00:00Welcome back, dear listeners. Today we gather around a story that begins with grief, but
00:05unravels into something far more mysterious, and perhaps even unbelievable. It's a tale
00:11of love, loss, and the unshakable bond between humans and animals, but also one of secrets
00:18that refuse to stay buried. As you listen, ask yourself, how well do we truly know the
00:26ones we hold closest? Let's step into Michael's world, a man mourning the loss of his wife
00:32Jessica, where what seems like an ordinary funeral takes a turn no one could have anticipated.
00:39Stay with me, because this is where the story truly begins.
00:44It was a very sad day for Michael. Today is the funeral of his wife Jessica. She recently
00:50passed away. It was her last wish to let her horse come to the funeral. But then something
00:55else happened. The horse suddenly kept stepping on the coffin. Michael had never seen the
01:00horse act this way, but it got worse. They couldn't control the horse. It got so bad that the horse
01:06even broke the lid. What they heard next shocked them all. The family was trying to pull the
01:13horse away from the coffin with everything they got, so he just could not understand why
01:18he reacted like this. Everything had gone so smoothly up till this point. But now the funeral was ruined.
01:25Or was it? But the horse now having quitted down a bit, the silence was once again disturbed. But this
01:33time by a faint crying.
01:36Michael looked again, but everybody else seemed to be just as confused as to who was crying as he was.
01:42But then he noticed that it came out of the broken coffin. Michael jumped on the wooden resting palace
01:48and pulled the broken piece off it. And he could not believe what he found under them. By what was
01:55in
01:55the coffin. Why did Jessica's horse react like this? And was everything the family thought they knew about
02:02her strange passing true. But, but before we start, smash the like button and make sure to subscribe if
02:10you haven't and hit that notification bell so that you won't miss any new stories. Jessica had been found
02:16unconscious in the stable next to her horse. She was found by one of the employees who immediately for help.
02:23Police and ambulance personnel were quickly on the scene, but they were sadly still too late. Jessica was
02:30pronounced dead on the scene. According to the officer that came to inform Michael, she had been
02:36transported to a morgue where he was going to determine the cause of death. If Michael still
02:42wanted to see his wife as he remembered her, he would have to make it there before, before the
02:47investigation started. Well, but Michael did not have much time to grieve or to wait for the result of
02:54the autopsy. He needed to start making arrangements for the funeral and call all of Jessica's loved ones
03:00to deliver the gut wrenching news. All the responses he got to his calls would stay with him for a
03:07long
03:08time. But one stood out in particular. The response came from Jessica's best friend with whom she often
03:14went horse riding. She was also very much distraught by the news, even though she had heard about it
03:21already. But also just happened to know Jessica's last wish. That Michael was shocked by what she
03:28would reeve. Apparently Jessica had told her many times that if she would ever come to pass away,
03:34she would want her horse Nikolai to be at the funeral. It was like. She had predicted that it
03:40might happen soon. Michael wasn't sure if it was even allowed, but he had to make this happen. But
03:47Michael would definitely take it into account when making arrangements for the funeral, if there
03:52was even a chance that his now late wife would have wanted it. He was going to make it happen.
03:57There had to be a good reason for it. For the next couple of days, Michael was doing his very
04:03best to
04:04make preparations for the funeral at the held of Jessica's parents. But in the back of their head,
04:10they were still very much thinking about the possible cause of death. Was there any foul play involved?
04:16Getting the horse to attend the funeral was actually surprisingly easy.
04:20There just had to be somebody there who was trained to control the animal. And Jessica's best friend fit
04:26that bill. She had cared for Nikolai when Jessica could not be there. The horse felt very comfortable
04:32with her. Maybe a little too comfortable. She would transport the horse on her trailer on the day of the
04:38funeral and have it there before the other guests arrived. For the burial is nobody objected to the horse
04:44being there. It should be a beautiful moment, but would eventually cause a lot of chaos.
04:49He had called the number of the person in charge of this multiple times already,
04:53but got told again and again that again that it was complicated and he had to be patient.
04:58What do you mean complicated? Michael screamed over the phone, but he got no real respond.
05:04They had definitely found something. He did already place Jessica in her coffin,
05:09which was transported to her last resting place, as he now only needed to look at the samples he had
05:16collected. The TAS. The test results would only come after the burial, and Michael had no patience.
