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 will feature two stories that show we may not be alone in this universe.
The audio from both 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 Exposed, and it's about a horrifying discovery in Brazil that was hidden by their government, but when photos were eventually leaked, it sent people into a panic.
The second and final story you'll hear is called Jelly, and it's about this very strange occurrence over in England that is often cited as one of the most credible paranormal events in history.
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've 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 invite the Amazon Music Follow button to come on out for a night of fun with you out on the town, but don't show up and don't answer any of their phone calls or text messages all night.
Okay, let's get into our first story called Exposed.
On the afternoon of September 29th, 1988, a 10-year-old boy named Francisco was walking along the perimeter of a man-made lake in southern Brazil while poking the ground with a stick.
Francisco was doing one of his favorite after-school activities, which was looking for bugs.
And this lake, which was a part of the Billings Reservoir in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, was his favorite place to do that.
And the reservoir was gigantic, but it was not shaped like a typical circular lake.
Instead, it was more like a big river that kind of wound around and had all these skinny branches kind of jutting off the sides of it.
And on this particular day, Francisco was walking along one of those skinny offshoots of this lake, where at certain points, if Francisco wanted to, he could literally swim to the other side of the lake in a matter of minutes.
Now, Francisco knew he was not really supposed to be anywhere near this reservoir because in recent years, gangs from the nearby cities would bring their murder victims out to this reservoir and bury them here.
And so locals knew it was not a safe place and to stay clear.
But Francisco, he didn't listen to any of that because he loved walking around this lake and looking for bugs.
And so he thought, you know what? No one's harmed me yet, so what's the big deal?
And so as Francisco casually walked along, poking at the mud, looking for his bugs, he finally saw one.
It was a huge water scorpion, almost two inches long.
And so immediately Francisco, without taking his eyes off the bug, drops his backpack, grabs a clear container that he kept in the side pocket.
He opened it up, he bent down, and he scooped up this water scorpion and capped it.
And then he brought the container up and looked inside to kind of admire his new pet.
And as he was staring at this container, he noticed something odd on the other side of the lake.
He basically saw it through the plastic container.
And so he lowered the container to get a better look at the strange thing on the other side of the water.
And what he saw was this big group of vultures all kind of standing in a circle right on the water's edge.
And immediately, Francisco was way more interested in these vultures than in his bug because vultures meant there had to be a dead thing nearby because vultures are scavengers.
And so whatever they were circled around was probably a dead animal.
But Francisco, he looked around and realized there was no way to get to the other side of the water to see whatever this dead thing was unless he swam.
And he knew if he went back home with soaking wet clothes, his mom would know he had snuck to the reservoir and he'd be in lots of trouble.
And so, feeling really frustrated, Francisco just picked up a rock and chucked it to the other side, trying to splash the water near the vultures to get them to fly away so he could see the dead thing.
But the first rock he threw did not really have an effect.
The vultures just kind of turned around and looked at him and then went back to whatever was on the ground.
And so Francisco gathered a big pile of like 25 rocks and began throwing them one after the other at these vultures.
And finally, Francisco had caused enough chaos on the other side of the water that the vultures got upset and they took to the air and they flew away.
And finally, Francisco got a clear view of the dead thing that was in the middle of the circle of vultures.
Now, initially, Francisco thought this dead thing was going to be maybe a bird or some other small animal from the area.
But when he got a good look at this dead thing from 30 feet away, it didn't look like either of those things.
It didn't have fur. It didn't have feathers.
It actually looked kind of pale, almost like a pig.
But Francisco's thinking to himself, why would a pig be all the way out here?
And then it slowly dawned on Francisco that what he was looking at was actually a dead person.
Suddenly terrified, Francisco scooped up his things, turned around, and ran to the nearest village where he began screaming for help.
Within a few hours, the area along the water where the vultures had been and where this body was, was swarming with police and also with curious villagers.
