• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Dead—Not Dead! (Mistaken Reports & Declarations Of Death)

rynner2

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 7, 2001
Messages
54,631
MAN DIES AT HIS OWN WAKE
Doctors in Argentina say a 94-year-old man died at his own wake.

They say Carlos Gonzales Valencia was wrongly certified dead at a clinic in Ramos Majia.

His daughter, a nurse, noticed he still had a pulse after his 'body' was taken home for his wake.

But by the time emergency services arrived, Mr Valencia had died for real, reports Terra Noticias Populares.

An emergency doctor said: "This man died while at his own wake. He was seen by a doctor and the funeral people but no one realised he was still alive, that is really incredible."

Now the family is suing the clinic.
thisisplymouth.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=115997&command=displayContent&sourceNode=115996&contentPK=7001217
Link is dead. No archived version found.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Toddler Revived After Believed Dead
FULLERTON, Calif. - A toddler who was revived nearly two hours after she was believed to have drowned and 40 minutes after doctors had declared her dead was responding to touch and sound Saturday, hospital officials said.

Twenty-month-old Mackayala Jespersen was in critical condition but responsive a day after she was found in her family's swimming pool, said Children's Hospital of Orange County spokeswoman Denise Almazan.

The little girl's family thanked the public for their "prayers and support," Almazan said.

Mackayala's mother found her floating face down in the backyard pool Friday morning, police Sgt. Sean Fares said. Police and paramedics tried to revive her and rushed her to Anaheim Memorial Medical Center, where doctors pronounced her dead.

Forty minutes later, police Detective Mike Kendrick was conducting a routine investigation into the death when he noticed Mackayala's chest was moving. He summoned doctors, who were able to revive her.

"It was a very emotional moment for everyone," said Fullerton Police spokesman Sgt. Ron Gillett. "We thought she didn't make it and then she did. It was the lowest of the lows and the highest of the highs."

Mackayala was later transferred to Children's Hospital. Anaheim Memorial Medical Center spokeswoman Gina Esparza declined to comment Saturday.

Mark Langdorf, chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of California, Irvine, said it is not uncommon for toddlers to survive drownings after showing little or no signs of life, especially if the water is cold.

What was unusual in Mackayala's case, he said, was the time involved.

"If you had said she came back to life after 10 minutes I would be surprised, but 40 minutes is just exceptional," he said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=17&u=/ap/20031108/ap_on_re_us/toddler_revived
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Just shows they shouldn't give up trying to revive them too quickly. :)
 
. . . and rushed her to Anaheim Memorial Medical Center, where Dr. Nick Rivera pronounced her dead.
 
Super Baby's Recovery Going Well
Revived Girl Baffles Medical Experts
By CHELSEA J. CARTER, Associated Press Writer

FULLERTON, Calif. -
Detective Mike Kendrick began photographing the body of a little girl on an emergency room table for an investigation of a drowning.

Then, through the lens, he saw her chest move. Just spasms, he thought. Then he saw it move again. And again.

"Am I seeing things? Does she look like she's breathing?" Kendrick asked his partner.

Less than an hour earlier, Kendrick had broken the news to the girl's mother that she had been pronounced dead by doctors. Minutes earlier, he stood by as the mother said goodbye to her daughter.

But 20-month-old Mackayala Jespersen was indeed alive. On Friday, she was in serious condition at Children's Hospital of Orange County, where she was transferred after being revived.

Her case has baffled hospital and emergency workers. They had struggled to revive her with CPR, breathing tubes, a heated blanket. How could they have missed the fact that the toddler was alive?

The Medical Board of California has launched an inquiry into whether physician error played a role, although the state Department of Health Services already has found that Anaheim Memorial Hospital followed proper protocol.

The girl's family declined to be interviewed by The Associated Press.

On Friday, the girl was breathing without a ventilator but was not fully alert. She was moving her eyes and her body somewhat, hospital spokeswoman Denise Almazan said. Earlier in the week, one of the girl's doctors said brain scans showed no serious brain damage.

Mackayala slipped out the back door of her family's home in Fullerton, about 30 miles south of Los Angeles, on Nov. 7. A family member found the girl floating face-down in the 52-degree water of the swimming pool shortly after 9 a.m., according to police reports and emergency workers.

The girl's mother, Melissa Jespersen, placed a frantic 911 call. Minutes later, two police officers arrived and began performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

"We did CPR for six or seven minutes. It seemed like a million years," said one of the officers, Steve Rubio.

