As The Raven Dreams Podcast - ATRD Ep. 231 - 8 True Scary Internet & Rainy Day Stories

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

Today, on the 231st episode of the As The Raven Dreams podcast, we have 8 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 the horror that is in the internet & Some scary things that happened in the Rain. Would you like to participate in the postcard exchange? It comes with a free ATRD Sticker! Just Send a post card to the following... Lucas PO BOX 8198 Rochester, MN 55903 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... PositivelySuspicious, HiddenFox, JustAPhase, TOM K, PeterW, N00dleG00ber, Mikayla As Well As Any Author That Has Requested Anonymity. TimeStamps… Ad breaks after Story 1 & Story 3 1 ➤ 1:14 2 ➤ 13:46 3 ➤ 23:53 4 ➤ 40:24 5 ➤ 51:36 6 ➤ 1:00:56 7 ➤ 1:11:11 8 ➤ 1:20:10 ----- 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 #InternetStories Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello? How are you? Hopefully, the answer to that question is, I'm doing fantastic, Raven, thank you for asking. Because if it's not, turn that around, make that work. Come on. No. If you're having a day, you're having a day, and I totally understand.

Today, we have a collection of rainy day and internet stories. So stories that happened while it's raining outside. I don't know if it's raining right now. I pre-recorded this intro a little bit early. If it's raining on the 26th June, let's just pretend that I foresaw that it would. And, of course, internet stories. The internet's a terrifying place,

so that's self-explanatory. Good scary stories here. Hopefully, you, my friend, enjoy them. Let me know down in the comments if you did, if you're on Spotify. Otherwise, I'll have you just rate the podcast on the platform you're on, which, eh, go for it. I'd appreciate it an honest rating.

I'm gonna just stop talking. Hope you all enjoy the stories. See you again soon. Until then, much love and enjoy. Back in 2021, I joined a Discord server for a game that I played quite often. During quarantine, I got into the game pretty heavily. Looking at best strategies, I spent too much on some of the DLCs and skins and ultimately joined a few communities on the game.

This game has a story mode as well as an online multiplayer option, and I quite enjoy playing it online with other people. I found this Discord server for it and joined it to jump into games with others in the chat, especially when I was locked inside all the time. The community was really active and thankful for the most part. Most people were very friendly and open to letting others into their groups. Some people took it way too seriously, but they didn't last long there. We played it casually in for fun. It wasn't a competition like some people tried to treat it. I also got to meet some pretty cool people there, and that's where the story takes place.

It started out fine. People joined here and there, and we greeted them all, and they were given the rules. No big deal. Then we had someone join with the screen name. playing on the name of a flower, like precious peony. She explained that she'd been playing the game a few years prior but had to stop due to life getting in the way, and now she was picking it back up.

She wanted to join to get better at it and play with others that played it casually. Everyone greeted her and we all talked occasionally between our day-to-day lives. We even offered to have her join our games, but she said that she couldn't join a call, which was fine. It wasn't required. We played games and she did decent at it too. Over time, we started talking more and learned that we had a lot of similar interests. We were both girls around the same age.

She was a year older than me. We both wanted to go to college for a veterinary, but couldn't stomach the worst cases. The more we talked, the more we started chatting in private, which is where we shared more personal information, such as the general areas of where we lived. I live in Arizona, she lived in Kentucky. She even told me that her first name was Ashley. From there, we started talking quite regularly, almost daily.

She would ask about my day and my job, and she would vaguely mention hers. She told me that she didn't currently have a job and that she just lived at home still. No big deal. life throws curveballs at everyone. She did tell me about some of her hobbies and what she liked to do for fun, and that was plenty. The more we talked, the more I shared about myself, and I would send random pictures to her. Nothing weird. I would send a picture of my cat, something I was working on, just things like that.

Then one day I went through one of those board phases, where I decided to cut and dye my own hair. The cut came out fine, but the color wasn't the best. It wasn't as dark as I was wanting, and definitely looked like boxed dye. But you live and you learn. Anyway, I was telling Ashley about it, and she gave the normal, it can't be that bad, I'm sure you did fine. We had been talking for a few months at this point, and I was comfortable enough with her that I was willing to share a picture of myself.

