MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Just Stay Inside

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

Today’s podcast features 2 separate, unique stories that will make you want to lock the doors and just stay inside. The audio from both of these 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:#2 -- “Pine Tree Farm" -- Strangers lurk around tree farm at night (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gFlFR1NBFE)#1 -- "Tintinnabulation" -- A girl hears a bell inside of an isolated forest in France (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQY5kZKKmbg)For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast features two classic scary stories. The audio from both 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 Pine Tree Farm, and it's about a family who lives on a farm in the middle of a

forest that notices something very strange going on outside of their house in the middle of the night. The second and final story you'll hear is called Tin Tinabulation. This story was recently played for players on the Los Angeles Chargers NFL team as part of a big Amazon Music promotion, and during the screening, one of the players got so anxious and uncomfortable listening to this story that he just ripped his headphones off and said, nope, I'm done. But before we get into those stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Delivered in Story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.

So, if that's of interest to you, please text the Amazon Music Follow button that you have something extremely important to tell them. Then, text them a GIF of the typing dots. Okay, let's get into our first story called Pine Tree Farm. Hello, I am Alice Levine and I am one of the hosts of Wondery's podcast, British Scandal. 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. Oh, and his boat wasn't seaworthy. Oh, and also, tiny't seaworthy. Oh, and also tiny little detail, almost didn't mention it. He bet his family home on making it to the finish line. What ensued was one of the most complex cheating plots in British sporting history. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts. Or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. I'm Peter Frank-O'Pern. And I'm Afua Hirsch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of

Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time, somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message,

it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle, that's all captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time. Think that's fair, Peter? I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful, no matter what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. In 2006, a 14-year-old boy named Evan lived on a farm in North Carolina. This was not a typical farm with animals and crops. It was a pine tree harvestry. Pine

needles are a big landscaping commodity, and Evan and his family made their living baling pine straw every year. As such, their main living house on the farm was situated right in the middle of 550 acres of perfectly lined up pine trees. They did not have any neighbors nearby, and there was only one road that led into the property which from the main house they could look out and basically see through the rows of trees all the way to the beginning of this road which meant any visitors were really easy to spot. The main house was built on a very slight hill which meant one side of the house was effectively built on stilts to compensate for the angle and on that side of the house on the first floor was the living room. So anyone who was in the living room looking out the window, they basically need to look

at a downward angle to see the ground. It would actually seem like you were on the second floor, but really you're on the first floor. The window in the living room was very unique. It stretched almost the entire length of the room, so almost 50 feet across. And at night, you could see animals darting between the different trees because you could see down the rows. And so that was pretty creepy. And then just the fact that this window is so big, if you're in the living room at night, you just felt really exposed. So between the creepy animals running around and the level of exposure and vulnerability, people basically avoided the living room anytime they were in the house at night. That winter, Evan's cousin came to stay with him on his farm, and because the main house did not have any extra

bedrooms, Evan and his cousin would have to sleep in the living room. There were two couches inside of the living room, one that was right underneath the 50-foot long window, and then another which was on the other side of the room against a wall that did not have a window. And so Evan would be sleeping on the couch right under the window, and his cousin would be sleeping on the other couch. The first night Evan's cousin was there, they put this big sheet up over the window, but it only blocked like 75% of the window. The two flanks of the window were still exposed, but where the couches were lined up, they were kind of blocked by this sheet. So it gave them a little bit of privacy. After goofing around for a while, the boys finally fell asleep around midnight, and then they woke up a couple hours later because they heard

Evan's dogs barking way off in the pine trees. Now, Evan was used to his dogs running around the property and barking at other smaller animals, and so just them barking was not necessarily a red flag, but the barking persisted to the point where Evan's cousin got up off the couch, moved across the room to the opening of the window that was not covered by the sheet at the foot of where Evan was sleeping. Now, Evan was still laying on the couch. He was not going to get up and look out the window. So he's looking down at his cousin, kind of looking at his face to get some sort of a read on what he's seeing. And he notices his cousin has this really perplexed look on his face, like he's squinting his eyes and trying to make sense of what he's looking at. And so Evan looks at him and says,

hey, what's going on? What do you see? And his cousin's like, I don't know if my mind's playing tricks on me or not, but I'm pretty sure I see people out there. At this, Evan jumps off the couch and runs over and butts up right next to his cousin so he can look out the window too.

