An elderly Ecuadorian woman recently became the focus of international media after she unexpectedly woke up during her own funeral.
Mrs. Bella Montoya, 76, who lived in the city of Babahoyo, the capital of Los Ríos province, was declared dead on the afternoon of June 9. Earlier that morning at 9 AM, she had been admitted to Martín Icaza Hospital in a state of high blood pressure, worsening heart disease, and stroke complications.
Doctors performed a complete resuscitation procedure but could not prevent the patient’s cardiac, circulatory, and respiratory arrest. After checking for any signs of life, Mrs. Bella was confirmed deceased.
Her body was transferred to a morgue and kept in a coffin from 2 PM to 6 PM that same day. However, when her son, Gilbert Barbera, arrived to arrange his mother’s burial, he was surprised to hear a heartbeat coming from the coffin.
Gilbert immediately opened it and discovered that Mrs. Bella was still alive. A video that circulated widely on Twitter showed what happened next:
Mrs. Bella Montoya, 76, from Babahoyo, Ecuador, wakes up after being declared dead on June 9.
Together with a funeral home staff member, Gilbert leaned her forward to help her breathe, while others called rescue teams. They placed Mrs. Bella on a stretcher and transported her back to Martín Icaza Hospital.
Doctors intubated her and admitted her to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). At the same time, Gilbert went to the Civil Registry office to cancel his mother’s death certificate.
Martín Icaza Hospital, where doctors had previously confirmed Mrs. Bella’s death, was also subjected to special inspection by a committee from Ecuador’s Ministry of Health. However, just one week after being in the ICU, Mrs. Bella was once again confirmed dead by doctors at Martín Icaza Hospital on June 16. The cause recorded in the documents was a cerebrovascular accident and ischemia.
“This time, my mother has really passed away,” Gilbert said after receiving the decision to cancel his mother’s death certificate. This meant he would have to return to the office to request a death certificate for his mother once again.
The “Resurrected” Dead
This rare incident in Ecuador is just one of many strange stories about the dead “coming back to life” reported continuously in recent years.
For example, in February of this year, an 82-year-old woman living in New York also unexpectedly woke up in a funeral home, nearly three hours after being declared dead. Last December, at a nursing home in the U.S., a middle-aged woman was also found alive, gasping for breath in a body bag in a morgue.
Two and a half hours earlier, a nurse had declared the woman dead through a dilation pupil test, with no breath reflex and pulse.
In 2021, a 40-year-old man in India who had a motorcycle accident was also confirmed dead in an autopsy report signed by his family submitted to the police.
The man was then taken to the morgue and refrigerated for seven hours before his sister-in-law arrived to see her brother-in-law one last time and was shocked to see the body move.
He was immediately warmed and transferred to an ambulance for transport to a nearby medical center. The man was later confirmed to have survived the critical condition.
This rare incident in Ecuador is just one of many strange stories about the dead “coming back to life.”
Not only recorded frequently in modern times, the phenomenon of the dead coming back to life has also appeared many times in history, particularly in the 18th century. This was a period when cholera was rampant, and due to the high number of victims, doctors feared that prolonged contact with them could lead to disease transmission, resulting in very cursory examinations of the corpses.
As a result, some people were buried alive. They were later found to have awakened in their tombs, with long hair and beards, hands raised and palms facing upwards.
Author Christine Quigley recounts in her book The Corpse: A History that in the early 1900s, a person was discovered to have been buried alive every week.
In 1905, English reformer William Tebb gathered evidence of 219 cases in which victims were nearly buried alive, 149 cases had been buried alive, and 10 cases where doctors had operated on the bodies of living patients because they believed the patients had died.
Notably, Tebb discovered two cases of “dead” individuals awakening right in the middle of their embalming process.
Scientific Explanation: Why Does This Happen?
