Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - 56: She Fell From The Sky: The Sole Survivor of Flight 508

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

When Juliane Koepcke boarded flight 508 with her mother on Christmas Eve, 1971, she knew the airline they were flying had a horrible reputation. She never imagined that she'd be the only person of the 92 on board to survive the flight. Subscribe on Patreon for bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Patrons have access to ad-free listening and bonus content. And members of our High Council on Patreon have access to our after show called Footnotes. Follow on Tik Tok and Instagram for a daily dose of horror. We have a monthly newsletter now! Be sure to sign up for updates and more. This episode is brought to you by the new book, Tender Beasts. If you like mind-bending horror stories that keep you up at night, you don’t want to miss TENDER BEASTS by Liselle Sambury. Available wherever books are sold! This episode is also brought to you by Factor. Factor’s delicious, ready-to-eat meals make eating better every day easy. Head to factormeals.com/hsp50 and use code hsp50 to get 50% off! Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by Kaelyn Moore

January 3, 1972. Three forest workers, Beltran Paredes, Carlos Vazquez, and Nester Amasi Fuen, walk deep into the Peruvian rainforest. Above them, the sky is a dark gray, casting a deep shadow through the already shaded jungle. This part of the rainforest is so dense and thick that the canopy blocks out most of the sun, even on a good day.

They almost stayed home. The rain was supposed to be bad and they wondered if they should just come out tomorrow. But something in Carlos told him they should go. And so here they were heading towards their station, deep in one of the most isolated places on the planet. As the three men walk forward, they hear something in the distance. They slow down and scan the forest. Most of what they would find in this part of the Amazon would be harmless. Monkeys,

sloths, anteatersers, but on the off chance they were being stalked by a jaguar, they wanted to be ready. They followed the noise when underneath the makeshift tent where they're supposed to be stationed, Carlos sees something that makes his eyes go wide. The others follow his gaze, expecting to see a predator. They could have never guessed what was walking towards them. It was a girl, but one that looked unlike anyone he had ever seen in the area. She was about 17 years old with platinum blonde hair and big red eyes. She was covered in mud and had a bad wound on her leg.

Gasoline dripped down her arm. Who was this girl? There were no white people in this part of Peru, only a few scattered locals with tan skin and dark hair. Beltran couldn't believe his eyes. with tan skin and dark hair, Beltran couldn't believe his eyes. And for a moment, he wondered if he should kneel before her. He had heard legends of who this woman must be.

Yakumama, the Peruvian jungle's water goddess. Often portrayed as a snake, it was said that if a pregnant woman looked at Yakumama, she would come back and take the child. She was to be feared. But before he can kneel down and show his respect, in perfect Spanish, the girl says to them, I'm the girl who was in the Lonza Crash. My name is Yuliana. This stops the men right in their tracks. If she had told them her name was Yakumama, the serpent water goddess, they would have probably believed her more. The men had heard

about what happened with the Lanza plane, a plane heading from Lima to Polcalpa that fell apart in the sky during a thunderstorm. Have they found my mom? The girl says, and all of the men look at each other with sorrowful eyes. No one had found her mother. They hadn't even recovered a single piece of the plane since it crashed over a week ago. The search had been called off. They said there was no way anyone could have survived. They had a lot to tell her.

But more importantly, there was a lot she needed to tell them. It's that feeling. When the energy in the room shifts, when the air gets sucked out of a moment, and everything starts to feel wrong. It's the instinct between fight or flight. When your brain is trying to make sense of what it's seeing, it's when your heart starts pounding.

Welcome back to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I'm your host, Kaelin Moore. This is a community for people with a dark curiosity. My kinds of people, and I'm so glad I've found you all and you've chosen to gather here. You know how I can tell you're my kinds of people? Because of how many messages I get where the top line will be something like, I saw this and thought of you, and then it'll be like the darkest, most disturbing thing you've ever read. Multiple people saw a story about a wild boar that killed its owner and sent it to me, saying, saw this and thought of you. You guys are unhinged and I love it.

