Today's story is a places you can't go and someone who went anyways type of story, and it is pure nightmare fuel, especially if you're claustrophobic. And then after you watch this full feature-length story, be sure you stick around for four more bonus places you can't go stories. Each of these bonus stories have been completely reedited. So even if you've heard them before, this will be a totally new viewing experience. 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 you take the like button camping with you, offer to set up their tent and then immediately pitch it directly on a fire. 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 12:20 AM on August 17th, 2020, a police sergeant named Kevin Bingham was sitting inside of his cruiser in a parking lot in Scottsdale, Arizona, with the windows rolled down when he heard a strange sound.

He couldn't place exactly what it was. At first, it sounded like a woman screaming, but then it morphed into more of a breach like a cat would make in a fight. But at the same time, this sound was echoey, almost like it was in a cave or something. But Sergeant Bingham is looking around him, and there's a school and a baseball field. There's houses and apartment buildings. I mean, he's in a typical American neighborhood. There's no caves anywhere near him. But regardless of where specifically this noise was originating from, what was clear to Sergeant Bingham is that whoever or whatever was making this noise sounded like they needed help, and so he decided he would go investigate. So Sergeant Bingham left the parking lot, turned right onto the road, and began driving roughly in the direction of the sound. But again, remember, the sound is It's very hard to place where it's coming from. But as he continued driving down this road, Sergeant Bingham realized the noise was getting louder, and so he must be getting closer. Just ahead of Sergeant Bingham, at the end of this road, is this huge health club. There's a big fitness center, and then behind it, attached to it was an outdoor pool area, and then surrounding the pool area was a 12-foot-tall brick fence.

Sergeant Bingham thought, based on the proximity to this noise, maybe the sound, the screeching sound, is coming from somewhere in this to the Health Club. And so Sergeant Bingham drives up to the health club, parks his cruiser, he gets out, turns on his flashlight, and right away, he hears more screeching, and immediately, Sergeant Bingham can tell it's coming from inside of the enclosed pool area, behind that twelve-foot-tall wall. And so Sergeant Bingham can't see into the pool area, but again, he can tell whatever it is, it's in there. And also, at the same time, he's pinpointing the sound. He can tell that this noise, this screeching sound, really doesn't sound like an animal. It sounds like a person. And so Sergeant Bingham runs up to the brick wall, and he listens really intently to see if maybe in addition to the screeching sound, if he can hear, you know, splashings sounds or some other activity inside of the pool area that would give away what's actually happening. You know, maybe somebody snuck in after hours, and now they're struggling to swim in one of these pools. But as he strained to listen, all he heard over and over again was the screeching sound, but nothing else.

There's no splashing, there's no other activity. It's just the screeching sound. And so as Sergeant Bingham was wondering how he was going to get into this pool area to see what was going on, he looked over and he saw there were two gym cleaners coming out of the fitness center. And so Sergeant Bingham ran over to them and he asked them, Hey, are you the only two that are working in this health club right now, or is there somebody out in the pool area? And the cleaners looked at Sergeant Bingham and just shook their head and said, No, we are the only ones working right now, and we've been listening to that screeching sound, too. We don't know what it is. And then shortly after they said this to Sergeant Bingham, suddenly the noise the screeching sounds changed, and it went from just being these guttural high pitch screaches to somebody yelling out a single word, help. The second Sergeant Bingham heard this, he grabbed his radio and called for backup. About two minutes later, another officer showed up, and right away, the cleaners opened up the doors to the fitness center, and Bingham and the other officer ran inside.

They cut through the huge gym to the very back, where there were doors that led out to the pool area. This pool area is huge. It's actually the biggest part of this the health club. And so they open up the doors, they go outside, and both officers are expecting to see this person that's calling up for help. But instead, once they get outside, it's eerily silent, and there's absolutely no activity anywhere. Right in front of them are these two pools. There's this huge lap pool. No one's in it. The water is calm. And then next to it is another pool, a smaller pool that has a water playground right in the middle of it. But that one as well is devoid of people and totally calm. And so the officers are looking at each other like, Where is this person that clearly was calling for help a second ago? But just then the cries for help began again, and this time they were able to pinpoint where it was coming from. It was coming from a third pool in the back of the pool area beyond these two pools and beyond some cabanas, there was this third shallow pool with two water slides going into it.

From the sound of these breaches, it sounded very much like this person must be in or near these slides. At this point, Sergeant Bingham became a little bit skeptical that whoever who this was really needed help. He felt like it was more likely that somebody had just snuck in after hours who maybe was high on drugs or mentally ill, and now they're just causing a scene inside one of the slides. Or maybe it's somebody who snuck in just to play a prank, to screw with the cops and act like they were in trouble when they really weren't. And so Sergeant Fingham looks at the other officer and they are like, Okay, let's go see what's going on here. They make their way over to the slides. And when they got there, there's two slides. There's one slide which is blue, and it's an open top. So if you were sliding it, you'd be visible the entire time you're on the slide. And there's nobody on this slide. So whoever is making these sounds, they're not on or in the blue slide. But the other slide, the red slide, was a tube slide. And so if you were going down the slide, you'd be hidden inside the tube.

