Stranger Than Fiction Vol. V 30:51

Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin Podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, and today's podcast features three stories that demonstrate that. The audio from all three 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 you'll hear is called "Icicle" and it's about one of the most baffling missing person cases ever. The second story you'll hear is called "The Ultimate Shock" and it's about a husband who thought he experienced a miracle, but in fact it would turn into the most horrific event of his life. And the third and final story you'll hear is called "Headache" and it's a story about this woman who begins having a very persistent headache, but she never would have guessed the sinister explanation as to why.

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've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, the next time the Amazon Music Follow button lets you borrow their favorite book, be sure you spill several cups of water all over the pages so it warps the book and it never closes flat again. Okay, let's get into our first story called Icicle.

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In 1984, 19-year-old Timothy Molnar was living at home with his parents in Daytona Beach, Florida, while going to school for aeronautical mathematics. On January 24th, Timothy gets up and begins his day just like every other day of the work week by going downstairs, having a bite to eat, and then taking his younger brother, Frank, to school.

Once he dropped Frank off, he drove across town to his university where he had class. But as soon as he parked, he realized he had forgotten his bike and that was something he brought with him everywhere. And so before class started, he went back home, he got his bike, put it in his car, turned around and headed out. And his mother would step outside and see him trailing away down the road. And that was the last time she or anybody in their family, for that matter, saw him alive.

That night when Tim didn't come home, his family called the police. The police asked them, you know, is there any reason he would want to run away? Is he in trouble? Is there anything going on? And his family's like, no, he's a straight-A student. He's got lots of friends. He's super happy. He's well-adjusted. He's on a great career path. There's nothing in his life to indicate that he would want to run away or that he's in trouble. I know he doesn't drink or do drugs. There's really nothing.

So the police begin their investigation and they start by looking at the family's credit card bills because they knew Tim had a credit card that was connected to the family account. And they found there had been a charge placed the same day he had gone missing in a gas station about 150 miles away.

And so the police go out to this gas station and they find someone that had been there when Tim was there. And he was able to describe exactly what he looked like, what his car looked like. And the police ask him, you know, was Tim alone? And the witness says, yeah, he was alone. He was acting totally normal. I saw him go into the store and then I saw him come back out again. And that was it. I don't know where he went after the gas station. So for the next couple of days, nothing really happened. There were no leads to operate on and Tim wasn't getting in touch with them. So they just waited. Then

Then on January 30th, so about a week after Tim has gone missing, Tim's family receives a letter from an auto impound company in Atlanta, Georgia. And the letter basically says there is a car that's sitting in our lot that is registered to your house. You need to come out here and get it.

And so the family goes to Atlanta, Georgia to inspect the car and they walk up to it and there's nothing suspicious about it. There's no scratches on it. The tires are all fully inflated. They look inside and there's no sign of a struggle. There's no blood. There's no debris of any kind. But what they would find inside the car were Tim's credit cards, his wallet, his license and other items suggesting that perhaps Tim is trying to ditch his old identity and start a new one.

They also noticed a few very expensive items that they knew were always in his car were now missing: his car stereo, his toolbox, and his bike.

Tim's family stayed in Atlanta for a couple of days thinking maybe Tim will return to this car, but after a couple of days it was clear that they weren't doing any good sitting there. So they went back to Florida. When they got back, they looked inside of Tim's room a little bit more closely and they discovered that none of his clothes had been taken. There was no suitcase taken. It was like he left with just the clothes on his back.

They also checked his savings account and he had taken all the money out but left $10 in there. And the family believed that by leaving that $10, what he was really saying is, "I'm gonna come back someday." But he didn't come back and they never ever heard about him again. It was like he just vanished.

A decade after Tim went missing, the TV show Unsolved Mysteries aired a segment about Timothy and his disappearance in hopes that the viewers would be able to give them some information about the case. And sure enough, a man named Stephen Cull, who was living in Wisconsin, called into the show and said, without a doubt, I know where Timothy is.

