MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Monsters Among Us Vol. V

Episode Date: February 12, 2026

Today’s podcast will feature 3 stories that will make you wonder how many monsters you may have encountered in your life. The audio from all three stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel, which is just called "MrBallen," and has been remastered for today's podcast.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#3 -- "The Home Gym" -- A family gets ready for a normal Friday, but little did they know their worlds were about to come tumbling down (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQMMgU2c69U)#2 -- "120 Times" -- This could have happened to anyone (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFV6R9GgPy4)#1 -- "To Save His Soul" -- What begins as a bible study in a motel, turns into one of the most disturbing cases ever (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQMMgU2c69U) You can WATCH all new & exclusive MrBallen podcast episodes on my YouTube channel, just called "MrBallen" - https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballen Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today's podcast will feature three stories that will make you wonder how many monsters you may have encountered in your life. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called The Home Gym, and it's about a family who's having a totally normal Friday, but little do they know, their worlds are about to come tumbling down. The second story you'll hear is called 120 times. and what makes the story so horrifying is that it could happen to you. And the third and final story you'll hear is called To Save His Soul,

and it's about a Bible study in a motel that quickly turns into one of the most disturbing cases ever. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload four times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Thursdays, and Fridays. So, if that's of interest to you, please offer the follow button a nice high-end teeth whitening kit. But don't tell them, you've secretly replaced the witener with red hair dye.

Okay, let's get into our first story called the home gym. On the evening of Thursday, May 21st, 2015, a 16-year-old girl named Lily walked into the home gym inside of her house in Hong Kong looking to do a workout. Now, she sort of expected the gym would be empty and she could kind of have the run of the place, but as soon as she walked in, she saw her dad was in there and he was doing some sort of cool-down exercise on a yoga. So Lily's dad, whose name was Ka Kim's son, was a doctor and a professional, and normally at this time of the day, she would never see him in the gym. He was typically locked upstairs in his study, or, you know, upstairs doing work or something, or he was just gone for the day. So for him to be here, it just didn't really line up with his schedule. And so Lily asked her dad, like, what are you doing here?

What's going on? And her dad would tell her, well, actually, you know, work at the hospital was really slow today. So I took off. I played some tennis with friends. And now I'm just doing some cool-down exercises, because I got nothing else to do, but I'll be out of your hair in a second. And sure enough, a couple of minutes later, her dad was up and out of the gym, and Lily just began her workout. The next day, May 22nd, around 1 o'clock, Lily was at home at her dining room table, sitting across from her mother, whose name was Wang Su Feng,

and Lily was eating a snack and staring at an open textbook. Now, normally, at 1 o'clock on a Friday, Lily would be at school, but she had had had the day off that day, and she had wanted to spend her day off seeing friends and just being a teenager, her dad was really focused on her being successful academically, and he told her that absolutely not. You're not going anywhere. You were going to stay home and you were going to study all day long. You will not leave the house. That's what you're doing. So Lily just continued to stare at the textbook and basically do what her father said.

And then a couple of minutes later, she actually heard her dad coming down the stairs. And he came into the dining room and he was clearly very pleased to see his daughter doing her work, or at least appearing to do her work. And he came over to her, gave her a kiss. he kissed their mother, and then he said he was off to work. And then he went out the door, and he was gone. And as soon as call was gone, Lily's mom looked over at her and said, I'm not going to make you study all day. Come on, let's go out and have a mother-daughter shopping day. And Lily was stoked. She shut her textbook, she went and got ready, and then a minute later,

she and her mom climbed into her mom's yellow mini-Cupert car, and they headed out. About two hours later, around 4.15 p.m., a local jogger was running in the same neighborhood as where Lily and her family lived, and as they were running down the road, they noticed there there was this yellow Mini Cooper car sitting on the side of the road, not moving, but it was still on. It was just sort of idling right there. And at first glance, it appeared there were people inside the car, but they weren't doing anything. They were just sitting there, not moving. And so the jogger was curious, and so they ran past and made a point to look inside the car,

and they saw two women in the front two seats of this car slumped over. The two women were Lily and her mother. And so the jogger began to panic and banged on the glass to try to get the women to respond, but they didn't. And so a minute later, police were called. They dragged Lily and her mother out of the car. They were totally unresponsive. They were rushed to the hospital, but it was too late.