Normally, when a body was discovered in or near this reservoir, which unfortunately happened quite a bit because of all the recent gang violence, police would often break ranks from the investigation and walk over to the local onlookers and kind of fill them in and tell them, you know, who this person was and what they think happened.
But this time it was totally different. The police were totally secretive and it was really obvious.
The police immediately roped off the entire area with crime scene tape, and then the police officers stood in a circle, shoulder to shoulder, blocking the view of the villagers so they couldn't see the body.
And then when villagers actually walked up to police and said, hey, can you tell us what's going on?
The police would say they couldn't talk about it, and then they would tell the villagers to back up and stay away.
Locals would stick around for a while, being treated this way the entire time by police.
And then finally, when the sun started to go down and it was clear the police were very committed to hiding what was going on, whoever was still there finally just left, figuring when they got home, they could just turn on the news and see what had happened with this dead person.
But when they got home and turned on their TV, there was not one news story about this body.
And at a minimum, this story should have dominated local news, but it somehow was not being talked about.
And then even stranger was the next morning when locals got up, they headed back to the reservoir to see what the police were up to.
And when they got there, they found the police were gone, the body was gone, and there was absolutely no trace that anyone or anything had ever been there.
It was like it had been totally sanitized.
For days, locals in this area continued to check the TV news, they checked the radio, the newspapers for some story, some bit of information about this dead body that was found.
But again, there was just absolutely nothing and it just made no sense.
Why wasn't anyone talking about this? And so eventually, in the absence of any official information about what happened, a rumor began to circulate among locals that the body belonged to a local fisherman who had gone missing three days before Francisco discovered him.
And this fisherman, apparently he was an alcoholic, and he had gone to the reservoir, and he had begun drinking, and apparently he drank so much that it killed him.
Now, many people wondered, you know, if this drunk fisherman story was the real story, then why were the police so secretive about the body?
And why weren't they willing to give up any information to the crowd about what had happened to this guy?
I mean, a drunk fisherman is not a super sensitive thing.
It just seemed like that doesn't line up with the police's behavior.
But questions like these remained unanswered.
And after several weeks of still no new information, no news coverage anywhere, even the most skeptical of villagers who really thought there's something weird going on here, they just kind of forgot about it and moved on.
Until six years later in 1994, when someone, we don't know who, from the Brazilian government decided they just couldn't keep the secret any longer.
And so they gathered up some photos and an autopsy report they were not supposed to have, and they smuggled those things to the media.
And once the media published these things, it became immediately clear that the dead man who was found in the reservoir in 1988 was not a drunk fisherman who drank himself to death.
Nor was he the victim of gang violence. Instead, it appeared that this person's death could potentially be paranormal.
But before we dive into the significance of those leaked photos and the leaked autopsy report, you need to understand a weird aspect of Brazil's history.
Brazil has an absolutely astounding number of sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs for short.
And these are not your typical UFO stories where some person claims they saw aliens or they were abducted by aliens, but they have no witnesses, they have no proof, they have nothing but their own story.
No, in Brazil, the bulk of their UFO sightings are reported by their military.
Because Brazil actually has a government program to monitor UFO sightings, because it happens so much in their country.
In fact, the Brazilian government was directly involved in one of the most famous UFO sightings of all time.
It was called the Night of the UFOs. This famous sighting, or sightings, because it actually happened in four different Brazilian states simultaneously, happened on May 19th, 1986, which was two years before Francisco spotted the dead body in the reservoir.
On that 1986 day at around 8.15 p.m., an air traffic controller at an international airport in Sao Paulo noticed three red lights hovering over the airport.
And so the controller called it in and asked, you know, what are these things?
But nobody knew. And at the exact same time, all across Brazil, dozens and dozens of other people who have no idea what's happening at this international airport began reporting that they too were seeing strange lights in the sky.
And many of these reports of these lights were coming from military personnel and government officials.
And so this was like a really big deal that like all across Brazil, everybody's seeing lights in the sky.
And so the government, in response to this, scrambled their fighter jets and sent the jets up to try to intercept one of these sets of lights just to see who or what they were and potentially shoot them down if they had to.
