Blind Faith (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

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 and you've come to the right place because that's all we do and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So if that's of interest to you, the next time the fall of buttons sneezes in public, instead of, you know, politely saying, you know, "Bless you, just scream shut up!"

Okay, let's get into our first story called "The Search for Acquire."

One afternoon, in November of 1980, 28-year-old John Reed sat at a table on a hotel veranda in the tiny village of Barcelo's Brazil, which was a two-day boat ride up a river from the Amazon Jungle's Largest City of Manouse.

“And sitting across from John was the legendary chief of the Uga Mangalula tribe, Tatunca”

Nara. Now, John had been in Barcelo's for about 10 days now, and in that time, he'd already spoken to Tatunca 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 Barcelo's about to go on this grand adventure. So Barcelo's and Tatunca 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 Tatunca,

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 Barcelo's to be the person who finally found”

the long loss city of Ocakor. Now, there was almost no record of the city ever actually existing, except for in one book called The Chronicle of Ocakor, which was by this his author and journalist named Carl Bruger. Carl wrote that Ocakor was the capital city of a 12,000 year old civilization, similar to the Inca's or ancient Egyptians, and that they'd lived thousands of years ago and had a big empire, and an extremely advanced civilization

for their time. But, according to Carl, Ocakor 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 Ocakor 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 Carl's book "Complete Fiction" and said that it's author just sort of made it up to make money. But John hadn't paid any attention to the naysayers. In any possible doubts that he had had, completely disappeared, the moment he'd finally met to Tumka. So, Tumka 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 Carl's book, and he was said to be the one known person who'd actually been to Ocakor who was still alive. And here, Tumka was in the flesh, 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 Tumka was real, well then surely,

everything else in that book was real too. Right now, though, neither John nor Tumka were saying anything, which was unusual because normally their meetings were very animated. As Tumka,

regaled John with all these amazing stories about Ocakor, and what it was like there,

and is very heavily accented English, but hearing these stories hadn't been enough for John, who really wanted to know where Ocakor actually was, so that he could actually see it with his own eyes. Now, so far, Tumka had not told John where it was. He'd said that the people of Ocakor wanted to stay hidden. You know, they're 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,

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 Tumka's deep wisdom oozing off of him in waves, and then finally, and his soft, very fragmented English, Tumka 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. 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 loss civilization of Ocarcore, 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 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 John was obsessed with Ocarcore, 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 figure that, you know,

“maybe he found Ocarcore, 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 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 detective 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 Ocarcore. Now, this book, according to the detective, was complete junk.

It was a fabrication. Ocarcore, 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. 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. Sure enough, later that same year, in June, Sandy arrived in the city of Manauce 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, Manauce 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 Ocaquard. But almost as soon as she actually

began doing this on the ground in Manauce, she realized how hard it was going to be. I mean,

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 rumours”

with no actual evidence, and on top of that, all the rumours 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 Manauce. But then another person claimed John had been shot years ago, and his bones have 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 Ocaquard, 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 almost everybody Sandy spoke to had. Fear. Each time Sandy asked about Ocaquard, 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 Ocaquard could get her in trouble, or even killed. So, as the days were 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 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 Ocaquard was not what he

thought it would be. So, just about every morning when she woke up, she'd have the sort of re-found 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 manals, 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 Ocaquard, but he hadn't gone in their blind. A local chief named Tatunca had told John how to get there. Now, by this point, Sandy had spent three weeks in manals in 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

Ocaquard, 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 Tatunca, whether they were real or not, it actually made her scared. She would love to learn what he knew, to go find Tatunca 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 Tatunca, Sandy's reaction was actually to pack up and leave. But after leaving Brazil, Sandy did not just 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 Tatunca. Because basically, it just felt too scary. She had 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 21st, 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 Barcelona, which she had learned was where Tatunca 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, 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 deported 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 Barcelona. So she knew by now

in that led him on this quest, had really spawned an entire economy in Barcelona. Since tourists

“came to talk to Tatunca and to try to find it, you know, he was in Barcelona. But as far as Sandy”

could tell, the tourist boom had not done much for the village of Barcelona. It was dirty in the houses were all very rundown shacks. She'd read that only about 3,000 people lived there. In 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