At one point, Mackayala spit up water, or perhaps it was forced from her lungs by the chest compressions.

Paramedics arrived and took Mackayala by ambulance to the hospital.

Kendrick and his partner, Detective Brent Rebert, were driving to the Jespersen home when they got word that Mackayala had been pronounced dead at 10:06 a.m.

At the home, Kendrick took the mother into her daughter's bedroom, sat her on the bed and told her the news. She went limp, fell to the floor and curled into a fetal position.

"The look on this mom's face was absolute horror and disbelief," he said.

The two detectives put her in their car. "All the way to the hospital, she kept saying, `This isn't true. God wouldn't take her at this age,'" Kendrick said.

At Anaheim Memorial, the detectives escorted her into a room off the ER to say farewell to her daughter. A few minutes later, they began the routine of photographing the body and making notes.

The heart monitor had a flat line. Her breathing tube had been disconnected. Her body was still wrapped in a heating blanket that had apparently been used to try to raise her body temperature. By all appearances, Mackayala was dead.

Then, at 10:45 a.m. — 39 minutes after she had been pronounced dead — her chest appeared to spasm. At first, the detectives thought it was releasing gas — a natural process after death. But the spasms continued and became longer.

"It looks like she's breathing," Kendrick told his partner. "Go and get somebody."

Rebert returned with a nurse, who put a stethoscope to the girl's chest. Doctors raced in. Machines were turned back on. Mackayala had a pulse. The two police officers shook their heads in disbelief.

Kendrick had the job of telling Mackayala's mother that her daughter was alive. This time, she fell to her knees and thanked God.

Three days later, Kendrick and another officer stopped by the hospital to visit Mackayala. "We were a little bit worried about how they would react to us. But we couldn't stay away," he said.

He got a hug from Mackayala's mother.

"She asked if I would come back and visit Mackayala when she comes home," Kendrick said. "I said sure."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031114/ap_on_re_us/revived_toddler_1
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Holocaust survivor siblings reunited after 60 years

Holocaust survivor reunited with brother

11/28/2003

SEATTLE -- George Gordon spent most of his life thinking he had lost his entire family in the Holocaust.

But he couldn't shake a lingering sense of uncertainty -- or the haunting dreams.

"I'd see my mother and sister in my sleep and wake up thinking, 'No, I can't believe they are dead,'" the 77-year-old Polish immigrant said. "It stays with you, if you don't know for sure. You can't let it go."

Then a volunteer for the American Red Cross Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Service stepped in and discovered something Gordon never expected to find: His sister.

Gordon had contacted the group hoping to discover how his family died.

"He was looking for graves. He never was looking for living people," said volunteer Tammy Kaiser. "The only reason he even began searching was just to find out where they were buried so that one day he could visit and pay his respects."

The tracing center, based in Baltimore, has handled requests from some 40,000 Americans, combing through war records released after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It forwarded Gordon's request to the agency's International Tracing Service in Arrolsen, Germany.

The Polish Red Cross got involved, and Kaiser, on her own trip to Poland with a Jewish student group, made a detour to Gordon's former hometown, Wroclaw, searching for his family graves. She found nothing.

After 18 months, Polish researchers finally discovered a simple newspaper obituary. It described Gordon's mother, Janina. It was dated 1979, and it mentioned only one survivor, a daughter, Krystyna.

"I couldn't believe it when I heard," Kaiser told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for a story Friday. "I cried for like 10 minutes. Then we called George."

Born Jerzy Budzynski, Gordon was sent at age 14 on a boxcar to Stuthoff, a Polish-only work camp, and then to Buchenwald, where he spent the rest of the war. His father and younger brother were shot dead by SS soldiers.

Only when speaking of the night he heard his sister's voice for the first time in 59 years did his voice waver.

"Krystyna, this is Jerik," he said, using his childhood nickname in a phone call to Poland.

There was a long silence. Neither knew quite what to say.

On Sept. 26, they were reunited in the lobby of the Hotel Monopol in Wroclaw, where Hitler had once shouted speeches from the balcony.

"These two women walked in, my sister and her daughter," Gordon said. "I wouldn't have recognized her if we'd passed each other on the street -- to me she was always a 12-year-old girl -- but when I heard her voice, I knew it was her."

© Copyright 2003 Associated Press.
 
This is a wonderful story.

