MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Do Not Enter

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Today’s podcast will feature 3 stories about places people were never meant to venture. The audio from all three stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel, which is just called "MrBallen," and has been remastered for today's podcast.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#3 -- "The Wail" -- Truly a place you'd never want to go (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYnAoco4Fbo)#2 -- "Horse Head" -- Adrenaline junkie gets swallowed up (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdDgIl1vNj4)#1 -- "The Fixer Upper" -- A maintenance worker calls for help after what they find behind a blue "Exit" door (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKJTrTAA_Hc)For 100s more stories like these, check out our main 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 @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast will feature three stories about places people were never meant to venture to. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.

The first story you'll hear is called The Whale and it's about a place you'd truly never want to go. The second story you'll hear is called Horsehead and it's about an adrenaline junkie who gets swallowed up. And the third and final story you'll hear is called The Fixer Upper and it's about a horrifying discovery a man makes after checking on his house that's for sale. 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 podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, the next time you take the Amazon Music Follow Button camping with you, offer to set up their tent, and then immediately pitch it directly on a fire.

Okay, let's get into our first story called The Whale. At 1220 AM on August 17, 2020, a police sergeant named Kevin Bingham was sitting inside of his cruiser in a parking lot in Scottsdale, Arizona with the windows rolled down when he heard a strange sound. He couldn't place exactly what it was. At first it sort of sounded like a woman screaming, but then it kind of morphed into more of like a screech like a cat would make in a fight. But at the same time, this sound was sort of echoey, almost like it was in a cave or something. But Sergeant Bingham is looking around him, and you know, there's a school and a baseball field, there's houses and apartment buildings, I mean, he's in

a typical American neighborhood, there's no caves anywhere near him. But regardless of where specifically this noise was originating from, what was clear to Sergeant Bingham is that whoever or whatever was making this noise sounded like they needed help, and so he decided he would go investigate. So Sergeant Bingham left the parking lot, turned right onto the road, and began driving roughly in the direction of the sound, but again remember the sound is kind of echoey, it's very hard to place where it's coming from, but as he continued driving down this road, Sergeant Bingham realized the noise was getting louder, and so he must be getting closer. And so just ahead of Sergeant

Bingham at the end of this road is this huge health club. There's a big fitness center, and then behind it, kind of attached to it, was an outdoor pool area, and then surrounding the pool area was a 12-foot-tall brick fence. And so Sergeant Bingham thought, you know, based on the proximity to this noise, you know, maybe the sound, the screeching sound, is coming from somewhere in this health club. And so Sergeant Bingham drives up to the health club, parks his cruiser, he gets out, turns on his flashlight, and right away he hears more screeching, and immediately Sergeant Bingham can tell it's coming from inside of the enclosed pool area behind that 12 foot tall wall. And so Sergeant Bingham can't see into the pool area, but again, he can tell, you know, whatever it is, it's in there. And also at the same time, he's kind of pinpointing the sound. He can tell that this noise, the screeching sound really doesn't sound like an animal. It sounds like a person. And so

Sergeant Bingham runs up to the brick wall and he listens really intently to see if maybe in addition to the screeching sound, if he can hear, you know, splashing sounds or some other activity inside of the pool area that would kind of give away what's actually happening. You know, maybe somebody snuck in after hours and now they're struggling to swim in one of these pools. But as he strained to listen, all he heard over and over again was the screeching sound, but nothing else. There's no splashing, there's no other activity and over again was the screeching sound, but nothing else. There's no splashing. There's no other activity. It's just the screeching sound. And so as Sergeant Bingham was wondering how he was going to get into this pool area to

see what was going on, he looked over and he saw there were two gym cleaners coming out of the fitness center. And so Sergeant Bingham ran over to them and he asked them like, Hey, are you the only two that are working in this health club right now? Or is there somebody out in the pool area? And the cleaners looked at Sergeant Bingham and just shook their head and said, no, we are the only ones working right now. And we've been listening to that screeching sound too. We don't know what it is. And then shortly after they said this to Sergeant Bingham, suddenly the noises,

the screeching sounds changed. And it went from just being these guttural high pitched screeches to somebody yelling out a single word, help. And so the second Sergeant Bingham heard this, he grabbed his radio and called for backup. About two minutes later another officer showed up and right away the cleaners opened up the doors to the fitness center and Bingham and the other officer ran inside. They cut through the huge gym to the very back where there were doors that led out to the pool area.

