My main goal in life is to never end up in a strange, dark, and mysterious incident delivered in story format.

Only OGs remember having to look for random characters in the background while being incredibly invested in MrBallen's stories

My mom once told me she heard of a waitress that was illiterate but nobody knew. She had somehow managed to get through life with this as a secret. It was discovered finally when someone noticed her notepad she used while waiting tables. This woman had basically created her own form of writing to take orders. Perhaps that's what this is?

Less than an hour in the ER and the doctor already saw him? Amazing.

Shout out to the ER nurse for going the extra mile to help Ricky in the middle of the night

This man went from 50k subs to 7 million and counting in under 2 years. I applaud your works

The craziest part of this story is that the nurse came back to discharge him within 15 minutes! 😅

It infuriates me that they didn’t even figure out if he was murderered or not…thats the first amount of tests they should do, to figure out if it was a homicide or something else. This person got no justice and his case was not treated correctly:( I feel bad for his family.

Sometimes when I start doing something dangerous I start to hear mr ballens voice in my head narrating all my actions. I then usually go back doing "safe" stuff because I dont want to figure out the end of the plot.

Imagine if mr ballen was a history teacher , he’d have the attention of literally everyone 😂

I’ve worked in a psych inpatient hospital for years - patients in the midst of psychosis will write stuff like this and it often means nothing. Did they test to even see if it was his handwriting? If so, I’ll say it was likely just his psychosis. He’s illiterate so he just put random letters together probably thinking he was writing something that made sense

How did the woman spot a body laying on the ground in a corn field, while driving by!? And WHO pulls over, gets out of the car, and walks through a corn field because they seem a dark figure!?

I cannot imagine ever being intrigued enough by "a dark shape" in a random cornfield to get out of my car and go into the field to see what it was, if anything I'd probably lock the doors and speed up!

Love it when I forget about mrballen for a while and realize I have a bunch of new episodes to watch👌

A note to the puzzle solvers, I believe this guy can read and write very well.. But as he was so paranoid of someone or something getting to him, he wanted to stay in the hospital so bad that he would lie to the good nurse to help him with his paperwork as a cover up.. either to buy time or something along those lines

MrBallen's hand motions are second to none when it comes to storytelling

I can't help but think how hilarious it would be if someone finally breaks this code after all these years and it just ends up being a recipe for like banana nut bread or something.

If we discover what these ciphers mean in our lifetime, I think it would be really cool if MrBallen did a short “closure” video explaining how this story ends.

As someone very interested in code breaking and ciphers, it's widely considered among code breakers that these nots were an instance of Hypergraphia, an uncontrollable urge to write and draw that can occur with some mental health conditions. As McCormick was illiterate and/or dyslexic, he was not able to write complete sentences, so this urge was translated into nonsense scribbles and sentences comprising of the letters and sounds he did know, or could remember in the mental state he was in. A very interesting and sad case nonetheless, I'm very thankful that most hospitals now have a mental health ward to accommodate for psychological distress, rather than discharging patients and expecting them to seek out support on their own, which many with severe mental health issues are not capable of doing.

My first thought hearing about the FBI asking for help from the public is “yeah sure, so if I solve it they will either think I might be the perp or find a way to pin it on me so they aren’t embarrassed about not being able to find the person and continue to get government funding”

Little did we all know that this isn't a cipher, it's just a couple pieces of paper that Ricky was practicing his letters and numbers on in his journey to literacy.

My first thought about the coded message is maybe that was what Ricky thought English was supposed to look like and tried writing himself a note. Maybe Ricky knew the alphabet, but not words. This could have been his way of writing reminders to himself. They could have also been delusions in writing form. I think they may have just been for him to know and for us to always wonder about.

