Back from the dead
“There are certain stories that legitimately just seem too strange to be true, and today’s story is definitely one of those. But if you get to the end of this story, you will see that a major American educational institution fact-checked this story really aggressively, and it held up. It really happened, so go into today’s very wild story with an open mind.
At the end of December in 1984, in a little village in Northern India, a young woman named Sumitra had her first child with her husband, and right away, Sumitra fell in love with her little baby boy. She had always wanted a baby, and now that she had one, she carried him with her everywhere, strapped to her chest. Anytime she had a free hand from cooking or housework, she would use it to pat his head or tickle his feet.
Life was not easy for anyone in Sumitra’s village, which was located just south of the Himalayan mountains along the Ganges River. Sumitra’s village was very poor; people lived in mud huts with thatched roofs, they had no electricity, and basically, no one had any formal education. As for Sumitra, her life was especially challenging, even relative to her peers because, when she was very young, her mother died, and then her father had to go away all the time for work. So she was left alone a lot and basically was raised by a cousin.
And now, even though she was married, her husband also had to travel quite a bit for work. So Sumitra lived with her husband’s parents in their hut, but the reality was she wasn’t nearly as close with them as she was with her own family, and her own family was nowhere nearby. So Sumitra’s life was really quite lonely, even as an adult. And so when Sumitra had her baby, it was like, for the first time in her life, she didn’t feel alone, and she was excited about her life. She was happy that something was finally going the way she wanted it to.
But then one day in early 1985, everything changed. That day, Sumitra, with her son attached to her chest, was walking into town to get water from the well. As she was walking along the dirt path, she suddenly came to a stop, very rigid, and she dropped her bucket on the ground. A couple of other villagers who were nearby heard the bucket fall; they turned and looked at Sumitra, who was standing there totally rigid. So one of these villagers, who was very concerned, walked over to Sumitra and asked her what was going on. But Sumitra didn’t say anything; she just stood there frozen.
This concerned villager looked down at Sumitra’s hands, and her fingers were bending back so hard it almost looked like they might break, going in the other direction. And then this villager, before asking any more questions, looked up at Sumitra’s face, and her eyes had rolled back into the back of her skull, and she had begun grinding her teeth so hard that it was making this loud cracking sound with every movement of her jaw side to side. So this villager was totally terrified and backed up for a second, and right as they did, Sumitra’s baby, who was still strapped to Sumitra’s chest, began hysterically crying.
And so the combination of Sumitra’s baby crying and these other couple of villagers who were staring at Sumitra, who’s standing there in this very grotesque pose, attracted the eyes of other nearby villagers, and soon there was a crowd of people just standing there, looking at Sumitra, not sure what to do. And then just as suddenly as Sumitra had fallen into this trance, it stopped, and Sumitra, she kind of shook her head, she fluttered her eyes, and she looked around, and then suddenly became aware that her son is hysterically crying, and also, there’s this crowd of people all around her. She has no idea why, and so feeling really embarrassed but again not knowing what’s going on, Sumitra quickly picked up her water bucket, she held her son, and hustled out of the crowd of people and made her way into town where she would get water.
When Sumitra came back from the well and was back near her hut, she didn’t tell anyone about what had happened on the way to the well. Frankly, she couldn’t really remember what happened. And so Sumitra told herself that whatever happened on the trail to the well that trance she fell into it had to be a one-time thing likely brought on by stress and sleeplessness from having a new baby, but a few weeks later it happened again, and this time the trance lasted quite a bit longer. Sumitra’s father-in-law had walked into their kitchen and found Sumitra standing there totally rigid with her hands kind of bending backwards and her eyes rolled back in her skull. He would tell her later on that he had shaken her and tried to wake her up, but he couldn’t for almost 10 minutes. And then when she had snapped out of it, she had no memory and had no idea what happened.
By May of 1985, so roughly five months after her first trance, Sumitra was falling into these bizarre spells nearly every day, and they were lasting hours at a time. Even more bizarre, lately during Sumitra’s trances, she would begin to speak, and the things she said were totally strange. Typically, she would bark out cries for help, she would say her head was being crushed and someone needed to help her, and then suddenly her voice would drop down to a whisper, and she would say, ‘All I can see is dark.’
