A woman is believed to have been buried alive by mistake and lay conscious inside her coffin for 11 days before trying to fight her way out of the stone tomb.

Rosangela Almeida dos Santos, 37, appears to have desperately tried to escape her wooden casket, which had been nailed shut after she was buried alive.

But she had already died by the time family members smashed open the tomb last Friday after locals reported hearing screams coming from her grave, according to reports.

Shocking footage shows the commotion in the Senhora Santana cemetery in Riachao das Neves, northeast Brazil, as local men took out the heavy coffin and removed the lid.