10 Terrifying REAL Stories of Being Buried Alive

In 2018, the Chinese province of Sichuan was subjected to weeks of prolonged, heavy rainfall. As a result, more than 200,000 residents suffered severe consequences with their homes and farmlands being damaged by the floods. During that period, an unidentified 64-year-old man was reportedly walking down a highway when a landslide collapsed the road beneath him and completely buried him. Over the next five hours, the man remained trapped underneath the mud while rescuers worked tirelessly to free him. Fortunately, they were able to get him out from under nearly 20,000 cubic meters of mud with only minor injuries sustained.

Sao Paulo Man Resurrects

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While visiting the resting place of her relatives at a cemetery in Ferraz de Vasconcelos, São Paulo, a Brazilian woman made a shocking discovery. According to reports, the woman heard noises coming from a nearby grave and noticed a man trying to make his way out. Naturally, she ran away, terrified. But after drawing the attention of the cemetery workers, they found out that the man wasn’t actually a zombie. In fact, he had reportedly been the victim of an attack in another part of town. His assailants, who probably thought he was dead, then brought him to the cemetery and buried him in a shallow grave. Luckily, he was discovered by the grieving woman.

Throughout history, there have been several instances of people being mistaken for dead and buried alive. That was nearly the case for Jozef Guzy, a 76-year-old beekeeper from Katowice, Poland. While at work, Guzy was stung by a bee and suffered a heart attack as a result. He was later pronounced dead by a doctor. Guzy was taken to the mortuary afterwards and placed in a coffin to be buried. Things may have gone terribly awry if his wife didn’t make a last minute request to retrieve some jewelry that he was wearing. Upon reaching into his coffin, the funeral director detected a pulse. Guzy was taken out and rushed to the ICU.

Known as the woman who lived once but was buried twice, Margorie McCall resided in the Irish town of Lurgan, County Armagh in the 17th century. McCall apparently suffered a fever in 1695 and was soon pronounced dead. On the day of her burial, her body was dressed up and interred at Shankill Graveyard. One night, her coffin was visited by grave robbers who dug her up to steal her valuable jewelry. While doing so, McCall suddenly awoke, scaring off her would-be robbers. She made her way out of the grave and walked back home where, upon seeing her, her husband collapsed out of shock. McCall reportedly lived to have another child before passing on later in life.

Back in 1993, 24-year-old South African Sipho William Mdletshe was involved in a ghastly car accident with his fiancée. While his fiancée survived, Mdletshe sustained injuries that were considered fatal by the first responders who arrived at the scene. As a result, he was immediately transported to the morgue. After enduring 48 hours trapped inside a cold metal cabinet at the morgue, Mdletshe miraculously regained consciousness. Probably thinking the worst, the young man began screaming for help and hitting the enclosure. He was eventually rescued by the mortuary workers and taken home to his fiancée, who was reportedly petrified to see him at first.

It’s one thing to get through being buried alive, but to have to survive a bear attack on top of that is nothing short of a miracle. That was the tale of Natalya Pasternak, a Russian post office worker who had gone to the woods with her friend to collect birch sap. While there, the ladies were ambushed by a bear who attacked Pasternak, leaving her in a terrible condition. The bear then buried her underneath some foliage, apparently saving her for its next meal. Pasternak’s friend was able to contact the authorities who returned to the scene and put down the creature. She was then rescued and taken to the hospital.

Young Sook An

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On October 16th 2022, 42-year-old Young Sook An was physically assaulted by her estranged husband Chae, and buried alive. At the time of the incident, the couple had been working through a bitter divorce and An had earlier filed a domestic violence protective order against Chae. During a heated argument on that day, Chae attacked An, then bound and gagged her with duct tape, before driving her out to the woods where he buried her alive in a shallow grave. An managed to escape from the grave after several hours and turned up at a stranger’s house very early the next morning. Chae was arrested that same day and brought up on multiple charges including attempted murder and kidnapping.

One of the most famous cases of a premature burial is that of Angelo Hays from France. In 1937, Hays was riding his motorcycle when he got into a terrible accident that left him with severe head injuries. He was pronounced dead a few days later and promptly buried. However, as his father had taken out a sizable life insurance policy on him, a claims adjuster was sent to investigate the cause of death. Two days after the burial, Hay’s body was exhumed and he was discovered to still be alive. He eventually made a full recovery and gained some popularity in France after inventing his own electric coffin.

Ever since the legendary Harry Houdini first attempted the Buried Alive escape in 1915, a few other performers have tried, and failed, to outdo him. One of these was the British daredevil Antony Britton. In 2015, with his sights set on besting Houdini, Britton laid in a standard-sized grave and was buried under six feet of soil. However, after about nine minutes had passed and Britton hadn’t resurfaced, his crew knew that something was wrong. According to the escape artist, he could feel himself being crushed under the soil and even sustained a cracked rib in the process. He was eventually pulled out and resuscitated by paramedics.

In 1915, at the age of 30, Essie Dunbar of South Carolina suffered an epileptic seizure and was thought to have passed away. As her sister lived in the neighboring town, Dunbar’s funeral was slated for the next morning to give her time to travel down. Nonetheless, she arrived late for the ceremony to find that her sister had already been buried. At her behest, Dunbar’s coffin was dug up so she could pay her last respects. To the utter shock of everyone present, once the lid was removed, Dunbar reportedly sat up in the coffin, alive and well. She went on to live for another 47 years before she eventually died, this time for real, in 1962.