Hey, what's going on? What are we doing today? We're doing... What's the... Hold on a minute. Hold on. Feel the power building. Today, we're going to cover two stories that are of the strange but true variety. 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. Not three, four, five times a week. I know, I know, but it's still pretty good. We're still doing it, okay? Still pretty good. So if that's of interest to you, please install hidden cameras all around the like buttons house and then livestream those cameras to Facebook. 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. On the morning of June 20th, 2005, a 40-year-old man named Wang Deung, stood just inside the doorway of a little home in rural northeastern China. Outside, it was pouring rain with all this crazy thunder and lightning. Also, there were these hailstones coming down the size of golf balls, smashing into everything.

I mean, just the impact on the roof must have been so loud. As Wang was standing in the doorway, he was actually looking out in the direction of the storm because all these people were running towards him to come in the house. Wang was actually hosting a wake for a friend, and he was hosting this wake at this man's home. All the people running up to him were all the mourners coming to pay their respects. Now, by this point, most of the mourners had already made it inside the house, and so Wang was basically just waiting for the last few stragglers to make their way inside. From his post at the door, Wang is watching the storm and all these people. He also took stock of the fact that as he looked out to the big tobacco fields that were all over the place in this town. That was the primary way people made money in this town. He noticed that there was nobody out there tending the crops. Even in rainstorms, people would tend these crops because this was their livelihood. But Wang understood why nobody was out there. Yes, it was the storm, but specifically, lately, there had been these crazy lightning strikes in storms like this that struck the field.

So these workers that were normally out in the fields every single day, they weren't doing that anymore. Finally, the last couple of arrived, and Wong greeted them and brought them inside. Then he shut the door and then began making his rounds inside the home, making sure all the guests have what they needed, and also just making sure the wake was overall a positive experience, all things considered. Now, to be clear, Wang was not a monk or a priest or even a relative of the person who was deceased. Instead, he was just the guy that emceed virtually all events in this town. If there were weddings, he was the guy who officiated the weddings. If there were funerals or wakes or things of that nature, also, Wang was often tapped to emcee that as well. He was like the village elder, if you will, even though he was only 40 years old. And Wong, he really treasured the fact that he was the guy that got to do these things. And so he put a lot of time and energy into making sure they went extremely well. So on this day, as he was making his rounds, checking in with all the mourners, nobody really needed anything.

And so Wong felt like he didn't have a role, and he scanned around the room looking for something else he could do that would be productive. And he noticed the incense near the casket was going out. And so Wang walked over, he pulled out the extinguished incense. He got a new stick of incense, put it in, and he lit it. And then he just stood over the casket and closed his eyes and began saying a silent prayer for the dead. And as Wang did this, suddenly there was this deafening roar, and then everything went black. A few seconds later, that deafening roar fated, and it was replaced by the sound of all the mourners in the house basically screaming and trying to figure out what just happened. And so as people began trying to size up the situation, They saw there was all this smoke near the casket, and there was all these wooden debris everywhere. Then people looked up at the ceiling, and they saw there was now a pretty good-sized hole that had blackened char around the edges of the hole that was smoldering. Then, unfortunately, once the smoke really had dissipated, Wang was laying right underneath this hole in the roof, and half of his head was gone.

It was very clear he was deceased, and it didn't take long for mourners to figure out what had happened. Wang had unfortunately been struck by lightning. Two days later, Wang's family held a funeral for Wang, and basically, the entire village showed up for this funeral because remember, Wang was really a central member of this community, and so it was a really big loss that he was now dead. And candidly, this only stoked the fears that everybody had about lightning strikes. I mean, this was really becoming a huge issue. But after the funeral ended and Wang had been placed into a hearse and driven off to the crematorium to be cremated, the people at this funeral who were making their way out began talking a little bit more candidly about what had happened to Wong. I mean, it was obvious he was struck by lightning, but in this town, there was a lot of superstition around deaths like this when it seems like how he died is almost like an act of God I mean, how many people get struck by lightning? Even if you're scared of being struck by lightning, that is a very rare phenomenon, and everybody knew that.

