MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Camping Horror Stories Vol. III

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

Today's podcast features 3 camping horror stories. The audio from all three 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:#3 -- "Dig" -- Young couple hears something digging outside their tent (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLs9za4X08E)#2 -- "Pinch" -- Campers wake up to something awful outside (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auz4tq50xZ0)#1 -- "Incomprehensible" -- An evil presence lurks in a Malibu, California state park (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcEUS8i1Kx4)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 three camping horror stories. The audio from all three 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 Dig, and it's about a young couple who heard something digging outside of their tent.

The second story you'll hear is called Pinch, and it's about campers who woke up to something awful outside. And the third and final story you'll hear is called Incomprehensible, and it's about an evil presence that lurked in a Malibu, California state park. 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'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 release a horde of angry emus into the Amazon Music Follow Buttons house while they're at work. Okay, let's get into our first story called Dig. The End around 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 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. In 1982, a very outdoorsy teenage girl and boy who had recently started dating decided to go camping in Maine.

Around 1 a.m. on the first night they were there, the girl wakes up because she has to go to the bathroom, and she's about to unzip her tent when she stops because she hears some strange noises coming from outside their tent. It wasn't that loud, but it sounded distinctly like something was digging in the ground. But she really had to go. And she figured, you know what, it's probably just some small animal or something. And so she begins to unzip the tent. And there's a little bit of moonlight that night. And there was a clearing outside of their tent.

So the moonlight's pouring through. So she has plenty of illumination. And so she looks through this tiny hole and she can't believe what she sees. It is a grown woman squatting down about two or three feet away from their tent. Her back is to them so she can't see that she's looking through the tent and she's feverishly digging into the ground in front of her. The girl literally falls backwards into her tent. She's so startled by what she sees and she lands on her boyfriend who immediately gets up and he's like,'s going on and she goes and she points at the little hole where she had unzipped the tent and she goes

the boy is confused but he can tell his girlfriend is very serious so he sits up quietly and he looks through the little opening in the door and he sees the digging woman the boy recoils and looks at his girlfriend and he's like what is going on out there? He takes a flashlight and she's telling him, don't do it. And he opens up the tent a little bit more and he aims his flashlight directly on this woman. And this gets her attention and she stops digging and she stands up slowly and she turns around and faces them and she's got no expression. She's not giving them any indication why she's there. She's not acting aggressive. She's not acting scared. She's just completely neutral. And she stands there staring at them for quite a while before turning around and just walking away from their campsite. And after a little while, when they were

pretty certain she was gone, they open their tent all the way. They go outside. They kind of scan around with their flashlights and she's nowhere to be found. And they go to where she was digging. And it's just this weird four inch deep hole in the ground. There's no rhyme or reason to why she was doing that. And so after sitting there wondering what they should do, they settled on, well, tomorrow we'll tell the park rangers that she was here and maybe they'll do something about it. And so feeling pretty confident that this woman's not going to come back, they both go back into the tent. They zip it shut. They get in their sleeping bags and they're about to go to sleep when they hear someone running towards their campsite. And they know it's this woman.

They immediately unzip the tent and they look out. And now the woman's not digging anymore. She's rummaging through some of their stuff that's outside of their tent. And the way she's doing it, they described as monkey-like. She'd pick something up, look at it, and throw it over her head. She'd pick the next thing up, throw it over her head, back and forth, just throwing things behind her. And so the boy gets out and he shines a light on her and goes, you need to leave. And she doesn't react. She just keeps flipping through all their stuff until he gets pretty forceful and says, you need

to leave right now. And at that point, she kind of stops and looks at him like, huh, what are you doing here? And then she gets up, turns around and walks away. Now the couple really doesn't know what to do because she's clearly willing to come back after being confronted. But they stayed outside their tent for about 15 more minutes, shining their light and making lots of noise

and treating her like she's an animal. And they're just trying to scare her away from the campsite. And after a little bit of time, they thought, okay, there's no way she comes back now because we were pretty aggressive with her this time and she seemed to really get it. They both do go back in the tent. And as soon as they zip it shut, they hear her come running straight back to the site. Like she was literally waiting in the wings for when they

