MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Born Together

Episode Date: October 22, 2026

Today’s story is really weird. It’s basically a cross between a medical mystery and a full-blow supernatural story. But independent of what you believe in terms of what actually happened here, what you’re going to hear about is totally bizarre and just inexplicable behavior that was documented over and over again over many years. And so even if you think this is fully rooted in science, I’m telling you there’s not really a great explanation for exactly what went down here.Story name, preview & link to original YouTube video:#1 -- "Born Together" -- When separation became impossible, something unthinkable happened... (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDzjbV_g4iI&t=4s) You can WATCH all new & exclusive MrBallen podcast episodes on my YouTube channel, just called "MrBallen" - https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballen Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today's story is really weird. It's like a cross between a medical mystery and a full-blown supernatural story. But independent of what you believe in terms of what actually happened here, what you're going to hear about is totally bizarre and just inexplicable behavior that was documented over and over and over many years. And so even if you think this is clearly somehow rooted in science, I'm telling you there just isn't a clear explanation. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the right place because

that's all we do, and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So, if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Follow Button's house and put itching powder in their contact solution. Okay, let's get into today's story. One afternoon in September of 1951, A 53-year-old father named Adolphus Eller carried a large cardboard box from his car toward a boarding house in the city of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He took the box inside and then went down a hallway and then into the room where his 21-year-old daughters, whose names were Bobby and Betty, were busy unpacking. Now, for Bobby and Betty, they were both really excited about moving into this boarding house.

They had recently decided to, at the same time, move out of the home they'd grown up in, which was in a town about an hour away, which is where their dad, Adolphus, and his house. his wife were currently living, they had decided to move here and get a job at a cigarette factory. They were both going to work there and live in this boarding house, and it was like a big deal for them. They were, you know, becoming adults. And so for them, they were really excited, but, you know, for their dad, Adolphus, it was bittersweet. You know, on the one hand, he was incredibly proud of them for becoming adults, so to speak. But on the other, it was, you know, sad to see his little girls becoming adults. And so even though they were now, you know, off on their own, they were still

together, literally living in this boarding house together and working at the same factory. And so he knew that even though he couldn't be there and neither could their mom, you know, to make sure they were okay, they would have each other, they'd look after each other. And so in a way, he knew they'd be okay. So Bobby and Betty, they were not just, you know, close siblings. They were actually identical twins. I mean, they had a really, really deep bond that likely only comes with being a twin. And even amongst, you know, identical twins who are very close with their sibling, it seemed like Bobby and Betty, had like a really intense relationship that really went way past whatever was normal amongst identical twins. I mean, they really leaned into being identical twins. So they both were five foot

three. They both had sort of round faces and dark hair, and they made sure they always styled their hair exactly the same way. But then just beyond their physical appearances being obviously very similar and, you know, styling themselves to look very similar, they also had very, very similar and interests, almost to the point where it was forced. They were both very social, very outgoing, and they both played the piano, and they sang in the glee club at school, and they both made good grades. But also, they seemed to share things that didn't seem possible really to share. For example, they had a tendency to get sick at the same time, but with illnesses that were

not necessarily contagious. Like one time Bobby had developed an abscess on one of her teeth, and she was really sick from it. And kind of inexplicably, Betty got an abscess in her tooth. Like, this is not something she could feign. It was like she just developed the exact same thing at the same time as her twin sister. And then any time, although it was pretty rare, that the sisters were different in some capacity, often because it was forced on them in some way, the sisters would very intentionally sort of do things to re-correct and become similar again.

