Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music.
Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast features three stories about people who get trapped with no way out.
The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.
The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.
The first story you'll hear is called Behind the Partition, and it's about a husband who wakes up and can't find his wife.
The second story you'll hear is called Molding Room, and it's about how one fateful mistake inside a factory had devastating consequences.
And the third and final story you'll hear is called Within Reach, and it's about an infamous caving incident.
But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So, if that's of interest to you, please offer to cut the Amazon Music Follow button's front lawn, but when you're done, be sure to blow all the grass clippings through an open window into their living room.
Okay, let's get into our first story, which is called Behind the Partition.
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On Friday, August 21st, 2020, 58-year-old Aristides Polino was driving back to his home in Miami, Florida in his police SUV after completing a midnight shift.
Aristides was a 25-year veteran of the Miami police force, and over the last two-plus decades, he had routinely done midnight shifts, so this was nothing new.
When he got to his house, he parked his SUV in the driveway.
And like always, he went right into his house.
He didn't talk to his wife, Clara, or his son.
He just went straight up to his bedroom and immediately fell asleep.
About four hours later at 5 p.m., Aristides woke up and he expected to hear his wife's voice somewhere in the house.
So when he didn't, and the house was just totally silent, something told him that something was off.
So he climbed out of bed, he put on his clothes, and he went downstairs to look for his wife.
When he got down to the living room, he saw his son sitting on the couch, but he didn't see his wife.
And so he asked his son, you know, hey, have you seen your mom?
And he would say, no, I haven't seen her.
But sensing on his dad's face that something was wrong, he said, hey, I'll help you look for mom.
And so the two men began searching the house, yelling out for Clara.
And Aristides began calling his wife, but she wasn't picking up.
And after several minutes, the two men reconvened in the living room.
And they started going over whether or not she had told them about some appointment that day.
And that would explain why she wasn't in the house.
But after talking about it, they decided that she didn't have any appointments and she should be home right now.
And so the men decided, you know, maybe she went outside and she's talking to a neighbor or, you know, she went for a walk and she's talking to somebody on the road.
And so they decided they would go outside and search the outside of the property.
When they got outside, Aristides went towards the back of the property and his son went towards the front down towards the driveway.
And so as Aristides is making his way around the back of the property, he hears his son scream out for help.
Aristides comes running back around the property and he sees his son standing in the driveway with the door of his police SUV wide open.
Four hours earlier, after Aristides came home, he parked his police SUV right in the driveway like he always did, and for some reason he left the car unlocked.
And so he goes in the house and he falls asleep.
And while he was sleeping, Clara, who was home, she exited the house and walked down the driveway to his SUV.
She opened up the door and went inside. It's believed she was looking for something, although we don't know what she was looking for.
And while she was in the back of his car, fishing around for whatever it was she was looking for, the door she had entered the vehicle in shut behind her.
And because this is a police SUV, the back seat was designated for suspects, and so the back two doors did not open from the inside.
And there was a very thick partition separating the back seat from the front seat, so Clara could not just reach over the seats and honk the horn to get someone's attention.
And Clara did not have her cell phone, so she couldn't call anyone for help.
And when she screamed out for help to somebody out on the road to help her, her screams were severely muffled and the back windows of this police car were heavily tinted, making it extremely difficult to see that there was a person in the backseat of this car.
So for four hours, Clara desperately screamed and kicked and punched and did everything she could to try to free herself from the situation she was in.
All the while, the temperature inside the car continued to go up.
The SUV was parked in full sunlight, no shade whatsoever, and the temperatures that day were over 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
And so by the time Clara was ultimately discovered, the inside of that SUV had effectively become an oven.
Aristides ran over to his vehicle and he pulled his wife out and he started doing CPR on her, but it was too late.
She had died of heat stroke. Her death was ultimately ruled an accident.
Our next story is called Molding Room. It was two days before Christmas in 2010, and 54-year-old Alan Catterall, along with his future son-in-law, Mark, were sitting in the break room of a kayak molding facility in the United Kingdom where they both worked.
And as they sat there drinking tea, they began exchanging notes about what gifts they got for the rest of their family for the holidays.
And as they spoke, they both were very careful to keep their voices very quiet in fear that someone might overhear them because Alan's wife and daughter also worked at this kayak company.
Alan had worked for this company for 10 years, and even though it was backbreaking work a lot of the time, he loved it because it meant he got to spend all this time with his family basically 24-7.
It was only 7 a.m., which meant Mark and Alan had just started their shifts, but they were already taking this break to talk about Christmas because they were so excited about it.
But they finally said, OK, we do need to go to work.
