MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - No Way Out Vol. XII

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

Today’s podcast will feature 3 stories that involve people who were trapped - with “no way out.” 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 -- "Bread" -- A DIY repair does not go to plan (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Nwh9sq7DI)#2 -- "Dead End" -- A man goes cave exploring in a very unassuming place (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JtAN6PS59o)#1 -- "The Cage" -- Urban explorers discover a horrifying scene during one of their explorations (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceXSZtJlAGA) 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's podcast will feature three stories that involve people who were trapped with no way out. 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 Bread, and it's about a DIY repair at a factory that quickly turns into a disaster. The second story you'll hear is called Dead End, and it's about a man who explores this cave that seems like it's sort of an unassuming place, but it's a good. quickly turns into a death trap. And the third and final story you'll hear is called The Cage. It's about urban explorers who discover a horrifying scene during one of their explorations.

But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, Delibered in Story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload four times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. So, if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Follow Button's house and flip all of their wall-mounted TVs upside down. Okay, let's get into our first story called Bread.

In 1998, Fresha Bakery, which was a bread company in Leicester, England, was all about profits. And their employees knew this, because all the time, corners were being cut for the sake of money, even if it was totally dangerous. In May of that year, one of the company's industrial ovens needed a minor repair. One of the cogs inside the oven had come loose and fallen off, and someone just needed to pick it up and put it back on. To picture this oven in your head, think of the scanner you put your luggage through at the airport, the x-ray machine. It's kind of like that. It was this 80-foot-long metal tunnel where there was a conveyor belt that ran through it, and you would put dough on one side, and it would run through with the conveyor belt through this oven, and then on the other side, it would be fully cooked.

Whenever repairs were needed inside one of these ovens, the procedure was to completely turn off the oven. So not just the heat, but the whole operation needed to be completely shut down, and then the oven would sit for almost a full 24 hours before a mechanic would go in, and make the repair. But the mechanic cost money, and every hour that this bread machine was not operational, the company would lose $1,500. And so the managers of this company thought, you know what, that's too much money to be giving up. If we do the repairs ourselves, that saves us on the cost of the mechanic, and if we can find a way to make the repairs while leaving the oven partially running, that will save us a whole bunch of money too. Someone pointed out that it was possible to turn the heat all the way down in the oven, but allow the conveyor belt to keep rotating through.

They just needed to find a way to get in with this conveyor belt moving around them. And so they came up with a plan. Even though the oven sat flush to the ground, there was a side panel that could open up and you could crawl underneath the oven and right above you would be the conveyor belt. And so they thought, well, hey, if we just remove a couple of sections of the conveyor belt, when that gap in the belt cycles around and is right over someone who is standing underneath it, They can stand up into that gap and kind of be hunched over and walk along inside of the oven staying in that gap until they come across the cog that's going to be right on the ground.

They can pick it up, put it right back on, and keep walking on, staying in the gap until they reach the other side, at which point they could crawl out the exit. And so they began walking around the factory asking for volunteers, and they were offering extra pay. Two men, 44-year-old Ian Erickson and 47-year-old David Mays, volunteered for the job. And their managers told them they would do it the next day because they needed to be. time to turn the heat off on the oven and let it cool down first. That night, David was out with his friends and he was talking about how he was kind of nervous about getting inside of a semi-operational industrial oven, but he told them the money was good.

The following day at 9 a.m., the oven's heat was turned all the way down, and the plan was it would sit like that all day and cool off all day, and then in the evening, Ian and David would get inside and do the job. But Ian and David had a really important soccer game they wanted to watch that night. And so they asked their manager, would it be possible to go in a little bit earlier? And so the manager walked down to the oven and put his hand inside one of the entrances, and there were fans blowing into it and had been off for a couple of hours. And he thought, you know what, this is probably fine. You guys can go now. A few sections of the conveyor belt were removed. Ian was given a radio and the two men opened the side to the oven and they crawled in

