Today's podcast will feature two stories that reveal 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 Face Peelers, and it's about all these very strange events that took place in Peru.
And the second and final story you'll hear is called The Window.
This particular case prompted a full-scale military investigation into a subject that can only be described as paranormal.
But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious Deliberated Story format, then you've come to the right podcast, because that's all we do.
So, if that's of interest to you, please figure out which book the follow button is currently reading and when they're about halfway done with it, go ahead and spoil the ending.
Okay, let's get into our first story called Face Peelers.
630 pm on July 29th 2023, a 15-year-old girl named Talia Davila Diaz stood right outside her back door of her house, staring out at the thick dense, shadowy rainforest that was her backyard.
Talia lived in a tiny, isolated village in Peru that was literally in the middle of the Amazon rainforest.
So as she was looking out, I mean, she would have seen these huge tropical trees and heard the sound of howler monkeys and exotic birds and animals moving all about, and the air would have been really thick and humid.
But she wasn't thinking about any of that.
Instead, she was focused on this grapefruit tree that was only a few yards away from her house.
She wanted to go get a grapefruit and bring it inside and make juice for her family.
However, Talia was scared, and she was scared for two reasons.
The first reason was this was the Amazon, an inherently dangerous place, especially at night.
There were loads of predators out there like snakes and jaguars.
But the other reason she was scared was that she was worried there could actually be something worse out in the rainforest, worse than any predators she was used to.
And that was because over the last couple of weeks, people in Talia's village had been claiming they were seeing these shadowy figures lurking in the tree line with these bright green eyes that would occasionally seem like they were hunting the people of the village.
Like anytime they went out, it was like these figures were kind of lurking off in the distance but nobody knew what they were.
The rumor around the village was that these shadowy figures were actually pelakaras, which translates literally to face peelers.
People in Talia's village believed that pelakaras were foreigners who would kidnap locals and cut their throats and peel the skin of their face off and then sell their body fat on the black market.
And the locals were so freaked out that pelakaras could be around that they began performing nightly patrols to keep the villagers safe.
So Talia again was very scared to even leave her house at this point, but she was also trying to be reasonable.
I mean, she'd gone out and gotten a grapefruit many times in the past.
This was not some new behavior, you know?
So she's looking out and she sees the grapefruit tree and she knows there's a nightly patrol out right now and I only have to go a few yards and get the fruit and get right back in the house.
Like, how big of a deal could this possibly be?
And so, after taking one more look around and not seeing anybody or hearing anything that was out of place, she took a breath, then rushed out to the tree, she grabbed a grapefruit and as she was turning around, she froze because her worst nightmare had just been realized.
Now standing between her and her back door were these two hulking dark figures, and one of them was like, so tall it was practically the size of a tree, and they both had these piercing glowing green eyes and they were looking right at Talia.
And Talia was so instantaneously petrified that all she could do was just stand there and stare back into their green eyes.
And as she did, she began to notice that their faces were grotesquely elongated, almost like they had masks on.
And then before Talia could do anything, the really tall one began sort of gliding towards her.
Not stepping towards her, but literally almost hovering off the ground towards Talia.
And then suddenly, Talia was being grabbed and thrown to the ground.
And the instant Talia hit the ground, these two figures descended on her and pinned her there.
And then one of them reached down and pressed their hand over her mouth and her nose and she couldn't breathe.
And then she sees the other one is holding what looked like a box cutter or a knife, and they put it right up to her neck.
And suddenly it's like Talia understands these are Pelicauras.
They're going to slit her throat.
They're going to kill her.
And so she has this sudden burst of energy, and she manages to push them off of her.
And when she did, Their hand came off her mouth and she screamed out for help.
And she heard somewhere in the village voices yelling back to her.
And then she heard footsteps and she knew it was the night patrol coming to save her.
And so at this point the figures released, Talia and she scrambled to her feet and immediately ran towards her house, right as the night patrol came bounding into her yard.
And one of the men had a gun and he raised it and began shooting in the direction of the figures.
And Talia, you know, she's totally panicked and she turns around and she looks at her attackers.
And she's expecting them to be fleeing into the rainforest.
But instead, these dark figures, they were like levitating in the sky.
And they were looking down at Talia and the night patrol with their glowing green eyes as they literally began to levitate into the sky.
And the whole time, the night patrol is firing repeatedly at these things.
And they just drifted off into the night and disappeared.
Talia ultimately would not suffer any physical injuries from this encounter.
But mentally, she was a wreck.
And frankly, so was the rest of the people in her village, especially those who were on the night patrol and, with Talia, witnessed these figures with green eyes flying away into the sky.
I mean, the fear in this village following this encounter was through the roof.
And, in fact, ultimately the Peruvian government would get involved after this encounter and they would investigate to try to figure out.
You know what happened to Talia?
And they would ultimately conclude that there was an illegal mining operation happening somewhere in the rainforest.
And some of these miners.
In an effort to scare people away from coming anywhere near their operation, they got their hands on jetpacks, wore armor and masks and then went into villages like Talia's and basically pretended to be aliens and then, did you know, fly off on their jetpacks.
That is the official story as of right now.
However, people like Talia and the other people in her village and many other people who live in the Amazon rainforest who have come in contact with these figures with green eyes, they say those are no miners.
Those are either palakaras or they are creatures from another world.
The next and final story of today's episode is called The Window.
On March 4th 1946, nearly every resident of a rural Brazilian town called Ara Sariguama packed up a few days worth of food and drink and headed south to the nearest big city to celebrate the Festival of Carnival.
This festival is an opportunity for folks to cut loose and eat good food right before most of them go into a religious fasting period.
One resident who opted not to join the fun at this festival was a 44-year-old man named Joao Prestige Filu.
Joao was a farmer.
He had five kids, he was a very quiet guy and he did not enjoy things like the festival for carnivals.
The crowds and the noise made him anxious and he really hated dancing, which there was a lot of at these festivals.
Instead, Joao would rather spend his spare time out in nature.
And so when Joao's friends and family and everybody else disappeared to head off to this festival, Joao did just that.
He and his best friend packed up Joao's horse and cart and they traveled across the dirt roads, through the woods, to the nearby Tiete River, where they spent the day fishing for catfish.
And as Joao stood on the rocks casting out his line, he listened to the birds sing and the parrots swooping by.
It was beautiful and sunny out.
I mean, this was a perfect day for Joao.
As sunset drew near though, both Joao and his best friend knew that, while the rainforest they were in was beautiful during the day, at night it could become quite hazardous with the animals that come out at night.
And so they knew they needed to leave.
And so they packed up all the fish they caught back into Joao's cart, and then the two of them hopped onto the cart and began making the journey back towards the town of Arasariguang.
When the pair got to a split in the road, Joao's best friend hopped off the cart and walked on foot down one path, because his house was actually just outside of the town and Joao, still in his cart with his horse, said bye to his friend and went the other direction.
Now, by this point, the sun had completely set, and so it was totally dark out, as Joao is going down this dirt road in the final stretch towards his town,
At this time in 1946, Arrasariguama was a beautiful place, but by no means a modern place.
They had no running water, no electricity, there was no sewage, no paved roads, no access to main roads and nobody had a telephone.
It was basically like this little patch of civilization with about a hundred people living there.
There was a church in the middle of the town and a couple of small huts that kind of sat around it.
And Joao and his family lived in one of those huts.
Joao usually loved walking along or traveling along this particular stretch of dirt road, especially at night, like he was doing right now.
He really enjoyed looking up at the stars and listening to the animals off in the forest that he couldn't see.
But this night, Joao just had a bad feeling as he was making this final approach towards his town.
Now remember, there's almost no one in the town.
They're all at this festival, so it's kind of like a ghost town in the middle of a forest.
But Joao, as he's going down this dirt road and he can see the church up ahead he's a couple hundred feet away he began getting this very unnerving sense that he was being watched.
And so Joao, as he's in his cart, began looking into the trees and all around him, wondering if maybe an animal or a person was nearby.
But there was no one.
Finally, Joao actually reached the church and he could see his little house and he could also see that his wife, who was at the festival, had opened up one of the windows just slightly so he could open it up the rest of the way and crawl into the house when he was back from fishing, because she had locked the doors when she left.
And so, by this point, Joao was trying to be very calm and collected, despite the stress of feeling like he's being watched.
But when he saw that window and he saw how close he was to his house, He basically just had the horse sprint the rest of the way to his home.
He just wanted to get off the streets.
And so finally, Joao, he reaches his house.
He crawls in through the window.
He shuts it behind him.
And immediately Joao expected to feel totally relieved that he was now behind locked and closed doors and windows.
He was safe.
But despite being inside of his home, he still had the sense that there was someone or something around him that was watching him.
Joao, like many other residents of this village, was fairly superstitious.
There was an old abandoned mine that was near the town and Joao and his peers had grown up hearing stories about some monster that lived in the mine that would come out at night and roam the forest.
And older people in this village would talk about this ancient serpent called Boitata that would come out at night and it would appear in a burst of fire.
And so Joao, he's thinking about the mine and these demons and ghosts that roam in the forest.
And he's all alone because everyone's at this festival and he doesn't feel safe inside of his house.
And so he's really starting to panic.
And it's at this moment that he suddenly feels this sense that whatever or whoever has been watching him is right out his window, to his left.
And so Joao.
As he's turning to look out the window, He's anticipating seeing a person out there, or maybe a jaguar or some other animal that's followed him from the rainforest.
But when Joao turns and looks out the window into the dark night, what he sees right outside of his property was so terrifying that for a second Joao couldn't even breathe.
And he just stood there staring at this thing.
And then he tried to put his hands up to protect himself, but it was already too late.
Minutes later, Joao would come stumbling out of his front door out into the dark night.
He's got a big blanket wrapped around him and he was just screaming incoherently.
And as he screamed all this nonsense, he began running in this kind of zigzag pattern with no clear destination in mind.
It was just like this mindless running all through the village.
And as he's running, he's got no shoes on and he's stepping on sharp rocks and glass and trash.
He's cutting his feet up horribly, but he doesn't seem to even notice.
And so as he's doing this, he's causing this huge scene but everybody's gone, it's a ghost town.
It's just him in this abandoned village in the middle of a rainforest in Brazil.
But eventually Joao kind of calmed himself down and ran to his sister's house Marie, because he noticed there was a lamp on inside of her house.
And he was hoping that maybe she too had stayed back from the festival.
And it would turn out Marie had not gone to the festival.
She too did not really like big gatherings like that.
And so she was home.
And so Marie was in her kitchen when she began hearing outside this horrible screaming sound almost guttural sounds, coming from someone or some animal out there.
And then before she could even figure out what it was, she heard this loud thud against her door.
Marie was terrified and she ran to her front window to look out and see what it was that had just collided with her door.
And what she saw made no sense.
It was her brother, Joao, but he was wrapped in that big blanket and his feet were all bloody.
And he was screaming at the top of his lungs, but he wasn't saying anything.
He was just kind of babbling.
And so Marie was about to run over and open the door for her brother.
But right before she did, as she's looking out the window, Joao turned and looked at her.
And when he did, she screamed because his eyes looked so alien.
They were wide and totally unfocused.
And she thought, that can't be my brother.
What's wrong with him?
But she would go over and open the door because after all, it is her brother.
And so she opens the door.
Joao kind of falls into the room and began writhing around on the ground continuing the scream he was emitting.
That didn't even seem human.
And the whole time Marie is trying to ask him, what's wrong?
What's going on here?
She's scanning him.
And besides the cuts all over his feet, he didn't appear to have other injuries.
And so eventually Marie just knelt down and she was about to grab Joao and try to kind of stop him from moving around, to just look at him and try to have a conversation with him.
But before she grabbed him, Joao rolled over and his lips opened up, exposing his teeth.
And he kind of grimaced at her with those wild, unfocused eyes.
And again, Marie just kind of backed up in horror.
Who is this?
What's happened to my brother?
And as Marie stood up to get away from Joao Joao, still with that sickening grin, with his teeth exposed, had this kind of low hiss come out of his mouth.
And so Marie, thinking he was trying to talk, she leaned in And through this hiss she heard him repeating it burns, it burns.
And so Marie, thinking her brother must have been burned, instinctively began removing the blanket and pulling his clothes off to find the source of this burn on her brother.
But besides the cuts all over his feet as she's looking at his body, his skin looked totally normal.
He looked completely unhurt.
So marie turned up to look at joao's face again to ask him more questions and hopes.
Maybe he could tell her something.
And it was at that moment she noticed that, even though he didn't seem to have any other injuries, his complexion on his face was now starting to change.
Now joao's cheeks had turned this kind of dark purple and almost looked like they were starting to swell.
And so at this point marie knew okay, i can't handle this, i don't know what's going on here.
And so she would stand up and just kind of back away from Joao, who's still got that grimace, with his teeth exposed and his purple cheeks.
He's staring up at Marie.
And Marie.
She finally backs out and she goes out the front door and she begins running to the other side of town.
Marie knew that there were two other men who had stayed home from this festival.
It was the town sheriff and the town doctor, whose name was Arasi Gumiji.
And those two men lived close together on the other side of town.
And when Marie arrived in front of their homes and began pounding on their doors and yelling for help, the two men quickly came outside, at which point Marie tried to explain what was happening to her brother, but she didn't really have the words, and so she just said he needs your help.
And so the two men just went with Marie and they ran back across town to Marie's house where Joao was still on the ground writhing in pain when they went inside.
Marie had only been gone for a couple of minutes, but by now it wasn't just Joao's cheeks that had turned that purplish color.
His chest and arms were also turning purple.
At this point the sheriff leaned over Joao and began asking him some questions.
And Joao he was obviously in horrible pain from something, but by this point he had calmed down enough to where he was speaking a little bit more, but what he was saying made no sense told the sheriff that he had been followed home, and then he got burned.
And when the sheriff asked him, who burned you, all joao could say was no one is to blame.
At this point the sheriff left marie's house and jogged over to joao's house to look for some sign of how he got burned, but when he got there, the house was completely unburned.
Everything was exactly as it should have been.
There was no scorch marks.
There was not even a lit candle anywhere, so there was no clues as to what happened to Joao.
By the time the sheriff got back to Marie's, it had been about 45 minutes from when Joao first got hurt, and now whatever was happening to his body that was turning him purple appeared to be getting much worse.
Joao's skin all over his face and his chest and his arms was now not only a very dark purple, but his skin was starting to blister and pop.
In fact, there was one area on his arm that had bubbled up so much that when it burst you could actually see the bone in his arm.
It was almost like Joao had been boiled in water, like the way you would boil meat on a bone, until the meat was tender enough that it fell off the bone.
It was like that was happening to Joao.
And so, as Joao's flesh just sort of began cooking off of him, the town doctor Arasi said we have to get him to a hospital right now.
But because the roads were not paved and it was dangerous traveling at night, they knew they couldn't get him to the big city hospital.
They would have to take him to a local hospital.
And so the sheriff who had a truck said let's just put him in the truck and I will drive him there.
And so Arasi, the sheriff, and Marie, they got a new sheet, they wrapped up Joao inside of it and they brought him outside, they put him in the sheriff's truck and they began driving towards the hospital.
Arasi stayed in the back with Joao as they made this drive and every time the truck went over a bump, Joao would let out a cry of pain and Arasi would look over and he would literally see these bumps were causing his skin to kind of fall off of his body.
When they finally arrived at the local hospital, the staff there pulled Joao inside, they put him in a private room, they put him on a bed and they had no idea how to treat him.
It was like his injuries looked nothing like they had ever seen.
They didn't even know where to begin and they kind of assumed that Joao would not survive whatever was happening to him.
And so the first thing they did is just pumped him full of painkillers.
And while these painkillers didn't actually do anything to stop basically, Joao's body from decomposing while he was still alive, they did at least allow Joao to stop feeling this horrible pain of his flesh falling off of him.
And so Joao finally just kind of sunk back in his bed, and the sight of him must have just been horrific.
He literally had huge chunks of his flesh just missing.
I mean, literally parts of his skeleton were exposed to the naked eye.
After the doctors had gotten Joao as stable as they could get him Arasi, the local town doctor, sat down next to Joao and just began asking him questions.
And for the first time, Joao was able to talk somewhat normally because he was on such a high dose of painkillers.
And so Arasi began asking Joao to go over everything that happened, from the time he left fishing for catfish until he arrived at his house and got burned.
This is roughly what Joao told Arasi.
He said, on his walk home from fishing.
He started getting that feeling that he was being watched and it got more and more intense as he got into town until finally he basically sprinted the rest of the way to his house, practically dove through that open window, shut it behind him and expected to feel relief being in his own home again.
But he didn't.
The feeling only intensified that he was being watched.
And at some point he got that sense that whoever or whatever was watching him was to his left, out the window out into his yard.
And when Joao turned to look, what he saw standing outside was this dark figure kind of hovering over the ground, and it was staring right at Joao.
And before Joao could even put his hands up to protect himself from whatever or whoever this was, this figure shot this bright ray of light directly into Joao's home through that window, which hit Joao in the chest and the face.
And immediately Joao was blinded and confused by this light, and then it really started to burn.
He believed he was on fire, which is why he grabbed that blanket and wrapped it around himself.
He was trying to put out a non-existent fire and that's when he stumbled outside and kind of zigged and zagged, kind of half trying to put this fire out, until he arrived at Marie's house.
But when he got there, that sensation of feeling like he was on fire didn't go away.
It just got worse and worse and worse, and then his skin began falling off.
When Arasi asked Joao, you know, who do you think did this to you?
Who do you think that figure was?
And Joao with bulging eyes would sit forward and say to Arasi, it wasn't of this world.
And as Joao said this, a chunk from his cheek fell off, exposing his jaw and teeth.
And as this happened, Joao asked one of the nurses for a water.
And so Arasi is sitting there, having heard the story, as Joao, who's all hopped up on painkillers, is grabbing this water and drinking, and Arasi is watching the water dribble out of the hole, now on the side of Joao's face.
About four hours later, Joao would pass away from his injuries.
There has never been any official explanation for what actually happened to Joao.
The doctors just wrote cardiac arrest and generalized burns on his death certificate because they really had no idea what else to call this.
Joao's family believed the Boitata, the ancient serpent that lived in the forest and appeared at night in a ball of fire, was responsible for what happened to Joao.
Other people in town thought maybe it was the monsters or demons from the old abandoned mine that had come out and attacked Joao.
Outside of Joao's town, people have theorized that Joao must have been subjected to some really high dose of radiation.
And so this theory has led people to believe that, you know, perhaps Joao was the victim of a secret weapon that the government was testing.
But to create such a concentrated beam of radiation that only affects Joao would be way more technologically advanced than anything that was available at the time in the world.
Not to mention, why would any government randomly target a Brazilian farmer with this weapon?
But Joao would not be the only person in Brazil to die from mysterious rays of light.
In the 1970s, so 30 years after Joao's death, several people in a city in northern Brazil reported seeing bright lights coming down from the sky, and then they too began turning purple and their skin began falling off and they would die.
And so, because of this high number of very strange deaths that looked just like Joao's, a new theory has taken root over the years to explain what happened to Joao and these people.
And that is, they were attacked by a UFO.
That Joao, when he looked out the window and saw that dark figure hovering over the ground.
That was a UFO.
And the light he saw was a weapon.
The UFO was firing a ray of radiation that struck him and killed him, like it struck and killed the others in Brazil.
The military actually looked into this theory in 1977 and 1978.
It was called Operation Saucer, like flying saucer.
However, officially they came out and said they found no evidence that UFOs were in any way involved in what happened to Joao or these other people.
However, many people are skeptical that we're really getting the truth.
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.
Our head of production is zach levitt, produced by jeremy bone, and Research and fact-checking by Shelley Hsu, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway and Camille Callahan.
Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear.
Audio editing and post-produced by Wit Lacascio and Cole Lacascio.
Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham.
Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain.
Production coordination by Samantha Collins.
Production support by Antonio Minata and Delaina Corley.
Artwork by Jessica Clogston-Kiner.
Theme song called Something Wicked. by Ross Bugden.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
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I really appreciate your support.
Until next time, see ya.
