The Most Terrifying Stories MrBallen Has Ever Told by a Campfire

[music and bell] [bell] All right, Mr Balland, >> what's up, dude? >> It's Halloween. >> Yep.

>> You are the storyteller of all storytellers. Give us some Halloween [ __ ] >> Yeah. >> Actually, bud, first, you want you want to try these things?

>> Yeah, actually, we have to try. You got to try these. So, these are the the Vigilance Elite Swarm Bites.

Let me know what you think. >> Yeah, dude. I I I have not officially told a story in front of a campfire in any sort of content capacity, so this is cool.

>> Are you serious? >> No, this is the first time, dude. [laughter] >> You did.

>> I don't know why that's >> Everyone's like, "Yo, you're a a campfire storyteller. Never once done this. " [laughter] >> That's hilarious.

This is it. >> But I do have a good story. Um, so these are really good.

These rival the gummy bears. >> Yeah. Thank you.

>> There you go. >> Um, all right. So, we we just released our our second graphic novel, Where Nightmares Live, which is a collection of nine uh true scary stories.

And one of the stories that we that I tell in there, uh, it's called The Bell. And so this story, the reason we chose it for the graphic novel is because it's sort of become one of our, I don't know, fan favorites, if you will. Like there's there's a handful of stories that uh have sort of are talked about the most and are sort of meme'd quite a bit in the strange, dark, and mysterious community, and this is definitely one of them.

And I think that uh I think we do it justice in the book, but there's a caveat to it. So the the way it's portrayed in the book, uh we we had to actually set the story in I think Arizona and it just had to do with a weird publishing issue. Like we had to make very small scenery changes.

Okay. [clears throat] >> But the original story is from this girl out in France. And so I we reached out to her.

This is years ago. And we got this story. And so this is the original story that has been adapted to the graphic novel.

And it's it's quite good. I I actually just told this at Comic- Con the other day. People loved it.

Nice. >> All right. So, in uh in June of 2019, there was this 18-year-old girl named Bella, and she had just wrapped up her her first year in college, and she had returned back home to where where she had grown up, which is this little town in France, and her her family still lived in the house she grew up in.

And it was situated up in these these mountains in this rural part of France. And growing up, Bella, you know, she had loved living in this town. It's a small town.

and she spent a lot of time, you know, hiking in the woods and um, you know, this is the first time she's come back since college. And, you know, she's just so happy to be back. And one of the the things she loved doing uh when she was growing up is there was this man-made lake that was like way out in this forest that was right sort of abudding against her property.

Um, and the man-made lake, the reason she liked it so much is >> no one really knew about it beyond the people who literally made it. It's man-made, but it it's not like a tourist attraction. And it wasn't something that was put there for tourists to go hike to or something.

It just it's something that because she lived in town and sort of hiked all over the forest, she had found it. And whenever she would hike out there, uh which took about 2 hours to go from where she lived through the forest to this lake, she would never see anybody else. It was like pristine wilderness, just forested wilderness.

And so and so she loved that. And so the only the only other people she would ever see out there would be like her her dad who would sometimes go with her. So anyway, she comes back from her first semester or first year I should say in college and um she gets back home and one of the first things she does is she's like, "I'm going to go hike out to the man-made lake, you know, do the thing I I love so much growing up.

" And so like on one of the first mornings that she's home, she packs up a a day bag and she hops in her car and she drives over to the it's it's it's the trail head, but it's not it's not really a marked trail. It's basically she drove like 15 minutes away from her house to like the edge of this forest and basically from the road it just buted right up against the forest. She would just walk right in where she knew it started.

And the way you get to this this lake is you basically you go 15 minutes into the forest where you find this stream and then you walk along the stream for about, you know, an hour and 15 minutes or so until you hit this east to west running river that sort of connects with the stream. and you turn left there and you go west and you follow that bigger river for like 20 minutes. It feeds into the the man-made lake.

So, it's basically this, you know, hour and a half long straight shot effectively along a stream. You you turn left, you follow the river, you get to the lake. And so, she parks, she gets out, she starts this hike, she goes through the woods, she reaches the uh the stream, she's walking along, and uh everything's going great.

