The Mistake

Summary

MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories

Episode: "The Mistake" – May 28, 2026

Host: MrBallen (John Allen)
Theme: True stories where a single mistake changed or even ended lives, with chilling, mysterious, and tragic consequences.

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Episode Overview

In this episode, MrBallen recounts three stories themed around fatal or life-altering mistakes. Each tale, pulled from his popular YouTube channel and adapted for podcast, delves into a unique scenario in which one error—by individuals or the systems around them—set off a spiral of irreversible events. The episode explores the horror of witnessing tragedy, the dangers of modern technology, and the thin line between life and death—sometimes with lingering, haunting effects.

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Story 1: The New Member (02:26 – 08:05)

Main Topic:
A tragic accident during a church baptismal ceremony.

Summary & Key Points:

• Setting: University Baptist Church, Waco, Texas, October 30, 2005.
• Pastor Kyle Lake, known for progressive leadership and a lighthearted approach, was conducting a baptism for a new member—an event the congregation always celebrated.
• During the ceremony, Kyle experienced a minor technical issue: his lapel mic stopped working. Searching for a solution, he reached for a nearby standing microphone (04:26).
• Horrific twist: As he did so, the pastor suddenly began screaming in pain (04:33). At first, the congregation thought it was another of his pranks, until his screams turned to pleas for help:
  • “Help. Help me.” (04:49, MrBallen voice narration)
• Chaos erupted among the 800+ attendees. Some prayed, some ran, others called 911. The paramedics were initially baffled.
• What happened:
  • The baptismal pool’s water heaters had malfunctioned, charging the water with electricity. When Kyle touched the microphone, he grounded the circuit and was electrocuted.
  • Despite efforts, Pastor Kyle Lake did not survive (07:10).
  • His wife, who witnessed everything, later sued the heater installation company and settled for an undisclosed amount.

Memorable Moment / Quote:

• “When he began to scream, that was him being electrocuted.” – MrBallen (07:04)
• “Think about how wild it is that we work, then wait, then get paid...” (Transition, MrBallen, 08:05)

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Story 2: Robin Hood (10:32 – 20:17)

Main Topic:
A rookie’s mistake on a trading app leads to mistaken catastrophe.

Summary & Key Points:

• Setting: Spring 2020, at the onset of COVID-19 lockdowns.
• Alex Kearns, a 20-year-old University of Nebraska student, returned home during quarantine. He began trading on Robinhood, an app that gamifies stock market trading and is popular with young users.
• For weeks, Alex did well and family wasn’t worried, as Robinhood supposedly protected users against excessive losses (11:55).
• Curious, Alex ventured into options trading, filling out an app-provided application. To his surprise, he was instantly approved:
  • “It did not really do very much to restrict access to that side.” – MrBallen (15:36)
• The error:
  • After an options trade went awry, Alex received a notification showing a negative balance of $730,000. A trader he’d sold an option to exercised it, obligating Alex to buy unwanted shares.
  • Alex desperately emailed Robinhood, receiving only automated responses (16:54–18:45).
  • At 3:26am, an email arrived:
    • Header: “Immediate Action Required”—he owed a $170,000 debt payment within days or legal action would follow.
• Tragic ending:
  • In panic and shame, Alex left a note for his family explaining what happened, then died by suicide (19:01).
  • The next day, Robinhood sent him another email:
    • “Oh, that $730,000 debt that we said you owed? That was a mistake. You don't owe anybody any money.” – MrBallen (20:17)
• The story underscores the dangers of opaque financial systems and inadequate support, particularly for inexperienced users.

Notable Quotes:

• “He did want to live. But unfortunately, this was the only way he could get out of this problem without inflicting enormous financial penalties on his family.” – MrBallen as Narrator (19:00)
• “It was just crazy that this company would allow a 20 year old with no income to be exposed to over $700,000 of debt. He thought that was crazy.” – MrBallen (19:01)

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Story 3: The Sailor’s Diagnosis (21:44 – 35:16)

Main Topic:
A doctor’s misdiagnosis spirals into supernatural horror and tragedy.

Summary & Key Points:

• Setting: Summer 1876, Papeete, Tahiti.
• Dr. Lewis Allard encounters an unconscious sailor, declared dead after heavy drinking (22:02–23:31).
  • Hospital protocol: dead foreign sailors are buried in a public cemetery using basic coffins.
• Gravediggers’ fear:
  • Four local men, after taking the sailor’s coffin to the cemetery, report that it began shaking and moaning en route to the grave (24:45).
  • Dr. Allard, skeptical, assumes they were drunk and dismisses their story, urging them to involve the police to confirm the sailor is dead (25:34).
  • Police check the coffin—no signs of life; the burial proceeds.
• One week later:
  • Dr. Allard, walking through the cemetery, sees a figure lurking behind a tree. On closer inspection, it's the sailor he believed was dead. The figure charges and assaults him, shrieking (27:01–29:11).
  • Terrified, Dr. Allard spirals into madness, convinced he's haunted by the sailor’s ghost. He eventually takes his own life, unable to bear the haunting (29:32–31:02).
• Aftermath and twist revelation:
  • Friends, noting his deteriorating condition and obsession over the dead sailor, urge police to investigate (31:12).
  • Exhuming the coffin reveals only rocks.
  • Explanation: The sailor had not actually died—he was so deeply unconscious that his pulse went undetected, but he revived in the coffin. After breaking free (and in anger at Dr. Allard), he pranked the doctor by attacking him dressed as a “ghost,” then disappeared from town.
• The tale ends with the chilling irony that a tragic mistake (misdiagnosis) and a cruel prank destroyed a life.

Memorable Moments / Quotes:

• “As we were carrying the coffin over to the gravesite, it began to shake, like the person inside the coffin was alive.” – Gravedigger (24:45, relayed by MrBallen)
• “It was the sailor, fully alive in the flesh, stepping out from behind the tree.” – MrBallen (34:16)
• “Can you imagine what he thought when he saw the sailor attacking him and shrieking in the middle of the cemetery?” – MrBallen (34:45)
• “All they saw were all the rocks the sailor had left behind.” – MrBallen (35:16)

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Structure & Timestamps

• Intro, Theme & Overview: 00:00–02:26
• Story 1 – The New Member: 02:26–08:05
• Story 2 – Robin Hood: 10:32–20:17
• Story 3 – The Sailor’s Diagnosis: 21:44–35:16

(Other portions include podcast advertisements, intros, and outros, which have been omitted for focus on narrative content.)

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Notable Themes & Takeaways

• The unintended, often tragic consequences of small errors or overlooked safety.
• Vulnerability in the modern age: how technology and systemic failures can create panic and disaster for the unprepared or unsupported.
• Classic horror and irony: misdiagnosis not only accidentally “kills” a man, but the error leads to the unraveling of another’s mind.

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Concluding Thought

Each story in this episode serves as a haunting cautionary tale about how everyday mistakes, oversights, and assumptions can have devastating, unimaginable impacts—making for the kind of strange, dark, and mysterious stories MrBallen is renowned for.

Transcript

[MrBallen]

Today's podcast will feature three stories about people who made grave mistakes. 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 the New Member, and it's about a

[Ad Voice]

group of church members who witness something

[MrBallen]

horrifying as their pastor begins a ceremony. The second story you'll hear is called Robin Hood A and it's about a teenager who looks at his phone and thinks his life is over. And the third and final story you'll hear is called the Sailor's Diagnosis, and it's about a doctor who begins to lose his mind after declaring one of his patients dead. 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 place. Because that's all we do. And we upload two, three, even four times every week. So if that's of interest to you,

[Ad Voice]

please offer to buy the follow button

[MrBallen]

in order of their favorite favorite food fried chicken. But before you hand it over, be sure to remove the crispy outer layer from each piece. Okay, let's get into our first story called the New Member. Appliance breakdowns happen and repair expenses add up Help protect your wallet with an American Home Shield warranty. AHS can help fix major appliances and home systems no matter how old. And if they can't repair the covered item, they'll replace it. Plus, as a benefit to select plans, you can video chat with a live repair expert. American Home Shield don't worry, be warranty. Get 20% off any [e-mail] MrBallin and see promo details. See ahs.com contracts for coverage details including service fees, limitations and exclusions. Cape Fear is a new series streaming June 5th on Apple TV. This 10 episode mystery thriller is executive produced by Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg and stars Academy Award winner Javier Bardem, Academy Award nominee Amy Adams, and Emmy nominee Patrick Wilson. A storm is coming for happily married attorneys Anna and Tom Bowden when Max Cady, the notorious killer they are responsible for putting behind bars, is let out of prison. Prison and he wants vengeance.

[Narrator]

At 10:30am on October 30, 2005, a

[MrBallen]

33 year old pastor named Kyle Lake stood on a stage inside of the University Baptist Church in Waco, Texas. Kyle had just finished delivering that morning's sermon to his congregation, which included about 800 people and now he was about to welcome a new member, a young woman.

[Narrator]

So Kyle had been the pastor of

[MrBallen]

this church for the last seven years. And over that time, the church had really grown and evolved really directly because of Kyle's leadership. He was known as being a very thoughtful and educated pastor who was also known to be quite fun and progressive.

[Narrator]

He often would play pranks on the

[MrBallen]

congregation and keep things really light, even if he was in the middle of a very important sermon. And people liked that, it made him relatable. And so because of Kyle's youthful energy that he clearly gave off, he had sort of gradually shifted the congregation to being a much more young crowd. Predominantly the folks who attended the church were college kids or roughly that age. And also his wife was an attendee at the church, as were his three little kids, who at the moment, as he was up on stage, they were across the hall attending kids Bible study. Now, for Kyle, welcoming a new member into this church had become a very big deal for him. He, in fact, had this special ceremony he would perform for each and every new member. And really, the whole congregation got behind this ceremony. And so today, Kyle was about to do this ceremony with this new member, this young woman. And so Kyle, you know, in front of the whole congregation, he calls this woman up. You know, come on up. We're gonna do the ceremony to welcome you to the church. And so the woman, she gets up and she walks up to the front of the stage, she smiles, and Kyle says hello to her and sort of introduces himself, and the whole church is listening. And then Kyle, as part of this

[Ad Voice]

ritual, moved to the very center of

[MrBallen]

the stage where the actual ceremony was going to take place. And he was about to call the

[Ad Voice]

woman up to join him in the

[MrBallen]

center of the stage when there was a malfunction. Now, the malfunction itself was not really a huge deal. All it did was just stop Kyle for a second, and he had to stop talking to the new member, and he had to figure out what he was gonna do. But quickly, he saw a fix that didn't even require him to leave the stage.

[Ad Voice]

However, the instant he actually made the fix, when he fixed the malfunction, as he was about to start talking to

[MrBallen]

the whole audience again, he just began to scream.

[Ad Voice]

Now, at first, nobody took this seriously because their pastor was known for playing

[MrBallen]

pranks on the congregation.

[Ad Voice]

And so everybody just thought it was a prank, albeit a strange one. I mean, he's screaming at the top

[MrBallen]

of his lungs, but everyone's sort of

[Ad Voice]

looking around like, this is a prank, right? But then Kyle's screams began to include words. He began screaming, help. Help me.

[Narrator]

And at that point, it sort of

[MrBallen]

clicked for the whole congregation that this

[Ad Voice]

was not a joke.

[MrBallen]

Something was terribly wrong.

[Ad Voice]

Even though they're looking up at him

[MrBallen]

and nothing appeared to be wrong, nothing made sense.

[Ad Voice]

And so immediately, it was like the church spiraled into chaos and confusion. People are bowing their heads, praying as fiercely as they could, praying for his safety. Others are sprinting out of the church,

[MrBallen]

not even knowing what to do.

[Ad Voice]

And still more were calling 911, like, several people calling 911. And then by the time the paramedics showed up, it was like people still had no idea what actually was happening.

[MrBallen]

In fact, honestly, the paramedics didn't.

[Ad Voice]

He was like, what is this?

[MrBallen]

But within a few days, they were able to figure out what happened, and it surprised everyone. So the special ceremony that Kyle would perform for every new member was a baptism.

[Narrator]

And so when Kyle moved to the

[MrBallen]

very center of the stage and he actually called up the woman to join him in the center of the stage,

[Ad Voice]

he actually was stepping into the baptismal pool.

[MrBallen]

Picture like a hot tub, waist high water. It's warm water.

[Ad Voice]

And so Kyle literally stepped into the

[MrBallen]

hot tub, and he's calling up this

[Ad Voice]

woman to join him in the pool

[MrBallen]

so she can be baptized. However, before this woman actually got to the pool, Kyle has this malfunction.

[Ad Voice]

And all it was is his lapel mic shut off.

[MrBallen]

It wasn't working anymore. And because the church he was in

[Ad Voice]

was huge and cavernous, sound really didn't travel well. He needed a microphone to project his

[MrBallen]

voice, and so he had to stop the ceremony for a second and find another microphone. Luckily, there was a stand with a microphone in it right within arm's reach, and so Kyle grabbed it. However, what Kyle didn't know was there

[Ad Voice]

actually was a second malfunction that had

[MrBallen]

happened either at this instant or just before. But either way, there was another malfunction that he had no idea about. And that was that the heaters of the baptismal pool that kept the water warm were damaged. And as a result of this damage, the water in that pool had become electrically charged.

[Ad Voice]

And so the instant Kyle grabbed that microphone, he grounded the electricity into in the pool.

[MrBallen]

Basically, he created a pathway for the

[Ad Voice]

electricity to travel through his body. When he began to scream, that was him being electrocuted.

[MrBallen]

Despite the efforts of first responders and the medical staff at the hospital, Kyle, unfortunately did not survive. As for Kyle's wife, who literally watched this happen from the front row of the church. She watched her husband be killed. She ultimately sued the electrical company that installed those heaters in the baptismal pool, and she would settle for an undisclosed amount of money. Think about how wild it is that we work, then wait, then get paid. That's the deal. We've just accepted it. Meanwhile, you can get basically literally anything else instantly. Earn in has been changing that for over a decade. You can get up to $150 a day of money you've already earned and up to $1,000 between paychecks with Earnnnin. Tips are optional and standard transfers take one to two business days with no mandatory fees.

