Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music.
Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast will feature two horror stories about manipulative people who twisted other people's faith into fear.
The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.
The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.
The first story you'll hear is called The New Nanny, and it's about a very busy family who tries to hire a new nanny for their daughter.
And the second and final story you'll hear is called Take My Soul, and it's about a man who's found on the side of the road, and his discovery leads detectives down a very dark rabbit hole.
But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So if that's of interest to you, please offer to make the Amazon Music Follow button a nice fresh batch of donuts, but instead of filling them with custard, fill them with mayonnaise.
Okay, let's get into our first story called The New Nanny.
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One day in March of 2012, a five-year-old girl named Maria sat on the floor of her kitchen in a city in northeast Brazil, eating an empada and watching her aunt cook some stew.
An empada is very similar to the empanada in that it is a pie filled with meat, but the empada is the Brazilian version of that pie.
Maria's family was actually known for their cooking, specifically their empadas.
In fact, at this very moment, Maria's mother was out selling their famous empadas on street corners and in bars and local restaurants.
Now, the family got by okay this way, but despite their notoriety around these empadas, they really wanted more.
They wanted their family name to be respected, to be powerful.
And so to try to make that happen, Maria's family basically worked 24-7.
Not just on making empadas, but basically in looking for ways to kind of grow and expand the family name.
In fact, while Maria was sitting on the kitchen floor, she could hear her father in the other room working.
And the reason she knew he was working is because periodically she could hear him yell out with excitement.
He was basically sitting there coming up with ideas of how he could make the family name even bigger and better.
And when he had a good idea, he would shout out and be like, oh, I found it.
And in addition to constantly sort of brainstorming for ideas of how to become rich and powerful, Maria's father also was an author and he was writing a book that he was convinced was gonna be another thing that would kind of ratchet their family up the social hierarchy.
But because Maria's mother and father and basically everybody in her family were so completely immersed in work all the time, it meant they didn't really pay much attention to her.
And so most of the time, Maria was just kind of on her own, usually playing in the kitchen or playing in the backyard.
Just then, the front door opened and in walked Maria's mother, and she was grinning ear to ear.
Not only because she now had an empty tray, meaning she had sold all her empadas, but also she had brought someone along that she was really excited to introduce to Maria.
Maria's mom stepped all the way into the kitchen and right behind her was this young woman.
And Maria's mother pointed at this young woman and then gestured for Maria to come over and say hi.
And she told Maria that this young woman wants to become her new nanny.
And so you guys can play together all the time while me and your father are out doing our work.
Maria stood up and gave a shy smile to the young woman, but she wasn't sold that this woman actually would become her nanny.
Because in the past, there had been other women who had come by to be her nanny and they didn't seem to last very long.
And so Maria was not getting her hopes up.
Still, Maria wanted to be friendly. So she walked over and as a gesture of goodwill, she handed this woman her half-eaten empada.
And the young woman took the empada and laughed and said, thank you.
After that, Maria's mother told her to head on out back and go play by herself for a bit while she and this new nanny hammered out the details of her new job.
And she told Maria that as soon as they were done, the new nanny would come outside and join her and they could play together.
And so Maria, who was always very obedient, did as she was told and she headed out back and entertained herself.
And the whole time, as she's just kicking rocks around and pulling grass up and just kind of doing what kids do, she kept looking back at the house, waiting for the nanny to come outside.
But she didn't. And after a whole hour had passed by and still this new nanny had not come outside, Maria felt really bored.
And so she went inside to go look for her.
A month later, Maria was out in her backyard playing by herself like usual when she heard a commotion happening inside of her house.
She looked over at the house and couldn't really tell what was going on.
And then she heard the sound of her mother and her father and her aunt raising their voices like they were fighting with somebody.
And then all of a sudden, these uniformed police officers came charging out the back door towards Maria.
One of the officers came right up to her and asked her what her name was.
And Maria was so scared, remember she's five years old here, that she didn't even know what to say.
So she just stood there staring, being totally terrified.
She had no idea what was going on. But as these police officers would soon tell her, it would turn out her entire life was one big horrific lie.
Maria's father, George Silvera, was not actually her father.
Nor was Maria's mother, Isabel Silvera, her actual mother.
Nor was her aunt, Bruna Silva, actually her aunt.
In reality, those three people were not related to Maria.
They were instead members of a cult called the Cartel Sect.
And all these three cult members cared about was impressing the members of the cult.
When they thought about, you know, making it big, their so-called family name becoming bigger and more powerful, that was all in relationship to the cartel sect.