That people can be traced and reunited after so many years, and that other people are dedicated enough to do so, raises the spirits and gives one hope for the human race.
 
That's beautiful.......needless to say i'm typing this with tears streaming down my face.
 
Dead man comes back to life at N.M. funeral home
Reuters
Posted January 2 2004, 2:15 PM EST


SANTA FE, N.M. - A New Mexico funeral home owner received the surprise of his career when a man pronounced dead at a hospital came back to life just before he was to be embalmed.

Russell Muffley, the owner of Muffley Funeral Home in Clovis, New Mexico, said he noticed Felipe Padilla breathing when the man pronounced dead at a hospital was being transferred to his facility on Wednesday. Padilla, 94, was rushed back to the same hospital, but did not recover. He was declared dead for a second time.

``When we were getting ready to move him from the stretcher to the embalming table, we noticed signs of life,'' Muffley said.

Padilla was breathing on his own but not speaking when paramedics took him from the funeral home back to Plains Regional Medical Center. He died a few hours later and was taken back to the funeral home, where arrangements had already been made.

Padilla will be buried next week.

``I have been doing this for 39 years and this has never happened before,'' Muffley said.
sun-sentinel.com/news/custom/fringe/sfl-12deadman,0,4663660.story?coll=sfla-news-fringe
Link is dead. No archived version found.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I've read lots of articles etc about this. It really interests me.

I've heard of peeps waking up during an open-coffin funeral, jumping out, running off screaming and being knocked down in traffic, whereupon they are replaced in the coffin and buried.:eek:

Many British hospitals have discreetly discontinued certain aspects of the laying-out of the dead because, it is rumoured, there have been cases of 'corpses' coming to life in the mortuary only to choke to death on cotton wool.:cross eye

There's a Discovery Channel prog about this which feastures interviews with 'resurrectees'. Can't tell you any details having only seen it 4 times!;)
 
Mother spots her "dead" child at birthday party

Mom finds kidnapped daughter six years later
Philadelphia officials had ruled infant died in 1997 fire

Tuesday, March 2, 2004 Posted: 8:19 AM EST (1319 GMT)

Police declared Delimar Vera dead after a fire destroyed much of her home.

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- A fire that authorities six years ago thought killed a 10-day-old girl was a ruse to kidnap the infant, Philadelphia police said Monday.

The baby, Delimar Vera, was sleeping in the upstairs front bedroom when a fire broke out at her family's two-story row house in north Philadelphia on December 15, 1997.

Luz Cuevas, her mother, could not find Delimar when she ran into the room. She eventually ran out of the house, overcome by smoke and burned on her face. Her two other children also survived, police said.

Remains of the infant's body were never found, and police concluded they had been incinerated in the flames.

The official cause of the fire was listed as an overheated extension cord attached to a space heater.

But Cuevas never fully believed her daughter died in the fire.

In January, she attended a birthday party for the child of an acquaintance and was struck by the resemblance of a 6-year-old girl to herself and her other children.

Telling the girl she had bubble gum in her hair, Cuevas was able to take strands of her hair in hopes a DNA test would prove she was right, according to Philadelphia police Lt. Michael Boyle of the special victims unit.

Luz Cuevas never fully believed her daughter died in the fire.

A state legislator helped put Cuevas in touch with police, who launched an investigation and had DNA tests performed that confirmed the girl is her daughter.

Police say Carolyn Correa, 41, a resident of Willingboro, New Jersey, a Philadelphia suburb, started the fire and kidnapped Delimar, whom she passed off as her own daughter.

Before the results of the DNA tests were in, officials placed the child in New Jersey state custody.

When police returned to Correa's home to confront her about the DNA results, she had fled, leaving behind three other children.

She remains a fugitive from multiple arrest warrants on charges that include arson, kidnapping and concealing the whereabouts of a child.

Lt. Thomas McDevitt of the special victims unit said Cuevas told police that Correa was a distant friend of a cousin of the baby's father, from whom she has separated.

Cuevas had met Correa the day before the fire, McDevitt said. Correa returned December 15, saying she had left her purse upstairs, he said.

The fire was discovered shortly after Correa left the house, McDevitt said.

It has not yet been determined when Delimar will be reunited with Cuevas.

Boyle said that when police told Cuevas about the DNA test results Saturday night she was "overwhelmed with joy."

"She sat there and shook and cried and kept saying, 'Thank you, thank you, thank you,'" Boyle said.

