BURIED ALIVE IN IMAGINATION

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12507, 24 July 1926, Page 11

BURIED ALIVE IN IMAGINATION

Woman’s Ordeal While Unable to Speak. THE northern part of the State of Wisconsin, in America, has communities isolated from each other by many miles. For long months snow blocks the roads, and even in fine weather travel and communication are difficult. One of these communities is the hamlet of Pound, which has been the scene of as gruesome a tragedy as any that haunted the mind of Edgar Allan Poe. , . , . Twelve miles out of the hamlet is the home of Mrs Molly Stankowitz, a small frame structure, deep in snow during the winter mouths and burning under the sun in the summer. Thirty months ago Mrs Stankowitz, a young woman, gave birth to a child. She did not rally from the ordeal, and the local doctors were puzzled. Finally she went into a state of complete paralysis. Had it been possible to take the woman to hospital it is probable that her ailment might have been cured within a short time. But the distance was very great, and her relatives could not afford it. A sister who had been studying to be a nurse came to Pound to help* “LOOKS DEAD" For seventeen months the woman lay flat on her back, unable to move a muscle but mentally aware of what was going on. Curious villagers, sympathetic and puzzled, came into stare at her. They offered the opinion that “Molly looks dead, don’t, she?” and did not think it necessary to lower their voices. The inert figure on the bed was able to hear everything they were saying. Mrs Stankowitz heard them compare her appearance to a corpse, she heard them remark that she had no chance to live. Her mind was keenly aware of everything that went on around her. She struggled desperately and futilely to cry out that she was not dead, that life >till flowed through her veins. But most of all she wished to scream that they must not bury her alive. "Within the ln«t few weeks an operation has been performed. Mrs Stankowitz lias almost fully recovered and

The fear of being buried alive has haunted mankind ever since the beginning of time.

This is the story of how, for seventeen months, a woman lay completely paralysed, tortured by the apprehension that the people around her would believe that the spark of life in her had gone out.

riicaiiiiiiiiiiiiciiHiiimimiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiifiincimiiHiiiuciiiiiiiiiiiiicaii is able to describe her acute mental sufferings while she was lying paralysed. “They might como—at least I used to think so—at night—and decide that I was dead,” she said in an interview. “The neighbours so often said J looked dead. “Then I would be so frightened that they would bury me alive, and in my chest there would bo a great pounding and I would feel as though I was .struggling in an iron casket. MENTAL WRITHINGS “Of course, I don’t suppo.se I really moved. But it would seem to me that I was writhing, so hard did I trv to speak to tell them that I was not dead, merely sleeping. Then my mind would carry me through horrible experiences, and sensations, thoughts of being buried alive and beating against a casket under the ground. For hours this would go on until actual sleep finally would bring relief. “Of course, I told myself, undertakers didn't bury people alive any more. But the thought kept coming hack that my case might be an exception. “J.t’s so away from everything out

Feared Friends Thought Her ' Dead. here. Strange things happen. I heard them speak, too. of snow and blockaded roads and mud in the ftpring. Sometimes things are done hastily because there is nothing else to do. Strange things happen in the country—t-liings folks in the cities don’t know much about. TORMENTED BY FLY “In some way a fly got inside the netting about my bed. All day long that fly walked over my face, and I could not move a muscle to brush it away, or call to anyone. It bit me again and again. “It was the worst experience I ever went through. Even when they brought my children to me X couldn’t let them know I recognised them.” Having been virtually dead for seventeen months, the noveltv of being again alive seems to awe Mrs Stanl kowitz. She constantly drifts off into long soliloquies of her sufferings and the terrific relief of the present. But her mind is perfectly clear, her answers logical and coherent. The universal terror of burial alive was illustrated in New York the other day when the will of Albert P. Schack, son of Count Schack, a Danish diplomat and author, was filed. INSTRUCTIONS IN WILL It provided that he must not be buried until three clays after two reputable physicians had declared life extinct. “Before preparing my body for burial,” Mr Shack said in his will, “[ desir© ‘that two refutable physicians known to bo experienced in such matters shall be called in, and that, they shall confer together and closely examine my body and determine, without doubt, whether or not I have certainly expired, and that each and both shall so testify to my sister. Mrs CJrac»o, or to those who are in charge of me anl my funeral, for I desire not by any chance to be buried alive. “I desire that three days shall be allowed from the time that the decision is made that I have expired to the time of the funefal and burial. That is, say if I die on Sunday, that the funeral shall not be before Tuesday or Wednesday next, or if I die on Monday, that the funeral shall not he before Wednesday or Thursday.”