For example, when Bobby had to get glasses because she had bad eyesight, Betty begged to get glasses or her. herself, despite the fact her vision was much better than Bobby's, but she still got those glasses so they could be the same. And now, you know, their big move out of the house involved getting the exact same job at the same factory and living in the same room in the boarding house. And so it really was just a continuation of the same behavior they had always exhibited. Now, there was a part of Adolphus and also his wife that, you know, secretly hoped that Bobby and Betty might eventually become more independent of each other. Like that seemed like the healthy route for them to eventually take. But as he sat down the last box of their things on the floor and looked at his

daughters who had the same identical excited smiles on, he actually found himself feeling grateful that they were kind of taking this leap in tandem like they always would. He just felt like, you know what, I just feel like this is a good intermediary step. Let them be dependent on each other for now. It's a good bridge into adulthood. So eventually, after a few minutes, Adolphus said, okay, you know, I'm going to take off now. Best of luck, you know, I love you, be in touch whenever you need to. and then he left and he headed back home. Two years later, Adolphus set the dining room table while his wife finished cooking in the kitchen inside of their home in the small town of Perleer, North Carolina.

And Adolphus had just put down the last dinner plate when he heard a knock at the front door. And right away, he felt so excited because he knew that, you know, it's the weekend and my daughter's always come to visit me every weekend. That's them. Bobby and Betty are here. They're here for dinner. They're going to stay for the weekend. And Adolphus and his wife, they love, they really cherish.

their time with their daughters ever since they had left to go to the factory. So Adolphus very excitedly heads to the door and he opens it up and he's really surprised at what he sees. It was Bobby, but Betty wasn't there. And when he said, like, where's Betty? Is she in the car? You know, Bobby said, no. And then also Adolphus took stock of the fact that Bobby had some luggage with her and she looked really sad, like depressed almost. And he said, you know, Bobby, what's going on? And she said, you know, I just hated my job at the factory.

I hated it. So I just quit and I'm coming home. And Betty, you know, she doesn't hate her job. She's going to stay. She's going to keep working at the factory and continue to live out there. And for Adolphus, I mean, this really is like a huge shift in their behavior. I mean, this is not something that these twins ever really did. They did basically everything together.

You know, even if one didn't necessarily want to do the thing the other was interested in, they would often just do the same things, again, to sort of mimic each other and be similar and just do everything the same. And so the idea that, like, they're doing such drastically different things. You know, one coming home and leaving the job, the other continuing to live out on her own, was just a huge departure. And then on top of that, you know, Adolphus said to Bobby, he's like, okay, well, of course you can stay here.

Of course you can come home. But where's Betty? Is she going to be here for the weekend? Is she going to come home and visit with you? You know, like, she can keep working there, but is she visiting this weekend? And Bobby was like, no, she's going to stay. She's actually not coming home this weekend. She's decided to stay.

And so again, it just felt like what's going on here for Adolphus and his wife? Like this is a crazy big shift. But very quickly Adolphus said, look, just come on in, have dinner, you know, get situated, we'll talk about this, we'll figure out what your next steps need to be. But of course, you can stay here and everything will be fine. And so Bobby, she picked her stuff up, she came inside, but then she quickly said she was not hungry and did not want to eat with them. And then she just went up to her bedroom, brought her stuff inside the room, shut the door,

and didn't come out again. And over the next two years, Bobby continued to basically just stay in her bedroom. She rarely left her room. She just closed herself in there and shut down almost entirely. She never talked to her parents about really why she left the factory or what she hated so much about the job that forced her to quit. You know, she just, she didn't talk about anything. She didn't reconnect with old friends or seek out new ones.

In fact, she became incredibly introverted. Whereas before, you know, when she and her sister were both living under this roof, they both were very extroverted. They were always out doing social things. And now, you know, Bobby is like a recluse in the room. She also was not showing any sign of making moves to change her current situation. Like she wasn't seeking a job. She wasn't looking for new opportunities. It was like she sort of had just declined to the point where she just was going to stay in her bedroom in perpetuity. But over the course of those two years that Bobby was home, there were several moments where she would sort of snap back and be herself again, these sort of extroverted, happy,

social, normal version of Bobby that her parents were used to. And that was when Betty would come home from the factory to visit on the weekends. It was like when Betty walked in the door, Bobby became reanimated and became her old self. And the two just immediately fell into rhythm as if no time had passed, like there's no ill will towards each other about the fact that they're not working at the factory or living together anymore. It was like everything went back to normal. And then Betty would leave to go back to the factory, and Bobby would go back to a room and shut the door. And so for Adolphus and his wife, you know, part of them had always hoped that these two, you know, would eventually separate and kind of learn to live independently.

