Disaster on Webb's Bait Farm | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
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- Опубліковано 12 жов 2020
- "On the 27th of May, 1983, on a farm near Benton, Tennessee a powerful explosion took place..."
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Don't play with fireworks - and certainly not illegal ones. Stay safe out there, everyone!
u too hun !new sub be safe all x
77 likes on "don't play with fireworks"?!? Wtf has this world come to?
Your narrative suggested Web's wife was implicated in the factory, but you never clarified that. Fail!
I'm very formal when I light fireworks. I throw firecrackers at people while I wear a tuxedo.
That's why you make your own fireworks. Those ones are legal. ;)
“He started a new line of business at the farm”
*Methampheta-*
“The manufacturing of illegal fireworks”
*-oh.*
Exactly what I was thinking!
I was thinking “This screams meth lab”, then the plot twist!
I totally thought it was going to be meth too
Yup, that’s what I thought
Thats where I thought this was going.
Really like these lesser known stories. A lot of bigger channels just recycle the same old tragedies.
100% agree
Yes!
Agree mrballen recycles all old stories
cough Chris Watts
Yes! Hearing the same old incidents can get pretty boring, this is a welcome surprise
I respect Webb for his reaction to the situation. He handed himself in, he took responsibility, and he pointed them towards the people who’d started this. I think he was genuinely remorseful for what happened. Poor sod.
Yeah. He just wanted to keep his bait farm from going under, i don't think he ever anticipated an explosion. But when ordinary people start handling materials they're not qualified/trained to handle safely things inevitably go wrong, sometimes explosively.
Stupid is as stupid does.
-A Wise Man
@@killman369547 I don’t know about keeping it from going under…he had another job, and a staff of 11. It doesn’t take much, I imagine, to keep a bait farm afloat. Worms aren’t exactly high maintenance…not that it’s not work. I just think this has more to do with greed than need.
Ya think? He lost 11 family and friends in one go, all of whom he and his wife hired. Those people wouldn’t have been there if not for the decisions they made. Obviously they shouldn’t have been doing what they were doing, but it had to have seemed like it wasn’t “that bad” from their perspective. After all, you’re making fireworks for people to enjoy. It’s not like you’re making guns, liquor, or drugs.
For that fairly innocent crime he lost 11 people in his life. Think about that for a second. Make a list of your loved ones in your head and cross off eleven names - those people are dead now, because of you. One of them was your own mother.
It seems pretty obvious to me that he would feel genuine remorse. I don’t know if I would even be able to live with myself after that.
Remember that he only did this out of desperation too, it's not like he was overly greedy
My mother, Great Uncle, and Great Aunt died in this tragedy. God rest their souls. She left behind 2 sons (2 and 4 years old at the time). It's been almost 40 years but the wound has never healed. I wish I could have known my mother. I know she was just trying to make a living for our family as my Dad's work at Magic Chef had gone on strike. I love you Dixie Lynn Freeman.
Condolences to you for your dire loss.
I'm so sorry for your loss... and yes, I have no doubt your mother and the other members of your family were just trying to provide in this hard world. I live in Knoxville.. and this.. well I don't want to say story bc obviously it isn't a story, it was people's lives.. but since the first time I heard of this tragedy it hurt my heart. I hope one day you will indeed meet your mother at the end of this ride.. many blessings to you and your family, take care.
@@TheKonga88 not cool man
@@TheKonga88 We get it, you have the mental age of a 9 year old. Seriously not cool dude
@@TheKonga88 do you get a kick out of being such an asshole for no reason? What a miserable life you must live.
my grandfather was one of the responding officers, he said bodies were strewn around, some in trees. crazy
I'm from the area, and have grown up hearing so much about this. That is correct, all the bodies were dismembered, and I'm pretty sure they didn't even know how many bodies there were at first. There's a chapter in Dr. Bass' book Beyond the Body Farm about this that goes into really gory detail.
@@jakkew5753 Ever hear about the doctor that was on a ladder by an El train? His watch "grabbed" the electricity (he never touched it) and he lost 3 limbs. Woke up 4 days later and tried to walk to the bathroom...
His description of what happens to the body where the legs narrow and the electricity has nowhere to go even stopped ME.
No idea what he was doing on a ladder near an El train...
@@windsofmarchjourneyperrytr2823 No, hadn't heard of that one. I'll look it up.
@@windsofmarchjourneyperrytr2823 I'd like to hear more about this, any additional information you may have to steer us in the right direction? Thanks
@LazerDog Laz Bradley County Officer in Cleveland TN. call bullshit all you want but i’ve heard that story from him at least 20 times
My first thought was fertilizer and farm chemicals, but an illegal fireworks operation really puts a twist in the story.
I don’t think a worm farm needs fertilizer. It’s not actually farming any plants
Last of the Albino Mexheecans what are you on about?
Last of the Albino Mexheecans angry much? You no speek English good
yup me too never figured fireworks
Yep, me too. Either that or a hellishly big still.
