Showing results for "The Premature Burial" in Classics

On a dark stormy night a group of friends share tales they've heard of everyone's greatest fear, to be mistakenly buried alive. To the shock and horror of her friends, one tops their tales. She tells her story.

In The Premature Burial, the first-person unnamed narrator describes his struggle with "attacks of the singular disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy," a condition where he randomly falls into a death-like trance. This leads to his fear of being buried alive ("The true wretchedness," he says, is "to be buried while alive."). He awakens one morning to find his worst fears realized!

The fear of being buried alive is the ultimate fear, and no classic author has put into words the terror-filled experience any better than Edgar Allan Poe. Experience author and narrator Edgar Lloyd's chilling narration of this all-time classic as he takes you deep, deep, deep into the realms of the undead in this gripping tale.... "The Premature Burial". This short but telling tale will exhume your greatest fears.... Be scared for the first time...all over again.

Nothing on earth is so terrifying as the prospect of waking up to discover you have been buried alive. A sufferer of catalepsy, who has a morbid fear of such a fate, takes every possible precaution. He designs himself a coffin which can be opened from the inside, which is padded, equipt with a bell for attracting attention, placed in an easily opened vault which contains food and water. Imagine then, his horror when he wakes up to find himself in a wooden box, reeking of damp earth and with none of his precautions in place. Poe at his most terrifying!

The fear of being buried alive was alive and well in the 19th century. It is said that Poe himself harbored this fear. An excellent audiobook to accompany a nighttime visit to a lonely graveyard.

El narrador anónimo describe en primera persona un trastorno que le aqueja, llamado “catalepsia”. Esta enfermedad lo lleva con frecuencia a pérdidas de conciencia muy similares a la muerte, lo que conduce al personaje a un terror a ser enterrado vivo. El narrador enumera diversos casos probados de personas enterradas vivas. En el primer caso, la tragedia fue descubierta mucho más tarde, al ser reabierta la cripta. En otros casos, las afortunadas víctimas tuvieron ocasión de atraer la atención sobre ellas desde su espantosa prisión.

La catalepsia, pues, hace al narrador muy proclive a caer en estados de inconsciencia, un problema que se le ha ido agravando con el tiempo. Su peor pesadilla es perder el sentido en ocasión de hallarse lejos de su hogar, y que, al ignorarse sus circunstancias en el nuevo medio, sea dado por muerto. Así, hace contraer la promesa a familiares y amigos de que no lo enterrarán antes de haber comprobado fehacientemente su óbito.