Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. And today we're going to look at three stories that demonstrate that. But before we get into those stories, if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format, then you 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 mail the like button a birthday card, but make sure you booby-trap it with a glitter bomb. 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. One day in March of 2012, a five-year-old girl named Maria sat on the floor of her kitchen in a city in northeast Brazil, eating an empanada and watching her aunt cook some stew. An empanada is very similar to the empanada in that it a pie filled with meat, but the empata is the Brazilian version of that pie. Maria's family was actually known for their cooking, specifically their empatas. In fact, at this very moment, Maria's mother was out selling their famous empatas on street corners and in bars and local restaurants.

Now, the family got by okay this way, but despite their notoriety around these empatas, they really wanted more. They wanted their family name to be respected, to be powerful. To try to make that happen, Maria's family basically worked 24/7, not just on making empatas, but basically in looking for ways to grow and expand the family name. In fact, while Maria was sitting on the kitchen floor, she could hear her father in the other room working. The reason she knew he was working is because periodically, she could hear him yell out with excitement. He was basically sitting there coming up with ideas of how he could make the family name even bigger and better. When he had a good idea, he would shout out and be like, Oh, I found it. In addition to constantly brainstorming storming for ideas of how to become rich and powerful, Maria's father also was an author, and he was writing a book that he was convinced was going to be another thing that would ratchet their family up the social hierarchy. But because Maria's mother and father and basically everybody in her family were so completely immersed in work all the time, it meant they didn't really pay much attention to her.

And so most of the time, Maria was just on her own, usually playing in the kitchen or playing in the backyard. Just then, the front door opened and in walked Maria's mother, and she was grinning ear to ear, not only because she now had an empty tray, meaning she had sold all her empatas, but also she had brought someone along that she was really excited to introduce to Maria. Maria's mom stepped all the way into the kitchen and right behind her was this young woman. Maria's mother pointed at this young woman and then gestured for Maria to come over and say hi. She told Maria that this young woman wants to become her new nanny, and so you guys can play together all the time while me and your father are doing our work. Maria stood up and gave a shy smile to the young woman, but she wasn't sold that this woman actually would become her nanny, because in the past, there had been other women who had come by to be her nanny, and they didn't seem to last very long, and so Maria was not getting her hopes up. Still, Maria wanted to be friendly, so she walked over and as a gesture of goodwill, she handed this woman her half-eaten empada.

The young woman took the empata and laughed and said, Thank you. After that, Maria's mother told her to head on out back and go play by herself for a bit while she and this new nanny hammered out the details of her new job. She told Maria that as soon as they were done, the new nanny would come outside and join her and they could play together. Maria, who was always very obedient, did as she was told, and she headed out back and entertained herself. The whole time as she's just kicking rocks around and pulling grass up and just doing what kids do, she kept looking back at the house, waiting for the nanny to come outside. But she didn't. After a whole hour had passed by and still this new nanny had not come outside, Maria felt really bored, and so she went inside to go look for her. A month later, Maria was out in her backyard playing by herself like usual when she heard a commotion happening inside of her house. She looked over at the house and couldn't really tell what was going on. Then she heard the sound of her mother and her father and her aunt raising their voices like they were fighting with somebody.

Then all of a sudden, these uniform police officers came charging out the back door towards Maria. One of the officers came right up to her and asked her what her name was. Maria was so scared. Remember, she's five years old here that she didn't even know what to say. So she just stood there staring, being totally terrified. She had no idea what was going on. But as these police officers would soon tell her, it would turn out her entire life was one big horrific lie. Maria's father, George Silvara, was not actually her father, nor was Maria's mother, Isabel Silvara, her actual mother, nor was her aunt, Bruna Silva, actually her aunt. In reality, those three people were not related to Maria. They were instead members of a cult called the Cartel Sect. All these three cult members cared about was impressing the members of the cult. When they thought about making it big, their so-called family name becoming bigger and more powerful, that was all in relationship to the cartel sect. They wanted the members of this cult to look at them as the most powerful and important members of that cult. The way they tried to do that was by performing the duties of this cult to the best of their abilities, better than anybody else in the cult.