6:22 Oh, I just noticed in the newspaper shot that it said that Dr. William Bass helped them identify the bodies. He is from the University of Knoxville and is the guy who set up the first "body farm" and is considered one of the fathers of modern forensic anthropology.
He is identified on Wikipedia, too.
@@sludge4125 well duh
That would be the. University of TN at Knoxville.
East Tennessee 💪🏾💪🏾💪🏾
Any relation to Billy Bass, that fish that sings "don't worry, be happy"?
I live about 15 minutes from Webb's. They were finding body parts in trees for about a week after this.
man thats crazy
What’s there now?
As a former member of a pyrotechnic crew, this story hits home. On July 2, 2002 my 2 “show-biz mentors” were in Florida prepping a show for the upcoming 4th of July. Just 3 days prior we had finished an unrelated show in Orlando at the TD Waterhouse arena where the Magic (NBA) play. I was scheduled to work the same show, but a nasty case of food poisoning sidelined me. I traveled home and had a 10 day break before heading back on tour. Fast forward to July 2, and I saw a breaking news story on CNN about a massive explosion in the same area my friends were. I immediately called the two of them (who happened to be brothers), no answer. It soon became clear that the blast was related to them and I knew there was slim chance of survival.
In shows like this one, there is an area removed from the public referred to as the boneyard where product is unloaded off a large 53’ trailer and shuttled to the site of the shoot where it is staged, wired, and detonated. While one of the brothers was in the trailer bringing pallets of explosives to the rear to be plucked off w/ a forklift, the brother in the truck noticed a plume of smoke rising from between 2 pallets and began to scream warnings to the others to run. It was too late. Seconds later the truck ignited and released such an intense blast that windows broke a mile away. The truck driver’s wife had wandered a couple hundred yards away and was able to dive into a shallow “puddle” just deep enough to submerge herself under as the intense heat and fire roared overhead. When she surfaced she saw her husband stumbling toward her with a hole in his midsection large enough to put her arm straight through him, and she saw my close friend near the base of a tree charred black but still gasping for air. He died shortly after. Her husband died the following day in the hospital in what I can only imagine to be extreme agony with 3rd degree burns over 90% of his body. The other brother had to be identified by a USMC Marine Corp tattoo on his forearm he got while serving in Vietnam and dental records. They sat out there in the boneyard for almost 72 hours, as investigators were concerned w/ live explosives that weren’t detonated during the initial blast. In total 5 lost their lives and the trucker’s wife was the sole survivor. To this day that’s the hardest loss of my life, and I never did another pyro shoot after that. Those were professionals that took their job very seriously and were entrusted to do some of the largest firework shows in the world, and tragically died because of a freak accident. RIP Brian & Gene, thank you for helping me become the man I am today.
PS, Next time you see a fireworks show, remember that the red and green shells are the cheapest colors by far. And that hard-working brave men and women are risking their lives in order to give you 20 minutes of patriotic or celebratory entertainment. Take a second to acknowledge that, and maybe think of my heroes, Brian and Gene. Be safe everyone.
wow that must be very traumatizing. i am sorry for your losses
My heartfelt condolences, for the loss of your dear friends.
I am so sorry for your losses. That's truly awful.
F
The articles I found say July 3, 2003
I feel like anyone who runs a bait farm is eventually going to use it as a cover for something. Farming worms sounds immensely depressing.
Not for everyone, I saw a video on raising worms, got so into it and decided I wanted to do it as a side hobby. That said, I’m weird.
There are some (allegedly) perfectly normal people who farm crickets, meal worms and such.
It’s pretty cool actually worms are incredibly easy to farm and are good for the soil biology.
@@dalton9493
That’s what it seemed like to me. I thought I’d have a small one and give them away to people for their gardens.
Even more depressing is waking up everyday driving an hour to spend 10 hours around people you don’t like then driving an hour home and doing it all over again for a lifetime of a career. Being around worms isn’t all that bad being able to drink or whatever else you like with no liabilities what so ever without having to show up on time either....or at all for that matter with a completely laid back schedule.
I almost feel shabby about liking these dark and sad stories. But they are immensely well narrated and with great respect for the victims of the accidents and their relatives. Each of these stories underlines the paramount importance of workplace safety and the terrifying horrors that may occur if safety standards are not taken seriously. 😥
They relive the story like giving it more respect than the original media report. I have heard of many of these stories but not with much detail.
Its not shabby. You are gaining knowledge.
I click on the like sign (if that's what you meant by "liking" them) to kinda bookmark the videos as my 'watched' videos. My memory has weakened considerably recently and i tend to forget if i watched a video or not (after say a few months) just by looking at its thumbnail.
I remember this well. I was 15. I lived in the next town over. There is no way to possibly describe the magnitude of the explosion. I was about 25 miles away. The sound was LOUD. The ground shook like an earthquake. Terrifying.
When I heard "farm explosion" my first thought was meth lab. More profit, more prison time, just as dangerous.