went back in the tent. And this time she runs back to the hole in the ground and she's just feverishly digging into the ground as fast as she can. And this time they runs back to the hole in the ground, and she's just feverishly digging into the ground as fast as she can, and this time they come out of their tent, and they're mad, and they are screaming at this woman to get the F out of here. What are you doing? And this seems to kind of frighten the woman who gets up, and she looks at them like, why are you yelling at me? And she runs away, and it looked almost animalistic the way she was running away, like she was feral. The boy and the girl are totally shaken up at this point. It's about 1 30 in the morning and this woman just

keeps coming back to their site and they don't know what to do about it. So they turn on some lanterns and they turn on their flashlights and they decide we're just going to stay outside until the morning. That way we know she doesn't come back and doesn't steal anything from us. But by about 3 30 in the morning they've been outside for two hours. They're getting cold. They're super tired. The woman's nowhere to be found. And so they finally say, you want to go back in and get some sleep? I think this time she's really gone. They get back in their sleeping bags and they go to sleep. They don't hear her again. The next morning when they get up and they unzip their tent, they look outside and all of their stuff has been thrown all over the campsite. And the

hole in the ground that the woman had dug that was previously about four or six inches deep is now well over a foot deep. And they realize this woman must have been lurking in the shadows in the woods watching them from 1.30 to 3.30 in the morning. That whole time they were out there kind of warding her off. She was just waiting, just watching them the whole time in the shadows. And as soon as they went into their tent, she must have given it a little bit of time, but then she ran right back over and she ransacked their site. But the strangest thing was after they looked through all of the stuff she had chucked around, nothing was missing. And there was some pretty expensive stuff that was laying out that she could have taken, but didn't. After they picked up their site, they went to the park ranger and they told them about what had happened, but the ranger has no

idea what to make of it. He's never heard of such a thing. And so the couple just leaves that day because they're not about to spend another night here. And to this day, they have no idea why this woman was running onto their site and digging into the ground and rummaging through their stuff. It was like she was just a wild animal. Our next story is called Pinch. In the summer of 2013, a young woman named Katie and her father decided to go camping at one of their favorite campgrounds in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Katie loved going camping with her father because he was this totally accomplished outdoorsman and he used to be a wilderness guide for much of his life and so she just always felt like she was in great hands whenever she was out

in the wild with him and she had kind of become a fairly accomplished outdoors woman herself. When they arrived at the campground the parking lot was packed with cars and they're like shoot I wish we'd called ahead a couple weeks ago and reserved a site because they're probably not even available now. But they went to the front desk and they were like you you're in luck. We have one available, but it's the one that's way over there. It was this one campsite that was kind of isolated from the rest of the campground. It was far away from the bathhouse. It was far away from where you'd go swimming. And it was far away from the parking lot. It was just like really inconvenient. And whenever they came camping here, it was like the one site they didn't want to use. But beggars can't be choosers. They were happy to even have a site.

And so they drove all the way down, down this little road into this very isolated campsite, kind of in the middle of this forest. Once they got there, they began setting up their respective tents because they were not going to be staying in the same tent. They each had these very small backpacking tents, which were so small that you could either zip it up all the way and stay warmer and more protected but get to sleep in a ball because your legs would not fit otherwise or you could unzip the front of your tent and when you lay down you could extend your legs fully but

your legs are protruding outside of your tent so you could only do that in warmer weather and if you were comfortable having your legs poking out into the wilderness after they set up their tents and they get their cooler set up and they have all their stuff kind of the way they want it, they go out hiking for the rest of the day. When they come back, they're totally exhausted. They fall asleep and nothing of note occurs over that first night. The next day they get up, they go back out,

they go hiking all day all over again, and they come back that night and they are totally exhausted again. And they get into their tents and they go to bed. And this night, something of note would happen. At about 3 a.m., Katie wakes up and she hears footsteps walking towards the campsite from a little ways off. They're in the woods somewhere. And she's thinking, okay, it's got to be my father because he's diabetic. And every night he gets up to go to the bathroom maybe three, four times. And he probably was just walking to the bathhouse and now he's walking back. But she realizes the bathhouse is over here, not over here. So what is he doing walking towards the campsite from this side? The footsteps come out of the tree line. They come into the clearing that is their campsite and they stop about two,

