BigDeal - MrBallen: How to Tell Stories Better Than 99% of People (Do This)

Episode Date: October 22, 2026

MrBallen is one of the most successful storytellers of our generation, with tens of millions of followers across platforms and a media empire built entirely on his ability to captivate an audience. In this episode, he breaks down the exact frameworks that separate people who can hold a room from people who lose it in seconds, why commitment to the story is more important than the story itself, and how to use silence, simplicity, and tension to make any story unforgettable. In this episode, you'll learn: Why commitment to the story is everything The simplicity principle: Why the hook is about biographical weight, not flashy openings How to use silence as a tension building tool Why near death experiences teach you that the worst thing that can happen is never as bad as dying Make your business official with the sponsor of today's video, Bizee. "MrBallen Presents: The Terror Within" is out now! Buy your copy here. ___________ (00:00:00) Introduction: The Power of Commitment in Storytelling(00:04:12) The Luther Charles Story: How to Hook an Audience(00:08:03) Simplicity Is King: The Three-Bullet System(00:14:26) The Opening Salvo: Biographical Information That Hooks(00:24:22) The San Francisco Bomb: When Public Speaking Goes Wrong(00:26:10) Navy SEAL Training: The Art of Suffering Well(00:28:38) Using Silence as a Weapon: The Power of the Pause(00:35:33) The Graphic Novel: Bringing MrBallen to the Page(00:41:05) Danny LaPlante: The Terror Within the Walls(01:09:03) Harrison Ford Saves a Boy Scout: When Stories Go Right(01:11:46) Afghanistan: The Grenade That Should Have Killed Him(01:21:24) Living on Borrowed Time: Using Mortality as Fuel ___________ MORE FROM BIGDEAL 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez OTHER THINGS WE DO 🌐 Our community: https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID 📰 Free newsletter: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp 📚 Biz buying course: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN 🏠 Resibrands: https://resibrands.com/ 💰 CT Capital: https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk 🏦 Main St Hold Co: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you're going to tell a story that really lands, they really need to believe that you believe in this story. The thing that I do well is commitment to the story itself. Even if it's a bad story, I'm going to tell it with full zeal. It's so hard to listen to someone speak if they are struggling with just the act of speaking. You have Mr. Ballin who has gained tens of millions of followers by telling strange, dark, and mysterious stories. He's going to break down for you today how you can become a better communicator in your life. And in the process, he's going to tell you some of the craziest stories I've ever heard. If you're ever going to tell a story to anybody, simplicity is king.

You don't want to overcomplicate stuff. My delivery is the most important part of that performance. If you think I'm stumbling and I'm all over the place, the story, even if it's great, it's going to be bad. How do you think about charisma or commitment to a story? What does that mean? I always knew. I'm obsessed with storytelling. I think that if you want to make a lot of money, have success, get your dreams into the world, do just about anything.

If you can't get people to believe in the stories that you're telling and you're not. very good at expressing yourself, you're not going to get very far. I didn't know until I started doing homework on you that you actually come from this storytelling family. That, you know, dad was a Pulitzer. Your sister has two Pulitzer's. You have, you know, one of the largest storytelling, really media empires across all platforms of probably anybody in our generation. And so I guess I'm curious. How do you think about telling an incredible story? I think that the thing that I do well when I tell a story is commitment to the story itself. that's probably the most true in a live environment when you literally have people in front of you.

It's less true when you have a camera and nothing else because there's no feedback. But if you're going to tell a story that really lands, a lot of times it's like the person listening to you or the people, whoever your audience is. They really need to believe that you believe in this story. Like, I'm sure you know this. When you are, when you take the stage, which you've done many times in your career, I bet on some level, you know that immediately you need to put the audience at ease. Not in terms of your expertise. In terms of your comfortability on stage, it's so hard to listen to someone speak if you're worried they are struggling with just the act of speaking.

Great point. You know what I mean? And so I think with storytelling, people are the second guess whether their story is worth listening to, not their literal story. Sometimes it's their literal story, but whatever story they're telling. And so I think that I approach storytelling with almost a reckless abandon that I am fully committed to the bit. Even if it's a bad story, I'm going to tell it with full, full zeal, full zest. And I think that that often masks whether or not the story in and of itself is like objectively really, really good. I think people are left with the experience of that dude can tell a story.

When in reality, it's just I commit to the bit. And I was raised in a family of Pulitzer Prize winners. so I happen to be really grammatically tight and understand tension. That's actually true. So what does that look like? So say you are, you know, I can picture your videos now. It makes a lot of sense that that's the first thing that you think about. But let's say I want, it's my first time in front of somebody.

I want them to believe in my story. I want them to really listen and commit. Are there things you do every time to put someone at ease when you're telling a story? That's a great question because it's something that I have had to think about much more intentionally as I've more and more done live storytelling. Not that it's some huge offering, but we do do more live storytelling. I saw the billboards somewhere. There you go. Yeah. Like when you're when you're doing it for the camera, yeah, that's definitely a skill set in and of itself. But when you're doing it for an audience, I have had to think about

what does those first few moments feel like for people? You know, do they feel confident in me? And so I think that just in terms of like the way I choose stories, because I, like, we did a live tour in 24 and I've subsequently done several live shows like we did one in Comic-Con like a couple days ago. It was a couple hundred people. I'm choosing stories that resonate for a live audience. Like, for example, I'm going to tell you a quick story? I would love to. Okay. So this is just like a classic good opener for a live audience. So in 1995 in St. Louis, Missouri, there's this guy named Luther Charles as an aspiring actor. He quit his job five years earlier. He lives at home with his parents. and he's actually sitting outside of his parents' house on this day in St. Louis, Missouri,

and he's reading the classified ads of the newspaper. He's really frustrated. You know, he's gone to many auditions over the past several years, and he's had a couple callbacks here and there, but nothing's stuck. You know, he hasn't had his big break, you know. And so on this day, he's sitting there, and he sees there's this open call. There's an audition for this musical that's actually taking place in Ohio. It's like several hundred miles away, and he's looking at it. And he's going to, and he's going to, quick to pretty much go to pretty much any open call. It doesn't really matter what genre or performance it is, but he's like, that's odd that it's all the way in Ohio. Like, why would you be advertising this, this in St. Louis? But he reads the ad and he's like, oh, like, I can see they're looking for a really, really specific type of actor or actress. And I actually think I could do this. I

think I could be this person they want. And so he's like, kind of getting fired up. He's like, I see the opportunity here. I think that I, I think I should go to this audition. I think I should go to this thing out in Ohio. It's tonight. I can get there, you know, I can get there tonight. So he tells his parents, he's like, I'm going to go try out for this part. This is incredibly niche part that they're looking for.

So he hops in the car and he drives off to Ohio. That night, the producer in charge of this musical out in Ohio is sitting in this theater. And, you know, one after another, they've seen people come in and audition for this particular role. and so far it's been, you know, not successful. And then at some point, Luther comes in. They don't know Luther, but Luther, our guy, he comes onto the stage, and he's a mess. He stumbles onto the stage. He appears to be drunk.

You know, he's got these, like, weird, almost like bandages, like, you would expect on a mummy, like wrapped like a comical mummy on TV, like wrapped around his head and his shoulders. And he just looks honestly terrible. And he's like slurring his speech as he's trying to. say to say that he's really excited to be here. He's like unable to speak well. And the, uh, the producers sort of taken it back and they're, they're asking him like, are you okay? Like, what's going on? And he's like, I know I'm perfect for this role. I've done everything I need to do to make sure that I am perfect for the role you're looking for. I'm, I'm your guy. And the

producer's like looking around, almost for backup from the others. Like, what do we do with this guy? There's something off about this guy. And then before they can make a plan of any kind, Luther begins to unfurl these bandages that are wrapped around his head. And eventually he reveals something on his head. And when he does, the producer and everyone, they're like, can't believe what they're seeing and before long. They're running out to call the police. So Luther, the ad he read, it was calling for a very specific type, let's say, of actor or

actress. The ad that the company put out from Ohio was that they were looking for. genuine, fearless actors and actresses. It was like big and bold. They wanted genuine fearless actors and actresses. But they made a typo, and somehow nobody caught it. They removed the F on fearless. Genuine earless actors was the classified ad,

and Luther was so desperate that he hacked off his ears and then took the stage believing he was a genuine earless guy and he could play this part. He did not get the part. He recovered from his injuries, and he received psychiatric care. He's doing okay, but he did not get the part. Wow. What a story. So take that story, I know that it's easy to tell. It's simple. I really only need to remember that that's the part. If you're ever going to do, and I'm not really telling talking to you, I'm talking to the audience, if you're ever going to tell a story to anybody, whether it's just your friend or it's a huge crowd, simplicity is king.

because simplicity offers up the opportunity, one, to get things wrong and quickly reset yourself. But two, depending on who you're talking to, you can sort of ham up the details, not change them. But like, I gave you probably a 30 seconds of extra stuff about him sitting on the steps that is just like fluff. But it's just to hype the story up. But more than that, as I'm telling the story, like, I know there's a really, really specific thing I'm holding back that alters the story completely. and if I can just get you to that point and deliver you this, like, total plot twist, it's sort of, it puts the audience at ease that he knows what he's doing. Like, I've come here for stories or I'm listening to you because you tell a story

to deliver something that, like, it's sort of a gut punch. It's like, oh, my God, that's so, that's crazy. That's so weird. Like, how could that have happened? And you can picture Luther. You can picture him on stage and he's missing his ears. It puts the audience at ease and it also puts me at ease. So I will typically choose very simple,

linear stories with a great payoff. And the whole time, if you didn't notice, if you watched the tape back, you can see that I'm excited to tell you the ending. You can see it on my face that I'm like genuinely eager to reveal to you at the end that he cut his ears off because they left out the F1 Fearless. And so you as the audience, I know that you're gauging my interest in the story. And so like I'm, I know it's a simple story. There's a great reveal coming. And I want you to feel that I got something coming, you land the plot twist. And then it's like you can get super dense and super boring after that, but the audience now, they're locked in because they're that was great. Tell me more. Whatever you're doing seems pretty interesting. I'm dialed in now.

