MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Desperate Measures (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Today, I’m going to tell you two stories about people who unknowingly risked everything to travel to their dream locations – and didn’t realize they were in danger until it was too late. Their stories remind us that careful planning is not always enough to keep us safe when we travel far from home. You can WATCH all new & exclusive MrBallen podcast episodes on my YouTube channel, just called "MrBallen" - https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballen Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today, I'm going to tell you two stories about people who basically unknowingly risked everything just to travel to their dream locations. And they didn't realize they were in danger until it was already too late. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload two, three, even four times a week. So, if that's of interest to you,

please promise the follow button a luxurious trip to Paris, but don't tell them you're sending them to Paris, Texas. Okay, let's get into our first story, which is called baggage claim. On the morning of Monday, January 7, 1985, a 31-year-old man arrived at an international airport in order to board his flight to the United States. The man was very nervous. His heart was beating fast and his palms were sweating so much that he could barely hold the handles of his very heavy tan-colored suitcase.

and the reason he was so nervous is because he was feeling very conflicted about what he was about to do. On the one hand, this trip was something he'd been dreaming of for months, and it was supposed to represent the start of a great brand-new life. Now, this man hadn't actually packed very many personal items to take with him, but one thing he had brought was a little bound book full of photographs, which showed what mattered the most to him, and what mattered the most was waiting for him in America. But on the other hand, the man was terrified, because before he could begin this brand new life, he had a huge problem he needed to take care of.

And that problem was why he needed to drop off his very heavy suitcase without anybody looking inside of it. And so now, inside the airport, the very nervous man stopped and readjusted his grip on the suitcase handles and then made his way over to the ticketing area where he would check his bag for his almost 11-hour flight to California. And then, you know, once he touched down and they landed in California, he could get off the plane, go to the baggage carousel and get his luggage, and then everything would be fine. Now, of course, he knew this was a big gamble. If it had been possible, he would have just brought this bag with him on the plane to stow it in the overhead bin, but he just couldn't do it because the bag was too big, too heavy.

And so really his only other choice, if he wanted the suitcase to make it to California, was to check it like he was doing, because the alternative was leaving it behind, and there was no way he was going to do that. He cared far too much about what was his own. inside of this luggage. And so by the time the man actually got in line in the ticketing and baggage check area, he was so stressed out that he was beginning to feel physically ill. By the time he got to the front of the line, he still felt very sick, but he composed himself enough that he walked up to the counter of the airline he was traveling with, which was Lufthansa airline, and the employee

who was working behind the counter was very cheerful, and they greeted the man and took his passport to verify his information. Then the employee put down the passport and then reached out his hand and gestured for the nervous man to give him his very important suitcase. This was, of course, the moment the man had feared the most, you know, when everything could really go astray. But, as calm as he could, he lifted up the suitcase, and for a second he almost panicked because it was just so obviously heavy. He realized the employee might make him open it right there because it just seemed wrong that this suitcase was that heavy. And he knew if that happened, he was done for. He'd be arrested immediately. But instead, the employee just dragged the heavy suitcase.

over to a conveyor belt behind the counter, and the nervous man watched as the employee heaved the suitcase onto the belt, and the man kept his eyes locked on the suitcase as it rolled down the belt and then disappeared through a pair of rubber flaps at the very end. He was so focused on the bag, he almost didn't notice the airline employee returning to try to hand him his boarding pass for the plane. Finally, the employee literally just waved the ticket in the man's face to get his attention and kind of snapped him out of it, and he took the boarding pass, and as calmly as he could, he thanked the employee, and then he turned and hurried off to catch his flight. About 12 hours later, on the other side of the world, another employee of Lutonza Airlines

walked around the baggage claim area at Los Angeles International Airport, which is typically just called LAX. It was about 2 p.m. Los Angeles time, and the employee was working in the International Terminal. It was his job to monitor the circular carousels where passengers picked up their luggage after their flights, and his job was to make sure no bags were left behind. And as he was making one of these loops, he noticed there was a tan-colored suitcase with soft sides sitting all alone on one of the carousels. The employee stopped and checked the monitor above the carousel to see the last time this carousel had been used by an incoming plane.

