An emergency rescue team transports an elderly woman discovered to still be alive after being considered deceased to a local hospital before her scheduled cremation at Wat Rat Prakhong Tham temple, Nonthaburi province, Thailand. Wat Rat Prakhong Tham via AP

A woman in Thailand who was found alive in her coffin at a Buddhist temple was saved from organ donation and cremation because her brother didn't have a death certificate.

Wat Rat Prakhong Tham, a Buddhist temple in the province of Nonthaburi on the outskirts of Bangkok, posted a video on its Facebook page showing a woman lying in a white coffin in the back of a pickup truck. She was slightly moving her arms and head.

Pairat Soodthoop, the temple's general and financial affairs manager, told The Associated Press on Monday that the 65-year-old woman's brother drove her from the province of Phitsanulok to be cremated.

He said they heard a faint knock coming from the coffin.

"I was a bit surprised, so I asked them to open the coffin, and everyone was startled," he said. "I saw her opening her eyes slightly and knocking on the side of the coffin. She must have been knocking for quite some time."

According to Pairat, the woman's brother said she had been bedridden for about two years and had become unresponsive, appearing to stop breathing two days ago.

The brother placed her in a coffin and journeyed about 300 miles to a hospital in Bangkok, to which the woman had previously expressed a wish to donate her organs.

Pairat said the hospital refused to accept the woman's body because her brother didn't have an official death certificate. When the brother approached the temple for a cremation, he was also refused due to the missing document.

The temple manager said that while he was explaining how to obtain a death certificate, that is when they heard the knocking. The temple staff assessed her and sent her to a nearby hospital for treatment.

The abbot said the temple would cover her medical expenses, according to Pairat.

Similar instances of a person being found alive at funeral homes or morgues have been reported in the past.

In June 2024, a 74-year-old Nebraska woman declared dead at a nursing home was found breathing at a funeral home two hours later.

In January 2023, a 66-year-old woman was pronounced dead at an Iowa care facility after an employee said she "did not feel a pulse" and that the woman was not breathing. After she was taken to a funeral home, the woman woke up "gasping for air."

That same year, a New York funeral home found an 82-year-old woman alive and breathing shortly after she was declared dead at a nursing home.

In 2002, five officials in Shanghai, China, were punished, and a doctor had their license revoked after a video showed funeral parlor workers returning a body bag containing a live person to a retirement home.

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