SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Our host; Dr.G had his first paranormal experience at only eight years old. With over five decades of storytelling, magic and paranormal story collection he is an award winning story teller on a mission to revive firelight and the telling of stories!
SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
The Unseen World: Paranormal Encounters and Historical Safety Coffins
The boundary between life and death has never been as terrifyingly thin as when coffin bells were a necessity. This deep dive into taphophobia—the fear of being buried alive—uncovers centuries of macabre history and the remarkable inventions born from our most primal fears.
From the haunting 14th-century tale of philosopher John Duns Scotus reportedly found outside his coffin with bloodied hands, to the documented case of Alice Blunden in 17th-century England who was buried twice while still alive, these stories fueled generations of anxiety. Edgar Allan Poe masterfully captured this cultural dread in his 1844 short story "The Premature Burial," but the reality behind the fiction is even more fascinating.
The podcast takes listeners through the surprising evolution of safety coffins and burial alarm systems, from Franz Vester's 1868 patent to astonishingly recent innovations like Jeff Dannenberg's 2010 patent for post-burial communication devices. We even explore modern developments like coffin playlist systems and grave jewelry alarm systems—proving our fascination with bridging the gap between the living and dead remains alive and well.
Most compelling is my personal experience when an authentic antique coffin bell—designed to be tied to a corpse's wrists—inexplicably rang during a live performance. The genuine shock experienced by myself, my partner Cassandra, and our audience speaks to something deeper than mere coincidence. As my daughter wisely notes, "There is indeed a world unseen, a world that exists all around us all the time, and every now and then, for whatever reason, we catch a glimpse of it and the dead get in."
Have you experienced something unexplainable? We'd love to hear your story—contact us through the website or call our show line as we continue exploring paranormal themes leading up to Halloween. Remember, telling a story is good for you—and if it's a ghost story, so much better.
Hey everybody, it's Dr G, spirit Tales and Magic. It's only 119 degrees. In wonderful downtown Phoenix. We've been having a heat wave for quite some time, causes a lot of problems, shall we say them? Shall we say, recently, while going through some mail and going back through some history, the office where what we refer to as the magic office is it shares a wall with another office. Public is allowed to come in during certain times and this microphone filters out a lot of things, some of the some of the things you don't hear. But I can hear people on the other side of the wall when they're in there and I hear this gentleman insisting to talk to me and Cassandra's like no, you can't talk to him, he's in production. But I pause everything and I go out and I'm like, okay, what is it that's bothering you?
Speaker 1:The death bell, the death bell. Yes, you own a coffin bell. Yes, I do. I just wondered why somebody would want to carry something like that around. My uh, my daughter. Now, keep in mind, his daughter is 36 years old. My daughter was at a party that you did a show at and you passed this thing around and sometime during the show it rang and you claim it was not a trick. That is correct. Well, first you make up the whole thing and then you have this gimmicked bell to scare people, and I just don't think it's right. Okay, I'm not going to give you the satisfaction of saying your last name on the air, but I do find it rather amusing that Dick is your first name. So while we're on the subject of the coffin bell, let's give you a little research about the coffin bell Number one.
Speaker 1:I do have a coffin bell. I purchased it in a haunted town in the West. Purchased it in a haunted town in the West. The person that owned it didn't really want to sell it. It was more of a decoration than anything else. But it was just one of the few props I have that actually spoke to us and I felt like that I should own it. So I bought it. Cassandra and I joke around all the time about I wonder if it rang on the day that I died three years ago. She was not in the presence of the bell at that time, and of course neither was I, but people feared being buried alive, so much that they invented special let's call them safety coffins, and with only about 85 days to Halloween and 55 days to October.
Speaker 1:I thought we'd give a little mention to this, so we'll talk about some history for a second. We'll talk about some history for a second. History shows that taphophobia that is, the fear of being buried alive, has a great degree of merit. As early as the 14th century there are accounts of specific people who got buried alive, while likely apocryphal. There was a certain tomb that was open in the body of philosopher, I want to say John Dunn's Scotus. He's a high Middle Ages guy. He's a high middle ages guy Reportedly found outside of his coffin. His hands were torn up in a way that suggested that he might have been digging to escape.
Speaker 1:Now we'll fast forward a little bit. 17th century England. It's documented that a woman by the name of Alice London was buried alive. Now I believe the story goes that she was knocked out after having ingested a large quantity of poppy tea that a doctor holding a mirror to her nose pronounced her dead. Back in day. If they held a mirror to your nose and it didn't steam up, that meant that you were not breathing and you're dead and off you go. The tea you see was made from dried, unwashed seed pods of poppies. Now, that would have contained some morphine and also some codeine, which, as we know now, are sedatives.
