Nightmare Fuel

Speaker 1 Today's podcast will feature three horror stories that are pure nightmare fuel.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 The first story you'll hear is called Face, and it's about a mother and daughter who spot a lost child on the side of the road while driving home at night.

Speaker 1 The second story you'll hear is called Just Teeth, and it's about a gruesome discovery made on a farm.

Speaker 1 And the the third and final story you'll hear is called Hell on High Water.

Speaker 1 And this story has been told many times through history, but this original version I'm about to share is by far the creepiest, because it really happened.

Speaker 1 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 come to the right podcast because that's all we do.

Speaker 1 So if that's of interest to you, please offer to get the follow button a nice fresh cup of coffee. But don't tell them you made the coffee using hot dog water.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's get into our first story called Face.

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Speaker 1 2004, 16-year-old Misty Tasker was a typical American teenager living in Live Oak, Florida, which is a small rural town right in the middle of the state.

Speaker 1 One Saturday evening in January, she and her mother attended a church service. Afterwards, they hopped in her mother's truck and they got on the country highway and began making their way home.

Speaker 1 Their house was just 20 minutes down this highway. It was a straight shot.
And this highway was pretty desolate. There were no street lights.

Speaker 1 It was actually a dirt road despite despite being a highway. And it was just thick forest on both sides of the road the entire way.

Speaker 1 There were no buildings or houses between the church and their neighborhood. Misty's mother was already a very anxious driver who would keep both hands on the wheel.

Speaker 1 She would sit up and kind of hunch over the wheel and keep her eyes intently focused on the road. But at night, her driving anxiety would shoot through the roof because she had really bad eyesight.

Speaker 1 And so she would go to great lengths to not drive at night to avoid that high level of anxiety.

Speaker 1 But the church service they had just come from had run a little bit long, and so now Misty's mother is driving with the sun starting to set, and she's going as fast as she can to try to get home before it gets too dark.

Speaker 1 And so as they're bombing down this road at about 55 miles an hour, despite it being about a 40 mile per hour zone, Misty, who's in the passenger seat, just happens to look over at her mother for no particular reason.

Speaker 1 And as she's looking at her, she notices out her mother's window, it looks like there's a little girl sitting on the side of the road. What's a child doing out here in the middle of nowhere?

Speaker 1 She says to her mom, I think I just saw a little girl. And Misty's mother, who's high up on the wheel, she did not hear Misty the first time.
She's just focused on driving and trying to get home.

Speaker 1 And so Misty says again, I think I just saw a little girl. I don't know what she's doing, but I feel like we need to go back and make sure she's okay.

Speaker 1 And so Misty's mom looks over at her and she's not prepared to turn the car around. That means staying out later and it means she's going to be driving in even darker conditions.

Speaker 1 And so she's like, did you really see someone? Because we got to get home. And Misty's like, mom, I'm pretty sure I saw a little girl.
We have to go back.

Speaker 1 And so finally, Misty's mother, she's very annoyed, but she stops the car, she does a three-point turn, and she begins driving back up the road where they came from towards this girl.

Speaker 1 Now, they had only made it about a half mile from where Misty believed she had seen this girl. And so pretty quickly, they slowed down because Misty said, I think she's in this area.

Speaker 1 And they both began scanning the right side of the road because that's where she's going to be now that they've turned around.

Speaker 1 Now, it was starting to get very dark outside, but there was enough light and they had headlights. They were pretty confident they'd be able to spot this girl.

Speaker 1 And so as they're slow rolling down the road, they both see this girl a little ways up on the right-hand side. Her back was to the road.

Speaker 1 She had her knees tucked up to her chest and she was rocking back and forth. Misty's mother made a comment that it was a little bit surprising that this girl was out here.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's really nothing around here. There's no houses, there's no buildings, there's no trails to be walking in in this forest on either side.
It was just kind of thick forest.

Speaker 1 And so she just thought it was very strange that this girl would even be out here, especially because there's not any traffic on this road.

Speaker 1 And so Misty's mother began slowly rolling up to her and she told her daughter that instead of just stopping right away, let's just drive past her and get a look at her, and then we'll turn around and see if she needs any help.