Stephen Hughes, a medical professor at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK, stated that the current death-checking procedures only include pupil tests, breathing reflexes, and pulse checks. “Unfortunately, there have been cases where death was confirmed by this process, but the patient later showed signs of life,” Professor Hughes said.
There is a scientific explanation for this phenomenon, known as “Lazarus syndrome,” inspired by a character from the Bible.
The New Testament recounts that Jesus had a disciple named Lazarus who lived in the town of Bethany near Jerusalem. One day, Lazarus fell gravely ill, and his two sisters, Mary and Martha, went to find Jesus hoping He would heal their brother.
But when Jesus arrived, Lazarus had been dead for four days and was buried in a tomb. Jesus then asked the townsfolk to remove the stone from the tomb so He could bring Lazarus back to life.
“I am the resurrection and the life: he who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live; and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die,” Jesus said.
A painting reenacting the story of Jesus resurrecting Lazarus.
Although the story has a mystical quality, Lazarus was later used by scientists to name the phenomenon they defined as “the natural return of normal heart rhythm after failed resuscitation efforts.”
Lazarus is also used to refer to the return of heart activity after a patient has been declared dead. According to the Cleveland Clinic, the basic order of a Lazarus case consists of six steps:
- 1. The patient experiences cardiac arrest.
- 2. Doctors perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) with the hope of saving the patient.
- 3. The doctor confirms CPR is ineffective and concludes the patient has died.
- 4. Another doctor clinically checks for dilated pupils, no pulse, and no breath reflex, confirming the patient is dead. No further medical interventions are performed from that moment.
- 5. Minutes or even hours later, the patient naturally exhibits breathing reflexes and the heart rhythm returns.
- 6. Doctors confirm the patient’s circulatory functions have been restored. The patient receives intensive care.
To prevent Lazarus syndrome, doctors today are required to perform continuous CPR for 20 minutes regardless of the patient’s responses. They are also limited to less than 12 breaths per minute and must continue monitoring the victim for at least 10 minutes after a failed CPR.
To date, scientists remain uncertain about the causes of Lazarus syndrome, but they have a hypothesis known as “air trapping.”
This occurs when air is pushed into the lungs too quickly during artificial respiration, leaving the patient with no time to exhale, leading to air accumulation and increased pressure inside the chest cavity.
This “air trapping” eventually compresses the chest veins and heart, preventing blood flow and inadvertently causing continued circulatory arrest.
It takes time for the trapped air to gradually leave the lungs, reducing pressure in the chest cavity. Eventually, blood from the veins can flow back to the heart and then be pumped to the rest of the body.
At this point, the heart will restart, and the patient seems to “come back to life” from the previously determined death.
Hypothermia and side effects of some medications can cause clinical death.
Lazarus syndrome is a classic example of clinical death, defined as the absence of pulse, heartbeat, and breath. Meanwhile, another definition of death called biological death occurs when the patient’s brain completely ceases to function.
Once biological death occurs, we currently have no way to reverse it, although scientists are attempting to experiment with various methods on animals in the hope of saving dead brains.
For clinical death in humans, there remains hope for reversibility, especially in many cases where the victim is hypothermic. Hypothermia can slow heart rate and breathing to the point of being nearly undetectable, but the truth is the victim is still alive.
In 2013, a pregnant woman in Canada experienced a rupture of membranes and gave birth to a stillborn baby right on the sidewalk in freezing weather, as the doctor could not find a heartbeat for the child.
However, two hours later, the baby began to move and “came back to life.”
Janina Kolkiewicz, 91, who woke up in a cold storage unit in Poland in 2014 after being mistaken for dead.
In 2014, a 91-year-old woman unexpectedly woke up in a morgue in Poland. Janina Kolkiewicz had previously been declared dead and was placed in cold storage to preserve her body.
After 11 hours, a morgue worker noticed that the bag containing Kolkiewicz’s body was moving. He called her family and rescue teams, who then warmed her up with a bowl of soup, hot tea, and two pancakes.
