November 28, 2025 • 21 mins
A faint knock from inside a coffin at a Buddhist temple saved a woman from being cremated alive in Thailand.
READ or SHARE: https://weirddarkness.com/woman-alive-coffin
00:00:00 = Open
00:45.49 = The Journey To The Temple
03:17.78 = The Sound That Changed Everything
05:21.73 = How Death Certificates Save Lives
06:59.11 = Not An Isolated Incident
11:50.43 = The Medical Mystery of Appearing Dead
16:36.28 = The Boundary Between Life and Death
18:56.78 = The Woman’s Current Status
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.
#WeirdDarkness #WomanAliveinCoffin #DeclaredDead #ThailandNews #MedicalMystery #SurvivalStory #BuriedAlive #FuneralHome #TrueStory #Unexplained
READ or SHARE: https://weirddarkness.com/woman-alive-coffin
00:00:00 = Open
00:45.49 = The Journey To The Temple
03:17.78 = The Sound That Changed Everything
05:21.73 = How Death Certificates Save Lives
06:59.11 = Not An Isolated Incident
11:50.43 = The Medical Mystery of Appearing Dead
16:36.28 = The Boundary Between Life and Death
18:56.78 = The Woman’s Current Status
WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.
#WeirdDarkness #WomanAliveinCoffin #DeclaredDead #ThailandNews #MedicalMystery #SurvivalStory #BuriedAlive #FuneralHome #TrueStory #Unexplained
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
A faint knock from inside a coffin at a Buddhist
temple saved a woman from being cremated alive. I'm Darren Marler,
and this is weird dark news. The line between life
and death seems straightforward enough. Someone stops breathing, their heart
stops beating. Medical professionals make their determination, Families begin the
(00:33):
grieving process. Futeral arrangements move forward, everyone accepts the finality
of it, and then, in rare moments that defy every
assumption we hold about mortality, something impossible happens. Sunday, November
twenty third, twenty twenty five started as an ordinary day
at Wat Rat Prokonton Temple in Nahaburi Province. The Buddhist
(00:54):
temple sits on the outskirts of Bangkok, and staff members
there have seen their share of grief and loss. They
offer a free cremation service to families who need it,
and requests come in regularly. Nothing about this particular Sunday
morning seemed unusual. A man arrived at the temple that morning,
having driven five hundred kilometers from Fitzanolach Province. In the
(01:14):
back of his pickup truck, sat a white coffin containing
the body of a sixty five year old sister. He
came seeking the temple's cremation services, which seemed like the
final step in a journey that had already taken him
across most of Thailand. Pirt Southope serves as the temple's
general and financial affairs manager, and he's the one who
spoke with a brother about the necessary documentation. The conversation
(01:36):
that followed painted a picture of a family struggling with
a long, difficult decline. The brother explained his sister had
been bedridden for approximately two years before her health deteriorated
further and she became unresponsive, appearing to stop breathing. Two
days earlier. She'd been confined to bed for all of
that time, her condition gradually worsening. Then, two days before
(01:58):
the brother arrived at the temple, she became completely unresponsive.
To all appearances, she had stopped breathing entirely. The brother
had every reason to believe she had died. The woman
had previously expressed a wish to donate her organs to
a hospital in Bangkok. That wish became the catalyst for
the first leg of his strange journey. The brother had
(02:20):
placed her body in the coffin and driven the three
hundred miles to a Bangkok hospital, hoping to honor what
she had asked for when she was still able to
communicate such things. Organ donation requires careful timing and special protocols,
so he had made the trip as quickly as he could,
but the hospital refused. They would not accept the body
without an official death certificate. The paperwork mattered more than
(02:43):
good intentions. Without that certificate, the hospital couldn't proceed, no
matter what the woman had wanted or what her brother
was trying to do. So the brother left the Bangkok hospital,
still carrying his sister's coffin in the back of his truck,
and headed to what Wrong Prokong Tom. The temple also
couldn't proceed without the proper documentation. Pyratte had to explain
(03:04):
this to the grieving brother, walking him through the process
of obtaining a death certificate. The conversation was probably a
familiar one for Pyratte. These administrative requirements exist for good reasons,
even if they add extra steps to an already difficult time.
Pyratt was in the middle of explaining to the brother
how to obtain a death certificate when they heard a
faint knocking coming from the coffin. The sound stopped everyone cold.
(03:27):
A knock, faint but distinct, coming from inside a sealed
coffin containing someone who had been dead for two days,
the kind of sound that makes you question whether you
actually heard it, because if you did hear it, then
everything you thought you understood about the situation has just crumbled.
