E X T E N S I O N TAPHOPHOBIA Taphophobia (from the Greek taphos , meaning tomb and phobos meaning fear), is the medical term given to the pathological fear of being buried alive, and appears to be what the majority of people are most afraid of happening to them, even nowadays. The Italian psychiatrist Enrico Morselli, professor at the University of Turin, gave it this name in 1891, saying that a person suffering from taphophobia was plagued1 by an irrational and heightened fear of the possibility of being buried alive, causing terribly distressing anguish. In the Victorian age, people began to be obsessed with this fear, much encouraged by the sensationalistic press and what, Enrico Morselli nowadays, we would call a media frenzy2 . Writers such as Poe, allowed their imaginations to run wild, basing their stories on the socalled true stories being circulated. They searched to understand and describe the complex physical and psychological feelings that ultimate horror would involve and also highlighted, particularly in the case of Poe, the worrying levels of ignorance in the medical profession. Indeed, the idea that it did sometimes happen was never in fact actually denied by doctors. Outbreaks3 of cholera epidemics, such as in 1849, when bodies needed to be buried as quickly as possible, added to these horrific tales going around. There were many newspaper reports on supposedly authentic cases and in 1909, the English reformer, William Tebb, collected 149 cases of 1. plagued: troubled and irritated by something. 2. frenzy: uncontrolled excitement. 3. outbreak: the sudden start of something unpleasant, such as a disease. 51