Workplace Horror Stories

[0] Today's podcast features two separate, unique stories that share a theme, workplace horror stories.

[1] The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from our YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.

[2] The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.

[3] The first story you'll hear is called Hellfire, and it's about a group of workers who were asked to make a repair inside of a very dangerous, large, industrial machine.

[4] The second story you'll hear is called the ninth compartment, and it is a harrowing, true story that was only discovered when a handwritten note was found at the bottom of the ocean.

[5] 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.

[6] So, if that's of interest to you, please invite the five -star review button to go on a long bike ride with you, but, before you leave, replace the water in their water bottles with hot dog water.

[7] Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads.

[8] Okay, let's get into our first story called Hellfire.

[9] I'm Dan Tibersky.

[10] In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York.

[11] A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast.

[12] What's the answer?

[13] And what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

[14] Hysterical.

[15] A new podcast from Wondry and Pineapple Street Studios.

[16] Binge all episodes of hysterical early and ad -free on Wondery Plus.

[17] In the spring of 2017, Antonio Navarette was on top of the world.

[18] Just a year earlier, the 21 -year -old Florida resident had met the love of his life, a young woman named Daisy Martinez.

[19] And now, Daisy was pregnant, and so she and Antonio were very excited about starting a family together.

[20] For the time being, Antonio and Daisy were living with, Antonio's parents in his hometown of Waimama, which is a quiet rural suburb just south of Tampa.

[21] But Antonio had a bright future ahead of him.

[22] Ever since he had graduated high school, he knew what he wanted to do with this life.

[23] He wanted to be an auto mechanic, and he had the skills to do it.

[24] From the time he was a toddler, he had always been obsessed with cars, breaking apart his toy cars and putting them back together, and then as he got a little bit older, he began drawing, these very intricate drawings of cars that he loved, or designs for new cars.

[25] And then when he was a teenager, he began actually tinkering around with real cars until he finally acquired a car of his own.

[26] It was a white Chevy lowrider pickup truck that he tricked out with all these fancy lights and special rims and this huge sound system that took up most of his back seat.

[27] It was thanks in part to this truck, which he nicknamed Casper, that Antonio, who was too shy to be much of a ladies man, met up with Daisy in the first place.

[28] Antonio had driven Casper to a local car meetup for other car enthusiasts where you could basically park your vehicle and you could walk around and see what other people did to upgrade or enhance their vehicles.

[29] And so while Antonio was there, he was walking around when he saw on the far side of this meetup, there was this unbelievably beautiful young woman and he found himself just staring at her.

[30] He couldn't help it.

[31] And this young woman, who was Daisy, she eventually would look up and she would smile at him and the rest, as they say, was history.

[32] Six months later, not long after Daisy had moved in with Antonio at his parents' house and the couple had announced to their delighted families that they were going to have a baby, Antonio got yet another good piece of news.

[33] He'd landed a good job with a company that did maintenance work for Tampa Electric Company's Big Bend power plant, which was located in Apollo, Florida, which was about 10 miles to the east of Antonio's parents' home.

[34] Now, this was not Antonio's dream job.

[35] job.

[36] He still very much wanted to eventually become an auto mechanic, but this job paid 12 bucks an hour, nearly double what he was used to making.

[37] And so with this job, he and Daisy would finally be able to raise enough money to get a place of their own, hopefully before the baby arrived that fall.

[38] Also, Antonio had been told by other people who worked at this company that this was actually a really easy job, that pretty much you just rolled around on golf carts all day picking up trash.

[39] It was perfect.

[40] A few weeks later, on June 24th, Antonio found himself driving in his truck to the Big Bend Power Plant for his first day on the job.

[41] As he drove, he would have glanced over at the picture of Daisy he had taped to his dashboard.

[42] She was the only woman he had ever loved besides his mother.

[43] When Antonio arrived at the Big Bend Power Plant, he was totally amazed at just how enormous this thing was.

[44] It was basically this huge factory that sat right up against the water, and there were four huge smokestacks coming out at the ceiling of this factory with white smoke billowing out of them.

[45] This plant produced electricity, and they did this by burning coal.

[46] This process was done in four distinct units that were inside of this factory that Antonio was looking at, and each of these units is comprised of a humongous boiler, which is basically a 12 -story tall oven, and so coal is loaded into this huge boiler, and it burns at the bottom of the boiler, creating some steam, and that steam goes up the boiler and begins to turn these huge turbines, creating the electricity, and then the steam just continues up the boiler and then out its respective smokestack into the air.

