MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - The Obsession

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Today’s podcast features 3 unique stories about “obsessions.” The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#3 -- "The 1st Floor" -- Woman starts hearing strange sounds downstairs (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z07gs6D9E8)#2 -- "The Shaman" -- One of the creepiest stories I've ever read (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzMwI_KMjr8)#1 -- "16 Minutes" -- A man’s dream slowly becomes a reality (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHYgUoM9N2Y)For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast features three unique stories about obsessions. The audio from all three stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story

you'll hear is called The First Floor, and it's about a woman who starts hearing strange noises coming from her downstairs. The second story you'll hear is called The Shaman, and to this day, it's one of the creepiest stories I've ever heard. And the third and final story you'll hear is called The Raven-Haired Woman, and it's about one man's dream that slowly became his reality. But before we get into those stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Delivered in Story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please secretly use the Amazon Music

Follow Buttons toothbrush to clean a dog's teeth and then just put their brush back. Okay, let's get into our first story called The First Floor. Hello, I'm Emily and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. OK, maybe that's a stretch but if i say pop star and shuttlecocks you know who i'm talking about no short shorts free cocktails careless whispers okay last one it's not andrew ridgely yep that's right it's stone cold icon george michael from teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom.

From the outside, it looks like he has it all. But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil. George is trapped in a lie of his own making, with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts or listen early and ad-free on Wanderie Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wanderie app. I'm Peter Frank-O'Pern. And I'm Afua Hirsch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me.

Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time. Somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message, it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle, that's all captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of

time. I think that's fair, Peter. I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful, no matter what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. In the spring of 2013, a young woman named Melissa finally moved out of her mother's house and got her own place across town. For the first few months she was living there, she never noticed anything strange. But about three months into living there, things started to get a little bit weird. It started with a whole bunch of hang-up calls where someone from different numbers would call, she'd answer, and she could hear them breathing, but they weren't saying anything. And then she started getting these huge bouquets of flowers delivered to her front step, but they weren't saying anything. And then she started getting these huge bouquets of flowers delivered to her front step, but they were delivered from Anonymous. Then after that,

she started noticing things in her kitchen and her living room were going missing. Things like plates, cups, drink coasters, salt shakers, forks and knives, little things. But since she lived alone and she was the only one moving these things, they really stood out. Melissa had this habit that every time she went to bed, she would unplug her TV. She had this irrational fear if she didn't do that, that it would spark a fire and her house would burn down in the middle of the night. So she was pretty obsessive compulsive about always making sure the TV was unplugged before she went upstairs to bed. And so one night around the same time she's getting these hang up calls and there's flowers being sent to her door and things are going missing, she unplugs her TV and she goes up to bed. The next morning,

she gets up and comes downstairs and the TV's plugged in again. She convinces herself that, well, she must have forgot to unplug the TV. As rare of an event as that is, it has to be what happened. And so that night, she unplugs the TV and remembers looking directly at the plug, confirming that yes I've unplugged the TV. Then she puts it down and looks again at the outlet. It's not plugged in. It's definitely not plugged in. And then she goes upstairs to bed. The next morning when she walks downstairs she had the sense of dread that when she turned the corner, because her TV was right at the bottom of the stairs, that when she turned the corner, it would be plugged in again, and her worst nightmare would come true,

that something is happening on my first floor when I'm asleep at night. And as she comes down the stairs and turns the corner, what does she see? The TV is plugged in again. She's horrified, but has no idea what to do. It's not some malicious act. And she's telling herself, well, maybe I forgot again. But then she's like, no, I remember last night staring at the plug. I definitely unplugged it. And so she flies around her first floor to make sure, one, everything is locked. But two,

no one else is in here. And when she's satisfied that, yup, it's empty down here. And two, everything is locked. She sits there thinking, well, now what do I do? Do I call the police and say, someone's plugging in my TV? You know, know she can't do anything and it was at this point that Melissa developed a very real fear of her first floor and she began going to bed so early at night because she could not be on that floor when it started to get dark and so imagine living alone being afraid of going down to your first floor how scary it would be at night when you're laying in bed your doors shut and any noise you hear in the house you're going to attribute to your first floor, how scary it would be at night when you're laying in bed, your door's shut, and any noise you hear in the house, you're going to attribute to your first floor. And so Melissa was living this absolutely wretched life where she's scared of everything outside of her bedroom. And so with that as context, Melissa goes to bed one night, super

