Transcript
Mr. Ballin (0:00)
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 story is about a group of friends who travel to this supposedly haunted abandoned town up in the mountains in Spain. And when they get there, the town totally lives up to the hype. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark and mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the right podcast.
Narrator (0:27)
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Mr. Ballin (0:28)
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Narrator (0:57)
Foreign.
Mr. Ballin (1:07)
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TJ Raphael (1:28)
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Narrator (1:51)
On the afternoon of October 16, 1991, a 36 year old man named Enrique Martinez bent down, pulled out his pocket knife and he carefully cut through the stem of a mushroom that was growing right next to a mossy log. And then after freeing this mushroom, he put it inside of his wicker basket with the other mushrooms he had collected in the area. And then Enrique stood up and just took a minute to take in the unbelievable view of this lush green valley right below him. Enrique was out mushroom hunting along with his wife Anna and their two friends Jorge and Sofia, who were dating. And where they were mushroom hunting was near this old abandoned town called La Musara, which is located up in the mountains of northeastern Spain. It had been Jorge's idea to come to this area and explore. Jorge had heard all these crazy stories about La Musara, about how it was haunted, and there was all this creepy folklore surrounding this town. As for Enrique, he didn't really care about the lore surrounding this town. Frankly, the town was not that interesting to him. What was interesting was the opportunity to come out here and collect mushrooms. That was something he really liked to do. Enrique and his wife Anna, lived in this very busy port city in Spain called Tarragona. And so their lives, day to day, were very hectic. You know, Enrique, he worked at a bar as a bartender. And so every night he was surrounded by hundreds of people coming in and out. And so having a chance to come out here and be in nature at peace and collect these mushrooms just sounded too good to turn up. Enrique stopped staring at the valley right in front of him, and he turned around and continued to scan the mountainside for a particular type of mushroom that grew in this area. It was called the bloody milk cap, which was known to be great for grilling. You know, it paired well with meat. And so Enrique's plan was to go out on this mushroom hunting trip, and when they got back, he wanted to cook a feast using these mushrooms for his wife and his friends. The group slowly made their way uphill until they finally saw the outskirts of the abandoned town, La Musara. La Musara was more than 900 years old, and now it was just a collection of crumbling ruins, Some dating back to prehistoric times. La Musara had never been a big town. At its peak, it had about 300 residents. But the last of the remaining residents of this town had finally fled 40 years earlier. And so now it was a ghost town. The group made their way over to one of the buildings that was right on the outer perimeter of La Musara. It was basically just a foundation with three walls still standing. There was no roof, but the friends, they went over to this building, and from right next to it, they were able to look straight down the main drag of La Musara. It was basically just a dirt road that went straight out, and all along the road were other kind of ruined foundations of where buildings used to be. And fairly far down this road, maybe 200ft away from where all the friends were standing, was the center of La Musara, which was marked by this big church with a huge steeple. And the church was actually in decent shape. It had not totally crumbled onto itself like the rest of the buildings around it. And then behind the church, somewhat visible from where the friends were standing, was this overgrown cemetery. And then kind of off to the side of the church was this pond that was also very overgrown, and it was full of croaking frogs. Enrique and his friends just stood there next to their dilapidated building, staring at La Musara in silence. Now, they knew this place was going to be very creepy. You know, people had said it was Haunted. And that was a big reason why Jorge wanted to come here. But now seeing it in person, I mean, really, the creep factor was much higher than they expected. It really did look like a spooky place. And then adding to the spook factor was very clearly, as they were looking down this main road, the friends could see this mist kind of starting to envelop the town. Jorge had told the friends when he was doing his research about La Musara, that the mist was really a trademark of this town, that at night it basically got completely consumed in white mist. But now the friends are looking down this road, it's the middle of the day, and already the mist is starting to come in. Finally, Jorge broke the silence and said, hey, I want to show you guys something. And he grabbed his girlfriend Sofia's hand, and he began kind of jogging down the main road in the direction of the church. And so Enrique and Anna followed behind. And after only walking maybe 10 or 20ft, Enrique happened to turn around and look back where they had just been standing next to this dilapidated building. And already he couldn't see that building because this fog had rolled in and