Demise by Design (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

But instead, they actually planned out their own demise. 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 place because that's all we do, and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So, if that's of interest to you,

“then next time you take the follow button on a haunted investigation, lead it into the basement, lock the door, toss the key, and run.”

Okay, let's get into our first story called The Perfect Wife.

One evening in July of 2016, a woman named Bay carried a bowl of rice to the dining table at her home in the city of Leo Jo, China. Her two teenage kids and her ex-husband, Chen, were already seated, and they were talking, and they were laughing. But when Bay came over and set the rice down and took her seat, the mood changed. It was like everybody suddenly got very quiet and began passing the dishes around in this sort of tense silence. So, Bay and Chen had a very complicated relationship.

They'd officially gotten divorced six years earlier, like they are, they are not married anymore.

“But at the time, when they got divorced, they had agreed to keep living in the same house to keep the family together.”

Now this had been very hard on everyone, Bay and Chen, their kids for the first couple of years, but eventually they sort of got used to it, and then actually, after a few years, the two Bay and Chen, they actually began to fall in love all over again. And they had even begun talking about getting remarried, but they hadn't gotten remarried yet. And so again, just a few years ago, it seemed like they were on a path with a family would be whole again. They'd be married again, and nothing really happened yet, but that's the path they were on.

But then a few months ago, everything had changed. Chen had begun acting increasingly cold and distant toward Bay, and even though again, they've been divorced this whole time.

They were always very cordial, but now there was like this icy front that he was putting up.

And then, just a few days ago, Bay had discovered very likely the reason behind this. She found out that Chen was seeing another woman. Now, Bay, she obviously understood that Chen can do this if he wants to. They are divorced, to mean they live together, they're kids together, but they're not, they're not a couple here. You know, she knew logically he could do that, but it just really hurt her.

“You know, for years now, she was thinking, you know, we're going to get remarried, and now it's like, what's this about?”

And so, Bay, after finding out about this, she confronted him about what she called the affair, even though again, it's not really an affair. But it had just turned into a huge fight, and they hadn't made up yet. And so now, the tension between them was palpable as they sat at the table together. Like it was so clear, there's like this huge conflict that is just totally unresolved. But now, as Bay looked around the table at her family, she felt a wave of not, you know, anger anymore, but longing.

She did love Chen still, and she also loved having him and her kids all under one roof, sharing meals together, and like being a true family.

And she wondered, you know, maybe if she could just show Chen how amazing she was, and how good he had it with her and their family here, maybe he would stop seeing this new girlfriend of his.

So, the next morning, after Chen left for work, it was like Bay was on a mission. She spent the entire day cleaning the house and picking up all of Chen's dirty underwear and all his laundry doing his clothes. I mean, she made the house look spotless, and by the time Chen finally came home from work that night, she had prepared this beautiful meal that was all ready for him. And even though Chen really didn't have a huge reaction to any of her efforts, it didn't matter because Bay knew this is like a mission she's on.

She is going to show him that she is the best he's ever going to get. So, the next day, she did it all over again, picked up after Chen and made the house so beautiful, cooked more food, he comes home, sort of doesn't care, and the day after that, and the day after that, she was just being the perfect wife, but eventually it did sort of wear on her that it's like, he doesn't even seem to be noticing, but still she was not ready to give up. And so after about a week of this, Bay was in her kitchen, you know, doodifully cooking this big meal for Chen and her kids, even though Chen wasn't even home, and he wasn't answering his phone, so Bay didn't even know if he'd be home to eat this food, and her kids weren't home either.

She explained to her mother that her dad, Chen, was in the hospital, that he had apparently had this really painful rash, and that had led him to go to the hospital because it wasn't going away, but now he was having trouble breathing,

“and the doctors were saying it was very, very serious that he might not survive, and hearing this, Bay immediately felt this not an stomach.”

Her heart began to race, and she told her daughter it was going to be okay, she'd be there soon, and then she hung up the phone, and with shaking hands, she grabbed her keys in her purse, and she headed out the door, but she didn't go to the hospital. So Bay had been so desperate to show Chen that she was the perfect wife for him, that she had completely thrown herself and all the housework and the cooking and the cleaning, to prove to him that she was better for Chen than his new girlfriend.

Except she took this idea of like outperforming the new girlfriend, a step too far, in addition to all the genuine efforts that Bay was making to tidy the house and make food and all that stuff.

“She also was doing something to Chen's laundry, with a very specific intention in mind.”

She was soaking Chen's laundry in something called periquot, which is an herbicide that causes burning and healing when it comes into contact with skin. Bay's hope was that this would cause a rash on Chen, and it would make him think that his new girlfriend was dirty, and she had given him a sexually transmitted disease that she's so gross like get rid of her. However, it was not until Bay got that call from her daughter that she finally realized just how toxic periquot really was, especially when applied in very high concentrations to very sensitive areas of skin.