05:23He had to get answers, but Michael was not saddest. I fied with this at all, and decided that he
05:30wanted
05:30to file a complaint about the time it was taking. He would get a response later that day, but it
05:36would
05:36turn his whole world upside down. But first, the funeral had to happen. For now, his focus needed to be
05:43on the funeral. He wanted to give Jessica worthy goodbye more than anything, and this would be
05:51done with a closed casket. This was a request from the man who did the autopsy, but it turned out
05:57the
05:57horse would have different plans. A lot of people talked at the funeral, and everybody had beautiful
06:03things to say about Jessica. Nobody was ready to say goodbye yet, but they knew they had no choice.
06:11This had come way too early. Nikolai was not present at the indoor ceremony, but things would soon
06:17change. This first part of the funeral went over, normally, but things started getting strange when
06:23the proceedings were taken outside, and where Nikolai was calmly waiting for his late owner to arrive.
06:30Only when the Cassid casket left the building, things started happening. The casket did not have to
06:37travel a long distance to get to Jessica's final resting place. The group could actually already
06:43see the horse when they walked out of the building, and thus the horse could see them as well, and
06:49it
06:49reacted almost immediately. While it had been perfectly calm up until that point, the moment his eyes had
06:56sigh on the casket that Jessica was in. He started becoming difficult, and eventually he asked Jessica's
07:04friend and some other guests to take the horse, it further away from the burial site, in the hopes it
07:10would calm him down a bit. And this seemed to help, but only for a little bit, as when the
07:16final speech
07:16started, the horse could not be held back anymore, and it just started swinging its head wildly, until
07:24Jessica's friend could simply not hold it anymore. The animal broke free, and started charging at the
07:31casket. Other guests could not get out of the way fast enough, and made a path for the animal. Only
07:38Michael had half a mind to stand in the way of the horse and protect his late wife, but his
07:43brother
07:44pulled him out of the way just in time. Now nobody was stopping the horse anymore, as he started prancing
07:51next to the casket. To the horror of everybody there, the horse started stomping with his hoofs on the
07:57casket as hard as he could. After only a few stumps from the horse, they could already hear the cracking
08:03of the wood, which got louder and more widespread with every impact. It was only a matter of time,
08:10and soon enough, Michael saw Moe. One of the hoofs disappear into the broken casket. Michael had his
08:17eyes closed when it happened. This was probably the worst case scenario, but at least the horse seemed
08:23to get a bit calmer now. It had stopped stomping at least, but it was still thrashing around. They needed
08:30to get the at the animal away from the grave, and luckily they managed to grab the leash again. With
08:36a lot
08:37of effort, they managed to pull the horse away from the casket, and the further he got away from it,
08:42the calmer
08:43he got till the point point where he seemed like nothing had happened. They tied the animal to a tree
08:49and went back to the service. Still a bit shocked by what had just happened, the whole gathering of
08:55people was deadly silent. Nobody knew what to say or how to react. What had they just been witness to?
09:01The silence was only broken by a soft whimpering. That slowly turned into crying. But there was something
09:09odd with it. And then none of the guests were, tearing up from as far as he could see. But
09:14the
09:14sound of crying was still there. Soft, but unmistakable. Where the hell was it then coming
09:20from? And then Michael's eyes landed on the broken casket. He slowly took a couple of steps toward the
09:26casket. And the crying got indeed louder. There seemed to be no doubt anymore that it was actually
09:33coming from the wooden final resting place of Jessica. But how was that even possible in an act of pure
09:40desperation? Michael climbed on the casket and started to remove some of the broken wooden pieces from
09:47it. The guests gasped when they saw what he was doing. But nobody was stopping him now. They too had
09:53heard
09:54where the crying was coming from. When Michael pulled the final big piece of wood from the casket, he was
10:00completely shocked by what he saw. A female voice shaky and nervously answered from out of the casket,
10:07I'm sorry, Michael. And nearly everybody there recognized the voice immediately. And when moments
10:14later their suspicions were confirmed, when a female slowly got out of the casket, Jessica was alive. But
10:20how? There was nobody that could make sense of what was happening there, except for Jessica. And as it would
10:28turn out, Jessica's whole story about dying at the stables had been made up. She had hatched a plan to
10:40fake her own death. And for a good payday, the funeral director and the mortician were in on it.
10:47She was even wearing makeup to look like she had been dead for a while. She had wanted her horse
10:53here so
10:53that when the funeral was over, she could get out of the cascade before it got buried hours later and
10:59ride off on her horse into the sunset with no plans other than to just live in the moment and
11:06see where
11:07it would take her. As you can expect, the marriage between Michael and Jessica was quickly divorced.
11:14Nobody wanted anything to do with her anymore. And she was fine with that. It had not been the way
11:20she
11:20had wanted. But she had still gotten out of her life. Michael or any of her friends and family had
11:26not
11:27heard from her since.
