The Wrong Remedy (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Today, we have three stories about people who are absolutely sure they have found the solution to all their problems. But they're wrong, and other people have to face the consequences. 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, and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So if that's of interest to you, please offer the follow button a nice, fresh ice cream cone. But don't tell them you've secretly hidden a thumbtack in the middle of it. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's first story called Worst Date Ever. Very late at night on May 19, 2014, a young man named Yusuf frantically dug a shovel into the dirt behind his home in the city of Fez, Morocco. He was on the verge of absolute panic, so he kept trying to take deep breaths while he worked to calm himself down. But to be honest, this was basically impossible because lying next to the hole that he was currently trying to dig was a woman's dead body. So just a few hours ago, Yusuf had actually been on a date with this woman. Her name was Mina El-Houari, and she lived more than a thousand miles away in France. But she and Yusuf had met online, and they had been talking long distance for a few months. And that morning, Mina had flown down to Morocco so they could finally meet in person. And Yusuf had been incredibly nervous about this meeting. But when Mina had arrived at his house a few hours earlier that night to go on a date with him, Yusuf had said, I'm going to go to Morocco. And Yusuf had said, I'm going to go on this date. Everything had actually gone exactly right. He had made her dinner, and their conversation had been super easy and very lively, and they were like laughing a lot of the time. It was like their chemistry online had perfectly translated to real life. It was great. That was until all of a sudden, in the middle of their meal and in the middle of laughing and having this wonderful time, Mina had gotten this weird spaced out look on her face, and then she abruptly collapsed on the floor. Yusuf had immediately rushed over to her to see if she was okay, but he quickly realized she hadn't just collapsed. She was dead. And Yusuf, he had no idea why or how this was even possible. I mean, nothing had happened. They had just been talking and laughing and eating, and then she just dropped. And it was so shocking that Yusuf hadn't been able to think straight. I mean, even now, as he was digging this hole, his mind was a mess, focused on anything. But he did have one sort of single, clear thought that he just kept going back to that was driving his current behavior, which was, everybody was going to think he killed her. I mean, the whole situation was undeniably weird and hard to believe. He knew the police would never buy that Mina had just randomly dropped dead immediately after flying to Morocco to meet him for the first time. Like, it immediately cast suspicion on Yusuf. I mean, he knew that what everyone was going to assume, police included, was that he had lured Mina there and then killed her. And there was no one else who saw what actually happened who could, you know, back up what he actually saw. And so it was just kind of his word against what people saw. And so he knew he looked incredibly guilty. And so to Yusuf, he felt like even in the best case scenario, he was going to very likely spend a long time in jail before his name was ever cleared of this. And worst case? He'd be convicted of a murder he didn't commit, and then he would just stay in jail. And so Yusuf had decided the only thing he could do, based on sort of his knowledge, at least as he saw it, of what had happened, you know, the only way he could protect himself was to try to cover everything up. Yusuf dug as fast as he could, constantly looking over his shoulders, you know, making sure his neighbors weren't watching or that nobody was outside. And then finally, after what felt like forever, when he felt like the hole was deep enough, he put the shovel down, and then he took Mina's lifeless body, he rolled her into the hole, and then he covered her right back up and just hoped that this was going to be enough to keep him from getting in trouble. Now, Yusuf, after this was done, had sort of half expected to feel relieved that he had, you know, taken care of this problem. But over the next few days, he was so anxious about getting caught that he felt sick to his stomach most of the time. I mean, he couldn't function at work, and he canceled plans with his friends, and he could barely sleep. And then one morning, his worst nightmare came true. He heard a knock on his front door, and he opened it up to see two police officers standing on his doorstep. Yusuf's heart pounded in his chest, but he somehow managed to stay relatively calm, and he smiled, and he invited the officers inside. They all sat down in the living room, and Yusuf, who's like super anxious, he's so worried, he's doing his best to appear normal. And as he's doing that, the officers explained to him that they were here to, uh, investigate the disappearance of Mina El-Houari. And Yusuf, pretty much the instant they said her name, he said, "Oh, I'm sorry to hear about that, but I don't know of anybody by that name." But as the words were