They both died. The police would begin their investigation into their deaths by searching the yellow mini-Cuper car. And when they searched it, there really was nothing of note inside of it. I mean, the two women's purses were in the front of the car, there was some basic exercise equipment in the trunk, but the car was pristine, clean, not cluttered. I mean, there really was nothing in the car that gave away what could have happened to these two women. For the next six months, the police tirelessly looked for some lead as to what happened

to this mother and daughter. They would interview all their friends and family. They would search their house top to bottom. They would basically take apart this mini-couper and look for, you know, defects or flaws that maybe could have contributed to their death. I mean, they were looking everywhere, but it just didn't make sense. Nobody had any idea what happened to these two women. And so right as this case appeared like it was about to go cold, the detectives decided to just go back to the mini-cooper and see if maybe, just maybe, they missed something.

And sure enough, they had. It would turn out, on May 22, 2015, the day that Lily and her mother died, Lily's father had told Lily to stay home and study, not because he cared about her academics. I mean, he did, but that day, the reason for this was not for that. Instead, he wanted her to stay home all day to protect her. When police originally searched Lily's mom's car, they found the two women's purses and also some basic exercise equipment in the trunk, specifically a deflated yoga ball.

And at the time, the police didn't think anything of these items. They looked into them, they considered them, but they didn't seem to have any bearing on what happened to the women. However, it would turn out, the yoga ball did have something to do with it. Specifically, two days before the women were found dead, that yoga ball was inside of Lily's home. It was in her home gym. In fact, when she walked into the home gym and saw her dad doing cool-down exercises and thought it was strange he was home right now, he was using that yoga ball.

And Lily didn't think anything of it. But in reality, what her father was doing was not cool-down exercises. He had not just come home early and, you know, it played tennis and this and that. In reality, he had taken that yoga ball to the hospital where he worked, and filled it with carbon monoxide, and odorless, colorless, poisonous gas. And his plan was to put the yoga ball in his wife's car, unplug it, and now it's sealed, and the gas is going to leak inside the car, and then when his wife got in the car and shut the door, she would effectively suffocate and die.

He didn't try to kill his daughter, though. He wanted her to stay home and study, i.e. don't go with your mom and get in the car, but the mother defied the father, brought the daughter along, and then after driving for only a mile, the two women collapsed and died. Ka Kim's son was arrested and charged with two counts of murder. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. He has never explained his motive. Our next story is called 120 times.

In 2019, 21-year-old Samantha Josephson was a senior at the University of South Carolina. She was a brilliant student who aspired to be a lawyer, specifically she wanted to practice international law. And so in order to do that, she needed to be able to speak other languages besides English. And so during her college years, she had really leaned into Spanish and become quite good at it rather quickly. During her college Spanish studies, one of her professors was a woman named Daniela Jaime's. Daniela very quickly recognized in Samantha that she had this incredible intellect and work ethic and just knew she was destined for greatness. In fact, she compared Samantha to Amal Clooney, who is George Clooney's wife and is considered to be one of the most famous international lawyers ever.

And so just out of a general interest to see Samantha succeed, Daniela offered to Samantha to kind of be there for her if she needed anything beyond just Spanish, that she was there to help her with law school applications, or if she needed advice on something, or if she just had ideas she wanted to bounce off of her, she would be available. And Samantha had taken her up on this offer, and by 2019 in Samantha's senior year, the pair had become very close, forming a sort of mentor-mentee relationship. Early that year, Samantha got accepted into her Target Law School, Drexel University in Pennsylvania. And so after telling her mother and father, Samantha ran to Daniela's office to tell her mentor the great news. And the two hugged and laughed and celebrated right there in the office.

it was clear that everything was falling into place for Samantha, and Daniela was just very, very proud of her. A few weeks later, on March 29th, Samantha decided to go out with her friends for some drinks. Now, Samantha normally spent a lot of her time studying even on the weekends, but since she was about a month away from graduation and she was already accepted to law school and really didn't have that much work since it was the end of the year anyways,

she decided she could cut loose for that weekend. So she, along with her friends, head out to this downtown, area called Five Points, which is right near the University of South Carolina, and it's an area that's full of shops and restaurants and bars, so on the weekends, it is packed with college students. Samantha and her friends hopped from bar to bar. They're having a great time. And then around 2 a.m., the group found themselves in a bar called Bird Dog, and while they were there, because it was so crowded, the group of friends got separated. Now, initially, the friends were trying to reconnect with each other through texts and phone calls, but they were just really struggling to