Same.
Edit: I was not expecting fireworks
First thing I thought was fertilizer. Then I thought meth lab!!
@@80sbreed87 I thought fertilizer/compost pile overheating.
My first thought was methane. Those cow farts can be silent but deadly.
Same.
"Hey buddy, you can't smoke in he..."
Look uncle. . . im getting a raise.
No you're not.
"Rubs socks on carpet furiously. Points finger"
Ok ok. Shake on it
"can I get a light?" "oh sur-"
🎵”Happy Birthday to you, Happy Bir....”🎵
@@crixxxxxxxxx Damn that went dark.
"I can't believe some people are stupid enough to smoke next to explosives like that!"
*vape explodes in pocket*
My first thought was "they were cooking meth", but illegal fireworks also make a lot of sense. Either way, I don't think a bait farm is a very profitable enterprise at the best of times.
Wasn’t 1983 before meth? Wasn’t it more rock cocaine? Not saying meth wasn’t around then but I wasn’t aware
Probably makes 100 percent profif
@@arribaficationwineho32 meth has been around since the world war 2. The biker gang have been cooking meth since the 60’s. My dads buddy did like 15 years for cooking meth in the 70’s.
@@yankees29 I remember now learning abt meth use in the German army. Thanks. I have lately read hitler was an addict. Funny that never popped up in anything I read until lately.
@@arribaficationwineho32 yeah he was. So was JFK. Lol
I'm from Cleveland Tn. I remember this very well I was only 9yrs old but 2 of my friends lost their parents in this blast. Thank You for covering this
I'm from Cleveland too. I was born in 92 so I wasnt around for this. But it has been a great conversation topic with older folks in town since I found out about this.
He was told his business would be booming. They, however, failed to specify what kind of boom it would be.
I feel bad for laughing!!!
Playing with dangerous Illegal Fireworks is like playing with Fire.
@@christinejorgens6577 It kinda is.
@@denisesalmon4496 same here
Exactly
The worms come in, the worms come out, the worms accidentally set off illegal fireworks on your snout.
Can’t trust em
They eat your eyes they eat your nose because they made you explode
The worms play pea knuckle on your snout. - scary stories... I see what u did there, well done
Ha!
@@tommyz1082 pinochle **
"...what could have caused a blast of such magnitude on a small, unassuming fishbait farm in rural Tennessee?" As someone who grew up in Eastern Tennessee, my first thought was, "Almost anything." I remember this happening. It was a surprise to everyone who wasn't a neighbor.
I always think of meth when it comes to rural southern farms. But 1983, I assumed fertilizer. Illegal fireworks was definitely out of left field
I was like "drugs?! ... fertilizer? Moonshine!!! Oh, fireworks, ok."
OK, the big "FIREWORKS" sign shown at their farm at the end makes me question why they didn't instantly know what happened!
That wasn't at the farm. That was Bramblett's fireworks store.
I recognized Beambletts sign immediately! East Tennessean 🙋♀️
😂
I was 3 years old when this happened but still remember it. My aunt Sybil died there. That is her car pictured at 3:02.
Christ
What happened to Webb after the prison sentence? I would imagine he’s dead by now?
Was your aunt webbs sister or something?
@@cigarsandpins4781 I'm pretty sure he's still alive. According to reports I've found, he lives about a mile from me. Don't know what he did after he got out of prison or what he does now, I would also like to know. I've also never met him.
@@ElvenSailor_Main No. We're not related to the Webbs at all. Her name was Sybil Hodge.
store: *explodes*
the worms: "you get what you fucking deserve"
LOL!!
LMFAO
😂😂🤣🤣
Laffed
The worms: dirt, sun, dirt, water, dirt, sun, water, dirt, water...
My husband had a good friend who made homemade fireworks. He was pretty skilled and even the local police knew he made them. Well he had a trailer next to his house where he worked on them. I’ll never forget the day because he was a welder and did contract work for my husband. We had sent him a fax that morning. Something happened and he basically blew himself up. His wife and preteen daughter were in the house. He was still alive when they found him but he was dying. The horror they must have felt haunts me. Apparently they didn’t get all of the pieces because a family member found one of his hands later in the debris. Please, please don’t mess around with this stuff. All it takes is one tiny mistake.
The forensic anthropologist mentioned in this video is actually a good friend of my father, they met when he was studying under him in UT. The anthropologist's name is William M. Bass, he also runs what he calls a "body farm" where he studies decomposition in nature.
my favourite pandemic discovery: this channel
Same!!!
Yo same.
Facts
True
Mine too!!
"Was thrown the length of a foot and covered in 3rd degree burns, he survived" bro what??? who was this dude?? luke cage??
Who is Luke Cage?
Burns over 30% of his body.
A foot is not very far, a fart can make someone jump farther.
@@krashd That was a misquote. He was thrown the length of a football field...not one foot.
Wonder how he is, these days. I imagine he needs care, and Webb cares for him.
