Buzz
Death can come unexpectedly. However, when you know your time is limited to just hours or minutes, you have the opportunity to leave a final message for the world. It might be a phone call, a text, or even a note scribbled on a nearby surface. These will be your last words—make them meaningful.
10. Nadine Haag’s Second Note
On December 4, 2009, Nadine Haag was discovered deceased in her shower. The 33-year-old Australian woman had a severe wrist injury. A razor, painkiller bottles, and a note placed beside the spa bath were found nearby.
“My family—it hurts so much—please live as if there’s no tomorrow, ever ever ever . . . Thank you for being the beautiful souls of this world. Thank you for taking care of me.”
Authorities and the coroner concluded that Nadine had taken her own life. However, her family, particularly her sisters, were convinced she had been murdered. At the time of her death, Nadine was embroiled in a bitter custody dispute with her ex-partner, Nastore Guizzon, and her sisters believed he was behind her death.
Nadine’s sisters relentlessly pressured the police. They eventually connected with Detective Julia Brown, who disclosed that a second note had been discovered beneath the suicide letter. Initially dismissed as “scribbles,” the sisters demanded to see it. When unfolded, the message was clear: “HE DID IT.”
The officer who collected the note had misinterpreted it as “HEADED IT” and filed it as insignificant evidence. Later, new tenants in Nadine’s apartment found the same phrase carved into a tile near where her body was discovered.
Based on the notes, New South Wales coroner Paul MacMahon overturned the suicide ruling in 2013. He stated that Guizzon “had motive, opportunity, and lied about his location on December 3 and 4, 2009.” He called for a thorough investigation.
9. The 98 Rock
Pearl Harbor wasn’t the sole US base targeted by Japan in December 1941. Japanese forces also attacked Wake Island, a small Pacific atoll housing 1,600 American military personnel and civilian workers. By December 23, Japan had seized the island. While most prisoners were sent to camps in China, 98 were left behind.
In 1943, the US launched a counterattack. After two days of intense fighting, the Japanese realized defeat was imminent and chose to execute the remaining prisoners rather than allow their liberation. The captives were blindfolded, lined up, and shot with machine guns. One unidentified prisoner escaped and hid, leaving behind a makeshift memorial in his final moments.
He etched the words “98 US PW 5-10-43” into a large coral rock near the site that would serve as the mass grave for him and his fellow prisoners.
When the escapee was found, the Japanese admiral overseeing the island personally executed him. However, the man succeeded in ensuring the fate of the 98 would never be forgotten. The rock remains standing to this day.
8. The Remarkably Polite Immigrants
In May 2006, a drifting yacht was discovered 112 kilometers (70 miles) off Barbados. Rescuers approached the distressed vessel, but they were far too late. Inside the rusted boat were the partially preserved bodies of 11 young men.
Although found in the eastern Atlantic, the boat had departed from Africa’s eastern coast four months prior, heading for the Canary Islands. Each man had paid $1,800 to be smuggled into Spanish territory. Initially, at least 40 others had been aboard, but they had succumbed to the harsh conditions of the ocean.
As the men realized their dire situation, some penned their final messages to the world. One note stated: “I wish to send money to my family in Bassada. Please forgive me and farewell. This is the end of my life in this vast Moroccan sea.” Another read: “I ask whoever finds me to send this money to my family. Please call my friend Ibrahima Drame.”
7. The Hamstead Colliery Miners
On March 4, 1908, a fire erupted in the Hamstead Colliery mine in England, trapping 25 miners below ground. Despite efforts by their colleagues and professional rescue teams equipped with breathing apparatus, the fire proved insurmountable.
All 25 trapped miners perished. One rescuer, John Welsby, also lost his life due to heatstroke.
When the bodies were recovered a week later, rescuers found the men huddled together in four groups. One group of six had left a final plea for salvation on a wooden board. The message began, “The Lord Preserve Us,” and concluded with, “For We Are All Trusting in Christ.” Between these lines were the names of the six miners.
6. The Final Words on Divers’ Slates
Underwater, divers often communicate by writing on slates with chalk. Given the inherent risks of diving, some of these slates have become the bearers of divers’ last messages.
One of the most famous messages was left by Tom and Eileen Lonergan. The American couple was accidentally left behind by a tour boat near Australia in 1998, a story later depicted in the film Open Water. A slate was discovered with their desperate plea: “To anyone [who] can help us: We were abandoned on A[gin]court Reef by MV Outer Edge on 25 Jan 98 at 3pm. Please rescue us before we die. Help!!!”
Not all diving tragedies are as widely known or unusual. The cave systems in North Central Florida have claimed hundreds of lives, often inexperienced cave divers. Among them was Bill Hurst, a diving instructor who disappeared during a dive in 1976. His body was later recovered, and on his slate was a heartfelt message: “I got lost. Tell my wife and kids I love them very much.”
5. Bill Lancaster’s Fuel Card
Aviation trailblazer William Lancaster crashed in the Sahara Desert on April 12, 1933, during an attempt to break the speed record for a flight from England to Cape Town. His final words remained undiscovered for 29 years.
His fate was nearly decided before he even took off. Lancaster had only flown a few hours in the previous year, following a three-month jail stint for a murder charge. Although acquitted, he suffered a breakdown that grounded him. When he was finally cleared to fly again, he aimed for a challenging record.
