MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Campfire Stories

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

Today's podcast features 2 classic scary stories. The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#2 -- "Who Was Calling?" -- After she dies, the police receive a disturbing 911 call (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVc5B8yL6H4)#1 -- "The Capitol Theater Haunting" -- 3 police officers independently witness the same PARANORMAL event in Utah (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvviRUjIUGk)For 100s more stories like these, check out our main 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 @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast features two classic scary stories. The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story

you'll hear is called Who Was Calling? and it's about a series of disturbing 911 phone calls that police dispatchers started receiving in Nevada. The second story you'll hear is called The Capitol Theater Haunting and it's about three police officers who independently witnessed the same paranormal event in Utah. But before we get into those stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please put the Amazon Music Follow Button's feet in cement and then throw them in the ocean.

Okay, let's get into our first story called Who Was Calling? I'm Emily and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. OK, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts? Free cocktails?

Careless whispers? Okay, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely. Yep, that's right. It's stone-cold icon George Michael. From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside it looks like he has it all but behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil. George is trapped in a lie of his own making with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. I'm Peter Frank-O'Pern. And I'm Afua Hirsch.

And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time. Somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message. It totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle, that's all captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time.

Think that's fair, Peter? I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful, no matter what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. 911 dispatchers hear a lot of interesting stories coming from the other end of the phone. But one group of dispatchers out of Reno, Nevada may win the award for the creepiest 911 calls ever received. When the details of these calls they got were put online, the internet went crazy. Here is their story. There was this old couple that lived about 20 miles east of Reno, Nevada.

In 2010, the husband dies, leaving the wife all alone in this house. Shortly after his passing, she began calling 911 two, three times a week requesting things like, can you please put some water on to boil? Hey, can you change the thermostat? It was clear she was showing signs of dementia and the dispatchers were respectful of her and gently told her that this is 911. You can only call if it's an emergency. And at some point, the woman would understand her mistake and she would say sorry and she would hang up. No first responders were ever sent out for these calls because it didn't seem like an emergency, it just seemed like a confused elderly person.

But no matter how many times they told her, she kept calling back, and eventually her calls took a turn. Instead of calling 911 to ask for help with mundane tasks around the house, she would call 911 believing she was talking directly to her deceased husband, John. The dispatcher would pick up and the woman would say, John, where are you? John, John. By this time, the dispatchers had gotten so many calls from this woman, they would recognize her address coming through and they knew what to expect. They would answer the phone, they'd be respectful, and they would tell her like they always did, this is 911, you can't call here, you need to talk to your family. And again, they did not send a responding unit out to her because it just seemed like she was confused, not in any danger. But one day when she called, she sounded

frantic and scared. John, please come home, help me, I need help. John, come home. This time they would send first responders out to the woman's house. When the responding unit arrives at her house just minutes after she had placed the 911 call, they go to the door and they're knocking and they're yelling for her and she's not coming to the door and it's all quiet in the house. The door is unlocked so they open it up and they announce themselves. They walk inside and immediately they can tell the heat is not on because it's very, very cold inside the house. They look around the first floor and they can't find her

and there's no sign of a struggle or any obvious problems that could have happened inside of the house. So they go upstairs and they start searching all the rooms and no one's there until they get to the last room and it's the bedroom. They go inside and there's an older woman who's lying on the bed and she's clearly deceased and has been for several hours because rigor mortis had already set in. The police are able to confirm that the woman who's lying on the bed is the same woman who owns the house and lives there. And at this point, they call back to dispatch and they tell

them, hey, you know, the woman that you claim made this 911 call well it can't have been her because based on rigor mortis she was dead at the time that 911 call was made but the dispatchers are like no way we know what she sounds like we speak to her multiple times a week we have a whole protocol built when we see her address come across because we speak to her so often. That 911 call that you got that led you to that house where she was, that call was made by her. What they ultimately decide is the reason for this discrepancy is she didn't have rigor mortis. She was just stiff because it was really cold

