As The Raven Dreams Podcast - ATRD Ep. 063 - Cryptid Encounters, Small Town and Reddit Horror Stories - 15 True Scary Stories

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

This Episode is Sponsored by Better Help.  Hello and Welcome to the 63rd episode of The ATRD Podcast! Today we have some intriguing and terrifying stories submitted by everyday people. In Today's Episode we will have Terrifying Cryptid Encounter Stories, Small Town Horror Stories, as well as a Mix Of Other Scary stories from Reddit. ➤ Want your story featured? Go to https://www.astheravendreams.com/Submit ➤ Want to know where to follow me on the internet? Go to https://www.astheravendreams.com/the-nevermore for all my links! ➤ You can also get EARLY ACCESS By joining my Patreon! https://patreon.com/astheravendreams Thank you to all of the authors that have stories in today's Video...  Jacob, Antonio, kalzorah, Bleeding_Rose82, kroghkevin, johnnytk0, A. C. Smart,Front-History-1396, PL, Wayne Oz, Bird, Joel T., and any author that requested anonymity.  ➤ All stories within are used w/ Either 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'.  And Remember; You are loved, you are important, and you are valid. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. --- 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

Beyevue at board of Vyarai. Embarked and profited. Embarked and relaxes. Cirotay. Bookinay. Oh, that also. And profite. Viaray, the voice that we love that we love. If you have a story you would like to hear featured on this podcast, please go to ashtheravendreams.com and click the button to submit your story. Also, if the platform you're listening on has the option to rate this podcast, please consider doing it. so. And thank you. I have a really weird and creepy story from when I was a kid.

And I really don't know what it was that I saw, but whatever it was was not human. On top of that, I want to start this story with what I guess would be a trigger warning. This story is not a happy one. It does not involve a happy ending, but it does involve my childhood dog. If you choose to read this one, this should serve as a warning to your listeners that if they can't stand things happening to dogs, it's recommended that they skip this story. So, the story happened back when I was a kid. I believe that I was around 10 years old at the time, give or take a year. I'm in my 50s now, so it was a subjectively long time ago, to be honest.

I'm sorry that I can't remember the exact key. year that this happened. At this time, I lived with my parents, my big brother, and my pet dog, Aries. Aries was a small dog, smaller than a retriever, but bigger than a Shizu. I don't remember what exactly he was, mostly because he was pretty much just a mutt. But he was a good dog, and he was very protective of me and my brother. When I say protective, I... I mean, really, protective.

When my uncle came over, if he tried to give me or Brian a hug, Aries would bark and try to bite his leg. That was actually why we called him Aries. He was like a little warlord, attacking anything that he didn't want near his family. Now, where we lived wasn't heavily populated, but I can't say that it was completely desolate, just that there weren't many houses in the area. There were a lot of woods, however, and with the woods come things like coyotes, foxes, and things like that.

I'd seen all that in my few years alive, and I knew what they were, how they looked, and what they sounded like when they cried. There were also claims of wolves and wildcats living in the woods near the house, too, though I had never seen any of those. This may all sound like I'm just rambling, but I'm trying to. show that I knew what all these things were, and if what I saw was one of those, I would have most likely been able to identify it. The first time that I saw this thing was one day when I was outside playing after school. It was the middle of autumn, and the leaves were starting to turn color, and it was starting to get a bit colder.

I was out back, swinging a stick, probably pretending that I was a knight and battling for my made-up kingdom, when I heard what sounded like a person crying out behind my yard. This didn't sound like a child. It sounded like an adult was weeping out in the trees. Like they wanted to sob, but they were controlling themselves and holding it all in as best as they could. I remember that this caught me off guard, and my curiosity ended up getting the best of me. I needed to know why there was an adult out in the woods and why they were. crying. I went over to the back of the fence, and I looked out into the woods, trying to see if I could find the person that was crying. At first, I couldn't see anything. But after kind of glancing

around the trees, I noticed that there was what looked like a man standing out in the woods near one of the trees, and I remember chuckling to myself, because he looked like he was naked. Again, I was like nine or ten, so it was just kind of funny to me that this person was standing naked out in the woods like that. But as I kept staring, something about him felt wrong. He looked like he was too skinny to be alive, really. Like, his skin was the only thing blocking his skeleton from the wind. And as quickly as I thought it was funny, I started feeling a bit scared. It was at this point that Aries started growling and barking at the person, and as soon as he did, this thing turned around to look at me, and I will never forget its face.

It was flat, like there was no nose. His eyes were dark black, his mouth looked larger than a normal person's, and it looked like he had fangs, or sharp and really cut teeth. I could see all of this from where I was standing, and he was. wasn't anywhere near me. That should tell you how much of an impact that visual had on me. I freaked out. I immediately ran back to the house.

Ares was following me, but he was also stopping and barking at the back of the yard every few steps. But after a few moments, he ran with me back to the house. I had no idea what to really do with this event. So I just kind of sat in my room and had what I now know to be a panic attack. this thing was terrifying. It looked human, but it definitely wasn't. And it wasn't any of the aforementioned creatures. I remember my brother coming into my room and asking if I was okay,

because he said he could hear me crying from his room, which was a surprise to me, because I wasn't even aware that I was actually crying. I told him that I saw something in the woods that scared me, and when I tried to explain what it was, he said that it sounded weird, but that it probably wasn't a big deal, and that it was just a sick animal or something.

He was older than me, so I assumed he was probably right, but deep down, I knew that that was wrong. Now, if that was the only time that I ever saw this thing, it would have been one too many times. But it wasn't. and the next time that I saw it was where things got worse. I want to add again that this second time is the disturbing event that I mentioned earlier,

and this is your fair warning that things did not end well. The second time that I saw it was about a week later. I was out back again, just sitting on my slide and staring out into the woods. After I saw that thing, I was actually scared to do much out. But my parents were the type to tell me to go play outside all the time, so I would pretty much just sit there and stare out into the woods seeing if this thing would come back. And unfortunately, it did. This time it was a lot closer. I was watching the trees and I noticed that this thing was standing out in the woods, basically just crawling on its knuckles.

This time, in a moment of stupidity and bravery, I actually shouted at it, telling it to go away. I don't know if I thought this thing would understand me or what, but that's what I did. When I shouted, this thing turned to face me, and it started to do its weird crawl, walk motion in my direction towards the fence. Unfortunately, this was enough for Aries to freak out. He actually ran towards the fence and dug out the small spot in the corner and went under the fence out into the woods, barking aggressively and chasing this thing. The creature did start to run, I guess, further into the woods, but Aries was unrelenting, and he kept chasing him. I started shouting for him, but he completely ignored me. I ran back to the house, and I shouted from my dad saying that Aries got out and was,

chasing something into the woods. I wanted to tell him that it was some kind of monster, some human-like beast, but the only word I could get out of my mind was something. I won't bore you with the conversation and how he went out to call for him beyond saying that my dad jumped the fence and went out into the woods looking for him while I stayed at the fence. After a while, he told me to go inside and get my mom,

and to stay inside until they came back, which I did. I later found out that the reason he told me to get my mom and stay inside was because he did find Aries. But what he found wasn't pleasant. They both explained to me that Aries was unfortunately gone, and they then had to explain that things like this happened sometimes in nature. I tried to describe what the thing was that I saw, but they basically told me that it was likely something like a wolf that had gotten to him.

I was insistent, but they just dismissed me, and told me that they would bury him out in the woods, and that it would be okay. Obviously, I was devastated. Aries was a good boy. He just wanted to protect me, and whatever the hell this monster was had killed him. That was actually the last time that I saw this thing, and unfortunately my family just accepts that it was probably a wolf or something, and Aries just wasn't big enough to hold his own.

But I know that's wrong. I know that this thing was some sort of humanoid monster, not a wolf. I hate that this whole thing was probably my fault. If I hadn't shouted at it, it probably wouldn't have started approaching, and Aries probably wouldn't have gone after it. But I can't blame myself. Aries was trying to protect me from this thing, and he did his job, as it never did come back.

I will always love and honor that pup as being the guardian that he was, and I will never forget what that thing was that I saw. That horrifying face and the disgusting frame that this thing had, as it slowly approached me that day. 27-year-old female here, I used to live in a small town where everyone basically knew everyone, and people in the smaller towns in the area.

In 2018, after I had lost my job, I was going to a place where people, 16 to 30, learned how to look and apply for a job and a lot else. There, I met a woman who all call, why. One day, Y started talking about a friend of hers who lived out of town with her mom, her dog, and her creepy German stepdad. This detail is important.

