has anyone ever heard of a death horn?seen this on tv programme'beyond belief fact or fiction????

Question

aparently it was used i the early days,when someone died they could have a death horn buried with them'it was 7ft in lenght and stuck up out of the ground,and if the person was to wake up they blue this?sounds silly i know..but i am i debate about this?anybody know?????????

Answer 1

It's the real deal. Long ago it was common for someone to slip into a coma and be buried as if dead. Edgar Allen Poe was terrified of being buried alive.

That's where we get the terms "grave yard shift" and "saved by the bell" from. In the 1600's there were many epidemics. People were rapidly buried to stem the spread of disease.

Families would take turns for quite some time, sitting in the grave yard just incase their recently buried member should come back.

A bell was often used. A bell was hung by a new grave. A thread strung down through the ground and tied to the dead person's finger. If that person began to move about the bell would ring and they'd dig that person up.

Even today we have incidents of people accidentally being written off and dead, bagged up and tossed in the morgue.

Answer 2

Actually I have heard of similar contraptions such as bells stringed from the coffin to a pole above the grave. In earlier times people would be mistakenly buried alive, and this was of course a great concern to many. Such a horn was probably used as the bell was, and indication from the one dwelling below the ground to notify those above that they were not quite dead... yet.

Answer 3

This, and variations on the theme (such as bells the person could ring via a string), were actually used, even as recently as the late 1800's.

Answer 4

snopes.com has a story about people rigging up bells in graves, and an urban myth about a telephone in a mausoleum. Yucky, but interesting...