MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

One morning in September 2016, a person sat in their home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, holding a business card. Like always, the sight of it made their stomach twist into knots. The card had been given to them years ago by a detective, and it was worn and faded from all the times the person had turned it over in their hands, agonizing over what to do with it. The detective had been looking for...

This story is a fan favorite from MrBallen's Medical Mysteries.When a woman gets sick with a mystery illness during the height of the COVID pandemic, she fears her holiday season will be ruined. But as her entire family starts getting sick one by one, a lousy Christmas is the least of her worries. For 100s more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" --...

On a September afternoon in 2000, an FBI forensics analyst stood in her lab in Quantico, Virginia, staring into a microscope in confusion. She was looking at two strands of hair that were evidence in a murder investigation. And something wasn’t right. She checked the label on the evidence bag the sample came from, then looked back into the microscope. She definitely wasn’t imagining it. The label...

This story is about a 3-year period in France where people were going missing at an alarming rate and no one knew why. Eventually it was discovered, and let me tell you, it is absolute nightmare fuel.Story name, preview & link to original YouTube video:#1 -- "The Beast of Gévaudan" -- A small village in France is terrorized by a beast (Original YouTube link --...

On the morning of July 11th, 2009, an elderly woman grabbed a coffee and sat down at her kitchen table in Pensacola, Florida, to read the local paper. The news was a big part of her day – she had lived in her neighborhood for 60 years, and liked keeping tabs on everything that was going on in her community. Which was usually a lot – Pensacola and the surrounding county had some of the highest...

Today’s podcast will feature 3 stories about mysterious disappearances. 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 -- "Lava Tubes" -- 1100+ miles of underground lava tubes in this park... (Original YouTube link --...

One afternoon in January of 1998, a prosecutor for the state of Georgia sat in the very back row of seats in a courtroom where a divorce trial was unfolding. The prosecutor was not involved in the divorce case – he handled murder trials. But he had come here today, because he had gotten a very surprising phone call about an unsolved case he had worked on a year and a half earlier. The caller had...

Today’s podcast will feature 4 stories about adventures… that go wrong. The audio from all four 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:#4 -- "Bungee" -- A couple decides to go bungee jumping, but someone panics and the result is caught on...

On the morning of May 17th, 2014, a detective wrote furiously as she sat next to the hospital bed of a mortally-injured 77-year-old woman. The woman had been in a coma for the last ten days, and the detective had been desperately working to figure out who had tried to kill her. Now that the woman had woken up, the detective was finally getting the chance she’d been waiting for – to ask her victim...

Today’s podcast will feature 3 stories where things are not what they seem. 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 -- "Deer Crossing" -- A man's drive home from a night out turns into a nightmare (Original YouTube...