BURIED ALIVE | Real Cases & Escape Plans | Paranormal Podcast (Ep 332 )

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Are you telling me this whole episode is buried alive? They discover her fingernails bloody, the coffin lining torn, and her face is just like twisted horribly in this like terror of being buried alive. You get married, you have babies, and then you get buried alive. This is a buried alive themed episode. Yeah. Yeah.

Very spooky.

Hi. Hello. This is Two Girls, One Ghost.

Two Girls, One Ghost. And we are your ghost. I know. I feel like I'm with my like high school crush who like doesn't want to look in my eyes.

Oh my god. going to go talk this episode.

That's Karen.

Hello. I'm Sabrina. I'll point at you,

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too.

What's up, everyone?

What's up?

We have another ghost story to tell you today. Well, Karin's going to tell it, and I'm going to listen and you'll listen with me.

Yeah. And if you didn't know, I was in Vermont for the 4th of July. My parents are selling their haunted house,

which I need to go to before they sell it.

They're selling in like a couple weeks.

Well, they're putting it on the market.

Well, we'll see.

We got to go up.

It's a big ask. I will call your parents and I'm going to go hang out with Devon Bill by myself.

It's too bad you couldn't come. We don't have to get into this. This is a podcast. We don't have to discuss everything. But I was in Vermont and

Dr. Timothy Clark Smith & safety coffins

every time I go to Vermont, I feel like I like to come back with some sort of like hometown tale, some

sort of like Vermont lore.

And I actually had this saved from a while ago that I had already like started to write up. So I was like, "Oh, this is perfect." Because in New Haven, Vermont, there was a man who was so terrified of the idea of being buried alive, he literally designed his own

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casket to ensure that he could get out. And it's now a ghost hunting tourist attraction. Are you telling me this whole episode is buried alive? This is a buried alive themed episode. So, we'll learn what to do to prevent yourself from being buried alive.

Oh, good. or I guess maybe like how to escape the design of a casket from this guy. We'll hear about one person who was buried alive. Then we'll hear about one other person who it's questionable what exactly happened but some sort of interesting thing. Well, this just reminds me of and lore that podcast covered this early days and I think when they turned it into a TV show, it was also um one of the topics they covered about it was such a common thing where people were being buried alive that they literally

started tying a string to the finger of the that's term dead ringer comes from.

Yeah. And a bell would ring if they were moving to signify, hey, you buried me alive. which in like postmortem twitching or like little animals like going through the wooden casket, a

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little mole tunneling through. Sometimes it would trigger rings. But I did Google like how many people have actually been buried alive like that we know have been buried alive. I'm sure it's way more than this, but the internet said only around 200 that we know of. That means like there are so many other people who

and maybe the key is like accidentally buried alive because I just feel like

Right. Cuz I was going to say there's probably also people who were purposefully.

So it

our listener story is indicative of someone who was purposefully buried alive.

Oh my god. Okay.

Yeah.

Yikes. It's an interesting thing because it's like is this like quicksand where we think quicksand is way more of a threat than it is to us,

right? Cuz it is just a terrifying fear.

It is. And I hope it never happens to any of you.

It was a fear that Dr. Timothy Clark Smith from New Haven, Vermont was riddled with. He suffered from tapophobia, which is the fear of being buried alive. So, there's an actual name for a phobia. And for Timothy, this was

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so real. It was so all-consuming. So in order to prevent this from happening to him or if he was buried alive to prevent himself from basically like suffocating and dying upon waking up, he decided to take some extraordinary measures and designed his own casket and like burial place which is now one of the strangest graves in America. The burial is complete with a window, a breathing tube. It has a bell and it's a part of what was like a fad at the time which was like a safety coffin system which was designed to basically like

is there like a help people

there's not a hatch. Okay, we're going to zoom in. If you're watching on YouTube,

you're going to see the design right here.

There's like a long window.

It's like a bunker. So like you have a bunch of room in this casket. You can kind of stretch your legs. If you wake up in there, you're not looking at like the wood or anything above you. You're not in full darkness. You have a skylight. Your face is

looking out at the sky, so you don't

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have to panic as much.

There's a breathing tube that connects to 6 feet above you, so you can

And there's also a bell to ring.

I mean, it's not a bad idea.

Yeah. I heard one rumor which I don't think is true because this guy I heard a rumor like people are like telling me. I read one place on the internet that he also like a gun was included just in case like everything else failed and he didn't want to like succumb to

that type of death.

But I don't I don't know if that's actually true because I feel like his fear of just like dying was so intense. I'm not sure.

Yeah.

If that part was true.

Interesting. I mean, now I feel like it's, you know, the way that we deal with death and like the cremations or the death burial process, I think the possibilities of being buried alive are a lot slimmer.

It's way slimmer, especially like just medicine, modern medicine and yeah, autopsies. Like there's just your body is not tossed into a grave as quickly as

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it was before.

Well, I also think about what's that like paralytic. There's some type of paralytic or there's also like a spider that could bite you that paralyzes you and even your heart and slows it so much that if someone did

examine your body it would seem like you were dead.

We covered a version of this years ago. Remember we did an episode I think I covered it. The zombies of Haiti

where there was basically like this farm

that they were Yeah. using this like breaking down this one plant and having people inhale it and were enslaving people. Like they looked dead and then they were transported after their families

thought they were dead.

