But… I’m not dead yet

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This article was published 13/01/2018 (3003 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s the kind of macabre headline that literally screams for attention. It appeared above a nightmare-inducing story earlier this week on newsweek.com and shrieked: “Dead man wakes up on autopsy table.”

According to the report, a prisoner in Spain woke up on the morgue table last weekend shortly before his autopsy after being declared dead by three separate doctors.

News reports state Gonzalo Montoya Jimenez, 29, was thought to have died in his prison cell around 8 a.m. last Sunday, and his body was examined by three doctors before being shipped off to the mortuary.

“Montoya Jimenez’s body already had marks drawn on it in preparation for an autopsy to determine the cause of death when he regained consciousness,” newsweek.com reported. “He was believed to be dead for four hours before his body showed signs of life.”

What tipped authorities off that their ex-prisoner wasn’t quite ready for The Big Jail Cell in the Sky? Notes newsweek.com: “It was the prisoner’s snore on the autopsy table that gave away that the supposed corpse was actually an unconscious man.”

The “dead man” was recovering in hospital, where he was listed in good condition. Relatives suspect he might not have taken his epilepsy medication, which led to a case of catalepsy — a condition where vital signs drop to undetectable levels.

What’s worse, the creepy case is not as rare as you might think, as we can see from today’s heart-stopping list of Five People Who Came Back From the Dead:

 

5) The not-so-dead person: Watson Franklin Mandujano Doroteo

The big comeback: They say only two things in life are certain: death and taxes. Well, it appears they might not know what they are talking about. Consider the disturbing case of Watson Doroteo, a young man from the Peruvian city of Tingo Mira, who reportedly died late last year after undergoing a routine root canal operation. News reports state the man, whose age has been reported variously as 24 or 28, went in for treatment at a dental clinic on Oct. 21, but was transferred to the hospital in Tingo Maria after suffering fever and chills following the surgery.

Doroteo was eventually pronounced dead by doctors, but relatives and local media have suggested he was more likely just heavily sedated. They started to think something was amiss during the open-casket funeral when the young man apparently appeared to be breathing.

Britain’s The Independent newspaper says Doroteo was inside his coffin when stunned mourners noticed what they believed was his rib cage rising and falling as he continued to breathe. “At the wake, relatives present called a doctor when they saw apparent signs of life,” The Independent reported. “According to Argentine newspaper Los Andes, the doctor arrived and confirmed Doroteo showed vital signs.”

Tragically, this unexpected resurrection was short-lived, so to speak. The young man was quickly taken back to hospital, where, for the second time, he was confirmed dead. The case is reportedly being investigated by police.

Notes The Independent: “But his relatives still claimed he might have been alive at his funeral, and, if nothing else, Mr. Doroteo’s story serves as an unsettling reminder that sometimes, when people are declared dead, it ain’t necessarily so.”

 

4) The not-so-dead person: Carlos Camejo

The big comeback: If our next case isn’t worthy of a horror movie or a Stephen King novel, then we’re not sure what is. Being wrongly declared dead is bad enough. But imagine the indescribable shock of waking up in the middle of your own autopsy.

That’s precisely what happened in September 2007 to a Venezuelan man named Carlos Camejo. It seems the 33-year-old man was involved in a grisly car crash, after which doctors pronounced him dead and had the body shipped to the local morgue.

During the post-mortem, coroners began to suspect something was amiss when they cut into Camejo’s face and he began bleeding. Which prompted the stunned doctors to quickly stitch up the incision on the “dead man’s” face. “I woke up because the pain was unbearable,” Camejo said after the ordeal, according to a report at the time in the the leading local newspaper, El Universal.

His unexpected return from the dead made headlines around the world in 2007. The headline on the Reuters story: “Dead man wakes up under autopsy knife.”

What made things all the more compelling was that Camejo’s grieving wife, informed of his death, had gone to the morgue to identify her husband’s body. Instead of identifying a corpse, however, she was shocked (and we assume delighted) to discover her husband waiting for her in a corridor, having refused to shuffle off this mortal coil, if you catch our drift.

Camejo was later photographed showing the autopsy scar on his face, as well as displaying a hospital document ordering that an autopsy be done on his dead body. Talk about waking up in the nick of time. We hope he celebrated by buying a lottery ticket.

 

3) The not-so-dead person: Walter Williams

The big comeback: When you hear the phrase “alive and kicking,” it’s hard not to think about Walter Williams. In early 2014, the coroner was called to the 78-year-old Mississippi man’s home in Lexington, a community north of Jackson, where family members believed he had died.

At the time, Holmes County coroner Dexter Howard said Williams — a father of 11, grandfather of 15, and great-grandfather of six — had no pulse and he was formally pronounced dead of congestive heart failure, then transported to Porter and Sons Funeral Home, where workers were preparing to embalm Williams’ body when they noticed something didn’t seem right. Something was moving inside the body bag.

