MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Jealousy, revenge, romantic triangles, robberies, sexual assault, and disputes during drug transactions are the most common motives and circumstances surrounding nearly all homicides. But the homicide that takes place in today's episode will not fall into any of those categories. Instead, it will fall into a category that most people don't realize actually exists. Needless to say, be careful of wh...

Today’s podcast features 3 stories that will make you wonder how many monsters you've encountered in your life without knowing it. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos: #3 -- "Soft" -- A couple’s weird encounter in the woods would take a chilling...

Early in the morning of October 3rd, 1994, a woman, living in Eugene, Oregon, woke up in her first floor bedroom to the sound of screaming coming from somewhere on the other side of her house. She thought the noise must be coming from her TV set in the living room, but as she stepped into the hallway, she realized this was not the case. The screaming was coming from an actual person, who sounded l...

Just after midnight on July 19, 2010, former professional basketball player, Lorenzen Wright, stepped out of a car and walked down a dirt path into the woods outside of Memphis, Tennessee. Then suddenly, Lorenzen heard a sound coming from the darkness, and he saw something rushing towards him. In a panic, Lorenzen turned off the path, put his head down, and started running as fast as he could into...

This story is a fan favorite that was previously published as Episode 72. In 1982, a young woman walked up a flight of stairs to her friend’s apartment, and knocked on the door. As she did, she noticed the little window on the door was broken. Worried something was wrong with her friend, the woman knocked again, this time a little louder, while also peering through the broken window to see if she...

On the morning of January 25, 2012, a police officer walked towards an abandoned Mercedes-Benz SUV in an old neighborhood in East Detroit. This neighborhood was known as a den for drug dealers and heroin users. The officer looked in the back window of the SUV and squinted to get a better look inside... and what he saw left him in shock. And what the officer found in the backseat of that Mercedes w...

This story is a fan favorite that was previously published as Episode 62. In late December of 2003, a 32-year-old man named Russel drove along scenic back roads on an island off the coast of Washington State, until he arrived at his destination, a house tucked way back in the woods. After driving down the property’s long driveway, Russel pulled into a parking spot and came to a stop. After turning...

On June 8, 1989, FBI informant Susan Daniels Smith stood outside on the second floor of a motel in Pikeville, Kentucky, smoking a cigarette and staring down at the parking lot. Then suddenly, Susan saw a car pull up, and the driver stepped outside. Susan’s pulse quickened, she flicked her cigarette to the ground, and she ran downstairs to meet the driver. And soon after, Susan and the driver got i...

Today's podcast features 3 workplace horror stories. The audio from all three stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel, which is just called "MrBallen," and has been remastered for today's podcast. Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos: #3 -- "Scavenger" -- A sailor goes missing right before departure (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ8EGOE...

On December 13, 2001, 35-year-old Tracey Roberts was running a bath upstairs in her house in the rural town of Early, Iowa. But then, Tracey heard the front door open and footsteps downstairs. And when she walked into the hall to see what was happening, she saw two men rushing upstairs towards her. So in a panic, Tracey ran to her bedroom, but one of the men grabbed her from behind and started str...

Today's podcast features 3 stories about people who, by all accounts, should be dead. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos: #3 -- "The Void" -- One of the greatest survival stories of all time (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watc...

On the night of January 12, 2003, 85-year-old millionaire Anna Mae Branson heard a knock at the door of her home in Madisonville, Kentucky – a place residents had nicknamed “The Best Town on Earth.” So, Anna Mae opened the door, and smiled at her visitor. But before Anna Mae knew what was happening, the visitor entered the house and started shouting at her. Anna Mae tried to get them to leave, but...

This story is a fan favorite that was previously published as Episode 50. In the late 1800s, a very strange hotel was constructed in Chicago, Illinois. From the outside, it looked perfectly normal, but the inside of the hotel was anything but. Hallways were a maze of twists and turns, and there were trap doors, sliding walls and secret stairwells everywhere. But the shock factor of this hotel was...

This story is a fan favorite that was previously published as Episode 40. Around 2:00 am on April 6th 2018, a mysterious person walked down a snowy suburban street in Wadsworth, Ohio. At some point, this person came to a stop in front of a modest two story home and then looked around to make sure no one was watching them. Feeling satisfied no one was, this mystery person turned away from the road...

Today's podcast features 3 stories that will make you never want to go swimming again. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos: #3 -- "What Lies Beneath" -- Something lurks below this hospital (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

On the night of May 31, 2003, a short bearded man was sitting in his car, holding a rifle, in the parking lot of the Green Iguana Bar and Grill in Rocky Point, Florida. The man opened the window, aimed the rifle at the back door of the bar, and waited for his target – a 37 year-old bartender named Sandee Rozzo. Then suddenly, Sandee stepped outside, so the man took a deep breath and FIRED, but he...

Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. And today’s podcast features 3 stories that demonstrate that. The audio from all three stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel, which is just called "MrBallen," and has been remastered for today's podcast. Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos: #3 -- "Double Plot Twist" -- As the name suggests, there are 2 big reveals i...

On the morning of July 18, 2014, in a wealthy neighborhood in Florida, a married couple in their 70's were sitting on their couch, trying to figure out how to use their brand new iPad. As they did this, suddenly, coming from the property next door, they heard a loud popping sound. The man got up off the couch and walked over to the window to see what was going on, and he saw a car he didn't recogn...

This story is a fan favorite that was previously published as Episode 30. In May of 2009, someone in Guatemala uploaded an 18 minute long video to YouTube titled, “YouTube Murder." Within hours of it being published, the video had gone massively viral to the point where YouTube’s servers began to crash, and in Guatemala, angry crowds of people began forming up in the streets demanding justice. Whe...

On the morning of Sunday, November 17th, 1991, two brothers were driving in their pickup truck down a road in the small town of Conway, South Carolina. The older brother drove, and the younger brother scanned the surrounding woods, looking for the perfect spot to go deer hunting. But as they rolled along, suddenly, the younger brother began shouting that he saw something, so the older brother quic...

This story is a fan favorite that was previously published as Episode 56. In 2016, a woman had just pulled into her driveway in her quiet neighborhood in Missouri, when suddenly her passenger door flung open and in jumped a man she didn't recognize who was wielding a knife. The woman froze in terror hoping this was just a robbery, but when the man spoke, she knew this situation was much, much wors...

On a cold and snowy day in January of 1994, a land surveyor for the North Carolina Department of Transportation parked his car at the edge of Highway 421 in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. After walking just a few yards away from the side of the road, he was already swallowed up in the deep woods that stretched for miles into Watauga County. Given the cold air and snow underfoot, the s...

In 1985, a group of hikers were making their way down a trail in this big forest in southern California when one of them looked through the trees off to their side, and they saw there was a stream running down parallel to the trail that they were on. And in this stream, the hikers saw something that just didn’t look right. And so, the hikers left the trail and made their way down to the stream, an...

It was a freezing cold morning in mid-January 2004 when a repair crew for the local electric and gas company in Princeton, NJ decided to take a break and go get some hot breakfast. The two men had been out all night fixing power poles and lines that had come down in a recent snowstorm. On their way to the diner, they saw a dark green SUV – engine running – sitting with its front wheel submerged in...

Today’s podcast features 3 stories about historical legends. The audio from all three stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel, which is just called "MrBallen," and has been remastered for today's podcast. Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos: #3 -- "Smoke" -- During WW2, one man redefined what it means to have a "high pain tolerance" (Original YouTube link -- http...