Man appears alive at own funeral

A Brazilian man turned up alive at his own funeral

A Brazilian bricklayer reportedly killed in a car crash shocked his mourning family by showing up alive at his funeral.

Relatives of Ademir Jorge Goncalves, 59, had identified him as the victim of a car crash in Parana state in southern Brazil, police said.

As is customary in Brazil, the funeral was held the following day, which happened to be the holiday of Finados, when Brazilians visit cemeteries to honour the dead.

What family members did not know was that Goncalves had spent the night at a truck stop talking with friends over drinks of a sugarcane liquor known as cachaca, his niece Rosa Sampaio said. He did not get word about his own funeral until it was already happening.

A police spokesman in the town of Santo Antonio da Platina said Goncalves rushed to the funeral to let family members know he was not dead.

"The corpse was badly disfigured, but dressed in similar clothing," said the police spokesman, who talked on condition of anonymity. "People are afraid to look for very long when they identify bodies, and I think that is what happened in this case."

Ms Sampaio said some family members were not sure the body was Goncalves. "My two uncles and I had doubts about the identification," she told O Globo newspaper. "But an aunt and four of his friends identified the body, so what were we to do? We went ahead with the funeral."

The police spokesman confirmed there were doubts: "His mom looked at the body in the casket and thought something was strange. She looked and looked and couldn't believe it was her son. Before long, the walking dead appeared at the funeral. It was a relief."

The body was correctly identified later, the police spokesman said, and has already been buried in another state. He declined to release the actual victim's name.