Speaker 1If you're going to tell a story that really lands, they really need to believe that you believe in this story. The thing that I do well is commitment to the story itself. Even if it's a bad story, I'm going to tell it with full zeal. It's so hard to listen to someone speak if they are struggling with just the act of speaking.
Speaker 2We have Mr. Ballin, who has gained tens of millions of followers by telling strange, dark, and mysterious stories. He's going to break down for you today how you can become a better communicator in your life. And in the process, he's going to tell you some of the craziest stories I've ever heard.
Speaker 1If you're ever going to tell a story to anybody, simplicity is king. You don't want to overcomplicate stuff. My delivery is the most important part of that performance. If you think I'm stumbling and I'm all over the place, the story, even if it's great, is going to be bad.
Speaker 2How do you think about charisma or commitment to a story? What does that mean?
Speaker 1I always knew.
Speaker 2I'm obsessed with storytelling. I think that if you want to make a lot of money, have success, get your dreams into the world, do just about anything. If you can't get people to believe in the stories that you're telling and you're not very good at expressing yourself, you're not going to get very far. I didn't know until I started doing homework on you that you actually come from this storytelling family. That, you know, dad was a Pulitzer. Your sister has two Pulitzers. You have, you know, one of the largest storytelling, really, media empires across all platforms of probably anybody in our generation. And so I guess I'm curious, how do you think about telling an incredible story?
Speaker 1I think that this, the thing that I do well when I tell a story is commitment to the story itself. That's probably the most true in a live environment when you literally have people in front of you. It's less true when you have a camera and nothing else because there's no feedback. But if you're going to tell a story that really lands, a lot of times it's like the person listening to you or the people, whoever your audience is, they really need to believe that you believe in this story. Like, you ever, I'm sure you know, this when you are, when you take the stage, which you've done many times in your career, I bet on some level, you know that immediately you need to put the audience at ease, not in terms of your expertise, in terms of your comfortability on stage. It's so hard to listen to someone speak if you're worried they are struggling with just the act of speaking. Great point. You know what I mean? And so I think with storytelling, people are, they second guess whether their story is worth listening to, not their literal story. Sometimes it's their literal, but whatever story they're telling. And so I think that I approach storytelling with almost a reckless abandon that I am fully committed to the bit. Even if it's a bad story, I'm going to tell it with full zeal, full zest. And I think that that often masks whether or not the story in and of itself is like objectively really, really good. I think people are left with the experience of that dude can tell a story when in reality it's just, I commit to the bit and I was raised in a family of Pulitzer Priests. Surprise winners. So I happen to be really grammatically tight and understand tension.
Speaker 2That's actually true. So what does that look like? So say you are, you know, I can picture your videos now. It makes a lot of sense that that's the first thing that you think about. But let's say I want, it's my first time in front of somebody. I want them to believe in my story. I want them to really listen and commit. Are there things you do every time to put someone at ease when you're telling a story?
Speaker 1That's a great question because it's something that I have had to think about much more intentionally as I've more and more done live storytelling. Not that it's some huge offering, but we do do more live storytelling.
Speaker 2I saw the billboards somewhere.
Speaker 1There you go, yeah. Like when you're doing it for the camera, you know, that's definitely a skill set in and of itself. But when you're doing it for an audience, I have had to think about what does those first few moments feel like for people? You know, do they feel confident in me? And so I think that just in terms of like the way I choose stories, because we did a live tour in 2024 and I've subsequently done several live shows. Like we did one in Comic-Con like a couple of days ago. It was just, you know, a couple of hundred people. I'm choosing stories that resonate for a live audience. Like for example, I'm going to tell you a quick story.
Speaker 2I would love to.
Speaker 1Okay, so this is just like a classic good opener for a live audience. So in 1995 in St. Louis, Missouri, there's this guy named Luther Charles who's an aspiring actor. He quit his job five years earlier. He lives at home with his parents and he's actually sitting outside of his parents' house. On this day in St. Louis, Missouri, and he's reading the classified ads of the newspaper. He's really frustrated. You know, he's gone to many auditions over the past several years and he's had a couple of callbacks here and there, but nothing's stuck. You know, he hasn't had his big break, you know? And so on this day, he's sitting there and he sees there's this open call. There's an audition for this musical that's actually taking place in Ohio. It's like several hundred miles away and he's looking at it and he's quick to pretty much go to pretty much any open call. It doesn't really matter what genre or performance it is, but he's like, that's odd that it's all the way in Ohio. Like, why would you be advertising this in St. Louis? But he reads the ad and he's like, oh, like I can see they're looking for a really, really specific type of actor or actress. And I actually think I could do this. I think I could be this person they want. And so he's like kind of getting fired up. He's like, I see the opportunity here. I think that I, I think I should go to this audition. I think I should go to this thing out in Ohio. It's tonight. I can get there. You know, I can get there tonight. So he tells his parents, he's like, I'm going to go try out for this part. This, this, this is incredibly niche part that they're looking for. And so he hops in the car and he drives off to Ohio. That night, the producer in charge of this musical out in Ohio is sitting in this theater. And, you know, one after another, they've seen people come in and audition for this particular role. And so far it's been, you know, not successful. And then at some point, Luther comes in. They don't know Luther, but Luther, our guy, he comes onto the stage and he's a mess. He stumbles onto the stage. He appears to be drunk. You know, he's got these like weird, almost like bandages, like you would expect on a mummy, like wrapped like a comical mummy on TV, like wrapped around his head and his shoulders. And he just looks honestly terrible. And he's like slurring his speech as he's trying to say that he's really excited to be here. He's like unable to speak well. And the producer's sort of taken it back and they're asking him, like, are you okay? Like, what's going on? And he's like, I know I'm perfect for this role. I've done everything I need to do to make sure that I am perfect for the role you're looking for. I'm your guy. And the producer's like looking around almost for backup from the others. Like, what do we do with this guy? There's something off about this guy. And then before they can make a plan of any kind, Luther begins to unfurl these bandages that are wrapped around. His head. And eventually he reveals something on his head. And when he does, the producer and everyone, they're like, can't believe what they're seeing. And before long, they're running out to call the police. So Luther, the ad he read, it was calling for a very specific type, let's say, of actor or actress. The ad that the company put out from Ohio was that they were looking for genuine, fearless actors and actresses. It was like big and bold. They wanted genuine, fearless actors and actresses. But they made a typo and somehow nobody caught it. They removed the F on fearless. Genuine, earless actors was the classified ad. And Luther was so desperate that he hacked off his ears and then took the stage believing he was a genuine, earless guy and he could play this part. He did not get the part. He recovered from his injuries and he received an award. He received psychiatric care. He's doing okay, but he did not get the part. Wow. What a story. So take that story. I know that it's easy to tell. It's simple. I really only need to remember. That's the part. If you're ever going to do, and I'm not really talking to you, I'm talking to the audience. If you're ever going to tell a story to anybody, whether it's just your friend or it's a huge crowd, simplicity is king. Because simplicity offers up the opportunity, one, to get things wrong and quickly reset yourself. But two, depending on who you're talking to, you can sort of ham up the details, not change them. But like I gave you a probably a 30 seconds of extra stuff about him sitting on the steps that is just like fluff. But it's just to hype the story up. But more than that, as I'm telling the story, like I know there's a really, really specific thing I'm holding back that alters the story completely. And if I can just get you to that point and deliver you this like total plot twist, it's sort of, it puts the audience at ease that he knows what he's doing. Like I've come here for stories or I'm listening to you because you tell a story to deliver something that like is sort of a gut punch. Like it's like, oh my God, that's so, that's crazy. That's so weird. Like how could that have happened? And you can picture Luther, you can picture him on stage and he's missing his ears. It, it puts the audience at ease and it also puts me at ease. So I will typically choose very simple, linear stories with a great payoff. And the whole time, if you didn't notice, if you watch the tape back, you can see that I'm, I'm excited to tell you the ending. You can see it on my face that I have, I'm like genuinely eager to reveal to you at the end that he cut his ears off because they left out the F on fearless. And so you as the audience, I know that you're gauging my interest in the story. And so like, I'm, I know it's a simple story. There's a great reveal coming. And I want you to feel that I got something coming. You land the plot twist. And then it's like, you can, you can get super dense and super boring after that. But the audience now they're locked in because they'll, Well, that was great. Tell me more. Whatever you're doing. seems pretty interesting. I'm dialed in now.