And he's scanning out amongst the rows of trees because there's just a mile of pine trees. And the first thing he notices is the moon is very bright that night. So there's good illumination and there was a light snow covering on the ground, which really added to the illumination. He's looking out maybe 100 meters when he sees someone's leg extend from behind one of the pine trees as if they're stepping into the space between a pine tree column. into the space between a pine tree column. And he's staring at it and he can't believe he's even seeing anyone walking around this area because he didn't see anybody come in on the road

and they have no neighbors. And so he's looking and then a body follows the leg. A person walks from one row to the next. This tall, dark figure just walks calm as can be between the two pine trees. And Evan just grabs his cousin and he's like, did you just see that? And his cousin's like, yeah, I saw that.

And so they continue to look in the direction of where this person crossed the path. And after a couple of minutes, they see another leg now emerging going the other way, back towards where that first person had come from. So the leg kind of extends into this gap and this tall figure walks across into the next row. Except now, instead of going just directly across, it looks like they're moving at an angle closer to the main house property. The boys look at each other,

and they don't know what to do, so they just keep looking out the window in stunned silence. And as they're looking, they see this person emerge again, except now, they're not 100 meters away. They're like 20 meters away. They don't know how they were able to move that quickly without being seen. And this time, when the leg comes out from behind the pine tree, instead of walking across the gap, it stops right in the middle and it turns and looks directly at the boys in the

window and then begins running toward them. The boys practically fall over trying to get away from the window. Evan's yelling for his father upstairs and the boys instinctively just start running around the house, locking every door, shutting every window. And as they're going from door to door, the anxiety is growing and growing because they think if I don't get there fast enough, this person who was running towards the property

is gonna come barging through that door. And so at every door, their anxiety is through the roof, but they managed to shut everything. Everything is locked right as Evan's father comes charging down the stairs. He's got his gun in hand and he's like, what's going on? And they say, there's someone out in our property. Their dad charges out the front door. The front door is not on the same wall as the living room. It's on the side of the house. So once he goes outside, he's going to need to turn to the right to look out in the direction they were describing. He bombs outside. He stays on the porch. He starts yelling at whoever's out there that if you come over here, I'm gonna shoot you,

get the F away from here, and then there's silence. And the boys are waiting, they're looking around, they're checking the window, they don't see anything. The dad comes back inside, he shut and locks the door, and he tells Evan, keep an eye out, if you see him again, you let me know. Evan would reflect on this experience later on and say, you know, we really should have called 911 at that point,

but as a kid, I just understood that that's the way my family did business. We kind of took care of ourselves. And so even though there is a threat of some stranger who's running at our property, we were not going to call the cops. And so his dad effectively was telling him to be a lookout. And so Evan and his cousin, they go back into the living room and they kind of go up to the window. They're a little bit apprehensive and they're looking out. And after five, 10 minutes of looking out the window and not seeing anything, they're thinking to themselves, you know, Evan's dad's a pretty intimidating guy and he was just out there screaming and yelling with a gun, threatening to shoot them. So they probably got the message and they're probably gone. And so the boys got back into their couches and it took them

a while, but they did ultimately fall asleep. The next morning when the boys got up, the first thing they wanted to do was go out there and see if they could find footprints from this person to kind of confirm it really was a person. Because part of them thought, you know, maybe we didn't see that. Maybe that was our imaginations. They don't know. And so they start by going out the front door. So not on the same wall as the living room.