I worked on the Mckormick code for a while. I tried color coding repeating characters and figured out certain characters repeat alot. I mean a alot. But every now and then maybe one character would change in these groups of characters or just one group may change. If it's a message, he was writing basically the same thing over and over most of the time. I know what it isn't. It's not a substitution code, and it's not transposed. It more than likely have to be in a grid pattern to be a transposition. It's not any type of other substitution type code or the FBI would have solved it. But I will tell you what it reminds me of. Activation codes for computer software. And if I were the FBI, that is exactly what I would look to see if it is. Remember, not to long after that, all these companies set up places where they would pay you to report people pirating software. I didn't know any of that about the hospital though. That was new to me. And I also didn't know he couldn't read or write or that he went around making up things about himself. I'll be honest, part of what makes me think about the software activation thing, other than groups of character repeating over and over, was how he wrote them on the paper and circled them. When I would have to write things like that down on paper, I would circle them just like he did. It looks just like something I would have done. If I were them, I would at least look to see if that is what they were. Ill give you a good example of what i mean and back then it was a lot easier for people to do than it is today. And a person could stand to make a lot of money, especially if they lived in a city. Imagine you are in 1999, and you end up having to go buy a new windows 98 disc to fix. Your pc. The misconception a lot of people were under, is that youre not actually buying the program. You are buying the activation code. Once you jad the code, just about any windows cd would work. As long as it was the right version. This was when burning cds was becoming popular also. I remeber my freinds modding playstations so they would play copied games. All you did was change a single chip on the board. I can't recall but I think it made the disc run in the opposite direction. It was a long time ago. But I remember you just changed one chip. But this doesnt just apply to a windows program. These vodes could apply to just about any popular software. Getting the sofware itself was mever the problem most people had, it eas alwasy the codes to activate them. If you were running an illegal business in this area, you could make a shit ton of money selling them for 15 or 20 dollars, as apposed to a 150 dollars that you would normally pay. Especially if you lived in a city. I used to fix computers back in the day when I was a teenager. And when you have to reformat and install a fresh operating system, you would also have to install all the software of various types back into the computer and most would have to have activation codes. So, before I did that, I would usually go through what ever I had to install and write all the codes down on a sheet of paper, so I had them right there. It made things easier for me. And usually my peice of paper would end up looking just like this so called "code". I would even circle them just like he did so I would know which codes were for what kind of software. It was just part of my process. Even the codes look similar. It just made me think of that. So it made me think it might not be a code at all, but maybe mistaken identity. Just a possibility. Something to keep in mind. Just wanted to explain why I thought that is what I it could be. Please excuse the typos.

Dude, your style of storytelling is phenomenal! Your ability to recreate an incident in story format is like reading a good book. Thanks for the good material and stories.

Shoutout the nurse who helped Ricky fill out his paperwork ❤

I wish the FBI had provided an email instead. Anyway, here's my guess. There are several words that appear to be close to medical terms in English: oxygen, first responder, pulse, nurse. In addition, there are several numbers. As an English as a Second Language teacher, I've seen people practice writing by mimicking the letters they see to master the letters first before forming actual words. From that, they start mimicking words. This looks like an approximation of English by someone who has a learning disability such as dyslexia. My guess is this is not encoded and he was copying notes from his hospital visit from paperwork or anything with writing in the room he was in. What's unusual is that it's all in capital letters. I think the FBI should speak to a learning disability specialist.

With all the resources used over time on this case, I would think they could do some low key handwriting analysis to see if Ricky or the drug dealer wrote it. Also compare it to any other hand written evidence in both cases.

I'm so sad for Ricky. I hope they crack this case. I also think he could've sunk into schizophrenia. It's sad. I have a couple family members who developed schizophrenia and it's a heartbreaking situation. Fortunately, one of them has insight into his condition and is doing better. I don't doubt the possibility that this poor guy was used by criminals; but it's also possible he fled from imaginary threats and walked himself to death. So sad for this guy.

Wow it's so brave of you to just go into the middle of a field and film a video there!We need more people like you!!!

I was a Deputy Sheriff back in the 90s..Richard looks very familiar. I know back then Crips and Bloods wrote a lot of cryptic letters from prison to the outside and vice versa. I'm wondering if Richard was used by the gangs to deliver these messages and they knew he was illiterate and would never be able to decipher it therefore making him the perfect person or Richard knew how to write the letters of the alphabet but was mostly illiterate and he could write in a way he could understand but to a literate person made no sense

My friends and I would write in cyphers all the time. I can imagine how confusing it would be to find one of our notes in our pockets 😂

Good job on your stories Mr Ballen. Enjoyable, interesting and well delivered

It would it be so awesome if one of Mr.B’s viewers actually manage to crack the cypher!