And so they put their cups in the sink and then Alan made his way down to the factory floor and his future son-in-law, Mark, made his way up to the control room.
On the factory floor where Alan was heading was where all the special machinery was inside of these little rooms where the kayaks were actually molded and put together.
And it was Alan's job to make sure the machinery was clean and operational.
The machinery inside of these little kayak making rooms was very customized and very finicky.
And so Alan was one of the few people at the company who really understood what made it work and what would cause issues.
And so he was very valuable at the company.
That day, Alan knew one of the circuit boards for one of these molding rooms had shorted out.
And so the leadership had decided to shut down that particular molding room while the circuit board was fixed.
And so when Alan went down and began checking out each of these molding rooms, he knew which one had been shut down.
So he knew when he went in there, it was not going to be operational.
But when he went into that particular molding room, he noticed that it really needed a good clean.
When these kayaks were made inside of these molding rooms, a lot of times the excess plastic would kind of seep out of the actual mold and it would get caked to the walls and it would flake all over the ground.
And so periodically, Alan would clean these rooms and he figured right now with this one shut down, he might as well clean it.
And so Alan grabbed a crowbar and he headed into this shut down molding room and he got to work chipping all this plastic off the walls and making a big pile on the ground to sweep out and throw away.
But as Alan chipped away at all the plastic, the doors leading into this molding room shut.
And so suddenly Alan was cast into total darkness because his only light before that had been coming through these doors.
But that was the least of Alan's worries.
He knew that if these doors were shutting, these doors were automatic, that meant that the circuit board had to have been fixed and they didn't know he was in here.
And so now this molding room must be operational, which meant he only had minutes to get out of this room.
And so Alan ran to the door and with his crowbar, he began trying to pry the doors open, but he couldn't.
These are mechanically sealed doors. They do not just open.
You need to press a button to release them.
But Alan's in a total panic. He knows what happens in this room, and he just can't get the doors open.
And so he began banging on the door with his crowbar and screaming for anybody out in the factory floor to please stop this process that's surely starting inside of this room.
Open these doors. Get me out of here. But it was so loud out on the factory floor, nobody heard him.
And so before long, Alan must have looked around and saw the walls inside of this tight, cramped space beginning to glow red. because this molding room was actually just an oven.
It reached almost 600 degrees Fahrenheit in about 10 minutes.
And so Alan is watching as this oven is restarting and he's sealed inside of it.
And so the walls turned bright red. And then before long, the crowbar he was using to try to open the door must have become so hot he couldn't have held it.
And then the ground as well would have been red hot and his shoes would have begun to melt.
And then the air temperature inside would have gotten so unbelievably hot he couldn't have breathed.
And so screaming in pain and pounding on the door, leaving his skin on the door every time he hit it, Alan eventually just collapsed to the ground in unimaginable pain as he cooked alive.
Finally, when Alan caught on fire and black smoke began coming off of his body and pouring out onto the factory floor, the factory realized there's a problem with this molding room, so they turned it off, they opened it up, and they discovered Alan.
It would turn out, after Mark and Alan had chatted about Christmas in the break room, and then parted and gone their own ways, Alan had gone down to the factory floor and inside of that molding room, and his future son-in-law, Mark, had gone up to the control room, where he would have no visibility of the factory floor.
All he had was this big switchboard full of lights and switches and gauges that controlled all of the molding rooms.
And not long after he got up there and was looking at the control panel, he saw a blinking light come on.
And it was for the molding room that Alan was working inside of.
And that blinking light meant someone had fixed the circuit board, and so that molding room now had power.
And so reflexively, Mark just turned it on.
And when he did that, the molding room began its restart process, which included sealing its doors and turning on the oven.
And inside of that molding room, there were no safety escapes.
In fact, there was really no safety precautions at all with regards to these ovens.
And so as soon as Mark flipped that switch, he had killed his future father-in-law.
Five years later, the Kayak Molding Company was convicted of corporate manslaughter and fined 200,000 pounds.
Also, the man who actually designed these molding rooms with no safety precautions in mind, no emergency exits, nothing, he was fined 25,000 pounds and sentenced to jail for nine months.
The show is sponsored by BetterHelp. When I fell into a depression in 2018, I didn't know what to do.
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The next and final story of today's episode is called Within Reach.
On January 30, 1925, a 37-year-old man named Floyd Collins walked through this huge forest in central Kentucky inside of a national park.
As he walked along, his boots splashed in the melting snow and mud on the ground, and above him, all he heard was the sound of water dripping down amongst the leaves.
It was warmer than it had been in several days, and so that was why Floyd was out here.
He was trying to take advantage of the nice weather.