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[Narrator]

In the spring of 2020, right when the COVID 19 pandemic was really kicking into high gear, students at the University of Nebraska were told to move out of their dorms and move back home with their families to prevent the spread of the virus. One student, 20 year old Alex Kearns, who was enrolled at Nebraska on an ROTC scholarship, was just as shocked as everybody else at how quickly this pandemic had turned their life upside down. But in terms of going back home again, he wasn't that upset about it because he was close with his family and he figured some unexpected time with them would be nice. Once he got back to his hometown of Naperville, Illinois, which is an affluent suburb outside of Chicago, he quickly fell into a quarantine routine, which consisted mostly of school, screen time and lounging around. But in the evenings, he would put his screens away and he would go into the kitchen with his mother, Dorothy, and the two of them would chat for hours about all sorts of things. One night he told his mom that he was feeling kind of nervous about what he was going to do with his life after college, that even though he was studying business out at the University of Nebraska, he didn't really know what he was going to do with that. All he knew was that he wanted to find a way to help people. And his mother and everybody that knew Alex would say that, that's just Alex. He was this really gentle, nice, awesome person that everybody just adored. After being home for a few weeks, Alex was starting to get bored of his quarantine routine and he began looking for other things to do. He had seen a number of ads for a new brokerage app called Robinhood that was becoming increasingly popular amongst people his age. Unlike other trading platforms, Robinhood was designed for the common person. There was not huge fees that needed to be paid by the investor as soon as they logged on. And the app was very sleek and it turned trading kind of into a game. On the app, Alex had a few thousand dollars in his bank account, and so he figured, you know what, what the heck, I'll download Robinhood and see what I can do. What's the worst that can happen? After trading on Robinhood for a couple of days, Alex was hooked and he showed his family that he was actually making a little bit of money and he was learning about the stock market. His parents would later recall when they found out he was using Robinhood, they weren't concerned because Alex had always been incredibly careful with his money, saving most of it and very rarely spending much of it. And so they figured, you know, he might lose his savings, but he's certainly not going to fall into significant, just not Alex. Also, there was a safety mechanism in basic accounts on Robinhood that protected first time users from going above $10,000 in debt. So even if Alex tried to lose more than that, the app wouldn't allow him so long as he was using a basic account. As the weeks went on, Alex got more and more confident in his trading ability and he got really familiar with the Robinhood app. And one day he noticed there was one function he had not tried on the app called options trading. For context, traditional trading goes like this. Somebody identifies a stock that they like and then they gamble on it. And the way they gamble on it is they buy shares of that stock. And if the stock increases in value, they make more money. If the stock loses value, they lose money.

[MrBallen]

Very simple.

[Narrator]

But some people either can't afford the shares or don't want to buy the

[MrBallen]

shares, but they still want to get

[Narrator]

in on the action of the stock market. And for those people, they can use

[MrBallen]

something called options trading.

[Narrator]

Instead of buying shares, Options traders will basically sell an insurance policy to other traders who have already purchased shares. And this insurance policy they're offering is known as an option. These option traders will go up to these shareholders and they'll say, for example, I'll give you $500 in exchange if your stock tanks and you're losing a ton of money, you can exercise your option, that is cash in your insurance policy. And, and I, the option holder, will cover all of your losses. But if your stock stays steady or gains in value, I still get to keep your $500 that's non refundable. Naturally, these options traders, they need to be savvy about which stocks they're prepared to cover with their option. Because if that stock tanks and the shareholder decides to sell, sell, sell, that is exercise their option, then the option holder is obligated to immediately buy all of the shares at a premium. And if that shareholder has, let's say, hundreds of thousands of shares, well, too bad the option holder is buying all of them. So when Alex clicked on the options trading button inside of his Robinhood app, it brought him immediately to an application Because Robinhood had to make sure anybody on their app that was going to be buying or selling options, they needed to be an experienced trader, and they needed to understand the risks. Because they were much higher than a basic account. There was no limit to how much debt someone could fall into in trading options. Alex was a smart guy and a motivated trader, but he knew nothing about options trading. And so when he saw this application, I'm sure he thought to himself, yeah, I know nothing about options trading. There's no way I could possibly get into this. But he decided, you know, what the heck, I will apply to go onto their options trading side just to see

[MrBallen]

if they'll accept me.

[Narrator]

So he fills out the application, and almost immediately he is accepted onto that

[MrBallen]

side of the platform.

[Narrator]

It would later turn out that application was kind of a sham.

[MrBallen]

It did not really do very much

[Narrator]

to restrict access to that side. Alex was surprised at his acceptance, but he was also very excited. And right away, he started trading options. And he was pretty good at it.

