Season 08 Episode 42: Reality Bites

but don't wait. Rooms are nearly sold out. Head to Crimewave Atsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your fan coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to see you on board. It was a searingly hot July afternoon at Varna International Airport in Bulgaria, and the terminal packed. It was peak tourist season and the first full week of operations since the start of the school holidays. Inside

the on site medical clinic, however, things were quiet. Doctor Kostoff, the physician on duty, had only seen two patients that day, a six year old boy with a twisted ankle and a nervous woman looking for something to ease her fear of flying. Doctor Kostoff sat at his desk watching the clock. He wondered if he had enough time to nip out and grab a cup of coffee before his next patient. When there was a knock at the door. It was the clinic receptionist asking if the doctor was free to

see another patient. It was a young man, she said, who just walked in, looking a little worse for wear. As the receptionist explained, he wanted to see a doctor to confirm if he was well enough to fly. A little confused by the request, doctor Kostov told the receptionist to send him in. Moments later, the young man appeared at the door. The doctor beckoned him in and told

him to take a seat. He looked to be in his late twenties, tall and broad, and by all accounts he appeared to have had a very long night and maybe hadn't even been to bed. Doctor Kostov suspected he knew exactly what the problem was. Farna was a popular destination for stagdoos and large groups of young men looking to let off steam. Clearly, this young man, with his ghostly pale skin and deep dark circles under his eyes, had gone a little too hard. Once he was sat down,

the young man introduced himself as Lars. It was then that doctor Kostov noticed something else about his appearance, an ugly purple bruise modeling the left side of his jaw. Lars explained little sheepishly that he'd been in a bar fight two nights ago, and that he'd ruptured his ear drum in the process. He'd already seen one doctor about it back in the city, who'd advised him not to fly again until the ear drum had healed. But, as

Lars said then, this simply wasn't an option. He had to get back to Germany immediately, and he wanted to know just how detrimental it would be if he did fly back today. Lars was clearly anxious about something and begged Dr Kostoff to be as quick as he could. Costoff agreed to take a look and asked Lars to be still as he placed an otoscope in his ear well. Doctor Lars demanded impatiently. Doctor Kostoff sat back, noting with concern the way that Lars seemed unable to sit still.

He kept glancing around, his eyes darting back and forth across the room as if scanning for threats. The doctor asked Las if he was on any medication. Lars confirmed that he'd been given some antibiotics by the first doctor, although now he was beginning to suspect that drugs had

been laced by some kind of poison. Alarmed by this possibly delusional response, doctor Kostov asked Lars to explain exactly what he meant by that, but before Lars could say anything, they were interrupted by a loud knock at the office door. As doctor Kostov got to his feet to answer it, he noticed that Lars had now frozen completely still, his face screwed up in terror, as though that door was the only thing standing between him and the devil itself.

Then Lars suddenly sprang to his feet with wild eyes. He screamed, I don't want to die here, Please, I have to get out of here. You're listening to unexplained and I'm Richard McLean Smith. At twenty eight years old, Lars Mittank had never traveled outside of Germany before. Born and raised in Berlin. In his early twenties, he settled in the town of Itsu, who he seemed to have everything a young man could want, a close knit family, a loving girlfriend, and a steady job at the local

power plant. So despite being a sociable and outgoing young man, Lars had never had much reason to venture far from home. But in the summer of twenty fourteen, he decided to change all that. One of Lars's old friends from high school was organizing a week long group holiday to Golden Sands, a beach resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, and Lars wanted to go. The itinerary would involve flying out of Hamburg and landing in Varna, the closest Bulgarian city

to the resort. It was a two and a half hour flight, not long by most standards, but the longest Lars had ever been on. As the holiday approached, Lars couldn't help but feel a little anxious at the prospect of leaving his home country for the first time. But when he met up with his friends at the airport and started talking about all the fun they'd have that week, his nerves faded quickly. This, he said to himself, was

going to be the trip of a lifetime. Once at the resort, time flew by for Lars and his five friends in a whirl of drink, sunshine and good vibes. There was always something to do, be it swimming in the resorts pool, playing football, or simply some bathing on the beach, just looking out at the gleaming surface of the ocean. And then there was the night life. In the evenings, Lars and his friendsans bar hopped along the beach. Then, as things livened up, they ventured inland in search of

the clubs. The trip was everything they'd hoped it would be, and everyone was in good spirits throughout. That was at least until the final night of the holiday, when everything changed. On the evening of July sixth, Lars and his friends headed out for their final dinner. The group was a little more subdued than usual, having been partying every night since they'd arrived. Most of them wanted to take things easy and get an early night ahead of their flight

