Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1891-01-01
Buried Alive.


buried alive while supposed to be
dead has come to light at Denver
On Sunday, November Ii, Louis
Bremen, 35 years of age, an employee
of the South Park railroad shops,
was supposed to have died from over
indulgence in malt stimulants. HIS
funeral was set for December2 2, under
the auspicies of one of the local tribes
of Red Men.
There was nothing unusual about
the services until the cofined body
was placed in the hearse. Then for
some unexplained reason, the horses
which had been used for this pur-
pose for years refused to go. and be-
came so unruly that they had to be
changed for another team. When
the cortege was ready to move the
horse of Henry Speck, one of the
mourners, refused to move, and he
was obliged to procure another animal
to add to the list of uncommon and
uncanny events. A runaway team
crossed the funeral procession on the
way to Riverside cemetery and collid-
ed with buoy containing two of the
friends of the deceased. The men
escaped injury, but the buggy was
badly damaged. Arriving at the GEM
etery the coffin was dropped from the
hearse by a laundering attendants,
to the disgust of the mourners.
Another and more sickening ac-
cident awaited them. As the coffin
was being lowered INTO the grave one
of the ropes broke, and for moment
the people were Mortified by seeing
the coffin standing on end in the
grave. According to the burial SER
vices of the Red Men it is provided
for the liberation of dove from a
small box placed on the coffin just as
the first handful of dirt is thrown
into the grave. This was finally
done after the coffin had been prop
erly placed in the grave. With a
feeling akin to superstitious terror,
some of the mourners saw the dove
futter from its cage and alight at
the very edge of the grave. It would
not take wings until frightened away
by the men who piled dirt over the
narrow home of the supposed dead
There were unusually thoughtful faces
in the procession that wendell its way
slowly from the city of the dead. The
more superstitious began to ponder
over the matter, and finally decided
to disinter the remains. This work
was done one week ago last Sunday,
and to their unspeakable horror they
discovered, as soon as the lid of the
coffin box was raised, that the coffin
itself was split, and the glass in the
cover was broken, as if the dead had
come to life, and in Vulnerable agony
of realization of his position had
struggled with mad desperation of
hopelessness and helplessness to free
himself from the very grasp of q
death whose horrors can be but feedly
imagined by the living.
The coffin lid was raised, and then
the full horror burst upon them. The
body was lying on its face, the Innings
of the coffin had been torn to threads
the hair was pulled out of the head
the arms were bent and the hands sc
tightly clinched that the finger nails
had been sunk deep into the flesh
The face of the dead was distorted
from the awful struggle through
which the man had passed, and the
cheeks showed that in his frenzy the
man intombed alive had dug his mails
deep into his flesh. Horror-strickened
at the discovery they first made sure
that life was indeed extinct, and theI
replaced the lid of the coffin, refllec
the grave and left the place Topeka
Capital