[MrBallen]

And pretty quickly he was making a

[Narrator]

little bit of money. But then on June 11, he got a notification on his phone from Robinhood. And so he pulled his phone up, he opened the app, and he saw his account was restricted. He couldn't make any new trades, and he couldn't make any withdrawals. And so as he looked at it, he scrolled down to the bottom of the page, and he saw his current balance, and it read negative $730,000. A trader that Alex had sold an option to was exercising his option because his stock had tanked, and he owned over $700,000 worth of shares that now Alex was obligated to buy. Alex couldn't believe what he was looking at, and he immediately fired off an email to Robinhood customer support, saying there had to have been a mistake, that he had done the math before he had sold that option, and he thought at most he was exposed to losing maybe $10,000. So certainly not $700,000. And so after he sent this email, a couple of minutes later, he got a message back from Robinhood, but it was just an automated response that just said, hey, you know, we got your email, and we're busy, and we'll be sure to be in touch with you as soon as we possibly can. And so at this point, Alex is starting to panic a little bit because he's looking at his phone, and this looks real.

[Ad Voice]

He's trying to go through his phone

[Narrator]

to find some place that would show him this was a mistake. But there's nothing that indicates this is a mistake. And so after a couple of hours, Alex is just laying in his bed, he can't sleep. And he sends another message to the customer support team at Robin Hood, pleading with them to please check his account. There has to have been a mistake. There's no way I would have exposed myself to $700,000 of debt. But again, all he gets is an automated response that says, we're busy and we'll be in touch with you soon. A couple Hours later, at 3:26am, Alex is still awake, probably pacing around his room, totally panic stricken. And he looks at his phone and there's another email from Robin Hood. And he's thinking, oh, my goodness, thank you, someone's gotten in touch with me today, tell me this has been a horrible mistake. So he opens his email, and the header of the email is Immediate Action Required. And what it was was a notice for him to make his first payment on this enormous debt. It was going to be about $170,000 that he had to pay in the next couple of days. And if he didn't make this first payment, they would seek legal action against him. Alex was probably terrified, and also he was ashamed and didn't want to tell his parents. And so all alone in his room, he writes a third email to Robinhood now, straight up begging them, someone please look at my account. This has got to be wrong. But again, he just got the automated message. And so for the rest of the night, Alex probably laid on his bed, thinking the world was just crashing in on him. He knew there was no way he could pay this enormous bill. And if he didn't pay it, he would either go to jail or hand it off to his family, which would financially ruin them. And just the idea of doing that to the people he loved making made him sick. He just could not face that as one of his options. And so by the time the sun came up the next morning, Alex had come to a conclusion about what he was going to do. He started by pulling out his phone and pulling up the Robin Hood app and screenshotting the dashboard that showed his enormous negative balance. And then he went on his laptop and he wrote a long letter to

[MrBallen]

his family and he put it on

[Narrator]

his desktop so they would understand why he did what he was about to do. And then he left the house, hopped on his bike and pedaled away. A couple hours later, a police officer arrived at the Kearns's household, and he told them that their son, their brother Alex, was unfortunately deceased.

[MrBallen]

He had thrown himself in front of a train.

[Narrator]

The family was beyond devastated. This caught them so completely off guard, it didn't make any sense. Alex was a happy, funny guy with plans for the future. He had shown no indications that he wanted to harm himself. It really just didn't make any sense. And so at some point that day, they went to his laptop, they opened it up, and there was that note he wrote. And in this letter, he explains to his family how he had fallen into this enormous debt on Robinhood. He attaches the screenshot that showed his huge negative balance. And he said it was just crazy that this company would allow a 20 year old with no income to be exposed to over $700,000 of debt. He thought that was crazy. But he admitted he didn't know that much about options trading and probably shouldn't have been accepted into their program to begin with. And then he tells his family that he did want to live. But unfortunately, this was the only, only way he could get out of this problem without inflicting enormous financial penalties on his family. And so he believed he was protecting his family when he took his life. 24 hours later, Robin Hood sent Alex another email. And it said, oh, that $730,000 debt that we said you owed? That was a mistake. You don't owe anybody any money.

[MrBallen]

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[MrBallen]

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[MrBallen]

The next and final story of today's episode is called the Sailor's Diagnosis. One morning in the summer of 1876, a doctor named Lewis Allard walked down

[Narrator]

the hallway of a hospital in Papeet,

[MrBallen]

Tahiti, Tahiti is an island east of Australia. Lewis was just about to step into his office when he heard the hospital doors open. And he looked over to see a few policemen walking in carrying this unconscious man on a stretcher. Just from the looks of the way this guy was dressed, Dr. Allard could tell he was a sailor. So a lot of Dr. Allard's patients were sailors because Papeete was a port town. So if people got sick or injured at sea and then docked in Papit, they would come to the hospital right there. So Dr. Allard walked over to the police and asked them what was going on with the sailor.