Pyratt asked them to open the coffin. Whatever doubts anyone
(03:50):
might have had about whether they had actually heard something
vanished the moment they lifted the lid. Everyone present was
startled by what they found. The temple later posted video
footage to their Facebook page. The video shows the woman
lying in that white coffin, still in the back of
the pickup truck where her brother had transported her. Her
arms moved slightly, her head moved. These weren't subtle movements
(04:13):
of decomposition or settling. It was a living person trapped
in a coffin. Pirratte saw her, opening her eyes slightly
and knocking on the side of the coffin. Pyrat noted
that she must have been knocking for quite some time.
How long had she been conscious in that coffin? How
long had she been aware of her surroundings, unable to communicate,
trapped in what was supposed to be her final resting place.
(04:36):
She had been in that coffin for at least the
duration of the three hundred mile drive from Pittsano Loach
to Bangkok, then from Bangkok to the temple. That's hours
hours of being conscious and trapped, probably having heard her
brother talking to the hospital staff then temple staff about
her cremation or organ donation. Temple staff immediately assessed her
(04:57):
condition and sent her to a nearby hospital. The abbot
announced the temple would cover her medical expenses. The woman
who had appeared completely dead for two full days, who
had survived a three hundred mile journey at a coffin,
who had been minutes away from cremation, was alive, conscious
enough to knock, desperate enough to keep knocking until someone
(05:20):
finally heard her. There is a dark irony in this story.
The requirement for an official death certificate is exactly what
saved this woman's life. Her brother had tried two different
facilities before arriving at the temple, first the hospital in Bangkok,
where he'd wanted to honor her wish for organ donation.
They turned him away for lack of proper documentation than
(05:43):
what rock prokong thom same answer, no certificate, no services.
Those bureaucratic requirements probably felt frustrating to the brother At
the time he had his sister's body. She was clearly dead,
or so everyone believed. Why did he need to jump
through more admitted strait of hoops? Why couldn't they just proceed?
If either institution had bent their rules and processed his
(06:06):
request without the proper paperwork, this woman would have been
cremated while still alive, or worse, her organs would have
been harvested while she lay there, conscious and trapped. The
paperwork requirement, annoying as it may have seemed, created delays
that kept her alive long enough to be heard. This
woman had been considered dead by her family for two
full days. She appeared to have stopped breathing. She remained
(06:29):
completely unresponsive in a coffin during a three hundred mile journey.
Her brother had no doubts. The hospital staff saw nothing
to suggest she was alive. The temple staff initially saw
no signs of life either, Yet she was conscious enough
to realize what was happening to her. She understood she
was in a coffin, She knew people were talking about
cremating her, and she had enough physical capability remaining to
(06:54):
knock persistently on the inside of the coffin until someone
finally opened it. The Thailand feels like it should be
a once in a lifetime anomaly, the kind of thing
that happens maybe once every few decades, if that, But
similar incidents have occurred with disturbing frequency in recent years,
suggesting the boundary between life and death can be harder
(07:15):
to identify than we'd like to believe. On June third,
twenty twenty four, a seventy four year old woman named
Constance Glance was declared dead at the Mulberry Nursing Home
in Waverley, Nebraska, around nine forty four am. She'd been
in hospice care. At the nursing home, hospice patients are
expected to die. The staff at these facilities have extensive
experience with death. They know what to look for. When
(07:38):
they determined Constance Glance had died, they had no reason
to doubt their assessment. Her body was prepared for transport
to a funeral home. The paperwork was handled. Family members
were notified. Everything proceeded according to standard protocols. Workers at
Butherus maser in Love Funeral Home and Lincoln noticed she
was still breathing just before noon, immediately after laying her
(07:59):
on an embalming table. The funeral home employee was preparing
to begin the embalming process that involves procedures that would
have been fatal if Constance had still been alive. The
employee placed her on the embalming table, and that's when
they noticed something was wrong. She was breathing. The funeral
home employee instantly called nine to one one and administered CPR.
(08:22):
Lancaster County Chief Deputy Ben Houtchin held a press conference
about the incident. He told reporters that he'd been in
law enforcement for thirty one years and nothing like this
had ever reached this point before. Deputy Haunchin was somebody
who had seen countless death investigations, who'd understood protocols and procedures,
and he had never encountered anything similar. Constance persevered a
(08:43):
few more hours before dying around four pm that same day.
She'd been pronounced dead around nine forty four am, discovered
alive around noon, and then actually died around four pm.
