People Who Disappeared In The Wild...And Came Back

By Sughra Hafeez in Confessions On 10th July 2017
advertisement

#1 Rita Chretien – Missing For 49 Days In Nevada

Al and Rita Chretien were headed to Las Vegas when they decided to get off the beaten track and follow their GPS down a more interesting road.

Nevada wilderness says her husband was frantic before leaving her in a desperate bid to get help after their van got stuck in the mud.

Rita Chretien said she and her husband, Al Chretien, used a tiny snow shovel to get their van unstuck but ended up in a worse situation.

The couple then walked 7.5 kilometers — in the wrong direction as they relied on a GPS — before her swollen knee gave out and they were forced to return to the van, she said.

The Penticton, B.C., couple's problems began with the GPS that led them off track when they decided to take the backcountry on their way to a trade show in Las Vegas last March.

They soon realized they were in deep trouble.

"We prayed and we cried and he went," Chretien told Dueck. "It was very emotional. We hadn't cried so deeply for years, and I tried to compose myself so it would be easier for him to go."

"We just couldn't believe it happened," she said. "We prayed and said, 'Lord, what are we going to do now?"

Chretien's husband never returned after setting off on his own three days after the van got stuck, and she faced the next seven weeks alone, hungry and dying.

"I think he must have passed away or frozen to death," she said.

On Day 49 of her ordeal, the day three hunters rescued her, Chretien thought she could die.

Rita had her Bible with her and says that her faith, as well as melted snow, kept her alive after many would have given up all hope.

#2 Luke Shembrook – Autistic Boy Missing For 4 Nights At Lake Eildon, Australia

A lot of readers probably have the impression that Australia is a very hot place filled with crocodiles and Paul Hogan, but it is in fact also quite chilly in areas and filled with venomous snakes and spiders rather than crocodiles.

11-year-old autistic boy Luke disappeared from his family’s campsite and simply wandered into the bush.

Luke, who has severe autism, was spotted by police Air Wing just before midday near Skyline Rd, 3km southwest of the campground where he vanished.

“To spot him now is an absolute relief and the joy felt by all of us that he has been found it just hard to describe,” Mr. Nugent said.

He described Luke as a “courageous, resilient, strong young man”.

“Eleven years of age after four days and we’ve all seen the terrain he was lost in, that is just amazing,” he said.

He was in good health and spirits and happy to be found, suffering only slight hyperthermia. Luke survived four nights unsheltered in the Australian bush, which many an adult would not be able to do.

And I have to say, having been to the exact spot at which he was found, he found a beautiful place to wait and be rescued.

advertisement
Follow On Google News

#3 Hiro Onoda – Hiding Out For 34 Years After The War

When the young ‘hippy’ adventurer, Norio Suzuki set out to find ‘Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman, in that order,’ he searched for days in the jungle before accidentally stumbling across the object of his interest in 1974.

Lt Onoda was what is known as a ‘Japanese Holdout’ – a member of the Japanese armed forces.

Hiroo Onoda, the last Japanese imperial soldier to emerge from hiding in a jungle in the Philippines and surrender, 29 years after the end of the Second World War.

Onoda was an intelligence officer who came out of hiding, erect but emaciated, in fatigues patched many times over, on Lubang island in the Philippines in March 1974, on his 52nd birthday. He surrendered only when his former commander flew there to reverse his 1945 orders to stay behind and spy on American troops.

Lt Onoda had been told to sabotage the allies and make things as difficult as possible, not to kill himself and not to surrender. He took it literally for 34 years.

It took a superior officer coming all the way from Japan to convince him to surrender – leaflets had been dropped in the mountains to explain that the war was over, but he had thought that this was simply a trick, and refused to leave his mountain hideaway.

advertisement

#4 Hugh Glass – Survived Six Weeks In The 1824 Wilderness Of South Dakota After Being Mauled By A Bear

Every man there knew Hugh Glass was a gone ‘coon.’ They had only to look at what little she grizzly's 3-inch claws had left of the old trapper. At least what they could make out through the blood, which was everywhere. To look at his shredded scalp…face…chest…arm…hand. To see how she’d chewed into his shoulder and back. They had only to listen to the blood bubble from the rip in his throat with his every breath. What astonished them was that he breathed at all. Again. And yet again.

