As The Raven Dreams Podcast - 5 HOURS of TRUE Scary Stories | True Scary Story Compilation

Episode Date: August 20, 2021

5 HOURS of TRUE Scary Stories | True Scary Story Compilation is a MASSIVE Collection of stories that have been featured on my channel! This Compilation contains mostle stories from my friday themed vids.  Do You Have A Story you want to see featured on this channel?  Send it my way  ➤  https://www.astheravendreams.com/submit  Post it To my Subreddit  ➤ https://reddit.com/r/TheRavensDream  Or Email me at [e-mail] Get Early Access and Help the channel by Joining Channel Memberships, or signing up for my Patreon! Patreon ➤ https://patreon.com/AsTheRavenDreams Channel Memberships ➤ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkW0ihdMHfBUjQrMKjRto6g/join ✯✬✯✬ All videos come with a content warning for language, potentially triggering situations, and disturbing content. Viewer Discretion is ALWAYS advised... I do scary stories- it's not all rainbows and daisies around these part.  Always Remember That You Are Loved, You Are Valid, And You Are Important. NEVER Let anyone tell you otherwise. ♥ ✯✬✯✬ 【Enjoy The Nevermore】 Subscribble to the Chibble! ➤ https://www.youtube.com/c/astheravendreams?view_as=subscriber?sub_confirmation=1 MY True Crime Channel ➤ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX9TQVx8YUuuI5gBP58NTtA Listen On Spotify! ➤ https://open.spotify.com/show/1EFYMKPBTTkmKyDla2JE1Q Listen On Your Apple Device! ➤ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/as-the-raven-dreams/id1543612283 Wear The Nevermore (MERCH SHOP) ➤ https://teechip.com/stores/astheravendreams Follow me on Twitter ➤ https://twitter.com/RavensDreamYT Everything Else ➤ https://www.astheravendreams.com/the-nevermore ✯✬✯✬ Forgive me for not doing timestamps- there are way too many stories to stamp here.  So, that said, the stories are from the following videos. Dark Web 3 1/15 Back woods Horror 1/29 Stalker Stories 2/5 Online Dating Horror 2/12 Dark Web 4 2/19 BabySitting stories 2/26 Camping Horror 3/5 Line Of Duty Horror 3/12 Bartender Horror 3/19 Dark Web 5 3/26 Spring Break 4/2 ✯✬✯✬ 【LEGAL DISCLAIMERS】  ➤All stories within are used w/ direct permission from the author- or under some level of CC license (where noted) True Stories are not verified, and should all be considered 'supposedly true'. Some Fonts used are from https://www.misprintedtype.com - Eduardo Recife makes some AMAZING fonts! If you need to contact me for Business purposes, please contact me at [e-mail] and indicate that the email is for business.  #TrueScaryStories #AsTheRavenDreams #RedditStories Be sure to *subscribe* if you like any of the following; Glitch In The Matrix Stories, Creepy Encounter Stories, Deepweb horror stories, Darkweb Stories, Reddit scary stories, True Scary Stories, Creepypasta, Reddit ghost stories, Or really anything- my channel is pretty diverse. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/astheravendreams/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/astheravendreams/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is one of those stories that, honestly, causes me a good amount of mental distress, but it's also one of those stories that I need to tell, either to an audience or a therapist to get out of my own head. This all happened back in high school. It was actually the second semester of my junior year. I was a bit of a loner back then and had never really had an actual girlfriend or a relationship. and was frequently teased by my friends for it. Like most high school guys, I had my crushes and girls that I wanted to get with, but none of them showed any interest in me,

until I met Cheryl. Cheryl was, and the best way I can think to describe her, the goth girl in her school that no one else really screwed with. She had a click of friends, and the popular kids would talk about her behind her back, but they never said anything to her face. She and I had spoken some before, and she seemed like a pretty okay person,

as far as previous experiences with her went, maybe a bit abrasive, but easy to talk to. I'll never know how it initially happened, but someone gave Cheryl my Snapchat name, and I know this, because one night she randomly sent me a snap that was a picture of a dog, and it said something like, What's up, loser?

I thought it was one of my friends at first, so I responded with the picture of my Xbox controller. I said I was playing Halo and asked who it was. I remember the person had their name set to something like Cherry Black, instead of their real name. Immediately after, she sends me a picture of herself. I was legitimately confused. I had no idea why she was Snapchatting me.

I think I replied with something like, Wow, you must be pretty damn bored to have to talk with me. And a pick of myself, just in case she thought I was someone else. Then, she replies with, No, I actually wanted to talk to you. We had a decent conversation over Snap. until I was too tired to stay up. She threw in her aggressive quips, calling me a loser every once in a while, making jokes at my expense.

But honestly, I didn't mind. It wasn't anything my group of childhood friends didn't already do, and she wasn't being malicious with it. From there, we actually spoke a few times at school, sat together at lunch, and started sitting. by each other during American history, which was the only class that we had together. Honestly, I was in a bit of awe because she was actually a really cool person, and she became a really good friend over the couple of weeks that we had gotten to know each other. Then, one day, I got a text from her that said, Hey, you're my boyfriend now.

I laughed it off. and responded with, Oh, is there a guy that you're trying to let down easy and you need to stand in? I didn't expect it, but she responded with, No, I'm telling you that you're my boyfriend now, and I'm your girlfriend. We are dating now. It was kind of an odd way to do things,

but I also wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. She was telling me that she and I were together, and that was that. Obviously, I thought that this was going to be some kind of messed up prank at first, but when I got to school the next day and saw her, she immediately started to make out with me, and I think it was then that I realized she was being serious. Again, she was obviously a bit more aggressive with it than I intended. but, hey, I had a girlfriend, and I was no longer a lonely loser.

Things went pretty well for about a week. Nothing crazy happened, and I was pretty happy. Then the first red flag came into the picture. I posted a photo on my Snapchat story of myself and my older sister. It was a completely innocent picture that I mostly posted, for family and friends for the fun of it. About ten minutes after posting it, I get a text from Cheryl with a screenshot of my Snap Story,

and my sister's face circled in red. It was like she loaded the picture into the editor on her phone and drew circles around her. The picture had a text with it that simply said, Who is she? I replied, that's my sister. She then responds, what's your sister's name?

I was a bit taken aback by how aggressive she was being about a snap with my sister, but I relented and told her. Her name is Amanda. About five minutes or so later, she responds with, okay, and a smiley emoji. That same night, I got a random text from my sister that said something to the effect of wow, your girlfriend is so cute. You should have told me that you were with her.

I asked how she knew, and she responded by telling me that Cheryl had added her on Facebook, and then messaged her asking her if she was actually my sister. Obviously, I had a bit of a problem with this, so the next day I asked her why she had done that. She responds by saying, I had to make sure that you were serious about being with her. me. Plus, I'm your girlfriend. I should get to know your sister so maybe we can do stuff in the

future. By the time this had happened, we had been dating for around eight or nine days, and she was being that aggressive about a snap with my sister. Again, this was my first girlfriend, and I was 17, so while this was a bit odd to me, I'd just let it go, because maybe that's how relationships just were sometimes. Overall, things seemed to go all right for another few weeks. Then, there was one day where I was at lunch and talking with my cousin, Anne. Cheryl walked up to us and basically grabbed me and forced me into a kiss with her. It was kind of strange, but I didn't do much to stop it.

afterwards, I kind of just laughed at how awkward the whole thing must have been for Anne. I cleared my throat and then said, Um, Anne, this is my girlfriend, Cheryl. We've been together for almost a month. Cheryl just kind of stared at her, and then reached out to shake her hand, saying hi with a very stale tone. Anne could sense the animosity, and she excused herself. after which Cheryl shifted her angry stare to me and asked me who the hell Anne was.

I explained that she and I had been friends since we were little kids, and that her mom had married my mom's brother, so she was my cousin by marriage. At first, Cheryl seemed to be accepting of my response. Then, after school, I got a text from her that said, I've been thinking about it, and you're not going to talk to Anne anymore. I didn't respond. Fast forward another week, and Anne, my cousin that I wasn't supposed to be talking to, got a job at the sandwich shop that I was working at, which is exactly what we had been talking about that day at lunch.

My boss was a really cool manager, and I was able to talk him into hiring her, and I told him that I would train her. I'd been there for a few months, so I was basically assistant manager without the official title. That night was Anne's first shift, and after he got all of her onboard paperwork done, he told me good luck, and to call him if I needed anything.

Then he left. We were about an hour and a half into the shift, and we were slow, So I decided that I would sit down at one of the tables and talk to Anne about how the closing shifts worked, how to fill out the cleaning checklist and just the overall basics. We were talking for about five minutes before my phone went off. It was a text from Cheryl. I opened it, and it literally said,

I thought I told you not to talk to her anymore. Obviously, I was confused. We were at work and working. One, how did she know that I was talking to her? And two, was she really going to be so controlling that she didn't want me speaking with my own cousin, who was a co-worker, that I was tasked with training. I told Anne to take a few minutes for a break, grab a drink, and that I would be right back. I stepped out into the parking lot, and sure enough, Cheryl was sitting in her car, facing the restaurant.

I went over to her car, and she rolled down her window. I asked her what the hell she was doing. She told me that she didn't want me talking to Anne anymore. I told her that I didn't have a choice in that she was my cousin. After some back and forth, and a short argument, I just gave up on the conversation and went back inside. I thought that maybe this would be the end of this annoyance, but sure enough, it wasn't. The next shift that Anne and I worked, which was two days after that event, I walked in,

and my manager asked me to come to his office. I stepped in and I could tell that he was upset with me for something, though I had no idea what it was. I asked him what was going on, and he told me that, apparently, Cheryl had called him and told him that he needed to get rid of Anne because she and I weren't supposed to be talking to each other. She told him some really messed up and elaborate story about how, when we were younger, I had sexually assaulted her, and that I was controlling her,

basically that I was grooming her since she was about a year younger than me. I was appalled at this. I obviously told him it wasn't true and that I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. And that I would be personally willing to sit in with Anne and she could tell him that it was all a lie. He honestly seemed uncomfortable about this, which was really bizarre to me. He told me that he had temporarily suspended Anne, but that he hadn't told her the reason, and that she would be coming back in two weeks, and that I needed to sort all of this out before then. I honestly had no idea what I was supposed to do to sort it out, but I agreed and just tried to get through my shift.

I completely ignored Cheryl at school the next day. She tried to approach me, and I completely shut her down. After class, before I had to be at work, I met up with Anne and told her what was happening. She was just as shocked as I was about this, and asked what we should do. I basically told her that we needed to just ignore Cheryl, and that it would help if she could talk to our boss without me around, and then explain the whole thing was a lie. A while after this conversation, when I was driving to work, I got a text from Cheryl. It said, I thought I had made it clear. I didn't want you talking to Anne.

I'd had enough of this, so I called her. Conversation was quick, but it was pretty much me breaking up with her, telling her to back the hell off, and to just leave me alone. She then said something that actually gave me the creeps. She said, you don't get to break up with me. I don't think you realize that I call the shots. I then told her that she was completely nuts and that she needed to get help. And then hung up on her. As I'm sure you can probably guess,

especially when dealing with obsessively crazy people like Cheryl, This is where things started to get worse. That night, while I was working at the sandwich shop, I kept getting weird looks from the customers as they walked in, and some customers that were walking towards the door would turn around and leave before they actually entered. Thankfully, one of my friends had decided to come by and get food. He got to the counter,

and he asked me what the hell was going on with the lady outside. I asked what he was talking about. He then proceeded to tell me probably the most horrific thing I had ever been told. Apparently, Cheryl was outside, and she was telling people that a rapist worked there and that no one should support a company that employed a rapist. She was literally telling people as they were walking up that I was a rapist and that I was free because no one would believe her.

She had been standing outside the entire shift and was saying this to people as they walked up. I couldn't see her because she was just off to the side of the window. I told my friend to hold on, and I stepped outside. Sure enough, she was standing there. I asked her what she was doing and why she was doing it, and she just started to scream, Hey, everyone, this is the rapist, this is the man that should be in jail. I told her to leave, and she just smirked at me and said, make me. So I did.

I called the police and told them that she was trespassing, and I then called my manager to tell him what was going on. The police showed up and told her that she needed to leave. They came in and asked for my information, and I gave it to them, then told me that she was advised not to return to the property, or she would be arrested for trespassing. Of course, just because she wasn't allowed on the property, didn't mean that she couldn't continue to do damage.

It was a day or two later when my manager once again called me into his office, thinking that I had taken care of the situation with Cheryl, I went in without really thinking anything of it. When I get in, he had my file on his desk and a paycheck in an envelope, as well as a Google review screen on his computer. He then proceeds to tell me, he was advised by the regional manager that he needed to fire me. I asked him what was going on, and he showed me the screen. The store's Google rating had been tanked,

and there were a significant number of one-star reviews that mentioned the store was employing a rapist. and that no one should support this business until they fired me. Some of them even mentioned me by name. My boss basically told me that, while he really didn't believe the whole thing, he didn't have a choice. It was bad press for the business, and his boss was telling him to let me go to fix this problem.

In the end, I just signed the document, gave him my hat and apron and took my check. I think the hardest part of this whole thing was trying to explain to my parents why I had been fired. I had been working there for almost a year at this point, and was probably the only person that had stuck around for so long. So to have to tell my parents that I was fired honestly hurt me. I had to tell my own mother that I was. was being fired because my ex-girlfriend was claiming the store was protecting a rapist,

and that I was being the one called out as such. I, of course, told her that it was all a lie, and that Cheryl and I were never even intimate, and that she was just trying to mess with me. Obviously, they weren't really sure what to do, other than possibly call the police and have them sorted out, but really, I'm not even, even sure if she was committing an actual crime.

None of the review bomb reviews had her name on them. She left the property when she was asked to do so, and unfortunately, there was a ton of plausible deniability on her side. My other thought was about whether or not she would be willing to lie to the police as well, and then have me arrested and drag all this out in a horrible legal battle. In the end, I just told my parents I was sorry this happened and that I would try to find another job. Obviously, they were telling me not to be sorry, but I honestly felt like this whole thing was my fault. I went to bed and just kind of sank into a bit of a low mentality.

The next morning, I woke up to my dad coming into my room and asking me if there was anything wrong with the car when I drove it from work. the night before. We shared the car since he worked an early shift, and he was home by the time I needed to go to work. I told him that everything was fine on the way home the night before, and then asked him what he was talking about. He told me to come outside and see. I went with him, and come to find, both tires on the driver's side were flat. I was just standing there, staring at the car, thinking that Cheryl would have had to have had to have. have done this. I obviously couldn't prove it was her, and there was no actual damage to the tires. The air was let out through the valve stem, but I had this hunch that this was just more of her

trying to get back at me. I apologize to my dad, but I also told him that I had no idea because all four tires were fine when I was driving home the night before. He believed me, but I think my face was telling, and he thought that I had an idea of what had happened. A few more days go by, I'm basically just floating through the motions and trying to move forward with things. When out of nowhere, I get a call to the guidance counselor's office. I head in, and they sit me down. Then, the counselor tells me that they got an anonymous report, that I was suicide. and that I had supposedly told one of my friends that I was going to bring a gun to school in order to do a suicide by cop.

I, obviously, vehemently denied this. It was nowhere near true, and I would have never said anything like that. He then told me that, even though I was a good student and didn't cause trouble, and even though I was vehemently denying it, they would have to send me home for a child. a few days on suspension, and that they would be required to go through my locker while I was gone, and, after that, I would be required under policy to have my bags searched, and walked through the metal detector every morning for an indefinite amount of time, basically until they believed that the threat was cleared.

Once again, I was in a position where I had to explain to my parents what was going on, since my mom had to leave work to come pick me up from the guidance office. I told her that Cheryl was out to get me, and that she was doing everything in her power to quickly ruin my life. I think, at first, she was a bit iffy on believing me, but then I literally burst into tears. And I think that may have been what hit it home for her that something was going on. and I told her that while I was dating Cheryl, she was super controlling.

I told her about all the red flags, how she flipped out on me for talking to my cousin, and how she freaked out when I had a picture of my sister on Snapchat. I told her about what she did at my work, how she was the one that filed the complaint with my boss, and most likely the one that had review-bombed the store. I pretty much just unloaded everything on my mom, mother because I had felt like my life had just fallen apart over a girl that I didn't even

like before she decided that we were dating around a month and a half ago. Looking back, it was all so stupid that it happened like it did, and it all happened so quickly, going from friends to dating, to me feeling like everything was ruined. I could see why I was so upset. My mom ended up telling me to take the time off and that she would talk to the counselor about what was going on. She told me that I should take the rest of the week if I needed it and just have a mental health break.

I agreed and decided I would just sit at home and do nothing for a few days, just enjoying some time to myself. But first, for the first, for you know, some reason. Something in my mind told me that I needed to message Cheryl and just try to get her to leave me alone. So I did. I literally text her and said, look, I know that things got complicated between us. I said things that upset you, but could you please just leave me alone and stop doing all of this? I get your point. You are in control. But please just, let me be and move on.

She replied pretty quickly, but it wasn't a good reply. She said something to the effect of, Okay, I'll move on to Anne then. How's that sound? I immediately contacted Anne to tell her, and she told me she would keep a lookout. I really didn't know how far Cheryl would take it since, while she hadn't done anything violent,

or aggressive toward me, she had still managed to really screw things up for me in a relatively short amount of time. To be safe, I actually called my uncle and explained to him what she had done and that she was now targeting Anne. And honestly, this was probably one of the best things I think I could have done.

My uncle, my mom's brother and Anne's stepfather, as a bit of a security nerd. He has cameras all over his property, and he knows how to protect himself. My warning, actually put him on edge and might have led to what happened next. As expected, Cheryl started to go after Anne and trying to cause her problems.

She started by trying to start a fight in school with her by talking crap on me, Anne just told her that she wasn't listening to, it and walked away. When Cheryl tried to follow her, Anne made it a point to walk toward one of the security guards and stand there, knowing that Cheryl wouldn't do anything. There were a couple of other things that she tried, that I honestly cannot remember. But it's not really important.

It's important to know that she spent a few days trying to make Anne's life hell, and Anne wasn't letting it happen. then Cheryl made a huge mistake and decided to escalate. The night it all ended, Cheryl had decided that she was going to try to throw a brick through the glass pane on the front door of Anne's house. Unfortunately for Cheryl, when she decided to do this, my uncle was in the garage, and in the garage, my uncle has a large screen that connects to all of his security camps. So, he saw her as she was walking up.

He was already walking out the side door when Cheryl actually threw the brick. He watched her do it, and was less than 20 feet away from her when she did. My uncle, being the guy that he is, immediately drew his gun and told her to get on the ground. He's not a police officer, but he is former military, and he's built with that kind of intimidation. that you don't really want to mess around with. From what I was told, as soon as she saw the gun in my uncle's hand, she immediately fell to the ground and just stayed there.

Apparently, he had scared the hell out of her, and she was honestly terrified that he was going to shoot. From there, Anne called the police, and they came. My uncle told them what happened, and showed them the camera feed. Cheryl was arrested and subsequently charged. I do wish that there was more of a happy ending for me, but there wasn't. I didn't get my job back.

I went back to school and went through a month of being searched every single morning. After that, I moved on and just stuck to myself and those that I knew were actually close, like Anne. Honestly, though, I didn't really mind that things didn't go back to perfect for me. Cheryl got caught doing something that was super illegal, probably got the scare of a lifetime from my uncle. And I honestly hope that this was the point where she decided to turn her life around. I have no idea what happened to her. And honestly, I don't want to know.

I just hope that... Cheryl and I never meet again. This all started back when I was in my first year of college, so around four or five years ago. And while it may not be the most terrifying story involving a stalker that exists, it's one of those things that happened to me that I genuinely will not get over. Honestly, I still sometimes get chills and anxiety thinking about this whole situation. and I know that sounds dramatic,

but living it is a whole lot different than reading it. While I was a freshman at my college, I was also working as a junior admin assistant for a medium-sized corporation, basically doing whatever it was that the admins and their assistants asked of me. In essence, I was an assistant to the assistants. So I was super low on the totem pole. It wasn't a bad job.

Some of the people were a bit rude, but I kind of think that had more to do with the corporate environment than them as people. Though they could also have just been a-holes, it's hard to say. One of my weekly duties was restocking what was essentially the office supply stand. This company had an open floor plan, and in the center of the third and top floor, was a cubicle segment that was filled with office supplies that people could freely take. It was basically an honor system, though there was a camera directly above this cubicle. And one of my jobs was to get the supplies from the closet, and make sure that the pens and post-its and whatnot were all full and ready for people.

It wasn't a hard task, honestly. It was just meticulous and took a good amount of time. The week that this all started, I was stocking the supplies and was approached by an employee that I didn't know. He looked a bit nerdy, had a bull cut, thick glasses, not trying to be rude or poke fun at nerdy people, just saying that he kind of fit the stereotype. Anyways, he walked up to the cubicle and kind of just stared at me. After a moment, I realized that I was probably blocking whatever it was that he was trying to get to, and maybe he just really didn't want to talk to me.

I apologized. I asked him what I could get for him and was just trying to be polite and keep my head down. He responds with, I don't think I've seen you here. Are you new? I was a bit confused. I'd been there for around a month, but maybe he didn't get up to the third floor very often. I've been here almost a month.

I'm a junior admin assistant. My name's Callie. Again, trying to be polite, but not overstepping. I'm Peter. I work in desktop support. He put his hand out to shake mine, which felt kind of weird considering what I was occupied with, and how this conversation had started. But again, maybe he was just bad with people.

It's very nice to meet you, Peter. Is there something I can help you with? I shook his hand quickly and turned back to finish my stalking. He kind of chuckled and mumbled something under his breath. I just let it go and went back to stalking. He stood there the entire time that I was putting things in the same. cubicle, which I obviously thought was a bit weird, but again, it was what it was. As I finished up, I stepped out and put the remaining extras on the cart to put back into the

closet. I told him it was very nice to chat with him, and that I hoped that he had a great day. He smiled and told me that he would see me around. Overall, I thought it was nothing. He was awkward. but harmless. I expected nothing to come of this situation beyond me having to potentially say hi to him if I saw him again in the future. Then, the next week rolled around. I was doing my supply stocking, and sure enough, Peter walked up to the cubicle,

this time holding a box of donuts. I paused for a moment and watched him walk up and open the box. The whole time he had this goofy grin on his face and was staring at me. I never thought a man walking up to me with a box of donuts could manage to look creepy, but there we were and there he was, looking incredibly creepy. He asked me if I wanted a donut, and I was polite and took one, and I placed it on a post-it note in the cubicle, because I had nothing else to put it on. I said thank you, and he just continued to stand there and stare at me without saying anything for several moments.

So I did the worst thing I possibly could have done. I asked him how things were. In my mind, I was just being polite, trying to make small talk. Then, out of nowhere, he asks me what I'm doing that weekend. He didn't answer my question. He just literally jumped into asking me out. I kind of laughed at him a bit when he asked. It was completely unintentional he just caught me off guard.

I politely told him that I had a fiancé. His smile kind of fell into a half frown, but he kept his awkward stare. After a few moments of silence, he put the donuts down in the cubicle and turned to walk away. I honestly had no idea how to take any of this, so I just decided to move on and ignore it. The next day, I was at my desk trying to book a flight for one of our C-level employees. When I feel a hand on my shoulder, I literally jumped and damn near screamed when it happened.

