A man ended up with the shock of his life after he received a letter from the government telling him he was dead.
48-year-old Mark Cusack is a former town councillor for Hungerford and was in for a surprise when he received an ominous letter from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
The letter informed him that he had tragically died, which was news to Mark, and left him without a National Insurance number meaning he was stuck with no way to pay his council tax.
Mark, who lives with his dog Puggles, said that his former place of work had even been informed of his passing, and he ended up having to go to his GP for a doctor's note to prove he was still alive.
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It may sound ridiculous but if the government thinks you're dead it can take a bit of effort to get them to fix that little mistake, and you'd probably want to know why they thought you'd shuffled off your mortal coil in the first place.
Mark said he could see the funny side to it all and had now managed to get a note from his GP to confirm he was actually still alive.
He said: "She joked that I should consider cashing in any life insurance I might have. I've reported the matter to Action Fraud, given that I've had a previous issue of identity theft.
"The current situation may seem farcical but it has many ramifications. I really wouldn't want anyone else to be faced with a situation where they're suddenly 'deceased,' especially not someone with a health condition or who is in a vulnerable situation."
"Unfortunately, reversing everything is not as simple as making a phone call or writing a letter."
His doctor's note dated 17 February had his GP saying she 'can confirm I consulted with him today in person and that he is alive', so hopefully it all gets sorted out now and Mark can officially get his life back.
Some people who have been presumed dead have come perilously close to ending up as the real thing, with one man waking up just in the nick of time as morgue staff were about to drain the blood out of his body.
Another who spent a whole night in a mortuary freezer shocked family members when it turned out he was actually alive and still breathing.
Someone else narrowly avoided being buried alive after his family noticed him moving while they were busy making funeral arrangements.
A spokesperson for the DWP said they were unable to comment on Mark's claims that he had been mistakenly informed of his own death as they had not received enough 'information needed to look into it what has happened'.
Joe Harker