Today we have three stories about people who each have like this one big thing in their life that brings them a lot of happiness and fulfillment and purpose.
But unfortunately, this same thing winds up being the very reason that their life gets ruined.
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 place, because that's all we do, and we upload two three, even four times every week.
So if that's of interest to you, on the next really cold day, offer to make the follow button a cup of hot cocoa.
But don't use whipped cream on top, use shaving cream instead.
Okay, let's get into our first story called The Old Man and His Dog.
One afternoon in June of 1993, a movie director named Xie Jin sat on a couch in a production studio in the city of Yinchuan, China.
He was with a few members of his production team and they were in the middle of auditioning what felt like the hundredth terrible actor for the lead role in the film that he was directing.
However, this was not an ordinary lead role.
The lead role for this film was going to be a dog.
So the movie was called An Old Man and His Dog, and it was based on this popular novel about a man living during a period of war in China with his loyal yellow dog.
People had really responded to the story in the book because it captured just how devastating war could really be on rural communities.
And a lot of people in China had seen themselves in the characters in the story.
At this point, Jin had already cast the film's human actors, but the dog's role was by far the hardest to fill and obviously the most central to the movie.
He and his team had hosted a bunch of casting calls already and advertised to the public to ask if anybody had a dog that looked like the one that was in this book.
And tons of people had answered this ad, but none of the dogs that they brought in were good enough for the film.
And the reason for that is Jin knew, you know, the dog needed to look the part.
But it was more than that.
Like, the dog also had to be compelling and charismatic despite being a dog.
I mean, this dog was the hero of the story and the soul of the movie.
So it really had to project loyalty and bravery and goodness on screen and sort of come across also as gentle and sweet enough that audiences fell in love with it.
But now, as Gin watched yet another anxious, poorly trained dog actor scurry around the room, he felt this wave of anxiety.
Jin was starting to feel worried that.
You know, maybe the reason all these dog actors were not working out is because maybe the perfect dog just didn't exist.
And if that was true, then his movie would not be good.
Like he would have a bad actor in the lead role and it would flop.
And for Jin, I mean, that really represented sort of like a worst case scenario for him.
So decades earlier, in the 1950s, Jin had been this prolific director in China and he had won many prestigious awards.
But during China's Cultural Revolution, which was a period of unrest in the country in the 1960s and 70s, Jin had been ostracized by the public because of his largely unpopular political views.
And ever since then, he had been struggling to regain his status as a celebrated filmmaker.
And so the chance to adapt this brilliant novel, which was touching and tragic and already beloved by the public, was like his opportunity to prove himself and get back on top.
And he knew that, you know, if the movie failed, he was old enough that he would very likely not get another chance like this and he might be completely forgotten about.
And so now, as this dog's audition came to an end and obviously this dog was not gonna be a fit, Jin's just sitting there feeling kind of hopeless, and Jin's producer walked up and led the anxious dog and its owner out of the room.
And Jin, at this point, was so busy worrying to himself about how this movie was destined to fail now that he barely noticed his producer bringing in the next dog and owner.
But when Jin looked up and he actually looked at the dog that was now standing in front of him the hundred and first audition he was seeing that day he just stopped and practically gasped because sitting in front of him, right in the middle of the room, was now this new dog that looked exactly like how he had pictured the one from the book.
It was shaggy and big and yellow-haired and had this eager-to-please look in its eyes that made Jin instantly feel like he was connected to it.
The owner who had come in with this dog was a young, friendly guy in his 30s who introduced himself as Chung and he explained that he had just started a dog training and breeding company.
And so having his dog cast in this movie would be a really big deal for his new business and would definitely help get his name out there.
So this was like high stakes for him too.
Now, Jin did not love the fact that you know Chung had just begun this dog training and breeding business.
So it meant that very likely he was pretty inexperienced with this dog actor.
However, when the actual audition began, any worries Jin might have had completely vanished.
Throughout the entire audition, Chung skillfully directed this dog like he'd been doing it for his whole life.
And the dog was obviously really smart and followed all the commands.
He was really well trained.
And it just seemed like the dog was really devoted to Chung, because it really did exactly what Chung asked, every single time.