But when she's maybe, you know, like 45 minutes or so, or an hour into the hike, she hasn't seen anybody. It's it's daytime, um, she starts to hear something. And at first, she can't even tell what it is, but she's truly like in the middle of the forest and and it's there's nobody around, but somewhere off in the distance, she couldn't really tell exactly where it was, but it seemed like it was sort of in the direction she was heading, she heard what sounded like a bell, but it wasn't very loud.

I mean, it was loud enough that she could hear it clearly, but she couldn't tell if it was like a a big like cowbell size bell or if it's like a little bell or if it's on a church steeple somewhere. But she's like, "There aren't any churches anywhere near here. " And so she stops and she's just standing next to the stream and she's just listening to this bell.

And the bell sound, it was sort of sporadic. It wasn't like constant or anything. It was just kind of random.

And you know, she didn't know what to make of it. But she's thinking, you know, I've been out here my whole childhood and the only other people I've ever seen out here are, you know, her own family. And so she's sort of instantly ruling out other people.

She's like, this this can't be a person. Like she actually thought it was two things. She thought one, maybe it's a a dog that has a a bell around its neck and it's running around out here.

But she's like, I don't know. The sound of the bell doesn't really add up. That doesn't that doesn't seem like the type of bell that would be around a dog's neck.

It doesn't it just seems too heavy, too deep. And then the other thought she had was like maybe there's like a bell that's in a box that's on the stream or on the river somewhere and it's like gotten stuck against a rock and the water's like rocking the box against the the rock. It's like a really specific thought she has.

But she would say like that's just what I thought it was. It's >> the bell in the box in the river or a dog. But she's like I don't know.

But as she's sitting there and she's listening to this bell, you know, somewhere out there, it just stops. And so she had stopped there for at least a couple of minutes and she heard it long enough that it was she experienced it, but then it just stopped. And so she's like, "Okay, well, whatever.

Just going to keep carry on, you know, like who knows what the bell was. " And so she keeps walking straight along. Basically forgets about the bell, but maybe like 15 minutes before reaching the east to west running river.

So, she's getting close to the lake at this point. She hasn't heard the bell again. That was, you know, 20 minutes earlier.

But she looks up ahead and off to the side of this stream she's walking along, she sees something on the ground and she doesn't know what it is. And, you know, there's a little goat trail that sort of fall that looks like a goat trail that follows the stream. And it's basically on the trail and it's like this dark mass that's on the ground.

And so, she walks up to it. You know, there's nobody around. You know, the bell sounds gone.

And she finds it's an animal. It's a it's a dead animal. Uh it's a beaver.

And at first, you know, animals die out here. There are animals out here. She wasn't overthinking it.

But as she got close to it, she realized that its head was gone. Its head was missing. Um which again, in the wild, you know, it happens, animal predation, it is what it is.

But she quickly noticed that the the beaver's head appeared to have been almost like surgically removed that the cut across its neck looked so clean that like a butcher had made it with a knife. Like this was not, you know, an animal shredding the beaver apart. This was this was a tool was used to cut the head off.

And so that goes through her head. So the first thing she thinks after that is, you know, that's weird, but she kicks it with her foot and she feels it's kind of like still, it's not rigid yet. It hasn't rigor mortise hasn't set in.

And she's thinking, "Oh my gosh, I I've stumbled across some other predator's prey. They were in the process of like maybe eating this thing, heard me, and it's scattered off. >> It's fresh.

>> It's fresh. " And she doesn't smell like de decomposing or anything. And so she starts to worry that there's like, you know, some, you know, knife wielding bear or something in the wool, whatever.

She doesn't know what it is, but there's some predator nearby that's like killed this beaver. But again, she's thinking it's weird that it's its head has been removed so so surgically. >> But after a minute or two, she just kind of convinces herself that like, you know what, I'm in the wild.

It's a dead animal in the wild. Yeah, it's weird, but not that big of a deal. >> And so, she just decides to to walk on and just forget about the beaver.

And so, she walks the the next 15 minutes or so, she meets the uh the east west running. She turns, she follows the east west running river to the man-made lake. She has a nice time, you know, sightseeing and doing exactly what she wanted to do.

And then, you know, at a certain point, she turns around and and begins to retrace her steps. And so, she walks back along the river. She turns, she gets back on the stream.

And as she's walking, you know, 15 minutes goes by, there's the beaver. The predator has not come back to claim it. No one's seems to have claimed it.