And so both officers are thinking, Okay, the person who's yelling out for help has got to be inside of this red slide. And so the two officers went to the base of the red slide, and they looked up inside of it, but they couldn't see anyone. But it was a big enough slide that it was possible they were just beyond their line of fight. And so Sergeant Bingham just yelled in like, Hey, are you okay? And the person did respond to this, but they didn't respond with words. They just responded with more screeching. And so Sergeant Bingham tells the other officer, Hey, stay right here at the foot of the slide. I'm going to go up and go down the slide. We'll meet in the middle, we'll find this person, and we'll get them out of here. And so the other officer stays put, and Sergeant Bingham goes to the stairs. He makes his way up to the top of the platform that led to both slides. He went to the top of the red slide, and he looked down into it, but he couldn't see anybody. But again, the slide was long enough. It's possible that from both sides, looking up and looking down, your line of sight would not allow you to see the person right in the middle.

And so Sergeant Bingham yelled into the slide like, Hey, I'm coming down, and my partner is coming up. We're going to find you here. If you're in there, go down, get out of the slide. But again, the response they got was not words. It was just more guttural screaming and moaning. And so feeling annoyed, Sergeant Bingham gets his flashlight and aims it straight ahead of him, and he begins slowly making his way down the slide. Slide, and at the same time, his partner at the bottom began making his way up the slide. As they're doing it, both officers are yelling like, Hey, if you're in here, we're coming in. Let's go. You got to get out of here. But again, all they're hearing is more screaming. As the officers get closer and closer to the middle, they're expecting to see someone. But then suddenly, both officers come face to face right in the middle of this red slide, and there's nobody there. It's just them. At this point, both officers are totally freaked out. This did not make sense. They've been listening to this person screaming out for the last few minutes, and it sounded so much like they were in this slide.

How could they not be? And so Sergeant Bingham and the other officer get out of the slide, and they start screaming out for this person like, Hey, tell us where you are. But in response, they just continued to get more and more desperate-sounding breaches. And it sounded like the breaches really were in this red slide, or at least somewhere really close by. But there's no one anywhere near them. There's nowhere for this person to be. It didn't make any sense. Having no other ideas, Sergeant Bingham went over to the blue slide, the open top slide that very clearly nobody is on. But he hopped on it and thought, Let me just check. And he began going up the slide. Now, this slide was not a straight slide. It actually went around in the middle like a corkscrew. And so as Sergeant Bingham began walking up the slide, the slide began to turn. And so he began walking along this corkscrew section of the slide on the way to the top. And about halfway up the corkscrew section, when he's basically halfway up the slide, Sergeant Bingham just stopped and just scanned around because now he's at a higher position, a better vantage point across this outdoor area.

And he's looking all around him despite still hearing these screams coming out of what feels like right where he is. He doesn't see anybody. But then, right as he's about to continue going up the slide, something catches his eye just below him. And he stops and he leans over the edge of this blue slide and looks straight down, and he could not believe what he saw. It would turn out earlier that night, so right before 12:20 AM, which is when Sergeant Bingham first heard that scree sound, a 32-year-old man named Ryan Kelly, who was naked and high on meth, snuck into the pool area. He climbed over that wall, jumped inside, and eventually, he found his way over to the stairs that led up to the platform that allowed you to go down the red and blue slides. Once he got up there, instead of sliding down the slide, he began walking down that blue slide, the an open top slide that has a corkscrew section in the middle. He began walking down it, and when he got about halfway down it around the part where it began to corkscrew, he stopped and at some point must have looked around him and noticed there was a support beam basically running from the ground straight up, basically as high as the blue slide was, where there were all these arms branching off of it that supported the corkscrew section of the slide.

It was just holding the corkscrew up. From where Ryan was standing, he would have had the ability to see the top of this beam, and he would have seen that the top of this beam was open. It was a round beam with about an 18-inch diameter across. To any sane person, it would be very apparent that you're not supposed to go inside of this support beam But Ryan, being high on math, decided he would go inside of this support beam. He climbed up to the top of it and then wedged his feet into this narrow opening. Ryan's a pretty skinny guy. He's naked, he's slick with sweat. He began lowering himself into this pipe, this hollow pipe that goes all the way to the ground. And after he got his feet in there and his legs in there, he's forcing himself down. He finally got most of his torso in, and then he would have realized his hands would not be able to fit unless he put them over his head. And so he put his arms over his head and just continued to wiggle himself down into this pipe. And at some point, probably around the time that his shoulders cleared the pipe, he slipped pretty quickly about halfway down the pipe, not to the ground, basically suspended right in the middle of this tiny, tight pipe.

Now, we don't know for sure if Ryan intended to get out of this pipe at some point, but once he was about halfway down the pipe with his arms up over his head, there was absolutely no way he could get himself out again. There was just nowhere to pull or anything. He's completely wedged, barely able to breathe. And on top of that, he's in Arizona. It's one of the hottest places in the world. And on top of that, they were experiencing a heatwave, and his body, his naked body, is pressed all against the inside of this metal pipe that conducts heat. And so he's basically in this really tight space, cooking alive, and there's no way to get out. And so at some point, as Ryan is likely realizing that he is completely screwed here and he's beginning to literally cook to death, he began trying to scream out for help. But he was likely in so much pain, and also, again, under the influence of meth, that he couldn't quite yell out words. He just let out those horrible screeching sounds, and those were the noises that Sergeant Bingham heard. But then when Sergeant Bingham and his partner got into the pool area, they were able to identify roughly where Ryan was stuck.

