Stranger Than Fiction Vol. XV

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

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

The first story here is called a miracle, and it's about a woman in rural Mexico who feels the sudden and excruciating pain in her abdomen.

The second story here is called the simulation, and it's about a man who enters a flight simulator for routine training, but you won't believe what happens next. The third story here is called deja vu. After a doctor's office calls a patient for an upcoming surgery, a series of events unfolds that is truly bizarre. And the fourth and final story here today is called the silk hat, and it's about a woman who answers her front door in the middle of the night and sees someone wearing a black silk hat. But before we get in to today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious, deliberate and story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do when we upload four times a week.

“Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.”

So, if that's of interest to you, please offer to make the fall of button a really nice big authentic Italian meal. But don't tell them every time the recipes call for olive oil, you used motor oil instead.

Okay, let's get into our first story called a miracle.

On the afternoon of March 4th, 2000, a 40 year old woman named Enes Vermeeras stood in the kitchen of her tiny one room home, which was deep in the mountains of Wawhaka, Mexico. Enes had a whole chicken on the counter right in front of her that she had just killed and plucked, and now she was using a six inch long knife to butcher it for their dinner. And as she did this, every once in a while, she would look up the window to check on her seven kids were playing together out in the yard.

“So, Enes and her large family lived in a very isolated rural community of about maybe 500 people.”

They didn't have running water or electricity or a phone, and they lived miles away from their closest neighbors. They mainly lived off of corn and vegetables that they grew themselves, chickens they raised, and then wild animals that Enes's husband would catch. Her husband was actually gone that day because he was out in the mountains hunting for deer. And so as Enes is just kind of going about her fairly typical evening routine here, you know, making dinner, she suddenly felt this really intense, very painful, cramping sensation that was kind of ripping through her abdomen.

And it hurts so bad that Enes stopped what she was doing and kind of doubled over and grabbed the counter and just tried to steady her breathing. I mean, this was really shocking. And for about a minute, Enes just stood there, you know, holding onto the counter, just waiting for this pain to pass, and eventually it did. Once Enes stopped, it was like, okay, she was back to normal and she could stand up again. But this was sort of alarming.

But at the same time, Enes was used to dealing with basically all medical crises on her own.

They lived in this isolated part of the world, and the nearest medical clinic was 50 miles away, and they didn't have a car. So, like, anything that happened, they basically had to deal with it themselves, and that was routine. Enes, despite how incredibly painful this was, she just told herself like, now that it had passed, the pain was gone. She said, you know what? It's probably fine. Like, I'm good. And so pretty quickly, she just kind of forgot about it and went back to butchering the chicken. But several hours later, this is after midnight now, the pain came right back.

And at this point, Enes, she's in this one common room in her house, where all her kids are fast asleep. It's past midnight now, and she's sitting on this bench, and she's gripping her abdomen, rocking back and forth, as this pain just rockets back and forth across her abdomen constantly. There's no relief, nothing. And she's trying so hard not to make a sound because she doesn't want to wake her kids up, nor does she want to scare her kids. Her husband is still off in the mountains hunting for deer, so she is alone. She just has this little flickering candle nearby. That's the only light she's got, and she just isolated, dealing with this excruciating pain.

And so at this point, Enes really felt like this could be a real problem. This might not be something she could just brush off and let pass on its own. This was real. This was an actual emergency. But what can she even do? There's nowhere to go. She can't do anything. She is just completely trapped here with this excruciating pain that's making it hard to even have cohere and thought it's so bad. But the one thought that kept going through her mind was she had to do something or whatever this was. It felt like it was going to kill her.

And so Enes felt like she really only had one option here, and it was a horrible, horrible option. But she knew she had to do it. She got up and she's, you know, she's hunched over in pain.

And then after she had done that, she turned around and still with this blinding pain, she hobbled into the kitchen.

“And she grabbed that six inch knife she had used earlier to butcher the chicken. And then she walked right back over to the bench and you're that candle that she had been sitting on earlier.”

Once she was there, she reached down and she pulled up her shirt exposing her abdomen, you know, where this pain was coming from. And then she took the knife and she plunged it into her abdomen. Immediately she let out this blood girdling scream. She couldn't help it. And she was sort of vaguely aware of all her kids waking up and sort of making their way over to her, but she was so focused on what she was doing. And she began slowly dragging this blade down her abdomen all the way to her belly button.