Thought they were dead. Transported to this one farm where they were like basically micro dosed the entire time so that they were

ablebodied enough to like do stuff on the farm and be enslaved but drugged so much that they couldn't escape.

Yikes. Real life horrors sometimes are the scariest of them all.

Yeah, humans are the scariest. Okay. So, here he is with his skylight. Okay. So,

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yeah. So, Timothy Clark Smith, he was a doctor and he would travel around a bunch, but he also lived in the 1800s. So, he was very aware of all the terrifying tales of people being buried alive. And he was also a doctor. So, I have no idea if he accidentally declared someone dead at this time. Like, I don't know like deep down where this fear came from, but it was

like eating him alive. And so he put a lot of effort into like creating his burial place so that he he wasn't taking any chances basically.

So Timothy lived his life always worrying in the back of his mind if he was going to survive a live burial if that was going to happen to him. And as we all do, Timothy did pass away. He was not buried alive. He actually died Halloween night of 1893. spooky.

Timothy, you spooky Such a spooky and he is buried in the Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven, Vermont. And there is this like 8 foot tall sort of

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like grassy mound. And like you said, it almost looks like a bunker because on top of this mound there looks like almost like a crypt built into the slope. It's like this square stone contraption. And in the middle of it is basically the skylight. So that is what if Timothy had been buried alive, he would wake up, look 6 feet above him and see through the skylight the blue sky or night and it still is dark and he's like, "Oh my god."

Or a loved one just like peering down looking.

That's also

like a four-year-old who like doesn't tell anyone that you're

That's actually another aspect of this that we need to consider is that that means that humans, living people can look down and see the corpse below.

That is right.

Which is creepy. That is exactly right. So on the side of this mound, there's the concrete cap, the large square, the glass looking down. You can peer down. Nowadays, you can't really see anything.

Yeah,

you can maybe get like a couple inches down, but like condensation and moss and

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just like

the elements over time has has made it the

fogged up the

right his breath over the past two centuries.

Oh gosh.

Century and a half almost. Yeah. So, at one point the caretakers tried to install new glass to basically let us all look at the him dead cuz we're sick. But the Vermont winters it just like wasn't going to hold up.

Yeah.

So now it's largely opaque. But it was said up until like the early 1900s, so I don't think it lasted more than a couple decades of actually being able to like peer down that you would get glimpses. You could like if you really squinted your eyes and the light was just so you could look down and see Timothy's dead rotting corpse probably that you

at that point. Yeah.

Scary.

Scary.

Huh.

So according to local accounts and cemetery lore, Timothy was buried with some tools to escape. He had a buzzer, a bell which was attached to his hand so he didn't have to like rifle around to find it. like it was tied to his finger,

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which is like the dead ringer, you know, like your muscle twitches and a ring

or a bell rings above your grave, indicating to whoever's in the cemetery, hopefully listening, that you are alive. And this was a very common device in safety coffins at this time. Y

he had a respiration tube for air that went all the way to the top. And some say he also had a ladder to try, which I don't there was no talks of like how he would have shimeied himself up a ladder. Okay. Well, now this is making me wonder because we just talked about where dead ringer comes from. Where does Jacob's letter come from? What's that?

Who's Jacob?

Oh, I don't know cuz I just think of the plant.

Let's see. Oh, it's in the Bible.

Oh. Oh, man. CCD failed us. Or did we fail CCD?

Jacob's ladder refers to a dream Jacob had where he saw a ladder reaching to heaven with angels ascending and descending. Oh, it's like staircases in the woods.

I was literally just thinking that. I was like, "Oh, but the scary version of the stairs. It's the same, aren't they?

They just made it sound nicer in the Bible.

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Okay. So, now obviously people go to this grave. You You still a lot of people try to look into it. And if you're watching on YouTube, I do have a bunch of photos and stuff so you can kind of do it.

Yeah. Like there's literally a closeup here. I'll show you Sabrina so you're not left out. People leave like pennies and stuff around. But it's basically it's you just see like stone and moss and complete darkness. Like you cannot see anything.

It does look like the entrance into a cave.

Yeah. I do wonder if you had like an intense high-powered flashlight and you went at night when there was no other light obstructing the view what you would see. Although it does kind of look like the moss has since grown up. So I think he might be completely covered at this point.

But you can still peer down. It's like completely open. There's no gate around it or anything. But now obviously there are some ghost stories attached to it. Love it.

So people claim to see a dim light under the glass at night. perhaps a ghost of him holding like a lantern down at his coffin, but he also wasn't buried with any light. So, it is interesting. His spirit, the orb of his

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spirit shining and showing itself and that's pretty much it. So, there's not too much else going on with his

Does the ghost still exist there or have they removed the bell?

That's a good question. I don't think the bell does exist, but actually Okay. Well, I said that that's it, but there are a couple other ghost stories because people talked about hearing or like claimed to hear kind of like the muffled ring of a bell. And apparently there was one time where the bell at his grave did actually ring and people were around and saw it, but people were like it was long enough after he'd passed and much more like recent where, you know, I say that, but like I think because of the way it was written, I thought it was more recent, but I actually have no idea when in history after his death this happened.

But clearly it was long enough after he had been buried that they were like, "It's not possible."

No. Yeah. I think people were like, "Oh my god, is this a ghost? Is this an animal? Like what's going on?" But it like truly started ringing.