leaving his mouth, he could hear the anxiety coming off his own voice, and he could tell the officers instantaneously did not believe him. In fact, one of the officers just right away leaned forward and said that, according to Mina's family, the last time they spoke to her, she was leaving her tell to go meet you. Yusuf froze for a moment, and then he opened his mouth to try and respond, but his mind just went completely blank. He couldn't believe how stupid he was to have not even considered the fact that Mina's family might know where she was going. He knew that trying to cover this up had just made him look way more suspicious, and now he couldn't think of any way to get out of this, except by telling the truth. And so Yusuf just began sobbing, and he blurted out the whole story. Mina had been at his house that night, and she'd just suddenly died, and he'd panicked, and he'd buried her in his backyard, but he insisted that he didn't kill her, and he begged them to just do an autopsy because it would prove that he was not responsible. She was dead. He'd just buried her. The officers were shocked by what they were hearing. I mean, this immediate confession that the person they're looking for is dead. I mean, this was, this was shocking. One of the officers immediately jumped up with his cell phone and called for a forensics team, and the other officer who had just heard this confession just looked at Yusuf and shook his head. And Yusuf, who was feeling horrible at this point, he just put his face in his hands, and he, he cried, and he thought to himself, what a horrible mistake he had made, you know, covering this up. And he knew now for sure he was going to be in an incredible amount of trouble. But there was a small silver lining, and that was, you know, despite definitely getting in trouble, they would see when they did the autopsy that he didn't do this. He had mishandled her death, no doubt, but he didn't kill her. So once that came out, it would show, like, what really happened here. That same day, Mina's body was exhumed from Yusuf's backyard, where he said it would be, and her body was taken to the coroner. And when the autopsy results came back, the police were actually kind of surprised because Yusuf was telling the truth. However, there was one thing Yusuf was telling the truth about. And that was, that Yusuf was telling the truth about. And that was, that Yusuf didn't know. Just like Yusuf had told the police, he was not responsible for Mina's random collapse on his floor during their date. Mina actually had undiagnosed diabetes, and she had collapsed due to critically high blood sugar. So that part was true. But Yusuf's steadfast belief that he did not kill her was not correct. It would turn out that in his state of panic after Mina collapsed, Yusuf, who was very impulsive, had not been careful in confirming that Mina was actually dead. Because it would turn out, she wasn't. Mina, because of her diabetes, was in a diabetic coma. So when Yusuf buried her, she was still alive. He'd been so desperate to avoid getting in trouble for murder that he'd committed a murder. When the autopsy results came back, they showed Mina had died from suffocation after being buried in the ground. A truly horrific way to die. As for Yusuf, he was charged with involuntary manslaughter. Our next story is called The Big Catch. Early in the afternoon of November 28th, 1993, a young fisherman named Daniel haggled with a vendor at a bustling outdoor fish market in Manakara, which is a port city in Madagascar. This market was so loud, it was chaotic, and it was it was packed with hundreds and hundreds of locals. There were vendors who stood at their stands selling piles of fish out of plastic buckets on the ground or laid out on banana leaves and wooden pallets. And it was already getting very hot, and the air was buzzing with flies, while stray dogs, wandering through the lines of customers. But Daniel was not buying from these vendors, he was selling. Because earlier that morning, he and his fishing crew had pulled in their nets and found a 6-foot long bull shark tangled up in their netting. And for Daniel, I mean, this was literally the catch of a lifetime. This shark had so much meat on it, he was sure it would sell for more than his crew normally made in a whole month. I mean, this was huge. And so Daniel and this vendor, they haggle for a bit longer, and then they finally settle on a price. And Daniel, like, can't believe the vendor's going to pay that much money. I mean, this was an astounding amount of money. And then as the vendor pulled out a big wad of bills and began peeling off how much he was going to pay Daniel, I mean, Daniel couldn't believe it. This was not just the most money he had ever made at one time in his life. I mean, this was easily the most. But more than that, this was like literally the most cash he had ever seen in person all at once. This was life-changing money. And as soon as those bills were handed over to Daniel, for a moment, he just looked at the money like, how can this be real? But then he folded them up, he stuffed it in his pocket, and then he handed off all the shark meat. And then he turned and he walked out of the market. Later that night, Daniel sat at the dinner table with his family while his uncle raised