Police in northern Greece are investigating a cemetery worker’s testimony that a woman revived in her grave shortly after being buried and called for help, only to die before she could be extracted. Police officials say the man and two people visiting the cemetery said they heard banging and a muffled call from inside the 45-year-old cancer patient’s grave, an hour after her funeral on Thursday. By the time the coffin was dug up and smashed open, the woman showed no further signs of life.
[It would have been impossible for] someone in a state of rigor mortis to have been shouting and hitting the coffin like that.
Chrissi Matsikoudi, eye witness
A doctor summoned to Peraia cemetery outside Thessaloniki pronounced her dead but said she had been so for hours and could not have been revived. The mother of two had been first declared dead at a private Thessaloniki clinic Thursday.