Speaker 2Okay. I love talking to people like Mr. Ballin, hearing how he went from telling stories into his phone to now running a company. I think it's so inspiring. Besides inspiration, at some point, if you want to become a real business, you have to get it on the books, the paperwork, the filings, the deadlines. It can be intimidating and it can feel like a second job. That's what Busy solves. Busy handles the whole back office from formation to filings. So your time goes into the part you're actually great at that you want to be doing. For me, it's helping people scale their companies to a million, then 10 million, then beyond. For Mr. Ballin, it's telling incredible stories. So what is it for you? Formation starts at $0 plus state fees with Busy. And when next year's annual report shows up, they handle that too. Busy and I put something together for you. Hit the link in the show notes. Okay. Back to my episode with Mr. Ballin. It's interesting because as you were talking the first time, I was trying to think, okay, what are the parts about this that are interesting even in the beginning? And I liked how you started with a date and a location and then the visual of the city on the steps and then the emotion. I love that. I love that. I love that. But you're right. All of that actually doesn't matter. If it's not simple to understand, you don't have an incredible pivot or plot twist and you don't feel like there's a big payoff at the end. So it's literally like there's three things you can remember instead of the seven I wrote down, which is part of the art of storytelling. It's like clear as kind.
Speaker 1Yeah. And I'll even say one time I was doing a show in Houston, Texas, and it was part of the tour. It was at our second or third stop along the way. And I was really excited to do this show. And the audience size was about what the other two shows had been. It was 1,000, 1,500, 2,000, something like that. And I'm really excited. But the thing I didn't account for is when I got on stage, unlike the previous two nights, which had been at typical theaters where the lights are bright, you don't really see the audience. It's like you're sort of in your void on stage, which is great. In Houston, it was like this sort of wide open. It's like a rock venue. And so it's like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't floor space with seats. And it just wasn't that dark. And so I get on stage and you really see like the volume of people in the room and they're not blacked out. Like I can see everybody. And it really messed with me because I went on stage thinking I'm going to like go into my blackout mode and just riff off the stories I know. But it really, I couldn't stop thinking about like individual people staring at me, being worried I was going to get something wrong. And I also, I hadn't been using the teleprompter to that point. I had it as a sort of a backup, but I told like I'm not even going to use it, like let it run. But basically I didn't have good backup. And my mind started sort of going blank because I'm getting ready to tell the first story. But luckily, I just, the couple things I could remember from the opening stories were just like the five or six bullets that is the story. And people don't know it, but like my rendition of the first story I gave was like a heavily truncated version because I just, I could only remember like the simple bullets that make the story what it is. And it worked. It was fine. And it was sort of like a good story. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's a good exercise that you don't want to overcomplicate stuff unless you really know it well. Because at the end of the day, it sort of comes back to this whole, my delivery is the most important part of that performance. It's like, if you think I'm stumbling and I'm all over the place, it's the story, even if it's great, it's going to be bad. And so simplicity allowed me to still deliver, let's say an adequate performance that did not upset the audience.
Speaker 2Yeah. There's nothing worse too. Have you ever spoken somewhere and just totally bombed? Oh yes. I have. I've done it. I've done it. I mean, maybe many people could say that I've done it many times, but I felt I had done it twice. And each time was oddly painful. Like it's not going to affect your life. You know, you're not going to war like you've actually, you know, done and prepared to do. But I thought, oh wow, this is such an awful feeling. I understand why people are so scared of public speaking, of storytelling. So I guess in that vein, you know, I'd love to hear, I think a lot of times if you can get that first, you've talked about it, like put, you know, you've talked about it. People at ease immediately, or if you get the hook right away perfectly, then it's sort of, I don't know, it's like a tether that you can follow throughout the rest of whatever you're speaking on. How do you think about starting a story? This other one was really about this incredible payoff, but when you're scripting and writing, you know, how much do you think about the hook? And do you have a story example where you're like, this one was so good. And then show you basically how to think about a hook.
Speaker 1And that in the, in the opening salvo of your story, it's pretty useful to just employ a couple of very basic facts about the story. Far too often when you, when you, when, when someone's just ripping off a story, the last thing you want to do, and this could be you with your friend, it doesn't have to be some public speaking event. The last thing you want, both as the audience and as the teller is the story's begun. And there's basic facts that have been left out that make it hard to like, just be in the moment. For example, I started telling you a story about, you know, Mark and he's struggling with his finances and like, he's looking for a job. Like you could understand who Mark is or whatever, but where, when, how old is he? Like, what's the context of the story? And so I find opening your story with some basic biographical information. If you're going to do like, I'm going to tell you a story. I almost always start with on date in this location, so-and-so and it's, it's, that's not rocket science at all, but I am arguably one of the better storytellers out there. And I, I use the simplest opening for virtually every story. That way the audience always gets basic biographical information. However, you don't want to then take the route of that's a throwaway line. It is not a throwaway line. It's not like, Hey, by the way, this happens and whatever, whatever. There's a story that is one of my first stories that ever went viral where the opening is like, so in the 1950s in Russia, there was this test. This is a real story. So I'll give the abbreviated version of it. But so in the 1950s in Russia, there was this really, really difficult test for mountaineers. It was called the level three hiking test, which does not sound particularly amazing in any way. But in 1950s, Russia, the level three certification was sort of like, you are the bees knees of mountaineering. And there's some pretty rugged places to, to climb mountains in Russia. So this is a big deal, right? And in January of 1954, there were these nine hikers that were good enough to take that test. And so, and then I would go into the story about these nine hikers. They get lost. They're found dead. Their bodies are radioactive. There's horrible pictures, but it's a whole thing. But what I did is I'm telling a story about nine hikers, which I actually, I don't need to give you their names because it's actually the group winds up being the main subject. It's Russia. It's 1950s. I bet you could have repeated those details back to me. But I also gave you a little bit of lore surrounding. It's sort of a joke. Like I don't need to know, like, I don't care, frankly, if you're into mountaineering, have mountaineered ever in your life or not, you know, that to those nine hikers, this mountaineering test is really important. And that's, that's the opening of the story. Something's going to happen when those nine hikers begin their level three tests, which I understand is very important in mountaineering in Russia in the 1950s. And so you still, I'm delivering you basic information, but you want the story to matter out the gate. So it's like the art of, actually, I actually don't even necessarily know how to do it for every story. I guess I just, maybe it's an eight, but you want your story to have weight from, from that, from the onset. So use the biographical information to, to place your story, but really think hard about how you place it. Because if your story starts with like in 1950 in Russia, there were these people that were looking at a map and they were like getting ready to take a hiking test. It's like, okay, I mean, maybe I'm into that. Maybe not. So I guess therein lies the art of the storytelling, but I would say that it's biographical and make it feel weighty at the very beginning.
Speaker 2I think it also makes you feel like it's believable because they're very specific and specificity somehow leads to believability. So when you're like 1950 named test for these specific people, that was incredibly difficult. You could imagine like, I think often, especially in this day and age, we believe things that seem specific. And so that is actually very helpful.
Speaker 1Specificity does help.
Speaker 2Yeah. And, and also, um, you know, I really like this idea of you've, you've, you've said before, even here, but you have to be committed to the story. That to me sort of feels like maybe charisma too. A little riz. I think this is like immediate, immediate, uh, unsubscribed from all Gen Z from his podcast now just due to cringe. But like, is there something you think about when you, when you are putting together stories, do you think about charisma and how you present? Are you looking in the mirror as Mr. Ball? And like, is there a specific outfit we're putting? Like, how do you think about charisma or commitment to a story? What does that mean?