The timeline shows just how close she came to being
embalmed whilst still living in on top was conducted the
following morning. The funeral home released a statement saying their
(09:04):
directors and staff handled the incident appropriately and with utmost care,
and thanked emergency responders for their quick response. They had
every right to frame it that way. The fuderal home
staff were the ones who caught the error and saved
her from a horrific death. Just eighteen months earlier, in
January twenty twenty three, another nightmare scenario unfolded at an
(09:25):
Iowa care facility. A sixty six year old woman at
the Glen Oaks Alzheimer's Special Care Center in Urbandale, Iowa,
was pronounced dead at six am on January third, twenty
twenty three. She'd been admitted to the facility on December
twentieth due to senile degeneration of the brain, and was
admitted to hospice on December twenty eighth. She'd only been
in hospice care for about a week. Her decline had
(09:47):
been rapid. The morning of January third, a nurse checked
on her and found what appeared to be clear signs
of death. At six am. The woman's mouth was open,
her eyes were fixed, and there were no breath sounds.
The nurse was unable to locate the woman's pulse using
her stethoscope. The nurse placed her hand on the woman's
abdomen and noted no movement. Everything pointed to death. The
(10:10):
protocols were followed, family members were notified, a funeral home
was contacted. The woman was placed in the body bag
and transferred to Anctity fuderal Home in crematory. She was
zipped into a cloth bag, loaded onto a gurney, and transported.
About an hour and forty minutes passed between the death
declaration and the moment she arrived at the funderal home
(10:30):
shortly before eight thirty am. Funeral home staff members discovered
the woman was still alive when they unzipped the bag
and observed her chest moving as she gasped for air.
Gasped for air. That phrase suggests desperation and panic. She
had been zippered into a body bag, unable to move
or communicate, probably struggling to breathe through that fabric. The
(10:53):
funeral home staff unzipped the bag, expecting to find a body,
and instead found someone fighting for oxygen. They immediately called
nine to one one. She was rushed to a hospital
where she was found breathing but unresponsive. She was returned
to hospice Care, where she died on January fifth, with
her family by her side two days later, surrounded by
(11:13):
loved ones. The death that actually came on January fifth
at least gave her family the chance to be present
to say goodbye properly. That's something she would not have
had if the funeral home staff had not noticed she
was alive. The Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals fined
to Glen Oaks ten thousand dollars for the incident. The
facility had failed to provide adequate direction to ensure appropriate
(11:37):
care and services were provided before declaring the woman dead.
Ten thousand dollars seems like a modest penalty for nearly
burying someone alive, But what's the appropriate price tag for
such an error? Sometimes people can appear dead when they're not.
The medical conditions that cause this phenomena have been documented
(11:57):
for centuries, though our understanding of them continues to evolve.
Catalepsy is a symptom of certain nervous disorders that cause
a trance like state with a loss of sensation and consciousness,
accompanied by rigidity of the body. The condition has terrified
people throughout history because it creates an almost perfect mimicry
of death. Someone suffering from catalepsy becomes rigid and unresponsive,
(12:22):
showing no apparent signs of life. The combination of narcilepsy
and catalepsy can easily make someone appear dead, as it
paralyzes a person's muscles, yet leaves them fully conscious. That
last detail is particularly horrifying. Fully conscious, aware of everything
happening around them, completely unable though to communicate or move.
(12:45):
Catatonia is a neuropsychiatric syndrome that can cause people to
become completely unresponsive to external stimuli while appearing awake. Patients
may hold odd positions with no response to outside stimuli
and have very little speech. Condition differs from catilepsy, but
can be equally difficult to distinguish from death Without proper
(13:05):
medical equipment. Someone in a catatonic state might remain motionless
for hours or days, barely breathing and showing no reaction
to touch, sound, or light. Their muscles become rigid, their
heart rate and breathing can slow dramatically. Then there's locked
in syndrome, which might be one of the most nightmarish
(13:26):
conditions in all of medicine. Locked in syndrome is characterized
by complete paralysis of voluntary muscles except for those that
control vertical eye movements. While the individual remains conscious and
cognitively intact, People with this condition cannot speak, move their limbs,
or even blink horizontally, making them appear completely unresponsive. Unless
(13:49):
someone knows to look specifically for vertical eye movements, a
person with locked in syndrome could easily be mistaken for
being in a vegetative state or dead. Science has also
documented something called Lazarus syndrome, named after the biblical figure
who was raised from the dead. Lazarus syndrome is defined
as a delayed return of spontaneous circulation after CPR has ceased.
