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Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast features three stories that all involve people getting trapped. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.
The first story you'll hear is called Inconspicuous, and it's about a chilling discovery made in a very unassuming place. The second story you'll hear is called Digging Sounds, and it's about two police officers who investigate a house in England that had all these strange noises coming out of it. And the third and final story you'll hear is called The Mayor, and it's about a town's mayor who goes missing in one of the most unlikely places ever.
But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Amazon Music Follow Buttons house in the middle of the night and just burn several bags of popcorn and then leave. Okay, let's get into our first story called Inconspicuous.
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On the evening of October 28, 2006, in a Florida city called Port Richey, a 37-year-old woman named Marisa Weber walked in the front door of her home and called out a greeting to her mom. Her mom didn't call back, but Marisa could hear her in the kitchen making dinner, and so Marisa walked over to say hello.
But Marisa only got about two feet into the family's very cramped living room when one of their many cats came bombing into the room and nearly knocked Marisa over as it ran past her and ran up to the side of the wall and just stopped and stared at the baseboard of the wall like there was something there.
Marisa was totally annoyed by this cat, and as she looked over at it, she knew what it was doing, because lately Marisa had noticed there were clearly rats in her family's home, kind of scurrying around in the ceilings and the walls. Marisa could hear them all the time, and one of their cats was now clearly hunting one of these rats. And this totally stressed Marisa out.
She'd actually begun taking anti-anxiety and antidepressant medication largely because of this rat infestation and really just the fact that Marisa hated living at her parents' home, but she didn't really have the means to go out and live in her own place, which she knew would solve the problem, and so she was just kind of stuck here.
And so Marisa turned away from the cat and likely the rat behind the wall, and she made her way through the tight little living room into the kitchen, and she gave her mom a quick hug, and she saw her dad was also in the room as well, and he said hello to her. And then Marisa's mom offered her some food, but Marisa said, you know what? I'm not hungry, thank you. I'm just tired. I'm going to go to bed. And so Marisa again gave her mom a hug. She said goodnight to her dad, and then she turned, walked up the stairs, and made her way to her bedroom. She went inside and shut the door.
The next morning, Marisa's parents got up and they began making breakfast and getting ready for the day. But Marisa did not come downstairs, and so the parents assumed she must have left early for her job. Marisa was a secretary at a waste disposal company. And so the parents just had their breakfast and they too went out for their jobs. And then in the evening when the parents were back home, Marisa did not come home at the time she normally would after work.
But the parents were not actually that concerned right then because they figured, okay, well, maybe she left early and she came home from work early. And so we just kind of missed her on both ends. And that's why her door to her bedroom is shut. She's just come home early and she's in there and she wants to be left alone. After all, she's a 37-year-old woman. She probably wants her space.
But later that night, when still the parents had not even heard their daughter moving around up there, the mother went upstairs and knocked on Maurice's bedroom door. But there was no answer. And so finally, Maurice's mom opened the door and the room was totally empty.
Now, at this point, the parents did start to get concerned because they're thinking, okay, well, we didn't see her this morning. We haven't seen her now. We don't know where she is. But again, their daughter is 37 years old. And if she wanted to go do something out of the house by herself and not tell anyone, she was kind of entitled to do that. And so the parents ultimately decided that they would just let this go for now. And in the morning, they were sure to see her.
But the next morning, the parents still had not heard from Marisa, she had not come home, and now they were officially starting to panic. In particular, the mother was worried that Marisa might have been kidnapped or something going to or coming back from work because Marisa was only 5 foot 3 inches tall and maybe 100 pounds. So she was really small.
And so Marisa's mom called her other daughter, Gina, in a total panic, saying, you know, your sister, she's missing. We don't know where she is. She might have gotten kidnapped. You know, come over and help us figure out what's going on. And so Gina came over to the house. And when she came inside, she told her parents, you know, let's stay calm here. Marisa, she's 37. I'm sure she's fine. Let's search the house and see if there's some note or something from Marisa explaining where she is and what she's doing.
And so the family searched the whole house starting with Marisa's room, but they couldn't find anything that gave them any clues about what happened to Marisa. But they did eventually find Marisa's purse that was still in her room, and when they opened it up they saw her wallet was still inside. And so that sent up a huge red flag for the family. You know, they're thinking why would Marisa go anywhere for an extended period of time without her wallet? That made no sense.
