One of them had been shot multiple

Hello. What do you think of the opening? I got to be honest, I love that little graphic. Pretty cool. So we have a lot going on here. I wanted to start by saying, don't worry, there is a scheduled story today. This is in addition to. Okay, last week was an anomaly. This is in addition to. So don't worry, we're getting a story this week. Before we get going, where are people watching this from? I've already seen some people in the chat. Someone said from Guatemala, which is crazy. I'm in Texas. So where are you guys watching this thing from? I want to see it in the chat. Let's see. 10 out of 10 opening. Thank you. Yeah, honestly, our team did such a good job with that graphic. That's very Cool. I think there's a delay in the chat. Here we go. Guatemala City. There you go. Another Guatemala person. Very cool. Well, as you guys are populating where you're watching, there it is, Pittsburgh, Canada, Ohio, Switzerland, Fort Wayne, Indiana. This is flying through. People from all over the place love to see it. Thank you. Very cool. So lots going on here. To get you up to speed, I'd say the biggest thing, if you haven't already heard about this, is I'm actually going live.

We're doing a live tour at the end of this year, so September 26th through October 20th. If you haven't heard about that, we are doing a full-blown live tour And in fact, this is something that is actually being announced right now for the first time. We are going to be selling our graphic novel at every stop along the tour. This is actually the real book right here, the graphic novel. Actually, if you have a VIP ticket to any of the tour spots, when you come meet me during that meet and greet, bring your book or get a book while you're there, and I will sign it for you. Okay? So that's a pretty cool feature. But actually, let's bring up the tour landing page right now if we can. All right. So if you go to tour. Ballonstudios. Com, you can find this right here. Sick little graphic. Love that thing. All right, so let's see. We're going to Dallas, Texas, Houston, Texas, San Antonio, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Medford, Mass. I'm from Massachusetts, my hometown, Quincy, Mass. We'll be in Medford. It's close. Philly, New York City, Washington, DC, Durham, North Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina, Nashville, and Atlanta.

So if you heard any city that's close to you, I would love to come see you, or I'd love for you to come see me. It's going to be an amazing show. We did a test run last year. On October 20th, we did a show at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas. It was great. We did like half old, half new in terms of stories. There was five stories stories. And for this show as well, it's going to be about that. But it's going to be O. G. Stories and some new ones that have never been told, and including a story from the graphic novel, I believe. So it's an amazing show. It's basically me up on stage with some Cool set design and graphics, just telling stories. So in addition to the live tour, which is really the big thing that's happening this year, let's talk about what's going on today for this livestream. So today, I'm going to be telling a story that's actually from the graphic novel. I've never told it live before. It's a real good one. And in fact, there's a cool origin story of where the story came from.

I'll get into that once I get to the story. It comes from a fan of the Strange, dark, and mysterious. That's the person who came up with the story, or this happened to them. But anyways, I'll be telling that story. And then in And also during that story, during the live version of the story from the graphic novel, we are going to put on screen actual images from the graphic novel. So you get to see the actual artwork as I tell it live. It's very dynamic over here. Lots of stuff happening behind the scenes to make this happen. So you'll get to see that. We also are doing tier lists again. So if you weren't at the last live stream, we did some tier lists. Those are pretty funny. We also have a giveaway And I will tell you. So it's a giveaway on Discord, and I will tell you how to, one, join the Discord, and if you haven't already, and two, sign up for this giveaway at the end of this livestream. So there's a giveaway, and also there's a Q&A at the end, a little hangout session at the end. But first, we got to get you up to speed on what's going on with my good pal, Seagull Lung.

So if you've been living under a rock, Seagull Lung received a package in the mail from the like button, okay? And he thought it was a gift. He opened it up, and it looked like it was a brand new lily pad, but it was rigged with explosives and fireworks. Sent the dude flying, okay? And Lungy was so incensed by the like button that he went rogue to go exact his revenge on the like button. And me, I went looking for him. I couldn't find him, but it would turn out he got his revenge on the like button by filling the like button's house with used Porta Pottys from a recent music festival. And unfortunately, he was caught in the act. And so he was locked up by the FBI, and he's currently in jail. And so here I am, my best bud, Seagal Lung, is incarcerated waiting for his release. And so I did the only thing that we could think to do in a situation like that. And it would be to create a commemorative limited edition merch line called the Seagull Lung Most Wanted Merch Line. As you can see, I'm rocking one of the T-shirts here.