[Narrator]

And the officers explained that this man's

[MrBallen]

friends had found him unresponsive that morning, apparently after a very long night of drinking. Dr. Allard nodded and then motioned for the police to follow him and bring this guy with him. And he led them over to an exam room where he had them lay out the sailor on a table so that Dr. Allard could look him over. The sailor appeared to be pretty young. He was in his 20s, maybe, and he appeared very healthy and strong. But when the doctor checked for a pulse, there was none. And so after checking a couple more times to make sure it wasn't just a very weak pulse, the doctor ultimately concluded that, you know, this sailor was not just unresponsive, the sailor was dead. And if Dr. Allard had to guess, he very likely died from alcohol poisoning, given his friends said, you know, the night before, this guy had had a really heavy night of drinking, and here he was. So alcohol poisoning. So this hospital had a policy for how to handle the death of foreign sailors in Tahiti. Basically, the doctor who pronounced the sailor

[Narrator]

dead would then arrange for them to

[MrBallen]

be buried in a public cemetery. And in fact, the hospital kept these cheap wooden coffins in the hospital morgue for this exact purpose. And so Dr. Allard followed protocol and asked the police to go inform the sailor's friends of his death. And then the doctor went to the hospital's morgue to arrange for a coffin. A few hours later, Dr. Allard was back in his office when he heard a knock at his door. He told whoever it was to come in. But when the door swung open, the doctor was surprised at who he saw there. It was the four local gravediggers who he had called earlier to bury that sailor who had just died. Now, generally speaking, Dr. Allard had virtually no interactions with the gravediggers after he hired them. He would tell them to bury the body, and they would do that and go on their separate way, like there was no reason for the gravediggers to come back and check in with the doctor. But as the doctor is looking at these four guys trying to figure out what was going on here, he quickly assessed that, you know, these guys weren't here just to chat. They were here because they look spooked. And before Dr. Allard could ask any questions about, you know, what was going on here, one of these gravediggers began to speak. And in sort of a rapid and sort of anxious tone, he said, you know, as we were carrying the coffin over to the grave site, it began to shake, like the person inside the coffin was alive.

[Ad Voice]

And then we heard the all, all these moaning sounds coming from inside of this nailed shut coffin. And we all got so panicked that

[MrBallen]

we just dropped the coffin and we

[Ad Voice]

ran here to tell you.

[MrBallen]

Now, Dr. Allard was pretty surprised by what he was hearing, but he's also

[Narrator]

thinking that, you know, when he hired

[MrBallen]

these four gravediggers, they were at a local pub and they were drinking. And so he's thinking to himself, you know, maybe something strange happened, you know, with this coffin, or much more likely, these four guys are drunk.

[Ad Voice]

And that what they've sort of said

[MrBallen]

here is just some figment of their imagination, that they're not professional, they're just drunk guys who are coming here screwing up my day. And so sort of annoyed, Dr. Allard's like, hey, I'm telling you, that guy is dead. Okay, this isn't a ghost scenario, but if you're so worried about it, why

[Ad Voice]

don't you go get a police officer,

[MrBallen]

have them come over and inspect the coffin, you know, make sure the person is really dead in there.

[Ad Voice]

And then once they confirm that, please

[MrBallen]

do your job and bury this guy. And so the grave diggers, they kind of look down sort of awkwardly, and

[Narrator]

they're like, okay, we'll go do that.

[MrBallen]

Then they turned and they left. And then Dr. Allard got back to work. And then a few hours later, Dr. Allard heard another knock on his door. And this time, when the Door opened. It was a police officer. And it was actually the officer that the four gravediggers had gone and found at Dr. Allard's suggestion. And he had gone over, checked the coffin. And, you know, the coffin wasn't moving. It wasn't making any weird sounds.

[Ad Voice]

It was sealed shut.

[MrBallen]

There was nothing going on. And so the officer eventually instructed the gravediggers, you know, to go ahead and bury it. There's nothing going on here. And so the gravediggers had, at that point, buried the coffin. And that had been that. And so the officer was here just to tell Dr. Allard that, hey, it's all good. You know, he's buried. We can move on. About A week later, Dr. Allard had

[Narrator]

basically forgotten about this whole snafu around

[MrBallen]

the coffin and whatever was going on with it. He was sort of onto the next thing, and he was out like he normally was at night to go for a walk. And the area that he liked to walk in the most was actually the cemetery. Not because he had some sort of morbid obsession, but because, you know, it was often, you know, vacant.

[Narrator]

There was nobody there.

[MrBallen]

And so it was a peaceful place to go walking. And so, you know, he's strolling through the cemetery like usual, and he's not seeing anybody like usual.

[Ad Voice]

But as it began to get dark, he was walking down this one row of headstones. And he looked up ahead, and he could have sworn he saw somebody standing

[MrBallen]

behind a tree with their body sort of half out of the tree, half behind the tree, sort of half obscure. And he stopped, and he's looking, and

[Ad Voice]

the whole thing just sort of felt off. Like, what is this person doing?