Sumitra’s family would contact the local medicine man who would come out and examine Sumitra, but he couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. Besides her trances, there seemed to be absolutely nothing wrong with her. She was the picture of good health. And then on July 16, 1985, so roughly six months into these trances, Sumitra would fall into another trance while she was cooking. During this trance, she would speak, except when she spoke, she was very calm, and she just said, ‘In three days, I’m going to die.’
By this point, Sumitra was terrified of whatever was happening to her, and she was totally exhausted, as was her family. Sumitra had stopped caring for her son, who was now about eight months old because she was afraid that at any moment, she could fall into a trance and accidentally hurt him. So her mother-in-law had basically become the boy’s mother, and Sumitra’s husband, who was the primary breadwinner for the family, was forced to stop traveling for work and just stay home and help out with Sumitra and his son.
Finally, on July 19, 1985, so this was the day that in her trance, Sumitra had predicted she would die, on that day Sumitra woke up and made a very conscious effort not to do anything that could potentially harm her. She didn’t cook because she didn’t want to be near flames. She didn’t walk near anything with any sort of ledge she could fall off, she didn’t even walk downstairs for the same reason. She also kept a very safe distance from her son in order to make sure he was safe.
And by late afternoon that day, Sumitra was just fine, and there was no sign that anything bad was going to happen to her. So she and her family began to relax. As Sumitra’s mother-in-law began making dinner, Sumitra decided to go outside and get some fresh air. And when she got out there, she saw one of her close friends across the road, and so she waved her and asked her friend cheerfully began walking closer to Sumitra to say hello. Sumitra suddenly froze, her eyes went back in her skull, her hands became rigid, and she fell into one of her trances.
And so this friend, like everyone else in the village, had become quite accustomed to seeing Sumitra in these trances, and so really, the friend was not that concerned when she saw Sumitra doing this. But then Sumitra began doing something in her trance that this friend had never seen before. Sumitra, who normally had her hands by her side during these trances, she began raising her hands up till they reached her forehead, and then wildly, Sumitra began clawing at something right above her head. And as she did, her breathing became very loud and labored. And so this friend, feeling suddenly so concerned for Sumitra, rushed over, but when she got right next to Sumitra, there was nothing she could do. Sumitra was just clawing at the sky, breathing really heavily, and then suddenly Sumitra stopped, and she put her hands down by her side, and she went back to this rigid pose. And then out of Sumitra’s mouth came this horrible, low rattling sound. It was just a constant sound that came out of her, and it got deeper and deeper and deeper until Sumitra’s voice kind of cracked, and then suddenly Sumitra went totally still. And when this happened, Sumitra’s friend, who was right next to her, realized Sumitra, even though she was standing upright, she was not breathing at all. It was like she was a statue.
And so this friend began screaming for help, and so Sumitra’s in-laws and her husband and other villagers who heard this cry, they came running outside, and they quickly circled around Sumitra. And then a few minutes later, the medicine man arrived. He broke through the circle, went right up to Sumitra, and began checking her out. He checked her pulse, he checked her heartbeat, he kind of looked inside of her mouth, he looked in her eyes, and then after a minute, he stepped back, and he just said, ‘She’s dead.’ Sumitra’s husband fell to his knees, and Sumitra’s mother-in-law, who was carrying Sumitra’s son, began crying, all the while Sumitra’s body still remained totally upright and rigid in the middle of all these people with her hands tight by her side and her eyes rolled back and her face frozen in what looked like a silent scream.
Eventually, the medicine man and Sumitra’s father-in-law stepped forward and lowered Sumitra’s frozen, rigid body onto the ground on her back, and they closed her eyes. There was no hospital to take Sumitra’s body to or official to call about her death, and in this village at this time, it was very important for both religious and public health reasons to take care of the body very quickly. And what that looked like was the villagers would work together to perform the Hindu death rituals, and then afterward, they would cremate the body, which is a process of burning the body until all you have left is the ashes. And so as Sumitra’s body lay still and rigid on her back right near her home, her family and the villagers began making preparations for her funeral. Sumitra’s mother-in-law and some women from the village began scrubbing down Sumitra’s body as well as putting essential oils on her face, and other villagers who were not a part of that went off to find wood for a fire.