But more than that, as Jin watched this audition, it really felt like this dog didn't just look the part.
It acted the part.
This was the dog he wanted in his movie.
And so, after only a few minutes, Jin stopped the audition and he told Chung, you and your dog have got the job.
They began filming the movie just a few days later and basically as soon as they started, all the worries Jin had had about maybe this movie not doing so well just completely vanished.
Because, just like he'd anticipated, this dog really was perfect.
It obeyed his owner, Chung, without hesitation, same as it had during the audition.
And the camera, I mean, the camera just loved this dog.
The dog had this very sweet tender quality to it that really came out any time the actor playing the old man interacted with it, which is exactly what Jin had hoped for.
And so Jin knew this dog was going to steal the hearts of everybody who saw it on screen.
I mean, this was exactly what he wanted.
And so Jin just disappeared into the making of this film.
He poured all his focus, all his passion into each and every frame.
And by the time production finally wrapped a few months later, Jin was sure they had just made a masterpiece.
And Jin was right.
The movie was released to rave reviews, and it seemed like everyone who saw it loved it.
Not only was An Old Man and His Dog recognized as one of China's top films of the year, but also it was widely regarded as an instant classic worldwide.
And so Jin knew that he had accomplished his goal here, and that his career now had a new beginning.
A year and a half later, on an evening in late January of 1995, Jin was reading a script in his living room in the city of Shanghai, China.
So the huge success of an old man and his dog had meant that Jin was once again in very high demand, which meant he got lots of phone calls and people wanted him to read their scripts.
And he was basically just getting to pick and choose what he wanted to do next.
This was like best case scenario for him.
So, as Jin is sitting there when his phone rang you know cause his phone again was ringing all the time these days He assumed it had to be one of his producers who wanted to talk about one of the many scripts they were looking at.
However, when Jin answered the phone, it was one of his producers.
But what they said to him completely stunned Jin.
His film, An Old Man and His Dog, apparently was being banned.
Jin, when he heard this, he just like sat there for a moment, unable to actually respond to this.
Like, this didn't make any sense.
Why in the world would this wholesome movie about an old man and his dog get banned?
Like, this wasn't political in any way.
This was like a... wholesome, family-friendly movie.
So China did ban films with some regularity.
Sometimes it was the content itself within the film could be viewed as being unduly influential on the public in a negative way, and so that could cause the film to be banned.
Or it could just be that the people who were in the film or the producers who made the film they could have done something in their own personal lives that was viewed as being unduly influential on the public, like in a negative way.
They could have had some scandal.
And then because of that scandal, they could have their work banned.
So the movie itself could be okay, but...
The people involved in the movie, they're bad, so movie must be bad as well.
So that was sort of relatively normal.
But Jin's film, An Old Man and His Dog, had been out for over a year at this point with no issues.
It was viewed as like this masterpiece.
Everybody loved it.
Everyone had all these great things to say about it.
So, like, it couldn't have been that.
The movie itself clearly was okay.
And Jin.
I mean he had had a.
You know, in his former life he had been politically divisive and it had cost him dearly, but that was in the past.
He had not done anything political, not in this movie, not in his personal life now.
Like he had not done anything that was scandalous that could potentially warrant, you know, this film being banned.
And so Jin's like, what in the world could have caused this movie to be banned?
Like, what is going on here?
And his producer said, like, you're not going to believe it, but It's the dog.
It would turn out a few days before The Producer Called Jen Chung, the owner of the dog who had starred in this film, had been arrested for being a serial killer.
Over the last five years, he had murdered at least five people.
But that was not actually why this movie was being scrutinized.
The movie was being banned because of how Chung disposed of the bodies of the people he killed.
After murdering and dismembering his victims, he would take those body parts and feed them to his dog.
The star of the movie.
And so ultimately, the Chinese government banned this film, because they knew from now on, now that the news broke about Chung being a killer and what he did with the bodies, that You couldn't watch this movie and watch that dog without thinking about the fact that that dog was eating people.
Jin would go on to make a few more movies, but they never really worked and ultimately his career kind of stalled and he never reached the heights that he'd hoped for.