totally obscured his view. Enrique couldn't help but feel a little uneasy again, because he thought the fog was supposed to come in at night, and it's broad daylight, and here we are totally covered in fog. But he shook it off, thinking, what's the big deal? And so Enrique turned back around, and he and Anna hustled to catch up with Jorge and Sophia, who by this point had stopped a little farther down the road, off to the side, where there was this strange rectangular rock that. That was maybe 2ft tall, just kind of jutting up out of the ground. And when Enrique and Anna made it to Jorge and Sofia, Jorge placed his hand on the top of this strange rock. And looking very satisfied with himself, he would tell his friends, this is the sistone. And people say it contains dark powers. The cistone was actually one of the oldest things in all of La Musara. Back in the day, Muslim armies used to march through La Musara, which actually got its name from this, or La Musara means the place to march. And so these armies, as they would pass through La Musara, making their way to the valley down below, they would always stop at the sistone because they believed it had magical powers that could help them defeat their enemies in their upcoming battles. Now, the Muslim armies were long gone by this point, but the sistone was still there. And people still said that it contained that kind of magical power, that there were dark Forces at work inside of the stone that. And so to touch it was very risky. In fact, some people said if you touch the sistone, you could be sucked into this parallel world full of all these demonic entities. And so, as Jorge told the group about all this history surrounding the sist stone and how no one should touch it, remember, he's got his hands squarely on the sistone the whole time. And so when he finishes telling the story, he looks at the others and said, come on, somebody else touch it. Jorge's girlfriend Sophia, said, absolutely not. I'm not about to tempt evil spirits here. But Enrique's wife, Anna, said, you know what? I'll touch it. And so Jorge smiled. He pulled his hand off the cist stone. And Anna, she walked forward. She took a deep breath, and then she placed her hand on the stone. And for a second, the whole group just held their breath, like something was going to reach out and grab Anna and pull her into the stone. But nothing happened. And a minute later, Anna had pulled her hand off, and the whole group was laughing. But just a couple of seconds later, Enrique, who had been laughing along with the group, suddenly noticed that the frogs in the pond near the church, a little farther down the road from where they were, were suddenly so much louder. It was almost like when they touched the stone, it had maximized the volume of these frogs. And so Enrique, he turned his whole body and began staring down the road through the mist and fog at this pond. And he could kind of barely make it out. You know, he was trying to see if there was something obvious causing these frogs to kind of go crazy. But as he stared at this pond, which, again, he could barely see, right behind it was the church. But there was lots of fog kind of blocking the church. And for a second, the fog kind of parted, and Enrique got a full shot of one of the windows of this abandoned church. And in the window was this dark figure just standing there, staring at Enrique and his friends. And Enrique, he sees this thing in the window. And in a second, it was gone. And then the fog rolled back in, covered up the window, and Enrique couldn't see anything anymore. And so Enrique just stood there in stunned silence, having no idea if what he just saw had really just happened or if it was in his imagination or something. But before he could even try to process what had just happened, he heard his name being called. And so he kind of snapped out of it. And he turned back to the group and. And it was Anna who was now jokingly saying, come on, Enrique, touch the stone, too. Enrique quickly scanned Anna, Sofia, and Jorge's face, and they were all smiling and laughing still. And so clearly none of them had seen this figure in the window. And so Enrique, he kind of just looked at all of his friends, and then he looked back in the direction of the church and this window, which, again, he couldn't see because the fog was blocking it out. And so Enrique just tells himself, okay, there's no way that I just saw some dark figure moving around this abandoned church. You know, that must have been my imagination. I'm totally fine. And so he turned back to his friends, and he could tell they were not going to let it go until he touched the stone. And so he said, fine. And he walked up and he touched the stone. And immediately, as soon as his hand made contact with that stone, everything seemed to change. The air around Enrique got cooler and the stone itself started to warm up. And as this happened, Enrique, whose hand was still on the stone, began to think, wow, I could do this for hours. I could just stay here and leave my hand on the stone. I mean, this is amazing. But then somewhere, buried deep in his mind, Enrique began telling himself, get away from the stone. Take your hand away. Get away right now. And so finally, Enrique did yank his hand away. And right away, all those feelings he was having as he touched the stone disappeared. The air went back to normal. He did not feel compelled to touch the stone, and he just kind of was left thinking, what just happened? Foreign hey, listeners, Big news for true crime lovers.