(14:14):
Patients who are pronounced dead after cardiac arrest experience an
impromptu return of cardiac activity. The syndrome is named after
Lazarus of Bethany, who, according to the New Testament of
the Bible, was brought back to life by Jesus Christ
four days after his death. Since it was first described
in nineteen eighty two, there have been at least thirty
eight reported cases of it. That numbers probably conservative. Some
(14:37):
researchers believe many cases of Lazarus syndrome simply go unreported
because of the potential legal and professional implications. A doctor
who stops CPR, declares someone dead, and then has that
person spontaneously revived faces uncomfortable questions about whether they stopped
resuscitation efforts too soon. Some researchers suggest that the Lazarus
(14:59):
phenomen may be caused by pressure build up in the
chest from CPR. Once CPR ceases, this pressure may gradually
release and kickstart the heart back into action. The theory
makes physiological sense, though it's difficult to study since the
phenomenon occurs so unpredictably and researchers obviously can't create experimental
conditions to test it. In twenty eighteen, Spain reported a
(15:23):
particularly disturbing case that highlighted how even multiple medical professionals
can make the same catastrophic error. A Spanish prisoner named
Gonzalo Montoya Jimenez was declared dead by three separate doctors.
Three different doctors examined him and each reached the same conclusion.
He regained consciousness mere hours before an autopsy was due
(15:44):
to be performed, and his family reported that he had
the markings drawn on him ready to be opened up.
The timing of his awakening saved his life. Autopsy procedures
would have killed him if he had remained unconscious even
a few more hours. Hospital sources told Spaceanish News it
could be the result of the man having catalepsy, which
can sometimes be a symptom of epilepsy, which Jimenez reportedly
(16:07):
suffered from. He had a known history of epilepsy. The
condition should have been flagged as a potential complication in
determining death, yet three separate doctors all missed it. These
medical conditions explain the mechanics of how someone can appear dead,
but they don't fully capture the psychological horror of being
trapped inside your own body, aware of people discussing your death,
(16:30):
feeling yourself being placed in a coffin or a body bag,
and being unable to do anything about it. The medical
definition of death seems clear enough on paper. Death involves
the irreversible loss of capacity for consciousness and capacity to breathe.
Both conditions must be permanently lost. The problem comes with
that word irreversible. How do we know when something is
(16:54):
truly irreversible versus just appearing that way? Modern medicine has
sophisticated tools for making these determinations. Monitoring equipment can detect
heart beats so faint they'd be impossible to find with
a stethoscope. Machines measure brain activity and track vital signs
with precision that our ancestors could never have imagined. In
(17:15):
major hospitals with full diagnostic capabilities, errors like the ones
described here should be virtually impossible. But these incidents didn't
happen in major hospitals with full diagnostic capabilities. They happened
in nursing homes, care facilities, private homes, settings where death
is common enough that staff members develop extensive experience with it,
(17:37):
Settings where diagnostic equipment is limited and determination often comes
down to classic clinical signs no pulse, no breath sounds,
no response to stimuli, fixed and dilated peoples. These signs
have been used to determine death for centuries, and they
usually work. Usually that qualifier matters. Someone appears to have
(17:58):
no pulse because it's too weak to detect manually. Breath
sounds are absent because breathing has become too shallow to
hear with a stethoscope. On responsiveness stems from locked in
syndrome or catalepsy rather than death. The pupils look fixed
because muscular rigidity has affected the eye muscles. Each sign
individually can be mimicked by specific medical conditions. When multiple
(18:21):
signs align, the likelihood of error decreases, but never reaches zero.
The woman in Thailand had shown no signs of life
for two full days before knocking on her coffin. Constance
Glance in Nebraska appeared dead for hours before workers at
the funeral home noticed her breathing. The Iowa woman with
Alzheimer's gasped for air inside a body bag after being
(18:44):
declared dead. The Spanish prisoner fooled three separate doctors. Each
case represents someone who crossed what appeared to be the
boundary between life and death, only to step back from
it later. Details about the Taigh woman's recovery remain limit.
The temple committed to covering her hospital expenses, showing they
recognized both the seriousness of what happened and their role
(19:06):
in her survival, but her identity has been protected. No
updates about her medical condition have been released to the public.
Now information about what caused her to appear dead for
two days has been shared. We don't know if she's
still in the hospital or if she's been released. We
don't know what her prognosis looks like. We don't know
if she'll make a full recovery or if those two
days of appearing dead have left lasting effects. We don't
(19:29):
know if doctors have determined what medical condition caused her
to seem lifeless. The incident occurred November twenty third, twenty
twenty five. What Rock Procongcom Temple posted video documentation of
the woman moving in her coffin to their Facebook page.
The footage exists as proof of what happened. It shows
her slight movements. It captures the confusion and shock of
(19:49):
the temple staff. It documents the moment they realized the
woman inside was alive and needed immediate help. What we
do know is this, she spent two days appearing dead
and responsive through a three hundred mile journey at a coffin.