Speaker 1That is something that I would say on the one hand, like charisma in delivering a story is something that you can definitely have. You can, it's sort of an innate skill for some people, but I don't believe, actually, let me take that back. I don't think it's an innate skill. I'm saying that let's say everybody has a gift. I'm saying that let's say everybody has a gauge, right? Some people's gauges are just more filled than others. And it's, it's really that let's, let's really, it, I guess it's public speaking, but it's more than that. It's, I always knew from the time I was probably in the military, this is like circa 2010 through 2017, we had to just give briefs, you know, like meaningless briefs, briefs that were stupid. And there's no storytelling required. You know, today, you know, one of the new guys, needs to tell everybody about the new goggles we're going to wear. You know, and he was like, go give the brief job. John. And as a new guy, you often were tapped with doing these briefs. And I got really nervous before I would do these briefs for a host of reasons, but it was just the basic, like the public speaking aspect of it was very stressful. But purely as I think it's called a mnemonic, I'm not sure if that's the right use for this. Purely as a way to remember what I had to say, I would try to package the salient points of the brief into a story in my brain. And it's in part because I just happen to remember things really, really well if they're in story format. And maybe it's my upbringing. Maybe it's the fact that I've been blessed to have very smart and story-driven people raising me and all around me growing up. But I actually think that more likely is that all of us, like humans, are inherently storytellers. Storytelling is like one of the oldest mediums that we can even point to that for sure humans did a long time ago, right? And so I think that storytelling was a strength of mine in terms of just like remembering how to tell a story. And so what I mean by that is when I sit in front of a camera, if I have a story, I'm going to be much more confident. If I were to give right now on my YouTube channel that I make videos constantly on that channel, it's a very routine thing. If I had to give a brief about like the channel's performance or something, and someone was like, no, just like simple slideshow, you can use any skill you want, but don't make it a story. I would really struggle with that. So I guess I sort of know to your question, if I'm telling a story and I've rehearsed that story a little bit, I'm very confident. I'm very, very confident, mostly that I'm going to remember it. I know how it flows. I have the sort of bullets in my mind. I probably was quite good at that to begin with, but I've gotten better with repetition over time. I can quickly remember things just if they're in a story. So I'd say I have a pretty high gauge to begin with is what I mean by that. But I think too many people in my experience in meeting smaller creators or aspiring creators, or just people who want to be better at storytelling, their gauge is likely lower. And they believe that like, oh, I'll never have the confidence to deliver a story the way you do, or like anybody who's good at storytelling. When in reality, like you just got to be willing to sort of embarrass yourself a few times. It doesn't mean you will embarrass yourself. You just have to be okay with the fact that you may embarrass yourself. You just have to embarrass yourself. I mean, you talked about bombing. I was in San Francisco. This is pre Mr. Ballin. I, before I, so after I got out of the military in 2017, Mr. Ballin happened in 2020. I did do things for those three years. And one of the things that I did was I did quite a bit of charity work. I helped found this, this charity called Elite Meat. It was sort of an unfortunate name. But Elite Meat was, it took transitioning military members in particular, like Navy SEALs, because that's the community I came from. And we connected them with, with business people that were looking to hire. That's actually even funnier as a name for that group. Elite Meat. It became sort of a meme. How do you spell it? M-E-A-T. But we host these networking events and it was just like, you know, a few hundred people, there was some level of like, uh, organization to who me to, but there was always these dinners, like a couple of times over the course of several days. And being the, the one who's running the event, I would always give a little, a little talk, you know, just like, Hey, thanks. Thanks for being here. Thanks for donating. They, you know, whatever. And, uh, I had done this four or five, six times over the course of a couple of years. This is like in 2019. And it's funny how much of a ripple effect this had on my career. Now we were at this restaurant in San Francisco, this like pretty small restaurant. There's like 50 people there. I'd say half of them are vets. Half are the, our sponsors have donated quite a bit of money. And the room was set up in the, in a horseshoe of like standup tables. And when I was going to give my little, my little talk, which really was going to be, Hey, thanks for being here. You know, see you next year. You know, it was like nothing. Uh, I was going to be standing in the center of the horseshoe, sort of like surrounded on 270 degrees. And so I don't know what it was, but I started like really worrying about this talk as it's like getting closer to when I need to clink the glass. And I have a co-founder, his name's Jordan Selick, awesome guy, former investment banker turned entrepreneur. He's doing lots of big things, but we sort of like traded off who would do the talk. And it was my turn to do it that night. And so it was time. And I'm like, totally having a panic attack, like full bore, like unable to talk to anyone, like totally stressed, but I'm like, I got to do this. Clink the glass. And everyone's like, Oh, great. All right, John, what do you got? Silence. I think I managed to say, Hey, thanks for being here. And then I, my mind, and then this is the way I handled it. I couldn't think of what to say. And then I turned and I left the restaurant and didn't come back. Oh, literally left. And Jordan would be like later on. He's like, yeah, he's like, we'd no one even addressed it. I just simply took the floor and finished the talk. But that was the last event that I did before COVID hit. And so no more events after that. And so when like the Mr. Ballin thing happened, my last public talk was a catastrophic fail. That was so embarrassing. No one talked to me about it. There are all these people in the restaurant. It was so conspicuous. It wasn't like, Oh, what's he doing over there? It's like, I'm going to be quiet. John's got something to say. Go ahead, John. Silence. It was just awful. But I was able to overcome it and raise my gauge, you know, to where it needs to be.
Speaker 2You do like the challenge. Cause then you went and were like, you know what? That was so terrible. Let me make a career out of that for the rest of the next many years.
Speaker 1Well, actually, interestingly, you
Speaker 2guys are a little bit of masochists in that way. I, at least if you're anything like my husband, he likes paint slightly.
Speaker 1I think. I do think there's truth to that. And in fact, the, when people ask about Navy SEAL training, I'm sure your husband will say the same thing. And I'm sure you've heard a million stories. It, it is a test. So Navy SEAL training, for those that don't know, it takes about two years. Obviously there's different pipe there. You can be an officer and go in, you can be enlisted. It's a whole thing, but let's generalize. It takes about two years. And like the hard stuff is call it like six months. It's it's out in San Diego and it's just like lots of physical stuff. Mental stuff, whatever, but it's like famously challenging. It's not really a test of, can you do this thing? It's not like, Hey, are you able to tie this special sailors? Not, you know, underwater. No one cares. You'll never use it. It doesn't matter. Or like, Hey, can you withstand like, you know, this cold temperatures? It's just, Hey, we're going to, we're going to make you pretty miserable and keep you there. And we're just going to see how you do. That's it. How good are you at being miserable? How good are you at suffering? And if you can pass the suffering portion, which is, Oh, it's very technical. We have this phase of training where we learn these things. And then we go to this phase of training. It's all the same. It's just different environments where you suffer, whether it's underwater in the air, on the ground. And so I do think that by the time you get through training, you've only really shown you're really good at suffering. And maybe some people almost, they crave the opportunity to suffer.
Speaker 2Well, you know, it's funny. We have, we have a dear friend who's still in and his brother went to go become a team guy too. And, um, this other friend of ours is if you ever met, he's a man of few words, right? Very intelligent, but just not going to speak a ton. And he, his brother went to go and get advice from him. What do I do? How do I go in? And if you hear from a lot of people, you would think it's okay. Well, during this phase, this, and then you're going to prep by running this many sprints and you better get the underwater thing down. And, and I remember him sort of looking at his brother and just saying, well, don't quit. And then walk it out. And that was it. And I remember saying to Chris, Oh my God, like, what don't we have to help them more? What else are we going to do? That seems like not that good advice. And he was like, it actually is pretty great advice because those are the only two things that you can do is just like, do not quit. And that's sort of it.
Speaker 1If you don't quit, you're probably not going to be asked to leave. You get to just keep on going.
Speaker 2Yeah. You guys have another gear. It's actually funny. Cause I was going to ask you about how great communicators you silence, which would not be, I think the way that you talked about in the last story, but do you think, you know, is it really important to also the things you don't say when you speak? And do you think about how to use silence in your stories?
Speaker 1Great question. And there's actually, I can probably think hard about this and have a better answer, but there's one answer that I think plays into the earlier thing I brought up, which is this idea of owning the bit, um, owning your story, whatever it is, whatever story you're going to tell, even the way I'm answering this question, I'm, I'm, I'm taking my time answering you. I know that like, she's asked me a question. She obviously values my opinion. You know, I'm going to give her a thoughtful response, but I'm not rushing the answer out. Right. I think that nervous energy turns into fast talking, turns into no silence, turns into fear. If there's any silence during your story, whether it's a huge crowd or no, or just one person that somehow that indicates you don't know what you're doing. When in reality, like intentional pauses and sort of allowing for things to land with whoever you're talking to. Ideally, if you have someone in front of you, you can gauge their reaction. Using silence as a tension building tool is, is great. Like when I revealed the, um, the earless thing, there's it's subtle, but there's a pause after I tell you that, uh, what they wanted was genuine fearless actors. And I know as I'm saying it, that you're like, that doesn't feel like a specific actor. I don't really, I don't really know where this is going. I, but something's about to land, but there's a pause. I don't it's like, genuine, fearless actors. But there was a typo. And so having the confidence to have those points of silence when you're delivering a story, it shows confidence, I would say. Also, if you get in the habit, if you're an aspiring storyteller, especially if you're going to be doing it in real life, get in the habit now of building those pauses into when you tell stories. One, because you don't sound nearly as slow as you think you do. If you slow yourself down dramatically, you'll still be talking faster than you realize if you play it back. But more than that, you'll teach yourself that if you ever have a point when you're giving a talk or you're telling a story and you do space, because it happens to everyone. It's part of being human. It's not like that only happens to people who do public speaking. No, it happens to all of us. It's part of being alive. If you're used to having pauses built into your delivery, it's so easy to recover because you can just break it down. You can just break it down. You can just breathe for a fraction of a second and pivot, find something else to say. I mean, even in the course of this interview, I've forgotten where I was a couple of times, but I know I can breathe for a second and pick up where I need to pick it up.
Speaker 2Yeah. How much do you watch the greats? As you talk about silence and breathing, I think about the last time I saw Dave Chappelle in person. Yeah. And he started out the entire bit or his show with just sitting and smoking a cigarette. It's a long smoke. It's almost an uncomfortable, you know, he sits there and he kind of looks around, but he lets sort of the audience settle and he lets everybody have the weightiness of the moment. And then he tells a story. And so I was wondering, you know, if you want to get good at this, I think one thing they can do is go and watch your channel because you interweave a lot of this throughout, almost to the point where it's like that point where you can see the matrix, you know, before it, all you see are the buildings, but then once you understand what you're looking for, you're like, oh, wow, it's actually all around. And so there are these formulas that are woven inside of your, your stories, which is cool to see from the outside. But how much do you go and study the greats in order to do your storytelling? Is that part of what you do or should people do that?