Okay, I love talking to people like Mr. Ballin. Hearing how he went from telling stories into his phone to now running a company, I think it's so inspiring. Besides inspiration at some point, if you want to become a real business, you have to get it on the books, the paperwork, the filings, the deadlines. It can be intimidating and it can feel like a second job. That's what Busy solves. Busy handles the whole back office from formation to filings so your time goes into the part you're actually great at that you want to be doing. For me, it's helping people scale their companies to a million, then 10 million than beyond. For Mr. Ballin, it's telling incredible stories. So what is it for you? Formation starts at $0 plus state fees with Busy and when next year's annual report shows up,

they handle that too. Busy and I put something together for you. Hit the link in the show notes. Okay, back to my episode with Mr. Ballin. Because as you were talking the first time, I was trying to think, okay, what are the parts about this that are interesting even in the beginning? And I liked how you started with a date and a location and then the visual of the sitting on the steps and then the emotion. But you're right, all of that actually doesn't matter. If it's not simple to understand, you don't have an incredible pivot or plot twist. And you don't feel like there's a big payoff at the end. So it's literally like there's three things you can remember instead of the seven I wrote out, which is part of the art of storytelling.

It's like clear as kind. Yeah. And I'll even say one time I was doing a show in Houston, Texas. And it was part of the tour. It was at our second or third stop along the way. And I was really excited to do this show. And, you know, the audience size was about what the other two shows had been. You know, it was 1,500, 2000, something like that.

And really excited. But the thing I didn't account for is when I got on stage, unlike the previous two nights, which had been at typical theaters where, you know, the lights are bright. You don't really see the audience. It's like you're sort of in your void on stage, which is great, you know. In Houston, it was like this sort of wide open, it's like a rock venue. And so it's a big floor space with seats. And it just wasn't that dark.

And so I get on stage and you really see like the volume of people in the room and they're not blacked out. Like I can see everybody. And it really messed with me because I went on stage thinking I'm going to like go into my blackout mode and just riff off. the stories I know, but it really, I couldn't stop thinking about, like, individual people staring at me, being worried, I was going to get something wrong. And I also, I hadn't been using the teleprompter to that point. I had it as a sort of a backup, but I told, like, the team, like,

I'm not even going to use it, like, let it run. But basically, I didn't have good backup. And my mind started sort of going blank, because I'm getting ready to tell the first story. But luckily, I just, the couple things I could remember from the opening stories were just like the five or six bullets that is the story. And people don't know it. But like my rendition of the first story I gave was like a heavily truncated version because I just, I could only remember like the simple bullets that make the story what it is. And it worked. It was fine.

And it was sort of like a good exercise that you don't want to overcomplicate stuff unless you really know it well. Because at the end of the day, it sort of comes back to this whole, my delivery is the most important part of that performance. It's like if you think I'm stumbling and I'm all over the place, it's the story, even if it's great, it's going to be bad. And so simplicity allowed me to still deliver, let's say, an adequate performance that did not upset the audience. Yeah, there's nothing worse, too. Have you ever spoken somewhere and just totally bombed? Oh, yes. I have.

I've done it. I've only done it. I mean, maybe many people could say that I've done it many times, but I felt I had done it twice. And each time was oddly painful. Like, it's not going to affect your life. You know, you're not going to war like you've actually, you know, done and prepared to do. But I thought, oh, wow. this is such an awful feeling.

I understand why people are so scared of public speaking, of storytelling. So I guess in that vein, you know, I'd love to hear, I think a lot of times if you can get that first, you've talked about it, like put people at ease immediately. Or if you get the hook right away perfectly, then it's sort of, I don't know, it's like a tether that you can follow throughout the rest of whatever you're speaking on. How do you think about starting a story? This other one was really about this incredible payoff. But when you're scripting and writing, you know, how much do you think about the hook? And do you have a story example where you're like, this one was so good? And then let me show you basically how to think about a hook.

I find that in the opening salvo of your story, it's pretty useful to just employ a couple of very basic facts about the story. Far too often when you, when someone's just ripping off a story, the last thing you want to do. And this could be you with your friend. It doesn't have to be some public speaking event. The last thing you want, both as the audience and as the teller, is the story's begun. And there's basic facts that have been left out that make it hard to, like, just be in the moment. For example, if I started telling you a story about, you know, Mark and he's struggling with his finances and, like, he's looking for a job, like, you could understand who Mark is or whatever, but where, when, how old is he? Like, what's the context of the story? And so I find

opening your story with some basic biographical information, if you're going to do like, I'm going to tell you a story, I almost always start with on date in this location, so and so. And it's, that's not rocket science at all, but I am arguably one of the better storytellers out there. And I use the simplest opening for virtually every story. That way, the audience always gets basic biographical information. However, you don't want to then take the route of, that's a throwaway line. It is not a throwaway line. It's not like, hey, by the way, this happens and whatever, whatever. There's a story that is one of my first stories that ever went viral where the opening is like, so in the 1950s in Russia, there was this test. This is a real story. So I'll give the

abbreviated version of it. But so in the 1950s in Russia, there was this really, really difficult test for mountaineers. It was called the Level 3 hiking test, which does not sound particularly amazing in any way. But in 1950s, Russia, the Level 3 certification was sort of like you are the bees' knees of mountaineering. And there's some pretty rugged places to climb mountains in Russia. So this is a big deal, right? And in January of 1954, there were these nine hikers that were good enough to take that test. And so, and then I would go into the story about the these nine hikers. They get lost. They're found dead. Their bodies are radioactive. There's horrible pictures, but it's a whole thing. But what I did is I'm telling a story about nine hikers, which I actually

don't need to give you their names, because it's actually the group winds up being the main subject. It's Russia. It's 1950s. I bet you could have repeated those details back to me. But I also gave you a little bit of lore surrounding it. It's sort of a joke. Like, I don't need to know, like, I don't care, frankly, if you're into mountaineering, have mountaineered ever in your life or not. you know that to those nine hikers, this mountaineering test is really important, and that's the opening of the story. Something's going to happen when those nine hikers begin their level three tests, which I understand is very important in mountaineering in Russia in the 1950s. And so I'm delivering you basic information, but you want the story to matter out the gate. So it's like the art of actually I actually don't even necessarily know how to do it for every story.

I guess maybe it's an eight, but you want your story to have weight. from that, from the onset. So use the biographical information to place your story, but really think hard about how you place it. Because if your story starts with like, in 1950 in Russia, there were these people that were looking at a map and they were like getting ready to take a hiking test. It's like, okay, I mean, maybe I'm into that. You know, maybe not.

So I guess therein lies the art of the storytelling. But I would say that it's biographical and make it feel weighty at the very beginning. I think it also makes you feel like it's believable because. they're very specific. And specificity somehow leads to believability. So when you're like 1950 named test for these specific people, that was incredibly difficult. You could imagine, like I think often, especially in this day and age, we believe things that seem specific. And so that is actually very helpful.

Specificity does help. Yeah. And also, you know, I really like this idea of you've said before. even here, but you have to be committed. Yes. Story. That to me sort of feels like maybe charisma, too. Little Riz.

Little Riz. I think this is like immediate, yeah, immediate unsubscribe from all Gen Z from his podcast now, just due to cringe. But like, is there something you think about when you, when you are putting together stories, do you think about charisma and how you present? Are you looking in the mirrors? Mr. Ball and, like, is there a specific outfit we're putting it? Like, how do you think about charisma?

or commitment to a story. What does that mean? That is something that I would say, on the one hand, like charisma in delivering a story, is something that you can definitely have. It's sort of an innate skill for some people. But I don't believe, actually, let me take that back. I don't think it's an innate skill. I'm saying that, let's say everybody has a gauge, right? Some people's gauges are just more filled than others. And it's, it's really, I guess it's public speaking, but it's more than that. It's, I always knew from the time I was probably in the military, this is like circa 2010 through 2017, we had to just give briefs, you know, like meaningless briefs, briefs that were stupid and there's no storytelling required.