And it was quite a while ago. And all the passengers clearly had come through and picked up their luggage except for this one loan bag. So based on the timing, the employee figured that, well, this bag must be unclaimed. But this was not remotely concerning to him. I mean, luggage went unclaimed all the time. Sometimes because bags were sent to the wrong airport, or because the suitcase's owner missed their flight, or even just forgot to get it.

But whatever the reason was, it was this employee's job to simply start the process of identifying the owner of the suitcase. So, like he always did, he walked over to the carousel and grabbed the suitcase handle and went to pick it up. But when he did, he let out a sort of surprised grunt and stumbled

because the suitcase was so much, heavier than he had expected. So he went back and he grabbed the handle with a better grip this time with two hands and braced himself and yanked and the suitcase kind of toppled over and fell off the carousel onto the floor. And this was also around the time that the employee noticed that this really heavy suitcase had no tags on it. And so now this bag did seem very unusual. The extreme weight and no tags, like that's not normal. So he knelt down and he began to unzip the suitcase to see what was inside. He was legally allowed to do this because unclaimed bags at airports are subject to search. But he had only unzipped it a little bit before he froze, and for a second he just stared in shock at

what was inside of the suitcase. But then he immediately got to his feet, just left the bag there, and ran to go find a phone to call the police. A little less than two hours later, around 3.45 p.m. Detective Don Ravens of the Los Angeles Police Department's Pacific Division stood in the baggage area of LAX's international terminal looking down grimly into the tan suitcase that was lying open on the floor. He was surrounded by officials from the LAPD, as well as the FBI, who had all been called to the airport because of what was found inside of the suitcase, the dead body of a young woman. Detective Ravens was shocked. He guessed this woman was maybe less than 30 years old. And judging by her features and dark hair, he thought she could be from an Asian or Latin American country. But that was about as far as he could get,

since she didn't have any identification with her, and there were no tags on the bag. There were also no obvious wounds on her body, so he couldn't immediately tell how she died. Raven spent some time speaking to airline and airport employees, including Customs, which is the government agency that's in charge of inspecting bags that are coming in and out of the country. And he was puzzled as to how a suitcase with a body inside of it had somehow cleared customs, but an agent explained that they didn't actually open up all the suitcases, which meant whoever checked this bag through customs had taken a huge risk, because realistically, they could have been searched and then the body would have been found.

So this suggested a certain level of desperation. But apparently this risk this person took to check the bag had paid off because the bag had gone all the way to California. But despite that, you know, Ravens didn't find much to go on here. At this moment, the victim was a Jane Doe, which meant there was no identification for her. And Ravens knew she could really be from anywhere in the world, despite, you know, his snap judgment that perhaps she was from an Asian or Latin American country. And because LAX was an international airport, you know, whoever checked this bag and potentially even put her into the suitcase could now be anywhere in the world too. Once Detective Ravens and the other investigators had finished examining the body as it was found inside of the suitcase, they didn't actually pull her body out. They sent the suitcase and her body to the corner.

Hopefully, an autopsy would turn up evidence that could tell Ravens and the other investigators who this Jane Doe was and what happened to her. The following day, on Tuesday, Ravens sat down at his desk and he opened up a manila folder he had been given. Inside of it was his Jane Doe's autopsy report. And when the detective began reading it, he couldn't help but feel sick. Because what he was reading told him that this poor woman had died a horrible, torturous death. The report said the woman had bruises all over her body, like the kind you would get from repeated heavy blows delivered over a period of at least several hours while she was still alive,

and her actual eventual cause of death was ultimately suffocation, which meant she either was suffocated and then put into the suitcase or was in the suitcase trapped inside of there and suffocated. Ravens put down the report and leaned back in his chair and just sort of thought through what he had just learned. Based on the autopsy, he now knew this poor woman had died a brutal, awful death. But the coroner had not found any identifying information or anything on her that would give away or help to give away who she actually was or who did this to her. So really he had very little here other than knowing this lady suffered.

