A WOMAN believed to be dead has stunned her relatives after gasping awake while on the way to her own funeral.
Chataporn Sriphonla, 49, was thought to have died on June 29 - and her family quickly began funeral preparations in accordance with Buddhist tradition.
Chataporn's mum Mali said: "My daughter was being treated for cancer at the hospital, but doctors told us she only had a slim chance of survival.
"I wanted her to spend her last moments with the family, so I arranged for her to be taken back to our home.
"We were heartbroken to find she had died on the way home."
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After her death in Thailand, her family bought a casket and arranged for cremation - but while en route to the storage facility where her body was going to stay, a surprise rocked the family.
Passengers in the car carrying her body were shocked when the "dead" woman suddenly woke up and breathed.
The family quickly rushed the woman to the hospital, where she remains under medical supervision.
Her relatives were understandably confused, but have said they believe Chataporn held on to see her children before she died.
An eerily similar incident happened last month in Ecuador, when a woman thought to be dead woke up and banged from the inside of her coffin.
Bella Montoya, 76, shocked relatives by waking up after she had been declared dead by doctors last month.
Retired nurse Bella was found alive in her coffin after spending five hours in a funeral home on June 9.
She was stretchered away by firefighters and transferred back to the same hospital where she had earlier ‘died’.
But Ecuador’s health ministry confirmed in a statement that the woman has now died from an ischemic stroke after spending a week in intensive care.
The ministry’s statement added that she had remained under “permanent surveillance” while in intensive care, but medics were unable to save her.
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The woman’s son, Gilberto, said he was not given any medical explanation as to why his suddenly mother woke up hours after her "death".
Officials have launched a probe to identify the doctor who signed her death certificate after the family made an official complaint.
Her remains have now been returned to the funeral home, where she will be buried in a cemetery this week.
