today I'm going to share two very bizarre missing person stories and they're both very unique in fact the second one is so memorable I think a lot of you will retell it to your friends and family because the ending is unexpected to say the least and really paints a good picture of what strange dark and mysterious content is all about but before we get into those two 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
once a week so if that's of interest to you please sneak in into the like button's house and eat like 99% of all their ice cream leaving just a very thin layer of ice cream at the bottom and then place that nearly empty container back in the freezer 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 stories [Music] at around 1:00 a.m. on August 27th 2000 a fisherman Named Sam Watts did his best to keep his balance on the wet
deck of the huge commercial fishing boat that he was working on and as he tried to do that he looked over at his crewmate Michael Edwards another fisherman who was grabbing onto the Mast as the ship rocked underneath their feet Sam and Michael and the four other crew members on board this boat had just dropped their anchor 56 Mi off the Northeast Coast of Queensland Australia and up until about an hour early earlier the sea had been very calm but now you know this huge storm had rolled in the wind had picked up the waves
were huge and while the four other crew members had already gone below to try to catch some sleep Sam and Michael were now on the deck doing their best to try to secure everything before they went down below and so as the wind is whipping and the waves are smashing against the side of this boat Sam and Michael decide they should split up to work more efficiently where Sam will go to the front of the boat then Michael would go to the back of the boat and they would each kind of work towards the middle
of the boat checking all the fast ings and the knots to make sure everything was good and then when they reached the center they would be good and they could go down below and so they did that Sam went to the front Michael to the back and as they began to work they kept constant eye contact with each other because this was obviously a very dangerous thing they were doing but at some point as Sam was making his way he had to duck down to check a particular fastening and so when he ducked down he
lost sight of Michael just for a second but in that Split Second this huge Rogue Wave smashed the side of the boat practically capsizing it sending Sam flying towards the railing but Sam luckily grabbed onto the railing before being thrown into the water and then as the boat kind of began to rock back to level Sam instinctively looked back down the ship to look for Michael and he watched through the darkness in the rain as Michael went kening off the side into the ocean he hadn't been able to grab on to anything and so the
instant the boat kind of leveled out again Sam screamed for Michael but he couldn't see him and so he ran down below woke up the whole crew and so moments later the crew was on the deck they had their big spotlights out scanning the water you know through this big storm looking for signs of Michael and at the same time the captain had come up and he was on the radio talking to police and so several minutes later a police boat managed to come out to the fishing boat and at the same time you know
the crew is still desperately looking for Michael they haven't found him yet and now the police began circling around the whole area calling out for Michael throwing out buoys into the water in hopes of you know maybe Michael sees one and grabs hold but nobody could find Michael he was just gone and so all that morning into the early afternoon the police continued to look in the area for Michael you know the crew on board the fishing boat did the same thing but still nobody could find a trace of Michael and so around noon that
day the search was called off and the police told Sam and the rest of the crew of This fishing boat that unfortunately you know at this point it seemed very likely that Michael had drowned and so of course Sam and the rest of the crew were basically in shock I mean this happened so quickly how could it be that you know Michael just a few hours ago was joking around with them part of the crew and now he's dead I mean it was just unbelievable but now unfortunately Sam and the rest of the crew had
to basically put their grief aside and make a very practical albeit very cold decision which was you know even though Michael's dead do we stay out here and continue fishing or because of his death do we just go back home and you might think that decision was actually super easy to make that of course you know they would pack it in and go back home how could you possibly stay out here and go fishing considering what had happened but you need to understand it cost a lot of money to go out on these fishing excursions
and they had just left and so they had not caught anything so they had spent all this money and they had no return from it and these fishermen were not wealthy in fact honestly they needed the money from this trip just to provide for their families and so if they did turn around right now I mean it would really hurt all of them and it would also make it really hard to get the funding again to go out lat and so after some pretty awkward deliberation the crew decided that you know what we got to
stay out here and fish but the Silver Lining was hey you know if we stay out here for another day or so you know maybe Michael's body will float to the surface and we can at least recover him and bring him back home to his family and so all day that day the fishermen stayed out and fished and they were very successful I mean one after another they were catching these Cod that were 6 ft long and nearly 100 lb they're called flowery cods but despite how incredible this was for their business you know this
