MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Brutal Mercy (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

Today, I’m going to tell you four stories of people who thought their day couldn’t get any worse... but they were wrong. 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, I'm going to tell you four stories about people who thought their day could not get any worse. But they were wrong. But before we get into today's stories, 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 ask the follow button to come on over and help you fix your roof.

But then once they actually get up on your roof, tell them you'll be up in a second, but just take the ladder away and leave. Our first story is called Flash. On the afternoon of March 7, 1946, a 10-year-old boy named Sipo led a team of eight oxen across an open, grassy field in the Heiveld region of South Africa. The wind was really starting to pick up and the clouds were gathering, so Sipo knew a storm was on the way, and so what he was doing was hurrying to finish plowing this field before it hit. He was walking ahead of his oxen, steering the ground.

them with a rope that was tied to a lead pair. And then behind the lead pair came three more pairs of oxen. And then beyond that was a chain going back to this really heavy plow. So basically all the oxen were working in tandem pulling this heavy plow. And so as SEPO is leading his oxen team and plowing this field, he's looking around, he's watching for signs the storm's going to hit, you know? And then at some point he actually hears off in the distance some thunder rumbling. And then he noticed raindrops hitting the ground. So he tugged. at the rope, you know, trying to get them to speed up. But the oxen were just slow.

They just kept walking at their normal slow pace. Now, at first, Sipo's thinking, okay, we can get through this. We'll plow the field. It'll be slow and steady, but it looks like the storm's going to hold. But really quickly, once the rain began, it just picked up really fast. Like the drops began falling faster and faster. The thunder got more and more pronounced. And so Sipo began to wonder if maybe he ought to just abandon this and just go home

and come back for this later. However, before Sipo could do anything, there was this blinding flash, and then something hit him and literally threw him into the air. Then he slammed down onto the dirt really hard, and for a few seconds, everything just went black. And then slowly, things began to come back into focus, and Sipo found that he was lying flat on his back in the wet dirt.

And as he lay there gasping, it dawned on him. He'd just been struck by lightning. Sipo, who was now starting to panic, tried to sit up to check himself for injuries, but his arms and legs wouldn't move. It was like he was paralyzed. And then, to his horror, he heard the sound of his oxen's hooves getting closer to him. And Sipo realized that where he'd ultimately fallen after being struck was right in their path. And if he didn't move, they were going to trample him.

Sipo's like trying and trying to will him, but nothing happened, and the sound of those oxen's hooves are getting closer and closer. So finally, he just shut his eyes and accepted his fate and waited to be crushed by his own oxen. But then when the oxen literally came right up to him, despite walking effectively right over him, he didn't feel anything. And so Sipo, whose eyes were closed, he's bracing for impact here. He's hearing the oxen pass over him.

He opens his eyes. and he sees, here are the oxen, but they're not stepping on him. It's like they're avoiding him. And so Sipo, he watches the lead pair pass over him without stepping on him. There's more to come. More oxen are coming along their way. And they too, you know, one by one. It's like they knew he was there or something,

or it was just an incredible coincidence, who knows, but they didn't step on SEPO. They all avoided him and basically spared him. And so Sipo, he doesn't know how badly hurt he is from the lightning strike. He doesn't really even know if he's going to recover here. He's currently paralyzed on the ground. But he breathes a sigh of relief after the final oxen passed by him without crushing him to death. He couldn't believe it.

But then he realized there was another problem. The oxen, despite not stepping on him, were continuing to walk as if nothing had happened. They're just going right along here. And what were they pulling? The plow. And the plow, if the oxen didn't stop, was going to literally this big, metal sharp plow was going to be pulled right across where Sipo was laying. And there was nothing he could do.

