MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - For a Price

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Whether it's fame, fortune, or the thrill of adventure — none of it comes without a price, and today's 3 stories demonstrate that.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#3 -- "Surge" -- A couple's dream vacation turns into a nightmare (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9en1PDgpAI)#2 -- "Stowaway" -- A runaway wants nothing more than to see the world (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHkpDWBmRO8)#1 -- "The Path Less Traveled" -- A discovery in a forest would have devastating consequences (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk9ijAskoRY&t=1s) 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.

Fame, fortune, adventure, all those things that we want, they all sort of come with a price. And today's three stories demonstrate that. 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 Surge, and it's about a couple's dream vacation that quickly turns into a nightmare. The second story you'll hear is called Stowaway,

and it's about a runaway who wants nothing more than just to go see the world. And the third and final story you'll hear is called The Path Buzz Traveled, and it's about a group of men who are very, very greedy, and their greed has devastating consequences. 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 their favorite dish, Fetuccini Alfredo, but replaced the Alfredo sauce with poisonous sea urchins. Okay, let's get into our first story called Surge. In October of 2007, Helena Carroll and her fiance, John Cullen, had saved a little bit of money and they were torn on what to do with it. They knew they should put it aside and put it towards a down payment on a new house, but they also really wanted to go on vacation,

and lately life had been very stressful for both of them, and so ultimately they decided, let's just blow it all on an amazing vacation. And so later that month, they flew off to Thailand. Over the course of their week, they spent most of their time at their resort, sitting in the pool and eating nice food, and they were having this really nice time. And on their last day, they decided they needed to do something a little bit more adventurous. And so they decided to explore the Nam Talu Cave inside of the Kausauk National Park, which is this 160 million-year-old rainforest that was not that close to their resort. In fact, it was not really a huge tourist destination because of how cumbersome it was to get there. But from everything they read about this park and specifically this cave they wanted to go in,

it was just this breathtaking experience and so they were sold. After signing up for a guided tour, they headed down to the pier where they boarded a boat and drove 90 minutes to the entrance of this park. When they got off, they met their two guides and then walked down to this entrance area where they connected with the other five tourists that were going to be on this tour with them. Those five people were two Swiss parents and their two teenage daughters, along with a 10-year-old German boy who was there on his own. After everyone had said hello and introduced themselves, they began walking through the park towards this cave. The allure of the Namtalu Cave, which is the cave they were going to be going to,

was there was a river that ran through it where at times as you walked through this cave, you'd have to hold onto a rope and wade through the water, where the water was up to your waist or even up to your neck at times, but it felt safe and controlled, and it was kind of exhilarating for foreign tourists to go through the cave. As they were just about to get to the entrance of the Namtalu cave, some park rangers happened to walk down the path next to them, and they exchanged some words with the two local guides that were leading this tour,

and they told them it's a bad idea to go into the Nam Talu Cave, because this is the monsoon season. No one's supposed to be in there, and if it starts raining while you're inside the cave, you won't hear it, and it will flood the cave, and then you'll be trapped. But despite the warning, the group continued on, because it hadn't rained that day, and there wasn't any rain in the forecast,

and the two local guides that were leading this tour, were really confident that they were not. in danger. They entered the cave a little after 1 p.m. And right away, they were walking through little puddles of water that got a little bit deeper. And pretty soon they were holding onto the rope and walking through the deeper sections of the cave, you know, waters up to their waste. And by all accounts, it was very exciting. And the entirety of the tour should only take about an hour where it's 30 minutes in, you hit the turnaround point and you come back. And they had made it about 20 to 25 minutes in, right before the turnaround point when Helena and John, who were towards

the front of the tour group, heard what's sounded like a rushing or roaring sound coming from the entrance of the cave. And they turned around and they saw this wave of water barreling into the cave and instinctively John and Helena start climbing up the walls and luckily there was a ledge where they were and they managed to scramble up onto this ledge. And Helena would say as soon as she got up there, she turned around to look where she had just been standing right as this surge of water blasted past them, carrying with it the two tour guides and the 10 year old German boy who immediately got swept around the corner down the dark tunnel and then seconds later the two swiss parents and their teenage daughters

they got swept away around the corner the couple was now stranded on this ledge with no time to be upset about what they're witnessing because the water was not only surging past them it was rising and there was limited amount of space before they would just be completely submerged in water and so they tried their best to climb up this wall to a slightly higher ledge which was still only a few feet away from these rushing rapids and so as they're crouched up on this ledge John eventually says to Helena, you know, we're going to die if we stay here, we're going to drown. And so I need to find a way to maybe get past this initial rush of water and maybe on the far side of the cave, I can work my way back up to the entrance and hopefully get us some help.