inside of her house, and that she had died in those couple of minutes between leaving the 911 call and when officers arrived. But in the back of everybody's minds, they're a little freaked out. A few days go by and another call is placed to 911 coming from that woman's home address. The dispatcher sees that and has to do a double take. Like, that's not possible. But they're thinking, okay, this could be a relative, it could be a friend, it could be anything. Picks up the phone and she's shocked when it's the same woman who is frantically yelling for John to come here, save me, help me, I need help. And the dispatcher who's well aware of the history and well aware that this woman's

supposed to be dead, stays calm, goes through the procedure, tries to get more information from this woman, but the call ends abruptly and there's no more information to be had. And so not knowing what else to do, she asks a responding unit to go check this house out. The responding unit goes over to the property, they knock on the door, no one's inside. The door is actually still open, they go in. The house is empty, there's no one there.

There's no one that could have made that call. At this point, dispatch is like, okay, this has gotta be a prank. But the next day, same thing happens. Here comes a call from the dead woman's house. They pick it up, and it's this distraught woman yelling for help. I need my husband. And the dispatcher is trying to get more information, but they can't. And then the line cuts out.

Once again, they have to send responders to this location because this woman has called 911 and is saying that she needs help. And once again, the officers get to the house and it's vacant. Just like when she was alive, these calls would persist multiple times a week. They continued even after her house was broken into and burned to the ground. There's not even a house anymore and there are still calls coming through from that address to 911. Finally, the police get in touch with the phone company and they explain the situation and the phone company looks at their records and they

say actually her phone line was disconnected almost immediately after she was deceased. But they tell police there's a chance that it might not have been disconnected properly at the site and that could be a reason why it's still working. So they send a lineman to go check out the actual property to confirm her lines were disconnected properly and that could be a reason why it's still working. So they send a lineman to go check out the actual property to confirm her lines were disconnected properly and that no wires were getting crossed and he said all of it checked out. Everything has been detached this whole time.

The phone company thought perhaps there was a digital recording of her that got trapped in their system and was randomly bouncing to their call center. But the dispatchers would say, you know, it doesn't sound like a recording that's playing the same every single time. It's always the same message. She's yelling for her husband to come save her. But the way she sounds is always different. It's a unique phone call every single time. So because there wasn't a definitive explanation for why this was happening, they had to treat each call like it was serious and so multiple times a week

for a year they received these ghost calls and had to send out responding officers to check on her even though the house was gone and there was nothing there and there was never anyone there it was just a vacant lot and then finally a year after this woman has died the calls just abruptly stopped and the police did not launch an investigation into what it was because the reality is police need to prioritize things that are threats to people or places. And this really wasn't either of those things. It was just really bizarre.

And so the official explanation for how a dead woman could be calling 911 from a non-existent phone line in a non-existent house for a year is we don't know. Hello, I am Alice Levine and I am one of the hosts of Wondery's podcast, British Scandal. On our latest series, The Race to Ruin, we tell the story of a British man who took part in the first ever round the world sailing race. Good on him, I hear you say. But there is a problem, as there always is in this show. The man in question hadn't actually sailed before. Oh, and his boat wasn't seaworthy. Oh,

and also tiny little detail, almost didn't mention it. He bet his family home on making it to the finish line. What ensued was one of the most complex cheating plots in British sporting history. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on W month early on Amazon Music with your Prime membership? That's right. All your favorite Mr. Ballin episodes can be heard on Amazon Music ad-free, and you'll always be the first one to catch our new episodes. But that's not all. You get access to other amazing shows like Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Morbid, 48 Hours, and 2020, all ad-free too.

And you know what that means, uninterrupted listening, so no more cliffhangers. Amazon Music is your home for all things true crime and offers the most ad-free top podcasts, so we definitely have something for you. And it's already included in your Prime membership. To listen now, all you need to do is go to amazon.com slash ballin. That's amazon.com slash ballin or download the free Amazon Music app. It's just that easy. Our next and final story is called The Capitol Theater Haunting. theater haunting. In 2006, Dave Murphy had just become a police officer in Salt Lake City, Utah. His first role was as a protective service officer, which meant he'd be in charge of physical security in a number of the county facilities. Dave's first facility was the

Capital City Theater, which is a landmark inside of Salt Lake City. Dave's first facility was the Capital City Theater, which is a landmark inside of Salt Lake City. It's been around since the early 1900s. It's this beautiful, grand theater. So in early August, Dave reports to the Capital City Theater first first day on the job, and he meets his partner, an officer by the name of Morgan Matthews. He gets there on this first day, and right away,

Dave would say that Morgan was just strictly business. The first place that Morgan takes Dave is the control room, which sits on the first floor of the theater. The theater had three floors and then it also had a basement as well. So the control room was on that first floor. Inside of the control room were all of these security monitors because there was all these cameras set up inside of the theater. The cameras weren't great, though. You pretty much could only tell what was in frame if there was a light on.