However, Jin had always hoped that one day he would leave a truly lasting mark on the Chinese film industry.
And he did, because he'll always be known for casting a flesh-eating dog in his cinematic masterpiece.
Our second story is called A Daughter's Love.
One evening in December of 1966, an eight-year-old girl named Elaine Ellery hurried after her parents as they walked towards this large factory in Norfolk England.
Elaine was so excited about the night ahead here that she was literally skipping as she walked along.
So this factory was where her father worked, and they were having their big annual Christmas party.
And for the first time ever, Elaine was being allowed to go.
And she couldn't wait to see what was inside.
So, Elaine was really close with her dad.
Because, even though he worked very long hours, he always went out of his way to spend time with her and make her feel very special.
In fact, during the work week, it wasn't uncommon for her dad to come home over his lunch break just to give his daughter a big hug, and so they could quickly eat together before he had to rush back to work.
And so now, after hearing about her dad's amazing factory over countless lunches they spent together Elaine, for the first time ever, was actually going to be able to see what he was talking about because, to this point, she had never even stepped foot inside of the factory.
Finally, Elaine and her parents arrived in front of this big factory, and in the doors they went...
And immediately Elaine is like totally struck by just how truly incredible this place is.
I mean, it was huge inside.
It was already packed with people who were chatting about.
There were all these other coworkers and their kids and their families.
Christmas music was playing and all she could smell was apple cider and baked goods.
And she looked around and she saw the whole interior of this great entry room they had walked into was beautifully decorated for the holidays.
There was tinsel and there were all these things hung up everywhere.
And there was even fake snow all over the place to give it like a true Christmas vibe.
And so Elaine, I mean, she had really high expectations of how grand this place was going to be.
And so far, it had more than lived up to its expectations.
I mean, this was really like an incredible thing.
So she was delighted.
And the whole night she just ran around the party holding her dad's hand, looking at the machines and meeting his coworkers and eating all these treats.
I mean, it was really just an incredible time.
I mean, the evening was a whirlwind for her and before she knew it, Elaine was exhausted and back in the car driving home, drifting off into a very happy sleep.
The rest of Elaine's childhood was very charmed.
I mean, basically, she and her dad stayed very close.
They went to that Christmas party every year after that first time she went, and it was always such a fun event.
Elaine and her dad continued to have those lunch breaks during the work week, and by the time Elaine was getting old enough to start thinking about starting a family of her own, she thought hard about the values that her father had instilled in her
One was her dad clearly worked very, very hard.
And the second one was her father clearly prioritized family over everything else.
You know as inconvenient as it was for him to come home on his lunch break practically every day, you know taking a break from, you know, backbreaking work in the factory.
He still did it because he wanted his daughter to feel prioritized and special.
And so she knew when she had a family of her own, she would act like her father.
So you can imagine how Elaine felt in 1983 when Elaine was 25 years old.
And by this point, she'd gotten married.
She had two kids of her own.
She was living up to the example her father had set for her.
You can imagine how she felt when that year her father passed away.
I mean, for Elaine, this was like earth shattering.
I mean, she knew he was getting older and it wasn't wholly unexpected that he passed.
But for Elaine, I mean, this truly was like devastating.
I mean, her father was like her rock.
She had really modeled her whole life on her dad.
However, after that initial really intense grief period ended right after the death of her father, Elaine was able to, you know, have a moment of reflection.
And she realized that.
You know as devastating as it was that he was gone.
Now you know, in a way, because of the way she had built her life, prioritizing family, and you know, living like her dad, that in some ways, even though he was gone physically spiritually, he was very much still with her and always would be.
Fast forward 41 years to one afternoon late in the summer of 2024.
And Elaine, who was now in her late 60s, was sitting at her kitchen table in her Norfolk home reading the newspaper.
So Elaine had retired just a few years ago.
And so now her life was pretty much exclusively about her family and about, you know, slowing down and truly being retired.
And in some ways the timing couldn't have been better for her to start slowing down, because lately Elaine had been feeling absolutely exhausted.
Which was odd, because Elaine felt, like you know, even though she viewed her retirement as a chance to slow down that she would likely have more energy because she wasn't working anymore.
And so her slowing down would sort of be by choice.
