Steve Stockton's STRANGE MYSTERIES Episode #19

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Hello, friends, Welcome in. Pull up a chair before you
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saw something warm to drink, and let the fire settle
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down to a quiet, glowing orange. Now outside, the sun
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is dropping below the treeline, and the shadows are starting
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to stretch long and thin across the yard. This is
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the time of day when the world slows down, when
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the noise of the television and the home of the
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refrigerator fade into the background, and you can finally hear
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the wind rattling, the wind of panes. Now we live
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in an arrogant age, don't we. We carry the whole
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sum of human knowledge in our pockets. We've mapped the
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ocean floors with sonar, we footprints on the pail dust
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of the moon, and we split the very atom.
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That holds the universe together.
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We like to think we've drawn a neat, bright circle
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around the unknown, fencing it in with science, logic and textbooks.
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We like to tell ourselves that the monsters have all
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been chased away by the street lights. But every now
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and then you catch a glimpse of something out of
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the corner of your eye, a shadow maybe that moves
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a little too fast, or perhaps the sound of the
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deep woods that doesn't belong to any animal. You know,
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you feel a sudden, inexplicable chill on the back of
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your neck when you're standing in an empty room. Now,
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back in nineteen eighty two, the good folks that readers
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digest published a big, heavy book, Clued Mysteries of the Unexplained.
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It sat on a lot of coffee tables, sat on
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my desk in college, and it scared the absolute dickens
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out of anyone brave enough to flip through its pages
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on a stormy night. Now, the terror in that book
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didn't come from vampires or werewolves. Oh no, the terror
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came from the fact that these were entirely true stories. Now,
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the stories you're about to hear are cut from the
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same exact cloth. These aren't campfire tall tales handed down
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by a friend of a friend. These are the cracks
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in our neat, orderly world. These are the impossibilities that
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were meticulously documented by police officers, scratched into log books
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of seasoned sea captains, and stamped on the official classified
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letterheads of the federal government. These are the cases where
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the smartest scientists in the room backed up their microscopes,
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threw their hands in the air, and admitted they didn't
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have a lick.
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Of sense as to what had just happened.
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From phantom crewise vanishing in the dead of the ocean,
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the toxic cow can be brewing in the blood of
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a suburban mother. These ten historical events are a reminder
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that the universe is vast, cold, and entirely indifferent to
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our rules. Friend, So lock your dead boat, draw the blinds,
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let's take a walk and see. We'll walk right off
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the edge of the map into the places where the
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light simply refuses to reach. Now, there's a saying among
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the old sauts whom make they're living out on the deep,
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dark and blue the ocean. She ain't your friend, and
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she ain't your enemy. She's just hungry. And if you
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sit on the docks down in Florida long enough, watching
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the tide pull the Atlantic against the shore, you'll hear
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the stories people like to talk about sea monsters, or
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alien saucers scooping up ships, or maybe holes in the
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fabric of time itself. But the scariest stories, the ones
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that'll make their hair on your arms stand up and
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send a cold shiver down your spine, even on a humid,
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agust night. Are the true ones, the ones where the
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facts are laid bare on official government stationery, and they
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still don't make a lick of say the granddaddy of
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them all, the tail that birthed the legend of that
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cursed patch of water they called the Bermuda Triangle. Started
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on a perfectly sunny Wednesday, December fiveth, nineteen forty five.
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The Second World War just wrapped up. The boys were home.
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The sky belonged to the United States Navy and Naval
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Air Station Fort Lauderdale was buzzing with young men learning
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the ropes. Then at two ten in the afternoon, five
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TVM Avenger torpedo bombers lined up on the runway. Now
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you got to understand what an avenger was. They called
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them the Ironclads of the sky. They were massive, single
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engine beasts built to take a beating over the Pacific,
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dropped their payloads and lent back to a carrier, missing
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chunks of their wings. They were tough, reliable, and practically
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unsinkable if you had to ditch one in the drink. Now,
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this was supposed to be a milk run flight nineteen
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a routine navigation exercised over the Bahamas. A little target
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practice on some old shipwrecks, and back in time per
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evening chow. Fourteen men were strapped into those five steel bellies.
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Thirteen were young trainees, full of vinegar and itching for
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their wings. The flight leader was a man named Lieutenant
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Charles Taylor, a combat hardened veteran who had spent the
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war flying by the seat of his pants over the Pacific.
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They lifted off into a cloudless, postcard perfect sky.
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Then for the.
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First hour everything was as right as rain. They hit
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their targets, dropped their dummy bombs, and turned north to
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begin the second.
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Leg of the triangle.
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Then right around three forty five PM, the radio crackled
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in the tower back at Fort Lauderdale. It wasn't a
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distress call, well not exactly. It was worse. It was
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the sound of a seasoned combat pilot slowly losing his
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grip on reality. Taylor came over the wire, his voice tight.
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He was trying to hail another plane, ask you if
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they had had his bearing. When asked what the trouble was,
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his answer sent a ripple of unease through the radio room.
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Both my compasses are out, Taylor said, the static hissing
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behind his words and I'm trying to find Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
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I'm over land, but it's broken. I'm sure I'm in
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the Keys, but i don't know how far down. Now,
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stop and think about that for a moment. Light nineteen
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had plumn directly east, out over the Bahamas, but Taylor,
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staring down at the scattered islands below him, had somehow
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convinced himself he was hundreds of miles off course, down
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over the Florida Keys. Now, the ocean plays tricks on
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a man's mind, especially when there's nothing but water in
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every direction. It's a condition pilots called spatial disorientation. You
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lose your horizon up, comes down east, but comes west.
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Your own brain turns against you. Radio operators on the
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mainland tried to tell him turn north, Charlie, put the
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sun on your port wing and you'll hit the But
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out there in the cockpit, Taylor was fighting a fandom.
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He refused to believe the sun. He refused to believe
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the radio. He only believed his gut, as he'd been trained,
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and his gut was telling him he was over the
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Gulf of Mexico. So he made a decision then that
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steal their fate. He ordered his squadron to turn east.
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He thought he was flying back toward the Florida Peninsula,
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but in reality, he was heading five planes and fourteen
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men directly out into the battless, empty Atlantic. As the
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afternoon wore on, the golden sunshine gave way to an angry,
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gray twilight. A storm was bren offshore, whipping the sea
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into the churning white camps. Down the radio room, the
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operator listened helplessly. The signal was fading as Flight nineteen
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flew further and further away from salvation. But it wasn't
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just Taylor's voice coming through the static. Oh no, the
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other pilots. The trainees were talking too, and they knew,
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they knew their leader.
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Was flying them toward their graves.
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Through their crackling interference, mainland operators picked up the desperate,
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terrified voices of the younger men arguing with Taylor.
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Damn it.
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One of the students keith his mic, If we would
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just fly west, we would get home, head west.
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Damn it.
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Now, can you imagine the terror in those tight metal cockpits.
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The sun dropping like a stone, the fuel gage is
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ticking steadily toward empty. The ocean below turning black and furious.
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You're a young man. You know exactly which way home is.
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But military discipline and no shadow of your commander's authority
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keeps you in formation. You follow the leader, even when
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he's leading off the edge of the world. Then by
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six p m. The radio chatter was faint, swallowed by
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the distance. In the storm, Taylor's voice came one last time,
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stripped of all its military confidence. It was the voice
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of a man who finally realized what the ocean had
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done to him. All planes close up tight, Taylor ordered
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his transmission, ghostly and hollow. We'll have to ditch unless landfall.
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When the first plane drops flow ten gallons. We all
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go down together. We all go down together. Those were
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the last words the mainland heard. Sometime after that, and
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the pitch black of a winter storm, five heavy iron
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planes ran out of gas. They would have glided down
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into fifty foot swells, slamming into the water like hitting
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a brick wall. But in those conditions the heavy Avengers
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would have filled with water and sank in seconds. Fourteen
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men swelled above the dark, but the ocean wasn't done
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feeding that night. Now, as soon as they realized Flight
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nineteen was doomed. The Navy scrambled a massive search and
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rescue operation. One of the planes they sent out was
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a Martin PBM Marin, or flying boat.
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Now.
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This was a hulking twin engine patrol craft designed to
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land right on the water pull survivors from the sea.
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Thirteen men boarded that mariner, strapped in and lifted off
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into the howling Knight to find their lost brothers. They
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radioed in a routine check a few minutes after takeoff,
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and then nothing dead air. Later that night, the captain
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of a merchant tanker passing through the area reported something curious.
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He told the coastguard he looked up into the stormy
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sky and saw a massive.
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Ball of fire blooming.
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The clouds had hung there for a few seconds, bright
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as the sun, before tumbling down into the churning sea
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in a shower of flaming wreckage the mariner folks said
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was a flying gas can the toys for vapor leaks.
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A single spark from a crewman lighting a cigarette or
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throwing a switch could have turned the whole bird into
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a bomb. Thirteen more men gone, twenty seven souls total
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erased from the world in a single evening. The next morning,
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the sun rose on a calm, glittering ocean, like the
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storm had never happened. Then the Navy launched one of
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the largest search operations in human history. Hundreds of planes
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crisscrossed the skies. Dozens of ships, submarines and coastguard cutters
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come to the waters from Florida all the way out
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to the deep Atlantic trenches. They searched for days, looking
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for life rafts, an oil slick, a floating seat cushion,
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a piece of a wing or fuselage, anything. But they
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found absolutely nothing, not one scrap of metal, not one
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drop of fuel, not one body. Five massive bombers and
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a giant flying boat had simply ceased to exist. When
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the Navy finally released their official report of disappearance, they
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couldn't explain it. A five hundred page Board of inquiry
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ended with the conclusion that sounded more like a campfire
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ghost story than a military document quote, we are not
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able to even make a good guess as to what happened.
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Vanished completely, as if they'd flown to mars End. Now
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folks will try to sell you on magnetic anomalies or
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perhaps methane bubbles erupting from the seafloor, or even the
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Lost City of Atlanta's pulling them down. But the truth
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is much simpler and a whole lot spook here. The ocean,
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my friend, is big, and we are very, very small.
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And sometimes when the sky turns gray and the compass
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starts to spend, the sea just opens her jaws and
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takes what she wants, and in some cases she never
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ever gives it back. Now, there's a kind of quiet
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you only ever hear up in the high timber of
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the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the dead winter. It ain't
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a peaceful quiet, Oh No, it's a heavy, suffocating silence,
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the kind that swallows sound hole and makes you feel
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like the trees themselves are watching you. Then they probably
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are folks who live up around Plumus National Forest, no
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better than to go wandering off the black top when
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the snowstar's falling. The mountains are beautiful, sure, like they're unforgiving,
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and they have a terrible habit. They're keeping what they catch.
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Now you're going to hear a story that'll put a
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chill deep in your mirrow. A chill A hot cup
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of coffee won't chase the way. But when you ask
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the old timers around Yuba City about the boys who
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went up the mountain and never came back, it's a tragedy.
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Bless their hearts. But more than that, it's a puzzle
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with half the pieces missing and the other half painted
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flat black. Now it was February twenty fourth, nineteen seventy eight,
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a Friday night down in the valley. Five young men
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piled into a turquoise and white nineteen sixty nine mercury
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months ago. They were local boys, ted Ware, Jack Hewitt,
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Bill Sterling, Doc Fairy, and Gary Matthias. They ranged in
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age from twenty four to thirty two, but their families
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just called them the boys. Now, you got to understand,
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these weren't your typical roughneck mountain man. Except for Gary,
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all of them had mild intellectual disabilities. They were general souls.
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The counder stuck close to home and stuck close to
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each other. Now Gary didn't have a learning disability, but
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he battered schizophrenia, which he kept managed with medication. He
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left sitting on his nightstand that evening. Now, these boys,
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00:14:29.480 --> 00:14:32.639
they were thick as thieves. Those five they played together
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00:14:32.679 --> 00:14:35.799
on a basketball team sponsored with the local Vocational Center,
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00:14:36.320 --> 00:14:38.519
and they were buzzing like a hive of bees because
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they had a huge tournament the very next morning. The
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00:14:41.879 --> 00:14:45.840
winner got a free week in Los Angeles. To those boys,
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00:14:46.159 --> 00:14:49.440
it was like the NBA Championships. They'd laid out their
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00:14:49.519 --> 00:14:52.440
uniforms on their beds before they left the house. They
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00:14:52.440 --> 00:14:55.759
wouldn't have missed that Saturday game for the world. But
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that Friday night they drove about fifty miles north to
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00:14:59.320 --> 00:15:03.720
Chico to watch the UC Davis basketball team play. After
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00:15:03.759 --> 00:15:06.960
the final buzzer, around ten PM, they stopped at a
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00:15:06.960 --> 00:15:10.919
local market. The clerk remembered them buying some hostess cherry pies,
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00:15:11.360 --> 00:15:15.200
some candy bars, and a few sodas. Just regular boys
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00:15:15.240 --> 00:15:19.720
doing regular things. From Chico, the drive home to Yuba
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00:15:19.799 --> 00:15:22.720
City is a straight shot south down Highway ninety nine.
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00:15:23.399 --> 00:15:28.399
It's an easy drive, flat, well paved, impossible to mess up.
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00:15:29.120 --> 00:15:33.159
But they didn't go south now for reasons known only
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00:15:33.200 --> 00:15:36.480
to God and the Whispering Pines. That Mercury months Ego
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00:15:36.600 --> 00:15:41.360
turned east. It headed away from home, away from their families,
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00:15:41.879 --> 00:15:44.919
away from the big tournament they've been dreaming about, and
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00:15:45.080 --> 00:15:49.320
started climbing into the Plumus National Forest, up winding treacherous,
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00:15:49.320 --> 00:15:53.639
dirt logging roads deep into the freezing, snow choked wilderness.
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A few days later, a forest ranger found that turquoise
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00:15:57.559 --> 00:16:01.200
Mercury sitting abandoned on a snowpacked mountain road, a grilling
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00:16:01.279 --> 00:16:05.279
seventy miles off their route home. Now, when the police
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00:16:05.279 --> 00:16:08.000
got there, what they found didn't make a lick of sense.
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00:16:08.600 --> 00:16:10.799
The car was slightly stuck in the snow drift, sure,
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00:16:11.080 --> 00:16:14.399
but it wasn't buried. Five grown, strong men could have
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00:16:14.440 --> 00:16:17.879
pushed it out in two minutes. The engine well, it
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00:16:17.919 --> 00:16:21.480
was in perfect working order, the gas tank a quarter full.
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00:16:22.240 --> 00:16:25.360
The keys were gone, but the doors were unlocked, while
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00:16:25.399 --> 00:16:27.799
the windows was rolled down, a crack, letting the bitter
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00:16:27.879 --> 00:16:31.399
cold inside. There neatly folded in the back seat with
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00:16:31.480 --> 00:16:35.240
the wrappers from those hostess cherry pies. There was no blood,
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00:16:35.440 --> 00:16:38.360
no signs of a struggle, no mud on the undercarriage
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00:16:38.480 --> 00:16:41.559
to suggest they've been driving frantically or running from something.
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00:16:42.480 --> 00:16:46.080
They simply stopped the car, stepped out into the freezing blackness,
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00:16:46.080 --> 00:16:49.440
wearing nothing but light jackets and sneakers, and walked away.
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00:16:50.559 --> 00:16:54.759
But why and what were they headed toward? That night,
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00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:58.000
a local man named Joseph Shaan's happened to be stuck
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00:16:58.039 --> 00:16:59.759
in his own car a little ways down that same
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00:17:00.039 --> 00:17:03.679
out on the road, suffering a mild heart attack. He
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00:17:03.759 --> 00:17:06.839
told police that around midnight he saw headlights pull up
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00:17:06.880 --> 00:17:09.680
behind him. He saw a group of men meeling around
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00:17:09.720 --> 00:17:12.480
the car in the dark, illuminated by the beams. He
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00:17:12.559 --> 00:17:15.680
called out for help, begging them to assist him, but
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00:17:15.720 --> 00:17:19.359
the men didn't answer. They just stopped talking, turned off
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00:17:19.359 --> 00:17:23.480
the headlights, and the woods went dead silent. A few
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00:17:23.519 --> 00:17:28.119
hours later, Sean saw a flashlight wandering through the trees. Again,
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00:17:28.319 --> 00:17:31.880
he called out, and again the light simply clicked off,
290
00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:37.079
leaving him in the dark. So the police brought dogs, helicopters,
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00:17:37.079 --> 00:17:40.240
and men on horseback to scour the mountain, but a
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00:17:40.279 --> 00:17:43.279
brutal winter storm blew in, bearing any tracks under feet
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00:17:43.319 --> 00:17:49.359
of fresh, heavy snow. Weeks turned into months. Spring finally came,
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00:17:49.880 --> 00:17:52.400
melting the snow and revealing the terrible secrets the mountain
295
00:17:52.440 --> 00:17:55.880
had been hiding. In June, a group of motorcyclists riding
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00:17:55.920 --> 00:17:58.359
through the woods about nineteen miles further up the mountain
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00:17:58.359 --> 00:18:00.880
from the abandoned car, caught a sin on the wind.
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00:18:01.799 --> 00:18:04.200
It led them to a rusty snow crushed for a
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00:18:04.240 --> 00:18:08.920
service trailer. Now inside that trailer they found ted Ware
300
00:18:09.720 --> 00:18:11.880
and the scene they walked into is the part of
301
00:18:11.880 --> 00:18:16.839
the story that keeps homicide detectives awake at night. Tad
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00:18:16.880 --> 00:18:20.440
was deceased. He was laid out on a bed, wrapped
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00:18:20.440 --> 00:18:23.319
head to toe in eight heavy blankets tucked in tight.
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00:18:24.400 --> 00:18:28.880
His shoes were missing, his feet were badly frosted. The
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00:18:28.960 --> 00:18:31.960
corner determined Ted had slowly starved and frozen to death.
306
00:18:32.720 --> 00:18:35.960
But here's the kicker. His beard growth showed he had
307
00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:39.880
lived inside that trailer were anywhere from eight to thirteen weeks.
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00:18:40.640 --> 00:18:44.559
He'd lain in that bed, slowly wasting away for months.
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00:18:45.599 --> 00:18:48.319
And right outside the trailer was a shed containing a
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00:18:48.359 --> 00:18:51.799
massive propane tank connected to a valve. Inside that it
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00:18:51.960 --> 00:18:56.759
turned on the heat. Ted never touched it, and scattered
312
00:18:56.759 --> 00:18:58.839
all around the inside of the trailer were dozens of
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00:18:58.880 --> 00:19:02.839
military sea rations and to hydrated meals, enough food to
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00:19:02.839 --> 00:19:06.359
feed all five men for an entire year. Now, one
315
00:19:06.440 --> 00:19:08.400
or two cans have been opened with a P thirty
316
00:19:08.440 --> 00:19:12.480
eight military can opener, but the rest they were completely untouched.