early, probably like three o'clock. The sun's not even down yet, but she's upstairs. But eventually it does get dark outside and she still has not fallen asleep. And so she sits up in bed and she turns on the TV. And right away, the channels on the screen start to change. And she's thinking, oh, I must be laying on the remote. But then she remembers the remote's in my hand. And so she's looking at the remote and then she's looking at the TV. She's not touching her remote and the channels are still cycling now Melissa had what's called a skybox Which means her downstairs TV was connected to her upstairs TV and vice-versa if one was changing the channel in real time The other changed the channel and so as she's looking at her remote and not touching it and looking at the screen as the channels

Are changing it dawns on her that someone downstairs is changing the channels channels are changing. It dawns on her that someone downstairs is changing the channels. And so frozen in fear, all she can think to do is turn off her TV because that's the one function that does not have any impact on the other TV. So she turns the TV off. And so in total darkness, in a house she's already terrified of, she is straining her ears to try to hear some sign that this is either something, someone's down there flipping through channels, or this is nothing. And I just happened to turn the TV on when the skybox was malfunctioning. And as she's sitting there, all she can hear is her own breathing and she can feel the pounding of her heart in her chest. But she doesn't hear any sounds in her house. She doesn't

hear the TV on. She doesn't hear footsteps, doors opening, none of that. It's silence in the house. So after what probably felt like an eternity, she just grabbed a pillow and clutched it in front of her and put her head into the pillow and just laid like that until she eventually fell asleep. The next morning when she gets up, the sun is out and it's this huge relief because suddenly with the sunlight pouring in the windows, it was like the house wasn't scary anymore. And she's telling herself, you know what what that had to have been just some anomaly with the skybox i bet i go downstairs and the tv's unplugged and so she goes downstairs and the tv is unplugged and so that for her kind of confirms that okay the paranoia is getting to me i'm losing my mind a little bit i gotta tell someone what's going on and so as it happens that day she was going to a family birthday party and so when

she gets there she pulls her older brother aside and says here's the strange things that are happening in my house with the skybox and all this and at first he looked at her like really this is what's going on you're seeing ghosts in your house but when she really focused on these specific things that were happening like the plug going back into the wall two separate times and then the skybox thing so the wall two separate times and then the skybox thing so the tv is kind of wrapped up in the weirdness that's been happening in her house and the missing items in her house and so for the brother it all kind of added up to okay this does seem a little bit weird and he offered to live with her for a few days and just see it for himself

and as they're talking their younger brother happens to walk by overhears the conversation and says oh i'll stay there too. For four days, the two brothers lived on the first floor of Melissa's house. And they don't see anything. They don't hear anything. It's completely ordinary. And Melissa at first was reassured, but then started to think, does that mean whoever's been doing this stuff is watching my house really closely and knows that I have protection of my house my house right now and they're staying away does that mean I'm being watched really closely and so finally when her brothers are getting ready to leave

after the fourth day she was practically begging them to stay she couldn't stand the idea of staying in this house her brothers reassured her that she had nothing to worry about but if she experienced anything weird anytime any day just call or text and they would be there in a heartbeat. Although she did not feel reassured, it was starting to get late, at least by her standards. It was like three o'clock.

So the sun's getting close to going down. So she needs to go upstairs. So she goes back in her house and does like 20 trips around her house to confirm everything is shut, everything is locked. No one's in the house, everything is safe. And then she goes upstairs to bed. But like most nights, she was so scared of everything outside of her bedroom door that she couldn't sleep. And as she's laying there in utter silence in her room, she hears the unmistakable

sound of her back door opening. And she hears footsteps walking through her first floor, and then she hears the TV turn on, and her brothers have been watching her TV last, and they had the volume set really, really high. So as soon as the TV went on, it blared all through the house, and immediately the TV turned back off, because whoever turned it on knew that that was going to wake up whoever was in the house. Melissa doesn't know what to do. Before, whatever the heck was happening in her house was a little bit subtle. It was like she had to think about what she was hearing to confirm it was actually happening. Now, this person is just strolling into her house in the middle of the night and flipping on the TV and blaring it through the house. And so she immediately is like, oh my god, what do I do?