locate each other and kind of in the middle of all that Samantha decided that she was just too tired and didn't really feel like staying out any longer and so she texted her friends and let them know that she was going to head back to her room so Samantha leaves the bird dog bar on her own she hops in an Uber and she starts driving back towards her campus several hours later after all of Samantha's friends had also finally gone home and then woke up that following morning they realized Samantha was not in her room and so they called her she didn't pick up they started asking around to other friends who might know where she was, but no one did. And so pretty quickly, Samantha's friends were very, very worried about her because the last

they had seen her, she was leaving the bar on her own. And so they were really worried something might have happened to her. And so by 1.30 p.m. that day, on that Saturday, the day after they had gone out, they called the police and reported her missing. At the same time that Samantha was reported missing, there were these two men who were in their mid-20s that were located 70 miles to the east of the University of South Carolina. They were out in this forest and they were hunting for turkeys. Earlier that day, these two men, whose names were Anders and Ryan, they had had no luck

actually finding these birds. And so they were getting frustrated. And so by the afternoon, they had split up and were kind of combing this forest on their own to see if they would have more luck solo. And so Ryan, he posted up next to their truck, which was parked on this dirt road that was butted up against the edge of this big forest. And Ryan, with his binoculars, was scanning out across this field that butted up against the tree line of the forest, and he was kind of scanning the tree line, but he still was having no luck finding any turkeys. And then Anders, he actually

had walked into that forest, which was right next to Ryan, and he was just kind of walking around looking for the birds as well, but he too was still having no luck. And so around 4.30 p.m., Anders, who's the one in the forest, he finally is just ready to admit defeat and leave empty. handed. And so he turns around and begins walking out of the forest in the direction of Ryan. And so at this point, he's maybe one or 200 feet away from Ryan, but the trees are very thick and they can't really see each other. And so Anders is just kind of walking in that direction. He's not looking for birds anymore, so he's not scouting around. He's just kind of looking straight ahead. And as he's walking, something catches his eye off to the left behind some trees. It was pretty far away, but he instinctively

turned and looked, and he couldn't really tell what it was. It wasn't a turkey, but it wasn't anything that should have been in the forest. And so he decided he would go get a better look. And so he turned away from Ryan and went left and started cutting through the trees. And he kept walking until his view of this thing was no longer obscured by trees. And when he got a full look at this thing that had caught his attention, he stopped where he was. He yelled for Ryan, who couldn't see him, but he yelled for him to come into the woods and look at this. And as Ryan is running into the forest to see what's going on, Anders is pulling his phone out and calling the police. When the police finally show up, they find Anders and Ryan and they're very shaken up

and they're sitting on the back of their truck on that dirt road where Ryan had been. And so the police pull up to them, they speak to them and get directions of how to get to what they saw inside of the forest. And then the police officers walk into the forest. They follow the directions. And before long, they're looking down at Samantha. 14 hours before her body was discovered, Samantha left the bird dog bar and walked out front where there's lots of other students, and she walked to this corner of this road right in front of her,

and she hailed an Uber. And then the Uber car pulls up, she hops inside, and then the car backs up and drives away. Except that was not an Uber car. That was a car driven by a 24-year-old named Nathaniel Rowland, who was not an Uber driver. He was a guy who had been driving around five points all night, presumably, to try to trick people into getting into his vehicle, believing it was an Uber. And finally, his plan had worked. He had pulled in right in front of Samantha.

She thought it was her car. She climbed in without question. And then once she was inside, she couldn't get out again because the doors were child locked. There was no way to open them unless they were opened from the outside. Now, initially, Samantha wouldn't have noticed this.

She just sat in the back seat. The car backed up. It started driving, except it didn't drive towards her campus. It drove the opposite direction. And the drive from this bar to the campus, was only a couple of minutes long, and so even if she wasn't really paying attention, she would have recognized fairly quickly

they were going the wrong way, because again, she's expecting to get dropped off within a couple of minutes. Now, we don't know what actually happened inside that car in terms of how Samantha actually handled this realization that he was taking her the wrong way. We don't know if she confronted him. We don't know if she tried to open the door

and then realized it was child locked. We just don't know. All we know is that Nathaniel drove Samantha to some isolated area, most likely 70 miles to the east, near that forested area where her body was found. And then once he parked wherever he was, Nathaniel pulled out a knife and then leapt into the backseat of his car where Samantha was trapped.