on the far left side of the oven and they waited for the gap to come around. When it did, they popped up and they began their journey into the center of the oven. About five minutes later, Ian came over the radio and said, hey, it's really hot in here. And the manager came back and said, don't worry, it's supposed to be a little warm in there, but it's nothing that can hurt you. And then a couple of seconds later, Ian comes back over the radio and says, no, it's really hot in here. It is unbearably hot in here. And so one of the managers ran over and checked the temperature gauge, which unbelievably no one had done to that point. And the temperature at the center of the oven was reading over 200 degrees Fahrenheit. It was hot enough to boil water in the center of this

oven. And unfortunately, there was nowhere for Ian or David to go. The belt could not go in reverse, and the fastest it could move is 17 minutes start to finish, so agonizingly slow. And they could not crawl up or below the conveyor belt in either direction. There wasn't enough clearance, and they'd get sucked up into the machinery. So they literally had to stay in the gap and slowly walk towards the hottest section of the oven. And so for 10 minutes, Ian and David slowly made their way across this oven screaming out in pain, yelling for help from anyone, someone, but no one could do anything. And even if they hit the emergency stop button on the oven, it wouldn't help them, because the heat inside of the oven is not because it's on, it was residual heat. And by turning

off the oven, that would just stop the conveyor belt, trapping Ian and David in the hottest part of the oven. Workers ran and got their tools and did everything they could to try to dismantle portions of the oven to try to get down to Ian and David. But by the time they finally, pulled off big pieces of the oven, Ian had already made it to the other side and been pulled out, and he was unfortunately deceased. He had been burned alive. And David had collapsed somewhere in the oven and had been crushed by the machinery that went over him. The bakery and their management team were all fined for their part in this tragedy. Our next story is called Dead End. On the afternoon of April 22nd, 2023, a 49-year-old father of three named Carl O'Keefe

crawled through a cave system in Cumbria, England. He was on his hands and knees shuffling his way forward, and the only light that guided him through this tight, small tunnel, was the headlamp on his head. So Carl was an adventurer. He loved things like rock climbing and exploring caves, but this particular cave, he wasn't that familiar with. He'd only been here a couple other times, and he didn't have a map, so really he didn't actually know where he was going. But Carl wasn't remotely worried, because he knew this was easily the safest cave system he had ever explored. In fact, this place was so safe that often people showed up with their kids and let them run around freely with no fear they were going to get hurt. And so Carl has no worries here.

And also he's thinking to himself, you know, he's not very far into this particular tunnel. He can actually still hear the other people and their kids kind of right behind him. And so again, even though he doesn't really know where he is, he feels completely fine. And so Carl continued crawling through this tunnel and eventually he reached this T intersection, where he just had to choose between going right and left. And again, he's got no map. He doesn't really know where he's going. So he decides, okay, I'll just go right. And so he begins going down this tunnel, which closely resembled the tunnel he had just came from. But as he was crawling along, he started to feel like the walls around him

were kind of shrinking. And it was getting harder and harder to push his body through this tunnel. And then finally, when it felt like it was so tight around him and it was getting so claustrophobic that maybe he should just turn around, he reached a dead end. That's all this was. The right turn was just a dead end. And so he thought, okay, I'll just turn around and go back the way I came and, you know, maybe explore the left side. So in order to do that, Carl decided he would make a U-turn with his body. He would literally just turn around and go back the way he came, leading with his head and his upper body. And so he's facing the dead end. He's on his hands and knees, and he begins doing this U-turn, and he kind of turns and gets his head and his shoulders and his upper half

kind of folded around until they're looking back in the direction he was coming. But he was too physically big to get his lower half to complete the U-turn. And so he was effectively wedged in this U-shaped position. He couldn't do anything. He was just stuck. But Carl didn't panic because he knows this is a safe place. This is not a big deal. Nobody gets hurt in these cave systems.

And I just need to rethink how I go back the way I came. Clearly, this U-turn attempt is not working. And so he decides, okay, let's reset. I'll pull my shoulders and my upper body back and I'll reset facing the dead end. I'll basically go back to exactly the position I was just in. Except when he tried pulling his upper body and his head and his shoulders back to where he was facing the dead end, he realized he was also stuck going in that direction. He couldn't go back to the way he was and he couldn't return in the direction he had come.

