← MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
Blind Faith (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)
00:35:21
Our two stories today are about people who believed in something so strongly, that it informed every single choice they made. And unfortunately for them – those choices led them down a very dangerous path.
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Our two stories today are both about people who believed in something so strongly that it informed every single choice they made. And unfortunately for them, those choices led them down very dangerous paths. But before we get into today's two stories, if you're a fan of the strange, dark and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place. Because that's all we do. And we upload two, three, even four times every week. So. So if that's of interest to you, the next time the follow button sneezes in public, instead of politely saying bless you, just scream shut up. Okay, let's get into our first story called the Search for Acacor. Foreign.
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One afternoon in November of 1980, 28 year old John Reed sat at a table on a hotel veranda in the tiny village of Barcelos, Brazil, which was a two day boat ride up a river from the Amazon jungle's largest city of Manaus. And sitting across from John was the legendary chief of the Uga Mongalula tribe, Tatunka Nara. Now, John had been in Barcelos for about 10 days now, and in that time he'd already spoken to Tatunka many times. But still, it was like every conversation they had gave John this incredible sense of awe. He really felt like his whole life had been leading up to this exact moment of being here in Barcelos, about to go on this grand adventure. So Barcelos and Tatunka were very far away from where John had grown up. I mean, this was a very foreign place. John grew up in San Francisco, California. But even growing up in those suburbs. As a kid, he had always dreamed of coming here and literally meeting Tatunka. So it was, like, surreal. He had really done this. And if things from here on out went the way John hoped they would, he might never have to even go back to America, because John was on a bona fide quest. John was in Barcelos to be the person who finally found the long lost city of Occacor. Now, there was almost no record of the city ever actually existing, except for in one book called the Chronicle of Accracor, which was by this author and journalist named Karl Brugger. Carl wrote that Acca Corps was the capital city of a 12,000-year-old civilization similar to the Incas or ancient Egyptians, in that they'd lived thousands of years ago and had a big empire and an extremely advanced civilization for their time. But according to Karl, Akakor and its people were way better because they were descendants from actual gods. When the Europeans eventually came to the Amazonian jungle, the people of Akakor did not get wiped out because they went underground. And it was there underground that they rebuilt their capital and literally hid their civilization from the modern world. And in fact, the legend said that they actually still live there now, guarding a treasure that had been given to them by the gods. Now, most people called Karl's book complete fiction and said that its author just sort of made it up to make money. But John hadn't paid any attention to the naysayers, and. And any possible doubts that he had had had completely disappeared the moment he'd finally met Tatunka. So Tatunka was not only a famous chief who knew the Amazon like the back of his hand, but more importantly, at least to John, he'd actually been interviewed in Karl's book, and he was said to be the one known person who'd actually been to Akakor, who was still alive. And here Tatunka was in the flesh. So sitting across the table from John in all his Amazonian glory, He wore just a loincloth, and he had that same turtle tattoo that the book described. So John knew he was the guy. He was the chief he'd been looking for. And to John, if Tatunka was real, well, then surely everything else in that book was real, too. Right now, though, neither John nor Tatunka were saying anything, which was unusual because normally their meetings were very animated as Tatunka regaled John with all these amazing stories about Accracor and what it was like there in his very heavily accented English. But hearing these stories hadn't been enough for John, who really wanted to know where Accucor actually was so that he could actually see it with his own eyes. Now, so far, Tatunka had not told John where it was. He'd said that the people of Akakor wanted to stay hidden. You know, their survival depended on it, and so he was not going to give up their location. But today, john could feel that something was different. Because just a few minutes ago, John had asked Tatunka again about literally going to Occacor. And now Tatunka had been very quiet for a very long time, like he was thinking about whether or not to finally reveal its location. And so John patiently waited. And as he sat there in this really intense silence, it was like he could almost feel Tatunka's deep wisdom oozing off of him in waves. And then finally his. In his soft, very fragmented English, Tatunka began to speak. Almost nine years later, on an evening in the spring of 1989, John's sister, 35 year old Sandy Reed, pulled into the driveway of her San Francisco area home and got out of her car to check the mailbox. Sandy had just gotten back from her sales job and she was tired and bleary eyed as she, you know, reached into the box and sort of mindlessly pulled out a stack of mail by. But as she began sorting through the mail, the return address on