But when these jets got anywhere close to these unidentified flying objects, these lights in the sky, these UFOs would move away like instantly.
One UFO was observed suddenly disappearing and then reappearing 20 miles away in just five seconds, which meant that UFO had to travel at least five times the speed of sound to cover that distance in such a short amount of time.
For reference, humans are not capable of going that fast.
We cannot do that. Eventually, the night of the UFOs ended when all these UFOs, these lights in the sky, just kind of suddenly vanished.
And then a couple of days later, the Brazilian government held this big press conference about the event, and they would say, we have no idea what those lights were or where they came from.
We have no clue. However, whoever or whatever was controlling these UFOs showed obvious signs of intelligence.
Now, as mind-blowing as that would be, to hear that, to hear that potentially intelligent creatures are flying around your airspace, remember, this is Brazil, where UFO sightings were kind of the norm, and so people were definitely shocked by this.
This was a terrifying thing, but they just kind of accepted what they were told and assumed, you know, the government will handle this, and people moved on with their lives.
That is, until several years later in 1994, when those photos and the autopsy report of the dead person in the reservoir were leaked, and then suddenly the people of Brazil, they're seeing this stuff and they're realizing, wait a minute, the night of the UFOs may not have been an isolated instance.
Those UFOs may never have left. Here is what the public learned from the leaked photos and the leaked autopsy report.
Back in 1988, when little Francisco spotted the dead body from the other side of the water, he correctly identified that it was a man's body.
But Francisco had been wrong when he told authorities that it didn't look like this guy had any visible injuries on him.
And the guy was naked, and so Francisco felt pretty confident that he would have seen something if the guy was wounded.
But when the police arrived and they saw the body up close, they immediately saw he had several very serious and very strange physical injuries.
He had these four perfectly circular one to one and a half inch diameter holes drilled into his body.
There were two right above his chest, basically sitting above his armpit.
There was one that was right over his belly button.
So his belly button was gone. It was just a hole where it had been.
And there was also one in his crotch. And these holes were not crudely done.
These were done with surgical precision, almost like whoever had done it was using high-end medical tools to make these cuts.
Now, at first glance, the authorities had no idea why these holes were on this guy's body.
But when the autopsy was done, they discovered this man was missing the majority of his internal organs.
And after doing some investigating, they discovered that all of his organs had literally been vacuumed out of him through these holes on his body.
Those holes were basically just ports to pull things out of him.
Also, most of the man's blood had been suctioned out of those holes as well.
But that wasn't all. The man also had one of his ears removed, one of his eyes was removed, and the lower part of his face was also removed.
And again, all of these cuts looked like they had been made with absolute surgical precision.
But perhaps the most brutal aspect of all the things that came to light when these documents were leaked was something that unless you looked really closely at the autopsy report, you wouldn't necessarily notice.
And it had to do with this man's vagus nerve.
Your vagus nerve is something that controls part of your nervous system that's responsible for automatic functions like heart rate and digestion.
And so when your body is suddenly in great distress, like suddenly you're fighting for your life or something, your vagus nerve can basically shut off those automatic functions like digestion in order to ensure all your energy is going towards fighting for your life.
But in this dead man's case, his autopsy revealed that his vagus nerve had gone absolutely wild right at the moment of his death.
It's complicated, but this suggests that this man was very likely alive when his face was being surgically cut off and those holes were being drilled into his body and his organs were being vacuumed out.
And then at some point, the excruciating pain that came from these horrible things happening to him got so, so bad, his vagus nerve basically turned off his heart.
So it was not these horrible physical injuries that killed him.
He literally died from the pain of these physical injuries.
In short, his body basically killed itself to avoid feeling the pain it was feeling.
So I'm sure you're wondering, how does the dead man in the reservoir and these leaked photos and the autopsy report, how does all of that connect with the night of the UFOs, which happened two years before the man in the reservoir was even found?
