As The Raven Dreams Podcast - ATRD Ep. 211 - Creepy Encounters & Other True Scary Stores

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

OK So I made a dumb error on this one originally- I somehow stacked 2 intros over each other. I Have fixed that. Unfortunately I made a SECOND Error I can't fix- and that is I had the rain track turned on when I rendered this one out. I don't know what Was going on with this one, but the rain track ends at about 20 minutes in. Sorry about that everyone. Today, on the 211th episode of the As The Raven Dreams podcast, we have 15 True Chilling stories. These stories come from the shadowy corners of reality, where everyday life takes an eerie twist & ordinary people experience the extraordinary. Today we will be diving into Creepy Encounter Stories & other True Scary stories from you! Today's episode was partially written by Tom K, Find his other works here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DBVX81W7 If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like or rate the podcast, and leave me a comment with your thoughts if the platform your on supports it! I upload episodes every 3 days, so there are 2 days between new uploads. The podcast consists of new scary story collections, Glitch in the matrix collections, and also what I call the "Dark Dreams" collections (which are older stories, remastered and layered with rain sounds). If you have a story to submit, would like to find where to listen to the podcast, or want to find me on social media platforms, all of that info can be found at https://www.astheravendreams.com You can also send stories into my subreddit (r/theravensdream) or email them to me at [e-mail] Want to check out some ATRD Podcast Merch? ➤ https://teechip.com/stores/astheravendreams Or for signed merch ➤ https://ko-fi.com/AsTheRavenDreams I wrote a novel, "The Insomniac's Experiment" by Raven Adams! Check it out on amazon (Or you can email me for a signed copy!) Join Patreon to get early access and support the Podcast! ➤ https://www.patreon.com/AsTheRavenDreams Check out my gaming channel with my pal Ghost_Ink ➤ @superNefariousBros On YouTube Thank you to all of the authors that have stories in todays episode... Ophelia, Ingling Fox, Alex, Gary, Lisa A, CLK, 5bkahle, Freesovereigninspiritedsoul, Alex.M.P, V, Randi, Amy, Calina, Write up By Tom K. As Well As Any Author That Has Requested Anonymity. TimeStamps… Ad breaks after Story 1 & Story 7 1 ➤ 1:50 2 ➤ 8:51 3 ➤ 13:07 4 ➤ 15:40 5 ➤ 19:59 6 ➤ 25:06 7 ➤ 40:24 8 ➤ 45:07 9 ➤ 52:11 10 ➤ 54:36 11 ➤ 1:10:37 12 ➤ 1:12:01 13 ➤ 1:15:03 14 ➤ 1:34:24 15 ➤ 1:36:20 ----- Disclaimer ➤ Episodes include a content warning for language and sensitive/disturbing content. Listener discretion is always advised. ALL Audio and visuals on this podcast are copyright of AS THE RAVEN DREAMS / RAVEN ADAMS and may not be duplicated, in any format. Bless This Mess. None of my audio is AI Generated, I am a real person reading real stories into a real microphone. Note: The podcast nor the host endorses any advertisements played during the podcast, ads are not chosen by ATRD or Raven Adams, they are chosen automatically by the advertisement systems by the platforms that host the podcast. I do not endorse, support, or promote any opinions or statements made in any adverts played during the show. #ScaryStories #UnexplainedMysteries #GlitchInTheMatrix Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Syrotay. Bookine. Oh, so, and profite. Villaray, the voice that we love. Hey there, friends. Hope you're doing well on this lovely day. I have no idea what day the week it is. I'm looking at my calendar here, but you know, I record these before I put the episode up. Obviously, I'm not recording them as I put the episode up at the same time. So, um, Thursday is when I have this scheduled. Okay, so hopefully you're having a great Thursday.

Um, hopefully I'm having a great Thursday. Hope so. Um, today we have a collection of some creepy encounters, so the let's not meet style creepy people stories. And then also a good number of just strange and scary stories. So this one is just going to be a mash up of a bunch of strange and scary stuff. Hopefully you enjoy it. If you do and you're on Spotify, let me know in the comments down below your thoughts.

My wife just laughed extremely loud. You guys probably didn't hear that. I have no idea what was so funny upstairs. She's supposed to be working. Anyways, hopefully you guys enjoy it. Let me know in the comments if you do. Send your stories into as the ravendreams.com. And if you could, let me know if you have any troubles getting to the website.

I've been having some people report that it's being blocked by some ISPs, specifically Spectrum. So I've been in touch with them trying to get it removed and they are a pain in the back end, to be honest. This all stemmed from it being reported as malicious back in 2024. Somebody decided to mass report my website as hosting malware. And it's been a disaster. So ever since.

Two years almost worth of trying to get that fixed. I am rambling. Anyways, enjoy the scary stories, friends. Hopefully you have a great day. Hope I see you again here soon. But until then, much love and enjoy. This happened in late April, after a pretty decent spring storm that makes the air feel all charged up and heavy. The kind that steals your lawn chairs and gives them to your neighbor.

You know the kind. My uncle has some decent acreage, and I sometimes come over to help out, which means hauling seed bags, helping to get the gutters cleared or remounted and keeping his Labrador Scotty from eating bugs. Don't ask. I don't know why Scotty has the desire to eat every bug he finds. just how he's always been. I know it's a tangent, but that dog will seriously eat cicadas, June bugs, lightning bugs, butterflies, you name it,

and he's probably eaten it. My uncle keeps a few trail cams along the tree line to catch a deer or whatever is stealing from his feeders. Nothing fancy, just some cheaper olive green boxes that make everything look all spooky in the IR lights. The morning after that storm that I mentioned, I walked the fence line and picked up, the fallen branches and such,

when I found that one of the cameras had been pulled from its post. It was hanging from its strap and pointing at the mud, so obviously not doing its job very well. I grabbed it, pulled the SD card, and remounted it, thumbing the buttons to make sure they still clicked and whatnot, basically just making sure it wasn't busted all to hell. I figured it was as good a time as any to pull the photos. That night, my uncle fell asleep on the couch watching a baseball game,

and I decided that I would take care of that SD card. If you've ever dredged through a trail cam dump, it's like hitting the lever on a slot machine filled with wind and a thousand shots of grass and branches, some random glare in the occasional raccoon mid-stride like it had been caught sneaking out in the middle of the night. The timestamps on his cam are small white text in the corner with the date, time, and temperature.

It's nice and clinical, really. The first set was normal. A white tail with one clouded eye, 48 Fahrenheit just after 1 a.m. Rain moving in like static. A cluster of blurry watering frames when the camera slipped, and a few shots of grass and mud. I almost trashed the whole group,

but I'm glad that I didn't. There was a picture that looked like two pale blobs at first, and I wasn't sure what I was seeing. But then it clicked. It was a person's knees. Someone was crouched in the tall grass just past the molyne, and their knees were visible to the camera. So they were crouching near the camera.

The perspective was a bit off, but I also didn't know how the camera was hanging off the post. Then the next image was closer, and then the next was them lifting the camera and looking at it, like they were holding the camera up and looking into it to take a picture of themselves. A random point I want to add here, trail cams make eyes reflect and glow in weird ways because of the night vision. This person's eyes were not glowing. They were dark.

I don't know that that's relevant to anything, but it's something that freaked me right the hell out since I saw it. So this is where it was a bit freaky. The camera snaps things that move, and it does so in delayed intervals, and sometimes it does so with weird gaps. 30 seconds here, a couple minutes there, and so on. The thing is, this person stayed with their face at the camera for a ridiculous amount of time. There was a series of over 200 frames, all taken at different intervals. A 30-second gap, and then two minutes, then just 10 seconds. But the subject was always the same.

A face. This wasn't a person checking on the camera and then walking away, This was someone holding the camera, with their face filling the frame and staring. The face was unremarkable in its features. A man probably middle-aged with a thinning hairline and a forgettable, slightly narrow face. No distinct scar, no weird hat, but the sheer volume of images was dizzying. Each photo was a close-up, and because of the infrared night vision, his skin was a ghostly pale. His dark clothes were blending into the background fuzz.

Like I said, the only thing that stood out, the thing that made the skin of my arms prickle and raised goose flesh, were his eyes. They weren't glowing white or green like an animal, which would be normal. They were just dark, flat voids like two holes punched into a sheet. Even when the camera shifted slightly between frames, or when the light seemed to catch the moisture on his skin,

his eyes remained stubbornly and unnervingly black. It made him look less like a person and more like a poorly animated doll. I kept scrolling, the digital click of the photos echoing in the quiet room where my uncle snored softly. The timestamps climbed. 147, 148, 150. I calculated roughly three hours and 45 minutes of the man just holding the camera and looking into it. Not moving, not repositioning, just staring. The final photo in the sequence was timed at 5.32 a.m.

