Today's story is a spooky mystery out of China. Now, it's a little bit complicated. However, if you stick it out till the end and you hear about what authorities find up on that mountain, you will have a wild internet rabbit hole to go explore. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange dark and mysterious Delivered in story format, then you come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload once a week. So if that's of interest to you, please move into the apartment directly above the Like Buttons apartment, and then make it a habit to sprint on your treadmill every morning at 3 AM. 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 today's story. At 05:00 AM on September 30th, In 2008, a 61-year-old man named Xi'an Tiyexiang finished getting dressed inside of the bedroom that he shared with his wife in the city of Beijing, China. After he finished getting dressed, Xi'an reached down and scooped up his backpack off the floor that was already packed. Then as quietly as he could, he tiptoed around the bed to his wife's side to give her a kiss goodbye.

Xi'an was going to be heading out to a local mountain that day for a day hike. And so Shien, he gets next to his wife and he bends down to kiss her. Right as he does that, he accidentally wakes her up. And so his wife opens her eyes and she looks up at him and Shien just says, I love you. He gives her a kiss and he tells her, Hey, I'll be back tonight before midnight. And so his wife, she groggily said, Okay. And she grabbed his hand and squeezed it and she told him that she loved him. And then she fell back asleep. And moments later, Shien had left the bedroom and walked out the front door. Shien's home was only a couple of blocks away from the train station. And since he needed to ride a train and then also a bus to get to this local mountain that was about an hour and a half journey away, the train station was his first stop. Up. And so Xi'an, as he walked towards the station, he was all smiles. I mean, he was really excited about this day. So, Xihen was retired, but he had spent his whole life teaching geography at Beijing number 5 middle school, and he was a very passionate teacher.

But the thing he was most passionate about that he routinely really pushed on his students, in some ways more than geography, was his love of nature. In fact, Xihen loved nature so much that when he was not teaching, he basically He spent all of his off time out in nature going for hikes. I mean, that was his thing. Today, Xi'an was especially excited about his hike because he was hiking one of his favorite trails. It was located on Mount Miao Feng, which is a mountain located 30 miles to the northwest of where Xi'an lived. This mountain was quite famous because of all the sacred and ancient temples that dotted the mountain all over the place. Then also, there were all these beautiful roses, like the flower that would bloom all over the mountain in the summer. It's just this totally strikingly beautiful place. Normally, Xi'an would actually hike up this trail and then actually camp out on Mount Miaufang, mostly because on the summit, there was this incredible view of downtown Beijing. At night, the view is spectacular with the city all lit up. But on this particular day, Xi'an knew an overnight stay was not possible because he had to be back home by the next day because it was his mother's 90th birthday.

He was very close his mother, and he was not going to miss that. And so Jean eventually made it to the train station. He bought his ticket, he boarded his train, and then he sat down in a seat, and as soon as he did, he opened up his bag and pulled out a stack of papers. For this hike, Jean had packed himself some food and water inside of his backpack. He also packed a newspaper called the Beijing Youth Daily, and he brought along his diary. But his diary was a little bit unique. Jean, because he loved nature so much and didn't like the idea of wasting anything, what he would do when he was a teacher at Beijing number 5 middle school, he would just take scrap paper and start writing on that. He would compile all his scrap paper into these diaries that he would keep. The reason he did that was primarily because he was so in love with nature he hated the idea of wasting anything. And so, Jean passed the time on the train by writing in his diary, a. K. A. His stack of scrap paper, and also reading this newspaper.

And Jean knew he really needed to read the entire newspaper pretty quickly, because by the time he got to the mountain, he was going to do what he always did, which is he would bring a newspaper with him on a hike, and as he walked, he would take out a page periodically and tie it to a tree, marking his way. That way, when he turned around and came back down, he would have his path marked because Jean did not always walk on a clearly marked trail, and so this was his way of not getting lost. Xien would ride the train car, and then he would get off, and he would board a bus, and then finally, right around 7:00 AM, that bus would come a stop in the tiny village of ChenFang, which is located right at the base of Mount Miafeng. And so, Xi'en grabbed his backpack, he hopped off the bus, and then began walking through the village towards the mountain. And then by about 07:20 AM, so not long after Xi'en had left the bus, he was almost up to Mount Miafeng when he pulled out his cell phone and he called his cousin.