This is old Seagal Lung. This is mugshot after being locked up. We also have the sleeveless version as well, if you're into that thing. And we have some stickers. Full Seagull Lung action. For those who maybe have no idea what's going on about Seagull Lung. It's a long story. It's like a weird inside joke here in the strange, dark, and mysterious community. And anyways, we did a merch drop for the last time when Seagull Lung went rogue, the Rambo, the Rambo the thing, which now I don't have anything to show you. But it sold out instantaneously, and we just didn't have anymore. And so we decided to continue the tradition. And you can get this Most Wanted merch right now. So in fact, if you go to the website Here, this is on ballinstudios. Com. If you click on Shop top there, you can scroll down and see what we got for sale. There it is. There's me. I did a photoshoot. So that picture, actually, if you go... Show the merch. I'll show the picture in a minute. So I did a photoshoot with my bud, Desire. I don't know if you're watching this or not, but that picture of me on the right, where I'm gazing off into the sunset there.

What you don't know is it was like a trillion degrees in Texas when I took that, and I was sweating profusely. And also, I had just laid down in that grass right behind me. We were trying to get this weird model-esque shot where I'm laying in the grass, looking up at the sun, and I'm holding a piece of grass. The shot did not work out. It was a horrible picture. But all these insects crawled into my shirt and into my pants, and I'm sweating profusely. And so as I'm taking this picture, I was saying, hurry up and take it, hurry up and take it, hurry up and take it, because the whole time my back was on fire with insects. In my shirt. So that's cool. Anyhow, Seagull Lung merch, Most Wanted merch. It's available for purchase. And also the giveaway at the end of the stream, I'm going to tell you how to do it at the end. I'm going to tell you how to enter the giveaway at the end. We're giving away 20 of these bad boys at the end of this live stream. And I'm telling you, it couldn't be easier to sign up for this.

So you want to stick around if you want to potentially earn yourself. I'll see you go long, Most Wanted shirt. Pretty good. Pretty good. So a lot of stuff happening, but a lot of you were like, Cool, dude, let's get into the story, and I'm with you. Okay? So we're going to transition now to the graphic novel story. So I'm going to tell it live. You're going to it's going to be some images from the graphic novel. I'm not going to say the name of this one, because if you've heard the story before, the name gives it away. So it's just going to be a story from the graphic novel. And so here we go. So in July of 2012, there was a woman named Simone, who was 22 years old, who was living in this beautiful town in Southwestern Germany called Rudasham am Rhein. I've struggled to pronounce this word many times, but Rudescham am Rhein. It's this winemaking village, and it's gorgeous. There's rolling green hills. There's vineyards as far as the eye can see. It's situated right on the Rhine River. It's this wonderful place. Simone had grown up in this village.

That's where she lived, and she loved it there. Charmed childhood. She's 22 now. But this summer, she was feeling a little bit down because she was actually getting ready to leave this village and start the next chapter of her life in New York City. But instead of dwelling on this sadness of moving away from home for the first time, she instead was really fixated on what she was going to do that summer, her final summer in Rudisham, Rhein. Simone, whenever One of her favorite memories of her entire life in this village is in the summer, she would go to this summer camp. There was this beautiful little camp in this forest that was not far from the town. From the time she was a little kid, she went as an attendee to this camp. There's all these counselors, and there's 200 kids that go to it, and they play games, and they put on stage plays. It's just this wonderful, wholesome camping experience. When she became a teenager, she basically was too old to go to this camp. She did what many of the other former attendees did, which is they eventually transitioned to becoming a counselor, like a volunteer counselor.

She became a counselor and loved it, frankly, more than being an attendee. For every summer after that, she was a volunteer counselor. And this summer, July of 2012, was no different. And she was going to be a counselor as well. So that was what she was going to do with her final summer before leaving for New York City. So in mid-July of that year, Simone packs up her stuff, and she heads off to this forest to go be a camp counselor. And so the logistics of this camp is the attendees, the children. It's a two-week long camp, 200 kids. They would get dropped off by their parents in the morning, and then in the evening, they'd get picked up and go back home. But for the counselors, they would actually live at the campsite for the two weeks. It was like a two-week time. They were out in the woods together. The counselors had created that tradition, if you will, and they told the staff, if you will, that the reason they were doing that is for efficiency's sake. We'll be there first thing in the morning because we're living there, and we can set the camp up.

When the kids go home for the day, we're all going to be there anyways, so it's easier to clean up the camp. There's all these reasons they had for it. But the truth was, the reason the councilors like to stay at this camp and live there is because after the kids would go home at night, all the The councilors would retreat to their tents, which they stayed in for these two weeks. They put these tents out in the forest. The camp is in a clearing, and then basically just into the tree line, they would set up their tents, and the counselors would live out there for the two weeks. But once the kids were gone, they would just go out to their little campsite and put a little campfire together. And the drinking age was 16 years old, or it is 16 years old in Germany. And so they just like, party, basically. Not like crazy, but they had a good time out in the woods. So that was the real the lure of the counselor side of being at this camp. So Simone, mid July, she heads out to the camp. She gets there a day ahead of when camp starts, and she connects with all of the counselors she hadn't seen for so long, and they set up the camp.