And he stabbed her 120 times. And then after he was finished stabbing her, it would take Samantha over 10 minutes to finally die. Within hours of dumping her body in the forest, Nathaniel was posting these normal posts on Facebook of him in front of his car and regular status updates, and he was having very normal interactions with his family and his friends, as if he was completely unaffected by this horrible crime he had just committed. Nathaniel was arrested within 24 hours of the discovery of Samantha's body.

While he never offered any motive for the crime, it's believed he simply decided that night he was going to go kill someone. And so he just began prowling around for a victim, and unfortunately, Samantha was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nathaniel was ultimately convicted of her murder and was sentenced to life in prison. The next and final story of today's episode is called to save his soul. On the evening of September 17, 2021, a 42-year-old preacher named Jason Thornberg was cleaning up his motel room in Ulyss, Texas, which is a small city between Dallas and Fort Worth. Jason was going to be hosting a small Bible study group in his motel room in a few minutes, and even though really it was not that dirty, he was really taking time to ensure it was as clean

and inviting as he could possibly make it. So normally, Jason would host these Bible study groups at his house, but unfortunately, Jason's house burned down just that past summer and he lost everything. But Jason was so committed to God and spreading the word of God that he still wanted to continue having these Bible study groups, even if it meant, you know, doing it in this kind of crummy motel room. And so Jason walked around the room, picking up laundry and straightening up his bed, and then after kind of arranging chairs in a circle for the various participants he was expecting,

he went over to a cabinet, pulled out some Bibles, and right as he was about to start placing these Bibles on each chair, he heard a knock at the door. And Jason was really excited because he knew that had to be someone who was here for this Bible study. And so he walked right over Bibles in hand to the door, he opened it up, and standing outside the door was this special. big guy covered in tattoos, kind of looking down at Jason, and Jason broke into a big smile. He was so happy to see this guy.

The man's name was David Lueris, and Jason had previously met him when he was out on the street doing outreach for his church, and he had invited David to, you know, anytime he wanted to come by the motel and be a part of this Bible study group. Now, Jason knew that David was really not the kind of guy who went to church or really showed any real interest in God or, you know, the Bible. but, you know, Jason took all kinds, and he was just hopeful that maybe David would show up someday. And now, here David was. However, David told Jason that the reason he was here was actually not for the Bible study group.

He was here because he was in the middle of a crisis, and he didn't know where else to turn. He confessed to Jason that he had begun using drugs and gotten mixed up in some criminal activity, and, you know, there's some dangerous people out there that he was sort of running with, and now his concern was some of those dangerous people were coming to get him. And so he literally felt like his life was in danger. Now, when Jason heard this, he was surprised. But at the same time, you know, he could tell that David was being very authentic and just needed help. And Jason felt like, you know, his job ultimately was to serve God and all of God's people.

And David was one of those people and he was in need of help. And so if all Jason did was simply provided safe haven for David inside of this motel room, then that was serving God and it was the right thing to do. And so Jason immediately said, no problem, David. he handed him a Bible and said, come on in. David took the Bible awkwardly and just kind of stood there for a moment, not really sure what to do. But then Jason said, hey, relax, just come inside, take a seat. And so David did. He walked in, he sat down with the Bible. And then Jason actually came over and sat down next to him. And the two of them for about 15 minutes just made kind of awkward small talk.

Jason could tell, you know, David is completely on edge. He was staring at the door, which was now closed, and he just clearly was very anxious and paranoid. And Jason really wasn't talking about the Bible or God or anything. He was just, you know, trying to calm David down and show him that this was a safe place. And then after about 15 minutes of this, when David had somewhat calm down, and also by this point, nobody else had showed up for this Bible study group, Jason decided, okay, you know what, maybe I'll just begin the Bible study with David. It kind of gives us something to do. And so Jason got up. He locked the door, you know, showing David that it's just going to be them, it's safe here. And he told David to go ahead and open his Bible to a certain page.

and then the two of them just began reading the Bible together. And for hours, they just sat there reading the Bible, and Jason spoke to David about, you know, teachings of God and how to lead your life in a way to serve other people. And, you know, for the most part, David did completely calm down and seemed to really be embracing this Bible study. But eventually, despite how well this Bible study was going, it did need to come to an end at some point, at least in Jason's mind.

