MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
Oct 2, 2026 · 1 hr 5 min · 18 segments
Tonight, I have a very special guest joining me at the Campfire! Liana is a HUGE MrBallen fan, and I wanted to tell a few stories live, just for her. All proceeds from this episode will be donated to…
So on March 3rd of 1954, there was this woman named Ye who lived in Hong Kong, and she and her friends were big time mahjong players.
I had to look up what mahjong was, 'cause I'd obviously heard of it, but I, I don't really know how it's played.
It's effectively like a card game with, with tiles, like domino tiles, right? And you're sort of trying to arrange the tiles.
You pick up a, a tile, you discard one, and you're trying to build like the best set the way you would play like with cards.
This is probably atrocious for those who play mahjong, but either way, big mahjong player.
Mm-hmm.
She, uh, she was a really good mahjong player, and she played, like, really competitively, and she had these three friends, these three women that she always played with.
Her dad owned it, and he rented it out, uh, and apparently, the tenant was out, so he'd just given it to his daughter to live in, so she's stoked.
She's got this amazing apartment, and she's hosting, like, a, you know, a mahjong tournament with her friends.
Mm.
She was just crushing it, and the way, the way they were playing was, like, for every, I guess, hand, I'm not really sure how they'd describe it, but for every round you play, the, the pot just kept getting bigger and bigger.
I don't really know, maybe they reinvested the money or something, but by the end of the night, it's, it's late at night, and there's this, like, massive cash pool in the middle of the table for the person who wins the game.
So on March 3rd of 1954, there was this woman named Ye who lived in Hong Kong, and she and her friends were big time mahjong players.
I had to look up what mahjong was, 'cause I'd obviously heard of it, but I, I don't really know how it's played.
It's effectively like a card game with, with tiles, like domino tiles, right? And you're sort of trying to arrange the tiles.
You pick up a, a tile, you discard one, and you're trying to build like the best set the way you would play like with cards.
This is probably atrocious for those who play mahjong, but either way, big mahjong player.
Mm-hmm.
She, uh, she was a really good mahjong player, and she played, like, really competitively, and she had these three friends, these three women that she always played with.
Her dad owned it, and he rented it out, uh, and apparently, the tenant was out, so he'd just given it to his daughter to live in, so she's stoked.
She's got this amazing apartment, and she's hosting, like, a, you know, a mahjong tournament with her friends.
Mm.
She was just crushing it, and the way, the way they were playing was, like, for every, I guess, hand, I'm not really sure how they'd describe it, but for every round you play, the, the pot just kept getting bigger and bigger.
I don't really know, maybe they reinvested the money or something, but by the end of the night, it's, it's late at night, and there's this, like, massive cash pool in the middle of the table for the person who wins the game.
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