I turned to see who the hell it was, and to my surprise, it was Peter. Even more, to my surprise, he had gotten a haircut, and he didn't look quite as nerdy as he had been. He apologized for scaring me and said that he just wanted to apologize for how awkward he had been the day before. He said he didn't get out much, and that he was socially awkward, but he realized he had stepped out of line when he asked me out. His tone, his manner of speaking to me and his overall demeanor was completely different, and he seemed sincere. I told him it was fine and that we all have our awkward moments. He then tells me that he did have something for me, but it had nothing to do with the previous day's situation.

He then pulls out a gift card to Red Lobster from his pocket and places it on my desk. He follows that up with saying, I promise this has nothing to do with yesterday. I got this for my birthday a couple weeks back, and I'm allergic to shellfish, so I'd rather it goes to someone who could use it. It was a nice gesture, and I appreciated it, so I told him thank you.

And then I told him that I was actually talking to my sister about wanting to go together to Red Lobster recently. and it was perfect timing. He kind of laughed it off and told me that he hoped I had a good time, and then left. This interaction was completely different from the other two times.

The rest of the week goes by, and my sister and I actually made plans to go have lunch, and then see a movie afterwards. We used the gift card and then went to the movies, and as we were leaving, who else did we run into, but Peter. At first, my mind was freaking out,

thinking about how awkward he was and how much I didn't want to deal with it. But then, our last interaction came to mind, and I thought the least I could do was thank him. He saw me and walked over, we said hi, I introduced him to my sister, told her he was the co-worker that gave me the gift card that we had lunch on,

there were a couple moments of idle chit-chat, and then we all went our separate ways. It wasn't until we got into the car, that my sister pointed out that Peter had the same haircut as my fiancé, and that he dressed the same as him. It was a bit out of nowhere. At first, I had to think about it, but I just told her that it wasn't an uncommon look for guys. Honestly, it wasn't too crazy to say, think that more than one guy could have the same look. She wasn't wrong.

They both had their hair shaved on the sides and back, but longer on the top and pushed to one side. The clothing thing I couldn't really speak on because I didn't see it. I ignored it and moved on. Over the next couple of weeks, a few more strange things happened that had me a little curious. I would be talking to my sister over Facebook Messenger about craving chocolate-covered strawberries. The next morning, Peter walked in with a box of chocolate-covered strawberries.

He said they were for anyone that wanted them, but he wanted to see if I wanted some first. I was talking to her about Game of Thrones, and then Peter would bring up how much he loved Game of Thrones out of nowhere. I would read a story on Google News, and Peter would casually mention something that was related to the story. As those two weeks pushed on, everything was just too strange, and I was kind of feeling like he was watching me,

and waiting for me to do anything so he could bring it up and make it seem like he was also interested. Despite our few friendly chats, I pretty much just stopped talking to him, and had fallen back into that he's a bit of a creep mentality. Then, I randomly got some text messages from him. It was Monday, and I was doing my stalking,

just waiting for Peter to show up and make things weird again, when my phone goes off. I looked to see what it was, and it was a text message that said, Hey, it's Peter. I just wanted to let you know, I won't be in today. I'm not feeling too well. Not only did I not know how the hell he got a hold of my phone number, I didn't know why he was texting me.

I just simply responded with, hey, this is Callie. I think you texted the wrong person. He replied saying that he meant to tell me because he didn't want me to worry. I just put my phone away and decided to not even bother replying. He started texting me good morning every single day after that. I think I responded once or twice, but after that I just started to ignore him. Then, another Monday rolls around. He walks up to the supply cubicle with a huge smile on his face.

I sigh and brace myself for another conversation with this guy that was just not getting it. He then pulls a small jewelry box. from his pocket and opens it. It has two earrings that look like they are legitimate, real pearls, and then asks me if I wanted them.

I asked why the hell he was trying to give me pearl earrings? And he responded saying his mom bought them for his sister, but she didn't like them. So he said he would give them to someone that would

like them. I just stood there and stared at him for several moments before my brain just snapped. I sat down on the desk of the cubicle and took a deep breath before basically telling Peter that he needed to back off, and that while he was a nice guy, I was engaged and that he wasn't going to get anywhere with me. I'm sure I said more, and I'm sure I was a bit more aggressive, but that's the gist of it. His smile faded, and he honestly looked like he was about to cry. He slammed the box closed and shoved it back in his pocket. He then stared at me straight in the eyes and said,

What does Brian have that I don't? I look better than him. I have a better job than him. I can give you anything you want, and yet you still won't give me a chance. I'm a nice guy. I don't know why you don't see that. He then turned around and stormed off. I had no idea how to take this.

I had never told him my fiancé's name. He should have no idea what my fiancé did for a living, nor what he looked like. I know what some of you may be thinking. I mentioned Facebook earlier, so maybe he got on there and scraped that information off of it. But that wouldn't really have been possible. I have my Facebook locked down to the point where you can't see anything or pretty much even find me unless I add you as a friend. Brian's is locked down the same way, and there's no way he could have really found either of us. Then, a thought hit me.

Peter was in desktop support, and he had full access to my work computer. He seemed to know everything I was doing. on that system, and he seemed to know everything I was talking about to people that I talked to on Facebook. To make a long story short, I called someone from the information security team up, and I explained the whole situation to him. I told him how Peter was acting creepy. I told him that he seemed to know everything I was doing on my system at all times, and about

the situation that morning. At first, I'm not sure that he was interested. it wasn't until I told him about the Facebook conversations that he seemed to change to taking it seriously. He asked me if I had ever logged in to my Facebook on my work computer. I unfortunately had to tell him that I had, and that I knew I wasn't supposed to. He said he didn't care about that.

He asked me to open Facebook on my phone, and me went through to the spot in the security settings where you can see all of your open sessions. He told me to do the force logout of every session, so I did. After a few minutes, we refreshed it, and, sure enough, there was a session that was connected that was not my phone. He told me to grab my laptop and to come with him, which led to me having a meeting with the chief security officer about this whole situation. I was nervous as hell, but he clearly had an idea of what may have been. going on.

The end result of these conversations and a very brief investigation, Peter, being in desktop support, had managed to remotely install remote access software on my system, as well as a key logger. When they went down to talk to him, they found that he had a browser open,

and he was logged in to my Facebook account, because he had gotten my password. He had every single photo from my Facebook, downloaded and in a folder on the computer. He had the software up and running and was watching my screen and what I was doing on my work computer at all times. He'd been watching the conversations, watching what I was searching,

watching what I was just talking about, and he was apparently taking notes. Over a couple of months, Peter had almost literally started his own person, file on me, and he was doing everything he could to be someone that I would get with. He, of course, tried to tell them that what he was doing with the remote software was legitimate so that he could give tech support if needed. But when they asked him about why he was logged into my personal Facebook, well, he didn't

have an answer. Thankfully, Peter was fired. I worked there for another few months, but then decided that I wanted to move on to something else. Like I said, this was a few years ago, and thankfully, I haven't heard from Peter since, and I genuinely hope I never have to see his face again. My camping story comes from a time when I was actually still a child, probably around 12 years old, the absolute oldest. Back when I was young,

my dad wanted me to get into hunting. He was a hunter, his dad was a hunter, and so on. Me, I never really had the drive to kill an animal, even for food. While I understand that he was trying to instill a sense of survivalism in me,

and trying to teach me what I would have to do if society collapsed, I'm now 47, and society has yet to collapse. At this point, if it did, I'd probably just accept it and live off cans of spam for a few months before I succumb to the elements.

Completely irrelevant to the story, my apologies. Anyways, the story took place on a hunting trip that my dad had set up for myself and him during the summer break of that year. He had planned to take me out to a hunting ground, that he used to hunt on, and that his friend owned. The plan was that we would sit up there and find the hunting tower and just wait for the deer to come along to shoot them. Pretty standard hunting trip, really.

We got all of our gear together, and we headed out early in the morning to get to the spot where he and I would be setting up the tents. I packed more than I needed, mostly because I was the kind of kid that would throw a fit about having to wear the same. same pants for two days in a row, and we were supposed to be out for the whole weekend. After lugging everything into the truck, double-checking to make sure we had our tents and camping equipment, I got in the car, and, to be completely honest with you, fell asleep as soon as the tires hit the asphalt. I know he drove for an hour or two, and then I woke up to the feeling of the truck going off the road and onto the gravel dirt paths. He pulled up to the spot where we were supposed to be at, and he asked if I was excited.

I told him I was, despite the fact that I was barely cognizant. We grabbed our tents and all of our gear and whatnot, and then I asked him where we were supposed to set up the tents. Much to my dismay, he tells me that we would have to hike about ten minutes to get close to the lookout tower. I remember the look on my face when I stared, daggers at him. He laughed his ass off. Then we started our trek into the woods. After about ten minutes or so, he pointed next to where the tower was and told me that that was where we would be in the next morning, when we actually started hunting. Then he told me to set up the tents, plural.

I asked what he was going to be doing, and he said that he was going to scout the area and see what was around. Then he dropped his tent and told me he'd be back in a little bit. At first I was pissed, that he was making me do all the work, but I went to it. I set up his tent first to be nice, and then I started struggling with mine. After having a difficult time with it and saying words that my dad would have swatted me for, I finally got them both set up, and we got our gear in the respective tents. After that, I actually got into mine and went back to sleep. I wasn't asleep that long, probably 15 minutes or so,

and I was woken up by my dad shouting my name close by. I quietly responded saying, Yeah, Dad, I'm in my tent. And then put my head back down. Then I was shaken awake by my dad opening my tent and telling me that I needed to get up right now. Now. I asked what was going on, thinking at first he was just messing with me. But the look on his face told me very quickly that he wasn't joking. I got up, I exited my tent, and he told me that we needed to leave immediately. I told him that we had just gotten there and asked why we needed to go. And he told me to come with him to the truck so we could leave. I asked about our camping gear, and he basically told him. told me to shut up and do what he told me.

Being 12, I wasn't going to argue with him any more than I had. So at this point, my dad had dragged me away from the campground, left all of her gear there, and was in a hurry. So the only thing that I could think to do was, again, ask what was wrong. He didn't respond at first, but when I asked a second time, he once again told me to stop asking questions and kept driving. Obviously, I was annoyed, but I just sat there and stared out the window and pouted. I got even more confused when he pulled in to the police station and told me to stay in the car.

I was going to ask why, but he was quick to get out and run up to the station before I could. I just continued to sit there and stare at nothing in particular. particular. Then, after about 10 minutes, he ran back out and we got back on the road. But this time, a cop cruiser was following us. Before I could ask anything, he literally told me to just keep my mouth shut and not ask any more questions at all. He pulled back up to the spot where our gear was and told me to stay put. Then he and the officer started off into the forest. Again, I was 12, and it was the late 80s. I was not about to just sit there and do nothing, bored out of my mind.

Honestly, though, I kind of wish I had. I waited for a few minutes, and then followed behind my dad and the officer, just far enough that I knew where they were, but distance enough that they probably wouldn't have noticed me. I followed them for a bit, and then they stopped, and my dad and the officer, were standing by a broken fence line. Basically, it looked like someone had knocked down the post to a barbed-wired fence, and it hadn't been replaced yet. I just stood there, and I heard my dad explaining things to the officer.

He told them that we were there to hunt over the weekend, that he knew the owner of the land, and that he was just walking the perimeter to check things out. Then, he said that he noticed the damaged fence and went over to check it out. out and said, I came over to check the damage so I could let him know about it, and that's when I saw her. I may have been young, but I was able to put two and two together. Him freaking out, wanting to leave, getting the police, and it's exactly what you're thinking.

Apparently, when he went ahead and checked out the area, he saw a woman's body lying in the brush. I later found out that it was actually a young woman around 16 that had gone missing only a couple days prior, and the cops had determined that her body was likely to have been dumped by whomever had taken her life. So this was literally my one and only hunting slash camping trip, and the only time that I ever did go camping. And I can technically say that I did go camping, because I slept in the tent for a little while, and that means it was camping. Jokes aside, this is the only time my dad took me out on one of these trips. And I don't think he even got together with his buddies to hunt after this.

Apparently, there's something about finding a dead body in the woods that ruins camping for you, no matter how long you've been doing it. This happened a few years back in 2016. My girlfriend at the time, Erica, and her friend, Elle, decided we would make spring break plans for the four of us. Myself, Erica, L, and then her boyfriend, O. We thought if we booked together, we could get a better deal on the hotel and maybe the car rental and any place that we wanted to go. We went with Mexico because my girlfriend had been, and she spoke for. flew into Spanish, so we thought we would be okay.

I had been working a lot more to save up for this, so I decided to put it all in my name, so it would all be together, and they would just pay me back. Obviously, I wasn't worried about my girlfriend, but I didn't know her friend and her boyfriend much. Stupidly, I trusted them. We'd gone to a few parties, and they were there. the guy seemed okay. They'd only been together for like a year by the time we went on this trip. He was quiet and stuck around L, but I thought it was just because he didn't know a lot of people.

Nothing odd ever stuck out to me. So as we were starting to go through the reservations and plans, Erica decided it would be easier to start a group chat with the four of us to make arrangements. I hate group chats. She knows this, and she also knew that I was down for whatever as long as it was within our budget. But I think she may have done it for a reason as I started realizing, as she would ask in there what hotel they may prefer, and if they wanted any specific accommodations. I would see L start typing, and then O would always answer.

He was always curt with his responses, and would not budge on what he wanted. He wanted separate rooms, not even one of those. those joined rooms, they had to be completely separated. If we did a car rental, he said he wanted one for himself, and then we could have another one. We were trying to do this as a group, so we weren't planning on getting more than the one car, but he was adamant that he wanted one, and he wanted it in his name then. So we agreed, but said he would have to pay for all the car because I wasn't going to be paying for something I couldn't even use. He went silent for a while, and after a few hours,

Elle actually responded saying she would pay for it and to put it in her name. So I guess we have finally agreed to that. After two long-ass days of figuring everything out that should have only taken two hours, and more money than we intended to spend, we were finally booked. But I was supposed to be paid back for half, so. I wasn't as concerned about it. We had three weeks before the trip. L and O said they would pay their part of theirs next week when they got paid.

No problem. Next week came around and Elle gave my girlfriend the money for the car. Not a word from O on any of this. Elle told my girl that O was going through things, apologized that he hadn't sent the money, and would next week. Wouldn't you know it? the next week rolls around and he still didn't pay. So I was actually an ass and I put in the chat that I appreciated Elle paying for the car so quickly.

This money was going to help with our food, anything we wanted to buy, and for emergencies. So yes, I was depending on getting it back. Literally within the hour, Elle called Erica and said she was sorry and that she would help pay it back, and that she would help take care of our meals if it's not paid by then. I did feel bad because I didn't feel like it should have been up to L. I didn't expect Erica to pay for all of it either. That's just the right thing to do. Because of this, I let it go.

Because I wasn't going to make this girl I barely knew pay for my food. Anyways, onward to the time of the trip. Erica and I had someone drop us off at the airport. I'm the type to always be early, so we were there an hour before. Erica messaged Elle to see how they were doing, and they didn't respond. It wasn't a big deal at first until we got closer and closer to the time, and she finally responded by saying they were almost there. I wanted to board the plane instead of waiting for them, but Erica insisted we waited.

Again, I was glad we did, because when they finally arrived, He looked pissed off and was carrying a duffel bag. I may not be a chick, but I definitely packed more than a small duffel bag worth of stuff for a trip for five days to a completely different country. In the same manner, Erica was excited, and as most women do, she was wearing a nice sundress and she had her makeup done. Elle, however, had her hair in a messy bun and looked like she'd just pulled something out of the basket. No makeup, but she looked exhausted. She was also rolling behind her two suitcases. It's not unusual for a girl, but also not usual to see her with some girly bag,

and matching carry-on, and then a dark blue one. I'm thinking, is this guy really making her pull both bags around? I remember Erica running up to Elle and grabbing one of her bags and then said something that I couldn't hear. O walked up to me and his manner completely changed. He was trying to act like we were best buds. It was a weird situation, but we boarded, and thankfully we were on our way. Once we did finally get there, it did not get better. We got the car, no issue, but the hotel was not at all what we were expecting.

The pictures must have been when they first opened, because... It looked run down to hell. The outside just looked sad. The inside wasn't much better, but at least the AC worked. The lobby had a small desk to the side with an older lady at it. Erica started speaking to her to get us checked in, and she led us to our rooms. The halls were musty and the wallpaper was warping towards the top. The carpet was old and stained by the many feet that had walked down these halls, too.

The rooms were not much different. The bed was big and comfortable, but I couldn't tell if it was cream-colored or if they were supposed to be white. It also reeked of cigarette smoke, and these were supposed to be non-smoking. So not really a good start. But the lady was really nice. She even spoke English and asked if we needed anything, so I couldn't bring myself to completely. plane. We decided that we should go find a place to have lunch so we could just forget everything and start having fun. We left our stuff in our rooms and we headed out to find a place. There were

a few buildings that were boarded up nearby and we had so many eyes on us. It wasn't a good feeling, so I tried to keep Erica close. We did find a place to eat and most of the time there, the girls talked, and I joined in every once in a while. I tried involving O as well, but he wasn't interested. He was on his phone most the time, and would look over at Elle sometimes, and she would just quiet down. I was starting to not get a good feeling about this guy. Little things like this would happen everywhere we went. We would start having fun, but he wasn't hardly laughing or joining in.

He was on his phone. A lot. On the second night, we went out to have drinks. This was the first time that he started loosening up and was kind of fun to be around. However, L now started looking nervous. Sure enough, we all learned he was not a fun drunk to be around. After a while, he became really aggressive. Groping and being inappropriate.

with not only L, but the server as well. When confronted by another server, he became angry, was yelling and threatening them. I tried to calm him down, but he acted like I was the enemy too. He did end up punching someone there, and of course we were kicked out fast. Of course, being the foreigners, people must have seen us as a problem, so other places weren't letting us in, so we got screwed. I told Erica we should probably just go back to our room for the night, which she agreed. Elle asked if we all wanted to just hang out together and, oh, refused.

We all went to our separate ways. I could tell Erica wasn't feeling good about this either. So we went back to our rooms. It didn't take long, but we started hearing a lot of loud bangs, like doors slamming. Erica asked me to go with her to check on them. I didn't hesitate. Our room was in the same hall, opposite side and two down. We could tell as we got closer, the banging and now the yelling,

was coming from their room. I knocked on the door, but no one answered. However, all the noise stopped. I knocked again, no answer. Erica shouted out asking Elle if she wanted a soda from the machine, and the door finally opened. It was O. He didn't have a shirt on, his hair was a mess,

and he had like scratch marks on his chest. Erica tried to play dumb. I know her, she's not the confrontational type, but not me. I immediately asked where Elle was, and he said it wasn't any of my business and tried to stop me from coming into his room. I tried to push my way through

when he immediately slugged me. All I remember after that was going at it for what had to be a few moments when Erica yelled for me. I managed to get O back enough to get the door closed and him out. He was trying his damnedest to break that door down. When I got over there,

Elle was in the bathroom curled up in a ball with blood all over her face and welts and other marks on her arms. Erica said that we had to be to call the cops, but I said we needed to figure out a way to get out before he got in because the windows didn't open. After what seemed like forever, the slamming finally stopped. I went and checked the door, and he wasn't there. I opened the door quietly to make sure he wasn't hiding around the corner. When it was clear, we took L to our room so we could figure out what

we needed to do next. That's when she told us that O had been abusive, for a very long time. But he hadn't gotten this physical before. She said that she had tried to avoid being alone because she knew that he was already so pissed off, and it wasn't going to end well. They went to their room, and she went to take a shower, and that's when he laid into her. She also said that she doesn't know where he got it from since he's been here, but he pulled out a knife on her and told her he would leave her here and that no one would find her.

Again, Erica suggested that we call the cops, and we did, but they didn't do much, as expected, because he was nowhere to be found. We, of course, suggested that she stay in our room tonight and then we would just go home tomorrow. problem was L's passport and belongings were in her room. The police were still there, so we asked them to stay long enough to get her stuff to make sure that he didn't show up. But somehow, he managed to get back into their room in between them and took almost everything. He took her purse, including her wallet, which had her money, cards, and ID and her suitcase, but luckily not her carry-on. which she hid under her side of the bed, and in which she kept her passport.

Unfortunately, she expected this to happen, and wanted to be safe in case something did. We slept the most we could. We started packing up to leave the next morning, and I told the girls to stay in their room, and I would make sure our taxi to the airport was here because, of course, he took the car. I was glad I didn't put it in my name, but I felt bad that Elle did, because who knows what he was going to do with it. The path was clear, so I walked our stuff out to the car and got the girls in, when I noticed a car in the parking lot just sitting there, and it was him. I tried to stay calm and rush the girls in without telling them. I didn't want to worry anyone, but I did text Erica to let her notice.

No, so at least she knew the situation. The dude followed us all the way to the airport. He sat there in the car, though, and didn't get out, which was odd. I shuffled them out, got into the airport, and tried to buy tickets as fast as we could. I had to use a credit card, but I didn't care. I wasn't feeling too good about this, and Erica could see the fear in me. Unfortunately, the closest thing we could find, find was a flight to the neighboring state that was starting to board, and I just took it so we could

get the hell out of there. We stayed in South Carolina for the night, and then flew home from there. Sadly, Elle had to stop her credit cards and her debit card, because he apparently tried to get home too. Erica told me that Elle filed a restraining order and never heard from him again, thankfully. but news always spreads. We found out that he was arrested on domestic battery charges a few years later. I hope that girl was just as lucky to get away from him, though. Overall, don't go on vacation, especially somewhere you've never been, with somebody that you hardly know.

This happened several years ago, when a few high school buddies of mine and I decided that, we wanted to get together and do our own kind of a 10-year reunion celebration. We were never the cool kids, so we kind of just thought that it would be a waste of time to even bother with the real reunion and decided that a camping trip would better fit our interests.

We had all kind of dispersed around the Midwest, so it was difficult to get all of the logistics sorted out. but my buddy Ray had family that lived out west in pretty much the middle of nowhere, but in a really nice, nature-laden part of the state. What was even better, they owned some remote land, and they were okay with us setting up our camp on their property so long as we didn't cause any damage to the natural formations. So it was an absolute win on our part.

and we set up the dates and times and decided that we would all go out the first weekend in May and spend some of the week out in a really nice area, just enjoying the weather and the surrounding nature. I was honestly super excited to go on this trip, as I hadn't seen a couple of the guys since we graduated, though we'd kept in touch over things like Facebook. The logistics went like this. I was going to head out that way by car with my pal Joe. Ray and Mark were going to drive out together, and Brent was going to drive out with Dave.

Basically, it was going to be a road trip with two of us per car, heading from different locations. And we had a hotel that we would be staying in for that first night. We were all going to meet up there and then head out to the campgrounds. as that would just make it easier for everyone to go at the same time. Like I said, I was pretty psyched, as this was probably the most exciting thing that I had done in a long time, and I loved road trips.

The drive there goes about as expected, fairly uneventful, with it pretty much just being a drive across parts of the Midwest, though the mountainous region was, obviously gorgeous. I was the one driving for the first half and Joe for the second, and we got there in pretty good time considering how far it was. We were the second group to make it to the hotel,

and the other guys, Ray and Mark, pulled in a few hours later. We all spent the night at the local bar catching up, playing pool, and just having a great night. After spending a few hours out and enjoying ourselves, we opted to go ahead and call it a night and head back to our hotel rooms. When the morning rolled around, we had our fancy hotel breakfast of just-add-water eggs and microwaved bacon, then all headed back out onto the road. We followed Ray's car for about 45 minutes or so, and we ended up in an area that pretty much seemed like the middle of nowhere.

He parked and we all got out. Joe and I kind of gave him a look like, Are you sure we're supposed to be here? But he reassured us that he knew the area from when he spent the summer with his aunt as a kid. In the end, all we could do was trust him. We parked the cars and got all of our camping gear out, walked a couple hundred yards away until we had all decided that the spot was perfect and started setting up camp.

