Today's story is a special one because this story was the very first one told on one of my personal favorite YouTube channels. The channel is called Wartime Stories, and basically the content is the Strange, dark, and mysterious meets the battlefield and beyond. The host of Wartime Stories is Luc LaMana, and he was a recon Marine, so very high speed, and he's got a great radio voice. But most importantly, he ferrets out these totally insane stories from service members from their times all around the globe, running into these unexplainable phenomenon and seeing and witnessing and being a part of things that just didn't make any sense. I mean, the stories he finds are terrifying and so intriguing. But in addition to just wanting to plug this amazing YouTube channel, I actually have another reason why I'm talking about Wartime Stories, but you'll have to wait till later in this episode to find out why. But before we get into this Wartime Stories-inspired story, if you're a fan of the Strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload once a week. So if that's of interest to you, the next time the like button has spent hours and hours carefully cleaning and detailing their vintage car, offer to do them a favor by parking their car in their garage.

When you get in there, carefully back it into the garage. But then instead of putting it in park, just go ahead and hit the gas and smash the car into their house. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's story. On the morning of August 16th, 1942, a woman named Ida Ruby was riding her horse on a dirt path right near a beach just south of San Francisco, California. Now, during the week, Ida was a telephone operator, but it was a Sunday, so she had time off. The way she to spend her time off was by riding her horse along the coastline and looking out at the beautiful water and taking in the nature and all these unbelievable cliffs that went down to the water. I mean, this was a beautiful area. Every time Ida would go out and do this little ride around, she would bring binoculars with her. And so anytime she saw something of interest, she would stop and use her binoculars to see what it was, like animals or things out over the water.

And on this particular Sunday, Ida turned a corner, and as soon as she did, something caught her attention off to her right, out over the water. And so she stopped her horse and she turned and she looked out and the sea was very calm, and she could see way out just past the horizon was what looked like this black thing hovering over the water. And instead of raising her binoculars right away, she just squinted and looked off in the direction, and she quickly realized what it was. It was a blimp. Now, today, when we hear the word blimp, we very likely think of the good year blimp that sits over sporting events with the big good year logo stamped on the side of it. It's basically a big balloon with a gondola that sits underneath it for the person who's driving it and passengers. That's actually exactly what Ida was seeing, a big, oversize balloon with a gondola underneath it. But this was not a good year blimp. It was a military blimp. Because this was 1942, right in the middle of World War II. Nine months earlier, the United States had joined World War II after the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.

Ever since then, Japanese submarines had been lurking off the Coast of California, all across West Coast, out in the Pacific Ocean. Occasionally, they would send torpedoes out and bomb the US mainland. The United States responded to this by launching this fleet of blimps that basically were able to get really low to the water, that could move really slowly and they would basically fly all along the Pacific Coastline looking for Japanese submarines. They could literally go down, and from their gondola, they could look down and actually see submarines and mark them for bombing runs or scare them off. Ida, like anybody else who was living on the West Coast of the United States at the time, was aware that there were blimps out over the ocean, but it was still a fairly uncommon sight. Because of that, Ida was intrigued, and so she raised her binoculars and she focused on this blimp, and she would see something that was so strange that even 80 years later, nobody can fully explain it. But to really understand why what she saw was so weird, we need to back up about 5 hours on the same day to about 6:00 AM at a military base just north of where Ida was seeing this blimp.

At 6:00 AM at this military base, that particular blimp that Ida would later see was at this military base on the ground, and some Navy pilots and mechanics were preparing the blimp for a routine mission out over the San Francisco Bay to look for Japanese submarines. The intended path this blimp was going to take on this day was it would leave the base and the pilot would take it over the famous Golden Gate Bridge, and then it would travel 28 miles to the west to the Marlon Islands. Then from there, the pilot would go 20 miles to the north to a peninsula called Point Reyes. Then from there, the pilot would head south along the coastline all the way back to base. This whole mission profile was scheduled to take about four hours. The pilots for this mission were going to be a 27-year-old Navy lieutenant named Ernest Cody and a 34-year-old officer named Charles Adams. Both of them were very experienced Blimp pilots. They had done missions like this many times before. This was going to be a very routine mission for them. Then Then also, in addition to those two pilots, there would be a Navy mechanic who would join the two pilots in case there was any malfunctions with the blimp during the mission.

