A Zimbabwe man, 34 year-old Brighton Dama Zanthe was pronounced dead and surprised mourners when he woke up at his own funeral. According to local reports, the man sat up in his coffin while family and friends gathered to pay their respects at his home last week.
Zanthe's body was scheduled to be taken to a funeral parlor that very same day, he's lucky that he woke up when he did. A mourner noticed Zanthe's leg twitched and couldn't believe what he was seeing.
"This shocked me. I was the first to notice Mr Zanthe's moving legs as I was in the queue to view his body. At first I could not believe my eyes but later realized that there was indeed some movements on the body as other mourners retreated in disbelief," one of the mourners and Zanthe's employer, Lot Gaka told the Herald.
These "resurrections" are not uncommon in Zimbabwe, although it may seem strange. Modern medical techniques in confirming deaths in Third World countries are rare. In some cases, people may seem to be dead, but aren't. When the heart stops beating, consciousness doesn't stop suddenly.
Hundreds of years ago, doctors used a variety of methods to determine if a person was dead. Sometimes they would hold a mirror under a person's nose or prick the eyes with needles.
During the Victorian area, fears of being buried alive were so prominent that coffins were rigged so that bells and would be raised to alert if someone came back from "death".
Cases of people rising from the dead don't happen as much in Western countries due to the practice of embalming. There's no possible way to wake up from that.
