Transcript: MrBallen’s Interview on Shawn Ryan Show SRS #249

These comics.

MRBALLEN: Yeah, dude, it’s a labor of love for sure. Put those together.

SHAWN RYAN: Very cool.

MRBALLEN: Yep. And then the flannel. Oh, the flannel. So I got to give you the, I don’t know if you dabble in flannels. I obviously do. And this, I’m not sponsored in any way by this brand, but Ferty brand, which you may have already heard about.

SHAWN RYAN: I know about these.

MRBALLEN: They make the best flannels and that to me. And if you see I got you your own color there, so it’s not like I’m giving you the red one where I wear. You can wear that in real life and it’s just normal. You can wear that in real life.

SHAWN RYAN: Dude, this is nice.

MRBALLEN: And they don’t wrinkle. You just throw them in a bag. Love it. So there you go. It’s pretty equal to a sick P226. I love this. This is gorgeous, man. Thank you so much.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re welcome. You’re welcome.

MRBALLEN: That’s nuts, man. You know, I haven’t shot since 2017. I got out of the teams in 2017. Haven’t shot a gun.

Eight Years Without Shooting

SHAWN RYAN: Eight years. You haven’t shot a gun?

MRBALLEN: No.

SHAWN RYAN: Are you anti gun now?

MRBALLEN: No, I just, okay. No, I’m not. I just have not shot. So I got out and I dove into entrepreneurship, and that’s all I wanted because for me, my story is I got medically retired in 2017, but the timeline was shifted pretty aggressively. It was like, hey, you know you’re going to get medically retired in part because of the injury I sustained in Afghanistan. I had some mental stuff going on and they’re like, yep, you’re going to get med boarded out.

But they gave me, I want to say it was over a year was my expected, this is when you’ll leave the military by date. But it just got moved way, way up really quickly. Still got medically retired. And so for the folks who don’t know, you get a retirement check, you leave and you have some level of income. But it wasn’t a lot then.

So I was suddenly out with kids and a wife and no plan. I was like, oh, in a year, I’ll figure it out when I get out, because my retirement date’s over there. I’ll figure it out. And so when I got out, I had to find a job. And it was sort of ironic. In my effort to find a job for myself, I began networking a lot and meeting people in the city, in New York.

And I ended up sort of putting together these networking events with the help of this guy, Jordan, who I met in the city. He’s a former investment banker, not a veteran. He’s a civilian. And we put together these amazing networking events that were actually for me to meet employers and get a job. But we brought other veterans to these events. We brought other employers, and everyone’s like, wow, what a great service this is.

And nobody was approaching me to get a job because they’re like, oh, this is his job. He runs this networking event. And I ended up doing that, and so I created a job that helped other people get jobs. And then shortly after that, I got into the MrBallen thing.

And honestly, dude, it’s just, this is another critical part of this. I sleepwalk like a maniac. And so my wife has always been like, I’m worried that you’re going to shoot me. And so in that, well, don’t worry, I have a place to keep this. I’ve been thinking about it. And so she has been anti gun because, did I tell you about my prolific sleepwalking?

SHAWN RYAN: I think you did.

The Sleepwalking Problem

MRBALLEN: I have, so this is according to ChatGPT. So this is not a true diagnosis, but I’ve gone to sleep studies. I’ve asked. I mean, I’ve seen sleep doctors and no one can figure out what’s going on. Basically, I go to bed, and within about 30 minutes of falling asleep, I am up. This is most nights.

SHAWN RYAN: This is the majority of nights.

MRBALLEN: Okay, that’s probably a stretch. It’s at least two or three times a week, at least. I wake up and I’m in this half stupor. I sleep by myself. I have alarms set to the room that I sleep in that Antonio is here, who’s my security guy. He sets special alarms on the doors that lead out of the house from my room. So if I bolt at night, he’s alerted to it.

And so I jump out of bed and I start running. What the f* is going on? Are you serious, dude? It’s crazy. And so to me, it’s so normal, but I’m like, oh. I’ve been doing, I was doing this in the teams, in Afghanistan, I was doing this, but I don’t know how I got in. But so I get out of the military, and that was the one thing my wife was like, you can’t have a gun in the house. You’re going to do something crazy with it.

So it’s a combination of get out, full civilian, full entrepreneur. It’s funny, I was actually going to say to you, it’s the one thing that I have let completely fall off. It’s just shooting. And that’s, I was going to ask you, how often are you shooting? Is this a thing you do every day? Because I feel like I want to reincorporate shooting into my life because it’s just something that I haven’t done since 2017.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, we’ll start that today.

MRBALLEN: Dude, I’m probably the f*ing worst shot ever right now, but I want to get back.

SHAWN RYAN: Not any good either.

MRBALLEN: I don’t.

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t really. I love shooting guns, but what I really, I’m not really into all the, we used to carry in the SEAL teams, you know what I mean? ARs and stuff. But yeah, it’s all good. I like them, but what I really like now is the old Western, revolvers and lever actions.

MRBALLEN: Yeah, that’s cool, dude.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s a lot of fun.

The Ouija Board Story

MRBALLEN: That’s awesome. But yeah, but I mean.

SHAWN RYAN: But also, like, yeah, I mean, when I left, you know what I mean, and started, you know, my entrepreneur journey, you know, I was in. It started with tactics, you know.

MRBALLEN: I remember watching videos of you out in the forest, talking about your everyday carry. They were going, like, super viral.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had to shoot for that. And then when I got tired of that s*, started the podcast kind of fell off until. Well, it didn’t kind of fell off. It fell off. But then we moved here, you know, and we got a shooting range right off the patio here, so. But I’m still pretty rusty.

MRBALLEN: Yeah, I mean, I remember in the Teams, there were dudes that just like, what they did is they like really kept dialed in and you can just see it when a dude’s shooting a lot. It’s just they’re so on point. They’re so good.

And for me, I was like, I was good enough to pass the test because I was a team guy, you know. But I didn’t have that like desire to like really become a great shot. I think I was like very average, if not below, but enough for the teams.

And now it’s like it became this daunting task over time. Then like, well, if I want to get back into it, I got to do it like discreetly too. I can’t like go to an instructor, but yo, I’m a former Navy seal. I learned how to shoot again. So I was going to ask you like, I want to shoot with you.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh yeah, dude. Well, we’ll do that on the break. But yeah, dude, Halloween’s right around the corner. Yeah. Last year we brought on an exorcist. It was awesome. But you are, you are the storyteller. So what. Let’s hear a story that, that, that, that you think goes along with Halloween. Something that’s going to scare the s* out of people.

The Bowen Family Tragedy

MRBALLEN: Yeah, actually there’s. I was thinking about it, so I knew coming here that was a big part of this is having some stories. And I would say this story I’m going to tell you is. So I did it actually on the live tour. I don’t think you heard this one though. This one was added in, gets a big reaction from the crowd.

So I’ve told this in front of, you know, thousands of people and, and this one just. It’s a good, It’s a great story. It’s a great story. It’s a horrible story, but it is, It’s a great story. It’s a horrible story, but it’s a.

SHAWN RYAN: Sa.

MRBALLEN: All right, so in 1986 there’s this family. The, the.

SHAWN RYAN: Is this real?

MRBALLEN: This is totally real.

SHAWN RYAN: This is legit totally real. Okay.

MRBALLEN: There’s this guy named Frank and he’s got two daughters. He has an older daughter. This is 1986. This is in Pepperell, Massachusetts. So it’s west. He’s got two daughters, he’s got a 15 year old daughter named Tina and a nine year old daughter named Karen. And this is in again the fall of 86.

And around this time frame, this family, the Bowens family, they had suffered this really awful loss. So Frank’s wife and the two daughters mother had passed away pretty unexpectedly from cancer. So she came on, suddenly, she passed away, and it was this horrible thing. And so this has happened within a few months of when the picks up in the fall of 86.

However, the part of the dynamic here is that the wife, the mother had been, you know, a working mom, and her income had been meaningful to the household. So the blue collar family, you know, Frank and his wife’s income were how they floated the family.

And so when she passed, not only is there, you know, all this grief in the household, you know, of course, but there’s also like a practical issue. You know, Frank now was 50% of the income is gone, and he needs to find a way to provide for his family.

And so in the immediate aftermath of her passing, Frank began taking all these extra shifts at work just to make ends meet, you know, just sort of what he had to do. But as, as a product or a product of that, was that Tina and Karen, who were sort of just old enough for this to be okay.

They, as they’re dealing with this incredible grief of losing their mom, who they were very close with, they began finding themselves alone quite a bit at their house, just alone, putting themselves to bed while their dad is out, you know, taking late shifts at work. But they accepted this, you know, it is. It is what it is. You know, their dad loves them and he’s just trying to do the right thing for the family.

So with that as the backdrop, there was this night where Frank was out at doing one of these late shifts. This is again, sometime in like September of 86, and the girls are home. And the girls, the death of their mom is so new in some ways that they haven’t quite moved to the point of acceptance. They still almost feel like mom’s going to come around the corner. Like, it just feels unreal that she’s gone.

And they just felt desperately that they just wanted to have one more interaction with their mom. It’s like they felt it in their bones. They just missed her so badly. And so with their dad gone for the night, the older girl, Tina, the 15 year old, she asked the younger girl, Karen, “Hey, do you want to get the Ouija board out and try to contact mom?”

So for those who don’t know what a Ouija board is.

SHAWN RYAN: Never a good idea.

Understanding the Ouija Board

MRBALLEN: Yeah, you know, a Ouija board, it looks sort of like just a rectangular game board. And it has A through Z on it, A, B, C, D, all the letters, the Alphabet, it has zero, you know, up to nine, all the digits.

And you put this, it’s called a planchette. It’s like this little dial that has felt tips, three prongs, felt tips that it sits on. And it’s got a little viewfinder in the top of it that you can look through. It’s like a little looking glass down onto the board.

And when you use the Ouija board, if you believe that this thing works, you know, you and whoever else. Let’s take Tina and Karen in this instance, they would rest their fingertips. They’d typically sit on opposite sides of the board. They’d rest their fingertips on the edge of this planchette.

And the idea is you don’t move the planchette at all. You just, like, rest your fingers on the planchette. And if there’s, you know, spirits in the room, the idea is they will you ask a question with your fingers. Tina or Karen asks a question, you know, “Hey, mom, are you here?” You know, their fingers are on the planchette.

And if there’s a spirit in the room, the idea is they will travel through your body and they’ll manipulate your fingertips, and they’ll move the planchette around. Part of the reason why Ouija boards have become so popular is it’s so easy if there’s a group of you to be the one person that sort of subtly moves the planchette and give the impression that, like, there’s a ghost in the room.

So it is what it is. If you believe it or you don’t. People say that, you know, Ouija boards are a way to talk to the dead.

SHAWN RYAN: What do you believe?

MRBALLEN: I don’t know. I don’t know if the Ouija board works. I think that there is.

SHAWN RYAN: You tried one?

MRBALLEN: I have tried, yeah. And.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, s*.

MRBALLEN: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Where’d you try it?

The Ouija Board Session

MRBALLEN: So we had one growing up. My sisters and I would always get out the Ouija board. And now that I’m thinking about it, it’s kind of weird. Little me and my sisters, as the young children, are having seances in our basement. So actually, I give. I’m open to it. I’m open to it.

So anyways, these two, they’re like, okay, you know, we want to try to contact Mom. And so they get their Ouija board and their little planchette, and they go down into the basement, and they literally set up like a seance. You know, the basement is just this blank slab basement. There’s a washer, dryer, there’s a couple of tools on a shelf, but it’s a blank, you know, concrete slab basement.

And they put their Ouija board down, they light some candles, and they sit down and they put their fingers on the planchette, and they begin asking questions, sort of to the room. Hey, mom, you know, if you’re in here, give us a sign. And they look at the board and they’re hoping it’s going to move, but nothing happens.

And over the course of the next hour, these girls tried every combination of question that they could ask to try to inspire the spirit of their mother to come in here and talk to them. But no matter what they did, they just couldn’t get the planchette to move.

And in some ways, it was sort of devastating. Again, they’re grieving the loss of their mom. They haven’t really come to terms with it. And this felt like hope. Mom’s going to come through. We know it, she loves us, but nothing happens.

And so they end up packaging up the Ouija board, and they go back upstairs and they go up to the second floor where their bedrooms are. And by this point, their dad, Frank, he’s still at work. He’s going to be out past the time they would go to bed. And Tina is the sort of older, more responsible one, and she’s, okay, we need to go to bed.