Speaker 1Yeah. I mean, honestly, you bring up Dave Chappelle and I'm not just echoing a sentiment that you've said, but, but Dave Chappelle, in my opinion, is one of, if not the single greatest storyteller of our generation. I mean, yeah, of course this content is not for everyone, whatever he's comedian, but he, if you listen to tell a joke, tell a story, whatever you want to call it, he knows he's got something he's going to give you and he's going to take his time getting there. He's confident in what he's doing. He's going to smoke a cigarette on stage before he starts. It's like, he's allowing the audience to know that he's in, he's showing you he's in control and he's, he's confident. And as soon as he starts, you're in for a show. Like it's clear, he's done that over such an enormous workload, like over decades of being amazing, but watch Dave Chappelle. You can't, you can't not come away thinking, wow, that dude knows how to tell a story. And it's all the little cues that some of which I'm not even able to articulate that he does, that it just immediately puts the audience at ease and makes you excited to listen to him. And so I actually, I'd say comedians are a great resource. I found before I began doing live performances, actually on a stage, I found myself actually watching lots of standup comedy, but I wouldn't actually watch the show. I would watch a show and I would watch a show and I would watch a show and I would watch the walkout and the opening few lines. Because I know just from my own experience that when, and this is probably true of a lot of people, whether they think about it or not, once you're out there and you're sort of off to the races, even if it's rocky, you're, you've sort of crossed the gap a little bit and you're sort of, you're doing it. You're sort of in it. It's a lot easier. You know, people aren't like waiting to like form an opinion of you. They've formed it. And so I know that if I can just get past the opening salvo, I'm probably going to be okay. I'm confident enough in what I can do. And so I remember I watched like Shane Gillis's, uh, was it dogs? What's the one come something dogs. I'm getting it probably wrong. This was a couple of years ago, but I watched his intro like so many times just, it was sort of because it was on Netflix and it kept popping up for me and I kept watching it. But, um, when you watch him walk out, there's really nothing special about his walkout. It isn't like there's some crazy thing. He just takes the stage and there's like 5,000 people in the crowd. But at no point when you watch him, are you thinking? Oh boy. I wonder if this guy's going to bomb. Never. You're like, Oh, phew. This guy's a professional. This is going to be great.
Speaker 2Yeah. Immediately. It's interesting. Cause you, you, a lot of the way that you talk about this is about this trust and believability and control, which I really hadn't, I have lately been thinking about stories a lot more technically, um, for whatever it's probably because that's business. I'm like, you know, where's the data from? How fast can you get to it? You know, why do I care about this story? But in the way that you're thinking about it a lot is actually you can move all that to the side. If you get somebody to trust that their time, which is a very precious commodity is going to be well held by you. Oh yeah. And if they know that they're going to like, they're going to allow you to sort of hold it. And I, and I guess I'm like curious to go a little bit more into a different direction, which would be, you know, you have this new book out, which is super cool because it's, um, this is, is this like, do you say this is animation? Is this graphic art?
Speaker 1I guess it's graphic art. We were, so what we were doing, with that book, it's just a third graphic novel that we've done. Um, you know, early on, I knew given the fact that, that, you know, at the end of the day, no matter how I identify or don't identify, I am definitely a storytelling brand. Um, it seemed silly not to have a book as that is one of the most basic places where stories exist. However, uh, thinking about what type of book we would do was it became like, there's a lot of different ways we could take that. You could write a novel. We still could.
Speaker 2Yeah. You could Stephen King it.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. I wish. Uh, but with, uh, with our audience, one of the things that it was very interesting is we came up with this idea that we're like, okay, well the platform where really Mr. Ballen became a big thing would be YouTube. It took off on tech talk, but it really became sort of like a meaningful brand, let's say on YouTube. And so we just were like, all right, let's, let's try to replicate what the on paper. And so it's visual, like YouTube is a visual platform, but more than that. And I'll, well, here, so it's a visual platform. So we, we, we grabbed this amazing guy, Andrea Muti, who's a, he's an Italian comic book artist, and he loves like paranormal himself. Like he loves the looking into UFOs and paranormal stuff, but he's never had the opportunity to do anything in, in his work in that. So he was like thrilled to do this. He's one of the best comic book writers. He's like one of the most, the biggest contributors in, in writing comic books. Like he's done like Superman, like he's a big deal. So we have like this powerhouse team and we have our writer's room. We have me and we're like, all right, we're going to make this amazing graphic novel and we're going to, we're going to mimic YouTube. And so we put together, this is the third iteration of it. So we did a, of our first one and it was like pretty much what you're holding, but just different stories is the gist. So proud of it. So beautiful. And we sort of tested the publishing project and we got a sort of lukewarm response when we put it out. And that the reason we began to see in some of the comments we were getting is actually very simple. We've, we forgot there's a core aspect of the YouTube experience that wasn't in existence in the model we put together. I wasn't in the book. The book was just the story. It was literally like beautiful artwork. You, the, the writing on the page, it's, it is me. But if you notice on several pages, you'll see a little avatar of me. That's there to remind our audience that like, Mr. Ballin is here with you because so much of the brand we discovered is like, it's that John is telling me the story, but it's not really John. It's John feels like my neighbor. John feels like a dude telling me a cool story. It's not that they literally want John Allen telling me a story that it's that I represent like comfortability. I represent like the every man, every woman just sort of telling their friend a cool story. And I didn't exist on the page in the initial draft. And so we just put the little character in there to remind people that like, no, no, the experience you're having with this book includes the guy, you know? And, and, and suddenly people are like, wow, now I want to buy this book.
Speaker 2Actually, it's really interesting. It is because it's, you know, you're, I sometimes feel like when I'm watching your videos, it's like, like, oh, I might, if, if John was my buddy, we'd be sitting around a campfire and he'd be telling this story. And, you know, even with like the traditional, you know, shirt and everything, sort of like everything primes you for, I'm going to settle in a little bit here. And if you weren't on here, it wouldn't, that's interesting. I'm wondering, now you have to go sort of deep into really, I don't know, sometimes for me, cause I'm a wuss, scary stories. And I'm wondering, like, have you ever had a story that you did a bunch of research on and created that just stuck with you? That you almost like couldn't get rid of? And if so, what was it and why?
