Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe

by Volume 01-05 (lit)

  grave.

  From what he related, it was clear that he must have been conscious

  of life for more than an hour, while inhumed, before lapsing into

  insensibility. The grave was carelessly and loosely filled with an

  exceedingly porous soil; and thus some air was necessarily admitted.

  He heard the footsteps of the crowd overhead, and endeavored to make

  himself heard in turn. It was the tumult within the grounds of the

  cemetery, he said, which appeared to awaken him from a deep sleep,

  but no sooner was he awake than he became fully aware of the awful

  horrors of his position.

  This patient, it is recorded, was doing well and seemed to be in a

  fair way of ultimate recovery, but fell a victim to the quackeries of

  medical experiment. The galvanic battery was applied, and he suddenly

  expired in one of those ecstatic paroxysms which, occasionally, it

  superinduces.

  The mention of the galvanic battery, nevertheless, recalls to my

  memory a well known and very extraordinary case in point, where its

  action proved the means of restoring to animation a young attorney of

  London, who had been interred for two days. This occurred in 1831,

  and created, at the time, a very profound sensation wherever it was

  made the subject of converse.

  The patient, Mr. Edward Stapleton, had died, apparently of typhus

  fever, accompanied with some anomalous symptoms which had excited the

  curiosity of his medical attendants. Upon his seeming decease, his

  friends were requested to sanction a post-mortem examination, but

  declined to permit it. As often happens, when such refusals are made,

  the practitioners resolved to disinter the body and dissect it at

  leisure, in private. Arrangements were easily effected with some of

  the numerous corps of body-snatchers, with which London abounds; and,

  upon the third night after the funeral, the supposed corpse was

  unearthed from a grave eight feet deep, and deposited in the opening

  chamber of one of the private hospitals.

  An incision of some extent had been actually made in the abdomen,

  when the fresh and undecayed appearance of the subject suggested an

  application of the battery. One experiment succeeded another, and the

  customary effects supervened, with nothing to characterize them in

  any respect, except, upon one or two occasions, a more than ordinary

  degree of life-likeness in the convulsive action.

  It grew late. The day was about to dawn; and it was thought

  expedient, at length, to proceed at once to the dissection. A

  student, however, was especially desirous of testing a theory of his

  own, and insisted upon applying the battery to one of the pectoral

  muscles. A rough gash was made, and a wire hastily brought in

  contact, when the patient, with a hurried but quite unconvulsive

  movement, arose from the table, stepped into the middle of the floor,

  gazed about him uneasily for a few seconds, and then -- spoke. What

  he said was unintelligible, but words were uttered; the

  syllabification was distinct. Having spoken, he fell heavily to the

  floor.

  For some moments all were paralyzed with awe -- but the urgency of

  the case soon restored them their presence of mind. It was seen that

  Mr. Stapleton was alive, although in a swoon. Upon exhibition of

  ether he revived and was rapidly restored to health, and to the

  society of his friends -- from whom, however, all knowledge of his

  resuscitation was withheld, until a relapse was no longer to be

  apprehended. Their wonder -- their rapturous astonishment -- may be

  conceived.

  The most thrilling peculiarity of this incident, nevertheless, is

  involved in what Mr. S. himself asserts. He declares that at no

  period was he altogether insensible -- that, dully and confusedly, he

  was aware of everything which happened to him, from the moment in

  which he was pronounced dead by his physicians, to that in which he

  fell swooning to the floor of the hospital. "I am alive," were the

  uncomprehended words which, upon recognizing the locality of the

  dissecting-room, he had endeavored, in his extremity, to utter.

  It were an easy matter to multiply such histories as these -- but I

  forbear -- for, indeed, we have no need of such to establish the fact

  that premature interments occur. When we reflect how very rarely,

  from the nature of the case, we have it in our power to detect them,

  we must admit that they may frequently occur without our cognizance.

  Scarcely, in truth, is a graveyard ever encroached upon, for any

  purpose, to any great extent, that skeletons are not found in

  postures which suggest the most fearful of suspicions.

  Fearful indeed the suspicion -- but more fearful the doom! It may be

  asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well

  adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress,

  as is burial before death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs --

  the stifling fumes from the damp earth -- the clinging to the death

  garments -- the rigid embrace of the narrow house -- the blackness of

  the absolute Night -- the silence like a sea that overwhelms -- the

  unseen but palpable presence of the Conqueror Worm -- these things,

  with the thoughts of the air and grass above, with memory of dear

  friends who would fly to save us if but informed of our fate, and

  with consciousness that of this fate they can never be informed --

  that our hopeless portion is that of the really dead -- these

  considerations, I say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates,

  a degree of appalling and intolerable horror from which the most

  daring imagination must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon

  Earth -- we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the

  nethermost Hell. And thus all narratives upon this topic have an

  interest profound; an interest, nevertheless, which, through the

  sacred awe of the topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly

  depends upon our conviction of the truth of the matter narrated. What

  I have now to tell is of my own actual knowledge -- of my own

  positive and personal experience.

  For several years I had been subject to attacks of the singular

  disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy, in default

  of a more definitive title. Although both the immediate and the

  predisposing causes, and even the actual diagnosis, of this disease

  are still mysterious, its obvious and apparent character is

  sufficiently well understood. Its variations seem to be chiefly of

  degree. Sometimes the patient lies, for a day only, or even for a

  shorter period, in a species of exaggerated lethargy. He is senseless

  and externally motionless; but the pulsation of the heart is still

  faintly perceptible; some traces of warmth remain; a slight color

  lingers within the centre of the cheek; and, upon application of a

  mirror to the lips, we can detect a torpid, unequal, and vacillating

  action of the lungs. Then again the duration of the trance is for

  weeks -- even for months; while the closest scrutiny, and the most

  rigorous medical tes
ts, fail to establish any material distinction

  between the state of the sufferer and what we conceive of absolute

  death. Very usually he is saved from premature interment solely by

  the knowledge of his friends that he has been previously subject to

  catalepsy, by the consequent suspicion excited, and, above all, by

  the non-appearance of decay. The advances of the malady are, luckily,

  gradual. The first manifestations, although marked, are unequivocal.