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00:19:13.240 --> 00:19:15.839
Tad had lost nearly one hundred pounds before he died,
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00:19:16.400 --> 00:19:19.240
starving to death in a room literally full of food.
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00:19:20.480 --> 00:19:24.160
Also in the trailer were books, wooden furniture, and plenty
320
00:19:24.240 --> 00:19:28.519
of paper. There were matches sitting on a table, yet
321
00:19:28.599 --> 00:19:31.640
no one had even tried to build a fire. It
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00:19:31.720 --> 00:19:34.240
was as if they were too terrified to make a sound,
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00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:38.559
too terrified to strike a match, and too terrified to
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00:19:38.640 --> 00:19:39.160
even eat.
325
00:19:41.240 --> 00:19:41.440
Now.
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00:19:41.559 --> 00:19:45.079
Over the next few days, searchers found the scattered skeletal
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00:19:45.119 --> 00:19:48.920
remains of Doc Ferry, Bill Sterling, and Jack Hewitt along
328
00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:52.119
the trail leading from the car to the trailer. Jack's
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00:19:52.160 --> 00:19:54.680
own father was the one who found his son's backbone
330
00:19:54.920 --> 00:19:58.160
resting under a man's anita bush. That's to come to
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00:19:58.240 --> 00:20:02.519
hypothermia in the deep snow. But Gary Matthias, the one
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00:20:02.559 --> 00:20:05.920
who needed his medication, He vanished like smoking the wind,
333
00:20:05.960 --> 00:20:09.400
my friend. Not a scrap of his clothing, not a bone,
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00:20:09.720 --> 00:20:11.119
not a clue's ever been found.
335
00:20:12.519 --> 00:20:12.680
Now.
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00:20:12.839 --> 00:20:15.960
What drove those gentle boys up that terrifying mountain road
337
00:20:15.960 --> 00:20:18.440
in the pitch black? What did they see in the
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00:20:18.480 --> 00:20:21.599
woods that made them abandon a perfectly good, warm car.
339
00:20:22.519 --> 00:20:25.720
Why did ted Ware slowly starve to death surrounded by food,
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00:20:26.160 --> 00:20:30.079
hiding under blankets like a frightened child hiding from a monster.
341
00:20:29.839 --> 00:20:30.359
In the dark.
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00:20:31.400 --> 00:20:34.880
Did someone force him up there? Did Gary suffer a
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00:20:34.960 --> 00:20:37.279
terrible break from reality and lead his friends on a
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00:20:37.279 --> 00:20:41.920
doomed march into the snow. The police closed the case,
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00:20:42.640 --> 00:20:45.319
chalking it up to a tragic combination of exposure and
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00:20:45.359 --> 00:20:50.400
mental confusion. But you asked the locals. You asked the
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00:20:50.440 --> 00:20:53.519
folks who know how those boys loved their families, how
348
00:20:53.559 --> 00:20:55.880
they wouldn't have missed that basketball tournament for all the
349
00:20:55.920 --> 00:20:59.759
tea in China. They'll tell you that something chased those
350
00:20:59.759 --> 00:21:04.079
boys into the dark, Something made them so terrified that
351
00:21:04.200 --> 00:21:07.359
starving to death in a freezing metal box seemed like
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00:21:07.400 --> 00:21:12.039
a better option than whatever was outside. So the sea
353
00:21:12.039 --> 00:21:16.279
Ara Nevadas are beautiful, Sure, the standing in those woods
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00:21:16.319 --> 00:21:19.400
when the sun goes down. Listen to the wind rattle
355
00:21:19.480 --> 00:21:22.599
the dead branches. You get the feeling the trees know
356
00:21:22.720 --> 00:21:26.880
exactly what happened that night, and they ain't telling, my friend,
357
00:21:27.599 --> 00:21:28.359
they ain't telling.
358
00:21:36.440 --> 00:21:36.680
Now.
359
00:21:36.880 --> 00:21:39.559
There are places in this world that are just too big,
360
00:21:40.079 --> 00:21:43.519
too wild, and too unforgiving for mankind to ever truly
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00:21:43.559 --> 00:21:46.880
put a saddle on them. The Siberian tiger is one
362
00:21:46.880 --> 00:21:50.480
of those places. It's an ocean of pine, birch and
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00:21:50.559 --> 00:21:54.480
bog that stretches on for millions of square miles, a
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00:21:54.559 --> 00:21:56.880
cold and lonely expanse where a man can walk for
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00:21:56.920 --> 00:22:00.440
a lifetime and never see another human face. It's a
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00:22:00.480 --> 00:22:03.359
place that keeps his secrets buried deep under the frost.
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00:22:04.680 --> 00:22:07.519
But on the morning of June thirtieth, nineteen oh eight,
368
00:22:08.039 --> 00:22:11.119
the sky above didn't just keep a secret. It's horror,
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00:22:11.160 --> 00:22:14.359
wide open and screamed. If you want to talk about
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00:22:14.440 --> 00:22:16.319
mysteries that make the hairs on the back of your
371
00:22:16.319 --> 00:22:19.759
next handed attention, then you have to talk about Tunguska.
372
00:22:20.920 --> 00:22:23.559
Because what happened out there in the middle of nowhere
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00:22:23.599 --> 00:22:27.519
was a display of raw apocalyptic power that, by all rights,
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00:22:27.680 --> 00:22:29.559
should have left a scar on the earth so deep
375
00:22:29.680 --> 00:22:34.000
would still be digging into it today. Instead, it left
376
00:22:34.039 --> 00:22:37.759
nothing but a ghost story. It was around seven fifteen
377
00:22:37.799 --> 00:22:42.279
in the morning. The Ivinki people, nomadic reindeer herders who
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00:22:42.359 --> 00:22:45.039
scratched out a tough living in the frozen woods, were
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00:22:45.119 --> 00:22:48.680
just starting their day. Forty miles away had a little
380
00:22:48.720 --> 00:22:52.799
trading post called Vanavara. A local man named Simon Ivanov
381
00:22:52.920 --> 00:22:56.039
was sitting on his porch, probably enjoying the brief warmth
382
00:22:56.079 --> 00:23:00.440
of the short Siberian summer. Then suddenly the sky split
383
00:23:00.519 --> 00:23:04.039
in two. Now, according to the folks who were lucky
384
00:23:04.160 --> 00:23:07.759
enough to be far enough away to survive, a massive
385
00:23:07.839 --> 00:23:11.480
cylindrical pillar of bluish white fire shot across the heavens.
386
00:23:12.559 --> 00:23:15.559
Ivanov Floda said that high above the forest, the sky
387
00:23:15.680 --> 00:23:18.960
looked like it was entirely covered in fire, and then
388
00:23:19.279 --> 00:23:23.160
came the heat. Sitting on his porch forty long miles
389
00:23:23.160 --> 00:23:26.279
from ground zero, Ivanov stood the heat wash over him
390
00:23:26.319 --> 00:23:29.240
so fiercely he thought his shirt had caught fire. He
391
00:23:29.359 --> 00:23:32.000
reached up the tear it off, but before he could,
392
00:23:32.279 --> 00:23:35.960
the shock wave hit an invisible fists slammed into the
393
00:23:35.960 --> 00:23:39.200
trading post, throwing Ivanov clear off his porch and knocking
394
00:23:39.240 --> 00:23:43.039
him senseless. The windows of the trading post shattered, dirt
395
00:23:43.079 --> 00:23:45.799
and timber ran down from the sky. The sound that
396
00:23:45.880 --> 00:23:49.720
followed was described as a deafening thunderous roar, like heavy
397
00:23:49.799 --> 00:23:53.279
artillery firing right next to your ear, that calling across
398
00:23:53.319 --> 00:23:57.279
the steps over and over again, hundreds of miles away.
399
00:23:57.720 --> 00:24:00.960
Passengers on the Trans Siberian Railway felt the train cars
400
00:24:01.039 --> 00:24:05.759
violently shutter and nearly jumped the tracks. Seismic stations thousands
401
00:24:05.799 --> 00:24:08.559
of miles away in the United Kingdom and America watched
402
00:24:08.559 --> 00:24:12.680
their needles dance frantically, recording a massive earthquake where no
403
00:24:12.759 --> 00:24:16.240
fault line existed. The blasts and a shock wave of
404
00:24:16.279 --> 00:24:19.799
air pressure traveling out from Siberia that was so powerful
405
00:24:19.920 --> 00:24:23.200
barometers across the globe recorded at circling the entire earth
406
00:24:23.599 --> 00:24:27.960
not once but twice. But it was what happened that
407
00:24:28.119 --> 00:24:31.480
night that really spoke the rest of the world. Over
408
00:24:31.519 --> 00:24:34.440
the next few days, the sky over Asian and Europe
409
00:24:34.519 --> 00:24:38.279
refused to get dark. Folks in London, Paris, and even
410
00:24:38.319 --> 00:24:41.240
Stockholm stepped out of their houses at midnight and looked
411
00:24:41.319 --> 00:24:44.759
up at the glowing, silvery, eerie clouds. The sky was
412
00:24:44.839 --> 00:24:48.400
so bright with some strange high altitude luminescence that you
413
00:24:48.400 --> 00:24:50.440
could stand in the streets of London at two in
414
00:24:50.480 --> 00:24:53.039
the morning and read the fine print of a newspaper
415
00:24:53.039 --> 00:24:56.640
without a lantern. Some folks even played cricket matches in
416
00:24:56.680 --> 00:24:59.119
the dead and night, lit by a ghostly globe of
417
00:24:59.119 --> 00:25:03.799
a disaster they couldn't even comprehend. Now, you'd think a
418
00:25:03.839 --> 00:25:06.000
blast that shook the world and lit up the European
419
00:25:06.079 --> 00:25:08.880
night would have every scientist on Earth scrambling to find
420
00:25:08.920 --> 00:25:13.599
the crater. But remember this is nineteen oh eight. Siberia
421
00:25:13.680 --> 00:25:17.680
was completely isolated. Then came the First World War, the
422
00:25:17.759 --> 00:25:21.880
Russian Revolution, and the bloody civil war that followed. For
423
00:25:21.920 --> 00:25:25.279
almost twenty years, the epicenter of the greatest explosion in
424
00:25:25.359 --> 00:25:31.720
modern human history sat untouched, undisturbed, and totally unexamined. It
425
00:25:31.759 --> 00:25:35.119
wasn't until nineteen twenty seven that a Russian mineralogist named
426
00:25:35.200 --> 00:25:38.480
Lyndon Kulik finally managed to lead an expedition into the
427
00:25:38.519 --> 00:25:40.839
heart of the Tiger to find out what had fallen
428
00:25:40.839 --> 00:25:44.680
from the sky. Now Kulik expected to find a massive crater,
429
00:25:45.160 --> 00:25:48.039
maybe a mountain of twisted space iron wort of fortune.
430
00:25:48.480 --> 00:25:52.680
His journey was a nightmare of frozen bogs, disease, carrying mosquitoes,
431
00:25:52.799 --> 00:25:56.279
and brutal terrain. As they got closer to the blast
432
00:25:56.359 --> 00:25:59.519
zone is the Vinki guides flat out refused to.
433
00:25:59.440 --> 00:26:00.000
Go any further.
434
00:26:00.079 --> 00:26:04.359
They believed the explosion was the work of Ogdy avengeful
435
00:26:04.440 --> 00:26:07.000
fire god who had cursed the land and smashed the forest,
436
00:26:07.759 --> 00:26:10.240
and no amount of money or threats could make them
437
00:26:10.240 --> 00:26:13.839
step foot in the dead zone, they turned back, leaving
438
00:26:13.920 --> 00:26:18.160
Kulik and a scientists to push on alone. So when
439
00:26:18.240 --> 00:26:21.440
Kulik finally reached the epicenter, standing on a ridge looking
440
00:26:21.480 --> 00:26:25.000
down into the Tunguska River basin, the breath went right
441
00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.359
out of his lungs below him and estimated eighty million
442
00:26:29.400 --> 00:26:33.000
trees had been flattened across eight hundred and thirty square
443
00:26:33.039 --> 00:26:36.559
miles of dense forest. Giant ancient pines were snapped off
444
00:26:36.559 --> 00:26:41.440
at the base like dry matchsticks, and every single tree
445
00:26:41.480 --> 00:26:44.119
was lying flat on the ground, pointing outward in a
446
00:26:44.200 --> 00:26:48.119
massive radial butterfly pattern, pointing away from the center of
447
00:26:48.160 --> 00:26:52.119
the blast. But as Kulik walked down into the very
448
00:26:52.160 --> 00:26:55.400
heart of the devastation, the exact point where the heat
449
00:26:55.400 --> 00:26:58.240
had been the hottest and the shockwave the strongest, he
450
00:26:58.319 --> 00:27:02.000
found the creepiest detail of all. At the dead center,
451
00:27:02.519 --> 00:27:05.640
the trees weren't knocked over, oh no, they were still
452
00:27:05.680 --> 00:27:09.759
standing straight up, but they'd been entirely stripped of their branches,
453
00:27:09.920 --> 00:27:13.799
their leaves, their bark. They stood there like a forest
454
00:27:13.839 --> 00:27:20.480
of dead white telegraph poles, petrified and silent. Now any
455
00:27:20.519 --> 00:27:23.960
military man will tell you exactly what that means if
456
00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:26.960
the trees at ground zero standing straight up, but everything
457
00:27:27.000 --> 00:27:30.279
around them is flattened, the blast didn't happen on the ground.
458
00:27:31.319 --> 00:27:34.440
Whatever it was, it detonated high up in the air.
459
00:27:35.720 --> 00:27:38.400
Now Kolik and his men start searching for the crater.
460
00:27:39.119 --> 00:27:42.000
They dug into the peat bogs, They dredged the little
461
00:27:42.039 --> 00:27:44.960
frozen legs. They sifted through the dirt looking for a
462
00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:47.680
chunk of a meteorite, a piece of a space rock,
463
00:27:47.759 --> 00:27:51.519
a sliver of iron. They looked for weeks. Then they
464
00:27:51.519 --> 00:27:54.440
came back in later years and looked again and again,
465
00:27:55.480 --> 00:28:00.400
and they found absolutely nothing. No crater, no impact point,
466
00:28:00.839 --> 00:28:05.200
no meteoric iron, no space rock. Whatever unleashed the energy
467
00:28:05.200 --> 00:28:08.599
of a thousand Hiroshima atomic bombs over the Siberian wilderness,
468
00:28:08.880 --> 00:28:11.680
flattening eighty million trees and glowing in the skies for
469
00:28:11.720 --> 00:28:16.799
a week, left no physical trace of itself behind. Now,
470
00:28:16.880 --> 00:28:19.119
modern scientists will tell you it was probably a dirty
471
00:28:19.160 --> 00:28:22.440
comet or a fragile, stony asteroid that couldn't handle the
472
00:28:22.480 --> 00:28:26.480
friction of our atmosphere. They say it superheated and exploded
473
00:28:26.519 --> 00:28:30.279
a few miles above the ground, vaporizing entirely before it
474
00:28:30.279 --> 00:28:36.720
construct the Earth that's the neat, tidy scientific explanation. But
475
00:28:36.799 --> 00:28:39.839
out there in the dark, when the campfire burns low,
476
00:28:40.480 --> 00:28:44.200
other folks whisper about different theories. Some say it was
477
00:28:44.240 --> 00:28:47.359
a rogue chunk of antimatter. Some say it was a
478
00:28:47.400 --> 00:28:51.880
microscopic black hole passing straight through the Earth. Some even
479
00:28:51.880 --> 00:28:55.279
suggest it was a piece of alien technology, a stricken
480
00:28:55.319 --> 00:28:58.680
spaceship that had deliberately detonated its engines high in the
481
00:28:58.720 --> 00:29:02.160
atmosphere to voin slamming into the planet and cracking it
482
00:29:02.279 --> 00:29:05.960
like an egg. Now we'll probably never know for sure.
483
00:29:06.920 --> 00:29:10.079
The Taga has swallowed the scars, and the new trees
484
00:29:10.119 --> 00:29:13.799
have grown tall over the follow ones. But the Tunguska
485
00:29:13.880 --> 00:29:17.440
event stands as a terrifying folks, a reminder of just
486
00:29:17.519 --> 00:29:21.240
how fragile we are. We walk around down here, paying
487
00:29:21.240 --> 00:29:24.559
our taxes and mowing our lawns, completely at the mercy
488
00:29:24.599 --> 00:29:27.559
of a universe that could at any moment throw a
489
00:29:27.559 --> 00:29:32.200
fastball right at our heads. So and if it happens again,
490
00:29:32.759 --> 00:29:34.599
we might not be so lucky as to have it
491
00:29:34.720 --> 00:29:38.640
land in the empty, frozen woods of Siberia. Next time,
492
00:29:38.839 --> 00:29:41.400
this guy might catch fire over place where millions of
493
00:29:41.440 --> 00:29:45.160
people are looking up wondering what in the world or what.
494
00:29:45.279 --> 00:29:47.519
Out of this world? This is coming forth.
495
00:29:56.839 --> 00:29:59.640
Now, if you ever want to understand the true terrifying
496
00:29:59.680 --> 00:30:03.240
skill the world, go find a globe, spin it around
497
00:30:03.279 --> 00:30:06.599
and til you're staring straight at the Pacific Ocean. Now,
498
00:30:06.599 --> 00:30:08.839
from that angle, you won't see much land at all,
499
00:30:09.640 --> 00:30:12.240
just a massive, unbroken dome of blue that covers the
500
00:30:12.279 --> 00:30:15.759
third of the entire planet. Down there, in not water,
501
00:30:15.960 --> 00:30:18.880
there are trenches deep enough to swallow mount Everest hole,
502
00:30:19.559 --> 00:30:22.000
and currents strong enough to drag a man halfway across
503
00:30:22.079 --> 00:30:26.400
the world before he even knows he's drowning. Out in
504
00:30:26.440 --> 00:30:28.960
the middle of all that lonesome blue, says the island
505
00:30:28.960 --> 00:30:32.119
of Maui. And it was there, on a beautiful Sunday
506
00:30:32.119 --> 00:30:35.480
morning in February of nineteen seventy nine, that the ocean
507
00:30:35.519 --> 00:30:39.480
decided to play a cruel, impossible magic trick. It was
508
00:30:39.519 --> 00:30:42.319
supposed to be a perfect day. Down in the little
509
00:30:42.359 --> 00:30:45.400
town of Hannah. Five good friends were loading up coolers
510
00:30:45.400 --> 00:30:49.720
with sandwiches and beer. He had Scott Mormon, Ralph Malachini,
511
00:30:50.279 --> 00:30:56.480
Peter Hanchett, Patrick Wassner, and Benjamin Kalama. They were young, strong,
512
00:30:56.519 --> 00:30:59.480
local boys, construction workers and tradesmen who knew the sun,
513
00:30:59.680 --> 00:31:01.920
knew the heat, and thought they knew the water.