Everything was going to plan with this blimp that morning. There was nothing unusual about this mission. But right as the two pilots and the mechanic were literally getting inside of the gondola to begin this mission, Lieutenant Cody looked down at the control panel inside the blimp, and he noticed the blimp was way heavier than it should have been. Now, you have to understand that the level of rigor that went into preparing these blimps for flight was really intense. I mean, they were weighing every little thing that was put inside of this blimp because it was a really important part of flying these blips, understanding how heavy it was. For this to be too heavy just made no sense. At first, Cody and Adams began tapping on the control panel, thinking maybe the panel itself was malfunctioning, and if they hit it hard enough, the little ticker would go back to a normal weight. But despite hitting the panel, it still showed it was too heavy. They flagged over the mechanic who was going to be joining them on the flight anyways. Voice, and the mechanic looked and thought for a second and then realized that day it had been very foggy.

It was totally possible that all this extra moisture in the air had stuck to the surface of the balloon. Collectively, that had added quite a bit of weight. I mean, this is a massive balloon, a lot of surface area, a lot of water. Now, this was not some crisis. At worst, this was an inconvenience. Basically, they had to wait until this moisture burned off once the sun came out, and then they could fly the blimp. But Cody and Adams, they just didn't feel like waiting. This mission was so routine, so simple. They done it so many times. And so Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams decided that the easiest and fastest solution to this problem was simply to tell the mechanic who was going to come with them on this mission to not come with them. Without his weight inside of the gondola, even with this extra moisture in the blimp, it wouldn't matter. The blimp would still be light enough to fly with just the two pilots on board. The mechanic didn't care, so he hopped off, and then Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams took their seats inside the gondola, and sure enough, when they looked at the control panel, the blimp was ready to go.

It was light enough. Lieutenant Cody fired up the blimp's engines, and just after 6:00 AM that morning, Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams lifted off the ground and began their routine mission. About an hour and a half later, at 7:38 AM, Lieutenant Cody radioed back to air control, saying that so far, the patrol had been totally routine. Everything was going smoothly. They hadn't seen any Japanese submarines or anything out of the ordinary. Also, Lieutenant Cody said they were positioned just east of the Faralan Islands, which meant they were exactly on course, and really everything did seem to be going exactly to plan. But four minutes later, Lieutenant Cody radioed back again to air control, and he said they had just spotted an oil slick down on the water. Basically, picture from their perspective, they saw that gleaning oil sitting on top of the ocean. At the time, this often signaled that below the surface of the water under this oil slick was a submarine. This is like a telltale sign that the Japanese could be right here. So Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams told air control that they were going to descend in the blimp down to the water and fully investigate this oil slick, and then they'd report back.

This last transmission happened at 07:50 AM. A few minutes later, a fishing boat named the Daisy gray was gliding slowly through the water just east of the Faralan Islands, when all of a sudden, the captain who's looking straight ahead, he turned the boat and he happened to see straight ahead of him this massive blimp, the same blimp Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams were in, descending very quickly through the clouds down towards the water. Remember, this was a pretty cloudy day, and so really this blimp came out of nowhere. This fishing boat captain was very aware that any time blimps were out over the water, that was because they were looking for enemy submarines. This captain realized he was heading right now straight in the direction of wherever this blimp was descending towards. The captain looked out ahead and he saw that big oil slick on top of the water, maybe 100 yards away from him. And so he put it together that, oh, my gosh, this blimp is going to that slick. That means there's an enemy submarine basically right there. And so in a panic, the fishing boat captain called to his crew to pull in the fishing nets, and he turned the wheel as fast as he could, and he hit the accelerator, doing everything he could to get away from this blimp, because he knew that typically what happens when a blimp came down and actually found a submarine is they sometimes dropped bombs on the submarine.

