MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - The Worst Death Story on the Internet

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

Today’s podcast is about "places you CAN'T GO, and people who went anyways..." This will be a "top 3" style episode, so you’ll hear three unique stories back to back, with each story being more intense than the last. The audio from all three stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel, which is just called "MrBallen," and they have all been remastered for today's podcast.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#3 -- “A Harmless Stream" -- A group of young people decide to make a late night hike through a dangerous forest. (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bvMIHUVkVE)#2 -- “Magellan" -- The worst "death story" on the internet. (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx14YtiLFIM)#1 -- "Boilermakers" -- A college freshman finds an off-limits door on his campus. (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJCY3JaCZAw)For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast is about places you can't go and people who went there anyway. This will be a top three style episode, so you'll hear three unique stories back to back to back, and each story will be more intense than the last one. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel, which is just called

Mr. Ballin, and they have each been remastered for today's podcast. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear, which is the number three story on today's list, is called A Harmless Stream, and it's about a group of young people who decided to make a late-night hike through a dangerous forest. The next story you'll hear, which is the number two story on today's list, is called Magellan, and it is about a particularly horrific thing that happened on an offshore oil rig. And the final story you'll hear, which is the top story of today's list, is called Boilermakers, and it's about a college freshman who finds an off-limits door on his campus. 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. because that's all we do. And we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.

So if that's of interest to you, the next time the five-star review button has an itch on their back, offer to scratch it for them, but continuously misunderstand their directions so you never actually itch the right spot. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into our first story called A Harmless Stream. I'm Emily and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. OK, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about.

No? Short shorts? Free cocktails? Careless whispers? OK, last one. say pop star and shuttlecocks you know who i'm talking about no short shorts free cocktails careless whispers okay last one it's not andrew ridgely yep that's right it's stone cold icon george michael from teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet join us for our new series george michael's fight. From the outside, it looks like he has it all, but behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil. George is trapped in a lie of his own making, with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery I'm Peter Frankopan.

And I'm Afua Hirsch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time. Somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message it totally floored me and the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle that's all captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time. Think that's fair Peter? I mean the way in which her

music comes across is so powerful no matter what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. In the late 1860s, a group of rugged American explorers came out of the wilderness and went straight to a newspaper to tell them about this otherworldly place they had found. And so the newspaper sat down, they got their notepad out, and these explorers start describing this place. And they say, okay, well, it's this huge expanse of wilderness. And in the middle of it, there are all these boiling lakes that are either neon green or yellow or red or all of those. And they're shooting boiling water into the sky. And there are these breathtaking waterfalls and snow-capped mountains. And there are bison and elk and wolves and bears just free roaming the whole area and so the newspaper they take all this down and at the

end of it they say okay guys well unfortunately we don't publish fiction but these explorers weren't lying they were describing an area that we now know as yellowstone national park which is this massive expanse of wilderness in wy Wyoming that sits on top of a volcano. And those boiling neon green, red, and yellow lakes really do exist. Those are hot springs, and they are the result of water passing by and making contact with underground magma chambers. Today, Yellowstone is so popular that every year millions of people go to the park, and so as a result, the park employs hundreds of people year-round to keep up with tourism. Many of these employees are young people, like college students, and in addition to being paid for their work, the park also offers

them the ability to live in employee housing, which are basically dormitories spaced all across the park to make it easier to just be on site and do their job. And these dormitories are either free or very low cost. And so these young people typically take up that offer and will stay inside of these dormitories for as long as they're working at the park. And so in 2000, a 20-year-old summer employee named Sarah Hulfers, she was staying in one of these dormitories in the park, and she was in her room when a group of other young employees that were staying in this dorm came down the hall, and they knocked on her door, and they asked her if she wanted to come with them to go swimming. And so Sarah, she had a day off, and she wasn't doing anything, and so she said, sure, I'll come with

you guys. And so after they all got their bathing suits on, and got their towels, and snacks packed, they left the dormitories and got into a couple of cars and then they drove over to this dirt lot that was right up against this huge forest. And so they parked, they got out, and they made their way over to this trailhead that begins in the parking lot and goes straight into this forest.