And most of the time at night, especially, lights were off. Once they were done looking at the control room, Morgan says to Dave, now we're gonna go do our rounds. This is something we do every time you get to the theater. You do a security round and make sure everything's locked, all the lights are off. Before you come back to the control room, you'll do that at the beginning of your shift

and at the end of your shift. Morgan brings Dave downstairs and it's the first time Dave is seeing the basement and he's shocked by how big it is. It is this massive hallway that stretches way down. In the middle of the hall is a piano that's just sitting out in the middle. And the lighting's not good down there. This is a very old theater. You know, everything in the building was pretty old. And Dave remembers thinking that he was immediately creeped out by this scene, this long hallway with all these doors and this piano right in the middle of the hallway. And he's thinking to himself, I don't want to spend much time down here. This is so creepy. But they go down the hall, they check all the doors, they make their way up to the main floor, the second floor,

the third floor, everything gets checked. And so after they do this security round, Dave and Morgan go back to the control room. And Dave is anticipating getting to know Morgan a little bit. This is their first night. They're going to be working together a lot. And Dave would say that Morgan just seemed really cold and just did not want to talk to Dave very much. And as soon as their shift was almost over, Morgan was very eager to just knock out the security rounds and just get out of that building. At the end of that night, Dave remembers thinking that there's just something off about Morgan's behavior. It seemed like Morgan really didn't like being in

the theater. It would turn out that he was onto something because Morgan didn't like being in that building, but it would take him a while to share with dave why over the next couple of days morgan and dave would do their security rounds together because dave's in training morgan's teaching him but on august 9th which is two days after dave's first day on the job morgan was confident that dave knew how to secure the whole building and so at the end of the night he tells dave why don't you do the security rounds yourself? Dave feels very confident that he knows how to do it. He goes down into the basement, make sure all the doors are shut and locked,

that the lights are off, finishes the basement, goes up to the first floor where the control room is and checks all the rooms on that floor. He goes into the main auditorium space. He's checking all the different nooks and crannies to make sure there's nobody hiding in there. He goes up to the second floor. He checks all the different rooms up there and the balcony, makes his way up to the

third floor where there's all the offices of staff that work at the theater. At the end of the search, the last room he would check was the rehearsal room. And it was the only room where there was no door to it. So you'd poke your head in, kind of look around, make sure no one was in there, and then you would leave. And that's the end of your check. So Dave gets to the rehearsal room. He flips the light on and he looks inside, doesn't see anybody, is satisfied that no one was in there and then you would leave and that's the end of your check so dave gets to the rehearsal room he flips the light on and he looks inside doesn't see anybody is satisfied that no one's in there turns the light off and as he's about to turn back into the hallway he hears a door slam with tremendous force right across the hallway from where he was and it was the bathroom door his first reaction is someone just ran out of the bathroom someone who had snuck into the building must have run out of the bathroom and they And his first reaction is someone just ran out of the bathroom. Someone who

had snuck into the building must have run out of the bathroom and they're making a break for it to get out of the theater before I catch them. And so he instinctively picks up his radio and he calls to Morgan and says, someone's on the third floor. But when Morgan looks at the camera, he doesn't see anybody. At this point, Dave's drawn his weapon. You know, he's looking down the hall. He doesn't see anybody. And as he's waiting for Morgan to come upstairs to back him up so they can go look for this person that's just ran down the hall, he realizes two things. One, just because he heard the door slam doesn't mean they left and slammed it. They could be in the bathroom. And so he's thinking to himself, someone could be in the bathroom right now. Maybe that's why we didn't see him on the camera. And then the

