MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Stranger Than Fiction Vol. XI

Episode Date: September 11, 2025

Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. And today’s podcast features 3 stories that demonstrate that. 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 -- "Family Dinner" -- In 2013, a man was preparing dinner for his family, when he realized he was missing a key ingredient for the meal (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUoex49Yzng)#2 -- "Table for Two" -- A woman spots something very odd about her neighbor’s dinner party (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWOMY0JQdFs)#1 -- "Lucky Day" -- A man stumbles into two highly unlikely scenarios when he goes surfing in Africa, and it may sound made up, but it's not (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLT32AR5c68)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. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, and today's podcast features three stories that demonstrate that. 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 Family Dinner, and it's about a man.

who was preparing dinner for his family when he realized he was missing a key ingredient for the meal. The second story you'll hear is called Table for Two, and it's about a woman who spots something very odd about her neighbor's dinner party. And the third and final story you'll hear is called Lucky Day, and it's about a man who stumbles into two highly unlikely scenarios

when he goes surfing in Africa, and it may sound made up, but it's not. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So, if that's of interest to you, please offer to make the Amazon Music Follow button a friendship bracelet using the little beads with letters on them. But make sure you spell on their bracelet

nobody likes you before you hand it over. Okay, let's get into our first story called Family Dinner. Hello, I'm Alice Levine. And I'm Matt Ford, and we're the hosts of British Scandal. And for our next series, we're bringing you the story of April Ashley. She was a trans trailblazer, a model and a socialised. who lit up Paris and London in the 1960s until a newspaper cruelly outed her and ended her career.

But that is not the scandal. Not only had April transformed her outward appearance, she'd also climbed the social ranks from a Liverpool slum kid to a lady, married to an aristocrat. And you know you're in for trouble when the tofts get involved. Yes, when the marriage went sour,

her divorce triggered a monumental question before the courts. Is it possible to legal, change sex. Follow British scandal wherever you get your podcasts and binge entire series early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. On August 23rd, 2013, inside of a little home in a Russian suburb, eight-year-old Maria Chelyasheva was hard at work at her kitchen table, drawing. a picture of a horse. Maria's parents had recently brought her to a farm where she was able to do some

pony riding, and ever since then, she had become obsessed with horses and ponies. And so as Maria was hard at work on her drawing, her father, 42-year-old Mikhail, was right nearby at the kitchen stove, dicing up onions, and as he did, his eyes were kind of watering from cutting the onions, and so he was making a show of turning around and looking at his daughter pretending to cry, and Maria thought it was very funny and then at some point as mcichael was doing this he realized he was missing a key ingredient for the dinner he was preparing so he kind of threw up his hands and exasperation and then he yelled out into the house to his wife you know hey do we have any potatoes and from somewhere in the back of the house maria's mother called back yes we do they're down in the cellar but they're pretty old

and so mcichael finished chopping his onions he threw them into a hot pan and then he walked out of the kitchen, poking Maria playfully as he walked by, and she kind of laughed at him. And then Maria watched as her father walked through the living room, past Maria's grandmother and brother, and he walked over to this door that was right at the beginning of this hallway, and that door led down into the cellar. And so Maria, she stopped for a moment and just watched as her dad opened the cellar door, began walking down the steps, and he shut the door behind him. And then Maria just went back to coloring in her horse. But after a few minutes, Maria started to smell something really bad and she looked up and she saw the onions that were on the burner were starting to burn and smoke was going up into the

ceiling and then suddenly the smoke alarm went off and as this commotion is happening, Maria's grandmother runs into the kitchen and begins fanning the smoke. She turns off the burner and moves the onions and then Maria's mother comes running into the kitchen and she's seeing what's happening and she's looking around. She doesn't see her husband and so very frustratedly, she yells out Mikhail, you burn the onions. Come in and deal with this. But Mikhail was not on the first floor. He was still down in the cellar.

