Today’s story comes out of China, and it is a brutal story. There’s just no way to tell it without being sort of graphic, so with that in mind, this is definitely a mature audiences only type of story. That said, it is a fascinating story, and the ending is something that very few of you are going to see coming. It's going to feel kind of predictable throughout most of the story, and then the end completely changes your impression of the story.Story name, preview & link to original YouTube video:#1 -- "The Job Offer" -- A crazy mystery unravels after people begin going missing in a small city in China (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zykdjsg1V1c)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 is the story behind the mysterious disappearances in Naha, China?
One Saturday afternoon in November of 1990, a 26-year-old kindergarten teacher named Su Lixia sat crying on a bench at a train station in the city of Naha, which is located in northeastern China. Sue had just left her husband for good. They'd had a bad marriage for a long time. It was very contentious. They fought all the time. And that morning they had gotten into this major fight.
Chapter 2: Who is Su Lixia and what led to her disappearance?
And for Sue, it was kind of like the final straw. And so she just stormed into the bedroom, grabbed some things, threw it in a bag and just stormed out. She was done. But Sue really didn't have a plan for what she was going to do once she left the house. And so she found herself just sitting at this train station doing nothing, just staring at the trains rolling in and out over and over again.
And as she sat there, again, not knowing what she's going to do, she suddenly took stock of the fact that very few people were getting on and off of these trains. And in fact, the train station itself was weirdly vacant. So the city of Naha, where Su was, was actually fairly small by China's standards, even though there was 70,000 people that lived there.
The city sat at the base of this towering mountain, and then all around the city in the outskirts was basically just farmland with lots of soy and corn crops. And then as you move closer to the city center, there were lots of things you would expect to see in a city like tall buildings and residential and commercial areas. But overall, Naha was just kind of boring.
You know, it's like the city was a city, even if it was small, but there was just not much going on. And in fact, if you lived in China, but not in Naha, there was a very good chance you didn't know Naha even existed. Like it was kind of irrelevant.
However, in the last few months leading up to this moment that Sue is sitting at this train station, the city of Naha had suddenly been put on the map, and everybody knew about this city, because women from Naha were going missing in droves. In fact, Sue herself knew of at least a dozen women who had gone missing over the past few months from Naha.
And as these women started going missing, it was making the news all over the country, and women who lived in Naha were acutely aware of the risks of being out alone, you know, in fear that somebody was going to come snatch them up and take them away. In fact, every time Sue would go to work, she would make sure she would walk with other women, like in pairs, to ensure safety.
I mean, this was a really scary time if you were a woman living in Naha. However, the caveat to the missing women was all of them to this point, when Sue was sitting at the train station, had been sex workers.
And Sue, she thought, you know, in virtue of not being a sex worker and instead being a kindergarten teacher, that somehow she was not actually that vulnerable to being snatched up or, you know, whatever was happening to these women. She just felt like it wouldn't happen to her.
But now, as Sue sat at this train station, which again was eerily quiet and vacant, she couldn't help but feel like she had made a bad decision being here. She felt like she could easily become the next woman who went missing from Naha.
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Chapter 3: What suspicious encounter did Su have at the train station?
He looked like he stepped straight out of a fashion magazine. He came up onto the train platform and without saying a word, he walked slowly down the platform all the way to where Sue was and he reached into his pocket and he held out a tissue to her because he saw she was crying.
And Sue, she's looking up at the sky, and again, there's nobody else here, and she's very much on edge, and she doesn't know what to do. I mean, it was already creepy that this place was vacant, but it's even stranger to have a random man come up to her and try to initiate some sort of interaction with her. It just felt wrong and weird and very suspicious.
But as Sue stared at this guy trying to figure out what his angle was, she could see that he had kind of kept himself standing back from her, kind of a respectful distance, you know, not trying to crowd her out. And he was looking at her with a very sympathetic look on his face. And he's holding this tissue out. And he said to her, are you okay? And he hands the tissue again, like, please take it.
And there was just something about this guy that felt very sincere. And Sue kind of let her guard down. And she accepted the tissue and wiped the tears from her eyes. She didn't say anything. And then this guy, he said, hey, do you mind if I sit with you? And at this point, Sue said, yeah, okay, you can sit down.
And so this very handsome, well-dressed man took a seat next to Sue, not right next to her, again, respectful distance from her. And again, he asked her, you know, hey, are you doing okay? And for Sue, whose life had been basically miserable the last few months or even years with this terrible marriage she was in, You know, she wasn't used to being asked if she was okay.
And this man, who she didn't know, had caught her at this very vulnerable moment in her life. And it was like all her emotions just came pouring out. And she began sobbing hysterically, telling this guy that no, she was not okay. Her life was in ruins. She had just abandoned her family and she had no idea what she was going to do.
And finally, when Sue stopped telling this guy all about her problems, she felt very embarrassed and kind of looked up at him like she was sorry for even saying as much. But the man who was very intently listening, he was just nodding along, very sympathetic. And he told Sue that his name was Jia, Jia Wang, and that he was a director at a factory not far from here.
And if she was open to it, he'd be happy to think about hiring her at the factory, you know, give her a new start potentially, because it seemed like that's what she really needed. And then he asked her if she wanted to come back to his house to discuss this job opportunity further.
