The Peculiar Truth about People Who Come Back from the Dead

• During the filming of the TV series Better Call Saul in 2021, star Bob Odenkirk suffered a heart attack. According to reports, including from Odenkirk himself, his heart stopped beating for 18 minutes. Then he was revived. He returned to work not long thereafter.

• Survival without a pulse for that length of time is rare - especially with no neurological damage as a result - but it’s not unprecedented.

• In January 2023, Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest on the field during a game in Cincinnati. His heart stopped beating, and he was revived after ten minutes.

• In 2020, a six-week-old baby survived for 27 minutes without a pulse.

• In 2011, a 54-year-old Minnesota man was revived after 96 minutes.

• In most cases, such as Odenkirk and Hamlin, the person is revived during CPR.

• Then there’s Lazarus syndrome, also called Lazarus phenomenon or autoresuscitation.

• It’s defined as a person coming back to life at least ten minutes after resuscitation efforts have ended.

• The medical community isn’t entirely sure how or why it happens.

• An Ohio man, age 37, suffered a heart attack. Emergency room doctors administered CPR for 45 minutes to no avail. Minutes after they stopped, his heart began beating again. He walked out of the hospital a week later.

• In 2019, a British woman was revived after having no heartbeat for six hours.

• 2014: A man from Mississippi, age 78, awakened inside a body bag in a morgue after being dead overnight.

• A Polish woman, age 91, woke up in a mortuary long after she was pronounced dead.

• The phenomenon is named after the Biblical story of Lazarus, a man whom Jesus Christ was said to have brought back to life after being deceased for four days.

• To date, there have been roughly 60-65 known instances. But the term Lazarus phenomenon wasn’t coined until the early 1980s, so many more cases may have occurred long before then.

• According to the National Institute of Health’s website, “Even though Lazarus phenomenon is rare, it is probably under reported.”