Mr. Ballin

At first, he didn't even know what he was staring at.

It was just this hollowed out sort of split section of the tree, and there was a few items that didn't belong there that were inside of it, like a cachet of sorts.

But then he sort of fixated on one particular item, and that's when he understood why the group was just so stunned.

And as he stared and sort of took in what he was seeing, he suddenly became utterly horrified.

It would turn out, when Jean ran off into the woods 57 years earlier, he used his intimate knowledge of the farmland and the surrounding woods to escape what he thought was a very dangerous situation.

And he did that by hiding.

Jean knew that that oak tree where he would always go when he would write in his notebook happened to have a hollow trunk.

And he figured he'd be just the right size to crawl inside of there and stay in there hidden until the Sioux were gone.

And so Jean had made it to the tree and he had wedged himself inside of there totally out of view.

and then unfortunately, he got stuck.

From inside the trunk of the tree, Jean had managed to write one last letter to Mr. Gleek, saying that he couldn't get out, he was stuck, and if he did die here, to please give all his money to his mother in France.

And so decades later, when Mr. Gleek's workers cut that big oak tree down, what they found inside of the hollow trunk was Jean's gun, his money, his notebook, and his mummified body.

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.

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 Eare.

Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Lacascio and Jordan Stidham.

Production support by Antonio Minata and Delaina Corley.