I mean, this is warfare. The fishing boat captain is getting away as fast as he can, and as soon as he's turned around, he looked back and he saw the blimp was now about 30 feet over the water, and someone inside the gondola was now leaning out over the side, and they dropped two things directly into the water, into that oil slick. Then seconds later, these huge plumes of smoke were coming out of the water. The person had just dropped some flares, basically marking where this submarine was. Now the captain knew, Okay, it's a submarine, and the next thing is very likely going to be bomb, like a depth charge is going to be dropped right there. Again, the captain's just speeding his way as fast as he can, hoping that if they do drop a bomb, it doesn't affect him and his crew. After making it another couple of hundred feet away from this blimp, the captain again turned around, expecting to see this blimp still hovering where it was because, again, they had just dropped flares. They're preparing to do something major right there. But now when the captain turned around, he saw the blimp was no longer hanging out over the water.

The blimp was now rocketing back up into the clouds as fast as it possibly could. Before long, the blimp was gone. It disappeared into the clouds, and there had been no bomb dropped. I mean, nothing really happened beyond marking the water. It was like, What's going on with this blimp? Some of you might know that before I became a professional, strange, dark, and mysterious storyteller, I was in the military. And while I was in the military, I definitely had some pretty wild experiences all around the world. But to be honest, what I remember most about my time in service was not any of my own exploits, but rather it was the insane stories I heard from other service members. Keep in mind, military service members are sent to some of the most isolated, desolate, inhospitable places in the world. And many times in those places, weird things happen, unexplainable things like borderline, paranormal things happen in these places. Think being out in the middle of the ocean with absolutely nothing around and seeing lights popping up in the sky and coming out of the ocean and seeing figures up on the mountains, wandering around where there shouldn't be any people.

I mean, there are insane stories out there from service members, but many of them are not necessarily told in the public. They're kept within the military. It's a part of military lore. The Wartime Stories YouTube channel that I mentioned at the top of this episode, well, Luc LaMana, the military veteran, he goes out and finds these totally bizarre stories from service members from all over the world, and he tells those stories on his YouTube channel. That is the premise of Wartime Stories. If that piques your interest, well, you're in luck because not only Can you right now go check out the Wartime Stories YouTube channel? But also, I personally hand selected Wartime Stories to come under the Ballin Studio's umbrella, and we have collaborated to make a brand new weekly podcast, the official Wartime Stories Stories podcast, which is available right now. So at the end of today's video, I'm going to play the trailer for the Wartime Stories podcast right at the end of this YouTube video. And then after you listen to that, go look up the Wartime Stories podcast on any podcast platform. It's free. All you have to do is look up Balin Studios, and you'll find Wartime Stories that way, or you can direct search for Wartime Stories.

Click on it, follow them, and give them a listen. It's an amazing weekly show with new episodes coming out every single Monday. It's going to be awesome. Make sure you stick around till the end of this episode to hear that trailer. Okay, back to the story. Meanwhile, back at air control, the last thing they heard from Lieutenant Cody was, Hey, we see this oil slick down below. We're going to investigate, and we'll radio back when we're done. And so Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams, they had clearly descended down to the water because that fishing boat saw it happen. But then after they rocketed back up to the clouds for some reason, they never radioed back to Air Control. So Air Control is waiting and waiting. They're not hearing back from Lieutenant Cody or Officer Adams. And finally, they began hailing the two pilots to say, Hey, what's going on? You said you were going to investigate. What did you find? What happened? But they could not get in touch with Lieutenant Cody or Officer Adams. And so eventually, after enough time had passed and they still had not heard from these pilots, air control sent two seaplanes out to that area east of the Faralan Islands to find the blimp and make sure the blimp was okay.