one of the envelopes made her stop. It was a letter that was postmarked from Germany, and Sandy didn't know anybody who lived in Germany, and so she really wasn't sure what to expect as she quickly ripped it open. But as her eyes scanned the lines on the page, her hands began to shake uncontrollably. The letter was from a German detective who said that he was writing about her brother John and that they were sure something bad had happened to him. So John, Sandy's brother, had gone to Brazil almost a decade earlier to find the lost civilization of Accucor, and Sandy and her parents hadn't heard from him since he left. Now, during the first few weeks of John's trip, he'd written letters fairly regularly, but then his last message had come in late 1980, and after that, nothing. Now, of course, Sandy had been worried about her brother, but she also hadn't been that surprised. He had gone radio silent because Sandy and her parents were well aware that Jon was obsessed with Akakor. And not just that he wanted to go on this adventure, find this lost city in the jungle and then never come home. He wanted to stay in the jungle. And so they kind of figured that maybe he, he found occur or maybe he just found another village somewhere. But either way, the way they looked at it is John likely wanted to start a new life somewhere else, somewhere in the jungle, and that's probably what he had done. So for nearly a decade, that sort of became their line of thinking. But now, as Sandy is reading this letter, it was like suddenly her understanding of what was going on with her brother was totally and instantly fractured. Now she was both panicked and also totally confused about the idea that one, John was in trouble and two, like, why is the German police looking for her brother? Why is that happening? Why aren't American police looking for my brother? But as her eyes frantically scanned the page, she learned why. The detectives said they were investigating the death or disappearance of John and at least three other people, including a German citizen who apparently had been lured into the Amazon by a particular book about a place called Occa Core. Now, this book, according to the detective, was complete junk. It was a fabrication. Occacor, not a real place. But the detective believed that someone was killing the people who came looking for it. Now, the detective said they had tried to investigate, but the Brazilian officials were being very uncooperative and he wasn't actually allowed to go to Brazil to collect evidence to try to figure out what happened here. And so basically he was stuck, but he wanted her to know they were looking into her brother. And so by the time Sandy finished reading this letter, she felt like, well, I have to do something. You know, if the German police, if they can't go to Brazil, maybe I can.
- [09:56]
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sure enough, later that same year, in June, Sandy arrived in the city of Manaus in the Amazon and checked into her hotel. She knew from John's letters from 10 years ago before he disappeared, that this was the general area he had been. And so her plan was sort of, roughly speaking, to search the city, turn it upside down, and see what she could learn. Now, obviously this was a big undertaking. Manaus is a big place. But Sandy at this point was all in on this mission. Sandy didn't really know why. You know, for 10 years, basically she had no idea what happened to John. But it was like now she felt like she was being called to do whatever she had to do to go find her brother. So she had quit her sales job, emptied her savings account, bought a flight here, and brought along a tape recorder, like an audio tape recorder, so that she would basically, you know, not miss anything, talk to everybody and learn whatever she could and track it. And her plan basically was to just spend all her time interviewing locals, recording what they say to try to figure out if anybody knew about John or Akakor. But almost as soon as she actually began doing this on the ground in Manaus, she realized how hard it was going to be. I mean, it had been almost a decade since her brother had gone missing. So when she met with the Brazilian law enforcement, they had virtually no details about his disappearance and really couldn't tell her anything useful. And when Sandy spoke to local residents, all she heard were endless rumors with no actual evidence. And on top of that, all the rumors she heard sort of contradicted each other. Some said a white man matching John's description had just recently been seen on the outskirts of Manaus. But then another person claimed John had been shot years ago and his bones had been found deep in the jungle. And then yet another person said, nope, none of that's true. What really happened is John found a tribe in the Amazon. Not the people of Akakor, but another tribe, and he had decided to just live with them. Now, even though all this information she was getting was sort of all over the place, there still was one common reaction that that almost everybody Sandy spoke to had fear. Each time Sandy asked about Acricor, people would sort of clam up like they were scared of it. Now, they all clearly knew about it. And most of the time when she brought it up, she was warned to sort of leave it alone. Like, don't talk about that. And that in some ways, looking for Akakor could get her in trouble or even killed. So as the days wore on, Sandy just felt herself feeling more and more confused and anxious. And each night as she laid in her hotel bed, she wondered if she should just give up, that this was impossible. But then it was like every night after she'd drift off to sleep, she would have