MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Forsaken Mission
Episode Date: June 19, 2025Today’s podcast will feature 3 military horror stories. The audio from all three stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.Story name...s, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#3 -- "Ramree Island" -- What happened on this island would go down as one of the most terrifying world records ever recorded (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiOyKVcDODo)#2 -- "Set Zed" -- The 2020 discovery of 24 super habitable planets (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6Gh1QNVDU8)#1 -- "Lighter Than Air" -- Two pilots go on a routine patrol in their blimp, what happened next is a baffling mystery (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4bUv4We_BU)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.
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Today's podcast will feature 3 military horror stories.
The audio from all 3 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 Ramrie Island, and what happened on that island would
go down as one of the most terrifying world records ever recorded.
The second story you'll hear is called Set Zed, and it's about quite possibly the worst
way to die.
And the third and final story you'll hear is called Lighter Than Air, and it's about
two pilots who go on a routine patrol in their blimp, but what happened next is a baffling mystery
to this day.
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, please push the Amazon Music Follow button into the Devil's
Kettle in Minnesota.
Okay, let's get into our first story called Ramrie Island. My name is TJ Raphael.
I'm the host of Liberty Lost, a new podcast about who gets to be a mother and the control
of young women hidden behind the veil of faith.
Binge all episodes of Liberty Lost ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.
In early 1945 during World War II, the British decided they wanted to take back Ramrie Island from the Japanese.
Ramrie Island is a fairly large, totally flat island off the coast of Burma that was a great
staging location to fly air campaigns onto the mainland. So it was a great air base and the
British had actually owned this island but the Japanese had taken it back from them in 1942. And so here they are in
1945 looking to take it back. So on January 21st, 1945, British and Indian infantry stormed the
beaches of Ramri to try to take it back. As soon as they land, they have all this naval artillery
support just bombing the crap out of this air base. It was just a matter of time before they overwhelmed the remaining
Japanese, but the Japanese do not want to surrender and instead they
give up the airbase that they were on.
So the British take that back and the remaining thousand Japanese
soldiers started retreating to the opposite end of the island to
where there was a much larger battalion of Japanese soldiers that
they could meet up with.
But the only issue with this particular
retreat was they would have to go through 10 miles of mangrove swamp where there's poisonous spiders
and insects and deep mud making it almost impossible to move. But they're determined and
they head off into the swamp. But what the Japanese were not ready for is what Ramrie Island is famous for. A
creature that makes poisonous snakes and spiders and insects look like child's play. And they
were walking directly into its den.
The British troops decided we're not going to go chasing them into the swamp. And instead
what they did is they set up boats blocking positions outside of the swamp. If any of the Japanese tried to escape they would be there
waiting and so the only way the Japanese could get out of there would be to go to the absolute
other end 10 miles away where their Japanese counterparts were. So that night as the British
are just kind of hanging out in their boats staring at the swamp they start hearing screams
coming from inside
of the swamp and its Japanese soldiers. Then you hear gunfire and then silence. And then
it would start all over again, all over this huge swamp was just screams, gunfire, silence,
screams, gunfire, silence. And the British are watching this like, do we have troops
in there? What's going on in there? What was going on
in there is defined by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest massacre of humans
caused by animals. And not just any animal, saltwater crocodiles. These massive man-eating
crocodiles can weigh up to 1,000 kilograms or 2,200 pounds. They can grow to be seven meters in length or about
23 feet in length. And National Geographic has labeled these crocodiles as the most likely to
eat a human of all animals. And Ramrie Island has the largest population of saltwater crocodiles in
the world and they all lived inside of the swamp that the Japanese had gone into.
A lot of them were bleeding from the battle they were in and so they were literally alerting hundreds of saltwater crocodiles to their location.
Saltwater crocodiles are notorious night hunters.
So what probably happened is the Japanese got inside of this mangrove, the crocodiles were immediately aware of their presence,
but they waited until
nighttime before they started having a feeding frenzy.
And over the course of the night, a number of Japanese soldiers had jumped out the sides
of the swamp, exposing themselves to the British.