back to Germany. In the morning, after feasting on the seafood, they headed to a local bar for one last drink before heading to bed. By eleven pm, most of the group was ready to leave, but Lars wanted to stay out. Emboldened by his new sense of adventure, he was determined to make the most of his last night at Golden Sand. Eventually, Lars's friends headed back to the hotel, leaving him alone at the bar. They didn't think it was such a big deal, since Lars was an extrovert and more than

happy to strike up conversations with strangers. Now alone in the bar, Lars soon got talking to another group of German tourists. The conversation was friendly at first, but then the subject turned to football. Lars was a devoted fan of Ferder Bremen, while the tourists, supported by an muncheon a rival team. The men started arguing about an upcoming match between the two teams, and somewhere between the alcohol

and the testosterone, things escalated quickly. Despite being clearly outnumbered, Lars was the kind of guy to back down from a fight. Much to his detriment, the other men dragged Lars into an alleyway behind the bar and beat him up. After one hit to the jaw, Lars staggered back before another punch cracked him on the side of the head. Eventually, Lars dropped to the fore and the men ran off,

leaving him bleeding on the ground. As Lars staggered back along the beach toward his hotel, he felt a searing pain inside his ear and realized that he could no longer hear properly on that side. Having made it to the hotel room, he collapsed into bed, hoping that a few hours of sleep would be enough to cure him, but he could barely get any rest at all. The searing pain in his ear sharpened every time he moved his head, and before long it began to ring and

wouldn't let up. It felt like if he let it, the sound would eventually drive him. The rest of Lars's group were up early on the morning of July seventh, packing their bags before their afternoon flight back to Germany, but Lars was sluggish, barely responding when his friends tried to wake him up. Finally, when he rolled over, with horror, they saw the state of his face. It was an alarming sight, his jaw covered in reddish purple bruises and a thin line of dried blood coming from his ear.

Still slurring a little, Lars told them what had happened. One friend insisted that he see a doctor before getting on a plane, in case the flying might cause his ear some long term damage. It was reasonable to assume he might well be suffering from concussion too, and he had to do it soon or he'd miss his flight. Lars was in luck since there was a medical center just around the corner from their hotel well that provided

walk in appointments to resort guests. Lars was promptly examined by the doctor, who confirmed that he had ruptured his ear drum, but thankfully had no concussion. The doctor prescribed him an antibiotic to prevent infection, then gave him the bad news that he should avoid flying for at least forty eight hours. Lars was angry. He had a job

and a girlfriend to get home to. He couldn't just hang around in Bulgaria on his own for another two days, but the doctor was adamant that the changes in atmospheric pressure during a flight could cause a reparable damage to his ear drum. A despondent Lars went back to the hotel and watched forlornly as his friends left for the airport. With little else for it, he went to the front

desk and asked if he could extend his stay. The receptionist eyed him suspiciously, king the dark bruises on his jaw sadly, she said the hotel was fully booked for the next few days, but more to the point, Lars was supposed to have checked out thirty minutes ago. A dejected Lance went back to his hotel room and packed up his things as quickly as he could. He was still in a lot of pain, and moving slowly and not being able to hear out of one ear was

starting to make him feel disorientated. Having checked out, he rolled his suitcase out onto the pavement and stood in the blazing sun, trying to figure out what to do. Traveling abroad for the first time had seemed exciting when he was with his friends, but now he was hung over, bruised and battered, and completely on his own. On the evening of July seventh, back in Itzahoe, Germany, Sandra Mittank was getting ready for bed when she heard her mobile

phone ringing. She was excited to see that the call was from her son, Lars. Sandra picked it up and cheerfully asked Lars how his flight home had been, but all she heard on the other end of the line was silence. Lars, She said, again, are you there? Sandra could hear breathing on the other end of the line, But just when she thought it was an accidental call, Lars finally began to speak. He didn't sound like himself

for a start. He was whispering and his voice was shaking so much that Sandra could barely understand him, and when she finally did hear his words, she couldn't make sense of them. Lars was saying something about still being in Bulgaria and that he was scared. There were people following him, he said, four men who wanted to hurt him. At first, she thought he was playing some kind of

practical joke. He had to be, after all, his flight had been due back that day, but her son had never been one for pranks, which could only mean that the fear in his voice was completely genuine. Terrified, Sandra asked if there was anything she could do. Lars asked her to cancel his bank hearts because he was afraid that somebody had access to them. He also told her that he'd been attacked the previous evening and now his

attackers were chasing him through the city. But where are you now, asked his mother, As Lars explained he'd left the resort and moved to a hotel closer to the airport, hoping to throw off his assailants, but now he was convinced they'd found him alarmed and utterly helpless. Sandra begged him to call the police if he really felt in danger, but it was no good, said Lars. He couldn't trust the authorities. Then he asked his mother if she knew