The Mysterious Tapping

And so the two, they go up to the second floor, they get ready for bed, and they go to their respective bedrooms. And so they get in their beds, the lights are off, the house is quiet, and they try to go to sleep.

But after maybe only 20 or 30 minutes of laying in bed, they’re both still awake, but they aren’t aware of the other. They’re in different rooms, but they’re both awake. There’s this tapping noise that begins to start in the house.

And at first it was sort of subtle, and both girls would report hearing it, but it wasn’t clear if the tapping noise was just a house sound. Houses make noises. Is it something outside? Is it the wind? Whatever it was. But more than that, it was kind of hard to pinpoint if it was coming from the floor. They were on the first floor, even the basement. Was it outside? It just sort of felt like this almost omnipresent tapping sound.

And it wasn’t rhythmic. It wasn’t consistent. It was sort of sporadic, but it was constant. So there’s a tapping sound that’s sort of just irregular, but constant. And so it very, it caught their ear.

And so Tina, the older one, she sort of is just doing her best to forget about it and just try to go to bed. But Karen, the younger one, the nine year old, she can’t sleep. She starts feeling worried about this tapping sound. They’ve just done a seance in the basement and now there’s tapping in the house. She’s a kid, it’s scary.

And so she leaves her bedroom and she goes right over to the next room where Tina is. And Tina’s in bed and Karen goes in and she’s like, hey, you know Tina, do you hear the tapping sound in the house? And Tina’s like, yeah, don’t worry about it. It’s no big deal.

But the two, they’re just sitting there and Tina’s trying to reassure Karen, but the tapping, it sort of begins to intensify a little bit. And Tina, she has this almost epiphany and she’s like, as she’s trying to tell Karen not to worry about it, the tapping is getting louder and she’s like, what if that’s mom?

We were just trying to contact her. What if the seance worked? What if mom did hear us? Maybe she’s here, maybe she’s in the house. Maybe she’s trying to get in touch with us. Maybe her tapping is her trying to signal us in some way.

Hope Returns

And suddenly that hope, that was dashed as their Ouija board session, their seance hadn’t worked, it’s all back now. They’re suddenly riveted with this idea that the sounds they’re hearing could be their mom, who they just want their mom back so bad that they’re prepared to believe anything at this point. Oh my God, it’s mom.

And so Tina and Karen, they get out of the bed and they walk into the hallway. Now, to this point, they still can’t quite tell where the tapping is coming from. But by the time they got into the hallway, it’s clear. It’s not coming from the floor they’re on, it’s coming from somewhere down.

And so they go into the dark stairwell in the second floor hallway and they’re looking down into the stairwell, I should say, that kind of banks around down to the first floor. And all they can hear is just this periodic tapping. And it’s coming from somewhere downstairs.

And the two girls are standing at the top of the stairs, not really sure what to do. And Tina, the older one, just suddenly goes, “Hey, mom, is that you?”

The tapping stops for a second, and then they hear a rhythmic knock. And then there’s silence again.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, shit.

The Tapping Begins

MRBALLEN: So there’s a clear response. And the girls, they think at first that it’s coincidence. That can’t be this immediate. It can’t actually really be her. And so Tina again says, “Mom, really, is that you?” And this time even louder, there’s three taps that come back from somewhere downstairs.

Clearly, something, someone is in the house, and they’re interacting with the girls. And their dad’s not home. But amazingly, the girls remember their mind state is, it’s Mom. This is a good thing. We’re excited about this.

To most children, this would be horrifying. But for them in this part of their lives, this was confirmation that their mom is here. And it gave them an enormous amount of courage and happiness, frankly. And they’re like, let’s go down. Let’s go downstairs and see what’s going on. Let’s see if we can, maybe Mom’s down there. Who knows, right? Let’s go down there.

And so down the steps the girls go. And as they’re going, they’re asking more questions, and they’re starting to sense that the tapping, which is louder now, they can kind of tell that it’s not somewhere in the first floor. It actually sounds like it’s coming from the basement, potentially.

There’s a door in their kitchen on the first floor that leads down to the basement. And it sort of sounds like the tapping is coming from down there, maybe even coming on the backside of that door. But they’re going down the stairs and they’re firing off more questions. Like, “Mom,” the questions they’re asking are all over the place. But they’re asking these questions, and each time they’re getting that three taps in response. They’re sure it’s Mom.

Into the Basement

They get to the kitchen, and now they’ve pinpointed the tapping is definitely coming from the basement. The door’s shut to the basement. They go to the door, they open up the basement door, and they’re looking down into this stereotypically terrifying basement. It’s pitch black, it’s wooden, creaky stairs. They can’t see anything down there.

And despite how confident they were that this is mom, this is where they drew the line. They’re not prepared to go all the way into the basement where it’s like, that’s kind of horror movie territory. But they stood at the top of the stairs, and for an hour, they asked their mother questions.

In their mind, they’re talking to their mom, they’re speaking into the basement, and they’re asking all sorts of questions. “Do you miss us?” Tap, tap, tap. You know, sometimes they’d get like four or five taps. And they began to think that maybe that meant no and three meant yes.

But they had this whole thing where they’re like, it’s Mom. It worked. The seance worked. But after an hour, their dad’s still not home. They’ve had this unbelievable experience that they chalked up to their mom, but then it just kind of stops. There’s no more tapping. No matter what questions they ask, it just sort of stops.

And, you know, the girls, they stayed awake because they’re sort of jazzed up by what’s happened here. And around this time, around the time that the tapping has stopped, there’s no more responses, Frank, their dad, comes home and he’s surprised to see his kids awake in the kitchen. And he’s like, “What are you guys doing?”

And they’re like, “Oh, you wouldn’t believe it, dad, it’s Mom. We got the Ouija board out. We had a seance.” They kind of explained the whole thing that happened, but they’re so excited about it, and they’re like, “Dad, it’s Mom. We were talking to Mom. We know it’s her. It has to be her.”

Frank’s Response

And now, Frank, you know, Frank also is in the process of going through what is this unbelievably bad situation for him. You know, he’s lost his wife. He has to work all these extra shifts. He can’t be around his daughters. He’s worried about his kids.

And he’s seeing his kids light up and be so excited at this idea that they’re talking to their mom, that even though he does not think for a second that there’s truth to what they’re telling him, he doesn’t think that there was tapping. He doesn’t think their mom was in the house. He thinks that these are kids who’ve lost their mother and they’ve come up with some coping mechanism, which is hearing random house tapping sounds, and they’ve convinced themselves it’s their mother.

And so without any hesitation, he just goes, “I bet that was your mom. That’s wonderful. You know, she’s looking out for you. She’ll always be looking out for you. Your mom is, she’s here with you. Now she’ll always be here with you. Your mom loves you.”

And the girls are so pleased, and they run up to bed so excited to go tell their friends the next day. So they go to bed, and Frank, frankly, doesn’t think much of it. He just is like, my kids are coping with a terrible tragedy, and if they want to do that, that seems harmless enough. So he goes to bed.

The Tapping Spreads

Over the next few days, the tapping sounds would continue, except they would only be heard by the girls. Frank would never hear the tapping sound. The girls would hear it coming from the basement. They’d call their dad, he’d listen, and there’d be no more taps. It was like they would disappear when Frank showed up.

But oddly enough, the tapping was no longer just happening at night and just in the basement. The tapping was sort of happening all over the house. You know, it would happen outside the front door. It was in the kitchen, it was in the girls’ bedrooms. It was everywhere. It was like the tapping was, it was always that tap, tap, tap when they were talking to it, but it was like all over the house.

But again, every time they’d hear it, you know, Frank wouldn’t be privy to it. He couldn’t hear it. Frank’s still telling himself that this is a relatively healthy coping mechanism, that it’s not that big of a deal.

But what ended up happening after about three days is the girls, they had convinced themselves that this is mom, right? This is a good thing. Well, by the third day, post seance, when the tapping is happening a lot, the tapping had sort of migrated primarily to the girls’ bedrooms, and it was also happening mostly at night now.

So by the third day, it’s sort of like all the tapping is happening in their bedrooms and it’s namely under their bed. They would hear the sound underneath their bed. And for the girls, they began to wonder why their mom would do that, because it just sort of feels like almost stereotypically terrifying for a kid. Something’s under your bed.

And they began to get this feeling that maybe this isn’t Mom. Maybe our seance worked, but we didn’t bring Mom’s spirit into the house. Maybe we brought something malevolent or just something other. We don’t know. And so they’re starting to question if this is really a good thing or not.

Growing Tension

And that’s what Frank picked up on. It’s been a few days. Frank picks up on that the girls no longer view this as a good thing, and it’s disrupting their sleep. And they would hear the tapping in the bed, and Frank would come into the room, there’d be nothing there. He had no explanation. But the girls are really spooked.

And so it was at this point that Frank began taking a harder stance with the girls. So around the third night, he just said, “Look, I know you’re going through it right now, and I understand that you’re dealing with a lot with your mom, but this isn’t okay. Whatever you guys believe you’re hearing with this tapping sound, I’m telling you, you have nothing to worry about in this house. But it’s not happening, okay? You’re working yourself up over nothing, and you need to stop it. And if you can’t, I understand. But we’re going to have to seek out professional help, grief counseling or something, because it’s not healthy for you all to be living in fear of a ghost in your house that, you know, it’s just not okay.”

The girls are furious because they believed up until the third night that their dad accepted that the taps were real and that maybe it was their mom. And now he’s sort of come out and been like, “I don’t believe you, and you know, forget about it, or else you’re going to go to therapy.” And so it sparked real issues between the daughters and the dad. You know, the dad’s really trying to do his best, but there’s real tension here.

So following this confrontation, if you will, between Frank and his daughters, or whatever you want to call it, the tension between them remained. And for the girls, they felt like they didn’t have their dad’s support anymore, and they started to really be fearful of even being in their house. They didn’t even want to be home anymore. You know, it’s like, it’s terrifying when you’re there. You hear these tapping sounds.

And so over the next several days, so now we’re looking at a week after the seance, the girls are finding every excuse to sleep over at friend’s houses and just be out of their house. And, you know, they’re kind of jarring with their dad about did the tapping sounds happen or not? But when they’re home, they hear the tapping sounds.

The Investigation

So fast forward about a week, a week post seance, and on this particular night, the girls didn’t have a place to go. They didn’t have a friend’s house to crash at. Their dad was out working a late shift. And so they were there in their home that night. And there was nothing they could do about it. They had to go to bed and just deal with it.

And the tapping is happening, you know, pretty consistently at this point. Not literally at this point, but it’s happening all the time. And so they’re just like, “Okay, we just got to get through the night, you know, whatever.”

So the girls are having their dinner in the kitchen. Their dad is at work. And at a certain point, the tapping starts, and it’s coming from the basement. It’s not the three rhythmic tappings. It’s just this kind of periodic tapping that sort of was the precursor to they could ask questions and get those rapid responses.

And Tina looks over at Karen and she’s like, “You know, dad doesn’t believe us. And, you know, the last week, every time this would happen, he would never hear it. He doesn’t believe us. We have to look into this. He’s not going to look into this. We have to.”

And so there’s active tapping in the basement. The door to the basement’s right off the kitchen. And Karen is starting to get the sense that Tina’s saying, we need to go into the basement right now and go look. Because they hadn’t done that yet. They had never really actually investigated the sound.

SHAWN RYAN: Would you have gone down there?

MRBALLEN: Yeah. Would you really? As a child? No. No. I’m sorry. As an adult. Me now? Yes. As a child, then, no way. No way.

SHAWN RYAN: I’d probably send my wife down.

Descending into Darkness

MRBALLEN: And so Tina, you know, is looking at Karen, who doesn’t want to do this, but Tina grabs a knife off the kitchen counter, and she’s like, “We have to go into the basement. We got to see what’s down there.”

And Karen, she doesn’t want to be up here alone. And so she’s trying to tell Tina, “No, we can’t go down there.” But she’s like, “Fine.” And so she gets behind Tina, and Tina goes over to the door, and the tapping’s happening downstairs.

And they open up the basement door, and the tapping stops right away. As soon as the door opens, the tapping stops. It was going all up until that point. Tapping stops and down the stairs the girls go.

They walk down into the basement. And the light in the basement was one of those pull string lights you have to get to in the basement. And so it’s dark in the basement, and they’re wandering through this dark basement to get to the pull string.