Ravens had spent the last 24 hours pouring over all the surveillance footage from the airport security cameras, looking for any suspicious passengers leaving without any luggage. But nothing had jumped out at him. He had also interviewed a bunch of airport employees who would have been in the baggage claim area on the day the body was found, but none of them had noticed anything strange either. And so, despite it only having been one day since this woman was found, Ravens was already worried that this case was going to go cold. But what Ravens had not counted on was the huge amount of publicity his Jane Doe would generate. The TV news, as well as the newspaper, were reporting feverishly on the body that was found in the LAX suitcase. And by Wednesday,

so 48 hours after the body was found, the reporting had made it all the way to Peru, where a man named Juan Espinoza contacted authorities to report that the body might actually belong to his wife. Officials in Peru called the LAPD, and Juan's report ended up on Ravens desk. Ravens opened up that report and began reading. Juan and his wife lived in Peru's capital city of Lima, but his wife had been trying to leave Peru to escape poverty. She had left their home hoping to basically sneak into the United States so she could get a job there and then send money back to her family in Peru. She had promised Juan that she would contact him when she arrived in America, but after she left, Juan said he never heard from her. This report felt like a promising lead to Ravens.

Juan and his wife checked a lot of boxes, especially because, you know, Ravens Jane Doe, had features that indicated she could be from a South American country like Peru. And so Ravens wondered if Juan's wife had tried to get into America by using a human smuggler, which is someone who transports immigrants across borders illegally. Human smuggling was obviously an unregulated industry. And Ravens knew smugglers could be very violent or reckless, and the people they were transporting often had no protection. Meaning, sometimes when people would go to these smugglers to try to get help to

to go to these other countries, sometimes the smuggler wouldn't help them. They would just rob them, or in some cases, rob them and then kill them and dispose of their body. And unfortunately, again, because there's no regulation or oversight, a lot of times these horrible crimes would just go unnoticed. And so maybe if that's what had happened to Raven's Jane Doe, it would explain why the tags were ripped off the suitcase. The smuggler who, you know, committed this crime, would not have wanted to leave any ID on or around the body that could be. be traced back to them. And so Ravens picked up his phone to call the LAX Airport Operations Manager to see if he could get the logs for any flights coming from Peru to LAX on the day the body was

found. And that was when he discovered there was a big problem with this theory. Because there were no flights from Peru. The only flights that day that used the luggage carousel where the body was found were from Korea, Japan, and Germany. And there weren't any flights that originated in Peru that had layovers in those countries either, which meant it just wasn't possible that his Jane Doe was Juan's wife. And so now Ravens was stumped all over again. He had almost no evidence to go on. All he really had was the suitcase and the body. And the actual crime scene itself was maybe somewhere in Korea or Japan or Germany. And so Ravens really didn't have a good idea of where he should begin looking for more evidence. But then he got an idea. Detective Ravens got up from his desk and headed straight

to the evidence room. He put on a pair of disposable gloves, and he found the box that contained evidence from Jane Doe's case, and he opened it up. And there really wasn't much. All that was in there were, you know, pieces of jewelry and some clothing that were found on the woman's body. And all of it had already been examined for trace evidence like blood or hair. However, blood and hair were not what Ravens was looking for. One at a time, he lifted out each of the sealed plastic bags that contained Jane Doe's belongings until he got to her blue sweater. He took the sweater out of the plastic, and he turned it over in his hands and then checked inside the neckband. And there he found exactly what he was looking for.

Immediately he felt a rush of adrenaline. He was onto something here. And so he reached back into the box and he grabbed another plastic bag with a pair of gray pants in it. And he did the same thing. He looked at the waistband. Then he opened a third bag and he checked inside of her blouse. And each time his hunch had been right. Jane Doe's clothing had labels sewn into them.

