On today's episode, we explore the astonishing stories of individuals who were mistakenly presumed dead, only to awaken during their own funerals or while in the somber confines of a funeral home. Prepare to be captivated by these chilling accounts of the living encountering the realm of the dead, as we delve into the baffling circumstances, the shocking twists, and the eerie aftermath that surround these inexplicable phenomena. Are you ready?
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:30 So, this week we were supposed to be interviewing Trisha West who was Kaytlynn Cargill's mother.
0:37 But that is going to be delayed slightly.
0:41 The reason is because this is the anniversary of the period of time, six years ago when Kaytlynn went missing and then I guess the anniversary of her being found would have been tomorrow.
0:56 So Trisha has asked that we delay her interview for a week or so that she can kind of get through this rough time because I'm sure it's very difficult for her.
1:10 So she has asked us to wait, and we are doing so to respect her wishes.
1:16 This week, we're just going to talk about something that's a little bit different, something that we haven't really talked about before, but that we've all seen in the news and we've all kind of wondered about that's when people are at a funeral home or in the morgue and are actually later found to be breathing and alive.
1:35 It's rather weird.
1:37 I have to say I've never experienced this, although I would love to get to a crime scene and then find that someone's actually alive when everyone thought they were dead.
1:47 But it would be kind of different, but I've never experienced it recently.
1:52 In Ecuador, there was a 76-year-old, she was declared dead at the hospital and then she was taken to a funeral home and the family was going to have a wake when she was there for her wake.
2:09 About five hours after she got there, the family heard sounds coming from the coffin.
2:16 Now, her name is Bella Montoya.
2:18 By the way, she was a retired nurse, and she was pronounced a week after she was admitted to IC U.
2:26 She was brought to the hospital on June 9th.
2:28 She had suffered a stroke.
2:30 So here she is now at the funeral home.
2:33 Her wake is taking place the noise coming from the coffin.
2:38 Now she was inside the coffin, wrapped in sheets, but she was hitting the coffin.
2:45 Ok.
2:46 So she was breathing heavily when the family opened it and was removed and taken by ambulance to the hospital.
2:55 She was put back in IC U and she was there for seven days, but she eventually did pass away amazing that she could hit the coffin after having a stroke.
3:12 She obviously knew for the most part somewhat what was going on.
3:17 That was just unbelievable.
3:19 Now, I looked on YouTube, because there's a video on YouTube.
3:25 Somebody actually recorded when they heard her and when they opened the coffin and recorded her that she was agonal breathing.
3:35 So she was barely breathing.
3:36 But then she'd been laying in a closed coffin for five hours.
3:40 So, I mean, who wouldn't be struggling for air?
3:43 There's no oxygen in there anyway.
3:45 I found that to be pretty amazing.
3:47 And actually that she lived another seven days after that is amazing.
3:53 I don't even think she was incubated.
3:55 I think she was just on oxygen.
3:57 So that's crazy.
3:59 And of course she, this was right after her death.
4:03 And so she obviously was not embalmed or anything like that.
4:08 There had been no postmortem preparation done at this point.
4:14 She was just taken straight from the hospital to the funeral home without anything else being done.
4:21 So obviously, that's how this happened.
4:22 But there are several cases and I mean, I know that y'all have heard of them because we hear of them in the news and we're like, what the heck are people that are pronounced and then later start breathing.
4:33 But there was another case in 2018 in South Africa where a woman was discovered alive in a mortuary refrigerator.
4:42 So she'd been declared dead by paramedics.
4:46 She was involved in a car accident.
4:48 She was one of several people involved in this car accident.
4:52 Back on June 24th of 2017, 2 other people actually died in the accident, but she was declared dead on scene by paramedics and then taken to the morgue.
5:08 And then a morgue worker went to check on her body and she was breathing.
5:15 This seems to happen pretty frequently again in February.
5:20 So this year 2023 in Iowa, a funeral home worker found a woman alive after she had been pronounced.
5:28 So she was at the Glen Oaks Alzheimer's special care Center, and she was placed on hospice and so was pronounced by her hospice nurse.
5:42 And again, I want to say we get a lot of hospice deaths reported to us and they are reported to us by RNS and LVNS.
5:53 So I don't know how it is in the State of Iowa, but in the state of Texas, LVNS cannot pronounce death.
6:01 It has to be confirmed by a doctor who is not on scene.
6:08 They're called by the LVN.
6:10 And then the doctor pronounces much like here in Texas, a medical director for the fire department basically pronounces for EMS.
6:20 So they're saying, yeah, she's not breathing, there's no pulse and then the doctor says, ok, time of death is this?
6:27 So in this particular case at this Alzheimer's special care center, the hospice nurse was an LVN.
6:34 So she I'm sure confirmed no pulse called the doctor.
6:40 And the doctor pronounced the time of death as a certain time.
6:43 And then at that point, they called the funeral home.
