7 death-like ailments that could leave you buried alive

Yesterday, The Guardian reported on a story in which a Honduran family smashed open a recently sealed tomb, believing the teenager buried inside to still be alive. The pregnant teen had become ill in a way that had raised concerns of demonic possession—and so a family sent for a man of the cloth.

“The pastor asked her to repeat the word of God and she refused,” Nelsy’s boyfriend Rody Gonzales told Univision. “Another voice was coming out of her.”

After her condition worsened, she was taken to the hospital. She was pronounced dead hours later—from a heart attack.

Soon after the girl was buried, Gonzales and a cemetery worker believed they heard banging from inside her tomb. After smashing it open, the family reported that she had bruises on her fingers and that the glass panel over her face was broken.

The girl, however, showed no signs of life, and the decomposition of the body could easily have explained the changes—meaning she was probably deceased the whole time. Nonetheless, the notion of mistaken burial has long been a fear that plagues humankind, so we wondered: Is it truly possible to be taken for dead? And if so, what causes it?

1. Lazarus phenomenon

There are, in fact, 38 known cases of people seemingly rising from the dead after flatlining—otherwise known at the “Lazarus phenomenon”. In these cases, the heart of the patients completely stopped, and was unresponsive to CPR or defibrillation, and they were declared dead. Many of the 38 were found snoring in the morgue less than an hour later; we can only hope one of them shouted “I’m not dead yet!”

It’s unclear how his phenomenon happens, but the thought is CPR causes buildup of pressure in the chest that prevents the heart from restarting. Once the pressure clears, the heart expands and triggers the heart’s electrical impulses, restarting the heartbeat.

2. Brain dead

Besides the heart stopping, there are many cases of people being declared brain dead—and then being discovered with signs of life after re-checking. For example, a UK teen in 2012 had four specialists declare him brain dead—only to have his parents insist he be checked again. A neurosurgeon found faint signs of life; he woke up from his coma two weeks later.

3. Locked-in-Syndrome

In 2013, a UK woman suffered a massive stroke and went into a vegetative state—or so they thought. While they discussed her life support, she was actually fully conscious, but was suffering from Locked-In Syndrome. In Locked-In Syndrome, patients are awake, but cannot move or speak at all (except sometimes for their eyelids, like Jean-Dominique Bauby)—and can take years for them to be recognized as conscious. (In Martin Pistorious’ case, it was 12.)

4. Catalepsy

Another brain condition that can create the impression of death is catalepsy, in which a person is often immobile and in a trancelike mental state. Some have hypothesized that the Honduran teenager suffered from this prior to her burial.

5. Hypothermia, poisoning, et al (which is how we added up to 7)

Several other conditions or substances can create the appearance the one is dead. Hypothermia presents as death before resuscitation, and there are cases of people recovering from snake venom or pufferfish toxin after being declared dead.

Further, an ineffective medical practitioner may miss signs of life, especially in cases of temporary paralysis, for instance with spinal cord trauma or botulism infections, among others.

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