You know, today, you know, one of the new guys needs to tell everybody about the new goggles we're going to wear, you know, and it was like, go give the brief, John. And as a new guy, you often were tapped with doing these briefs. and I got really nervous before I would do these briefs for a host of reasons, but it was just the basic, like the public speaking aspect of it was very stressful. But purely as I think it's called a demonic, I'm not sure if that's the right use for this, purely as a way to remember what I had to say, I would try to package the salient points of the brief into a like a story in my brain. And it's in part because I just happened to remember things really, really well.

if they're in story format. And maybe it's my upbringing. Maybe it's the fact that I've been blessed to have very smart and story-driven people raising me and all around me growing up. But I actually think that more likely is that all of us, like humans are inherently storytellers. Storytelling is like one of the oldest mediums that we can even point to that for sure humans did a long time ago, right? And so I think that I basically used storytelling was a strength of mine in terms of just like remembering how to tell. a story. And so what I mean by that is, is when I sit in front of a camera, if I have a story, I'm going to be much more confident. If I were to give right now on my YouTube channel that I make

videos constantly on that channel, it's a very routine thing. If I had to give a brief about like the channel's performance or something and someone was like, no, just like simple slideshow, you can use any skill you want, but don't make it a story. I would really struggle with that. So I guess I sort of know to your question, if I'm telling a story and I've rehearsed that story a little bit, I'm very confident. I'm very, very confident, mostly that I'm going to remember it. I know how it flows. I have the sort of bullets in my mind. I probably was quite good at that to begin with, but I've gotten better with repetition over time. Now it's like I can quickly remember things just if they're in a story. So I'd say I have a pretty high gauge to begin with is what I mean by that. But I think too many people in my experience in meeting smaller creators or aspiring creators or just people who want me better at storytelling, their gauge is likely lower. And they believe that, like, oh, I'll never have the confidence to deliver a story the way you do or like anybody who's good at storytelling. When in reality, like, you just got to be willing to sort of embarrass yourself a few times.

It doesn't mean you will embarrass yourself. You just have to be okay with the fact that you may embarrass yourself. I mean, you talked about bombing. I was in San Francisco. This is pre Mr. Ballin. I, before I, so after got out of the military in 2017, Mr. Ballin happened in 2020. I did do things for those three years. And one of the things that I did was I did quite a bit of charity work.

I helped found this charity called Elite Meat. It was sort of an unfortunate name. But Elite Me was, it took transitioning military members, in particular, like Navy Seals and spec-offs guys because that's the community I came from and we connected them with with business people that were looking to hire. That's actually even funnier as a name for that group. Elite meat. It became sort of a meme.

How do you spell it? M-E-A-T? But we host these networking events and it was just like, you know, a few hundred people, there was some level of like organization to whom me too. But there was always these dinners like a couple times over the course of several days and being the one who's running the event, I would always give a little talk. You know, just like, hey, thanks for people. here. Thanks for donating. You know, whatever. And I had done this four or five, six times over the course

of a couple of years. This is like in 2019. And it's funny how much of a ripple effect this had on my career now. We were at this restaurant in San Francisco, this like pretty small restaurant. There's like 50 people there. I'd say half of them are vets. Half are our sponsors who have donated quite a bit of money. And the room was set up in a horseshoe of like stand-up tables. And when I was going to give my little talk, which really was going to be, hey, thanks for being here. you know, see you next year. You know, it was like nothing. I was going to be standing in the center of the horseshoe, sort of like surrounded on 270 degrees. And so I don't know what it was, but I started like really worrying about this talk as it's like getting closer to when I need

to clink the class. And I have a co-founder. His name's Jordan Selleck, awesome guy, former investment banker turned entrepreneur. He's doing lots of big things. But we sort of like traded off who would do the talk and it was my turn to do it that night. And so it was time. And I'm like, totally having a panic attack. Like full bore, like unable to talk to anyone, like totally stressed. But I'm like, I got to do this. Plank the glass. And everyone's like, oh, great.

All right, John. What do you got? Silence. I think I managed to say, hey, thanks for being here. And then my mind. And then this is the way I handled it. I couldn't think of what to say. And then I turned and I left the restaurant and didn't come back.

Oh my God. Literally left. And Jordan would be like later on. He's like, yeah, he's like, no one even addressed it. I just simply took the floor and finished the talk. But that was the last event that I did before COVID hit. And so no more events after that. And so when like the Mr. Ballin thing happened, my last public talk was a catastrophic fail. That was so embarrassing. No one talked to me about it. There are all these people in the room that I am close with. No one addressed it. It was so. conspicuous. It wasn't like, what's he doing over there? It's like, oh, I'm going to be quiet. John's got something to say. Go ahead, John. Silence. It was just awful awful. But I was able to overcome it and raise my gauge, you know, to where it needs to be. You do like the challenge, because then you went and were like, you know what, that was so terrible. Let me make a career out of that for the rest of the next sort of many years. Well, actually, interestingly, you guys are a little bit of masochists in that way. I feel like, at least if you're anything like my husband. He likes paint slightly, I think.

I do think there's truth to that. And in fact, when people ask about Navy SEAL training, I'm sure your husband will say the same thing, and I'm sure you've heard a million stories, it is a test. So Navy SEAL training, for those that don't know, it takes about two years. Obviously, there's different pipe.

You can be an officer and go in. You can be enlisted. It's a whole thing, but let's generalize. It takes about two years. And like the hard stuff is call it like six months. It's out in San Diego, and it's just like lots of physical stuff. mental stuff,

whatever. But it's like famously challenging. It's not really a test of can you do this thing? It's not like, hey, are you able to tie this special sailors not, you know, underwater?

No one cares. You'll never use it. It doesn't matter. Or like, hey, can you withstand like, you know, this cold temperatures?

It's just, hey, we're going to make you pretty miserable and keep you there. And we're just going to see how you do. That's it. How good are you at being miserable? How good are you at suffering?

And if you can pass, the suffering portion, which is, oh, it's very technical. We have this phase of training, where we learn these things. Then we go to this phase of training. It's all the same. It's just different environments where you suffer, whether it's underwater, in the air, on the ground. And so I do think that by the time you get through training, you've only really shown you're really good at suffering. And maybe some people almost, they crave the opportunity to suffer well. You know, it's funny. We have, we have a dear friend who's still in, and his brother went to go become a team guy too. And this other friend of ours is, if you ever met, he's a man

of few words, right? Very intelligent, but just not going to speak a ton. And his brother went to go and get advice from him. What do I do? How do I go in? And if you hear from a lot of people, you would think it's okay, well, during this phase this, and then you're going to prep by running this mini sprints, and you better get the underwater thing down. And I remember him sort of looking at his brother and just saying, well, don't quit and then walk it out. And that was it. And I remember saying to Chris, oh, my God, like, don't we have to help them more? What else are we going to do? That seems like not that good advice. And he's like, it actually is pretty great advice because those are the only two things that you can do. It's just like, do not quit. And that's sort of it. If you don't quit,

you're probably not going to be asked to leave. You get to just keep on going. Yeah, you guys have another gear. It's actually funny because I was going to ask you about how great communicators use silence, which would not be, I think, the way that you talked about in the last story, but do you think, you know, is it really important also the things you don't say when you speak? And do you think about how to use silence in your stories? Great question. And there's actually, I can probably think hard about this and have a better answer, but there's one answer that I think plays into the earlier thing I brought up, which is this idea of owning the bit.

Owning your story, whatever it is, whatever story you're going to tell, even the way I'm answering this question, I'm taking my time answering you. I know that she's asked me a question, she obviously values my opinion. You know, I'm going to give her a thoughtful response, but I'm not rushing the answer out, right?

I think that nervous energy turns into fast talking, turns into no silence, turns into fear. If there's any silence during your story, whether it's a huge crowd or just one person, that somehow that indicates you don't know what you're doing. When in reality, like intentional pauses and sort of allowing things to land with whoever you're talking to, ideally if you have someone in front of you, you can gauge their reaction. Using silence as a tension-building tool is great. Like when I revealed the earless thing, it's subtle, but there's a pause after I tell you that what they wanted was, genuine fearless actors. And I know, as I'm saying it, that you're like, that doesn't feel like a specific actor. I don't really, I don't really know where this is going. I, but something's about to land.

But there's a pause. I don't say, maybe, but there was a typo. There was a typo. It's like genuine fearless actors, but there was a typo. And so having the confidence to have those points of silence when you're delivering a story, I mean, it shows confidence, I would say. Also, if you get in the If you're an aspiring storyteller, especially if you're going to be doing it in real life, get in the habit now of building those pauses into when you tell stories. One, because you don't sound nearly as slow as you think you do. If you slow yourself down dramatically, you'll still be talking faster than you realize if you play it back. But more than that, you'll get in, you'll teach yourself that if you ever have a point when you're

giving a talk or you're telling a story and you do space, because it happens to everyone. It's part of being human. It's not like that only happens to people who do public speaking. No, it happens to all of us. It's part of being alive. If you're used to having pauses built into your delivery, it's so easy to recover because you can just breathe for a fraction of a second and pivot. Find something else to say. I mean, even in the course of this interview, I've forgotten where I was a couple of times.