Speaker 1 And so as they got right up next to her, they realized she was not a little girl. She was a young teenager, but she was not a young, young child.

Speaker 1 And as they drove right past her, they would expect her to turn around and acknowledge the car creeping up on her, considering there's no other traffic in the area and you're just some person sitting on the side of the road, you should definitely turn around and see what's behind you.

Speaker 1 But the girl did not acknowledge them. She just continued to have her knees up to her chest and rocked back and forth.

Speaker 1 And so Misty and her mother are a little bit freaked out by this, but they drive past her about 50 meters.

Speaker 1 Misty's mother does a three-point turn, and when they're looking back down the road, where the girl should now be on their left-hand side, they're oriented back towards their house now, she wasn't there anymore.

Speaker 1 But there were no street lights. It was now almost completely pitch dark outside.
And so all they had was the headlights. And so Misty told her mom, you know, drive up a little ways.

Speaker 1 Maybe the girl stood up and moved and we just can't see her because she's not in the headlights.

Speaker 1 And so Misty's mom began driving down the road and kind of turning slightly towards the left to shine the light more to the left, but there was no sign of this girl.

Speaker 1 For good measure, they turned right slightly to shine the lights more to the right-hand side of the road, but there was no sign of this girl.

Speaker 1 And so Misty and her mother just slow rolled back down the road, kind of keeping their eye out on both sides.

Speaker 1 But after traveling for several minutes, going about 5-10 miles an hour and seeing no sign of this girl, they decided that, well, she must have just gone back into the woods and gone back to wherever it was she came from.

Speaker 1 And so Misty's mom began picking up speed, and before long, they had gone maybe two or three miles away from where they had seen this girl, and they were coming up to this four-way intersection with stop signs all around.

Speaker 1 And as they were getting close, Misty's mother gasped because on the other side of the intersection intersection on the right-hand side was this girl sitting on the side of the road.

Speaker 1 She's got her back to the road, her knees are up and she's rocking back and forth. And so Misty's mother pulls up to the stop sign and then just sits there.

Speaker 1 And both women are just stunned at what they're looking at. They had just seen her two, three miles back down the road.
It wasn't possible for her to get all the way up here.

Speaker 1 And so Misty's mother looks at her daughter and says, you know, do you think it's a different girl? And Misty's like, no, that's the same girl.

Speaker 1 And so they just sat there for a minute until Misty started to panic. And she said to her mom, mom, don't stop.
I got a bad feeling about this girl.

Speaker 1 I don't know what's going on, but you can't stop next to this girl. But Misty's mom, she was definitely weirded out by this situation, no doubt.

Speaker 1 But she didn't feel good about abandoning this girl in the middle of the night on the side of the highway.

Speaker 1 And so even though she felt a little bit hesitant herself, She told Misty, you know, we have to at least drive past her and ask if she's okay. That's the least we can do.
And Misty was not having it.

Speaker 1 She said, mom, do not stop. I got a bad feeling about this.
Don't stop near this girl. But Misty's mom let up off the brake and began slow rolling past this intersection.

Speaker 1 And now at this point, Misty is just absolutely terrified. And so she takes her seatbelt off and she goes down into the footwell right in front of her seat.

Speaker 1 And she closes her eyes and covers her ears and she just continues to beg her mother to just please keep going. Don't stop.

Speaker 1 But her mother just continues on until she stops right next to this girl who's still still just sitting on the side of the road with her back to the road. She's got her knees up.

Speaker 1 She's rocking back and forth. She's not acknowledging Misty or her mother.
And so Misty's mother turns to her daughter and says, please roll down your window. And Misty refuses.

Speaker 1 She's still down in the footwell, still in the fetal position. She's crying and she's still begging her mother to please just go home.

Speaker 1 And so Misty's mother, frustrated, reaches across the passenger seat. She rolls the window down.

Speaker 1 And Misty, who's down in the footwell, all she remembers is sitting there covering up her ears and she's crying and she opens her eyes and she's looking up towards her mom who's reaching over the seat and her mom yells out to this girl.

Speaker 1 And Misty remembers looking at her mom who suddenly recoils in horror and screams and then they take off like crazy flying down the road.

