sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction and today i'm
going to share three stories that demonstrate that 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 come to the right channel because that's all we
do and we upload three or four times every week
so if that's of interest to you please offer the
like button a bowl of chips and some guacamole but
replace the guacamole with wasabi also please subscribe to our
channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss
any of our weekly uploads alright let's get into today's
stories [Music] so full disclosure this is not my personal
story but in order to do this story justice it
has to be told in the first person so i
am simply an actor i was once on a u.s
military ship in the wardroom which is the officer's lounge
when the operations officer came inside this guy was the
definition of not a morning person he was bleary-eyed he
kind of stumbled in he was like a zombie holding
a bagel he sits down in front of me he's
barely conscious and he starts gnawing on his bagel and
i'm sitting with my back to the outboard side of
the ship so that's the outside of the ship behind
me and there's a porthole right next to my head
where the sun is coming through and it's hitting this
officer directly on his face and so the officer's looking
up at the sun he's kind of squinting and blocking
the sun from his face and i'm looking at him
expecting him to shift left or right to get out
of the path of the sunlight but instead this officer
slowly reaches for the phone on the wall he brings
it up to his head and he goes yeah bridge
yeah uh this is ops i need you to adjust
our path yeah one five six yep that's about right
okay all right all right bye after he hangs up
with the bridge i'm watching him and he hasn't moved
he's still just looking at the sunlight blazing in on
his face he's just squinting and looking up at it
and then all of a sudden this port of sunlight
just gradually begins to shift off of him and winds
up on the wall right behind him where it stops
by ordering the bridge to change the ship's path just
slightly about 15 degrees it's enough of a change to
reposition the sun from his face he literally redirected thousands
of tons of steel and hundreds of people just because
he was too lazy to move left or right i'm
in awe i can't believe he's just done this and
for a second i worry that he won't realize how
unbelievably brilliant this was and then as i'm looking at
him in between bites he just looks up at me
and smiles and goes back to eating his bagel [Music]
in november of 2006 nintendo came out with a brand
new gaming console called the wii and it was hugely
popular and sold out almost completely right away by the
following january it was still not on shelves in most
places around the world and so people were going crazy
spending unbelievable sums of money to try to get their
hands on this system a sacramento california radio station called
kdnd got a hold of one of these coveted systems
and decided they would give it away during an on-air
contest the contest was going to be called hold your
wii for a wii and the premise of this contest
was simple the contestants would be given lots of water
and the person who held it the longest i.e they
didn't urinate would win the prize leading up to this
contest the radio station began promoting it really aggressively on
air and lots of people called in with concerns saying
that drinking too much water can actually be deadly but
the station brushed these concerns off and said they were
aware of them and that all contestants would be signing
a waiver and so ultimately the station was not responsible
for what happened to them on the morning of friday
january 12th 18 contestants showed up at the kdnd radio
station and they signed their waivers although one of the
contestants said the waiver only covered publicity issues not health
and safety concerns one of the contestants was 28 year
old jennifer strange who was a mother of three and
she was trying to win this wee for her kids
she along with the others after signing their waiver were
ushered into this room where they were handed eight ounce
water bottles every 15 minutes they would be expected to
finish that water bottle and then refill it and do
it every 15 minutes and if at any point they
didn't completely finish their water bottle in time or if
they got up to use the bathroom they would lose
the contest the contest started at 6 45 a.m and
by 8 am after five bottles had been drank a
number of the contestants began pulling themselves out to use
the bathroom but the radio staff felt like this contest
was gonna take a really long time until they gave
the remaining contestants that included jennifer a larger bottle of
water to drink from over the next several hours all
of the contestants except for jennifer and one other had
dropped out because it was just too painful they had
to go to the bathroom jennifer was heard on air
saying it hurt so much and one of the hosts
laughed and said well do you need to lay down
and then somebody piped up and said she can't even
walk and so everybody just kind of laughed and did
nothing about it around this time a nurse called into
the radio station and very emphatically said what they were
doing this contest was a really bad idea you're gonna
get someone killed from water intoxication water intoxication is also
known as water poisoning and in a nutshell what happens
is when you drink too much water the water dilutes
your bloodstream it can cause swelling in your brain and
it can lead to coma and or death the host
after hearing this concern turned and yelled to the remaining
contestants hey is anybody dying out there and then the
host just kind of laughed and hung up on the
nurse a little while later you can hear one of
the hosts on air comment on how jennifer's belly looked
really strange it had become totally distended and bloated and
they said it looked like she was pregnant at some
point jennifer and the other remaining contestant began vomiting but
instead of dropping out they just continued to drink more
water and did not go to the bathroom but finally
it became too much for jennifer to bear and she
dropped out of the contest and she relieved herself for
coming in second place she received tickets to a justin
timberlake concert on her drive home jennifer began experiencing this
horrific headache to the point where she was just sobbing
uncontrollably through tears she called one of her co-workers and
said she just was not going to be able to
come into work that day her head hurt too much
and so after she hung up her coworker she'd just
spoken to was really concerned about her and called jennifer's
mother to let her know what was going on and
about an hour later jennifer's mother headed over to jennifer's
house to check on her and she found jennifer dead
in her bathroom from water poisoning the station was ultimately
sued by jennifer's family and they were ordered to pay
over 16 million dollars in damages in 2005 57 year
old steven slevin was a physically healthy man but mentally
he was struggling he was depressed and felt like his
life didn't have any purpose anymore and so in august
of that year he decided to just go on a
road trip he didn't know where he was going he
just felt like if i get out on the road
and just go driving somewhere i will feel better and
on this road trip he eventually began drinking alcohol and
before long he was swerving along the new mexico highway
and a police officer saw his erratic driving and pulled
him over once stephen failed his sobriety test the police
officer arrested him stephen was brought to a local detention
center where during his booking process it was discovered that
he had a history of mental illness and so the
officers following that county's policy segregated him from the rest
of the general population in an effort to protect stephen
from himself they moved him into a padded cell on
the first floor they removed all of his clothing and
they put him in what's called a suicide smock which
looks like a big blanket wrapped around your upper body
and what it does is it keeps inmates warm and
modest but it also prevents them from balling up their
clothes and creating a noose they could hurt themselves with
after a few days in this padded cell steven was
moved to another better cell that had a window it
had a shower it had a toilet and he was
there for two weeks under strict medical observation but at
the end of those two weeks for reasons that are
not entirely clear steven this mentally unstable man was moved
into solitary confinement to await trial for his dwi solitary
confinement is a type of imprisonment where the inmate is
shifted into a single person cell and they are kept
there nearly around the clock without any significant interaction with
other people or other inmates these psychological effects of solitary
confinement are well documented and terrifying just 15 days into
solitary can be enough to cause permanent psychological damage steven's
first few weeks in solitary were actually okay he was
allowed to write to his family he was able to
detox and reflect on his life during those first few
weeks it was noted that stephen was very polite in
his very limited interaction with the officers that were dropping
food off through the slot in his door also when
stephen had a few minor medical issues instead of throwing
a fit he just knocked on the inside of his
door and waited patiently for someone to acknowledge him which
took a long time but he never got frustrated or
mad but by january of 2006 so roughly three months
into his solitary stint stephen had not had any updates
on when his case was going to go to trial
and stephen was starting to lose his grip on reality
he was having these severe panic attacks and he was
suffering from intense hallucinations he desperately wanted to find out
how much longer he was going to be kept in
the cell but nobody would tell him he tried writing
his letters to his family asking for help or asking
them to try to get an update on his case
but when he went to literally write the letter his
hand shook so severely from the stress and anxiety that
he literally couldn't write these letters starting that january stephen
began spending the bulk of his day in the corner
of his cell with his knees tucked up to his
chest rocking back and forth he was allowed out of
a cell a few times a month but in april
of that year that stopped and he almost never left
a cell again and without leaving his cell steven was
unable to bathe and so his skin began developing fungus
and began falling off and his teeth began to rot
finally on may 8 2007 so one year and eight
months of being in solitary confinement steven was transferred out
of his cell to a behavioral institute in las vegas
nevada after bathing and shaving and cutting his hair and
receiving proper medical treatment he was back to his normal
self within a couple of days and while he was
there he had a chance to speak to a lawyer
and the lawyer would say the entire meeting stephen was
just saying where have i been and the lawyer said
you know you've been in solitary confinement awaiting trial you've
been there for almost two years and to that stephen
was shocked and literally didn't believe him he actually couldn't
remember that time in his life it was like it
had driven him crazy and he had completely repressed it
from his memory but when the lawyer told him about
it it began to come back into his mind and
he begged the lawyer to not let them send him
back to solitary confinement and as lawyers said unfortunately if
that's where they're going to keep you that's where they're
going to keep you until you have your trial for
this dwi and unfortunately we have no idea when that
trial is going to be but stay strong because it's
bound to be soon if they've already transferred you to
this institute stephen stayed at this institute for two weeks
and during that time he asked constantly about when his
trial was going to happen but nobody knew and at
the end of those two weeks stephen was abruptly taken
out of his room put in a van driven back
to new mexico and put back into his solitary confinement
cell and immediately steven began to deteriorate then he begged
the guards to not put him in the cell but
nobody was listening and before long the door had shut
and he was all alone again within a couple of
days stephen developed an abscess in one of his teeth
and he tried to get medical attention but he didn't
get it and so he sat in the corner of
a cell and for eight hours one day he rocked
back and forth and violently twisted and yanked and pulled
on that tooth until he was able to rip it
out of his head almost two months later on june
22nd 2007 stephen's case was finally put before a judge
and the judge dismissed all of the charges it's believed
the judge found out about this horrible mistreatment of stephen
and took pity on him but we'll never know three
days later steven was released from jail and reunited with
his family he had been in solitary confinement for two
years without so much as a hearing to tell him
what was going on he had essentially been forgotten about
he would go on to sue the county and win
15.5 million dollars in damages however at the same time
he's winning this case he was diagnosed with terminal lung
cancer and given less than a year to live it's
unclear if he is alive today so that's gonna do
it guys if you found the secret in today's episode
let us know in the comments what it is and
where you found it so give us the time stamp
and if you're the first to do that we will
pin you at the top of the comment section if
you got something out of today's episode and you haven't
done this already please offer the like button some chips
and guacamole but replace the guacamole with wasabi also please
subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so
you don't miss any of our weekly 3 or 4
video uploads if you want to get in touch with
me you can direct message me on instagram or on
twitter my username for both platforms is the same it's
johnballen416 i also have a ton of content over on
ticktalk where my username is mr ballen i also have
a second youtube channel called mr ball and shorts where
i post short random videos and lost episodes if you
have a story suggestion please submit it to our subreddit
just called mr ballen it's linked in the description below
so whether i see you on instagram twitter tick tock
reddit youtube or some combination just know that i really
appreciate your support and until next time that's going to
do it see ya