Her friend told her that she desperately wanted to move out because her stepdad makes her so uncomfortable. Her bedroom is right next to their bathrooms, so she would usually put on her new clothes in her bedroom. But now she does it in the bathroom, because he would look at her inappropriately when she walked to the bedroom. According to why, you can see the bathroom door from the living room. Her stepdad would get off the couch and try to spy on her while she was in the bedroom.

I had a gut feeling that this wasn't the last I heard of him, and I'm sad to say, I was right. I broke up with my ex in 2019, but shortly after that, I got a job at a thrift store taking care of jigsaw puzzles. and board games. 2020 came along, and I became so lonely that I downloaded an app that was aimed for finding friends. I started talking to a guy in January who said that he was 26 to 27 years old

and that he was from Germany, that he lived in the exact same town that Yise said her friend did. I thought that was odd, but out of curiosity, I talked with him some more. He said that he moved to Sweden with his wife, wife and their dog. Insert red flags here. He was looking for someone to talk to because they were going through a divorce right then,

and he wanted to meet and perhaps go for a walk in the forest near his house. He then talked about hobbies that he had, like his motorcycle, and other things that I've forgotten about at this point. This is also important. My crepe meter was peeking, and I ghosted him hard. Eight months later, when I was laying a jigsaw puzzle out, I heard a man with a German accent come in. I felt that something was off, but I continued to do my job. For obvious reasons, we didn't have a lot of people who worked there at that point in time,

but this made me the youngest woman there. It was 25 at the time. My male boss was going to do something before he went to show him around the place. While my boss worked, this guy roamed. around and then he asked me if he could sit down and talk to me. I said okay, because, of course, there could be more than one German person even in a small community. Do you remember all of the important things? Yeah. He told me almost all of the same things again. He wasn't the age that he said he was. He was old, if not older than my father,

and he's 53 now. The color disappeared from my face. and I started to scratch my neck and fear. He then trauma dumped on me. He talked about how he had sex with a young girl in Germany, got her pregnant, and then was forced to leave Germany because of this. Apparently she gave birth to a son, and his son reached out to him when he was older.

His son had told him that he was gay, and the creep was then blaming himself for somehow making his own son gay. He talked about his dad's alcoholism, and just other things that I don't remember. He also asked if we could eat together, but I declined. HR came into our working room, the room where we looked through the stuff that we get, and she called my name.

I turned my head and she clearly saw that I was afraid. She said that she needed to talk to me. I only nodded, stood up and walked over to her still scratching my neck. We walked to another room where she sat me down in a sofa, and asked me if I was okay. All I could say was yes. I was afraid of this man, and when I had calmed down,

I gave her the short version of what happened, and her eyes widened. It was close to closing time, so she asked if I wanted to go home, and that she would make sure he only left ten minutes after I had gone. My apartment was only five minutes away. I didn't even look at her. I was so frozen in fear that I only stared at her,

that I only stared at the wall while continuing to attack my neck. After a few minutes, I only nodded. She walked me to the employee entrance and stood there while I walked home. I then saw the damage I had done to myself when I arrived home. My female boss wasn't there until Monday, and unfortunately HR wasn't there that day. My boss came over to my desk and said that she had spoken with HR, but that she wanted to hear it from me. I told her exactly what had happened, and I also told her that I heard about him before. Her response was, and these are her exact words, but in English, I've heard of him before,

because I have an old friend who, unfortunately, is at a mental hospital right now. She told me that he's the kind of person who likes to attack young, thin, vulnerable, and insecure women. I fit that description. My fear turned into rage. I just looked at her and said, Are you crazy? You know what type of man he is, and you knew that I'm working here,

and you still hired him. She said that she had talked with the male boss who also knew about him, but that they had decided that people can change. I said that I agree, but he has already shown that he is not willing to. She decided to make him work during the weekends and forbade him to come to work during the weeks when I was there.

Of course, he showed up. up anyways. When HR was there, she would tell him to go out, but when she wasn't, you could clearly tell that he was looking for another victim, or for me. My bosses are lovely people, even though they are severely confused. I should have reported them, but it's too late now. I've since moved to a city that's over two hours away, and he doesn't work there anymore. A couple of edits from the original poster. Sorry, but I forgot a very important fact. The thrift shop that I worked at hired people who are in vulnerable situations

and are desperate for a job, and they still hired a predator knowing that fact. I don't know if this part is important, but I would also like to say that the company I worked for also helps people by buying groceries that are about to expire, and then they make food bags that they give out for free. They also give clothing out for free if the person really needs it, especially if that person happens to be a single parent who needs clothes for their children.

They also help in other ways, but I've honestly forgot the rest. This took place in the little town close to the border of Alabama and Georgia. I've moved since then because there wasn't much in that area. To put it simply, for energy, You had the grocery store, a bowling alley, and town gossip. Even around my age of about 12 or so, the gossip was definitely more exciting. The older people with their stupid leagues pretty much took over the bowling alley anyways. My family lived in a small three-bedroom house with my parents, myself, my twin brother, and our older sister.

We were never really the ones being talked about, unless something. happened at my dad's job. He was a cop. Otherwise, we were typically the ones that people told everything, too. Some stuff our parents tried to keep us out of, but we typically found out by overhearing them, or from the rumors going on, even at school. Seriously, that's all that we had going for us around here. This story involved a house and a couple that lived about two houses down and across the street from us. It was a man and a woman. For the sake of simplicity, let's call them Bonnie and Bill. I'm not sure if they were married or just together,

but thankfully I never saw any kids over there. I have never seen two people argue that much in my life. I think they've actually got Jerry Springer beat. The three of us kids would walk to the bus stop, which was in their direction, and sometimes he would be leaving and you could hear them. hollering as he left. Bill would usually proceed to burnout from the driveway,

so my sister would always harp on us to make sure that we didn't walk too close to the street, not knowing what he could possibly do. While playing outside in the front yard, sometimes we would be interrupted as we could hear them screaming at each other. We would all run to the fence and watch, and we weren't the only ones. When Miss Samson was outside in her garden, she would pause and walk over by the street to see what was going on too. Within a few moments, anybody that was outside was now looking down in that direction,

waiting to see or hear something worth talking about for days. One of the fights got pretty intense, as I had been riding my bike with one of my friends around the block, when I saw Bonnie angrily carrying handfuls of stuff and throwing it on the corner. We slowed down to see what it was, and noticed it was mostly clothing. I saw one of those plug-in razors and a small portable radio that was smashed, like it had been thrown, dropped, or crushed. Bonnie noticed us looking and told us that we were free to take whatever we wanted,

all while still talking to herself and just randomly screaming. We didn't dare touch any of it, because, just as I expected, Bill came flying around the corner in his car and stormed over to grab his stuff and bring it back inside. Then the argument ensued again. This was pretty much the norm for these two. The cops were occasionally called, and I think most of them my dad ended up on. So we would always hear him talking to my mom about what had happened. They would argue about the silliest things from how dinner was made wrong,

how he laughed at something that she didn't like. They thought the other one was having an affair, or maybe they just woke up in a bad mood. It was crazy, but I just figured it was two people that probably shouldn't be together, and they would be better off working on themselves alone. And one day, I assumed that's what they finally did. And we heard them arguing again on our way to the bus stop.

When we got home that afternoon, it was quiet and Bill's car was gone. Again, we just assumed that he had left to cool off. The next day, his car still wasn't there, and then the next day and the next. Rumors were that he finally got tired of her, or they got tired of each other, and they split. Bonnie even tried giving away some of Bill's stuff to random people. When we were at the bus stop, she hollered for us and said that we could have whatever we wanted. She had haphazardly thrown a bunch of stuff in the bed of her truck and told us to take whatever. We all politely declined, but then she tossed me a pack of baseball cards.

I've collected them for years and I was a kid, so it was pretty hard to say no to them. That night, I had started going through them and showed my dad what I had gotten, but he wasn't too thrilled with the idea of me having these cards. So I reluctantly handed them over, and as far as I know, he gave them back to her. It was probably about two weeks or so, where it was pretty silent around the neighborhood. We rarely saw her, and she started putting stuff on the windows to block anyone or anything from seeing through it. She had newspapers and plain white paper all over, even on the small etched glass window on the the door. Then there was a new car that showed up at the house, being driven by a slightly older

lady. I, of course, didn't notice until we heard the familiar sounds of screaming. So, we did what any of us would do and went to check it out. The only thing I remember hearing from that conversation was Bonnie yelling things like, get off my property, leave me alone. Hence the new lady talking about calling the cops or reporting something. My dad went out there to see what exactly was going on, which resulted in the lady leaving and Bonnie telling my dad to leave too, and then storming off back inside. Then, being nosy, we heard my dad talking to my mom and some of his friends about it a few days later.

