Did you ever think about which way to die would be the most traumatic one? I don't think I ever did, but broaching the matter now I feel that the worst kind of death might very well be to be considered dead, only to wake up in the coffin - and to be alive.
As if such an experience wasn't enough one has to die once more, and this time for real which means to die by suffocation as nobody knows about the mistake and one is confined in a place without much oxygyn. Or what about being buried, but then wake up, realize what's going on, beg for one's life - and then be killed by a greedy murderer? I think that's the very worst scenario I can imagine and it may happen. As it is it may very well be an accurate account of what happened to the young and exceedingly wealthy Danish widow, Giertrud Birgitte Bodenhoff, who died in Copenhagen in 1798.
Now she lies in a stately burial vault or burial chamber on the same churchyard where you'll find the much plainer graves of Hans Christian Andersen and Søren Kierkegaard. According to rumors she doesn't much like her last resting place as some people have reported meeting a very sad and mourning figure by her grave whom they took to be her grieving spirit. If that's the case then I wouldn’t blame her for feeling unhappy at her untimely and unpleasant death.
It all started when she married her cousin in 1796. He was the affluent merchant and ship owner Andreas Bodenhoff and somewhat older than her because at that time she was only 16 years old. Half a year after the wedding she became the richest widow of Europe at the demise of her husband. Sadly enough, young as she was, she herself got very ill from an abscess inside one of her ears. Presumably nobody could do anything about it, but the pain was excruciating so she was treated with heavy doses of morphine. Apparently the doctors were a little too generous with this dangerous pain killer because she died - or did she?
It was much more difficult to establish the death of somebody in 1798 than it is in our times and Giertrud Birgitte's older brother was worried as his "dead" sister was lying in her coffin looking as rosy as she used to before her "death". It's not normal to keep one's looks after death and what's more, the level of hygiene at that time may have rendered it difficult to discern the smell of death, i.e. putrefaction, from lack of soap and water. So one asks oneself the question: Was the young woman in the coffin really dead or what was going on?
However there are no answers to that question until an incident some years later: The head gravedigger, Christian Meisling, called for the priest. He was dying and wanted to confess something which by now has become a myth: In 1804 he and his colleagues were exposed for their foul habits on the churchyard. Being very poor they needed cheap wood for their fires and free clothes for both themselves and their families. Both of these objects, as well as a lot or other kinds of loot, they found in the new graves. So they digged up the newly buried corpses and robbed them of everything. The dead body of a young man who had been buried shortly before was found naked in the bushes of the churchyard and that find opened the investigations. According to Christian Meisling on his deathbed something even worse happened to the hapless Giertrud Birgitte, whose coffin presumably was opened by him, first and foremost to rob her of her valuable ear rings. However, when he tore these priceless jewels off the abscess in her ear burst - and she woke up.
At first she didn't gather what was going on, but when she grasped the awful situation she begged him to spare her and instead save her life. She offered him money and rewards of all kinds, but the gravedigger dared not let her live so he killed her and buried her once again.
Now, one should remember that her grave wasn't in the ground, but above it, i.e. in a rather spacious burial chamber and according to theory that's the reason why she may have survived - IF that's what she did. Many have doubted this story about survival in the grave, but in 1952 the case was investigated, actually by one of her relatives who was a well-known politician. He found that the corpse didn't lie in the same position as it was put in 1798 and her feet seemed to have moved. That fact has been taken as an indication that she really did survive, but only to meet her death once more and in a very sad manner.
Wikipedia
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