Speaker 1:Her family quickly makes arrangements for her burial. Two days after she was laid in the ground, children playing thought they heard screams. They immediately ran to the schoolmaster and when he went to check the grave site for himself, he found that blunden was still alive. It took another day to exhume her. She was so close to death that she was returned to her grave, where a guard stood by for a long time before deserting his post. The next morning she was found dead, but only after struggling to release herself once more.
Speaker 1:Remember that little game that some of us played in kindergarten. You sit in a circle on the floor and you pick left or right, you whisper something in the person's ear either the person to your immediate left or your immediate right and by the time he gets back to you it's something completely different. As a bit of a folklorist, I can tell you that a lot of myths and legends that we endure are not too far different than that game. But if you go way fast forward, let's talk about I believe it was February in 2014. I don't have the notes in front of me, so that's from memory, and well, you know how that works.
Speaker 1:Cnn reported that a Walter Williams of Mississippi. He was pronounced dead on February, the 26th 2014. The correct paperwork was completed, of course. They put his body in a body bag, take it to the funeral home. When he gets to the funeral home, he's taken to the embalming room, because you know that's what they do. The embalmer comes in, he gets everything ready and he notices that this guy is very lightly breathing. Yep Williams was alive. Now, as it turned out, that was a short-lived reprieve. I think it was two weeks later that he passed away for real. But what keeps those things alive and keeps them going? We'll back up just a bit.
Speaker 1:Then, edgar Allan Poe, 19th century. We've heard of Poe. He exploited all kinds of human fears in his stories and being buried alive was not going to be an exception. I believe the work was called Premature Burial and it's a short story, not as famous as the Raven, of course. I want to say it was 1844. The narrator describes his struggle with things such as attacks of singular disorder, which physicians have mostly agreed that the term catalepsy. It's an actual medical condition. It's characterized by a death-like trance and a rigidity of the body.
Speaker 1:The story focuses on the narrator's fear of being buried alive and the corrective actions that he takes to prevent it. He makes a bunch of friends Promise that they will not bury him prematurely. He doesn't stray away from his home and he builds a tomb with equipment Allowing him To signal for help In case he should be buried alive. In case he awakes from one of these mysterious episodes, poe goes on to describe how the narrator remodeled the tomb. The slightest pressure upon a long lever that extended far into the tomb would cause the iron portal to fly back. There were arrangements also for the free admission of air and light, convenient receptacles for food and water within immediate reach of the coffin intended for his reception, if they were needed. The coffin was warmly and softly padded and provided with a lid fashioned upon the principle of a vault door, with the addition of springs so contrived that even the feeblest of movement of the body would be sufficient to set it at liberty. And besides all this, there was suspended from the roof of the tomb a large bell, a rope which was designed to extend through a hole in the coffin so it could be fastened to one of the hands of the corpse. Unfortunately, the character takes all these precautions only to find that his greatest fears realized.
Speaker 1:Precautions for the Majors of the So-called Dead. It's not clear if Poe inspired innovation or if he was merely tapping into the feelings of the time, but this fear led to one of the creepiest categories of invention coffin alarms, series of inventions in the 19th century which would aid someone who was buried alive to either escape or to breathe or in some way to call for help. Patent number eighty one thousand four hundred and thirty seven now that was granted to franz vester on august, the 25th of 1868, for an improved burial case. But that wasn't the end of it, because patent number 268,693 was granted on December 5, 1882 to John Crickman for a device for indicating a live buried person. The device has both a means for indicating movement as well as getting fresh air into the coffin. The disclosure states that it will be seen if a person should be buried alive and come to life with motion of his hands, will turn the branches of the T-shaped pipe upon the near which his hand is placed. A marked scale on the side of the top indicates movement of T and air passively comes down the pipe Once sufficient time has passed To ensure that the person is dead. This device can be removed. Well, on November the 3rd in 1885, charles Seeler and Frederick Bonterar, I want to say I'm probably messing that up they got a patent, number 329,495, for a new burial casket.
Speaker 1:As medicine has advanced, there have, of course, been technological advances in determining if someone's dead or alive. Doctors can hook up a body to machines that monitor heartbeat, brainwaves, respiration. But even though the fad of coffin alarms has passed, or has it, here's some interesting things from the 21st century. Patent number 7,765,656 was granted on August the 3rd of 2010. Yes, that's 2010.
Speaker 1:To Jeff Dannenberg for an apparatus or method of generating post burial, after burial communications in a burial casket. I've actually seen that one and I have an NDA that I'm not supposed to discuss it, so we will not discuss it in any detail. No sense in giving our attorneys a heart attack where they may need to be placed in a coffin with a death bell. This apparatus is powered by a battery, if you wish, or power, if you're in a cemetery, that can bring power to your tombstone, or a battery, solar or hard line that will allow you to speak with the person in the casket and, should he awake or for any other reason want to talk back to you. You will be able to hear that through the tombstone.