They get to the pull string, they pull it, and they’re both totally on edge. And they’re looking around. And they would later say, you know, on some level, we were like, there’s got to be some logical explanation. Like, for example, a raccoon got into the house. Wouldn’t explain the responses we’re getting with tapping sounds.

But as a human being, we will go to great lengths to convince ourselves that we are okay. In moments of crisis, a lot of times before you kind of cross the threshold into, “Oh, my God, this is a horrible crisis,” your brain will say, “No, everything’s fine. Everything’s good. It’s just a raccoon.” And they’re kind of hoping for that.

But they get down there, they pull the light, and, you know, Tina’s got her knife and Karen’s tucked up behind her, and they’re looking around the basement. And I told you before, there’s nothing in the basement. There’s a washer and dryer. There’s a wood shelf, a shelf with some tools on it over here. But there’s not even storage down there. It’s just this vacant open space. There’s nowhere to hide, and there’s nothing down there. It is an utterly vacant space.

SHAWN RYAN: There’s got to be a hole in the floor or something.

The Horrifying Discovery

MRBALLEN: Well, they looked. They looked all around the basement, and there’s nothing there. They’re looking for where a raccoon could have gotten in. But it’s like, as they’re looking, it’s dawning on them that there isn’t a clear answer here.

We’ve definitely heard the tapping. Dad hasn’t. We have. And we’re down here at the source of the tapping in many ways, and there’s nothing.

And they’ve sort of mentally shifted to, it could be malevolent. And so they’re having this big fear response. They’re like, okay, we can’t be down here. This is just horrifying.

And so they turn and begin going back upstairs. And as they’re walking up, they notice there’s writing on the inside of the stairwell wall leading up to the first floor. They’re walking up the stairs, and right on the wall on the basement steps, written in red is, “I’m in your closet. Come find me.”

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, shit.

MRBALLEN:

The Terrifying Discovery

It’s the girls. See that? And obviously they sprint out of the basement, they bolt out of the house. They were very friendly with their neighbor. They run to their neighbor, they’re banging on the door. It’s late at night. The neighbor opens the door, like what’s going on?

The girls are hysterical. They’re like, “Oh my God, there’s a ghost in our house. There’s writing on the walls.” The neighbor is aware of the fact that they’ve lost their mother and understands that this is a very difficult time for them. And so no judgment passed. Has no idea what’s happening. Just says, “Get in the house. We’re going to wait for your dad. You stay here and we’ll wait for your dad, and he’ll know what to do.”

And so the girls, they’re just happy to be away from their own house. Frank, not that much longer, comes home, and the neighbor sees him pull into the driveway, immediately flags him down, and as gently as he can, he explains, “Hey, so your daughters are with me. They’re fine. I don’t know what’s going on in your house. They seem very spooked about something to do with writing on the walls in your basement. I don’t really know, but they’re very shaken up. They’re at my house right now. Just want you to know.”

And Frank is like, okay. He knows what this is about. This has been going on now for a week. And really all he’s thinking is, I guess I better plan for therapy or something for my kids. And so he goes and he tells his daughters, “Okay, I’m here. I’m going to go check the house. You stay here. I’ll go check it out, and I’ll talk to you guys.”

Frank Investigates

And so he goes to his house, he goes inside, and he searches this whole house, and there’s nobody there. He goes into the basement, and sure enough, written on the wall, it does say, “I’m in your closet. Come find me.” But it’s written in ketchup. Someone put it there. But his first thought is, my daughters clearly put it there. They’re the ones sort of playing into this delusion here. This is a really unhealthy thing they’ve done.

And now they’re acting out this whole thing with the neighbor, and it’s becoming this big drama. This is clearly some huge grief response. And so he leaves the house, not concerned in the least that this is a real problem. He’s thinking, this is an issue of my daughters. My daughters are struggling here, and they need professional help.

And so he comes back over to the neighbor’s house, and he tells his girls, “Look, I know you’re dealing with some tough stuff here, but enough is enough. We’re going to start grief therapy, literally tomorrow.”

And the girls, they did experience what they just experienced, and they don’t even know what to make of it. I mean, now it’s really gone from this sort of tapping sound in the house to something very concrete, almost a threatening message left that clearly was designed for them to find. But their dad doesn’t believe them. They just feel trapped. Like, what do you even do?

And so the girls are sort of resigned. They’ve been worn down by this and they’re just like, “Fine, we’ll find out, we’ll do therapy.”

A Brief Period of Peace

And so the girls literally, I think it was the next day, started therapy. And wouldn’t you know it, over the coming several weeks, there was no more tapping in the house. It was like everything went back to normal, peace returned to the house, if you will. The girls were still terrified to be in the house, but even when they were alone, the tapping was gone.

And for Frank, he felt like, obviously, you’re in therapy now, that’s always been that. It’s nothing more. It’s just been in your head. But it wouldn’t stay that way.

So one week after the seance is when the writing on the wall showed up that, “I’m in your closet, come find me.” And that’s what starts the group therapy session. The following three weeks, it’s like peace in the house returns. So at the end of those three weeks, so now, effectively one month after first contact, if you will, the seance the girls had at the very beginning, we’re at one month after at this point.

They haven’t forgotten. They, as in Frank, Tina and Karen have not forgotten about the tapping. They haven’t forgotten about the weird stuff. But it’s sort of no longer a thing, right? And they’ve sort of returned to normal life.

The Ice Cream Trip

And on this day, this is in October, I think, at this point of 1986, Frank had taken Tina and Karen and one of their friends, a girl named Kathleen, out to get some ice cream. And so they went out. This is in the evening time. They’d gone out, they got ice cream. They’re just living their lives, sort of moving on with life.

And they come back to the Bowen household where they were going to spend the next hour or so before Kathleen had to go home. And when they got home, Frank went up to the front step of his house and he’s about to open his door when he realizes that there’s something off about his house.

He looked into the window and he saw there was a couple lights on inside the house that he just didn’t remember leaving on. But this is not such a big red flag that he’s like, “Oh, my God, don’t go in the house.” It’s more like, that’s weird. I don’t remember leaving those on. He was pretty conscious, I suppose, of leaving his lights off and on whenever he left the house.

And he sort of looked back at his daughters to maybe see if maybe they were going to say, “Oh, we left those on.” But they don’t even pick up on him thinking about this. So he puts the key in. He unlocks the door, he opens it up.

Something Is Wrong

And it gets even weirder because now he sees that there’s a radio that’s on that was on really quietly that he can now hear. And also a TV is on. TV’s on in the back of the house. So lights are on, TV, radio. And he also couldn’t help but feel like some of the furniture in the first floor had been moved, but slightly. Only so much that if you lived in a place, you would notice the difference, but that’s it. If you didn’t live there, you wouldn’t have picked up on it. But things seemed a little bit out of place.

And so Frank, he sort of turns to Karen and to Tina and Kathleen, their friend, and he’s like, “Hey, did you guys leave this stuff on?” And the girls, by the way, at this point, they’re seeing these things. And Tina and Karen are immediately back in that, “Oh, my God, it’s happening again.” It’s this thing, whatever it is. And they’re like, “We didn’t do that.” And so they’re immediately terrified.

Kathleen has been fully read in by Tina and Karen. They’ve heard about all the things they saw. She believes it fully. And so the three girls are horrified.

Frank doesn’t really know what to make of this because, remember, he believed that his girls were sort of behind this delusion. That’s what he would refer to it as. It’s just a delusion. And therapy was the way to get out of this thing. So he’s like, I think that’s still true, but I also have to deal with the fact that this is hard to reconcile. They were with me. How could they have done this? And they seem genuinely scared.

And so he hasn’t really decided as he’s walking into the house how he’s going to react to this. He’s looking at his girls who are all scared, tucked up behind him and sort of looking at the scene, like, what’s going on here?

Searching the House

And so he does this half invested search of his house where he’s not really sure how he feels about it. He sort of walks around the house, he turns off the radio, turns off the TV, turns on the lights, because now they’re home, but there’s nobody there. He searches the first floor, goes to the second floor. The girls are right behind him the whole time because they’re so scared. They go down in the basement, and no one’s down there. The house is quiet, no one’s there.

But after he finishes the whole search, he realizes there’s actually one room that he hadn’t checked yet. Just when he had first walked in, there’s this room right off the front door. It’s the front sitting room that overlooked the front of the house. And just because he sort of half began the search, wasn’t really planning it, he just sort of overlooked it. And so he has one more room to search. It’s this front room of the house.

And so he said, “Okay, I’m going to go search that room.” And so again, he searched the whole house, nobody’s there. He walks into this front room and when he walks in, he’s basically looking at windows that overlook the front of the house.

And as soon as he walks in, he sees written on the wall above those windows is the words “Marry me” written in shaving cream. And he walks in and he’s just looking at the words and he’s thinking to himself, my daughters. I just don’t feel like this was them. How could this be them? I would have noticed something like this. It just feels like this can’t have been them.

But he can’t quite wrap his head around what that actually means. If you accept this isn’t your daughters, then everything your daughters have been saying before might also be true. So he’s stuck with this almost existential crisis of, what do you do with this?

The Man in the Closet

And he’s staring at the letters and his daughters and friend are literally up against his backside. And then he hears something over to his left, out of his eyesight. Still in this front room, sort of tucked up against the back wall relative to how he’s looking was just a closet. And he hears the sound of the closet opening and he knows his girls are right behind him.

And so he turns and out of the closet walks this figure that’s wearing a dress, they have clown makeup painted on their face, they have a hatchet over their shoulder. It’s this man who walks out and he stares at Frank and the girls and he just points and he goes, “Upstairs,” and he starts walking towards them with this hatchet over his shoulder.

And Frank, who, he’s in complete fight or flight response here, he just protects the girls and he’s like, “Go, just do what he says.” And they start going out of the front room towards the stairs that go to the second floor. And this dress wearing, hatchet wielding, makeup wearing maniac also is the dress of his dead wife.

He’s staring at Frank intently, got this hatchet and he just keeps telling him, “Go, go up the stairs.” And so Frank keeps the girls between, he stays between the guy and the girls and he gets them to go up the stairs. And as soon as they get to the top of the stairs, Frank is still staring at this guy who’s right in front of him with the hatchet. He tells the girls, “Go into the first bedroom.”

And so Kathleen goes in, Tina goes in, Karen goes in. And then when Frank goes in, this guy with the hatchet is just sort of methodically slowly walking after him. Like he’s just taking his time. As soon as Frank goes in and all the girls are in with him, he slams the door shut and he holds it shut. And suddenly there’s the struggle between the hatchet wielding maniac and Frank to open this door. And so they’re battling at the door.

Escape

And Tina, the 15 year old, immediately just turns, runs to the window and jumps out of the second floor window, leaps out of the house, she slams to the ground. There’s screaming and all this chaos happening up in the room right above her. She just takes off to that same neighbor’s house. And now she’s in full hysterics, screaming that somebody’s in my house, they’re attacking my family.

And the neighbor now consents. This is not some delusion these girls are having. Something horrible is happening next door. And so they call the police. Police show up a couple minutes later. And when they get there, they look up at that second floor bedroom where Frank and the girls were. And Frank is leaning out the window screaming that there’s somebody in my house. They’re right at the door. I don’t know where they are. They’re gone, they’re in my house.

And so the police immediately, they get the ladder put up, and they get the girls and Frank out of the house, and they usher them over to the neighbor’s house, and they’re all safe, they’re all fine. Traumatized, no doubt, but the guy never got into the bedroom and at some point took off. And so Frank and the girls were okay.

And so Frank, Kathleen, the friend, Karen and Tina, they’re all fine. They’ve been moved over to the other house. But now the police, they go in, guns drawn, to search the house for whoever this person is who broke into their house.

Police Investigation

And so in they go, and they search the house, and there’s no sign of any sort of disturbance of any kind. I mean, there’s nothing there. No one’s in the house. They searched everywhere. They did ultimately, though, find a hatchet that was leaned up against the back sliding glass door, and that door was partially ajar. And so it sort of gave the impression that this person, whoever it was, is gone.

And so after the search of the house, the police are like, “Look, we don’t really know what to tell you here. We don’t know where this person is. Your description of them, unfortunately, it’s sort of like you describe somebody wearing a costume. We don’t even know what they look like realistically. They had clown makeup on, a dress. We think they’re a man. They could be a woman. We don’t know how old they are. We don’t know what to tell you other than it seems risky to have you stay in your house.”