She survived being taken first to a Bangkok hospital for
organ donation, than to a temple for cremation, and when
(20:10):
she finally had the physical capability to knock on that
coffin lid. She kept knocking until someone heard her. That persistence,
that determination to be heard, despite everything her body had
put her through, saved her life. If the death certificate
requirement had not created the delays, if Pyrat hadn't been
in the middle of explaining the paperwork process when she knocked,
(20:32):
If the knock had come a few minutes later or
a few minutes earlier, when no one was near enough
to hear it, this story would have ended very differently.
If you'd like to read this story for yourself or
share the article with a friend, you can read it
on the Weird Darkness website. I've placed a link to
it in the episode description, and you could find more
stories of the paranormal, true crime, strange, and more, including
(20:53):
numerous stories that never make it to the podcast in
my Weird Darknews blog at Weirddarkness dot com slash dash
News
A faint knock from inside a coffin at a Buddhist
temple saved a woman from being cremated alive. I'm Darren Marler,
and this is weird dark news. The line between life
and death seems straightforward enough. Someone stops breathing, their heart
stops beating. Medical professionals make their determination, Families begin the
(00:33):
grieving process. Futeral arrangements move forward, everyone accepts the finality
of it, and then, in rare moments that defy every
assumption we hold about mortality, something impossible happens. Sunday, November
twenty third, twenty twenty five started as an ordinary day
at Wat Rat Prokonton Temple in Nahaburi Province. The Buddhist
(00:54):
temple sits on the outskirts of Bangkok, and staff members
there have seen their share of grief and loss. They
offer a free cremation service to families who need it,
and requests come in regularly. Nothing about this particular Sunday
morning seemed unusual. A man arrived at the temple that morning,
having driven five hundred kilometers from Fitzanolach Province. In the
(01:14):
back of his pickup truck, sat a white coffin containing
the body of a sixty five year old sister. He
came seeking the temple's cremation services, which seemed like the
final step in a journey that had already taken him
across most of Thailand. Pirt Southope serves as the temple's
general and financial affairs manager, and he's the one who
spoke with a brother about the necessary documentation. The conversation
(01:36):
that followed painted a picture of a family struggling with
a long, difficult decline. The brother explained his sister had
been bedridden for approximately two years before her health deteriorated
further and she became unresponsive, appearing to stop breathing. Two
days earlier. She'd been confined to bed for all of
that time, her condition gradually worsening. Then, two days before
(01:58):
the brother arrived at the temple, she became completely unresponsive.
To all appearances, she had stopped breathing entirely. The brother
had every reason to believe she had died. The woman
had previously expressed a wish to donate her organs to
a hospital in Bangkok. That wish became the catalyst for
the first leg of his strange journey. The brother had
(02:20):
placed her body in the coffin and driven the three
hundred miles to a Bangkok hospital, hoping to honor what
she had asked for when she was still able to
communicate such things. Organ donation requires careful timing and special protocols,
so he had made the trip as quickly as he could,
but the hospital refused. They would not accept the body
without an official death certificate. The paperwork mattered more than
(02:43):
good intentions. Without that certificate, the hospital couldn't proceed, no
matter what the woman had wanted or what her brother
was trying to do. So the brother left the Bangkok hospital,
still carrying his sister's coffin in the back of his truck,
and headed to what Wrong Prokong Tom. The temple also
couldn't proceed without the proper documentation. Pyratte had to explain
(03:04):
this to the grieving brother, walking him through the process
of obtaining a death certificate. The conversation was probably a
familiar one for Pyratte. These administrative requirements exist for good reasons,
even if they add extra steps to an already difficult time.
Pyratt was in the middle of explaining to the brother
how to obtain a death certificate when they heard a
faint knocking coming from the coffin. The sound stopped everyone cold.
(03:27):
A knock, faint but distinct, coming from inside a sealed
coffin containing someone who had been dead for two days,
the kind of sound that makes you question whether you
actually heard it, because if you did hear it, then
everything you thought you understood about the situation has just crumbled.
Pyratt asked them to open the coffin. Whatever doubts anyone
(03:50):
might have had about whether they had actually heard something
vanished the moment they lifted the lid. Everyone present was
startled by what they found. The temple later posted video
footage to their Facebook page. The video shows the woman
lying in that white coffin, still in the back of
the pickup truck where her brother had transported her. Her
arms moved slightly, her head moved. These weren't subtle movements
(04:13):
of decomposition or settling. It was a living person trapped
in a coffin. Pirratte saw her, opening her eyes slightly
and knocking on the side of the coffin. Pyrat noted
that she must have been knocking for quite some time.
How long had she been conscious in that coffin? How
long had she been aware of her surroundings, unable to communicate,
trapped in what was supposed to be her final resting place.
