Legends 24: Buried Alive

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Welcome to Lore Legends, a subset of lore episodes that explore the strange tales we whisper in the dark, even if they can't always be proven by the history books.

So if you're ready, let's begin.

Fear is powerful.

It can paralyze us both physically and emotionally, or it can inspire us to accomplish things we never thought we could.

For example, in 1982, a Georgia mother miraculously saved her son's life.

He'd been working in the driveway under his 1964 Chevy when the jack gave out, pinning him beneath the car.

His mother ran outside and, fueled by adrenaline and terror, lifted the car off of him with her bare hands.

Her son was a little shaken up, but otherwise fine.

But fear also has a darker side.

When we're afraid we can feel alone, or trapped, or threatened by some real or imagined danger.

Some fears can be overcome, like that of snakes or spiders, but others can be harder to shake, like the fear of death, especially of dying alone.

Of course, most of the time, our fears lack teeth.

After all, how often will we actually encounter a deadly cobra or a man-eating shark?

We're statistically more likely to be struck by lightning.

At least that's what the experts say.

But of course that doesn't stop us from lying awake each night trying to escape those fears.

Every once in a while though, the thing that haunts our dreams actually becomes reality.

So what do we do when the unthinkable happens?

How do we handle our fear in the face of certain death?

Do we fight to survive or do we accept our fate?

These questions aren't so easy to answer.

But while everyone has their own unique fears and struggles, one of the most common nightmares of all is said to be waiting for us in our graves.

So grab a shovel and take a deep breath because it might just be your last.

I'm Aaron Manke,

and this is Lore Legends.

It's a tiny piece of land with a big story.

Just off the coast of South Carolina is a place called Edisto Island.

It was named after a branch of the Cassabo Native peoples who once lived there.

When the colonists arrived in the 1600s, though, they enslaved everyone they found, forcing them to plant rice and cotton.

Over the next century and a half, a combination of displacement and disease slowly eradicated the tribe, but the plantations continued to spread.

Several of them were owned by a man named William Seabrook.

Along with the land, he also ran a healthy ferry business that shuttled people to and from the island.

In the mid-1800s, William's wife gave birth to a daughter named Julia, who had a bit of a rough childhood.

Often, she was sick, and doctors had trouble diagnosing the nature of her condition.

Still, she went on to live as full a life as she could.

And around 1848, Julia married a man named John Barrick Legree, a plantation owner just like her father.

They had two sons together, and for a while, everything was peaceful.

But their wedded bliss wouldn't last long.

Four years into their marriage Julia passed away.

She was only 22 years old.

Now the story varies depending on who's telling it, but it's possible that she contracted either diphtheria or malaria.

Whatever it was put her into a coma and eventually she slipped away.

The family doctor came to the house and officially declared her dead.

That very same day, Julia was brought to the local Presbyterian church cemetery to be interred.

Her body was laid to rest within the family's mausoleum, a reddish stone structure that bears the name J.B.

Legree above the door.

Inside, three headstones line the back wall.

Julia's reads, in sacred reverence to her memory by her bereaved husband.

So she was placed inside the crypt and the door was sealed, a door that wouldn't be opened again until the next death in the family occurred.

Some say only two years passed by.

Others claim it was 15.

But when the next member of the Legree clan finally did die, the door to the mausoleum mausoleum was opened and they made a horrifying discovery.

Julia was no longer in her crypt.

Her remains were just inside the doorway in a crumpled heap, still draped in the torn remains of her burial gown.

The trouble was no one had entered the tomb since her death, but that was when the family noticed something else.

Scratches on the walls and door.

and her fingernails, still attached to the tips of her fingers, they say, were jagged and broken.

Julia hadn't hadn't been dead after all.

She had woken up inside the crypt and, in a panic, tried to claw her way out.

It was believed that the illness had caused her heart rate to drop so low that the doctor couldn't even find it.

Death had really been nothing more than a coma.

The family placed her remains back in her crypt and closed the door once more.

And you would think that her story would end there.

But when they returned sometime later to pay their respects, they found the door ajar.

Assuming that it just hadn't been closed all the way, they shut it again and left.

But a few weeks later, a clergyman at the church happened to walk by and it was open yet again.

And this kept happening too.

No matter how many times that door was shut, it would open back up.

