A 15-year-old Guatemalan girl woke up inside her coffin during her funeral Saturday, eight hours after her evangelical pastor father mistakenly declared her dead on the way to a medical center without a professional examination or death certificate.
The unusual ordeal began in the rural village of El Jocote, located in Sacapulas within Guatemala’s Quiché department, where the event transpired last Saturday. The 15-year-old girl, Yuleidy Ixcotoyac, fell ill during the early hours of the morning and lost consciousness while her father was driving her to an emergency medical facility.
Her father, Abraham Ixcotoyac, pulled the vehicle over to check on her condition. The frantic father stated that she had simply ceased to exist, she died on the way.
Finding no visible breathing or detectable pulse on her wrists, he concluded that she had passed away before reaching the clinic.
“I saw that she was no longer breathing and I couldn’t feel her pulse on her wrists. It was a very difficult situation for me. She did not go to hospital.”
Abraham Ixcotoyac, father
Funeral Preparations in El Jocote
Because burying family members shortly after death is a common practice in the region, the family immediately purchased a wooden casket from a local funeral home. No doctor ever examined the teenager, and an official death certificate was never issued before funeral arrangements moved forward.
Mourners gathered at the family home at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, just eight hours after the teenager initially collapsed. Friends, relatives, and neighbors filled the room to pay their respects to the young woman’s body, while her mother was splayed over the coffin in tears.
Teenager Wakes up and Sits up in Casket
Grief turned to profound astonishment when the teenager’s mother, Lesvia Ríos, leaned over the casket in tears and detected subtle movement inside the box. The mother declared to brothers and friends that she did not lose hope and kept saying her daughter was alive. Family members quickly opened the glass window and lid of the coffin to find Yuleidy waking up and sitting upright.
“When I was crying on top of her casket, we opened the window and she was moving, she was waking up and suddenly she sat up.”
Lesvia Ríos, mother
Dressed in a pink T-shirt, the conscious teenager began speaking to the stunned crowd. Loved ones rushed forward to help her out of the casket and offered her water, transforming the solemn gathering into a scene of joy and shouts of praise, including family members yelling “hallelujah.”
Reflections from Yuleidy Ixcotoyac
Recalling the frightening sensations that preceded her collapse, the teenager described to a local television station feeling severe physical distress before blacking out entirely, adding that she considers it a miracle she is alive and has no way to thank God enough.
“My heart started hurting really badly, it felt heavy and then I blacked out, like I fainted.”
Yuleidy Ixcotoyac
Following the dramatic event, Yuleidy returned home to recover. She expressed deep gratitude for her survival, while local authorities in Guatemala have not released public comments regarding the episode. Meanwhile, the viral video documenting the wake has attracted scrutiny over a continuity discrepancy at the three-second and six-second marks where a man’s arm appears without a wristwatch before instantly reappearing with one on the exact same wrist.