And so Sipo is in full panic mode. He can hear the sound of this huge, heavy plow crushing its way through the earth, you know, getting ready to cut right through him. And he's doing everything he can to try to move his body. But he just can't. He's paralyzed. And he's only able to look straight ahead because that's the way he landed. And he starts to see the frame and the,

chain that's connected to the plow and it's moving across him. And he knows any second now, this plow that's getting louder and louder is literally going to cut him in half. And there was just nothing he could do. And so once again, he found himself just accepting fate. He's about to die here. And so right as he knows he's about to be cut in half, there was this other really bright flash of light in the sky, except this time, SEPO didn't feel himself being chucked through

the air. It was just this really bright flash, and then everything went still. The plow stopped. There was just, there was no noise. Everything was still. And Sipo, he still can't move, right? He has no idea what's going on. But as he would eventually find out, there was a second lightning strike.

It didn't strike Sipo. It struck his oxen and killed all of them. So they all get killed and they fall to the ground, stopping the plow literally inches from his head. Ultimately, SEPA would recover from being struck by lightning. He would actually regain feeling in his limbs, he would get up, and, you know, despite the tragedy of losing all of his oxen, he would walk away and go back home. And so what we're left with at the end of the story is the idea that sometimes lightning does strike twice. This segment is brought to you by whale fall. You might remember a handful of years back, I told you the incredible story.

of Michael Packard, a lobster diver off Provincetown, Massachusetts. One day in June of 2021, about 45 feet down in the water, checking his traps, something slammed into Michael so hard it knocked the regulator right out of his mouth. For a moment, everything went black, and his first thought was that a shark had him, that this was now how he was going to die. But there were no teeth, just darkness and pressure closing in. Because Packard was not inside of a shark. He was inside of a whale. And somehow that whale spit him back out and Packard survived. He walked away with nothing worse than deep bruising.

No broken bones and home from the hospital that same night. That story has always stuck with me because it proved the ocean can produce something that sounds too wild to be real. Well, it turns out Hollywood thought so too because the new movie, Whalefall, throws you into the exact same impossible situation that Michael Packard was in. Whalefall tells the story of Jay Gardner as he dives off the central coast of California in search of his father's remains following his death. Instead, Jay finds himself trapped inside the belly of a massive sperm whale with only one

hour of oxygen left. The water is pitch black, his air is running out fast, and every second that passes is a second closer to running out completely with no clear way up and no way to call for help. Jay sees that lessons from his father might be the key. to his escape. Now, whalefall is fiction, but after what actually happened to Packard, none of it feels all that outlandish. Both stories come down to the same thing in the end. Impossible odds and somebody who refuses to stop fighting for the surface. Thank you again to our sponsor, Wailfall. Hold your breath. Watch Whale Fall only in theaters, October 16th. Get tickets now.

Our next story is called Save the Baby. One afternoon in January of 1978, a woman named Janet Whittle sprinted across a hospital parking lot in St. Helens, England. With her was her husband Paul, who was clutching their three-month-old baby Lisa close to his chest. As soon as they reached the hospital, the doors to the ER slid open, and Paul began yelling for a doctor because their baby, Lisa, was not breathing. So just a few minutes ago, Janet had been at home in the nursery, and she had been feeding and burping Lisa, and then she had set Lisa down in the crib just for a minute while she went to the kitchen to wash up. And when she'd come back, the baby's face had been completely pale and she'd been making pretty obvious choking sounds. Janet began screaming for her husband, and seconds later,

Paul comes charging in, he sees what's going on, he scoops up Lisa and says they're going to the ER. And luckily, Janet and Paul lived basically right next door to a hospital. So they literally just went outside and ran across the lot right over to the hospital. And so now a nurse and a doctor came running up the hall, they grabbed baby Lisa from Paul, they could see obviously the baby was choking or at least struggling to breathe, and without even asking any questions, they just turned and ran into a nearby exam room. Then Janet and Paul followed, and they're so upset, they're wondering what's going to happen, and all the team could say is it looks like the baby is choking on food. At this point, the doctor turned baby Lisa over, and he held her in one hand and then used the heel

of his other hand to thrust against her back, trying to dislodge whatever was stuck in the baby's windpipe. But after trying again and again, they could not get Lisa to breathe normally. They couldn't dislodge whatever was in there. And so this was getting more and more dire by the second. At this point, the doctor turned to the nurse and said, call an ambulance because Lisa has to be transferred to the children's hospital because they have the necessary equipment to save this baby's life. Minutes later, an ambulance driver named David Lamb raced through the streets of St. Helens on his way to the children's hospital. He knew that Lisa, the baby in back, was in critical condition.