“And so Chen, he's unknowingly wearing these poisoned underwear, and eventually the periquot seeped through his skin into his bloodstream and did permanent damage.”

And so when Bay got that call from her daughter and realized clearly it's because of her that Chen is the second that he might even die because of what she's done, she felt so guilty that instead of going to the hospital, she immediately went to the police and turned herself in.

And unfortunately, two days after that, Chen would die from the poisoning he died from organ failure, ultimately Bay was charged with intentional injury and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Our next story is called "Theo Shelton On Steel". One night in the winter of 1620, a soldier whose name was Yon was crouched in this dark cramped church loft in the city of Prague, and what he was doing is he was waiting for the people who took care of this church to lock up the church.

To lock up for the night and leave, Yon had actually been in this hiding spot for hours at this point, his legs were going numb from the awkward position he was in.

But he knew this was going to be worth it, because as soon as the church was empty, he'd have free reign of the place, and he could take whatever he wanted. Yon was part of an army that fought for the Habsburg Empire, which ruled most of Europe at the time, and they had just won this huge battle and taken over this city, Prague. And since the battle was now all done, Yon and many of his other soldiers were supposed to go home soon. But before Yon left, he felt like he deserved some spoils of war, and he'd heard that this specific church was filled with all these gold and jewels, and it had not been ransacked.

Lots of buildings in Prague had been ransacked by this point by the invading army, but the church had gone untouched. Very likely because it's a sacred building, and even the invading army recognized that. But Yon, he could care less about the sanctity of this building. And he had seen that the rumors about this place being full of incredible jewelry and gold, it was right. Pretty much everywhere he looked, there were things to steal, like beautiful, gilded furniture and little jewelry pieces that worshippers had left around as, as offerings to the church and its saints, I mean, this place was like a gold mine. But what excited Yon the most was up on the church altar.

Up there there was this huge statue of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus on her lap, with one hand behind his head, and the other gently resting on his stomach, and this statue had a massive gold chain around the Virgin Mary's neck, which Yon really wanted to steal.

Moments later, Yon found himself looking up at this huge statue of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, and his eyes were fixated on that gold chain, which was truly just stunning enormous.

And he was thinking, man, it's going to be really easy just to slip that thing right off of there. However, the statue itself was huge, and it was also up on this ledge above the altar, and so to just physically get to the chain was going to be a challenge. Like he couldn't reach it. I mean, he'd literally have to climb up to get to it. But luckily, there was a stool right nearby, and so he went over and grabbed the stool, he put it in front of the statue, and then he began climbing, basically up the statue in the ledge, to get up to this chain, so he could, you know, hook it off or neck and take it.

But, right as he reached the point where he'd be able to grab the necklace, he reached for it, and as his fingers were about to close around the chain, he suddenly felt this tight searing pain in his arm, and when he looked to see what had happened, he screamed. The next morning, a priest walked into this church to set up for morning service, and as soon as he walked inside and looked towards the front altar, he froze. Because there was a man dangling from the statue of the Virgin Mary, and he was kicking his feet like mad and begging the priest for help. Like he was stuck and couldn't get down. The priest had no idea what was going on here, but he immediately hurried up the aisle to try and help the guy.

“But when he got there, he saw that the man was actually like caught on the statue, like he was totally trapped in some ways.”

However, when he got there, and he saw how this man was stuck on the statue, the priest just stared and total disbelief, because what he was seeing was either a miracle or an act of divine vengeance. Because the Virgin Mary's hand which had been resting on Jesus was now reached out and was wrapped around the dangling man's arm, like the statue had literally grabbed him. Now the priest is thinking like, "How is this even possible?" None of this makes any sense, but when he tried to pull the man away and to help free him, the hand wouldn't let go. The man was truly stuck. And so in the end, they actually cut John's arm off at the elbow.

“That's how they got him down. And the instant his arm was severed. Witnesses say the Virgin Mary's grip relaxed and his arm was released.”

Yam was arrested for trying to steal from the church, and he actually was thrown in prison. However, the experience changed him so dramatically that after he was released from prison, he entered a monastery and became a monk. Now, the story happened 400 years ago, and so we don't really know what happened. I mean, maybe the statue of the Virgin Mary came to life and grabbed John's arm and pinned him there, like the priest claimed, and like John claimed, or maybe, John, after climbing up the statue fell and got sort of trapped, like hooked on the statue's arm. Maybe that happened.

And maybe they overreacted and locked his arm off. I mean, we don't know. But what we do know is that his arm really did get cut off because they kept the arm.

“And today, his severed arm, his withered and dry severed arm, is hanging from a meat hook by the entrance to that church in Prague to discourage anyone else from trying to steal from the Virgin Mary.”