I felt more comfortable with her, and she sounded legitimate and never gave off any weird vibes. I sent it, she said it looked great. She even tried to make me feel better by comparing my hairstyle to some celebrity that I wasn't familiar with, and I appreciated it. After talking about hair, we got on the topic of other bad trends, and she mentioned an embarrassing phase that she went through

just a few years prior. I asked her about it because I wasn't familiar with what she was talking about. There was a pause in her responses, and she mentioned that she thinks she had a picture of it. I told her she didn't have to share it if she didn't want to, and she went silent. No big deal. I didn't even give it a second thought.

She would randomly stop responding sometimes, but that's just how it was with us. But then, about an hour or so later, it was later on at night, I got a message from her that included a photo. The picture looked a little older, but I remember chuckling slightly at it. I then went to bed telling myself to respond in the morning, but as it would turn out, I forgot to until I got another message from Ashley. She asked me if I got the picture and if I looked it up. I remember that question because I thought the question of Did I look it up was strange.

I actually didn't even know what she meant by that at first, but I just apologized and told her I was in bed and didn't want to message so late. I made a comment about the hair and our conversation continued for the day. But after a while, I started thinking about the question that she asked again and what she meant by it. So I asked her. She claimed that she was asking if I tried to look up the hairstyle.

I told her that I didn't and that was it. But something was still weird to me. And the more I looked at the photo, the weirder it got. The photo, as I mentioned, looked blurry, like it was old. But then I finally realized why it looked off. It looked like it was a photo taken of a photo on a computer screen. You know, when you take a picture of your screen and it has the scan lines on it, that's what it looked like. So that kind of threw up my suspicions.

She didn't seem to want to share any pictures at first, but then shared this one. We were close in age, and our generation has always been big on social media, so it would make sense to pull an old photo off of there. What I'm trying to say is that it was a weird choice. to take a photo of a computer screen that way. So I did what I've done in the past. I thought I would try to go ahead and reverse image search it. I'd done it in the past with a few dates that I'd gone on, and I had good results, so I was hopeful that it would work with this too.

I did get some results, but it was not what I ever expected to find. The picture that came up linked to a page for a missing. person's report. It was on a local police department's website. Looking at it more, it was definitely the same picture, but clearer. The name and location on it was even the same. First name was Ashley, last seen in a city in Kentucky. She'd been missing for the last eight years.

From there, I searched by the first and last name listed, and did find a Facebook page that didn't have much activity. for the last six years or so. There was an occasional birthday post from others, but nothing from the Ashley person directly. So therein lies the question. Had I been talking to a missing person? Were they just messing with me?

Or did they just find a random photo on the internet to use and chose the wrong one? Either way, I became concerned with a hint of annoyance that, more than likely, they were just lying. I wanted to nip it in the bud immediately. So I messaged them and asked them when that photo was taken. They gave me a year and based on what I found online, it was accurate.

So I asked her, is that really you in the photo? She was typing for a while, then stopped, and then it started again before she finally responded that yes, it was really her. So I sent a screenshot, of the missing persons page and asked her if she was okay. No response. I waited for several minutes, but there was nothing from her.

I sent a follow-up message and said that I was just concerned for her and asked if there was anything that I could do to help. She started typing and then stopped, and this continued a few times, but then nothing was sent. I was too on edge. to do anything else. I kept our chat open on my laptop and phone waiting for a reply. I even stayed up late, waiting for a response, but it never happened.

Finally, I went to bed late, and when I woke up the next morning, I had a text from her. It said, sorry, I'm fine, please don't worry about me. And nothing else. I replied telling her not to apologize, and that I was just concerned for her. her because it looked like people were still looking for her, people that loved her. Then she went offline with no response, and I was still up in the air. It could still be a person that just found a random photo to use, and maybe they realized they chose the wrong one.

But something ate at me that maybe it was really her. Was she in trouble, and somehow got access to the outside world? Did she run away and just not once to be found? It was possible, but doing the math on her current age and when she went missing, she would have been around 17. So technically, still a kid. I waited for another response from her, but I never got one. And the next day her profile changed to deleted user,

and she wasn't in the game server anymore. I felt sick. I felt like I was definitely on to something if she felt the need to delete her account. I told one person about this, a friend of mine, and after showing her everything, she said that I should report it to the police. Then came the feeling of guilt, like I would have been wasting their time if I reported it, but my friend was right. If it really was the missing person, I needed to speak up. I called the local police from the missing persons page, and I reported it to them. They asked me for all the details that I had, and I had to email them screenshots of our conversation.

