Yuleidy Ixcotoyac, a 15-year-old girl, sat up inside the coffin at her own wake in El Jocote, a village in the municipality of Sacapulas, in the department of Quiché, in rural Guatemala, on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026, roughly eight hours after her father decided on the road that she was dead.
Mourners had pressed around the wooden casket in the yard of a family home. Accounts place the awakening between seven and eight hours after the family considered her dead. Footage of the moment spread on social media far beyond the Guatemalan highlands.
A Drive That Stopped Short
Yuleidy felt severe pain in her chest in the early hours of Oct. 10 and lost consciousness. Her father, Abraham Ixcotoyac, an evangelical pastor, loaded her into his vehicle and set out for a medical center. He pulled over as he neared the municipality of San Pedro Jocopilas and checked her.
“She was no longer breathing, and I couldn’t feel her pulse on her wrists,” her father said.
Ixcotoyac never completed the trip to the medical center. He drove instead to a funeral home, bought a coffin and carried his daughter’s body back to the house, where relatives, neighbors and members of his congregation had already gathered. Burying a loved one soon after death is common in Guatemala, which is why the casket was purchased immediately. The family set the wake for 2:30 p.m. the same day.
No doctor ever examined the teenager. She never entered a hospital or a health center, and no one issued a death certificate. Some reports asserted that the girl had been declared dead at a hospital; her father has been emphatic that she never entered one.
Movement Behind the Window
Her mother, Lesvia Ríos, said she had refused to accept that her daughter was gone. As the mother wept over the casket, the family opened the small viewing window set into the lid. They saw movement inside, and the teenager, dressed in a pink T-shirt, sat up and began to speak. Relatives lifted her out of the coffin and handed her a cup of water. Loved ones shouted “hallelujah” as the video rolled.
Ixcotoyac told the local channel TV Sac that he was standing in the patio when the shouting broke out, and that his daughter was being pulled from the coffin by the time he reached it.
What the Teenager Remembers
“My heart started hurting really badly, it felt heavy and then I blacked out, like I fainted,” she said.
Yuleidy is now conscious. She told local media that she was given oxygen afterward and that her hands were still trembling. She said she thanks God for being alive. Both parents publicly attributed the awakening to a miracle rather than to a mistake.
Online reaction divided. Some viewers called the footage miraculous, others said the girl had been left traumatized, and others dismissed the account as a religious fabrication.
Prosecutors Open an Investigation
Guatemala’s Public Ministry said prosecutors in Sacapulas, working with the regional prosecutor’s office, opened an investigation on Sunday, Oct. 11, into how relatives came to consider the teenager dead without a medical death certificate. The national child-protection agency, the Procuraduría General de la Nación, had her moved to the regional hospital in Huehuetenango for tests that include brain and heart exams, Prensa Libre reported. Her father said she was stable and that the family was awaiting the results. He has also said he took her home instead of to a hospital because God had given him a revelation, and that he has committed no crime.
There is no official confirmation that her death was ever certified through a documented clinical evaluation. The episode therefore cannot accurately be described as a medically verified resurrection.
The cause of what happened to Yuleidy cannot be established without verifiable clinical data. Deep loss of consciousness and other conditions can be mistaken for death and require professional assessment. The case has reopened conversation in the region about the importance of professional verification in any medical emergency.
