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

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

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 -- "Don’t Mess With Doug" -- They picked the WRONG house (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzMwI_KMjr8)#2 -- "The Ring" -- Something is trapped inside the box... (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK6MIl28b-8)#1 -- "Strange Calls" -- A fishing trip turns into a nightmare for 4 men (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0E0Br_PY28) 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 @mrballen Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello fans of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious. I'm here today to tell you all about what it actually means now that we've moved over to the Sirius XM family. Big picture, it means we are going to make more content for you. Right now, you get one YouTube video a week on Saturday. Well, what we're going to do now is we're going to have the Saturday upload be the same, but then also the Mr. Ballin podcast. Well, we've begun already filming those episodes like a YouTube video.

So that's a second piece of content every week. then there's two other shows that you guys don't even know about yet, which means on any given week you could have up to four new video pieces of content on the Mr. Ballin channel. And also all these pieces of content will double as podcasts as well. This new content schedule is going to start early next year. Also, there's one other thing I want to clarify, which is the state of Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries and redacted.

Those shows were created in collaboration with Wondry, but now we're partnered with serious, and so we're not going to be making any new episodes of either of those shows. For now, if you want to hear my podcast episodes one week early and ad-free, make sure to 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. Keep on the lookout for more announcements in the coming weeks. Thank you. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. And today's podcast, will feature 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 Don't Mess with Doug, and it's about a criminal who picks the wrong house. The second story you'll hear is called The Ring, and it's truly so horrifying, it sounds like something out of a horror movie.

And the third and final story you'll hear is called Strange Calls, and it's about a fishing trip that turns into a complete nightmare for four men. 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 show, because that's all we do. So, if that's of interest to you, please offer to mow the follow button's grass, but do it in a totally disorganized fashion, leaving huge chunks of uncut grass. Okay, let's get into our first story called Don't Mess with Doug.

Around midnight, on September 3rd, 1986, Doug Wells and his wife Kristen were pulling onto their street in western Montana when they noticed a camper parked in front of their house. Neither of them recognized the camper, and so when they pulled into their driveway, Doug got out and walked over and looked inside to see if anyone was in there. And there was. There was a man sleeping in the front seat. Doug didn't wake him up. Instead, he went back to his wife. They talked about it, and they decided that this man must have just randomly parked in front of their house and that most likely the next day he would leave. and so the couple went inside their house and they began getting ready for bed. At some point, Doug rounded up all the trash inside of the house and was going to bring it outside to put into the trash bin. And when he went outside, standing in his front lawn is the same guy

who was just sleeping inside of the camper. And so Doug very cautiously goes down the front steps and he yells out to this guy and says, you know, what are you doing here? And immediately the man put his hands up and said he meant no harm. He said his name was Wayne Nance and he actually worked with Doug's wife, Kristen, at the furniture store in town. Wayne went on to say that he happened to be driving down their street earlier that day, and he spotted someone standing outside one of their windows looking in their house,

and he knew it was Kristen's house, and he looked in their driveway, and he saw that Kristen wasn't home, and it looked like nobody was home, and so he decided he would just park out front and try to scare off this person and wait for Kristen to get back. But by the time Kristen got back, he had fallen asleep. Doug was totally caught off guard by this whole situation, the idea that there's this guy on his property talking about another guy that was lurking around his property. And so he asked Wayne, you know, did you see this guy again after that first time you saw him? And Wayne said, no, he hadn't, but he didn't have a flashlight. And so maybe if Doug

went in the house and got some flashlights, the two of them could walk the property and make sure nobody was there. Doug thanked him for the offer and said, okay, well, why don't you come in the house and I'll go look for those flashlights? And so Doug led the way inside of his house. And as soon as Wayne got in the house and shut the front door behind him, he pulled out a metal pipe he was hiding and smash Doug over the back of the head. Doug turned around and Wayne hit him again over the face and before long the two of them were struggling on the ground. Kristen, who was upstairs, heard the commotion and she came running down the stairs and she sees at the bottom her husband who's bleeding profusely from his head, he's covering himself up on the ground while Wayne, her co-worker is standing