After departing England, he encountered strong headwinds, forcing a stop in Barcelona. To compensate, he flew at night, getting lost multiple times over North Africa. Without a cockpit light, he relied on a flashlight to check his compass every few minutes.
By the time he refueled in Reggan, Algeria, he had been awake for 30 hours and could hardly stand. Authorities urged him to stay, but he refused. Already 10 hours behind schedule, any further delay would ruin his chance at the record.
About an hour later, off-course, he crashed in the Sahara. In 1962, a French army patrol discovered the wreckage. Among the debris was a fuel card bearing Bill’s final message: “The eighth day has begun. It’s still cool. I have no water . . . I wait patiently. Please come soon. Fever consumed me last night. Hope you find my full log. Bill.”
4. The Battlefield Wills of the British Army
In the early 20th century, the British Army issued will forms as standard equipment. Many superstitious young soldiers avoided filling them out, fearing it might invite bad luck. As a result, many wrote their final wishes in haste after being fatally wounded.
One soldier in Afghanistan was found with the words “I want mother to have all” written in his own blood on a rock. While most wills weren’t as grim, they were often rushed, brief, and improvised. Soldiers used whatever was at hand—envelopes, playing cards, newspaper scraps, bayonet scabbards, and even helmets. A World War I soldier wrote his will on his glove. Nearly all wills left belongings to mothers or sweethearts.
Lieutenant Joseph A. Child, fatally shot in 1918 during World War I, left a brief note: “I leave her all.” The “her” referred to his wife, as the note was written on the back of her photograph. Some soldiers had the chance to write more detailed messages, like “I leave everything to my beloved wife.” Others, less fortunate, could only manage a few words, such as “all for wife.”
In 1915, a newspaper reported that the workload for lawyers at London’s Somerset House had tripled due to the unusual wills they had to process.
3. The Last Letter of Otto Simmonds
Otto Simmonds, a German-born Jew, was captured by the Nazis in France and held at Drancy, a deportation camp near Paris that processed 70,000 prisoners during the war. In August 1942, Otto was placed on a train headed for Auschwitz. It was during this journey that he wrote a letter to his family. The source of the paper, pencil, and envelope remains a mystery.
My dears, On the way to Poland!!! Nothing helped. Tried everything. Allegedly it’s going to Metz. Fifty of us in one car!! Be brave and courageous. I’ll be the same. Stripped of everything in Drancy. Kisses, Otto
Otto threw the letter from the train window. Miraculously, a railway worker found it and sent it to his wife, Marthe.
Marthe searched for her husband into the 1960s, but he was never found. The letter became her sole memento of him. In 2010, Otto’s family donated the letter to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
2. Isaac Avery’s Message to His Father
The Battle of Gettysburg, with 50,000 casualties on both sides, was the bloodiest and most pivotal conflict of the American Civil War. Abraham Lincoln’s subsequent address remains one of the most iconic speeches by a US president.
Isaac E. Avery, a colonel in the Confederate Army, was shot in the neck during the battle, leaving him partially paralyzed and unable to use his right arm. As he was carried off the battlefield, mortally wounded, he held a small piece of paper in his hand.
After being thrown from his horse, Avery retrieved a piece of pencil lead from his pocket. Despite being right-handed, he used his left hand to write a note that said: “Major, tell my father I died facing the enemy. IE Avery.”
He passed away the next day in the hospital. The note is now part of the treasures collection at the North Carolina State Archives.
1. The Kursk Submarine Tragedy
On August 12, 2000, the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk was conducting exercises in the Barents Sea. An explosion, for reasons still unclear, tore a hole in the submarine, causing it to sink. Shortly after, its remaining torpedoes detonated, and the sub settled on the ocean floor.
What followed was one of the most poorly executed rescue missions in modern history. Russia initially declined international assistance, but after five days of unsuccessful attempts to reach the submarine, Vladimir Putin agreed to accept help. A Norwegian rescue ship and a British submersible arrived within two days, reaching the Kursk on August 20. By then, it was far too late, and all 118 crew members had perished.
Sailors who survived the initial blasts gathered in a rear compartment. Among them, officer Dmitry Kolesnikov wrote a note four hours after the explosion: “15:45. It’s too dark to write, but I’ll try by feel. Chances are slim, 10-20%. We hope someone will find this.”
Later, he added that the survivors planned to “attempt an escape.” The note concluded with: “Hello to everyone. Don’t lose hope.” Additional lines addressed to his family were kept private.
When the bodies were eventually recovered and laid to rest, the note was placed beside Kolesnikov’s coffin.
+ The Thoen Stone
In 1887, Louis Thoen, a stonemason, uncovered a sandstone slab in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The slab bore an inscription that read:
Came to these hills in 1833 seven of us all died but me Ezra Kind
killed by Indians beyond the high hill got our gold June 1834
The reverse side of the stone contained an additional message:
Collected all the gold we could carry our horses taken by Indians I’ve lost my gun and have no food with Indians pursuing me.
Many dismissed it as a forgery. Why would Ezra Kind take the time to carve such a message? And wasn’t it suspicious that a stonemason found it? However, the tale gained credibility when records confirmed Ezra and his companions were real individuals who vanished in the 1830s.
The original stone is housed in a local museum, while a replica marks its discovery site. Whether genuine or an elaborate 1880s hoax, it remains a captivating historical artifact.
