Dead But Alive

I have talked in the past about the amount of people who disappear from this planet every year, but I have never talked about the amount of people who were thought to be dead and suddenly were found. This happens a lot more times than we suspect. Sometimes it is just a simple thing like an obituary printed in a paper while the person is alive. There has been quite a few of these. Most large newspapers have obituaries made out in advance for famous people and when they get information one of these famous people has died they grab their obits and rush them to publication. There are also those people who want their obits published while they are alive for various reasons. Alan Abel was a comedian, writer and filmmaker who liked to create hoaxes. He managed to get the NY Times to publish his obituary as a joke when he was alive. A British criminal who was a serial killer decided to fake his death to avoid the police, his name was Anthony John Allen. He faked his own drowning off Beach Head in 1966. I presume he picked this spot because it is known in Britain as the most famous suicide spot in the country.

When we talk about mistakes made by publishing obituaries while people are still alive, one of the strangest ones happened again in Britain when Rex Alston a retired BBC sports commentator had his obituary published in 1985 and then his wedding announcement published by the same paper. Sometimes pranks are played on people as we know and one was a prank played on William Baer a New York University professor. His students convinced the NY Times he died and they published his obituary in 1942. Another rather more embarrassing death announcement was made about Lucien Bouchard the former premier of Quebec. A network began broadcasting a live tribute to him after announcing his death only to find out he was still alive. They blamed Radio-Canada for the error while Radio-Canada blamed them.

Having your obituary published when you are still alive is bad enough, but there is something worse, much worse and that is being buried while you are still alive. The case of Angelo Hays has been called the worst case of premature burial in the 20th century. Hays had been riding on a motorcycle and was thrown from it head first into a brick wall. His body was such a mess his relatives were not allowed to look at it. He was examined by several doctors who found no pulse and buried three days later. An insurance company had the body exhumed two days later because they were conducting an insurance investigation. It was found his body was still warm which shocked the investigators. It turned out he had been in a coma so he didn’t need much oxygen. The man recovered fully after several operations. In 1915 a woman named Essie Dunbar who was an epileptic died from a severe attack of epilepsy, or so they thought. The funeral had been delayed one day so a sister could be present, but she was late and the body was buried. When the sister got there she demanded the coffin be uncovered so she could see her sister one more time. When the coffin was dug up and the lid removed, Essie Dunbar sat straight up.

There have been many people who were thought to be dead, but were found years later when they really died. A woman had disappeared eleven years ago. She had lived in Lititz Pennsylvania and her name is Brenda Heist. She was found living in the Florida Keys on Key Largo. When the Florida police contacted the Lititz Borough Police a detective confirmed this was the woman he had been looking for since 2002. The detective said, “she left just on a split-second whim and decided to just leave, and turn her back on her family and on her life, and pursue a life with these homeless people to hitchhike down to Florida."

A man in Ohio petitioned the court. He had been declared legally dead over twenty years ago and wanted to be declared alive. He had disappeared and his ex-wife asked a judge for the declaration after he went missing so her daughters could receive Social Security benefits. The man had owed tens of thousands of dollars in child support when he disappeared. He pled his case before the judge stating he was an alcoholic and had drifted around for all those years. He was petitioning the court because he needs a driver’s license and needs a Social Security number. The man was barking up the wrong tree however and the judge order the man to stay dead and ended his case.

A woman in Croatia was reported missing in 1966. Her name was Hedviga Golik. She was found 42 years later sitting in front of her television dead. She had made herself a cup of tea and sat in a chair facing the television. No one had looked for her in the flat because everyone thought she had moved out. It is hard to believe something like this could happen anywhere in the world, but it did. The reason her body was finally found was the authorities had broken into the flat to determine who owned it. The tenants had notified the ownersΒ  and city services that no one had used the apartment since they thought 1970, but it took four decades to get things going and for the authorities to check. This may have been due to all the fighting in the country. Another woman had died in her London flat and no one noticed for three years. When authorities broke into her flat, her television was still on. The only reason the authorities broke into the flat was there were rent arrears. The woman was laying on a couch, but she was a skeleton and an unopened pile of Christmas presents were on the floor and a large pile of mail lay behind the slot on the door. It was impossible to tell the cause of death due to decomposition but authorities believed it was due to natural causes.

Not all stories of this type have to do with humans. A cat was run over by a car and declared dead. Its owner buried it. You would think this was the end of the story but it wasn’t. The cat returned five days later appearing outside the home of the people who owned it. It had a terrible wound on its head and some described it as looking like a zombie. Apparently the cat was not dead only wounded and managed to claw its way out of the grave. The name of the cat is Bart. He had head trauma, a broken jaw and his eye was damaged. He will have a blind eye, but it seems that other than that he will recover. Bart is now being called the Miracle Cat.
It is said about 40 people per day who are alive are declared dead by federal agencies.