Healed and Hunted | Campfire Stories with MrBallen

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Around 330 p.m., on October 25, 1974, a 41-year-old man named Carl Higden, drove his work truck along a paved road in the medicine-boe National Forest, which was this huge nature preserve in southern Wyoming. Carl had taken off early from his job on an oil rig to go elk hunting in this preserve, and now he was heading towards this very specific area

“in the National Forest called McMardy Canyon, that he had heard was really good for elk hunting.”

As Carl drove, he found himself looking around at the Evergreen trees and the snow cap mountains in the distance, and he just felt this total sense of calm come over him. He was a very rugged outdoorsman, and there was really nothing he loved more than spending time out in nature all alone. And so for a little while, he was just enjoying himself driving along until eventually the paved road he was on, gave way to this long rocky trail. And Carl, he didn't want to damage the truck, he was

driving since it actually belonged to the company he worked for, so he wound up pulling over and getting out and then he just grabbed all this stuff and continued walking on the trail by foot. The hike along this trail was not only, you know, pretty rocky and rough, but it was also predominantly uphill, and so it didn't take long before Carl was having trouble breathing. And not just because

“it was physically taxing, but also because when he was younger, he had tuberculosis, which had”

left his lungs really riddled with scar tissue that did make it harder to breathe, especially when he was exerting himself. But, you know, Carl continued on, and every few minutes he would just stop and bend over and catch his breath. But after about 30 minutes or so, he had hiked to the point where the trees had begun to thin out, and then he found himself standing inside what looked like a big bowl in the earth. So this was McMardy Canyon, where he was, you know, intending to go for this

elk hunt. And, you know, the reason it sort of felt like a bowl is because it was mostly just flat with some shrubs and grass, a few trees, and these tall hills out on the sides, sort of giving this impression of a bowl. And so, Carl, he sort of just stopped and took stock of the area and wouldn't you know it when he looked straight across the canyon, the bowl, he saw a group of just five elk grazing in the distance, like this was unbelievably lucky. Here they are, right away.

And so, Carl slowly began walking towards them, doing his best not to make any noise, and then when he was within shooting distance, he just stopped, raised his rifle, and he looked through

his sights to aim at the first elk he saw, and then he pulled the trigger. But, for some reason,

when he pulled the trigger, the gun didn't go off, it didn't fire, or at least it didn't appear to, and certainly there wasn't any kickback, it just was like nothing happened. But then, he saw something that just didn't make any logical sense. And at the same time, he's experiencing this just insane phenomenon. He felt this massive wave of vertigo, and then he just sort of felt himself falling, and then he blacked out. The next thing Carl knew, he felt himself being shaken

back and forth. And he sort of slowly began to blink his eyes, feeling very confused and disoriented. His head was pounding, it was clearly dark outside, and then he realized sort of with horror that somehow he was back inside of his work truck. But, these surroundings outside of the truck definitely looked different, like the truck was parked in a different spot than where he left it. He suddenly felt himself getting shaken again, and then he heard someone say his name.

And he looked up, and in the darkness, he saw that there were two men that he didn't recognize who were clearly shaking him, trying to get his attention. And they tried to ask him like, what was going on? But Carl's mouth sort of felt numb, and when he tried to speak, it's like the the words came out and garbled in nonsensical. And so at some point, these two men sort of gave up trying to talk to Carl, and they just lifted him up, pulled him out of the truck, and they

carried him over to their vehicle, and, you know, Carl heard them say something about a hospital, and then before long, their car was driving off, and then Carl blacked out again.

About 30 minutes later, around midnight, on October 26th, so this is eight hours after Carl first

in Rollins, Wyoming. And inside, she saw Carl lying on the bed, hooked up to an IV, and there were a bunch of monitors with a nurse standing beside him, and she saw, you know, her husband's eyes were open, but clearly unfocused. And then as Marjorie is just standing there, taking in the the initial shock of what she's seeing, the nurse actually pointed at her at Marjorie, and then asked Carl, if he knew who she is wife, who she was. But Carl returned to me, he looked at Marjorie,

but he just kind of stared blankly, and then shook his head and said, no. So earlier that evening, Marjorie had been at home waiting for Carl to come back from his hunting trip. But when he hadn't

shown up on time, she ultimately had called the Sheriff's Department and asked them to go to

