In this strange story, an 80 year old man from South Africa suffered an asthma attack that left him dead. At least that’s what everyone thought.

After not being able to revive the man, his family had placed a phone call to an undertaker so that they could handle his body. Upon arrival at their home, the trained driver checked the man for a pulse, looked for a heartbeat –I guess he looked for it on the man’s carotid artery on his neck — The driver finished examining the body and took it to the local morgue. There the body stayed locked away in a large refrigerated compartment for the next 21 hours.

During a routine shift at the morgue, a few employees heard screams and banging coming from the locked compartment where the recently deceased lay. It doesn’t take much imagination to visualize the terror the employees must have felt when they heard the screams coming from behind the refrigerated door. If that were me in the situation, I would have bolted right out the door and would not stop running until I reach a gun shop. Or did you forget the scene in “The Return of the living dead” in which the yellow body that was hanging from a meat hook in the freezer comes alive and bangs on the door to get out. Screw all that, I know how the movie ends. I watch it religiously.

Unlike me, the employees showed some courage and opened the door only to find the 80 year old man alive and well. Reminds me of the Clairvius Narcisse story.

Full source: CBS News

What’s it like to wake up inside a morgue fridge? A South African man got the scare of his life after doing just that.

The unidentified man – who was mistaken for dead after being knocked out by an asthma attack – woke up Sunday afternoon, about 21 hours after his family had called an undertaker, according to a spokesman for the Eastern Cape department of health, Sizwe Kupelo.

The morgue’s owner, Ayanda Maqolo, said he sent his driver to collect the “body” shortly after the family reported the apparent death. “When he got there, the driver examined the body, checked his pulse, looked for a heartbeat, but there was nothing,” Maqolo said, adding that he thought the man was about 80.

But a day after the man was put in the locked refrigerated compartment, morgue workers heard someone yelling for help. They thought it was a ghost, Magolo said. The man was freed only after the police were called.

 

Is there a lesson here? Kupelo, the health department spokesman, thinks so. He urged South Africans to call on health officials to confirm that their relatives are really dead.

That sounds like a good idea. A trained health official knows to pronounce someone dead only after following strict guidelines. In addition to checking for a pulse, these call for checking pupils for response to light, checking for response to touch, checking for heart sounds, and checking for breathing.

And the unlucky man? He was taken to a nearby hospital and later discharged after doctors deemed him stable. His family was informed that he was alive during a family meeting convened to make funeral arrangements.

Said Magolo, they’re very happy to have him home.