103\. Terrifying True Urban Legends: Bodies, Bodies, Bodies
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There's a lonely span of highway in Turkey, just south of the Black Sea, the D-100. It stretches for hundreds of miles across the entire country, from Bulgaria to Iran. And if you were driving along it at night, you'd find long stretches of near darkness between the scattered towns. The headlight beams would be the only light for miles. It's incredibly eerie as you're winding through the mountains trying to find your destination.

And because of that, there's a lot of urban legends about this road, specifically one that comes to mind from a small town called Kargalei Hanbaba, two and a half hours east of Istanbul.

The legend says that one night, just after midnight, the townspeople of Kargalei Hanbaba were awoken by the unmistakable sound of a car crash. One man was awake at the time, and he described it like a large crunch,

followed by other large crunches, like cars were just piling up on one another. He hurried out of his house down towards the D-100, which cut through their town. And as he approached, he could smell something burning, acrid and horrible, and there was smoke in the air.

In the faint light from a cracked headlight, he watched a dozen passengers rush out of their cars and flee across the road. He ran towards them, trying to help, but before he could reach them, he heard screams erupt from the group.

The man ran the last few yards to the highway, but could only watch in horror at what unfolded. As each of the passengers took a step onto the highway, the moment their foot touched the concrete, they started to melt. He watched as a dozen people writhed in agony and cried out for help, but there was nothing he could do. Then one by one, they disappeared.

Today, that legend is passed around by travelers who have to traverse the D-100 through that section. Watch out for the demon road, they say. It can swallow you whole. And they say that you better pray that you don't break down in that town because if you have to step foot on that stretch of road, you'll melt like a firecracker popsicle on a hot day.

Now, there are plenty of urban legends about road trips. I mean, we've covered some of them on this show. Drivers who are actually ghosts, murderous hitchhikers, or even possessed cars that try to run other drivers off the highway. But the road itself, swallowing a dozen people down to the depths below, well, that's a wild, unique twist. And it's not like anything I've ever heard before.

But what if I told you there was a true story behind this legend that is, dare I say, even more upsetting than the legend itself? You'd probably say, of course there is, Kaylin. This is Heart Starts Pounding. It's literally what I listen to this podcast for. Well, my spooky little listeners, you are in luck.

This is Heart Starts Pounding and I'm your host, Kaelin Moore. And today we're talking about three times that the legends were true. Now, I love sitting here in my study reading through old urban legends, and I will say some of these come from you guys. So if you grew up in a town where legends were passed around, you can always write to me. There's a forum on my website, heartstartspounding.com.

I want to get back to the story, but first I want to shout out this community. If you're listening to the ad-supported version on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts, thank you so much. Our sponsors help make this show possible. And if you're a patron or an Apple podcast subscriber, I'm so thankful for your support. Seriously.

Actually, this week, I did want to give a special shout out to our listener, Emma, who reached out to me to let me know that she's getting her PhD in the history of madness. I think that is so cool. I seriously love you guys. And please always let me know what sort of macabre or morbid things you guys are doing with your lives for work or just for pleasure. OK, let's get back to the story. Ready, Jinx?

And as always, listener discretion is advised. It was August 11th, 1965. A commercial passenger bus was traveling overnight from Istanbul to Ankara, a distance of about 270 miles or 443 kilometers. There were 40 people on board in total. Their heads leaned against windows, gazing out into the darkness while the driver trekked through the night.

At around 2:00 AM, the bus reached this 100 mile stretch of the highway that was especially sparse and very dark. There was barely any light but the moon and passengers looking out the windows wouldn't have been able to see much.

The driver, a man named Ozdemir Suer, had taken this route dozens of times. He didn't mind that there was no light. He could probably do it in his sleep. Just after 3:00 AM, the bus was cruising through Kargalei Hanbaba, a small village of about 1,000 residents, when the driver saw something out in the road in front of him.

It was a dark shape in the middle of the highway that was rapidly approaching. Through the darkness, he couldn't judge how far away it was. That is, until it was too late.

