MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Devotion

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Today’s podcast will feature 3 stories about acts so strange and unsettling, they blur the line between devotion and madness. The audio from all three stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel, which is just called "MrBallen," and has been remastered for today's podcast.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#3 -- "Exit Interviews" -- One of the most infamous cult cases in history... (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw9UOmib5hE)#2 -- "A Family Ritual" -- A family performs a sickening ritual (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V61B4JTczJM)#1 -- "The Helping Hand" -- After a hand washes up on a shore in Florida, a mysterious case begins to unravel (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eHMOFfHKDw) You can WATCH all new & exclusive MrBallen podcast episodes on my YouTube channel, just called "MrBallen" - https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballen Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today's podcast will feature three stories about acts so strange and unsettling, they blur the line between devotion and madness. 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 Exit Interviews, and it's about one of the most infamous cult cases in history. The second story you'll hear is called a family ritual,

and it's about a sickening act of family performs together. Keep in mind for this story, listener discretion is advised. And the third and final story you'll hear is called The Helping Hand. And in this story, a literal hand washes up on a beach in Florida, after which a very mysterious case begins to unravel. 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 podcast, because that's all we do

and we upload four times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Fridays. So, if that's of interest to you, please offer to make the like button a nice peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But make sure you employ a six to one peanut butter to jelly ratio. Okay, let's get into our first story called exit interviews. In the early 1970s, a man named Marshall Applewhite was fired from his music teaching job for having an inappropriate relationship with a male student. Shortly after, he admitted himself into a psychiatric institution where he met a nurse who worked there named Bonnie Nettles. Both had a deep interest in biblical prophecy, and Applewhite, after meeting Nettles, was convinced they had met in a previous

life. Nettles agreed, and took it a step further, saying extraterrestrials had come to her and preordained that she would someday meet Applewhite. The two did not have a romantic relationship at all. It was strictly platonic. They bonded over a desire to ascend to a higher level of existence and ultimately reach the kingdom of heaven. Applewhite began calling himself Bo, and Nettles became peep and together, they would start an infamous cult known as Heaven's Gate. The premise of Heaven's Gate was that an alien spacecraft that they simply called the UFO was going to come to Earth and whisk away Heaven's Gate cult members, elevating them to a new world and a better life that they referred to as Tela, or the evolutionary level above human. There was a catch, though. Anybody on Earth

who did not get on the UFO whenever it got here would be recycled, i.e. destroyed, along with everybody else on Earth, and then at some point a new human population would grow, and another UFO would come, and whoever got on that would be saved over and over and over again. That was just how it worked. And Bo and Peep were telling everyone they talked to about Heaven's Gate that were already in end times. Apparently there were signs that this UFO is going to be here any day. And so now is the time to join the cult. And so by 1975, Bo and Peep had recruited 20 people to be a part of their cult, which meant they gave up their families, they gave up their possessions, they basically gave up everything in their life and moved to Colorado to live in total poverty

as they waited for this UFO to arrive. For 10 years, cult members waited and waited for this UFO that never showed up. And Bo and Peep are aggressively reminding people that this is the path, you're just going to stay the path, and then Peep unexpectedly died of cancer in 1985, which really screwed things up for the cult. In their doctrine, it was destiny that Bo and Peep would get on that UFO and make their way to Tela, the evolutionary level above human. That was their destiny. And now Peep has died on planet Earth.

She did not get on the UFO. She did not ascend to Tela. She will not get to Heaven's Gate. Bo was devastated and horribly depressed, and it wasn't really clear what was going to happen to Heaven's Gate. But he composed himself, and he began to... tweak his messaging a little bit. Bo began telling his followers that Peep had in fact ascended to Tella. Yes, she did not get on the UFO. However, the aliens must have given her a signal that if she leaves behind this human body, this mere vessel, you'll still ascend to Tella. Basically,

he was preaching to them, if you just end your own life at the right moment, you can go to Tella too. But Bo didn't really know what the right moment was. He didn't know what the trigger was going to be. Until 1995, when astronomers discovered the Halebop comet was going to be passing by Earth two years later in 1997, and Beau saw this as the trigger. The UFO was going to be hiding behind the trail of this comet, and for sure, PEEP was riding on that UFO, and as soon as it passes by Earth, we need to ascend. And so fast forward to March 26, 1997, as the Halebop comet passed by Earth, 39 of the Heaven's Gate cult members, including Bo, they began their journey.

