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

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

Today’s podcast will feature 3 stories that sound impossible – moments so unlikely, they shouldn’t exist… yet somehow, they do. 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 -- "Scooped" -- After a tragedy at sea, a truly unbelievable discovery is made (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzMwI_KMjr8) #2 -- "One For The Road" -- A man's drunken walk home would end in a nightmare (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7Nf7E6y8UA) #1 -- "Her Face" -- A woman wakes up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, but her dreams soon begin to blend with reality (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZZY_nT7KYs)   You can WATCH all new & exclusive MrBallen podcast episodes on my YouTube channel, just called "MrBallen" - https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallen If 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.

Today's podcast will feature three stories that sound impossible. Moments so unlikely, they literally shouldn't exist. Yet, somehow, they do. 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 Scooped, and it's about a tragedy at sea,

and then a truly unbelievable discovery that is made after. The second story you'll hear is called One for the Road, and it's about a man's drunken walk home that would take a dark turn. And the third and final story you'll hear is called Her Face, and it's about a woman who wakes up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, only to realize her dreams may be bleeding into reality. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload four times a week. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Fridays. So, if that's of interest to you, please swap out the follow-button spray deodorant for extremely harmful pesticide.

Okay, let's get into our first story called Scooped. In 1956, the SS Andrea Doria, which was a beautiful ocean liner, was considered to be Italy's largest, fastest, and safest ship. But those things would not be what this ship was remembered for. On July 25th of that year, the ship was sailing towards the east coast of the United States. States when it ran into some very heavy fog. And so following procedure, the captain slowed the vessel down and turned on their fog whistle. A little while later, another vessel, the Swedish ocean liner

called the SS Stockholm, entered the fog as well, but they were unaware of Andrea Doria's position. Now, both vessels were using radar, but unfortunately, both vessels misinterpreted what they were seeing, and so neither of them communicated with the other as they careened towards each other. When visual contact was finally made between the two ships. It was too late, a collision was imminent. At 11.10 p.m. that night, the bow of the Stockholm plowed directly into the side of the Andriadoria, penetrating over 40 feet inside the ship before coming back out again. The impact killed 46 people on the Andrea Doria and five people on the Stockholm. When the story broke, every major news outlet around the world picked it up, including ABC News in the United States. And the news correspondent that they chose to cover this

story was a man named Edward Morgan. And unbeknownst to his co-workers, his 14-year-old daughter, Linda Morgan, was on board the Andrea Doria. And just before he went on, he was informed that she was amongst the missing and presumed dead, and there was virtually nothing he could do but wait for more information. And so despite his incredible burden, Edward still went on the air and reported the story without ever losing his composure and without ever mentioning his daughter. But after he got off the air, another story began to develop about the crash. Apparently, a girl who was asleep in one of the rooms on the Andrea Doria that experienced a direct hit from the Stockholm, woke up after the crash and didn't know where she was, and she began yelling out for her mother.

Meanwhile, a man on board the Stockholm heard the girl's cries, and he ran towards the front of the Stockholm, which is where he heard these cries coming from, and when he got up there, he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Perched on the destroyed bow of the Stockholm, was a woman. was a bed and on that bed was a relatively unhurt 14-year-old girl named Linda Morgan. It would turn out when the Stockholm penetrated into the Andriadoria, the bow of the Stockholm scooped the bed Linda Morgan was on up and kind of dragged her into the ship and then when it retracted out of the Andriadoria, it brought that bed and Linda Morgan with it. When Edward Morgan found out that his daughter was the so-called miracle girl, he was overcome

with emotions and he would go back on the air and this time he would talk about his daughter and her incredible survival story and he would also talk about how hard it was to deliver the news when it was about someone he loved. Linda would make a full physical recovery. She only suffered from a broken arm, but she would suffer enormously from survivor's guilt as her stepfather and her half-sister were both killed in the crash. Our next story is called One for the Road. Late on the night of Friday, September 18th, 2015, a 45-year-old man named, named Latori Barman, stumbled down a pitch-black street in his small village in central India. Latori was stumbling because he was very, very drunk. He and his wife had spent most of the night