514
00:31:02.920 --> 00:31:03.799
Now they borrowed the.
515
00:31:03.799 --> 00:31:07.200
Seventeen foot Boston Whaler named the Sarah Joe. If you
516
00:31:07.240 --> 00:31:09.960
don't know, a Boston Whaler is a mighty fine boat.
517
00:31:10.279 --> 00:31:13.079
The manufacturer used to famously sew them in half just
518
00:31:13.119 --> 00:31:16.759
to prove the fiberglasshull would still stay afloat. But a
519
00:31:16.839 --> 00:31:19.799
seventeen footer is little more than a bathtub. It's an
520
00:31:19.839 --> 00:31:23.440
open skiff made for zipping around the coastal shallows, casting
521
00:31:23.440 --> 00:31:26.319
a line, and being back on dry land by supper.
522
00:31:27.319 --> 00:31:30.839
It has no cabin, no shelter from the elments, and furthermore,
523
00:31:31.240 --> 00:31:34.559
no business being out in the deep water. But the
524
00:31:34.599 --> 00:31:37.160
sky was clear, the water was like glass, and the
525
00:31:37.200 --> 00:31:39.720
fish were biting. The boys fired up to eighty five
526
00:31:39.720 --> 00:31:43.200
horsepower outboard motor and took off out into the Alina
527
00:31:43.279 --> 00:31:46.920
Haha Channel. Now old Hawaiian fishmen will tell you to
528
00:31:46.960 --> 00:31:51.000
keep a respectful eye on that channel. Alanuis Haha roughly
529
00:31:51.039 --> 00:31:55.119
translates a great billow smashing. It's a place where the
530
00:31:55.119 --> 00:31:58.079
wind gets squeezed between the towering volcanoes of Maui and
531
00:31:58.119 --> 00:32:01.000
the big island, and it can turn nasty faster than
532
00:32:01.000 --> 00:32:05.759
a rattlesnake strike. Around lunchtime, the wind started to pick up.
533
00:32:06.359 --> 00:32:10.839
By one o'clock the sky was a bruised purple. By two,
534
00:32:11.000 --> 00:32:14.599
a freak unpredicted megastorm came roaring down the mountain slopes
535
00:32:14.759 --> 00:32:18.440
and slammed into the ocean. Now we're talking hurricane force
536
00:32:18.519 --> 00:32:22.799
winds howling at seventy miles an hour. We're talking rain
537
00:32:22.920 --> 00:32:26.240
so thick and sideways that you couldn't breathe. The ocean
538
00:32:26.319 --> 00:32:29.799
whipped itself into an absolute frenzy, throwing up forty foot
539
00:32:29.880 --> 00:32:34.480
rogue waves that crashed like following buildings. Other much larger
540
00:32:34.480 --> 00:32:36.759
fishing boats out that day barely made it back to
541
00:32:36.799 --> 00:32:40.079
the harbor, their crews kissing the dock when they tied off,
542
00:32:40.720 --> 00:32:44.960
But the Sarah Joe nobody saw it come back. So
543
00:32:45.200 --> 00:32:47.880
when the storm finally broke the next day, the coast
544
00:32:47.920 --> 00:32:51.759
Guard launched a veritab armada. They put helicopters in the air,
545
00:32:52.400 --> 00:32:56.559
cutters in the water, and planes crisscrossing the skies. They
546
00:32:56.599 --> 00:33:00.640
searched seventy thousand square miles of Pacific. To give you
547
00:33:00.680 --> 00:33:03.519
an idea, that's like trying to find a white pickup
548
00:33:03.559 --> 00:33:08.160
truck parked somewhere in the state of Washington. They searched
549
00:33:08.160 --> 00:33:10.960
for a solid week, but they didn't find a cooler.
550
00:33:11.440 --> 00:33:14.279
They didn't find a life jacket. They didn't find a
551
00:33:14.359 --> 00:33:17.920
single splinter of fiberglass. It was as if the ocean
552
00:33:17.960 --> 00:33:21.319
had simply opened its jaws, swallowed the Sarah Joe hole,
553
00:33:21.759 --> 00:33:26.440
and wiped his mouth clean. The families understandably wept. A
554
00:33:26.559 --> 00:33:29.319
memorial was held and the names of the five boys
555
00:33:29.319 --> 00:33:32.039
were added to the long, heartbreaking list of souls lost
556
00:33:32.079 --> 00:33:36.240
to the sea. The years rolled on, A decade passed,
557
00:33:36.799 --> 00:33:40.640
the mystery that Sarah Joe went cold, settling into local legend.
558
00:33:41.640 --> 00:33:45.799
Then came nineteen eighty eight. Shift your mind's eye about
559
00:33:45.839 --> 00:33:49.160
two two hundred miles to the southwest of Maui, deep
560
00:33:49.200 --> 00:33:52.559
into the Marshall Islands. Out there since a speck of
561
00:33:52.599 --> 00:33:55.839
coral and sand called the Tyungia Toll. To call it
562
00:33:55.880 --> 00:34:00.640
remote as an understatement, It's a lifeless, baking strip of
563
00:34:00.720 --> 00:34:04.039
crush shells in the middle of absolutely nowhere. There is
564
00:34:04.079 --> 00:34:08.639
no fresh water, nothing grows but scrub brush. Nobody lives there,
565
00:34:08.880 --> 00:34:12.159
and nobody ever visits, save for the occasional marine biologists
566
00:34:12.239 --> 00:34:16.599
checking on seabird nesting grounds. But that year a scientist
567
00:34:16.719 --> 00:34:19.360
named John Naughton was leading an expedition to the atoll.
568
00:34:20.239 --> 00:34:23.159
He was walking along the blistering, white hot beach when
569
00:34:23.159 --> 00:34:27.079
he spotted something entirely out of place. It was the ruined,
570
00:34:27.440 --> 00:34:31.440
sun bleached hull of a small fiberglass boat. Nawton walked
571
00:34:31.519 --> 00:34:33.480
up to the wreck and rushed the sand away from
572
00:34:33.480 --> 00:34:36.880
the faded registration numbers on the bow. He called them
573
00:34:36.880 --> 00:34:40.880
into the registry. When the radio crackled back, the hairs
574
00:34:40.920 --> 00:34:44.440
on Naughton's arms stood straight up. It was the Sarah Joe,
575
00:34:45.960 --> 00:34:48.599
drifting twenty two hundred miles across the Pacific and a
576
00:34:48.679 --> 00:34:51.880
tiny open skiff is a miracle of ocean currents. But
577
00:34:52.000 --> 00:34:55.519
that wasn't the spooky part. Naughton and his team kept
578
00:34:55.519 --> 00:34:59.519
walking a little further up the beach. Tucked just inside
579
00:34:59.519 --> 00:35:02.519
the scrubble, they found a cross made of drift wood
580
00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:06.800
lashed together with wire. Below it was a shallow, perfectly
581
00:35:06.880 --> 00:35:12.039
rectangular grave. They started digging under a meticulously arranged pile
582
00:35:12.079 --> 00:35:16.719
of coralstones. They found a human jawbone. Dinal records later
583
00:35:16.760 --> 00:35:21.039
confirmed what everyone already suspected. The bones belonged to Scott Mormon,
584
00:35:21.559 --> 00:35:24.800
one of the five boys from the Sarah Joe. But
585
00:35:24.840 --> 00:35:27.679
here's where the story stops being a tragedy and turns
586
00:35:27.719 --> 00:35:30.519
into something that'll keep you awake staring at the ceiling
587
00:35:30.519 --> 00:35:35.199
in the dark. Buried alongside Scott's bones, placed there with deliberate,
588
00:35:35.360 --> 00:35:39.800
almost ritualistic care, was a stack of paper. Some folks
589
00:35:39.840 --> 00:35:42.719
say it was loose leaf paper, others described it as
590
00:35:42.800 --> 00:35:46.039
thin squares of tin foil. But whatever it was, it
591
00:35:46.079 --> 00:35:50.400
was entirely blank. No note, no journal, no final words,
592
00:35:50.480 --> 00:35:53.239
just a silent, bizarre offering, buried in the sand.
593
00:35:54.360 --> 00:35:57.679
So who buried Scott Mormon? If his four.
594
00:35:57.519 --> 00:35:59.960
Friends that survived that hellish twenty two hundred miles drift
595
00:36:00.079 --> 00:36:02.719
across the ocean, a journey that would have taken months
596
00:36:02.760 --> 00:36:05.920
under a baking sum without food or fresh water, where
597
00:36:05.920 --> 00:36:10.880
were they. Naunton's team scoured every inch of that tiny atoll.
598
00:36:12.079 --> 00:36:14.719
They brought in cadaver dogs, They dug in the sand,
599
00:36:15.480 --> 00:36:18.559
and they found absolutely no trace of Routed, Peter, Patrick,
600
00:36:18.639 --> 00:36:22.280
or Ben No bones, no torn clothes, no camp, no
601
00:36:22.360 --> 00:36:25.440
fire pit. If they had to strength to drag a
602
00:36:25.440 --> 00:36:28.440
boat ashore, build a cross and painstakingly bury their friend.
603
00:36:29.079 --> 00:36:33.519
They didn't just vanish into thin air right after right. Okay,
604
00:36:33.559 --> 00:36:37.280
you might say, maybe Scott died at sea, washed ashore
605
00:36:37.400 --> 00:36:40.639
on the atoll and someone else found him, But who
606
00:36:41.639 --> 00:36:45.079
teanki atoll is hundreds of miles from the nearest inhabited island.
607
00:36:45.760 --> 00:36:50.840
It sits entirely outside of commercial shipping lanes. Now, let's
608
00:36:50.880 --> 00:36:54.159
just say a Chinese fishing trawler or even a group
609
00:36:54.199 --> 00:36:57.639
of rogue smugglers happened to anchor there, found the body
610
00:36:58.119 --> 00:37:01.440
and decided to do the Christian thing by burying him.
611
00:37:01.679 --> 00:37:05.079
Then why didn't they report it? If you find a shipwreck,
612
00:37:05.159 --> 00:37:08.360
and especially a dead body, you call it in. And
613
00:37:08.360 --> 00:37:12.280
what about the blank pieces of paper? Some Hawaiian elders
614
00:37:12.280 --> 00:37:14.800
whisper that burying a man with blank paper or foil
615
00:37:15.199 --> 00:37:18.559
resembles a very old, obscure island bara right, intended to
616
00:37:18.599 --> 00:37:23.079
protect the deceased spirit from wondering if a passing Taiwanese
617
00:37:23.079 --> 00:37:25.880
fisherman buried him, how did he know about a Hawaiian
618
00:37:25.960 --> 00:37:30.480
burial custom. And then comes the final chilling piece of
619
00:37:30.519 --> 00:37:34.679
the puzzle, the detail that turns the whole thing upside down.
620
00:37:35.639 --> 00:37:38.280
When the government pulled the files on the atoll, they
621
00:37:38.360 --> 00:37:42.639
realized that another scientific expedition had visited that exact same
622
00:37:42.679 --> 00:37:46.679
beach in nineteen eighty five, six years after the Sara
623
00:37:46.760 --> 00:37:49.920
Joh went missing and three years before Naught and found
624
00:37:49.960 --> 00:37:54.679
the shallow Grove. Those scientists had walked that exact shoreline.
625
00:37:54.800 --> 00:37:59.480
They took photographs, They surveyed the scrub brush. In nineteen
626
00:37:59.519 --> 00:38:04.000
eighty five. Sarah Joe wasn't there. There was no boat,
627
00:38:04.119 --> 00:38:08.119
there was no cross, there was no grave. The boys
628
00:38:08.239 --> 00:38:12.519
vanished in nineteen seventy nine. Think about that. For six years,
629
00:38:13.000 --> 00:38:16.920
that boat and those bodies were somewhere else. Maybe they
630
00:38:16.920 --> 00:38:19.559
were trapped in some massive, slowly rotating eddy in the
631
00:38:19.599 --> 00:38:23.519
middle of the Pacific. Maybe they washed upon some entirely different,
632
00:38:23.639 --> 00:38:26.920
uncharted rock and the ocean eventually reclaimed the boat and
633
00:38:26.960 --> 00:38:31.360
dragged it back out to sea. Or maybe something else
634
00:38:31.440 --> 00:38:35.400
found them, something that kept him for years before finally
635
00:38:35.400 --> 00:38:38.079
spitting the boat in a single, meticulously buried scent of
636
00:38:38.119 --> 00:38:42.400
bones onto the most desolate beach on Earth and leaving
637
00:38:42.480 --> 00:38:45.159
behind the stack of blank paper, just to let us
638
00:38:45.199 --> 00:38:48.559
know that some stories aren't meant to be read. So
639
00:38:49.400 --> 00:38:52.360
the families of the other four boys Sadly, they never
640
00:38:52.400 --> 00:38:56.760
got an answer. The ocean took their sons, kept its secrets,
641
00:38:57.280 --> 00:39:00.800
and left behind a puzzle that defies all logic, all science,
642
00:39:00.920 --> 00:39:03.840
and all reason. So the next time you stand on
643
00:39:03.880 --> 00:39:07.199
the beach and look out the waves, just remember the
644
00:39:07.239 --> 00:39:10.880
Pacific is deep, it is hungry, and it does not
645
00:39:11.239 --> 00:39:12.559
play by our rules.
646
00:39:12.760 --> 00:39:13.079
Ever.
647
00:39:20.840 --> 00:39:23.840
Now, there's a comfort we all take for granted. When
648
00:39:23.840 --> 00:39:26.679
we lock our front doors at night, we turn the
649
00:39:26.719 --> 00:39:30.239
dead boat, we draw the shades, and we tell ourselves
650
00:39:30.280 --> 00:39:34.000
that the monsters, the criminals, and the unpredictable chaos of
651
00:39:34.039 --> 00:39:38.039
the world are safely on the outside. We believe that
652
00:39:38.079 --> 00:39:42.320
if our four walls are secure, we're safe. But what
653
00:39:42.440 --> 00:39:45.440
if the danger doesn't come through the window. What if
654
00:39:45.440 --> 00:39:48.400
it doesn't come from the outside at all? What if
655
00:39:48.400 --> 00:39:52.320
the terrible consuming thing is already inside, waiting in the
656
00:39:52.440 --> 00:39:55.840
very marrow of your bones. Now we're going to visit
657
00:39:55.880 --> 00:39:58.800
a story that'll make you look sideways at your own hands.
658
00:40:00.159 --> 00:40:03.039
To go back to Saint Petersburg, Florida in the summer
659
00:40:03.159 --> 00:40:07.280
of nineteen fifty one. I've lived in Florida before, briefly,
660
00:40:07.920 --> 00:40:10.320
and Florida in July ain't so much a place as
661
00:40:10.360 --> 00:40:14.079
it is a condition. It's sweltering, the air seems thick
662
00:40:14.159 --> 00:40:18.960
enough to drink, and folks generally stay indoors, sitting perfectly
663
00:40:19.000 --> 00:40:22.320
still under ceiling fans in their Florida room, just waiting
664
00:40:22.320 --> 00:40:26.400
for the sun to go down. Now, Mary Hardy Reeser
665
00:40:26.719 --> 00:40:29.559
was doing just that. She was a sixty seven year
666
00:40:29.599 --> 00:40:32.840
old widow, a pleasant, quiet woman who'd moved down from
667
00:40:32.880 --> 00:40:35.880
Pennsylvania to be closer to her son, a local doctor.
668
00:40:37.039 --> 00:40:40.039
She rented a tiny, little efficiency apartment at twelve hundred
669
00:40:40.079 --> 00:40:43.840
Cherry Street in Northeast Then on the evening of Sunday,
670
00:40:43.920 --> 00:40:48.000
July first, Mary's son, doctor Richard Reeser, dropped by to
671
00:40:48.039 --> 00:40:48.719
visitor's mother.
672
00:40:49.719 --> 00:40:50.320
When he laughed.
673
00:40:50.320 --> 00:40:53.920
Around eight pm, Mary was sitting in her favorite overstuffed armchair.
674
00:40:54.559 --> 00:40:57.119
She was wearing a ray on nightgown, a pair of
675
00:40:57.159 --> 00:41:00.800
black satin slippers, and a robe. She had taken a
676
00:41:00.800 --> 00:41:03.599
couple of sleeping pills, and she was smoking a cigarette.
677
00:41:04.440 --> 00:41:06.320
She told her son she was feeling a little tired,
678
00:41:06.480 --> 00:41:10.360
said her goodbyes, and locked the door behind him, and that,
679
00:41:10.639 --> 00:41:13.639
my friends, was the last time anyone saw Mary Reeser
680
00:41:13.920 --> 00:41:18.360
as a living, breathing human being. The next morning, right
681
00:41:18.360 --> 00:41:22.639
around eight am Mary's landlady, a woman named Pansy Carpenter,
682
00:41:23.000 --> 00:41:25.360
walked up to Mary's door to deliver a telegram.
683
00:41:25.880 --> 00:41:27.440
She knocked, no answer.
684
00:41:28.119 --> 00:41:32.559
She called out Mary's name, nothing, so Pansy reached out
685
00:41:32.559 --> 00:41:34.760
and grabbed a brass door knob to let herself in,
686
00:41:35.599 --> 00:41:38.440
but as soon as her skin touched the metal, she
687
00:41:38.559 --> 00:41:42.440
yelped and pulled her hand back. The doorknob was blisteringly hot.
688
00:41:43.559 --> 00:41:45.960
Panicked and thinking the poor woman had fallen asleep and
689
00:41:46.039 --> 00:41:48.519
left the stove on, Pansy ran to get a pair
690
00:41:48.519 --> 00:41:51.519
of house painters who were working across the street. The
691
00:41:51.559 --> 00:41:55.199
men rushed over, carefully forced the door open, and braced
692
00:41:55.239 --> 00:41:59.760
themselves for a wall of roaring flames. But there was
693
00:41:59.840 --> 00:42:05.000
no roaring fire. There was no inferno. Instead, a suffocating
694
00:42:05.039 --> 00:42:07.679
wave of heat rolled out of the apartment, carrying with
695
00:42:07.760 --> 00:42:10.920
it a sickly sweet, greasy, heavy smoke that coated the
696
00:42:10.920 --> 00:42:14.840
back of their throats. The men stepped inside, coughing, waving
697
00:42:14.880 --> 00:42:18.840
the haze away from their eyes. Now the apartment was
698
00:42:18.880 --> 00:42:23.440
strangely intact. The bed was neatly made, the sheets completely unscorched.