“And so for right now, while we continue to investigate and try to figure out who this is, we want you and your family to just stay with a relative. Just don’t stay at your house. What we’re going to do is we’re going to basically stake out your property and just assume that maybe this guy might come back and maybe we’ll catch them then. And then in the interim, we’re going to be canvassing the town and trying to figure out who did this to you.”

And Frank’s like, “Fine.” And so really, without taking anything from his house, he and the girls just leave, they go to a relative’s house, and over the next few days, the police do canvas or they stake out Frank’s property, and nobody goes in or out. It’s just the vacant home that no one’s going in or out of. There’s nothing going on.

And police are communicating that to Frank the whole time. Like, “Hey, we’ve asked in town, too, and no one seems to know who this could be. Again, sort of limiting with the description of this person. We don’t really know who we’re even looking for. But no one’s gone into your house. And we think at this point, they’re probably not going to come back. But just for safety, give it a couple more days before we let you go back in.”

Frank Returns Home

And so this is a couple days into this, and Frank, he and his girls, they had to leave pretty abruptly, and so they were not able to take any supplies with them. They had their toiletries and their pillows and all their nice things. They’re in the house still. And so it’s broad daylight on the third day of this, and Frank’s like, “You know what? I think I can pretty much just go over there, run in the house real quick and just get my stuff, bring it back, and then we’ll have a couple more days and we’ll move back in.”

And so he drives. Frank does broad daylight on this third day of the stakeout. He gets to his property, and he doesn’t see any police anywhere. Doesn’t see any cop cars anywhere. He’s thinking, “Oh, maybe they’re unmarked or something, I don’t know.” But there’s nobody parked anywhere. It just looks like his house is here and no one’s watching it. And he’s like, “Okay, well, they’re probably here somewhere. I’m just going to run in real quick, get my stuff and leave.”

And so he parks in his driveway. He gets out of his car, and he starts walking towards the front door. But before he even gets to the porch, he thinks he sees something moving in his house up on the second floor, that same bedroom where they had been. And he stops immediately because he’s thinking, “Oh, wait a minute. What if they’re watching my property from in the house? They didn’t specify how they were going to watch the house. And I don’t want to just walk in there to potentially an armed police officer who’s waiting for an intruder. I don’t want to just barge in

The Dark Truth About Danny LaPlante

SHAWN RYAN: Holy shit.

MRBALLEN: And the dude in the corner, his name was Danny LaPlante. I’m going to tell you about Danny LaPlante because the story, it takes a horrible turn. This is already bad, but it gets exponentially worse.

So Danny LaPlante was this 16-year-old kid and he clearly had humongous issues, huge issues. Six months earlier from when he’s discovered in the wall, he had had some sort of fleeting interaction with Tina Bowen, the 15-year-old. Apparently he made some sort of move on her and he felt rejected. Tina didn’t recall it at all. They apparently went to school together, but she does not have a memory of interacting with this guy ever. It’s like, “I didn’t even know that he felt that way about me.”

But he felt spurned by her. He felt rejected. And the way he handled his rejection is he snuck into their house right after that. So six months earlier, burrowed a hole in their wall in the basement and was living in their walls.

And what he was doing is, by the way, he did not have access to their whole house from that hole in the basement. He only had a little crawl space in the walls in the basement. He was leaving the crawl space all the time and just wandering their house with the family there. He was spying on the family 24/7.

And then at a certain point, when the girls went downstairs and had that seance, Danny could tell they were having a seance to try to contact their mother. And all those tapping sounds he made were intentional. He was trying to pretend to be their mother to make them feel like it’s mom. He was the one. He snuck into their bedrooms and was flicking the underside of their bed. This guy was asking to get caught.

He never did, but it was him pretending to be their mom. And then eventually he mixed it up and decided to be evil and pretended to be a malevolent spirit. So this guy’s completely psychopathic, right?

So he gets arrested and he’s put in jail, and 10 months later, as he’s awaiting trial, he is given bond. He’s allowed to leave jail. He’s given bond.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s the framing, right? Yeah, bond.

MRBALLEN: And while he’s out on bond, he sneaks into another family’s house. And for reasons that we still don’t even understand now, he murdered three of the four people in that family after living in their walls. And now he’s currently in jail.

And he recently was put up for a parole hearing, and he was rejected. And during the parole hearing, they determined that he’s arguably one of, if not the single most sociopathic member in the entire prison system. So that’s the story of Danny LaPlante.

SHAWN RYAN: Damn. How did he kill the other family?

MRBALLEN: He drowned them.

SHAWN RYAN: He drowned them.

MRBALLEN: I believe the mom was strangled and the two children he drowned.

SHAWN RYAN: Jeez.

MRBALLEN: Yeah. And so if you look at this guy now, if you look at videos of Daniel LaPlante now, I mean, if you were to imagine somebody capable of doing that, that’s what he looks like. So not good, dude.

The Art of Storytelling

SHAWN RYAN: How do you find this stuff?

MRBALLEN: Well, that one’s pretty well publicized, I suppose.

SHAWN RYAN: We know about that. Yeah.

MRBALLEN: But the thing that, and this is not to toot my own horn, but I think that the thing that I will do to stories that I think brings them to life a little bit is there are stories that are told by loads of people on loads of accounts and channels and movies and TV shows. But a lot of time there’s sort of like a formula for how each one gets told.

For example, this is completely random, but like, Roswell, New Mexico. I don’t even have the story in mind, but the way that story is often told is “Roswell, New Mexico is like, were aliens by the government are kept,” and like, that’s how you start the story and then you sort of back into it. And that’s how everybody tells that story.

If I was going to tell, and I’d never done this, a story about Roswell, I would start with some anecdote that led to this theory even existing. I would start with somebody’s experience in real time that was potentially paranormal. And then I would begin to connect it to Roswell in some way. Maybe the government comes in after the fact, and suddenly the sighting this person saw, the government’s asking questions, and it turns out it’s the agents from Roswell, New Mexico.

And so I like to find a way to tell a story where the payoff is only at the end. Especially in true crime stories, which we do a lot of, so many times when you tell a story like that, it becomes one fixated on the antagonist, the killer, because they’re the most obscene, they’re the most memorable in the worst ways. And you lead with, “today I’m going to tell you the story of the murder of so and so and so.”

Going into it, you sort of already know what it’s going to, what the story is, and you’re fixated on the killer. And so the way I tell these stories, it’s designed to be like you’re in the POV of the normal people that are meant to feel relatable to you. The people who, like the Bowen family, were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s all. That’s it. And the other family that were killed, the Gustafsons, wrong place, wrong time.

I want you to inhabit their point of view and have the killer be almost anonymous. This is a story where Danny LaPlante gets really named, but the killer or the bad thing that happens always needs to feel like sort of this thing that always happens in a MrBallen story. It’s this ambiguous bad thing. It’s the character in the story that I can relate to. I can feel their emotions that way. By the time the bad thing happens, it’s heart wrenching. You’re like, “Oh my God, I feel for those people.”

So that story gets told a ton, but it’s often told with “I’m going to tell you the story of the guy in the wall.”

SHAWN RYAN: Man, you do a phenomenal job.

MRBALLEN: Thank you. That was a long one.

SHAWN RYAN: Holy shit. Living in the wall.

MRBALLEN: Yeah. And you know what’s crazy is…

SHAWN RYAN: This guy had parents.

More People Living in Walls

MRBALLEN: I think he did. He was a very, don’t quote me, I want to say a very dysfunctional family, if you can imagine.

But there’s actually, these are far less good stories, but there’s a shocking number of, because we researched this stuff, shocking number of people that have found people living in their walls. And honestly, it’s usually, it’s not like you can live in someone’s wall. It isn’t like your walls magically connect all over your house. That’s not really how it works.

But there are definitely instances, especially in major cities of squatters finding their way into these apartment complexes and different people’s homes. Actually this is not even a full story, but there is this, there was a movie based on this and I’m not prepared to tell this whole story, but there was this apartment complex, I want to say it was in New York where there were all these people getting killed.

Just in this massive Section 8 style housing, people packed on top of each other. Super big high rise. All these people were getting killed. They were just turning up dead in their apartments. Nobody knew why. They just would be found dead in their apartment sort of inexplicably.

And it would turn out that the way this apartment was built was really, really cheaply. In particular, the way they insulated the walls between each of the different units. So in essence, if you wanted to, there was a way from, I think the basement where you could get into the inner workings of every single, you could get into the space between every single apartment. There was effectively scaffolding very near.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh my gosh.

MRBALLEN: And even worse than that, every single apartment, their mirror was just placed into the drywall. It wasn’t anchored at all. And so these dudes began sneaking into people’s apartments by just climbing inside of the wall, like this high rise building and punching open the mirror. Now they’re in your apartment and killing the people in the apartment and going back in through the mirror.

SHAWN RYAN: Jeez.

MRBALLEN: And there was the, I think I don’t know if this one was true or not. But there was one about, in a way, it’s sort of not heartwarming at all. It’s bad, but it’s the closest thing to heartwarming.

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know if you have any heartwarming stories.

The Hidden Apartment Dweller

MRBALLEN: This one is like, there was this guy who, I want to say this might be, I don’t know if this is a true story or not, but it’s a great, you can probably look it up. It’s one of the more viral clips that’s out there, and I think it’s true.

There was this guy who, he lived in the city. He was in New York, and I think he shot content for like a vlog or something. I don’t think he was a big influencer or anything, but he was the type of guy who filmed himself a lot.

And there was this, someone put together a compilation of all these videos of him over the course of these vlogs he was doing. He was mentioning that, he’s like, “Man, it’s the weirdest thing happened to me last night. My toothbrush was on the other side of the counter.” You know, little things that, in the vlog, he’s clearly not making a big deal out of it, but he’s saying, “I mean, that’s so weird. I’m losing my mind.”

He just here and there mentioned that there are all these weird things happening. He lives alone. He lives in a big apartment building in New York. And he eventually starts to question his own sanity. He begins to say to his followers, or whatever you want to call it, he’s like, “I just, something weird is happening to me. I keep forgetting where I’m putting things. You know, I keep buying things, and they’re disappearing.” In particular, food. And weird stuff is happening in the kitchen.

And so he eventually sets up a camera in his kitchen. It’s a very small New York City apartment kitchen. He sets up a camera and, you know, over the first couple of nights he’s filming, nothing happens. He doesn’t even know what he’s looking for. He’s not going to, “Oh, someone’s living in my apartment with me.” He’s just like, “What, am I sleepwalking? What am I doing?”

And then there’s this one clip that’s gone crazy viral. It’d be easy to find. It’s the middle of the night, and this cupboard opens, and this little woman, this little woman climbs out of the cupboard, and she’s looking around and she goes over to a sink. She hasn’t even got off the counter yet. And she squats down and pees in a sink.

She jumps down and she goes to his fridge and she starts eating all this food in his fridge. And then she goes around the house. She comes back with a toothbrush. Sure enough, she cleans her teeth, puts everything back, and then she goes back into the cupboard and puts everything back.

And the guy discovered it and he was horrified. This is real too. Well, I don’t know that this, I’ve seen this video and I believe it’s true. And this guy did an interview for it. He was like, “Yeah, it turns out in that cupboard you could basically climb up into the ceiling of the apartment and hide.”

But it was this woman who, and this is the heartwarming part, if you will, I think that she had no money. You know, she was down on her luck. She was this elderly woman who had literally walked into his apartment when he left the door open one day and just magically found this hiding spot and had been there for a year. So he was living for a year. It’s crazy.

SHAWN RYAN: Holy s*, dude. You uncover some wild…

MRBALLEN: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Wow. Do you believe in paranormal stuff?

The Mexican Pilot Mystery

MRBALLEN: I don’t know. I sort of do. I think that what’s happened is in virtue of constantly searching for stories that are credible enough that we would share them on our shows, you sort of are exposed to a lot of stuff that’s clearly not true, especially when it comes to user submissions. A lot of that stuff, it could be true, but there’s just no way I can prove any level of credibility. It’s one person’s perspective type of thing.

But there are definitely some things that are tough to explain. And I think that where I go to is it’s sort of a cop out to say, you know, paranormal doesn’t exist. Only because all you have to do is just zoom out. Zoom out a little bit on our species, zoom out a little bit on Earth.

It doesn’t matter what you think of how we got here or whether there’s God, whether there isn’t, or whatever. Your interpretation of existence and our place in it doesn’t matter. It is undeniably the case that we are this little tiny thing in this vast space that we don’t really understand.