But I just, I know I can breathe for a second and pick up where I need to pick it up. Yeah. How much do you watch the greats? Like, as you talk about silence and breathing, I think about like the last. time I saw Dave Chappelle in person. And, yeah, and he started out the entire, you know, bit or his, his show with just sitting and smoking a cigarette. And it's a long smoke. It's almost an uncomfortable, you know, he sits there and he kind of looks around. But he lets sort of the audience settle. And he lets everybody have the wadiness of the moment. And then he tells a story. And so I was

wondering, you know, if you want to get good at this, I think one thing they can do is go and watch your channel because you interweave a lot of this throughout, almost to the point where it's like at that point where you can see the matrix, you know, before it, all you see are the buildings. But then what you to understand you're looking for, you're like, oh, wow, it's actually all around. And so there are these formulas that are woven inside of your stories, which is cool to see from the outside. But how much do you go and study the grades in order to do your storytelling? Is that part of what you do or should people do that? Yeah, I mean, honestly, you bring up Dave Chappelle and I'm not just echoing a sentiment that you've said, but Dave Chappelle,

in my opinion is one of if not the single greatest storyteller of our generation. I mean, yeah, of course this content is not for everyone, whatever, he's comedian, but he, if you listen to him, tell a joke, tell a story, whatever you want to call it, he knows he's got something he's going to give you. And he's going to take his time getting there. He's confident what he's doing. He's going to smoke a cigarette on stage before he starts. It's like he's allowing the audience to know that he's in, he's showing you he's in control

and he's confident. And as soon as he starts, you're in for a show. Like, it's clear he's done that over such an enormous workload, like over decades of being amazing. But watch Dave Chappelle, you can't, you can't not come away thinking, wow, that dude knows how to tell a story. And it's all the little cues that some of which I'm not even able to articulate that he does, that it just immediately puts the audience that he is.

and makes you excited to listen to him. And so I'd say comedians are a great resource. I found before I began doing live performances actually on a stage, I found myself actually watching lots of stand-up comedy, but I wouldn't actually watch the show. I would watch the walkout and the opening few lines. Because I know, just from my own experience, that when, and this is probably true of a lot of people,

whether they think about it or not, once you're out there and you're sort of off to the races, even if it's rocky, you've sort of crossed the gap a little bit. And you're sort of, you're doing it. You're sort of in it. It's a lot easier. You know, people aren't like waiting to, like, form an opinion of you. They've formed it. And so I know that if I can just get past the opening salvo, I'm probably going to be okay. I'm confident enough in what I can do. And so I remember I watched like Shane Gillis's, was it dogs. What's the one come? Something dogs. I'm getting it probably wrong. This was a couple years ago. But I watched his intro like so many times. Just it was sort of because it was on Netflix and it kept popping up for me and I kept watching it. But when you watch him walk out, there's really nothing special about his walkout. It isn't like there's some crazy thing. He just takes the stage and there's like 5,000 people in the crowd.

But at no point when you watch him, are you thinking, oh boy, I wonder if this guy's going to bomb. Never. You're like, oh, few. This guy's a professional. This is going to be great. Yeah. Immediately.

It's interesting. A lot of the way that you talk. talk about this is about this trust and believability and control, which I really hadn't, I have lately been thinking about stories a lot more technically for whatever. It's probably because that's business. I'm like, you know, where's the data from? How fast can you get to it? You know, why do I care about this story? But in the way that you're thinking about it a lot is actually, you can move all that to the side if you get somebody to trust that their time, which is a very precious commodity, is going to be well held by you. Oh, yeah. And if they know that, they're going to like,

they're going to allow you to sort of hold it. And I guess I'm like curious to go a little bit more into a different direction, which would be, you know, you have this new book out, which is super cool because it's, this is, is this like, do you say this is animation? Is this graphic art? I guess it's graphic art. So what we were doing with that book, so it's a third graphic novel that we've done, you know, early on I knew given the fact that,

that, you know, at the end of the day, no matter how I identify or don't identify, I am definitely a storytelling brand. Yep. It seemed silly not to have a book as that is one of the most basic places where stories exist. However, thinking about what type of book we would do was it became like, there's a lot of different ways we could take that. You know, we can do a traditional, write a novel. We still could.

Yeah, you could Stephen King. Yeah, yeah, I wish. But with our audience, one of the things. that it was very interesting is we came up with this idea that we're like, okay, well, the platform where really Mr. Ballin became a big thing would be YouTube. It took off on TikTok, but it really became sort of like a meaningful brand, let's say, on YouTube. And so we just were like, all right, let's try to replicate what the experience is on YouTube on paper. And so it's visual. Like YouTube is a visual platform, but more than that, and I'll, well, here, so it's a visual

platform. So we, we grab this amazing guy, Andrea Muti, who's an Italian comic book artist, and he loves, like, paranormal himself. Like, he loves the, looking into UFOs and paranormal stuff, but he's never had the opportunity to do anything in his work in that. So he was, like, thrilled to do this. He's one of the best comic book artists in the world. And we got Rob Van Vendetti, who's, like, one of the most, the biggest contributors in writing comic books. Like, he's done like Superman. Like, he's a big deal. So we have, like, this powerhouse. team. And we have our writer's room. We have me. And we're like, all right, we're going to make this amazing graphic novel. And we're going to mimic YouTube. And so we put together, this is the third

iteration of it. So we did our first one. And it was like pretty much what you're holding, but just different stories is the just so proud of it. So beautiful. And we sort of tested the audience with it. They knew we were working on some sort of publishing project. And we got a sort of lukewarm response when we put it out. And the reason we began to see in some of the comments we were getting is actually very simple. We forgot there's a core aspect of the YouTube experience that wasn't in existence in the while we put together. I wasn't in the book. The book was just the story. It was literally like beautiful artwork. The writing on the page is me, but if you notice on several pages, you'll see a little avatar of me. That's the, that's the writing.

there to remind our audience that, like, Mr. Ballin is here with you. Because so much of the brand we discovered is, like, it's that John is telling me the story. But it's not really John. It's John feels like my neighbor. John feels like a dude telling me a cool story. It's not that they literally want John Allen telling me a story. It's that I represent, like, comfortability. I represent like the every man, every woman, just sort of telling their friend a cool story. And I didn't exist on the page in the initial draft. And so we just put the little character in there to remind people that, like, no, no, the experience you're having with this book includes the guy, you know? And suddenly people are like, wow, now I want to buy this book.

Actually, it's really interesting. It is because it's, you know, I sometimes feel like when I'm watching your videos, it's like, oh, I might, if John was my buddy, we'd be sitting around a campfire and you'd be telling this story. Sure. And, you know, even with like the traditional, you know, shirt and everything, sort of like everything primes you for, I'm going to settle in a little bit here. I agree. And if you weren't on here, it wouldn't. That's interesting. I'm wondering, you have to go sort of deep into really, I don't know, sometimes for me, because I'm a wuss, scary stories.

Yeah. And I'm wondering, like, have you ever had a story that you did a bunch of research on and created that just stuck with you that you almost, like, couldn't get rid of? And if so, what was it and why? I did one about 9-11, which is really not, it's frankly, a pretty big departure from the type of stories we would do. It was the first time as Mr. Ballin that 9-11 happened. And given that, you know, a big part of me joining the military was sort of the catalyst was witnessing 9-11 in real time as a kid.

So I wanted to sort of memorialize that experience and tell a story. And I grabbed this guy's story, Mike, who was in, I believe, the North Tower. He survived. Obviously, we have a story. But unlike the other stories about 9-11, this was really meant to be like, I want you. And not like in a gratuitous way. I want you to be in the tower. But I don't want it to feel like catastrophe.

I want you to feel like you're in the tower. You're in the hallways. You're interacting with your coworkers. I want people to feel like the weight of, of north. normalcy in some ways because that's what it was, these people just went to work. And then later that same day, you have women and men, like, they're either burning to death or leaping to their deaths. And it's like on the way down, their final act of dignity, the women is like pushing their skirt down mid-air as they're falling to their deaths. And so that story was really difficult to

put together simply because it hit close to home for me. It was, it's a 9-11 had a huge impact in my life. And speaking to Mike. And, like, like getting these like very personal stories. So that one. But in terms of like a story that stuck with me because it's just sort of epically horrific, there's one. And this is, I didn't prepare this. This is just story that it stuck with me so much. I'm going to tell it off memory, even though it's not prepared. So in the late 1980s, this is like 1989 or 1990, it's somewhere around there in Pepperel, Massachusetts. It's like sort of out in the sticks in Massachusetts. There was this family, the Bowen family, made up of Frank, his wife, and then there was Tina and Karen, the two children.