Speaker 1:There were many, many incarnations of the death bell, which is what we started speaking about. The one I have is about the size of a large grapefruit. It's mounted to a piece of wood right now, not a coffin, but there's a piece of apparatus at the end of it that allows a rope a fine rope, more like a heavy twine to be attached. That would run down into the coffin, be tied to one wrist of the person who's passed and then, as the other loop came down, it would be tied to the other wrist. So if the person woke up and found that they were in the coffin and they began to flail around, the bell would go crazy, would ring. It's a very loud bell. So you would you would notice it. Very recently we are not in the Halloween store businesses anymore. We quit doing that 20 years ago, but I still do occasionally keep up on the data for those and go to some small conventions.
Speaker 1:And there is a music system that is getting patented. It was either last year or it's going to be patented this year. That will allow you to have your playlist accessibility in your coffin and it works much in the same way as the communication device does. It can be hardwired to your tombstone, it can be battery or solar powered, so that you can listen to your playlist through eternity. And if you would decide you wanted to change it, you could do it from inside of your coffin. There is also a patent applied for an anti-theft device for jewelry left on your loved one in the coffin, so that if someone disturbs it, a very high decibel siren will go off. I do find that interesting. So from the 14th century until now, dick, we have all been fascinated with safety measures for the dead. Now I guess if you're a person that believes in ghosts, it's not too far-fetched to say that if you didn't have that and you wake up in the coffin, you're eventually going to die, but then you're going to be angry, so maybe you're going to come back and haunt some people. But taphophobia has been around for a very, very long time. It wasn't invented for a storytelling mentalist show, nor was over 1,000 patents for safety operations of the same thing.
Speaker 1:On the night that the death bell rang, cassandra and I were doing a show. It was the Death to my Twenties birthday show and I'm not going to give the people names because I didn't ask their permission to put them on this podcast, so, but we were doing the show and I frankly can't remember what story I was telling at the time, but very clear and loud, one ring Ding. But very clear and loud, one ring. I stopped what I was doing and I looked at Cassandra, who had stopped what she was doing. We're now staring at each other with the deer in the headlight. Look, if you will. That lasted for two or three seconds, which seemed like an eternity. Now, at the end of the show, usually there's an autograph line or we try and get some feedback, either positive or negative, we take both and someone came up and said how did you make that bell ring? So I didn't. You know you guys have that so well rehearsed. The look on your faces it looked like you were really, really surprised. Yes, you could say that, and that's because we were really really surprised.
Speaker 1:I can tell you with a large degree of certainty. There are many things that I both agree and don't agree with in the realm of telling stories and paranormal stories at shows. One of the things I get a little chafed about is they lump all of us folks who do that into the category of bizarre magic. So, number one, there's nothing that bizarre about it and a large portion of the show is not a contrived piece of magic. I have found that occasionally can't put a statistic on it, but occasionally when you're doing this Can't put a statistic on it, but occasionally when you're doing every three will tell you that they have had an interaction with one. And if you're a frequent flyer of the podcast, you know that my first one was when I was eight years old with my aunt Agnes Wagner. It's on the podcast, you can look it up.
Speaker 1:Fast forward to this year and all that. We've all been through the pandemic and, in my case, dying once. I can't remember if it's two strokes and one heart attack or vice versa. After all of that and 11 moves, here we are in 22 countries and 117 cities and counting and 17 cities and counting, and Cassandra and I are going through some of our first year storytelling stuff. Now I've been archiving this stuff for a very long time. It is all very well marked, it's all numbered. I don't have a table of contents for it, but when I see a box it says on the box what's in the box and there was a particular thing that Cassandra wanted to see. So we're looking through the box and we find a picture of me as a very young child, child being held on a tricycle by my aunt, agnes Wagner, who has this magnificent smile on her face. I've been through that box a hundred times. I never saw that picture.
Speaker 1:Now, some say you just overlooked it. Some would say other things. You know, one of my daughters says there is indeed a world unseen, a world that exists all around us all the time, and every now and then, for whatever reason, we catch a glimpse of it and the dead get in. I'll never grow tired of that saying.
Speaker 1:So what's your story? Is there something in your life that you possess, some artifact that could be like the coffin bell, something unexplained that happens when you're in a particular place or with a particular thing you know? We'd love to hear about that and you can get in touch with us through the website or call the show line. All of that information is there for you. We'll be doing some, shall we say, paranormal kind of things leading up to October and leading up to Halloween. We are still not booked for Halloween because I haven't taken any of the offered bookings. We're kind of playing this one by ear because we just wanted to see what happened. If we did so, until the next time, my friends remember, tell a story, it's good for you, and if it's a ghost story, so much better. Dr G, spirit, tales and Magic and we will talk to you soon. Good night from Phoenix.