When I was mentally sick, I walked from my house to a friends house that was 28 miles away. It can be done. I left during the night and got there in the early hours of the morning. Your mind is so occupied that the walking doesn’t phase you. It’s like time stands still and all of a sudden you’re at your destination.

Hey Mr Ballen. The issue with people who have schizophrenia or BPAD is that a lot of them have manic periods where they make these cyphers or languages. It's not common, but widespread enough for it to be noted. It might seem like they've hidden something meaningful in there, but most of the time its genuine gibberish. I have a friend who did this on a manic episode even. I could never decode it, but he told me what it was meant to say. "American dad and Archer are the best comedies of the modern day". Even though I have the answer to the riddle, there isn't a way to decode the message that would make sense, and clearly he's insane given the message delivered.

Bro remember My grandma used to send me riddles like this with letters and they had letters and numbers like this. The letters meant different things like (5 was the letter H) for example. It was really hard to solve but when I did it was always like (check your mail) and I would get more riddles! It doesn’t help but it’s just a fun memory before she died 😅

The woman that found him was super brave to walk out in that cornfield alone.

this guy could tell a story about just painting a living room and he would have me on the edge of my seat. Great storyteller one of if not the best

The answer to the code obviously lies in his prior codes written in his youth. His family were aware so they must have had some knowledge of how he developed this, with early examples

I’m a new sub and I’m already addicted to the way you tell stories. Keep up the good work❤

I’d like to believe the FBI personally asked Mr. Ballen to tell this story in hopes one of us would figure it out 😄

I found some "code breakers" input on these notes from years ago and one of the generally accepted ideas is that the "notes" are phonetic shorthand, not a cryptographic cipher. Also, with Ricky's mental conditions and illiteracy, even the phonetic shorthand has to be viewed as possibly dyslexic. There are several other ideas: Using letter "e" as periods (.) to end "sentences" or thoughts; 71, 74 and 75 are interstates in or around Cincinatti, Ohio; and, for example, "firse prse onde 71 ncbe" means "First person on d 71 nice be" ("The first person I met on the 71 was nice").

Im impressed by your ability to give these accounts in such a detailed way without losing place and maintaining a good memory. Must be a social butterfly. 👍

There were 2 girls that my friend and I went to high school with, and ended up going to a dance with (because that's all I remember from High School😮) , way back in 1998. These girls had not only managed to rearrange letters in words from 3 different languages (English, Spanish & Portuguese I think it was) to format a completely new written language, but had somehow managed to be able to speak this language fluently and understand each other. Nobody else had a clue. Point is, there is every possibility that this will never be solved, because it combines more of a rearranging of an ancient language, rather than being a Cypher. To my eye, the letter combinations that are used in these letters, look like some type of Nordic or old Germanic language. Complete shot it the dark though. Just coming at it from a different point of view.

I love it that he has to include a "real photo of actual phone booth" for the kids. 💜✌️