And so the mourners couldn't help but suspect that maybe Wang was not this incredible person that everybody loved. Maybe he had deep dark secrets, and the way he was killed was like God's punishment, smiting him for the terrible things he was hiding. But nonetheless, the mourners who had just left the funeral followed tradition and actually walked over to the local crematorium where Wang would be cremated. Basically, it's the absolute final goodbye, and typically the family will stay there and wait for all the people to come by and pay their final respects. Then at that point, the family hands off their loved one in their casket to the manager of the crematorium, and the cremation process begins. And so all that happens. All the mourners go to the crematorium. They pay their final respects. And then before long, Wang's family was brought inside the crematorium with the manager, and they were placed in this quiet room to wait for this process to happen. And then the manager left them and went down the hall to the furnace room where Wang's casket was waiting for him. So the furnace room inside of this crematorium is basically like this big industrial space where in the middle is this huge, intimidating metal furnace, which is actually where the bodies are slid in and burned until they're just ash.

And so picture the biggest oven you've ever seen with a big metal rectangular door and these rails that slide directly into this furnace, and the casket is placed on those rails and then fed into the furnace. They seal the door and then, of course, ignite the furnace, and then the cremation begins. And so the manager, who had done this many, many times, walked up to Wang's casket, which was already placed on the rails. Workers had already set it up for this process before he came in. And so the manager walks up to the casket, he opens it up, he sees Wang's body, and he confirms that Wang is just wearing a robe with a belt, and he did not have any jewelry or metal on him or anything like that, which was not allowed during the cremation process. And so feeling confident that this was all good, he shut the casket and then slid the casket into the furnace. He shut the door, the big metal door, locked it, and then started the furnace. And as soon as he hit it, the manager heard the familiar sound of gas histing as the gas filled up the inside of the space, and then the familiar wooshing sound of the flames igniting.

But as the manager stepped away from the front of this furnace and was making his way back towards the door, he noticed there was another sound coming from inside of this furnace. It was a histing sound, but different than the gas sound. This was something else. Then before long, the histing got louder and louder and louder. Then finally, there was this massive explosion inside of this furnace, and so smoke is pouring out of the sides. It was unbelievable that the furnace itself even held its shape. I mean, something massive had detonated inside of this thing. In fact, even though that door that seals the furnace shut, even though it had not been blown off, the force of whatever detonated inside of there was so strong that the manager actually was knocked backwards from the blast. In a panic, he got up and there's smoke filling the room and there's flames dancing out of the edges of this metal door in front of the furnace. He hits the emergency stop and the flames cut, but it's still all smoky and it's totally chaotic and workers are rushing into the room to figure out what's going on, and the manager had no idea.

This was something he had never, ever seen before. Just minutes later, firefighters arrived and basically extinguished the remaining flames that were residually burning inside of the furnace and slightly outside of the furnace. Remember, this was a significant explosion, so there are cracks and breaks all over the furnace where some flames were still lit. But finally, the firefighters did extinguish all the flames, and then after it was safe to be in there, an investigation was launched as to what the heck happened in there. And so police officers went into this room and began sifting through all the debris in this room, both inside of the furnace itself and also outside where it had cracked and things had shot off in different directions. And for a while, they found nothing. I mean, all they found were basically pieces of long ash and some bone and some tissue from him, but there was nothing else that was unusual. But at some point, one of the officers did find something that was unusual. He found a piece of metal that was inside of the furnace that clearly should not have been there. Because remember, it's not allowed to have metal or jewelry or anything on the deceased when they're brought into the furnace.

And considering what happened, they're like, Okay, does this have something to do with the explosion? And so the officers hullled around this metal, and they began cleaning it off to see if there was anything written on it. It's not a very big piece of metal. And eventually, they had cleaned it off enough that they realized there was something written on it, and it absolutely explained what had happened here. So to understand what happened, you need to have an understanding of how the Chinese government responds to severe storms like the one that was going on on the day that Wang was struck by lightning. So remember, Wang's village had all these tobacco fields all over the place, which was not only how the villages made their living, but also China as a whole, they need these crops to be bountiful. These huge storms that produce those golf ball-sized pieces of hail, those can severely damage tobacco crops. The Chinese government doesn't want that to happen. The Chinese government has set up these things called weather bureaus, which are these agencies all across the country whose job is to try to weaken these storms. The way they do that is very interesting.

