Stranger Than Fiction Vol. XIII

The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.

“He links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.”

The first story you'll hear is called What's Wrong with Mommy, and it's about a family's Christmas morning that quickly turns into a nightmare.

The second story you'll hear is called Stealing a Slice, and it's about a stand-off and a domino's pizza chain that takes a wild turn. And the third and final story you'll hear is called Peak Experience, and it's about a man who wakes up after an avalanche and finds himself in another life or death situation. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the right podcast, because that's all we do, and we upload four times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Thursdays, and Fridays.

So, if that's of interest to you, wait until the fall of the button has left for their summer vacation, and while they're gone, go into their house and completely decorate the interior and also the exterior for Christmas. Okay, let's get into our first story, called What's Wrong with Mommy. .

“In the early evening hours of December 24th, 2011, so Christmas Eve, 26-year-old Zazel Preston sat on her bed in her little apartment in Anaheim, California, and wrapped Christmas gifts for her children.”

Laying next to her was her newest addition to the family, her third child, a seven-week-old little boy.

This Christmas was a big deal for Zazel. It was also a big deal for her husband, 30-year-old William Wallace, not only because it was going to be the first Christmas with their new son, but also because this was the first Christmas after Zazel and William had reconciled their relationship. They had been married for the past three years, but over those three years, their relationship had been very unhealthy and toxic and at times abusive. But earlier that year, when Zazel had discovered that she was pregnant, this baby became kind of like a new anchor point for their relationship.

It was like suddenly they could put their differences aside and just focus on raising their kids together. After wrapping her final present, Zazel hopped off the bed, she scooped up her little boy, and then she headed out into the living room, where she met up with her husband and her two older children, who were little girls aged three and eight,

“and then they all headed outside and went next door to celebrate Christmas Eve at a party with their neighbors.”

Early the next morning, so on Christmas Day, Zazel's two oldest children, the two girls, they got up early and they rushed out of their bedrooms, and they ran down the hallway into the living room where their parents were waiting for them on the couch, along with their baby brother. The living room was completely decked out with Christmas decorations that the family had put up over the past couple of weeks. The Christmas tree was in the corner with bright multicolored lights and ornaments all over it.

There were reefs on the wall and other string lights around the top of the room, and then over their fireplace were all of their stockings nailed up stuffed with goodies. The little girls squealed with delight and ran around the couch and took up spots right underneath the Christmas tree,

and they grabbed their first present, and they turned and looked at their parents on the couch,

and they saw their dad kind of give them a nod of approval, which meant, "Okay, you can start opening your gifts." And so the girls happily began tearing into the festive wrapping, and then after each of them had their brand new toy in hand, they turned around reflexively to show their parents. And so William, he sees the toys and he says, "Oh, they're so great, guys!" And then when the girls, they look at their mother, and they show her the toys,

she doesn't even react, she completely ignores them. And so at some point, you know, these little kids, they start yelling for their mom, "Hey, Mom, check it out! Look at this new toy!" But Zazel just sits there, she doesn't say a word, she just sitting back on the couch completely ignoring them. Finally, the eight-year-old turns to William and says, "Let's run with Mommy."

And at this point, William pauses, and then he gives Zazel a skating look before very bluntly saying to these young kids, "Mommy got drunk, and now she's ruined Christmas." The girls knew from William's tone of voice that their parents must be fighting, and so they did what they normally did when this happened, and that was to just try to ignore it. And so the little girls they turned away from their parents and began opening more presence,

doing their best not to disturb their parents who were sitting silently behind them, and then a little after 9 a.m. after most of the presence had been opened, William abruptly stood up and walked into the other room and placed a phone call. And then a few minutes later, there was a loud knock on the front door. The night before, after Zazel and William and their kids had left their neighbor's party

and by the time the kids had all gone to bed, the fight between the parents had become very physical.

