There was a time when there was a man who was a Navy Seal and became a YouTube sensation.
Jonathan B. Allen, better known online as MrBallen, has over 4 million followers on his online account. Allen is wearing a hat on backward and has a flannel shirt on. You'll never guess what was hidden in this home, that's the synopsis of the story today.
You won't.
Allen is spinning a yarn about a 36-year-old man who built a guillotine in his bedroom and killed himself as he slept.
John Allen is a Quincy native and a former Navy Seal.
Sound effects such as hammering, sawing, knocking and crashing add to the morbid mood. He shows the details with wide-eyed facial expressions. His voice picks up at the end. His jaw drops.
He said that as a storyteller, you must be committed. I do a lot of the things on camera.
True crime is a gold mine. Millions of fans watch shows such as "Making a Murderer" and "Tiger King" on streaming services. We are obsessed with stories about the darker side of human nature. According to a report by Omnicore Agency, the second most-watched genre on YouTube is thrillers/crime/mystery, with 60% of the company's 2.3 billion users hitting play.
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In June 2020, Allen started uploading scary tales to his videos. The guillotine story had 2.2 million views. He said that Allen never worried about running out of content.
There are pictures from a video.
The stories I cover are usually about people getting killed or something horrible, and there is no shortage of that. It is good for my career but it is sad.
Allen wants to bring people on a journey that ends with some kind of discovery. He said that an engaging story has a good twist.
The twist is the most satisfying part of telling a story.
Before you click play, turn on the lights. Allen's stories might make you want to crawl. A video tells the story of how a former child actor threw a couple off a boat. There are also stories of a cannibal frat boy, a serial killer in Alaska, and a mine that exploded on a family at a Ukrainian campsite.
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Allen doesn't give himself nightmares. It will take more than a scary story to top his real-life tale of terror. During his deployment to Afghanistan as a Navy SEAL in the summer of 2014, a grenade bounced off his shoulder during a firefight and exploded, sending a piece of metal into his hips and legs. Allen said he was bleeding to death. I thought I was going to die when I went blind. A helicopter came to the rescue after the medic jumped into action. Nine of the 25 members in his platoon received a medal.
Scary stories don't keep him up at night.
John Allen is a Quincy native and a former Navy Seal.
Quincy's roots are deep.
Allen was raised in the Wollaston section of Quincy by his parents. He said they lived on Franklin Street and East Elm Avenue.
Allen played baseball as a kid. He worked for the Quincy Recreation Department as a teenager. He snowboarded at Blue Hills Ski Area.
After graduating high school, he left UMass-Amherst because of bad behavior. He lived in his mother's basement for three semesters while taking classes.
I was lost. Allen said he couldn't figure out what to do.
John Allen is a Quincy native and a former Navy Seal.
He returned to the campus after getting his act together and graduated with a degree in philosophy and a minor in English. He went to the recruiting office a few months later.
He was in boot camp by December of 2010. Allen was a member of SEAL Team 2 who was stationed in Virginia Beach for five years. He retired from the Navy.
After returning to civilian life, Allen worked at a nonprofit helping veterans find jobs and training Navy SEAL candidates. Allen said he began using social media to raise money for the charity.
Allen told stories about his time in service.
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Allen built a following of about 40,000 fans around the John the Navy Seal brand.
I was parading around like I was cool and my former teammates were not happy about it. Allen said people were upset with him.
He jumped on the TikTok platform instead of doing those videos. The deaths of nine Russian hikers at Dlovyat Pass was posted by him. He and his family went to an indoor water park with their three children. Five hours later, the post had 5 million views.
John Allen is a Quincy native and a former Navy Seal.
I wanted to do another one, but I didn't see it as a career. All of them went viral. Everything had 20 million views. Allen said that he didn't know what he was doing but it worked.
Allen has a green screen in his home. It can take up to 20 hours to produce.
My biggest issue is choosing a topic, not because I can't find something, but because I'm picky. There are many subjects. I keep them all listed and organized on my computer. Sometimes I find a great story and know it is the one. There are days when I spend 12 hours on the computer and have nothing to show for it, because I have been reading through topics and not liking any.
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The 37 million channels on YouTube are competing for attention. Allen encourages viewers togently take the like button out for a nice seafood dinner in every video he uploads. The dark themes are offset by that kind of light humor. The victim is the center of the story that sets Allen apart from other true-crime storytellers.
Others in the genre focus on the killer. The audience is in the footsteps of the victim, so I do the opposite. I say that Sally would have been in total darkness and heard something behind her if she had been there.
Henry is the son of John Allen. MrBallen is Allen's handle on his channel.
A family of storytellers.
Allen comes from a family of storytellers and his path from Quincy to internet fame might seem unconventional. Mom is the head of circulation at Thomas Crane Library. Dad is an assistant managing editor at The Boston Globe and is in charge of the Spotlight Team. His older sister, Evan Allen, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Globe, and his younger sister,Jessie Allen, is a PhD candidate in biology.
They are smart and talented. Allen said that he thought he was the worst writer in the group. The way I communicated my stories was by speaking. I felt I had a leg up when it came to telling stories and talking about them. They got me beat on the writing.
With close to 5 million subscribers, Allen has his happily ever after.
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Dana Barbuto can be reached at dbarbuto@patriotledger.com.
Quincy went from a blue-collar haven to one of the state's most expensive places to live.
MrBallen is a former Navy Seal who is now a YouTube star.
