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Article: Buried Alive
- Article from:
- Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Buried Alive
"Buried alive"
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the phrase itself frightens people with its thoughts of being enclosed in a narrow space with one's breathing air diminishing, helpless, and unable to escape. A 1985 Italian study of patients recovering from myocardial infarction, found that 50 percent of them suffered from phobias that included being buried alive. The fear of being buried alive is denoted by the word
taphephobia.
The state of the appearance of death while still alive has been denoted by the term
thanatomimesis,
although the phrase "apparent death" is used more frequently by medical professionals and those in the scientific community.
This fear of premature burial is not wholly without ...