Man declared dead in crash but woke up 48 hours later inside freezing morgue | World | News
The man woke up screaming 48 hours later (Image: Getty Images)
A fiancée was left mourning her partner following what appeared to be a fatal car accident – except he was actually still breathing.
Sipho William Mdletshe was pronounced dead following a severe car collision in 1993, but merely 48 hours afterwards he was screaming to be released from the freezing mortuary he suddenly discovered himself trapped within. The man in his 20s, from the township of Sebokeng south of Johannesburg in South Africa, was promptly transported to a morgue.
He was subsequently placed in cold storage, as is standard procedure following such pronouncements. But the tale took a spine-chilling turn two days afterwards when morgue staff heard eerie sounds emanating from within one of the metal compartments.
Realising something was drastically amiss, workers opened the drawer and to their astonishment Mdletshe was breathing, having regained consciousness and cried out for assistance from within.
His survival was absolutely miraculous and, according to published accounts, he gradually came round following the collision, became sufficiently alert to understand his location, and then started screaming. This action ultimately saved his life, reports the Mirror.
The man had been declared dead (Image: Getty Images)
Nevertheless, the nightmare didn’t end there for unfortunate Mdletshe, reports Unilad. When he tried to reunite with his fiancée – who herself sustained minor injuries in the crash – she allegedly retreated in terror, convinced he was something supernatural after being informed of his death.
She even believed he was a zombie returned from the grave. In another extraordinary account of someone returning from the dead, the family of Essie Dunbar were heartbroken when she passed away aged just 30 following an epileptic seizure.
Her funeral was swiftly organised and she was laid to rest six feet below ground inside a wooden coffin in South Carolina, US in 1915.
However, her mourning sister arrived late for the service and requested the coffin be exhumed so she could pay her final respects.
What unfolded next defies imagination. Upon opening the lid, Essie was very much alive and smiling back at those gathered.
The ministers overseeing the service were thrown into panic and tumbled into the grave, with one sustaining broken ribs, according to ‘Buried Alive’, published in 2002.
Even Essie’s own relatives fled in terror, convinced they were witnessing something supernatural as the woman climbed out of the coffin and attempted to follow them. Astonishingly, following her harrowing experience, Essie resumed her quiet existence.
Accounts from decades afterwards describe her labouring in the fields, picking cotton and living on her own.
More recently, a woman who was pronounced dead at a hospital shockingly ‘came back to life’ whilst being transported to her own funeral last year. After her condition deteriorated, she was confirmed to have died and was transferred from the mortuary to the funeral parlour in preparation for her burial.
But staff were reportedly horrified when they discovered the elderly woman actually had a pulse. Adding to their alarm, she is said to have moved her fingers.
Paramedics at the funeral home in Son Valenti funeral parlour in Palma, Majorca confirmed she was alive and immediately rushed her back to the city’s Juan March de Bunyola Hospital.