a dream about John. It was like he was haunting her. And he would say to her in these dreams that Ac Cor was not what he thought it would be. So just about every morning when she woke up, she'd have this sort of refound sense of purpose, and she would continue to look for her brother, but it just kept going nowhere. However, during her last few days in Manaus, based basically on finances, like she was running out of money and would have to go home soon. During that time period, she heard another rumor, and that was that John had gone into the jungle to find Akakor. But he hadn't gone in there blind. A local chief named Tatunka had told John how to get there. Now, by this point, Sandy had spent three weeks in Manaus and its surrounding areas and really felt completely overwhelmed. I mean, she really hadn't made much progress anywhere. There was definitely a sense of fear around Akakor, and she was even starting to feel that that, like, looking into this could potentially get her into trouble. And in many ways, hearing about this new person, Tatunka, whether they were real or not, it actually made her scared. She would love to learn what he knew, to go find Tatunka and see if he knew where her brother was. But there was also a part of her that just feared even pursuing this lead. It was like all of a sudden, Brazil just felt too overwhelming for her. And so after learning about Tatunka Sandy's reaction was actually to pack up and leave. But after leaving Brazil, Sandy did not just, you know, fly to California and give up on the search for her brother. She just decided to look for her brother, sort of in a roundabout way. She had heard from a local in Brazil that there was a Swiss tourist who might have seen John in the jungle. And so after Sandy left Brazil, she went to Switzerland and spoke to this tourist. And then after speaking with that tourist, she flew to Germany and she met with that detective who had sent her the initial letter she got. But neither the tourist nor the German detective had any new information. So by the end of all that, Sandy still had no answers. And by this point, she also had no money. She had completely drained her savings account trying to find her brother, and it had not worked. Now Sandy considered just going home. I mean, she was broke, she was scared, and really, she hadn't actually gotten anywhere in her search for her brother. But there was still one lead that she had not investigated, and that was Tatunka, because basically it just felt too scary. She'd abandoned it and left for Switzerland and Germany. But Sandy felt like now, if she never went back to Brazil to speak with him, she would never get any real answers. It felt like Tatunca was the key, and she had been cowardly. She needed to go back there. She needed closure. So she went back to America. But she only stayed long enough to earn some quick cash cleaning houses so that she could finance another trip to Brazil on June 21, 1990. So about a year after she had made her first trip, Sandy did return to Brazil. She took a small plane to the village of Barcelos, which she had learned was where Tatunka lived. This time, though, she brought some backup with her. A documentary producer and also a reporter. She felt a lot safer coming here with a group, but also she did want to draw attention and resources to eventually help her with her brother's case. When they landed at the rundown airport, Sandy and her small team deboarded and walked straight into the tiny village. In the time that she had been back in America earning cash, Sandy had done some research on Barcelos. So she knew by now that Karl Brugger's book, the Chronicle of Akakor, the book that, you know, John had been so interested in, that led him on this quest, had really spawned an entire economy in Barcelos since Taurus came to talk to Tatunka and to try to find it, you know, he was in Barcelos. But as far as Sandy could Tell the tourist boom had not done much for the village of Barcelos. It was dirty and the houses were all very run down shacks. She'd read that only about 3,000 people lived there, and between all of them, they only had one phone. And so, as the group wandered around looking for a friendly face to give them directions, Sandy spotted a woman who was hanging her laundry up on a line outside her home. So Sandy approached her and asked if she knew where Tatunka lived. And the woman immediately nodded, which Sandy expected, because Sandy had not just read up on Barcelos, she now knew a lot about Tatunka as well. And she knew that basically everybody in this area knew his name. He was a renowned chief who'd once led an expedition for the famous explorer Jacques Cousteau. And he was a hero, too. One time he had saved the lives of a dozen Brazilian soldiers after their plane had crashed in the Amazon. So the country's secret service was actually in Tatunka's debt. And also, of course, Tatunka was interviewed extensively in the Chronicle of Akakor, that book, and was the only known person who'd actually been to the city and knew its location. But more recently, Tatunka had settled into a quieter life and was running a hotel and giving boat tours to visitors along the Rio Negro. And so Sandy got directions to Tatunka's hotel from this woman. And as Sandy and her team began heading deeper into the village to go meet this guy, Sandy felt a mix of excitement and also fear. I mean, there was just something sort of heavy about finally meeting this guy. Eventually, the group came to what appeared to be a very isolated looking hotel surrounded by a wooden gate. And inside of the gated area, up on the veranda of this hotel was this very lean, shirtless man with a turtle tattooed on his chest. And Sandy