They go out the front door, they turn and they walk down into the trees and they're looking around and they find some footprints. So they're confirming to themselves, okay, there was someone out here. It wasn't us. This is not our footprints. We found them. So they start following the footprints back towards the property, and they realize at some point there are two distinct sets of footprints. There were two people out here. And even worse is they followed them all the way up to the house. And there were two different circles of footprints that stopped right underneath the living room window along the two flanks of the window where the sheet was not covering. Which means over the course of the night when Evan and

his cousin were up at that window looking out, there's a good chance that one or two strangers were tucked up against the side of the house. And they would not have seen them because of the angle out of the living room window. It was steep because of the stilts it was on. And so anybody that was tucked up along the side, they'd be in a blind spot. And then for sure, after Evan and his cousin got back into bed and were sleeping, there were two strangers who were right up against those windows, probably pulling themselves up to look inside. When Evan's father found these footprints,

he immediately grabbed his gun and tried to follow them back into the woods to see where they came from. But unfortunately, the snow cover wasn't complete. And at some point they lost the tracks and they never figured out who those two people were. Evan would say following this event, his cousin refused to ever come back over his house for a sleepover. come back over his house for a sleepover. Hello, I'm Emily, and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities.

And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts? Free cocktails?

Careless whispers? Okay, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely. Yep, that's right. It's stone-cold icon George Michael. From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all, but behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil. George is trapped in a lie of his own making with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. 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. And we finally decided to take the plunge and the show is awesome. In this free weekly show, we explore bizarre unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths,

and everything in between. Each story is totally true and totally terrifying. Go follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're a Prime member, you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. The next and final story of today's episode is called Tintinabulation. is called Tintinabulation. In June of 2019, an 18-year-old girl named Bella wrapped up her first year in college and headed home for the summer.

Her family lived just outside of this small town in France that was tucked up in the mountains and surrounded by this huge forest. And so growing up, Bella spent a lot of her time out in this forest, either by herself or with her father or other members of her family. And so she knew the forest like the back of her hand. Her favorite place to go in this forest was the man-made lake that sat kind of at the center of this forest. It wasn't huge, but it was a beautiful view. It was very peaceful. And so she liked going out there. The way she would get to it is she would leave her house she would hop in her car she would drive a couple of miles down

the road and she would pull off into the shoulder of this road and there was no signage that said this was the pull-off to get to the man-made lake this was an area that she and her family had discovered that there was this particular trail you could take and so she would pull off at the shoulder she would get out and she would turn away from the road and just walk directly into the trees, which butted right up against the road. And very quickly, after walking into the woods, after going through some thick underbrush, she would reach this kind of clearing, and she would see up ahead this little stream. And off to the left side of this stream is what looked like this kind of beaten up little footpath, but actually what it was was an animal trail. So animals just kind of made their way around this area all the time. And so it kind of carved out a path. And so Bella would walk down to this animal path and she would walk along the path that kind of went

parallel with the stream. And she would walk for maybe 15 or 20 minutes until this animal path veered hard to the left, kind of went away from the stream. At that point, Bella would abandon the animal path and just continue walking along this stream, both away from the stream. At that point, Bella would abandon the animal path and just continue walking along this stream, both stepping in the stream on some rocks and standing on either side when she could. And she would follow the stream due north, just going straight into the heart of this forest for about an hour, walking at a fairly leisurely pace until the stream connected with this east to west running river. And at this point, Bella would turn left facing west and she would follow along this riverbank

about 20 minutes until the river fed into the man-made lake. And so she would stay at this lake sitting on a rock, enjoy the view and look at the animals and listen to nature all around her. And then at some point she would turn around and retrace her steps all the way back to her car. For reference, one leg of this journey from car to

lake or from lake to car took about two hours. Part of the reason Bella really enjoyed being in these woods and being at this lake was because it just kind of felt like they were hers. Because up until this summer in 2019, the only other people that Bella had ever seen anywhere in this forest or near this lake were other members of her family. So it really felt very private. So in June of that year, Bella comes home from college and almost immediately she wants to go out to the man-made lake because she hasn't been in months.

