MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Phantom Driver

Episode Date: August 29, 2024

Today’s podcast will feature 2 stories about drivers who left their route, and then bad things happened. The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#2 -- "Highway Crash" -- Police officers make a mind-blowing discovery along a forested highway in England (Original YouTube link -- https://youtu.be/oWOMY0JQdFs?feature=shared)#1 -- "Rumble" -- A rumbling sound in a forest in Arizona would be the start of a strange series of events (Original YouTube link -- https://youtu.be/E3eAMAH4QcQ?feature=shared)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 8 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 two stories about drivers who left their route and then bad things happened. 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 Highway Crash,

and it's about police officers who make a mind-blowing discovery along a forested highway in England. And the second and final story you'll hear is called Rumble, and it's about a strange series of events that started with an odd rumbling sound in a forest in Arizona. 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 replace the Amazon Music Follow Buttons maple syrup with Break Fluid. buttons maple syrup with brake fluid. Okay, let's get into our first story called Highway Crash. I'm Dan Tuberski.

In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. What's the answer? And what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head? Hysterical, a new podcast from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Around 7.20 p.m. on the evening of December 11, 2002, a police department in a rural English county called Surrey started receiving all these frantic emergency calls.

Now all of these calls were coming from drivers on a heavily trafficked highway called the A3, and they all were saying the same things. They had seen this totally reckless driver with super bright headlights that was weaving in and out of traffic and going at high speeds and nearly crashing into people and then a couple of the callers said they actually saw this car go down the embankment off the side of the highway and so it looked like they might have crashed. And so of course this police department after getting all these calls decided to send out a couple of officers to see what was going on. When the two officers got out to the A3 and began patrolling the area on the A3 where all these calls were saying they had seen this reckless driver, they didn't see the driver. They didn't see a wreck on the side of the road, they didn't see any signs of an accident.

I mean there was nothing there. Now had only one person called in about this wild reckless driver, at this point the officers would have chalked this up to a mistake or even a prank But so many people called in about this one particular reckless driver on the a3 that these two officers decided to just keep on looking and really see if they can figure out where this driver went and so to this point the two police officers had been just Driving on the a3 to try to find this driver And so they decided they would park their vehicle get out and walk on foot on the edge of the highway because there were these huge forests that lined either side of the A3. In fact Surrey, the county

in England where this was, was one of the most heavily forested areas in all of England and so these forests on either side of the A3 were very dense. You could not see very far into them and so these officers were thinking that it might be possible that this driver, if they were driving as recklessly as all the callers made it seem like, they could have veered off the highway, gone down the embankment, and then because they were going at such a high speed, they could have crashed their way into one of these forests and basically disappeared from view from the road. That in order to see this crash in the forest you'd have to be basically in the forest. And so these two officers they

pulled over they got out and they began walking along the edge of the highway staring into the forest looking for a sign of a car wreck. And sure enough after walking for a while one of the officers spotted something deep in the woods that looked almost metallic or plastic. Whatever it was it wasn't supposed to be in the forest. And so the officers made their way into the tree line and began walking through all the trees. And as they got closer, they realized very clearly there was a car. There was a wreck in the forest. And so the two officers, they began running towards the wreck. They're calling for

backup on the radio. They get to this wreck in the middle of the forest and they're on the driver's side and they look inside the car and there's no driver in the driver's seat, but they looked through the car to the passenger side and they saw the front passenger door was wide open and on the ground on the other side of the car was very clearly a body. And so the two police officers rushed around the car to get a better look at the body and when they did, you know, they couldn't believe what they were seeing it didn't make any sense like what was this now to understand why these police officers were so caught off guard by what they were seeing we need to go back five

months to July 16th 2002 on that night a 21 year old man named Christopher Brian Chandler finished up his beer at a pub in West London. And for reference, where this pub was located was about one hour north of that stretch of the A3 highway in Surrey where the car was found in the woods. This night, Christopher had gone to this pub with a close friend of his. This was meant to be a fun night out. But, you know, as Chris is finishing up this beer, he began to feel really antsy because it turned out Christopher was actually wanted by police in London for robbery and so he hated staying in one place for too long. And so the only people who even knew where Christopher was, was the friend he was with at the bar and then also Christopher's brother. He knew he was at this particular pub. And so finally

Christopher got so anxious about being in this pub for too long that he told the friend he was with that he just wanted to leave and so he said good night to his friend. The friend stayed at the pub and Christopher left, got in his car and began driving south. But Christopher never arrived at the place he was trying to go. He just sort of disappeared and nobody heard from him again. Christopher's brother eventually would report Christopher missing, but remember, the brother knows Christopher is wanted for robbery and so Christopher suddenly going on the lam and just disappearing for a while was kind of par for the course, and so the brother really didn't think this was a big deal.

