Disaster on Webb's Bait Farm | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror 

Don't play with fireworks - and certainly not illegal ones. Stay safe out there, everyone!

“He started a new line of business at the farm” *Methampheta-* “The manufacturing of illegal fireworks” *-oh.*

Really like these lesser known stories. A lot of bigger channels just recycle the same old tragedies.

My mother, Great Uncle, and Great Aunt died in this tragedy. God rest their souls. She left behind 2 sons (2 and 4 years old at the time). It's been almost 40 years but the wound has never healed. I wish I could have known my mother. I know she was just trying to make a living for our family as my Dad's work at Magic Chef had gone on strike. I love you Dixie Lynn Freeman.

I respect Webb for his reaction to the situation. He handed himself in, he took responsibility, and he pointed them towards the people who’d started this. I think he was genuinely remorseful for what happened. Poor sod.

My first thought was fertilizer and farm chemicals, but an illegal fireworks operation really puts a twist in the story.

As a former member of a pyrotechnic crew, this story hits home. On July 2, 2002 my 2 “show-biz mentors” were in Florida prepping a show for the upcoming 4th of July. Just 3 days prior we had finished an unrelated show in Orlando at the TD Waterhouse arena where the Magic (NBA) play. I was scheduled to work the same show, but a nasty case of food poisoning sidelined me. I traveled home and had a 10 day break before heading back on tour. Fast forward to July 2, and I saw a breaking news story on CNN about a massive explosion in the same area my friends were. I immediately called the two of them (who happened to be brothers), no answer. It soon became clear that the blast was related to them and I knew there was slim chance of survival. In shows like this one, there is an area removed from the public referred to as the boneyard where product is unloaded off a large 53’ trailer and shuttled to the site of the shoot where it is staged, wired, and detonated. While one of the brothers was in the trailer bringing pallets of explosives to the rear to be plucked off w/ a forklift, the brother in the truck noticed a plume of smoke rising from between 2 pallets and began to scream warnings to the others to run. It was too late. Seconds later the truck ignited and released such an intense blast that windows broke a mile away. The truck driver’s wife had wandered a couple hundred yards away and was able to dive into a shallow “puddle” just deep enough to submerge herself under as the intense heat and fire roared overhead. When she surfaced she saw her husband stumbling toward her with a hole in his midsection large enough to put her arm straight through him, and she saw my close friend near the base of a tree charred black but still gasping for air. He died shortly after. Her husband died the following day in the hospital in what I can only imagine to be extreme agony with 3rd degree burns over 90% of his body. The other brother had to be identified by a USMC Marine Corp tattoo on his forearm he got while serving in Vietnam and dental records. They sat out there in the boneyard for almost 72 hours, as investigators were concerned w/ live explosives that weren’t detonated during the initial blast. In total 5 lost their lives and the trucker’s wife was the sole survivor. To this day that’s the hardest loss of my life, and I never did another pyro shoot after that. Those were professionals that took their job very seriously and were entrusted to do some of the largest firework shows in the world, and tragically died because of a freak accident. RIP Brian & Gene, thank you for helping me become the man I am today. PS, Next time you see a fireworks show, remember that the red and green shells are the cheapest colors by far. And that hard-working brave men and women are risking their lives in order to give you 20 minutes of patriotic or celebratory entertainment. Take a second to acknowledge that, and maybe think of my heroes, Brian and Gene. Be safe everyone.

6:22 Oh, I just noticed in the newspaper shot that it said that Dr. William Bass helped them identify the bodies. He is from the University of Knoxville and is the guy who set up the first "body farm" and is considered one of the fathers of modern forensic anthropology.

I live about 15 minutes from Webb's. They were finding body parts in trees for about a week after this.

my grandfather was one of the responding officers, he said bodies were strewn around, some in trees. crazy

I feel like anyone who runs a bait farm is eventually going to use it as a cover for something. Farming worms sounds immensely depressing.

I almost feel shabby about liking these dark and sad stories. But they are immensely well narrated and with great respect for the victims of the accidents and their relatives. Each of these stories underlines the paramount importance of workplace safety and the terrifying horrors that may occur if safety standards are not taken seriously. 😥

I'm from Cleveland Tn. I remember this very well I was only 9yrs old but 2 of my friends lost their parents in this blast. Thank You for covering this

When I heard "farm explosion" my first thought was meth lab. More profit, more prison time, just as dangerous.

He was told his business would be booming. They, however, failed to specify what kind of boom it would be.