And so after walking for a while on this muddy, slushy trail, the trees around Floyd began to thin out, and then eventually he reached the edge of the tree line, and in front of him was this huge clearing.
Now, in this clearing, the trail he was on continued straight ahead, but it came to a stop in front of this huge cavern-like opening in the side of a hill.
And so without hesitation, Floyd stepped out of the trees, into the sunlight, and he walked the rest of the trail right up to the opening of this cavern, and he stopped and just stared and smiled.
This cavern-like space on the side of this hill was the entrance to a cave known as Sand Cave.
And Floyd had spent the last week coming out to Sand Cave and exploring the different tunnels, but today his plan was to go as deep and as far inside of this cave as he possibly could.
Caves were a huge tourist attraction in this region, and Floyd was a very experienced caver who had been caving since he was six years old, and he knew that most of Sand Cave had not been explored.
And so if he could go in there and explore all the different parts of the cave and map it all out and make sure it was safe, it was sure to be a huge moneymaker.
He could bring people here and lead them on guided tours.
So Floyd left the muddy path he had been walking on and stepped foot inside of this grand entrance to Sand Cave.
It's basically this 250 foot wide cathedral-like space inside of this hill with ceilings high enough you could stand, but it's totally dark in there.
And despite being this big open space, it very quickly funnels to this one kind of tunnel that goes straight down and connects to all these offshoot underground passageways, many of which have never been explored before.
And so as Floyd walked across this big open entryway, he lit his oil lamp and then began mentally preparing himself for what he was about to do, which was going to be very claustrophobia inducing, even for a very experienced caver.
And so Floyd reached the back of this huge entryway and he reached this tunnel that would connect to the rest of the cave and he began walking down it.
And this tunnel was not very restricting.
You could stand in it, you could move around in it, but it was very short.
It was 15 feet straight down at an angle where at the bottom of those 15 feet was a square hole in the ground.
And Floyd, having been here the previous week, knew that once you go through this hole, the real caving begins.
Now you're going to be down on your hands and knees, wriggling your way through these very tight and restricting areas where you don't really know where you're going.
Because again, a lot of this stuff has never been explored before.
But this is why Floyd loved caving. He loved the adventure and the risk of doing things like this.
And so Floyd got to this hole, he put his oil lamp down on the ground, he casually lowered himself feet first into this hole which dropped down several feet, and then once he was on firm ground, he reached up, grabbed his oil lamp, and pulled it into the hole with him.
Once he was inside of this lower level space, he crouched down and looked around, and off to his right was a tunnel that he could crawl through that seemed to lead to a series of other tunnels.
And so he puts his lamp in front of him, he gets down, and he begins crawling through this tunnel.
And after a little while, he reaches this kind of fork in the road where he had several options of very narrow tunnels to choose from.
Now, the previous week, Floyd had gone down several of these tunnels and mapped out where they went, but there was one tunnel in particular at this fork that was very narrow.
It was likely the most narrow of all the tunnels, but from where he had seen the last week, it looked like it went pretty far without obstruction.
And so he immediately began going headfirst into this tunnel where he had no idea where it was going to go.
Think about that. If you go headfirst into a tunnel and you get stuck, what are you going to do?
You can't really go anywhere. So this guy is like totally fearless, just going headfirst into what most people would consider a nightmare scenario.
And so the way Floyd would approach these very tight tunnels is he would put his oil lamp out in front of him and then he'd keep his hands over his head and he'd kind of wriggle his way head first and push his lamp along the way.
And so that's what he did. He began going into this really restrictive tunnel.
You know, it's hard to breathe because the walls are so tight on his chest cavity.
But as he's going, eventually the ceiling begins to slope upward just enough that he can pull himself up onto his hands and knees and kind of catch his breath.
By this point, Floyd was approximately 55 feet underground.
That's where this little pocket was where he could get up on his hands and knees and breathe.
And so from this position, he still could see with his lamp that this tunnel continued to snake further and further down.
And his hope was that eventually it would lead to a big underground chamber that was not just big enough to go to your hands and knees on, but was big enough you could stand on. and walk around in, because those were the big tourist attractions.
Not only because it seems like another world underground that you can fully explore and walk around in, but also, as Floyd knew from his past experience of going into other caves, a lot of times those big underground chambers are full of Native American artifacts.
And again, that was a huge potential moneymaker for people like Floyd, because it allowed him to advertise that this cave where tourists could go explore was full of all this rich history.
And so Floyd eventually, after catching his breath in this little spot, got back down onto his stomach with his hands out in front of him, with the lamp out ahead of his fingers, and he began going deeper and deeper into this unexplored section of Sand Cave.