Similar incidents have been reported where individuals presumed dead have been found alive after exposure to extreme cold, being buried in avalanches, or simply experiencing hypothermia.
When the heart stops beating for any reason, the tissues it serves will lack both oxygen and glucose, and may accumulate toxic waste. This gradually kills the cells. Once enough of them die, the major organs begin to fail, and the entire body is presumed dead.
The fragile cells of the brain are particularly susceptible to oxygen deprivation and typically begin to die within about 4 to 6 minutes. However, a drop in temperature can significantly extend this time: cold reduces the cells’ demand for oxygen and glucose, causing them to enter a hibernation state.
This results in clinical death but prevents biological death until the patient awakens.
Xanax, a sedative that can cause apparent death.
The side effects of some medications are another reason why living individuals may be mistakenly thought to be dead. Notably, patients believed to have overdosed on Diazepam (the brand name for Valium) or Alprazolam (the brand name for Xanax).
These are sedatives used to protect the brain from damage and are often combined with anesthesia during major surgeries, especially cardiovascular surgeries when circulation must be stopped.
Under normal circumstances, an overdose of Valium or Xanax can lead to bradycardia, respiratory depression, and decreased responsiveness, resulting in clinical death.
As sedatives protect the brain, once they are eliminated from the body, patients can wake from clinical death and return to normal health.
In 2014, a 24-year-old man in Kenya named Paul Mutora was also mistaken for dead after medical staff administered a drug called Atropine to him. This medication treats nerve agent poisoning and has the effect of slowing the heart rate.
This was the reason Mutora was presumed dead, before he woke up 15 hours later in the morgue, causing panic among the staff.
Catalepsy: A Strange Phenomenon Mimicking Death
Returning to the case of Bella Montoya, a 76-year-old woman in Ecuador who recently woke up at her own funeral, local media reported that she may have suffered from a condition known as Catalepsy, where patients lose consciousness and bodily sensation, putting them in a state of rigidity and immobility – often easily mistaken for the third stage of death known as rigor mortis.
According to forensic scales, a typical death goes through 5 stages. Stage 1 (corneal opacity) occurs immediately. Stage 2 (pallor mortis) happens within the first 15-120 minutes.
Stage 3 (rigor mortis) begins from the second hour and peaks at the 12th hour, during which the muscles of the body become stiff and cannot move. It is not until 36 hours later that this rigidity begins to dissipate, transitioning the body into stage 4 (livor mortis) when blood settles in the lower parts of the body, followed by stage 5 (decomposition).
Catalepsy, where patients lose consciousness and bodily sensation, putting them in a state of rigidity and immobility – often easily mistaken for the third stage of death known as rigor mortis.
In a cataleptic state, patients tend to mimic the rigidity of a corpse with symptoms of muscle stiffness, immobility, and unresponsiveness to external stimuli. Even when doctors apply strong physical force, such as pressing the philtrum, they do not respond to awaken.
Their breathing and heart rate also slow down, causing those in a cataleptic state to often be mistaken for dead.
According to a 2013 study, Catalepsy results from the blockade of certain dopamine receptors in the neural pathways related to motor behavior. Those most likely to fall into this state are patients with epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and schizophrenia.
Particularly, users of drugs and narcotics such as ketamine, cocaine, or certain antipsychotics can also enter this state.
Currently, there are no approved medications to treat Catalepsy; doctors can only address the underlying disease causing it or simply wait for the condition to naturally subside.
In conclusion, science offers numerous theories explaining the phenomenon of individuals “coming back to life,” which has increasingly appeared in media and social networks recently. But regardless of the cause, the ultimate explanation remains that these patients have not truly died.
Hypothermia, cataleptic rigidity reactions, certain medications, and especially Lazarus syndrome after cardiopulmonary resuscitation can all lead to apparent death. This serves as a reminder for doctors and medical staff to be exceedingly careful when confirming that a patient or individual has died, to prevent similar unfortunate events from occurring in the future.