It was a brief conversation, and all Xi'en really wanted to do was just to make sure his cousin was going to be around the next day for Xi'en XieN's mother's birthday. The cousin said he would. And so Xi'en told him, Okay, I'm going hiking today, and I will see you tomorrow. And then he hung up. Then, only a couple of minutes later, Xi'en disappeared into the beautiful forests of Mount Miafeng. A few years ago, I started noticing that I was getting a whole bunch of solicitation phone calls and emails. Now, at first, it was just some random company trying to sell me some product, but pretty quickly, it took a and became just a succession of spammers and scammers trying to get me to wire them money or send them a gift card or click on suspicious links. Now, honestly, this was more of a nuisance than a real concern because I didn't read any of these emails. I just ignored them. But it made me wonder, how do they have my information? So as an experiment, I just googled myself, and I can tell you I was genuinely shocked by how much of my personal information was just out there for anyone to access.

Process. Keep in mind, this happened pre Mr. Balin. This is like I have no social media, I don't post anything to the internet, yet somehow my data was widely available on the internet. I wound up hiring a service that basically scrubbed the internet and removed all of that private information. As soon as they were done, these spammy phone calls and emails stopped, and most importantly, I had peace of mind again that my identity was secure. If this could happen to me, it definitely could happen to you if it hasn't already. This is why today's video sponsor is Aura. Aura is the one-stop shop for securing your identity. Aura can identify all those data brokers who are selling your information without your consent. What they can do is they can put in an opt-out request on your behalf and take down your personal information off of those shady websites. Aura offers many other features as well that will also help protect you and your family's privacy. They have a VPN, they have identity and credit monitoring, they have antivirus, password management, they have identity theft insurance, they have parental controls, and much, much more, all on a single app.

Aura is very easy to set up, and you get everything at one affordable price. I value my privacy, and I value yours too. So right now, go to aura. Com/misterbaulen to start your two-week free trial now. The link is also down in the description below. Again, that's aura. Com/misterbaelen to start your two-week free trial today. So Jean's wife did not expect to hear from Jean at any point that day because she knew he would have terrible cell phone service up on the mountain. But she did expect her husband to be home on time. He had told her that morning before he left that he would be home that night before midnight. And if you knew Jean, you knew this guy was never late. He said, I'm going to be someplace at a certain time. He would be there. So when 10:00 PM rolled around that night, and still Jean was not not back yet and he had not called, Jean's wife was actually not worried because she was thinking, Okay, well, it's 10:00. He'll be home in the next couple of hours because he said he'd be here by midnight tonight, and he will be here tonight.

And so she went to bed expecting to wake up and see Xi'an in bed with her in the morning. But the next morning, when she woke up, Xi'en was not in bed, so he did not come home. And so his wife immediately was very concerned and began calling Xi'en's family, and nobody knew where he was. And so that day, the family went to the police and they reported Xi'en missing. The local police immediately organized a search for Jien. However, they knew this was going to be a very challenging search. Mount Miafung is not some enormous mountain by any means. It's a decent-sized mountain, but it's really known for having these paths that twist and turn all over the place, so it's pretty easy to get lost. And then also there's a whole bunch of sheer cliff faces all over the place. So if you're not paying attention attention, you could literally just walk off a ledge. In short, this is a dangerous and confusing place. At the same time that this search was happening out on the mountain, the police were also in contact with Jeanne's cell phone service provider to see if they could track down Jien's cell phone, because obviously, if they could find that, they might find Jien, too.

But the only way a cell phone can be tracked is if the cell phone is on, because when it's on, it connects to the nearest cell phone tower, and that's how these service providers are able to tell where these phones are. They look to see which tower it's connected to. But when GN's cell phone service provider looked for his phone, they quickly determined his phone was off. So unless the phone came back on again, they would not be able to locate the phone. However, they were able to pull all of Jien's cell phone signal history up until his phone was turned off. And what they found in this signal history is the day before, so the day Jien went missing, his cell phone was on at 4:00 PM that evening, and he received a phone call at 4:00 PM. The service provider was able to see that when this phone call came in, Xi'en's cell phone was not where they thought it would be. It was not high up Mount Miafung. It actually was near the base of the mountain. When police reached out to the person who had called Xi'an at 4:00 PM, they discovered it was just a friend of Xi'an's.