699
00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:26.679
A stack of old newspapers sat on a nearby table,
700
00:42:27.079 --> 00:42:30.280
not so much as even singed at the edges. But
701
00:42:30.400 --> 00:42:33.039
over in the corner of the room where Mary's overstuffed
702
00:42:33.119 --> 00:42:36.039
armchair used to be, there was a blackened circle on
703
00:42:36.119 --> 00:42:40.079
the rug about four feet wide, and inside that circle
704
00:42:40.559 --> 00:42:43.599
was a pile of white ash. And sticking out of
705
00:42:43.639 --> 00:42:46.960
the ash was the charred metal cloil springs of the armchair.
706
00:42:47.880 --> 00:42:50.559
And sitting right on the edge of the blackened circle,
707
00:42:50.920 --> 00:42:54.440
completely pristine and untouched by the fire, was a single
708
00:42:54.480 --> 00:42:59.039
foot still wearing a black satin slipper. Now, when the
709
00:42:59.039 --> 00:43:01.920
police arrived, they didn't know what they were looking at.
710
00:43:02.079 --> 00:43:05.280
The human body is mostly water. We don't burn easily.
711
00:43:05.400 --> 00:43:08.679
Oh No, to reduce a full grown human adult to
712
00:43:08.719 --> 00:43:11.440
a pile of powdery white bow and ash, you need
713
00:43:11.480 --> 00:43:15.440
the specialized industrial fury of a crematorium. You need to
714
00:43:15.480 --> 00:43:18.760
sustain temperatures of around two thousand to twenty five hundred
715
00:43:18.760 --> 00:43:24.000
degrees fahrenheit, lasting away for three to four solid hours. Now,
716
00:43:24.039 --> 00:43:27.239
if a fire burning at two thousand degrees had ignited
717
00:43:27.280 --> 00:43:30.000
in the corner of that small Florida apartment, the room
718
00:43:30.039 --> 00:43:33.119
shouldn't have just caught fire. It should have exploded into
719
00:43:33.320 --> 00:43:38.119
raging fireball. The wooden walls should have been vaporized. In fact,
720
00:43:38.400 --> 00:43:41.159
the whole building should have burned to its foundation in minutes.
721
00:43:42.400 --> 00:43:46.239
Yet as detectives walked around Mary Reeser's living room in
722
00:43:46.239 --> 00:43:50.039
an absolute days, they documented a scene that defied every
723
00:43:50.119 --> 00:43:54.039
known law of physics. A pile of newspapers sitting just
724
00:43:54.119 --> 00:43:57.840
inches from the ashes had ignited, a plastic wall switch
725
00:43:57.880 --> 00:44:00.480
a few feet away had melted and sagged down the wall,
726
00:44:01.079 --> 00:44:04.079
and a mirror had cracked from the ambient heat. But
727
00:44:04.480 --> 00:44:07.440
the paint on the walls hadn't even blistered. There was
728
00:44:07.480 --> 00:44:11.199
a greasy, yellowish soot covering the ceiling, but absolutely no
729
00:44:11.440 --> 00:44:15.639
structural fire damage. And then as they sifted through the
730
00:44:15.639 --> 00:44:19.400
small pile of ashes, they found Mary Reezeer's skull, or
731
00:44:19.440 --> 00:44:23.000
at least what was left of it. Normally, in a
732
00:44:23.039 --> 00:44:25.920
fire hot enough to consume bone, the human skull will
733
00:44:25.960 --> 00:44:30.000
expand from the boiling fluids inside and violently shatter, But
734
00:44:30.480 --> 00:44:32.079
Mary's skull hadn't shattered.
735
00:44:32.360 --> 00:44:33.119
It had shrunk.
736
00:44:33.960 --> 00:44:36.840
The detectives found a hard and calcified lump, not much
737
00:44:36.880 --> 00:44:40.719
bigger than a teacup. Now, the local police chief was
738
00:44:40.760 --> 00:44:44.119
so bewildered he boxed up the ashes. The slipper a
739
00:44:44.159 --> 00:44:46.679
piece of the rug and the melted wall switch and
740
00:44:46.760 --> 00:44:49.679
shipped the whole lot to the FBI laboratory in Washington,
741
00:44:49.760 --> 00:44:53.440
d c. He included a desperate note begging for help.
742
00:44:53.960 --> 00:44:56.519
He also brought in doctor Wilton Kraugman, one of the
743
00:44:56.559 --> 00:45:01.679
world's foremost fiscal anthropologists and bone experts. So doctor Krogman
744
00:45:01.800 --> 00:45:05.000
examined the scene and the remains, and his conclusion sent
745
00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:09.239
a chill right through the scientific community. He later wrote quotes,
746
00:45:09.840 --> 00:45:11.960
I find it hard to believe that a human body,
747
00:45:12.519 --> 00:45:17.280
once ignited, will literally consume itself, burn itself out, as
748
00:45:17.320 --> 00:45:20.360
does a Candlewick. Never have I seen a human skull
749
00:45:20.440 --> 00:45:23.960
shrink by intense heat. The opposite has always been true.
750
00:45:24.679 --> 00:45:27.000
This is the most amazing thing I have ever seen.
751
00:45:27.639 --> 00:45:29.800
As I review it, the short hairs on my neck
752
00:45:29.840 --> 00:45:36.039
bristle with vague fear end. Now the FBI, however, couldn't
753
00:45:36.079 --> 00:45:39.519
afford to have vague fear on the official record. They
754
00:45:39.599 --> 00:45:43.320
had a public to pacify, so they issued an official
755
00:45:43.360 --> 00:45:46.719
statement outlining a theory known as the Wick effect. And again,
756
00:45:46.840 --> 00:45:50.320
it's just a theory. The government's story went like this.
757
00:45:51.039 --> 00:45:54.440
Mary Groggy from the Sleeping Pills, dropped her lit cigarette
758
00:45:54.440 --> 00:45:58.719
into her lap, the cherry flame of the cigarette smoldered against.
759
00:45:58.480 --> 00:45:59.559
Her ray on nightgown.
760
00:46:00.199 --> 00:46:03.719
Eventually the fabric caught fire and burned her skin, splitting
761
00:46:03.760 --> 00:46:08.239
it open and exposing her subcutaneous body fat. The fat melted,
762
00:46:08.519 --> 00:46:11.079
soaking into her clothing like wax soaking into the wick
763
00:46:11.119 --> 00:46:14.719
of a candle. Now, once this gruesome candle was lit,
764
00:46:15.199 --> 00:46:18.000
it's simply burned low and slow beating on her own
765
00:46:18.039 --> 00:46:22.239
rendered body fat for hours, generating enough localized smoldering heat
766
00:46:22.320 --> 00:46:25.079
to slowly turn her bones to ash without ever kick
767
00:46:25.119 --> 00:46:27.599
out a flame high enough to catch the room on fire.
768
00:46:28.800 --> 00:46:30.800
Now it sounds nice and neat when you type it
769
00:46:30.800 --> 00:46:33.960
out on official FBI letter head. It gives folks an
770
00:46:34.000 --> 00:46:38.800
answer they can digest. But talk to any seasoned arson
771
00:46:38.840 --> 00:46:41.519
investigator off the record, and they'll just shake their head.
772
00:46:42.239 --> 00:46:45.239
The Wick effect might explain a badly burned body. Sure,
773
00:46:45.760 --> 00:46:48.639
it's been replicated with dead pigs wrapped in blankets to
774
00:46:48.679 --> 00:46:53.400
a degree, But the Wick effect doesn't explain temperatures hot
775
00:46:53.480 --> 00:46:56.039
enough to shrink a human skull to the size of
776
00:46:56.039 --> 00:46:59.840
a baseball. It doesn't explain how a fire hot enough
777
00:46:59.840 --> 00:47:03.199
to melt metal springs and turned thigh bones to powdery
778
00:47:03.239 --> 00:47:06.960
white ash felt to ignite a dry stack of newspapers
779
00:47:07.000 --> 00:47:10.599
sitting just to hands with the way. And it doesn't
780
00:47:10.639 --> 00:47:14.480
explain how I fire that intense snuffed itself out before
781
00:47:14.519 --> 00:47:18.360
consuming the perfectly preserved left foot, still clad in its
782
00:47:18.400 --> 00:47:23.199
neat black slipper. So Mary Reeser's death became the most
783
00:47:23.199 --> 00:47:27.079
heavily documented, most widely debeted case of what folks call
784
00:47:27.639 --> 00:47:33.159
SHC or spontaneous human combustion. To this day, no one
785
00:47:33.199 --> 00:47:36.800
has ever adequately explained how woman simply turned into a
786
00:47:36.840 --> 00:47:40.039
localized furnace in the middle of a quiet summer night.
787
00:47:40.840 --> 00:47:44.159
It leaves you with a deeply unsettling thought. We worry
788
00:47:44.199 --> 00:47:47.840
about faulty wiring, We worry about leaving the stove on.
789
00:47:48.679 --> 00:47:51.840
But if the mystery of Mary Reeser is true, then
790
00:47:51.920 --> 00:47:55.079
the fuel for our own destruction is already inside us,
791
00:47:55.639 --> 00:48:00.000
just waiting for some unknown, unimaginable spark. And if it happened,
792
00:48:00.800 --> 00:48:03.480
there is no smoke alarm in the world that can
793
00:48:03.559 --> 00:48:14.840
save you from yourself. Now, if you sit down with
794
00:48:14.880 --> 00:48:17.000
a map of the world and drag your finger all
795
00:48:17.039 --> 00:48:19.519
the way down to the bottom, past the warm currents
796
00:48:19.519 --> 00:48:22.519
of the equator, past the shipping lanes, and past the
797
00:48:22.639 --> 00:48:25.320
very tip of Africa, you'll find yourself pointing out a
798
00:48:25.360 --> 00:48:28.679
whole lot of nothing down there. The ocean doesn't behave
799
00:48:28.760 --> 00:48:31.880
like it does anywhere else. There are no land masses
800
00:48:31.880 --> 00:48:34.599
to break the wind, so it just howls, whipping the
801
00:48:34.639 --> 00:48:38.480
freezing water into roiling mountains of gray foam. Sailors call
802
00:48:38.559 --> 00:48:42.320
those latitudes the Roaring forties and the Furious fifties, and
803
00:48:42.400 --> 00:48:45.079
they are, without a doubt, the deadliest stretches of water
804
00:48:45.199 --> 00:48:49.280
on God's green Earth. But if you look close, real close,
805
00:48:49.760 --> 00:48:52.840
right smack in the middle of all that violent, freezing nothingness,
806
00:48:53.159 --> 00:48:56.440
there's a tiny speck of rock. That rock is called
807
00:48:56.480 --> 00:49:00.760
Bouvey Island. It is, by every official jigger graphic metric,
808
00:49:01.079 --> 00:49:03.800
the most remote piece of land on the planet. It
809
00:49:03.880 --> 00:49:06.480
sits over one thousand miles north of the ice shelves
810
00:49:06.480 --> 00:49:10.719
of Antarctica and about fourteen hundred miles southwest of South Africa.
811
00:49:11.760 --> 00:49:14.840
It isn't a tropical paradise either. It's the tip of
812
00:49:14.880 --> 00:49:18.519
a dead volcano jutting up from the seafloor, covered almost
813
00:49:18.679 --> 00:49:22.320
entirely in a thick, creeping glacier. The coastline is nothing
814
00:49:22.360 --> 00:49:26.679
but sheer plunging ice cliffs and black volcanic stone. It's
815
00:49:26.719 --> 00:49:30.639
a place completely hostile to human life, a place where
816
00:49:30.679 --> 00:49:33.559
man was never meant to tread. And yet if you
817
00:49:33.599 --> 00:49:35.519
want to hear a story that'll make you question how
818
00:49:35.599 --> 00:49:38.159
much we really know about this world, you need to
819
00:49:38.159 --> 00:49:40.679
hear what a group of British sailors found sitting on
820
00:49:40.679 --> 00:49:43.920
the shore of that frozen hillscape in nineteen sixty four.
821
00:49:45.480 --> 00:49:48.519
It was April and the Southern Hemisphere's winter was just
822
00:49:48.559 --> 00:49:51.880
starting to show its teeth. The Royal Navy Ice patrol
823
00:49:51.960 --> 00:49:55.920
ship HMS Protector was cutting through the heavy swells tasks
824
00:49:55.960 --> 00:49:58.920
was surveying that desolate part of the world. The captain,
825
00:49:59.039 --> 00:50:02.360
Lieutenant Commander Allen Crawford knew they couldn't land a ship
826
00:50:02.400 --> 00:50:05.199
on Mouvey. The cliffs were too steep and the waves
827
00:50:05.239 --> 00:50:08.760
would smash a hole of splinters. But they had a helicopter,
828
00:50:09.840 --> 00:50:12.079
so Crawford and his team chopped their way through the
829
00:50:12.079 --> 00:50:15.280
biting winds and flew over the island. As they circled
830
00:50:15.280 --> 00:50:19.239
the western edge, they noticed something new. A recent volcanic
831
00:50:19.360 --> 00:50:22.360
eruption had formed a low plateau of black basalt rock,
832
00:50:22.559 --> 00:50:25.119
creating a small sheltered lagoon right at the edge of
833
00:50:25.159 --> 00:50:28.960
the sea. So they brought the helicopter down the roaders,
834
00:50:29.039 --> 00:50:32.320
kicking up black grit and freezing spray. The men stepped
835
00:50:32.320 --> 00:50:35.039
out into the howling wind, probably feeling like they were
836
00:50:35.079 --> 00:50:37.039
the first human beings to ever set foot on that
837
00:50:37.079 --> 00:50:41.199
particular patch of newly born rock. But as they walked
838
00:50:41.199 --> 00:50:43.920
along the edge of the freezing lagoon, they stopped dead
839
00:50:43.960 --> 00:50:47.239
in their tracks. Sitting there, resting in the shallow water,
840
00:50:47.440 --> 00:50:49.480
just off the rocky beach was a boat.
841
00:50:50.519 --> 00:50:50.679
Now.
842
00:50:50.679 --> 00:50:53.280
If it wasn't a piece of driftwood, it wasn't a mirage.
843
00:50:53.880 --> 00:50:57.239
It was a twenty foot long, clinker built wooden boat.
844
00:50:58.079 --> 00:51:01.239
I let that sink in for a minute. You're standing
845
00:51:01.280 --> 00:51:04.400
on the most isolated, unreachable rock on the entire planet.
846
00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:08.000
There are no shipping lanes for thousands of miles the
847
00:51:08.079 --> 00:51:11.679
waters around your legendary for swallowing massive steel freighters without
848
00:51:11.679 --> 00:51:15.599
a burb and yet here was a small, open wooden
849
00:51:15.599 --> 00:51:18.360
boat sitting quietly in a lagoon at the end of
850
00:51:18.400 --> 00:51:23.679
the world. Literally, Crawford and his men understandably approached it cautiously,
851
00:51:24.119 --> 00:51:27.400
their boots crunching on the volcanic glass the boat was
852
00:51:27.440 --> 00:51:30.480
in surprisingly good condition. They were surprised that it hadn't
853
00:51:30.480 --> 00:51:33.440
been smashed to bits on the rocks. It had been
854
00:51:33.440 --> 00:51:36.679
intentionally piled into the calumb waters of the lagoon. So
855
00:51:36.719 --> 00:51:39.679
as they looked it over, the mystery only got darker.
856
00:51:40.599 --> 00:51:44.159
The boat had absolutely no markings, no name painted on
857
00:51:44.199 --> 00:51:49.119
the hull, no registry numbers, no national flag. Furthermore, the
858
00:51:49.159 --> 00:51:52.480
engine had been entirely removed. It wasn't ripped out in
859
00:51:52.519 --> 00:51:56.079
a storm. It was gone, leaving only an empty motor wheel.
860
00:51:57.360 --> 00:52:01.000
So the men fanned out searching the black beak. A
861
00:52:01.039 --> 00:52:03.239
few yards away from the water, they found a pair
862
00:52:03.280 --> 00:52:07.079
of heavy wooden oars laid out perfectly parallel on the rocks.
863
00:52:07.679 --> 00:52:10.480
Next To them was a copper buoyancy tank, the kind
864
00:52:10.480 --> 00:52:12.960
you'd find fitted inside a ship's lifeboat to keep it
865
00:52:13.000 --> 00:52:16.440
afloat if it took on water. Nearby, there were some
866
00:52:16.480 --> 00:52:21.199
pieces of scrap wood neatly arranged. Everything about the scene
867
00:52:21.239 --> 00:52:24.400
said that someone had successfully navigated the daily so ocean
868
00:52:24.440 --> 00:52:27.880
on Earth rowed this little boat into the lagoon, pulled
869
00:52:27.920 --> 00:52:32.599
their gear ashore and set it down. So where were they?
870
00:52:33.360 --> 00:52:36.679
Crawford's team continued to search the plateau. They looked for
871
00:52:36.760 --> 00:52:40.039
a camp. They looked for a fire ring, they looked
872
00:52:40.039 --> 00:52:43.119
for a shelter made of sailcloth or stone, and they
873
00:52:43.159 --> 00:52:47.960
found absolutely nothing. Then, with a sense of creeping dread,
874
00:52:48.360 --> 00:52:51.480
they started looking for bones. Surely, if a crew of
875
00:52:51.480 --> 00:52:54.559
shipwrecked sailors had all washed up on Bouveay Island, they
876
00:52:54.599 --> 00:52:58.199
would succumbed to the freezing temperatures within days. Their bodies
877
00:52:58.280 --> 00:53:01.639
just had to be here. But the black rocks were
878
00:53:01.639 --> 00:53:06.280
completely empty. No clothes, no skeletons, no final messages scratched
879
00:53:06.320 --> 00:53:09.760
into the stone, just a quiet, unmarked boat and a
880
00:53:09.800 --> 00:53:12.760
pair of oars waiting for hands that were never coming back.
881
00:53:14.159 --> 00:53:17.199
So the helicopter eventually had to return to the Protector
882
00:53:17.440 --> 00:53:21.199
before the weather turn. The crew left the island, taking
883
00:53:21.239 --> 00:53:24.400
the haunting images of that empty boat with him. When
884
00:53:24.440 --> 00:53:28.239
they got back to civilization, they started digging into maritime records,
885
00:53:28.639 --> 00:53:31.639
trying to find an explanation that didn't make their skin crawl.