Even through every religion, we still don’t really understand. We don’t really know with absolute clarity who we are and what we’re doing here. We have good ideas, we have great theories, but it’s undeniably part of the human experience that we were like, yeah, we don’t really know. We think. We think. So I believe this, but I don’t really know.

And so because of that, why is it so outlandish to think that there could be, for example, supernatural activity? I mean, I told this story actually on the Story Time with MrBallen, the new show we’ve been doing. I told it to Tom Segura on our first episode.

Rafael’s Solo Flight

The shortened version of it is there’s a story of this Mexican pilot who’s this young civilian pilot who was learning how to fly just as a civilian. He’s a 21-year-old kid, forget his name. And there was the day where he was going to fly solo for the first time.

So he shows up to the airfield, I think it’s called Chimalacan, Mexico. I’m butchering the name. He shows up, he’s done all his tandem or whatever you call it, flights with an instructor. Today he’s going to fly on his own. And the flight path that he was going to be on was very simple. Take off, do a couple of turns, come back and land. Just show us you can do it and then you’re certified.

So he’s not nervous. He gets in the plane, he takes off. I think it was 9:15 in the morning. I want to say this is in the 80s or 90s, I forget, but it wasn’t super recent. He takes off and everything’s going fine and he begins making his turn.

And then at a certain point there’s this fog that rolls in. And they were sort of aware of the fog, but the fog really came in fast. And as he’s entering this fog, he loses his visibility. And this is also at a time where the instruments in the aircraft were pretty rudimentary. It was basically dead reckoning. You’re sort of looking out the window to see where you’re going. This might even have been in the 60s or 70s, now that I think about it. It was not recent.

And all he’s got is his compass and his altimeter. He doesn’t have much going on and he’s just sort of looking out the window and he’s seeing where he’s at. And he said, okay, I’m good. He’s making his turn, but at a certain point he knows he needs to begin to descend to land. And he basically knows where he is. He figures once I go below the fog, I’m going to see the runway and I’ll land.

Loss of Control

But as he tries to descend, he realizes his craft, his airplane’s not responding. It’s flying, it’s steady, it’s not faltering, but it’s not descending. And he tries to pull the yoke to one side. It’s not turning right, it’s not turning left. He can’t do anything. He’s not panicking.

But as this is happening, he realizes that the plane is not just leveled off, it actually is beginning to climb. And he has no control over it. He’s just going up. And so he goes over the radio, he’s trying to tell, I guess the air traffic control, what’s going on. But he doesn’t really even know what’s going on other than he’s lost control of his aircraft.

He’s in this big cloud of fog. He’s sort of losing sight of anything. And as he’s rising, he begins to lose consciousness and finally just passes out. So he’s riding up into the clouds with no control and he passes out.

So Rafael, pretty sure his name’s Rafael, for the sake of this story, I’m going to call him Rafael from here on out. So Rafael, he wakes up sort of abruptly and he’s looking around. And immediately he takes stock of what’s going on because he just passed out in the cockpit a minute ago. And he’s flying solo, pretty dangerous.

And he sees that his plane’s still flying. He’s flying level, his plane’s fine, and the mist is all gone, the fog is all gone. And he looks out his window and he sees that not only is the fog all gone, but he’s actually over a very new looking environment. He’s flying over water now. In every direction. It’s water.

And he’s really just happy that he hasn’t crashed, and he can’t really picture how he got here. But as he’s sort of taking stock and taking back control of the plane, and now he does have control, the plane again, he realizes there’s somebody trying to talk to him on the radio.

The Strange Radio Transmission

And they’re like, “Hey, hey, Rafael, Rafael. Hey, what’s going on, Rafael?” And he’s like, “Oh my God, I don’t even know what to say to you. I don’t even know where I am.”

And the guy over the radio is air traffic control off the coast of, I forget where it is, some coastal city in Mexico. They’re like, “Hey, I’ve been talking to you for the last hour or so. Are you okay? And is somebody with you right now?”

And Rafael’s like, “What? No, it’s just me. I fell asleep. I don’t know how I got here.”

And so the air traffic control guy is very suspect of what’s going on. And he’s like, “Hey, do me a favor. Turn around. Come over here. You’re going to land right here at, you know, wherever, whatever city this is. Come land right here. We’re going to talk to you, okay?”

And so he’s like, “Thank you. Okay?” So he turns around and he lands. And where he is, and now forget, I think it’s three hours away from where he took off. Where he lands is a three-hour flight away, let’s put it that way. I forget the name of where he lands.

The Investigation

So he lands, and as soon as he lands, he’s thinking, “Oh, my God, I’m getting so much trouble. I definitely didn’t pass my test. This did not go well.”

He gets out of his aircraft and there’s all these people waiting for him. These stereotypical, in suits, government officials that show, that’s what it looks like, that’s the way he reports it. And they take him. And before he can even ask questions about what the heck just happened, they’re like, “Hey, you’re going to come with us. We’re going to screen you and see if you’re on drugs. And also we want to give you a psychological test to make sure you’re sane.”

And the whole time he’s like, “What is going on?” He’s trying to ask questions. Nobody’s giving him an answer. It’s these people in suits that just kind of whisked him away to this hospital.

And he gets to the hospital and they give him a drug screening, and he’s totally sober. And they have a psychologist talk to him who determines that he’s shaken, but he’s sane. And it’s only at that point that they’re like, “All right, Rafael, we’re going to tell you what the heck’s going on here.” And he has no idea. He’s totally clueless what’s happened here.

The Impossible Timeline

So he took off at 9:15am, this is what they told him. They’re like, “You took off at 9:15am, you flew up into the cloud, and then no one could find you again. And then at about,” I want to say it was an hour later or an hour and a half later, call it 10:30, 10:45, “air traffic control off the coast of Mexico, they picked up this blip on their radar flying in circles out over the water. And it was Rafael.”

And they’re like, “What are you doing here?” The guy who was like, “Hey, are you alone in the cockpit right now?” That guy, that same air traffic control, he got on the radio with Rafael and he spoke to him for an hour, and they recorded his conversation.

And at some point in this conversation with Rafael that Rafael doesn’t remember, there’s a recording of this I wish I could play for you right now, where Rafael, it doesn’t sound like him, but he’s the only one in the cockpit. And it’s recorded on air traffic control.

The Alien Message

He says something to the effect of, “This is not Rafael. We come to you from another planet. We’re using his body as a microphone. You need to understand that your species is on the brink of destruction, that you’re using nuclear weapons. You’re about to turn on yourselves, and you’re going to annihilate yourselves if you don’t stop. And if you don’t stop, there are,” the insinuation was entities other than people on Earth are going to intervene and stop you.

It was basically like, “Stop fing around on Earth and blowing s up and killing each other, or else someone’s going to have to intervene.” It’s sort of the message, but it’s said through Rafael. And if you listen to it, even though it’s in Spanish, it sounds horrifying. His voice sounds deep and it’s garbly, and you can tell the air traffic control guy, as he’s talking back and forth to him, he’s unnerved by it.

And then magically, at 10:30 or 10:45, when Rafael wakes, comes to in the cockpit, his voice totally changes. On the recording, he’s like, “Hey, what’s going on? I just woke up. I just woke up.”

So Rafael has no memory of it, but there’s a couple other anomalies that don’t really add up.

The Physical Impossibilities

One, you have just the fact that there’s a recording of the conversation where for an hour, this guy is getting this weird feedback from Rafael that sounds like another alien species talking to him. But also the plane itself. It’s a three-hour flight to get to that body of water. And he had enough fuel in his plane, I want to say, for an hour’s flight or two hours flight, it was less.

When they recovered his plane, he had three-quarters full tank of gas. So just to get to where he was, even if he had flown straight, one, he didn’t have enough time because it was 9:15ish takeoff, 10:45am or whatever it was he’s found over the body of water. That’s not three hours, that’s an hour and a half. So it’s less than three hours. So even a fast plane couldn’t have got there in three hours. And the fuel was literally too full to be there.

The Buried Evidence

And so the only way you can get this story, this is sort of dramatic, but it’s good for the story. The story’s not really widely talked about because it’s a very scrutinized story in Mexico because people are like, “This is the best piece of evidence that something weird’s going on. There could be aliens out there.”

This feels like the story has been buried in an archive in this library in Mexico. And the way we got access to it, I kid you not, is we had to write a handwritten letter to this Mexican library to request to use the story in the recording. Because it’s the recording, that’s the transcript in the recording. And then when we asked, they had to interview us to figure out what we were using it for.

SHAWN RYAN: Are you…

MRBALLEN: I swear to God.

SHAWN RYAN: Are you serious?

MRBALLEN: Yeah. And they were like, “Whatever you do, don’t make a video about it.”

SHAWN RYAN: Here we are.

MRBALLEN: And here we are. Yeah. So…

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, s*.

MRBALLEN: Right?

SHAWN RYAN: How’d you find that one?

MRBALLEN: So we have a pretty amazing team of researchers. And we have one, Sam, who’s our Spanish language researcher. And so she will specifically read news sources that are Spanish language that we don’t necessarily have access to. And she just found it. Yeah, I guess people were talking about it on the interwebs, if you will.

SHAWN RYAN: Man, that is wild.

MRBALLEN: Yeah. You know, have you had any paranormal stuff happen to you?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I mean, I had the… I had… It’s a long one. And if you want to hear a long one, I have a long story. How much time have we got?

MRBALLEN: We got, we got, we got all the time in the world.

A Personal Paranormal Experience

MRBALLEN: Yeah. So I have one thing that happened to me that I don’t even know if it’s paranormal or not. I would say that it likely feels close. And in a way, it’s—

SHAWN RYAN: It.

The Cabin in the White Mountains

MRBALLEN: People think it’s the reason I started doing MrBallen, but it’s totally coincidental. I have exactly one time that I had something strange happen to me. And it also happens to be one of the first stories I told on the Internet that went pretty viral. But it’s not why I do this. It’s just happenstance.

So when I was 16 years old, I was big into snowboarding. And I had these two buddies of mine who both were named Nick. And one of them, his nickname was Wolf, like the animal Wolf. And so for the sake of the story, there’s Nick and there’s Wolf.

And the three of us, we snowboarded together all the time. So I grew up just south of Boston, Massachusetts, and I lived in a town called Quincy. You know, Massachusetts is not known for its rugged mountain peaks. And so there’s really nowhere to go snowboarding. But there was this place called Blue Hills. It’s this little ski resort. It’s literally a hill, hence the name Blue Hills in Milton, Massachusetts. And they pump snow onto it, and it’s no kidding, just a little tiny hill. And we loved it. We were there all the time, taught snowboarding there. It was like that was our place in the winter. Me, Nick, and Wolf were there all the time.

But every winter, from the time I was maybe 12, so 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, the one big trip we would take is Nick’s family had a cabin in New Hampshire up in the White Mountains. And for us, that was the one time where we’d go stay at the cabin, and for a weekend or a few days, we would go snowboarding at real mountains in New Hampshire, which compared to Blue Hills in Massachusetts, these were Mount Everest. It was amazing. And so we really looked forward to that trip every single year.

The Unexpected Loss

But when I was 16, we had a trip planned to go up to this cabin and their cabin itself. It’s located up on this old abandoned ski resort, which matters to the story. Basically, they built all these little cabins. I think it’s called King Pine was the name of the resort before it shut down. But there’s all these cabins that were built for the ski resort. But then the ski resort shut down, and a lot of the cabins got demolished. Nobody really kept them or they were sold off or whatever. But there was a few that kept their cabin on these old abandoned mountains. And there’s really very little in the way of public service that goes up there. So the roads get all nasty and stuff. But it was cool to be living on the side of the mountain.

But anyhow, we had a trip to go up there planned and sort of out of left field, Nick’s father passed away. It was, I honestly, I think it was a heart attack, but it was very abrupt. And when we would go to this trip, this annual trip up to this cabin, it was always me, Wolf, Nick, and then Nick’s mom and dad. And they were this perfect couple. You know, they loved each other so much. They were so much fun to be around, just the most motherly, fatherly group. And they loved that cabin, especially the dad. The dad, I don’t think he built it, but he was always, you know, he was very handy fixing it up. You know, he’s a man’s man, rugged guy.