anything about seth priscil, the antibiotic he'd been given. He'd taken it as prescribed, but now he wondered if the doctor who'd prescribed it was secretly working with his attackers. The drug was making him feel weird, he said. Before Sandra could get any more information, Lars abruptly ended the call. Sandra tried desperately to call her son back, growing increasingly frantic as her cause went straight to voicemail. Back in Varna. Throughout the call to his mother, Lars had been hunkered

down in a corner of his hotel room. He'd pulled all the blind shut, worried that somebody in a nearby building might be spying on him. But his mother's mention of the police seemed to trigger something in him, a realization that he wasn't safe anywhere. He abruptly left his room and started pacing the hallways of the hotel. It was a somewhat dingy and run down place, and the more time he spent there, the more agitated he became. But at the same time he knew it wasn't safe

to leave. He looked through every window he passed, peering out to see if anyone was watching him from a nearby rooftop. He went down to the foyer and walked back and forth, eyeing everybody who came and went. For a while, Lars took refuge in the hotel's lift. The enclosed space with its bright fluorescent bulb made him feel safe. Certainly, there was no way anybody could be lying in wait to attack him there. But then the doors opened to

reveal a confused looking man hoping to get in. But was it just another hotel guest, thought Lars, or an assassin sent to kill him. Terrified, Lars fled as fast as he could, sprinting through the hotel lobby and out onto the street. By then it had gone one a m and the streets were deserted. Lars had no idea where he was going. All he knew was that he had to keep moving. Back in Germany. Lars's mother, Sandra

hadn't slept a wink. All she could think about was her son, all alone in a foreign country and seemingly in danger. At a complete loss of what to do, she was just contemplating trying to get in touch with the Bulgarian police herself when her phone rang again. The relief at seeing Lars's name flash up on the screen didn't last long. He sounded even worse than he had in their last conversation. Rather than whispering, now he was talking so fast she could barely understand him. Sandra tried

to force him to slow down. She asked if he'd been able to get any sleep, and Lars laughed out loud. Of course he hadn't, he said. Didn't she understand what he'd been going through. He'd been up all night trying to evade his pursuers, but now he said they were closing in. In that moment, a chilling realization dawned over Sandra. Lars wasn't in physical peril. There were no shadowy men chasing him across the city. It was something much worse

than that. Lars had become untethered from reality. Sandra mittank made her son promise her that he would go straight to the airport at the first opportunity and get on the first flight back to Hamburg. They'd figure the rest out from there come home, she pleaded, and, much to her relief, eventually Lars agreed. Back in Varna, Lars collected his suitcase and checked out at the hotel. Then he

took the short taxi ride to the airport. He spent the entire journey watching the driver's face in the rear view mirror, monitoring him for any signs of possible danger. Thankfully, Lars arrived at the airport without incident. Once there, however, the large crowds and brightly lit terminal seemed to disorientate him even further, and though the pain in his ear had diminished, it seemed then to come roaring back. It was then that he remembered the doctor had advised him

not to fly. He knew that he didn't trust that doctor and that he was just trying to keep him from a s but he still wanted a second opinion to make sure, and that's how he ended up at the airport clinic of doctor Kostov. Costov confirmed that Lars's ear drum was indeed ruptured, but the flying wasn't likely to make the damage any worse. At first, Lars was relieved by the news, only for another panic to grip him.

So it was all true, he thought the other doctor really had been lying to him and trying to keep him from leaving Bulgaria. Lars began glancing nervously around the room, appearing to be looking for cameras or monitoring devices. He then asked doctor Kostov about the antibiotic, now absolutely convinced that the doctor who prescribed it had been trying to poison him. By now, doctor Kostov was picking up the

clear signs of paranoia. He wasn't going to clear Lars to fly anywhere until he'd had a full psychiatric evaluation. But before he could figure out the next steps, they were interrupted by that loud knock on the door. Lars sprang to his feet like he'd just been electrocuted. Trembling, he eyed the door, convinced that the men who were pursuing him had finally tracked him down. He looked around frantically, but there was no way out. I don't want to die,

he screamed. I have to get out of here, just then the door swung open. On the other side of it was a construction worker in a high viz vest looking confused, and with that Lars bolted out of the room. He pushed past the man in the high viz vest and ran for his life back into the terminal building, leaving behind his passport, his wallet, his phone, and all of his luggage. Thanks to the extensive CCTV surrounding Varna Airport, the last known sighting of Lars Mitank was captured on video.