Let's talk about flying for a second, because that's a big part of today's episode. Some of you are probably not afraid of flying at all, and that's for a good reason. We're currently in a golden age of airline safety. In 2021, there were 1.93 accidents per million departures globally, and in 2022, there were even less than that. And only 8% of those accidents had any fatalities. Those numbers become even more safe if you're flying within the United States. The last fatal commercial airline crash in the US was in 2009, and safety regulations were put in place

immediately afterwards to make sure it never happened again. Pilots were given shorter shifts and more time to rest in between flights. And since those were implemented, history hasn't repeated itself. And yet, every time I stepped foot on a plane, I immediately start to panic.

Flying has always been a horrible fear of mine, even though there's no evidence that really backs that fear up. We have a much higher chance of crashing our car on the way to the airport than we do of being in a plane crash. But because of this, morbidly, I like to read about plane crashes. It's like pouring salt in the wound. It's probably the same reason we watch scary movies or TikToks about the North Sea. We like to be scared. We're little freaks, I don't know. But today, I want to tell you a story that is so much more than just a plane crash story.

Yes, one of the most terrifying things I could ever imagine happened to Yuliana Kopka, but her calmness and resilience in the aftermath led to her survival. At 17 years old, she was braver than I'll ever be. Yuliana's story is one of hope, of how far the human spirit can push, of miraculous survival. And today, I wanna tell you that story. But before we dive in, I wanna say thank you. There are many ways to listen to this show.

You may be listening to the free ad supported version. You might be listening to the ad free version because you're a Patreon subscriber, or you could be listening ad free through our new Heart Starts Pounding Premium subscription on Apple Podcasts. You could even be listening against your will because your significant other plays the podcast really loud in the car. I don't know, but regardless of how you're listening, thank you for being here.

You are the reason this show exists. I would not be able to talk about what horrible thing I've been hyperfixating on without all of you, so thank you. And if you haven't had a chance to check out our February bonus episode on the scariest stories from the internet this month, you might wanna check that out. I talk about the viral Grimes crime story

about a foster family who sewed their children into animal costumes, as well as the trailer of the new Nickelodeon tell-all documentary, Quiet On Set. I was especially interested in talking about that one because I used to work on a kid's show. So you definitely don't wanna miss that. And it's streaming now on Patreon and our Apple subscription.

Okay, we're gonna take a quick break. And when we get back, we're gonna start from the beginning. And as always, listener discretion is advised. I wanna take a second to tell you about a new book you have to check out. Tender Beasts by LaZelle Sanbury is a dark academia thriller with a paranormal twist. And if that doesn't hook you right away, let me tell you what it's about.

Sunny is trying to maintain her wealthy family's picture-perfect facade after her mother's death. But when her estranged brother is accused of murdering one of her classmates, Sunny must uncover the truths and the monsters behind her parents' legacy. Soon, she may have to choose whether to preserve the family she's always loved or protect the brother she barely knows, and risk losing everything her mother worked so hard to build. This book is a really juicy murder mystery and you will tear straight through it. If you like mind-bending horror stories that keep you up at night, and I would assume you

do because you're listening to this podcast after all, you don't want to miss Tender Beasts by Lacelle Sanbury. Available wherever books are sold. Yuliana Copca arrived at the Lima Airport with her mother early in the morning on December 24th, 1971. They were trying to make it back to their remote town in Peru in time to see her father for Christmas. Yuliana had just graduated high school in Lima

and she was really eager to see him. Their hopes sank once they got to the airport though. It was packed. The day before, many flights had been canceled and now hundreds of passengers looking for another ride home for the holidays were crowding the terminal. Yuliana doesn't hear it over the cacophony of shouts, but there's another native German speaker sternly talking to a ticketing agent in heavily accented Spanish.

