- Getting swallowed by the earth does not sound like a fun birthday activity.
What’s your favorite thing to do on your birthday? Maybe you like to throw a big party for everyone you know, grab dinner with your family, or go do something special with someone special.
Or how about spending your birthday trapped underground in a tiny hole? No? That doesn’t sound like a good time?
You can thank your lucky stars, then, that you’re not Danielle Tammone. The Long Island resident was walking in her backyard on her birthday when the ground literally swallowed her.
It turned out that there was some kind of old, overgrown well in the yard. Tammone managed to step right onto its foot-wide opening and slide down into the deep crevice.
The hole had been barely wide enough to let the slim-built woman slip through, but it didn’t give her much space to move. Utterly trapped, the panicking woman started screaming for help.
Fortunately, her neighbors heard her. The 911 call they made was probably the best birthday present Tammone could’ve imagined.
Sinking into the Ground
The strange incident happened on September 17, 2026. That’s Tammone’s birthday, and she was turning 47 years old.
On that morning, Tammone had gone out to the backyard of her Bohemia home to get some fresh air. Her birthday took a sudden turn downward when she realized she was quickly sinking into the ground.
“Slowly, the earth just started moving or sinking,” Tammone recalled for News 12 Long Island. “It was weird. It happened so fast.”
She either had no time to jump away or perhaps putting her weight down only made the soil cave in faster. In either case, the ground opened up, and Tammone slid into an eight-foot-deep sinkhole lurking under her yard.
“And then I was just down, down in an eight-foot hole with water and sod,” she said.
All that was above ground were Tammone’s shoes, her alarmed dog, and a small, foot-wide opening in her lawn.
Scary Experience
Fortunately, Tammone didn’t hurt herself as the watery sludge on the bottom of the hole softened her landing. Due to the wetness, she believes she fell into an old abandoned well, cesspool, or a similar structure.
All that said, Tammone didn’t spend too much time musing about the hole’s original purpose at the time. Instead, she (quite understandably) panicked.
“People suffocate and they die, so I thought that at first,” Tammone told CBS. “I couldn’t breathe well because I was gasping and scared and crying.”
Even in her shocked state, Tammone didn’t want her birthday to also become the day of her death. She attempted to get her legs up high enough to start inching her way out. However, the hole’s old stone walls crumpled under her weight, and she became worried about the entire thing collapsing on her.
So, Tammone did the only thing she could. She started calling for help.
“I didn’t stop screaming, screaming, screaming and praying,” she recalled.
‘I Couldn’t Believe She Was Down There’
Luckily for Tammone, two of her neighbors happened to be outside that morning as well. Although they hadn’t seen her fall, they heard her muffled cries.
But as they peered into Tammone’s yard to see what was wrong, they were initially quite confused. They couldn’t see the woman anywhere, but someone was definitely yelling.
“At first, we thought she was in the shed or something. We were not looking on the ground,” said Christine Chanowsky, one of Tammone’s neighbors.
Then they noticed Tammone’s shoes on the grass – right next to the small hole. Sure enough, Tammone’s panicked screams were emanating from the crevice.
“We were purely frightened. Just terrified,” Chanowsky said. “The hole was maybe about 12 inches wide, so I couldn’t even believe that she was down there.”
Ladder to the Rescue
The neighbors called 911, and the police arrived quickly. In the end, rescuing Tammone was surprisingly simple.
The cops borrowed a ladder from one of the neighbors and lowered it into the well, allowing Tammone to grab it as they hauled her to safety.
Nonetheless, the experience was harrowing for her. Tammone said that she spent about half an hour in the hole.
By a small miracle, Tammone came out of the incident with no injuries apart from a couple of minor scrapes. She credits it to the hole’s soft soil.
“I feel fine because it was soft. Thank God I didn’t land on stone,” she said.
I couldn’t verify what Tammone did afterward to celebrate her birthday. You couldn’t blame her for just wanting to stay at home for the night, though.
For more tales of people being caught in strange locations, check out our list of 6 people who became stuck in bizarre places.