Tragic story of 'grizzly man' and girlfriend eaten alive by bear while filming entire ordeal

Warning: Article contains graphic content

Timothy Treadwell was a bear enthusiast and documentary maker and nicknamed ‘Grizzly Man’ due to his love for the giant animals.

It wasn’t odd for him to fly out to Alaska every summer for 13 years to camp out alongside the beasts.

But on one year’s camping trip, the worst would happen.

Timothy would often play with and even touch the bears when he visited, mostly because he believed that he was one of the pack himself and that the animal was misunderstood.

However, he was apparently repeatedly warned by friends and family of the dangers of the bears, but still decided to camp with them every year.

But Timothy was tragically killed one as he was mauled to death in front of his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, in October 2003.

The bear then targeted Amie once it was finished with Timothy, who was also killed in the incident.

The attack happened just hours before the couple were due to fly back home by seaplane for the winter, and instantly, the couple’s air taxi pilot knew something was wrong.

Willy Fulton knew immediately what had happened when he landed at Katmai National Park.

According the Fulton, he would find the couple waiting on the shore to be picked up, but instead there was an eerie silence and the 'meanest looking bear' standing on top of a pile of human remains.

Upon further inspection, the couple's tent was found collapsed and torn alongside their evening snack that was unopened.

Timothy was a bear enthusiast. Lionsgate Films

A ranger then spotted fingers and an arm in a 3ft-high mound of grass, mud and twigs, alongside some other remains from the couple.

They also found what was left of Timothy's head, still connected to a small piece of his spine.

The couple always recorded their interactions with bears, and the attack was no exception.

But in the panic, both Timothy and Amie forgot to remove the lens which resulted in six long minutes of disturbing audio from the attack, which was the final moments of Timothy's life.

In the years that followed, a documentary about the tragic attack was made by Werner Herzog titled Grizzly Man, which was pieced together from Timothy's actual video footage of the bears and examined the bear enthusiast's love of heading to the Alaskan reserve every year.

It soon became critically acclaimed, achieving a 92 percent Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but the horror of what had happened remained with audiences for years.

Topics: Animals, Documentaries, Travel, News

Britt Jones