886
00:53:32.519 --> 00:53:36.519
The first thought, naturally, was a shipwreck. Maybe a larger
887
00:53:36.599 --> 00:53:38.840
vessel had gone down in the Southern Ocean and a
888
00:53:38.840 --> 00:53:42.360
handful of desperate survivors that piled into this lifeboat, riding
889
00:53:42.400 --> 00:53:45.360
the wild currents until they miraculously washed up on Bouveay.
890
00:53:46.199 --> 00:53:49.880
But there was a massive problem with that theory. Absolutely
891
00:53:49.920 --> 00:53:52.639
no ships had been reported missing anywhere in the Southern
892
00:53:52.639 --> 00:53:56.840
Hemisphere during that time, not a freighter, not a fishing trawler,
893
00:53:57.000 --> 00:54:01.280
not a military vessel. Furthermore, them all open boat simply
894
00:54:01.320 --> 00:54:04.599
cannot survive the open waters of the Roaring forties. The
895
00:54:04.639 --> 00:54:06.480
waves would capsize it in less.
896
00:54:06.320 --> 00:54:06.840
Than an hour.
897
00:54:07.880 --> 00:54:09.760
It had to have come from a larger ship that
898
00:54:09.840 --> 00:54:13.280
was relatively close to the island. But if a ship
899
00:54:13.360 --> 00:54:16.079
was close enough to drop off a lifeboat, why didn't
900
00:54:16.079 --> 00:54:19.159
the ship itself stay. I drop off a boat with
901
00:54:19.239 --> 00:54:21.960
no engine, no markings, and a crew that apparently vanished
902
00:54:21.960 --> 00:54:25.800
into thin air. Some folks tried to rationalize it by
903
00:54:25.800 --> 00:54:29.599
saying maybe it was an abandoned Soviet whaling skiff. During
904
00:54:29.599 --> 00:54:32.920
the Cold War, Soviet whaling fleets were known to operate
905
00:54:32.960 --> 00:54:37.039
in deep, uncharted waters, completely ignoring international laws and keeping
906
00:54:37.039 --> 00:54:40.639
their movements strictly off the books. Maybe a Soviet ship
907
00:54:40.679 --> 00:54:43.599
had been nearby, the skiff got loose, and it simply
908
00:54:43.719 --> 00:54:47.840
washed ashore empty, But that doesn't explain the oars. The
909
00:54:47.840 --> 00:54:50.320
ocean doesn't neatly lay a pair of heavy wooden oars
910
00:54:50.400 --> 00:54:53.320
side by side on the rocks high above the tideline.
911
00:54:53.760 --> 00:54:58.199
The ocean smashes things, it scatters them. Those items were
912
00:54:58.239 --> 00:55:02.159
placed there by human hands, and hands that belonged to
913
00:55:02.159 --> 00:55:04.719
people who took the time to unload their boat, but
914
00:55:04.880 --> 00:55:06.760
didn't take the time to build a fire to keep
915
00:55:06.800 --> 00:55:11.320
from freezing to death. Two years later, in nineteen sixty six,
916
00:55:11.760 --> 00:55:14.199
another expedition returned to Bovai Island.
917
00:55:14.760 --> 00:55:15.880
They managed to land on.
918
00:55:15.880 --> 00:55:19.320
That same black volcanic beach, walking the same stretch of
919
00:55:19.360 --> 00:55:20.920
coastline crawforded.
920
00:55:20.400 --> 00:55:24.639
Walk, and the boat was gone. The oars were gone,
921
00:55:25.000 --> 00:55:27.280
the clopper tank was gone.
922
00:55:27.480 --> 00:55:30.199
Now, in this part of the world, it's entirely possible
923
00:55:30.199 --> 00:55:33.000
that a violent winter storm had swept in, picking up
924
00:55:33.000 --> 00:55:35.079
the heavy wooden boat and dragging it back down into
925
00:55:35.079 --> 00:55:37.840
the crushing depths. Yes, the ocean has a way of
926
00:55:37.840 --> 00:55:40.840
cleaning up its own messes, but for those who know
927
00:55:40.920 --> 00:55:43.679
the story, it just adds another layer of frost to
928
00:55:43.719 --> 00:55:47.719
an already chilling mystery. We may map the stars, we
929
00:55:47.800 --> 00:55:50.360
can split the atom, and we pretend that we are
930
00:55:50.360 --> 00:55:54.320
masters of this earth. But out there, thousands of miles
931
00:55:54.320 --> 00:55:57.360
from the nearest street light or warm hearth. The ocean
932
00:55:57.480 --> 00:56:02.239
keeps her secrets, and she doesn't owe us any explanations.
933
00:56:02.320 --> 00:56:05.000
So who were the men who rode to the loneliest
934
00:56:05.000 --> 00:56:08.880
place on the planet? What were they running from? Or worse,
935
00:56:09.400 --> 00:56:13.000
what were they running to? I guess we'll never know.
936
00:56:14.320 --> 00:56:16.599
But all we do know is that somewhere out there,
937
00:56:16.719 --> 00:56:19.119
in the dark, freezing waters at the bottom of the world,
938
00:56:19.639 --> 00:56:21.960
there are things happening that don't fit into our neat
939
00:56:22.000 --> 00:56:26.599
little history books, and maybe, just maybe it's best we
940
00:56:26.719 --> 00:56:37.360
leave it that way. Now, there's a certain kind of
941
00:56:37.400 --> 00:56:40.800
comfort that you only find in a small Midwestern town,
942
00:56:41.480 --> 00:56:44.679
the kind of place where everybody knows your name, your
943
00:56:44.719 --> 00:56:48.079
mama's name, and what church you go to. On Sunday mornings.
944
00:56:48.760 --> 00:56:50.719
You can leave your keys and ignition when you run
945
00:56:50.760 --> 00:56:53.840
into the hardware store, you leave your port light on
946
00:56:53.960 --> 00:56:58.199
for the neighbors. It's a place built on trust, but
947
00:56:58.519 --> 00:57:02.000
trust is a fragile thing. All it takes is one
948
00:57:02.039 --> 00:57:05.559
little crack to let the darkness seepin, and once that
949
00:57:05.679 --> 00:57:08.039
poison gets into the ground water of a small town,
950
00:57:08.480 --> 00:57:12.079
it doesn't just kill the roots. It turns neighbor against neighbor,
951
00:57:12.440 --> 00:57:16.199
until the whole place is choked. On paranoia. If you
952
00:57:16.239 --> 00:57:18.719
want a masterclass and how to tear a town apart
953
00:57:18.800 --> 00:57:22.239
without ever showing your face, listen to this true account
954
00:57:22.360 --> 00:57:27.800
of what happened in Circleville, Ohio. Now, Circleville is a quiet, proud,
955
00:57:27.840 --> 00:57:31.760
little farming community about thirty miles south of Columbus Thakmous,
956
00:57:31.760 --> 00:57:35.559
mainly for hosting a giant pumpkin show every October. But
957
00:57:35.880 --> 00:57:38.360
back in the spring of nineteen seventy seven, the town
958
00:57:38.360 --> 00:57:39.519
didn't harvest pumpkins.
959
00:57:39.920 --> 00:57:42.760
It harvested fear now.
960
00:57:42.840 --> 00:57:46.280
It started out quietly, as these things usually do. A
961
00:57:46.320 --> 00:57:49.480
few folks went out to their mailboxes expecting utility bills
962
00:57:49.480 --> 00:57:53.800
and postcards, and instead pulled out plain white envelopes postmarks
963
00:57:53.800 --> 00:57:57.760
from nearby Columbus. There was no return address, and when
964
00:57:57.800 --> 00:57:59.840
they ripped them open, they didn't get a friendly hell
965
00:58:00.000 --> 00:58:04.679
hell oh, they found poison now. These poison pen letters,
966
00:58:04.679 --> 00:58:08.559
as it were, were written in a distinct, bizarre blocky handwriting,
967
00:58:09.199 --> 00:58:11.320
heavy ink pressed down so hard you could feel the
968
00:58:11.320 --> 00:58:14.320
indentations on the back of the paper, and the things
969
00:58:14.360 --> 00:58:16.760
written on those pages were the kind of dark, dirty
970
00:58:16.800 --> 00:58:20.039
secrets the small town folks spen their whole life trying
971
00:58:20.079 --> 00:58:23.840
to keep buried. The writer knew about hidden drinking problems,
972
00:58:24.119 --> 00:58:29.199
quiet bankruptcies, and whispered affairs. The writer knew exactly where
973
00:58:29.199 --> 00:58:32.039
you lived, what you drove, and what time you turned
974
00:58:32.039 --> 00:58:35.920
your lights off at night. Now they weren't asking for money,
975
00:58:36.039 --> 00:58:39.880
Oh no, they weren't trying to extort anyone. They just
976
00:58:39.960 --> 00:58:41.599
wanted to watch the town bleed.
977
00:58:42.559 --> 00:58:42.760
Now.
978
00:58:42.840 --> 00:58:45.840
The primary target of this invisible predator was a woman
979
00:58:45.920 --> 00:58:49.159
named Mary Gillespie. Mary was a local school bus driver,
980
00:58:49.519 --> 00:58:53.320
a regular hardworking woman, but the letters accused her of
981
00:58:53.360 --> 00:58:56.679
carrying on a scandal's affair with the local superintendent of schools,
982
00:58:57.039 --> 00:59:00.000
a man named Gordon Massey. I know where you lived.
983
00:59:00.239 --> 00:59:02.800
One of the letters to Marry read, I've been observing
984
00:59:02.800 --> 00:59:04.599
your house and know you have children.
985
00:59:04.840 --> 00:59:09.159
This is no joke. Please take it serious. Now.
986
00:59:09.239 --> 00:59:11.519
Can you imagine the ice cold dread of holding that
987
00:59:11.519 --> 00:59:14.400
piece of paper, knowing that whoever wrote it was likely
988
00:59:14.400 --> 00:59:17.159
standing right next to you at the grocery store, smiling
989
00:59:17.199 --> 00:59:20.159
at you, asking how your kids were doing, all while
990
00:59:20.239 --> 00:59:24.440
their heart pumped pure venom. Now, eventually the letters started
991
00:59:24.480 --> 00:59:27.800
arriving for Mary's husband, Ron, Ron was a good man,
992
00:59:28.039 --> 00:59:30.280
and the letters taught it him prob imember a coward,
993
00:59:30.800 --> 00:59:32.239
telling him that if he didn't put a stop to
994
00:59:32.280 --> 00:59:35.480
his wife's supposed affair, the writer would do it for him.
995
00:59:36.079 --> 00:59:39.639
The Invisible Watcher threatened his very life, his wife's life,
996
00:59:39.719 --> 00:59:43.199
and his children's lives. Ron Gillespie was pushed to the
997
00:59:43.239 --> 00:59:46.760
absolute breaking point, and on the night of August nineteenth,
998
00:59:46.960 --> 00:59:51.360
nineteen seventy seven, the string finally snapped. Ron was sitting
999
00:59:51.360 --> 00:59:54.880
at home when the telephone rang. Now nobody knows exactly
1000
00:59:54.880 --> 00:59:56.360
who was on the other end of the line or
1001
00:59:56.480 --> 00:59:59.880
what was said, but whatever it was, it sent Ron
1002
01:00:00.079 --> 01:00:04.320
into blind fury. He slammed the receiver down, walked into
1003
01:00:04.360 --> 01:00:07.760
the bedroom, grabbed his pistol, and stormed out the front door.
1004
01:00:08.239 --> 01:00:10.400
He told his children he was going to finally confront
1005
01:00:10.440 --> 01:00:13.039
the person who'd been tormenting the family. He knew who
1006
01:00:13.039 --> 01:00:15.880
it was, and he was going to end it. He
1007
01:00:15.960 --> 01:00:18.320
climbed into his pickup truck and tore off into the
1008
01:00:18.400 --> 01:00:22.440
dark Rual, Ohio night. A short time later, Ron's truck
1009
01:00:22.519 --> 01:00:25.480
was found wrapped around an apple tree. He was deceased.
1010
01:00:26.400 --> 01:00:29.679
Now in a normal town, that's a tragic drunk driving accident,
1011
01:00:29.800 --> 01:00:32.079
or maybe a case of a man driving too fast
1012
01:00:32.079 --> 01:00:35.639
in the dark. But the local sheriff found something mighty
1013
01:00:35.639 --> 01:00:39.519
strange in the wreckage. Ron's pistol was sitting under his body.
1014
01:00:39.920 --> 01:00:43.400
It had been fired exactly once. So what did Ron
1015
01:00:43.400 --> 01:00:46.920
shoot at the tree a warning shot? Or did he
1016
01:00:47.000 --> 01:00:49.960
meet the letter writer on that dark country road? Did
1017
01:00:50.000 --> 01:00:52.440
he fire a shot before his truck was forced off
1018
01:00:52.440 --> 01:00:56.000
the pavement? Now the sheriff ruled his demia as an accident,
1019
01:00:56.480 --> 01:00:59.320
waving away the fired gun as a mistfire. During the crash,
1020
01:01:00.360 --> 01:01:03.599
the town of Circleville knew better. They knew the Boogeyman
1021
01:01:03.760 --> 01:01:07.360
was real, and a few days later the letters proved it,
1022
01:01:07.840 --> 01:01:10.920
floating about Ron's demise and promising more blood if the
1023
01:01:10.960 --> 01:01:15.880
affairs didn't stop. So for years the letters ran down
1024
01:01:15.920 --> 01:01:19.320
on the town, hundreds of them, thousands of them. They
1025
01:01:19.400 --> 01:01:23.280
terrorized the mayor, the police, local business owners. They even
1026
01:01:23.280 --> 01:01:26.159
put up hateful, vulgar signs on the fences along the
1027
01:01:26.159 --> 01:01:30.199
country roads for everyone to see. In nineteen eighty three,
1028
01:01:30.480 --> 01:01:33.199
Mary Gillespie was still driving her bus route, trying to
1029
01:01:33.239 --> 01:01:35.079
live her life under the crushing weight of a town
1030
01:01:35.119 --> 01:01:38.480
that whispered about her every where she went. Then one
1031
01:01:38.519 --> 01:01:41.159
afternoon she was driving her empty bus down a rural
1032
01:01:41.239 --> 01:01:44.559
road when she saw a new, crude cardboard sign tied
1033
01:01:44.599 --> 01:01:47.199
to a wooden fence post. It was written in that
1034
01:01:47.239 --> 01:01:50.639
same terrifying blockhand writing, and it threatened her young daughter.
1035
01:01:51.599 --> 01:01:55.039
Understandably furious, Mary pulled the heavy bus to the shoulder,
1036
01:01:55.440 --> 01:01:57.880
marched out into the tall grass, and went to rip
1037
01:01:57.920 --> 01:02:01.480
the sign off the post. But as she pulled it free,
1038
01:02:01.760 --> 01:02:03.920
she noticed a piece of twine tied to the back
1039
01:02:03.960 --> 01:02:06.920
of the cardboard. The twine ran down into a small
1040
01:02:06.960 --> 01:02:09.320
box sitting in the grass at the base of the
1041
01:02:09.320 --> 01:02:13.199
fence post. When Mary looked inside the box, her heart jumped.
1042
01:02:13.960 --> 01:02:16.599
Sitting there in the grass was a twenty five caliber pistol.
1043
01:02:17.199 --> 01:02:20.280
The twine it was tied directly to the trigger. The
1044
01:02:20.280 --> 01:02:23.199
barrel was pointed right at chest height. If Mary had
1045
01:02:23.280 --> 01:02:25.920
yanked that sign just a little bit harder, the gun
1046
01:02:25.920 --> 01:02:29.039
would have fired a bullet straight into her heart. But
1047
01:02:29.280 --> 01:02:31.639
as they say, the devil looks after his own, and
1048
01:02:31.679 --> 01:02:35.280
the trap was faulty. The gun had jammed. When the
1049
01:02:35.280 --> 01:02:38.159
police collected the booby trap, they finally caught a break.
1050
01:02:38.519 --> 01:02:40.679
They managed to pull the serial number off the pistol,
1051
01:02:41.039 --> 01:02:43.599
and it traced back to a man named Paul fresh Hour.
1052
01:02:44.400 --> 01:02:46.400
Now hold on to your hats, because this is where
1053
01:02:46.400 --> 01:02:50.280
the story gets really twisted. You see, Paul Freshour wasn't
1054
01:02:50.280 --> 01:02:53.239
some drift. He was Mary Gillespie's own brother in law.
1055
01:02:53.840 --> 01:02:55.320
He was the man who had been a shoulder for
1056
01:02:55.440 --> 01:02:58.760
the family to cry on after Ron passed away. So
1057
01:02:59.119 --> 01:03:02.239
the police dutifully palled Paul in. He swore up and
1058
01:03:02.280 --> 01:03:04.440
down he was innocent. He said the gun had been
1059
01:03:04.480 --> 01:03:07.760
stolen from his house weeks ago. But the sheriff made
1060
01:03:07.800 --> 01:03:09.760
Paul sit down and write out a few sentences to
1061
01:03:09.800 --> 01:03:12.679
test his handwriting, and they claimed it was a dead
1062
01:03:12.679 --> 01:03:15.280
match for the black letters that had been terrorizing the
1063
01:03:15.320 --> 01:03:19.840
town for six years. Paul Fresheer was convicted of attempted murder.
1064
01:03:20.559 --> 01:03:23.880
The judge slammed the gabble down, the cell door slam shut,
1065
01:03:24.280 --> 01:03:27.679
and the town of Circleville breathed a massive collective sigh
1066
01:03:27.679 --> 01:03:32.880
of relief. The monster was finally locked up. Folks freathed easier,
1067
01:03:33.679 --> 01:03:37.599
Folks unlocked their dead boats. They stopped looking over their shoulders.
1068
01:03:38.000 --> 01:03:39.719
But the peace didn't last.
1069
01:03:39.880 --> 01:03:40.320
Oh No.
1070
01:03:41.280 --> 01:03:44.239
While Paul Fresher was sitting in a maximum security prison
1071
01:03:44.280 --> 01:03:48.039
cell in lim Ohio, the mailman in Circleville kept walking
1072
01:03:48.079 --> 01:03:52.559
his route, and the letters start showing up again, hundreds
1073
01:03:52.599 --> 01:03:57.400
of them, postmarked from Columbus, written in the exact same heavy,
1074
01:03:57.480 --> 01:04:02.400
blocky handwriting. They continued to taunt the town, completely unfazed
1075
01:04:02.400 --> 01:04:06.840
by Paul's arrest. The prison warden was furious. He threw
1076
01:04:06.880 --> 01:04:10.360
Paul into solitary confinement. He stripped the cell of every pen,
1077
01:04:10.559 --> 01:04:13.719
every pencil, and every single scrap of paper he had.