She's been in school. And so she's eager to get back to some place that she kind of considered to be her happy place. So one morning she gets up early and by herself, she leaves her house, she hops in her car, she drives the couple miles down the road, she pulls off onto that shoulder, she parks her car, she hops out, she turns away from the road, she walks into the forest, she finds the stream and starts walking along that animal path right to the side of the stream. She walks for a few minutes until she reaches the point where the trail kind of cuts to the left and she just stays on the stream and is just continuing walking along the stream. And about 30 minutes later,

when she was maybe one or two miles short of the east-west running river, she hears a bell somewhere off in the distance, way out in front of her, out towards the river. It sounds just like a chime, a single chime. And as soon as she hears it, she stops because there's never any people out here ever. And that bell sound came from somewhere in the forest. it, she stops because there's never any people out here ever. And that bell sound came from somewhere in the forest. And so she stops because she's not really sure if she actually heard that because it could have just been her mind playing tricks on her or something. And so she stops and just kind of listens for a second.

And then she starts to hear this bell just continuously start ringing. Now the ringing was not uniform. It was constant, but it was kind of sporadic, as if you were holding a bell and kind of ringing it randomly, like you might see the sports game. And so she's thinking to herself, you know, is there a dog that got lost somewhere up ahead, and it's got a bell on its collar, and that's the sound I'm hearing? But as she's sitting there listening to this kind of sporadic bell sound, she's thinking, that's way too loud to be some rinky-dink bell on a pet's collar.

So it's got to be something more robust. Maybe somebody have a bell inside of a box and that box got on the river and it's floated down river and it's like crashing into rocks or something. I mean, she's going through these very strange scenarios in her head, but she's not concerned about the bell. She's actually pretty intrigued. And since the sound of this bell seemed to be coming from the direction she was already traveling she decided she would just keep on walking and hopefully see whatever it was that was causing this bell sound and so bella just began walking along the stream

again kind of listening to this bell and thinking about what it was going to be and after about five minutes of her starting to walk again the bell bell just stops. It goes totally silent. And when it does, it actually kind of startles Bella because she'd been listening to it so intently. And so she stops and she's listening, kind of expecting it to go off some more, but it doesn't. All she hears are the sounds of nature all around her. Now, Bella didn't have an explanation for what the spell was or why it stopped, but she really just wasn't that worried about it. She figured there was some sort of explanation for it. There had to be. And so she just kind of shrugged and kept on walking

and put her focus back on getting to the lake. About 10 or 15 minutes later, Bella was still walking along the stream. She was still maybe a half mile or a mile short of the east to west running river. When she sees up ahead on the left side of the stream as she's walking, there appears to be something laying on the ground that looks like it could be an animal or a rock. She doesn't really know what it is. And as she gets closer, she realizes it's a beaver laying on the ground, and this beaver is missing its head. Now, this is a huge forest, and Bella would have known that, you know, of course, there are wild animals all over the place, and so finding the body of an animal that had been attacked by another animal was not unusual. That's nature. But what did strike

Bella as odd was the cut on this beaver's neck was unbelievably neat and uniform, as if its head had been very carefully removed with a very sharp knife. And the beaver's head was nowhere to be found. It certainly did not have the appearance of having its head removed from some predator and its teeth. That would have been very rough. Also, the rest of the beaver's body was intact. So whatever killed this beaver was not interested in eating the beaver. As Bella stood over this beaver and was just staring at it, she also noted that there was no smell. Normally, when something dies, it begins to smell very quickly. It's part of the decomposition process. And so for there not to be a smell indicated to

Bella that this beaver must have been killed fairly recently. And then when Bella kind of gently prodded the body with her foot, she realized the beaver's body was still fairly limp. So rigor mortis had not set in. Rigor mortis is another part of the decomposition process where the body kind of stiffens up. And that happens fairly soon after death. And so as Bella is realizing this beaver must have died very recently, it dawns on her that most likely whoever or whatever has killed this beaver is probably somewhere nearby. And Bella can't help but connect this dead beaver to that bell she was hearing earlier, which before meant nothing. But considering the bell was roughly coming from the same area where this beaver has now been found,