They use a chemical called Silver Iode that they put into the actual storm clouds. What silver iode does is it attracts ice particles and water. And so with this chemical up in the clouds, it breaks up the hail a little bit and either makes them really small. And sometimes this chemical can actually completely destroy the hail and convert it from hail to just plain old rain, which is great. So how do these weather bureaus and this Silver Iode have anything to do with what happened to Wang? Well, unfortunately for Wang, the way these weather bureaus in China actually get this Silver Iode up into the clouds is they basically take a rocket launcher and fire a literal rocket, like an explosive device, that contains this Silver Iode inside of it. The rockets get fired up into the sky, into the clouds, where they detonate, and then the Silver Iode is sprinkled all throughout the cloud. Clouds. Unfortunately, on the day Wong was killed, one of those rockets were fired into the sky, and this rocket, it goes up, it goes into the cloud, but it doesn't detonate. It turns around and falls straight down, and it just so happens to go straight through that roof into Wong's head, blowing off a portion of his head.

Then the rocket itself got embedded in his torso and did not detonate. Then when he was wheeled off to the crematorium and slid into the furnace and that manager turned on the furnace, that histing sound he began hearing right before the explosion was the sound of that rocket inside of Wong's torso heating up and then finally detonating. When the police officers found that little piece of metal, what they had found was actually a piece of the rocket itself. When they cleared it off, they saw there was a serial number for that particular weather bureau rocket. That was how they were able to solve this mystery. Three years after Wang's death, the Chinese government came out and said, Yep, this is our fault. We did this. They compensated Wang's family 80,000 Taiwan, which is equal to about 12,000 US dollars. And while that's a pretty underwhelming settlement to be paying for somebody's life, what is significant that came out of this case is following Wang's death, the Chinese government altered their rockets that they fired into these clouds, and they added this feature where if for some reason the rocket goes into the cloud and doesn't detonate, it will automatically deploy a parachute and will safely fall to the ground and not detonate.

All right, I have some bad news for you. Seagalung is missing. You see, it all started about four years ago when I began feuting with the light button. Doing silly pranks like rattling up a hornet's nest and jamming it inside the like button's toilet, or releasing angry honey badgers into their vacation home. Just fun stuff. But lately, the like button has begun to retaliate, and it's escalating quickly. Just the other day, Seagalung received a package in the mail. He opened it and boom, it was a brand new lily pad. He was so excited. He hopped on it, getting ready to settle in for a nap, when he suddenly realized this was not a normal lily pad. This one was riddled in poison ivy and also strapped to the brim with fireworks and explosives. It was obviously the work of the like button. The second Lung tried to move, it detonated sending Lung fly across the yard. It was at that point that something happened to Seagal Lung. He got laser vision and realized he was going to exact his revenge on the like button once and for all. And before I could stop him from going rogue, he was gone.

And so unfortunately, it's now been a week and I still have not heard or seen Lung. And so naturally, I did the only thing anybody would do in this position, and that is, I created a... And that is, I created a limited time merch drop... I created a brand new limited Lungy merch line commemorating our rogue comrade. Right now, you can go to Shop Mr. Balin. Com and check out the entire Lungey merch line that's only available for a limited time. We have a new graphic tee and tank top. We have a new pen that everybody loved. Those sold out so fast last time. There's a sticker set. There's even coasters. I mean, if you're into Seagal Lunge, which I think a lot of you are, it's pretty good. But you got to act now because I promise you this stuff is not going to stick around. It's going to sell out quickly. So go get your Lunge merch before it's too late. Again, shop Mr. Balin. Com and get your Seagal Lunge merch, which is your of supporting Lung on his mission to destroy the light button. Enjoy. On January 30th, 1989, two young men were working the afternoon lunch shift at a Domino's Pizza restaurant in Shambly, Georgia.

Their names were Darryl Wilson and Sean Burnet. In most weeks, this shift that they worked together was really boring because virtually nobody came into the restaurant. But on this day, at around 11:00 AM, as Darryl and Sean are twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the shift to end, a man who was obviously disgruntled and very agitated stormed in the door carrying a gun, a 357 Magnum gun, so a really powerful handgun, and he aimed it straight at them. Darryl and Sean were so shocked by this that at first they didn't do anything. But then it dawned on them that, Oh, my goodness, this guy's coming in here to rob the place. Daryl and Sean suddenly put their hands up and they began saying, Okay, take whatever you want, take whatever you want. The man suddenly began shouting something at them like he wanted something. It took Darryl and Sean a second to understand what he was asking for. But when they started to process the things he was saying, they understood that this did not seem like a robbery. The guy was demanding that they call Tom S. Monahan, so he, this guy, the guy with the gun, can talk to Tom.

