MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
Sep 18, 2026 · 44 min · 17 segments
Today's story is a fan favorite that was previously published as Episode 361. On a morning in early 1986 in Arizona, someone sat hunched over a desk, furiously writing a letter. And almost every line…
[gentle music] On the morning of Monday, March 24th, 1986, 46-year-old Julie Williams finished up getting ready for work in her bedroom in Mesa, Arizona, and as she did, she couldn't stop smiling.
When she was done, she took a final look in the mirror, then grabbed her purse and headed outside to her car.
And as she made her 20-minute morning commute to the city of Tempe, where her office was, she saw other people heading to work, and she saw businesses and shops opening up, and this made her smile just keep getting bigger.
Julie had been working as a secretary at an insurance agency for the past several months, and she actually loved going in every day.
It wasn't that she always dreamed of working in insurance or anything like that, but for the first time in years, Julie had started to feel a real sense of purpose and peace at her job because Julie had dedicated most of her life to this point to being a mother to her three daughters.
She'd stayed at home in California, where she'd lived while the girls were growing up.
She stayed home so she could look after them and cook them dinners and just be there for them all the time and give them the best life they possibly could have.
Now, Julie would not have traded that time with her daughters for anything in the world.
Once all three of them had officially moved out of the house, Julie really struggled.
And to make matters worse, following her kids leaving, she and her husband got divorced, so she really was beginning to feel lost and alone.
But Julie had decided she would just have to make some major changes to basically save her life, and so she had moved from California to Arizona, where one of her daughters lived, and she had set out to start the next phase of her life, which she was determined to make a happy one.
Just before 8:00 AM, Julie turned off a road in Tempe and pulled into the parking lot of a large office building that housed several businesses, including the insurance company where she worked.
She pulled her magnetic ID badge out of her purse and swiped it across the card reader that was just to the side of the door.
She heard the lock click open, so she walked inside and headed down a hallway to her company's office.
But this small office had played a major part in helping her start this new phase of her life.
[gentle music] On the morning of Monday, March 24th, 1986, 46-year-old Julie Williams finished up getting ready for work in her bedroom in Mesa, Arizona, and as she did, she couldn't stop smiling.
When she was done, she took a final look in the mirror, then grabbed her purse and headed outside to her car.
And as she made her 20-minute morning commute to the city of Tempe, where her office was, she saw other people heading to work, and she saw businesses and shops opening up, and this made her smile just keep getting bigger.
Julie had been working as a secretary at an insurance agency for the past several months, and she actually loved going in every day.
It wasn't that she always dreamed of working in insurance or anything like that, but for the first time in years, Julie had started to feel a real sense of purpose and peace at her job because Julie had dedicated most of her life to this point to being a mother to her three daughters.
She'd stayed at home in California, where she'd lived while the girls were growing up.
She stayed home so she could look after them and cook them dinners and just be there for them all the time and give them the best life they possibly could have.
Now, Julie would not have traded that time with her daughters for anything in the world.
Once all three of them had officially moved out of the house, Julie really struggled.
And to make matters worse, following her kids leaving, she and her husband got divorced, so she really was beginning to feel lost and alone.
But Julie had decided she would just have to make some major changes to basically save her life, and so she had moved from California to Arizona, where one of her daughters lived, and she had set out to start the next phase of her life, which she was determined to make a happy one.
Just before 8:00 AM, Julie turned off a road in Tempe and pulled into the parking lot of a large office building that housed several businesses, including the insurance company where she worked.
She pulled her magnetic ID badge out of her purse and swiped it across the card reader that was just to the side of the door.
She heard the lock click open, so she walked inside and headed down a hallway to her company's office.
But this small office had played a major part in helping her start this new phase of her life.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.