And so they walked down this trail until the trail goes right out of the forest and brings them to the edge of this river. And this river was called the Firehole River. It was called that because the surface of this river steamed and it gave the impression that this river was on fire. The reason this happened is some of the water flowing through this river would pass by those underground magma chambers warming it up. And so this is a lot like the hot springs, except on a much smaller level the hot springs are boiling whereas this river was just slightly warmer to the point where it would steam so totally safe to swim in

so sarah and the rest of this group they come out of that trailhead and they're standing on the edge of this beautiful river and they walk down to the edge and they all jump in and they have this great day they're swimming around they're playing games And they were only expecting to be there for a couple of hours, but they were having so much fun that before long, the sun had gone down and they were still in the river. And so when it was dark out, they finally climbed out of the river and they toweled off. And then they realized they had a bit of a problem. Because they did not expect to be there for as long as they were,

no one had brought flashlights. And the way back to the parking lot would be going along that trail through the forest. But that was a pretty far trail, and it's totally pitch black out. There's no ambient light. And realistically, there's some pretty big animals that live inside of that forest. And so some people in this group were a little bit nervous about walking through this forest. But ultimately, about half of the group said, you know what, whatever, let's just run through the forest and get back to our cars as fast as we can. I'm sure nothing will happen to us. And the other half decided they would look for an alternative route that would skirt the forest and allow the moonlight to be their guide along the way.

That second group was made up of Sarah, along with two 18-year-old boys named Lance Bucci and Tyler Montague. with two 18-year-old boys named Lance Bucci and Tyler Montague. So Sarah and these two boys, they're standing there and they're watching the first group go into the forest and disappear. And then she, along with these two guys, they turn right and they begin skirting the river and walking around the forest. And so they walk downstream with the river on one side and the forest on their left. And they're walking for a while until they see up ahead on their left, it looks like the forest is starting to thin out maybe a little bit and so they took that as an opportunity to cut left and basically begin kind of going straight towards the parking lot which was generally off

to their left. So they make that turn they start walking and the terrain is relatively open it's this big open field with a couple of trees here and there it was pretty easy to navigate and they felt like hey we found a great alternative route. The moonlight's still shining through. We've got great visibility. And so they're walking along, happy as can be. And then they see there's a couple of streams up ahead. They get to the first stream, and it's not that big, so they jump across it.

They get to the next stream. It's still not that big. They jump across that one. And then they get to this third stream, and they realize, you know, it's still pretty small, but it's significantly bigger than the last two. And so if we mistime it, we could fall into it. Now, this was not some huge deal. They were already wet from having gone swimming, but they didn't want to jump in this stream. And so they considered walking off to the right and trying to find an area that was more narrow. They could jump across more easily, but they figured they were probably within maybe one or two hundred feet of the parking lot. They couldn't see it,

but they knew they were close. And they really didn't want to go farther and farther away to only have to just jump over this thing anyways. And so they decide, you know what, let's just jump across it. Let's just do it. If we fall in, we fall in. And so the three of them backed up from the stream to give themselves some running room, and then they grabbed hands, and at the same time, all three of them ran forward and leapt across the stream. And they cleared it. They landed on the other side, but the ground they landed on was kind of loose and soft, and so it kind of crumbled underneath them, and they all fell backwards into the stream. In the darkness, this stream had looked like the other two streams they had seen, albeit a little bit larger,

and so they were not thinking this could be potentially hazardous if they fell into the water. But it would turn out this stream was extremely hazardous. It was nothing like the other two streams they had encountered. This one was runoff from a nearby hot spring, and so the temperature inside of this stream was 178 degrees Fahrenheit. So it was practically boiling water, and it looked like it was shallow, but in fact, this stream was 10 feet deep. And so when this trio fell into these scalding waters, they let out blood curdling

screams. And the other group that had ran down the forest path, they had got to the parking lot and were waiting for them. And so they hear the scream and they just take off running in the direction of the screams. They cut right through the forest and they come out to that field and they find Lance and Tyler are on the edge of the stream, desperately trying to pull Sarah out of the water. And so the parking lot crew, they run over and they grab Sarah, they pull her out. They don't really know what's happened. They don't know this is some boiling stream. But it very quickly dawns on them, when Lance and Tyler and Sarah just continue to scream outside of the water, that something is horribly wrong.