over him, punching and kicking him. Before Kristen could do anything, Wayne noticed her up on the stairs and he drew a pistol and aimed it at her and told her to come down here and tie up your husband's arms and legs. Kristen, who's in shock, is just hoping this was just a robbery and that they would have their lives spared. And so she does as she's told. She walks down, Wayne throws her some cord. She ties up her husband's arms and legs. And then afterwards, Wayne leads Kristen back upstairs to the bedroom where he ties her up as well. After that, Wayne went back down to the main floor where Doug was still laying on the ground

and he grabbed Doug by the legs and he pulled him down the flight of stairs to the basement, or he tied him up to a pole. And then he savagely beat him with the pipe before Wayne pulled out an eight-inch blade and plunged it directly into Doug's chest all the way in. And then when he pulled it out again, Doug slumped over. Wayne went back upstairs all the way to the second floor to check on Kristen, and he saw she had managed to get partially out of her restraints,

and she was reaching for the landline. And so he jumped on top of her and managed to restrain her all over again. And then after he was confident in her restraints, he went back downstairs to make sure Doug was dead. When he got down there, he saw Doug was still slouched over in the same position he had left him, and so Wayne assumed Doug must be dead. And Wayne went back upstairs to assault Kristen. But Wayne was wrong.

Doug wasn't dead. And after Wayne went upstairs that second time, Doug, despite his horrific head and chest injuries, managed to wriggle out of his restraints, and then hobbled over to a workbench where he had a rifle laying out because Doug was actually a gunsmith. And so he took the rifle and he looked at. it with the one round he found on the table,

and then he walked over to the base of the stairs, he raised his rifle, and he made his way up to the main floor. He didn't come in contact with Wayne, and he looked around the first floor he didn't see him, and he heard his wife screaming upstairs. And so he made his way to the next set of stairs and began walking up with his rifle raised. At the top of the stairs to the second floor,

there was a hallway that ran right and left out of sight. And so as Doug is making his way up, he can hear off to the left, out of view, his wife screaming in the bedroom, and he can hear the sound of very, hear the sound of very heavy footsteps running down the hall towards the landing where he is. And so Doug positioned himself in the stairwell. He took aim about chest tight with his rifle, and he waited for their attacker to show himself. And so as soon as Wayne came flying around the

corner with this knife in his hand, Doug just fired one shot that struck him right in the stomach. Wayne fell backwards, totally shocked at what had just happened. He began to stagger. And Doug, meanwhile, turned his rifle around like a baseball bat because he didn't have any more rounds. And he just starts walking down the hall, smashing Wayne, As Wayne continues to stumble and fall and try to run away from Doug, and finally, he gets away from Doug, charges into the bedroom where Kristen is, and he grabs his pistol, and he turns around and he fires three shots towards the door where Doug is now standing.

And Doug, he's unfazed. One round hits him in the leg, the other two miss, he doesn't care. He just walks up to Wayne and begins bashing his head in with the back of this rifle. He hits him so many times that the buttstock of the rifle explodes and the metal of the rifle bends like an L. And at some point, Wayne drops the gun because he's getting viciously beaten on by Doug and his rifle. And Doug sees that, he grabs the pistol, and he fires the remaining rounds into Wayne's head. Police and paramedics would show up shortly thereafter, and Doug, Kristen, and their attacker, Wayne were all rushed to the hospital.