But Ryan, again, couldn't make words. He's so messed up. He's in so much pain that he just continued to scream. And because he was in that pipe, it created this weird echoey phenomenon where when he would scream out, his voice would come out of the pipe and almost get thrown around the park. That's why Sergeant Bingham and the other officer couldn't quite figure where he was. And at one point, it sounded like he was in that red slide when obviously he wasn't. And so finally, at some point, Sergeant Bingham walked up the blue slide. He's halfway up, he's hearing Ryan screaming, and he turns and he looks down. And from his perspective, where he was standing, he was looking down into that pipe. Looking up at him inside of this pipe is Ryan, arms up over his head, wide-eyed, reaching, trying to be saved. But unfortunately for Ryan, his rescue was a very technically difficult thing to pull off. He was too far down the pipe for anyone to reach him to pull him up. When they threw a rope down to him inside of the pipe, Ryan was too weak to grab onto the rope.

For hours and hours, rescue crews tried to get Ryan out. The whole time, Ryan is panicking and screaming and cooking to death, basically. They couldn't get him out. Finally, at the seven-hour mark after he was found, they had to bring in a crane, and they had to fully dismantle the slide and pull that pipe out of the ground. But unfortunately, by that point, it was too late for Ryan. He had passed away. An autopsy would show that ultimately what killed Ryan was the combination of the meth in his bloodstream and the extreme heat he was exposed to inside of that pipe. As many of you may know, the biggest event ever to come out of Ballon Studios is fast approaching. From September 26th to October 20th, I will be on tour. I'll be visiting 15 cities across United States, telling strange, dark, and mysterious stories, live and in person. Last year, we did one show. It was a sold-out show in Austin, Texas, to trial run this concept. And it's basically just me on stage telling stories, and people loved it. And there was huge demand for more. And so here we are doing 15 more shows.

Tickets for these 15 shows have been selling very quickly, but there are still tickets available if you act basically right now. All you have to do is go to tor. Ballinstudios. Com, find the show that is nearest you or whichever one you're interested in, click on the link. And if there are tickets still available, you can buy them through that link. And if you're lucky, there might even be some VIP tickets left, which will give you access to meet this guy, if that's of interest to you. Also, just for our VIP ticket holders, bring your copy of our graphic novel, and I'll sign it for you when we meet. And so the way you get the book is either you have already pre-ordered it or you can buy a copy at the theater. We'll be selling them on site. Again, I'm going to be on tour from September 26 to October 20th, telling stories in person. It's going to be great. If you want to go, there are still tickets, but they're going quick. Just go to tor. Ballinstudios. Com and get your tickets today. Okay, back to the stories.

In 2003, 27-year-old Kurt Smith was employed as an engineer for the German shipping company called Hapag Lloyd. Over the past year, he had completed two separate month long deployments with this company, and he enjoyed the work enough that he asked for a contract extension. It was granted, and on July 11th of that year, he boarded the CM London Express to begin his third deployment. Three months into it, one of the ship's pistons broke. The piston is the part of the engine that goes up and down inside the hollow cylinder of the engine block. They would need to turn off the engine in order to make this repair, and so they made an unplanned stop in Savannah, Georgia. Once they got there, Kurt, along with seven people under his command, headed down to the engine room to begin the process. Over the next several hours, the men were able to extract the broken piston and put in the new one. But this was back-breaking work. It was so hot in the engine room. What they're moving around is so heavy and cumbersome, and they're all bickering with each other. At some point, Kurt called out the foreman for being lazy, and the foreman did not like that, and he was very popular amongst this group.

And so by the end of getting the piston back in, everybody in there just totally resented Kurt. But ultimately, they got it done, and Kurt cut everybody loose except for the foreman. He told him he needed to stay back and help him ensure all the pistons were properly installed. To do that, they would need to go inside of something called the scavenger air receiver, which is this tube that's 55 feet long by 5 feet wide with access hatches on either side, and it sits right next to the engine block. Each hatch on either end had three latches on the outside that were called dogs. And so Kurt undid the three dogs on his hatch, and he opened it up. He called inside of the tube with his flashlight, and he began crawling. And on his left side were these square cutouts, these windows called scavenger ports that looked into each of the engine's cylinders. And so Kurt crawled along, counting the different cylinders until he got to the sixth one, which is where they had replaced that piston. Meanwhile, the foreman went around to the Aft hatch. He undid the three dogs, he opened up the hatch, and then using a remote control device, he was able to bring the pistons into position safely so Kurt could inspect them through the scavenger port.

The procedure on the ship was if you were inspecting one cylinder, the expectation was is you would inspect all of them. And that entire process took about an hour, and Kurt just didn't feel like doing it. He was tired, he had a bad day, he was hungry. And so after he was certain the new piston was working just fine, he rushed his checks on the other cylinders. And after only about 20 minutes, he told the foreman that, Yeah, we're good, we can leave. So he and the foreman got out, they dogged their hatches, and they headed up to their rooms to change. Their captain had been told they had to leave Port no later than 9:30 that night because a huge tanker was coming in and there'd be no space for them. But at 08:00 PM, as everyone is running around prepping the ship, somebody noticed Kurt was not at his workstation. The chief engineer called down to the engine room to ask anyone down there if they had seen Kurt, but nobody had. So a sailor was sent down to Kurt's cabin to see if he was in there, but he wasn't. At this point, because they only had about an hour until they were departing, they had to find Kurt.