And also, the police felt the same way because they know Christopher is trying to elude them, and so it makes sense he would be missing. And so as a result, nobody really followed up on Christopher's missing person report. Everybody just kind of moved on. That is, until five months later, when all those drivers began calling into the police in Surrey about seeing this totally reckless driver careening down the A3, who eventually crashed into a ditch, and then those two officers, they went out to that stretch of A3, and sure enough, it was Christopher's car, and the body on the ground was Christopher.

However, there was a problem. When the two police officers walked up on Christopher's car and saw it for the first time, they were struck by how old it looked. But it didn't really register with them why that would matter. It just stood out to them that this is a really, really old and rusted up car. But when they went around to look at the body on the ground, Christopher's body, they saw that his body was actually mostly a skeleton, which meant Christopher did not crash and die on this night, December 11th, 2002. Very likely he crashed and died five months earlier, right around the time he disappeared. Now the Surrey police, they say that this was all just one big coincidence, that the reckless driver that all these drivers were reporting that night on the A3 must have not crashed and actually just kind of got away and then just by

coincidence when the police were searching that area of the A3 for the reckless driver they happened upon Chris and his car. But remember several of the drivers who called in that night about seeing this reckless driver on the A3 they specifically said they saw the car veer off the embankment and crash down below near the treeline. Like this is a serious crash, someone needs to get out here with an ambulance because probably someone's hurt. And then when the police got out and searched the exact area where this crash supposedly happened, they find Chris's car that had all the hallmarks of a car that was driving recklessly on the A3 that veered off and crashed into the

woods. I mean they found Chris in his car because of these calls, but it could not have been Chris. But what other car could it have been? As of today we do not have a good explanation for how this happened and so it's been dubbed the A3 Ghost Crash. I'm Dan Tuberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't.

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head.

It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline

and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical. Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. She struck him with her motor vehicle. She had been under the influence that she left him there. In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death

of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask. Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling.

This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police coverup. If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a coverup to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion.

And after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision. To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. The next and final story of today's episode is called Rumble. Late on the night of May 27th, 1995, a long-haul truck driver named Devin Williams pulled his gigantic refrigerated semi truck into a truck stop in a city called Kingman, Arizona. After putting his truck in park, Devin reached over and grabbed his sleeping bag off the

passenger seat and began to unroll it. Devin would normally get out and use the bathroom and brush his teeth before going to sleep for the night, but this night Devin was so exhausted that instead of going in, he just unfurled that sleeping bag and then climbed behind the front two seats of his truck and got into what's called the sleeper cab, which is an area behind the front two seats in the cab where drivers can lay down and rest. Devin had been on the road for the last four days basically non-stop, and all he wanted to do was just finish the stupid route and get back home to his wife, Mary Lou, and their three kids in the tiny town of Americus

in Kansas. Devin hated being away from his family for long periods of time, which unfortunately was part of his job being a long haul truck driver, but they needed the money because he and his wife had just bought a new house and it was a total fixer upper and so they needed to do a whole bunch of repairs to turn that house into a home. And so, missing his family and just wishing he was done with this route, Devin laid in his sleeping bag in the sleeper cab trying to fall asleep, but he just couldn't. And unfortunately, as Devin knew, if he didn't sleep this night, then he would have to take

another break later on on this route to rest because he couldn't just continue to drive with absolutely no sleep, and so taking an additional break that he was not prepping for could affect his ability to get home on time. It was Saturday night, and the strawberries and lettuce that Devin was hauling inside of his truck were due in Kansas City, Missouri, 1300 miles away on Monday morning. And so Devin began doing the math in his head. If he stopped a little while later to take another sleep break, would he still be able to cover those 1300 miles by Monday? And he just wasn't sure.