And initially, Helena said, don't do it, don't leave, we're safe here. But eventually he said to her, I have to go. I love you. I have to go. And she said, okay. And he jumped into the water and almost immediately he was pulled under and disappeared. For the next 20 hours, Helena had to sit on this ledge in total darkness until the water finally began to subside a little bit and rescuers could come in to get her. What had happened was after Helena and the rest of the tour group had gone inside of the cave, they made it just far enough in that they were out of earshot of what was happening outside of the cave.

Right at that moment, a huge freak storm rolled in, there was this flash flood that was so intense, the lake that was right outside of the entrance to this cave, it rose up and began, dumping directly into the cave. It was like a dam basically breaking and all the water just poured in all at once. When Helena was finally let out at the cave, she didn't know what happened to her fiance or the other tourists that were part of the group. But as soon as she stepped outside, she saw there were eight coffins that had been lined up right outside, and she found out that she was the sole survivor. Despite this tragedy, people still go into the Namtalu Cave even during monsoon season. Our next story is called Stowaway. In 1970, 14-year-old Keith Sapsford was living in Sydney, Australia with his parents, and he was desperate to travel the world.

His parents wanted him to be able to travel. They just lacked the resources to be able to afford that kind of thing. However, they were able to pull a little bit of cash, and the three of them did go on a nice European vacation, that his parents were hoping would kind of calm down his desires to want to travel all the time. They thought this would be, you know, a taste before he got older, and he could go travel as much. as he wanted. But when he came back from that vacation, it really had the opposite effect. It was like Keith had experienced the life that he's so desperately wanted, and now he's home, and it's like that life has been taken from him. Following that vacation, Keith began trying to

run away from home. Not because he didn't want to be around his parents, but just because he saw it as his only way to, you know, see the world. But every time he would run away, his parents would quickly find him and bring him back home. Their concern for their son would only grow, though, because he would find ways to sneak away and be gone for longer and longer stretches of time, and they're thinking it's only a matter of time before he really gets hurt. In an effort to save their son, they ended up enrolling him in this very strict boarding school that was per boys with behavioral problems. And they were hoping that the staff at the school was going to be able to kind of calm their son down

and keep him from trying to run away all the time. But unfortunately, the school really had the opposite effect, because the school, in a sense, was like a prison. You weren't allowed to leave. And so immediately, Keith, when he gets there, he's looking for ways to escape this boarding school. And two weeks after arriving, he would be successful. He would elude the staff and he would escape. Three days after he had escaped this boarding school, he found his way to the Sydney Airport.

Now, this is the 1970s, and it was far easier to get into an airport than it would be today, where there's lots of security. There wasn't much of that at the time that Keith was at the airport. And so Keith walked across the tarmac to a plane that was bound for Tokyo. and he climbed inside the wheel well. He tucked himself in there and he waited for takeoff. A photographer named John Gilpin happened to be at the Sydney airport on the same day that Keith has now snuck into that wheel well, and he had a new lens for his camera that he was testing out.

And at one point, he was just taking pictures of the tarmac, and he began taking pictures of a plane that was taking off. And it was the same plane that Keith had snuck into. And he takes pictures of it as it takes off, it goes up to altitude, and it flies away. And he just took a series of pictures of it, puts his camera, away, doesn't think twice about it. John had inadvertently captured the final moments of Keith as he fell nearly 200 feet to his death. As soon as the pilot took off, the wheels were retracted, opening up that wheel well for a brief second, and there was nothing for Keith to hold onto, and he slipped out. But even if he had not fallen out, he almost certainly would have

died from freezing temperatures and lack of oxygen at altitude. The next and final story of today's episode is called The Pathless Traveled. On a spring morning in 1870, a gold prospector named Frank Lemon rode his horse along the shore of the North Saskatchewan River, which is a river that runs through Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada. Frank was at the back of a line of about a dozen men who had all been hired by a rich investor named Lafayette French. He had commissioned them to search the Canadian wilderness for potential gold mines. And if they found a gold mine, then French would bankroll a full-scale mining operation and pull out all the gold he could, and these men who found it would get a cut up the profit.