Hugh was exploring the South Dakotan wilderness with a group of other mountain men and explorers when he was mauled by a mama grizzly bear (who I imagine is much like a mama Facebook bear, but sweeter). He managed to kill the bear with some help from his companions but was very wounded.

Hugh was carried along by his party on a litter that they threw together with sticks, then decided that was too hard, and decided to leave two men with him to wait while he died and buried him.

Two men, Fitzgerald, and Bridges dug a grave for him but they then ran off, taking Glass’ rifle and equipment, claiming they were under attack from a hostile local tribe. They found the party and reported that Hugh Glass had died.

Of course, he didn’t. He set his broken leg, wrapped himself in a bear hide to cover his bone-deep wounds and set off crawling back to civilization. He made it to a river, made a raft and floated downstream to his starting point at Fort Kiowa.

Follow On Twitter

#5 Beck Weathers – Missing Above The Death Zone On Mount Everest

On the night of May 10, 1996, Beck Weathers huddled with 10 other climbers on an exposed stretch of Mount Everest, 26,000 feet above sea level.

A blizzard churned the air into a slurry of ice and snow.Their supplemental oxygen was fully depleted, and they struggled for each breath.

Weathers, a 49-year-old Dallas pathologist, was worse off than most. Earlier that day, he'd gone almost entirely blind — the altitude-induced effect of a recent corneal operation — and as the sun set, his body temperature dropped and his heart slowed.

Anyway, Weathers started to descend with another guide when a storm disoriented the whole party. A guide came back to rescue Weathers and three companions, but by that point, Weathers had wandered off because people don’t make good choices up to that high.

More guides came to check on him and another man and believed Weathers to be near death and ‘unsaveable’, so they left him to die.

Weathers had a nap and woke up, making it to camp under his own steam, badly frostbitten. He was put in a tent by himself and again not expected to survive, but he survived another night and walked down to a lower camp to be medevac by helicopter.

He lost one arm, the fingers on the other, most of both feet and his nose.

It would prove to be the deadliest event in Everest's history up to that point, and it soon became the most famous, garnering headlines and being immortalized in Jon Krakauer's 1997 bestseller, Into Thin Air — and now, Everest, an Imax film starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Jason Clarke, and, as Weathers, Josh Brolin.

#6 Shannon Fraser – Missing For 17 Days In Far North Queensland

Seeing is believing, according to the man who first encountered Shannon Fraser after she emerged from 17 days lost in dense tropical scrub in North Queensland.

The 30-year-old woman was naked, save for a plastic fertilizer bag wrapped around her, and her skin all over so badly sunburned she nearly bled, farmer Brad Finch told Guardian Australia.

Fraser’s tale of survival, reportedly eating small fish and insects as she slogged her way through the forest at the foot of Queensland’s highest mountain, made global headlines this week.

It has beggared the belief of locals who wonder how a visit to a popular swimming spot in an area not considered particularly remote could go so badly off track for so long.

Shannon had gone swimming in a water hole with her fiancé and a friend, and the last they had seen of her was her running into the bush and disappearing after a fight. She got hopelessly lost and wandered the bush naked for the next 17 days.

Shannon lost 16 kgs and all of her clothes somehow, with her brother Dylan telling press “Its Biggest Loser meets Bear Grylls”, because brothers are jerks.

Shannon has apparently made up with her fiancé.

advertisement

#7 Andrew Gaskell – Missing For 14 Days In A Malaysian National Park

Some people disappear into the wilderness and are lost and it is a surprise, others disappear into the wilderness and no one is overly surprised because they have made a series of stupid choices.

He was reported missing to Tasmania police when his family did not hear from him after he set off hiking in the Sarawak park, with poor mobile coverage.

Gaskell said he got lost after descending a mountain at sunset into bushland where there were a lot of different trails. “I ended up spending that whole night just wandering,” he told ABC radio.

“If I had a GPS or navigational equipment I would have been fine. That was extremely stupid of me, really.”