And then that night, they did not go out into the woods and have a party. They just set up their tents out in the tree line. And then the next day is day one of the actual camp, and the kids come along, and they got dropped off by their parents, and they have this wonderful first day of camp, doing their thing, doing camp stuff. Then in the evening, after the kids all left, Simone and the other dozen or so counselors, after doing all their chores to wrap up for the day, they excitedly grabbed their beer and and rushed out to the tents in the forest to have their first party night. They get out to the tents, and they're all having a good time, swapping stories, just enjoying summer. In virtue of it being the first day, a lot of the counselors were pretty exhausted. It was a full effort that first day, and so no one was really up for staying up super late. They wanted to crash and just go to bed. Simone wanted to stay awake, and so she was one of the last to finally retire into her tent. But she did eventually.

It's well past midnight. You got a picture of where this is happening, too. They're far enough away from the actual campground. They're well into the tree line that there's no light beyond whatever they have on them. If you sleep in these woods, it's like darkness, right? It's well past midnight. Simone, finally, is one of the last people to climb into her tent. They all slept on these cots that they would put inside of their tent, so they were elevated off the ground. Simone Simone gets into her tent, and she gets on her cot, and it's just so hot. It was just really hot this time of the year, and she just felt like it was stifling in her tent. She decided she would pull her cot out of her tent and just basically set it just in the woods. Imagine if you wandered off into the woods with a caught, put it down, and lied on top of it, that's what she was doing. She's in the middle of the forest, completely exposed, and she's going to try to sleep because it's a little bit cooler out there. She wasn't the only one doing this.

Some of the other counselors had also struggled to fall asleep because of the heat. There was at least a few other people that had their cots outside of their tent. Simone, she puts her cot next to or near another counselor who's already asleep. Simone gets in her cot, and she's trying to fall asleep, but she's still struggling to fall asleep. She could only really hear the sounds of the other counselors that were snoring and sleeping away, but she couldn't sleep. She had this growing sense of dread as she was laying, again, in total darkness in the woods, exposed in this a lot. I can imagine it being a little bit stressful. But eventually, she falls asleep. I'm going to show you an image that we were going to prep and put on the screen, and I'm going to show you literally in the book. Once she falls asleep, Simone is thrust into a visceral nightmare, one that she remembered every detail of this nightmare. So in her dream, she comes to in her dream, and she looks out, and she sees this post-apocalyptic skyline. It's like a desert city with all these buildings that have now basically fallen into disrepair.

They're crumbling over It looks like a nuclear bomb has gone off, and we're in the nuclear Holocaust, and humanity is being wiped out. She's looking off into the distance, and she sees this skyline of just broken down buildings, and it's just sand everywhere. Between her and these buildings, in the foreground, are all these people that are just standing there, shoulder to shoulder, maybe a couple of hundred feet away from her. Their clothes are in tatters. They look like some of them are naked, but they're just barely wearing any of these clothes, and they're standing there shoulder to shoulder, just staring at Simone. It's hard to detail this and hold this, but there you go. That's the visual for the skyline. And so they're all staring at Simone. And so she instinctively is fearful of these people, but they're not moving towards her. They're not doing anything. They're just standing there like zombies. And so she's taking stock of the scene, and she didn't know why it was scary, but it was. She's like, This is a nightmare, right? As she's looking at these people and as she's taking in the skyline, she takes stock of the fact that on either side of her are these two huge men, that she doesn't know how...

They're not physically laying hands on her, but she can tell they are the reason that she She can't move from the spot she's in. She's rooted to the spot. The guy on her left is not doing anything. He's just standing there. But the guy on her right is turned to the side like he's doing something with his hands, but she can't quite see what it is. Simone, she's looking over as best as she can at this guy, trying to figure out what he's doing. She's seeing these people in this horrible skyline. And then at some point, the guy on her right turns back around, and in his hand, he's holding what looks like a wreath, like a holiday wreath you would hang on your door during Christmas this time, let's say. And so Simone sees this wreath, doesn't really know what to make of it. It's this weird nightmare she's having. But the guy, without saying anything, who's next to Simone, he raises the wreath over her head. He's holding it above her head. And at this point, the other guy on the left side of Simone, he grabs the other side of this wreath.

