 Hello, everybody, and welcome to a very special bonus episode of Esoteric Atlanta. This story was recommended by one of our community members, Linda, and I'm super, super, super excited to bring you this story today. So thank you so much, Linda, for bringing this story to my attention. I had never heard of this story, but I was pleasantly surprised by it while doing research for you guys. Now I am in the bedroom while my boyfriend works in the front room today, so I apologize for the change of scenery. I also have the fan going over my head so if you see my hair move, I apologize, and if that bothers you, then you don't need to actually watch me. You can just listen to the story. Now if I had to guess, I would say that most people in this world believe that there is more to us than what we see in this world. Many people believe in angels and in beings with strength and knowledge far greater than our own. With that being said, many people of faith, regardless of what faith it is, has had experiences that they can't quite explain. A lot of people would scoff at these experiences and tell them that it was just their mind playing tricks on them. However, with the story we're going to talk about today, there were a bunch of people, especially children, who all experienced the same saving grace of angels. Today we are going to be talking about the Cokeville Miracle. Cokeville, Wyoming is a very, very small town in Lincoln County. This is a huge Mormon community and by the 2010 census, there was only 535 people. The first European-American settler came to the area in 1869. His name was Tilford Cutch, and in 1873 he opened a trading post. Lincoln County got its first railroad, so this brought more people into the town. The town then incorporated in 1910. Cokeville got its name from coal found in the area, but then sheep became more popular. In 1918, it was considered the sheep capital of the world. Wyoming is a beautiful, beautiful state, and like most states in the United States, if not around the world, it is full of these small, tight-knit communities. I'm sure that most of you grew up in small, tight-knit communities where everybody knows everybody. A town with only about 500 people means that literally everybody knows everybody. This was a town where you could leave your doors unlocked, where you felt safe with your children playing at the neighbor's house. But on a spring day in 1986, that all changed for this small community. For people who knew David Young throughout his life, they claimed that he was always mentally troubled. For many people, they believed that his mental instability was the sign of high intelligence. David Young ended up earning a degree in criminal justice from Chanjum State College in Nebraska. Soon after, he was hired to be the one and only deputy marshal in the small town of Cokeville, Wyoming. David Young's time as the marshal would only last for six months. During the six months, he met a local woman named Doris Waters. She was a waitress and a singer. She was five years his senior and by the time they got married, they each had children from previous relationships. Doris had one daughter and David had two. After they got married, David was fired from his job as the deputy marshal of Cokeville for inappropriate behavior. After getting fired, David and his wife Doris Young moved down to Tucson, Arizona. They brought his youngest daughter Penny with him as she was the only child remaining in the house. Once in Arizona, David isolated himself even more. From my research, it says that they found a small trailer where David started to work on his manifesto. David was highly inspired by the book Brave New World. He had this desire to create his own little new world order. He also believed in this idea of us dying and then reincarnating into the spirit world where he would be able to control everything. At this point, David got super invested in explosives. He would spend his days out in the Arizona desert trying out different ways to make buses blow up. While David and Doris were living in Arizona, David did keep in touch with two friends from Cokeville, Wyoming. These two friends saw David's mental instability again as a sign of super high intelligence. Now being that this was deities, there were no cell phones or internet connection. So David's two friends, Gerald and Doyle, kept in touch with David through landlines and writing letters. David convinced Gerald and Doyle that he had this big plan that was going to make them a ton of money. He called it the biggie. And convinced Gerald and Doyle to invest money into his little project. Pretty soon, David was ready to head back to Wyoming to engage in his new business venture. He loaded up his van with his wife Doris and his daughter Penny. Once in Cokeville, he met up with Gerald and Doyle, although at first he would not tell them what the big venture was. On May 16th at 1pm, David, Doris, Penny, Gerald and Doyle pulled up at the Cokeville Elementary School. As soon as they got to the elementary school, Gerald and Doyle realized what was about to happen and refused to participate. Because they refused to participate, David handcuffed the two men inside of the van and ordered Penny and his wife Doris to come into the elementary school with him. Now I do have to be careful about what I say on YouTube regarding the situation. But let's just say that between Doris, David and Penny, they carried in a bunch of items that could potentially in someone's life, if you know what I mean. Also had a homemade, in a grocery cart with them. He had a line tied around his waist that was supposed to be the trigger for this. Once they got inside the elementary school, David's daughter Penny basically freaked out and ran out of the school refusing to participate in what they were about to do. Because Penny decided to do this, this is how the town officials were notified about what was going on. Because as Penny left the school, she took the van with Gerald and Doyle handcuffed in the back and drove it into town to