When Frank had signed up for this job, he had thought it was a great opportunity. In fact, he thought it was such a big opportunity that he had convinced his best friend, whose nickname was Blackjack, to come along as well. But now, after weeks of searching the wilderness for these mines and not finding any, all Frank really wanted to do now was just go home. And so as this group of men continued their ride along the shore, Frank sort of zoned out and just kind of stared off into the forest all around him. And then at some point, as he was doing this, as he was looking off to his right,

He noticed, amongst the thick trees, there was this little trail, this dirt trail that kind of wound off into the distance. And for some reason, Frank was just immediately drawn to it. And so he pulled on his horse's reins and came to a stop and just stared at this strange trail. Frank thought about how for all this time they've been out here searching for gold, they'd basically only looked in this river and found nothing. And so he thought to himself, you know, maybe the gold is not in the river, but it's maybe

out there in the woods. and maybe this trail that he was looking at might lead them to gold. And so Frank turned back around to tell the rest of the group about his big idea, you know, to try to go down this trail here. But when he looked, he saw all the men in the group, except for his best friend Blackjack, had continued on without him. They basically hadn't even stopped when Frank had stopped. However, Frank really didn't care what the group had left him because he was totally over this trip

and frankly didn't want to be with this group anyways. And so he just looked over at Blackjack and just kind of gestured. towards this trail as if to say, you want to go this way? And Blackjack, who was also totally over this trip, just smiled and nodded, like, yeah, let's go. And so the two men turned their horses and began heading down this thin dirt trail off into the woods. For several hours, Frank and Blackjack continued on this trail deeper and deeper into the forest. You get a picture of very thick trees all around, and it's just this little winding dirt trail on the ground. They had no idea where this trail was going, but there was just something so powerful about this trail.

It was like calling them to go. But as they rode along, Frank kept getting this bad feeling. Like he kept hearing what sounded like voices and footsteps right behind them on the trail. But every time he turned, all he saw was Blackjack. There was nobody around them at all. They were deep in the forest. And after a while, you know, Frank kept hearing these noises and he asked Blackjack, like, hey, are you hearing that stuff too?

And Blackjack said, yeah, I am. But he too would turn around and see nothing. They were all alone. And so eventually, you know, the men convinced themselves that, you know, what those sounds must be is the sound of their party, who's discovered they have, you know, left the group and maybe they're out there looking for them. But Frank and Blackjack really had no intention of rejoining the group. They kind of didn't like the group.

And so they said, you know what, let's just keep on going. Eventually, the path these two friends were on led them to a stream. And so they stopped, they got up their horses, they knelt down, and they scoop their canteens into the water to get a drink. And as Frank did that, he looked into the crystal clear water. and he saw nuggets of gold just sitting there in the stream. Frank couldn't believe it. I mean, he's out here looking for gold,

but he was not expecting to find it right here in the middle of nowhere, despite, you know, his instinct that maybe the gold was out here. And so he just froze and he's staring at this. He can't believe it. He grabs Blackjack, who hadn't seen it yet, and pulls him over. Blackjack looks, and the two men, they're like, oh, my goodness, we've done it. But Frank said, look, before we celebrate, let's see what we're dealing with here. Let's go upstream here and try to find the source of this gold.

And so the two men that got up, they're super excited. They start walking along the side of the stream, looking in the water, and as they're moving upstream, they're seeing all this gold in the water, and it's getting more and more. And eventually, they reached this rock ledge that water was pouring over down into the stream, and literally in the ledge are these massive veins of gold. They had found a gigantic gold mine that clearly nobody else had tapped before. I mean, this could be worth not just millions of dollars, but billions of dollars. And so at this point, the two friends began to celebrate.

They were ecstatic. I mean, this is unbelievable. They're jumping around. They're hugging each other. And then at some point, they just kind of stopped and went silent because they realized they now had a big dilemma. So the whole reason Frank and Blackjack were out here in the Canadian wilderness was to look for gold, but they were looking for gold on behalf of the rich investor Lafayette friend.

