MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - 'Til Death Do Us Part

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Today’s podcast will feature 3 horrifying stories about couple’s romantic vacations. 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 -- "Honeymoon" -- Newlyweds travel to one of the most beautiful places in the world, but don't realize how dangerous it is (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tul0S0xFzh8)#2 -- "The Underwater Room" -- A vacation takes a horrible turn for the worst (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR2lSI12DA8)#1 -- "Embrace" -- Photographer captures a picture of something terrifying (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIcBvNbHKTs)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 8 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 3 horrifying stories about couples' romantic vacations. The audio from all 3 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 Honeymoon, and it's about newlyweds who travel to one

of the most beautiful places in the world, but don't realize how dangerous this place really is. The second story you'll hear is called The Underwater Room, and it's about a vacation that takes a horrible turn for the worst. And the third and final story you'll hear is called Embrace, and it's about a photographer who captures a horrifying picture. 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 twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please hold the door for the follow button, but open it way too early so they're forced to run slash walk all the way to the door just to be polite.

Okay let's get into our first story called Honeymoon. I'm in Dravama, and in the latest season of The Spy Who, we open the file on Klaus Fuchs, the spy who started the Cold War. It's the 1940s, and Britain hopes to beat the Nazis by making an atom bomb. But there's a traitor in the ranks. Klaus Fuchs, a German nuclear physicist and communist who's secretly working for the Soviet Union. Whilst helping Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project, Fuchs stashes away atomic secrets for his Soviet spy masters. As he quickly becomes embroiled in a web of espionage, his double life threatens to unravel, leaving

his true motives and final fate hanging in the balance. Follow the Spy Who on the Wondry app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or you can binge the full season of The Spy Who Started the Cold War early and ad-free with Wondry+. If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good you are a fan of the strange, dark and mysterious. And if that's the case, then I've got some good news. We just launched a brand new strange, dark and mysterious podcast called Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries. And as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans

have been asking us to dive into for years, and we finally decided to take the plunge and the show is awesome. In this free weekly show, we explore bizarre, unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths and everything in between. Each story is totally true and totally terrifying. Go follow Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're a Prime member, you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. In the fall of 2002, 19-year-old Gemma Houghton moved into her dorm room at the very prestigious University of Manchester in England to begin her freshman year.

Her first couple of months at the school were relatively uneventful. She spent all of her time focusing on her studies and so she really had not gone out and met any new people. But in early 2003, so about halfway through her freshman year, she was standing outside of her dorm when this boy she had never met before walked up to her and introduced himself. He was this tall, very handsome, very charming guy. He said his name was Ian Redmond. He was a senior at the school, and he in fact lived in the same building that she did, and so he just wanted to introduce himself. Now Gemma was not looking for a boyfriend, but she was immediately attracted to Ian, and Ian would later say the feeling was mutual. This chance encounter would ultimately blossom into a full-fledged romantic

relationship, one that would ultimately lead to Ian six years later proposing to Gemma on Christmas Eve 2009. That same year they got engaged, the couple who had diligently saved money for years and years and years were able to pool their money and buy a house together. It was not a very nice house, it was a fairly beat up cottage in this little town in England that would need a lot of work, but Ian and Gemma were actually very excited to do the work. They looked at this as an opportunity to make the house exactly the way they wanted it, and it was a chance for them to spend some quality time together.

So for the next two years, during all of their free time, Ian and Gemma would work on their home, and then finally in August of 2011 right before their actual wedding day They finished the renovation their home is done And so they get married and then literally right after their wedding instead of going right into a honeymoon They just moved right into their dream home that night And so for the next couple of days the newlyweds got to enjoy being husband and wife for the first time Inside of their dream home and then it was time to go on the honeymoon. In addition to having set aside money for the down payment on their home,

the couple had also set aside money for this honeymoon. They wanted it to be an amazing vacation. And so what they decided to do for their honeymoon was to go to Seychelles, which is this island nation in the Indian Ocean, which many say has the most beautiful beaches in the world. So on August 10th, the couple hops on a plane and they fly to Seychelles and when they land, they check into their resort, which is this unbelievable place that overlooks this perfect beach with white sand and crystal clear waters.