second thing he thought of is that door, the bathroom door, can't slam. It's got this huge hydraulic hinge to it. It can't slam. So his gun is drawn and he's aiming it at the bathroom door right as Morgan comes up on his right. Morgan draws his pistol. He's got it on the door as well. And they make entry into the bathroom. They clear all the different spaces in the bathroom and no one's in there and there's no way to get out of there. Morgan and Dave are like, okay, well, they must not have come in here. They must have run out of the bathroom. They're somewhere in the theater. And so they decide they're going to search the entire building and find this person that clearly was just in the bathroom and that's how they slammed the door. We're not going to worry about how they slammed the door with a hydraulic hinge. We just know it was slammed somehow.

So they leave the bathroom, guns still drawn, and they start making their way down the hall. They're checking all the doors. Everything is locked. When they start making their way downstairs to the second floor, Dave recognizes through the door, because there's a door leading onto the second floor, he can see that the lights are on and he had turned them off. And so as they're walking down the stairs, he says to Morgan, Hey, did you turn the lights on on the second floor?

And Morgan's like, no. And so they think that whoever was here, whoever was in the bathroom is on the second floor. They must have turned the lights on. They go into the second floor and not only are the lights on, but all the doors on the second floor had been opened. They searched the entire second floor. They search every single room.

No one's in the second floor. They searched every single room. No one's on the second floor. They turn off the lights. They shut all the doors. Everything's locked. When they went down to the first floor, everything was the way it should have been. Locked, lights off, nothing down there. And they go down to the basement. And even though it was creepy being down there, because they've now searched the whole building, and they're anticipating coming in contact with whoever is here, assuming they haven't left the building yet, and there's no one down there. They decided to review the footage from the third floor to see if they could pick up someone running in the hall

around the time that that door slammed, but the camera was not trained on the bathroom door, so you just have this view down the hall, and you can't see the bathroom specifically, not to mention the hallway is dark, and the cameras are terrible without light, and so all they're able to see is the light go on in the rehearsal room while Dave is doing his last check in there. The lights turn off because Dave's about to turn around. And then after that, you just hear this massive slam of this door, but you can't see what happened.

So they don't know what to make of it. They're both very much on edge that someone might still be in the building. And so they do another sweep of the building and no one's there. And so they decide to just chalk it up and say, we were hearing things and seeing things. I'm sure it's fine. Let's just get out of here. And they leave. A couple of days later on August 11th, Morgan is working alone. Dave wasn't coming in that day. So Morgan's alone in the theater doing a shift. And at some point in the night, as he's sitting in the control room, he thinks he hears whispering in the hall right behind him and so after the experience he had with dave a couple nights ago he's on edge so he draws his pistol right away and so he goes out into the hallway and immediately when he steps into the hall the whispering seems to go farther

and farther away from him down the hall so he gets out there he's looking around he can't see anything he makes his way down the hallway towards the stairs that go down into the basement, or if he wanted to go up to the second floor. And when he gets to the top of the stairwell, he's gun drawn, looking down, looking up. He hears what sounds like coughing coming from the basement. And at this point, Morgan said

that he was actually pretty scared. I mean, imagine being alone in this theater. Just a couple of days earlier, you've had this weird experience with slamming doors and doors being opened and lights going on that somebody else, another police officer witnessed with you. You're alone in this theater and you're hearing coughing coming from the basement after hearing voices behind you. That's pretty terrifying. So he very slowly starts going down the stairwell. He's getting ready to clear the corner and just as he does the coughing stops. He turns the lights on and he looks down the stairwell he's getting ready to clear the corner and just as he does the coffin stops he turns the lights on he looks down the hall and there's nothing there

he starts making his way down the hall he's checking every door making sure it's locked you know making sure that everything is secure and he gets all the way down the hall and as he's almost done checking the basement he smells smoke and it's coming from a door right next to him and so he unlocks that door and he goes in and there's no fire. But all he can smell is smoke. So he turns the light on. He's looking around. There's no fire. He's convinced that somewhere down the basement, there's a fire. He goes to every single room and he keeps checking and there's nothing. And then at some point, the smoke smell dissipates. He checks every space in the theater to look for a fire and there's no fire. He's wondering if he should call the fire department, but he's thinking, what would I tell them?

