Fate is like a spider web. Imperceptible from a distance,
but always watching from the corner of the room.
For the most part, out of your way. But if you happen to get caught,
the more you struggle, the more ensnared you become.
Grab your loved ones, hold them close, and as always, viewer discretion is advised.
[music]
On August 15th, 2019, a man called 999, the UK equivalent of 911,
to report some suspicious activity on his property.
Apparently, earlier in the day, he'd been in a confrontation with several teenagers
who were trying to steal some of his stuff.
This time, they returned at night wearing ski masks and gloves and carrying weapons,
ready to carry out the theft.
Here's the audio of the 999 call.
"Thames Valley Police. What's your emergency?"
"I've got four masked men outside my house and they've got weapons."
"Oh, and they're stealing my quad bike. I'm going out there now."
- "No, no, don't go out there." - I'm going out there now."
"No, because if they've got weapons."
Although the full version isn't available online, following that last back and forth,
the man tells the dispatcher that there's all sorts of pieces of wood outside.
They can pick up anything they want, but they're not taking his bike.
Then, there's a brief pause and the man says, "Wait, they've already taken it."
He then watched as the car sped away with his quad bike in tow, attached by tow strap on the car.
After the call, the dispatcher contacted police and shortly after that,
the two officers closest to the area were on their way to the man's house.
Luckily enough, on the way there, they happened to run into the group who'd stolen the quad bike
and pulled up aggressively, trying to block their way on this little two-lane road.
The headlights immediately shone blindingly in the men's faces
and one of them who was outside of the car, unhooking the quad bike, took off into the bushes.
The police officer in the passenger seat then got out and started approaching the car, but as he did,
the car managed to squeeze around the left side of them and started to speed away.
As it did this, the tow strap wrapped around the officer's legs and ripped them out from under him,
causing him to smash his head on the ground and get knocked unconscious.
Then, because he was unconscious, he wasn't able to free himself and was dragged away by the car as it sped away.
The other police officer slammed the car into reverse and started chasing them.
But obviously, with it being in reverse, he wasn't able to catch them and quickly lost sight of them.
Eventually, he turned the car around and kept going in the direction they headed
and started to find objects that had fallen off of his partner as he was dragged behind the car.
At first, these were just things like his ID and badges, but eventually,
he started to find deeper and deeper layers of clothing which had been ripped off.
A few minutes later, another officer was driving through the area not far from where the confrontation had just occurred,
and noticed what looked to be a deer carcass lying in the middle of an intersection.
But then as he got closer, he realized that it was a person's body.
He stopped his car, put his lights on, and got out and as he approached,
he started to recognize that the man was wearing a police officer's uniform.
And then he recognized that it was Andrew - one of his fellow police officers.
He immediately called EMS and did his best to stabilize Andrew, but tragically, it was already too late.
A little while later, his partner heard the call over the radio and arrived on scene
to find that Andrew had already been pronounced dead by paramedics,
just 15 minutes after he was pulled away by the car.
The scene was gruesome. In total, he was dragged close to two miles (3.22 km) before he was untangled,
and in that time, he suffered severe head trauma, which was ultimately fatal.
The suspects were later found using a police helicopter and arrested and following their trial,
were sentenced to between 13 and 16 years each for manslaughter.
This would also lead to a new law being put into place, which would require mandatory 20-year sentences
for anyone who commit manslaughter of an emergency worker such as police, firefighters, and paramedics
after public outrage deemed the punishment to be inadequate for the crimes.
In Northern Ireland, about 20 kilometers (12.2 mi) south of Belfast, is a farm owned by the Spence family.
On this farm, one Saturday in September, brothers Nevin and Graham and their friend, Andrew,
were all helping to load wood into the back of Nevin's car.
This farm was owned by their father, and the 30-year-old Graham worked on the farm
full-time to help tend to the livestock and crops.
Nevin, on the other hand, at just 19 years old, was a talented rugby player and played professionally Ulster Rugby Club.
But despite playing rugby, he still frequently helped out his brother and father
because he enjoyed working on the farm he grew up on.
He even joked about some of his best workouts coming from doing a hard day in the fields rather than in the gym.
While they were loading up the car, their mother called out to them from the house that dinner was ready
so they took a break from loading the wood and headed inside.
Then, just a little while after they had gone in, their father came inside, looking concerned
and told them that the family's Border Collie had fallen into one of the tanks underneath the animal shed.
The brothers and Andrew quickly went back outside to the shed
which housed the cows and sat on top of a massive tank.
This 10-foot-deep pit spanned the entire length of the cow shed and was used to collect all of the cow manure.
The reason that this is all collected is that it's eventually spread across the fields as fertilizer.
Now, to access the pit, there were eight holes in the ground roughly the size of a manhole cover.