It's just, you know, it's just here. Um, she did think that was a little bit odd, like if something killed it, you know, it probably would have taken it by now. But either way, it's still here, walks past the the beaver carcass and and just continues her walk all the way, you know, the hour and a half from there all the way back to the the road.

She gets in her car. She drives home. Overall successful day, you know, weird bell, fine, weird beaver, fine, but overall normal day.

So she's she's at home for the next week and she visits her family and she, you know, does all these different things, but after a week goes by, she's sort of bored. You know, she's home. You the the novelty of being home from college has sort of worn off and she's sort of bored.

And on a night, this is a week after this this hiking trip she's just been on. It's a night she's at her house and she's just bored and she's like, "You know what? I'm gonna go back to the man-made lake.

I just love it out there. I love hiking. I'm I'm going to go I'm going to go for a hike.

Um, however, remember it takes 2 hours just to get to the lake and then however long you're going to be there and then 2 hours to get back and that's assuming no setbacks at all. And she decides to head out at like 5 6:00 at night and you know sundown I think was 8:00 that night. So basically if she rushed I think it was 9:00 she basically had 3 hours until sundown it takes 4 hours to do it.

And so she was like, I'll just I'll hustle in there. I'll see the lake and I'll hustle back and it'll just be like sort of a it'll be more exercise than sightseeing if anything. And she's she's done this hike so many times that she's not concerned about doing the trip.

She's done this a hundred times. She knows exactly what she's doing. But in addition to it getting dark out, um there was a storm in the area.

Hadn't started raining yet, but there was a chance of a thunderstorm that night. And so, you know, she I don't know if her parents or loved ones con encouraged her not to go, but somehow or another she did tell her parents that she was going to go out and do this hike, you know, you know, 6:00 at night here. Um, and basically, she said, "I'm going to be quick about it.

" And so, she uh she leaves her house and she she drives over to the same, you know, drop off spot. She gets out and it's starting to get starting to get dark, but not dark yet. She she hikes into the forest and she starts walking and she uh she gets to the stream and she's walking along the stream.

She's making good time. Everything's fine. There's nothing weird happening.

Uh and she gets all the way up to where the beaver is and sure enough the beaver is it's still there. Uh and in fact, you know, it looked like it was decomposing somewhat. You know, ex it had decomposed the amount you would expect.

You know, it sort of looked like it's just been sitting here this whole time. She's thinking it's it's still odd that no one's claimed it. Nothing has claimed it.

But either way, here it is. By the time she reaches the beaver, though, uh it's really starting to get dark out. Um which was expected, but also it's it's starting to rain.

And the beaver is about 45 minutes from the lake. It's 15 minutes to the river, 30 minutes to the to the lake from there. And so it's starting to get dark.

It's starting to rain. And so she's sort of reached a point at the beaver where she needs to make a decision. Am I going to keep going or not?

and she decides that, you know what, screw it. I'm going to keep going. I'm so close.

I just want to get there and I'll turn around. And so from the beaver, she's she starts hustling, practically running to the river, but the sky, it really just like opens up and it's like thunderstorm, lightning. It's completely downpouring.

She still makes that turn at the East West River. And she's like running, you know, trying to get to the man-made lake, but she's realizing like, what am I doing this for? Like this is it's becoming pretty dangerous what I'm doing.

you know, it's over an hour's hike back. I could fall. I could get hurt.

Like, this isn't worth it. And what's the point to just say I went to the lake? So, she gets, you know, halfway down the East West River before she's like, "Okay, I'm just going to mail it in, turn around, retrace my steps, and head back home.

" So, she turns around. It's literally just pure downpour at this point, and it's basically as dark as it is right now. And so, she goes back to where the river meets with the stream.

She turns and as she's going along the stream now, the long straightaway that'll bring her, you know, the hour and a half all the way back to her car, she's on that path, when she turns onto it, it's raining so hard and it's so dark that she's basically looking straight down because she doesn't want to trip. You know, it's rocky. That's not really a real path.

It's wet. And so she's she's hustling and she's got her head down and she's avoiding falling this whole time. And she gets to where the beaver is, but she's not thinking that.