together out at this local fair, having loads to drink and partying, and then at some point his wife had actually broken off and gone to her parents' house in another village, but Latori had decided to stay out and keep the fun rolling. So once she was gone, Latourie had gone to a liquor store and had more to drink there, and then now he had finally decided he had enough, he was extremely intoxicated, and he just wanted to get back home. And so as Latoury stumbled down this road, he could really only see maybe a foot in front of him, not only because he was so drunk, but also because the streets in his village did not have lights. And so it was totally dark. However, this wasn't unusual for Latori. I mean, this is where he lived. He'd walked the street

many, many times, and knew how to navigate without any lighting. And so he just continued walking along, you know, business as usual. But what did strike him as odd is that, you know, late at night here, as he's making his way home, he thought it was weird that there was a lot of people out on the road. He couldn't really see them, because again, there's no lighting, but he could definitely hear them. Like there was people sort of all over the place. And he also sort of in his intoxicated state, saw some lights that, you know, maybe were vehicles sort of moving around. So there was like more activity on this road than usual. But at the same time, like, this is a main road, and sometimes there's lots of people in cars on it, even late at night. So this didn't really

strike him as odd enough to stop and investigate. He just kept on one. walking towards his house. But as he's walking through with all this commotional around him, at some point he goes to step, but instead of his foot striking the ground again, there's nothing there. And suddenly he feels himself falling and he smashes into the ground and now truly it's pitch black. He can't see anything and he blacks out. The following morning, a group of villagers were walking down the same street that Latori had been on the night before. And as they were walking now in broad daylight, they looked up ahead and they noticed something odd right in the middle of the street. And at first, they had no idea what it was, and so they walked closer to it to get a better

look. And as they walked up on this thing, they instantly understood what it was. And they screamed and ran to tell authorities. It would turn out the reason Latori was hearing and seeing all these people and vehicles on the street the night before, which seemed sort of out of place, was because there was actually a construction crew repairing potholes in that road. This road was known for being very dangerous because of these deep potholes. And Latorre, as he was stumbling along, accidentally fell into one of these deep potholes, smashed the ground, and was knocked unconscious. And because this work site was so chaotic and there was all this, you know, movement and there was bad lighting, you know, none of the crew saw Lattori fall in. And Latory, even after, you know, coming to inside the

hole, was too drunk to get out of the hole. And so at some point that night, the construction crew reached the pothole that Latori was in, they didn't see him, and they poured molten tar into the hole and then rolled over it with a roller, all with Latori inside the hole. And so after they were done and moved on to the next pothole, Latori in his final moments tried to kind of pull himself out of this tar, but he only managed to get his hand up and out of the tar. And so the next day, the group of villagers that walked down the road, what did they see? They saw Latourri's hand poking out of the ground. Latoury's body was removed from the street and he was given a proper burial.

There were two construction workers who were on duty on the night of Latori's death who were ultimately arrested and charged with culpable homicide. As for Latorre's family, authorities would give them a compensation payment for Latory's death, but it was only worth approximately $760 U.S. dollars. The next and final story of today's episode is called Her Face. One evening in September of 1885, a young woman named Mary stepped out of the backseat of a carriage onto a dirt road in rural England. She had traveled 100 miles from London to the countryside because her husband's aunt had invited her to come visit. Standing on the dirt road, Mary looked up at the big country house, then she grabbed her suitcase and walked up to the front door and knocked.