three meters outside of Katie's tent. Now there were no windows on Katie's backpack tent. There was just little vents at the front and the back that kind of pointed down. And so she couldn't see out anyways. And there was no illumination out. So you can't even pick up a silhouette. It's a total darkness out there. She can't see who's out there. She can only hear them. But she's thinking, okay, maybe my dad got lost coming back from the bathhouse because he didn't have a flashlight and he walked too far. That's possible. Or, you know, he could have decided to relieve himself just in the tree line, even though he's not known to do that. He's a guy that goes to the bathhouse. And so she's running through these scenarios that are convincing her that, oh, that's just my dad. But what she really wants to hear is that person walk away from her tent and get into her father's tent, because that will

confirm in her mind that that was her father. And so she's sitting here waiting for that confirmation and she hears the footsteps again, but instead of walking around her tent to her father's tent, this person walks right up against her tent very quickly. And they clearly begin leaning over her little tiny tent because she can hear them breathing right above her. And this is when she realizes, that's not my dad.

And as she's having this terrible revelation that some stranger is outside her tent right now, she has an even worse revelation. It was a warm night that night, so she was sleeping with her tent unzipped and her legs poking out the end. She musters the courage to begin slowly retracting her legs back inside of her tent.

But before she's able to do that, this person stands up, turns, and starts walking towards the base of her tent where her legs are. She's completely frozen and terrified about what's about to happen. But this person doesn't stop at her feet. They keep moving and in fact start circling her tent. facts start circling her tent. But because they were making a lot of noise and walking around her, it allowed her to pull her legs back into her tent without, you know, this person hearing her. And so she had the illusion of safety being inside of her tent, but her tent is still unzipped. So she's waiting for this person to come around and crouch down and look inside of her tent because it's open. And so she's just looking down there, hoping that doesn't happen. But unfortunately,

right at this moment, the person walked to the base of her tent and came to a stop right outside where the opening to the tent is and so she's sitting there thinking please don't come in here please don't come in here please don't come in here and even though her feet are pulled up into her tent she suddenly feels something pinch her foot and she knows it's a hand something has grabbed my foot and she stifles a scream and she starts shaking uncontrollably because her instincts are telling her, don't let this person know you're awake. And luckily, as she's sitting there shaking from fear and trying to be quiet as best as she can, she's holding her mouth. This person stands back up again and goes back to the spot next to her

tent and leans over the tent once again. And she can hear them breathing right over her. And so for several minutes, she lay there shaking with this random person who pinched her foot a minute ago, hovering over her tent in the middle of the night. And she has nothing she can do. And she's just quiet. She's hoping it's gonna end soon. And eventually this person would turn around and walk over to their cooler and their table

and some other things that were out. And she hears some rummaging going on. Some things are being moved around. And then this person just kind of walks off into the distance. But she doesn't know if they're gone. She doesn't know if they're standing in the edge of the tree line waiting for her to come outside. Maybe they laid a trap for her. And so she just lays there, silent, doesn't move. And she's praying to herself, please don't let anything happen to me or my father. And all night she's just laying there. And then eventually she does fall asleep. Probably hours go by, but she does fall asleep because she wakes up again when she hears her father unzipping his tent and she charges

out to meet him. And she can tell right away that he's scared. And before she can even say or begin to describe what's happened to her, he says, were you outside your tent last night at about two, three in the morning? Because I heard all sorts of commotion near our cooler. I wasn't sure if it was an animal. I wasn't sure if it was you. And she starts telling him, no, this is what happened to me. And as she's describing what happened to her, he looks behind her at the picnic table, which was next to their cooler and they had their backpacks on it. Basically anything that didn't fit in their tents, they kept near this picnic table. And he points at it and she turns around and any item that was in the cooler or in their backpacks or that was just out has been stacked

in a pyramid formation on this table. Clearly the guy who was here last night did this. For some reason they don't understand. And as they go over to look at it to see if anything's been taken, they notice this track of footprints. Like these heavy footprints that have been going around and around Katie's tent. So she clearly wasn't imagining it. And so that instant, they packed everything up, got in their car, and they left. And to this day, they can barely talk about it with each other because it's all the things that could have happened. The father felt horribly guilty because he clearly heard this person but didn't leave his tent. And his daughter was clearly in danger. And his daughter's thinking, the tent was open. This person was crouched down, reaching