Everybody at the trucking company where Devin worked knew the 29-year-old as being very easygoing and good-natured. Trucking was very hard. People drove insanely long hours on very little sleep, and some people even took drugs to stay awake even longer to make sure they hit their deadlines. And so truckers have kind of earned the reputation of being very rough and tough people. And Devin certainly looked rough and tough. He was this big guy who wore cowboy hats, he had a big fumenchu mustache,

he had tattoos, but in reality despite how he looked he was actually like a gentle giant and really all he talked about were his kids who he was totally devoted to. The only time anyone at this company saw Devin get mad was when his work interfered with his ability to see his family. And now as Devin tossed and turned inside of a sleeper cab, he was getting mad because he was thinking this stupid route and his inability to sleep during this particular break was very likely going to interfere with seeing his family. And after an hour of Devin getting angrier and angrier and so not sleeping at all, he finally just gave up

on sleep, he chucked his sleeping bag, he climbed out of the cab and he headed into the truck stop where he went to the bathroom, he got a bite to eat, and then he called his boss and he told him that he had just made a stop in order to sleep but he couldn't and so he was just gonna hit the road again but don't worry even though I need another break in order to sleep I will be in Kansas City on Monday morning with this delivery on time." After speaking to his boss, Devin left the truck stop, climbed back into his

truck, he fired it up, and then before long he was back on the highway driving east. Devin's boss was a guy named Tom Wilson, and he didn't find anything unusual about this phone call he got from Devin. Maybe it was a little unusual that Devin was unable to sleep and that he called his boss to say he was unable to sleep, but Devin sounded totally normal. And so that night Tom was not worried at all that Devin would not make it to Kansas City by Monday morning. Devin was like one of his most reliable guys, and so if Devin said he was going to be there on Monday morning, even if he needed extra breaks along the way, then he would be there on Monday morning. But on Monday morning, the distribution

center in Kansas City, Missouri, where Devin was supposed to go and drop off the lettuce and strawberries, called Tom Wilson and they said, hey, your driver's not here yet, what's going on? Now at first, Tom was actually really annoyed with the distribution center because he felt like, okay, the clock has just struck the deadline, Devin will likely arrive in the next few minutes and they're prematurely calling to complain. And so Tom communicated that to the distribution center

and they said, okay, fine, we'll wait a little bit longer. But when almost an hour passed and still Devin had not shown up, the distribution center called Tom back and said, Hey, he's not here. Now after the second call, Tom totally changed his mindset. And he was actually now worried about Devin. And so he apologized to the distribution center and said he would get in touch with Devin as soon as he could to the distribution center and said he would get in touch with Devin as soon as he could and figure out where their shipment was. But Tom couldn't just call Devin

and ask where he was and what was going on because this was back in 1995. They didn't have cell phones and so Tom basically just had to wait for Devin who's out on the road somewhere to stop somewhere and call Tom to tell Tom what's going on. And so all day Monday, Tom sat at his desk waiting for a call from Devin. And when he didn't get a call from Devin, Tom began calling his other drivers all over the country asking them if maybe they had had some sort of interaction with Devin and knew where he was and why he had not made it to Kansas City on time. But none of the drivers had any idea what was going on with Devin.

No one had spoken to him. Then that evening, Tom got a call, but it was not from Devin. It was from Devin's wife, Mary Lou. And she was calling to say, where's Devin? He was supposed to be home by now, and he's not. I haven't heard from him in days. What's going on? And at this, Tom suddenly thought, okay, we have a real problem here.

And so when Tom explained to Mary Lou what was going on with Devin, how he had missed this deadline, Mary Lou panicked and immediately called the police. A little while later, a police officer in Americas, Kansas arrived at Mary Lou's house to take down the missing person report. And after they did that, the deputy assured Mary Lou that very likely her husband would be found and he would be just fine. And so they explained to Mary Lou that what they would do is put out an alert to all the different police departments that fell kind of roughly along the route that Devin's truck had been on and see if any of them had had some sort of interaction with Devin. You know, maybe he got into an accident, maybe his truck broke down and he was stranded somewhere,

