One night in 1870, two best friends were out in the wilds of the Canadian wilderness when they discovered this gigantic gold mine. But within just a few hours of this seemingly incredible discovery, something horrible happened to these two men that kickstarted a chain of tragic events that today we still do not fully understand. 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 place because that's all we do, and we upload once a week. If that's of interest to you, please offer to make the like button their favorite dish, fettucini Alfredo. But replace the Alfredo sauce with poisonous sea urchins. 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. On a spring morning in 1870, a gold prospector named Frank Lemon rode his horse along the shore of the North Saskatchewan River, which is a river that runs through Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada. Frank was at the back of a line of about a dozen men who had all been hired by a rich investor named Lafayette French.

He had commissioned them to search the Canadian wilderness for potential gold mines. If they found a gold mine, then French would bankroll a full-scale mining operation and pull out all the gold he could, and these men who found it would get a cut of the profits. When Frank had signed up for this job, he had thought it was a great opportunity. In fact, he thought it was such a big opportunity that he had convinced his best friend, whose nickname was Black Jack, to come along as well. But now, after weeks of searching the wilderness for these mines and not finding any, all Frank really wanted to do now was just go home. As this group of men continued their ride along the shore, Frank zoned out and just stared off into the forest all around him. Then at some point, as he was doing this, as he was looking off to his right, he noticed amongst the thick trees, there was this little trail, this dirt trail that wound off into the distance. For some reason, Frank was just immediately drawn to it. He pulled on his horse's trains and came to a stop and just stared at this strange trail.

Frank thought about how for all this time they've been out here searching for gold, they'd basically only looked in this river and found nothing. He thought to himself, maybe the gold is not in the river, but it's maybe out there in the woods, and maybe this trail that he was looking at might lead them to gold. Frank turned back around to tell the rest of the group about his big idea to try to go down this trail here. But when he looked, he saw all the men in the group, except for his best friend, Black Jack, had continued on without him. They basically hadn't even stopped when Frank had stopped. However, Frank really didn't care that the group had left him because he was totally over this trip and frankly didn't want to be with this group anyways. He just looked over at Black Jack and just gestured towards this trail as if to say, You want to go this way? And Black Jack, who was also totally over this trip, just smiled and nodded like, Yeah, let's go. And so the two men turned their horses and began heading down this thin dirt trail off into the woods.

For several hours, Frank and Blackjack continued on this trail deeper and deeper into the forest. You get a picture of very thick trees all around, and it's just this little winding dirt trail on the ground. They had no idea where this trail was going, but there was just something so powerful about this trail. It was like calling them to go. But as they rode along, Frank kept getting this bad feeling. He kept hearing what sounded like voices and footsteps right behind them on the trail. But every time he turned, all he saw was Blackjack. There was nobody around them at all. They were deep in the forest. After a while, Frank kept hearing these noises, and he asked Blackjack, Hey, are you hearing that stuff, too? And Blackjack said, Yeah, I am. But he, too, would turn around and see nothing. They were all alone. Eventually, the men convinced themselves that what those sounds must be is the sound of their party who's discovered they have left the group, and maybe they're out there looking for them. But Frank and Blackjack really had no intention of rejoining the group. They didn't like the group. So they said, You know what?

Let's just keep on going. Eventually, the path these two friends were on led them to a stream. They stopped, they got up their horses, they knelt down, and they scooped their canteens into the water to get a drink. As Frank did that, he looked into the crystal clear water and he saw nuggets of gold just sitting there in the stream. Frank couldn't believe it. I mean, he's out here looking for gold, but he was not expecting to find it right here in the middle of nowhere, despite his instinct that maybe the gold was out here. And so he just froze and he's staring at this. He can't believe it. He grabs Black Jack, who hadn't seen it yet, and pulls him over. Black Jack looks, and the two men, they're like, Oh, my goodness, we've done it. But Frank said, Look, before we celebrate, let's see what we're dealing with here. Let's go upstream here and try to find the source of this gold. And so the two men, they got up, they're super excited. They start walking along the side of the stream, looking in the water. And as they're moving upstream, they're seeing all this gold in the water.

