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FUNERALS are held as a way to allow family members to say a final goodbye to the ones they love.

But during a recent funeral in Indonesia, a corpse appeared to be waving  as its coffin was lowered into the ground.

 Chilling footage appears to show a corpse's hand waving inside a coffin as it's being buried at a funeral in Indonesia
Chilling footage appears to show a corpse's hand waving inside a coffin as it's being buried at a funeral in Indonesia

No one noticed at the time but a video of the event horrified locals, who fear the person was trying to "dig his way out" after being buried alive.

To make the incident even spookier, the movement happened at the exact time the priest could be heard saying: "God has said in the book of John: 'I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me will live even though he is dead.'''

 Other supposedly 'dead' people have terrifyingly come round inside morgue refrigerator drawers and even on the pathologist's slab
Other supposedly 'dead' people have terrifyingly come round inside morgue refrigerator drawers and even on the pathologist's slab

But the scientific explanation for this momentary resurrection is rigor mortis: the state the body sets into when we die, which causes muscles to become stiff up until 72 hours after time of death.

And incredibly, there are many similar stories of people appearing to come back to life after being pronounced dead.

Here are some of the most frightening true tales of life beyond the grave — including people getting stuck in mortuary fridges, waking up during autopsies and screaming from coffins.

Woman dies at her own funeral

 Fagilyu and her husband Fagili Mukhametzyanov - she started screaming when she woke up at her own funeral
Fagilyu and her husband Fagili Mukhametzyanov - she started screaming when she woke up at her own funeralCredit: EuroPics

In 2011, Fagili Mukhametzyanov from Kazan, Russia, opted for an open coffin funeral for his wife Fagilyu, who had reportedly 'died' of a heart attack.

As he was saying goodbye to the love of his life, she suddenly 'woke up' screaming as she realised where she was.

The 49-year-old woman was taken to hospital, but her resurrection was short-lived.

"Her eyes fluttered and we immediately rushed her back to the hospital but she only lived for another 12 minutes in intensive care before she died again, this time for good," her 51-year-old husband said.

Fagili said he was furious with doctors for having wrongly declared his wife dead the first time around.

Which is understandable, given some reports say her horrific 'second death' was caused by a heart attack believed to have been triggered by the sheer horror of almost being buried alive.

Breathing in a morgue drawer

 A South African woman was put into a morgue fridge after she was thought to have been killed in a horrific car accident
A South African woman was put into a morgue fridge after she was thought to have been killed in a horrific car accident

But some people didn't even make it to the funeral before their miraculous resurrection.

In 2018, a woman was found alive inside a mortuary fridge after having mistakenly been pronounced dead by paramedics at the scene of a horror car accident.

At the time, the South African woman, who has not been named, had shown "no form of life" according to the ambulance company Distress Alert, who spoke to TimesLive.

Her 'dead' body was sent to Carletonville morgue in the Gauteng province, where it was put into a body bag and onto the cold metal slab.

 A South African ambulance - the crash victim appeared lifeless when she was found by paramedics
A South African ambulance - the crash victim appeared lifeless when she was found by paramedicsCredit: AFP - Getty

What happens to the body after you die?

  • A few seconds after you die, brain activity will stop. This is followed by livor mortis, where your skin pales and the cells slowly die due to a lack of oxygen in the blood, though skin cells can remain alive for several days after death.
  • Once rigor mortis sets in, which usually takes between two to six hours, calcium will build up in your muscles and your limbs will be stiff to move. During this stage, it's possible for a dead man to have an erection or even ejaculate due to muscle contractions.
  • Your body will also turn a shade of green as enzymes digest themselves, and because gases in the body accumulate.
  • The next step happens around 36 hours after death; the muscles will loosen once again, and the body will release remaining bodily fluids including urine or faeces.
  • Some corpses will also release gas and the body can also bloat - again, due to gas.
  • The final stage is putreficiation, in which the body starts to smell and decompose.

But when one of the morgue workers checked on her body, he made the chilling discovery that she was still breathing.

The woman was rushed to hospital in east Johannesburg and an investigation was launched into her misdiagnosed death.

But as unlikely as it seems, similar morgue nightmares have unfolded in the UK too.

In 1996, a lady named Daphne Banks from Cambridgeshire was found still breathing in a hospital mortuary after an attempted suicide overdose on New Year's Eve.

After being declared dead at her home, neither police nor undertakers realised she was still alive as they put Mrs Banks on a stretcher, covered her with a sheet, and drove her to the morgue.

An undertaker later noticed her chest rising and falling in the mortuary.

Snoring in a body bag

 Gonzalo Montoya Jiménez was just moments away from being butchered in a post-mortem
Gonzalo Montoya Jiménez was just moments away from being butchered in a post-mortem

Even if you do survive being kept in the morgue, the autopsy will definitely kill you.

Which is why one prisoner had the escape of a lifetime.

In 2018, at a prison in the Asturias region of Spain, an inmate proved he was alive just in time to dodge his own autopsy.

Gonzalo Montoya Jiménez had been pronounced dead by three different doctors, according to a Spanish media report.

But as mortuary workers were preparing to operate — having even put incision markings on his body — they heard snoring coming from Jiménez's body bag.

 Jiménez was just hours away from being dissected when he was heard snoring in a mortuary body bag
Jiménez was just hours away from being dissected when he was heard snoring in a mortuary body bag

It's believed that he suffered from catalepsy: a medical condition where the patient stops responding to pain, the body's muscles go rigid, and breathing is slowed.

This can be caused by nervous disorders, such as Parkinson's disease and epilepsy, as well as cocaine withdrawal.

After his reawakening, Jiménez was taken to hospital and put under observation at the intensive care unit.

'Dead' for 11 hours

 There have been instances where people have died in hospital, only to stir hours later
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There have been instances where people have died in hospital, only to stir hours laterCredit: Getty

And for some miracle patients, they never even make it to the mortuary before they're back from the dead.

One woman was thought to have died at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading in October 2012, only to come round 11 hours later.

Doctors had spent 45 minutes trying to save Tasleem Rafiq in hospital after she had collapsed.

The medics ran blood tests to check oxygen levels after failed resuscitation attempts and pronounced her dead.

With no hope of recovery, her family was allowed to see her body to say their goodbyes — doctors said she had been injected with adrenaline and would make involuntary movements, but these shouldn't be confused with signs of life.

I was on the right and my brother was on the left when he said, 'She's looking at you'.

Fazaen, Tasleem Rafiq's son

"She was lying with her eyes rolled back gasping," her son Fazaen told The Independent.

"We were sitting with her praying. I was on the right and my brother was on the left when he said, 'She's looking at you.'

"We called the nurse and asked if that was normal. She said yes, it was quite normal."

But there was nothing normal about Mrs Rafiq's case, which doctors described as "a miracle".

She ultimately survived and without any brain damage, despite the lack of oxygen circulating in her body.

Interestingly, two years later, a 91-year-old woman named Janina Kolkiewicz spent this exact amount of time — 11 hours — in a mortuary fridge after being declared dead in Ostrow Lubelski, Poland. She too, woke up.

Most fake 'death' experiences have scientific explanations, such as in Jiménez's case, where he only appeared to be dead as a result of a rare medical condition.

Or, as in the case of the waving corpse's hand, movement can be due to the processes human bodies go through when they die.

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