And she picks up her phone and she calls her brother. Then he picks up right away and she goes, someone is in the house right now. The brother's like, I will be there in 10 minutes. Do not leave your bedroom. Don't do anything. Stay on the phone with me. So Melissa's shaking out of fear and she gets up as slowly as she can and she walks over to the window to get as far away from the door, which was locked as she possibly could. And she's glancing out the window window waiting to see her brother pull up as she listens for any sign that this person downstairs has begun walking upstairs finally melissa sees out of the corner of her eye her brother's car pulls up across the street and he along with her younger brother hop out they run across the street towards her house they hop over the fence and they run

down the alley between her house and her neighbors and they go towards the back out of sight she's still on the phone with him and she's saying do you you see him? Do you see him? Do you see him? Do you see him? And he says, hold on. He goes to the back of the house where he knows you can look in and basically see the whole first floor. And as soon as he gets to that spot where she's expecting him to give her a report and he pauses, there's silence on the phone and she goes, what do you see? And he says, OK, yeah, there is someone in your living room right now. I'm going to hang up and call the police. I'm going to call you right back. Now, Melissa knew what she heard was very real to her, but to have it confirmed by her brother right now took this to a whole nother level of fear. Now she's legitimately fearing for her life. There is a

person, an intruder in my house right now. Confirm. They are right downstairs and they've been coming into my house probably for weeks. And so her brother hangs up the phone and begins calling the police. Meanwhile, Melissa is just standing in this room horrified as she listens to a stranger walk around the first floor of her house. But because she was hearing the footsteps clearly downstairs, she decided she would just walk over to her door and look through the keyhole, which was oversized on her door. And if you look through it and over to the left, you'd actually look downstairs to the first floor. You'd only see a sliver of the first floor. And so very carefully, she walks her way over to the door. And as she kneels down to look through the keyhole her phone

rings it was in her pocket and it wasn't on silent it was on loud and it was her brother calling back and she kind of fumbles for her phone she drops on the ground it's still ringing and she finally silences it and then reflexively she pokes her head back and looks through the keyhole and standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up at her is a man with a hat pulled over his eyes who's clearly heard the sound and he begins walking up the stairs she's falling over backwards screaming at the top of her lungs to get her brothers inside she hears them come charging inside she hears this epic struggle on the stairs and she hears this person who's in her house because it was a voice she didn't recognize screaming i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry and then it's quiet and so she opens

that door because she wants to help if she can and she looks and she sees her brothers have this man pinned on the stairs he's not moving and she sees her younger brother is holding something and he holds it up to her and he just shakes his head and it's a freaking knife and then she puts it together that the stranger in her house was carrying this knife. And before she can even take that information in, the older brother takes the hat off of this guy and it's their mother's ex-boyfriend from 10 years ago. The same one they all believed had an inappropriate attraction to Melissa.

Police show up and take him away and he quickly admitted to sneaking into her house for months. They don't know how he got in and he would never tell them, but he admitted that, yep, I was breaking in almost every single night. But he never gave a good reason why. He just started doing it.

Police cited mental illness as the likely culprit for why he was doing it and the family believed this could be something more sinister, but either way, he was given three years in jail and the family, once again, cut all ties with him. we tell the story of a British man who took part in the first ever round the world sailing race. Good on him, I hear you say. But there is a problem, as there always is in this show. The man in question hadn't actually sailed before. Oh, and his boat wasn't seaworthy.

Oh, and also tiny little detail almost didn't mention it. He bet his family home on making it to the finish line. What ensued was one of the most complex cheating plots in British sporting history. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good you are a fan of The Strange, Dark, and Mysterious. And if that's the case, then I've got some good news. We just launched a brand new Strange, Dark, and Mysterious podcast called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

And as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years. And we finally decided to take the plunge, and the show is awesome. In this free weekly show, we explore bizarre unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between. Each story is totally true and totally terrifying. Go follow Mr. Balan's Medical Mysteries

wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're a Prime member, you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Our next story is called The Shaman. On April 27th, 1997, a farmer in Indonesia was walking his livestock through a thick sugarcane field near his house when he tripped on something. After he regained his balance and looked down, he noticed a strange mound of dirt that seemed totally out of place. He wanted to dig it up just out of curiosity, but he wasn't on his property, so instead he walked back to the

village and he told the village leader about this strange pile of dirt and suggested he see what's under it. So the village leader and some other men headed back out to the field. They find this dirt pile and the first thing they do is they poke it with a stick. The stick went right into the pile. It was a soft pile of dirt and when they pulled it out, this horrible stench filled the air that was coming out of this mound. Worried about what they might find underneath this pile, the men decide to leave it alone and go back to the village and tell authorities about it. And the authorities promptly tell them to go back out there and uncover this thing and tell them what they find. And so the village leader and some more men head back out to the field and they start digging.

And pretty quickly, their shovel strikes something that's fairly soft inside of this mound. And so after delicately removing some more dirt, they discover a woman's face is looking right back at them. It appeared she'd been buried up to her neck, and then someone had just thrown dirt on top of her head. At this point, the authorities did come out, and they were able to identify the body as belonging to a 21-year-old local woman named Diwi. After asking around the village about this girl, the police determined the last time anyone had seen her was three days earlier when she had left her house to run an errand. But after that, no one knew what happened to her. Just a few hours after Diwi's discovery, a 15-year-old rickshaw driver came to the police

with additional information. He said three days earlier on the evening of April 24th, so the same day that people had seen Diwi last, he said she had come to him to ask for a ride. And when she got into the rickshaw, he asked where she wanted to go. And she said she did not want to tell him specifically where she was going. Instead, she just wanted him to drive in a particular direction and she would give him more information about how to get where she wanted to go as they got closer. And so this really intrigued the driver, and so after he began going in this direction, he turned to her again and said, you know, can you tell me anything more about where we're going?

This is really weird that you're not giving me any more information. And so finally, Diwi relented, and she told him she was going to see the shaman. A shaman, in simple terms, is someone who uses magic to cure the sick. The driver did think it was odd that this girl was going to see the shaman in the middle of the night and she was being so secretive about it, but after he dropped her off, he hadn't given it much thought until he found out she had died. The police approached the shaman, who was 45-year-old Ahmad Siraji, and they asked him if he had been with Diwi on the night of April 24th. Initially, Siraji said no, he had not been with her and he had no idea what happened to her. But after police searched his

house and found Dewey's belongings inside, Siraji said, okay, I've been lying and I have a confession to make. And he would very nonchalantly tell police that not only had he killed Dewey, he'd also killed dozens of other women the same way and buried them in the sugarcane field. And so the police went out to the field and started looking around and they found all these mounds of dirt all over the place and under them were women buried up to their neck. After the excavation was all done, the police believed they found the bodies of 42 different women but truthfully that was just a guess. They believed there could be more. During his trial, Siraji explained in detail why he did the things he did. He said back in 1986,

so 11 years earlier, he had this vivid dream where his deceased father came to him and instructed him to drink the saliva of 70 women, and if he did that, he would become immortal. When Siraji woke up, he didn't chalk up this experience as just a strange dream. He believed he had just had a real interaction with the spirit of his dead father and so he decided he would do as he was told. But his father didn't explain to him how he was going to extract the saliva from these 70 women. And so after thinking about it for a couple of days Siraji decided the most efficient way to do it would be to just kill the women and then forcibly take their saliva. To find his victims, Siraji began telling people in his village that he had supernatural powers. That he was able to grant women specifically everlasting beauty and riches.

And many people believed it. And so as this rumor spread not only around his village but to surrounding areas, lots of women heard about it and came to him and requested his services. He would tell them to come back later that night when it was totally dark and to not tell anyone where they were going. Once they arrived, they would come inside of Siraji's house and they would pay him a fee that was roughly equivalent to 300 US dollars. And then he would tell them he needed to perform a ritual to give them their beauty and their riches. And so he would tell them he needed to perform a ritual to give them their beauty and their riches. And so they would leave his house, they would cut through a cemetery, and they would enter into that sugarcane field, and they would walk for a while until

Siraji stopped them. And he would hand the woman a shovel, and he would tell her to dig a hole in the ground. And he would assure her this is part of the ritual. And so he would stand there as she dug the hole until it was about waist deep. And then he would tell her to get in the hole and put her hands by her side. If she was at all nervous, he would just reassure her again that this is all part of the ritual, that lots of people have done this before, that it's totally safe. And so she'd get in the hole, she'd put her hands by her side. Siraji would take the shovel and he would fill the hole back in until she was completely immobilized. And then at this point, Siraji would pull out a cable, he would wrap it around their neck, and he would strangle them to death. And then once they were dead, he would pull their body out of the hole, and then he would forcibly extract their saliva.