And this pool area is huge. It's actually the biggest part of this health club. So they open up the doors that go outside and both officers are expecting to, you know, see this person that's calling up for help. But instead, once they get outside, it's eerily silent and there's absolutely no activity anywhere. Right in front of them are these two pools. There's this huge lap pool. No one's in it. The water is calm. And then next to it is another pool, a smaller pool that has a water playground right in the middle of it, but that one as well is devoid of people and totally calm.

And so the officers are looking at each other like, where is this person that clearly was calling for help a second ago? But just then the cries for help began again, and this time they were able to kind of pinpoint where it was coming from. It was coming from a third pool, kind of in the back of the pool area, beyond these two pools and beyond some cabanas, there was this third shallow pool with two water slides going into it. And from the sound of these screeches,

it sounded very much like this person must be in or near these slots. And so at this point, Sergeant Bingham became a little bit skeptical that whoever this was really needed help. He felt like it was more likely that, you know, somebody had just snuck in after hours who maybe was high on drugs or mentally ill and now they're just kind of causing a scene inside one of the slides. Or maybe it's somebody who snuck in just to play a prank to screw with the cops and act like they were in trouble when they really weren't. And so Sergeant Bingham looks at the other officer and they kind of are like, okay, let's go see what's going on here.

And they make their way over to the slides, and when they get there, you know, there's two slides. There's one slide, which is blue, and it's an open top, so if you were sliding down it, you'd be visible the entire time you're on the slide. And there's nobody on this slide, so whoever is making these sounds, they're not on or in the blue slide. But the other slide, the red slide, was a tube slide, and so if you were going down the slide, you'd be hidden inside the tube. And so both officers are thinking, okay, the person who's yelling out for help has got to be inside of this red slide. And so the two officers went to the base of the red slide, and they looked up inside of it, but they couldn't see anyone, but it was a big enough slide that it was possible they were, you just beyond their line of sight and so sergeant Bingham just yelled in like hey

Are you okay? And the person did respond to this but they didn't respond with words. They just responded with more screeching and So sergeant Bingham tells the other officer, you know, hey stay right here at the foot of the slide I'm gonna go up and go down the slide. We'll meet in the middle We'll find this person and we'll get them out of here." And so the other officer stays put, and Sergeant Bingham goes to the stairs. He makes his way up to the top of the platform that led to both slides. He went to the top of the red slide, and he looked down into it, but he couldn't see anybody. But again, the slide was long enough. You know, it's possible that from both sides,

looking up and looking down, your line of sight would not allow you to see the person right in the middle. And so Sergeant Bingham yelled into the slide, like, Hey, I'm coming down and my partner's coming up. We're gonna find you here. Like, if you're in there, go down, get out of the slide. But again, the response they got was not words. It was just more guttural screaming and moaning. And so feeling kind of annoyed, Sergeant Bingham gets his flashlight and aims it straight ahead of him, and he begins slowly making his way down the slide, and at the same time his partner at the bottom began making his way up the slide. So as they're doing it, both officers are yelling like, hey, if you're in here, we're coming in, like, let's go, you gotta

get out of here. But again, all they're hearing is more screaming, and as the officers get closer and closer to the middle, they're expecting to see someone, but then suddenly both officers come face to face right in the middle of this red slide, and there's nobody there. It's just them. And so at this point, both officers are totally freaked out. This did not make sense. They've been listening to this person screaming out for the last few minutes and it sounded so much like they were in this slide. Like how could they not be? And so Sergeant Bingham and the other officer get out of the slide and they start screaming out for this person like, hey, tell us where you are. But in response, they just continued to get more and more desperate sounding screeches. And it sounded like the screeches really were in this red slide or at least somewhere really close by, but there's no one anywhere near

them. There's nowhere for this person to be. It didn't make any sense. And so having no other ideas, Sergeant Bingham went over to the blue slide, the open top slide that very clearly nobody is on, but he hopped on it and thought, let me just check. And he began going up the slide. Now this slide was not a straight slide. It actually went around clearly nobody is on, but he hopped on it and thought, let me just check, and he began going up the slide. Now this slide was not a straight slide, it actually went around in the middle like a corkscrew, and so as Sergeant Bingham began walking up the slide, the slide began to turn, and so he began walking along this corkscrew section of the slide on the way to the top, and about halfway up the corkscrew section, when he's basically halfway up the slide,

