Prep for Disaster (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Today, I'm going to tell you four stories about people who were very focused on preparing for something that was really important to them, but during their prep, they each inadvertently misjudge a single detail that ultimately, completely upends their plans. 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 place because that's all we do upload two, three, even four times every week. So, if that's of interest to you, please invite the follow button to come with you to Game 7 of the World Series. But don't tell them, their seat is directly behind a concrete pillar. Okay, let's get into our first story called Community Chaos. One afternoon in the winter of 1889, a 58-year-old man named Thomas Burroughs put out some wooden chairs in a large communal room inside of a church in the rural town of Eagle Creek, Illinois. Thomas worked at the church, and he and a few other volunteers were setting up the congregation for their big annual event that night, where all the local farmers and their families would come together for a bit of community connection with food and music and other festivities. So, the town of Eagle Creek was a very humble farming community, where everybody for the most part worked extremely hard for the little that they had, and there really weren't a whole lot of opportunities to actually just have fun, which really was why they did this event every year. So right now, Thomas and his co-workers were working hard to make sure that everything for tonight was perfect. That there were decorations on the walls, there were enough chairs and food for everyone in a table for refreshments, like they wanted this to just be exactly what the town needed. And now, as Thomas finished putting out all the chairs, he went over to the middle of the room, where there were some boxes that needed to be put away before everybody else arrived. He leaned down and began picking these boxes up, and as he did, he realized some of the labels that had been on these boxes had fallen off, so he just began putting them back on. And then after all the labels were back on, he carried each of the boxes over to a corner where he just stacked them up and sort of got them out of the way. Then after that, he gave the room a final one-sover to make sure there was nothing out of place. And when he was satisfied, he told the other volunteers that "We're all set, ready to go." A few hours later, and Thomas was standing at the front door of the church's communal room. His job for the night was to greet all the guests as they came in, and also to keep an eye on anyone who was trying to cause trouble. Big parties like this were, you know, a rare luxury in this community, so Thomas really wanted to make sure nobody had too much fun and, you know, got out of hand. Now, at this point, the event had already begun, and so far it was going great. Right behind Thomas, there was a big crowd of farmers and their wives, you know, just kind of chatting and enjoying themselves, and nearby there were their kids running around, laughing and playing, like everything was playing out as Thomas had hoped. But suddenly, as Thomas turned his attention back outside, you know, waiting for more guests, he heard someone inside of the communal room start shouting, and he turned to see that a local farmer, a guy named Peter Johnson, was actually now physically fighting with a group of young men. And Thomas watched in horror, as Peter actually punched one of the men in the face, just as another young man picked up a chair, one of the chairs that Thomas had so dutifully put out, and smashed it over Johnson's head. It was like a full blown brawl. Before Thomas could really even begin to understand what in the world was going on here, it was like all hell broke loose inside of this church. People began jumping into this scrap to try to pull the young men off of Peter, but as soon as they were sort of in the fisticuffs, they got sucked in, they're getting punched, they're getting kicked, and before long it was like 12 men or more are all fighting with each other, and then those who were not in this fight were scrambling to grab their kids and usher them off to safety. And then before long as Thomas is watching this party just completely devolved, some of the men began pulling out knives and guns and whatever weapon they had on them, and it's just like pure mayhem in a church. Like Thomas is looking at this, like, what are we doing here guys? It's a church event. And so Thomas, he just storms into the middle of this fight, which obviously was quite dangerous, but like he's one of the main guys in charge here, he can't believe they're doing this. And he figured, you know, with his presence, he could just go in there and sort of demand this thing to stop. But as he went in and began trying to grab people to throw him out, he got pulled into the fight himself. And before long he's getting punched, and he's getting kicked in the ribs, and then he felt this really sharp pain in his back. And as soon as he felt that, he began to scream out, and he fell to the ground, and now he's like underneath this very much ongoing fight, and he's getting trampled and stamped on. Like, he could get killed in here. And so by this point, Thomas is forgetting the idea of him being the sort of peacemaker here. He knows he's not going to stop this, at least not like this. And so he began just rolling and crawling his way to get out from underneath this madness, making his way to the other side of the room. And so Thomas, he's crawling his way, and eventually, he gets out from underneath this just complete madness, and the fights just going on the whole time. And as he's dragging himself to safety, he sees something on the ground that he hadn't really thought about until right now, and suddenly he understood why this fight was even happening in the first place, and he had something to do with it. So this party was actually a Christmas party, so it was not just a random