Not because she literally couldn't keep up anymore.
But lately, it was like Elaine had zero energy.
It's like all she could do was sit in place and either read or call her kids.
And that was basically it.
But on this particular day, as Elaine just sat in the kitchen reading the newspaper...
Despite not physically really doing much at all, she suddenly started to feel winded, like she had been running around or something like it was hard to catch her breath.
And it scared her.
She put the paper down and she sat there for a minute trying to calm herself down, telling herself this is just like a panic attack or something.
But it didn't go away and she really was struggling to breathe.
And so she decided she would get up and go get a cup of water and just take a sip of water and calm down.
But when she stood up and began walking over to the sink to get water, like this sensation she was having just got worse and worse.
And by the time she was at the counter, she's like holding onto it just to stay up on her feet.
And she's trying to sip the water, but she's still like unable to breathe.
And she realized that this, combined with this, you know, recent really intense fatigue, meant something had to be wrong here.
Like this was not something she could just write off.
And so she hobbled her way over to the phone.
She picked it up and she called her doctor.
Not long after, one of Elaine's children came by, picked her up, and drove her to the hospital.
And by this point Elaine, she'd calmed down a little bit, but still that experience of really not being able to breathe really had shaken her up.
And so Elaine, she goes into the doctor's office and she sits down in the exam room and she explains to her doctor what's been going on and what just happened that day.
And not long after that her doctor got a series of tests done and eventually Elaine got an answer from those tests that explained all of her symptoms.
However, that answer made Elaine look at her childhood, her charmed childhood, in a completely new and disturbing way.
It would turn out decades earlier, Elaine's father really had been setting a great example by working very hard and always prioritizing his family and always prioritizing his daughter.
But what her father didn't know at the time in fact, many people didn't know at the time was that his work itself was actually putting his family at risk.
At this time in the UK most factories, like the one Elaine's father worked at, made products that contained asbestos.
So asbestos is a substance that was used very widely for decades to construct structures primarily.
Like in construction, it was used a lot.
In fact it was so common that basically any house or building built before the year 2000 likely was made with asbestos inside of it.
And so, when Elaine was growing up in the 1960s, asbestos was, you know, naturally still being used all the time.
And her father obviously encountered it daily at his work.
But even though they didn't know it at the time, This was a huge problem for Elaine and her family, and really for anybody else who was living a life that was similar to theirs.
Because asbestos was eventually found to be highly toxic and known to cause a very specific type of very aggressive and very deadly cancer that can sometimes take decades to develop.
It was the very kind of cancer that Elaine's father had died from in the 1980s.
And unfortunately it was the very kind of cancer that Elaine was diagnosed with in 2024, following that difficulty breathing and fatigue spell.
And then she would eventually die a year later in 2025 from that cancer.
And so in a tragic twist of fate here, basically it was because of how close Elaine was with her father growing up that she ultimately contracted the same disease that he did.
I mean there's no question he got that cancer because of his exposure to asbestos in the factory, but he would come home from the factory.
Like over lunch, he'd come home and he'd have lunch with Elaine and he wouldn't change.
He'd give her a big hug.
They'd have their lunch break together.
He's putting asbestos on his daughter, not knowingly, but he's covering her in this toxic substance.
And then, when he would bring her to the Christmas party, all that white snow on the ground was not snow, it was asbestos, but they didn't know it was toxic.
And so ultimately, it really was because of how much she loved her dad and how much he loved her that ultimately killed them both.
The third and final story of today's episode is called Rest and Relaxation.
Around 9 pm on January 18th 2015, a 68-year-old man named Dennis Antiporak stood at his kitchen counter in North Miami Beach, Florida.
Writing a note.
And this note was for his wife and for his adult daughter, Laura, who lived with them.
And all he was doing was letting them know that he was going to be stepping out, but he'd be back in a couple of hours.
Now, for Dennis, it actually was not that unusual for him to go out this late at night.
This was kind of routine.
He would often leave the condo where they lived and he would go down the street to this diner called Denny's, which is a big chain in America, and he would hang out there with his friends, you know, stay there for a couple of hours and then he'd come back home.
And tonight was going to be no different.
His plan, as he said in this letter, was to go to Denny's.
However, there was one stop he wanted to make before he headed out to Denny's, and he made that clear in his note.
He basically provided his loved ones with his his evening itinerary.
So after finishing the note, Dennis left it on the counter, he grabbed his things and then he walked out the front door of the condo.
Several hours later, around 2 am, Dennis's daughter Lara paced around the living room of the family's condo with her cell phone to her ear.
So she and her mother had gotten home around 10 so an hour after Dennis had left and they had found Dennis's note on the kitchen island.
But now you know it was getting really late and from the note it seemed an awful lot like he would have been back by now.
And so now Laura was trying to call her dad to figure out what was going on.
However, every time Laura dialed her dad's number, it just went straight to voicemail.
And so again, now that it's like 2 am and she's starting to worry about her dad, she knew that he had gone to Denny's, the diner down the road.
And so she looked up the number for that restaurant.
It was open 24-7.
And she called the Denny's.
However, when a worker at Denny's answered the phone and Laura asked them, you know hey, is my dad there.
Because by this point, they would know him.
He went there all the time.
The worker said no.
He hadn't been in at all the whole night.
And so after hearing this, I mean, Laura was baffled.
Like, where else could her dad be?
But then she remembered the note because her dad said before he was going to go to Denny's he was going to make a pit stop.
And so she looked at the note again and she was like, that's where he has to be.
He's got to be upstairs.
So upstairs in this condo complex was a whole bunch of amenities that this place offered for its residents.
There was a big gym and a pool and there were common areas and relaxation rooms and all these different things up there.
And Dennis loved going up there.
And in his note he indicated that's where he was going to go and go relax for a little bit before going out to Denny's.
And so Laura, she heads upstairs, and the first place she looks is the gym.
But the gym was totally empty.
No one's up there working out at 2 in the morning.
It was vacant, and her dad's nowhere to be found.
And then from the gym she went to the pool area and the pool was closed, but she could look into the pool area itself and there was no one in there, including her dad.
He was not in the pool.
But then Laura looked from the pool over to this door that was near the pool area.
That led to one of those relaxation rooms that this condo offered its residents.
And in her dad's note, he had indicated he was going up there to, you know, relax.
And so she walked over to the door.
She tried the handle.
It was unlocked.
She pushed it open and immediately she was hit with this overwhelming smell.
She nearly gagged.
And then she looked up and she saw her dad.
So this condo had a whole bunch of different ways for their residents to unwind and relax.
They had these like relaxation rooms.
They had mindfulness rooms and meditation rooms and yoga rooms.
They had the pool.
They had the gym. and they had Dennis's favorite relaxation room, which was actually just a sauna.
So earlier that night Dennis went into the sauna, expecting to be in there for a short amount of time to just relax, basically.
A sauna.
All it is is just a closed space that gets really really hot inside and you sweat and you just kind of sit there and Just allow your body to kind of like melt a little bit and relax, and then you get out again.
You feel very refreshed.
But it's critical that you only stay in for a limited amount of time because you're effectively inside of an oven.
And Dennis, he went into the sauna.
No one else is in there.
He set the timer for when it should shut off, and he fell asleep inside the sauna, and then the timer malfunctioned.
And so the sauna didn't turn off.
And so he's asleep in the sauna.
It's just cooking him over and over again until he actually has a heat-induced heart attack and he dies.
But then nobody knew he was in there and the sauna's still on, and so he's dead in the sauna, basically just cooking for hours and hours and hours until finally his daughter Laura, went up there, opened up the sauna door and found her dad, who by this point, was literally charbroiled.
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.
The Mr Ballin Podcast Strange Dark and Mysterious Stories is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr Ballin.
Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bone and Cole Ocasio.
This episode was written by Kate Murdoch and Kate Gallagher.
Story editing by Evan Allen.
Research and fact-checking by Shelley Hsu, Samantha Van Hoose, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul Ben Faciano.
Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear.
Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacascio and Jordan Stidham.
Production support by Antonio Minotta and Delaina Corley.
Artwork by Jessica Clogston-Kiner.
Theme song, Something Wicked, by Ross Bugden.