They took my contact info and said that they would keep in touch if they needed anything else. It's been five years at this point, and I still have not heard anything about it. No calls or contacts from the police, nothing on the news about this missing Ashley being found, it was like nothing changed. I want to believe that it was just someone that grabbed a random photo, an imposter of some sort, but to not just admit it at that point, and her one message she sent after still eats at me some days.

Because part of me still thinks I may have been talking to someone that had been missing for years. And there's nothing else I can really do about it. The Discord server doesn't exactly. exist anymore, as the owner turned out to not be a good person, unless I heard it was deleted or something. I left the server a long time back. But if Ashley is still out there and she enjoys stuff like this, I hope that she hears this.

And reach out to your family if you can, because we all want answers. Hey, Raven, I was reminded of something that happened to my brother and I when we were kids. and I wanted to share it with you. We grew up in a rural part of the south on a large piece of property. My grandparents owned the land, but after my dad lost his job, we moved in with them. I was still very young when we moved, so I don't really remember our old home. My grandparents' home is what I remember as my childhood home. The house was a decent size, four bedrooms, so we even got our own rooms, but

it was also pretty isolated. The nearest neighbor was maybe a quarter of a mile on a gravel road. It was the kind of place where we were given a lot of freedom to roam around outside without the fear of being hurt or kidnapped by a stranger. But because we kind of lived in the middle of nowhere, we didn't have other kids to play with.

We did have friends from school, but we couldn't just walk down the street and invite someone over. Thankfully, I had my brother Mikey to play with. He was two years older than me, but he wasn't at the point yet that I wasn't cool enough to hang out with him. This was when the story took place. I was nine, Mikey had just turned 12 the day prior. He got this new bug-catching kit for his birthday, so we were outside trying to see what we could find and catch. The problem with this was that it was raining and had already.

already rained quite a bit that morning, so the only thing we were really finding were worms. We like to gather up a lot to just watch or play with them, and sometimes we would keep them in a bucket to fish with. And we ended up ditching the bug kits and just took a small shovel and an old bowl to fill with worms. After a good rain, we liked to move this big rock that was close to the gravel driveway and see what we could find underneath. As expected, we found several worms and pillbugs, so we started gathering them up. But then we had an idea to make a home for the worms. We dug out the small divot that the large rock had made and started making bedrooms. We made lines with sticks, rocks for beds, and so forth as kids do.

But that's not the important part of this story. What is important was the man we noticed on accident. that was nearby. He had been digging in the mud when I looked around to think of what we could use for materials for our worm home. As I scanned the area, I saw a man in the distance leaning against a tree. It was very unusual to have unexpected guests, or rather unexpected guests, were not a thing. Granted, we were kids, so that kind of thing didn't go through us, of course. But people that did come over were always in a car. Walking there was certainly not something that happened. So to see some random guy standing next to a tree was definitely abnormal. I pointed him out to Mikey, since he was the boss, being the older brother. He looked up at him too, and we both just kind of stared for a moment.

Our property was lined with trees, and that's where he was standing, right where they started. He was wearing normal clothes, nothing weird, just dark pants and a light blue or green shirt that was visibly soaked through. You could see where it was sticking to his chest. He didn't have a raincoat on or a jacket or anything. He was just standing in the rain at the edge of our property and watching us. I remember something feeling weird, like his stillness was wrong. Being out there, I was familiar with the animal stillness when they hear something, or how people will go still when they're spooked.

But this was different, and I couldn't make out what it was. Neither of us moved for several minutes, or maybe just seconds that felt a lot longer. I remember asking Mikey if he knew who the guy was, and he shook his head. I asked him what we should do, and he shrugged. He said that we weren't doing anything wrong,

so we should just ignore him. I did as my brother said and tried to go back to what we were doing. We started talking, but I kept getting this weird feeling like I was being watched, and I looked back up at the guy. He was still there, but now standing straight up, not leaning, and appeared to have his arms behind his back. I don't know why I did this, but I felt inclined to acknowledge the man. So I raised my arm and waved to.

him and Mikey noticed this. He grabbed my arm and pulled it down asking me what the heck I was doing. I just shrugged and told him that I didn't know, that I felt I should at least say hi. He then reminded me that we shouldn't talk to strangers. I agreed with him and apologized and again tried to go back to playing, but that weird feeling would not pass. I tried to make an excuse and asked Mikey to go back to the house with me to get a drink. He didn't want to at first, and told me to just go alone. But I didn't want to leave him by himself. The man was starting to creep me out,

and I didn't want to leave him while he was around, so I let go of my little ego and told Mikey that I was scared to go alone. He got mad, but relented. He stood up, and we started walking towards the house. As we walked to the house, we heard a man's voice shout, Hey! And we both looked at the only person it could have come from. The man was now walking toward us with his hands still behind his back.