Okay. Well, that's my other question is how do you tell how do you differentiate

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between the wind causing the bell to ring and the person inside the casket making it ring? Well, I guess if it was the wind, it would just be like the actual bell moving back and forth, but if it was the casket, you'd see the pull of the string, right?

Yeah. I guess I haven't seen this in person, so I don't know the mechanisms of it, but

and I don't know if the bell's still there. That's a really good question.

Octavia Hatcher

So, Timothy Clark, he was not buried alive, luckily. But down in Appalachia, one Kentucky woman was not so lucky.

In Appalachia. Mhm. And this is content warning for infant loss. Oh, shoot. Okay. Octavia Hatcher. She was a young Pikeville, Kentucky woman who reportedly suffered a horrific fate in 1891. She was born in the 1870s and she married this local entrepreneur, James Hatcher, in 1889. So, in January 1891, the couple was so excited because they were going to welcome their child. They were pregnant and they were going to have a little boy, Jacob. Well, they didn't know that they were having a little boy

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at the time. You couldn't

There's no test.

Yes, they named him Jacob after he was born. But unfortunately, he didn't make it after a few hours. So, he passed in very early infancy, right after delivery.

So, Octavia is completely overcome with grief. She like cannot possibly get past this. She is so sick and she actually falls ill and ends up going into this coma, but no one knows she's in a coma. Everyone thinks

until 1891.

Yeah, you're not right. And she was sick before, so everyone thought she died of her sickness. It wasn't just like a random.

So she went into like a catatonic state,

basically. So in April she fell ill and on May 2nd 1891 she was pronounced dead. She was to be buried immediately due to the hot spring weather and the lack of inbalming. Days later several Pikesville residents suffered very similar illnesses but none of them died. A few

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of them started to go into this sort of like catatonic comaike state. And this is when the panic kind of struck everyone in town and the doctors and her family because they were like, "Holy did Octavia have the same thing?" And we just buried her alive.

I'm glad that that's what they jumped to because what's the story that um Oh, the vampire of Mezza. That story we covered a couple episodes ago. I mean, I think probably a couple months ago now at this point, but like where the guy died and then a bunch of people started getting sick and they jumped to like, oh, there's a vampire.

There's a vampire.

I'm glad that they didn't jump to, oh, that that she's now risen from the grave and getting everyone else sick.

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true. No, that they didn't think that. And they were trying to figure out what the illness was because everyone was getting sick and there were some theories about what was causing all of these illnesses. One was that perhaps there was a mosquito-b born encphilitis. I'm not sure that this theory existed at the time or like much later.

Um, and then also perhaps some gases

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escaping from a nearby mine and that's kind of like why the whole town started kind of, you know, dropping all at the same time.

So at this time people are like, "Oh my gosh, is Octavia buried alive? We just buried her underground. She was one of the first ones to have this illness and then we thought she died and now everyone else is in these weird comaike states, but no one's actually dying. Holy what do we do to Octavia?" So her family rushes to get her like emergency examation and they do successfully exume her coffin. Inside they discover her fingernails bloody, the coffin lining torn and her face is just like twisted horribly in this like terror of being buried alive cuz she had woken.

I'm so curious how long. I think it was only a few days, but she there was not

because like how much air like how long did she have to suffer like that?

Oh yeah. I don't know.

We did an episode on blind spot where Jane Jamie Alexander was buried alive

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and we had to do like so much research and like look at the physics of like the size of the coffin, how deep it was buried to calculate how much air she had and how much time she had.

They did a buried alive on the traders. remember?

Oh, yeah. Yeah,

the very first season.

But it's they're not like really buried alive.

Yeah, I guess they have breathing tubes.

Yeah,

that's a that's a reality TV show where they're not trying to kill people.

Yeah. So, I don't I don't know how long, but I know it was just a few days later, like within the first week that they went to bury her. So, obviously, there was a lot of evidence that she had woken and realized that she was buried alive and attempted to escape. But sadly,

so sad.

Yeah. She succumbed to a very tragic tragic end.

Yeah. Cuz when I hear things like that, immediately my brain goes to being in that scenario myself and like

trying to put myself in their shoes, which I shouldn't spend time doing that, but like

Yeah,

it's natural, too. Yeah.

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Like clearly she tried to scratch her way out and

the absolute panic, right? And then her poor husband James, like he just lost their child and then now he's lost his wife. And beyond just losing his wife, then to learn of the complete horror that she faced in her final hours, it's absolutely

like losing her twice.

Devastating. Yeah. So he commissioned a life-sized marble statue of Octavia. He had it sculpted in Italy and erected on her grave in 1892 alongside a smaller monument for their son, Jacob. And I've included some photos of both of those in the YouTube.

That is a very romantic gesture. A man to commission a marble statue from Italy for you.

Yeah, the statue is so huge, too. Like her monument is really tall and then she stands at top it and then her son is like being cradled in like a little pillowy bassinet right below her. She's like standing protective standing watch

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over the cemetery. It's really quite emotional. So the statue and Hatcher Octavia, her last name, Hatcher. It says Hatcher on the monument. So the Hatcher plot eventually became shrouded in supernatural lore. It is said that the statue periodically turns away from the city, which people were saying like it's a symbol of her rejecting everyone who just let her suffer. However, in the 1990s, prankster college students were caught going there and rotating the statue, and they also broke part of her statue.

Rude. Very rude. So, a fence and a marble base were later added to help protect her and the site.