And the labels were clearly written in some language that was not. English. Ravens wasn't sure, but to him, he thought maybe the letters looked Middle Eastern. It didn't take long for the FBI to help Ravens and the LAPD identify the origin of Jane Doe's clothing. All of it had been made in the Middle East, in Iran. This meant that finally, Detective Ravens had a likely country of origin for his Jane Doe. But he also had another problem now. Really, he had the same problem he'd had when he thought his victim was from Peru. And that was that there were only three international flights that his Jane Doe could have been on. And none of them, them originated in Iran. And there were no connecting flights from Iran that day either. And so Ravens

needed the public's help. On Thursday, so three days after the body was found, he and another detective sat down with a reporter from the city's newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, a publication that's read all over the world. And Raven and this other detective's goal was, you know, to give as many updates as they could about the case, you know, hoping that somebody somewhere would read the story, recognize a detail, and come forward. However, that's not really how the interview played out. By the end of it, Ravens was feeling pretty discouraged. By all the questions, he and his partner just couldn't answer. In fact, the last thing he said to the reporter, which ended up getting printed as the sort of last line of the story, the lasting impression,

if you will, was don't be too surprised if you never find out where she came from or who she is. The next morning, Detective Ravens got to his office and had barely taken off his coat when his phone ring. A police officer from Sacramento, California was on the other line, and he sounded all worked up. He told Ravens that he knew that, you know, the LA investigators have been working on the airport Jane Doe case, and even though it wasn't going anywhere, he knew it was a big deal for them. But he told Ravens that he actually had this unbelievable development in Northern California that was connected to the airport Jane Doe case. He said authorities in Northern California had just found another body. But when Ravens heard this, his first reaction was not excitement that there was new

evidence or something, it was confusion. He didn't need another body. He needed to find his Jane Doe's name. And so he asked the Sacramento officer, you know, what he meant. Had they found another woman in another suitcase or something? But the Sacramento officer said no, the body belonged to a man. And this guy's name had never even been on police radar. He had died from a gunshot wound, you know, 400 miles away from Raven's Jane Doe. But the officer said that the story they had uncovered behind this new body would likely solve Raven's Jane Doe case. This is the story that the Sacramento officer told Ravens. On the evening of Monday, January 7th, just a few hours after Jane Doe's body had been found at LAX,

a man named Hadi had picked up his friend and roommate, a 31-year-old man named Mahmood Ayazi, at the Sacramento airport, which is about 400 miles north of LAX. Hadi was excited to see Mahmood, who had been away for a few weeks. They were good friends and Mahmoud was always very optimistic and fun to be around. But on this day, when Mahmoud got in his car, Heidi immediately noticed that his friends seemed sullen and quiet and just very clearly upset about something. And so Hadi asked him what was wrong.

And Mahmood just said, oh, I'm sick with the flu. But to Hadi, Mahmood did not look very sick. He looked worried and kind of jittery and nervous. And as they started to drive, he kept looking out the windows and out the back of the car, like he was nervous about somebody following them or something. And when they got back to their apartment, Mahmoud went straight to bed. And for the next two days, Mahmood continued acting increasingly weird and paranoid. He asked Hadi to disconnect the phone in their apartment and said he didn't want to see any of

their mutual friends. He also kept looking out the windows of their apartment, but whenever Hadi asked what was wrong, Mahmood refused to explain. Then, sometime before 6 a.m. on Thursday morning, so now three days after Hadi picked Mahmood up from the airport. Hadi woke up to the sound of the front door of his apartment opening and then shutting. So it felt way too early for Hadi or Mahmoud to be up and they also lived in a city where break-ins were unfortunately not uncommon. So the sound of the door opening was enough for Hadi to get out of bed and go make sure everything was okay. But when he got to the door, he did not find an intruder or something.

He found Mahmoud in the process of leaving the apartment. Hadi asked his friend, you know, where are you going? But Mahmoud just shook his head and said he was simply going out. And so there was really nothing Hadi could do. I mean, he couldn't stop Mahmoud from going out, so he watched his friend leave and then Hadi went back to bed. But as he was in bed, he had this sick feeling in his stomach that something bad was about to happen. About two hours later, somebody called the Sacramento Police Department to report finding

a dead body in the driver's seat of a car in a parking lot. The dead man had clearly died from a self-inflicted grubriced. gunshot wound, and on the passenger seat next to the body were two Iranian passports and one Lufthansa Airlines plane ticket. When the Sacramento police officer finished telling Detective Ravens the story, he said he believed that one of the passports that were found in the car with the body belonged to Ravens Jane Doe. He said he would send it over that afternoon by courier so Ravens could make a positive ID. And when the passport did arrive, Ravens was able to finally give his Jane Doe her name back. She was a 20-year-old Iranian woman named Katan Safawi, and after investigators searched Mahmoud's apartment,