It's getting more and more. And eventually, they reach this rock ledge. The water was pouring over down to the stream, and literally in the ledge are these massive veins of gold. They had found a gigantic gold mine that clearly nobody else had tapped before. I mean, this could be worth not just millions of dollars, but billions billions of dollars. And so at this point, the two friends began to celebrate. They were ecstatic. I mean, this is unbelievable. They're jumping around, they're hugging each other. And then at some point, they just stopped and went silent because they realized they now had a big dilemma. The whole reason Frank and Black Jack were out here in the Canadian wilderness was to look for gold, but they were looking for gold on behalf of the rich investor, Lafayette French, which meant they were contractually obligated to tell French if they found gold. Here they are, they found this massive gold mine, and that's what they're supposed to do, again, based on their contract. But if they did that, French would get rich beyond his wildest dreams from this mine, and yeah, he'd cut them a check, a piece of the profits, but it would be like nothing compared to what French would get from this gold mine.

Or, and this is where the dilemma comes in, Frank and Black Jack could hide the fact that they had found this mine, and then they alone could come out here anytime they wanted take the gold and become rich themselves. Now, granted, they would have to be subtle about it because if they started showing up with barrel fulls of gold, Lafayette French is going to find out about it and they're going to be in trouble. But there was a way to do it where this mine could effectively be theirs and they could get rich. But obviously, there was a lot of risk involved in that second choice. Frank and Blackjack decided that, You know what? This is way too big of a decision for us to make just on the fly right now. So let's just stay here in the area Let's camp out for the night and just sleep on this and come to a decision tomorrow. The two men left the stream and headed over to this clearing that was right nearby and decided that's where they would pitch their camp for the night. Black Jack left to go gather firewood, and Frank began to pitch their tent.

As Frank did that as he began setting up their tent, he began hearing whispers, like the voices he was hearing as they were walking in on that trail, and they kept thinking it was maybe the group that was looking for them. He began hearing those voices again. It was all around him in the trees. But every time he looked, there was no one there. Now, Frank convinced himself that maybe these whispers were actually Black Jack because he had gone off to get firewood, and maybe it was him. But at one point, when Frank heard these whispers, he looked in the direction of the whispers, there was no one there, and he realized check was at the same time on the opposite side of the clearing. It could not have been him. Frank couldn't help but feel really unsett. It was like there was somebody or something here watching them or listening to them, but he just couldn't tell who or what it was. But Frank just told himself to shake it off. Don't worry about that. Instead, just focus on getting the camp set up. We recently launched our newest podcast at Ballon Studios called Redacted, Declassified Mysteries with Luke LaMana.

And so far, you guys are loving it. So much so that I am now happy to announce that we've created an official YouTube channel for the show, Redacted. So now you can enjoy listening to and watching this show in a beautiful new animated format. If you love binging things like I do, well, you're in luck because we just dropped the first three episodes of this new animated series. And from here on out, every Tuesday, you'll get a brand new upload on this channel. To give you a sense of the stories and the artwork that you'll see on this brand new redacted YouTube channel, here's a look at a clip from episode one. Keep in mind what you'll see in this clip is reflective of how all the episodes will be on this channel.

At 10: 35 PM on January 3, 1961, a physicist named Ed Velario pulled up to a secret nuclear test site in the Idaho desert. Ed had received an emergency call about an explosion at the nuclear reactor known as SL1. No one had been able to contact the three men who were working that night. Valario waved at his partner who was waiting for him in front of the reactor building. The two men grabbed their gas masks and rushed inside. They hurried up three flights of winding stairs that led toward the reactor's control room, past pipes and motors and condensers towards the cramp nerve center that controlled the reactor. The building was completely silent, save for the frantic static from their Geiger counters. Valario glanced down and saw the needle pointing to maximum radiation levels. He'd never seen levels that high before. When Valario opened the control room door, his heart skipped a beat. The scene inside was total devastation. Twisted metal scattered across the floor, clouds of steam hovering above the shattered control board, pools of blood and water everywhere. Two bodies lay on the floor, bodies so badly mutilated, it was impossible to tell who they were.