get-together, it was for the holidays. And you know, basically the idea was these families were going to come and have this wonderful time, and each of these families who worked really hard for the little that they had, they all basically scrapped their money together, what little they had extra, and they bought their own kids Christmas gifts and wrapped them up, and they brought these gifts to the party. It was sort of agreed upon that all the families would have gifts for their kids, and the kids would all sort of open them together, like at this Christmas party. But critically, the way this went is all the parents dropped off their wrapped presents, ahead of the party. They dropped them off like in the afternoon, and it was Thomas and his volunteers job to set them all up on the side of the room, so that when the kids came in, the presents would be sort of presented for them. And Thomas and his team, they had done that. Those boxes that he had moved to the side of the room right before the party started, those were the gifts, and he had them all set up, all stacked up. But some of the labels had fallen off of these gifts, and he hadn't thought much about it, and he had just sort of randomly put the labels back on, inadvertently giving the wrong gift to the wrong child. And so later that night, when the kids began opening their gifts, like the gifts they were getting didn't really make any sense for them. It's like, oh, Cindy loves dolls. Good thing we got her, you know, a toy gun, and you know, Tommy over here, he loves teddy bears. Good thing we got him a slide. Like none of it made any sense. But the kids, they were sort of okay with it. But the parents who had scrapped the money together, they're watching their kid open their gift that they're really excited for their kid to get, because they really got this one gift just for them. And it's the wrong gift. But then they see, you know, right over there, Chris's kid, you know, Tommy, he's playing with my kids sleigh. You know, what the heck is that about? And so the parents began fighting with each other, saying you stole my kid's gift. Not realizing it was just the labels had been put in the wrong places by Thomas. And so ultimately Thomas, he actually got stabbed in the middle of this fight when he went in to break it up. He got stabbed in the back. But he would make a recovery. And in fact, nobody died during this party. It was just a very painful lesson for Thomas that when you organize a Christmas party, don't screw up the labels on the gifts. Our next story is called Poor One Out. Just before 4 p.m. on October 21st, 1905, a 26-year-old man named Adam Stocker, hurried down a staircase inside the brewery where he worked in the town of Redding, Pennsylvania. He was heading down to the cellar so he could finish his last task of the day, and he was moving really quickly because he was just excited to be done so he could finally go home. And so down the stairs Adam went and at the bottom of the steps he could see one of his co-workers, whose name was Jacob. He was standing there doing some inventory and Adam cheerfully said hello, and you know Jacob said hi back. He passed by Jacob and then Adam went down the short hallway in the cellar that brought him out to the cascroom, which is this massive, massive space with all these barrels of beer. So this was the cascroom as it's aptly named and it is where this brewery did all their brewing and then stored their beer. And so this room is filled with, you know, hundreds of these huge barrels that have these thick steel bands that reinforce them on the outside. They could hold like 2,000 plus gallons of beer each. And all Adam had to do, his final task before he got to go home was just to pour some beer from one of these big cascs into a bunch of smaller kegs and then these kegs would be brought to the town's upcoming market where they could be sold. So this is a pretty routine task. And so Adam, he's really excited, he's got like this very short thing he's got to do, but his mind is totally elsewhere. Like the reason really he wanted to get home is not just because he didn't feel like working right now. It was actually because he just really wanted to see his fiance Kate who was at home. The two of them were finally getting married in five days. And it was like all either of them could think about. They were so excited about this wedding. And so he just, you wanted to get home and just talk about the wedding with her and talk about their future. Like that was all his mind could focus on as he went in to do this final task. And so Adam, pretty absent-mindedly, went over to one of the casks and just robotically began going through the motions. He had done this so many times before. This is like muscle memory, you know, pouring the beer into the smaller kegs. He found the right cask, he checked to make sure it was all done brewing and ready to pour. And then Adam actually went down to open up the valve at the bottom of this cask to begin, you know, pouring the beer out into the smaller keg. And he was literally about to turn the valve when he realized, because again, he sort of absent-minded here. He had not actually gotten an empty keg yet. And so if he had turned the valve, it would have just, you know, spilled out on the floor. And so Adam laughed at himself because he's like, "I clearly am not paying attention here." Like, I gotta focus just for an extra couple of minutes here and then I'll be done. And so he left the cask, he walked over and he began to get one of the smaller kegs to bring back and put underneath to get the beer. But like as he's getting the smaller keg, there was this really loud, groaning sound that began to echo through the entire cask room. And then before Adam could even turn around or do anything, that groaning sound suddenly became a massive banging. At the same time, this was happening. Adam's coworker, Jacob, who had been at the foot of the stairs when Adam came down, he was standing maybe 15 feet away from the cask room so like just