McMarty Canyon just to check on him. And so two deputies had gone out there and they found him, and he was unconscious in his truck. So those two deputies were the ones who obviously shook him away and took him to the hospital. But interestingly, you know, beyond the fact that the deputies had no idea would happen to him, they reported that his truck had been parked three miles away from the main road in this muddy bog, and strangely, there were no tire tracks leading to it. It was almost

like it was just dropped in the bog with, you know, Carl inside of it. But, you know, despite this weirdness, the deputies and Marjorie for that matter were not concerned about, you know, the weirdness around the truck. They were worried about Carl who's just laying here unconscious. And so they had rushed him to the hospital and Marjorie had driven there as fast as she could. A doctor had already explained to Marjorie that her husband was, you know, clearly very disoriented

“and seemed to be suffering from a case of amnesia. He couldn't even remember his own name, let alone,”

you know, what had happened to him while he was out in that canyon before the deputies showed up and found him past out in his truck. Doctors had given Carl X-rays and brain scans and run all kinds of tests on him, but not only did they not find any evidence of some sort of head injury, you know, that likely would have caused his amnesia, but they actually didn't find anything wrong

with him at all. He seemed perfectly fine beyond him just showing up basically unconscious and disoriented.

And so realistically, the staff told Marjorie that because they couldn't really find anything wrong with him, they didn't really know how to treat him. And so for now, Carl was just being kept in the hospital under constant observation. And so Marjorie just took a seat on the couch, next to her husband's bed, sort of not even sure what to think of this whole situation. And she was about to ask the nurse a couple of questions, but then suddenly Carl sort of

10 stop and began frantically looking around the room like he really had something in mind that he was looking for. And then he began saying like, where are my pills? Marjorie had no idea what pills her husband was talking about. And it was clear, the nurse also didn't know what he was talking about. And so Marjorie, she reached out and just tried to grab her husband's hand to try to calm him down. But the moment she did that, Carl sort of stopped what he was doing and he yanked his hand away

“and stared at her like she was a total stranger. Two days later, Carl still could not remember what”

had happened to him when he had gone hunting. But he had recovered some basic memories like his own name and also who was wife was. And so between that and the fact that realistically Carl did

not have any signs of any physical injury, they ultimately, the hospital, this charged him and just sent

him home with Marjorie and basically told her that he was probably fine and that he probably just needed to be in a familiar place to sort of recover all of his memories and get back to normal. However, when the couple got back home, it very quickly became clear to Marjorie that Carl was not okay and he was not getting better. For the most part, Carl was just unusually quiet at home, like uncharacteristically quiet.

And then when he would speak, it often was in that frantic sort of nonsensical way that he had spoken in the hospital when he was, you know, looking for his pills. And in fact, when he was home, he did continue to suddenly start looking for his pills and then also he began telling Marjorie

“that, you know, somebody had stolen his elk. Marjorie would try to ask him like, "What do you mean?”

Like, what do you mean your pills? What do you mean somebody took your elk? Like, what are you talking about?" But Carl didn't even seem to know. Like, he would have moments of recognizing that it's so crazy what he's saying, but he just didn't have the memories to be filled in. It was like, Carl was just as confused by his own vague memories as his wife was. However, a few days after they got home from the hospital, Carl suddenly told his wife that he'd actually remembered something

He told her that when he was in, Marty Canyon, and he saw those elk, and he raised his rifle,

“and he pulled the trigger, he said there was no sound, there was no kickback, it was like,”

nothing had happened. But then he said something happened that like, truly just didn't make logical sense. He said he realized that he hadn't had fired, but it was like the world had slowed down, and he could actually literally see the bullet leaving the rifle, but like in slow motion. Like this bullet is trickling out of the gun and slowly making its way across the canyon, and he's just staring at this bullet, and then the bullet seemed to strike like an invisible wall of

sorts. At which point, the bullet actually stopped and almost flipped inside out and sort of flattened and then fell to the ground, and then also as the flattened inside out bullet fell to the ground, Carl said he too fell to the ground, and he blacked out. Now, when Marjorie heard this, you know,

her first thought was like, this is nonsense, you know, this is not real, this is something maybe Carl's