And so Maria's mother knew that, and she was kind of annoyed that he was taking so long down there. And so after muttering something under her breath, she stormed out of the kitchen, walked over to the cellar door, opened it up, went downstairs, shutting the door behind her. Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, Maria's grandmother was now going through the burned onions,

looking for any that were salvageable, and Maria had gone back to her. her horse drawing, but after about five minutes, it dawned on Maria that her parents had still not come out of the cellar yet, and it just felt like too much time had passed. They should be up by now. And so Maria stopped working on her picture and just stared down the hall at the cellar door. And at the same time, Maria's grandmother had stopped with the onions and she too had come over and was watching from right next to Maria down the hall at the cellar door, both of them just expecting the parents to emerge any second. But as the seconds ticked by, nobody emerged from the

cellar. And so finally, Maria's grandmother said, okay, I'm going to go see what's going on. And so Maria watched as her grandmother walked through the living room, past Maria's brother, who was playing a video game, and then Maria's grandmother right in front of the closed cellar door, just yelled out, hey, are you guys okay down there? But there was no response from the cellar. And so with this, Maria's grandmother turned around and told Maria's brother to turn off his video game because it was so noisy, you know, maybe they were calling from the cellar and they couldn't hear them. And so the brother, who was just totally frustrated by this whole situation, he paused his game. And then Maria's grandmother called out again, you know, hey, are you guys okay down

there? And this time, when there was still silence, Maria's brother, he just stood up and said, okay, why don't we just go downstairs and make sure they're okay? Why aren't we doing that? And so without waiting for a response from his grandmother, Maria's brother just walked right over to the cellar door, he opened it up, and he looked down and he goes, look, look, They're right there. And then the brother began walking down the steps, yelling to his parents, hey, come on, when's dinner? What's going on?

And as he did, he shut the door behind him. And so after this, Maria's grandmother walked back into the kitchen and sat with Maria as the two of them stared at the cellar door, expecting their family to return any second now, but they didn't. And so at this point, both Maria and her grandmother were really starting to panic. They could tell something was wrong. And so Maria's grandmother grabbed her phone and called a neighbor and just said, hey, can you come over? I think something's wrong. I don't know what it is. And then, after Maria's

grandmother hung up the phone, instead of waiting for the neighbor to come over, Maria's grandmother just got up and walked right over to the cellar door, then open the door, and began walking down the stairs. But this time, the grandmother left the door open. And so Maria was able to listen from her seat in the kitchen to the sound of her grandmother's footsteps making their way down the stairs. And then at some point, Maria heard what sounded like a distinct thud, and then silence. Now, at this point, Maria is terrified. The neighbor has not come over yet, and so without knowing what else to do, she just got

up and walked over to the open cellar door and just stared down into the darkness down below. She couldn't see anything, but she was too scared to even call out to her family. And then finally, she just began descending the stairs herself. 10 minutes later, the neighbor, who Maria's grandmother had called, finally arrived over at their house. He knocked on the front door, but there was no answer. And so he tried the doorknob, found it unlocked, so he opened it up, and he stepped inside. And right away, you know, he looked around and it was totally quiet.

There was nobody on the first floor of the house. But the neighbor immediately heard crying, and he walked around the first floor listening for where it was coming from, and he realized when he got to the top of the open door leading down into the cell. that the crying was coming from down there. And so without a thought, the neighbor just ran down the stairs and he couldn't believe what he found. He found Maria, the eight-year-old, just crying on the ground, and all around her was her entire family just laying on the ground. Now, the neighbor had no idea what was going on, but sensing clearly there was some sort

of emergency based on the call he got and what he was seeing now, he just scooped up Maria, ran upstairs and ran out of the house, and began screaming for help. When help arrived, they would search the house and make their way down into the cellar, and they would discover that Maria's entire family, her grandmother, her brother, her parents, they were all dead. And what had killed them were the very potatoes that Mikhail had gone down to get. It would turn out Maria's mother was right when she warned Mikhail that the potatoes they had downstairs were very old. In fact, they were sold, they had begun to rot, and as they rotted, they produced this toxic

fume that did not ventilate out of the cellar. The cellar was totally enclosed, there was no windows, and the family had this habit of always shutting the door whenever they went down into the cellar. And so over time, this fume had totally filled the entire cellar, and one by one, as family members went down into the cellar, sealing the door behind them, they passed out from these fumes and then died. Maria was the only one who survived going down into the cellar because her grandmother, who had gone down right before her,

had left the door open. And so by the time Maria had gone down, a lot of the toxic fumes had found their way up the stairs and escaped into the rest of the house. And so when Maria went down there, it was not nearly as toxic. What if I thought? told you that the crime of the century is the one being waged on our planet. Introducing Lawless Planet, Wondry's new podcast exploring the dark side of the climate crisis. Uncover shocking tales of