After a bit of time, we all got our tents set up, and we decided to set them up with the six tents in a semicircle facing towards where we had parked our cars. And once night started rolling in, we set up our small pit and lit a fire. Then we all sat around it and started reminiscing about our high school years. It was probably one of the best nights I've had in a very long time, just sitting there with my old pals from high school. talking about the days when we were young and then catching up on random things in our lives. What made it all better was that the property owned by Ray's aunt was legitimately in the middle of nowhere. There were only dirt roads. There were no streetlights and there was no cell reception.

It was probably around 10 or so when Brent pointed out that there was a car driving down one of the dirt roads. We all kind of sat there and watched it past. It was pretty far away from us, but it was the only car that we'd seen all night. Ray laughed, and he said it was probably just one of the neighbors cutting through the backroads for whatever reason. He mentioned that the dirt roads over this way were pretty much used only by people that knew his aunt, and by people that were running illegal goods, mostly because the cops never came this way. Dave asked about what kind of illegal goods, as if he was going to purchase some, and as nonchalantly as he could be, Ray just says, oh, you know, drugs for the cartel. Obviously, we were all a bit shaken up by this. He didn't tell us that we were going to be sleeping on a cartel trail.

He tells us that it's fine and that we didn't have to worry. His reasoning was pretty much that if they were running drugs across this area, they weren't going to pay us any mind, because then it would look more suspicious. They would just pass on by and keep going, never giving us a second glance. All I could do at this point was trust him. After a couple more hours of chatting and drinking the beer that we had brought, we all decided that it would be a good idea to call it a night. We all got in our tents. And for some reason, I was struggling to fall asleep.

I was lying there for about an hour and a half, tossing and turning, and just generally feeling uncomfortable, when I noticed that there was a light shining in the direction of our tents. I sat up, and I watched it as it got brighter and closer for a few moments. Then, it just stopped moving. Within a few seconds, the silence of the small forest was interrupted with the sound of a gunshot, and then an old man. man yelling for all of us to get out of our tents. Inside, I was freaking out. I was obviously thinking something about the cartel coming to rob us or murder us for being on their turf. In my defense, I was tired and a bit buzzed. He started shouting again that if we didn't get out of our tents, then he would come in and get us out, and that he had plenty of zip cuffs to make that happen,

which was more than enough for me to get my ass up and open the door to my tent. I think the other guys were just as freaked out, because everyone else exited their tent around the same time, except for Ray. We all got out and in front of us was an old man holding a handgun in his right hand and a shotgun strapped to his back. It was pretty clear that he was in control of this situation, and he was going to be ready to take on any threat. I remember him saying something along the lines of,

I saw you boys out here a few hours ago. I gave you plenty of time to leave. Now we're going to have to do this the hard way. Before he unclipped his collection of zip cuffs, all of us were in a mild panic, but apparently I was the only one that thought that we should say something. Wait, sir, we know who owns this land. We're not here to cause any.

trouble or anything. If we need to leave, we can find a new place to set up camp, or go back to the hotel or something. He paused for a moment and looked over at me. Then he asked me how we knew the owner. I tried to tell him that she was a family member of one of us, but he was still in the tent. At first, he looked like he didn't believe me, but after I pointed to the only closed tent and said he was in there, he motioned for me to open the tent and say, he was in there. He motioned for me to open the tent and said, Don't do anything stupid. You move wrong at all,

and they'll be burying your ass out here. This statement made me all but piss my pants. But I moved over to the tent with my hands up, and then slowly unzipped it. I tried to wake Ray up by saying, Ray, get up. There's a crazy dude with a gun out here. Of course, he had more to drink than I did,

and he was less than responsive. I whispered shouted it again, and after a few seconds he finally opened his eyes. I told him that he needed to get outside immediately because we were all about to die. He slowly and grogly sits up and then stands to get out of the tent. After a few seconds of taking in the scene, he half-drunkenly says, Oh, hey, Mr. Carls, what are you doing out here? The look on the old man's face changed completely. He went from murderous intent to looking like he just saw his own grandson for the first time.

He quickly holstered his gun and stepped forward to give Ray a hug. After the tensions were a bit more settled and we were done having our panic attacks, we learned who this man was. Ray told us that Mr. Carls was his aunt's next-door neighbor and had been for a long time, and as long as they'd lived there, apparently, and the last time they'd seen each other, Ray was around 12 years old. When we asked why he was creeping around Ray's aunt's property,

ready to put a hole in anyone he saw, he responded by telling us that, apparently, Ray's aunt was out of town, and she had asked Mr. Carls to watch the property for trespassers, a job that the old man took very seriously. Also, his aunt had apparently forgotten to mention to the old man that we would be coming up for our camping trip. So when he saw our camp, he thought we were going to be there for a little bit and leave, which was a common thing for drifters. When he saw that we were still there a few hours later, he apparently strapped up and decided that he was going to take us all in to the sheriff's department himself.

Hence, the zip cuffs. In the end, we stayed the full week and enjoyed the time together. Mr. Carls even came out to have a beer with us a couple times and brought us some food that his wife had made. Not exactly the norm for camping cuisine, but it was quite nice. I will say that, as much as I really did enjoy this trip and hanging out with some old friends, having a gun shot right outside my tent and then having the gun pointed at my face, because this old man thought we were trespassers

really made it to where I don't think I want to go camping again. I've only had one bad experience with the Deep Web, and it was way more than enough, in my personal opinion. I'm not an overly technical person. I'm not a tech genius. I'm no hacker extraordinaire, but I do know my way around the internet, and I have an understanding of what indexes,

and non-indexed pages, Deep Web, actually are. I took a few classes on Internet security, and there were a couple of sections dedicated to the Deep Web and Dark Web, or at least explaining what they were, how the technology worked, like Onion Routing and encryption, and I felt confident enough to get on the Deep Web, and I thought I could keep myself safe. and that confidence was my first mistake.

But in my defense, this situation could have happened on the surface web. It just made it that much creepier that it was on the deep web. Because I wasn't interested in any of the illegal content on the dark web, I kept myself confined to the part of the deep web that was closer to the surface, basically the wading pool of the deep web. Of these pages, I mostly visited things like forums and discussion boards. I had this personal appreciation for anonymous conversation, and while I wasn't a troll or aggressive or anything, I was a bit more out with my opinion and personality, as there wasn't a name

associated with the statement. Now, in order for this all to make sense, I kind of have to explain about what happened, and then go back to explain the how, because it won't really make sense otherwise. As stated, I spent a good amount of time on the forums. I spoke with people that I honestly considered my friends, and I learned a lot. It was actually kind of nice, kind of like there was a place that I belonged, like a bar, but with text and random people that were faceless. Now, on the main forum that I would use,

most people signed their posts and messages with a pseudonym. Of course, there was no control over this, and anyone could use anyone else's name on their post, and no one would ever be the wiser. Strangely enough, it was kind of an honor system, and most people followed it. My name on this site was, ironically, no girls on the net.

It was supposed to be a joke, a play on the claim that there are no girls on the internet, just guys pretending to be girls. This was ironic because I was a girl. Anyways, on this forum, I was fairly well known to a lot of the people in my subboards, and people would refer to me as girl. I know, not exactly specific, but typically when, someone typed girl, they were talking about me. Anyways, I was friends with a lot of people on this page, and they were all fairly decent.

Never ran into anyone that I thought was really creepy, for the most part. That fell apart when I got a message on Facebook one day, of all places, from some guy that I had never seen before named Derek. And that message just said, Hey girl. At first, I didn't put two and two together. I thought he was just being a douche, and I told him as such. My response was simply, What an incredibly rude and derogatory way to refer to someone.

Give me one reason I should even bother responding to you beyond this. And this guy responds with, I thought that's what everyone called you. At least, that's what I've always. always called you. You're no girls on the net, right? When I read this, I was a bit freaked out. How had this person found my personal Facebook? There was absolutely no connection between me and that account,

and I was always careful to not post anything that could be considered personally identifiable, and I had no idea how he had connected the dots. I asked who he was, and he once again asked if that that was. that was my username. I didn't want to tell him yes, but I also didn't want to say anything that may indirectly confirm that it was me. So I ended up just saying that it wasn't me, and that I hoped he found whoever it was he was looking for. He responded with a smiley face, and then that was it for the conversation. I thought that was the end of it.

I thought he had bought it, but... I was wrong. I was very wrong. About a week later, I got a letter in the mail. And while this was a bit off, in today's day and age, that is, I didn't think too much of it. I took it in, and I opened it. And then I pulled out the letter. It was a printed letter, pretty much just said,

Don't lie to me, girl. I know it's you. I want to get to know. know you better. Here's my phone number. Shoot me a text when you get this. P.S. I will know that you got it. I was seriously freaked out. This guy was sending me letters, which meant that he knew my address. Not only that, but he claimed that he would somehow know if I got the letter and didn't tell him. How? That's when I looked over at the envelope to see if I could find a return.

turn address, and then I realized that, of course, there wasn't one. On top of that, there weren't any stamps on the envelope either, which meant that it hadn't gone through the post office. It was most likely hand-delivered, which then told me how he was going to know if I got it. My next mistake was calling the number. If I was going to fix this problem, I was going to have to do it head on. I pulled out my phone and I called him. When he answered, he started off with, hey, sweetheart. I was legitimately disgusted. My response to him was, I'm not your sweetheart. I don't even know who the hell you are. How did you find my information? He avoided this question, but started saying that he was in love with me and that he

needed me in his life. I, once again, told him that I had no idea who he was, and that I wasn't interested. He told me to get interested, or things were going to be difficult between us. I'd had enough. I told him that he was a creep, and that he needed to get a life, and then I hung up. He tried calling me back a couple times, but I ignored it. Then he texted me, and I think I nearly pissed myself. The message that he sent me said, You're going to love me, one way or another. Don't make me hurt you.

Which he then followed up with. See you later, sweetheart. Obviously, I was paying. This dude was a super creep and had no issues with being creepy out in the open like this. But I really didn't have much in ways of options since he hadn't actually done anything. Being a creep isn't really a crime until or unless they escalate. Well, it escalated pretty quickly. It was actually that same night when things happened.

around 8 o'clock that evening, I heard a knock on my door. I, unfortunately, knew it was most likely him. I pulled the curtain open from the side window, and I saw this guy standing there in a hooded sweatshirt and black pants. Pretty obvious red flag in this case. He stood there at the door and just kept knocking. Then he started yelling that, He knew I was home.

I stayed off to the side where he couldn't see me and dialed 911 on my cell phone. When they asked what the emergency was, I said, loud enough for him to hear me, that there was some creep trying to break into my house, hoping that it would be enough to get him to go away. What I didn't expect was him to smash the glass of my front door with a hammer, and then reach in to unlock the door. What he didn't expect was my brother, a trained police officer, to come around the corner with his gun locked on him the second he stepped in to the house. As soon as my brother screamed, get on the ground, this guy started yelling, don't shoot me, and fell to his knees. My brother restrained him, and the cops eventually showed up to arrest him.

when they got him out and in their car, they came back to tell us what they had pulled off of him. This guy came with zip tie cuffs, a large knife, the hammer, obviously, and a pillowcase stuffed into the hoodie pocket. Basically, it was likely that he planned to kidnap me,

cuff me, put the pillowcase over my head, and then take me out to his van, which he had parked just outside. In the van, They found condoms, adult toys, and various other creeper things that I don't really want to think about right now. So that's the what. But the question becomes the how.

How did he find me? How did he know who I was? How did he connect my stupid username with me as a person? Easy. I was an idiot. And apparently I had clicked a link that he posted onto the forum. This guy had linked to something on the forum page that I was apparently interested in, and it had malware that loaded onto my system,

because I had some stupid software, like JavaScript or Flash or something, that was out of date and vulnerable. This guy was able to drop a key logger onto my system. That, plus those fantastic little things in Chrome and Firefox that will save your personal information for quicker entry, things like your address and name and all that. Yeah, that helped him tremendously. This guy had infected my system, and I had, unbeknownst to me,

given him all my personal information. Then he turned into the super creep. Like I said above, this technically could have happened on the surface web, but I think it was more likely to happen on the Deep Web Forum because I had taken my anonymity for, granted. I thought I was safe. I thought I was invincible because my name was not connected to the board, or the posts. So, I guess, take this as a lesson. Do not think that anonymity is invincibility.

And make sure you always update your computer. I'm 19, and I work for a church-based summer camp in the Midwest, as assistant head counselor. Basically, second in command. For privacy reasons, I won't give the name away. And even if I did, you probably wouldn't have heard of it. It's a fairly small community of churches that does the summer camp. Unlike other church camps, we don't really focus on religion during the camp. It's more of an actual camping experience.

Sure, there is. There's a day or two where we do cover a number of parts of the Bible, but for six of the eight days, it's pretty much just enjoying nature, hiking, birdwatching, fishing, etc. The land that we set up on actually belongs to one of the pastors of the church. It's got a lot of woods, a small pond, and on one side is backed against a small cornfield. The whole thing is about 20 to 30 minutes away from society. My point in this is, despite the fact that it is an area for enjoying nature, if there were an emergency, we wouldn't have to wait long for an ambulance or anything like that. In fact, you actually get a little bit of cell reception out in parts of the campground.

For the most part, we managed to keep the kids in line, but sometimes they wander into the field or we feel. find them taking impromptu hikes in the woods. Most of the time, this is fine, but the story is about the one time that it really wasn't fine, and the kids that were there were probably scarred for life. We were about halfway through the eight-day trip. We had already gone through one of the two Bible study days, and right about then is when the kids start to get restless and wants to wander off on their own. On this day, we had two or three boys do just that.

They wanted to go out and explore the cornfields on their own. I was dealing with the rest of the group and making sure everyone knew what activities they were supposed to be doing for the day. And when it came time for roll call, I realized that they weren't there. Not wanting to sound the alarm right away, I asked one of the other counselors to go check the bunks, and then asked my group if they had seen them. After a bit of interrogation, I finally got one of the kids to tell me that they had gone out into the field. Whenever this happens, we have to do a basic lockdown. Get all the kids back in the buildings and guard the doors just in case.

I called the other counselors in the Wauki and advised them that I was about to go look in the cornfield for the missing boys. They came out and rounded up the kids, and I started towards the field. As I get there, I finally see the group of boys running back towards the camp. All of them looking absolutely terrified. I'm thinking that they're all panicking because they realize they're probably about to get into trouble. So I take a deep breath and I calm myself. We're not supposed to reprimand the campers. We're supposed to talk to them as if we're negotiating or talking to an adult.

I raise my hand to get them to stop as they exit, and they beeline straight towards me. One of them looks like he's been crying and two of them are screaming incoherent gibberish at me. I calmly tell them that we needed to talk and that they should have told us that they were going out. When one of them finally squeezes out a word that I can understand. Dead, body. I immediately drop my camp counselor act and ask what the hell happened. One of the two boys was going off finally takes a breath and he tells me, We were out in the field, and we saw a trailer, so we decided to go see if it was locked.

When we got closer, we noticed that it smelled bad. We opened the door, and there was a dead body. Obviously, I was a bit freaked out, but I was also skeptical of their claim. I dropped the walkie, and I told the others that I had found the boys, but to keep everything locked down for the moment. Then I told the boys to take me to the trailer. They were hesitant at first, but I told them that I needed to make sure they weren't lying, and then we would need to report it to the police. They led me through the cornfields and in for a few minutes.

And sure enough, as they had mentioned, there was an old silver camper in the field. It was a small camper trailer, like the kind that one person could comfortably sleep in, too, if you didn't want any privacy. seeing this kind of made me nervous. If they were telling the truth about the trailer, then I was worried that they were telling the truth about what was in it. I held my breath, I walked over to the door, and I grabbed the handle, and I pulled the door open.

The smell that hit me was intense, and I immediately slammed it back shut, pulling away and trying not to gag. I grabbed the radio again and told the others to call the police, police immediately. One of the counselors tried to prod me for more information, but I just repeated that they needed to call the cops. I took the boys back to the

head counselor's office, and I asked them to sit outside while I explained what had happened, and all of us waited for the officers to arrive. When they got there, we told them what had happened, and I took them out to the trailer. They verified and they called in the corner

and did everything they needed. to do. I went back to my boss's office and just sat there with the boys. They were all petrified of this situation. They were probably thinking that they were in trouble and the cops were going to think they killed this guy. I explained to them that they were fine and they did a good thing since they told us about it and the police would be able to figure out what happened and that they weren't in any trouble. I don't think it helped in any way. There's not much more to the after this. They took the body, and they notified the owner of the property. When all was said and done, it was found that the man in the trailer was actually a member of the church,

and he'd been missing for about two weeks. Come to find out, he had actually committed suicide in the trailer. They found a bottle of hard pain pills and a large empty bottle of Jack Daniels. How he knew about the camper is beyond me. and the owner of the land had no idea either. He said that it was just an old trailer that he left out in the field for storing tools. Somehow, he knew about the trailer and decided that it was a good place to follow through with his decisions. Honestly, I'm never going to forget that smell, and thinking about it still makes me want to gag. But I really feel bad for those boys.

I'm going to bet that they'll never forget this whole event, and they're going to need therapy to get past this. This happened when I was 15 and going on 16. I'm also an only child, so while, yes, people may think I'm lucky because I get more than some households with multiple children, I would much rather have siblings. It can get very lonely and boring. With that being said, I usually get to invite a friend or a cousin to go on trips, or to special events with my parents and I.

If we go to the movies, a theme park, the swimming pools, I usually bring someone. Spring break was not much different. My parents owned something like a condo in Florida, so sometimes we would go there for spring break, in the summer, or even for Christmas break. This year, we were going to be going there for spring break. again, and it was also important to me because my birthday is in April, so it was supposed to be part of my sweet 16. Because of this, my parents agreed to let me take a friend with me. As mentioned, I've had friends go with me on trips, but they've all been within the state. I've had cousins go with

me to Florida, but never a friend of my choice. Rightfully so, I was excited about this. It was also part of my birthday gift, so I felt like more of an adult. So after all the parent talk and confirming locations and that my parents weren't planning on selling off my friend, things were set and I was going to have some pre-birthday fun. My friend and I did have to keep our grades up in order to go, so after about a month of making sure everything was done and turned in on time, we were in the clear and on our way to Florida. We had plans to go to the beach, Universal Studios, and also just go to a mall or something to go shopping by ourselves.

We got to choose our seats on the airplane and sit a few rows in front of my parents so that we could have privacy. When we got there, they even let us sit at our own table at dinner. We did do a few things my parents wanted to do, like some kind of water boat ride thing with all these alligators around it, and we went to the Hard Rock Cafe because my dad is obsessed with that place. Things were going normal for a while, but I will definitely say that my arrogance got the best of me,

thinking that I was an adult. So the day it came for us to go to Universal Studios. This is where we first started having troubles. My parents were still with us the entire time, They didn't always go on the rides, but they were there when we got on, and then they would be at the exit once it was over. On some rides that we had to wait on, we were standing there, people watching, and noticed one guy in particular. He stood out because, one, he didn't have any kids with him, or anyone else, and two, he had on one of those tank tops with a muscular torso on it to make it look like it was your own. own. Those just look weird on anyone, but especially so on him. He ended up on one of the rides we

went on, and he just stared at us the entire time. And we sat in the back of one of the rides so he couldn't stare at us, but he even looked back at us before it started and smiled. We were young and didn't really know how to react, so we just waved and smiled back. And we saw him a couple more times, but he was never around when my parents were with us. Since he didn't really do anything, though, we didn't bother telling them and just tried to enjoy our time there. We were there for most of the days, so we were pretty tired the next day. We wanted to go to the mall, but my parents said that we should just hang out there,

go to the beach to relax, and then go tomorrow. We ultimately agreed, but the beach was looking pretty busy. so we stayed in for most of the day doing our hair and makeup. My mom said she was going to run to the store to pick stuff up for dinner, and that my dad would be working on some things, so they agreed to let us go to the beach for a while by ourselves, since it was within walking distance of the condo. Again, it was pretty exciting because we got to do something on our own,

so with our hair and makeup done, we grabbed our stuff to head to the beach. and we got out there and laid out our stuff and just sat there for a while talking. We took our phones, of course, and we were taking stupid filter pictures, and to our surprise, we see tank top guy walking towards us. Again, we didn't really know how to react, so we just sat there and tried to pretend we were busy or having a serious conversation. He got maybe five to ten feet from us, and stopped.

He kind of just looked around and then laid out like this sleeping bag. He sat down and looked up at the sky, then looked over at us. Then he smiled and waved again. I again waved back. I was facing him while my friend was facing away, so we were having a fake, serious conversation. I was texting her to say, he just noticed us. And he waved. So we started thinking about leaving when he started talking to us.

It was okay at first, but then it got weird. The conversation went something like this. Him. Did you girls have fun at Universal? Us. Yep. Him. That's good.

And I had some new ones out there, huh? Us. I don't know. I haven't been in a while and she's never been. Oh, do you live around here? No? Just on vacation? Yes.

You girls didn't get all prettied up to be out here by yourself, though, did you? We're not alone. So you're waiting on your boyfriends? I answered no, but my friend answered yes. We didn't get to fully think out our answer. At this point, It was definitely getting uncomfortable with a full-grown adult asking 16-year-olds about having boyfriends and calling us pretty. So we decided to come up with an excuse to leave.

I start to grab my phone like I was getting a call to come home, and I tell my friend that we had to go. So we started grabbing our stuff, and then he said, Leaving already? I tried saying the same thing about needing to go home when he started to stand. up really quick. Then he says, Well, if no one is here with you, girls, then let me walk you home. You never know the kind of people that could be walking around. We, of course, said it was okay, and that I was staying in a place nearby.

Then my friend gave me a look, making me realize how stupid it was to say that. He seemed to catch on because he had this very, sinister grin and said something about how it was even better. Should be a short walk then, right? My friend finally jumped in and said we're fine. Then she grabbed me by the arm and we started walking away quickly from him. We were still pretty worried about the whole situation, and we turned around and noticed that he was still standing there and smiling and holding

his sleeping bag. So we kept walking. The condo was probably about a block away, so when we went around the corner, we stopped for a second to think about what just happened. My friend was freaked out too, but she was laughing about it and making fun of the guy. I finally loosened up a bit, and we kept walking. At one point, we started trying to do cartwheels home, just playing around and trying to shake off the weird vibes. when I land a cartwheel and then I see him around the corner. He tried to make it look like he was on his phone, but he was holding it like he was taking pictures.

Of us. At this point we booked it. We ran straight ahead, paid no attention to him, and just ran. As we did, there was a woman and a young girl about to enter one of the condos close to us, so I just started shouting out. a mom, you called me, what's up? The woman looked confused at first, but she must have seen the fear in our face

and immediately started looking around and shuffling us into her place. I know it may have still been silly, but I thought since she had a kid with her, she was safe. Once we were in, we explained to her what happened. She believed us, thankfully, and since she was leaving, she agreed to walk us home, but told me to call my dad to make sure he was out there to greet us. Thankfully, he was nowhere to be seen after that,

but we did tell my dad, and they thankfully called the cops to file a report. As far as I know, they never found or caught the guy. From then, we were definitely more cautious of our surroundings, and my parents stayed close by, but we still had fun. It was definitely a memorable trip. I felt bad for my friend, thinking she'd probably never be able to do something like that again, but I've also learned my lesson and was thankful for her and that lady. I'm also a lot less naive in my late 20s and with my own kids,

so I know that I'll be stressing the importance of strangers and trusting your gut. But since then, and always, I hope to never see Tanktop dude again. I want to preface this story by saying that if you have any curiosity about the deep and or dark web, just get rid of it right now. If you're an everyday user and aren't in the know of how onion routing, encryption, VPNs, etc. work, then use the stories like this one to satiate your curiosity. Do not start down that rabbit hole and don't dig any deeper than you need to. That said, let's get into some backstory.