Our third and final story of today's episode is called "A Place to Hide."

Just before sunset in June of 1997, a 31-year-old man named Nassiruddin wrote a horse through a snowstorm in the mountains of northern Pakistan. His younger brother, Kathiruddin, followed right behind him on his own horse. Nassiruddin was desperate to get them out of the mountains before the sunset. Because when it did, the temperature would get dangerously low, and continuing to follow the trail in the dark was like a death sentence. I mean, the ridge that they were on now and would have to continue riding out of the mountain range was, you know, icy, it was steeped. They were all these jagged drop-offs, and so one wrong step and you were dead.

Now, the reason these brothers were even traveling through this very dangerous mountain pass in the first place.

And they couldn't travel along the main roads anymore where they could be seen. And so here they are taking this horrible sort of back road's way.

And now, on top of all the hazards they were facing, it also had begun to snow. And so Nassiruddin and his brother, they're racing against the sun setting, they're making their way, they're getting hit with all the snow, they can barely see anything because of it.

“And then as they're racing along, a gunshot sounded from somewhere down the mountain.”

And then a bullet whizzed past Nassiruddin's ear, he could hear it snap next to his head. Nassiruddin realized their neighbors had found them even out here. Like they've been found, this feud is spilling over into other areas. And he knew he and Kathiruddin as younger brother were exposed out here.

And so Nassiruddin desperately began looking around for, for somewhere they could take cover from the gunfire that was going to continue to come their way.

And he saw there was a cave, often the distance in the cliff face, like they just had to go a little bit further, and they could get inside of this cave. And it seemed like it was their only chance, and so Nassiruddin yelled out to his younger brother to follow him.

“But his voice was sort of drowned out by the wind and the snow, and there was more gunfire, and so he didn't know if his brother even heard him.”

And so Nassiruddin, as you know, more and more rounds are being fired at them, they're landing pretty close.

He just drove his heels into his horse's flank, and rode for the cave.

Nassiruddin's heart was pounding in his chest as he reached the actual cave entrance, but right as they were about to go inside, meaning him and his horse. His horse pulled up sharp and refused to enter, and so Nassiruddin, he just hopped off his horse, and dragged it by the reins to get it inside of this cave. And then once he was in the cave, he turned around, hoping, of course, that his brother, Kothiruddin, would be right behind him.

“But he didn't see his brother at all. It was just the wind and the snow whipping outside, and just the sound of more gunshots being fired.”

And, you know, Nassiruddin knew it's like he should go out there and try to save his brother, but he also thought, "If I put my head out of this cave, I might just get shot right then in there." You know, hopefully my brother, who he's smart, he knows what he's doing, I'm sure he's found cover somewhere else. And so, Nassiruddin decided to hunker down and just wait. But just then, Nassiruddin noticed this light in his periphery, and he turned, and he gasped. Because this cave was apparently not an ordinary cave, this cave was glowing. All around him, the walls and the ceiling, they shimmered with this intense blue light.

It was so mesmerizing that for a second, it was like time just stood still, and Nassiruddin forgot all about his brother. He just stood there trying to make sense of these glowing walls. He didn't understand it. It was like he had stepped into another world here. But then, more gunshots erupted outside, breaking Nassiruddin out of his trancity. He rolled around, he's hoping maybe his brothers and the cave now, but he's not, it's just him and his horse. And he just thought, "You know, I can't stay here while, you know, this is going on out there. I have to go out and find my brother."

And so Nassiruddin took two steps towards the entrance, then felt this rush of cold air, and the floor disappeared beneath him. Outside the cave, Kathiruddin, so Nassiruddin's brother, had found some cover. He was crouched down behind some rocks with his horse, lying down next to him. Kathiruddin had seen his older brother go into that cave, but he had not been able to follow him with all the shooting. He knew if he got out from behind the rocks, he'd be a dead man, so he had just stayed. And he continued to stay there behind those rocks until it got dark.

And at that point, you know, the shooting had stopped and had been done for quite some time, and so he got up and he runs over to the cave, pulling, literally pulling his horse behind him. And when he stepped inside of this cave, the cave was pitch black. Kathiruddin couldn't see anything at all, certainly not his brother, but he did feel this unsettling chill like there was just something off about this cave. And so he called out for his brother, but there was no response. And so Kathiruddin, he, by touch along, because he can't see anything, he felt his way to the back of the cave, and the cave turned out to actually be quite small, but it was totally empty.

And there was, there was no sign of his brother or his horse, and this just didn't make any sense. I mean, Kathiruddin from where he was behind that rock, he had a view of the entrance to this cave, and he had just come in here. There are no other exits. There's only one way in or out, and the whole time, Kathiruddin had been taking cover.