knew immediately from the tattoo that that was Tatunka. As Sandy and her crew opened the gate and walked towards Tatunka, she pulled out a photo of her brother and held it up along with, you know, an explanation of why she was there. And Tatunka at first just kind of listened and watched as they approached him. But then as he began to hear what she was saying, he smiled. And in broken English, he told Sandy he was surprised she hadn't come sooner. But Sandy didn't return his smile because as she stared at Tatunka, all she could think of was how wrong everything was. Tatunka's face, the way he spoke, the way he carried himself, none of it made any sense at all. It would turn out those dreams Sandy was having where her brother John would appear to her and tell her that Akakor was not like he thought it would be. It would turn out that was correct. Akakor didn't exist. However, it was not just a fake city created by that author, Karl Brugger, to sell his book. No, it was something much, much weirder than that. That whole book was based almost exclusively on the stories of Tatunka, the legendary Amazonian chief who Sandy was now meeting, you know, in front of this weird hotel. But Tatunka, the man standing in front of Sandy, was not chief of anything. In fact, he wasn't even Amazonian. In reality, this man parading around as Tatunka was just some random German man named Gunther Haak who had fled Germany for the Amazon to avoid paying child support to his ex wife in the 1960s. But when he arrived in the Amazon, he wanted to blend in. But he didn't speak the language and he had this heavy German accent. So what do you do? Well, he created a whole made up story about a long lost civilization that he supposedly descended from, you know, Akakor. The Akakor story was designed by this guy just to keep him from having to pay child support. The problem was the Akakor story, the legend he created, worked too well. Gunther managed to convince local and even national authorities that he was an actual indigenous person. And then fatefully, he also convinced this writer, Karl Brueger, that he really was from this lost civilization and sort of inadvertently created an entire tourism industry based on Occacor. And so when Carl's book came out, Gunther found himself in a bind. To keep his tourist revenue stream afloat, he had to keep pretending that Occacor was real and he knew where it was, while also never letting anybody get there. And both Sandy and the German police believe that to protect this secret, Gunther killed any tourists who insisted on actually visiting Accracor, including Sandy's brother, John Reed. Gunther Haak has never been charged with murder and denies ever hurting anyone. John Reed's body was never found. The author Karl Brugger was shot to death in 1984 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. And rumors still circulate about who killed him and why. And as of 2024, Gunther Haak was confirmed to be alive and still living in Barcelos and still insisting that Acca Corps is real. To this day, explorers still travel to Barcelos to try and find it.
- [23:48]
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Do you love suspense?
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Do you love it when your pets
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The second and final story for this episode is called the Parable. On the night of November 14, 1994, 56 year old DeWitt Finley drove his pickup truck up a snowy single lane highway in the Oregon mountains. It was late, but DeWitt was incredibly alert and it was taking every ounce of his concentration to not crash. It was snowing really, really hard and the road was incredibly icy. Not to mention DeWitt was towing a camper van behind his truck and the van was sort of sliding around and causing DeWitt to feel really unbalanced as he drove. And so as he's driving along, you know, white knuckling here, all he could think about was how having taken this route was such a bad idea. So DeWitt was a traveling salesman and he sold fancy camper vans, which was why he had one on the back of his truck to drive it around from city to city and to show it off to potential new customers. He'd just been in the Oregon coastal town of Coos Bay and was now driving to Grant's Pass, which was in the southern part of the state. Now, the drive should have only taken about two and a half hours, but DeWitt had decided to take a longer, more scenic route that cut through the mountainous national forest. Except that now, instead of experiencing a tranquil, peaceful drive with lush, stunning Oregon scenery, he was stuck in a snowstorm and fighting his way up a steep, heavily forested slope with a cliff on one side. Now, for just about anybody, this, this would be a harrowing experience. But for DeWitt, I mean, he was especially out of his element. He was from sunny Los Angeles, California. Like he never drove in conditions like this and he had Only very recently moved to Montana this past summer with his fiance and two kids. And while Montana did have some harsh winters, he hadn't experienced them yet. So this was, like, really a novel experience. But DeWitt was a very religious man, and so as this drive was spiking his heart rate and making him so stressed out, he's white knuckling his way up this pass, all he began to do was just quietly internally pray. And for a time, this all seemed to work. You know, maybe the prayer was working. He was staying on the road. He was making his way. He thought, I'm gonna get through this. But eventually, the truck began to slide on the slippery conditions, and DeWitt sort of panicked and hit the brakes as hard as he could, which caused the vehicle to slide even more. And