Navy SEAL To True Crime: Insane Stories Of Courage, Fear & Resilience - MrBallen - #774

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is MrBallen. He's a storyteller, YouTuber, and a former United States Navy Seal. Why are we drawn to learn about things that scare us? Whether it's war stories, true crime, or strange, dark and mysterious tales, there's something compelling about discovering an unnerving part of life that we previously didn't know existed. Expect to learn how to tell a world-class story, why so many people are obsessed with things that scare them, the three most terrifying but true stories that MrBallen has learned during his career, what being a Navy SEAL teaches you about life, why MrBallen received such a huge backlash from the Navy SEAL community, what it means to live a good life, whether there is life after death, what it feels like to get hit by a grenade, and much more. This was very fun. John might be one of the best storytellers on the internet, and I love that today he tells a fully fleshed out spooky real life story and then uses the story he just told you to explain the art of how he tells a story and then gives you takeaways on how you can tell better stories yourself. And I've used some of those tips over the last couple of weeks since we recorded, and it's actually made my stories more engaging. So apparently it actually works, which is awesome. Lots to take away from today. If it is dark and rainy and the thunder is clapping outside, you may need an additional blanket for this one. In case you were wondering, 80% of you aren't subscribed, and that means you will miss episodes when they go up, like next week with Gary Vaynerchuk, and the week after that with the one and only Tim Ferriss. The only way you can ensure you won't miss episodes when they go live is by navigating to Spotify and pressing the follow button in the middle of the page, or the plus in the top right-hand corner on Apple Podcasts. It's free, it supports the show, and it makes me very happy indeed. So go and do it. I thank you. But now ladies and gentlemen, please welcome MrBallen.
How does a Navy Seal end up telling scary stories on the internet?

**John Allen** (2:19)
I still don't even know. Yeah, I kind of fell backwards into it, actually. The short version is, I was experimenting with social media content after I was out of the military, just because it was interesting to me. I saw there were all these new brands and people kind of blowing up on social media, and I was kind of struggling to find my way as a civilian again.
And so I was like, oh, I'll try social media. And I tried a bunch of stuff that didn't work, very cringey, like attempts at comedy and all these different things. And then I remember I had these two documents on my computer of ideas for TikToks at the time is what I was doing. This is like early 2020 And I had this one document that I had exhausted all these different ideas for TikToks, ranging from sketch comedy to all these goofy things that didn't work. And I had this other document, and it just said Dyatlov Pass on it. And so me personally, John Allen, the person, I like to watch and consume strange, dark and mysterious content, you know, spooky, you know, nonfiction content. And the Dyatlov Pass is this story about these hikers who go missing in the 1950s. And it's this famous unsolved case. Basically these nine hikers vanish and they're found again and they're in different stages of decay and their bodies are radioactive and their clothes are half on and half off. And there's these totally unsettling pictures. And I was like, well, I've tried all these different things on this side. This document has been exhausted and didn't work. I guess I'll take a shot in the dark on this totally random like departure from any other type of content I had ever tried. And it was a total like, I just don't care how it goes. I'm clearly not able to hit the mark on social media. I'm just gonna do the one thing that I personally enjoy.
And I was at this water park in Pennsylvania, this indoor water park called Great Wolf Lodge in Pennsylvania with my wife and my three kids. And I shoot this 60 second Dyatlov Pass TikTok where it was crappily made. I'm kind of like winging it, telling the story, 60 seconds long and I post it. because I'm going to the indoor water park, I didn't want to have my phone. So I just left it in the room and went to the water park. And then when I came back a couple hours later, my phone was basically not working because it was getting so many notifications. There was like five million views on this video after only a few hours. And for reference, I had never gone even close to viral before in any way. It was like 10,000 views over a year was a really big deal. And now the internet has tuned in. And admittedly, I wasn't like, oh, here's a career now. But I was like, that was pretty fun. That was pretty cool. And I like making those stories. And I just went on a tear making content, having no idea where it would go. And it turned into MrBallen.