Scary True Stories Told In The Rain | Ep. 485

Scary Stories and Rain

A chilling episode of 'Scary Stories and Rain' featuring three true paranormal and suspenseful tales: a pilot's terrifying flight into a sud

Key takeaways

• Power outages during critical flight maneuvers can lead to life-threatening situations, especially when aircraft systems are already compromised.

Main topics

• True aviation accidents
• Unsolved missing persons cases

Notable quotes

"The entire city was behind it. This massive metropolis of glittering lights. Then suddenly, all the lights just disappear, like the city itself was just swallowed up by the earth."

Conclusion

These stories underscore how real-life fear—whether from technological failure,

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hey, welcome to Scary Stories and Rain. Do you want to listen ad-free? Just subscribe on Spotify for $2.99 a month. Now turn out the lights, enjoy the stories, and enjoy the rain. My uncle Andrew has this story from back when he was a commercial airline pilot. He wasn't piloting the plane this happened to, but he heard the story from a friend who used to fly private jets around West Africa. Apparently, the gig paid well enough, but because of the safety regulations and some of the more turbulent politics around the region, the flying could get pretty hairy from time to time. A bunch of crazy stuff happened to him while he was over, but the thing that made him quit makes for quite the yarn. So apparently, his friend is co-piloting the private jet of some African ambassador. But the plane is basically falling apart. All the dials are faulty. The landing gear was on the fritz. Basically, you were taking your life in your hands whenever you piloted this aircraft. But since they were coming to the end of their contract, they didn't want to quit early and not get their bonus. So they worked with the ground crews to ensure the aircraft was fit for takeoff each time. Point being, my uncle's friend is seriously stressed out, and the actual pilot had taken to drinking most nights, just to keep his nerves together. But the straw that broke the camel's back was this one-night flight into Nigeria. The turbulence had been very rough on this occasion, and apparently the pilots are just about ready to throw in the towel. But the flight is almost over, and they are both about to breathe a sigh of relief as they begin their descent. into whatever airport they're flying into. The way my uncle tells it. His friend is focusing on the runway, but the entire city is behind it. This massive metropolis of glittering lights. Then suddenly, all the lights just disappear, like the city itself was just swallowed up by the earth. My uncle's friend and the pilot of the private jet just about crapped their pants. With their faulty equipment and complete lack of experience landing in that particular city, they are maybe only seconds away from smashing that plane into the runway, or maybe even a building, if they tried to pull away too late. Then, to make matters worse, the pilot just seemed to shut down. He has this full-on mental breakdown. and just freezes up in his seat. My uncle's buddy had to take control of the aircraft and basically just guess where all the runway and the buildings were. He said it was the most stressful and terrifying flight of his life. How he was expecting the plane to just burst into flames any second as it collided with something. He pushed the engine to its absolute limits too. Said the plane was shaking at the angle he was turning it at. Miraculously, they don't crash or stall and they make it back into the skies above the darkened city and my uncle's buddy starts bawling out the pilots for freezing up like he did. But the guy was catatonic until they landed and didn't say a thing in response. After that, they went into a holding pattern until the power came back on and they could get in touch with air traffic control and get permission to land. I hate flying as it is, but imagining that kind of scenario is like a pucker factor of 10. Word was the pilot was so freaked out that he refused to take the return flight, bought a business class ticket back to the U.S., and was never seen again. My uncle's friend had to wait until his client could hire a new pilot before he could get out of Lagos or Nairobi, or wherever it was. Somehow, he managed to finish his contract without that plane falling apart on him, or any more cities going dark, and he made it out of Africa with a buttload of bonus cash. But after that, he was much more selective of who his clients were, and I think now he just flies domestic and makes a steady salary that way. Crazy story though, right? Of all the times you don't want to get a power cut, landing a plane is definitely up there. Speaker 1 (4:45) On the 3rd of May 2007, three-year-old Madeline McCann disappeared from her bed in a vacation apartment at a resort in the Algarve region of Portugal. More commonly known as Maddie in the media, and to those close to her, she had been taken on vacation by her parents, Kate and Gary, along with her younger twin siblings. One night, the McCanns left their children to sleep in the ground floor apartments they were staying in, while they ate at a nearby restaurant. Kate and Gary had assumed it would be safe to leave their children alone for the duration, since the aforementioned restaurant was just 180 feet away, which would allow them to momentarily check on them from time to time. But when Kate went to check up on the children at around 10 p.m., she discovered that Maddie was missing. Over the next few weeks, Portuguese police managed to misinterpret some of the DNA evidence collected from the crime scene. This led to them suspecting that Maddie had died in some kind of tragic accident at the apartment, with their parents covering up their own involvement by faking a kidnapping. The McCanns were formally declared suspects in the case by Portuguese police in September 2007, but were essentially absolved of any suspicion in July of 