Procedural death: when a person who is not dead is purposely declared legally dead by the government.

Usually the subject of the obituary is famous but the deceased person is not.

Name confusion: where someone with an identical or similar name has died.

Misunderstandings: such as when a Sky News employee thought that a rehearsal for the future death of the Queen Mother was real.

In particular, a number of Japanese soldiers thought to have died in World War II in fact survived-typically hiding in a remote jungle for years or even decades, believing that the war had not ended.

Missing in action: soldiers who go missing in war are sometimes incorrectly declared dead if no body is found.

Misidentified body: when a corpse is misidentified as someone else, often someone who was involved in the same incident or who happened to go missing at the same time.

Impostor: when an ordinary person who for years has passed themselves off to family and friends as a retired minor celebrity dies, it can prompt an erroneous obituary for the real (but still living) celebrity.

Hoax: when a death is falsely reported, either by an outside party or the subject themselves, generally as a prank.

The ensuing legal disputes often continue for many years, with victims growing elderly and sometimes dying in reality before they are resolved (see Uttar Pradesh Association of Dead People).

Fraud victim: many people from different countries have been registered dead by officials who are bribed by relatives who want to steal the victim's land.

Faked death: when the subject fakes their own death in order to evade legal, financial, or marital difficulties and start a new life.

Clerical errors: due to clerical errors, almost 500 living people in the United States are inadvertently considered dead each month by the Social Security Administration.

Brush with death: when the subject unexpectedly survives a life-threatening illness or injury which made the person appear to be dead or certain to die or if they were really dying but not yet dead at the time of publication.

The most egregious examples were in 2003 when CNN incorrectly reported the death of seven major world figures in this way, and in 2020 when Radio France Internationale published as many as 100 premature obituaries.

Accidental publication: release of a pre-written draft obituary, usually on a news web site, as a result of technical or human error.

Premature obituaries may be published for reasons such as the following: People who were presumed (though not categorically declared) to be dead, and joke death reports that were widely believed, are also included. This article lists the recipients of incorrect death reports (not just formal obituaries) from publications, media organisations, official bodies, and widely used information sources but not mere rumours of deaths. Examples include that of inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel, whose premature obituary condemning him as a 'merchant of death' for creating military explosives may have prompted him to create the Nobel Prize black nationalist Marcus Garvey, whose actual death may have been precipitated by reading his own obituary and actor Abe Vigoda, who was the subject of so many death reports and rumours that a website was created to state whether he was alive or dead. Pope John Paul II was the subject of three premature obituaries.Ī premature obituary is an obituary of someone who was still alive at the time of publication.

You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources. This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness.

Ed kershner paine webber