His flight was canceled the day before, and now he's desperately trying to get on Yuliana's flight with his crew. They're filming a movie in the jungle in Puculpa, and he needs to get on Juliana's flight with his crew. They're filming a movie in the jungle in Pucallpa and he needs to get to set. Is there any way he can get on that flight? The agent just shakes her head. No, it's a full flight and even then it might just get cancelled today. By tomorrow this man will understand how this moment saved his life. He'll hear the news of the crash and a deep existential chill will rumble through his body. It's a feeling most of us haven't felt, the overwhelming feeling of our own mortality.

It will change his life forever. But in this current moment, as he's being shut down by the ticketing agent, he's pretty pissed off. Yuliana isn't paying attention to that though. She's paying attention to two American boys that are her age. She knows a little bit of English and she tries to keep up with them.

They're just like Yuliana. They're in Peru because their parents are linguists who are studying the language of indigenous people living in the Peruvian rainforest. Juliana is in Peru because her parents are biologists that couldn't find work in Germany after the war. They opted instead to travel to Peru where the ecology and biodiversity

still had so much to be explored. Her mother specifically was an ornithologist. She studied birds and everything she knew about birds made her that much more afraid to fly. She just didn't understand it. Birds had hollow bones. They had to be light to fly. So how could a massive metal tube stay in the air? After hours of waiting, at around 11am, their flight is finally called. Yuliana, her mother, and the boys she was talking to all grabbed their things and board. She remembered as she was boarding, finding out that their flight actually had a name, Mateo Pumacawa, named after the famed rebel who helped liberate Peru from the Spanish in the early 1800s.

Pumacawa met an unfortunate end, however, when he was captured in 1815 to be hanged in court. One of his arms was severed from his body upon his death. I hope the same thing doesn't happen to us, one of the American boys joked. Once they were on the plane, Yuliana sat in her seat, 19F. Her mother sat next to her, and a Peruvian man sat in the aisle seat and fell asleep immediately. This kind of plane, a Lockheed L-188 Electra, was really nice and comfortable, especially for the time. It was a plane that prioritized flyers comfort

by trying to limit vibrations and noise, two things that were nearly unbearable in the early days of flying. Lockheed was better known for making military aircraft. The Electra was one of their first forays into commercial airliners, and it was, let's just say, a rocky start. So the plane that Yuliana and her mother boarded

was actually the second generation of the Electra. The first generation was pulled from production after a few devastating accidents occurred. On February 3rd, 1959, American Airlines Flight 320 crashed an Electra into the East River in New York City, resulting in 65 fatalities. This was due to pilot error

rather than a fault with the aircraft. It was theorized that the pilot started landing too early and crashed into the river about 5,000 feet before it got to the runway. But then on September 29th, 1959, and March 17th, 1960, electric planes fell apart in the sky because of something known as whirl mode. It's a little complicated, but in layman's terms, whirl mode happens when the electroplanes vibrated at a certain frequency in their cruising altitude of 15,000 feet.

This vibration would continue to amplify until you felt the worst turbulence you could ever imagine. It then caused the plane to break into pieces. After the Whirlmode disasters, the Electra saw an extensive redesign that strengthened the wings and did more to keep the vibrations of the engine to a minimum. Yes, after these mass casualty events, Lockheed continued to sell planes. To put it into today's terms, electros were the Boeing aircrafts of their day.

Those issues seemed to end with the first generation electros, but some still believed that turbulence was not good for this type of plane. They were better suited for desert climates where they could show off their long-haul abilities without being encumbered by bumpy skies. This particular flight that Yuliana and her mother were on

was heading through part of the Andes Mountains. And if there's one thing the Andes were known for when it came to flying in the 1970s, it was turbulence. As Yuliana describes it, the first half hour of the flight was fine. Everyone was in good spirits, excited that they made the last plane out to be able to celebrate Christmas with their families. Christmas gifts were stuffed in the overhead compartments, under seats, spilling into the aisles. The plane resembled Santa's sleigh almost.

Sandwiches were served to the passengers and then flight attendants came around to pick up the trash. By that point, the hour long flight was already halfway over. And that's when, all of a sudden, without any warning, the outside darkens all around the plane. They've somehow made it into an angry storm cloud, and Yuliana can see lightning flashing around her. The plane begins to shake, caught off guard by the violent storm.