the town hall to try to get in touch with the police department. On that day, unfortunately, all the police deputies were sent out of town for other duties, including a man named Ron Hartley who would end up being the lead investigator on this case. His son would end up being one of the witnesses to the miraculous event that happened on this day. And in 2015, a movie about this event was created told from the perspective of Ron Hartley and I will place a link to that movie in the description box below. I watched it yesterday in preparation for this story for you guys and I bawled my freaking eyes out. You see, David Young had a plan. Yes, he was crazy, but he had a plan. He knew that the children of Cokeville Elementary School had tested very, very high with governmental testing so he knew these children were intelligent. He also knew the makings of a small community. After all, he had once lived in this community. In some journal entries found after the incident, David had written, Threaten one and all are at your mercy. He knew that doing what he was about to do would get the attention of the town and of the powers that be that he needed in order to enact his manifesto. Very casually, David and Doris walked into the reception area of the school where David started handing out his manifesto titled Zero Equals Infinity. He also was quoting us telling everybody at the school that this was a revolution. Now being that this was 1986 in a very small town, obviously there wasn't any security at the school. And as David was rounding up all the people in the reception office, Doris went door to door to each classroom and asked the students to come into classroom four. Now there are different accounts of what she actually said. Some people said that she was screaming that there was an emergency while other people say that she was telling the children and the teachers that there was a surprise for them in classroom four. And so these students unknowingly got up and walked into classroom four with all of their teachers. There was also a person there applying for a job that got thrown into classroom four as well as a UPS driver that got pulled into this as well. In total there were 136 children, 9 teachers, 6 staff members, again a job applicant and a UPS driver all in classroom four which was a room that was 30 by 32 feet. What would end up happening would be a two and a half hour standoff. Pretty quickly the adults realized what was going on when they saw all the... As the... was homemade gasoline started to leak and as the gasoline started to leak the children started to vomit and get major headaches. At that point one of the teachers asked David if they could open the window which David allowed him to do. David commanded the principal to call the authorities. He wanted two million dollars per person in that room. He said he was willing to wait in that room with the children for 10 days to get his desired money. Back in those days that would have been about 308 million but if we add inflation to that today to get a better understanding of how much money he wanted that would be 720 million dollars today. He claimed that after 10 days if he did not get what he wanted then he would start removing the children from this earth plane, that's all I can say on YouTube, one at a time. He also demanded to have an audience with the then president Ronald Reagan. Allegedly he had sent his manuscript to Ronald Reagan but had never heard back from Ronald Reagan. Not surprising. About the two and a half hours the teachers of Cokesville Elementary School did everything they could do to keep the children calm. One of the teachers ended up taking masking tape and placing it around David and his homemade book so that the children wouldn't get too close to David as he could see that David was starting to get more and more and more agitated. They brought out books, papers, crayons and tried to occupy the children so that the children themselves would not understand the severity of the situation they were in. Because Penny had gone to Town Hall to notify authorities of what was going on, calls had been made out to all the deputies who at that point were out of town and trying to race back into the town. Again one of those deputies was Ron Hartley whose son was in the classroom at this moment. Parents from the school gathered outside of the school at the other end of the school trying to figure out what to do. The fire department was called and they kept the parents at bay claiming that if the parents were to run into the school it could trigger everything to go off and that they would have to remain calm. Needless to say for a small town like Cokesville Wyoming no one knew exactly what to do. There are claims that ranchers around the community drove up to the community to try to give as much of what they had to David Young in order to meet the demands for the excessive amount of money he wanted in order to let the kids go. Now that we've been able to read some of David's journals we know that he had no plans of ever letting those children go. Eventually he was planning on pulling the plug taking them all out so that he could rule them in some weird spiritual world where he would be their leader. The events that followed next could only be orchestrated by God. For the residents of Cokesville Wyoming this was a day where everything was going wrong. But it would end up being a day where everything went right. Around 4 p.m. David Young had to use the restroom. And so he called Doris over and he tied the trigger from his waist around her wrist. As he was in the bathroom Doris reached her hand up to her head to deal with her headache which caused the trigger to be pulled. Everything went off but instead of going out across the classroom it went up through the ceiling. At that point in the confusion and in the smoke teachers started throwing the children out of the window to the ground below instructing them to run. Other teachers who were closer to the door started pushing children out the door