I guess the new lady was Bill's sister, and she hadn't heard from him in about two weeks. so she came over looking for him. From what he found out, they'd had an argument, he left, and then never returned. She said that he called her once, saying that he was moving to Florida, didn't want any of his stuff, and would never be coming back, which is why she was just getting rid of all of his crap. That was really the last time we ever heard about him. Apparently, over time, his sister still came around looking for him and asking,

questions, but since he was an adult, and there were no obvious signs of foul play, they couldn't really do much. So, fast forward, all three of us kids have graduated and moved out of that town. My parents still live there, but my dad has since retired a little earlier due to a bad accident messing up his back. We've all pretty much forgotten about the situation and moved on with our lives. It was probably around 2008. Us kids were visiting my parents for a little get-together. I think it was Labor Day weekend or something.

At some point in time, we started seeing a few cop cars and detectives, according to my dad, showing up at Bonnie and Bill's old house. They hadn't seen Bonnie for around six months to a year, and it was assumed that the house was abandoned, especially due to what we know as the housing crash around the same time, it was entirely possible. A new couple had actually bought the house, and they considered themselves house flippers.

We were all standing outside like old times, trying to see what was going on, and my dad decided to walk down there, Kane and all, to see if he could figure out what exactly happened. One of his friends was there and was more than willing to fill him in, since he was familiar with the previous owners. And, of course, now that we were adults, my dad was willing to share the details with us. The new owners of the house had gone to complete the basement since part of it was just dirt or loose gravel.

There was a weird spot that had concrete pretty much poured over, but it wasn't leveled or smoothed out. So you could pretty much just stick your foot or hand under it and lift it right off the ground. This was exactly what the new owners had done, curious as to why that was there, with the soft ground underneath. Then, they kept digging, and, well, they got their answers. They found human remains. They immediately called the cops to report it and brought them all out to investigate. We wouldn't find out more until after us kids had left, but the local newspaper reported it, and they were able to identify them as Bill.

My dad told us that the remains had a fractured jaw and skull, so now it's rumored that Bonnie was the cause of it all. The problem is Bonnie is now gone, and no one knows where she is, or hell, if she's even still alive. So while I didn't personally see or witness anything, I was living on the same block as a potential killer. The same block where a man died and was left in a makeshift grave in his basement.

I was even given some of his property. This creeped me out and still does. She never did anything violent towards any of us kids, but it was still a thought that was in my mind. We got close enough to her windows to see what she had covering them, but would she have tried to do something to us if she had caught us? Would she have done something if the sister had pushed her luck? It was crazy. This is the stuff that you just hear about in the news or on some true crime television show, but I actually lived it.

So that's my small town story. I know this can happen in any town to any one, but it's surreal when it's truly that close to home. I used to live in a small town in the Midwest that wasn't exactly. the nicest place in the world. We weren't so small that everyone knew everybody else, but we were small enough that most of the large corporations passed over the town when they were opening locations, and anytime something new was coming to town, everybody knew. It's kind of hard to explain, really, but I think it's best to look at it like this.

We were a small, unincorporated suburb outside of a large, city. The town had a name, but it wasn't one that most people would know. And it was small enough that if you ever had to introduce yourself, you would just say that you were from the bigger city that was to the north. It was small enough that we only had one elementary school, one middle school, and one high school, if that makes more sense. Anyways, I had a plan when I was in high school, that I was going to move as far away from the town when I graduated, and then I graduated and realized that I needed to have money to do anything. So I ended up staying for a few more years to save up and get my own place.

During this time, I worked for the only big-name grocery store that had recently moved into the town. I had started as a cashier, but after a few months, the owner had wanted to try something new. and his big idea was implementing a delivery program. Basically, the customers would call in or go to the website and order any number of things, someone would pick it out, and then the driver would deliver it to the person's house. The only real rules were that the order had to be over $20, and it had to be within 10 minutes of the store.

I, of course, was promoted to delivery driver, because I had been there longer than most of the other cashiers. I was a bit iffy with it at first. I wasn't a huge fan of going to strangers' houses with groceries, but I didn't have to handle any money since the orders had to be paid for before we did the delivery. So, as my boss would put it, I was at a pretty low risk of being robbed. Plus, it wasn't like I was driving around a car that had a logo or said I was a deluxe. delivery driver. It was just my old Ford, and the likelihood of someone robbing me in an old

rusted out in 90s fiesta was pretty much zero. And after doing it for a couple of weeks, I started feeling like it wasn't that big of a deal. I got to know some of the people in my town better. They were mostly friendly, and people actually did tip in cash, so it was kind of neat. then, of course, there's the event that ruined everything, and the one that the story is actually about. We got a delivery to a house that had an address that seemed familiar to me, but I wasn't sure why it was familiar. I didn't live on that street at any point in my life or anything, and I looked at the map at the store, but nothing around it seemed familiar to me. I just shrugged it off that I must have done a delivery over there at some point, and the house was just familiar because of that. I grabbed their order, which was literally a dozen frozen pizzas, and headed out.

It wasn't until I pulled up toward the house that I actually realized why I was somewhat familiar with it. I once had to pick up a friend of mine from this house to get him away from his not-so-great lifestyle, Back when I was like 16, this was what is commonly known as a trap house, and it was one of two in our town. It was an older house that was clearly not kept up, but was actually really nice looking, as long as you didn't get close. I looked at the delivery slip in hopes that it was just a house nearby or something and not this specific house, but, of course, it was one. 100% this house. I parked my car in front of the house and just thought to myself that they ordered groceries. They knew you were coming, and nothing bad was going to happen.

I got out, walked up to the front, and as soon as I stepped in and closed the gate to the front yard, all hell broke loose. Apparently, one of the inhabitants heard me walking up the sidewalk, because, She threw open the front door and immediately started screaming at me, asking who the hell I was, what I was doing in their yard, and, most importantly, screaming that if I moved, she was going to put a slug in my head. That last statement was the one that bothered me the most, obviously, because she was walking towards me with a double-barrel shotgun and her fingers shaking near the trigger. I tried to tell her that I was with the grocery store and that I was delivering food and this was apparently not okay with her.

She actually pushed me to the ground and put the barrel of the gun to my head and started yelling about how I was obviously a cop and then she said that I needed to say my last goodbyes to Jesus because she was going to end me. I remember just begging and saying that I was not a cop. I tried to push the girl. groceries toward her and tell her that I was a delivery driver, but the words were just not coming out.

I seriously thought that I was about to die, because this woman was clearly not thinking straight, and I had apparently walked up at the wrong time. Then, my savior, a guy named Ken, walked out the door, and in the most chilled and non-bothered voice said, Heyo, Mary, you need to chill. He's not a cop. He's here to bring me my pizzas. When I say unbothered, I mean completely calm and damn near like a surfer.

The woman with the gun, I'm assuming now that her name was Mary, completely changed faces and reached down to help me up and said that she was sorry. She then seriously started laughing at the whole thing. She thought it was the funniest thing to happen to her all week. She was cracking up and just saying that she almost killed a kid over nothing. I just nodded and said that it was okay, and I tried to chuckle along with her. Then Ken walked over to us and looked through the bags to make sure all his pizzas were there. Again, like nothing had just happened.

He counted them out and said they were all there, and that he appreciated me bringing them, because his car was in the shop. This was the most awkward conversation that I had ever had with anyone. Confirming that all the food was there while thinking that I was going to need a change of pants, while the woman that nearly blew my head off

was chuckling and slapping her legs in a laughing fit. Ken then nonchalantly handed me a $5 bill and said that it was for my troubles. And then said that Mary wasn't normally like that, she was just having a bad morning. I took the money and made it away from that house as quickly as I could. I have no real way of explaining the feeling I had afterwards other than pure adrenaline. The whole way back to the store, I was shaking, my heart was racing.

I got back and told my manager what had happened, and he said he would make a note of it on their account, but that he couldn't blacklist them. thankfully they never did order for delivery again and while I did see Ken come into the store a couple of times I never saw Mary ever again thankfully surprisingly enough I did keep doing the job for another year after that but only because I needed the money once I had saved enough I got out of there and I moved to a nicer town on the other side of my state and now the only reason I ever go back is so I can see my mom for her birthday or for Christmas.