And then after getting checked in, the couple goes down to a restaurant and they're having a bite to eat and as they're sitting there they're probably thinking to themselves this is gonna be the best vacation ever. During the first week of their trip the couple was very active spending lots of time exploring the island and going out on different excursions and going to lots of restaurants they were just all over the place and so out on different excursions and going to lots of restaurants. They were just all over the place. And so come Tuesday, August 16th, which was the start of their second week and final week of this honeymoon, the couple was kind of tired from all the activity.

And so they decided they would just have a lazy day at the beach that day. And so the couple grabbed their swimsuits and their towels and their chairs and they left the resort and headed down to the beach right outside. And then after finding a decent spot on the sand, they set up their chairs and they left the resort and headed down to the beach right outside and then after finding a decent spot on the sand they set up their chairs and towels put their stuff down and Gemma she laid down on one of the chairs to begin sunbathing and Ian he grabbed his fins and his snorkel and he kissed Gemma on the cheek and said he was going to go down to the water and go for a swim. Gemma remembers watching Ian as he walked across the beach and stopped in front of the

water and put on his big fins and got his snorkel on and then he kind of awkwardly duck walked his way into the water and Gemma remembers just smiling and laughing to herself watching him awkwardly do this and then thinking to herself how lucky she was to be married to such an amazing guy. She really loved him so much. After Ian had finally gotten into the water and had begun his snorkeling journey, Gemma laid back and began to doze off to sleep. A little while later though, Gemma suddenly woke up to the sound of what almost sounded like someone sneezing really really loudly.

And so instinctively she sat up and scanned the water line for her husband, but all she saw were other tourists in the water swimming and snorkeling and doing all sorts of stuff she couldn't find Ian and then she heard a male voice calling out for help and it was coming off to the right towards the top of the beach pretty far away from her and she turned and she saw Ian. Ian was about 60 feet off of the sand so he's well out into the water and he appeared to be kind of hunched forward with his arm kind of in the water and he's waving his other arm in the air. It was like he was stuck on something and before Gemma could get up and run to him or help him in any way,

Ian just begins to scream at the top of his lungs. When Ian began screaming, there was a surgeon who was also on vacation at the beach who was in a boat near where Ian was. He hears the scream and he boats over to Ian and he and the guy who was in a boat near where Ian was. He hears the scream and he boats over to Ian and he and the guy who was in the boat with him manage to pull Ian out of the water that get him on the boat and Ian is alive and he's conscious but he is missing his entire left arm. He's missing the majority of his left thigh and there was a huge chunk missing from his midsection. It would turn out Ian had been attacked by a bull shark, one of the most aggressive sharks in the world. That sneezing sound that Jemma had heard that had

startled her awake was the sound Ian had made through his snorkel when the shark bit down on him. The surgeon rushed Ian to the shore and pulled him out and got him onto the sand and began trying to save his life. At the same time, Gemma had come running up the beach and she managed to push through the quickly forming crowd and she drops down next to her husband and Ian at this point is alive and he's conscious, he's very badly hurt but he's looking up and he's clearly making eye contact with Gemma and Gemma, she's looking down at her husband and she's making clear eye contact with him, and they don't really say much. It was like this horrible moment where all they could do was just be in the moment together. And so during this kind of silent acknowledgement, Ian would ultimately pass away. It would turn out over the past few weeks,

there had been a rash of shark attacks at this beach, including one other fatal attack on another tourist. Because shark attacks in Seychelles were so unheard of, they believed this had to be the work of one rogue bull shark. That was the one shark that was doing all of these attacks. And so because this shark had not been captured or killed, the country had actually instituted a temporary ban on swimming at this beach and a few other beaches, but for whatever reason, the ban had not been communicated effectively to the tourists, nor had it been enforced on the tourists. And so Gemma and Ian had no idea the water was a dangerous place to be. They just looked out and saw other tourists swimming around and believed it was totally safe, when in reality, it obviously wasn't.

Gemma would quickly return to England and she would host her husband's funeral in the same church she and he had been married in 10 days earlier. 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. Bolland's Medical Mysteries and Mr. Bolland's Strange Dark and Mysterious Stories, along with a huge collection of top true crime podcasts completely ad-free. No more wading 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 ballin. That's amazon.com slash B-A-L-L-E-N. Dive into uninterrupted true crime stories today. Imagine you're walking through the park one day and you see a suspicious backpack sitting underneath a bench. You report it to the police and upon investigating, they discover two live pipe bombs inside. You rush to clear the area before they explode, saving countless lives and preventing injury.

