What started as a playful joke quickly turned into a nightmare for one woman, whose near-death experience during a bungee jump became a terrifying brush with fate.

It goes to show that anything can happen, especially when you perhaps are not expecting it.

Keep reading to learn more.

Back in 2012, 22-year-old Erin Langworthy from Australia was on a trip to the iconic Victoria Falls — a natural wonder straddling the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe — when she decided to take on a 360-foot bungee jump from a bridge spanning the Zambezi River.

Before the jump, Erin jokingly sent her mum a postcard, teasing: “I’m doing a bungee jump tomorrow, so I’ll say goodbye… only joking!” It was meant to be light-hearted, but her words would soon take on a haunting significance.

Erin was the 105th person to jump that day, and she admitted she felt a few nerves, but never imagined anything could go wrong. As is customary for the jump, her leap was captured on camera. The footage shows her arms outstretched, falling gracefully — until, in a split second, the cord snaps.

Plummeting into the Zambezi, notorious for its strong currents and crocodile population, Erin hit the water hard, and the broken cord still bound her feet together.

“It felt amazing at first,” Erin later said, per The Guardian. “Then I felt a jolt across my chest, like I slowed down for a second… and suddenly I hit the water. That’s when I realised something had gone seriously wrong.”

Knocked unconscious for a moment by the impact, Erin came to underwater, her lungs burning, disoriented and struggling to work out which way was up. “As I went deeper, the water got colder; I think that snapped me out of it,” she recalled.

To make matters worse, the bungee cord tangled in rocks and debris as she was swept through the rapids. With immense effort, she managed to dive under and free it more than once. Despite severe bruising and internal trauma, she swam through the fast-flowing river and made it to the Zimbabwean side, where a staff member helped her to safety.

“I’d seen crocodiles that morning,” she later said, “but I couldn’t even think about that. I was coughing up blood and struggling to breathe. My lungs were on fire.”

She credits her instinctive outstretched arms during the fall for saving her from a head-first impact and likely unconsciousness.

Erin was taken to a nearby hospital in Victoria Falls where she was put on a ventilator, underwent scans and was treated for partially collapsed lungs and potential infections from the dirty river water. “I had ingested a lot of water, so they gave me strong antibiotics,” she said of her stay in the hospital. “But miraculously, there were no broken bones.”

Despite the trauma, Erin was philosophical about the incident. “The bungee team were incredibly apologetic. I think it’s a miracle I survived.”

In the wake of the accident, Zambia’s then-tourism minister Given Lubinda addressed public fears, saying the bungee jump had a strong safety record with over 50,000 jumpers a year and just one known incident, according to The Lusaka Tmes.

In fact, Lubinda even offered to jump again, alongside Erin, to prove the safety of the operation. “It’s my responsibility to take the risk,” he said. “And to show the world that Zambia is still a destination worth visiting and bungee jumping in.”

As for Erin? Her mum insists she’ll never jump again. Erin, on the other hand, isn’t so sure.