But even though Betty, who was staying out at the factory and living on her own, appeared basically to be doing okay on her own, it just seems sort of obvious that Bobby was just completely falling apart without her sister. She was utterly dependent on her. I mean, it was so clear. And so Adolphus really didn't know, you know, how this was going to play out. It just sort of seemed like over time, this was definitely getting worse, certainly for Bobby. But around the time that Adolphus and his wife are sort of trying to figure this out what to do about Bobby, you know, two years in to her being home, right around that same time frame, so two years in, Betty sort of inexplicably came home one Friday and said, you know what, I quit the factory too,

and I'm going to live here as well. And in a weird way, you know, Adolphus and his wife were relieved because it meant that realistically, the daughters would almost certainly fall back and step with each other and return to their normal selves. And really, for Bobby's sake, it seemed like this would be an enormous, you know, plus in her life. I mean, she really was falling apart here. And they had seen how happy she was every time Betty came home to visit over those two years. And so there was a relief that Betty was home. But there was also like a, it didn't really make sense that Betty was quitting her job. I mean, really, it seemed like she liked her job. She seemed to be doing well on her own. Adolphus couldn't

necessarily prove this, but he believed that ultimately what Betty must be doing here is what she and her sister always did, which is we will do the same things even if we don't necessarily want to. Like Betty basically was sacrificing her independent life to come back home and be with her sister and sort of fall into step like they always did. That's what it seemed like. But again, it seemed like the silver lining was, at least our daughters will be normal again. They'll be happy and healthy again. But that is not what happened. Once Betty came back to home, you know, she quit the factory and she and Bobby are now living once again under the same roof. They absolutely did fall back and step with each other like they always had done.

But their connection to each other, their dependence, their attachment on each other was so extreme, way more than before. And before it was already extreme. So this is like way beyond what's reasonable. They basically went into the bedroom where they both were living, which was Bobby's bedroom, now Betty was living in there as well. They went into that bedroom and just shut the door and just stayed in there together basically 24-7.

So they did not, you know, become the extroverted girls that they used to be. They became introverted but together. They didn't seek out jobs. They certainly didn't show any interest in getting jobs. They, again, were not socializing. They just stayed in that room basically 24-7. They slept in the same bed and then in the rare times that they would leave the bedroom, they would walk side by side, like they were touching shoulders, like everywhere they went.

They had to basically be on top of each other. And they also moved almost like in sync, like robots. They were just doing the exact same thing. And then anywhere they went, they could not separate. Like any room they went to in the house, they were together. Go to the bathroom. They're going together. I mean, everything was together.

It was a level of attachment that the parents had never seen before. Now, of course, Adolphus and his wife were concerned about this. They didn't really know even what to call what they were seeing. It just seemed like codependency to a fault. they were sort of hoping that, you know, eventually the girls would kind of level out again and get their lives back on track, even if they retained that really intense bond. But then it got worse. In addition to basically shutting themselves in this room all the time and never being apart

from each other, they also stopped eating. At first, it just seemed like they were, you know, just not interested in dinner. You know, Adolphus would go up to the bedroom and he'd knock on the door and it would open a crack and both Bobby and Betty's faces would come to the door at the same time. And Adolphus would say, hey, you know, dinner's on the table. to come down to eat, and the girls, without even looking at each other, would say in perfect unison, we're not hungry. And then they would shut the door. And it was like, okay, I guess they just don't want to eat. But then weeks would go by and the girls would just refuse to come out and