"...what could have caused a blast of such magnitude on a small, unassuming fishbait farm in rural Tennessee?" As someone who grew up in Eastern Tennessee, my first thought was, "Almost anything." I remember this happening. It was a surprise to everyone who wasn't a neighbor.

My first thought was "they were cooking meth", but illegal fireworks also make a lot of sense. Either way, I don't think a bait farm is a very profitable enterprise at the best of times.

Not to overshadow this awful story, but your channel really is incredible. You are concise, thorough, articulate, and you get straight to the point. You deserve the subscribers you're getting. Congrats on 100K.

I was 3 years old when this happened but still remember it. My aunt Sybil died there. That is her car pictured at 3:02.

I remember this well. I was 15. I lived in the next town over. There is no way to possibly describe the magnitude of the explosion. I was about 25 miles away. The sound was LOUD. The ground shook like an earthquake. Terrifying.

My husband had a good friend who made homemade fireworks. He was pretty skilled and even the local police knew he made them. Well he had a trailer next to his house where he worked on them. I’ll never forget the day because he was a welder and did contract work for my husband. We had sent him a fax that morning. Something happened and he basically blew himself up. His wife and preteen daughter were in the house. He was still alive when they found him but he was dying. The horror they must have felt haunts me. Apparently they didn’t get all of the pieces because a family member found one of his hands later in the debris. Please, please don’t mess around with this stuff. All it takes is one tiny mistake.

my favourite pandemic discovery: this channel

The worms come in, the worms come out, the worms accidentally set off illegal fireworks on your snout.

My uncle was one of the worms at the farm. He never talked about it, because he was a worm.

OK, the big "FIREWORKS" sign shown at their farm at the end makes me question why they didn't instantly know what happened!

"Hey buddy, you can't smoke in he..."

"Was thrown the length of a foot and covered in 3rd degree burns, he survived" bro what??? who was this dude?? luke cage??

The forensic anthropologist mentioned in this video is actually a good friend of my father, they met when he was studying under him in UT. The anthropologist's name is William M. Bass, he also runs what he calls a "body farm" where he studies decomposition in nature.

I imagine it would've been easy to convince someone to take part in an operation like this. Its not drugs or bootlegging liquor. Someone might see it as just profiting off of fireworks without having to report it to the I.R.S.

This accident is absolutely horrible. I'm studying chemistry at Uni and the thought of improper manipulation with such materials absolutely frightens me

He was at his wits ends, money was tight and he felt unsure, then with a flourish and tip of the hat, the devil appeared and said "I can help with that."

To anyone wondering, what was left of Webb’s “Bait Farm” was quickly torn down and a rafting company now utalises the land as a storage facility.

You, Horror Stories, and Brief Case are honestly my favorite channels that talk about lesser known tragedies and such. I like to remember how morbid and unpredictable and cruel the world really is. It helps me appreciate every minute I'm alive and breathing, even when I feel like I shouldn't be.

If anyone is interested, there is a chapter in a book called "Beyond the Body Farm" by Dr. Bill Bass that discusses how the bodies (and their parts) were identified. Bass was the lead forensic anthropologist on the case and founder of the Tennessee University body farm.

This is my hometown! Wasn’t alive at the time but there is still some old Tin from the buildings in the trees around the property.

Finally. Someone telling stories and I'm satisfied at the end. I have no questions. I think you did an awesome job by not leaving me hanging at the end wondering what happened. I feel that I got all info needed. That doesn't happen to often in this day & age...Thanks!

i gotta say, i love the music for this channel. it totally sets the mood without being too full of itself or cringe.

I thought this was called Webb’s Bat Farm, and was curious to learn about how one farms bats

Thrown a football field! That’s hard to comprehend

THANKS for bringing these lesser known local stories to our attention. Lessons learned by others mistakes are so important. We are not all doomed to repeat them if we pay attention. STAY SAFE!

I was in San Bernardino CA in the 80's when a fireworks warehouse exploded because of a worker smoking a cigarette. It felt like it was like an earthquake to us 10 miles away.

store: *explodes* the worms: "you get what you fucking deserve"

I remember this event. I was a D.J. for WBIN radio in Benton. I was on air when the explosion occurred. Our GM, Jasper Woody, would be on scene most of the day. I drove up as soon as my shift was over. Thankfully they had most of the remains covered up by the time I got there. 11 of the dead were Webb's family members. Cousins, uncles, mother, brother etc. The day after they found a portion of a torso in an attic, after crashing thru the tin roof. This was 500 yards from the blast site. The blast cloud was much, much more than mentioned here. First we all heard the blast. Then 2 front windows broke. We all ran outside. Everyone in town could see it. The thing I remember most about the blast site, was the complete lack of debris and no grass for a hundred yards in all directions.

