Deadraisers.

[catsmate]

OK, well it's not 01APR and it doesn't seem to be a joke so I give you The Deadraisers; a group of USAian (naturally) Evangelical xian wackjobs who claim to bring the dead back to life.

It (the Dead Raising Team) is run by one Tyler Johnson, who claims to have brought eleven people back to life. He says he even persuaded the authorities in his state to issue him with an official photocard which lets him through police lines at car accident sites (which I hope is crap but you never know in the land of the free nutter).
There is of course absolutely no evidence for their claims and Johnson and his cohorts are unwilling to provide successful case studies or other citations.

No this lunacy was amusing when it was safety contained inside the USA but it appears to be spreading to civilisation. Well the UK anyway.

Alun and Donna Leppit are a seemingly sane British couple who are convinced that the dead can be raised through the power of prayer. There was a BBC 4 programme (Out of the Ordinary: The Power of Prayer) about them.
Unfortunately (for them) there's a lack of corpses for them to practice on.

Oh and there's a Kickstarter for their new documentary called Deadraisers, which follows enthusiasts as they trail round hospitals and mortuaries molesting corpses trying to bring people back to life.

BBC report
Freethinker report

 

[Brainache]

Sarah Silverman has a joke about how to commit the perfect murder:

Just repeatedly punch someone in the heart while shouting: "Live dammit, live!"

Maybe these guys are really murderers pretending to "save" people...

 

[Recovering Agnostic]

It's disappointing that this sentence was buried so far down the article:

Johnson is unwilling to provide successful case studies.

Well, I'm convinced.

I think we can see how these ideas spread, as well:

And in general, the proof that believers cite is a bit unconvincing - for example, there is an American heart surgeon who allegedly brought a heart attack patient back from the dead with prayer. But he was also using a defibrillator, and other doctors find the story entirely unremarkable.

But yeah, it was the prayer wot done it.

Claims like this sit in the margins between wishful thinking, careful presentation of facts and outright deception. For the most part, people like this genuinely believe that people can be raised from the dead, and probably think they have done it themselves, but the further they get drawn into it, and the more expectation they create for themselves, the more likely it is that they're going to end up knowingly fabricating stories, probably justifying it to themselves on the grounds of service to a wider truth.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

I've got a spare internet here for anyone willing to cosplay as zombie hunters and follow these guys around.

 

[Hellbound]

I've got a spare internet here for anyone willing to cosplay as zombie hunters and follow these guys around.

Actually, I think a better option would be to tip off some other fundie religious group about these "false prophets" supposedly raising the dead (isn't there a verse in Revelations about this? Don't have a Bible handy to look right now).

Sit back with popcorn, and the hijinks will ensue.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

I've got a spare internet here for anyone willing to cosplay as zombie hunters and follow these guys around.

Not enough actual brains to feed on.