To ring in Halloween, the A&E network has what they think is the creepiest idea yet: a two-hour special event called Fear: Buried Alive in which... yep, you guessed it... three people will be buried alive in underground coffins. The show debuts on A&E on Oct 26 at 8 pm, and would've been the creepiest idea ever... IF THE MERCURY HADN'T GONE AND DONE IT FIRST.
Note: We are not claiming that we are the first organization to bury people alive for fun. However, I bet we're the first NEWSPAPER to ever do it! For those who can't remember, the year was 2005, and we were looking for a theme for our annual Halloween issue. That's when then-music editor Zac Pennington spoke up and said, "I wouldn't mind being buried alive." WELL, THAT'S ALL I HAD TO HEAR. We dug a deep hole, stuck him in a makeshift coffin (with a too-small breathing tube) and left him buried underground for three hours. Here's a selection from Zac's horrifying feature.
For the first time since the casket had closed above me, a strain of dull panic began to set in. The air around me had clearly begun to thin as I entered the third hour: I was getting nauseous, my lungs required shallower, more rapid breaths to stay satisfied, and my head began to ache relentlessly—each symptoms of my encroaching carbon-monoxide poisoning. It may have taken a couple of hours underground, but peril had finally crept into my lonesome crypt, and I was committed to facing it for as long as I could. After another wrestling match with my embarrassingly small bladder (this time crouched like a cat above the half-full Powerade bottle), I spent the next 40 minutes lying as still as possible so as not to further exasperate my difficult breathing. The air had grown so thick with my own breath that I crouched fetally to press my mouth to the air hole—a futile endeavor, as oxygen no longer seemed to be reaching me. My own body was trying to kill me. Just six minutes shy of the three-hour mark, I Bat-signaled the team—nonchalantly informing them that I was "ready when you are" as I sucked fruitlessly at my air tube. Upon my admittedly passive cry for help, the din that I had been experiencing from above for the past three hours fell immediately silent—no talking, no digging, no unburying. A minute passed: "What the fuck are they doing up there?" Two minutes: "Is everything a fucking joke to these people?" Three minutes, four: "Was I actually just clawing at the ceiling?"
