Public DomainEssie Dunbar was allegedly buried alive in 1915.During a hot South Carolina summer in 1915, 30-year-old Essie Dunbar died of an epileptic seizure. Or so her family thought.They called a doctor, who confirmed that Dunbar showed no signs of life. The family then arranged a funeral, placed Dunbar in a wooden coffin, invited friends and family to mourn her death, and finally buried her.At the request of Dunbars sister who arrived late to the funeral Dunbars coffin was dug up so that her sister could view Dunbars body one last time. To everyones profound shock, Dunbar was alive and smiling.Essie Dunbar had been buried alive, and she went on to live another 47 after her first death or so the story goes.The 1915 Death Of Essie DunbarNot much is known about Essie Dunbars life before her death in 1915. Born in 1885, Dunbar apparently lived a quiet existence in South Carolina for the first 30 years of her life. Most of her family lived nearby, though Dunbar also had a sister in the neighboring town.Evanoco/Wikimedia CommonsThe town of Blackville, South Carolina, where Essie Dunbar spent most of her life.But in the summer of 1915, Dunbar suffered an epileptic seizure and collapsed. Dunbars family called a doctor, Dr. D.K. Briggs of Blackville, South Carolina, for help, but he appeared to arrive too late. Briggs found no signs of life and told the family that Dunbar was dead. Heartbroken, Dunbars family started to plan a funeral. According to Buried Alive: The Terrifying History Of Our Most Primal Fear by Jan Bondeson, they decided to hold the funeral the next day, at 11 a.m., to give Dunbars sister time to travel to the service. That morning, Essie Dunbar was placed in a wooden coffin. Three preachers conducted the service, which should have given Dunbars sister plenty of time to arrive. When the service finished, and Dunbars sister was still nowhere to be seen, the family decided to proceed with the burial.They lowered Essie Dunbars coffin six feet into the ground and covered it in dirt. But her story didnt end there.An Astonishing Return From Beyond The GraveA few minutes after Essie Dunbar was buried, her sister finally arrived. She begged the preachers to allow her to see her sister one last time, and they agreed to dig up the coffin which had just been buried. As the funeral attendees watched, Dunbars freshly buried coffin was dug up. The lid was unscrewed. The coffin was open. And then shocked gasps and cries rang out not in anguish but in shock. To the astonishment and terror of the crowd, Essie Dunbar sat up in her coffin and smiled at her sister, looking very much alive. According to Buried Alive, the three ministers conducting the ceremony fell backward into the grave, the shortest suffering three broken ribs as the other two trampled him in their desperate effort to get out.Even Dunbars own family ran from her as they believed that she was a ghost or some type of zombie sent to terrorize them. When she climbed out of her coffin and tried to follow them, they grew even more terrified. But Essie Dunbar was not a ghost nor a zombie. She was just a 30-year-old woman whod had the bad luck of being buried alive and the good luck of being quickly dug back up again. Essie Dunbars Life After DeathFollowing her funeral, Essie Dunbar appeared to return to her normal, quiet existence. In 1955, the Augusta Chronicle reported that she spent her days picking cotton, and that shed outlived Briggs, the doctor who had first pronounced her dead in 1915. [Dunbar] has many friends today, a local doctor, Dr. O.D. Hammond, who treated one of the injured preachers during Dunbars funeral, told the paper. She gets a nice-sized welfare check monthly and earns some money picking cotton.Augusta ChronicleA newspaper article from 1955 recounting the story of Essie Dunbars premature burial in 1915.In fact, Dunbar lived for almost another decade more. She passed away on May 22, 1962, at Barnwell County Hospital in South Carolina. Local papers reported her death with the headline: Final Funeral Held For South Carolina Woman. And, this time, there were apparently no shocking moments during Dunbars burial. But though Dunbar became something of a local legend, its difficult to discern the fact and fiction of her story.Was Essie Dunbar Truly Buried Alive?In their fact-check of Essie Dunbars story, Snopes determined that the veracity of Dunbars premature burial was unproven. Thats because no contemporary accounts of Dunbars 1915 funeral exist. Instead, the story seems to come from the book Buried Alive (published in 2001, almost 100 years after the event) and from stories about Briggss death in 1955. Thus, Essie Dunbars story may not be entirely accurate. But hers is just one of many stories of people who were mistakenly buried alive. Theres Octavia Smith, for example, who was buried in May of 1891 after she fell into a coma following the death of her infant son. It was only after Smith was buried that the townspeople realized that a strange sickness was going around, in which the infected appeared dead but awoke a few days later. YouTubeAnother person who was buried alive was Octavia Smith. But Smith, buried in 1891, was not quickly dug up like Essie Dunbar, and reportedly suffered a horrific death in her coffin.Smiths coffin was dug up, but the townspeople were too late to save her: Smith had indeed woken up underground. Her horrified family found that shed shredded the inner coffin lining and died with bloody fingernails and a look of horror frozen on her face. As such, its no surprise why stories like Essie Dunbars or Octavia Smiths, or any other accounts of being buried alive strike such fear into our hearts. There is something incredibly terrifying about the thought of waking up underground, in an enclosed space, where no one can hear you scream. After reading about the premature burial of Essie Dunbar, learn about the Chowchilla Kidnapping, the event that left 26 school children buried alive in rural California. Or, look through these real life horror stories even more terrifying than anything Hollywood could dream up if you dare.The post The Strange Story Of Essie Dunbar, The South Carolina Woman Who Was Allegedly Buried Alive In 1915 appeared first on All That's Interesting.