eat. And so the girls began to lose a considerable amount of weight, like an unhealthy amount of weight. But no matter what, Adolphus and his wife did, they just would not eat. And so after a couple of weeks of this, Adolphus and his wife decided that, you know, they clearly were not going to get through to their daughters and get them to change their behavior just by presenting them with logic. You know, hey, you really ought to come down here and eat because you have to eat to survive. Like, they're not listening to that. There's something going on here. And it seemed increasingly obvious that it was mental, that these girls were really struggling with some sort of mental illness. At least that was the parent's suggestion. And so they brought their daughters to go see a

psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist very quickly actually made a diagnosis. They said that Bobby and and Betty both had schizophrenia, which is a very serious chronic brain condition that affects the way you think, the way you behave. Basically, all the ways in which you interact with the world can be gravely affected by schizophrenia. And so a lot of their strange behaviors or their anomalous behaviors, in particular, they're not eating and their codependency, the psychiatrist believed could basically be explained by schizophrenia. And so ultimately, the psychiatrist prescribed Bobby and Betty some antipsychotic medication and promised Adolphus that if they'd take these meds, they'd be okay. But even though Adolphus and his wife ensured that Bobby and Betty took their medication

exactly as they were supposed to every single day, the twins did not seem to get any better. If anything, they actually continued to get worse. They spent, if anything, more time, you know, locked in their bedroom and they became more frail and they continued to barely eat. And they also began showing signs of being very paranoid around anybody that was not their other sibling, even their own parents. It was like the only person either Bobby and Betty could be around was the other. They couldn't be around anybody else. They just kind of hid themselves away, basically 24-7. And so pretty quickly, Adolphus came to the realization that these antipsychotic

meds are not doing enough, or maybe they're not doing anything at all. But at the same time, Adolphus did not think that, you know, the diagnosis was wrong. He believed his daughters did have schizophrenia, the symptoms basically fit, but the treatment wasn't working. And so in Adolphus, his mind, he felt like what he needed to do was just get his girls more and better psychiatric help. So in early 1961, when Bobby and Betty were both now 30 years old, Adolphus had them both involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital. And at first, it seemed like this hospital stay was exactly what the girls needed. Because, you know, they gained weight back pretty quickly because they were being forced to eat,

and they were also being monitored effectively 24-7 and they were given proper medication, and, you know, they were just kind of comprehensively looked after, and so pretty quickly they got better. And also, the girls were allowed to stay in the same room together. They really never separated them, which was an important part of their recovery as they had each other. And so after several weeks in the hospital, they were deemed, you know, healthy and back to normal, so to speak, and they were discharged. But pretty much immediately, once they got back to their family home, they regressed right back to being, you know, secluded in the bedroom, not eating, and being completely introverted and completely not normal. not healthy. And so, again, they were committed. And again, they got better while they were at the hospital, but then once they were discharged and back home, they got worse again. Over and over and over

again for over a year. It was like they were in and out of the hospital. It just didn't seem like they were making any real progress. And so eventually, Adolphus and his wife and several doctors and nurses that had treated the two girls over the past year during their numerous hospital stays, eventually they all kind of came to the conclusion that it could be possible that what was happening here is these girls had schizophrenia, and that was kind of the root cause of all their issues. Or maybe it was just their intense dependency on each other that was effectively causing all their problems, that what could have been viewed as like this timeless bond between siblings was actually like a really deeply unhealthy codependency where they were so enmeshed in the other that

like they couldn't grow as people and become independently functioning adults, that they were kind of stuck, and that unless drastic action was taken, they would continue to be stuck and continue to decline, or at least spiral the way they had been. And so a decision was made to without asking the girls to forcibly separate them and see if that made a big difference. And so on April 11, In 1962, Bobby and Betty were both once again committed to the hospital. Except this time, for the first time, they were separated. They were put in literal opposite ends of the hospital in totally separate wards, and they completely lost their minds.