To anyone wondering, what was left of Webb’s “Bait Farm” was quickly torn down and a rafting company now utalises the land as a storage facility.
I imagine it would've been easy to convince someone to take part in an operation like this. Its not drugs or bootlegging liquor.
Someone might see it as just profiting off of fireworks without having to report it to the I.R.S.
Indeed. This seems like the easiest racket to lure people in.
Not to overshadow this awful story, but your channel really is incredible. You are concise, thorough, articulate, and you get straight to the point. You deserve the subscribers you're getting. Congrats on 100K.
Omg, Charlie Darwin, I’m a huge fan!
Yeah, so many of these historical horror channels lean hard into clickbait and gratuitousness. This channel definitely feels more fact and mood-driven.
Agreed. And unlike many other channels (cough Horror Stories cough) he puts a lot of effort into his videos, in terms of research and editing. I also appreciate how many of his stories teach a lesson about safety and corruption and so on, and he doesn't focus on the tragedy nor exploit it as clickbait. Massive respect for this channel and this lovely community!
@@hermionestranger4964 So agree. My bro showed his sons graphic pix of consequences of fireworks accidents, when they were tweens. My bro was a pyro at their age, so ....
I just find something annoying about you denigrating Horror Stories. I am not sure why you felt the need to do so.
This accident is absolutely horrible.
I'm studying chemistry at Uni and the thought of improper manipulation with such materials absolutely frightens me
Absolutely
I doubt you’ll ever come into contact with anywhere near the amount of chemicals to cause what happened here...
@@JosephQPublic he's studying chemistry. Industrial processes use quantities of chemicals that could (and have!) kill entire *cities* if no effective safety measures were implemented.
My sister lived in industrial area and there is this big chemical factory there. She told me one day the whole town was ordered to evacuate because there is a fire in the chem factory. Within a few hours the evacuation was cancelled as the fire was brought under control. Very scary because the industrial area is so big and surrounded by many houses, schools, gov offices and malls. The chem factory has their own fire and rescue team, by the way. I guess they are well equipped that's why they can control the fire before any explosion happens.
@@lilspiderlily read up on the Enschede Fireworks disaster about what happens when industrial sites are build too closely to residential site.
I was in San Bernardino CA in the 80's when a fireworks warehouse exploded because of a worker smoking a cigarette. It felt like it was like an earthquake to us 10 miles away.
My uncle was one of the worms at the farm. He never talked about it, because he was a worm.
I bet he always made an appearance when it rained.
Sorry for your loss 😟
That worm has seen some shit
🤣🤣
He later went on to invent the Worms computer game.
I thought this was called Webb’s Bat Farm, and was curious to learn about how one farms bats
... ask wuhan... 🙃
Nothing to it. Just hire Batman as manager.
Carefully
Ask the Australians, they tend to know how things grow upside down... 🙃
Well you see, we're not farming the bats, were farming there, uh. . poop
He was at his wits ends, money was tight and he felt unsure, then with a flourish and tip of the hat, the devil appeared and said "I can help with that."
My thought exactly.
@@ulalaFrugilega the devil often appears when one is at their lowest. he offers a quick fix, fast cash, a simple repair and when you ask the cost he simply says "it will be paid, in due time~"
@@nyotamwuaji6484 True, but you know what else appears in such circumstances! Some sort of angel, just helping out, then saying: as payment, just be kind ti the next fella. I've had those, so I know.
Please be quiet.
This is not devil stuff nor amgel stuff. This is a man wanting to make ends meet, blaming some mythical "ultimate evil" is bad habit and not how things work.
The devil barely made any deals in the books and it was usually with gods permission to test his believers faith and it in turn ended with the believer being returned into gods protectiona and rewarded with being saved. There was no test in faith for this, nor was there anything of the sort.
I know this is 2 months old but I can not help it but say in a rude fashion.
Shut the fuck up, pleas for once cut the religious crap out and see for what it was.
Firework obliterating people because it was an illegal run of it to make ends meet.
@@ColdNorth0628 This is literally just a saying. Stop being so butthurt that other people exist on this planet with differing beliefs than you. Cry some more.
I remember this event. I was a D.J. for WBIN radio in Benton. I was on air when the explosion occurred. Our GM, Jasper Woody, would be on scene most of the day. I drove up as soon as my shift was over. Thankfully they had most of the remains covered up by the time I got there. 11 of the dead were Webb's family members. Cousins, uncles, mother, brother etc. The day after they found a portion of a torso in an attic, after crashing thru the tin roof. This was 500 yards from the blast site. The blast cloud was much, much more than mentioned here. First we all heard the blast. Then 2 front windows broke. We all ran outside. Everyone in town could see it. The thing I remember most about the blast site, was the complete lack of debris and no grass for a hundred yards in all directions.
You, Horror Stories, and Brief Case are honestly my favorite channels that talk about lesser known tragedies and such. I like to remember how morbid and unpredictable and cruel the world really is. It helps me appreciate every minute I'm alive and breathing, even when I feel like I shouldn't be.