Some of these were open and the dog had accidentally fallen inside to the bottom of the tank.
There was no way to exit this pit except from these holes, meaning there was no way for the dog to get out
and knowing that the dog could have been hurt in the fall, the brothers quickly grabbed a ladder
and placed it inside one of these entrances.
They then looked down into the dark pit, and from the entrance, it was too dark to see anything
other than the three-and-a-half feet (1.07 m) of cow manure at the bottom.
Once they'd placed the ladder, Graham grabbed a flashlight and started descending.
He shined the flashlight around looking for the dog, but around 15 seconds later after not finding anything,
he started climbing back up the ladder.
Right as his head was about level with the opening to the pit,
his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell backward directly into the pit.
Nevin immediately jumped into action and down the ladder right after his brother, while Andrew went to tell the others.
But before Andrew had even returned to the entrance, Nevin had collapsed into the sludge as well.
This is because as manure decomposes, it gives off a mixture of poisonous gasses.
These settle in the bottom of the tank because they're heavier than air
and bubble up more quickly if the slurry is disturbed.
This means that the tank had become more toxic with each person who went down.
In fact, these tanks are often fenced off and require special equipment to even enter.
When Andrew returned, he had the brothers' father with him, who, despite knowing the danger,
went straight for the ladder, knowing his sons only had minutes down in the tank.
For all he knew, they could have been drowning in the liquid at the bottom.
So he climbed down the ladder, got to the bottom and grabbed Graham and started carrying him up the ladder.
And just as he got high enough for Andrew to grab a hold of him and start pulling him up,
he started to lose consciousness as well and let go of the ladder.
Without him to support Graham's weight, Andrew wasn't able to hold him anymore,
causing them both to fall backward and directly into the manure.
As this was all going on, their sister, Emma, who had been visiting that day,
had noticed a car speed up the driveway and to where the shed was.
She ran around to the shed entrance while her husband parked the car where she found Andrew at the entrance.
He then frantically told her that all three of the men were unconscious down below.
And without even thinking, she immediately went right to the ladder as well.
Andrew tried to stop her, but she pushed past him and started descending and incredibly,
she managed to grab her father by his belt and lift him up just high enough
for the people above to grab him and pull him out.
She climbed up quickly and gave him several breaths to resuscitate him,
and then went right back down to grab her brothers.
This time, she grabbed Graham and started lifting him out as well, but as she got a few rungs up the ladder,
she started to feel lightheaded, and that was the last thing she remembered.
A little while later, she woke up above ground and on her side.
She later found out that Graham was successfully pulled out by the others thanks to her,
but they couldn't risk going back down again until rescuers arrived.
Eventually, firefighters arrived on scene with oxygen tanks and managed to recover Nevin
and the family's dog from the bottom of the tank sunken into the slurry.
Tragically, both Nevin and their father were pronounced dead on scene.
Graham was rushed to the hospital, but he too wouldn't be able to be revived.
Emma would make a full recovery, but was obviously devastated.
In just a few short minutes, she lost both of her brothers, her father, and the family dog.
Just absolutely tragic.
In May of 2014, a family of four from Idaho was asked by their grandparents
if they could help move them out of their home in Aberdeen, Washington.
The youngest of the family, Pierce, couldn't go, because he had to go to school during the day,
so both of his older sisters and their mother would go without him.
They also plan to leave a few days in advance to the weekend to turn it into a fun little road trip.
Leading up to the trip though and particularly on the day that they were leaving,
Pierce just had a really bad feeling about them going.
And this feeling was overwhelmingly bad to the point that as they were pulling out of the driveway,
Pierce started crying and practically begged his mom not to leave.
His mother asked him why he was so worried, because this was totally uncharacteristic of him,
but Pierce couldn't even give her a clear answer.
He couldn't explain what it was that he was feeling other than the sense of dread he was having about the trip.
Understandably, his mother reassured him and calmed him down, but still set off for Washington to help his grandparents.
The drive ended up being pretty uneventful, and then a little while later,
they were welcomed by their grandmother and grandfather in Aberdeen.
They got settled in and took a look around and realized there was still lots of packing to be done.
So rather than wait for the following day, they got started that night still
and kept packing until later in the evening at around 11:00 PM.
Then, after a long day of driving and packing, they all retired to their bedrooms to go to sleep.
Pierce's two sisters, Brittany and Courtney, took one of the rooms upstairs on one side of the house.
His mother took the larger room on the other side, and their grandparents slept downstairs
in their room, which was on the main floor.
A little while later, a few hours after going to sleep, in the middle of the night,
Brittany woke up to find that their room was filled with thick black smoke.
She got out of bed and she could hardly breathe or think straight
and stumbled over the door, ready to open it.