(04:36):
She had been in that coffin for at least the
duration of the three hundred mile drive from Pittsano Loach
to Bangkok, then from Bangkok to the temple. That's hours
hours of being conscious and trapped, probably having heard her
brother talking to the hospital staff then temple staff about
her cremation or organ donation. Temple staff immediately assessed her
(04:57):
condition and sent her to a nearby hospital. The abbot
announced the temple would cover her medical expenses. The woman
who had appeared completely dead for two full days, who
had survived a three hundred mile journey at a coffin,
who had been minutes away from cremation, was alive, conscious
enough to knock, desperate enough to keep knocking until someone
(05:20):
finally heard her. There is a dark irony in this story.
The requirement for an official death certificate is exactly what
saved this woman's life. Her brother had tried two different
facilities before arriving at the temple, first the hospital in Bangkok,
where he'd wanted to honor her wish for organ donation.
They turned him away for lack of proper documentation than
(05:43):
what rock prokong thom same answer, no certificate, no services.
Those bureaucratic requirements probably felt frustrating to the brother At
the time he had his sister's body. She was clearly dead,
or so everyone believed. Why did he need to jump
through more admitted strait of hoops? Why couldn't they just proceed?
If either institution had bent their rules and processed his
(06:06):
request without the proper paperwork, this woman would have been
cremated while still alive, or worse, her organs would have
been harvested while she lay there, conscious and trapped. The
paperwork requirement, annoying as it may have seemed, created delays
that kept her alive long enough to be heard. This
woman had been considered dead by her family for two
full days. She appeared to have stopped breathing. She remained
(06:29):
completely unresponsive in a coffin during a three hundred mile journey.
Her brother had no doubts. The hospital staff saw nothing
to suggest she was alive. The temple staff initially saw
no signs of life either, Yet she was conscious enough
to realize what was happening to her. She understood she
was in a coffin, She knew people were talking about
cremating her, and she had enough physical capability remaining to
(06:54):
knock persistently on the inside of the coffin until someone
finally opened it. The Thailand feels like it should be
a once in a lifetime anomaly, the kind of thing
that happens maybe once every few decades, if that, But
similar incidents have occurred with disturbing frequency in recent years,
suggesting the boundary between life and death can be harder
(07:15):
to identify than we'd like to believe. On June third,
twenty twenty four, a seventy four year old woman named
Constance Glance was declared dead at the Mulberry Nursing Home
in Waverley, Nebraska, around nine forty four am. She'd been
in hospice care. At the nursing home, hospice patients are
expected to die. The staff at these facilities have extensive
experience with death. They know what to look for. When
(07:38):
they determined Constance Glance had died, they had no reason
to doubt their assessment. Her body was prepared for transport
to a funeral home. The paperwork was handled. Family members
were notified. Everything proceeded according to standard protocols. Workers at
Butherus maser in Love Funeral Home and Lincoln noticed she
was still breathing just before noon, immediately after laying her
(07:59):
on an embalming table. The funeral home employee was preparing
to begin the embalming process that involves procedures that would
have been fatal if Constance had still been alive. The
employee placed her on the embalming table, and that's when
they noticed something was wrong. She was breathing. The funeral
home employee instantly called nine to one one and administered CPR.
(08:22):
Lancaster County Chief Deputy Ben Houtchin held a press conference
about the incident. He told reporters that he'd been in
law enforcement for thirty one years and nothing like this
had ever reached this point before. Deputy Haunchin was somebody
who had seen countless death investigations, who'd understood protocols and procedures,
and he had never encountered anything similar. Constance persevered a
(08:43):
few more hours before dying around four pm that same day.
She'd been pronounced dead around nine forty four am, discovered
alive around noon, and then actually died around four pm.
The timeline shows just how close she came to being
embalmed whilst still living in on top was conducted the
following morning. The funeral home released a statement saying their
(09:04):
directors and staff handled the incident appropriately and with utmost care,
and thanked emergency responders for their quick response. They had
every right to frame it that way. The fuderal home
staff were the ones who caught the error and saved
her from a horrific death. Just eighteen months earlier, in
January twenty twenty three, another nightmare scenario unfolded at an
(09:25):
Iowa care facility. A sixty six year old woman at
the Glen Oaks Alzheimer's Special Care Center in Urbandale, Iowa,
was pronounced dead at six am on January third, twenty
twenty three. She'd been admitted to the facility on December
twentieth due to senile degeneration of the brain, and was
admitted to hospice on December twenty eighth. She'd only been
in hospice care for about a week. Her decline had
(09:47):
been rapid. The morning of January third, a nurse checked
on her and found what appeared to be clear signs
of death. At six am. The woman's mouth was open,
her eyes were fixed, and there were no breath sounds.