It got so bad that a new heavy-duty door was installed on the crypt in the 1960s, one that was so strong that it could only be moved using heavy machinery.

So, it came as quite a shock when it was discovered open again.

Well, open might be the wrong word, really.

The modern door looked like it had been ripped off its hinges.

Then, according to the legend, the interior side of this new door was covered in what could only be described as scratch marks.

Eventually, everyone gave up.

Today, the door remains open so that Julia's spirits can come and go as she pleases.

But some folks aren't sure that it's helped.

Visitors there have felt a strange energy around the mausoleum.

Photos taken of the tomb sometimes come out distorted, and paranormal investigators have noted a spike in EMF readings while inside.

Now, I have to be clear here.

Julia Legree was a real person who lived, died, and was interred there on the island, but the town disagrees with her legend.

For one, there's no historical evidence to back up the story of her tragic second death, and the town is quick to point out that all family burials were done underground.

So Julia's crypt would have been covered by a heavy stone slab, something immovable, by someone in her condition.

But while her story may pose more questions than answers, she wasn't the first person to face the horror of being buried alive.

And she certainly wouldn't be the last.

About 200 years before Julia's accidental interment, there was Anne Green.

She was a 22-year-old maidservant from Oxford, England, who, in 1650, had to face one of the most tragic events a mother could ever endure.

You see, Anne had become pregnant by the teenage grandson of her employer, a pregnancy that tragically ended in miscarriage several months later.

This being a less compassionate and enlightened time, Anne tried to hide the evidence of what happened, but a fellow servant discovered the truth and turned her in.

Already grieving her loss, Anne was arrested, tried, and found guilty of murder, all for something that should never have been considered a crime in the first place, which is why on December 14th of 1650, Anne Green stood in the yard of Oxford Castle with a noose around her neck.

At the appointed hour, the ladder she'd been standing on was removed, and she was hanged.

Spectators watched as she twitched and struggled under her own weight.

It took half an hour before her movement stopped, but after they did, her friends pulled down on her body to make sure she had been put out of her misery.

The sheriff of Oxford only stepped in when he realized that they might break the rope, which to him was perfectly good and should be saved.

And just take a moment for that to sink in.

Hundreds of people had just watched a human life be taken, and the sheriff's biggest concern was saving a rope.

Anyway, after all of that, Anne's body was placed in a coffin and sent to be dissected by Oxford medical students.

And this was a common thing back then.

The corpses of executed criminals were some of the only cadavers allowed by English law to be studied by medical colleges.

So it wasn't all that unusual when Anne's body was delivered to the house of Dr.

William Petty, an Oxford anatomist and teacher.

But what came next was unusual.

The doctor enlisted the help of his colleague, Dr.

Thomas Willis, in opening the coffin.

They removed the lid and looked down at the body of the woman inside and then saw her take a breath.

Suddenly, they were no longer in possession of a deceased woman.

She was alive.

They propped her up and opened her jaw so they could pour a hot cordial down her throat.

She coughed as her body slowly came back to life until finally, she opened her eyes.

They then administered a series of treatments to help ease her back into the world of the living.

After that, they drained five ounces of blood from her veins and gave her more cordial to drink.

They also rubbed her limbs to encourage circulation and then applied compressive bandages to them.

And her body was warmed through a variety of external and internal methods as well, including placing her in a bed with another woman.

12 hours after emerging from her coffin, Anne was able to talk.

According to the pamphlet published about her condition, her first words were, behold God's providence.

Within a day, she could answer questions and pray, although her memory was shaky.

It didn't return until several days later.

The only parts she could not recall involved her execution and the revival.

It took four days before she was able to eat, but after a month, she had fully recovered.

Anne's father, capitalizing on what had happened to his daughter, charged admission for people to come and see her while she healed.

For an additional fee, they say, you could also view her coffin.

And this money wasn't just to make him rich.

It also paid Anne's medical bills.

But Anne was a living miracle, and thousands came to see the woman that God had spared.

And her resurrection inspired Dr.

Petty to write a letter to the authorities petitioning for her pardon, citing her survival at the hand of God.

And who were those justices to argue with divine providence, right?

After some paperwork had been filed, Anne was officially declared a free woman.

