today marks the beginning of our annual scarathon where for the entire month of october all i do is tell you true scary campfire stories 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've come to the right place because that's all we do and we upload two or three times every week so if that's of interest to you please offer to sing at the like button's wedding for free and then when it's time for their first dance sing a rendition of do host
by ramstein in an australian accent also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads alright let's get into today's story [Music] in june of 2019 an 18 year old girl named bella wrapped up her first year in college and headed home for the summer her family lived just outside of the small town in france that was tucked up in the mountains and surrounded by this huge forest and so growing up bella spent a lot of her time out in this forest either by herself or
with her father or other members of her family and so she knew the forest like the back of her hand her favorite place to go in this forest was the man-made lake that sat kind of at the center of this forest it wasn't huge but it was a beautiful view it was very peaceful and so she liked going out there the way she would get to it is she would leave her house she would hop in her car she would drive a couple of miles down the road and she would pull off into the shoulder
of this road and there was no signage that said this was the pull-off to get to the man-made lake this was an area that she and her family had discovered that there was this particular trail you could take and so she would pull off at the shoulder she would get out and she would turn away from the road and just walk directly into the trees which butted right up against the road and very quickly after walking into the woods after going through some thick underbrush she would reach this kind of clearing and she would see
up ahead this little stream and off to the left side of the stream is what looked like this kind of beaten up little footpath but actually what it was was an animal trail so animals just kind of made their way around this area all the time and so it kind of carved out a path and so bella would walk down to this animal path and she would walk along the path that kind of went parallel with the stream and she would walk for maybe 15 or 20 minutes until this animal path veered hard to the
left kind of went away from the stream at that point bella would abandon the animal path and just continue walking along this stream both stepping in the stream on some rocks and standing on either side when she could and she would follow the stream due north just going straight into the heart of this forest for about an hour walking at a fairly leisurely pace until the stream connected with this east to west running river and at this point bella would turn left facing west and she would follow along this riverbank about 20 minutes until the
river fed into the man-made lake and so she would stay at this lake sitting on a rock enjoy the view and look at the animals and listen to nature all around her and then at some point she would turn around and retrace her steps all the way back to her car for reference one leg of this journey from car to lake or from lake to car took about two hours part of the reason bella really enjoyed being in these woods and being at this lake was because it just kind of felt like they were hers
because up until this summer in 2019 the only other people that bella had ever seen anywhere in this forest or near this lake were other members of her family so it really felt very private so in june of that year bella comes home from college and almost immediately she wants to go out to the man-made lake because she hasn't been in months she's been in school and so she's eager to get back to some place that she kind of considered to be her happy place so one morning she gets up early and by herself she
leaves her house she hops in her car she drives the couple miles down the road she pulls off onto that shoulder she parks her car she hops out she turns away from the road she walks into the forest she finds the stream and starts walking along that animal path right to the side of the stream she walks for a few minutes until she reaches the point where the trail kind of cuts to the left and she just stays on the stream and is continuing walking along the stream and about 30 minutes later when she was
maybe one or two miles short of the east-west running river she hears a bell somewhere off in the distance way out in front of her out towards the river it sounds just like a chime a single chime and as soon as she hears it she stops because there's never any people out here ever and that bell sound came from somewhere in the forest and so she stops because she's not really sure if she actually heard that because it could have just been her mind playing tricks on her or something and so she stops and just
kind of listens for a second and then she starts to hear this bell just continuously start ringing now the ringing was not uniform it was constant but it was kind of sporadic as if you were holding a bell and kind of bringing it randomly like you might see the sports game and so she's thinking to herself you know is there a dog that got lost somewhere up ahead and it's got a bell on its collar and and that's the sound i'm hearing but as she's sitting there listening to this kind of sporadic bell sound she's
thinking that's way too loud to be some rinky dink bell on a pet's collar so it's got to be something more robust did maybe somebody have a bell inside of a box and that box got on the river and it's floated down river and it's like crashing into rocks or something i mean she's going through these very strange scenarios in her head but she's not concerned about the belt she's actually pretty intrigued and since the sound of this bell seemed to be coming from the direction she was already traveling she decided she would just keep
on walking and hopefully see whatever it was that was causing this bell sound and so bella just began walking along the stream again kind of listening to this bell and thinking about what it was going to be and after about five minutes of her starting to walk again the bell just stops it goes totally silent and when it does it actually kind of startles bella because she'd been listening to it so intently and so she stops and she's listening kind of expecting it to go off some more but it doesn't all she hears are the