  The fits grow successively more and more distinctive, and endure each

  for a longer term than the preceding. In this lies the principal

  security from inhumation. The unfortunate whose first attack should

  be of the extreme character which is occasionally seen, would almost

  inevitably be consigned alive to the tomb.

  My own case differed in no important particular from those mentioned

  in medical books. Sometimes, without any apparent cause, I sank,

  little by little, into a condition of hemi-syncope, or half swoon;

  and, in this condition, without pain, without ability to stir, or,

  strictly speaking, to think, but with a dull lethargic consciousness

  of life and of the presence of those who surrounded my bed, I

  remained, until the crisis of the disease restored me, suddenly, to

  perfect sensation. At other times I was quickly and impetuously

  smitten. I grew sick, and numb, and chilly, and dizzy, and so fell

  prostrate at once. Then, for weeks, all was void, and black, and

  silent, and Nothing became the universe. Total annihilation could be

  no more. From these latter attacks I awoke, however, with a gradation

  slow in proportion to the suddenness of the seizure. Just as the day

  dawns to the friendless and houseless beggar who roams the streets

  throughout the long desolate winter night -- just so tardily -- just

  so wearily -- just so cheerily came back the light of the Soul to me.

  Apart from the tendency to trance, however, my general health

  appeared to be good; nor could I perceive that it was at all affected

  by the one prevalent malady -- unless, indeed, an idiosyncrasy in my

  ordinary sleep may be looked upon as superinduced. Upon awaking from

  slumber, I could never gain, at once, thorough possession of my

  senses, and always remained, for many minutes, in much bewilderment

  and perplexity; -- the mental faculties in general, but the memory in

  especial, being in a condition of absolute abeyance.

  In all that I endured there was no physical suffering but of moral

  distress an infinitude. My fancy grew charnel, I talked "of worms, of

  tombs, and epitaphs." I was lost in reveries of death, and the idea

  of premature burial held continual possession of my brain. The

  ghastly Danger to which I was subjected haunted me day and night. In

  the former, the torture of meditation was excessive -- in the latter,

  supreme. When the grim Darkness overspread the Earth, then, with

  every horror of thought, I shook -- shook as the quivering plumes

  upon the hearse. When Nature could endure wakefulness no longer, it

  was with a struggle that I consented to sleep -- for I shuddered to

  reflect that, upon awaking, I might find myself the tenant of a

  grave. And when, finally, I sank into slumber, it was only to rush at

  once into a world of phantasms, above which, with vast, sable,

  overshadowing wing, hovered, predominant, the one sepulchral Idea.

  From the innumerable images of gloom which thus oppressed me in

  dreams, I select for record but a solitary vision. Methought I was

  immersed in a cataleptic trance of more than usual duration and

  profundity. Suddenly there came an icy hand upon my forehead, and an

  impatient, gibbering voice whispered the word "Arise!" within my ear.

  I sat erect. The darkness was total. I could not see the figure of

  him who had aroused me. I could call to mind neither the period at

  which I had fallen into the trance, nor the locality in which I then

  lay. While I remained motionless, and busied in endeavors to collect

  my thought, the cold hand grasped me fiercely by the wrist, shaking

  it petulantly, while the gibbering voice said again:

  "Arise! did I not bid thee arise?"

  "And who," I demanded, "art thou?"

  "I have no name in the regions which I inhabit," replied the voice,

  mournfully; "I was mortal, but am fiend. I was merciless, but am

  pitiful. Thou dost feel that I shudder. -- My teeth chatter as I

  speak, yet it is not with the chilliness of the night -- of the night

  without end. But this hideousness is insufferable. How canst thou

  tranquilly sleep? I cannot rest for the cry of these great agonies.

  These sights are more than I can bear. Get thee up! Come with me into

  the outer Night, and let me unfold to thee the graves. Is not this a

  spectacle of woe? -- Behold!"

  I looked; and the unseen figure, which still grasped me by the wrist,

  had caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind, and from each

  issued the faint phosphoric radiance of decay, so that I could see

  into the innermost recesses, and there view the shrouded bodies in

  their sad and solemn slumbers with the worm. But alas! the real

  sleepers were fewer, by many millions, than those who slumbered not

  at all; and there was a feeble struggling; and there was a general

  sad unrest; and from out the depths of the countless pits there came

  a melancholy rustling from the garments of the buried. And of those

  who seemed tranquilly to repose, I saw that a vast number had

  changed, in a greater or less degree, the rigid and uneasy position

  in which they had originally been entombed. And the voice again said

  to me as I gazed:

  "Is it not -- oh! is it not a pitiful sight?" -- but, before I could

  find words to reply, the figure had ceased to grasp my wrist, the

  phosphoric lights expired, and the graves were closed with a sudden

  violence, while from out them arose a tumult of despairing cries,

  saying again: "Is it not -- O, God, is it not a very pitiful sight?"

  Phantasies such as these, presenting themselves at night, extended

  their terrific influence far into my waking hours. My nerves became

  thoroughly unstrung, and I fell a prey to perpetual horror. I

  hesitated to ride, or to walk, or to indulge in any exercise that

  would carry me from home. In fact, I no longer dared trust myself out

  of the immediate presence of those who were aware of my proneness to

  catalepsy, lest, falling into one of my usual fits, I should be

  buried before my real condition could be ascertained. I doubted the