It’s the stuff of horror movies, the undertaker working late, the movement of the coffin lid behind him… he turns to see a woman rising from the coffin and he collapses to the floor in a dead faint.

Well, that is pretty much what happened in Germany, where a funeral director at the Munstermann funeral parlour received delivery of an elderly deceased lady from a local elderly residence home in city of Gelsenkirchen. The undertaker was working close to the coffin when the woman lifted the lid and groaned, “Where am I?”

It was at this point that the undertaker passed out. He awoke, managed to get a grip on reality and immediately examined the woman, who, by now, was lying back down in the coffin with her eyes open. He immediately contacted the ambulance service who rushed to the scene. They said she was definitely
alive and whisked off to hospital. Unfortunately, she died not long after being admitted.

It turns out, the woman was discovered in her bed at the retirement home, allegedly not breathing. A doctor was called who confirmed the lady was dead and advised staff to contact the undertakers to collect the ‘deceased.’ Since the incident, one Lother Burger, who runs the home said: “This is terrible and inexplicable and we are under siege from the press, we are being pilloried.”

Meanwhile, a police investigation has begun to try and establish if there was failures in the handling of the woman’s ‘death.’