And so when I found out that Nick’s dad had died, you know, I really didn’t care about the ski trip, snowboard trip. I’m thinking, of course we’re not doing that. You know, how could we? It was literally a couple of days away. You know, there’s not a chance we’re going to do that. I remember I talked to Wolf separately, so not the guy whose dad died. And I said, hey, you know, just between you and I, obviously, we’re not going to go, right? And he’s like, yeah, no way.

But I ended up getting a call from Nick. And Nick was always a very stoic guy, sort of a tough, quiet, reserved kind of guy. And he’s like, hey, showing almost no emotion or anything. He’s like, hey, you know, we’re just going to go. We’re going to go on the trip anyways.

And I remember thinking that I actually really didn’t want to because I’m thinking about how uncomfortable that’s going to be. The absence of his father is going to be so obvious. But I also was thinking that, you know, for all I know, this is their way of sort of honoring his late father. He loved the cabin, and maybe it’s one of those things where it’s, he would want us to go still do the trip.

And so I called Wolf separately, and he sort of agreed that. He’s like, I feel like it’s our responsibility to go and be supportive and just let this be whatever it is. You know, it’s not meant to be a fun vacation. It’s meant to be, be there for the family and just go. And so me and Wolf agree to go with Nick.

The Trip to the Cabin

And the deal is it’s going to be the three of us, the three friends, Nick’s mom, like usual. And then she had two much older sons. They were in their 30s at the time. We’re 16. I hadn’t met them before. I knew they existed. But, you know, the rumor was that they would be joining us at the cabin, presumably the night we got there. We were going to be there for three nights. They were going to join us. And so without even telling Wolf or I, we sort of understood that they’re going there to sort of fill the obvious gap left behind by Nick’s dad’s absence. And so that’s sort of what we think we’re walking into.

And so the day comes, it’s just a couple of days later, you know, Nick’s mom comes, picks me up, and it’s me, Wolf, and Nick in the back seat. It’s a big SUV, and, you know, Nick’s mom is driving, and the front passenger seat is, you know, conspicuously empty. That’s where the dad would sit. And so, you know, up to New Hampshire we go. And, you know, at this point, I am, I’ve embraced the situation, and I’m just looking to be a good friend. So is Wolf. We just go up there. It is what it is.

The Cabin’s Layout

So we go up to the cabin. And a couple more points about the cabin that are sort of important for the story is the cabin itself is situated on a mountain. It’s built on a mountain. If you think about how you’d build a level house on a slope, you got to sort of put half the house, if you will, out on stilts to keep it up, supported. And then the other half is sort of effectively built into the mountain, you know, to build something on a slope, I guess. I hope that makes sense. And so that’s how this one’s built. Basically, half the house was sort of jutting off the mountain with big stilts and a big wraparound porch that went around the outside. And then sort of a section of the house was sort of burrowed into the mountain.

And when you drive up this mountain, you’d turn onto a little access road, and you’d be approaching the house, sort of looking at it from a profile view. You’d see on the left side is the stilted side, and the right side is the side buried in the mountain. The door is right in front of you as you pull up to it. The door to get into the cabin, you actually have to step onto the wraparound porch and take a few steps. And then there’s a door that leads directly into the side of the cabin. And once you step inside, you’re standing quite literally between the kitchen on your right where there’s linoleum under your right foot. And on your left is this shag carpet where the dining room is. So you step in and you’re straddling these two rooms. There’s also sleigh bells that they kept on the door. So anytime you opened it, you could always hear it opening.

And so you walk into the cabin and there’s just one big open room. It’s called an open floor plan. It’s a very small cabin. So kitchen over here, dining room here with a table in it. And if you just kept walking straight towards the back of this cabin, again, not very big, you’d enter the living room. There’s no wall demarcating it. You just sort of get to a couch with a TV on the back of the cabin. And if you turned around in that back of the cabin and looked up, you’d see a lofted second floor. And basically at the back side of the cabin, there’s stairs that go up to the second floor. So it’s just a lofted second floor. That’s where the mom and dad, that’s where they would sleep.

And then where we would sleep is when you first walk in and you got the kitchen on your right, you got the dining room on your left. If you walk halfway through the cabin and you stopped and you turned right, you’re now looking into the mountain that direction. There’s a single hallway that goes straight down and then makes a tiny little left. And there’s one bedroom that is where we would sleep.

And when you go into that bedroom, you’d walk in. It’s a corner fed room, if you will, for our military days. And immediately on your right is a bunk bed. I would sleep on the lower bunk, Wolf would sleep on the top bunk. And then with basically all the remaining space in the room, it’s not a very big room, was a queen size bed where Nick would sleep. And there was just enough space where you could walk between the queen size and the bunk bed, a little row there. So all that will make sense once we get into the story or what really happens.

The First Night

So anyways, we get up to the mountain, we get to the cabin, we put our stuff down and right away, you know, even though it’s midday, we head out to Attitash, I think that’s the name of the mountain we went to and we snowboard all day and it’s great. You know, even though it’s a sad trip, it was wonderful to be out on the mountain.

And then we come back and at this point we were told that the brother, one of the two older brothers, was likely going to be there late at night. He was coming in from some trip he had and so basically he was going to get there, but it was going to be late at night, likely after we fell asleep, so there’s no reason to stay up for him.

And so we were at the cabin and the three of us are like, man, let’s just go to bed right now. It’s seven or eight o’clock. Let’s just go to bed and we can get up super early and hit the mountain and snowboard all day tomorrow. It’s going to be awesome.

And so we go in our bedroom and the other two fall asleep immediately. But I just can’t sleep. There’s no reason for it. Just couldn’t sleep. Maybe I was excited and I had a PlayStation 1 in there and I was playing SSX Tricky, that little snowboarding game. Just crushing video games. I just couldn’t sleep. But finally I’m like, all right, I got to go to bed. So I turn it off and I get into the bunk and it’s truly pitch black inside this room.

The room has, it’s been built into the mountain. It’s not some secret room. It’s just the way the cabin is constructed. There’s no windows, it’s bunkered in the mountain. And so there’s no light coming in. And it’s the middle of the night and the only light in the room was just a digital clock that had a little red dial to it, a little red digital face. That was the only light in the room. But it’s truly a pitch black room.

The Footsteps

And so I’m laying there and I still can’t sleep. And my feet are closest to the door and Wolf is the same orientation above me and Nick is the same orientation next to me. And I’m laying there and at a certain point I hear footsteps out on the wraparound porch and I didn’t hear a car approach. I also wasn’t actively listening for sounds outside. I was trying to fall asleep, but I just, I remember hearing these footsteps on the wraparound porch.

And, you know, I think that I mentioned it before in another story. It’s amazing what your brain will do. I’ve seen this in this particular story, and I’ve also seen it, you know, in the military, where you’re met with overwhelming evidence that something bad is happening, but your brain is like, nope, everything is fine. And it’s the middle of the night on a mountain, and I’m hearing footsteps in the wraparound porch. And so my brain immediately jumps to, oh, it’s Nick’s brother. Has to be Nick’s brother. It’s two, three in the morning right now. We knew he was going to be here. I’ve never met him.

And it’s funny, my go to thought was, I’m going to pretend to be asleep because I’m not, I don’t want to have a social interaction with this dude right now. Never met him before. It’s three in the morning. Was going to walk in and be like, yo, get up. Let’s chat. Let’s meet, you know. He’s not going to do that. But that’s all I’m thinking. I’m like, all right, just do your best sleep impression.

And so I’m sitting there, and I hear these footsteps. And they’re out on the porch, which is elevated off the ground. It’s pretty echoey, and it’s silent in the house beyond that. And the footsteps, they stop outside the door, the door that leads into the kitchen and the living room. And I hear the door open, and I can hear the sound of the sleigh bells on the door ringing. So makes sense. The door is opening, he’s here.

And the first thing that I noticed that seemed off was I didn’t hear the door shut again. I just heard it open. And the footsteps, when they’re out on the wraparound porch that is an elevated wooden platform, makes sense that they would echo in a sense, or that you would hear them.

SHAWN RYAN: Them.

The Footsteps in the Cabin

MRBALLEN: The cabin is not echoey. There’s shag carpet, and it’s like cement slab. You don’t hear people’s footsteps. But when the footsteps came into the cabin, I continued to hear them. Like, they were echoing almost like they were out on the wraparound porch.

And so, footsteps, wraparound porch. The door opens, the sleigh bells. The footsteps come into the cabin, and they’re like, echoing. Echo’s not even the right word. They’re loud. Like, I can hear a thump with each step.

And I’m telling myself it has to be one of Nick’s brothers. That’s all. That’s all it can be. There’s no other explanation here because any alternative is awful. There’s no other good alternative.

And so the footsteps are moving, and I had this weird thought that I can only describe this way. It was almost like I could see in my mind’s eye where they were in the house. Whoever. Whatever this was. It was like I was intimately aware. Probably because I was having a fight or flight reaction. And my brain was going crazy.

It was like with every step, it was like I could see the feet moving exactly where they were in the cabin. And I could tell as the footsteps hard stomped through the cabin, they stopped. And I knew they were stopping right at the point where you would turn and you would, if you wanted to, you’d walk down the hallway that led to us.

There’s no other. Once you come down this hallway, we’re the only room that’s left, right? And so I’m picturing in my mind, okay, this has got to be Nick’s brother. But what’s going on here? Why do I have this weird thought about this?

The footsteps stop at that point, and they turn and they begin walking down the hallway towards our room. Our door’s shut. It’s pitch dark beyond the little red light in the room.

And at this point, I’m starting to wonder, okay, I don’t know if this could be Nick’s brother. This just feels awkward. It feels wrong. The door’s not shut. What’s up with these footsteps being this loud? Is this an intruder? Is it a predator? I don’t know. Is it an animal that’s come into the house? All these thoughts are going through my head. They’re all bad.

And I remember having this almost paralyzing fear come over me as the footsteps began coming down the hall. Because all I’m thinking is in a moment here, invariably it seems like the door is going to open and I’m going to have to have some sort of interaction with whoever, whatever this is.

Wolf and Nick are dead asleep. And I’m so scared with fear, I can’t make a sound. I’m so scared. I’m so scared.

And so I’m laying there, and the footsteps come down the hallway, and then they stop right outside the door. So it comes down the hallway, and it turns and it’s facing the doorway that’s shut. And I’m looking towards the foot of my bed, the bunk bed now.

And there’s a space between the top bunk and where I’m laying. And so I have a little bit of a view on this door that’s on the wall here. I can see the door. And the door opens inwardly, and it’s so dark. But my mind, I’m like, I know where the door is. I know, even though I can’t see it, I know if anybody comes in, they’re going to be right there.

The Dark Figure

And so I’m laying here staring down through the slat in my bunk bed. The door opens and this dark, tall figure walks into the room. And each step is like this thunderous boom as it’s walking into the room, like it’s echoing through the whole house. It feels like I’m amazed no one else has woken up to it.

And I see it walk past, and I’m going to explain this. I see it walk past the slats in the bed or that space in the bed, and the room is pitch black. There’s really no light coming in. Even when the door opened up. There’s a tiny bit of light from the digital clock, but there’s virtually no light.

And I could practically perfectly make out a dark silhouette within a dark room. It was like I could see it clear as day, as if there was a light being shown on it. This tall, dark figure that walks past the bed, and I’m laying here, and my view is partially obscured by the top bunk over here.

I can see Nick on the bed there. I can basically see the whole room. But if you’re standing real close to the bed and you were to walk down the row and you were taller than the top bunk, let’s say I couldn’t actually see you unless I moved my head and looked up at you, right?

So I’m laying here, and this thing walks into the room. It turns at the foot of the bed and it begins marching down the space between where I’m laying and where Nick is laying. And it’s so tall that from my perspective, I can only see its thighs, if you will. Its hips would be above the top bunk. It doesn’t feel physically possible that it’s so tall.

And it marches right next to me and it stops. And I’m laying there sweating bullets. I honestly don’t think I’ve been more scared in my life. I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared.

And I remember thinking. I said it in the YouTube video that I told, and it became a meme within my community of fans. I was very earnestly, I was like, all I could think was, “Please, God, whatever or whoever you are, don’t bend down here and look at me, because it’ll ruin my life to have to interact with you.”

But I’m laying there, all I’m thinking is, oh, my God, don’t interact with me. Don’t. I know this is not Nick’s brother. I don’t know who or what this is. But it turned away from me almost like a military facing movement because it had marched down the way and it turned away from me. Now it’s looking out over Nick’s bed.