Gaskell said his feet were injured and it was very difficult to walk. “My nails are infected and I’ve been bitten by a lot of things.”

He chose not to take a guide to show him through the Park, with its huge limestone cave systems and dense jungle.

The only surprising thing about him being lost was that he did not die. After heading off without the mandatory guide, he managed to eat ferns and drink river water to stay alive. He was bitten by insects and covered in leeches. His toenails became infected. He was close to death.

Andrew publicly apologized for all the trouble he caused and hopefully will follow the rules and regulations next time he wants to go exploring and TAKE A GUIDE.

#8 Yossi Ghinsberg – Missing For 21 Days In The Amazon Jungle, Bolivia

Yossi Ghinsberg is an Israeli motivational speaker (among other things) who disappeared into the Amazon jungle in 1980 with three companions, looking for lost Amazonian gold.

It sounds like a movie, and in fact the movie Jungle is coming out soon, starring Daniel Radcliffe, if you want to see more of Yossi Ghinsberg.

After following a mysterious Austrian geologist through remote village after village, on foot and by boat, it became clear that their guide was really a criminal searching for gold for his own nefarious purposes, and was not really a geologist.

The group broke up and Ghinsberg survived on his own rotting from fungi and being eaten alive by ants. He wandered delirious, and was eventually found by one of his earlier companions and an indigenous tribe that had taken him in.

The other two companions (including the fake geologist) were never found, and Yossi spent the next three months in hospital.

#9 Madeline Connelly – Missing For Six Days In Montana With Her Dog Mogi

Madeline was visiting family in Montana when she parked her car by the side of the road and went for a walk in the Great Bear Wilderness, which is a name that IMMEDIATELY PUTS ME OFF HIKING THERE.

And I am an Australian who is like “Oh, a snake, I shall step over him.”

All she had with her was her clothing (just a sweater for warmth), her dog and his leash, and her car keys.

sounding hoarse and looking uncomfortable at all the attention, Madeline Connelly explained how a quick hike with her dog Mogi became six days lost in the Montana wilderness.

"I realized we didn't have water. Found a swimming hole. .got back up, took a wrong turn," the River Forest native told reporters Wednesday after she was rescued from the Great Bear Wilderness near Glacier National Park. "The first night, I realized that I was not in the right place."

Connelly said she survived by drinking water out of creeks and streams. She did not have much to eat and was unable to start a fire at night to keep warm in the near freezing temperatures.

Madeline is just fine now and back in her native Chicago, and Mogi, who has experienced the best walks ever, is always kinda hoping they get lost again.

advertisement

#10 Ricky Megee – Missing 70 Days In The Australian Outback

This is a weird one.

According to his own story, Megee was driving along the Buntine highway near the border of Western Australia and the Northern Territory when his car broke down.

Then he remembered nothing until he was woken by hungry dingoes pawing at him.

He has suggested that he was drugged by a hitchhiker, but what happened to the hitchhiker?

Megee lost half his body weight, camping near a dam and eating frogs and lizards. Luckily frogs and water were in abundance in the wet season, and the temperature was pleasant.

A skeletal Megee turned up at the isolated Birrindudu station, much to the shock of the locals.

Megee’s car was never found. Perhaps the mystery hitchhiker holds both the car keys and the key to the mystery.

Megee has since written a book about his ordeal called Left for Dead.

#11 Reg Foggardy – Missing For 6 Days In The West Australian Goldfields

Mr. Foggerdy had been on a hunting trip 170 kilometers east of Laverton on Mason Lake Road, when he left the campsite he was sharing with his brother

Reg Foggardy is a tough-as-nails Australian grandfather who disappeared into the Australian outback.

He had been camel hunting with his brother, and after a day with a little luck and even fewer camels he had returned back to camp to rest for the night.

Unexpectedly a camel appeared and Reg, who had just taken off all his hunting gear, gave chase with just a gun, wearing an only pair of shorts, a shirt, and flip flops.

He didn't have any equipment. It was just the circumstances of how he had gone out taking off after a camel and then became disorientated and lost.

Reg shot the camel but got lost in the process, and with no knife could not even use the camel’s body to survive.