[MrBallen]

Is that a person? Like, what's going on here?

[Ad Voice]

And so he's staring, and as he's looking, sure enough, this dark silhouette steps out from behind this tree.

[MrBallen]

And the way they stepped out, it was like they stepped out, turned and faced Dr. Allard and just stood there,

[Ad Voice]

clearly looking right at Dr. Allard. But they're pretty far away from Dr. Allard. Like, there's a good distance between them. But immediately, Dr. Allard felt threatened by

[MrBallen]

this person or whatever it was.

[Ad Voice]

He didn't even know if it was a person. He couldn't tell if it was his mind playing tricks on him or not. He's just staring at this thing that looked like it was looking at him. And so Dr. Allard Instinctively, who's now feeling a little bit frightened, turned and just started walking away. Like he was done walking in the

[MrBallen]

cemetery for the night.

[Ad Voice]

And so he Turns and he starts walking. But then it's like the hairs in the back of his neck stood up. He just felt like this person, whoever it is, they're still watching me. And so he stopped after just a couple of steps and he turned back around. And now this figure is clearly marching directly towards Dr. Allard. They're almost running, they're walking real fast right towards Dr. Allard.

[MrBallen]

And so now Dr. Allard's terrified.

[Ad Voice]

He knows there's something happening here. Why would this person be doing this? Like, is it a person? Like what's happening here? And so Dr. Allard, he turns and starts to run. And as he's running, he hears this horrible high pitched scream echo across the entire cemetery. And then he looks back one last time and he sees the face of this figure, this person charging towards him. And it's the same guy who died a week ago. The same sailor that he buried. The one who presumably was moving around in the coffin the gravediggers were so scared of, it was him. And he jumped on Dr. Allard and began throttling him. And Dr. Allard's on the ground staring at this ghastly face, this scream is coming out of him. He had no idea what was going on. And then Dr. Allard just blacked out. A few minutes later, Dr. Allard came to and he sat up suddenly and he's looking around and there's nobody there. It's just a dark, vacant cemetery. No sign of the dead sailors ghost or whatever or whoever it was.

[MrBallen]

They're gone.

[Ad Voice]

And Dr. Allard's just sitting there, his heart's racing still, and he's telling himself, like, did that even just happen? Like it felt so real. His neck was sore from, you know,

[MrBallen]

what he felt was this guy, this thing attacking him.

[Ad Voice]

But at the same time, he was so sure that the face that he had seen on this person was the dead sailor's face. But how could that be? He's dead, he's buried.

[MrBallen]

How could that be?

[Ad Voice]

And so ultimately, Dr. Allard, he got up and he hustled back to his house. But over the coming weeks, Dr. Allard sort of spiraled into madness because it was like every day, all the time, he would see out of the corner of his eye for a second, like a glimpse of this dead sailor's ghost. And it was always that face, that ghastly face, that shrieking face looking right at him. And he'd turn and, you know, the face would disappear. But Dr. Allard, he just felt like he was almost being haunted, that something had happened, you know, like that attack in the cemetery. It had felt so real. He felt like now this ghost was literally haunting him. But he couldn't tell anyone. I mean, he's a doctor.

[MrBallen]

What's he gonna do, tell people that

[Ad Voice]

a ghost is haunting him? He didn't know what to do. And so what he ended up doing after several weeks is he just began staying home and laying in bed, Basically feigning illness to avoid leaving the house. And he would just lay there with his eyes closed, basically all day, because as soon as he opened his eyes, he would see this dead sailor's face. He really was losing his mind. And then eventually, when Dr. Allard knew he had to stop, basically staying in bed all day and go back to the hospital and sort of function in

[MrBallen]

society again, go back to work, you know, otherwise, people were going to start asking questions here, like, what's going on with you?

[Ad Voice]

And he didn't have an answer.

[MrBallen]

You know, when that time came and he knew, it was sort of like,

[Ad Voice]

okay, go back to normal or tell people about this.

[MrBallen]

Well, what Dr. Allard ultimately did is

[Ad Voice]

he decided to walk up to the roof of his house and throw himself off. He literally couldn't live with what he

[MrBallen]

believed was this ghost haunting him 24 7. When the doctor's close friends found out that the doctor had taken his own

[Ad Voice]

life, they immediately went to the police

[MrBallen]

and said, hey, wait a minute. Like, we think this has something to

[Narrator]

do with what he was dealing with

[MrBallen]

over the past several weeks. So the doctor, despite not wanting to tell anybody about, you know, his haunting,

[Ad Voice]

he did sort of begin to tell

[MrBallen]

a couple of his close friends.

[Ad Voice]

Now, he was sort of subtle about it, but he began telling people that. He's like, yeah, I just keep seeing that dead sailor's face everywhere I go. I just keep seeing him.

[MrBallen]

Now, he didn't highlight the fact that

[Ad Voice]

he was basically losing his mind over

[MrBallen]

and thought it was literally a ghost.