There's no fire. And so he ultimately, after checking three, four times and being very confident there wasn't a fire, he just says, okay, no fire. I guess I was just smelling things. A few weeks later, on September 4th, Dave has just arrived at the theater. He's there a little bit early. Their shift started at 5 p.m. He was there at about 4 30 and when he walked into the building

He sees that there are three staff members sitting at the front desk talking to each other And as he walks past one of them is talking about ghosts inside of the theater and it immediately piques his interest And so he walked over to the guy talking about ghosts and he introduced himself And it turned out that this guy was a man named Blair Fuller, who was a senior accountant at the theater. And so Dave asked Blair, what are you talking about with ghosts in the theater? Because I provide physical security here and I've seen some strange things here. I just love to hear what you have to say about it. So they head up to the third floor where Blair's office was and they sit down and Blair says, okay, I got a doozy for you. This happened to me a couple of years ago. I was actually in this office. It was about nine, 10 o'clock at night. I was doing some

work and I heard the elevator kick on. Now the elevator was right outside of his office and anytime it was on, the engine was really loud. It was really obvious if the elevator was moving around. And so he's doing his accounting work and he hears that engine kick on. He doesn't think much of it, but then it clicks that he's the only one in the building. And so he's doing his accounting work and he hears that that engine kick on. He doesn't think much of it, but then it clicks that he's the only one in the building. And so he kind of looks out the glass window of his office. He had a closed door office with two windows looking out into the foyer where there's this elevator and he looks out and he can see that the little lights above the elevator showing what floor it's on have lit up and it's going up.

So the elevator was in the basement and now it's in the first floor the second floor third floor the door is open and there's no one there and at this point blair says that he wasn't concerned he figured okay maybe there's some maintenance maybe it's scheduled to do that who knows but after a little while the alarm goes off in the elevator to signify that something is obstructing the door from shutting and he's like there's nothing obstructing the door why isn't it shutting and like, there's nothing obstructing the door. Why isn't it shutting? And so he leaves his office and he kind of walks over to the elevator

and he walks into the elevator. And he said immediately he felt this massive drop in temperature inside of the elevator. And as he's standing there, he turns around. Now he's looking back towards his office inside of the elevator. The doors start to shut. And for whatever reason, he said, I didn't get off. I just decided I'm going to ride this elevator. The basement button lights up as if someone had pressed basement and they start going down. And he's sitting there

thinking, what in the world is going on? It was just on an alarm because the door wasn't shutting. And then miraculously, when I go inside of it, it suddenly works again and it's going to the basement. So he goes to the basement. The door opens down there. He steps out and Blair says that it took all of his courage to yell out, hey, is anyone down here? And as soon as he did and he didn't hear a response, he said he didn't want to make any more sound. The elevator sat in the middle of the hall in the basement. It's that huge hall with that piano sitting right in the middle. The lights are off and he pokes his head down one way. There's nothing down there. He sees the piano barely from the light of the elevator and he looks down the other way. There's no one there. And at this point, he's just so spooked. He just gets back in the elevator and he hits floor three, floor three, floor three. And he's hitting like door close, door close,

door close. The door closes and he goes back up to his office. He goes into his office and he shuts the door and he sits down and he's thinking like, what was that? Why did that just happen? I got to find out if they're running maintenance or something. And as he's sitting in his chair thinking about this strange experience, he hears what sounds like banging sounds coming from outside of his office in that foyer near the elevator. He just goes to his door and he opens it up and he pokes his head into the foyer. And he looks to the side and there's this big filing cabinet and all of the cabinets are out. They've all been pulled out. He certainly didn't do this. And it was as if someone was one by one pushing each of them shut, these big heavy cabinets. And he's watching as one by one, these things are slamming shut, one by one until the whole thing

is shut. And so he goes over and he's like trying to disprove what he just saw. That he can open up a drawer and that it will shut on its own. But none of them shut on their own. You have to shut it. Something has to shut it for it to shut. And so he packed up for the day and left and did not work another night shift at the theater. Later that night Dave would share Blair's story with Morgan. He wasn't really sure how Morgan was gonna react, but Morgan actually would open up and he would say, before you started working here,

I always felt like I was being watched when I was here. And then we had that experience obviously where the lights are coming on and you heard that banging from that bathroom door. And then just a few days ago, I heard voices coming from the hall and I heard someone coughing in the basement and I smelled smoke and there was no one there. And so they start going back and forth, exchanging stories of just how uncomfortable this place made them feel.