Tatunca lived and the woman immediately nodded, which Sandy expected. Because Sandy had not just

read up on Barcelona's, she now knew a lot about Tatunca as well. And she knew that basically

everybody in this area of new his name. He was a renowned chief who 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 plan had crashed in the Amazon. So, the country's secret”

service was actually in Tatunca's debt. And also, of course, Tatunca was interviewed extensively in the Chronicle of Acquora that book and was the only known person who'd actually been to the city and knew its location. But more recently, Tatunca 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 Tatunca's hotel from this woman. And as Sandy and her team began heading deeper into

the village to go meet the sky, Sandy felt a mix of excitement and also fear. I mean, there was just

something sort of heavy about finally meeting the sky. 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 Tatunca. As Sandy and her crew opened”

the gate and walked towards Tatunca, she pulled out a photo of her brother and then held it up, along with, you know, an explanation of why she was there. And Tatunca, 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 Tatunca,

all she could think of was how wrong everything was. Tatunca'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, you know, Oca Corps was not like you thought it would be. It would turn out that was correct. Oca Corps didn't exist. However, it was not just a fake city created by that author,

Carl Bruger to sell his book. No, it was something much, much weirder than that. That whole book was based almost exclusively on the stories of Tatunca, the legendary Amazonian chief who Sandy was now meeting, you know, in front of this weird hotel. But Tatunca, 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 Tatunca was just some random German man named Gunther Hawk, 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-loss civilization that he supposedly descended from, you know, Oca Corps. The Oca Corps story was designed by the sky, just to keep him from having to pay child support. The problem was, the Oca Corps 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, faithfully, he also convinced this writer, Carl Bruger, that he really was from this lost civilization and sort of inadvertently created an entire tourism industry based on Oca Corps. 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 Oca Corps 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 the secret, Gunther killed

Gunther Hawke has never been charged with murder and denies ever hurting anyone.

“John Reed's body was never found. The author, Carl Bruger, was shot to death in 1984 in Rio de Janeiro,”

Brazil, and rumors still circulated about who killed him and why. And as of 2024, Gunther Hawke was confirmed to be alive and still living in Barcelona, and still insisting that Oca Corps is real. To this day, explorers still travel to Barcelona to try and find it. The second and final story for this episode is called The Parable. On the night of November 14th, 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 campervan 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 campervans, 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 just been in the Oregon coastal town of Kusbe, 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 forest at slope with a cliff on one side. Now, for just about anybody, 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 fiancé 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 going to be his white knuckling his way up this past. 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 going to 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 going to 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's survived.

And then he checked himself out and, and amazingly, he didn't appear to have any injuries. And also, from the inside, it seemed like his truck was okay, too. Maybe he dinged up the outside,

you know, from hitting the snowbank, 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 snowbank, 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 call anyone for help. He also wasn't expecting to be stuck, you know, by the side of the roads we 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,

DeWitt took a deep breath, said another prayer, you know, 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, you know, maybe it was his faith that he was able to sleep. However, when he woke up, it was clear, you know, 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 tire is 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 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 at 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 white out, 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 in 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 he 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 un furnished. 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,

you know, 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 going to be found. And so he would just leave it up to God to save him once again. Two days later, the storm finally led 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 in 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 workback, which he obviously had with him. So, he had begun writing to the people he loved. His fiancé, 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 fiancé 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 assigned that God was looking out for him. DeWitt had no idea how long somebody could live literally

without eating. But after two months, DeWitt had tracked the days in his calendar, two months had gone by, DeWitt felt like I should be dead. I have an 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 20th, 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,

had began to skid and he went off the road and crashed into a snowbag. Luckily, the teenager and

“his girlfriend were okay. And for a minute, they just sat there kind of daysed. 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 away 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 going to take a look, in case 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 mountain side 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 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 in the camper. Well, that was obviously Dewitt's

truck in 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. Ballenpodcast, Strange Dark and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballen. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. Our head of production is Zach Levitt. Produced by Jeremy Bohn. Story editing by Evan Allen. Research and fact checking by Shelley Xu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Schumway, and Camille Callahan. Research and fact checking supervision by Stevenier. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit La Cassio and Cole La Cassio.

Perry Crowell and Jordan Stitham. Mixed in Mastered by Brendan Kane. Production Coordination by Samantha Collins. Production support by Antonio Minata and Delana Corley. Art work by Jessica Klugst and Kiner. Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballenpodcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballenpodcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballen 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. Ballen. If you want to listen to episodes one week”

early and add free, you can subscribe to SiriusXMpodcast+ on Apple Podcasts or visit SiriusXM.com/podcast+ to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So, that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.