The Unexplained
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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 will feature three stories about missing people that we just can't explain. 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 Todd Guybe, and it's about a man who goes missing after leaving a party. The second story you'll hear is called 40 Years Later, and it's about a very creepy discovery on a deserted island. And the third and final story you'll hear is called Acid Trip. When help arrives on the scene of a terrible car crash, they discover one person is unaccounted for.

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 up behind the follow button and viciously rear naked choke them. Okay, let's get into our first story called Todd Guy. ♪

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In 2005, Todd Guy was 22 years old. He lived in Michigan. He was an avid outdoorsman. He liked to go deer hunting. He loved to catch trophy fish and he loved his family. And routinely after he moved out of the house, he would drive on the weekends, the five miles north to his parents' house and would spend lots of time with his parents and his extended family.

On June 11th, 2005, Todd was visiting his parents at their house. He was there for dinner and after dinner, he went back to his house. He checked in with his roommate who was actually his cousin. And then following that, he drove to a local bar to get a few drinks.

At about 9:30 that night, he decides to leave the bar and walk to this big orchard where there was this huge annual keg party that he and his friends would go to. He leaves his car at the bar and he walks to this orchard and it's perfect weather, all of his friends are there, he's having this great time and he's there all the way until midnight.

It was getting late. Todd felt tired, so he told a couple of his friends that he was going to head home. He was going to leave his car at the bar, and he was just going to walk back to his house. The area that this orchard was in was right near his home, and so he knew this area extremely well, and it was only about a mile south to walk to his house. So all of his friends said bye to him. They said he seemed totally normal. They watched him walk south towards his house, and that was the last anybody saw of him.

On his walk home, Todd would make four phone calls to friends and to family. And the last one he made was at about 1245 in the morning and it was to his friends. And he told them that he was in a field and he couldn't breathe. And they kept asking him, like, what are you talking about? And all they heard was very heavy breathing on the phone. They couldn't tell if it was his or if someone else had taken the phone and was now breathing into it. Then the phone cuts out and they try calling him back and there was no answer. They couldn't get in touch with him.

The next day when Todd did not show up at a family get-together, something he never would have missed unless he told them ahead of time, his family knew something was wrong. Plus they had those strange phone calls the night before, they checked in with his friends, they said, "Yeah, we haven't heard from him." They went over to his house, he wasn't there, and so that's when they called the police. A massive search has kicked off involving canines and helicopters and they're not finding anything.

Three weeks after Todd had gone missing, a couple was walking around this lake that was located north of the orchard where Todd was at that big keg party. And the wife looked out into the water and she said she thought she saw something bobbing. She couldn't tell what it was, but it was just this weird object that stood out to her. And she and her partner walked down to the edge of the lake and they looked out. And at first she thought it was a person who was swimming, just kind of bobbing up and down because...

Their body position was such that their shoulders and head were totally out of the water. And so it was a strange sight and they knew that it didn't seem right. So they called the police, police show up and it turns out that this person was Todd Guy and they were deceased.

When searchers found out that it was Todd Guybe in the lake, their reaction was, "No way." We have witnesses saying he was walking south after he left the keg party. Why is he in a lake way to the north of the keg party? It's in the complete opposite direction. Also, investigators were baffled at his body position because if he was a drowning victim, you would expect him to be face down in the water, as most drowning victims are.

But for him to be upright, shoulders out of the water, it doesn't make any sense unless there's ice in the water to kind of prop him up. And there wasn't any ice in the water. His toxicology report showed that in addition to alcohol in his system, he had a very high dose of an antidepressant, something that he wasn't prescribed. And he didn't have any history of mental illness and had never been prescribed any antidepressant in his life.

His body was pristine. It did not have any of the hallmarks, the bloating you would expect from being in water for 21 days. In fact, it was concluded that it was impossible for his body to have been in the water for all 21 days that he had been missing. His autopsy showed that he had almost no water in his lungs, even though his death was classified as an accidental drowning.

When the news broke that this was an accidental drowning, the family and friends pushed for a closer examination of this case because it wasn't adding up. And so a noted pathologist looked at all of the evidence and determined that at most, Todd had been in the water for maybe three days and he had almost certainly been deceased when he was placed in the water, which is why there wasn't any water in his lungs. And it's potentially why he was in that position that he was in, that upright position.