“Neighbors would recall, late at night, on Christmas Eve, hearing this very loud commotion,”

coming from Zazel and William's apartment. And at some point, apparently Zazel had tried to run out of the apartment, but William had chased after her and hauled her back inside. The sounds coming from their apartment would eventually stop somewhere in the wee hours of Christmas Day. And then as the sun came up on Christmas Day, Zazel and William had made their way to the couch, and they were sitting there with their seven-week-old baby waiting for their two oldest two wake-up

and come open presents. Except, when their two little girls came out of their bedrooms and bombed into the living room to begin celebrating, only William was alive. Zazel had been beaten

to death by William. And after he had beaten her to death the night before, he had dragged her

into the living room, set her up on the couch to make it look like she was sitting, and then put sunglasses on her eyes in order to trick the children. And so all morning, as this three-year-old

“and eight-year-old are opening these gifts and turning and showing their mother with excitement,”

she was dead the whole time. But at around 9 a.m., William realized his charade was not going to last because his kids were really keyed in to their being something wrong with their mother. And so that was when he got up and he called 911 and he told them that his wife had gotten drunk and fallen into a glass coffee table, and so she was hurt. And so a little bit later, the police and paramedics they arrived, they go inside, and right away they can tell,

William is lying to them. There's more to the story than they're being told. And so ultimately, William would be convicted of secondary murder, and he would be sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. As force as L's three children, they are now being looked after by her parents. 30th, 1989, two young men were working the afternoon lunch shift at a Domino's Pizza restaurant in Chambley, Georgia. Their names were Darrell Wilson and Sean Bernse. And most weeks,

“this shift that they worked together was really boring because virtually nobody came into the restaurant.”

But on this day, at around 11 a.m., as Darrell and Sean are kind of twirling their thums waiting for the shift to end, a man who was obviously disgruntled and very agitated, stormed in the door,

carrying a gun, a 357 magnum gun, or really powerful handgun, and he aimed at straight at them.

Darrell and Sean were so shocked by this that at first they didn't do anything. But then it kind of dawned on them that, oh my goodness, this guy's coming in here to rob the place. And so Darrell and Sean suddenly put their hands up, and they began saying, no, okay, take whatever you want, take whatever you want, and the man suddenly began shouting something at them like he wanted something, and it took Darrell and Sean a second to kind of understand what he was asking for,

but when they started to process the things he was saying, they kind of understood that this did not seem like a robbery. The guy was demanding that they called Tom S. Monahan, so he, this guy, the guy with the gun, can talk to Tom. Now Darrell and Sean may have known this, but probably not because they likely didn't care, but Tom S. Monahan at the time was the owner of Domino's. Not like this particular restaurant in Shambli, Georgia, but like the entire national

chain, he was the actual owner of the company, and so this guy is coming in, being like, "Let me talk to the owner of Domino's." And so at some point Darrell and Sean understood who Tom S. Monahan was, perhaps the guy with the gun explained it, or maybe one of them did know who Tom S. Monahan was, but either way, Darrell and Sean suddenly realized, oh my goodness, this guy wants to talk to the owner, but they have no way of getting in touch with the owner of Domino's. They're just

pizza cooks, they're not like connected to the C-suite. But when Darrell and Sean told the guy, like, "Hey, we don't know how to get in touch with the literal owner of this major franchise." Well, the guy didn't like that, and he got really frantic and began yelling and screaming like, "You've gotta do it, you've gotta get Tom in the phone!" And so Darrell and Sean are like, "Okay, and they grab the phone, and they try to call their own boss, because they don't know who else to call,

and as they're calling their own boss, this guy fires two shots into the ceiling." So this is like a really high intensity situation that's escalating really quickly. But Darrell, who actually was the one on the phone, he did his best to stay calm, and when his boss got on the other line, he tried his best to explain the situation as quickly as he could, because he could tell, you know, this guy with the gun is very close to potentially shooting them, and the boss of Darrell and

Sean did understand, okay, clearly there is a crisis happening at this branch, and when Darrell said, "You gotta find a way to get Tom S. Lone Han on the phone," like right now, his boss was like, "I got it." And a few minutes later, Darrell's boss, who stole on the phone with him, was like,

and he's like, "What's going on?" And at this point, Darrell just handed the phone over to the

guy with the gun, and said, "Here you go, Tom's in the phone, and the man with the gun grabbed the phone, put it to his ear, and then began rattling off these totally bizarre demands." He wanted a white limousine to show up to the restaurant to be his getaway car. He wanted $10,000 in cash, and he wanted a copy of a science fiction novel about the free maissons called the widow's son. And so Darrell and Sean, who are behind the counter witnessing this, they're hearing these demands

and it's clicking for them that clearly this guy is not mentally well. This is a guy who's totally unhinged, and who knows what's going to happen. After a few minutes on the phone, the gunmen hung up, and then told Darrell and Sean very calmly that now the three of them were just going to sit in the restaurant and wait for his demands to be met. And for the next five and a half hours,

