A Chinese woman was over 70 years old and had been battling cerebral thrombosis for more than a decade, in addition to cancer that doctors already considered untreatable.
On September 8, her family in a village in Hejian, Cangzhou, Hebei Province, found no signs of life. They placed her in a refrigerated coffin while waiting for relatives who lived far away. But the following night, her daughter-in-law heard something: a buzzing, a groan, a sound that should not come from a closed coffin. The family took her out immediately.
By September 11, the woman had regained some consciousness. She opened her eyes, although she could not eat or drink, and remained in critical condition. That same night, she died, this time for good. She was buried on September 13. A village official later explained that the coffin was in refrigeration mode, not deep-freezing mode, which allowed her vital signs, weak but present, to manifest again. Chinese doctors call this “apparent death”: a pulse so faint that it can be mistaken for definitive silence.