And so about 20 of them were captured.
And they said that they were completely surrounded by these crocodiles, that everywhere you looked,
there were growling huge crocodiles eating one person and as soon as they were done
they would just charge after you and eat you and at the end of their retreat and
the Japanese did get to the other side of the swamp only 500 of the 1,000 made
it out the other side and so to this day people stay far away from Ramrie Island
because there are so many of these man-eating saltwater
crocodiles that have no issue ripping you to shreds. On December 6, 1941, 20-year-old US Navy sailor Clifford Olds met up with a couple of his
shipmates at the Monkey Bar for a night out in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
The next morning, just before 8am, Cliff was back on board his ship, the USS West Virginia.
He was starting his workday when the Japanese launched the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
Cliff's ship was a prime target and was quickly hit with two bombs, seven torpedoes, hundreds
of people are dying on board, and very quickly his ship is starting to sink.
Onboard a Navy ship, there's all these different conditions the ship is set to depending on what you're doing.
Whether you're at war or you're just docked in peacetime, and all of these different conditions have very specific
instructions, and one of those conditions is condition Z.
Better known as setting Z, if the captain of a ship calls
this out over the loudspeakers, every single hatch inside of that ship is shut and locked. If your
ship is sinking and you say set Z, you are sealing all of those compartments so no more water can
flow into them and you can maintain a little bit of buoyancy so you don't sink quite as fast. But
if you set Z as your ship is sinking,
especially if you're getting attacked
and there's all these holes in your ship,
there's a good chance when you seal those hatches,
you're gonna be sealing people inside of these rooms
and they will not be able to get out again.
So when that call comes out over the loudspeakers,
set Zed, everybody knows to get the heck
out of their compartments so that they do not get trapped inside of one of those rooms.
On Cliff's ship, Set Zed was called over the loudspeakers and Cliff, along with Ron Endicott
who was 18 and Buddy Costin who was 21, were at the bottom of the ship in the freshwater
pump room and when someone came by and shut and sealed their room, they did not see them
in there.
And so probably the three of them ran
to the door and were banging on it and trying to get someone's attention, but in the chaos of the
moment, that person on the other side of the door that could have opened it up again was now gone.
Even though the SetZed procedure did prevent water from going into certain cabins on the
West Virginia, it still would sink to the bottom of the ocean along with 17 other ships.
The next day there was a whole bunch of marines that were on the dock right next to where the wreckage of the West Virginia was underneath the water. And as they're standing in the dock,
they start hearing a banging sound. And at first they think it's probably just a salvage team or it's some strap clanging against the side of one of
these ships. But they started to notice the tapping sounds started to sound like
intentional rhythms that a human might make and it dawned on them that someone
is trying to get our attention underwater. There are people trapped in
the West Virginia. But when the Marines ran to their superiors and
told them there are people trapped inside of the ship we have to get them
out, they broke the horrible news that there's nothing they could do for them.
If they went down and began trying to cut a hole in the side of the ship so
they could swim out, as soon as there's even a tiny little hole on the side of
that ship there's so much pressure it would rush inside and fill that space
almost immediately and they wouldn't be able to cut a hole big enough fast enough and so
cutting into the ship is going to kill them. Also just lighting that torch
presents a unique problem because there's so many chemicals in the water
from all of the attacks that happened the day before we run the risk of
lighting a fire or lighting off an explosion that could take even more life
and because they were still months away from being able to raise the ship out of the water,
which would save them, the decision was made that we're going to have to let them die.
And so for the next 16 days, Marines and sailors were put on guard duty right next to the wreckage
of the USS West Virginia, and they would listen to the tapping as they desperately tried to
tell people, come down here, save us, we're alive, we're not going anywhere, please help
us.
And the Marines and sailors were so distressed about this, it was so horrible to listen to,
they would cry and cover their ears because they wanted to save them, they're so close,
but they're so far away.