Doug and Kristen would make full recoveries. As for Wayne, he would die the following day from his injuries. After the incident, the police investigated Wayne Nance to see who this guy was, and they discovered that almost certainly he had been a serial killer that was connected to at least six cold case murders from 1974 to 1986. But because Wayne never confessed to any of these murders before he died, the true number of people he killed is still unknown. Our next story is called The Ring. In May of 2011, 27-year-old Mikalina Lewandowska was surprised when she got a text message from her on-again, off-again boyfriend, 27-year-old Marchine Kasperzak. The pair had actually previously been engaged and had a three-year-old son together,

but they just could never seem to make it work for longer than a couple of months at a time. In the text message, Marchine was asking Michelina if he could take her shopping, something he knew she liked to do. As for Michelina, lately she had been turning down requests like this one from Marchine, and she was inclined to at first, but their son was already being looked after by her mother, and Michelina didn't have plans that day, and so she thought, you know what, what the heck? And so she said yes. So Michelina took a shower and got ready and even put on her engagement ring that Marchine had given her,

and then she waited by the door. A little while later, Marchine, who was an aspiring bodybuilder who had become addicted to taking steroids, showed up at her Huddersfield, England home. McElina opened the door, Marchine came inside, and then as soon as the door shut behind him, he tased Michelina, he jumped on top of her, and then he bound and gagged her. And then once she was restrained on the ground with no idea what was going on, Marchine opened the front door and waved down to his car that was parked on the curb, and one of his friends, this 18-year-old named Patrick, came out and walked up to the house and came inside.

And then Patrick and Marchine worked together to cram Michelina into this small, rugged cardboard box. And then once she was forced inside of there, they closed it up, taped it shut, and then brought the box down to the front of the house and put it into Marchine's trunk. And then Marchine and Patrick hopped in the front two seats of the car and drove off. Once they reached the outskirts of town, they parked in a parking lot right next to this huge forest. And from there, they took the box with Mikalina inside of it and two shovels and walked into the woods. And at some point, they left the path and walked way away from where anybody would normally be until they felt like they were far enough away that no one would see them.

And at that point, they put Mikalina down and then using their shovels, they dug a grave. Once it was deep enough, they put Mikalina in her box inside of the grave. and then they covered her back up with dirt and then put a 90-pound log on top of her, and then the two of them just walked away, leaving Mikalina to die. In the box, Mikalina was not dead yet, but she knew if she attempted to escape with Marchine and Patrick right above her, they would just kill her on the spot, or they would dig an even deeper hole, and then it would be impossible to get out again. And so after waiting an agonizingly long amount of time to ensure Marlene and Patrick had gone,

Michelina jumped into action. She immediately tried to wriggle her way out of her restraints, but the position they had forced her into, which was basically the fetal position with her hands tied behind her back, it didn't allow her to move very much in any one direction. And so without any movement, she could not get herself to come free of these restraints. And so as she's struggling trying to figure out what she's going to do,

she realizes she had chosen to wear her engagement ring that Marchina had given her, something she never wore anymore, and she could potentially use the diamonds in the ring to cut through the tape that was keeping her wrists tied together. And so she began working that ring until finally she did cut through her restraints and her hands were free. And so she managed to force both of her arms right in front of her body and then once they were in front of her, she immediately began scratching and clawing at the cardboard right above her. And eventually she scratched a hole in the box itself and dirt began pouring in on her, and she was already very low on oxygen. She was fighting off unconsciousness

by remembering that her three-year-old son needed her, and she had no idea what Marchean was going to do to him. And so she just kept on digging and fighting as the dirt's coming in on her, and she's struggling to breathe. And then finally she pokes all the way through, and she can see sunlight, and fresh air comes into the hole, she can breathe again. And then with this huge surge of adrenaline, she forces herself and manages to push all the way up through this hole until she's standing in her grave. And from there, she pulls herself up and out of the dirt, and she runs towards the road where she flags down a motorist,

and the motorist would call police and then wait with her until they arrived. After Marchine was arrested, the story came out that he had heard a rumor that Mikalina was going to be leaving him and going back to Poland with their son, and he didn't want that, so he had decided he was going to kill her. Marcheen was found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison, and Patrick was found guilty of kidnapping and sentenced to four and a half years in prison. The next and final story of today's episode is called Strange Calls.

