Full Stomach | Campfire Stories with MrBallen

got a great plot twist at the end. But this story, it's sort of so unbelievable that I think a lot of

“people are going to have a hard time actually believing it. But I'll tell you that when this happened,”

the story happened in Hong Kong, this story got picked up by many major news outlets and was covered extensively. So that suggests there's some real credibility to the story.

But ultimately, it's up to you to decide what you actually believe. But before we get into tonight's

story, if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious, deliberate and story format, then you come to the right campfire because that's all we do and we upload two, three, even four times a week. So if that's of interest to you, go ahead and sign in to the fall of button's email account and delete all of their emails. Also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into tonight's story.

One evening in December of 1989, a young waiter named Zao was busking a table at the restaurant

“he worked at in Hong Kong when he heard the restaurant's phone ring. And the sound really”

stressed Zao out because the restaurant was really busy that night and it was only Zao and one

other waiter working along with the manager who was in back. And so Zao, you know, he's busking

this table, he began looking around for the other waiter to see if maybe they heard the phone and they could go take the call but he saw the other waiter and she was busy actually taking another table's order and the manager was, you know, somewhere in back and would not normally take the call anyway. And so Zao, you know, he sighed and stopped busing the table and went over and he picked up the phone. And right away, he can like barely hear the person who's talking that it's a voice

of what sounds like a very frail older woman and she's practically whispering into the phone. And so Zao had to like block his other ear because it's so loud in the restaurant and he's

“straining to listen and he's asking this person to speak up. But finally he can hear, you know,”

what this woman is calling for and she's calling because she's trying to place an order for

delivery. But this is in the 1980s so this is before there were things like Uber eats and, you know, door dash and in Hong Kong at the time if somebody called in to a restaurant for a delivery order, what it meant was people like Zao had to take the order and then literally take the food and actually physically bring it to the person who would call it in. So this is like sort of a very tedious thing for somebody like Zao. And so as soon as Zao could tell that the reason this woman had called

was for a delivery order, he's like, oh my goodness, could it get any worse? Like I have so much to do here. It's so crazy and now I have to literally run this woman's order to her and then come back and continue my work like man, what bad luck. But it wasn't like Zao could do anything else. Like he couldn't tell the woman, no. So, you know, as best as he could, he listened and he told the woman to like repeat her order like, let me write down what you want and so eventually he heard

that what she wanted was stir fried rice noodles with an extra egg in order of beef chow fun and a couple servings of fried rice and then after he took down her order, he told her that he'd be there in about half an hour and then he hung up. About 15 minutes later, the bell rang in the kitchen and Zao walked over and he saw that the food was ready to take out food. And so he grabbed the bag, he grabbed the receipt that showed the address of this woman's

apartment and he stapled it to the bag and then he found the other waiter who was working that night and he told her to please look over his tables while he was gone, he'd be right back. And then with the food in hand, he left the restaurant and began running across the city to get to this apartment. And so he gets outside and he looks at the address and he starts running in the direction of this apartment and after several minutes, he gets to the apartment complex,

he makes his way up and he finds the door of this woman's apartment and he knocks on the door and he just waits and nobody answers the door. And so, you know, he's looking at the time, he knows he needs to get back to the restaurant as soon as possible, he has people that are waiting for him and so he knocks a bit louder this time and sort of calls out like, hey, delivery, now I answer, it's still just quiet inside this apartment. And so he looks at the the receipt

on the bag but again shows the address of this woman's apartment to make sure he's at the right one and he's like, yep, I'm definitely at the right apartment. And so after a few more moments of silence, Zhao, he just gives up trying to be polite here, he really needs to get back to the restaurant and so he just starts wailing on the door, yelling like, hey, delivery, like get out here and get your food. And now this time, he hears some movement inside of the apartment and so he stops banging on the door.