Speaker 1 Misty jumps out of the footwell and she's looking at her mom and she's like, what's happening? What just happened? What did you see?

Speaker 1 And her mom's got her hand over her mouth and she's speeding down the road and she's crying now. And she's looking at Misty and she just doesn't have the words to describe what she just saw.

Speaker 1 And so Misty's asking her mom, what did you see? What happened? And finally, her mother just said, she didn't have a face. She didn't have a face.

Speaker 1 It was hollow. There was nothing on her face when she looked at me.
And so Misty screams and she's crying and her mom is crying and they speed home.

Speaker 1 They're home just a couple of minutes later and they run inside, practically falling over each other to get in the house.

Speaker 1 And as soon as they get inside, Misty's mom calls 911 and she didn't even know how to describe what she just saw.

Speaker 1 But she knew it was too embarrassing to try to describe it as some girl without a face sitting by the highway. And so she just told the police that they had seen a girl they think needs help.

Speaker 1 And so the police went out and they searched that entire stretch of highway. They looked for any sign of anybody out there, but there wasn't.
There was never any trace of that girl.

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Speaker 1 Our next story is called Just Teeth.

Speaker 1 At around 7.30 a.m. on September 25th, 2012, a 69-year-old farmer named Terry Garner stepped out of his house in rural Oregon to go feed his animals.

Speaker 1 He stopped first at his enclosed yard where he spread some seed on the ground for his chickens and turkeys, and then he headed over to his pen where he was raising four-horned goats, which are goats that grow four horns instead of two.

Speaker 1 And after picking up some hay and tossing it in with the goats, Terry just stood there and smiled as he watched the animals eat. Terry loved his animals.

Speaker 1 He actually had previously been a butcher for most of his life.

Speaker 1 But six years earlier, when he had retired, he had kind of gone the opposite direction, basically housing all these animals and treating them basically like people.

Speaker 1 In fact, he was so devoted to his animals that sometimes when the nearby river would flood, he would move all of his animals into this house he had built on his property just for the animals, to make sure they were safe.

Speaker 1 And if you ever went to visit Terry at his property, it was pretty common to see a lot of the chickens and other birds just kind of hanging out on the front porch of Terry's house. He didn't care.

Speaker 1 He liked having them around.

Speaker 1 But of all the creatures that Terry took care of at his farm, the animal he loved the most were his pigs.

Speaker 1 Now, normally when farmers raise pigs, they grow them to about 250 to 300 pounds, and then they sell them to butchers to be slaughtered. But that's obviously not what Terry was doing here.

Speaker 1 He loved these pigs so much that he basically just fed them anytime they were hungry, and they were hungry all the time, which meant his pigs sometimes grew to be like 700 pounds, and at no point was Terry going to sell those pigs.

Speaker 1 He just wanted his pigs to live their best life.

Speaker 1 So on this morning, after he was done feeding his chickens and turkeys and the goats, he grabbed a whole bunch of food and began making his way over to his beloved pigs.

Speaker 1 A few hours later, a member of Terry's family arrived at Terry's property and knocked on his door. This family member had called Terry earlier in the day and Terry hadn't picked up.

Speaker 1 Now that, in and of itself, was not that uncommon. Terry was a busy farmer.
But Terry always called people back, and so far he hadn't.

Speaker 1 And so this family member was here just to check on him and make sure he was okay.

Speaker 1 And so after a few minutes, when Terry did not come to the door, the family member grew more concerned about Terry and decided they would just walk the whole property and just go find Terry and see what he was doing.

Speaker 1 And so the family member left the porch and walked all around the property. They saw where the chickens and turkeys were.
They saw the goats. They saw the pigs.
But that was it.

Speaker 1 All they saw were animals. Terry was nowhere to be found.
It was like he was gone.

Speaker 1 And so the family member was just about to turn around and head back to Terry's house to see if, you know, maybe he really wasn't there, when suddenly something caught their eye in the pig pen.

Speaker 1 Now, at first, what they were looking at just seemed impossible. Like, how could that be there? That doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 1 But when the family member walked over and got a closer look, they knew for sure what they were looking at. And as soon as that truth sunk in, they turned, ran to the house, and called the police.

