What is interpretively rich but genuinely uncertain:

Whether something remarkable genuinely happened in 1915, and the story has been embellished in the retelling.

Whether a small kernel of a real event — perhaps an episode of severe post-ictal unresponsiveness that was mistaken for death in more informal circumstances than the account describes, perhaps a family scare during a period of illness — was amplified over decades of retelling into the dramatic narrative that appeared in 1955.

Whether the entire narrative, as told, is a community legend that grew up around the fact of Essie Dunbar’s unusual health history and the fact that she lived to an unexpectedly old age.