like a crack and it's dark inside the apartment and it's bright in the hallway and so from his perspective, Zhao's looking into this crack and he can't see anything but eventually out of this darkness of this little crack, a little hand shows up and in this hand is money and through the crack, the hand reaches with the money and so Zhao he reaches out, he takes the money and then a voice comes through the inside of this apartment and it's that same very quiet, frail voice of the woman who had

called and placed the order and she just said, "For Zhao to leave the food right there, just drop it, take the money and go." And so Zhao, he's thinking how bizarre this is like, why is this woman acting the way she's acting like, why can't you just open the door all the way and literally take

your food inside, like you asked me to come here with your food, you basically invited a stranger

to your apartment, like why would you now be so cagey? It just it was odd, but at the same time, Zad didn't really care. She had given him the money which covered the order and at this point he could just

“leave the food and go back to the restaurant and so that's what he did. Drop the food,”

left the apartment complex, ran back to the restaurant and continued his night and basically forgot about this woman. So later that night after the restaurant had closed, Zhao and the other waitress were cleaning up and getting ready to leave when the manager came out of the back office looking really upset about something and he sort of strolled over to Zhao and the other waiter and they both stopped instinctively when they saw the look on his face and they're sort of looking at

him and he comes in and sort of out of nowhere he's like, "I know one of you two has been stealing

from this restaurant. I know it." And immediately, Zhao, he looks over at the other waiter and she looks back at him and they're like, "What? Exound new. He did not steal any money. There was no way he was talking about him." Then from the looks of it, the other waiter, she definitely did not seem like she, you know, had just been caught stealing and so the two of them kind of looked back at the manager and they're like, "What are you talking about? Like, we didn't steal from you.

Like, what do you mean? Like, what are you talking about?" But the manager was like, "I know one of you did it. I don't know who, but one of you did it and I'm telling you right now if it ever happens again, you're fired." And then the manager just turned around and he walked back into his office and

so Zhao and the other waiter are just left standing there like, "What just happened?" But at the

“same time, like, Zhao anyways, he knew he didn't take any money and he's just like, you know what?”

I just want to go home. Like, this has been a long day. I want this to be over and it seemed very much like the other waiter felt the same way. And it's the two of them just kind of shrugged and they were like, "I don't know what he's on about, but I didn't do anything." And they finished cleaning up and then before long, they had left for the night. The next day, Zhao was back at work and once again, it was extremely busy and once again, they were

under staffed. It was just Zhao and another waiter, a different waiter than the day before, but still it's just the two of them and the manager who was in the back office. And so it's just another very stressful day and all day, Zhao, he's thinking about the fact that the manager had effectively accused him of stealing the night before and that really hadn't been resolved just from the perspective of the manager hasn't talked about it again, so it's like the elephant in the room. But at this point,

“Zhao was just doing his job because he didn't steal anything. He knew he didn't steal anything.”

And so he figured it was just a misunderstanding if it gets brought up again, there's definitely an explanation here. And so all day and into the evening, Zhao is just a work-in-like man, so it was the other waiter. And then at some point in the evening, the phone and the restaurant rings. This is in the middle of the busiest time of the night. And once again, Zhao, like he's here in the phone ringing and he's hoping the other waiter is available to take the call because

the last thing he wants to do is do another delivery order, but just like the night before, his coworker was busy taking orders from other people and so it fell on Zhao to take the call. And so Zhao, he trudged his way through the very busy and very loud restaurant to the phone, he answered it and immediately he recognized the voice. It was the same woman who had called the night before. The woman he could barely hear, she was talking so quietly. And so again,

he had to block his ear to hear what she wanted. And again, she was placing an order for delivery. So again, Zhao would have to be the one to literally go run to her apartment and drop off her food and then hustle back and finish his shift. And so feeling sort of annoyed and a little frustrated because he can barely hear this woman. He's like, hey, can you please repeat your order like, I need to write down your order. And so feeling annoyed, Zhao, you know, he took down her order,

which was the same as the night before, stir fried rice noodles with an extra egg in order of beef

would see her in about 30 minutes and then he hung up. And then 15 minutes later, the kitchen bell

“bangs, Zhao walks over, he grabs the back food, he attaches the receipt, out he goes and he runs”

across the city over to this woman's apartment and up he goes, he gets to her door, which he knows is the right one because he had been here the day before and he pounds on the door right out the gate because apparently this woman takes forever to come to the door and so he's pounding on the door saying, hey, I'm here delivery delivery and eventually he hears the sound of movement inside the apartment, the sound of locks turning and then the door opens just a crack and then out comes a

little hand with some money. Zhao, he takes the money just like the day before. He hears the sound of this woman saying to just leave the food outside in the hall, he does just that, he places it down, the door shuts and Zhao turns, and he leaves, and he goes back to work. Later that night, after the restaurant had closed, Zhao and his other coworker were cleaning up, you know, happy