I'm a tech nerd, 100%. I'm the type of person that was ripping apart old PCs in the 80s and putting them back together just to see what worked with what. Mind you, that was back when I was a kid. Now, I learned about all the tech back then, and I took that passion deep into my adulthood. So, now, I was. work in IT, if that wasn't obvious.

And I know a lot about what goes on out there on the net. Now, that's all well and good, but that's all surface web and surface tech level stuff. The question from here quickly becomes, how does me being a geek equal dark web horror story? Simple. I've been there. In fact, I've been there probably more than many of the stories that you've heard on this channel and many others out there. I've seen quite a bit, and maybe I'll give you a few more stories in the future, but this

one is one that I think is worth telling, mostly because it was honestly terrifying. Back when I was on the dark web frequently, there was one site that I used to always venture towards. Obviously, I'm not naming that site, because as far as I know, it's still out there. still exists. This site was, I don't know, kind of like a dark web bizarre. You could buy pretty much anything and everything you could really want, and it wasn't terribly expensive.

I used to buy things from there that were less than legal, and I even used to occasionally sell some stuff that was also less than legal. Honestly, this site had everything. Substances, weapons, pirated DVDs, stolen goods, if you wanted it, you could find it there. The dealers had their ratings that would pretty much tell you how reputable they were, and the higher the rating, the better the overall service or quality of what you've ordered. Think eBay ratings, but for drugs and other illegal stuff.

One day, in one conversation, sticks in my mind as, probably the most memorable thing that ever happened while I was on the dark web, and on this particular sales site. I was browsing some of the content, simply for the hell of it, seeing what was out there and what I may have wanted to blow my money on, and I saw an entry that I thought was a bit strange, girlfriend for sale. Honestly, I thought it was a joke.

Maybe someone was selling their old silicone, sex doll and wanted to have an eye-catching title. I went to the page and scrolled down to the description, and it didn't help any more than the title. It simply said, selling my old girlfriend, message for details. At this point, I felt quite compelled to message this person, so I did, and here is how the conversation went. Me, hey, I wanted to ask about your girl. friend for sale.

Him. All right. What do you want to know? Me? Pretty much everything? Him. All right. She's 27. A bit on the thicker side. She has black hair, green eyes, freckles. There was more information that he included here. He used other words to describe her body type, gave exact measurements and went into a bit of personal details on her and what she would do for me.

I'm not going to put them here as I want to keep this story out of the graphic territory. After he told me all this, I obviously knew that this wasn't a sextal he was selling. He was legitimately trying to sell a real person. I wasn't sure what to do or say at this point, so I simply said, go on. him. Would you like to see her? It may make it easier to see if you're really interested. Me.

Okay. And I wish I hadn't done that. He then sent me a few pictures of this woman, tied up, and gagged in a basement. She looked exactly like he had explained. Her wrists were bound with duct tape, and she had a chain around her neck that looked to be connected. to a concrete pillar in the center of the basement. The look on her face was one of legitimate terror.

You could tell that she had been crying excessively, her skin was dirty, and her hair was a mess. He then sent me photos of her in what I will simply describe as compromising situations and positions. I'm, again, not getting into the details, but honestly, it may be. me want to vomit. When I clicked on this entry on the site, I was kind of expecting it to be a joke.

But these pictures, and what he had told me, had me pretty certain that this was absolutely real, and that scared the hell out of me. Then he sent me another message. I have one interested buyer that's currently offering $70k cash by the end of next week. if you can get me at least 75, she's yours. I was beyond shocked that the only thing I could think to do was ask what her name was. To which he replied, Oh, sorry, I can't give out her name in case you would do something stupid.

Like, try to find her or contact the police. I replied with, oh, no, I wouldn't dare. I was just curious. His response to that chilled me even further to the bone. Good, because it wouldn't matter. There's no one around that'll miss her, and on paper, she's been dead for a month.

I do what I can to make my transactions stress-free. That includes my prospective buyers. I expect them to keep things stress-free from me. So please, don't do anything stupid. He compounded this last sentence with a smiley face emoticon, which honestly actually added to the threat. I honestly had no idea what to say. I didn't know if this was legitimate or some kind of honeypot seller trying to arrest human traffickers.

I just told him that I would try to get the money together, and if he didn't hear from me by the time the other seller came through, that was okay by me. I didn't want to raise any alarms with this guy, regardless of who he really was. I really don't have much more to say about this story, other than to say that I have no idea what happened to her or the cellar. I didn't follow up and I just kind of let the situation go.

I know. This makes me a shitty person, and I've honestly lost sleep over it, but I'm more hopeful that it was, just a honeypot, and that he was trying to lure me into doing something illegal so that I could be arrested, more than being some guy that was actually trying to sell his girlfriend. This story didn't happen to me, and it isn't mine directly. It happened to my aunt back in the mid to late 90s when she was still a teenager. I asked her if I could share the story, and she said that she would prefer that I did.

just in case it could help someone else avoid a similar situation. Though, I don't know if anyone would ever be in a similar situation in the current day and age. That said, I'm going to tell this from memory, so if some parts seem inconsistent or a bit confusing, I do apologize. Like I said, this was back when my aunt was a teenager. She was a pretty well-liked young woman. She was a good kid, straight-a-student. and she was well known and held in a high regard throughout the neighborhood. She was known to be a dependable babysitter.

She loved spending time with kids, kids loved her, and she had done a good amount of volunteer work over the summer with the daycare at our local church group. Basically, people in the area knew that if they needed someone to take care of their kids for a couple of hours, they could call her and not have to worry about anything. she ended up going into child care, and she actually owns a local daycare today. If that helps to explain how much she loved and loves working with children. This specific situation happened when she got a call from a couple a few blocks away. It was the expected story.

They wanted to have a date night and needed someone to watch their young daughter for a few hours. They said they would pay her $10 an hour to watch her from five hours. to 11. My aunt agreed, and everything seemed like it was pretty standard. Now, this was back in the 90s. Almost no one had a cell phone, the internet wasn't really a big thing, and a lot of people just trusted people in their neighborhood, based solely on the fact that they were in the neighborhood.

It was a totally different time from today, where we're way more protected in our everyday lives. My aunt and grandparents didn't know anything about this couple, which wasn't out of the ordinary at all. And while this situation didn't seem too crazy, things got strange

pretty much right off the bat. My grandfather dropped my aunt off, and she knocked on the door, but at first nobody answered. She stood there for a few moments and knocked again. After a few more minutes, the man of the house

did finally enter the door. He said that he apologized for not hearing her knock sooner, and that he was in the bathroom getting things ready. After that, my aunt said that she entered the house and noticed that it was incredibly clean, and

also minimalist. The living room was pretty much just an old couch, a chair, and a television. There was a lamp in the corner for a light, but that was it. There were no pictures, No toys, nothing to indicate that this family had a young child or was even a family at all.

She ignored this and thought maybe they just didn't have much in ways of money. And she turned to ask the man about the daughter, the basics really, name, emergency contact information, schedule, and any rules that she needed to abide by. She said that at first, the man had a look about his face that made it seem like he was nervous. like he was trying to think of an answer to the questions right there on the spot. After a few moments, he cleared his throat and responded. Her name is Abigail. If there's an emergency, call my mother. Her phone number is on the fridge.

Her name is Beth. Scheduling and rules won't really be an issue. Abigail's too young to do anything, and she'll most likely be asleep the whole night in her crib. At this point, My aunt had a few things click for her. There weren't any toys because Abigail was still a newborn. This could also explain the lack of pictures on the wall of the family.

She nodded and told him that she understood and asked if Abigail had a feeding schedule and asked if they were trying to keep things on a strict timeline. She said at this point, the man just shook his head and told her not to bother Abigail while she slept, and that if she didn't wake up crying to just let her start. sleep. Obviously, my aunt was a bit confused. When you have a baby that young, you typically don't just let them sleep. Keep them on a schedule and keep things consistent. But she was also doing this based on the parents' terms, so she didn't fight or argue about it. After a few moments of talking, the man said something that caught my aunt off guard. He said something along the lines of,

I know you probably had a long day at school, and you'll probably want to take a shower at some point. If you do, the shower's upstairs. A second door on the left. Feel free to please use it if you need to. So how many weird red flags is this at this point? Three? Well, there was another that happened immediately after this comment.

After insisting that she could take a shower, the man said that they needed to go and thanked her for her time watching their daughter. He then opened the front door, got in the car, and started to drive off, leaving my aunt there alone with Abigail. It may not be obvious what that red flag was in that situation, but my aunt immediately realized that something was off. At no point did the mother of the child come out of any room in the house. she hadn't met her, and the man just left without her. At this point, it seems like maybe there wasn't a mother in this situation, but again, my aunt thought that maybe she didn't quite understand it.

Maybe the man had to pick her up from work. Maybe they were meeting up somewhere, so she let it go and just sat on the couch to watch some TV. She sat there for a little while and just watched whatever was on. But after a while, she says that something didn't feel right, which yeah, obviously. She said that something in her told her that she should check on Abigail, even though the father said that she didn't need to.

So she got up and started up the stairs and realized that she didn't know which room was Abigail's. There were two doors on the left and one on the right. She knew the second door on the left was the bathroom, so she checked the first one on the left. It was a small bedroom, but it looked like it could have been a bedroom, but there was no bed. She said the room was an absolute mess with trash everywhere, and off to the side was a small desk with an old computer sitting on it. Since that wasn't the bedroom, she assumed that maybe Abigail's crib was in the master bedroom.

She went over to the other room and opened the door, only to find nothing but a mattress and a box spring on the floor and a single dresser. She looked in that room. There was no crib. There was no indication of a small child, just the bed and the dresser. Much like the living room, and in complete contrast to the other room, it was completely clean. It was at this point that a few things became a little more clear. One, this guy was a bit off his rocker, putting it lightly. Two, there was no daughter.

Abigail did not exist and she was babysitting a non-existent child. And three, this guy's insistence that she take a shower, it was all the more creepy by the fact that the first two things were true. She closed the door, and she went back downstairs. Then she grabbed their phone and called her house. She explained to her dad that there was no baby there and told him about how weird the guy was being. my grandpa told her that he would drive over and park on the street and wait for the guy to get back to make sure that nothing else happened. About four or five hours later, the guy came back and his creepy vibes escalated. The first thing that he asked her was if she had taken the shower.

She told him that she hadn't, and said that he seemed legitimately upset about the fact, to the point where he actually asked her why she hadn't. She said that she just didn't need to, and moved on to telling him that Abigail was quiet all night, and that she needed to get going now that he was home. When she went to leave, she said that he stepped to the door and told her that she didn't need to rush out, and that the night was still young. She said he pretty much turned the skeeve up to 11 at this point, and was looking her up and down and telling her that she could make herself comfortable if she wanted to.

She looked at him and told him directly that she had already called her dad and that he was just sitting outside, waiting for her to come out, and that he would likely be coming up to the door if she didn't go. For a moment, he seemed to be sizing her up and trying to determine if she was lying, but eventually relented, saying something like, well, we wouldn't want to keep him waiting. He opened the door, my aunt walked out, and he quickly shut the door behind her. She took off over to my grandpa's car and got in quickly before she realized that in everything that had just happened, he didn't even pay her for her time. Honestly, the money didn't matter to her. She just wanted to get home. My aunt said that she explained everything to my grandfather and, while he believed that this guy was,

was a creep, and he said he hadn't technically done anything illegal or wrong, so there wasn't much that could be done. Even so, my aunt didn't babysit for anyone that wasn't an immediate neighbor or family member after that, and she holds on to the thought that had my grandfather not already been parked outside and waiting, things would have gone much, much worse. I'm a paramedic and have been for what feels like forever, though it's only been about four or five years. I just want to say that being a paramedic will absolutely tear you apart mentally,

and will age you faster than almost any other career path. Is it fulfilling? Absolutely. I love helping people, but there are also points in time where you're expected to help, and there's literally nothing you can do in the situation. Those are the ones that get to you the worst. In my time riding in the back of an ambulance, I've seen some really messed up stuff.

I've seen a lot of death, a lot of blood, and genuinely a lot of chaos and pain. And as much as I hate it, it really does make it worth it when you're able to save even just one person from a terrible situation. This story here is one of the stories that absolutely had a lasting impression on me, and is more of a sad story than a scary one,

but it fits into the paramedic horror stories theme, just in a different form of horror. So this story happened in my second year of being a paramedic, which would have been around 2016, maybe early 2017. I was already in the middle of my shift, so I was already in the swing of things, and it was a slow night, which is a good thing when you do my line of work. We were on standby, just kind of waiting for a call when we finally get one over the radio.

Dispatch pings us and tells us there's a high-priority call with very little information, a couple of miles down the way from where we are. They tell us that the caller sounds like they're young, and they informed the emergency line that their mom was on the floor and not responding to them. This isn't the kind of call that you really want to get, but it does happen. Sometimes parents work themselves into such a heavy fatigue that they legitimately pass out. There are also a hundred other conditions that can lead to unconsciousness, blood pressure issues, diabetes, anemia, etc.

So while this kind of call starts off with the worst-case scenario in mind, you have to keep your hopes up and keep all possibilities in mind. Within a couple of minutes, we're on the road with the lights and sirens going. We're driving as fast as we safely can in trying to get past the cars that seem to not want to move for us. Which, if I may drop in a side here, if you see an ambulance on the road, with their light and sirens going, get the hell out of the way. You not moving

could literally be what could cause someone's death, so stop with whatever is in your head and makes you think that you don't have to move over, and just move. I know most people are good about this, but it pisses me off when I see people that seriously think they are more important than a damn ambulance.

Anyways, we were on the road for the scum. critical call and getting there as quick as we possibly could. The GPS gets us to the house. It's a one-floor, ranch-style house in a decent neighborhood. There isn't a car in the driveway and the front door is closed. We park out front. I grab the defibrillator kit just in case, and we make a quick jog towards the front door and start knocking.

After a few seconds, a little girl that couldn't have been old than five or six answers the door. Her face is bright red, and she's very obviously been bawling her eyes out. As soon as I saw her, I got hit with a super deep palpitation. Thankfully, my partner was a veteran, and he'd been doing this way longer than I had,

so he had a better head on his shoulders when it came to these situations. He leaned down to her and said, Hi there, We're here because someone called saying that their mom wasn't feeling well. Was that you? This little girl just nods her head and says her mother was in the kitchen. She opened the door further to let us in, and then led us through the living room and into the kitchen area.

As soon as we saw the mother, I knew this was going to be a worst-case scenario. The stove was on with whatever was that she was making for dinner, and it was starting to smoke and she was face down on the floor, with her eyes rolled back. My partner told me to take the little girl into the living room and that he would call for backup, so that we could secure the scene and get the situation figured out. Basically, since it was just the two of us, I had to keep the child occupied while he attempted to resuscitate, if he could, though I think we both knew that wasn't going to happen. At this point, I'm in the living room and trying to keep this little girl that is in this state of panic because she has no idea what's going on from completely losing it.

First thing she asks me is if her mom is going to be all right. And to be honest, I just kind of sat there for a moment before telling her that we were going to do everything that we could to help her. and absolutely killed me to lie to her like that. I tried to pull the subject away from the situation a little bit. I asked her for her name. She told me her name was Chloe, and that she was about to be six years old next week. I tried to ask if she could remember what happened.

She told me her mom was making dinner and then said she didn't feel good, and then all of a sudden she was lying down on the kitchen floor. When she tried to wake her up, she wouldn't respond. So she did what she knew to do and called 911 on the phone. I told her that she did the right thing and that what she did was very brave. Then I asked her where her dad was. She told me that he was at work because he worked nights. This left me with a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Just thinking that this man had went to work. he left his daughter and wife at home in that he had no idea what was happening at his house at that moment. When the secondary paramedics unit showed up, and the police unit showed up as well to the house, I took Chloe outside to one of the officers, and they asked the neighbors for any contact information for the father. At this point, the officers took over the scene, and they took care of Chloe as they tried to get a hold of her father. I told her that she did a great job, and I pretty much had to let it go at that point. I went with my partner in the secondaries with her mother to the hospital, but she was pronounced DOA. In the end, this situation was nothing shy of heartbreaking.

The father was notified, and he showed up with a look of absolute disbelief on his face, and I don't blame him. Like I said, he went to work like any other day, and he was then called back home and told that his wife was dead, that he was now a single parent. I later found out that she was, as expected, gone when we got there. She had apparently had a major stroke while she was making dinner, and then suddenly collapsed.

Her daughter called 911 immediately like she should have, but there was literally nothing that we could have done. This is one of those stories that made me second-guess my career path. I kept with it in the end, and I hope that I never have anything like this happen again, so long as I'm doing this, but I'm sure it will eventually. To all the listeners out there,

make sure your loved ones know that you love them, make sure they know that you care and cherish each and every, moment you get with them. Never take any of it for granted. This all happened back when I was 15 years old and was a bit of a socially awkward teen. I didn't have many friends, and I didn't really socialize a whole lot

beyond the basic social media stuff, so I would sometimes watch my cousins for a few bucks every now and then. That said, and because I had some experience watching kids, My dad's friend, Alex, asked him if I would be able to help out during the summer break. Alex was in his mid-30s and was now a single father to a six-year-old son named Max. His wife, Sherry, had passed away due to some sort of heart complication,

something that wasn't diagnosed and took her very suddenly. Because of this, Alex was basically killing himself working two jobs to keep food on the table, and to keep the lights on. When this all happened, summer break had just started, so Alex was in a situation where he needed someone to watch Max all day, but obviously didn't have the money to pay for any sort of child care

for 12 plus hours a day, five to six days a week. This is where I came into the picture. My dad had mentioned to me that if I took up watching Max over the summer, he would pay me $50 a week. He knew that Alex couldn't afford it, but we were well off enough that he could cover it for him. I was 15.

Like I said, so $50 a week, $200 a month for the summer? You could bet that I was going to take that deal. Plus, I always thought Max was adorable, and I knew he was a good kid, so really? It was win-win. The first day that I was watching Max, I got there early and Alex hadn't yet left for work. He was telling me all the basic rules, and that there were chicken nuggets for his lunch in the freezer, and basically all the things that you would expect from a parent.

Then, he went into how much he appreciated me doing this for free, and that he was sorry that he was taking my summer from me. I explained to him that I really didn't have any plans and I loved Max, so it was really not a big deal to me. He then went into how his sister was watching him after school, but she basically told him that she wasn't willing to watch him for the entire day if he wasn't going to pay her. To me, that was a bit shocking. It was surprising to me that a family member wasn't willing to help out, especially, with Alex's current situation. I reassured him that I was happy to help,

and that I was sorry that he was going through all that he was. He left for work, and I sat on the couch and turned on the TV. Max was still asleep. He wasn't likely to wake up for a few hours, honestly. Watching Max for the first few days was pretty normal. My dad would drop me off in the morning. I would doze off on the couch, watching TV, until Max woke up, and then I would make him breakfast.

We'd watch some movies, play some games, and just have a good time until his dad got home. Honestly, I was really happy with it overall, and I thought it was going to just be a great summer. Then, at some point in the second week, I think, it was early in the morning, and I was still asleep on the couch. And I heard a crash come from the kitchen. I quickly sat up and saw Max in the kitchen, looking like he was absolutely petrified when he saw that I was awake. He just stared at me with a bright red face. I saw him in his pajamas, cereal and milk on the floor,

and a bowl sitting upside down next to him. It was pretty clear what happened. But for some reason, Max screamed as loud as he could and ran through the hallway, into his room and then slammed the door. while screeching in tears. He kept yelling that he was really sorry over and over and over again while shrieking in tears.

I was legitimately confused. I had no idea what was going on. He had spilled his cereal, and while he wasn't supposed to be getting his own breakfast like that for this very reason, I wasn't upset or anything, but he was screaming like crazy. I got up and went back to his room,

and knocked in the door, asking him what was wrong. He was refusing to answer me, and he just kept yelling that he was sorry. I went in, and I knelt down to talk to him. I told him it was okay, and that we just needed to clean up the mess. I told him that it wasn't a big deal and that he didn't need to freak out. At first, he didn't seem like he trusted me, but he eventually took a deep breath, said okay, and we went out and cleaned up the mess. We went through the rest of the day like normal.

I didn't push it with him and thought maybe he was just in a weird mood. Then, about a week later, we were having fun and he wanted to paint. I thought that sounded like a good time, so I got his kid paints and paper set up in the kitchen. We were just, again, having fun making random paintings, when he accidentally spilled the water he was cleaning the brush with on the floor. Once again, his face turned red, and he went absolutely crazy with his crying and screaming. And then he tried to run to his room. It was literally the same situation as a few days prior, but this time I was able to get a hold of him and stop him.

The look in his eyes was legitimate horror, as he was belting out his apologies at the top of his lungs, with tears pouring out of his eyes. and I told him to calm down, and that it wasn't a big deal, and we would just go ahead and get it cleaned up and finish our paintings. Once again, he looked like he didn't trust me, and like I was going to do something more than just clean up and move on. I told him to breathe that he needed to calm down because everything was okay.

After a few moments, he nodded, took a deep breath, and told me that it was okay. At this point, I felt like I needed to get to the bottom of this. Part of me was worried that maybe it was Alex doing something to make him act like this, but honestly, he seemed like such a good guy that I couldn't see him doing it. I sat him down on the couch, I knelt in front of him, and then I asked why he got so scared when he spilled the water.

He told me it was because he had made a mess. I told him that it wasn't a big deal when he made a mess. we would just have to clean it up and be more careful. Then, I asked why he thought it was such a big deal. At first, he didn't seem to want to tell me. But eventually, he started talking about it. He said that when he made a mess at Aunt Marie's house, he got punished. In my eyes, punishing a kid would be sending them to their room

or taking away something for a period of time, but obviously something much worse was going on over at the aunt's house. I was a bit nervous, but I eventually asked him what his aunt would do when he got into trouble. What he told me, made me sick. Apparently, when he got in trouble over at his aunt's house, she was verbally abusive. She yelled at him and he didn't like the yelling. When it got worse, he told me that when he did something bad, after yelling at him, she would seriously shut him in the dryer.

She would put him in the dryer and shut the door, holding it shut until he stopped crying. He said that when he made a mess while I was watching him, he thought I was going to put him in the dryer and shut him in, which is why he ran to his room and was telling me how sorry he was. I was shocked. I told him I would never do that, in that he didn't have to worry about that ever happening with me, to which he said that he liked me more than his aunt and gave me a hug.

I honestly wanted to cry when this happened, but I just told him it was okay, and we went back to painting. When Alex got home, I asked him if I could talk to him. I explained what Max had told me about his aunt, and Alex was just as appalled as I was. He told me that he had no idea this was happening. He just thought Max didn't like it over there because his cousins were kind of brats. It was not much more to this story, honestly.

I watched Max the whole summer, and then he came over to our house after school when we went back. Alex was able to get his life together, and he got remarried, and they're a happy family now. Max is 11 now, and he's a smart kid. And I don't think he really remembers what happened back then. From what I know, Alex confronted his sister about the situation, and she claimed that it never happened. But I'm pretty confident that Alex believed his son. I certainly did. To the best of my knowledge, he hasn't spoken to Marie since he talked to her about it, and I don't blame him.

