MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - In An Instant

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Today’s podcast will feature 4 stories that prove the line between life and death can disappear in an instant. The audio from all four 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: #4 -- "This Is It, Baby" -- They found the final recording from inside the cockpit (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCAXfw9MDxg) #3 -- "Don’t Touch The Water" -- A seemingly innocent looking body of water (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDJ8_VFtexw) #2 -- "Out Of Bounds" -- A boy jumps a fence to retrieve a basketball (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JtAN6PS59o) #1 -- "The Knocking" -- A nature photographer faces a nightmare situation (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQROGpQqsQI) 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 four stories that prove the line between life and death can disappear in an instant. The audio from all four 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 This Is It, Baby, and it's about a final recording found inside of a cockpit. The second story you'll hear is called Don't Touch the Water, and it's about this seemingly innocent-looking body of water, has a 100% mortality rate. The third story you'll hear is called Out of Bounds, and it's about a boy who tries to retrieve a basketball in a restricted area.

And the fourth and final story you'll hear is called The Knocking, and it's about a nature photographer who faces a truly nightmare scenario. 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 four times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. So, if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Follow Button's house and replace the stuffing in their pillows with cement. Okay, let's get into our first story called This Is It, Baby.

On September 25th, 1978, a Pacific Southwest Airlines Boeing 727 Jet Airliner entered San Diego Airspace. Like all PSA aircraft, Flight 182 had a whimsical black button nose and smiley face, painted underneath the cockpit. These so-called grinning birds were synonymous with the company's self-promoting ad campaign about them being the world's friendliest airline. But the airline was often criticized for being too friendly

with their super low airfares, their kind of comic banter that the captains would employ through the intercom to passengers, and their female flight attendants who wore mini skirts and were instructed to make nice with the male passengers. Because the weather was clear, air traffic control directed Captain McFerrin and First Officer Fox to

switch from instrument flight rules to visual flight rules procedures and to begin their final descent. Visual flight rules refers to pilots using their eyes to guide the plane. It's done when they're flying low, the weather's clear, and they can see the ground. At 8.59 a.m. that morning, as PSA Flight 182 descended down to 4,000 feet, air traffic control advised them of a Cessna, which is a small plane that was ascending in their direction. Fox responded that they saw the Cessna, and so air traffic control came back and said to maintain visual separation. Maintained visual separation meant that despite ground radar-based controllers who could provide vertical and lateral separation criteria, the burden for maintaining separation fell solely on Captain McFerrin and his crew. In layman's terms, air traffic

control was telling them, don't lose sight of the Cessna. Inside the Cessna was a flight instructor named Martin Casey and his student who was a United States Marine named David Boswell. As this little plane ascended, air traffic control informed them that PSA 182, who was right in front of them and slightly above them, they were on their descent. However, they had the Cessna in sight. As a result, the men inside of the Cessna did not take it upon themselves to actively begin looking for this jet. They assumed the pilots of PSA 182, who had them in sight, would avoid them. Back in PSA 182, there seemed to be some confusion in the cockpit. The two pilots were debating whether the Cessna they were watching fly lower than them, past them on the right,

was the same Cessna that Air Traffic Control had told them about. And at some point, they agreed, yep, that's got to be the same Cessna. And so they called in to Air Traffic Control that it looks like the Cessna has passed us. They've flown past us on the right. Immediately after this transmission, the Black Box recorded the two pilots talking to each other, basically trying to convince the other that, yes, that was definitely the right Cessna. but after a couple of minutes of reassuring themselves, one of them says, boy, I hope that was the right Cessna.

According to later testimony by the air traffic controller, who was in communication with the pilots of PSA 182 as they were on their final descent, he would say when Captain McFerrin came over and said the Cessna has passed him on the right, he believed him, and he didn't think to check to make sure it was the right one. But in reality, the Cessna that McFeran and Fox had seen was the wrong one, the real Cessna they were supposed to maintain visual separation with, the one containing KZ and Boswell, was still ascending in the direct flight path of PSA 182, except now this Cessna is in 182's blind spot below their nose, so they literally can't see each other. At 901 that morning, air traffic control got an alarm that PSA 182,

and this Cessna are about to collide, but for some reason the air traffic controller did not alert both aircraft. Instead, this controller only contacted the Cessna and didn't tell them this was a dire situation. They said, hey, there's traffic in your vicinity, but I'm pretty sure it's just PSA 182, and they already see you, so you're fine. So Casey and Boswell inside of the Cessna just continued to ascend. One minute later, at 902 a.m., PSA 182 flies directly over the Cessna and strikes them with their nose wheel. The Cessna gets hooked by the wheel and flips upside down and gets trapped underneath the right wing of the jet. Seconds later, the Cessna splits in two, the tail section containing David Boswell, plummets to the earth like a ragdoll, the nose section of the Cessna that contained Martin

Casey stayed trapped underneath the right wing for a few seconds before it detonated. Inside of PSA 182, this explosion was deafening, and immediately after it, McFerrin was recorded saying, easy baby, easy baby, then he asked Fox, what's the damage? And Fox says, it's bad man, were hit. Despite trying to keep the plane flying level, it lurched forward into an unrecoverable nose dive, and McFerrin, knowing they were doomed, calmly calls out to air traffic control and says, we're going down. Air traffic responded, okay, we'll have the equipment ready for you, then the black box

recorded the sound of a stall warning inside the cockpit, and as the aircraft streaked at over 300 miles per hour straight towards the ground, McFeran's last known transmission to air traffic was this is it, baby. Seconds before impact, McFerrin gave his final command over the intercom, which was, Brace yourselves, and then right before the black box cut out, someone in the cabin yelled, I love you, Mom. At 903 a.m., PSA 182 slammed nose first into the ground just outside of downtown San Diego in an area called North Park.

The resulting explosion of thousands of gallons of jet fuel sent a shockwave that was registered two miles away. Almost immediately, firefighters were rushing towards the rising mushroom climate. of black, oily smoke, and many of the first responders that arrived at the crash site in those first few hours were deeply disturbed at what they saw. The bodies that had not been destroyed in the explosion had gotten trapped up in the trees. All told, 144 people were killed in this accident, 135 were from PSA 182, two were from the Cessna, and seven were just unlucky people that were standing on the ground in North Park. Following a one-year investigation into the mid-air collision,

it was determined that the flight crew of PSA 182 was found to be primarily responsible because there was that moment that was picked up in the black box where the two pilots were unsure if the Cessna that passed them was the right one. But instead of calling that into air traffic control and getting confirmation, they blew it off. Our next story is called Don't Touch the Water. There is this tiny little stream that winds its way through a forest in Yorkshire, England, called the Bolton Strid. It's not very wide. You could jump over it. It doesn't appear to be very deep, it looks like maybe a foot or two, and it's not moving very fast.

But that's all an illusion. There are signs up all over the place that say, do not go near the Bolton Strid. It kills people. Because just beneath the surface of this seemingly tame water body is a natural booby trap that has a 100% mortality rate, meaning every single person that has ever stepped foot in the Bolton Strid has died. In 1998, Barry and Lynn Collett were were walking along the Bolton Strid. strid on their second day of their honeymoon and all of a sudden a torrential downpour starts just raining down on them and the rocks they were on suddenly got pretty slick and lynn slips and falls into the

strid berry being a good husband runs over to try to save her and he too falls into the strid a man named desmond thomas was on the other side of the strid and he saw barry as he was running for his wife and he saw him fall in and he watched barry's face as he was looking at him as if he was going to stay afloat at the top. Desmond said it looked like someone came up and grabbed his leg and yanked him under the water and he didn't see him again. Lynn's body was found six days later in West Yorkshire and Barry's body was found over a month later 10 miles downstream. In another case in 2010, an eight-year-old boy named Aaron Page was playing by the Bolton Strid for his birthday. There's an area that's totally safe that's away from the strid where people have picnics and that kind of thing and he came down to the edge of the

strid and was running on the rocks and he slipped and he fell in. Now an adult saw this happen and they ran over and they were able to grab onto him while he's in the water. But the pull from inside the water was so strong that this person couldn't hold on to this child who was eventually sucked under and dragged away and drowned. And beyond these two reports, there's dozens of others of people trying to jump over the strid and falling in and drowning. So why is the Bolton Strid so deadly? All this water in the river wharf gets funneled into the Bolton Strid. And the way it fits through that narrow section that is the Bolton Strid is the river turns on its side. So when you're looking at the Bolton Strid and you think, oh, that's not that deep.

Well, it is that deep. It's at least as deep as the river wharf is wide. And if you look at it on the surface and you say, oh, well, the Bolton Strid's not moving very fast. Well, that's because underneath the surface there is a whipping current. And in fact, the current that runs through the Strait is so strong that if you are standing on one of the rocks overlooking the water, you're looking down into the Bolton Strid, well, you're not really standing on solid rock. You're kind of standing on a ledge. You just don't know it because the water meets the edge of the ledge. Underneath the rock you're standing on, the water has completely carved it out.

So if you were to fall in, before you get sucked under the water, you would get sucked against the side and you would disappear under one of those shelves and go way, far back underneath these rocks, and then you get sucked under and drown. And a lot of people who fall into the strid, they don't make it out the other side. They don't get downstream. They get pulled into all these different caverns and tunnels that have been carved out by that current, and they're trapped in there forever, because no one's going in to retrieve them, not even with scuba gear. Because if you get in there with scuba gear, the current will push you into these different caves, and you aren't getting out again. Our next story is called out of bounds. At 6 p.m. on October 27th, 2014, a 17-year-old boy named Jesus Manessus was playing basketball with a group of friends

on an outdoor basketball court at Kinlock Park in Miami, Florida. The friends had broken up into two teams and were in the middle of a very intense pickup game. And the game was pretty close, and Jesus' team was doing pretty well. But at some point, when Jesus and his team had possession, one of his teammates just got frazzled by the defense and just took this crazy three-point shot from way behind the line, and the ball just sailed right past the hoop, completely missed it, airball, and it bounced, and then went clean over this chain-link fence on the edge of the park. And as soon as this happened, Jesus and all of his friends let out a collective groan,

because they knew basically anything that went over that fence was pretty much gone forever. But to Jesus' surprise, one of his friends turned to Jesus and was like, hey, why don't you just hop the fence and go get the ball? Now, Jesus really did not want to do that. I mean, he had been coming to this park since he was like one years old with his family, and his mom and dad had always told him to never, ever climb that fence. Never. But now, Jesus's friend who had asked him to do this had kind of like turned it into a dare and he's like, no, really, come on, Jesus. Like, go, go hop the fence and get the ball.

And the other friends had kind of picked up on this and they were kind of egging it on, being like, yeah, Jesus, go over there, get the ball. And so Jesus knew, like, this is not a good idea. I cannot go over that fence. But here I am surrounded by all my peers, basically egging it. me on to go do it and he didn't want to look weak or scared. And so he's thinking to himself, you know, hey, what's the worst that could happen? And he's like, all right, I'll go get it.

And so Jesus left the basketball court and walked over to this fence. And it was about seven feet tall and there was all this barbed wire across the top of it. And so as he's standing there looking at the fence, he turns back around and his friends are all smiling like, yeah, go get it. And so he's like, okay. And he begins climbing the fence. And he gets to the top and he reaches the barbed wire and he very carefully positions himself so he doesn't cut himself on the way over. And right after he's cleared the barbed wire, he kind of tumbles to the other side of the fence, he hits the ground and he's kind of shaken up from hitting the ground pretty hard.

But, you know, he stands up, dust himself off. He realizes he's okay, and he turns and looks through the fence now at his friends and they're all cheering him on. And so now, Hesuzus is feeling really confident and he kind of smiles at his friends, like he's the hero now, and he turns, and sure enough, there's the basketball, just a few feet away. So he walks over, picks up the basketball, and chucks it over the fence back to his friends. And Hesuzuz was about to to climb over the fence and go rejoin his friends, when he happened to look back in the direction of where his basketball had been, and he noticed there was another basketball that somebody else

had lost over this fence. Except this basketball was on the other side of a second fence. Basically, once you climb this first fence, a couple of feet later, there is a second fence. These were the two fences that Jesus and everybody who ever came to this park were warned about, never climbed them. But Jesus has already climbed the first one, and he's got his basketball, and he's thinking, I can climb the second one too, and I can get that basketball, and then we'll have two. So if we ever lose another one, we have a backup. So without even telling his friends, Jesus walks over to the second fence, which is basically identical to the first fence, about seven feet tall, a bunch of barbed wire at the top,

and he carefully climbs to the top, and he kind of positions himself over the barbed wire, and then he drops down to the other side, except this time when he hits the ground after clearing that second fence, something horrible happens. Within seconds of Jesus landing inside of that second fenced-in area, his friends back on the court saw what was going on and began totally panicking. They're screaming, they're running around, they don't know what to do. Eventually, one of them would call 911, and then minutes later, first responders show up and they find Jesus's friends. They're totally frantic. They're all pointing toward the fenced-in areas. And the first responders, they look and they know right away, there's virtually nothing they can do to save Jesus.

The reason these fences were totally off limits, the reason Hesuz's family specifically warned him from when he was a young kid to never ever climb them, was because inside of the second fenced-in area was an electrical power grid. And there were signs all over these two fences warning people to stay back that it was dangerous. No trespassing like fatalities will occur if you go in here. But Jesus ignored the warnings and he climbed the first fence and he climbed the second fence. except when he landed inside of that second fenced-in area, he landed on a live electrical wire. And the second he did, 500,000 volts of electricity coursed through his body. For reference, the average lightning bolt contains about 300,000 volts of electricity.

So, as soon as Jesus hit that wire, it was like the equivalent of two lightning bolts striking him at once, but not just one time, over and over and over again. And so unfortunately, Jesus died almost immediately. The next and final story of today's episode is called The Knocking. At 10 a.m. on September 10, 2022, a 68-year-old woman named Diana Stewart stood on the deck of a small boat in the Pacific Ocean, less than a mile off the eastern coast of New Zealand. She looked out at the perfectly calm, light blue water, and she saw this albatross bird flying across the sky, so she lifted up her camera and took a picture.

Diana was a wildlife photographer, and she was also a member of the Nature Photography Society of New Zealand, and she, along with nine other members of this society, had chartered this boat for a special birdwatching and photography trip. And so far, you know, the trip had lived up to the hype. They'd spent two hours sailing around the water, photographing all these beautiful and rare birds and other wildlife, and they'd even been lucky enough to see a couple of whales. And so this had been really a fantastic trip. Now, at this point, the group had basically finished up their trip, and they were making their way back towards shore. And so as they were going, Diana was keeping her eye out for any last-minute picture opportunities.

And as she was looking around, looking for birds, she noticed something in the water. There was something huge moving sort of near the boat. It actually looked like it was moving towards the boat sort of at an angle. And at first, you know, she couldn't really tell what it was. But then suddenly it came into focus that it was an enormous whale, this huge whale, is going to swim basically right under the boat. And so Diana, she pulled out her camera to take a photo, but then the worst thing possible happened.

This whale, sure enough, came towards the boat, but it didn't go under the boat. It rammed the side of the boat. And before Diana could do anything, suddenly the boat was lurching onto its side, and she and the rest of the crew were thrown off the boat into the frigid water. And the second she hit the freezing cold water,

her life jacket, which she was wearing, it automatically inflated. It was one of those auto-inflate life jackets. It inflates, and she sort of disoriented. The water was so shockingly cold. I mean, this is a completely unbelievable situation to find yourself in. But, you know, as she surfaced and she tried to get her bearings, she realized it was pitch black everywhere she looked, and it was so loud.

She could barely hear anything but the sound of the engine of the boat, and that's when she realized, as she's putting her hands up, that the boat must have capsized, landed on top of her, but there's this little bit of air. She's basically in an air pocket, but she can't hear anything. She just hears the sound of this engine and it's deafening. And so she began calling out for help and she tried to kind of maneuver out from underneath, you know, this curved underside of the boat that created this pocket. But she couldn't find her way out.

And this life jacket she had on was fully inflated. She couldn't deflate it. And because of her buoyancy, she couldn't swim down below and get out from under this boat. And so she's sort of trapped underneath this boat. It's freezing cold. The water could easily give you hypothermia in less than 30 minutes. You know, it's total chaos. It's loud because of the engine. And so Diana's trying not to panic.

And as she's sort of looking around fumbling in the dark, you know, gasping for air, she realized there were other people also trapped underneath. And so she's grabbing at them and trying to talk to them and they're all panicked. She has no idea, you know, what their state is. Are they hurt? She doesn't know. And so basically her only option at this, point was just a bang on the underside of this boat, just trying to get anybody's attention

outside, you know, out from underneath where they were, to know that they were trapped under here. They needed help. And in fact, when she began knocking, there were people outside the boat, basically who had been thrown off the boat, everybody had been thrown off the boat. There was 11 people, six people, were not trapped under the boat. Five, including Diana, were trapped underneath. And so as Diana is pounding the underside of the boat, the skipper of the boat, the skipper of the boat, a guy named Mark, he was one of the six who were outside, and he clearly heard the knocking sound. And so he's obviously in a bad situation, too, same as everybody else in the water. But he was in a markedly better situation because he's not trapped under this boat.

And so he quickly understood that, okay, he needs to gather the six people he's with, kind of make sure they're okay, and then figure out how they're going to get these people trapped under the boat out. And so his first instinct was just to bang back on the side of the boat, you know, to let them know, hey, we hear you. But again, you've got to picture the scene. They are suddenly in the water because a whale flipped their boat. They have no idea if this boat's going to sink any second here. The engine is currently running, so it's super loud. The water is freezing cold. They're out in the middle of the ocean. Like this is a true life or death situation here. But Mark, you know,

he does his best to stay calm. He's hitting the boat back to let the folks know down underneath the boat that they're okay. We'll get you out of there. But underneath, you know, Diana and the others, They're starting to panic. It's hard to breathe down there. I mean, there's really not much air. The water's choppy because they're moving around. It's their gulping down waters. They're doing their best to survive down there.

But they just keep hitting the boat back saying, come on, you've got to get us out of here. But periodically, they'd still try to force themselves out from underneath. But again, their life jacket just made it impossible. Like, they didn't have a way out unless they ditched their life jacket. But then that's another problem. Are you really prepared to ditch your life jacket? You don't know if there's obstacles when you swore.

out from under. You don't know if you're even strong enough to make the swim. What happens if you get stuck down below? Like there's all these factors that sort of forced the group under the boat to do nothing in weight and just bang the underside of the boat. And so Mark, out on the outside, with his group of six people, including himself, they actually climbed on top of the flipped upside-down boat. You know, the boat was big enough that he knew their extra weight would not cause it to sink any further or create a worse problem for those under the water. He just knew he had to get those people out of the water to avoid hypothermia. And then once they were all up there, Mark found one of the people he was with,

their cell phone, despite being submerged, was still working. And so, Mark took the phone, he called authorities and said, you gotta send somebody out here right now. We have people trapped in the water. We need your help. Authorities said they would be out there as soon as possible. And sure enough, authorities were able to get out to the boat fairly quickly. And they were able to get Mark and the five others that were trapped on top of the

capsized vessel to safety, and then divers were sent into the water, and they went underneath the boat. And sure enough, the five others, you know, Diana included, they were all still there. But unfortunately, all five were deceased. However, those five didn't die from hypothermia. They didn't die from drowning. When the boat was actually hit by the whale and capsized, it caused some of the gasoline lines to rupture. And so there was this leak in the gasoline lines, and when the boat was upside down, that leak was basically pouring into the air pocket. The dark, freezing cold, loud, awful air pocket they were in was basically filling with toxic gasoline fumes. And ultimately, 17 minutes after capsizing, all five died from gasoline poisoning. 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, produced by Jeremy Bone and Cole Lacassio, research and fact-checking by Shelley Schu, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Schumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fasiano. Research and Fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacasio and Jordan Stidham. Production support by Antonio Manata and Delana Corley.

artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner, theme song, 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 SeriousXM 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.