In this last frame, his face was still there but tilted slightly, a mere fraction of an inch that was barely perceptible, but at least it broke the hypnotic stillness of the other 200 photos. It looked like he was listening to something. The next image in the dump wasn't of the man. It was a shot of the sunrise, bright orange and pink light filtering through trees, with a few small raindrops clinging to the lens, and the camera now sitting where I had found it,

hanging on the post but pointing up at the sky instead. A normal, almost pretty photo, and the man was gone. I ejected the card, my hands suddenly shaky, and sat there for a long time, just listening to the silence of the farmhouse, I told myself a hundred stories. And Sky was drunk. He was high.

He was just a prankster trying to mess with the camera owner. He was a very strange neighbor, but none of those explanations accounted for the time. Hours. No one stands still and stares into a trail camp for nearly four hours. At least, no one that I want to talk to or deal with. My hometown was a filming location for the 1985. movie Day of the Dead by George Romero. So every year we had a festival downtown called ZombieCon in tribute,

which was just a bunch of vendors and people in costumes on a bar crawl. As the years went on, the costumes got even better and the small downtown streets got even more packed. There were no real tickets or gates, just a table at the ends of the streets where you could donate to the Pushing Daisies organization, or leave some canned food and then walk right on in. It was 2015, and it was the first year my parents let me go with my friends unshaperoned since I was finally a high school freshman. The theme that year was zombies versus hunters, and the streets were filled to the brim with people covered in fake blood

and people carrying prop guns. There were so many people it was hard to move through the crowd. My friends and I, a group of five girls, were walking on the outskirts of a densely crowded square. The night started to get late, and it was time to start finding a spot to call my parents to come pick us up. As we navigated through the crowd, breaking through the loud music playing on the streets was suddenly a scream. Streak started to ring out from everywhere and people started running. We looked around confused. You have to understand that at 15, you think nothing bad can happen to you and the red flags fly over your head.

One of my friends joked, is there a sail going on or something? A woman in front of us threw off her flip-flops, pulled her baby out of the stroller and started running, leaving the stroller and her shoes behind. Three of my friends, one infected by the other, were the kinds to panic laugh. Within moments the streets was nearly empty. I got my giggling friends to finally pull to the side. A cop walked by, nearly the only person left on the street, yelling at us to leave. We still had no idea what was going on. Some codes came through the cops walking, and he started sprinting in the direction that we were originally headed.

On top of all of this chaos, my parents kept calling me on my cracked iPhone 6. but no matter how many times I tried to swipe to pick up, the screen did nothing. I tried to call them back and it just wouldn't connect. It was nearly 1 a.m. at this time and we were the only ones left on this deserted street. My friend still making fun of the whole situation and the seriousness flying over their heads. My parents had apparently been cruising around wherever the streets weren't blocked off looking for us, and they finally found us. We piled into the back and the first thing that flew out of my mom's mouth,

there's a shooter on the loose and you didn't pick up the phone? Are you out of your mind? After we explained ourselves, she explained. That night, someone had decided to commit something horrible and disappear into the crowd. A man opened fired into the crowd, hospitalizing five and killing a man named Expavius Taylor at the scene. He was only 20. People couldn't tell what blood was real and what was fake. People couldn't tell who did it between all the people carrying fake guns that day.

Obviously, we never had a zombie con again. Every day we watched the news wondering when they would finally find who did it. It took them three years to finally find the murderer, and he was arrested in 2018. It was 24-year-old Jose Bonilla. He got 30 years in prison. In the end, he was only caught because he was drunkenly bragging about what he had done at a bar in the same downtown, where he had taken that young man's life. Back in October of 2005, when I was 15, my family and I were living in an apartment above an S.O. gas station in Bostrick, Norway. One night, I had a very lucid dream of a little blonde boy, probably aged eight or nine,

crying in our living room. He was wearing a striped t-shirt with a silver star printed in the middle of his chest. When he saw me, he spoke in Swedish. I'm Norwegians, so I understood what he was saying, especially bus accident. He kept pointing down to the ESO station. I woke up, it was October 31st, convinced a bus was going to crash into the station.

I told my mom and dad everything about the dream, and my dad told me to get a grip. That nightmares happen. That didn't stop my high anxiety. Every bus that stopped to deliver packages, I was sure would crash, but nothing happened. That evening, my siblings and I went down to the station to buy snacks for a horror movie marathon,

and I saw a newspaper headline. Bus, accident, and Tenorife. It had a picture of a bus in front of a shell gas station. Naturally, I bought it because it was a Swedish tourist bus that went off the road in Tenorife. Not too far from the airport there with 28 people on board. A Norwegian tourist leader died. Front and center in the article was a picture of two blonde boys crying in the aftermath of the accident. one of them was young, aged eight or nine, in a striped t-shirt with a star print on the middle.

He survived. I don't believe in psychics, mediums, witches, or anything paranormal, but I still have the paper to remind myself that I don't know crap. How can a little boy appear in a dream of mine? A stranger. To warn of an accident happening as it was happening on October 30, 2000. I haven't had anything like that ever happened to me again, and I still can't explain it. The weekend of 101124, my friends and I set out for a camping trip in Lake Kaganza State Park, located in Stofton, Wisconsin.

While finishing up some geocaching on a hike trail near the outhouses, we encountered something or some one strange. You can enter the trail. after crossing the path of another trail that enters the forest. The trail that we were on circled a prairie that laid in the middle of the trail that was surrounded by forest. The sun was low in the sky. It had to have been roughly 6 p.m. The sun was just above the tree line as we started our hike. As we were at our last geocash of the night, the sun had just gone behind the tree line and it was beginning to get dark,

but we could still see without the assistance of flashlights. The forest went silent. No more sounds of the bugs around us or birds that have been active all day. It approached us with a whistle, a bone chilling whistle. Our entire group went silent and no one said a word until we heard a second whistle. The second whistle was more broken up than the first, and in the slightly tipsy state that I was in, I thought it had to be a human whistle as it was not perfect.

To that, I responded with a pretty stern, Hello, hoping for an explanation as to why our group got whistled at twice. I thought you were dogs, a voice said as it rounded the trail towards us. As he passed our group, I noticed that I could not make out a face on this person, but I chalked it up to nerves and being distracted. as a group we agreed that while it was a strange encounter we shouldn't panic but took it as a sign to get off the trail this is where it gets even more weird all four of us in the group kept our eyes peeled for anything as we made our way back to the car when suddenly this creature calling it a creature as it surely was not human suddenly appeared on the edge of the trail closest to the woods and staring blankly into the field in front of it. That would have been to a right.

And in the flattest, driest tone, it said, Who is that guy? Everyone in our group kept walking as I answered, the same guy from earlier? As I assumed it was talking about my boyfriend who was behind the group. We had never been so silent on the walk back to the car. Checking behind our shoulders and our surroundings, constantly.

We made it back to our campsite where we decided that due to the time of the day, it would be best to wait to pack up until morning. While we were debriefing our experience, I told my friends how in neither encounter I could make out a face. Being a female hiker, I make it a point to gather some facial features of anyone I cross on a trail just in case. no one in our group could identify a face and in our own way we described how the face on this thing was not a human face

it seemed to have almost a blurred effect over what should have been a human face all of us saw the same thing you could tell where eyes, nose, and a mouth should have been but there was none on this creature being that it whistled and was unidentifiable we're convinced that we have encountered a skinwalker. They just are not relevant in that area of Wisconsin. It was a long night at the campsite with the impending feeling of being watched. I'm spiritually inclined and I feel that I took the necessary steps of protecting our campsite for a secured night's sleep,

but I've had strange encounters since. I'm willing to explain the encounters I've had since that night have asked, but any ideas? Hi, Raven. I love listening to your glitch stories before bed, but because of spooky season, I've been listening to your spooky stories and realized I definitely have something to contribute.

Maybe not something huge, but here we go. I have never suffered with sleep paralysis, but have experienced exactly once. My friend who lived in the same house had it all the time. He told me while we were watching some paranormal things about sleep paralysis and sleep paralysis demons, and he just said, this often happens to me. Some days later, we were in his room and he was doing something at his computer, sitting on the end of the bed. I laid down on his bed with my head on his pillow.

We're really close, so he didn't mind. I was pretty tired, and the thing he was doing on the computer took a while, so I ended up falling asleep. When I woke up, I couldn't move or make a sound, and it felt like the air or something was being sucked out of me. I've seen ghosts and things since I was small, and they kind of don't bother me. So since I had just watched something about this but never experienced it,

I thought, great, I need to observe this. So I felt more curious than panicked. At the start, I could move my eyes and saw there was like a dark blanket over everywhere I looked. I looked up, but I couldn't see where the dark shadow blanket ended. So I knew it wasn't just my eyes not fully open, or me still being so much asleep that I didn't register the light fully. Those were my first guesses. Although, thinking about it now, I must have been pretty awake going straight into data analysis.