They wanted the members of this cult to look at them as the most powerful and important members of that cult.
And the way they tried to do that was by performing the duties of this cult to the best of their abilities, better than anybody else in the cult.
And so what did this cartel care about? Well, the literal purpose of the cartel sect was to eliminate women they deemed unclean in order to reduce and purify the world's population.
And Maria's family, the mother, the father, and the aunt, had become very well-versed at doing this.
All those nannies that came around to see Maria, well, the reason they kept vanishing is because shortly after the mother, the father, and the aunt introduced them to Maria and said, oh, she's going to be your new nanny, they would shoo Maria out into the backyard, and then they would murder the nanny because this person had been deemed unclean.
They would cut their throats and stab them to death.
But that wasn't all. That wasn't enough cleansing.
After they murdered these women, they would then butcher them and stuff the human meat into their famous empadas and sell them to the people in town.
They literally were feeding people in this city human meat.
But the cult and the cannibalism and the murders were not actually the biggest shock of the story.
The biggest shock of the story is actually the real identity of little five-year-old Maria.
She was actually the daughter of the very first victim of the cartel sect.
The mother, along with Maria, three and a half years earlier, when Maria was just a year and a half, they had been lured to this very house where her mother was murdered right in front of Maria.
And then after her mother was killed, they cooked her mother and fed pieces of the mother to Maria.
And ever since, they had just kept Maria and treated her like she was a member of the family, basically turning her into an unwitting cannibal.
The existence of the cult and their hideous murders were ultimately discovered after they used one of the credit cards of their victims sometime in the spring of 2012.
That's when all the cops rushed into the backyard and confronted Maria.
George, Isabel, and Bruna, Maria's fake family, were convicted of three murders, including the murder of Maria's real mother, and they are currently serving what amounts to life sentences in Brazil.
Police believe the actual number of women that they murdered is as many as eight.
As for Maria, according to recent news articles, she was reunited with distant family.
Maria is not her real name. That is a pseudonym to protect her identity.
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The next and final story of today's episode is called Take My Soul.
On the afternoon of July 18th, 1997, a man was driving down a road surrounded on both sides by trees in a rural part of Wisconsin called Douglas County.
There were no other cars on the road, and so this guy was driving pretty fast.
And as he rounded this bend in the road, something out the passenger side window on the side of the road in the grass caught his eye.
He couldn't tell what it was, but it was a pretty big object.
And after he drove right past it, he just couldn't stop thinking about it.
Like whatever it was, it just seemed out of place.
And so for whatever reason, this man felt compelled to actually stop and go see what it was.
And so he slowed down and parked on the shoulder.
He got out and began walking along the road back in the direction of this object.
And as he got closer, he began to see this object again in the shoulder of the road.
It was sort of obscured by grass and other things, so he couldn't see what it was.
But as he got closer, he saw the object was pretty big and it was all white.
And as he took a few more steps and got within maybe 20 or 30 feet, he finally got a better look at this object and he just froze.
Because the object was a man. a man wearing all white, a white suit, a white belt, white shoes, all white, and he was laying on the side of the road, just totally motionless.
And for a second, the driver thought, you know, maybe this guy is sleeping, but after taking only a few more steps and getting a totally unobstructed view at this guy, he saw there was a gaping hole in this man's chest.
He was obviously dead. And so the driver turned around, ran back to his car, sped to the nearest house, and called 911.
The next morning, a Douglas County detective named Steven Long was sitting at his desk looking at the photos of the dead man in white.
This murder case was less than 24 hours old, but already this was one of the weirder cases that this detective had ever been assigned to.
The victim had pretty much immediately been identified because he was carrying on his person, his wallet, and in his wallet was his driver's license, and so they knew who he was.
But the man in white's identity actually made the whole case more confusing, not less.
The dead man was a 45-year-old millionaire named Mark Foster.
Mark lived three hours away in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and had no discernible ties to Douglas County.
And so the detective was thinking like, what is this rich guy doing here dressed head to toe all in white, getting murdered on the side of some local random back road?
But things only got more confusing from there.
After the medical examiner did Mark's autopsy, he told Detective Long that he had discovered a note inside of Mark's shoe.
And the note just said, Jack Frazier isn't here, but it's Jimmy Bailey or a lookalike?
I hope I'm okay. Now, nobody, including Detective Long, had any idea what this note meant.