[47] In newer units, the airborne ash, which is a natural byproduct of burning coal, is captured inside of the boiler.

[48] But, at Big Bend, three of their four units were built in the 1970s, so they were older models, and they did not capture the airborne ash inside the boilers.

[49] Instead, the ash would get heated up so much that it would melt and turn into a substance called slag, which basically is molten lava, like the stuff that comes out of volcanoes.

[50] That's what slag is.

[51] And so as this slag kind of builds up inside of the boiler, it would go through this man -sized hole at the very bottom of the boiler, and right below that hole is this 30 -foot -tall water tank called a cooling tank, and this red -hot slag it basically dumps down into that water which cools it off, turning it into these kind of glassy rocks.

[52] And then they settle at the bottom of this 30 -foot cooling tank, and at the bottom of the cooling tank is this grinding mechanism that pulls these hardened, cooled -off little boulders of slag into it, and it crushes them up and spits them out on the other side as little tiny bits of slag chips.

[53] And then these chips get sold for use in everything from sandpaper to roofing shingles.

[54] So after Antonio had spent several minutes just admiring this gargantuan building he would be working in, he gathered up his things, he hopped out of his truck, and he headed toward the front doors.

[55] That day, and the next couple of days, were very uneventful for Antonio.

[56] He basically just sat in a break room and watched videos about safety, and training and then when he wasn't doing that he was out trying to navigate around the inside of this huge factory which was basically this huge maze and he found very quickly that it was a very hazardous place to work as there were huge trucks moving around inside of it it was super loud and there was just heavy machinery operating constantly all around you but after several days of just kind of walking around and asking people what things were Antonio felt like he had a pretty good handle on the layout and also on what his job would entail.

[57] On Thursday, Tuesday, June 29th, so just four days into doing this new job, Antonio woke up in his parents' house in a really good mood because the next day, that Friday, Daisy was going in for an ultrasound and they were going to find out whether their baby was a boy or a girl, and he was very excited about this.

[58] And so Antonio came downstairs, he grabbed a quick bite to eat, and then he kissed Daisy on the cheek, and he headed outside into his truck and began the commute to work.

[59] A few hours later, Antonio's mother was in the grocery store when she pulled her phone out of her purse, and she noticed Antonio had called her and she missed it, but he had left a voicemail.

[60] And so she played the voicemail and then put the phone to her ear.

[61] And what she heard was quite possibly the most traumatic thing a mother could ever hear from their child.

[62] After leaving the house that morning, Antonio drove all the way to work, no problem, he parked in the lot, he went inside the building, and initially the day was like any other day.

[63] He just kind of drove around the facility and picked up trash, and that was it.

[64] But just a couple of hours into his shift, two fairly significant issues arose simultaneously inside of Unit 2.

[65] In the boiler, the slag that was building up had somehow created a sort of plug over that man -sized hole where the slag was supposed to dump into the water chamber.

[66] And so as more and more slag was being created as the ash melted, it wasn't draining into that chamber.

[67] and so all of this slag was just building up on top of itself inside of the boiler.

[68] And then in the water chamber, completely unconnected from the issue in the boiler, the slag that had fallen into the water chamber that had cooled and settled at the bottom, it had landed in such a way that it actually blocked the grinding mechanism.

[69] And so none of the cooled slag boulders and rocks were being ground up and expelled out the other side.

[70] And so they needed to fix these two issues quickly.

[71] otherwise Unit 2 would become basically ineffective.

[72] Now, the safe way to fix these two blockages would be to start by turning off Unit 2's boiler.

[73] And then once it was off, you could drop dynamite into the boiler itself and break up the blockage over the man -sized hole and you could send a team into the water chamber after you drained it to chip away and move the blockage over the grinding mechanism.

[74] However, turning a boiler off at a power plant is extremely expensive.

[75] And so the Tampa Electric Company decided, you know what, let's just have them fix these blockages without turning the boiler off.

[76] And so at 4 in the afternoon, a senior plant manager rounded up five other employees, which included Antonio, to come with him and do these repairs inside of Unit 2.

[77] And so the plan was to empty all the water from the cooling chamber of Unit 2, And then once it was empty, they would open something called the doghouse door, which is on the outside of the cooling chamber towards the bottom.