I just hope that whatever Marie did doesn't scar Max, and that he grows up to be a normal and happy person. As has been stated in a number of other stories on the net about the dark web, if you don't have a reason to be on the dark web, then stay off. Obviously, I recommend understanding the technology, getting to know what a VPN is, understanding how tore and encryption all work, but only for the sake of knowledge and an understanding of security. I'm all about understanding technology and really getting to know the layers of the internet. But don't go looking for illegal or questionable content.

Because if you look, you will find it. That said, and moving on to the story that I wanted to share, and this happened several years ago. I would say early to mid-2000s at the latest. This was a time before the internet was a huge entity that everyone spent all of their time on, when broadband was like 10 megabits per second at most, and Newgrounds was king of the internet. Back then, I was actually a contractor for web development. People and organizations that wanted to have their presence on the net would contact me and I would discuss what they wanted,

then build websites for them. These weren't complex websites like what exist now. They were more like pages with static content and pictures. Basically just, This is our company and this is what we do, kind of pages. It was a good paying gig. Back in the early 2000s, a lot of companies wanted their presence on the web, and I worked with a lot of local corporations.

It's not super relevant, but it helps to, one, let you know how old I am, and two, let you know that I understand technology and how the web works. Back then, I was always on the web, looking into competitor's sites and seeing what worked where, and pulling inspiration from things that already existed. At one point, I was talking to a buddy of mine, another tech. person, and he brought up that I should consider looking at the dark web for some inspiration. At first, I was a bit confused. The only thing I knew about the dark web was that it wasn't easy to get onto, and that it was where hackers and criminals hung out on the web. I asked him why he thought I should be going to the dark web, and he made a point that I couldn't refute. He mentioned that I would probably be the only person in the area that built websites that had seen parts of the dark web

slash deep web. Basically, he was saying that I would have a leg up on everyone else because I would have an idea that they wouldn't have. I kind of agreed with him, so after chatting with him, he convinced me and I had him come over to set up my system for accessing the dark web. I got on and started just going through random sites, and I was trying to avoid anything that could be illegal. And I actually found a neat site that kind of worked like a wiki. I don't think it was the actual Deep Web Wiki or anything like that,

but it was a collection of links very similar to it, and some of them actually worked. For the most part, they just ended up. on dead ends and nothing on the other side. But some of them were interesting forums and just pages with information about random things. I was happily clicking along when I came across a page that kind of looked like the original version of YouTube. If anyone has been around for a while, then you know what I mean. Old, blocky page with star ratings underneath the video.

What was weird to me was that a lot of the front page videos were just a black screen. And when I clicked on them, they had an overlay that said something along the lines of, this video has expired. What was strange to me was that the titles of the videos were just single words. The first one I clicked on was titled Hang. There was another one that was called, electric and one called pain. Obviously, these were a bit ominous, but there wasn't much on the screen for the videos.

Just the title and a star rating. Hang had a five-star rating, and it showed that it had been rated 40 times, for instance. I was scrolling through the front page, and I finally found a video that didn't have a black box overlay. It was titled, Shoot. The thumbnail for the video was a guy literally sitting in a nearly empty room that was trashed. I clicked the video and it started up pretty quick. I don't know why, but part of me was sitting there thinking it was going to be a fairly normal video. That it was going to be some sort of vlog or something from the guy in the thumbnail.

Instead, what I got was a video of a guy sitting in this dingy-looking room with a syringe in his hand. As much as I wanted to click away, I just sat there and watched this video as it played out. As the video started, he was just sitting there and staring at the camera. It looked like he nodded to someone that was behind the camera, after a second or two the audio cut in, and I heard him say something like, for 300, right? And then a voice said yes.

He nodded and glanced back to the camera, and basically started stating his name and location. I don't remember exactly where he was, but he said his name was something like Jeff, that he was doing this for the site for an amount of money, equal to $300, in that this video would serve as his contract. Then, he ended with a, and remember, kids, don't do drugs. Then, after a second, he situated himself in the chair and tied off part of his arm.

Then he took the syringe and shoved it into his arm. Long story short, he shot whatever was in that syringe. I want to assume it was heroin into his arm. He was doing this on camera for money. My guess is that this site was set up for people to do things for the audiences, and then they would get paid for it. This was like some dark web sort of YouTube or Twitch for people to pay. and watch what happened to other people in certain situations.

Watching this guy have a reaction to the drugs that he put in his arm was horrifying. He seriously collapsed on the floor and he started convulsing, and I really don't want to remember the rest of it. I clicked off of it, and I went back to the main page. And at that point, the other videos became more clear. Hang, electrical, pain? All of these were videos of people doing something to themselves for payment. The fact that Hang had such a high rating really didn't sit well with me at this point.

I can only imagine what happened on that video, that got people to rate it five stars. After watching this guy drop to the floor from injecting, again, I'm assuming heroin. I wasn't very curious about the website anymore. I closed the page, and I decided that I was done with all of that. And honestly, the sight of that guy in the thought of what the other videos most likely contained has seriously haunted me ever since.

The story takes place when I was in college a couple of years ago. I was away from home for most of the year on campus, and I didn't have much going on in my social life. I didn't really socialize, and I wasn't doing much in ways of partying or hanging out with anyone else. Through most of my college life, I only had one real friend, Charles. Charles was a techie. He was all about the newest trends and technology. and he was always willing to discuss the newest topic if you had an interest. Since I really only had Charles, and I couldn't see my family or friends at home,

I would sometimes get to a point where I was really lonely, and I was feeling like there was no one around to talk to. Yes, cell phones are a thing, and they were, and I could have just called my family at any time. But honestly, there's something about seeing the face of those you love that just makes it more personal. And makes it feel more connected. Maybe it's just me, but I sometimes feel like I need to see someone's face to know that they're really there. Anyways, there was one day where I mentioned this to my dad,

that I was feeling a bit down about having not seen them for a couple months. and he decided to take it upon himself to send me a fancy webcam so that we could start doing video chatting. I was honestly ecstatic about the idea, and I actually joked about how that was something I should have thought of. He ends up going to a local tech store, and he buys this really nice HD Logitech webcam. I have no idea how much he ended up spending on it, but it was a very nice, really good quality camera. As soon as I got it, I set it up and I got it all running, and then I got on a video call with my mom and dad.

I was legitimately excited to have it, and I really felt like this was going to be the solution to my socialization issues for sure. For a month or two, everything went pretty normal with it, and the camera itself, or at least how it worked, isn't the focus of this story. The camera itself was a really good piece of hardware. The image was crystal clear and it was really easy to use. Unfortunately, it being a good piece of technology

meant that Charles liked it as well. A long story short with that, Charles was wanting to start a YouTube channel where he went down internet rabbit holes and solved those weird mysteries on the world. web. Think people like Frederick Newtonson or Nightmind and such, but more dedicated to those weird 4chan mysteries. Basically, he asked me if he could use my computer to record himself for his videos, and in return, he said he would be my on-call tech support. I didn't really care about the

tech support, and while it was a little weird to have him in my dorm room, I didn't mind it. For the most part, he would text me when he wanted to record, and I would go for a walk, go get food, or work on homework in the commons area of the university. This deal went on for a couple weeks, two or three at most, and he recorded at least five or six times during this time frame. I watched his first few videos, and they were actually pretty decent. Good, interesting information that was presented in a clean way. He had one on some missing girl that some people on 4chan were talking about that was

really well done, and then he had one that explained parts of the deep and dark web. I found it a bit strange when he didn't even bother to ask to use my computer that next week, but I also thought that maybe he was busy with classwork. Then, when the next Monday rolled around and he didn't have class, and he didn't call me, I messaged him to ask him what was up. He told me that he just wasn't feeling up to doing anything on his channel. I again thought that was odd, but I didn't really push it. I just kind of told him that whenever he was wanting to do more work,

to let me know. What got strange for me was that, after that, he seemed to not really want to talk to me anymore. Then, there was something that happened that legitimately scared the hell out of me. There was one night

that I was having a lot of trouble sleeping, and I was feeling incredibly restless. I was pretty much just lying there and staring at the wall, and then I rolled over and looked at my car, computer. At first, I didn't notice anything, other than the dark screen and the window behind the monitor. Then, after a couple of seconds of just staring, something about the scene was bothering me. Then it clicked. My screen was off, sure, but I had left the tower on. Now, this is something

that I do every once in a while, but then my eyes moved over. and I noticed that the red light on the webcam was blinking. This light only blinks when the camera is in use, and I hadn't used the camera at all that day. I sat up, I started to shift out of my bed, and then I noticed that the light on the camera shut off. My groggy brain struggled with the situation, but I decided to get up and just unplug the camera.

then try to go to sleep, which did not quite work. Things got even worse the next day when I needed to get on my computer to do some classwork. It was early in the afternoon when I was back in my dorm room. I turned it on to do a report when I noticed that there was a document on my desktop that was titled, Read me, please. I hesitantly clicked on it, and then read what it said. Hello, Michael.

Please, don't unplug the webcam tonight. I like watching you while you sleep. I'm not doing anything bad with the footage. I promise. It was literally two sentences, and it made me want to puke as I read it. I immediately disconnected my computer from the internet, internet and called Charles, demanding he come over to help figure out what the hell was going on

with this. He was hesitant at first. He told me he was busy with something else, but I told him that my computer had been compromised and that I needed his help immediately. When I said that, he changed his tune. When he got to my room, I found out why he changed his tune. He explained to me that when he was doing research for his dark web video, he had to go out onto the dark web. He said that while he was doing so, he did come across a few sites that were sketchy, but he tried to avoid anything that was too questionable. That is, until he came across a website that required you to accept a prompt to access it. He said that it looked reasonable, and it just said that you accepted their terms and whatnot.

But when he clicked on it, the computer locked up and it looked like someone else had connected to the computer. Apparently he watched as someone else got into my system and basically did whatever the hell they wanted. And then he didn't tell me. He said he was pretty sure they had disconnected and that they hadn't done anything to the computer because part of the agreement page said they would not use my information for malicious purposes. He said this as if I hadn't just told him that this person was remotely accessing my computer to watch me sleep, and as if hackers on the dark web have a code of conduct. I may have gone off on him, telling him that it was the dumbest thing he could have done,

that he needed to fix the problem right then and there. I told him that he needed to get all of my files off the system and then wipe it, or else I would make his life hell. A threat that I have literally no idea how I would have followed through on, but thankfully Charles was a bit timid and he agreed that he would help me. Obviously this was a few years ago, and I'm no longer on the campus, and I'm pretty sure that guy never got on to my system again after that.

Despite this, I have literally never slept with a computer in the same room since. and I've always made sure to turn off my computer when I'm done using it. Every night. I used to be a bartender for some trashy dive in the middle of nowhere, Missouri. It was a job that I took because I was in need of money, and I wasn't the smartest kid out there. I'm not saying bartenders are stupid or anything like that.

What I am saying is that this bar would hire anyone that knew, how to use a shot glass. Basically, if you could hold a glass bottle and pour it into a little cup, you could have the job. One would think that the fancy drinks may require a bit more dexterity or understanding, and you would be right. But this bar was in a part of town where no one ordered drinks with a color that wasn't caramel. I think that pretty well explains the place, as well as the clientele. truckers, bikers, some tweakers, the best of the best, but hey, at least we had live music sometimes.

I worked at this bar for a few years, actually, mostly because the money was enough to pay my rent. To tell you when I worked there, this was at a time before Lyft or Uber, back when you had to actually have the number to a taxi company, called them to get someone out and they would send the little yellow car to come get you or whomever. Most of the people that came into our bar would get what they wanted, drink, and get out. Most of them could take care of themselves, whatever that meant to them, be it a designated driver or just self-control. However, we also had a good number of people that would come in, get completely trashed, and we would have to take care to make. make sure they didn't get into a car. Strangely enough, this wasn't actually that hard.

We would tell them that they would have to give up their car key to get more to drink. Most people were there to drink too much, so they would hand me the key and move on. Then, as stated earlier, when they were done drinking, we would get them a cab and get them home, or wherever. I hate to be that guy, but after they left the bar and they left the bar and got into the taxi, it wasn't my problem anymore. The situation is one of those times where the events took place, and while there was nothing I could have done, I kind of wished I could have.

That specific night was fairly busy. We had a group of bikers that had come in to have a night together, which usually meant that things would be a bit more calm. It's kind of funny how having 10 or 15 burly guys in leather sitting around, around the bar makes other people behave. Because of this group, I was spending a lot of time and effort taking care of them and their requests, which is fine. But when you're one of two people working the bar,

you have to try to balance the handful of other people with the large group. Of course, the large group were also great tippers, and that kind of made me lean into their needs a bit more. I know, selfish reasoning. But it is what it is. We had a few people leave after only one drink because they were probably annoyed, but there was one guy who was sitting in the corner and just kind of staring off into nothing.

Like he was spacing out. As a bartender, you have to make your customers at least feel welcomed into the establishment. So I went over to his table at one point and I asked if I could get him another drink as his glass was empty. He kind of stared at me for a second and smiled, and then shook his head. I could tell that something was up with him, so I paused and decided to go ahead and talk to him for a moment, and basically asking him if he was all right. At first, he seemed like he wanted me to go away, but I dropped the line that always seemed to work on people like that. Hey, man, I get paid by the hour, and a couple drinks is a hell of a lot cheap,

than a therapist, so if you need to get something off your chest, well, now's a good time to do so. It seemed like it got through to him. He nodded and kind of grinned before he started talking. Well, man, I'm going to be honest. Today was probably the worst day that I've had in a very long time. I was actually fired from my job for the last nine years today because I made a single mistake that cost the company a couple grand. I was used to hearing the I got fired today stories, and I could tell that this guy was stuck in his own head and needed someone to talk to. So, I pulled a chair and decided to sit and listen for a moment. I told him to keep going, and talking it through would probably help him in the long run. He laughed a bit, but then he kept talking.

It was really just a stupid moment. I messed up and my boss had to fire me. He had no choice. And now I'm sitting here, spending what little money I had, trying to feel a little more numb than I was already, so that I can go home and tell my girlfriend that I don't have a job anymore. I could tell that this was really hurting him at this point. You know that look people get when they want to break down but are holding it back? That was the exact look this guy had.

I asked him what he was drinking and he told me that he really couldn't afford another one at that moment. and I told him it was on me in celebration. He kind of stared at me for a moment, and I told him it was to celebrate the future, because while that situation sucked, things would get better, and it was better to believe that the future was worth celebrating than to wallow in the pain of the moment.

Side note, yes, being a bartender made me philosophical, and I was damn good at it. I then told him that even if he was, struggling at the moment, he wouldn't be broke forever. And I told him to just remember me when he became a billionaire, unless it came from robbing a bank, in which case we'd never met. If nothing else, I got a bit of a chuckle out of him, and that was all that I needed. He smirked and told me that he'd had a jack and coke.

I told him I would get him a new one, went back to the bar and did so. He thanked me and told me that he would remember that in the future. I told him no problem, and then told him to try to have a good evening. He nodded, and I went back to my bar, taking care of the bikers and the handful of other people that came in. After about 20 minutes, I looked over and he had left. I cleared and wiped down the table and kind of just moved on from there. That was until about 10 minutes later. I was clearing out a couple tabs when the doorman ran in and told me to call the cops.

I asked what was up, and he told me that someone had just robbed the convenience store across the street. Obviously, I grabbed the cordless and rang 911, explaining what just happened. They told me that there was a unit that was already pulling up to the location, and that they were likely going to ask us some questions. I told them that was fine, and then as the officer pulled up, they advised we could disconnect. Long story short, and the officer arrested the guy. And they came over to ask us a few questions. After asking about what we saw and talking to us about the event,

we came to find out that the guy that robbed the store was the guy that had gotten fired. For whatever reason, he left the bar and went over to the convenience store, and apparently he held it up, demanding the money from the register. When the cashier fought him, he took a knife out and stabbed the cashier several times. What's even worse, that wasn't the first. That wasn't the first place he had robbed that evening, and our bar was actually on his original list. When he came in and saw the bikers, he decided it wasn't worth it.

The whole story about being fired was a lie, and the reason he was distraught was because his plan had been foiled by the group of bikers. So, in the end, the guy that I was nice to would have shoved a knife in my face to rip some cash from the register, had we not had a bunch of bikers in the place. And my judge of character was apparently way off on this guy. If anyone's curious, the clerk at the store did survive, and the guy went to prison for a very long time. I worked at that bar for a few more years, and after that night,

I was actually rather elated every single time the biker groups came in. When I was in high school, I used to watch my two. baby nephews, Ben and Sammy, a few times a week over at my brother Terrence's house. My brother was a pretty chill guy, and I loved spending time with my little nephews, so really it wasn't that big of a deal to me to lose a few nights every week. They were still pretty young, and were still in that age range where they could be easily entertained by SpongeBob and Chicken Nuggets, while I messed around with my phone or my D.S.

It was really just like I had a couple younger brothers that needed my attention every now and then, and I loved it. My brother had always been a good kid, but as he got a bit older, he ended up getting in with the wrong crowd, and fell in love with a woman that was a terrible influence on him, Kaylee. Kaylee was a user, and I mean of both people and substance. Unfortunately, Terence wanted to see the best in her and decided that she was worth his time. They ended up getting together, but not married, and had two kids together, Ben and Sammy.

At some point after Sammy's first birthday, Kaylee got picked up for attempting to shoplift from a big box store, and then got her basic misdemeanor charge, escalated to a pretty hefty felony when the police found a significant amount of methamphetamine in her purse like enough for her to be charged with intent to distribute all of this is important because it's what left my brother in charge of two young boys as a single father

and is why I had to watch them several times a week while he worked his second job now this ritual of him working nights and me watching them had been going on for around six months at this point, and without issue. And with Kaylee in prison for years, I thought it would just keep going and being a smooth situation. I thought wrong. It was a pretty normal Tuesday night at Terrence's house.

I was there watching the boys, and they were watching some cartoons while I was making dinner. When I heard a knock on the front door, I wasn't expecting anyone, so I thought maybe it was an Amazon package or something, just knocking to let us know that it was delivered. I kept making dinner and I ignored it for a moment, and then I heard the doorbell ring. At this point, Ben walks in the room to tell me that Aunt Becca was at the door. Rebecca, or Aunt Becca, was Kaylee's sister, and she was just as bad as, as it was. if not worse than Kaylee.

On top of that, Terrence had a no-contact order against her. She wasn't supposed to be there, and she wasn't supposed to be anywhere near the kids. I told Ben to take Sammy up into his room and to stay there, and that I would be up in a moment. Then I sent a quick message to Terrence that basically said, Rebecca is at the door, telling her to leave. Then I unlock the door but keep the chain connected and open the door slightly, asking if I can help her.

She stares at me for a second, then huffs and lets out a snide chuckle. I'm here to see my nephews. Where's Terrence? I tell her that Terence isn't there, and that she would need to come back another time to talk to him about the situation. She tells me that I need to let her in and see her nephews right then and there. At this point, Terence is calling me, so I put the phone on speaker and tell him that I was just informing Rebecca that she needed to leave. She starts yelling at me and then at the phone, saying that she has a right to see her family and that he can't keep them from her. He calmly but directly says, Rebecca, you need to leave.

If you're not gone in three minutes, my brother will be calling the police and telling them that you're currently violating a restraining. order. You aren't supposed to be anywhere near my sons, and you aren't supposed to be on my property. Phil, if she's not gone in three minutes, call the cops. I agreed. He said to call him back and let him know what was going on, and that he would be home soon. Then he hung up. At this point, Rebecca is screaming at me about how I'm ruining her life and calling me every single derogatory and racist name that she can pull out of her mouth. I once again firmly tell her to leave and go to shut the door. She tries to push her hand in the gap to stop it from closing,

but I wasn't having it. I kept pushing the door against her fingers. If she was going to try to force her way in, then I was going to use force to keep her out. After a few seconds of what I'm assuming was tremendous pain, she pulls her fingers back and I slammed the door, locking the deadbolt and the knob. She then starts yelling about how she's going to kill me

and how I'm going to regret everything. I give her the full three minutes, and by the end of it, she's in her car and she is driving off. So I text Terrence to let him know that she's gone, but that she was being incredibly violent with her words. He tells me again that, if I see her or a car that looks like hers drive by at all, that I needed to call the cops immediately and tell them.

them what happened. I agree, and we move on with the rest of the night. I give the boys their food, they're happy and full, and Ben asks if they can go play in their room. I tell them it was fine, and honestly, my mind was on the possibility of Rebecca coming back, so it was best that they were in their room just in case. After about an hour of me sitting and watching SpongeBob by myself, and listening to the boys play upstairs. I get up to go and check on them. And no sooner than I stood up, I hear what sounds like a loud smack on the front door.

Then, the sound of glass breaking. I duck and I freak out. I grab my phone and run upstairs into my nephew's room. I shut the door and I call 911 immediately. Honestly, a good portion of this is kind of a blur. I don't recall the phone call really. I think a lot of what I said to them was pure instinct and a lot of my action was just pure adrenaline.

I thought that this crazy woman was seriously trying to break into the house to get to us, and I honestly thought that there was a high possibility I was going to be killed and my nephew's kidnapped. After standing in the room with my back against the door for several moments and telling the 911 operator about the situation, she said the police would be there within a few minutes and to stay in the room. What I hated the most about this was that my nephews were just looking at me. Sammy was too young to process what was going on beyond me being in the room to play with them,

and Ben was just old enough to know that I was scared of something, but not know what. So I'm sitting there on the floor and just waiting, telling the boys to go back to playing. they do, and I'm holding back tears just waiting for what felt like an eternity for the police to arrive. In reality, it was nine minutes, but it felt like an hour. When I heard the police announce themselves, I told the boys to stay in the room and that I would be right back. I went out there and there were two officers standing at the door with their guns drawn and several more cars in front of the house with their spotlights shining around the area. I let the officers in.

They asked me if I was okay and if anyone else was in the house. I tell them that I was watching my nephews and that the person that did this was likely their aunt. I explained the night to them, and they asked me that I contact Terrence and see if he could come home. Long story short, and to skip over the conversation with the police, Rebecca had come back and thrown a brick through the garage window and through the bay window in the living room. Even creepier, she had thrown a dead squirrel at the front door. And that's what the initial thump was before the bricks came through the windows. This woman had lost her mind and was legitimately trying to show how crazy she was.

And while I was scared enough to pretty much piss my pants, I was horrified at the thought that she would have been willing to throw a brick through the living room window, where one of her nephews seriously could have been sitting. She could have killed one of them easily if they had been in the room. Thankfully, it was just me, and they were upstairs playing. The police took the statement, and they put out a call for her, and they asked the neighbors if they'd seen anything and all that. My brother bought security cameras for the windows after that night, just in case.

But from what I recall, she was picked up by the house. the cops and won't be getting out anytime soon. So, Rebecca, the absolutely insane woman that happens to be my nephew's aunt, I hope you and I never meet again. The story happened what feels like a really long time ago. I was still new into my job as a paramedic and had yet to be beaten down by the stresses that come with the job. Honestly, it is a good job, but it will wear you down.

Working for 12-hour shifts at some point, running around, constant blasts of adrenaline because of new calls, it will age you so much quicker than any other job. I cannot tell you how many days off I slept through, because I was completely and totally exhausted from my shifts. Honestly, it's enough to destroy your time. your personal relationships, which is where we can segue into the context of the story. Back when I was a rookie paramedic, I was dating a rookie police officer named Laura. Laura was an incredibly energetic, spry, and fun-loving girl that I genuinely loved, and she was

probably one of the nicest people that I've met in all my years on this earth. Laura actually joined the force because of her father, Paul. He was a sergeant in that same department, and he'd been on the force for quite a while. I don't remember how long, but he was pretty well known and well respected throughout our small town. I actually knew Paul from when I was a medic prior to dating Laura. So when I met her and we started dating, it was actually quite a surprise for me when I was. I found out they were related. Regardless, he knew I had a good head on my shoulders and a steady job, so he was okay

with us being together. Anyways, now that you know who I am and who they are, it's probably best to get to the actual story slash situation. Like most paramedic horror stories, this isn't one that's scary per se, but it's terrifying in its own right. On the night of this situation, I'd been working a full 12 shift, and I was tired. I was actually scheduled to be off the next day, so I was ready for it to come to an end. The night had actually been fairly busy, considering it was the middle of the week.