We both stopped where we were as we watched the man approach us. Then I watched as he pulled his arm out from behind him, and he had something in his hands. He raised it above his head and quickly swung it, throwing what he had towards us. It was like I was watching it in slow motion. I watched something oddly shaped fly toward us, trying to figure out what it could have been,

until it landed at our feet hitting my brother's leg. It was a dead squirrel. We both freaked out as we ran to the house screaming. My mom met us at the door with a confused look on her face, certainly just trying to figure out why the hell we ran inside screaming. We knew better, especially when my grandma may have been sleeping, and having muddy, wet shoes.

We didn't leave them on the porch like we were supposed to. We both started shouting about the man and the dead squirrel when my mom called for my dad who was in the living room. My dad must have heard part of it, because he was already storming out the door. My mom told us to stay where we were, and my mom followed. followed my dad outside. We wanted to know what was going on, however, so we went back outside too. Shortly after, my dad was in the yard holding the squirrel and asking where the guy was.

We pointed to the tree line, but the man was gone. He wasn't in the distance, like he was trying to run away. He was just completely gone. My dad walked toward the trees and told the three of us to go back inside. We went in, taking off our shoes this time, and washed up per our mom's instructions. Afterwards, we just went to the living room and watched some TV, and consistently checked the window for our father. Finally, he did come back in, and he told us everything was okay now. We were young, so we asked what had happened, and all he said was the guy was clearly sick, but he was gone now,

and then told us to come get them immediately if we ever saw him again. We had no reason to think otherwise, and we just let it go. We didn't go back out there for the rest of the day. We did go back out the next day. It was still raining, and we both kept looking around the trees, anticipating that he would show up, but he never did. Over time, my brother liked to tease me and try to scare me

by saying that it was some creepy cult thing or a crazy guy that escaped trying to catch us. Of course, at the time, it was pretty scary to me. I became worried about being outside alone and certainly didn't like being out there at night. As I got older, it was brought up and my dad said that he didn't know who the guy was or what he was doing on our property. But the description that we gave didn't match anyone he could think of, and certainly not our neighbors. and as for the squirrel, he couldn't make heads or tails of that either. He said that it didn't have any clear marks that it was injured, so he didn't even know how it had died,

or why the guy even had it. So, all we know to this day is that this completely strange man showed up on our property in the rain with a dead squirrel and decided that it would be amusing or something to throw it at two young kids. I'm still at a loss, but I guess if his goal was to traumatize me as a child, he succeeded, because it unfortunately became a core memory of my childhood. Hey, Raven, I hope you're doing well so far this year and had a great new year.

I did, thank you. I honestly didn't think I would have any stories recently to share, but as always, there's something crazy happening after short periods of quiet in the life of myself and my wife. I wasn't sure if this was a dark web story or not, but you'll see why, when I explained what happened in this story. This is a true story, as always, and only authorized to be read by As the Raven Dreams. So, if you hear it anywhere else, please report it as copyright content theft. Yeah, that's happened recently with... Anyways.

If you recall, about three years ago, I worked at a computer recycle and repair shop that had some pretty odd happenings. A man involved in kidnapping tried to break in to steal a phone, a pink iPod kept glitching back into my life, and a woman with a big knife trashed the storefront because she accused us of stealing her laptop and reselling it. Well, I left that job at the end of 2023 and never looked back. Even though I left on good terms, I rarely kept up with the business owner, who we will call Thomas, and he added myself and my wife on social media. media because we all knew each other prior to me working for him. Apart from him liking a post here or there or leaving an emoji comment on some of our content,

he didn't really talk to us for years. I didn't really notice how long it had been since I last heard from him until one day while at home. On that day, I had a visit from a pair of men that identified themselves as police investigators. They showed badges, asked to come in, and I'll skip to the point. part where they started asking me if I recalled working at a computer repair shop. To which I said yes. They asked some questions about what I did there, and I told them my job included testing old computer parts and electronics, listing things for sale on the company eBay, and occasionally

building out custom computers for clients who bought from the sister company storefront. They asked me if I did anything else with the company and used a leading, hinting tone. and I also recalled that here and there I would also drive the box truck to pick up items whenever we had scheduled pickups from customers or clients. I specified that I rarely did this since Thomas, and one of the other co-workers there who will call Nick, primarily handled the box truck pickups. They nodded, and then began asking me when the last time we had heard from or saw Thomas was.