She just gets to the point where the beaver is and she's she's moving along as fast and as carefully as she can and at some point something hits her in the head and she just like stops and she looks up and it's the beaver. The beaver is strung from a branch suspended over over the trail. It was tied up basically hovering over the trail like a trap you'd walk into and it's got its head back but the head is stitched onto its paws positioned in front of its body like that.

>> Holy [ __ ] and [clears throat] it's decomposing and so it's like slimy and gross and she's walked square into it. But think about the implication here. When she came through 15 minutes ago, the dead Bieber was right there on the ground.

She's only been gone for like 15 minutes or so, and it's dark out. It's thunder and lightning out. She's over an hour away from her car in the middle of the forest.

And this dead beaver is now suspended above the trail. It had to have happened in the last 15 minutes. And as she is figuring out what she's going to do, from somewhere in her periphery, she hears a bell.

It begins to ring in the forest right near her. It's the same bell she heard a week ago. She has no idea the connection, but it's undeniable that this is so horrifying.

And she immediately goes into this mindset of like, I can't run because if I try to run from here, I'm going to panic. I'm too far away to run. I have to like stay composed.

And so she sidesteps the the dangling carcass with its head, you know, doing her best not to panic that clearly somebody's watching this. Someone's watching me right now. It's dark enough that she really can't see into the forest.

And she's hearing this bell sort of off in the distance as it's seems to be moving closer to her. She walks past the carcass and she starts basically speed walking but controlled, you know, back towards her car. And after maybe 10 or 15 steps, the bell sound starts getting louder and louder and louder.

something is sort of crashing through the woods behind her, but she's so scared she doesn't want to turn around and look. And so she starts walking faster and faster along this trail. And with every step that she goes faster, this bell gets louder and louder.

And it's like every step of whatever's behind her is getting louder and louder. Branches are falling. Something clearly is trailing her.

And so eventually she does she just full-blown panics. And she just starts [ __ ] hauling ass down the stream. She's just running as fast as she can.

And the whole time there's this bell and crashing. It's raining. It's thundering and lightning.

She has no idea what's going on. All she knows is there's somebody, something that is chasing her through the forest at this point. And it is like adrenaline mode, running as fast as she can.

And as she's running, she pulls out her phone and she calls her dad, but he doesn't pick up. She puts her phone back. She's still running.

And eventually she just trips after like running as fast as she can. She trips and face plants on the trail. Hits her head pretty good.

And as soon as she falls, you know, she can hear the rain and thunder and lightning, but whatever was behind her stopped. The bell stopped. Everything stopped.

And she's just laying there. She's totally out of breath, but she kind of gets herself up. She hasn't turned around yet.

She's still just like on the ground looking this way. And she knows that she's so far from her car at this point. Like, she has to just turn around and see what's behind her.

She has to look. Like, she's too far. She's not going to make it.

Whatever it is, it's it's right behind her. And so, she kind of composes herself a little bit. that she's totally out of breath and she turns around and behind her it's like, you know, there's not much of a trail, but there's the trail she had been running on next to the stream and there's a little bit of a clearing where she's looking and there's a little bit of moonlight coming through and she's looking back basically out towards just a bunch of trees and a little bit of a clearing and there's nothing there.

There's nothing in the clearing and for a second she's thinking it's all in my head and then she's thinking did I have a bell on my on me that that's the sound it's been making? Have I been making this up in my head? But then somewhere off in the woods, she hears the bell ring and this tall dark figure walks out from behind a tree and stands in the middle of the trail and looks at her and she sees there's this bell that's attached to its hip.

And so every step it's taking, that's the sound of the bell is this enormous creature that's, you know, charging through the woods. And so she doesn't even know what it is. She doesn't know if it's human.

She doesn't know what's going on. But she just gets up, turns, and just keeps on running. She pulls out her phone.

And this time when she calls her dad, her dad picks up. And so she's charging through the woods. Her dad's in the line.

She's screaming at him like, "Come to the pickup point. Someone's chasing me through the woods. " And she's running along.

And the dad like instinctively knows like clearly there's something going on. He and his wife hop in the car. They speed out to that where her car was, where the daughter's car was.

And the whole time, you know, Bella is charging through the woods. This thing's chasing her with the bell. And when the parents actually got to the pickup point, they've been on the phone with Bella the whole time.