“that the day was finally done and as they're doing that, again, at least from Zhao's perspective,”

this is the second time this has happened, the manager comes storming out of the back office

looking really upset. Now again, the other coworker was not here the night before but the other coworker could see, like clearly there's an issue and Zhao had stopped as well, you know, waiting to hear what the manager had to say and the manager comes over but instead of addressing both of them, the manager looks right at Zhao and he just says, I know it was you. You are the only one who was here yesterday and today and I'm telling you there is money missing from the register, it's you.

You're the one stealing it. Now Zhao, like he knows he didn't take any money from the register, this didn't happen, there's no way that this is true, like it can't be true and so Zhao, like he needs this job and so he can't just like fight with his manager, but he said like, that's not possible, I don't know what you're talking about, can you please explain what you mean? Like, I don't know, I don't know how this could have happened but I'm telling you it was not me.

Now the manager, he's sort of staring at Zhao, you know, trying to size them up to see if maybe he's lying or not and he can't quite tell and he just he says to Zhao, well, you know what, the reason I know that somebody is doing this, that this is not some mistake is because the money from the register is not just missing, it's that the money has been replaced with counterfeit money, like someone is taking money, use Zhao and putting counterfeit money back to sort of make it seem like

no money is missing but I know it's counterfeit money, like I can spot it, I know it's counterfeit money, you're doing that Zhao, you did that, you stole from me and if you don't give the money back, you're fired and so Zhao at this point he's like, what, I didn't do that, I have, I have no idea what you're talking about, there is, there is no way that's true, I did not do that. At this point, the manager just turned around and went into the back office and then when he came out again,

he was holding the counterfeit money and he showed it to Zhao and right away, Zhao could tell like,

yeah, that's blatantly counterfeit money, like it would never pass his real money, he knew right

away what it was, so this was not just typical fake money, it was something known as ghost money, in Hong Kong some people will literally burn this fake money, this ghost money at the funeral, that's sort of an offering and the belief is that by doing that, this money somehow goes to the deceased person and they can use this money in the afterlife, so it's sort of part of a funeral ritual. And so Zhao knows like this is ghost money, he would recognize it as not real money and so the

idea that this was put into the register to somehow doop the manager into believing that don't worry, no one's still any money here just seems sort of absurd and so Zhao, he says to the manager like, well wait a minute, I didn't do this but if I were to take money from the register, I wouldn't have left behind this obviously fake money, I would have just taken the money, I didn't, but why would I put this obviously fake money back in the register? That definitely wouldn't fool you, it didn't

in the manager, he was thinking about it and he was like, yeah, actually you're right,

“but then he was like, well you know what must have happened then is you must have accepted”

this counterfeit money from a customer and not realized it, this is your mistake, you must have allowed someone to pay with this ghost money and just not notice that, you know, you're very busy, maybe that's what happened and Zhao's like, no, like there's no way I would have accepted clearly fake money, I would have said no, this is not real money, like there's no way I would have made that mistake. And so the managers like, well then how could how could this money have gotten into

the register? Like were there any strange customers here over the past two days? I don't know like,

do you have any memory of strange customers or CD customers over the past two days?

“Now Zhao, like he wasn't immediately thinking, oh I wonder what criminals I ran into in the last”

couple of days that maybe paid with counterfeit money, because like in his mind, there was no one like that, like over the past two days, it was just normal people, except he did just immediately think about that woman who had called on both nights and had the same delivery order that he had taken to her apartment and he thought how weird it was that she had only opened the door a crack and handed out a little bit of money and told him to leave the food on the ground and like

for just whatever reason, even though in some ways he knew, like there's no way that woman has anything to do with this counterfeit money, he just found himself telling the manager, he's like,

well actually there was like this one woman, like I delivered food to her the past couple of nights