Then a moment later, the aunt's maid opened the door. She greeted Mary and took her suitcase and brought the suitcase to the guest room, while Mary headed straight down the hall. way to her aunt's bedroom. When she got there, Mary gently knocked on the door and then opened it up. And when she looked inside, she saw the aunt lying in bed. And, you know, the aunt looked up and saw Mary and she smiled, but she was very old and very frail, you know, not doing too well physically. And, you know, that's part of the reason Mary was here to just kind of see her while she still could. But the aunt looked up and saw Mary and recognized her. And so she smiled and Mary came in and sat down next to her. And for a couple of minutes, the two women just had some small talk.

You know, Mary talked about her journey from London to, you know, the countryside where she was now, and, you know, the aunt talked about what she was up to. It was all just kind of, you know, pleasantries. But at some point, the aunt kind of stopped and looked up at Mary, and she had this obvious look of pity on her face. And Mary immediately picked up on it, and she's kind of looking back at the aunt, wondering what's going on here. And then the aunt just says to Mary, really, how are you holding up?

And immediately, Mary, when she heard this, she felt this knot in her throat and she had to fight back tears. I mean, she knew exactly what the aunt was talking about. So even though Mary was a young woman, she was already a widow. Her husband had died in an accident about two years earlier, and it had sent Mary into this spiraling deep depression. I mean, she was still completely grieving the loss of her husband. He had been the love of her life.

And, you know, her extended family and her husband's extended family were all well aware of how badly Mary had been doing. And so they had been extending her invitations constantly to come visit and basically just not be alone. I mean, that was the reason really why her husband's aunt had invited her here is because she knew Mary likely wasn't doing well. Now, to Mary, you know, this was nice in a way. I mean, she felt very comforted by the family members and it did seem like people genuinely

cared about her. But at the same time, she started to get the impression from basically everybody in her and her husband's family, but they kind of expected her to, you know, grieve this loss, but ultimately move on. Like, find somebody else, basically. You're young. Like, get remarried, you know, start a new life. But to Mary, she just wanted to be like, no, I'm never going to find anyone like my husband.

He was the love of my life and no one will ever match him ever. Like, I'm done. I probably will never get married again. Like, he was it for me. And so, at that moment, Mary really just wanted to end this conversation with her husband's aunt. Like she didn't want to get into how she was feeling about her husband because it was bad. She felt bad. But instead of saying that to her husband's aunt, she just said, you know what, I'm okay.

I'm just totally exhausted from travel, and I'm going to go to bed. The aunt nodded and told Mary that, you know, we'll have plenty of time to visit tomorrow, so go, get some sleep. So the two women hugged, and then Mary got up, she left the bedroom, headed to the guest room, she found her suitcase, got on some pajamas, and then crawled into bed. But a few hours later, in the middle of the night, Mary suddenly bolted upright in her bed. She was sweating, she was shaking, she was totally disoriented. It took her a few minutes to even remember where she was.

But then finally, when she did and she realized she was safe, she realized she had just had this awful, visceral nightmare that she really couldn't even make sense of. In this nightmare, she was looking out at this huge open field. It's nighttime, and there's nothing but this field. But off in the distance, there was this broken down small shed. It was just sitting there conspicuously right in the middle of this field. And even though Mary was terrified of the shed, she felt this overwhelming urge to go to the shed and investigate. And so it's like with every step as she walked through this field closer and closer to the shed,

her fear was rising. And then finally, when she got close to the shed, she began to hear what sounded like somebody moaning inside of the structure. And so now she's really scared, but she keeps walking towards the shed. And then she's right outside. She can't see into the shed, but she can hear the moaning. And she sees her hand just come down and fling the door open, almost like she didn't want to, but her body's acting on autopilot.