My step dad had a serious case of bipolar disorder and to me this story sounds like classic “manic depression” (The old name for bipolar). When my stepdad was in a manic state it would last four weeks. He’d become really agitated and assume people were plotting against him, even my mom. My stepdad would write stuff down non stop while he was manic. He’d write lists of things so he wouldn’t forget anything. He’d write song lyrics and poems constantly. He’d follow you around talking non stop and spit while he talked, then he’d ask you questions and guess the answer, after answer, after answer, before you got a chance to respond. Sometimes he’d do things that were reckless like picking up hitchhikers and bringing them home for family dinner or giving them rides to other cities. He would put a lot of spiritual meaning into everything. Like one time I was outside in the yard playing with my dog’s puppies while wearing a shirt with little clowns on it and he suddenly thought it was a sign that we were supposed to keep all the puppies and train them to do tricks and take them on the road as a traveling circus so we could preach the gospel and lead people to believe in Jesus. Another time he became convinced that because he read the Bible story about the army who marched 7 times around the city of Jericho and then God made the walls fall down, that we, as in me at age 6, my sister aged 17, my mom, and he, were being told by God to wake up every morning and go to our church and walk around the outside of the church building singing and marching in one direction 7 times in the morning and then do the same thing in the opposite direction at night. Why? Who knows! I’m betting it had something to do with spiritual warfare. I could go on and on with stories about my stepdad’s manic episodes but basically all this is to say Ricky’s actions do not surprise me at all. Even though he couldn’t actually read or write he may have thought that the letters he wrote down meant something to him and that he’d be able to look at them later and remember what they meant. He wasn’t heard from until he was found 20 miles away in that field and they didn’t find any proof of death by foul play. I have a strong suspicion he just randomly collapsed in that field after a really long and terrible manic episode and I feel really sad for him and his loved ones.

My ex boyfriend was schizoaffective. He didn’t realize it at times and did realize something was off other times. He refused to get help for it. He would keep notebooks that contained weird messages and “codes” that were “messages” he received from people around him and from what I grew to realize, messages from the voices in his head. He believed that everyone was specifically against him and he didn’t know why. He thought there were these organizations that included all the people closest to him. He started to tape his notes and codes up on his wall. His windows would all be covered in blankets and curtains because he thought he was being watched. It was all very bizarre. Before I realized something was actually going on in his head, I ran across some of drawings in his notebook. I was sitting there trying to decipher it and didn’t understand. It was gibberish. It took until he started having delusions about me and accusing me of being in this organization and thinking my skincare bottles were messages I was secretly giving him to realize that none of it actually was real.

I think Ricky broke into this guy's house looking for drugs, found these papers and ran out. Then word was on the street the dealer was missing these papers and Ricky was now afraid for his life!

Coming from a crypto background, my take on it is, Ricky could be an ideal messenger to carry the message. This is something we do in actual cryptography as well. If the code is complex enough that it can't be bruteforced and revealed back to normal (plain)text without knowing the secret, Ricky is no longer a liability, but an absolute asset. He will be retrieving and dropping these messages off from people who knows the code. But Ricky isn't smart enough to pick up on their conversations and decode the code used. And no one suspects someone with his intelligence to be a messenger to any major thing, because no one will take him seriously. Makes a lot of sense in my opinion.

Mr Ballen the GOAT of UKposts storytelling

I would love to watch a mini series of MrBallens own personal scary/strange stories, the one that he told about the holiday he had with friends was super fascinating

While i dont think i have the capability to solve the cypher i do think that the most easiest way to go about it is decoding lines 9-11 on the first page as it seems to be the only case of almost the same wording on all three lines minusing the first few letters and the numbers used

I absolutely love how MrBallen uses ambient noise in his storytelling. It really adds depth

My uncle was an agent for Game and Wildlife(now retired) when this evidence was first recovered. He, along with many members of other agencies, were consulted about these cyphers. The reason he was consulted was his involvement in the investigation of man called “the Chicken Man”, who was a voodoo witch doctor in New Orleans who was known for encrypting messages. As far as he knows, zero progress was ever made.

Here is an expert advice, "Show it to a pharmacist"😂

Its not everyday i want to watch Mr.Ballen tell a good story ive never heard before but when i do it's very relaxing and rewarding .Does anyone think the same thing or also do this ?

Wouldn’t it be amazing if one of Mr. Ballen’s viewers could crack the code because he told this story on UKposts? It’s possible! Just remember the housewife who solved the Zodiac’s cypher over a cup of coffee while reading about in the social media of her day, the newspaper.

Since Ricky told people he was a singer, prince and doctor when he wasn't, maybe he told the wrong person he was a codebreaker or such like and was entrusted with sensitive info. When they found out he wasn't what he said he was already in too deep...

With all the genius savants in the world. How could they not figure out the riddle by now?