But where, he wondered, was the third man. Then something above him caught his attention, something on the ceiling, something that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Head on over to the official redacted YouTube channel today. The handle is at redactedmysteries. Make sure you go over there and subscribe so you don't miss any uploads. I will also put a link to the channel in the description below. Wundry Plus subscribers can also watch redacted on the Wundry app. Okay, back to the stories. A few hours later, Frank and Blackjack were sitting on a log in front of their campfire eating conversations talking about what they were going to do with the gold. At some point, Frank said what he was really thinking about this whole situation. He told Blackjack, Look, I think we'd be so stupid to tell Lafayette French. Why should we take a small payday one time when we can basically have an endless supply of wealth for the rest of our lives. But when Frank looked over at Blackjack to see what his reaction was to this pitch, he could see right away that Blackjack disagreed. Blackjack was looking down and he turned to Frank and was like, Look, it's morally wrong to lie here. I would rather be poor and honest than rich and morally bankrupt. And so what had started as a civil discussion from this point on really escalated and just became a full-blown yelling fight with both men absolutely refusing to judge on their stance about what to do with this gold.

Eventually, when the two men were standing up and just screaming in each other's faces, Blanchek finally just threw his hands up and said, You know what? Enough. He turned around and stormed over to the tent and disappeared inside. For a minute, Frank just stood there stewing by the fire, just completely furious that Blackjack didn't see it the way he saw it. But eventually, Frank calmed down and thought, You know what? I need to go to bed, too. Obviously, we are not near a decision. We need to sleep on this. Even though Frank was still upset, he walked over to the tent, too, didn't say a word to Blackjack. He just climbed inside, got into a sleeping bag, and tried to go to sleep. But after laying there for a while, when Frank had not fallen asleep, and his friend Blackjack had, he was snoring and passed out, Frank just could not help feeling enraged again at his friend. How can you not see this opportunity here? Why in the world would you tell Lafayette French? That's so stupid. And so Frank just laid there restlessly tossing and turning, listening to the sound of Blackjack snoring and getting so mad at him.

As he did, Frank went from, I need to convince Blackjack in the morning that we need to keep the gold for ourselves, to, I need to stop Blackjack from telling anyone. He is an obstacle He's not a friend. He's a problem. As he thought about this, these dark thought loops were going through his head. Frank just became consumed with rage. It was like he couldn't control what he was doing. In that moment, Frank found himself getting up, walking out of the tent and grabbing an ax. Before he could even think about it, he had walked back into the tent, raised the ax, and driven it into Black Jack's skull, killing him instantly. A few minutes later, Frank was outside sitting by the campfire, looking at his bloody hands, wondering what just happened. How could he have just done what he did? That was his best friend. What had come over him? It was like Frank was a different person. He couldn't understand. But as Frank was sitting there grappling with what he had When he was done, a twig suddenly snapped over in the direction of the tent, and instantly Frank looked over like, Who's over there?

What's going on? As he looked in the direction of the tent, he began to hear this low guttural moaning. It almost sounded like a dying animal. And He thought for a second, Wait a minute, is Blackjack not actually dead? Is that him making that noise? But at the same time, Frank's thinking, That's not possible. I practically split Blackjack's head in half with that ax. He can't be making that sound. But before Frank could even begin to process what he was hearing, this moaning sound got louder and it got closer to Frank like it was moving in his direction, but there's nobody here. Frank is horrified. Then right as the sound is practically on top of him, he began hearing those whispers, those voices he had been hearing in the woods on the way out here. Except this time, the voices were clear. They were talking to Frank, and they were saying, You're going to be tortured for what you did to Black Jack. Then just as soon as these voices began, suddenly they stopped. The moaning stopped, and the entire forest just went deadly silent. Frank has just stuck there staring in the tent, wondering what's happening.

