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Stories of Old Nevada: How early American sayings originated | Lifestyles | elkodaily.com

This is educational.

In small towns and villages, it was found that when reopening coffins, about 1 in 25 had scratch marks on the inside indicating the person had been buried alive. People concerned about this sometimes tied a string to the wrist of a corpse, led it up through the coffin to the surface and tied it to a bell. Someone then had to sit out in the cemetery all night to listen for the bell. Thus, someone could either be “saved by the bell” or was considered a “dead ringer.”