Sergeant Bingham just stopped and just kind of scanned around, because now he's at a higher position, you know, a better vantage point across this outdoor area, and he's looking all around him, despite still hearing these screams coming out of what feels like right where he is. He doesn't see anybody, but then, right as he's about to continue going up the slide, something catches his eye just below him. And he stops and he kind of leans over the edge of this blue slide and looks straight down and he could not believe what he saw.

It would turn out earlier that night, so right before 12 20 a.m., which is when Sergeant Bingham first heard that screeching sound, a 32-year-old man named Ryan Kelly, who was naked and high on meth, snuck into the pool area. He climbed over that wall, jumped inside, and eventually he found his way over to the stairs that led up to the platform that allowed you to go down the red and blue slides. And once he got up there, instead of, you know, sliding down the slide, he began walking down that blue slide, the open top slide that has a corkscrew section in the middle. He began walking down it, and when he got about halfway down it, around the part where it

began to corkscrew, he stopped and at some point must have looked around him and noticed there was a support beam basically running from the ground straight up basically as high as the blue slide was, where there were all these arms branching off of it that supported the corkscrew section of the slide. It was just holding the corkscrew up. And from where Ryan was standing, he would have had the ability to see the top of this beam. And he would have seen that the top of this beam was open.

It was a round beam with about an 18 inch diameter across, and to any sane person it would be very apparent that you're not supposed to go inside of this support beam. But Ryan, being high on meth, decided he would go inside of this support beam. He climbed up to the top of it and then wedged his feet into this narrow opening, and Ryan's a pretty skinny guy, he's naked, he's slick with sweat and he began lowering himself into this pipe, this hollow pipe that goes all the way to the ground and after he got his feet in there and his legs in there, you know, he's forcing himself down, he finally got most of his torso in and then he would have realized his hands would not be

able to fit unless he put them over his head and so he put his most of his torso in, and then he would have realized his hands would not be able to fit unless he put them over his head. And so he put his arms over his head and just continued to wiggle himself down into this pipe, and at some point, probably around the time that his shoulders cleared the pipe, he kind of slipped pretty quickly about halfway down the pipe. Not to the ground, basically suspended right in the middle of this tiny, tight pipe. Now, we don't know for sure if Ryan intended to get out of this pipe at some point, but once he was about halfway down the pipe with his arms up over his head, there was absolutely no way he could get himself out again. There was just nowhere to pull

or anything. He's completely wedged, barely able to breathe, and on top of that he's in Arizona. It's one of the hottest places in the world, and on top of that, he's in Arizona. It's one of the hottest places in the world, and on top of that, they were experiencing a heat wave, and his body, his naked body, is pressed all against the inside of this metal pipe that conducts heat. And so he's basically in this really tight space, cooking alive, and there's no way to get out. And so at some point, as Ryan is likely realizing that he is completely screwed here and he's beginning to literally cook to death, he began trying to scream out for help, but he was likely in so much pain and also again under the influence of meth that he couldn't quite yell out words.

He just let out those horrible screeching sounds and those were the noises that Sergeant Bingham heard. But then when Sergeant Bingham and his partner got into the pool area, they were able to identify roughly where Ryan was stuck. But Ryan, again, couldn't make words. He's so messed up, he's in so much pain that he just continued to scream. And because he was in that pipe, it kind of created this weird echoey phenomenon where when he would scream out, his voice would come out of the pipe and almost kind of get thrown around the park. That's why Sergeant Bingham and the other officer couldn't quite figure out where he was, and at one point it sounded like he was in that red slide, when obviously he wasn't.

