A story, which appeared in 1892, tells of a shopkeeper of the Rue St. Honore, at Paris, who had promised his daughter to one of his friends, a shopkeeper like himself, residing also in the same street.

One day, a rich gentleman came into the shop, and was so taken with the girl’s beauty, he returned later and asked her fathers permission to marry the girl.

The mans request was accepted, and the girl was engaged to the rich gentlemen instead of the young man to whom she had first been promised.

Soon after the marriage, the young bride fell ill, and shortly thereafter proclaimed as dead. The next day she was enshrouded and interred.

The first lover having an idea that she had fallen into a lethargy or a trance, took her out of the ground that night, and was able to revive her.

The young shopkeeper and the girl married, crossed the channel, and lived quietly in England for some years.

At the end of ten years, they returned to Paris, where the first husband saw her on the street on day and recognized her as his deceased wife.

The first husband claimed her in a court of justice; and this was the subject of a great law suit.

The wife and her second husband defended themselves on the ground that death had broken the bonds of the first marriage.

The first husband was even accused of having caused his wife to be too prematurely interred.

Before the case had been decided, the wife and the second husband, unsettled by the notoriety of the trial, again left France for England, where they ended their days together.

Plutarch (46 – 120 CE) recounted the story of a man who fell from a great height, and landing on his neck, and although there was no appearance of injuries, was believed to be dead. The next day, as this man was being carried to be buried, he suddenly recovered his strength and his senses.

An account, written by a physician in 1896, tells of being on the same train transporting the body of a person being taking to be interred.

He asked for permission to look at and to touch the dead man, and was astonished to find signs of life in the “corpse.”

The body was removed from the train and taken to the psysicians home, where it was given medical attention and nourishment.

After several days the once-deceased man was restored to sound health.

The man, who had once been on his way to the graveyard, later returned to his parents and relations.

There are several instances of persons, who after being interred, were found to be alive, and lived a long time afterward.

One such item relates how a woman of Orleans was buried in a cemetery, with a ring on her finger, which could not be removed when she was placed in her coffin.

The following night, one of the womans servants, attempting to steal the ring, broke open the coffin.

He too found that the ring could not be removed from the womans finger, and was about to cut her finger off, when she uttered a loud shriek. The servant fled in terror.

The woman was able to unwrap herself from her winding sheet, returned home, and outlived her husband.

In the personal recollections of M. Bernard, a principal surgeon of Paris, he tells of being with his father at the parish of Real when they took from the tombs, living and breathing, a monk of the order of St. Francis, who had been interred for “three or four days.” The unfortunate man had “gnawed his hands around the bands which confined them” and died almost the moment that he was in the air.

There is an account of the wife of a counselor of Cologne, who was interred with a valuable ring on her finger, in 1571.

A grave-digger opened the grave the succeeding night to steal the ring, whereupon the good lady took hold of him, and forced him to take her out of the coffin.

The grave-digger was able to disengage himself from her hands, and fled.

The resuscitated lady went and rapped at the door of her house.

At first her family was frightened, thinking she was a phantom, and left her a long time at the door, waiting anxiously to be let in.

At last they admitted her into the house, warmed her, and she recovered her health perfectly.

She later gave birth to three sons.

After she eventually passed away, the story of her previous encounter with death was engraved on her tomb.

Francois de Civile, a Norman gentleman, was the captain of a hundred men in the city of Rouen, when it was besieged by Charles IX.

At the age of twenty-six Civile was severely wounded in battle, his body falling into the moat. His body was placed in a trench, along with others, and a thin covering of earth was throw on top of the mass grave.

He remained there from eleven in the morning till half-past six in the evening, when his servant, having dug a proper grave for his master, went to disinter him.

The servant observed signs of life in his masters supposedly dead body.

Civile was taken and put in a bed, where he remained for five days and nights, without speaking, or giving any other sign of feeling. During this time Civile was burning hot with fever as he had been cold in the grave.

The city having been captured, the servants of an officer of the victorious army was to lodge in the house where Civile lay.

Civile was put on a paillasse in a back room. His enemies later tossed him out a window and onto a dungheap, where he remained for more than seventy-two hours, clad only in his shirt.

At the end of that time, one of his relations, surprised to find him still alive, sent him to a relatives house, a league’s distance from Rouen, where he was attended to, and at last recovered.

During a great plague, which attacked the city of Dijon in 1558, a lady, named Nicole Lentillet, being reputed dead of the epidemic, was thrown into a great pit, wherein they buried the dead.

The day after her interment, in the morning, she came to herself again, and made vain efforts to get out, but her weakness, and the weight of the other bodies with which she was covered, prevented her doing so.

She remained in this horrible situation for four days, when the burial men drew her out, and carried her back to her house, where she perfectly recovered her health.

A young lady of Augsburg, having fallen into a trance, her body was placed under a deep vault, without being covered with earth; but the entrance to this subterranean vault was closely walled up.

Some years after that time, some one of the same family died.

The vault was opened, and the body of the young lady was found at the very entrance, without any fingers to her right hand, which she had devoured in despair.

On the 25th of July, 1688, there died at Metz a boy, of an apoplectic fit, in the evening after supper.

On the 28th of the same month, strange moaning sounds were heard to come from the place where he was buried.

They opened the boys grave, and he was attended by doctors and surgeons.

The physician maintained, after he had been opened, that the young man had not been dead two hours.

This is extracted from the manuscript of a bourgeois of Metz, who was familiar with the family. - Dean Terry