MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
The Crawlspace (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)
Mon, 31 Mar 2025
On a cold winter day in 2013, police officers rushed through the dense woods outside of a small town in Kentucky. They weaved their way through the trees, keeping their eyes peeled, and finally, one of them shouted out. He saw what they were looking for in the distance. The other officers quickly followed him into a clearing, and there, they saw a man with a long gray beard sitting in a large self-made camp. It looked like the man had been living out in the woods for months. The officers stared at him, and they almost couldn’t believe it, because they had finally tracked down the man who they thought could help solve a murder that had taken place a year earlier in a town 150 miles away.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 of the mysterious man in the woods?
On a cold winter day in 2013, police officers rushed through the dense woods outside of a small town in Kentucky. They weaved their way through the trees, keeping their eyes peeled. Then finally, one of them shouted out. He saw what they were looking for in the distance.
The other officers quickly followed him into a clearing, and there they saw a man with a long gray beard sitting in a large self-made camp. It looked like the man had been living out here in the woods for months.
The officers just stared at him, and they almost couldn't believe it, because they had just tracked down the man who they thought could help solve a murder that had taken place a year earlier in a town 150 miles away.
But before we get into that story, 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 email the follow button informing them they've just won the multi-billion dollar lottery.
All they have to do is give you their social security number and credit card information. Okay, let's get into today's story. On the evening of October 28, 2012, 87-year-old Barbara Howe sat at the dinner table with a friend in her house at the Mount Pleasant Retirement Village in the small town of Monroe, Ohio. As the two women began eating, Barbara's friend had a huge smile on her face.
She couldn't get over how Barbara still loved to cook and how good she was at it. At 87 years old, Barbara made it a point to stay active, and she loved cooking and having people over to her house as often as she could. And when she wasn't entertaining, she loved to drive her prized red Cadillac around town and visit the shops on Main Street.
At the dinner table, Barbara broke down the latest episode of Dancing with the Stars, which she watched religiously, and then also the two women caught each other up on what was going on with their kids and their grandkids. Barbara's husband had died about 14 years earlier, and since then she'd lived on her own.
But her family, especially her daughters and her granddaughter Barbie, made sure she was never by herself too often. Just then, the landline phone rang, and Barbara shook her head. People calling during dinner time was so rude as far as she was concerned. But she excused herself from the table and walked into the bedroom to grab it.
The person on the phone said they were working in the retirement village that evening to fix and update all of the residents' Lifeline medical alert systems. Lifeline was a device that allowed someone to push a single button in order to get medical help in case of an emergency.
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Chapter 2: Who was Barbara Howe and what happened to her?
The man said his brother had been wearing a Mount Pleasant Retirement Village sweatshirt. Detective Myers asked the man where his brother was because he wanted to speak to Danny right away. But the man said this is actually where things got even weirder because soon after their conversation, his brother Danny had disappeared.
Immediately following this call, Myers met with Agent White when they reached out to local police in the Kentucky town where the caller lived. But after weeks of searching, the police couldn't find the man's missing brother, Danny French. But then, on January 18, 2013, so two and a half months after the murder, Detective Myers got a call from the cops in Kentucky.
They said they had found Danny French. And apparently, he'd been living in the woods for months. Myers got in his car and sped across the state line into Kentucky to the local police station where the cops had brought Danny. Danny was big and very intimidating looking, he had long gray hair and a huge gray beard, and he certainly looked and smelled like he'd been living outdoors for months.
But it wasn't really Danny's appearance that shook Myers the most. Instead, it would be what Danny talked about. When Myers asked him about Barbara Howe, Danny said he didn't know her and had nothing to do with the murder.
But when Myers asked him why he'd gone to live in the woods, Danny got this glazed look in his eyes and he started talking about how the woods were a fantasy world and a place where people transformed into different things.
Myers and Danny continued talking, and basically the conversation went in all sorts of different directions, into bizarre things that at times Myers just did not understand at all. It sort of seemed like Danny was sort of unhinged. But by the end of their discussion, despite the bizarreness of what they were talking about, it was clear Danny had to know something about what happened to Barbara.
Myers just knew it. So when Myers left the station, he got assurances from the local police that they would keep close tabs on Danny. Still, as strange as all this might be, there was nothing actually tying Danny directly to Barbara's murder. So Myers returned to Ohio with another potential suspect, but no evidence.
This had also been the case with Barbara's granddaughter Barbie and several of the Mount Pleasant employees who Agent White had interviewed. All good suspects, but no evidence. Investigators also received DNA test results of samples taken from multiple suspects and attempted to try to match them to samples found at the crime scene.
Now, these results did eliminate some suspects, but they did not conclusively point to a killer. And soon, with no new evidence coming in, the investigation started to grind to a halt. Months passed, then a year went by with very few new leads. Myers and White still believed they had a few strong suspects here, but the evidence just wasn't strong enough to make any arrests.
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