I’m frozen, paralyzed. I was helpless. He could have destroyed me. I couldn’t do anything. And it bowed forward into Nick. It bent forward into Nick and then disappeared into the ground. Just was gone.

And in a movie, let’s say, I think you might be like, oh, now it’s safe. Then the ghost melted into the floor. We can run away now. All good, everybody, right? But in real life, I’m like, where did it go? Where is it? That’s not how. That’s not normal. There’s so many questions. What do I do now?

And so I’m laying in bed wondering if it’s going to poke its head up and look at me. And again, it’s this horrible, horrible thing. And so I just laid there in bed waiting for whatever or whoever this was to reemerge.

SHAWN RYAN: And I didn’t move.

The Morning After

MRBALLEN: And I’m frozen solid, just so scared. And at a certain point when nothing happened in the room, I must have fallen asleep. That’s the only explanation because it’s like this gray area post seeing it to when I wake up.

But I basically come to or wake up very shortly after this. I only could have slept for an hour tops. And I realized that Nick and Wolf are both up out of the bed. It’s just me. There’s a little bit of light in there, and I can hear out in the kitchen the sound of Nick’s mom doing her morning routine.

And I’m so relieved. The room is safe again. I’m up out of the bed and I go running. I’m sorry. Nick and Wolf, they’re still in the bed. They’re still in their bedroom, but I can hear Nick’s mom. That’s actually important.

So I wake up, I hear Nick’s mom, Nick and Wolf are still in bed. I know it’s safe now. I pop out of bed and I run into the kitchen or I go into the kitchen and I’m about to tell her. I had all these questions. I wanted to say to her, I mean, I’m 16, but I’m a kid. I need some reassurance from an adult.

But I instantly was like, wait a minute, she has just lost her husband a couple days ago, and I am going to come dangerously close to potentially having a sort of offensive conversation if I start being like, oh, I think I saw a ghost last night in my room. Who do you think it is? So I just was like, how do I approach this?

SHAWN RYAN: How old are you?

MRBALLEN: I was 16, but I was like, oh, I have the perfect thing to ask.

The Third Night at the Cabin

MRBALLEN: I go in the kitchen and I’m like shaken up because I know this happened. This was not like some fleeting dream. Like something happened. And I say to her, I’m like, hey. And she’s making coffee, doing her thing, and I’m like, hey, did your sons, your older sons, did one of them show up last night?

And she sort of looked at me and she just didn’t say anything. And I’m like, were they here? Do they stop by at any point? And she goes, no. And I just, I clearly had a reaction to that. She could see a reaction from me. I was like, let down. Like, that was my one silver bullet. Maybe that was Nick’s brother being really weird last night, you know.

And she looks at me and she’s like, “John, it’s okay. It was just my husband. I heard him last night too.” And I got to tell you, that was not a reassuring thing to hear from a parent. It caught me so flat footed because it’s like I haven’t even… I came out there looking like I had seen a ghost. I clearly was probing about something that happened last night. I’m asking, I’m doubling down on was your son here? She just sort of said it and I didn’t even know what to do.

And so I just was like, I can’t talk to her. I can’t, I don’t want to talk to her about this. I don’t even know what to say or do. I’m just going to sit down. I began like drinking like 10 cups of coffee, just like doing anything to take my mind off this.

And then not long after, Wolf and Nick came out of the bedroom and they came over and Nick’s doing his own thing and I pulled Wolf aside and I just told him outright I was like, dude, this what happened last night? And he’s like, “F*, dude. Like, I don’t know what to tell you. That’s horrifying. Sucks, dude. Like, I don’t know what to tell you.” But I told him and I’m like, I’m telling you, I don’t know what to make of it.

And I said, that’s what Nick’s mom said. Like, she… I think she’s referencing whatever happened to me. And he was like, freaked out by it. But he’s also like, I don’t know, man. Like, yeah, there’s got to be an explanation here. And so I sort of took the stance of this is something I’m not going to understand. And I’m just going to act like everything’s normal. Let’s just have a normal day of snowboarding and assume that this is okay. Somehow or another, this is okay.

Returning to the Cabin

And so we do our morning routine. We go snowboarding for the day. And pretty quickly, once I’m out of the cabin and we’re snowboarding, like, it was like it all evaporated from my mind. I forgot about it. Had a great day of riding. And then at the end of the night, when it was time to come home, the one thing I did do is I said to Nick and Wolf, I’m like, hey, tonight when we’re back there because we have two more nights at this cabin, I’m like, can you guys just like let me fall asleep first before you… let me enter the slumber realm ahead of you?

And they’re like, oh, yeah, definitely. We’ll definitely do that for you. And so we get back to the cabin and I checked in with Nick’s mom. I said, hey, tonight we’re expecting your sons or one of them. And she’s like, yeah, yeah, they’re probably going to be here tonight. And I’m like, okay, these elusive brothers, I guess they’re going to be here tonight.

And so I’m in bed at like 7. I’m in my bed. I barely slept the night before. And I’m like just trying to go to bed. And I remember the one thing that I did that made it feel like more real is I put in the springs underneath the bed above me. I put a knife, like slotted into the springs to protect myself. But I’m like, nothing’s going to happen. I’m fine.

And so I lay there in bed and I cannot fall asleep. Because I’m doing that whole like, oh my God, I need to fall asleep before them. Like, I can’t be awake. And so it was impossible to sleep. And eventually, Nick and Wolf were like, dude, we’re going to bed. It’s like midnight. We’re going to bed. We’re not just going to sit here until you do. And I’m like, fine. I’m like, kicking their bed and like, trying to keep them up. But eventually they fell asleep.

And once again, I am alone in the room, wide awake. It’s dark in the…

SHAWN RYAN: With a knife.

The Second Encounter

MRBALLEN: Oh, I got my stupid knife right above me. And I’m laying there, and time was just going by. And at some point, maybe two, three in the morning, I remember hearing the sound of the steps out on the wraparound porch. And it was the same. It was like it happened again. I’m laying there and I hear the sound on the wraparound porch.

And because I’ve now had one experience the first night, this feels the same. And it just defies everything we think we understand about how the way the world works, the way things work. And I was just instantly in that paralysis state that, like, so scared I can’t move. Like I’m dead. And I’m looking up at this knife that I can’t even move my arm to get.

And I’m laying there and I hear the footsteps in the porch. I hear the door. It opens, the sleigh bells. One other thing that I failed to mention the first night is another thing, is as soon as the door opened and there were sleigh bells, I also heard a pot fall to the linoleum floor. That was the first night that did happen. It happened again second night. So it’s like a mirror image. It’s the same thing happening two nights in a row. Like, exactly the same.

And then I hear these loud footsteps as this thing… I can see it in my mind’s eye as walking through the house, the cabin, it stops, turns, and begins walking down the hallway towards our room. And it’s the same as the night before. I know it’s not one of Nick’s brothers. Like, this is an intruder. Like, I don’t know what this is. And I’m horrified.

The door opens up, and again, it’s this tall figure that walks into the room. I see its hips, if you will, through the slot of the bed above me in mine. It’s so tall, I can’t see it. It marches past me next to the bed, and then again, same as the night before, I’m praying it doesn’t look at me and ruin my life. It turns away from me and bows into Nick and vanishes.

And so it’s really the same thing in a row. The same thing two nights in a row. And not comforting. Like, worse. It only made it more real that it had happened again. And I’m still laying there wondering where it went. It isn’t like, oh, don’t worry. Yesterday it vanished. It’ll vanish today. It was the same. It was like, replay.

And I again laid there, could barely sleep. Eventually, out of sheer exhaustion from snowboarding all day, barely sleeping, I did fall asleep. And then I woke up at a certain point. And again I hear Nick’s mom out in the kitchen this time.

Morning Confrontation

That morning, when I got out of bed and went in there, I didn’t care at all about being offensive. Didn’t care in the least. I walked out there, and I was like, hysterical. Like, I don’t even know what to say to you. Like, please tell me your sons were here. And like, I just tell her everything.

And the whole time, she’s looking at me, and she’s a wonderful woman. She’s so motherly, so nice. She’s just like, almost… I can almost feel like she felt bad for me or something. Like, she’s listening to me. She’s not dismissing me, but she’s just letting me do my cathartic ranting about how terrified I am and what the f* is going on here? I want to leave.

And at the end of it, she’s just like, “John, it’s really okay. It’s just my husband. I heard him here last night. I heard him here the night before. It’s fine.” Like, that’s what I’m hearing from the adult in the house. And it was just like, this is not all right.

And I remember on that morning, we have one more night at this house still. And it gets worse. Actually, somehow it gets worse. I was like, I want to go home. I just want to f*ing go home. I don’t want to be here. But this is a trip that I have looked forward… I look forward. This is like, the one big trip. Like, my family didn’t have a lot of money or anything. This was like, a big deal to get to go do this big trip. This was awesome. And it was like, all I talked about.

And so the idea that I’d be calling my folks up like, yo, drive to New Hampshire. Pick me up and bring me home because I’m seeing ghosts.

SHAWN RYAN: There’s a f*ing ghost.

The Decision to Stay

MRBALLEN: It just felt like… like two. And then it also… it was like… I don’t know how this will be interpreted long term. Am I being totally insensitive to the fact that I went here to support the family who’s lost their dad, and I’m claiming a ghost scared me off? It just… it was a lot.

And I grappled with it, and I remember I talked openly to everybody. To the mom, to Nick, to Wolf. I’m like, I’m just… I’m just going to stay. Like, I was openly saying that I wanted to get the f* out of here. But I’ll just stay. It’s one more night. I’ll stay with you guys. It is what it is.

It was a weird morning. It was so weird because she’s like, almost reassured to hear me confirming what she thinks she’s hearing. I don’t even know. It was like, good for her. She wanted to talk about this, and I didn’t want to talk about it. And Nick, the son of the deceased, he’s totally doesn’t want to hear any of it. And Wolf is very scared now. He’s getting worked up by… it was just a very weird thing.

But anyways, we got one more night. And I’m like, God, just got to get through one more night of this awful experience. And so that day, after doing our weird breakfast routine, we found out one, that the brothers were not going to be stopping by after all. Turns out, didn’t really matter, but they were not going to be stopping by. So that night, the one more night I had, I didn’t even have a thing to cling onto. That could be the reason behind these sounds.

The Coffee Table

But before his mom, Nick’s mom drove us to the mountain that day. We made a very small pit stop at this woodworking shop that was near the cabin. She was picking up a new coffee table that they were going to place in the cabin at the foot of the stairs that led up to the second floor of the lofted area. And she just needed me and Nick and Wolf to literally lift it, put it in the jeep.

And so we go to the woodworking shop, we get this new coffee table, this beautiful wood coffee table. We put it in the SUV, we go to the mountain, we do our snowboarding for the day. And I honestly was so checked out, I didn’t really care. I just wanted to get time to pass. I just wanted to be done.

We come back from snowboarding, we get picked up, and when we get back to the cabin, Nick’s mom had us offload this heavy coffee table and walk it in. And we put it by the foot of the stairs that led to the second floor. And then we went to bed.

And I again instructed Nick and Wolf, like, stay awake. Let me sleep. But they didn’t, and they fell asleep. I’m awake in the room by myself, and I’m just furious. That was how anger was the feeling I had. I felt so mad that like, I’m in this position. How can I be in this position? What have I done here?

SHAWN RYAN: This is the third night.

The Third Night

This is the worst. And so I’m laying there, and sure enough, it’s like three in the morning, and I hear those f*ing steps on the wraparound porch. And it’s like I’m losing my mind. Like, I don’t even know. There’s no way to react to this. This is awful.

And so I’m terrified. I’m looking at my stupid knife. And the door, it opens. I hear the sleigh bells, the pot falls, the linoleum. It’s the third night in a row. This is crazy. The footsteps come into the cabin.

But this night, something new happens. When the footsteps reached that point where they would turn and come down the hallway to where our bedroom was, instead of that, they kept walking to the very back of the first floor of the cabin.

And again, it’s almost like in my mind’s eye, I could see exactly where they were moving in the house based on how loud the thumps were or whatever. And it was really, actually surprisingly way more terrifying when I figured out or when I could sense here that this thing was not going to be following the pattern.

You know, as awful as the pattern was, come into the room, bowing to Nick, and I’m terrified all night. I didn’t die at the end of it. Like, things were contained, but now it’s like something new is happening. And it suddenly was like, this thing has the capacity to sink into the ground. Like, what’s going on here?