“that's what they did. Darrell, Sean, and the gunmen who just kept the gun aimed at Darrell and Sean,”

they just sat inside of this restaurant. And at the same time, you know, by this point, the police have been called, and they're completely surrounding this restaurant, and when the gunmen came into the store, because this was a very slow day, there weren't any other customers or staff inside, so it really was just Darrell, Sean, and the gunmen, and so it's a total standoff. But interestingly, for Sean and Darrell, who are right there with

this gunmen, they started to sense that this guy was not here to hurt them. He was really after Tom Asmanahan, and over those five and a half hours, they were just sitting there with him, with his gun aimed at them, he periodically began telling them, you know, what his grapes were with Tom Asmanahan. The gunmen told Darrell and Sean that Tom was specifically targeting him, the gunmen, and also Tom was secretly communicating with the gunmen when the gunmen didn't

want to talk to him, almost like telekinesis or something. And also, the gunmen told them

“that Tom Asmanahan periodically will walk around his property at night, kind of creeping around,”

you know, scaring the gunmen. And Darrell and Sean, you know, they're hearing these things and not believing any of it, but they were very empathetic and said, oh, yeah, I can understand why that would be an issue. I can understand why you come in here and demand to speak to Tom Asmanahan yep, totally get it, and that was just kind of how the day was going, and then around 430 pm, so they've been in there a long time by this point. The gunmen told Darrell and Sean that

he was really hungry, so they better go make him some pizzas. So Darrell and Sean just got up, they went in the back, they made two large, everything pizzas, and after they were made, they put him in boxes and slid him across the counter to the gunmen. And at this moment, Darrell and Sean knew the gunmen, in order to eat, would have to put his weapon down to open

up the box and get the pizza. And so the second they handed it over, without even communicating

with each other, they kind of waited for the gunmen to put the gun down, and he did, he put the gun down, he opened the pizza up, he grabbed the slice, and at that moment Darrell and Sean began sprinting past him towards the door, and the gunmen who's seeing this happening drops the pizza he grabs the gun and he turns, and he aims. So to really understand what's happening here,

“you need to understand what type of marketing Domino's, like the national franchise,”

was doing to advertise their product. Starting in 1985, Domino's came up with a very popular advertising campaign called The Noid, and The Noid was actually a character, it was like this weird, claymation character with big sneakers and bunny ears, he was like this goofy thing that was the equivalent of McDonald's hamburger, but this was for pizza. And what Domino's did with The Noid, is they would run these ads on TV, where The Noid was like this menace, who was

always out to disrupt pizza deliveries. Not necessarily Domino's pizza deliveries, but generally

pizza deliveries, it's like the Noid's going to destroy them, either by freezing the pizzas on their way to the person's house, or smash them into the ground, or causing whatever mayhem the Noid could create to stop pizzas from getting to their customers. And so Domino's kind of catchy thing was avoid the Noid with Domino's, meaning like Domino's the chain was the only chain capable of avoiding all the chaos that could disrupt you getting the thing you want, your pizza.

And this advertising campaign was brilliant, not only because it really worked, people really liked Domino's, because it did seem like they were superior, but also they were able to kind of franchise this character itself, the Noid. It became a toy you could buy, and there was talk about doing a TV show and maybe a movie around this Noid character. And Michael Jackson, like the King of Pop, he put The Noid in one of his music videos, I mean this was a really, really successful advertising

campaign, but for as successful as this campaign was, it did unfortunately lead to what happened inside of this Domino's restaurant in Shambli, Georgia. So on the day, this gunman came charging in and held up the place, you know, aiming the gun at Sean and Darrell, it would turn out the gunman's name was Kenneth Lamar Noid. And Kenneth Lamar Noid was not going into the store to get money, or to steal food, or to hurt, you know, Darrell or Sean, he was there to get his revenge on Tom

S. Monahan, who he looked at as the person responsible for coming up with this Noid campaign.

was not a marketing campaign, but rather Tom S. Monahan specifically targeting Kenneth Lamar Noid,

“basically making him out to be this big villain. But Kenneth's plan for how to deal with this”

totally backfire, because in a totally ironic twist, by holding up this Domino's franchise and creating this huge standoff, he literally became like the Noid, because no pizza deliveries could be had that entire day out of that franchise. And so Kenneth Lamar Noid in an effort to stop Tom S. Monahan from running this Noid campaign, because I'm no villain, I don't go after pizza, I don't try to stop people from getting their pizzas, and in an effort to do that, that is exactly

what he did. He literally became the human version of the Noid. And so after Darrell and Sean made a run forward towards the door, Kenneth did grab his gun, and he did aim it at the two men,

and he even fired it a couple of times, but he missed, and Darrell and Sean were totally

unheard. In fact, nobody got hurt, all that happened is Kenneth Lamar Noid looked like the Noid

“and he got arrested. However, instead of going to jail, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital.”