And so what did this cartel care about? Well, the literal purpose of the cartel sect was to eliminate women they deemed unclean in order to reduce and to terrify the world's population. And Maria's family, the mother, the father, and the aunt, had become very well-versed at doing this. All those nannies that came around to see Maria, well, the reason they kept vanishing is because shortly after the the mother, the father, and the aunt introduced them to Maria and said, She's going to be your new nanny, they would shoe Maria out into the backyard, and then they would murder the nanny because this person had been deemed unclean. They would cut their throats and stab them to death. But that wasn't all. That wasn't enough cleansing. After they murdered these women, they would then butcher them and stuff the human meat into their famous empatas and sell them to the people in town. They literally were feeding people in this city human meet. But the cult and the cannibalism and the murders were not actually the biggest shock of the story. The biggest shock of the story is actually the real identity of little five-year-old Maria.

She was actually the daughter of the very first victim of the cartel sect. The mother, along with Maria, three and a half years earlier, when Maria was just a year and a half, they had been lored to this very house where her mother was murdered right in front of Maria. Then after her mother was killed, they cooked her mother and fed pieces of the mother to Maria. Ever since, they had just kept Maria and treated her like she was a member of the family, basically turning her into an unwitting cannibal. The existence of the cult and their hideous murders were ultimately discovered after they used one of the credit cards of their victims sometime in the spring of 2012. That's when all the cops rushed into the backyard and confronted Maria. George, Isabel, and Bruna, Maria's fake family, were convicted of three murders, including the murder of Maria's real mother, and they are currently serving what amounts to life sentences in Brazil. Police believe the actual number of women that they murdered is as many as eight. As for Maria, according to recent news articles, she was reunited with distant family. Maria is not her real name.

That is a pseudonym to protect her identity. Are you the type of person who has binged basically all of my YouTube videos and every week you anxiously wait a new upload? If so, thank you. But also you're in luck. Because if you didn't know this, we actually have a separate podcast, the Mr. Ballen podcast, that has literally hundreds of stories that are not on YouTube that you can binge right now. That podcast is available on all podcast platforms. Again, it's just called the Mr. Ballin podcast. On Mondays on that podcast, we upload exclusive new content that is not on YouTube to the podcast. That's Mondays. Then on Thursday, we remaster the audio of your favorite videos on YouTube and put those on the podcast. But again, Mondays, those are brand new and exclusive to the podcast. But if you want to hear those exclusive episodes one month ahead of Apple and Spotify and all the other platforms, well, there's only one place you can do that, and that's on Amazon Music. So again, you can go to any podcast platform and find the Mr. Ballen podcast, or if you're like me and you hate waiting, then you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

On January 23rd, 1989, a mother was cooking dinner in her home in Rochester, New work when her 11-year-old daughter came into the kitchen. The daughter had just finished delivering newspapers along her delivery route in their quiet suburban neighborhood. And so her mother asked her the same nightly question, How was the route? Usually, the daughter replied with just a, Good But tonight was different. Instead, her daughter said, It's okay, and the mother cried like, Well, what do you mean? What happened? The daughter said, Well, I saw something strange. She told her mom that she delivered newspapers to this one particular old man. He was very nice, and he always waved her whenever she went by. And tonight was no different. He had waved to her, but there was just something off about the way he was sitting. The mother asked, What do you mean? The daughter, she really struggled to articulate what she had seen. One, it was dark. Two, the man was sitting inside of a screened-in porch that obscured her view, and the awnings were pretty low, making it hard to look in. But she said basically when she had gone past, the man had waved her like normal, but his legs appeared to be straight up in the air.