Gifts start flying everywhere, and the man in the aisle who had slept through the entire flight at this point is jolted awake. It's so bad people start to shriek in fear. The once bubbly and excited energy of the flight had now devolved into chaos. Yuliana can see her mother is getting really stressed out, but is trying to keep calm to not upset her daughter.

Yuliana looks out of the window to see what's happening, when all of a sudden, there's a flash right next to the wing. So bright it was like a camera went off directly into her eyes. Everything goes quiet, and she hears her mother say in a calm voice, now it is all over. What Yuliana remembers next felt like a dream, a roar of an engine, screams fading away into silence, then the feeling of the plane nose diving. And finally, free fall. She doesn't know how it happened, but Yuliana has a quick memory of still being strapped

to her seat, but the plane around her is gone. She's spinning towards the Earth. In this memory, there's no one next to her. The seats of her mother and the Peruvian man are empty. She's facing the earth and she can see the tops of the trees crammed together so tightly she can't see the forest floor. Wind rushes in her ears like a train speeding by her.

She closes her eyes and everything is gone. What's left is a dream, one where she's filthy, covered in mud. She has a thought that she should get up and take a bath, but she's unable to. When she opens her eyes again, Yuliana is laying on the forest floor underneath her airplane seat. Her seatbelt has been unbuckled as if she had been awake at some point, and she's covered in mud. For a moment, she thinks she can get up, and she gets to her feet long enough to see that there's no one else around her. The people from the plane are all gone. The airplane is all gone. It's just her and the seats of Row 19 alone in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. And with that, she blacks out and falls back onto the forest

floor. More after the break. This episode is brought to you by Factor. I like eating healthy, or at least I like the idea of eating healthy. Truthfully, sometimes it's just too much work to make good decisions. I'm running behind or I don't want to dirty my entire kitchen right after I clean it, so I just order out or, you know, eat a bag of chips or a scoop of peanut butter

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They taste great and their dietitian approved. And factor isn't just ready-made dinners. They also have snacks, smoothies and breakfasts. I even got some wellness shots, which is great because I always get sick this time of year. You can choose between six and 18 meals a week and pick from 35 different options, including keto, calorie smart, vegan, and veggie. So if

you're just not feeling it one week, you can treat yourself and have Factor send you every single meal. Head to factormeals.com slash hsp50 and use code hsp50 to get 50% off. That's code HSP50 at factormeals.com slash HSP50 to get 50% off. As Yuliana lay unconscious on the jungle floor, airline executives in Lima were also on the verge of passing out. Air traffic control had watched as the Electro Plane Juliana was on disappeared from their radar. Initially, they prayed that it had made an emergency landing somewhere, but they knew a bad storm had rolled in unexpectedly and anyone who had worked for the airline Lanza in the past knew deep down the aircraft was not sitting safely on a different tarmac. For Lonza, this was the final straw on a camel's back that should have been broken years ago. This was Lonza's third devastating crash

since the airline started operating in 1963, not even 10 years prior. On April 27th, 1966, Lonza Flight 501, heading from Lima to Cusco, crashed into a mountain, killing all 49 people on board. The accident was chalked up to pilot error. They said the plane was too heavy to gain altitude fast enough to clear the nearby mountain range. The plane was another Lockheed plane, and after the official report came out and it was deemed not the fault of the aircraft, Lockheed probably breathed a huge sigh of relief. Phew, not us this time, guys.

Then, on August 9th, 1970, Alonso Flight leaving Lima tried to make an emergency landing when one of its four engines caught fire during takeoff. The flight was cleared to make an emergency landing when it entered a 45 degree bank and crashed into the hilly terrain. 99 people died, including an entire study abroad program from New York. The co-pilot was the sole survivor. That disaster was, at the time, the deadliest aviation accident in Peruvian history and significantly eroded public confidence in Lanza. And the plane in question, ooh,

a Lockheed L188 Electra, second generation. So on Christmas Eve, a little over a year Lockheed L-188 Electra, second generation. So on Christmas Eve, a little over a year from their last devastating crash, Lanza executives were panicking, not out of anxiety over what happened to their passengers, but because they knew they were out of a job. Back on the forest floor, deep within the Peruvian jungle, miles away from any civilization, Yuliana is waking up again.