crime and corruption threatening our world's future. Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey listeners, big news for true crime lovers. You can now enjoy this podcast ad-free on Amazon music with your prime membership. Listen to all episodes of my podcasts, Mr. Bollin's Mysteries and Mr. Ballin's Strange, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories, along with a huge collection of top true crime podcasts, completely ad-free. No more waiting through cliffhangers or dealing with ads, because let's be honest, ads shouldn't be the most nerve-wracking part of true crime. To start your ad-free listening journey, download the Amazon music app for free, or head to Amazon.com slash balin. That's Amazon.com slash b-a-l-l-l-en. Dive into

uninterrupted true crime stories today. Our next story is called Table for Two. On the morning of August 2, two men sat together laughing inside of a bar in a tiny village in northern France. named Lucian Perot and Olivier Boudin, and even though there was a massive age difference between them, Lucian was 69 years old and Olivier was 38 years old, the two were totally inseparable, to the point where the people in the village referred to them as father and son. Lucian had spent his whole life working in manufacturing in a nearby city,

but just four years earlier, he had finally retired and he had moved into a small home inside of this northern French village. But when he had first moved in to this this new home, he had been very lonely and sad. You know, Lucian was divorced, he struggled with alcohol, and he had had a really tough life, and he just wasn't doing well. But when he met Olivier, his whole life turned around. When the two met, Olivier also was kind of like a down-on-his-luck guy. He was struggling with some health issues that made it hard to work, and so for years, he had been bouncing between the nearby city and this village in northern France looking for work somewhat unsuccessfully. And so when these two happened to connect, it's like they

bonded over having kind of difficult lives. And for Lucian, what really mattered to him was Olivier, despite being so much younger than him, did not treat him, did not treat Lucian like he was this dried-up worthless old man. He treated Lucian like a peer. And so together, these two very unlikely best friends began kind of orchestrating their lives around the other. And before long, it was like their lives had all this new structure and routine and meaning to them, because again, the two men got to be together basically all day long. So, on this particular morning, as Olivier and Lucian were together at this bar, they began talking about what they wanted to do that night.

And they settled on having a barbecue at Lucian's house. Lucian would cook up some beef, and they would sit out on his back garden patio and just spend the night together. It sounded like a wonderful plan. And in fact, the bartender would say that when Olivier and Lucian finally left the bar of that day that he recalled overhearing them being so excited about this particular barbecue. And so that evening, Olivier and Lucian arrived at Lucian's house and they went out to the back patio where Lucian had already draped a nice tablecloth over this small round table. It was a red and white

checkered pattern tablecloth and on this table was an open bottle of wine and some cheese and a baguette. And so Olivier, he sat down and began enjoying some wine and bread and Lucian walked over to the grill and began cooking up the beef. Lucian had a neighbor. We're going to call her Marie because we don't actually know her real name. And Marie's second floor window overlooked Lucian's garden patio where the two men were having this cookout. And so that night, Marie did glance out and saw the two men kind of listening to music and goofing around. And she was used to them spending lots of time together. And she was also used to them staying up late at night. And so she figured, you know,

tonight's going to be another one of those nights where these guys are up late. having wine, celebrating whatever, you know, she was just going to shut the window and try to ignore the noise coming in and just let them do their thing. And so eventually, Marie would do that. She would go to bed to the sound of music coming from next door and the sound of men talking. And then the next morning, when Marie got up around 6 a.m., she looked out that window again, and frankly was not that shocked at what she saw. Lucian was still just sitting at the table, looking like he could be eating some bread, or still drinking wine, and Olivier had clearly passed out on the ground. Now, Marie didn't judge. She knew these two liked to stay up late and drink and do stuff like

this, and so she thought, you know what, none of my business. Then, at 9 a.m., so three hours after Marie had first woken up, she left her house to go to another neighbor's house to feed their chickens while they were away for the day. As she passed by Lucian's house, she glanced into his back garden patio, and she saw Lucian was still just sitting at the table, and Olivier was still passed out on the ground. It was like they hadn't moved for three hours. But again, Marie's thinking, none of my business. And so she just kept on going, went to her neighbor's house, and fed the chickens.

But when Marie came back to her house three hours later, around noon, she looked again into Lucian's backyard, and she saw the two men still had not moved. Lucian is sitting at the table, and Olivier is laying on the ground. And suddenly, Marie's thinking, wait a minute, you know, the sun is high in the sky right now. These guys aren't moving. They're going to get heat stroke. You know, we've got to do something about this. And so she yelled out to Olivier and Lucian, but she got no response.