then the next few seconds were just a blur of snow and darkness and trees. And then, after what felt like an eternity where he's thinking, oh, my God, I'm gonna go off the cliff, his truck slammed into a snowbank, keeping him from falling off the cliff. After that, everything went quiet and still. And for a moment, DeWitt just sat there, completely stunned. His heart was hammering in his chest, and his whole body was vibrating with adrenaline. But after a few minutes, DeWitt calmed down enough that he was able to kind of assess the situation. You know, number one, he didn't go off the cliff. So that was a huge win. He survived. And then he checked himself out, and amazingly, he didn't appear to have any injuries. And also, from the inside, it seemed like his truck was okay, too. I mean, maybe he dinged up the outside, you know, from hitting the snow bank, but it just seems like he slid off the road and he was basically okay. To DeWitt, this felt like a miracle. He immediately felt like all that praying he had done had worked. You know, God was looking out for him and saved him. However, when DeWitt put his truck in reverse and attempted to drive out of the snow bank, his tires just spun. They couldn't get traction. And so he realized, yeah, I survived the crash, but I may not be able to move, and I am up in the middle of the wilderness of the Oregon mountains. It's snowing like crazy. Like, what do I do? Also, it's the middle of the night. He doesn't have a phone, doesn't have a radio, so he has no way to. To call anyone for help. He also wasn't expecting to be stuck, you know, by the side of the road. So he didn't have food or water or really any provisions. And he also hadn't seen another vehicle for a really long time, so he had no idea how frequently people used this road, especially in the winter. And also, he wasn't even supposed to be on this route, so if anybody went looking for him, they wouldn't look here. However, just as panic began to overwhelm him, DeWitt took a deep breath, said another prayer. God had already saved him once, and DeWitt just had to trust that he would do it again. Somehow, DeWitt was able to calm down enough. Maybe it was his faith that he was able to sleep. However, when he woke up, it was clear one, it's still snowing outside. But worse, it had been snowing clearly all night because his truck was now way more buried in snow. The snow literally made it all the way up to the edge of his window. It's like multiple feet of snow out there. And so DeWitt, he turned his car back on, and he threw it in reverse again, seeing if maybe now he'd be able to back out. You know, pretty unlikely. But as soon as he hit the accelerator, the tires clearly spun. He didn't move. Now it was daylight. And so he's thinking, okay, maybe now I can look around and see a house, a building, or. Or some sign of life somewhere in the distance, just to give me a sense of how close I am to other people. But when he looked out his window, all he could see in every direction were trees and snow. He actually couldn't even see the road anymore and had no idea where it was since he'd gotten all turned around during the crash. And so he's just, like, in this. This whiteout, basically. And so DeWitt at this point, was trying his best not to panic. And so instead he focused on, you know, what do I have? What supplies do I have right now? And he sort of began looking around the inside of his truck, and he found he actually had a lot of useful stuff in here. There were some cushions and a sheet so he could make a bed for himself to curl up in. And he could also use the truck's heater to keep himself warm and to melt snow for drinking water. He'd obviously just have to be, you know, careful not to burn too much fuel. Also, DeWitt had the camper that was attached to the back of his truck, which you would think would be great for a situation like this. You can just live in the camper until you get rescued. Except DeWitt knew this was not really a real camper. It was a demo model. It was unfurnished. There was no Heat, no supplies, nothing. It was really just a shell, so not that useful. But once DeWitt was done doing this mental inventory, even though in some ways he had basically realized I have very little, he actually felt a sense of calm come over him. He felt like, you know what? I have enough to keep me alive for a while, and in that time, I'm gonna be found. And so he would just leave it up to God to save him once again. Two days later, the storm finally let up. But even with the now clear weather, the snow didn't melt. And then soon after that, another storm came and dumped more snow and ice all over his truck. Also during this time frame, DeWitt didn't see any other cars or trucks or plows. So he had a feeling that the road he had crashed on was now so clogged with snow, it wasn't even usable. But even though at this point DeWitt was extremely hungry, I mean, he had no food. It's been several days here. He also was warm and dry inside of his truck. And critically, he was also hydrated. He'd been drinking plenty of melted snow, so he was, you know, surviving as best as he could. And then also to ward off all the negative, intrusive thoughts about what could happen to him out here, DeWitt had begun to pass the time by meticulously crossing off the days in his yearly planning calendar and also writing letters. DeWitt always carried around pen, paper, and envelopes inside of his work bag, which he obviously had with him. So he had begun writing to the people he loved, his fiance, his sons, and even to his boss, to explain what had happened and why he had missed work. And in each letter, DeWitt did not sound scared or sad. In fact, if anything, he seemed