Speaker 1 It would turn out, earlier that morning, when Terry had walked into the pig pen to feed his beloved enormous pigs, somehow or another he had wound up on the ground.

Speaker 1 Now, we don't know if he had a heart attack, or if he had some other medical event, or if he simply just tripped and couldn't get up again, but one way or another, he wound up on the ground, and at some point, his pigs devoured him.

Speaker 1 And so what that family member saw in the mud that caught their eye was not Terry, but Terry's false teeth grinning back at him.

Speaker 1 Those teeth, along with several pieces of his body and his clothes, were all that was left of Terry.

Speaker 1 One more haunting detail of this case is that officials were not able to actually figure out whether or not Terry was dead before he began being eaten, or if he was just sort of incapacitated and very much alive when his beloved pigs began to eat him.

Speaker 1 The next and final story of today's episode is called Hell on High Water.

Speaker 1 One evening in the middle of March of 1907, a sailor named Nels Nelson stood at the bow of this big Russian steamboat called the Perrier, and he looked out over the Pacific Ocean with a very worried look on his face.

Speaker 1 The sun was starting to go down, and Nels was afraid of what the night might bring.

Speaker 1 About a month earlier, the Perrier, the boat that Nels was on, had left Hong Kong and begun its long journey to California, where Nels and the rest of the crew would offload all their hemp and machinery.

Speaker 1 And just that day, the Perrier had passed by Honolulu, Hawaii, which meant they were nearly to their final destination.

Speaker 1 Now, their long voyage thus far had been quiet, but now Nels just couldn't help feeling like their luck was about to run out. Nels had been a sailor his whole life.

Speaker 1 He was originally from Sweden, but he'd traveled all over the world, and a few years back he had linked up with the Perrier in Hong Kong.

Speaker 1 And now, other than the captain of the Perrier, who was a Russian named Gavinsky, Nels was the longest-serving member on board the Perrier.

Speaker 1 And what that meant was Nels and the ship's captain were the only two currently on board the Perrier who knew the ship's dark secret.

Speaker 1 Now, Nels and the captain had not told anyone this secret and didn't intend to. Now, this wasn't something they planned, like they weren't trying to keep it a secret.

Speaker 1 Instead, it was just kind of this unspoken agreement that we're just never going to talk about this.

Speaker 1 But at the last port in Hong Kong where the ship was docked, the previous entire crew of the Perrier, minus Nels and the captain, had all deserted because of this secret.

Speaker 1 And so now Nels and the captain were left to kind of keep this information to themselves and go out and solicit a new crew to come on board the Perrier to go to California, but they did it without telling these people about this dark secret.

Speaker 1 And they'd managed to do it.

Speaker 1 Nels and the captain had found this kind of ragtag bunch of sailors to come with them on this journey, but as a result of recruiting basically anybody with a pulse who was willing to go on this voyage, the crew they ultimately recruited was kind of an untrustworthy, sketchy bunch.

Speaker 1 On this night, it was Nels' turn to stand watch, which means basically you would stay up and kind of patrol the boat and look out for problems or emergencies.

Speaker 1 It was just a way to make sure the crew was always safe, even when everybody was asleep.

Speaker 1 And even though Nels was not exactly thrilled to be staying up all night to stand watch, in a way he actually was kind of relieved to be in charge of this task.

Speaker 1 He figured he'd rather be awake and miserable than asleep and vulnerable.

Speaker 1 Suddenly, another sailor came up to Nels and Nels hadn't heard him, and the sailor slapped him on the back and said, hey, how you enjoying your sunset cruise tonight?

Speaker 1 Nels turned around and saw it was another crew member just kind of pulling his leg and so Nels attempted to put on a smile and kind of go along with the joke and make it kind of lighthearted, but he was really struggling because he was looking off to the horizon and he could see the sun had nearly set.

Speaker 1 For the next couple of hours, Nels and this other sailor would stand by this railing in the cold night air and they would just talk about, you know, what they're going to do when they get to California, and, you know, what they plan to do with their lives generally, and just kind of small talk, normal stuff.

Speaker 1 And, you know, for a little while, Nels did forget about all this extreme anxiety he was having about nighttime.

Speaker 1 But at some point, as Nels and this other sailor were just chatting away, there was this warm breeze that kind of came across the deck of the ship.

Speaker 1 Now, remember, it had been very cold all night, and so this warm air really stood out. And the second Nels felt that warm air, he knew his worst fears were about to be realized.

Speaker 1 And so Nels was so scared about what was about to happen that he just kind of froze. He couldn't even turn and tell his partner what was happening.

Speaker 1 And his partner was totally oblivious because his partner had never been on the Perrier before and didn't know the ship's dark secret.

Speaker 1 And so this other sailor just kept on blabbering away, totally oblivious.

Speaker 1 But then, as Nels is frozen to the spot with fear, from down below in the ship where the crew was all sleeping, they heard this loud guttural scream like one of the crew members was being tortured or something.

Speaker 1 And right away, the guy next to Nels, the other sailor who had been with him, he stopped talking because now he knows there's a problem. He doesn't know what it is, but obviously something's wrong.

Speaker 1 Now, Nels was still frozen with fear because he knows what's happening. He knows what's gonna happen.
And so he was just standing there and the other sailor is like, Nels, what's going on?

Speaker 1 We gotta go down there. But it wasn't until more screams began coming out of the berthing birthing area down below that Nels kind of snapped out of it.

Speaker 1 And he was like, all right, come on, we got to go. And the two of them, they went bombing down the steps down into the birthing area.

Speaker 1 And they went into the first compartment where these screams were coming from.

Speaker 1 And when Nels and his partner walked into this room, they looked and they saw two of their crew members were sitting on one of the bunks, just completely rigid, as if they were totally stiff.

Speaker 1 And the two of them were just screaming as loud as they possibly could in perfect unison, but it was like they weren't there.

Speaker 1 It's like their eyes were staring off into the distance and they couldn't control their bodies. Now, Nels knew what was going on here, but the partner didn't.

Speaker 1 And so the partner's looking at Nels like, what's going on here? And Nels just turned to him and said, look, I think we can quarantine them. Help me move them.

Speaker 1 And so this partner has no idea what Nels is doing. He doesn't understand what's going on.
But he kind of jumped into action with Nels.

Speaker 1 And Nels and this guy, they grabbed these screaming crew members who were totally stiff.

Speaker 1 And they remained stiff as Nels and the other sailor dragged them out of the room, down the hall, and they put them in what's called the hold, which is kind of like a jail cell on board a ship.

Speaker 1 It's where sailors who misbehave get sent to. And so it's a place you can put things and lock the door and they don't come out again.

Speaker 1 Nels's thinking was, you know, if we can take these affected crew members and quarantine them in the hold, maybe, just maybe, this won't spread to the rest of the crew.

Speaker 1 But as soon as Nels had shut and locked those two men inside of the hold, it was like the the entire ship erupted with screams as the entire crew, minus Nels and his partner, just began screaming like mad.

Speaker 1 It was like the ship was total chaos. And so Nels and the crew member, they began running down the hall, trying to figure out where the screaming was coming from.

Speaker 1 But before they knew it, the rest of the crew were streaming out of their rooms, into the hallway, just screaming and running their way upstairs to the top deck.

Speaker 1 And so Nels began telling himself, you know, stay calm. It's okay.
It's not happening to you yet.

Speaker 1 But then it felt like someone had reached up inside of Nels' chest and was squeezing as hard, as hard as they could. It was like his body was being possessed by something.

Speaker 1 And then he felt this pressure building up inside of him. And then it was like, without even trying, suddenly the loudest scream that had ever come out of Nels came out of his mouth.

Speaker 1 And he was completely powerless to stop it.

Speaker 1 And seconds later, Nels screaming at the top of his lung, along with his partner, who was also screaming, they joined the stampede of other screaming crew members running their way up to the top deck and when nels and his partner reached the top deck as they were screaming and screaming and screaming nels looked around and he took stock of what he was seeing again he's literally screaming this entire time and can't stop it and he's seeing that's what everybody else was dealing with there were sailors who were clawing at their faces almost like they were trying to stop themselves from screaming but that wasn't doing anything others were holding their throats attempting to stop the screaming.