6:47 The funeral home comes and picks up the deceased.
6:50 So the worker at the funeral home unzipped the bag, the body bag that she had been placed in and saw her chest moving up and down and then she gasped for air.
7:05 So they were able to find a pulse and even though there was no verbal response, she wasn't talking and there was no eye movement.
7:14 She was taken to the hospital and then apparently was stable enough.
7:21 Well, of course, she was in hospice.
7:22 So they're not really going to do any life saving measures, but she was taken back to the hospital and then back to the nursing home.
7:31 So she was taken back where she originally started, and she actually died about two hours later.
7:39 So the department of Inspections and Appeals in Iowa actually issued two state violations to that nursing home, which totaled about $10,000.
7:50 So basically in a nutshell, I mean, you have to be able to recognize when someone's actually deceased before you pronounce them and have a funeral home, come pick them up.
8:02 Now, many times when someone is on hospice or just when they're close to death, you know, their respirations become shallow, sometimes difficult to detect.
8:15 And that's why at the hospitals here are most of them anyway, in the emergency rooms, they do an ultrasound to look at the heart and confirm that it has stopped beating usually before they pronounce.
8:32 So anyway, you have to be able to, I mean, because sometimes the pulse is going to be super, super thready and really weak.
8:41 It's not going to be a bounding strong boom, boom, boom pulse that you would feel in a 20-year-old.
8:48 It's going to be very hard to feel with your hands.
8:52 When you're trying to check it on the wrist, their respirations may be so shallow and their chest may not move up and down that you think that they're deceased, but that's not always the case.
9:09 So in November of 2021 there was another case of a man in India.
9:16 This is happening everywhere, but he was actually hit by a motorbike on November 18th of 2021.
9:25 He was taken to a hospital, obviously in critical condition.
9:30 He was pronounced dead and kept in a morgue freezer for seven hours.
9:37 Apparently, his injuries were pretty drastic, and he had enough facial injuries that he could not be identified.
9:47 And so his family, we do not do this at our office, and some do, but we do not.
9:55 But his family came to the morgue to identify him and noticed that he was breathing.
10:03 So I don't know the final outcome of that, but obviously, his injuries were pretty bad, probably had a lot of internal bleeding and obviously a head injury of some sort, but that would be crazy to show up at the morgue to identify your dead family member and then actually notice that they're breathing so super crazy.
10:27 20-year-old in Michigan, this again was in 2020 she was declared dead and taken to a funeral home after the fact and then found to be breathing.
10:44 And these are not all old people, obviously, I mean, 45 years old, 20 years old, 37-year-old.
10:50 But also, you know, you've got that occasional 80-year-old that's going to start spontaneous respirations again.
11:01 There's a 37-year-old in Ohio who collapsed at home.
11:06 So his heart stopped and because of his age, I'm sure they did 45 minutes of CPR.
11:15 He was taken to the hospital; he was pronounced and then family was in the room kind of saying their goodbyes visiting.
11:23 And then several minutes later, the family noticed that there was a heart rhythm on the monitor.
11:32 A week later y'all, he went home like he was discharged like he was, I mean, I don't want to say fine.
11:39 He may have had some residual effects because I'm sure his brain went without oxygen for a short time, but he was actually sent home, which is just amazing.
11:50 I found conflicting reports, but there have been around 63 cases documented in medical journals where this happens.
12:00 It's just the circulation returns after the heart stops.
12:05 It's called Lazarus syndrome and it is a delayed return of spontaneous circulation after CPR it's very rare.
12:16 It's a very rare syndrome first of all.
12:18 But they're saying because of this, that you should wait at least 10 minutes after someone is technically pronounced dead before you zip them up in a body bag.
12:30 Because during those 10 minutes is when, if this is going to happen, it's most likely for it to happen.
12:39 But it only happens after CPR has been done on someone.
12:45 So that really doesn't explain some of the cases like the hospice patient, CPR was not done on her.
12:53 Obviously, she was in hospice, she was expected to die.
12:56 So there was no CPR done on her.
12:59 So it doesn't explain her case other than the fact that maybe her pulse was so weak and thready that they couldn't palpate it and then her respirations were so shallow that no one could really tell that her chest was rising and falling.
13:17 But this particular Lazarus syndrome typically is thought to only happen after CPR is performed.
13:26 Now, a lot of research, there's been some, it's so rare that it's hard to know, but doctors feel that it could be from air trapped in the lungs due to hyperventilation while CPR is being done.
13:46 You know, we're bagging or if you're at a residence and you don't have a bag, you're blowing air, which, you know, I know CPR has changed over the years, but this is from air that's being trapped in the lungs while CPR is being done.
14:02 So it's probably most likely at the hospital because we're hyper ventilating with the airbag.
14:09 But the longest time someone has been dead supposedly and then came back to life is 45 minutes.