And so finally at some point Sergeant Bingham walked up the blue slide, he's halfway up, he's hearing Ryan screaming, and he turns and he looks down, and from his perspective, where he was standing, he was looking down into that pipe. And looking up at him, inside of this pipe is Ryan, arms up over his head, wide-eyed, screeching, trying to be saved. But unfortunately for Ryan, his rescue was a very technically difficult thing to pull off. He was too far down the pipe for anyone to reach him to pull him up, and when they threw a rope down to him inside of the pipe, Ryan was too weak to grab onto

the rope. And so for hours and hours, rescue crews tried to get Ryan out, the whole time Ryan is panicking and screaming and cooking to death basically. You know, they couldn't get him out, and so finally at the seven hour mark after he was found, they had to bring in a crane and they had to fully dismantle the slide and pull that pipe out of the ground. But unfortunately, by that point, it was too late for Ryan. He had passed away.

An autopsy would show that ultimately what killed Ryan was the combination of the meth in his bloodstream and the extreme heat he was exposed to inside of that pipe. A few miles from the glass spires of Midtown Atlanta lies the South River Forest. In 2021 and 2022, the woods became a home to activists from all over the country who gathered to stop the nearby construction of a massive new police training facility nicknamed Cop City. At approximately nine o'clock this morning, as law enforcement was moving through various of a massive new police training facility nicknamed Cop City. At approximately nine o'clock this morning, as law enforcement was moving through various sectors

of the property, an individual without warning shot a Georgia State Patrol troop. This is, We Came to the Forest, a story about resistance. The abolitionist mission isn't done until every prison is empty and shut down. Love and fellowship. It was probably the happiest I've ever been in my life. And the lengths will go to protect the things we hold closest to our hearts.

Follow We Came to the Forest on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of We Came to the Forest early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. collection of top True Crime podcasts completely ad-free. No more wading through cliffhangers or dealing with ads, because let's be honest, ads shouldn't be the most nerve-wracking part of True Crime. To start your ad-free listening journey, download the Amazon Music app for free or head to Amazon.com slash ballin. That's Amazon.com slash B-A-L-L-E-N. Dive into uninterrupted true crime stories today. Our next story is called Horsehead. Jacob Cockle always loved the water. He grew up in a town called Penzance in the UK and he spent virtually all of his time

surfing at one of their beaches. By the time he was 10 years old, he started skipping school to go surfing and started getting in a lot of trouble for that. But despite his parents and his teachers' frustrations with him, there was always one person that had his back and totally understood him, and that was his older sister, Grace. They were so close, they developed their own special language they talked to each other in, and Jacob used it so much that people actually thought he had a speech problem. But when Jacob was 17, his life was turned upside down when Grace was diagnosed with a brain tumor and she died very quickly after that.

This had a profound impact on Jacob, it was like his entire view of the world had totally changed overnight, and he began to believe that Grace's energy had been transferred to him and that it was now his duty to live for the two of them. And so what this translated to is Jacob began taking lots and lots of risks because he felt like he didn't want to pass up opportunities. He wanted to live life to the fullest, even if it was a little bit reckless. In addition to loving the water, Jacob also loved photography. And so with this new risk-taking attitude, he began doing these water-based stunts and

filming himself in the process. Things like surfing in storms or leaping off of buildings into fairly shallow water or diving to dangerous depths on a breath hold. And Jacob loved it. He loved taking these risks. He loved filming himself taking these risks and so he decided this was going to be his career. He was going to be a world-famous photographer that specialized in dangerous photos and films. And so Jacob got this big piece of paper and he put it on his bedroom wall and with black

marker, he wrote himself a reminder, I will become a world famous photographer and I will let nothing stand in my way. Basically, he was prepared to go to any length to get the shots that he needed to get. And this intense attitude worked. By his early 20s, he had won major awards with National Geographic and the Sunday Times. He was also a regular contributor to surf magazines where he almost always got the cover shot. Most of his award-winning pictures were taken of the sea in its most violent and turbulent forms. The money Jacob earned from these competitions he spent on improving his photography equipment.