The nurse was unable to locate the woman's pulse using
her stethoscope. The nurse placed her hand on the woman's
abdomen and noted no movement. Everything pointed to death. The
(10:10):
protocols were followed, family members were notified, a funeral home
was contacted. The woman was placed in the body bag
and transferred to Anctity fuderal Home in crematory. She was
zipped into a cloth bag, loaded onto a gurney, and transported.
About an hour and forty minutes passed between the death
declaration and the moment she arrived at the funderal home
(10:30):
shortly before eight thirty am. Funeral home staff members discovered
the woman was still alive when they unzipped the bag
and observed her chest moving as she gasped for air.
Gasped for air. That phrase suggests desperation and panic. She
had been zippered into a body bag, unable to move
or communicate, probably struggling to breathe through that fabric. The
(10:53):
funeral home staff unzipped the bag, expecting to find a body,
and instead found someone fighting for oxygen. They immediately called
nine to one one. She was rushed to a hospital
where she was found breathing but unresponsive. She was returned
to hospice Care, where she died on January fifth, with
her family by her side two days later, surrounded by
(11:13):
loved ones. The death that actually came on January fifth
at least gave her family the chance to be present
to say goodbye properly. That's something she would not have
had if the funeral home staff had not noticed she
was alive. The Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals fined
to Glen Oaks ten thousand dollars for the incident. The
facility had failed to provide adequate direction to ensure appropriate
(11:37):
care and services were provided before declaring the woman dead.
Ten thousand dollars seems like a modest penalty for nearly
burying someone alive, But what's the appropriate price tag for
such an error? Sometimes people can appear dead when they're not.
The medical conditions that cause this phenomena have been documented
(11:57):
for centuries, though our understanding of them continues to evolve.
Catalepsy is a symptom of certain nervous disorders that cause
a trance like state with a loss of sensation and consciousness,
accompanied by rigidity of the body. The condition has terrified
people throughout history because it creates an almost perfect mimicry
of death. Someone suffering from catalepsy becomes rigid and unresponsive,
(12:22):
showing no apparent signs of life. The combination of narcilepsy
and catalepsy can easily make someone appear dead, as it
paralyzes a person's muscles, yet leaves them fully conscious. That
last detail is particularly horrifying. Fully conscious, aware of everything
happening around them, completely unable though to communicate or move.
(12:45):
Catatonia is a neuropsychiatric syndrome that can cause people to
become completely unresponsive to external stimuli while appearing awake. Patients
may hold odd positions with no response to outside stimuli
and have very little speech. Condition differs from catilepsy, but
can be equally difficult to distinguish from death Without proper
(13:05):
medical equipment. Someone in a catatonic state might remain motionless
for hours or days, barely breathing and showing no reaction
to touch, sound, or light. Their muscles become rigid, their
heart rate and breathing can slow dramatically. Then there's locked
in syndrome, which might be one of the most nightmarish
(13:26):
conditions in all of medicine. Locked in syndrome is characterized
by complete paralysis of voluntary muscles except for those that
control vertical eye movements. While the individual remains conscious and
cognitively intact, People with this condition cannot speak, move their limbs,
or even blink horizontally, making them appear completely unresponsive. Unless
(13:49):
someone knows to look specifically for vertical eye movements, a
person with locked in syndrome could easily be mistaken for
being in a vegetative state or dead. Science has also
documented something called Lazarus syndrome, named after the biblical figure
who was raised from the dead. Lazarus syndrome is defined
as a delayed return of spontaneous circulation after CPR has ceased.
(14:14):
Patients who are pronounced dead after cardiac arrest experience an
impromptu return of cardiac activity. The syndrome is named after
Lazarus of Bethany, who, according to the New Testament of
the Bible, was brought back to life by Jesus Christ
four days after his death. Since it was first described
in nineteen eighty two, there have been at least thirty
eight reported cases of it. That numbers probably conservative. Some
(14:37):
researchers believe many cases of Lazarus syndrome simply go unreported
because of the potential legal and professional implications. A doctor
who stops CPR, declares someone dead, and then has that
person spontaneously revived faces uncomfortable questions about whether they stopped
resuscitation efforts too soon. Some researchers suggest that the Lazarus
(14:59):
phenomen may be caused by pressure build up in the
chest from CPR. Once CPR ceases, this pressure may gradually
release and kickstart the heart back into action. The theory
makes physiological sense, though it's difficult to study since the
phenomenon occurs so unpredictably and researchers obviously can't create experimental
conditions to test it. In twenty eighteen, Spain reported a
(15:23):
particularly disturbing case that highlighted how even multiple medical professionals
can make the same catastrophic error. A Spanish prisoner named
Gonzalo Montoya Jimenez was declared dead by three separate doctors.
