Screaming could be heard coming from the coffin (not pictured) after it was buried (Picture: Getty)

A cemetery worker got the fright of his life when he heard a woman screaming from inside her buried coffin.

The man told police he could hear muffled shouts and banging coming from the plot of a 49-year-old woman who had been pronounced dead and buried that day.

Workers and cemetery visitors frantically dug up the coffin and smashed it open, however they were too late and the woman had died.


Police visited the Peraia cemetery near Thessaloniki in Greece, however a doctor who examined her body at the scene claimed she had been dead for hours and could not have possibly been buried alive due to her advanced state of rigor mortis.



The doctor, Chrissi Matsikoudi told Greek television channel MEGA: ‘We did several tests including one for heart failure on the body.’

A coroner will be carrying out a separate examination on the body.

Police say the woman, a mother of two who suffered from cancer, cannot be named until the post mortem is carried out.

Relatives of the woman say they are considering filing a complaint against the doctors who first pronounced her dead.