The Nun Movie 2018

The Nun movie review: Dreary and dreadful, the Conjuring Cinematic Universe deserves a quick burial

In an episode of his terrific podcast, Lore, host Aaron Mahnke tells the story of how, during the cholera epidemics of the 18th and 19th centuries, it was common for coffins to come with a bell mechanism. A thin rope would lead out from the coffin, snake through the six feet of earth, and would connect to a bell attached to the gravestone. This was done to prevent premature burial - or, the objectively terrifying scenario in which a living person - presumed dead - was buried, only for them to wake up hours later. Were an unfortunate soul to find themselves in such a predicament, the idea was for them to pull on the string, attract attention with the bell, and have themselves dug out and return to the land of the living.

According to Mahnke, this is where the term ‘saved by the bell’ originates from, although the veracity of this claim is… muddy.

Instances of premature burial were so common that Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story about it, and a German doctor even conducted several experiments on himself to promote his state-of-the-art coffin, which came equipped with a feeding tube and a stock of sausages.

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