Three different doctors examined him and each reached the same conclusion.
He regained consciousness mere hours before an autopsy was due
(15:44):
to be performed, and his family reported that he had
the markings drawn on him ready to be opened up.
The timing of his awakening saved his life. Autopsy procedures
would have killed him if he had remained unconscious even
a few more hours. Hospital sources told Spaceanish News it
could be the result of the man having catalepsy, which
can sometimes be a symptom of epilepsy, which Jimenez reportedly
(16:07):
suffered from. He had a known history of epilepsy. The
condition should have been flagged as a potential complication in
determining death, yet three separate doctors all missed it. These
medical conditions explain the mechanics of how someone can appear dead,
but they don't fully capture the psychological horror of being
trapped inside your own body, aware of people discussing your death,
(16:30):
feeling yourself being placed in a coffin or a body bag,
and being unable to do anything about it. The medical
definition of death seems clear enough on paper. Death involves
the irreversible loss of capacity for consciousness and capacity to breathe.
Both conditions must be permanently lost. The problem comes with
that word irreversible. How do we know when something is
(16:54):
truly irreversible versus just appearing that way? Modern medicine has
sophisticated tools for making these determinations. Monitoring equipment can detect
heart beats so faint they'd be impossible to find with
a stethoscope. Machines measure brain activity and track vital signs
with precision that our ancestors could never have imagined. In
(17:15):
major hospitals with full diagnostic capabilities, errors like the ones
described here should be virtually impossible. But these incidents didn't
happen in major hospitals with full diagnostic capabilities. They happened
in nursing homes, care facilities, private homes, settings where death
is common enough that staff members develop extensive experience with it,
(17:37):
Settings where diagnostic equipment is limited and determination often comes
down to classic clinical signs no pulse, no breath sounds,
no response to stimuli, fixed and dilated peoples. These signs
have been used to determine death for centuries, and they
usually work. Usually that qualifier matters. Someone appears to have
(17:58):
no pulse because it's too weak to detect manually. Breath
sounds are absent because breathing has become too shallow to
hear with a stethoscope. On responsiveness stems from locked in
syndrome or catalepsy rather than death. The pupils look fixed
because muscular rigidity has affected the eye muscles. Each sign
individually can be mimicked by specific medical conditions. When multiple
(18:21):
signs align, the likelihood of error decreases, but never reaches zero.
The woman in Thailand had shown no signs of life
for two full days before knocking on her coffin. Constance
Glance in Nebraska appeared dead for hours before workers at
the funeral home noticed her breathing. The Iowa woman with
Alzheimer's gasped for air inside a body bag after being
(18:44):
declared dead. The Spanish prisoner fooled three separate doctors. Each
case represents someone who crossed what appeared to be the
boundary between life and death, only to step back from
it later. Details about the Taigh woman's recovery remain limit.
The temple committed to covering her hospital expenses, showing they
recognized both the seriousness of what happened and their role
(19:06):
in her survival, but her identity has been protected. No
updates about her medical condition have been released to the public.
Now information about what caused her to appear dead for
two days has been shared. We don't know if she's
still in the hospital or if she's been released. We
don't know what her prognosis looks like. We don't know
if she'll make a full recovery or if those two
days of appearing dead have left lasting effects. We don't
(19:29):
know if doctors have determined what medical condition caused her
to seem lifeless. The incident occurred November twenty third, twenty
twenty five. What Rock Procongcom Temple posted video documentation of
the woman moving in her coffin to their Facebook page.
The footage exists as proof of what happened. It shows
her slight movements. It captures the confusion and shock of
(19:49):
the temple staff. It documents the moment they realized the
woman inside was alive and needed immediate help. What we
do know is this, she spent two days appearing dead
and responsive through a three hundred mile journey at a coffin.
She survived being taken first to a Bangkok hospital for
organ donation, than to a temple for cremation, and when
(20:10):
she finally had the physical capability to knock on that
coffin lid. She kept knocking until someone heard her. That persistence,
that determination to be heard, despite everything her body had
put her through, saved her life. If the death certificate
requirement had not created the delays, if Pyrat hadn't been
in the middle of explaining the paperwork process when she knocked,
(20:32):
If the knock had come a few minutes later or
a few minutes earlier, when no one was near enough
to hear it, this story would have ended very differently.
If you'd like to read this story for yourself or
share the article with a friend, you can read it
on the Weird Darkness website. I've placed a link to
it in the episode description, and you could find more
stories of the paranormal, true crime, strange, and more, including
(20:53):
numerous stories that never make it to the podcast in
my Weird Darknews blog at Weirddarkness dot com slash dash
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