Everyone declares you a hero for a fleeting moment until everything changes and you are declared the prime suspect. This was the story of security guard Richard Jewell. After the Centennial Park bombing killed one person and wounded more than 100, public pressure and a media witch hunt pushed a desperate FBI to find a suspect. Despite obvious holes in the case and unethical tactics used by the FBI, security guard Richard Jewell was under pressure to confess. I'm Aaron Habel. And I'm Justin Evans. Join us as we explore the aftermath of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing and the newest season of our podcast, Generation Y, the Olympic Park bombing. Follow Generation Y on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Generation

Y ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus. Our next story is called The Underwater Room. In 2017, Steven Weber was a larger than life 38 year old DJ living in Louisiana. That year, through a mutual friend, he met Kenesha Antoine, who was a 38 year old lawyer also living in Louisiana. And as soon as they met, they immediately hit it off and began dating. They both had always wanted to travel the world, but they never got around to it because life always seemed to get in the way.

But now that they had each other, and so therefore had travel partners, they decided they couldn't wait any longer, and so they created a bucket list of all the places in the world they wanted to go, and then over the next couple of years, they began checking places off their list. In 2019, when Kinesha was going to turn 40, they decided they needed to go somewhere really special to celebrate. And so they checked their bucket list to see where they hadn't gone yet, and they ultimately settled on going to East Africa because there was a resort there they had always wanted to stay in. It was called the Pemba Resort, and it was famous for their underwater room. They literally have a

two-story cabin floating 300 meters off the coast. Its main floor is at surface level, it's got a beautiful couch that looks out over the water, and you can take the stairs up to the roof of the main floor where there's another couch and you can stargaze and look out 360 degrees and there's no other cabins out on the water. You're completely isolated. And then if you go back down to the main floor, there is a ladder that goes straight down 10 meters into the master bedroom and it's completely underwater. All four walls have these huge windows that look out directly into the beautiful Indian Ocean. To stay in this cabin for one night costs $1,700 and so Stephen and Kinesha decided they would only splurge on it for one night at the end

of their Africa trip. So in September of that year the couple flew out to Africa, and for over a week, they enjoyed sightseeing and going on safaris and eating nice food, and then at the end of their trip it was time to head out to the underwater room. So, they got to the Pemba Resort on the mainland, they checked in, and then they loaded into a boat and were brought out 300 meters to their actual cabin out on the water, and then after the boat left them there, Kanisha got out her phone phone and began filming and she filmed as the two walked around and they looked at the amazing view. They went onto the roof and they're looking all around and they're laughing because it's so unbelievably beautiful and then at

some point they make their way down that ladder down into the master bedroom underwater and the two just can't stop laughing because it was so bizarre and just so incredible being down there. There were fish that were coming up to the glass and just staring at them. They just couldn't believe what they were seeing. And then at some point, Stephen makes a joke that a shark was coming and Kenisha turns around and then sarcastically laughs at him and says, okay, haha, yeah, shark. And then she turns off the recording.

A little while later, Stephen leaves Kenisha in the master bedroom and he goes upstairs and he puts on fins and then hops in the water. Kenisha who's still down in the master bedroom is surprised when she sees her boyfriend on the other side of the glass out in the Indian Ocean. And so Kenisha just grabs her phone and starts filming him because she knows he's up to something and then at some point Stephen pulls out a plastic bag with a handwritten note inside of it and he presses it up against the glass so she can see what it says. And so Kinesha zooms in on the note and you can tell from the tone in her voice she really

doesn't know what he's doing, but then there's a pause in the video as she's reading the note and the note says, I can't hold my breath long enough to tell you everything I love about you, but everything I love about you I love more and more every day. Will you please be my wife? Marry me. Kinesha is so astounded at this proposal. You can tell she's almost crying she's so excited. And so as she just continues to film him, Stephen pulls out a ring and he holds it up to the glass. And now at this point, Kenisha is just beside herself. She couldn't be happier. And so Stephen closes the ring box, he grabs the

letter, and he swims up out of view back to the surface. And Kenisha turns off the recording, turns around, runs to the ladder, and climbs up to the main floor to give Stephen her answer that yes, she would marry him. But when she got up there, she looked around and Stephen wasn't up there. And so she's yelling for him, she's looking around, waiting for him to show up, but he's not. And so she runs up onto the roof of the main structure to get a better look around to see where he went. And so she runs up onto the roof of the main structure to get a better look around to see where he went. But when she got up there, she looked down and there's nothing but ocean. There's no sign of Steven anywhere.

