Tents are cubicles of doom. By the end of this page, it’s unlikely you’ll ever want to go camping again. Every tent should be equipped with a contraption that activates a Vincent Price recording each time you zip up. Something along the lines of ‘nice knowing you’ or ‘goodbyyyeee’. People should be made to take a Navy SEAL course in survival before being allowed to purchase any tent-shaped camping equipment.

Of course, most tent-based activities pass without incident, but when they go wrong, they can go really, really wrong. Below, among other things, lie shattered dreams, electrocution, massive bears and a conspiracy theory. It’s all true. So if you’re planning to go camping anytime soon, it might be worth reading this when you get back.

9. Poleaxed
According to witnesses, the gust of wind lasted only 10 seconds. In the summer of 2004, a huge tent at the Plessisville music festival near Montreal was blown away. One of the tent’s poles, well anchored up to that point, came free and critically injured a 65-year old woman. Daniel Breault, owner of the company that installed the tents, was quoted as saying ‘It was really an act of God’. Other eyewitnesses said the sky turned black for only a moment and that the tent flew like a hot air balloon (more on that later).

Perhaps he displeased someone along the way?

8. Cycle of Pain
David Bishop was busy qualifying on his bicycle for the European Youth Relay Championships last year. At this point, it’s worthwhile to consider what was going through David Bishop’s head as the worst possible scenario that could happen. He was in the top three, cruising to qualification, something he had been training for almost his whole life. Perhaps a wet patch on the track could send him slipping, maybe a lapse of concentration could cost him a few precious places. It’s safe to say he probably hadn’t considered a flying police tent carried by a massive gust of wind knocking him off his bike and into sixth place.

7. Balloon Hit
Just last month, Thomas Hurd fell from a hot air balloon 35 feet on to asphalt. The balloon had struck a massive tent erected for the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. A witness, Lou Hillenbrand, was quoted as saying, ‘We saw the man cartwheel out, and he fell 30 to 35 feet. He didn’t hit the tent. It looked like he hit the asphalt.’ Although it’s impossible to imagine Lou saying that without a hilarious over-the-top yokel accent, the severity of falling 35 feet on to a very, very solid surface should not be underestimated. Thomas Hurd got away with a dislocated hip.

6. Power Line
It’s a normal day at work for a tent worker. Moving tents is practically a key performance indicator. To impress the boss when deadlines are tight, it’s best to move the whole damn thing at once. In 2004, three tent workers in Arkansas were lifting an assembled tent over a fence when one of the supports touched a power line, killing them all instantly. John Jakob, an experienced tentist(?), had the following to say: ‘This is always avoidable…. Prior to moving a tent, power lines should be pointed out and avoided.’ Thanks John.

Yeah, well they could be difficult to see, I guess!

5. Drunk Driver
Not one to joke about, this. On the night of July 4th this year, Nicolle Marie Mercedes Prechel, 31, consumed a litre, yes, a litre, of Southern Comfort and smoked some marijuana while staying at a campground. The next morning, she backed her car over a tent in which four-month old Wyatt Sandler was sleeping. Father Jacob Sandler watched, horrorstruck, as the tent was dragged a further 14 feet before the car came to a stop. Prechel pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in prison.

That’s a lot of booze

4. Utah Boy
The year is 2007, the place is Utah. It’s a father’s day outing, a Sunday night. Suddenly, the stepfather of an 11-year old boy hears him scream ‘something’s dragging me’. That’s the last thing the boy says before the black bear that has hold of him pulls him out of the tent and kills him, dragging his body over 400 yards before abandoning the corpse.

Cute, in a picture

3. Kuwait Wedding Fire
Some people get jilted at the altar. Some people fluff their lines during the speech. Some people fall over during the wedding dance. Earlier this year, some people had to watch 41 women and children die as a fire broke out in their wedding tent. The fire razed the tent to the ground in less than three minutes, and it’s thought that most of the dead were trampled in the panic. Fire department chief Brig Gen Jassem al-Mansouri was quoted as saying, ‘It was a horrific scene with bodies and many shoes stuck to the ground at the only exit. They must have trampled over one another’.

That’s not the shower you’d like

2. Grizzly Man
Anyone who has seen Werner Herzog’s documentary film Grizzly Man will know the story of Timothy Treadwell, a man who over the course of 13 years believed he had built a kinship with the bears in Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. He would approach and often touch the bears, believing himself to be in perfect safety. In 2003, while on one such trip, he and his girlfriend were killed and partially eaten by bears. The documentary shows Herzog listening to a found audio recording of the moments when the bear attack took place, before advising Jewel Palovak, the trustee of the tape, to never listen to it and if possible destroy it. The attack happened while they were in their tent.

1. Dyatlov Pass
A story so strange and profoundly disturbing it’s a wonder J. J. Abrams or M. Night Shyamalan hasn’t yet made a movie out of the scant evidence available. On the night of February 2nd, 1959, a group of nine ski hikers died in the Ural mountains of Russia. The manner in which they died has yet to be explained. Investigators at the scene determined that the hikers had torn open their tents from the inside and had then walked barefoot during heavy snowfall down to nearby woods. Two of the bodies were found dressed only in their underwear. Three others were found in poses suggesting they had attempted to return to the camp after heading to the forest, only to die en route. The other four were found four months later, buried under four feet of snow in a ravine further into the woods. One of the bodies had major skull damage, two had major chest fractures.

The only picture we could show would be this one….

Investigators compared the extent of the injuries to those sustained in a car crash, yet the bodies had no external wounds and one doctor concluded that the wounds could not have been inflicted by a person because ‘the force of the blows had been too strong and no soft tissue had been damaged’. One woman was found with her tongue missing. Another group of hikers around 30 miles away claimed seeing strange lights in the sky. The bodies were also found to be radioactive, though no source of radioactive material could be found. No explanation has ever been put forward and the case has now been closed.

Subscribe for free and recieve the latest Self-Catering-Breaks news and stories
Filed under Blog

• No Related Post

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 12:32 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.