He was stuck in this U-shape and couldn't go anywhere. Now again, Carl is telling himself that it's going to be okay. This is a safe place kids play here. Like this is no big deal. I'm going to be okay. And so we tried, you know, to kind of shimmy himself one way or the other, but it was like no matter what he did, he just could not move out of this U-shape. And as that happened, he began to kind of panic, his heart rate began to rise, it became

harder to breathe, it felt like the walls of this cave were kind of pushing down on him, and before long he was becoming overwhelmingly claustrophobic, and he just started screaming out for help. Immediately, some of the staff who heard Carl yelling out made their way into this tunnel system and actually saw Carl. They could see him in this U-shape, totally wedged. And at first, they, like, couldn't understand what was even happening here. But when they tried to pull him out, they couldn't get him to move. I mean, he really was totally stuck here. And so sensing that this was a true emergency, the staff backed out and they called the fire department. In the fire department,

they came out, and they too could not get Carl out. He was stuck. And so pretty quickly, Carl realized all he could do here was just do his best to stay calm because this position he was in was really restricting his breathing, not to mention, you know, the tunnel itself is pressing down on him. And so he just tried to stay calm and kind of have measured breaths. And he kept thinking, you know, the rescue team, they're right there. They're going to get me out of here quickly. I know it. But much to Carl's shock and to the shock of all the first responders, they didn't get Carl out quickly.

Instead, it would take an agonizing four hours to finally free him. And during those four hours, Carl got weaker and weaker and weaker and weaker and more and more panicked. The instant Carl was out of the tunnel, he was rushed to the nearest hospital and admitted to the intensive care unit. And there, they would discover he had suffered all these extensive crush injuries from being in that position for so long. He had severe bone damage, organ damage, and nerve damage.

I mean, he was in horrible shape. And despite heroic efforts by medical staff to try to save Carl, ultimately he would die eight days later from those injuries. And his death would become massive news because it really seemed impossible that somebody could die in that cave system because it was meant to be so safe. This cave system was not like an underground cave system where Spalunkers go. No, this was a cave system for kids. It was a kids playplace. All the tunnels in the cave itself was made out of plastic again so kids could crawl and explore. But adults were told, they too could go through those tunnels with their kids. And so Carl had gone to a birthday party for

one of his kids' friends. He had brought his kids along, and being the devoted father that he was, he went right in there with his kids and was crawling all around and goofing around with the kids until, unfortunately, he got stuck. The next and final story of today's episode is called The Cage. On May 28, 2022, a photographer named April Bertucci, along with two of her friends, snuck towards this abandoned funeral home in Flint, Michigan. The funeral home was a big brick building right off a main road in the center of the city, and April and our two friends knew there were lots of people that were kind of looking in this direction, and it was illegal to go into this property, and so very carefully,

they snuck their way towards the back door of the building, and they saw the door was completely attached to its hinges, it was in good shape, appeared to be locked, but they thought, you know what the heck. They walked up to the door, took a look around, April reached down, tried the handle, and it pulled right open. And as soon as this happened, April was psyched, because not only was she a photographer, but she was also an urban explorer, which meant she would sneak in to places like this, abandoned buildings and other man-made sites, just to have a look around. One, because it was fun and exciting, but also because she got to use her photography, taking cool pictures of places

like this funeral home. And so April's friends were also into urban exploring, and as soon as this door came open, it was like, oh my goodness, I can't believe we're going to get to explore this legendary site. So this funeral home had been shut down about five years earlier because of reports of unsanitary conditions inside. Anonymous reporters had gone in and discovered that there were literally like human remains out. There were up to 40 bodies being stored in one room with no air conditioning. So they're just rotting. There's maggots all over the place. There's some bombing liquids on the ground. There's blood everywhere. I mean, basically, this place was like the site of a horror movie. And so the state comes in, they shut this place down, and the owner, after being shut down,

just abandons the building, just leaves it exactly the way they had left it. I mean, the bodies were removed by the state, but all the equipment for the funeral home was just left behind, everything was sealed up, and that was that, and the place was deemed off limits. But naturally, urban explorers found out about this and began going in to see this horror show for themselves. And so April and our friends, they had heard about this place and immediately were like we gotta go in there. We gotta see it for ourselves. And so they hopped in a car and they drove over three hours from Ohio to Michigan just to check this place out. And now here they were, door open, and in they go. Once the door shut behind them, April and her two friends were looking