And so they're wondering what they should do about this. And Dave has this idea. He's like, my best friend, I'll invite him to come over here one night and we'll tell him that we're giving him a tour of the building and we'll just see what he says. We'll see if he reacts to anything here. Who knows? You know, maybe something strange will happen and then we'll have another person validate it. Morgan thinks that's a good idea and so Dave reaches out to his best friend Greg. Greg would say that he was a little bit surprised to be getting this offer to come take a tour of the theater, but he was interested and since Dave was asking, he figured he would oblige him and so Greg agrees to come take a tour of the theater, but he was interested. And since Dave was asking, he figured he would oblige him. And so Greg agrees to come to the theater and take a tour.

So the next day, Dave and Morgan are at the theater and Greg shows up. And so they start this tour. They go in the main auditorium. They're looking around and then make their way into the basement. Morgan turns on the light and Morgan and Dave instantly see

a little ways down the hall on the left, one of the doors has been opened. And so Dave and Morgan push Greg instantly see a little ways down the hall on the left one of the doors has been opened and so Dave and Morgan push Greg out of the way they draw their pistols and they're aimed at the open door and so Greg just stays behind them as Morgan and Dave make their way down this open door and when they get right outside the door and they're about to push it open to go inside the door slams shut right in front of Greg and Dave and Morgan. And they all are looking at each other like, what's going on? But before they can do anything, the door handle starts rattling really aggressively. After the rattling stops,

Dave and Morgan look at each other and they nod their head like, we've got to go in there. Greg is scared about being out in the hall alone and so he just follows them in and so the three of them go into this room Dave and Morgan are you know pistols drawn it's a small room there's no one in there light switch on no one in there Greg suddenly gasps and he points to the corner and he says someone's sitting in the corner and Dave and Morgan immediately train their guns on what's in the corner but no one's there and Greg's like I just saw someone sitting in the corner, but no one's there. And Greg's like, I just saw someone sitting in the corner. It looked like he had a hood on, he had a sweatshirt on, I don't know, but he was right there.

And so Dave and Morgan, they're freaked out because they brought Greg here on some level to disprove the strangeness. And now the three of them have seen a door slam that shouldn't have been open in the first place. Greg's claiming to have seen a figure sitting in the corner. This scared the crap out of all three of them. They quickly left, locked, shut off the lights, went upstairs.

Greg's like, I'm out of here. Greg leaves. And Dave and Morgan are like, now what? So at this point, all the strangeness that was happening in the theater was getting reported, but it was being reported in a way that Dave and Morgan didn't seem like they were referencing something haunted, but rather someone was breaking in. Ultimately, the county installed new cameras inside of the theater. These updated cameras had infrared technology, which allowed them to see better when the lights were off. They were hoping that this would allow them to catch whoever was breaking in practically every time Dave and Morgan are on shift. So on the day that it was installed, September 15th, Morgan is working there alone. And he's sitting in the control room looking at

the different cameras and he's kind of playing around with the different screens and seeing what each of the cameras can do. And at some point, something catches his eye in one of the screens. In the main auditorium, it appeared like someone might be sitting in one of the seats, but the camera was zoomed back enough that he couldn't get a clear picture, and he didn't know what was normal in any of these cameras, because this is the first time he's looking at any of these screens. And so he's looking at the camera really closely, and he thinks he sees someone, he can't really tell,

that has a hood on or a shroud on that's just sitting in the middle of the theater. And he can see clear as day a set of eyes. And before Morgan has a chance to do it, it just starts raising into the ceiling and disappears. Morgan didn't even check to see what it was. He was done. He literally quit that day. That was his last day at the theater. A couple of weeks after Morgan has quit and Dave is working alone at the theater, he's in the control room, and all of a sudden he hears a piano playing. And there's only one piano in the entire theater. And it's sitting in the theater. He's in the control room and all of a sudden he hears a piano playing and there's only one piano in the entire theater and it's sitting