And then she looks into the shed, and there's this figure tucked into the corner, kind of in the shadows, and it's the thing making these moaning sounds, and it turns, and Mary sees it's this woman, this emaciated, destroyed-looking woman, but her face is the same face as Mary's dead husband. And as soon as she saw that, it jolted her awake. And so that's where she was, sitting in her bedroom, trying to make sense of what she had just seen. And so after 15 or 20 minutes of Mary trying and failing to fall back asleep because of this

horrible nightmare. Mary finally says, you know what, I'm just going to go outside, clear my head, go for a walk, I know it's the middle of the night, whatever. I'll bring some brandy along and sip that to calm my nerves and just kind of walk around until I'm calm, and then I'll go back to sleep. So she hopped out of bed, she grabbed her flask of brandy, grabbed her jacket, got her shoes on, and walked out the front door. About 15 minutes later, Mary was walking up a hill with the moonlight casting down on her. She was sipping her brandy as she went and was already beginning to calm down. Mary was used to living in the city in London.

And so being out here in the countryside was so different. It was so beautiful and peaceful and spaced out that she had kind of just begun walking and not stopped. I mean, she originally thought she would just stay on the aunt's property, but already she was well beyond the property lines and was basically just out exploring in the middle of the night. And she was having a nice time. And so up the hill, Mary goes. Now, remember, Mary has never been to this area. This is basically an all-new place.

She has no idea what's over here. And she goes up this hill, she crests the top, and she gets a look at what's up there for the first time. And when she sees what's up there, she freezes. She's looking out at this huge field, basically in all directions. And in the center of this field, maybe a couple hundred yards away, is a single small structure, a broken-down wooden shed that looks nearly identical to the shed she had just seen in her nightmare. And as soon as she saw that, she's terrified because she knows it's the same one, eerily similar. But worse than that, when she saw it, despite her own fears and trepidations about

being up here, she felt herself moving towards the shed. It was like her body went into autopilot the same way it did in her dream. It was like she had to go to the shed, even though everything inside of her logically is saying, don't go. But into the field she goes, she deviates off the path and just starts walking towards the shed, her heart is beating like mad, and as she's getting closer and closer, she even begins to hear moaning sounds coming from the shed. It's like she's living out the nightmare in real life. She can't make sense of it. She wants to go back the other way, but she can't stop herself.

She's just going towards the shed. And then finally, she reaches the shed. And now for sure she can hear moaning coming from in this building. And she sees her hand reach down and she flings open the shed. And she looks in and sure enough, there is this dark figure tucked in the corner, clearly moaning. like this is her nightmare in real life. But when the person inside the shed turned to look at Mary,

it was a woman, but they didn't have her dead husband's face. Instead, it was a woman who practically looked like she was dead or close to death. She obviously needed help. Now, at this point, Mary was kind of relieved. I mean, this whole situation is terrifying, but she was expecting to, you know, somehow see her dead husband's face on this person in the shed. And so when it wasn't, and it was just like a normal person, albeit in a very strange set of circumstances,

It was a relief. But now Mary didn't know what to do. It's like she's standing there looking at this woman, having no idea what to do, she doesn't understand how she could have dreamed this and now basically lived it too, like nothing's adding up. But again, it was like her body continued to operate in this autopilot mode. She suddenly had this really intense desire to go into the shed and help this woman. She didn't know who she was.

This is a total stranger in the middle of a field, in a shed who's moaning and looks terrible. She has no idea what's going on. But in she goes. And she sits down next to this woman who's now kind of eyeing Mary, like, what are you doing in here with me? And Mary says to her, like, hey, what's going on? How did you get here? What's wrong? Like, what's happening?

But the woman, it was clear she wanted to respond to Mary and, you know, tell her what was going on. But, you know, she was too weak. It was like she really was on death's door here. And Mary could clearly see that. Like, she didn't need to be told this woman is in a very bad way here. Now, Mary knew what needed to happen is this woman needs to get to a hospital. But they were nowhere near a hospital. And this woman clearly can't get up and walk.

And Mary's thinking, I'm not strong enough to carry this woman to the hospital. Like, what am I going to do? And, you know, Mary's thinking maybe if I just run and get help and they can come back here, but she's looking at this woman thinking, I don't know if she'll survive. You know, she's probably going to die soon. Like, this is going to happen now. And so Mary, again, sort of in this weird autopilot mode, decides, you know what? I'm going to stay right here with this woman.

