10 Chilling Stories Of People Who Were Buried Alive

In September 1987, Stephen B. Small - a successful businessman in the town of Kankakee, Illinois - received a phone call telling him that one of the properties he owned had been broken into.

But this was just bait, and the man was being lured into a trap.

After he'd left his home, his wife, Nancy, received another call from someone who claimed to have taken her husband hostage - and they wanted $1 million in exchange for his life, according to The New York Times.

Nancy and Stephen's family were willing to comply with these demands, but they could not understand a message sent to them by the abductors, which told them where to drop the money off.

As a result, not a single dollar exchanged hands, and the authorities found Stephen's dead body several hours later, southeast of Kankakee. He had been buried alive in a makeshift wooden box under three feet of sand.

The kidnappers had given Stephen a little bit of light, some water, and an air pipe that went above ground, but none of this helped - he is presumed to have suffocated or had a heart attack while lying in the hastily cobbled-together box.