Speaker 1I did one, um, about 9-11, which is really not, it's frankly a pretty big departure from the type of stories we would do. It was the first time as Mr. Ballin that 9-11 happened. And given that, you know, big part of, uh, me joining the military was sort of the catalyst was witnessing 9-11 in real time as a, as a kid. Um, so I wanted to sort of memorialize that experience. and tell a story. And I grabbed this guy's story, Mike, who was in, I believe the North tower, he survived. Obviously we have a story, but unlike the other stories about 9-11, this was really meant to be like, I want you and not like in a gratuitous way, I want you to be in the tower, but I don't want it to feel like catastrophe. I want you to feel like you're in the tower, you're in the hallways, you're interacting with your coworkers. I want people to feel like the weight of normalcy in some ways, because that's what it was is people just went to work. And then later that same day you have women and men, like they're either burning to death or leaping to their deaths. And it's like on the way down their final act of dignity, the women is like pushing their skirt down midair as they're falling to their deaths. And so that story was really difficult to put together simply because it hit close to home for me. It was, it's a 9-11 had a huge impact on my life and speaking to Mike and like getting these very personal stories. So that one, but in terms of like a story that stuck with me, because it's just sort of epically horrific, there's, there's one. And this is, I didn't prepare this. This is just a story that it stuck with me so much. I'm going to tell it off memory, even though it's not prepared. So in the 19, late 1980s, this is like 1989 or 1990, it's somewhere around there in Pepperell, Massachusetts. It's like sort of out in the sticks in Massachusetts. There was this family, family made up of Frank, his wife, and then there was Tina and Karen, the two children, Tina's 15, Karen is nine. And they're sort of a normal family. Frank's a blue collar guy. His wife also works. I forget what his wife did, but his wife, she had cancer in, I believe it was October of, I think it was 1986, but place it as 1986. Frank's wife sort of abruptly dies in the, in the fall of 1986. And it really disrupts the family as you can imagine, like severely disrupts the family. But one of the more practical ways it disrupted the family is she was providing a good chunk of the income for the household. And of course there's sympathy for the family. And, and, and like, you know, Frank has, his boss was quick to say, you know, take some time off, but you know, they just, they didn't have enough money. And so like the immediate aftermath of losing her meant Frank suddenly needed to work a whole lot more, even though he knew he needed to be home with the kids, you know, in part, he also was dealing with grief in his own way. He's like out of the house. A lot, like within the first couple of weeks, he's taken overnight shifts. And so Tina and Karen, the Tina is the 15 year old Karen's the nine-year-old they are at home, you know, after school, they're just home by themselves in this house, you know, that, and they were very close with their mother. This was like, it's devastating for just about anyone to lose a parent, but this was like a specially, you know, grievous for them. So in the following weeks after their mother passes on a night that Frank is out at work doing a late night shift, Tina and Karen they're home. And on this night, one of them, it's not clear who says, I have an idea. Why don't we try to contact mom tonight? Why don't we like get the Ouija board out? You know, you're familiar with the Ouija board and try to contact mom. Like let's have a seance. I bet we can do it. And they're like, this is a great idea. Let's do it. Let's do it. So they by themselves, they go down into their basement of their house. And the basement is like nothing in it. There's like a washer and dryer. Like it's like a barren basement, low ceiling. And they put the Ouija board out. They put the candles out. Like they're doing like what they think goes into a seance, right? They've never done one before. And they sit down and they put the little, the little planchette, the little device that sits on the board and they sit down across from each other. They put their fingertips on the planchette and they're like, all right, we're going to, we're going to try to talk to mom here. And at some point they start asking questions, like sort of to the room, like, Hey mom, if you're here, right now, like give us a sign. And you know, nothing happens. You know, the planchette doesn't move, but all night or over the course of this hour, they try and they, they, they don't have any success getting in touch with their mom. And so, you know, on some level they were disappointed on another, they're sort of like, I didn't really think that was going to work. They pack up their Ouija board. Frank's still not home yet. So they're still home alone. It's late. And they're like, all right, let's just, you know, let's just go to bed. It's disappointing. It is what it is. Let's go to bed. And before the girls fall asleep, one of them, or really both of them begin to hear something downstairs. It's just like a tapping sound. At first it was sort of not really clear if it was even really a sound that was worth paying attention to, but there was definitely some sort of sound coming up from the downstairs. It wasn't clear if it was outside at all, but it was somewhere. I can hear it coming up the stairwell and the girls' rooms had doors that fed out to a hallway that was like right in front of the stairwell. So it's sort of like the stairwell's right outside their door. And for a little while, like five, 10 minutes, both girls haven't said a word. They're just laying in their beds and they're hearing this tapping sound that's sort of sporadic and random. And eventually, Karen, the nine-year-old, she's the younger one, she's scared, you know, from this tapping sound. And so she leaves her room and she marches down the hallway and climbs, you know, into her older sister's bed. And she's like, Tina, like, do you hear that sound? The tapping sound? And Tina's like, yeah, I do. And she's trying to be tough, you know? And I spy nothing, you know, there's a branch outside or whatever she said. But the two girls, they're sitting on the bed and they're just hearing this tapping sound. And it's sort of like unclear what they want to do about it. And then at some point, one of the girls says, what if it's mom? What if our seance worked? Like, what if that's, what if this is mom getting in touch with us? And so they're both like kind of excited at the prospect. I mean, they're freshly from losing their mother. Any sign that maybe she's here is like this incredible thing to see. And so together they're like, well, let's, let's go see. Let's, let's go see what this is. You know, maybe it is. And so the girls, they, they leave their bed and they walk out into the hallway and they stand at the top of the stairs and they're, they're looking down the stair, the stairway goes down halfway. There's a landing and it banks around and goes down to the first floor. So they can only see down to the landing and they're, they're looking downstairs. It's dark in the house. Frank's still not home. And Tina, the older one just goes, Hey mom, is that you? Oh shit. Like a definitive response from somewhere in the house. And the girls are like, this is amazing. It's mom. And the other girl, Karen, she's like, mom, really? Is that you? Tap, tap, tap. Someone's responding to them. And they're like, it's mom. Our sants worked down the stairs. They go, they're a little apprehensive. I mean, this is still pretty crazy, but they're going down the stairs. They, they make that turn on the landing. They're, some of them are not even yes or no questions. They're just like general questions for their mom who they think is in their house right now. And they're getting those responses. They're getting the periodic, like tap, tap, tap and response. And so they're, they're, they follow the noise down to the first floor. They trace it to the door that leads down to the basement further confirmation that that's where our sants was. Makes sense. Mom must be down there. They open up the basement. They ask a couple of questions down the stairs into the dark basement. They get those taps. They're down in the basement and the girls as confident as they are that this mom, they're not quite ready to go all the way into the basement. They're a little nervous about going in the basement as any kid would be, but they stood at the top of the basement stairs, just looking down into this dark basement, talking to their mom, getting these, these, you know, triple taps, you know, in response to various questions they had. Are you, are you always going to be there? Are you going to be looking out for us? That type of thing. So they're thrilled. It's like inexplicable, but incredible. They're thrilled. So, you know, about 30 minutes or something like that. And then the tapping stops, like no matter what question they ask, there's no more tapping. And so the girls at this point, they're like, okay, like we're so jazzed up from this. Like, let's just wait for dad. Like when dad gets home, we'll tell him all about it. Now it's like midnight or whatever. So they shut the basement door. They're just like hanging out in the kitchen. And then eventually Frank comes home and the girls are so pumped. Like, dad, you wouldn't believe it. We had the seance, like mom's here, you know, it's going so great. And Frank, you know, he, he knows his daughters have just lost their mother. You know, he's knocking like, no, your mom's not here. He's, he's an understanding guy. He's immediately clocks that. I don't, I'm not going to try to debunk this. This is clearly my young children dealing with the grief of losing someone very close to them, their own mother. This is their coping mechanism, right? So I'm not going to be like, no, instead he said, your mother is here with you for sure. She'll be here forever with you. No doubt. She'll always be in your heart and that type of thing. And the girls are like thrilled, like, oh, this is great. You know, and they run off to bed and Frank, you know, he's worked a long day and Frank, he didn't really think much about this. You know, it's the kid, the kids are going through a lot. It is what it is. So he goes about his night. He goes to bed the next day, the girls get up and they're so excited, you know, about what's happened and they keep telling their dad and, you know, Frank periodically would leave the house over the course of the next couple of days. And anytime he was gone, there'd be these taps coming from the girls. They'd be like, oh, it's mom. And they'd talk to her, like, stick around when dad gets back. We want you to talk to him. But every time Frank was in the house, like didn't hear any tapping sounds. At some point, call it three days or so after the tapping began, which was just over the course of those three days, periodically it was going on. The girls began to shift their thinking a little bit. You know, they were so convinced it was mom, you know, for at least at first, but the tapping sort of, it evolved. It went from being sort of just in the basement, and sort of controlled in that way to they'd hear it all over their house at all all hours you know and so the girls call it at about the week mark from when it all began seance tapping a week later they uh they went to their dad who has just been putting up with this just accepting that they're claiming to talk to their mom they said you know dad we think the seance worked but we don't think it's mom we think we like invited you know an evil spirit into the house through the seance like we think it's it's bad you know and at this point now frank is sort of looking at the whole situation and he's like you know girls there's there's nothing in the house you know doing the typical sort of like what you'd expect in a movie oh come on guys there's