He told them this story about how 10 years earlier he was walking around this forested area in Wisconsin when he came to a clearing in the middle of this forest and he saw this lump in the middle of the ground. He didn't know what it was. It was wintertime, so he couldn't tell if it was wood or an animal. And he walked up to it and he looked down and he realized there was this huge block of ice. And when he brushed the snow off the top, he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Inside of this huge block of ice is the dead body of a young man.

Cull would immediately call the police who'd show up. They would get the body out of the ice, but there was no identifying information on him. And he was very badly decomposed at this point. And so they had no way to identify him. And so he was buried and he was unclaimed.

But from the second Steve saw that dead body in the ice, that image was seared into his mind. And so when the TV show Unsolved Mysteries put a picture of Tim up on the screen saying, if you've seen this guy, let us know. Stephen's like, oh my gosh, I recognize those clothes. That's the guy who was dead in the ice block. And so the police go to Wisconsin. They dig up the body that was inside of the ice. They do a DNA test. And sure enough, it's Tim Molnar.

Even though Tim's body was almost completely skeletonized at this point, the coroner said there's no sign of trauma to his body. None. However, they weren't able to determine a cause of death. To this day, we have no idea how or why Tim wound up 1,200 miles away, frozen inside of a block of ice. Our next story is called "The Ultimate Shock."

One morning in early June of 2011, in the Russian city of Kazan, a 49-year-old Russian woman named Fagilyu Mukhametsinov woke up feeling nauseous.

Fagiliu had recently had some health problems, and her doctors had told her that she really needed to take it easy, don't do anything that really stressed her out or made her mad, you know, basically just relax. And so, on that morning, this is exactly what Fagiliu decided to do. Instead of pushing through her nausea to go to work anyways that day, she decided she would call out from work and stay home and have some tea and try to just feel better.

But, a little while later when Fagiliu was in the kitchen making tea, her husband, Fagili, he came in and asked her how she was doing, and she said, "You know what? I actually feel worse. You know, my nausea has gotten worse, my chest hurts, and I'm starting to sweat. I'm going to go lie down in the bedroom." But, as Fagiliu walked across the kitchen to go lay down, her chest suddenly tightened tenfold, and she collapsed to the ground unconscious.

Fagili rushed over to her and tried to wake her up, and when he couldn't, he rushed to the phone and dialed 112, which is Russia's emergency line, and he called for an ambulance. And then when the ambulance arrived, Fagiliu was not breathing. And by the time they got her to the hospital, she was declared dead. She had died from a heart attack.

Fajili, who had been married to Fagiliu, his wife, for almost 30 years, was absolutely heartbroken, but he and his wife's religion encouraged people to have funerals within 24 hours of a loved one passing away. And so despite the fact that Fajili was basically despondent from all his grief, he pretty much immediately began calling relatives and friends and making preparations for Fagiliu's funeral, which would take place the next day.

The next morning, Fagili woke up and put on his best suit, and then he joined his and his wife's family and friends at the funeral home for Fagiliu's funeral.

When Fajili walked inside of the funeral home, he saw there were all these wooden chairs facing forward towards the front of the room, and at the front of the room, up on a table, was his wife's coffin, which was open and surrounded by all the flowers that Fajili had barely been able to buy with the little bit of money that he and his wife had.

Fajili slowly made his way down the middle of the room to his wife's coffin, and the other people that were there saw him coming and got out of the way in respect to, you know, the husband of the deceased. And so Fajili, he walks up and he looks down at his wife, who again, you know, it's open casket so he can see her, and he was struck by her appearance. She just did not look right.

Now, Fagili did not have enough money to embalm his wife, which means to preserve a dead body and make it look like it's very lifelike. And so instead, the people who worked in this funeral home had just applied heavy makeup to Fagiliu's face to try to make her appear more lifelike, but it really hadn't worked. To Fagili, it didn't even look like his wife. After all, Fagiliu never even wore makeup, and so to see her with heavy eyeliner and bright red lipstick was just totally bizarre.

Behind Fagili, Fagili's relatives were all assembled in the first row, beginning their prayers for the dead. And so Fagili, after taking a few more looks at his wife, he stepped back and joined the first row. And so as Fagili was standing there holding his mother's and brother's hand, he closed his eyes and did his best to focus on the words of the prayer instead of on the grief he was feeling for his wife.

