Vivid dreams, an intuitive message, and an unexplained urge lead a searcher to a wrecked car, where a 17-year-old miraculously survived for eight days.

Vivid dreams, an intuitive message and an unexplained urge led a volunteer searcher to find the wrecked car of a 17-year-old girl who tumbled 200 feet down a ravine and miraculously survived for eight days, according to The Associated Press.

On Oct. 2, 2004, Laura Hatch had left a party and soon after, her Toyota Camry plunged off a cliff through an open space between two guardrails along a steep, winding two-lane road.

After four days of searching, hope dimmed. "We had already given her up and let her be dead in our hearts," said her mother, Jean Hatch.

But several days later, Sha Nohr said she had dreams about a wooded area. She also heard an intuitive message: "Keep going, keep going."

The following morning, Nohr, accompanied by her daughter, drove to the area where the crash was believed to have occurred, praying as she traveled to the site. "I just thought, 'Let her speak out to us,'" Nohr said in an interview with The Seattle Times.

According to Nohr, something caused her to suddenly stop her car, get out, and climb over a concrete barrier. Nohr clambored down more than 100 feet of a dense thicket along the sharply angled embankment. Soon, she could barely barely make out a wrecked auto among some trees.

Nohr found Hatch in the back seat, badly hurt and severely dehydrated. Hatch was not only alive but conscious.

Dr. Richard G. Ellenbogen, chief neurosurgeon at Harborview Medical Center, noted that a blood clot on Hatch's brain resulting from the crash might have killed  her. But it probably did not expand because of her dehydration. Recovering in a medical facility, Hatch even managed to joke with her caregivers.

"It's an extraordinary tale of survival," commented King County sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart.