MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - He Sees You When You're Sleeping

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

Have you ever had the overwhelming feeling that something or someone was watching you? Well, today’s podcast features 3 stories that will have you checking your house for intruders before y...ou go to sleep. The audio for all three 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 -- "Never Alone" -- A father notices writing in his daughter's closet (Original YouTube link -- https://youtu.be/8z07gs6D9E8?feature=shared)#2 -- "Awful Routine" -- Man finds something unexpected in his attic (Original YouTube link -- https://youtu.be/vARuVoqbQL0?feature=shared)#1 -- "Stripes" -- One of the most popular "spooky" stories on Reddit (Original YouTube link -- https://youtu.be/W5U1vyQr_IY?feature=shared)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.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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. Have you ever had the overwhelming feeling that something or someone was watching you? Well, today's podcast features three stories that will have you checking your house for intruders before you go to sleep. 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.
Starting point is 00:00:32 The first story you'll hear is called Never Alone, and it's about a father who notices writing inside of his daughter's closet. The second story you'll hear is called Awful Routine, and it's about a man who finds something totally unexpected inside of his attic. And the third and final story you'll hear is called Stripes, and it's one of the most popular spooky stories on Reddit. 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.
Starting point is 00:01:11 So, if that's of interest to you, please offer the Amazon Music Follow button a beer, but give them an O'Doul's. Okay, let's get into our first story called Never Alone. 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. OK, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about.
Starting point is 00:01:59 No? Short shorts? Free cocktails? Careless whispers? OK, 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.
Starting point is 00:02:22 From the outside, it looks like he has it all. But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil. George is trapped in a lie of his own making, with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. or the Wondery app. Hello, I am Alice Levine and I am one of the hosts of Wondery's podcast, British Scandal.
Starting point is 00:02:50 On our latest series, The Race to Ruin, we tell the story of a British man who took part in the first ever round the world sailing race. Good on him, I hear you say. But there is a problem, as there always is in this show. The man in question hadn't actually sailed before.
Starting point is 00:03:06 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. In February of 2013, a young woman named Kim finally moved out of her parents' house, and she moved into this tiny
Starting point is 00:03:45 little apartment that she absolutely loved. Kim had severe social anxiety. She could not stand being out in public, talking to people she didn't know. And so she would do everything in her power to stay indoors. She had a job that didn't require her to travel. And so having this little apartment was like her little oasis. When she was there, she was safe. If she had to leave, she was practically running to her car and running back so she didn't have to talk to anybody. In those first few weeks she was living there, as much as she tried to avoid all contact with other people, there was one person she was kind of forced to have an interaction with, and that was her landlord. But her landlord turned out to be this awesome old woman named Olivia who really took a liking to Kim and kind of looked at Kim
Starting point is 00:04:30 as like her daughter. And Kim was surprised at herself for wanting to interact with Olivia. She was very comforting and she was this really nice lady. And so even though they didn't actually interact that much, they developed this relationship where Olivia liked to make food and she'd come over to Kim's door and she'd knock and she'd leave it outside of her door and she didn't expect Kim to come out and talk to her. She knew Kim was uncomfortable being out in public and so she didn't push her to do that. Instead, she just expected her to eat some nice food and whenever Kim was done eating to put her dishes back outside the door and Olivia would take it up and she would go clean it and that was that. And so Kim really grew to love Olivia and was very happy to have her there. It was like she made her feel safe. Two months after moving into this tiny little new
Starting point is 00:05:15 apartment, Kim started taking a new medication for her anxiety. Now historically she had taken a whole bunch of different medications and knew when you start a new one, it's not uncommon to have a whole bunch of side effects that you're just not used to and they're kind of awful and you need some time to get used to them. So at the same time she's taking this new medication, she starts to notice that she's forgetting things. Things in her apartment are being put in places she does not remember putting them. And things are going missing and she can't remember where she put them. And so even though she was expecting side effects
Starting point is 00:05:50 from this new drug, she was really frustrated with the memory loss. She also noticed this medication made her exceptionally drowsy to the point where most days she had to take a nap for two or three hours in the middle of the day just to get through the day. Because Kim had such intense anxiety about being out in public, she did not want to go to the doctors to get a different prescription or to even talk to the doctor about, you know, is this normal? Because that doctor's visit would necessitate a whole bunch of interactions with people she doesn't want to interact with. And so she decided, you know what, I'm just going to take my medication, I'm going to let myself adjust to this new normal and everything will be just fine. During the time period that she's experiencing all these side effects that she is attributing
Starting point is 00:06:34 to her new medication, she got a delivery from Olivia. It was a Greek salad that she knew Kim loved. And Kim's psyched about this Greek salad. She brings it in her apartment and she decides, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to have a nice day to myself. I'm going to go in my bedroom. I'm going to turn on Netflix. I'm going to eat this salad in bed. It's going to be awesome. And so she's sitting in bed. She's eating her salad. She's watching Portlandia. And then she falls asleep right in the middle. Like as she's eating her salad, she's falling asleep. She's so tired. When she woke up, she's like, wow, I've never fallen asleep that hard and that fast before. And she's literally still got the fork in her hand from eating her salad. And then she notices on the other side of the bed, the left side of the bed, these sheets are all disturbed, like someone has been laying there. And Kim always
Starting point is 00:07:23 sleeps on the right side of the bed. It was almost like a compulsion for Kim that she could never sleep on the left side, like it was bad luck. And she reaches her hand out and she feels that side of the bed where it's been disturbed and it's still warm. And so she quickly thinks to herself, well, I guess I must have rolled over and laid on that side of the bed and then rolled back to this side just miraculously right back in the same position I was in with the salad fork still in hand and that's when it kind of clicks in her head like that's not possible that's not possible so what does that mean does that mean someone's in my apartment right now and so she leaps out of bed she gets her phone she enters 9-1-1 and she's ready to dial. And she flips on all the lights in her apartment.
Starting point is 00:08:05 She's running around and there's no one in her apartment. The apartment's still locked. Everything is normal. And so she puts her phone away and her heart's still racing. She's very stressed out about what's just occurred. Because in her mind, in the back of her mind anyways, she knows she didn't roll over. That didn't happen. This is when Kim began to wonder, are all these strange happenings in my apartment connected to what just happened now? Because this incident right here does not feel
Starting point is 00:08:31 medication side effect driven. And so all of a sudden she's looking at the other weird things in her apartment, like the missing toothbrush and the missing shoes and things getting moved around as suddenly connected. And it dawns on her that maybe she's been blind to something else happening. Maybe someone is breaking into my apartment. So for the next couple of days, Kim watched her apartment like a hawk to see if there was any indication of somebody breaking into her apartment at any point. And there was nothing. She always locked the door. She always kept the windows shut. The only thing that stood out to her was when she woke up in the mornings, her bedroom had a very distinctive smell to it. It wasn't her smell and it wasn't a smell she was used to. It was like
Starting point is 00:09:14 another person's smell and it really freaked her out. She decided it's time to tell my parents. She decided it's time to tell my parents. And so when she tells her parents and she's describing out loud what's been going on in her apartment, it's the first time she's hearing herself say this stuff out loud. And it sounds way more creepy and way more scary than it did in her own head. And so as she's telling them, she's becoming scared to go back to her apartment. and her dad picks up on that and says, hey, I'll go back with you. We'll look around your apartment and we'll make sure it's safe and secure. And then on the way out, we'll check in with your landlady and we'll let her know what's going on. So she's brought in and everything's going to be fine.
Starting point is 00:10:03 They go back to her apartment, they go inside and when they walk in everything looks normal they kind of do a walk through the apartment looks normal but before her dad leaves he says hey let me just do a closer inspection of your whole apartment let me look everywhere and make sure there's not like some special way to get in here just to give you peace of mind and so he went into her bedroom and he starts looking around and he's lifting up the mattress and looking underneath. And then he opens up her closet, which is this big closet, lots of clothes in there. It's not quite a walk-in closet, but it's big enough that you can easily stand in there. And her father reaches in and splits the clothes and he uses his light to look
Starting point is 00:10:39 at all of the back wall. And he pushes on it and he taps on it and he sees if there's any sort of special compartment. There's not. But before he he walks out again he notices a little blurb of writing on the bottom right corner of the inner wall an area that you could only see if you were standing in the closet looking for strange things on the wall of the inside of this closet he kneels down to take a look at it and it's this little tiny blurb of text that says come back here so i can look at you and the only way you could write it is if you were laying down in this tiny little corner facing the exit of the closet and that's when her father looks at the bottom of the closet and one of the slats on the closet door was missing and so in theory if you were someone that was writing this message you'd be laying down where your eyes would be looking through that slat right at her bed.
Starting point is 00:11:31 Her father put it together and he stood up. He walked out to his daughter and he said, come over here. He showed her what's in her closet and he said, did you write that? And she goes, no. And he goes, all right, it's time to leave. They walk outside, they go to his truck, and he calls the police, and he says, someone's breaking into my daughter's apartment. Police show up, and using CCTV footage, they capture a grown man regularly going into Kim's apartment in the middle of the night, and he clearly has a key. going into Kim's apartment in the middle of the night, and he clearly has a key. It would turn out to be Olivia's grown adult son named Henry who lived with her,
Starting point is 00:12:14 who apparently as soon as he saw Kim for the first time, he fell madly in love with her and became very obsessed with her. And he developed this fake relationship in his mind where he believed he and Kim were dating, even though Kim didn't even know Henry existed. She didn't even know he was living with Olivia. She had never seen him before. During questioning, Henry said what he did is he got sleeping pills and he ground them up. And anytime his mother was delivering food to Kim, which she loved to do, and she was always excited about it. So she was talking about it so he would know it was happening. He would put sleeping pills in her food.
Starting point is 00:12:50 He would mix it in and then he knew as soon as it was delivered, she would be asleep and he would use his mother's spare key to go into the apartment. And what he said he did is he never touched her. He never laid a hand on Kim. Instead, he laid next to her in bed or watched her from inside the closet. he laid next to her in bed or watched her from inside the closet. So for the four months that Kim lived in this apartment, where she believed every time she came inside and shut the doors, that she was kind of away from society, she could just be alone in her bubble.
Starting point is 00:13:22 Well, in reality, there was some psychopath just a few feet away from her almost the entire time. When Olivia found out about all of this, she made a point to tell Kim she had nothing to do with it and she was terribly sorry, but their friendship ended. I'm Peter Frankopan. 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.
Starting point is 00:13:56 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 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?
Starting point is 00:14:31 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. If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good you are a fan of The Strange, Dark, and Mysterious. And if that's the case, then I've got some good news. 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,
Starting point is 00:15:04 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 ball'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. Our next story is called Awful Routine. In July of 2017, Jerome Kennedy was laying in bed next to his wife, and his 10-month-old daughter was sleeping in her crib in the corner of their bedroom. And as he's laying there, he starts to hear what sounds like scuffling sounds above his ceiling.
Starting point is 00:16:03 Now, above his ceiling was an attic. It was more like a crawl space because it was incredibly tight, and Jerome and his family didn't keep anything up there. They didn't spend any time up there, in fact. And so Jerome's laying here thinking, man, did an animal get up there? I mean, this is a pretty old apartment building. It's certainly possible that a squirrel or something could have crawled inside the attic, and that's what's making the sound. But eventually that night, the sound sound stopped and Jerome went to sleep.
Starting point is 00:16:30 The next day Jerome went up into the crawl space and there was nothing up there. But it's a pretty big space and again it's pretty difficult to maneuver around so we thought you know it is still possible that there could be an animal up here. But there wasn't any immediately obvious signs and so he went back down and just hoped it would stop. A couple days go by and he hasn't heard anything in the attic and then one night he wakes up to the sounds in the attic and when he opens his eyes there's a vent that sits at the top of the wall right in front of him that's actually over his daughter's crib and he could have sworn he saw what looked like a flashlight coming from the attic. Immediately he gets up and walks over
Starting point is 00:17:10 and pulls the vent cover out and he's looking into the attic but it's not a good view. It's a curved vent so at best you're getting a little sliver of a view into the crawl space and he didn't see any more light and he didn't hear anything else and so once again he kind of chalks it up puts the vent cover back in place gets back in bed and falls asleep the next morning he tells his wife about the light he saw in the vent and now they had already spoken about the strange sounds coming from the attic and she knew that perhaps there was some animal up there but the light definitely caught her off guard but then she remembered that next door they were doing a whole bunch of renovations on the apartment. And perhaps the partition, there was a break in it.
Starting point is 00:17:50 And they could be doing some late night work. And light could have leaked through the break in their partition wall in the attic. And maybe that was causing the flash of light. So Jerome knocks on his neighbor's door. And he says, hey, you know know i saw a weird light in my attic and i'm trying to see if there's a break in our partition wall that perhaps if you guys were working late last night light could have poured through onto our side you know is that a possibility and his neighbor said you know we were not working late last night and i've actually been up into our
Starting point is 00:18:19 attic and i've checked that partition wall because we're doing renovations and i need to make sure this apartment is in good working order because i'm looking to sell it and that partition wall because we're doing renovations and I need to make sure this apartment is in good working order because I'm looking to sell it. And that partition wall is solid. So I don't think there's a break in it. Jerome and his wife are totally stumped. And so they decide, let's just put a security camera up in the attic and let's see what's moving around up there. Let's see what's causing the light and these sounds. So that day, Jerome goes out, he gets a little security camera,
Starting point is 00:18:48 he comes home, he installs it in his attic, and then he, his wife, and his daughter go to bed. That night, Jerome doesn't wake up to any sounds in the ceiling, he doesn't see any lights, and so when he goes to check the footage the next morning, he's not expecting to see anything. But he is shocked at what he discovers. In the middle of the night, after Jerome, his wife, and his young daughter have
Starting point is 00:19:12 already fallen asleep, you see on camera as the partition that separates Jerome's attic from his neighbor's attic slides open. And in crawls who else but Jerome's neighbor, Robert Havrilla, the same guy he was speaking to the day earlier about, hey, have you heard anything in the attic? Well, turned out it was his neighbor. So he comes in, he's carrying a drill and a plank of wood, and he crawls very quietly over Jerome's side of the apartment. And then he pulls aside some insulation that clearly he had already detached before because it slid out of the way very easily. He lays the plank down over some beams and he gets himself positioned over it and then he uses his drill to drill a hole right into Jerome's ceiling
Starting point is 00:19:57 and it would happen to be directly above his daughter's crib. He'd put the drill back and then he'd lay there on the plank of wood and stare through the hole at Jerome's daughter for 30 minutes without flinching. After he was satisfied, he got up, pulled the plank out of the way, he slid the insulation back in place, he grabbed his drill and the plank of wood, and he crawled his way back into his side and shut the false door. back into his side and shut the false door. Jerome calls police who come over and they look at the footage and they immediately arrest his neighbor. But then when they go up into the attic to look for themselves,
Starting point is 00:20:33 they find there's all these different drill holes that have been carefully covered over because their neighbor had been doing this for some time and had developed a sort of awful routine where he would come in and spy on the family, specifically their infant daughter. Jerome's neighbor was found guilty of criminal trespassing and was given five years of probation
Starting point is 00:20:54 and had to pay Jerome's episode is called Stripes. On a warm summer night in 1998, a seven-year-old boy named Tyler Florian fell asleep watching TV on his living room couch. Tyler lived with his parents as well as his older brother, Will, who was 10 years old, in a modest two-story home in a rural neighborhood in West Virginia. That night, Tyler's father, who normally tucked the boys in at night, was out for work. And so after Tyler fell asleep, it was his mother who gently woke him up and encouraged him to head upstairs to his room. And so Tyler, he gets off the couch and he's groggy and he makes his way over to the stairs. He climbs up the stairs and he turns right and heads down the hallway to his room.
Starting point is 00:22:10 He goes into his bedroom, he climbs into his bed, and then he falls asleep. In order to understand what happens next, you need to have a good understanding of the layout of the second floor hallway. That hallway stretched from the front of the house all the way to the back of the house. And at either end of this hallway were doors that led outside of the house, and these doors had big windows on them. The front of the house, that door, if you walked out it, you'd be walking out onto a balcony that overlooked the front yard of the property. But if you walked out the back door of the second floor hallway, you would not be walking onto a balcony that overlooked the front yard of the property. But if you walked out the back door of the second floor hallway, you would not be walking onto a balcony. You would not even be
Starting point is 00:22:50 on the second floor. You'd be basically stepping into the backyard of the house. And the reason for this is because the house was built into a hill. And so the back half of the house is literally underground. It's in the hill. And so there is no door on the lower half of the house is literally underground. It's in the hill. And so there is no door on the lower half of the house because there's just earth behind the door. And so it's that second floor doorway at the end of the hall that serves as kind of like the exit to the backyard of the house.
Starting point is 00:23:18 So with that in mind, Tyler, he gets upstairs, he goes to his bedroom, which is towards the front half of this hallway, and he falls asleep. And then only about an hour after falling asleep, he wakes up to the sound of someone using the bathroom. Tyler's bedroom was positioned right across the hall from the bathroom and his door was open. And so Tyler's laying on his bed, he opens his eyes and he's looking through his open door at the bathroom and the bathroom the door is shut
Starting point is 00:23:45 but he can see there's light coming out from underneath the bottom of the door so he knows someone's in there and so tyler is just laying there watching whoever is in there he's assuming it's his brother who has a habit of going to the bathroom in the middle of the night and so he's just kind of watching and then at some point he hears the flick of the light as it's turned off and he sees the light disappear from inside of the bathroom. The door swings open and sure enough, it's his brother who steps back into the hallway. His brother looks into Tyler's room but doesn't attempt to interact with Tyler. Instead, Will just turns and walks back down the hallway towards his bedroom. And so as Tyler is listening to the sound of his brother's footsteps fade down the hallway,
Starting point is 00:24:26 he closes his eyes again and prepares to go back to sleep. But as he's laying there with his eyes closed, he can tell that his brother has stopped short of his bedroom and has turned around and is now walking back up the hallway towards the bathroom and towards Tyler's room. And so Tyler opens his eyes again because he knows his brother is about to be right in front of his bedroom. And he's thinking, okay, you know, maybe he forgot something in the bathroom. And so Tyler decides to just watch to see what his brother does. And so sure enough, Will walks all the way up until he's standing
Starting point is 00:24:58 right in front of Tyler's open door. But instead of going into the bathroom, Will walks into Tyler's room. And right away, Tyler sits up and says, you know, hey, what are you doing? What's going on? And his brother, he pauses for a second and he begins to say something that sounds like he saw something out there. But, you know, he's hesitant. He doesn't really know how he wants to frame the thing he wants to say. And so Tyler's like, come on, what are you doing? It's the middle of the night. What's going on? And finally, Will just blurts out, I keep seeing a man wearing stripes
Starting point is 00:25:29 at the end of the hallway. And so Tyler, he hears this and he can't compute what he's being told. And so he just says, what? What are you talking about, Will? What did you see in the hallway? And Will would say again, I keep seeing a man wearing stripes at the end of
Starting point is 00:25:46 the hallway. I've seen him a couple times in the last couple of days. I go to the bathroom and then when I start walking back, I see him outside the back door in our backyard. And so Tyler is so scared because his brother does not sound like he's making a joke. His brother sounds like he's telling the truth and just the fact that his brother can't sound like he's making a joke. His brother sounds like he's telling the truth. And just the fact that his brother can't quite find the words to describe what he saw made it seem even more real. And so Tyler, he gets out of bed and he says, Will, we got to go tell mom.
Starting point is 00:26:16 But that required going into the hallway and going down the hall towards where apparently this man in stripes was to get to their mother's bedroom and so will who initially was not that scared of this man in stripes he had seen was now starting to get pretty panicked in seeing tyler's reaction to this and so will tells tyler you know stay right there stay in the room and so will he kind of peeks back into the hallway and he looks all the way down and there is no Man in Stripes anymore. There's no one in the hall. And so he tells Tyler, you know, the coast
Starting point is 00:26:51 is clear. And the two of them run down the hallway all the way right in front of that door that leads into the back of the property where the Man in Stripes was. And they turn left and they go into their parents' bedroom where just their mother was because their father was out of town. And so they charge in there, they wake their mom up and they're talking over each other, trying to communicate to their mom that there was a ghost, that there was an intruder, that there was something bad happening around their house. And so finally their mom just tells them to be quiet
Starting point is 00:27:20 and she says, okay, boys, sit on the bed. I'm going to go have a look around the house. And so the two boys do as they're told. They sit on the bed and their mom leaves the bedroom. She goes into the hallway and she looks immediately to her left where the man in stripes supposedly was. And she doesn't see anything. She just looks out into their backyard. There's nothing there. She looks down the other direction out the front of the house doesn't see anything she walks all around the house she goes outside she looks everywhere but she doesn't see anyone or anything and so eventually she comes back inside the house she goes up to the second floor she goes back to her bedroom and she tells her boys look you probably just spooked yourselves there is no
Starting point is 00:28:00 man in stripes you're totally safe you're fine, just go back to bed. You probably just imagined whatever you saw. And so Will, who was the one who saw the man in stripes, was very quick to accept his mother's answer. It actually seemed like it was a relief to have somebody tell him that what you had seen wasn't real. And so he very happily went back to his bed and he fell asleep. But Tyler, who had not seen The Man in Stripes, but had a very intense reaction to hearing his brother describe it, could not accept his mother's answer. It just totally freaked him out because his brother was always joking around about stuff. But this did not feel like a joke. This felt very, very real. This did not feel like a joke.
Starting point is 00:28:43 This felt very, very real. But over the course of the next couple of days, weeks, months, years, Will never claimed to see the man in stripes again, and so pretty quickly, Tyler forgot about it. Fast forward 11 years to 2009, so Tyler is now 18 years old, and he and his mom were out in the car running some errands. And as they're driving around, they were just chatting about all sorts of different things, and at some point, they began talking about one of their beloved family pets, a dog named Max that they had when Tyler was really young. And so as they're kind of swapping
Starting point is 00:29:23 stories about all the goofy things that this dog did, Tyler's mom suddenly says, hey, Tyler, do you remember the time that I opened the front door to let the cops into the house? And Max came bounding into the house and he went right into the kitchen and he ripped open all the food. And Tyler's looking at his mom like, wait, when did the cops come to our house? When did you open the door to let the cops come into our house? And as soon as Tyler said this to his mom, his mom looked at him as if she had just given away something she hadn't meant to. And then she kind of relaxed and said, you know what?
Starting point is 00:29:54 I never got around to telling you. Now that I'm thinking about it, you and your brother were asleep and you didn't even know this happened. And then afterward, me and your father decided not to tell you guys because we didn't even know this happened. And then afterward, me and your father decided not to tell you guys because we didn't wanna scare you. Back when you were about seven years old and Will was about 10 years old,
Starting point is 00:30:14 your dad was away at work and we were all asleep one night when suddenly I wake up to the sound of someone or something moving around outside of our house. And so I sit up in bed and I go into the hallway and I look left and I look out that door into our backyard and I see standing up against the glass, this man with his hands pressed to the window looking into the house. And so Tyler's mom would tell him how she totally freaked out and she flipped on the lights and it scared this guy who ran off.
Starting point is 00:30:45 And then she called the police and then the police showed up. And that's when their dog Max came bounding inside and shredded the bag of food. And the police, they searched the property, but apparently they never found this guy. Tyler's mom would go on to tell him that the police warned her that her description of this man that was standing at their back door matched the description of a man who was wanted for murder who was on the loose in the area. Tyler was dumbfounded. He didn't remember this because obviously he had been asleep because this is something he would have remembered. And so he had so many questions about this whole situation. But the first question he asked his mom was, well, what did he look like? And his mom said, well, you know, he was tall, he had dark hair,
Starting point is 00:31:34 he had blue jeans on, and oh, you know what? He had a striped shirt on. It would turn out for a couple of days in the summer of 1998, this suspected murderer who was on the run from police had apparently been hiding out on Tyler's family's property and in the middle of the night, for whatever reason, this suspected murderer would walk over to the back door of the second floor hallway and he would put his face up to the glass, and he would stare into their home. This was the man in stripes that Will claimed to have seen. He was real. Tyler, after making this connection, would follow up with his family members, and he would do some
Starting point is 00:32:19 digging of his own, but he was never able to figure out who the man in stripes was or what happened to him. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you enjoyed today's stories and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our other studios' podcasts, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, and Run Full. Just search for Ballin Studios wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to watch hundreds more stories like the ones you heard today, head to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. So, that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, Prime members. You can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early
Starting point is 00:33:29 and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. And before you go, please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. In May of 1980, near Anaheim, California, Dorothy Jane Scott noticed her friend had an inflamed red wound on his arm and he seemed really unwell. So she wound up taking him to the hospital right away so he could get treatment. While Dorothy's friend waited for his prescription, Dorothy went to grab her car to pick him up at the exit.
Starting point is 00:34:00 But she would never be seen alive again, leaving us to wonder decades later what really happened to Dorothy Jane Scott. From Wondery, Generation Y is a podcast that covers notable true crime cases like this one and so many more. Every week, hosts Aaron and Justin sit down to discuss a new case covering every angle and theory, walking through the forensic evidence, and interviewing those close to the case to try and discover what really happened. And with over 450 episodes, there's a case for every true crime listener. Follow the Generation Y podcast on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

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