In the early morning hours before sunrise on April 12, 1990, a 31-year-old man named Nathan Neesmith pushed down on the gas throttle of the fishing boat that he was steering just off the coast of Georgia. And as he did this, he expected the boat to naturally kind of kick him. into a higher gear and go faster. But as he pushed that throttle down, nothing really happened, and the boat just kind of sputtered along going about half the speed that he expected it to go. Confused, Nathan stepped away and began making his way out towards the deck,

where his younger brother, Billy Joe, who was actually the captain of this fishing boat, was out there taking a nap, and Nathan figured, you know, if there was any issue with the boat, Billy Joe was the guy to talk to. He would know how to fix it. Now, for context, the two brothers were on the first day of a seven-day fishing trip that actually Nathan was not supposed to be a part of. The crew was originally going to be Billy Joe, the captain, and the one who actually rented the boat, along with Billy Joe's nephew and also two other commercial fishermen. But at the last second, those two other commercial fishermen had bowed out, and Nathan and a friend had volunteered to go to round out the crew.

Now, Nathan and Billy Joe, they came from a fishing family, but it was really only Billy Joe who had pursued the family business. Now, Nathan was perfectly handy out on the water, and and did know how to fish and knew his way around a fishing boat, but compared to Billy Joe, there was a massive gap in experience. Billy Joe was the fisherman, and Nathan really was not. But Nathan and Billy Joe were very close, and so as soon as Nathan heard, Billy Joe was in trouble and needed some more fishermen, Nathan didn't hesitate to say he would do it.

Because really for their entire lives, that was sort of their dynamic. Even though Nathan was the older brother, it was Nathan who looked up to Billy Joe, and any chance he got he would do anything to to help Billy Joe. And Billy Joe really respected that and loved that about Nathan. But now, as Nathan made his way out to the deck to wake his brother up to tell him on the first day of the trip, right as Nathan's taking the wheel that something's wrong with the boat and I can't fix it.

And also, Nathan was enormous, like 250 pounds, well over six feet tall. He was huge, this big physical presence, but he really was not mechanically savvy at all. And so again, Nathan is sort of feeling like, you know, sorry and also maybe even second guessing whether or not it was even a good idea for him to have come along. You know, if he can't even fix a minor issue with the throttle or the engine, you know, what's he doing here? But when Nathan woke up his younger brother and explained the issue, Billy Joe was not upset. He was like, okay, we'll go down below and we'll take a look at the engine and make sure everything is okay. However, when they went down and Billy Joe opened up this

hatch to look at the engine, smoke immediately came out and it was very clear to Billy Joe anyways that this was not like a minor issue, something seriously was wrong with the engine. This was a big problem. And so Billy Joe began cussing. You know, he's totally frustrated. And he just told Nathan to, you know, go down below and tell the other two to wake up and come help.

And so huge Nathan turned around and went down into the bunk room down below. And the second he got down to that level of the fishing boat, he just stopped. Because there was at least a foot of water in the hallway and in the bunk room when he went inside. And so Nathan screamed at the other. two fishermen to get up. And so they got up and they're looking down. They're seeing all this water. And so they're starting to panic. And Nathan, he goes back upstairs and he yells to Billy Joe,

who's dealing with this engine issue, that in addition to that, it appears the boat is also sinking. And so Billy Joe is like, get buckets, go down there and start bailing out the water. I'm going to call Mayday. And so Billy Joe runs back up to the steering wheel. He grabs the radio. And Nathan and the others can hear him yelling over and over again. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. And as that was happening, Nathan and the other two fishermen put on their life vests, grabbed buckets, and went down below to begin manually bailing out the water. But the second they got down there, it was very obvious the water, wherever it was leaking into this ship, was coming in way faster than they could potentially bail out.

