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Alarms added to coffins to prevent being buried alive!

chileman

Coach
Messages
10,523
:lol: The New Zealand Herald
Wednesday May 05, 2004

An evangelical cemetery in Chile has begun to construct coffins with a built-in alarm in case the dead person was actually buried alive.

"The idea was born because of what happens, and what can be seen in some exhumations, coffins having been hit from inside," said Humberto Becerra, the deputy manager at the Way to Canaan cemetery.

Becerra said the special caskets would have buttons that could be easily activated if the deceased should wake, setting off an alarm bell somewhere in the cemetery!

:D Remind me when I'm at the end of my days to take a holiday to Chile..
 

Twizzle

Administrator
Staff member
Messages
155,398
Who would hear them 6 feet under.

Don't they have doctors in Chileland.

About as usefual as putting a smoke detector in a crematorium.
 

chileman

Coach
Messages
10,523
Actually Twizzle, it was and maybe is still something that happens....just a bit of trivia for you!
"Do you know where the terms "graveyard shift"and "dead ringer"came from? The 1500's.....a little historical fact -

England was old and small and the local folks
started running out of places to bury people.
So they would dig up coffins and take the bones
to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave.
When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have
scratch marks on the inside and they realized
they had been burying people alive.
So they thought they would tie a string to the wrist of the corpse,
lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.
Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night
(The Graveyard Shift) to listen for the bell:
thus someone could be "saved by the bell" or
be considered a "dead ringer"."
 

Mr Angry

Not a Referee
Messages
51,816
To put some minds at ease.
In Australia, it is a requirement by law that 2 doctors must pronounce the person dead before they will be treated as a dead entity.
I guess in Chile that does not happen.
 

Twizzle

Administrator
Staff member
Messages
155,398
If it is trivial, this is the best place for it.

I am a much more informed person now.

Lucky they did not have those alarms in "The House of the Living Dead"
 

DRRRAGONS

Juniors
Messages
1,346
chileman said:
Actually Twizzle, it was and maybe is still something that happens....just a bit of trivia for you!
"Do you know where the terms "graveyard shift"and "dead ringer"came from? The 1500's.....a little historical fact -

England was old and small and the local folks
started running out of places to bury people.
So they would dig up coffins and take the bones
to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave.
When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have
scratch marks on the inside and they realized
they had been burying people alive.
So they thought they would tie a string to the wrist of the corpse,
lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.
Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night
(The Graveyard Shift) to listen for the bell:
thus someone could be "saved by the bell" or
be considered a "dead ringer"."


For anyone as stupid as me, this is a load of crap
 

Raider_69

Post Whore
Messages
61,170
DRRRAGONS said:
chileman said:
Actually Twizzle, it was and maybe is still something that happens....just a bit of trivia for you!
"Do you know where the terms "graveyard shift"and "dead ringer"came from? The 1500's.....a little historical fact -

England was old and small and the local folks
started running out of places to bury people.
So they would dig up coffins and take the bones
to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave.
When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have
scratch marks on the inside and they realized
they had been burying people alive.
So they thought they would tie a string to the wrist of the corpse,
lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.
Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night
(The Graveyard Shift) to listen for the bell:
thus someone could be "saved by the bell" or
be considered a "dead ringer"."


For anyone as stupid as me, this is a load of crap

thats a dead set ripper

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
i crack me up
 

Crusader

Bench
Messages
3,587
The part about the bells is actually true, back then obviously the technology did not include EEG's, etc...
 

Andy

First Grade
Messages
5,048
If you've seen Kill Bill Volume 2, that's how I'd get out of my coffin if I was buried alive.

I've been practising on the bottom of my desk, right here in my office.

The receptionist, God bless her hot dumb ass, keeps saying "Is there someone knocking at the door??"
 

DRRRAGONS

Juniors
Messages
1,346
Scratch marks have been found on the inside of some coffins and tombs. Our Buried Alive page details some cases of this. Such marks, however, were a relatively rare find, certainly nothing on a level even remotely approaching the "one out of 25" figure given in the e-mail.


. . . and they realized they had still been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on their wrist and lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell.
Premature burial signalling devices only came into fashion in the 19th century; they weren't around in the 15th. Some of these 19th century coffins blew whistles and raised flags if their inhabitants awoke from their dirt naps. (Once again, our Buried Alive page provides information about a number of these devices, including ones available in modern times.)


That is how the saying "graveyard shift" was made.
The earliest documented use of the phrase graveyard shift comes from a 1907 Collier's Magazine. However, graveyard watch was noted in 1895, with that term referring to a shipboard watch beginning at midnight and lasting usually four hours.


If the bell would ring they would know that someone was "saved by the bell" or he was a "dead ringer".
Saved by the bell is a 1930s term from the world of boxing, where a beleaguered fighter being counted out would have his fate delayed by the ringing of the bell to signify the end of the round. Need we mention that although fisticuffs were around in the 1500s, the practice of ringing a bell to end a round wasn't?

Likewise, dead ringer has nothing to do with the prematurely buried signalling their predicament to those still above ground — the term means an exact double, not someone buried alive. Dead ringer was first used in the late 19th century, with ringer referring to someone's physical double and dead meaning "absolute" (as in dead heat and dead right).

A ringer was a better horse swapped into a race in place of a nag. These horses would have to resemble each other well enough to fool the naked eye, hence how the term came to mean an exact double.
 
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