[78] They would open that up, giving them a line of sight into the bottom of this cooling chamber where that grinding mechanism was, where all those slag rocks had kind of come to a stop on top of it, and they would fire water cannons into the bottom of this cooling chamber to attempt to dislodge these slag rocks off of the grinding mechanism.

[79] And then after they cleared that blockage, they would shut the doghouse, store and they would somehow deal with the blockage inside of the boiler.

[80] But that felt like a secondary issue.

[81] They needed to make sure the grinding mechanism was cleared before they did anything else.

[82] Now, you need to understand that this company had asked their employees to do this type of repair before, to do it with the boiler still on, and in the past, nothing bad had ever happened.

[83] And so these six guys, including Antonio, must have thought this was just totally routine, that we would never be asked to do something like this if it would.

[84] was extremely hazardous.

[85] But it would turn out what they were doing making these repairs with the boiler still on was quite possibly the most hazardous thing they could possibly do at this plant.

[86] But either way, the six -man team made their way over to Unit 2, and they began taking up positions with their water cannons right in front of the doghouse door.

[87] Antonio's job for this operation was actually not to be involved in getting the slag free.

[88] He was just going to be there to clean up during and after the operation.

[89] And so he stood kind of in front of the doghouse door, but maybe 10 or 15 feet back, just kind of standing back, watching the other guys do their jobs.

[90] Now, you need to understand the scale of the machinery in front of Antonio and these other men.

[91] You have the water chamber, which is 30 feet tall, and then above the water chamber is the 12 -story tall boiler that is still on, so there's coal actively burning inside of it, There's red -hot slag, so like lava, just kind of tumbling around inside of it.

[92] And the steam inside of this boiler is well over 1 ,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

[93] And so they are dwarfed by this totally dangerous piece of machinery.

[94] But eventually, their operation begins.

[95] The senior plant manager has the water chamber drained, and then after it's empty, they opened the doghouse door, and Antonio watched, as the other five men took turns with their water cannons, firing them through the store at the big slag rocks that are sitting on top of the grinding mechanism and it wasn't really working that well but they were starting to make some progress and Antonio likely was just kind of getting bored waiting for this to be over because there really wasn't much for him to do there wasn't much cleanup and then as he's standing there something horrible happened because the boiler had been left on all that ash was still getting melted and turned into slag And the slag was not being drained because that plug had formed over the man -sized hole in the boiler.

[96] And so you have all this slag that's building up, building up, it's getting heavier and heavier and heavier.

[97] And about 20 minutes into their cleanup operation, the weight of all that slag broke through that plug, immediately creating an opening for all this red -hot slag, this lava came tumbling down.

[98] It rebounded on the back end of the empty water tank and shot out of the dog.

[99] doghouse door like a tidal wave of hellfire, and in seconds, thousands of gallons of this lava -like substance was all over all six men.

[100] It was like a wave going over them, and then after the slag hits the ground, they were all standing in six inches of basically lava that stretched in 40 feet in any direction.

[101] Now, unlike trying to run in, let's say, mud or deep water, where you're just kind of moving slowly, every step you take in this slag, basically your foot melts into the slag.

[102] So with every step, your shoe melts, then your skin melts, then your bones melt into this substance.

[103] And so all these men, after immediately being hit with this stuff and catching on fire, literally, they likely tried to start running, but it was like their bodies were slowly consumed by this slag feet first.

[104] And so Antonio tried to run like the rest of them, but he couldn't go anywhere and he fell onto the slacks.

[105] He's laying on his side and as he's melting and burning to death, he reaches into his pants pocket with his free hand and he pulls his phone out and he calls his mother.

[106] She doesn't pick up and so he leaves her a voicemail.

[107] And all he says is, Mom, Mom, I'm burning.

[108] Please call the cops.

[109] Please, Mom!

[110] And in the background of this voicemail, all you hear is the hissing sound of the steam and slag pouring out of the boiler.

[111] In total, five of the six men that were a part of this repair operation would be killed from this tidal wave of slag.

[112] Antonio would be one of them.

[113] Tampa Electric would end up paying out a settlement to each of the families of the deceased.

[114] If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good.

[115] You are a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious.

[116] And if that's the case, then I've got some good news.

[117] We just launched a brand new Strange Dark and Mysterious podcast, called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[118] And as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years, and we finally decided to take the plunge, and the show is awesome.