I was a biology student at the time. Anyway, there wasn't that much more to observe, and I didn't feel tired anymore, and I wanted out. So I tried to call it to my friend, but it was like the sound just turned into a raspy air sound. Like it was literally being sucked out of me. So I tried to reach my hand to him, and I could only muster to move my fingers. He was in hyper-focus mode at the computer, so he didn't. noticed anything. And then I remembered a weird dream that I had as a teenager. In the dream, I was just standing in the room that I was sleeping in and said, I'm going to be late to class,

but I'm asleep. And then the dream me sat down where the actual me was actually sleeping in real life, slumped down in the same position. Me and a friend fell asleep over the TV at lunch break, so it was a slumped position, not a laying. position. And then the me and the dream started jerking her, or I guess my, head up. And then putting it back down and on the third try, I jerked my head up and woke up. I looked at the time, and me and my friend ran to class and just made it. Anyway, I wondered if that trick would work here too, since both situations seemed to be in the sleep domain, so trying all that I could to move my head to the side, and after a bit it did go to the side.

Like my head broke free, literally. It didn't go slowly when it finally went, but like I was honestly fighting against something. But then it should be sleep muscle locking and not sleep paralysis. I felt my breathing getting lighter and easier. The blanket of shadows was gone, and I felt like I could just move freely. So while I sighed in relief, I turned my head again straight, like it had been, and it started again right away. So again, I tried putting my head to the side, and when I managed to do that, I sat straight up with my head in that position to whatever this was couldn't gain the connection back,

and suck out whatever it was sucking out of me. I never fell asleep in his bed again, and I never fell asleep in his bed again, and I, I never experienced it again. Some years later, after he had stopped experiencing it, he was telling our friend about it in a conversation that we were all having about paranormal things, and he said that what he used to see when he experienced it was a blanket of shadows.

So, it looks like I saw his sleep paralysis demon. Maybe it got confused or something. But after this, I fully believe that sleep paralysis is not what science. says. It's something that we do not understand yet. Just a heads up, this is a research piece, so just FYI. This one actually came in some time ago from a viewer suggestion. It's taken a bit to get to it, but here we are finally. Just from initial research, I can tell you that this case is quite disturbing

and does talk about familialicide and spree murder. If these topics are too much for you, I suggest that you skip listening to this one. That being said, let's take a look at this disturbing case. Ronald Jean Simmons was born in 1940 in Chicago, Illinois, to Loretta and William Simmons. In 1943, his father died of a stroke. Within a year, his mother had remarried an Army Corps engineer by the name of William D. Griffin. In 1946, Griffin was transferred to Little Rock, Arkansas. This move would mark the beginning of many such relocations all over Central Arkansas.

By the age of 10, Simmons had gained a reputation as a bully in his family, as he often tormented his younger half-brother Pete and sister Nancy. Later on, Pete would recall that once he had a family of his own, Simmons would inflict the same kinds of torment upon his own children. He had this way of exploiting any kind of perceived weakness. He also had a habit of being abusive towards animals as well. One of his sister-in-laws would recount that Simmons was always quick to anger and definitely an egocentric individual.

His parents tried to reign in his behavior, often sending him away to live with family friends during the summers and even enrolling Simmons in a Catholic boarding school. Despite their best efforts to reform the boy's behavior, he only continued to escalate. In 1957, Simmons would drop out of high school and enlisted with the United States Navy. While stationed in Guam, he would earn his GED, that's general education diploma. In 1959, he was relocated to the Naval Hospital at Naval Station Bremerton in Washington.

It was while attending a U.S.O event, he would meet Bersibé Rebecca, Becky Ullabari. The pair would be married in 1960 in Rattan, New Mexico. They would have seven children over the next 18 years. In 1962, Simmons would leave the Navy, and later on, in 1963, he would enlist in the USAF. Eventually, he was assigned to the AFOSI, that's Air Force Office of Special Investigations. In 1966, he would be promoted to the rank of Staff Sergeant. He would volunteer for a total. in Vietnam in 1967, in exchange for a guaranteed billet with AFOSI in Saigon.

He was assigned to AFOSI Personnel Investigations Division, and he would be in Vietnam for about a year until 1968, including during that Tet Offensive early that year. He was a decorated veteran that during his 20-year career earned a bronze star, the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross, and the Air Force Small Arms expert Marksman Ribbon. In 1979, Simmons would retire from service at the rank of Master Sergeant. During his service, Simmons maintained an exemplary service record with a spotless record of behavior.

At some point, his wife, Becky, revealed that Simmons's mother had warned her repeatedly about what Simmons was like. Quote, but I didn't listen. Over time, he began to dominate and control. nearly every aspect of Becky's behavior. He made her stop wearing makeup and keep her hair tied back. She was to wear long dresses and was completely isolated. To begin with, he would allow her to write to her family, but later on he would deny her any stamps to mail her letters,

and this forced her to ask other people to mail her letters in secret. Simmons even refused to let Becky get a driver's license, which further isolated her and kept her from access to the mail, by using distant PO boxes to censor the family's mail and restrict their access to it. Simmons even convinced Becky that she, quote, deserved what she got. He also denied Becky having a telephone in the house, and when she made calls from elsewhere, he was always hovering nearby monitoring her and what she said. After his discharge from the military in 1981, Simmons was investigated for child essay.

and ultimately for allegedly impregnating his 17-year-old daughter, Shelia. Later on, it was revealed that Simmons' son, Ardine Simmons Jr., was the person that had initially alerted authorities and did so multiple times over the next few weeks after the first report on April 17th of 1981. Upon further investigation, they got corroborating statements from Sheila's friends and even officials from the school. Within three days of the initial report, a caseworker was sent to speak with Sheila privately who confirmed that she was, indeed, pregnant with her father's child. Reportedly, the first instance of the abuse occurred in 1980 in a hotel room in Phoenix, while the pair were traveling from New Mexico to California for a coin show.

Simmons loved coin collecting and Sheila only pretended to enjoy it in order to please her father. On April 21st, one of the assistant Odoro County prosecutors was made aware of the charges, and under threat of prosecution, Simmons agreed to psychological counseling for the entire family. The social worker later reported that during their investigation, two more instances of SA were uncovered in September of 1980. In March of 1981, Sheila became aware she was pregnant and she told her father. On June 17th of 1981, she gave birth to a daughter whom she named Sylvia. In that same year, a social services report stated that social workers sought to gain custody of all four of Simmons' daughters

after the man insisted that they would raise Sylvia. The report also said that it told the DA to seek custody of the children, but he later claimed that the ADA never relayed the request to him. Sheila's school principal, among others, made reports that when they saw Sheila and Simmons writing around together that she was often sitting much too close to him, more like a couple than father and daughter. After five weeks of counseling, the family stopped going once Simmons heard from his lawyer that anything he said to social workers could be used against him in court. Deputy Jeff Farmer was assigned to investigate on behalf of the county sheriff's department,

and on June 20th he made his first visit to the Simmons household, where he spoke to both Sheila and her mother Becky. Sheila refused to make any kind of statement or comment on the abuse, nor would her mother Becky. Farmer's investigation would end after he spoke to R. Jean Simmons Jr., and the boy refused to make any comment on the abuse to his sister. However, two months after the birth of Sylvia, the Odaro County Court decided to charge Simmons with three,

recounts of incest, engaged in during September of 1980. However, when they arrived at the family's home near Cloutcroft, they discovered that the family had packed up and moved from the area. Simmons relocated the family to Arkansas, where the family lived in a five-bedroom mobile home. Two of the bedrooms were under an extended roof, where they had inoperable heat or air conditioning. Their only source of heat came from a wood-burning stove in the family room, and only one bedroom had a window unit for air-conditioning.

The toilet was inoperable, and so the family made use of two nearby outhouses. There was also a non-working phone in the home, which Simmons would not have hooked up, because he didn't want the family to have uncontrolled contact with the outside world. Their home was also surrounded by a makeshift privacy fence that was as tall as 10 feet in places. And Simmons also made his family dig a new privy pit just weeks before Christmas, where he would later dispose of some of their bodies. With all of this quite horrible stuff laid out, I have to tell you that we've only scratched the surface, and the worst is yet to come, so... Brace yourselves. By the time we were in the run-up to the horrors that were to come, many members of the immediate family had left the property.

Jean Jr. had relocated to New Mexico where he had gotten married and had a daughter. Sheila had moved out of the house with her daughter Sylvia and had also gotten married. Simmons's other son, William, had moved to Russellville after landing a full-time position at a Hardee's there and being promoted to shift manager. Later on, investigators would conclude that, for weeks, Simmons had been plotting to kill his entire family, and he had plans to do so, over the Christmas holiday, as he knew that that was the small window of time

where they would all be gathered together. Simmons would begin his spree on December 22nd, when he bludgeoned his wife Becky and oldest son, Gene Jr., and then shot them in the head with his 22-caliber pistol. But not stopping there, he would go on to asphyxiate his three-year-old granddaughter Brenda before disposing of their bodies in the freshly dug pit. but he was still not finished,

as he then waited for his other children to arrive home for Christmas break. Loretta, 17, Eddie 14, Marianne 11 and Becky 8 were separated once they got home and were strangled by Simmons. He also submerged their heads in a large drum of water in the non-functional bathroom to make sure they were all not breathing, before he dumped them into the pit with their mother and oldest brother. They never even had a chance to get out of their school clothes, and one of the girls even had gum in her mouth.