This friend said that Jien said he was coming down the mountain now and he'd be home soon. So this new information did basically line up with what Jien had told family he'd be doing that day, just a quick day hike. Although, again, they expected it to be a little bit longer. It seemed a little odd he'd be down the mountain by 4:00 PM, but still, this basically lined up with what they thought he was doing. However, this new information did not help explain what happened to Jean. Why was he missing? The expectation was he must have gotten lost or hurt or something up on this mountain. Maybe he's stranded somewhere and can't go anywhere. But now, based on this phone call, it It sounded an awful lot like Jean was not even on the mountain when he disappeared. So where was he? Police had already checked all the bus stations and train stations in the area to see if maybe Jean took a different way home or something. But when they went to all these different stations, there was no evidence that Jean had been to any of them. There was another problem. Members of Jean's family told the police about Jean's habit of tying newspapers to trees to mark his trail as he hiked.

The family told the police that Jean did this every single time he hiked, and his wife told the police that for sure she knew her husband had brought along a copy of that newspaper. By all expectations, there should be markers up on that mountain, literally leading searchers to wherever Xi'an went. But after an entire day of searching Mount Miao Fung, they didn't find a single newspaper anywhere. For the next several days, this big search for Xi'an continued, but nothing was found. That is, in till October seventh, so one week after Xi'an had vanished. On that day, Xi'an's cell phone service provider noticed that Xi'an's cell phone had suddenly turned back on, and the phone was not on or near Mount Miaufang. Instead, It was located 36 miles away from the mountain at a train station called Beijing West railway Station. Now, the cell phone was only on for a couple of seconds, but it was on long enough for the provider to confirm that it really was in that location. And so the police immediately dispatched a team to go to Beijing West railway Station and see if they could find Xi'an. But when they got there, Xi'an was not there.

His phone was not there. They looked at all the security footage. There was no sign of Xi'an They searched the surrounding areas. Nothing. And on this day, at basically the same time that police are at this railway station trying to make sense of what's going on with the cell phone, a villager from Chanfang village, which is that little village that sits at the base of Mount Miafung, came forward with a very strange story. He said on the day that Xi'an disappeared, this villager was at his little shop. He sold walnuts to hikers that were making their way towards Mount Miafung. It was basically like snacks for the hike, and he sees this guy walking up through the village towards the mountain, and he looked exactly like Xi'en because now Xien's face was on the news and this villager had seen it, and so he felt like he had seen Xien. This villager said, this guy who looked exactly like Xien, he walked up and actually stopped at this villager's shop to buy some walnuts. This villager and this man who looked like Xien, they just chatted for a few minutes. At some point, this guy, this guy who looked like Xien, asked the villager, Hey, these are great, but where else can I buy walnuts?

I want to buy other types of walnuts and bring them back to my family. So this villager was like, Oh, yeah. Well, the best walnuts in all of Beijing are actually located about 30 miles away at the base of another Another mountain. It's called Tietua Mountain, and there are vendors over there who sell the best walnuts. That's your answer right over there. Then after the villager said this, this guy who looked just like Jean, it's like everything changed for him. It's like his expression changed, his tone changed. It's like he's been given this information that's changed his life about these walnuts. He says to the villager, Okay, I'm going to go there right now. Without saying anything else, this man just turned and began quickly walking away from the walnuts, back through town, back towards the bus stop, so away from Mount Miafung. In theory, this guy is going to the bus to what? Commute 30 miles to this other mountain, Tietua Mountain, to get these walnuts? I mean, the villager does not know this guy, but even he felt like this is bizarre. This guy comes up, he's buying snacks to go hike Mount Miafung.

He seems really excited about it. I offhandedly mention these walnuts, and he's like, Boom, I'm out of here. I'm going to go 30 miles to this other mountain to get these walnuts. It just seemed weird. Then when police spoke to Jean's family about this new information, they would learn that Xi'en did not have a special interest in walnuts, and neither did his family. Even if there was a reason why Jean just really wanted these walnuts, he would not have had time in that day to take the bus 30 miles to Tietua Mountain, get these walnuts, go 30 miles back, and hike up Mount Miaufang because he can't the night. He needs to come back tonight in order to go to his mother's birthday party the next day. So it just made no sense. But this Walnut thing was basically the only lead police really had because everything else was a dead end. And so they decided to shift their search area from Mount Miaufang to Tietua Mountain. And pretty much right away, they saw something that gave them hope that Xi'an could be here. They found pages from the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper tied to trees on the mountain.