It was a broken down tanker truck. The bus slammed into the back of the tanker. The driver lifted his head. He was alive by some miracle. And so he turned around to check on his passengers, fearing the worst. He saw though that they were shaken up, but no one was injured. And actually some of them were still even asleep, undisturbed by the commotion. Thankfully, this all seemed like a minor accident.

But as the driver looked back out into the road, the color drained from his face. Through the windshield, he saw plumes of smoke rising up. And worried that the engine had caught fire, he swung the front doors open and turned back towards the passengers. Everyone needed to get off of the bus immediately. If the fire spread to the gas line, the whole thing could explode.

So, everyone did as they were told. They stood up from their seats and they ran towards the front exit. Smoke was now clouding through the open door, so people had to cover their mouths as they ran. The driver ushered everyone down the steps, but as the first group of people stepped onto the road, the pavement felt unusually hot. They could hardly see the ground because of the smoke,

but the burning sensation was climbing up their feet towards their ankles and legs. The passengers on the road actually started to fall to the ground in pain, feeling like they were being burned alive. At that point, a group of townspeople had gathered after they heard the commotion, and they watched in horror as the passengers fell to the ground

and their skin started melting off of them wherever they made contact with the pavement.

But the strange thing was, there was no fire anywhere. Through the murky, swirling smoke, one of the passengers spotted a drainage ditch filled with water on the other side of the highway. So the driver and a few of the passengers made a beeline for safety, running around the people that were writhing in pain and screaming for help. Desperate for relief from the burning pavement,

They all jumped into the water, safe from whatever invisible force was burning the others. But the water burned worse than the pavement. The townspeople heard the screams of each passenger as their bodies hit the liquid and they watched as their heads went below the surface but never came back up.

And that's because it wasn't water in the ditch. The broken-down tanker truck had been carrying nitric acid, an extremely corrosive chemical that can dissolve skin in high concentrations.

Now, nitric acid is actually one of the most commonly used acids in acid attacks because of its ability to melt skin so quickly. It's also used in the creation of explosives and sometimes fertilizer, which is maybe why the truck was carrying it.

When the bus ran into the truck, the tank was damaged and acid started to spill all over the road and down into the drainage ditch. When the water that was in the drainage ditch mixed with the acid, it caused an exothermic reaction which released a huge amount of heat and made all of the water in the ditch boil and create a huge amount of steam.

So there wasn't an engine fire. The smoke and the burning in their feet was all caused by the spill. And instead of jumping into a ditch of water, a dozen passengers had leapt to their deaths in a pool of undiluted acid. Their bodies were dissolved in moments. Those still standing on the road suffered severe burns and several did die later at the hospital from their injuries.

But many of the bodies were never recovered. They had completely dissolved. So the victims' family members constructed a monument next to the crash site listing their names. And a white marble structure still stands there today. And if you ever find yourself on that long stretch of highway, you can actually stop on the side of the road and read the names yourself, one by one.

But, according to the locals, don't get out of your car because you're not going to want to find out what happens if your feet meet the pavement. This episode is brought to you by Hero Bread.

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That's hsp at h-e-r-o dot c-o. College holds a mythic place in American culture. It's often considered the best four years of your life and hailed as a beacon of integrity and excellence.

But beyond the polished campus tours, there are stories you won't find in the admissions pamphlets. - The higher-ups are concerned about one thing, and that is avoiding scandal. - It's no wonder that college campuses capture the nation's attention, especially in moments of upheaval.

I'm Margo Gray. Each week on the Campus Files podcast, we bring you a new story. It was the biggest academic scandal in the history of college sports and probably in the history of academia. On Campus Files, we cover everything from rigged admissions to the drama of Greek life.

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Our next story takes us all the way over to India, to the base of the Nanda Devi mountain. This mountain sits nestled in the Himalayan mountain range and is the second tallest mountain in all of India, with an elevation almost as high as a plane's cruising altitude.

And legends have surrounded this mountain for as long as humans have lived by it. But there's one particular one that I wanted to share with you that blends modern and ancient folklore.

So the legend says that a hundred years ago, there were two young boys who lived by the base of the mountain. And one day, they were playing tag and started chasing each other higher and higher up the mountain. They were laughing and squealing with excitement and they weren't paying attention to how high they had gone. When all of a sudden, one of them stepped on something that snapped like a twig.