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expelioring in Ontario 50 tours gratuys on the machine a subic base Bonanza Depos minimum of $10 DeVosydevil de facto I feel like this more so affected my mother instead of me but being older now and also being

a parent I completely understand the fear and trauma that it would have caused her and this took place in a small rural town in Virginia I won't say more than that out of respect for my mother but if not for her

I would blast the hell out of the sky here. Anyways, my parents lived there as a kid with their parents, and I do remember the town because I remembered visiting my grandparents there often. But when I was about three or four, my parents moved out of there and into a larger, more populated city, saying that they wanted more options for me when it came to schooling and friends,

since the previous town was pretty secluded. As for school, I had always done well until I started high school. I struggled in history and algebra. I don't understand why because I normally loved math, but for some reason, it was not clicking for me. The teacher was fine, but I can't say the same for history. They did nothing to help make anything interesting. he pretty much just made us read from this outdated textbook while he fell asleep at his desk.

My parents saw the struggle the whole way, because they had their own parent portal, and during one of the parent-teacher conferences, we all brainstormed some ideas. After some options were thrown around, we thought it would be best to get a tutor to help. Apparently, I wasn't the only one struggling in history, and until the board made changes, some students created a study group. It was basically just a group of students working together, and they saw improvements in their grade, so they asked me to try it.

I did like the idea, though, because it made me feel like I wasn't singled out. As for algebra, they did have tutor options through the school at no extra cost to my parents, so they suggested that I'd try that first. So, for history, They basically just told me to show up on Tuesdays in the library and let someone know that I was there for the study group. And then the algebra tutor was either a current or retired teacher that was volunteering.

They tried to stay consistent as to whom each student would work with to make it smoother, since everyone teaches differently. They told me that I would meet with the algebra tutor at the school as well on Thursdays. So, that following week, I went to the designated. room and was introduced to Mr. Michaels. My algebra teacher told me that he was a retired teacher, but that he loved to help students, so he still volunteered for this, or even subbed a few classes before. I think I remember seeing him in passing in the past, but I don't recall ever seeing him

in one of my classes as a sub. So, after a little talking between us and the teachers, we finally got into the work. It was Mr. Michaels, myself, and about three or four other students. The first thing I remembered about him at that time was how patient he was and how much he actually seemed to listen to us. Granted, I had never been in trouble with school stuff before, so I was expecting to see some grumpy adult complaining how they didn't understand what we didn't understand, and that the work was easy and then not actually help us.

but instead he broke down the equations and really focused on the parts that we struggled with to help us understand it better. The more that I worked with him, the more confident I was feeling with my work and answers. After maybe just a few weekly sessions, I was starting to see improvements, and my parents were really proud of me for sticking with it as well. They asked me how I was feeling about it, and I explained everything to them. I even told them about the tutor and how he was a retired teacher, but that I had never seen him before. As the sessions continued, I found myself just talking to Mr. Michaels more and more. The sessions would typically be about two to three hours, but sometimes we would be escorted out of the school with security because we were staying so late.

Sometimes there were other students that stayed behind with us, but usually it just ended with us, in the room. So, whenever it came close to the end of the first semester, I wanted to do a pretty hefty review to make sure that I still understood everything, as well as fill out our little cheat sheet index card. We were all given one normal sized index card that we could write whatever we wanted on, and have with us whenever we took our midterm exams. I remember it was getting close to closing when I made a comment about it being easier if

we just did this outside of school, like a library or a cafe. Mr. Michaels didn't mind the idea either, so I went to use the phone that was in the room, cell phones weren't really a thing that many kids had at this point in time. My mom answered, and I explained to her what I was wanting to do. I could tell by the tone in her voice that she didn't really like this, and at the time, it kind of confused me. She was reluctant, but said that we could come home and continue working in the living room or kitchen if we wanted, but she didn't want me to go anywhere else outside of the school.

I was disappointed, but I told her I understood and hung up. I went and told Mr. Michaels about her response, and when I tried inviting him over, he said that he actually had things he needed to do as well, and he suggested that we just leave for the night and continue the session next week since we still had one more week left before the exams. And when I went home that night, I was still upset,

and I explained to my mom as to why. All she really told me was that, since it was school-related, it was best to keep it at the school. This was a weird statement to me. Some of us from the history study, group once met up at a local fast food place instead and she was okay with it. Why was she treating this so differently?

Unfortunately, or I guess fortunately, I did mention that there were occasions where it ended up being just me and Mr. Michaels, and I felt bad that they weren't able to clean the room until we were gone, and that's why I wanted to go somewhere else. This immediately caused a switch to flip, and my mother, became visibly upset. She said, I thought you were there with other kids there with you. How often do you end up alone with him?

Is there anyone that ever goes in and checks on you all? I could tell that she was holding something back and not telling me, but since she was the parent, I wasn't going to push the matter. I just answered her questions honestly and watched as she became more and more visibly upset. She told me that I was not to meet with any adult alone ever again, and then told me that I needed to tell her or my dad immediately if it ever did happen. This obviously upset me as well. I was doing so much better, and I was so proud of the improvements that I had been making. But my mom couldn't seem to see that, and was instead getting upset about something that she suggested I do in the first place.

I went to bed that night pretty mad and confused, and I hardly said anything to my parents before I left for school the next morning. Since I didn't see Mr. Michaels until the following week, I was in my normal happier mood at school and at home. That next Thursday, though, all the emotions would come racing back when my mom surprised me with an early pickup from the tutor session. I would typically call her when I was done and she would pick me up as I waited outside. Mr. Michaels was pretty quick to leave after that, so he was never around by the time she got there. This time, however, she came into the school, and when she opened the door and made eye contact with all of us, all of the color drained from her face. She told me that we needed to leave right now and told me to pack up my stuff quickly.

I was confused. She had never done this before, and this time we weren't even alone. it was myself and Mr. Michaels, as well as another girl and a guy. Mr. Michaels stood up and just in a cold, non-personal tone said, see you later, and then turned his attention to the other two. He had been sitting by me at the time, so he had actually gotten up and walked closer to the others. I didn't understand any of this. When we got to the car, my mom took to the car, my mom,

took off quicker than I had ever seen her drive, and the first thing she said to me with a shaky voice was, you are never to meet with Mr. Michaels again. Do you understand me? Not alone, not with a group of people, never. If you see him coming towards you, you walk in the opposite direction. I didn't understand what was going on at all. I kept asking her what was wrong and to explain to me because she was scaring me, but I was also frustrated. Why was she doing this to me now? Again, as her voice cracked,

I could tell that she was holding back tears as she said there are some things you just don't need to know about until you're older. I didn't even get the chance to really try and make any sense of this, nor would I ever be in a situation where I would possibly run into him again.

My parents kept me out of school for the rest of that week, and the next. Taking those exams were a pain, but at least I got it done. There were several meetings that my parents had with teachers and staff, but I was always left at home with my grandparents. At least we had the holiday break, so I didn't miss much school after that, but when I went back, I felt like I had so many eyes on me. Thankfully, my mom was already at the door waiting for me at the end of the day,

because I didn't even like riding the bus anymore. After the school year was finished, we would move again and now even further from their hometown, hence the town in school that I had grown up in. It wasn't until I was older that I finally understood everything clearly. Mr. Michaels wasn't his real name, but it was just the name he went by at that school. I don't know if maybe he used his middle name or what.

However, he was actually a teacher at my mom's old high school from the first town. He was the type that tried to fit in with the kids and be cool, and he succeeded at it. He got a lot of the kids to like him, including my mom. Unfortunately, his intentions were a little more sinister. Over a period of a few months, he actually assaulted my mother, taking advantage of her when they were alone. It started when he gave her rights home, and he was even brazen enough to try that stuff at the school, all the while trying to convince my mom that it was for her own good so that she would pass.

My mom ended up dropping out of high school because of this, and sadly her parents didn't believe her at first, until she talked to some other girls that confessed to being a victim as well. I'm not sure of all the legal details, but basically, he was never actually charged with anything because no one had the evidence, and then he fled. He was pretty much nowhere to be found. Like, he just fell off the face of the earth, and of course, no one really cared. After my mom met my dad and had me, they wanted to move away due to all the bad memories of that town.

They settled into a place, and that's where I grew up, and began going to school. I'm sure her experience was always in the back of her mind, but she always went to the conferences and met any and all of my teachers and the staff to make sure that she was involved. Unfortunately, she never met the tutor, because there was never really an opportunity to do so. Not to mention, everything else at the school so far had been fine. I don't think anyone really expected the same creep to show up years later,

in a town and school several hours away under a different name. So, of course, it was quite the shock to my mom when she saw him in the room with me. Sadly, I assume that he recognized my mom as well, because even with all the meetings and complaints she had with the school board, he was long gone. Again. No one saw him again, and apparently the contact information they had for him did not work anymore. either. I don't know if he had any sinister plans with me or any of the other kids, but it just

makes me sick these days knowing that I was in the same room as him, and alone at that. Not to mention that now he's gone, he could literally go anywhere. I don't think it would be fair to call me paranoid either when I say it's never a bad idea to be suspicious of anyone, especially adults that are around children or other vulnerable people. and most importantly, not only do I hope I never see him again, but I hope he never sees another child. There was a time in my life when things were really bad. Like I was homeless and living as a vagabond. Getting food from trash cans, begging people for change kind of bad.