they would find another piece of evidence that would actually explain why Katan Safawi had ended up beaten and pummeled and asphyxiated to death in an abandoned tan suitcase in LAX. The evidence was a little-bound book, and it was full of photographs. Back on January 7, 1985, Mahmoud, very nervously, dropped off. the tan suitcase that contained Katan at the international airport and then boarded a Lufthansa flight to L.A.X. He was traveling from Frankfurt, Germany, one of the three cities that had flights into L.A.X that day that specifically used the carousel where the body was found. But Mahmoud's trip had not started in Frankfurt. It had started in Iran. But his travel plans had gotten all messed up and

he'd gotten stuck in Germany for several days. And so this was him finally getting out. But he was insanely nervous about this leg of the trip because of what was in his suitcase. He had expected to feel much less worried once he had successfully checked the suitcase and got his ticket and boarded his flight. But when he did all that and when his plane took off, Mahmoud only got more and more anxious. Every time the plane hit even the tiniest amount of turbulence, he wanted to scream from the anxiety. But finally, the flight landed at LAX, and as soon as it touched down, Mahmood got off as fast as he could and practically sprinted to the baggage carousel where he would pick up his suitcase and then board another flight to Sacramento. But when he got to baggage claim and he picked up his suitcase,

he knew immediately something was wrong. With a shaking hand, he unzipped the suitcase. And when he looked inside, he felt a wave of grief and horror that was so powerful, he almost fainted right there. Because the trip that Mahmoud had been dreaming of for months that he was returning home from now, was a journey to his home country of Iran to get married to the woman he loved, Catan. And now, inside the suitcase, was the dead body of his new wife, Katan, who Mahmoud had been trying to smuggle into America to start their new life together. Katan had run into issues with her visa in Frankfurt, and officials wouldn't let her board

the plane to America. And so Katan and Mahmoud tried for days to fix this problem, but it became clear that only Mahmoud would be able to actually enter the United States, not Katan. And so ultimately, Katan willingly got into that suitcase. Mahmoud had not murdered her, or at least not intentionally so. She hadn't been trafficked or anything. She chose to get in that suitcase. Together, they decided that they would smuggle her in the cargo hold of the plane, and that's how they would get her to the United States. But during the flight, when she had boarded, she had been totally alive. But when she was in the cargo hold, other luggage had fallen and piled on top of her

and slowly crushed her to death. And so when Mahmoud got to LAX and opened up the suitcase and saw what had happened, he panicked. He pulled the tags off the suitcase and left the suitcase and just got on his flight to Sacramento. And then once he landed there, he was so overcome with guilt and grief that three days later, he took his own life. When police searched Mahmood's room, they found the little bound book full of photographs that he had so carefully packed for his trip to America, and those photos were of his and Katan's wedding. The following week, Mahmoud and Katan's bodies were sent back to Iran, via the same route they had taken to get to Los Angeles. But this time, they traveled together. The next story is called Cold and Calculating.

On the morning of December 11, 1960, a 27-year-old man named Leonid Raghazov stood on the deck of a Soviet ship that was sailing across a freezing ocean at the very bottom of the world. Up ahead, finally, he could see the enormous, desolate white landmass of Antarctica, a continent that was too brutally cold for human civilization to last at scale. Basically, nobody lived there except for like a handful of scientists and other people who were researching the area, like Leonid. Antarctica was about to be Leonid's home for the next year and a half. And Leonid, he looked around him on the deck of the ship at the other 11 men who made up his team, and he smiled.

They were all part of what was called the 6th Soviet Antarctic Expedition, and they'd been sailing for 36 days all the way from Leningrad, Russia to get here. Their job was to get to Antarctica, disembark, and then travel nearly 50 miles inland over brutal terrain, where they would eventually build a brand-new scientific research facility from the ground up, and then they would stay there and begin studying the local climate. Leonid and the rest of the men had been chosen for this expedition because they all had specific skills that the team needed. Leonid was a meteorologist and also knew how to drive this special all-terrain vehicle that they'd brought on the ship. There were a few other meteorologists on the team,

as well as several engineers and other scientists, and also one of the men was a doctor. Their work was part of a larger Cold War era effort by the Soviet government to expand scientific research and knowledge. So Leonid saw this job both as a way of having this big adventure and also as a way of serving his country. And so he ultimately felt proud to be here. But as he was actually looking at the vast emptiness of Antarctica right in front of him for the first time, the reality of the situation they were in began to dawn on him.