2008 when Portugal's Attorney General archived the case on the grounds that there was too little evidence to take a case against them to trial. Britain's own Scotland Yard law enforcement agency then began its own investigation, Operation Grange. in mid-2011. After a fair amount of research, the senior investigating officer declared that he was treating the disappearance as a criminal act by a stranger, most likely a planned abduction or burglary that had turned violent when the perpetrators believed themselves discovered. In 2013, Scotland Yard released composite images of local men they wanted to talk to regarding Maddie's disappearance, including one man seen carrying a child toward the beach the same night she disappeared. Shortly after this, in light of new local suspects being identified, the Portuguese police reopened their inquiry into her disappearance. This caused Britain's Operation Grange to be scaled back in 2015 to allow Portuguese authorities more control over the investigation. But some of the detectives who worked on the case continued to pursue a small number of inquiries that they seemed worthy of following up. A prominent British newspaper described the disappearance as the most heavily reported missing person case in modern history. And to this day, her whereabouts remain a complete mystery. Despite the fact that police in multiple countries were involved in trying to locate their daughter, the McCanns took it upon themselves to hire a company of private investigators to dig up information that might help regular police agencies in their search. The PI company, known as Oakley International, was based in Washington, D.C. in the United States and was initially awarded a six-month contract worth then. half a million dollars that was raised mostly by charitable donations made by members of the public. Oakley International began to interview potential witnesses, delve through security footage, and trace clues all over Europe. But in 2008, the McCanns leveled a serious accusation at the firm's 56-year-old Irish CEO, Kevin Halligan, which meant they reneged on the contract, handing over only half of what the firm was apparently owed. Speaker 1 (8:44) Halogen was said to be misusing resources meant solely for the purpose of finding Maddie, allegedly using them to fund a lavish lifestyle of travel and leisure. Halogen fiercely denied the claims, but it appears the man was no stranger to fraud. In 2012, he was extradited to the U.S. to face charges over an unrelated $1.3 million fraud, to which he pleaded guilty the following year. He was sentenced to 41 months in prison, but was deported from the United States soon after his court appearance because of the time he had already spent behind bars. Halligen had escaped the possibility of a lengthy jail term in the U.S., probably because he was wealthy enough to afford the best defense attorneys that money could buy. But because he had become central to the floundering and now apparently corrupt efforts to locate young Maddie, he had angered a lot of people along the way and made himself many enemies, some of which vowed to seek revenge on a man. that apparently used a little girl's abduction for his own financial gain. Which is why it is so suspicious that he died suddenly at his home in Guildford, Surrey, in January of 2018. Adrian Gatton, a TV director and investigative journalist who made a documentary with Halogen in 2014, confirmed his death to the Press Association, saying that he had not been in good health. There was blood around the house, probably caused by previous falls when he was either drunk or blacking out, he said. His house was full of empty drink bottles. A lot of people wished him ill. but his death is almost certainly related to alcoholism. But following his death, a Surrey police spokesman said that we were called to an address in Cobbett Hill Road, Normandy, following a report of a man in his 50s having been taken unwell, who subsequently died. The death is being treated as unexplained, and a file will be passed to the coroner's office in due course. Speaker 1 (10:59) Unexplained, certainly not a word we might expect to hear following the death of a man who, as Adrian Gatton had phrased it, was certainly related to alcoholism. The fact remains that when the police broke into Halligen's home, they found bloodstains all over the house. There is of course the possibility that Halogen's corruptly wicked ways had finally caught up with him, that the people who were furious and vengeful regarding Maddie's disappearance heard of his apparent corruption, and then channeled their anger toward him. But Halogen always insisted that the media reports were a gross distortion of what actually happened. The print media in particular took this line that really nothing was being done. I was living the high life on the proceeds of the McCann case, he once said. Trust me, I didn't so much as buy a new suit. The money, all of it, is fully accountable. It's provable. It seems that Halogen was very keen on proving his innocence with regards to the Find Maddie Fund that he was accused of misusing. Perhaps the alcoholism he was said to suffer from was a direct result of the ire he had occurred was a manifestation of the pain that any innocent man would suffer under that kind of undue scrutiny. And maybe, just maybe, he believed that finding Maddie would vindicate him. Did Halogen die a natural death? Did he even die an explainable one due to his heavy drinking? No. Unexplained. That's how Surrey police described his death. There's every possibility that he was murdered, and if indeed he was, could it possibly be because he had gotten so close to the truth behind Maddie's disappearance that someone, somewhere, felt that he must be silenced? The actual disappearance took place in Portugal. Halogen's death occurred in Surrey, England, and in June of 2020, a public prosecutor in Germany ordered an inquiry regarding a possible involvement of a 43-year-old man believed to have been living in a borrowed VW camper van