Anja Rueschel, 19, of Stenda, Germany, was pronounced dead after being run down by a car, but woke up inside a zinc coffin used to carry the dead from traffic accidents. She banged on the lid and fainted as medics unscrewed it. She recovered from her head injuries. Daily Star, 8 Mar 1996.

Peter Archer, 47, was arrested for running naked down a street in Melbourne, but he was released when it was discovered that he was fleeing from a mortuary where a doctor had officially pronounced him dead. Irish Independent Sun, 19 Mar 1996.

David Dobson, 56, died for more than five minutes on 20 April after a 30,000-volt shock blew him off his feet and melted his 30ft (9m) CB radio ærial when it touched an overhead power line next to his mobile home near Farnborough, Hampshire. Although clinically dead, his heart was restarted by another shock delivered by paramedics. Western Daily Press, Guardian, 29 April 1996.

Chen Chun-nan, 34, started to sweat while his wife was crying over his "dead" body at a funeral house in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, after a car crash. Also in southern Taiwan, Kuo Lee-huang, 61, was found "dead" in his house, but when a policeman went to inspect the funeral, Mr Kuo "moved all of a sudden". South China Morning Post, 29 April 1996.

Asuncion Gutirrez, 100, startled her mourning family and friends in Managua, Nicaragua, when she sat up in her coffin at her wake and asked for food. "This is the third time she has done this to us," said her grandson. [AFP] 4 May 1996.

Undertaker Richard Blake, 27, was attacked by a "corpse" which came to life as he was embalming it. Blake suffered broken ribs in the New York assault. The attacker then suffered a massive heart attack and died again. Daily Record, 13 May 1996.

Micaela Velasco, 101, was declared dead by a doctor in Zamora, north-west Spain. A few hours later, undertakers were preparing her for her burial when they saw her lips move. Three days later, she was "as fit as a lady of her age can be". D.Telegraph, D.Mail, 30 Sept 1996.

Two morgue attendants in Havana, Cuba, playing chess on the night shift to pass the time, got the shock of their lives when a "corpse" suddenly sat up, reached over and moved one of the chessmen. Coroner Jose Muñoz said Miguel García suffered a heat attack and had been incorrectly pronounced dead. He came to on the slab and, disoriented, grabbed the first thing he saw ­ the black bishop . He moved it three squares and dropped it. At the time of the report, he was recovering at Havana General Hospital. People & Places (Ghana), 17 Oct 1996.

A farmer "dead" for 40 minutes was brought back to life by doctors who massaged his heart 10,000 times and gave him electric shocks. Zhao Guoyu, 43, a farmer in Gaoyang village near Tianjin, China, suffered nine massive heart attacks within three hours in hospital. It is allegedly the longest time a patient has stopped breathing and still recovered. South China Morning post, 14 Nov 1996.

A 93-year-old woman was rescued from cremation at a mortuary in Gungzhou in southern China's Guangdong province when a mortuary worker tried to tie an identification tag to her hand and realised she was breathing. Doctors found the woman was suffering from low blood pressure brought on by diabetes. Her condition was said to be improving. [R] 4 Feb 1997.