into my tent, grabbing my feet. Like that's such a horrifying image. And so this has been completely traumatizing for them and they just don't talk about it anymore. Hello, 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. Okay, 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 Wanderery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. We just launched a brand new Strange, Dark, and Mysterious podcast called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. And as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years. And we finally decided to take the plunge, and the show is awesome. In this free weekly show, we explore bizarre, unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between. Each story is totally true and totally terrifying. Go follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever

you get your podcasts. And if you're a Prime member, you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. The next and final story of today's episode is called Incomprehensible. On the morning of Sunday, June 17th, 2018, 35-year-old Tristan Beaudet pulled his phone out of his pocket to check the weather forecast for Orange County, California. Orange County is this beautiful suburb located right between Los Angeles and San Diego. And this beautiful suburb is where Tristan and his wife, 36-year-old Erica Wu, and their two young daughters, aged two and four, called home. And on this day, which was Father's Day, Tristan had gotten up

early to check the weather to make sure it was going to be clear that day because he really wanted to take his family out for a fun beach day to celebrate his holiday. And he was in luck because when his app loaded, it showed that Orange County was going to be beautiful and clear all day. Although even if the weather had come back as rainy and horrible and cold, Tristan was the kind of person who still would have wanted to go to the beach. Because for Tristan, anything outdoors was really awesome. That was his happy place, being out in nature. Whether it was going to the beach or going hiking or camping or just throwing a frisbee around outside, he didn't care. If he was outside, he was good with it. And even though his

daughters were still very young, they both already had totally fallen in love with nature just like their dad had, which made Tristan just so happy. Because now, he had these two little sidekicks that would go with him on all of his outdoor adventures. As for Tristan's wife, Erica, she did love the outdoors, but maybe not as much as Tristan did. But that was okay with Tristan because all he would do is make little adjustments to his adventures to make it more bearable for Erica. Like whenever they went camping, Tristan would totally rough it in a tent right on the ground, but he would bring along a big full-size blow-up mattress for his wife. And this was something that Erica just adored about Tristan. Not that he literally

waited on her hand and foot, but rather that Tristan just kind of went with the flow. If his wife wanted a blow-up mattress, that was fine. You know, it didn't matter to him. That was just who he was. He just, he didn't judge people. He just, he was at peace with the world. And in fact, it was that character trait that had originally attracted Erica to Tristan erica had met tristan back in high school when some mutual friends had set them up tristan didn't have a date to a dance at a school and so the friends were kind of like erica go with him and so erica would agree to go and on the night she actually met tristan for the first time she's laying eyes on him for the first time he was a sight to behold the summer prior he had sprouted up like four inches

or so. So he's super tall, but his body hadn't quite filled out yet. So he's super lanky looking and he was totally overdressed for this dance. He had on this full tuxedo and he was not remotely self-conscious. He was only psyched to have a date to this dance. And during this dance, Tristan would just totally rock that tuxedo in all of his gangly glory as if this tuxedo was made for him. And he would really try hard to make sure that Erica had a good time with him, and she totally did. And so after this dance was over, the pair was inseparable. Erica would go on to study at Stanford and would become an OBGYN doctor. As for Tristan, he would become this wildly successful, widely published scientist with a patent related to vaccine delivery.

However, in typical Tristan fashion, he didn't care at all about his resume. It didn't matter that it was completely stacked. I mean, on paper, this guy was just unbelievable. But Tristan never changed his personality. He never changed anything about himself. In fact, his scientist colleagues who adored him, they used to think it was hysterical that this brilliant chemist who was on the cutting edge of various cancer treatments and all this crazy research, that guy was actually this big mellow type person who wandered around the lab and started most of his sentences with, dude. By early afternoon on that Father's Day in 2018, Erica and Tristan and their two little girls had made their way to a local beach, and Erica had

found herself sitting in a beach chair reading a book, and Tristan and the girls had set up a sunshade right down where the water broke and they were digging in the sand. And so over the course of that afternoon, Erica, she's reading her book and periodically she would look up and she would see Tristan and the girls digging in the sand or making sand castles. And then at some point, Tristan and the girls, they would get up and abandon their dig site and they would run into the water and then they would run back to shore right as the waves were breaking, trying to kind of escape the waves.

