Chapter 1: What are the dark secrets revealed in today's episode?
Today's podcast will feature three stories about dark secrets that were hiding in plain sight all along. The audio from all three 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 Dating Game, and it's about a reality show contestant who is not who he says he is. The second story you'll hear is called Something Scratching, and it's about two brothers that make a discovery two decades after their mother disappears.
And the third and final story you'll hear is called Be Still, Their Hearts, and it's about a medical center where something deeply unsettling begins to unfold. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload four times a week.
Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Fridays. So if that's of interest to you, please invite the follow button to come over to your nice, calm backyard barbecue, but be sure to replace their hot dog with a lit stick of dynamite. Okay, let's get into our first story called Dating Game.
Before The Bachelorette pitted 30 men against each other to win one woman's heart, Americans watched another show about random strangers competing for a mate. It was called The Dating Game. Starting in 1965, this reality show featured a woman asking three men questions without seeing their faces, and based on their answers, at the end of the show, she would choose one to go on a date with.
On the surface, the September 13, 1978 showing of The Dating Game looks like every other episode with lots of unsubtle innuendo, but this episode would go down in history as a one-of-a-kind, and not in a good way.
At the end of this particular show, it was time for the Bachelorette, Cheryl Bradshaw, to make her decision, and she would choose Bachelor number one, who would turn out to be this tall, good-looking, long-haired guy whose name was Rodney.
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Chapter 2: How did a reality show contestant hide his true identity?
Rodney comes around the partition, and they see each other for the first time, and everybody laughs, and they hug, and the show looks like every other show, and on stage, Rodney looks like every other contestant that's ever been on the show.
But after the show ended and Cheryl and Rodney went backstage and actually began having a real conversation that was not being filmed, Cheryl would say that Rodney completely changed. He became incredibly creepy and was saying things like, I always get the girl. And then at some point he says, hey, you should come out with me tonight. It'll be a date you'll never forget.
And she turns to him and just says, no, thanks. This would turn out to be a really wise decision because Rodney was a horrible, horrible person. Had the show done a background check on Rodney, they would have discovered that he assaulted an eight-year-old and went to jail for three years for it and was currently on parole.
But even if they had done a background check on Rodney, the check would not have discovered what he did at night. Rodney was shamelessly cocky and self-confident, and unlike a lot of men, he had no issue walking right up to any woman anywhere and flirting with her. And he used that to his advantage.
He would go up to women in bars and he would convince them that he was a fashion photographer and that they were so beautiful. Would you come back to my apartment and do a photo shoot with me? And just like Cheryl on the dating show, these women were immediately kind of charmed by him and would say yes.
Once they got back to his apartment, he would shut and lock the door and then become that creepy guy that Cheryl saw backstage. But unlike Cheryl, who at the time she saw this just said, I'm not interested and was able to leave, these women were trapped. And then whether they wanted to or not, they would do a photo shoot with him and then he would strangle them to death.
because Rodney Alcala was not your typical dating game contestant. He was a serial killer who by the time he stepped foot on that show and was chosen by Cheryl Bradford to win the game, he had already killed four people. In over a two year period, he killed as many as 130 people, which if you're doing the math is over those two years, he was killing at least one person a week.
Alcala was finally apprehended and he was sentenced to death.
Our next story is called Something Scratching.
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Chapter 3: How did a contestant's past affect a reality show outcome?
And then Dr. Marsden removed the breathing mask from the woman's face. Then he changed her IV from an anesthetic drug mixture to regular saline. And so now that these drugs were not being pumped into her system, she would wake up over the next half hour or so.
After that, Dr. Marsden and the nurse and the surgeon took their patient on the stretcher and they pushed her out of the OR into the hallway and began making their way down towards the recovery room.
But as they were walking down this hallway, they bumped into more of their colleagues, another nurse and another anesthesiologist, and the hallway was tight enough that Dr. Marsden had to step aside to let these two pass.
Then after they did, and they sort of waved at their colleagues, Marsden, the nurse, and the surgeon continued walking, and as they did, Marsden happened to look down at their patient, and immediately he knew something was wrong. This woman's skin had turned completely gray. Dr. Marsden was totally caught off guard by this.
He looked at her vital sign monitor and saw that her blood pressure, which just moments ago had been normal, was now dangerously high, and then as he's staring at her monitor, her blood pressure plummeted, and then also her oxygen levels fell, and then she began foaming at the mouth.
It was clear this woman was going into cardiac arrest, which meant if they didn't act quickly, her heart was going to stop. Now, Dr. Marsden again is sort of in shock at how quickly this is happening, but he just jumped into protocol. He began giving the woman chest compressions to make sure blood was flowing to her heart.
Meanwhile, the surgeon administered oxygen and blood pressure medication, and the nurse called for an ambulance. The reason she had to call for an ambulance is because the surgery care center was not equipped to handle medical emergencies. It was only for scheduled surgeries, and so if there was a medical emergency, all they could do was just stabilize the patient until paramedics arrived.
And that's exactly what Dr. Marsden, the nurse, and the surgeon did. They got this woman stable, and then just a minute later, two paramedics came running down the hallway, they took possession of the patient, they put her onto their stretcher, out the door they went, they put her in the back of the ambulance, and they sped off to the local hospital.
As Dr. Marsden watched the ambulance disappear down the road, he knew his patient was now in good hands, but he was still very shaken by the whole experience. Because this type of emergency, somebody going into unexplained sudden cardiac arrest following a totally routine surgery, was extremely rare.
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