Usually with these stories, I feel like some of the participants were wilfully, callously negligent, but in this case, it feels like none of them comprehended the risk.

Excellent video.... since everyone's making suggestions, I'd suggest the horrific Cairngorm school trip disaster (1971), which I don't think anyone else has done on RU-vid.

When I was a kid I used to drill out the black powder from model rocket engines and do things with it. Long story short, I never played around again after I burned my hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes off. It was the most embarrassing summer of my life and I could have lost my sight.

I've been in a 6 story mushroom cloud explosion.. about 20-30 meters from my house in a back field, our scout hut.. no one understood how a boy scouts clubhouse could cause such an explosion.. I do. We had a store room in the centre (also holding roof up) full to the brim with Calor Gas cylinders.

This was the first video of yours I stumbled across back in January 2021, while I was stuck at home with COVID. I love macabre documentaries like these, and I especially like your style of commentary on all these stories. Some of these docs I see on tv or youtube, etc. "ham" it up a little too much, or are overdramatic. You present these stories in a non judgmental light that shows the information and the tragedy. Instant sub from me!

It almost sounds like he made a deal with the devil to gain profit, and lost everything in the end.

If he wanted a little extra income, why he didn't he just grow magic mushrooms like all the other worm farmers?

I grew up about 20 minutes from this area. I was 13 years old when it happened. I remember seeing it on the news, but I never knew the full story. Thanks for sharing this!

The moral of the story: Don't try to reenact the game series Worms

My takeaway? Being a master baiter doesn't pay all that well. You'll need a sideline.

Not to defend his actions, but $100 per crate was a big profit for the early 80's, especially in the rural South. If they put out just a few crates a day they were all making a lot of money in a time and place where many would have been jobless. Money will drive people to do risky and foolish things.

My dad was in middle school when this happened. He said they could feel the effects of the blast all the way from the school. We still live in Bradley which is the county over from Polk where this happened. He went to South Polk at the time.

I'm coming back and liking all the videos i've watched from all my subs. This is the one that got me hooked on Fascinating Horror. Great video!

"..alot to risk for little more than 100$ profit per crate." They said they turned out around 130 crates a week. Thats 650,000$ a year!!!!!! Making it sound like he risking it all for a sack a peanuts.

I kept waiting for the words, “dynamite fishing”, but alas...they never came.

Imagine the first responders' face "All units, all units. Theres been a massive explosion at Dan's bait farm."

I think the people working with the explosive chemicals probably WERE aware of how dangerous it was, at least initially, but with any potentially dangerous job 'familiarity tends to breed contempt'. This is the case in both legal and illegal operations. Something that is initially scary and treated with respect becomes familiar and our sense of danger and wariness towards it lessens with time. This is how most industrial accidents occur.

Damn that's horrible...he should have stuck with raising night crawlers, seems like the ideal life to me

"thrown the length of a football field" im sorry WHAT

These "Fascinating Horror" videos are great! When we have family over, after dinner we gather all the grandkids together to watch and learn how bodies are splattered all over the place and blown to smithereens through all sorts of exciting, illegal operations.

My father, a doctor, was what we would now call an "early adopter", buying a Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera (instant) in 1972. He used this to take "before" and "after" photos of injuries suffered by his patients. And a surprising number of them over the years made the incredibly poor choice of trying to make their own fireworks, or to modify existing ones. Let me tell you that you would be sick if you saw the photos my Dad showed me, of what happens to people's hands when they fusk around with fireworks. This was more than sufficient for my enjoyment of them to always be strictly limited to, "Lighting fuse and standing well clear".

Can we talk about how eerie the music is?? Love it.

This dude’s voice is so calming I’ve fallen to sleep watching these videos more times than I can count

Your videos are one of my favorite things to watch after a long day at school

I live in tennessee and I'd never heard of this! I thought it was going to be illegal fertilizer resale that caught fire but honestly, if you live here, the fireworks thing totally tracks.

Have you thought about covering the White Island volcano eruption of December 2019? It just happened last year and not a lot of people know about it, despite a major cruise ship company being to blame for 21 people dying. I love how informative your videos are, and I feel like you could bring attention to it in a way that still would be respectful to the victims.

