Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. And today’s podcast features 3 stories that demonstrate that. The audio from all three stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel, which is just called "MrBallen," and has been remastered for today's podcast.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#3 -- "The Oklahoma Problem" -- Woman discovers something buried in her past (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JPEtNglQ4o)#2 -- "The Dark Room" -- A man wakes up in total darkness with no memory of where he is, but his nightmare was just beginning (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7VtahvTLH4)#1 -- "Timothy Dexter" -- The most absurd rags to riches story ever... (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCvx4jikmsI)For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What stories are featured in this episode of Stranger Than Fiction Vol. IX?
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. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, and today's podcast features three stories that demonstrate that.
The audio from all three 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 Oklahoma Problem, and it's about a woman who discovers something buried in her past.
The second story you'll hear is called The Dark Room, and it's about a man who wakes up in total darkness with no memory of where he is, but then realizes his nightmare is only just beginning. And the third and final story you'll hear is called Timothy Dexter, and it's quite possibly the most absurd rags-to-riches story ever.
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 sneak into the Amazon Music Follow Buttons house and lightly toast all of their bread and then put it all back in the bag. Okay, let's get into our first story called The Oklahoma Problem.
In the spring of 2021, 52-year-old Texas resident Karen Davis got married, and then after the ceremony and after the honeymoon, she went through the process of changing her last name from Davis to McBride to match her husband's last name. After the change was done, the last step was to get a new driver's license with the new name on it.
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Chapter 2: What is 'The Oklahoma Problem' story about?
So Karen emailed the local DMV or Department of Motor Vehicles to set up a time for her to come in and make the change to her license. But after she sent that email, the local DMV immediately emailed Karen back and they told her that they could not help her with this request until she resolved an issue. Now, they didn't specify what this issue was.
However, they very cryptically said it had something to do with the state of Oklahoma. And then at the bottom of the email, there was just a phone number they told her she needed to call in order to resolve this issue. And so Karen's thinking, okay, that's pretty weird, but I did used to live in Oklahoma, so that probably has something to do with it.
And so not thinking much of it, she punched this number the DMV had given her into her phone, and then she let it ring. A few moments later, much to Karen's shock, a woman from the Norman, Oklahoma district attorney's office picked up the phone and said, how can I help you?
Karen immediately assumed that the DMV must have made a mistake, that maybe they were trying to give Karen some other number in Oklahoma, because this was an Oklahoma problem, and they had mistakenly given her the number to the DA's office. But since she had this woman on the phone, Karen told her, you know, hey, I was just trying to get a new license in Texas.
They told me there was some sort of issue. It had to do with me potentially living in Oklahoma. I don't know what it is, but this is the number they gave me. So I'm sure it's a mistake, but that's why I'm calling. The woman from the DA's office had no idea who Karen was, but after taking down Karen's information and looking on her computer, she discovered Karen's so-called Oklahoma problem.
And after she explained to Karen what this enormous problem was, Karen literally couldn't believe it. But after this woman went over the details a few more times and really showed Karen that this Oklahoma problem was very, very real, suddenly everything in Karen's life made sense.
For the last 22 years, Karen, who was incredibly smart and friendly and polite and never had a problem with anyone, had an incredibly hard time getting a job. Even jobs that she was extremely qualified for, she would get turned down for for someone who was way less qualified. And then in the rare times that Karen did actually get hired, she would always get fired for no reason.
And so Karen never understood why she was being treated this way until now. It would turn out 22 years earlier, which is when Karen's hireability issues began, she lived in Norman, Oklahoma, which is where the DA's office was that she would end up calling 22 years later. And when she was living in Norman, she lived with a roommate.
And this roommate was this nice young man who had a couple of young kids. And one weekend, he went to the local movie store called Movie Place, and he rented the hit 90s movie, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, to watch with his kids. And after he was done watching this movie, he didn't return the VHS tape of Sabrina the Teenage Witch back to Movie Place.
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Chapter 3: What happened to Carlos Camejo in 'The Dark Room'?
And he remembered that his friend had called him up and asked him to go out on this ride. Carlos used to go out all the time on his bike for fun with his friends and by himself, but now that he was 33 years old and married, he didn't have the time for it as much. But the weather had been so beautiful that when his friend had called and asked to go out, Carlos said, let's do it.