It was far too cryptic. But when they ran Jack Frazier and Jimmy Bailey's names through their database, the police discovered that both of those men, one, existed, and two, they lived in Minnesota, same as Mark Foster.
And so naturally, Detective Long began to suspect that maybe those two, those two men, were connected in some way to Mark Foster.
You know, maybe they were involved in his murder, or maybe they were actually his killer or killers.
He didn't know, but it was his best lead.
So Detective Long decided he would just have to go to Minneapolis to try to find out more.
A few hours later, Detective Long parked his car at the Minneapolis police station.
He got out and walked inside the building.
Waiting for him inside was the local detective who Mark had already spoken to.
And so after meeting this detective, the two of them went into an interview room where Mark Foster's wife was waiting for them.
And right away, Detective Long noticed that she was very pregnant and at least 15 or 20 years younger than Mark.
But despite that, she seemed very composed.
It would turn out she'd already been told about her husband's death, and she was basically resigned to the fact that she was here to try to answer questions to figure out what happened.
And so the detectives sat down and they began to interview her and then when they brought up the note that was found in Mark's shoe, specifically when they said the two names that were on that note, Jack Frazier and Jimmy Bailey, when they said that, it triggered something in Mark Foster's wife.
She immediately began to cry and then in between sobs, she would tell the detectives that she knew who those two men were.
She told them that she had previously had relationships with both of them before marrying Mark.
And she said after she married Mark, Jack and Jimmy became very jealous.
They didn't like the idea that she had chosen Mark over them.
And so she had always felt like those two, Jack and Jimmy, sort of had it up for Mark as a result of this romantic rivalry.
After the interview with Mark's wife ended, Detective Long began to think that, you know, despite this case appearing on the surface to be very odd and confusing, that perhaps in reality, it was quite simple.
Maybe Jimmy and Jack were so jealous of Mark that they killed Mark.
I mean, based on what Mark's wife had just told them in the interview about them being romantic rivals of Mark, and also the fact that that note was in Mark's shoe and named those two men, it certainly seemed very possible.
But over the next couple of days that Detective Long began digging into this theory, that theory fell apart.
Because it would turn out Jack Frazier and Jimmy Bailey had absolutely airtight alibis.
They simply couldn't have been the killers.
Now, Detective Long was obviously frustrated, he felt like he really had it here, but he was not deterred.
He decided his next move would be to try to better understand his victim.
To this point, he had already interviewed a lot of Mark's friends and family, but something he had not done yet was simply go to Mark's house and have a look around.
So Detective Long got a search warrant, and on July 29th, roughly a week after Mark was killed, Detective Long, along with another detective, pulled up in front of Mark Foster's large two-story home in the middle of a quiet suburban neighborhood.
Now, from the outside, the home looked totally ordinary relative to its neighbors.
But once they got inside the house, it was anything but.
The detectives made their way up to the front door and knocked, and a few seconds later, Mark Foster's wife opened up the door and let them inside.
And right away, Detective Long is looking around and he's seeing all over the walls on the first floor of the house are these graphic pictures and paintings of naked people.
And then in addition to that, on some of the coffee tables and various surfaces on the first floor, right when you walk in, are all these pornographic magazines and books everywhere.
And Mark's wife didn't acknowledge any of it.
She acted like it was completely normal to have all this stuff right in the front part of your house.
And so the two detectives are looking at each other as, you know, Mark's wife is leading them on this tour through the first floor.
And at some point, Detective Long just said, hey, you know, Mrs. Foster, why don't you have a seat on the couch and you just let us take a look around your house on our own?
And so she said, OK. She sat down on the couch and then the two detectives, they left the living room, went back to the front of the house and made their way upstairs.
And once they got upstairs, they found the master suite and there was all this bondage gear inside.
There were leather straps attached to the bedpost, there was whips and handcuffs, there was also additional pornographic material in there.
But I mean, considering what the detectives had seen downstairs, this sort of felt on par for this house.
And so after searching the other bedrooms and other rooms on the second floor and finding more pornographic material basically everywhere, the detectives found their way back to the hallway in the second floor and they noticed there was a rope hanging down from the ceiling and it was attached to the pull door that led to the attic.
And so the two detectives, they walked over, they pulled the rope down, it revealed this fold-out set of stairs that came down from the attic and once those were in place, the two detectives began climbing up.
And once they got up there, they discovered that this attic was not a storage space like many attics are in American homes.
Instead, this attic was a fully functional room that sort of resembled like a satanic dungeon of sorts.
All the walls were totally jet black and there were all these burned out candles all over the place and tarot cards littering the floor.