Reg hid from the hot sun under trees and ate ants to survive – and as a diabetic, this is what would have saved him.

After six days he was found, just as he had laid down to die.

He still wants to go back and find his gun.

#12

Juliane was only 17 years old when she became the sole survivor of LANSA Flight 508, which broke up in the air when it was struck by lightning.

She fell 3 km down, strapped to her seat, her fall broken by the rain forest canopy and her seat.

But falling from the sky was only the beginning of her troubles. The forest that had saved her life became her prison. She was now lost in the deep uninhabited jungle with danger behind every bush.There were jaguars, scorpions and poisonous snakes camouflaged as leaves, which she couldn’t see because she had lost her glasses. Equally unsettling were the rivers with piranhas and alligators. And December in the rainforest is wet. By day Koepcke was dotted with the black outlines of a hundred bugs.

Juliane followed advice that she could remember from her father and followed a stream downstream until she found a boat. Juliane then poured gasoline onto her arm, which was infested with maggots, and successfully removed 35 of them. I can’t even. She had broken her collarbone in her fall.

Juliane waited at the boat and was found by its owners, woodcutters who were working in the forest.

Juliane’s mother sadly died in the plane crash, but she was reunited with her father and wrote a book about her ordeal, called I Fell From The Sky, a statement which she is one of the few people who can absolutely truthfully say.

Her story gripped the world. There was something powerfully life-affirming in its cocktail of luck, bravery and the invincibility of the human spirit. That same month, the first interview appeared in her native country, Germany, in Stern magazine.

Then media coverage exploded. One journalist was so desperate to get an interview she pretended to be a nurse. Koepcke was being talked about and written about all over the globe.

advertisement

#13 Robert Bogucki – Missing For 43 Days In The Great Sandy Desert Of Western Australia

The last anyone saw of Robert as he cycled away from the Sandfire Roadhouse in Western Australia was his back wheel. He intended to cycle solo across the Great Sandy Desert.

Bogucki was found by a Channel Nine helicopter 43 days later, and had survived by eating plants and flowers and drinking water that he found or dug for.

Even though Robert recovered just fine, Channel Nine got in some hot water for taking Robert to hospital in their chopper rather than waiting for medical personnel or notifying the search parties that were looking for him. I guess there is nothing like an exclusive scoop to a news channel.

As there were five people and four helicopter seats present at the rescue, one journalist was left behind briefly with some water until another helicopter got him. It was a very exciting day for Channel Nine.

#14 Ada Blackjack – Missing For 2 Years On A Remote Russian Island

Ada, an Inupiat woman, was hired by Canadian explorers Stefansson and Crawford to be cook and seamstress on an expedition to the now Russian Wrangel Islands, and claim them for Canada.

In 1921 five expeditions were left on the island, but due to running low on food, three left in search of help and Ada Blackjack stayed to care for a sick man. The man soon died, and she was left there alone for two years, fending off polar bears and eating seals that she hunted.

Being a woman of color, Ada was blamed for the death of the man she tried to nurse back to health until she convinced his family that she had done everything she could do.

Despite her survival alone on the island, she died in poverty in 1983 and sadly is barely remembered.

#15 The family who survived on turtle blood while lost at sea for 38 days

In 1971, the Robertson family boarded their yacht Lucette at Falmouth harbour, Cornwall to sail around the world. Eighteen months into the trip, they were 200 miles from the Galápagos islands when catastrophe struck. Their boat was hit by a pod of killer whales and destroyed within minutes.

The family scrambled aboard a leaky raft and when that finally deflated 17 days later, they made for their dinghy, the Ednamair.

There was only enough water for 10 days, and the only food on board consisted of a bag of onions, a tin of biscuits, 10 oranges, six lemons, and half a pound of glucose sweets. When that ran out, the family drank turtle blood to survive.

The matriarch of the family, Lyn Robinson, was a nurse and devised a gruesome technique to keep them hydrated with rainwater collected in the boat. She knew the water, which was contaminated by a mix turtle blood and offal, would be poisonous if taken orally, and insisted her family take enemas using tubes from the rung of a ladder.

On July 23, 1972, the family were finally picked up after a Japanese crew spotted their distress flare.