Walter Williams was 78 years old and had been in hospice care for weeks because of heart failure when, on a Wednesday night in late February 2014, his family called to report that he had died.
The coroner in Holmes County, Mississippi, found no pulse or heartbeat and declared him dead. His nephew, Eddie Hester, watched as they put him in a body bag and zipped it shut. They took him to Porter and Sons Funeral Home and laid him on the embalming table.
At dawn, as the employees were getting ready to begin, the bag moved. Williams was kicking from inside and breathing deeply, with long inhalations. Paramedics took him to a hospital, where he was able to talk with his children. He remembered almost nothing: he thought he had simply been asleep.
No one knows for certain what happened. The coroner suspects that his pacemaker stopped and started again, and doctors suggested that severe hypoglycemia combined with medication may have left him in such a deep sleep that he seemed dead.
He really did die two weeks later, at home. Before he passed away, he saw his sister and met his youngest grandchild. His nephew had asked the coroner for just one thing: “Make sure this time”.