nothing here that type of thing but he means well you know he wants to tell them like you're struggling through something that no kid should have to struggle through you know your mother is with you but these taps you're hearing they're in your head you know you have nothing to worry about and frank is getting increasingly more and more frustrated with his girls he's working all these extra hours he's trying to tell them like you got to stop this you know like find a different way to deal with this and so it all kind of comes to a head one night when now we're at call it two weeks post seance and it was one of the first times the girls since becoming scared of the tapping that they were home alone when frank was out because by this point they'd been finding excuses to stay with friends and things so they're home alone frank's out and they're standing in the kitchen and they start hearing tapping sounds it's coming from the basement and despite all the taps and all the times they've heard it they've never really fully investigated like where really is the sound coming from this is like the first time the girls look at each other and they're like we we need to like literally go down there and see what this is like we can't just be scared we need to go down dad doesn't believe us there's something here we have we have to go down there and confront what's in the basement whatever it is and so tina the 15 year old she grabs a knife and she's like oh my god i'm so scared i'm so scared i'm so scared i'm so scared i'm so scared you know karen gets behind her and they open up the basement door down they go into the basement so down the stairs they go and they're looking around like they're super scared but there's there's nothing in the basement like they're in the basement they're looking around the lights are on there's there's nothing down here and as they're down there they hear tapping coming from right behind them they whip around there's nothing there and they're like oh my god like our house is actually haunted and so now they're so scared they just are like screw this they turn and they start running out of the basement and they're like oh my god i'm so scared i'm so scared i'm so scared i'm so scared they're running out of the basement but as they're going up the stairs as lights are on now they see written on the hallway in the stairwell going down to the basement like on the wall in red it says come find me i'm in your closet they see that and they're like oh my god they bolt out of the basement they run out of the house they they run next door to their neighbor's house they're totally hysterical the neighbor knows the family well knows they lost their their wife doesn't really know any of the context of the tapping or any of that stuff but he sees these girls you know hysterical he knows frank's out doing this late shift instinctively he's like just get in the house the girls are like so upset they're like we we think there's ghosts in our house we did a seance with the ouija board and the neighbor's not passing judgment at all they're just like you're fine you're safe stay here you know when your dad gets here he'll know what to do just stay here you're safe you're good like you're good the girls are like very upset but they're like thank god we're not in our house anymore so they stay there and a couple hours later frank comes home in the driveway and the neighbor sees frank come in and so he immediately leaves his house tells the girls to stay and he goes over and he says to frank hey here's what happened there i guess they saw some writing on the wall it sounds like there's ghosts i don't know what's going on but your your daughters are obviously very upset i just want you to know you might want to talk to him and frank's like all right okay he calls the girls over they're outside the house now and he's like tell me what happened they tell him you know we saw writing on the wall like we heard tapping we went down there there's nothing down there like we really think the house is on it and he's like all right stay here stay with the neighbor i'll go check the house so frank totally not worried about what he's going to find this is this is nonsense he goes in the house searches the house nothing in the house he does find writing though in the stairwell it does say i'm in your closet come find me it does say that but it's written in ketchup you know he's thinking okay now it seems like my daughters have taken this to the next level they are writing on the walls they're they're sort of creating a bigger drama out of this it's not even about coping i don't even know what this is this is like these children are struggling so mightily that they're they're acting out this is this is them and so he's not mad he isn't like i'm gonna go discipline them he's like we got some issues this is this is beyond something that i can just tell them to stop so he leaves the house and he's very comforting to his daughters and he's like don't worry the house is fine starting tomorrow you guys are going to go to grief counseling like we need to we need to get you some help because clearly whatever has been going on it's not worked we got to get you guys professional help and the girls they they know what he's saying i don't believe you i think you did this that's what they know he's suggesting but they're so just defeated sad you know they're like okay that's what we'll do like whatever like resign to it they're they're definitely at odds with their dad but they've accepted it so this is about two weeks post seance the decision is made that they're going to go get professional help and like literally i think it was like within a day or two the girls are seeing a grief counselor and wouldn't you know it all the tapping in the house stopped you know over the coming couple of weeks that they are now in professional care it's like the house sort of went back to to relative normalcy you know there's no tapping frank and the girls are getting along pretty well things are things are okay and even the girls thought maybe there's truth to to us sort of getting a little out of our out of our minds over this thing maybe this was a little in our head i don't know so things kind of go back to normal for a couple of weeks now we're about a month post seance and so call it a month post seance frank takes tina and karen and one of their friends whose name is was maureen or kathleen out for ice cream it's just a random night there are no problems in the house things are good right they remember what happened but it's not part of their day-to-day anymore so they leave the house they get some ice cream and they come back to the house it's pretty late at night and as they pull up to the to the house the girls are in the car they're chatting doing their thing but frank he looks up at the house and he immediately notices that something just seemed off about the house he's looking at the house he's sort of looking at the girls the girls are not paying attention to the house at all he gets out of the car doesn't say anything they they walk up to the house and then before he unlocks the front door and goes in he just turns to the girls and he's like did you guys leave the lights on upstairs i could have sworn i shut those lights off before we got here and the girls are like oh no i don't i don't think so right that's weird like could have sworn i i had those lights off i never leave those on when we go out of the house okay then they walk onto the porch and the girls are sort of not picking up that anything's wrong yet they go to the door and as he's getting ready to unlock the door he hears inside the house that clearly tv or a radio is on something's on in the house it's not loud but something's on in the house it's not the sound of somebody talking it's the sound of a recording on a device in the house frank's like what is going on here because he's like i was here and they've been with me since we left and he's not thinking this is connected to the girls but he's thinking did i just like lose my mind and not turn things off before well he's he's confused he's not he's not doing the up go surreal he's doing the there's got to be an explanation here so he's he unlocks the door he opens it up and like sure enough the tv's on there's a radio on and back you know it's not like bedlam inside the house it's just a couple things have been left on and the girls at this point they notice like the daughters not not the friend the daughters notice that those shouldn't be on like no one's been here and they get spooked they go quiet and they kind of tuck in behind their dad who's standing in the threshold of the front door and frank's sort of like looking back at the girls looking into the house like he's like did they did they do this did i do this he's like he's caught between how serious do i need to take this but he starts doing this sort of like half invested investigation of the house he walks over he turns off he's looking around like did i move the chair like this everything looks kind of off but when he got back to where they started basically the foyer the front foyer in the front room there was one more room left to search it was just like the front sitting room that was like next to the front door it overlooked the front street it was like sort of a nothing room and he had just in his sort of half invested state had not gone in there when he first began this sort of half invested search and so the girls have been quiet they're they're on edge they're right behind sort of tucked behind their dad and frank he walks into this room so now he's he's facing the front of the house he walks in and there's a row of windows and above them is like the the frilly curtains that sit above the windows and then on the wall above that written in shaving cream it just says will you marry me and frank's looking at that and he looks at his daughters and back at the shaving cream and he knows obviously he didn't do that the girls are horrified because they see it now too but as they're standing there and frank's literally like and do he hears movement from the closet in the side of the room and frank turns and the girls turn too and out of the closet walks this deranged looking person wearing frank's dead wife's dress or wedding dress walks out of the closet with a hatchet over his shoulder and he has this person has clown makeup on like this it's almost comically bizarre out of the closet they walk and they turn and they look over at frank and the girls and then specifically at frank and they just go go upstairs and so they kind of backpedal out of the room the girls start going up the stairs frank goes you know back backwards, watching this person who's slowly walking towards them with the hatchet. Up the stairs they go. He tells the girls, go in the first bedrooms. They kind of like make their way into the first bedroom. He follows them. And as soon as he gets into the second floor bedroom, he shuts the door and he holds the doorknob. And there's this sudden struggle at the door as the maniac is now trying to pull the door open. Frank's holding the door. There's no plan. And Tina, the 15-year-old, like in a panic, she just turns and runs and leaps out the second floor window, like jumps clear out of the house, smashes to the ground. She runs to that same neighbor next door, the one that they had ran to when the ketchup thing happened. Oh my God, there's somebody in the house. You know, that type of thing. Neighbor calls the police. The police come flying over a couple of minutes later. And when they get there, Frank and his girls are up in that second floor window. They didn't jump. And they're yelling like, hey, there's somebody in my house. There's someone here. I don't know where they were. I think they're in the hallway. They're gone now. I don't know what's going on. So the police, they get a ladder. They get, you know, Frank. His girl's down. Everybody's safe. You know, Frank, the girls, everybody's safe. And the police are like, you stay at the neighbor's house. We're going to search your house because clearly there's someone in