outside of the cask room. And he was literally physically thrown off his feet as there was this massive explosion that ripped through the cellar, starting from the cask room. Jacob smashed the ground hard, but you know, he had survived and he sat up and there's dust and debris in the air and he's coughing. He has no idea what's happened. And he also realized he was soaking wet. And then he looked toward the cask room, like down that hallway toward the cask room where Adam was. And you can see the entire floor, really everything inside the cask room was soaked in liquid, which had to be beer. And then also as he continued to look into the cask room and they're still dust and everything sort of settling, he saw there was like a weird lump just sort of sitting inexplicably in the middle of the floor in the cask room. And at first he didn't know what it was, but then as he sort of squinted his eyes and the dust finally settled, he realized what it was and Jacob began to scream. So it would turn out this brewery used a very special type of cask. They were considered top of the line at the time. And what made them so special is they used this special air pressure system to work. Basically, you know, they would turn on an air pressure system that would force air into the cask and then you'd open up the valve at the bottom and that pressure would force the liquid out. It was a better pour. It was a faster, more powerful pour. And when you're pouring lots and lots of beer into smaller kegs, this system made things much more efficient, much faster. And so Adam, when he first went into the cask room, he did what he always did when he was about to pour beer out of a cask into anything. And that was to turn on the air pressure system, which begins pumping air into the cask, like whichever cask you've turned on the system for. And so he turns on the system and he's about to open up the valve at the bottom to pour the beer when he realizes up, I've forgotten the smaller keg. And so he leaves the lower valve closed while the air pressure system is on a big no-no and air is building up inside of this cask and he goes over to get the smaller keg. And by the time he's about to bring it back, so much pressure had built up inside of that cask that it couldn't be held anymore. And the cask exploded and the explosion itself, it was bad and that probably would have hurt Adam. He was so close. But what ultimately did Adam in is the steel bands that were around this cask holding it together. The explosion forced one of them off and sent it flying like a frisbee across the room and it cut Adam's head off. The lump that Jacob saw in the middle of the cask room was Adam's head. So Adam, what he was supposed to do if he was leaving the cask after turning on the air pressure system is to turn it back off again because you won't have that on at the same time you're opening up that lower valve. It keeps it from building up inside, but he was absent-minded and he kept it closed and I cost him his life. And then adding insult to injury five days later is when Adam was actually buried, which is the day he was supposed to get married. (dramatic music) Our next story is called Cash with Draw. Around three a.m. on September 26th, 2009, a man named Byron Gashi sat in the passenger seat of his friend Taseen's car as they drove down a quiet street in the city of Denon, Belgium. As they were driving along, Byron looked out the window and he could see there was a sign for a bank right up ahead. And when he saw that, his heart began to race. At this point Byron turned around and looked into the back seat where another one of his friends was sitting and he asked this friend if he was ready. And the friend nodded and said yes. So Byron and his two friends were out at this hour for one very specific reason. They were going to rob the ATM outside of this bank. And Byron really actually wasn't even nervous. He was just excited because they came up with like this amazing foolproof plan to break open the machine and take all the cash inside. Now the bank, 'cause it's 3 a.m. was closed. And security was gone. There was nobody out on the street nearby like it's a ghost town basically. So Byron was pretty sure if they worked quickly here, they could, you know, go up, take the money and be out of there before anybody even noticed. And so a moment later, the car comes to a stop right outside the bank. The scene is parked right up against the curb and to scene and Byron and the other friend they're looking around and sure enough, there's nobody here. And the ATM machine is right there sitting right outside the bank like this is it. This is gonna be so sweet, so quick, they're gonna be so rich. And so to scene, his job was to be the getaway driver. So he was gonna stay in the car behind the wheel. While Byron and the other friend, they were the ones who were actually gonna get out and extract the cash. And so once again, the coast was clear, those two, they got out and they gathered up the equipment they would need for this brilliant plan they had and they walked over to the ATM. And once they got over there to scenes watching them and Byron, he's got down in one knee and he's setting something up. And so as the other friend, they're sort of like working together to set up this complicated thing that's gonna like, you know, get the money out and to scenes thinking like, man, this looks great. And then after a moment, it seems like they've got everything set up just right, like to scenes watching and Byron and the other friend, they're like, expecting something to happen, but nothing happens. And to scenes like, what's going on? Is there problems? And he's watching the body language of Byron and the other guy and they seem sort of like frustrated, like they're talking to each other like, hey, do we do something wrong here? They're like fiddling with their contraption they've set up to try to open up this ATM. And it just seems like nothing's working. And then all of a sudden, from to scenes perspective, he's in the