And then after that, he would take the shovel again and dig the hole a little bit deeper, and then he would put the body back inside the hole, making sure their head was still sticking out of the ground. And he would orient them so their face was looking towards his house because he believed having these women constantly looking at him at all hours of the day gave him more power. He said as for Diwi when she first came to his house and she had paid that fee she was worried about leaving and going and doing this ritual. It scared her and so Siraji told her to wait and he went into the other room where his wife was and he told her that, hey, I'm going to go kill this girl and I need your help. I need you to calm her down. And his wife, who had no idea her husband was a mass murderer, just immediately went along with it.

She came back into the room and she assured Diwi that everything was totally fine. They had done this before. It was all going to be perfectly safe. And she even said she would come with them to do this ritual. And so at this, Diwi was much more calm and she agreed to go. And so the trio left the house, they went to the cemetery, out to the field, and then only two people came back. Siraji was executed in 2008 by firing squad and his wife was sentenced to life in prison. The next and final story of today's episode is called The Raven-Haired Woman.

In 1889, when Karl Tanzler was just 12 years old and living with his family in Dresden, Germany, he had a very strange dream. In this dream, he found himself in this black void where everywhere he looked, it was just nothingness. And then behind him, he heard footsteps. And so he whips himself around and he looks and there's this woman dressed in this big, puffy, elegant white dress walking towards him out of the darkness. And when she walks right up in front of him, she comes to a stop and she introduces herself as Anna Constantia von Brockdorf, who was a real person in the early 1700s. She was a noblewoman in Germany and she would tell Karl that she is actually a distant relative of his and that she was here to pass on a very important message. Karl was rooted to the spot. He didn't know if he should be afraid of what she was here to pass on a very important message. Carl was rooted to the spot. He didn't know if he

should be afraid of what she was going to say or excited or nervous, but before he could decide, Anna had already turned and was pointing in the direction she had appeared out of. And so Carl turns and looks in the direction she was pointing, and out of this blackness, out of this void, came this woman's face. It was a face detached from a body. It almost looked like a floating picture of a woman's face. And as this face floated closer and closer to them, Carl was immediately struck by just how beautiful this woman was. Her hair was jet black like a raven's feathers, and her skin was white like porcelain. But there was something off about this woman, this floating face. She looked sad and kind of frail.

And so as Carl found himself staring at this face, which was now right next to them, Anna spoke to him again. And she would tell Carl that this woman, the floating face, she's going to appear in your life later on. And it is your mission given by God to save her. She's going to be very ill, very sick, and you need to find a way to keep her alive. Then Carl, in real life, woke up, and immediately he was struck by just how visceral that dream had been. It really felt like that had just happened to him, but after a few moments, it seemed like, okay, that was just a dream. But unlike other visceral dreams he had had in the past, this one did not gradually fade from his memory.

Instead, over the course of that day, the memory specifically of the raven-haired woman's face really seemed to become more clear and more concrete in his mind, to the point where at the end of that day, he could easily remember exactly what she looked like. Over the following days and months and years, Carl periodically would have the same dream, the same vision of his distant relative Anna who would come out of the void and she would remind him to be on the lookout for this raven-haired woman when God sent her to him. But despite these constant reminders in his dreams and Carl being ever vigilant to look for this raven-haired woman in real life. He never

actually found her. He never met this woman he was supposed to save. Fast forward to 1926. Carl was 39 years old. By this point, he had gotten married, not to the raven-haired woman, but instead to a local woman in Dresden. And the pair had had two daughters together, and they lived a simple life. And, you know, by and large, Karl seemed rather content and happy with his life. However, secretly, he was a little disappointed that these dreams, these visions that he was having of Anna and the raven-haired woman, that they had not come true, that it really had just been a dream. That year, due to an economic downturn in Germany,