Bo told them they would be exiting the earth in three groups. And so on March 26th, Group 1 entered their San Diego Mansion and consumed applesauce, mixed with barbiturates, followed it up with a whole bunch of vodka, and then put a bag over their head and waited for death. Then on March 27th, Group 2 entered the San Diego Mansion, knowing full well what they were walking into. They all had specific jobs of how they were going to clean up the mess. left from group one. They cleaned it up. Then they picked up the group one members and placed them

in beds and put a purple cloth over their face before they, Group two, consumed their own applesauce mixed with barbiturates and put a bag over their head and waited for death. On March 28th, the third group entered the San Diego mansion and this included Bow, and they did the same cleanup as Group two. They put the group two deceased members in bed as well, and then they consumed applesauceas and barbiturates, followed it up with vodka, bag over the that had waited for death. Bo had given special instructions to two of the members that were within that third group to wait until he had exited earth and take special care to put him in a specific bed, organize a certain way, and then when they consumed their own applesauce and barbiturates

followed up with vodka, they should do that in their bed because they're the last two. There's nobody else to move them. When a former cult member stopped by the San Diego mansion to check in on the cult, they went inside not knowing what they were up to, and found all 39 cult members deceased, laying in bunk beds with identical black and white Nike running shoes on their feet, with purple shrouds over their bodies, and they were all wearing matching armbands that read Heaven's Gate Away Team. Just hours before they exited the earth, each of the groups would perform exit interviews, where they would record themselves talking about why they were doing this, why it was important, and what they expected on the other side.

They are remarkably cheerful and happy considering what they all know they are about to do. Here are some highlights from those exit interviews. Okay, we have Thursodi with us, and I believe that he chose the name Thersodi because you want to be reminded of your thirst for next level knowledge. Is that correct? That's right. I know my vehicles, or this vehicle, that I'm wearing is pretty nervous, pretty scared. Some may say, well, boy, it's quite a irreversible step. This isn't a troubling circumstance. Don't take it as that. It's just a gateway, just a doorway. Okay, thank you. Now, you're going to find this old crummy vehicle in a bunk someplace that I'll be going,

and I'll probably be watching when you check it out and observe your responses and your reaction when you look at these vehicles. And they're all nothing but containers that we've used and board for the short amount of time. People in the world who thought that I had completely lost my marbles. They're not right. Our next story is called a family ritual. On April 9, 2005, in Gowshung City, Taiwan, a young man was home alone inside of his apartment watching TV. And as he sat there watching TV, he heard a loud thumping sound coming from right above him.

As soon as he heard it, he muted his TV and he listened for a second, And a minute later, he heard it again, a loud thump. And then he heard another one, and another one and another one. And before long, all he heard was a succession of thumps and also what sounded like chanting coming from upstairs. However, as unusual as these types of sounds might be to the average person, to this young man, these actually weren't that weird. Because the family that lived right above him, the Wu family, were pretty eccentric. They were very religious people who often did these ceremonial dances, and rituals at all hours.

And a lot of times, they involved stomping around and chanting really loudly. And as annoying as that could be, this young man never complained. He was very respectful of the Wu family, and he knew, you know, these sounds he was hearing were connected to their religion, and he felt like that was none of his business. And so, like he did basically every other time he would hear these noises, he simply turned the volume up on his TV and tried to forget about them. But after a few minutes, it was like the noises coming.

from upstairs just kept getting louder and louder and louder until it was basically impossible to ignore. And then suddenly he heard a scream coming from upstairs that certainly did not feel attached to a ceremony. It sounded like somebody was in danger or in trouble or something. And so at that point, the young man turned the TV off and he stood up and he thought, I need to go up there and make sure things are okay. I mean, forget being annoyed. It sounds like, you know, someone's in trouble or someone's hurt or something. But as he began making his way towards his door to go upstairs and check on the Wu family, all the noises just completely stopped and it was silent upstairs. And at that point, the young man just stopped where he was. And for a

minute, he just listened, you know, waiting to see if maybe the noises would pick back up again. But they didn't. And so the young man just turned around, walked back to his seat and turned the TV back on. Two days later, on April 11th, that same young man was back home all alone, watching TV yet again, when, once again, he heard a loud pounding sound. Except this time, it was not coming from upstairs, it was coming from his front door. Somebody was hammering on his front door trying to get his attention. And so the young man turned off the TV, he got up, and he went over to his door, he opened it up, and standing there on the landing was this middle-aged man named Wu

