Back in the 18th century, one of the things that people were most terrified of was being buried alive. The invention of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation planted the idea in people's heads that even if they looked deceased, they could still be alive in there. One would think in the modern age that being declared dead without actually being dead wouldn't happen, but guess what? It does, all the damn time. Here are 10 stories of living people who refused to go quietly into the grave.
Judy Rivers
The federal government has something called the Death Master File, which sounds like the name of a kick-ass anime series but is really just a boring list of every single dead American citizen ever. When you get added to it, you lose your Social Security benefits, don't have to pay taxes, et cetera. Communications specialist
Judy Rivers learned all about it in 2010 when she was accidentally added to the Death Master File despite being alive, and it ruined her life. She was unable to open a bank account or get a line of credit. Things got worse for her when Rivers was actually arrested for identity theft -- of her own identity! At her lowest point, Rivers had to live out of her car for six months as she dealt with getting her name off of the list. Thankfully, she was able to set things right and testified before Congress on the problems with the system.
Donald Miller Jr.
You can't blame the state of Ohio for declaring
Donald Miller Jr. dead. In the early 1990s, owing thousands of dollars in child support, he mysteriously disappeared. His ex-wife, unable to locate him, applied for him to be considered deceased so their daughters could receive his Social Security benefits. After an attempt to locate him, the court agreed and everything was fine until 2013 when Miller showed up and applied for a driver's license. He had just been drifting through the Southeast for 20 years, working under the table. Here's where it gets weird, though: Even though he was standing in front of them, the Ohio court wouldn't reverse their decision.
Carlos Sanchez Ortiz De Salazar
Sometimes you just need to get away from it all. So when Spanish psychiatrist
Carlos Sanchez Ortiz De Salazar disappeared in 1995, his friends and family thought he'd committed suicide and had him declared dead a few years later. They were in for a bizarre surprise when a pair of mushroom pickers in northern Tuscany stumbled upon De Salazar's wilderness camp in 2015. He has been living alone in the wilderness since 1997, and told a park ranger that he was going to disappear somewhere else now that he'd been found. His family, naturally, aren't terribly happy about that and have committed to tracking him down and bringing him back to civilization.
Carlos Camejo
If you had to define the most nightmarish possible scenario, "waking up during your own autopsy" is pretty high up there. Venezuelan man
Carlos Camejo got into a nasty traffic accident in 2007 and was declared dead on arrival to the hospital. He was trucked down to the morgue for the customary autopsy when the coroners noticed that something was a bit off. After an incision in Camejo's face started bleeding excessively, they realized that he was actually still alive and rushed him back to a room for alive people. He got a fresh new facial scar from the whole ordeal but at least they didn't remove anything important.
Clairvius Narcisse
When we talk the living dead, the topic invariably turns to zombies. But they're not real, right? The case of
Clairvius Narcisse might persuade you otherwise. The Haitian man was admitted to Haiti's Albert Schweitzer Hospital in 1962 with a bad fever and pronounced dead two days later. He was buried in a cemetery near l'Estere, but his body was dug up a few days later and disappeared. Narcisse had been the victim of a poisoning, and his assailant gave him the antidote and kept him drugged and enslaved on a sugar plantation until he died in 1980. Narcisse escaped, slowly regained his mental faculties, and shared his bizarre story with the world that considered him dead.
Ishinosuke Uwano
A pervasive World War II urban legend is the story of a Japanese soldier stationed on a remote island who never learns of Japan's surrender and stays at his post for decades. The story of
Ishinosuke Uwano isn't quite so absurd, but it's still pretty amazing. Stationed on Sakhalin Island, when the war ended Uwano moved to the USSR, and eventually settled in Ukraine where he married a woman and fathered three children. Japan declared him officially dead in 2000, but six years later he shocked the world by showing up at the Japanese embassy in Kiev. He announced that he wanted to finally head back to Japan to see his family.
Lal Bihari
If you want to put one over on someone, having them declared legally dead is a pretty next-level prank. In 1975, Indian farmer
Lal Bihari went to his local government office to get a proof of identity certificate for a bank loan. He got a rude surprise when the clerks there told him that he was dead and couldn't have one. Apparently Bihari's uncle had gone in a few years ago and told them that he had died, leaving him next in line to claim his family property in Khalilabad. It took him nineteen years to convince the government that he was alive, and he founded the Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People to help other people in similar situations come back to legal life.
Maria de Jesus Arroyo
Remember how we talked about being buried alive a little bit ago? Get ready to freak out, because it's still happening -- sort of. In 2014, an elderly Boyle Heights, California, woman named
Maria de Jesus Arroyo suffered a severe heart attack and was pronounced dead at White Memorial Medical Center. Her body was placed in a bag and brought to the morgue, but while she was there Arroyo actually woke up -- not being dead after all -- and tried to claw her way out like something out of "The Walking Dead." Her frail body couldn't handle the shock and she died a second time for real in the morgue, but her family is suing the hospital.
Terri Thompson
For her entire life, doctors have been telling
Terri Thompson that she's not likely to make it. Diagnosed with a rare blood disease called hypogammaglobulin anemia at a young age, it was unlikely that she'd live beyond her 25th birthday. She doubled that estimate, but at the age of 49 was shocked to discover that even though she was alive and well, the government had gone ahead and declared her dead. When she went to the bank in 2009 to get some money, the teller said that the bank had received a notice that she had passed away and returned her Social Security check. Her health care benefits were also canceled, leaving her no way to get her medication. Thankfully, she was able to get enough media coverage to get her early death reversed.
Delimar Vera Cuevas
Let's end this with one of the most screwed up stories we've ever heard. In Frankford, Pennsylvania, the home of Luz Cuevas caught fire in 1997. All of Cuevas's family made it out alive except for her
daughter Delimar, only 10 days old. No trace of her body was found, but it was obvious that the raging inferno had totally consumed the infant. Fast forward to six years later when Cuevas saw a strangely familiar little girl at a birthday party. She sneakily grabbed some of the child's hair and took it to a DNA lab, where they confirmed a match. Luz's cousin by marriage Carolyn Correa had kidnapped the baby, started the fire to hide the crime, and raised the child as her own in New Jersey. She pleaded no contest and got nine to 30 years in prison.