Grandma returns from the dead, fixes lunch, scares family

[JTFrog]

http://now.msn.com/now/0301-grandma-is-alive.aspx

​No one expects to walk into the kitchen and discover their recently-deceased grandmother calmly cooking a meal. That Stephen King-worthy scenario happened to one Chinese family, after 95-year old Li Xiufeng climbed out of her unsealed coffin, six days after she'd been found "dead" in her bedroom. According to The Mirror, after Xiufeng suffered what was thought to be a fatal head injury, plans were made for her funeral, including holding an in-home wake for friends and family. Her coffin had not yet been permanently closed, giving Xiufeng the opportunity to escape after waking from what a doctor described as an "artificial" death and what her family probably called "the reason we all just soiled ourselves."

[Renew Deal]

1. I wonder how many people die each year by being pronounced dead when they're not.

[JTFrog]

2. One of my biggest fears

has always been that I'd be wrongly pronounced dead and buried alive. Used to have nightmares about that after watching Kill Bill.

[Denninmi]

6. Well then, be sure to specify that your body be embalmed. Or be cremated.

Trust me, if you research what is done to the human body in the embalming process, you would learn there is no way anyone would survive that. If you were somehow just deeply comatose and appeared to be dead, the embalming process would definitely finish the job.

[Generic Brad]

11. I'm going to specify they try to wake me first

As a precursor to embalming. Just to be really safe.

[Curmudgeoness]

4. "Saved by the bell." "Graveyard shift." If I remember correctly,

it used to be said that these old sayings originated from a time when some of the wealth people would be buried with a devise that would ring a bell if the person woke up in the ground. They claim this is just a myth, but it is obvious that people have worried about this forever. Maybe the Native Americans who put their dead on platforms had the right idea.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. Not a myth at all.

"A safety coffin or security coffin is a coffin fitted with a mechanism to prevent premature burial or allow the occupant to signal that he/ she has been buried alive. A large number of designs for safety coffins were patented during the 18th and 19th centuries and variations on the idea are still available today."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_coffin

The above site has a really good general overview of the types of safety devices invented over the years, starting in the 1600's.

[Little Star]

3. OMG!!!

[Curmudgeoness]

5. I am curious to know

how grandma felt about crawling out of a coffin.

[drm604]

8. Apparently it didn't upset her too much.

They found her cooking a meal.

Then again, I suppose she was really hungry after six days, so maybe her hunger overrode her shock.

[Curmudgeoness]

10. Old people are just too cool....

they just roll with the punches.

[shanti]

9. yowza!

i'm not surprised that they shat themselves!

[trusty elf]

12. Makes me think of Poe's "The Premature Burial".

[Number23]

13. K&R for the title alone!