[Ad Voice]

But a couple of his close friends were aware that it almost seemed like, you know, Dr. Allard was effectively having

[MrBallen]

a mental breakdown over this dead sailor. And they did sort of connect that Dr. Allard sort of felt haunted by this dead sailor.

[Ad Voice]

And so said close friends ultimately went to the police and said, hey, I

[MrBallen]

know this is a stretch, but the

[Ad Voice]

doctor kind of thought he was being haunted by this dead sailor before he died. We think that has to do with

[MrBallen]

why he took his own life.

[Ad Voice]

And sort of, amazingly, the police, the way they responded to this was, okay,

[MrBallen]

we're gonna look into this. We're gonna Investigate the haunting, so to speak. And what they did is they exhumed the coffin of that dead sailor. They didn't know what else to do. They just decided they would do that. And so they raised the coffin out of the ground, and they open it up, and they cannot believe what they see. So it would turn out those four

[Ad Voice]

gravediggers had been totally justified in being

[MrBallen]

scared about what they thought they heard and felt in that coffin when they were going to bury it. Because the sailor was not dead.

[Ad Voice]

He was just so drunk that it

[MrBallen]

felt like he was dead.

[Ad Voice]

They couldn't feel his pulse.

[MrBallen]

Dr. Allard had been wrong. The sailor was not dead.

[Ad Voice]

He was totally alive.

[MrBallen]

And so as he was being carried over to the gravesite to be buried,

[Ad Voice]

he really was moving around inside the coffee and moaning because he was horribly hungover, but totally alive.

[MrBallen]

And, you know, grappling with the fact that he's now, you know, confined inside of this coffin. He likely had no idea what was going on. So you can imagine the types of

[Ad Voice]

sounds and things he might be doing.

[MrBallen]

And so the gravediggers, they were right to be scared. They did get a police officer. The police officer came over, and for

[Ad Voice]

whatever reason, when he inspected the coffin, you know, he saw it was sealed. There was no movement inside the coffin. It was totally quiet.

[MrBallen]

So, you know, the sailor inside, he just wasn't moving or making any sound.

[Ad Voice]

And so the police officer greenlit burying him. So the living sailor inside the coffin

[MrBallen]

is buried underground by these gravediggers, and they go their separate ways afterwards. But then that sailor wakes up again. You know, he begins thrashing around after

[Ad Voice]

being buried in the ground, and he actually managed to break out of the coffin and climb out of the ground. He saved himself. He literally, you know, survived being buried alive, but he was furious at the doctor who so cavalierly just decided he

[MrBallen]

was dead and now go bury him. And so he decided he would play a prank on the doctor to get back at him.

[Ad Voice]

So what he did is he filled his coffin up with rocks and he sealed it back up and he reburied it so nobody would know anything. And then for the next week or

[MrBallen]

so, he just kind of hid out

[Ad Voice]

and didn't let anybody know that he was actually still alive. And then after about a week, he

[MrBallen]

knew the doctor told his walks in that cemetery.

[Ad Voice]

And so he hid behind a tree in the cemetery and waited for the doctor to be alone making his walk. And when he saw him, it was the sailor, fully alive in the flesh, stepping out from behind the tree. Looking at the doctor. That was him. It really was the sailor. And he really did run forward, shrieking, pretending to be a ghost, and he attacked Dr. Allard, basically giving him the impression that his angry ghost was attacking him.

[MrBallen]

And then after Dr. Allard passed out on the ground, the sailor ran off.

[Ad Voice]

But for Dr. Allard, who fully believed that sailor was dead, can you imagine what he thought when he saw, you know, the sailor attacking him and shrieking in the middle of the cemetery? He fully believed that was the sailor's ghost. And he had this totally real experience getting attacked by the ghost. And so even though he survived the encounter, it drove him mad. He began seeing the dead sailor, the ghost, everywhere he went, and it eventually drove him to kill himself. And so when the police opened up

[MrBallen]

that coffin, all they saw were all the rocks the sailor had left behind. But following the doctor's suicide, that sailor apparently skipped town and was never seen again. 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 and Cole Ocasio Research and fact checking by by Shelly Shue, Samantha Vanhus Evan Beamer Abigail Shumway Camille Callahan Alex Paul Ben Faciano Research and fact checking supervision by Steven Ear Audio editing and post produced by Whit Locasio and Jordan Stidham Production support by Antonio Minotta and Delaina Corley Artwork by Jessica Claugdon Kiner Theme Song Something Wicked by Ross Bugden thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast. And just a reminder, every night 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. Ballin. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad free, you can subscribe to Sirius XM podcast plus on Apple Podcasts or visit siriusxm.com podcastplus 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 ya.

[Ad Voice]

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[Narrator]

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[Ad Voice]

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[MrBallen]

Tennessee2012.