And on the back of the attic, basically all the way on the other side, there was what appeared to be an altar that sort of overlooked the entire room.
And on the altar were more candles and there was a voodoo doll.
I mean, it's totally creepy and the two detectives are looking at each other like, what's going on here?
And so the detectives, they climbed all the way into the attic and then slowly began walking across towards the altar.
And when they got close enough to actually see the altar up close, they just froze.
Because sitting on the altar, in addition to the candles and the voodoo doll, were two business cards.
Their own business cards. Hey listeners, Mr. Ballin here.
What if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories happening right now are all connected to what might be the biggest crime of our generation?
You know I'm always on the hunt for the most chilling and perplexing tales out there.
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Detective Long and his partner immediately went downstairs and confronted Mark's wife about the attic.
Like, what's going on up there? Why are our business cards on your altar?
But Mark's wife, the second that attic was mentioned, went silent.
She refused to speak about anything to do with the attic.
And so after a minute, realizing this conversation was going nowhere, Detective Long and his partner called for backup.
And as they waited for backup, the two of them stepped away from Mark's wife and began speculating like, is this a cult?
Was Mark a part of a cult that like ran it out of his attic?
Like what's going on here? And are we being targeted by the cult?
Is that why our names are on the altar? A few minutes later, backup arrived and they would do a much more extensive search of the property.
But other than finding more pornographic materials and bondage gear, there really wasn't anything else substantive that connected Mark or his wife to what happened to Mark or what Mark was even doing in this house.
Was he in a cult? They didn't know. And so ultimately, Detective Long and his partner told Mark's wife, who still is being quiet at this point, that she should not leave town because they were going to follow up with her soon.
Now, in fairness, Detective Long couldn't tell if Mark's wife was being silent and not talking about what was going on in her house because, you know, she was complicit in some way in what happened to Mark, or if she was maybe being threatened by somebody and she was afraid to talk.
They didn't know. But either way, after leaving the property after the search was over, Detective Long and his partner felt like their next move was to try to learn more about cults.
They needed a cult expert. And it just so happened there was an occult bookstore very close to Mark's house.
And so they decided they would start there.
And right away, their decision to go to that bookstore paid dividends, but not how the detectives expected.
It would turn out the owner of that bookstore was indeed a cult expert.
But much more importantly, and relevant to this case, was that the owner happened to personally know Mark Foster.
And he told the detectives that Mark came to his bookstore all the time, and also the owner said he knew a bunch of Mark's friends.
And so by the time the detectives left the bookstore, they had learned a little bit about cults, but more importantly, they left with a list of names the owner had given them of known associates of Mark Foster who maybe were involved in whatever was going on in Mark's house, and so maybe they had information about what happened to Mark.
The detectives were able to track down everybody on this list very quickly, and they were all young people in their 20s.
And in each of the interviews they conducted, each of these young people were very open about being in what they called a religious group that they said Mark was a part of as well.
Now, the detectives theorized that this religious group was very likely a cult, like they believed, but they didn't call it a cult.
They called it a group. But the detectives didn't let up.
They kept pressing these people until eventually a new name surfaced, Greg Freisner.
Now, none of these people said Greg was in charge of the cult.
Instead, they just sort of said, well, talk to Greg if you want more information about our group.
The detectives naturally began to wonder if this Greg person was the cult leader, or maybe he was Mark's killer, or maybe he was both.
But regardless, it seemed pretty apparent that they needed to talk to Greg because he might have more information about what happened to Mark.
It took a few days, but the detectives were able to track Greg down and they brought him in for an interview.
And boy, oh boy, did Greg have a story to tell.
Based on what Greg told the detectives, here is what happened to Mark on the day that he died, on July 18th, 1997.
On that day, Greg Freisner met Mark Foster at Mark's home.
And when Mark came outside, he was dressed head to toe in white, something he would do for special ceremonies.
And so Mark, he came down the steps, didn't say a word to Greg, they went to Greg's car, Greg hopped in the driver's seat, and Mark climbed into the back seat.
And before long, they took off and began driving northeast.
And for hours, these two just drove in total silence.
Mark just stared out the window and Greg focused on driving.
The only thing that happened during this multi-hour long drive was at some point Mark pulled out a piece of paper from his coat pocket and he wrote something on it.
And then after staring at it, he kind of smiled and tucked it into his shoe.
And then a little bit later, Greg pulled over on the side of the road in Douglas County, Wisconsin, on this random back country road.