But when the seaplanes got out there, they couldn't find the blimp anywhere. I mean, they flew all over the place doing wider and wider circuits. There was no sign of the blimp. When they looked down at the water in the same area where Lieutenant Cody had called out that slick and where that fishing boat had also seen the slick, well, the slick was gone or the seaplanes just couldn't see the oil slick. But the seaplanes stayed on station in that area near the Faralan Islands for another two hours, just flying all over the place, hoping to eventually see this blimp. Eventually, they would. At about 10:30 AM that morning, one of the seaplanes spotted the blimp way, way high in the sky, way higher than any blimp would ever go. It is dangerously high, and it was way off course. But when these two seaplane pilots began flying towards the blimp to get eyes on the pilots inside of this blimp, Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams, well, when they got close enough, the blimp just began rapidly descending, like it was trying to avoid being seen by these seaplanes. In fact, the blimp descended so quickly that it dropped below the cloud cover, and the seaplanes, they couldn't move that quickly.

They had to do a big track to turn back around and try to go lower again. But once they got below the clouds to find this blimp, the blimp was gone. It basically had vanished. The seaplane pilots called back to air control, and they're like, I don't know what's going on with this blimp, but it's way off course. It was way up in the sky. Now it's somewhere down below, but we can't find We got to get in touch with Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams. There's obviously something wrong. But air control would try over and over again to get in touch with these pilots, but neither Cody nor Adams ever responded. They had just gone totally radio silent. At the same time, this chaos with this blimp is happening. Ida Ruby, the woman at the beginning of the story, was riding her horse on that dirt path near the beach just south of San Francisco, and she looked out over the water and she saw that blimp. Ida Ruby, she stops, she raises her binocular, her binoculars, and she looks at this blimp. After she focuses her binoculars, she realizes there's obviously something wrong with this blimp.

The actual balloon portion of the blimp, which said Navy on it, had collapsed so much in the middle that you couldn't even read the word Navy. It was all crumpled together because, again, the balloon is deflated. Also, she saw that this blimp appeared to just be listing as if the wind was blowing it and it was not being directed by the pilots inside. This blimp to be getting blown directly towards Ida. And so she lowered her binoculars and she looked out with her naked eye. And sure enough, this crumpled up blimp that was still afloat but clearly was not doing too well was getting closer and closer and closer to her. And as it was, it was getting lower and lower to the ground, and she's starting to worry it's going to smash into her. But right as this blimp was about to pass basically right over her head, she raised her binoculars one more time and she got a clear look inside of the gondola where Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams would have been. Now, Ida Ruby has no idea who's supposed to be inside of this blimp and who isn't or even what they're doing, but she definitely recalled exactly what she saw inside of that gondola.

That's the thing that has troubled everybody for so many years because what she saw was three people inside of that gondola. If you recall, that gondola only ever contained two people. It was Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams. But now, Ida Ruby is looking up and clear as day, there are three people in that gondola, even though at no point was there three people. It didn't leave with three. It didn't come down and take more people on board. It made no sense that there were three people inside of that gondola. Again, Ida Ruby wouldn't have known that, but when that information got passed, this was like, How could that be? And so after seeing the three men inside of this blimp, Ida lowered her binoculars and watched in horror as this deflated blimp drifted just above her, practically arm's length above her, and careened over the cliffs behind her and smashed into the ground. Then seconds later, Ida began hearing sirens going off in Daily City, which was located right behind her. That was the nearest town. As the blimp came in for a crash landing in Daily City, it scraped across a couple of residential rooftops and hit a couple of power lines before coming to a stop in the middle of the street.

Now, the blimp didn't explode or catch on fire or anything. It just crumpled to the and nobody got out of it. It just stopped, and it was there, right in the middle of the street. And very quickly, first responders rushed to this blimp because there have been so many reports of this deflated blimp looking like it was about to crash. And so they had been tracking it, and here it was. They ran up to this blimp, but at some point, one of the first responders ran up to the gondola itself where the door was slightly open, and they opened it up hoping to find there would be some survivors inside. But when he looked inside of this relatively small space, there There was nobody in there, and there was no sign that anybody had been in there. There was no blood or anything. It was just an empty gondola. But remember, minutes before, not even, Ida Ruby had clearly seen three people inside of that gondola. To go from three people to none in the space of a couple of hundred feet as everybody's watching this thing come into crash land in Daily City, where could they have gone?

