Illustration: a body in the morgue

A 91-year-old Polish woman surprised morgue workers when she started moving, 11 hours after being declared dead at home, public television reported Thursday.

Janina Kolkiewicz woke up inside a body bag in a cold chamber at the morgue in eastern Poland last Thursday, according to the TVP public broadcaster.

“I was sure she was dead,” doctor Wieslawa Czyz told TVP. “I’m stunned, I don’t understand what happened. Her heart had stopped beating, she was no longer breathing,” she said.

“My aunt has no inkling of what happened since she has late-stage dementia,” Bogumila Kolkiewicz, the woman’s niece, told a local newspaper.

“Once we got her home, she said she was freezing and asked for a hot cup of tea.”

Police have opened an investigation into the incident.

Five year ago, an 84-year-old Polish woman also woke up in a morgue after being declared dead by her doctor.

The emergency medical services became aware of the error when someone saw her body bag in the morgue moving, police said.
The woman, from the village of Jablonowo in central Poland, fell unconscious and her husband called an ambulance. A doctor from the emergency medical services pronounced her dead.

“A funeral company took the body to the morgue. Several hours later, a worker there noticed the bag containing the body was moving,” he said.

“He called a doctor who noted the woman’s vital functions had returned.”