it made her uneasy. And so Bella found herself whipping her head around, looking out into the trees, seeing if, you know, there's some person, a hunter or somebody that would kind of explain what was going on. But there was nothing. And so Bella felt herself starting to panic a little bit, but then she stopped herself and said, calm down. It's broad daylight. I have been coming to these woods for years and years. I've never seen another person. I've never encountered some predatory animal. I'm sure everything is perfectly fine. I got nothing to worry about. And so she stepped over the beaver and kept on walking. Bella would eventually reach the east-west running river. She would turn left and walk for 20 minutes alongside this river. She'd reach the man-made

lake. She enjoyed the beautiful view and the scenery. And then at some point, she turned around and began retracing her footsteps. She walked past the beaver on the ground all the way back to her car, and she went home. A week later, Bella was sitting around her house when she felt pretty bored and decided kind of abruptly that in order to cure her boredom, she would go back to the place she loved so much, the Man-Made Lake. And so she told her parents where she was going, and then she left the house, hopped in her car, drove to the pull-off, and parked and entered the woods at 6 p.m. Sunset that night was at 9 p.m., and so Bella knew this would need to be a fairly quick turnaround so she didn't get trapped in the woods in the dark. And so Bella finds the animal trail to be a fairly quick turnaround so she didn't get trapped in the woods in the dark.

And so Bella finds the animal trail. She follows along the stream until the trail goes left and she stays on the stream. She continues walking on the stream when she starts to hear the distant sound of thunder. So she looks up into the sky through the trees and she can see the sky is starting to get dark, but she's still a couple of hours away from sunset. And so between the thunder and the dark skies, she knows a storm is rolling in. But she is determined to get to that lake. And so instead of, you know, turning around and saying, okay, I'll come back another time, she just starts jogging along the stream to get there as fast as she possibly can. And almost immediately as she's jogging, the raindrops start to fall. And by the time she passes the beaver

corpse on the ground, it hadn't moved, the rain wasrops start to fall. And by the time she passes the beaver corpse on the ground, it hadn't moved, the rain was really coming down. And then about 15 minutes after the corpse, when she hit the east-west running river, that's when the rain was at a full downpour. Still, Bella turned at the river and continued west towards the man-made lake as if she was going to go all the way, but only about a minute or two into this final leg. She still had about 20 minutes to get to the lake. She stops herself, and she looks at her watch, and she can see it's after eight o'clock already. And she's thinking to herself, you know, if I turn around right now, it's going to take me over an hour to get back to my car. Sun sets at 9 p.m.

It's after 8 p.m. now. So already I know I'm going to have to navigate this forest at night in the dark, even if it's just for a little bit at the end. And if I go all the way to the lake and then come all the way back to the car, I'm gonna be in the forest after dark for quite a while, maybe up to an hour. And she's thinking, you know, I'm confident I can do that, but it's also pouring rain, I'm cold, if I get lost this could turn into a very bad situation. And so she ultimately decides that even though she really wants to keep going, she needs to turn around. She needs to head back. And so she turns around and she walks back up alongside this east-west running river to where the stream

fed into that river. She turns and begins walking south along this stream headed back towards the car. On her walk, because the visibility was starting to get quite bad because it was so dark, she had her head down at the ground because she didn't want to trip. She's stepping on rocks. She's stepping on muddy areas. She wants to make sure her footing is solid. And so her head is down. The rain is pounding all around her.

And she's walking for about 15 minutes when all of a sudden something hits her in the top of the head. And so reflexively, she looks up and kind of puts her hands in front of her face to protect herself. And she sees what she had just run into. It was the beaver corpse. It was hanging from a string that was dangling off a branch right above her. And this beaver's head had been retrieved. And the head had been stitched onto the front paws of this beaver. And so she's looking at this beaver that's dangling from this rope.

