MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Unanswered Vol. II

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

Today’s podcast will feature 3 stories about mysterious disappearances. 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 -- "Lava Tubes" -- 1100+ miles of underground lava tubes in this park... (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNpctf6WJx8)#2 -- "Stay in the Car" -- Two people go missing after a car crash (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=shared&v=eOxeX1MkcWo)#1 -- "What Just Happened?" -- Woman repeatedly calls 911 then vanishes... (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vARuVoqbQL0)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 will feature three stories about mysterious disappearances. 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 lava tubes,

and it's about two women who go for a hike in a part of the world that is known for its hundreds and hundreds of miles of underground tunnels. The second story you'll hear is called Stay in the Car, and it's about two people who go missing after a car crash. And the third and final story you'll hear is called What Just Happened? And it's about a woman who repeatedly calls 911 and then vanishes. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious,

delivered in story format, then you come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week. once on Monday and once on Thursday. So, if that's of interest to you, please replace the liquid in the Follow Button's hand sanitizer with glue. Okay, let's get into our first story called Lava Tubes. When you bury something as abruptly and deeply as I did that summer, it's hard to dig it back up.

From audible and internationally bestselling author Wendy Walker comes the room next door. Some bury the past. Some live in it. We all have secrets we keep. Three friends. Everyone had a story about that night. Two timelines. No one would ever have to know.

One deadly truth. It's not that hard, you know, to get away with. things these days. The room next door. Listen on Audible. It's the season for new styles, and I love to shop for jackets and boots, so when I do, I always make sure I get cashback from Racketon, and it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cashback from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. Earn cash back at stores like Sephora, old Navy, and Expedia. It's super easy to use, and before I buy anything, I always go to Racketon first. Join for free at racketton.C. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you via

Interact, Paypal, or check. Get the Racketon app or join at racketon.ca. That's rakeut-t-E-N.C-A. On September 19, 2013, 69-year-old retired middle school teacher Amy Linkert and her friend, 63-year-old Joe Blakesley, who was a physician, headed off to the Craters on the Moon Park in Idaho.

This park is actually a dormant volcano. It's not extinct. It's going to be active again. and probably in the next 1,000 years. But for now, it's this beautiful park that is known for these crazy lava fields that look otherworldly. You know, barely any vegetation can grow on them,

and there's just a strip of pavement they've kind of weaved through these massive, jagged lava fields. And then you have all these big mounds that are the actual volcanoes. Another feature of this park are all the lava tubes underground. All the molten lava, when it jets around underneath the surface before shooting out, it carves these natural tunnels

underground, these huge caverns. They're like these big caves you can explore. And there's 1100 miles of lava tubes, tunnels, and caves underneath this park. The two women told their families they would be back in Boise, Idaho by the 21st. But when the 21st came and they were not home, their families were suspicious. They tried calling them. They didn't pick up. And for the next 36 hours, they just kept trying to call them and, you know, called around to see if anybody else knew where they were. And then finally, on the morning of the 23rd, when no one knew where they were, they reached out to the authorities. The formal search for these two women began on the 24th, so five days after they had initially left for this trip, and the searchers quickly found their

pickup truck parked in the parking lot of the Craters on the Moon Park. And in their truck were there two dogs who were alive, they were okay, and in the front seat were their purses and their cell phones. But there was no sign of Amy or Joe. This was obviously a bad sign, and so So the search was really kicked into high gear to see if they could find these women before it was too late. But unfortunately, within 24 hours of finding the truck, they would find Amy's body. And her body was located way off of the main trail. She was in an area that the park superintendent described as incredibly rugged and inaccessible.

Now at this park, there is a strip of cement that weaves through this really dangerous lava field. And if you were on this strip of cement, you wouldn't be thinking about walking onto the lava not only would you need to navigate all these massive mounds of jagged, cooled lava. There's all these cracks in the ground that you could fall through and just plummet to your death. So no one's about to start walking off the trail, especially not two older women that went here just to have a casual stroll through the park.

They were not there for some grand adventure. They were not athletic distance hikers. it made no sense that Amy would be so far off the trail in an area that was so dangerous and so clearly off limits. When the families were notified that Amy had been found and they were still looking for Joe, the detail that the family keyed in on was the idea that these two women left their dogs in the truck. That was something so unbelievably uncharacteristic of either of them. They adored those two dogs. They would never, ever abandon them like that.