But they kept doing it, you know, getting the water out as fast as they could, trying to stay calm. They can hear Billy getting more and more frantic, yelling May Day over and over again. And then all the lights inside of the ship began to flicker, And then they went out, and they were cast into total darkness. The engine basically had stopped, and it was just silence, just the sound of water rushing into this boat. Also, Billy Joe had stopped yelling May Day because clearly the boat had lost power and the radio didn't work. And unfortunately, before the power cut out, nobody had heard any of Billy Joe's May Day calls. So nobody knew where they were, nobody knew they were sinking, and without power, they had no way to communicate to anybody.

They were totally alone. So Nathan, Billy Joe, and the others did the only thing they could do. They went up to the main deck. They grabbed their inflatable life raft. They blew it up, chucked it over the side. They grabbed as many supplies as they could, put it in the raft. They all made sure they had all their flotation on. And then they jumped into the life raft, abandoning the sinking fishing boat.

Now, once all four men were safely inside of this life raft, they were not as panicked as you might think they would be. because they had put enough food and water in this raft to last them at least several days. They all again had their life vests on, so proper flotation, and even though nobody responded to those Mayday calls, it wasn't impossible to think that maybe somebody had heard the Mayday calls, and they just had not called back. You know, maybe there was a rescue operation coming to their location right now.

They didn't know. But it felt plausible that they could be rescued. They would just need to kind of ration out their supplies and stay optimistic. However, their optimism quickly faded when after only being in this life raft for 30 minutes, right as the sun was starting to come up, Nathan began to hear a strange sound. It was coming from somewhere in the life raft.

He couldn't quite place the sound, and so at first he kind of tried to ignore it, but then he noticed the life raft was becoming softer, and then he realized the sound he heard was a small hiss. The raft had a leak. And even though the four men were able to trace the sound of this leak to the actual puncture, they didn't have a patch kit or any meaningful way to patch up this hole. And so all they could do was just put their hands over this leak and do their best to seal it,

but it didn't stop the air from coming out. It just delayed it. And so over the next hour, again, as the sun is just coming up on the second day of their big fishing trip, the raft finally completely deflated, and all four men were suddenly bobbing in the freezing cold ocean surrounded by the wreckage of their sinking fishing boat. And so eventually the men grabbed the biggest piece of wood from the wreckage that came floating by, and it was buoyant enough that it kind of served as like a makeshift raft, but it wasn't buoyant enough to hold all four of them at once, which meant they had to take turns resting on this raft,

and then they'd have to get back in the ocean and kind of wait their turn again. I mean, totally miserable. And as this was happening, they just stared at the hull of their sinking fishing boat that was still poking up out of the ocean, just drift farther and farther away from them, because the current was pretty strong. And as they watched, their ship just kind of disappear into the distance, and they're just kind of drifting out into the middle of the ocean, they were all just stunned into silence.

They could not believe how this had happened and so quickly. And also, what were they going to do? I mean, they're in the worst possible situation here. It just didn't seem possible that they could actually survive this. Now, for reference, even though the men had salvaged a lot of their food and water from the sinking life raft, and they had their flotation devices on, that didn't protect them from hypothermia.

It wouldn't matter if it was super warm outside. What mattered is the ocean was really cold. And because they couldn't stay on that raft, they had to keep cycling through, going back in the ocean over and over again. It was just a matter of time before they would get hypothermia. And sometimes hypothermia can kick in in just a couple of hours. I mean, we're not talking days here.

This is going to be quick. And all these guys knew that. And so as these men were forced to have these really morbid discussions around who's going to stay in the water and who's going to stay on the raft, Nathan made a drastic decision. Nathan, being by far the biggest physically out of the four men, he knew that if he wasn't there right now, the other three could easily fit on their makeshift raft

and stay out of the water, delaying hypothermia, thereby increasing the odds that they got rescued. And so Nathan did what he always did, and he turned to his younger brother, who he looked up to so much, who he just wanted to help all. the time and Nathan told him, I'm going to swim to the wreckage. I'm going to swim back to the hull of our sinking ship and I'm going to fashion my own makeshift raft. That way you guys can

have this one and I'll have my own and we can all get out of here in one piece. Now keep in mind, it was fairly obvious that the hull of the sinking ship, which was barely visible near the horizon, was at least three miles away just from their own rough calculations. So this is a monster or swim to get to that. And so immediately, Billy Joe and the other three were like, no, that is a suicide mission. You cannot do that. Do not swim to the hull. You're not going to make it. Now, just to give some additional context here, if you're not familiar with just how challenging swimming in the open ocean is, I'm going to give you my limited experience. So when I was in the military, we had to do one, five and a half mile open ocean swim, and then also we did a whole bunch

of two-mile ocean swims. And even though we were allowed to use amazing wetsuits and fins, we had a swim partner with us. We had the land nearby to use as a reference to make sure we're going the right direction. We had food, we had water, we were in great shape. Even with all of that, open ocean swims are miserable. You get all the salt in your mouth and your nose, you start cramping and chafing. I mean, it takes hours and hours and hours to swim some of these distances and you're constantly fighting against the waves. I mean, it is an absolute shore, swimming in the open ocean, again, even with all the right stuff in place. And you got to remember, Nathan is that this big guy, you know, he's got this big, bulky life vest on that's going to make it hard to swim.

He doesn't have fins, he doesn't have a wetsuit, and he's got no landmarks around him, you know, to make sure he's going in a straight line. Typically, when you're swimming in the ocean, you're constantly looking at the land or some other landmark to make sure you're going in the right direction. He wouldn't have had that. And also, it's this unknown distance he's covering, and there could be predators in the water. I mean, there's so many barriers here that basically there was like a zero percent chance this swim would be successful.

But Nathan totally understood what he was really doing here. He didn't really know if he was actually going to make it to that boat. Frankly, that was not really the point. What he was really doing was choosing to sacrifice himself to potentially save his brother and the other two. And so even though they were telling him, do not go, do not swim in that direction, you're not going to make it. Nathan just turned to his brother, Billy Joe, and said, I love you. And then he turned and began swimming. And by some miracle, 11 hours later, right as the sun was setting, Nathan was still alive and still swimming, and he did reach the sinking boat that still had its hull poking out of the water.

Now, when Nathan got to the sinking ship, he was almost dead from dehydration, from hypothermia. I mean, he's miserable, but he's made it to his destination completely against all odds. He climbed up onto this hall, and he found a spot on the hull of the ship that supported his weight, and he made it. managed to tie himself using some rope or maybe his life vest to the hall. So he was anchored in place. And then he didn't get to sleep because the whole time he's thinking, you know, this thing could sink under the water at any point and it will drag me with it because I'm tied to it. Or he could just drift off of it if his rigging kind of came undone if he was asleep.

And so all night, beyond exhausted, he's just holding onto this hall. You know, not really sure what's going to happen, but here he is. Just waiting it out. And then finally, when the sun came up that next morning, as Nathan, looked around him, he's in the middle of the ocean, he sees in the direction he had come from, this pillar of smoke coming up over the horizon. And so Nathan, you know, he rubs his eyes, he can't believe it. He's thinking, there's no way, there's already a ship out here. You know, we're in the middle of nowhere, but sure enough, slowly but surely this massive freighter ship

came into view that was very far away. You know, it's not near Nathan, but he can see it clear his day, and where the ship was basically circling was roughly where he believed his brother and the other two fishermen were still floating. And so he's thinking, oh my goodness, the freighter is going to save them, and then it's going to come save me. And so Nathan just clung on to the hall and watched as this freighter made these big slow loops right around that same area. And then the freighter came to a full stop, and it appeared to lower something down into the water. It seemed very much like a full-blown rescue operation. And then about three hours after he he first spotted this freighter, the freighter began to move again and this time directly towards

Nathan. Nathan was so relieved he could practically cry. But instead what he did is he thought they're going to be here in a minute, I'm finally just going to close my eyes and go to sleep. And so he put his head down on the hall, looked one more time at the freighter and then closed his eyes. Now, Nathan would be rescued, but it would not be by that huge freightership. Nathan eventually had opened his eyes after closing them for a second and he saw this freighter that had been coming straight for him, at some point had kind of deviated and gone in the wrong direction and then vanished over the horizon, never to be seen again. And it would take three more days before a separate ship happened to find Nathan, they scooped him up, and they rescued him.

