A 22-year-old man spent three days trapped at the bottom of a 12-meter-deep well because villagers who heard his cries for help thought he was a wailing ghost and wouldn’t approach the well.

It’s unclear what Liu Chuanyi, a young Chinese national, was doing in the forest on the border between Thailand and Myanmar, but he somehow fell into an abandoned well on the outskirts of a small village. Authorities believe he was trekking through the woods when he fell into the 12-meter-deep hole, sustaining serious injuries, like a fractured wrist and cerebral concussion. At first, he started shouting for help as loudly as he could, but as the hours passed, he realized he would exhaust himself quickly and diminish his chances of being rescued. He was right, he spent the next three days and three nights at the bottom of the well, with no food or water, and had he not saved his energy, he would have probably died there.

Photo: Valentin Lacoste/Unsplash

After desperately shouting for help when he first fell into the abandoned well, Liu Chuanyi began shouting for help only once every hour to save his strength. Even so, his cries went unanswered not because no one heard them, but because people who did were convinced they were the cries of a ghost. Instead of approaching the well, nearby villagers stayed away, afraid of being attacked by spirits.

Luckily for Liu, someone alerted the police about bizarre sounds coming from the forest, and as they investigated the area they stumbled over the well he had fallen into. The rescue operation took about 30 minutes, but Liu’s emaciated body showed just how much he had to endure over three days and nights without food or water.

There is still a lot about this story that we don’t know, such as Liu Chuanyi’s presence so far from home, but authorities plan to question him as soon as he leaves the hospital.