which meant they were contractually obligated to tell French if they found gold. And so here they are, they found this massive gold mine, and that's what they're supposed to do, again, based on their contract. But if they did that, French would get rich beyond his wildest dreams from this mine, and yeah, he'd cut them a check, you know, a piece of the profits, but it would be like nothing compared to what French would get from this gold mine. Or, and this is where the dilemma comes in, Frank and Blackjack could hide the fact that they had found this mine, and then they alone could come out here anytime they wanted, take the gold,

and become rich themselves. Now, granted, they would have to be kind of subtle about it, because they started showing up with barrelfuls of gold. You know, Lafayette French is going to find out about it, and they're going to be in trouble. But, you know, there was a way to do it where this mine could effectively be theirs, and they could get rich. But obviously, there was a lot of risk involved in that second choice. And so Frank and Blackjack decided that, you know what, this is way too big of a decision for us to make just on the fly right now. So let's just stay here in the area, let's camp out for the night, and just sleep on this and come to a decision tomorrow.

So the two men left the stream and headed over to this clearing that was right nearby and decided that's where they would pitch their camp for the night. Blackjack left to go gather firewood and Frank began to pitch their tent. And as Frank did that, as he began setting up their tent, he began hearing whispers, kind of like the voices he was hearing as they were walking in on that trail. and they kept thinking it was maybe the group that was looking for them, he began hearing those voices again. It was kind of all around him in the trees,

but every time he looked, there was no one there. Now, Frank convinced himself that maybe these whispers were actually Blackjack, because he had gone off to get firewood and maybe it was him. But at one point, when Frank heard these whispers, he looked in the direction of the whispers, there was no one there, and he realized Blackjack was at the same time on the opposite side of the clearing. It could not have been him.

And so Frank couldn't help but feel really unsettled. It was like there was somebody or something here watching them or listening to them, but he just couldn't tell who or what it was. But Frank just told himself to shake it off, you know, don't worry about that. Instead, just focus on getting the camp set up. A few hours later, Frank and Blackjack were sitting on a log in front of their campfire eating rations, talking about what they were going to do with the gold. At some point, Frank said what he was really thinking about this whole situation.

He told Blackjack, look, I think we'd be so stupid to tell Lafayette French. Why should we take a small payday one time when we can basically have an endless supply of wealth for the rest of our lives? But when Frank looked over at Blackjack to see what his reaction was to this pitch, he could see right away that Blackjack disagreed. Blackjack was kind of looking down and he kind of turned to Frank and was like, look, it's morally wrong to lie here. I would rather be poor and honest than rich and morally bankrupt. And so what had started as a civil discussion from this point on, really escalated and just became a full-blown yelling fight, with both men absolutely refusing to budge on their stance about what to do with this gold.

And eventually, when the two men were standing up and just screaming in each other's faces, Blackjack finally just threw his hands up and said, you know what, enough. And he turned around and stormed over to the tent and disappeared inside. For a minute, Frank just stood there stewing by the fire, just completely furious that Blackjack didn't see it the way he saw it, But eventually, Frank kind of calmed down and thought, you know what, I need to go to bed too. Obviously, we are not near a decision. We need to sleep on this. And so, even though Frank was still upset, he walked over to the tent too, didn't say a word to Blackjack, he just climbed inside,

got into his sleeping bag, and tried to go to sleep. But after laying there for a while, when Frank had not fallen asleep and his friend Blackjack had, he was snoring and passed out, Frank just could not help feeling enraged again at his friend. Like, how can you not see this opportunity here? Why in the world would you tell Lafayette French? That's so stupid. And so Frank just laid there restlessly tossing and turning, listening to the sound of Blackjack snoring and getting so mad at him.

And as he did, you know, Frank went from, you know, I need to convince Blackjack in the morning that we need to keep the gold for ourselves to, I need to stop Blackjack from telling anyone. He is an obstacle. He's not a friend. He's a problem. And as he thought about this, these dark thought loops were going through his head. Frank just became consumed with rage.

It was like he couldn't control what he was doing. And in that moment, Frank found himself getting up, walking out of the tent, and grabbing an axe. And before he could even think about it, he had walked back into the tent, raised the axe, and driven it into Blackjack's skull, killing him instantly. A few minutes later, Frank was outside, sitting by the campfire, looking at his bloody hands, wondering what just happened?

How could he have just done what he did? That was his best friend. What had come over him? It was like Frank was a different person. He couldn't understand. But as Frank was sitting there grappling with what he had just done, a twig suddenly snapped over in the direction of the tent. And instantly Frank looked over like who's over there?