Plainly difficult is also very good :)
Thrown a football field! That’s hard to comprehend
The intensity of the shock wave must have been insane. Terrorists aiming for mass kill would cream over it. Hell, they wouldn't even need to leave nails and marbles in the midst of their devices.
And lived,, yea hard to comprehend
He was still close enough for the burns so he basically was inside the explosion, albeit just close enough.
Actually just under 2 football fields if we're talking about American football. I don't know how long futball fields are.
Football (or soccer) fields are about 110 to 120 yards long.
If anyone is interested, there is a chapter in a book called "Beyond the Body Farm" by Dr. Bill Bass that discusses how the bodies (and their parts) were identified. Bass was the lead forensic anthropologist on the case and founder of the Tennessee University body farm.
I read this book years ago and it led me to read all his stuff. He even has some novels published under the name jefferson bass the we co wrote with a guy who helped him with some of his non fiction books. They were very good.
That’s fascinating. Thank you for sharing
I'm re-reading that book right now! 🤪
The Tennessee what now?
@@goldenfiberwheat238 you haven't heard of body Farms? It's where researchers study body decomposition and also new forensics students go to learn. I have one right down the road from where I live and we catch smells of it every now and then. Not pleasant
Finally. Someone telling stories and I'm satisfied at the end. I have no questions. I think you did an awesome job by not leaving me hanging at the end wondering what happened. I feel that I got all info needed. That doesn't happen to often in this day & age...Thanks!
THANKS for bringing these lesser known local stories to our attention. Lessons learned by others mistakes are so important. We are not all doomed to repeat them if we pay attention. STAY SAFE!
Excellent video.... since everyone's making suggestions, I'd suggest the horrific Cairngorm school trip disaster (1971), which I don't think anyone else has done on UA-cam.
Ooo never heard of this!
Never knew about this I used the link.
I second this suggestion
Holy shit. When I studied abroad in Scotland, I went hiking in the Cairngorms all the time. Yikes, I had no idea about that...scotland will fucking kill you, man.
1989 Cormier-Village Hayride Accident in New Brunswick, Canada is also a good shout. Logging truck passing a hayride with 60+ people tipped over and crushed them all. Fucking terrifying.
It almost sounds like he made a deal with the devil to gain profit, and lost everything in the end.
Yeah it does. He was a desperate man and the devil swooped in and stuck out his hand....
He did.
Hmmm...true
My dad was in middle school when this happened. He said they could feel the effects of the blast all the way from the school. We still live in Bradley which is the county over from Polk where this happened. He went to South Polk at the time.
Usually with these stories, I feel like some of the participants were wilfully, callously negligent, but in this case, it feels like none of them comprehended the risk.
Man if you can't comprehend the risk of making homemade explosives with a bunch of chemicals that you don't understand, then I can't help but call it much other than natural selection. It's like the old, "if someone jumped off a bridge, are you going to follow them?" line kind of.
@@173jaSon371 Not quite the same. Lots of people make extremely dangerous products without understanding them. So long as they can follow instructions precisely and have safety measures in place, you'd hope things would be okay. Admittedly, the owner was horribly negligent, but I bet no employee at a fireworks factory understands the properties of what they are creating.
@@matbroomfield True I definitely see your point. I'm kind of just assuming something family run illegally with a somewhat smaller staff would make them all be aware what they were doing to a degree. Either way a tragic situation with unnecessary losses of life.
@@173jaSon371 Yes, I totally agree.
They certainly knew that at some point those explosives would maim or kill somebody who bought them. Good riddance.
"thrown the length of a football field" im sorry WHAT
AND surviving. Wtf
@@kiiingst0n They make 'em tough in Tennessee!
About 100m.
It's truly dumb luck what some people can survive, would almost certainly have died without immediate medical care, who knows what permanent injuries like paralysis, brain damage and amputations he also suffered.
WHAT, indeed. Are they talking about American football, which is 100 yards, or that other thing, which is more like 115?
Tbh he probably survived because his body wasn’t tense lol
This is my hometown! Wasn’t alive at the time but there is still some old Tin from the buildings in the trees around the property.
Woa!
Do you know what became of the injured survivor?
The moral of the story: Don't try to reenact the game series Worms
🤣
DIE KOMENZIE!!!
Who brought out the concrete donkey?
My goodness, I misread the title as
“ Weeb’s bait farm” and I thought it was going to be an anime merchandise factory 😂
Sure would be a sight to behold in the 80s, I reckon. 😄
If he wanted a little extra income, why he didn't he just grow magic mushrooms like all the other worm farmers?
Yeah abs those have way more medical value too.
@@Val.Kyrie. And they don't explode.
Ha!
@@laceneil4570 might blow your mind though 💥
In usa thats probably more illegal than making illegal fireworks (explosives)
Imagine the first responders' face
"All units, all units. Theres been a massive explosion at Dan's bait farm."