Police say they cannot fully explain why Delimar was declared killed.

Officers at the time found bone fragments they thought were the baby's remains, but tests later showed them to be nonhuman, McDevitt said.

When investigators returned to the scene, firemen had already dumped several hundred pounds of debris from the gutted bedroom in the back yard, McDevitt said.

The officers sifted through the debris but found mostly dry wool particles, which they were told resemble human ashes, but only those burned at 1,000 degrees for an hour or longer, McDevitt said.

The fire, which was confined to the bedroom, lasted only about 15 minutes and was nowhere near 1,000 degrees, McDevitt said.

McDevitt admitted this scenario is an explanation only "up to a point." On the other hand, officers had no reason to suspect arson or a kidnapping, he said.

CNN's Susan Chun and CNN.com's David Osier contributed to this story.


© 2004 Cable News Network LP, LLLP.
 
That is so horrible, I wonder if the other children she had were also the victims of kidnapping.
 
So is the little girl with her real mother now? She must feel as if her mother has deserted her. :(
 
Spooky, I gathered from CNN this morning that the need to do lot prep work with the girl meant it hasn't happened quite yet. She*may* be in state custody. I'm sure they'll both need a lot of family counseling for a while.
 
the child is with the social services getting the child ready to be reunited with her real parents
 
Poor kid. What a scary thought at that age. BTW your mum isn't really your mum, she's done a bunk and this is your real mum. It'll take a long time to get over this. :(
 
I hope they put that woman under the jail. How could you do that to another person. I think I would kill them with my bare hands.
 
I should also add I smell a subtext here. I saw her interviewd. Hispanic woman, her English isn't that great, probably not a real high income. That might be part of the reason the police/arson invesigations were so lame. Until the state leg guy helped her (also Hispanic, but a handsome, well-spoken, successfull man) she police were still ignoring her. Sad, but not far-fetched. She is resourcefull, I will say that.
 
suspect turns herself in

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- A woman accused of kidnapping a 10-day-old girl six years ago has surrendered to police in Philadelphia and is being questioned by detectives, CNN has learned.

Carolyn Correa, 41, walked into the Philadelphia Police Department Special Victims Unit office in downtown Philadelphia just after 4:30 p.m. Tuesday with her attorney, Jeffrey Zucker, police said.

"We are pleased that this phase of a complex, protracted, and emotionally charged investigation has been completed with the subject's arrest," said Philadelphia Capt. John Darby.

Correa had been sought in connection with the kidnapping of the infant, Delimar Vera, who was sleeping in her room when a fire broke out at the two-story house in Philadelphia December 15, 1997.

Luz Cuevas, the baby's mother, couldn't find Delimar when she ran into her room. She eventually ran out of the house, overcome by smoke and suffering burns on her face. Her two other children survived the fire.

Remains of the infant's body were never found, and police concluded they had been incinerated in the flames.

The official cause of the fire was listed as an overheated extension cord attached to a space heater.

But Cuevas never fully believed her daughter died in the fire.

In January, she attended a birthday party for the child of an acquaintance and was struck by the resemblance of a 6-year-old girl to herself and her other children.

Telling the girl she had bubble gum in her hair, Cuevas was able to take strands of her hair in hopes a DNA test would prove she was right, according to Philadelphia police Lt. Michael Boyle of the Special Victims Unit.

A state legislator helped put Cuevas in touch with police, who launched an investigation and had DNA tests performed that confirmed the girl is her daughter.
Police declared Delimar Vera dead after a fire destroyed much of her home.


Police say Correa, a resident of Willingboro, New Jersey, a Philadelphia suburb, started the fire and kidnapped Delimar, whom she passed off as her own daughter.

Before the results of the DNA tests were in, officials placed the child in New Jersey state custody.

When police returned to Correa's home to confront her about the DNA results, she had fled, leaving behind three other children.

She had been a fugitive from multiple arrest warrants on charges that include arson, kidnapping and concealing the whereabouts of a child.
Philadelphia officials had ruled infant died in 1997 fire

Lt. Thomas McDevitt of the Special Victims Unit said Cuevas told police that Correa was a distant friend of a cousin of the baby's father, from whom she has separated.

Cuevas had met Correa the day before the fire, McDevitt said. Correa returned December 15, saying she had left her purse upstairs, he said.

The fire was discovered shortly after Correa left the house, McDevitt said.