Finally on Christmas Eve Eve the banging stopped. Six months
later they were finally able to raise the West Virginia out of the water and as crews were going
through all the different compartments and removing bodies they got to the freshwater pump room where
Cliff, Ron and Buddy had been. They open it up and they find three bodies and they realize right away the torture these poor guys had gone
through. Inside this airtight section was this locker full of food rations. They're also in the
freshwater pump room and so they just opened up the tank and they had all the fresh water they needed
but what they didn't have enough of was air and so for 16 days sitting in the dark at the bottom of the ocean knowing they're not going to get out of here, they slowly suffocated.
And we know they were alive for those 16 days because they had a calendar where they were marking off each of the days they were down there in red pen.
This story was so distressing, the Navy decided not to share the information about what happened to those three to their families.
It wasn't until years later the truth came out, but even today on memorials and monuments commemorating what happened at Pearl Harbor,
they are listed, Cliff, Buddy and Ron are listed as killed in action on December 7th.
Hey, it's Mr. Ballin here. If you haven't discovered redacted, declassified mysteries yet, well, you're in for a fascinating
journey through history's hidden files.
As a fellow military veteran, I can tell you that the host of the show, Luke Lamanna, brings
a very unique insider perspective to these wild stories.
From covert operations to historical deceptions,
Luke examines verified stories that sound almost too incredible to be true.
Like Ana Montes, the Defense Intelligence Analyst who maintained a perfect cover
while secretly working for Cuba for nearly 20 years.
Or the Tic Tac incident, where a decorated Navy pilot encountered something in the skies
that the Pentagon couldn't explain.
Luke and his team dive deep into declassified documents decorated Navy pilot encountered something in the skies that the Pentagon couldn't explain.
Luke and his team dive deep into declassified documents to bring you thoroughly researched,
eye-opening stories from the darkest corners of history. Follow redacted declassified mysteries
with Luke Lamanna on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new
episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.
Last year, long crime brought you the trial
that captivated the nation.
She's accused of hitting her boyfriend,
Boston police officer John O'Keefe with her car.
Karen Reed is arrested and charged
with second degree murder.
The six week trial resulted in anything but resolution.
We continue to find ourselves at an impasse.
I'm declaring a mistrial in this case.
But now the case is back in the spotlight. And one question still lingers. Did Karen Reed kill
John O'Keefe? The evidence is overwhelming that Karen Reed is innocent. How does it feel to be a
cop killer, Karen? I'm Kristin Thorn, investigative reporter with Law & Crime and host of the podcast, Karen, The Retrial.
This isn't just a retrial.
It's a second chance at the truth.
I have nothing to hide.
My life is in the balance and it shouldn't be.
I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this.
It's not her.
Listen to episodes of Karen, The Retrial, exclusively and ad free on Wondery Plus.
The next and final story of today's episode is called Lighter Than Air. On the morning of August 16th, 1942, a woman named Ida Ruby was riding her horse on a dirt
path right near a beach just south of San Francisco, California.
Now during the week, Ida was a telephone operator, but it was a Sunday so she had time off, and
the way she liked to spend her time off was by riding her horse along the coastline and you know
Looking out at the beautiful water and taking in the nature and all these unbelievable cliffs that went down to the water
I mean
This was a beautiful area and every time Ida would go out and do this little ride around
She would bring binoculars with her and so anytime she saw something of interest
she would stop and you know use her binoculars to see what it was, like animals or things out over the water.
And on this particular Sunday, Ida turned a corner and as soon as she did, something
caught her attention off to her right, out over the water.
And so she stopped her horse and she turned and she looked out and the sea was very calm
and she could see way out just past the horizon was what looked like this black thing kind
of hovering over the water.
And instead of raising her binoculars right away, she just kind of squinted and looked
off in the direction and she quickly realized what it was.
It was a blimp.
Now today, when we hear the word blimp, we very likely think of the Goodyear blimp.
It kind of sits over sporting events, you know, with the big Goodyear logo stamped on
the side of it.