Speaker 1 Some others were running into walls and grabbing and fighting with each other. I mean, it was absolutely chaos.
And so Nels, he's kind of taking stock of this whole situation, still screaming.

Speaker 1 And then he notices one sailor in particular, and Nels knew exactly what was going to happen.

Speaker 1 That one sailor, who Nels did not know well, he was one of the sketchy crew members who were picked up in Hong Kong, he stopped screaming.

Speaker 1 And Nels could tell because there was this look of absolute calm over the sailor's face. And he was down on all fours, almost like an animal, right out in the middle of the top deck.

Speaker 1 And Nels, as he continued to scream, watched as this young, now very quiet sailor started to move across the deck like an animal.

Speaker 1 And as he did, he got faster and faster, like he was galloping on all fours, and he was headed straight for the railing of the ship.

Speaker 1 Now, Nels, in his conscious mind, he knew what was going to happen next, and he wanted to stop it, but just like he couldn't stop his own screaming, he was powerless to stop what was about to happen to this young man.

Speaker 1 And sure enough, Nels watched in horror as this galloping young sailor went full speed to the railing and then just leapt clear over it and splashed into the water below.

Speaker 1 And the second he hit the water, it was like everybody on the ship broke out of their trance. The screaming stopped and it was eerily quiet.

Speaker 1 And one by one, each of the crew who had kind of broken out of their trance now began looking around, having no idea how they just wound up on the deck and what was even going on.

Speaker 1 And they looked at each other to try to to figure out, like, you know, do you know what just happened? But nobody knew.

Speaker 1 And then this very tense silence was broken when one of the crew members who had seen that young man gallop and leap over the side, you know, this crew member, he yelled, hey, man, overboard, someone jumped over.

Speaker 1 And it was like, that was the thing that everybody was going to focus on. We're going to forget about this absolute craziness that just happened and we're going to try to rescue this guy.

Speaker 1 But despite lowering down rowboats and paddling around for nearly an hour and yelling out for this guy and turning their ship around over and over again, they never found him.

Speaker 1 He never made a single noise, nothing. He just vanished into the night and that was it.

Speaker 1 And so after about an hour of searching, the search was called off and this sailor who had leapt over the edge was declared dead.

Speaker 1 And once he was declared dead and the rest of the crew were all back on board the Perrier standing on the top deck looking around like, what just happened?

Speaker 1 Nels and the captain looked at each other and nodded, because they knew they would have to tell the crew what just happened. They would have to share this ship's dark secret.

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Speaker 1 And so Nels and the captain told the crew the big secret, and the crew was obviously horrified, but considering they had just been through the entire experience, they weren't exactly surprised.

Speaker 1 They just hoped that, you know, this night was the only night this craziness would happen. But the following night, the same thing happened.

Speaker 1 Everybody screamed, went crazy, ran up to the deck, somebody leapt overboard. The next night, same thing happened as well.

Speaker 1 The next night, so four nights in a row of this, the captain just could not take it anymore.

Speaker 1 And when he heard that first scream echo through the ship, the captain grabbed a pistol, put it to his head, and fired.

Speaker 1 In early April, the Perrier finally reached San Francisco, California, where the crew was supposed to offload their hemp and machinery.

Speaker 1 By this point, one of the sailors, whose name was Pataman, had assumed command of the ship, but by this point, the crew were very close to mutiny. They did not want to be on the ship anymore.

Speaker 1 They didn't care who was in charge.

Speaker 1 And in fact, once the Perrier got even just within sight of land, there were nine sailors still on board the Perrier who stole one of the rowboats, lowered it down to the water, and just paddled to land to get away from the Perrier as fast as they could.

Speaker 1 They didn't even ask to be paid. They just wanted to get away.
Nells and the few remaining crew members on board the Perrier docked it in San Francisco, California.

Speaker 1 They unloaded the hemp, and then the crew actually got back on the Perrier and set sail again and sailed to Santa Monica, California, which was not a very far distance, where they would offload the machinery, so the rest of their haul.

Speaker 1 And actually on the morning that they were supposed to actually dock in Santa Monica, the crew's cook leapt overboard to his death at 2 a.m. and the crew barely reacted.

