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 stories about unexplainable phenomena.
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 Voices, and it's about a woman who suddenly begins hearing voices in her head.
And the second and final story you'll hear is called Come Back, and it's about a child with totally unbelievable claims.
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 replace the Amazon Music Follow Button's roll-on deodorant ball with a single clove of garlic.
Okay, let's get into our first story called Voices.
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Service is not available in all states. The following story was pulled from a 1997 article in the British Medical Journal.
The article was written by the psychiatrist who treated the patient, who will be the focal point of this story.
The only reason I bring this up is because this story truly sounds made up, and it's not.
One night in the winter of 1984, a healthy middle-aged woman, who we'll call Brenda for this story, was at her home in London reading a book when she suddenly heard a voice in her head.
It said, Please don't be afraid. I know this must be shocking for you to hear me speaking to you like this, but this was the easiest way I could think of.
My friend and I, we used to work at the children's hospital and we would like to help you.
Brenda couldn't believe what was happening.
She had never heard voices in her head before.
And this voice that was speaking to her, it was so clear and it did not sound like any voice she had heard before.
And so at first, Brenda just sat on the couch and didn't do anything and just waited, hoping that maybe she was just imagining this.
But the voice in her head seemed to pick up on her reaction and said, Brenda, this is not a hallucination.
We're real and we want to help you. Brenda did not believe it was real.
She believed she had just lost her mind.
And so for the rest of the night, she just completely ignored the voice in her head.
And first thing the next morning, she went to her doctor's office and said, please help me.
The doctor referred her to a psychiatrist.
And so she went over to the psychiatrist's office.
And after they performed an evaluation of Brenda, they said, look, I don't really know why you're hearing these voices.
There's no clear medical explanation for why.
And so Brenda was ultimately diagnosed with something called functional hallucinatory psychosis, which basically means Brenda was hallucinating, but there was no clear reason why.
The psychiatrist began treating Brenda with an antipsychotic drug, as well as with supportive counseling.
Over the next couple of weeks, as Brenda diligently took her medications and went to her appointments, the voices eventually stopped.
So Brenda went into her psychiatrist's office and she said, doc, you've saved me.
The voices are gone. I'm so happy. And the psychiatrist would later recall that Brenda was visibly relieved.
It was obvious that she was not making this up, that she really believed that she had these voices and now they were gone.
And so after Brenda left the office, she actually went on vacation with her family outside of London just to celebrate the fact that she had not, in fact, lost her mind.
But while she was away on holiday, she started hearing the voices again.
And this time, they told her she had to get back to London as soon as possible because there was something terribly wrong with her.
And they gave her a very specific street address that she was supposed to go to to seek treatment.
And so Brenda is horrified that the voices are back in the first place.
But what she's really scared about is that maybe there's some truth to what these voices are telling me.
Maybe there is something wrong with her.
And so Brenda ran to her husband and she explained what happened.
And he was very reassuring and said, look, honey, you should just totally ignore the voices again.
There's probably nothing wrong with you.
Just try to relax and have a nice vacation.
But Brenda could not relax. She could not ignore the voices because they were constantly telling her, you need to leave.
You need to go back. There's something wrong with you.
And so finally, Brenda convinced her family to end the vacation early and they headed back to London.
And as soon as they got there, Brenda made her husband come with her and they drove to the street address the voices had given her.
And when they got to this very specific location, they found themselves standing in front of the brain scan unit of a London hospital.
Brenda and her husband were totally shocked.
But before they could even react to what they were looking at, the voices in Brenda's head came back and they told her, You need to go inside and you need to request a brain scan for two reasons.
One, there's a tumor in your brain. And two, this tumor is causing your brainstem to swell.
At this point, Brenda was so scared that this information might actually be true that despite what her husband was saying, she went right inside the brain scan unit and she requested this scan.
And when they asked her, you know, who's the doctor that referred you over here?
She said, I don't have one. Then she ultimately told them that, well, there are voices in my head that told me to come over here and get this scan.
Now, the doctors at the brain scan facility were not totally like, get out of here.
But instead they said, look, this is a very expensive scan.