Well, following the night of the UFOs in 1986, farmers in Brazil who lived in the areas where these famous sightings took place began reporting that their cattle were dying kind of inexplicably.
And this began happening with enough frequency in all of these areas where the UFO sightings had taken place that a theory began to develop in Brazil that maybe the UFOs that were here during the night of the UFOs have something to do with all these cows turning up dead.
And as that theory began to take hold all across Brazil, that UFOs are killing our cattle, another theory began to come out of that one, which was, well, if the UFOs are coming in here and killing cattle, what's stopping them from killing people?
And then in 1988, so two years after the night of the UFOs, and right in the middle of all these farmers all across Brazil saying their cows were dying for no reason, the dead man in the reservoir was discovered.
And as soon as the government saw the physical condition this guy was in, with the weird holes drilled in his body and his organs missing and his face pulled off, That plus the fact that he was located in this reservoir, which by the way, was in a night of the UFO sighting area, the government decided they would have to hide the story.
A critical detail that I have left out intentionally until right now is that the cattle who were turning up dead, they were turning up dead with circular holes drilled into their bodies with organs missing and parts of their faces removed. meaning clearly whatever was happening to these cattle inside of these siting areas had happened to this man in the reservoir.
And if that got out to the public, then it would confirm for many people in Brazil that, yep, the UFOs, they're the ones going after the cattle, and now they're going after us too.
And so this was why the police were so secretive about the body and not letting anybody see it or learn anything about it.
And it was also why no news was run anywhere in Brazil about the story.
It's because the government was really trying to make sure it did not get out.
And the government was able to keep it quiet until 1994 when those photos and the autopsy report were leaked.
But like all things having to do with UFOs or aliens or paranormal stuff, it's like despite the evidence, those things very quickly are pushed into the kind of conspiracy theory bucket and they stay there.
People do not want to touch that category. so even though brazil remains an absolute hotbed for ufo sightings wikipedia even has a page dedicated just to tracking brazilian ufo sightings despite all that no one really cares but if you care there is an unbelievable amount of information online about what's going on in brazil and if nothing else it is just a fascinating rabbit hole to fall into Hey, it's Mr. Ballin.
I'm excited to tell you about something special.
For the first time, my show, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted, Declassified Mysteries with Luke LaManna, to tell a story so complex it required our combined storytelling styles.
This special episode is called A Redacted Medical Mystery.
In it, unexplained symptoms after a routine surgery quickly unravel into something much darker, leading straight to classified government operations hidden for decades.
To listen and uncover the truth alongside us, head to either the Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries or Redacted show pages right now.
Or search for A Redacted Medical Mystery in the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you're fascinated by unexplained medical stories, well, stick around on Medical Mysteries.
Every week, we dive deep into cases that will leave you questioning everything you know about the human body.
And if government conspiracies are more your style, Redacted is your go-to for stories that unravel secrets never meant to see the light of day.
Remember, you can listen to both shows early and ad-free by joining Wondery+.
Hey listeners, Mr. Ballin here. What if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories happening right now are all connected to what might be the biggest crime of our generation?
You know I'm always on the hunt for the most chilling and perplexing tales out there.
Well, I've discovered a new podcast that uncovers real-world mysteries unfolding right now, much like how another Ballin' Studios podcast, Redacted Declassified Mysteries, brings hidden government secrets to light.
And it's called Lawless Planet. Host Zach Goldbaum reveals how shocking tales of murder, cover-ups, and mysterious deaths are all part of something bigger. the systematic destruction of our planet.
From activists who vanish in the Amazon to whistleblowers uncovering billion-dollar environmental crimes, these aren't just stories about the environment.
They're real-life thrillers about people caught between powerful forces willing to kill to keep their secrets buried.
Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.
Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. For the first time, my show, Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted for a special episode.
A redacted medical mystery uncovers how routine surgery leads to classified government operations.
Listen now on the Medical Mysteries or Redacted feeds, or search A Redacted Medical Mystery wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey listeners, big news for true crime lovers.