It's carrying its own head. And she's walked square into it. And her first reaction was basically to gag. She was going to vomit. She was so disgusted. And then she began frantically rubbing at her hair where this thing had made contact with her because there could be juices from the decomposition that got on her. And then after frantically kind of patting at her head for a second, she stops and something really terrifying dawns on her. Whoever strung this beaver up to this tree and then stitched its head onto its paws, they had done that in the last 30 minutes. Because

30 minutes earlier when she was on her way in, she remembered passing the beaver carcass on the ground. She saw it. It had not moved from where it was the week before when she first saw it. And now this beaver is strung up in the tree. And so as the wheels are turning in Bella's head, she realizes that if someone has just done this, then they are probably nearby. And at this point, it's really starting to get dark, the rain is pounding all around her, and she starts whipping her head around,

looking in all directions to see if there's someone out there that did this. But as she's looking, all she sees is just dark forest in all directions. And she knows she's at least one hour, even if she runs from her car. And so suddenly, she is totally panicked. And in an effort to calm herself down, she says to herself, okay, I need to get out of here, but I have to walk. If I start running right now, this is going to turn into a complete nightmare. I just have to try to walk. And so she walks around this dangling beaver corpse and starts walking along

the stream. And as soon as she's past that corpse, she feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She can hear movement behind her. She doesn't know what it is. It could be a deer. It could be some animal, but she's too afraid to turn around. And even though she was trying to tell herself to calm down, just keep walking, you're safe, you're freaking yourself out, everything is okay. As she's walking, she could feel herself starting to speed up until finally she was just running down the stream,

sprinting actually away from this beaver and whatever it was that was moving around in that area. And at some point she got so winded from sprinting so fast that she came to a stop maybe five or six minutes after seeing this beaver. And as soon as she came to a stop maybe five or six minutes after seeing this beaver. And as soon as she comes to a stop and she's walking, she still hasn't turned around yet. She hears the sound of that bell. And right away, it's the exact same sound she'd heard the week before. It's that kind of constant sporadic sound of someone ringing a bell. But

in her panicked state, she doesn't know where it's coming from. She's so scared. Her anxiety is so high. She doesn't know if it's behind her or if it's off to the side. It's now completely dark out. And so she is full-blown terrified. There is someone or something behind her that has strung this beaver up that's probably watching her and she can't see them. Even though she's beyond winded, she can barely breathe. She just starts sprinting as fast as she can.

And as she's stumbling and falling on the rocks and tripping because she's not really looking where she's going in the background and all around her, she's hearing this bell chiming and she's hearing something moving around in the woods behind her. And she pulls her phone out of her pocket, her iPhone. And as she's running, she dials her father. She puts the phone to her ear. She's crying. She's panting. She can barely breathe. Her father picks up and she's so relieved to hear his voice, but she can't even make a sentence. She just starts crying and wailing and pleading with him. Dad, come out to the forest. Meet me at the spot where the trail veers away from the stream. Meet me there. There's someone in the forest that's chasing me, and I can't see them. Her father on the other end of the phone, he didn't know what to make of this,

but he could hear the primal fear in his daughter's voice. And so he didn't ask any questions. He said, stay on the line. I'm coming to meet you right now. So Bella's father and mother, with Bella on the line, they run out of their house. They hop in their car. They speed a couple miles down the road. They park next to their daughter's car. And as they're running into the woods, they can hear way off in the woods, the sound of the bell. They can hear the bell. They hear their daughter screaming on the phone. They can hear the bell coming through the phone, and she's begging them to please come into the woods. Come in here. Save me. And so the parents run into the woods, and they begin running up the stream. Meanwhile, Bella, who's way out in the woods, she's still 10

or 15 minutes away from her parents. She is barely able to run at this point. She's exhausted almost all of her energy, and as she's getting closer and closer to her parents the sporadic Bell sound is getting louder and louder and louder like whatever it is is gaining on her and she can hear behind her all these sticks and branches they're breaking as if something is coming up to her and finally when it feels like this Bell is right behind her head she just kind of stops in defeat she's too far away from her parents she can't get to them in time. And so it was almost like she had to turn around and finally look at whatever it was that was behind her. And so terrified beyond words, Bella, who can barely breathe, she's so scared and

so tired, she slowly turns around. Now when she turns around and she's facing the other direction, she's looking across this clearing. She just happened to run past this clearing. And because it was a clearing, there was a little bit of moonlight that was coming down through the trees, just enough to illuminate this space that was about 50 feet wide. And as she's looking across this clearing, at first, she doesn't see anything. And then this tall, dark figure walks into the clearing. And as soon as it steps in, she can see it's got a bell at its waist. And with every step it took, it would violently ring the bell, causing the ringing