As for the actual advertising campaign itself, which was very successful, you know, avoid the Noid, well, it would not survive this total PR nightmare, and Thomas Monahan canceled it immediately after Kenneth Lamar Noid was taken off. So in a weird way, Kenneth actually did sort of get his revenge. The next and final story of today's episode is called Peak Experience. On April 1, 1984, a 28-year-old man named James Sevinier, opened his eyes and looked down and saw

his whole body was covered in snow, and a lot of that snow had turned red from what looked like blood. James tried to take a breath in, but as soon as he did, his chest exploded in pain. Then James began moving his tongue around in his mouth, and he realized there was this weird substance in his mouth, and there were all these sharp objects in his mouth, and so when he spit, he realized what it was. It was blood and shattered teeth. James began to panic and tried to lift

up one of his arms, but it wouldn't move, and then when he tried to move his other arm, it did move, but that little movement hurt so bad he began crying in pain. So James is dealing with this blinding full body pain that he has no idea what it came from. He's looking around and he can barely understand where he is or what happened, but then James looked up kind of right behind him, and he saw this enormous snow-covered mountain. Now James had no idea what mountain this was,

but in his head he thought, you know, I must have attempted to climb that mountain. James was a self-described climbing bum, which really just meant he lived out of his car most of the time and traveled all around the world, seeking out the most dangerous mountains in the world for

“him to climb. And so as James was racking his brain, trying to remember what happened,”

suddenly it all just came flooding back. He remembered he was here, and the Canadian Rockies, with his best friend Richard Whitmore, and the two of them had attempted to climb this particular mountain. It was an 11,000 foot tall mountain called Mount Delta Form, and James remembered that as they were making their way up this mountain, they were hit by an avalanche. Now James didn't really remember what happened once the avalanche hit them, but it would turn out

he had fallen along with his friend Richard about 140 stories as this avalanche carried them down the mountain. For reference, that's taller than the Empire State Building, so this is a massive fall. And so as James is remembering that avalanche, he began looking around frantically for his friend Richard, hoping that maybe he was okay and nearby, and they could work together to get out of this situation. And sure enough, at some point James looked over, and he saw there was a crumpled figure

kind of lying in the snow that obviously was another person. And so James instinctively tried to sit up to go over to his friend, but as soon as he attempted to do that, he felt the blinding pain in his body. I mean, he is totally wrecked here, and he couldn't stand up. But James really wanted to go see his friend, so he kind of rolled over and threw the pain using his one good arm,

he crawled his way over to Richard. And for a second, he thought maybe his friend was alive that

he too had survived this epic fall. But as he looked down at Richard, he could see his chest was not moving, and his neck was twistedfully badly, and so was his back, and so James knew his friend Richard was dead. And so James just collapsed into the snow, feeling unbelievable anguish and sadness, and fear. I mean, this is the only other person out here. They are nowhere near civilization, and it's going to be at least four days before anybody even notices that they aren't back yet,

because that was when James and Richard were supposed to be home. And now, James is thinking like, "I can't even stand up. I can barely breathe. I'm so badly hurt. What am I going to do?"

And this was something James said that we thought would happen to him eventually, that a mountain would end up killing him, and here he was realizing that, yep, that's exactly what's about to happen. I'm going to die out here. And so James just kind of lay there, resigned to his fate, literally waiting to die. And after about 20 minutes, when his body began to go numb and he was starting to enter into hypothermia, James heard a voice from behind him. It was this woman who walked

“right up to him and she said, "You can't give up. You have to try."”