This was a long time ago, and I'm doing a lot better in my life now, but, this point in my life was really low. And while some may say that I could have been hallucinating or seeing things, I was not a stereotypical hobo. I didn't do any sort of drugs. I didn't drink. I just struggled to get through every day, and what led to me being homeless was out of my control.

I'm not going to get into all that because it's not really important. But I will say that, I was basically living in a rust bucket with four wheels that barely ran. Back when this happened, most cities weren't really bothered by people sleeping in their cars like they seemed to be today. And so long as you were out of the way and not bothering anybody, you could pretty much just stay where you were for the night. No one would really care. Back then, because I was sleeping in my car,

I typically tried to park it somewhere that was away from people and wouldn't be an issue for anybody. There was one spot that I liked specifically that was in a small suburban area that was only sort of incorporated. It was mostly residential, and there were woods that pretty much surrounded the streets. Like, there were a good number of houses, but if you kept going,

there was an area that was just a road with trees on both sides. I would go towards that area that didn't have the houses, and I would pull over and park on the side of the road as close to the trees as I could, and that's where I would essentially camp out. It almost felt like actually camping, to be honest with you, because it was surrounded by the trees, and I was safe in my little car, so I just tried to hold on to that optimism and make the most out of it.

that is until the event this story is about happened I had been camping there for a couple of weeks just thankful that I had a bit of stability in my depressing circumstance on that night I had actually managed to get a few dollars together so I had gotten a Big Mac for McDonald's and a small soda I was honestly happy as could be it was around 9 p.m. and I was sitting there savoring my meal

when I noticed what looked like a deer in a small clearing in the woods. I'd seen a few deer in this area before, so it wasn't really surprising, but I also really liked deer, so I was thinking that this was going to be an even better night. When you're in a bad situation, the simple things can mean a lot, honestly. As the deer started walking through the woods and getting closer to where I was, I started to see that there was something wrong with it. At first I thought that it had some sort of parasite or something. I had read about those kinds of things, but I quickly realized that this was not a parasite.

Whatever was wrong with this thing was really wrong. As it got closer, I was able to see that it looked like the skin was actually falling off of its face. Like, I could see part of its jawbone from where its flesh was near literally melting off. its face. It took me a minute to really realize what the hell I was seeing. I was trying to mentally piece together that maybe it had been attacked and was dying. But no, the skin wasn't falling off like it had been ripped into. It was melting.

And it wasn't just its face. It was all over its head, legs, midsection. Its antlers were sharp pointed and were also broken, and it looked like they had some kind of skin hanging off of them too. I was thinking that if this was a deer, it was really messed up from something. But after

a few moments, I came to be certain that this was not a deer. As it stepped through the woods, this thing got towards a tree and slowly pulled itself up onto its hind legs and started scratching at the tree with its hooves. Though

they weren't really hooves. They almost looked more like claws, The zombie-fied deer monster thing was standing there, its flesh falling off the bone, and clawing at the base of the tree for God knows what reason. I genuinely have no idea what this thing was, but I immediately started my car and drove off. I was not going to deal with whatever the hell this monster was. I had nothing to protect myself or to fight this monster with if it decided it wanted to come and get me, and I was not going to die by some melting deer thing. I wish that I had a camera with me at the time,

or that this was when camera phones were a common thing, because I cannot properly explain how disgustingly terrifying this thing really was. And if I'd gotten a picture of it, then maybe I could get someone out there to hunt it and kill it, because this thing was not natural. If it was a deer, then the only word I can think to describe it is zomified.

And the fact that its hooves looked more like claws to me tells me that this thing was something else altogether. Obviously, I never went back to that area, ever. I never camped out there again, and I pretty much kept my car in parking lots when I was still sleeping in it. I thankfully did get through this hard time and things are better now,

but I will never forget the night that I saw that horrifying beast, and I'm just glad that I have never seen anything like it again. I used to spend a lot of my summer vacation at my grandparents' house, which was essentially a small farm in the middle of nowhere. And as much as I loved my grandparents, I used to also get really bored. I used to go out and explore some of their land and would oftentimes go out into the forest that lined their property, despite the fact that my grandma would tell me that I needed to stay close to the house.

One year, I had ventured out and found what was basically a small cave near the property line, and I loved it. It was a really small cave, like large enough to fit me comfortably in it when I was about ten, and that was about it. It was large enough for an adult to kind of crawl into, but it would be rather cramped and it would not be comfortable for anyone larger than a child to stay in for more than just a few minutes. I had actually painted one of the walls with my name and some other random things, just pretty much mark it as mine. It was dumb, but it was my little home away from my grandparents' farmhouse.

As I got into my older teenage years, I stopped going to my grandparent's house as frequently, mostly because my parents were more okay with me staying home alone. I hadn't been to the farmhouse for a few years by the time this all happened, as a matter of fact. About a decade ago, my grandfather passed away. So I actually spent several days with my grandmother at the house to try to keep her company and to make sure that she was doing okay. On one of the days while I was staying with her, I wanted to walk the property line and make sure things were okay,

and after a little while I remembered my little cave. I wanted to go see if it was still there, or if it had been taken over by nature. I headed out to the northern corner of the land, jumped the fence, and headed out into the woods, right towards where the cave was. after a few moments of fumbling with the location, I actually found where the opening was

and was excited to see that it was still there. The next part was the difficult part, which was me trying to figure out if I could even get into the cave at all without getting stuck. After thinking it through, I decided that I could pretty much get half of my body in if I turned the right way, and from there, I should be a little bit of,

able to see if my name was still painted on the wall. I get down on the ground and I start to twist myself in, and as soon as I get my head into the cave, I start to smell something putrid. It was pretty obvious that something had died there, which was disappointing, but I just assumed that it would be a possum or a raccoon or something that had scurried away to die inside the cave. It was gross, but it wasn't going to stop me from seeing if this was still my cave. I get my head in and what I saw was horrifying. It wasn't just a small, dead animal. It was numerous dead animals.

Like dozens of carcasses were lined up on the back wall. There was also what looked like children's clothing piled off to the side and what looked like an old doll sitting on top of the clothes. At this point, I was out. I pushed myself out of the cave, not even caring if it was still marked, because something was staying in that cave, and I didn't want to know what the hell it was. As most scary stories go, though,

it didn't just end with dead animals in the cave. As soon as I pushed myself out, I started hearing what sounded like growling or hissing. I stood up and looked around, but I didn't see whatever it was that was so angry with me until I looked up. I have no idea what the hell this thing was, but it was about 200 feet away from me, standing in one of the trees and angrily growling at me.

It looked human-like, but it 100% was not human. I took off, thinking this creature was definitely going to chase me, but about halfway to the fence, I looked back and saw that this thing was actually crawling on the ground toward the cave, which made this all worse. That thing, whatever it was, it was living there,

and it was storing its spare carcasses there. I just kept running towards the house, and I decided that I would forget that this thing ever existed. I never mentioned it to my grandma, and unfortunately she passed away. same year. The estate was sold, so I have no way of going back to see if that thing was still there. And I never got the chance to go back with a camera or anything. I really do not know what I saw, but it looked like some kind of feral human-like monster. It wasn't quite large enough, though.

It almost looked childlike. It was small enough to live in that cave. It was nimble enough to climb and stand in the trees as it growled at me. It was seriously creepy as hell, and I hope that I never see anything like it again. And to be honest, I hope that whoever now owns that property never runs into that thing. This was about a year ago.

For a while before I started taking melatonin, I had always had lots of trouble sleeping. Many nights I would stay up until 3 a.m. or so, and whenever I stayed up past midnight, I felt very weird. I always passed this weird feeling of dread as my generalized anxiety disorder, which I have lots of problems with. I still get this feeling sometimes randomly during the day, too. A note before I get into the next part,

I have a leopard gecko in my room, so there's always a bit of light coming from her tank. So one night around 2.30 a.m., I still couldn't sleep. I rolled over as I do a lot when I can't sleep, but something was off. It took me a second to realize, but it was brighter in my room than normal. For this next part, let me go over some stuff about my house. My room used to be a porch, so it's almost entirely windows. And if I were to roll over, I would face my backyard. We have a wooden deck, and it covers most of the yard, except for most of the parts that I can see from my window.

