Meteorite Flies Through Woman's Ceiling and Lands on Her Bed: 'I've Never Been So Scared'

Ruth Hamilton woke up to find a hole in her ceiling, debris on her face and a 2.8-pound meteorite between her pillows

One woman got the surprise — and scare — of a lifetime when she woke up to find a meteorite lying beside her pillows.

On the night of Oct. 3, Ruth Hamilton woke up to the sound of her dog barking followed by "an explosion," she told The New York Times.

Much to her surprise, Hamilton noticed a hole in her ceiling as well as "debris all over my face," the British Colombia woman told CBC News.

"I jumped out of bed and turned on the lights. I didn't know what else to do, so I called 911," Hamilton recalled. "Talking to the operator, she was asking me all kinds of questions, and at that point, I rolled back one of the two pillows I'd been sleeping on and in between them was the meteorite."

"I've never been so scared in my life," she told the Canadian Press.

Although police initially believed the rock may have come from a nearby construction sight, they quickly realized that wasn't the case.

However, workers at the construction site did report having "seen a meteorite, or a falling star, explode and there was a couple of booms," Hamilton told CBC News. "Then we knew."

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After the shock of the incident wore off, Hamilton contacted researchers at the University of Western Ontario.

"It's certainly a meteorite," professor Peter Brown, who will work with researchers to find out more information, told CBC News.

According to The New York Times, the 2.8-pound meteor that wound up in the woman's bed was one of two to hit the Canadian province that night.

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Although Hamilton felt fortunate that she wasn't injured, or worse, experts say the odds of being killed by a meteorite are extraordinarily rare.

Astronomer Alan Harris previously estimated humans have a 1 in 700,000 chance of being fatally injured by space objects, according to National Geographic. Meanwhile, in a 2014 paper, Tulane University earth sciences professor Stephen A. Nelson argued the likelihood was actually 1 in 1,600,000.

Even though it gave her quite a scare, Hamilton said she plans on keeping the meteorite once researchers are finished studying it, according to The New York Times.

"My granddaughters can say that their grandmother just almost got killed in her bed by a meteorite," Hamilton said.