Now with this, even though Sue had really appreciated everything this guy had done to this point, the second he asked her to come back to his house, she's like, red flags are going up. She knew there's something off here. Clearly this guy does have an angle and it's not to benefit me. And so she looked at him with an absolutely suspicious look like, no way am I going to your house.
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Chapter 4: What happened after Su accepted the job offer from Jia Wang?
And as soon as she was done with her cup, Jia, again, he went quiet and just stared at Su with this kind of sinister look on his face, like he was very pleased with what was going on. And at that point, Sue looked down at her teacup and then back at Gia. Then suddenly she began to feel very drowsy. It was like her vision was beginning to go. And she realized Gia clearly had poisoned her.
There was something inside of her tea. And so before she could do anything, everything went black. If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good you are a fan of The Strange, Dark, and Mysterious. And if that's the case, then I've got some good news. We just launched a brand new Strange, Dark, and Mysterious podcast called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.
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A couple of weeks later, just a few blocks away from where Su met Jia at the train station, a police officer named Zhang was standing behind his desk at the police station when a very concerned-looking elderly couple came inside. Now, this couple was here to speak with Zhang about a missing person, but the missing person was not Su.
She had been missing for two weeks now, nobody had seen her, but no one had reported her missing. Her husband had just assumed that Sue had left him, and that's why he hadn't seen her, and so he had naturally not reported that. And again, nobody else knew she was missing, so keep that in mind. Officer Zhang has no idea about Sue and Jia, none of it.
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Chapter 5: How did the police respond to the increasing number of missing persons?
But when this elderly couple came in to make a missing person report, Officer Zhang was not the least bit surprised. It was now December of 1990, and over the past six months, 20 women out of Naha had suddenly gone missing. Remember, Sue is not one of those 20. The 20 are mostly sex workers who went missing at that same train station where Sue met Jia.
And so Officer Zhang was used to making all these missing person reports, But candidly, the police actually felt like, you know, because these were sex workers that were going missing, they weren't sure if they were actually being abducted or if they were simply getting on a train and kind of leaving town to go work somewhere else.
And so really there wasn't a whole lot of investigation happening to figure out why so many of these women were going missing. But again, Officer Zhang, he's not surprised that they're telling him they want to file a missing person report.
But when Zhang took this elderly couple to an interview room to talk to them about whoever was missing in their lives, when this couple spoke, Officer Zhang knew this was different. Because the couple was not reporting another missing woman from Naha who also happened to be a sex worker. Instead, they were reporting that a man was missing, a businessman.
Chapter 6: What is the significance of the missing businessman in the case?
However, the details of his disappearance sounded eerily similar to all these sex-working women who had also gone missing. This guy was last seen at that same train station where Su had met Jia, and then nobody had seen him, and so that's why they were here.
And so Officer Zhang, he wrote up their report, and then he told the couple that, you know, very likely this man is okay, and he'll show up at some point under his own steam, but he told them the police would look into it, and they'd be in touch.
However, as this couple got up and turned around and left, Officer Zhang couldn't help but feel like this missing man and all these missing women went missing from the same place. And it's the same city and it's the same pattern over and over again, but now we have a man.
And even though Zhang wanted to write it off as an anomaly, he started to wonder if this missing man was connected to all these missing women.
Chapter 7: How does the pattern of disappearances evolve over time in Naha?
Because by January of 1991, so two months after Su had gone missing without a trace and still had not been reported by anybody, and six weeks after that elderly couple reported that man missing, another five people from Naha had gone missing, two more women, and three more men.
And so now the police in Naha were looking at 26 people, men and women, that had all gone missing very recently out of Naha, and nobody had a clue what happened to them.
And importantly, because now there were men who were not sex workers who were going missing, the police couldn't just write this whole thing off as, oh, these sex working women are just going to another city to go do their work there. Like that was not a possibility anymore. Clearly something bad was happening and the police knew they really needed to do a real investigation here.
So finally, in early spring of that year, the police in Naha formed a task unit and legitimately began investigating all these disappearances. But amazingly, there was like no information. Like there was nothing. These people went missing and nobody heard from them. There was no evidence of where they went.
There was not even any sign that anything bad happened to them because no bodies had been found. There was no evidence of really anything happening. All the police knew is these 26 people, not including Su, so she would be the 27th person, had been at this train station and then vanished. And that's all they knew. And it got to the point where this story really began to spread around China.
And it became like this running joke that if you don't want to live, go to Naha. because everybody assumed there had to be some sort of serial killer or something happening there who was just roaming the streets, picking people off.
And then by late summer of 1991, when really this story had taken hold across the country and was becoming a bigger and bigger deal because there was absolutely no resolution here, police had no idea what was going on, well, the whole situation got a whole lot worse because now, in addition to people suddenly vanishing at the train station in Naha,
more people were also going missing in other cities nearby Naha, but all along the same train line that left out of Naha. So more train stations, more disappearances all around the area, not just the city of Naha, but all around.
And by the fall of that year, when over 30 people had gone missing all the same way from these train stations all around Naha, the police still had absolutely nothing to go on. All they had is here are these people. Here's where they were. They vanished. We got nothing else. No bodies, no evidence, nothing.
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