It's basically a big balloon with a gondola that sits underneath it for the person who's driving it and passengers
And that's actually exactly what Ida was seeing a big oversized balloon with a gondola underneath it
But this was not a Goodyear blimp. It was a military blimp
because this was 1942 right in the middle of World War two and
Nine months earlier the United States had joined World War II after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor
and ever since then Japanese submarines had been lurking off the coast of California kind of all across the West Coast out in the Pacific Ocean and
Occasionally they would send torpedoes out and bomb the US mainland
And so the United States responded to this by launching this fleet of blimps that
basically were able to get really low to the water that could move really slowly and they
would basically fly all along the Pacific coastline looking for Japanese submarines.
They could literally go down and from their gondola they could look down and actually
see submarines and mark them for bombing runs or you know scare them off. And so Ida like
anybody else who was living on the west coast of the United States at the time,
was aware that there were blimps out over the ocean but it was still a fairly
uncommon sight. And so because of that Ida was sort of intrigued and so she
raised her binoculars and she focused on this blimp and she would see something
that was so strange that even 80 years later nobody can fully explain it.
But to really understand why what she saw was so weird, we need to back up about five hours on
the same day to about 6 a.m. at a military base just north of where Ida was seeing this blimp.
And so at 6 a.m. at this military base, that particular blimp that Ida would later see
was at this military base on the ground and some Navy pilots and mechanics were preparing
the blimp for a routine mission out over the San Francisco Bay to look for Japanese submarines.
The intended path this blimp was going to take on this day was it would leave the base
and the pilot would take it over the famous Golden Gate Bridge and then it would travel
28 miles to the west to the Farallon Islands.
And then from there the pilot would go 20 miles to the north to a peninsula called Point
Reyes and then from there the pilot would head south along the coastline all the way
back to base.
This whole mission profile was scheduled to take about four hours. The pilots for this mission
were going to be a 27 year old Navy lieutenant named Ernest Cody and a 34 year old officer named
Charles Adams. And both of them were very experienced blimp pilots. They had done missions
like this many times before. This was going to be a very routine mission for them. And then also,
in addition to those two pilots, there would be a Navy mechanic who would join the two pilots in case there was any malfunctions with the blimp during the mission.
And so everything was going to plan with this blimp that morning, you know there was nothing
unusual about this mission, but right as the two pilots and the mechanic were literally getting
inside of the gondola to begin this mission, Lieutenant Cody looked down at the control panel
inside the blimp and he noticed the blimp was way heavier than it should have been.
Now you have to understand that the level of rigor that went into preparing these blimps
for flight was really intense.
I mean they were weighing every little thing that was put inside of this blimp because
it was a really important part of flying these blimps, understanding how heavy it was.
And so for this to be too heavy just made no sense
and so at first Cody and Adams began like tapping on the control panel thinking maybe the panel
itself was malfunctioning and if they hit it hard enough the little ticker would go back to a normal
weight but despite you know hitting the panel it still showed it was too heavy and so they flagged
over the mechanic who was going to be joining them on the flight anyways and the mechanic looked and
kind of thought for a second and then realized
you know that day it had been very foggy and so it was totally possible that all
this extra moisture in the air had stuck to the surface of the balloon and so
collectively that had added quite a bit of weight I mean this is a massive
balloon a lot of surface area a lot of water now this was not some crisis at
worst this was an inconvenience, basically they had to
wait until this moisture kind of burned off once the sun came out and then they could
fly the blimp.
But Cody and Adams, they just didn't feel like waiting, this mission was so routine,
so simple, they'd done it so many times, and so Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams decided
that the easiest and fastest solution to this problem was simply to tell the mechanic who was going to come with them on this mission
to not come with them.
Without his weight inside of the gondola, even with this extra moisture in the blimp,
it wouldn't matter.
The blimp would still be light enough to fly with just the two pilots on board.
The mechanic didn't care, so he hopped off and then Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams
took their seats inside the gondola and sure sure enough, when they looked at the control panel,
the blimp was ready to go.
It was light enough.