sounds of nature all around her now bella didn't have an explanation for what the spell was or why it stopped but she really just wasn't that worried about it she figured there was some sort of explanation for it there had to be and so she just kind of shrugged and kept on walking and put her focus back on getting to the lake about 10 or 15 minutes later bella was still walking along the stream she was still maybe a half mile or a mile short of the east to west running river when she sees up
ahead on the left side of the stream as she's walking there appears to be something laying on the ground that looks like it could be an animal or a rock she doesn't really know what it is and as she gets closer she realizes it's a beaver laying on the ground and this beaver is missing its head now this is a huge forest and bella would have known that you know of course there are wild animals all over the place and so finding the body of an animal that had been attacked by another animal was not
unusual that's nature but what did strike bella as odd was the cut on this beaver's neck was unbelievably neat and uniform as if its head had been very carefully removed with a very sharp knife and the beaver's head was nowhere to be found it certainly did not have the appearance of having its head removed from some predator and its teeth that would have been very rough also the rest of the beaver's body was intact so whatever killed this beaver was not interested in eating the beaver as bella stood over this beaver and was just staring
at it she also noted that there was no smell normally when something dies it begins to smell very quickly it's part of the decomposition process and so for there not to be a smell indicated to bella that this beaver must have been killed fairly recently and then when bella kind of gently prodded the body with her foot she realized the beaver's body was still fairly limp so rigor mortis had not set in rigor mortis is another part of the decomposition process where the body kind of stiffens up and that happens fairly soon after death and
so as bella is realizing this beaver must have died very recently it dawns on her that most likely whoever or whatever has killed this beaver is probably somewhere nearby and bella can't help but connect this dead bieber to that bell she was hearing earlier which before meant nothing but considering the bell was roughly coming from the same area where this beaver has now been found it made her uneasy and so bella found herself whipping her head around looking out into the trees seeing if you know there's some person a hunter or somebody that would kind
of explain what was going on but there was nothing and so bella felt herself starting to panic a little bit but then she stopped herself and said calm down it's broad daylight i have been coming to these woods for years and years i've never seen another person i've never encountered some predatory animal i'm sure everything is perfectly fine i got nothing to worry about and so she stepped over the beaver and kept on walking bella would eventually reach the east-west running river she would turn left and walk for 20 minutes alongside this river she'd reach
the man-made lake she enjoyed the beautiful view and the scenery and then at some point she turned around and began retracing her footsteps she walked past the bieber on the ground all the way back to her car and she went home a week later bella was sitting around her house when she felt pretty bored and decided kind of abruptly that in order to cure her boredom she would go back to the place she loved so much the man-made lake and so she told her parents where she was going and then she left the house hopped
in her car drove to the pull-off and parked and entered the woods at 6 p.m sunset that night was at 9 00 pm and so bella knew this would need to be a fairly quick turnaround so she didn't get trapped in the woods in the dark and so bella finds the animal trail she follows along the stream until the trail goes left and she stays on the stream she continues walking on the stream when she starts to hear the distant sound of thunder so she looks up into the sky through the trees and she can
see the sky is starting to get dark but she's still a couple of hours away from sunset and so between the thunder and the dark skies she knows a storm is rolling in but she is determined to get to that lake and so instead of you know turning around and saying okay i'll come back another time she just starts jogging along the stream to get there as fast as you possibly can and almost immediately as she's jogging the raindrops start to fall and by the time she passes the bieber corpse on the ground it hadn't
moved the rain was really coming down and then about 15 minutes after the corpse when she hit the east-west running river that's when the rain was at a full downpour still bella turned at the river and continued west towards the man-made lake as if she was gonna go all the way but only about a minute or two into this final leg she still had about 20 minutes to get to the lake she stops herself and she looks at her watch and she can see it's after eight o'clock already and she's thinking to herself you know
if i turn around right now it's going to take me over an hour to get back to my car sun sets at 9 00 pm it's after 8 p.m now so already i know i'm gonna have to navigate this forest at night in the dark even if it's just for a little bit at the end and if i go all the way to the lake and then come all the way back to the car i'm gonna be in the forest after dark for quite a while maybe up to an hour and she's thinking you know
i'm confident i can do that but it's also pouring rain i'm cold if i get lost this could turn into a very bad situation and so she ultimately decides that even though she really wants to keep going she needs to turn around she needs to head back and so she turns around and she walks back up alongside this east-west running river to where the stream fed into that river she turns and begins walking south along this stream headed back towards the car on her walk because the visibility was starting to get quite bad because it