But even though Nathan had been really crushed when that freighter had gone the wrong way, he held on to this idea that, you know, that freighter had clearly rescued his brother and the other two fishermen, and certainly, even if they couldn't find him, they would go back and they would tell the authorities that Nathan is out there. You know, we swam back to the hull of the ship. We got to go find him. And so certainly a rescue effort would be on the way. And it was true. A rescue boat had come out and found Nathan. So everything seemed to be tracking. And when Nathan woke up inside of his hospital room back on land, his friends and family were all by his bedside and he's looking around. He can't believe he survived. And the first thing he asks is,

how's my brother? How are the other two fishermen? And why didn't that freighter pick me up too? And at this, all the people in the room just kind of looked at Nathan with a very confused look on their face, and eventually they asked him a question that made Nathan burst out in tears. They said, what freighter? It would turn out, Billy Joe and the other two fishermen were still missing at this point, and nobody had heard a thing about some big freighter in the area. As far as anybody knew, at least in Nathan's family, that freighter ship did not exist. The search for Billy Joe and the remaining two crew members went on for weeks,

and weeks. And while the active search out in the ocean was going on, the Coast Guard and police were searching through every record they could possibly find of basically any ship that was even roughly in the area where Nathan and the others had been. But despite looking everywhere, there was basically no sign that any ship of any kind had been there beyond the rescue operation that eventually scooped up Nathan. And so again, it seemed very likely that that freighter ship didn't exist, and it was possible that Nathan and his very deteriorated state had maybe hallucinated it. Although Nathan was adamant, he definitely saw that ship. It did not feel like, you know, a multi-hour-long hallucination. It felt like he was watching a ship.

He was sure of it. But again, there was just no proof, and so nobody knew what to think of that. And then eventually, even though there was this huge search going on, there was just no sign of Billy Joe or the others. And so eventually the search was called off. And unfortunately, the presumption was Billy Joe and the other two were now dead. Five months later, on the afternoon of October 5, 1990, the phone rang inside of Nathan's sister's home. Now, by this point, the victim's families had all tried to sort of restart their lives following this tragedy, but deep down, none of them could truly accept that Billy Joe and the other two fishermen were just gone. They just couldn't do it. It was too soon.

It felt like, you know, any moment they were going to get news that, you know, they had been rescued by some freighter ship or something. And so any time a phone rang in any of these family's homes, it's like they would rush to the phone with a sense of hope that this time it's going to be different, their loved ones are going to be okay, only to obviously be crushed when that was not the case. But on this day, on October 5th, that phone call that came through in Nathan's sister's home, that one was different. When Nathan's mother picked up this phone call in Nathan's sister's home, she answered it and said hello, and right away she thought, oh, this has to be a wrong number, because

the person who was calling was speaking in rapid Spanish and she didn't understand what they were saying. But as she was about to hang up, the caller intermittently throughout their rapid Spanish began saying something in English that Nathan's mother could understand, and it totally shocked her. The caller kept saying Nathan's sister's name over and over again, followed by Nathan's sister's phone number, like on repeat, the name, the phone number in English over and over and over again, and Nathan's mom is so caught off guard by this that she just listened, not even sure what to do, and then before she could ask any follow-up questions,

