On July 30, 1945, The USS Indianapolis was struck by two torpedoes from a Japanese submarine, which took down the ship in only minutes. Of 1,195 crewmen, ~900 entered the water, facing sharks, painful dehydration, and exposure for nearly five days before they were finally rescued. It was the U.S. Navy's single worst loss of life at sea.

Joanne Lees and her boyfriend Peter Falconio thought they were taking the trip of their dreams but it would sadly end in a tragedy so massive the whole world would know their names. While driving down an isolated road in Australia's outback in 2001, Peter was flagged down by a mysterious driver and was shot and killed on the side of the road. The man attempted to abduct Joanne but she managed to escape and later provided a description that led to the capture of their attacker.

After attempting to take a leisurely self-guided tour of the ancient Mayan ruins in the jungle on Cozumel island, Ken Wilson became hopelessly lost when he split up from his group and lost track of the trail. By the time Ken had realized he didn't recognize his surroundings he was already deep in the jungle and too far away for anyone to hear his calls for help. Every step he took brought him deeper into the jungle maze, further from rescue as darkness approached.

Let's close out 2025 with some bone chilling survivor stories that our listeners wrote in, including a close call with a famous serial killer, a terrifying encounter at an empty gas station, a run-in with an escaped convict, a nasty electric scooter accident, and more! 

In 1992 Levon Brooks was arrested for murdering a three-year-old girl and sentenced to life in prison. Only a few months later Kennedy Brewer was arrested for a nearly identical murder and was sentenced to death. Both cases were based almost entirely on faulty bite mark evidence and both men spent almost two decades in prison for crimes they did not commit. However in 2000, Kennedy Brewer wrote a letter to the Innocence Project asking for their help with his case which was when the fight for the truth began and the real story came to light. 

Donna Cooper, her daughter Gina, and Jenny Leung took a drive into Death Valley for a day of exploring. After deciding to take a detour they realized too late that their GPS was leading them further into the desert with no real direction. Two hundred miles later they were out of gas and almost out of hope that they would get out of there alive.

Let's talk about some terrifying Reddit Let's Not Meet stories!

The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who migrated to California along the Oregon Trail in a wagon train from the Midwest. After taking a new and dangerous shortcut, the party became trapped by an exceptionally heavy snowstorm in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. When their food supply ran out the group resorted to cannibalism of those already dead.

On November 14, 1974, Barbara Mabee Abel returned home from work with her 6-year-old son to find the Casanova Killer, Paul John Knowles, waiting in her kitchen with a double barrel sawed-off shotgun. To protect her son and sister, she convinced Knowles to take only her, begging him to kidnap her instead of harming her family. During her captivity, she employed a survival strategy of charming him and attempting to make him fall in love with her to keep him from killing her. By this time, Paul John Knowles, had already been on a 4 month killing spree and claimed to kill more than 35 people.

On July 22nd 2010, Dave Akers and Gary Nall decided to take a sight seeing trip in Gary’s small plane. What should have been a short flight before sunset turned into a fight for their lives after the plane got caught in a powerful down draft that caused them to crash almost 4,000 feet up a remote mountain side in the Alaskan wilderness. Despite their injuries, the men quickly discovered their only option was to attempt to hike off the mountain.