And so Marie just walked into Lucian's backyard. And as she got closer and closer to the two men, she realized that they were not moving at all. Like, they were not breathing. Something was horribly wrong here. And so Marie, she just turned and ran to another neighbor's house. She told them what was going on. and they got these big pots of water, and they ran back and doused Olivier and Lucian with water,

trying to get them to snap out of their drunken stupor, but the two men did not move at all when the water hit them. Clearly, they were dead. The next day, the local prosecutor announced there was going to be an investigation into the two men's deaths, which were being classified as criminal acts. And the prosecutor also said that it seemed like Lucian and Olivier died at the same time, and so most likely this was either a double homicide

or a murder suicide, and the primary theory as to what killed the two men was poison put in their food. And so, police sent off the canned beans the two men were eating to this institution in Paris to test it for something called botulism, which is a deadly toxin that will grow inside of canned foods, but it came back negative, and then also police sent off the rest of the food the two men were eating to various other laboratories to be tested for poisons. And again, all of it came back negative. There was nothing that the police could detect in any of the food they ate. And so for a minute, investigators kind of scrambled because they're like, okay, if it wasn't

poison in their food, what else could have killed these guys? There was nothing at the scene that would give away what could have killed them. And so they were just stumped. And so police were kind of confused for a minute, but then the autopsies came back for Olivier and Lucian, and everything changed. Lucian and Olivia were not murdered. This was not a murder suicide. They didn't die from botulism or from some poison in their food. They died because of a set of very particular circumstances. Both Lucian and Olivier suffered from non-fatal minor medical issues. Lucian had bad dental health,

and so was missing a couple of teeth, and Olivier was suffering from a heart condition called cardiomegaly, which means his heart was slightly enlarged and somewhat fragile. However, his condition was totally being monitored by doctors and was under control. But just for a second, on the night of August 2nd, 2017, when Lucian and Olivier were having that cookout in Lucian's backyard, their non-fatal, minor medical issues suddenly became a really, really big deal. Lucian cooked up a big plate of beef rib. Now, beef rib can be difficult to chew, even when you have all your teeth and take your time, but Lucian was missing teeth, and he loved this beef rib so much,

he was wolfing it down really quickly, and so he wasn't chewing it enough, and at some point he swallowed a particularly big, unchewed bite, and he began to choke. And when that happened, his best buddy, Olivier, sitting across from him, he stood up to try to help his friend, who's basically dying right in front of him, and the stress of this moment caused his heart to seize up, his heart which is already enlarged and fragile, and he had a heart attack and died. And then Lucian, who now has no one to help him,

continued to sit at the table trying to get this beef out of his throat, but he couldn't, and he eventually asphyxiated and died as well, hunched over at the table. The next and final story of today's episode is called Lucky Day. On an April morning in 1993, a surfer named John Do. Doyle was sitting on a surfboard out in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of West Africa, just scanning the water waiting for a wave. John was totally alone out here.

There were no other surfers, nothing, and the only sign of human civilization anywhere was John's Land Rover, which was parked up on the sand on the beach. John was an American. He was from Colorado, and so his experience had always been, you know, lots of snow and mountains and trees because that's Colorado, but now here, off the coast of Africa, it was a totally different planet. And in fact, today, John was really feeling that because the sun was so hot that day. It was over 95 degrees Fahrenheit, and he could actually feel his back starting to burn as he sat there, you know, waiting for the next wave. And so he told himself, actually, that he would

just catch one more wave and then call it a day to avoid a sunburn. But as John continued to kind of scan out across the water waiting for this wave, he noticed about 20 meters away was a shark fin swimming in a circle, like stereotypical, terrifying shark behavior. And so John is horrified, and he wants to get out of the water immediately, but he's far enough away from shore that if he jumped into the water to swim to shore, you know, he's going to be in the water with the shark thrashing around. He's just going to attract the shark over to him. And so John decides his only hope here to escape the shark is actually just to surf it.

That way he'll stay out of the water. It's much faster. he'll get to shore, if the shark can't follow him there, it'll be fine. And so, trying to stay calm, John continued to keep his eye on the shark that was still 20 meters away, and he also really looked closely for any swell coming towards him that might be big enough to allow him to surf to shore. And thankfully, after only a couple of minutes, John did see a swell coming towards him that seemed like it would be perfect for a final wave. And so at this point, John is facing out to sea towards the swell, towards the shark that still

20 meters away and he turns himself around so he's facing towards shore and then he lays down in his stomach and he begins to paddle towards shore and as he's doing this you know he's checking the swell to see when it's going to come up when he can stand up and eventually the swell is right underneath him and as he's about to stand up on his board and actually surf into shore he looks into the water that has not quite formed into a wave yet and he sees the shark it's literally underneath him And so John has this sudden surge of adrenaline, and he just jumps up onto his board. He stands up, and for a second, he's stable, he's surfing, and he's riding this wave away from the shark. He's doing exactly what he hoped he could do.

