commentary by Patrick H. Moore
We know that certain things can go wrong with the bodies of the deceased. In rare (but real) cases, innocent uncomprehending corpses are sexually violated by desiring morgue workers. In the old days, it was not uncommon for a particular brand of specialized thief to perform what were euphemistically referred to as “excavations”, i.e., the thieves robbed graves for a price selling the “stiffs” to medical schools so that budding surgeons would have something (someone) to practice on.
But the fear that many of us harbor (for good reason, it turns out) is that we will be buried alive only to wake up in a cold, dark, confined and horribly frightening place otherwise known as a coffin. When I was a kid, film director Roger Corman made a film called “The Premature Burial” based on an Edgar Allen Poe short story that Wikipedia describes as follows:
Set in the early dark Victorian-era 1830s or ’40s (also similar to Charles Dickens’ fiction of rain-soaked London streets), it follows Guy Carrell, who is obsessed with the fear of death. He is most obsessed with the fear of being buried alive. Though his fiancee Emily says he has nothing to be afraid of, he still thinks he will be buried alive (a common fear and in reality an 
occasional occurrence with the primitive and happen-stance character of the practice of early surgical and medicine science then, with bodies being raided from morgues to do educational autopsies…) So deluded, he seeks help from a few people, including his sister, but he still is haunted by the fear of death and the sense that someone close wants him dead…
Now, of course, the exhumation of corpses is no longer required for medical training purposes, although there are situations such as the Kendrick Johnson gym mat roll death case, in which the corpse is exhumed and reexamined in hopes of obtaining more accurate autopsy results. Of course, Kendrick Johnson is dead and is hardly aware that his final resting place has been violently disturbed.
No, the real (and relevant fear) is that one will be declared legally dead only to wake up imprisoned in a mute and unyielding coffin.
David Lohr at Huffington Post writes:
A California family who claims a loved one was prematurely declared dead, and then “frozen alive” while trying to escape a morgue freezer, has filed a (wrongful death) lawsuit against the hospital.
According to the lawsuit, Maria de Jesus Arroyo, 80, suffered a heart attack on July 26, 2010, and was pronounced dead by a doctor at White Memorial Medical Center in Boyle Heights, Calif. Arroyo’s body was laid out so that her family could pay their respects before it was taken to the hospital’s morgue, where it was placed inside a refrigerated compartment, pending pickup by a mortician.
It was during Arroyo’s time in the refrigerated compartment, the lawsuit alleges, that something — which under different circumstances might have been viewed as a miracle — turned into a nightmare.
“She was put into that body bag while she was alive,” the family’s attorney, Scott Schutzman, alleged to The Huffington Post. “The cold from the hospital morgue woke her up, and she was fighting her way out when she died.”
According to the lawsuit, when morticians later received Ms. Arroyo’s body from the morgue, they discovered that she was face-down rather than face-up. (In other words, although “dead”, she had managed to turn over.) Her nose was broken, and she had cuts and bruises on her face, according to the court papers.
At first, Ms. Arroyo’s family attributed the injuries to mishandling of her remains, presumably by hospital personnel while moving her from the hospital wake to the “refrigerated compartment”. (This would suggest she was dropped on her head or maybe even that some jaded hospital orderlies used her as a punching bag, which seems unlikely.) The problem was, the injuries — however they were caused — were so severe that that the mortuary was unable to mask them. As a result, the family was apparently informed that something was drastically wrong, which in turn led them to consider filing a suit accusing the hospital of negligence.
At this point, the family’s attorney, Scott Schutzman, hired a medical expert to review depositions and declarations by hospital staff. After scrutinizing the documents, the medical expert came to the following surprising conclusions:
- Arroyo had received her injuries pre-mortem (pre-mortem technically means prior to the autopsy, in other words, before the morticians picked up, transported and examined the deceased).
- Thus, she was literally “frozen alive” in the hospital morgue.
“She must of got the wounds while she was fighting, while she was on her way out, and that’s why they found her upside down,” Schutzman said.
Based on the medical expert’s review, Schutzman withdrew the original negligence lawsuit and filed the current case which alleges wrongful death.
“Even if we win, it’s bittersweet because they relive this whole thing,” Schutzman said, referring to Arroyo’s husband and their eight children.
Naturally, White Memorial Medical Center has denied any wrongdoing in the case.
“We followed all proper protocols in this matter and are confident that once the facts of the case are reviewed, we will prevail in court,” hospital officials said in a statement.
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I suspect that the hospital officials are correct and that they probably “will prevail in court”. Even if they do not prevail, the physician who wrongly pronounced Ms. Arroyo dead (as well as the hospital), will presumably be protected by their medical insurance.
White Memorial Medical Center is a Los Angeles County Hospital and is probably not where many doctors would choose to work if they could wrangle better gigs at places like Kaiser Permanente or Cedars Sinai or UCLA Medical Center. That does not mean, however, that its doctors are in any way incompetent or that we should assume that there was any real wrongdoing on the part of Ms. Arroyo’s physician(s) or the hospital staff.
What this situation does strongly suggest, however, is that the common fear of being wrongly pronounced dead and then buried alive is more than just an idle fear and may, in rare cases, actually manifest.
So if you turn out to be one of the unlucky ones (the few, the unfortunate, the still barely breathing), you have my most heartfelt condolences. And should I be the victim of a premature burial, I hope no one ever finds out, unless of course I manage to claw my way out of whatever crypt I am encaged in.