The weekly profit, in today's dollars, was more than $25K.

This is my new fave uploaded, fresh content that no others have on their repeat and mix list. Well done sir , great work 💪🏻

Can you imagine harvesting bait one second and then getting reincarnated the next

God, this channel is so good. Never change anything, this is perfect.

Can we just acknowledge how crazy it is that the demand is so high in a niche market that these operations and the like pop up?

I initially thought this was going to be an illegal moonshine operation, or fertiliser incorrectly stored. Last thing I would have thought of was fireworks..

I blew my right hand apart when I was 18 in '04, with a large homemade salute that had a fuse malfunction. 🤷🏻‍♂️ U.S. only allows a maximum of 50mg flash powder in firecrackers. M80s for example have 3 grams. Almost all the M80s (and larger) salutes people buy are homemade. It's just rolled Kraft paper tubes + end caps, green visco fuse and flash powder. Flash powder at it's simplest is just aluminum powder and an oxidizer. It has to be mixed by hand in small quantities because it is sensitive to static and shock and cannot be mixed in the type of mills used for black powder. It is very dangerous, even professional pyrotechnic makers are extremely careful with it. M80s, blockbusters, quarter sticks" ashcans, silver salutes, cherry bombs etc are just a Kraft paper shell and varying amounts of flash powder. So I can see why people make them to sell, it's easy money, but dangerous to yourself and other people, including the ones who buy them.

damn bringing a bad name to all the good, honest worm farmers out there

I just want to say I do appreciate that in your videos that you include both metric and U.S. customary units whenever you give measurements.

Imagine the body count if they included the worms : (

These are the best I've seen in a long time short straight to the point

4 days ago you had 33k, now you reached 100k!! I’m so happy your content is finally being recognized

Interesting story! When this first started, I really though fertilizer was going to play a role in the explosion.

It's amazing how much research was done as evidenced by this video's deep details.

Man annihilated all his friends and family in one easy step

Damn when I read disaster at a worm farm I was thinking it was a fire/explosion caused by some weird gas buildup, like compost piles spontaneously combusting if they're not burped, but when I heard the size of the explosion I was a little taken aback imagining that being caused by just worm farts 🤣🤣🤣

So underrated..this channel brings me life honestly...the voice over soothes me to sleep...thank you!

Dan Webb's cousin on the mower name wasn't Tommy, his name is Larry. Larry's my neighbor. I was 7 yrs old when this happened. My Daddy was the 1st person on the scene that day, he was a cop. He was literally a policeman his whole life, he's retired now. I have the video from the local news about this and he's on it. (The same video can be found here on RU-vid) I remember the long hours he worked until all the people were identified and how he didn't have a appetite at all for a long time because of what he had to see. He was a detective and worked many cases during his 40+ year career and there were a few that got to him but this 1 was definitely 1 of the ones that stayed with him.

My little birdie that sits on my shoulder always warns me about dangers like this and sometimes I actually listen, LOL! I like this video.

When i saw "Farm Disaster" i assumed this was gonna be one of those horrific tales about how you can suffocate in a cess pit or grain silo lol i was waaay off the mark

Some video suggestions: Piaseki PA-97 Disappearance of McCann family in Alberta Murder of Tim McLean Cuyahoga River fire

For some reason when you said how little he actually profited from all this, that hit me harder then finding out that he lost several family members to the blast. The family aspect hits hard, but to then find out who little he was making for the risk involved...sad, baffling.

My goodness, I misread the title as “ Weeb’s bait farm” and I thought it was going to be an anime merchandise factory 😂

He wasn't making bombs, he was making M-80's. Only in Tennessee.

Was anyone else thinking "Aw, shit. It Was a meth lab." Then got the shock it was fireworks? 12/22/20 Holy crap, thanks for over 900 likes guys!

Crime doesn't pay. Unless you're a career politician.

"thrown 150 meters or 170 yards" Still not speaking in any measurements us everyday Yanks speak. It's about 500 feet.

I'm glad Harry and Lloyd never started their worm farm.Sounds dangerous

I've binged everything on this channel in a weekend. I damn near broke my mouse clicking on this video when I saw it... 🤣 🤣

Something similar happened recently out here in California..a house exploded that was being used as an illegal fireworks operation...the 2 people behind it were killed and they absolutely destroyed their neighborhood with debris and smoke

This channel and bedtime stories are so underrated