We can't just let you in here and get a scan because the voice has told you to.
We need a clinical reason to do it. We need a doctor's note saying you need this scan.
And so they turn Brenda away and Brenda now is just a complete wreck.
She ends up calling her psychiatrist and she explains the situation about getting this address and being told to get this brain scan.
And after a few minutes of hearing her story, her psychiatrist says, OK, you know what?
I will call over and I will get you an appointment to get a brain scan because I want you to be at ease.
And it seems like this is probably the only way we're going to be able to do that.
And so after this conversation, the psychiatrist got in touch with this hospital and he requested the brain scan for Brenda.
And about a month later, Brenda went in, she had the scan done, and sure enough, she had a brain tumor and her brainstem was swollen.
The doctors couldn't believe it because Brenda was showing absolutely no signs of having this condition.
And so they told her that, well, you know, you can just wait and see what happens.
This might not have any effect on you. And so you can just wait to see if you get symptoms eventually.
Or we can go in and do the surgery and remove this tumor.
But of course, doing brain surgery comes with some very significant risks.
After thinking it over with her family, Brenda decided to go with immediate surgery.
And after telling her doctors as much, the voices in her head told her that she had made the right decision.
A couple of days later, Brenda went in and her surgery was a huge success.
After she regained consciousness in the recovery room, the voices spoke to her.
They said, We are pleased to have helped you.
Goodbye. After that, Brenda never heard the voices ever again, and she never had any complications from the surgery or from the tumor.
And to this day, the medical community still has no idea who those voices in her head really were.
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The next and final story of today's episode is called Come Back.
Late one afternoon in December of 1986, a woman named Shanthi Singh was sitting on her bed, cradling her toddler son, whose name was Titu, as he threw a huge temper tantrum.
Titu, who was three years old, had already been throwing this tantrum for about 30 minutes at this point, and it didn't seem like anything Shanthi did was getting him to calm down.
In fact, honestly, it just seemed like Titu was getting worse and worse by the second.
And Shanthi knew her son's constant wailing must be annoying her neighbors in the little rural village in northern India where they lived.
But again, Shanthi just felt like really there was nothing she could do.
After all, this was not a typical toddler tantrum.
Titu was not throwing this tantrum because he lost a toy or was fighting with his siblings or something.
No, the reality was Shanthi and her husband had no idea why Titu was throwing this tantrum because Titu threw these tantrums all the time for seemingly no reason and nothing they did would get him to stop.
He would just start throwing these crazy fits and he would only stop when he was ready.
Now, Shanthi and her husband had taken Titu to the local doctor and he'd been examined and the doctor said, look, I think your son's just fine.
I can't find anything wrong with him. So whatever's causing him to be so upset, it's gotta be psychological.
Shanthi grabbed her son and tried to give him a hug and kiss to get him to calm down.
But as she did that, you know, Titu turned around and tried to hit her in the face and kicked her and punched her.
And so Shanthi had to kind of fall back on the bed.
And Titu at this point is still throwing this huge tantrum.
He leapt off the bed and ran out of the room.
Now, Shanthi had already sent the rest of her family, her kids, her husband, outside to wait out this current Titu tantrum.
And so for a second, Shanthi thought about just laying on the bed and letting her crazy toddler just kind of run around the house until he was done throwing this tantrum.
But as Shanthi was laying there on the bed, practically crying from frustration, she heard a plate break in the kitchen.
And so she jumped up and ran into the kitchen, and there was Titu looking down at the ground where there was a shattered plate on the ground.
Clearly, Titu had smashed it on purpose.
And so as furious as Shanti was, she suddenly realized that nothing she could do was gonna get this kid to stop.
And so right now, the only thing she could do was just put him in a safe place where he couldn't hurt other people or himself or damage anything else.
And so Shanthi, trying to be as calm as possible, walked up to Titu, who's still throwing this tantrum and swinging at her as she's coming near him.
And she grabbed him, she turned him around so he couldn't kick her or punch her.
She put him into his room and then shut the door.
And then she sat down in the hallway with her back up against the door to keep it shut.