a cup to toast Daniel's big catch. The family had actually already spent a little bit of the money that Daniel had earned from the shark on this celebratory meal. The table was full of food and alcohol. I mean, this was a feast. And Daniel, he was feeling really proud. He was actually the youngest fisherman in his family. So the fact that he had been the one who made this catch was a really big deal. And so once his uncle finished this elaborate toast about how great Daniel was, Daniel just smiled and then downed his own cup in a single gulp. And the alcohol really burned his throat. But he managed to get it down without wincing. And then he told everyone to dig in. About six hours later, Daniel woke up covered in sweat. His tongue was tingling like he had just eaten something really spicy. And there was also this strange metallic taste in his mouth. He tried to sit up and he realized that actually his legs were tingly too. The burning sensation in his mouth kept getting worse and worse until Daniel was desperate for something to drink. He tried to stand, but he fell right out of bed, knocking over his lamp. And the crash brought Daniel's aunt and uncle running into the room. And Daniel, he told them to please get him some water. So his aunt, in a panic, she turned and she ran out and came back a few seconds later with a cup of water. Daniel, he grabbed the cup and starts chugging as fast as he can. But the water burned horribly and he spat it out and he screamed in pain. And then he turned to his aunt and he yelled at her, asking her why had she brought him scalding hot tea. But she just looked at him confused and said she hadn't. It was just regular room temperature water. A few hours later, Daniel's symptoms were only getting worse. So his aunt, she went outside and she flagged down a man that was pulling a rickshaw and she asked him to please take Daniel to the hospital. And the guy said he would. And by the time they got to the hospital, Daniel, in addition to his other symptoms, now also had a pounding headache and he was beginning to fade in and out of consciousness. And so because of that, Daniel's aunt and uncle, who had come with him, had to physically help lift him off the rickshaw and sort of carry him into the hospital. And then as soon as they were in the hospital, Daniel heard his aunt gasp. And so Daniel, he lifted his head up to see what she was reacting to. And for a second in his delirium, he thought maybe he was back at the fish market because there were people everywhere packed together and like a dense mob filling up every inch of the room. But then he realized this was not the fish market, this was the hospital. And these were all the other people trying to check in to the emergency room. But then Daniel's vision began to go and he was sort of in and out of consciousness again. And before he knew it, he was being laid out on a stretcher and carried over to this hallway, which was somehow even more crowded and more chaotic than the waiting room. And all around him, you know, despite not really having a good sense of what was going on, he could still tell that there were there were nurses and doctors running back and forth treating patients right there in the hall. And the patients all seemed to have gone crazy. Daniel could see one man who was writhing around in obvious physical pain while a nurse just sort of dabbed his forehead with a wet washcloth. And this man was shouting that the towel was too hot while the nurse kept saying that it was not, it was cold. Other patients were complaining that it was freezing in the hall, even though they were visibly sweating profusely. And a woman that Daniel couldn't quite see kept screaming about a hot stethoscope, which didn't even make any sense. It was totally surreal. It was like the entire city had descended on this hospital and everybody had gone mad. But then through all this madness, Daniel heard one of the medical staff shouting that they needed more respirators because they had just lost another patient. By the end of that day, this hospital was completely overrun with people all over the city who all had the same symptoms, including numb or tingling limbs, headaches, confusion, and feeling that anything cold was hot and anything hot was cold. Now the doctors and the medical staff had no idea what was causing this outbreak. But very quickly, these patients began falling into comas and then dying by the dozens. Ultimately, the local medical staff, the local doctors, had to call in a team of outside investigators, experts, to come in and figure out what was going on here. And those investigators tracked the outbreak backwards to where it all started. And their search led them to the Manakara Fish Market and to Daniel. It would turn out Daniel had been right. That huge shark that he caught really was the catch of a lifetime. But it would turn out the same qualities that made the shark so valuable also made it deadly. The shark was valuable primarily because it was huge, with enough meat to feed a whole community. But sharks basically keep growing until they die, so the reason that this bull shark was so big was because it was so, so old. And during the many, many years it had been alive, it had consumed an enormous amount of something called ciguatoxin. Ciguatoxin is