was so dark she had her head down at the ground because she didn't want to trip she's stepping on rocks she's stepping on muddy areas she wants to make sure her footing is solid and so her head is down the rain is pounding all around her and she's walking for about 15 minutes when all of a sudden something hits her in the top of the head and so reflexively she looks up and kind of puts her hands in front of her face to protect herself and she sees what she had just run into it was
the beaver corpse it was hanging from a string that was dangling off a branch right above her and this bieber's head had been retrieved and the head had been stitched onto the front paws of this beaver and so she's looking at this beaver that's dangling from this rope it's carrying its own head and she's walked square into it and her first reaction was basically to gag she was going to vomit she was so disgusted and then she began frantically rubbing at her hair where this thing had made contact with her because there could be juices
from the decomposition that got on her and then after frantically kind of patting at her head for a second she stops and something really terrifying dawns on her whoever strung this beaver up to this tree and then stitched its head onto its paws they had done that in the last 30 minutes because 30 minutes earlier when she was on her way in she remembered passing the beaver carcass on the ground she saw it it had not moved from where it was the week before when she first saw it and now this beaver is strung up
in the tree and so as the wheels are turning in bella's head she realizes that if someone has just done this then they are probably nearby and at this point it's really starting to get dark the rain is pounding all around her and she starts whipping her head around looking in all directions to see if there's someone out there that did this but as she's looking all she sees is just dark forest in all directions and she knows she's at least one hour even if she runs from her car and so suddenly she is totally
panicked and in an effort to calm herself down she says to herself okay i need to get out of here but i have to walk if i start running right now this is going to turn into a complete nightmare i just have to try to walk and so she walks around this dangling beaver corpse and starts walking along the stream and as soon as she's past that corpse she feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand up she can hear movement behind her she doesn't know what it is it could be a deer
it could be some animal but she's too afraid to turn around and even though she was trying to tell herself to calm down just keep walking you're safe you're freaking yourself out everything is okay as she's walking she could feel herself starting to speed up until finally she was just running down the stream sprinting actually away from this beaver and whatever it was that was moving around in that area and at some point she got so winded from sprinting so fast that she came to a stop maybe five or six minutes after seeing this beaver
and as soon as she comes to a stop and she's walking she still hasn't turned around yet she hears the sound of that bell and right away it's the exact same sound she'd heard the week before it's that kind of constant sporadic sound of someone ringing a bell but in her panic state she doesn't know where it's coming from she's so scared her anxiety is so high she doesn't know if it's behind her if it's off to the side it's now completely dark out and so she is full-blown terrified there is someone or something behind
her that has strung this bieber up that's probably watching her and she can't see them even though she's beyond winded she can barely breathe she just starts sprinting as fast as she can and as she's stumbling and falling on the rocks and tripping because she's not really looking where she's going in the background and all around her she's hearing this bell chiming and she's hearing something moving around in the woods behind her and she pulls her phone out of her pocket her iphone and as she's running she dials her father she puts the phone to
her ear she's crying she's panting she can barely breathe her father picks up and she's so relieved to hear his voice but she can't even make a sentence she just starts crying and wailing and pleading with him dad come out to the forest meet me at the spot where the trail veers away from the stream meet me there there's someone in the forest that's chasing me and i can't see them her father on the other end of the phone he didn't know what to make of this but he could hear the primal fear in his
daughter's voice and so he didn't ask any questions he said stay on the line i'm coming to meet you right now so bella's father and mother with bella on the line they run out of their house they hop in their car they speed the couple miles down the road they park next to their daughter's car and as they're running into the woods they can hear way off in the woods the sound of the belt they can hear the bell they hear their daughter screaming on the phone they can hear the bell coming through the phone
and she's begging them to please come into the woods come in here save me since the parents run into the woods and they begin running up the stream meanwhile bella who's way out in the woods she's still 10 or 15 minutes away from her parents she is barely able to run at this point she's exhausted almost all of her energy and as she's getting closer and closer to her parents the sporadic bell sound is getting louder and louder and louder like whatever it is is gaining on her and she can hear behind her all these
sticks and branches they're breaking as if something is coming up to her and finally when it feels like this bell is right behind her head she just kind of stops in defeat she's too far away from her parents she can't get to them in time and so it was almost like she had to turn around and finally look at whatever it was that was behind her and so terrified beyond words bella who can barely breathe she's so scared and so tired she slowly turns around now when she turns around and she's facing the other direction
she's looking across this clearing she just happened to run past this clearing and because it was a clearing there was a little bit of moonlight that was coming down through the trees just enough to illuminate this space that was about 50 feet wide and as she's looking across this clearing at first she doesn't see anything and then this tall dark figure walks into the clearing and as soon as it steps in she can see it's got a bell at its waist and with every step it took it would violently ring the bell causing the ringing