“We got him into the embalming room, and we noticed his legs beginning to move, like kicking,” the coroner told CNN at the time of the case, which quickly went viral on social media. “He also began to do a little breathing.”

After being freed from the body bag, the lifelong farmer was taken to hospital and reunited with his overjoyed family. Doctors speculated a mix of medicines may have caused Williams’ vital signs to appear unresponsive. Family members, however, suggested his pacemaker may have stopped working, then spontaneously restarted.

“Every case I do is a learning experience,” is what the coroner told CNN, adding the case had taught him an important lesson, namely: “That miracles can happen.”

Sadly, this resurrection didn’t last long, as Williams passed away, again, a mere two weeks later. The same coroner and funeral home director declared him dead.

His family told reporters they were grateful for the extra time they had with Williams. “I guess it was just his time,” his nephew, Eddie Hester, told the CBC News radio program, As It Happens. “I thank the good Lord for letting my uncle stay here a little bit longer… It was a two-week miracle for me, and I enjoyed every minute of it, and my family did, too.”

 

2) The not-so-dead person: Janina Kolkiewicz 

The big comeback: So you’ve just surprised everyone by coming back to life after wrongly being declared dead and spending 11 hours in cold storage at a mortuary. How do you celebrate your return from The Great Beyond? Well, if you’re Janina Kolkiewicz, a 91-year-old Polish woman whose story made headlines in 2014, you complain about feeling cold, then warm up with a bowl of soup and a couple of pancakes.

It may sound like a B-grade horror film plot, but it’s not. It all began one morning in the eastern Polish town of Ostrow Lubeski when the woman’s niece summoned the doctor after arriving home to find that her aunt did not seem to be breathing or to have a pulse.

According to the BBC, the family doctor examined the elder Kolkiewicz, declared her dead and wrote out her death certificate, then the body was taken to the mortuary, where preparations began for a funeral in two days’ time. After 11 hours in cold storage in the mortuary, however, the woman regained consciousness and began wriggling in her body bag, which startled workers, as you can imagine.

“We’re in shock,” the woman’s niece, Bogumila Kolkiewicz, told the Dzennik Wschodni newspaper. “At midnight we got a call from the funeral home to say that she was alive. She doesn’t know what happened to her, but she’s in good health. She did complain about being cold, however, when she came home.”

The doctor, identified as Dr. Wieslawa Czyz, had no idea how the woman came back from the dead. “I do not know how this is possible; I’m still in shock,” the doctor was quoted as saying. “If I had had any doubts about her being dead I would have called an ambulance and would have tried to resuscitate her. But she had no vital signs: no pulse, nothing.”

The director of the funeral company was also shocked, saying: “Neither me nor my predecessor, who was in charge of the home for 30 years, have ever encountered anything like this.” A neighbour called it “a miracle,” but the resurrected 91-year-old wasn’t saying much. “My aunt has no inkling of what happened since she has late-stage dementia,” her niece said.

 

1) The not-so-dead person: Angelo Hays

The big comeback: It’s one thing waking up at the start of your own autopsy, or in the middle of your funeral. It’s another thing entirely when you’re revived after spending two days buried in your coffin. That’s what happened to 19-year-old Frenchman Angelo Hays, who is considered the most famous 20th-century example of premature burial.

According to dozens of online accounts, in 1937, Hays was thrown from his motorcycle into a brick wall. His face was so badly disfigured his parents weren’t allowed to view the body. Unable to find a pulse, the doctor in the village of St. Quentin de Chalais declared Hays dead. Three days later, the young Frenchman was buried in the village cemetery, his coffin carried to the grave by eight friends from the local volunteer fire brigade.

When an insurance firm in nearby Bordeaux discovered Hays’s father had recently insured his son’s life for 200,000 francs, an inspector was sent to investigate the accident. Two days after the funeral, his “corpse” was exhumed and taken to a forensic institute in Bordeaux, where the doctor in charge discovered (Gasp!) the body was still warm.

It seems the head injury had caused his system to shut down, making him appear dead. He spent two days unconscious underground. “He had been in a deep coma and his body’s diminished need for oxygen had kept him alive,” notes the website MentalFloss.com.

After several surgeries and extensive rehabilitation, Hays completely recovered. “In fact, he became a French celebrity,” MentalFloss.com explains. “People travelled from afar to speak with him, and in the 1970s he went on tour with a (very souped-up) security coffin he invented featuring thick upholstery, a food locker, toilet, and even a library.”

 

The point is, this would be a good time to celebrate the fact you are currently on the green side of the turf. Because when you’re dead, you’re dead… unless, of course, if you’re not.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca