MrBallen’s Medical Mysteries - Ep. 16 | The Carancas Curse

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

In September 2007, a meteor strike leaves a massive crater in the high Peruvian desert, drawing curiosity seekers from miles around. Shortly after, people from the nearby town of Carancas start becoming violently ill. Some residents fear a curse has befallen them, but the truth might be much more frightening.See 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 episodes 49 to 56 right now and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. In November of 2007, a scientist stood on the edge of a 50-foot-wide crater in the Peruvian high desert. The crater was full of water. But despite its innocent looking appearance, this crater full of water held incredible danger. When it formed two months earlier, hundreds of people and animals in the area had gotten violently sick, and so far no one had come up with a good explanation for how this was possible. In fact, according to the laws of physics, the crater shouldn't even exist.

It was a mystery that had researchers all over the planet scratching their heads. But as the scientist stared down into the big crater, he thought he might have the answer to both of these mysteries. And if he was right, it would mean that the threat posed by this crater was far greater than anyone imagined. Any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. And Audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as a part of your everyday routine without needing to set aside extra time. As an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their ever-growing catalog. Explore themes of friendship, loss, and hope with remarkably bright creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.

Find what piques your imagination. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial, and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. I'm Marsha Clark, host of Informants Lawyer X. Join me as we tell the shocking true story of a lawyer who wasn't just representing some of Australia's most dangerous gangland criminals. She was informing on them to the police. Informants Lawyer X is available exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery for access to this and more Exhibit C true crime podcasts. From Ballin Studios and Wondery, I'm Mr. Ballin,

and this is Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, where every week we will explore a new baffling mystery originating from the one place we all can't escape, our own bodies. If you liked today's story, please ask the follow button to come skip some stones with you on a lake, but when the follow button isn't looking, steal their phone and skip that into the water. Today's story is called The Karankas Curse. It was a chilly morning on September 15th, 2007. A sheep farmer named Gregorio Yaruri sat on his porch,

sipping a mug of coffee and looking at the distant mountain peaks that surrounded his hometown of Carancas, a small village in southern Peru. It was silent except for the sheep bleeding in the pasture. Then Gregorio heard a low sound, like a hum. At first the noise was faint, and it sounded like it was coming from miles away. Then the hum grew louder, and the coffee in his mug started to vibrate. A moment later, pebbles on the ground surrounding his porch began to shake as the hum turned into a roar. Alarmed, Gregorio set down his mug and leaped down into the yard. He looked around, trying to figure out if the noise was human-made or maybe an earthquake.

He covered his ears as the hum roared to a deafening scream. Then he spotted something small and orange streaking through the sky. An instant later, a sonic boom whipped across the valley, shattering a window in Gregorio's house. He was thrown onto his back and he rolled a few times before steadying himself in the dirt. Noises began to erupt all across the plain. Gregorio could hear dogs howling and shouts coming from some of the neighboring farms. Gregorio was bracing himself for something else to happen, but the sky above him was bright blue again. So he stood up, feeling totally shell-shocked, as he brushed the dust

from his pants. He scanned the horizon for some clue as to what had caused this explosion. In the distance, he could see a plume of thick black smoke rising a hundred feet into the air. At first, Gregorio was filled with dread. Then, a sense of determination swelled up inside of him. He needed to know what had just fallen from the sky. He ran for the bicycle he kept leaning up against the side of his house. He brushed the glass shards from his broken window off the seat, and then he hopped on and he set his feet on the pedals

and took off towards the Tower of Smoke. As Gregorio neared the site of impact, the smell of rotten eggs stung the inside of his nostrils. He pulled over just long enough to grab his bandana out of his back pocket and tie it around his face to block the smell. About a hundred feet from the Tower of Smoke, he noticed red dust covering the ground. The closer he got, the thicker the blanket of dust seemed to be.

When he finally reached the base of the smoke plume, he rubbed the dust with his feet. It appeared to be clay that had been kicked up by the crash. The smoke was so thick, he still couldn't tell what had impacted the ground. But whatever it was, it had created what appeared to be a huge crater in the ground. The column of smoke was emerging from a hole about 50 feet across. It really looked like someone had just detonated a bomb there. A few minutes later, the smoke started thinning out,

and Gregorio could finally see into this crater. He walked up to the edge, and his eyes widened from a combination of fear and wonder. The crater was filled with a dark green liquid. The liquid had a consistency somewhere between maybe water and sludge, and it was bubbling as if it was simmering. Gregorio pinched his nose through the bandana. The egg smell coming off of this crater was so strong

that he felt sick to his stomach. He walked around the perimeter of the crater, kicking at the shards of clay and jagged rock that littered the ground. It looked like someone had smashed a huge vase to pieces. Gregorio scanned the horizon. It seemed like he was the only person who'd come to investigate this plume of smoke. He figured the neighboring farmers must be worried that whatever crashed into the ground was a bad omen. A lot of his

neighbors still believed in ancient spirits. But after a while, it struck Gregorio as kind of odd that not even an emergency vehicle had come out to survey the scene. Something had just shot out of the sky and smashed into the earth. It felt like that was the kind of thing police would want to know about. But Gregorio knew help would not be coming from his village. Only about 250 people lived in Karankas, so it didn't have its own police force. The authorities were located in the nearby town of Desaguadero, which was about seven miles up the road. Gregorio wasn't sure if the folks in Desaguadero would be able to see the smoke plume from

there. If they couldn't, he worried that the authorities might not even know this happened. Gregorio jumped back on his bicycle and pedaled to the house of a neighbor who owned a motorcycle that Gregorio knew he'd be able to borrow. It was going to be up to him to raise the alarm, and he had to get out there fast. About 20 minutes later, Gregorio parked his borrowed motorcycle in front of the police station in Desagüedero and then walked inside. He was greeted by a tired-looking receptionist with the phone pressed to her ear. It seemed like she'd been talking to people for hours. Three deputies were talking loudly about an airstrike. It took a minute for Gregorio to realize what was going on.

The police did know about this explosion. One of them had seen the orange streak in the sky, but they thought that Karankas had actually been struck by a missile. Gregorio waved down one of the officers and explained he had seen a crater filled with this green ooze that smelled terrible. The officer disappeared into a back room for a moment, and then he returned with the chief of police. They asked if Gregorio could lead them to the crash site. Gregorio agreed. Soon, he was back on his neighbor's motorcycle,

leading police cars along the seven-mile road back to the Karankas countryside. As the crash site came into view, Gregorio could see people moving around the rim of the crater. As he drew even closer, he realized that dozens of villagers from Karankas had come to see what had caused the smoke. He guessed that when the black plume of smoke had dissipated, the neighbors figured it was now safe to come take a look. Gregorio pulled over his motorcycle about 20 yards from the crater and dismounted. The police car spanned out around him. As policemen approached the perimeter of the crater,

Gregorio noticed his neighbors picking up rock fragments as souvenirs and pointing at the green liquid at the bottom of the massive hole. Gregorio overheard a nearby couple speculate that maybe this was the result of a missile strike from Peru's neighbor and rival, Chile. One teenage boy was talking excitedly, telling his friends they were probably just attacked by a UFO. An old woman, who Gregorio assumed was the boy's grandmother, told him to be quiet. This was clearly a sign of bad things to come, a curse sent by the spirits. She sounded terrified. Gregorio did not find any of these theories very convincing.

However, he wasn't ready to offer any of his own. But the strange explosion had him just as curious as his neighbors. He picked up a shard of deep red rock near his feet and slipped it into his coat pocket, just as another car pulled onto the scene. Gregorio recognized the mayor of Carancas, Maximiliano Trujillo. Mayor Trujillo stepped out of the back seat, squinting in the sunlight. The mayor walked toward the crater, looking stunned.

He stopped right next to Gregorio and asked what happened. Gregorio just shrugged, still in disbelief. Straight ahead of them, a pile of black rocks were smoking at the edge of the crater. The mayor's eyes widened when he saw them, and he began walking toward the crater to get a better look. By late afternoon, hundreds of people had gathered at the crash site. Gregorio stood near the front of the crowd, hoping that if he stuck around long enough, the police might announce what had caused this explosion. As the sun started to set, the smell of rotten eggs returned. It was faint, but pungent. Gregorio's

eyes began to water. He pulled his bandana back up over his face, but that didn't work anymore. The smell was giving him a headache. A few minutes later, a short woman standing near Gregorio leaned over and began vomiting, and she wasn't the only one. People all around the crater were starting to get sick. Between the rotten smell coming off the green sludge and now the vomit, the air around the crater was now so thick that Gregorio thought he might faint. He fought his way through the crowd back to his motorcycle and sped off towards home, sucking in the fresh air as he went. When he walked through his front door, his phone was ringing.

It was his son, who had moved about six hours away for a job after he had graduated school. As Gregorio told him about the afternoon's excitement, he took the rock out of his pocket and he laid it on the kitchen table. He began to describe its deep red color, but his son cut him off. He begged Gregorio not to touch it. If Karankas was attacked by a missile, then this red rock could very likely be radioactive. Gregorio remembered the people getting sick at the crater. He felt a surge of anxiety, and he covered the rock with a dish towel. If his son was right, half the town was now vulnerable, and Gregorio spent more time at the crater than anyone else.

Panicked, he hung up on his son and ran outside to hose himself off. He didn't know how much it would help, but he had to do something. He spent the rest of the evening feeling totally anxious until finally he managed to fall asleep. The next morning, Gregorio woke up with the sun as usual. He still felt a bit queasy, but no worse than the night before. He breathed a big sigh of relief because he figured that radiation poisoning would have made him feel a lot sicker by now still felt a bit queasy, but no worse than the night before. He breathed a big sigh of relief,

because he figured that radiation poisoning would have made him feel a lot sicker by now, and so probably he was in the clear. As the sunrise turned the sky a vivid pink, Gregorio walked out of his house towards the sheep pen. He grabbed tufts of hay and dried grass and scattered them on the ground, and the sheep came running over to graze. Gregorio watched until one of the sheep picked its head up and ambled away. Then he noticed something unusual. There were dark splotches on the hay right where the sheep's head had been. It took Gregorio a moment to realize what he was looking at. He walked over and grabbed the sheep that had ambled off, and he lifted its head up, and blood was trickling out of its nose. Then he looked at the ground. Another splotch of blood stained the hay beneath his feet.

As he walked the length of the pen, he found drops of blood spattered all over the ground. Gregorio rushed inside and called his vet, expecting to leave a voicemail since it was still early, but to his surprise, the vet actually picked up. He sounded wide awake, like he'd already been up for hours. He said that he'd been getting calls all morning. Livestock across Carancas were getting sick. The vet promised to make Gregorio's farm his next stop. Gregorio thanked him and hung up.

He had no idea what kind of sickness had emerged from that crater, but it seemed like it could be deadly. From the award-winning masters of audio horror. I see a face right up against the window. Bleach white, no hair, black eyes, a round hole for a mouth. It's flat, Taylor. It's completely flat.

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More than 200 people who visited the crash site had flooded the hospital in Desagüedero. They were all sick with migraine headaches, and they were vomiting. The hospital got so overwhelmed with patients, they diverted people to smaller health clinics throughout the city, which were now acting as satellite operations. Mayor Trujillo had called the Red Cross to help administer care in these satellite clinics, but now even the clinics were completely full. The smell inside the packed clinic was terrible. People were retching and crying.

To the mayor, it felt like he was walking through a war zone. Thankfully, he'd received confirmation that morning from the authorities in Lima, the capital of Peru, that Karankas had not been attacked by a missile. In fact, scientists said that the crater had been caused by a meteorite. Mayor Trujillo was relieved that they were not under attack, but a mystery remained. Nobody knew why people were now getting sick. Meteorites had never been known to have that kind of effect. Specialists were flying out from Lima to investigate further.

Mayor Trujillo moved through the crowd of patients in the waiting room, trying his best to reassure them. He stopped by a Red Cross doctor who was tending to a small elderly woman on a folding chair. The mayor greeted the old woman and then thanked the doctor for traveling all this way to Deseguadero. The doctor stood upright, looking tired but hopeful. He explained that all the patient's blood work was coming back normal. He didn't know why they were sick, but judging from their symptoms, he said everyone should make a full recovery in a few days.

Trujillo smiled with relief, but the old woman hissed and called the doctor a liar. Many of the patients around her nodded in agreement, eyeing the doctor like he was in on some big conspiracy. He heard them muttering about evil spirits causing this disaster. Trujillo knew that many villagers believed the meteorite was a curse from the ancient spirits, and because of that, many had refused to listen to the Red Cross doctors and aid workers. To Trujillo, this was the problem

with people of the Carancas region. Outsiders never came to the area, so many of the villagers didn't trust them. Trujillo knew that Carancas was not cursed. He just needed to find a way to get his people to listen. Then an idea struck. Maybe he could get them to believe the science

with the help of someone who could appease the spirits. Trujillo left the health clinic, climbed into his car, and drove the seven miles to Carancas. The small village, nestled in the shadows of snow-capped mountains, was eerily quiet and deserted. As the mayor slowly drove through the narrow and winding streets, he could see people peering out their windows.

Normally, they'd come outside to wave hello, but now it seemed like they were terrified of leaving their homes. A few minutes later, Trujillo pulled up to a small adobe house with a thatched roof. It belonged to the local shaman, a man the mayor had long respected for his wisdom. Everybody in town trusted the shaman, and Trujillo hoped he could bring some calm to the community. Trujillo stepped out of his car, and he was pleased to see that the shaman came out of his house to greet him. Trujillo explained the situation to the shaman, and the shaman nodded thoughtfully, and he agreed that the meteorite was not a curse,

although it had disrupted balance in the land. And so he said he was happy to do his part to restore the natural order of things. Trujillo smiled and shook the shaman's hand. He promised he'd be in touch soon, and then Mayor Trujillo headed back to his car. With the shaman's help, he was sure he could get the townspeople to listen to him and restore order in the town. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Montreal, Canada, a professor named Peter Schultz was standing in line at a coffee shop scrolling through the news app on his phone. He taught earth environmental and planetary sciences at Brown University in Rhode Island, but he was in Montreal for a conference on craters made by meteorites and other space objects. He was fascinated by the articles about the meteorite strike in southern Peru, and not just because he found meteorites in general interesting.

This one stuck out, because it made no sense. The reports said that Karankas was struck by a chondrite meteorite, the most common type of meteorite, but also the most fragile. A chondrite meteorite is a type of rock that comes from asteroids. They're made up of small grains of minerals that have not been melted or changed much since they formed billions of years ago. Chondrites are so porous that they crack and burn up in Earth's atmosphere before they can hit the ground.

To Peter, it seemed impossible that one of these chondrite meteorites could hit the Earth with enough force to create this massive crater. Stranger still, he had read that more than 200 people who visited the crash site had ended up in the hospital. Meteorites should not be making people sick. Peter thought there had to be more to the story

than met the eye. Peter turned his phone to silent and spent the rest of the afternoon in back-to-back lectures at his conference. He finally left around dusk. As he walked to dinner, he noticed his voicemail was full of inquiries from different reporters and news outlets, hoping for a comment from him on how a meteorite could cause such a widespread sickness. But Peter had to tell these reporters the truth. He did not have answers, but he wanted to get them, and the only way to do it was to head to Peru and see the crater for

himself. A few days later, Mayor Trujillo stood in the very crowded community center in Deseguadero. He had needed a huge space to hold this town hall meeting, and Carancas didn't really have a building that could accommodate this size crowd. Even this community center was packed with almost every single person from Karankas in attendance. The mayor shivered, but not because he was cold. He knew that the government scientists had discovered something that would have a profound impact

on everyone in this area, and not just for those who had gotten sick at the crater. As Trujillo stood there waiting, he spotted Gregorio Uri sitting in the back. He was grateful to him for his role in alerting the authorities and was happy to see that Gregorio looked healthy. In fact, most of the locals who'd gotten sick were starting to feel better. But Trujillo knew if they didn't listen to the scientists, then things could get worse again.

