MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - One Last Fare/Mom's Cooking | Campfire Stories with MrBallen

Episode Date: October 16, 2026

Welcome back to the Campfire! Tonight, I have two very different stories. But each of them are about sisters who stick together, even in the face of truly unimaginable horror. Be sure to WATCH this episode on my YouTube channel on Friday, October 16th at 2:00 p.m. ET! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode is brought to you by Crystal Lake on Peacock. All right, welcome back to the campfire. Tonight, I have two very different stories, but each of them are about sisters who stick together even in the face of truly unimaginable horror. But before we get into tonight's stories, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious, delivered in story format,

then you come to the right campfire because that's all we do, and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So if that's of interest to you, please apologize to the follow button for all the horrible things you've done to them over the years at my request, and tell them to make it up,

you're going to send them on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii. But don't tell them, you're going to book that trip on their credit card. Also, please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into tonight's stories. Around 1 a.m. on a hot summer night in 2004, a young taxi driver named Somkiet drove through a remote area of Bangkok in Thailand. And as he scanned around looking for people on the sidewalk, looking for potential passengers, he was starting to feel pretty nervous because there weren't any. There was nobody out like looking for a ride.

And, you know, Sama Kiet, this is what he did for a living. And he knew that, you know, sometimes he'd have lots of fares, sometimes he wouldn't, and that's just how it went. but this week in particular, it had just been like really difficult to get fares. It was like there was nobody out. And so he had no customers. And so he had made basically no money this week. And unfortunately for Sommequiette, he didn't know if he could even make rent at this point. Like he literally needed one more fare.

Like that's actually what he would need to push him into. Okay, I can afford to live in my apartment still. And so that's why he was out so late looking around just trying to find anybody out here. And also, keep in mind, the area of Bangkok where he was was not a particularly nice area. I mean, this is sort of a sketchy area. But he had checked all the nice areas. Nobody was there. And now he's here.

He's like so desperate. He's driving through the seedy part of town just in hopes of finding anybody. But, you know, despite his willingness to take on all kinds here, he's driving around, he's driving around. He doesn't see anybody. And even though he knew he likely would not make rent now, he's like, he's like, he's like, I just got to pack it in and go home. Like, there's nobody out here. I don't know why, but it is what it is. And so he made a U-turn, and he began leaving this section of Bangkok to head back home when up ahead out of nowhere, there were these two girls, these two teenage girls

just standing on the side of the road, and one of them had her arm up. She was waving down the taxi. And he's like, oh my goodness. Like, one, I can't believe I didn't see them when I first came up here, but who cares, I got myself my last fare that I so desperately needed. Like, it was worth it coming out here. And so he pulls up right alongside these two young women, and he sees that they're a little weird. I mean, at least from his initial perspective, they seemed like a little too young to be out here in the middle of the night.

You know, they seemed like young girls sort of vulnerable in this part of the world. You know, this is a sketchy part of town. He doesn't really know much about these girls. But also he noticed that the girls, they almost looked like identical twins. You know, they just, they looked very, very similar, except one had long hair and the other had short hair. And they both also were wearing all black, like head to toe. They were wearing black. And they also had like no expression. They weren't happy to see the cab. They weren't mad. They were just like neutral. And so they flag, you know, some kit down. He pulls over and he's got the radio

going inside of his car. And, you know, he pulls over and he unlocks the doors to the back of the cab. And then he begins fiddling with the meter, which is up near him, sort of near. the radio console. He's basically trying to reset it so we can hit start and the fare will run while they're in the car. And so he gets that all set up. He knows he's unlocked the doors. He turns the radio down and he turns to look out the window at these girls because he's expecting them to sort of get the nod of approval from him and then they'll climb in the cab. But he turns and he looks and they're gone. The girls are no longer standing next to the car. And for a second he's like, where did they go? Then he looks in his rear view mirror and he practically jumps out of his

skin when he sees these two girls are sitting in the back of his cab. They're already sitting inside the cab. They're just sitting there looking straight ahead, just like totally neutral expressions on their faces. And so some kid, he tried to control how sort of unnerved he was. But then he was thinking, okay, you know, I know these girls could be pretty weird. Like, the radio was on loud. It's entirely possible. I just didn't hear them get in. You know, this is weird, but I need the fare. And so he just turns to look at them, you know, and says, where do you want to go? And when he asked this question, both girls looked at him and they just like stared and didn't say anything back.

And then the girl with the really long hair, she had this like intense stare. She's looking right at Samkhiet. And she just says, Watt Samian. That's all she says. And, you know, actually Samkhiet knew what this meant. Watsamian was actually a temple that was right in the center of Bangkok. It was a Buddhist temple. And he also thought, okay, well, I know where that temple is, one.