So there's four hands holding this wreath above Simone's head. I don't know if I'm in frame, so I'm going to go straight on with the camera. So they're holding this wreath, and they begin to lower towards Simone's head. And as they do, Simone can tell all these people, they're looking a little bit more intently in the direction of Simone, really taking into account what's going to happen here. And as soon as this wreath touches Simone's head, she feels this blinding pain, like an excruciating pain all around the crown of her head. And she realizes at this exact moment that this is not just some wreath, it's a crown of thorns. And the thorns are digging into her head, and these two huge men are pulling it down on her head as as they possibly can. And she wants to scream, but she can't make any noise. She wants to run. She can't. And so she's just stuck there feeling this excruciating pain, and blood is pouring down her face, and it's unreal. It feels real. It literally feels real to her. And so in the dream, this goes on for several seconds until finally, it's like it's so much that she wakes up.

She's out of the dream. And so Simone, she takes stock of the fact that she's in this dark forest, which must have been disconcerting at first, but she looks around, she's in her caught, she's surrounded by the counselor, she can't really see anything, but she's like, Oh, okay, it was just a bad dream. But instinctively, like we all do when we sometimes have, maybe not dreams like this, I hope not, but similar horrible dream Sometimes you check just to make sure you really are not dreaming. And so she reached up and touched her head to make sure she was not, in fact, wearing a crown of thorns. And she touched her head and there was no crown of thorns. And so she's relieved. But when she brought her hand back down, she can't She didn't see her hand. It's too dark, but she felt like there was something on it, something sticky. And at the same time, as she's noticing that there's something sticky on her head, she begins to feel this pain bubbling up around her head that was very similar to the pain she felt in her dream. And so as this pain is ratcheting up and up and up, she catches out of the corner of her eye.

Again, it's very dark, but maybe out of the sunlight or something, she could either hear something or barely see something running around in the tree line near her, scurrying off away from her. She has no idea what it is, but she can't even focus on it because now the pain, the real pain, not the phantom pain in her dream, but the actual pain into her head is so blinding, she can only focus on that. And it finally gets to the point where she starts to panic. She doesn't know what's going on. She's realizing this is blood. That's what I've touched my head. There's blood on my head. And so she begins to scream. So she's screaming. And the girl who's next to her, the other counselor, wakes up because the girl is screaming right next to her. The counselor sits up. She sees Simone Simone screaming. She's like, What's going on? What's going on? She can't see Simone. It's too dark. And so this other counselor fumbles for a flashlight, grabs a flashlight, turns around, and shines it on Simone's face. And the second Simone is illuminated, and this the counselor can see her, the other counselor begins to scream at what she sees on Simone's head.

And so for the next 15 minutes, it is absolute chaos in the forest. As people are screaming, they're trying to figure out what's going on. The other counselors are waking up. Nobody knows what's going on. And in the course of those 15 minutes, the other counselors grab Simone. They put her into one of the vehicles they had at the camp. And by this point, Simone is vomiting. She's still bleeding from her head, and they rushed her to the hospital. I wish I could pull right now I can say, What do you think happened? But I'll tell you what happened. When Simone was having that dream, the dream where she sees the city skyline and she doesn't know what's going on, and then suddenly she felt the thorns being driven into her head, well, the pain she was feeling in her dream of something driving into her head was synced up with actual pain she was feeling in real life. There was something digging into her head, but for some reason, her body, her brain, didn't process the pain in real life the way you would think you would, like, wake up because something's happening to you.

Instead, the thing that was happening in real life to Simone's head manifested itself in this dream. So we basically believe Simone was already having a nightmare. She's in this post-apocalyptic landscape, and then something in real life began happening to her head, and it entered her dream. That was the Crown of Thorns. Well, the real thing that was happening was a fox had snuck into the camp or was living in the forest, wandered up to Simone, and began eating her scalp. And it sat there and ate her head and took at least 20 solid bites out of her head before the pain in real life that had manifested in her dream got so extreme that Simone bolted upright, and her sitting upright scared the fox off. Almost certainly, that is the thing she saw, scurrying off into the forest. She was rushed to the hospital. She would be saved. They actually were able to suture her scalp all back together again, and they hid the scars in her hairline. But I spoke to Simone, so I mentioned there was a connection to our community. She might even be listening to this, to be honest. Simone posted this story on our subreddit.

It was about her and this experience. She described this whole story and how after it happened, she was so traumatized that she not only could not go back in that forest ever again, but she couldn't go into any forest anymore. I mean, it's a true PTSD. She said she still has phantom pain, where the fox bit her head. She also said that because it was a fox, she had to go through this insane rabies protocol. Rabies is a lethal disease you can get from animals that have it. It's treatable, but she had all these shots she had to get. I mean, it was this horrible experience, but she lived, and she's one of our amazing members of the Strange, dark, and mysterious community. And so, yeah, that story is a wild one, and it's one of the stories in our graphic novel here. Just to show that image again. Pretty cool, huh? Pretty good. Go to cam 2, see if you can zoom in on that again. I can't show too much, but here's what you get to see. Pretty good stuff. Pretty cool. There you Well, all right. So what did you guys think?

I wonder if Simone is... Honestly, I bet she's in this, and I'm going to hear a message from her after this. Rabies, big needles. Yeah, absolutely nuts. I wish I could say, I'm glad I can say I don't have something to compare that to, but I don't know what that would be like to have an animal be eating your head and have it turn into your dream. That's something else. All right, well, on that note, let's go ahead and shift We're going to shift here. And remember, don't drop off here because we have a giveaway at the end, and I'm going to tell you how to join the Discord and how to sign up for that giveaway. We're giving away 20 of these bad boys, okay? So you want to stick around for this. Let's go ahead and shift to the old tier list Best Here. I'm going to need your help. So here we go. The way this works is there's three tiers, basically best, meh, and bad. So top tier is best, so good, meh, nice try, bad. Okay. And we're going to rank, last time we ranked horror movies. This time, we are going to put into tears horror shows.

Okay? I'm going to... Man. Okay, so we got The Watcher, American Horror Story. We got Stranger Things, and The Walking Dead. I'm going to kick this off with The Walking Dead as that's connected to the story I just told, the post-apocalyptic scene of the people in the desert, the zombies, if you will. So here's my opinion of The Walking Dead. I love loved the first season of The Walking Dead. I thought it was the coolest show. I remember my wife and I, we were in San Diego at the time. When I was in the Navy, we had just gotten out there, and the show came out, and it was like what we did when I came back from training, which was all day long, I'd be gone at all hours, but we had little bits of time in the evening and the weekend, and we would watch The Walking Dead, and it was awesome. I got to be honest, after season one, it went downhill, in my opinion. But I I have good memories connected to The Walking Dead, and I'm impressed with the brand itself. I'm going to go ahead and throw that in top tier because of the nostalgia, and just the franchise that they created is pretty incredible.

So There you go. Okay, next we're going to do American Horror Story. Actually, and by the way, I guess I said I need your help. This is a me exercise. It's not really a we exercise, but you can go ahead and judge me in the comments for my choices. That's how we're going to do this together. You're going to viciously judge my choices. So American Horror Story, here's my opinion of this. It's a brilliant concept. If you're not familiar with this, they get these amazing actors and actresses, and each season has a theme. I'm making this up, but there's like, Haunted Hospital, and I'm butchering this. There's different horror themes that the entire season falls I wanted to. And it's amazing writing, the costume design, the special effects. It's amazing. But I just couldn't get into it. I wanted to. I think that maybe because it's not really based on real stuff, it's loosely based on real events, but not explicitly so. And I think I've become a snob to that a little bit in virtue of the strange, dark, mysterious, delivered-in-story format is based on real events. We try to make it really credible that I'm totally...

That's That's the way I go. So I'm going to put this in meh. I got to be honest. So good. And I know people are going to be like, That's a terrible choice. But hey, here's your chance to judge me in the comments. Next, we're to the watcher. This one, I watched a little bit of it, but the reason I included it on the tier list is because I've actually covered the real story on our YouTube channel. And so if I recall the details, there's this family that moves into this beautiful dream home in New Jersey. This is, I think, in the '90s or maybe the 2000s. It's relatively recent. They move into this beautiful home. This is the real story. As soon as they move in, I forget exactly how this happens, but they start receiving mail from some anonymous person that basically says they are the watcher of this property, and they have been for so many years, and before them, it was somebody else in their family. It's like this lure around the house, that this house is basically being watched by somebody, but it's not clear who, and it's not clear if their intentions are good or bad.

It's more like, imagine moving into a house, and you got a letter being like, Hey, how's it going? I see you moved into the house. Well, I've been watching this house for 100 years, and I watch everything that happens inside the house, and I'm watching you right now, and you don't know who I am. So it continues in that vein. It gets very bizarre, the real story does. I, admittedly, have not watched the entirety of the series, but it's about that story. So there you go. I'm going to go ahead and throw that in so good because I can't genuinely rate it as such because I didn't really watch all of it. This one's going to get a reaction, unfortunately. People are going to hate me for this. Stranger Things. You ever fall into the trap of you're watching a show and you discover a character flaw in one character, and you can't let it go? It consumes every scene they're in. I'll give you another example because I don't want to say who it is in this one, but I'm sure people can figure it out. The show Dexter, which is an amazing show.