And when they looked more closely at the newspapers, they found the publication date of this newspaper lined up with the copy that Xi'an would have had with him on the day he vanished. And so, of course, the searchers just began following this trail of newspapers, hoping Jean would be at the other end. For two days, searchers very diligently followed this trail up the mountain. It wound around, and they went pretty slowly because as they're moving, they're constantly checking everything around. They don't want to miss any clues. But Finally, after two days of following this trail, they eventually found something. The newspapers led them to a campsite. Now, the campsite was abandoned, but there was a bit of hay, there were some used water bottles, and some toilet paper. Just from the looks of it, this campsite looked relatively active, like somebody had been staying here recently for at least a day or two. It seemed pretty likely, based on everything else, that this was Jeanne's campsite. Pretty quickly, after searching the campsite, they found something that virtually guaranteed that this was his campsite. Authorities found this plastic bag that was sitting next to the bed, and inside of the bag was a piece of scrap paper from Beijing number 5 Middle School.

On this scrap paper was a note. The note said, Xi'an had indeed hiked up Tietouan Mountain on September 30th. This would have been the day that he left, so the day he disappeared. Then on his way down, he said he got lost and was forced to spend the night out here. That explained the campsite. Then on October first, so that would have been the day after he spent the night out here, he said he was going to attempt to follow the ridge line down the mountain to a nearby village to safety. This note ended with the phrase, Leaving this note here just in case. Love to everyone who passes by. Now, at first glance, this note was like amazing news because suddenly it seemed totally possible that Jean was just fine. I mean, the way the note was written, it sounded like he was at least healthy and safe, albeit I'm sure he was not happy to be stuck up on a mountain, but he loved being in nature, and so he seemed okay. Then he had a reasonable plan for how he was going to get out of there, follow the ridge line, go down to a village, go to safety.

But as the police analyzed this note, they noticed that some things were off about it. First of all, this note basically directly contradicts other facts of this case. Remember, cell phone records prove Jean got a phone call at 4:00 PM on the day he went missing from his friend, and his friend would report that Jean told him that he was coming down Mount Miofung and he'd be home soon. But according to the note they found, that was not possible because the note said Jean, at 4:00 PM on September 30th, the day he went missing, he would have been on Tietua Mountain, either hiking up or being in the process of getting lost and ultimately making that campsite where he camped out for at least one night. In addition to this factual discrepancy with this note, another issue with the note was just the way it was written. Now, Jien's wife had a chance to look at the note and she would say, That is my husband's handwriting. But the note contained a bunch of very strange language choices that just didn't make sense for Jien to be using. For example, this note, which really should have been a first-person point of view.

Jien has gotten lost. He's by himself. He's riding to the world, letting somebody know what's going on with him. It really should have been written in the first person. My name is Jean. I am lost. Here's what I'm doing. But the note was written in the third person. Jean got lost on the mountain, and so he is going to camp out for the night, and tomorrow, he's going to make his way out to safety. But despite being written in the third person, it did sound like somebody was talking about themselves. It did not feel like somebody else was attempting to document what Xi'en was doing. But by far, the weirdest part of this note was the tone shift that happened about halfway through. The first half of this letter was written, albeit in the person, but it was grammatically correct and formal, like you would expect from a very well-educated, retired teacher. But once you get to that second half of the note, the grammar started being really awkward. Then the very final line, which says, Love to everyone who passes by, that actually sounds totally awkward in Chinese. Love to everyone who passes by is the translation into English, and that basically makes sense to us.

That's not an awkward phrase, but if you put back in Chinese, it's so awkward. It would be like if I tried to say to you, I take the bus to work, but instead I said, To work, take bus. I wouldn't say it that way, and it would immediately seem very awkward for anybody who knows me if I wrote or said something like that. This last line stood out so much that actually police and friends and family of Jean assumed he must have left that in there as a secret message or a code, like a distress signal. Especially when you consider the other weird factors around this note, but nobody could figure out what it meant. The day after this note was discovered, a searcher was up in the vicinity of Jean's campsite on Tietoua Mountain, and they were walking around, retracing their footsteps, looking for new places to search. When they turned a corner and up ahead, they noticed there was this tree hanging out over this rocky cliff, and dangling from the tree was something gray that looked out of place. And so the searcher, sensing this could be a of Xi'an's whereabouts, he yelled out for other searchers in the area that he had found something, and then he took off running towards this thing to see what it was.