And so at this point, the family did call the police and they reported Marisa missing. But the police got nowhere on the case. And so on November 9th, so 12 days after Marisa had said goodnight to her parents, gone up to her room and then vanished, the family was at a total loss for what to do.
But Gina, Marisa's sister, had begun to think to herself, you know, hey, it's possible that Marisa, who was not doing well mentally, you know, she was very unhappy. She was totally stressed out about this rat infestation, which really highlighted the fact that she was stuck at home with her parents at 37 years old. You know, Gina's thinking that it was totally possible that Marisa had just abruptly run away or worse, maybe she had harmed herself.
And so on November 9th, Gina decided she would take one more pass through the family home and just see if she could find any little indication that would give away what was going through Maurice's mind before she vanished. And where Gina started was in Maurice's room.
And so Gina, she went upstairs, down the hall, she opened up her sister's bedroom, and she walked inside, and you gotta picture this space. It was totally cluttered, almost like a hoarder's space. There were piles of clothes that were taller than a human person. I mean, this room is totally packed with stuff.
But Gina, she took her time kind of walking through the room, looking everywhere, kind of sifting through all the piles of junk and clothes and everything in the room. And she couldn't find anything. But then at some point, her attention was drawn to her sister's bookshelf. And she looked over at it and she thought she saw something odd right in the middle of the shelf.
Now, Gina had a flashlight with her, and even though the light was on in the room, she still lifted up the flashlight and turned it on and shined it at this thing in the middle of the bookcase. And when she saw it, she screamed. Based on Gina's discovery, here is what happened to Marisa Weber on October 28, 2006, the night she disappeared.
That night, Marisa had come home. She saw her mom and dad in the kitchen. She was offered food. She turned it down and said, I'm tired. I'm going to bed. She went upstairs. She went into her room, closed the door, and sat down on her bed.
Then Marisa grabbed a pill bottle next to her bed, which contained morphine and codeine, which are two very powerful painkillers. They're opiates, so highly addictive. She popped a few of those, and then she rolled a marijuana joint and smoked that. And then she grabbed the TV remote and sat back on her bed, getting ready to zone out.
But when she tried to turn on the TV, which was sitting on this bureau on the other side of the room, it didn't turn on. And right away, Marissa knew that the TV likely had become unplugged. This was something that happened periodically. The room was so packed with stuff that sometimes when Marissa was just navigating through her room, the stuff would bump into the bureau and that would in turn jostle loose the plug from the TV.
But the TV was actually not plugged in right behind where this bureau was. The TV was sitting on the bureau, but the plug ran down and kind of to the side of the bureau behind this huge bookcase that was pressed right up against the bureau.
But this bookcase was so loaded down with books and things that Marissa had collected over the years that not only could you not really reach through the bookcase to the wall, but it was too heavy. You couldn't move the bookcase. And so the only way to access this plug from the TV was to climb on top of the bureau where the TV was and kind of reach back and grab the plug behind the bookcase and plug it back in.
And so Marissa, who was likely beginning to feel the effects of all the drugs she had taken, climbed on top of this bureau and she reached back behind this six foot tall bookcase and she began trying to grab the plug, but it was just out of reach. And so she leaned farther and farther and farther until she finally grabbed the plug. But when she managed to plug it back into the wall, she slipped forward and fell head first into this tiny space behind the bookshelf and the wall and she got pinned upside down.
Now, we don't know why Marisa didn't begin calling out for help. Perhaps she was so under the influence of these drugs that she couldn't really process the situation and didn't know what she should do. Or maybe she was embarrassed about the fact that she had somehow gotten trapped upside down behind her bookcase. But either way, she didn't call out for help right away. And unfortunately, what happens when a human body is trapped upside down long enough is all the blood rushes to the upper part of your body.
It causes your eyes eventually to pop out of your head, it feels like your head's gonna explode. But the real problem is all that blood pools around your lungs and restricts your lungs and makes it really hard to breathe. And critically, if you can't take a big breath in, you can't project your voice loud enough to call out for help.