Now, Darryl and Sean may have known this, but probably not because they likely didn't care. But Tom S. Monahan, at the time, was the owner of Domino's. Not like this particular restaurant in Shambly, Georgia, but like the entire national chain. He was the actual owner of the company. And so this guy is coming in being like, Let me talk to the owner of Domino's. And so at some point, Darryl and Sean understood who Tom S. Monahan was. Perhaps the guy with the gun explained it, or maybe one of them did know who Tom S. Monaghan was. But either way, Darryl and Sean suddenly realized, Oh, my goodness, this guy wants to talk to the owner, but they have no way of getting in touch with the owner of Domino's. They're just pizza cooks. They're not connected to the C-suite. But when Darryl and Sean told the guy, Hey, we don't know how to get in touch with the literal owner of this major franchise. Well, the guy didn't like that. He got really frantic and began yelling and screaming like, You got to do it. You got to get Tom on the phone. Daryl and Sean are like, Okay, and they grab the phone and they try to call their own boss because they don't know who else to call.

As they're calling their own boss, this guy fires two shots into the ceiling. This is a really high-intensity situation that's escalating really quickly. But Daryl, who actually was the one on the phone, he did his best to stay calm. When his boss got on the other line, he tried his best to explain the situation as quickly as he could because he could tell this guy with the gun is very close to potentially shooting them. The boss of Darryl and Sean did understand, Okay, clearly there is a crisis happening at this branch. When Darryl said, You got to find a way to get Tom S. Monahan on the phone right now, well, his boss was like, I got it. A few minutes later, Darryl's boss, who's still on the phone with him, was like, Okay, I'm going to pass you through. Then a second later, Tom S. Monahan hops on the phone and he's like, What's going on? At this point, Darryl just handed the phone over to the guy with the gun and said, Here you go. Tom's on the phone. The man with the gun grabbed the phone, put it to his ear, and then began rattling off these totally bizarre demands.

He wanted a white limousine to show up to the restaurant to be his getaway car. He wanted $10,000 in cash, and he wanted a copy of a science fiction novel about the Freemasons called The Widow's Son. Darryl and Sean, who are behind the counter witnessing this, they're hearing these demands, and it's clicking for them that clearly this guy is not mentally well. This is a guy who's totally unhinged, and who knows what's going to happen. After a few minutes on the phone, the gunmen hung up and then told Daryl and Sean very calmly that now the three of them were just going to sit in this restaurant and wait for his demands to be met. For the next five and a half hours, that's what they did. Darryl, Sean, and the gunmen who just kept the gun aimed at Darryl and Sean, they just sat inside of this restaurant. At the same time, by this point, the police have been called, and they're completely surrounding this restaurant. When the gunmen came into the store, because this was a very slow day, there weren't any other customers or staff inside. So it really was just Darryl, Sean, and the gunmen.

It's a total standoff. But interestingly for Sean and Darryl, who were right there with this gunman, they started to sense that this guy was not here to hurt them. He was really after Tom S. Monahan. Over those five and a half hours, they were just sitting there with him with his gun aimed right at them. He periodically began telling them what his gripes were with Tom S. Monahan. The gunman told Darryl and Sean that Tom was specifically targeting him, the gunman. Also, Tom was secretly communicating with the gunman when the gunman didn't want to talk to him, almost like telekinesis or something. Also, the gunman told them that Tom S. Monahan, periodically, will walk around his property at night, creeping around, scaring the gunman. Darryl and Sean, they're hearing these things and not believing of it, but they were very empathetic and said, Oh, yeah, I can understand why that would be an issue. I can understand why you'd come in here and demand to speak to Tom S. Monahan. Yep, totally get it. And that was just how the day was going. And then around 4:30 PM, so they've been in there a long time by this point, the gunman told Darryl and Sean that he was really hungry, so they better go make him some pizzas.