And when he began to notice it was getting dark outside, he sort of began wrapping it up and he shut his Bible. and sort of expected that David would take a hint and leave, but David didn't. Instead, when David began to realize that, hey, this is over now and it's time for you to go, David looked at Jason and begged him to please let him stay in this room overnight, that he can't go out there, it's not safe for him. Now, Jason knew he did have some level of responsibility for David. I mean, David had told him he was in danger, he had already invited him inside,

and was basically providing safe haven for him, and it did feel kind of wrong to be like, now go back out there. But at the same time, Jason felt a little uneasy. I mean, he didn't really know David. He didn't really understand the situation. And so there was some hesitation at first. But after looking again at David and seeing how desperate he was to just please stay here overnight, Jason said, okay, you can stay.

So, Jason grabbed some extra blankets and pillows and created a makeshift bed on the floor. And then after that, the two of them actually reopened their Bibles and just began reading some more from the Bible for a couple more hours, basically another round of Bible study. But eventually, they both were very tired, so they put their Bibles down, they said good night, they each climbed into their beds, and they closed their eyes and fell asleep. For the next five days, Jason's motel room remained mostly closed,

and the only thing anybody heard coming from his room was gospel music, and it was being played at a very high volume, basically the entire time. To the point where other residents of this motel began to complete. about how loud the music was. However, the owner of the motel was getting these complaints from residents who were only there for, you know, hours at a time or days at a time, and, you know, the room they're complaining about, Jason's room, he was a long-term resident and so had a sort of higher priority with the owner, and so the owner just didn't feel like bothering Jason. He wanted him to stay and keep paying for that room. So the owner didn't do anything about the noise

complaints. And also, the owner did know that his motel had sort of a seedy reputation, and so generally speaking, he didn't really care too much about the music. to begin with. And so over the course of these five days, the music kept on blasting and really the only other thing of note, again, that happened in this period of time, was that these two other people entered Jason's motel room and didn't leave either. So basically there's four people in the room, they haven't come out again, super loud music, that's all going on for five days. And then on the fifth day, the morning of September 22nd, a single person walked out of Jason's motel room and they were wearing a full-body hazmat suit and carrying some sort of luggage, and they would leave the motel,

get in a car, and drive away. Forty-five minutes later, about 25 miles away from that motel, the Fort Worth Fire Department got a call about this raging dumpster fire in a residential neighborhood. Firefighters quickly got to the scene and put out the blaze, and after it was gone, they walked up to the smoky dumpster and looked inside just to get a look at what was burning, and what they saw caused them all to back up. and call the police. It would turn out, David was right when he said he was in danger.

However, what he didn't understand is hiding out in Jason's motel room was not going to protect him from that danger. Shortly after he and Jason wrapped up that second Bible study that night and the two of them climbed into their respective beds, Jason in his actual bed and David in the makeshift bed on the floor, well, David did fall asleep pretty quickly, but Jason didn't. Jason waited until David was asleep, and then Jason got up, got a knife, and then slit David's throat.

Then he cut David's heart out and ate it, because Jason the preacher really actually believed that human sacrifice was the best and purest way to serve God. Over the course of the next five days after killing David, Jason would remain in his motel room blasting gospel music, and over those five days, he would basically lure those two women into his room, very likely on the promise of Bible study,

but they too would be sacrificed. And then on the fifth day, the person who exited the motel room in the full hazmat suit was Jason. And that luggage he was carrying with him contained the body parts of the three people he had just killed. And he brought those body parts to that dumpster in that residential neighborhood and lit them on fire. And so when the firefighters put out the fire, what they saw inside were burned up bodies. Jason was arrested, and while he was awaiting trial, he confessed that David and the two women were not actually his first victims. He said that just a few years earlier, he had sacrificed his girlfriend, and that house fire that destroyed all of his belongings and prompted him to go

live in this motel was set by Jason himself, because he had sacrificed his roommate and needed to get rid of the evidence. Ultimately, law enforcement was only able to show that Jason killed those five people. But there could have been more. Jason was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death. currently on Death Row in Texas. 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, research and fact-checking by Shelly Shoe, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, and Camille Callahan. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Witt LaCasio, Jordan Stidham, and Cole LaCasio, production coordination by Samantha Collins, production support by Antonio Manata and Delana Corley, artwork by Jessica Klogsten Kiner, theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden.

Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts or visit seriousxm.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.