In the 1940s, the people of Donora, Pennsylvania fall prey to a deadly epidemic that destroys their lungs. Doctors suspect it has something to do with the fog that is constantly blanketing their town… but why now? They need to find an answer fast – before the darkness claims more victims.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the story behind the 1948 Donora tragedy?
Hey Prime members, you can binge episodes 73 through 80 right now and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. On the afternoon of Saturday, October 30th, 1948, a teenage boy wearing an orange and black uniform ran across his high school's football field. He searched the sky for a pass from his quarterback, but a thick layer of fog had rolled in that made it impossible to see.
Chapter 2: What happened during the football game in Donora?
As the boy waved his arms, the ball bounced off his helmet and fell to the ground. But before he could even jog back to his teammates, the boy heard the school's announcer call his name over the loudspeakers. The announcer sounded urgent and told the boy to report to the sidelines right now. And when he got there, his coach told him he had to head home right away. His mother needed him.
So the boy just took off his helmet and ran home through the fog. When he burst through the door, he saw his father lying on the couch with the doctor standing over him. And his mother was standing by, weeping. The doctor told the boy that he was very sorry, but his father had just died. The boy just stood there, stunned. His father had been fine that morning.
He didn't understand what could have happened. However, what this boy did not know was that his father was not the first person in town to die that day, and he would not be the last, because this community was in the middle of a medical disaster that would change the course of American history.
In the depths of an Atlanta forest, a clash between activists and authorities ends in tragedy. I'm Matthew Scher, and on my new podcast, We Came to the Forest, we expose the hidden truths behind a shootout that left one activist dead and countless lives forever changed. Binge all episodes of We Came to the Forest ad-free on Wondery+.
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From Ballin Studios and Wondery, I'm Mr. Ballin, and this is Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, where every week we will explore a new baffling mystery originating from the one place we all can't escape, our own bodies. So if you like today's story, please go to a store the follow button is currently shopping at and page them over the intercom to tell them their car is being towed.
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Chapter 3: Who was Helen Stack and what did she experience?
When they run out to go deal with it, steal their shopping cart. This episode is called Darkness in Donora. On the morning of Friday, October 29th, 1948, a young woman named Helen Stack woke up inside her modest home in the small town of Donora, Pennsylvania. And as soon as Helen opened her eyes, she started coughing. Her throat had been sore for a few days, but this morning it felt even worse.
She thought she might be coming down with a cold, but Helen was not the kind of person to let a minor illness slow her down. So she still got out of bed, got dressed, and then drank some coffee and ate breakfast before starting her walk to work. From where her house stood near the top of a hill, Helen could sometimes see the entire town.
Donora sat inside of a valley right on the banks of the Monongahela River, surrounded on three sides by 400-foot-tall cliffs. On the fourth side were rolling hills that stretched off into the distance. That morning, though, Helen couldn't see any of Donora's natural beauty because fog was blocking her view. In fact, low gray clouds had been hanging over the town for the past four days.
But that was actually normal because Donora was inside of basically a natural bowl in the earth. The surrounding cliffs and hills blocked the wind, so the fog would accumulate and then get stuck in the valley. To Helen, this was just part of life in Donora. And while it was sort of frustrating at times, it was easy to ignore, because there were so many other good things about living there.
Everybody was friendly, there were plenty of jobs, and there were always fun events going on. As she walked to work, Helen could hardly see across the street, but she could see enough in front of her to say hello to the neighbors who passed her by on her side of the sidewalk, who all knew her by name.
And then at some point, she passed by a street next to a bunch of industrial mills that were also shrouded in fog, and she knew that somewhere in that fog, most of the men in Denora were working. And when she reached McKean Avenue, the main street in town, she could barely make out the workers who were hanging up decorations for that evening's annual Halloween parade.
Eventually, Helen came to a stop in front of a tall brownstone building on McKean Avenue. She went inside, walked up to the second floor, and unlocked the door of the doctor's office where she worked. Helen was the only employee working for the two doctors, Ralph Kohler and Edward Roth. To Helen, these two men seemed pretty similar.
Both were in their 40s, they were tall and heavyset, and they both had very kind and patient demeanors. The only obvious difference between them was that Dr. Roth smoked cigars like a chimney, and Dr. Kohler avoided cigars altogether because he had diabetes and a heart condition. As for Helen, she was a receptionist, a secretary, and a nurse, so she had a lot of responsibilities at the office.
