27 Years Ago, Jean Hilliard (USA) Miraculously Revived After Being Frozen for 6 Hours, Astonishing Doctors.
On the night of December 20, 1980, the weather was frigid, with temperatures dropping to -22 degrees Fahrenheit (-30 degrees Celsius). At that time, 19-year-old Jean Hilliard was driving home to her parents’ house in Lengby, Minnesota, after visiting a friend. Suddenly, she lost control of the car and veered off the road. The car came to a stop and would not restart, prompting Jean to decide to walk to her friend’s house, Wally Nelson, about 3.2 kilometers away.
Jean Hilliard was only wearing dress shoes, a coat, and gloves. Her clothing was insufficient to keep her warm, and she collapsed in the snow just a few meters from her friend’s door. She lay motionless in the snow until Nelson found her around 7 AM the next morning. At that time, her body was as rigid as a block of ice.
“I pulled Hilliard’s collar and pushed her onto the porch. I thought she was dead, her body was stiffer than a board, but I saw a few bubbles coming from her nose,” Wally Nelson recounted years later. Without Nelson’s quick response, Hilliard could have become one of the thousands of annual fatalities due to hypothermia. Instead, her story became a topic of intrigue for the scientific community.
According to The New York Times, doctors at Fosston Hospital were stunned by Jean’s condition. They attempted to provide her with nutrition through an IV, but the needle could not penetrate her frozen skin. The doctors were also unable to measure her temperature with a thermometer. Her face and eyes were frozen, unresponsive to light. The patient’s body did not react to any form of medical care.
Dr. George Sather, who treated Jean, stated: “Her body was cold and rigid, like a piece of meat in the freezer. Her limbs could not bend or move. She showed no response for about two to three hours after thawing began. Jean’s heart rate was only 8 beats per minute. Her body temperature was around 26 degrees Celsius.”
Doctors were left helpless in Jean’s case.
The doctors shook their heads in despair. They said that the cells were completely frozen, and the internal organs were getting colder, making it increasingly difficult for them to function until they completely ceased to work. Even the brain could not be saved. Jean had no hope left. The only thing the doctors could do for the young woman was to wrap her in heating pads to raise her body temperature and melt the ice.
By noon, Jean began to twitch and miraculously regained consciousness. Everyone around her was astonished. By nightfall, she was able to move her arms. By the third day, she could move her legs as well. She required medical treatment for the next 49 days but eventually made a full recovery, with no amputations required, not even a finger.
To this day, no one knows how this young woman’s body could fully recover from such a frozen state. The case of Jean Hilliard remains a mystery in the medical field.
How Can a Body Survive in a Frozen State?
Unlike many substances, water expands significantly when it freezes, even more than in its liquid form.
This temperature expansion is detrimental to cells exposed to cold, as the fluids inside the body risk swelling to the point of bursting blood vessels or rupturing cell membranes.
Many species of animals have evolved various adaptations to cope with the threat posed by sharp ice crystals in sub-zero conditions. The Antarctic blackfin icefish produces glycoproteins as a natural antifreeze. Wood frogs convert part of their cells into syrup by flooding their bodies with glucose, allowing them to resist freezing and dehydration. Outside the cells, water freely turns into ice, encasing the tissue in ice and making wood frogs appear like frozen frog-shaped blocks.
However, Hilliard’s body likely did not face these conditions. Scientifically speaking, it is possible that the victim, although hypothermic, still had a temperature much higher than freezing.
Jean Hilliard (center) returning to normal life after the accident. (Photo: MPR News).
If a person’s body becomes cold, hypothermia occurs. The danger of hypothermia depends on the degree of body temperature reduction. Specifically, when the temperature drops to 32 degrees Celsius, the body’s temperature compensation mechanism begins to fail, mental states may change, and the individual may even suffer memory loss. At 27 degrees Celsius, the victim may start to lose consciousness. Below 21 degrees Celsius, severe hypothermia can occur, potentially leading to death.
The record for the lowest body temperature of a surviving adult is 13.7 degrees Celsius. At that time, the individual had been submerged in cold water and frozen for an extended period.
In reality, the human body or any animal will become noticeably stiff when experiencing severe hypothermia. This can easily be mistaken for freezing, despite the differences in severity between the two states.
For Hilliard, her body likely experienced stiffness similar to that found in a corpse. The advantage of this state is that the body automatically “shuts” the channels leading to the blood vessels beneath the skin, keeping the internal organs functioning steadily.
This mechanism works so effectively that it can easily lead people to mistakenly believe the victim is dead, as they feel completely cold to the touch and show no signs of life. Even the heart rate can drop to a very low level.
When the body enters this state, it becomes extremely challenging for medical personnel to assist the victim, as they cannot use needles to penetrate the frozen skin due to severely constricted veins, and dehydration causes them to press tightly against the internal muscles.
The victim is then in a perilously dangerous state, bordering on death without timely intervention.
These factors highlight how fortunate Hilliard was to survive miraculously after she truly “faced death.”
This story also illustrates the incredible capabilities of the human body. Nonetheless, we should not rely on luck, as very few people have the ability to withstand such extreme state changes.