And so one of the people in the parking lot crew, they take off running, they go into one of their cars, and they drive and they get help. And not that long after, a helicopter would arrive and it would take Sarah, Lance, and Tyler to a nearby hospital. It would turn out Lance and Tyler, when they fell into this water, they only submerged up to their necks. And as soon as they hit the water, they immediately turned and got themselves out again. So they were only in the water for maybe a second or two. And these things ultimately saved their lives. Although they did still have burns over almost their entire bodies.

They had to go through dozens and dozens of surgeries and years of rehab, and they had to pay all this money for medical bills. So it was not a smooth course after they got pulled out, but they lived. As for Sarah, she was not as lucky. When she fell into the water, she completely submerged her head, her body, all of it went under the water, and then she just could not get herself out again, and so she stayed in the water much longer than the guys did. When she was admitted to the hospital, despite the fact she was talking and conscious, the doctors very quickly realized they had a big problem with her. A third degree burn or a full thickness burn is when the outer layer of skin gets destroyed and also the inner deeper tissues

of the skin also gets destroyed, including these cells that are responsible for reproducing skin. And so if you get a third degree burn, that part of your body will not heal on its own. You literally have to get a skin graft, and a skin graft is effectively a skin transplant. They will take other sections of skin from your body that are unburned and they will place them over that site where you have the third-degree burn. But when Sarah was wheeled into the operating room, it was determined that she had third degree burns on 100% of her body. So there was no unburned skin to use for a skin graft. Her whole body was ruined. And so despite their best efforts,

Sarah would pass away 15 hours after arriving at the hospital. A year later, Lance's family would sue the National Park Service for not having put up a sign near that particular stream to warn people of its dangers. But that lawsuit was tossed out because it was determined that the trio, Sarah, Tyler, and Lance, had chosen to walk off trail in a known thermal area, and so they were being negligent, not the park. first ever round the world sailing race. Good on him, I hear you say. But there is a problem, as there always is in this show. The man in question hadn't actually sailed before.

Oh, and his boat wasn't seaworthy. Oh, and also tiny little detail, almost didn't mention it. He bet his family home on making it to the finish line. What ensued was one of the most complex cheating plots in British sporting history. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app.

In May of 1980, near Anaheim, California, Dorothy Jane Scott noticed her friend had an inflamed red wound on his arm and he seemed really unwell. So she wound up taking him to the hospital right away so he could get treatment. While Dorothy's friend waited for his prescription, Dorothy went to grab a car to pick him up at the exit. But she would never be seen alive again, leaving us to wonder, decades later, what really happened to Dorothy Jane Scott.

From Wondery, Generation Y is a podcast that covers notable true crime cases like this one and so many more. Every week, hosts Aaron and Justin sit down to discuss a new case covering every angle and theory, walking through the forensic evidence, and interviewing those close to the case to try and discover what really happened. And with over 450 episodes, there's a case for every true crime listener. Follow the Generation Y podcast on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. The next story, which is just off the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland, and you cruise eastward, after about seven hours, depending on your speed and the weather, you would come across this

massive man-made structure jutting up out of the ocean. It looks like a cross between a construction site and a corporate office building sitting on top of 100-foot-tall metal stilts. It looks like a cross between a construction site and a corporate office building sitting on top of 100 foot tall metal stilts. It's called Magellan and it is an offshore oil rig and it will remain in place until all the oil has been sucked up in that area. The people who work, often for weeks or months at a time, on rigs like Magellan are known as roughnecks and they have one of if not the most dangerous job in the world all exterior surfaces on these offshore rigs are always slick either with water or oil and so there is a constant risk of falling sometimes hundreds of feet if you're up on a higher platform you could fall to a lower platform which could be fatal or

you could fall clean off the rig all the way to the ocean 100 plus feet below. If you add in some bad windy weather, the risk of falling increases tenfold. Also, the crude oil that these roughnecks are drilling for is highly combustible, and so fires are a huge concern as well. And if that wasn't risky enough, there's also this phenomenon known as a blowout, where basically the oil well that the drill is actually drilling into will just explode. Now, all rigs have some sort of mitigating equipment to try to save themselves in case this occurs, but in reality, if it happens and you are unfortunately near the drill when it happens, you are likely to be killed or maimed. While the downsides of working on an oil rig are fairly obvious, the upsides are too. Namely, your pay is fantastic. In 2000, a 41-year-old father of two named Gordon Moffitt was a roughneck working on the Magellan. His primary job was to perform maintenance on the drill. Now, these

offshore rigs work great most of the time, but they do have a habit of breaking down fairly often. And for a drilling company, any time they are not sucking out crude oil, they're losing money. And so it was just a known thing when you worked on one of these rigs that as soon as there is an issue that causes the drill to stop working, it must be fixed immediately. Whether it's day, night, horrible weather, good weather, it didn't matter. It had to be fixed right away. And so on the night of October 9th that year, Gordon had just gotten back to his quarters to end the day when he got a call on his radio that he was actually needed to come back out to fix a problem that had stopped the drill.

Now, Gordon was a seasoned roughneck, and he had grown quite accustomed to these late-night calls to go out and fix things, and so he wasn't annoyed. He just put his stuff back on, turned around, and he headed out the door. When Gordon got to the main deck, which is this wide open metal platform right in the middle of the rig where the drill actually passes down through it on its way to the ocean, when he way to the ocean. When he got to the main deck, he was met by some of his co-workers who told him where he would need to go. The cabling that needed fixing was located right below the main deck. However, it was not accessible from the main deck. In order for Gordon to get to it, he would need to go down to the next lowest platform from the main deck. Basically, he would need to go down to the next lowest platform from the main deck. Basically, he would need to hop in an elevator and go down one floor. And from this lower deck,

the crew on the main deck would lower down a harness attached to a long wire. They would feed it down through this hole in the main deck platform called a mouse hole. It was about 10 inches across. And they would feed it down and he would grab the harness. He would put it on and then he would signal up to the main deck crew who could literally see him through this mouse hole. They would turn around and they would signal somebody called the hoist operator and they were located above the main deck, slightly back. They couldn't actually see Gordon. So they're relying on communications with the people on the main deck and the hoist operator would start their winch and a winch basically reels in the wire that was connected to the harness that was on Gordon. And so once the hoist operator was informed, he'd turn on the

winch and then Gordon would be raised up until he could access these cables. And then he'd do his maintenance and be lowered back down. And that would be it it. Now Gordon and the crew had done maintenance using this winch system many times before so this was a very routine fix. So Gordon made his way from the main deck down to the slightly lower deck and he looked up at the mouse hole and he watched as the main deck crew members lowered the harness with the wire attached to it down through the mouse hole and so Gordon grabbed the harness he put it around his waist and he secured it and after he was sure it was on correctly he signaled up to the crew on the main deck that he was ready to start and they in turn turned around they flagged the hoist operator who started the winch and so very slowly gordon was lifted off the platform he was standing on

and he was brought up after several minutes all the way up about 10 feet to access these cables and as soon as he was parallel with them he waved to the main deck crew who were not far from him at this point and he said i'm good and so they turned around they told the hoist operator who stopped the winch and so gordon got his tools out and he began working on these cables and the whole time he's trying to stay in one place because the wind is whipping through and he's kind of dangling and swinging around and then eventually he finishes the repair the cables are good and so he signals the crew on the main deck through the mouse hole that he was good to go you can lower me back down now and so the main deck crew they turn they wave to the hoist operator to go ahead

and lower gordon and the hoist operator he gives the thumbs up and he starts the winch. However, the hoist operator accidentally forgot to switch the direction of the winch. And so when he started it again, instead of the winch spooling the wire out and lowering Gordon, it continued to reel the wire in, pulling Gordon upward. Now, the winch did not move very quickly, and so it wasn't like Gordon is rocketing up towards the mouse hole. However, this problem was immediately recognized by Gordon and the main deck crew, and so they're frustrated. They're yelling up at the hoist operator saying, Stop, stop, stop, reverse the winch. They're all waving and flagging this guy down.

