A Brazilian man gave his family quite the shock when he showed up very much alive at his own funeral in the town of Alagoinhas.
The family of Gilberto Araujo, a 41-year-old car washer, believed that he died after police called them to tell them that he was killed and that they should come down to the city morgue to identify his body.
Araujo's brother, Jose Marcos identified the body and took it back to his mother's house for a wake. Family members and friends gathered at the house to mourn the loss of Araujo, but the body at the wake wasn't who they thought it was.
"The confusion started when news started circulating that a car washer had been shot dead," Jose Marcos' wife, Ana Paula, said according to the Associated Press. "Police called my husband and told him that his brother had been killed and his body was at the morgue."
Before Araujo was set to be buried on Monday, "a friend of Gilberto's saw him walking down the street and told him that his family was mourning him," according to AP.
When the real Araujo heard the news of his death, he returned to his mother's home to let them know that he was just fine. His family was is disbelief.
"Some people fainted and others were so scared they ran away. It was a big shock," family friend Maria Menezes said, according to AP.
It turns out that a car washer was killed in the northeastern Brazilian town, but it wasn't Araujo. In a strange coincidence, the body of the real car washer who was killed, looked very similar to Araujo. The body that Araujo's family was mourning was that of Genivaldo Santos Gama.
Araujo's mother was relieved to learn that it wasn't her son who was killed after she spent time mourning the loss.
"I am overjoyed. What mother wouldn't be after being told that her son is dead and then sees him alive," his mother Marina Santana said, according to AP.
In another strange coincidence, Araujo isn't the only man to show up alive at his own funeral recently. One family actually took it a step further and buried the body of a stranger that they thought was their family member.
According to the Times of Zambia, Victor Chiesnga, 38, showed up to his sister's house after learning that his family supposedly buried his body. Chiesnga had gone missing for a long time and his sister Susan received a phone call on October 1 saying that her brother died after being run over by a car.
"Our brother who was with our uncle and the others identified the body they found in the mortuary and came back to inform us that it was indeed Victor's body that was picked," Susan Chiesnga told the Times.
The family buried the body of a stranger.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