And so starting to panic, she runs back down to the main floor at surface level and now she's frantically yelling for Steven, yelling for him to come up to the surface. Where is he? Where are you? But there's no response. Kenisha is all alone out in this cabin in the middle of the ocean. She has no way to contact anyone on the mainland and so she has no idea what to do. She doesn't know if she should just jump in the water to go looking for him. She doesn't know if he's maybe

playing a joke on her. She just doesn't know what's happening and so she just reflexively begins screaming out for help, hoping that somebody will hear her and come help her find Stephen. And after a little while, some boaters not too far away hear her yelling out for help. They come over and they, along with Kenisha, begin looking and they ultimately find Stephen, but by the time they found him, it was too late. He had drowned. The details of exactly how he managed to drown or exactly where he was when they found him are not listed online. The next and final story of today's episode is called Embrace. On October 15, 2003, a newlywed couple named Tina and Gabe Watson arrived in Australia for their honeymoon. They were both 26 years old and lived in Alabama, and neither of them made very much money.

Tina worked in the kids department of a clothing store, and Gabe worked for his father at a packaging company. But Gabe's family had gifted this honeymoon trip to Australia to Gabe and Tina and so the couple was so excited about it and they had taken actually a whole year to plan this trip out. It was going to be the adventure of their lives. Once in Australia the couple spent the first week in Sydney which is one of the biggest cities in the country. They went on a river cruise, they visited the famous Sydney Opera House, and they went to see the koalas at the zoo. Something Tina was very intent on doing because she loved animals. And then on October 21st,

so six days into their big trip, the couple headed north to the city of Townsville, which is this beautiful beach town that's right near the Great Barrier Reef. The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest and most famous coral reef system. This was going to be the real highlight of their trip. Gabe had grown up loving the water, and now as an adult, his passion was scuba diving. He was a trained rescue diver, and any chance he got back home in Alabama, he would go diving.

As for Tina, scuba diving kind of scared her. She didn't like the idea of being underwater for extended periods of time and breathing in underwater. It just felt so foreign that she didn't like it. But she knew Gabe really wanted her to go scuba diving with him in Australia, and so 10 months earlier in January of 2003, Tina had begun taking scuba diving lessons, and then right before they headed out for this trip to Australia, Tina had gotten certified in scuba diving. So after arriving in Townsville, Gabe and Tina would spend the night in a hotel, and then early the next morning, the couple would get up and make their way down to the dock where they would board a diving boat.

This boat was going to take them out into the open water right over this famous shipwreck called the Yungola where lots of people scuba dive and this Yungola wreck is right near the Great Barrier Reef so it's a truly amazing place to go scuba diving. When the couple actually was out on the open water, they looked around and just could not believe how stunning everything really was. The beach town at a distance was unbelievable and the water was perfectly clear blue where they could see thousands of fish shimmering and swimming all around them. Finally the dive boat came to a stop over the area where the Yungola wreck was and Gabe and Tina began putting on

their dive gear as did the other four tourists who were also on this diving trip. Now Gabe and Tina were dive partners, which meant for this dive they were instructed not to leave each other really at any point until they're back on the surface, but initially once they and the other divers were put into the water, the entire group swam down together 100 feet to the bottom of the ocean where this shipwreck was. And at first everything was going great, the swim down was easy, and then once they got down there because the water was so clear and sunlight could reach them, they were able

to look at each other and just really take in how spectacular this really was. But unfortunately Gabe, he looked at his wrist at some point and noticed his dive computer, which tells you how much air you have left and what depth you're at, was malfunctioning, so he signaled to Tina that he needed to go to the surface and get his computer fixed. And so he and Tina would swim away from the group back up to the surface, and then once on the surface, Gabe was able to talk to the dive leader on the boat, and he was able to get his dive computer fixed, and then after only a couple of minutes of being back on the surface, Gabe and Tina went back under the water and began heading back down towards

the rest of the group. And as Gabe and Tina approached the rest of the group, they saw they were all kind of swimming around in dive pairs around the Yungola wreck, And so Gabe and Tina, they got down there and they joined the queue and began as well moving as a pair around the wreck. Back up on the surface, the dive leader who was up in the boat was just kind of sitting there waiting for the divers to come back up when all of a sudden he noticed there was this sudden eruption of air bubbles coming up to the surface and so he peered over the side of the boat to see what was going on, and Gabe, who had only left the surface after fixing his dive computer maybe five minutes earlier, came bombing up out of the water.