So they sounded the alarm on their ship, which was a little bit premature, but they figured, let's get everybody involved and just find Kurt. And so everybody stopped what they were doing and began searching the ship. During the search, a sailor was down near the scavenger air recovery space, and he noticed on the forward hatch, there was a little piece of rag poking out of the top right corner of the forward hatch, and the lower two dogs were not set. He knew they were having issues getting a good seal on this particular hatch because there was a divot in one of the O-ring. He figured someone must have put a rag right over that divot to try to help seal this hatch, and they just forgot to shut the two lower dogs. Now, it did cross this sailor's mind that Kurt could have gotten inside of the scavenger air recovery space and then somehow got locked inside. And so he did want to investigate. However, there was a very strict policy about who was allowed to actually open up the scavenger air recovery hatches. And it wasn't the sailor. It was only the foreman, the chief engineer, and Kurt.

And so this sailor decided to play it safe and just close the lower two dogs and then told his superior that there was this weird rag poking out of the forward hatch and that someone should go down there and open it up and see if Kurt's inside. And so his superior went and told the chief engineer. And so as the chief engineer is making his way down to check on this strange rag situation, the foreman, completely independently, had gone around to the of the scavenger unit to the Aft hatch, so not the one with the rag poking out of it. He unlocked the three dogs. He opened the hatch. He looked inside and shined his light, didn't see anyone, shut the hatch, locked all three dogs, and then began to walk away right as the chief engineer came down and saw him. He saw him securing the scavenger air unit, and he said, Hey, I was just coming down here to check to make sure Kurt wasn't in there, and you just checked, right? He's not in there? The foreman said, Yeah, no one's in there. It's all good. The two of them, the foreman and the chief engineer, did not check on the rag.

They just left. The search for Kurt continued on the ship, but they could not find him. As 9:30 was approaching, the captain called the Port Authority, then he said, Hey, we're down someone. Can you please send someone out to look around? A search on the land began, but they couldn't find Kurt. Finally, 9:30 came around, and the big container ship that was supposed to come in and take their place was just waiting right out in the water for them to leave. The captain did his best to linger for another 10, 15 minutes, but finally, they were forced to leave, even though they had no idea where Kurt was. They fired up the engine and they left. The The general consensus on the ship was that Kurt must have fallen overboard and drowned, or maybe he ran ashore and ran off, but that was very unlike him. And so an investigation was launched, but it would probably be a while before anybody found out what happened to him. Finally, two days later, they arrived in Port at Norfolk, Virginia. They powered off the engine, and they got the ship ready to be put into Harbor mode, where basically they open up all the hatches and they prep it to sit there for a while.

And during that process, the foreman went down to the scavenger air recovery space, and he opened up the forward hatch, and he found Kurt. Although no one has all the details of what happened to Kurt. The leading theory is two days earlier when he had done that abbreviated check of the engine cylinders, when he had basically cut it short with the foreman because he just didn't want to do it, he had gotten back up to his room and started to think to himself that if anything goes wrong with any of those pistons, that I'm going to be to blame because the foreman was with me, and I called the foreman lazy earlier, and he doesn't like me, and so he's bound to turn me in. So Kurt decided he would go back down and do a more thorough check, but he didn't want anybody to know he was second-guessing himself, and so was going to do this alone, even though it was a huge no-no to go inside of the scavenger air unit by yourself. Because if you manage to get stuck in there by yourself, horrible things are going to happen to you, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

But Kurt was confident, so he headed down. He undaug to the forward hatch. He swung it inside. He climbed in with his flashlight. Then somehow, once he got inside, he managed to fall backwards and hit the hatch door so hard that it swung shut, slammed, causing the upper dog to swivel and rotate down and to lock him inside. He knew that nobody knew he was in there. He had made sure that nobody knew he was in there. He screamed for help, but nobody could hear him. The ship was so loud as it was, and being inside of this tunnel, no sounds getting out of it. He's looking around thinking what he should do, and he looks back at the door, the one that's sealed right behind him, and he sees the very top crack, there's a tiny sliver of light, because even though one dog had sealed him in, because the other two had not, there was a little gap in the seal. He thought, if he can just wedge his dirty rag into that little space and push it out onto the other side, someone will see it, will clearly recognize there's a foreign object hanging off of the forward hatch, and they'll have to open it up and they'll find me.

Once he wedged his rag up and through, he was confident he would be found and so he slouched down against the back of the hatch, and he just sat there waiting to be found. Then a little while later, he heard the sound of somebody not opening the hatch behind him as he thought they would, but instead locking the two dogs, making sure it doesn't open. He must have got up and turned around and screamed for them, but again, they can't hear him. Then a couple of minutes later, on the other side of the tube, 55 feet away, the Aft hatch opened up briefly. Somebody shined their light in. It didn't hit him. He tried to yell for them. They didn't hear him, and then he saw them shut the hatch, and he heard the sound of them locking all three dogs. At this point, you got to figure that Kurt's fear is at a primal level. He knows at any moment, if somebody doesn't get him out of here, this is going to become a death trap. As he's looking around, just wondering what's going to happen, he would have felt the incredible pressure start to build up in his ears.

