Woman Spends Three Days In Morgue, Comes Back From The Dead Minutes Before Autopsy

Sixty-one-year old, Hardy Lyudmila Steblitskaya, endured three days inside a morgue, rousing minutes before her scheduled post-mortem exam. It’s nothing new for the Russian grandmother as she has been officially declared and brought back from the dead twice; once last November and again in October of this year. The retired cook, with a history of heart problems, is a perplexing anomaly to doctors. Her peculiar reoccurring habit of returning to life leaves her family in the grips of both grief and hope.

Steblitskaya, feeling ill, was taken to the Tomsk Regional Clinical Hospital in Russia last November, and spent a few days there. When her daughter Anastasia called the clinic to check in on her mother, she was told Steblitskaya had passed away. Devastated, the family began making funeral arrangements; buying flowers, purchasing a casket, organizing a plot. When Anastasia came to claim her mother’s body, she was instructed to wait. The autopsy had not yet been performed.

Yahoo News reports that a visibly confused physician approached her and clarified that her mother was in fact alive, not dead, and in her bed breathing. Her mother doesn’t remember what happened, only that she was in hospital, and then woke up in a morgue. Her skin was peeling from the cold. But she is grateful to be alive. Doctors are still unable to explain what happened, but assure all proper checks were made before the family had been informed of the death.

Anastasia told The Siberian Times:

“My head was so fuzzy that I didn’t even think about getting back into the room, and hugging mum. Or asking her about what happened. Instead I started calling everyone, saying things like, ‘Er, sorry. Can you please stop digging the grave? Ah, is it done. OK… well, there won’t be a funeral, my mother is alive.”

In October 2012, Steblitskaya had an apparent death during another hospital stay, but she was brought back after several hours.

Hardy Lyudmila Steblitskaya is not the only person to be given a second chance at life, according to The Daily News. Earlier this year Hamdi Hafez al-Nubi, a 28-year-old waiter, had been declared dead after suffering a heart attack at work. During burial preparation another doctor, sent to sign his death certificate, discovered he was still warm and revived him. In April a 95-year-old Chinese woman climbed out of her own coffin six days after she was declared dead.