You can now enjoy this podcast ad-free on Amazon Music with your Prime membership.
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That's amazon.com slash b-a-l-l-e-n. Dive into uninterrupted true crime stories today.
The next and final story of today's episode is called Shelley.
On the afternoon of June 6th, 1980, a 56-year-old man named Zygmund Adamski, who just went by Ziggy, was having a late lunch with his wife and his cousin inside of Ziggy's little brick house in the English village of Tingley.
That day had been a particularly stressful day for Ziggy and his family because the following day was Ziggy's goddaughter's wedding, and Ziggy was very close with his goddaughter.
Ziggy and his wife couldn't have kids because of medical issues, and so his goddaughter had basically become, at least in Ziggy's mind, like his own daughter.
And so in fact, at her wedding, Ziggy was going to be walking her down the aisle.
And while Ziggy was really excited about this, he was also very stressed out that he was going to screw it up. up and so he had gone over and over you know what responsibilities he had as part of the wedding party and he had this little speech he had to give that he had rehearsed 50 times he had it written out i mean he was ready but he was very much in his own head about something potentially going wrong that he would be responsible for And on top of that stress, Ziggy had gotten into a fight that day with his cousin because he felt like the cousin was being kind of disrespectful in some way to his goddaughter.
And so Ziggy had stepped up and defended his goddaughter to his cousin.
And so there was this undercurrent of tension at the lunch table, not to mention this overarching stress that Ziggy was under about this wedding.
And so as Ziggy and his cousin and his wife have this kind of tense meal, Ziggy suddenly realizes that he forgot to get potatoes when he went to the store earlier to buy ingredients for this meal.
And for some reason, Ziggy decides, you know what, I'm going to just put my stuff down now, go to the store and get those potatoes, even though at this point it was too late to make the potatoes for the meal.
And so maybe Ziggy just wanted to go out and do anything to get away from his cousin for a minute and away from all this wedding planning they were doing and just kind of go out and clear his head.
And so Ziggy put his napkin down on the table.
He stood up. He told his cousin and wife that he was going out to get potatoes.
They were like, okay. And the cousin actually said, do you want me to come with you?
You know, like, is there anything else you need to get while you're out?
And Ziggy said, nope, I'm good. He grabbed some cash out of his wallet and he headed out the door.
The village of Tingli, where Ziggy and his wife lived, was a very safe place.
He and his wife had actually moved there after fleeing from Poland during World War II, where both Ziggy and his wife, whose name was Lottie, had been held prisoner at some point.
And so after all this trauma of being held prisoner and having to flee their home country, they had looked for the safest, best place to kind of resettle and stay for good, and Tingli was it, and they loved it.
Ziggy had gotten a job in Tingley as a coal miner, and he had been doing that for 27 years.
As for Lottie, she didn't work because she had a disease called multiple sclerosis, which meant she was confined to a wheelchair.
But Ziggy and Lottie had quickly made lots of friends in town who were very supportive, and so it wasn't long before Ziggy and Lottie had a very happy and stable life in this town.
The little shop where Ziggy was going to was only about three blocks away from his house, which meant walking to the store, getting potatoes, and coming back would only take a few minutes.
And so Lottie and the cousin back home, they expected to see Ziggy really come back within 10, 15 minutes.
But when he didn't, and after about 30 minutes went by, Lottie actually got really concerned because Ziggy was just not the type of person to do stuff unannounced.
He was incredibly methodical. He was very punctual and reliable.
And so being late from this little trip to the store was just so uncharacteristic that Lottie told the cousin, hey, you go to the store and see if Ziggy is there.
See what's going on here. Ziggy had worked in the coal mine for nearly 30 years and he had some serious lung issues from breathing in all of the coal.