They looked out and they realized that they had made it halfway up the mountain and snow was now surrounding them. But even more surprising was there, below their feet, were bones. Thousands and thousands of human bones, skulls and all. The two boys looked at each other in disbelief, but not because of the amount of bones they had found.

No, because they figured they must have found the goddess Nanda Devi's graveyard. So there was an ancient legend to this mountain, one that said the goddess Nanda Devi, who the mountain is named after, killed an entire town who she felt didn't respect her.

In the legend, the king of an ancient civilization in the area marries a princess, but they don't properly give thanks to the goddess Nanda, so the goddess doesn't attend their wedding. The king wants to make it up to Nanda, so he invites her to his home, but when she's inside, he doesn't offer her any water.

This angers the goddess even more. Finally, the king says he's going to make it right, so he leads his kingdom up Nanda's mountain. But when the goddess comes down, she sees the parade as a disgusting display of the king's ego. The subjects are praising him, not her, and there's dancers who are half naked and gyrating. This was not a celebration for Nanda, she declared. It was a mockery.

In her anger, the goddess Nanda hurled hail down at the townspeople and it hit them in the head like massive frozen bullets. Then she deployed an avalanche which buried them all at the lake. And the boys thought that that must have been the lake they stumbled upon. The legend of the two boys has always just felt like that though, a legend.

Anyone who looks at the mountain would see how difficult it would be for two young boys to traverse halfway up in an afternoon. But the locals had always wondered, are the bones of the people Nanda killed really up there? Is there some truth to that legend?

Well, in 1942, a mountain ranger named Hari Kishan Madhwal was hiking through Nanda Devi National Park on an ecological survey mission when he came upon a lake nestled in a small valley.

Actually, Hari thought calling it a lake might be too generous. It was only 130 feet wide, which was less than an Olympic-sized swimming pool. It sat at 15,000 feet elevation in a bowl surrounded by mountain peaks fed by the melting glacier runoff.

It was the warmer months when he was up there, but the lake was still frozen at the rim, which made him think that it wasn't all that deep. And as he approached the lake, all that he could hear was the rhythmic crunch of his boots over gravel and twigs hidden under a light covering of snow.

The closer he got to the lake though, the louder the twig snapping sound got, and also lower, like he was breaking entire branches. But scanning the area, Hari realized that there were no trees around him. Then, Hari noticed a small pile of rocks a few feet from the shore with a few dark fuzzy patches growing on them, lichen perhaps. He pulled out his notebook and bent down to examine it more closely.

It was an unfamiliar black color and he didn't recognize the growth pattern, a new species perhaps. So he picked up one of the rocks to collect a sample, except it wasn't a rock.

Hari was holding a human skull. The patch of lichen on it was hair and skin, semi-preserved by the frozen lake. Hari flung it back to the pile on the ground, and that's when he saw that they were all skulls, at least a dozen of them. And retracing his steps, he kicked away the top layer of slushy snow from the path,

revealing even more bones. Every hollow branch pop had actually been a femur, a tooth, a rib. Hari scanned the shore, stupefied. He was standing in a mass grave. There were thousands of bones scattered around him from hundreds of bodies.

When Hari returned from his survey and reported what he had found at the lake, officials feared the worst. It was at the height of World War II that he found those bones. So they assumed that they may have belonged to Japanese soldiers who died during an attempt at a surprise invasion. But many of them had heard the old legend of goddess Nanda, and they wondered if the bones could be from her time.

So a few months later, a group went up to inspect the bones and they found amongst the remains scattered artifacts like arrowheads, shoes, and jewelry. These were not the bones of Japanese soldiers. Some of these remains were over a thousand years old, likely from the eighth century. Other skeletons in the area still had some skin and hair caked to parts of them, which made them seem like they weren't quite as old.

And that's when one of the researchers picked up a human skull to inspect it, just a little closer. And there, in the back of the skull, was a hole, like the person had suffered a sharp blow to the head. The group picked up more of the skulls and noticed that most of them had similar injuries, a sharp blow to the head.

Could it have been from hail? Like in the story of Nanda Devi. The expedition team was baffled. Why had hundreds of people come to this lake in an isolated and treacherous location in the mountains? And what killed them all?