Yeah.

Julia Buccola Petta

And that is the story of Octavia. But now there's another story of a kind of similar situation. This person was not buried alive, but she had a similar end of life.

This is a story of a mother's intuition and an Italian bride who was deemed a

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miracle. And this is content warning for infant death and traumatic birth.

Okay. It's hard cuz it's like these stories are all from like the late 1800s, early 1900s. So, it's like there was a lot of that.

Well, that's also reassuring that all of the stories of be people being buried alive is from that time period and that there's not

in the intense fear of being buried alive. I don't fear I don't think about being buried alive.

No, I think my only fear of being buried alive is in tandem with like being kidnapped or

it's like a serial killer.

Yeah. It's not It's not like doctors pronounced me

right dead.

Dead. Right. Exactly. I agree. In the shaded Italian section of Mount Carmel Cemetery or Carmel I think we've covered this cemetery. Maybe Mount Carmel Cemetery is just outside of Chicago. It sounds familiar to me. So maybe we did, maybe we didn't. I don't know. Who knows?

But there is a life-sized statue of a woman in a long wedding gown that stands a top her grave. Her name is Julia Puchola Peta.

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Ooh, beautiful name.

Yeah. B U C C O L A space P E T A. Might have to mispronounce that, but I'll call her Julia. I know how to say that one.

Yeah.

Uh, she's also known as the Italian bride. That's what people call her. H. So, Julia's tombstone is famous not just for some ghostly activity, but also because the legend of her body's remarkable preservation and her spirit. It's said that her spirit now wanders the cemetery. But let's do some background on Julia and how she got there. So, young Julia, she was this Italian-American woman. She married at 20, became pregnant shortly after, but tragically in March 1921 during childbirth, poor Julia and her son both passed away.

Oh.

She and her baby were buried together in the exact same coffin. So, she was laying down in her coffin and she held her baby in her arms and they were buried in a casket together. I guess it was like a custom in maybe Italian culture at this time. I read that young

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women who died uh be buried in their wedding dresses. So, she was wearing her wedding dress in her casket. That makes sense cuz you're buried in like your prized possession and probably your wedding dress was expensive item.

It still is like the most expensive thing that people spend money on.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, Julia's mother, Filamina, she was obviously beside herself when her daughter and her new grandson both passed. And soon Filamina began having terrible nightmares. These nightmares were about Julia and basically Julia was pleading with her in these nightmares saying, "Mama, I'm still alive."

This is like Zona Houston shoe.

And so Filamina was like, "Holy I have to do something. My daughter was buried alive." And so she starts petitioning to get the coffin exumed and for people to look at it. Apparently, I read that she was a very intense woman. Like, she was pretty aggressive and and

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like a scary lady. However, I guess none of the tactics she used in her own panic worked because for months, people refused to exume the grave. I would literally go out there by myself and get Yeah.

Right. Cuz what's the worst that happens? You're wrong.

You're wrong. And then you're just you're just like then you just reberry a mourning.

Yeah. There's so many excuses for your behavior after like grieving if people thought that that was a crazy move.

I get it nowadays especially because of like the whole inbalming process. Like there is no way for someone to be buried alive in that way. So if someone like a mom came crying being like my daughter they were killed during the inbalming process.

No no no there's no way. But back then why not?

Right. I know. And there's like that was like a grave robber.

Body snatcher time too.

Get your shovels. We're going back in time.

Yeah. Poor Filamina. She was just like,

that's devastating.

Riddled with these non-stop recurring nightmares. Mama, I'm still alive. Mama, I'm still alive.

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But then I also understand from their perspective, it's like this is a grieving mother.

Mhm.

Of course, she's having these nightmares. And of course, she wants her daughter to be alive,

right? Yeah. She just lost her child in a very traumatic way. So she Filamina grew very convinced that Julia was trying to tell her something that either she was buried alive by mistake or that her spirit was not at rest and Filamina needed to do something to help her daughter.

Mhm.

But she didn't get anywhere with her please until 6 years later in 1927. She finally succeeded and her daughter's coffin was exumed.

6 years later.

Mhm. And what they found shocked everybody.

Oh no. Julia's body was in near perfect condition. Oh,

no signs of decomposition even though her infant that was still held in her arms had completely decomposed. So, she was perfectly preserved and he had decomposed in her arms.

Witnesses claim Julia looked as if she had just been buried that week, not years ago. And in fact, there is a

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famous photo that apparently Filamina took uh which we're going to show on YouTube of Julia's exumed body laying in her coffin, and it shows just how intact and like fresh she looks her skin, her features. It's also preserved. So, here's a photo of her in her wedding dress, and then there's her in her wedding dress in her coffin 6 years later. Exub. Some people say like, "Oh, that that can't be true. That photo must have been taken like when she was buried."

Her skinare routine. I don't know. And it's so weird because people will say like, "Oh, it was something about like the fatty acid deposits and like, you know, trying to say all these things that like could have preserved her body." But if that was true, why didn't the baby

Yeah. Like if it was an environmental thing, her her infant should have been experiencing the exact same thing. No, there has to be some scientific evidence and like proof for why she didn't decompose. And this is why body farms exist. Because

Mhm.

Maybe there was something in her body or maybe there was like a chemical that she

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had in her body. Did she take something when she was giving birth?

Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know.

I also I'm glad that there was no evidence of her actually being buried alive.