Then the silence was broken by this unbelievably loud, high-pitched, blood-curdling human scream coming from the tent. It was at that point that Frank just got up and sprinted to his horse and began riding away, away from the gold, his friend's body, everything. He didn't care. He needed to get out of there as soon as possible. But the second he began blindly galloping through the forest away from this area, he began hearing whispers and heavy footsteps right behind him as if they were following him out of the forest. But Frank was so scared, he didn't even dare turn around to look. He just rode as fast as he possibly could. Hours later, However, Frank suddenly emerged from the dark forest, and just by absolute happenstance, he arrived right in the town that he and the other gold prospectors had passed through on their way out into the woods. The moment Frank left the tree line and actually entered into this town, the whispering and the footsteps, which had basically chased him all the way to this point. They stopped. Suddenly, Frank was all alone. Now, by this point, Frank had convinced himself that everything he had heard in the woods, the voice telling him he was going to be tortured for what done, the heavy footsteps, the whispering, the screaming, the moaning, all of it, everything that had caused him to flee was actually the ghost of Black Jack, that after he had killed his friend, his friend's spirit had immediately risen and sought revenge on Frank.

That's what was happening. This horrified Frank so much that he didn't care at all about the gold anymore. He just wanted to get out of the spiritual danger he thought he was in. As he rode into this village, all he looked for was a church. When When he found the church, he went to the front steps and he sat there waiting for the priest. At dawn, the priest finally arrived at the church and found Frank sitting there looking horrible, and Frank instantly stood up, rushed over to the priest, and began begging him to save him from Black Jack's ghost. Now, at first, as the priest listened to Frank tell his story about this ghost, he just thought that Frank was crazy. But once he got Frank to slow down and go over the details step by step, the priest realized that perhaps there was some truth to this story. It sounded like it was probably true that Frank really did find a gold mine with his friend named Black Jack, and at some point, the discovery of this gold mine prompted Frank to murder Black Jack. But despite the fact that this man, Frank, had just openly confessed to a murder, the priest could only focus on the gold, the gold that apparently Frank had found out in the forest.

It was like this intense feeling had come over the priest, this darkness that just made him suddenly so greedy. He had never felt this way before in his life, but it was like he was laser-focused on finding a way to claim that wealth that was just out there right now. And so against all his better judgment, the priest turns to Frank and says, You know what? We'll help you. But for right now, you need to get out of town. Get out of here. Don't come back. We'll go out, we'll find Black Jack. We'll give him a proper burial, and that will protect you from his ghost. And so Frank was so thankful to the priest, and he took off not realizing that the priest did not care at all about Frank at this point. All the priest cared about was getting Frank out of the picture so that that gold mine out in the woods could be his. The next day, the priest asked his friend, an outdoorsman named John McDougal, to head off into the wilderness to try to find Frank and Blackjack's campsite. That's what John did. After a few hours of looking, he found the campsite.

Sure enough, he found Blackjack's dead body still inside of the tent with the ax lodged in his head. Right away, John, the ever loyal friend to the priest, began doing what the priest told him to do, which was to bury Blackjack to cover up the murder. Because the priest and John were planning to claim this gold mine for themselves, and they couldn't have this murder getting out to the public because then officials would come out and investigate the scene, and then they would find the gold mine. They couldn't have that. And so John began digging a grave for Blackjack, and as he did, he began hearing whispers all around him in the trees. Remember, he's all alone out there. And so he began looking around, trying to figure out who's out here. Did somebody follow him? But there was no one. John did his best to keep trying to dig as quickly as he could. But these whispers, these awful voices, they just kept getting louder and louder and more pronounced and closer to him, eventually to the point where John was spoked. I mean, John was this avid outdoorsman who routinely spent time by himself out in the wild.

But here he was feeling very unsettled by these voices. But despite his fear, John did what he was told and dug the grave as fast as he could. He grabbed Black Jack's body, threw him inside, he covered him up, and he put a couple of big stones on top of the gravesite to make a makeshift tombstone. Then afterwards, again, despite feeling totally unsettled out here, John did the next part of the plan, which was to go look for gold, go to the stream, find the gold these guys were talking about. But as John is down by the water looking for gold, he began hearing more and more of those voices all around him. He kept spinning around, but nobody was there. Then finally, this awful high-pitched laughter cut through the trees. He whipped around. There was nobody there. But it was so terrifying that John just abandoned the search for gold and just hopped back on his horse and fled out of there. But within a couple of days, John and the priest had convinced themselves that those weird noises and that laughter that John had heard out there was just some bird, that it was all in John's head.