In fact, because of that detail, the families jumped to this has to be foul play because they never would have done that. They wouldn't have abandoned these precious dogs. The search for Joe would continue. They basically shifted the entire effort to center over Amy where she was found and work in circles out from there to see if they could find her. They had helicopters flying overhead. They had mining experts walking through all the lava tubes below and they couldn't find her. finally on October 23rd so 28 days after amy was found joe's body was discovered as well and she was lying one mile away from where amy had been found in a similarly inaccessible part of the park that would have required significant climbing over jagged cooled lava fields and all these cracks in the ground she would have had to navigate to reach where she was and even more strangely is the area where she was found had been searched extensively by air with helicopter pilots flying overhead and by cadaver-sniffing dogs that had been in that area

and they had not picked up her scent. So either the helicopter pilots and the cadaver-sniffing dogs were just wrong or missed something, or Joe had not been there the whole time. A cause of death has not been determined for either of the two women. However, what was released is neither of them appeared to have suffered an incapacitating injury, meaning they weren't struck down where they were. They were traveling and ultimately stopped where they were. It seems highly unlikely that these two women abandoned their two dogs and left their cell phones in the car and then wandered way off the trail and separated from each other all without supplies. But even if they had done that, even if they had, you know, separated and left the trail,

where they ultimately reached seems like an area they would not have been able to get to without assistance. And since they were separated, they weren't able to help each other get where they were. were. So although authorities have ruled out foul play, this was deemed an accident, it does seem like if there was ever a place to commit an attack, it would be this particular park because underneath the park is 1,100 miles of lava tubes that connect to each other and weave all through the park, and there's hundreds of caves, many of which have not been found or explored, that it would be pretty straightforward to attack someone and then go underground and not be found. certainly makes you wonder who or what could be hiding underground in those lava tubes.

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. Ballin's medical mysteries and Mr. Ballin's strange, dark and mysterious stories, along with a huge collection of top true crime podcast, 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-E-N. Dive into uninterrupted true crime stories today. Our next story is called Stay in the Car. Before dawn on December 12, 1992, a 17-year-old girl named Tracy Dion sat in the passenger seat of a little two-door car that was swerving down a deserted road in the Yankton Sioux

Reservation in South Dakota. Everybody in the car was drunk, including Tracy, sitting next to Tracy in the middle front seat was her 19-year-old cousin named Ruby, and Ruby's boyfriend, a 20-year-old named Arnold, was driving the car. All three of them had been out partying all night, and so now they were trying to make it home. The swerving was making Tracy feel sick to her stomach, but she didn't want to say anything to Arnold in fear that she might distract him. I mean, it was really dark outside, there was no streetlights, there was ice on the road. I mean, for a sober driver, this would be a challenging drive, let alone a drunk driver. They were coming up on an intersection, and Arnold brought the car to a stop with a lurch.

Tracy watched as Arnold checked for cross-traffic and then pulled out onto Highway 281. But halfway through this turn, as Arnold was accelerating, Tracy began to feel the car slide. And even in her drunken state, she could tell Arnold had hit a patch of black ice. And so as the car began to skid, she wanted to scream before she could. The car was already flipping over, and then everything went black. A short time later, Tracy came too. The car was upside down, and Tracy quickly realized she had fallen out of her seat and was now basically resting on the roof of the car, which was now on the ground.

From what she could tell, after the car had finished rolling over, it had come to a stop just off the side of the highway. And so they were not in immediate danger from other cars striking them. But she couldn't really see outside because the windows were so badly cracked. Beside her, Tracy could hear her cousin Ruby pounding on the driver's side door trying to get it to open, and so Tracy tried to look around Ruby to see Arnold to see if he was okay, but when she did, she saw the driver's seat was empty. Tracy tried to make sense of what she was seeing.