And the footsteps go past that turn point and it goes to the very back of the first floor. And there’s a pause. And then I hear the footsteps going up the stairs to the second floor where Nick’s mom is.

And so I hear the footsteps, and it’s like, basically right above us. And at a certain point, the footsteps just stop. And I spent the rest of the night laying there looking up at the bunk above me, waiting for this entity to float through the ceiling and come down to me bowed into the ground the day before.

So it’s like all night I’m just laying there, so scared. This is the worst night of the three. I didn’t hear any more sounds after that. At a certain point, I must have dozed off again because it’s like I’m on fumes at this point.

The Message

I wake up. It’s super early, you know, earlier than the past two mornings I’d gotten up. It’s probably four in the morning, and Nick and Wolf are still asleep in their bed. It’s still pretty dark, but I can hear something out in the living space. And it sounded like Nick’s mom. And it sounded like she was crying.

Frankly, didn’t f*ing care. Just wanted to leave. Got out of bed and I went out there and it was like, I’m not even looking for explanations. I’m not looking to talk about this. I can just be done. I can go out here and we can just leave.

And I go out of the hallway and I look over to the kitchen where I expect her to be, and she’s not there. She’s over on the stairs, leading up to the second floor, and she’s definitely crying.

And I look over at her, and before I can ask anything, she just goes, “John, come here.” And she’s standing over that coffee table that we had put at the foot of the stairs the day before. And I walk over to her and she’s crying. And I sense that she’s not crying tears of sadness. She’s happy. These are happy tears.

And I’m getting ready to ask questions here, but she just stops me and points at the surface of the coffee table. And I look at the coffee table, and etched into the wood is the words, “I love you.” And she goes, “I didn’t write that.”

SHAWN RYAN: Holy shit, dude.

MRBALLEN: What? And so I will say the conclusion to this story is this ended my relationship with everybody in the story. I didn’t. This is it. That’s the end of the relationship with these people. This was so traumatic for me. It was like, well, I’ll just never talk to any of you again. And I’m thinking, look, think of the answers for what could have happened range pretty much.

It’s like, okay, let’s go through the exercise of perhaps Nick’s mom, in the state of grief that she is in, somehow picked up on that I had had some sort of nightmare or whatever, and took it upon herself to pretend that she, too, had seen a ghost or something.

SHAWN RYAN: Right.

Searching for Explanations

MRBALLEN: Why would you do that? To me, one would be a question, but two, I didn’t give up that I saw anything on that first morning. It isn’t like I walked out and said, “Hey, last night I heard somebody walking around the cabin. Was it your son?” I tried to ask as diplomatically, I’m sure. I had a look. I’m sure looked scared.

How could she have possibly thought, “Oh, I know what this is. He must have had a thought that somebody was walking around the cabin last night. I’m going to capitalize on that and pretend that it’s my husband.” And it was so immediate that she agreed with me and said, “That was my husband. And it’s okay.”

It’s just, it doesn’t mean it’s not possible. In fact, if there’s any rational explanation, it’s that she, out of grief and sadness, did this to make it feel like her husband was still around. But even that, I don’t know. I don’t know if you could do it that quickly and that well. It’s possible. It’s certainly possible.

But then it’s like, what’s the alternative? It wasn’t me. Certainly wasn’t me. And I’m the guy that sleepwalks. I’m the guy that has all the reason in the world to say, “Oh, no, there’s probably, this was, this was my mind. This was.” But it’s not. It was corroborated.

SHAWN RYAN: That is wild. You’ve never spoken to them again?

MRBALLEN: Wolf, a little bit. Nick zero. His mom zero. I mean, the little bit is about the fact that I’ve told this story.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Yeah.

MRBALLEN: Holy shit. And it’s funny, the reason we cut ties or I did, it wasn’t malice. It was like, dude, we can’t get over this.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

MRBALLEN: This is not something I’m able to get over.

Shawn’s Cabin Experience

SHAWN RYAN: Dude, we’ve had some stuff happen.

MRBALLEN: Yeah, yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: We had Tim, who’s on behind one of these cameras here. He was there for it. Elijah, he was there. He’s upstairs. He was there for it. So before I did the podcast thing, I was basically throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck, because I was so tired of tactics and I was done with it.

And so I was, one of my ideas was, “Oh, I know, we’re going to do this reality TV survival scenario series or whatever.” Right. So first one I did was, Tim was there, Elijah was there. Tim was one of the contestants.

It was like, “Hey, you got 50 bucks or 100 bucks or something. End of the world’s happening. We’re going to Bass Pro, and you have to buy everything that you would need to survive on a time limit.” So we rented this cabin, this old Civil War cabin out in this area called College Grove. It’s like 20, 30 minutes from here.

MRBALLEN: And…

SHAWN RYAN: But, you know, this is, you know, Franklin. You know this area, this is front lines, Civil War.

MRBALLEN: There’s a lot.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah. Lots of Confederate Union cemeteries around. Lots of buildings that were shot up. Blood stains on the floor. Lots of ghost stuff around here. There’s ghost tours all over town.

Anyways, we go to this old cabin. A little bit of a backstory. So it took my wife and I over a year to find a place to live here. And when we were moving up from Florida, we just kept getting outbid by Californians. This is like the big migration.

MRBALLEN: Oh, really?

SHAWN RYAN: And we just couldn’t afford it. And so I looked at my wife and I was like, “I’m getting tired of putting in offers on houses and getting outbid. The shit’s getting depressing. This is our seventh trip up here. Let’s just go get a cabin out in the woods, enjoy Tennessee for the rest of this trip. And then we’ll go and find some place to move in Florida that’s out of the city.”

So we go to this cabin rent. It’s awesome. It’s out in the middle of nowhere. It’s in this cow pasture, out in the rolling hills. Family owns it. It’s an Airbnb. Family owns it. That’s, you know, who knows? The farm has been in their family for generations. I’m like, “This is pretty cool.”

It’s like one of those old school log homes, you know? And I woke up and I kept, I woke up in the middle of the night and I just kept hearing this banging on the roof.

MRBALLEN: Roof.

SHAWN RYAN: And I’m like, “Well, you know,” wake Katie up. And I’m like, “What is that?” Nothing. She didn’t hear anything. She’s like, “Maybe it was a squirrel.” I’m like, “No, there’s no squirrel that makes this sound on the roof.”

MRBALLEN: And…

SHAWN RYAN: And I’m like, “All right, well, whatever. Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe I had a dream or something, but who knows?” So I don’t really think much of it.

Fast forward a couple of years. We’re out there for this event that we’re doing, though. We’re doing the Survival Series. So we do the, we set up this cabin and we put the Vigilance Elite sign up for some branding, and we’re getting it ready to shoot the debrief because we’re going to grab all the stuff from Bass Pro, come back, they’re going to present it. I’m going to grade the two contestants.

And we’re trying to plug in the sign, and we’re plugging in these lamps and trying to build this kind of a set, and none of the electrical’s making sense, but it doesn’t hit me. I’m like, “That’s weird. I plugged the sign in here. Doesn’t work. Plug the lamp in, does work. Plug the sign in over there. It does.” You know, and it’d be just weird electrical going on, but I don’t really think anything of it.

So we go out, go to Bass Pro. Bass Pro is probably an hour away. We do the exercise, come back, they’re presenting all this stuff, all the stuff that they brought with the budget. And we had only rented the Airbnb for the day. And we’re in the middle of this debrief. We’re supposed to be out by 6pm and I’m facing the window.

Very, a similar cabin. Sounds very similar to what you were in. Everything. It’s one big room. Right. Kitchen’s in the room, dining room’s in the room, TV, fireplace. And then there’s a spiral staircase that goes up to a loft, but the loft isn’t enclosed. You know, you could lean over the…

MRBALLEN: Yep.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, see downstairs. So it’s all one big room minus the bathroom. We have this little table set up, and we start hearing footsteps. And I thought the footsteps were outside.

MRBALLEN: Were outside.

The Footsteps

SHAWN RYAN: This shit’s on camera.

MRBALLEN: Oh, really?

SHAWN RYAN: We’re filming this stuff. Yeah, there’s a video up on our channel that shows us. And so you see me in the debrief and these guys are talking, and you just see my face all of a sudden, and I go like this. And I’m looking out the front door, but I see my, I thought I saw somebody else’s reflection, but it wound up being mine while I’m hearing footsteps.

And you just see my face go like, “What the f*?” And then I, and then the reflection turns into my reflection, but on the camera. So the footsteps were upstairs. I thought it was the porch. You know, it was a wooden porch out there. It’s past six. I figure this is probably the owners coming to say, “Hey guys, we got a wedding coming up tomorrow. You got to get the hell out of here.”

MRBALLEN: Oh, my God.

SHAWN RYAN: We pull the camera footage. And, well, first, then I look up. All three of us that are on camera, all look up at the exact same time, and you hear these footsteps. And I look at Tim and Adam, and I’m like, “Did you guys just hear that?”

My wife was there. Elijah was there behind the camera. We had a marketer there that was behind. Every single person in the room is looking up going, “What the f* was that?”

We packed the shit up. I’m like, “Get the f* out of here. Right now. This, we’re not even going to finish. Get out of here.” So we load up all the camera, load up the microphones, put the furniture back.

MRBALLEN: I can’t even remember.

The Haunted Cabin Discovery

SHAWN RYAN: Did we go upstairs and even look upstairs to get one to life? He goes, yeah. So we pack all this up. Dude, I did not even want to look at the cabin because there’s on the top in the loft, which is where the bedroom is, where me and my wife were sleeping when I heard the man, the banging on the roof.

There’s a little window, and you have to close this gate. I’m like, I’m not even looking in that damn window. I don’t want to. I don’t give a shit. I have guns. It’s not going to kill whatever’s up there.

MRBALLEN: So we haul.

SHAWN RYAN: Hightail it back to my house.

MRBALLEN: Immediately.

SHAWN RYAN: Pull the footage. I might pull the footage. Let’s see what that was on the footage. If I remember correctly, you do not hear the footsteps. Do you remember this? Do you hear the footsteps? We have it. We’ll pull it. I’m going to have a question, so I’m going to have both of you step outside. I’m going to bring each one of you in.

This place is haunted, as every time there’s a footstep, you can hear the static in the camera. So be like, God, I call my best friend. We’re all blown away. We’re like, holy, there’s a ghost in there.

And I call my best friend later that night, and I’m like, “Hey, John, check this out.”

MRBALLEN: Listen to this.

SHAWN RYAN: “What do you think of this?” I tell him the whole story. He goes, “Pull up.” He goes, “Look, pull up the Airbnb. Pull it up right now and just see what the reviews say.” I’m like, “Oh, great idea.”

We pull up the reviews, dude. And it is, “Don’t bang on the walls. They bang back. Don’t show up after dark because the entire place comes alive.” It was just review after review after review of people’s haunted stories in that cabin. Hadn’t been back there since.

MRBALLEN: Holy. That’s crazy. I know.

SHAWN RYAN: I could have swore I told you this. I may have told you this.

MRBALLEN: No, I’ve never heard that, because I.

SHAWN RYAN: Was like, we should do John’s episode at that cabin when you came here. But, dude, yeah, true story.

Confirming the Nightmare

MRBALLEN: Those reviews, that’s crazy. It’s wild, dude.

SHAWN RYAN: I will, well, when this come, we’ll put the footage in the episode so you can see it.

MRBALLEN: That’s nuts. I’d love to see that.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. But I believe in paranormal stuff. It scares the f* out of me still today at 43 years old.

MRBALLEN: So that would be to feel like, “Oh, maybe it was something. It was this.” But then to see the reviews, that’s what confirms your nightmare, dude.

SHAWN RYAN: Yep.

MRBALLEN: That’s the thing.

SHAWN RYAN: I got more for you. I’ll tell you.

MRBALLEN: I’d love to hear it.

SHAWN RYAN: I’ll tell you tonight at the campfire session. Yeah, but, well, hey, man, I really appreciate all the stories, and it’s good to get in the Halloween spirit, you know, a couple days beforehand, so thank you. Thank you.

MRBALLEN: Thank you for the Sig. Dude, you kidding me?

SHAWN RYAN: Hey, let’s go. Let’s go. Burn it down real quick.

MRBALLEN: Let’s do it. Thanks, bro. Cool.

SHAWN RYAN: Awesome. Thank.

MRBALLEN: Thanks, bro.

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