And so Marisa did not call out for help during those first critical few moments she was trapped behind the bookcase. And then when she realized she absolutely couldn't move, she didn't have the lung capacity to call out for help. And so likely for one or maybe even two days, Marisa remained upside down behind this bookshelf and likely was aware of her family coming in and out of her bedroom looking for her, but she was not able to vocalize. She could not get their attention. And so
And so eventually she died.
Marisa's family would say when they were looking for Marisa in her bedroom while she was dying behind the bookcase, they said they did hear sounds, but it sounded like the rats that were running all over their house. And so they didn't know it was actually likely Marisa moving around behind the bookcase trying to get their attention because you can't use her voice. And then after Marisa died, her family did continue to go back into her room to look for her. And they began to smell something funny, which was Marisa decomposing.
but the family didn't know that and they chalked it up to the fact that the room was really messy and again there are rats in this house i mean this was not a clean space and so they kind of thought okay you know the smell can't be anything serious it wasn't until november 9th when marisa's sister gina was back in marisa's bedroom and she looked over at the bookcase and she saw something strange what she saw was her sister's foot right behind the bookcase gina couldn't really process it so she got her flashlight out she shined it on the foot and
And when she scanned from the foot down, she realized it was her sister.
That said, I always make sure to step back and spend time away from work with my family or friends. This is because my therapist always stresses how important it is to recharge whenever I can. That way I don't burn out. This is why I think therapy can be so helpful for people whose lives feel very hectic, which is basically all of us. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's
It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash mrballandpod today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash mrballandpod.
Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Maybe you'll find inspiration in the incredible true story of black female mathematicians at NASA in Hidden Figures, or the
Our next story is called Digging Sounds.
On February 15th, 2004, two police officers drove down a quiet street in a little English village called Murrow, and they pulled over in front of this little brick bungalow. Earlier that day, a neighbor who lived on this street had called the police to report hearing a strange digging sound coming from inside of this bungalow. And so these officers had been sent out to see what the sound was and make sure the occupants of this home were okay.
Now, these two officers were not particularly worried about the occupants of this house. They assumed that some wild animal must have snuck in while the owners were away, and that was all this was. But, as they would quickly learn, that was not the case.
After climbing out of their car, the two officers just stopped and listened for a second to see if they could hear this digging sound. But the bungalow was quiet, the street was quiet, and so the two officers shut their car doors and made their way up to the front porch of this bungalow and knocked on the front door.
After a few moments, when nobody answered, one of the officers reached down and tried the handle and found it was unlocked. And so he opened the door just a crack and he called out through this opening in the door into the bungalow saying, "Hey, you know, it's police. We're here to check on you." But when no one called back to them, the officer opened the door the rest of the way and immediately both officers saw there was a huge problem inside of this house.
The entire first floor was flooded with several inches of water, and they could hear from somewhere in the back of the property the sound of running water. And so again, both officers called out into this house to try to get the attention of anyone who might be inside, and when again they were met with silence, the officers walked into the flooded house and began walking straight back towards this running water sound.
And eventually, after walking through the living room, they entered this hallway that went right to the back of the property. And as soon as they were in it, they could see there was an open door at the end of the hallway on the left. And it seemed like the running water sound was coming out of that room. And so the two officers, one by one, sloshed down this hallway to this room. They turned left, looked inside, and what they saw completely shocked them and immediately sprung them into action.
Two months before these officers came to this bungalow and found it flooded with water, the owner of this bungalow, 51-year-old Ronald McCleggish, had broken up with his girlfriend. And this breakup was really hard on Ronald. He was already divorced, he was totally broke, he had loads of health issues like bad asthma, he had some liver issues, and just generally he was someone who was kind of physically frail.
And so this girlfriend had been one of the very few good things in his life, and now she was gone and he was alone again. And so very quickly after this breakup, Ronald fell into a very dark depression.
And so for six weeks after they broke up, Ronald, for the most part, just stayed in bed and kind of moped around his bungalow, kind of feeling bad for himself. But then finally, at the end of those first six weeks after the breakup, Ronald decided he wanted to get his life back together and just move on. So on February 1st, 2004, so roughly two weeks before those two officers would come to his bungalow because of this digging sound,
Ronald would wake up feeling determined to start anew. And the first thing he was going to do was purge his bungalow of anything that was his ex-girlfriend's. She left a lot of things behind when they broke up. She had not collected them. And so now they were just kind of sources of pain. And where most of her stuff was inside of Ronald's bungalow was in this closet in one of the bedrooms at the end of the hall.
So that morning, Ronald headed down the hall. He turned left into the bedroom. He opened up the closet. He went inside and with a trash bag in hand, he began rifling through everything in this closet and anything that was hers, he would take it and put it right into the trash bag.
And at some point, when Ronald was almost done pulling the last few things of his girlfriends out and into the trash bag, from behind him, he heard the strange sound coming from the bedroom. It sounded like wood bending or creaking. But before he could turn around to see what the sound was, the door to the closet he was in slammed shut with incredible force. And suddenly Ronald was trapped inside of this closet in total darkness.
Now, Ronald was likely shocked at first, but he would have reached and tried for the handle and found that no matter what he did, he could not open this closet again. And so Ronald began screaming for help and pounding on the door, but nobody came to help him.
The closet that Ronald was in was fairly tall, but it was only two feet wide by about two feet deep, which meant Ronald could only stand inside of this closet. He couldn't sit down, he couldn't bend down, he literally was trapped standing. And Ronald didn't have water, he didn't have food, he knew that no one was going to be checking on him anytime soon, and even though his bungalow was kind of small and shabby, it was built out of brick.
And so the likelihood that his calls for help were penetrating outside loud enough that people could hear them and that they would come in and rescue him was pretty slim.
And so at some point that evening, Ronald realized he needed to do something different if he was going to get out of this closet. And so above him were a series of pipes across the ceiling. And so he reached up and he grabbed one of them and he broke it off. He was likely thinking that with this pipe, maybe he can burrow a hole in the wall and crawl through to another room, or maybe he can punch a hole in the door
and somehow unlock it, or at a minimum with the metal pipe, smashing it against the wall or the door would be louder than any noise he could make by yelling. However, the second he broke that pipe off the ceiling, something horrible happened.
The pipe he broke was a water pipe. And as soon as it was broken, icy cold water began pouring down directly on top of Ronald's head and face. And again, because he can only stand basically in the middle of this closet, he couldn't get out of the way of this water. It was like he was under a waterfall and couldn't go anywhere.
And so he likely tried to ignore the water and tried to use the pipe and screamed and do anything he could to get someone to know he was in here, but no one could hear him. And so it was like he was being tortured with this freezing water and he's in this tight claustrophobic space. It's total darkness and he's totally panicking. And for days and days, that would be Ronald's nightmarish reality.
But, despite how terrible his circumstances were, Ronald continued to use that pipe to both smash the walls to make loud sounds, he also began burrowing into the walls trying to make a hole. But Ronald was getting weaker and weaker, he became very sick, and also because the water was constantly hitting his head and face, his skin got so saturated that
that literally his skin started falling off. It basically opened up into these sores and began to sag and the water just began brushing his skin off. And so finally, after about a week of being trapped in this closet in these terrible conditions, Ronald realized help was not going to come in time. And so he put his pipe down. He kind of slumped up against the wall and then closed his eyes.
Ronald's neighbor, who called the police, actually did hear Ronald using that pipe to try to dig a hole in his wall. And she heard Ronald smashing the pipe on his door. And she must have heard muffled shrieks and yells. But she didn't know what they were and kind of just decided it wasn't her business. But when Ronald's house went from all these strange sounds to silence, that was when she called the police and said, hey, I had heard some digging sounds coming from the bungalow and now I don't.
And so when those two police officers arrived at Ronald's bungalow, they went inside, they went down the hallway, they went into the bedroom where Ronald had gone, and they saw this huge wardrobe, which is a big wooden piece of furniture, toppled over right in front of the closet. And at the bottom of the closet, they saw two human feet protruding from underneath that little space at the bottom of the closet. Those feet belonged to Ronald.
He had managed to force his feet underneath the closet, but of course, he could not have fit underneath the closet door. And so the two police officers rushed over and together, they barely were able to get this wardrobe off of the closet door. And when they opened the door up, Ronald was in there, he was deceased, his body was still in a standing position, kind of rigid and propped up against the wall, and freezing water was still pouring down onto his head.
It would turn out no one had intentionally trapped Ronald. Instead, his wardrobe was just unstable and it happened to topple over at the worst possible moment. The next and final story of today's episode is called "The Mayor." In April of 1979, a 69-year-old woman named Monica Myers was appointed mayor of a little village called Betterton in the US state of Maryland.
Betterton used to be this very fancy resort town on the water where people from Baltimore and Philadelphia would come there for vacations. They had fancy hotels and restaurants and shops. But by the time Monica became Betterton's mayor, Betterton had kind of gone downhill.
People had stopped coming to Betterton, all the hotels shut down or were abandoned or burned down, the summer homes of the rich people from the big cities, those got sold off, and down at the beach, all these glamorous boardwalks literally just kind of crumbled into the sea, and in their place were all these shanty towns where homeless people set up their camps.
But Monica had grown up in Betterton, and so she really loved the town and wanted to improve it. And so when she became mayor in 1979, she really leaned into her new role way more than other mayors would.
Instead of managing the village from an office like most mayors would do, Monica literally went out in town and just began doing lots of jobs around the town for free. She would ride around with the police and literally stop crimes in action. One time she stumbled across someone looting a vacant hotel and she personally got out, chased this person down, and made them put everything back that they had taken.
She would pick up trash on the beach, she would do random repairs on people's homes and businesses all over town, and sometimes she would just go door to door asking people how they were doing. And so very quickly, the people of Betterton really grew to love Monica, and they loved seeing her every single day just out and about making Betterton a better place.
And so on March 20th, 1980, roughly one year into Monica's tenure as mayor, it was immediately noticeable to the people of Betterton when Monica was nowhere to be seen.
That day, she did not go to the police station in the morning like she normally did. She was not seen at the beach doing her trash pickup, and she didn't knock on anybody's door. And so by mid-morning that day, the people of Betterton, all 120 of them, were basically out in force looking for Monica.
And at 11:30 a.m., the police in Betterton got a call about Monica. It was this guy who was totally panicked. He could barely make a sentence. And he basically just told the police, "You gotta get here now." And so the police hopped in their cars and they sped to the address this guy gave them.
And when they got there, they saw it was this very plain boxy building that was kind of tucked back in the woods. It was far away from the town center and really nobody ever went over here. And the police, when they parked their cars, they saw the guy who had called the police, the distraught caller, was standing outside of the front door. He was obviously crying and he was waving for them to come over and follow him into this building.
And so the police got out of their cars. They ran over to this guy and they're asking him, you know, what happened? Where's Monica? What's going on? But this guy was so hysterical. He really could not describe what happened to Monica. He just kept telling them to come on, come on, follow me.
And so he led them into this building and pretty quickly they entered this huge warehouse where all across the ceiling were these big metal catwalk areas that kind of zigged and zagged all over this warehouse. And below them, all over the floor, were these huge industrial-sized 15-foot tall vats that contained something.
And so this guy who had led police here, he stops and he just points at the nearest vat. And so the police picking up his cue begin walking towards this vat. And as they got closer and closer, they were hit with this horrible smell that made them gag and cough. And before long, they had to stop and kind of compose themselves. The smell was so bad.
It would turn out this building that was kind of removed from the town center of Betterton was Betterton's sewage treatment plant. And that morning, Monica had gone to the treatment plant to help clean some of these 15-foot tall industrial-sized vats that contained human waste.
She had done this enough times that when she was here, she did not need any supervision. And so that morning, she was alone, she climbed up onto one of the catwalks over one of these big vats, and she had reached down with her testing kit to test the sewage to see how much cleaning it would need. And as she did that, she somehow slipped and fell into the big vat of human waste.
Now, she would not have immediately gone under. It was not like a liquid. It was more like clay or really thick mud, where at first she would have kind of been laying on top of the sewage. But as soon as she tried to move to get out of the sewage, the sewage would have functioned more like quicksand, where as soon as a part of her body went under the surface, it would not come up again.
And so after the police composed themselves, they climbed up onto the catwalk and they looked down and they saw Monica, who was face down, partially submerged inside of this vat, and she was deceased. Her autopsy would reveal that she died of drowning, which means she literally inhaled human waste.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. If you enjoyed today's stories and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, and Run Full. Just search for Ballin Studios wherever you get your podcasts and you'll find them all. Also, there are hundreds more stories like the ones you heard today, but in video format on our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin.
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