Carl and his family left Germany and emigrated to the United States, where they believed there would be better opportunities for them. And when they arrived in the United States, they settled in central Florida. But within a year, Carl and his wife had a severe falling out, and they split up. And so Carl would leave the family home in central Florida and he would resettle several hundred miles south in southern Florida in a town called Key West and it would be in Key West that Carl would get a job as an x-ray technician at a local hospital and it would also be in Key West that Carl's life would change forever. Less than a year after settling in Key West, Carl was at the hospital going about his day when an older woman walked into the office

and she said to Carl that she was there to get her daughter, her 21-year-old daughter, an x-ray of her chest because her daughter apparently couldn't stop coughing and they were concerned about it. And so Carl began doing the paperwork with the mother when suddenly the daughter came into the office. And as soon as Carl saw her,

he knew immediately that she was the raven-haired woman from his dreams. She walked in and she sat down in a chair and Carl just stopped what he was doing and stared at the daughter. And then he kind of broke out of it and turned his attention back to the mother. And he said to her, ma'am, don't worry. I will do everything in my power to save your daughter's life. Now, the mother didn't know what was wrong with her daughter. And so this was both really helpful that this man she was talking to was so willing to help and also kind of ominous that he was already insinuating that she could be dying. But either way, the mother said, thank you very much. You know, we really appreciate that.

And so Carl and the mother, they finished their paperwork, and then Carl quickly left from behind his desk and hustled over to the daughter. And he introduced himself, and he reiterated that she was in good hands. And the daughter was a little bit weirded out by this, but she was polite and said thank you, and she said her name was Elena. And so Carl would take Elena and bring her back and give her the x-ray, and unfortunately, he would discover through this x-ray that she had tuberculosis. Today that disease is easily curable but at the time that was a death sentence. When Carl saw this though in a weird way it almost made him happy because this was another indication that you know this really was the raven haired woman from his dreams. Not only did she look the part but she also had arrived in desperate need of help

and so now carl needed to find a way to save her even though he was just an x-ray technician he was not a doctor and so he had no clue how to begin to treat tuberculosis but that didn't stop carl over the next year carl would be in touch with elena and her family on a near daily basis updating them on all of the new techniques to fight tuberculosis that he was doing all this research on, and he would tell them about experimental procedures and drugs they could try, even sometimes paying out of pocket for them to go try them. He would also bring Elena into the office as often as he possibly could to x-ray her again and again and again to see if perhaps she was making good progress.

But unfortunately, over the course of that year where he was doing everything he could, it just didn't work. The disease ravaged Elena's body. And on October 31st, 1931, so roughly a year after Carl had first met Elena, Elena would unfortunately pass away. Elena's family was devastated by this, but their grief didn't even compare to Carl's grief. It was like Carl had lost his life too. He couldn't believe he had failed his mission and let the raven-haired woman die. When it came time to bury Elena, Carl said, let me pay for the most elaborate gravesite we can possibly make. Let me set up a mausoleum for her. A mausoleum is an external building that sits in a cemetery that effectively serves as a kind of

shrine to the deceased. And so her family, they understood that Carl had become very, very close with Elena, although they didn't fully understand the relationship. But they did understand she meant a lot to him, and so they agreed to let him do this. After Elena was buried inside of this small temple that Carl had built for her, Carl began spending virtually all of his time kneeling inside of it, crying and begging for Elena's forgiveness. Elena's family was well aware that Carl was doing this, and at first they kind of just let it happen. But, you know, after several months, they began to tell Carl,

you know, you really need to let her go. You need to begin to move on. But Carl refused. In fact, over time, he only became more and more obsessed with Elena. Finally, after seven years of Carl doing this, Elena's family decided, you know, enough is enough. He really needs to stop making her loss all about him. It's not his loss. It's our loss. We're her family. And so the family decided the only way to kind of get Carl to stop doing what he was doing is to demand he give the key back that gave him access into the small area inside of the mausoleum. So one night, Elena's sister, whose name was Florinda, decided to go over to Carl's house unannounced and confront him and get the key back from him. And so she hopped in her car and she drove over to his property.