I'm going off... I could have included Dexter in here, actually. Dexter, about the serial killer guy. So his sister, I just felt like her cussing and swearing was so forced and awkward that I couldn't watch it anymore, even though the show was great. Every scene she was in, even if it was a nice, wholesome scene, she just had to be so so vulgar and awful. And it wasn't for any other reason, then they just decided, Yeah, we're going to make her vulgar and awful in every scene. And it made me detest her character. And then I couldn't watch the show anymore. Something similar happened with Stranger Things. It made me hate the show. I got to be honest. I'm throwing it a nice try, and I know people are going to disagree, but that's where I'm at. It's an incredible franchise, similar to The Walking Dead in the way they grew it out, but it just could Couldn't let go. Couldn't let go of it. Okay? So there you go. I want to see... See, some people are agreeing with me. I hated his sister from Dexter. There we go. Yeah, dude, let's go ahead and we'll pretend there's a tier below.

Nice try. That's just big fail. And that's where Dexter is going to go. Okay? So Dexter is down there. We can't even show it. It's so bad. That's Dexter. Okay. Good tier list. Cringe, How dare you? Yeah. I've made some enemies, guys. But hey, that's what the tier list is for, to make enemies. Okay, moving on. The next thing we're going to do is a little Q&A action. So The way this is going to go is we actually sourced these questions already from our Discord server, and this might be a good time to throw in the comment section, a pinned comment for the... If you have not joined our Discord server, Discord, which is this really cool place of the most diehard, strange, dark, and mysterious fans, it's free. It's this amazing online community that's really well run. You can do so by clicking on the pinned comment right now in the chat, and it just brings you in, you can join our Discord server. It functions a lot like Reddit, but frankly, it's just better, and it's customized to the Strange, Dark, and mysterious. People asked some questions from Discord, and we grabbed a few questions for right now.

The first question comes from Alley Enchanted. Again, this is from our Discord server, and it is, what is your favorite story to read to your kids? The reason I chose this is I actually don't tell the types of stories that land on YouTube. I make up a story every single night. In fact, right now, I believe my son and my two daughters are watching this right now, as does my wife. Hello, fam. But every night, I tell my son in particular, a story, and I make it up. And it always starts the same way. So here it goes. It goes, Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Ernie Lee, and he loved his mom and dad, and he loved his two sisters, Ella and Cora. And he had three kitties, Eddie, Rosie, and Chuy, and he had seven pet dinosaurs. Their names were E2, Mouth, Max, Rex, Rapter, and Billy. He also had a pet Toucan named Touky Touk, and he had a pet dinosaur named Dinosaur. And And his three best friends were Elsa, Anna, and Olaf, and also all the princesses lived with him, and all the heroes lived with him as well.

And they lived in his bed, which was a rocket ship inside of his house, where nothing could ever hurt them in his rocket ship, and that's where they lived. And so that's the opening. And then most stories go, and one day, Ernie Lee decided to go for a walk in the forest. And he told Elsa and Anna, and by the way, we have props for these. We lay in bed and I hold the Elsa and Anna He told Elsa, Hey, I'm going to go for a walk in the woods behind our house. And Elsa always says to Ernie, No, Ernie. It's not safe out there. You need to be careful. And he says, It's going to be fine. I'm Batman. And so Elsa says, Okay, that's fine. And so Elsa, and Anna, and Olaf, and all the princesses, and all the heroes, they bid Ernie a due as he leaves our house. He's got a special pack filled with all his special tools, and his snacks, and his drinks. And he leaves out the back door, and he He heads towards the back fence. He hops the fence, and he makes his way into the forest.

And all day, Ernie was just walking along through the forest, enjoying the view, seeing the insects and the birds, and having a nice time. But at some point, Ernie got lost, and he got turned around, and before long, he couldn't find his way back, and it was dark out, and he was totally all alone. And so he decided, Well, I guess I'll have to pitch my campsite right here for the night, and when it gets light the next day, I'll have to make my way back home. And So he pitches his campsite. But before he goes in his tent, he makes a campfire, and he drinks his milk by the campfire. Critical detail. He's a big fan of chocolate milk. Drinks his chocolate milk, and then he goes inside of his tent. And as he's trying to sleep, he hears something Everything. Ernie sits up in his tent and he looks around. He has no idea what's going on. And he goes to the tent, and he unzips. He unzips the tent, and he looks out, and he doesn't see anything. All he can see is the embers of the fire. But he hears footsteps behind tent.