And the two little girls thought this was so much fun and they were laughing hysterically and screeching with excitement as the waves crashed at their ankles. These are tiny little waves. And at some point, Erica, she's looking up watching this and she sees her two little girls having a blast and she sees her husband flash her this big grin

because he knows this is totally funny. And at that moment, Erica suddenly felt herself feel something that she didn't always feel these days. And that was just contentedness, happiness. Tristan, because he was this totally laid back guy, he was able to just kind of enjoy life as it came to him. But Erica, she couldn't do that. She was a constant worrier and that was largely because when she was just eight years old she lost her father and it was this totally traumatic experience that really upset her childhood was just devastating for the family and so ever since then she had developed this very real paranoia that no matter how good her life was that at any

second it was going to be ruined by something horrible happening to her. But as she sat in this chair, watching her husband smiling at her and seeing her kids playing with him, it was just this perfect moment. And so Erica would put the book down and she would get up and run into the surf to be with her family. Little did she know, something horrible was about to happen. Four days later, on June 21st, Erica was home studying for this big medical exam she was scheduled to take the next day. But at the house with her was her husband and her two little girls. And so the house was totally chaotic and loud. And it was obvious to Tristan, as he looked over at his wife, that she was really struggling to focus. And Tristan also knew that they were a

week away from moving. They were moving to San Francisco. They had just put a deposit down on a house. They had some family up there. So it was a smart move to make, but they still had a lot to do for this move. And so Tristan's looking at his wife, knowing that, you know, the stress levels have got to be through the roof for her. And so Tristan decided he would just take the girls and head out for the weekend to make sure Erica had the time and space she needed to prepare for this test and also just maybe to be alone and have some peace and quiet. And so Tristan made a couple of phone calls. And then after he was done, he talked to Erica.

And he told her that he had just made reservations at this campsite up in Malibu, California. Malibu is another beautiful Southern California town located about an hour and a half north of Orange County. It's where a lot of celebrities live. It's a very rich part of California. And he tells Erica that he had made reservations in this campground that's out there and that he had called his brother-in-law named Scott, who had two young kids himself, ages three and five, and they were all going to go there together and spend the weekend at this campsite. Now, Erica was very thankful for her husband for being willing to do this

because she did need the time and space to study, but she immediately was just concerned about it because, you know, Tristan, he would take the girls and go out on all sorts of adventures all the time, but he had never gone camping overnight without her there, and so her reaction was to worry about it. But Tristan, who knew his wife very well, told her, don't worry, I will take great care of the kids. It's a place that's totally public. It's an amazing campground. There's loads of people around. It's totally safe.

And so eventually Erica was convinced. And so Tristan began packing the car with all the camping supplies and the kids' toys and the kids' bikes. And as he's doing that, and the girls are really excited about this camping trip, Erica still found herself thinking, you know, I hope they cancel this trip. Because she just couldn't help feeling like something bad was about to happen to them. But Tristan did not cancel the trip. And after the car was all packed and the girls had been tucked into their car seats in the back seat, Tristan kissed Erica goodbye and said he would see her in a couple of days and good luck on your test tomorrow. And with that, Tristan hopped into the car, he backed out of the driveway, and Erika watched as he pulled up the road and headed north

towards Malibu. After studying well into the night, Erika finally went to sleep. And then the next morning, she got up early because she was nervous about the test. She was anxious about her husband and her kids and so she's up early and she's getting ready and as she's getting ready she hears a loud knock on the front door. She looks at her clock and she sees it's 6 45 in the morning and there was no reason for anybody to be knocking on her door that early in the morning maybe unless it was Tristan but he wouldn't be knocking on the door he'd just be coming inside and so apprehensively she walked out of her room and went to the front of the house and then she opened the front door. And as soon as she saw who was standing there, she knew something was wrong.

Erica would later reflect on this moment when she opened the door. And even though it didn't make sense and it was irrational, she would sometimes think to herself, what if I had just never opened the door? Would this nightmare have really happened? But Erica did open the door and standing out there was her sister-in-law, Priscilla, who was there unannounced. She lived an hour and a half away and she looked very frazzled and upset.