And so Lottie was thinking, you know, maybe he collapsed or something along the way from these breathing issues. but when the cousin got to the shop the shop owner told the cousin that they had seen ziggy he had come in about 25 minutes earlier he had bought a bag of potatoes seemed totally normal everything was fine and he had left walking back in the direction of his home and so the cousin thanked the shopkeeper and then left and began jogging back towards ziggy's house thinking you know maybe he had just not seen him on the way that maybe ziggy was sitting down somewhere on this three block path But the cousin got all the way home and didn't see any sign of Ziggy.
And so after going back inside of the house, the cousin and Lottie talked about what they should do.
And they actually went back out into the neighborhood, asking around, asking neighbors and other people if they had seen Ziggy.
But after a couple of hours of canvassing the neighborhood and not finding Ziggy or finding any indication of what happened to him, Lottie ended up calling the police.
But the police were not inclined to launch a huge investigation for a grown man who's only been missing for a couple of hours in his neighborhood with no sign of foul play or any other sign that anything really bad had happened.
And after the police began asking questions of Lottie and the neighbors about what Ziggy's life was like, they learned that recently Ziggy had been declined for an early retirement from the coal mine.
Because of those breathing issues he was having, he had requested to retire now, but they said no.
And so Ziggy was really upset about that.
He was really stressed about this wedding of his goddaughter the next day.
He'd been fighting with his cousin. Also Ziggy was basically taking care of his wife who's in this wheelchair all the time.
And so because of all these stressors in Ziggy's life, the police started to wonder if maybe it was possible that Ziggy had not been going to get potatoes, but in fact was just kind of abandoning his family.
And so ultimately, on the day that Ziggy went missing, the police told Lottie and Ziggy's cousin that they should just sit tight, see if he comes back tonight, and if he doesn't, go to the wedding tomorrow because Ziggy is so close with the goddaughter.
If he's having some sort of issue right now, you know, he's very likely to come back for something as significant as this wedding.
And so Lottie and Ziggy's cousin stayed at the house all night.
Ziggy did not come back. They didn't hear from him.
And the next day they went to the wedding, but Ziggy didn't show up for that either, even though he's supposed to walk his goddaughter down the aisle.
And so after coming back from this wedding, Lottie called the police.
She called local hospitals. She talked to all of her neighbors.
I mean, she really put out like an all points bulletin to everybody in the area that something terrible has happened to Ziggy and we need to find him.
But despite police beginning to lean into this and her neighbors really going out in force to try to find Ziggy, no one could find him.
He had just vanished. On the morning of June 11th, so five days after Ziggy went to get potatoes and then vanished, a man named Trevor Parker got to work at his father's coal yard in the English town of Todd Morden.
The coal yard was basically just this big open lot that had a chain link fence around it that buttoned up against some railroad tracks.
And inside of this lot were just these huge mounds of coal up against the perimeter of the lot.
And then also inside of the coal yard was one small office building.
And so on this morning, when Trevor pulled through the gates of this coal yard, first of all, he could see the entire yard the second he went in.
And as he looked out, all he noticed was the fact that everything was wet from an early morning storm.
And so after just kind of surveying around the lot to make sure none of the coal got blown around from the storm, he made his way to the small office building to do some paperwork.
Trevor would work inside of that office building for a while, and then around lunchtime, Trevor decided to just go and get some lunch and kind of have a nice long lunch break.
And so he left, he went to the pub, he was there for a couple of hours, and then around 3.45 p.m., he came back to the coal yard, and when he went through the gates, everything looked the same, except there was this dark thing on top of one of the coal piles in the back of the yard.
Now, Trevor didn't know if he had seen it when he had first arrived that morning or if it was new, but whatever it was on this pile, it immediately caught Trevor's attention.
And so after parking his vehicle, Trevor began walking over to this 12 foot tall coal pile with this thing on it.
And when he got about 30 feet away from it, he realized he saw someone's shoe, that this dark figure was a person.
And right away, Trevor started rolling his eyes because there was a group of homeless people that lived near the railroad tracks just outside of the coal yard.
And it wasn't uncommon for them to get really drunk and then wander their way into the coal yard where sometimes they would fall asleep.
