Rachael Noye added a joke to the tail end one of Tyler Drummond’s, while they walked through a Wichita, Kansas mall, hand in hand. He thought her joke was so funny that he held his stomach. He continued walking and holding his stomach, until his face turned laughter to a grimace. “I don’t feel so good!” Tyler said moments before collapsing in agony. He didn’t fall flat initially. Initially, he went to a knee, but when that didn’t gain him any relief, he slowly lowered himself to the ground. When that didn’t offer him any relief, he tried to sit up, but he couldn’t. Tyler had no idea, at this point, how much pain he would experience over the course of the next eight minutes. 

“It happened so fast,” Rachael would later say. “One minute he was laughing his tail off. The next, he’s groaning on the floor. I thought he was playing. ‘Get up,’ I said. ‘People are watching Tyler, get up’. He did things like this before, and I didn’t want to fall for it again.” 

Tyler was in such excruciating pain that he could not respond. 

After a couple seconds, Rachael knelt down next to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. She still wasn’t sure if she was the product of one of his jokes, until he let out his first unintelligible yells. “Tyler was not one to bring attention to himself, and he yelled loud,” Rachael added. “That’s when I knew something was really wrong.”

“Help!” Rachael cried out when she realized how serious this was. When no one responded, she said, “Help me! Help us!” When a few people broke ranks to help, she shouted, “Someone, someone call an ambulance!” over them.  

Two different patrons did just that. Others rushed forward to help in any way they could. Two of them attempted to help Tyler sit up, but he refused their requests. He continued rolling back and forth, holding his gut. Tyler’s face was one of complete agony. 

Rather than say, “Is there a doctor in the house?” One of the onlookers, seeing Tyler Drummond writhe around on the floor in pain, making unusual, guttural sounds of anguish, said, “Is there a priest in the house?” 

A priest happened to be in the mall that day, dining in the food court. “I’m a priest,” Father Danielson said running to the man. “What’s going on?” When the throng parted to allow his entrance, the Father Danielson went to a knee before the man, “What’s wrong with you sir?” the priest said, taking one of Tyler’s hands. Tyler attempted to answer, but his voice was so strained that Father Danielson couldn’t understand him. Tyler continued holding his stomach with the other hand, sweating profusely, and shouting at the top of his lungs. Some say he was probably swearing, but no one could understand a word he was saying.

“What happened?” Father Danielson asked Rachael when Tyler proved unable to answer.

“I don’t know,” Rachael said. “One minute he was fine, laughing, all that, then he said, ‘I don’t feel so good,’ and he just collapsed.”

“What’s his name?”

“Tyler,” she said. “Tyler Drummond.”

Not knowing what else to do, Father Danielson continued to hold Tyler’s open hand and said. “You have to tell us what’s wrong, Tyler. You have to tell us how we can help you.” Father Danielson began asking Tyler more pointed questions, and Tyler either couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. The priest began silently praying for the man.

“No,” Rachael. “He needs more than prayers.”

“All right,” the priest said. He then began administering Last Rites on the man. 

“No,” Rachael said, in the throes of panic. “He doesn’t need Last Rites either. He needs an exorcism. I’m Catholic. I know the difference.”

“I don’t think-” the priest said, but Rachael cut Father Danielson off with more pleas for something more.  “I think he needs a doctor-” the priest tried to say, but the growing throng of shoppers around them cut him off this time, imploring him to follow Rachael’s instructions and do something more. At the two minute mark, some proceeded to call the priest out for not doing everything in his power to end this man’s pain, others shouted him down, and some even began screaming:

“Do something! He could die!”

Tyler quieted a little when the priest began praying over him quietly. Tyler listened to the prayers, but members of the throng later said they only made Tyler more agitated and fearful.

The ever-growing crowd around them grew as fearful and agitated as Rachael and Tyler, “What are you doing?” they shouted. “Do the exorcism, like the woman said!” Father Danielson wasn’t sure what they wanted, but they were growing so unruly that he began to fear for his own safety. He wasn’t sure if they wanted him to begin speaking Latin, which would be a problem because he didn’t know any, or what they wanted, but they appeared on the cusp of violence.

“If he dies it’s on your hands!” a man in an Ivy League hoodie shouted, three minutes into Tyler’s agony. Three minutes might not seem a long period of time, but anyone who has experienced acute pain knows three minutes can feel like an eternity.

Tyler then began screaming louder than before, as the priest made up some prayers, he thought might calm the crowd. “Do it again!” one of the women in the crowd shouted at the priest. “It’s working.” The priest continued holding Tyler’s hand throughout, but he began mumbling the prayers, so the crowd around them might think he was speaking Latin. 

“Get it out of me!” were the first words Tyler said that anyone could understand. He rolled to and fro, while retaining a tight hold on Father Danielson’s hand. “GET IT OUT Of ME!”