Sean, who was the patriarch of the Wu family upstairs. And Wu-Shan looked absolutely horrible. He was dressed all in black, head to toe, but he was pale and skinny and very gone. And he was covered in what looked like filth, like food and ash. And he smelled unbelievably horrible. And the young man, he asked Wushan, like, hey, is everything okay? And remember, the young man's thinking about that crazy, loud ceremony they had just two days earlier, you know, wondering, you know, whatever happened with that.

That was so loud. But Wushan just looked back at the young man with this kind of vacant expression. And he just said, call an ambulance. And then, without saying anything else, Wushan turned, ran down. the steps and disappeared out into the street. And so at this point, the young man is left just standing there having no idea what to think. I mean, Wu Shan did not look well and he's now run away. And again, this young man is thinking about that bizarre ritual he overheard a couple of days ago that just kind of stopped abruptly after screams were heard. Now he's being told to call an ambulance,

and so he's thinking, I better go upstairs and make sure things are okay before I do anything else. And so the young man left his apartment, went upstairs to the Wu family's apartment, and the door was shut. But even standing outside the door, he began to smell that same absolutely horrible smell that he smelled on Wu Shan. So he knocks on the Wu family's door, he's kind of cover in his nose, but he doesn't get a response, nobody comes to the door. And so after looking around, he just tried the doorknob and he found it was unlocked. So, you know, pretty apprehensively, but knowing he needed to see what was going on here, he opened up the door and right away he's hit with another wave of just this disgusting smell. He can barely breathe. But nonetheless, he steps

into the house and he calls out to anybody. You know, anyone come over here and tell me what's going on, but nobody called back. And he kind of looked around the family's apartment and it was totally filthy. There was just this grime all over everything. And he made his way all the way into the living room. And there he stopped because in the middle of the living room on the floor, he saw something that he just simply couldn't believe. It would turn out, The Wu family had performed a ritual two days earlier. That was the sounds that the neighbor downstairs had been hearing. Those loud stomping and screaming, all that stuff,

was a ceremony like the family was known to do. However, that ceremony got totally out of hand. So in the weeks leading up to that ceremony, one of the Wu family's daughters came down with an illness. And because the family didn't have a lot of money, they couldn't send her to the doctor. And after a couple of days when she didn't get back, the family decided that, okay, well, she must not be physically sick. She must be spiritually sick,

meaning she was possessed by a demon. And so at first, they tried some ceremonies to ward off this demon, but it wasn't really working. And then before long, the rest of the members of the family began complaining that maybe they too were also possessed by the same demon. And before long, that was the belief that the entire Wu family shared, that they all were possessed by demons. And so, on the the downstairs neighbor heard all that stomping and chanting and screaming, that was the day that the Wu family performed a big group exorcism to try to get rid of these demons once and for all from all of them. But the way they did this exorcism was truly horrifying. They believed that the one thing demons were afraid of was filth. And so they decided that if they filled their bodies with

enough filth, the demons would leave. And so the Wu family, as they They chanted and stomped around and screamed, began consuming their own feces. And when they would vomit it back up again, they would just swallow it right back down for hours and hours and hours. What the downstairs neighbor actually discovered inside the living room of the Wu family's apartment was the daughter, the one who originally had gotten sick, and she was laying on the ground and was deceased. And during the autopsy, they would discover that her airway was totally blocked, by feces and vomit. By the time the downstairs neighbor made this discovery, the entire Wu family had fled the apartment. You know, Wu Shan had disappeared after saying calling an ambulance, and the rest of the

