There are certain sets of circumstances, should you ever find yourself in them, where the most reasonable course of action is to reflect on what a good life it’s been and prepare to check out. We all like to hear
nail-biting stories of those who
beat the odds and managed to overcome
certain death, but these stories are of course highly statistically unlikely—that’s why it’s called “certain death”.
As for the following people, they decided that statistics be damned, they weren’t going to be one. These average, everyday people found themselves in situations that are normally only survived by waking up from the nightmare, yet they’re still with us today… and with some pretty harrowing tales to tell.
Survived: Being buried alive
Michelina Lewandoska, a Polish emigrant to the U.K., described for a British court in January of 2012 the terror she felt as she lay buried in the ground, her hands and feet bound, in a taped-up cardboard box, slowly suffocating: “During my time inside my
shallow grave where I was buried alive I feared that my life was at an end and I was going to die… I prayed to God to help me to survive so that I could look after my young son.” The referred to her then 3 year-old son she shared with fiancé Marcin Kasprzak—the man who had buried her.
After having grown “bored” of Michelina, Kasprzak and his younger friend Patryk Borys hatched a plan to get rid of her. Marcin attacked her with a stun gun, once to get her to the ground and once “for a long period”; he and his friend then bound her wrists and ankles and tied her up, apparently trying to figure out what to do next for several hours—before finally stuffing Michelina into a cardboard box and driving off into the wilderness, to bury her alive under four inches of earth and a 90 pound tree branch.
Incredibly, Michelina used her engagement ring to cut loose of her bonds as she was buried in the shallow grave, then claw her way out. She had difficulty walking and breathing for weeks after the attack, and doubtless still has nightmares; but on her testimony, her attackers were both sentenced to
20 years in prison.
Survived: Attack by “Railway Killer” (sole survivor)
When Holly Dunn and her boyfriend Chris Maier were approached by a strange looking man asking for money late on the night of August 29, 1997, they were a little spooked—and they had every reason to be. The man’s name was
Angel Resendiz, and at the time he had already killed six people and would go on to kill many more.
Resendiz found the couple chatting by some train tracks a few blocks away from a party they had just come from. Producing an ice pick, he was able to get both Holly and Chris tied up and stashed in a ditch; after repeatedly checking to make sure he had not been seen, he returned to bludgeon Chris to death with a 50 pound rock. Holly was then raped, stabbed in the neck with the ice pick, and beaten so severely she was practically unrecognizable, at which point she mercifully passed out.
After awaking to find her attacker gone, Holly dragged herself to the nearest house, and was taken to the hospital with a shattered eye socket and broken jaw among many other injuries. She was able to recover, and testified against Resendiz at the trial that saw him convicted and sentenced to death—a sentence that was carried out in 2006. Angel Resendiz, the “Railway Killer” murdered at least 15 people over 13 years—and Holly Dunn is the only one of his victims to survive.
Survived: 47-story fall from apartment building
Alcides Moreno and his brother Edgar were window washers, and they worked together on Manhattan high rise buildings for years. The job obviously carries certain risks, and in December 2007 those risks became horrifying reality as the rig they were working on became disengaged and plummeted 47 stories—almost 500 feet—into an alleyway. Firefighters arrived to find Edgar deceased and his brother Alcides alive, CONSCIOUS—and sitting up.
Investigators theorize that Alcides was able to sort of “ride” the platform, using it to help slow his descent, and his doctors noted that he did not hit his head or break his pelvis upon landing—the two things most likely to cause fatal complications in such a fall. Alcides was rushed to the
emergency roomthat day with injuries to his spine and brain, shattered limbs, fractured ribs—in short, everything you would expect to see in someone who just fell 500 feet onto the pavement, except the lack of a pulse.
Doctors expected his recovery to take a year or more, but he was pretty much recovered—and making the rounds on morning talk shows—by June. Alcides’ days as a window washer are over, but his days of life should be plentiful, to the astonishment of literally everyone. Moreno’s lead doctor said that falls from three stories and above are very difficult to survive, and that Alcides’ treatment had taken his team into new medical territory: “Above ten stories, most of the time we never see the patients,” he said, “because they usually go to the morgue.”
Survived: Being stranded at sea after boat sank
Longtime friends
Ken Henderson and Ed Coen were on a fishing trip in the Gulf of Mexico in March 2012 when their 30-foot boat started to fill up with water. Henderson tried to pump some of the water out, but it had taken them too long to notice—salt water sprayed everywhere, killing the pumps. There was no response on their radio, no signal on Henderson’s cell phone—and just after grabbing some
life jackets and a few supplies, the boat vanished beneath them into the ice-cold water.
And there they remained, for over 30 hours. They talked to keep each other distracted, huddled together to conserve body heat, and fought fatigue, dehydration and the bitter cold for as long as they could. Henderson decided to make a last ditch effort—a solo swim toward a distant oil rig—when it became apparent that Coen, a slender man, was having serious trouble.
Ken almost didn’t make it. He became disoriented and almost got off course, and began hallucinating trees made of ice under the surface of the water. After finally stumbling aboard the rig at two in the morning, a day and a half after and 50 miles from where their boat sank, Ken was able to find a galley with a phone and call his wife, who alerted the Coast Guard. It was they who discovered Ed Coen’s lifeless body a short time later, but there would have been two bodies to find if not not for Ken Henderson’s valiant effort.
Survived: Black bear attack in his home
Richard Moyer began the morning of October 3, 2011, like any other. He got up to let out his dog Brindy, who dashed off into the Pennsylvania woods surrounding their home, but as he turned to go back into the house, Brindy returned—hurriedly and unexpectedly. With a gigantic black bear chasing her.
This
bear really, really hated Brindy and anyone involved with her. It literally broke down the door and stormed into the house after the dog, attacking Richard and waking up his wife Angela. She tried to intervene, and quickly discovered that stopping a bear attack is a bit of a double edged sword, as the bear turned on HER. This prompted the dog to leap onto the attacking animal, and Richard Moyer to shrug his shoulders and do what any husband would: “What are you going to do? I kept my head down and just leapt into the bear,” he said. And that’s when the bear got REALLY mad.
It mauled the hell out of him, chewed on his head for a little while, and then—amazingly—simply stopped, went out onto the front porch and sat down. While the damage from the bear’s claws was extensive, the gnaw job on the back of Richard’s head required 37 staples to close. Husband and wife were both home from the hospital by the end of the day, probably eager to tell the story to their 10 year-old son—who had slept through the whole thing.