And so Trevor's thinking, okay, clearly one of these drunk homeless people has found their way into the coal yard and they've passed out on top of this pile of coal.
And so instead of going over and talking to this person directly, Trevor just turned around, went back inside of the office building, and he called for an ambulance.
The ambulance arrived a few minutes later.
They did not have their sirens on. They didn't come flying into the yard.
This was a routine thing they were doing.
They were scooping up a drunk and bringing them back to the hospital.
When the medics got out of their ambulance and Trevor directed them over to the proper coal pile, they were just cracking jokes along the way.
This was not a big deal. When the two medics got to the bottom of the coal pile, one of them began climbing up the coal to go see this drunk person and get them down.
And so Trevor, as this is happening, he walked a little bit closer.
And when he did, he realized that the person who had fallen asleep on the coal, they had really nice pants on, like tailored pants.
They were certainly not what Trevor expected this person to be wearing.
But before Trevor could even really react to the clothes this person had on, the medic who had climbed up had finally reached this person.
They reached down and began trying to move the person around.
And suddenly, when they had manipulated this person's body enough, the medic's facial expression completely changed.
They went from somewhat routine to totally horrified.
And they backed off of this person on the coals.
They turned around and ran down the coal, practically falling over themselves.
And when they got down there, Trevor heard the medic say to his partner, call the police, call the police right now.
And Trevor said, what's going on? What did you see?
And the medic who had reacted that way just shook his head and walked away to kind of compose himself.
And so Trevor at this point was starting to get spooked himself.
Clearly, whatever the medic had just seen had really shaken him up.
And so Trevor just kind of stood there while the other medic ran in and called police.
And then a few minutes later, a police car came flying into the coal yard and an officer named Alan Godfrey, along with his partner, got out of the car.
And right away, the medic who had gone to the top of the pile and been freaked out by what he saw, walked over with a very ashen face.
And he told Alan Godfrey that something was terribly wrong with the person on top of this pile.
And so Alan, not really sure what to expect, walked over with his partner to this coal pile and with the medics and Trevor standing back, Alan on his own climbed up the coal and he looked down at this person.
And what Alan saw was a man lying on his stomach wearing a beautiful three-piece brown suit and Alan immediately noticed that there was absolutely no soot from the coal that this guy was laying on on his suit.
Even though Alan, just to get up here, had basically covered himself in black soot.
And so he was wondering, how did this guy get up here and not get covered in soot?
It didn't make any sense. Also, Alan noticed that this guy's hair looked totally bizarre.
It looked like someone had given him like a really bad haircut with dull scissors.
Like they just grabbed tufts of his hair and kind of chopped randomly.
I mean, his hair was kind of all over the place.
There were bald spots. And then as Alan looked from this guy's hair down, he noticed almost hidden in his hairline was this fairly deep wound in the back of his neck that was still bleeding.
But there was this weird green jelly-like substance very obviously placed over this wound.
And Alan had no idea what the substance was.
But as weird as all that was, that didn't explain why the first medic had basically completely panicked and run away.
When Alan tried to roll this guy over onto his back to try to wake him up and see if he was okay, he rolled him over and Alan got a look at this guy's face and immediately Alan let go of him and kind of had to step back for a second.
Because the guy's face was contorted in this frozen look of absolute terror.
His jaw was open so wide it was almost like his lower jaw was dislocated.
And his teeth were baring and his eyes were bulging out of his head.
And so Alan quickly realized that obviously this was not just some drunk homeless person who passed out here.
This was a dead person. And whatever happened to them must have been unbelievably terrifying to leave someone looking like that. in their death pose.
It would turn out this deceased man in the coal yard was Ziggy Adamski.
But this did not solve the mystery of what happened to Ziggy five days earlier.
In fact, his discovery really only created more questions.
This town where this coal yard was, Todd Morden, was located 25 miles away from where Ziggy lived.
And as far as anyone knew, Ziggy didn't know anybody in Todd Morden.
So there was no reason for him to be there.