If he was ever given a physical prize like a brand new TV, he would just give it away to his friends, because all Jacob was really focused on was going out and living life to the fullest and taking crazy chances and capturing those experiences on film. And one crazy experience that he had always wanted to capture on film actually took place right in his hometown of Penzance. A very strong whirlpool would appear a few times a year in a harbor that was right near his childhood home. It was just a quirk of engineering designed to keep the harbor from silting up.

At high tide the water would come in and it would hit this quay wall and at the bottom of the quay wall was a tunnel that fed into this other pool, and so that would fill up with water. And then when the tide retreated during low tide, the water in the harbor would drain out and the water from the pool would slowly filter out back through this tunnel, pushing the silt and sand out of the harbor. But sometimes when the water came into the harbor during high tide it would come in so quickly it would build up against the quay wall and it wouldn't drain fast enough down through that tunnel into the pool. And so just like in your bathtub if you pull the plug when it's full you'll see a whirlpool form as the water is sucked down the drain. The same thing would happen at this

quay wall as all this water is being forced down and sucked through this pipe. It would create this huge whirlpool that you could see on the surface from the quay wall. And even though this whirlpool only formed a couple of times a year, it was so dangerous there were caution signs all around the edge of the harbor and on the quay wall telling people to stay out of the water. But in his mid-20s, Jacob ignored those signs and he started jumping into this whirlpool every time it formed. And he was able to kind of swirl around the outside and he would film it inside and just on top. And he would upload his videos to YouTube and they would get millions and millions of views.

They were totally beautiful and terrifying at the same time. On May 28th, 2013, when Jacob was 28 years old, he noticed that the whirlpool was back in his hometown and he wanted to go out and film inside of it again. And so he ran to his friend David's house and he asked him to, hey, come down to the harbor and film me inside of this whirlpool. And so by the time David got his stuff together and made it to the quay wall, he looked down and he saw Jacob was already in the whirlpool swirling around. David also noticed that Jacob was wearing a rubber horse head mask and he told David the reason he was doing it is because it would be more eye catching on YouTube.

So David leaned over the wall and began filming Jacob as he swirled around this whirlpool in his horse mask making nae sounds and at some point Jacob stopped and he swam away from the whirlpool but you could see the pull of the whirlpool was very strong because even with flippers on Jacob really struggled to swim away from this whirlpool. But he was in good spirits about it and he was laughing with David and saying how when he first jumped in, he was actually pretty scared of this whirlpool. It's definitely the strongest one he had been in over at this quay wall. And David would say, yeah, I can tell from up here that one's really strong.

For the next 10 or 15 minutes, David and Jacob kind of joked back and forth about the strength of the whirlpool and Jacob would put his mask back down and swirl around inside of the whirlpool, then get out again. And then towards the end of the video, Jacob yells up to David that he only has one more thing in mind that he wants to do with the whirlpool. He wants to dive down below and film it from underneath. And so he asks David to hand down his camera. David hands it down, and you see Jacob adjusting his camera.

And then he dives below the surface to begin filming this whirlpool. And so David's up on the top watching Jacob and he's very familiar with Jacob. He knows he does things like this. He knows he has a great breath hold. But after a couple of minutes when he doesn't reemerge, David gets scared and starts yelling for him. And when he still doesn't come up, David turns and runs to the other side of the quay wall and looks over that railing towards the pool side and he can see the water is still rushing into the pool and there's no sign of Jacob and so he ran back and forth a couple of times and he didn't see Jacob until finally he went back to the pool side and he

saw Jacob down below he was lying face down in the water. So David ran down and waited out to him, but it was already too late. Jacob had drowned. The reason Jacob was able to swirl around at the top of this whirlpool and not get pulled under is because he had a wetsuit on and wetsuits are buoyant. But as you go underneath the water, the deeper you go, the water pressure pushes against your wetsuit and it reduces the overall buoyancy of your wetsuit. And so when Jacob dove down into this whirlpool, the pressure pushed against the suit, he lost his buoyancy, and then he got caught up in the current of this very strong whirlpool and he was pulled slowly down to the bottom.