Anyways, it took a few seconds, but I realized that the backyard motion sensor light was on, and it confused me since usually stuff that would pass by doesn't set it off. It hasn't been set off in the middle of the night before or since. I got up, wide awake, and I looked out the window. There I saw some really weird creature. It kind of crawled like a cat, but way too fast crawling to be a cat. It was too big to be a raccoon or groundhog or something similar, though it was brown. It had no tail or ears, but it looked like it had very thin fur.

Again, too big to be some kind of rodent. I had a good comparison for size of a nearby lawnmower. It was unnaturally fast, and it crawled unnaturally, too. I could tell it was crawling because I could see defined shoulders, and it was very low to the ground. This thing was again the size of my dogs, so about three feet tall if it were to stand up fully, and two feet long.

It darted across my yard behind the deck where I could no longer see it. I stared for a while, but I never saw it come from anywhere. If it were to come back from behind the deck, I would be able to see it if I tried, which I was. It took half a second to move a solid 20 feet and keep in mind that it was crawling. My best guess is maybe it was some weird crawling coyote, since there are some in the area. There was no way that this was a dream, though, because I remember checking my phone for the time when I eventually went back to bed, and I couldn't fall asleep for another hour. Plus, I don't really get nightmares.

Another thing, it was not one of my dogs. I have no solid brown dog, and none of my neighbors do either. Though I don't think it was a dog since it was crawling way too fast to be a dog, and it had no tail or ears. This may be related, but a while before this happened, I heard some kind of weird canine howling, and I even recorded it. I could hear it in the video, but everybody that I knew never heard this thing. This was happening for two solid days.

I even showed them the video, and they couldn't hear it. I felt like I was going insane because I could never find anything in the area that would howl like the howl that I heard, and it freaked me out. It's never too early to plan your summer story in Europe with WestJet, from rolling countryside to cobblestone streets. Begin your next chapter. Book your seat at westjet.com or call your travel agent. WestJet, where your story takes off. I have a story that happened just a couple of days ago on January 20th at around 2 to 3 a.m. I just want to write it to see if anyone has seen anything similar.

So me and my boyfriend went to park at a parking lot right by a church. We were in his Jeep facing the church and he was telling me his past life story and I was listening to him talk because it was something heavy that was on his chest and he felt he needed to let out to me. He works night shift and was on break so he gets a call to come back to work at three. So we're pulling out of the parking lot and we noticed three deer. and there was an alleyway that went toward the direction to where you can get a good glance at them. My boyfriend asked me if we should pull in to see the deer, so I said yes, and we did.

We parked there for a minute straight staring at these deer, and two of them were male, and one was female. But it kept walking while the other two male deer stopped and stared. We just looked at them, and it was cool, and then we backed out with the headlights face. towards the third deer standing there. We stopped, and my boyfriend stared at it and said, That's an ugly, weird-looking deer. I looked, and it did not look normal at all. It stared back at us, but the stair looked so eerie.

This deer had a white face from the bottom to its eyes, and its nose was pushed downward like a flat face. The eyes were facing directly straight toward us, and not sideways as a normal dears would have. The body was that of a deer, and my boyfriend continued to stare and examine this thing, and I was questioning, like, is that a deer or a different animal?

And he's like, no, that's a deer. I stared at it and told my boyfriend, why are we just staring at it? And I looked away because I didn't want to stare at it anymore. I told him to go, and we left. I was just like, that deer did not look normal,

and he was like, you saw that too, right? I had the chills all the way back home. He told me to not tell anyone what we saw and tried to convince me that we had only seen the two male dears and not the third one to help me feel not as scared,

considering I was going home alone. I got home safe and went right to sleep. The next morning, me and my boyfriend talked about it, and agreed what we both saw, and then stopped talking about it because I can still see how it looked in my mind. But that's my story. It's just been on my mind because I've never seen anything like that in my life. We are next to a reservation where we were, and I'm not sure if this is relevant, but maybe 30 minutes before we left, there were coyotes in the field whining, and we rolled our windows down to listen to them, and they stopped, so we had just continued talking.

I think I was an elementary school, or just starting middle school. We lived in a pretty normal neighborhood at the time, across the street from an elementary school. I have an older brother who was 13 years older than me. He was often out very late, and would come home late, because he would go clubbing and whatnot, and sometimes not even come home until the morning. It was past midnight one day, and I heard the bell ring multiple times,

as well as knocking on the door. He didn't have a cell phone, it was the beeper era, so my brother couldn't have called anyways if he didn't have his keys. I got out of bed and ran downstairs, just assuming it was him. Before I could get to the door,

I heard talking outside, and a woman's voice. I looked through the window blind, and I saw an older woman staring right back at me. My mother then grabbed me from behind and told me to stay away from the window. Just then, the woman at the door began to pound on the door and start screaming. Help, please help me. Help, please!

My mother took me upstairs and we sat on my bed, which was right by the window facing the front of the house, and she was holding me close. Thinking back now, I'm sure that she felt terrified, but she didn't seem that way to me at the time. We had to listen to the doorbell and pounding of the door constantly for a few minutes before a man's voice behind the woman asked her, Where's my money?

Which put an end to the knocking. My mother later told me that the man was standing behind the woman and that there was a car parked in front as well. The woman was maybe trying to stall, and continued to bang on her door for a while before she gave up. Then, they left together. It was a very odd encounter that left us shaken for the night. Nothing bad ever happened at that house again, but my cousins had previously lived at that house and were once robbed when nobody was home.

On another occasion, my aunt was in the kitchen by the back door, and a naked man was standing. standing outside the door, staring in at her through the window, just smiling at her. After we left that house, the next residence were also robbed, so we dodged a bullet, I think. I bet that the man and woman that paid us a visit were working together, but I don't know what the whole line about the money was supposed to do. Were we supposed to feel bad for her and come outside to give her the money that she needed? I'm glad that I didn't open the door, and it gives me chills to think about what would have happened if I did. My name is Cal, and I got a pretty creepy story for you.

It was so bad that I ended up leaving my job for another shortly after this happened. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's move on to some information. Like the title states, I was 16 when this happened. I was also working at the place where dreams go to die. Walmart. I absolutely hated working there. But thankfully, this encounter was the straw that broke the camel's back. Now, another thing I should mention, I look a few years younger than I actually am.

I have a baby face, so even though I was only 16, I looked 13. It was during the day when this incident happened. It was a pretty slow day. I had spent most of my shift wandering around, helping where I could. I was already done with everything in my department. I was in the middle of heading back to my area when a man approached me. He was a bit of a creepy dude, but I didn't want to be rude by not helping him, even though everything in me was telling me to walk away.

Anyway, creepy guy was asking me to help him find a gift for his need. I asked him if he had any idea what he wanted to get his niece. He said he wasn't sure, so I took him to the kid's section so he could choose something. While he was browsing, he started asking for my name. If I lived in the city, how old I was, that sort of thing. I obviously wasn't overly keen on providing this information, so I was pretty vague when answering. other times I would completely avoid the question altogether and redirect the conversation to his niece.

It was evident that he was not interested in discussing his niece, so he provided one-word answers and went right back to his intrusive questioning. He started asking me more personal stuff, like if I had a boyfriend, if I'd ever had sex before, etc. Now, I was horrible at communicating when someone crossed a boundary, I hated confrontation, and my managers sucked. They would give me hell for the stupidest crap, which made me really anxious whenever I had to talk to them. As a result, I did everything I possibly could to avoid talking with them.

Anyway, I asked him if there was anything else that he needed. I just wanted to hurry up and end this whole interaction. But, of course, he told me that he needed a card and a big. bag to put the gift in. So I begrudgingly directed him to the card section, all the while he upped the creep factor and began asking me extremely personal questions. He was now giving me compliments. He would tell me how beautiful I was, how I had such a great-looking back-end. Keep in mind, I don't look a day over 13, and yet that did not seem to stop the creep for making these crude remarks. While he picked out a bag and a card, I kept my distance, but I remember that he kept

giving me, the best I can equate it to, is bedroom eyes. It made me sick to my stomach, but I figured that he would eventually get everything he needed and be on his merry way. He eventually got a card and a bag, and he asked me to lead him to the till since he didn't know where they were. Obviously he did, but I just sucked it up and directed him to the checkouts. When we got within walking distance of a till, I politely excused myself and felt relieved to finally get rid of him. Unfortunately, he ran ahead of me and asked me for my number. Even go as far as making this horrible comment, I like my girls nice and young.

They can just keep going and going. You and I will have lots of fun. It's not the exact word-for-word thing he said. Nobody needs to hear the real things that he said. That made my skin absolutely crawl. I told him I didn't have a phone. I did, of course, and it was sitting in my vest pocket. He thankfully didn't seem to notice it, but I was beyond paranoid that he would spot the phone and call me out on my lies.