And as soon as they pulled over, again, without saying anything, Greg and Mark got out of the car and they went around to the back of the car where the trunk was.
And the two men are kind of stretching, you know, it's been a long drive, taking in the scenery.
And then before long, Greg pops open the trunk.
And in the trunk is a rifle. Neither men have any strong reaction to this.
Greg just reaches down, pulls the rifle out, and Mark, calm as can be, just begins walking over to the side of the road, to the shoulder.
And then once he got to the shoulder, Greg came over and stood right in front of him and just looked intently into Mark's eyes, looking for the signal.
And at some point, after Mark kind of composed himself, he nodded at Greg, at which point Greg raised that rifle, placed the barrel directly on Mark's chest, and fired.
Mark crumpled to the ground and he laid there for a second, just moaning horribly.
And Greg just stood over him watching until finally Mark went silent and died.
At which point Greg casually went back to his car, got inside and drove home.
The only time he stopped was to throw his rifle into a nearby river.
But once Greg got home, he was overjoyed because he knew the sacred ritual he had just carried out with Mark had been a total success.
It had gone exactly to plan. It would turn out Mark Foster was absolutely a member of that religious group, the cult, if you will.
Except he was not just a member. He was the cult's leader.
And Mark is the one who orchestrated his own death.
However, Mark did not view his death as him actually dying.
Quite the opposite. We celebrate life as we celebrate death.
Death is nothing to be afraid of. Death is a great crossroads, a change in attitude, a change in longitude, a change in the way that we perceive our spirit.
When we reach that portal, they'll ring some golden bells.
He believed that what he and Greg, his most devout follower, were going to do, this sacred ritual, was after Greg fires the shot into his chest and ends this body's life, that his soul, his consciousness, and his power will be transferred into Greg.
Basically, his soul will go into Greg. And Mark believed once this transfer happened, that basically he would be immortal, that his soul would never die.
It would stay in Greg and then maybe at some point get transferred to somebody else.
But basically he would be here forever. The bizarre note that was found in Mark's shoe, the note that he wrote and stuffed in there, that note was designed to throw police off the trail.
He knew that he was having Greg murder him, again, for this ritual, but he wanted to make sure Greg didn't get caught.
And so he wrote on the note, very specifically, Jack Frazier and Jimmy Bailey.
Those two people he hated. He hated that they had been in past relationships with his wife, and they hated him, and so he figured if he was going to create a scapegoat for his murder, who better than his romantic rivals?
They had nothing to do with it. He just named them in that cryptic note to get them in trouble.
As for all the pornography and bondage gear that was found inside of Mark's home, well, that all played a role in Mark's cult as well.
He was a firm believer that the more sex he had with his followers, often multiple followers at the same time, the more powerful he would become.
As for the detective's business cards found on the altar up in the attic, those were very likely placed there by followers of Mark, so members of the cult, in an effort to potentially, you know, thwart their efforts to solve the case.
They might have believed that by placing those on there and performing various rituals that that somehow would prevent them from solving the case.
We don't know for sure. That's the theory around why they were there, but obviously that didn't work.
Greg Freisner would ultimately be found guilty for playing a role in Mark's death.
He obviously was the trigger man. And so he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
As for Mark's wife, although she definitely knew about the cult and may have been a participant, there was never any evidence that actually connected her to Mark's murder.
And so she was never charged with any crime.
A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
If you enjoyed today's story and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts.
There's this one, the Mr. Ballin Podcast, as well as Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories, Run Fool, Redacted, Late Nights with Nexpo, and A Twist of History.
All you have to do is search for Ballin Studios wherever you get your podcasts.
To watch hundreds more stories just like this one, head over to our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin.
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Until next time, see ya. Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music.
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Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. I'm excited to tell you about something special.
For the first time... My show, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted, Declassified Mysteries with Luke LaManna, to tell a story so complex it required our combined storytelling styles.
This special episode is called A Redacted Medical Mystery.
In it, unexplained symptoms after a routine surgery quickly unravel into something much darker, leading straight to classified government operations hidden for decades.
To listen and uncover the truth alongside us, head to either the Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries or Redacted show pages right now. or search for A Redacted Medical Mystery in the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you're fascinated by unexplained medical stories, well, stick around on Medical Mysteries.
Every week, we dive deep into cases that will leave you questioning everything you know about the human body.
And if government conspiracies are more your style, Redacted is your go-to for stories that unravel secrets never meant to see the light of day.
Remember, you can listen to both shows early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus.