And more than that, it's near my taxi cab garage. So I can drop off this fare, go right over to the garage, drop off the cab, and head home. You know, I got my last fair and I can be done for the night. So this works out. You know, these girls are a little weird, a little unsettling, but it's okay. Like, got the fare, let's go. And so he turns back around and he turns the radio up a little bit and he pulls away from the curb and he starts driving. And so Sommkiet, he's driving along and periodically he's looking in the rearview mirror at these two girls who the whole time, they're just like sitting there motionless, staring straight ahead, just acting really just bizarre.

And like the whole time, you know, Sampkett wasn't scared or anything like that, but he was just like unnerved. Like he just didn't want to be around these two girls. They just kind of freaked him out. And so finally, as he was getting closer to this temple, he was getting sort of relieved, that he was going to drop these two off and be done with this and get his last fare. So eventually he makes the last turn that brings him down the street that would bring him right to this temple. He crossed over these railroad tracks that would bring him right up to the front of this temple. He parks in front of the temple.

And in this temple, it's beautiful. It's super ornate. It's very old. And it's actually, even though it's in the center of Bangkok, it's actually sitting on about like four acres. of just forested land. There's like a village behind it where some people live and actually the monks actually live in the village right behind it. But it's like the sort of oasis in the middle of a kind of hectic and chaotic city. And so he pulls up in front of this temple and he parks his car and he begins fiddling with the meter because he needs to turn it off to figure out how much they owe him.

And at the same time he stops the meter. He turns down the radio and he's about to turn and get his payments. Like he turns to say, hey, you owe me X amount of money. But when he looks into the back seat, the girls are gone. And again, it's like, how didn't I hear the doors open? Like, I didn't hear him come in, and now I didn't hear him get out. But more than that, all Sampkiet is thinking is I'm getting scammed. Like, these girls are running away and not paying their fare, and I didn't just put up with that totally weird car ride. I didn't stay out late and go to the sketchy part of town to get ripped off. And so even though a lot of red flags here in terms of like what's going on, all Sarmqa is thinking is I'm getting paid. I'm going to track these girls down and they're

going to pay me. And so Somm Kiet just hops out of his car and starts looking around, like scanning for these girls. They couldn't have gone far. And so he looks towards the temple, which is, you know, right in front of him. And he sees the gates to the temple are closed. Like the temple is locked. So the girls couldn't have gone in there. And he sees, you know, behind him, there's the road they came in on, but it's past the train tracks and it sort of went off to this dead end behind them. So there really wasn't a whole lot of areas to hide behind him. And then there was like this pathway that went around the back of the temple that led to that village. And he's thinking, okay, the girls must have run down there because there's loads of buildings back there where they

could hide from me. Like that's where they've gone. And so he starts making his way down this path to go confront these girls and get his money. And as he's making his way down the trail, he begins to hear the sound of a train that's approaching on the tracks because as he as he came to the temple he crossed over some tracks and so he's he's past the tracks he's hearing the train he's making his way down this this walkway here towards this village and as the train passes basically the road that he crossed over as it passes by suddenly Somm Kiet hears screams like really loud female screams it sounded like teenage girls and he didn't really know if it was connected to the train or what but what he thought

thought was, there they are, I know that's them. That's them making those screaming sounds. And so he's not thinking why potentially these girls are screaming, like what's going on. All he thinks is they're over there. And so he turns away from the trail that went to the village behind and he begins running over towards the railroad tracks because now the train has passed by and he gets to the railroad tracks and he's sort of looking for these girls in a little ways back on the tracks off the road. He sees the girls. and the girls are the ones who were screaming, but they've clearly been hit by this train that's cut through.

The girls have been cut in half. Literally, both girls have been cut in half. And in fact, their upper bodies are, they're still moving. They're still alive. The girls are like trying to drag themselves back to the road, like together. The two girls are sort of crawling towards him. They're screaming out in just absolute agony, and they're trying to get him to go get help.

Like this is like a hellish scene. He can't believe it. And, you know, very quickly, he goes from, I want my money to, oh my God, they're going to die. Like, somebody needs to help them. And it seems sort of futile. But he's like, I have to go get help. Like, I can't do anything about this. And so Somm Kiet, he turns and just reflexively runs towards the temple because he knows there's got to be people inside of there who can maybe help. He runs, you know, climbs the gate. He runs up to the front door. He's banging on the front door. And eventually the door opens up, and as the door is opening, all Somm Kiet can hear are these girls like screaming down on the train tracks. Like it's just horrifying.