Why are we calling it an accidental drowning still? And where was Todd from the day he went missing for those 15 to 17 days before he was placed in the water? And what did he mean when he was on the phone the night he went missing and said he was in a field and couldn't breathe? And what was all that breathing in the background? Lots of questions on this one. Our next story is called 40 Years Later.

One of the most remote places in the world is Bulldeer Island in Alaska. It's two-thirds of the way to Russia along the Aleutian chain of islands. The nearest inhabited island is about 50 miles away. The weather on Bulldeer Island is pretty brutal, especially during the winter, and there's no electricity there.

In 1944, the United States Army decided they wanted to send five of their soldiers to monitor the weather station on Bulldeer Island. That was like the one thing the island was used for. And so one of the people that was sent on this assignment was a guy by the name of Bud Houston.

Budd was born in Wisconsin and worked in a shipyard before enlisting in the army in 1942. He was a big hunter and outdoorsman, and so the prospect of living on this kind of desolate Alaskan island really appealed to him, and he was excited about the assignment.

In October of that year, Bud was flown out to Baldir Island and he met with the other four soldiers that were going to be living on the island with him. It was going to be those five on the island, no one else is there. And they quickly learned their job of monitoring the weather station was a very low effort job. And so they could do all of their tasks over the course of the day pretty easily and it freed up a lot of time for them to explore the island. And that would actually become their favorite pastime because there really wasn't much else to do there except explore the island.

And so very quickly, they became very familiar with the whole island because it wasn't that big. It was about maybe two and a half miles wide by four and a half miles long.

On March 3rd, 1945, so five months after they've arrived on Bull Deer Island. So by now they know every square inch of the island. They're very comfortable here. They had to do a routine patrol around the weather station. This was something they did multiple times a week. So very routine. And all five of them are sitting in the weather station and Bud says he'll do it. So Bud gets his rifle and he heads outside to do this patrol.

and the other four are just sitting in the weather station. And after about an hour, they realize Bud hasn't come back yet. And this patrol does not take more than 20 minutes.

And so they step outside to see if he's out there. And the weather at the time was very mild. You know, there's no snow on the ground. It's not very cold. It's not very windy. And the visibility this night was pretty good. And so they're looking out over the island and the island has no trees. At the very far end, at the opposite end of where the weather station is, there's one significant sized mountain. But short of that, it's not particularly mountainous. So from their perspective, they could look out over the island and basically see everything. And they don't see him anywhere.

At first, they were not that worried about it because they figure, you know what? He knows what he's doing. He's been here so long. He's probably just out exploring or something. But they decided they would go look for him. They go down to the water. He's not down there. They walk all around the far side of the island. They can't find him. And so by the time they get back to the weather station, they're like, we have to tell the command that we've lost him. So they radio back to higher command and they say, we don't know where he went. He went out on patrol and we didn't hear anything. And now he's gone.

And so a whole bunch of reinforcements came out to the island to look on foot with the other four soldiers, as well as planes and helicopters. And for two days, they looked all over that island for Bud, and they couldn't find him. And you got to remember that there's very few places you could possibly even go on the island that they wouldn't be able to look and see you. And so everyone started to think he must have jumped into the water or fallen into the water because there's nowhere for him to hide on the island.

And so after a couple of days, they were so sure that it was just not possible for him to be on the island that they called the search off and they said he must have fallen into the water. Fast forward 40 years to 1988 and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was studying birds on Bull Deer Island and they made this amazing discovery.

This crew had set up their camp at 1600 feet of elevation on the one large mountain on the far side of the island, basically on the opposite end of the island from the weather station. And one of the crew members happened to just walk around one of the boulders and they looked down and there was this little tiny crevice between the boulder and the ground and he thought he saw something inside of it. And he got down and he looked and he realized there was a skeleton that had been kind of crammed into this tiny little tight space.

And the skeleton had a military uniform on it. It had been kind of balled up, but there was a uniform on what was left of the skeleton. And there was also a rifle that had been jammed down in there as well. And it would turn out to be Bud Houston.