And then as Titu, inside the room, began banging on the door and trying to open it, you know, Shanthi's sitting there anchoring the door, and she's just praying that her son's going to calm down soon.
And then at some point, Shanthi heard her son start to say something that typically signaled the end of a tantrum.
Titu, in the bedroom, began saying the word shershverma, which actually was a nonsense word that Shanthi and her husband and the other kids had no idea what it meant.
But, you know, Titu, at the end of his tantrums, he would always just start saying over and over again, shershverma, shershverma, shershverma.
And so Shanthi, she's in the hall and she's hearing Titu start to do that.
And so on the one hand, she's thinking, okay, you know, this tantrum is about to end.
But on the other, she's like, I have no idea what that word means.
You know, it's obviously connected in some way to what's going on with my son, but I have no idea what it means.
It sounds like nonsense. And so Shanthi began yelling through the door at Titu to explain what Shershverma meant, but Titu had no explanation.
He just kept saying the word over and over again, Shershverma, Shershverma, Shershverma.
Shanthi and her husband had five other kids.
Titu was the youngest, and Titu was not like any of his other siblings.
The other siblings did not throw temper tantrums like this, not at all.
And in fact, Titu had been a difficult child even before he was born.
Towards the end of Shanthi's pregnancy with Titu, she'd become very, very sick, and in fact, had to be hospitalized for the entire last trimester.
And then as a newborn baby, Titu basically didn't sleep at all, and he cried constantly.
And so Shanthi and her husband initially thought, you know, Titu must just be a very fussy baby.
But in time, you know, as he grew into more of a toddler, it was clear to Shanthi and her husband that Titu was actually a different kind of kid.
He seemed like a very unhappy and kind of angry kid who was permanently on the verge of crying or throwing a fit.
But it wasn't until Titu began talking at around two years old that Shanthi and her husband really started to become worried.
Because the things Titu was saying as a two-year-old were just not in keeping with what you would expect a two-year-old to say.
And I'm not talking about the nonsense word that Titu would use during his temper tantrums, shershverma.
Basically, Titu would say things that seemed to indicate that he genuinely hated everyone in his family.
Now, for context, Shanthi and her family were not poor, but they weren't rich either.
They lived in a little concrete home, they didn't have a TV or a car, and all the kids wore hand-me-down clothes, and Shanthi actually handmade her clothes and her husband's clothes.
But the family always had enough food to eat, and they were educated, and they seemed happy enough.
It's just that they didn't really have the ability to do anything extra, like above and beyond a modest life.
And Titu had never known anything different.
This was his life from the day he was born.
But when he learned to speak at around two years old, it was like all Titu wanted to talk about was how crappy of a lifestyle their family lived.
For example, when Titu's mom, Shanthi, would put on one of her saris that happened to be ripped, a sari is a traditional garment in India, Titu would look at what she was wearing and in toddler speak, you know, he would tell her that she looked terrible and that it looked like she was just wearing rags.
T2 would also walk around their house and he would point to spots in the house that looked dirty and he would demand that somebody cleaned it up because he didn't want to live in a dirty house.
And then whenever the family needed to go somewhere and they would walk there or take the bus there, T2 would complain the entire time that he wanted to be in a car and why aren't we driving in a car?
Like, why are we walking? Despite the fact that T2 basically had never used a car before.
But perhaps the strangest aspect of Tidu's behavior was around the time he began talking and insulting his family, he also began talking about this very historic city called Agra, which was located about eight miles away from where they lived.
Agra was famous for being home to the Taj Mahal, which is considered to be one of the most beautiful buildings ever made.
Agra also has a very busy downtown and lots of tourism, but Titu had never been to Agra, and there was no reason he would be drawn to Agra, like his family had no connection to that city.
But starting around the time Titu began talking at two years old, he began asking to go to Agra several times a week.
And when his parents would say, no, we're not going to go to Agra, Titu would throw a huge tantrum.
And so not long after Titu had begun speaking and saying all these terrible things, Shanthi and her husband decided that really all they could do was just wait and hope their son grew out of this terrible behavior.
But Titu did not grow out of this. Shortly after his parents decided to just kind of wait it out, T2 would randomly attack another small child with a sugar cane, and he beat the kid so badly the kid was bleeding at the end of the attack.