She checks her watch and notices that it's still ticking. But she's having trouble reading what time it says. That's either from the concussion or because she lost her glasses in the fall. From her perspective, she thinks it's been about a day and a half since the crash. She was in and out of consciousness for a while, but she remembers the sun going down and coming back out again. Only now is she able to get up and assess the damage. She feels her face and can tell that her eyes are swollen. Her

concussion must be really bad. On her, she has one surviving sandal and her sleeveless dress is mostly intact save the busted zipper. Her arm hurts as she reaches to feel the zipper, most likely from a broken collarbone. Instead of the zipper though, she feels a deep, fleshy wound about the size of a dime. As she pulls her hand back, she closes her eyes, afraid to assess the damage. But to her surprise, it hardly bleeds. Down on her calf, there's another deep cut,

but it also doesn't bleed. She's in a lot of pain, but what hurts the most is when she looks back to her seat and sees that where her mother once sat is now a muddy, empty chair. Where did her mother land? If she survived the fall, surely others did as well. Looking around, her vision is blurry, but she can still tell there's no one. Just thick jungle in every direction,

identical on all sides. One of the most miraculous things in this moment is that Yuliana doesn't panic. She has a very stoic reaction to all of this. She knows she was just in a plane crash and that now she must do whatever she can to get out and find her mother. One step at a time. No need to get overwhelmed. First, she starts walking around because she wants to see if she can find any people. But that proves difficult. The plane didn't crash. It wasn't going to all be in one location.

Instead, it broke apart midair and landed over 15 square kilometers. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack. Yuliana calls out, hello? Is anyone there? But nothing except the sound of insects and frogs ever return her cries. She does, however, find a bag of sweets and takes everything that hasn't been waterlogged. There's no way to tell how long this will be her food supply for. And just then, a low drone sound can be heard over the treetops that breaks up the jungle

din. It must be the rescue planes looking for survivors. But the canopy is so thick here, hardly any sunlight gets through. There's no way a plane would ever be able to find her. The only way she's making it out of this forest is if she walks out herself. How would she know which way to go, though? Every direction looks the exact same, yet one could lead her to civilization and the other could lead her miles deeper into the thick jungle.

The drone of the plane fades away into the distance, but there's another sound that gives her hope, the ticking coming from her wrist. Her watch is not waterproof. It was a delicate gift she received from her grandmother years ago. And yet it has survived a two mile fall from the sky and is still ticking. And so is she.

There is no one else around to guide her through the forest, but this watch survived as a reminder of the family she must return to. And together, they were gonna make it out of this jungle. Yuliana's father had heard about the crash at this point. Everyone in Peru had, but at first, Yuliana's father had heard about the crash at this point. Everyone in Peru had, but at first, he's not worried for his wife and daughter. He had specifically told them to never fly Lanza after he had heard about all the crashes

they kept having. But then, a special announcement interrupts the radio broadcast. They're going to read the names of each person who was on the flight. He almost turns the broadcast off. There's no reason to listen, he thinks. In a monotone voice, the broadcaster coldly reads the list, and there, buried in the middle, are the names of his wife and child. Meanwhile, Yuliana has started her long walk out of the forest. It's not long before she can hear something else

in the jungle though, a small babble of a brook. Through the blinding headache and foggy thoughts, Yuliana is able to remember a story her father once told her about a man who got lost in a forest and was able to follow a small stream to a larger river and then follow that river to a small town. So that whole first day, all she does is walk along the small brook, sweets still in hand. For water, she would drink raindrops off of leaves. By nightfall, she hadn't made much progress. She was still deep within the thick jungle,

but she had to rest. Unable to make a fire or find shelter, she just lies down on the forest floor and falls asleep. When she awakes, she checks her watch. It's later in the day than she thought. Her body must need a lot of sleep for her concussion. There's no time to rest though, and she gets up and continues walking in the shallow stream. This is when she thinks of how lucky she was to have lost her glasses.