So why did Bud say he was going to go outside and do that patrol, which really just meant walking around the immediate vicinity of the weather station? You're certainly not traveling very far. Why did he say he was going to do that and then walk four and a half miles to the other end of the island and then climb up 1,500 feet to the top of this mountain?

But even if he had a reason to be over there, why would he then force himself into this little tiny crevice? If he was looking for shelter, while the weather was incredibly mild, it would not have been life-threatening to be out in the elements, at least not that first night or even that second night. And he knows the island like the back of his hand. He probably had a little bit more time. He probably could have found a better place for shelter than this awful little crevice.

But if he was at a place where he was seeking shelter under these boulders instead of just walking back to the weather station and getting real shelter, then he had to have been in an emergency situation. That's the only way that makes sense. But if he was in an emergency situation, he would know that his responsibility is not just to survive. It's also to be found again and to make sure you're not obscured underneath a boulder so no one can find you.

This island, it was like the easiest place to be found. There's no trees. There was helicopters overhead and planes. And there's all these people. It's a small space. All he had to do was not be under the boulder 24-7. Maybe during the day when the weather let up, roll out from under the boulder. Let yourself be found.

But that's not what happened. What probably happened is Bud somehow got crammed into that little tiny crevice almost immediately after he left the weather station to do that patrol. But logically speaking, he would not do that to himself. So someone else had to do it. But all the other people on the island were in the weather station at the time this would have been happening. So it really makes you wonder what happened when he walked outside of that weather station. Who

Who or what did he see and what did they do to him? Unfortunately, we'll probably never know.

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On the evening of June 24th, 1986, a 10-year-old boy named Juan Pedro Martinez Gomez bounced around in his seat and smashed his toy cars together in the cab of his father's big red tractor-trailer truck.

Juan was so excited he could barely sit still. He always wanted to go for a ride in his dad's big truck. His dad was a long-haul trucker, but his dad always said no. But Juan had just gotten his best report card ever, and so as a reward for doing so well in school, Juan's father had surprised Juan and Juan's mom with this particular trip.

Their plan was to drive from their hometown in southeastern Spain all the way across the country to the northern coast. And then once they got there, Juan's dad would offload the cargo that he had driven there. Juan and his mom and dad would stick around and kind of make a vacation out of it. Going to the beaches and checking out the beautiful pastures where all the cows would graze. I mean, Juan was super excited.

Juan's dad pulled the truck into this big lot with all these other trucks around, and then Juan's dad turned around and began backing the truck up so it could be paired up with the cargo he'd be hauling to the north coast. It was this huge 25,000 liter tanker that was covered in all these stickers and warning labels, and Juan's father didn't know what this tanker actually contained, but he could tell whatever it was, it was pretty dangerous and also very important.

And so as Juan's dad is backing up skillfully to line up with this tanker, Juan is just sitting in the back seat, absolutely transfixed at how cool his dad is. I mean, this is like the most amazing thing Juan had ever seen.

and so finally juan's dad successfully hitched the truck to the tanker and so once they were all hooked up juan's father yelled out the window and said bye to the people he worked with and then juan's father put in juan's favorite tape cassette into the stereo and turned the music up and then he turned onto the road and began making his way toward the highway

Juan's dad would drive basically all night, and Juan and his mother would basically sleep all night. But they would wake up at about 5 a.m. when Juan's father pulled into the parking lot of a diner that was located just north of the city of Madrid, Spain. They were making great time, so Juan's father told his family they could take their time eating.

When the family did finish their meals, they got up and began walking out towards the truck, and little Juan, he turned around and he waved to the waitresses, and they all waved back. And then the family climbed back into Juan's father's truck, and then before long, Juan was curled up in the backseat trying to fall asleep again, as his father merged onto the highway and began heading towards the stretch of mountain road called the Soma Sierra Mountain Pass.

About 40 minutes later, a man who was also driving in the Soma Sierra Mountain Pass was just driving along when suddenly a huge red tractor trailer truck came barreling toward him from behind, shining their lights into his car. And so this man, you know, he sees this truck approaching so quickly and he tried to get out of the way, but there was nowhere to go. And the truck wasn't stopping. It was honking its horn. And the truck smashed into this guy, which sent his car careening off the road.

but luckily it did not tumble all the way down the mountain. And so this guy's car comes to a stop on the side of the road and the guy he kind of comes to and he feels himself, he's worried he's got a serious injury. He did find a little blood on his head, but overall he felt he was okay. And then he managed to get his door open and he climbed out of his car and he looked a little ways down the road and there was the truck that had hit him. It was now on its side and it was hissing steam and it didn't look like anybody inside the truck was trying to get out.

Now, even though this guy was pretty shaken up from the crash he'd just gotten into, he felt like he was definitely in better shape than whoever was in this truck.

and so he decided he would just go up there and try to help them. But after only taking a few steps, this white van came blazing around the corner and came to a screeching stop on the road right next to where this guy was. And then before the guy could do anything, the sliding door to the van flung open and this woman with blonde hair jumped out and she ran over to him and she said, "I'm a nurse, do you need any help?" And so

And so this guy, he's looking at this woman and he's kind of sizing her up and she did not seem like a nurse. And in fact, for some reason, this guy felt like she just made him really uncomfortable. He couldn't quite put his finger on it.

and then he looked past this woman at the van and he saw the driver looked oddly similar to the woman except it was a man who was driving but he also had very bright blonde hair and he had these striking blue eyes that really stood out even from a distance and then in the passenger seat of this van was this elderly woman who was just staring daggers at this guy who's now talking to this nurse who's right next to him and so the guy's looking at the old woman and the old woman's looking right back

And she really looked mean, like she was not happy to be talking to him. And so the guy finally just said to this woman who was claiming to be a nurse that, you know what? I don't need any help. Go help them. They need help because they haven't gotten out of the truck yet.

The woman just nodded and then she ran back to the van, hopped inside, and the van sped, you know, the hundred feet down the road to where the crashed big red tractor-trailer truck was. And again, the woman hopped out and she rushed over to the truck and she climbed on top of it and she reached down and she took something out of the truck. But from his perspective, you know, a hundred feet back, the guy who had also crashed, he couldn't tell what she had taken out of the cab.

But after she took whatever she took, she climbed off the cab, she did not attempt to help anybody inside of the truck, she jumped back in the white van, and the white van sped off down the road, and they were gone. The guy barely had time to process what had just happened before he began to smell this unbelievably powerful rotten egg smell.

When help arrived, emergency responders immediately realized they had an environmental disaster on their hands. The big red tractor-trailer truck, which was Juan's father's truck, was hauling 25,000 liters of sulfuric acid. And that rotten egg smell they were smelling in the area meant the air was now becoming toxic as the sulfuric acid leaked out and began interacting with the ground and making its way into the nearby river.

So before anybody could even go inside of this truck to see if there were survivors, they had to basically cover it and the surrounding areas with hundreds and hundreds of pounds of sand and lime to try to counteract the acid.

It would take hours to do this, and in that time, nobody came out of the truck's cab. And then finally, when emergency crews were able to go up to the truck and look inside, they discovered that the vehicle's occupants were all dead. However, there were only two bodies. It was Juan's mother and father. Juan was nowhere to be found.

Now, one of the theories was, well, when this crashed, maybe the sulfuric acid landed on Juan's body somehow and literally dissolved him. And so that's why he was not found. But that's not possible because it would take much, much longer for sulfuric acid to totally eat away someone's body. And the body would have to be fully submerged in the acid the entire time. So that could not have happened.

Rescuers would search the entire area deep into the woods in all directions looking for signs of this child, but there were none. And when investigators attempted to recreate this accident to try to figure out what actually caused it and why it happened, what they would learn would only confuse them more.

Juan's father's truck had nothing wrong with it mechanically, meaning the brakes weren't messed up, you know, the accelerator wasn't messed up. There really was no reason why this truck should have crashed unless it was intentional. That's the only way this could have happened.

Also, the truck contains something called a tachometer, which registers every time the truck slows down or stops. And when investigators looked at the record from this tachometer, they discovered that Juan's father had slowed down or stopped 12 different times between leaving the diner and crashing.

But the route from the diner to the crash site was a straight shot with no traffic lights or stop signs. Basically, there had been no reason from the diner to the crash site to ever slow down or stop. But again, Juan's father did 12 separate times. And then also there were traces of heroin that were found in a hidden compartment in Juan's father's truck.