Tina's 15. Karen is nine. And they're sort of a normal family. Frank's a blue-collar guy. His wife also works. I forget what his wife did. But his wife, she had cancer in, I believe it was October of, I think it was 1986, but placed it as 1986. Frank's wife sort of abruptly dies in the fall of 1986. and it really disrupts the family, as you can imagine, like severely disrupts the family. But one of the more practical ways it disrupted the family is she was providing a good chunk of the income for the household. And of course, there's sympathy for the family. And like, you know, Frank, his boss was quick to say, you know, take some time off, but, you know, they just, they didn't have enough money. And so like the immediate aftermath of losing her meant Frank

suddenly needed to work a whole lot more, even though really he knew he needed to be home with the kids, you know, in part he also is dealing with grief in his own way. He's like out of the house a lot, like within the first couple of weeks. He's taken overnight shifts. And so Tina and Karen, the Tina is the 15-year-old. Karen's the nine-year-old. They are at home, you know, after school. They're just home by themselves in this house, you know, and they were very close with their mother. This was like, it's devastating for just about anyone to lose a parent, but this was like especially, you know, grievous for them. So in the following weeks after their mother passes, on a night that Frank is out at work doing a late night shift, Tina and Karen, they're home.

And on this night, one of them, it's not clear who, says, I have an idea. Why don't we try to contact mom tonight? Why don't we like get the Ouija board out? You know, like you're familiar with the Ouija board and try to contact mom. Like, let's have a seance. I bet we can do it. And they're like, this is a great idea. Let's do it.

this to it. So they buy themselves, they go down into their basement of their house and the basement is like nothing in it. There's like a washer and dryer. It's like a barren basement, low ceiling. And they put the Ouija board out. They put the candles out. Like they're doing like what they think goes into a seance, right? They've never done one before. And they sit down and they put the little planchette, the little device that sits on the board. And they sit down across from each other. They put their fingertips on the planchette. And they're like, all right, we're going to try to talk to mom here. And at some point, they start asking questions, like sort of to the room, like, hey, mom, if you're here right now, like, give us a sign. And, you know, nothing happens.

You know, the planchette doesn't move. But all night, or over the course of this hour, they try and they don't have any success getting in touch with their mom. And so, you know, on some level, they were disappointed. On another, they're sort of like, we didn't really think that was going to work. They pack up their Ouija board. Frank's still not home yet. So they're still home alone. and it's late, and they're like, all right, let's just, you know, let's just go to bed. It's

disappointing it is what it is. Let's go to bed. And before the girls fall asleep, one of them, or really both of them, begin to hear something downstairs. It's just of a tapping sound. At first, it was sort of not really clear if it was even really a sound that was worth paying attention to, but there was definitely some sort of sound coming up from the downstairs. It wasn't clear if it was outside at all, but it was somewhere. I can hear it coming up the stairwell. And the girls' rooms had doors that fed out to a hallway that was like right in front of the stairwell. So it's sort of like the stairwells right outside their door. And for a little while, like five, 10 minutes, both girls haven't said a word. They're just laying in their beds and they're hearing

this tapping sound that's sort of sporadic and random. And eventually, Karen, the nine-year-old, she's the younger one. She's scared, you know, from this tapping sound. And so she leaves her room and she marches down the hallway and climbs, you know, into her older sister's bed. And she's like, Tina, like, do you hear that sound, the tapping sound? And Tina's like, yeah, I do. And she's trying to be tough. You know, it's by nothing. There's a branch outside or whatever, she said. But the two girls, they're sitting on the bed and they're just hearing this tapping sound and it's sort of like unclear what they want to do about it. And then at some point, one of the girls says, what if it's mom? What if our seance worked? Like, what if that's, what if this is mom getting in

touch with us. And so they're both like kind of excited at the prospect. I mean, they're freshly from losing their mother. Any sign that maybe she's here is like this incredible thing. And so together they're like, well, let's let's go see. Let's let's go see what this is. You know, maybe it is. And so the girls, they leave their bed and they walk out into the hallway and they stand to the top of the stairs and they're looking down. The stair, the stairway goes down halfway. There's a landing and it banks around and goes down to the first floor. So they can only see down to the landing. And they're looking down stairs. It's dark in the house. Frank's still not home. And Tina, the older one, just goes, hey, mom, is that you? Tap, tap, tap. Like a definitive response from somewhere in the house.

And the girls are like, this is amazing. It's mom. And the other girl, Karen, she's like, mom, really is that you? Tap, tap, tap. Someone's responding to them. And they're like, it's mom. Our stance worked. down the stairs. They go, they're a little apprehensive. I mean, this is still pretty crazy, but they're going down the stairs. They make that turn on the landing. They're calling out more questions that some of them are not even yes or no questions. They're just like general questions for their mom who they think is in their house right now. And they're getting those responses. They're getting the periodic like tap, tap, tap in response. And so they're,

they follow the noise down to the first floor. They trace it to the door that leads down to the basement. Further confirmation that that's where our seance was makes sense. Mom must be down there. They open up the basement. They ask a couple questions down the stairs into the dark basement. They get those taps. They're down in the basement. And the girls, as confident as they are, but this is their mom. They're not quite ready to go all the way into the basement.

They're a little nervous about going in the basement, as any kid would be. But they stood at the top of the basement stairs just looking down into this dark basement talking to their mom, getting these triple taps in response to various questions they had. Are you always going to be there? Are you going to be looking out for us? that type of thing. So they're thrilled. It's like inexplicable, but incredible. They're thrilled. So, you know, about 30 minutes or whatever passes by of them doing it. And then the tapping stops. Like, no matter what question they ask, there's no more tapping. And so the girls at this point, they're like, okay, like we're so jazzed up from this. Like, let's just wait for dad. Like when

dad gets home, we'll tell them all about it. Now it's like midnight or whatever. So they shut the basement door. They're just like hanging out in the kitchen. And then eventually, Frank comes home and the girls are so pumped. Like, Dad, you wouldn't believe it? We had the seance. Like, mom's here. You know, it's going so great. And Frank, you know, he knows his daughters have just lost their mother. You know, he's not going to like, no, your mom's not here. He's, he's an understanding guy. He's immediately clocks that I don't, I'm not going to try to debunk this. This is clearly my young children dealing with the grief of losing someone very close to them, their own mother. this is their coping mechanism, right? So I'm not going to be like, no. Instead, he said,

your mother is here with you, for sure. She'll be here forever with you, no doubt. She'll always be in your heart, that type of thing. And the girls are like thrilled, like, oh, this is great, you know, and they run off to bed. And Frank, you know, he worked a long day. And Frank, he didn't really think much about this. You know, it's, the kids are going through a lot. It is what it is. So he goes about this night. He goes to bed. The next day, The girls get up and they're so excited, you know, about what's happened and they keep telling their dad. And, you know, Frank periodically would leave the house over the course of the next couple of days. And anytime he was gone, there'd be these taps coming from the basement, you know, and it was like every time the girls, they'd be, oh, it's mom.

And they'd talk to her. Like, stick around when dad gets back. We want you to talk to him. But every time Frank was in the house, like didn't hear any tapping sounds. At some point, call it three days or so after the tapping began, which was just over the course of those three days periodically, it was going on. the girls began to shift their thinking a little bit. You know, they were so convinced it was mom, you know, for at least at first. But the tapping sort of, it evolved.

It went from being sort of just in the basement and sort of controlled in that way to they'd hear it all over their house at all hours, you know? And so the girls call it at about the week mark from when it all began seance, tapping a week later, they went to their dad who has just been putting. up with this, just accepting that they're claiming to talk to their mom. They said, you know, dad, we think the seance worked, but we don't think it's mom. We think we like invited, you know, an evil spirit into the house through the seance. Like, we think it's bad, you know? And at this point, now Frank is sort of looking at the whole situation and he's like, you know,

girls, there's nothing in the house, you know, doing the typical sort of like what you'd expect in a movie. Oh, come on, guys. There's nothing here. That type of thing. But, you know, he means well. He wants to tell them, like, you're struggling through something that no kid should have to struggle through. You know, your mother is with you, but these taps you're hearing, they're in your head. You know, you have nothing to worry about. And Frank is getting increasingly more and more frustrated with this girls. He's working all these extra hours. He's trying to tell them, like, you've got to stop this, you know, like find a different way to deal with this. And so it all kind of comes to a head one night when now we're at call it two weeks post seance.

And it was one of the first times the girls since becoming scared of the time. tapping, that they were home alone when Frank was out. Because by this point, they'd been finding excuses to stay with friends and things. So they're home alone. Frank's out. And they're standing in the kitchen and they start hearing tapping sounds. It's coming from the basement. And despite all the taps and all the times they've heard it, they've never really fully investigated. Like, where really is the sound coming from? This is like the first time the girls look at each other and they're like, we need to like literally go down there and see what this is. Like we can't just be scared. We need to go down. Dad doesn't believe us. There's something here.

