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 to 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 the 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 and interests nevertheless which through the sacred awe of the topic itself very properly and very peculiarly depends upon our conviction of the truth of the matter narrated. What I have now to tell 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 mysterious, 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 a torpid, unequal and vacillating action of the lungs. Then again the duration of the trances 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 conceive of absolute death. Very usually he is saved from premature internment 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 in market, are unequivocal. The fits grow successively more and more distinctive and endure each for a longer term than the proceeding. 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 semi-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 dizzy 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 tartly, 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 perceive that it was at all affected by the one prevalent malady, unless indeed an idiosyncrasy in my ordinary sleep may be looked upon as super-induced. Upon awaking 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 special 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 carnal. I talked of worms and 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 to 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 as 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 waking 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 sepulchral idea. From the innumerable images of gloom which thus oppressed me in dreams, I select for record but a solitary vision. I thought 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 within my ear. I sat erect. The darkness was total. I could not see the figure of him who 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 busy in endeavors to collect by thought, 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 whom I demanded art thou? I have no name in the regions which I inhabit, replied the voice mournfully. I was mortal, but am themed. I was merciless, but impitiful. 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 tranquilly 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 caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind, and from each issued the faint phosphoric radiance of decay, so that I could see into the innermost recesses, and their view the shrouded bodies and 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 tranquilly 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 entombed. And the voice again said to me as I gazed, Is it not, oh, is it not, oh, 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 a rosy tumult of despairing cries saying again, Is it not, oh, God, is it not, a very pitiful sight? Fantasies 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 irrecoverable. 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 to being readily opened from within. The slightest pressure upon a long lever that I extended far into the tomb would cause the iron portal to fly back. There were arrangements also for the free admission of air and light, and convenient receptacles for food and water, with an 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 springs 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 suffice to save from the uttermost agonies of living in humation, a wretch to these agonies fordoomed. There arrived an epoch, 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 day, a torpid uneasiness, an apathetic endurance of dull pain, no care, no hope, no effort. Then after a long interval or ringing in the years, then after a lapse still longer, a prickling or tingling sensation in the extremities, then a seemingly eternal period of pleasurable quiescence, during which the awakening feelings are struggling into thought, then a brief re-sinking into non-entity, then a sudden recovery. At length, a slight quivering of an eyelid, and immediately there upon an electric shock of terror, deadly and indefinite, which sends the blood and torrents from the temples to 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 that 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 shuttering 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 motion. And why? I could not some encourage 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 along urged me after long a resolution to uplift the heavy 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 now fully recovered the use of my visual faculties. And yet it was dark, all dark, the intense and utter railessness of the night that endureth forever more. I endeavored to shriek and my lips and my parked 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 reposed within a coffin at last. And now, amid all my infinite miseries, came sweetly the cherub hope. For I thought my precautions. I writhed and made sposmatic 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 sternard 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 the second endeavor I succeeded. A long, wild and continuous shriek or yell of agony resounded through the realms of the subterranean night. Hello! Hello there! said a gruff voice in reply. What the devil's the matter now? said a second. Get out of that! said a third. What do you mean by yelling in that air kind of style like a catty-mount? 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 proceeded 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 60 or 20 tons need scarcely be described. That which I occupied had no bedding of any kind. Its extreme width was 18 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 eluded of collecting my senses and especially of regaining my memory for a long time after awakening 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 hakerchief and which I had bound up my head in default of my customary nightcap. The tortures ended, however, were indubitably quite equal for the time to those of actual sepulcher. They were fearfully, they were inconceivably hideous, but out of evil proceeded 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, who con I burned. I read no night thoughts, no Faustian about church yards, no bugaboo tales such as this. In short, I became a new man, and I lived a man's life. From that memorable night I dismissed forever my carnal apprehensions, and with them vanished the cataleptic 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 imagination of man is no carethus, to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas, the grim legion of sepulchre terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful. But like the demons in whose company Afraziab made his voyage down the oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us. They must be suffered to slumber, or we perish. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. You can also email me anytime with your questions or comments through the website at WeirdDarkness.com. That's also where you can find all of my social media, listen to free audiobooks, shop the Weird Darkness store, find my other podcast, Church of the Undead, and more. Plus, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story. Stories on Thriller Thursday episodes are works of fiction and links to the stories of the authors can be found in the show notes. The premature burial was written by Edgar Allan Poe. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. Copyright, Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Mark 12, verses 28b-31. Of all the commandments, which is the most important? The most important one, answered Jesus, is this. Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this, love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. And a final thought from Plato. Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Weird Darkness is celebrating its eighth birthday this month and our way of celebrating is to raise money for organizations that help people who struggle with depression, anxiety, and thoughts of suicide and self-harm. It's called Overcoming the Darkness and you can make a donation right now at WeirdDarkness.com slash Overcoming. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Overcoming. A gift of any amount will bring us that much closer to our goal and your donation helps that many more people who are affected by depression, so no gift is too small. Our goal is to raise at least $5,000 this month. If you've not donated yet, or if you'd like to give again, or maybe you'd like to grab the link and share the fundraiser on your own social media and challenge others to give, visit WeirdDarkness.com slash Overcoming. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash Overcoming. 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