I told him I left the company in 2023 and I hadn't been back, because it was on the other side of town, and I didn't really have a reason to go there. One of the investigators asked if I'd spoken to Thomas on the phone, via social media, or any other form of communication, and I mentioned that here and there he would like a comment, or he would comment an emoji on a post, and I pulled out my phone to look.

His last comment was over two years ago on a photo of my wife and I. This is where they began to turn the conversation. One of the investigators asked me if I recalled picking up a truckload of server racks sometime in July of 2023, and produced what looked like a copy of one of the recycle pickup forms we used at the shop. Of course, I recognized it. I actually designed those forms myself to make it easier to file and keep up with our client's information. And the one they were holding up for me to see was also one that I signed as the pickup driver for. For clarification, the forms I created had sections on it for date, time, client name, pickup location, address of pickup, and a brief description of what we were picking up.

In short, I made sure it was thorough enough. On this form, we were checking boxes for confirming the pickup the day before and day of, and I marked that I spoke with Daniel over the phone the day before the pickup. up. There were four server racks to be picked up around noon on a Friday in July. I remember that day well, because that pickup was relatively weird. And for clarity, I'll go back and tell the story of what happened that day. On Friday, July 7th of 2023, Nick and I drove across town to a small business park. You know, the old brown brick buildings with dark tinted windows that must have been all the rage in the 80s. because they're everywhere.

And I remember while I drove, he kept calling the number on the pickup form in an attempt to let Daniel, the client, know that we were arriving at his location. Nick even sent a text to the number as well, but we didn't hear anything back. We ended up navigating to the back end of the business park, which faced towards a small tree-lined parking lot

with no cars in it. It seemed somewhat abandoned. I pulled up at the building suite with the door, marked E5 and put the box truck in park as Nick tried calling again. I remember how odd it was that there weren't any other cars in the parking lot, and from what we could see in the semi-dark tinted windows, the space looked empty. It wasn't unusual for us to have commercial clients who were moving or even residential pickups for people that were transferring out of town, and had old electronics to get rid of.

but usually the clients met us at the location, or at least with someone on site for us to interact with. Nick asked me if I was sure I had the right day and time, and I told him that I had spoken to Daniel on the phone the day before and confirmed with him, and called earlier that day to tell him we were on our way out. Not long after I mentioned this, Nick got a text to his phone from Daniel that simply said,

door is open, racks in the back, take them all. Thank you. Nick shrugged at me and basically said that if the door was open for us, we could go ahead, grab the racks, and get this over with. I think we both expected Daniel to be inside the building somewhere, but as I shut off the truck and opened the back cargo hole to grab the hand truck, server racks are heavy, for those of you who don't know, they are. Nick opened the front door of Sweet E5 and said hello loudly and called for Daniel a few times. Once I entered the space, I remember how quiet and completely emptied out it was. The light still worked and the space had a few offices in it down a narrow hall.

Every office was empty, except for the final room at the rest of the building, which was a larger warehouse-like space that did have three standing server racks stacked in a back corner. They were older-looking server racks, nothing new or fancy, and Nick began looking them over and determined they had been disconnected, but looked like they were still in decent condition. We loaded them up on the hand truck one by one and used the box truck ramp to roll them into the truck until all three were loaded and secured in the back. We sat around for a minute looking for Daniel, and Nick tried to call him again, but he never picked up. We tossed around the idea of not wanting to leave the space unlocked in case Daniel specifically left it open for us, but after about 15 minutes of waiting, Nick shot a text to Daniel and said that we picked up the server racks and were about to head back,

and that we didn't want to leave the place unattended. Daniel never responded. In fact, when we drove back to the shop, I tried calling from our office phone and the number for Daniel gave a message saying it was disconnected. it. Nick said not to worry about it, and I was told to load the servers into our storage area for now and leave them because Thomas was going to take them to the scrapyard the next day. And that was the last I'd heard, thought about, or even seen, the server racks. Back to current day, I explained this to the investigators who nodded ever so often as I spoke. And it kept striking me how awkward it was talking to them in my kitchen about something that seemed so mundane at the time.