and he sort of described the whole thing and just kind of how weird it was that she would have him leave the food in the hall and she was, you could barely hear her and he sort of was confused about the whole thing and so like this didn't explain the counterfeit money at all but it was like the only weird thing that Zalk would think of and the manager by this point did believe Zalk, like he had sort of changed his tone and he sort of believed that something weird was going on

here and it wasn't Zalk, like he was now sort of working was out, a figure it out and so the manager was just like okay well you know if this lady calls again, let me deliver the food to her, let me see if maybe I can talk to her and see if somehow some way I can figure out if

if she's the one giving us the counterfeit money and so the next day Zal was back at work and again

it's a busy day at the restaurant and all day it's just him and one other coworker and they're their busy all day and then in the evening around the same time that this woman had called the past two days the phone rings and this time when the phone rings Zal immediately runs over any grabs it like he doesn't care about what he's doing he was waiting for this call because he was told to you know if she calls handed over to the manager and so he picks up the phone he answers

it and sure enough it's the same woman the woman he can barely hear and she orders the exact same meal to the exact same address and once again Zalk takes it down and he says we'll be there in 30 minutes and he hangs up but this time after giving the order to the kitchen Zal went to the back office and he told the manager that hey she called again so the food will be up in about

“15 minutes and if you want to take it over there and see if yourself you're welcome to and the”

manager was like great I got it I'll take it and so sure enough about 15 minutes later the bell rings in the kitchen the manager goes out he grabs the food he looks at the address on the receipt for where the lady lives and then he leaves the restaurant and he makes his way across town he gets to the apartment building he gets up to the door and he knocks and after a few moments there's silence and so he knocks again and he checks the receipt again to make sure he's at the right place and he

knows he is and so he's he's knocking some more and he's calling out you know delivery delivery and eventually he hears movement inside of the apartment and he hears the sound of locks turning and then just the way Zal described the door opened just a crack and then a little hand came through that crack holding out some money and for the manager it actually was pretty disappointing because for whatever reason he just felt like this is going to be it this person is going to hand

me the ghost money the counterfeit money this is going to explain it maybe it's like a a senile old person who's confused and you know they're accidentally giving out you know the wrong

“money here maybe that's what's going on and somehow Zal just didn't recognize it or something even”

though he claims he would have seen it but maybe that's what happened but but no the money that was coming through the door was definitely real money and so the manager he just took the money and the woman told him to just you know leave the food in the hallway which he did and then the door shut and the manager put the money into his pocket he left the apartment complex and he walked back to the restaurant and so later that night after the restaurant closed you

know Zal and his coworker were cleaning the restaurant and the manager was in the back office counting the money from the register and as he's counting it he realizes he's short except this time there was no counterfeit money in the till it was just it was just short and he's thinking like what's going on he kept checking the receipts he was looking for maybe money that had been misplaced but then he remembered that the exact amount that he was short

was the money that he himself had collected from the woman at the apartment from the delivery order and so he reached into his pocket where he'd put the cash and just forgotten and he pulled it out

pulled out of his pocket was ghost money like the money that he knew when it had come through the door

from this woman it had been real money that money that he looked at confirmed was real putting his pocket now he's looking at it again and it's ghost money like how can this be but right at that moment that's when he realized what must be happening they were dealing with a professional counterfeiter she must be using money that has the appearance of real money when it's given to the other party but then maybe like there's like paint or something

on it that sort of wears off and it eventually reveals that it's fake money but by that point

“the transactions already happened and the con is done and so he's thinking that's what's going on”

that explains the whole thing that's why Zao didn't realize it when he was taking this money it looked real and it wasn't until later when you know whatever they did to the money were off that it became clear it was ghost money so at this point the manager picked up the phone any call it the police later that same night two police officers arrived at the apartment complex where the woman who kept ordering delivery food lived and they made their way up to her

apartment and they knocked on her door and they called out that it was the police and they were here to talk to her but nobody answered the door and so after a few moments the police knocked again much louder this time but still there was no answer nobody came to the door and it was around this time that the officers noticed there was this horrible smell coming very clearly