And so he probably fought as much as he could to try to get out of there, but he couldn't and eventually was forced into that tunnel underneath the quay wall, and he was under there until he drowned, and then he was eventually spit out the other side. The next and final story of today's episode is called The Fixer Upper. On May 28th, 1986, a Florida real estate agent named Marguerite Welty walked up to the front door of this little white stucco home sitting right on the edge of Lake Placid in Florida. Marguerite pulled out a key from her pocket. She unlocked the door, opened it up, and then she turned around and standing right in front

of her were her clients, this young couple named Lois and Richard Goodman, who were thinking about buying a vacation home. And so this was one of the homes they were checking out. And so Marguerite smiled at her clients and gestured for them to come inside. The house sat at the end of a quiet, shady street lined with huge trees and other small vacation homes. And a lot of these vacation homes

were perfectly manicured and beautiful, but the house they were touring today was not. It was unmaintained and overgrown, you know, the paint was chipped and fading. It just looked bad because the owner of this property at one time had used this house as their vacation home but lately they had just kind of stopped coming out here and so they really never came out to check on the property and so it definitely had the look of an abandoned property. And now the owner didn't even know if they could fix it anymore. And so they decided they would

just sell it and let somebody else deal with it. And so Marguerite led Richard and Lois into the house and she brought them right into the carpeted living room. And the house was very musky and dark. You know, all the windows were shot and all the blinds were drawn. And so Marguerite kind of instinctively walked over to the windows and began opening up the curtains and opening up the blinds, letting sunlight into the house. And so as this room is suddenly being lit up by the sunlight behind her, Marguerite hears Lois and Richard start to laugh at something. And so Marguerite turned around to see what was so funny.

And when she saw what Lois and Richard were laughing at, Marguerite did not think it was very funny. In fact, she thought the fact that they were laughing right now was kinda rude, especially when you considered what this couple had asked of Marguerite. They had come to Marguerite and said, hey, we want to buy a vacation home. It needs to be perfect. It needs to be on the water. It needs to have this and this and this. But we have a tiny budget.

Go find us homes. And so Marguerite had really struggled to find vacation homes that were in their budget. But then she had found this diamond in the rough, this house on the coast of Lake Placid. It had three bedrooms, two bathrooms. It had a garage, direct access to the water, it even had a boat dock. I mean, this house was perfect. Now of course, this house had obvious downsides, like the fact that it was clearly a fixer-upper.

I mean, anybody who bought this home would have to put a lot of work into just making it livable again. And then also, there was a distinct weird vibe about the property itself because the owner was never there. They had covered all the furniture inside of this home with white sheets, which kind of gave it a sort of haunted house vibe. And then also there was virtually nothing of value inside of this home because again, the owner was like never here. But for some reason there was the super intense security system on the house. I mean, there's cameras everywhere and the windows had metal bars over them.

And so the aesthetic inside and outside this house was not a good one. But again, you know, Marguerite felt like if they could just look past the negative stuff, this was really the perfect place for them. But now here Marguerite's clients were laughing away at the kind of goofy interior of this home. It's like they were being totally disrespectful both to Marguerite and frankly to the owner of this property. I mean, this is a good opportunity. What are you doing?

But ultimately Marguerite couldn't force her clients to be appreciative of this. And so she just kind of laughed along with them, but then very quickly changed the subject and told them, you know, hey, let's go walk around the rest of the house. Make sure you see the whole place before you pass judgment. But Marguerite only had to lead Richard and Lois around the house for a couple more minutes to figure out they definitely were not in the market for this house. They could not look past the bizarre kind of spooky almost atmosphere inside the house and how run down it was, you know, so they were

just not going to put an offer on this house and Marguerite knew it. And so even though Marguerite was definitely frustrated, she told her clients, you know, don't worry about it. I'll go back to the drawing board. I'll find more properties and we'll check those out. And so Marguerite led Richard and Lois out of the property, she shut and locked the door behind her, and then she and her clients left. Two days later, on May 30th, 1986, the owner of this run-down old vacation home came by to check on the property.

