'I was tied to a world on fire': This man suffered a nightmare coma

A young man has shared his insane story with French publication Gentside about surviving electrocution. In the video, the man tells the story of how a trip of charity work in Romania ended with him almost dying.

Simon, at the time of the incident, was 18 and he and some friends went on an environmental mission. For three weeks the group of young men chopped trees that needed to be removed for the wellbeing of the forest. At the end of those weeks the men had to leave and take a night train back to Bucharest from where they would then go back to France.

The nightmare started there…

The abandoned train

Simon explains that the group arrived at the train station early. Because of that, Simon and one of his friends decided to go explore the surrounding area. They discovered a desolated building as well as a bunch of abandoned trains.

Being caught up in the thrill of the moment, Simon says that he and his friend decided to climb onto one of the abandoned trains. Simon’s friend went first and started climbing the ladder on the side of the wagon. Simon followed and from there, he has no idea what happened.

A flash of white light

According to the friends who had been left behind by Simon and his friend, they heard an enormous noise with a huge sort of flashing white light. Their first thoughts were:

What are these two up to again? We leave them for five minutes and they manage to get something exploded!

Simon’s friends were far from the truth. The first thing these men saw was the friend who climbed onto the train before Simon. They found him utterly disoriented and slightly burned on the arm. Somehow, the young man managed to climb down the ladder and lie down on the ground by himself. That’s when he said:

I don’t know where Simon is.

At this very moment the station master rushed towards the group of friend yelling:

Kaputt! Kaputt!

Your friend is dead.

Simon’s friends started looking for his corpse but thankfully they found him alive. However, he was severely injured as his head hit the tracks when he fell off the wagon.

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Simon realises something is very wrong

When his friend found him, Simon could see by the looks on their faces that something was very wrong with him. He explains:

At this moment my friends are thinking that they might be watching me die and that they have an opportunity to do something. The friend that climbed onto the train with me came closer and held my hand. He then started whispering soothing sweet nothings to me.

From this, Simon only remembers being on the ground, not able to move and feeling as if something was burning all around him. Especially because the smell of burning was quite strong.

When first responders arrived Simon realised that his clothes had melted on him and he remembers that the firefighters had to get him naked. That’s when he grabbed one of them and said:

I don’t want to die.

Simon is put in a coma

Unknowingly Simon was transferred by plane to Lyon, France where he went to a hospital specialised in burnt victims.

There he was put in a coma for a week. Simon remembers this quite vividly and explains:

For me, being in a coma was like being in a week-long nightmare. Reality was mixed with dreams. I could hear noises around me. I could feel I was strapped to my bed and that I had a machine to help me breathe. I could also feel like I was burning.

What I was imagining at this time was that I was tied to a world on fire. Probably tied to a cliff with people trying to help me but not managing to do so.

While I was in a coma there were several moments when I wanted everything to end.

Read more: Man who was in a coma for 10 days reveals what he saw in the 'afterlife'

Simon wakes up

Because the coma was so hard on Simon, doctors decided to get him out of it. When he awoke he was confused because his last memory was of climbing onto the abandoned train. At first he thought a joke was being played on him. He was in the hospital, ‘mummified’ and completely bald.

That is when doctors told Simon that he had survived an electric charge of 27,000 volts. To put that number into perspective, that is the amount that trains need in order to move forward.

For Simon, things really started to hit when he was able to take a look at himself in the mirror.

For the first time I could see my naked body. I could see all the damage. It wasn’t pretty. One of my arms almost looked kind of melted. I had third degree burns on one arm and my chest. I couldn’t recognise myself.

That’s when I realised that the body I was looking at was not the body that was my own. All that because I made the stupid mistake of climbing onto that train.

Following that realisation, Simon had to undergo a look of physical therapy, especially to regain the use of his legs. Now, years later, he has accepted that his body is not what it used to be before the accident.

Sources:

Gentside France: Ma Pire Expérience 👥 J'ai survécu à une décharge de 27 000 volts