So Darryl and Sean just got up. They went in the back. They made two large everything pizzas. And after they were made, they put them in boxes and slid them across the counter to the gunman. At this moment, Darryl and Sean knew the gunman, in order to eat, would have to put his weapon down to open up the box and get the pizza. The second they handed it over without even communicating with each other, they waited for the gunman to put the gun down. He did. He put the gun down, he opened the pizza up, he grabbed a slice. At that moment, Darryl and Sean began sprinting past him towards the door, and the gunman who's seeing this happen, he drops the pizza, he grabs the gun, and he turns, and he aims. To really understand what's happening here, you need to understand what type of marketing Domino's, like the national franchise, was doing to advertise their product. Starting in 1985, Domino's came up with a very popular advertising campaign called The Noid. The Noid was actually a character. It was like this weird claymation character with big sneakers and bunny ears. He was like this goofy thing that was the equivalent of McDonald's Hamburgler, but this was for pizza.

What Domino's did with The Noid is they would run these ads on TV where the Noid was this menace who was always out to disrupt pizza deliveries. Not necessarily dominoes pizza deliveries, but generally pizza deliveries, it's like the Noid is going to destroy them either by freezing the pizzas on their way to the person's house or smashing them into the ground or causing whatever mayhem the Noid could create to stop pizzas from getting to their customers. And so domino's catchy thing was avoid the noid with dominoes, meaning dominoes, the chain, was the The only chain capable of avoiding all the chaos that could disrupt you getting the thing you want, your pizza. And this advertising campaign was brilliant, not only because it really worked, people really liked dominoes because it did seem like they were superior, but also they were able to franchise this character itself, The Noid. It became a toy you could buy, and there was talk about doing a TV show and maybe a movie around this Noid character. Michael Jackson, like the king of pop, he put The Noid in one of his music videos. I mean, this was a really, really successful advertising campaign.

But for as successful as this campaign was, it did unfortunately lead to what happened inside of this Domino's restaurant in Shambly, Georgia. So on the day, this gunman came charging in and held up the place aiming the gun at Sean and Darryl, it would turn out the gunman's name was Kenneth Lamar Noid. Kenneth Lamar Noid was not going into the store to get money or to steal food or to hurt Darryl or Sean. He was there to get his revenge on Tom S. Monahan, who he looked at as the person responsible for coming up with this Noid campaign. Because Kenneth Lamar Noid was very mentally ill, and he believed the Avoid the Noid campaign was not a marketing campaign, but rather Tom S. Monahan, specifically targeting Kenneth Lamar Noid, basically making him out to be this big villain. But Kenneth's plan for how to deal with this totally backfired because in a totally ironic twist, by holding up this Domino's franchise and creating this huge standoff, he literally became like the Noid because no pizza deliveries could be had that entire day out of that franchise. Kenneth Lamar Noid, in an effort to stop Tom S.

Monahan from running this Noid campaign because I'm no villain. I don't go after pizzas. I don't try to stop people from getting their pizzas. In an effort to do that, that is exactly what he did. He literally became the human version of the Noid. After Darryl and Sean made a run for it towards the door, Kenneth did grab his gun, and he did aim it at the two men, and he even fired it a couple of times, but he missed, and Darryl and Sean were totally unhurt. In fact, nobody got hurt. All that happened is Kenneth Lamar Noid looked like the Noid, and he got arrested. However, instead of going to jail, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. As for the actual advertising campaign itself, which was very successful, avoid the Noyde, well, it would not survive this total PR nightmare, and Tom S. Monahan canceled it immediately after Kenneth Lamar Noyde was taken off. So in a weird way, Kenneth actually did get his revenge. Avoid the Noid. Domino's Pizza delivers. All now, now. Hey, everybody. Just a reminder, we do have that new limited merch line that's all around Seagalung and him going rogue.

There's the new Graphic T and tank top. There's the new pin. There's coasters. There's a sticker set. It's all really good stuff. Go to shopmisterbalin. Com and get your Seagalung merch to help support our rogue comrade who's going out there to get his revenge on the like button. Shop Mr. Balin. Com. Go get that sweet, sweet Seagalung merch now. So that's going to do it. If you enjoyed today's stories, remember, we have multiple podcasts under the Balin Studio's umbrella. We have Mr. Balin podcast, Strange, dark, and mysterious stories with hundreds of stories, many of which are not on YouTube. They're just on the podcast. We also have Mr. Balin's Medical mysteries. We have run full, bedtime stories. All you got to do is go on any podcast got a whole bunch of stories you can go binge. Until next time. Thank you so much. See you. Wait, don't go anywhere. If you're looking for more strange, dark, and mysterious videos, click here.