Speaker 1 Because by this point, this was just commonplace on board the Perrier. People going crazy and jumping over to their deaths.

Speaker 1 And so once the Perrier was docked in Santa Monica and all the cargo was offloaded, Nels and the rest of the crew just left it there. They totally abandoned it and just left.

Speaker 1 And the Perrier would remain totally abandoned in this dock in Santa Monica until a reporter from the Chicago Tribune newspaper found out about what had happened on board this ship and the fact that now it was totally abandoned, which seems so creepy.

Speaker 1 And he decided to dig into this, and ultimately he published the story that I'm telling you right now. Here is the Perrier's dark secret that both Nels and Captain Gavinsky knew all too well.

Speaker 1 Three and a half years earlier, on a night in the fall of 1903, the Perrier docked in what was then called Bombay, but what is now known as Mumbai, India.

Speaker 1 And on this particular night, some of the crew members of the Perrier decided they wanted to leave the boat and go have some fun.

Speaker 1 So a few sailors and an officer hopped on one of the rowboats on board the Perrier, they lowered it down to the water, and they paddled to shore.

Speaker 1 And apparently, this group of guys had a great time on shore, but at some point, the officer apparently killed a guy on land. Who knows what it was about? Nobody knows.

Speaker 1 The reporter from the Chicago Tribune couldn't figure it out. But the rumor goes the officer killed someone.

Speaker 1 And when they came back to the ship that night, the officer was bragging about killing this person and even making jokes about it.

Speaker 1 Now, we don't know if this story actually happened, and we also don't really know if this is the seminal event that prompted what would become the dark secret of the Perrier.

Speaker 1 But very shortly after that officer had killed someone, the Perrier had left Mumbai and they were out at sea and it was very cold, but then suddenly the crew remembered this warm air wafting over the boat and then screams rang out from inside as the crew began going totally crazy.

Speaker 1 This was the first appearance of the Perrier's Dark Secret, which sailors on board the Perrier actually just referred to as the thing.

Speaker 1 Nobody ever saw the thing or felt the thing or heard the thing.

Speaker 1 The only thing they experienced before all hell broke loose is a warm breeze would come across the ship, and then seconds later it was absolute pandemonium until one of the crew members died.

Speaker 1 And this thing would basically inhabit these sailors and cause them to take their own lives.

Speaker 1 Over the next few years, more crews would join the Perrier and go out to sea, and over and over and over again, this thing, the Dark Secret, would take over and many of the crew would end up dying.

Speaker 1 And so by the time the crew had come to port, the crew would totally mutiny and disappear. Nobody wanted to be anywhere near this ship.

Speaker 1 That was why Nels and Captain Gavinsky were the longest-serving members on board the Perrier, because they were the only ones who were willing to come back.

Speaker 1 All told, the Thing, or the Dark Secret of the Perrier, claimed the lives of 23 sailors.

Speaker 1 20 of them, after screaming like maniacs, suddenly just went quiet and leapt over the railing into the ocean and drowned, and the three others that passed away were the ship's captains, who all killed themselves.

Speaker 1 After the Perrier was abandoned in Santa Monica, California, it's unclear what actually happened to it, but we know it never sailed commercially again.

Speaker 1 A quick note about our stories. They are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

Speaker 1 The Mr. Ballin podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr.
Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen.

Speaker 1 Our head of production is Zach Levitt, produced by Jeremy Bone. Research and fact-checking by Shelly Hsu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan.

Speaker 1 Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Eyre. Audio editing and post-produced by Witt Lacasio and Cole Lacasio.
Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham.

Speaker 1 Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane. Production coordination by Samantha Collins.
Production support by Antonio Minata and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Klogston-Kiner.

Speaker 1 Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr.
Bollin podcast.

Speaker 1 If you enjoyed today's story and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts. There's this one, the Mr.
Bollin podcast, as well as Mr.

Speaker 1 Bollin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories, Run Fool, Redacted, Late Nights with Nexpo, and A Twist of History.

Speaker 1 All you have to do is search for Balin Studios wherever you get your podcasts. To watch hundreds more stories just like this one, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr.
Ballin.

Speaker 1 So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support.
Until next time, see ya.

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