Before they had left the hospital, the ER doctor had said that because Lisa's skin was now turning gray, she probably would die during transport. But David, the driver, he knew he still had to try. I mean, obviously, maybe they can get her there and maybe they can save her life. And so now he sped down the street toward an intersection that was right up ahead and he pulled into the left lane. But right as he reached the intersection, the light turned red, and David was forced to slow down to make sure there was no oncoming traffic.

And so he looked both ways really quickly, and when he thought the street looked clear, he began the turn, and just as he did, he heard screeching tires, and then something smashed into the side of the ambulance. 20 minutes later, Janet and Paul, who had not been in the ambulance, they had ridden in a taxi cab from the ER over to the children's hospital. They got out at the children's hospital, and they went inside to the reception desk, and they began asking about their baby. The receptionist immediately paged the staff,

and then Janet's heart pounded as a young nurse came out into the waiting room and told her and Paul that the ambulance their daughter had been in had unfortunately been in a crash. A car had apparently struck the ambulance, and the ambulance had spun out and smashed into the side of a hotel. When Janet heard this, she nearly collapsed. I mean, she was already bracing for terrible news, but it just seemed like it was just getting worse and worse,

and she's looking at the nurse just waiting to be told her daughter is dead. But the nurse didn't say that. The nurse explained that the ambulance had been hit so hard by this other car that it actually had saved their daughter's life. Up until that crash, no one had been able to dislodge whatever was stuck in baby Lisa's throat. It would turn out the impact of the crash essentially performed a perfect Heimlich maneuver on Lisa and dislodged the food from her throat.

She began breathing normally again, and the color returned to her face. She was fine. And she also had no injuries from the crash itself, like she was completely cured. In fact, everybody involved in the crash in both cars walked away from the crash. And shortly after the crash, baby Lisa was reunited with her overjoyed parents, and they went home and just continued living their life as normal. Our next story is called The Distress Call. Around 10 a.m. on May 15, 1978, a dispatcher picked up a ringing phone at the Pima County Sheriff's

headquarters in Tucson, Arizona. He asked the caller what their emergency was, and the man on the line said he wanted to report a ship sinking in the ocean. Now, the dispatcher immediately assumed that this had to be a prank call, because Arizona is completely landlocked, like there's no ocean anywhere near Arizona, so how could this person be reporting a sinking ship in the ocean? So, the dispatcher told the caller to stop wasting his time. And he was literally about to hang up when the man in Arizona shouted at him to wait. He was being serious. He said he had a CB radio here in Tucson, and somehow he just picked up a Mayday signal

from the captain of a ship that was stranded and taking on water off the coast of Key West, Florida. So a CB radio is a citizens band radio. It's a short-distance two-way radio that allows people to talk to each other, without necessarily a license, and you don't need the internet or cell phone towers, like truckers sometimes have CB radios. But critically, CB radio is for short distance, not thousands of miles away off the coast of Florida all the way to Tucson. At this point, the dispatcher actually thought this really had to be a prank because they

knew CB radios really couldn't receive signals from that big of a distance. So this is like not possible that this man could have picked up that Mayday signal. But most likely, the dispatcher's thinking that the caller is not necessarily playing a prank. More likely, local kids are playing a joke and this guy is gullible enough to believe it. Like, maybe kids are pretending to send a Mayday signal for a boat off the coast of Florida. This guy heard it. And he's like, oh, my goodness, this is real. And he's calling 911.