Footage shows him sprinting out of the airport building and climbing over an eight foot barbed wire fence. After making it onto the ground on the other side, Lars proceeded to run across a field of sunflowers in the direction of a nearby forest. At this point, he dropped off the edge of the surveillance camera's range and vanished. Doctor Kostoff reported what had happened to airport security, who in

turn informed the Bulgarian police. For weeks, investigators combed to the forests and fields surrounding the airport, confident they would soon find Lars. Surely he couldn't get far without his work, wallet or passport, they thought. But despite the extensive search,

no trace of Lars was ever found. In desperation, his mother, Sandra, hired a private investigator to try and figure out what exactly had happened to her son, but it came to nothing, and although the footage of Lars's final moments circulated widely online, its infamy failed to produce any viable leads. The most likely explanation for what happened is that during his last twenty four hours in Varna, Lars experienced some kind of

psychotic episode. He became paranoid and delusional, convinced that he was being followed and persecuted. What isn't clear is why. It's possible that his descent into madness was caused by the head trauma sustained during the bar fight, or perhaps, as others have suggested, it was an extreme response to stress and sleep deprivation. A more unlikely possibility is that he had a bad reaction to the antibiotic. In very rare cases, this kind of drug can cause psychosis as

a side effect. There are some, however, who've speculated that Lars wasn't paranoid at all, that he really was being pursued, and that he disappeared because his attackers caught up to him. Local police claim to have found no evidence of this. In a spooky echo of the unexplained death of Eliza lamp who died mysteriously in a hotel in Los Angeles in twenty thirteen, footage captured at his hotel and at

the airport shows Lars quite literally running from nothing. Lars Mittank has now been missing for more than eleven years. His mother, Sandra, has never given up on finding him, and still runs an active Facebook group dedicated to the case. There have been plenty of supposed sightings over the years in locations all across the globe, from as far away

from Bulgaria as Brazil. The only verified sighting of Lars's last known whereabouts, however, was in that remote, desolate field where he ran for his life before seemingly vanishing into thin air. When I reflect on Lars's story, I'm haunted not only by the mystery of his disappearance, but perhaps by something darker still, the idea that the mind can, at any given time fracture to a point from which there is no coming back, If indeed that is what

happened to Lars. To imagine what he endured that sense of being hunted by invisible forces, that terrifying conviction that the familiar world has been replaced by a cruel imitation. Is to glimpse the most fragile boundary of all, the border between reality as we hope it to be and the one that emerges if we allow all those latent fears in our heads to take over and completely cloud

our judgment. And maybe that's why his story feels so unsettling to day, because in our own way, we are all perhaps stumbling into a world where reality has never been less certain, Where every face we see on a screen is a fake, a polished and filtered version of the real thing. Where voices we might have once felt were reliable, governments, institutions, and the media feels suspect to

so many. Even our own family photograp are touched up and manipulated to create the perfect picture postcard, so that even in years to come, should we want to look back nostalgically to our own personal pasts, we will no longer find the truth of them, but simply a sweetened and sanitized version of it. Reality, it seems, is being closed off at both ends. We are the descendants of the false advert, the sales gimmick, and the spin doctor. By all accounts, we should be better experts at spotting

the unreal by now. But that's the problem with reality. It has always been a slippery thing, whether by our design or not, and we each of us live in our own version of it. So if reality is always a little distorted, the question then, really, if we have the luxury to choose is through just what filter would we prefer to have it distorted? Through fear and hate or love and empathy? What lens would we prefer others to apply when they look at us. That concludes our

final episode of season eight. As we step away for a little while, I want to thank you the listener sincerely for spending your time with Unexplained. Your dedication, your curiosity, and your willingness to journey into these shadowed corners with me means more than I can ever say. If you haven't already, please do rate, to review and maybe share

the show. It really helps to keep it all going. Lastly, I just want to give a massive shout out to this season's writers who've been doing an absolutely phenomenal job. In alphabetical order, thank you so much to Diane hope, Emma Dibden, James Connor Patterson and Neil mac Robert. Neil actually has a book coming out. It's a horror novella that has been described as equal parts terrifying and heartbreaking. It's called Good Boy and comes out on October night,

so please look out for that. We'll return fittingly for our first episode of season nine on Friday, October thirty. First All Hallo's Eve with more unnerving tales from the borderlands of the Unknown. Until then, we remain sometimes eerie, sometimes strange, sometimes terrifying, always unexplained. This episode was written by Emma Dibden and Richard McLain Smith. Thank you as ever for listening. Unexplained is an Avy Club Productions podcast

created by Richard McLain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or

a story of your own you'd like to share. You can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com and reaches online through X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast