Five hours into her own wake, the coffin started making sounds.
In June 2023, a 76-year-old retired nurse in Ecuador named Bella Montoya was declared dead at a hospital, dressed and laid out for burial, and brought to a funeral home for her wake. Then, with about 20 relatives gathered around her, the coffin started knocking back.
A Mistaken Declaration
Montoya had been rushed to Martín Icaza Hospital in Babahoyo with a suspected stroke and cardiopulmonary arrest. Doctors tried to resuscitate her. When she didn't respond, a physician on duty pronounced her dead. Her son, Gilberto Barbera, was handed a death certificate along with her identification papers — the kind of paperwork nobody expects to be handling twice for the same person. The family did what most families do next: they called a funeral home.
Knocking From Inside the Coffin
The wake had been going for about five hours when people in the room noticed something wasn't right. There was movement. There was sound. "My mom was wrapped in sheets and hitting the coffin," Barbera later told the Associated Press, "and when we approached we could see that she was breathing heavily." Video from the scene, later shared publicly, showed Montoya's face moving inside the open casket while relatives held her head steady, stunned, trying to figure out what was actually happening in front of them.
The family rushed her straight back to the same hospital that had declared her dead hours earlier. This time, doctors described her condition as unstable, and they weren't giving the family much reason for hope.
They were right not to. A week later, still in intensive care, Montoya died. Ecuador's health ministry gave the cause as an ischemic stroke — the same underlying condition that had put her in the hospital to begin with. Her son had to go through the process of registering her death a second time, this time for real. "This time my mother really did die," he told a local newspaper. "My life will not be the same."
An Investigation Into the Hospital
Ecuador's Ministry of Public Health opened a formal investigation into how the original death declaration happened, forming a technical committee to review the hospital's procedures for issuing death certificates. Montoya's sister filed a separate complaint. As of the most recent reporting, no findings about the doctor involved had been made public, and Barbera made it clear the family didn't consider the matter closed.
Not as Rare as It Sounds
Cases like this surface more often than most people would guess. In December 2022, an Iowa care facility mistakenly pronounced a 66-year-old resident dead and sent her to a funeral home, where staff found her gasping for air. In 2020, a young woman in Ecuador reportedly opened her eyes just as an embalmer was about to begin working on her. None of these stories end the way people assume — they're not really about someone cheating death. They're about how much can go wrong in the narrow window when a hospital is deciding, under pressure, that a heart has actually stopped for good.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Bella Montoya survive?
No. She died about a week after being revived, from an ischemic stroke, according to Ecuador's health ministry.
Was the hospital held responsible?
Ecuador's health ministry launched an investigation into how the death was mistakenly declared, but no findings had been made public as of the most recent reporting.
Has this happened elsewhere?
Yes. Similar cases of premature death declarations have surfaced in the U.S. and elsewhere in recent years, though they remain uncommon.