It would have taken him to his knees, it would have been crushing in his skull, and he would have heard the sound of each of the hatches being pressed up against their O-ring as the room began to pressurize. Then he would have heard the sound of the pistons beginning to churn inside of the engine cylinder right next to him. At that point, he would know there's no hope. And slowly, horribly, that room would begin to heat up until Kurt was cooked alive. Midday on June 10th, 1981, an Italian man and a six-year-old son walked to the edge of their property in Frascati, which is an area in Italy known as the hub of Rome's local wine industry. The father needed to repair a section of their fence, and his son, who he said had the soul of Huckleberry Finn, wanted to tag along. But as soon as the work began, Alfredo just wanted to go play in the vineyards, and so he ran off. The father didn't think much of it because his son always played in the and just figured he would see him back at the house. When the father finished up the work around 7:00 PM and walked back into his house, he was surprised that Alfredo wasn't there.

So he asked his wife, Have you seen our son? And she said, No. Can you go out and find him? Because dinner is going to be on the table any minute. The father goes back outside expecting to see Alfredo come running out from behind some hiding place, but he doesn't. He yells out for his son and doesn't get a response. He begins walking his property and yelling for Alfredo, and he's not finding him. After two hours of looking, he finally just calls the police. The police arrive, and initially, it's just a couple of officers with flashlights, and they spend about two hours looking as well. They can't find him, so they call in backup in the form of officers with sniffer dogs. The dogs began searching the property for another three hours, and they still couldn't find him. A little after midnight, the fire department, known in Italy as the Fire Brigade, they joined in as well. Shortly thereafter, a Fire Brigade officer was on the edge of Alfredo's property when he discovered a small hole in the ground. It would turn out Alfredo's neighbor had dug an illegal well, which was a common practice at the time.

And generally, if you dug one of these wells and you struck water, you would report the well. But if you dug down and you didn't find water, you would just cover it up with a girder and you wouldn't tell anyone. In this case, however, the hole the officer was looking at did not have anything covering it. And so he knelt down and he yelled Alfredo's name into this hole, and at first, he didn't hear anything. Then he yelled again and he heard Alfredo yell back for his mother. Alfredo must not have seen the opening as he was running around playing, and he fell feet first into an 80-metre deep shaft. After Alfredo was found, the fire brigade took over rescue efforts, and so additional fire brigade units were called to help. But as soon as those additional units showed up, the captains of the different units began arguing with each other because it wasn't really clear how they were going to get him out. And unfortunately, Finally, the fire brigade immediately made a very bad decision. They decided to lower a plank into the shaft attached by a rope that he could grab onto and they could pull him out that way.

But when they lowered it at about 24 meters, the plank got stuck inside of the tunnel. When they yanked on the rope to try to free it, the rope came off of the plank, but the plank remained wedged in the tunnel, blocking the tunnel. By the following morning, TV crews had swarmed the area, and one of them offered up a two-way microphone that could be lowered down into the hole so they could talk directly to Alfredo. When the microphone was finally lowered down next to his face, he was crying and pleading for them to get him out and that he missed his mother. Amateur spelunker Tulio Barnaby, a 23-year-old, had come over and joined the vigil that night. The Plank Plan shocked him for its foolishness, and so too did the scene. It was like everyone and no one was in charge. The well opening had been widened in hopes that a very skinny person would be willing to be lowered down to remove the piece of wood that was obstructing the tunnel. And since was a spelunker and was comfortable in confined spaces and was pretty skinny, he volunteered himself to do it. As he was lower down, he quickly realized the inside of this tunnel was not a straight shot.

It was more like a corkscrew. And so because of its winding nature, he was not able to get down to the wood. And so he signaled to go back up again. And when he reached the surface, he didn't have the wood in hand, but he told the fire brigade that because of the winding nature, it's unlikely Alfredo fell all the way to the bottom. He's probably stuck somewhere in the middle, which is a good thing. But we have to be really careful as we pull him out that we don't do anything that unintentionally causes him to slip farther into the hole. Tulio's suggestion was that go out and recruit professional spelunkers to be involved in the rescue because they would understand how to get someone out a tight space so far down in the ground. But the fire brigade disregarded his advice and said, We don't have enough time for that. At 6:00 AM the next day, about 12 hours after Alfredo has fallen into the swell, the fire brigade would make another very poor decision. They decided they would drill down another hole parallel to the one Alfredo was in, and they would drill down past to the point they believed Alfredo was, at which point they would turn and drill laterally and connect to the tunnel Alfredo's in, grabbing Alfredo, pulling him across, and back up the new tunnel.

Tolio objected, and he said the vibrations from this drill are almost certainly going to dislodge the boy and cause him to slip farther into the tunnel. But once again, the fire brigade did not listen to him. The drilling began about 2 hours later, and by that afternoon, Alfredo's plight had become major national news, with every single TV station playing a 24/7 live broadcast of the well watching the drilling take place. Even the Italian President made a special trip to the well to see how it was going. But the drilling was very slow, and Alfredo, he had that microphone next to his head, and he was crying half the time. Then the other times, he was just pleading with them to get him out and saying he was cold or that he was tired. And the rescuers would say, We're going to be down there to get you. Don't fall asleep. We're going to get you out of there. Finally, after 36 hours, they had drilled all the way down to their intended stopping point, and they began drilling across into Alfredo's well. When they finally broke into Alfredo's well, rescuers rushed in with flashlights and looked up and looked down, and there was no sign of Alfredo.

