Alan Caterall was 54 years old when the accident occurred. Personal archive
A man suffered a horrific death after becoming trapped in a huge oven that was accidentally turned on.
Alan Catterall, 54, was responsible for cleaning plastic from the inside of an industrial oven at a kayak factory called Pyranha Moldings in Cheshire, England.
The case happened in 2010 and was retold last week on the MrBallen podcast, dedicated to “strange, eerie and mysterious stories.” At the time, another factory employee, Mark Francis, who was then engaged to Caterall’s daughter, didn’t know his fatherinlaw was still in the oven and turned the device on.
As the temperature rose, Caterall desperately tried to call for help. He banged an iron bar against the oven walls, hoping to get someone’s attention.
However, the oven’s walls became redhot, “and soon the iron bar he was trying to use to open the door must have become so hot that he could no longer hold it,” the podcaster said.
“In addition, the ground must have become extremely hot, his shoes would have melted and then the air temperature inside would have become so unbearably high that he could no longer breathe.”
Caterall’s wife Pearl, who also worked at the company, later told tabloid The Mirror that she did not blame her soninlaw for the accident. “We don’t blame Mark at all. He and my daughter are still together. I blame Pyranha Moldings Ltd for what happened. It’s still a big shock,” he said.
Health and Safety Executive Martin Heywood said: “The doors were programmed to close automatically once power was restored, which meant there was a high risk of someone becoming trapped inside.”
The case went to trial in 2015 and Peter Mackereth, technical director and designer of the industrial furnace at Pyranha Mounts, was found guilty of breaching workplace safety standards, which led to Caterall’s death.
See planes that disappeared without a trace and still fascinate the world today
A technology expert claimed to have spotted the plane MH370, which disappeared in 2014 with 239 people on board, on Google Maps. The Malasya Airlines Boeing 777 took off from the Malaysian capital towards China and disappeared around 40 minutes later. Investigators have worked intensively since the tragedy, but to this day cannot say what happened. Below you will find other aircraft that disappeared without a trace and still cause a lot of speculation today:
In 1962, in the leadup to the Vietnam War, the Lockhead L1049H Super Constellation aircraft, flying from Guam to the Philippines with 107 people on board, disappeared over the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. There were no emergency calls. Despite a search by a group of 1,300 people, 48 aircraft and eight ships, nothing was found. In July 2016, the Indian Air Force Antonov An32 aircraft with 29 people on board disappeared while flying over the Bay of Bengal. in the Indian Ocean in July 2016. This was the largest search operation for a missing aircraft at sea in history, involving submarines, surface ships and aircraft. The mission was aborted in September of that year without a trace being found. At the height of World War II in 1945, the U.S. Navy sent five torpedo bombers on a routine training flight over the Bermuda Triangle. All 14 crew members aboard the five military aircraft were never seen or heard from again. Hours later, the Navy sent 13 more men on a searchandrescue mission in a Navy seaplane. They were never seen or heard from again. On July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart, an aviation pioneer in the United States, and navigator Fred Noonan were taking off from Lae, New Guinea in a Lockheed Electra 10E when the aircraft lost contact with the towers and disappeared over the Pacific. It is assumed that the wreckage of the aircraft lies on the seabed. Amelia dreamed of traveling around the world and this was one of the final stages of her journey. In 1951, the Douglas DC4 aircraft with 38 people on board left Vancouver for Anchorage, Alaska, and disappeared after an hour and a half. The crew suffered an accident, probably due to the bad weather, but an emergency alert was not issued until it was too late to save those on board. No trace of the aircraft or its occupants was found.