Embalmers find man alive and kicking in body bag

Workers at a Mississippi funeral home found an elderly man alive and kicking in a zipped-up body bag as they were preparing to embalm him, the Clarion-Ledgerreports.

Walter Williams, a 78-year-old farmer who had been pronounced dead at his home Wednesday night by a coroner, woke up inside the bag at the Porter and Sons Funeral Home in Lexington, Miss., about five hours later.

"I asked the coroner what happened, and the only thing he could say is that it's a miracle," Holmes County Sheriff Willie March said,

Coroner Dexter Howard had declared Williams dead after checking his pulse.

"I did my part in checking him, I filed my paperwork, and we were ready to make the removal," Howard said. "We got him to the funeral home, and into the embalming room and noticed the kicking, and he began to breathe."

Williams' nephew, Eddie Hester, told WAPT-TV that he "stood there and watched them put him in a body bag and zipped it up."

After he became animated inside the bag, paramedics rushed Williams to a hospital.

"I don't know how long he's going to be here, but I know he's back right now. That's all that matters," Hester told WAPT.

The coroner said Williams' pacemaker may have stopped working and then started up again.