What's going on? And as he looked in the direction of the tent, he began to hear this low, gutterol moaning. It almost sounded like a dying animal. And he thought for a second, like, wait a minute, is Blackjack not actually dead? Is that him making that noise? But at the same time, Frank's thinking, that's not possible. I practically split Blackjack's head in half with that axe. He can't be making that sound. But before Frank could even begin to process what he was hearing, this sound, this moaning sound, got louder and it got closer to Frank like it was moving in his direction, but there's nobody here. And so Frank is horrified. And then right as the sound is practically on top of him,

he began hearing those whispers, those voices he'd been hearing in the woods on the way out here. Except this time the voices were clear. They were talking to Frank and they were saying you're going to be tortured for what you did to Blackjack. And then just as soon as these voices began, suddenly they stopped, the moaning stopped, and the entire forest just went deadly silent. And Frank has just stuck there staring in the tent wondering what's happening. And then the silence was broken by this unbelievably loud, high-pitched blood-curdling human scream coming from the tent.

And it was at that point that Frank just got up and sprinted to his horse and began riding away, away from the gold, his friend's body, everything. He didn't care. He needed to get out of there as soon as possible. But the second he began blindly galloping through the forest away from this area,

he began hearing whispers and heavy footsteps right behind him as if they were following him out of the forest. But Frank was so scared, he didn't even dare turn around to look. He just rode as fast as he possibly could. hours later, Frank suddenly emerged from the dark forest, and just by absolute happenstance, he arrived right in the town that he and the other gold prospectors had passed through on their way out into the woods. And the moment Frank left the tree line and actually entered into this town, the whispering and the footsteps, which had basically chased him all the way to this point,

they stopped. Suddenly Frank was all alone. Now, by this point, Frank had convinced himself that everything he had heard in the woods, the voice telling him he was going to be tortured for what he'd done, you know, the heavy footsteps, the whispering, the screaming, the moaning, all of it, everything that had caused him to flee was actually the ghost of Blackjack, that after he had killed his friend, his friend's spirit had immediately risen and sought revenge on Frank. That's what was happening. And this horrified Frank so much that he didn't care at all about the gold anymore. He just wanted to get out of the spiritual danger he thought he was in.

And so as he rode into this village, all he looked for was a church. And when he found the church, he went to the front steps and he sat there waiting for the priest. At dawn, the priest finally arrived at the church and found Frank sitting there looking horrible, and Frank instantly stood up, rushed over to the priest, and began begging him to save him from Blackjack's ghost. Now, at first, as the priest listened to Frank tell his story about this ghost, he just thought that Frank was crazy. But once he got Frank to slow down and sort of go over the details step by step, the priest realized that perhaps there was some truth to this story. It sounded like it was probably true that Frank really did find a gold mine with his friend

named Blackjack, and at some point the discovery of this gold mine prompted Frank to murder Blackjack. But despite the fact that this man, Frank, had just openly confessed to a murder, the priest could only focus on the gold. the gold that apparently Frank had found out in the forest. It was like this intense feeling had come over the priest, this darkness that just made him suddenly so greedy. He had never felt this way before in his life,

but it was like he was laser-focused on finding a way to claim that wealth that was just out there right now. And so against all his better judgment, the priest turns to Frank and says, you know what, we'll help you. But for right now, you need to get out of town. Get out of here, don't come back. We'll go out, we'll find Blackjack,

will give him a proper burial, and that will protect you from his ghost. And so Frank was so thankful to the priest, and he took off, not realizing that the priest did not care at all about Frank at this point. All the priest cared about was getting Frank out of the picture so that that gold mine out in the woods could be his. The next day, the priest asked his friend, an outdoorsman named John McDougal, to head off into the wilderness to try to find Frank in Blackjack's campsite. And so that's what John did, and after a few hours of looking,

he found the campsite. And sure enough, he found Blackjack's dead body still inside of the tent with the axe lodged in his head. And right away, John, the ever-loyal friend to the priest, began doing what the priest told him to do, which was to bury Blackjack to cover up the murder. Because the priest and John were planning to claim this gold mine for themselves, and they couldn't have this murder getting out to the public, because then officials would come out and investigate the scene, and then they would find the gold mine. They couldn't have that. And so, John, John began digging a grave for Blackjack, and as he did, he began hearing whispers all around him in the trees.