Well, one of the first theories proposed was that the lake had been used as a cemetery by a local civilization at some point. Maybe there had been some kind of epidemic and they took their dead to the lake to avoid the spread of disease, which is maybe why there were so many people there from the same era.

Another suggested that these were the remains of a defeated army during the Daghra Tibetan War in 1841. There were reports of a band of 70 surviving soldiers who retreated home through the mountains, and perhaps these were their fallen arms men. But anyone who looked at the area could tell that some of these bodies were older than just 100 years.

For almost 80 years, no one had any answers as to who the people at the lake were. That is, until 2019, when the mystery of Skeleton Lake got even stranger. So in 2019, a group of scientists ran the first comprehensive DNA study of the bones using samples from 38 individuals, and it turned...

the previous theories about this lake on their head. First, however the bones got there, it actually happened at different times over a span of a thousand years. The oldest samples are dated to the 7th century, the most recent ones to the 1800s. Instead of one mass extinction event, carbon dating showed two distinct periods of time.

So the theory became that the groups were travelers who were coming to the mountain for a festival called Nanda Devi Rajat, which was held every 12 years since the 8th century.

It's possible that the bones are the remains of people who died making the pilgrimage. But there's a huge gap from 985 to the 1800s. So what happened to all of the travelers in that time? I mean, maybe they just all got lucky and no one died. But even twistier yet...

DNA testing showed the bodies had different ancestries. Most were East Asian and seemed to come from the area, but in the group of skeletons that were dated from the 1800s,

14 of them were Greek, specifically from the Isle of Crete, 3,000 miles away. This was beyond baffling to the researchers, and it kind of threw the theory that they were there for a festival in the mountains out the window. Why would visitors from Greece travel all the way to this mountain for the festival? But if it wasn't the festival, what brought them to the mountains? And what killed them? Well,

Many locals, to this day, say it was the goddess Nanda, and for now, that might be just the best guess we have.

There are plenty of urban legends around the world that feature imposters. Black-eyed children that play on the sympathy of strangers only to reveal themselves as demonic creatures. And maybe you've heard the one where Avril Lavigne secretly died 20 years ago and was replaced by a lookalike named Melissa. These legends range from downright terrifying to kind of odd.

This isn't a new fear. These imposter urban legends come from folklore stemming from thousands of years ago. In Irish and Scottish folklore, these imposters are called changelings. In most versions of these legends, malevolent fairies kidnap human babies and replace them with an other. It might have been a wooden carving of a baby that was enchanted to look like a real child.

Sometimes the changeling was a fairy baby that had been rejected. In any case, the human was stolen, raised by the fairies, and the replacement, the changeling, typically died soon after the swap.

But changelings weren't exclusively children. Certain legends claimed that teenagers and sometimes even adults were kidnapped if the fairies thought that the real person was worth it, like if they were particularly beautiful or talented. The myth of the changeling is one of the longest surviving legends from folklore that still appears in urban legends today.

So why would a legend that someone was stolen in the middle of the night and replaced with someone else persist for so long? Is it maybe because there's real stories from our world that keep reinforcing it? Are there real stories of someone being replaced, of real imposters infiltrating our world that keeps spreading further and further until they become urban legends? Well,

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On April 26th, 2006, nine college students in Indiana piled into a van. They were on their way to set up a banquet for the inauguration of the new president of their school, Taylor University, and they figured that they should all carpool together. The group was driving towards the university on I-69 when, in the distance, a large semi truck was coming down the road in their direction. It was kind of swerving, as if the driver was drunk.

But as the truck got closer, it became apparent that the driver was in a much worse position than that. He was fast asleep at the wheel. And before the group could do anything, the semi-truck veered and barreled into the van.

A few hours later, Don and Susie Van Ryn got one of the worst phone calls any parent could get. Their 22-year-old daughter, Laura, had been in a serious car accident and was now in critical condition at the hospital.

Susie hung up the phone in utter shock. No one ever thinks that will happen to their loved one. She couldn't break down now though. So she went upstairs, she woke up Laura's sister, Lisa, and she held it together enough to share the news with her. Within an hour, the whole family was packed and in the car heading to Laura's bedside.