That's terrible footsteps. I do a better job with my son. Boom, boom, boom. And then suddenly into his vision, pops Bane, the villain from Batman. Bane says, Ernie, I'm going to get you. But luckily, Ernie turns into Ernie the Batman, and he jumps out of his tent, and he says, Not today, Bane. And he grabs Bane and says, Don't be mean, Bane. Bane says, You're right. I'm sorry. I'll never do that again. And so Bane becomes Ernie's friend, and Ernie turns back into regular Ernie, not Ernie the Batman. And the two go back to the house because magically, Bane knows how to get back to the house. And waiting at the house in the middle of the night are all the princesses and all the heroes, and all his dinosaurs and kitties, giving him a hero's greeting, a hero's welcome. And Ernie walks back home, and they all give him big hugs and high fives, and they say, Ernie, you saved the day. And then they all retreat to Ernie's rocket ship, and they put on their pajamas, and they They snuggle into the bed with their milk, and they sip their milk, and they drift off to sleep.

The end. So every single night, I tell some variation of Ernie Lee becoming Batman and saving the day from various villains that are typically villains that we've read about in a comic book because he loves Batman and Superman and the Flash. We'll pull villains from the books who always sneak up on him, and then he saves the day. And then before that, with my daughters, when they were young... I know, I got 15 minutes here. My daughters, the story was they would... My daughters are much closer in age. And when they were younger, they would go into a haunted pyramid in Egypt, even though they were warned by their parents, Don't go in that haunted pyramid. But in the story, of course, they go in the haunted pyramid, and there's a door that shuts on them. And then they're in the middle of the pyramid, and these mummies come out of the walls. They have to ward off the mummies. And of course, they saved the day in their own way. And they come out, and they're chastised by their parents. But they're also told, You're so brave for facing those mummies head-on. Those are my favorite stories to read to my kids.

I hope that answers your question, Ellie Enchanted. Next. Next question is from Queen Day Walker, and it is, what natural disaster scares you the most? Honestly, so my family and I, we were living in Virginia several years ago, and a twister, a very small, I wouldn't even call it a tornado, but a twister came rocketing through our town, and I watched it. I remember there was a storm warning, and I looked out the front door, and I watched this twister go over the roof of my neighbor's house, and it didn't rip their house apart, but it totally pulled a bunch of shingles and really messed up the roof of their house, and it just barely missed ours. I remember feeling so utterly powerless. If this a real tornado and it came to my house, there is nothing you can do. I mean, yeah, you got your tornado shelters and everything, but I'd go with tornado. That, to me, feels just horrifying. Looks like we are on to question number three. If you want to put in the chat what you're most afraid of, natural disaster-wise, love to hear it. Next, what excites you the most about going on tour?

This comes from my boy, Crew. Kind of a cheat code. You guys all know Cru. He's from the Discord server. He runs the server. He's the man. He wants to know what excites me the most about going on tour. So honestly, I think doing live storytelling is the purest form. It's like anything can happen. I love storytelling, and I think doing it live is the best version I can do. I think that it also is cool to have an audience that's right in front of you. You get to react to the audience. And also, it It's tough to sit in a studio and tell stories all the time. Just in terms of my life, it's a lot of sitting in a studio and telling stories by myself to a camera. I love the idea of getting to meet you all. And that's the cool part of this, that it's not me in a void, it's all of us. We're together in this, and the tour is a chance to come together, as maybe corny as that sounds. I think it's great. I will say, actually, there's been lots of questions about, is the tour age-appropriate for kids?

I will say, yes, it is. We are going to make sure, or we have made sure that the tour is... It's not going to be G-rated, but it's not going to be, for example, the most gruesome story I can think of is the one we did about the oil rig worker called Magellan, where it's a places you can't go story, where this person basically gets pulled through a hole this big that they can't fit through, and a machine pulled them through it. So you can imagine how gory that story is. Stuff like that's not going to be on this. It's going to be more psychological and more like, wow, That's wild. So in short, you can bring your kids if the least intense versions of Mr. Balin stories are cool for your kids, then this is definitely going to be that. It's more psychological and more like, Holy cow, versus that is so Terrific. We're not going that route. So call it PG 13 to PG, somewhere in there. Actually, since we're firing off all these questions, I actually want to give the poll... Oh, nice. We already got it right here. I was just going to say we got to try the poll.