They called it up to the top, and they said, He's not here. Then all of a they heard a faint voice coming from all the way down at the bottom of the well. The vibrations from all of the drilling had indeed caused Alfredo to slip all the way to the very bottom. They estimated he was approximately 30 meters below this new parallel tunnel, and at that depth, the temperatures would be freezing. And so now Alfredo, on top of everything else, was facing hypothermia. They quickly lowered the microphone again down to Alfredo, and they told him, We're going to get you out of there. We're sorry we dropped you, but we're going to get you. And Alfredo's voice came back weak. He was He was tired, he was sore, he was freezing, he was crying. It was like the situation was just getting so much worse by the second, and rescuers knew they had to get to him probably in the next couple of hours where that was it. And so another skinny man volunteered to go down into the hole, and they lowered him, and he would go all the way down to the bottom where Alfredo was.

He would call up that he found him and that Alfredo was alive. But Alfredo was stuck waist deep in this mud that the guy could not pull him out of. Every time he'd begin to raise him slightly out of the mud. He'd lose his grip, and he would fall back into the mud, going deeper into the mud each time. After the seventh time of not being able to do it, Alfredo was getting dangerously close to being neck deep in the mud, and so the guy had to be pulled back out again. As soon as he was pulled back out again, more men volunteered themselves to go in there and try to yank him out, but many of them were not able to even get down to Alfredo. They would get stuck along the way. A couple did get to Alfredo, but they said his condition was worsening, he was weak. He wasn't even assisting, trying to get pulled out. It was clear they were reaching the end. Finally, at 6:36 AM on Saturday, so two and a half days after Alfredo fell in, they could not get him to respond on that two-way microphone. And so they sent down a sonar probe, and they could not detect a heartbeat, and doctors declared him dead.

The next day, liquid nitrogen was poured into the hole to preserve the body, and then 31 days later, they were finally able to extract it. After it was all over, the 25 million plus people that watched this take place live television were crushed with what happened to Alfredo. There was a general sense that lots of people let this poor child down, which led to his death. But the person who was ultimately held accountable for it was the neighbor who had illegally dug the well. And so the neighbor was charged with manslaughter and was sent to jail, but their sentence is not publicly available online. If you hop in a boat just off the Coast of Aberdeen, Scotland, and you cruise eastward, after about seven hours, depending on your speed and the weather, you would come across this massive manmade structure jutting up out of the ocean. It looks like a cross between a construction site and a corporate office building sitting on top of 100-foot-tall metal stilt. It's called Magellan, and it is an offshore oil rig, and it will remain in place until all the oil has been sucked up in that area. The people who work often for weeks or months at a time on rigs like Magellan, are known as roughnecks, and they have one of, if not the most dangerous job in the world.

All exterior surfaces on these offshore rigs are always slick, either with water or oil, and so there is a constant risk of falling, sometimes hundreds of feet. If you're up on a higher platform, you could fall to a lower platform, which could be fatal, or you could fall clean off the rig all the way to the ocean 100 plus feet below. If you add in some bad windy weather, the risk of falling increases tenfold. Also, the crude oil that these roughnecks are drilling for is highly combustible, and so fires are a huge concern as well. If that wasn't risky enough, there's also this phenomenon known as a blowout, where basically the oil well that the drill is actually drilling into will just explode. Now, all rigs have some mitigating equipment to try to save themselves in case this occurs. But in reality, if it happens and you are unfortunately near the drill when it happens, you are likely to be killed or maimed. While the downsides of working on an oil rig are fairly obvious, the upsides are too. Namely, your pay is fantastic. In 2000, a 41-year-old father of two named Gordon Moffet was a rough neck working on the Magellan.

His primary job was to perform maintenance on the drill. Now, these offshore rigs work great most of the time, but they do have a habit of breaking down fairly often. For a drilling company, any time they are not sucking out crude oil, they're losing money. It was just a known thing when you worked on one of these rigs that as soon as there is an issue that causes the drill to stop working, it must be fixed immediately Whether it's day, night, horrible weather, good weather, it didn't matter. It had to be fixed right away. On the night of October ninth that year, Gordon had just gotten back to his quarters to end the day when he got a call on his radio that he was actually needed to come back out to fix a problem that had stopped the drill. Now, Gordon was a seasoned rough neck, and he had grown quite accustomed to these late night calls to go out and fix things. So he wasn't annoyed. He just put his stuff back on, turned around, and he headed out the door. When Gordon got to the main deck, which is this wide open metal platform right in the middle of the rig where the drill actually passes down through it on its way to the ocean.

When he got to the main deck, he was met by some of his coworkers who told him where he would need to go. The cabling that needed fixing was located right below the main deck. However, it was not accessible from the main deck. In order for Gordon to get to it, he would need to go down to the next lowest platform from the main deck. Basically, he would need to hop in an elevator and go down one floor. From this lower deck, the crew on the main deck would lower down a harness attached to a long wire. They would feed it down through this hole in the main deck platform called a mouse hole. It was about 10 inches across. They would feed it down, and he would grab the harness, he would put it on, and then he would signal up to the main deck crew who could literally see him through this mouse hole. They would turn around and they would signal somebody called the hoist operator. They were located above the main deck, slightly back. They couldn't actually see Gordon, so they're relying on communications with the people on the main deck.