There is something disturbingly familiar with some of the letter sequences particularly the mrse lpse type configurations. Others remind me of addresses that end in GMBH. Definitely seen something similar somewhere, at some time. When and where eludes me. Having said that, I spent almost 4 years looking for a passage in a book that i read in a book that I didn't have until 4 years later so maybe i haven't read it yet.

17:30 I can think of several VERY good reasons to entrust someone like Ricky with that code: no chance he cracks it, no chance he even tries, and if he loses it and it ends up in the wrong hands, there's no chance they get any info out of Ricky that could be used to crack it. He's the PERFECT mule for some kind of cryptex.

You tell these stories so well. It legit sounds like you were there to watch these events happen.

Keep it up!!! I can't get enough of these!!!😅

Part of me wonders if the reason the police were so quick to dismiss was because there were corrupt officers. They just didn’t put any effort into investigating what happened, like they did a complete 180° out of nowhere.

What a shame that Ricky never had a place to go to for safety. A mental hospital would have been ideal. Such cases always make me sad, because these people usually end up homeless or in jail - or worse. They are so vulnerable, yet there is no place designated specifically to care for them for as long as they are in need. It's heartbreaking.

Regardless of the person’s history, rather than just admitting they don’t know what’s wrong, too many doctors blame it on the victim’s own mind.

I've actually seen a few things like that in prison. Normally people would just write down random letters. And then once you put like a newspaper over it. And hold it up to the light that will give you your answer. I seen it a lot I don't know if that's the correct way, but that's just my theory

I’ve been to the ER and told the nurse I couldn’t breath. She said “you wouldn’t be able to talk if you couldn’t breath” 🙄 thanks ma’am I’m better now

I just went on my first backpacking trip through the mountains for 3 days. The person who set it up thought it was more of a beginners trail but it was NOT. I was afraid I was going to be in a mr. Ballen video. I'm now happy to be home watching this video safely from my couch 😂.

Looks like Ricky’s attempt at a grocery list lmao

This cypher will never be solved without the original code sheet...there's letters and symbols and each combo refers to a word or groups of letters and whatever those may be is anyone's guess until the original cypher is produced

You are the best story teller on youtube. You deserve to have your own high production value show on tv!

I wanna know if the FBI ever asked the drug dealer what he knew about Ricky.

This happened in the town I used to work in. East Alton MO. It’s literally a ghost town. More than half the houses are abandoned because of the floods. There’s maybe 50 people living in the town. Probably never going to be solved.

I have so many things rn going on my mind about this. 1- He wasnt mentally stable so may be he just randomly wrote anything. 2- If he could write, why did he took nurse's help back at the hospital. He wouldn't have cared how he was filling the form and just filled in his own way ( I am reffering to what people in comments are saying that may be he knew the letters but not the words/sentences) 3- How do they exactly know if it was his hand writing/notes? Did they match his writing? Because if he could not fill the form at hospital, how did he wrote all this? 4- May be it was someone else's notes. He had stolen it knowing it was holding a big secret and thats why he was paranoid that someone's gonna come after him. 4- May be the third party unalived him and not the ones who were trying to get him for stealing the notes. He might have steal the notes, got into fight or some bs and then got ki****!? And that is why its all messed up. 5- May be it meant nothing but to distract from actual evidences. 6- And last, may be he was lying all this time. He might be a mentally healthy, normal person who might was indulged in illegal activities and would end up running to the hospital when felt threatened for life. Which might have made him sweat and afraid of being attacked by someone. He would go to the ER to basically hide since he can not go to the police station. And acted like he was having chest pain, took his time staying in the lobby so may be from whom he was hiding might give up on him and when the threat kinda subsided, he went to eat something but those people kept an eye on him and .... him.

Imagine helping the FBI and your story is the next story Ballen telling.