And as he was doing that, his mother, who was on his right side, suddenly broke from the words of the prayer and let out this strange crying sound. And Fajili, he opened his eyes and looked over at his mother, expecting her to be collapsed on the ground from all the grief she was experiencing. But instead, he saw his mother was trembling and looking straight ahead. And so Fajili followed her gaze, and what he saw at the front of the room made Fajili want to faint.

His wife, Fagiliu, was now sitting straight up in her coffin. She wasn't making a sound, but she was looking out at the crowd of people with her strange makeup on her face, just staring at them with wide eyes. And for a second, everybody in the funeral home noticed this and went totally quiet, and both Fagiliu and the mourners just stared at each other.

And then Fagiliu began screaming, but at first it was like she couldn't make any sound, and it was this raspy, dry yell that was coming out of her mouth. But then it built and built until it was sort of like a bellow or a roar. And when this loud, deep, guttural sound began coming out of Fagiliu's mouth, the mourners in the room began screaming too. And suddenly it was absolute chaos inside of this building.

As funeral workers rushed to call emergency services not knowing what else to do, Fagili, who also had been screaming after seeing his wife arise from the dead, he kind of snapped out of it and ran to his wife and he embraced her. And when he did, Fagiliu went from screaming to silent. And she looked up at her husband with wide scared eyes and began crying. And then she slumped forward into Fagili's arms.

At this point, Fajili's family and Fagiliu's family saw what was happening, and they kind of snapped out of it too, and they rushed forward, and they helped Fajili lift Fagiliu out of her coffin, and they laid her down on the ground. And even though she wasn't moving, her eyes were open, and she was looking up at her family, just absolutely terrified, with all her makeup running from her tears. And then 12 minutes later, when Fagiliu finally was rushed to the hospital, she was declared dead again.

It would turn out that when Fagiliu collapsed on her kitchen floor, she really did have a heart attack, but it didn't kill her. She was just unconscious and her breathing was very shallow and she wasn't moving and nobody noticed. And so when Fagiliu kind of came to and woke up inside of her coffin at her funeral, she likely was okay, you know, all things considered. She was, you know, healthy enough to be alive.

But when she looked around the room and saw she was at her own funeral and sitting in her coffin, the stress of that moment had given her another heart attack. And this one had been fatal. Mr. Ball and Collection is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. Maybe you'll find inspiration in the incredible true story of black female mathematicians at NASA in Hidden Figures, or the fantasy world of Throne of Glass. There's more to imagine when you listen. As an Audible member, you get to choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog,

New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash imagine or text imagine to 500-500. That's audible.com slash imagine or text imagine to 500-500. The next and final story of today's episode is called Headache.

On the afternoon of May 25th, 2017, 42-year-old Nicole Gordon was laying on her couch in her home in Atlanta, Georgia with an ice pack on her head. She had a blinding headache, one of the worst headaches she had ever had, and she was just unable to do anything else but lay on the couch.

Nicole really had no idea why she had this terrible headache. The only thing she could think of was three weeks earlier, she had been in a minor car accident and one of her car windows had broken and some of the glass had cut her face, but she didn't think that would be enough to lead to this absolutely horrific headache that had not gone away for three weeks.

But Nicole was a very tough woman. And even though she had thought about going to the hospital over these past three weeks to deal with whatever was causing this headache, she had told herself that, you know, it's got to be something minor. I just need to kind of tough it out here. And what toughing it out looked like was laying on the couch all day long, only getting up to eat and go to the bathroom, not going to work and just sitting in the darkness with this ice pack, just hoping for this headache to go away.

And so as Nicole was just laying there, she heard her back door open up. It was her boyfriend, Geronte, coming in with groceries. He came inside and he put the groceries away. And then he came into the living room where she was and he asked how she was doing.

And she told him that the headache had not gone away yet, and would he mind going into the kitchen and getting her some ibuprofen, which are pain meds, as well as some water. And so Geronte said, of course. He went in the kitchen. He got what she needed. He brought it back. She said, thank you. She took the ibuprofen, and then she went back to just being totally miserable.

But just a second later, Nicole and Geronte heard a knock at the front door. And Geronte, he walked over and kind of casually looked through the blinds to see if he could see who was at the front door. And he saw it was Nicole's best friend, Leisha. But instead of going to the door and opening it, Geronte turned to Nicole and said, hey, it's Leisha. Do you want me to get the door? And Nicole should just kind of grunted and said, no, please just ignore her.

Even though Nicole and Leisha were very close, Nicole knew that Leisha was very high energy. She had been calling and texting basically nonstop ever since Nicole had begun getting these headaches. Leisha just wanted to help and kind of be around and be a part of her recovery.

but Nicole just couldn't deal with that super high energy right now. She could barely have a conversation without her head hurting even more, and she knew that Leisha and Geronte didn't really get along too well, and so Nicole figured it would just be better for everybody if they pretended no one was home, and Leisha just went on her merry way. But Leisha was very persistent and just continued knocking really loud on the front door. She began calling Nicole's phone, and so Nicole began reaching over and silencing her phone over and over again.

And finally, Nicole looked over at Geronte and just said, "I don't need this. I'm going into my bedroom and I'm lying down." And so she grabbed her phone, she stood up off the couch, you know, she could barely move, her head hurts so bad, and she walked, you know, quietly past the front door, made her way into her bedroom, and she was about to lay down on the bed when she made the mistake of opening up her blinds just a little bit. Her room was on the front of the house as well, and she wanted to see if Leisha was still there.

and when she opened those blinds, Leisha, who was outside, happened to be looking at Nicole's bedroom, and the two of them made eye contact, and Nicole's like, oh my god, she knows I'm here, and so Nicole, she just shuts the blinds, but now Leisha comes up to the window, and she's yelling, Nicole, I know you're there, come on, let me in, I want to help you, but Nicole, she just could not deal with it, and so she laid down on her bed, and just continued to totally ignore Leisha.

Nicole knew that no matter how offended and upset Leisha was for this snub, she would get over it because the two women had been friends for nearly two decades. 19 years earlier, they had been neighbors and they had become friends really quickly. They had been pregnant at the same time and they began raising their kids kind of like side by side. But in the last five years that Nicole and Geronte had been together, Nicole and Leisha had kind of drifted apart because

because Leisha and Geronte both had very strong personalities and they just kind of clashed.

And Nicole and Geronte had this kind of on-again, off-again relationship. And every time they were broken up, Leisha would come around and be totally unfiltered with Nicole about how much she didn't like Geronte. But right now, Nicole could just not deal with Leisha. And so despite hearing her yelling for her to come outside, come on, I know you're in there. Nicole just rolled over on her bed with her ice pack on the side of her head and she fell asleep.

A few hours later, when Nicole woke up, Leisha was gone as well as Geronte. He didn't stick around for very long. He often would only come over just to check in and then he'd go off and do his own thing. And so Nicole, who still had this blinding headache, she sat up, she got out of her bed, and she was only able to walk back out into the living room where she laid down on the couch and just went right back to sleep.

Even though Nicole had had this headache for three weeks and it had not gotten any better, she really was convinced that taking enough ibuprofen and relaxing long enough would cause it to go away. But over the next couple of days, this headache, which was already like a 10 out of 10 on the pain scale to Nicole, somehow became like a 20 out of 10 and it got so bad that she couldn't even open her eyes. It was like horrific.

And as this headache got so, so, so bad, her relationship with Geronte started to sour. Geronte didn't really believe that Nicole was actually in the amount of pain that she was in, and he kind of began acting like she was just being lazy. And this really upset Nicole because that wasn't true at all. She was just in blinding pain and couldn't do anything.

Finally, in late June, so five weeks after Nicole's headaches had begun, and at this point her headache had still not gone away, she was laying on the couch, like always, with the lights off, she's got the ice pack on her head, and she's just trying to get through the day when she hears the back door open, and it's Geronte, and he comes in, he slams the back door, he doesn't even say hello, and he just storms into the living room and just looks down at her with a totally disapproving look. And Nicole, she kind of looked over at him,

And when she saw that look on his face, she had just had it. And she said, you know what? We're done. And immediately, Geronte got so mad. And he's like, how dare you? I've been taking care of you for the past five weeks, bringing you groceries, this and that. And Nicole, she had no energy to fight with him. And so she just let him rant and rave until finally he was done. And he walked out. And she was like, thank goodness.

A few days later, on June 25th, Leisha was back at Nicole's house knocking on the door. Nicole had actually texted her to let her know that she had officially ended things with Geronte. And so feel free to come over. You know, there's not going to be any drama with him being here. And so Leisha had come back over. She was very excited to see Nicole and kind of get over the snafu of her being ignored. And when she knocked, Nicole did go up to the door and she opened it up.

And Leisha, as soon as she saw Nicole, this is like the first time she's seeing her since Nicole's headaches had really begun, she knew something was definitely wrong with Nicole. Her entire apartment is totally dark. All the windows are covered up. And Nicole is squinting out at Leisha and beckoning her to come inside. And Leisha's like, oh my gosh, like how bad is this headache? And Nicole could barely make a sentence. And she just said, oh, it's so bad. It's so bad.

And so Leisha came inside and Nicole led her through the dark apartment to the kitchen and back. And Nicole, she sat down and Leisha sat down opposite her. And Leisha began asking Nicole questions about her headache, about Geronte, just kind of about her life. And quickly, Leisha realized that Nicole really wasn't making any sense. Her answers, even to the simplest questions like, what did you eat today, were in fragments and didn't really make any sense. And finally, Leisha said to Nicole, hey, thank you.

"This can't be a normal headache. This is something serious. You need to go to the hospital." And at this point, even though Nicole had been trying so hard to just kind of white knuckle her way through whatever was going on in hopes it would go away, you know, she was starting to realize that there was something wrong here and she needed help from a doctor. And so Nicole agreed to go.

And so Leisha would help Nicole up and kind of assist her out of the apartment and into Leisha's car. And Leisha would take her to the hospital. And when they got there, Leisha brought Nicole into the emergency room. And she explained to the nurses and doctors that Nicole had this terrible migraine. It started after she was in this minor car accident five weeks earlier. And so the doctors and nurses brought Nicole back to one of the rooms. And they began kind of treating her the way they would any other patient who had a serious headache.

They asked her if she was hydrated, they asked what medication she was taking, they asked her what she was eating, how much sleep she was getting. They were just kind of going down the list of different things that could cause this headache, but nothing stood out as a red flag.

Even the fact that she had been in this minor car accident and had some cuts on her face from the glass, that really wasn't enough for them to think, "Oh yeah, that would cause five weeks of a persistent migraine-like headache." They even looked at the cuts on her face to see if maybe they were infected or something, but they weren't. Basically, they had no idea what was causing this.

But the doctors and nurses were very concerned because persistent extreme pain in your head could be signs of a stroke or an aneurysm or something, both of which can be fatal.

So they put Nicole through a series of imaging scans to get a look inside of her head to try to figure out what was going on. And after they finished all these scans, Nicole was brought back to her hospital room and she laid down on the bed. And even though she felt terrible still because of this headache, she at least felt like, okay, finally, you know, these people are going to figure out what's wrong with me. They're going to give me medication. This headache is going to go away and I can get back to my normal life.

But only a few minutes later, as Nicole is laying there trying to get comfortable, the door to her room suddenly burst open and a swarm of people came into the room looking very concerned. And in the middle of all these people was a guy wearing a suit. And he walked up to Nicole and he said he was a police detective and he held up one of her scans and he pointed at it.

But to understand what he was pointing at on her scan, we need to go back and look at what really happened on the day that Nicole got into that minor car accident.

Back in early May of 2017, Nicole and Geronte, who were still dating at this point, had just come back to Nicole's house after the two of them had been at a house party together. And Nicole was furious with Geronte because at this house party, he had been openly flirting with another woman right in front of Nicole.

And so Nicole, after going into her house, brought it up to Geronte about how disrespectful that was. And Geronte, instead of being apologetic or trying to defend himself or even lie about it, he actually just got really mad at Nicole and said, you know what? Fine, I'm breaking up with you. And then he began going around her house, gathering up all of his things that he had left inside of her house. And Nicole, truthfully, was so mad that she didn't really care that he was putting on this show of taking his stuff and leaving her.

And so after a few minutes of Geronte angrily grabbing his stuff from inside the house, he headed outside to Nicole's car where he had some more things inside of her car. And so he went in the passenger seat and Nicole, she just reflexively got into the driver's seat of the car just to make sure that Geronte didn't take anything inside of her car that he shouldn't or mess with her car in some way to get revenge on her.

And so she's sitting there, she's watching Geronte right next to her, gather up his things, and then he hops out of the car, doesn't say a word to her. And then he walked around the front of her car and got into his car, which was parked right in front of hers, facing out towards the road. He climbed into the driver's seat, shut the door, and then he didn't move. And so Nicole, she's still sitting in her car, looking at Geronte, hoping that he's just going to leave now, but he wasn't.

And so suddenly feeling so frustrated and mad at him for everything, she turned on her car and drove forward, not fast or anything, and bumped intentionally into the back of Geronte's car. And then she backed up to where she had been. And after she did that, she stared angrily at Geronte, basically being like, what? Like, I want you to leave. Like, get out of here.

And Geronte, he was furious. And so he threw his car in reverse and he really hit the gas and rammed into the front of Nicole's car. And in fact, he hit her car so hard that her car lurched backwards and smashed into her fence.

Now, Nicole's memory only showed her this exchange. She remembered fighting with Geronte, him getting his stuff, and then her bumping into him, and then him really hard smashing into her. And so when she thought about the minor accident she had gotten into, this was it.

But what Nicole did not know as she was laying in the hospital bed, as this detective is holding up the scan and pointing at it, is there was actually a whole other series of events that played out after Geronte backed into her.

After Geronte backed into Nicole and she smashed into her fence, Geronte got out of his car, walked up to Nicole's car, drew a gun, and shot Nicole in the head. That's what happened. This was not a glass cut. This mark on her forehead was where the bullet went into her skull.

But obviously, this did not kill Nicole. It knocked her unconscious, and Geronte picked her up, put her in his car, and drove her to his mother's house, where he told his mother that, oh, Nicole was drunk and she got into a small accident and, you know, she just needs to rest. And so Geronte's mom, believing her son, put some Neosporin on Nicole's entry wound from the gunshot, put a band-aid over it, and kind of looked after her for the night.

And then when Nicole came to, she had no idea what happened. Her memory only existed up until Geronte rammed into her. She didn't remember him getting out and shooting her and all of that. And so when Geronte realized that Nicole didn't know he shot her, he just went along with it and said, oh, yeah, you got drunk and, you know, we were fighting a little bit and you got into a small accident. And I think the glass fell down and cut your head. You know, that's all that happened. And Nicole believed it.

It wasn't until Leisha made Nicole go to the hospital five weeks later and they scanned her head that they discovered a bullet lodged in her brain. And so the detective came in the room holding up the scan and he pointed to the bright spot on the scan and that was the bullet. And the doctors and nurses, they told Nicole that we've never seen anything like this, like you should be dead.

And also, because this has gone untreated for five weeks, your body healed around the bullet. Like, we can't even take it out now. Your brain has formed itself around the bullet. And so it will do more damage than good if we try to pull it out.

And so Nicole would go on to live her life with this bullet in her head, but she never really fully recovered. As for Geronte, the police would very quickly go after him, but he would flee police and evade them for two years. And then finally, when they caught up to him, he was hiding in an attic and there was this whole long standoff, but then finally he would surrender himself.

And then he would get charged with a host of crimes, many of which he was convicted of. And so ultimately, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. If you enjoyed today's stories and you're looking for more bone chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios podcasts, Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries, bedtime stories and run full. Just search for Ballin Studios wherever you get your podcasts and you'll find them all.

Also, there are hundreds more stories like the ones you heard today, but in video format on our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time. See ya.

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like...

I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. Yeah.

No, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new Dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.