The only one that is believed to have fought back is Loretta, who had defensive wounds on her arms and markings on her face, consistent with being punched at least twice. One of her earrings and her watch were also broken in the struggle. But Simmons still was not finished. After killing all of the family that lived in the home or were visiting the home for the holidays, he began planning his trip to Russellville to finish his murderous spree. His spree would pick up again on December 26th of 1987.

The other members of the family arrived, including his son Billy and his wife, Renata, and their son Trey, who was just a few months shy of his second birthday. His daughter, Sheila, her husband Dennis McNulty, Sheila's daughter Sylvia, 7, and his other grandson, Michael, also short of his second birthday. Billy and Renata were the first to die when they were shot to death. Simmons then drowned Trey. Sheila and Dennis were the next to be shot to death before strangling both Sylvia and Michael.

He laid all the bodies out in a nice row in the lounge and covered them all with coats, except Sheila who was covered with Becky's best tablecloth. Trey and Michael were wrapped in blankets and left in an abandoned car at the end of the road. On the first Monday after the Christmas holiday, holiday, December 28th, Simmons took two of his 22 caliber pistols and $250 cash and left the house. He put the cash in an envelope and posted it to his mother-in-law with a note that said, Dear Ma, sometimes you reap many, many more times what you sow. This is just a little token of our appreciation.

Keeping in remembrance of us, loved Gene. He took off for Russellville and a Toyota Corolla that belonged to Jean Jr. At some point along the way, he mailed the letter to his mother-in-law and sent two nearly identical letters to different aunts. Once he made it to Russellville, his first target was Kathy Krivans-Kendrick at the law office where she worked, Peel, Eddie and Gibbons. Simmons had been infatuated with her since they had been co-workers at Woodline Motor Freight Company. He'd been rejected by her, and now, in revenge for the slight, the family annihilator walked into her work, and shot her four times in the head. From the law office, he went to an oil company a few blocks away

to kill his former employer, Russell Taylor, but only wounded him, although he did murder a firefighter and delivery driver of Taylor's named James David Schaffin. Schaffin was a stranger to Simmons and had just come from a car fire when he encountered Simmons and was shot. Next, on the trail of carnage was the downtown Russellville Minimart, where he shot the store owner David Salier in the head and clerk Roberta Willery in the jaw. From here he went to his old place of employment, woodline motor freight company, where he shot his former supervisor Joyce Butts.

After which he ordered an employee named Vicky Jackson at gunpoint to call the police saying, quote, I've come to do what I want to do. It's all over now. I've gotten everyone that wanted to hurt me. Now, from here, since this has gotten so long, and I'm really sick of writing about this guy and saying his name, we'll skip all the trial and stuff because this would be a two-hour-long script, and I just don't have that in me. In short, he wanted the death penalty and waived his rights to appeal, and on June 25th of 1990, he was executed by lethal injection.

By the end of the spree, 16 people were dead. four severely injured. And of course, we're going to end this by naming the victims of the savage and senseless murder spree to have their names be the last thing stated in this case and not his. Brasabe, Rebecca Becky Simmons, Ronald, Jean Simmons, Jr., Barbara Simmons, Loretta Simmons, Eddie Simmons, Marianne Simmons, Rebecca Becky Simmons, his eight-year-old daughter, William Billy Simmons, Renata Lynn May Simmons, William H. Trey Simmons, McNulty,

Dennis McNulty, Michael McNulty, Sylvia Gail McNulty, Kathy Cribbins-Kendrick, James David Schaffin. May they all rest in peace. I'm submitting this anonymously because I don't want to put myself or my family in danger. I've recently come to the discovery that my grandparents were involved with the Chicago mob. While I haven't discovered any evidence to prove they were in the mob itself, things line up in a way that makes it undeniable. I was born after the Chicago mob was officially disbanded, but did they ever really go away? Maybe on paper, but not in truth. When I was a young child, my mother took me into the

city to see our therapist. When I finished seeing my therapist, my therapist, my My mother was spending way too long talking to one of her friends outside of our car. I announced to her that I would be walking around the corner to the park. She could clearly see me from the park, and I could clearly see her in the car. I grew up in a small town, the kind where everyone knew everyone and their children. I saw a person that I had seen my grandmother with once and decided to go up to him and say hi. To me, it seemed like he needed help with something. Considering that I saw my grandma with him, I thought my mom wouldn't mind me approaching him.

I don't remember many features of his, except I think that he had a scar on his cheek. He seemed startled by a child in the early teens approaching him. He seemed nice. We talked briefly, and then my mother stormed over to me and pulled me toward her and sternly told me to get away from him. He called her by her first name, and she seemed disgusted by his existence. My mother showed very strong emotions, and you could always hear it in her voice and see it on her face when she was angry. She always stiffened up. She stiffened up and seemed more angry than I have ever seen her.

I couldn't tell at the time, but now I can tell that she was trying to stay brave and she was on the verge of tears. I told the man goodbye. He told my mother something that within a few words would be summarized to, Let your child come to their own decisions about us. Leave the past in the past, Ms. Last Name. Or you'll regret it. He didn't wave goodbye to me and he didn't say goodbye. He then turned to the building behind him and entered.

My mom dragged me back to the car and started scolding me. Within a few words, she said, Don't wander off again and don't talk to strangers. I just don't know what to do with you. I wanted to say, he's not a stranger, he's grandma's friend. I then noticed that she was crying and actually looked scared. I decided not to say anything because I had never seen her like this. Instead of driving us home, she drove us to my grandparent's house, which I wasn't happy about,

because it meant that I would likely have to deal with them talking for a few hours, and she didn't even take me home to get my Game Boy advanced SP so I could play polka. on Sapphire, and not quote-unquote, bother the adults while they're talking. She told me to wait in the car and she went into their house for about ten minutes, and then came out and we went home. She told me never to speak of that again, and to never speak to that man again. She also told me that I was better off forgetting about it, and until this year I did forget about it.

My grandmother had a fascination with prohibition, and my grandfather was born in the early 20th century. He was born around 1910. At this point, my grandparents and my parents have all passed away. I'd also like to apologize to this man or any of his family if I got the details wrong. I was a child when it happened. I don't have any bad feelings about you, but as you may have guessed, my grandparents didn't really tell me anything. except for a few things that helped me come to this conclusion. All I know is that they left the, quote,

seen to raise their children in safety. I'd like to thank you all for listening and apologize again if the vagueness bothers you, but I'm not trying to get myself or anyone killed because I spoke about the wrong person inappropriately. I spent a decade working as a nightlife DJ in Los Angeles. From 2010, up until early 2020, right before the world hit pause.

For 10 years, I lived in that electrical pulse between midnight and dawn. The city never really slept. It just changed personalities after dark. Every night behind the decks was a different kind of fever dream. Neon lights, the thud of bass through smoke machines, people chasing euphoria in designer shoes and cheap cologne. I thought I'd seen it all. Bar fights that turned into dance off,

celebrities losing their phones in champagne buckets, couples breaking up and making up in the same song. But what I didn't realize was that sometimes the real madness happened after the party. In those quiet hours when the lights turned back on and the city exhaled. Most of my gigs were on the west side. Santa Monica, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa. But home was across the hills and Sherman Oaks. It was a solid drive at three or four in the morning when the freeway was wide open and

empty, like it was just me in the hum of sodium streetlights. Every night I had the same post-gig ritual. Before heading home, I would stop by the 24-hour CVS down the street from my apartment. It was one of those fluorescent-lit islands of civilization in the middle of a sleeping city. I'd grab a snack, a bottle of water, maybe a microwave meal or some detergent for the next day. Sometimes it was just an excuse to wind down and shift gears from 120 BPM back to human speed. The CVS lot connected to my street, so I used it as a shortcut. A little detour that saved me a red light.

That night I was doing what I always did. I pulled in, grabbed a couple things, a frozen dinner, detergent, a coffee for the morning, paid the board cashier and got back into my car. As I turned toward the exit, my headlights swept across the far wall of the building, and that is when I saw her. At first I thought it was just another unhoused person with a cart, maybe digging through the trash, but then the motion caught my eye. It was sharp, rhythmic, and deliberate.

She was a woman, maybe late 20s, early 30s, wearing a full cheerleader uniform. The kind that you would see at a high school pep rally. Pleaded skirt, white sneakers, lettered top, hair pulled into a high ponytail. She had pom-poms in both of her hands that were gleaming silver under the harsh white light of the CVS sign. And she was performing. Like full-on choreography. High-energy kicks, sharp arm pops, big smile, except the smile didn't reach her eyes. It was like muscle memory had taken over and the soul was somewhere else.