And so, Lieutenant Cody fired up the blimp's engines, and just after 6am that morning,
Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams lifted off the ground and began their routine mission. About an hour and a half later at 7 38 a.m. Lieutenant Cody radioed
back to air control saying that so far the patrol had been totally routine
everything was going smoothly they hadn't seen any Japanese submarines or
anything out of the ordinary and also lieutenant Cody said they were
positioned just east of the Farallon Islands, which meant they were exactly on course and really everything did seem to be going exactly to plan.
But four minutes later, Lieutenant Cody radioed back again to air control
and he said they had just spotted an oil slick down on the water.
So basically, picture from their perspective, they saw that gleaning oil sitting on top of the ocean. And so at the time, this often signaled that below the surface of the water under this
oil slick was a submarine.
So this is like a telltale sign that the Japanese could be right here.
So Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams told air control that they were going to descend
in the blimp down to the water and fully investigate this oil slick and then they'd report back.
This last transmission happened at 7.50am.
A few minutes later, a fishing boat named the Daisy Gray was gliding slowly through
the water just east of the Farallon Islands when all of a sudden the captain who's looking
straight ahead, he turned the boat and he happened to see straight
ahead of him this massive blimp the same blimp lieutenant Cody and officer Adams
were in descending very quickly through the clouds down towards the water and
remember this was a pretty cloudy day and so really this blimp kind of came out
of nowhere and this fishing boat captain was very aware that any time blimps were
out over the
water that was because they were looking for enemy submarines and this captain realized he was heading
right now straight in the direction of wherever this blimp was descending towards and so the
captain looked out ahead and he saw that big oil slick on top of the water maybe 100 yards away
from him and so he put it together that oh gosh, this blimp is going to that slick.
That means there's an enemy submarine basically right there.
And so in a panic, the fishing boat captain called to his crew to pull in the fishing nets
and he turned the wheel as fast as he could and he hit the accelerator doing everything he could to get away from this blimp.
Because he knew that typically what happened when a blimp came down and actually found a submarine is they sometimes dropped bombs on the submarine. I mean this is warfare.
And so the fishing boat captain is getting away as fast as he can and as soon as he's turned around
he looked back and he saw the blimp was now about 30 feet over the water and someone inside the
gondola was now leaning out over the side and they dropped two things directly into the water, into that oil slick, and then seconds later these huge plumes of smoke were
coming out of the water.
The person had just dropped some flares basically marking where this submarine was.
And so now the captain knew, okay, it's a submarine and the next thing is very likely
going to be a bomb, like a depth charge is going to be dropped right there.
And so again, the captain's just speeding his way as fast as he can, hoping that if
they do drop a bomb, it doesn't affect him and his crew.
And so after making it another couple hundred feet away from this blimp, the captain again
turned around, expecting to see this blimp still hovering where it was, because again,
they had just dropped flares.
They're preparing to do something major right there but now when the captain turned around he saw the
blimp was no longer hanging out over the water the blimp was now rocketing back up into the
clouds like as fast as it possibly could and before long the blimp was gone it disappeared
into the clouds and there had been no bomb dropped I mean nothing really happened beyond
marking the water.
So it was like, what's going on with this blimp?
Today is the worst day of Abby's life.
The 17-year-old cradles her newborn son in her arms.
They all saw how much I loved him.
They didn't have to take him from me.
Between 1945 and the early 1970s, families shipped their pregnant teenage daughters to
maternity homes and forced them to secretly place their babies for adoption.
In hidden corners across America, it's still happening.
My parents had me locked up in the godparent home against my will.
They worked with them to manipulate me and to steal my son away from me.
The Godparent home is the brainchild of controversial preacher Jerry Falwell, the father of the
modern evangelical right and the founder of Liberty University, where powerful men, emboldened
by their faith, determine who gets to be a parent
and who must give their child away.
