1. The fire at the cemetery “My great-grandmother died when she was 103 years old, when I was eight. In the middle of the ceremony, my grandmother (daughter of the deceased) leaned on the grave where a few candles were burning. Then her hair started to catch on fire, and everyone started running around trying to put it out. They even dropped the casket halfway there.” —Karine Dal Piva Menoncin

2. The lost earring

“My aunt lost an earring at a funeral, and the next day, another person she knew died, and she had to go back to the same cemetery. So, she left the wake, asked permission from the family that was in the area where she had lost the earring, and began to look for it while everyone was praying. And, of course, she ended up finding it!” —Anonymous

3. The borrowed clothes

“My friend got an urgent call to go to her mother-in-law’s funeral. When she got there, she saw something that shocked her so much that people started asking her what was going on. They were going to bury her mother-in-law with an outfit of hers that she loved, and that she had given the outfit to her grandmother, who had already died. It was eating her up inside, but she didn’t make a sound. Now she’s no longer married to the same guy.” —Ezequiel Apenas

4. The, uh, allergy attack

“My sister and I went to a funeral, and since my sister is a total clown, she startd making me laugh. You know the feeling when you start laughing a bit and it gets even worse? To cover it up, I started to cough. Then, my sister also started to laugh a lot, and to cover it up, she also started coughing. So both of us were coughing like crazy and my dad tried to make an excuse for it, saying: ‘They’re allergic to flowers… And those flowers have a pretty strong smell, right?’ Then all the old women started coughing too, until they began taking the flowers out of the room. The people started to quietly leave, and then we burst out laughing like we never had before in our lives.” —Aline Ýngratis

5. The robbery

“Once, some people tried to rob me at my great-grandmother’s funeral! I was in the cafeteria of the funeral home with some other family members, waiting to get some chicken drumsticks, with my phone in my jacket pocket. My cousin, who was there too, noticed that the guy next to me was slowly pulling the phone out, and I didn’t notice anything since I was going through a difficult moment and also really hungry. Finally, my cousin ran up and was on top of the guy, and he said he was sorry. Then he came over to his family, who was mourning in the room next to us, and his sister shouted, ‘YOU CAN’T EVEN FORGIVE PEOPLE AT OUR FATHER’S FUNERAL?” —Alice Stippe Rodrigues

6. The miniskirt

“At my great-grandma’s funeral, one of her friends, who was 70 years old and had a rather provocative sense style (I loved it), went to say her goodbyes in a miniskirt. When she leaned down to kiss the forehead of my great-grandma in the casket, she was showing everything off to everyone sitting behind her. And it wasn’t a quick kiss. I had to get out of the chapel because I couldn’t even look at my mom’s face without laughing.” —Divina Francis

7. The game of tag

“When I was 5, a classmate from my school went to her grandfather’s funeral. She and her cousins decided to play tag around the casket. Then, she had the idea to go under the casket. And then, her cousin tagged her and she jumped up. The casket flew to one side, and her deceased grandfather to the other!” —Carolina Vieira

8. “Not me too!”

“My uncle died four years ago. When it came time to bury him, his twin brother arrived at the edge of the pit and said: ‘Oh no, my brother, someday we will find you.’ It would have been a touching scene, if only this twin brother hadn’t then tripped and almost fallen in the pit, shouting, ‘DAMMIT, NOT ME TOO!’ Nobody could hold in their laughter.” —Patricia Tolentino

9. The surprise encore act

“My mother told me a story about when my great-grandmother died and her loved ones went to her wake. At that time, people would just assume someone was dead and that was it — there would be no autopsy or anything. At the wake, it started to rain heavily, and they were in the yard. Everyone ran inside and left her body there. Suddenly, they heard a door slam and when they went to go see who it was, it was the great-grandmother, cursing everyone out for leaving her in the rain. Apparently, it was total pandemonium.” —Nataly Lima

10. The wrong funeral

“My mother-in-law arrived at the cemetery and, even before entering the funeral home’s hall, she began crying, greeting people and giving them her condolences. She cried and cried, and when she was near the casket, she saw she was crying for the wrong person. The wake for her family member was in the room next to that one. After that, she burst out laughing while standing over the casket of this unknown person, and everyone started giving her dirty looks. Once she found the right wake, she cried from laughing every time she looked at the casket, because she remembered the dead person from the room next door.” —Mayara Cardoso