telling them to get outside. The teachers themselves showing extreme bravery kept going back into the classroom making sure that all the children had made it out safely. Doris herself had been extremely burnt and as she stood there flailing with fire all over her David came out of the bathroom and basically gave her a mercy shot. During this time shrapnel was going off everywhere but ironically never hit any child. In fact the only person that was hit with anything was the music teacher John Miller who got hit right between the shoulder blades. If the bullet came in half an inch away from where it had gone in it would have taken his life but after this event he was back at work three days later. Seeing what had happened now his plan had gone completely awry David then went back into the bathroom and basically ended it for himself taking himself off the earth playing y'all know what I'm saying can't say the word. Now of course all the parents were so relieved that their children were okay yes some of their children had been burnt badly in fact there were about 79 injuries that had to be addressed but not one person lost his or her life. But then the real story started to emerge as Ron Hartley started to figure out what had happened all of a sudden stories of the miraculous came out of the mouths of the children. First Ron Hartley was really confused because David Young was quite smart and he had practiced with these explosives for a very long time how was it that he messed up the one explosive that really mattered but he did. It also appears that some of the wires had been cut before everything had gone off but there was no way that these wires could have been cut by a faculty member or David himself because the masking tape had been placed around David and the explosive in order to keep the children away from the agitated man. If the wires had been cut they would have been seen by David or Doris and the person who cut them probably would have been taken out. The fact that the teacher placed masking tape around David and his device meant that the children were far enough away from the device to not have it take their lives when it went off. And the milk carton that David used to store the gasoline had a leak in it where gasoline was leaking therefore causing the device to not be as impactful as David wanted it to be. How could this mistake have been made by someone who had practiced this so many times? All the children independent of each other spoke about people dressed in white standing in the classroom with them. Little Jenny Sorson Johnson claimed that a beautiful lady helped her escape. Later on when she described this lady to her family they realized the lady was her long sense departed great aunt. Jenny claimed that this beautiful woman held her hand as she ran out of the building but once she got out of the building the woman was gone. Little Catherine Payne who had been coloring in the classroom with David Young claimed that a beautiful woman in a white dress that looked like her grandmother walked up to her and told her that everything was going to be okay and that when her brother came to tell her to go to the window that she needed to get up and listen to her brother and go to the window. Catherine said she put her head back down and looked up and the beautiful lady that she said was her grandmother was gone. Then her brother Travis came up and told Catherine to go stand by the window. A move that saved both of their lives. Even Ron Hartley's son claimed his late grandmother also helped him. The children also claimed that coming from the ceiling were what appeared to be light bulbs or orbs as we know them of angels that stood around David Young's device holding hands making sure that the device went up through the ceiling and not out to the children. And not only that, for weeks after the incident happened the children kept drawing pictures of all the angels that were present that day protecting them. After the incident was over when investigators went back into the classroom they saw what appeared to be outlines on the wall of heavenly angels where the soot had pressed against the wall drawing the outline of a being that had been standing there. This was truly a miracle. One that could have only been allowed to happen through the grace and mercy of God. Now this was covered in the movie of the Cokeville miracle and I'm going to say this again. I don't know why these children were spared and others haven't been so lucky. Whatever God's plan is is God's plan. But that doesn't mean that we can't celebrate the opportunities that God gives us a glimpse into his heavenly realms. I highly recommend everybody looking into this story. There are books written on this story and again the movie had me crying like a baby. I absolutely believe in angels and I do believe that our past loved ones still watch over us from the other side and this leads me to wanting to do a video with all of you. I would love to know if you yourself have had an experience with an angel or with a past loved one. It doesn't have to be a story where your life was saved. It can be if that's the story. It could be just a simple story. Something that assured you that there are greater beings protecting us. I would love to get a compilation of all these stories from you to make one long video in a time in our life where there's so much upheaval and fear. One of these stories is reassurance that everything is going to be alright. And I would love to be able to do that on this channel with the help of all of you. So if you're interested in sending in your story, please reach out to me. Alright guys, I hope that you enjoyed that. Thank you again to Linda for recommending this story to us. I hope that you all are having an awesome weekend. Thank you again to Josh McKay for doing our music. If you would like to purchase the opening song, there's a link down in the description box below and thank you so much to Todd Roderick for helping me get this video out to you all today. I will talk to you soon.