was not a cause for celebration because they had just lost their friend the day before and so it was a very somber day and all day you know all the fishermen really are looking out at the water hoping to see Michael's body but you know by the end of that 24 hours of fishing they didn't see any sign of Michael and so they packed everything in and they headed back to Port they sold off all of their Cod that they had bought and then each of the fishermen went back to their families and grieve the
loss of their friend a few days later a factory worker was standing in front of a fish processing line line with this huge 97 lb Cod right in front of them this is one of the flowery cods that Sam and the other fishermen had caught 24 hours after their friend had gone overboard and so this worker took their knife and like they did every day all day long began opening up this fish and at some point after cutting it open and looking inside of this enormous Cod the worker just stopped and couldn't believe what they
were seeing and then they began to scream it would turn out a few days earlier after Michael had been thrown overboard during that storm he very likely had been alive when he hit the water but the area where they were fishing off the coast of Queensland Australia was known for having lots of sharks and saltwater crocodiles in the area and so pretty much immediately Michael was attacked by either a shark or a crocodile or maybe both and during this feeding frenzy as Michael's getting ripped to pieces his head got ripped off and began to float
away and at some point one of those huge flowery cods saw the head and ate it whole and then later that day Michael's colleagues caught the Cod who caught Michael's head and so that factory worker who opened up that particular Cod saw Michael's undigested head looking up at her and apparently his face was fixed in Terror with his eyes wide and his mouth open as if his final moment had been him screaming some of you might know that before I became a professional strange dark and mysterious Storyteller I was in the military and while I
was in the military I definitely had some pretty wild experiences all around the world but to be honest what I remember most about my time and service was not any of my own exploits but rather it was the insane stories I heard from other service members keep in mind military service members are sent to some of the most isolated desolate inhospitable places in the world and many times in those places weird things happen unexplainable things like borderline paranormal things things happen in these places think being out in the middle of the ocean with absolutely nothing
around and seeing lights popping up on the sky and coming out of the ocean and seeing figures up on the mountains wandering around where there shouldn't be any people I mean there are insane stories out there from service members but many of them are not necessarily told in the public they're kind of kept within the military it's like kind of part of military lore that is the premise of wartime stories and if that pequs your interest well you're in luck because not only can you right now go check out the wartime stories YouTube channel but
also I personally hands selected wartime stories to come under the Ballin Studios umbrella and we have collaborated to make a brand new weekly podcast the official wartime Stories podcast which is available right now go look up the wartime Stories podcast on any podcast platform it's free all you have to do is look up Ballin Studios and you'll find wartime stories that way or you can direct search for war time stories click on it follow them and give a listen it's an amazing weekly show with new episodes coming out every single Monday okay fact to the
[Music] [Music] story on the afternoon of July 13th 1994 a man woke up feeling very confused and disoriented and he felt some pain in the back of his head and as he opened his eyes he kind of slowly realized that he was on his back in a ditch on the side of the road looking up at a big blue sky the man tried to sit up but as soon as he did he felt this throbbing pain in the back of his head and he reached back to touch it but the second he did you know
it hurt even worse and he definitely felt there was a pretty big lump on the back of his head and then when he brought his hands in front of his face he saw he had all these bruises around his wrists that he had no idea what they were from and so as this man in the ditch is trying to figure out what's going on suddenly this older man who he didn't know just appeared by the side of the road and looked down and said hey are you okay and so the guy in the ditch is
looking at this guy he's got no idea who he is and he wants to say like what's going on where am I who am I what's happening but he couldn't find the words it's like he just kept looking at this older guy looking at his wrist and feeling his head and having no idea what's going on but then for some reason three names popped into this guy's head the guy in the ditch he thought of three names he had no idea whose names these were but for some reason he felt like those names were really
important and so after a few few minutes of awkward silence as the guy in the ditch is trying to talk he finally just blurts out these three names he says uh Pat Joel Chris and so the older man who had asked the guy in the ditch what was going on he didn't really know how to react to this guy blurting out these names and so he kind of ignored it and just said okay uh hi my name is Steve and then Steve the older man helped the guy from the ditch out of the ditch and
then once the man in the ditch was on his feet kind of looking around he looked at Steve and suddenly he could say other words and he said to Steve where are we and Steve looked at him and said we're in Cheyenne Wyoming now the guy in the ditch didn't know why but he immediately felt like Wyoming had to be wrong like there's no way he could be in Wyoming but the guy in the ditch didn't know where he was supposed to be he didn't know who Steve was he didn't know who Pat Joel or
Chris was and so it's all totally confusing and so he just stood there kind of saying nothing and as he did Steve said hold on a minute I'm going to get my stuff and so Steve kind of shuffled down the road like 10 20 ft away where there was a shopping cart full of cans and there was a backpack and some other things dangling off the side and as Steve grabbed the shopping cart turned it around and slowly began pushing it back towards the guy in the ditch the guy in the ditch stared at Steve
and kind of put together that you know Steve must be homeless and this realization made the guy in the ditch think that you know maybe he was homeless too and so suddenly instinctively the guy from the ditch began reaching into his pockets thinking maybe he had an idea or something that would show him who he was that would show he was not home homeless that he had a place that he needed to go to and he reached in his pockets but there was nothing all he found was 23 cents and a comb and so by
the time Steve came over with his cart and asked the guy from the ditch hey do you want to come to the shelter with me the guy from the ditch was like okay yeah I'll go with you and then once the guy from the ditch and Steve arrived at the shelter when they went inside you know the guy from the ditch had to introduce himself to the people who ran the shelter and so he made up a name combining one of those names that was running through his head Pat with the color of the desk
of the person who was asking him for his name inside of the shelter and so he just called himself Pat Brown and after Pat Brown got a room inside of the shelter he went to bed that night still having no idea what was going on but he felt confident you know if I just sleep tonight I'll wake up tomorrow and I'll know what's going on I'll figure out you know what happened to me but the next day when Pat woke up he was still completely confused did not know who he was had no idea what
was going on but he had the wherewithal to know that you know something bad must have happened to him and maybe he should go talk to the police because maybe they would know if other people were looking for him or something and so Pat walked from the shelter to the police station it was not far away and he went inside and very politely he walked up to the desk he introduced himself to the cop who was on duty and Pat just began explaining to the cop as much as he could remember he said you know
yesterday I woke up in a ditch I don't know who I am I don't know why I'm here I think I have amnesia I just keep thinking of three names in my head Pat Joel and Chris but I have no idea what they mean can you help me now the cop who's hearing this did not think oh my goodness this is totally legitimate let's launch an investigation to figure out who you are instead the cop is like is this guy on drugs is he mentally ill you know what's going on with this guy but the
cop would say you know Pat was incredibly polite and did not appear to be intoxicated and so the cop humored him and said okay you know what let's look through the most recent missing person reports in the area to see if somebody matching your description you know is a missing person and so the cop began going through the database but he couldn't find anybody that matched Pat's description and so at some point he said look like I can't really help you very much here because you're a grown man you do not seem to be in
distress here and even though it's very unfortunate that you can't remember who you are or where you need to go or you know where your family is that's not really a police matter but as he was saying this to Pat Pat who's kind of crestf falling you know he's putting his hands near his face and just kind of reacting to this snooze that the police are not going to help him and the police officer says hold on a minute look at your hand and so Pat looked at his hand and he saw you know there
was no ring on his left ring finger but there was a pretty obvious callus where a ring should have been it looked like you know Pat must have been wearing a ring up until recently and for some reason it was now off and so the cop said hey it looks like you may be married or were married for a long time cuz you got that callous but you know beyond that I'm sorry there's not much else I can offer you and so even though this was somewhat valuable information it didn't really Point Pat in any
direction and so he was about to turn and leave when the cop said hey you know do you want to ride to the hospital because it seems like you could be having some sort of medical event here but Pat politely declined and just told the officer to please be in touch with him if anybody Came Calling looking for somebody that kind of seemed like him and the police officer said he would and so after this Pat left the station and went back to the shelter and basically told himself I'm going to stay here and just
wait until my memory comes back because at this point that was kind of all he could do how however weeks would go by at the shelter and nobody would contact the police looking for somebody like Pat Brown and Pat wouldn't remember any more details the only thing that kept coming into his head was those three names Pat Joel and Chris but that was it and so finally after a few weeks of no progress being made Pat decided he would leave the shelter in Cheyenne and go to Jackson Wyoming because some other people in the shelter
had talked about Jackson Wyoming as being a place where people who don't have ID cards could get jobs and basically start over and because Jackson was only a little over 400 m away from Cheyenne it was not unreasonable to try to hitchhike your way to Jackson and so almost exactly 2 months from the day Pat woke up inside of this ditch he began hitchhiking his way towards Jackson and then when Pat got to Jackson he was able to get a job without an ID he got a job at a newspaper sorting mail and doing some
clerical work and at first he stayed in a shelter like he had in Cheyenne until he had saved up enough money to rent a room and as the months went by in Jackson Pat did begin to remember additional details about what seemed like his former life he discovered while doing clerical work at the newspaper that he was able to use an adding machine without looking at it it was like his fingers just knew where to go he also discovered that he was able to do really complex math problems in his head and then also in
virtue of being at the newspaper he saw a lot of information about the stock market and he actually seemed to know a lot about the stock market even though he didn't know why also while Pat was in Jack he started to feel this really intense compulsion to go to a Catholic church and so he began going to Catholic mass and while he was in church he just automatically began saying the prayers along with everybody else even though again he didn't really know why he had that information in his head but the biggest clue that came
back to Pat while he was in Jackson was this recurring dream he would have where he was at this Campground somewhere and this little boy comes around the corner and looks up at Pat and says hey Dad mom needs your help with Chris and then in the dream he responds to this child by saying okay Joel I'll be right there and so with all these Clues kind of coming back into Focus Pat sort of felt like he had a grip on who he used to be based on the callous on his finger and on that
recurring dream it did seem like he was a married man who had at least two kids you know Joel and Chris and so his wife was very likely named Pat or maybe Pat was another child he didn't know and then also he felt like he must have been maybe an accountant or somebody who worked with numbers you know based on the adding machine and understanding the stock market and complex math problems and also he was a devout Catholic because that's the only way he would know all those prayers but despite kind of putting together who
he seemed to be in his previous life that didn't really tell him anything about what he should do now like he didn't know where his potential family was or where his job was or where he should go and so even though he had this kind of former life formed in his mind he couldn't act on it and so Pat's weird life in limbo in Jackson Wyoming just kind of continued to drag on and so by the end of 1997 so by this point it's been 3 and A2 years since Pat has woken up in the
Stitch confused he's still in Jackson Wyoming he still has no idea who he is and it's starting to set in that unless he takes drastic measures here he'll never figure out the truth about who he is and so early in 1998 Pat does take drastic measure he contacts a very popular TV show at the time called Unsolved Mysteries and asked them to please cover his story because if they did it would be broadcast across the country and maybe somebody out there would recognize him and come find him and sure enough when Pat contacted Unsolved Mysteries
they thought his story was totally insane and they covered it Pat's episode aired on April 10th 1998 almost exactly 4 years after pat woke up in that ditch and on the day his episode aired in a city in Indiana 1500 miles away from Jackson Wyoming a phone rang in a woman's house so she answered it and it was her cousin and her cousin told her stop whatever you're doing and turn on the TV put it on channel CBS and so this woman she walks into the living room she turns on the TV flips it to
CBS and she sees an episode of Unsolved Mysteries is playing and it's Pat Brown's episode and this woman is staring at the TV and she practically faints when she sees what it's about but she stays composed and just stands there staring at the TV so shocked she can't even say anything and the whole time her cousin is yelling through the phone you know saying can you believe it oh my goodness and then at some point on the TV a phone number flashed at the bottom of the screen where the producers of the show told the
audience hey if you know anything about this case call this number and so with this the woman who's watching the TV she hangs up on her cousin and she dials that number she sees on the TV Pat's drastic decision to call Unsolved Mysteries would indeed solve the mystery of who he was however the truth about who Pat was is not what you think it would turn out some of the clues that Pat had sort of naturally recalled in those four years that he was kind of figuring out who he was were indeed clues of his
former life he really was a married father those three names Pat Joel and Chris those were the names of his wife and his two sons Pat was his wife and Joel and Chris were his two sons and he really was a devout Catholic which is why he was able to remember all of those prayers but some of the other Clues he thought of over those four years like his incredible aptitude for math or the fact that he could use an adding machine without looking or the fact that he understood the stock market so easily those
were clues about his former life but specifically they were clues about why Pat was in this position in the first place it would turn out Pat Brown was actually a man named Carl brodnick Jr and Carl brodnick Jr was a wanted felon who had misappropriated tens of thousands of dollars from the advertising agency where he worked as an accountant and Carl had been under serious criminal investigation when he suddenly disappeared from his home in Indiana on July 8th 1994 which is 5 days before Pat Brown woke up in that ditch on the side of the
road with a lump on his head markings on his wrist and having no idea who he was or what happened to him now there has never been a perfect explanation for what actually happened to Carl but if you think about this logically his claim of having Amnesia is very likely true why would a guy use Amnesia as his cover story to flee the law you know run to Cheyenne Wyoming and say I don't know who I am I don't know what happened to me only to then what a few years later go on national TV
and out himself and totally make himself a target for the police it doesn't make any sense and then also adding credibility to this idea that maybe something happened to Carl versus Carl running off to save himself is we know that when Carl disappeared on July 8th 1994 from his home in Indiana he took out $1,000 in cash from his checking account and then also took out another large sum of cash from his home's second mortgage however when he woke up in that ditch all the money was gone gone he just had 23 cents in his
pocket now after Carl vanished from his house in Indiana police did go looking for him because he was under criminal investigations they wanted to find him and they pretty quickly found his car 250 Mi away from his home in a strip mall parking lot in missoury but there was no sign of Carl anywhere and then right after the police found his car they checked Carl's credit card and they discovered it had just been used in Colorado so 900 mil away to buy clothes but when they went to that store and tried to find security footage
of you know when that transaction took place there was no footage and so there was no way of knowing if Carl really was the guy in Colorado making that transaction or if somebody else had his credit card and then after that there were no other leads nobody had any idea what happened to Carl his family didn't know the police had nothing to go on and so very quickly his case went cold until four years later when that episode of Unsolved Mysteries aired now there are many theories about what could have happened to Carl but the
leading theory that again is just a theory is that Carl may have been in debt to some very dangerous people and so when he fled his home in Indiana it's very likely that he was not running from the law even though he was under criminal investigation he was actually running from these dangerous people and that the reason he might have been stealing from his company was to pay off these dangerous people but apparently it wasn't enough hence why he decided to just kind of take off and run away and these dangerous people seemed to have
caught up to him and they captured him and it looked like they tied his wrists at some point because of the marks on his wrist and they very likely tortured him or something hence why he had this very serious head injury and then it seems like they dumped him on the side of the road very likely to die they might have thought he was dead already but he didn't die and when he came to he must have really had Amnesia from the injuries he sustained from these bad people that chased him down but again that's
just a theory when Carl's episode of Unsolved Mysteries aired it was his wife Pat bradnick who was the one who saw him on TV and couldn't believe it and called it in and then when she called this in at first you know Carl was reunited with this family and it was this big happy reunion Carl comes back home he sees his wife and his kids and then he's immediately arrested and prosecuted for embezzlement now ultimately Carl would plead guilty to the charges against him but he would say the whole time I don't remember committing this
crime I don't remember anything and so ultimately Carl did not get sent to prison he instead served time on probation and then after it was over he just went back to living as Carl brodnick Jr despite still having huge gaps in his memory at least according to Carl if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious then you come to the right place I have this Mantra do things that scare you I am doing a full-blown tour across the United States how do you feel about that oh terrified but that's why I'm doing it
it's a privilege to have the opportunity to stand in front of people who have chosen to be here just to listen to me I want the people in the audience to be drawn into the stories I'm telling the same way they are at home we strange dark and mysterious in [Applause] here so that's going to do it if you want more strange dark and mysterious content remember we have a whole slew of strange dark and mysterious podcasts that are free to listen to right now all you have to do is go to any podcast platform
and type in Ballin Studios and you'll see there's the Mr Ballin podcast there's Mr ballin's medical Mysteries there's bedtime stories there's run full there's wartime stories they're awesome go give them a listen if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious so that's going to do it thank you guys so much until next time see you wait don't go anywhere if you're looking for more strange dark and mysterious videos click here
