10 Years ago I survived an airplane crash. What I saw there scarred me for the rest of my life - Day 1

You won?t find anything about it on the news or internet. The case was declared closed soon after the crash, claiming there were no survivors. I never told anyone about it, not even my late wife. I guess the whole thing traumatized me so much that I just wanted to push it to the back of my mind and never think about it again. But it was always there, gnawing at me, reminding me. So now I'm going to tell you all about it.
It was early fall and I had just boarded the plane which would take me home from my two-week long business trip. The plane took off just fine and I since I'm so prone to jet leg, I decided to get some sleep. I?m not sure how much time had gone by, but I remember strong turbulence waking me up. I opened my eyes to see luggage falling down and around and passengers screaming in terror.
?What?s going on?!? ? I instantly became alert, asking the terrified lady next to me.
She outright ignored me, clutching her seat feverishly. Oxygen masks dropped from above and I put mine on as soon as it did, buckling my seatbelt with trembling hands. I looked outside the window and saw the tops of endless rows of trees dangerously close and getting closer by the second.
This is it, it?s all over.
Those were my last thoughts before impact and everything went dark.
I awoke on the floor of the airplane. Luggage, spilled food and other items were all around me. I looked up towards the pilot?s cabin and was met with a view of trees. The plane had apparently broken into pieces, but the fuselage seemed somewhat intact, despite the mess around me.
My first thought was: I survived!
I looked down at my aching body and tried to assess the damage. I was pretty bruised up and my shoulder had a minor cut, but other than that nothing serious. It was then that I heard the voices of other passengers around me. To my left it sounded like a woman was crying and another woman was consoling her. In front of me I heard a moaning sound, while to my right was a man who seemed to be bruised up like me, but fine.
I got up and realized that a handful of us were still alive and some were already checking the dead bodies for their vital signs.
?We need to help the injured, now!? ? one of the survivors shouted.
I joined in to help them with that, checking the pulses of the passengers that weren?t messed up so badly that they could potentially be alive.
?Linda, she?s gone. I?m sorry.? ? the consoling woman told the young girl who was sobbing over what we later figured was her sister's disfigured body.
A few minutes later we saw a passenger who was alive in his seat, but just barely. He had a metal pipe hanging from his gut and his legs were crushed beyond recognition. He begged us to kill him and after some hesitation, Mitch, one of the survivors, took a hatchet did him in. The rest of us turned away. We could hardly bear listening to the sound of the hatchet connecting to the man?s skull, let alone watch it.
?What should we do?? ? Linda asked.
?Basic rules say that we should stay put and rescue will have an easier time finding us.? ? I said.
?He?s right.? ? another survivors said ? ?We need to set up an SOS signal and try to contact someone. Amber, are you getting anything??
He asked the woman who was consoling Linda earlier. She was on her phone, trying to see if she can get a signal.
?Nothing.? ? she shook her head in desperation ? ?Not a single bar.?
?Then we have no choice but to wait.? ? another survivor responded.
?We have to set up shelter. It?s gonna get cold tonight.? ? I said.
?Wait, we?re not gonna be here for that long, are we?? ? Mitch asked.
?Tonight. And maybe a few more nights.? ? I said ? ?We have to ration our food and get cozy.?
?What about the ones who died? We have to give them a burial.? ? Linda said through tears.
?We will, sweetie.? ? Amber told her ? ?But right now we have to think about our own survival.?
We went outside of the fuselage to see where we were, but despite having a small clearing, all around us were tall trees, blocking our view. A few broken trees lay around, as a result of the plane knocking them down upon impact. Since there were no major elevations nearby, there was no way of telling how close or far we were from civilization.
We carried out the dead bodies and lined them up in front of the fuselage. We decided not to use our strength for digging, since who knows how long we?d have to stay here, so instead we just covered them with sheets and clothes.
In total, there were only six of us left alive. Linda, Amber, Mitch, Will, Norton and myself. At around dusk, it started to get really cold, so we used the luggage to block the opening in the fuselage as much as we could.
Mitch used rocks to form an ?SOS? sign in the small clearing behind the plane, in hopes to get the rescuers? attention faster. When night fell, we still couldn?t get rid of the impending cold, so we put on extra clothes and huddled up on makeshift beds made from clothes and blankets of other passengers.
We ate a meager meal of a candy bar per person and decided to get some sleep. Most of the group members fell asleep quickly, with the exception of Linda crying herself to sleep. I was the last one to fall asleep.
I?m not sure what time it was when I suddenly woke up at the sound of a twig snapping outside the plane. I thought maybe someone had found us, so I shot up and peered out the window. I couldn?t see anything, so I approached the luggage barricade and peered through the hole. I was met with pitch darkness outside our plane. I had never been camping before, so to see the woods in such absolute blackness terrified me.
Thinking the sound may have been from an animal, I was about to return to bed when I heard another snap of a twig close by. I grabbed a flashlight and moved some of the luggage away, enough to make an opening for myself. I went outside and scanned the area with the beam of light.
"Hello?" - I called out, hoping against hope that someone human would hear me.
No one was there. I went around the plane, with every twig I stepped on echoing throughout the woods. It was then that I realized how quiet it actually was. When I went to bed, the forest was brimming with the sounds of its inhabitants. Now there wasn?t a single sound ? no birds, insects, nothing.
I remembered that when a forest goes quiet, it usually means there is a predator nearby. My heart started racing and I carefully scanned the area with my flashlight again and proceeded to back away towards the fuselage. I got to the barricade of luggage and as I was about to climb, I heard another sound behind me.
It sounded like something was slowly being dragged across the ground. I pointed my flashlight towards the source of the sound ? to the pile of dead bodies. Slowly, I moved the beam from right to left across the still corpses covered by clothes.
My flashlight finally reached the edge of the body-line on the left and my heart started thumping even faster. One of the jackets had been moved aside and the space where a body had once been, between two other bodies, was now gone. The dragging sound resounded again.
I moved the flashlight up and saw the body of a woman lying on the floor. And then it limply slid further into darkness by a few inches with that same dragging sound, leaving only her legs hanging in the light. I pointed the flashlight further upwards and saw the woman's wide eyes staring blankly towards the sky with an expressionless face. But that's not what scared me.
Clasping the woman's hair, just at the edge of the light was a skinny, yet muscular black, hairy hand. Two glowing eyes reflected back from the flashlight and as soon as the creature saw me, it produced a very short scream (we?re talking milliseconds here) and ran off with the sound of loud and impossibly quick footsteps echoing and at the same time fading almost instantly, dragging the woman behind itself into darkness.
I dropped the flashlight and ran back to the fuselage. I blocked the opening with the luggage, panting. I returned to my seat, surprised that no one was awake by my loud footsteps and breathing. I covered myself, keeping an eye on the luggage barricade. All night, I thought I imagined skinny hands poking their way in, but whenever I blinked, they were gone.
Sometime before dawn, I finally fell asleep. I awoke to the chirping of the birds and the voices outside the fuselage. I sighed in relief, the nightmare still freshly imprinted in my mind. I went outside and saw Norton and Will standing near the pile of bodies and having a heated discussion.
I approached them to ask what they were talking about and Norton said:
"One of the dead passengers is missing. It might have been a bear."
I looked past them towards the corpses and saw the space where one of the dead bodies should have been. And beyond that, distinctive tracks of something heavy being dragged on the ground stretched and disappeared in the treeline ahead.


Source.

Experience is the best teacher