That's what the dispatcher thinks is going on. And so the dispatcher kind of tried to explain that to this man, sort of treating him like, look, I think you're being duped here that somebody's playing a prank on you and this is not real. But the man insisted this is not a prank. Like the captain sounds very panicked. This is not a child pranking me. This is real. And he just begged the dispatcher to, even if you think this is completely made up,

please do me a favor and just look into it. And so the dispatcher said, fine, all right, we'll make sure somebody calls Florida and we'll make sure there's no sinking yacht. Thank you. And then they hung up. An hour later, a helicopter pilot took off from the Coast Guard base in Key West, Florida, and began flying out towards the ocean. They were going to go, you know, make sure there's not any sinking yachts out here. And as the pilot began, you know, flying around looking for, for sinking yachts,

he also fiddled with his radio and switched through all the frequencies that CB radios can broadcast on. But he wasn't seeing anything out on the water and he certainly wasn't picking up any signals, no Mayday signals, nothing. Now, this pilot, when he went out to do this reconnaissance mission, really didn't expect to see anything. I mean, the Coast Guard in Key West had not received any Mayday signals that morning, and no one had reported seeing or hearing a ship in distress, except some random guy 2,000 miles away in Tucson, Arizona. And so the pilot is not shocked that, you know, basically there's nothing out here.

But as he's, you know, going through the motions of flying around, looking out over the water, you know, trying all the stations of the CB radio. He sees a flash, like a flash of light out of the corner of his eye. And he looked down in that direction and he saw something glimmering in the water. So he turned the helicopter and got down lower to get a better look at what it was, and he couldn't believe what he was seeing. It was a 30-foot yacht sinking in the water with three people desperately waving on the deck. This is a sinking ship. I can't believe it's real. It would turn out the May Day signal was not a prank. It was a real signal from this yacht called the Timberlane. And it was a good thing that the man who heard it called the police. Because even though he was so

far away, it should have been impossible for him to even pick up the signal, he actually, it would turn out, was literally the closest person in the world who could have helped. So under normal conditions, CB radios cannot broadcast more than 15 miles away. But on this particular day, Conditions were not normal. There were an unusually high number of solar flares that day, which increased the ionization of the layer of the atmosphere that radio signals travel on. So what that means is when the Timberlain sent out their Mayday message, the signal sort of bounced off the supercharged layer of the atmosphere, which is a phenomenon known as skipping.

So instead of being broadcast to other CB radios in the immediate area, the May Day signal skipped across the atmosphere to radios thousands of miles away. So that's why the Coast Guard right there in QS, Florida, did not pick up the distress signal, but a random man in Arizona did. And thanks to him taking it seriously and calling 911, the Coast Guard was able to rescue all three people on board, and they towed the Timberland to safety. Our next and final story of today's episode is called The New Doctor.

One afternoon in June of 1975, a woman named Marie Daniels stood up from her chair in the corner of a hospital room in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Next to her was her husband Harold, and he was asleep in the hospital bed, hooked up to a whole bunch of machines. Harold had undergone surgery that morning to remove some cartilage growths from around his neck, and the surgery had gone well. And afterwards, the hospital staff had moved him to this room to rest. And so now, Marie figured she could slip out for a few minutes and, finally grab some food and maybe some coffee. And so Marie, she grabs her purse and quietly begins to walk across the room, doing her best not to wake her husband up, who's clearly passed out in the bed here. And right as she's about to reach for the door to leave the room,

she hears Harold let out this huge gasp right behind her. And she whips around and she sees Harold's eyes are wide open and his whole body has gone totally rigid like his limbs are all sticking out and he's stiff as a board. Marie at first was was sort of stunned by what she was hearing and seeing, and for a second she wondered if her, if her husband was just stretching. But then all of a sudden her husband went completely limp, and his heart monitor, which had been beeping in the background until right now, started letting out this one long, continuous beep. Marie realized that her husband had just flatlined, which meant his heart had stopped. He was

effectively dead. And so Marie, for a second, is just frozen there. Like, this happens so suddenly, like, what is going on here? But then she broke out of her shock. She ran over and hit the call button next to the bed, and then she bolted out into the hallway and began shouting for help. Moments later, two nurses rushed past Marie, who was out in the hallway, and they turned the corner and bolted into Harold's room. And so Marie, who's still sort of in shock, she walked to the doorway and just watched as these two nurses put this cart full of medical equipment right next to Harold's bed, and Harold was still flatlined. As these nurses were getting set up with this equipment, Marie, who was out of the doorway, and she heard more footsteps, and she