Despite being repeatedly told that I, in fact, did not have a phone. he kept insisting that I'd give him my number or a social media where he could contact me. It got to the point where I was backing away from him because he would get so close to me that I could smell his breath. Unsurprisingly, he didn't take the hint, and he kept inching towards me. Want to know the real punch to the gut? I had a couple of my managers walk past. They definitely saw this guy harassing an underage employee, and they did screw all to help. I was getting desperate.

No one was coming to my aid, which made me feel hopeless on top of it. I thought I would never get rid of this guy. My saving grace was my manager walking through the front door before this creep got hansy with me. My manager was my absolute favorite person. He was pretty intimidating, used to serve in the military. He was also a pretty big fellow.

Pure muscle could probably break me in two with one hand, but he was a gentle giant. Whenever customers got rowdy with the employees, he would intervene. It was always hilarious to see people who were red in the face deflate the moment they saw him approaching. I spotted my manager, and I gave him a look of desperation when he glanced over at me. I can't tell you how relieved I felt when I saw him make a beeline for us. He placed himself between me and the creepy dude, slapped on his customer.

customer service smile, and asked if he could assist the creep, since I was supposed to be on my break. I happily took the hint and practically ran to the back of the store. I went to the staff room and was shaking from the adrenaline and on the verge of crying. I was in the staff room for about 20 minutes, before my manager called me into his office. He asked if I was okay. I said I was shaken up, but fine. He assured me that he'd have me working in the best.

for the next week just to ensure that if the creep came back looking for me, he would not be able to find me. He then told me that the guy kept asking where I went, what my number was, what my name was, but my manager told him that he couldn't release that information. My manager literally escorted this guy out of the store and watched him drive away before coming back to talk with me. I never did see the guy again. Then again, I left my previous job shortly after this encounter. I got another offer to work with my best friend at her dad's restaurant after I told her what happened, which I happily took. I admit, I was a little sad to leave, mainly because I really did adore my manager, but my hatred for Walmart and my fear of that dude was ultimately what pushed me to leave.

So to that creepy guy who harassed me at my job, let's never meet again. And on the off chance that we do, I owe you a punch to the teeth. So about a year or two ago, my best friend and I decided to stay at a motel that is as close as we could get to the cemetery that we love to do EVP and investigations at. We have had ridiculous amounts of things happen at this cemetery. Now, it's important to understand that this cemetery is in the middle of the country, surrounded on all sides by farmland. It's a very old cemetery in Texas. The motel is in a small town about seven to ten miles away.

That's just a guess, as I've never had to count the miles while doing this, but it's still the closest that we could get. So, we booked the room for two nights, and on the first night we went out there right as the sun went down, trying to get a feel of the vibe in the cemetery, which we learned long ago is super important to do. On our way back to the hotel on the country highway, we see a beautiful blue falling star, or what we think was a falling star, and it was so close to where we were passing the blue of it, it was shining into the car on the dashboard. We, of course, thought this was awesome, and kind of creepy, but we continued on our way to the motel.

So we wait until about midnight or so, and we head back to the cemetery with all of our gear to begin our EVP session and whatnot. This cemetery is not vast or sprawling in any way, but it is a decent size, and has very much. and has very large trees to shade it all the way around. It has a dirt road that circles the entire graveyard with graves on both sides of the road all the way around it. The entrance is slim and has a metal pillar gate type entrance. It's open to the public, so there's no door on it, so you just drive right in. It is the only entrance slash exit. So we like to circle the graveyard.

yard on the dirt road a couple of times, and make sure there are no wild animals or grave robbers. Yes, that is a thing that's happened to us, and yes, they were caught, or really just anything that we would need to worry about other than the supernatural. So we're driving very slowly in the back of the cemetery, and the road is straight for a bit until you have to turn to get back to the front of the cemetery. We're at the halfway point on the straight part of the road, and I can easily see when the road turns, and we're talking about coyotes, because that's what we're watching for at this point. And then, the next thing I know, we're in the middle of the turn, and I can see a matching gate to the front entrance. I thought, oh, when did they put in that entrance?

And since there's an oil rig pump on that side of the cemetery, as this is Texas, why would we? would they put it there? Then, I realized that something isn't right, because we're not on the side of the cemetery. We're at the front of the cemetery. The gate I was seeing was the entrance. Then, as if all sound returned in a rush, I could hear my best friend mumbling, as if she had been speaking and forgot what she was talking about. Now, all of these revelations that are happening are in like a split second. So I look down at the clock on my dashboard, and I freak out. I slam on the breaks and I look at my best friend who is looking very unsure of what is happening, and I tell her that something is very wrong. Then I start trying to figure out what was going on. I asked her what was the last

thing she remembered us talking about. She thought for a moment, and then she told me she remembered us talking about coyotes. I, too, remember this, but neither of us could remember anything after that. We don't know how we got back to the front of the cemetery, what we were talking about, and on top of that, she was recording video on her phone to document anything that might happen, standard procedure for us when we arrive at the cemetery. Only, the phone recorded our conversation up to the point of the coyotes, and then stopped recording, and it's all blank. There was no video recorded, just the audio. I looked at the clock

right before this had happened, because we'd like to mark our time for the video, and it was 21 after the hour. When we finally came to, I don't know what else to call it, it was 35 after the hour. We were missing about 15 minutes of time. This, of course, sent our minds reeling, and we tried to explain it away, but we literally can't. So we go back to the motel and just call it a night. The next day, in the afternoon, we decided to try our hand at Randonautica to see if there was really something to it like people say. We choose our intention in the radius, we figure it would be safer during the day to start out with, and we hit the roads following the map to the location. Our intent was supernatural spot.

I know, not very clever, but this was our first and only time using this app. And I'll be damned if it did not bring us to the exact spot we were at when I first came out of it, the night before when we lost time. Thinking about this to this day, it gives me chills. And usually we were going to the cemetery in the motel at least twice a month. We've only been back one other time, and, that was even worse, and we haven't been back since. We have also never done Randonautica ever again.

We thought of everything we could think of, like both of us having a mental episode at the same time, which is just stupid, all the way to aliens. I just don't know what happened, and it really bothers the two of us. Was something done to us? Were we somehow attacked and drug? I really can't see that.

that considering drugs like that would take a lot longer to wear off than 15 minutes. And also, how the hell did the Randinotica app know when I was a kid? And through pretty much all of my time growing up, I used to live near a military base. My dad was in the military, and he was important, I guess. I honestly have not the slightest idea what it was that he actually did, but he was pretty much never home. and I had practically no relationship with him up until the day that he died of cancer. My dad isn't the important part of this, but I think that the military base may be. I can't prove that this thing had anything to do with the military,

but would it really surprise anyone if they were out there doing some sort of experiments on humans and mixing them with animals? I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, and I guess I should probably go through the entire event that happened. before I say that. I'm not going to say when exactly this was, nor where, but I will say that I was in my early teens, probably 13 at most. We were living in our small two-bedroom house near the base,

and really there was nothing special about it, other than it had a basement that could have doubled as a bomb shelter. The night that this happened, I was in my bed and struggling to fall asleep. I remember vividly that I was having a lot of problems sleeping around this time, because I was feeling like something was watching me in my room. I wasn't a paranoid kid, but for a few nights I was feeling like I was paranoid. It was like I was having major anxiety, but didn't know why. It didn't happen for very long, but it was something that I was dealing with for a couple of days prior to the actual event. On the night that I saw this thing, I was still having trouble sleeping, and I had pretty much given up on it.

So I was sitting on my bed and reading something. While I was reading, I started hearing what sounded like raspy and deep breathing. Like someone was struggling to get enough air. It's a hard sound to explain beyond just deep gasping. The sound wasn't coming from my room, though. It was definitely coming from outside, but it was loud enough that I could very clearly hear what it was. I went over to the window to see what was going on, but at first I couldn't see anything beyond the darkness of night. I kept focusing, trying to adjust my eyes to the dark, and it was then that I saw the thing that was struggling to breathe.

It was a man, or what looked like a man. but he was covered in what appeared to be really mangy fur. It almost looked like he should have been covered in fur, but someone took an electric razor and shaved close to 70% of the hair off his body. I couldn't see him at first because he was struggling to stand up from under my window. He was basically sitting there and trying to crawl away, while also trying to pull himself up to his feet. It was at this point that I realized that the,

the sound of the gasping was definitely outlined in pain. This human-like thing was suffering, struggling to breathe, and part of me assumed that it was dying. It made me think that I needed to do something about it. Because I was still a kid, I decided that I needed to tell my mother. I went and woke her up, and I told her that there was a man outside my window that was choking. that was the only way that I could think to explain it to her. She told me to stay in her room and not come out until she came back, and she walked out. I could then hear her get on the phone, and I heard her say my dad's name,

and then tell whoever she was talking to which unit we were in. I wasn't sure who she was talking to, but I kind of assumed it was the police. After a few moments of waiting and listening to her talk, I actually left her room and went back to mine because I was genuinely curious what exactly was going on. I remember hearing my mom and then my dad talking, though they were talking in hushed tones, and I couldn't quite make out what they were actually saying.