“mind has has created to fill in the gaps of his memory, because it's got to be really frustrating”

for him that he's got all these like fragments that he can't put together, and so maybe this is just his mind filling in the gaps with this really specific and weird imagery. But not long after hearing this story, Marjorie was doing the laundry, and she was finally washing the clothes, her husband had on when this whole thing happened out in the canyon, and when she reached into the pockets of his jacket to make sure they were empty before, you know, washing the

jacket, she felt something metallic, and she pulled out this round like flat disc, this metal disc,

and at first she just had no idea what it was, but then she thought about what her husband had

said about the bullet from his rifle, you know, flipping inside out and flattening and falling to the ground, she couldn't help but feel like this metallic disc that she's holding in her hand that was in her husband's jacket looks an awful lot like a bullet that has been flipped inside out and flattened like she couldn't believe it. Not long after this discovery of the alleged bullet, Marjorie sat next to her husband on a couch inside of an office at the university of Wisconsin.

They were both sitting across from a psychology professor named Dr. Leo Sprinkle. Now, Marjorie knew this meeting was sort of a long shot, but she was hopeful that, you know, maybe they would learn something valuable. So by this point, Carl had not recovered any other memories from his hunting drip, but after, you know, recovering the the supposed flat bullet in her husband's jacket, Marjorie became convinced that something truly strange had happened to her

husband. I mean, she obviously knew something happened out in the canyon, but now it just seemed like I don't even have any theories for what could have happened, but something really weird must have happened. And so she and Carl were both very determined to try to figure out what happened. And so

“that's how they ended up in Dr. Sprinkle's office. Dr. Sprinkle was not your average”

psychologist. He was a really big believer in hypnosis. He practiced hypnosis. And specifically, he believed that hypnosis could potentially allow people to access repressed memories, which is exactly what Marjorie and Dr. Sprinkle and Carl for that matter believed was going on with Carl, that he had experienced something that was being repressed. But it was in there, you just need to find a way to access it. So that day in the professor's office,

Marjorie stayed very quiet and just observed, while Dr. Sprinkle told Carl to close his eyes to relax his head down towards his chest and just focus on his breathing in and out, in and out. And after several minutes of this, Dr. Sprinkle told Carl to slowly lift his head back up and Carl did, but when he looked up, his eyes were actually still closed. And at this point, Dr. Sprinkle asked Carl to tell him what happened on October 25th when he went out hunting in

McMarty Canyon. And Carl, with his eyes still shot, began to speak really fluently. And he began telling just the most insane story, Marjorie or Dr. Sprinkle for that matter, had ever heard. Carl said, again, under hypnosis here, that after he had watched that bullet, leave his rifle in slow motion and hit this invisible wall and flip inside out and fall to the ground,

he said that he too had fallen basically at the same speed as this bullet onto the ground

and basically he passed out. But he only blacked out for like a second. And when he opened his eyes, he said he was still lying on the grass in the middle of this canyon. Except now,

body suit, almost like what a scuba diver would wear. And Carl said, this figure was vaguely,

“you know, human-shaped, but it had very yellowish skin and very small eyes and no ears and no”

lips. And there were two antennas sticking out of, you know, it's forehead. And one of its arms extended into this flat stump. But the other arm seemed to have almost like a prosthetic attachment at the end of it that almost looked like a power drill. And then, in perfect English, this figure sort of looked down at Carl and just said, how are you? And Carl said he was so stunned by this thing speaking to him in perfect English that Carl just sort of blurred it out. Oh,

pretty good, pretty good. And the figure seemed satisfied with the sensor and it went on to quickly explain that its name was Azo-1 and it came from a planet 163,000 light years away from Earth. And it said it had no intention of hurting Carl. In fact, it said it wanted to help Carl. Then, with the hand that sort of resembled a power drill, it reached into what looked like a

“pocket on his body suit and it pulled out the small packet containing four pills. And it told”

Carl that these pills would heal him. And then this thing offered Carl one of these pills. And Carl, you know, for reasons he couldn't explain just immediately took the pill and swallowed it. And then after that, Carl said that Azo-1 asked him if he wanted to go for a ride. And Carl just said, sure. So Azo-1 helped Carl off the ground and then as soon as Carl was standing

back up again, he saw there was this cube-shaped vehicle not far away. And a split second later,

Carl said he was somehow inside of this vehicle along with Azo-1 and also two other vaguely humanoid figures and the five elk that he'd been out here hunting. They were behind this clear wall like a containment pen within the vehicle. Then Carl was seated in a chair as was Azo-1 and the two other humanoids. They were all just