in the basement. It's his job to protect this place so he knows he has to go down and check because it could be some hooligan in the building somewhere. So he leaves the control room and as he starts walking over to the stairs with his gun drawn, the music is getting louder and louder, the piano is getting louder and louder and louder. He makes his getting louder and louder and louder. He makes his way down the steps, and as he's about to turn the corner, he hears the guard that protects the keys on the piano

slam shut, and the piano stops. Then he turns around the corner and he looks, and there's no one down there. He flips on the light, no one's in the hall. He knows he's not gonna find anyone down here. It's this entity that's causing all this mayhem inside of the theater. Dave's seen enough. He's done. He's done with this theater, and he goes right back upstairs. He goes in the control room, locks it, stays there till the end

of the shift, and then he is out. And the next day, he goes to his sergeant, and he says, you can't ever put me back inside that theater, or I will quit. And so sure enough, he was transferred. Over the next two months, they didn't have anyone who could do full-time security at the theater. So different random officers would be there for a couple hours, a couple of days a week until November 26th, they found another officer, a veteran police officer named Josh Thomas, who was going to be working at the theater full-time. On November 26th, the first night that Josh Thomas was going to be there, he didn't have anyone to turn over with. So he was just alone at the theater. And it just so happens

that Dave is in a patrol car near the theater. And when at some point in the night, Josh comes over the radio and says, hey, I need backup right now. Someone has broken into the theater. Dave knows that it's probably not someone breaking in. He knows what's going on inside that theater. He was the closest to it. And even though he did not want to go, he felt like it was his responsibility to go to that theater and be Josh's backup. And if it was what Dave thought it would be, this entity in the theater, that he would be able to explain to him what he had seen before he ultimately decided never to go back. And when Dave gets to the theater, there's this back door that they would go into and he sees Josh is standing just outside the theater. And Dave would say that Josh's eyes

were like saucers. He looked terrified. And so Dave has an inkling of what's going on. And he goes over to Josh. He's like, what's going on? Is someone still in there? He said that he had been doing security rounds and he had heard what sounded like voices when he was in the basement. And he didn't think much of it. He checked all the rooms, everything was shut. And when he made his way up to the third floor, he saw that the elevator had kicked on. It was in the basement and suddenly the light was on and it was roaring up to the third floor. And when the elevator opened up, there was no one there. And he's standing there looking at it and he looks inside, there's no one there. And then the alarm goes off. That's when he called in for backup. Dave says, look, let's just go search the building.

We'll do it together. They clear the whole theater. No one's there. And before Dave leaves, they go into the main auditorium where the stage is, and they're just standing on the stage, chatting with each other. And Dave, his back is to where the audience would be.

And Josh is facing Dave, facing towards the seats. Josh just suddenly stopped. Mid-sentence, he's just frozen and looking just beyond Dave's shoulder. And Dave goes, what? And Josh goes, there's something behind you. Dave slowly turns around and as soon as he does, he can tell immediately what Josh is looking at. Standing in the very back of the theater away from them is a man standing in the corner with his hands by its sides. Its back is to them and it's looking down with a hood over its head. Dave turns his whole body around to look at this

thing right as this thing turns around real quick and looks directly at them. It has these deep, dark sunken eyes and its face looks like it had been very badly burned, like it was black and charred. And it's looking at them before it just turns and runs out the back of the theater josh believed that that was an intruder dave was fairly certain that that was just another example of this entity that haunts the theater but they would search the building and they could never find that cloaked figure again and that was when dave sat josh down in the control room and he filled him in on why Morgan had quit and why he ultimately had quit. And he also told him the story from Blair. So Josh is like, great, I'm glad I work here now. This was the last time that Dave would go to the theater, but Dave would do some additional

digging on the history of the theater. It would turn out that in the 40s, there was this horrible fire and a man had been trapped in the basement when the fire had erupted and he had died inside of the theater. And so Dave would share this information with Morgan and with Josh and the three of them all believed that what they were witnessing was the ghost of that man who died in that fire. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, please put the Amazon Music Follow Button's feet in cement and throw them in the ocean. This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning, but in the meantime,

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