And then she pulled out the knife and she could barely think it's so painful or kids are crying. And she plunged the knife back into her abdomen and raped it down the other side, creating this massive gash in her stomach.

“And then she kind of dropped the knife and she screamed and she couldn't even help it and her kids are all crying.”

And she takes her hand and she reaches into her stomach and she's fishing around every little move is like lightning striking her body. But she eventually finds what she's looking for and she pulls it out of her stomach. And what she's looking at is her eighth child, a baby boy, and she had enough wear with all to take that knife and cut the umbilical cord and place the baby down before she passed out. After Ennis lost consciousness, one of her kids left the house and just started running to go find the nearest person to get some help.

And miraculously after finding some people, you know, when those first responders got to the home where Ennis was hours later, they found her and her newborn son alive.

And they were taken to the closest hospital for emergency treatment and they would both make full recoveries.

“Today, Ennis from Eris is the only woman ever who has performed a successful c-section on herself.”

Our next story is called the Simulation. On the morning of October 30th, 2014, a 54-year-old Russian pilot named Sergey Galitzky, along with his translator, walked into the Flight Safety International Building in Wichita, Kansas. This building was inside of the Wichita National Airport and it was basically just a big training facility for pilots. Once inside, Sergey walked up to the front desk and explained to the clerk in Russian that he was here that day to try to get a certification for a particular type of seasonal plane.

His translator then repeated what he said in English to the clerk, at which point the clerk nodded, and said they would go back and get Sergey's instructor. A few moments later, the clerk returned now with a 78-year-old man named Jay Ferguson, who was the instructor. Jay introduced himself to Sergey and the translator, they all shook hands, and then Jay led the two deeper into the building.

And as soon as they were inside, Sergey and the translator saw all this crazy high-tech training equipment basically everywhere they looked.

Eventually, Jay came to a stop in front of this big white circular pod that was up on top of this electronic base. Now to the untrained eye, this might look like a futuristic amusement park ride, but to Sergey, he knew what this was, this was a flight simulator. So, Sergey had been a pilot for over 30 years, we had loads of experience flying, he had flown big commercial aircraft and helicopters, but today he was learning how to fly a sort of mid-tier plane, this little sesna plane. And before he'd be allowed, even with all his experience, to actually go out and fly this thing, he had to do a couple of simulated flights inside of the simulator to run through the motions, get some experience before actually going out and doing it.

And so Jay reached out and opened up the door to this pod and gestured for Sergey and the translator to go inside. And so they did, Sergey went in and he saw right away that the inside was an exact replica of the inside of a sesna, like down to every little detail, it looked exactly the same. Even out the windows, it appeared like they actually were situated on a real airport runway. And so, Sergey sat down in the pilot seat, Jay took a seat next to him, and the translator took a seat behind both of them.

Once they were situated, Jay and Sergey went through the mandatory pre-flight safety checks, something you would do on any flight. You just make sure the plane is in good working order, that your communications are good, same thing they would do for a real flight, they're doing for the simulator. And then once they were done, Jay pressed a button, which turned on the engine of this flight simulator. And it actually felt like it really turned on a real engine, like the pod began to rumble, like this was a real plane.

Then once Jay gave Sergey the green light, Sergey released the brakes, at which point it very much appeared, like the plane began to roll forward.

And it was amazing how life-like this whole thing felt.

“The pod actually would move and kind of keep up with all the movements that Sergey was initiating in the simulation.”

It really felt like they were in an actual plane. And then, once Sergey had positioned the plane on the runway, he hit the gas, and the pod throttled back as the plane rocketed down the runway, and before long they took off, and they were up into the sky. Once flying in the sky, Sergey kind of circled around the digital aerospace for a while, kind of feeling out the controls. And he quickly found the sesno was a little bit more sensitive than the other aircraft he had flown before. So it took some time to kind of get his bearings, and then once he was feeling pretty comfortable, and he relayed as much to Jay,

began relaying directions and feedback to Sergey through the translator, just basically testing Sergey's ability to fly this craft. Because at the end of the day, this was a test. Sergey needed to prove he could do this in order to get his certification.

“After a little while, Sergey felt like he was doing a really good job, and he had good control of the craft, and Jay as well felt like this had gone really well,”

and you know, Sergey had effectively passed his test, and so a decision was made to go ahead and land this plane back on the runway. So Sergey circled around and he angled the plane right alongside the runway, and he came down and he was taken his time, and everything was going exactly right, and then right as the wheels of this plane touched the runway, the instant that happened. There was this loud crashing sound, and then everything went black. At the same time this was happening, folks standing outside of the flight safety international building.

