ChrisDHDR/Wikimedia Commons

Originally published in the August 2002 issue

I was on my paddleboard in the Pacific near Santa Rosa, California. I was getting ready to dive off the side and go spearfishing when the lights went out. I heard this big, loud noise like a garage door slamming, and it was completely dark.

All of a sudden, I could see these big white things out of my left eye. At first I thought it was busted fiberglass. The first thing that went through my mind was that a boat ran over me and stuffed my head through my board. But as soon as I touched the white things, I realized they were teeth.

He had a hold of my head. I was at a right angle to his mouth, hanging out the side. The front teeth were buried in through my cheekbones and my nose. It was quick and sharp. The teeth were like razors. When he clamped onto me, it was a god-awful crunch. I heard the crunching of teeth plowing through bone, but it didn't hurt. Something in the brain clicks so you don't feel it till later.

He didn't take me down — he took me out of the water. When I saw the water, it was like three feet below me, but I could see we were moving fast. I tried to pull my head out. I reached up on the shark and it was flat, like the side of a Buick, and it had a sandpapery feel. And then I just started pounding on it. I went berserk. I shredded my gloves on its teeth. I was just striking at him blind. I don't know if that's what made him let loose of me. If he would've finished the bite, I would've had no brain.

When the thing let go, it went underneath me, and I saw part of its head. It was a great white; it was wider than my shoulders.

He had a hold of me for eight to twelve seconds. We probably traveled about sixty to seventy feet.

I swam back to my board. I was bleeding like hell, blood pouring out of my nose, out of my face. I couldn't feel nothing from the top of my head to my butt on the right side. I had a two-and-a-quarter-inch hole in the back of my neck. I looked like hamburger. They took me away in a helicopter, and I got to Santa Rosa hospital. Now I've got one bad scar near the corner of my eye and across my nose, but, hell, they've faded down. They fit in with the wrinkles. — Rodney Orr, 61, electrician, as told to Matt Claus

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