And today, like most days, she was the first one to the office. She turned on the lights and opened up the blinds in the waiting room, then began sweeping up the thin layer of soot that had blown in through the air vents and settled on the floor overnight. Like the fog in Donora, the soot was also very annoying, but totally normal to Helen. She knew it came from the mills nearby.
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Chapter 4: How did the doctors in Donora respond to the crisis?
And so Helen kind of broke out of her trance, ran back inside the office and answered the phone, and immediately she heard the sound of a woman screaming on the other end of the line for help, just like the blue-faced man in the hall had been doing. The woman said her husband couldn't breathe and he needed help right now. Helen got the woman's address and promised that Dr. Roth would be there soon.
However, before Helen could run across the hall and tell Dr. Roth that another patient needed his help, the phone rang again, and then again, and then again. And everyone Helen spoke to said the same thing. They couldn't breathe, they were coughing up blood, their heads hurt, their stomachs were killing them, and they all thought they were going to die.
And unfortunately, the town only had a single ambulance, and it was booked solid. And so one after another, Helen took down these people's names and addresses and added them to the growing list of patients the doctors needed to visit. Helen had no idea what was going on in Donora, but it certainly felt like all hell had broken loose inside of her normally quiet town.
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So for some sun, fun, and just the right amount of mystery solving, come join us. If you'd like to know more and secure your spot, visit exhibitccruise.com for pre-sale information.
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From a man tortured for a crime he didn't commit, to a woman who misidentified her attacker. These stories will change the way you think about justice, forgiveness, and the possibility of a better world. Follow This Is Actually Happening on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to This Is Actually Happening ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.
Imagine this. You help your little brother land a great job abroad. But when he arrives, the job doesn't exist. Instead, he's trapped in a heavily guarded compound, forced to sit at a computer and scam innocent victims. all while armed guards stand by with shoot-to-kill orders.
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Chapter 5: What was Dr. Roth's experience during the Donora smog?
Two hours later at 6 p.m., Dr. Roth squinted as he very slowly drove down McKean Avenue after an afternoon of house calls. Because of the fog, which now had gotten so bad, he could hardly make out the lines on the road, and so he just gripped the steering wheel tightly and went really slow, keeping an eye out for the brownstone building where he worked.
Dr. Roth had never been in a situation like this before. People all over town were struggling to breathe, regardless of whether they had asthma or not, and Dr. Roth really didn't know why. He figured it must be something in the air, literally. But even with fog this bad, he'd never seen it affect people this much before.
By this point in the day, he'd already given so many patients adrenaline injections that he'd run through his entire supply. And he'd barely made a dent in the list of people who still needed help. And so now he needed to stop by the office and refill his supply of adrenaline before making more house calls. But it was literally too foggy to even find his own address.
And so Dr. Roth figured he'd have better luck if he just parked his car and walked. So he carefully pulled to the curb, turned off the engine, and got out. He went to the sidewalk, and when he saw the nearest building to him, he realized he'd actually driven past his office without knowing it.
And so Dr. Roth doubled back towards the brownstone, threw open the door, and began running up the stairs. However, after only a few steps, he had to stop because he ran out of breath, and then he began to cough. His chest felt tight, like somebody was squeezing the air out of him.
He managed to make it back to his office, but immediately when he got there, he doubled over in the entryway and coughed until tears were streaming down his face. Dr. Roth felt like he was choking. He started to panic and looked around for help, but his secretary, Helen, had left for dinner, and his colleague, Dr. Kohler, who had left to go take a nap, was still at home.
Dr. Roth realized he was all alone in his office. He held onto a desk and tried to steady himself, but he kept hacking until he felt nauseous. He managed to make it to the bathroom before he actually vomited. And then after that, he stumbled to the bathroom sink and splashed cold water on his face.
His heart was racing and his whole body felt weak, but he knew he couldn't just stand there because he still felt faint. So he rushed towards the back room where drugs were stored and grabbed a vial of adrenaline and a clean syringe. With his hands shaking, Dr. Roth filled the syringe, poked the needle through his pant leg into his thigh and injected himself with adrenaline.
And after that, he just collapsed into his office chair. After a few moments, Dr. Roth took a big, deep breath. He sat there for several minutes, relishing how good it felt to breathe again. And as he slowly calmed back down, Dr. Roth tried to figure out what had just happened to him. Just like the patients he'd been visiting all day, he'd had what seemed like a sudden, very severe asthma attack.
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