I don't know what they were expecting to see, but the scene at the hospital was horrible. Laura was lying in a hospital bed, completely comatose. Her face was covered in bandages and there were tufts of her blonde hair peeking out over them. There were tubes all over her and seeing her this way was really devastating for her family. Her face was so bruised and swollen, she hardly looked like herself.

A doctor came into the room and told them just how lucky their family was, though five other friends had all died in the collision.

Susie could hardly handle that news, so she just thanked God for sparing her daughter. She held onto her faith that Laura would wake up, and she sat by her side day and night, talking to her, singing her favorite songs. Laura had always been such a bright, happy child that Susie had used the pet name Sunshine. And now she took her daughter's hand, ignoring the IV line that was taped to her skin, and sang to her.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. Please, God, don't take my sunshine away. Susie prayed every day.

Eventually, Laura's five other friends were buried. Without Laura there to say goodbye, there was a vigil held for them at the school. And each day, Laura's family would look at her and worry that she would be next, that she would be buried with her friends. But after a few weeks, she woke up from her coma. But she had a very long road to recovery ahead of her. Laura struggled to speak. She couldn't really say more than a few words at a time.

But the doctors assured her family that this was to be expected. Laura had suffered extreme trauma and it was going to take a while for her to get back to normal. They warned that she would probably have gaps in her memory and might become confused easily. She also might use the wrong words for things as her brain reformed neurological pathways. Their support was essential to helping her along though. So

The family made sure that one of them was by her bedside day and night. And one afternoon, Laura's sister, Lisa, was watching over her, reading her a book. The swelling was starting to go down and her sister was starting to look more like herself. Well, actually, Lisa put the book down and gave her sister a good look. Had Laura's hairline always been like that?

Well, it probably changed a bit because of the stitches on her scalp. That was easy to write off. But then one day, Lisa was talking to a nurse who mentioned that Laura's belly button was pierced.

That was news to Lisa. And the sisters talked about everything. Like, Laura had literally called her sister once to tell her she was switching shampoos. Why would she have kept a body piercing a secret? Lisa wouldn't have told their parents if that's what she was worried about. But Lisa started thinking about other things that had seemed strange once Laura woke up. Like,

Lisa had been so happy when her sister first awoke that she cried. She held her sister's hand and she looked into her now open eyes, eyes that seemed more gray than blue. She thought maybe that was a side effect of the head injury, but now she wasn't so sure. Lisa kept reassuring herself though.

These were silly worries. All that mattered now, the only thing that mattered, was that Laura was alive, recovering more and more every day. One day, though, when Lisa was sitting by her sister's bed, Laura's boyfriend, Aaron, ducked his head into the room. Laura had recently been moved from the critical ward, and that meant that non-family members were finally allowed to visit.

Aaron had stopped by the previous two days also, but Laura had been asleep. And seeing that she was awake now, he took a few steps into the room. Lisa stood from her chair. She was going to give them a few minutes alone. So Aaron took her place at Laura's bedside and reached for her hand. But there was no real reaction from Laura. No smile. She just stared at Aaron. And when he leaned in to kiss her cheek, Laura kind of flinched.

Her eyes were wide open, bewildered, like she didn't recognize him almost. That seemed crazy though, they had been together for years. The next afternoon, Lisa sat in the hospital room with her parents and she told them what happened with Aaron, but they reminded her that the doctors had warned them about this. Laura was just confused, it didn't mean anything.

But Lisa was having a harder time letting go of her questions today. A nurse entered with a wheelchair to take Laura for her physical therapy session. And she asked if any of the family members would like to accompany her. Having a familiar face in the room can sometimes be helpful. So Lisa quickly volunteered. She would play cheerleader while her parents took a break and grabbed some lunch.

Don and Susie tried not to fuss over Laura too much as the nurse helped her into the wheelchair, and Don promised to bring her a bag of salt and vinegar chips, her favorite. Susie kissed her forehead, wishing her good luck in her session, and Lisa saw the same wide, muddled look in Laura's eyes. And then, as the nurse wheeled the chair out of the room, Lisa heard her sister mutter under her breath,

"False parents." And it sent shivers down Lisa's spine. During the session, Laura was working on her fine motor skills, practicing picking up things and using them like cutlery and markers. And Lisa applauded as her sister successfully picked up and uncapped her third marker. It was slow, but it was definitely steady progress. A few days ago, she couldn't even bring a spoon all the way to her mouth.