The driver's side door was closed, but Arnold was gone. Just then, Tracy heard the sound of the driver's side door opening, and she turned to see her cousin Ruby forcing the door open, a few inches, and then a second later, Ruby was slithering out through that crack to the outside. To Tracy, everything felt like it was happening in slow motion. She was too shocked and confused to make any sense of it. But if Ruby was getting out of the car, Tracy felt like she should too. And so Tracy turned and crawled across to the driver's side and was about to make an exit the same way Ruby had when the door slammed shut violently right in Tracy's face. Tracy didn't

understand why Ruby would do something like that? Why would she shut the door that aggressively when she knew her cousin was still inside? Tracy tried to open the door again, but she was too weak to do it. She figured her cousin Ruby was okay, but she couldn't see outside because of how cracked the windows were. At this point, Tracy began to feel woozy. She laid her head down on the roof of the car, wondering to herself why Ruby and Arnold had left her behind. Tracy would stay trapped inside of the car alone for a few hours until finally a motorist saw the flipped-over car and called 911. Shortly after that, first responders arrived on the scene, they pulled Tracy out of the car, and shockingly, she actually didn't have really any serious injuries at all.

She didn't even need to be hospitalized. But rescuers could not find Ruby or Arnold anywhere. They were gone. And once rescuers had scoured the entire area around the crash site, the sheriff who was in charge of the scene started to wonder if Arnold and Ruby were not just missing. Maybe he thought they had fled. Arnold had been driving drunk and all three of them were underage and so the sheriff thought maybe Arnold and Ruby were scared to get in trouble. Over the next few days, the police continued to search the surrounding area for Arnold and Ruby, hoping they were not badly injured and that they would just turn up on their own, but they never did. And as the days turned into weeks, hope began to wane for the young couple.

Their family and friends kept searching the area along 281 where the car had flipped, looking for any clue as to where these two had gone. But there was nothing. There was no trace of them. It was like Arnold and Ruby had gotten out of the car and just vanished. But in January of 1993, so three weeks after the crash, strange and conflicting reports of sightings began to trickle in. First, a woman came forward claiming to have seen Arnold, alive and well at a New Year's Eve party. Now, the police doubted this claim, but this woman was

insistent that she had seen Arnold, and they actually hooked her up to a lie detector test, and she passed the test. And so officials brought in guests from this party, who this woman claimed were with Arnold, and they asked them, were you with Arnold? And they said no, but they failed their lie detector tests. Now, of course, this was suspicious, but police really didn't know what to do with this information. Assuming this woman's story was true, that she really did see Arnold. Well, according to the details of her story, Arnold did not appear to be in any kind of distress. And even if he was in distress, the police still had no idea where he was, so how could they help him? Other locals came forward, claiming to have spotted Arnold around town as well.

But nothing came of those reports either. Neither Arnold nor Ruby turned up. Months went by, and the case went cold. Until March 10th, when a driver was going down Highway 281 and they noticed a strange object in the drainage ditch next to the road. By now, the weather was much warmer than it had been on the day of the crash. So instead of snow and ice inside of the drainage ditch, it was run off water. And the strange object was floating in it. The driver stopped his car, got out, and walked up to see what this thing was, and as soon as he saw it, he turned, ran back to his car and called the police.

because what the driver had just found was a dead body. And when the police arrived and searched the area, they found another body not far away. The bodies belonged to Ruby and Arnold. But this discovery did not solve the mystery of what happened to Ruby and Arnold. Instead, it made it much more bizarre. Because first of all, the bodies were found 75 feet away from the original crash site, and the exact spots where the two bodies were found. bodies were found had been searched many, many times on the day of the crash, days after the crash.

They were searched by police, they were searched by friends and family of Ruby and Arnold. The idea that this is where the bodies had been the whole time was impossible. They would have been found. And then there was the condition of the bodies. Ruby's body was extremely decomposed, which made sense given the fact that the crash was three months earlier. But Arnold's body was barely decomposed at all. And in the pocket of Arnold's jeans, police found a mysterious set of three keys.

One was a vehicle key and two were house keys. But none of them opened any vehicle or building that Arnold was known to frequent, and nobody recognized them. Finally, the police found a tuft of hair lying near where the bodies had been found. It was Ruby's hair, but it didn't look like the hair had been there for very long, certainly not three months. Instead of being dirty and matted, like you would expect, given how long she must have been there, the hair was perfectly clean.

The official coroner's report on Ruby and Arnold's deaths were that they died of exposure, and then their bodies were just overlooked by searchers for months. But to a lot of people, including the sheriff, who was in charge of the original crash site, this made no sense. Despite the coroner's findings, law enforcement officials believed that Ruby and Arnold's deaths were the result of foul play. Under the foul play theory, somebody pulled Ruby and Arnold out of the crash. site while they were still alive and then killed them later. And then perhaps they killed them at

different times, which would account for the differences in decomposition of their bodies. The FBI ultimately came in and took over this case, but they eventually closed it down, citing a lack of evidence to support the foul play theory. However, with or without foul play being involved here, nobody has a good explanation for all those sightings of Arnold after the crash. And also, nobody can explain why the door was slammed in Tracy's face. in the immediate aftermath of the crash. Maybe it was Ruby or Arnold who slammed the door, or maybe it was their killer.