The stream is incredibly meandering, and if she could see perfectly, she'd probably try to take shortcuts through the forest. But since she couldn't see that far ahead of her, she doesn't risk getting lost. She stays on her path. Not having glasses also prevents her from seeing all of the threats that lie deep in that part of the jungle. At one point, she does come across a bird-eating spider and fears it'll jump out and bite her, but she's able to pass by it. She also hears the large, flapping wings of a king vulture and watches

its blurry shape fly towards where she just came from. It must smell the dead, she thinks. Then, at one point in her trek, she looks out ahead and can see a fuzzy outline of something metallic and cylindrical. It's one of the turbines from the plane, and it's charred. It must have been the one that got hit by the lightning. If this turbine had just held up, she wouldn't be in this mess. Yuliana doesn't feel any anger looking at it, though. Just curiosity. Each step she takes, she's trying to learn more about what happened and pieced together the accident. This turbine is a big clue, but it's what she sees next that really shows her

just how bad the accident was. It's people, three people in a row of seats, upside down and about three feet in the dirt. Just their legs stick out of the mud. Yuliana has a horrible thought. Is one of those my mother? But as she gets closer, she sees that the woman in the row has painted toenails and her mother did not. Yuliana breathes a sigh of relief.

She still has a smidgen of hope that her mother is out there, but she's getting an overwhelming sense that she may be the only survivor, but she can't think of that right now. She has to walk. The days start getting mixed up for her. The concussion makes it hard to keep track of things, but she thinks that around December

27th is when she ate her last piece of candy. To compensate for the lack of food, she tries to drink as much water from the stream as she can. She knows from living near the rainforest that jungle stream water is cleaner than a stream you would find near a town Because there's no people around to contaminate it. The water is muddy and brown But she knows that even that is better than clear water where people live By maybe the sixth day she estimates the stream she's following feeds into a rushing river. Okay, she's making progress. But it's also around this point that she realizes she hasn't heard a plane

in quite some time. The search must have been called off, she thinks. Okay, it doesn't matter. Here is a river. And where there is a river, her father used to say, people cannot be far. Yuliana gets into the water and tries to walk along the bank, but it's too dangerous. There's stingrays in the river, and Yuliana knows that they rest in the shallow parts. If she were to step on one, it would plunge its venomous stinger into her foot. It's safer in the deeper part of the river, but there are piranhas. Yuliana knows from her parents that piranhas only tend to attack in standing water, not rivers, so she decides to risk it and she swims downstream in the deeper part

of the river. And she's able to gain a good bit of ground that day because of this. part of the river, and she's able to gain a good bit of ground that day because of this. But that night, she has another setback when she goes to feel the wound on her back. There's something moving inside of it. A fly must have laid eggs there because now it's infested with maggots. This is not good, Juliana realizes.

She knows the biggest threat that maggots pose is blood poisoning if they burrow too deep. All she has on her is a little ring that she uses to try to scoop them out, but that doesn't do much. She'd need to find alcohol or kerosene, something she could pour into the wound to kill the parasites.

But she's not going to find those out here, so instead, she just prays that it doesn't get infected before she finds help. She keeps on her journey, letting the current of the river carry her most days so she doesn't exert too much strength. She's starting to feel how much weaker she's gotten. It's been days at this point since her last bit of food. The hunger has subsided and now it's mostly full body fatigue.

Has the new year passed yet? There's no way for her to really tell what day it is, but it might be 1972 by this point. As she's drifting down the river, she has plenty of time to think to herself. If the planes have stopped, do they think everyone is dead? Is anyone looking for her at all?