And so as a monk comes out of the temple, Somm Kiet just like launches into this tirade about how, oh, I had these girls. They were my cab. They fled the cab and they ran down on the tracks. They got hit by a train. They're going to die. Like we have to go save them. You got to call police. But the monk, like he just wasn't.

reacting and he just looked at at Somm Kiet, almost with a look of pity on his face and just shrugged his shoulders and sort of shook his head and then just turned around and went back inside the temple. And Samp Kietz, like, are you kidding me? Like, you're supposed to be someone who helps the community. Like, you're a monk. Like, what are you doing? And so he just turns and runs back, hops the fence, runs back over to the train tracks because like now he's got to be the one to help apparently because nobody else is going to help him, at least not the monk. And he runs back to the tracks, like not even sure what he's going to do. And when he gets there, he looks where the girls had been, and now they're gone.

So the reason that monk reacted so nonchalantly to Somm Kiet when he's approaching the monk with this emergency, like people are dying, you need to help us. The reason the monk basically didn't react is because the monk had seen this before. The monk knew there wasn't going to be any girls down of the tracks if they went over there. Like he had seen this play out before with other cab drivers. It would turn out years before Sam Kiet picked up those two girls, a pair of teenage sisters had been on the way to their mother's funeral at that temple, and before they got there, they were struck and killed by a train.

And then soon after that, local cab drivers began seeing these two teenage girls, these seemingly identical twin sisters around the area, and when they would pick them up, they would all report that they always wanted to go to that temple. That was always their destination. And the girls would be really cagey. Some of the cab drivers reported not hearing them get in or out of their cab. But invariably, after these cab drivers would take the girls to the temple, the girls would suddenly vanish, and some of the cab drivers would just chalk it up to, you know, I guess they scam me.

Others, like Somme Kiet, would try to find the girls, figure out where they went, and where would they find them? Down on the train tracks, looking like they had just been struck by a train, and then they would vanish. And so several of those other cab drivers, like Sampiet, had run to the temple after seeing this horrific scene

that looked totally real to them, totally visceral, you know? They ran to the temple for help, and the monks had grown so accustomed to this scenario playing out that when Somm Kiet came up, yelling about the girls getting hit by the train, the monks like, yep,

seen that before, it'll go away. That was sort of their reaction. That's why he was like, man, all right, and he left. And so today, in Bangkok and in the surrounding area, legend has it that these twin girls, their spirits, haunt the area. Because despite the fact they've been dead for years, they're still just trying to get to their mother's funeral. This episode is brought to you by Crystal Lake on Peacock. If you like the kind of stories we tell on this show, the ones with the unexpected twists? Well, this one is right up your alley. Linda Cardellini stars as Pamela Vorhees in this chilling prequel to Friday the 13th. Dark secrets from Pamela's past emerge just as bodies begin appearing across the quiet town

of Crystal Lake. It's an eight-episode psychological thriller set in the 1970s with Pamela at the center of it all. And the whole time, you're left asking the same question the townspeople are. Just who is Pamela Bortes? From A24 and an executive producer of It Welcome to Dairy comes a terrifying Peacock original series. I know I'll be watching, so mark her calendars because this one is going to be good. Stream every episode of Crystal Lake Now only on Peacock.

Our second and final story of today's episode is called Mom's Cooking. Around lunchtime in late July of 1983, a six-year-old girl named Nan Nan was sitting at the kitchen table alongside her little sister in their tiny fourth-floor apartment in Kowloon-walled city, which is just outside of Hong Kong. And Nan-Nan, you know, she's a six-year-old kid, but she could tell, even as like a young child, that things in her life were stressful, or more specifically, things in her mother's life were pretty stressful. So Nan Nan and her little sister, they were being raised by just their mother. And their mother, you know, she worked very hard to provide for them. But recently their mother had lost her job. And so, you know, it was already tough in their family financially. But now that her mother wasn't working, she obviously didn't have an income. And so really, things were tight financially. And so Nan Nan Nan and her little sister, despite being so young, they could just tell that

their mom was just really having a hard time just kind of going about the day to day, looking after the kids. But despite the obvious tension in the household, Nan Nan, not only knew, obviously her mom loved her and loved her sister, but also like her mom, no matter what, would find a way to take care of them. Matter what she had to do, she would do it. And so right now, what Non-Nan and her sister were very aware of is food in their house was very very very, very, very much. basic. You know, they used to have sort of a richer array of different foods to eat on any given day. But these days, due to the financial hardship they were under, pretty much all they ate in this home was rice because it was cheap and it was just easy to come by. And so that day for lunch, you know,

