Bear attacks are among the most terrifying encounters one can stumble upon in the wilderness, and such meetings with these ferocious creatures seldom have a happy ending.
In a spine-chilling episode, a woman was feared dead after being brutally assaulted by a bear during a leisurely walk in the woods of Tynda, Siberia. Initially, it was believed the woman had been savagely ripped apart by the hungry bear during her casual stroll with a friend but astonishingly she was later found buried alive.
Rewinding to 2015, Natalya Pasternak was horrifically mauled and hidden under foliage by a bear, yet against all odds, she survived. The then 55-year-old postal officer had ventured into the forest with her 80-year-old friend Valentina Gorodetskaya and her dog to collect birch sap for making vitamin-rich syrup.
At some point during their excursion, the women encountered a wild and starving bear exhibiting strange behaviour. After the dog failed to scare away the beast and ran off, Natalya bravely placed herself between the bear and her elderly friend, knowing full well the older woman had no chance of outrunning the animal.
The gigantic creature then launched an onslaught, digging its sharp claws into Natalya’s body, inflicting severe injuries across her head, arms and legs. The bear also scalped her and gnawed her leg down to the bone, leaving her with massive scars that persist to this day.
Despite her brave attempts to fend off the attack by hitting the bear’s eyes, she was unable to halt the horrifying assault. As her elderly friend ran to the nearest building for help, Natalya fell to the ground, barely alive. However, the bear stopped short of devouring her, instead dragging her lifeless body some distance before hiding her under a pile of leaves, reports the Mirror.
Natalya recounted her chilling ordeal to The Siberian Times, saying: “When I saw the bear, I tried to escape. Then I remembered about my friend and stopped. That was the moment when the predator attacked me. The animal started to tear my legs apart and I tried to attack him with something I was using to collect birch sap.”
She added: “Then a quick thought hit me: ‘If the bear takes my legs, I’ll be disabled for the rest of my life. It’s better to die than to be a burden to my children.”
Her friend, Valentina, also fought the beast with a branch while praying. The bear then turned on her elderly companion, striking her across the back, before returning to maul Natalya.
Natalya added: “Valentina escaped and, despite her age, she made it to a water cleaning facility and called the emergency services. Despite such a nightmare, I didn’t go mad. A prayer that I was screaming out loud helped me.”
The bear then stood over her nearly lifeless body, circling it as if guarding a precious trophy. However, hunters arrived and shot it dead.
A group of hunters in Tynda found Natalya’s body, which had been brutally mauled by the bear and concealed under leaves, leaving the woman in her fifties understandably traumatised.
They shot the bear, and despite her severe injuries, Natalya was still alive. Sergei Ivanov discovered her on the ground, heroically saved her, and quickly rushed her to the nearest hospital.
Despite the terrifying experience, after weeks of rest and medical treatment, Natalya made a miraculous full recovery.