Is her father trying to move on with his life? What she didn't know is that the crash was causing quite a stir in all of Peru. There was a news blackout on information regarding the crash because so many people were calling in with false tips. People thought they saw a plane circling the jungle for 10 minutes before going down. That wasn't true. The plane went down on its flight path.

People thought they heard the plane explode and suggested it was a terrorist attack, but that also wasn't true. The sound was most likely a landslide that happened during the storm. But most importantly, Yuliana's father wasn't giving up. He wrote letters to her aunt about how invested he was in the search efforts.

Even over a week in the search efforts, even over a week after the plane disappeared. He had been tracking all of the theories people had and writing them down, hoping to make sense of what happened. Yuliana doesn't know any of this as she's floating down the river. To her, alone in the Amazon, it feels like the world has forgotten about her

and her mother. She'd have to fight through her exhaustion to make it out and show everyone she's alive, that other people could be alive, that her mother could be alive, that the search had to continue. She's finally gotten to a point of the jungle where the sun hits the river

and she can feel her back peeling and blistering from the burns. But she doesn't have the energy to do anything about it. She's so tired, she almost falls asleep. But then, she hears squawking. Her eyes shoot open. She knows what squawking means. Baby crocodiles. And she knows what baby crocodiles mean. Big, angry, protective mama crocodiles. There in front of her, she sees a few baby caimans, which are like small crocodiles.

She jumps up and sees the mom looking right at her, angrily from the shore, not that far away. But Yuliana knows about these creatures, from her parents. She knows that they're more afraid of her than she is of them, so she calmly backs up into the water and floats on. It is the knowledge that her parents have passed onto her that has kept her alive until this point. She knows that she shouldn't eat the frogs

even though she wants to, but she also knows that if she has to, the venom in the frogs of this area isn't enough to kill her. She knows which animals are actual threats and which ones she shouldn't be afraid of. But finally, one day, she hits a point where none of that matters. She's so tired.

She can't really move on. She hasn't eaten in almost a week and the fatigue is really getting to her. She pulls herself over to the shore to rest for a little while, closing her eyes. There's a fleeting thought of maybe this is it, maybe this is where I die. She briefly opens her eyes again, and that's when she sees a miracle. There's an empty docked boat in the river. With the teeny bit of strength she can muster,

she swims over to it and sees that it's been used recently and the rope tying it to the shore leads to a path that's been cut out of the jungle. There must be people down there. The boat's owner surely lives down that path. It takes hours, but Yuliana is able to stumble into the jungle where she finds a small makeshift hut that someone has thrown together. There she sees boat supplies, which includes gasoline. Taking a deep breath, she unscrews the lid of the container and pours gasoline all down her back,

trying to kill as many maggots as she can. The pain is excruciating, but using her ring, she's able to dig out around 30 maggots. It wouldn't be until later that she was told she hardly made a dent in what was in her wound. She sat there waiting for the owner to come, but no one showed up. So she waited and waited and waited, and it got darker and darker and still no one came.

Eventually she just wrapped herself in a tarp and fell asleep. The next day, same thing, no one came. She wondered if she should go look for people but she also knew she didn't have the strength to do so. Her body was in full starvation mode and she had to conserve every last drop of energy she had. The sun started going down that day and she thought she would have to make it another night without any food.

Would she even be able to? When she finally heard rustling in the jungle and saw three men walking towards her Right when she sees them she almost collapses from the relief She was going to be okay She had made it They had all heard about the crash It's been on every TV and radio station non-stop for the last week and a half Every TV and radio station non-stop for the last week and a half. That day, the day they found her was January 3, 1972, 10 days after the crash. She desperately asks them if there are any other survivors.

Has anyone found her mother? They just look at her with sad eyes. No, Senorita, they say. No one has been found. No parts of the plane have been found. She's the only survivor. It wouldn't be discovered until later, but there was evidence that more people survived the initial crash and died in the jungle waiting for help.