a chemical compound produced by a very specific kind of algae. Fish eat this algae, and then sharks eat the fish, and the toxin builds up in the shark's bodies over time. Now this is not really a problem for the fish or even the sharks. But, for the humans who eat those sharks, who have this toxin in them, it causes ciguatera poisoning, which has very bizarre neurological symptoms, like feeling that anything cold is actually excruciatingly hot and vice versa. Now in most cases, this is not fatal. But Daniel's very, very old shark had spent literal decades accumulating ciguatoxin until its meat was off-the-charts toxic. And because this shark was so big, there was so much toxic meat. And that vendor who bought it from Daniel, he sold that meat to hundreds and hundreds of people at the fish market. And Daniel and his family, they didn't buy any of this meat. They just kept a portion for their dinner that night. That was part of their celebratory meal. All told, around 500 people got sick from this shark. 188 of them wound up in the hospital, and 98 of them died. Which means Daniel's shark actually killed more people than every single great white shark attack in recorded history combined. All by itself, this one bull shark made its species the deadliest shark in the world. The next and final story of today's episode is called The Heir. One morning in early May of 1896, a young man named Nicholas Romanov sat in his palace in Moscow, Russia, listening anxiously as one of his advisors delivered their daily report. Nicholas was actually just weeks away from being officially crowned as the next ruler of Russia, the Tsar. And this report he was getting was about the many decisions that Nicholas was making. And this report was about the many decisions that Nicholas was making. And this report was about the many decisions that Nicholas now had to make. Nicholas's family, the Romanovs, had been ruling over Russia for the last 300 years. And Nicholas's father had just died. So now it was Nicholas's turn to step up and lead the country. And this was pretty much the worst thing that had ever happened to Nicholas. Partly, this was because he loved and admired his father, and he was devastated that he was gone. But mostly, it was because Nicholas didn't know anything about leading a country. He was a quiet person and would rather spend his time reading or taking walks with his wife. And his father really hadn't prepared him at all for this moment. He'd never taught Nicholas about the country he would one day be running. Also, growing up, Nicholas had rarely ever left their palace. So literally, he hadn't actually seen the vast majority of Russia. He basically lived in a bubble. And so Nicholas just felt completely unprepared and unsure of himself. And then Nicholas's advisor began asking him all these questions about what wanted to do for his coronation ceremony and the festivities around it, which would be taking place in a few weeks. And as he sat there listening, it's like Nicholas felt so overwhelmed he felt sick to his stomach. But then, Nicholas had this brilliant idea about his upcoming coronation. I mean, he had lots of problems to deal with, but it was like he had thought of this perfect solution for what to do about the coronation. And it was so obvious, he couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it earlier. Nicholas didn't actually have to make any of these decisions he was being asked to make himself. He could just copy his father, who had successfully ruled over Russia for 13 years and obviously knew what he was doing. He could just copy all of his decisions about what he did when he was coronated. So, Nicholas interrupted his advisor and said he didn't want to answer any more questions about this coronation. Instead, the organizers should simply just recreate his father's ceremony and celebration. Use the same location, the same food, the same everything. At this, Nicholas' advisor sort of looked at him with a strange look in his face and asked if Nicholas was really sure about that. And Nicholas just nodded and said, "Yes, of course." So, the advisor nodded and hurried off. And Nicholas exhaled with relief. After that, Nicholas just spent the next few weeks in a much more relaxed state. He obviously was going to have lots more problems and issues that he would have to deal with as a czar, but really the coronation had become like the big stressful thing for him because it was so soon and now he had solved for it. And so, he had just gone back to reading and taking walks and just sort of taking it easy. You know, the last few weeks he was going to be able to do that before he was officially czar and just allowed his organizers to recreate, you know, his father's coronation for him. And they did just that. You know, per Nicholas' instructions, the organizers really set up the exact same event they had held 13 years earlier for his father. They invited the general public and they used the same venue for the festivities called the Kadynka Field, which is just outside of Moscow. They made sure there'd be the exact same food stalls set up to hand out the same sausages and bread rolls and little souvenir cups to the public. And the same musicians were there to perform and entertain the visitors until Nicholas made his imperial