And he began to feel a jolt of fear. Everything on this expedition had to go exactly right. or he and the other men's lives would be in danger. I mean, this is not a safe place for people. They were arriving in a place with literally zero infrastructure, and they only had about two months before the polar winter was going to hit Antarctica, which meant they had to construct the entire research facility and make sure it was polar winter-proof in those first two months,

because that was their shelter. And just to make the stakes clear, if they didn't get it done in time, or if the structure was flawed in some way, they would almost certainly die. When the polar winter came, temperatures would drop as low as negative 140 degrees Fahrenheit. And the ocean would literally freeze solid. The closest help would be about a thousand miles away and could take weeks or even months to arrive. And their only way to contact the outside world was with this long-range radio that was not always reliable.

So essentially, Leonid and these 11 other men that made up this expedition, they were going to be completely isolated, with nobody to rely on except each other, until their scheduled pickup, which was in April of 1962. Again, a year and a half later. So now, when their ship docked on the coast of Antarctica, and the captain called out for everyone to start unloading the ship,

Leonid hesitated, and so did some other men. I mean, this was it. This was the real start. But one at a time, they began grabbing their supplies and climbing down a ramp on the side of the ship. Leonid watched his fellow scientists step onto the snow, and as he did, he sort of shook off his own fear as a moment of weakness. Right now, he needed to be strong. And ultimately, I mean, Leonid was a very strong-willed person.

He had been born in a remote village in eastern Siberia, so he knew he could handle the isolation and the extreme cold. He had already done that before. He was also the son of a World War II veteran who had died in combat. And his father had taught him to soldier on at all costs, even under the toughest circumstances. So right now that's what Leonid did. He soldiered on. He took a deep breath of the ice cold air, then grabbed his things,

walked down the ramp and stepped onto the snow with the others. And then once they had everything they had packed for the next 16 months off the ship, the crew on board the ship still wished all the men good luck, and then they lifted up the ramp. And then Leonid and the rest of the team watched as that ship began sailing away, leaving them all alone for the first time.

At first, things at the north, new Antarctic Research Center went pretty well. Leonid and the team successfully built the entire research building in time before the polar winter, so when the worst weather came, they were able to hunker down inside and be safe. They'd also set up a whole bunch of atmospheric measurement tools that allowed them to study the Antarctic climate exactly as they wanted to. So by April, so four months after getting dropped off by that ship, and now only about a month or so into the six-month-long polar winter, the men, for the most part, were really really. just trying to stay warm, conserve their supplies, and gather data. However, they hit their first

real snag on the morning of April 29th. Leonid woke up in his bunk that day with a stomachache. When Leonid woke up, he had that pain in his stomach, but he also felt nauseous and so weak that he could barely roll over inside of his bed. And this really concerned Leonid, because getting a stomach ache back at home was one thing. But getting a stomachache in Antarctica was totally different. For one, there was a huge blizzard going on outside that was making both land and air travel literally impossible, which meant that even if Leonid radioed for help, nobody would be able to get to him for a very long time. And to make matters even worse, at their research station, they didn't have access to most of the regular medical treatments that would have been available

back at home. Basically, if this stomach ache was anything serious, Leonid could die. As a result, Leonid would basically not allow himself to even consider the possibility that this stomachache was serious. Instead, he told himself that, you know, he must have just eaten something weird. They were all living off of rations of preserved food, and so he figured he must have gotten a bad batch of something. And maybe he just had a mild case of food poisoning. So he dragged himself out of bed and he went to the kitchen for a glass of water to hopefully settle his stomach. But when he got there, he saw two other men, another meteorologist and an engineer who were sitting at a nearby table having breakfast. And they took one look at Leonid and immediately asked him like, hey, are you okay?