The girls begged and screamed and demanded to be kept together. But the staff said, nope, it's for your own good. A few hours after the girls had been separated at the hospital, so this that the first time they're being kept apart. This is like 1 a.m. on the morning of April 12th. Adolphus was at home asleep when his phone rang. And he was confused because it's the middle of the night, like who's calling him. But when he picked up the phone, he heard a hospital doctor's voice on the other end. And the doctor sounded completely frantic. And he tried to explain to Adolphus what was going on. You know, Adolphus was aware of the fact that the girls were going

to be separated, but everything the doctor was saying about what had followed after the separation just didn't make any sense and he was trying to clarify, like, what are you talking about? But the doctor finally just paused and then just clearly stated basically the disaster that had unfolded after the separation, that something they could have never planned for has happened and even the doctor didn't really know what to make of it. And when Adolphus heard this, he just sat there on the phone, completely frozen, having no idea how to react. Over the next few days, doctors at that psychiatric hospital tried to come up with a rational

scientific explanation for what happened on the night that Bobby and Betty were separated. But they couldn't figure it out. So, in an effort to figure it out, they called in the North Carolina State Board of Investigators for some help. But they couldn't figure it out. And so they called in the FBI. And the FBI couldn't figure it out either. Nobody had any idea how this could have happened or why. And so as this story naturally began to leak out to the press and began circulating in newspapers all over the country as like this unbelievable mystery, a lot of people, as they saw the story, began to wonder if maybe the explanation for what happened after these girls were separated is not rooted in science.

Maybe what happened is something that we as humans, we can't really understand. But it doesn't make it any less real. It would turn out at 12.55 a.m. on the night or early morning that Bobby and Betty were separated in the hospital. A nurse in the ward where Bobby had been moved to was doing her regular rounds, and when she got to Bobby's room, she found Bobby lying in her bed on her side and she was dead. About five minutes later, at 1 a.m., a doctor went to check on Betty in the ward where she was on the other end of the hospital, and this doctor found Betty was also dead in her bed lying in the exact same position that Bobby was. But the strange thing was, is there was no obvious

of what killed them. There was no sign of illness, there was no sign of self-harm, there was no sign of violence or foul play. It was like, inexplicably, both of these girls were just dead. And then even after doing multiple autopsies, nobody could figure it out. Like there wasn't a reason that they died. Forget foul play, forget how it happened. There wasn't a medical diagnosis for what killed them. They just suddenly died. And so the only real conclusion they had was that, Somehow, the twins had died from no apparent cause at almost the exact same time. The twins' cause of death was officially listed as ill-defined and unknown. The only theory that anyone has been able to come up with about what happened came from

one of the doctors who treated Bobby and Betty in the hospital. He believed that the twins were so distressed about being forcibly separated that they found a way to reunite by, quote, willing themselves to die. Basically, the twins need, the spiritual, physical, emotional need to be with the other. And having that taken from them was so strong, so powerful, that they basically forced themselves to shut down and die in hopes that their spirits could reconnect. But as crazy as that sounds, there's actually one more very strange detail about the way they died that seems to add a layer of credibility to the idea that whatever happened here

is bigger than science. It's something paranormal. It's something supernatural. It's something else. And that was that when they found Bobby and Betty's bodies, just five minutes apart from each other on opposite ends of the hospital, they weren't just laying in bed in the same position as the other. No. It seemed like they were positioned sort of awkwardly on their bed. If you think about how a bed works, you know, it's a rectangle and you lay vertically along the bed. The girls were found sort of a little bit at an angle on their respective beds. Like they were sort of positioned in a non-natural, non-parallel way with their bed. They were sort of almost perpendicular to the flow of their bed.

And at first, it was just an anomaly about how they were found. Oh, they died and they sort of got into this position. But then somebody realized, if you removed all the walls, just in your mind, if you removed all the walls between each of the rooms they were in, the way they were laying on the bed made sense. Because the girls, in their own way, positioned themselves to be looking exactly at each other when they died. A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Ballin podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin.

Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bone and Cole Ocasio, research and fact checking by Shelley Schu, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Schumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fasiano. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacosio and Jordan Stidham. Production support by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner, theme song, Something Wicked, by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel that very same day.

And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts or visit seriousxm.com slash podcast plus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.