“sitting there. Then Carl said he felt this powerful force pushed against his body,”

like the vehicle was moving so fast that it basically pushed him back into a seat. But less than a minute later, the vehicle just stopped. And Azo-1 said, "We're home." At this point, Carl was just suddenly standing outside of the vehicle. And he said it felt very cold and the sky was jet black. And then around Carl, the landscape was very different from planet Earth. It was very rocky and desolate without any trees or grass or

really any organic-looking life anywhere. And then in front of Carl, he said he saw this massive metallic-looking tower that sort of reminded him of the Seattle Space Needle. And there was this light on the top of it that was actually so bright that Carl said when he looked at it, it sort of hurt his eyes. And so Azo-1 led Carl, the two other humanoid figures and the elk to a door on the outside of this tower. And once they were standing outside of it, Carl said the

door slit open. But instead of it sort of leading into the tower, it just led to what reminded Carl of the inside of a large elevator. And the whole group just got unbored and began riding up. And then when this elevator of sorts came to a stop, and the door opened again, Carl saw the small room with metal walls and a handful of what looked like platforms on the floor. Azo-1 led the elk onto one of those platforms and told Carl to get on one too.

And so Carl just did as he was told and stood on one of these platforms. And then at a nowhere, some kind of high-tech device emerged from these metallic walls and began sort of circling

around Carl. It went from his head all the way to his toes, basically like scanning him.

Carl was vaguely aware of the same process taking place to the elk as well. And then when this the scanner was done, it made a beeping sound. And then Azo-1 looked over at Carl and told him, "Well, the elk are what we needed, but you're not." So we're going to take you back to Earth now. And then Carl said the next thing he knew, he was just magically back inside of his work truck, like he had somehow been transported there instantaneously. And he was being shaken awake by

those two sheriff's deputies. And so back in Dr. Sprinkles office, Marjorie is listening just completely shocked by what her husband is saying, not even sure what to make of it. And then Dr. Sprinkle, at the end of Carl's story, when he got to the point where he's being shaken awake by the deputies, Dr. Sprinkle snapped his finger and Carl kind of came to. He opened his eyes and sort of refocused, clearly out of hypnosis. And then they all just kind of sat there,

like in total silence, really unsure what to say to each other. But as crazy as Carl's story sounded, there were several very strange facts about Carl's case that up to this point, nobody had been

all of them. The first fact that this story explained was that when Carl woke up in his work truck,

“like magically just appeared in his work truck, it was not just three miles away from the main road.”

It was actually three miles away from where he had originally parked it, and this truck was just sitting in a muddy bog with no tire tracks leading up to it. So it was just totally unclear how it got there. And so if you follow along with Carl's story, perhaps when he was transported back to Earth, they, this other creature and the other humanoids maneuvered the truck with Carl in it

into this bog. The second strange fact is that when Marjorie had ballistic experts analyze that

flattened, presumed bullet that she had found in Carl's jacket, they were just as baffled as she

“was. Like they could not come up with any earthly explanation for how a bullet could be flattened”

and turned inside out. Like this was not possible. And so again, if you follow Carl's story, perhaps this, this being is the one that flipped the bullet inside out. And the third and perhaps strangest fact is that when hospital doctors gave Carl X-rays, they found something that should have

been medically impossible. All of the tuberculosis scar tissue in Carl's lungs that had plagued him

for decades that had made it so hard to be physical and exercise. They had somehow disappeared. It was as if someone were something had healed him. Despite how unbelievable Carl's story sounded, and despite the fact that hundreds of people have spent decades trying to disprove it, no one has ever found a better explanation for the moving truck, the impossible bullet, and Carl's disappearing scar tissue. Because of that, some researchers believe that Carl Higden's

account could be one of the most credible alien abduction stories ever recorded. 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. Ballem Podcast, strange dark and mysterious stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballem. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bohn and

Cole Casio. The episode was written by Karis Pash Cooper. Research in fact checking by Shelley Chu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fassiano. Research in fact checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whitley Casio and Jordan Stitham. Production support by Antonio Minata and Delana Corley. Art work by Jessica Klogst and Kiner, theme song, "Something Wicked" by Ross Bugden.

Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballem Podcast, and just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we've put out on the Mr. Ballem Podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballem YouTube channel that very same day, and trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to

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