To this day, what actually happened on December 12, 1992, on the side of Highway 281 remains a mystery. Growing up, Colton Louder was a joy to be around. He was always goofing off and making people smile, and he had a really infectious laugh. But secretly, he was depressed and began self-medicating at a very young age. By the time he was 18, he was a full-fledged drug addict, and by the time he was 25, he was in jail on a life sentence for murdering his uncle over a drug-related dispute.

Colton's actions had a profound impact on his family, but none more so than on his twin sister, Kalyn. She had known about his pain, even when he was putting on that facade of being happy and bubbly and outgoing, and she had reached out to him and tried to help him, but she could never get through to him, and when he was ultimately convicted,

it was crushing to her. She felt like she couldn't help someone who was really vulnerable. But instead of just feeling bad about this, she took her sadness about her brother and watching him spiral and turned that into a laser focus on helping other vulnerable people that were struggling with addiction and depression to try to help them before they end up like her brother. And eventually, she would get her degree in social work from Utah State. But despite Kalin's best intentions to want to help as many people as she could,

she found it very difficult to find work in her field, and it wasn't uncommon for her to have fairly long stretches of unemployment. And it was during one of those long stretches in 2014 that Kalin's life rapidly fell apart. And it left everybody who knew her thinking, what just happened? On September 26, 2014, a little after 9 p.m., Kaelin calls 911. She reported that there was this huge, brutal fight taking place in her condo's clubhouse. Basically, it was of a restaurant where you could rent it out in the first floor of this condo complex. And she said it was getting out of hand and police needed to come over here and stop it before someone got hurt.

The police asked her if weapons were involved. Were people using weapons in this fight? And Kalen says, yes, guns. But when police rushed to the scene bracing for the worst, they discovered that it's just a docile wedding reception happening inside of this clubhouse and not one person in there reported any altercation happening. They were like, we're being pretty quiet. I don't know where she would have got that from.

One guest would tell police that they had lit off a single firecracker, but they showed them what they had used, and they were these little tiny, cheap things that made almost no noise. So it is possible that Kalen could have mistaken that for a gunshot, but it does seem highly unlikely. Police leave, and then one hour later, Kaylin calls 911 again, but she immediately hangs up as soon as an operator has actually answered the phone, and the operator calls the number back

and Kalyn picks the phone up but she's not really speaking, she's mumbling, she sounds confused and the operator said, you know, hey, you tried to call 911 a minute ago, is everything okay, can you tell me where you are? And Kalen would have a really hard time giving her address to the police.

It was like she couldn't remember her address and she's mumbling and at some point she says my roommate thinks I'm delusional and paranoid, but I'm not. Kalen eventually kind of calmed down and said she was sorry for, calling 911 and the operator said, okay, and they hung up, and that was the end of the call. The next morning, Kalin calls 911 for a third time in 24 hours.

This time, she's frantic. While she's on the phone with the operator, she's periodically screaming at these two people that are apparently robbing her apartment to get the F out of here, get out of my apartment, you can't be here, and the operator is trying to get more information out of Kalin, but Kaylin is very distressed. She can barely communicate with the operator. She's half crying. And the operator tells her, can you leave? Can you go somewhere safe? And Kalen says, no, there's only one way out. This is a small apartment. I can't go past them. And the operator tells them that police are on their way. Just stay in your bedroom. Don't go anywhere. And so while Kalin is huddled in her bedroom and the dispatcher is still on

the line listening, you hear Kalin's roommate, Carol, walk into her bedroom and very calmly say, Kaylin, what's going on? And Kalyn's like, Carol, get over here. You know, lock the door. Get in here. There's two people in here. They're robbing us. They're out there. They're in the other room. And Carol's like, no, there's no one here. The front door's locked. Kalin suddenly sounds really confused. And she says, well, I can't explain that. But they must have been in here because I heard them. They must have had a key. And that's how they got in. And that's how they got out. And right at that moment, the responding officers show up. and there was no sign of a break-in.

