Cases of comatose people "waking up" at their own funerals are not as rare as you might think. They seem to be reported every year, which means that they might be a one in billion chance. Even more individuals would fail to wake up at their funeral, which means that some wake in their grave or tomb.

This was a common fear in the 1700s and into the 1800s and many people took precautions. You could have your tomb built so it could be opened from the inside (like John Carter in the recent SF movie) or bells would be installed that could be rung by the deceased if they awoke in their grave. Nonetheless, there seems to be evidence that many people were buried alive due to the lack of a proper definition of death and failure to distinguish a coma from death proper.

In this case, the child seems to have died again. Perhaps speedy medical attention could have saved the poor little tyke, but his family were clearly not rich and educated enough to obtain help immediately.

This is why wakes are a good idea, especially if the deceased is not embalmed. If the deceased is embalmed, the option of revival is gone. The custom may have evolved to guard against just such a contingency.

Of course, it is possible that the story is made-up or the result of wishful thinking and natural behaviour of a cadaver. Bodies do "sit up" and gases do make noises, both of which have contributed to folklore and urban legend. The sitting up is just a spontaneous muscle contraction. Gas is released from the digestive system (or via the digestive system) as decay sets in (methanogenic bacteria are responsible for most of the gas).

Having spent many years reading Fortean and other weird news sources, I am not incredulous about the possibliity of such an event, but I choose not to firmly believe one way or the other. Journalism is unreliable, witnesses are unreliable, and sometimes the mystery remains mysterious despite reasonable efforts to determine the truth.

What a shame the boy was not successfully revived, assuming he was alive still or temporarily for some reason.

The reason why these stories originate in the Third World is that embalming is expensive and is not routine there, while in the First World, they'll toss you out of a hospital bed while you're still breathing and the embalmer maybe be called in before anybody sees the "deceased".

Death remains difficult to diagnose. The heart and lungs can cease functioning, the brain can apparently stop, but there might be a low level of slow and barely perceptible activity still. People have survived drowning for periods of 45 minutes or more, especially children who fall through ice and are "preserved" by the cold from some of the effects of low oxygen. People have been revived up to several days after supposed death, and have woken from comas after decades.

Most modern doctors use brain death (which has to be determined by a machine) as the definition of death, but apparently even the brain can be temporarily stopped--or at least the bits that make brainwaves. Many of the vital functions are controlled by the brain stem and thus can work even if the individual has barely any cerebellum at all. Several functional people have been found to have largely empty heads. I mean literally--fluid where "the brain. should be, and the famous case of Mike the Chicken, whose head was almost entirely chopped off but who lived for quite some time, results from the same basic structural facts--"Mike" had most of her brain stem intact, so she continued to live without much of the brain, but not with no brain.

Science denialists who believe in the soul try to prove the existence of the soul by claiming the brain is not necessary for thinking and identity, and this is the sort of evidence they misinterpret to confirm their beliefs.

MrDon: After 27 years in the funeral business I can tell you this, bullhshiat.

In the 1800's people used to be so afraid of being burried alive, they bought caskets with a lever or a rope installed on the inside they could grab if they woke up and had been burried. The lever or rope would activate a flag or bell above ground to tell the world they were still alive. People who attended the grave all night were refered to as working the "Graveyard Shift".

If you do not have the advantage of "Expert signs of death" available , wait 48 hours and the skin on the belly will start to turn green (putrafaction) - If you see that (and odor) you know for sure that person is dead.

The very first thing they taught us in mortuary science college was verifing that the person you are about to embalm is in fact dead. Good idea.

You mispelled "putrefaction".

washington-babylon: turboke: LaViergeNoire: I have a little boy (3, almost 4), and if that kind of thing happened, there is no FARKING way I'd bury him anyway the same day, doctors saying he's really dead or not. I've read enough Edgar Allen Poe and I'd try to get some better doctors.

/emotional
//sad story

I was rather thinking along the lines of H.P. Lovecraft.

The fall of the House of Usher.

'Nuff said.

We would have also accepted "The Premature Burial".

unyon: Midnight Rambler: Abra cadaver!

Well played. I was fascinated by how he learned to speak English when dead.

Dammit, that made me burst out laughing.

vernterv: unyon: Midnight Rambler: Abra cadaver!

Well played. I was fascinated by how he learned to speak English when dead.

Dammit, that made me burst out laughing.

I aim to please. It was that or he sat up talking "eu quero cérebros", but I figured the audience for the Portuguese joke was smaller.