And number two, when he had left to go get potatoes, he had been on foot.
So did he walk 25 miles to this random town? also assuming he did just walk to this coal yard this coal yard is a big wide open lot that if you were standing anywhere near it even outside the fence you could look in and basically see the entire place so it just seemed really unlikely that ziggy could just walk into this very public open space and get to the top of one of these coal piles without somebody noticing him whether that was Trevor or one of the other employees that were there, or one of the truck drivers that were in and out of there all the time, all day doing deliveries, or the homeless people who were near the railroad tracks, or the people who rode the trains that passed by there every single day.
I mean, there are a lot of eyes on this coal yard, but nobody saw Ziggy.
It was like he just kind of appeared at the top of this pile.
And again, even if Ziggy had managed to slip in and sneak to the top of this pile, why didn't he have soot from the coal all over his clothes?
And if maybe he had been brought there, if someone had killed him and put him on this coal pile, there's even more reason he would have soot all over him because they would have had to drag him up to the top of the pile.
And even putting all that aside, if someone really did kill Ziggy and they placed him on this pile, why?
This is a very open public place. Someone is going to find him.
You're going to get caught if you're the killer.
And then, of course, there is the issue of what Ziggy was wearing.
That brown three-piece suit he was wearing that had no soot on it, it wasn't his, and it wasn't put on right.
The buttons were not lined up. It almost looked like somebody else who didn't know how to put a suit on had tried to dress Ziggy.
And then Ziggy also did not have an undershirt on.
It was just the jacket over his skin. And then also Ziggy had this totally bizarre haircut that looked like someone who didn't know how to give a haircut had cut his hair with scissors and said, you know, good enough.
And then of course you have this wound on the back of Ziggy's neck.
Now, the wound itself was determined not to be fatal.
It was a fairly deep cut, but it wouldn't have killed him.
However, the most significant part of that wound was that green jelly that had been placed across the back of it.
During Ziggy's autopsy, they were unable to figure out what this green jelly was and they ran dozens and dozens of tests on it.
And also during the autopsy, the coroner would determine that Ziggy had actually died the same day he had been found.
So he was doing something for five days between going missing and being on this coal pile, but nobody knows what it was.
And as for his cause of death, the coroner was not entirely sure, but it did seem like he died of a heart attack.
The coroner would search all of Ziggy's body for signs of some sort of fight.
He might've gotten into some sort of defensive wound on his body, but there was nothing.
However, the coroner did find there were very small burns on the back of his neck that were caused by acid, but it was unclear how those got there.
When they inspected Ziggy's stomach, they determined that he had been eating and drinking regularly, and so he was not malnourished, he was not dehydrated.
He was relatively healthy when he died. He just had this heart attack for unknown reasons, and apparently whatever gave him the heart attack scared him so badly, his face contorted in that horrible way.
Ultimately, the coroner just kind of gave up and ruled that Ziggy had died of natural causes, and then the case was closed.
But to this day, no one really has any idea how Ziggy went from going out to get groceries to winding up 25 miles away, dressed differently with this haircut, with this jelly on him and acid burns, dead with this horrible look on his face on this coal pile.
It doesn't make any sense. This case has become very famous because people say it is the best example of alien abduction.
That Ziggy had left his house to get groceries, got abducted by aliens, and then over five days, you know, these aliens did stuff to Ziggy, including cutting into his neck and dropping acid on him and then they put that green stuff on the back of his neck they dressed him the way they thought people dressed in the suit but they didn't really do it right and then they literally just dropped him on top of this coal pile which would explain why he didn't have soot all over him he was dead they dropped him and he just landed on the top of the coal pile And even if you think that's totally far-fetched, keep in mind, still today, we do not know what that green jelly compound was on the back of his neck.
It's literally never been identified and people have been trying to figure it out for 40 plus years.
Also, it's worth noting that one of the responding police officers, Alan Godfrey, claimed to have seen a UFO within weeks of finding Ziggy Adamski.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
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