The Unsolved Diaries: People Talk About Their Life’s Lingering Mysteries
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The Sky’s the Limit
My uncle is a pilot and wanted to take me and my grandparents to my cousin’s college graduation when I was 13. We were all waiting at the small airport outside when he touched down on a single-engine 4 seater plane (don’t know the real name of it).
When he landed, I immediately got a gut punch/stomach-dropping feeling. I wasn’t scared of flying, but SOMETHING inside me told me that something was wrong/off. I don’t know if he landed funny or what because nobody else seemed to react the way I did, but I had a very hard time shaking that uneasy feeling.
We all loaded into the plane and took off. Not even a minute or two passes by and we’re now high above the tree levels when suddenly the engine stalls….
I didn’t realize it right away, but noticed that something was again, wrong and noticed my uncle was intently focusing on turning the plane around. That’s when I saw the engine had stopped.
In a blink of an eye, we bank hard and start nosediving down. I closed my eyes and said my goodbyes to myself and we all silently went down.
There was a loud crash/noise and I felt my whole body snap forward and back and I saw a flash. Next thing I know I feel like I’m OK and so I open my eyes and see that I’m alive. I very quickly gather my wits about me and check on everyone else and everyone seems to also be alive. I look out the window because I hear something to my side and see the gas pouring out.
I shake my uncle and tell him we need to get out now and he springs into action and unbuckles his seatbelt as do I and I start asking if everyone is OK. My grandparents are in shock, but responsive and we reach over and swing the door open and get everyone out. We start walking away from the plane and see an ambulance arriving at the same time. People had seen the crash and called 911.
The entire plane was destroyed, wings snapped off, nose smashed, tail broken, and yet the area we were sitting in was completely intact.
My uncle and I were ok, we had a massive bruise later on where the seatbelt had held us, and I had a small headache. My grandpa was fine too and my grandma had like 2 broken ribs, but otherwise ok.
Still to this day don’t know how my gut knew something bad was going to happen. The biggest mystery of my life besides the fact that we survived something catastrophic like that.