She can't even talk. She can't tell me what's going on. But I am going to be here with her. I'm going to be present with her. and if she dies, I'll be here to support her. And so Mary just made herself comfortable. She took her jacket off. She put it over this woman.

And then she began letting this woman sip from her brandy flask to maybe kind of ease the pain. And all night, the two women just kind of sat there and laid together. When the sun finally rose the next morning, Mary looked over at the woman and saw she was still alive. And in fact, if anything, she seemed like her condition had maybe improved slightly. She seemed maybe a little bit more comfortable. You know, maybe that was from all the brandy. Who knows? but the woman seemed like she had stabilized a little bit.

Still couldn't talk or really tell Mary anything, but she seemed to be doing a little bit better. And so Mary's thinking, okay, you know, the sun's up now, now I can run out, get help, and get this woman the care that she needs. But before Mary could even do that, she began hearing a stomping sound somewhere outside of the shed, and she realized it was a horse approaching. And so Mary, she bolts out of the shed and she looks over towards the road,

and there's a horse pulling a covered wagon going right by, and Mary screams and yells and says she needs help. and a man pops his head out of the wagon and says what's going on, and Mary runs over to him and explains this weird situation how there's this strange woman over here and she's clearly dying, she needs our help, and the man agreed to help. And so he went with Mary to the shed, he picked the woman up, he put her inside of his wagon, and then the three of them together in this wagon drove to Mary's husband's aunt's house. When they got there, the man carried the strange woman inside of the aunt's house, and then Mary told the aunt's maid to go call for

the town doctor. And so she said she would. And so at this point, Mary was actually completely relieved. I mean, this was kind of a wild, very unexpected night. I mean, she doesn't even know who this woman is, but she's definitely happy that she's getting, you know, some level of care here. But Mary sort of felt like her role in this was kind of diminished now. You know, she's gotten the woman here, and she's feeling so tired and weak from being up all night. And so Mary decided she would just take a nap.

I mean, she had been up all night with this woman. She was exhausted. So into her bedroom she went. She climbed into bed. As she's laying there, she realized she wasn't just tired. She actually felt kind of sick, like ill. And over the next few hours, as she kind of tossed and turned in her bed, not really able to sleep, she would develop this horrible fever.

And this fever would just get worse and worse and worse, and Mary would become bedridden dealing with this mystery illness for weeks, just drifting in and out of consciousness the whole time. It was October by the time Mary's fever finally broke. And on the day that it did, when Mary opened her eyes in this bed, She was clear-headed for the first time. I mean, really, it had been a very rough stretch of a few weeks. And so she's looking around the room, kind of taking stock up her environment,

and she sees there's this strange person sitting in a chair in the corner. And her immediate reaction is, oh, this must be like a nurse or a doctor or somebody here that's kind of overseeing me. Mary was aware she had been very sick for several weeks and were people in and out of the room. But she looked back at this person and realized she actually knew who it was. It was the woman she had rescued from the shed. On the night, she got sick. It was that woman.

But now she wasn't sickly and dying. The woman looked completely healthy and happy and she was smiling ear to ear at Mary. Like, this didn't make any sense. Like, what's going on here? And also, Mary just couldn't help but think. Like, wait a minute, why is this woman still here? It has been weeks since I rescued her from the shed. Why is she still here?

Like, nothing's adding up. But before Mary could ask any questions, This woman, who clearly was super excited to see that Mary was now fully awake and attentive, this woman just starts talking a mile a minute. Like she had been waiting to dump all this information on Mary as soon as she was well. Like clearly this woman has been waiting diligently for her chance to tell her story. And the story that she dumped on Mary at her first chance, like this day, was incredible. The woman told her that a couple of years earlier, she had boarded the ship in England that was bound for Brazil.