family too had kind of run off. But the police would ultimately track down all the remaining Wu family members and they would all be arrested. However, a court ultimately decided that the Wu family was suffering from something known as mass hysteria. And as a result of that, they could not be held legally accountable for what they did. And so they were all acquitted. The next and final story of today's episode is called The Helping Hand. One morning in November of 1997, a police captain named Jeffrey Lewis, along with his partner, parked their squad car near the Manatee River in Bradenton, Florida, which is a small city just south of Tampa. A few minutes earlier, the Bradenton Police Department had received a call from this

frantic man who had said he had found something suspicious that had washed up on the shore of this river. And so Captain Lewis and his partner were there to investigate. And so as soon as they got out of their squad car, this man who had called the police, he saw them and waved them down, and he was pointing at something in the sand. And so Captain Lewis and his partner, they walked over, and before they even talked to this guy, they just looked down at what he was pointing at,

and right away they could see why he called the police. Because there, sitting on the sand, was a severed human hand. And so the instant Captain Lewis saw this, his first thought was actually just alligators, because there were alligators that swam in the Manatee River, and people were told about them and were told, you know, not to go swimming here, but people still did. And so his thought was, well, maybe one of the alligators got a swimmer.

However, when Captain Lewis looked at the hand more closely, he could tell right away that that probably did not happen. Because where the hand had been cut off from the body, the cut was almost surgical. It was very, very neat. Whereas if an alligator had ripped the hand off, it would be rough. But this almost looked like a surgeon had carefully removed the hand. And so what this signaled to Captain Lewis is this hand very likely represented a murder victim.

Somebody who killed this person, cut their body up, and one of their body parts is now washed ashore. And so Captain Lewis turned to his partner and told him to call for backup. And within an hour, police officers were scouring the Manatee River looking for the body that belonged to this hand. Meanwhile, the captain bagged this hand as evidence and brought it to the county sheriff's crime lab, hoping that forensic experts could potentially figure out who the victim was using fingerprints. However, when he actually handed over the hand to these forensic technicians, they told Captain Lewis that it was very likely going to be impossible to try to pull prints from this hand because the hand was very badly decomposed and water damaged.

But they told Captain Lewis that despite this being a total long shot, they would still give it a try. And so really all Captain Lewis had was this hand, and so he just kind of waited for information from the crime lab about the fingerprint. And before long, the waiting went from days to weeks to months with no fingerprints. And so with no fingerprints and no other breakthroughs in this case, Captain Lewis moved on to other cases. That is, until June of 1998, when Captain Lewis was sitting in his office doing some work, when he suddenly got a call from the crime lab about the hand. An employee told Captain Lewis they had finally made a breakthrough.

When they couldn't get the prince off this hand at first, they had moved to this very complicated technique where basically they would peel individual layers of skin off the hand and sort of piece together all the information to get a print. And amazingly, this technique worked. And so not only did they now have this print, but they had also already run this print through the Florida State database and they had gotten a match. The hand belonged to a man named Willie Settle. As soon as he hung up, Captain Lewis opened up a new tab on his computer and began researching

Willie Settle to figure out who this person was. And he quickly found through public employment records that Willie had been a retired garbage collector, and then also Captain Lewis looked at police records and discovered that Willie had a minor criminal history. But what really stood out in his research about Willie was that Willie had never been reported missing. Willie had instead been reported dead. Right there in the public records that Captain Lewis was looking at, he found Willie's death certificate. And this document said, Willie had died of natural causes five months prior to his hand washing up on shore. And also it said Willie had been buried in a local cemetery, and no police had ever been involved in his death because no crime had been committed.

And so Captain Lewis was baffled. None of this made any sense. If Willie had died of natural causes and been buried over a year ago, then how did his hand, his severed hand, wind up on the shore of the Manatee River? The next day, which was Friday, June 26th, Captain Lewis, along with a few other police officers, went to the cemetery where Willie had been buried, and they exhumed. his casket. And when they opened it up, they actually expected it to be empty, considering his hand was already missing, so probably his whole body was gone. But no, when they opened it up, there was Willie missing his left hand. But that wasn't all. At the bottom of Willie's casket were all of his internal organs, just sitting there in a rotting pile. And so Captain Lewis is staring at this, having no idea what to make of it, but the first thought he had was, okay, you know, maybe somebody

tried to rob Willie's casket. But he's thinking, you know, if they did that, Why did they cut out his organs and stash him at the bottom of the casket? And also why did they remove his left hand and chuck it in the river? Like, that doesn't make any sense. It felt like every clue Captain Lewis found was only making this case harder to solve. But he hoped when he sent off Willie's body to the county medical examiner that they would be able to provide him with some more answers as to what happened here. Later that afternoon, the county medical examiner would perform an autopsy on Willie's body.