Yeah,

that at least is reassuring cuz there's no like claw marks. the photo of her when she was basically exumed, resurrected from the dead, so to speak, and a photo of her in her wedding dress. They are now on display on Julia's tombstone for all to see, marked into a grave, like etched into the stone. So, naturally, this discovery set imaginations ablaze during this time when rumors started going around that she had been in perfect condition 6 years after her burial.

Mhm. Some saw it as a miracle. This was a really big Catholic Italian community, too. So, they were like, "This is a sign of her purity, a sign of her innocence. She was just 29 years old when she died, her whole life ahead of her. She had wed. She was having her first child, her family, and she was gone too soon." And

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so, a lot of Catholics started referring to her as incorruptible, which was a term that they used often for these types of conditions, which I guess happened every once in a while. And it was a sign of holiness. So like I think when you go to Italy now or like Spain and there's certain churches and mausoleiums and stuff where you like can look in on preserved bodies that are deemed saints often times and so there was kind of this petition to make Julia a saint.

She was not canonized as a saint.

So but at the time they wanted her to be. This is like so pleasant. But it's so interesting how in like history and I am going to refer back to the vampire of mezza like why one iteration is viewed saintly the other iteration in a group of people are like oh my gosh this is a vampire killer. Exactly.

Yeah.

I would have preferred to live in this community. Right. Yeah. Chicago baby. People started calling her labella admentata. Sorry. Sleeping beauty. Oh, her mom

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claimed that she had been preserved by divine intervention. And to honor this, she commissioned this beautiful statue of Julia on her wedding day that now adorns her grave with an epitap and with the two photos, one with Julia and her wedding gown on her wedding day, and the other supposedly taken when her grave was brought back up from the ground six years later.

So, my question is, did Julia's mom have these nightmares for six years? Mhm.

6 years of nightmares.

Apparently, they stopped once she was exumed.

Yeah.

Wow.

So, like what it means, I don't know what Julia's message was. I don't know.

Yeah.

But apparently she was Yeah. preserved. And maybe this was like supposed to be some sort of miracle to like give the community hope for some reason at this time. I have no idea.

Or she wanted one last goodbye. I don't know. Yeah.

So interesting. But Julia, who was buried in her wedding dress, a white dress, became a lady in white. in white. Enter the lady in white, Julia. So soon

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people reported seeing a woman in a white wedding dress roaming the Mount Carmel Cemetery at night and she would be seen kneeling by a particular grave. And this grave was her grave, Julia's grave, or it was presumed to be her grave cuz it was presumed to be Julia's spirit.

People would also see her walking down roads between tombs only to disappear when approached. A lot of people driving late at night said that they would see her walking around. And there's one well-known tale. There's kind of two versions of it, so we'll tell both versions. The a young boy got lost in a cemetery, and when he was found, he told his parents that he had been guided back to the gate by a nice lady in a white dress who had taken his hand and brought him back.

That's so beautiful, especially knowing that Julia's son died in childbirth, like helping the children.

Yeah.

And in this legend, the family later passed Julia's monument, and the boy excitedly pointed and said that that was the lady who helped him. There's another version of the same story that says the parents actually watched a woman in a

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white dress holding their child's hand bring him back to them and then as soon as they were reunited she just disappeared in front of their eyes vanish.

I love Julia. Right. So Julia's spirit is benign. People are not very spooked by her other than like just your general spooked when you see a ghost. People wonder if her figure still remains because maybe she's looking for her child or simply she's just there to help the lost and the griefstricken. I like to think that she's also there helping new souls if because I don't know if the cemetery is like one that people are still being buried at.

Like I like to view her as this like motherly figure for any spirit.

Yeah, it's really beautiful. There was, again, I have no idea how true this is because this was on one Facebook thread, like in a comment, so who knows if it's true, but some people have said that the statue, her statue sometimes moves on its own, like the hands or like the eyes will like move direction or look like they're following you. Who knows?

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Yeah,

that definitely could be part of the lore or just one person on Facebook.

Sure.

Made it tried to

telephone game.

Telephone game. So Julia's story, like others we've heard, highlights the fine line between grief and the supernatural. A mother's desperate love led to a shocking discovery.

So yeah, this is the buried alive episode. So whether it's a window to death in Vermont, a ghostly bride guiding the lost in Chicago, a bell that maybe rings, or nightmares that consume you long after the dead have gone silent. These graves and these stories remind us that death doesn't always mean stillness. There's echoes of grief, obsession, nightmares, and sometimes something for a stranger. So, what would you do if you were buried alive?

conclusions

I mean, that's a good question. Yeah. Um, beg cuz that's so it's so you can't do anything unless you do have a bell attached to you. like the chances of you surviving are so slim and you

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have to fight the panic because the more you panic the more you breathe you use up all your oxygen

but regardless it's a painful horrific like torturous death

that's why people were so scared of it

suffocated

and it is wild I mean I glazed over it but like Timothy Clark Smith he created that whole contraption for himself but like that was a popular thing these like safety coffins of the time where people I'm sure it was like a quite an arm and a leg uh to buy one of those. But like there was a whole thing, a whole time period where people because it was common enough or at least the stories and the fear of being buried alive

was permeating all the different communities that people were like being buried in what they felt was like almost safe proof, right? Foolproof. Well, it also just makes me think of all the death practices that existed back in this time. And when I went to in Marblehead, there's the Jeremiah Lee mansion and they offer tours on the

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third floor is this like it was the children's floor. And so there's this room with a bunch of children's toys and a lot of things, but there's portraits. And I noticed immediately that the portraits all like look a little weird. M

and the reason is because child death was so common, artists would paint bodies of children and go town to town selling them and then they would paint the the face of the child that passed away on top of these already painted bodies. So there's an infant that passed away and the infant's face is painted at top a fouryear-old's body.