And Leonid didn't want to worry them because again, like any medical emergency is a huge deal here for everybody. So he quickly forced a smile and said, oh yeah, everything's fine. Then Leonid quickly grabbed his glass of water, chugged it down and made his way back to his bunk. And when he got there, he didn't just climb back in bed. Instead, he grabbed some clean clothes and a towel and then walked down the hallway to the shower stalls. And he turned one on as hot as it would go and then got inside. However, before he could even wash his hair, his vision began to go blurry around the edges and his ears began to ring.

He felt like he was about to faint and he quickly sat down on the floor of the shower so he wouldn't fall and hurt himself. And as he was sitting there with his head spinning and the hot water raining down on him, the dull aching pain in his stomach suddenly sharpened. It was like a horrible, stabbing pain, ripping through his stomach now. Leonid barely had time to wrap a towel around his waist and rushed to a toilet before he began to vomit. A few minutes later, Leonid stumbled into a small storage closet where the research team kept a reserve of basic medications like pain relievers and antibiotics. Leonid took some antibiotics and tried to power through the day, but that pain in his abdomen just got more and more intense.

Eventually, he told the other men on his team that he really had to stop, lie down, and rest, that something was wrong here, but maybe if he just lays down long enough, it'll go away. Leonid would spend the entire evening going back and forth from his bed to the toilet because he kept vomiting, and he didn't sleep at all that night. And by the next morning, April 30th, Leonid was in so much pain that he really could, couldn't even try to hide it anymore. He was still vomiting, he was still very dizzy to the point where he could barely stand up, and he could tell he was also running a very high fever. However, what really scared Leonid the most was what his belly actually looked like. He had not been able to

keep any food down for the last 24 hours, so he knew his stomach was completely empty. And yet, he was so bloated that his belly was sticking out like a balloon. And so lying in bed, feeling feverish, nauseous, and dizzy, and looking down at his grotesquely swollen abdomen, Leonid had to admit to himself that this was definitely more than just food poisoning. Something was very wrong, and he needed help. The scientific research team's doctor took stock of all of Leonid's symptoms, and he immediately came up with a diagnosis. And the diagnosis was simple, but the treatment was not.

Leonid definitely did not have food poisoning. He was in a life or death situation. This was a very serious thing. But to save him, the doctor was going to have to perform a surgery that had only ever been done successfully two times in all of history. And that was because this surgery required a very risky technique that most doctors refused to even try because it was so dangerous both to the patient and also to the doctor. Basically, Leonid was likely going to die if the doctor attempted the surgery. But Leonid was definitely going to die if he didn't.

And so ultimately, a decision was made that the doctor would give it his best try. At least that way, they were trying to save Leonid's life, even if they were unsuccessful. At 2 a.m. that night, so technically early morning on May 1st, the doctor took a deep breath and mentally prepared themselves for this surgery. Leonid was lying on a makeshift operating table inside the research center. He was wearing a surgical gown, and despite the fact he was about to undergo real surgery here, he was wide awake because he had to be. Due to the nature of this incredibly risky and rare surgery, the doctor couldn't actually give Leonid any real anesthesia

to knock him out. Leonid had to be wide awake and fully aware for this entire procedure, which meant all he could get were some local anesthetics, which sort of dulled the pain but did not get rid of it. The doctor looked over at the four other research team members who were in the operating room. There was a driver, a meteorologist, and two aerologists, which are scientists who study the Earth's atmosphere. Now, none of these four had any real medical training, but the doctor needed assistance to do this operation, so he'd recruited them to help him out. Leonid had his head propped up with pillows, and his knees were turned to the left, so he was twisted into a position where the lower right side of his abdomen was facing up towards the ceiling. The doctor had already

cut a hole in his hospital gown, so Leonid's swollen stomach. was visible. And now, through that hole, the doctor injected Novakane, which is a type of local anesthetic right into Leonid's abdomen. And then once the Novakane took effect, the doctor used a scalpel to carefully make a four inch long incision into Leonid's lower abdomen. Leonid took in a sharp breath, but he did his best to stay perfectly still. The incision began to bleed heavily, and one of the assistants came over and used a pair of metal tongs to spread open Leonid's skin and muscles and fat, revealing Leonid's internal organs. At this point, the doctor was so nervous that his hands began to shake. But he took a deep breath and slowly cut his way with the scalpel