[119] In this free, weekly show, we explore bizarre, unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between.

[120] Each story is totally true and totally terrifying.

[121] Go follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're a prime member, you can listen early and ad -free on Amazon music.

[122] She struck him with her motor vehicle.

[123] She had been under the influence and she left him there.

[124] In January 2022, local woman Karen Reid was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O 'Keefe.

[125] It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location.

[126] What happens next?

[127] Depends on who you ask.

[128] Was it a crime of passion?

[129] If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling.

[130] This was clearly an intentional act.

[131] And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia.

[132] Or a corrupt police cover -up.

[133] If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover -up to prevent one of their own from going down.

[134] Everyone had an opinion.

[135] And after the 10 -week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision.

[136] To end in a mistrial, It's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is.

[137] Law and crime presents the most in -depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen.

[138] You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondry Plus.

[139] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

[140] The next and final story of today's episode is called the Ninth Compartment.

[141] On the morning of August 12, 2000, 33 of Russia's best naval warships stopped inside of a particular section of the Barents Sea.

[142] The Barents Sea is this 800 -mile stretch of freezing water up in the Arctic Circle just northwest of Russia, and these 33 ships were in this stretch of water for this huge military training exercise.

[143] Basically, they were going to run through some war game scenarios, where, for example, one ship would pretend to be an enemy combatant, and the other ships would work on locking onto that ship and firing at them.

[144] But of course, they wouldn't use real missiles or torpedoes.

[145] They would use duds that didn't actually explode.

[146] And so around 9 a .m., the man who was in charge of this entire operation, his name was Admiral Popov, and he was actually on board one of these 33 ships, he authorized one of the submarines that was out there to shoot two of their dummy torpedoes at a target, an enemy combatant, which was actually just one of the other ships.

[147] And so as soon as he did this, he was authorizing the start of this multi -day long exercise.

[148] And so all day and all night, they're doing these war game scenarios.

[149] And by the following morning, so 24 hours into this exercise, Admiral Popov stepped away from the action to speak with Russian reporters on the phone.

[150] And during this interview, he tells them that so far the training exercise is going exactly to plan and that it looks like it will ultimately be a huge success.

[151] However, there was a problem.

[152] At the same time, Admiral Popov is giving his remarks to the reporters about how well this exercise is going, the family members of some of the crews that were out there as part of this exercise, they heard a rumor that the exercise was not going to plan that in fact something bad had happened to one of the ships, but none of the family members had any more information beyond that.

[153] Even though this rumor was just that, a rumor, the family members of these crews that are participating in this exercise, they naturally became very worried.

[154] And so they all that morning began calling the naval base where the 33 ships had originated asking for more information.

[155] And the phone operator on the base that was receiving all of these calls that morning at first was telling these family members that, no, nothing's going on.

[156] I haven't heard anything.

[157] There's no issues.

[158] But eventually, this phone operator let slip that in fact they too had heard the rumor that something bad had happened.

[159] and they think it actually might be true.

[160] But when this family member who heard this pressured the phone operator for more information, the operator clammed up and said, you know, I can't give you anything else.

[161] And so at that point, the family member hung up the phone and called the media and told them what was going on.

[162] And the media, as soon as they had the story, they went right to Admiral Popov and they said, hey, can you address this rumor?

[163] And he didn't.

[164] He did not respond to any of the media's inquiries.

[165] And in a weird way, that was kind of reassuring to the family member, of these crews, because they're thinking, you know, if Admiral Popov is just kind of ignoring this rumor and he's staying out there out on the Barents Sea still conducting this exercise, then certainly nothing bad could have happened, right?

[166] And so for the rest of that day, Sunday, the family members of these crews and the media just kind of did nothing because there wasn't anything else to do besides wait to see if there was any new news coming out of this exercise.

[167] And the following day, on Monday the 14th, so 48 hours after the start of this training exercise, there would be news.

[168] Russian officials would go on TV and they would address the rumor by saying, well, yeah, it is true.

[169] Something did happen out during this exercise, the Kursk, which was the name of one of the submarines, that was one of the 33 ships that was part of this exercise, they experienced some minor technical difficulties that forced them to ground their vessel at the bottom of the barren sea.

[170] see.

[171] But don't worry, this is normal.

[172] We're in touch with them through the radio.

[173] Everybody is fine.

[174] We are pumping air and power into their submarine, and before long, we will have them back on the surface.

[175] There's nothing to worry about.

[176] Now, naturally, the family members of the Kursk crew specifically, they panicked when they heard this, because even though the government is acting totally confident that everything is fine, they did not feel confident that everything was fine.

[177] Their family members are trapped on the bottom of the ocean.

[178] But at the same time, they remembered the Kursk, the actual submarine, was a very special and very safe submarine.

[179] The Kursk was quite literally Russia's best ship.

[180] They had spared no expense on it.

[181] It was extremely expensive.

[182] And it was massive.

[183] It was bigger than two football fields put together.

[184] And it was constructed out of this very specialized, highly reinforced steel that allowed it to take a direct hit from a torpedo and just keep on going, no problem.

[185] It was also outfitted on.

[186] the inside with all the latest and greatest technology and so if you were going to be stuck at the bottom of the ocean inside of a submarine you would want to be stuck inside of the kursk and so the families took solace in that but over the next couple of days despite the government reassuring everybody in the news that everything was fine it's totally minor we're going to have the kursk up in no time despite all that the kursk still had not been raised to the surface and the government was not giving the families or the media any new information.

[187] And so in this kind of void of no real information, the families began to panic and the media began to speculate.

[188] Did the Kursk really suffer from minor technical difficulties like the government was saying?

[189] Or was this something more serious?

[190] This question would be answered on August 21st, so nine days after this training exercise had begun, when a Norwegian dive team, they were out there to assist in the recovery effort, they were able to dive down to the kursk, and they actually got inside of the submarine through an escape hatch.

[191] An escape hatch is like this watertight closet that kind of sits on the outside of the submarine, and it allows people to go in and out of the submarine without flooding it.

[192] And once these Norwegian divers got inside of the kursk and had a look around, they were totally shocked at what they saw.

[193] While the exact details of what happened inside the kursk are still debated today, and probably will be for some time, there is one aspect of the story that is more or less universally accepted, and that is what happened inside of compartment number nine.

[194] The kursk was divided into nine watertight segments called compartments.

[195] Number one was at the front of the submarine, and then it went two, three, four, all the way down to nine in the very back of the submarine.

[196] And the reason we know what happened inside of compartment number nine is because a 27 -year -old Kursk crew member, Dmitri Kalesnikov, told us.

[197] Dmitri was born into a family of submariners.

[198] His father was a submariner and his father's father was a submariner.

[199] And Dimitri idolized them, and so growing up, that was all he ever wanted to be.

[200] And in the late 1990s, his dream would become a reality when he commissioned as a naval officer in the Russian Navy and was given orders to serve on board the Kursk.

[201] Four months before this training exercise out in the Barents Sea, Dmitri met and very quickly married a high school teacher named Olga, and right after their wedding, one of the first things he did is he brought her on board the kursk for a tour.

[202] And Olga brought along a video camera and filmed her tour through the ship.

[203] And on this video, Dmitri is all smiles.

[204] He is so happy to be leading her around the ship and introducing her to people and showing her all the cramped spaces on board the submarine.

[205] It's really obvious that Dmitri is.

[206] was so proud of his job, not only of his job, but also just so proud to be sharing this part of his life with his wife.

[207] Fast forward to August 12, 2000, and Dimitri, along with 117 other crew members on board the Kursk, had just arrived at their designated section in the Barents Sea for this training exercise.

[208] And at 1127 a .m., the captain of the Kursk came over the radio, and he told Admiral Popoff, who was not on the Kursk, he was on a seat.

[209] He was on a seat.

[210] separate ship, he told the Admiral that the Kursk was about to fire their two dummy torpedoes.

[211] After this call was made, the man in the first compartment of the Kursk.

[212] So at the very front of the Kursk, this is where all the torpedoes, both fake and real, are stored.

[213] They began loading these two dummy torpedoes.

[214] Meanwhile, Dmitri was all the way back in the seventh compartment, the engine room.

[215] That was where he was stationed.

[216] He was actually in charge of everybody who worked in the seventh compartment.

[217] And so as these two Dmitri was, he was in the seventh compartment.

[218] And so as semi -torpedoes are being loaded, Dimitri and his men, there weren't that many of them, they were twisting dials and pulling levers, when all of a sudden there's this really loud crashing sound and then the ship shudders and then jolts hard to one side, as if someone had grabbed the front of the submarine and just forced it to one direction.