Wow. I thought you were gonna say it's all like photographs of

No, let me find postmortem photos. Geez, what a morbid morbid thing.

But like it makes sense, right? Cuz people want to memorialize the their children.

But it also makes me sad that like artists were not capturing a child's whole essence just because it was like easier to make money and be more

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efficient. I know by pre

But that's how many children were dying.

We see it all the time. Like New England has some old ass cemeteries and you'll be sitting in front of a grave and you'll be like, "Hm, I wonder who this is." And you'll look and it's like four siblings. It's so so sad. It's hard. I don't know how people had so many kids. I feel like I'd have one child and spend like my whole life just like helicopter trying to make them stay alive. No. Yeah, this room has like 15 paintings of children. Oh, wow. Yeah, we'll put it in YouTube. There were a lot of them. But that's also why it's the most haunted room in that house, which we should go to that house.

The Jeremia mansion. Yeah,

they have in the summer. They have like little markets and flea markets.

No, but I mean investigate.

Oh, that house.

They do paranormal investigations there, too.

They do.

Yeah.

You know what?

Yeah. It was crazy cuz I was like, these are just like only one person was actually buried alive cuz I didn't want it to be overly immorid. But there are plenty of stories of people truly being buried alive. Well, I feel like what we should do right now is ask Google what

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to do if you're buried alive. In case any of you find yourself buried alive, you know what to do.

Here, you can credit us when you're interviewed on the news about your survival.

Alive.

Credit us for regurgitating Google.

Yeah. How did you do it? How did you survive? Well, I listened to this podcast. Two girls went ghost. Okay. Stay calm. Helpful. Thank you. Assess your surroundings to find out if you're in a coffin or container. Can you move your legs? Is it wood? If it's solid, how heavy is it? Can you wiggle your fingers and toes? Try to create air space. Cup your hands over your mouth to create a small air pocket. Don't waste energy. If you're in a wooden coffin that's not too deep, how do you know how deep it is, though?

And also, what are the chances you're in a wooden coffin? Have you seen caskets these days? They're freaking thick. There's no way you're getting through that plastic.

Here's what I'm thinking.

Fabric

nowadays. Let's say because the scenario that we've talked about if you're buried alive is probably another human has done

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this to you in like a killer murdering type of way,

right?

This is not a traditional burial. We're assuming that this is

you're in danger.

You're a victim of a terrible monster.

And this person's probably not going out and buying an actual coffin cuz that's sus. They might be crafting themselves.

Okay. If it's just dirt,

if it's a killer, it's just dirt.

Then you have to dig, which I think is better because at least you could try to do some type of digging than being in a container cuz how do you get out of a container,

right? Well, that's where the air pocket thing is really important because the more you dig, like you're kind of caving dirt in on yourself.

And you also have to figure out which way is up. So, you have to do that by spitting. It's the same in an avalanche. You spit and you see which direction your spit goes.

Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah. And then when your spit like however it falls is

the ground that's beneath you cuz the ground.

So go the cuz John Adams made that rule

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and then go the opposite way.

Okay.

Honestly, what you just read feels more like a meditation to just try to keep yourself calm as you slowly die.

Best case, carry an emergency whistle.

Well, if you've been kidnapped, that guy's going to let you keep your bright orange whistle on you,

right? They're not going to check you for and they're also not going to be burying you in a place where you blowing your whistle is going to help.

You know what freaks me out is like you're probably in the woods.

I know people are going to hear that and be like, "Oh my god, it's paranormal or it's a coyote or

they won't hear it at all."

So you can't I don't think you can yell help.

Well, I don't think you really could yell. I mean, you just have to hope that the person was dumb and only buried you like a foot underneath the ground. Then you can get out.

Yeah. So, um, hopefully none of you are buried alive because that sounds horrible.

We're starting to be like Timothy Clark Smith. We're starting to get nightmares.

I am only scared of it from I'm scared of human.

Yeah.

Generally, last night we caught it on the like Nanic camera. I heard

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I was home alone cuz Brian was gone for a long time cuz he has he's a baseball coach and their game started really late. So, he was gone for

Yeah. most of the night. Not most of the night. He's back.

He's gone till 3:00 a.m. He's like, "Yeah, that baseball game went really late."

He He was back at 10:30, but to me, that was the whole night. I was terrified cuz at 9:45.

Oh my gosh.

5 minutes earlier.

It start Yeah.

Yeah. I heard on the Nanic camera, I heard the sound of a door knob opening. Like, it's very distinct.

Yeah.

It clicked. I was like, "What the fuck?"

And then like 5 minutes later, I heard it again. So, I was like, "Someone opened and closed a door." And I was absolutely panicked and I like went back and listened on the camera like over and over and over and over again. It was like the same thing. It was the clicking of the doororknob. Did you ever figure out what it was?

No. And I told Brian when he got home and he was like, "I just walked through the whole house."