But the hoist operator, after he had hit start on the winch, had just kind of turned around, because this is a routine thing they'd done a million times before, and so he's not looking at the crew on the winch had just kind of turned around because this is a routine thing they'd done a million times before and so he's not looking at the crew on the main deck so he has no idea what's going on and it was so windy and loud that night on board the rig that he couldn't hear their cries and so the winch just continued to reel in the wire slowly raising Gordon closer and closer to the mouse hole. Now Gordon could not get out of his harness unless he was on the platform below. So there was no way to escape the situation he was in. And so Gordon, after a few seconds of this not stopping and him continuing upward, he starts screaming. He's not annoyed anymore. He's terrified. And so is the crew on the main deck. They are now frantically

screaming at the hoist operator to stop the winch, but nothing is working. And so one of the main deck they are now frantically screaming at the hoist operator to stop the winch but nothing is working and so one of the main deck crew members sensing that they need to do something different to get this guy's attention he runs away from where the mouse hole is to this nearby phone and this phone is connected up to the hoist operator station and he picks it up and it starts dialing up in the hoist operator, he's still not paying attention when the phone rings. He grabs the phone, puts it to his ear, and immediately he's hit with screams to stop the winch. And so the hoist operator, totally confused, whips around and hits stop on the winch. But it was too late. Just a few moments earlier, Gordon had finally been pulled all the way up right to the entrance of the underside of this

mouse hole and as he reached this hole he tried to position himself in a vertical position so that maybe he could slip his upper body into the hole and he could just kind of slide through the hole he'd still be hurt by it but it would limit the damage however because of his harness being on his waist right in front of him he couldn't get himself into a vertical position. He could only lay back in a horizontal one. And so when he reached the underside of the main deck and he's looking right at this mouse hole, he just put his arms and his legs out and tried to push himself back as if he could fight the winch and keep himself from going into this hole. But there was nothing he could fight the winch and keep himself from going into this hole, but there was nothing he could do,

and so his pelvis first was pulled into the 10-inch hole. And as his body begins to literally break in half, he's screaming out in pain, and then by the time the hoist operator had hit stop, Gordon was already deceased, and only a section of his torso actually made it up through the hole. Gordon's company was found guilty of being blatantly delinquent on many safety protocols, and so they were fined £60,000,

and then they paid an undisclosed amount to Gordon's family. The next and final story, which is the top story of today's list, is called Boilermakers. At 7.20 p.m. on Friday, January 12, 2007, 19-year-old college freshman Wade Steffi walked into Ford Dining Hall, which is one of five dining halls on Purdue University's campus. Ford Dining Hall, which is one of five dining halls on Purdue University's campus. Purdue is a prestigious American university located in Indiana that is known for its excellent athletics and academics. Wade, who was an aviation technology student and was at Purdue on a full academic scholarship, grabbed some food and then sat down at a table with some friends. This was the first Friday of the 2007 spring semester, and so Wade and his friends at the table

and the hundreds of other students that were sitting all around them were buzzing with excitement about what they were up to that night and what they were up to that weekend. And so Wade and his friends, they sat there chatting about their plans for about an hour, and then at around 8.20 p.m., Wade realized he needed to leave. And so he stood up, he said goodbye to his friends, he carried his tray to the trash can, and then he made his way out of the doors he came in on. And so once he was outside of the dining hall, he immediately turned right and walked the very

short distance to the building that was right next to Ford Dining Hall. And so that building was called Owen Hall, and it was a dormitory. Now, this was not Wade's dormitory. He actually lived in a different dorm called Cary Quad West, which was located on the other side of Ford Dining Hall. And so Wade goes inside of Owen Hall because he has some friends in there, and he makes his way to their room. And when he goes inside, he sees they're all kind of sitting around chatting and drinking some alcoholic drinks. And so Wade sits down and he has a couple of drinks and he just hangs out with his friends for about an hour.

And so around 9.30 p.m., Wade and the other people he was with in this room, they left Owen Hall and they walked the half mile away from Campus to the West to this huge party at a fraternity. And so Wade would stay at this fraternity for several hours until about midnight, at which point he pulled one of his friends aside and he told them that he just remembered he had left his jacket inside of Owen Hall, and so he wanted to go back and retrieve it. The dorms on Purdue's campus all lock at night, and so the only way you can get inside is if you live there, and so you have a key, or if you know someone who lives

there who will open the door for you. And so during his walk back to Owen Hall, Wade would make six phone calls in an attempt to get someone in Owen Hall to open the door for him. But four of his phone calls would just be the wrong number. And so the people that were picking up and he was asking to open the door, they didn't know what he was talking about. And so they hung up. But he did call two people that did live inside of Owen Hall. However, they didn't answer their phones. And so around 1230 a.m., Wade arrived at Owen Hall. He put his phone back in his pocket and he just walked up to the doors which were locked and he just started knocking and eventually a resident of