Stories of her attempted execution were published in broadsides and other literature, and some even claimed that instead of total amnesia during her execution, she actually saw visions of heaven.

In one version, for example, she claimed to recall walking through a lush clearing beside a rolling river where, and I quote, all things there glittered like silver and gold.

Another pamphlet suggested that she had been in a garden of paradise surrounded by four angels.

Anne lived for nine more years.

During that time, she got married and even had three children.

Yet, she never forgot the grave injustice she suffered at the hands of the court or how she had lived to tell the tale.

But while her survival may have seemed like a gift from God, other examples throughout history have looked a lot more like the work of the devil.

Anne's resurrection may have seemed astonishing, but it was surprisingly not unique.

Just 90 years after her unjust hanging, an English boy named William Duell was executed for some very real and very serious crimes.

Duell was a 16-year-old who was working as a farmhand when he encountered a woman named Sarah Griffin.

She was a long way from home, and when she told Duel that she was sick, he told her that she could rest for the night inside his barn in a hay bale.

And she accepted.

Duel then ran back to the local pub to tell five other men about her, and they all willingly followed him back to the barn, where Sarah was robbed, beaten, and assaulted.

She died a few days later from her injuries.

At his trial, Duel gave a tear-filled testimony, but his remorse fell on deaf ears.

He was found guilty and sentenced to death, and on the day of his execution, he dangled at the end of a rope for a solid 20 minutes.

Then his body was cut down and the following day was taken to the surgeon's hall.

There, a washer woman stripped and cleansed him for dissection, but she'd only been scrubbing for about 10 minutes when she noticed something odd.

The young man's body was groaning.

Other attendants huddled in close, thinking that they were imagining things, but no, William Duell was making sounds sounds and his body was still warm.

A surgeon stepped in to draw several ounces of blood from him.

He was then given some hot water and wine to warm him up.

Within two hours, Duel was able to sit upright in a chair.

He still couldn't speak and had not fully healed, but the sheriff didn't care.

He sent his former prisoner back to jail until he was well enough to be executed again.

The next morning, William Duell found that he could talk again.

He was questioned by both the sheriff and the surgeon about what he remembered.

He said he recalled receiving his last rites, but couldn't remember the hanging itself.

But he'd retained enough of his memory that he could recite the Lord's Prayer without hesitation.

And just like Ann, William Duell became a minor celebrity, earning the nickname Dead Alive Duel.

Two men interviewed him at Newgate Prison to get his side of the story, and they published his account in a pamphlet titled News of the Dead.

Duel gave them detailed explanations of what he'd seen as he hung from the gallows, saying, A thousand dreadful specters, the one more terrible than the other, presented themselves to his confused imagination.

Anne Green had gotten a glimpse of heaven in her brush with death, but the same couldn't be said for William Duell.

He viewed a very different afterlife, one full of torture and endless horrors.

But what frightened him the most was something else he saw in those final moments before he died.

Sarah Griffin herself, who stood before him, perhaps judging him from beyond the veil.

When Duel finally awoke after his execution, something about him was different.

The swearing and blasphemy that used to fly from his lips had softened.

He was much more reserved.

He was concerned for his future and, more importantly, what awaited him in the afterlife, which begged an all-new question, what to do with Mr.

Duell now?

On the one hand, prosecutors didn't want people to believe that survival meant a pardon.

On the other, some felt that William's survival represented divine intervention, and that to execute him again would go against God's will.

So what was to be done?

Well, as it turns out, there was a third option.

Banishment.

A number of news articles, and even that News of the Dead pamphlet I mentioned a moment ago, had already argued in favor of Duel being transported for life rather than re-hanged, and the court agreed.

He was sentenced to serve out the rest of his days in the British colonies in North America, a fairly common occurrence at the time.

In fact, during the 1700s, over 52,000 criminals were exported from England to the New World.

These men and women were essentially sold into servitude, sometimes for the remainder of their sentence and sometimes for the rest of their lives.

Duell fell into the latter camp.

Which is why on February 10th of 1741, William Duell found himself on a ship bound for North America.

He had committed a horrible crime, and even a miraculous resurrection wasn't going to keep him away from the consequences.

Death is a guarantee.

All of us know it.

But I think we tend to forget just how hard it was to prove in the days before modern medical science whether or not a person had died.

Guess it still happens today.