as non-non and her sister are waiting to eat, they know they're just going to get rice and maybe if they're lucky, a little scrap of sausage or something that their mom was cooking up. But, you know, as they're sitting there and, you know, non-nun, she's smelling the food her mom's making, she also couldn't help but smell the smells that were coming in from outside their window. So, Calhoun, where they lived, the so-called walled city, was not a normal city. It used to be an old military fort that had gotten caught in the middle of this territory fight between the British and the Chinese, and then after the dispute, the fort, this area, the walled city had basically just been abandoned by,

both sides. And so it had become this sort of legal gray area where nobody was really overseeing it, but lots of people still live there. And so people continued to build and sort of, you know, grow their lives there inside of this strange sort of walled in city. But again, there's no oversight. And so people built like with no restrictions, no architectural guidelines. And so like things just sort of began building on top of each other. And it turned into this like really densely packed, sort of like sketchily built, like think of a slum built up on top of itself. It basically was like the size in terms of square footage of maybe four football fields. But again, people built on top of each other and it was like, you know, 10,000 plus people all lived here.

And so for non-non and her family, like this is this is a tough place to live. It was sort of a dangerous place, but it was home. It was home for non-non and her family. And one of the things about Calhoun is it had some pretty, unique smells to it, in part because of a lack of infrastructure and because of just like all the people packed on top of each other, it sort of smelled bad all the time. However, amongst those sort of gross smells that would come in through the window, one of them was the smell of fried fish balls. That was something that prior to this, this financial hardship the family was under,

that was sort of like a special treat that Nan Nan and her sister would get from time to time. Her mom would go downstairs out into the packed alleyways of the Walden City, and there were like these vendors that fried up these fish balls. And that was like a great treat for Non-Nan and her family. But, you know, these days there were no fish balls to be had. And so on this particular day, as Nan-Nan's getting ready for lunch, all she could smell are those fish balls outside. And it's all she wanted. But today it was just going to be rice. And so this particular day was sort of nondescript.

You know, Nan-Nan had a rice. and they did have a little bit of sausage and, you know, just things were normal that day, you know, as normal as they could be in Calhoun. And then the next day, around lunchtime, as non-nun's watching her mom, again, prepare rice, just plain rice and a little bit of sausage again for her and her sister, Nun Nun couldn't help but notice that her mom just didn't look well. I mean, her mom, again, you know, the six-year-old non-nun, she had noticed that her mom was obviously mentally maybe not doing so well.

But today, it seemed like her mom was physically not doing well. Like she looked sick. And in fact, after her mom had prepared the usual plate of rice and the sausage, she told Nan-Nan and her sister that, you know, hey, I'm just going to go lay down for a little bit. I'm not feeling too good. And so that was like the first time that, you know, the kids were sort of worried about mom. Beyond the stresses of, you know, providing for the family, it looked like she was sick. However, despite that, over the coming days and weeks, even though, you know, the children are definitely

noticing that mom's not doing too hot, her mom kept getting up. She kept, you know, providing food for the kids, rice pretty much every meal, and she would, you know, do what she had to do to look after the kids. She was going out to try to find a job. She wasn't being successful. But like, by all accounts, she's doing the things she's supposed to be doing. And so fast forward to an evening in August of that year. This is now, give or take, three or four weeks after, you know, Non-Nan had noticed her mom was potentially actually physically sick. And on this particular evening, Nan-Nan and her sister are sitting at the kitchen table. They're hungry and they're smelling the fishball smell coming inside the apartment and wishing they could eat that, but they know

it's not going to happen because they see their mom, she's preparing rice and a little bit of sausage. And they're not upset about it. It is what it is. They know their mom's So they're just being good sports about it. And so they're just sitting in the kitchen. Mom's whipping up some food and mom doesn't look good, but she's doing her best. And while the food is literally being made, it's on the stove, the pot of water's boiling, that the pans going.

Non-Nan's mother, she turns around and just says, hey, kids, you know, just hang out in here for a little bit on your own. I'm really not feeling that good. I'm just going to go lay down in my room, but I'll be back out to wrap up food and I'll serve you guys dinner here in just a minute. And so Nod N and her sister are like, okay, like they just were playing together and joking around to the table, you know, smelling all the smells, the good and the bad smells coming into the apartment. But just a few minutes later, as the kids are just hanging out in the kitchen, they hear a knock on their front door.