He was spuked for no reason. When in reality, it was just that incredible pull of that gold being out there waiting to be claimed. It was like John and the priest, they just couldn't not go looking for it. And so John decided to go back out into the woods, except this time, he did not go alone. He brought a group of men with him. And so this group, led by John, retraced Frank and Blatchek's steps down that skinny trail all the way to their campsite. When they got there, John just froze. He could not believe what he was seeing. The rocks that were sitting on the grave where John had just buried Blackjack were gone. These huge rocks were just missing. And also the tent, the bloodied tent where Black Jack had been murdered, had also been cleared. There was no trace of it anywhere. It was like the campsite had never existed. And this made no sense to John because he knows this is a totally isolated part of the wilderness. Nobody comes through here. Who in their right mind would just happen to pass by and randomly grab all these rocks and the tent covered in blood and take it out of here?

It made no sense. Who could have done this? Now, until this point, John really had convinced himself that everything he had experienced the time before was in his head. It was just a bird or it was just normal forest sounds. He also, like the priest, had convinced himself that Frank's original story about Black Jack's Ghost chasing him out of the forest with just the ramblings of a crazy, guilty man, a murderer's guilty conscience had created that story. But now, as John was surveying the scene in front of him, he couldn't help but think, maybe this place is haunted. And so once again, John just returned and fled. He and the men, they got out of there as fast as they could. When John got back to town, instead of going to the priest, he just went right to the bar and just started drinking. He kept on drinking until he died of alcohol poisoning just a couple of days later, and John's death started a chain of unexplained catastrophes all connected to this gold. First, the priest, after discovering what happened to John, didn't really spend any time grieving the loss of his friend. Instead, the priest just saddled up headed out into the woods to find the gold himself.

However, he found the trail that led out to the campsite and to the gold had been destroyed in a forest fire. Then, Lafayette French, the rich investor who had bankrolled the original expedition, he heard about the mine and decided he would go find it. However, the guide that he hired to take him there literally died on the way into the forest. By this point, French had heard all the stories about how Black Jack's Ghost was out in this forest, haunting the area, preventing people people from finding the gold. But French ignored all those stories. Just like with Frank and the priest and John, it was like that gold had an unbreakable hold on him. For 30 years, French kept going out into that forest, searching for that gold mine, and eventually, he found it. Or at least that's what he said in the last letter he wrote back home. But we'll never actually know for sure because after sending that letter on that same day, Lafayette's cabin burned down and he died without telling anybody the location of the mine. With French's death, that solidified the rumors that the haunting was real. People began to believe that there was only one thing that could explain this almost magnetic pull the gold had on so many people, and also all the terrible fates that befell everybody who tried to go look for it.

That was that the gold mine was cursed. Today, people still believe that, that Black Jack's Ghost is out there in the forest preventing people from finding the gold. But whatever the truth is, whether the curse is real or not, to this day, no one has ever been able to successfully find the gold again and live to tell about it. Are you the type of person who has binged basically all of my YouTube videos and every week you anxiously wait a new upload? If so, thank you. But also you're in luck. Because if you didn't know this, we actually have a separate podcast, the Mr. Ballin podcast, that has literally hundreds of stories that are not on YouTube that you can binge right now. That podcast is available on all podcast platforms. Again, it's just called the Mr. Ballin podcast. And on Mondays on that podcast, we upload exclusive new content that is not on YouTube to the podcast. That's Mondays. Then on Thursday, we remaster the audio of your favorite videos on YouTube and put those on the podcast. But again, Mondays, those are brand new and exclusive to the podcast. But if you want to hear those exclusive episodes one month ahead of Apple and Spotify and all the other platforms, well, there's only one place you can do that, and that's on Amazon Music.

Again, you can go to any podcast platform and find the Mr. Ballin podcast, or if you're like me and you hate waiting, then you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Wait, don't go anywhere. If you're looking for more Strange, dark, and mysterious videos, click here.