There was a shopping cart beside her, piled high with blankets and plastic bags, and she moved around it as if it were part of her routine, like a prop in some bizarre late-night halftime show. I sat there with my foot hovering over the break, completely mesmerized. I had seen eccentric people all over L.A., but this was different. It felt almost ritualistic. Part of me wanted to look away, but another part couldn't. It was 3.30 a.m., dead quiet except for the buzz of the lights and the distant sound of the street sweeper.

The way she moved, which was perfectly in time to a beat that only she could hear, gave me chills. I thought, I have to show my girlfriend this. Not in a cruel way. It just, this was our neighborhood, the same CVS we would walk to together late at night for snacks. I reached over to grab my phone from the passenger seat, intending to take a short video. Before I could even open the camera app, she stopped dancing. Her head snapped toward me, and then she charged. She sprinted straight at my car full speed with pom-poms flying.

She slammed her hands down on the hood, and then she was, then started pounding and screaming words that I couldn't make out through the glass. My heart jumped into my throat. I threw the car in reverse, backing up slowly, terrified to hit her. She ran to the passenger door and started yanking on the door handle. Thank God the doors were locked. Her face was lit up in my headlights. Sweat-streaked mascara.

That same cheerleader grin twisted into something manic. She yelled something like, No, you don't get to leave yet. But it came out garbled, swallowed by rage and exhaustion. I shifted in to drive and swerved left. Careful not to hit her as I sped off. As I turned the corner onto my street, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw her running after me, still in formation with pom-poms in hand,

feet pounding the asphalt like she was leading an invisible parade. My adrenaline was surging. My heart was racing faster than it did behind. the deck. I circled the block twice scanning for her, making sure that I wasn't being followed. Finally, I found a parking lot a few streets away and cut the engine. For a moment, I sat there in silence, listening to the tick of the cooling engine trying to calm down. By the time I crept up to my apartment, the street was empty again. It was as if she had evaporated back into the dark. The next morning, I told my girlfriend everything that happened. We laughed at first. We laughed at

in that nervous way people do when they're trying to downplay fear, but as I described her, with her outfits, the precision of her movements in the way that she charged the car, our laughter started to fade. For weeks afterward, every time I pulled into that parking lot, I would scan the shadows. Sometimes I thought I saw her, or maybe I just wanted to. During the pandemic, when everything shut down and the streets got eerily quiet,

I saw her again a few times. Not dancing anymore, just pushing her cart down Ventura Boulevard. She wasn't wearing the uniform, but I could still see it stuffed into the cart. The bright skirt and pom-poms like relics from a life she refused to let co-of. I do still think about her sometimes, about how thin the line is between performance and madness. As a DJ, I always thought the music ended when the lights came on, but that night in the CVS part, parking lot, I realized that for some people, the show really never stops. Years ago, after moving from Colorado to Wichita, Kansas, I started to feel deeply homesick.

In Colorado, the city lights were everywhere at night. You can see them from just about anywhere. A sparkling view no matter where you are, but in Wichita, it's flat in every direction. No matter where you are, you can't see the city lights at night. night. After about six months, I missed that view so much that it almost made me heart sick. I would lie awake at night, imagining how beautiful Wichita must look from the sky and wishing I could somehow see it. One winter night, I woke up, got out of bed, walked into the living room and went straight through the closed window. Outside was a bare tree, its limbs stark against the sky. I floated right through it and began to rise. At first I could see the rooftops of my

neighborhood, the streets and the streetlights below. As I went higher and higher into the sky, the view widened, blocks, roads, and neighborhoods unfolding beneath me like a glowing map. And soon I was so high up that I could no longer make out individual houses or streets, only an ocean of city lights stretching for miles. It was breathtaking, more beautiful than I had ever imagined. I hovered there, marveling at this view, still rising higher and higher. Then a single thought crossed my mind. What if I go too high and can't get back?

Instantly I woke up in my bed. I was satisfied with this experience because I got to see the city lights of Wichita, Kansas. They looked very different from Colorado City Lights. There was a faint haze, the city lights were shining through, all the same level and a bit more dim than what I was used to seeing in Colorado, but still very pretty. What can I say? The heart wants what it wants.

And apparently that was the only way I was going to see those city lights. I no longer live in Wichita, but it was an awesome and comforting experience at the time. My name is Alex, and the story takes place when I was just, 16. Autumn had always held a special place in my heart. I adored watching the last crimson leaves cling to the skeletal branches of trees. The sky was often painted in shades reminiscent of blood, loomed over a perpetually overcast backdrop typical of late autumn. It was a season filled with beauty and melancholia, and for someone like me, restless and incredibly bored in my small-town life, There was nothing better than soaking in the scenery.

My friends, Jake and Maya, however, had grown weary of my restlessness. They insisted that I needed an adrenaline rush to shake things up. I responded with an exaggerated eye roll, but that did little to sway their determination. Alex, you know that all Miller's place? The shack that's practically falling apart? It's only a few miles into Blackwood Forest. Sure, it sounds spooky, but it's not haunted. just old. Jake suggested one day, his eyes gleaming with excitement. Blackwood Forest was

more than just old. It was legendary in our town. Whispers clung to it like an ancient moss on trees, filled with tales of strange disappearances and unsettling sounds that loomed over anyone brave enough to venture inside. The old Miller's place was a logging cabin abandoned over 50 years ago, rumored to harbor a dark soul trapped within its walls. Normally I would scoff at ghost stories, but the thought of being alone in that eerie place surrounded by the forest's whispers sparked something deep inside me.

It wasn't a dare from Jake or Maya, but rather a challenge I set for myself. Something to fend off the creeping boredom that felt like it was suffocating me. So, on a brisk Tuesday afternoon, as the autumn wind howled through the neighborhood like a wolf's cry. I grabbed a small hiking bag and filled it with the essentials.

A flashlight, a compass, a bottle of water, and my dad's old hunting knife from the garage. As I stood by the front door, double-checking my gear for this adventure I was about to embark on, I called out. Dad, I'm just going for a long walk. I slipped on my sturdy hiking shoes, hearing my dad grunt from the living room, clearly engrossed in his football game. He didn't seem worried. After all, I had a knack for enjoying long walks during the autumn season.

The crunch of fallen leaves beneath my feet signaled that I had stepped on to the familiar and well-trodden paths of Blackwood Forest, a stretch I often referred to as the initial leg of my journey. As I inhaled, the crisp scent of pine trees mingled with the damp earth, filling my lungs with a refreshing acceleration that made me grateful to be out in nature. However, as I pushed deeper into the barely visible hiking trails, which were said to lead to the Miller Place, the atmosphere began to shift. The woods grew denser and the sunlight dimmed, and the vibrant oranges of the outer edges giving way to the stark browns and grays that felt almost foreboding. Before long, it seemed as though the trees were closing in around me, their branches intertwining overhead to form a skeletal canopy that obscured the sky, making it feel like I was stepping into another realm.

In this new world, the air turned colder, and the silence thickened, reminiscent of something out of a horror movie. Yet I refused to let fear make me feel like a timid mouse, so I pressed on, determined to confront whatever lay ahead. By the time I reached the Miller Place, the sun had dipped below the horizon, casting the western sky and shades of bruised purple,

and fiery reds. The cabin appeared just as people had described it, yet somehow even worse than I had imagined. It wasn't merely old or decayed. It bore the scars of time and neglect. The front porch sagged precariously, overtaken by invasive vines that seemed to be reclaiming the structure for nature. The windows resembled gaping empty eye sockets,

and the roof had collapsed in several areas, exposing dark rafters like broken ribs. A chill ran down my spine and I sensed that this unease had little to do with the autumn air. Somehow, it all felt profoundly wrong, but I couldn't back down from the dare that had brought me here. I realized that the hunting knife tucked away in my hiking backpack would likely be useless against whatever I might encounter inside the cabin. Yet the whisper of challenge in my mind urged me to move forward. forward. With a deep breath to steady myself, I approached the Miller Place and pushed open the flimsy rotting door.

It groaned in protest before crashing to the ground with a startling thud. A thick cloud of ancient dust billowed up, catching the feeble rays of sunlight that managed to penetrate the gloom. The interior revealed a large room strewn with debris. There was a broken table, a rusty chair, and what appeared to be the remnants of a cot all coated in fuzzy layers of grime. I called out a hesitant, Hello? But my voice was swallowed by the oppressive silence, sounding thin,

almost childish, and completely out of place. There was no reply, just the wind whistling mournfully through the gaps in the walls. I reached into my hiking backpack and pulled out the flashlight, its beam of feeble spear against the encroaching darkness.