And instinctively, Nond, she does not look at the door. She looks at her mother's bedroom door because she's expecting any moment now. Mom's going to come out because she hears the door, you know, being knocked on. and she's going to open the door and she's going to, you know, talk to whoever's out there because that's what adults do. Kids don't answer the front door, adults do. And so she's looking at her mom's bedroom door, but the door doesn't open. And so non-n-non and her sister are looking at each other. They're hearing the knocking on their front door, getting sort of more urgent, and they're looking over at their mom's bedroom door, but still, her mom's not coming out.

And so eventually, non-n-n-non, being the older of the two siblings, she's like, okay, I'm going to answer the door. And so she gets up and she walks over and she opens it up and there are two police officers standing outside the door. And Nan Nan had never interacted with a police officer, one, because she's six. But two, there were no police in Calhoun. So if police were here, they were coming in from outside, which meant there had to be something pretty major to draw their attention. Because for the most part, police just didn't bother. They didn't come in here. or those who lived here, you were sort of on your own.

But, you know, non-n-non, she knew that, well, I need to be honest and helpful with the police because, you know, these people are authority figures. I need to, like, you know, tell them what they want to hear. I need to be a good girl, you know. And so the police, they look down at her and they see her sister over at the kitchen table. There's no, you know, mother in sight, no father in sight. And they asked non-non, like, hey, are your parents here? Can we talk to your parents?

And Non-N-N-N's like, oh, well, my mom's in here, but she's resting. She's in the bedroom. And the police officers, they look at each other, and they look back at Non-N-N-N- and they're like, I think we're going to need to wake up your mom none. This is pretty important. Like, can we come in? And Non-N-N-N-N's like, okay, you know, come on in. Yep, she's her bedroom's right over there.

And so the police officers, they come into the apartment, and they just make their way right over to the bedroom door, and Nan-N-N-N-and her sister are just standing there watching. and, you know, the officers are knocking on the bedroom door, calling out, trying to get their mom to come out and talk to them. But her mom is not coming out, and the bedroom's quiet. And so eventually, one of the officers tries the door handle and finds it's unlocked, and they open up the bedroom door.

And immediately, one of them, when they look in the bedroom, they reflexively began to retch, and they turned and just vomited all over the ground. So it would turn out, unfortunately, Nan Nan and her sister's mother was dead. And the state of her body was just so grotesque that it caused that reaction by the officer. He gagged and puked pretty much on site. But the reason for that is because Nan Nan's mother, she had not just died. Based on the medical examiner's report, she had been dead for weeks from a heart attack. And so her body was like, extremely badly decomposed to the point where it just made the whole apartment reek horribly.

In fact, that's why the police were there. Neighbors who were used to, you know, pretty bad smells in this area, they smelled something so putrid that they called the police. And so they were here to basically check to see if there was a dead body here. And sure enough, there was. And so obviously Nan Nan and her younger sister, they are told that your mother, unfortunately, is dead. and it's like this totally devastating blow for these kids, of course.

But more than just being devastating for them, non-none in particular, I mean, she's just six years old, but she thought to herself, like, this doesn't make any sense. This isn't possible. She couldn't have died a few weeks ago. She was out here making dinner like minutes before the police showed up. How could she have died weeks ago? That doesn't make any sense. Now, the way, you know, the police and psychologists,

and the people that got involved in this case, the way they reacted to this is these children have basically undergone like severe trauma here. This is like a response to the death of their mother. Like they're not able to process it. And so even though she's been dead for weeks, these children, they're not equipped with like the emotional capacity to deal with that. And so they've like concocted this story that mom's still okay. Like mom's still here.

She's still making us food even though clear. what they must have been doing is the kids are like making the food and the kids are sort of running the household, but they've convinced themselves that like, no, everything's okay. Mom's still here. Everything's fine. And so they basically called it like a trauma response. But there was a problem with that. When those officers went into the apartment and ultimately discovered the dead body, there were things on the stove. There was rice on the stove and sausage on the stove that was being prepped to which the kids said, oh, mom was out here. She was making. making us dinner. That was her. She did those things. And again, they had chalked it up as like,

oh, the kids must have been making the food. Well, it turns out when the kids were asked, like, how do you go about making your lunch? How do you go about making your dinner? They had no idea. And when asked to manipulate the stove, the kids didn't know how to do it. And they also were little. They couldn't even lift these pots of water up onto the stove. They're six and like three. Like, they're not capable of doing this. Like, they could not have been making the food the way the food was being prepared when those officers walked into the apartment. And the girls, they never changed their story. Mom was doing it. And so at the end of the story, independent of how you feel about what really happened, the one mystery we're left with is

who was making that food. This episode is brought to you by Crystal Lake on Peacock. 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 Lacasio. This episode was written by Kate Murdoch. Research and fact-checking by Shelley Shoe, 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 Manada 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 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 you.