And when he did, the dive leader immediately noticed that Tina was not with him. And before the dive leader could even ask Gabe what was going on, Gabe, who was obviously very panicked, he ripped off his mask and he began trying to tell the dive leader that something was wrong with his wife, that she had sunk away from him and he couldn't get to her and he needed help. And so the dive leader immediately put on a scuba tank, he jumped in the water and swam down as fast as he could to the wreck down below. And when he got there, he immediately saw Tina by herself laying on the sand on the bottom of the ocean just totally motionless on her back. And so the dive leader he swam over to her

he scooped her up and he brought her all the way back to the surface and then once on the surface he put Tina into the boat and then the dive leader he climbed inside and immediately began doing CPR on Tina. And for 45 minutes the dive leader tried to do CPR, tried everything he could to save Tina, but unfortunately it was not enough and Tina passed away. An autopsy would later reveal that Tina had died from something called an air embolism, which is when an air bubble gets trapped in a blood vessel and blocks it. In scuba divers, this can happen from holding your breath for too long or trying to ascend too quickly.

One theory about how this could have happened to Tina was based on what Gabe said happened when he and Tina went back down to the wreck after he got his dive computer fixed. He said they got down there, everything was fine, they were swimming around like the other dive pairs, taking pictures, when Tina started to panic, kind of randomly, and she reached out for Gabe, and Gabe said she knocked his oxygen mask off his face, and so Gabe was kind of starting to panic, and he got the mask back on,

at which point Tina was kind of floating away from him, and so Gabe, not really knowing what to do, said he went to the surface to get help. And so in that time frame, perhaps Tina, you know, tried to rush to the surface on her own, giving herself the air embolism, or maybe in her panic she had held her breath, giving herself the air embolism. But it wasn't long after Tina's death was ruled an accident, and the case was closed, that the other four people who were

on that dive with Gabe and Tina began reaching out to Tina's family. These divers had seen something very strange happen right around the time Tina died and they felt like they had to tell someone. One of these four divers would tell Tina's family that as they were swimming around the wreck, they saw Gabe and Tina come back down after Gabe had fixed his dive computer and pretty quickly after they reached the bottom, Gabe seemed to give Tina a hug, like a really strong bear hug. Now there's no reason any diver would hug another diver underwater, certainly not that hard, unless it was some sort of rescue attempt. And this diver who witnessed this told Tina's family that this did not look like a rescue attempt.

It looked like Gabe was trying to restrain Tina and Tina was trying to get away from Gabe. After a few moments of watching this, the same diver would see Gabe release Tina and at that point Tina would go limp and float to the bottom and Gabe would rush to the surface where he would tell the dive leader that he had this emergency with his wife. This new information led Australian authorities to charge Gabe with murder. They alleged that Gabe intentionally turned off Tina's heir and then put her in that bear hug to make sure she couldn't turn it back on again.

Gabe, however, has always denied this, saying his wife really just panicked and he was trying to help her but couldn't and then went to the surface. Gabe ultimately pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in Australia and served 18 months in prison. Prosecutors in Alabama then also tried to charge Gabe with murder or something else in connection to Tina's death, but ultimately a judge dismissed the case. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Bollin Podcast. If you enjoyed today's stories and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts, not just this one, but also Mr. Bollin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories,

Wartime Stories, and Runful. Just search for Bollin Studios on any podcast platform and you'll find all of them. If you want to watch hundreds more strange dark and mysterious stories, just head over to our YouTube channel which is just called Mr. Ballin. So that's gonna do it, I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya. Hey Prime members, you can binge 8 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 Wondry.com

slash survey. Are you in trouble with the law? Need a lawyer who'll fight like hell to keep you out of jail? We defend and we fight just like you'd want your own children to defend it. Whether you're facing a drug charge, caught up on a murder rap, accused of committing war crimes, look no further than Paul Bergrin. All the big guys go to Bergrin because he gets everybody off. You name it, Paul can do it.

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