And the first thing he noticed when he began was that despite the fact that Willie's organs clearly had been removed, that Willie's abdomen did not appear sunken in. It appeared full. So the medical examiner started the autopsy by cutting open Willie's abdomen to see what was in there. And when he saw what was inside of Willie, he just froze, having no idea how to react to what he was looking at. He had never seen anything like this in his entire career, not even close. And so the medical examiner just grabbed a can. took some pictures of Willie's midsection and sent those pictures to Captain Lewis. The next day, Captain Lewis sat inside of an interview room in the police station across from a 45-year-old woman named Paula Green All-Briton. Paula owned and operated a funeral home along with the help of her son, and she had been the one responsible for Willie Suttall's burial. And so Captain Lewis asked Paula about Willie's burial, and she would tell him that Willie had actually died in poverty without any family members to help cover his burial expenses. However, when Paula had found out about this, she said she had agreed to do the burial anyways,

for no cost, as sort of a community service. However, when Captain Lewis poked and prodded and tried to ask for more information about exactly what that meant, Paula would eventually concede that there actually was slightly more to her rationale behind wanting to do Willie's burial. It was not just for charity. Two days after this interview, police arrested both Paula and her son. And at Paula's trial, the truth surrounding what happened to Willie finally came out. It would turn out, Paula's funeral home business was really struggling,

to the point where if she couldn't start generating some real money, her business might go under. And she couldn't have that. And so Paula decided she would conduct a prosperity ritual to write her business. But to perform this prosperity ritual, Paula needed a body. And so along comes Willie Suttle, who's died in poverty and his family can't afford his funeral. and Paula says, don't worry, I'll take him on for free. But really what she needed was Willie's body. And once Paula and her son had possession of Willie's body, they began a ritual,

which started with Paula's son carefully cutting off Willie's left hand, and then the two of them cut Willie's midsection open, removed all his internal organs, and then Paula got out all these voodoo dolls, and she wrote on pieces of paper the names of the other funeral homes, her competitors in the area, and she pinned these pieces of paper to each of these voodoo dolls, and then she took those voodoo dolls and jammed them inside of Willie's abdomen

in the empty cavity they had created, and then they stitched him back up. And then she took Willie's body and his organs, and she chucked them into a cheap casket and had him buried. And then she also took the hand that her son had removed, she put it inside of a plastic bag, added some weight to it, and chucked it into the Manatee River. Paula believed this voodoo ritual would literally cause the only, of the other funeral homes, whose businesses she wrote down on the dolls and jammed inside

of Willie's body, that this ritual would literally cause all of them to be struck down and killed, putting their businesses out of business, thereby leading to her business, prospering once again. However, none of these things came to fruition. The ritual did not work the way Paula intended it to. Instead, the hand that she had thrown into the river ultimately washed ashore, and before long, the police figured out what Paula and her son had done. In 1999, so two years after Willie's hand had washed up on shore, Paula and her son were found

guilty of desecrating Willie's corpse. Paula's son ultimately served one year in prison. As for Paula, her conviction was actually quickly overturned due to a technicality. It was discovered that during an interview with Paula, that police detectives told her that she could not be convicted if this ritual was part of a religious practice, that she was protected under the U.S. Constitution. And so Paula, who confessed to doing this ritual, did so by saying it was part of her religion. She practiced voodoo. And so in court, that confession was ruled inadmissible. And so she walked free. A quick note about our stories. They are all based on true events. But we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

The Mr. Ballin podcast, Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen. Our head of production is Zach Levitt. Produced by Jeremy Bone. Research and fact-checking by Shelley Shoe, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacasio, Jordan Stidham, and Cole Lacasio.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Production Coordination by Samantha Collins. Production support by Antonio Manata and Delana Corley. artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner, theme song called 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.