You'd feel like you were in a surrealist comedy sketch for a split second.
I grew up about 20 minutes from this area. I was 13 years old when it happened. I remember seeing it on the news, but I never knew the full story. Thanks for sharing this!
When I was a kid I used to drill out the black powder from model rocket engines and do things with it. Long story short, I never played around again after I burned my hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes off. It was the most embarrassing summer of my life and I could have lost my sight.
I remember i was camping and some idiot threw a model rocket engine in the campfire it flew out and hit me as we were running away. Burned my leg real bad still have the scar.
@@stimactzedvard7556 We used to put a small hole in eggs and drain the yolk and contents out. Then we would fill it back up with the black powder and use a fuse made of rolled up newspaper to light it. It made a really impressive boom and mushroom cloud when it worked. One time I was having trouble getting the fuse lit, so we soaked half of it in gasoline ☹️. I was leaning with my head right over it trying to light it when it went off. It was instant and the next thing I remember is just laying on my back coughing and squirming in pain. I had ice packs all over my head and face for days.
@@lucast3006 i used to buy gun powder and use empty air gun canistwrs id fill them with x amount of powder put an m80 fuse inside and crimp them shut with pliers. This was way before 9/11. They made a hell of a racket.
Did same, lighting a 55gallon drum fire with xylene. Just a big flash, and no eyebrows, eyelashes.
dude, you played w/ gunpower?? _how are you alive??_
My takeaway? Being a master baiter doesn't pay all that well. You'll need a sideline.
Twisted C V, very very twisted.
Lol! So much for keeping my mouth shut!
Did Seaman Staines work there?
@@annescholey6546 Yep, and he's ok. Thanks to a stroke of luck he got off early that day. So to speak.
Best to stick to cutting the bait.
This was the first video of yours I stumbled across back in January 2021, while I was stuck at home with COVID. I love macabre documentaries like these, and I especially like your style of commentary on all these stories. Some of these docs I see on tv or youtube, etc. "ham" it up a little too much, or are overdramatic. You present these stories in a non judgmental light that shows the information and the tragedy. Instant sub from me!
Man annihilated all his friends and family in one easy step
Doctors hate him 🔥
I kept waiting for the words, “dynamite fishing”, but alas...they never came.
I kept waiting for the word "methamphetamine" and was delightedly surprised to be wrong...
😂 that reminded me of my dad and the fish pool incident.
We had this fish pool built in front of the house (for the love of fish), but for that particular year, the pool was infested with tadpoles during the rainy season, and followed by mosquitoe's larvae soon after. Fish had long gone by then.
Cleaning would take a lot of time, so my dad had the idea to try killing all the larvae in one fell swoop. So he lit up one small firecracker 🧨 and threw it in the water. *BOOM*
The water's gone, the pool's also done for 😂 man, I just love physics.
My dad just stood there laughing at the aftermath like an evil genius. Mission accomplished nonetheless
Ground up Mullein seeds work well.
Damn that's horrible...he should have stuck with raising night crawlers, seems like the ideal life to me
Ideal until he couldn't afford even that anymore
BBE: Perhaps, but your forget the ever present danger of a worm stampede. His family lived in danger whether wrangling worms or rolling 'cracker.
Charlie stole night crawlers from here...
@@KB4QAA Beautifully crafted, Pelican, the word stampede made me laugh so's Sweet Baby Jesus can hear me!
Totally missed out on naming the business "We've got worms".
I initially thought this was going to be an illegal moonshine operation, or fertiliser incorrectly stored. Last thing I would have thought of was fireworks..
I live in tennessee and I'd never heard of this! I thought it was going to be illegal fertilizer resale that caught fire but honestly, if you live here, the fireworks thing totally tracks.
"..alot to risk for little more than 100$ profit per crate." They said they turned out around 130 crates a week. Thats 650,000$ a year!!!!!! Making it sound like he risking it all for a sack a peanuts.
Still not worth the lives of all those people
Definitely not a sack of peanuts when you take inflation into consideration. Greed makes people do things they wouldn't normally do
...you think 650,000 is a bag of peanuts....?
@@sandrahernandez722 No, im saying that they make it sound like he was risking it all for very little money. my point is that 650,000 is ALOT of money, but they make it sound like he risked it all for a bag of peanuts, which 650,000 is NOT.
Minimum wage was $3.35 an hour in 1983.
All the money involved was of much higher value than it sounds.
The weekly profit, in today's dollars, was more than $25K.
Holy shit
The weekly death rate, in today's lives, is still the same.
Oh, I completely misunderstood that. Can see the temptation, now.
@@jdraven0890 right at first i was like $5 an hour that's nothing. oh it's 1983 that's a lot.
@@danmauller9453 Nah. Webb made 25k, the workers made $5/hr which was less than a dollar more than the MINIMUM wage at that time.
Can you imagine harvesting bait one second and then getting reincarnated the next
As a red wiggler worm!
i gotta say, i love the music for this channel. it totally sets the mood without being too full of itself or cringe.