The villagers weren’t talking much, and a lot of the women were crying, but it wasn’t just grief they were feeling; it was also fear. They all knew about Sumitra’s trances; they happened all the time for months. But what the villagers couldn’t wrap their heads around was the idea that during one of these trances, Sumitra had accurately predicted her own death. And so now, the villagers couldn’t help but think that dark forces were at play here, that maybe Sumitra was possessed, and you know now, whatever had possessed her and killed her is somewhere in the village and so that night as the sun started to go down normally kids would be out playing in the village but their parents said no come inside it’s not safe outside and so for the most part, the only people who were outside that night were the women who were still cleaning and prepping sumitra’s body for her funeral and at some point, one of the women who was doing this was brushing out sumitra’s hair and as she did that she suddenly stopped and she backed up and screamed and pointed at sumitra and then the other women all around sumitra’s body they looked over at what this person was pointing at and they too saw it and screamed and everyone began scrambling to try to get away from sumitra as fast as possible.
What all these terrified women were seeing was that sumitra her eyes were closed but her eyes were darting left and right so her eyelids were kind of fluttering and then suddenly sumitra’s chest filled with air and then she breathed out a long loud exhale and then she opened her eyes and she sat bolt upright and began looking around and the other women who were terrified they’re looking at her and they were struck by how completely healthy and normal sumitra now looked even though for the past 45 minutes she didn’t have a heartbeat and was totally pale and looked completely dead sumitra wiped the essential oils from her face and then she stood up and as she did the medicine man he had heard all the commotion and ran ran over and he ran to sumitra and kind of assisted her and got her to stand on her feet because she was a little bit wobbly and then the medicine man performed a checkup on sumitra checking her heartbeat her pulse he looked in her mouth he looked at her eyes and then he asked sumitra you know how are you feeling and sumitra said I’m okay and then the medicine man he kind of turned to face this now huge crowd of on-looking villagers and the medicine man had a big smile on his face and he said you all have just witnessed a miracle sumitra is back from the dead.”
Sumitra’s husband and her in-laws were too shocked to say anything or really even react, but then suddenly Sumitra’s husband was overcome with joy and he ran forward to hug Sumitra. But as Sumitra turned and saw him coming towards her, she backed up suddenly and put her hands out to protect herself from her husband. Immediately, the medicine man kind of stepped in between the husband and Sumitra and patted the husband on the shoulder, saying, “You know she’s been through something very traumatic. You need to give her time and space to recover.” The villagers, who saw this happen, were accustomed to Sumitra falling into trances before, but this time seemed more intense. They assumed she would be okay soon.
Afterwards, the medicine man reassured Sumitra’s husband and her in-laws that she would likely be fine, but he would come by and do another thorough medical exam on her just to make sure. The next morning, Sumitra woke up feeling much better. However, as soon as she saw her husband and her in-laws, she got scared and ran away. They chased her, and finally, when her husband caught up to her, she reacted defensively, saying he was not her family and this was not her home.
Then, one day, three months after Sumitra’s apparent death for 45 minutes, a stranger named Ram Tripathi came to their home. He asked about a young woman acting differently, and Sumitra’s husband was bewildered by how this stranger knew about her issues. He told Sumitra about the man, and she instantly ran to him, claiming her name was Shiva Dueti and that her sister-in-law had killed her. Ram Tripathi, who was Shiva’s father, had lost his daughter earlier under mysterious circumstances, and now he believed that Sumitra was his daughter’s reincarnated spirit.
Shiva Dueti had a troubled life, and when she died under suspicious circumstances, her family suspected murder. Sumitra’s behavior, mannerisms, and even her memories and knowledge aligned with those of Shiva Dueti. Scientists from the University of Virginia investigated the case and considered it one of the most credible reincarnation stories ever recorded.
Sumitra, now accepted as Shiva Dueti, lived the rest of her life as her and raised her son with her husband in their village until she passed away in 1998. The case was never officially solved, but Sumitra’s testimony provided insight into the mysterious circumstances surrounding Shiva Dueti’s death.
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