But then, Courtney from the other side of the room, near the window,
clearly and calmly said, "Brittany, get to the window."
So she bolted over to the little window at about chin height, grabbed the ledge, pulled herself up,
punched the window out with her hand, and then went straight out.
Then, she spun back around to help Courtney up next, and as soon as she did,
flames came bursting through the window and forced her back.
She screamed out and panicked, and when she did,
the neighbors who had noticed the burning house by then
ran around to the window and gathered down below her and told her to jump.
Over on the other side of the house, it's believed that their mother
got outt more easily because of a larger window in the master bedroom.
Then, after getting down, she heard Brittany scream and thought that the girls were still trapped inside the home,
so she ran back inside to try to find them.
The last thing that Brittany heard was their mother's scream for them shortly before the roof collapsed.
The same neighbor who caught Brittany went around the house looking for anyone else
and heard tapping on one of the windows.
As he got closer, he realized it was the grandparents trying to break out of their bedroom window.
He quickly broke the window and pulled them out next, but unfortunately, wasn't able to save anyone else.
On Friday morning, Pierce was sitting in his first period class on what was an otherwise normal morning.
Part of the way through the class, his teacher was called out of the room and when he came back in,
Pierce remembers that he looked like a ghost because of how white his face was.
He quietly called Pierce out of the classroom where Brittany's husband was waiting
and told Pierce everything he knew about what had happened.
He told him that there had been a fire, that Brittany and his grandparents
were in critical condition in the hospital, and that his mom and Courtney were missing.
On the eight-hour car ride to Washington, Pierce was just blank.
He realized that if they were missing in a house fire, it meant that they probably died, but he held onto hope anyway.
Then, tragically, as they entered Aberdeen, they got a call from the police chief, confirming that they had died.
Now, there's one more thing about the incident that's still a mystery
that has to do with Brittany's account of what happened that night.
To this day, she's sure that Courtney was standing at the window, telling her to go through it,
even if she could only see her silhouette in the darkness.
However, when the bodies were eventually discovered in the wreckage,
rescuers found that Courtney was still lying peacefully in her bed.
Apparently, she had never gotten up because she died of smoke inhalation before ever waking up.
This fire occurred on May 9th, 2014 - just three days after Courtney turned 26
and just two days before Mother's Day.
The two of them were buried a few days later in their hometown
on what would've been their mother's 55th birthday.
Brittany and their grandparents made full recoveries, and Pierce is now
the same age as Courtney when she passed away.
He now has a beautiful wife and two children of his own, and in recollecting the events of this story,
wanted people to know that positive things can come out of what might seem like never-ending grief.
That eventually, the feeling fades and that he wouldn't be who he is today without the hardships and challenges.
On September 2nd, 1999, a man was cleaning his home,
getting it ready to be sold, and one of the final items that need to be thrown out
was a steel drum that the previous owner had left in the crawlspace in the basement.
He never thought to move it himself before then because it had been out of the way,
but now that he was gonna be selling, he figured it would be a good idea.
But when he finally went to move this thing, he realized it was ridiculously heavy
and it took several people and a dolly to finally get it outside into the curb.
Then, when it came time for garbage day, the garbagemen picked up everything but the barrel
and put a note on it, saying that it was too heavy and might contain chemicals that they weren't allowed to take.
So the man decided to simply open it up and empty the contents in hopes that
the garbagemen reconsider it the following week.
He then grabbed a screwdriver and started prying the lid off, but as soon as he got it open a crack,
a horrible smell came out of it.
Then, when he finally got the lid off entirely, he realized that the smell was coming from a badly decomposed body.
He could actually even see a hand and a shoe sticking out of the plastic pellets inside the barrel.
The man then called 911 and police arrived and moved the drum to the coroner's office for examination.
Eventually, they removed the corpse of a woman with dark hair.
She had obvious signs of blunt force trauma, and she was wearing 1960s style clothing.
They then examined her teeth and took an x-ray of her body
and found dental work that looked to be from Latin America.
And they found that she was close to nine months pregnant when she died.
In the drum as well was a purse, a wallet, some jewelry, and an address book that was soaked by the liquid inside.
Initially, the writing in this was completely illegible, but after drawing it out,
the names and addresses slowly became readable.
Unfortunately, as they started going through the list, they found number after number
that was disconnected or belonged to someone else, and the people they were looking for
had moved to different addresses.
At the same time, they started looking into the previous homeowner and where the drum originated from.
Along with the body, some green liquid was found inside, which was determined to be
a halogen dye used in manufacturing.
This was later linked back to a chemical company which had gone out of business as of 1971
and was partly owned by a man named Howard B. Elkins.
This is when things started to be slowly pieced together as police realized
that Howard had also owned the home the drum was found in between 1957 and 1971.
Police first questioned the neighbors and asked if any of them remembered a Latin woman
who interacted with Howard or Howard's wife.
Weirdly, none of the neighbors remember seeing this woman. But shortly after that,
police received an anonymous phone call, telling police that there was a Latin woman
who Howard was close with at the factory that he owned.
She was one of the workers on the production line there.
With Howard now seeming like a clear suspect and the factory getting confirmed
as the origin of the drum, police located Howard and decided to pay him a visit.
The now 70-year-old Howard was living in Boca Raton, Florida and was very displeased to get a visit from the police.
He was difficult and uncooperative when they interviewed him,
but did admit to them that he had an affair with a woman during that time period.
He also conveniently couldn't remember what her name was or what she looked like.
Police then asked him for a DNA sample to rule him out as a suspect, but he obviously refused.
As a parting message, police told him that they'd see him again shortly for his DNA after they received a court order.
But the following day, Howard's body was found with a shotgun wound to his head.
Apparently, Howard realized that he'd been found out as the wound was later determined to be self-inflicted.
To the police, this was a pretty clear admission of guilt.
This was then confirmed when Howard's DNA proved to be a match for the unborn child of the woman in the drum.
The only problem was they still had no idea who the woman was
or what had happened between her and Howard.
It wasn't until they finally managed to get ahold of one of the people in her address book
that the full story would be revealed.
Eventually, they managed to get in contact with a woman named Kathy
who lived at the same address as she did when the woman went missing,
and the two of them happened to be good friends.
Here is a pieced-together version of the events leading up to the woman's death.
Reyna Marroquín was born in El Salvador in 1941
where she grew up and eventually got married and lived happily.
Unfortunately, she later found out that her husband was cheating on her and that his mistress had gotten pregnant.
Unable to live with this information, she moved to the US to get away from him and took up work as a nanny.
She eventually left that job and enrolled in a fashion school and started taking English classes
and this is where she met Kathy, and the two of them became close.
Kathy eventually helped Reyna get a job at a local factory where she met Howard,
and then the two of them started dating.
Things seemed to be going really well for Reyna, except for the fact that Howard was married.
Reyna didn't really have a problem with this though because Howard still treated her well
and took her to the movies and to dinner and gave her the impression that he was going to leave his wife for her.
Eventually, Reyna got pregnant, but rather than leave his wife like she thought he was going to do,
Howard got a small apartment for her to live in.
Initially, Reyna still hoped that she just needed to wait a little bit longer, and then the two of them could be together.
But then when she was about eight months pregnant, she got fed up and decided to take things into her own hands.
Reyna then called Howard's home and told his wife everything.
Upon finding out about this, Howard was furious and called Reyna
and told her that he was going to kill her, and then ended the call abruptly.
Reyna then called Kathy, crying, and told Kathy about what had happened
and that she'd made a terrible mistake and that she was scared.
Like any good friend, Kathy told her she'd come over to comfort her,
but then when Kathy got to Reyna's apartment, Reyna was gone.
Obviously worried about their last interaction, Kathy did the right thing and contacted police,
but the police brushed her off because Reyna was an immigrant.
She was more or less told that it was more than likely that Reyna simply returned to El Salvador.
Tragically, weeks turned to months, and Kathy never heard or saw from Reyna again.
Reyna's mother was also heartbroken when she stopped receiving letters from her daughter.
Any mother would be upset about their daughter going no-contact,
but Reyna and her mother were particularly close.
Things would go on like this for 28 years before the barrel was finally opened.
It's believed that Howard initially intended to dump the barrel in the ocean,
but after filling it, realized it was just way too heavy.
Instead, he simply wheeled it into his basement and into the crawlspace with Reyna's body and the unborn child inside.
Police eventually tracked down Reyna's mother who was 95 by then
and sent Reyna's body back to El Salvador where she received a proper burial.
Apparently, after Reyna went missing, her mother even had nightmares that Reyna was trapped in a barrel somewhere.
She was obviously horrified to learn that the truth was almost exactly how she dreamt.
Then, within a month of the funeral, her mother passed away as well and was buried in a plot next to Reyna's.
Hello everyone. My name is Sean and welcome to Scary Interesting.
I just wanna give a huge thank you to all of you for watching.
This is also the first video to feature a story that someone who watches this channel was involved in personally.
My sincere thank you for allowing me to tell your story.
To anyone else who has sent in story suggestions, thank you all so much.
I've gotten so many great suggestions from all of you recently.
In fact, two of the other stories in this video were sent in by you guys.
So if you wanna submit your own true story or story suggestion,
you can send an email to me using the email found in the description,
or you could submit a story suggestion to the Scary Interesting Subreddit.
Once again, thank you all so much for watching, and hopefully, I will see you in the next one.