you know, maybe he was hospitalized, who knows, but very likely one of these police departments would know where Devin was. And sure enough, after this alert went out, the officer got a call back very quickly from a sheriff's department in a place called Coco Nino County, Arizona. Coco Nino County was located 200 miles to the east of Kingman, Arizona, which was where Devin had been on Saturday night, but couldn't sleep and then called his boss to say he was going to hit the road again. But interestingly, the sheriff's department in Coco Nino County made it very clear to the police officer in Americas, Kansas that they had no idea where Devin was, but they definitely

knew where his truck was. In fact, basically everybody in Coco Nino County knew where Devin's truck was. It was all anybody in that county was talking about. Because on Sunday, so the day before Devon was reported missing somebody driving Devon's truck spent the entire day terrorizing hikers and campers inside of the Tonto National Forest in Coco Nino County. The Tonto National Forest, which is 600,000 acres of just rugged wilderness preserve, was nowhere near Devon's trucking route. In fact, it wasn't near any trucking route ever.

It's like 20 miles off of the highway, and the roads in the forest are barely wide enough to support small cars going through, let alone a 48 foot long, massive 10 ton semi truck like Devin was driving. But on Sunday morning, so roughly 8 hours after Devin had called his boss Tom, two hikers named Lynn and Jack Yarrington were in their tent inside of Tonto National Forest just having a nice time, it's peaceful, it's quiet, and they're right near this dirt road that kind of bent around a corner, and suddenly they began to hear a rumbling sound coming from one end of this road. And so they were in their tent, they unzipped it, they looked out, and at first all they saw on the road coming in their direction was

this huge cloud of dust and smoke, and then through the dust and smoke came Devin's humongous truck Blazing down this road at practically full speed and at first Jack and Lynn are like How is this truck even in the forest? How did it get here? How did it actually manage to drive to this point and after Devin's truck? Whizzed past them and blazed off in the other direction out of sight, Lin and Jack weren't scared or worried. They were just totally confused and so they began speculating, you know, like, well maybe the driver got lost and they're trying to find a place to turn around or

something. And sure enough, a couple of minutes later they heard a rumbling sound and they saw another cloud of dust and it was Devin's truck now coming back in the other direction on the same dirt road and so Jack and Lynn that kind of backed up behind their tent and they watched as this truck blazed past them again flying out the other direction and so in some ways that kind of confirmed to Lynn and Jack that yes You know this driver who's definitely driving recklessly at this point has likely gotten lost They've managed to turn around and now they're heading back out to the Highway and that's all this was and then all of a sudden as they're kind of chatting about it and laughing about it They hear the sound of the truck coming back again and they look up and sure enough

There's Devon's truck barreling down the road again Except this time Jack and Lynn, they looked where Devin's truck was going and they saw there was a small sedan coming up the road in the opposite direction. So Devin and the sedan are going to collide and because this road was actually on a turn, the driver of the sedan couldn't actually see the truck and the driver of the truck, whether it was Devin or somebody else, couldn't see the sedan. And so both drivers are driving towards each other without realizing it, and so Jack and Lynn, they jump up, they begin screaming and yelling at the driver of the truck to slow down, but the truck didn't slow down, it just continued coming down the road,

and the sedan driver, he saw Jack and Lynn flailing their arms and trying to get somebody to stop on the road, and so sensing there was another car, the sedan came to a full stop, and then right in front of them they saw this truck come barreling around the road, and so the sedan began backing up wildly trying to get out of the way of this huge truck, and then finally the driver of the sedan just cut the wheel and peeled off the side of the road into the brush, and right as they did the truck, which had not slowed down at all, even though the driver could have clearly seen the sedan, just whizzed right past the sedan and would have smashed into it if the sedan had not jumped off the road.

The driver of the sedan got out of the car and when Jack and Lynn ran up to him to make sure he was okay, he would tell them that he got a good look at the driver of the truck as he drove past him, and he told them that the driver was just gripping the wheel looking totally straight ahead, no expression whatsoever, just barreling past him. It was like he didn't even look at the sedan, he was just going. A little later that day, and not far from where this incident had just happened on this road with Jack and Lynn and the sedan, there was this family that was hiking through Tonto National Forest, and they had arrived at this big, beautiful open field in the middle of the forest, and they planned to have a picnic in this field.