Tyler’s screaming, and the crowd’s urging that the priest do something more, compelled the priest to mumble faster at the five minute mark. These sounds went back and forth in dramatic waves, until Tyler’s screams began building in intensity. Sensing that, the crowd that had been pushing forward to see more of Tyler’s incident, began backing away in unison. They didn’t know what was going to happen, of course, but they all, in various ways, described how they thought this might progress into something unexpected and something unprecedented.  

When Father Danielson was unable to do anything as immediate as the man in the Ivy League hoodie instructed, the man panicked. He was one of the first spectators on the scene, and he proved one of the mot agitated throughout. His agitation with either the priest, or the situation, progressed until he couldn’t take it anymore. He had been making a sign of the cross on himself throughout the situation, but when the situation appeared to only be growing in intensity, he made one final sign of the cross, kissed his fingers and impulsively and violently pushed and shoved his way out of the throng, screaming, “It’s coming! Get out! Get out while you still can! It’s coming!” If the throng gathering around Tyler, hadn’t been so large, the hysterical man would’ve probably knocked the woman standing behind him flat, but the man behind her caught her before she could go down. The shouting man continued making the sign of the cross, some spectators later said, and he continued shouting, “It’s coming!” until he was safely in his car, peeling out of the parking lot, and driving away as fast as he could. 

Seconds after that hysterical man fled, and three others followed him, one with a small child, it began. It began six minutes after Tyler Drummond collapsed to the floor in the middle of a Wichita, Kansas mall. Some spectators described it as a hiss, a hiss more similar to the sound one might hear from air slightly escaping a balloon, as opposed to the snake’s hiss. This was followed by further evidence of Tyler’s agony, as he began to wail loud and long wails. Two more spectators exited, and the rest backed up more. 

“Anyone who tells you they weren’t scared,” one of the spectators said, “is lying. Straight up lying.”

“Oh, absolutely terrified,” a middle-aged woman said, “I’m a little embarrassed to admit it now, but I got into a screaming match with a woman who had her seven-year-old child with her. ‘Get her out of here!’ I shouted at the woman. I thought it was irresponsible that she kept her daughter there. I mean, we didn’t know what was going to happen.”

“It reminded me of the screams a woman will make while in the final stages of childbirth,” another said.

When the hissing sounds “Progressed from hissing sounds to flapping sounds” at the seven minute mark, four more people left the crowd that gathered around Tyler Drummond. Their departure wasn’t as violent as the man in the hoodie, but they were described as bug eyed in their departure. They ducked and weaved their way through the throng and out of the mall. Those who departed would never hear the sounds progress from the unusual flapping sounds to the more familiar sounds of flatulence, and we can only guess the stories they tell of their day at the mall that afternoon, if they didn’t seek out the news stories on what ended up happening.

Some spectators say that the flatulence lasted minutes, others say it might’ve lasted thirty seconds, but the priest said, “It might’ve lasted maybe seven seconds, but it was long and loud, very long and very loud.” It was also, according to all of the spectators there, quite foul. One of the primary reasons for its regrettable, and some say unforgettable, smell was that when Tyler began to feel some relief from his initial push, eight minutes into “the most painful gastro intestinal pain I’ve ever experienced,” he pushed harder. He pushed so hard that some diarrhea followed the flatulence.

When it was finally over, and everyone realized what happened, Tyler smiled an embarrassed smile. His smile emanated through the sweat that drenched his hair and left his face beaming with sweat. The priest also noted that the alarming redness of his face, slowly dissipated, until his normal color returned. While sitting up, Tyler actually managed a laugh. This caused others to others to laugh, until just about everyone was laughing.  

“It was a laugh of relief,” Father Danielson said later. “Euphoric laughter.” Tyler didn’t even mind that the laughter was directed at him. He took it in stride, and apologized a number of times to the crowd if he upset them in anyway, and he thanked them for their concern.

“I’ve never been so relieved to hear another man fart,” a senior citizen said before shaking Tyler’s hand.

“Oh, I know it,” Tyler said. He was laughing while shaking that man’s hand, and his face colored again, in embarrassment. “Thank you, for your concern.”

“Thank you most of all, father,” Tyler said, standing up to shake Father Danielson’s hand. “I really thought that was something far more serious. Thank you for staying with me.”

“Well you’re welcome,” the priest said. “What do you think it was?” he asked. “What caused it?”   

“I don’t know,” Tyler said still holding the priest’s hand. “I just know that I’m glad you were there for me, with me, thought all that. That was a bad one.” When Father Danielson gently pressed a little further, Tyler said. “I honestly don’t know, father, it might have had something to do with the 2-for-1 sale at Arby’s. I took advantage of the sale and downed two steakhouse garlic ribeye sandwiches. I heard someone joke one time about gastrointestinal issues, saying, some of the times food fights back. Maybe that was it.”