Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. And today, I'm going to share two stories that demonstrate that. But before we get into those stories, 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 leaves their phone out unattended, go ahead and pick it up and spam passwords over and over again until it locks them out of their phone for a week. 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 stories. At around 8:00 PM on December 16, 2023, a 31-year-old man named Nestor Flores was driving down a highway just outside of Dallas, Texas, with both his hands tightly gripping the steering wheel. Nestor was very stressed out on this ride. All he wanted to do was get home because he was worried that on this ride, he might get pulled over by police. I mean, this was a route he had driven a bunch, and he knew there were loads of state troopers that patrolled the area.

And from his perspective, it seemed like they pulled people over all the time. Nestor had spent the night out with a couple of friends, and he had had a couple of drinks. He didn't feel he had had too much to where he couldn't drive, but he knew if he did get pulled over, he could be in trouble. Then on top of that, in the back of Nester's mind was the fact that he had had a couple of minor run-ins with the law over the past couple of years. And so he had this fear of police already. And also, Nester was not born in America. And so he was worried that on top of all that, if he got pulled over, he could risk being deported. And so on whole, Nester just does not want to see any police officer. He just wants to get home and go to bed. And so as Nester is doing his best to not draw any suspicion to himself and is trying to follow all the rules of the road, he decides to have a sip of his Diet Coke. And his Diet Coke was right in the middle console.

So as he's driving, eyes straight ahead, he reaches down and he grabs the Coke, he pulls it up, he uncaps it, takes a sip. But then as he puts the drink back down, again, he's keeping his eyes on the road, he hits something with the drink, and he feels the drink slosh out of his cup and it hits his hand. And instinctively, he took his eyes off the road and looked down at the Coke, and he managed to put the drink back in its cup holder. And then when he brought his eyes back to the road, there was a deer in the middle of the road. He was too close to swerve out of the way. And so at full speed, he smashes into this deer. The deer hits his front windshield and basically caves in the passenger side windshield and flips up and over the back of his car. Nestor, amazingly, was composed enough to not swerve wildly post-impact because he knew if he did that, he could run into oncoming traffic or something. And so he just kept on going straight and gradually slowed down and pulled off the side of the road.

And as he did, he looked over his shoulder, seeing if this deer was basically lying in the road or even worse, maybe it hit some other car. But when When he looked over his shoulder, the road was clear. There was no deer. Now, even though Nestor was obviously very shaken up at this point, he just had this horrible car accident with this deer, and he's already on edge about getting pulled over by police. But for the moment, it was just peaceful on the highway. No cops were coming up to him, and he's pulled over to the side. Physically, he was okay. It seemed like the deer was okay. It clearly ran off the road or something. And there was damage to his car. I mean, the deer really smashed in the front of his car, and the windshield, especially on the passenger side, was basically caved in. But Nestor was able to see through his side of the windshield. And when he put the car back in drive and hit the gas, the car seemed to drive just fine. And so even though Nestor felt bad that he had smashed this deer, he thought, What am I going to do?

Go find the deer and make sure it's okay? He can't really do anything. It's night time. He made the decision that nobody saw this, and it seems like everything's okay, so I'm just going to drive home, and I'll take care of my car tomorrow. But after driving 38 more miles from the impact site, Nestor's car began making this horrible rattling sound from the engine, and also smoke began to billow up out of the front of his car. And so Nestor knew, this is so conspicuous. He's going to get pulled over if he doesn't stop. And so feeling really annoyed because he was actually pretty close to home at this point, Nestor pulled off the highway and came to a stop in a parking lot of a fast food restaurant. And so at first, all Nestor did was just turn off his car and wait for a couple of minutes in hopes that that would be enough to cure his car. But after a couple of minutes, the smoke continued to billow out of his car. And then when he tried to turn it back on again, the car simply wouldn't start. And so at this point, Nestor knew he had to call a tow truck.

But when he reached for his phone, his phone was dead, and he didn't have a phone charger in his car. And so he's like, Great, I can't even call a tow truck. But then he looked up and saw the fast food restaurant was open, and he decided he would just go in there, and he would ask one of them if they had a charger. Nestor gets out of his smoking car, he walks into the restaurant, he goes up to the counter, and he asks the person behind the counter like, Hey, my phone's dead. Do you have a charger? Do you mind charging my phone? But the employee, they didn't say anything back to Nestor. They just stood there with their mouths open and their eyes wide staring at Nestor. They couldn't believe what they were looking at. And so Nestor's thinking like, What's wrong with this person? Hey, do you have a charger or not? And the employee, who by this point is pale as a ghost, just shook their head at Nestor like, No, they don't have a charger. And then they just stood there still staring at Nestor. And so now Nestor is genuinely just furious.