Trujillo had invited two guests to this meeting. One was the local shaman, and the other was a geologist named Luisa Macedo. She was one of the scientists flown in by the government. The mayor made his way to the front of the crowd and called for silence. He had to choose his words carefully to avoid panicking those who believed that Karankas was actually cursed. He cleared his throat and announced that, yes, something had fallen from the sky, but it had been a meteorite from outer space. Before anyone could argue with him, he called the shaman over to join him and asked if he could prepare a sacrifice. It needed to be something that would

appease the spirits in case they were the ones who sent the meteorite crashing to earth. The shaman nodded. He told the crowd that they had rightfully sensed that the meteorite had unbalanced the land, but he reassured them that the correct sacrifice would help appease any unhappy spirits. He promised he would sacrifice a llama fetus at the crater as soon as possible, which should be enough to restore harmony to the area. Several of the older women present smiled, but Mayor Trujillo was still tense. Now came the hard part, getting them to accept the scientists' findings without panicking. He introduced Luisa, the government geologist. The hall erupted in whispers.

Trujillo told the villagers to calm down that Luisa was from southern Peru just like they were. That's why he'd asked her to speak. Everyone seemed to accept this, since a regional scientist seemed a little more trustworthy. The crowd settled down a bit, and then Luisa smiled, and she held up a large cardboard chart she'd made showing data on the local water table. Trujillo held his breath, worried she was making things more complicated. Instead, the crowd pushed in to get a better look at what she had. Luisa explained that she and her team weren't totally sure what

was making so many people and livestock sick, but they had a strong theory. The day that she and her team had arrived in town, they'd gone to the crash site and collected samples from different parts of the area. They also tested the groundwater at the bottom of the crater. Mayor Trujillo saw Luisa hesitate for a moment and then continue. She said that her team found that the water contained dangerous levels of arsenic, a deadly poison. The crowd erupted in murmurs of alarm. As Trujillo looked around the room, he wasn't surprised by everyone's reaction. When he first heard Luisa's theory, he'd been stunned too. But he needed the crowd to listen.

Their lives depended on what Luisa had to say. Trujillo raised his hands and called for order, and after a few seconds, the townspeople did quiet down, and he told them to continue to listen to Luisa. Luisa nodded and then explained that when the meteorite hit Carancas, the shock wave caused the groundwater to heat up and vaporize. This caused the air to fill with a fine mist of arsenic vapor. Everyone who had gone to see the crater got sick because they had inhaled that vapor. After hearing what she had to say, the crowd became agitated again and started shouting questions. Mayor Trujillo saw Gregorio in the back trying to be heard, and so Trujillo demanded everyone be quiet, and he pointed at Gregorio and asked him to speak. Gregorio, the sheep farmer, stood up and politely asked Luisa if that meant their drinking water was

contaminated too. Luisa stayed silent for a moment. Trujillo could tell she was carefully thinking about what to say next. Finally, she nodded and said that although they did need to do more testing, it was very likely. In fact, most likely, their water supply had been contaminated for years, making the people less healthy and more vulnerable to deadly diseases like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. And so until they knew for sure, Luisa advised the crowd to just drink bottled water. Gregorio was alarmed by what he heard, but he thanked her and sat down. Everyone else seemed totally stunned into silence by Luisa's explanation. First the meteor hit, making people sick. Now they learned their water

was contaminated all along. Trujillo knew it was frightening, but at least they knew what they were dealing with. After answering more questions, Luisa wrapped up her remarks and walked off the stage. But as she headed toward him, Mayor Trujillo noticed that the scientist looked anxious. He pulled her aside and asked if everything was okay. Luisa shook her head and told him that something still didn't make sense. She was confident that the sickness had been caused by arsenic gas from the meteorite impact, but she had not actually proven that. No scientists had detected arsenic in the air around the crater.