Even weirder was when they looked inside of the gondola, they discovered that basically everything was functioning perfectly fine. It was unclear how it became deflated because, again, all the controls inside of this thing were working just fine. Also, the parachutes were still inside of this gondola. If you're going to jump out, you need a parachute But they were in here. And also the life raft, it was still inside of the gondola. It was like there was nothing wrong with the blimp. And so this whole situation made no sense. The Navy would launch an exhaustive investigation into what happened with this blimp. And the only The explanation the Navy came up with was, well, it looks like Officer Adams and Lieutenant Cody just fell out of the blimp at the exact same time, and they disappeared into the ocean. However, both pilots were wearing life preserves and would not have taken those off. That was absolutely 101 for being a pilot of one of these blims. They would have had these life preserves on, and even if they had fallen out and perished, they would have floated to the surface, or if they landed on land, they would have likely been found.

I mean, the entire route they had been on was heavily scrutinized and searched, but the bodies were never found. Then also, the Navy could not explain how Ida Ruby clearly saw three people absolutely, like 100 feet away from her inside of that gondola. She had No reason to lie about that. She was just saying, Yeah, I looked up, saw three people, saw it crash into Daily City. She didn't know there was supposed to be two people. She was just calling what she saw. But the Navy had no explanation. In the years that have followed this empty blimp crash in Daily City, it's been dubbed the Ghost Blimp Story, and loads of theories circulate about what could have happened here. Some people say that the reason there was all that extra weight at the beginning of the mission profile at 6:00 AM was not because of moisture on the balloon, but because there had to have been maybe a stowaway somewhere in the blimp. Then after takeoff, they jumped down into the gondola, and maybe they were responsible for whatever happened to the pilots and why the blimp crashed. But it doesn't explain what happened to those three people.

What happened to the stowaway? What happened to Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams' body? We don't know. Other theories include that maybe Lieutenant Cody and Officer Adams were somehow captured by the Japanese, and some other people say maybe Cody and Adams were abducted by aliens. But as far fetched as these theories might seem, the truth is we really have no idea what happened on that ghost blimp. Okay, that's the end of today's story. And now, here is the official trailer for the Wartime Stories podcast. And after you to it, be sure to go find the Wartime Stories podcast on any podcast platform, give them a follow, and tune in every Monday for a brand new episode. Enjoy the trailer.

What stories come to mind when you hear the term war? Stories of courage under fire, daring accounts of espionage, or despicable crimes against humanity. True, these are stories which no doubt permeate the forefront of our minds when it comes to war. But in and amongst the many anecdotes and legends borne out of military service, from the gruesome front lines in foreign lands to the peacetime garrison back on home soil, did you know that there were other kinds of stories? The kinds of stories that are whispered ever so quietly among the disciplined ranks of military personnel. Experiences that often go unreported because, well, who among their commanding officers would believe them? Tell me the truth. Stories of unexplained mysteries, of terrifying creatures that hide deep in unexplored regions, encounters with entities that were thought to exist only in legends, testimonies that indicate we are not alone in the universe, and supernatural encounters that make a man question the nature of life and death. Who said that? My name is Luke LaMana. I'm a Marine Corps reconnaissance veteran with a few strange experiences. And when I became a civilian again, I found myself going down the proverbian real rabbit hole.

I became obsessed with finding these kinds of stories and getting to the root of them. And now, I'm going to share them with you. From Balin Studios, this is Wartime Stories, a new immersive weekly podcast that is a mix of horror, mystery, and awe-inspiring tales, where the strange, dark, and mysterious meets the battlefield and beyond. Follow and listen to Wartime Stories now, wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday.