Latest / Crime and Horror / Vanished without a trace... except her FINGER - MrBallen

Transcript

Vanished without a trace... except her FINGER - MrBallen · Crime and Horror

0:00
Speaker 1: Today, I'm going to share three stories about missing people.
0:03
Speaker 1: Except the real take home from each of these stories
0:06
Speaker 1: is not so much how or why these people went missing,
0:10
Speaker 1: but instead it's the the haunting circumstances surrounding each of
0:15
Speaker 1: their disappearances. But before we get into today's stories, if
0:19
Speaker 1: you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered
0:21
Speaker 1: in story format, then you've come to the right place,
0:24
Speaker 1: because that's all we do, and we upload two, three,
0:26
Speaker 1: even four times every week. So if that's of interest
0:29
Speaker 1: to you, please offer to fill up the like Buttons
0:31
Speaker 1: car with gas. But instead of actually doing that, just
0:35
Speaker 1: go ahead and permanently glu shut their gas cap. Also,
0:38
Speaker 1: please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications
0:41
Speaker 1: so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads.
0:44
Speaker 2: Okay, let's get into today's stories.
1:01
Speaker 1: On the afternoon of April tenth, nineteen ninety eight, a
1:05
Speaker 1: forty year old woman named Diane Augut stood at a
1:07
Speaker 1: bar inside the Hayloft Tavern in the small town of Hudson, Florida.
1:11
Speaker 1: Diane grabbed her glass off the bar and down the
1:13
Speaker 1: last few SIPs of her drink, and even though by
1:16
Speaker 1: this point her vision was blurry, and she actually felt
1:18
Speaker 1: sick to her stomach. She still yelled out to the
1:21
Speaker 1: bartender in a very slurred voice and told him to
1:23
Speaker 1: bring her another round. And the reason for this is
1:26
Speaker 1: because Diane actively wanted to get so drunk that she
1:30
Speaker 1: could just forget everything, because at the moment, her life
1:33
Speaker 1: was kind of a disaster. So Diane used to be
1:37
Speaker 1: a married, stay at home mother with three kids that
1:39
Speaker 1: she loved so much. But about ten years ago, she'd
1:43
Speaker 1: begun having some very serious mental health problems and she'd
1:47
Speaker 1: ultimately been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She would fall into
1:50
Speaker 1: these deep depressions that would make it almost impossible to function,
1:54
Speaker 1: and then she would swing and have these manic episodes
1:57
Speaker 1: that would literally keep her up for days on end
2:00
Speaker 1: and left her so delirious that she would start talking
2:03
Speaker 1: to herself. Eventually, Diane's husband divorced her and he got
2:07
Speaker 1: custody of their kids. Now Diane's life had sort of
2:11
Speaker 1: leveled off. She was living with her sister, so she
2:13
Speaker 1: had some level of support, but her bipolar disorder really
2:17
Speaker 1: was not under control, in part because she had medication
2:21
Speaker 1: for it but didn't always take it, and so she
2:23
Speaker 1: would swing in and out of mania and deep depressions
2:26
Speaker 1: all over again, and as a result of this, she
2:29
Speaker 1: had consistently been in and out of various psychiatric facilities
2:33
Speaker 1: multiple times. So on this particular night, Diane really just
2:37
Speaker 1: wanted to drown her sorrows, and so a couple of
2:39
Speaker 1: hours earlier, she had left her sister's house and walked
2:42
Speaker 1: to the spar because she didn't have a car, and
2:44
Speaker 1: she'd been standing around at the spar basically pacing in
2:48
Speaker 1: circles and drinking alone ever since. Just then, the bartender
2:51
Speaker 1: came over, and even though Diane was seeing double, she
2:54
Speaker 1: immediately saw that he did not have another round in
2:57
Speaker 1: his hand.
2:58
Speaker 2: He had no more alcohol.
2:59
Speaker 1: The bartender gave Diana a look that was half annoyed
3:02
Speaker 1: and half sympathetic, and he told her he was cutting.
3:05
Speaker 2: Her off, and Diane was so mad.
3:08
Speaker 1: She began telling him that he didn't know what he
3:09
Speaker 1: was talking about, that this was humiliating, but he just
3:12
Speaker 1: put his hands up and said, no, I'm sorry, you're
3:14
Speaker 1: cut off, and so eventually, very angrily, Diane turned and
3:18
Speaker 1: sort of stumbled out of the bar and began walking
3:20
Speaker 1: down the street. The next day, so April eleventh, Diane's
3:24
Speaker 1: mother Mildred paced back and forth inside of her living.
3:27
Speaker 2: Room holding a phone to her ear.
3:28
Speaker 1: It rang a couple of times, and then a dispatcher
3:31
Speaker 1: from the local police department picked up, at which point
3:34
Speaker 1: Mildred told them in a shaky voice that she needed
3:37
Speaker 1: to report her daughter, Diane missing. So a little while earlier,
3:41
Speaker 1: Mildred's other daughter, Diane's sister, the one that Diane lived with,
3:45
Speaker 1: had called to tell her that Diane had left the
3:48
Speaker 1: house the night before without telling her where she was
3:50
Speaker 1: going and still had not come home yet. And of course,
3:53
Speaker 1: based on Diane's history of mental illness and pretty erratic behavior,
3:58
Speaker 1: Mildred immediately felt like, oh my gosh, my daughter must
4:01
Speaker 1: be in trouble. So now on the phone with police dispatch,
4:05
Speaker 1: Mildred explained the whole situation.
4:07
Speaker 2: She said that, yes, it was.
4:08
Speaker 1: Possible that her daughter Diane had left and gone somewhere
4:13
Speaker 1: for some actual, real purpose, but it was also entirely
4:16
Speaker 1: possible that she was having a manic episode and might
4:19
Speaker 1: have you know, in her mania, wandered off and gotten lost.
4:22
Speaker 1: The dispatcher said that she would send officers to interview
4:25
Speaker 1: Mildred and her other daughter and they would start looking
4:28
Speaker 1: for Diane right away, but four days later, on April fifteenth,
4:32
Speaker 1: there was still no sign of Diane. That afternoon, Diane's mother,
4:35
Speaker 1: Mildred checked in at the police station, like she had
4:38
Speaker 1: been every day since her daughter first went missing, but
4:41
Speaker 1: just like always, the police didn't have any new information
4:44
Speaker 1: for her. So far, all they knew was on April tenth,
4:48
Speaker 1: the night Diane had left her sister's house without saying
4:50
Speaker 1: where she was going, they had figured out she had
4:53
Speaker 1: gone to the Hayloft tavern and gotten so unbelievably drunk
4:57
Speaker 1: that the bartender had cut her off, and then at
4:59
Speaker 1: that point she had walked.
5:00
Speaker 2: Out of the bar and that was the last the
5:02
Speaker 2: bartender saw her.
5:03
Speaker 1: The following day, on April eleventh, Diane had been sighted
5:07
Speaker 1: walking along Highway nineteen, which was just a couple of
5:10
Speaker 1: miles away from that tavern, and then she'd also been
5:12
Speaker 1: spotted near a locally owned motel right off the highway
5:16
Speaker 1: called the Coral Sands Motel. But after that, the police
5:19
Speaker 1: said they had no idea what happened to Diane, where
5:21
Speaker 1: she could have gone, or what could have happened to her,
5:24
Speaker 1: and so ultimately Mildred left the police station feeling very
5:27
Speaker 1: disappointed and also scared. I mean, the whole drive back
5:31
Speaker 1: to her home, she felt absolutely sick with worry. She
5:35
Speaker 1: had no idea if her daughter was hiding somewhere on purpose,
5:39
Speaker 1: or if she'd gotten lost and was now injured, or
5:41
Speaker 1: maybe she was hungry, or if she'd maybe run into
5:44
Speaker 1: the wrong person and potentially been kidnapped or worse. I mean,
5:47
Speaker 1: there's all these terrible scenarios playing out in her head. Finally,
5:51
Speaker 1: Mildred got back home and she went inside and she
5:54
Speaker 1: sat down on her couch and just tried to think about,
5:56
Speaker 1: you know, what else she could do to find her daughter.
5:59
Speaker 1: And that's when she noticed she had a new voicemail
6:02
Speaker 1: on her answering machine. Mildred thought, you know, maybe her
6:04
Speaker 1: other daughter had called while she was out and that
6:07
Speaker 1: was the voicemail, or maybe it's something to do with Diane.
6:11
Speaker 1: But either way, she got up, she walked over and
6:14
Speaker 1: she had play and what she heard made her feel
6:17
Speaker 1: sick to her stomach.
6:18
Speaker 2: What she heard was.
6:19
Speaker 1: Diane's voice, and Diane sounded terrified, and she kept.
6:24
Speaker 2: Saying, help let me out.
6:27
Speaker 1: Then there was sort of a scuffling sound on the recording,
6:29
Speaker 1: like somebody had grabbed the phone out of Diane's hand,
6:33
Speaker 1: and then Diane said something like, hey, give me that,
6:35
Speaker 1: and then the call just cut off. And so after
6:37
Speaker 1: hearing this, Mildred obviously went into a total panic. It's like,
6:41
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, all of the worst things that could
6:43
Speaker 1: have happened to my daughter must be happening. And so
6:46
Speaker 1: now even though Mildred was completely upset, she's shaking with
6:49
Speaker 1: anxiety and fear. She grabbed the answering machine and looked
6:53
Speaker 1: for the caller ID to see you know who left
6:55
Speaker 1: this message, But all it said was the call had
6:58
Speaker 1: come in from somewhere called Starlight, which didn't mean anything
7:02
Speaker 1: to Mildred, but she quickly you know, dialed this number back,
7:05
Speaker 1: hoping you know whoever it was would pick up, but
7:08
Speaker 1: nobody answered, and so after that Mildred called the police.
7:12
Speaker 1: This voicemail made it obvious to police that Diane had
7:16
Speaker 1: not left on purpose and she was not lost. It
7:20
Speaker 1: sounded like, at least based on this voicemail, that she
7:22
Speaker 1: had been kidnapped.
7:24
Speaker 2: And was likely being held against her will.
7:26
Speaker 1: But as for where Diane was being held, the police
7:29
Speaker 1: had no idea that couldn't trace the call to her
7:32
Speaker 1: specific location, and they couldn't figure out what this starlight
7:35
Speaker 1: thing was either. So for another full day or so,
7:38
Speaker 1: the investigation, you know, despite this new lead, basically floundered.
7:42
Speaker 2: There wasn't much to go on.
7:43
Speaker 1: That is, until the next afternoon on April sixteenth, so
7:47
Speaker 1: five days after Diane disappeared. On that day, the police
7:51
Speaker 1: got a call from a man who said he had
7:53
Speaker 1: just been walking along the side of Highway nineteen and
7:56
Speaker 1: he had found something disturbing. He said he wasn't sure
7:59
Speaker 1: if the object was even real, but he thought, you know,
8:02
Speaker 1: for sure, the police should probably come check it out,
8:05
Speaker 1: just in case. And so police immediately rushed out to
8:07
Speaker 1: the scene. They found this object, They sent it off
8:10
Speaker 1: for testing, and then they waited and when the analysis
8:14
Speaker 1: came back.
8:15
Speaker 2: They learned two things. Number one, the.
8:17
Speaker 1: Object was definitely real, and number two, it belonged to
8:22
Speaker 1: Diane Augit the object was the severed tip of a
8:26
Speaker 1: finger from her right hand. Over the next few years,
8:29
Speaker 1: people kept calling in sightings of Diane Augate to the
8:32
Speaker 1: police in Florida, and the police would look into it,
8:35
Speaker 1: and they would interview more than one hundred people, but
8:38
Speaker 1: nothing ever panned out. The police never figured out what
8:41
Speaker 1: starlight was, which is where that voicemail had originated from
8:44
Speaker 1: that was left on her mother's voicemail, and the police
8:47
Speaker 1: also never determined how or why Diane's finger was cut off.
8:51
Speaker 1: But despite all that, strange clues that definitely were tied
8:55
Speaker 1: to Diane kept turning up in some very strange places,
9:00
Speaker 1: like for example, the manager of a convenience store near
9:03
Speaker 1: where Diane lived found a bag of Diane's neatly folded
9:06
Speaker 1: clothing inside of their store's outdoor freezer, and a customer
9:10
Speaker 1: at a different nearby convenience store found a plastic bag
9:14
Speaker 1: full of toiletries, including eyeliner and perfume and lipstick that
9:17
Speaker 1: was left behind on a countertop and on it was
9:20
Speaker 1: scrawled the name Diane. But police were never able to
9:24
Speaker 1: figure out who placed the bag or why, and so
9:27
Speaker 1: unfortunately today Diane's case remains unsolved. Betterhelp is the paid
9:46
Speaker 1: partner of today's video. Sometimes I think about being a
9:49
Speaker 1: kid riding in the backseat at night, street lights flashing
9:53
Speaker 1: across the window, no responsibilities, no real fear of the future. Well,
9:58
Speaker 1: if I could say something to that little kid version
10:01
Speaker 1: of me, I'd probably say, you're gonna be okay, but
10:05
Speaker 1: don't rush it.
10:05
Speaker 2: Don't wish this away, because.
10:07
Speaker 1: When things get hard, it's easy to start looking backwards.
10:11
Speaker 1: Nostalgia is basically a highlight reel, and then you look
10:14
Speaker 1: at your present and it doesn't stand a chance.
10:17
Speaker 2: Here's the thing, though, the.
10:18
Speaker 1: Life you are living right now, you're going to feel
10:21
Speaker 1: nostalgic for this someday, and so if you spend it
10:24
Speaker 1: longing for something that's already gone, you'll miss it twice.
10:28
Speaker 2: If reaching for the past is getting in the way.
10:30
Speaker 1: Of living now, therapy may help you figure out what
10:34
Speaker 1: you're actually looking for, and it might also help you
10:37
Speaker 1: to start finding more of that in the present.
10:40
Speaker 2: Better Help make starting therapy easier.
10:42
Speaker 1: Take the quiz and get matched with a credentialed therapist
10:45
Speaker 1: quickly and switch any time at no extra cost.
10:48
Speaker 2: If it's not the right fit.
10:49
Speaker 1: Click the link in the description or go to betterhelp
10:52
Speaker 1: dot com slash mister ballin and get ten percent off
10:55
Speaker 1: your first month of therapy. Around three thirty pm on
11:06
Speaker 1: December seventeenth, nineteen twenty seven, a twenty one year old
11:10
Speaker 1: sailor named Joe Stevens stood inside of a US Navy
11:13
Speaker 1: submarine that was cruising underwater in Cape Cod Bay, about
11:16
Speaker 1: a mile off the coast of Massachusetts. Joe was at
11:19
Speaker 1: the front of the submarine, inside of a small windowless
11:21
Speaker 1: compartment called the Torpedo Room.
11:24
Speaker 2: It was about twenty feet.
11:25
Speaker 1: Long by ten feet wide, and on one side there
11:28
Speaker 1: was a metal door that was open that led out
11:30
Speaker 1: to the rest of the submarine. The walls were lined
11:33
Speaker 1: with six bunks, a bunch of machinery, and also several torpedoes.
11:37
Speaker 1: And Joe was absolutely thrilled to be in this submarine
11:41
Speaker 1: because Joe had always dreamed of working on us up
11:45
Speaker 1: when he was a kid. He'd actually made this fake
11:47
Speaker 1: periscope out of wood, which on a submarine, the periscope
11:51
Speaker 1: is like a set of binoculars, if you will, that
11:53
Speaker 1: kind of juts up above the submarine, and the submarine
11:56
Speaker 1: can rise just close to the surface but right below,
11:59
Speaker 1: and the proscope purchase kind of just barely out of
12:02
Speaker 1: the water, and it can look around to show you
12:04
Speaker 1: what else is nearby. And so with this fake periscope,
12:07
Speaker 1: Joe and his older sister Florence would spend hours and
12:10
Speaker 1: hours as kids pretending they were on a submarine deep
12:14
Speaker 1: underwater on all sorts of special missions, and so years later,
12:18
Speaker 1: when Joe turned eighteen, the first thing he did is
12:20
Speaker 1: he enlisted in the Navy, and recently he had.
12:24
Speaker 2: Finally been assigned to actually working.
12:26
Speaker 1: On this submarine, and it was really like, you know,
12:28
Speaker 1: his childhood dream had finally come true. On this particular day,
12:32
Speaker 1: Joe was doing one of his very first test sales. Basically,
12:36
Speaker 1: he and the other forty men on board the sub
12:39
Speaker 1: were just testing out all the different machinery on board
12:42
Speaker 1: to make sure everything was working correctly. And so Joe
12:44
Speaker 1: and five other men had been assigned specifically to work
12:47
Speaker 1: in the torpedo room. They stood by inside of this
12:50
Speaker 1: room and waited for a command from their captain to
12:53
Speaker 1: come through on the one way intercom overhead. But as
12:56
Speaker 1: they're standing there, just sort of waiting around sort of
13:00
Speaker 1: of nowhere, Joe heard this grating, loud, metallic sound that
13:05
Speaker 1: kind of echoed through the whole submarine. In fact, the
13:08
Speaker 1: sub itself shook so hard during this sound that Joe
13:12
Speaker 1: and the others fell to the ground. And so immediately
13:15
Speaker 1: Joe and his coworkers are scrambling to get to their feet.
13:18
Speaker 1: They're looking at each other like what was that. Then
13:21
Speaker 1: it was like their worst nightmare began to play out
13:24
Speaker 1: as water began to rush through that open door from
13:28
Speaker 1: the rest of the submarine into the torpedo room, and
13:31
Speaker 1: so as this absolutely horrifying scenario is playing out, Joe
13:36
Speaker 1: his immediate reaction is actually this overwhelming sense of deja vu, Like,
13:42
Speaker 1: just for a second, he felt like I've experienced this
13:45
Speaker 1: exact moment before. But before he could actually process this feeling,
13:49
Speaker 1: a couple of his coworkers rushed past him and managed
13:52
Speaker 1: to slam that door that connected the torpedo room to
13:56
Speaker 1: the rest of the submarine. They shut it and they
13:58
Speaker 1: sealed it. So at this point, Joe has sort of
14:00
Speaker 1: snapped back to reality. He's not thinking about the dejavou thing.
14:04
Speaker 1: He's like, okay, like what's going on. I mean, he
14:07
Speaker 1: realized that there must have clearly been some kind of accident.
14:10
Speaker 1: I mean, basically everybody thought.
14:12
Speaker 2: The same thing.
14:13
Speaker 1: That sound, the grating sound, the shaking, and the water,
14:15
Speaker 1: I mean that screams something has struck the torpedo.
14:19
Speaker 2: Something's happened.
14:20
Speaker 1: He expected the captain's voice to come over the intercom,
14:23
Speaker 1: not to talk about the test run they were actually
14:25
Speaker 1: on here, but with orders about what they should do
14:28
Speaker 1: now that there was a real world emergency playing out.
14:31
Speaker 1: And so for a couple of minutes, Joe and his
14:33
Speaker 1: fellow sailors just kind of sat there in this you know,
14:36
Speaker 1: sealed off torpedo room, waiting for this announcement. But there
14:40
Speaker 1: was nothing, and then Joe and the others felt a jolt,
14:44
Speaker 1: as if the submarine had just settled at the bottom
14:47
Speaker 1: of the bay. At first, Joe and the five other
14:50
Speaker 1: sailors didn't panic whatever had happened. They knew clearly it
14:54
Speaker 1: was not good, but they also figured, you know, maybe
14:57
Speaker 1: this was not a total emergency.
14:59
Speaker 2: It was bad, but maybe we can salvage this.
15:02
Speaker 1: After all, they were only about, you know, one mile
15:04
Speaker 1: away from the nearest coast Guard station. And even though
15:07
Speaker 1: Joe and the others inside the torpedo room did not
15:10
Speaker 1: have a way to actually reach out from where they
15:13
Speaker 1: were to the Coastguard station or anyone else for that matter,
15:17
Speaker 1: to call for help, they figured that somebody else in
15:20
Speaker 1: the other parts of the submarine would be able to
15:23
Speaker 1: punch out and call to the coast Guard station and
15:25
Speaker 1: call for help. But the minutes turned into hours and
15:29
Speaker 1: there was no progress, Like there was no obvious sign
15:32
Speaker 1: that any sort of rescue was underway.
15:34
Speaker 2: They didn't hear anything over the intercom.
15:36
Speaker 1: They couldn't even hear anything on the other side of
15:38
Speaker 1: the door, Like you know, they figured by now one
15:41
Speaker 1: of their comrades would have come over and like knocked
15:43
Speaker 1: on the door or in some.
15:45
Speaker 2: Way talk to them, but no, it's just silence. And
15:48
Speaker 2: also the.
15:49
Speaker 1: Emergency lights inside the torpedo room eventually flickered out. They're
15:52
Speaker 1: very likely on the bottom of the bay in the
15:55
Speaker 1: sealed room in total darkness. They also had no food
15:58
Speaker 1: and no water that was in the other part of
16:00
Speaker 1: the submarine, but they couldn't open the door without risking
16:03
Speaker 1: more water coming in, so they're just totally trapped now.
16:06
Speaker 1: Of course, all of that was horrible, you know, for
16:08
Speaker 1: Joe and the others. They knew how dire this situation was.
16:12
Speaker 1: But the scariest part of the whole situation was that
16:15
Speaker 1: they knew there was a finite amount of oxygen inside
16:18
Speaker 1: of this sealed room, and with every breath they took in,
16:21
Speaker 1: they were using up that air supply, and so pretty
16:24
Speaker 1: soon this tiny metal torpedo room was starting to feel
16:28
Speaker 1: more like an underwater coffin.
16:30
Speaker 2: Joe began fading.
16:31
Speaker 1: In and out of sleepy, sort of lost track of time,
16:34
Speaker 1: and he also was starting to lose hope.
16:36
Speaker 2: But then suddenly Joe heard this loud.
16:39
Speaker 1: Metallic clanging sound, and he realized someone was knocking on
16:43
Speaker 1: the outside of the submarine, like their rescue had clearly begun.
16:47
Speaker 1: And so Joe and the others immediately jumped out of
16:49
Speaker 1: their bunks sort of knock it into each other because
16:51
Speaker 1: they can't see each other, and they went over to
16:54
Speaker 1: begin knocking back, signaling to whoever was out there that hey,
16:57
Speaker 1: we're alive, We're still in here. By using Morse code,
17:00
Speaker 1: which is a method of communication via tapping, Joe was
17:04
Speaker 1: able to actually communicate with these folks outside the submarine,
17:07
Speaker 1: and he did confirm they were Coastguard rescue divers, and
17:12
Speaker 1: they told Joe what happened. They explained that about sixteen
17:16
Speaker 1: hours earlier, a Coastguard ship had struck their submarine. It
17:20
Speaker 1: punctured the submarine, it sank, and everybody else minus Joe
17:25
Speaker 1: and his people inside of the torpedo room, had all drowned,
17:29
Speaker 1: and so now the rescue divers were here to rescue
17:32
Speaker 1: Joe and the other people he was with. Now, when
17:35
Speaker 1: Joe and the others heard this news. I mean, this
17:37
Speaker 1: was horrifying, but also they're thinking, wow, had we not
17:41
Speaker 1: sealed that door as fast as we had, we would
17:43
Speaker 1: be dead, Like we are so lucky to be alive.
17:46
Speaker 1: And so Joe, after hearing this message, he began frantically
17:49
Speaker 1: knocking back a message basically saying like, well, great, but
17:53
Speaker 1: when are you going to get us out of here,
17:54
Speaker 1: because we're running out of air.
17:56
Speaker 2: It's getting hard to breathe in here.
17:57
Speaker 1: But the rescue divers could only tell him that they
18:00
Speaker 1: were doing their best and they would get them up
18:02
Speaker 1: as soon as possible.
18:03
Speaker 2: And this was definitely true.
18:04
Speaker 1: I mean, the Coastguard was genuinely doing everything they could
18:07
Speaker 1: as quickly as they could to save Joe and the others.
18:11
Speaker 1: But the reality was this was a really difficult problem
18:15
Speaker 1: to solve. You have people that are trapped inside of
18:17
Speaker 1: an air pocket deep underwater. If you open up any
18:21
Speaker 1: section of this air pocket, any section of the submarine,
18:24
Speaker 1: water will rush in so quickly that the pressure alone
18:28
Speaker 1: of that water rushing in would literally kill everybody inside.
18:31
Speaker 2: So that wasn't an option.
18:33
Speaker 1: You also have the fact that, as Joe said, they're
18:36
Speaker 1: running out of air, you have this compressed timeline to
18:38
Speaker 1: figure it out, and so really what it leaves you
18:41
Speaker 1: with is, okay, you need to basically quickly lift up
18:45
Speaker 1: the submarine, keeping everybody inside of it, and raise it
18:48
Speaker 1: to the surface.
18:49
Speaker 2: But this is in nineteen twenty seven. This is like
18:51
Speaker 2: a complicated thing.
18:52
Speaker 1: To do with modern day technology, let alone one hundred
18:55
Speaker 1: years ago. But that was sort of like their best
18:57
Speaker 1: chance is bring in multiple shit, So with all these
19:00
Speaker 1: different strange lifts and somehow scooped the submarine and raise
19:05
Speaker 1: it to the surface before everybody inside suffocated. But the
19:08
Speaker 1: problem was when they actually began organizing all these ships
19:11
Speaker 1: to try to lift up the submarine, there was this
19:15
Speaker 1: huge storm on the surface with really high winds that
19:18
Speaker 1: just battered the area, making it nearly impossible to position
19:22
Speaker 1: the different lifts off these ships.
19:25
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, this storm was going to be raging for days.
19:29
Speaker 1: And so while this catastrophe was playing off off the
19:31
Speaker 1: coast of Massachusetts, about one hundred miles away in Providence,
19:35
Speaker 1: Rhode Island, Joe's older sister Florence, opened up a newspaper
19:40
Speaker 1: and read yet another article about the sunken submarine, where
19:44
Speaker 1: she knew her brother was trapped. For the last couple
19:46
Speaker 1: of days, Florence had been absolutely glued to a radio
19:50
Speaker 1: and the newspaper, desperate to hear or read some good news.
19:54
Speaker 1: But every article, in every news segment they said the
19:57
Speaker 1: same thing. The six men who were trapped in side
20:00
Speaker 1: the sub were definitely still alive.
20:02
Speaker 2: They were communicating with.
20:03
Speaker 1: The divers, but the storm on the surface was still
20:06
Speaker 1: just too intense to rescue them. Florence felt so scared
20:10
Speaker 1: for her brother, and not just because the situation itself
20:13
Speaker 1: was objectively dangerous, but also because she remembered the submarine
20:17
Speaker 1: game that she and Joe used to play when they
20:19
Speaker 1: were little, and more specifically, she remembered the very last
20:23
Speaker 1: time they had ever played it. Joe had been about
20:25
Speaker 1: four years old, and the two of them had just
20:28
Speaker 1: finished another one of their make believe missions, and they
20:30
Speaker 1: were supposed to be bringing their imaginary submarine back up
20:33
Speaker 1: to the surface. But then Joe had suddenly dropped his
20:37
Speaker 1: homemade wooden periscope, and he'd turned to Florence and said
20:41
Speaker 1: something so strange and so haunting for such a young
20:44
Speaker 1: child that Florence had never forgotten it. She had asked
20:47
Speaker 1: him to clarify and explain what he meant, but he
20:50
Speaker 1: had refused, and in fact, after this he refused to
20:53
Speaker 1: play the Submarine game ever again. Now Florence hadn't thought
20:56
Speaker 1: about this in years, but now now that she's seeing
21:00
Speaker 1: what's happening with her.
21:01
Speaker 2: Brother, it was all she could think about.
21:04
Speaker 1: A Couple of days later, on December twenty second, so
21:06
Speaker 1: five days after the submarine had sunk, Florence received word
21:10
Speaker 1: that her brother, Joe, and all the other sailors in
21:12
Speaker 1: the torpedo room had died while waiting to be rescued.
21:16
Speaker 1: And Florence was totally grief strucken. I mean, this was
21:18
Speaker 1: her baby brother who's just died in this horrible way.
21:21
Speaker 1: But also, strangely, for like the first time in her life,
21:25
Speaker 1: she felt like she actually understood what Joe had said
21:29
Speaker 1: all those years earlier, when he was four years old,
21:32
Speaker 1: when they had played that last game of Submarine on
21:34
Speaker 1: that day, after dropping his periscope, he had turned to
21:37
Speaker 1: Florence and said, quote, all hands were lost. This is
21:42
Speaker 1: an expression that's used in the Navy to mean everybody
21:46
Speaker 1: on board died, meaning there make believe submarine had just
21:50
Speaker 1: sunk and everyone on board had died, and remember, after
21:54
Speaker 1: he said this, Florence tried to get you know, four
21:57
Speaker 1: year old Joe to explain what he meant, but he
21:59
Speaker 1: wouldn't and and he refused to play it ever again.
22:02
Speaker 1: And so now, in hindsight, Florence believed that her four
22:06
Speaker 1: year old brother had predicted his own death. On the
22:23
Speaker 1: evening of April nineteenth, nineteen eighty nine, a sixty two
22:26
Speaker 1: year old man named Thomas Mihan was sitting in his
22:28
Speaker 1: living room in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, watching some TV when his
22:32
Speaker 1: phone rang. Thomas picked up and said hello, and he
22:35
Speaker 1: heard his daughter, Patricia on the other end, and right
22:38
Speaker 1: away he could tell by Patricia's voice that she was
22:41
Speaker 1: feeling really down, which actually didn't surprise him. So Patricia
22:45
Speaker 1: was thirty seven years old, and Thomas knew she'd really
22:48
Speaker 1: been struggling lately. She lived almost two thousand miles away
22:51
Speaker 1: from Pittsburgh in Bozeman, Montana, where she worked as a ranchant. Now,
22:55
Speaker 1: she liked her job, mostly because she loved the animals,
22:59
Speaker 1: but she just she's had a really hard time getting
23:01
Speaker 1: along with.
23:01
Speaker 2: People, and so she was sort of lonely.
23:04
Speaker 1: She didn't really have a lot of close friends and recently,
23:06
Speaker 1: she'd been through a breakup and even though she'd always
23:10
Speaker 1: loved kids, she'd never had any of her own. And
23:12
Speaker 1: so to Thomas, it seemed like his daughter was just
23:15
Speaker 1: going through, you know, basically a midlife crisis.
23:18
Speaker 2: And so asked, Thomas, is listening.
23:19
Speaker 1: To his daughter just kind of you know, talking about
23:22
Speaker 1: her life generally and just sort of making small talk.
23:25
Speaker 1: He sort of cut through and just said, hey, you know,
23:27
Speaker 1: like what's going on, Like how are you doing? And
23:29
Speaker 1: Patricia she stopped and then sort of vaguely said that
23:33
Speaker 1: she was just under a lot of stress and that
23:36
Speaker 1: she was thinking about quitting her job and moving away
23:38
Speaker 1: from Bozeman. And she actually asked her dad if he'd
23:42
Speaker 1: be okay with her coming to Pittsburgh and maybe moving
23:44
Speaker 1: back in with him, and Thomas, who adored his daughter
23:47
Speaker 1: and really felt for her, immediately was like, of course,
23:51
Speaker 1: you can come home anytime you want. This definitely lightened
23:54
Speaker 1: Patricia's mood, and then she told her dad that she'd
23:56
Speaker 1: call him back the next day to make more solid plans,
23:59
Speaker 1: and then she said.
24:00
Speaker 2: She loved him and she hung up.
24:01
Speaker 1: But the next day, Thomas did not get a call
24:04
Speaker 1: from Patricia. In fact, he never got another call from
24:08
Speaker 1: his daughter again. The following day, so April twentieth, at
24:12
Speaker 1: about eight to fifteen pm, fifteen hundred miles away from
24:15
Speaker 1: Thomas's house in Pittsburgh, a woman named Carol Heights was
24:19
Speaker 1: driving down a very isolated two lane highway in the
24:22
Speaker 1: rural town of Circle, Montana. It was dark and cold outside,
24:26
Speaker 1: and all Carol could see was the one car driving
24:29
Speaker 1: in front of her, and beyond that it was just
24:31
Speaker 1: big empty fields on either side of the highway. But
24:34
Speaker 1: sort of out of nowhere, this car, which had just
24:37
Speaker 1: been putting along at the same speed as Carol, it
24:40
Speaker 1: suddenly swerved off the road.
24:42
Speaker 2: For a second, Carol.
24:43
Speaker 1: Was just so confused, like what caused the car to
24:47
Speaker 1: suddenly veer out of the way. But then a split
24:50
Speaker 1: second later, Carol understood exactly what had happened, because right
24:55
Speaker 1: in front of her was another car driving the wrong way,
24:59
Speaker 1: barreling down on her. And so Carol she jammed on
25:02
Speaker 1: the brakes and she tried to swerve out of the way,
25:04
Speaker 1: same as this other car had, but she wasn't fast enough,
25:08
Speaker 1: and this other car smashed into her basically head on.
25:12
Speaker 1: Carol felt her head snapped back there was this loud,
25:15
Speaker 1: metallic crunching sound and then blackness. But then just a
25:18
Speaker 1: couple of minutes later, Carol opened her eyes and realized
25:22
Speaker 1: she had survived the crash. I mean, she felt, you know,
25:25
Speaker 1: pain in her neck, and her car's a mess. The
25:28
Speaker 1: airbags have deployed, like obviously she's been in a serious wreck.
25:31
Speaker 1: But she's alive. And so eventually Carol managed to open
25:35
Speaker 1: up her door and she climbed out, you know, with
25:37
Speaker 1: the intention of actually checking on the other driver, because
25:40
Speaker 1: the other car that smashed into hers basically butted up
25:43
Speaker 1: against her, and she can't really tell the status of
25:45
Speaker 1: this person. So she gets out and she's going over
25:48
Speaker 1: to see if this person's okay. But before she reached
25:51
Speaker 1: the other car, the other driver also climbed out of
25:54
Speaker 1: their car, and in the light from both cars headlights,
25:57
Speaker 1: Carol could see that this this other person was a
26:00
Speaker 1: middle aged woman who appeared to have shoulder length strawberry
26:03
Speaker 1: blonde hair. And this woman, you know, didn't appear to
26:05
Speaker 1: be heard, at least on the surface. In fact, weirdly,
26:09
Speaker 1: she seemed very very calm. And this woman she just
26:12
Speaker 1: stood there by her car, not saying a word to
26:15
Speaker 1: Carol or in any way recognizing what she had just done,
26:18
Speaker 1: which is drive the wrong way and smash into Carol
26:21
Speaker 1: could have killed Carol. No recognition of that. Instead, she
26:25
Speaker 1: just stood there and then eventually she turned and just
26:28
Speaker 1: stared at Carol, and this was sort of alarming to Carol,
26:30
Speaker 1: and it caused her to just stop and also just
26:33
Speaker 1: stand there staring at this woman, not really sure what
26:36
Speaker 1: to do. And as Carol is like waiting to see
26:39
Speaker 1: what they're going to do, the other driver, this middle
26:42
Speaker 1: aged woman, just turned and started walking away. At this point,
26:46
Speaker 1: Carol yelled to her to stop, like you can't go.
26:48
Speaker 1: We had this horrible accident, like we have to wait
26:50
Speaker 1: for authorities to get here.
26:51
Speaker 2: You can't just leave. But this woman, she didn't even
26:54
Speaker 2: look back to talk to Carol.
26:55
Speaker 1: She just calmly walked off the highway and then climbed
26:59
Speaker 1: over into one of those big empty fields on the
27:02
Speaker 1: side of the road and just kept on walking until
27:05
Speaker 1: Carol couldn't see her anymore.
27:07
Speaker 2: She just vanished.
27:08
Speaker 1: When the police arrived about forty five minutes later at
27:11
Speaker 1: nine pm, they found.
27:12
Speaker 2: The wreck, and they found Carol and this other driver.
27:15
Speaker 1: Again was just gone, and so they ran the license
27:18
Speaker 1: plate of the other car, the one that hit Carol's,
27:21
Speaker 1: and they learned that it was registered to thirty seven
27:24
Speaker 1: year old Patricia Mehan. But beyond the fact that apparently
27:27
Speaker 1: Patricia had just wandered off here, the other weird thing
27:31
Speaker 1: about this was the registration showed that Patricia lived four
27:35
Speaker 1: hundred miles away, so they really weren't sure what she
27:38
Speaker 1: was even doing all the way out here.
27:39
Speaker 2: Now, Patricia did.
27:40
Speaker 1: Not come back to the crash site, and so eventually
27:43
Speaker 1: police got canine units out there and they began looking
27:46
Speaker 1: for her, and they were able to find a trail
27:48
Speaker 1: over footprints out in that field, and they followed that
27:51
Speaker 1: trail for hours and hours, but eventually the footprints just
27:54
Speaker 1: stopped and the dogs lost her cent. Now, police would
27:58
Speaker 1: continue looking for Patricia for nearly with no luck. I mean,
28:01
Speaker 1: they never found another trace of Patricia. It really was
28:04
Speaker 1: like she wandered into that field and just sort of vanished.
28:07
Speaker 1: But that was not the end of the story, because
28:10
Speaker 1: about two weeks later, a totally unrelated police officer was
28:14
Speaker 1: eating at a fast food restaurant in Laverne, Minnesota, which
28:17
Speaker 1: was about seven hundred miles away from the crash site. Now,
28:21
Speaker 1: even though this officer lived and worked in a completely
28:24
Speaker 1: different state, they'd actually heard about Patricia Mehan's disappearance and
28:28
Speaker 1: seen pictures of her because her case was now national news.
28:31
Speaker 1: So when this officer looked across the restaurant he was
28:34
Speaker 1: in and saw a middle aged woman with strawberry blonde
28:37
Speaker 1: hair sitting in a booth by herself, silently drinking water
28:41
Speaker 1: and just staring off into space, he immediately recognized her
28:45
Speaker 1: as Patricia. Now, the police officer had no idea if
28:48
Speaker 1: this really was Patricia. He was confident it was, but
28:51
Speaker 1: this just seemed so random and so bizarre that she
28:54
Speaker 1: would be here, of all places. He also didn't know
28:57
Speaker 1: if this person was alone or not, or what she
28:59
Speaker 1: was even trying to do, so instead of getting up
29:01
Speaker 1: and going and talking to her, he just stayed in
29:04
Speaker 1: his seat and kept an.
29:05
Speaker 2: Eye on her, and for.
29:06
Speaker 1: The next five hours, the woman he believed was Patricia
29:10
Speaker 1: just sat there in the booth, slowly drinking water, just
29:14
Speaker 1: staring off.
29:14
Speaker 2: Into space for five hours.
29:16
Speaker 1: Eventually, the restaurant closed, at which point an employee had
29:20
Speaker 1: to tell this woman to get up and go. They
29:22
Speaker 1: also told the officer that he too had to leave
29:24
Speaker 1: and so after the officer and this woman, who he
29:27
Speaker 1: thought was Patricia, had left this restaurant, the officer kind
29:31
Speaker 1: of hung back and continued watching the woman, and she
29:34
Speaker 1: just went right across the street to a diner, and
29:36
Speaker 1: this time the.
29:37
Speaker 2: Officer did not keep his distance.
29:39
Speaker 1: He went inside the diner and he went right over
29:41
Speaker 1: to where she was sitting at a table, and he
29:44
Speaker 1: sat down next to her, and he just said, what's
29:46
Speaker 1: your name? And for a moment, the woman seemed kind
29:48
Speaker 1: of confused, why, you know, this random police officer was
29:51
Speaker 1: even sitting with her to begin with. But instead of
29:53
Speaker 1: you know, challenging the police officer, she just went quiet
29:56
Speaker 1: for a second, and then in a sort of hushed
29:59
Speaker 1: boy she said that she was from Colorado. But then
30:03
Speaker 1: a moment later she shook her head and said, actually, no,
30:06
Speaker 1: I'm from Israel. And then before she gave up any
30:08
Speaker 1: more information like her name or why she was here
30:11
Speaker 1: or anything, she jumped up out of her seat and
30:14
Speaker 1: ran outside. And the police officer was kind of caught
30:17
Speaker 1: off guard by this and was a little bit slow
30:19
Speaker 1: to get up and chase after her, but he ran
30:21
Speaker 1: outside too, and by the time he got out there,
30:24
Speaker 1: she had disappeared. Over the next month or so, the
30:27
Speaker 1: police in charge of Patricia's case received dozens of reports
30:32
Speaker 1: like this from people who believed they saw Patricia at
30:35
Speaker 1: restaurants and truck stops all over America, and the police
30:38
Speaker 1: actually confirmed many of these sightings, meaning they believed that
30:42
Speaker 1: these witnesses really did see Patricia, it was not just
30:45
Speaker 1: some look alike. And in every case, witnesses reported that
30:49
Speaker 1: this woman, presumably Patricia, refused to speak and was just
30:54
Speaker 1: staring vacantly into space.
30:56
Speaker 2: She didn't seem to know who she was or what
30:57
Speaker 2: she was even doing.
30:58
Speaker 1: But also in every one of these cases, before anybody
31:02
Speaker 1: could intervene or ask her questions or just help her
31:05
Speaker 1: in some way, Patricia would run off and disappear again.
31:08
Speaker 2: It was like Patricia was.
31:10
Speaker 1: A ghost, appearing and disappearing over and over again all
31:14
Speaker 1: over the country.
31:15
Speaker 2: As of today, there.
31:16
Speaker 1: Have been over five thousand reported sightings of Patricia Mehan,
31:20
Speaker 1: but still we do not know where she is. Her
31:22
Speaker 1: case still today is open and unsolved.
31:32
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for watching.
31:34
Speaker 1: Let me know what you thought of today's episode in
31:35
Speaker 1: the comments, and remember we have hundreds of videos.
31:39
Speaker 2: For you to binge right now.
31:41
Speaker 1: But If you're looking for a recommendation for me of
31:43
Speaker 1: that one video that's worth your time, well it's this
31:47
Speaker 1: one right here, so give it a watch.
31:49
Speaker 2: All right, until next time, see ya.