Remember, he's all alone out there. And so he began looking around trying to figure out who's out here. Did somebody follow him? But there was no one. John did his best to keep trying to dig as quickly as he could. But these whispers, these awful voices, they just kept getting louder and louder and more pronounced and closer to him, eventually to the point where John was spooked. I mean, John was this avid outdoorsman who routinely spent time by himself out in the

wild, but here he was feeling very unsettled by these voices. But despite his fear, John did what he was told and dug the grave as fast as he could, grabbed Blackjack's body, threw him inside, he covered him up and he put a couple of big stones on top of the grave site to kind of make a makeshift tombstone. And then afterwards, again, despite feeling totally unsettled out here, John did the next part of the plan, which was to go look for gold, go to the stream, find the gold these guys were talking about. But as John is down by the water looking for gold, He began hearing more and more of those voices all around him. He kept spinning around, but nobody was there.

And then finally, this awful high-pitched laughter cut through the trees. He whipped around. There was nobody there, but it was so terrifying that John just abandoned the search for gold and just hop back on his horse and fled out of there. But within a couple of days, John and the priest had convinced themselves that those weird noises and that laughter that John had heard out there was just some bird, that it was all in John's head. he was spooked for no reason, when in reality, it was just that incredible pull of that gold

being out there waiting to be claimed. It was like John and the priest, they just, they couldn't not go looking for it. And so John decided to go back out into the woods, except this time, he did not go alone. He brought a group of men with him. And so this group, led by John, retraced Frank and Blackcheck steps down that skinny trail all the way to their campsite. And when they got there, John just froze. He could not believe what he was seeing. The rocks that were sitting on the grave where John had just buried Blackjack were gone. These huge rocks were just missing. And also, the tent, the bloodied tent where Blackjack had been murdered, had also been cleared.

There was no trace of it anywhere. It was like the campsite had never existed. And this made no sense to John because he knows this is a totally isolated part of the wilderness. Like, nobody comes through here. Who in their right mind would just happen to pass by and randomly grab all these rocks and the tent covered in blood and take it out of here, it made no sense. Like, who could have done this? Now, until this point, John really had convinced himself that everything he'd experienced

the time before was in his head. It was just a bird or, you know, it was just normal forest sounds. And he also, like the priest, had convinced himself that Frank's original story about Black Jack's ghost chasing him out of the forest with just the ramblings of a crazy, guilty man, a murderer's guilty conscience had created that story. But now, as John was surveying the scene in front, he was. front of him, he couldn't help but think, maybe this place is haunted. And so once again, John just turned and fled. He and the men, they got out of there as fast as they could, and when

John got back to town, instead of going to the priest, he just went right to the bar and just started drinking. And he kept on drinking until he died of alcohol poisoning just a couple of days later. And John's death started a chain of unexplained catastrophes all connected to this gold. First, the priest, after discovering what happened to John, didn't really spend any time grieving the loss of his friend. Instead, the priest just saddled up and headed out into the woods to find the gold himself. However, he found the trail that led out to the campsite and to the gold had been destroyed in a forest fire. Then Lafayette French, the rich investor, who had bankrolled the original expedition, he heard about the mine and decided he would go find it. However, the guide that he hired to take

him there, literally died on the way into the forest. By this point, French had heard all the stories about how Blackjack's ghost was out in this forest haunting the area, preventing people from finding the gold. But French ignored all those stories. Just like with Frank and the priest and John, it was like that gold had an unbreakable hold on him. And so for 30 years, French kept going out into that forest, searching for that gold mine, and eventually he found it.

Or at least that's what he said in the last letter he wrote back home. But we'll never actually know for sure, because after sending that letter, on that same day, Lafayette's cabin burned down and he died without telling anybody the location of the mine. And so with French's death, that sort of solidified the rumors that the haunting was real. And people began to believe that there was only one thing that could explain this almost magnetic pull the gold had on so many people and also all the terrible fates that befell everybody who tried to go look for it, and that was that the gold mine was cursed. And today, people still believe that, that Blackjack's ghost is out there in the forest

preventing people from finding the gold. But whatever the truth is, whether the curse is real or not, to this day, no one has ever been able to successfully find the gold again and live to tell about it. 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. Ballen. 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 Lacassio. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Production Coordination by Samantha Collins. Production support by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Klugston Kiner. Theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. If you enjoyed today's story and you want to hear more like it,

go ahead and check out our YouTube channel, just called Mr. Ballin, where we have hundreds more stories a lot like this one, but most of them are not available on this podcast. They are only available on that YouTube channel, which again is just called Mr. Ballin. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.