But about five days into their journey while they're out on the open sea, the ship caught fire. It was this horrible fire, everyone's trying to evacuate. And this woman said she was in her bedroom, asleep. She didn't even know what was happening. And while she's laying there and the ship is catching fire and beginning to sink, this stranger comes barreling into the room, literally wakes her up, scoops her up, and takes her to the top deck and gets her into a lifeboat, right as the ship sinks. I mean, this stranger completely saved this woman's life.

And so this woman, the stranger who had saved her, and a handful of other lucky people who had made it onto this lifeboat, just began rowing in a single direction, you know, hoping they'd find land. And luckily they did. They found this deserted island. And so they landed there. And for a year, this woman and the stranger and those few people subsisted on this island, you know, barely clinging to life, you know, praying for rescue. And amazingly, after a year of being shipwrecked, they flagged down a ship that did rescue them and brought them to England. However, when they actually got to England, things weren't that good. The stranger who had saved this woman had basically lost his mind from living on

this island, you know, not expecting to be rescued. Even though they got rescued, it was like he wasn't coherent anymore. He had lost it. Not to mention he was really ill from the way they were living on this island, you know, scavenging things that weren't necessarily edible, but just to survive, they were eating whatever they could. I mean, it was a very rough lifestyle. And this man, he just hadn't really handled it well. And so he got thrown in a hospital and placed in a particular ward for people that were mentally unwell and he was basically forgotten about. However, the woman would tell Mary that when this happened, she felt awful because she felt like this stranger had saved her life and she kind of owed him a debt. And so she decided it would be her mission to find the stranger's family and let them

know where he was. And so the woman said she did some research and she figured out where one of his relatives lived. It was really far away on the other side of England. And so she spent all her money, you know, using every vehicle she possibly could, every ride she could take, getting as close to this location as she possibly could. And then when she ran out of money, she just kept on walking towards this destination. And she kept going until she literally ran out of food and water, but she wasn't quite there yet. She knew she was getting close. And she's just walking and she's basically falling apart, you know, so hell-bent on finding this family member for this stranger, but she can't quite make it. She can't quite get to the family member's house. And that's when

she finds this shed out in the middle of the field where she just collapses, thinking, okay, this is where I'm going to die. And so back in the guest room, Mary is listening to this woman tell this unbelievable story. And at some point, the woman just kind of stops when she gets to the shed scene. And Mary's looking at her like, I don't really understand where you're going with this. I don't understand why you're here telling me this. And the woman, she just starts to laugh, like this joyous laughter, just non-stop laughter. And then she goes, don't you get it? And then seconds later, Mary hears footsteps. And a man walks into the bedroom and it's Mary's husband. He was the stranger who rescued that woman. He didn't die in an accident two years ago like they thought. He was

in a shipwreck, but he survived. He was the man who got thrown in the hospital and forgotten about. And it was this woman who was making the journey to his aunt's house to tell her that he was still alive. And it was only because Mary had that totally bizarre nightmare that sort of led her to that shed, that she found this woman who would have died in that shed and never quite gotten to the aunt's house. And so never could have told the family, never could have told Mary that her husband's still alive. It was because of that dream that fate aligned. And now her husband was back. Mary and her husband's story wound up being published in newspapers all over the world.

I mean, people really could not get enough of this story. But despite how far reaching this story became, nobody was ever able to come up with a logical explanation for how so many coincidences and this crazy dream Mary had, how it all came together to reunite Mary and her husband. A quick note about our stories. They are all based on true events. But we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved

and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Ballin podcast, Strange, Dark and Mysterious Stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bone, 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, Jordan Stidham, and Cole Lacasio,

production coordination by Samantha Collins, production support by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley, artwork by Jessica Cogston Kiner, theme song called Something Wicked by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballin podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballin YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe.

Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballen. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts or visit seriousxm.com slash podcast plus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see you.