It has not yet been determined when Delimar will be reunited with Cuevas.
 
lopaka said:
I should also add I smell a subtext here. I saw her interviewd. Hispanic woman, her English isn't that great, probably not a real high income. That might be part of the reason the police/arson invesigations were so lame. Until the state leg guy helped her (also Hispanic, but a handsome, well-spoken, successfull man) she police were still ignoring her. Sad, but not far-fetched. She is resourcefull, I will say that.

I agree to that, a bunch of Hispanics in the U.S. are simply ignored by the police, specially the new arrivals who hardly speak English.
 
Mother reunited with 'dead' child

A Philadelphia woman and her daughter have been reunited six years after the child was believed to have died in a house fire.

The reunion came six weeks after 31-year-old Luzaida Cuevas recognised the girl as her child at a birthday party; DNA tests later confirmed this.

Police say a distant relative kidnapped the girl and brought her up as her own.

The woman allegedly set fire to the house from which she abducted the child to cover up her crime.

Film script

Ms Cuevas and the child she called Delimar Vera were officially reunited on Monday.

She then took the girl home where the family planned "a small private gathering of friends and family" to celebrate, her lawyer told the Associated Press news agency.

The events leading to Ms Cuevas finding her daughter after such a long time could come straight from a film script - and producers are aiming to transform the real life story to the screen.

Mrs Cuevas was at a child's birthday party in January, when she noticed that one of the children there bore a striking resemblance to her own.

"When she smiled, when she was a baby, she drew a dimple, and the little girl, she smiled, and the dimple was there," Ms Cuevas said.

Delimar Vera was thought to have died in a fire in 1997, when she was only 10 days old.

Investigators assumed the baby's body was consumed by the flames.

Trauma

Ms Cuevas escaped the blaze with her other children, but she never accepted that her baby had died - pointing to the fact a bedroom window was mysteriously open, even though it was December.

Carolyn Correa, a cousin by marriage of the girl's father, is alleged to have kidnapped the girl and taken her to New Jersey to raise her as her own daughter.

She has been charged with arson, kidnapping and 13 other counts.

Child psychologists say the change could be traumatic for the girl, who has left the only home and family she ever knew.

AP reports that her parents have decided to minimise the confusion by calling her by the name she was given by her alleged kidnapper - Aaliyah Hernandez.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3545413.stm
 
Child psychologists say the change could be traumatic for the girl, who has left the only home and family she ever knew.

They showed some video of the kid back with her real mum - she looked very happy and was talking with the press.

"So what are you going to do now?"
"Uh... get some pizza?"

David
 
For those stories about people being pronounced dead but being reluctant to accept the diagnosis:

Boy starts breathing as he's prepared for funeral
Toddler had been pronounced dead after drowning

The Associated Press
Updated: 1:53 p.m. ET May 28, 2004

BOISE, Idaho - A hospital worker preparing a 22-month-old for a funeral home noticed the boy was breathing — more than an hour after he had been pronounced dead from drowning.

Logan Pinto apparently wandered away from his baby sitter Thursday and fell into a canal near his home in Rexburg, about 275 miles east of Boise. He was submerged for nearly 30 minutes before police found him a half-mile downstream, said Rexburg police Capt. Randy Lewis.

Though an officer gave him CPR and emergency workers did everything they could to revive him, Lewis said, the boy was pronounced dead when it appeared the effort had failed. After giving the boy’s mother and stepfather — Debra and Joe Gould — some time to say goodbye, Madison Memorial Hospital nurse Mary Zollinger began to prepare Logan’s body for the funeral home.

But when she looked at the boy, she noticed his chest was slightly moving and realized that Logan was alive.

The boy was flown to Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City, where he was listed in critical condition Friday. Late Thursday, he was breathing on his own and his color had returned, but he was placed back on a respirator Friday, Lewis said.

“I’m just amazed and overwhelmed with what took place,” Lewis said. “They aggressively worked on him for quite a bit of time, and of course it’s a bad situation when you have to let the parents know that their son has passed away.”

But despair turned to joy when emergency workers learned the boy was alive.

“It’s called divine intervention, I think. I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe it hardly, especially after leaving there and seeing what had transpired,” Lewis said. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s joyous and relieving.”
msnbc.msn.com/id/5085797/?GT1=3391
Link is dead. No archived version found.


Small children and drowning (esp. in very cold water) are some of the 'best' circumstances for this kind of thing.

Emps
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Ahh, the dive reflex.

