A Paraguayan family gained the shock of their lives when their son walked straight into a wake - that they were holding for him.
Juan Ramon Alfonso Penayo, 20, had been missing for several days and was feared by family and friends to be dead, fears that were seemingly confirmed when police found the remains of a badly burned body and attributed it to the missing man.
The area in which Penayo lives, in Paraguay, is rife with drug gangs and it is not uncommon for men to disappear and never be seen again.
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His family thought that their son had become mixed up with the gangs and had fallen into trouble through that.
He left his home on Thursday last week and did not return, according to Candido Figueredo, an expert in organised crime in the Amarbay department.
Mr Penayo's sudden disappearance prompted his family to think that he was dead and when a charred body was found, they assumed that it was his and thus organised a funeral.
The body itself was so badly burned as to be unidentifiable, but the family buried it anyway.
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They were holding a wake for their son when he dramatically walked back from the dead and right into the middle of his own funeral.
The Amarbay department, a part of Paraguay that borders Brazil and is reportedly known as a hotbed of drug trafficking and cocaine growing.
The borderlands between Paraguay are regularly fought over by rival gangs of drug traffickers looking to control the movement of cocaine from the production areas in central South America to the points of sale in the big cities of Brazil.
Law enforcement in the region can often be overwhelmed by the powerful drug cartels and thus the area is often quite lawless, with disappearances such as that which was assumed to have taken place in the case of Mr Penayo a regular feature of life.
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While the Penayo family will certainly be happy to have their son back safe and sound, there is still no indication of who the burned body actually belongs to.
Featured Image Credit: CENTopics: World News, Funeral, Weird, Brazil