We have to go down there and confront what's in the basement, whatever it is. And so Tina, the 15-year-old, she grabs a knife from the kitchen block. You know, Karen gets behind her and they open up the basement door. Down they go into the basement. So down the stairs they go and they're looking around. They're super scared, but there's nothing in the basement. Like, they're in the basement. They're looking around. The lights are on. There's, there's nothing down here. And as they're down there, they hear tapping coming from right behind them. They whip around. There's nothing there. And they're like, oh, my God. Like, our house is actually haunted. And so now they're so scared. They just start like, screw this. They turn and they start running out of the basement. But as they're going up the stairs, as the lights are on now,

they see written on the hallway in the stairwell going down to the basement, like on the wall, in red. It says, come find me. I'm in your closet. They see that. And they're like, oh, my God. They bolt out of the basement. They run out of the house. They run next door to their neighbor's house. They're totally hysterical. The neighbor knows the family well, knows they lost their wife. Doesn't really know any of the context of the tapping or any of that stuff, but he sees these girls. You know, hysterical. He knows Frank's out doing this late shift. Instinctively, he's like, just get in the house. The girls are like so upset. They're like, we think there's ghosts in our house. house. We did a seance with a Ouija board and the neighbor's not passed in judgment at all.

They're just like, you're fine. You're safe. Stay here. You know, when your dad gets here, he'll know what to do. Just stay here. You're safe. You're good. Like, you're good. The girls are like very upset, but they're like, thank God, we're not in our house anymore. So they stay there. And a couple hours later, Frank comes home, falls in the driveway, and the neighbor sees Frank come in. And so he immediately leaves his house, tells the girls to stay. And he goes over. And he says to Frank, hey, here's what happened. They saw some writing on the wall. It sounds like there's ghosts.

I don't know what's going on, but your daughters are obviously very upset. I just want you to know you might want to talk to him. And Frank's like, all right, okay. Calls the girls over. They're outside the house now. And he's like, tell me what happened. They tell him, you know, we saw writing on the wall. Like, we heard tapping.

We went down there. There's nothing down there. Like, we really think the house is on it. And he's like, all right, stay here. Stay with the neighbor. I'll go check the house. So Frank, totally not worried about what he's, going to find. This is nonsense. He goes in the house, searches the house. Nothing in the house. He does

find writing, though, in the stairwell. It does say, I'm in your closet, come find me. It does say that, but it's written in ketchup. You know, he's thinking, okay, now it seems like my daughters have taken this to the next level. They are writing on the walls. They're sort of creating a bigger drama out of this. It's not even about coping. I don't even know what this is. This is like these children are struggling so mightily that they're, they're out. acting out. This is them. And so he's not mad. He isn't like, I'm going to go discipline them. He's like, we got some issues. This is, this is beyond something that I can just tell them to stop. So he leaves the house, and he's very comforting to his daughters. And he's like, don't worry,

the house is fine. Starting tomorrow, you guys are going to go to grief counseling. Like, we need to get you some help. Because clearly, whatever has been going on has not worked. We've got to get you guys professional help. And the girls, they know what he's saying. I don't believe you. I think that you did this. That's what they know he's suggesting. But they're so just defeated, sad, you know, they're like, okay, that's what we'll do. Like, whatever, like, resigned to it. They're, they're definitely at odds with their dad, but they've accepted it. So this is about two weeks post-saunce that the decision is made that they're going to go get professional help. And, like, literally, I think it was like within a day or two, the girls are seeing a grief counselor.

And wouldn't you know it? All the tapping in that. stopped. Over the coming couple of weeks that they are now in professional care, it's like the house sort of went back to relative normalcy. You know, there's no tapping. Frank and the girls are getting along pretty well. Things are, things are okay. And even the girls thought, maybe there's truth to us sort of getting a little out of our, out of our minds over this thing. Maybe this was a little in our head. I don't know. So things kind of go back to normal for a couple of weeks. Now we're about a month post-saience. And so call it a month post seance, Frank takes Tina and Karen and one of their friends,

whose name is, was Maureen or Kathleen, out for ice cream. It's just a random night. There are no problems in the house. Things are good, right? They remember what happened, but it's not part of their day to day anymore. So they leave the house, they get some ice cream, and they come back to the house, it's pretty late at night. And as they pull up to the house, the girls are in the car, they're chatting, doing their thing. But Frank, he looks up at the house, and he immediately notices that something just seemed off about the house. He's looked at the house. He's sort of looking at the girls.

The girls are not paying attention to the house at all. He gets out of the car, doesn't say anything. They walk up to the house. And then before he unlocks the front door and goes in, he just turns to the girls. And he's like, did you guys leave the lights on upstairs? I could have sworn I shut those lights off before we got here. And the girls are like, oh, no, I don't think so. That's weird.

Like, could have sworn I had those lights off. I never leave those on when we go out of the house. house. Okay. Then they walk onto the porch and the girls are sort of not picking up that anything's wrong yet. They go to the door and as he's getting ready to unlock the door, he hears inside the house that clearly TV or a radio is on. Something's on in the house. It's not loud, but something's on in the house. It's not the sound of somebody talking. It's the sound of a recording on a device in the house. Frank's like, what is going on here? Because he's like, I was here and they've been with me since we left. And he's not thinking this is connected to the girls, but he's thinking, did I just, like, lose my mind and not turn things off before?

Well, he's, he's confused. He's not, he's not doing the up, go surreal. He's doing the, there's got to be an explanation here. So he's, he unlocks the door, he opens it up and, like, sure enough, the TV's on, there's a radio on and back. You know, it's not, like, bedlam inside the house. It's just a couple things that have been left on. And the girls, at this point, they notice, like the daughters, not the friend, the daughters notice that those shouldn't be on. Like, no one's been here. And they get spooked. They go

quiet. And they kind of tuck in behind their dad who's standing in the threshold of the front door. And Frank's sort of like looking back at the girls, looking into the house. Like, he's like, did they do this? Did I do this? He's like, he's caught between how serious do we need to take this. But he starts doing this sort of like half invested investigation of the house. He walks over. He turns the TV off. He's looking around like, did I move the chair? Like, everything looks kind of off. But when he got back to where they started, basically the foyer, the front foyer in the front room, there was one more room left to search.

It was just like the front sitting room that was like next to the front door. It overlooked the front street. It was like sort of a nothing room. And he had just in his sort of half-invested state had not gone in there when he first began this sort of half-invested search. And so the girls have been quiet. They're on edge. They're right behind him.

They're sort of tucked behind their dad. And Frank, he walks into this room. So now he's facing the front of the house. He walks in and there's a row of windows and above them is like the frilly curtains that sit above the windows. And then on the wall above that, written in shaving cream, it just says, will you marry me? And Frank's looking at that and he looks at his daughters and back at the shaving cream. And he knows obviously he didn't do that. The girls are horrified because they see it now too.

But as they're standing there and Frank's literally like, what do I even do, he hears movement from the closet at the side of the room. and Frank turns and the girls turn too and out of the closet walks this deranged looking person wearing Frank's dead wife's dress or wedding dress walks out of the closet with a hatchet over his shoulder and this person has clown makeup on like this it's almost comically bizarre

out of the closet they walk and they turn and they look over at Frank and the girls and then specifically at Frank and they just go go upstairs so they kind of backpedal out of the room the girls start going up the stairs. Frank goes, you know, backwards watching this person who's slowly walking towards them with the hatchet. Up the stairs they go. He tells the girls, going to the first bedrooms. They kind of like make their way into the first bedroom. He follows them. And as soon as he gets into the second four bedroom, he shuts the door and he holds the

doorknop. And there's this sudden struggle at the door as the maniac is now trying to pull the door open. Frank's holding the door. There's no plan. And Tina, the 15-year-old, like in a panic, She just turns and runs and leaps out the second floor window, like jumps clear out of the house, smashes to the ground. She runs to that same neighbor next door, the one that they had ran to when the ketchup thing happened. Oh, my God, there's somebody in the house, you know, that type of thing. Neighbor calls the police. The police come flying over a couple minutes later.

And when they get there, Frank and his girls are up in that second floor window. They didn't jump. And they're yelling like, hey, there's somebody in my house. There's someone here. I don't know where they were. I think they're in the hallway. they're gone now. I don't know what's going on. So the police, they get a ladder. They get, you know, Frank and his girls down. Everybody's safe. You know, Frank, the girls, everybody's safe. And the police are like,

you stay at the neighbor's house. We're going to search your house because clearly there's someone in there or who has been in there, the way you've described it. Police go in, they search the whole house top to bottom, and they cannot find anything. However, they do find the back glass sliding door of the first floor was slightly open, and there was indeed a hatchet, lying up against the wall, as if someone left it there on their way out. The police, they search the house, they do that, they find the hatchet, and then afterwards they pull Frank aside, and they're like, okay, you know, obviously, we believe you, there was someone in your house, but they're not there now. And so here's what we propose. You and your family, stay somewhere else for the next couple of days. We're going to watch your house

because they're not here now. Maybe they'll come back. Maybe they'll come back for their hatchet, right you know who knows we'll just monitor your house sort of discreetly see if they turn up because as it is the way you've described them they basically had a costume on so we don't even know who to look for man woman how old they are like pretty much disguise we don't even know where to start maybe they're here maybe they're outsiders we don't know so we're going to just monitor your house so you just hang out for a couple of days so frank and the girls they're horrified happy to be alive you know thanks to you know Tina's quick thinking basically and so they stay with a friend a family a family family friend. And for the next couple of days, the police monitor the house, and they report to

Frank each day, like, not seeing anything, you know, no one's coming to your house. Like, there's no sign of any activity, you know, I guess it's just over. But Frank, after a few days, is like, man, I can't, I can't just do this. Like, I can't just not be at my house. And he didn't have a chance to collect any of his things, like his toiletries and whatever. And so three or four days into this, this, you know, surveillance program, he's like, I'm just going to go over there and just real quick, go in the house, I'm going to grab my toiletries or whatever, and, you know, whatever. So without telling the police, he drives over to his house and he pulls into his driveway and, you know, it's nondescript, nothing going on, it's daytime. But as he's pulling into the

house, for a second, he thinks he sees somebody walking around in his second floor of his house. And obviously he witnessed someone walking around in his closet, so he's quick to be worried about it. But he also is like, wait a minute, I don't know if the police were also going to be in my house. They said they'd be watching it from the outside. I guess I don't really know if they're also in the house. I guess that could be part of their protocol. I better call them real quick and just make sure I'm not going crazy and just tell them and see what they say before I just walk in.