Basically, because they were trying to sell it, they just wanted to go up and make sure there were no obviously bad things about the property. They knew it was in rough shape, but, you know, they're just doing a sanity check. And so they get to this property, they open up the door, and they step inside inside and right away the owner is hit with this horrible smell. Now the owner knew it normally did not smell great inside this home, but this smell he was smelling now was just so bad. It was so pungent. He knew it was not normal. And so the owner began walking around the house trying to figure out where the smell

was coming from. And at some point he found himself in the living room and his eyes happened to land on the thing that Richard and Lois Goodman had been laughing at two days earlier. Except when the owner saw this thing, he didn't think it was funny at all. In fact, what he did is he instantly turned around, ran out of the house, grabbed a phone and called 911. Four days earlier, on May 26th, a 28-year-old man named Thomas Lopez Ruiz, who was living in this makeshift campsite down by the water near Lake Placid, decided to leave his campsite and

go into town to try to earn some money. Thomas did not have a steady job, instead he did odd jobs in town whenever he could to earn a few bucks. But on this day when Thomas went into town there was no work. So Thomas decided he would go rob one of the many vacation homes along the coastline of Lake Placid. And the home that he picked is the same vacation home that Marguerite would take the Goodmans to two days later.

And so Thomas arrives in front of this overgrown property and he tries the doors and they're all locked. However, Thomas had a plan. Thomas was a pretty small guy. He was about five foot, two two inches tall only weighed about 140 pounds And so he figured he could just slip through the chimney. That's how he could break into the house And at first it went great You know, he slipped in no problem and before long he was making his way down towards the inside of the house

But what thomas realized as he went down the chimney is the chimney was not perfectly straight up and down realized as he went down the chimney is the chimney was not perfectly straight up and down instead it was sort of tapered where at the top it was wide but the deeper you got so the farther down you went in the chimney the narrower the inside of the chimney got. And so when Thomas was almost all the way down the chimney he got stuck. He could not get the rest of the way down. But where he got stuck, he couldn't grab the top of the chimney. He couldn't pull himself out. And so he is absolutely wedged, can't go down, can't go up. And making matters even worse was every time he exhaled, his chest would shrink a little bit. And that would cause him to slip a little bit farther, a little bit deeper into

the chimney. And then when he would try to breathe in again, his chest would not be able to fully expand again. And so basically, every second that went by, Thomas was sinking lower and lower and lower by little bits, making it harder and harder and harder to breathe. And you got to figure that he was screaming for help, which again was causing him to breathe a bunch, causing him to sink even farther. And so it would have made breathing extremely difficult. And so Thomas is like in this absolute claustrophobic nightmare. And without outside help, he had no chance of survival. Two days later, Marguerite Welty brought the Goodmans into that property and she would open up the blinds and sunlight would come into the living room and Marguerite would

hear Lois and Richard laughing at something and she would turn around and she would see they were pointing at the fireplace and visible in this fireplace were two legs dangling down inside the chimney. They were not so far down that they were touching the ground. They were just kind of suspended in the air and Lois and Richard based on the way the house looked already, you know, the kind of spooky vibe, you know, there's white sheets over all the furniture. There are these bars on all the windows. Everything is dark and dirty and kind of gross. Like there's this haunted house vibe to this place. And they're thinking this must be a Halloween decoration or some sort of prank.

You know, a mannequin kind of jammed up into the chimney, maybe to look like a robber breaking into your house or something that the owner never took down because clearly the owner stopped taking care of this property. And so it kind of makes sense that these decorations would be left out. And so Lois and Richard are laughing at this Halloween decoration and Marguerite, she looks at the legs too and also thinks they're just some Halloween decoration, doesn't think anything of it. And so finally they end up leaving and that was it. But as I'm sure you all have guessed, of course, those legs were not mannequin legs. Those were Thomas's legs.

And in fact, the creepiest part about this is Thomas may have been alive during the house tour. The autopsy showed he actually did not die of asphyxiation. So he didn't suffocate. He died from dehydration which which takes about two days. And this house tour was about two days in. And the day prior to the house tour, a neighbor had been outside and they thought they heard someone yelling inside of the property.

But for some reason, you know, the neighbor just didn't do anything about it. And so there's a pretty good chance Thomas was barely alive as they were touring the house. But you know, by the time the owner came back two days later and smelled that horrible smell, Thomas had passed away. And that smell was the smell of his body decomposing. Also, just to close the loop on this, it's not clear why the home owner had that really aggressive security system with the bars on the windows, he just did. 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.

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