The hoist operator would start their winch, and a winch basically reels in the wire that was connected to the harness that was on Gordon. Once the hoist operator was informed, he'd turn on the winch, and then Gordon would be raised up until he could access these cables, and then he'd do his maintenance and be lowered back down, and that would be it. Now, Gordon and the crew had done maintenance using this winch system many times before, so this was a very routine fix. Gordon made his way from the main deck down to the slightly lower deck, and he looked up at the mouse hole, and he watched as the main deck crew members lowered the harness with the wire attached to it down through the mouse hole. Gordon grabbed the harness, he put it around his waist and he secured it. After he was sure it was on correctly, he signaled up to the crew on the main deck that he was ready to start, and they in turn turned around. They flagged the hoist operator who started the winch. Very slowly, Gordon was lifted He offed the platform he was standing on, and he was brought up after several minutes, all the way up about 10 feet to access these cables.

As soon as he was parallel with them, he waved to the main deck crew who were not far from him at this point, and he said, I'm good. They turned around, they the hoist operator who stopped the winch. Gordon got his tools out and he began working on these cables. The whole time, he's trying to stay in one place because the wind is whipping through and he's dangling and swinging around. Then eventually, he finishes the repair. The cables are good. He signals the crew on the main deck through the mouse hole that he was good to go. You can lower me back down now. And so the main deck crew, they turn, they wave to the hoist operator to go ahead and lower Gordon. And the hoist operator, he gives a thumbs up and he starts the winch. However, the hoist operator accidentally forgot to switch the direction of the winch. And so when he started it again, instead of the winch, spuling the wire out and lowering Gordon, it continued to reel the wire in, pulling Gordon upward. Now, the winch did not move very quickly, and so it wasn't like Gordon is rocketing up towards the mouse hole.

However, this problem was immediately recognized by Gordon and the main deck crew, and so they're frustrated. They're yelling up at the hoist operator saying, Stop, reverse the winch. They're all waving and flagging this guy down. But the hoist operator, after he had hit start on the winch, had just turned around because this is a routine thing they've done a million times before. And so he's not looking at the crew on the main deck. So he has no idea what's going on. And it was so windy and loud that night on board the rig that he couldn't hear their cries. And so the winch just continued to reel in the wire, slowly raising Gordon closer and closer to the mouse hole. Now, Gordon could not get out of his harness unless he was on the platform below. There was no way to escape the situation he was in. Gordon, after a few seconds of this not stopping and him continuing upward, he starts screaming. He's not annoyed anymore. He's terrified. And so is the crew on the main deck. They are now frantically screaming at the hoist operator to stop the winch, but nothing is working.

One of the main deck crew members, sensing that they need to do something different to get this guy's attention, he runs away from where the mouse hole is to this nearby phone, and this phone is connected up to the hoist operator station, and he picks it up and it starts dialing. Up in the hoist operator station, he's still not paying attention when the phone rings. He grabs the phone, puts it to his ear, and immediately he's hit with screams to stop the winch. And so the hoist operator, totally confused, whips around and hit stop on the winch. But it was too late. Just a few moments earlier, Gordon had finally been pulled all the way up right to the entrance of the underside of this mouse hole. And as he reached this hole, he tried to position himself in a vertical position so that maybe he could slip his upper body into the hole and he could just slide through the hole. He'd still be hurt by it, but it would limit the damage. However, because of his harness being on his waist right in front of him, he couldn't get himself into a vertical position.

He could only lay back in a horizontal one. When he reached the underside of the main deck and he's looking right at this mouse hole, he just put his arms and his legs out and tried to push himself back as if he could fight the winch and keep himself from going into this hole, but there was nothing he could do. And so his pelvis first was pulled into the 10-inch hole. And as his body begins to literally break in half, he's screaming out in pain. And then by the time the hoist operator had hit stop, Gordon was already deceased, and only a section of his torso actually made it up through the hole. Gordon's company was found guilty of being blatantly delinquent on many protocols, and so they were fined 60,000 pounds, and then they paid an undisclosed amount to Gordon's family. In 1974, 18-year-old Debbie Stone landed what she considered to be an amazing summer job. She was hired to work at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Her specific role was to be a hostess at a brand-new attraction called America Sings. Disney had basically converted an old carousel, which is a ride that spins around in a circle.

They had converted it into a rotating stage, and they put up partition walls all along this rotating stage to create six distinct stages on this rotating stage. And so on each of these six stages were different sets of these robotic animals that played different songs about America. And so the way this would work if you were in the audience, is you would walk into this theater that looked like a single theater with one stage right in front of you. But really, what you were looking at is one of these six stages. And so the audience would sit down, they would see one of the acts, they'd see one performance on one of the stages. And then the stage would rotate. And so the audience would remain in the theater until all six stages had rotated in front of them and played their 2-4 minute long act. Debbie's job at America Sings was at the beginning of these shows, where the audience would watch all six acts, she would go up before the very first act. She'd go on stage and she would greet the audience. And then the show would start. It would filter through all six of the stages.