through the protective membrane that surrounded Leonid's organs. But as he did, he accidentally poked a hole in Leonid's large intestine. And Leonid noticed right away because he began gushing blood. And when the doctor realized what he'd done, he sort of began to panic. And he began yelling for the assistants to hand him his surgical sewing kit. And when they did, he kind of clumsily began trying to sew the whole shut. But by the time the doctor had finally closed up the wound, Leonid had already lost a lot of blood. And the real problem, the reason the doctor was doing this surgery in the first place still had not been solved. Like the surgery had not really even happened. We just had this incision, that's it. And so the doctor knew he really had to hurry before Leonid

bled out. And so he threw his standard operating procedures out the window. He just had to go for it here. So he just took one of his hands and reached inside of Leonid's abdominal cavity and started literally feeling around trying to find the source of Leonid's illness. But as he did, it was like all the blood drained out of Leonid's face. I mean, he's feeling this. This must have been horrific. His body went limp and his head kind of rolled back on his pillow. And this was actually the exact moment that this surgery truly became its most dangerous, not just for Leonid, but for the doctor too. Right as Leonid's head rolled backwards, the doctor felt himself go weak, and suddenly he was seeing stars. And this was because Leonid and the

doctor were actually the same person. In addition to being a meteorologist and a driver of that special vehicle, Leonid was also a recent medical school graduate, and he was the one doctor at this research station. So Leonid was performing surgery on himself. He had given himself, that Novacane shot, and then forced himself to stay still as he carved a four-inch-long incision into his own abdomen, accidentally slicing into his intestines that he had the wherewithal to then stitch up as he's bleeding to death, and then he shoved his own hand into his abdominal cavity. But it was at that point that Leonid actually looked like he might die, because he began to show signs like he was going to pass out likely from blood loss or just shock.

But he'd given his assistant's specific instruction on what to do if he passed out during the procedure. They were supposed to inject him with a specific drug mixture and then give him CPR until he woke up. But just as one of the assistants readied the needle to inject into Leonid because it did appear like he was about to pass out, Leonid suddenly sucked in a huge breath and his head snapped back up. Leonid, with his hands still inside of his abdomen, told his assistance that he was okay. Then he looked over at the mirror that one of his assistants had been holding up this whole time so that he could see what he was doing during the surgery. And with a combination of the mirror and just sort of feeling around inside of his own body,

which must have been horrifically painful, Leonid finally found the thing that was making him so sick. It was his appendix. This entire time, Leonid had been suffering from acute appendicitis. Then he cleaned out his abdominal cavity with antibiotics and then sutured up the entire incision. When he was finally all done, Leonid examined his appendix that he had cut out of himself, and he saw there was this dark, diseased-looking spot right on the bottom of it.

Leonid estimated that if he had not removed this thing, it very likely would have burst in less than 24 hours, and that definitely would have killed him. Within just two weeks, Leonid was back up on his feet and helping out at the research center like normal. And when the whole team went back home to the Soviet Union in April of 1962, so about a year after Leonid's self-surgery, he was greeted like a hero. The government actually gave him a medal called the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, which was for extraordinary contributions to Soviet society. And he would go down in history as the third person to ever perform a successful auto-apendectomy, and he did it outside of a real hospital with no other trained medical professionals anywhere nearby. And that's actually not the only way that Leonid's legacy lived on.

Today, some countries actually require doctors who are stationed in Antarctica to undergo preventative appendectomies just so that they will never be in a situation like Leonid. Because it turns out the one thing you really can't bring to Antarctica is your appendix. A quick note about our stories. They are all based on true events. But we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

The Mr. Bollin podcast, Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Bollin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, our head of production is Zach Levitt, produced by Jeremy Bone, story editing by Evan Allen, research and fact-checking by Shelley Shoe, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan.

Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit LaCashou. and Cole Lacasio, Perry Crowell and Jordan Stidham. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane. Production coordination by Samantha Collins. Production support by Antonio Manata and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Klogstenkiner. Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden.

Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts or visit seriousxm.com slash podcast plus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice.

So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.