She's been screaming and crying into the phone. And she would keep saying to them on the phone, Bella, that it has a bell. Can you hear the bell?

Like almost to to prove that it was actually real, this thing was really happening. And the parents would later say that they can actually hear in the woods this bell just like chiming through the woods. Their daughter's being chased by whatever this thing is.

And so the dad, he's like, "Where are you? " And she's just running through the woods. He eventually just runs in after her.

And he practically collides with her. She's like 15 minutes away. He runs into her.

He grabs her. He turns around without even looking and basically runs her out of the woods. They practically jump into the car and they drive off and there's, you know, nothing there as they're peeling away.

Whatever it was, they couldn't even see it. And so the Bella and her family, they're like, she's so upset. Like they don't even know what to ask her.

Like what the hell happened, they go straight to the police station cuz they don't know what else to do. Like they don't know what to make of this. They don't know how real this really was.

They go to the police station and the police are like, "All right, we'll we'll take a look. Like we don't we don't know what to make of this either. " And so the the following day when it was bright out, the police went out there to go search the woods, which you know, there really shouldn't be anybody out there.

And they couldn't find anything except they found one of Bella's shirts that she hadn't brought out there that was folded up and left under a rock that she had not brought out there. That was just out in the middle of the woods. And so she is she has not returned since.

And so that is that is the bell story. What the? >> So, yeah, just some tall dude with a bell on his hip just running around in the woods apparently.

>> What do you make of the shirt? I >> I don't know, man. I I feel like that part it's hard to verify it.

I feel like that's a great ad to the story, but that's what that's what was said. So, but either way, I mean, the police report does say there was a shirt. You talked to this girl, though.

>> Yeah. But five years ago, and part of the issue was the for the for the version now. We couldn't retalk to her.

We had to rely on what we had the conversation we had 5 years earlier. But yeah, dude, it's uh the cra the crazy part with that story is it wasn't like a viral Reddit story. Sometimes you'll see these like crazy stories go viral on Reddit and you're like, "All right.

" Like like there was that crazy story about like the staircase in the woods. Have you heard of it? There was a period of time in like the 2022 time frame I think where there was this like folklorish story about oh have you seen a stairway in the woods and it's like this idea that like out in the forests of the world there are these just random staircases that go nowhere and there's all this folklore around it but it's just like a viral madeup thing.

Her story nobody was reading it. It was like her personal testimony and when I spoke to her she was just so shaken up by it. It was like, damn.

Like, this feels like you're just getting the [ __ ] off your chest and that you don't know how to make sense of whatever happened to you. And so, it just struck it struck me that even if >> all it was is like some person in the woods with a bell on their hip chasing after him. I don't know.

It's pretty terrifying. >> Uh, but I would I wouldn't What? What do you What do you What What's with the beaver?

>> I don't know. Yeah. What happened?

I'm If we assume, you know, this this figure, this person, this thing is responsible. Like, I guess what? So, they killed the beaver and cut its head off with a tool.

I don't know. >> [ __ ] man. Lot of lot of unknowns.

Wild. Wild. >> So, we that's in the book along with uh eight other stories of similar ilk, you know, that are just sort of creepy and, you know, nightmarish.

But yeah, no, there's lots of crazy stories out there, man. How'd you pick the stories for the book? >> Uh, I don't even know.

I Well, I do know. I completely know. [laughter] I'm 100% aware.

[laughter] I don't know. Actually, I don't know why. We uh we wanted uh [laughter] I literally authored this book.

[laughter] Oh man. Uh no, we we wanted the graphic novels to sort of mirror what we do on YouTube. Meaning, if we're going to use the graphic novel medium, it's pictures.

let's like kind of make it feel like the thing that people really enjoy, which is like the video stories that we do on YouTube. And so we sort of pick stories that were sort of best uh to showcase the visual aspect of the story. And so lots of, you know, spooky stories with great visual elements to it.

So yeah, it's a great it's a great story. There's a few others. Um, >> how many how many of these stories do you reach out and talk to somebody who is involved?

depends if it's a if it's like a public source story, like if it's just widely reported on, there's really we could if it strengthens the story, but if we have the information, we can just take it and run with it. >> Um, anytime you're anytime you're doing uh actually, do we can I tell another one? >> Yeah.