And as he inched along, even though the ceiling remained very tight on top of him, he's totally compressed to the ground, the walls on either side of him began to expand, which meant Floyd, if he wanted to, could actually turn himself around, although he couldn't stand up.
And so Floyd is making his way down this very low ceiling area when he notices his oil lamp is beginning to flicker, which means it's going to go out soon.
Now, Floyd wasn't concerned about suddenly being in the darkness inside of a cave.
Now, to most people, that would be terrifying.
But Floyd, again, was so experienced, he was very confident that he could easily make his way out again just by touch.
He didn't need the light. But he did know that trying to move around inside of a cave in the darkness was dangerous, and so he should not do that if he could avoid it.
And so as much as Floyd wanted to continue and hopefully find something incredible inside of this cave, he decided he really needed to just turn around and go back to the surface and come back the next day to continue exploring.
And so because this part of the tunnel he was in was really wide, he was able to turn himself around and drag his lamp until he was facing back uphill, and then he rolled onto his back.
So his head is pointing back up where he came from, and his feet are pointing in the direction that he had previously been traveling, and he's on his back.
And so his oil lamp is above his head. He can move his arms side to side because, again, it's pretty wide in the area he's in.
His head is pretty restricted by the ceiling.
And he began inching with his heels and pushing with his arms, moving up the tunnel on his back.
And as he would move, he'd use his head and his hands to push the oil lamp back up the direction he was going.
And for a little while, this system worked great.
But at some point, right as he was getting close to that area where he was able to previously get on his hands and knees and catch his breath, Floyd accidentally kind of rushed and pushed his lamp too hard and knocked it over, which extinguished the light.
And so suddenly, Floyd was cast into total darkness.
Now, again, Floyd was not concerned or really even scared about being in darkness inside of this cave, but this was not a good scenario and he knew it.
But he told himself, stay calm, he knew where he was in the cave, he just needed to get to that little pocket, he'd catch his breath, and then he'd continue his way back up, eventually reach that hole in the ceiling, that square hole, he'd climb out, make his way out of the cave, and boom, he'd be done.
And so Floyd just continued to push the now-extinguished oil lamp above his head, and he continued to inch with his heels and moved his arms around to keep going backwards up this tunnel.
But then, right before Floyd reached that pocket inside of the tunnel where he could get onto his hands and knees, he heard the sound of falling rocks somewhere below him, kind of near his legs.
Now it's pitch black, he can't see anything.
And so Floyd just kind of held his breath and hoped that whatever was happening wouldn't affect him.
But then he felt a shooting pain in his left leg.
A 27 pound rock had broken loose from the low ceiling and landed on his left ankle.
Now, at first, Floyd was actually relieved that the rock had landed only on his left leg.
And in fact, his leg was actually kind of positioned in a depression on the floor of the cave.
And so the rock didn't really hit his left ankle directly.
It kind of like hit the ground and then leaned onto his left ankle.
And his left ankle was kind of protected in the depression in the cave floor.
And so Floyd's thinking, thank goodness it only landed on my ankle and not on my head or my chest because then I'd be dead.
And so, after catching his breath and kind of calming down, Floyd tensed his body and pulled his left leg as hard as he could to clear this 27-pound rock, but his foot wouldn't budge.
And so, Floyd thought he would just reach down and kind of dig his foot out.
He'd just move the rock out of the way. But even though this cave had widened out on either side of Floyd when he had gone deeper and deeper into it, because he had retraced his steps, he was farther up the tunnel where those sides had really come in much closer to him.
And so he wasn't able to actually reach down and touch the rock.
The walls made it impossible. And so he wasn't able to use his hands to clear this rock. so floyd is pinned underground unable to move in absolute pitch darkness inside of a cave that's practically crushing his chest because the ceiling is so low and he knows it's unstable the ceiling has now fallen off so there's a chance more rocks could come in at any time i mean this is like a worst case scenario for anybody who goes caving But Floyd told himself to just stay calm.
He knew this was a very bad situation, but people were certain to find out he was missing and they knew he had gone to Sand Cave and they would come here, they would find him and they would rescue him.
And so Floyd just decided he would wait. and for an agonizing 30 hours.
Remember, 30 hours of pitch blackness, trapped in a totally claustrophobic environment.
30 hours of this, no food, no water, can't go to the bathroom.
He's laying there for 30 hours, and then finally he hears a voice coming from somewhere near the entrance of this cave.
And when he heard that voice, it was like the sweetest sound he had ever heard.
Because not only did they represent help, but the voice was coming from Floyd's brother, Homer, who was also a very experienced caber.
And so Floyd's thinking, thank goodness I'm saved.
