The Lazarus Syndrome: Burial Alive and Other Horrors of the Undead

Evoking the unimaginable horror of premature burial, The Lazarus Syndrome traces the history of this grisly phenomenon---as well as premature dissection, untimely cremation, and the embalming of the living. Rodney Davies recounts unseemly cases, both literal and literary, of misdiagnosis and miraculous escapes from premature interment. Explaining the generally accepted ways of determining death---lack of pulse and visible respiration---Davis shows how misleading these indicators can be. Immobilized by trance, coma, or catalepsy, thousands have suffered the chilling consequences of misdiagnosis. While the discovery of unwarranted cremations and premature burials has most often come too late to save the unfortunates, accounts astonished grave robbers who, pulling the rings off the near-dead, have roused them back to life. Treading the fine line that separates this world from the next, The Lazarus Syndrome is replete with stories of life after death---but of a completely different kind.