So if you see in the In our YouTube chat right now, there is a poll. This is the new poll feature, guys. So what's scarier? The possibility of intelligent life in space or none at all? So that's a question I ponder. If you think about it, yes, it would be horrifying to find out there's an alien civilization living on Mars or some distant planet. Horrifying in the sense that that would really change the way we think about ourselves and how we fit into the universe. But what is also equally terrifying is what if we're it? What if we are it? There's nothing else. It is this vast expanse, and we are the only living things. That is intensely terrifying in and of its own right. So what is scarier? Possibility of intelligent life or we are it, which is worse? And I got to be honest, I think that to think we are alone feels more horrifying, I would say. Can we go to the next question? We're down to do question number two. Can we do that? Question number two. So it sounds like people agree with me. It's about 60 %, nothing out there.

And by the way, 10 minutes from now, the regularly scheduled programming is going to be coming on this channel. A story is coming out in 10 minutes. And I will also say this story that you're going to hear not live, but the scheduled one, it was really, really, really hard to tell that story. You'll see in the opening, I tried to explain it. It was an emotionally fraught story. That was a really hard story to tell. Not click bait. You'll see immediately that I was pretty emotional telling the story. It's a very intense story. So next question in the poll is, who would win in a fight? Lungy or the like button? Come on. It's, of course, the Lung. Lung is the winner. Easily, we got a thousand votes in there. And Lung is the winner by far over the like button. Come on. That's easy. So Lungy wins. Next question. Would you rather watch a a movie or read a book? I think we touched on this last time. We'll do it again. Lately, I got to be real, I'm a book guy, but I'm totally not like a... I read 7,000 books a year guy.

That's not me. I'm lucky if I read two a year, but I enjoy those two books. Those are good books. Right now, I'm reading, in addition to the Mr. Balling graphic novel, I'm reading The Lost City of Z by David Grand. It's about explorers who went into the Amazon. I talked about it on an Instagram story about all the horrible insects in the Amazon. They're called bee liquers, or eye liquers are in the Amazon. They're this type of bee that are attracted to the liquid on your eye, and they'll sting your eye. Anyways. All right, so lots of people say movie. Actually, that makes sense. I'm acting like that's weird. I'm probably now more booked than movie, but not on whole. There you go. So movie wins. Last one. If you hear something go bump in the night, what is your first thought? A, it's Is it a ghost. B, it's a burglar. C, it's lung. D, I don't care. I'm tired. So what are you thinking? It's the middle of the night. You hear a bump. Is it a ghost? Is it a burglar? Is it a lung? Or I don't care. It's going to pop up any second, I promise.

I'm even getting a countdown over here. Almost. We're learning how to use the poll feature as well. Okay, here. Did it not pop up? There it is. Boom. Sorry, maybe because there's four answers, it's a little bit more cray. Let's hear your answers. What do you think if you hear a bump in the night? There's only four options that it could possibly be. Ghost, burglar, lung, I don't care. There's literally nothing else that it could possibly be. And I'm going to go ahead and override this statistic because a lot of people are erroneously choosing burglar. You should have chose Lung. So we're going to go ahead and go with Lung. I've overridden this poll. Lung is the only correct answer. All right, hey, so the new video is coming out in seven minutes. But before you go, I told you I was going to tell you how to do this giveaway. It's very simple. Right now, if you are not already signed up for our Discord server, the pinned comment in this live stream has the link to the Discord server. You just click it. It's so easy. It'll walk you through how to join.

It's not a cost. It's not a hidden cost. You just join. It's very easy. Once Once you've joined, so either you've just joined or you already joined, on the left side, you can see it on the screen right now, there's all these things you can click on. Click on giveaways right there. The mouse is hovering over giveaways. You click on that, boom. And then you scroll down where it says, New Ball and Mr. Ball and merch, you Click that emoji. Once you click it, you are entered. It is that easy. Sign up for Discord, pin in the comment, giveaways, click the emoji. That's all you have to do. We're choosing 20 people that are going to get old wanted merch, Lungy wanted merch. If you go to our website, ballinstudios. Com. You can get your Lungy merch as well, the new Wanted Lunge merch. Again, I'm going on tour. If you go to tor. Ballinstudios. Com, there you go. All our dates are there. We're going all over the place. I'd love to see you. Bring your graphic novel or buy one there. And if you have a VIP ticket, I will sign this bad boy when I meet you at the show, okay?

The show is going to be awesome. Get your tickets. And again, there's a regularly scheduled programming going out in six minutes. It was a really hard episode to record. That's not a lie. You'll see as soon as you see the first five seconds of the video. But it's a really powerful episode that meant a lot to me, and I think it'll mean a lot to the family who is in the video. Thank you all so much for joining me on this wonderful livestream. Enjoy the video in five minutes. Go sign up for the giveaway, get your tour tickets, bring your books, get your merch. Love you guys. Until next time. See you.