His house was kind of set back off the road behind some trees. And so you had to drive down this kind of winding driveway to get to it. And so Florinda turned onto his driveway and she began driving. And when his house came into view, the first thing she noticed was a number of the windows on the first floor were all lit up. Clearly, Carl was home. And as she's driving towards the house, she's just looking in these windows. And for a second, she sees Carl

and he's very elegantly dressed in a suit or a tuxedo and he's ballroom dancing with this woman who's also very elegantly dressed as well. And for a second, Florinda considered turning around and not disturbing him. But then she thought, you know what? This has been going on for so long. I just need to get this over with. And so she drove her car and stopped in front of Carl's house. She hopped out. She walked up onto his porch and she knocked on his front door. Inside, she could hear music was clearly playing. But just a few seconds after she had knocked, the music was cut off.

And then no one came to the door. And so Florinda knows there's people inside this house, and so she knocks again, but again, there's no movement in the house. It's just silent, as if the people inside are pretending not to be there. And so finally, frustrated, Florinda knocks on the door a third time and says, Carl, I know you're in there. I have to talk to you about my sister. Please come out here. And so finally, she heard the shuffling of feet, and then she heard the sound of the door unlocking, and it opened up just a crack. And through this crack, Carl looked through, and he looked out at Florinda very suspiciously, and he said to her, what do you want? And Florinda would say, look, I'm here to talk to you about my sister. Can I please come inside for a second? Or can

you come out here and talk to me? But Carl pretty much immediately said no and then he shut the door however before he shut the door carl had very briefly stepped out of the way allowing florenda to see through that gap into the house so before the door actually shut she got to see who and what was inside that house and what she saw was the woman carl had been dancing with, and the woman was seated in a chair maybe halfway through the house, and she was facing the door, and Florinda knew immediately it was her sister. And so she's standing on the porch having no idea what to make of what she's just discovered,

and so feeling kind of overwhelmed, she just kind of staggered off the front porch, she turned around, she ran into her car, and she drove off to tell the police. When the police came back, they knocked on the front door, and they demanded that Carl let them see the woman he was there with. And so at this point, Carl knew the gig was up, and so he opened the door, and he allowed them to come inside. And when the police went inside, they saw the woman he was with, and sure enough, it was Elena. However,

woman he was with and sure enough it was Elena. However, Elena was deceased and had been for seven years. After her death, Carl said he was able to talk to her inside of her mausoleum and so that was why he was going back there every single night because he and Elena were spending time together. And then at some point in 1933, so two years after Elena has been dead and buried, Carl would say she told him while he was visiting her mausoleum that she didn't like being in the mausoleum and that she wanted to come back with him and stay at his house. And so the following day, Carl had shown up with a child's wagon and he pulled her out of her coffin, pulled her out of the mausoleum, put her corpse in this wagon and wheeled her back to his house. He had continued to go to the mausoleum every night for the next five years just to keep up appearances, but Elena's body never went back inside of it.

She would stay at his house, where he painstakingly attempted to restore Elena's very badly decomposed body to its original form. He strung piano wire through her entire body, connecting all of her bones together to keep her skeleton intact. He replaced her eyes with glass eyes, and he began rubbing the special wax all over her skin. He also stuffed her insides full of rags in order to give her a full, natural look, and he constantly sprayed her with perfume to reduce the smell. Once she was, in his eyes, back to normal, he began spending as much time with her as he possibly could. He would change her outfits constantly, he would put on makeup, and he would give her new jewelry, and he would talk to her about the ups and downs of life. He would laugh with her, he would cry with her, he would sleep with her.

Carl would admit that ultimately his goal with keeping Elena in his home was to eventually still save her life. He believed if he could somehow get her body up into the stratosphere, that the radiation up there would bring her back to life. And if he could do that, he would be fulfilling his God-given mission to protect her. But Carl never got a chance to launch her into the stratosphere. her. But Carl never got a chance to launch her into the stratosphere. Instead, he was charged with wantonly and maliciously destroying a grave and removing a body without authorization. However, these charges would be dropped and Carl would be set free. As for Elena, her body was returned to her family and they would bury her in Key West. West. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, please secretly use the Amazon Music Follow Buttons toothbrush

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