And she would give Erica absolutely heartbreaking news, news that was so earth shattering that Erica literally couldn't comprehend it. Like, this cannot be true. There literally has to be a mistake. But there was no mistake. Erica would not take her medical exam that day. Instead, she would hop into the car with Priscilla, and they would drive to Malibu. The day before, Tristan and his two little girls, after driving for about an hour and a half, arrived in Malibu at the entrance to the Malibu Creek State Park. Now, when most people think of Malibu, they just think of the beautiful properties lining the beach.

They think of celebrities and rich people and exclusivity. And that's all true. But what a lot of people don't know about Malibu is that just outside of the kind of main Malibu area is this totally wild area, this very rugged terrain, all these canyons, all these heavily forested areas. It all kind of butts up against the outside of Malibu. And in this totally rugged area is where the Malibu Creek State Park is. So Tristan and Scott, they arrive at the gates of this park that leads into this wilderness, and they check in with the park rangers up front,

and they are directed to their respective campsites that they had reserved. They had reserved two sites right next to each other. And all a campsite is, usually, is just a square little plot of land with nothing in it, and it's a place where you put your tent on, and sometimes there's a fire pit inside of it. It's really sparse. And so Tristan and Scott, they thank the park ranger, they drive all the way across the campgrounds, they get to their designated spots, and right away Tristan's like, these are just not very good campsites. They were located right near the

porta potties, so kind of smelled bad, and there was lots of foot traffic right in front of their sites, and their site was kind of at a tilt too. So just overall, it was not ideal. And so Tristan said this to Scott. And Scott decided he would just go talk to the park rangers again and see if they could change their campsites. And so he went to the front, talks to the park ranger, and they say, no problem.

There's actually two open campsites on the other side of the park. We'll just swap your reservation. And so Tristan and Scott and the kids, they make their way to these other two campsites. And other side of the park will just swap your reservation. And so Tristan and Scott and the kids, they make their way to these other two campsites. And these are perfect. They're kind of tucked up at the base of this huge canyon. There are no porta potties nearby. So no foot traffic. It's very private. And the land was totally flat. And so the men are totally happy with this. And they start getting their stuff out of their vehicles and setting up their tents. And the kids are running around playing and riding their little bikes around. And then after their campsites were mostly set up,

Scott and Tristan made a fire in the fire pit that was located roughly between where the two tents had been set up. And so Scott was sleeping with his two sons in his tent and Tristan would be sleeping with his two girls in his tent. And so they get this big fire going and then all the kids and the adults, they sit around the fire and they start roasting hot dogs and making s'mores, which is marshmallow chocolate and graham cracker and the dads are telling funny jokes and spooky stories too

and before long, the kids are just totally exhausted and so Scott and Tristan both take their kids and put them to bed inside of their tents and then after the kids are tucked in, the two men come back to the fire and Tristan, who had packed pre-made cocktails, he pulls those out and he shares one with Scott. And then the two men just enjoyed each other's company, you know, sat around the campfire, chatted for a while. It was mostly

Tristan talking about his upcoming move to San Francisco, but Scott was happy to just listen. And then at some point, the two men were just totally exhausted and they decided it was time for them to go to bed. And so they put out the fire. Scott would hug Tristan and tell him that he loved him. And then the two men would leave the campfire and go to their respective tents. As Scott climbed into his tent with his two sons, he turned and looked out the open flap of his tent across the fire pit towards Tristan's tent. And he saw Tristan climb into the tent with his girls. And so after he sees Tristan get into his tent, Scott zips up his own tent, and he lies down, and within 10 or 15 minutes, Scott is fast asleep. Just before sunrise the next day, so around 4.45 a.m., Scott suddenly

woke up. He thought he heard a loud sound, but he couldn't place the sound, and so he's just laying there. It's still dark outside, and as he's kind of getting his bearings, he realizes one of Tristan's daughters is crying in her tent. Now, this was not cause for alarm necessarily, because Scott just thought, you know, whatever she was upset about, Tristan would certainly calm her down any minute, and she'd be okay. But as Scott was laying there with his two sons sleeping right next to him, Tristan's daughter just continued to cry. Now, Tristan was a famously heavy sleeper. And so Scott was thinking, okay, you know, he just must not be awake.