there or who has been in there the way you've described it. Police go in. They search the whole house, top to bottom. And they cannot find anything. However, they do find the back glass sliding door of the first floor was slightly open. And there was indeed a hatchet lining up, laying up against the wall as if someone left it there on their way out. The police, they search the house. They do that. They find the hatchet. And then afterwards, they pull Frank aside. And they're like, okay, you know, obviously we believe you. There was someone in your house, but they're not there now. And so here's what we propose. You and your family stay somewhere else for the next couple of days. We're going to watch your house because they're not here now. Maybe they'll come back. Maybe they'll come back for their hatchet, right? You know, who knows? We'll just monitor your house sort of discreetly. See if they turn up because as it is the way you've described them, they basically had a costume on. So we don't even know who to look for. Man, woman, how old they are, like pretty much disguised. We don't even know where to start. Maybe they're here. Maybe they're outsiders. We don't know. So we're going to just monitor your house. So you just hang out for a couple of days. So Frank and the girls, they're horrified, happy to be alive, you know, thanks to, you know, Tina's quick thinking basically. And so they stay with a friend, a family, a family friend. And for the next couple of days, the police monitor the house and they report to Frank each day, like not seeing anything, you know, no one's coming to your house. Like there's no sign of any activity, you know, I guess it's just over. But Frank, after a few days is like, man, I can't, I can't just do this. Like I can't just not be at my house. And he didn't have a chance to, to collect any of his things, like his toiletries and whatever. And so three or four days into this, this, you know, surveillance program, he's like, I'm just going to go over there and just real quick, go in the house. I'm going to, I'm going to grab my toiletries or whatever. And you know, whatever. So without telling the police, he drives over to his house and he pulls into his driveway and you know, there's, it's nonchalant. Nothing going on. It's daytime. But as he's pulling into the house for a second, he thinks he sees somebody walking around in the second floor of his house. And obviously he witnessed someone walking around in his closet. So he's quick to be worried about it. But he also is like, wait a minute. I don't know if the police were also going to be in my house. They said they'd be watching it from the outside. I guess I don't really know if they're also in the house. I guess that could be part of their protocol. I better call them real quick and just make sure I'm, I'm not going crazy and just and see what they say before I just walk in. Cause originally he was just going to jet in there, grab the stuff and go. And when he pulled up, he didn't see any cops outside. So he goes to that neighbor's house, grabs their phone. He calls the guy, his contact, the police. And they're like, yeah, Frank, no one's going in your house. So if you saw somebody in your house, that's not us. And I don't know how there was nobody outside of your house. You probably arrived at like the, at the, the exchange between the officers, maybe somebody had just left. So there should have been someone outside to greet you. It's our bad, but definitely should be in there. And so they're like, do not go in your house. We're going to come over and search it for you. So Frank stays at the neighbor's house that the police come over and they go up to the front door. And remember the police saved for a couple of minutes here and there. They've been watching this house from the outside the whole time. They open up the door and like what they see inside the house is just unbelievable. There are all these pennies that are glued to the ceiling of the first floor. There are knives that have been driven into the walls. In some cases through family photos, there are these champagne flutes that are half filled with champagne inexplicably sort of placed around the first floor. There's furniture rearranged in sort of bizarre ways. It's like this weird scene, but clearly someone has been in here. We've been watching this house and someone's been getting in and out of here clearly, or they're still here. And so they're like back out. We need to do a much more thorough search of this house. We missed something. There's some way in or some way out or someone's still here. And so it's like full send. Every cop in town searches this house. They rip it to shreds. They're like, we are going to find this person. And they search that house for hours and they do not find a thing. There's no, there's no footprints coming in or out. There was snow on the ground. There's, there's no sign that anyone could have gotten in here, but clearly someone was in here. And eventually a couple of the officers who were part of the search, they find themselves in the basement where it all began, the nothing basement. And they're frustrated. They're like, I don't know how to even go back to Frank and his family and tell them that we did. We don't know considering now what we can see on their first floor. And so they're just frustrated. They're sitting in the basement and they're like, we must've missed something. And at one point, one of the guys is leaning up against the washing machine in the basement. One of the only things down there, he's leaning up against it. He's like, wow, we missed something. And suddenly his weight causes the washing machine to move just slightly. It wasn't bunkered to the wall. And it reveals a little cutout on the backside of, of the washing machine. It was bigger than it needed to be. I think for like the dryer, there are those ducks that feed into the wall. This is like a bigger cutout. It had clearly been discounted. No one had thought to look behind these two, these two appliances and they pulled them out of the way. And they discovered there's this big cut that leads to a tunnel in the wall and they get their flashlight out and they lean into this, this hole in the wall in the basement. And they shine their light down this, this tunnel in the walls to the back corner of the basement and crouched in the corner is this person wearing a dress. The clown makeup and their hatchet. Okay. That person was a guy named Danny LaPlante. He was 16 years old. And about a year earlier, he went on what he presumed to be a date with Tina, the 15 year old. He felt like his, his advances were spurned and he was very upset about it. And so naturally, what did he do? He found a way to break into the family's house, burrowed into their walls and was living in their walls for the better part of six months to a year. He was in the basement. When the girls were performing that seance here, he heard them trying to contact their mom. And then he pretended to be their mom doing the tap, tap, tap, you name it. He was absolutely playing along with the idea that they thought it was their mom. He also didn't just stay in the wall in the basement. He routinely would leave the wall in the middle of the day. He said the family didn't notice. He would just walk around the house. He'd go under their beds at night and flick their springs. No one investigated. So he's living in their house, living in their walls. So he gets pulled out. And obviously gets arrested. He's 16, but he's let out on, on bail effectively. 10 months after he was pulled from the wall and he's been 10 months after he gets bailed out, he sneaks into another family's house in Massachusetts and he murders all of them. He kills the entire family. Doesn't know them. No connection to them whatsoever. Followed the same protocol, but he murdered by drowning them in the bathtub. He's still alive. And he recently was up for parole. He was rejected. He was determined to be during this parole hearing, arguably the single most psychotic inmate in the entire federal prison system. So that's Daniel LaPlante for you. And if you Google him in a weird way, you're like, I can see it.
Speaker 2Oh God. I don't want to see that. I'm not Googling that. What a fucking, especially with three kids.
Speaker 1You're like horrific. Yeah. So that that's the one that sticks. Oh God. What a story.
Speaker 2Honestly, I can't believe you do this for a living because I think I'm, I'm, I'm hype. I'm like actually sweating. And I think you have to like get into the psyche of all that. Even when you were telling the story, the part that stood out to me is how many times you're like, you could see how he would rationally do this. Right. And you could see how like the dad would think that this is not a thing, which is why your stories are so interesting.
Speaker 1Well, cause I think that one of the things I want to do, whether it's a story like that, where it's very dark or if it's, there were plenty of stories that are like kind of goofy. Like I'll tell you a very, very, very short story. Boy scout named Cody Clausen in 2001, he was camping with his, with his dad and his boy scout troop out near Yellowstone. And he, at one point decided to go from the campfire and where the tents were to go back to his dad's truck, which was like two miles away on a known trail to get some supplies, come back. And it was, it was like a nothing thing. He's like 13 years old. Um, and he has 15, so he's 15 years old, capable of doing this on his own, but he gets lost at some point, you know, between the campfire and his dad's truck. And this is 2001, no cell phones, no radios. And so he gets totally lost. You know, his dad eventually discovers that he's gone. They're looking for him, but he, he goes way off the trail and he gets completely lost. And so that night, you know, sun goes down, this horrible storm comes in, you know, like hail and lightning. And he takes shelter inside of this cave and he's got no supplies. He's freezing cold. And he's like, what am I going to do? Right. So he sleeps in a cave. The next morning he gets up and he's like, I'm going to go to the campfire. And he's He's like, "All right, I just need to go out and run around and someone's going to see me, they got to be looking for me. Right. And so he goes out and he's like, so like messed up from being no sleep, whatever, but he's running around and he sees this, this clearing, like this random clearing in the trees. And he goes in the clearing and he's just like hoping that someone flies overhead and sees him. And sure enough, like literally that same day. So less than 24 hours after going missing, a helicopter flies overhead. It clearly sees Cody down below. Cody's like waving the pilot, you know, waves down, like got contact. He's going to get out of here. So the pilot circles up and he lands his helicopter. And this is again, 2001 Cody runs over and the guys like the pilots calling him to like, yep, come in this way. Like come in this direction. Come on. And gets on the helicopter. Like he's saved. And he sits in the back of the helicopter and the pilot turns around and it's Harrison Ford and his private helicopter at peak fame. Harrison Ford happened to find Cody Clausen and saved his life. What's up kid. It's Indiana Jones. Come to save you.
Speaker 2Best thing that's ever happened to that kid. Also Harrison, like what a, he gets to be a hero without doing much. Just flying around, saving, saving Boy Scouts. Also, I feel like that would be a good one to put in the book because the visual of Harrison's face.
Speaker 1Oh yeah. Oh yeah. He's, he's iconic.
Speaker 2Anytime you tell a beautiful story, it allows you to see some different type of humanity. And like, you've lived a lot of stories. So I know that, um, you actually, I believe went to Afghanistan and you had one of those near death experiences that many people talk about. What story do you tell from that? What happened? And, um, because I think there's a beautiful chance to get to experience something without having to go through some of the horror that you've been through in so many half.