owen hall who didn't know wade and wade didn't know them they heard the knocking and they came out to the door to see what was going on and they looked through the glass and they saw wade and apparently they decided that wade looked too intoxicated to let into the building, and so they refused him entry. And so Wade apparently stood there, he kept knocking for a little bit, but he eventually just kind of gave up, he turned around, and he walked away. Fast forward a few days to Tuesday, January 16th, and Wade's roommate, who had actually been gone all the past weekend, he returned and the first thing he noticed when he got back to his dorm was that Wade was not in the dorm. And so he called

and texted Wade, but he didn't get a response. And so the roommate went out around the floor that they lived on to ask people if they had seen Wade and no one had seen him since the previous Friday. And so starting to get pretty concerned, the roommate called Wade's family to see if maybe they knew what was going on with him, but his family had no idea. And so by the end of that day, the police had been contacted about Wade potentially being missing, and they in turn contacted Wade's cell phone provider, and they were able to determine that Wade's cell phone was still showing up somewhere on Purdue's campus, although they couldn't figure out exactly where. So that

evening, a massive campus-wide search was launched with hundreds of police officers and volunteers. Even the school's equestrian club came out with their horses to search the nearby woods. But despite this huge search effort that would go on for several weeks, the only thing they would find of Wade's was one of his shoes. It was found on January 20th, so just four days into the search, and it was located right outside of an exterior door that led into a maintenance room inside of Owen Hall. But when they searched this maintenance room, Wade wasn't in there. Finally, after nearly a month of searching, when they still had not found

Wade, the official search was called off. On March 19th, roughly two months after Wade had been reported missing, a maintenance worker was downstairs in the laundry room of Owen Hall when they heard a strange popping sound. At first, the worker thought it was actually coming from one of the washers or dryers that was on, and you know, maybe there's a loose coin or some piece of metal that was inside of the washer or dryer that's getting banged around inside, and that's making the sound. And so this worker began walking around the laundry room, kind of listening in to each of the washers and dryers that were on to see if they were making this sound. And so as he's doing this, he hears the popping sound again, but it's clearly not coming from any of the washers

and dryers. In fact, it's not even coming from inside the laundry room. It's coming from somewhere out in the hall. Curious, he leaves the laundry room and he goes out into the hall, and as soon as he's standing in the hall, he hears the popping sound again. And this time, it was obvious that it was coming from behind the closed door that was directly opposite the laundry room. So, the worker pulled out his big set of keys, he opened the door that was directly in front of him, and he stepped inside. Moments later, he would make a big discovery. Based on that discovery and the investigation that would follow it, this is a reconstruction of what happened to Wade Steffi. In the early morning hours of January 13th, right after Wade had been denied entry into Owen Hall

because the student who was in there who didn't know him thought he was too intoxicated, right after that happened, Wade left the front doors and made his way around to the left side of the building to look for another way inside. And when he got to the left side of the building, he found another door. Now, even though this door did not have a sign on it that said keep out, it was fairly obvious that this door was not designed for students to use. There was a metal railing that lined the outside of this door, clearly to prevent pedestrians from getting to the door, and the door itself was actually not built at ground level. It basically was built at basement level. So you'd be standing at this railing looking down

at the door. And down in front of the door was a slab of cement right out in front of it that gave the door enough clearance to be able to open. And so basically there was a railing around a pit, and that was where the door was. The proper way to get to this door was to literally climb over that railing and jump down into this pit. And then you'd need a key to open this door because it was always locked. Well, it was supposed to always be locked. And so when Wade saw this clearly off-limits door on the side of Owen Hall in his drunken state, he decided it would be a good idea to try to go into it. Because in his mind, he thought, you know, whatever is behind this door doesn't really matter. As long as I can just get inside of some part of Owen Hall, I can find my way up to my

friend's room and I can get my jacket. And so he rushes over to the railing, he climbs over, he leaps down into that pit area, he grabs the doorknob of this off-limits door and he pulls on it and it's open. So he opens it up, he steps inside, and it's totally pitch black. And all he can hear is the sound of machines humming and whirring in the darkness. And again, in his drunken state, he decides this is still a good idea. His only concern was he couldn't find a light switch, and it really was basically pitch black in here. And he was worried once the door shut, not only would his only light source be totally cut off, but it might actually lock behind