And so Carlos began going over in his head the route that they had taken through La Victoria and all he could remember was this long straightaway and then a right turn and then nothing. It was like after he made that turn, everything went blank.
And as Carlos thought about how weird it was that one, he was paralyzed, and two, he had no memory of what happened after he made that right turn, he started to realize that he felt something against his back.
It was like there was a block underneath his back, kind of right between his shoulder blades, propping his chest up, and he felt his arms kind of dangling down by the side, and it was very uncomfortable. And as he laid in this totally awkward position, he began to hear somewhere out in the ether, unfamiliar voices just kind of chatting.
And immediately Carlos is like, okay, someone's here to help me. I don't know what's wrong with me, but somebody's here. I'm going to be okay. And soon, whoever was talking near Carlos had moved closer to him, and actually Carlos began to realize that it was actually more than one person.
It was at least two people talking back and forth, but again, Carlos can't open his eyes, he can't move, he can't communicate with these people. He just knows they've come closer to him. And after these people had moved right up against Carlos, Carlos suddenly felt something metal pressing up against his chin. It was kind of sharp and it kind of hurt when it touched his chin.
And Carlos wanted to scream out and tell them whatever they were doing to stop and at least tell him what was going on. But Carlos couldn't make a sound. And then Carlos began to hear this kind of mechanical whirring sound, like a machine starting up that was very close to where he was. And suddenly Carlos began panicking, like, what's going on? What are they doing to me?
And as Carlos's heart rate is starting to speed up, one of the people who had moved near Carlos suddenly said, oh my God, that's impossible. This can't be. And then again, Carlos felt more pain in his chin. And then the pain got dramatically worse.
It went from just kind of like a poking feeling to something going into his chin, and he felt it moving underneath his skin like a knife cutting through him, and then whatever it was, it went out of his chin. And as this is happening, Carlos is trying so hard to just wake himself up and do something to tell these people to stop, but he just couldn't do it.
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Chapter 4: Who is Timothy Dexter and why is his story absurd?
When he arrived there, he met a lonely, wealthy widow named Elizabeth Frothingham, and he promptly married her, becoming rich overnight. After moving into her mansion and dubbing himself Lord Timothy Dexter, he suddenly felt lost. He had spent his entire life pursuing wealth, and now that he suddenly had it, he didn't know what to do with it.
And so he looked around Newburyport at the other rich people and saw what they were doing, and he found that many of them held political positions. And so Timothy decided he would run for office too. But unfortunately, the voters caught on to the fact that he was a second grade dropout who couldn't read or write or think critically, so he didn't win the election.
But instead of accepting his defeat, Timothy began petitioning the town to let him have his political office anyways. The town said no, that's not how democracy works, but Timothy didn't really understand and he just continued to send these carefully outlined petitions explaining exactly why they needed to appoint him.
The town had to bring in experts that were able to decipher what he wrote because Timothy was deeply illiterate and his petitions were so riddled with spelling mistakes and were so confusing that at first glance it looked like it was written in a foreign language. After they deciphered them, they would immediately deny them, but Timothy just continued to send them.
And so finally the town got so fed up with all of his petitions that they decided they would just give him a fake political title just to get him to stop and to low-key humiliate him. They offered him the title of the Informer of Deer, and they told him his job was to look high and low all over Newburyport for any signs of deer activity. And the joke was, in Newburyport, there are no deer.
But Timothy did not find this humiliating. He did not see the joke in it. He took it very seriously and believed his petitions had worked. And so he took his political title and with great enthusiasm, he got to work, spending all hours running all around the town, carefully documenting all deer activity, of which there was none.
At the end of his term, Timothy felt like he had accomplished a lot as the Informer of Deer and was ready to move on from political office. And so he turned in his official Informer of Deer logbook to the town and told them they should pass it along to the next Informer of Deer to get them up to speed.
Unfortunately, when the town opened that logbook, they found it contained only crude pictures of deer and then illiterate ramblings about deer that were so difficult to decipher that even the experts weren't able to do it. And so the logbook was thrown away and the informer of deer position was never filled again. Hey listeners, big news for true crime lovers.
You can now enjoy this podcast ad-free on Amazon Music with your Prime membership. Listen to all episodes of my podcasts, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries and Mr. Ballin's Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories, along with a huge collection of top true crime podcasts completely ad-free. No more wading through cliffhangers or dealing with ads because let's be honest,
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