Animating Dead Tissue

GreyPilgrim

Thinker
GreyPilgrim
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Jun 28, 2005
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172
This may seem trivial, but it's a question to a situation I encountered about 10 years ago. I've always taken as read that the situation actually DID occur (in my mind at least) as I remembered it but having read the JREF forums I'm trying to at least entertain the possibility that I was too drunk to actually remmber the exact facts and have filled in the blanks a little bit.

Ok. The facts as I remember them,

I lived at home with my mum, and we had found a little stray dog which we called Sam. We kept Sam for a long time, but one night I got back late from a party and my mum said there was some bad new - Sam had died during the night. I was quite young at the time, I think about 16 / 17, and I was quite upset by it all (we think he had been poisoned). Being drunk, young, volatile, and upset I found a shovel and a big sack, put Sam in the sack, marched off a couple of miles to a wooded area where we used to walk together, and I began to dig,

So I dug a hole for my dog in a quiet spot and buried him. and I put the piece of turf back on top of the pile of dirt that I'd just filled in.

Now bear in mind, I'm a town boy, used to halogen lights, and now I'm half drunk and in the woods, pitch dark.

So as I'm about to leave, I put my foot on top of the turf, and put my full weight on top of it to squash it all down and settle the earth into a level mound.......

and the dog growls from beneath the earth.

friends, I threw the shovel into the darknesss and ran as if the hounds of hell were at my feet..

There is no way Sam could have been alive. Even from the look of him - his eyes were open, he was stiff as a board, cold, no breath, no pulse. He was dead. I'm sure of it. He was COLD.

Even now my sceptical brain is telling me it was just a lungful of air that was inside his body when he died, that was exahled and pushed out across his vocal chords when I pushed down with my foot to create a growl sound. Can someone please confirm that this is actually feasible. I like to entertain the thought that I imagined the growl, but I don't think I did.

What made it all the more freaky was that I'd just finished reading Pet Sematary a couple of weeks before.
 
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Possible scenarios include the dog was alive but you only thought it was dead or it was dead and you only thought it growled. I have seen people who claimed their dog was dead and it was not and more surprisingly I have seen people whose dog was dead and they swore it was alive. Not possible is reanimation of dead tissue by burying in the ground. My guess is it was dead and you only thought it growled.
 
Wow, that's pretty creepy. :) I would have been freaked out too!

I have the experience of hearing air come out of dead animals (that were CLEARLY dead, as in, I had just put a bullet in their head to put them out of their misery) and it CAN make a funny noise. I suppose your theory is possible, that air in the dog came out passing through the vocal chords and making a strange noise.

Also, what Dogdoctor said is very true, many people imagine things at such times. They would not normally imagine things, but those are very trying circumstances. Anyone might imagine something at a time like that.

In any event the dog was dead. I am sure you are correct about that. The dog did not suddenly come alive. That just does not happen.
 
Somewhat related, this is a old archive film from the Soviet Union called "Experiments in the Revival of Organisms". This gruesome little flick involves some interesting dog experiments.
 
Amapola said:
Wow, that's pretty creepy. :) I would have been freaked out too!

I have the experience of hearing air come out of dead animals (that were CLEARLY dead, as in, I had just put a bullet in their head to put them out of their misery) and it CAN make a funny noise. I suppose your theory is possible, that air in the dog came out passing through the vocal chords and making a strange noise.

Also, what Dogdoctor said is very true, many people imagine things at such times. They would not normally imagine things, but those are very trying circumstances. Anyone might imagine something at a time like that.

In any event the dog was dead. I am sure you are correct about that. The dog did not suddenly come alive. That just does not happen.
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I never thought the dog somehow came back alive, "re-animating dead tissue" was a stupid title to use (it was late when I typed this last night), sorry if I gave the wrong impression of what I was getting at!!

The dog was definately dead, no question of that. I'm loath to say that it "definately" made that sound because I know the mind can play tricks but as far as my memory goes, I remember it clearly...a low, groan / growl when I flattened down the ground. I always explained it to myself that it was a lungful of air (although another part of my mind tells me that a body would relax and exhale upon dying...I don't know)

Whatever. It was the single most terrifying moment of my life to date. Roger Bannister eat your heart out.
 
GreyPilgrim said:
I always explained it to myself that it was a lungful of air (although another part of my mind tells me that a body would relax and exhale upon dying...I don't know)
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Well, I was trying to be delicate about this before, but just let me say there are other places where air can come from, and escape. Not so much "air" maybe, as "gas". ;) I hope that makes it more clear.

Thanks for the explanation of the title! I was not really sure what you meant, but I understand now. Still, very creepy!
 
Would it be possible that you were plastered drunk, overly emotional from a tragic situation, and had an overactive imagination from reading a horror novel about animals coming back to life?

Honestly not being condescending, but it might be a possibility that you've overlooked. An overstressed mind can act in strange ways sometimes.
 
Since you were in the woods, could it have been another animal? I've had raccoons growl at me before. It would have been a weird coincidence, but that's just how creepy stories get started! (Sorry about your puppy btw.)
 
I guess anything is possible. Lugging the dog all the way to the woods sobered my up slightly but not a lot. Maybe I did imagine it. All I can say is in terms of the memory, it clearly came from underfoot.

And it didn't sound like a fart either!
 
The dog could have had air in his lungs, or gases from bacteria, and stepping on the mound could quite easily have forced air from his body to produce the growl sound.
 
Did you remove the dog from the sack before burial? The sack itself may well have been the repository of air AND the source of the noise. Much like a whoopie-cushion.
 
shecky said:
Somewhat related, this is a old archive film from the Soviet Union called "Experiments in the Revival of Organisms". This gruesome little flick involves some interesting dog experiments.
Click to expand...

Absolutely Frankensteinish!

ETA : And now that I've seen all of it, it's bovine pooh. No way they could've revived that dog after draining it's blood and letting it be dead for 10 minutes, and then have it 'live for years, grow, put on weight and have families.'
 
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Ryokan said:
I'm still not too sure about this. Wouldn't 10 minutes without blood cause irreversible damage to the brain?
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You'd think so.

I figure the whole thing is mostly bogus. But you gotta admit it has lots of creepy factor.
 
Explanation:

You buried your dog in the Pet Semetary. It is now a hound of hell and ripping small children apart. Way to go.
 
aha!

I think I see what happend here. Dog dies, owner gets a little drunk, is a little emotional, enters woods at night to bury dog. Dog is dead, falls in hole, owner covers dog and steps on hole.

Owner didnt realize the hole for the dog was also the hole of a vicious fat honey badger and the badger growled veraciously to ward off any predators or worse; someone who might want its honey. :p

You simply dug into a badger hole while digging ur dog hole. That or a naked mole rat. Pretty simple really...sheesh...anybody could spot this as a classic case of honey badger/naked molerat mistaken vocal identity.:D
 
krelnius said:
I think I see what happend here. Dog dies, owner gets a little drunk, is a little emotional, enters woods at night to bury dog. Dog is dead, falls in hole, owner covers dog and steps on hole.

Owner didnt realize the hole for the dog was also the hole of a vicious fat honey badger and the badger growled veraciously to ward off any predators or worse; someone who might want its honey. :p

You simply dug into a badger hole while digging ur dog hole. That or a naked mole rat. Pretty simple really...sheesh...anybody could spot this as a classic case of honey badger/naked molerat mistaken vocal identity.:D
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Reading some of the previous posts, I was beginning to toy with the idea that I might have buried the dog alive. The horror was unimaginable.

I am much more comfortable with the honey badger explanation. :-)
 
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