Not to defend his actions, but $100 per crate was a big profit for the early 80's, especially in the rural South. If they put out just a few crates a day they were all making a lot of money in a time and place where many would have been jobless. Money will drive people to do risky and foolish things.
He was paying his workers really well, too. $5 USD per hour in 1983 is $1.65 over minimum wage, and equates to more than $13 USD in 2020.
@@bluesman99999 • I was going to say that too. $5/hr sounds awful to today’s young worker - but I remember I made $1.65/hr at my first job at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville. I was 18 years old and thought I was in tall cotton!
But you always take a risk when you do something illegal. He still had a choice and made the wrong one.
@@bluesman99999 13 an hour is not very well and certainly not for dangerous work, if minimum wage had stayed matched with inflation it be at $25 an hour today
An acre of land was 500 dollars in 83.
Now that same acre is 85,000 dollars
Inflation is awful
You could buy a 3 bedroom 3 bath split ranch with 2 car garage for 100,000. Today that same house costs 850,000
damn bringing a bad name to all the good, honest worm farmers out there
Not to mention all the good, honest illegal fireworks manufacturers. It's a crying shame, it is!
Could you imagine buying a styrofoam container of live worms to go fishing, and discover a human finger or ear in it? LOL.
Imagine the body count if they included the worms : (
In fact the worms orchestrated the explosion and were all safe in their underground shelters.
1983 worm uprising
Crime doesn't pay. Unless you're a career politician.
“Are these Fireworks good?”... “Well, they Killed 11 People!”
I don't know man, the dude up the road says he has stuff that's killed 13........
Interesting story! When this first started, I really though fertilizer was going to play a role in the explosion.
I was thinking meth-lab. But then 1983, so unlikely. $5.00 an hour to do something fun was pretty big money in 1983! Especially in Tennessee. I was happy with $4.50 average to deliver pizzas in 1986 in Chicago suburbs...
@GazB says who?
@GazB I don't know enough about meth labs to agree or disagree with you. Thankfully...
I know huh, some story like "In the hot afternoon that day, the slurry of worm poo reach critical mass."
Me, too
These "Fascinating Horror" videos are great! When we have family over, after dinner we gather all the grandkids together to watch and learn how bodies are splattered all over the place and blown to smithereens through all sorts of exciting, illegal operations.
This is my new fave uploaded, fresh content that no others have on their repeat and mix list. Well done sir , great work 💪🏻
Damn when I read disaster at a worm farm I was thinking it was a fire/explosion caused by some weird gas buildup, like compost piles spontaneously combusting if they're not burped, but when I heard the size of the explosion I was a little taken aback imagining that being caused by just worm farts 🤣🤣🤣
That's what i thought too! Some weird gas build up.
Kirk tiny
"If they're not burped" all I can picture is someone lifting a compost pile onto their shoulder and patting it on the back like a baby lmfao
I'm an avid composter and ain't had no explosions yet. However, while fermenting kombucha, I left the fermentation going too long without burping the bottles and they exploded in my mom's living room. Thankfully nobody got hurt. Now I keep an alarm on my phone to remind me to burp my fermenting foods....
@@apassionatenerd.3564 when you turn a compost pile in cold weather, you can see/feel the warm steam come off of it. Its one of life's simplest pleasures, burping a compost pile...
4 days ago you had 33k, now you reached 100k!! I’m so happy your content is finally being recognized
It's been kind of a wild ride, but I'm thrilled. Great to have you on board!
@@FascinatingHorror And now you're 274k. Enjoy the "explosive" channel growth before UA-cam surpresses you.
Business is booming.
I'm coming back and liking all the videos i've watched from all my subs. This is the one that got me hooked on Fascinating Horror. Great video!
Your videos are one of my favorite things to watch after a long day at school
Can we just acknowledge how crazy it is that the demand is so high in a niche market that these operations and the like pop up?
Not crazy at all. Fireworks have been in demand for ages.
John Avery so weird.
Mark Pemberton but who would want them this bad? ridiculous.
Merica!
Not surprised. If a demand for a thing exists someone will fill it. We as a people can only decide if we want it filled in a safe, uniform above ground fashion or by whomever steps up and can get away with it
Can we talk about how eerie the music is?? Love it.
How are you doing today Tovah Guillen? It's really nice having you on here...I saw your profile on here and i think we definitely are on the same page on many Levels. Trust, Communication, Loving, God fearing, Honoring, Understanding, Patience and Respecting Your Partner, So crucial to provide balance.
Yup, it's stuck in my head now
spoopy music:'3
@@geraldruiz2437 Good pick up line Gerald. You must be running low on luck if you're trying to pick up women on UA-cam.
I think the people working with the explosive chemicals probably WERE aware of how dangerous it was, at least initially, but with any potentially dangerous job 'familiarity tends to breed contempt'. This is the case in both legal and illegal operations. Something that is initially scary and treated with respect becomes familiar and our sense of danger and wariness towards it lessens with time. This is how most industrial accidents occur.