I mean, the whole night has completely derailed here. All he wanted to do was get home, and it's like one horrible thing happens after another. And so Nestor was just like, Okay, fine. And he turned around and he left the restaurant and went back to his car thinking, Maybe if I search the whole vehicle, there's bound to be a charger in there somewhere. And so Nestor gets back into his car, he climbs into the driver's seat, he shuts the door, and as he begins looking around his car for this charger, he begins to feel really sleepy. Actually, he eventually just leans forward and falls asleep in his car. More than two hours later, Nestor woke up to the sound of somebody tapping on his window. Nester groggily turned and looked, and it was like the worst case scenario. It was a police officer who was shining his flashlight into the vehicle, clearly gesturing for Nester to roll his window down. Nester was totally compliant. He rolled the window down and he looked at the officer. And before Nestor could even say anything, the officer said, Get out of the car. So Nestor, he gets out of the car and he's thinking to himself, Why is he acting so aggressively towards me?

What have I done here? And so Nestor, he gets out of the car. And again, before Nestor can ask any the officer just says to Nestor, What happened tonight? What's going on here? And so Nestor, he knows his car is jacked up, and here he is, sleeping in the parking lot. And so he turns to the officer and begins explaining the deer story. He was driving down the road, he hits this deer, it went over the top, he didn't see it, he didn't report it. And as he's telling the officer this, he's thinking, Oh, my gosh, is there a law? If you hit a deer, are you supposed to report it? Is that what's going on? Maybe the deer did die, and it was in the middle of the road, and somebody saw his license plate, and now the cop was here. And so Nestor began to panic trying to explain the logic behind leaving the deer and how sorry he was. He should have stopped. He should have called the police. But the officer finally just put up his hand, telling Nestor to stop talking. And then the officer took his flashlight and he shined it past Nestor at his car.

And when the officer did that, the officer immediately grabbed his radio and began barking orders into it, saying he needed backup. And so Nestor's like, What is going on here? This whole night has been such a disaster. What did I do? And so Nestor, he turned to see what the cop was looking at on his car that would elicit such a big response from him. And when he looked at the passenger seat of his car, where the cop's light was now shining, Nestor froze for a second and then just started to scream. It would turn out that even though Nestor believed he had only had a few drinks and he was okay to drive, the reality was he was completely violated drunk and should never have been behind the wheel. And when he was driving on the highway, anxiously trying to get home, well, he didn't hit a deer. He hit a 45 pedestrian named Terry Ivory, and he hit this guy with so much force that Terry went through the windshield on the passenger side and then landed in the passenger seat, minus one leg, which had been severed on impact. And then Terry's dead body sat there in the passenger seat with Nestor having no idea, he thinks there's a deer back there, but there was never a deer.

There's just a dead guy next to him. Nestor just drove 40 more miles with Terry's dead body next to him. Then when Nestor's car began to smoke and make noises, he pulled off the to that fast food restaurant parking lot. Then when he went inside the restaurant to try to get a phone charger, the reason that employee was so shocked to see Nestor and could basically not even speak when Nestor was trying to talk to them was because Nestor was covered practically head to toe in blood, Terry's blood. Now, it's not entirely clear why that employee did not immediately call police. But after Nestor left the restaurant, went back to his car, and fell asleep, during the time Nestor was sleeping, someone inside the restaurant did he'd call the police, and that's why they showed up and knocked on Nestor's glass. Nestor was charged with collision involving death in December of 2023. However, his case has not yet been adjudicated. Earlier this year, we announced our very first Mr. Ballen book, a graphic novel, and the release date is fast approaching. It's coming out on October first, which also happens to be my birthday. Now, this graphic novel was truly a labor of love.

It took us well over a year to put this thing together, and I'm telling you, it's fantastic. There are four brand new feature length stories that I have never told on any of our platforms, so four new, and then five Ogie, like classic Mr. Ballen stories that have been reedited and reformatted to fit the graphic novel. So if you haven't done this already, go to book. Balinstudios. Com to pre order a copy of this amazing graphic novel so you can get it the moment it comes out, which again is in just a few weeks on October first. And if you're a fan of hearing my voice tell you stories, you're in luck because I just finished recording the audiobook version of the graphic novel, and I promise you, it is not just me reading the book on tape. It's not that. I actually went wildly off script for every story, spicing them up a bit, to the point where the director was a little bit concerned that I had gone so rogue during this audiobook. But I'm telling you, it wound up making the audiobook really unique. It's basically like its own thing now, and it's a great companion to the graphic novel because because it's not just the words.

It's like an expansion of what you're seeing on the page. So the audiobook, it's pretty good. So again, if you want a copy of the novel or the audiobook or both, just go to book. Ballinstudios. Com. Okay, back to the stories. On the afternoon of December 15th, 1997, a brand new mother named Luz Cuevas sat on her couch in her little apartment in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, cradling her beautiful 10-day-old baby girl who she had named Delamar Vera. In the room with Luce and her daughter were some members of Luce's extended family who had come over to meet the baby. For about an hour, the family all took turns holding the baby and complimenting how cute her little dimples looked. Then eventually, the baby started to get fussy, at which point, Luce said she was going to take her upstairs and put her to bed. Luce brought Delamar upstairs to her nursery, and she put the baby down in her crib, and she stayed with for a bit until Delamar finally had dozed off to sleep. And so after being sure that her daughter wasn't going to stir, Luce got up and she began making her way towards the door.

Right before she left, she made sure to plug in the space heater for her daughter's room to make sure it would stay warm enough while her daughter slept. And then after that, she left the room, shut the nursery door, and went back downstairs to rejoin her family. Luce's family didn't stick around much longer after Luce came downstairs. And after they were all gone, Luce realized she was totally exhausted and her daughter was still fast asleep upstairs. And so Luce decided she would also lie down and try to take a nap herself. But as soon as she closed her eyes, she heard this loud thud sound coming from the second floor, and it sounded like something really heavy had smashed into the ground. And she's thinking, her daughter's up there. Could that be her daughter somehow falling out of the crib or something? And so Luz jumped up, sprinted upstairs, and as she looked down the hall, she could clearly see there was black smoke billowing out of her daughter's nursery. And so Luz charges down the hall, she opened opens up the door, and she looks into her daughter's room, and it's completely engulfed in flames.

I mean, everything is on fire, but it's her baby girl in there. Without any hesitation, Luz charges into the inferno. But when she gets up to the crib, the crib is so completely on fire that when she looks in, she can't even see her daughter. And so in a craze, she begins looking around the room thinking, Maybe my daughter did fall out of the crib, and she's somewhere else in the room, but everything is on fire. She can't see anything. And so It has loose. It's literally catching on fire and breathing in all the smoke. She's screaming for her daughter. And then a couple of minutes later, firefighters burst into the door, and they literally drag Loos out of the nursery. She hasn't found her daughter. She's screaming, Where's my baby? But the firefighters, they bring her outside. And just a couple of minutes later, they were able to extinguish this blaze. And after they came out of the house again, they found Loos, who had all these terrible burns in her body, and she's totally messed up from this fire. And they tell her that, unfortunately, Unfortunately, her daughter was dead. After Delamar's death, Luce's life completely fell apart.

I mean, the grief was so immense. It was like she could no longer function in society. I mean, she actually retracted from the world, stopped interacting with people, didn't see her family. She wound up getting a divorce from her husband just over the grief and the sadness of losing this child. I mean, it was like her life basically ended when her daughter's life ended. But on top of that, Luz also felt this incredible sense of guilt because Because after the fire, the investigators told her that the cause of the fire, although not conclusive, was very likely from that space heater she had plugged in right before she had left the room. And so, of course, Luce is feeling this incredible burden for having potentially killed her daughter. But also, she just began to obsess over the details because, again, it wasn't conclusive that it was the space heater. That was their best guess as to what caused the fire. And so Luce began to wonder, was it something else? Was it prevention What was it? Basically, Luce became completely obsessed with what happened to her daughter. It was the only thing she ever thought of for years.