>> Yeah. All right. >> I haven't prepared this one, but it's a great story, and it was actually in the earlier graphic novel.

You'll have to for the people that are watching this, you have to forgive some inaccuracies, but it's it's a great great story. If it's a if it's a uh like a first-person account, you know, the only way to verify it is to speak to them. But even then, you're not really verifying it.

You're just hearing it for yourself and trying to gauge it. And then what we do is we say, "Look, like this is their account. It doesn't mean it's true.

It means I've spoken to them. It's their account. " >> And we had this one, and actually, it's funny, her name is Bella as well.

Uh the the uh the protagonist of the story is also named Bella. Um, but I spoke to her and dude, this story it's it's great. Got a great plot twist.

>> Right on. Let's hear it. >> This one, the title of it is Thorns and it's uh it was put in our first graphic novel, which, you know, it's comparable to the the novel we just released.

So, if you're interested, it's it's in the first one. All right. So, there's this girl named Bella.

Um, might be Belle. Anyway, we're going to call her Bella. So, Bella, she uh she grew up in Germany in this like quaint little village in Germany.

And uh growing up, you know, a big part of her childhood is she would go to summer camp. Like it was a sleepa away camp, you know, for a couple of weeks in the summer. All her friends went and it was right near their village out in the forest and it was like it was it almost felt like a theater a theater camp, you know, they'd go and they'd sleep away and there'd be games and stuff, but they'd also put on performances and like plays and stuff, but it was like a really big part of her childhood.

And then the sort of right of passage for the kids that typically went to this this camp is they would after um being a a a student, what's the name? A a camp goer, whatever. >> A camper.

>> A camper. That's the word. After being a camper, it was pretty common for for folks to become camp counselors, especially in their college years.

And that was sort of the cycle of life of this camp. Um and so Bella, she uh she was about to go to college. It was her senior year uh summer before she was going to college and she had reached the age where she was she couldn't be a camper anymore nor did she really want to be.

It was her first year of being a counselor and she was actually really excited at the prospect of uh of being a counselor cuz this is again like something that matters a lot to her and all all our friends were going to be counselors as well. And so, uh, that summer on the on the start of the camp, you know, she and the rest of the counselors showed up early and they helped set up all the different little cabins in the woods. There's like a little little lake nearby and, you know, they set up all the different like stations the kids be playing at over the week.

She like helped prep the camp. Um, and then the kids finally arrived on the first day and it's like all these happy little kids running around and Bella and all the counselors. It was it was great.

they got to like give these kids the experience that they had growing up and it was a multi-day camp. Um and then at night on this first night after uh the kids all were ushered into their various cabins and were finally asleep. Um it was tradition amongst the counselors uh especially I guess on the first night of camp to actually not sleep in the cabin with the kids to like put the kids to bed and then the counselors they go out in the woods they basically party and and then crash in the woods.

Great, great for the kids. [laughter] >> So they abandon the children in the cabins, but they uh so the kids are all in their cabin and she and the other counselors, they head out into the woods. And so the the cabins where the kids are, it's it's all been cleared.

And so they they barely go into the tree line and they set up their CS and their tents and stuff. And uh you know, Bella was having a great time. Everyone's like having some drinks.

They're just like laughing. And um at a certain point, you know, they they had had enough fun and and they decided it was it was time time to go to sleep. And so Bella, she had her her cot laid out.

It was like a metal cot and it was inside of this tent. And she uh she just felt it was like really uncomfortable sleeping in the tent because the tent was sort of low and the cot was raised and so for she was like very close to the material. It was very hot and so she like a lot of the other uh camp counselors had just done away with the tent finally and just literally was just sleeping out in the open just on her cot.

Um and so Bella eventually alongside many other counselors falls asleep. Um and she starts having this unbelievably vivid dream. She starts she dreams that she's in this like almost like an apocalyp like an apocalypse scene where she's looking out at this this city skyline but all the buildings are sort of like deteriorating and the ground is mostly sand like it's almost like you're out in the desert and there's like the city in the middle of the desert but instead of it being an oasis it's like whatever the opposite of an oasis is like crumbling death destruction and standing sort of shouldertosh shoulder in front of the city skyline but pretty far away from her is imagine like Back in the day when armies used to stand and face each other and fight hand-to-hand combat, they would like line up and charge at each other.