1078
01:04:13.719 --> 01:04:16.880
The guards checked Paul's mail in and out. It was
1079
01:04:16.960 --> 01:04:20.320
physically impossible for Paul fresh Hour to be mailing anything,
1080
01:04:21.239 --> 01:04:24.119
and yet a few days later but later arrived on
1081
01:04:24.159 --> 01:04:27.480
the warden's own desk. The warden opened it up. The
1082
01:04:27.559 --> 01:04:30.360
heavy ink stared up at him. Now, when are you
1083
01:04:30.400 --> 01:04:32.320
going to let me out of here? The letter read,
1084
01:04:32.800 --> 01:04:35.599
I told you I wasn't a writer. Now they have you,
1085
01:04:36.159 --> 01:04:40.880
Paul and me to worry about. So Paul fresh Hour
1086
01:04:40.960 --> 01:04:43.159
served ten years in prison for a crime he swore
1087
01:04:43.199 --> 01:04:46.800
he never committed. All the while, the real Phantom Circleville
1088
01:04:46.960 --> 01:04:49.760
continued to laugh at the cops, laugh at the courts,
1089
01:04:50.119 --> 01:04:53.639
and terrorize the town. Paul was finally released in nineteen
1090
01:04:53.719 --> 01:04:57.079
ninety four, a broken man who maintained his innocence until
1091
01:04:57.079 --> 01:05:01.320
the day he died. So this very nobody knows who
1092
01:05:01.320 --> 01:05:05.159
the real Circleville letter writer was. They never confessed, They
1093
01:05:05.239 --> 01:05:08.760
just eventually stopped writing, melting back into the shadows of
1094
01:05:08.800 --> 01:05:12.800
that quiet Ohio town. It makes you think differently about
1095
01:05:12.800 --> 01:05:15.840
your neighbors, though, doesn't it. So when you're standing in
1096
01:05:15.880 --> 01:05:17.800
line at the grocery store or waving at the car
1097
01:05:17.920 --> 01:05:21.519
driving down the street, just remember you never really know
1098
01:05:21.679 --> 01:05:24.320
what's going on behind the smiling eyes of the folks
1099
01:05:24.320 --> 01:05:29.239
next door. Because in Circleville, the monster wasn't hiding under
1100
01:05:29.320 --> 01:05:32.559
the bed. The monster was waving at you from the
1101
01:05:32.599 --> 01:05:43.480
porch across the street. Now there's a stretch of wilderness
1102
01:05:43.559 --> 01:05:46.480
up in the Pacific Northwest that folks from the city
1103
01:05:46.519 --> 01:05:49.519
don't rightly understand, that is, unless they stood dead in
1104
01:05:49.519 --> 01:05:53.280
the center of it. The Cascade Mountains. Now it ain't
1105
01:05:53.360 --> 01:05:57.079
like the friendly, rolling hills of the Midwest. It's a jagged, dark,
1106
01:05:57.320 --> 01:06:01.159
unforgiving spine of ancient ry, choked with towering Douglas furs
1107
01:06:01.159 --> 01:06:04.800
and draped in freezing, relentless rain. When the flog rolls
1108
01:06:04.840 --> 01:06:07.480
in low over those tree tops, it feels like the
1109
01:06:07.519 --> 01:06:10.000
whole world is holding his breath, and it kind of is.
1110
01:06:10.639 --> 01:06:13.280
It's the kind of country that can hide a secret forever,
1111
01:06:14.159 --> 01:06:16.360
and it's exactly the kind of place where a man
1112
01:06:16.360 --> 01:06:19.039
could step out of the sky, vanish like a puff
1113
01:06:19.079 --> 01:06:21.079
of cigar smoke, and become a ghost.
1114
01:06:21.119 --> 01:06:21.480
Story.
1115
01:06:22.639 --> 01:06:24.199
So, if you want to hear a mystery that made
1116
01:06:24.199 --> 01:06:26.960
the federal government toss and turn in their sleep, listen
1117
01:06:27.000 --> 01:06:30.760
to what happened the night before Thanksgiving November twenty fourth,
1118
01:06:30.960 --> 01:06:35.000
nineteen seventy one. Not all started down in Portland, Oregon,
1119
01:06:35.280 --> 01:06:38.599
under a dismal, weeping gray sky, A man walked up
1120
01:06:38.639 --> 01:06:42.320
to the Northwest Orean Airlines counter. He was utterly unremarkable,
1121
01:06:42.480 --> 01:06:46.159
mid forties average height, wearing a sharp dark suit, a
1122
01:06:46.159 --> 01:06:49.440
white button down shirt, and a black cliff on tigeh
1123
01:06:49.599 --> 01:06:52.480
He looked like, say, an insurance salesman or an aerospace
1124
01:06:52.559 --> 01:06:56.239
engineer heading home for a dry turkey dinner. He paid
1125
01:06:56.280 --> 01:06:58.639
twenty dollars in cold hard cash for a one way
1126
01:06:58.679 --> 01:07:02.280
ticket on fight till up to Seattle. He gave his
1127
01:07:02.400 --> 01:07:06.239
name to the clerk, Dan Cooper. He walked onto the
1128
01:07:06.239 --> 01:07:09.159
Bowing seven twenty seven, took seat eighteen C in the
1129
01:07:09.199 --> 01:07:11.519
back of the plane, and lit up a Rileigh filter
1130
01:07:11.599 --> 01:07:15.400
tiped cigarette. He ordered a bourbon of water. He was
1131
01:07:15.519 --> 01:07:18.159
smooth as a pane of glass. He didn't look nervous,
1132
01:07:18.239 --> 01:07:20.760
he didn't look sweaty. He just looked like a man
1133
01:07:20.840 --> 01:07:24.239
with a plan. As the plane lifted off the tarmac,
1134
01:07:24.519 --> 01:07:27.559
Cooper caught the ivy young flight attendant named Florence Schaffner.
1135
01:07:28.119 --> 01:07:29.880
He slipped her folded piece of paper.
1136
01:07:30.440 --> 01:07:30.599
Now.
1137
01:07:30.639 --> 01:07:34.079
Florence, thinking he was just another lonely traveling salesman trying
1138
01:07:34.079 --> 01:07:36.519
to hustle a phone number, dropped it on red into
1139
01:07:36.519 --> 01:07:41.719
her purse. Cooper leaned closer, his voice low and steady. Miss,
1140
01:07:41.920 --> 01:07:44.360
you better look at that note. I have a bomb.
1141
01:07:45.440 --> 01:07:49.360
Florence FROs pulled the paper back out. The handwritten note
1142
01:07:49.360 --> 01:07:53.840
demanded two hundred thousand dollars in negotiable American currency, four parachutes,
1143
01:07:54.039 --> 01:07:56.480
and a fuel truck waiting on the tarmac in Seattle.
1144
01:07:57.199 --> 01:07:59.800
To prove he wasn't bluffing, Cooper popped the latches on
1145
01:07:59.800 --> 01:08:03.599
his black out of shakecase. Inside, Lawrence saw eight red
1146
01:08:03.599 --> 01:08:07.239
cylinders all wired up to a massive battery. She walked
1147
01:08:07.320 --> 01:08:10.159
up to the cockpit, her knees shaking, and handed the
1148
01:08:10.199 --> 01:08:13.360
note to the captain and just like that the skies
1149
01:08:13.400 --> 01:08:17.920
over America changed forever now. The spookiest thing about Dan
1150
01:08:18.000 --> 01:08:21.760
Cooper wasn't the bomb, It was his demeanor. A desperate
1151
01:08:21.800 --> 01:08:24.600
man sweats, a crazy man, yells Cooper.
1152
01:08:24.800 --> 01:08:25.520
He did neither.
1153
01:08:26.159 --> 01:08:28.479
While the airline scrambled to get the FBI to gather
1154
01:08:28.640 --> 01:08:32.119
ten twenty dollars bills and scrounge jumped four parachutes from
1155
01:08:32.159 --> 01:08:36.359
a local skydiving school, Cooper sat in eighteen Sea sipping
1156
01:08:36.359 --> 01:08:39.720
his bourbon pools of cucumber. He politely offered to pay
1157
01:08:39.760 --> 01:08:42.720
his bar tab, even made sure the flight attendants got
1158
01:08:42.760 --> 01:08:46.159
their meals. The other thirty six passers on board didn't
1159
01:08:46.199 --> 01:08:48.399
even know they were being hijacked. They were just told
1160
01:08:48.399 --> 01:08:51.720
there was a minor mechanical delay. Cooper was as cool
1161
01:08:51.760 --> 01:08:54.680
as the other side of the pillow, as they say, so.
1162
01:08:55.000 --> 01:08:58.119
The plane landed in Seattle, the sun went down, and
1163
01:08:58.199 --> 01:09:01.119
a nasty winter storm started brewing up, lashing the windows
1164
01:09:01.119 --> 01:09:05.079
with freezing rain. The FBI brought the money and the parachutes,
1165
01:09:05.359 --> 01:09:07.920
and true to his word, Cooper let all the passengers
1166
01:09:07.960 --> 01:09:10.319
and a couple of flight attendants walk right off the plane.
1167
01:09:11.319 --> 01:09:13.920
Then he ordered the remaining crew to take off again,
1168
01:09:14.520 --> 01:09:18.000
but His flight plan was so specific, so utterly bizarre,
1169
01:09:18.359 --> 01:09:20.279
that the pilots knew they were dealing with a man
1170
01:09:20.319 --> 01:09:23.600
who understood exactly how Boeing seven to twenty seven were.
1171
01:09:24.840 --> 01:09:27.479
He ordered them to fly toward Mexico City, but they
1172
01:09:27.520 --> 01:09:30.399
had to stay below ten thousand feet. They had to
1173
01:09:30.479 --> 01:09:33.119
keep the landing gear down. They had to set the
1174
01:09:33.159 --> 01:09:35.680
wing flaps to fifteen degrees to slow the plane to
1175
01:09:35.720 --> 01:09:39.239
a crawl about two hundred miles an hour. Now that's
1176
01:09:39.279 --> 01:09:41.640
the absolute minimum speed to keep the heavy bird from
1177
01:09:41.640 --> 01:09:44.960
falling out the sky. Most importantly, he ordered them to
1178
01:09:45.039 --> 01:09:48.920
leave the cabin unpressurized. They took off into the pitch
1179
01:09:48.960 --> 01:09:54.000
black storm tossed night following his directions. Then somewhere south
1180
01:09:54.000 --> 01:09:57.119
of Seattle, flying right into the teeth of the Cascade Mountains,
1181
01:09:57.399 --> 01:10:00.199
Cooper sent the last flight attendant into the cockpit and
1182
01:10:00.239 --> 01:10:03.199
told him to lock the door. He was entirely alone
1183
01:10:03.239 --> 01:10:06.920
in the back of the plane. Then at eight PM,
1184
01:10:07.039 --> 01:10:10.479
a warning light flashed on the cockpit dashboard. The heavy
1185
01:10:10.520 --> 01:10:13.319
hydraulic app staircase. A set of stairs had dropped down
1186
01:10:13.319 --> 01:10:15.239
from the belly of the seven to twenty seventh tail
1187
01:10:15.479 --> 01:10:19.359
had been deployed. A few minutes later, the pilots felled
1188
01:10:19.359 --> 01:10:22.439
a sudden, violent change in air pressure. The tail of
1189
01:10:22.439 --> 01:10:25.399
the plane suddenly pitched upward, forcing the captain to wrestle
1190
01:10:25.439 --> 01:10:28.600
with the yoke just to keep them level. Something heavy
1191
01:10:28.720 --> 01:10:33.199
had just left the aircraft, so when the plane finally
1192
01:10:33.199 --> 01:10:36.439
touched down in Reno, Nevada to refuel, the app stairs
1193
01:10:36.439 --> 01:10:39.560
were dragging on the runway, thrown up as shower of sparks.
1194
01:10:39.760 --> 01:10:43.760
The FBI swarmed the plane, guns drawn, ready for a shootout,
1195
01:10:44.039 --> 01:10:46.600
but when they reached the cabin, all they found was
1196
01:10:46.640 --> 01:10:50.880
empty seats. Friend on seat eighteen sea neatly laid out
1197
01:10:51.079 --> 01:10:53.640
was Cooper's black cliff on tie and a tie cliff.
1198
01:10:54.239 --> 01:10:57.279
A second parachute had been cut open, its cords, presumably
1199
01:10:57.359 --> 01:10:59.479
used to secure the heavy bag of NTSOM money to
1200
01:10:59.520 --> 01:11:03.920
his body. Dan Cooper or whoever he really was, had
1201
01:11:03.960 --> 01:11:07.720
stepped out onto that metal staircase, looked down into the howling,
1202
01:11:07.800 --> 01:11:09.600
freezing black abyss.
1203
01:11:09.399 --> 01:11:10.000
And jumped.
1204
01:11:11.079 --> 01:11:13.760
Now think about that for a second. Try to wrap
1205
01:11:13.800 --> 01:11:16.680
your mind around the sheer, terrifying reality of that jump.
1206
01:11:17.319 --> 01:11:20.359
It's nineteen seventy one. You're wearing a business suit and
1207
01:11:20.399 --> 01:11:23.439
a pair of slip on loafers. It's twenty degrees below
1208
01:11:23.520 --> 01:11:26.840
zero outside that airplane. The wind is whipping past it.
1209
01:11:26.920 --> 01:11:30.079
Two hundred miles an hour. Below you is nothing but
1210
01:11:30.199 --> 01:11:34.760
jagged pine trees, sheer cliffs, and absolute darkness. To step
1211
01:11:34.840 --> 01:11:37.600
up that staircase requires a kind of nerve or a
1212
01:11:37.680 --> 01:11:41.800
kind of madness that most regular folks just don't possess.
1213
01:11:42.600 --> 01:11:45.960
Then the FBI launched the largest, most exhausted manhunt in
1214
01:11:46.000 --> 01:11:50.359
American history, code named nor Jack. They had SR seventy
1215
01:11:50.359 --> 01:11:54.760
one Blackbirds biplanes taking high resolution photographs of the wilderness.
1216
01:11:55.199 --> 01:11:57.920
They had soldiers trudging through the mud and snow looking
1217
01:11:57.960 --> 01:12:00.960
for a parachute canopy caught in the branches. They searched
1218
01:12:00.960 --> 01:12:03.680
the rivers. They interviewed every man in America who had
1219
01:12:03.680 --> 01:12:07.520
ever jumped out of a plane, and they found nothing.
1220
01:12:07.880 --> 01:12:10.159
Not a shoe, not a shred of nylon, not a
1221
01:12:10.199 --> 01:12:13.399
single bone. It was as if the Pacific Northwest had
1222
01:12:13.479 --> 01:12:16.079
just opened up its jaws and swallowed the man hole.
1223
01:12:17.159 --> 01:12:19.560
For years, the federal government insisted there was no way
1224
01:12:19.600 --> 01:12:22.399
he survived. They said the wind tore him apart, or
1225
01:12:22.479 --> 01:12:24.880
the cold frozen solid before he ever hit the ground,
1226
01:12:25.640 --> 01:12:28.000
or maybe he landed in the Columbia River and drowned
1227
01:12:28.039 --> 01:12:31.039
under the weight of the cash, but then came nineteen
1228
01:12:31.119 --> 01:12:34.760
eighty eight, years after the jump, a young boy named
1229
01:12:34.760 --> 01:12:37.039
Brian Ingram was digging a fire pit on a sandy
1230
01:12:37.079 --> 01:12:39.399
stretch of the Columbia River known as the tan of Bar,
1231
01:12:39.880 --> 01:12:43.119
just north of Portland. His shovel hit something strange.
1232
01:12:43.840 --> 01:12:44.079
There.
1233
01:12:44.239 --> 01:12:47.479
Buried in the wet sand, he found three bundles of rotting,
1234
01:12:47.560 --> 01:12:51.199
decaying twenty dollars bills held together by Brital rubber bands.
1235
01:12:51.760 --> 01:12:54.199
The serial numbers. They were a dead match for the
1236
01:12:54.239 --> 01:12:58.520
Cooper ransom. The FBI rushed in, thinking they had finally
1237
01:12:58.560 --> 01:13:01.840
cracked the case. The money only made the mystery darker.
1238
01:13:02.399 --> 01:13:05.840
The bundles they were found upstream from where Cooper's presumed
1239
01:13:05.920 --> 01:13:08.840
drop zone was. How did they get there? Did they
1240
01:13:09.000 --> 01:13:11.760
wash down from a tributary, did he bury them there,
1241
01:13:12.399 --> 01:13:15.399
or did he drop them during his descent. The rest
1242
01:13:15.399 --> 01:13:18.279
of the money, over one hundred and ninety four thousand dollars,
1243
01:13:18.439 --> 01:13:21.560
has never been seen again. Not a single bill has
1244
01:13:21.560 --> 01:13:26.039
ever gone into circulation to this day. dB Cooper is
1245
01:13:26.079 --> 01:13:29.520
the only unsolved hijackie in the history of commercial aviation.
1246
01:13:30.239 --> 01:13:34.600
The FBI officially closed the case in twenty sixteen, admitting defeat. Oh,
1247
01:13:34.760 --> 01:13:37.199
they have a wall of suspects. Men who looked like
1248
01:13:37.279 --> 01:13:40.119
to sketch men who confessed on their deathbeds, men with
1249
01:13:40.199 --> 01:13:44.079
military skydiving records. But the DNA pull from that black
1250
01:13:44.119 --> 01:13:47.439
clip on tie doesn't match any of them. So when
1251
01:13:47.479 --> 01:13:49.760
you sit out on a porch in the Pacific Northwest
1252
01:13:49.800 --> 01:13:52.439
on a cold November night, listening to the wind out
1253
01:13:52.479 --> 01:13:54.760
of the pines, it's hard not to look up at
1254
01:13:54.760 --> 01:13:57.560
that dark sky and wonder did the woods claim a
1255
01:13:57.600 --> 01:14:00.000
fool in a business suit that night? Or did a
1256
01:14:00.119 --> 01:14:03.159
phantom pull off the perfect crime, loading down through the
1257
01:14:03.159 --> 01:14:05.800
freezing rain, walking out of the forest with a bag
1258
01:14:05.840 --> 01:14:08.760
of cash, and slipping quietly back into the world of
1259
01:14:08.800 --> 01:14:12.760
the living. We'll probably never know, But that's the thing
1260
01:14:12.840 --> 01:14:24.159
about ghosts. They don't ever really die. They just become legends. Now,
1261
01:14:24.239 --> 01:14:26.680
if you've never driven through the piny woods of East
1262
01:14:26.680 --> 01:14:29.680
Texas on a moonless winter night, it's hard to explain
1263
01:14:29.840 --> 01:14:32.880
just how thick the darkness can get out there. The
1264
01:14:32.920 --> 01:14:35.439
lob lolly pines grow so tall and crowd the two
1265
01:14:35.479 --> 01:14:38.640
lane black tops so tight that they blot out the stars.