Follow Liberty Lost on the Wondery app
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Meanwhile, back at air control, the last thing they heard from Lieutenant Cody was,
hey, we see this oil slick down below
we're going to investigate and we'll radio back when we're done and so lieutenant Cody and officer
Adams they had clearly descended down to the water because that fishing boat saw it happen
but then after they rocketed back up to the clouds for some reason they never radioed back to air
control and so air control is waiting and waiting they're not hearing back from lieutenant Cody or
officer Adams and finally they began hailing the two pilots to say, hey, what's
going on? You said you were going to investigate. What'd you find? What happened? But they could
not get in touch with Lieutenant Cody or Officer Adams. And so eventually, after enough time
had passed and they still had not heard from these pilots, air control sent two seaplanes
out to that area east of the Farallon Islands
to find the blimp and make sure the blimp was okay.
But when the seaplanes got out there, they couldn't find the blimp anywhere.
I mean, they flew all over the place doing wider and wider circuits.
There was no sign of the blimp.
And when they looked down at the water in the same area where Lieutenant Cody had called
out that slick and where that fishing boat had also seen the slick, well the slick was gone or the seaplanes just
couldn't see the oil slick. But the seaplanes stayed on station in that area
near the Farallon Islands for another two hours just flying all over the place
kind of hoping to eventually see this blimp. And eventually they would. At about
10 30 a.m. that morning one of of the sea planes spotted the blimp way, way high in the sky.
Like, way higher than any blimp would ever go. It is dangerously high and it was way off course.
But when these two sea plane pilots began flying towards the blimp to get eyes on the pilots inside of this blimp,
Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams, well well when they got close enough,
the blimp just began rapidly descending, like it was trying to avoid being seen by these
sea planes.
And in fact, the blimp descended so quickly that it dropped below the cloud cover, and
the sea planes, they couldn't move that quickly, they had to do a big track to turn back around
and try to go lower again.
But once they got below the clouds to find this blimp, the blimp was gone. It basically had vanished. And so the seaplane pilots called back to
air control and they're like, I don't know what's going on with this blimp, but it's way off course.
It was way up in the sky. Now it's somewhere down below, but we can't find it. We got to get in
touch with Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams. There's obviously something wrong, but air
control would try over and over again to get in touch with these pilots, but neither
Cody nor Adams ever responded.
They had just gone totally radio silent.
And at the same time, this chaos with this blimp is happening.
Ida Ruby, the woman at the beginning of the story, was riding her horse on that dirt path near the beach just south of San Francisco and she looked out
over the water and she saw that blimp.
And so Ida Ruby, she stops, she raises her binoculars, and she looks at this blimp.
And after she focuses her binoculars, she realizes there's obviously something wrong
with this blimp.
The actual balloon portion of the blimp which said Navy on it had
Collapsed so much in the middle that you couldn't even read the word Navy
It was all crumpled together because again the balloon is like deflated and also she saw that this blimp
Appeared to just be kind of listing as if the wind was blowing it and it was not being directed by the pilots inside
And this blimp appeared to be getting blown directly towards Ida.
And so she lowered her binoculars and she looked out with her naked eye and sure enough
this crumpled up blimp that was still afloat but clearly was not doing too well was getting
closer and closer and closer to her.
And as it was, it was getting lower and lower to the ground and she's starting to worry
it's going to smash into her.
But right as this blimp was about to pass basically right over her head she
raised her binoculars one more time and she got a clear look inside of the
gondola where Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams would have been. Now Ida
Ruby has no idea who's supposed to be inside of this blimp and who isn't or
even what they're doing but she definitely recalled exactly what she saw inside of that gondola and that's the
thing that has troubled everybody for so many years because what she saw was
three people inside of that gondola and if you recall that gondola only ever
contained two people it was lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams. But now Ida Ruby is looking up and
clear as day there are three people in that gondola. Even though at no point was there
three people. It didn't leave with three. It didn't come down and take more people
on board. It made no sense that there were three people inside of that gondola. Again,
Ida Ruby wouldn't have known that. But when that information got passed, this was like,
how could that be? And so after seeing the three men inside of this blimp, Ida Ruby wouldn't have known that, but when that information got passed, this was like, how could that be?
And so after seeing the three men inside of this blimp, Ida lowered her binoculars and
watched in horror as this deflated blimp drifted just above her, you know, like practically
arm's length above her, and careened over the cliffs behind her and smashed into the
ground and then seconds later, Ida began hearing sirens going off in D Daly City which was located right behind her, that was the nearest town.