Nothing had been taken. It really looked like nothing had happened unless someone really did have a key. At this point, Kaelin was very embarrassed. She apologized to the officers. She apologized to her roommate. And she ended up calling her mom and saying, I'm mortified.

I can't believe I just called 911 three different times and nothing came of any of these calls. Like, I feel so embarrassed about it. And her mom, being a good mom, told her, you know, don't worry about it. No one got hurt in the process, so it's all good. And so Kalyn moves past it and on the call with her mom, she starts talking about what she's going to do that day. She says, well, I'm looking to update my resume and submit it to a couple different job openings.

And I also want to clean up my apartment. And so they hang up the phone and everything seems normal again. But at about 5.45 p.m. that night, Kalen, along with her beloved little dog named Phyllis, that apparently she took everywhere with her, were seen exiting the condo and walking out to the parking lot behind their building. Kalyn was barefoot, was only wearing a tank top in shorts, despite the fact that it was cold and raining. And as soon as she puts her dog down, because she was holding her dog in her arm, Kalin begins having this totally animated discussion, except there's no one there for her to be talking to. About 15 minutes later, she and her dog turn around and walk back towards the condo

complex out of view of a camera, but residents would say they saw her crying and going up to a gate that lets you back into the condo, and she apparently couldn't open it, and as she's standing there struggling, she suddenly stops, puts her dog down, turns, and starts running away. And the camera footage we have of her is only when she's back in the parking lot,

but she's running away still, and the dog is nowhere to be found. Her beloved dog, she's abandoned, she's got no phone, no wallet, and nobody knows where she's going. Later that night, when Kaylin's family could not get in touch with her, because of all the weirdness

around those 911, calls. Her family just had a bad feeling about it, and so they filed an official missing person report that night. When police arrived at the condo complex, the first thing they did is they reviewed the security footage. And they already knew about her three 911 calls that had happened within 24 hours, and all of them had been for unfounded reasons. And they see Kalin on camera barefoot in a tank top and shorts in the rain, and she's having this animated discussion with nobody before running around and running away. And so police go to Kalyn's family and they say, does your daughter have a drug problem? Is she mentally ill? And her family tells the police, no, she's got no history of mental

illness. She definitely does not have a drug addiction because of what happened to her brother. And they explained what happened with Colton and how that had a tremendous impact on her and how that it actually sent her on a course to help people with mental illness or people who are fighting against addiction or depression. And they explained how she was just really well adjusted and everything seemed okay until these 911 calls started and now this. So this huge search is launched between the police and volunteers and actually the louder family even hired some private investigators to help them look for Kalin, but days turned into weeks and there was no leads, no one knew where she was, she had just vanished. Then on December 1st, 10 weeks after she went missing, city workers

were inspecting drainage pipes down near the Jordan River, which was a river that went by her apartment and they discover behind some plants a body that was half submerged and it would turn out to be Kalins. They pull her out of the water and no cause of death could be accurately determined because of how long she had been in the water for. It looked like she had been in there for probably all of the 10 weeks she had been missing. They were able to determine that there were no drugs in her system and there was no water in her lungs, which meant she didn't drown. Her body was. Her body was found five miles from where her apartment was and so initial speculation was she must have gotten hurt and fallen into this river and drifted the five miles downstream to where she was found but

they looked at that section of the river between her apartment and where she was found and the water was simply too shallow and windy and it would not have been possible for a human body to travel that distance which means almost immediately after she ran off screen on the security footage She covered those five miles, wound up at that section of the Jordan River, died and then fell in the water, or fell in the water and then died, but not via drowning. The police officially ruled Kaylin's death an accident, but her family disagrees. They say if you look really closely at the security footage right before she runs away, it looks like she's terrified. More specifically, it looks like she's terrified of someone we can't

see on camera. When she's having that animated discussion where it looks like she's looks like she's talking to no one, further feeding the idea that she had kind of lost it. Well, there's this huge rock to the right in the video that kind of obscures our view, and behind that is this huge forest. And it is theoretically possible that someone could be back there that we can't see. But no matter what, her family believes that whatever she was doing in her final moments on camera is the key to understanding why she ran off and ultimately died. So you be the judge. Was this a psychotic break or is there something more? 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 Misty, 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 Samarney. Samantha Collins. Production support by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley. Artwork by Jessica Klogston 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 Nextbow, 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 wondery.com slash survey.