0 Days Since Last Accident (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

MrBallen (0:01)

Today, I'm going to share three stories about people who expected to have a totally normal day at work. However, their days were anything but.

But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark & Mysterious, delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So if that's of interest to you, the next time you're over the Follow Buttons house, go ahead and unplug their refrigerator. Okay, let's get into our first story, called Where's Jim?

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SPEAKER_2 (1:24)

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MrBallen (1:53)

MrBallen Podcast Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories is presented by Crystal Lake, coming soon to Peacock. Linda Cardellini stars as Pamela Voorhees in this chilling prequel to Friday the 13th. Nine months after her son Jason's death, dark secrets from Pamela's past emerge just as bodies begin appearing across the quiet town of Crystal Lake. From A24 and an executive producer of It, Welcome to Derry, comes a terrifying Peacock original series. Stream every episode of Crystal Lake, Thursday, October 15th, only on Peacock.

On the evening of Monday, June 21st, 2004, a woman named Tracy Dunnally was sitting in her parents' kitchen near Auckland, New Zealand, anxiously staring at the landline telephone, waiting for her husband's friend, Stephen, to call her back. So earlier that day, Stephen, the friend, had called her and said that he had tried to reach her husband, Jim, at the Glenbrook Steel Mill where he worked, but Jim's coworkers had said he wasn't actually at work. Apparently, he had arrived at work around 6:30 a.m. like usual. He had dropped his lunch on his desk and changed into his work uniform like he's doing all the normal things. But then at 9 a.m., he had inexplicably missed a pretty important meeting. And so the assumption amongst colleagues was, well, Jim must have just gone home. However, Stephen had called Jim at home. He had called his landline phone and Jim didn't answer. And Tracy, she was at her parents' house and Stephen didn't know that. So he's calling this number. Nobody answers. And so because he's again starting to get worried about Jim, Stephen had just gone to Tracy and Jim's house to effectively do a welfare check. And when he got there, he confirmed that Jim was not there. So now, basically nobody knew where Jim was. And Tracy knew that right at this moment, Stephen was actually calling the mill back to see if maybe by now he had turned up or if there was just more information about where he went. And Stephen had obviously told Tracy that as soon as he hears back or as soon as he learns anything, he would call her because he had learned she was at her parents' house. He would call her there and keep her up to date. And so she's sitting here waiting for the update. Just then, the phone finally rings. Tracy, she immediately answers it, and it's Stephen.

And Stephen did have news, but it was neutral to bad news. So he said they had discovered that Jim's car was still in the parking lot of the steel mill. So theoretically, that meant that he was still at work.

But the other part of the update was, you know, his coworkers literally couldn't find him. Like, nobody knew where he was at the steel mill if he was really there. And so at this point, Stephen told Tracy that considering, you know, the situation, she really ought to consider reporting her husband missing. And at first, Tracy's hearing this, and it was like she couldn't actually process what she was being told. Jim had worked at this mill for 19 years as an engineer, and nothing like this had ever happened before. And so right away, Tracy goes to worst-case scenario, and she's thinking, he's gotten, you know, hurt on the job. He's trapped somewhere. There's been an accident. You know, that's why no one can see him. And then on top of that, Tracy's thinking, like, the past couple of nights, she knew her husband had not slept well. He was tired, including this morning, when she briefly woke up and she saw him leaving for work. He was definitely tired, like he had had another bad night's sleep. And again, you know, he's been doing this job forever. She didn't really think twice about it. But now, thinking about the situation they were in, she's like, the mill is the last place you want to go and work if you're not totally focused, if you're tired. I mean, there's huge, heavy machinery there. It would be pretty easy if you're not paying close attention to have an accident, you know? And she's thinking, man, like, what if somebody else had an accident and it like affected Jim, and like nobody noticed, and he's trapped somewhere? Or what if he, you know, because he was tired, made a mistake or something? But she's just thinking, somebody could have just not seen what happened to him, and he needs our help, like right now, what are we going to do? And so after speaking to Steven, you know, she thanked him for the update, she hung up, and she's sort of flustered here. But the first thing she did is she ran to her parents, she's at their house, and she told them what's going on, you know, as best as she could understand it, and then asked them to look after the kids, you know, her kids, while she figured out what to do next. Later that evening, Tracy was now sitting in the boardroom of the Glenbrook Steel Mill, and she was totally nervous, her heart's racing, her hands were trembling. She had ultimately done what Steven had suggested, and she did report Jim missing. Now she was at the mill to see if there had been any updates. The boardroom she was in was crowded now with police officers, with mill personnel and search and rescue coordinators, and they were all telling Tracy that, right now, we don't have anything new, we can't find Jim, we've looked, and we still can't find him.