Some of the bodies didn't have much decomposition for being dead in the jungle for ten days, suggesting they had died days after the crash. Yuliana's mother was one of those people. The men gave Yuliana fresh clothes and some food, but she could hardly eat without becoming immediately full. She figured her stomach had shrunk. As they take her to go to a doctor, Yuliana can't help but wonder why people cower away from her in terror.

She overhears a woman scream, those eyes, I can't look at those eyes. When she got to the doctor and finally looked in a mirror, she saw that all the blood vessels had burst in her eyes from the concussion. Everything, the whites, the irises, was a dark crimson red. No wonder the three local men were so afraid of her when they found her.

She looked like a monster. Her father arrives when she's at the doctor. Word of Yuliana's miraculous survival had spread far and wide throughout Peru, and her father ran to find her the moment he heard. When he bursts through the door of the room she's in, the only thing he can bring himself to ask is, how are you doing? himself to ask is, how are you doing? She looked at him calmly and answered, good. The two share a big hug. No tears. No more words. Just holding the person they never knew if they'd see again. At the end of the embrace, he sits next to his daughter looking at her wounds. The dirt under her nails, her bloodshot eyes.

The two don't say another word to each other. They don't have to. Juliana would go on to help authorities find the wreckage in the forest. It's believed they would have completely abandoned the mission to find the plane had she not been able to guide them. When they got to the area where most of the luggage and people were, they noticed that

Christmas presents and clothes were strewn about the trees, acting like a giant standing memorial for those who were lost. The body of Yuliana's mother was found, and her father identified her. Not by her face, though. She was not in good enough condition to be recognized, but by her legs and feet. For a while after, he worried that he had gotten it wrong. Perhaps the woman in his wife his ticket to his girlfriend. There was a mother with her five-year-old child, two sisters who wanted to fly together, a woman, Mary Lopez, who was to be married soon, one family lost three daughters, and she started feeling guilty about surviving when so many

others had died, but she also learned a little about why that may have happened. During storms in the Andes, there tends to be really intense updrafts, which may have slowed her down. She also remembers spinning around wildly, almost like a helicopter seed falling from a tree, and think about how those seeds fall. They gently drift towards the ground from the tree. The spinning motion keeps them in the air much longer. If Yuliana was spinning fast enough and the updraft was strong enough, it could have created a similar effect of having a parachute.

Yuliana also landed in a particularly dense part of the jungle, full of thick vines and tree canopies. There would have been a lot of debris for her to hit to slow her fall even more. Ironically, the spot where she fell was only a two-day walk from another village, but the way she chose to go took her 10 days. Years later, Juliana would be reached out to by a man who wanted to help her get her story out there. It was the German man from the airport, the one who was trying to get his film crew on

her plane that day but was told they didn't have enough space. That man was Werner Herzog, the documentarian. He couldn't imagine what she went through, but he also spent the majority of his life thinking about that flight. Perhaps that was something they had in common. Yuliana was able to get her story out in his documentary, Wings of Hope, and in her own book,

When I Fell from the Sky, the true story of one woman's miraculous survival. Two of the main sources I used in telling you her story today. And Yuliana is still alive today. She took after her parents and earned a doctorate in biology. She even went on to marry an entomologist who specializes in parasitic wasps.

Yuliana has dedicated her career to studying the flora and fauna of the Amazon rainforest. Many would think that she would try to stay as far away as she could from the jungle that almost took her life. But according to Yuliana, she would have never survived without it jungle that almost took her life. But according to Juliana, she would have never survived without it. It cushioned her fall. It led her to safety, and she wanted to do what she could to give back. And that's the part that stuck with me the most. Of this whole story, her ability to find little bits of good that helped her keep going. It's really beautiful

And I hope that part of her story inspires all of you like it did me This has been Heart Starts Pounding written and produced by me, Kaelin Moore Additional research by Matt Brown sound design and mix by me, Kaelin Moore. Additional research by Matt Brown. Sound design and mix by Peach Tree Sound. Special thanks to all of our new patrons. You will be thanked in our monthly newsletter, which you can sign up for on our website. Another special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Head to our website, heartstartspounding.com. Until next time, stay curious.