Thread: Buried Alive

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The unendurable oppression of the lungs-the stifling fumes of the damp earth- the clinging of the death garments- the rigid embrace of the narrow house- the blackness of the absolute night- the silence like a sea that overwhelms- unseen but palpable presence of coqueror worm- these things, with the thought 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 nothing so agonizing upon Earth-we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell.

-Edgar Allen Poe, "The Premature Burial"

In our Graveyards with winter winds blowing
There is a good deal of to-ing and fro-ing
but can it be said
that the buried are dead
With their nails and hair still growing?

A horror of great darkness all around
Lies on my soul, darkness that one may feel,
It interpenetrates, through all doth steal
Like a dead, icy, heart chill, so profound
And numb, that being seems ice bound!
O God! In mercy reveal,
Break off this living tomb the sevenfold seal,
Buried alive, I feel as underground,
cast me not off! From this dumb living tomb!
- H. Ellison, Eclipse