One aspect of Ricky that wasn't covered here is how he actually had a criminal conviction for statutory rape where he served 10 months of a 3-year sentence. I wonder if that somehow had anything to do with the person(s) who murdered him. He'd also fathered four children from numerous women over his time so could've had enemies on that front. He clearly was very mentally unwell and it's possible he got involved with some actual drug dealer, agreed to do something, failed miserably at it or double-crossed someone, and got killed as payback. The notes and the ciphers on them could literally just be actual gibberish with no solution, only meant to further throw off law enforcement when/if his body was eventually found. Ricky's family when interviewed about the notes said Ricky used to scrawl things down sometimes, but it was always complete gibberish as he was illiterate. But it's still possible he did write the cipher, but as he was illiterate, his methodologies for the meanings of things most likely would never be cracked.

What if my boy Ricky was just writing random letters trynna make words? 😂😂

If it is a code and someone gave it to Ricky then it's possible that they gave it to him because no one would expect him to have a coded message.

He wasn’t crazy he stayed in hospitals all night and watched the door for the people after him. He didn’t go to his gfs house bc they already knew where she lived. He was smart and probably pretended to not know how to read to stay a little longer. He was paranoid for a good reason

I wonder if since Ricky was illiterate if he didn’t make up his own language, ya know, kinda like twins do sometimes. I worked with a completely illiterate guy once who also had a mental illness who used to take our lunch order and he had his own symbols for any kind of food you can imagine. It was so fascinating to me. I imagine if he was found dead like this with our lunch order it would turn out like this, with world class code breakers trying to figure out how a guy like this could’ve gotten such a complex system of encrypted code… and it would just turn out to be our lunch order.

Could be a substitution cypher based on some text or book that Ricky had access to in all the places he went. Wouldn’t be able to crack the cypher with the text it’s based on. Other rules could be added too to further confuse anyone trying to interpret it. I believe this is a fairly basic encryption technique but still effective without context.

My uncle who is in is 60s and is severely schizophrenic writes out alot of codes and stuff like this. Pages of it. Its always been very interesting to me.

MrBallen is now America's storyteller. I can't wait to see how far this thing goes. Much success John

The ‘Not a real photo of Rickie’ got me giggling hard 😂😂 love the hidden jokes in the strange, dark and mysterious

Plot Twist: FBI cracks code. Its Ricky's favorite meatloaf recipe.

That picture you showed is Barnes Jewish Hospital. Its WAY bigger now. The lot across the street is a large parking garage. That entrance you see is south campus and you can't see it anymore because the garage is in the way. The entrance still looks prettt much the same though.

Crazy how none of the doctors at ER offered psychological help from the psych ward or a specialist or something. They just let him go. This story is chilling! 🔥

I went to the e.r. one time because I couldn't breathe and all my levels were good. I just had a panic attack and while they were doing tests on me. My whole body tightened up and I thought I was gonna die...no joke. Turns out i have anxiety , that i never used to have, and it makes me "feel" like im laboring to breathe..it freaked me out.

Ricky had no way of leaving St. Louis... yet Ricky had two feet at the bottom of his legs 😂!

Paranoia, Cornfield, Rapid decomposition, Cryptic messages... and no one knows a damn thing. Damn.

After all this time and all these videos, I finally found myself listening to you tell the story and caught myself nodding as if you could see me. That's some powerful kind of "drawn into the story".

I passed this on to some friends who do like a challenge - I also hope they find what happened to this young man. No one deserves to die like that

Love the content, currently binge watching. There’s noone out there asking you to hit the like button like you 😂

Imagine someone finally decoded it after all these year and the first words you read are "Never, Gonna, Give".......

Can we find a way to have an adult story time where we get this man on tour to go to theaters and tell a live audience of the strange dark and mysterious?

My goal in life is to listen to every strange dark and mysterious story that will ever exist .. mr Ballen you are the goat !!

My thought process is that there are multiple syphers inside this one message. For instance one set of capital letters are one peace, while some capital letters that are a different size are part of a different set of alphabet. And so on, they probably already thought of this but I just wanted to put it out there

Maybe they're license plate numbers of the trucks that are shipping the goods. If he was kept inside one of the trailers in high temperature for awhile that might explain his decomposition.

I really don’t think I’ll ever find any of the secrets because I listen to Mr. Ballen every night to fall asleep to