They heard this loud crashing sound, and they looked in the direction which is toward the flight safety building, and they saw there was this massive fire and black cloud of smoke coming up from the backside of the building, and so they called 911.

And when first responders arrived on scene, they discovered evidence of a plane crash.

“It would turn out there was another pilot named Mark Goldstein, who was flying that day out of Wichita National Airport,”

except Mark was flying an actual plane. He was the only passenger inside of a six-seat passenger plane, and pretty much as soon as he took off, he lost control, and he crashed through the walls of the flight safety international building. Specifically, he struck the flight simulator, where Jay, Sergey, and his translator were busy trying to land their digital flight. The plane crash, along with subsequent fiery explosion, claimed the lives of Mark, Jay, Sergey, and his translator. Our next story is called deja vu.

One morning in October of 2015, a receptionist sat at her desk at a sports medicine center in Birmingham, Alabama, and scrolled through her boss's upcoming search reschedule on her computer. The receptionist worked for a famous orthopedic surgeon named Dr. James Andrews, and because of his notoriety, his schedule was typically packed, and so her job, for the most part, was just to go through his schedule all the time, and make sure nothing conflicted. And so, as this receptionist scrolled through the schedule, she saw that over the next couple of days that Dr. Andrews did have several surgeries,

and there actually didn't appear to be any conflicts, and so she began moving on to the next part of her job, which was to alert upcoming surgery patients about their upcoming surgery, and to make sure that all their information and the timing of the procedure were all in line with whatever they were expecting. And so the next person up to get surgery by Dr. Andrews was this minor league baseball player whose name was Brady Feigel, and he was having an elbow surgery, and he was supposed to come in the following morning.

So, the receptionist called the number on file for Brady, but it actually wasn't Brady's phone number. It was Brady's baseball team's athletic trainer. And so, you know, this guy picks up the phone, and the receptionist says, "Hey, just so you know, Brady has a surgery tomorrow morning. It's his elbow surgery, just trying to confirm the details, and make sure he understands what he needs to do to prep for it, et cetera, et cetera."

And so after she ran through her spiel, the trainer just kind of paused for a second, and there was silence in the line,

and then the trainer said to the receptionist, "There's got to be a mistake here, because Brady already had that surgery." He said, " Brady had gotten it done six months earlier, and as a result of the surgery, had had to sit out, basically the entire baseball season. So there was no mistake in it. He had had the surgery it was done." But the receptionist, as she's hearing this, she's like, "No, that doesn't make any sense." Because the receptionist actually remembered Brady Fiegel.

He had come in recently for his consultation for this elbow surgery, and he was a really unique looking guy. I mean, he's six foot four, he had bright red hair, a big beard, and also he is a professional baseball player. Like, this is a unique guy that's coming in for a unique surgery that's related to baseball.

And so what ended up happening next is the receptionist and the trainer started going back and forth, trying to describe Brady Fiegel to make sure they both were talking about the same person. But of course, they were, because how many six foot four professional baseball player pitchers

“with this particular elbow problem that were coming to this clinic for an elbow surgery were there?”

Like, this had to be the same guy, but how could they both be right? But the trainer is saying, "Well, my Brady Fiegel already got it done." And the receptionist is like, "No, he's scheduled to come in tomorrow because I had a consultation with him a couple of days ago." Like, they couldn't both be right, but they couldn't understand how this could be possible. But the explanation for this that they did eventually figure out, you just have to see to believe.

It would turn out the receptionist and the trainer were both right. Dr. James Andrews was scheduled to perform an elbow surgery on a six foot four red-haired, big bearded, minor league pitcher named Brady Fiegel the following morning. And Dr. James Andrews had also performed the same surgery on another six foot four red-haired, big bearded, Brady Fiegel who also was a minor league baseball player, also a pitcher who heard his elbow months earlier.

There were literally two Brady Fiegel's that didn't know each other that looked the same. Did the same sort of really unique job, minor league baseball player, that also went to the same clinic to get the same surgery at roughly the same time. But somehow or another, the clinic put the wrong contact information for the wrong Brady. And so the guy who was supposed to get surgery the next day, they accidentally put in the contact info for the other Brady Fiegel, because they confused them because they looked exactly the same and they had the same name and they're getting the same surgery.

So you can see how the mistake happened. And so it was not until the surgery mix up that the two Brady Fiegel's learned the other existed, they did not know each other. And when they met each other, I mean they're spitting images of each other and they do the same job and they have the same issue with their elbow.

I mean it was like this incredible coincidence.

“But believe it or not, they did do a DNA test because they're thinking we've got to be related, right?”

Nope, they're not related, they are just absolutely perfect doppelgangers. The next and final story of today's episode is called The Silcat. Around 1am on Sunday, January 20th, 1907. A 57-year-old man named Samuel Hughes was riding on a passenger train that was moving through South Eastern Wales. Sam had spent basically the last 24 hours working the entire time.

He was a salt merchant and he had left the town where he lived, a town called Blackwood, and taken a train south about an hour to another town called Newport where he did a lot of business.

And basically all day Saturday, from early morning, all the way into late at night, he had been working and now finally, you know, 1am on Sunday,

he's back on a train heading back to his town in Blackwood. But despite how utterly exhausted he was on this ride back home, you know, barely able to keep his eyes open. Sam was just so relieved that soon, very soon, he would get off the train, he'd be back in his house, and he could just collapse in bed. And so that's all he's thinking about. So for a little bit longer, Sam is, you know, fighting to keep his eyes open and the train's rumbling along,

and he can tell he's getting close to home and he rides this train all the time. This is a pretty, you know, regular route for him. And then finally, Sam feels the train start to slung down, at which point he gathers up all his things, he gets up and kind of shuffles his way into the hall, and then once the train came to a full stop, he stepped off the train onto the platform,

relieved that, you know, he's now maybe 10 minutes from home. But, as the train took off from the station, Sam, who's again standing on this platform, it's late at night here, he's looking around and he realizes something. In his stupor and his exhaustion, he didn't realize this was not his stop. He had gotten off one stop to early, it was like he was on autopilot, he was so tired, he just,

he got off thinking he was home, but he wasn't.

“And now the train is gone, and remember, this is the early 1900s, he didn't have a quick way to get from where he was,”

to his home, like there wasn't going to be another train anytime soon, nor did he know the train's schedule. He also didn't have a way to call a cab or anything, you know, it's one two in the morning here,

and so Sam realizes he basically can either find a place to stay and whatever town this is,

or he can basically walk to blackwood, which is, you know, a pretty good walk away, but he figured, you know, maybe, you know, this town was close enough he could do it. And so he figured, you know, his first step here is just leave the platform and just go find somebody. Anybody in town that maybe is out and about and just kind of figure out where we are,

but he needs to go find somebody. And so even though Sam at this point is furious with himself and really just wants to spend time dwelling on the fact that he's made this mistake, he sort of over that, and he's just he's just focused on finding a solution. And so Sam leaves the platform and he starts walking, you know,

in the general direction of lights that he sees often the distance, but this is a small train platform. He's clearly not near any major city, it's pretty much dark and just rural roads going in different directions. And so he really does not have high hopes that he's going to run into anybody anytime soon, but surprisingly, after leaving the platform and walking not very far, he got to an intersection where he saw another person walking up the other street.

And he quickly realized it was a police officer and so Sam is like so relieved, you know, an authority figure, they can help me and he flags down the police officer and the officer comes over

“and you know, they're kind of sizing up Sam, like, what are you doing out here?”

It's the middle of the night, you got luggage with you, like, what's going on here? And Sam explained the mistake you had made and asked the officer like, hey, you know, is there a place to stay here or maybe, you know, is it walkable to get to my town, you know, blackwood? And the officer would tell him, like, you know, there is places to stay in this town, but if you're up for it, it would only take you, you know, maybe an hour if you did want to make the walk to blackwood,

and, you know, if I was in your shoes, I might do that. And Sam, you know, he thought about it and he was like, you know what, I do, I just want to get home, I want to get my own bed, so yes, just point me in the right direction. And so the officer, he explained to Sam that luckily, it's really simple.

You just basically go straight down that road and you walk for about an hour until you reach a bridge,

once you get over the bridge, follow some signs, and it'll be really obvious that you're right in your blackwood, and you'll make it through us to the way.

“And so Sam thanked the officer and then gathered up his things, and he began walking in the direction of his town.”

Several hours later, a little after 3 a.m., Sam's wife, Bess, was awake inside of their home in blackwood. She was awake because she was waiting for Sam to get home. She knew he would have a long day in Newport, but by now she knew he should be home. I mean, he went on this trip fairly regularly, she knew how long it took even on the long end. And it being 3 a.m., and him not being home was starting to be pretty concerning.

And so she's up, she's kind of anxious, and all of a sudden, she hears Sam calling out to her. He's clearly out in front of the property, you know, he must have known that she was awake. He could see the lights on inside the house, and he was calling out to her that, you know, he was returning. And so Bess, you know, she's overcome with relief, she knows her husband to save. She grabs a candle, and she goes to the front door to greet her husband.

She opens the door, and she looks out, and it's not her husband. Her husband is nowhere to be found. Instead, there is this dark figure standing on her porch, just inches away, looking right at Bess. And Bess, you know, she freezes when she sees it, but she isn't scared. There's a weird calm about what she's looking at.

She doesn't know what it is, she's no idea what to do, but she's just standing there calm, as this figure is right in front of her, not moving. And as she's just staring at it, she realizes it's dressed in this long black cloak,

and it had on a black silk hat, and her husband always wore a black silk hat.

And she knew specifically, he had worn it that morning when he went to Newport. And so for a minute, she just staring sort of unbelievably at this apparition, apparently wearing clothes, at least a hat that belonged to her husband, and she knows she just heard her husband call to her. She didn't imagine that, he just called to her, but then Bess blanked, and the figure just vanished, the hat, the cloak, it's all just gone, and there's nobody standing on her porch.

And now, Bess is scared, because as much as there was a calm about this figure, now she's thinking like that I just imagined that, like what's going on here,

“is my husband outside somewhere, did he call to me because he's heard or something?”

And so she leaves her house with this candle, and she's running around her house, calling out for Sam, but Sam's not out there. And so eventually, Bess goes back inside the house and just continues to sit up, waiting for Sam. But Sam doesn't come home, and eventually, you know, by five or six in the morning, Bess just goes to bed.

When Bess woke up, later that afternoon, Sam still had not come home yet, but now, you know, the sun is out, and she's telling herself that that weird thing that happened last night, she must have imagined that, you know, like, that didn't happen, and, you know, Sam's fine. He'll be home, you know, he stayed late before and not told me, like everything's okay. But as Bess is reassuring herself that everything's okay, she hears a knock on the front door.

And for a second, she thinks maybe it's Sam, maybe he's home, but she goes to the door, she opens it up,

and it's a police officer, and he just says to her, "I have some terrible news." It would turn out the night before when Sam met that police officer who told him to walk this way to get back to Blackwood, well, Sam had followed the directions, and apparently he was on the right path,

demarcate that he was close to Blackwood.

“But, perhaps because he was so exhausted, or maybe just because it was still so dark outside,”

he fell off the bridge to his death. And so the police officer is telling Bess this, and she's totally overcome with grief. But then for whatever reason, her mind immediately went to that dark figure she saw on the porch, a little after 3 a.m.

And without really thinking this through, she just said to the officer, "What time do you think he died?"

And the officer was like, "Well, you know, based on the officer that directed Samuel in that direction, you know, towards the bridge, and how long it would have taken him to get there, we estimate he likely fell off the bridge around 3 in the morning." And so for Bess, she's thinking, "That's around the same time. I saw that figure on my porch."

And then she also began to think about that hat, the black silk hat that Sam always wore

that she knew he had worn that morning when he went to Newport. And so Bess's next question was, "Well, when you found him, was he wearing his black silk hat?" And the officer was kind of confused and said, "No, he wasn't wearing a hat at all." And so when Bess heard that, those details confirmed that who or what she saw on her porch earlier that morning, the dark figure with the black silk hat, that must have been Sam's soul.

He was coming to say goodbye to his wife because he had just fallen off the bridge and died. And you know, this figure having that black silk hat on was a way of showing her that, "Yes, that really was her husband."

“Bess would later tell the story to a reporter who would have this story printed all over Wales, and that's how we know it today.”

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. Ballum Podcast, strange dark and mysterious stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballum. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bohn and Cole Kassio, research and fact checking by Shelley Xu, Samantha Banhouss, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fassiano.

Research and fact checking supervision by Steven Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whitley Kassio and Jordan Stitham, production support by Antonio Minata and Delana Corley, artwork by Jessica Klogst and Kiner, theme song, "Something Wicked" by Ross Bubden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballum Podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballum Podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballum 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. Ballum.

“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]