Because originally he was just going to jet in there, grab the stuff, and go. And when he pulled up, he didn't see any cops outside. So he goes to that neighbor's house, grabs their phone. He calls his contact to the police. And they're like, yeah, Frank, no one's going in your house. So if you saw somebody in your house, that's not us. and I don't know how there was nobody outside of your house. You probably arrived at like the exchange between the officers.

Maybe somebody had just left. So there should have been someone outside to greet you. It's our bad, but definitely no one should be in there. And so they're like, do not go in your house. We're going to come over and search it for you. So Frank stays at the neighbor's house, the police come over and they go up to the front door. And remember, the police saved for a couple of minutes here and there.

They've been watching this house from the outside the whole time. they open up the door and like what they see inside the house is just unbelievable there are all these pennies that are glued to the ceiling of the first floor there are knives that have been driven into the walls in some cases through family photos there are these champagne flutes that are half filled with champagne inexplicably sort of placed around the first floor there's furniture rearranged in sort of bizarre ways it's like this weird scene but clearly someone has been in here we've been watching this house and someone's been getting in and out of here clearly or they're still here. And so they're like, back out, we need to do a much more thorough search of this house.

We miss something. There's some way in or some way out or someone's still here. And so it's like full send. Every cop in town searches this house. They rip it to shreds. They're like, we are going to find this person. And they search that house for hours. And they do not find a thing.

There's no footprints coming in or out. There's snow in the ground. there's no sign that anyone could have gotten in here, but clearly someone was in here. And eventually, a couple of the officers who were part of the search, they find themselves in the basement where it all began, the nothing basement. And they're frustrated. They're like, I don't know how to even go back to Frank and his family and tell them that we do, we don't know, considering now what we can see on their first floor.

And so they're just frustrated. They're sitting in the basement, and they're like, we must have missed something. And at one point, one of the guys is leaning up against the washing machine. in the basement, one of the only things down there. He's leaning up against it. He's like, wow, he missed something. And suddenly his weight causes the washing machine to move just slightly. It wasn't bunkered to the wall.

And it reveals a little cutout on the backside of the washing machine that was bigger than it needed to be. I think it felt like the dryer. There are those ducks that feed into the wall. This is like a bigger cutout. It had clearly been discounted. No one had thought to look behind these two appliances. And they pulled them out of the way.

And they discover there's this big cut that leads to a tunnel. in the wall. And they get their flashlight out and they lean into this hole in the wall in the basement and they shine their light down this tunnel in the walls to the back corner of the basement and crouched in the corner is this person wearing a dress with the clown makeup and their hatchet. Okay. That person was a guy named Danny LaPlante. He was 16 years old. And about a year earlier, he went on what he presumed to be a date with Tina, the 15-year-old. He felt like his his advances were spurned, and he was very upset about it. And so naturally, what did he do?

He found a way to break into the family's house, burrowed into their walls, and was living in their walls for the better part of six months to a year. He was in the basement when the girls were performing that seance. He heard them trying to contact their mom. And then he pretended to be their mom doing the tap, tap, tap, tap, you name it. He was absolutely playing along with the idea that they thought it was their mom. He also didn't just stay in the wall in the basement. He routinely would leave the wall in the middle of the day, he said.

The family didn't notice. He would just walk around the house. He'd go under their beds at night and flick their springs. No one investigated. So he's living in their house, living in their walls. So he gets pulled out and obviously gets arrested. He's 16, but he's let out on bail effectively. Ten months after he was pulled from the wall, and he's been ten months after he gets bailed out,

he sneaks into another family's house in Massachusetts, and he murders all of them. He kills the entire family, doesn't know them, no connection to them whatsoever followed the same protocol, but he murdered by drowning them in the bathtub. He's still alive, and he recently was up for parole. He was rejected. He was determined to be during this parole hearing, arguably, the single most psychotic inmate in the entire federal prison system. So that's Daniel LaPlante for you.

And if you Google him, in a weird way, you're like, I can see it. Oh, God, I don't want to see that. I'm not Googling that. What a fucking, especially with three kids. You're like. Terrific. Yeah. So that's the one that sticks.

I'd say. Oh, God. What a story. Honestly, I can't believe you do this for a living because I think I'm, I'm, I'm, like, actually sweating. And I think you have to, like, get into this. psyche of all that even when you were telling the story, the part that stood out to me is how many times you're like, you could see how he would rationally do this, right? And you could

see how, like, the dad would think that this is not a thing. Yeah. Which is why your stories are so interesting. Well, because I think that one of the things I want to do, whether it's a story like that, where it's very dark or if it's, there were plenty of stories that are like kind of goofy. Like, I'll tell you a very, very, very short story. Boy Scout named Cody Clawson in 2001. He was camping with his dad and his Boy Scout troop out near Yellowstone. And he at one point decided to go from the campfire and where the tents were to go back to his dad's truck, which was like two miles away on a known trail to get some supplies, come back. And it was like a nothing thing. He's like 13 years old. And he has 15. So he's 15 years old, capable of doing this on his own. But he gets lost at some point,

you know, between the campfire and his dad's truck. And this is 2001, no cell phones, no radios. and so he gets totally lost. His dad eventually discovers that he's gone. They're looking for him, but he goes way off the trail and he gets completely lost. And so that night, the sun goes down, this horrible storm comes in, like hail and lightning, and he takes shelter inside of this cave and he's got no supplies. He's freezing cold. And he's like, what am I going to do?

Right? So he sleeps in a cave. The next morning he gets up and he's like, all right, I just need to go out and run around and someone's going to see me. They've got to be looking for me, right? And so he goes out and he's like so. like messed up from being no sleep, whatever, but he's running around and he sees this, this clearing, like this random clearing in the trees and he goes in the clearing and he's just like hoping that

someone flies overhead and sees him. And sure enough, like literally that same day. So less than 24 hours after going missing a helicopter flies overhead. It clearly sees Cody down below. Cody's like waving. The pilot, you know, waves down, like got contact. He's going to get out of here. So the pilot circles up and he lands his helicopter. And this is again, 2001. Cody runs over and the guys like the pilot's calling him to like, yep, come in this way. Like come in this direction. Come on. Get on the helicopter.

Like he's saved. He sits in the back of the helicopter and the pilot turns around and it's Harrison Ford in his private helicopter. At peak fame, Harrison Ford happened to find Cody Claussen and saved his life. What's up, kid? It's Indiana Jones. Come to save you. Best thing that's ever happened to that kid. Yeah, right.

Also, Harrison. Like, what a, he gets to be a hero without doing much. I know. Yeah, just flying around saving boys'couts. Also, I feel like that would be a good one to put in the book because the visual of Harrison's face. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's iconic.

Anytime you tell a beautiful story, it allows you to see some different type of humanity. And, like, you've lived a lot of stories. So I know that you actually, I believe, went to Afghanistan and you had one of those near-death experiences that many people talk about. What story do you tell from that? What happened? And because I think there's a beautiful chance to get to experience something without having to go through some of the horror that you've been through in so many have. Yeah, well, thank you. I went to Afghanistan on my first tour as a seal.

And in many ways, the experience was sort of exactly what I thought it would be. And in many ways was sort of horrific in ways I didn't expect. But it was just like, you know, it's like the ugliest parts of humanity in some ways. You know, people trying to kill each other. You're sort of in it. But at the end of the deployments, like five months into it, I was in an alleyway at the tail end of sort of sporadic gunfighting over the course of the day. We did not get into like infinite gunfights over there. This just happened to be a day where we got a pretty significant gunfight.