[219] What Dimitri and the men in the seventh compartment could not have possibly known was that one of the real torpedoes in the first compartment had malfunctioned and it exploded.

[220] But because of how well -built the kursk was, how strong the exterior walls were, this torpedo, as advertised, did not puncture through it.

[221] It did a lot of damage and caused a massive fire, but the sub was not sinking.

[222] So back in the seventh compartment, Dimitri, he stands up from being jostled to the ground, and the alarms are going off, and everything is totally chaotic, everyone's asking what's going on, and Dimitri, he takes charge, and he tells his men to follow the emergency protocol.

[223] which was to seal the watertight doors of your compartment.

[224] And so in this case, he sealed both the doors, one leading to the sixth compartment and the other leading to the eighth compartment.

[225] There's a lot of reasons for why they do this, but in essence, if there's a leak somewhere in the submarine, by sealing off your compartment, you protect yourself from being flooded.

[226] As Dimitri and his men are sealing these two doors, they would have begun to see and smell smoke as it came in through the ventilation ducts because there was now this uncontrolled fire raging at the front of the submarine.

[227] They also would have felt these submarines suddenly pitch upward at a very steep angle as the captain of the Kursk desperately tried to surface.

[228] But before they could reach the surface, that uncontained fire reached the other live torpedoes and it set off this almost instantaneous chain reaction of explosions.

[229] This second collective blast killed virtually everyone in the front half, of the submarine.

[230] Either the blast itself blew them apart, or once this hole in the front of the submarine, because the second blast did puncture the walls, once that hole was created, all this Arctic water began flooding into the submarine.

[231] So if you didn't get killed by the blast, you very quickly drowned.

[232] The only people who survived the first and second explosions were anyone in the sixth compartment going backwards, so six, seven, eight, and nine.

[233] And so Dimitri and the other men in the seventh compartment, they would have been definitely badly shaken up from that second explosion.

[234] That completely rocked the submarine and sent them tumbling all over the place, but they would have been very alive and very aware of the terrible situation they were in.

[235] And so I would imagine that Dmitri and the others tried to grab onto any of the piping or anything they could as the submarine, because the control tower has been destroyed, just angled straight down and began careening downward.

[236] At 1132 a .m., just four minutes after that initial explosion, the Kursk slammed nose first into the ocean floor 350 feet below the surface, and then the back half of the Kirste came down to rest.

[237] We don't know exactly what happened on board the Kursk for those first two hours after they hit the ocean floor.

[238] What we do know is they had power, so there was light inside of the submarine.

[239] Also, the air purifiers were still working, so despite the chemicals, and smoke that was in the air, it was relatively easy to breathe.

[240] During those first two hours, we also know that at some point, Dmitri and the other men in his compartment must have heard banging coming from the sixth compartment, because remember they had sealed off the doors both to the eighth and the sixth compartment, and so Dmitri decided to break emergency protocol, and he opened the door to the sixth compartment to allow any of the survivors that were banging on the door to come into their compartment.

[241] And when Dimitri and his men opened that door and looked into the sixth compartment, they would have seen that it was rapidly flooding and most likely anybody forward of that compartments of 5, 4, 3, 2 ,1, they were already dead.

[242] By 1 .30 p .m., and his men in the 7th compartment and the other survivors from the 6th compartment, they were forced to retreat from the 7th over to the 8th compartment and then finally into the 9th compartment because of flooding.

[243] Even though they had sealed off their watertight doors, the walls were no longer watertight because this huge explosion had sent shrapnel flying down the body of the submarine, puncturing holes in all of the walls.

[244] And so it didn't matter if you shut your watertight door.

[245] Eventually, as one compartment would fill up, it would begin leaking through all the cracks in the walls.

[246] And so Dimitri and all of the people he was with, they would have been very aware of that.

[247] And so by the time they got all the way back to the ninth compartment, the very back compartment, there was nowhere else to go.

[248] The water was going to eventually reach them and they were doomed unless they got rescued or if they left out of the escape hatch.

[249] Despite how absolutely terrifying this situation must have been, Dmitri remained calm.

[250] In fact, he was so calm that he pulled out a piece of paper as he's sitting in this cramped ninth compartment with these 22 other men and he writes the date and time in the corner and then he begins to kind of describe what had happened.

[251] He talks about there being an explosion, and he thought he and these 22 men were the only survivors, and he says they're now trapped in the ninth compartment, and they have to wait for rescue.