The whole time he was there, so there's nowhere else he could have been. And so the idea that they're not in here, it just didn't add up.

But at this point, Kathiruddin knew it was simply too dark and too cold to effectively look for his brother. So he just hopped on his horse and headed to a nearby village for the night. The next morning when Kathiruddin woke up, he went right back out to that mountain side, to that cave, and he looked again for his brother and his brother's horse.

There was no sign of them, he spent hours out there, and now he's looking in this cave. In the daylight, like it's a small cave, there's nowhere else his brother could have gone.

And so it didn't make any sense, and as the sun was getting ready to set again, Kathiruddin decided that really at this point his only option is to make the journey all the way to his village. Connect with some family and friends and have them join him in a few days and come back out here and do an even bigger search. And just hope that maybe in those couple of days, Kathiruddin would turn up. However, in the coming days, he did not turn up. And in the subsequent searches that Nassiruddin did with other people, those also turned up nothing.

And so eventually, they just had to accept the fact that Kathiruddin must have died somewhere in the snow. About six months later, so towards the end of 1997, Kathiruddin, the younger brother, went back up to that mountain pass to say some funeral prayers for his brother.

But when he got to the spot where Nassiruddin had disappeared, the cave, well, the cave was just gone. Now at first, Kathiruddin thought he'd just made a mistake, and he was just in the wrong spot.

“But he hiked up and down the ridge, and there was no cave anywhere. And remember, like he and his family had been out here several times, to look for Nassiruddin, they had been back to the cave on multiple occasions, and it was always there.”

And like he knew where it was, and so the idea that now it's just gone didn't make any sense. And so now, Kathiruddin was even more confused about what happened to his brother. He would go back home and he would spend years afterwards thinking about that strange cave and trying to make sense of it all, but it would be decades before he got any answers. 28 years later, on a morning in August of 2025, Kathiruddin and his family were contacted by the local police, a local shepherd had been grazing his livestock and a nearby valley, and had stumbled upon some human remains, just lying out on the ground.

An ID found on the body confirmed that the body belonged to Nassiruddin, but there was something very strange about the body. Although Nassiruddin had disappeared almost 30 years ago and was presumed to have died approximately 30 years ago, his body now was pristine with no signs of rot, and his clothes were all perfectly intact. It was as if he had just died like 24 hours ago. But, in looking at Nassiruddin's body, it was clear he had not aged. He looked like the young man he was when he disappeared.

He had magically survived, not contacted anyone for 30 years and just happened to die yesterday. It was like, no, this is the body of someone who died 30 years ago, but somehow their body has preserved perfectly. It was almost like Nassiruddin walked into that cave and had been frozen in time. In fact, that's exactly what happened. Because it would turn out the cave where Nassiruddin had disappeared wasn't made of rock. It was an ice cave on the side of a massive glacier.

“That's why it glowed in the sunlight that beautiful blue, but from the outside just looked like a normal cave after dark.”

Somewhere inside of that cave, there was a crack like an ice crevasse that was covered by snow, and at some point Nassiruddin stepped on the crack and fell into it. We don't know how far he fell, but it must have been a significant crevasse. And as soon as he fell into this crevasse, which would have happened abruptly to the point where he probably couldn't even scream out, as soon as he fell into this crevasse, snow from inside the cave kind of toppled down on top of this crack and covered it up. And so, in essence, Nassiruddin was like instantly encased in ice.

And unfortunately, he likely was alive for some period of time, trapped in that ice crevasse before he froze to death.

“So that's why nobody found Nassiruddin, because he was literally trapped, probably pretty far down inside of this glacier, covered with snow. He was basically under the ground, if you will.”

And then, a few months after he froze to death inside of this crack, well, the ice, the glacier, the top layer of the ice, it melted enough that the cave opening melted away.

And his body would stay frozen in ice, deep inside of that glacier, for decades, for nearly three decades, until eventually, at that point, the glacier melted enough that his body was released and found by the local shepherd.

As for his horse, it was never found.

“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.”

The Mr. Ballem Podcast, strange dark and mysterious stories, is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballem.

Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bon and Cole Casio. This episode was written by Kate Gallagher, Kate Murdoch, and by Andrew Keller. Story editing by Kate Murdoch, Evan Allen, and by Aaron Land.

“Research in fact checking by Shelley Xu, Samantha Banhous, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fassiano.”

Research in fact checking supervision by Steven Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whitley Casio and Jordan Stitham. Production support by Antonio Minata and Delana Corley.

Artwork by Jessica Klogst and Kiner, theme song "Something Wicked" by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballem Podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballem Podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballem YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballem.

“If you want to listen to episodes one week early and add free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast+ on Apple Podcasts or visit SiriusXM.com/podcast+ to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice.”

So, that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support. Until next time, see ya.