They asked a few follow-up questions about Daniel, which I didn't know anything else about since he was only in my life for roughly 48 hours as a person on the other end of a phone. I had never spoken to him before or after that job, and I began feeling that something bigger had happened. They weren't super descriptive, but the second investigator showed me a photo on his phone of a few server racks sitting in what looked like a storage unit and asked me if I recognized. them. And I told them the truth. It was three years ago, and I didn't inventory them so I wouldn't know them if I saw them again. To which he nodded, said okay, and then proceeded to tell me that these were the server racks that were found in storage behind the sister location storefront, and had been added to the inventory list as for sale instead of taken to the scrapyard. They said they spoke to Nick, who also no longer works there, and that he pretty much said the

same thing I did, and they found that Thomas had actually been the one who entered them into the inventory for sale instead of taking them to be destroyed. They told me that if the server racks had been destroyed, they wouldn't be talking to me right now. They got around to asking me why I left the company, and of course these guys already had records of everything, which again made me feel that something far more sinister was going on since these investigators were being very thorough, and every question. The question they asked me felt like a test that only the truth would help me pass, and I told them everything I knew. I did ask them what this was all about, and they gave me a very condensed synopsis.

Thomas sold those server racks to someone late last year, and it set off some serious alarms. Buried in the server, were what they referred to as illegal content, including directories of stolen personal data they had traced back. to a call center scam, as well as other illicit content. The customer who bought the server rack contacted the police when he stumbled across the data while attempting to set up an in-home network, and the cybercrimes unit passed it on to the federal level. They asked the customer where he got the servers from, which led them to Thomas, our former boss at the Recycle and Repair Shop, which is how they got my information.

Thomas spoke with him once about everything, but there were some inconsistency. with his story around what happened after Nick and I brought the server rack back to the shop in in 2023, especially if they were supposed to be destroyed, and not sitting in a storage unit. The investigators did some digging in the records of the company and found out some things that they wanted to question Thomas about next, but he disappeared. I never handled records or anything at the storefront, so I didn't know what they found out, but for Thomas to be missing the day they said he was. was, it could not have been good.

They wrapped up their questions with me and thanked me for my cooperation, and said that if they could think of anything else, they would reach back out again. I haven't heard back from them since then, but I guess this means they didn't consider me a suspect of whatever else is going on. I haven't heard from Thomas beforehand, and there was no reason that we would hear from him now. I was curious as to what was really going on, and it wasn't until a week. week after the interview that I got a call from the now former assistant manager of the repair shop

storefront. A woman will call Katie. She asked me if I could meet her to talk and after mulling it over I decided that since I had nothing to hide and already spoke with the investigators, I would go and see what she wanted. Heck, if they questioned me again, I would tell them she asked to talk to me and relay anything she said. I also took along one of my recording devices, is just for additional proof in case anything came up where I needed to prove anything she said, since she worked right under Thomas and also hadn't spoken to me in years. Well, Katie spilled the beans. Not only had she quit her job,

but she fully cooperated with the investigators that came to the store because Thomas took indefinite leave of absence and left her in charge, settling her in the crosshairs of what is possibly a jackpot of criminal charges. The reason the investigators were looking for Thomas was not just because of the criminal servers, but also according to the records kept at the store, Thomas had agreements with certain businesses, schools, and other organizations to pick up their recycled electronics

with a clause stating that they were to be destroyed, not repurposed or repaired. We of course didn't know this, because none of the techs like me or the storefront salespeople, knew what Thomas's on-paper agreements looked like. But apparently his work computer had backups and agreements, signed with various companies, some of which were labs or schools with R&D facilities, which specifically demanded that any device he picked up from them were to be destroyed.

This had been going on for years before and after I worked there, and all of it was on record. Katie told me that she believes Thomas is on the run because of pending, criminal charges, since the incident with the servers basically stirred up the skeletons in the closet, especially since what was on them brought about federal attention. I kept my response as very simple and very neutral, only saying, wow, or, okay, that's serious. Because I didn't know any of this prior to the conversation. She told me she'd already been interviewed by the investigator several times, and that she turned over

everything she could at the storefront. And, of course, the place is closed now, possibly for good, due to the investigation. No one knew where Thomas went, but she said the investigators felt confident that they could find him. She also elaborated that the investigators told her the server racks had data on them, that the investigators said looked like the kind of information stolen and identities you'd purchase on the dark web, as well as some information information information. files on clients that reached into some darker activities.

