**MrBallen** (0:00)
Today's podcast will feature two stories about unexplainable phenomena. The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called Two Faced, and it's about a man who's filled with this deep sense of foreboding after a ghastly sight in his mirror. And the second and final story you'll hear is called Make It Rain. And it's about an inmate who has a truly unbelievable ability.
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, please invite the follow button to come with you to a big costume party. But don't tell them you're actually going to a funeral.
Okay, let's get into our first story called Two Faced.
**SPEAKER_2** (1:12)
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**MrBallen** (1:42)
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On the night of November 7th, 1860, a 51-year-old American politician walked inside of his modest two-story home in Springfield, Illinois. This politician was totally exhausted, but he was also really happy because in his hand, he had a telegram that confirmed he had won an election that he had worked so hard for, and he wasn't sure he was going to get.
So earlier that night, this politician had been out basically partying and celebrating this huge victory, but now he was totally beat and ready for bed.
Once the politician was inside his house, he picked up an oil lamp to light the way, and he walked through his house to his study, where he put the lamp down on his desk. He put the telegram saying he had won this election next to the lamp, and then the politician just collapsed into a sofa to fall asleep.
But before he closed his eyes, this politician looked over at a mirror on the wall, and what he saw in the mirror made him gasp, and he sat upright and looked at it like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. In this mirror, this politician was seeing his own face, reflected as it should be, but then next to it was another face, and it was not his. It kinda looked like him, but it actually looked more like a corpse, like a dead person was looking out at him from this mirror. And so the politician, he stood up and began walking over to the mirror to get a closer look, but as he got closer, the dead person's face disappeared and all was left was his own reflection. And so he's like, okay, I must have been dreaming that, that can't have been real. And so feeling very unsettled, this politician just went back over to the couch and he laid back down thinking, okay, just forget about that, go to sleep. But again, he glanced over at the mirror and now that he was laying down again, he saw the two faces again, his own and this dead person's face. And at this point, he stood up and rushed out of the room into his bedroom where his wife was. Now his wife was a very devoted spiritualist. And so the politician thought maybe he could tell her about what he saw in the mirror and she could interpret it and tell him what it meant. And so he sat down and he told his wife about what he had just seen. And she would sit there for a minute pondering what her husband had just said. And then her expression on her face just totally changed. She went from intrigued to very upset. And in a quivering voice, she would tell her husband that what this meant was he would serve honorably in the office that he had just been elected to for one term. He would get re-elected, but he would not survive the second term. Now, when the politician heard this, he immediately rejected it. And he said to his wife, you know, there's no way that's true. You know, I probably didn't even see a face in the mirror. I'm probably just so tired. I imagined what I saw. So let's just forget about it. But his wife was not consoled and she fell into his arms sobbing as if he had just been diagnosed with some fatal illness. And over the next several days and weeks and months, this politician's wife continued to be so upset about this potential death omen that the politician had apparently had, even though, again, the politician is constantly telling his wife, come on, like, there's no way that's actually going to happen. And sure enough, over time, the politician's wife did sort of stop being so scared all the time that her husband was going to die. And the politician himself, he just kind of forgot about what he had seen in the mirror that night. And so he would go on to serve his first term in this elected office, he would be re-elected for a second term, and then during his second term, on April 14th, 1865, this politician and his wife were out at a play in Washington, DC., and during the last act of the play, a man named John Wilkes Booth famously snuck up behind Abraham Lincoln, who was this elected politician. He was the president of the United States in his second term, and John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head, killing him.
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