And when he got up to the tree, he looked up and he saw it was a pair of sweat pants that had clearly been intentionally tied to this branch in the tree. The searcher, he reached up and grabbed one of the pant legs and tugged on it. When he did, all these white things began falling out of the pants and landing on the ground. When the searcher stopped and looked down to see what they were, he couldn't believe it. It was a whole pile of human bones. However, they were not zhiens. In fact, nobody ever figured out who these bones belonged to or why they were stuffed inside of pants and tied to a tree on this mountain. But the discovery of these bones would open up a whole new mystery because after these bones were found, all the searchers came over and basically just began combing the area near these bones, and the police began uncovering body after body after body. They found two more sets of human bones stuffed into pants and tied to trees, and they found the other bodies at the foot of a cliff and also inside of this well, and inside of this cave.

In total, authorities found 10 sets of human remains in the vicinity near Jean's campsite, but none of the human remains belonged to Jien. Officials were only able to identify a few of the bodies, and they were not able to figure out how died or whether or not foul play was involved. But the discovery of those bodies did mean one thing for Jean's case. It meant all these people had previously gone up to Yétoit Mountain before Jean went up and vanished. When these other people went up the mountain, clearly, something horrible happened to them, and we don't know what it is. Is there a killer on the loose? Is there some animal or creature out there that's taken people out? I mean, we don't know. But what started to happen since Xi'an went missing, and his story was all over the news in China, is that all these other hikers who've been on Tietua Mountain before have begun sharing their experiences when they hiked up Tietua Mountain, and some of their stories about what they've seen on that mountain are horrifying. One person said they were walking up the mountain. They had their partner with them who was a little bit farther back the trail, and so they're walking up on their own.

The first person, as they're walking up the trail, suddenly sees this guy just come out of nowhere there wielding an ax, and he walks up to this person, and all he says is, Are you alone? The hiker is like, No, my partner's back there. They're coming up here. What's going on? But the ax man, he basically acted like he didn't even hear their answer, and he just asked it again, Are you alone? The hiker was like, No, my partner's back there. The ax man, again, just said, Are you alone? Are you alone? Are you alone? This ax person kept doing that until the hiker and their partner just turned and ran. Then another hiker shared a story about how they were walking up a trail on Tietua Mountain, and at some point, they lifted their head up. He saw a little ways up the trail, off the trail, so in the tree line, were all these people, this group of strangers just standing there, motionless, half behind trees, like they were trying to hide themselves, but also not. They were just staring at this hiker, unmoving, not speaking, just staring. The hiker, they look up and they see this, and they were so unnerved so quickly that they just turned and left, and they have no idea who those people were.

And so obviously, we have no way of verifying these other hikers' stories about what they saw on Tietua Mountain. But when you combine their testimony with Jean's story, it really makes you wonder, what's going on up there? The official search for Xien was called off at the end of October, so roughly one month after he vanished. But unofficially, the search for Jean continues to this day. However, they still have not found his body, and basically no real progress has been made. Before you go, I just wanted to point out that we sell merch, official Mr. Balin merch, year round at shop Mr. Ballon. Com. Mr. Ballen. Com. We do the limited drop model for holidays and special events, and we'll create special things that come out on those drops. But in between those drops, I just want you all to know that we always have the Balin Basics line available at shopmisterbalin. Com. Mr. Ballen. Com. That includes things like T-shirts, crewnecks, hoodies. There's even a beanie and phone cases and more. So go check it out. Shop Mr. Ballen. Com. We have merch year round. Actually, one design that just came out that's on sale right now, and it's, I think one of my very favorite pieces of merch is this shirt right here.

It's a graphic T-shirt based on The Headless Valley, one of the best episodes I think that we put out on YouTube. The back is like a movie poster for the Headless Valley episode. This is a great shirt. I wear it all the time when I'm not wearing flannel, of course. And again, it's on sale right now at shopmisterbaulin. Com. All you have to do is use the code Headless 20 at checkout, and you get 20% off this bad boy right here. But you got to hurry because that code is only good until 11:59 PM on May seventh. After that, the discount's gone. The shirt's still there, but the discount is not. So again, merch year round with our Balin Basics line at shopmisterbaulin. Com. Right now, you can buy this Headless Valley Story Tee for 20% off by using the headless20 code at checkout. So go to shopmisterbalin. Com and get your Mr. Balin merch. So that's going to do it. If you enjoyed today's story, be sure you check out our podcast called the Mr. Ballin podcast, where we have literally hundreds more stories right now that sound an awful lot like this one, but many of them are only on the podcast.

They are not available on YouTube. So again, that podcast is just called the Mr. Ballon podcast, and you can listen to it on any podcast platform. Thank you so much. Until next time. See you. Wait, don't go anywhere. If you're looking for more strange, dark, and mysterious videos, click here.