And we had tracked down via drone overhead these people that we believed were fighters, but we had to go see if they really had guns or not. And we got to the end of this intersection, this alleyway where we walked down this alleyway and there's just like a seven foot tall wall. This is nighttime, night vision on, like it's pitch black. And based on the drone operator, we believed we could peek our heads over this wall. And there was this big field out beyond this wall. And we could sort of look to the other side of the field and get a sense of who these folks were, whether they were kids, random people, whatever. Combatants, we didn't know. but one way or another, the cardinal directions, the location of these folks got mixed up,

and we suddenly found ourselves looking over the wall and seeing that, one, they're right here on the immediate other side of the wall, and two, they are combatants, like guns, you name it. What ensued was this, well, we had to decide if we try to back out and find another way, they might hear us, they had heard us to this point. We kind of snuck up on them. Anyways, turns into this very intimate shooting back and forth across the wall, and they were holding grenades with pins out. Basically, though, the way grenade works, at least frag grenades, is it's like the body of the grenade. It's like a metal rock. And there's a fuse inside of it.

And when it detonates, the body itself blows up into a million pieces. And it's designed to almost turn into these jagged pieces of metal that shoot everywhere. And the lethal radius, at least for an American frag grenade, it's like, within, I think, five meters, you're toast, you're dead. Two grenades come over the wall. The way it works is you pull the pen and you release the spoon and there's a timer that starts and it detonates like five seconds later or something. Grenades come over the wall. One actually hits my shoulder and had time slowed down. I'm on night vision and there was a drone overhead with an infrared spotlight that was

flashing, which is normally we would use that for targeting. For whatever reason, we were in a targeting spotlight, which is like imagine if God had had a flashlight and was turning it off and on and like a pretty tight cone that you can only see on night vision. And so like we're in like a strobe light and I see the grenade, then it disappears. See the grenade? Then it disappears. And it hits my shoulder.

and like this happened in a fraction of a second, but I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to die. I remember being like really concerned that it was going to blow up right here and it would blow my head off, not so much because like shoot, I'll die. That was sort of a given. It was like, I won't have a face. I can't have a, you know, open casket. You know, my mom won't see me again. Hits my shoulder.

I see it disappears. See it disappears. The strobe. It makes it like halfway down to the ground. I remember thinking like, oh, maybe it'll just blow my legs off and I'll live through this. So who knows? It's the ground. We were standing in like a sewage runoff.

There was a sewage trail that went through it. So it was like a couple of inches of sewage, which I think realistically probably saved several of our lives. The grenade landed and at least the one that hit me. There was two that came over the wall. Then it blows out. And it just felt like somebody took rocks and just threw them at my legs. It didn't hurt at all.

I'm sure this is like the most extreme amount of adrenaline that you can possibly get. You know, the time slowing down thing. I don't know the science behind it, but it. sort of makes sense because what's happening is like when your body truly thinks not like oh this is really stressful I hope I'm going to be okay but no like actual death is coming it's like your body does everything it can instantly to try to save you and one of the things it does is it dumps all these you know adrenaline to help you focus you can understand what you need to do to survive that's the fight or flight instinct and so it's like time slows down blows up don't feel anything and

then I was just incapacitated. I was down. My gun was blown off me, my helmets, so I didn't have night vision anymore. And it was just chaos because there was only seven of us. We didn't know how many people were on the other side of the wall. And as I'm sure your husband has told you, you can get shot and keep on going. So it's like very intimate. The fighters in the village just began arbitrarily firing in our direction because it's like martyrdom is a thing. They don't care if they hit their own. They're going to hit us. Like rockets are being fired. It was, it's like, okay, I've survived the blast somehow, and it looks like several of my teammates have as well. But now it's like they're going to come around the wall and shoot us. Some RPGs can, it was like,

okay, I'm alive now, but I'm going to die very soon. At some point, you know, I'm trying to crawl my way. I get scooped up and dragged, but one of the guys that was not out, or everybody lived on our side. Everybody got hurt, but everybody lived. I got dragged to like the stem of the T, and I was placed up against a wall. And, you know, I'm just sitting there. I don't have a gun. I don't have anything. You know, there's a decent illumination from the moon. I don't have night vision on. And all I hear is gunfire over here. And it's like I'm sitting there. I can't get my turnicits off to stop the bleeding. Even though they were literally put on my kit with rubber bands to be quick release. I couldn't even get them. I was so weak. And then I, my hearing went, like it went complete silence. And then my vision sort of came to toilet paper rolls and then faded. But I was totally lucid. I was very alive. But I can't see, can't hear anything. And I remember thinking about my wife, Amanda, back home. You know, sort of having that moment of like, honestly, I was just thinking she's going to end up getting remarried.

We didn't have kids yet. And I wasn't mad. It was just like she's going to have a whole other life with somebody else. As she should, you know, like, that's the way it's going to go. She's like 20 something. You know, this is the end of the road. I wish I'd had kids sort of thing. And then I also, I was really hung up on.

I wonder if they'll say John Allen was killed in action or Jonathan Allen was killed in action. I was very fixated on that. I wonder how they're going to spell that. Not that I cared one way or another, but it was like practical, right? And I also had a thought that I've subsequently told people about, which is like every day when you live your life, you don't think about the act of living. You don't wake up and think, okay, today I better breathe. I better make sure my heart's pumping. I better like, you know, things that we do to live. You just do them automatically. Your entire experience is being alive and you do it automatically. What people are. don't appreciate, that's maybe not the wrong word for it, what they don't know or they haven't experienced yet, is that your body, as good as it is at being alive, it's just as good at shutting down. You just haven't done it yet. And as I was sitting there, silence, no vision, it was like, this is death. Not scary, not bad, not good, nothing. It simply was. I am dying. And the last thing I felt was maybe like almost a physical feeling of letting go, which I've seen other people echo. I don't know. That's probably not even how it really felt. It was like, okay, that's it. And I sort of

almost let go mentally, I don't know, and I felt myself hit the ground. I sort of leaned over. And it was like, I'm dying now. This is active death here. And then a moment later, my seal medic came running out, put tourniquets on my legs and presumably stop the bleed in time because I very slowly got my vision back, got my hearing back, but we're like in the worst situation. They called in like air strikes like five feet away from us. We're still getting shot at them all over the city. They carried me like out to the helicopter. The guys that are like one guy, his lung was collapsed. And he had to keep doing needle decompressions on him, like the medic. As we're taking fire, he's like jamming needles into his intercostal space. I imagine porcupine quills of all these these needles poking out to relieve pressure

on his lung. Like he's assisting me. You know, it's like this just madness. as we run to the helicopter. I obviously survive, you know, and it was just very lucky that I didn't bleed out. And it was just entirely because of my medic. But, you know, I, in some ways I've had the cliche, like, wow, I am on a second chance feeling. I've had a lot of that. But I don't feel that on a day-to-day basis. I don't walk around thinking, wow, I'm on bar.

I'm on like this amazing second chance. I don't. but it's very, very good for when I'm stressed about trying something new or I'm stressed about doing something hard. I have found that it's so easy for me to say, dude, you should be dead. And in some ways, it doesn't even necessarily require having a near-death experience, but understanding that we are mortals, it's sort of dark, but like it's a very refining thing. If you just use that in your life in a good way, like your mortality doesn't need to be a negative. It can be a good thing. You can say, dude, literally I don't know how much time I have. That in and of itself should inform your decision making to some degree. We all have responsibilities. You can't just be like, well, then I'm going to go skydive today. Like, you could. Maybe don't. If you have like 17 kids to feed, maybe don't do that. But the point is, it's like I have used that experience to be quick to risk embarrassment, quick to like take chances. Because the way I see it is like,

the worst that will happen is not as bad as dying. And so it's just, it's taught me to continue to seek out those challenging things, which I think I was already sort of doing. But now it's with a healthier level of reckless abandon. John Ballin, what a series of stories and a life already lived. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you. I felt like mad.

It was also beautiful. No. Well, first of all, I like yappers. And as an interviewer, yapping is nice. It's very seldom when you do a podcast. you get to like not actually think about any of the stuff and fall so deeply into a story. Wow. And like what a beautiful skill that you have that you're able to do that.

Thank you very much. Yeah. Especially you're like, I didn't plan this one. So what happened? This is all I do, though. In a way, I planned it. It's actually incredible. I'm so excited for the book.

I'm actually going to give it to my husband because he totally likes this. And then he's going to tell me the stories and I'm going to get freaked out. actually. Although I hear women are actually like mostly the target audience for all scary stuff. They do like that stuff. No. That's just the way it is, I guess. Yeah. We just, we want to be scared, but like from over there, you know? That's right. Okay. So the terror within. It's available everywhere. Yeah. So it's available everywhere. There's available everywhere. There's nine stories. You can pick it up, read any one of them. They are not directly connected. There is a through line, which is this idea that the scariest thing in any one of the, these stories is never the thing you expect. And I'm taking it a step further. It's that we all have a darkness inside of us, the terror within, if you will. Some people, it comes out, some it does not. And so it sort of exposes that side of humanity a little bit. But there's one story in there. It's called Eliza that I think of all the stories we put in graphic novel form, it's very fitting, I'll say, it's a story that's exclusive to the graphic novel. It's very fitting for

our current sort of state of living, the type of technology we use. It's a very unique story about a guy who let's, let's call it tech, go a little too far. It's creepy. I like it. I like it. I also like a good tension, cliffhanger. There you go. John Ballin.

Thank you for being here. Thank you very much.