And so as the blimp came in for a crash landing in Daly City, it scraped across a couple of
residential rooftops and hit a couple power lines before kind of coming to a stop in the
middle of the street.
Now the blimp didn't like explode or catch on fire or anything, it just kind of crumpled to the ground and nobody got out of it.
It just kind of stopped and it was there right in the middle of the street.
And very quickly, first responders rushed to this blimp because there have been so many
reports of this deflated blimp looking like it was about to crash.
And so they had been tracking it and here it was.
And so they ran up to this blimp.
But at some point, one of the first responders ran up to the gondola itself where the door was slightly open and they opened it up hoping
to find there would be some survivors inside.
But when he looked inside of this relatively small space, there was nobody in there and
there was no sign that anybody had been in there.
There was no blood or anything.
It was just an empty gondola. But remember, minutes before, not even, Ida Ruby had clearly seen three people inside of that
gondola. So to go from three people to none in the space of like, you know, a couple hundred feet as
everybody's watching this thing come into crash land in Daily City, like where could they have gone?
And even weirder was when they looked inside of the gondola, they discovered that basically
everything was functioning perfectly fine.
It was unclear how it became deflated because again all the controls inside of this thing
were working just fine and also like the parachutes were still inside of this gondola.
Like if you're going to jump out, you need a parachute, but they were in here and also
the life raft, it was still inside of the gondola.
It was like there was nothing wrong with the blimp, and so this whole situation made no
sense.
The Navy would launch an exhaustive investigation into what happened with this blimp, and the
only explanation the Navy came up with this blimp, and the only
explanation the Navy came up with was, well, it looks like Officer Adams and Lieutenant
Cody just fell out of the blimp at the exact same time and they disappeared into the ocean.
However, both pilots were wearing life preservers and would not have taken those off.
That was like absolutely 101 for being a pilot of one of these blimps.
And so, they would have had these life preservers on and even if they had fallen out and perished,
they would have floated to the surface or if they landed on land, they would have likely been found.
I mean, the entire route they had been on was heavily scrutinized and searched,
but the bodies were never found.
And then also the Navy could not explain how Ida Ruby clearly saw three people absolutely like
a hundred feet away from her inside of that gondola.
Like she had no reason to lie about that.
She was just saying, yeah, I looked up, saw three people, saw it crash into Daly City.
She didn't know there was supposed to be two people.
Like she was just calling what she saw, but the Navy had no explanation.
And so in the years that have followed this empty blimp crash in Daily City, it's been
dubbed the ghost blimp story and loads of theories circulate about what could have happened here.
Some people say that, you know, the reason there was all that extra weight at the beginning
of the mission profile at 6 a.m. was not because of moisture on the balloon, but because there
had to have been maybe a stowaway somewhere in the blimp.
And then after takeoff,off you know they jumped down into
the gondola and maybe they were responsible for whatever happened to the pilots and why the blimp
crashed but it doesn't explain what happened to those three people what happened to the stowaway
what happened to lieutenant Cody and officer Adams's body we don't know other theories include that
maybe lieutenant Cody and officer Adams were somehow captured by the Japanese and some other people say, you know
Maybe Cody and Adams were abducted by aliens
But as far-fetched as these theories might seem the truth is we really have no idea what happened on that ghost blimp
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.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Bolland Podcast.
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Hey guys, Mr. Ballin here.
You know how I tell strange dark and mysterious stories?
Well, I've stumbled on some strange dark and mysterious medical stories that really
are just as wild.
Like there was a story about this woman who accidentally swallowed something that got
lodged in her heart.
There was a story about a guy where a tree grew in his lung.
Or there was a story about this person who their skin turned bright blue.
Or this town everybody started laughing uncontrollably that lasted for months.
I mean, the list goes on.
And these are not urban legends.
These are real mysteries that we dive into that have left doctors and scientists baffled sometimes for years. And so that's why I
created Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries, a totally separate show all about these wild mysteries of
the human body. Follow Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you
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