entrance. It was all exactly the same. And then finally, after all the preparations had been made, the day finally arrived. Early in the morning on May 30th, so coronation day, a reporter named Vladimir Gilyarovsky tried to push his way through the huge crowd at Kadynka Field, this massive area that spanned over a mile wide with a pavilion and stage in the middle of it. Vladimir was there to cover the new Tsar's coronation, and he was so far really impressed by the turnout. I mean, the actual celebration hadn't even started yet, and already there were hundreds of thousands of people packed into every inch of this enormous field. Now, Vladimir remembered the celebration for Nicholas' father's coronation, but there had not been nearly as many people at that one. And so Vladimir, at some point, he began trying to make his way over to the food area. But he could barely move. The crowd was so dense that, like, each step he took was basically just a small inch forward. It was like you couldn't go anywhere. And as Vladimir was trying to navigate this mob, he heard someone yell something to the crowd. And all the people around Vladimir started repeating what had just been yelled to them. Like, they were passing it along across the entire crowd over and over again until it was like everybody was yelling it, and as this happened, Vladimir felt like the energy shift around him. The crowd, who had been sort of restless before, now, it was like they were all moving with a purpose, all moving at once. Like, everybody was trying to move in the same direction. And as this happened, as Vladimir was doing his best to kind of go with the flow here, he began hearing people scream. But before Vladimir, or anybody else for that matter, could even react, everything just became a blur of more screams and just mass panic with limbs and bodies all shoving against him and falling at his feet. And then at some point, Vladimir was so compressed by all these people that he couldn't move, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't scream. He was just stuck. So, Nicholas Romanov had decided he would copy his father's coronation celebration exactly as it happened. He was just going to mimic that exact same thing. And it would turn out that choice seemed like a good one, but in practice, was a very bad choice. Because Nicholas, despite being Russian and living in Russia and about to be in charge of Russia, did not know the first thing about his country. He didn't know about the country's economics or politics or social issues. He lived in his bubble in the palace. And so, because of that, he didn't realize that the Russia that he was inheriting was not the same one as the one his dad, had inherited. And it would turn out, this Russia was starving. At Nicholas's father's coronation celebration, they had handed out bread rolls and sausages to the people who came. And so, Nicholas told his advisors to advertise the same thing for his own celebration. But in a literally starving country, this meant when those advertisements went out that there would be free food at this coronation, this meant a gigantic, gigantic horde of half a million starving people showed up, not to see their new czar, but to eat. And the number of people who showed up looking for food was way more than the organizers had planned for. And once all those people had descended on the field and were eating that food, at some point, one of those people saw the food was dwindling, and they yelled out to the crowd that the food was almost gone. That was the phrase that the reporter, Vladimir, heard people yelling and then repeating, which caused the panic. People began to rush towards the vendors to get the food before it ran out, and it caused a massive stampede. And so, for hours, the crowd shoved and pushed and fought and ran over the bodies of people who had fallen. Ultimately, around 1,300 people were suffocated or trampled to death right in that field. And that reporter, Vladimir, who had been on the ground and saw it firsthand, he survived. And he wrote a detailed article about how horrible it was. And the media generally blamed Nicholas for the whole thing. So, Nicholas's reputation, which he'd tried to bolster by copying his successful father, was completely destroyed before it even began. And in fact, for the rest of his reign, the people called him Nicholas the Bloody. The country only continued to face economic problems under Nicholas's reign. And in fact, 22 years after he became Tsar, after this tragedy at the coronation, a group of revolutionaries murdered Nicholas the Bloody and his family and ended monarchy forever in Russia. 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 LoCascio. This episode was written by Karis Pash Cooper. Research and fact-checking by Shelley Hsu, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Faciano. Research and fact-checking supervision by Steve Anear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit LoCascio and Jordan Stidham. Production support by Antonio Minata and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogsden-Kyner. Theme song, Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. And just a reminder, every new and 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 ad-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. ♪ ♪