14:17 So I don't know where they got that particular statistic.
14:22 I know the lady in the coffin who had been there for five hours had probably been breathing or been alive longer, obviously.
14:32 But after eight hours without oxygen, those brain cells are all going to die.
14:39 But the Lazarus syndrome, apparently when someone experiences that their circulation typically returns within 10 minutes of CPR being stopped.
14:54 I mean, that's amazing.
14:56 That would be great.
14:57 Now, that doesn't mean that the existing problems still don't exist, and that the person may not still need surgery.
15:05 And I mean, they're obviously going to still have to spend some time in the hospital if they're taken back to a hospital setting.
15:10 But it’s crazy.
15:12 I mean, you've heard about it, and I used to be afraid of that, like whenever I would go into the morgue, like I don't work at ME’s office now where we have a morgue.
15:21 So I don't have the need to go into one.
15:23 But when I worked in Harris County, for example, in Houston, the morgue was always full.
15:30 I mean, there was never a day where it was empty.
15:33 You would go in there to get something or to look at someone and there would just always be this fear for me, that someone would sit up in their body bag and I mean, it again never happened.
15:47 I don't believe it's ever happened to anyone there.
15:49 It was just a weird feeling, you know, that what if they're not dead, you know, but it was just, it kind of creeped me out.
15:57 But so of the 63 cases, 18 of those people who were actually pronounced dead managed to make a full recovery.
16:08 And so these people were discharged home.
16:13 So, can you imagine laying in a cold morgue in a body bag and then end up going back to the hospital and then end up being discharged back home.
16:28 So weird.
16:29 But I know that there have been just a lot of cases where this has happened.
16:34 And so I thought it would be kind of cool to research it.
16:36 And the Lazarus syndrome was the only thing that I could really come up with as far as a possible explanation.
16:43 But I just thought that it would be something that everyone's interested in because you always hear of those stories.
16:48 You know, I mean, of course, once someone is embalmed, the chances of this happening are 0% because they've been embalmed, they don't have blood flow anymore and there's no possibility of spontaneous respirations, but none of these people were embalmed.
17:05 Like keep in mind this all happened pretty much within probably minutes or hours of them being pronounced.
17:14 So again, no postmortem care as far as embalming had been done on any of these people and in many countries and many religions, if you're buried within 24 hours, you don't have to be embalmed.
17:29 I know that my grandmother passed away years and years and years ago.
17:34 I can remember that we buried her within 24 hours.
17:39 That was so she wouldn't have to be embalmed.
17:42 I think the reason for that was money.
17:45 I'm not 100% sure.
17:47 But I'm pretty sure that that's why my family did it that way is because embalming was expensive.
17:51 And if they buried her quickly, they wouldn't have to pay for that.
17:55 But I know in many countries they do have different rituals.
18:00 So many times people are buried without being embalmed.
18:03 And you've seen those movies where people are buried alive, you know, whether it be to be tortured by their killer or whatever.
18:11 But that's always been just like a horrifying thought to me.
18:15 I mean, drowning or being buried alive would just be, oh my God.
18:20 I don't even want to think about it, but none of these people have been buried again.
18:24 They were all pronounced minutes or hours prior.
18:28 It's just crazy.
18:30 I mean, I can't imagine.
18:31 And that fact that there were actually 18 of the 63 that were actually fully recovered and went home.
18:40 I mean, that is unbelievable.
18:41 So that's kind of a happy story.
18:44 Right?
18:44 So I wanted to share something kind of, I guess, somewhat upbeat I don't know if you could say that it is, but somewhat upbeat.
18:52 We will try to meet again with Trisha this week again.
18:57 I'm not sure.
18:58 I really, I don't want to pressure her.
19:00 I know it's a really rough week for her on the 19th of June is when Kaytlynn went missing and then I believe the 21st, which is two days later is when her body was found.
19:13 So we're right there in that period of time where it was the hardest for her, I'm sure.
19:20 And it continues to be hard.
19:22 And so everyone say a little prayer for her and we will try to get a hold of her again.
19:29 I don't want to put too much pressure on her.
19:31 But in the next week and if she is still not feeling it, we're going to give her a little bit more time.
19:37 But we will have her on here probably in the next few weeks, at least.
19:41 But I encourage you because this is super interesting.
19:44 Go to YouTube and look for the 76-year-old in Ecuador that was found alive in her coffin.
19:50 The video is on there.
19:51 You can use any of those to search for her, any of those words, probably 76-year-old or a woman in coffin and you'll probably be able to find it.
20:00 But I don't think it's been taken down.
20:02 I don't know why it would be, but they actually lift her out of it and put her in an ambulance.
20:06 So it shows it all on video and you can actually see her breathing, struggling to breathe, but somewhat breathing and then taken back to the hospital where she lived for seven more days.
20:17 Anyway, hang top for me for the interview.
20:21Thank you so much for listening.
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