They Were Not Dead, Actually

It is said that John Duns Scotus who fell into a coma and died in 1308, was buried alive. His tomb was opened after his death and his body was found outside the coffin, with hands that were torn and bloody.

In the 16th century, Matthew Wall, a man from Hertfordshire, England was being carried to his grave in his coffin, when one of the pall-bearers tripped. The coffin fell to the ground and there was a moment of stunned silence. But the faces of the onlookers soon changed to horror, as the sounds of a desperate knocking reached their ears. The knocking was coming from inside the coffin. The lid of the coffin was cracked open and Mr Wall was found to be still alive.

Nicephorus Glycas, the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Lesbos, awoke in his coffin in 1896. He had lay seemingly dead for two-days. He then sat up and scoldingly asked the terrified mourners what they were staring at.

Help!

In 2007 a man was involved in a car accident. The Venezuelan man was declared dead and prepared for an autopsy. Doctors realised their mistake when the man began to bleed and came to consciousness due to the unbearable pain of the scalpel. The man’s wife who arrived at the hospital in order to identify the dead body of her husband found him alive.

In 2011, an apparently dead man was put into a refrigerated mortuary in South Africa. But he awoke to find himself surrounded by dead bodies. He began screaming in terror causing mortuary workers to "run for their lives" in fear of a ghost. The elderly man was able to return home.

In January 2012 a woman named Michalina Lewandowska was tasered, bound and gagged, shoved in a box and buried in a shallow grave. She heard the sounds of the shovel and the dirt falling as she lay underground. Amazingly, the woman used her engagement ring to cut the cords binding her wrists. She then used the ring to cut and slash the box. As the dirt fell on her face and into her mouth, she began kicking and pushed her way up through the earth. The man who attempted to murder her was the father of her 4-year-old son.

Super Gran

In March 2012, in a remote area of China, a 95 year-old woman who had taken a fall, was found motionless and not breathing. The family placed the woman in a coffin, with the lid off and family and friends came to view the body according to local tradition. The day before the funeral the coffin was found empty. A desperate search ensued, but the elderly lady was soon found cooking in the kitchen, because she felt hungry.


Books To Read

The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber set in Victorian England.