‘Startled’: Woman found alive, heard knocking on coffin at crematorium
A woman has been found alive inside her coffin after temple staff heard a faint knocking when she was brought in for cremation.
A woman has been found alive at a crematorium in Thailand after temple staff heard a faint knocking sound from inside her coffin.
The 65-year-old woman was believed to be dead when she was driven by her brother to the Buddhist temple Wat Rat Prakhong Tham, in the Nonthaburi province outside Bangkok, to be cremated on Sunday.
The temple’s general manager Pairat Soodthoop, told the Associated Press he was speaking to the woman’s brother about cremation when he was “surprised” by a noise coming from inside the coffin.
“I asked them to open the coffin, and everyone was startled,” Mr Pairat told the news agency.
“I saw her opening her eyes slightly and knocking on the side of the coffin.
“She must have been knocking for quite some time.”
The temple shared a video on social media showing the woman moving her arm while lying in a white coffin in the back of a ute.
The video shows emergency service workers lifting the coffin out of the vehicle before the woman was carried onto an ambulance on a stretcher and transported to a local hospital.
The woman’s brother told Mr Pairat the woman had been bedridden for two years and appeared to stop breathing two days earlier.
Thinking she was dead, he drove nearly 500km from the province of Phitsanulok in Thailand to a hospital in Bangkok, where his sister wanted to donate her organs.
But the hospital refused as her brother did not have an official death certificate, Mr Pairat explained.
The brother then drove to the temple in Nonthaburi, which offers a free cremation service, but was again refused as he did not have the proper documentation.
Mr Pairat said he was explaining how the brother could obtain a death certificate when he heard the knocking from inside the coffin.
He said the temple would cover the woman’s medical expenses.
Originally published as ‘Startled’: Woman found alive, heard knocking on coffin at crematorium
