Woman, 64, ‘sucked into her parents’ grave is suing cemetery after sinkhole almost ‘swallowed her up’

A WOMAN suffers with nightmares after being “sucked into her parents’ grave” when a sinkhole almost swallowed her up, a lawsuit claims.

In the real-life horror show, Joanne Cullen, 64, claims she bent down to fix a bow on a wreath by the headstone when she sank hip-deep into their grave.

She is now suing St Charles Resurrection Cemetery in New York, which is run by the Diocese of Brooklyn, for $5million (£3.75million) after the “terrifying” incident.

After being sucked into the grave in December 2016, Cullen fell forward and smashed her head on the tombstone, cracking a tooth, her lawyer Joseph Perrini told The New York Post.

She then tried to “bounce back and she started sinking into the ground and grabbed the sides of the tombstone,” he said.

The stunned woman from North Bellmore, Long Island, cried out for help, but no one in the graveyard could hear her screams. The creepy calamity occurred at dusk on Dec. 19, 2016.

“Getting sucked into your parents’ grave when you go to visit them on a cool December afternoon with the sun going down … it’s terrifying and traumatising,” the lawyer said.

The 64-year-old says the chilling incident in graveyard — the final resting place of her bookkeeper mother, Evelyn, and roofer father, John — has left her an emotional wreck.

“I will never go back there again,” Cullen said through her attorney, adding she now fears walking in open fields and “has nightmares” and headaches.

She also needs counselling now, the suit claims.

Mr Perrini contends that gravediggers who backfilled an adjacent grave to Cullen’s parents left an underground void that caused Cullen to sink into the netherworld.

“It’s outrageous that this should happen to anybody,” the attorney said.

“We want to make sure the cemetery and employees learn from this. We want to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

Cullen is suing St. John’s Cemetery Corp. — an arm of the Catholic Church’s Brooklyn Diocese — which manages St. Charles Resurrection.

The cemetery is the final resting place for Oscar-nominated actor Vincent Gardenia and Wimbledon men’s doubles champion Vitas Gerulaitis.

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