I think this is adding to just like Noah being open. And maybe it's your

He didn't stir at all cuz at first I was like, "Oh, is this just like him moving position or something?" Or like the bed

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creaking.

Maybe your grandma was checking on him.

Maybe. But it scared me.

Yeah. Especially when you're home alone.

Yeah. I do have a listener story, but I also wanted to just talk about a tangent real quick that I thought of while you were telling the story.

Oh, also sorry. My random story about the doororknob creaking open was because in the 45 minutes I waited for Brian, I like fullon fantasized and like walked through every scenario of me brutally murdering the intruder. I had a whole plan.

Yeah,

that person was bleeding out within like.5 seconds of me getting to them.

Yes, you are a protective mama. my like survival instincts. I feel like over the past few years, like 10 years ago, I might have been like, "Oh, like I would try to like break someone's leg and you know, like,

you know, kind of keep them alive, but win, but now you're like instant death."

Yeah, that's fair. I read a book that I recommend. It's called The Manade of Smoke by Alex North, who he also wrote The Whisper Man, but really good. Highly

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recommend. And it's like a good both of them are good murder mysteries that I really like and I read them very quickly. But when you were telling your story and The Lady in White, I was thinking now that I'm older and more wise and in a position where maybe I'll get married again. I have been thinking about how I feel like when I got married, I really didn't have the understanding of marriage rituals and like why people do the certain things that they do in weddings. And I now I'm like I don't know if I'd want to wear a white dress. Well, one, so expensive.

Yeah.

And two, the whole idea of a white dress is like supposed to be like the purity, the virginity and all of this stuff. Like

that's the stark white.

Like

there's different types of white.

Like should I wear I'm a

The scarlet letter.

Yeah.

S for Sabrina. This isn't my first time.

Yeah. I read that like purposely when I picked up my wedding dress. I did uh like Ivory Cream because I was like, I don't want people to think I'm a virgin.

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God forbid they think I'm a virgin. I live with my man before even getting married. But God forbid because everyone at your wedding would have thought you were a virgin. No, but I've seen people do I mean I think it's still quite expensive, but I've seen people buy like really cool amazing like fluffy wedding dresses and dying them like pink or like a light blue like Sleeping Beauty. That is pretty. I also just feel like I took the wedding. Okay, here's we're going to get get into my psyche a little bit. I grew up very much with this mentality of be a good little girl.

Mhm.

Like sit there, be quiet, do what everyone tells you. Like that was just the mentality I was raised with and that was like very ingrained in me.

Which is so wild knowing your sister cuz

I know.

I can't imagine anyone telling her to be a good little girl and her comp. No one did. Well, everyone told her and she was like rebellious. But and I think because she was the rebellious one, I was the

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like I don't want to be the problem one, you know.

Mhm.

You know, family dynamics.

But I think when planning the wedding, I was like, yeah, you just do all these things. You just follow the traditions. You just do these things. And now, as I'm coming into my own and exploring like what I like and what what's mine, I am like I want to be more self-expressionate in all ways of life. And so if I were to throw another big party for a union of lives, it's another way of saying a wedding,

right? But I don't know if I would legally get married again, but I would want to do it like way more personal and like fun.

Yeah. Would you want to do

I don't know. But like I wouldn't want to do all the traditions.

Yeah. Well, you did that. It's done.

Yeah. Right. Already did that version.

Been there, done that.

Been there, done that. That's so That's so 2020. That's so 2020 of you. But anyway, um Oh, listener story. That's what I have. If you did like funky things at your wedding, please share

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with me because I not that I have one coming anytime soon, but can start my mood board. So, I did warn this story

listener story

involves someone being buried alive.

Mhm. This is from our listener, Tiffany, and it is called Being Sensitive with Many Ghosts. Hi, my name is Tiffany and I have grown up seeing, interacting, and speaking with spirits since a very young age. I'll give you some of my most crazy or amazing experiences and not my entire life because I'm sensitive and I see ghosts very regularly. When I was 8 years old, my grandma passed away. That night, I woke up in bed and I found my grandmother laying next to me. I could see the indent in bed where she was and it was terrifying because her jaw was locked sideways and open. I only know that she was there because my younger brother woke up in the bed with me and started screaming. That morning, he told my mom and my mom was like, "No, it's just a dream." But I could see my grandma standing next to her. I found out later at 16 years old that when my grandmother died, the nursing staff that would go into rooms in the assisted living area didn't find

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her for hours and rig rigger mortise had already set in and her jaw was locked open.

Oh my gosh. Oh, this is horrifying.

Which is also really sad that her spirit is still showing up that way. But I do imagine if it's like so soon after death that like the ability to show up in a different way wasn't possible yet.

Yeah. And there's probably a lot of confusion.

Yeah.

She might have still been like in some way her soul still tethered to her body until she was discovered, you know.

Okay. Now, this is the story that involves being buried alive. Content warning. It involves a story of murder. When I was 14 in high school in California, it was an outdoor school and I would sit and eat lunch with my friends behind the buildings looking out at the desert. One day, a girl spirit kept showing up to me. She was following me through all of my classes, following me everywhere throughout school and throughout the day. Every time she came near me, I would get this horrible headache and feel like my chest was being compressed and that I was being suffocated. This continued for weeks

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before I finally asked her, "Why are you following me?" She told me that she was over there and pointed out towards the vast desert. This was still a natural desert because the cross country team used it, but she pointed me to an area on the school grounds. I followed her. I followed her all the way to a spot where there was loose dirt. I called my principal who called the police and it turned out a girl was buried there. She had been knocked unconscious and buried alive. They still don't know who did it. Holy This is recent.