The therapist set a piece of paper in front of Laura. Did she want to try writing a few words today? How about something simple, like her name? Laura concentrated and carefully formed letters on the page, and she proceeded to write down, with a shaky hand, W-H-I-T-N-E-Y, Whitney H.

Immediately, alarm bells went off in Lisa's mind. "That's okay," the therapist reassured her, trying to cover up her disappointment. "It was normal for Laura to not remember her own name. "This session was about her motor skills, not her memory, "and she was doing a great job today. "They should just stop there for the day." As she wheeled Laura back to her hospital room,

Lisa's head was spinning. This was bad. This was really, really bad. Lisa stopped walking and she tabulated all of the small concerns from the last few weeks, realizing that they were adding up to something much bigger. And she knelt down in front of Laura and looked at her squarely into her eyes. The eyes that were now definitely a different color than they were before.

"What's your name?" she asked. And the woman in the chair took a determined breath and then whispered, "Whitney." Lisa finally said what she had been thinking all week. "You're not my sister." The woman in the chair shook her head, tears welling in her eyes. And then she whispered again, "Whitney." Lisa was devastated.

because this meant that her worst fear had happened to Laura. Demanding answers, Laura's family raised the alarm with the hospital doctors, insisting that they check dental records to confirm her true identity. And they came back and confirmed that, yes, this woman was not Laura. The woman that they stood vigil for for five weeks, the woman that they prayed for, sang to, read to, was named Whitney Serak.

She was a fellow college student at Taylor University and one of the passengers in the van during the accident. She had been declared dead by first responders, but no one at the coroner's office had actually done any tests to confirm the identities of the other people killed during the crash. Whitney's own family had been too distraught to see her body in the morgue. They wanted to remember her as she was, not broken and bloody.

First responders claimed that the crash site was very chaotic. The semi-truck had slammed head-on with the passenger van, shredding through the metal. They had done their best to identify the victims based on the personal items that they found on the scene. And they found Whitney's purse next to Laura's body. And based on their similar physical appearance, height, weight, blonde hair, bluish eyes, they made an assumption.

And in this case, it was the wrong one.

Even as Laura's family fell into grief over their daughter, Susie made sure the hospital immediately called Whitney's family to tell them what happened. It was two in the morning, but she couldn't let the girl's mother keep thinking she had lost her daughter for a single second. And this time, when she saw the faces of her mother, father, and sister, there was no doubt in her eyes, no vacant confusion. Whitney recognized all of her family immediately.

Laura's family didn't hold any ill will toward Whitney or her family. They focused on mourning Laura, never forgetting that four other people lost their lives in the crash too. And while the truth was a relief for Whitney, it brought struggles of its own. She had heard the details of the funeral her parents had held a month earlier, what people had said at her memorial service. She grappled with survivor's guilt. Why hadn't the real Laura been spared? What

purpose was Whitney supposed to fulfill? And it took Whitney several years to fully recover from her injuries. She was eventually able to return to Taylor University and she completed her degree in psychology. She wrote a book about her experience and what it meant to her. She wrote that she still feels kinship with Laura, like she's living for both of them now.

The story of Whitney and Laura has become sort of an urban legend of its own. The town still talks about how once the wrong girl was buried, though they don't always get all of the details right. And the story spreads and it spreads and it spreads until it's almost indistinguishable from folklore.

And that's why I love telling these stories, so that we can all understand the real story of the real people behind some of these legends. Because, like I say, here at Hearts, Arts, Pounding, in our little rogue detecting society headquarters,

Sometimes, the legends are true. But that's all I have for you today. Next week, I hope you will join me again for our Valentine's Day episode, for those of you who celebrate Tales of Poisoning. One that you're not going to want to miss. And until then, stay curious.

Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Additional research and writing by Abigail Cannon. Sound design and mix by Petrie Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com. Until next time, stay curious.