And so Homer was able to navigate from the entrance down all the way to the tunnel that Floyd was in, and Homer got to that spot in the tunnel where Floyd had gone to his hands and knees, that pocket there.
So Homer's in that pocket, and he can see Floyd is only a few feet away from him.
He can see Floyd's head right there. And so Homer, who had a lamp, you know, he shines the light on Floyd, and the two brothers don't waste any time with small talk.
Instead, Homer, who had his oil lamp, had set it up right next to them, and he began feeding Floyd sausage sandwiches and giving him sips of water.
And then Homer would tell Floyd that he just did not have the equipment to help Floyd get out right now, but Homer was going to go back to the surface, get men, get supplies, and then come back and save Floyd.
And so Floyd is very thankful, he's very relieved, he says goodbye to Homer, and Homer turns and makes his way back up to the surface.
15 hours later, Homer would return by himself.
And so at this point, Floyd has been trapped for 45 hours.
And so Floyd, he's laying there kind of in and out of consciousness, and he hears the sound of Homer calling out to him.
And then he hears the sound of Homer chiseling away at some rocks.
It would turn out Homer's plan to save Floyd was basically to chisel away the side of this section of tunnel that Floyd was stuck in, in order to be able to reach down and somehow, some way, clear the rock off of Floyd's leg and then pull Floyd up.
Now, Floyd understood, of course, that this plan of chiseling away the side of this tunnel to make it wider was going to take some time, but luckily Homer had shown up with more food and water, and they chatted the whole time as Homer worked, and so Floyd was in good spirits and Homer was very optimistic.
But after eight hours of Homer slowly chiseling his way, widening this tunnel, he hadn't made much progress and he was totally exhausted.
I mean, you gotta remember that the angle he was working at was horrible.
He was basically crouched down on his hands and knees, chipping away at this rock.
And so after those eight hours, Homer would leave Floyd and go back home and sleep and eat and drink and kind of recover.
But he told Floyd, don't worry, tomorrow more men will be here to help chisel away this tunnel and get Floyd out of there.
But over the course of the next five 50 hours.
Floyd remained trapped inside of this tunnel with the rock pinning his leg, and despite Homer and several other men getting down there and very diligently chipping away at this tunnel, it just was not happening very quickly.
And so over the course of those 50 hours, Homer began going in and out of consciousness, and he began not being able to differentiate between what was real and what was not.
At one point, he would say that he believed the cave had kind of opened up and these angels riding golden chariots with flaming wheels had come in to save him.
And as they were lifting him out of the cave, he smelled food and coffee.
And then suddenly his hallucination cleared and he realized he was trapped in the darkness all alone, still in this cave.
And it was like it destroyed his morale.
And so Floyd is really starting to go downhill and the rescuers are realizing they need to do something and they need to do something now.
But at the 130 hour mark, things got even worse for Floyd.
As he was laying there in the tunnel, this was sometime in the middle of the night, and so no rescuers were actively down there trying to chisel their way down to him.
He was laying there, and he was listening to the sound of the running water somewhere outside the cave, and that sound was kind of amplified down to him, and then all of a sudden, he heard the sound of falling rocks somewhere up above, and then when those rocks stopped and it went silent again, he could not hear the sound of the running water.
It was very muffled. And that was when he realized that there must have been a cave-in somewhere higher up in the cave, which meant, potentially, there could be a significant block just to get down to him.
Forget about widening this tunnel, I mean, he could be actually entombed inside of Sand Cave.
And so, Floyd did the only thing he could do, which was to pray.
It would turn out that cave-in had indeed blocked the way for rescuers to get down to Floyd.
And because of how extensive this cave-in was, the rescuers actually decided to start carving a brand new tunnel that would join up with the side of Floyd's tunnel.
I mean, this is an even bigger undertaking than just chiseling the side of the tunnel that Floyd was in, which was their original plan and had taken several days.
And so now they have to build this brand new tunnel to Floyd.
And so finally, on February 16th, 1925, so a staggering 17 days from the time Floyd got first stuck in this cave, the rescue team finally punched through and reached Floyd.
And as soon as they did, the lead rescuer looked over at Floyd and then he paused.
He turned up and he just said, dead. It would turn out, shortly after that cave-in which sealed Floyd in completely inside of Sand Cave, at some point over the next couple of days, those rocks began to break free and tumble down the cave and began striking Floyd until finally one or several of those rocks hit him in the head or chest and killed him.
So just imagine you are trapped. You've been there for several days.
You're in total darkness. You're entombed inside of this cave.
And periodically, rocks just come tumbling down and smash into you.
Who knows how long it took to kill him, but that has to be one of the most agonizing ways to go ever.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
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