And so that's why he's not able to comfort his daughter. And so Scott would carefully get up. He'd unzip his tent. You know, he'd be careful not to step on his sons. He went outside and outside it's cold. It's dark. He cannot see inside of Tristan's tent. There's no windows on it. And so he just walks over. And by the time he gets to the tent, he can hear clear his day. Tristan's daughter is still crying. And so Scott kind of loudly, but still whispering says, Hey, Tristan, Tristan, wake up. But Tristan doesn't wake up. And so with Tristan's daughter

still crying right on the other side of the nylon of this tent, Scott decides to just open the tent up and look inside. And so he walks around to the front of the tent. He unzips the tent and he looks inside. Now, it's too dark. He can't really tell what he's looking at. But even with the minimal light, he could tell that Tristan was clearly still sleeping right in the middle of the tent.

And positioned on either side of him was his two-year-old daughter and his four-year-old daughter, and from the looks of it, the two-year-old was crying, and the four-year-old, who was also whimpering, was doing her best to comfort the two-year-old. And so Scott's looking in, wondering what's going on, when the two little girls, they turn and look up at Scott, and when they see him, they just start saying, wet, wet, wet. Now, Scott doesn't know what they're talking about. He's starting to get a little bit flustered because he thinks something's wrong. And so he reaches in and just starts shaking Tristan, saying, hey, wake up.

But as soon as he did that, he could tell Tristan's not sleeping. Tristan is dead. And his two little girls are sitting in a pool of his blood. and his two little girls are sitting in a pool of his blood. Right before Scott had woken up, someone who was standing near the campsite had fired a gun several times and one of their bullets went into Tristan's tent and struck him right in the head as he slept next to his daughters. Roughly two hours after Tristan was killed,

Priscilla showed up on Tristan's doorstep to tell his wife, Erica, what happened. That her little girls were about to grow up without a father, just like she did. This news absolutely destroyed Erica. A 42-year-old man named Anthony Rauta would be arrested and charged with Tristan's murder. Rauta would be arrested and charged with Tristan's murder. Rauta had a long criminal history, and at the time of Tristan's murder, he was living illegally in this park up in the canyon nearby, and when he was arrested, he was in possession of a gun that was ballistically linked to the bullet that killed Tristan. His trial is still ongoing because Rauta keeps firing his defense attorneys, which delays the trial.

While Rauta has said he's innocent, he didn't do this, his behavior in court so far has not made him look any more innocent. He has been so violent and erratic during the initial court proceedings that when he goes into court, they have to strap his wrists and his legs into a chair and put what's called a spit hood over his head, which prevents him from spitting on people and biting people. Assuming he was the shooter, that he was responsible for shooting Tristan, which most people believe he was, and there really is an enormous amount of evidence that supports this, but again, his trial is still ongoing. But if we assume he was the shooter, the theory is

it was completely random. He did not know Tristan. He basically just fired his gun either intentionally into the tent or recklessly, and he just happened to fire into the tent. But either way, one of his bullets struck Tristan in the head and killed him, meaning Tristan was literally just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And if this case wasn't heartbreaking enough, one more distressing detail is that this shooting was not the first shooting in or around this campground. In the year leading up to Tristan's death, there were an astounding six other shootings, two of which happened literally in the campground right where Tristan was killed. Now, none of these other shootings were fatal, but in all six cases, the shooter or shooters were never caught, and the Malibu police just kind of didn't investigate. until Tristan got shot and killed in this campground that the stories of all these other shootings that never got solved came out and people are looking on a map saying, wait a minute,

there's all these shootings unsolved with a rogue shooter or shooters out and about right here, right over this campground, and we haven't shut down the campground, and we haven't told the public that there's potentially a uncaught shooter roaming around this campground? Why is that? In the meantime, Erica has filed a $90 million lawsuit against several agencies saying that her husband had no idea there was this threat of an uncaught shooter at that campground and had authorities put any sort of warning up, Tristan never would have taken his kids inside of that park and he would be alive today. Her lawsuit is still ongoing.

On Wednesday, June 7th, 2023, Anthony Rauta was sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder of Tristan Beaudet and three counts of attempted murder, including two involving Tristan's daughters. 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 release a horde of angry emus into the Amazon Music Follow Buttons house while they're at work. This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning,

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