‘Dead’ woman in Ecuador knocks on coffin during wake

QUITO, Ecuador — Mourners at the funeral of a woman from Ecuador were startled to hear her knocking on her coffin, still very much alive.

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Bella Montoya, 76, was declared dead last week following an apparent stroke, the BBC reported.

Relatives found her gasping for air at her wake on Friday in the city of Babahoyo and rushed her back to an area hospital, her son, Gilberto Barbera, told The Associated Press.

“It gave us all a fright,” Barbera told the news organization. He added that doctors said that Montoya’s condition was still “dire.”

Ecuador’s health ministry has launched an investigation, the BBC reported. Montoya remained in intensive care on Monday at the Martín Icaza Hospital in Babahoyo while officials investigate the doctors involved in her case, the AP reported.

In a statement, the ministry said that the woman went into cardiorespiratory arrest and did not respond to resuscitation efforts, according to the BBC. She was declared dead by a doctor at the hospital.

The woman’s family brought her to a funeral home and were holding a wake Friday when they heard “strange sounds.”

“There were about 20 of us there,” Barbera told the AP. “After about five hours of the wake, the coffin started to make sounds. My mom was wrapped in sheets and hitting the coffin, and when we approached we could see that she was breathing heavily.”

Montoya was under intubation at the hospital, and doctors were pessimistic about her chances of survival, the news organization reported.

“Little by little I am grasping what has happened,” Barbera told the AFP news agency. “Now I only pray for my mother’s health to improve. I want her alive and by my side.”