A BRAZILIAN man has startled family and friends by walking into his own wake.

There was screaming. There was fainting. It doesn't happen every day: a car washer in Brazil walked into his own wake, where his distraught family was already weeping over their loss.

"People were so startled. Women were fainting, people started running all over the place," said Maria Menezes, one of the mourners at the event in Alagoinhas, in Salvador de Bahia state, G1 news reported.

Gilberto Araujo, 41, heard from a friend on the street that his family thought he was dead and was busy getting ready to bury him so he decided to head straight to the wake and clear things up.

"A friend of mine told me there was a coffin at the wake - and that I was inside it," Mr Araujo said. "I told him: 'But I am alive! Pinch me!"

In fact, Mr Araujo's family had been burying a corpse that looked startlingly like their loved one, a body that had yet to be formally identified, G1 reported.

"I am just beside myself with joy," a beaming Marina Santana told the network. "What mother who is told her son is dead is not going to be overjoyed when she sees her son alive again?"