Speaker 1Yeah. Well, thank you. Um, I, yeah, I went to Afghanistan on my first tour as a seal. Um, and in many ways the experience was sort of exactly what I thought it would be. And in many ways, it was sort of exactly what I thought it would be. And in many ways was sort of horrific in ways I didn't expect, but it was just like, you know, it's like the ugliest parts of humanity in some ways, you know, people trying to kill each other. Um, but at the end of the, the deployments, like five months into it, uh, I was in an alleyway at the tail end of sort of sporadic gunfighting over the course of the day. We did not get into like infinite gunfights over there. This just happened to be a day where we got into a precinct thing, a gunfight. And we had tracked down via drone overhead, these people that we believed were fighting. And we had tracked down via drone overhead, these people that we believed were fighters, but we had to go see if they really had guns or not. And we got to the end of this, this, this intersection, this, this alleyway where we walked down this alleyway and there's this like a seven foot tall wall. This is nighttime night vision on like it's pitch black. And based on the drone operator, we believed we could peek our heads over this wall. And there was this big field out beyond this, this wall. And we could sort of look to the other side of the field and get a sense of who these folks were, whether they were kids, random people, whatever combatants, we didn't know. But one way or another, the cardinal directions, the location of these folks got mixed up. And we suddenly found ourselves looking over the wall and seeing that one, they're right here on the immediate other side of the wall. And two, they are combatants, like guns, you name it. What ensued was this little, we had to decide if we try to back out and find another way, they might hear us. They hadn't heard us to this point. We kind of snuck up on them. Anyways, turns into this very intimate shooting back and forth across the wall. And they were holding grenades with pins out. Basically, the way grenade works, at least frag grenades is it's like the body of the grenade, it's like a metal rock. And there's a fuse inside of it. And when it detonates, the body itself blows up into a million pieces. And it's designed to almost turn into these jagged pieces of metal that shoot everywhere. And the lethal radius, at least for an American frag grenade, it's an M67 grenade. It's like within, I think, five meters, you're toast, you're dead. Two grenades come over the wall. The way it works is you pull the pin and you release the spoon. And there's a timer that starts up. And then you're like, oh, my God, it detonates like five seconds later or something. Grenades come over the wall. One actually hits my shoulder. And at a time like slowed down, you know, I'm on night vision. And there was a drone overhead with an infrared spotlight that was flashing, which is normally we would use that for targeting. For whatever reason, we were in a targeting spotlight, which is like imagine if God had a flashlight and was turning it off and on, and like a pretty tight cone that you can only see on night vision. And so like, we're in like a strobe light. And I see the grenade, then it goes off. And I'm like, Oh, my God, I'm going to die. I remember being like really concerned that it was going to blow up right here. And it would blow my head off. Not so much because like, shoot, I'll die. That was sort of a given. It was like, I won't have a face. I can't have a, you know, open casket. You know, my mom won't see me again. Hits my shoulder. I see it disappears. See it disappears. The strobe. It makes it like halfway down to the ground. I remember thinking like, oh, maybe it'll just blow my legs off and I'll live through this. Who knows? Hits the ground. We were standing in like a sewage runoff. There was a sewage trail that went through it. So it was like a couple of inches of sewage, which I think realistically probably saved several of our lives. The grenade landed. And at least the one that hit me, there was two that came over the wall and it blows up. And it just felt like somebody took rocks and just threw them at my legs. It didn't, it didn't hurt at all. I'm sure this is like the most extreme amount of adrenaline that you can possibly get. You know, the, the, the time slowing down thing, I don't know. When your body truly thinks not like, oh, this is really stressful. I hope I'm going to be okay. But no, like actual death is coming. It's like your body does everything it can instantly to try to save you. And one of the things it does is it dumps all these, you know, adrenaline to help you focus. You can understand what you need to do to survive. That's the fight or flight instinct. And so it's like time slows down, blows up, don't feel anything. And then I was just incapacitated. I was down. I, my gun was blown off me. My helmet was blown off. I was like, I didn't have night vision anymore. And it was just chaos because there was only seven of us. We didn't know how many people were on the other side of the wall. And as I'm sure your husband has told you, you can get shot and keep on going. Um, so it's like very intimate. The fighters in the village just began arbitrarily firing in our direction. Cause it's like martyrdom is a thing. They don't care if they hit their own, they're going to hit us like rockets are being fired. It was, it's like, okay, I've survived the blast somehow. And it looks like several of my on the wall and shoot us some RPGs. It was like, okay, I'm alive now, but I'm going to die very soon. At some point, you know, I'm trying to crawl my way. I get scooped up and dragged by one of the guys that was not out or everybody lived on our side. Everybody got hurt, but everybody lived. I got dragged to like the stem of the T and I was placed up against a wall and, you know, I'm just sitting there. I don't have a gun. I don't have anything. You know, there's a decent illumination from the moon, but I don't have night vision on. And all I hear is gunfire over here. And it's like, I'm sitting there. I can't get my tourniquets off. Stop the bleeding. Even though they were literally put on my kit with rubber bands to be quick release. I couldn't even get them. I was so weak. And then I, my hearing went, like it went complete silence. And then my vision sort of came to toilet paper rolls and then faded, but I was totally lucid. I was very alive, but I can't see, can't hear anything. And I remember thinking about my wife, Amanda back home, you know, sort of having that moment of like, honestly, I was just thinking she's going to end up getting remarried. We didn't have kids yet. And I wasn't mad. It was just like, she's going to have a whole other life with somebody else as she should, you know, like that's the way it's going to go. She's like 20 something, you know, this is the end of the road. I'd like, wish I'd had kids sort of thing. And then I also, I was really hung up on, I wonder if they'll say John Allen was killed in action or Jonathan Allen was killed in action. I was very fixated on that. I wonder how they're going to spell that. Not that I cared one way or another, but it was like practical, right? And I also had a thought that I've subsequently told people about, which is like every day when you live your life, you don't think about the act of living. You don't wake up and think, okay, today I better breathe. I better make sure my heart's pumping. I better like, you know, things that we do to live. You just do them automatically. Your entire experience is being alive and you do it automatically. What people don't appreciate, that's maybe not the wrong word for it, but they don't know, or they haven't experienced yet is that your body is as good as it is at being alive. It's just as good at shutting down. You just haven't done it yet. And as I was sitting there, silence, no vision, it was like, this is death, not scary, not bad, not good, nothing. It simply was, I am dying. And the last thing I felt was maybe like almost a physical feeling of letting go, which I've seen other people echo. I don't know. That's almost a let go mentally. I don't know. And I felt myself hit the ground. I sort of leaned over and it was like, I'm dying now. This is active death here. And then a moment later, my SEAL medic came running out, put tourniquets on my legs and presumably stopped the bleed in time because I very slowly got my vision back, got my hearing back, but we're like in the worst situation. They called in like airstrikes, like five feet away from us. We're still getting shot at from all over the city. They carried me like out to the helicopter of the guys that are like one guy. His lung was collapsed and he had to keep doing needle decompressions on him. Like the medic, as we're taking fire, he's like jamming needles into his intercostal space. I imagine porcupine quills of all these, these needles poking out to relieve pressure on his lung. Like he's assisting me, you know, it's like this just madness as we run to the helicopter. I obviously survive, you know, and it was just very lucky that I didn't bleed out and it was just entirely because of my in some ways I've had the, the cliche, like, wow, I am on a second chance feeling. I've had a lot of that, but I don't feel that on a day-to-day basis. I don't walk around thinking, wow, I'm on bar. I'm on like this amazing second chance. I don't, but it's very, very good for when I'm stressed about trying something new or I'm stressed about doing something hard. I have found that it's so easy for me to say, dude, you should be dead. And in some ways it doesn't even necessarily require having a near-death experience, but understanding that we are mortals, it's sort of dark, but like, it's a very refining thing. If you just use that in your life in a good way, like your mortality doesn't need to be a negative. It can be a good thing. You can say, dude, literally, I don't know how much time I have. That in and of itself should inform your decision-making to some degree. We all have responsibilities. You can't just be like, well, then I'm going to go skydive today. Like you could, maybe don't. You have like 17 kids to feed. Maybe don't do that. But the point is, is like, I have used that experience to be quick to risk embarrassment, quick to like take chances. Because I, the way I see it is like the worst that will happen is not as bad as dying. And so it's just, it's taught me to continue to seek out those challenging things, which I think I was already sort of doing, but now it's with a healthier level of reckless abandon.
Speaker 2John Ballin, what a series of stories and a life I've already lived. Thank you so much for being here today.
Speaker 1Thank you. I feel like I yapped like mad. It was also beautiful.
Speaker 2No, well, first of all, I like yappers. And I was an interviewer. Yapping is nice. It's very seldom when you do a podcast, you get to like, not actually think about any of the stuff and fall so deeply into a story. And like, what a beautiful skill that you have that you're able to do that.
Speaker 1Thank you very much.
Speaker 2Yeah. Especially you're like, I didn't plan this one. So what happened?
Speaker 1I do though. In a way I planned it.
Speaker 2It's actually incredible. I'm so excited for the book. I'm actually going to give it to my husband because he likes this. And then he's going to tell me the stories and I'm going to get freaked out. Although I hear women are actually like mostly the target audience for all scary stuff. They do like that stuff.
Speaker 1That's just the way it is, I guess.
Speaker 2Yeah. We just, we want to be scared, but like from over there, you know?
Speaker 1That's right. Okay.
Speaker 2So the terror within.
Speaker 1It's available everywhere. Yeah. Available everywhere. There's nine stories. You can pick it up, read any one of them. They are not directly connected. There is a through line, which is this idea that the scariest thing in any one of these stories is never the thing you expect. And then taking it a step further, it's that we all have a darkness inside of us, the terror within, if you will. Some people it comes out, some it does not. And so it sort of exposes that side of humanity a little bit, but there's one story in there. It's called Eliza that I think of all the stories we put in. I think of it as a graphic novel form. It's very fitting, I'll say. It's a story that's exclusive to the graphic novel. It's very fitting for our current sort of state of living, the type of technology we use. It's a very unique story about a guy who lets, let's call it tech, go a little too far.
Speaker 2Okay. Creepy. I like it. I like it. I also like a good tension cliffhanger. There you go. John Ballin, thank you for being here.
Speaker 1Thank you very much. you
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