That was a theory. In fact, she didn't understand how the meteorite could have gotten hot enough to create this toxic arsenic vapor. Luisa explained that meteorites are usually freezing when they impact Earth, even though they may look like they're on fire. That's because space is extremely cold, with an average temperature of negative 454 degrees Fahrenheit. The friction caused by entering Earth's atmosphere would have heated it up a little bit, but not enough to boil water and turn it into a mist.

Mayor Trujillo frowned. He now realized that even Luisa wasn't sure that her arsenic theory was right. And if she was wrong, then something else had made his people sick. Trujillo was troubled. But he had a more immediate challenge, making sure the local drinking water was safe. It was up to the scientists to figure out whether arsenic vapor or something else had caused the mass sickness. Until they figured it out, Trujillo knew he would not sleep well. A little over two months later, in December of 2007,

Professor Peter Schultz arrived in Carancas to investigate the crash site. On a dry and sunny day, he drove through the winding roads of the rugged countryside until he reached the crater. Even though the rainy season had nearly filled it with water, he was struck by how massive

it was. Peter had heard about Luisa Macedo's discovery of arsenic in the water. There was no debate that there was arsenic in the water itself, but so far, nobody had been able to explain how, or even if, arsenic got into the air. Until that was proven, there was still the possibility that some other chemical from the meteorite's impact had made everyone sick. If that was the case, the people of Carancas could still be in danger. Peter was determined to find the answer and make sure these people were safe. And over the next few weeks, he was able to slowly form a theory

that connected all the dots. Usually, when chondrite meteorites shoot through the Earth's atmosphere, their fragile makeup causes them to shatter into hundreds of tiny pieces, which turn to ash long before they ever reach the Earth's surface. And that's what should have happened

with this meteorite. Peter concluded that the Caranx meteorite survived its passage through the atmosphere because of its high speed and shallow entry angle. He believed that these factors, along with the heat from the Earth's atmosphere, caused the outer layers of the meteorite to melt and fuse back together. That made it dense enough to make it through the atmosphere, where it became superheated and unleashed the arsenic vapor once it hit the ground. All this meant that the people of Carancas were safe. It was the meteorite, and not some other unidentified danger,

that heated up the arsenic-laced water and turned it into vapor. Thankfully, the damage caused by the meteorite's impact was not permanent. All the people who'd gotten sick, including Gregorio Iaruri, made a full recovery, and so did all the animals. Thanks to the research of Luisa Macedo and the other scientists, arsenic was detected in the drinking water, and non-profit organizations have installed measures to make it safer. Even though the water is cleaner and the arsenic gas is long gone, the people of Karankas will always remember when, in a way, they were attacked by a UFO. To be continued... We use aliases sometimes because we don't know the names of the real people in the story. And also, in most cases, we can't know exactly what was said, but everything is based on a lot of research.

And a reminder, the content in this episode is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This episode was written by Aaron Land. Our editor is Heather Dundas. Sound design is by Matthew Cilelli. Coordinating producer is Sophia Martins. Our senior producer is Alex Benidon. Our associate producers and researchers are Sarah Vytak and Tasia Palaconda. Fact-checking was done by Sheila Patterson.

For Ballin Studios, our head of production is Zach Levitt. Script editing is by Scott Allen and Evan Allen. Our coordinating producer is Matub Zare. Executive producers are myself, Mr. Ballin, and Nick Witters. For Wondery, our head of sound is Marcelino Villapando. Senior producers are Laura Donna Palavoda and Dave Schilling. Senior managing producer is Ryan Lohr. Our executive producers are Aaron O'Flaherty and Marshall Louis for Wondery.

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