Now, Juan's parents had no criminal record and absolutely no connection to drugs or the cartel, but investigators did consider a theory that, you know, perhaps a drug cartel ambushed Juan and his family, and ultimately Juan was kidnapped.

But there was one more really strange element to Juan's disappearance, and that was that white van that that guy saw right after the crash. Multiple people in the area around the Soma Sierra mountain pass said they saw that exact white van because they all remembered the woman and the man who had that same really bright blonde hair. It just was something that was kind of unique and stood out.

But the police tried to track down this van and the man and the woman and the elderly woman who was also claimed to have been seen inside the van, but no trace of that van was ever found. And also, police were never able to figure out what that woman actually took from inside of one's father's cab before they sped off and disappeared.

Missing person posters of Juan went up all over Spain, and almost immediately, loads of sightings were reported of Juan. But every time the police followed up on these sightings, they never panned out. Interpol, which is a major international police organization, called Juan's disappearance one of the strangest disappearances in all of Europe.

One year after the crash, so in 1987, a driving instructor in Madrid, Spain, was filling out some paperwork in his office when he heard a knock on the door.

When he answered the door, he found there was this elderly woman who appeared to be blind, and with her was a young boy who appeared to be about 11 years old. The driving instructor asked them, you know, how can I help you? And he watched as the elderly woman turned and whispered something into the little boy's ear, and the driving instructor, he could hear her whispering, but he couldn't understand what she was saying. It sounded like a foreign language. In fact, it would turn out they figured out she was speaking Farsi, which is the language spoken in Iran.

The little boy listened to the elderly woman, and then after hearing what she had to say, he turned to the driving instructor and he asked in perfect Spanish, "Where's the U.S. Embassy?" The instructor gave them directions, and then the little boy nodded, and then he and the elderly woman, they turned around, they grabbed each other's hands, and they began walking away. And as they walked away, the driving instructor, he just couldn't help but feel like there was something oddly familiar about these two people. And so he flagged them down and he said, "Come back for a second."

And so the boy and the woman, they came back and the driving instructor, he asked the boy, he said, you know, do you live in Spain? And if you do, how long have you lived here for? And when he asked the boy this, the boy immediately looked really afraid. And then the elderly woman, she turned and she whispered something else into the boy's ear. And then after she was done talking, the boy kind of settled down and he looked at the driving instructor and he said, six months.

And for some reason, at this exact moment, the driving instructor realized why this boy seemed so familiar. He remembered seeing him on all those missing person posters all over the place. And so the driving instructor, he couldn't remember the boy's name and he goes, "Hold on a minute." He turns and he runs inside of his office and he finds one of the posters that said Juan Pedro Martinez Gomez. He grabbed it and he ran back out to show it to them and be like, "Hey, they're looking for you."

when the driving instructor came back to the front door, the boy and the blind old woman were gone. And so the driving instructor, he stepped out, he's looking around, he's yelling out for them, they were gone. Now it's important to understand that to this day, no sightings of Juan have ever been confirmed. And that includes the driving instructor who claimed to have seen Juan. But to this day, Juan's body has never been found. He's still missing and his case is still unsolved.

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, not just this one, but also Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories, and Run Full. Just search for Ballin Studios on any podcast platform and you'll find all of them. If you want to watch hundreds more strange, dark, and mysterious stories, just head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin.

So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.

Imagine you're walking through the park one day and you see a suspicious backpack sitting underneath a bench. You report it to the police and upon investigating, they discover two live pipe bombs inside.

You rush to clear the area before they explode, saving countless lives and preventing injury. Everyone declares you a hero for a fleeting moment until everything changes and you are declared the prime suspect. This was the story of security guard Richard Jewell. After the Centennial Park bombing killed one person and wounded more than 100, the

Public pressure and a media witch hunt pushed a desperate FBI to find a suspect. Despite obvious holes in the case and unethical tactics used by the FBI, security guard Richard Jewell was under pressure to confess. I'm Aaron Habel. And I'm Justin Evans. Join us as we explore the aftermath of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing in the newest season of our podcast, Generation Y, The Olympic Park Bombing.

Follow Generation Y on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Generation Y ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.