down this long, dark hallway. It's totally silent inside. The walls were made out of cinder block that had been painted white, but the paint was all chipping off and they had their flashlights out and it's just dark and creepy and they're looking down the hallway. And just for us, second, they just stop and listen to see if anybody else is inside of here moving around. You know, maybe other urban explorers or even other animals or anything, squatters, they don't know. But they're sitting there for a second just listening and they don't hear anything. And so with April in front, they begin walking down this hallway.

And as they're walking, there's all this trash on the ground. It's totally eerie as they're walking. You know, every little sound is sort of startling them. They're kind of laughing as they're going. And eventually, April stops in front of this first door that she sees, the first door off the hallway, and it's closed, and right across the center of this door is this big caution sign saying, you know, stay back. And then underneath the caution sign, it says formaldehyde. And so April and our friends knew that, okay, well, formaldehyde is a chemical used to embalm bodies,

something funeral homes did. And so they know that behind this door, very likely, was the embalming room, where funeral homes would literally pump dead bodies full of formaldehyde and prep the bodies, you know, to be presented at the wake, you know, before they're actually laid to rest. You know, it's like this is where actual dead bodies are manipulated. And so April and her friends are pretty excited. And so April, you know, she opens up the door and they look inside of this room and it's very eerie. It's pretty much vacant.

But in the center of this room, it's all dark, they have their flashlights, right? In the center of the room is this metal table, this standalone metal table. It's like a gurney. And it's where the dead body would be placed as they're being embalmed. And then on the walls all around are all these shelves with various tools and, you know, vials of various milky liquids. There's a saw, there's scissors, there's scalples on the ground. There's, you know, fabric that appears to have some sort of bodily fluids on it. I mean, this really looks like the scene of a horror movie.

But for April and her friends, it's like, this is a gold mine. I mean, this is what we came here for. And so April and her friends, for the next little bit, they just began walking all around the embalming room. You know, April taking photos, and her friends and April kind of moved. moving things around, seeing what was in there. And then eventually, you know, they left and they continued to search the building. And they found a chapel where there were caskets laying around. They also went into a garage and they found there was an old hearse just left inside the garage.

I mean, the place really was as creepy as everybody said it was. And so it was sometime around discovering the garage that the girls had gone back to the main hallway and they discovered this other door that they hadn't seen when they were searching over the first 30 minutes they had been in there. And this door led to this ominous stage. that went down into what appeared to be the basement. And so at this point, you know, the girls felt like they had sort of searched the entire main floor and, you know, the two friends, not April, they really wanted to go down these

steps and explore the basement. You know, they'd been here long enough that it seemed pretty clear that they were the only ones there. It had been totally quiet. And even though it was creepy, I mean, ultimately, they sort of felt safe at this point. And April did too, but she also was having a great time still taking pictures on the first floor. And so at this point, the group decided to split up.

The two friends would go down into the basement, and April, for a little bit longer, would stay up on the first floor and just continue taking photos and then she would join them. And so, no big deal, they split up. The girls go down to the basement. April's taking her photos, doing her thing. And just a couple of minutes later, April hears her friends in the basement through the floors, yelling out something to the effect of, oh my gosh, is that real? And then the other friend is like, yes, that is real. Oh my gosh! And so April, she runs to that doorway, she goes down the stairs, and she finds her friends at the foot,

of the stairs, and they're looking out into the main space of the basement that April can't quite see yet. And so she goes right down to her friends, she's looking at them, they look horrified, they're looking out at something obviously terrible in the basement, and April turns from her friends to the basement, and what she sees makes no sense. There's just like this empty basement, you know, with some stuff pushed up against the walls, but in the middle of the basement is what appears to be like this standalone metal jail cell. Like imagine metal rung. that you would imagine in a jail, but all the way around. It's about eight feet tall, ten feet wide, four feet deep.