sound and so this thing starts moving into the clearing and as bella is staring at it it was like time slowed down she could not process what she was looking at she didn't know what she was looking at all she knew is whatever or whoever this is they're coming straight at me and so bella suddenly got this unbelievable adrenaline rush it was like her body went into autopilot to save her and she turned around and began sprinting faster than she'd ever sprinted in her life and as she ran all she could hear was the sound
of that bell which she now knew represented steps this thing was taking and so the bell was getting faster and faster and louder and louder and she knew it was gaining on her and she began lying and screaming out loud that i'm on the phone with the police they're right up ahead they're going to be here any moment but whatever it was that was behind her they weren't phased they were just charging ahead gaining on her second by second meanwhile her parents had made it to the meeting spot but her father he felt like i
can't just sit here and he just starts charging into the woods he can hear his daughter screaming he can hear this bell getting louder and louder he just starts running towards it and sure enough seconds later he sees his daughter compounding out of the forest and she leaps into his arms he just grabs her turns around and runs with her back to the meeting spot he grabs his wife and the three of them just charge out of the forest back to the parking lot back in their car and they speed off in the car all
of them are crying they don't know what to make of what just happened bella's trying to describe it but she can't and her parents they had been on the phone listening to their daughter screaming and all they kept saying to each other the parents was i heard the bell i heard the bell i heard the bell as if the bell confirmed their worst nightmares that there really was someone or something out in those woods that was trying to do harm to their child they would drive straight to the police station where bella would file a
report about what she experienced out in the forest and then afterwards her parents as a precaution took her to the hospital where she was determined to be okay besides some bumps and bruises from falling down the following morning the police went out to the forest to the area where bella had explained where she had been and they searched all along that animal foot trail and all along the stream but they never found any sign of this dark figure with the bell bella would tell police that she had a handbag and as she was running back
she dropped the bag she remembered where she dropped it along the stream but when the police went to that area the bag was gone also the beaver was no longer there it was not tied up to the tree it was not on the ground it was gone the only thing police found that was out of the ordinary was they found a little ways off from the stream basically along the path that bella would have been running on they found a t-shirt neatly folded placed underneath a rock but the police and bella and her family have
no idea what that signifies ultimately the police told bella and her family that more than likely what she ran into was some kind of mentally unstable person that was living out in the woods and perhaps when bella came into the woods they felt like she was on their property and so they kind of tried to scare her off but bella has a hard time accepting that she felt like as she was running from whoever was behind her that she was in mortal danger that had it not been for her father running into the woods and
literally grabbing her and running with her the rest of the way that she may not have gotten out of the woods at all that she might have been attacked and killed by whoever this was she also can't help when she looks back at the entire experience thinking about that moment when she turned around and looked across that clearing and saw this figure come into the moonlight for the first time that when it came into the moonlight the way it was moving the steps it was taking they weren't normal they were abnormal there was just something
off about this thing's movement that it didn't seem like she was looking at a person but rather some big animal but regardless since her ordeal there have been no strange sightings out in those woods however almost no one ever goes in those woods except for bella and her family and bella and her family they don't go in those woods anymore so whoever or whatever is out there is still just out there so that's gonna do it guys if you found the secret in today's episode let us know in the comments section what it is and
where you found it and if you're the first person to do that we'll pin you at the top of the comment section if you got something out of today's episode and you haven't done this already please offer to sing at the like button's wedding and then when it's time for them to have their first dance sing a rendition of do host by ramstein in an australian accent also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly two or three video uploads we are now selling merchandise like
flannels and hats and hoodies and all sorts of stuff if you're interested go to shopmrvallen.com if you want to learn about upcoming deals and promotions for our merchandise go to our shop's instagram page the username is shop mr ballen if you want to get in touch with me you can direct message me on instagram or on twitter my username for both platforms is the same it's john ballen416 i also have a ton of content over on tick tocks where my username is mr ballen we also have a second youtube channel called mr ball and shorts
where we post random short videos and lost episodes we also have a facebook page just called mr ballin where we post condensed versions of the longer episodes you see on youtube if you have a story suggestion please submit it to our subreddit just called mr ballen it's linked in the description below so whether i see you on instagram twitter tic toc reddit youtube facebook or some combination just know that i really appreciate your support and until next time that's going to do it see ya