I think I had already been on two calls in that evening alone, and the other pair had already been sent out twice. And while the calls we had taken weren't that big of a deal, it was a lot more than I was used to having to deal with. Because of this, I was hopeful that we would just have a silent remainder of the evening, and I would be able to do nothing for the last hour of my shift. I know this sounds lazy, but trust me, when you're running around for five or so hours taking care of various things around town, it's enough to make you want to fall asleep while drive.

Of course, that's not how things work in reality. And with around 45 minutes left of an exhausting shift, we get a high priority call. I'm sitting there and listening to the dispatch inform us of the situation as we're getting everything together to get out as quickly as possible. The whole thing was a pretty horrible mess, apparently. We were informed that we were responding to a shots of, fired potential injury at a domestic call. The initial call that the officer had taken was one where a woman had called the police on her husband because he had gotten drunk and was starting to hit her.

The location was actually a frequent call, one that the officers had gone to a number of times. And the situation typically ended with, husband goes to jail for a couple of days, gets out with a court date, but the wife would not leave him. Now, I know that the cycle of abuse is very real, and these kinds of relationships are very hard to get out of, but it's really painful to see these things recur like this. Unfortunately, and obviously, this time things had gone south. There were shots fired with injury, and obviously we were headed in that direction as fast as we humanly could. It wasn't close, but we were still making pretty good time overall.

It wasn't until we were about halfway there, that the call changed from a shots-fired potential injury to a shots-fired officer down. This kind of escalation, it turns the entire situation from a big deal to a huge deal. We now had an officer that was in need of immediate medical attention and, most likely, other injuries. We pulled up to the scene and we jumped out and when we saw a second team of officers had already secured the scene and were trying to help out the downed officer.

While I anticipated this to be a terrible situation, I could feel my heart stopping when I saw Paul on the ground in a pool of his own blood. I ran over to him and I started to do everything I could to stop the bleeding, but I knew, Immediately there was nothing that could be done. He'd been shot in the left side of his neck, and he was already starting to fade at that point. I remember grabbing his hand and kneeling down and telling the officer to hold the pressure. The look in his eyes when he saw me

is something that's going to stick with me until the day that I die. It was almost like a glimmer of hope. He knew me, and he trusted me, so I think part of him had become a little more relaxed when he saw me approaching. Either he started to think he was going to be okay, or he knew he was a goner and at that point didn't feel alone anymore.

Like I said, I tried to keep him there, and we tried to get him into the ambulance while maintaining, but he passed away while we were headed to the hospital. Apparently, the call had gone bad within the first few minutes of Paul showing up. the husband was, as the wife had said, drunk and pissed off at the world. When Paul showed up, he expected the whole thing to go as it had gone in the past.

The husband would fight for a bit, but would eventually end up in cuffs, and then in a cell for a day or two. What he didn't expect was that the husband was going to be completely off it and then shoot his wife dead while Paul was knocking on the door. From what I was told, this guy murdered his wife, and then when he saw Paul, shot him from the window, and then turned the gun on himself. Talking to Laura was nearly impossible after this whole thing had happened, because there was nothing I could do to save him, and I just had to watch her father die.

I tried to talk to her about it. I tried to tell her he wasn't in pain, and I tried to tell her that he was at peace when it happened, but it didn't really do much. I don't blame her for not wanting to hear all that standard BS. Laura and I split up pretty soon after. We kind of just grew distant, and I think that she didn't want to be around me anymore after this whole thing happened. Again, I don't blame her. She also quit the force within that. month. I actually have no idea what happened to her after this, and I'm sure it took her a lot of time to get to a good place mentally.

I just personally hope that if Laura is still out there, she's living her life to the best of her abilities, and she was able to keep going strong. If not for herself, then at least for Paul. I've been debating on posting this. Not because I've been scared, but sometimes. simply because this is my first post since joining Reddit. Please forgive my writing as sometimes my wording and punctuation could be better. I'll start off by explaining the area, so you can get a good picture of where this occurred. We lived in a small neighborhood. All the surrounding streets were dead ends, into a half-circle park.

Behind the park are some woods and a railroad track. When we were younger, we all played in the front, part of the woods. We never ventured too far back. This was our play area for years. We never had an issue or a scare. This area was pretty and well-lit, wooded area. Anyhow, one day my brother Jimmy and my best friend Sarah, and my brother's best friend Ian, were all building a dam in the middle of the small creek that ran through the park and the woods. The boys decided they were going to head back to Ian's house for some snacks, Sarah and I said we would stay to finish our camp area.

As we're moving the rocks around, I get a very odd feeling come over me. A strange feeling that we're being watched. I immediately think it's the boys trying to scare us and just continue with what we are doing. Sarah and I load up some big rocks and head back to the creek and put them down at the dam. I get that feeling again, and as I stand up, I see something straight in front of me, about 30 feet away.

I can't clearly make out what it is yet because it's behind a bush, but I do see that it is a pattern of red and blue. I know that's nothing the boys had on, so at this point I'm focusing on trying to figure out what it is. As I'm scanning up the bush, I start to realize it's a... clown. I kid you not. My heart started pounding immediately. The clown and my eyes lock. He's wearing a blue and red hat with a reverse pattern red blue jumpsuit. I grabbed Sarah's shirt and immediately pull her upright and she notices the man right away. He's smiling with the full face of makeup and he has a huge knife. We both say nothing and start running as fast as our legs can take us. He begins to follow. We can hear twigs snapping and the ground crunching,

but we are booking it. We run through the front of the woods, through the side of the park, and up her dead-end street. Ian and Jimmy are two houses up from the end, and see us running and are screaming what is going on. While running past, we scream that there's a clown, and they start laughing. We are still running, screaming for our lives, and we finally make it to the middle of the street when Sarah's dad, Danny, is now running out the front door, because he hears us screaming. We meet Danny right at the beginning of the neighbor's house, and we're trying to explain what we saw, and he says, girls, stop it now. This is ridiculous. What are you talking about? We try to catch our breath. By this time, Jimmy and Ian have caught up to us. We're crying and pointing and telling

Danny again that we saw a clown and a knife. Jimmy and Ian are laughing, and Danny is asking if they played a prank on us. About this time, an old yellow pinto type of car comes from the dead end at the park and pulls right up next to the sidewalk of the yard we are in. Sure enough, plain as day, It is the freaking clown. No hat this time, but knife in hand and telling us to come here. Danny starts shoving us all towards the house, and he himself is scared and running now. The car drives off down the street. We get inside, and Danny calls the police.

We had to give statements, and the police patrolled the neighborhood in the park for a few weeks. We were never allowed to go in the park again, and a few months after. After that, the city started to clear out the woods. They cut down many of the trees and made a walking area that you could see through all the way to the train tracks. My friend and I used to talk about this many times up until her death. No one would believe us had they not seen it as well. It was just so scary. I think they only got to see him because, whoever it was, had to go down the dead end road to leave the neighborhood.

Either way, this man was not afraid of us, nor the small group of people that gathered from our screaming. He very bravely stopped right in front of us as her father tried to comfort us and calm us down, all the while flashing his knife. We're lucky to be alive, I feel. Had it just been one of us left in the woods, which sometimes occurred, I don't think there would have been a group of four of us any longer. Sarah's dad stopped drinking that day, and we all have a fear of clowns. In the time that I have personally spent on the deep and dark web,

which I can say with all honesty has probably been way too long, I've seen some incredibly bizarre and really messed up stuff. A lot of what I've seen and done could probably get me into legal trouble if I went into details. Thankfully, I know what I'm doing for the most part, and have protected myself. This isn't my first story on your channel, but I'm not going to say which other one was mine. I'll leave that for the listeners to figure out. I will say, in that story, the actions I took were definitely not legal.

That said, I thought I would send you another story and send you one that wasn't necessary. me doing anything, but me finding something on the deep web that was genuinely unexpected, and legitimately creepy as hell. I can't remember the exact point in time when this happened, but it was a while back, pre-COVID, which honestly feels like an eternity ago, so probably early 2019. I was on one of my typical dark web excursions, trying to decide what I wanted to do. wanted to do while perusing through various onion links. I ended up on a page that was incredibly out of place.

On the dark web, you get tons of strange stuff, adult content and what have you, but this page looked like someone's personal homepage. It had a guy's picture on the front and center, and it went into a lot of detail explaining exactly who this guy was. It had his name, location, professional experiences, software and apps that he had developed, companies he had contracted with and worked for. To be honest, this page could almost have been a substitute for the guy's LinkedIn, you know, if it weren't an onion link on the deep web.

I started reading his info out of curiosity. Honestly, I hadn't seen any other page where a person laid out their entire life for the dark web. but this guy was putting it all out there. Experience, education, who he's worked with, what programming languages he knew, all of it. I seriously went through all of his pages, one by one, pretty much becoming this guy's biggest fan, until I got to the bottom.

There was a page titled, To the love of my life, Chrissy. I was already this deep into this guy's information, so I figured why not learn about the person that he obviously was in love with. Couldn't hurt, right? But before I press on about what this page was, I want to remind you that this page was laid out like a CV. This guy was very professional,

and was obviously proud of his accomplishments. It had tons of his personal information, and it seriously looked like something he could have sent to a prospective employer. But this page, undid all of that. At the top of the page, there was a brief explanation of who exactly Chrissy was.

Apparently, Chrissy was a former co-worker with this guy that had worked together at a previous contract gig, and he was very obviously, painfully obsessed with her. The page had a header slash title that

seriously read, Chrissy is my angel, my light, and God wants me to have her, which was then followed by an incredibly cringy poem about how she was his world and how his life was only worth living while he was with her. Then there was a picture of a woman who, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume was Chrissy. Now, all of that was within the first section of the page,

and it isn't too terrible, right? It is creepy, wasn't necessarily terrifying. Well, after that, is where things started to get freaking weird. After his quick confession of how much he loved Chrissy, this guy threw out any semblance of sanity, and his mental state became very apparent. He had picture after picture, after picture of this woman.

Again, creepy. He was obviously collecting pictures of her, but it just... kept escalating. Several of these pictures, in fact most of them, were pretty obviously taken without Chrissy's consent. Some looked like they were taken at company events or with friends. Some looked like they were taken from a Facebook page. But a lot of them were taken of her at candid moments. There were pictures of her at her desk in an office, in a parking lot, eating lunch with her friends at a grocery store and at a park with, I'm assuming, her husband and her kids.

There were even some pictures taken of her through a window and through curtains of her in pajamas, and some others of her in her underwear in her bedroom. This guy was very clearly a stalker, which, yeah, was obvious, but he had taken it almost to the furthest level he. could. By this point, we've clearly established here that this guy was obsessed, stalker, creep, but there's more. He had actually gone the length to Photoshop Chrissy's face onto adult models, and then photoshopped his own face onto males in the same pictures. Each picture had its own description of what it was supposed to be, like, me and Chrissy on our honeymoon, a hot summer night,

expressing our love, etc. And all of them were obviously photoshopped pictures of adult content with their faces. This man was obsessed, yes, which is creepy in its own rights, but this was a level above obsession. This was him living out a creepy fantasy with a woman that had a life of her own, and she had no idea how deep in love with her this weirdo was. I honestly felt bad for her. If I knew how to get a hold of her, I would have let her know so she could file a restraining order. I remember that after all the freaky picks, there was a section at the end that said something like,

Chrissy and I are soulmates. We met in heaven before we came to earth, and God wants us to be together. We will be the modern Adam and Eve, lovers meant to usher in the future. she will see how much I love her and we will embrace as we welcome our new lives. Which, to me, sounded a bit like he was going to force her to love him.

But I don't know. In the end, this was one of the weirdest things I've seen on the dark web. It may not be super creepy to some people, but it does make me wonder how many weirdos obsessed with their wimbing. women coworkers like this and don't build their own deep web shrine. The dark web is a place where you can buy damn near anything for the right amount of Bitcoin

from things like the obvious, drugs, hacking tools, personal information on people you wish to stock, all the way to things that are much more obscure. Things like exotic pets, Hitman Services, though, Most of those are honey pots, and illegally obtained weapons. Most of the time, when thinking about buying things in the dark web, it's best not to think too much on what you're looking at. Take it at face value and don't ask questions. You don't want to know where the hell those guys got that block of drugs

or the handgun that you just purchased, because, odds are, when you get to the end of that rabbit hole, you're going to find that someone is either dead, injured, missing, or being looked for by federal agents. My point is, you really don't need to be on the dark web unless you plan to break the law in some way, shape, or form. That said, there is one service that I found on the dark web that actually made me think about it

and what could have or could be happening. For a bit of backstory, I spend a lot of my personal time on the internet. I do a lot of contractor IT work for larger companies, mostly data security and security analysis for medium-sized corporations. One of my secondary jobs in my cybersecurity work is what is known as threat,

hunting. A threat hunter is someone that goes out onto the deep and dark web and tries to find pages that are selling vulnerability information for websites or technologies. Basically, they go and see if a company's information is readily available to hackers, or if they're using technologies that are being actively exploited. This doesn't have anything to do with my story, but it gives you an idea of who I am and what I do for a living. And it helps you to understand why I was out on the dark web. Now, because I had to find this data on the dark web, typically information that was for sale, I had to get in with the people selling the info, and I had to purchase it when necessary. These were legitimate sales on the dark web. Yes, this is a gray area, and yes,

there can be issues with doing this, but a lot of the time, it was critical for what I was doing for these organizations. Because of this, I spent a lot of time on sites that were built to sell illegal content. This ties back to how I started the story. The sites that sell illegal content, and services, and typically you see these things and you just understand that they exist, and you move on. However, there was one site that had something that made me legitimately terrified, mostly because it had two services that were sickeningly tied together. The first service that I saw was one that was, unfortunately, fairly common. which is escorts.

A lot of the time, these escorts from the dark web are not willing participants. They are, more often than not, victims of human trafficking. That alone is sickening and terrible, but the next part is what made it worse. This website had a service dedicated to assisting immigrants. On its face, that may not sound like much, but put into context with the other side of that, it's incredibly likely that a lot of these immigrants they were helping were actually being dragged into the human trafficking side as well.

I mean, just think about it. People entering a foreign country, possibly alone and desperate, most likely not able to keep in touch with family back home, and it's likely that no one knows where they're going to end up. I just kind of sat there and thought about it for a few moments, and it really got to me. The thoughts that someone from another country may be looking to get away from an oppressive government or away from something like the cartel could end up finding this as a way out.

I could imagine they would do so much to scrape together the money just to pay these people that say they would help them. and then they end up getting trafficked or sold out as an escort. I know this isn't your normal story, and I apologize if it's a bit strange in its context, but it's something I found on the dark web that actually scared me. And while it was really only an implication with no confirmation, it's one of those things that when you know how these illegal networks work,

It becomes quite clear what's happening. I've been the man behind the bar for a significant portion of my life, mostly because it pays the bills, lets me work odd hours of the day, and you get to meet new and interesting people. Though that last one may have varying definitions for some people out there, but honestly, I've met some really cool people, and even a handful of celebrities

while serving drinks, and I dig it. Of course, you have the occasional crappy patron, and sometimes you have to deal with fights, but most bars and clubs hire the big muscle guys to take care of those problems. So you just have to be smart enough to not get involved and inform security if things get out of hand. The bar I work at has a small radio system for the employees of the club, Basically, it's a walkie-talkie system that allows us to contact each other without having

to leave our stations. If I have a customer wanting to know where their deep-fried cheese curds are, I can grab the radio and ask the kitchen for an ETA. If we have a band playing, I can radio over to the booth and let them know what it sounds like from my side. On top of this, if we have a customer or patron that is out on the floor and looks like they're getting a little too hammered. I can call out to security and the other bartenders

and inform them that the guy with the skull shirt and blue jeans is cut off. And we can all act as a unit behind the counter. It's probably one of the best things this club has implemented, if you asked me. The story I want to tell you is one where the radio really held up its end and made our jobs easier and potentially saved someone from a horrible situation. This was several years ago. It was a pretty typical night. I think there was some DJ playing a dance set for the bar, and quite a few patrons were out that night.

Whenever we have DJs, we usually get a bunch of couples out wanting to get wasted and have fun, first dates, and for some reason, a lot of middle-aged women that gets super. super loud. The people that were involved in this were probably in the first or second category, but it was a group with two guys and two ladies. One of the couples walked up to the bar. The young lady ordered, I think, a strawberry daffery, and he ordered a couple of shots for their friends over on the other side of the room. She pulls out her credit card and asks me to start a tab for them. I grab it and I ask her for her ID. all basic stuff.

She checks out, and it all goes as expected. He tells her to take the shots over to their friends so they don't have to walk over, and she excitedly agrees. As soon as she walks away, he looks me dead in the eyes and drops a small baggie on the counter, and then says, how much to add this into her drink. I was clearly taken aback by the fact that he would just ask, and then he drops a couple hundred dollar bills on the counter and nods towards the baggy. Obviously, I wasn't going to add this into her drink, and I was more than ready to knock this ass hat out myself,

but I grabbed the bag and the money and tell him to take the rest of the shots over to the friends. He stares and be confused, but then I tell him that he can't be around when I do it, otherwise he would look guilty. At first, he didn't seem to understand, but after processing it for a few moments, he smirks and nods, and then starts to walk toward the group. The second he stepped away from the counter, I grabbed my radio and called for all security. I literally told them that I had an attempted drugging and that management needed to call police, and that security would need to detain him. Then I gave his description, black short-cut hair, blue-colored button-down, khakis, etc. As soon as they both confirmed that they were all doing what was requested,

I stepped out from behind the bar and walked up to the group, and then I got her attention. At first, the guy seemed a bit suspicious of me, but I calmed his suspicion when I said to the whole group, Your drinks are all coming up shortly, but the system said that your card was declined. Do any of you other lovely folks have a card? for the tab, I'd hate for your party to end here, and then threw a wink over at that jackass. The lady friend then pulled out a card and tried to hand it to me. I mentioned that I needed them to come over to the bar so I could get her ID, and told the potential victim that she needed to come get her card back. They both followed me over to the counter. The whole time she was saying how

confused she was about the fact that the card was declined, and all that. As soon as we got back to the bar, and I got into my station, I grabbed my radio, and I told security to proceed. They approached the two other guys, and while I have no idea what was said, I saw that they were motioning towards the door. After a few seconds, the one jackass started yelling about how they weren't going anywhere, and, of course, a small scuffle ensued. When I was certain that security had these two guys under control, I then told the ladies about what the one had asked me to do. I informed them that he had tried to slip me $200 to get me to drug or dackery. At first, I didn't think they believed me, but I showed her the baggy and the money and told her that the police were on their way.

I think the realization of the situation hit her right then and there, because she started to cry. and her friend was just sitting there with her mouth wide open. I tried to interject a bit in an attempt to get them talking and to calm down. I asked how long they'd known the guys. She tells me that they had just started dating two weeks ago and that he was a friend of the second guy, who turned out to be the female friend's husband. Apparently, she'd known him for years,

but the two of them had just started dating because the couple had decided to hook them up. The cops showed up and pulled the ladies aside to discuss it with them, and one of the officers asked me for what the guy gave me. I had no issue with handing it to him, and I told him that the manager would happily give them the security camera footage from behind the bar. Then they informed me that, when they got there, the husband actually tried to fight off one of the officers, and claimed he had no idea what his friend was doing, or that he had drugs on him. Apparently, his friend the jackass, then literally said in front of the police, bullshit, Dave, I literally bought it from you.

So I have no idea what happened to that marriage or that friendship, but I was beyond grateful for the radio system that night. This was one of those situations that make you think that, even if you do know someone, you may not always know their intentions. A few years ago, I went camping for the first time in my life. It was about 11 or 12 when we headed out to a forest nearby our house. We were in Poland for the holidays, as every year, and right next to our house was a huge forest. So, one day, we decided to take out my mom's old tent she still had from, like, the 90s,

and just stay the night or two in between some wildlife. Good thing, the place we chose to sleep at was only about 20, maybe 30 minutes away from the house. Bad thing, there are a lot, and I mean a lot of wolves, foxes, and boars out in the forest. And honestly, I kind of regretted going there in the first place. We set everything up at around 6 p.m. and my sister and I set up the campfire. My dad chopped down some of the smaller trees earlier with his oak axe, important for the later part of the story, and by now it had dried out enough to catch fire. We sat around it for quite some time, probably around four hours until it was dark, so we decided to just head to sleep then. My two sisters and I on one end of the tent, and my parents on the other.

It was probably just the fear of getting eaten alive by some wolves or homesickness, but I couldn't sleep at all. I heard my dad tell my mom he was going out into the forest to get some wood for the morning, while it was still fairly dry, or it would have all soaked up the dew by then. The thoughts of not having my dad around made it even worse for me to close my eyes for even a second. I'm not too good at telling what time it is by you. just staring at the sky or trying to figure out how long it has been, so I'll just say it was around 12 or 1 in the morning.

I was actually falling asleep when I heard some rattling outside the tent. My first thought, Wolf. I was terrified, and so I just popped out my head through the little curtain that separated the two halves of the tent, basically a thin piece of fabric, just hanging. hanging on some threads to see if my dad was back. He was still gone, and it had been about an hour since he went. I lay back down and just tried to fall asleep, but when I turned myself on the side,

I saw this faint human shadow outside the tent. I froze and let out a teeny squeak. The person seemed to be holding some sort of axe-shovel-type, thing in his hand, and so I thought it may have just been my dad coming back. The shadow walked towards the entrance of the tent and just stood there at the zipped-up door for maybe 30 seconds. I began to wonder why he wasn't just coming inside. Then the person finally ran off into the forest, but they dropped the axe.

You could hear the footsteps fade into the distance, and a thump just happened along the way. maybe a minute or two later, I hear my dad walking back from the opposite side of the forest and enter the tent all tired and just fell asleep. Seemed kind of sketchy and fishy and scary to me, but it was so late I couldn't even think anymore, and I somehow fell asleep. The next morning, I woke up after my dad dropped his phone on his face, letting out an ouch. I peeped through the curtain at him, and he just smiled back while rubbing his nose. I needed some fresh air, because I was feeling a bit sick.

Maybe from the nerves in the morning or homesickness, I couldn't really tell. Both of us got out of the tent, and we walked around for a while. We circled around the campsite for around 10 minutes, until we came back to our tent. That is when I noticed something that ran the chills down my back. A few meters from the tent In the corner of my eye, I managed to catch a glimpse of something red. It took me a hot second to realize what I actually saw,

and when I turned my head to see what it was, it was a red and black rubber axe. It was not there before. I knew it wasn't my dad's because his was by the pile of wood that he collected at night. For my dad's reaction, I probably turned pale because he started to freak out a little like I was about to pass out or something. He turned his gaze to where I was looking and we both just stared for a few seconds before he called out for the rest of the family to wake up and get moving.

We were all packed up within the hour and we rushed back home. I later told my dad what I saw that night and he didn't believe me at first. I carried on with the story and he finally realized I was telling the truth. To this day, I still have no idea who the hell that was. But I'm just happy he didn't investigate our tent any further or any other animal out in that forest. So to the Axeman, who was outside my tent in the middle of the night, let's not meet. This happened to me a few years ago.