He was sitting on a chair and his legs were up, vertical, right in front of him. In fact, when he waved, it was like he was waving between his legs at her. When the mother heard this, she really didn't know what to make of it. I mean, the story didn't make any sense. She couldn't really understand how this guy was sitting where his legs would be straight up in the air like that. But at the same time, she could tell her daughter was worried and she figured that maybe her daughter's imagination had run wild here. She told her daughter, Hey, look, if he waved to you, then I'm sure everything is just fine. Don't worry about it. But the following night, when the girl came back from her route once again, she was even more upset about this guy out on his porch. She told her mom that once again, she looked in the porch and there he was sitting there with his legs straight up in the air, except this time he didn't wave to her, including when she made a point to stop and wave at him. He did not wave back. Now, the girl told her mom that she was worried about him, and so she went right up to the door to go check on him, but the screened-in porch was locked, so she couldn't get inside.

Her view was obscured because of the screen, so she couldn't really see him in there. But she didn't know what to do, so she just left. Now, this story, which was already weird, now did seem a whole lot that two days in a row her daughter is seeing this. But the mother's thinking to herself, Come on, this is just some older guy who loves this chair, and he's fallen asleep in some weird position here, and my daughter is exaggerating what she's seeing. This can't be a big deal earlier. But again, seeing the concern on her daughter's face, she told her daughter, Look, don't worry about it. I'm sure everything's fine. I will go by tomorrow morning and make sure he's okay. The next morning, a little before 11 AM, the mother arrived on the street where this old man lived. As she was walking down the road towards the house, she actually spotted the mailman. Before she went any farther, she flagged the mailman down and she asked him, Hey, is there anything weird going on with that old guy who lives right over there? But the mailman was like, No, he's just a nice older guy who waves at everybody who goes by.

The mother thanked the mailman and did give some thought to just taking what the mailman said and turning him back around and heading home and telling her daughter everything's fine. But she knew her daughter was She was worried about this guy, and so she decided she would just continue down the road and check on this guy for herself and just really make sure he's okay and then report back to her daughter. Also, the mother was thinking, it's about 20 degrees outside. It's very cold. This is not really a good time for an older man to be outside so much. What's he doing? Let's really make sure he's okay. The mother made her way down the road and she reached the old man's house. Sure enough, the screened in porch really did obscure whoever was inside of it. She could see a silhouette of what appeared to be this old man sitting there. But the first thing she actually noticed was not him, but rather the two newspapers that were sitting right on his walkway, uncollected. I mean, these are the newspapers that her daughter had left over the same period of time that she's seeing this weird thing happening with this guy.

And so suddenly, the woman's feeling like that's a pretty big red flag. And so she hustled her way right up towards the front. And as she did, she looked in into the screen porch and waved at this old man to try to get his attention like, Hey, are you okay in there? But the man did not wave back. The mother went right up to the door and she checked it, but like her daughter had said, it was locked. The mother, she pressed her face up against the mesh screen that had been obscuring her view from a distance, and she put her face right up against the screen where she would have a clear view inside. When she did, and she saw the old man who was in fact right there, and he did in fact have his legs up, when she saw him, she realized what was actually going on. The second she did, she jumped back, turned around, and ran away to go call the police. It would turn out the old man who lived there, whose name was Robert Ham, and he was 73 years old, he was not just eccentric and sitting weirdly on his front porch.

Instead, on January 23rd, right before that little girl had come home and told her mother that this man had been acting strangely. On that evening, Robert had come out onto a screened-in porch, and for whatever reason, he had attempted to sit down on this trash can that was out there on the porch. But the lid didn't hold. And so Robert fell butt first into this trash can, folding him up into this V position where his legs were straight up in front of him. And Robert was too weak to get himself out of the trash can. And also because of being in this V position where his legs were pressed up against his torso, it was restricting his ability to breathe and to make any sound. And so all he could do in this position was just wave at passerby, hoping they would see he in trouble and go help him. But unfortunately, nobody could really tell what he was doing, including the little girl on the paper route. They just thought there was this guy sitting in his porch in this weird position, waving to people, when in reality, he was dying. Unfortunately, because nobody came to his aid, Robert did die.

