EDIT: Arg, my bad. I was so confused over this, but after a few minutes of puzzling, I realized that wasn't the same person, but another creature with the same name. Sorry for the confusion. I looked for a place to delete this message, but I don't know how. Mods, feel free.
I had a Dwarf die in the first few minutes of my fortress; he went hunting and got spitted by Trogs. I didn't have a graveyard, and didn't make one for the duration of his death, and in fact had to forbid his corpse from being reclaimed so nobody else would die. He rotted to the bone and was forgotten.
Fast forward many player hours. I have built a graveyard and some coffins in the same room, and have 4-5 dead bodies hanging around. I never saw his body or bones collected or buried, but the first coffin was dedicated to him automatically. During a sudden goblin raid, I lost another one, one of my soldiers. In the confusion, a corpse appeared in my graveyard, with the same name as that first dwarf, naked but fleshy. It was not adjacent to the coffin, nor on the way from the coffin to the door. A few minutes later, he started rotting, and spouting miasma.
The only conclusion I can draw is that a Goblin thief tried to steal his body, forcing it to be generated incorrectly, and moved towards another coffin on the other side of the room, then was forced to drop it and flee. However, I didn't see anyone in the room, either, and there was nothing there worth stealing, as far as I can tell.
Obviously, since it's rotting, it wasn't re-buried. I checked, and it's not a forbidden object. His coffin is empty, but I didn't think to check whether it was before the raid. Even if it wasn't, he would have been long since made into bones and a skull. That, and I don't know why it even appeared.
It was that close to being a miraculous resurrection...
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Topic: [RESOLVED] [40d] Reappearing corpse (Read 613 times)