Both of today's stories are about people who made big choices that they thought would improve their lives, but neither of them really took the time to actually learn exactly what they were signing up for.
That led to disaster.
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 place, because that's all we do, and we upload two three, even four times every week.
So if that's of interest to you, please gift the follow button a brand new gumball machine.
But don't tell them the gum is actually just painted balls of candle wax.
Okay, let's get into our first story called Dream Car.
At 8am on June 8 2015, 72-year-old James Lee Rogers parked his beautiful red Corvette in the parking lot of a Waffle House in Port Arthur, Texas.
And as he pulled that car into the lot I mean James he just felt so proud to be driving this vehicle.
This was a 2007 C6 Chevy Corvette pristine condition, and it was exactly the car that James had been dreaming about like his whole life.
I mean, it drove amazing.
It looked incredible.
And more than that, it had all these modern elements to it.
I mean, it didn't even have regular door handles.
Everything was like push buttons and electric.
I mean, to him, owning this car was like owning a really flashy sports car.
And he thought that, you know, anybody who saw him driving it, they knew.
This guy had made it.
And on top of having this really cool car, James also had like a pretty awesome life here in Port Arthur.
I mean, he had lots of family in the area.
He had grown up here.
He loved living here.
But he also really loved this particular Waffle House.
It was where he went basically every morning in his flashy car to get his coffee.
But, you know, it wasn't just their coffee that he was drawn to.
It was the waitstaff.
It was the regulars who went to this Waffle House.
This had become like a sort of second home for him and he really looked forward to coming here basically every day.
And so he parks his Corvette, he gets out, and before he walks into the restaurant...
He has to tell his dog.
He brought his dog along Leia, this cute little dog, to stay in the car because the dog was not allowed in the Waffle House.
You know, this was something he knew, but it was going to be quick.
So he told Leia, you know, to be a good girl and stay in the car.
Don't rip it up.
You know, this is his dream car.
She was a very good dog.
And so she sat down, he shut the doors, you know, used the electric push buttons to do it.
And then once he knew his dog was secure, into the restaurant he went.
Once he got inside, James took his usual seat at the counter where his friend MJ was already sitting.
MJ was in his 60s, and like James, he was also a fixture at this Waffle House.
And so the two immediately began chit-chatting about the weather and their kids.
And then at some point, James ordered his coffee and used that as a chance to catch up with some of the wait staff that he spoke to every morning.
And then eventually, more regulars began filtering in and out and James made a point to chat with them and laugh with them as well.
I mean, again, this was like his second home.
And in fact on this particular day there were so many people that he wanted to talk to coming in and out of the restaurant that
He decided, you know what, my dog's fine out there.
You know, I've only been in here for a few minutes.
I'm going to order some food as well.
However, right after James ordered his food, He turned and he looked out the window into the parking lot and, even though he couldn't actually see his Corvette, he could see that it was extremely sunny and very hot outside.
Like he knew that when he showed up.
But I mean, he's looking out there and it just looks like a desert out there.
It's so hot and like there's nobody out there.
It's just cars getting blasted by the sun.
And he's thinking, like, Leia's out there.
And even though he had had the AC on when he pulled up and so you know likely his Corvette was still a little bit cool there was no way that it was particularly comfortable in his car right now.
And so before his food showed up, James turned to MJ and just said, hey, I'm going to be right back.
You want to just like hold my seat?
I'm going to go out and check on something.
And MJ, who was kind of busy talking to other people, he's like, yeah, go ahead.
I'll save your seat.
And then James left the restaurant to go check on Leia.
And so James, after leaving the Waffle House, he sort of ran around the corner out of view of where he had been sitting.
And he went over to his beautiful dream car.
And as soon as he walked up to the window he could see that Leia was very excited inside, happy to see James again.
And You know, just for good measure, even though he now knew his dog's OK.
He climbed inside the driver's seat and shut the door and he turned around and he pet his dog and just he could tell the temperature inside the car was not that bad.
And so he was only going to be in the restaurant for another 15, 20 minutes tops. she'd be okay.
However, after only having sat inside his car for a matter of maybe like 30 or 60 seconds, he felt himself getting really hot.
I mean, it was definitely not cool inside the car and the sun's burning through the windows.
And he just was like, you know what?
This is not responsible to leave my dog in here.
I can't do this.
And so, even though he had placed his order for food, he figured he could go in there cancel the order.
He was a regular, they'd understand.
You know, he could have one more sip of coffee, but that was it.
He needed to get back out here and basically put the AC back on and get him and his dog back into the comforts of their own home.
But when James pushed that super fancy button on his car door that he was sort of so proud of how modern his vehicle was when he pushed it to open his door, nothing happened.
And so James, like he's just staring at the door in confusion, because this has never happened before.
And so...
He starts pushing it a few more times, but again, nothing happened.
And then, after a few moments, when this car door was not budging, James reached across and started pushing the button on the passenger side door to see if maybe it was just an issue with his door.
But no, that door wouldn't open either.
And so finally, he decided he would just try to turn the car on to see if maybe that would help.
But he couldn't get his car to turn on.
The Corvette was completely dead, and James had no idea why.
But he knew This was not good because this car, because it's so modern, didn't have normal handles.
They really were all electric, all buttons.
And so if these buttons aren't working and all the windows are up, what do you do?
How do you get out?
And so James, he's starting to stress out about what's going to happen here.
Is he going to have to break a window of his beloved vehicle here?
Is that what he's going to have to do?
And also, how crazy is that?
How could he have wound up in this position?
But also the sun is just burning through the glass and he's suddenly becoming really aware of just how hot it was getting inside of his car.
Like this is sort of becoming an emergency really quickly.
I mean, cause again, he can't even turn on the car.
So he can't turn on the AC.
He's like inside of an oven at this point.
And so James instinctively reached for where his phone would normally be, but it wasn't there.
And that's when he remembered he had left his phone inside the Waffle House.
When he had gone in earlier.
It was low on charge and he had handed it off to one of the waitstaff to go plug in somewhere.
And so his phone's inside.
He has no way to contact anyone.
But luckily, right at that point James looked out the corner of his eye and he saw a couple walking out of the Waffle House.
And he's like, Oh, thank goodness someone's coming out.
I can get their attention.
They can come over here and get me out of here.
Or at least, you know, call someone who can.
And so he starts waving through the front windshield at this couple, as they're sort of walking generally in his direction, but they clearly didn't see him.
Like the sun is glaring off the glass, kind of making it hard to see inside.
And so James is sort of realizing this, and he's becoming more and more desperate as he and his dog are getting more and more overheated.
And so he began leaning on the horn to get their attention that way.
But no sound came out of his Corvette because the horn was powered by electricity.
And again, the car is dead.
And so James now is getting frantic.
He's banging on the windows.
He's screaming to them.
But this is a nice car.
It's totally soundproof inside.
Again, there's the glare from the sun and the glass.
The windows are partially tinted.
They can't see or hear him.
And so this couple eventually comes right near his vehicle.
They climb in their car. drive away without ever noticing him.
Once they were gone, James told himself that, you know what, this is a busy area.
Lots of people come in and out of this Waffle House.
Someone's going to see us.
Someone's going to get us out of this car.
And so, for the next several minutes, James looked all around him, looking for anybody walking through this parking lot, looking for people coming out of the Waffle House and anybody who came even close to his vehicle.
He would scream and yell and bang and do anything he could to get their attention.
But nobody noticed him, like no one could see or hear him.
And now James and his dog were really starting to struggle with the heat inside of this vehicle.
It really was like they were trapped inside of an oven.
And so eventually, when it seemed like no one was going to notice them, James just began frantically looking around the interior of his car for a toolkit.
He thought he had left a toolkit in here somewhere, you know, in case of emergencies. he's thinking you know maybe there was a tool in there he could use to maybe jimmy open one of the doors or if he had to he could maybe use something heavy in the tool kit to break a window just to get out that way and so eventually in the back seat near leia he found this tool kit but when he cracked it open he was disappointed because it really didn't have anything that useful There were some pliers, there were some jumper cables, and a flashlight.
But you know James, he still took the pliers and he jammed the head of the pliers into the crack of the driver's side door to attempt to to basically wrench open the door.
But the pliers were very thin and so he didn't budge the door at all and he used a lot of energy trying to, you know, force the door open.
And remember, it's like blisteringly hot inside of the vehicle at this point and it's getting harder and harder to breathe, like lee is struggling to breathe.
James is, you know, drenched in sweat.
And so he drops the pliers and he just has this huge wave of anxiety come over him that like oh my goodness, like is this it?
Are we going to die in here?
And so as like, this crushing reality is coming down on him, James has this adrenaline surge and he leans back in his seat and he starts kicking as hard as he can against the glass with his feet to try to break open the windshield or kick open the driver's side window.
But amazingly, despite all of his energy going into this, he didn't crack the window at all.
Like it felt like he was kicking a concrete wall.
There was no budge, nothing.
And so again, after exerting even more energy and now sweating even more, and it's getting harder and harder to breathe, James took those pliers and he's like He's really gassed.
He can barely breathe.
And he starts smashing the head of the pliers into the window.
That didn't do anything.
So it's like, I can't do anything to get out of this vehicle.
And so James, he sort of just like, lays back in the driver's seat, which he had reclined at this point.
And he's just, he's panting.
He can barely breathe.
He's opened up his shirt a little bit and he's looking back at his dog and she's really struggling.
And he's just like, I can't believe this is happening.
And as he's laying there, he sort of looks towards the front of the car and his eyes land on the glove box in front of the passenger seat.
It was like, oh my goodness, how could I forget?
There's a manual inside of there.
There has got to be instructions for what to do if your car dies.
There's got to be a way to get out.
Like, it's gotta be in that manual.
And so suddenly, having all this energy, James sat up, he opened up the glove box and he pulled out this manual that he had never read before.
I mean, he had no reason to, but...
He opened it up and he began looking through it, looking for, you know, the section that would explain what to do in case of, you know, total power outage and you're stuck inside the vehicle.
But like as he's looking at the pages, like his vision's swimming, it's...
So hot.
He's so tired.
And he just, it's all this little text.
It's hundreds and hundreds of pages.
And like nothing explained the situation.
It was like so not user-friendly.
And so James.
He's flipping through all these pages, and Even just the act of turning the page was becoming so laborious, like he is just beginning to shut down.
I mean, he's basically dying inside of an oven and he can barely turn the page and then before long, after about a quarter of the way through, it's like he couldn't see anymore and he literally just like he couldn't turn the page anymore.
He had no strength left.
MJ.
So James's buddy, the guy in his 60s who was also a regular at the Waffle House, he's inside the Waffle House.
He's having his breakfast and his coffee.
He knew James had stepped out.
You know, he was going to be right back. and he did not come right back but he figured no big deal like you know he probably got caught up with something maybe he forgot that he had ordered food but you know mj he's got all these reasons for why james has not come back to the restaurant and also mj being a regular he's he's chatting it up with other people he's not really even aware of the fact that james has not come back inside the waffle house And eventually, after MJ had had his coffee and his food, he's getting ready to maybe make an exit himself. when two employees come running in the front door of the Waffle House.
And so everybody turns to these employees who clearly are sort of making a scene here, and they're like what, what's going on?
And the employees, they're like, we just saw James.
He's asleep in his car and we can't open the doors.
We slammed on the windows, but he's not reacting.
At this point, MJ felt sick to his stomach.
Because he suddenly realized when he looked at his watch it had been four hours since James had gone outside saying he'd be right back.
Now, MJ, you know, he got caught up doing other things and he was in here all the time.
He loved being here.
Time flew when he was in here.
But even he, like, didn't understand how much time had passed.
And he's thinking like, oh my gosh, what's happened to James?
And so MJ jumps out of his seat and he runs outside into the blistering heat.
He goes around the corner to the red Corvette.
He sees, you know, through the tinted glass, there's James inside of the vehicle.
He starts hitting on the window, but there's no answer.
You know, James isn't moving.
And so MJ calls 911.
It would turn out, when James bought the red Corvette, I mean, it really was like his dream car.
He fell in love with it.
I mean, it was beautiful.
It was flashy.
It oozed status.
It had all this new tech.
It looked so expensive.
I mean, it was perfect.
And James, I mean, he didn't just, you know, buy this car and that was it.
I mean, after he had it, he obsessed over it.
He learned every little detail about it.
He took great care of it.
He drove it everywhere.
I mean, this was like his child.
But despite, you know, really obsessing over the car, he never learned one really important thing about this car, which is what do you do if you happen to be inside of the vehicle with the windows rolled up and your power goes out?
Because the doors are not regular doors.
They're powered by buttons.
They're electrical.
And if you have no power, you can't open them, as he found.
Well, it turns out there's actually a lever under the driver's seat that, once you pull it up, it pops open the driver's side door and you can get out, no matter if there's electricity or not.
But that information was buried on page 80 of that owner's manual that he had pulled out and begun flipping through.
But he was so delirious from heat exhaustion he couldn't get that far into the manual.
He's like combing through all this really dense text.
He made it about a quarter of the way through when unfortunately, he failed and his dog Leah died from heat exhaustion.
James's family filed a wrongful death case with Chevrolet, the maker of the Corvette, in 2018, but the case was dismissed.
Chevrolet still makes Corvettes with these special electric doors.
And there have been numerous additional incidents of people getting locked in and trapped.
But in more recent Corvette models the manuals have the information about the door's release lever much closer to the front of the manual.
Our second and final story today is called A Call to Arms.
On the morning of August 20 1862, a 17-year-old farmhand named Jean Leroux carried his axe over to a stack of logs by a barn on a farm in Ottawa Township, Minnesota.
As a farmhand, Jean was responsible for lots of different odd jobs like splitting the firewood and feeding the animals and helping with the crops.
Basically, Jean had to know every single inch of the farm and the woods that surrounded it, and how to take care of it all.
But even though he was basically constantly busy, Jean still found his mind wandering to a place that was sort of difficult, which was, he felt, a lot of times pretty homesick.
So Jean was actually from France and he had left behind his whole family and his previous life to come here to America, where there was supposed to be more opportunity.
However, America was turning out to be a pretty violent place.
The country was currently fighting the Civil War.
And on top of that, the area specifically where Jean lived was pretty much like the frontier.
And so there were these constant territorial disputes and virtually no law enforcement.
So just a really dangerous place.
But more than any dangers he faced, Jean just really missed his family, especially his mom.
So he spent basically every spare minute he had which was, you know, few and far between sitting out in the woods by this one particular, just huge, beautiful oak tree and he would sit at the base of it and he would make journal entries about basically everything he was doing so he could track it all and know what to tell his mom when he finally got to see her again.
He just wanted to tell her all about his experience.
Also just for context, Jean had saved virtually all the money he had worked so hard to acquire, And his whole plan was to eventually send that money to his mother, who he loved so very much and missed so much.
But more and more like.
The more homesick he became, the more he wished he could actually just go back to France and get out of America and literally hand the money to his mom and just see her again and be done with this whole America experiment.
But for now, John raised his axe over his head and he brought it down on the log that he was going to split.
And it did.
It split open.
And he raised the axe again to chop another log.
But as he did, he froze because off in the distance he could hear a series of repetitive booming noises like really loud
And for Jean, I mean immediately.
His heart started to race and he was so scared because he knew what those were.
I mean, those were gunshots.
And he was terrified that the thing that he, and really everybody else in his town, had been scared of for days was now finally happening.
So right on the other side of the woods that surrounded the farm was the Minnesota River.
And over the last decade lots of people had settled along this river and there'd been a town established right nearby and new homes were being built constantly.
However, all the expansion had literally forced out the indigenous tribe who had previously lived in the area, the Sioux.
And after being displaced, the Sioux had struggled to find food and a place to live, while the settlers just continued to expand and take more of their land.
So finally, just two days earlier, the Sioux had had enough and they finally retaliated, attacking settlements along that river.
It was being called the Sioux Uprising, and the attack so far had been horrific.
A lot of farms along that river had been burned to the ground and their occupants had been killed right alongside it.
And then, just yesterday, the Sioux had attacked a city that was just 50 miles down the river from where Jeanne was right now.
And so Jean and everybody else in this particular area had really been terrified the last 24 hours that the violence was moving in their direction, towards Ottawa Township.
And so now Jean, he had put his axe down, and he just stood there, you know, trembling as the sound of gunshots continued.
I mean, this was not just a few stray bullets.
This was a barrage of gunfire.
And so this could only mean one thing.
The Sioux were here.
Now, Jean couldn't tell exactly where the shooting was coming from, but he could tell it was pretty close.
And so Jean knew that he likely only had maybe several minutes to gather up whatever he could of his possessions and get to safety before the Sioux arrived.
So Jean, he bolts over to the farmhouse, goes inside, and he goes to the area inside where he slept.
And he grabbed his rifle.
And he also grabbed his notebook and all that cash he'd been saving for his mom.
And he jammed the notebook and the cash into a satchel and, with his rifle over his shoulder, he ran back outside.
And then once he was outside, he sprinted right towards the tree line at the edge of the property.
And after running for a little while, Jean finally stopped to catch his breath and to listen, to see if there was more gunfire.
And as he sat there listening, he couldn't hear anything.
But that's when he realized, like, he's all alone out here.
If the Sioux came charging through the trees right now, he wouldn't stand a chance, even with his rifle.
But Jean had an advantage.
He knew these woods like the back of his hand.
He was in here all the time.
And because of that, he knew exactly where to go to find safety.
About an hour later, Sean's boss and the owner of the farm, Edward Gleek, hustled from his farmhouse towards town.
Mr. Gleek had also heard the gunshots.
I mean, basically everybody in town had.
And he had come running out of the barn just in time to see his farmhand, Jean Leroux, bolting off into the woods.
And, you know, Mr. Gleek, he didn't blame the kid.
He was also horrified by the recent attacks and was also very worried that those shots they were hearing were a sign that trouble had finally arrived in their town.
But after all these gunshots...
No Sioux warriors showed up in town.
And so now Mr. Gleek was heading to the town center to see what had actually happened.
Like, what were those gunshots?
Now Mr Gleek had sort of accepted that this could have been something totally benign, or it could have been the Sioux.
He didn't know.
But he was just going to find out.
He was rational.
He was calm.
Despite, you know, the risks here.
But when he got into the town center, I mean, all he could see was just chaos.
Many of the area's residents were out running around carrying trunks and bags and all their belongings, like they were fleeing the area, much like Mr Gleek's farmhand Jean Leroux had looked like he was doing.
However, it didn't take long for Mr Gleek to hear what had happened, and it was not an attack by the Sioux.
Those people running around like maniacs, you know, fleeing the area.
They just hadn't heard the real story yet.
They were sort of operating like there was an attack coming.
So apparently a group of American soldiers had been riding on a boat up the Minnesota River, And for some reason they'd just gotten overly excited and began firing their guns repeatedly.
So those were gunshots.
And unfortunately, because they were gunshots, they completely freaked out all the residents around the river because of this growing threat of the Sioux attacking
Fortunately, at least in this case, there were no attacks.
This was just, you know, an unfortunate event.
And so, after hearing this, Mr Gleek went back to his farm to find John and tell him that, you know, everything was actually just fine.
But when he got there, Jean still had not come back yet.
And when Mr. Gleek went into the woods to go look around for him, he couldn't find him.
Now Mr Gleek figured that Jean would eventually find out what happened, much like everybody else in town.
I mean, Not everyone had the news yet, and so at some point that day, he was bound to return.
But by the time night fell, Jean still had not come back.
And then the next day, Jean didn't come back.
And the next day and the next day, he just didn't come back.
And so finally, after repeatedly searching his property and asking all over town if anybody had seen Jean, Mr Gleek finally came to the conclusion that Jean must have fled because of this, the Sioux attack, and then likely gone back to France to be with his mother, something he knew he wanted to do anyways.
Maybe this was his excuse.
57 years later, on a morning in July of 1919, Mr. Gleek sat on his porch looking out over his farm.
The same farm that Jean had been a farmhand for 57 years earlier.
Mr. Gleek was old now, and so he could no longer actually physically work on the farm himself.
So instead he had to hire entire crews to do various jobs.
And in fact right now he had a whole bunch of workers out in the woods clearing away some dead brush for him.
And so, as Mr Gleek is just kind of surveying his property, he notices a worker come running out of the tree line and starts waving at Mr Gleek really frantically, like he had something really important to say.
And then as the man got closer, Mr. Gleek could see that this worker looked terrified.
And before Mr Gleek could ask what had happened, the worker whose face was white as a ghost, said Mr Gleek needed to come and see something.
And so Mr Gleek, who was very intrigued at this point, managed to haul himself up, and he slowly hobbled off into the woods with this worker.
And as he got to where the rest of the crew was inside the forest, he saw that they were all mostly gathered around this very large, recently downed oak tree.
And the whole group was very quiet and tense and they were all just staring at a section of this tree that had split open.
When Mr Gleek joined the group and looked at this particular section of the trunk of this tree, this hollow part, At first he didn't even know what he was staring at.
It was just this hollowed out sort of split section of the tree and there was a few items that didn't belong there that were inside of it, like a cachet of sorts.
But then he sort of fixated on one particular item, and that's when he understood why the group was just so stunned.
And as he stared and sort of took in what he was seeing, he suddenly became utterly horrified.
It would turn out, when Jean ran off into the woods 57 years earlier, he used his intimate knowledge of the farmland and the surrounding woods to escape what he thought was a very dangerous situation.
And he did that by hiding.
Jean knew that that oak tree where he would always go when he would write in his notebook, happened to have a hollow trunk.
And he figured he'd be just the right size to crawl inside there and stay in there hidden until the Sioux were gone.
And so Jean had made it to the tree and he had wedged himself inside of there, totally out of view, And then unfortunately, he got stuck.
From inside the trunk of the tree.
Sean had managed to write one last letter to Mr Gleek saying that he couldn't get out.
He was stuck.
And if he did die here, to please give all his money to his mother in France.
And so, decades later, when Mr Gleek's workers cut that big oak tree down, What they found inside of the hollow trunk was Jean's gun, his money, his notebook and his mummified body.
A quick note about our stories.
They are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
The Mr Ballin Podcast Strange Dark and Mysterious Stories is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr Ballin.
Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bone and Cole Ocasio.
This episode was written by Kate Murdoch.
Story editing by Evan Allen.
Research and fact-checking by Shelley Hsu, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul Ben Faciano.
Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear.
Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacascio and Jordan Stidham.
Production support by Antonio Minata and Delaina Corley.
Artwork by Jessica Clogston-Kiner.
Theme song, Something Wicked, by Ross Bugden.