Fast forward to January 24th, 2004, so six years after the fire. And on this day, Luce was invited to a family party. There was a get together, and Luz basically never went to any family function or really left her house much at all. But for some reason, on this day, she decided to go out. And so she goes to this party, and when she gets there, remember, Luz has basically been a recluse for the past six years, and so she's not going to immediately start socializing. And so instead, she just goes in the house and finds a spot in the back, away from everybody else who's chatting, and just stands there, people watching. And While she's doing that, something catches her attention off to the side. When she turns to look at it and sees what it is, she immediately just freezes. Three days later, Luce walked into the office of a local state legislator, and after saying hello, she sat down, reached into her purse, and pulled out a little plastic bag that contained a folded-up napkin, and she slid it across the table to the legislator. So he picked up the bag and stared at it inquisitively as Luce dove in to this wild explanation about what was in this bag and why she was here.

At the end of this totally off-the-wall, insane-sounding story, the legislator was left just staring at Luce and looking back at the bag in total shock. Then finally, after a couple of moments of silence, the legislator just said, Okay, yeah, I'll see what I can It would turn out the fire was not caused by the space heater that Luce had plugged in right before she left her daughter's room. Instead, police believe after Luce came downstairs and tried to take a nap, somebody broke into her apartment, went into the nursery and set the fire on purpose, but not before abducting the baby. That person was one of Luz's own family members who had been at her apartment that day celebrating the birth of Dela Marvera. It was Luz's husband's cousin, Caroleyn Correa. And in fact, on this same day, before the fire and before the abduction, Caroleyn made a point to announce to the whole family that she was pregnant, even though she wasn't. It was just going to be her cover story for why she suddenly had this brand new baby. Six years later, when Luce was at that family party, well, the thing that caught her attention on the other side of the room was her daughter.

She literally saw her daughter, and even though she hadn't seen her in six years, she instantly knew it was her because of her distinctive dimples. Now, Luce knew she couldn't just suddenly yell out like, That's my daughter. So instead, she came up with this plan. She walked up to the girl and very discreetly said, Hey, honey, I think you got some gum in your hair. And so as she pretended to pull gum out of the child's hair, she carefully plucked a few strands and put them inside of a napkin and put it inside of her pocket. And then three days later, she brought that hair inside of that plastic baggie and she gave it to the legislator and basically said, Here's what I think happened. I think she stole my kid. Can you test it for DNA? To prove that girl is my daughter. The legislator was like, Okay, I'll give it a shot. Lo and behold, that hair would prove that girl at the party was her daughter. She did not die in that fire. Caroline Correa was sentenced to 9-30 years in prison for abduction. She originally had an arson charge against her as well, but investigators could not actually prove how the fire started, and so they ultimately dropped those charges.

Officials also launched an inquiry into how the fire department had handled the original investigation because Luce had tried to convince fire officials that maybe her daughter had not died in the blaze. Maybe she was just missing. Because when Luce went into the nursery, she claimed she couldn't even find her daughter. But investigators had told her that the fire had burned so hot that basically her daughter had been totally incinerated, and that's why she couldn't find her. In the end, though, because of her refusal to ever give up, Luce was ultimately reunited with her daughter, Delamar. Okay, so if you're not listening to show called RunFool, then you are really missing out on a truly special and unique podcast. Now, it's technically a horror podcast, but honestly, it's so much more. Every episode is a fresh take on terrifying lore, like a modern ghost story wrapped up in a tightly-spun narrative. Also, remember, Runful is a Ballin Studio's podcast, which means there's always going to be a big plot twist or reveal at the end. Rodney Barnes is the iconic host of Runful, and every story he tells on there, it feels like this fully immersive horror movie.

Also, the sound design on the show is like expert level. Barnes really knows what he's doing. Even if you never watch the show, you should tune in just for a second, at least once, just to hear Barnes's radio voice. It is like the best, most soothing voice I think I've ever heard. So if Runful feels like a show you might like, go run and follow the show and start listening. So that's going to do it. If you want more strange, dark, and mysterious content, remember, we have a whole slew of podcasts under the Balin Studio's umbrella. They are the Mr. Balin podcast, Mr. Balin's Medical mysteries, Runful, Bedtime Stories, and Wartime Stories. All of them are free. There are Strange, dark, and mysterious variety. All you have to do is go to any podcast platform, look up Balin Studios, and boom, there are all of our podcasts for you to go binge. Thank you very much. Until next time. See you.