Buried Alive by AJ Griffiths-Jones is a bone-chilling book details loads of premature burials, accidental interments, live burial/sacrificial rites, murder, and deliberate live burials to make and break records. Premanture burials have struck terror into the minds of so many for thousands of years. Taphophobia is the fear of being buried and waking up alive and has affected thousands of people throughout history. In fact, the American Society for Prevention of Premature Burial was necessitated. I understand that, especially when medical technology was not as advanced as it is today. People appeared dead in comatose and apopletic states and death-ike trances. Some poor souls were paralyzed and couldn't move, silent witnesses to their own funerals. Others were fortunate to signal to passersby by screams they were alive and were revived and lived days, months or years after.

This book is so riveting, disturbing and gripping it was impossible to put down, yet at times it was necessary for my own sanity! The author describes "dead-houses", miners, safety coffins, wills bequeathing money to someone who would stab or sever arteries to ensure death, left notes to housekeepers with similar instructions and also to have several doctors examine their body, and the Greek method. Ways of determining death are discussed as well.

The story of a vault opened to bury someone years after a woman was buried there is terrifying. Her skeleton sat at the entrance...and fingers were missing. A man was removed from his coffin, clothing shredded and bloody in a desperate attempt to escape.

If you are intrigued by the macabre and weirdly fascinating, this book is for you.

My sincere thank you to Pen & Sword and NetGalley for providing me with an early digital copy of this astounding book.

BURIED ALIVE is a macabre yet interesting read that was clearly well researched. The pieces on the history and motivation behind the practice were intriguing, however, once it became evident that each chapter was largely a compilation of brief stories centered around a specific subject, the book lost some of its appeal and became a bit monotonous.

Thank you to Pen & Sword and NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a scary concept and worked with what I was expecting from this type of book. AJ Griffiths-Jones does a great job in keeping the reader engaged and had the research to back it up. It had that historical element that I was looking for and glad I was able to read this.