Yeah. I don't know. Tiffany doesn't like mention like how long the person had been buried there, but

Tiffany's reminding me of the that one girl like the goth girl in the lovely bones who like sees her sees the spirits.

That movie is so sad. When I was 17, my now maid of honor was being haunted by three spirits. A demon who liked playing with her niece and ended up killing her

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dog. a little girl who liked to tickle her feet and play with her hair and a woman who never really wanted me to see her.

These hauntings got so bad that the demonic presence started mimicking her grandparents' voices and her brother's voices when they were not home. Side note, if you feel a negative energy and feel pulled to look at it, do not look at it. Also, for both of you, you say you feel presences around you sometimes. If you're ever scared, you can say with conviction, "If you are not with God, be gone. My protective spirits told me this and they say it's a guarding rule that spirits and demons must follow. In my friend's house with my mom, she worked with my mom and that's how we became friends. We cleansed her house based off what my spirit guides told me to do. We used salt, holy water, and told the spirits to leave and that they did not belong there. During the cleansing, there were so many loud bangs and thuds. But after the cleansing, it felt like they had all left until that night when we slept over. I felt like something was watching me. And I got very little sleep. But in the morning, my mom told

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me, "Yep, there's something still here." Because apparently I had gotten up, screamed her name, and then she came running to me in the middle of the night, and I was asleep. Apparently, like waving my arms in the air to the point where she had a bruised eye when I saw her in the morning. Apparently,

I was asleep and then just stopped and went back to sleep.

This makes me think nightmare. Yeah. Then this one comes from my mom, but it also includes me. I had a surgery the night before this happened and my mom was taking care of me. It happened a year ago. I'm 22 now. And she felt like staying in my bed because she said there wasn't a good feeling in my spare room. In the middle of the night, she was woken by a little girl who she said looked like me. She said she got an overwhelming urge to leave the room because she felt like she was in the spot that the little girl needed to lay in, which was in Tiffany's bed. M

she left and when she got to

What the hell? You just offer it up?

I think she was like half asleep because

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the next sentence says she left and went to the other room, but then she got to the other room and was like, "Wait, what? There's no other children here." And ran back to check on me. I was fine and the girl was gone. When she told my best friend Allison, and I the story the next morning, Allison freaked out and said that she had seen this girl as well. They described her and I responded with, "That's my sister." I didn't know what I had said, but my mom looked terrified and then told me the strangest thing in the world. Apparently, I was supposed to be a twin.

But I had absorbed my twin before birth.

Oh, I have chills.

And I still get an eerie feeling when I think about it because one, never has she shown herself to me personally. Two, I didn't know that I was supposed to have a twin, but I seemingly said it that morning when they were talking about it. Anyway, I have a million other stories. I love your podcast, not just for the spooky stuff, but because it's helping people broaden their ideas of what the paranormal looks like. Thank you guys, Tiffany. Oh my god, that is interesting cuz it's like if we think

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about like souls and maybe like two souls, we're like, "Yes, we get to be twins and they decide to go together, but they can't help what physically happens."

I know. Also, I have a science question.

Okay, what's your science question? Can only identical twins absorb the other because they share the same sack? Oh, that's interesting. I don't know. Imagine having triplets. Scary. There's so many stories of people who are like, I had one kid and then we were let's just have one more and then they give birth to triplets.

I know. It's crazy. Well, I think it was happening a lot with people doing IVF, but I know a lot of states there's a lot of like now I don't know if it's like universal across the US, but most places you can only try one egg at a time because before they were implanting multiple and that's how so many people were having multiples.

This girl that we went to college with, she and her husband ended up getting a surrogate. The surrogate got pregnant within a month or two. our friend got

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pregnant. So now they're having two babies within two months of each other.

Yeah.

Oh my god.

Isn't that wild? Also, I just learned maybe this will be like a learning moment for all of us that the term Irish twins is derogatory. Is it? Yeah. Apparently, it was like created or like used to be like rude towards like the Irish Catholic immigrants who were

and their views of like birth control and having large families.

Interesting.

Yeah. which I was like, "Oh, I've used that so many times. I'm not going to

What I learned from this is it's okay to say like and um because those are safe words and they mean that you're thinking about what the next word you're going to say is."

Yeah. But holy holy, here's a swear. Holy Balls. Balls. Because that's crazy. I I can't imagine having a 2-month-old that you're trying to care for and then going into the hospital to give birth to another child and starting the process again and like

Yeah.

the two-month-old still needs so much.

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It's like basically like having twins and also being 8 months pregnant with a newborn and then yeah like all that whole it's a lot but also a miracle. Amazing. Anyway, this was we we covered a lot here. Ran the gamut. started with being buried alive and now we've got weddings, we've got

babies.

Well, you know, you get married, you have babies, and then you get buried alive.

That well, unfortunately, that did happen to a lot of people.

My story.

Ah, well, go ahead and share all of your paranormal encounters with us. Email them to us at two girls onego podcastmail.com. Join us on Patreon. Tell your friends about us. Shout out to Jamie Ryan who edits and produces our podcast. Thank you, Jamie. We love you all so much. And we will see you on the other side.

Very spooky.