1266
01:14:39.319 --> 01:14:42.479
There are no street lights. There are no neighbors. It's
1267
01:14:42.560 --> 01:14:45.159
just you, the hum of the engine and the heavy
1268
01:14:45.199 --> 01:14:48.000
beams of your headlights cutting a narrow tunnel through the trees.
1269
01:14:48.600 --> 01:14:50.520
It's the kind of quiet that makes you lock your
1270
01:14:50.520 --> 01:14:52.239
doors without even realizing.
1271
01:14:51.880 --> 01:14:52.479
You're doing it.
1272
01:14:53.119 --> 01:14:56.000
Then, on the evening of December twenty ninth, nineteen eighty,
1273
01:14:56.199 --> 01:14:59.159
Betty Cash, a fifty one year old restaurant owner, was
1274
01:14:59.239 --> 01:15:01.920
driving a brand new new Oldsmobile Cutlass down Farm to
1275
01:15:01.960 --> 01:15:05.800
Market Road fourteen eighty five. In the passenger seat was
1276
01:15:05.800 --> 01:15:09.199
her friend and employee, Vicky Landrum. In the back seat,
1277
01:15:09.359 --> 01:15:13.039
half asleep was Vicki's seven year old grandson, Colby. They
1278
01:15:13.079 --> 01:15:16.199
were just regular folks, tired after a long day, heading
1279
01:15:16.279 --> 01:15:19.039
home from a post holiday dinner, looking for a warm bed.
1280
01:15:19.760 --> 01:15:22.479
But the piney woods had something else waiting in the
1281
01:15:22.560 --> 01:15:26.119
dark for them. Right around nine pm, then he noticed
1282
01:15:26.119 --> 01:15:28.960
the light above the tree light. At first, she thought
1283
01:15:28.960 --> 01:15:31.039
it was just an airplane on his final approach to
1284
01:15:31.119 --> 01:15:36.359
Houston Intercontinental, which was about fifty miles away. But airplanes moved,
1285
01:15:36.560 --> 01:15:40.520
airplanes blink. This light was a solid, piercing glare and
1286
01:15:40.600 --> 01:15:43.840
it was dead stationary in the sky. Now, as the
1287
01:15:43.840 --> 01:15:47.239
Oldsmobile rolled further down the empty highway, the tree suddenly
1288
01:15:47.279 --> 01:15:49.439
broke and the light didn't belong to an airplane.
1289
01:15:49.439 --> 01:15:49.760
Oh no.
1290
01:15:50.840 --> 01:15:54.079
Covering dead center over the blacktop, roughly one hundred and
1291
01:15:54.079 --> 01:15:58.159
thirty feet in the air, was a massive diamond shaped object. Now,
1292
01:15:58.199 --> 01:16:02.239
folks who talk about UFO and UAPs, they usually talk
1293
01:16:02.279 --> 01:16:05.359
about saucers or cigars, or quiet things that slipped through
1294
01:16:05.359 --> 01:16:09.039
the night skies like ghosts. But there was absolutely nothing
1295
01:16:09.039 --> 01:16:13.119
ghostly about this thing. It was entirely metallic, dull and
1296
01:16:13.199 --> 01:16:15.560
gray in the places where it wasn't glowing with an
1297
01:16:15.640 --> 01:16:19.800
unbearable blinding luminescence, and it was loud. It was emitting
1298
01:16:19.840 --> 01:16:22.880
a harsh, thrumming roar that rattled the fillings in their teeth.
1299
01:16:23.640 --> 01:16:28.199
But the most terrifying part was the fire. Every few seconds,
1300
01:16:28.479 --> 01:16:31.199
a massive cone of brilliant, roaring orange flame would have
1301
01:16:31.239 --> 01:16:33.560
rubbed from the bottom of the diamond, shooting down toward
1302
01:16:33.640 --> 01:16:37.319
the road. Every time the fire blasted downward, the massive
1303
01:16:37.359 --> 01:16:39.920
craft would push up slightly into the air, only to
1304
01:16:39.960 --> 01:16:42.800
sink back down when the flames cut out. It looked
1305
01:16:42.800 --> 01:16:45.880
like a machine in distress, a wounded beast struggling to
1306
01:16:45.880 --> 01:16:50.079
stay aloft, spitting liquid fire onto the Texas asphalt. Betty
1307
01:16:50.159 --> 01:16:52.720
slammed on the brakes. The car skidded to a halt
1308
01:16:52.760 --> 01:16:55.520
in the middle of the road. Inside the cutlass, the
1309
01:16:55.600 --> 01:16:59.399
temperature spiked almost instantly. Now it wasn't just a warm draft,
1310
01:17:00.079 --> 01:17:03.680
suffocating skin prickling heat of an open oven door. The
1311
01:17:03.720 --> 01:17:06.720
interior of the car got so blisteringly hot that Vicki
1312
01:17:07.119 --> 01:17:10.199
terrified out of her wits, grabbed little Kolby and shouted
1313
01:17:10.199 --> 01:17:11.439
at the end of the world had come.
1314
01:17:12.039 --> 01:17:12.239
Now.
1315
01:17:12.279 --> 01:17:14.760
She was a deeply religious woman, and looking at that
1316
01:17:14.880 --> 01:17:17.279
fire in the sky, she told her grandson to by
1317
01:17:17.319 --> 01:17:21.279
his head because Jesus was returning. But Betty Cash was
1318
01:17:21.319 --> 01:17:24.079
a practical woman. She couldn't sit in that banking car
1319
01:17:24.159 --> 01:17:25.119
waiting for the rapture.
1320
01:17:25.159 --> 01:17:25.560
Oh no.
1321
01:17:26.199 --> 01:17:28.239
She pushed her door open and stepped out onto the
1322
01:17:28.279 --> 01:17:31.760
highway to see what was blogging her path. She stood there,
1323
01:17:31.960 --> 01:17:34.960
made in the blinding light, watching the massive diamond hover
1324
01:17:35.079 --> 01:17:38.000
in the night sky. The heat radiating off the craft
1325
01:17:38.039 --> 01:17:41.800
was physical, heavy and punishing. It felt like standing too
1326
01:17:41.880 --> 01:17:44.720
close to a bonfire. But the heat was coming from
1327
01:17:44.760 --> 01:17:48.239
the sky now. After a few minutes, the craft fired
1328
01:17:48.319 --> 01:17:51.439
up a massive, sustained pillar flame and began to slowly
1329
01:17:51.439 --> 01:17:54.199
pull away, lifting up over the tree line and moving
1330
01:17:54.239 --> 01:17:57.760
into the distance. Betty, sweating and trembling, turned back to
1331
01:17:57.840 --> 01:18:00.600
her car. She reached out to grab the driver's side
1332
01:18:00.640 --> 01:18:04.319
door handle. Big mistake. The metal was so incredibly hot
1333
01:18:04.359 --> 01:18:07.079
that it scorched the flesh right off her palm. She
1334
01:18:07.119 --> 01:18:09.119
had to use her leather jacket to grip the handle
1335
01:18:09.159 --> 01:18:12.439
and force her way back inside. The dashboard was soft
1336
01:18:12.479 --> 01:18:16.560
to the touch. The vinyl itself was melting now. As
1337
01:18:16.560 --> 01:18:18.359
they sat there trying to catch their breath in the
1338
01:18:18.359 --> 01:18:22.000
sweltering car, the sound of the roaring fire faded, only
1339
01:18:22.079 --> 01:18:26.880
be replaced by something else black dlack quack quack. It
1340
01:18:26.920 --> 01:18:31.319
was the heavy, rhythmic, unmistakeable beating of helicopter rotors. Suddenly
1341
01:18:31.399 --> 01:18:34.880
the night sky was swarming with him heavy lift military
1342
01:18:34.920 --> 01:18:38.279
gray bowing c H forty seven chinnooks, the massive ones
1343
01:18:38.319 --> 01:18:39.000
with the twin.
1344
01:18:38.840 --> 01:18:39.640
Rotors on top.
1345
01:18:40.439 --> 01:18:42.840
Vicki and Betty sat in stun silence as they counted
1346
01:18:42.840 --> 01:18:47.399
the helicopters roaring overhead, chasing after the retreating diamond. They
1347
01:18:47.439 --> 01:18:52.000
counted twenty three helicopters in all, twenty three military helicopters
1348
01:18:52.039 --> 01:18:56.199
buying in tight, aggressive formation, seemingly trying to encircle or
1349
01:18:56.319 --> 01:19:01.039
escort the cripple flaming craft. Eventually, the skuy went quiet.
1350
01:19:01.479 --> 01:19:03.520
Betty put the car in gear and drove them home.
1351
01:19:04.039 --> 01:19:08.600
They thought the nightmare was over, but the nightmare hadn't
1352
01:19:08.640 --> 01:19:11.680
even started. Later that night, the three of them began
1353
01:19:11.760 --> 01:19:14.279
to feel sick. Now it wasn't the flu, and it
1354
01:19:14.319 --> 01:19:18.800
wasn't food poisoning. It was a vicious, terrifying, total body breakdown.
1355
01:19:19.760 --> 01:19:24.279
Now Betty suffered the worst. Within hours, her skin turned blistering, angry, red,
1356
01:19:24.479 --> 01:19:26.199
as if she had spent a week baking in the
1357
01:19:26.199 --> 01:19:30.279
desert sun, despite it being a freezing December night. Huge
1358
01:19:30.319 --> 01:19:33.000
weeping water blisters formed on her scalp in her face.
1359
01:19:33.600 --> 01:19:37.000
She was vomiting uncontrollably, stricken with violent diarrhea and a
1360
01:19:37.039 --> 01:19:40.039
pounding headache that felt like her brain was expanding inside
1361
01:19:40.039 --> 01:19:43.359
her skull. Over the next few days, the heard deepened.
1362
01:19:43.800 --> 01:19:46.520
Betty's hair began to fall out in massive clups, her
1363
01:19:46.520 --> 01:19:50.479
eyes swell shut, her fingernails began to fall out. Vicki
1364
01:19:50.560 --> 01:19:53.760
and Young Kobe they suffered the exact same symptoms, though
1365
01:19:53.840 --> 01:19:56.479
slightly less severe, since they had remained inside the car.
1366
01:19:56.920 --> 01:19:59.920
The boy's face did break out and raw weeping soreds.
1367
01:20:01.079 --> 01:20:03.600
When Betty was finally rushed to the emergency room, the
1368
01:20:03.680 --> 01:20:07.680
doctors were utterly baffled. They brought in specialists, they ran tests,
1369
01:20:08.239 --> 01:20:11.039
and the medical consensus they reached sent a chill through
1370
01:20:11.039 --> 01:20:14.119
the room. Betty hadn't caught a bug. She had been
1371
01:20:14.119 --> 01:20:17.760
burned by normal fire. According to her medical charts, she
1372
01:20:17.880 --> 01:20:22.119
was suffering from severe acute radiation poisoning, the exact same
1373
01:20:22.199 --> 01:20:24.600
kind of saiular trauma you'd find in a survivor of
1374
01:20:24.600 --> 01:20:27.760
an atomic blast, or may be a technician standing too
1375
01:20:27.840 --> 01:20:32.119
close to an unshielded nuclear reactor core. So when the
1376
01:20:32.159 --> 01:20:34.800
local police went out to farm the Market Road fourteen
1377
01:20:34.840 --> 01:20:37.560
eighty five to investigate, they found a section of the
1378
01:20:37.600 --> 01:20:40.640
asphalt that had been completely melted and crated by extreme heat.
1379
01:20:41.079 --> 01:20:43.800
A few days later, a mysterious crew showed up and
1380
01:20:43.880 --> 01:20:47.279
repaved that specific patch of road, erasing the fiscal scar
1381
01:20:47.520 --> 01:20:50.439
left with the fire. But the women knew what they
1382
01:20:50.479 --> 01:20:53.199
had seen, and they knew the helicopters they saw had
1383
01:20:53.239 --> 01:20:55.960
the words United States Army painted right on the side.
1384
01:20:56.920 --> 01:20:59.239
They hired a lawyer and sued the federal government for
1385
01:20:59.239 --> 01:21:02.760
twenty million dollars, claiming that the military had been secretly
1386
01:21:02.800 --> 01:21:06.680
testing a highly classified nuclear powered aircraft that had somehow
1387
01:21:06.720 --> 01:21:11.319
gone rogue and irradiated innocent civilians. But when the gabble
1388
01:21:11.359 --> 01:21:15.439
fell in federal court, the United States government stonewalled generals
1389
01:21:15.439 --> 01:21:19.000
and based commanders from every military installation within five hundred miles,
1390
01:21:19.039 --> 01:21:21.840
took the stand and swore under oath that there were
1391
01:21:21.920 --> 01:21:24.920
absolutely no helicopters in the air that night, not a
1392
01:21:24.960 --> 01:21:28.239
single one. They claimed they didn't own a diamond shaped craft.
1393
01:21:28.720 --> 01:21:32.359
They claimed the airspace was totally empty because they couldn't
1394
01:21:32.359 --> 01:21:35.239
definitively prove the helicopters belonged to the US military. The
1395
01:21:35.319 --> 01:21:38.760
judge dismissed the case. The government washed its hands to
1396
01:21:38.840 --> 01:21:44.279
the whole affair. Sadly, Betty Cash never fully recovered. She
1397
01:21:44.359 --> 01:21:48.239
developed breast cancer, suffered from severe neurological issues, and spent
1398
01:21:48.279 --> 01:21:50.439
to the rest and spent the rest of her life
1399
01:21:50.479 --> 01:21:53.119
in and out of hospitals, her body slowly shutting down
1400
01:21:53.399 --> 01:21:56.279
from the invisible poison she absorbed on that lonely stretch
1401
01:21:56.319 --> 01:22:00.359
of road. She died in nineteen ninety eight, twenty years later,
1402
01:22:00.840 --> 01:22:03.319
still demanding an answer from a government that simply turned
1403
01:22:03.359 --> 01:22:06.720
its back on her. So what exactly flew over the
1404
01:22:06.760 --> 01:22:10.279
piney woods that night? Was it a captured alien vehicle,
1405
01:22:10.399 --> 01:22:14.000
broken and bleeding, being corralled by our own military. Was
1406
01:22:14.000 --> 01:22:18.359
it an experimental, deeply classified American black project, a powered
1407
01:22:18.560 --> 01:22:22.079
nuclear engine that failed terribly and irradiated the citizens that
1408
01:22:22.159 --> 01:22:25.560
was built to protect. Well, we'll likely never know the truth.
1409
01:22:25.800 --> 01:22:28.359
The files, if they exist, are buried so deep they'll
1410
01:22:28.399 --> 01:22:31.439
never see the light of day. But the medical records,
1411
01:22:31.520 --> 01:22:35.000
they're very real. The scars were real. It's one of
1412
01:22:35.000 --> 01:22:37.800
those stories that stays with you. It's a reminder that
1413
01:22:37.840 --> 01:22:40.279
when you're out driving in the deep dark woods and
1414
01:22:40.359 --> 01:22:43.359
you see a strange light hovering over the trees, maybe
1415
01:22:43.359 --> 01:22:45.840
you shouldn't stop to look. Maybe you should just put
1416
01:22:45.880 --> 01:22:48.279
your foot on your gas lock the doors and pray
1417
01:22:48.359 --> 01:22:51.640
whatever it is doesn't notice you. Because in this old world,
1418
01:22:51.680 --> 01:22:54.399
my friend, there are things much worse than monsters.
1419
01:22:54.399 --> 01:22:58.319
In the dark. There are secrets, and some secrets.
1420
01:22:58.000 --> 01:23:08.840
Burn entirely too hot to touch. Now, there's an unspoken
1421
01:23:08.920 --> 01:23:11.359
promise when you walk through the sliding glass doors of
1422
01:23:11.399 --> 01:23:15.359
a hospital emergency room. The promise is that no matter
1423
01:23:15.399 --> 01:23:18.680
how bad things get, no matter how much you're bleeding
1424
01:23:18.760 --> 01:23:21.520
or how hard your chest. This season up, you've crossed
1425
01:23:21.520 --> 01:23:24.880
the threshold into the safest place on earth. You're just
1426
01:23:24.920 --> 01:23:28.680
surrounded by bright lights, sterile steel, and people whose entire
1427
01:23:28.680 --> 01:23:31.239
life's work is pulling folks back from the edge of
1428
01:23:31.239 --> 01:23:35.520
the dark. But what happens when the danger doesn't walk
1429
01:23:35.560 --> 01:23:37.720
through those doors with a gun or a knife? What
1430
01:23:37.880 --> 01:23:40.439
happens when the danger is cooking right inside the patient's
1431
01:23:40.439 --> 01:23:44.039
own veins. Now here's the story that's going to make
1432
01:23:44.039 --> 01:23:45.800
you look down at your own hands and wonder what
1433
01:23:45.920 --> 01:23:48.600
kind of chemistry said you're carrying around under your skin.
1434
01:23:50.119 --> 01:23:53.279
This is the night that Riverside General Hospital had to
1435
01:23:53.399 --> 01:23:57.399
run from a dying woman. It was a Sunday evening,
1436
01:23:57.560 --> 01:24:01.399
February nineteen, nineteen ninety four, who Riverside, California, was just
1437
01:24:01.399 --> 01:24:03.560
settling down for the night when the wail of an
1438
01:24:03.560 --> 01:24:07.119
ambulance cut through the quiet. The paramedics were bringing in
1439
01:24:07.159 --> 01:24:09.239
the thirty one year old mother of two named Gloria
1440
01:24:09.359 --> 01:24:13.520
Ramirez plus her heart. Gloria was in bad shape. She
1441
01:24:13.640 --> 01:24:16.640
was battling late stage cervical cancer and her body was
1442
01:24:16.680 --> 01:24:19.479
given out when they wielded her through the double doors
1443
01:24:19.479 --> 01:24:23.000
at eight fifteen pm. She was taking shallow, ragged gasp,
1444
01:24:23.279 --> 01:24:26.039
Her heart was beating entirely too fast, and her blood
1445
01:24:26.079 --> 01:24:30.119
pressure was dropping like a stone. The er staff swarmed her.