11. A moment of solace

“At my grandfather’s funeral, we were at one of those cemeteries that only has plaques on the ground in the middle of the grass, and some very nice mountain views. I saw my cousin walking alone in the middle of the grass. I thought, ‘poor girl, she feels so bad, I’m going to go over to her.’ I went up to her and asked if she was okay. She said: ‘Yeah, I just came over here because I had to fart.'” —Anonymous

12. The interruption

“When my grandmother died, one of my aunts lost control when my cousin began to give a speech about the Bible, talking about how it was the path that God chose for us, to live and then to find ourselves with him, etc. My aunt kept on crying, my cousin said, ‘then, God…’ and my aunt interrupted: ‘I’M GOING TO MISS HER SO MUCH’. Then my cousin said: ‘yes, moving on…’ and my aunt: ‘OH MY GOD, I’M NEVER GOING TO SEE ALICE AGAIN.’ Then my cousin lost patience and said: ‘all right people, we’ll do the burial later, okay?'” —Alice Lima

13. The meet-cute

“The pastor who was speaking at the wake was kind of a boring guy, and my mom started laughing at him. She couldn’t stop, so she went out to get some fresh air and see what was going on. There, she found a guy who had the exact same thing happen to him, and they hadn’t seen each other inside. They started chatting, set up plans to see each other again, started going out, and that’s how I was born.” —Igor Pinheiro

14. The flag

“I don’t know if it’s wrong to laugh about this, but my friend went to a wake for her uncle, who was a huge fan of the Cruzeiro soccer team, and she saw that her mother had brought her Cruzeiro flag to put on the casket. Then, before burying him, my friend took the flag off of the casket and everyone started looking at her. Then she said to her mom: ‘I worked hard to buy this flag, I really liked my uncle, but it was really expensive.” —Giovana Lima

15. The wrong party

“At my friend’s grandfather’s wake, there was a wake being held for another elderly man in the room next to ours. But they were playing music, drinking, and the people at the church for her grandfather were horrified. Then after a while, a woman came over, entered the room and called out to the people there: ‘Hey, I loved this guy so much, he was the life of the party.’ Then everyone gave her a dirty look, because my friend’s grandfather had been an evangelical Christian all his life. The woman got the idea, looked at the casket and saw that it wasn’t the person she thought it was. Then she said in a serious tone: ‘Oh, sorry, I though this was the wake for Nelson.’ I couldn’t hold it in and started laughing.” —Alice Lima

16. The party crashers

“My grandmother and my aunt were passing by a wake, and nobody in the family was crying for the deceased. They felt bad for the deceased and went there to cry for someone whom they had never seen in their lives. And the result was that the family of the dead man started giving them their condolences.” —Renata Mendes

17. The wrong type of alcohol

“When my grandmother died, my family decided that she would be buried in the city where she was born. So my mother (who goes over the top with food) decided to provide a buffet and a lot of whiskey to serve at the wake, because everything was about food and drinks. When the buffet didn’t arrive, some of my grandmother’s brothers started to ask for some drinks to drown their sorrows. My cousin was desperate, and went to look in my aunt’s house for some alcoholic beverages to serve. She found an unlabeled bottle and decided to take it over to the funeral, and everybody drank it. But then when it came time for the burial, everyone started feeling really funny, and nobody knew why. My aunt spotted the bottle, now almost empty, and shouted: ‘what is my medicine for putting on my joints doing here?” It turned out that my cousin had given them rubbing alcohol.” — Julia Salles

18. The wrong party, part 2

“My friends decided to go to my grandfather’s funeral, and by some HUGE coincidence, there was another funeral of someone else with the same last name at the same cemetery. They got there after it had already begun (there were 3 of them), and so they were towards the back and they couldn’t directly see who was there. Two of them had already gotten pretty emotional, they were crying, until the third one noticed during the speech that the person speaking said: ‘she was a great mother and woman.’ So she realized that it couldn’t have been my grandfather. She looked to the side and saw my other two friends crying, and began to tuck her head into her shirt, to try to stifle her urge to burst out laughing. Then, she managed to pull the rest of them to the side, and let them know they needed to go to the right funeral. They were able to find me and caught the end of my speech. Then they told me what had happened, and even ended up laughing myself silly on the day of my own grandfather’s funeral.” —Paula Mascarenhas

19. The flower delivery

“When my great aunt Cida died, my godmother ordered her a floral wreath. Her name was Marisa. And then, with everyone gathered there crying, the man arrives with the flowers and says: ‘does anyone know where the wake for Marisa is?!’ They guy had thought that Marisa was the name of the person who died, and not the person ordering the flowers. Everyone burst out laughing!” —Marcella Marrara Ducati Assali