But I think I speak for all of us when I say that it's nice to know that the odds of it happening to you or me are incredibly low.

And truth be told, it's been that way for over a century, but that doesn't mean we stop talking about these tragic mistakes.

And of course, we could dive deep into the world of safety coffins or waiting mortuaries where bodies were set out with a sort of wait-and-see approach to death.

But I'm honestly more interested in the fear of it all.

And of course, what that fear does to us.

In so many of these stories, the results of a misdiagnosed death can be horrific.

Most of the time, thanks to quick burials, those falsely reported deaths could only end one way.

But it's also fascinating to know that every now and then, someone bounced back.

And William Duell, well, some say that he lived to the age of 80 in Boston, Massachusetts, until he died somewhere around 1805.

But a lot of historians think that that might not actually be true.

According to a 1915 book about the history of the Surgeon Society, William Duell met a much different fate than the court intended.

Rather than being shipped to the colonies, Duel was sent east, where he changed his name to William Deverell, took on work as a merchant, and started a new career selling opium to the Chinese.

William seemed to be a man unable to make wise decisions, and because of that, he was never really destined to go down in history as someone who accomplished a great and noble thing.

But in the end, he did do something that no one could have expected.

He died, and then he lived to tell the tale.

Premature burial is a horrifying topic.

And yes, there might be aspects of these stories that would be fun to trot out at dinner parties as one of those entertaining did-you-know moments, but it's clear that the deeper we dig into them, the darker these tales become.

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200 years before William Duell cheated death, a young Englishman named Matthew Hall did the same.

But he wasn't a criminal or a murderer.

He was just a humble farmer from the small English village of Braffin.

In October of 1571, Wall had died suddenly.

His remains were tucked comfortably into his coffin and carried by several pallbearers down the tree-lined route of Fleece Lane to St.

Mary's Church.

But one of the pallbearers wasn't looking where he was stepping.

He walked into a pile of fallen leaves and slipped.

Losing his grip on the coffin, it tumbled out of his hands and to the ground.

Everyone regained their composure and lifted the box once more, but they noticed a strange sound coming from inside it.

It was the panicked banging of someone who had been prematurely boxed up.

It seems as if he was still alive, so the coffin was opened and Matthew quickly sat up.

It was believed by some that he had suffered a form of epilepsy that had caused him to slip into a coma.

The doctors had all pronounced him dead when he was just sleeping.

Having survived his own death, Matthew went on to marry his fiancée and the pair had two two sons together.

He lived for another 24 years before finally meeting his end.

This time, for real.

And Matthew had prepared for this death.

In his will, he stipulated that the proceeds from the sale of his house and land must fund several honorary observances.

For one, he wanted the church bells rung every October 2nd to commemorate the day that he did not die.

He also wanted them to ring out in honor of his marriage.

As for his grave, the sexton of St.

Mary's Church, where he was buried, was required to cover the plots in brambles so that sheep wouldn't walk all over it.

And in an ironic twist, he asked that Fleece Lane be swept every year as well.

Because obviously, had the road been clear on that date in 1571, it was likely that none of his pallbearers would have tripped, and Matthew would have been buried alive.

Today, the person who lives on what used to be Matthew Wall's land must pay £1 a year to the vicar to fund that sweep.

And every October 2nd, as many as 70 local children gather to do the work.

But they aren't paid for their labor in money.

No, these kids actually do it for candy.

After the sweeping is done, a group gathers at his grave in the St.

Mary's churchyard for a moment of song and prayer, thanking God that Matthew wasn't buried alive.

So, was there really a Matthew Wall who was almost interred before his time?

Well, in a 1939 news article, there was mention of a Matthew Wall who wanted the church bells rung on October 2nd, the local street swept, and his grave covered in brambles.

The day that all this occurred was even called Old Man's Day.

But to those who participate in the yearly festivities, the truth is what we make of it.

As the Reverend Jeanette Gosny, former vicar at St.

Mary's, has said, It's like any village tradition.

You don't know how much genuinely happened and how much is based on an incident.

But it's nice to believe that it's true.

And honestly, if anything is true, I think it's a statement that all all of us can agree with.

Being buried alive sounds like a fate that is worse than death.

This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with writing by Harry Marks and research by Cassandra DeAlba.

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