Australian Influencer Details Her 'Near Death Experience' with an Exploding Sauna

In a video shared to her nearly 1 million followers on TikTok, the influencer explained she was renting out an Airbnb for a wellness retreat where she was expected to host a workshop. In the GRWM -- or Get Ready with Me -- video, Elissa detailed her "crazy, traumatizing near death experience."

"I'm in the middle of nowhere, there's not a neighbor for 200 meters, there is no reception," Elissa recalled in the video, sharing she had used the sauna already the night before the incident and turned it on while doing some tasks around the home.

"I thought I'll just cook dinner quickly and then go in in 40 minutes, which is what you do for a lot of saunas – you let them heat up," she said.

Then, after she finished dinner and got ready, things took an explosive turn.

"I'm about to put my swimmers on to go … and I hear 'Boom.' I look up. The entire sauna exploded," the social media star exclaimed, clarifying she was not inside the sauna when it happened.

"It was, like, a 10-to-15-meter high explosion. All the power went out, my phone was about to die, I have no reception," she continued. "I am screaming, 'Help! Somebody help me!' It was a horror movie."

She then explained the panic she felt not being able to contact anyone -- before feeling some relief after discovering emergency services still worked without reception.

"Thank God. My hands were shaking," she said to the camera.

Elissa mentioned she saw neighbors, who were about 1/8th of a mile away, but explained they were at first hesitant to help after she ran to their door screaming for assistance. Eventually, they opened up, before explaining why they didn't immediately open the door.

"The lady goes, 'Sorry we were so resistant to help you. Last time a lady was screaming, she stabbed her husband,'" she claimed.

"Three fire trucks come to take down this huge fire. Luckily, the sauna was about 50 meters from the house on a hill. The whole sauna burnt to the ground," she continued. "It was the most horrific thing to experience because I was a few minutes from going into that sauna."

In her caption under the video, Elissa wrote, "I asked CHATGPT what it means when a sauna burns down😭 life is so fragile, mum was definitely making sure I didn’t get in that sauna," referring to her late mother.

She added that, had she been inside, "no one would hear me, no one would help me," and her husband would have "walked up to me in a fire." Elissa added that she still hosted her workshop the next day and will seek therapy.