Complacency can be lethal
I've been in a 6 story mushroom cloud explosion.. about 20-30 meters from my house in a back field, our scout hut.. no one understood how a boy scouts clubhouse could cause such an explosion.. I do.
We had a store room in the centre (also holding roof up) full to the brim with Calor Gas cylinders.
Funny about the ending as I also live next to the famous firework factory fire, the explosion is unrelated obviously.
This dude’s voice is so calming I’ve fallen to sleep watching these videos more times than I can count
I'm not sure that is his intention.
makes my eyes heavy 😂 i never get through the whole video cause his voice puts me to sleep
@@graceseay6871 i don't even remember half of the videos I've watched on this channel 😂
That’s because they are boring as fuck.
It is. Nice soothing voice.
Have you thought about covering the White Island volcano eruption of December 2019? It just happened last year and not a lot of people know about it, despite a major cruise ship company being to blame for 21 people dying. I love how informative your videos are, and I feel like you could bring attention to it in a way that still would be respectful to the victims.
That would be a good one to cover. I felt so bad for all of the victims.
Cruise ship company?
@@banjopete Royal Caribbean had regular day excursions available to White Island for passengers on cruises around New Zealand, and they continued sending people to the island even after they had been notified the volcano had reached unsafe activity levels, indicating an eruption could happen soon. 38 of the 47 people who were on the island at the time of the eruption were passengers of Royal Caribbean's Ovation of the Seas cruise ship, and, according to the survivors, they were only told about the increased activity level when they were already on the island and couldn't leave until the tour ended.
I remember this happening! I watched CNN 10 (basically a 10 minute segment of news for the day) and it was only briefly mentioned. I’d love to hear more about it
There's a young victim who runs a TikTok channel dedicated to her burn wounds and bereavement/ trauma recovery from the event, she's an amazingly strong woman!
These are the best I've seen in a long time short straight to the point
My little birdie that sits on my shoulder always warns me about dangers like this and sometimes I actually listen, LOL! I like this video.
When i saw "Farm Disaster" i assumed this was gonna be one of those horrific tales about how you can suffocate in a cess pit or grain silo lol i was waaay off the mark
Yeah, like the worm food built up gases that were flammable and caught fire. I didn't see this coming lol
I've binged everything on this channel in a weekend. I damn near broke my mouse clicking on this video when I saw it... 🤣 🤣
I’ve started rewatching all of the videos. So glad a new one came out today
Sameeee
I watched all of it in one dayyyy.... holy moly...
I may have pushed down a small child trying to go find a quiet spot with my phone when I saw it was posted. 🤪
This was the video that hooked me on your channel, I've been watching every new vid since
This is the first "Fascinating Horror" vid I watched back in 2020. Loved the channel ever since
He wasn't making bombs, he was making M-80's. Only in Tennessee.
Hey, Dennis, your dad's looking for you.
@@termsofusepolice Yeah, I heard about that.
Yeah I kind if double take'd when he listed the TYPES of explosives they were making. Sad to think how cheap it was and how incredibly dangerous it was to do this, and also the other location the organizer was involved in.
Flash powder...in mass quantities...death follows
Go big or go home.
I just want to say I do appreciate that in your videos that you include both metric and U.S. customary units whenever you give measurements.
Did not know about any of the five videos I have watched from you in two days. You have a great channel and enjoy how you do the videos.
It's amazing how much research was done as evidenced by this video's deep details.
Some video suggestions:
Piaseki PA-97
Disappearance of McCann family in Alberta
Murder of Tim McLean
Cuyahoga River fire
Jeez that Tim McLean story is horrendous, I’ve got family in Portage La Prairie and have been there many times, never knew about this until now. Would certainly make for an interesting and unsettling video.
@@yungamurai Can you believe they let the bastard walk!? That's Canada under the liberal party for you I guess 🙄
@@lhaviland8602 Absolutely unbelievable, I had to check if it was true after reading the wiki article. How this person could be considered rehabilitated after a few years in a hospital having spontaneously decapitated and butchered a random person is literally insane.
also PETA fucking made an ad about Tim McLean comparing it to eating animal meat for their own benefit
@@andrewliu6592 PETA are an awful organization half of the vegan community hate them so it really is that bad
This sound like a plot out of Ozark or Breaking Bad.
Crazy story! Great video!
Just discovered this channel this morning. Really good stuff
God, this channel is so good. Never change anything, this is perfect.
I'm glad Harry and Lloyd never started their worm farm.Sounds dangerous
Ha!
"thrown 150 meters or 170 yards"
Still not speaking in any measurements us everyday Yanks speak. It's about 500 feet.
I shoot at the rifle range and bowhunt. My world is measured in yards.
Only noobs use feet. How long is your damned foot? Ha!
One a 3/4 football fields.
These are brilliant short Documentaries. Well done.