And I've learned my lesson. Me and a group of friends from school decided to take a spring break trip, since we were graduating and wanted to do something wild for a change. We settled on where else, but Florida. Beaches, drinks, and whatever else it brings us. We set up our plans, we waited a grueling week or so for it to come, and we finally head out. We got there.

The hotel was great. There was a bar in the hotel, but what would be the fun in that? So we headed out, grabbed some pizza, and scattered out the area for nearby bars, and other interesting places. We found a bar that we decided to stop in, and it looks are deceiving. It was a lot smaller inside than it looked. There was a short bar on one side, a few old. old rickety booths in a long table along the side with bar stools and those little touchscreen games. There were more older people in there, but we were tired and just wanted to have a good time for our first night.

There were a few women who looked to be about our age playing pool, so we thought we'd give it a shot. Me and my two friends grabbed drinks and headed over to the girls. They allowed us to stay, and we played a few rounds. with them. It was a lot of fun, but apparently we were too loud for them, so after giving us multiple warnings, we decided to leave. It was already late, so we split from there. I unfortunately didn't get any phone numbers, but at least I had three more days to try. Next night was fun. The third night was where things got weird. We found a VR game cafe, and we hung out there for a while. We had lunch and then decided that we would get a couple packs of beer, a cooler, and then head out to the beach.

It was normal, and we found a spot. One of my friends rented a surfboard and decided he would try it out. That idiot has never surfed in his life, so it was more fun for us to watch him fall over every time. There was a group of people playing beach volleyball, so after a few beers, I decided I was okay with making a fool out of myself, too. I joined in for a while, and then we stopped to get something to eat, and more drinks since what we had wouldn't last. One of the girls offered to have us go back to her condo to continue partying, and, of course, we're not passing that up. When we got there, there were already a few people there. That was a blast from what I remember.

I know we had more shots, games, lots of stupid dares, but... But that's about all I can remember from that night. The next morning, I woke up under a tree, in a parking lot of a thrift store. The only thing I was wearing was my swim trunks, and I had a set of keys in my pocket that were not mine. My scalp also seemed really irritated, and that's when I realized my hair had been colored. blue. It was coming off of my hand, so I figured it was the spray stuff, but I still don't remember any of that happening. I tried to look around and place myself, but I didn't recognize any of the buildings or street names. It doesn't help that I'm not from Florida either, so yes, I was a little

concerned. The thrift store wasn't open, it seemed, so I walked across the street to a gas station, to see if they could help me, or at least tell me where the hell I was. The lady at the register looked annoyed, like she must have been used to this kind of thing. Honestly, but she was nicer than I expected. She actually told me the hotel I was at. It was about six or seven miles from where we were, so thankfully I was in the same state, and not too far. I didn't have any money or my cell phone on me, so...

I couldn't call my friends, nor could I pay for anything, so I was about to be screwed. The cashier was hesitant about letting me use the store's phone at first, but she finally let me. I tried calling my friend, they didn't answer, so I had no choice but to start walking. It gave me some time to try to remember what happened, but I legit don't remember anything after the shots, and then my friend trying to jump over the concrete wall in the back. My head was starting to hurt, and I was getting tired and thirsty. So I tried my luck at hitchhiking. I can't say I blame anyone for not stopping for me.

Some guy in swimming trunks and sloppy blue dyed hair, but someone finally did. It was an older lady and some beat-up pickup truck. I told her the best I could where I'd. I was heading. She reminded me of my grandma, so it was hard to explain that I got blackout drunk and didn't know where I was. She was nervous, of course, but ultimately told me to ride in the back of the bed, and she would take me to the hotel. I got there, and thankfully the front desk lady remembered me somehow, so she got me back into my room, since I didn't have my key or my ID. None of my friends were there, though, and I was just hoping they didn't end up in the same position as myself.

I took a shower and got dressed, and I'm not going to lie, I crashed. I was exhausted in my head was still killing me. I however woke up to my friend throwing a bottle of water at me. Apparently they made it as far as the lobby, passed out on the couches and were told to leave, or go to their rooms if they were staying there. They then got up and went looking for me while I made it back here. Unfortunately, the shower didn't get all the blue hair dye out,

and they said they don't remember me ever doing that, nor did they have any clue whose keys I had. None of us drove or rented a car, and our house keys were in our suitcases. We kind of kicked back the last night to recover and try to remember what the hell happened. But we still can't. To make it even weirder, as we were checking out,

the guy at the front desk said there was a note left for me. Shockingly, it was my ID wrapped in a Burger King receipt that was two months old with a lipstick print on it. He was able to match the name on the ID to me since the room was in my name. So, overall, I... I lost a night that I can't remember. I lost my wallet and I came to a set of keys that I still have, because now it's a reminder that I will never do something so stupid again.

This may not be a standard babysitting horror story, but it's still worth sharing. And there are actually a few things that I want to share. I may send more over to you later if you want, but these are some of the worst. I've been working as a lead at a daycare for around 13 years now, and it's almost entertaining how unfiltered kids are when you get them talking, and how much they imitate those that they're around frequently. What kind of sucks about this is that when a kid says something that's iffy or questionable, we have to contact CPS by law and report what happened. One instance of this happening actually happened pretty recently with a little boy that we'll call Jim.

One day, during the morning, while the kids were playing, I was making coffee and Jim walked up to me. I was putting my creamer and sugar in the mug, and Jim asked me if I liked to smell the sugar. I was a bit confused at first. why would I smell sugar? I told him I wasn't sure what he was talking about. And then he tells me that, sometimes, while he's at his uncle's house, his uncle likes to smell the sugar. I asked what he meant,

and he tells me that his uncle likes to smell the sugar off of the table with a straw. Come to find out, while his uncle was watching him, he decided it would be okay to do cocaine in front of him. of him and just tell him it's sugar. Another one that's worth talking about happened with a little girl in my group named Sasha. Sasha was a sweetheart. She was incredibly quiet and soft-spoken, but she was also one of the nicest little girls that I'd ever met.

One day, her dad brought her in and she had a bruise on her face. Obviously, my mind went to a dark place, and I told her. told her dad that I had to legally ask what had happened. He tells me that he didn't know. She had the bruise when he had gotten home from work the night before, and she wouldn't tell him no matter how much he asked. He seemed sincere, and said that he thinks that she fell or something when she was doing something she wasn't supposed to, and maybe she didn't want to get in trouble. I accepted his response, and we went on with the day. Around lunch, she said she wanted to tell me something and asked if I could keep a secret.

I told her that I could, of course, and asked what was wrong. She told me that she was sorry that she had lied to her dad about her bruise, but she didn't want him mad because his girlfriend had given it to her. Apparently, her dad's girlfriend was verbally abusive and had now become physically abusive to this little girl, and the dad was none the wiser. I, of course, told him, and I filled out my report to the protective services. I felt bad for the dad, but I had no choice in the matter. The last one is probably the saddest one for me,

and it happened when I was still fairly new to working out of daycare. There was a little boy that attended our daycare named Adam. Adam was incredibly shy, but absolutely loved. being in the daycare because of how much he got to socialize. I know that sounds like opposites, but it was more like he was shy until he got to know you. Adam's father was a police officer for the city and was a fairly well-respected guy. Adam was very clearly proud of how much of a hero his dad was, and he would talk about it a lot. Then, one day, while I was sitting at one of the tables, I heard Adams say something about how people are coming to get him.

I asked him what he meant, and he said that, Daddy says that some of the bad people he arrested are going to come get us. I was just kind of like, okay. I said I wanted to hear more, and then he goes on to say that his dad had put duct tape over his, his windows and put a camera in his bedroom to watch him and make sure the bad guys didn't break in. I really didn't know what to do with this, and I probably shouldn't have, but I actually contacted his father about the situation. I was asking him if everything was all right at home because Adam was saying things that didn't really make sense. His dad laughed and just said that Adam had a wild imagination.

I agreed, said it was okay, and hung up. Unfortunately, I have no idea what happened after that, because Adam never came back to the daycare. His father had resigned, and apparently they moved away within the next week. I don't know if this was for protection, or if his dad was legitimately paranoid. So, yeah, kids can say some crazy,

things, and I have more that I might send your way, but I just wanted to use this as an opportunity to say that kids do not have filters. If you tell your kids something, or if you do something in front of your kids, they will 100% repeat it, or they will happily go on telling someone else all about it. Back when I was single and used some online dating pages, I had a few dates that were probably in the category of awful and painful, but only one that was really creepy. There was one time that I had matched with a girl named Cindy, and we talked for a bit, and we hit it off, you know, the basics start to a good thing when it comes to dating. After chatting it up, we decided that we would meet for dinner the next night.

We meet up, and she's exactly as she was in the pictures. and she was incredibly friendly. We had a quick conversation outside the restaurant and went in to get our food. The dinner started out as perfect as it could have. About 20 minutes in, after we had gotten our drinks and put in our food order, I noticed that there was a woman sitting at a table a few spots down that was glaring at me. At first, I thought maybe she was staring at something behind me, But I was at the wall, and there was nothing to stare at.

I mentioned it to Cindy, and I said, Hey, there's a woman that's sitting behind you that is staring daggers at me right now. She put her hands over her face and said, Oh, God, blonde, long hair, glasses. While this was a vague description, it was exact. This woman was blonde, had long hair, and thick. glasses on her face. I told her she was right and asked if she had knew her. Come to find out, this woman that was murdering me with her eyes was Cindy's ex-girlfriend.

I had no problem that Cindy was for both teams. What I had a problem with was the fact that this woman was going to legit murder me at a moment's notice. I asked if I should be concerned and she said probably not, which was not at all convincing. After a few moments, our waiter brings over our food, we thank him, and he walks away. No more than 45 seconds later, Cindy's ex stands up and walks over to our table. Hey, Cindy, leave me alone, please. At this point, I could tell that Cindy and this woman did not break up on good terms. Cindy's face was visibly red, and I could tell that she was having a bit of a panic attack.

Please just go away. I don't like this one, the other woman said, before she grabbed my drink off the table and practically heaved it at me. She then said, see you around. To Cindy, and looked over at me and said, you should watch your back. And walked away. like that wasn't the most terrifying thing that she could have said to me. So there I was, soda covering my food, my shirt, and my pants, and the look on my face was probably one of complete and total shock.

Thankfully, the waiter had actually seen what had happened, so he rushed over and told me that he would get the manager, and he would get the food taken care of. I wasn't really concerned about the burger. I was more so worried about Cindy and maybe a little bit for myself. By this point, Cindy was actually in tears. I asked her what was up with that woman and if she was in any actual danger. Honestly, just trying to gauge the situation and figure out if I needed to call the cops.

She then proceeds to tell me that Amanda, the ex, it was pretty much a stalker at this point. She had followed Cindy around on each date that she had, ruined her relationships, and even literally stabbed her last boyfriend. She said it was only in his hand and that he was completely alive and fine, but that he had broken up with her right after that. She said that every time she thought Amanda would be gone for good, she would appear the minute Cindy tried to move on. The worst part, this had been going on for two full years at this point. She said that she had filed a restraining order, contacted the police, and nothing was being done about it. She said that for some reason the authorities were taking it lightly, and they weren't really doing much to keep Amanda away.

She told me that the stabbing incident had happened over three months ago, and that she had waited this long to see if maybe it would work, to get rid of Amanda. Well, it didn't. Amanda was very much there and very angry. At the end of our date, after we had finished our dinner and talked a bit more about Amanda, Cindy told me that it was best that we didn't see each other again. She apologized and said that if Amanda ever disappeared entirely,

she would give me a call and maybe we could try again. I agreed, and we went our separate ways. On the way home, I called my brother to tell him what had happened, and honestly, he laughed at me. He then told me that I was being played, and that Cindy was just trying to get free food, and that Amanda was her wing woman. I started to believe him, and was actually a bit upset that I had fallen for it and that they were such good. good actors. That is, until the next morning. I got up, I got my coffee, and then I went to take my dog for a walk, when I saw the end result of Amanda's anger. My windshield was smashed,

and all four of my tires had been slashed. On top of that, the phrase, she's mine, was spray-painted on the hood. Obviously, I called the police, got the report, and made my insurance claim. Thankfully, I had good coverage. I also sent pictures to my brother and asked if he thought I was still being played. In the end, I never spoke to Cindy again, and I didn't message her to tell her about the damage to my car. I told the police about the night before, but they didn't really seem interested. Every now and then, I start to think about Cindy, and

I wonder if she's out there, if she's doing okay. I really do worry that Amanda may lose her mind and attack her one day. I guess my final thought, to Amanda, the absolute psychotic ex-girlfriend of Cindy, I hope that you and I

never meet again. This may not be a story that would be considered a horror story, but it's one of those stories that makes it clear you shouldn't go on dates with people you don't know too well, or at least ask better questions about the person you plan on going on a date with. This happened back when I was on a stint with dating apps, and there were a handful of guys that I matched with, but I was also a bit picky with who I selected. There was one guy, we'll call him Chris,

that I saw in the app that I thought would be a really good candidate. He was fairly attractive, around my age, and his bio talked about how he was an entrepreneur, and that he was always working on his next business venture. Maybe I had a thing for the business type, I don't know, but I matched him, he matched with me, me and we were good to go from there. We chatted for a while on the app.

I told him about who I was and what I did, and about how I was attending night classes to become a nurse. And he told me about who he was, kind of. I asked him about his business ventures, and he avoided the question entirely, which to me was a bit sketchy, but I also thought that maybe he wanted to make sure I wasn't just trying to get with him for his money.

I know, kind of stupid. It would have made more sense for me to think he was into drugs or other shady activities. Anyways, we talked for a bit and decided that we would get together at a steakhouse in town. It was actually his suggestion. And he was almost insistent that we go to a specific steakhouse because he loved their prime rib. This guy was talking to me about getting prime rib at a steakhouse for a first date. So, yes, I was a bit excited about seeing this through. Since first impressions are everything, I dressed up a little nicer than normal, spent a lot of

time making myself look presentable, and really gave it my all. Again, Steakhouse for a first date. I get there, and I'm sitting in the lobby area waiting for him to arrive, and when he does, he does not look at all like I had anticipated. He was clearly a few pounds heavier than his picture, his hair was longer, his facial hair was unkempt, and he looked like he hadn't showered in a few days. On top of that, his clothes were fairly loose fitting and stained. I was a fair bit taken aback by his appearance, but in the end, was still wanting to go forward with this date. Our conversations were decent, and appearance isn't everything.

Maybe he had just had a really stressful week. We get to the table, and when the waiter comes to take our drink orders, he asks him to bring back two baskets of the free bread. He is insistent that we need two baskets. When they come to the table, this man grabs the small loaf and starts tearing into it, like he hadn't eaten in a few days. Fast forward to the actual meal, and he orders the prime rib, as he said he would. I ordered the chicken parmesan because it sounded awesome.

After that, while we were waiting, I started wanting to talk to him and get to know him a little more. So, I asked what kind of business venture he was coming. currently working with. He laughed at my question and told me not to worry about it. Again, red flag. He then starts talking to me about nursing school and asks about how much it's going to cost me. This was a strange question, but I told him how much I was paying to get my license. He then proceeds to tell me that I needed to quit nursing school and then take all the money

I was spending on it, and put it into Bitcoin. Now, I know that currently Bitcoin would be a good investment had I gotten in way back. But this? This was in December of 2017, when it was peaking. This man was telling me to drop my career aspirations and invest all of my money into it when it was like $15,000. Had I done so, I had I done so, I. I would have lost everything when it tanked only a month later. He then continues to tell me that he had put all of his life's savings into it a week prior,

and that he was going to be a millionaire because of it. Suddenly, the night kind of made sense. He had pushed all the money he had into Bitcoin, and he meant all of his money. He was broke, and he was using the dating apps to find him. find other targets to get them to invest and possibly get a free meal. This last part became apparent when he asked me if I could pay for it because he had forgotten his wallet.

At the end of the meal, he asked the waiter for two boxes and an extra loaf of the bread. He crammed all of his leftovers into one box with what was left on the table and then filled the other box with my leftovers and the extra. or bread. I almost felt bad for him at that point. He was very clearly broke. Well, let me restate that. I would have felt bad for him had he not expected me to pay, and then ordered a $25

cut of beef when I ordered a $10 item. Anyways, I guess the moral of this story, get to know people before you go on a date and try your best not to be a meal ticket for someone who doesn't know how to invest their money. And yes, I know Bitcoin is doing great nowadays, but investing when he did was stupid. And I can't imagine it worked out well for him back then. And no, there was no second date. This story is going to be a bit technical,

and I know that may turn some people off of it, but the technical side is important to know exactly what it is that made this such a weird situation for me. I'm going to try to keep it a bit simplified, so my apologies if the tech nerd in me breaks through. For some background on who I am, I do two jobs in my daily life. Front-end web development and backend,

and web connections. The first job has me building out websites for users and includes both the coding of the pages, as well as the overall user interface. The second job has me watching server connections and seeing what traffic goes where and who connects to what. The best way to look at it is like this. If you connect to a website, you're connecting to a web server,

most likely in a data center. Those data centers have routers, of routers internally, gateways, load balancers, which balance loads, and a bunch of other devices that most home users will never touch in their daily lives. And a lot of it is honestly really boring. And that said, most people know what a firewall is, or at least that it filters traffic based on rules. Those rules tell you what can and cannot connect, and what to do with traffic that isn't

specifically laid out, accept or deny. All that technical BS out of the way, my job requires that I understand how connections happen and that I need to know how to determine where an IP address is coming from. This comes in handy, as I'm able to see that an IP address in China is trying to connect to our local government website in Ohio, which typically results in those IPs getting blacklisted. basically pinpointing the geographical location of an IP address. It sounds complex, but I promise you, a lot of that information is very easily accessible, and with just a bit of know-how, you can usually get a good estimation on the location.

Now that I'm done rambling, I've dabbled in the dark web a few times, and I like to know what I'm doing. Most of the time, connections on the deep web or dark web are encrypted, and it's difficult to find out who is where and what's all going on. Most of the time, the people that run dark web websites don't have much of a connection to the surface web, but it does occasionally happen. There was one time that I ended up on a deep web site that wasn't very well built, or at least not very well protected. This site was for Bitcoin transactions and money transfers, and based on what they described in their quote-unquote partner sites, they were used for very specific and very illegal adult content.

You would like to think, in your mind, that they would keep these kinds of things behind good technology and that you would never have to worry about your data being accessed. Well, you'd be very wrong in this case. The site itself had pieces of code that were static, including comments and connections to static IP addresses while checking out. Lesson 1 in security, never hardcode anything. Always code with dynamics in mind, and never reference your firewall in your programming.

Anyways, I pulled what was listed as a static IP address in the connections, and there were only a couple of IPs, one of them seemed to not respond to any traffic at all, which I kind of expected to be the firewall. But the other one, the one that was constantly labeled as, quote-unquote, home throughout the code, seemed to be a web server, and then it wasn't locked down at all. I connected to the admin port on the server,

and to my surprise, the login information was the default credentials. I was expecting the server to be mostly empty, maybe some kind of honeypot, but as I traversed the directories, I was honestly surprised. Looking at what was on the server, this was the server, the one that was running the payment processing for the illegal content, and they were storing all of the data on this server, firewall lists, IP access logs that they were holding on to, there was a list of every IP and system that had connected and made transactions over the past year or two.

As I dug deeper into the server, I found something that honestly creeped me out. There was a directory on the web server that was for a school district's website. This server that was taking payments for sites that ran very illegal content, was also hosting the public surface web-facing website for a school district. Looking at the information that was saved on some of the pages, it was a school district that taught everything from pre-K through 12th grade and was down south. I'm not going to list the specifics for the safety and security of the school. My initial thought was maybe this server was hosted by a third,

third party, maybe the school didn't actually own this server, but after checking the IP addresses on the geolocator, it was confirmed that this server was 100% hosted on a static IP address assigned to that school district. The schools probably had no idea that they were passing Bitcoin transactions for really vile content. But someone there knew, and they were taking full advantage of having access to servers and having full access to a government-funded and owned IP address. I gathered all the information I could, including how I found the server, what the server

was hosting, and a very basic outline of the insecurities on the server. I also took screenshots of all the things that I knew existed. I bundled it all up and sent it over to the email of the superintendent of the district, advising them that they needed to look into who was managing and running their servers. I only ever got one email back, basically saying thanks, and that they would look into it. My guess is, they either handed it over to the local police or they did some sort of internal investigation. Obviously, they're not going to email me back to tell me the end results. But in my head, though, the sicko that was taking advantage of the schools like this is currently rotting in prison.

I live in a small town in South Africa. Near my town, there is a large patch of woods, and since the outbreak of Corona, I haven't been in the woods for a long time, until yesterday. So my friend called me and asked me if I wanted to join him and a few other mates to play a game of paintball in the woods. and, obviously, I was keen. I got my paintball gear and gun, and headed off to my mate's place. There were six of us, Chase, Liam, Matt, Joey Stephen, and obviously me.

We headed off to the woods, but made a few stops to fill up on petrol and just get some gas for the paintball guns. When we finally got to the woods, we parked the cars, got in our gear and ventured out into the forest to find the perfect spot. to play paintball.

Eventually, we got deep enough and to an area with sufficient cover and space to play a good game of Capture the Flag. We played a couple of games, and since it's winter, it got dark really quick, but we planned for this and brought our flashlights and decided to play a couple of night games, which is extremely hard, especially in the forest we were in. During one match, Joey and I decided to sit out because we were both tired and just needed a quick breather, and the others continued to play from a significantly good distance away from us. While we were chilling, I was rolling up, yes, I'm a pothead,

and Joey went to go take a piss a couple meters away from me. While I was busy rolling, I had the flashlight pointing towards myself, since there was no other light to allow me to see what I was doing and around me. It was completely dark. I couldn't even see two meters ahead of myself because of how dark it was. Suddenly, I heard footsteps coming my way, but I thought it was Joey, and I soon realized I couldn't see any light from his flashlight, so now I was more vigilant but still relaxed,

thinking he was trying to play a prank on me or something, but the footsteps stopped a few meters away from me, so I lifted up my flashlight and pointed it in the direction of where I heard the footsteps and scanned the area. I just saw bushes and trees, and I just thought it might be Joey hiding in the bushes or behind the tree, waiting to give me a jump scare,

and then I heard footsteps coming in the opposite direction, and when I looked, I could see that it was Joey because he was holding his flashlight. That's when I stopped what I was doing and picked up my flashlight and paintball gun, and when Joey reached me, I whispered, Bro, I think there's someone over there. Joey obviously didn't believe me

and just said to me to stop being a baby, but he soon regretted saying that because I decided to do one last scan of where I heard the footsteps, and to my horror, I saw someone peeking and staring right at me from behind a tree, probably 10 to 11 meters away. I just shouted, what the actual hell? And when Joey heard me say this, he looked at me, and then to where the man was,

and instantly jumped up picking up his paintball gun also. We stared at each other for at least two minutes, but it felt like forever, until he stepped out from behind the tree. He was a large man, at least six foot. He was honestly filthy, like he hadn't taken a bath in years. He was wearing baggy ripped up jeans and just an old, dirty zipped-up bomber jacket. Plus, we could see that he was on something or it was just bad shit crazy. And he was holding something behind his back.

He finally said, What are you guys doing out here when it's so dark? We couldn't even answer him because of the shock we were in. Joey stuttered with fear in his voice. Um, we're just leaving. But the man nodded his head in disagreement and said, No, you're not. Your friends are still playing the game.