1446
01:24:30.680 --> 01:24:33.600
This was routine chaos for them. They moved like a
1447
01:24:33.640 --> 01:24:37.279
well oiled machine, looking up heart monitors, lipping an oxygen
1448
01:24:37.319 --> 01:24:39.640
mask over her face, and prepared to inject her with
1449
01:24:39.760 --> 01:24:43.840
drugs to calm her racing heart. But almost immediately things
1450
01:24:43.880 --> 01:24:46.880
took a turn for the strange. When the nurses, unbutting
1451
01:24:46.880 --> 01:24:49.840
Gloria's shirt to apply the defibrillator patched to her chest,
1452
01:24:50.119 --> 01:24:53.000
they noticed her skin was slick with a bizarre oilychene.
1453
01:24:53.720 --> 01:24:56.399
It wasn't sweat, It looked and felt like she was
1454
01:24:56.439 --> 01:24:59.920
coated in a thin layer of grease. At the same time,
1455
01:25:00.079 --> 01:25:02.960
the medical staff leaning over or caught a sudden, sharp
1456
01:25:03.000 --> 01:25:06.600
whip of something foul coming from her mouth. Smelled like
1457
01:25:06.680 --> 01:25:10.760
bad garlic or maybe even old onions. Now strange smells
1458
01:25:10.760 --> 01:25:13.680
in an emergency room ain't exactly front page news, my friend.
1459
01:25:14.399 --> 01:25:17.239
The staff pushed through it. They shocked her heart, trying
1460
01:25:17.239 --> 01:25:20.239
to shock it back into a normal rhythm. Then a
1461
01:25:20.319 --> 01:25:23.399
registered nurse named Susan Kane stepped up to draw vile
1462
01:25:23.439 --> 01:25:27.159
of blood from Gloria's arm. Susan slid the needle in,
1463
01:25:27.479 --> 01:25:30.039
drew the plunger back, and handed the warm syringe to
1464
01:25:30.079 --> 01:25:33.640
doctor Marine Welch, a respiratory therapist standing next to the bed.
1465
01:25:34.920 --> 01:25:36.760
But as the blood hit the air of the room,
1466
01:25:36.960 --> 01:25:40.399
another smell hit the staff. This one was entirely different
1467
01:25:40.439 --> 01:25:44.119
from the garlic smell. This was a harsh, stinging, chemical odor,
1468
01:25:44.439 --> 01:25:50.119
almost exactly like ammonia. Now, Doctor Julie Gorchinski, a senior
1469
01:25:50.159 --> 01:25:52.640
medical resident, leaned over to get a closer look at
1470
01:25:52.640 --> 01:25:55.560
the blood in the syringe, and what she saw didn't
1471
01:25:55.600 --> 01:25:59.159
make a lick of medical sense. Now, blood is supposed
1472
01:25:59.199 --> 01:26:02.880
to be crimson, smooth and liquid, But floating right there
1473
01:26:02.920 --> 01:26:05.600
in the tube of the Gloria's blood were strange manilla
1474
01:26:05.680 --> 01:26:10.359
colored particles. They looked like tiny yellow crystals sparkling under
1475
01:26:10.399 --> 01:26:13.600
the harsh fluorescent lights of the trauma room. There are
1476
01:26:13.680 --> 01:26:17.119
crystals in her blood, doctor Gorczinsky muttered, holding the tube
1477
01:26:17.159 --> 01:26:20.159
up to the light. Before anyone could ask what that
1478
01:26:20.279 --> 01:26:24.239
even meant, the first domino fell. Susan Kane, the nurse
1479
01:26:24.239 --> 01:26:26.479
who had drawn the blood, suddenly complained that her face
1480
01:26:26.560 --> 01:26:29.199
was burning. The skin on her cheeks felt like it
1481
01:26:29.239 --> 01:26:34.039
was on fire. A second later, she pitched forward, completely unconscious,
1482
01:26:34.119 --> 01:26:37.680
hitting the linoleum floor. Now the staff rushed to grab
1483
01:26:37.720 --> 01:26:39.520
her and carry her out of the room, but as
1484
01:26:39.520 --> 01:26:42.800
they were dragging Susan through the double doors, doctor Gorzinski
1485
01:26:42.920 --> 01:26:45.720
started to feel light headed. She told a colleague she
1486
01:26:45.800 --> 01:26:48.319
wasn't feeling well, stepped out of the trauma room, and
1487
01:26:48.399 --> 01:26:51.399
she immediately dropped to the floor. Her body seized up
1488
01:26:51.439 --> 01:26:56.000
in violent, uncontrollable trimmors, and her breathing stop. Moments later,
1489
01:26:56.119 --> 01:26:59.319
Doctor Welch, the respiratory therapist, who was still holding the syringe,
1490
01:26:59.560 --> 01:27:03.960
slumped up over a crash cart. Out cold, panic, absolute
1491
01:27:04.000 --> 01:27:08.479
and unfiltered, swept through the emergency room. This wasn't mass ysteria.
1492
01:27:08.640 --> 01:27:12.079
Oh no, this wasn't a trick of the mind. Highly
1493
01:27:12.119 --> 01:27:16.279
trained medical professionals were dropping like flies, their bodies, seizing
1494
01:27:16.560 --> 01:27:19.640
their lungs, seizing up. Whatever was coming out of Gloria
1495
01:27:19.720 --> 01:27:23.000
Ramirez was spreading through the air, and it was violently toxic.
1496
01:27:23.720 --> 01:27:27.239
The hospital declared a dire internal emergency. They ordered the
1497
01:27:27.239 --> 01:27:31.840
immediate evacuation of the entire emergency department. Nurses, doctors, and
1498
01:27:31.920 --> 01:27:35.319
orderlies began grabbing patients, some with broken legs, some with
1499
01:27:35.399 --> 01:27:38.159
IV lines still, dug them from their arms and physically
1500
01:27:38.239 --> 01:27:42.079
dragging them out into the freezing February parking lot. They
1501
01:27:42.119 --> 01:27:44.840
set up a makeshift trauma center right there on the asphalt,
1502
01:27:44.880 --> 01:27:47.279
under the glow of the street lights, stripping off their
1503
01:27:47.319 --> 01:27:50.880
clothes and hosing themselves down, terrified that the invisible poison
1504
01:27:51.079 --> 01:27:55.159
was clinging to their scrubs. Inside the hospital, a skeleton
1505
01:27:55.199 --> 01:27:57.800
crew of a few brave doctors stayed behind with Gloria.
1506
01:27:58.319 --> 01:28:00.840
They held their breath, doing everything they could to save
1507
01:28:00.840 --> 01:28:04.439
her life, but at eight fifty PM, her failing heart
1508
01:28:04.520 --> 01:28:09.439
finally gave out. Gloria Ramirez passed away. By the end
1509
01:28:09.479 --> 01:28:12.760
of the night, twenty three hospital workers had become violently ill.
1510
01:28:12.960 --> 01:28:17.840
Twenty three both of them were hospitalized themselves. Doctor Koshinski,
1511
01:28:18.039 --> 01:28:20.600
the resident who had looked closest at the sparkling blood,
1512
01:28:20.640 --> 01:28:23.680
suffered the worst. She ended up spending two weeks in
1513
01:28:23.680 --> 01:28:28.399
the intensive care unit. She developed hepatitis. Her bones literally
1514
01:28:28.399 --> 01:28:30.840
began to die from a lack of blood flow, a
1515
01:28:30.880 --> 01:28:34.960
condition called a vascular necrosis, leaving her reliant on crutches
1516
01:28:35.000 --> 01:28:39.359
and a wheelchair. For months, So what did the world happen?
1517
01:28:40.399 --> 01:28:40.600
Then?
1518
01:28:40.640 --> 01:28:43.600
When the Riverside County HASMAT team rolled into the arf
1519
01:28:43.760 --> 01:28:47.600
in their heavy moonsuits carrying air sniffers and chemical detectors,
1520
01:28:47.920 --> 01:28:50.800
they scared every inch of that room. They checked for
1521
01:28:50.880 --> 01:28:55.159
sewer gas, They checked the oxygen lines, they checked the vents.
1522
01:28:55.439 --> 01:28:59.680
They found absolutely nothing. The air was clean. When the
1523
01:28:59.720 --> 01:29:02.560
corner or performed the autops young Gloria Ramrez, he didn't
1524
01:29:02.600 --> 01:29:05.960
take any chances. He and his team wore airtight suits
1525
01:29:06.000 --> 01:29:11.520
and especially constructed containment chamber. They took tissue samples, blood samples,
1526
01:29:11.600 --> 01:29:14.880
and ran every toxicology screen known to modern science at
1527
01:29:14.920 --> 01:29:19.079
that time. They found no known poisons. They ruled that
1528
01:29:19.119 --> 01:29:21.800
Gloria died of kidney failure brought on by her cancer.
1529
01:29:22.600 --> 01:29:25.520
The media dubbed her the Toxic Lady, but nobody could
1530
01:29:25.560 --> 01:29:29.399
answer exactly why she was toxic. It took months for
1531
01:29:29.439 --> 01:29:32.439
a team of scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
1532
01:29:32.720 --> 01:29:35.760
to finally propose the theory that made sense, a theory
1533
01:29:35.800 --> 01:29:38.600
that's still debated by chemists to this day because it
1534
01:29:38.640 --> 01:29:43.159
sounds like dark magic. The scientists proposed that Gloria desperate
1535
01:29:43.199 --> 01:29:46.439
for relief from her agonizing cancer pain, had been rubbing
1536
01:29:46.439 --> 01:29:48.760
her skin with a common over the counter home remedy
1537
01:29:49.000 --> 01:29:54.000
called DMSO, which it stands for dimethyl sulfoxide. That would
1538
01:29:54.000 --> 01:29:56.760
explain the garlic smell and the greasy sheen on her skin.
1539
01:29:57.520 --> 01:30:01.960
But DMSO isn't toxic. People use it on horses. People
1540
01:30:02.039 --> 01:30:06.119
use it on themselves. Now here's where the terrifying alchemy
1541
01:30:06.119 --> 01:30:09.479
of the human body comes into play. The scientists theorize
1542
01:30:09.520 --> 01:30:12.560
that when the paramedics put an oxygen mask Congloia, the
1543
01:30:12.600 --> 01:30:15.439
heavy dose of pure oxygen bonded with the DMSO in
1544
01:30:15.479 --> 01:30:20.520
her system, creating a new compound, DMSO two dimethyl sulfone.
1545
01:30:21.680 --> 01:30:25.479
Dimethyl sulfone is known to crystallize at room temperature, which
1546
01:30:25.520 --> 01:30:28.920
perfectly explains the Manila colored flex floating in her drawn blood.
1547
01:30:29.640 --> 01:30:33.119
But it gets worse when the er doctors press those
1548
01:30:33.159 --> 01:30:35.279
defibrillator paddles to her chest and hit her with a
1549
01:30:35.319 --> 01:30:39.600
massive joted electricity. The electrical shock forced the DMSO two
1550
01:30:39.800 --> 01:30:43.119
to bond with even more oxygen, creating a third incredibly
1551
01:30:43.199 --> 01:30:48.399
unstable chemical, DMSO four add DMSO four is better known
1552
01:30:48.399 --> 01:30:53.319
by its terrifying chemical name, dimethyl sulfate dimethyl sulfate is
1553
01:30:53.359 --> 01:30:57.880
a heavy, highly volatile chemical used in industrial manufacturing. It's
1554
01:30:57.920 --> 01:31:00.840
so poisonous that the military has considered using it as
1555
01:31:00.840 --> 01:31:08.399
a chemical weapon. Simply inhaling its vapors causes immediate tissue damage, seizures, delirium, paralysis,
1556
01:31:08.399 --> 01:31:13.000
and necrosis of the bones. Without meaning to. Lauria Ramiro's
1557
01:31:13.000 --> 01:31:16.680
body had acted as a perfect sealed pressure cooker through
1558
01:31:16.720 --> 01:31:20.600
a bizarre chain reaction of pain relief cream, ambulance, oxygen,
1559
01:31:20.640 --> 01:31:23.600
and the electric shockmen. To save her life, her bloodstream
1560
01:31:23.640 --> 01:31:27.520
had manufactured a military grade nerve gas. When the nursery
1561
01:31:27.560 --> 01:31:29.439
of blood, the gas set the warm air of the
1562
01:31:29.720 --> 01:31:34.359
ar vaporized and took down the road. Now some folks
1563
01:31:34.359 --> 01:31:38.479
in the scientific community say, oh, that's impossible. They argue
1564
01:31:38.479 --> 01:31:41.239
a human body can't generate the temperatures needed to create
1565
01:31:41.359 --> 01:31:45.560
dimethyl sulfate without cooking the person alive from the inside out.
1566
01:31:46.720 --> 01:31:49.960
Some of the affected nurses filed lawsuits having the hospital
1567
01:31:50.000 --> 01:31:52.880
had a secret illegal meth lab or a massive sewer
1568
01:31:52.920 --> 01:31:55.920
gas leak that they were covering up using gloria as
1569
01:31:55.920 --> 01:31:59.840
a convenient scapegoat. But neither a meth lab nor a
1570
01:31:59.840 --> 01:32:02.800
s DW her leak explains the greasy skin, the garlic breath,
1571
01:32:02.880 --> 01:32:05.119
or the terrifying sparkling crystals.
1572
01:32:04.680 --> 01:32:06.079
Boating in that syringe.
1573
01:32:06.640 --> 01:32:10.079
Now, the mystery of the toxic Lady of Riverside sits
1574
01:32:10.119 --> 01:32:12.520
in the cold gray area between medical science and a
1575
01:32:12.520 --> 01:32:16.159
ghost story. It leaves us with a deeply unsettling truth.
1576
01:32:17.039 --> 01:32:19.359
We look out at the world and worry about snake bites,
1577
01:32:19.439 --> 01:32:22.680
toxic waste, and poisoned food, but we forget that we
1578
01:32:22.720 --> 01:32:27.239
are at our very core, walking talking bags of reactive chemicals,
1579
01:32:27.600 --> 01:32:31.039
and sometimes my friend, given just the wrong ingredients and
1580
01:32:31.079 --> 01:32:34.439
a spark of electricity, the monsters we are so afraid
1581
01:32:34.479 --> 01:32:49.359
of can be manufactured right inside our very own beating hearts, Well, friends,
1582
01:32:49.560 --> 01:32:52.479
fairy habit. The fire is just about down to the
1583
01:32:52.520 --> 01:32:55.920
ashes now. The house is quiet, save for the settling
1584
01:32:55.920 --> 01:32:58.520
of the old floorboards and the taking of the clock
1585
01:32:58.600 --> 01:33:02.279
in the hall. But when you sit with stories like these,
1586
01:33:02.960 --> 01:33:05.760
when you really let them sink into your marrow, they
1587
01:33:05.800 --> 01:33:08.960
tend to leave a strange taste in your mouth. Human
1588
01:33:09.000 --> 01:33:12.319
beings are hired wired to solve puzzles. When we find
1589
01:33:12.319 --> 01:33:15.079
a piece that doesn't fit, we'll turn it, twist it,
1590
01:33:15.159 --> 01:33:17.720
shave down the edges and hammered it into place until
1591
01:33:17.720 --> 01:33:21.159
we can step back and say, there, that makes perfect sense.
1592
01:33:22.560 --> 01:33:25.520
We do it because the alternative is just too terrifying
1593
01:33:25.520 --> 01:33:29.560
to live with. If we admit that five experienced airmen
1594
01:33:29.640 --> 01:33:32.319
can fly out of a clear Florida sky and simply
1595
01:33:32.359 --> 01:33:35.359
cease to exist, or that a woman can burn to
1596
01:33:35.439 --> 01:33:38.760
white ash in her armchair without sending the newspaper she
1597
01:33:38.880 --> 01:33:42.159
was reading right next to her, well, then we have
1598
01:33:42.239 --> 01:33:44.279
to admit that we aren't really in control at all,
1599
01:33:44.359 --> 01:33:48.000
don't we. We have to ment that we're just small,
1600
01:33:48.199 --> 01:33:51.920
fragile things whistling past the graveyard. In a universe it's
1601
01:33:51.960 --> 01:33:56.399
far older, far stranger, and far hungrier than we could
1602
01:33:56.399 --> 01:34:01.960
ever comprehend. So what do we do with these? We
1603
01:34:02.039 --> 01:34:04.720
do what the police, the FBI, and the scientists did.
1604
01:34:05.439 --> 01:34:08.000
We put them in a cardboard box, write the word
1605
01:34:08.079 --> 01:34:11.439
unsolved across the top and thick black marker, and shove
1606
01:34:11.520 --> 01:34:13.359
them to the very back of the highest shelf in
1607
01:34:13.399 --> 01:34:16.760
the archives. We close the door. We go back to
1608
01:34:16.760 --> 01:34:21.119
our jobs, our taxes, and our tidy, illuminated lives. But
1609
01:34:21.399 --> 01:34:25.840
bearing a secret doesn't make it disappear. Oh no, the
1610
01:34:25.920 --> 01:34:29.159
ocean is still out there. My friend, deep and dark
1611
01:34:29.359 --> 01:34:33.560
turning under the winter storms. The Siberian Taga is still
1612
01:34:33.600 --> 01:34:37.199
silent and waiting. The piny woods are still thick enough
1613
01:34:37.239 --> 01:34:40.960
to blot out the stars. The world hasn't lost its magic,
1614
01:34:41.479 --> 01:34:45.319
and it certainly hasn't lost its teeth. So go on
1615
01:34:45.560 --> 01:34:48.399
and head off to bed. Better double check those locks
1616
01:34:48.439 --> 01:34:50.960
on your way down the hall, just for peace of mind.
1617
01:34:51.680 --> 01:34:53.560
But before you turn off that last.
1618
01:34:53.359 --> 01:34:56.039
Lamp, take a quick look out the window at the
1619
01:34:56.159 --> 01:35:00.039
night sky, Look past the street lights and up in
1620
01:35:00.079 --> 01:35:03.840
to that endless, sprawling black, and give a little nod
1621
01:35:03.880 --> 01:35:08.359
of respect, because out there in the dark, the unexplained
1622
01:35:08.439 --> 01:35:11.560
is still waiting, and it doesn't care whether you believe
1623
01:35:11.600 --> 01:35:16.640
in it or not. I'm Steve Stockton. Thank you for listening.
1624
01:35:17.319 --> 01:35:20.760
Stay safe, be good to yourselves. I'll see you next time.
1625
01:35:21.039 --> 01:36:05.199
Until your animals, I said him.