“from this apartment at first when they walked into the hallway they had sort of smelled it but”

they had chalked it up to maybe being just the way the whole building smelled but no as they were standing here it seemed pretty clear that this awful like rotten food smell was coming out of this apartment and considering the fact that they were here for a potential like you know counterfitting ring inside of this apartment and just the weirdness of the smell and the silence as they're pounding on the door the officers decided like we got to go in there we got to see what's going on

and so they kicked the door down and as soon as they did they were hit with an even more powerful

horrible smell like rotting food smell and they covered their noses and they they went into this apartment they start calling out like police police and it's dark inside the apartments they can't really see anything they they try the lights but the lights don't turn on and they're looking

“around and there's a little bit of light coming into the windows they can kind of see that it's a”

small apartment there's a kitchen there's a living room and what appears to be a bedroom over here and they they cut through the kitchen and they're sort of calling out they don't see anybody in the apartment like there's no movement whatsoever and they eventually make their way around to the living room and by this point they basically searched the apartment and there's nobody here like there's no counterfitting equipment or or any sort of criminal operation happening in here

but they eventually get to the living room where the most light was coming in from the outside

and when they looked for the first time really closely at the living room they realized there was

like this horrible scene inside of this apartment there were four very decomposed dead bodies sort of lying around the living room they were draped on the furniture and on the ground and sort of strewn about the dead bodies were all these wrappers and bags of takeout food like trash from takeout food and so the police after seeing this awful scene they they backed out of the apartment and a full-scale investigation was launched into what happened here and ultimately what they

discovered was these four people had died because of an accidental carbon monoxide leak inside of this apartment but the leak had occurred at least a week before their bodies were found and so that in and of itself created a whole bunch of questions for the police and certainly for his ow and his manager because it's like wait a minute we've been delivering food to this apartment to somebody somebody keeps opening the door and handing us this money that is apparently

counterfeit money you know ghost money someone's been doing that and clearly there are bags of takeout food that were literally the bags that they brought from the restaurant it turned out it was the same stuff like who's been in here it doesn't make any sense like there must be somebody else that was maybe in here with the dead bodies or something however there was one other truly confounding discovery that had been made already that was made during the autopsy of these

four people that really added a pretty awful twist to the story that to this day like nobody can understand nobody has a good explanation for this and really this is the reason the story went so viral at the time and was covered by so many news outlets so in addition to the

they cut open the stomachs of each of these four people and you know what they found inside

“of their stomachs they found the takeout food the stir-fried egg noodles the beef chow fun the”

fried rice that was brought over by zow and his manager from their restaurant that was the food inside of their stomachs and the food was determined to be about maybe one or two days old so literally the food they brought over these dead people consumed even though according to their own

autopsy's they were dead by the time the food arrived and zow and his manager would confirm

they brought the food over like a day ago these people would have been dead by then so how did the

“food get into their stomachs now to a lot of people the only explanation here was that whoever”

ordered the food would have called that that frail sounding older woman who then paid with ghost money was literally a ghost the four dead people spirits must have been in some kind of limbo stuck inside the apartment where they had died feeling bored and hungry this incident which now is just known as the ghost take away incident because take away as another word for delivery food it has been written about extensively in major publications all over Hong Kong and it's been picked

“up in other parts of the world and so there are plenty of people that say you know this really”

happened this is true we don't know to make of it but it's true this happened but other people say

this is just an amazing urban legend it's up to you what you think is really true

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. Ballum podcast strange dark and mysterious stories is hosted and executive produced by me Mr. Ballum our head of writing is Evan Allen produced by Jeremy Bohn and Cole Kaseo this episode was written by Karis Pash Cooper research and fact checking by Shelley Xu Samantha Van Housse

Evan Beamer Abigail Shumway Camille Callahan Alex Paul Ben Faciano research and fact-checking supervision by Steven here audio editing and post-produced by Whitley Kaseo and Jordan Stittum production support by Antonio Manada and Delana Corley artwork by Jessica Klogst and Kiner theme song something wicked by Ross plugged in thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballum podcast and just a reminder every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballum podcast you can also

now watch on the Mr. Ballum 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. Ballum if you want to listen to episodes one week early and add free you can subscribe to serious xm podcast plus on apple podcasts or visit seriousxm.com slash podcast plus 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 you

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