car, you know, 15 feet away. There's this unbelievable blinding light that just encompasses everything all around him. It's like everybody's completely covered in this light. And then a second later, there's this shock wave, like a massive explosion. And then to scene he's looking and it's just like rubble and dust and like the bank where it used to be is basically gone. And he can't even see his friends. And he's sitting there like, what do I even do? Like he's checking himself for injuries. Like what's going on here? And then a moment later, he hears the sound of sirens fast approaching, like clearly, something's gone horribly wrong here. He's waiting for Byron and the other to come into the car to make their getaway, but there's no sign of him. And again, it's like some sort of bomb went off, like what in the world? And so to scene, he just takes off. He drives away. So it would turn out the big plan is they were going to use dynamite to blow up the ATM. They were going to blow off the front of the ATM and take the cash out. But byron and the friend and to scene for that matter didn't know anything about explosives. So they just grabbed a random amount of dynamite, which for those who don't know any better, explosives are very sensitive. You want to use exactly the right amount for the job because if you use too much, it's like a nuclear bomb relative to what you want it to be. And so they brought like a massive amount of dynamite, not realizing it was massive, slapped it onto this ATM, and then they couldn't get it to go off. That's what the scene was seeing. They're like unable to make it explode. And then finally, after tinkering with it, they detonate the dynamite and it does blow apart the ATM, but it also completely levels the bank. Like it literally blew the entire bank up. It was just gone and it blew up byron and his friend. They were basically obliterated from this blast they died. To scene, he would survive and he would drive off, but he would quickly be arrested and sent to jail. Our next and final story of today's episode is called The Feast. [Music] On the morning of April 20th, 1671, a 41-year-old man named Francois Vatel stared into the pantry in a massive chateau in the countryside of Chantilly, France. He'd been up all night and had barely slept in almost two weeks, actually. So this morning, I mean, he was really running on just adrenaline at this point. So Francois was the head of household for a very high-ranking nobleman whose name was Louis II de Barbonne-Conday. And Louis II was currently trying to gain favor with the King of France. So he had decided to invite the King and his whole court over to his place for this elaborate three-day feast. And organizing this huge feast was Francois' responsibility. So he'd spent literally all his time over the past couple of weeks preparing for it. Francois took a lot of pride in his work, and he knew how crucial this event really was going to be for his boss' social well-being in France. So he had to make sure everything was just perfect. Now, of course, this was a huge task, because Francois was not just planning, you know, some, you know, relatively modest dinner party here. Here we're going to be 300 nobles on the guest list, not just 300 people, 300 nobility on the guest list, and they all came with a bunch of plus ones and staff of their own. So really, Francois actually had to accommodate close to 3,000 people for three days of these grand meals and entertainment. I mean, this is a massive, massive event for him. Also, these chateaux itself, it only had a measly 10 bedrooms. So Francois had to arrange for everybody else to stay at hotels and private mansions and neighboring towns. It was like a total logistical nightmare. And now, it was just 3 days until everybody arrived, and there really was still quite a bit left to do, including making sure that they just had enough food to actually feed all these people. And so now, Francois was checking the pantry to take stock of everything they had, and figure out if they were still missing anything. And so, Francois, he got this list out with all the things he needed to have, and he went item by item, checking to see if he had it. And he confirmed that, you know, at the end of this list, the only thing that it looked like they still needed was the fish. And the fish was not going to be like a side dish. There was at least one lunch over these 3 days, where the fish was the centerpiece, like they needed fresh fish. This was definitely not an optional thing. This was part of the schedule. So Francois, he had sent a buyer all the way to the coast to order the massive quantities of fish that he knew they would need for a feast of the size. And Francois had emphasized to the person he had sent that the fish had to be delivered to the chateau before dawn on the 24th. In many ways, he felt like his entire career depended on that fish arriving in time. So at the same time that Francois was taking final stock of his inventory and thinking about this fish, well, a hundred miles away at a seaport on the coast of France, Francois' fish buyer watched as a driver loaded some huge baskets of fish into a horse-drawn delivery wagon. The buyer had had to contact practically every supplier on the coast, but he had been able to get all the fish that Francois needed. And he was watching as it was all being packed up and shipped out right now. Which meant that, you know, by the buyer's own math, the fish was going to be at the chateau in, you know, just a few days, right when Francois had requested. The fish was going to be a success. A few days later, around 8 a.m. on the morning of April 24th, so fish delivery day, a servant at the chateau in Chantilly was carving some vegetables at the kitchen sink while Francois frantically rummaged through the pantry right behind him. So this weekend's big first elaborate lunch was supposed to take place in just a few hours. And while the fish did arrive before dawn that morning, this whole wagon full of food and fish had been