Professional Hazards (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

**MrBallen** (0:00)
Today, I'm going to share three stories that are all about people who were just trying to do their jobs, and they ended up facing an extremely unexpected and dangerous professional hazard. 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, go ahead and leave the follow button at the supermarket's checkout line, and tell them you're just going to go get one more thing. But then just take your time strolling through the store and just leave. Okay, let's get into our first story called Death Vault.
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On the evening of July 27, 2000, a 35-year-old woman named Esther Penn held a folder full of financial documents as she rode an elevator down to the basement level of an old office building where she worked in New York City. Esther was exhausted because it was really getting late. The workday had actually officially ended hours ago, but today had been abnormally busy, and so she had to put in overtime to finish everything up. So the company that Esther worked for was a very prestigious financial firm that managed investments for really wealthy clients. And it was Esther's job to make copies of stock certificates and other important financial documents and file them away in a big vault in the building's basement. And today, there had just been a lot of files to get through. And in fact, this was going to be the latest that she had ever had to go into the vault, like during a workday, since she had been working here. She'd been here two years. I mean, this was like her longest day ever. And so she was just sort of over it. But now, as the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened and Esther stepped out onto the basement level, she reminded herself that she was almost done here and she'd be able to go home soon. Like, this is not that big of a deal. And so she walked over to the vault entrance, which was this massive two-ton metal door. Since employees went in and out of the vault constantly, this door was kept unlocked during the day and just swung wide open, this huge metal door. And right now, it was standing wide open, as usual. So Esther walked through the open door into this massive vault. You got a picture, this is like a portion of the basement. You're not walking into like a little closet that they keep safe. This is like a massive walk-in vault with rows of filing cabinets. I mean, there's all these cabinets on the walls. I mean, this is a serious space. And so she goes in there and she walks to the very far end of this vault, where the filing cabinet she needed was. Esther stayed there for over 15 minutes, carefully filing the copies she had made. And then when she was done, she turned and hurried back toward the vault's exit, excited to get out, go upstairs and go home. But when she got to the massive metal door, it was no longer open. It was closed.
Now, at first, Esther was just surprised that she hadn't heard this door shut. I mean, it's a big metal door. If it's gonna somehow shut, she would hear it, right? But she's thinking, okay, I'll just push it open. Yeah, it's a huge door, but assuming it's not locked, you can just push it right open.