But as they came out of the treeline and walked into this beautiful open high grass meadow area, they looked out and they saw just kind of in the middle of the field was this huge truck that made no sense. How in the world could this truck have gotten to this meadow? They didn't know. But they clearly saw there's a truck and the father of the family, he saw there was a man standing next to this truck just kind of looking away from them off at the mountains in the distance. And so this family kind of assumed that the driver of this truck had somehow gotten into this meadow and maybe their truck was stuck and so now they need help.

And so the father told his family to stay put for a second and then he on his own walked across the meadow towards this truck and as the father got closer, he did see that very clearly the truck was stuck in the mud. And so this driver very likely is stranded. And so as he got close enough, the father yelled out to the sky and said, Hey, do you need some help? You know, we can go back and call someone, you know, what can we do for you?

But the man who was standing outside of the truck didn't even turn around to talk to this father. He just kept standing there motionless, looking off into the distance. And so the father made it about five or six feet away from this guy, and the father just stopped, and very clearly said, hey, I'm talking to you, do you need help? And at this point, the man who was standing next to the truck, he turned around, and he looked at the father, and immediately the father kind of backed up for a second, because there was something off about this guy. The guy was just kind of standing there and he was staring at the father and he opened his mouth like he was about to speak. But instead of speaking, he just kept opening his mouth wider and wider until it was as wide as he could get it.

And then he began wiggling his lower jaw back and forth as fast as he could and then clicking his teeth simultaneously. And so the father just began backing up like there was something wrong with this guy. And right as the father was about to just turn around and leave and go protect his family from this guy, the guy stopped with his mouth and then he just stared directly at the father and said very calmly, I didn't do it. They did it. Now when the father heard this, he was already so weirded out by this guy that he didn't even have any questions to follow up with. Instead, he just turned and began running back towards his family.

And so feeling very unsettled, the family, they ran back to their car, they drove back home and they called the police about this guy and his truck. It would take a deputy from the Coco Nino County Sheriff's Department a little while to finally navigate their way all the way out to this meadow where this truck and this guy apparently were, and when the deputy got there, they walked out into this meadow and sure enough, just like the father had said, there was the truck stuck in the mud. And so the deputy began walking out to the truck expecting to see the driver, this guy who the father had said was acting totally weird. But when the deputy got up there, he found the truck was totally abandoned. There was nobody in the

cab, there was nobody nearby. It was just sitting here, but it was still running. And so the deputy tried to open up the cab, but it was locked. He did look inside and everything looked very neat and orderly, and then he went around to the back of the truck and he opened up the back doors and he found the refrigeration unit was still on and inside of this truck was lots and lots of strawberries and lettuce. So the deputy really didn't know what to make of this truck in the middle of the field, combined with this report that the father gave about this guy who was standing near it acting totally weird. And so he just checked the license plate of the truck and he ran it against his database

to see if there were any matching reports of missing trucks or missing truck drivers, but there weren't any. Because remember, this is on Sunday this is happening, and it wasn't until the next day, Monday, that Devin was reported missing and his truck was added to a list of missing trucks and missing truck drivers. And so, the Coco Nino County deputy just called a towing company, who came out and hauled Devin's truck out of the forest. And then, 24 hours later, when Devin was reported missing, the Coco Nino County Sheriff's Department put it all together and contacted the officer in Americas, Kansas to say, okay, we do have Devin's truck, but we don't have any other answers for you.

The behavior of the man who was driving Devin's truck through Tonto National Forest was so insanely out of character for someone like Devin that it seemed totally impossible that Devin could have done this. But both Lynn and Jack Yarrington and the other people who saw this truck flying through the forest on that Sunday, they all insisted that the man they saw in the cab driving this truck matched the picture of Devin Williams. But there was absolutely no reason for why Devin would want to go to the Tonto National Forest. And even if he did want to go to this forest for some reason, he should have known that his massive semi-trailer truck was not a good choice to be driving around these narrow dirt roads in the middle of this wilderness preserve.

All we know about Devin is that at the time he went missing, all he likely wanted to do was just get home to Americas, Kansas, to be with his wife and three kids again. That's really all he cared about. The police did consider that, you know, maybe Devin just ran away, but that theory didn't add up. Devin had no criminal record, he had a great relationship with his wife so there were no issues there, and there were no other kind of outstanding relationship issues with friends or family, and financially, even though it was a little tight, they were doing just fine. They just wanted some extra money to fix up this house and make it really nice.