And then also another time, shortly after the sugar cane beating, T2 was at the store with his mother, and his mom was looking at this bracelet, which she couldn't afford.
She was just looking at it through the glass.
And Titu sensed his mom wanted the bracelet, and in an odd show of affection for his mother, he turned to the shopkeeper, this little tiny kid who's not even three years old yet, and he tells the shopkeeper that if he doesn't give this bracelet to his mother for free, that Titu will shoot and kill the shopkeeper.
And so after this, Shanthi and her husband just stopped taking Titu out in public at all.
It was just too embarrassing. But what really just unsettled Shanthi the most about her son's behavior was that nonsense word that Titu kept saying at the end of all of his tantrums, shershverma, shershverma.
And so fast forward to that day after he's broken the plate and now Shanthi's put him in his room, Titu began saying that nonsense word, except he was getting a little bit older and his speech was getting a little bit more clear.
And so as Shanthi was laying up against the door, she realized that her son was not saying a single word, Suresh Verma.
He was saying two words. They were Suresh Verma.
But Shanthi had no idea what that meant.
She thought it sounded like a name, but it was a name she had never heard before.
But one day, a few months after the dish-breaking incident in April of 1987, all of T2's very strange, erratic, terrible behaviors would erupt all at once.
That April day started out like any other.
Shanti made breakfast for her family, and then her husband headed out to do some errands, and her six children kind of dispersed around the inside and outside of the house to play, study, whatever.
But Titu was really grouchy, and so he stayed inside in the kitchen with Shanti.
A little while later, Shanthi's oldest son came into the kitchen and he asked his mother, hey, when will dad get back from his trip to Agra?
Shanthi's husband had gone to Agra to run one of his chores, and Agra was the city that Titu was totally obsessed with.
And so when Shanthi's oldest son said the word Agra, Titu, who was sitting in the kitchen, he heard it and kind of looked up like he was totally fixated on their conversation.
And then as Shanthi and her oldest were talking about the dad, Titu just got up, left the kitchen, and he went to his room.
He grabbed a couple of things, and then he came back into the kitchen carrying this bundle of clothes with him.
And he walked right past his brother and his mother.
He went out the front door and began running down the road without saying a word.
Remember, this is like a three-year-old child.
This is not a teenager. This is a little kid.
And so Shanthi and her oldest son, they kind of watched in shock as Titu ran off down the road.
And for a minute, neither of them did anything.
And then it was like they broke out of their trance and the oldest son just turned and began running out of the house to catch up with Titu.
Now, it didn't take long for the oldest to catch up with his young brother, but it was surprisingly hard to stop Titu from trying to run away.
He fought back as hard as he could to keep his brother from pulling him back to the house.
And then when the older brother got Titu back inside, Shanti looked at her older son and she saw he had a black eye from where Titu had just hit him.
And when Shanthi turned to Titu to try to get him to apologize to his brother for hitting him, she saw Titu was completely inconsolable.
He was throwing a huge temper tantrum. He was on the ground kicking and flailing and screaming at the top of his lungs.
And so Shanthi and her oldest son knew there was no hope in getting him to calm down.
He was deep into one of his tantrums. And so Shanthi and the oldest just basically restrained Titu so he couldn't hurt himself or one of them or damage anything.
And for a while, as they held him to the ground, Titu just continued to scream and flail and throw this fit.
But eventually he did kind of calm down and he began saying Suresh Verma, Suresh Verma over and over again.
But then he began talking about something that he really hadn't brought up before that stood out to Shanthi and her oldest son.
Titu, in addition to saying periodically Suresh Verma, Suresh Verma, also began talking about some radio store in Agra.
And Titu kept saying, why didn't dad bring me to the radio store?
Why didn't he bring me? And so as Shanthi is listening to her son, she suddenly thinks, you know what?
This is my chance. He's being so specific about this radio store.
You know, maybe this is my opportunity to lean in and learn what the heck is going on with my kid.
And so once Titu fully stopped his temper tantrum and Shanthi and her oldest could finally let go of him, once Titu had left the room, Shanthi turned to her oldest son and she told him to go to Agra right now.
Just go there and look for a radio store or something.
Look for anything that could be a clue to what's going on with Titu.
He obviously has some fixation with the city.
Just go, look around, see if you can find something.
So the oldest son left the house and he went to one of his friend's houses who had a car, and together they drove into Agra.
Now, Shanthi had no idea if her oldest son's trip to Agra would produce anything useful, but she figured, you know, she's got nothing to lose.
A few hours later, when Shanthi's oldest son returned from Agra, he came into their home with a very serious look on his face.
And right away, Shanthi could tell, clearly, he's discovered something.
And so Shanthi asked her oldest son, you know, tell me, what did you learn?
What happened in Agra? And the oldest son, you know, he looked down for a second.
Then he looked back at his mom and he just said, tomorrow, we're going to have visitors.
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The next day, a car pulled up in front of Shanti's home, and six people climbed out.
There was a woman wearing a beautiful red sari who appeared to be in her 30s, and then there were three other men who also appeared to be in their 30s, and they were all wearing suits and jackets.
And there was also an older couple, a man and a woman, and the man was wearing this beautiful sweater, and the woman had on all this silk.
It was clear, just from the way they looked, that these six people were not from this area.
They were from somewhere else, and they had a ton of money.
Now, Shanthi was inside the house, and she was watching this group arrive, but she did not go outside to greet them.
She, her husband, and all of her kids, minus Titu, had decided the night before, when they knew these visitors were gonna arrive, that they wouldn't go out and talk to them.
Instead, they would just allow Titu to basically make first contact with these people and see what happens.
So when Shanti saw this group of six very well-off people were standing right outside of their gate, kind of waiting to be let in, she called for Titu and said, hey, go outside and open the gate for our guests.
And so Titu, who was not throwing a fit at this point, he came running through the house and he went to the door.
He's not looked outside yet. He opens up the door and he runs outside and he sees these six people on the other side of the gate.
And suddenly Shanti heard Titu make a sound that he never made.
It was like the sound of pure joy. He was so elated to see these six people.
Shanti couldn't believe it. For a second, Shanthi closed her eyes and almost started crying because she knew even before Titu had made that joyous sound when he saw these people, they were about to solve the mystery of what was going on with her son.
Just then, Shanthi heard Titu from outside yelling for Shanthi and the rest of his family to come outside and meet his other family.
Shanthi went to the door and gestured for the guests to come inside, and then she led them through the house to the back deck.
And then after they were all seated, Shanthi looked over at her son, Titu, and she saw he had this huge grin on his face.
He was so happy, and he was staring intently at the woman who got out of the car, who was in her 30s and wearing the beautiful red sari.
And she was sitting right across the table from Titu, and Titu is just locked on her.
Now, at this point, nobody is speaking. Everybody is just sitting there.
No introductions have been made, so nobody even knows each other's names.
And in this kind of tense and awkward silence, Titu, who again is just staring at this woman in red, he eventually breaks the silence, the three-year-old child, and he asks the woman in red to come sit next to him.
And so the woman in the red sari, she does what he asks and moves over and sits next to the toddler.
And then Titu looked up at her and he smiled and he said, do you know who I am?
And the woman, she's looking down at him and she said, no, I don't.
And Titu would look back up at her and he would say, I know who you are.
You're Uma. And at this, the woman in red, whose name really was Uma, she gasped.
She had no idea how this kid knew who she was.
But before she could even say anything, Titu continued.
And he said to her, Hey, do you remember when we went to the fair with Ranu and Sanu and I bought you those sweets?
And at this, the woman in the red sari, Uma, she had this new look come over her face.
Instead of looking like she was just kind of shocked and appalled that this random kid knew who she was, now it was like a look of shocked recognition as she's looking down at Titu, like she suddenly understood what was actually going on.
And at the same time, T2's mother, Shanthi, was watching this happen and she was kind of piecing together what was really going on here.
And suddenly she realized she needed to check something.
She got up and she ran out of the room and she came back with scissors.
And without saying anything, Shanthi went straight to Titu.
