A man declared dead by doctors in Brazil was discovered alive by his brother as he wiggled around in his morgue body bag.
When the body of Valdelucio Goncalves, 54, was brought to the morgue inside Menandro de Farias General Hospital in Salvador, doctors believed he had died from “respiratory and multiple organ failure,” the Daily Mirror reports.
His brother Walterio arrived Sunday to dress the man’s body for the funeral and got the shock of a lifetime when he saw squirming inside the zipped-up body bag.
“All I needed to do was put some new clothes on him, so he’d be ready for the undertaker to come and collect him,” Walterio said. “But as I got closer I could see it wriggling.”
“I went crazy and shouted for the medical team,” he added. “They checked him and confirmed that he was still alive.”
Grieving family members initially believed Goncalves had succumbed to a recent battle with stomach cancer, and had already made the necessary arraignments for his burial.
“It was a shock to all of us when they called to tell us he’d passed away,” said his niece Patricia Cintra.
“By Sunday morning everything was sorted. We’d paid for his death notice in a newspaper, bought the coffin and booked his funeral.”
“His feet had already been tied together and his nose and ears stuffed with cotton wool,” she added.
Once Goncalves was conscious, he was quickly rushed back to the intensive care unit, but wary family members decided to transfer him to a different hospital instead.
Since Goncalves is unable to speak, he penned a letter explaining that he viewed his jolt back to life as a religious miracle provided to him by the Blessed Irma Dulce, a Franciscan Sister who is considered in Brazil to be a saint with miraculous powers, according to the Daily Mirror.
“I, Valdelucio, saw death at my feet, but my faith was so great that I was cured,” he wrote.
“Before Irma Dulce I said, do a miracle in me, and she heard my prayer.”
The health department for the state of Bahia confirmed Monday that an investigation into the deadly error was under way.