As I swept it around the room, something caught my eye in the corner glinting faintly. I made my way over to a pile of rotting newspapers, using my free hand to shift them aside while the flashlight illuminated my path. That's when I spotted it, an old, tarnished locket, half buried beneath the debris. I picked it up. It's weight surprising me. The locket felt cold to the touch,

and as I directed the beam of light onto it, I noticed its golden hue. When I prided open with my free hand, I was met with a faded and blurry photograph of a little girl. She couldn't have been older than seven. Her hair neatly pulled back with the ribbon. There was something unsettling about her solemn gaze even in the blurry image, and I felt an inexplicable urge to keep it,

quickly shoving the locket into my jacket pocket. Before long, the sunset surrendered to full darkness, and the temperature inside the Miller Place dropped significantly. I tried to convince myself that it was just the open roof or draughty walls, but a prickling sensation crawled across my skin, making me uneasy. Suddenly I felt the unsettling impression of being watched. Every creek and rustle of the leaves outside sent a jolt through me, making me jump at the thought of something sinister lurking nearby,

realizing it was time to leave, I turned toward the entrance, but then a loud thump echoed from the back of the room, near the crumbling fireplace. My heart raced in my chest as I spun around, flicking my flashlight beam wildly, but all I could see were the dusty shadows dancing under the wavering light. I tried to call out a hesitant's hello, but my voice came out as nothing more than a whisper. That's when I heard it. A faint, almost imperceptible sound, like the giggle of a child. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, and the playful sounds sent goosebumps racing across my skin. This couldn't be a child or my friends. I was all alone in this desolate area.

Panic began to set in. The place was no longer just an old logging cabin. There was something or some one here with me. I tried to rationalize it. Maybe it was the wind or a wild animal, or perhaps my imagination was running wild, but then I heard the giggling again. This time, much closer. A rhythmic tapping sound echoed from directly above me,

seemingly emanating from the collapsed ceiling. My breath hitched in my throat and in a surge of instinct I bolted. Bursting out of the Miller Place, I plunged into the dense darkness of the blackwood. forest. The moon was just a sliver in the sky barely illuminating the skeletal branches overhead. I swung my flashlight around, but it barely helped. The trees, once majestic, now loomed like grasping claws, their branches reaching out to snag my clothes as I stumbled through. The ground, which had felt like a soft carpet of leaves earlier, transformed into a treacherous crunching trap. Each footfall echoed loudly in the eerie silence announcing my presence to whatever was lurking in the shadows.

Now I wasn't just running from an old cabin. I was fleeing from a horrifying sound. The giggling seemed to follow me, sometimes distant, sometimes alarmingly close, weaving through the trees, but it was now mingling with another sound, a heavy dragging sound. It sounded as though something heavy was being pulled across the forest floor. The rustle of leaves around me was not matching my frantic escape. As I stumbled, I went head first into a pile of damp leaves, filling my flashlight slipped from my grasp and vanished into the all-consuming darkness around me. My heart raced, a tight knot forming in my chest as I frantically searched for my flashlight.

My hands brushed against the cold earth, sharp twist. and jagged rocks, desperation fueling my movements. Fortunately, the flashlight had rolled beneath a thick bush, and since it was a heavy-duty tactical model, the beam persisted, illuminating a small patch of ground. That's when I noticed it. A single muddy boot print. It was too small to belong to an adult, and of course animals don't wear boots. A chill ran through my veins.

And then I heard it. That dragging sound now alarmingly close just beyond the bush, accompanied by those childlike giggles that no longer sounded innocent. They were ragged and strained, almost resembling sobs. I quickly snatched up the flashlight, my hands shaking violently as I pointed the beam forward. My breath caught in my throat when I spotted a figure standing about 20 feet away, partially obscured by the trunks of two towering pine trees.

It was a girl, small and slender, almost ghostly pale in the flashlight glow. She wore a tattered, old white dress with her head tilted slightly, and though I couldn't make out many features, there was an unsettling stillness about her, a profound sense that something was terribly wrong. As she began to raise her head as if preparing to do something, a scream built in my throat. I didn't want to see what came next. Adrenaline surged through me, pure and potent,

propelling me to my feet despite the sharp pain radiating from my twisted ankle that I had gotten from my fall. I had no intention of dying in the middle of the forest. So I ran. Ignoring the searing pain, I pushed myself harder than I ever had before, tearing through the skeletal branches that clawed at my clothes and skin. in. The blackwood forest morphed into a blur of dark shapes and terrifying sounds. I had no idea where I was headed. I just needed to escape. The loud, dragging and giggling noises continued to echo behind me, sometimes distant,

sometimes alarmingly close, and I felt a cold breath at the nape of my neck as I sprinted. With the flashlight beam aimed ahead, I noticed its light seemed to diminish, struggling to fend off the encroaching horrors that surrounded me. Then, through the trees, I spotted a faint distant glow. It was the lights of my town. A rush of hope surged through my chest, igniting my weary lungs and aching muscles. I pushed past the last of the skeletal branches and stumbled out of the blackwood forest onto a gravel road that would lead me to the main road of town.

I didn't really pay much attention as I sprinted through the vast experience. spans the forest, pushing myself until I finally saw the comforting glow of the streetlights. It was only then that my legs buckled beneath me and I collapsed onto the asphalt, gasping for breath. Nerves coursed through me, making me shake uncontrollably. The air was still crisp, carrying the earthy scent of damp leaves, but in town, autumn felt like a warm embrace. The shadows danced around me yet they were familiar, benign figures cast by lamppost and houses, nothing like the terrifying entities lurking in the depths of blackwood forest. The details of my walk back home were a blur, but the overwhelming joy that washed over me as

I spotted my house, its warm lights glowing invitingly, is something I'll never forget as I stepped on to the front porch. I slipped inside, and to my surprise, my dad was still glued to the TV. I locked the door behind me and sank against it, feeling my body tremble. When I looked at my hands, they were marred with bloody scratches, and I noticed the dirt and torn fabric on my clothes. The locket with the picture of the little girl I had taken from the Miller Place was still tucked away in my jacket pocket.

I never really shared the whole story with my dad or my friends. I skated over the details, mumbling about tripping, twisting my ankle and getting lost, conveniently blaming my compass for my disorientation. They all just shook their heads, probably chalking it up to my usual clumsiness. I told them that it was just one of those things I couldn't help, though deep down,

I knew I probably could have if my foolish brain had cooperated. But I was acutely aware of what truly transpired. My skepticism had been shattered into the terrifying depths of Blackwood Forest, replaced by a chilling certainty that some things are best left undisturbed. It's been two years since my last adventure of the Miller Place, yet that lock it remains tucked away in a drawer beneath some socks, a haunting reminder of that fateful night in the forest, which revealed its true chilling nature.

I still wander through Blackwood Forest, but I never venture deep enough to catch sight of the Miller Place again. Sometimes when the wind howls just right, I could swear I hear a faint child-like giggle lingering on the edge of my hearing. That sound has become a permanent resident in the back of my mind. I'm safe, I tell myself. I made it out. Yet a part of me, the part that clings to that locket,

knows I left a piece of myself behind in those dark autumn woods, and I'll never truly be the same again. This happened back in 2020 during COVID. My wife had a recurring dream ever. every night around the same time for a little over a week. Every time it would startle her awake, and that would wake me up. She would tell me about it, and we would talk about it more throughout the night. She would dream about a young girl with long blonde hair, probably 13 to 14 years old,

standing in a stream under a bridge crying and asking for help. After the first few nights of the same dream, I suggested trying to keep the dream going and not waking up. But it didn't work. So we started trying to figure out who the girl was. About four days later, I'm awakened to her being completely hysterical. She was freaking the hell out. I get up and try to calm her down and ask what was going on. And she kept saying,

it's her. She kept repeating it. Finally, she turned her phone toward me and on the screen was a missing person's report out of Hot Springs, Arkansas. It was the girl from her dream. A few days ago, my friend and I were driving on the back roads of South Carolina,

specifically toward Cleo, working our way up to North Carolina. We're from New York and doing a backroad road trip photographing beautiful scenery. It was around 12 to 1 a.m. And we were talking about Skinwalkers, not using that word aloud,

just referring to them as skinnies. And haunted Appalachia, since the back roads reminded me of all the stories I enjoy listening to on YouTube. I have my camera with me and wanted to photograph an abandoned home on the side of the road with my strong flashlight. We approached the home,

I'm in the passenger seat of the car and shining the flashlight directly at the home and immediately see a jack terrier dog on the front porch. I thought, not too weird. We are in the middle of nowhere, so maybe it's astray. I quickly put my flashlight in my lap and it's not turning off. I'm clicking every button and it's burning hot fast, immediately burning my skin. I disconnected the battery, and said, well, that was concerning, and we kept driving.

Suddenly, I'm adjusting the settings on my camera, and it completely isn't working either, after using it all day photographing. I eventually just put everything down and became frustrated since I wanted to take some night shots. Camera and light clearly fail. About five minutes later, we're driving with open fields to both sides of us. I'm trying to get the flashlight to work and pointing it out into the open field while driving. As soon as it turns on, I see eyes. 30 pair, at least.