She pushed his head to the side, exposing his right ear.
And she used those scissors and began cutting all the hair off his head that was kind of drooped over his right ear, kind of exposing the right side of his skull.
And as the hair on Titu's head fell to the ground, exposing more and more of the right side of his head, all the adults watching just gasped.
And the whole time, Titu was just smiling.
To understand what just happened out on that back porch between these random people and Shanthi and her family, you need some context.
So here's what happened when Shanthi's oldest son was sent to Agra to go investigate and look for clues that could explain what was going on with Titu.
The brother and his friend had driven all around Agra, you know, looking for radio stores and looking for things that might in some way kind of connect to T2, and they didn't see anything.
But at some point, they drove past one of the many radio stores in Agra, and the name of this radio store immediately stood out to the brother and his friend.
So the older brother and the friend, they parked their car and they went into this particular radio shop.
And inside of there is where they met Uma, the woman who had the red sari on, who was in her 30s, that T2 said we went to the fair together with, that woman.
So she's inside this radio shop. And when the older brother asked Uma how this radio shop got its name, that was when things began to fall into place for this older brother about what was going on with T2.
Uma would tell the older brother that this radio shop actually belonged to her husband, except three and a half years ago, he was murdered.
He was shot and killed. And so she had been running the shop ever since.
And Uma said she had considered changing the name of the shop, you know, since taking it over, but she just couldn't bring herself to change it because the shop's name was actually based on her husband's name.
The name of the shop was Suresh Radio Shop.
Her husband's name was Suresh Verma. The two words that Titu would say all the time at the end of his tantrums, Suresh Verma, Suresh Verma.
That was Uma's husband. And it would turn out the details of Suresh's death matched up in a very bizarre way with Titu's birth.
And all of Titu's totally erratic, strange, terrible behavior throughout really his entire life to this point now suddenly made sense if you knew about Suresh's life.
Many people, including professors from major universities in India and America, have come to believe that what happened with Titu was when Suresh was murdered, his spirit somehow came out of his body and entered Titu's body.
Basically, Suresh was reincarnated in Titu.
This reincarnation theory would explain why T2 was always saying Suresh Verma, because in theory that was his real name.
You know, that's the guy who died, who then his spirit transitioned to T2.
So he's saying his name over and over again.
And then also T2's obsession with Agra would make sense because that's where Suresh's radio shop was and where he lived.
Also, the reincarnation theory would explain why Titu was so critical of Shanthi and the rest of his family's lifestyle, basically accusing them of being poor and kind of living below his station.
Well, Suresh's family was very, very wealthy, and so that was the lifestyle Suresh had lived.
And so if his spirit was now in Titu's body, he might be at odds with their lifestyle.
And lastly, the reincarnation theory would explain the two very unique and very pronounced birthmarks that Titu had right next to his right ear.
He had one right above his right ear and right below it.
Now, these were birthmarks that Shanthi was well aware of, but after she learned about how Suresh Verma was killed, he was shot in the side of his head and the bullet went in above his right ear and then came out on the bottom part of his right ear When she heard that, she ran and got the scissors, she cut the hair away around Titu's ear, revealing the two birthmarks, and then the other families saw those birthmarks and they're like, oh my goodness, that is literally where the entry and exit wounds were on Suresh.
And then also it's worth pointing out that on the day Suresh was shot and killed, well, basically that day was when Titu's mother, Shanthi, began feeling really sick during her pregnancy with Titu, and she had to be hospitalized.
After this discovery about Titu and Suresh Verma, Shanthi and her husband and the rest of her family expected Titu to want to live with Uma and his other family.
And at first, that is what Titu wanted to do, but pretty quickly he actually decided that, you know what, I want to stay put with the family I was born into and we can just visit with the other family.
And so that's what they did. You know, Uma and the other wealthy family, they made visits all the time to see Titu and vice versa.
You know, the families got along great. And as for Titu, you know, he was really happy.
You know, his bad behavior basically went away and he became a normal high functioning kid.
And Titu has grown up and become a very happy and successful adult.
He's got a family of his own and he's currently a professor at a college in India.
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.
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