Wouldn't have thought the child would have been "dead" long enough to begin preparing the corpse for a funeral, but it's possible.
 
Yep it seems to be an old Fortean favourite (although I couldn't find too many other threads) and examples include people waking up at their funerals or worst during the postmortem!!

This is a sad story along these lines:

SAN FRANCISCO

Woman pronounced dead -- dies next day

Medics investigated for failing to take 90-year-old to ER

Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, July 10, 2004

The San Francisco Fire Department is investigating why a paramedic crew pronounced a 90-year-old woman dead and left her for the medical examiner, only to rush back to her Marina District home an hour later when investigators discovered she was alive.

The woman, Divia Masetti, died the next day after being taken to California Pacific Medical Center, authorities said Friday.

Masetti was discovered Wednesday in her house on Avila Street, caked in dried blood and urine and covered with flies and ants.

The neighbor who found her, Anna Iriartborde, said she promptly called 911 at 5:27 p.m. "I really thought she was dead," she said.

A paramedic, identified by authorities as Paul Jug, and firefighters from a nearby station house who showed up at 5:32 p.m. came to the same conclusion. Authorities said that rather than running an extensive check of vital signs, Jug pronounced Masetti dead at the scene.

The crew members radioed to communications that they had an "obvious dead on arrival" case, and they were leaving.

The paramedic crew left at 6:09 after police arrived and the medical examiner was en route. "When the investigators were preparing to remove her to the medical examiner's office, she showed signs of life,'' said Alan Pringle, chief investigator with the office.

Specifically, Masetti moaned when the coroner's investigators moved her, authorities said.

Paramedics were summoned again at 6:18, this time with an ambulance. By 6: 33, the ambulance was taking Masetti to the hospital, where she later opened her eyes.

She died the next morning. The cause of death has not been determined, but it appears she died of natural causes, Pringle said.

Fire Capt. Pete Howes said the department was investigating the matter as a "nontransport of a patient.'' He declined further comment and would not say what might happen to the paramedic or other crew members.

Jug did not return a call Friday seeking comment.

Howes did say that after a meeting with internal regulators last week, before the Masetti case, the department had agreed to a policy that dictates that paramedics must contact San Francisco General Hospital and run through a checklist of medical signs before deciding not to take patients under age 5 or over 55 to the hospital.

Howes would not say whether the paramedic crew that checked on Masetti had followed the checklist, which Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White had emphasized in a memo was "not voluntary."

Hayes-White ordered the policy put in place in June after reports she received suggested that paramedics had failed to take four patients to the hospital who should have gone there.

"There are a number of cases that are under investigation,'' said Michael Petrie, who is investigating those cases on behalf the Department of Public Health.

On Thursday, "in light of recent events," Fire Department medical director Dr. John Brown extended the policy to all patients.

Mayor Gavin Newsom said Friday that he had had a "tough conversation'' with Hayes-White "to make sure this doesn't happen again.''

"I'm very concerned about it,'' he said. "My heart goes out to her family. ''

It is unclear whether Masetti could have been saved had she been treated promptly. An autopsy is pending.

Iriartborde said she doesn't know what to make of it all. "I'm not surprised that they thought she was dead," she said. "But they must check. . . . I guess they did, because they spent some time up there.''

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/07/10/BAGUU7JAL620.DTL
 
Last edited by a moderator:
seems to be a fairly common event. and those are the ones we hear about. i'm sure some go unreported and are even covered up.
 
then there must be an awful lot who aren't dead when declared dead, but die soon after, the mistake never being discovered, or who are buried alive.

i heard that the victorians were really paranoid about being buried alive and had all kinds of little bells and signs and windows on their coffins so that people buried alive could alert those on the surface to their predicament.
 
Yep see:

forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1157
Link is obsolete. The current link is:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...ure-burial-fears-incidents-precautions.21581/

Obviously once things go that far we aren't going to hear about things unless they have all those bells and whistles in their coffin (sometimes literally) which is why most of the tales are pre-burial (and pre-post morem and embalming I suppose ;) ).

Emps
 
Last edited by a moderator:
My mother made us promise to cremate her as she was terrified of being buried alive..... :(
 
I'm not afraid of being buried alive but wish to be cremated anyway. Hygiene and all that.

S'funny, at the turn of the last century cremation was being pushed as the hygienic alternative to burial and now cremation is being seen as polluting. Woodland burial is the coming thing.
 
Back
Top