Alive in a Coffin

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 810, 2 November 1929, Page 20

Alive in a Coffin

Carpenter’s Dreadful Experience

JffKARLY buried alive twice in a lifetime. That is the uncanny experience that has befallen a Munich carpenter named Stocker. ■* His first "burial” was when he was a young .man of 22. And he has just escaped a second time. He gives an eerie account of his feelings. Stocker was gravely injured while carrying a large piece of wood, and was taken to hospital. He was operated on, but on leaving the operating room he fell into a state closely resembling death. He was conscious, but every effort of the doctors to “revive”, him failed, and he was pronounced dead. “I lay on my bed, rigid, incapable of pronouncing a word,” Stocker relates. "1 heard everything and saw everything plainly. In a frightful spasm of anguish I heard the nurses say I was dead, and the doctors confirm the verdict. A few hours later I was put in a coffin and taken to a chapel, and placed beside two bodies in their coffins. Candles were lighted around me, my hands-crossed over my breast, a chaplet placed between them. I heard some of those around me say what a pitiful thing was death. Others declared that death was a happy event, especially for me with the wounds I had received. Nuns came and prayed beside my coffin. I wanted to yell out,

shriek, so great was my fear of being buried alive. But I could not even move my lips. “My fear gripped me. I gazed fixedly at the Cross in front of me, and I made a mental vow that I would carry a Cross weighing a hundred-weight to the Virgin of Altotting if 1 escaped from the awful fate of being buried alive. Soon after I had been carried to the chapel one of the doctors who had attended me came to the hospital saw my empty bed, asked where I was, and was told I was dead. He would not believe it, and went to find the surgeon who had operated on me. This was about two o’clock in the morning. The surgeon got up, dressed, and returned with his assistant to the hospital. Then they came into the chapel and carried me away again to the operating room. Doctors and nurses massaged my arms energetically for an hour. The efforts of the doctors finally conquered the paralysis of my limbs, and I returned to ‘life-.’ The surgeon fell on his knees and thanked God that 'I had not been buried alive. Then, searching in his pockets, he drew out a handful of ten-shilling pieces, which he gave me to help ‘forget the fright I had had.’ ” On his recovery Stocker brought to the Virgin of Altotting the cross he had vowed to give.