Guatemalan girl, 15, sits up ALIVE in her own coffin eight hours after father declared her dead

Yuleidy Ixcotoyac, 15, stunned mourners at her own wake in El Jocote, Sacapulas, Guatemala, when she rose to a sitting position in her wooden coffin roughly eight hours after her father, evangelical pastor Abraham Ixcotoyac, had declared her dead at the roadside. No physician confirmed the death and no official death certificate was issued; the family bought a coffin and arranged a home funeral before she stirred. Her mother, Lesvia Ríos, standing over the casket in tears, was the first to catch a faint movement, triggering screams of shock that gave way to cries of 'hallelujah'.

On the way to hospital, Yuleidy was seized by acute chest pain and lost consciousness; her father checked for a pulse at her wrists, found none, and turned the car around, driving straight to a funeral home.

'I kept saying she was alive; she wasn't dead,' Lesvia Ríos said — the mother had never accepted that her daughter was gone.

Yuleidy told local television the experience was a miracle: 'I have no way to repay God for everything he has done in my life.'