[252] He also talks about how they had considered going out the escape patch, but apparently it hadn't worked.

[253] After Dimitri wrote this very neat, very legible, very organized note, he folded it up and put it in his pocket, and then for the next hour and a half, he sat inside of the ninth compartment with the 22 others, and the power went out, which thrust them into absolute pitch darkness.

[254] I mean, completely black inside of there, and the temperatures, because the power was out, suddenly began to plummet, and then the worst part was, the water began seeping through the walls.

[255] And so Dimitri and the other men, they would have known that it's just a matter of time before this room fills completely with water, and there is nowhere to go.

[256] And so with the water rising all around them, Dimitri pulls that paper back out of his pocket and he adds to the note.

[257] And this time, his handwriting is barely legible.

[258] And it's because he's probably suffering from hypothermia, so he's shaking.

[259] He can't see what he's writing.

[260] In fact, he writes the words, I'm writing blind to indicate it's totally dark in the room.

[261] And in this second note, he leaves on this piece of paper, which was dated and timestamped an hour and a half after the first one, Dmitri indicates that he does not think he's going to survive.

[262] It's very clear none of them think they're going to survive.

[263] Then, with the remaining space on this piece of paper, Dmitri writes this very loving and very thoughtful message to his wife and his family saying goodbye, and then his final words on this note are, regards to everybody, no need to despair, Kalesnikov.

[264] After he wrote this second message on this note, he folded the paper up, put it in his breast pocket, and then in total darkness, listening to the sound of water rushing into the room, he and the other 22 damned souls prepared to die.

[265] We don't know how long Dmitri and the other 22 men survived in compartment nine, but experts say the entire Kursk submarine was completely flooded eight hours after the initial explosion.

[266] One of the most heartbreaking aspects of this case is that Dmitri and these 22 other men could have potentially been saved if the Russian response was a little bit more urgent and coordinated.

[267] Despite two of the ships, including the ship that Admiral Popov was on, hearing and feeling the second explosion that the Kursk experienced, nothing was done about it.

[268] It was reported, but no one really did anything.

[269] And then when no one could get in touch with the Kursk after they had said they were going to fire those two dummy torpedoes, everybody else, all the other ships, Admiral pop -up, they all just said, you know what, I'm sure it's just their radios and they're fine and they'll be in touch soon.

[270] And so it wasn't until later that evening when the Russian Navy even figured out there was a major problem with the Kursk, that the Kursk has vanished.

[271] And then it would be several hours before they even got a rescue submersible in the water down to the Kursk.

[272] And then once it was down there, they could not latch onto the escape hatch on the submarine.

[273] And so even if there were survivors inside of the submarine, they would not have been able to exit into this rescue submersible.

[274] And so for days and days, the Russians struggled to try to get inside of the submarine and kept turning down foreign aid from Norway, from America, from Great Britain, and then finally nine days after the Kursk had sank, the Russians did accept foreign aid.

[275] And that's when the Norwegian dive team, they went down and they were able to open up the escape hatch.

[276] And when they went inside the submarine, they saw it was completely flooded, there were bodies floating everywhere, and that's when ultimately Dimitri's body was found, and they found that note tucked in his breast pocket.

[277] Russia would go on to award the entire crew of the Kursk with the Order of Courage, which is a very significant military award, and the families of the crew of the Kursk were given 10 years' salary each.

[278] They were also given free housing in any Russian city, and their children would all have their college education paid for.

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[298] I'm Dan Tibersky.

[299] In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York.

[300] I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad.

[301] I'm like, stop fucking around.

[302] She's like, I can't.

[303] A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast.

[304] It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls.

[305] With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low.

[306] Everybody thought I was holding something back.

[307] Well, you were holding something back.

[308] Intentionally.

[309] Yeah, yeah.

[310] Well, yeah.

[311] No, it's hysteria.

[312] It's all in your head.

[313] It's not physical.

[314] You're, oh my gosh, you're exaggerating.

[315] Is this the largest mass hysteria since the witches of Salem?

[316] Or is it something else entirely?

[317] Something's wrong here.

[318] Something's not right.

[319] Leroy was the new date line and everyone was trying to solve the murder.

[320] A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, Hysterical.

[321] Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[322] You can binge all episodes of hysterical early and ad -free right now by joining Wonderry Plus.