sound. And so this thing starts moving into the clearing. And as Bella is staring at it, it was like time slowed down. She could not process what she was looking at. She didn't know what she was looking at. All she knew is whatever or whoever this is, they're coming straight at me. And so Bella suddenly got this unbelievable adrenaline rush. It was like her body went into autopilot to save her. And she turned around and began sprinting faster than she'd ever sprinted in her life. And as she ran, all she could hear

was the sound of that bell, which she now knew represented steps this thing was taking. And so the bell was getting faster and faster and louder and louder. And she knew it was gaining on her. And she began lying and screaming out loud that, I'm on the phone with the police. They're right up ahead. They're going to be here any moment. But whatever it was that was behind her, they weren't phased. They were just charging ahead, gaining on her second by second. Meanwhile, her parents had made it to the meeting spot,

but her father, he felt like, I can't just sit here. And he just starts just starts charging into the woods he can hear his daughter screaming he can hear this bell getting louder and louder he just starts running towards it and sure enough seconds later he sees his daughter come bounding out of the forest and she leaps into his arms he just grabs her turns around and runs with her back to the meeting spot he grabs his wife and the three of them just charge out of the forest back to the parking lot back He grabs his wife and the three of them just charge out of the forest, back to the parking lot, back in their car, and they speed off. In the car, all of them are crying. They don't know what to make of what just happened. Bella's trying to describe it, but she can't. And her parents, they had been on the phone listening to their daughter screaming. And all they kept saying to each other, the parents, was

I heard the bell. I heard the bell, I heard the bell, I heard the bell, as if the bell confirmed their worst nightmares. That there really was someone or something out in those woods that was trying to do harm to their child. They would drive straight to the police station where Bella would file a report about what she experienced out in the forest and then afterwards her parents, as a precaution, took her to the hospital where she was determined to be okay besides some bumps and bruises from falling down. The following morning, the police went out to the forest, to the area where Bella had explained where she had been, and they searched all along that animal foot trail and all along the stream, but they never found any sign of this dark figure with the bell. Bella would tell police that

she had a handbag, and as she was running back, she dropped the bag. She remembered where she dropped it along the stream, but when the police went to that area, the bag was gone. Also, the beaver was no longer there. It was not tied up to the tree. It was not on the ground. It was gone. The only thing police found that was out of the ordinary

was they found a little ways off from the stream, basically along the path that Bella would have been running on, they found a t-shirt neatly folded placed underneath a rock. But the police and Bella and her family have no idea what that signifies. Ultimately, the police told Bella and her family that more than likely what she ran into was some kind of mentally unstable person that was living out in the woods. And perhaps when Bella came into the woods, they felt like she was on their property. And so they kind of tried to scare her off. But Bella has a hard time accepting that. She felt like as she was running from whoever was

behind her, that she was in mortal danger. That had it not been for her father running into the woods and literally grabbing her and running with her the rest of the way, that she may not have gotten out of the woods at all. That she might have been attacked and killed by whoever this was. She also can't help when she looks back at the entire experience, thinking about that moment when she turned around and looked across that clearing and saw this figure come into the moonlight for the first time, that when it came into the moonlight, the way it was moving, the steps it was taking, they weren't normal, they were abnormal, there was just something off about this thing's

movement that it didn't seem like she was looking at a person, but rather some big animal. But regardless, since her ordeal, there have been no strange sightings out in those woods. However, almost no one ever goes in those woods, except for Bella and her family. And Bella and her family, they don't go in those woods except for Bella and her family, and Bella and her family, they don't go in those woods anymore. So whoever or whatever is out there is still just out there. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, please text the Amazon Music Follow button that you have something extremely important to tell them. Then text them a GIF of the typing dots. This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning, but in the meantime, you can always watch one of the hundreds of stories we have posted on our main YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. We have a registered 501c3

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