And James, even though he was totally caught off guard that there was another person out here, there was something so calming about this woman and the way she was talking to him that without any hesitation, it was like James's whole mindset about this situation completely changed. Suddenly, he was not ready to give up and die. But now, because of this woman, he was going to fight to survive. And so, after kind of moving around and looking back towards

this woman, she would say to him, "Put your coat on." And so, James, despite the excruciating pain, used his warm arm that still worked and kind of propped himself up, and then he pulled his coat out of his pack, which was lying near him. And very painfully, he slipped his coat over his broken and damaged arms. And then, once the coat was on him, the woman set to James, now take a sip of water. And so, James, without any hesitation, he reached over and grabbed this water, he unscrewed the

“top and took a sip, even though the water stung his totally shattered mouth. And then after James”

put the water down, the woman very calmly told him, "Okay, now disconnect yourself from Richard's body, and then use the tree right here to pull yourself up." And so, he untieved from Richard, and then using his one-good arm, he grabbed the tree, and he managed to hoist himself up onto his totally destroyed legs. And he couldn't believe he was even standing at this point, but here he was, you know, up on his feet, and then the woman said, "Okay, it's time to move." And so, James began

walking away from the mountain, and this woman just followed along behind him. And for a long time, he trudged through this knee-high snow barely able to take a step without this blinding pain coursing through his body, but every time he began to stumble or slow down or seem like he was going to give up, the woman would very calmly urge him to keep going, keep going, keep moving.

And finally, after about four hours of this horribly painful track, James was on,

“he came upon the camp that he and his friend Richard had built before coming over to this mountain”

to begin this climb. And so, James quickly began moving towards his tent that was still pitched, that he knew inside had a warm sleeping bag and some water and food, and so, as he made his way towards the tent, he stopped himself, and he turned around to talk to his guide to thank her for pushing him onward, but when he turned, there was no one there. And when he looked at the ground, there was only one set of bloody footprints that were his leading all the way back to where he had fallen.

This guide, this woman, she didn't exist. James was totally unsettled by this and really didn't know what to do about it, but he knew right now the priority was just to survive. And so, he made his way over to his tent, and he attempted to get inside of it, but his hands were so cold and so badly

beaten up that he couldn't use the zipper, he couldn't even get it open. And then finally,

when he managed to use a tool to get it open, he couldn't open up a sleeping bag. It was like his body was shutting down. And so, we thought, okay, I'll make a fire, and that will be enough to keep me warm, but again, it's like his body was failing him and he couldn't do it. He couldn't start the fire. And so, right as James is realizing that, you know, despite making it to this campsite, he may not be able to survive because he can't use the campsite, he began to hear voices.

Right away, James is worried that the voices he's hearing don't really exist like this woman he had seen, but sure enough, just a second later, three skiers came around the corner and they saw James. And amazingly, one of them was a very experienced mountain guide, and another one of them was a nurse. And so, right away, when they saw James, they saw he was dying, the nurse rushed over, she made a fire for him, she got him comfortable, she put on warm clothes, and the mountain guide

he took off to go get help. And sure enough, a couple hours later, a helicopter arrived and they airlifted James out and he would make a full recovery. However, it would take James' years

before he finally opened up about this mysterious vanishing woman who literally saved his life,

without her talking to him and urging him to go, he would have laid their next to his friend and died. But, James, he was afraid to bring up that he had seen this woman and fear that people would think he was crazy. But, when he finally brought it up, he would quickly learn that he was far from the first person to experience this phenomenon of having this invisible person help you. In fact, this phenomenon is common enough that it has its own name, it's called the third

manifest. The third man refers to this mysterious vanishing person that steps in and helps people survive who have just undergone some horribly traumatic event. An example of somebody else who has experienced the third manifest was the very last person to escape the second world trade center

right before it collapsed because a mysterious vanishing voice told him exactly which direction to go

“until he escaped. And so, whether the third manifest is actually supernatural or just a trick”

of survivor psychology, you know, we don't know. James, who is both an atheist and a scientist, says he does not believe that this woman who saved him was an angel or connected to religion in any

way. Instead, he just said, you know, it was a presence that I needed at the time that saved my life,

“but that is the extent of my understanding.”

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. Ballon Podcast, strange dark mysterious stories, is hosted and executive produced by

me, Mr. Ballon. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bohn, research and fact checking by Shelley Shoe, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Calhan, research and fact checking supervision by Stephenier. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit LaCassio, Jordan Stittum, and Cole LaCassio, production coordination by Samantha Collins, production support by Antonio Minata, and Delana Corley, artwork by Jessica Klugston-Kiner,

theme song called "Something Wicked" by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballon Podcast, and just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballon Podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballon 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. Ballon. If you want to listen to episodes,”

one week early, and add free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast+ 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! [Music]