He would die of a heart attack. In fact, by the time that little girl's mother arrived at his house and put her face up against the screen, Robert was already dead. At around 7:30 AM on September 25th, 2012, a 69-year-old farmer named Terry Garner stepped out of his house in rural Oregon to go feed his animals. He stopped first at his enclosed yard where he spread some seed on the ground for his chickens and turkeys, and then he headed over to his pen where he was raising four horned goats, which are goats that grow four horns instead of two. After picking up some hay and tossing messing in with the goats, Terry just stood there and smiled as he watched the animals eat. Terry loved his animals. He actually had previously been a butcher for most of his life. But six years earlier, when he had retired, he had gone the opposite direction, basically housing all these animals and treating them basically like people. In fact, he was so devoted to his animals that sometimes when the nearby river would flood, he would move all of his animals into this house he had built on his property just for the animals to make sure they were safe.

If you ever went to visit Terry at his property, it was pretty common to see a lot of the chickens and other birds just hanging out on the front porch of Terry's house. He didn't care. He liked having them around. But of all the creatures that Terry took care of at his farm, the animal he loved the most were his pigs. Now, normally, when farmers raise pigs, they grow them to about 250 to 300 pounds, and then they sell them to butchers to be slaughtered. But that's obviously not what Terry was doing here. He loved these pigs so much that he basically just fed them anytime they were hungry, and they were hungry all the time, which meant his pigs sometimes grew to be like 700 pounds, and at no point was Terry going to sell those pigs. He just wanted his pigs to live their best life. On this morning, after he was done feeding his chickens and turkeys and the goats, he grabbed a whole bunch of food and began making his way over to his beloved pigs. A few hours later, a member of Terry's family arrived at Terry's property and knocked on his door.

This family member had called Terry earlier in the and Terry hadn't picked up. Now, that in and of itself was not that uncommon. Terry was a busy farmer, but Terry always called people back, and so far he hadn't. So this family member was here just to check on him and make sure he was okay. After a few minutes when Terry did not come to the door, the family member grew more concerned about Terry and decided they would just walk the whole property and just go find Terry and see what he was doing. The family member left the porch and walked all around the property. They saw where the chickens and turkeys were, they saw the goats, they saw the pigs, but that was it. All they saw were animals. Terry was nowhere to be found. It was like he was gone. The family member was just about to turn around and head back to Terry's house to see if maybe he really was in there when suddenly something caught their eye in the pig pen. Now, at first, what they were looking at just seemed impossible. How could that be there? That doesn't make any sense.

But when the family member walked over and got a closer look, they knew for sure what they were looking at. As soon as that truth sunk in, they turned, ran to the house, and called the police. It would turn out earlier that morning when Terry had walked into the pig pen to feed his beloved enormous pigs, somehow or another, he had wound up on the ground. Now, we don't know if he had a heart attack or if he had some other medical event or if he simply just tripped and couldn't get up again. But one way or another, he wound up on the ground, and at some point, his pigs devoured him. What that family member saw in the mud that caught their eye was not Terry, but Terry's false teeth grinning back at him. Those teeth, along with several pieces of his body and his clothes, were all that was left of Terry. One more haunting detail of this case is that officials were not able to actually figure out whether or not Terry was dead before he began being eaten, or if he was just incapacitated and very much alive when his beloved pigs began to eat him.

As many of you may already know, by far, the most popular series that I do on our YouTube channel is the Top 3 Places You Can't Go and People Who Went There Anyways series. We're going to continue to do that series periodically on YouTube like we have for years. But because this series is so in demand, we are also going to begin telling these stories in a brand new format. Audio. Right now, you can head over to the Mr. Ballen podcast on any podcast platform to find one of these exclusive episodes. The way you find them is you look in the title of the episode, and if it says You can't at the front of the episode, that is this type of content. Right now, there's an episode that's live, and periodically, we're going to populate more You Can't style episodes on that podcast. The only reason we are not full sending this You Can't series on audio as a standalone show is because we need to gage the interest on audio before we ramp that up. That's why you're seeing periodic uploads. If you really want to hear more of this stuff, go listen to that You Can't episode and tune in each time we tell you there are You Can't episodes available.

If there's lots of demand, you'll see more You Can't style episodes, which again are very similar to the top three places You Can't Go and people who went there anyways. Right now, go over to Mr. Ballen podcast and have a listen to the first You Can't episode. Enjoy.