It wasn't like they were struggling to put food on the table. Also, the police considered that, you know, maybe Devin was kidnapped or something. But Devin is like this big, imposing, tattooed cowboy hat, big mustache, tough truck driver. I mean, who's going to try to kidnap that guy? Devin also had no medical issues. He wasn't struggling with his mental health, he had no neurological abnormalities, he also never used drugs and always passed every single drug test that he got while working for this trucking company. Devin was basically just this totally normal, nice, well-adjusted guy with nothing to run or hide from, and so none of this made any sense. hide from and so none of this made any sense. Police mounted a massive search inside of Tonto National Forest and during the search the couple, Jack and Lynn Yarrington, who had seen the truck barreling up and down the

road and nearly collide with that sedan, they would tell searchers that they actually thought they saw Devin Williams not in his truck, but out on foot, walking around on Monday morning. So just hours before he would have been reported missing, they said they just saw this guy wandering barefoot down the road as they were driving out of the forest, and they slowed down to ask him if he was okay. And this guy, who looked exactly like Devin Williams, responded by picking up a rock and throwing it at their car. And so Jack and Lynn just drove past him, not realizing that this was the guy who very likely was driving that truck. Now the police, when they began this search, were pretty confident they would find Devin, especially after hearing from Jack and Lynn that he was pretty likely on foot and without shoes walking around the forest.

It seemed like he could not get very far, but despite this huge search, they could not find Devin. There was absolutely no trace of him. And so after nearly three weeks of searching and not finding Devin, the police called off the search. Then on May 2nd, 1997, so almost exactly two years from when Devin had been reported missing, two hikers were walking on this trail in the middle of Tonto National Forest, right in the area where police had extensively searched for Devin two years earlier. These two hikers, they're walking on this trail and up ahead they see there's this white thing right in the middle of the trail, just kind of sitting out. Now this is a well-trafficked trail, and so they're wondering, you know, what is this thing?

And so they walk up and they see this white thing is a perfectly intact human skull. There's no skeleton, it's just the skull. And so these hikers, they gasp, they can't believe they're looking at a real human head, and they're thinking, you know, how in the world did it get here? Why hasn't anybody else seen this and taken it? Like, how are we the first ones to see

this? And so they would end up calling the police. The police would come out, they'd gather up the skull, it would be sent in for testing, and sure enough, DNA testing would reveal the skull belonged to Devin Williams. No one has ever been able to explain what actually happened to Devin Williams. But the discovery of his skull inside of Tonto National Forest nearly guarantees that the driver of the truck two years earlier really was Devin, and the guy standing outside of the truck

that was stuck in the mud in the meadow was likely Devin, and the guy throwing rocks at Jack and Lynn's car was Devin. People have put forth a whole host of theories about what happened to Devin, ranging from he had some sort of medical event where he kind of lost his mind and that's what caused all this strange behavior, or maybe Devin was on drugs despite not having any history of drug use, you know, maybe he took a really strong drug and that's what caused him to do all this, and still others believe that maybe there's a paranormal element to this whole story that perhaps Devin was contacted by aliens and that's what induced all the bizarre behavior and then ultimately he was abducted by

said aliens and then somehow his skull wound up back on this trail in the middle of Tonto National Forest. And as crazy as that sounds, still to this day, no one has any idea what happened to him, so that theory is just as good as any other. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Bollin Podcast. If you enjoyed today's stories and you're looking for more strange, dark and mysterious content, be sure to check out all of our studios podcasts. They are this one of course, Mr. Bollin Podcast, and we also have Mr. Bollin's Medical Mysteries, we have Bedtime Stories stories and also Run Fool. To find those other podcasts, all you have to do is search for Ballin Studios wherever you listen to your podcasts. To watch hundreds more stories,

just like the ones you heard today, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya. Hey Prime members, you can binge 8 new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. And before you go, please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good you are a fan of the Strange Dark and Mysterious. And if that's the case, then I've got some good news. We just launched a brand new Strange, Dark and Mysterious podcast called Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries. And as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years, and we finally decided to take the plunge and the show is awesome. In this free weekly show, we explore bizarre, unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps,

unexplainable deaths and everything in between. Each story is totally true and totally terrifying. Go follow Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts and if you're a Prime member, you can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music.