It's just this inexplicable, standalone jail cell. At least that's the way April interpreted it, and so did her friends. And as she's looking at it, April, she sees that in the middle of the jail cell, if you will, is like this big metal box that's just sitting on the floor in the center of the cell and then right above it in the ceiling is this pretty big cutout, like a hole in the ceiling. And so April sees this and takes in what she's seeing and she can't really process it. She doesn't really understand what this is.

And she's looking at her friends and they're so horrified. They've been yelling out about something being real. Like, what is that? Oh my gosh. And she's kind of looking back and forth and then she sees it. She sees there's something else inside of this jail cell. And when she sees it, she recoils in horror. She grabs her friends.

They sprint out of the funeral home and they call the authorities. When authorities arrived, they went right down into the basement and they looked inside of that jail cell, and quickly they determined that April and her friends had not been alone inside of this building like they had thought. It would turn out, six days earlier, a local man who had nothing to do with April and her friends totally separate, had gone to this funeral home to have a look around. Except he wasn't an urban explorer. He was not going in here to have a good time or take photos. he was going inside to steal scrap metal and try to sell it for a profit.

And so he made his way inside the funeral home. He looked around. You know, he didn't really find much. But eventually, went down into the basement. And when he got down there, he turned, he looked out at that space down there. And he saw this jail cell, this metal jail cell that just kind of sat in the middle of the basement. Except what he would have seen is just the bars that sort of surrounded the outside of the cell, the actual cell itself.

The metal box in the middle that was on the floor that April saw and her friend saw, that was not there, and the hole in the ceiling would not have been there. He would have just seen basically a lot of metal in the middle of the basement. So he's thinking, I've hit the jackpot. This is exactly what I've come here for to take this metal and go sell it. And so this man, he goes into the jail cell, into this cage, and he quickly realizes the actual metal struts that made up the cage, even if they were super valuable, they were thick,

and difficult to cut through, and so realistically, they were going to be really hard to extricate and get out of this place. But when the man is actually inside of this jail cell, this cage, he sees there's actually some other metal that he hadn't seen when he first came down that might be far easier to extract. Basically, right in the middle of this cell were additional metal rods that were running from the ceiling down to the ground. They were far thinner and easier to move around, and he's thinking, you know, I could actually cut these and get these out of here, and turn a profit on them, and then come back at a later date with, you know, more people or more powerful tools to cut the metal that sort of was the cage, the stuff that he had originally seen.

And so, feeling pretty optimistic, the guy put his stuff down, you know, his phone, his wallet, his other things, off to the side, you know, in the cage. And then he got out his bolt cutters and he cut the very first one of these thinner cables right in the middle of the cell. And as soon as he cut one of them, there was this loud, rumbling sound he would have heard right above him. and then this big metal box came crashing down and pinned him to the ground. It would turn out what this man had walked inside of was not a jail cell in the basement of the funeral home. It was actually the inner workings of something known as a casket lift.

Basically, the funeral home has to raise caskets from the basement where potentially they're stored, up to the main floor to be used, and, you know, they're pretty cumbersome, big things that need to get moved around, and so effectively they have an elevator that brings them up. And so that big metal box that came crashing down on this guy was the actual lift itself that actually carried up the caskets. And the cord that he cut were actually the cords that supported that lift. And so as soon as he cut one of them, he was cutting the support to effectively the elevator car that was right above him that then fell and crushed him.

However, he didn't die from getting crushed. He just got trapped. And as soon as he realized he was trapped and being kind of crushed to death here, he reached for his phone, but he realized his phone was just barely outside of his reach. He couldn't get to his phone. And nobody knew he was here. This was an illegal activity. He didn't broadcast where he was going.

And so he's stuck. He can't call anyone, and no one knows he's here. And so for six days, that lift gradually crushed this man to death. And then finally, when April and her friends showed up and they went down in the basement, they didn't just see, you know, this destroyed casket lift. They saw this dead man's body, and he was literally outstretched, still reaching for his phone. 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. Ballin podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bowlin. produced by Jeremy Bone and Cole Lacassio. Research and fact-checking by Shelly Shoe, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer,

Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fasiano. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacasio and Jordan Stidham. Production support by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner, theme song, 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 SiriusXM.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 you.