Aurora Starchild
Have you ever wondered if you should keep that “bungee jump” item on your bucket list? Do you have friends who post about their skydiving or BASE jumping experiences on Instagram and wonder, ‘How are they still alive’? As it turns out, accidents do happen and yes, people die. But one woman’s jumping nightmare has a happy ending. She fell 360 feet into crocodile-infested waters and somehow miraculously survived.
Videos by Rare
Erin Langworthy’s Bungee Cord Snapped and She Plummeted Into Crocodile-Infested Waters
Erin Langworthy was 22 years old back in 2012 and had just graduated from university in Australia. So, she decided to treat herself to a solo excursion to Zambia, Africa. There, she met up with a tour group that was going to bungee jump off a 360-ft tall bridge over the Zambezi River by Victoria Falls.
It seems that Langworthy must have had some divine intervention, because her subconscious was giving her signs of what was to come. But still, there’s no way she could have known that she was going to suffer a life-threatening bungee jumping accident.
The day before the jump, Langworthy sent her mother a postcard that said, “I’m doing a bungee jump tomorrow, so I’ll say goodbye… only joking!” And, per an article in The Guardian, she was preparing to jump and thought, “What am I doing throwing myself off a perfectly good bridge?”
Erin Langworthy jumped, her feet tied together, arms swinging gracefully forward into a dive position. But then her rope snapped when she was about 2/3rds of the way down. She continued falling, into the river below, with the bungee cord attached to her.
She Got Swept Away By River Rapids With Cord Still Attached, Feet Tied Together
Langworthy was then thrust down under the water and swept away by the rapids. She’d seen crocodiles in the river earlier. Her bungee cord was attached to her feet and her feet were tethered together. The bungee cord got caught in the rocks and she had to go under to free herself. Finally, after wedging her arm in between two slimy rocks on the river’s edge, she managed to stop her descent downstream.
An employee from the bungee jumping company got her out of the water by grabbing her harness. Langworthy started coughing up blood and was brought to the hospital. However, because she’d been swept so far downstream, it took them over 5 hours to get to the medical facility. Her lungs had collapsed, and she was given a ton of antibiotics. But no bones were broken and, miraculously, she lived to tell the tale of the bungee accident.
“I’m a positive person, so I’ve never been angry about what happened,” Langworthy told Sophie Haydock, who published the story in The Guardian. “Around 50,000 people jump from that spot every year, so it was pure chance that the rope snapped on me — just wear and tear. They’ve now introduced measures to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
She added that her mom still has the cryptic postcard on her fridge. And as for whether or not the experience turned Langworthy off of bungee jumping? She said her mother is “adamant I’ll never do another, but I’m not so sure.”
If you don’t believe the story, watch for yourself. The entire bungee jump accident was caught on video. Watch it below.