Presumably dear, and it spooked me a bit after the Skinwalker stories. Five minutes pass. We approach a stop sign and see a little elderly Chihuahua dog walking on the side of the road. My heart immediately wants to scream pull over so I can help. and find his owners. Mind you, this is past one in the morning now. Back to back, two dogs, nothing working, no service, my friend keeps driving.

He's saying no, that we are not stopping for absolutely anything. I feel guilty, also having a senior small dog at home, and I desperately wanted to hop out of that car. Is this a common thing down here in the rural south? Did I encounter something possibly spiritual? Or something trying to lure us after speaking about skinwalkers and hauntings of Appalachia? Dear Raven, thank you for all the extra work you put in this month to give us all kinds of spooky goodness in recognition and celebration of all Hallows Eve and Dia de los Muetos.

Thank you for reading my previous submissions and this one as well. I don't know how you will choose to categorize it, because it contains a glist. Litch, maybe two. Impossible decline into madness, psychic abilities, strange phenomenon, and after all that, it leads me to, yeah, all that. Take a deep breath, buddy, and grab some water. The story has a long white tale, pun intended, you'll catch it later. And again, thank you for reading.

I'm from Booger County, remember? A real place once, one that can no longer be found. But where anything and everything is possible, does exist and has or will happen more than once. A place where time speeds forward and reverse and anything you order from outside the county is two days or two weeks away. And I believe in everything. I believe that everything that's ever been written about, named, described, or defined becomes real, if it wasn't already. To name is to know. It's all real if we can catch it on.

camera or not. Also, y'all should know, I speak and treat everything as if it is alive. Consciously aware, animals, trees, rocks, furniture, dishes, everything. And, FYI, I had moved back to my hometown in the year of 1999. Side note, I'll not change names to protect anyone I know. We're all guilty, not an innocent soul in the lot of us. This is also my personal story. of how CERN broke Earth goes down. The Mayans calendar ended on December 21st, 2012. So early in January 2012, I decided to live my best life, and to paraphrase Jim Morrison, with some censorship here.

Just in case the whole crap house was about to go up in flames, I was going to get my kicks. I guess you could say I had a bit of a midlife crisis, feeling the pressure of immortality. The unexpected thing that happened was I rediscovered my love of horseback riding. I was looking to buy my own horse in late April slash early May. A good friend I worked with at the time had a six-year-old gelding fox trotter that was for sale, that he thought would match me quite well. I've always referred to him by his last name only, Conrad.

So, Conrad had told me the horse was black and white paint, His brother had him saddlebroke for 30 days, and he himself had ridden the horse on one trail ride. This horse is green, and I got to ride him down for the first year. He said he had bought the gelding for his wife, but they didn't get along. When I asked why not, he said they just didn't match. Since I had always wanted a black and white paint, I was already excited, and I honestly trusted Conrad's judgment that we would be a good match. I'll explain it with my grandpa's words.

If you ain't a match with your mount, you spend more time fighting and fussing with a non-recritter than you do riding. I made arrangements to test ride that weekend. We worked third shift at the local factory back then, so we agreed that we would both sleep Friday morning after work and I would arrive at the Conrad Ranch that afternoon at 2 p.m. That morning, while I slept, I dreamed of buying the horse. In my dream, Conrad said the horse's name when he introduces me. I never have remembered the name he said in the dream. Just that I didn't like the name, and immediately changed it to drops of Jupiter. I woke to my alarm, feeling quite perplexed for several reasons.

First, I had been dreaming. I always find that realization unsettling because it's rare. Rare that I dream at all. I sleep in total blackness on purpose. Rare still that I remember what I was dreaming about, and I know if I remember my dream in detail it's prophetic in some way. But never exactly what I dream. Hence the intentional dream suppression.

I prefer to be surprised by life like everyone else. The other thing I was puzzled about was realizing I had not asked the horse's name when we first spoke about it. Why not? When I got there, Conrad had the horse saddled and ready to test ride. He was going over some of the basics of how the horse had been trained, instructing me on the verbal cues and physical touches the horse would respond to and what not to do. My friend James, who had gotten this whole horse thing started, had also come with me,

and I had noticed glancing over my shoulder that he was chatting with Mr. Conrad, my friend's father, about one of his horses, a tall, sleek, all-black gelding. When I turned back around, Conrad asked if I was ready to ride him, and I said yeah, but not until I told him about the dream. When I got to the part where I hadn't liked the name and changed it to drops of Jupiter, without skipping a beat, he interjects with, Wrong horse, this is ace. I said, no, didn't you hear me say that?

it was just a dream, but it was this horse. To which he replied, Yeah, wrong horse. I say, I think I may have confused you. Conrad replies, No, you got the wrong horse. The one your buddy is looking at with Dad is the horse whose name was changed to drops of Jupiter.

Dad didn't like the name that he came with, and the first time my brother rode him, that horse threw him past the moon. When he told my dad, Dad asked if he had seen the drops of Jupiter. The song was really popular then, and it was so funny, it just stuck. We call him Joop now. I got goosebumps.

Conrad just smiles and says, Get on Ace and take a ride. This is your horse. I know he is. I bought Ace, a black and white paint with black and white mane and tail that day. And the Conrad's delivered him that evening. Ace needed a road down. I needed refresher courses in riding a gated horse,

and the two of us, we had to learn to trust each other. So our first moment alone, as horse and rider, I made a verbal promise to Ace that we would play cowboys for no less than five miles a month, until the end of the world in December, or for the first year that I owned him, if it didn't. He had rubbed me in agreement, so our journey began. We were trail riding every weekend of summer 2012, and due to the extreme temperatures of 100-plus that year, during the days, we rode mostly after dark.

Horses have excellent night vision, by the way, and if anyone is wondering, it was the best summer ever. I spent every weekend sipping crowd in seven, smoking, fox trotting along miles and miles of Bougar County back roads under star-kissed skies. So, I got my kicks. By September, I noticed the black and white paint horse I bought was completely white mane and tail two. I mentioned it to Conrad, and he shrugs and then states, Ace was born three colors. Chestnut, black and white. He'll be a horse of many colors.

That's how I know y'all'd be a good match, and you are, too. That's, and neither of you got any quit in you. I was a bit taken aback and quite proud of the compliments I had just received. I didn't know the Wizard of Oz horse was a real thing, but then this realization hit me. I threw my arms around Conrad and a brief but tight hug, exclaiming, I love you, man, and I love Ace. He really is something special. Then I half skipped back to my workstation wearing a grin that I couldn't peel off the rest of the night. But it was also around this time that I started noticing.

strange stuff that I thought I was the only one aware of. It had all begun happening to the normals too. What a year, huh? 2012, the Mayans, CERN, the Mandela effects and Matrix glitches. The crapp house went up in flames. Let me explain. I honestly believe that the world I knew before ended that day, but I wouldn't realize it for a few more years.

me, my dog, and my horse rode into the fire that day problem is we kept on a fox trotten until we had come out the other side of what was supposed to be eternity or hell or heaven the other world

some place else for Christ's sake we just kept riding it out everything happened exactly the way I told James that it would on November 1st while in discussion with him I made our plans for December 21st.

I had stated that I had an eerie feeling that this was no longer a joke. It felt more real to me each passing week, that my spidey senses were haywire. My antenna picked up static way too often, radio silence in the spirit realms. So I believed the world ending more and more. Also, I wanted to prepare. I'm not a prepper.

Some of you all prepared some crazy stuff for your ending, but why not? So my plan was, no matter the weather, we, me and my familiars, would ride into eternity together in a smooth fox trot, feathers in our braids, war paint on our faces, screaming, yehaw. Me, Ace, and Heifer, my black and white spotted pit bull, who was quite closely bonded with Ace and worked as a guide dog on every ride we had taken in her lifetime,

we were all going to go out with our boots on, in style, like true heathens do, I wouldn't have it any other way. I'd have him brush down and saddled not long after daylight. Warpaint us and the dogs, an ace and I would have a good little nip with our coffee, feed the dog good steak, and then wait for a sign.

He would stay under saddle till it was time to ride. In December 21st, 2012, I woke not feeling rested. I had been dreaming. I hate that. worse, I can't recall any visual images from the dreams, just snippets and sounds. Horse hooves, crackling fire, my plans, that checks. But then there is this lingering feeling that I am or was quite confused before I woke. So I proceeded with my plans. Knowing everyone that's caught wind of what I'm doing today believes I've gone completely mad,

and I was beginning to hope so. The day was uneventful for most, I suppose. For me, though it was anything but. My folks and my peeps were worried about me, thought me suicidal or insane. I got calls, texts, and visits. I kept telling them all that if nothing happens, before the 22nd, I'll take the saddle off Ace,

wash off our war paint, and celebrate that life on Earth continues with the favorite treats I had waiting for the three of us, and that would be the end of my crazy quest to get my kicks. I had planned all along for the possibility of the 22nd. I plan to settle myself into a more subdued, age-appropriate lifestyle, go back to the boring nine to five and yard work with an occasional outing. My life would have less hell-raising adventures on horseback, and in four-wheel drives.