him, and then he'd be trapped inside of this room. And so he took off one of his shoes, and he tucked it in the door jamb of the door he came in on to keep it open. And so with the door propped open behind him, he began walking into this room. And pretty much right away, he bumped into this big metal structure. He couldn't see what it was, because again, it was too dark, but he could feel it, and he could tell, you know, it was a flat metal structure. It felt like a machine of some kind, and he could hear that it was one of the machines that was buzzing and whirring, and so he just decided he would try to walk around it because, again, his goal is just to get through this room and find another door somewhere and kind of continue his journey up into the dorm,

and so Wade began moving his way left along this machine, kind of continue his journey up into the dorm. And so Wade began moving his way left along this machine, kind of believing it was going to come to a stop at some point, and then he could walk around it. But it would turn out this machine was very big, very wide. And so by the time he actually got to the left edge of this machine, he was practically right up against the wall of the room he was in. And when he got there, he realized the space between the side of the machine and the wall of the room was big enough that if he turned sideways, he could basically squeeze his way past it. Now, he had no idea how far into the room this strange machine went, but in his drunken state, he decided it was a good idea. And so he

turns sideways, so his back is to the wall of the room, and his chest is going to be facing the machine, and he begins pushing himself into that narrow space. And so as he's making his way, his hands are up, kind of protecting his face and neck, and at some point, he kind of begins to trip. Now, he didn't actually fall because he's basically wedged into this tight space, but for a second he reflexively grabbed with his hands onto this machine right in front of him, and just by chance his left ring finger slipped into a very narrow hole that was about two inches deep. The room that Wade was inside of was called an electrical vault, and it contained six large transformers, one of which Wade's finger had just stuck inside of. The job of these six transformers

is to take the high voltage they receive from the main power grid and then transform it, hence the name, into lower usable voltage that gets dispersed into Owen Hall for residents and teachers. Even though the outside of these transformers had mostly been covered with protective materials that mitigated the electrocution risk, there were still several parts of these machines that there was just nothing you could do. They just presented a really high electrocution risk. And one of those sections you needed to be extra careful with was that two-inch hole that Wade's finger slipped inside of.

At the back of that hole was an exposed electrical conductor. And the second the tip of his finger touched that conductor, between 2,000 and 4,000 volts of electricity were pumped into his body. For reference, when people get executed via the electric chair, they are electrocuted with 2,000 volts of electricity. Wade likely died instantly, but because of the fact that he was kind of wedged between the transformer and the wall, after he died, he didn't just slump onto the ground. Instead, he remained in a semi-upright position with his finger still stuck inside of that hole. And so for the next two months, his body just continued to be electrocuted every second.

Finally, sometime in March, as a result of Wade's body fluids draining out of him, the electrical current that was being pumped into him altered its course and began snapping outside of his skin into the ground. And so the sound of the electrical current actually striking the ground was that popping sound that the maintenance worker heard. The door that the maintenance worker opened in order to investigate the sound was the only other door that led into the electrical vault, the other being the exterior door that Wade had gone in on. Initially, when the worker opened that door and looked inside of the vault, he actually didn't see Wade,

but he smelled something funny, and that was what led him to walk into the room and make his way around, and that's when he spotted Wade's body. Earlier on January 20th, when they found Wade's shoe, which at some point had just slipped out of the door jamb, so it was not propping open the exterior door when it was found, it was just sitting in that pit area and the exterior door was shut. And so when they found that shoe, the police, they did go inside of the electrical vault, but they didn't go in through the exterior door. They went around and went in

the same door that the maintenance worker opened from right across the hall from the laundry room. And when they opened it up, they just looked into the room. They didn't walk into the room. They just looked from the doorway and from their perspective, they couldn't see Wade. And so that was why initially they had said, you know, Wade is not inside of that room. Ultimately, because that exterior door to the electrical vault was supposed to be locked at all times, and clearly it was not because that's how Wade got in, Purdue was found to be negligent. And so they agreed to pay Wade's family $500,000, and they also set up a scholarship in Wade's name.

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