There are bad days, then there are days when someone tries to cremate you while you’re still alive. A woman in Bangkok learned that difference the hard way when temple staff heard a faint knocking coming from inside a white coffin and realized the woman inside wasn’t dead. She was, in fact, very much alive.
The scene unfolded at Wat Rat Prakhong Tham in Nonthaburi, where workers filmed the moment they opened the coffin and saw 65-year-old Anong Chaibun lifting her head. The Associated Press reported that her brother had driven her nearly 300 miles in the back of a pickup after believing she had stopped breathing two days earlier. His plan was to bring her to a Bangkok hospital because she had wanted to donate her organs, but the hospital wouldn’t accept her without an official death certificate.
Temple officials told AP they also refused to cremate her without paperwork, and that’s when they heard the knocking. Pairat Soodthoop, the temple’s general and financial affairs manager, said the sound was unmistakable. “I asked them to open the coffin, and everyone was startled,” he said. “She opened her eyes slightly and knocked on the side of the coffin.”
Woman Found Alive in Her Coffin Moments Before Cremation
Anong had been bedridden for two years and, according to her brother, had grown unresponsive. Once they realized she had been alive inside the coffin for who knows how long, they called for help and sent her to a nearby hospital. Temple leaders said they would cover her medical bills.
Insanely enough, this is not an isolated incident. It’s the latest in a string of people waking up inside morgues, funeral homes, and body bags. CBS News previously reported on a Nebraska woman who was declared dead at a nursing home, only to start breathing again two hours later at a funeral home. An Iowa care facility mistakenly sent a living woman to a mortuary in 2023, where staff watched her suddenly gasp for air. New York investigators looked into another case that same year after an 82-year-old woman revived shortly after being declared dead.
And then there was Shanghai, where a video in 2022 showed workers returning a body bag to a retirement home once they realized the occupant wasn’t actually dead. Several officials were punished.
Anong’s story adds another chapter to the “you won’t believe this” file that medical examiners and funeral directors never wanted. Thank god someone heard her knocking.
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