turned, and she saw Harold's neurosurgeon, Dr. Carnes, come running down the hallway. He ran past Marie into the room, and he went right up to that cart full of all the equipment that the nurses were getting ready, and he grabbed two paddles, two defibrillator paddles that are designed to shock your heart back into working again. And so Marie, she's watching as the neurosurgeon grabs the paddles, he's communicating with the nurses, and he puts it on Harold's chest, And then a second later, Marie watched as Harold's whole body jolted as this electrical pulse was shot into him by these paddles from the doctor. But Marie, she's watching the monitor and it's still just a flat line.

So the defibrillator paddles were not working. And so Marie, she's just standing there, like really not even able to fully process what's happening. Like she's hoping they're going to be able to save her husband. But Dr. Carnes and the nurses, they kept adjusting the machine and trying again and again and again. but every time they'd send that pulse into Harold's body, his body would look like it was coming alive again just for a second, but then his heart would just continue to flatline. It just, it was not working. And then finally, after two agonizing minutes, it was like Dr. Carnes and the nurses, they didn't give up, but they stopped trying to jolt Harold back to life. And Dr. Carnes said,

we're going to have to rush him up to the ICU and see if maybe they can save him. This was, you know, obviously a low chance of success. I mean, he's already been flatlined for several minutes. Like, he's going to die here. But then suddenly, before anybody could move Harold out of the room, Marie heard another set of footsteps racing down the hallway, and a doctor who she had never seen before rushed into her husband's room. And this new doctor told Dr. Carnes to step aside.

And Dr. Carnes did. And then he asked for the paddles, and Dr. Carnes handed them over. And then Dr. Carnes and the nurse, just kind of gave this new doctor his room. Marie quickly realized that this new doctor must be some kind of specialist that they call in when somebody was crashing like this. And so she watched in awe as this new doctor adjusted the dials on the defibrillator machine and then once the doctor was confident it was all right, they took the paddles, placed them on Harold's chest, and then one shock later and Harold's heart restarted. And Marie was so relieved to

to see those blips back on the heart monitor that she just instantly ran to the bed, and she grabbed Harold and wept tears of joy. Three weeks later, Marie was standing by Harold's bedside in the intensive care unit, watching as Dr. Carnes read over some test results. So when Harold had flatlined, he'd been medically dead for four minutes, which was a really dangerous amount of time for his brain to go without oxygen. So after he was revived, Dr. Carnes had kept him in the ICU for monitoring to make sure his brain was okay. But amazingly, over the three weeks he was in the ICU, Harold made a full recovery.

And so now Dr. Carnes read over his test results and basically gave Harold a clean bill of health and said that he could go home. Marie was overjoyed and she asked if they could thank that specialist who had raced in at the last minute and literally saved Harold's life. And that's when Dr. Carnes got this very strange look on his face, and he told Marie that that was not going to be possible. Because he said he had no idea who that doctor was. In fact, he said he had never seen him before at all, like never before that day. And then after he had saved Harold's life and then departed the room, Dr. Carnes said he never saw him again. It would turn out, multiple members of the hospital staff saw and spoke to this mysterious doctor that afternoon. but nobody actually knew who he was.

And Dr. Karn said the only reason he handed over the defibrillator paddles to the stranger was because this man came into the room presenting like an extremely capable, confident doctor. Like there was no denying. He knew what he was doing. And so he handed him over. And sure enough, the guy saved Harold's life. But then after he saved Harold's life and left the room, no one at the hospital ever saw him again.

That hospital never determined who the mysterious doctor was, or if he was even a real doctor at all. 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. Boland 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 Lacasio, story edited. by Luke Baratz. This episode was written by Aaron Land, Kate Gallagher, and Andrew Kelleher.

Research and fact-checking by Shelley Shoe, 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 Whitlocasio and Jordan Stidham. Production support by Antonio Manata 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 SiriusXM.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.