I felt a shiver down my spine. How about we play a game of our own while we wait for your friends? And that is when he finally showed us what he was hiding behind his back. It was a large machete. That's when I knew we had to get out of there. So I aimed my paintball gun, and in the toughest way I could muster up, I told him, leave now, or I will shoot. Even though I only had about six or seven paintballs loaded,

and Joey did the exact same thing, aiming his gun at the man, even though he had no paintballs in his gun. But he didn't even flinch. But did something that on the same thing. honestly made my skin crawl. He just smiled and said, The game starts now. And suddenly, he just rushed at us.

So I told Joey to run while I fired my last bullets at him, and luckily I shot him in his head, which caused him to fall. So that was our chance to book it and link up with our other friends. As soon as we started running, we heard his footsteps again, and he was actually gaining on us. We could barely see, but we couldn't slow down, because we knew what would happen if we did. So we just carried on sprinting our hearts out until we heard other paintball guns being fired,

so we knew we were close. Joey started shouting to get everyone's attention, and all of a sudden, I heard a loud thud. Joey tripped and twisted his ankle. I turned around to help him up, and when I did, I could see the man running full sprint towards us. In that moment, I thought it was going to be the end for us, but our friends heard our screams for help and rushed to us. And when they saw the man, they just started firing on him. And he knew he wasn't going to be able to take us all on. So he decided to turn around and disappear into the forest.

We helped Joey up, rushed to get our stuff, and then rushed to the cars. When we got to my friend's place, we helped Joey treat his ankle. And I proceeded to tell my friends, everything that happened, and they were all creeped out. It's safe to say that the next time I'm in those woods, I will be much more vigilant. So, these two stories aren't mine directly. They're actually stories I've been told by my dad from his 20-some-odd years serving as a police officer in Southern Michigan. Working for the force that long will absolutely net you a number of stories,

but I recall two of them specifically that bothered him, and strangely, both of them were on the roads. Actually, thinking back, a lot of the stories that he had to tell were about drivers or car accidents. It makes sense, though. A lot of terrible things happen while people are driving around, and far too many people out there drive with zero regard for the safety of others. Anyways, this first story is a testament to the fact that you should always wear your seat belt,

regardless of how uncomfortable it may make you feel. On top of that, you should always take further precautions when it's snowy or cold. My father was on his shift and was patrolling, when he got a call of a rollover accident in the area, that he was near. And the callout informed that there were potential injuries. Seeing as how he's not a medic, his job on the call was basically to get to the scene, secure it, attempt any basic assistance to anyone injured, etc. He hit his lights and he guns it out to where the crash was reported.

And he saw it at the corner of a main road, and a side road. He parks his car to block traffic in that section, and he runs over to the flipped car. From what he's always told me, this was a small sedan, something like a Dodge Neon, and it was still upside down. Even worse, the driver that was in the car was completely out of it. At this point, he's trying to see if the driver is even still alive, checking for a pulse, checking for breathing, when the man suddenly wakes up. My dad is trying to ask him if he can hear him, just trying to get a response out of him.

And when he finally responds, my dad said that the words were completely incoherent. That's when my dad realized the smell. This guy was three sheets to the wind, completely trashed and barely conscious. My dad's just trying to get this guy to a point where he can help him out of the car. When out of nowhere he hears the sound of a kid screaming. As soon as this starts, the driver freaks out and starts yelling about his son. My dad looks in the back of the car and there's no one else there, which then led to the assumption that the kid had been actually thrown from the vehicle.

My dad gets up and goes to look for the car. son, and he finds him in a decent-sized snowbank. He's barely moving, but he's screaming his lungs out and crying in pain. My dad runs over and kneels down by him. Obviously, this kid is scared and hurt, but he keeps trying to get up. My dad keeps telling him that he'll be okay and that he needs to not move, just in case he had a head or a neck injury. From what he said, the kid. didn't look like he was in good condition, but the fact that he was conscious enough to cry and yell and also tell him where he was hurting was a good thing.

Obviously, this situation overall was not good, and the end result was pretty terrible. The father was fine, he wasn't hurt at all. The son ended up with a broken leg and a concussion, but he did make a full recovery. That was the good part of it. The bad part was that the father, as stated, was completely trashed at around 4 in the afternoon and was driving with his son in the front seat without a seatbelt and the roads were not in good condition, hence the snowbank mentioned.

My dad never figured out how this guy ended up flipping his car, but when he did, his son had apparently gone out the window, and thankfully, the car did not roll on top of him. This was a pretty awful situation that ended with a decent ending. The father was obviously charged and the kid was removed from his custody, but it could have gone much, much worse. The second story does not have a happy ending, and if you're sensitive to grim or gruesome stories,

I don't recommend reading it. I'll keep the details low, that way it doesn't become too much for those of you that read it. The story actually happened closer to the beginning of him working for the force, and it's one that has absolutely haunted him. Based on what he said,

he was patrolling like any other day, when he actually saw what was a suicide on a nearby bridge down into the highway traffic. He said that he actually saw the whole thing from where he was stopped. And again, I won't get into the graphic details, but he said that there was a young woman on the bridge, and he knew what she was thinking about doing. He said that as soon as he grabbed his radio to call it in,

he saw her jump down on to the road, and then saw a semi try to swerve out of the way. Obviously, this doesn't work with a large truck like that, and he couldn't move quick enough, but her act actually took more than just her own life. When the truck tried to swerve, he actually ended up hitting another car that was beside him. My dad said that the damage to that second car was an immediate indication that there was zero chance the driver could have made it out of the accident alive. So, while it was tragic that the first person decided to end their own life, and, yes, I wholeheartedly think that's a terrible thing to happen, her method ended up taking the life of someone else that had nothing to do with her or her decision. In the end, my dad said that the truck driver was traumatized.

He had attempted to not hit the girl, but ended up taking someone else's life, too, completely by accident. accident. This whole thing was a wrong place, wrong time situation, and there's no way to not feel horrible for that guy. I can imagine the years of therapy he had to go through to get past this in his mind, and I really do hope that he was able to move forward with his own life. The story happened about a year ago, when I was a bartender up in the northeast part of the U.S. I'm not going to give the specific location for privacy reasons, just know it was in a fairly decent part of the country and a fairly decent part of the state. The bar itself wasn't one of those snooty high-class joints where people dress in shiny clothing to go, but it did have standards,

in that people were expected to act civilized and know when to cut themselves off. There was the occasional patron that would drink too much and try to start fights, but our door guy was good at his job, and we were pretty damn close to a police station. My point is, if they got out of hand, it wasn't long before we had them under control. I think that's why the bar was actually so popular, because it was just a chill place where you could just hang out and play pool. We also had a pinball room that was pretty legit, too. Overall, the six years I worked there were decent. We didn't have too many problems, but there was one night that I will absolutely never

forget for the entirety of my life. I remember that it was a pretty normal Friday night. We were open for the public, and there weren't any special events planned. Usually, these nights were the best. We would get a good crowd, decent tips. and you'd meet some pretty cool people that just wanted to have a good night. The entire evening was going pretty normal, until about an hour and a half into the rush crowd.

I was sitting there, mixing drinks and handing them out, when I looked over and see that some random guy walked out of the men's restroom, completely naked, with the exception of his shoes. This guy was pushing past people as they stared at it, him and he was trying his damnedest to get out to the floor. And when he got to the area by the stage, he started

busting his ass and some sort of spasm-filled dance, just absolutely losing it. Remember how I said it was a normal night and there were no events? That meant there was no DJ and no band

playing, meaning the only music that was playing was going on overhead, and it wasn't loud. nor was it danceworthy. Despite that, this guy was flaunting his manhood all over the dance floor, and probably the fastest-paced dance I've ever seen. And it would have been absolutely hysterical, had I not been working,

and had there not been a huge crowd of people trying to enjoy their evenings, when I realized that this guy wasn't going to stop anytime soon and was probably not doing this in a sound mind, I decided to step out and get our security on the situation. I walked over to the door and waved down Bert, the door guy, and explained to him, literally saying the following, Hey, Bert, there's a naked guy busting a move on the floor to non-existent music, and while I'm happy that he's having a great time,

we should probably get him off the floor. I could see Bert laughing as he nodded, and I went back to my bar to finish what I was doing. When I got back over to my station, the manager informed me that he had called the police and they would be there in only a few minutes. Within a few seconds, though, I hear a commotion happening, and I assume this guy is giving Bert a hard time. Sure enough, I look up and see that Bert is trying to grab the guy's arm and get him off of the floor. and this guy is screaming at Bert that he's ruining his night. Bert tells him that he either needs to leave or put pants on, and this guy seriously thrashes and decks Bert square in the side of the face.

Now, Bert is a big man, and I've never seen him stagger when someone gets aggressive, but this guy apparently had one hell of a right hook, because he was able to knock Bert down. And while I wish I could say that he just went back to death, dancing, he didn't. Instead, he made a B-line straight to my bar and started climbing up on it to get away from them, whoever they were other than Burt.

Again, had this not been happening while I was working, I would have been laughing my ass off. But at this point, I didn't really know what to do. After a second or two, Burt got back up and walked up to the bar and basically just tried to talk this guy down from the top of the bar. After a bit of back and forth between this guy that is clearly tripping hard, and Burt, the guy jumps down and tries to run to the back. Thankfully, Burt grabs him and gets him in a lock.

Unfortunately for Burt, this guy was not done fighting. At this point, this guy is wailing his arms and legs out in any direction he can, and Burt is trying to carry him toward the door. out of nowhere, this guy goes full psycho and just screeches as loud as he can, and then literally sinks his teeth into Bert's arm. Like, he literally bit into his arm as hard as he could, to the point that it drew blood and caused Bert to scream in pain. Thankfully at that moment, the police had entered the building and saw what was happening.

Though I don't think it was hard to figure out where the situation was. was, it took two officers and a crap load of blast from the taser to finally get this guy away from Bert and out the front door. Thankfully, due to the fact that this guy was clearly on something, they also sent the paramedics. If you're curious, I believe it was bath salts and speed, so this guy was flying higher than a zeppelin. The medics came in and checked Bert's arm. He ended up needing a few stitches and he had to be able to a permanent scar on his arm from this guy. Honestly, though, I'm glad that Bert was there and was as tough a guy as he was, because I have a feeling if I had tried to stop this guy, he could have killed me.

We ended up closing for the night after that whole thing went down, and the manager actually hired a second doorman for every shift. I guess he figured that having two burly guys would be better than just the one, and while that was true, We never had another event like that happened, thankfully. So I'm not a techie like some of the people here, but I at least do know what I need to do when it comes to accessing the deep web. That said, I don't go digging for creepy stuff,

and I don't ever go for anything illegal. On the deep web, there is a lot of content that is just slightly too raunchy for the surface web, and isn't posted for the masses. A good number of deep web sites don't even crack the illegal category, and that's really the main difference between the deep web and the dark web. A lot of what I know on the deep web is people talking BS about random things. Things like politics, modern science, technology, cryptids, and other crazy supernatural stuff,

as well as conspiracy theories. Some of those conspiracy theories can get really freaking weird. In fact, that's kind of what my story here is about. So, one of these sites that I would use a lot was basically a discussion board for conspiracy theories and craziness about how there were demons among us that were going to take over the world. A lot of it sounded like insane people, just rambling off scripts that you would find, in the trash bin at the sci-fi channel headquarters, but some of it was interesting,

and all of the theories had their ardent followers. The people that seemed to run most of the theories were those that genuinely believed that our government around the world was run by demons, and that they sacrificed children to drink their blood, like seriously crazy stuff. I remember that there was one user that I genuinely think was insane, and he was super

into this theory. I think his tag was something like Dave is home, or something. I remember it being something about Dave and home, so I'm just going to call him Dave. Dave would post on every single thread

that he could find, and he would egg on the initial poster to the point that he was almost rewriting their theories to be better. What's worse? He seemed to believe in every single crazy theory that was posted. Government run by baby-eating demons?

Yep, totally true. Same government somehow being run by space-faring lizard people? Also just as true. Disney, sneaking subtle hints into their kids' movies to get everyone hooked on cocaine? Sure, why the hell not?

It was as if this guy refused to see reality for what was actually in front of his eyes. Everything had a hidden agenda. Everything was some plot to control the masses, and everything was worth questioning. I don't think Dave could have made a cup of coffee without accusing the coffee maker of trying to take away his God-given freedoms. Anyways, as quickly as I saw Dave pop up and make new post on the forum, I noticed that he had almost completely disappeared. I went over to his profile to see what he had posted lately, only to find that he had made a final thread called, Don't trust the admins.

This thread outlined that the admins of the forum site were attempting to find him and censor him so that they could send a hitman to take him out of the picture. It had a ton of seemingly irrelevant details and included pictures of random people out walking that Dave claimed were following him for the admins. He then rounded the whole post out with an onion link to a website that he had created so that he could continue

on with his ramblings. I went over to his website, and I read all of his posts, and they legitimately just kept getting crazier and crazier. Eventually, I'd had enough of his absolute insanity, and decided to log off for a while. I kind of stopped getting into the deep web for a little bit, mostly because I didn't have the time. I was feeling the stress of the end of my first year in college. After a while, I think maybe it was about a couple months between my last login. I decided I wanted to go on and see what Dave had gotten up to. I went back to the forum, went to his account, and then to his personal site

slash blog. When I got there, I found that there were over 300 new updates. This man had seriously posted over 300 times within a little over a month and a half, at most. I started down the rabbit hole of his posts, and his theories started getting really abstract. Some of them made some sense, like you would have clear moments in that crazy fog, but a lot of them were things like the Russian government is watching you with a satellite that comes around every Thursday, and that meat you buy at the store isn't really meat, but a plasticine-like material that was synthesized in that it contained hormones to make people stupid. It was all honest to God insanity.

Then I got to the end of his feed, and I felt bad for laughing at his posts. His last post was simply titled, I can't do it anymore. It was probably the most lucid thing he had written on the page. It explained that his mother had passed away from cancer recently, of course he blamed Big Pharma for this, but then went on to explain that the stress of life was too much for him, and he couldn't keep up. He outlined some of his theories about the government running our lives

and explained that, if he couldn't live free, then he wouldn't live at all. He finished off the post by saying, To all my friends that have helped me see clearly over the years, I thank you, and may God bless you all. Then he posted a picture of a hand holding a pistol of some sort. I don't know Jack about guns, though. There was nothing after this post.

And the few comments that existed were basically just people saying that God would understand his decision and that he was truly a soldier fighting for the truth. Obviously, this was all pretty depressing, and I was a bit freaked out, knowing that this guy that I was just making fun of in my head, it was most likely no longer alive, and was also dealing with some very serious mental issues. In the end, I didn't really go back or spend any time on the deep web. Dave's story had a bit of a lasting effect on me,

and kind of taught me a lesson about sympathy. This happened back when I was single, obviously, and working a night shift at a certain large chain restaurant that we're going to go ahead and call the ringing burrito. Anyways, the night that this all started was incredibly slow. I had done all the closing tasks and we were pretty much just sitting around and waiting for someone to come in. I was standing in the register area for the drive-thru and swiping through Tinder. when I came across the profile of a girl that I actually thought was pretty cute. I was looking over her bio and reading about her.

She was a year older than me, started her bio with a stupid joke, and it said that her favorite animals were koala bears. I remember thinking that was kind of strange, so when we matched and started talking, I literally started off with, Why koalas? She responded with the laughing emoji and said that they were cute and also kind of dumb, like her. The fact that she jumped in with self-deprecating humor was perfect for me, and I thought it was hilarious.

We chatted for a while on the app and just kind of made small talk. She asked what I did for a living, and I told her that I was attending classes during the day and working at the ringing burrito during the evenings. Honestly, there were so many around town that I wasn't overly concerned with just saying that as a general place. After a while, she said that she needed to do some stuff, but asked if we could get together after my shift. I was pretty excited at first, but then realized I'd been working in the back of a ringing burrito for the last few hours. and I had classes in the morning. I told her that we could meet up on Friday night if she was available,

as I actually had it off. And she seemed to agree, which was great. A couple hours later, near the end of my shift, we get a car in the drive-thru and I do my normal line. Welcome to the ringing burrito. How may I help you? Yeah, hi. I'm looking for a Michael. which was my name. I was incredibly confused.

I had no idea why someone would be coming through the drive-thru and looking for me. I just said, Um, okay, I'm actually, Michael, can I help you? I hear the person on the other end say something like, Oh, finally! And then saw the car pull up. To my surprise, the woman in the car was the girl that I had matched with a couple hours prior.

I just kind of smiled at her, incredibly confused and unsure of how to handle this situation. Oh, um, hi, how are you? It was all that I was able to muster as I stared at her with an awkward smile. I'm good now. This is the fifth ringing burrito I've been to looking for you. She stared at me when she said this with what I can only say. was the most terrifying smile I have ever seen.

It was legitimately the smile of a crazy person that had just found exactly what they were looking for. So, do you want to go get drinks now? I was beyond confused. I was still at work. I was still working, and obviously so. This woman had been hunting different ringing burritos looking for me. I just kind of stared at her and then stared down at my uniform, kind of saying

you do see where I am and how this situation looks with my eyes. She just kept her terrifying stare and smile pointed directly at me. After a few moments of this horrifying awkwardness, my manager tapped me on the shoulder and basically motioned for me to move. So I did. He stepped forward and asked how he could help her. She said that she was looking for me and all that she had been through to find me on that evening. He basically told her to order something or leave, and after a few minutes of her screaming at him, she left. After that happened, he told me that he could see how scared I was from across the restaurant

and felt like he may have needed to step in. I thanked him and told him that she was crazy. He agreed. After work, I checked Tinder to see if she had messaged me at all, and nope. She had blocked me, though, so I guess that she got the hint. This is probably the only really weird thing that I ever got out of Tinder, thankfully. And after this night, I never heard from her again. My uncle was an officer on a narcotics team that was tasked, basically,

with finding who was selling the hard drugs in his town, and then building a case against them, so that they could set up stings and take them down. He was pretty good at it, and he had taken some decent-sized dealers off the streets. A lot of his cases were based on anonymous tips, with people naming people doing deals in X, Y, or Z areas. They would then tail the person, and once they were satisfied that they had something they could get, they would typically set up a sting, record a sale, and then go for the bust pretty much immediately after.

Most of the time, this went perfectly. They would get the sale on the video and would have the probable cause to arrest the deal, dealer immediately after, and more often than not, it would be a quick and easy arrest, and a straightforward case. This case was actually one of my uncle's last for reasons that will be obvious later, and this one was pretty serious for his unit, and for his station. He was actually assigned to tail a fellow officer that was accused of dealing, and he had to take the case very delicately, as he knew.

needed to prove that this guy was guilty and not let him know that he was being investigated. My uncle said that they followed him for a good while, and while it was certainly a struggle, they did get a hold of evidence that he was potentially dealing.

The problem was, since this guy was a cop, he wasn't willing to deal with just anyone. From what they had gathered, he had specific people that he would work with, and they didn't really have the ability to get a deal on tape or anything like that.

My uncle told me that they tailed him for a long time, and they finally decided that they would just arrest him. He determined that he would do so in a secluded area, and he would do anything he could to not make a scene. Of course, being an officer, there's this whole honor thing, and he decided that he would offer the guy a chance to come clean and go in willingly. My uncle said that he followed the guy until, at one point,

he went in to one of the locker room areas. He decided that this would be the point where he would confront him. He mentioned that he went in, and he started the conversation casually, until the room was cleared out. Then he basically confronted the guy and said, Look, we have a case against you. We have all the evidence we need.

And it would be best that you just turn yourself in without causing a scene. Basically, like I said, just giving this guy the chance to go in willingly. He says that, at the beginning, this guy acted like he was going to go with my uncle. But the second his guard was down, he pulled a knife and jammed it into my uncle's shoulder. My uncle fell from the scuffle and, you know, being stabbed. but this guy couldn't have chosen a worse course of action at a worse point in time. As soon as he stabbed my uncle, another officer entered the locker room and saw what happened. My uncle said he doesn't remember much of what went on,

but apparently the guy ended up with a round in him and the entire station went into a frenzy. They both pulled through. My uncle lost a majority of the use of his right arm, and the other officer went in for, I believe, attempted murder charges, seeing as how he attacked my uncle with an obvious intent to do harm. In the end, they found out that this guy was actually pulling items from the evidence locker for his sales. He was using what had been confiscated for his own profit. While this may not have been the most terrifying story,

it's one that my uncle and family will never forget. because this guy could have absolutely murdered him then and there. It's just likely that he panicked and went for a stab instead of anything that actually would have done my uncle in. My uncle admits that he went about this really stupid, that he should have went in with someone else, and he should have just said screw the honor system and taken him out in the lobby. Either way, this guy went to prison, and he won't be out for a very long time.

And my uncle now does desk work for the station, so it's rather unlikely that he'll ever end up getting stabbed again. The story is related to one that you've told in the past. You could see it as a continuation or addition to it. I'm not the author of that story, but I've had a similar experience. The story in question is the one you mentioned, I think. think back in your first dark web video about the kids that ended up on the human meat shop. If any one of you don't recall the story, first off, you should go listen to the video, but it was about a group of kids who were messing around with the dark web and ended up on a butchery

site that listed human meat and explained how to properly prepare it. They advertised their special seasonings and gave all the information about the specific human cuts. They also touted that they sourced on demand, meaning they had the ability to get the meat when you requested it. So, they had it on standby, and then they would kill and cut it when you wanted it.

Kind of like Wendy's fresh, never frozen promise, but for cannibals. Yeah, it was legitimately creepy stuff. And what's even worse? It's legitimate. I can actually vouch for the, legitimacy of the human meat market. I don't know about that specific page they were on.

It could have been a honeypot. Who knows? But there are a handful of actual pages that you can work with to get human cuts. I've actually spoken with people that claim to have eaten human meat on the dark web. And they've told me it tastes close to veal, but depending on the person's fitness level, can also taste closer to pork. I don't know about you, but that thought makes me gag and kind of want to become a vegan. That said, I actually had a bit of a story about another dark website that was similar,

but took it a bit further in their intentions. I'm not going to name the page. I don't want you listeners going out there and becoming man-eaters. Plus, it's super illegal to buy human meat. Duh. But there was, and probably soon. still is, a dark web site out there that is dedicated to cannibalism, but they see it as more of a religious experience than anything.

You heard that right. They see the practice of cannibalism as a religious experience. This group of people that are on this page firmly believe that loving thy neighbor is not enough. You should also gnaw on their shins with a bit of sweet baby rays. Sorry, bad joke. Humor aside, I am being completely serious. The site was built by a group of people, a cult, if you will,

that hold a firm belief that the ultimate act a human can perform to get closer to God is to consume their fellow man. Their ethos basically states that eating human meat can cause a change in your biology and would make you more than human. It said something about how it was basically the way to climb up the food chain, and that the only thing above humans were gods. Thus, being more than human, made you godlike. I remember reading a lot of their information and just thinking, wow, these people are completely and totally insane, but they definitely held tight to their own beliefs,

and they didn't shy away from what they thought. Like I said, this was pretty obviously a cult, and it used all of the expected cult language, pushing you to become more than what you are, talking about how their leader was given this message from God himself, and trying to gather more members through their positive reinforcements of their ideologies. They had a section where you could actually sign up for a meeting to come and see what their group was about, which, to me, felt more like a method of getting more victims, but maybe they were legitimately recruiting people. Much like the other page, they had all the basics.

How to prepare the meat, what flavors went best with what parts, how to safely eat your human meat, which is an interesting thought. There was even an entire section of the page dedicated to their members and rankings. It included their favorite activities. It was honestly like an icebreaker page that was made to show you, and that everyday people were also willing to eat other everyday people. Overall, this was a 10 out of 10 on my WTF meter, and if I disappear after sending you this story, you'll know what happened.

I'll just hope they pair me with a nice salad to balance out the meal.