And then Debbie would get back on stage, and she would say goodbye to that group of audience members. It was a simple gig, and Debbie seemed to like it. On July ninth of that year, which was nine days after this attraction had opened, and so it was nine days after Debbie had started her job, Debbie was asked to come in for an evening shift. And so she left her house, and she made it out to the attraction at about 10:00 PM, which was right at the start of a show. And so she went right inside, she hopped on stage, she greeted the audience, and then she left the stage, and the show began. And so over the next 30 minutes, all six of the stages performed their acts. And then after the sixth act was done, Debbie Dutafly climbed back onto the stage. She said goodbye to the audience. And then as that audience was leaving the theater, she turned around and walked towards the back of the stage she was on. What happened next requires some additional explanation. Each of the six stages that made up this attraction had a fairly tall back wall.

And behind each of these six back walls that were in a ring was the center of the actual attraction. And in the center was this circular, fairly tall storage room. This storage room did not rotate. It was stationary. The stages and their respective back walls, they rotated around around this storage room. The gap between the outside of the storage room and the back of any of these back walls was only a few inches. It was very narrow, but it was big enough that a person, in theory, could get stuck back there. So it was a real hazard. However, Disney did not put any specific safeguards in place to prevent their staff from intentionally or unintentionally going into this space. They just told their staff to not go back there and be careful. So back on July ninth, after Debbie has said goodbye to the audience and she's walked towards the back of the stage she's on, she decides to move from the stage she's on to the adjoining stage. And when she does that, she either trips or falls or something happens, which causes her to fall into the narrow space between the two back walls of the two stages she was on.

And so she falls through that gap and then gets wedged between the outside of the storage room and the back of one of the back walls. She tries to pull herself up and pull herself out of the space, but she realizes she's stuck. And so she starts to panic and she starts screaming for help. None of the staff hear her or they don't recognize that this is a real call for help. And this new wave of people that are coming in, the new audience, they're all talking loudly, there's music playing, they don't really hear her. And anyone that actually did hear her calling for help, they would later say they thought it was part of the show. And so as Debbie is screaming bloody murder, she cannot get out of this gap, this narrow gap she stuck in, these stages, they start to move because the show is going to start. And because Debbie has nowhere to go, when the stage began to rotate, she got forcibly dragged and twisted and rolled, and her body began to contort, and her bones started to break, and she was forced to continue moving through this narrow space because the stage was just going to keep on going until it reached its next position.

And so finally, after it dragged her all the way to its next position, Debbie didn't die. She was grievously injured. She probably had dozens of broken bones, but she was alive, and she still totally stuck, and she's screaming with every ounce of energy she has. But again, the audience, even though they heard her screaming, they assumed it was part of the show. And apparently, the staff also heard her scream and convinced themselves it was just no big deal. And so two to four minutes later, when the act was complete, the stage began to rotate again. And so Debbie again is rolled and contorted and crushed and dragged and smashed and broken as the stage again rotates to its next position. And she's still not dead. She's screaming out for help. No one is coming to help her. And so the entire show would play out with the stage rotating through all of its sections. And then finally, at the end of the show, when one of the audience members alerted the staff that, Hey, you should really go check out that screaming we heard. And at that point, they went for a look, and they discovered Debbie, and she was very obviously deceased.

Disney would pay a small settlement to Debbie's family, and then they would put up a number of safeguards on the America Sing's attraction to make sure something like this never happened again. Hey, everybody. If you haven't heard yet, we announced some really big news recently. We are putting out a book, and it's amazing. It's called Mr. Ballon presents Strange, Dark, and Mystierious: The Graphic Stories, and it's an amazing graphic novel we have been working on for over a year. It's our very first book, so we're all very proud of this. We think it's going to be so amazing. So in this book, there are nine stories, five of which are of the old variety. So you've heard them on YouTube, and they've been remastered and put into this book. And then you have four full-length brand-new stories, which are amazing, that have also been put inside of this book. And the way we made those four new stories is to have them replicate the feel of YouTube. In fact, I would say this whole book is like the written version of our YouTube channel. It's totally a throwback to our OG fans who found us on YouTube.

This is the book for you. It's going to be so good. The book is not coming out until my birthday, October first, but you can pre-order it right now by going to book. Boleynstudios. Com. And also, after you pre-order, be sure to follow me on social and all the other places that we put out content because we're going to be teasing stuff about this book before release. Things like sneak peeks into the book and some pieces of artwork and some behind the scenes stuff.

There's a lot of stuff going on, but it all starts with pre-ordering that book.

Again, go to book. Ballinstudios. Com and pre-order our first ever official book. It's going to be great. Enjoy.

So that's going to do it. If you enjoyed today's stories and you're looking for more Strange, dark, and Mystious content, well, you're in luck because we have a whole slew of Strange, Dark, and Mystious podcasts under the Balin Studio's umbrella. We have the Mr. Balin podcast, Mr. Balin's Medical mysteries. We have wartime stories, bedtime stories. We got Run Full. They're all free. They're all awesome. You got to go check them out. Go to any podcast platform and just look up Balin Studios, and boom, you'll see all our podcasts. That's hundreds of hours of free content to binge right now. Enjoy.