rejuvenated. He seemed happy. He would reflect on how much love and joy was in his life and how lucky he was to have that. And he would tell the people he was writing letters to, like his fiance and sons, that he really wasn't worried. He knew he was going to be okay because God was clearly looking out for him. The days turned into weeks, but DeWitt continued to stay warm and basically comfortable and alive, even without any food. But DeWitt believed that his hunger actually was a sign that God was looking out for him. DeWitt had no idea how long somebody could live, literally without eating. But after two months, you know, DeWitt had tracked the days in his calendar. Two months had gone by. DeWitt felt like, I should be dead. I haven't eaten in two months. But he wasn't dead. And he felt like that was a sign God was keeping him alive for his eventual rescue. It has to be. On the morning of May 20, 1995, a teenager, along with his girlfriend, drove up the same mountain road that DeWitt had been on when he got into his accident. And even though it was May, there was quite a bit of snow still, and the road was still quite icy. And about halfway up a particularly steep incline, this teenage kid lost control of his truck. It began to skid, and he went off the road and crashed into a snowbank. Luckily, the teenager and his girlfriend were okay. And for a minute, they just sat there kind of dazed. And then the driver put the car in reverse and tried to move, but the car wouldn't move. The tires just spun. So eventually, the teenager climbed out of the car to examine his vehicle to see if there was serious damage here or if he was just stuck in the snow. But when he did this, when he climbed out of his vehicle, he looked just up the road a ways, and off the side of the road, basically equal to where he was relative to the road, was another vehicle. It was a pickup truck with a camper attached to it that was clearly half buried in the melting snow. And so the teenager told his girlfriend that he was gonna go take a look in case, you know, somebody else had a wreck and they needed help. So this kid, he leaves his girlfriend and he hikes over to the truck. And when he gets there, he can't see inside of it. It's covered with too much snow. But he brushes off some of the snow, revealing one of the windows into the truck. And he looked in, and for a second, he couldn't quite see what was in there. But then eventually he saw it. And when he did, he just gasped and backed up. After DeWitt crashed, he was certain he was going to be rescued. He knew he was in an isolated part of this mountain. I mean, he clearly knew that, but he really believed that God was going to save him. He felt like it was God who kept him from going off the cliff, and now God was going to intervene and save him, that somebody was going to show up and rescue him, effectively because of God. So because of that belief, because of how strongly he believed that DeWitt did not get out of his truck. I mean, he got out maybe to use the bathroom, but for the most part, he stayed in his truck. And unfortunately, had he just gotten out and really looked around, he would have seen there was actually a paved path that, due to the way the winds whip on that side of the mountain, the snow doesn't stick to the ground. And so even with a huge snowstorm, he would have seen a black paved path going down the mountainside and he could have walked it down to civilization and it would have saved him. But DeWitt was so convinced that if he just waited here, somebody would save him because God was going to save him again. He just didn't leave his truck. And then when he began to feel that incredible ache from the starvation, the fact that he wasn't dying, you know, months in with no food, it sort of built that resolve inside of him that clearly God has a plan. Clearly I should be dead right now, and I am not. I need to maintain faith and I'm going to be saved. And in many ways that's beautiful. It's poetic in some ways, but it ultimately led to his death. That teenage driver who happened to get into a car accident up on that mountain road, who then saw the truck and the camper. Well, that was obviously DeWitt's truck and camper. And when the teenager walked over and cleared the window and looked inside, he saw DeWitt, who was deceased, inside of the truck. DeWitt ultimately died of starvation, most likely on January 19th, which is the final day that he crossed off on his calendar. A quick note about our stories they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Ballin podcast Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories is hosted and executive Produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. Our head of production is Zach Leavitt. Produced by Jeremy Bone Story editing by Evan Allen Research and fact checking by Shelly Shue, Samantha Vanhus, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway and Camille Callahan Research and fact checking supervision by Steven Ear Audio editing and post produced by Wit Locascio and Cole Locasio, Perry Crowell and Jordan Stidham Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain Production coordination by Samantha Collins Production support by Antonio Minotta and Delaina Corley Artwork by Jessica Claugston Kiner Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin podcast you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts plus on Apple Podcasts or visit siriusxm.com podcastplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So that's gonna do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time. See ya.
- [39:13]
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- [39:48]
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