She was looking at what looked almost like an army of people standing there, not moving, staring up at her like they were poised to attack her or something. And as she's staring at this this sort of apocalyptto scene, she realizes that there's two people standing on either side of her, one on either side of her. It's these two these really big guys that are on either side of her.

and she doesn't really know what they're doing, but she's not paying much attention to their to to them. And as she's staring at the the people out in front of her, she know she notices they start to move towards her. They're like walking towards her.

And then eventually when they get close enough, she's like making she's staring at their faces and they all have like these horrible expressions on. They're like they look terrifying. Like their eyes are wide, their mouths are like bleeding.

It's like this horrifying thing. But as she's staring at this this sea of people coming towards her, the guys on either side of her, they turn and they're looking at her now. They're both like basically looking at each other with her in the middle.

And she realizes she can't move. She's like frozen. And so she can't even turn her head, but she's sort of looking out of the corner of her eyes at these two huge guys that are not really looking at her.

They're kind of looking at each other, you know, across from Bella. And then they they pick something up sort of next to her and they raise it up over her head. So, both men are are holding on to something that's now situated above Bella's head, but she can't look up at it.

She's just sort of obliquely aware that they're holding something over her head. And as she's like sort of dreading whatever's going to happen next, they begin to they begin to lower their arms. And then whatever they have, it touches her head.

And immediately, Bella feels this blinding shooting pain in her head. And it feels so real. It's almost like she can feel it in real life.

It's like she's sort of aware. She's dreaming, but this feels so real. And it dawns on her finally that she kind of looks up and she sees blood is sort of trickling down her face that they have this crown of thorns that they're digging into her scalp and they're pulling it as tight as they can >> into her scalp.

And it's like excruciating for her. And finally, she begins to be able to move her body again. And right as she does, she just lets out this horrible scream.

>> And then she wakes up and she sits up and she's totally like like, "Oh my god, like I'm I'm okay. That was a [ __ ] horrible dream. I'm okay.

And she's just sitting there and because when she sat up, she'd made some noise. One of uh the people next to her, one of the counselors who was asleep, they woke up too, and they're like, "Bell, are you okay? Are you okay?

It's dark. They they can't see anything. " They just she can hear Bella breathing heavily and she's like, "I had a horrible dream.

I don't know. " And so the girl next to her, the other counselor, she turns on a light and she shines it at Bella. And when she does, she's like, "Oh my god, Bella, we have to get you to the hospital.

" And Bella's like, "What's going on? " And she reaches up and she realizes her head is bleeding profusely. And she's like, "What is going on here?

" And so like immediately everybody wakes up like, "Let's go. " And they grab Bella. They throw her in a car and they rush her to a hospital.

Bella has no idea what's going on. And when they get there, like she had to get all these stitches to her head and they're like, "What happened to you? " Like nobody knew what happened to her.

She's like, "I was having this dream and it's like weirdly connected to this. " Well, it would turn out what really happened to her that they would later discover after people came forward with what they saw that night, other counselors when she fell asleep, a fox with rabies walked into the camp and was eating her scalp and >> get the coincided. Are you serious?

>> Her dream. >> Holy [ __ ] >> And so when she got to the the they treated her for for rabies immediately cuz they didn't know what it was. But sure enough, when the story got out to other counselors, one of the other counselors was like, "Yeah, there was a fox that kept coming back over to us, and I kept having to chew it away.

" And so, the only explanation is while she was laying there, the fox was eating her head. >> Whoa. [laughter] Whoa.

>> So, yeah, I talked to her and she actually she came out to a book signing and like signed a book of her story. Yeah. >> Yeah.

[sighs] >> Can't tell though. You can't tell, [laughter] >> dude. Whoa.

Yeah, dude. >> Damn. John Ballin, ladies and gentlemen.

>> Thanks, bro. >> Mr Ballin. >> Hell yeah.

Get yourself some of these. Can people buy these? >> Oh, yeah.

>> Oh, dude. Yeah. Get yourself some s'more bites.

>> Perfect for the campfire. >> Book is in the description. >> Yep.

[music] Where nightmares live. Get after it. >> Happy Halloween, everybody.

>> Thank you. >> Cheers. >> Thank you, man.

[music] No matter where you're watching Shawn Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify podcasts.