There were few fears more terrifying in the old days than being buried alive. Before modern monitoring equipment, before reliable life-support machines, and before doctors could always tell the difference between death and a deathlike state, the thought of waking inside a sealed coffin haunted the public imagination.
For Mrs. Julia Ann Stanfield of Cunningham, North Carolina, that nightmare may have become real.
In 1903, Mrs. Stanfield traveled to Durham to undergo surgery for a tumor. According to the newspaper account, two doctors administered chloroform before the operation. But before the knife was ever used, she stopped breathing…