He can't believe it. And then, because he was panicked, because he was rushing, because it was a new board, who knows why, the nose of his board suddenly dipped just long enough to throw John off his board and into the water with the shark. And so immediately, as this wave is churning John over, he grabs onto his surfboard and just kind of holds on and he's waiting for a moment when the wave stops so he can get out of the water back on his board and away from the shark.

But before the wave even stopped tumbling him over, John suddenly felt the searing pain in his calf. And so John, who's underwater still clutching his board, he opens his eyes underwater, then he looks down and through the cloudy water, he can see very clearly it is the shark, and it's a great white shark that is latched on to his leg. And so now, in a total panic,

John began punching the nose of the shark, and when he did, the shark actually recoiled and released his leg long enough that John could pull it out. He actually managed to get up onto his board again, and just a second later, almost out of instinct, he was back standing on his board just surfing along with a leg that was now bled up. leading profusely into the water.

And for a second, John was stable and appeared to be kind of moving towards shore again, but then the shark, it doubled around and swam at John from the side and literally smashed into him, knocking him off the board back into the water. But this time, John managed, when he fell this second time, to actually grab on to the board with both hands. So he has two hands on the board, he's getting tumbled in the water again, but he knows the shark is going to come for him. and so at the last second he pulled the board close to his body and kind of turned himself like it was a shield

and the shark came flying towards him and bit him but because he used that surfboard as a shield the shark just bit the surfboard ripped off half of it and swam off with it and began mauling this half of the surfboard and john with the other half of the surfboard he somehow managed to stand up on it again his leg is bleeding everywhere and he rode this damaged half surfboard into shore successfully away from the shark. And so when John pulled himself up onto the sand, you know, out of the water, he looked back and he saw the sharks swimming off. And even though he's an extriciating pain from this attack,

he was so relieved. He couldn't believe he actually just survived that. But John did not have time to think about, you know, what good fortune this was in a way because he was an hour away from the nearest civilization. And between where he was now and that town, there was nothing. There weren't homes, there weren't buildings, there weren't offices, nothing.

It was just totally wild lands until you got to that town. And so John knew he would need to get in his car and drive all the way to that town and then get the people of the town to go get medical help. So, I mean, he is hours away from getting the help he needs. And so he has no time to waste. And so he crawls through the sand. You know, his leg is killing him, but he's just so focused on getting up to his land. rover and he manages to get to his car, he opens the door, he climbs in the driver's seat,

and then as soon as he's in there, you know, he shuts and locks the doors, and then he grabs a white t-shirt that he had on the passenger seat, and he ripped it into strips. And he used those strips like tourniquets, and he wrapped them around his leg, the leg that was bleeding from his calf, and he basically used this tourniquet to attempt to cut off blood flow to his entire right leg to stop the bleeding to save his life. But the wound on his right leg was so bad and so deep that despite putting on multiple very tight tourniquets, it just wasn't doing very much.

He was still losing blood at a pace that likely would kill him before he got to town. And so John was kind of like, well, nothing else I can do, but attempt to go to town. So he fired up his car, he reversed off the beach, and began making his way towards town. As John sped along the road, he began to feel very lightheaded.

You know, between the pain in his leg and the extreme heat outside, he just felt very dehydrated and weak. And so he thought to himself, if I can't get a sip of water soon, I'm going to pass out right now, and then I'm done for him. And so as he's driving along, John began fumbling around his car, you know, looking for any sort of liquid somewhere in the car,

but ultimately all he found was an empty water bottle. And all he saw in every direction was just this barren African savannah with no people and no water anywhere. And so, John just kept on driving, hoping eventually he might find some water source. And luckily, after only a couple of minutes, when his eyelids were really starting to droop

and he was having a hard time focusing, he noticed up ahead there was a copse of trees with a little creek that ran through it. And so immediately, John pulled over and he got out and he hobbled his way over to the water. He laid down in his stomach, so his face is basically right over the water, and then he just put his face in the water,

and began to drink. And as he did, he felt his heart rate start to slow down. He felt himself relax a little bit. And he started to think to himself like, hey, you know, I found water, you know, I'm doing okay. Maybe I will survive this. But right as John was starting to feel optimistic, he felt a new shooting pain on his right side. And so with a little bit of strength he had, he managed to turn his head and looked to see what was going on. And staring back at him was a lion who would just bit his side.