I could still hear the gasping and choking sound that this humanoid thing was making, but it was quickly cut out by the sound of a large truck pulling up into our yard, which was followed with what, what sounded like other military men, shouting that they were there to help. As they approached, I started hearing the gasping getting louder and faster,

almost like this thing was scared of the people that were approaching him. As soon as I started hearing this, I heard my mom and dad talking again and getting louder, which meant that they were coming upstairs. So I ran out of my room and into the hallway. My mother was obviously mad at me for leaving, leaving her room, but I just told her that I had to go to the bathroom and she let it alone. I asked them what that was all about, and my dad just told me that it was a homeless man that was

very sick, and that they were taking him to the hospital. The fact that my dad was home told me that this was more serious than just a sick homeless guy, but I wasn't going to poke him and ask for more information. That was the only time that anything like this ever happened, and my dad never told me any more info, nor has my mother. I don't know what this thing was, but I can tell you that it wasn't quite human. Or if it was human, it was not fully human. I saw this thing.

Something was sincerely wrong with it, or him, or whatever. I don't know if this would qualify as a cryptid, really, but to me it was a creature that was unexplainable, which fits technically. Whatever it was, I could tell you that the military took care of it, and that was that. A friend was recently telling me about his visit to the UFO Museum in Roswell, New Mexico. During the course of the conversation, I realized that he had never seen a UFO. So I told him about my first. It was late July or early August of 1978, a few miles west of Santa Rosa, California.

I, my sister, and our two friends, who also happens to be sisters, were camping out on the back lawn and sleeping bags. Mom and my brother were out there with us as we were getting settled. I was at least ten, probably closer to eleven. This was beyond the suburbs, and there were only four houses within a hundred yards of of our house and only one who would have been in our range of sight in daylight. But the lights were off, and it was dark. We were talking and looking at the stars, and we noticed that one was moving on a vaguely northwest track.

We figured it was a plane or a satellite. And then, it stopped. Plains and satellites don't just stop. It was pretty much overhead, too high to be a helicopter, we couldn't think of what it could be. Now, I would say such a thing would be a drone, but this was 1978, so no drones. We joked that it was a UFO. It then moved again, a short distance southwest, at a right angle to its original path.

Again, it paused still right overhead, and then it took off, just zip. It was gone heading west. Weird, right? but wait, there's more. After a bit, mom and my brother went inside. Gradually, the talking slowed and we all drifted off to sleep. Sometime later, I was really groggy and trying to sleep, ignoring the headlights flashing behind the back fence from cars passing on the two-lane highway.

Then, behind the fence, I saw a humanoid figure covered in tiny lights stepped from behind one tree trunk to behind another. The suit the figure was wearing was something like a reflective silver asbestos suit that my dad had from when he was on the crash crew in the Air Force, complete with a draped helmet and a face shield, but it was also set all over with lights. Teeny, tiny lights the size of rice greens. You shrug because you've seen lights this size all the time nowadays,

but this was 1978. and the smallest Christmas tree lights for the size of your thumb. I only saw the figure once, and only for a moment. Eventually the headlights behind the fence stopped swinging around, and it got quiet. There had been some kind of vehicular noises back there, too. Gradually, I became more awake, and it occurred to me that there was an orchard, a hill, and a forest between us and the highway. It was a quarter mile away, and had very little traffic

in broad daylight, much less the middle of the night. So what were those headlights? And the figure? I'm going inside, I said. Apparently we were all awake because in moments and without discussion, we grabbed up our sleeping bags and we're heading in. Mom remembers the sound of us hitting the back door. She and my brother got up to see what was going on and hung around as we settled in the living room. I didn't say anything about what I'd seen.

It was too crazy, too unreal. Just a dream, right? But wait, there's more. That camp out was the last hurrah before our big move. Eight months later, and 2,000 miles away, halfway across the continent. My teacher was passing out the purchases that I and a classmate had made from the scholastic book order forms. One of my classmates had a book about UFOs that I had had. missed. I borrowed it in class and was reading, and then turned the page, and wham, not one,

but two grainy black and white photos of figures like the ones in lights that I had seen behind the fence the summer before. I have no explanation. I talked to Mom about it the other day, and she's still stumped, too. Oh, and as a fun post-script, that friend that I was telling about this, the one who visited the UFO Museum in Roswell, he has a copy of that UFO book from back then. It's not a huge surprise, as he's only three years younger than me, and he grew up 50 miles from my then-new school, but it's kind of a cool end to the story. I hope you enjoyed hearing about my experience, and if you have an explanation for either the UFO, the figure and lights, or what was happening behind the fence, please do share. I'm still looking for explanations. While writing a post on another subreddit,

I remembered a creepy encounter that I had when I was around 11, and I just thought I would share. From ages 8 to 13, I was living in a small village where everyone knew each other. My brother and I spent the majority of our time playing with our cousins and the other kids. And since everyone knew each other, our parents never really watched over us while we played.

But I'm kind of glad that they did this time. It was literally just a sunny day like the days before, and we kids were all playing at the small grass field, just about the size of a footballish soccer field. It's placed in the middle of the village with the two main roads of the village on each side. Some of our parents had decided to get together, drink a beer, and talk in one of the front lawns where they could see us play. In the middle of our game, we noticed a man approaching us from the opposite direction from where our parents were sitting.

None of us recognized this man, so he was clearly not from the village. As he got closer, we started looking back at our parents, but none of them had noticed that we had stopped playing, nor the man. This was a time where kids my age started learning about stranger danger, kidnappers, and other creeps. So I immediately thought the worst about this man. And since I was one of the oldest kids and was responsible for the younger kids, I started trying to get the others to back away from the man. I think he noticed the creeped-out look that we gave him, because he stopped up a few meters from us and started talking to us.

And please, bear with me, this happened almost ten years ago, so I don't exactly remember the conversation. but he told us not to worry because he just wanted to talk to us. One of the older kids told him that we couldn't talk to him, and I kid you not, this man actually started pulling some kind of classic, Do you want to see my puppies or kittens? He literally asked if any of us wanted a kitten. There was some more conversation between us and the man,

but I don't remember what it was. I remember looking back at our parents again to see if they had noticed anything by this point. They finally had. I have this clear picture in my head of our parents. All of them were watching us with alarmed faces. Some of the parents were still sitting in the white garden chairs, and others were standing up and looking like they were mere seconds from interfering. I remember looking back at the man and saying,

Our parents are watching and pointing towards them. The man looked at the direction I was pointing, and then reached inside the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a single red lollipop. He tried to get one of us to take it, but I loudly told the others to not take it, because it could be poison, which it probably wasn't, but it worked because no one wanted the lollipop. I remember the man looking in the direction of our parents again, and I feel like some of them might have been getting ready to come over, because he took a few steps back. He smiled and walked over to the small bench that we had pulled out from one of the other kids' houses, and he put the lollipop down and said,

I'll just leave this here. Then he turned around and walked towards the direction that he had come from. I kept on telling the others to not touch the lollipop, and suddenly my uncle was standing next to me with one of my cousins, asking what the man had wanted. We told him what had just. just happened, and some of the other kids started calling the man a creep. I think that my uncle didn't know what to do, so he just told us that we were allowed to go to

his house, grab a soda, and then come back and continue playing. We quickly forgot the encounter with the man, but my brother and I have occasionally brought it up as a weird memory from our childhood. Hey there, friends. That was today's episode of the As the Raven Dreams podcast. and I really hope that you all enjoyed this collection of scary stories. If you did, please do consider checking out my YouTube channel where I do these same stories, but a little bit earlier than I do them here on the podcast form,

and also in slightly different collections. If you really enjoy the podcast, please do consider giving it a rating of any sort if the platform you're listening on has ratings. Any honest rating is appreciated by me, be it for you. five-star, one-star, however you want to do it. Just know that rating the podcast helps tremendously. And, if you would like to support

further, I do have a Patreon and channel memberships if you'd like to do things on the YouTube side, where for as little as a dollar a month, they get early access to my content. Never ever expected, but always appreciated. That said, friends, I hope that I do see you on the next

episode of this podcast. And of course, until then. Sleep well.