I wouldn't have good reason nor occasion to be sipping crown and sevens, and that would stop too. Ace was well trained in one hell of a brave and trustworthy mount now. I could rest him of a winter from here on out. Besides, I felt like if I did temporarily lose it, or have a midlife crisis or whatever, I made the most of it. Go big or go home. I had been in my Polar King bibs all morning,

frequently going out to check on Ace, though I could see him through my windows. I was feeling a bit pissed off about everyone's concerns, too. I had already planned my escape from madness if that was the case. I mean, for real, though, who does that? At the same time, I had the inexplicable knowing that I had to stay the course of the plan. I was staring at the window having these thoughts one moment, and the next I blurt out, screw it, let's light this up.

I'm headed out the door, grabbing my gloves, and it's, It's time to go now. I go out, untie ace, check my cinch strap, check my saddlebags, tell him and heifer that I appreciate them seeing this through with me, hand each of them a treat from the saddlebags. I then grab the reins, saddle up, and we're off. It's December 21st. It's not exactly a warm and sunny day for the Ozarks. I start us down a familiar path, in the direction we take to put in our five miles monthly. I hear my granny's voice tell me to let Ace drive and to relax.

So I do. I start gawking about us, listening to the sounds of the rhythm of Ace's hoofbeats. I'm amusing myself thinking, if nothing else, anyone who drives past the three of us will be wondering what the hell our truck was all about, and maybe wondering if we were real or not. I realize I've been staring between his ears lost in thought, not actually paying attention, and then ask myself out loud, where are we? I'm looking around for something familiar, but I'm not too worried.

Long stretches of dirt road with nothing but wilderness on both sides is familiar in its own way. And I figure in another mile or so, I'll recognize where I am. So I went back to contemplating my thoughts, half-ass daydreaming, staring blankly between Ace's ears. On any other horse, I would be paying attention to the road ahead, the ditch line, the dog out front, etc. Heifer's job is to stir up any rabbit or squirrel that might spook the horse, before the horse gets there. She also stood between us and any loose dogs, again, to prevent him from spooking, but it is ultimately the rider's responsibility to keep the horse calm and to notice possible spooks and prepare. Ace is different, though. I've only ever had him spook twice in all those.

years. Once from a woodchipper truck and he's so scared of a miniature horse, that I have to dismount and walk him past it. I think it's because they don't smell like a natural animal. Not sure, really. Anyways, I'm basically lost in thought when I notice everything is brighter, like when the sun comes out from behind a cloud. I look up and around me and everything is fire. Not everything is on fire, Everything I see is fire. The dog ahead of us is walking on flames. We are walking on flames. I reach out with my right arm extended all the way and feel air moving, but not hot flames that I could see my hands touching.

This is when I realized we are not burning. Now I'm excited. We fox trotted our way into eternity. The world has ended and we went out in style. I say to Ace, Hell ought suit me fine. I never believed in heaven anyways. And as I'm giggling, pleased that I'm not surrounded by a bunch of hypocritical people for eternity,

and that I got to keep my horse and dog, the flames start to subside. They're just lowering into the gravel road, and the sound of Ace's hooves has become loud as thunder. What just happened? Where's my hell? I exclaim out loud. To which Granny's voice answers. Nice try. No response. That is how it has always been with the voice I call Granny.

She comes through when she has something to say to me, but it's rare that she answers a direct question, and I've never been the one to decide when I hear her voice or not. I'm looking around puzzled and realize I'm very cold. I still don't know where I am or how far we've ridden, and I see my dog running back toward me, tail wagging happily. She stops a few feet in front of us and waits. When we get to her, Ace stops.

Heifer stands up on her hind legs and nose bumps him. It's their thing. I've seen it many times, but it usually happens when I first catch Ace and again before I pasture him. After the nose bump, she gets out in front of us and turns left, then right into our driveway. Our driveway. How did we get here? I've got no clue. We get home.

I unsaddle Ace and brush him down. give him treats and put him in the pasture. I'm cold and stiff, so the dog and I go inside. I take out my braids and feathers and shower to wash off the war paint. In the shower, the thought occurs to me. Maybe this is my hell loop. After my shower, I just went to bed with the same feeling of confusion that I woke with. The following spring, my horse is gray with a white mane and tail still.

tragic circumstances had befallen the Conrad family. Mr. Conrad was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Conrad called to ask if me or my buddy James might still be interested in purchasing jupe, because the day I bought Ace, James tried to buy jupe too, and Mr. Conrad said that jupe was not for sale. But the recent terminal diagnosis changed that. I put my buddy James on the phone and he makes a deal. Joupe was delivered to us within hours.

We learned that day that our horses are half-brothers, sired by the same black-and-white stud but different mares. By the way, Conrad was right. Ace was, is, and always will be my horse. We're a good match. He is a horse of many colors, and in many ways, I reckon I am as well. I've forgotten most of my dreams

and only shared this with one other male friend of mine. The dreams start out with me and a friend at a toy store. The friend is female, and we were with my daughter. We were shopping for a toy for my daughter to help her through a sad time. I discovered that the sad time was finding out that her dad had passed away, which would be my husband. As we were shopping for my daughter, several people, mainly women, came and tried to help cheer up my daughter.

They came up with several ideas on how to cheer her up, which we listened to and made note of. By we, I mean, the female friend that I was with that was helping me shop. There was one very odd suggestion by someone that came over and tried to help, and she suggested having another child. Even though that was odd, it was when I found out why we were trying to cheer up my daughter in the first place, because even though I mentioned it at the beginning of this, I didn't actually find out until that suggestion was made. I just knew that we needed to do something to cheer her up as she was very sad.

It was, however, that that caused the realization that my husband had passed away in the dream. Anyway, I woke up and was pleased to find that it was just a dream, but it felt very real and felt like something that was actually taking place. I don't know if it was a dream of a future event, which I've had those before, or just a dream that felt very real. I hope this is good enough for your channel, and I am glad that it was just a dream, but a strange one. Again, I hope that this is something I can share with you, and I'm also just a bit scared to share this. It has taken me eight years to share this.

Back then, my life was falling apart. I was in the middle of a divorce after almost 20 years of marriage. my mom had just died suddenly, and during that same separation, my husband's mom passed away, too. She wasn't just his mom, she was like a second mother to me. She taught me how to parent, how to raise a family. Losing her right after losing my own mom nearly broke me. About five days after her death, I was driving my 11-year-old daughter to school, and we stopped at the dollar tree near her house.

That's when we saw her. Half a football field away walking straight toward us. Not a look-alike and not a trick of grief, but her. She looked younger, healthier, more alive. I froze. My daughter froze. We both just stared. She wasn't walking.

She was marching straight at us. Eyes locked, face stern and angry. Step after step she was getting closer. Until she was only a few yards of. way. That's when my daughter started bawling, she turned and ran inside the store. I followed right behind her. The second we looked back out the windows, she was gone, not walking away or fading out, just gone. It's been eight years, and my daughter is 18 now. She remembers it exactly the same way that I do. And sometimes I still wonder, if we hadn't run inside, what would have happened

when she reached us? Hello there, friends, Raven here. Welcome to the end of this episode of As the Raven Dreams. I hope that you genuinely enjoyed this collection of scary stories, as I enjoyed putting them together for you. If the platform you're on has the option to follow the podcast or leave ratings or reviews, please do consider doing so as it helps the podcast grow. Of course, if you enjoy the content, that is. If you didn't enjoy it, then feel free to also leave a rating as honesty is important, and I take all feedback seriously. Also, I do have a YouTube channel.

It's a lot of the same content, but we do live streams on Saturdays around 6 p.m. Central, so if you're free once Saturday night and want to come over and say hi, I would love to have you there. We just kind of have a good time doing whatever we want for the few hours that I'm online. You can also join the Patreon, patreon.com slash as the raven dreams, for early access to all this content. Check out the website, astherravendreams.com for information and where you can listen to the podcast, find all my social media links, find the merch store, and send in your own stories to keep the podcast going, as it pretty much exists on crowdsourced content at this point.

All of you really do keep the show going, so a huge thank you for that. Also on the website is information about the book that I wrote, titled The Insomniacs Experiment by Raven Adams. It's a psychological thriller, and I think it's pretty good. You might actually like it. Check it out. It's available on Amazon. Or if you want a signed copy, you can email me to see if I have any left, and I will absolutely oblige if I do. All that said, friends, I hope you have a lovely rest of your day.

I hope I see you again here very soon. But until then, remember that you are loved. You are valid. You are important. and the world is a better place with you in it. Don't forget that. Until next time, much love and sleep well.