the caller cut the line, and the phone call was over. And then a few minutes later, another phone rang in a home that was not far away from Nathan's sister's home. And this other home belonged to the boat owner who Billy Joe had rented the fishing boat from that unfortunately sank and caused this whole tragedy. And so this boat owner, he picks up the phone, he answers it, and just like the call that had come through in Nathan's sister's house,

this call was the same. It was somebody calling speaking rapid Spanish, and the boat owner was about to hang up when he heard something that he understood, because it was in English, and what he heard was his own name followed by his phone number, over and over and over again. Basically the same type of call that Nathan's mom had just heard, and then before the boat owner could ask any questions, the line went dead. Now, one phone call like this, you could chalk up to maybe a prank or a wrong number or just a really weird coincidence, but to have those two calls happen within minutes of each other and basically take on the exact same form, but different names and different phone numbers, it just seemed way too coincidental to not be somehow connected to the missing

fisherman, because the link between these two households where these calls came in was the doomed fishing trip, and these calls did not stop. Every few weeks after this first time these calls came through, the phone would ring in Nathan's sister's house or in the boat owner's house, and it would be the same thing all over again. Rapid Spanish, followed by either Nathan's sister's name and then her phone number or the boat owner's name and his phone number, just like that for weeks and weeks and weeks. And so as soon as this started happening, Nathan's family and the boat owner, they figured out they were both getting these weird calls, and they contacted authorities, which kind of restarted the search for Billy Joe and the missing fisherman, because now it seemed very plausible that

maybe Nathan really had seen a freighter, and that freighter really had picked up Billy Joe and the others, and, you know, maybe they had been taken to another country, a Spanish-speaking country, and maybe people were trying to get in touch with the families now to get them back home. Or, of course, there could be a negative side to this that maybe they were captured by some rogue vessel and were being held by these people who were calling. I mean, there's any number of theories, but it made authorities wonder, you know, hey, what's going on here? And so authorities got in touch with Mexican authorities and other Spanish-speaking countries, authorities and tried to figure out if there was any chance that there was, you know, a vessel out

there around the time that Billy Joe and the others were missing, that in theory could have maybe illegally been in that area or something. But despite this kind of exhaustive effort to kind of look again to see if maybe there was a freighter in that area, there was just no evidence that there was. It made no sense, but the authorities said, look, we have no idea what these calls are about. We still do not think that freighter or any ship that even resembled a freighter was out there. We still believe that Billy Joe and the others are dead. But as for the victim's families, they just didn't buy that.

They really believed that these strange phone calls were somehow connected to Billy Joe and the missing fisherman. Specifically, these calls must signal that Billy Joe and the others were still alive. They just had no evidence to support that. That is, until March 6, 1991, so almost a year after the doomed fishing vessel sank and Billy Joe and the others went missing, on that day, the phone rang inside of Nathan's sister's home, and she answered it,

and it was the voice who spoke in rapid Spanish, but this time they spoke in perfect English, and all they said was, I'm bringing him home. And then the line went dead. Nathan's sister screamed, and she yelled for her husband to call police. They contacted the authorities, and again, it kind of brought back to life, the search for Billy Joe and the missing fisherman. And then after this call, there was a near constant presence of authorities on the Georgia coastline, basically looking out to the water, waiting, hoping for Billy Joe and the others to return. But unfortunately, they never did. And following that last phone call where the caller spoke in perfect English and said,

I'm bringing him home, after that, the call stopped. And so to this day, no one has ever been able to actually figure out what happened to Billy Joe and the other two fishermen. They are presumed dead at this point. But there's this one nagging question that surrounds the whole story, and that is, what did Nathan see? Was that actually a freighter picking up Billy Joe and the others? And if so, what did they do with them? Or was Nathan just hallucinating? It's entirely possible, but Nathan has always said he knows what he saw and that was not a hallucination. As for the families of the victims,

they still firmly believe that their loved ones are still out there and someday they will come back home and the families just hope they're alive long enough to be there for the reunion. 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 Wit 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 Manata 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-fool, 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 him.