and was now growling and staring at John and beginning to move its jaw left and right to really sink its teeth into John. Now, this is unbelievably painful for John, and he's already dealing with an unbelievable pain in his leg from the shark attack, and so John's experiencing pain that very few people ever get to experience,

and it caused this unbelievable surge of adrenaline, you know, one that you would likely get basically right before you die. That was the level of adrenaline, he was getting. And with this adrenaline rush, he grabbed a stick and he began hitting this lion who's locked onto his ribs, and he managed to beat the lion off of him. And the lion, you know, it only backed up maybe a few feet, and it's still totally fixated on John, and it's growling and edging towards him. But John, you know, all he could do was just attempt to get to his

Land Rover. And so as soon as the lion had let go of him, he just stood up and kind of pathetically began hobbling as fast as he could towards his land rover. And he literally just walked past this lion who's still growling at him, kind of trying to size him up, and he just kept on walking towards his car, and he was almost there when he noticed the sound of the lion growling behind him, which had been constant to this point, had suddenly intensified. To the point where John couldn't even help himself, he had to turn around and see what was going on. And when he turned around, he saw now there was not just one lion, but an entire pride

of lions. There was at least four lions that now had all formed a semicircle and were staring at John and moving towards him to eat him. But John really couldn't do anything about this. All he could do was just hopefully get to his land rover in time. And so John just turned back around, so his back is to the pride of lions a few feet away from him, and he just continues hobbling towards his car. And as he walked, the lions began swiping at him and cutting his legs open and his arms open. I mean, they're like razor blades just being taken to the backside of him, but they didn't launch a full bore attack on him. It was like they were just kind of testing him. And then right when the lions were basically about to actually pull John

to the ground and eat him, was when John got to the door, opened it up, jumped it up, jumping inside, shut it, and locked it. However, when John went to grab his keys and start the car, he realized he didn't have the keys. And when he turned and looked outside, he saw the Pride of Lions and his car keys on the ground. He was doomed. He knew there was no way he could get those keys without getting killed in the process. And so John basically just resigned himself to die in his car right here. Like he knew, I'm going to die in the next few hours. There's nothing I can do. And so, he just kind of sat there and waited. And 30 minutes later, John heard a very loud, almost explosion sound coming from somewhere outside of the vehicle.

And then he heard it a few more times, and before long, the lions were so startled by it that they ran away. And then he hears what sounds like a series of shutter flashes, like camera flashes. And, you know, he's looking around, he can't quite figure out what's even going on, because again, he has all these injuries, he's lost so much blood. And then eventually, John just kind of passes out, having no idea what had just happened. It would turn out there was actually a safari that was happening in the area where John was at the same time, and the safari guide, as they drove past this area, happened to spot John inside of his land rover, surrounded by lions, and so as all the people in the tour began furiously taking photos of this crazy scene in front of them,

the tour guide began firing his rifle into the sky to scare the lions off. And so those were the noises that John was hearing before he passed out, and then after he passed out, the tour guide and all the people on the tour, pulled John out of his land rover, because now the lions are gone, and they would take him to a hospital where doctors and nurses would have to give him 250 stitches to stitch up all of his various shark and lion wounds. John would make a full recovery, and he would hang up on his wall in his office, the broken half of that surfboard that he did successfully manage to ride in to escape the shark. He says the surfboard reminds him how lucky he was.

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. Our head of production is Zach Levitt. Produced by Jeremy Bone. Research and fact-checking by Shelley 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 Whit Lacasio and Cole Lacasio.

Additional audio editing by Jordan Stidham. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Production Coordination by Samantha Collins, production support by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley, artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner, theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. If you enjoyed today's story and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios podcasts. There's this one, the Mr. Ballin podcast, as well as Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries, bedtime stories, wartime stories, run full, redacted, late nights with Nexpo, and a twist of history. All you have to do is search for Ballin Studios wherever you get your podcasts.

To watch hundreds more stories just like this one, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see you. 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. And before you go, please tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at

wundry.com slash survey.