All right, we've all heard monster stories. Some are just stories, and others are allegedly

true, as told firsthand by respected folks. This is a story that took place 50 years ago,

late at night, in a small town in Illinois. I'm Patty Steele. If something scratches at your

door late at night, better think twice before opening it. That's next on the

backstory. This is an I-Heart podcast. People called them murderers. Ten years later, they were gods.

Today, no one knows their names.

A group of maverick surgeons who took on the medical establishment, who risked everything

to invent open heart surgery.

Welcome to the Wild West of American Medicine.

I'm Chris Pine, and this is Cardiac Cowboys.

If you like medical dramas, if you like heart-pounding thrillers, you will is Cardiac Cowboys. If you like medical dramas, if you like heart-pounding thrillers,

you will love Cardiac Cowboys. Listen on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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We're back with the backstory. I don't know about you, but when I was a little girl, I had nothing but older brothers,

and they loved me, but they also loved to scare the hell out of me.

They'd talk about monsters seen late at night in the woods behind our house.

I was terrified, and I never doubted them, duh.

But these kinds of stories, a lot of times,

are based on some sort of fact. Let's go back to the spring of 1973, we're in a tiny southern

Illinois town called Enfield. It was mostly defined by long stretches of fields, with rail lines

running through it. A little after 10 o'clock at night,

Henry McDaniel heard something scratching on his front door. Don't open it! Well, he's not listening

...