delivered, while that had happened on time, there was only a fraction of the fish that Francois needed, like there wasn't enough fish. And so Francois, he was running around that morning trying to think of some other way to fix this lunch, because he didn't have a huge amount of the main course. Then all these nobles and the king, I mean, all these people are going to see that he screwed this up, like this is a worst case scenario. And so Francois, after looking everywhere and like asking anybody if they had ideas for what they could do, it's like there really wasn't a good alternative here. There was just too many people and there wasn't enough good food or good main dish food that he could actually use like he really was. He was screwed here. And so eventually Francois, he just like stopped in the middle of the kitchen and he had this look of utter defeat on his face. All the other chefs in the staff are looking at him like, oh my gosh, what are we going to do here? And then eventually, you know, with this look of utter defeat on his face, Francois, he just stopped and he told everybody, I'm just going to go to my room and think for a minute. I got to go up there and just figure this thing out. And then he turned and stormed out of the kitchen. A few minutes later, that same servant who had been scrubbing vegetables at the sink finished up what they were doing and carried the veggies over to the chef's station. And as they did that, they happened to look outside and they saw there was another delivery wagon pulling up right outside the chateau. And when the servant got out there and grabbed one of the crates off the back of the wagon, he saw what was inside of it and he sighed with relief. It was the rest of the fish. The servant told the driver that they had all been so stressed that morning because they didn't have enough fish. They were just sort of unsure what had happened to the rest of what they had ordered. And so now, this was like a huge relief that their big lunch was going to go off without a hitch like, thank you so much. And so the servant, after helping the driver fully unload, he ran inside and headed upstairs to tell Francois the good news. However, there was a hiccup. So Francois's buyer, he goes out to the seaport and he orders this unbelievably enormous amount of fish and other food as well, but predominantly fish. In fact, there was so much that they had to break it up into two wagons. There was just so much of it. And so the buyer had helped load the first wagon and then they were like in the process of loading the second wagon and he just told the driver like, hey, they really need this stuff soon. You go on ahead. At least, you know, this wagon will get there a little bit early. They can start prepping this food and then, you know, the second wagon, after we get it packed up, it'll make its way. It'll only be behind by like 30 minutes. And so that was the decision that was made. We'll have two wagons bringing the fish and all the supplies back to the chateau. But the buyer had not told the driver of the first wagon that there was a second wagon. That driver just took off and thought this was all we got. Here you go. Like, when he got to the chateau, he was like, here's all your stuff. And so when Francois had received the first wagon, he had no idea there was a second wagon. And so he's in full panic mode that he doesn't have enough fish not realizing literally in a matter of minutes. It's going to arrive, but he didn't know. And so he's thinking like, my career's over. I'm going to completely embarrass myself. The first meal, I've completely screwed up. The king is here. All these people are here and it's all my fault. And so in the very short amount of time between the arrival of the first fish wagon and the arrival of the second fish wagon, Francois went up to his bedroom, attached a knife inside of his door that was pointing outward like it's it's jutting off the door. And then he ran into it three separate times, running himself through, ultimately killing himself. And literally he died pretty much right as the second fish truck arrived. So Francois as staff was obviously well aware of how much stress he had been under in the weeks leading up to this huge event. And they also were quite aware of how stressed he was when he didn't get enough fish. I mean, they saw he took his own life over it. And so they all really liked Francois felt like he'd done a great job and that this was a horrible tragedy. And so they actually honored him by going forward with this big event. Francois had done all the prep for it. He had meticulously planned everything. He had not, you know, under ordered the fish. He ordered exactly the right amount. He had everything prepped. Obviously he didn't know about it. And so the event had happened and it actually went off without a hitch because of what a good job Francois had done. 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. Ballin podcast, Strange Dark and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bone and Cole LaCasio. This episode was written by Kate Gallagher and by Kate Murdoch, Story Editing by Kate Murdoch and Paris Pache Cooper. Research and fact-checking by Shelley Shoe, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fassiano. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear, audio editing and post-produced by Whit LaCasio and Jordan Stidem, production support by Antonio Monada and Delana Corley, artwork by Jessica Clogston Keiner, theme song "Something Wicked" by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballon podcast, and just a reminder, every new an exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin podcast. You can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin 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. Ballin. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and add free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple podcasts, or visit SiriusXM.com/podcastplus 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.