Grieving man climbed into mortuary freezer

A Taiwanese man grieving over the death of his girlfriend climbed inside a mortuary freezer to be with her and was only pulled out alive half an hour later.

The 41-year-old man was discovered on Monday when workers detected an unusually high temperature in the freezer and realised the hatch was not securely fastened.

"A mortuary manager opened the hatch, then saw two people lying inside, and felt scared enough to yell out and then even cried," the Liberty Times reported. "She didn't stabilise for a long time."

The man had taken a drug before entering the freezer to speed what appeared to be a suicide attempt, local papers said. Reports said his girlfriend died on Friday from an overdose of sleeping pills.

The mortuary said it would step up security to ensure that family and others who came to identify bodies did not stay too long, the administrator Chang Lung-ching said.