From the woman who woke up in a body bag to the man who was abandoned on Mount Everest, these wrongly declared deaths will chill you to the bone.
It ’s a nightmare billet — waking up in a dark , enclosed space , screaming for help with no cue how you baffle there or why . For some people , however , that nightmare became a horrifying reality .
It should be easy to tell if someone is dead , but that is n’t always dependable . Some of the people on this list made it all the way to the morgue before anyone take in they were still breathing . Others were found active in their casket , only to die for real soon afterward . And a prime few lived through experience that , for all intents and purposes , shouldhave killed them .
But in each case — whether it has a well-chosen ending or a tragical finis — one affair remains coherent . All of these hoi polloi were consider to be dead , but they were n’t . Here ’s what happened to them after they were found alive .
Vickie Kettlewell/StarTribuneJean Hilliard and her parents, after she recovered from being frozen.
Jean Hilliard: The Teenager Who Was “Frozen Solid” In The Snow For Six Hours
Vickie Kettlewell / StarTribuneJean Hilliard and her parent , after she regain from being frozen .
On a December night in 1980 , 19 - year - oldJean Hilliardwas drive back home after a night out with friends in Lengby , Minnesota . The atmosphere was bitter cold , and the temperature was around -22 point Fahrenheit .
She had hire her dad ’s Ford LTD — a rear - wheel - drive fomite miss anti - lock brakes . The car end up skid into a ditch , so Jean set out out to walk the two mile to her friend Wally Nelson ’s house to ask him for help .
But the cold temperatures and dark of the nighttime made the tripper seem far longer than it ought to have been , and when Jean Hilliard finally see the light of Wally Nelson ’s house , her vision suddenly went black .
Nelson awoke the next forenoon with a adult female he ’d taken home the night before to bump a shocking surprise in his yard , about 15 foot from the door . It was Jean , his best acquaintance ’s lady friend , frozen blotto , eyes astray open .
“ I think she was dead , ” Nelson said . “ Froze stiffer than a board , but I watch a few bubbles coming out of her olfactory organ . ” He loaded the frosty girl into his companion ’s car and rushed her to the nearest hospital in Fosston .
Doctors were n’t optimistic about Jean ’s condition . Her tegument was so frozen that it could n’t be pierce with a hypodermic needle . Her torso temperature did n’t record on the thermometer . Her grimace was ashen . According toThe New York Times , the attending physician Dr. George Sather say , “ The body was cold , all firm , just like a opus of meat out of a cryptic frost . ”
Yet , by some miracle , as doctors step by step unthaw her out with heating plant pads , they observe a fallible pulse . Jean ’s body temperature was still well below normal , but she was alive . Within hours , she was speaking coherently , worrying that her forefather would be worried about his wrecked car .
Jean had no idea that her folk — and several other members of her community of interests — had drop the whole morning merely praying for her survival . And of course , they were overjoyed to find oneself out she had dwell . But what seemed to others to be a miracle , felt like nothing special at all to Jean .
“ It ’s like I fell gone and wake up in the hospital , ” she said . “ I did n’t see the light or anything like that . It was kind of disappointing . So many people talk about that , and I did n’t get anything . ” In the end , Jean Hilliard run on to contribute a normal life story , with no ill effect lingering from her time on ice .
