In Zimbabwe, mourners attending a funeral recently were stunned when the "dead" man came back to life. According to a story in the Daily Telegraph, "Family and friends were filing past a coffin with the remains of Brighton Dama Zanthe, 34, when one of them noticed the dead man's legs twitching.
"I was the first to notice Zanthe's moving legs as I was in the queue to view his body," said one of the mourners, Lot Gaka, who employs the man at his transport company. "This shocked me. We called an ambulance immediately. It's a miracle and people are still in disbelief."
It's fortunate that Zanthe recovered in time, though not quite a miracle. Stories of people assumed dead but waking up just before burial are weird, but are more common than most people think - especially in Third World countries where modern medical treatment is rare, and confirming death may sometimes be little more than guesswork.
Consciousness does not suddenly stop when the heart stops beating, and people who appear dead in some cases may not be. Cases of people who were presumed dead but woke up shortly before burial - or, in some horrific cases, shortly after burial - have been around for millennia, and may have contributed to belief in vampires and zombies.
Fears of premature burial obsessed many in the Victorian era and in fact some caskets were equipped with tubes and equipment leading to the surface so that bells and flags could be raised to alert groundskeepers in case the "dead" awoke.
Testing for Death In centuries past, doctors used a variety of curious methods to determine death, ranging from holding a mirror under a person's nose to detect moisture in their respiration to pricking the eyes with needles. Usually those sorts of crude measures are enough, but every now and then the vital signs will be too shallow to detect.
The same remains true today, and sometimes medical monitoring machines make errors. Doctors are only human and sometimes they make mistakes. Medical personnel typically don't spend any more time than necessary with patients they believe to be dead. Instead they, quite reasonably, turn their attention and resources to the injured or diseased patients who they know are living. No one has the responsibility of staying with the dead for hours or days to make sure that they stay dead.
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It wasn't always the case. In his book "Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear," researcher Jan Bondeson notes that in the late 1700s French doctors were so concerned about premature burial that they proposed that all major cities in France should have special "waiting mortuaries," in which the recently deceased would be laid out in rows on floors or tables and carefully watched by monitors who would wander among the corpses looking for signs of anyone coming back to life. It was only at the point in which the bodies would begin bloating and putrefying that the corpse would finally be considered dead enough and sent for burial.
Sharon Hill, a blogger at Doubtful News.com, points out another reason why these cases are rarer in Western countries: "People are not embalmed as in other countries prior to burial." Indeed, the same chemical process that preserves the dead and makes them suitable for public viewing also assures that the people really are dead.
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Method of Treating Corpses, John H. Chambers: July 8, 1890
A decade before the turn of the century, John H. Chambers submitted a patent to systematically remove decomposition fluid from caskets -- which no longer needed to be buried, given his upright, contained design:
"I am aware that it is not new to provide for the removal from the coffin of the fluid in a matter created by the decomposition of the body, and I do not seek to cover such, broadly. Neither do I claim, broadly, the process of embalming, as I am aware that it has long been the practice to embalm bodies after death; but so far as I am aware it never has been proposed to embalm the body and then provide for the exclusion of the air and the removal of the fluid matter from the coffin. This is important. I also attach importance to the employment of the disinfecting-trap in the outlet-pipe to the coffin."
Improvement in Poison Bottles: James W. Bowles; Oct. 10, 1876
During the 19th century, losing your poison among the assortment of other -- non-lethal -- liquids and tonics in your collection was evidently a common mishap. Or at least James W. Bowles thought as much, so he set out to solve that problem in 1876 with his coffin-shaped bottles.
Bowles explains in his patent: "(T)he peculiar shape of the bottle serves as a warning against the careless use of the contents."
Method of Preserving Corpses: Graham Hamrick; Jan. 5, 1892
Can a torch of burning sulfur really keep a body from decomposing? Graham Hamrick thought so.
In 1888, Hamrick devised a complicated process of embalming that included a plethora of chemicals and a burning sulfur torch that needed to be relit on a regular basis.
The record shows it took more than four years for his patent to be approved, but Hamrick defended his process:
"Subjects preserved by my procedure above set forth involving treatment for the longer period of about 40 days have been kept for many months through the hottest weather, in the open air, in a perfectly natural condition, and without any decomposition. I am unable to assign any limit to the continual preservation of such embalmed bodies."
Corpse Eye Closer: J.M. Spear; April 21, 1891
It turns out that "effectually adjusting and closing the eyelids of corpses in such manner as to impart thereto an undisturbed or natural appearance," was a difficult feat to perform in 1891 when J.M. Spear applied for a patent for his "Corpse Eye Closer."
Spear's contraption, a rounded piece of metal with sharp, angled teeth, is meant to be slipped between the eyeball and the eyelid of the deceased.
Improvement in Combined Grave, Coffin and Monument: Leland M. Speers and Abraham Clark; July 6, 1875
Three for the price of one! Leland M. Speers and Abraham Clark sought to bring simplicity to the 19th-century burial -- and an added safety feature in case someone was buried alive.
In the gentlemen's own words: "(T)he features of the dead can be viewed at any time without removing the cover. This enables friends of the deceased who may have been absent at the time of the death and funeral to view the said deceased at any time they may wish. This construction also enables the body to be watched for any desired length of time, in cases where there may be doubt as to whether the body may be dead or in a trance state, until it revives or all doubt is removed."
Buried Alive Prevention
Being buried alive might be less of a concern today, but it was a real possibility in the 19th century, as evidenced by various patents from the era.
Many of these elaborate contraptions include all bells and whistles -- sometimes literally -- to prevent such mistakes. One even includes an air shaft to ensure proper breathing while the living soul awaits retrieval. Another is designed so that the mistakenly deceased must hit his or her head on the coffin to call for help.
Beheading Block and Ax: William Hanlon; Feb. 11, 1890
William Hanlon's patented Beheading Block and Ax is not nearly as deadly as it sounds. In fact, it's a turn-of-the-century magic trick.
Hanlon writes: "The object of this invention is to produce upon the stage in the presence of an audience and under full light an illusive beheading so nearly realistic that as the victim's head lies upon the block the descending ax and block give forth the natural thud of a blow, and the blade appears to actually sever the neck of the victim, and after the seeming separation of the head from the body both simultaneously fall, the body to the floor and the head apparently through the block to an opening at the base thereof at a point removed from its natural position, both in distance and angle, and all this without the employment of reflectors, such as are commonly used for illusive acts of this general character."