It didn't feel good to hear that. And as I left that meeting and headed home, all I could think about was how all I did three years ago was go fulfill a recycling pickup request from a client named Daniel. And all of this stirred about from my former boss, Thomas, not scrapping those server racks like he said he would. This is how 2026 is beginning for me, so far. And even though the year has begun relatively positive, the situation is running in the background like an open browser window. I wonder if they ever tracked down who Daniel was, since now I feel it's obvious that it's probably not his real name.

And I wonder how long it'll take until they find Thomas. But for now, that's my most recent crazy story stemming from the computer repair and recycle shop, which I quit working at three years ago. Word of advice, if you buy second-hand electronics, please do yourself a favor and run a program like D-BAN and nuke the drive. Run a DOD-level wipe on the hard drive. Don't buy and run random computers, server shelves, or other electronics on your Wi-Fi without wiping and testing them first.

Don't buy anything from Craigslist. Words to the Y is to keep you safe, so that you don't end up with someone's criminal or illegal dark web evidence in your possession. This was something that happened to my mom and I back when I was a young teenager. I think the year was 2004, or close to then. I remember that I was in middle school at the time. My family lived in a pretty normal neighborhood. We had neighbors on all side of us.

Some kids from school lived nearby, and some of the older people that lived around us were nice too. I'd say that we all pretty much knew each other one way or another, and nothing crazy ever really happened either. It was the weekend, so my mom was home with us while my dad worked. He ran a car shop, so he was there pretty much daily. My mom was a teacher at a special need school, so she got the same days off as us. There was a really bad storm going on, and it had been going on for the past two days. It was downpouring on the bus ride home from school the day prior,

and we were actually under flash flood warnings. Our basement tended to flood, so my mom had been down there making sure the pump was working right and that nothing was on the floor. My siblings were upstairs playing in their room, and I parked myself in the living room, because, along with the flooding basement, we tended to lose power if the wind got too strong.

I wanted to play a game in my room, but I didn't want to play a game in my room, but I didn't want to risk losing power and losing the games, so I was just couch surfing for the time being. So while I sat on the couch watching whatever I could find, I was startled by someone knocking on the door. We weren't expecting company. At least my mom didn't mention anyone coming over, so I didn't have a clue who it could have been. I looked out the front window and saw a girl in regular clothes, a shirt and shorts and sandals. And she was soaked. No raincoat or poncho, or even an umbrella in sight. I yelled to my mom that someone was at the door and went to open it.

We have a screen door on the outside and then the main door on the inside. I opened the main door and looked at the girl. She was looking around the area as I opened it, like she was looking for something specific. When I opened the door, she gave me a thin smile and asked for help. She said that her car wasn't working and claimed that it died about a block over. First she asked if I could come look at it. I assume that she asked me because I was a guy, but I didn't know the first thing about cars. I told her that I would ask my mom and started unlocking the screen door, but before I could finish the sentence or flip the lock, my mom was walking into the living room and asked, who is it?

I explained to her what the lady had told me, and she had a funny look on her face. She made a hand motion telling me to step away from the door, and I did. The girl explained to my mom why she was there, and my mom began asking questions about what the problem was. She asked what the car was doing, but she kept laughing a little under her breath and saying that she didn't know how to explain it,

because she didn't know cars, which is why she needed help. To my surprise, my mom flat out told her that we could not help. She said that she couldn't leave her kids alone and that I didn't know about cars. Me not knowing was a lie, but I was also old enough to watch my siblings. I had done it before, so all those comments were kind of weird to me. Then the girl asked if I could at least help her push her car and before I could say anything, my mom said no because I was grounded and not allowed to leave the house. For a moment, I became confused and upset.

I wasn't grounded prior. What the heck had happened? My mom looked at me sharply, and I knew that look. The girl then asked again for help, and my mom refused. After some simple pleading, she finally seemed to give in and asked if she could at least use our phone to call her dad, to come get her. I didn't know what was going on and why my mom was acting the way that she was, so I just said it. She's usually that southern hospitality type, so it was really strange for her to be unwilling to help this girl. I remember saying, it's just a phone call, mom. Why can't she use the phone? Or something to that effect. My mom gave me that look again, but she sighed and walked off.

I stood by the door as I watched my mom grab the cordless landline and bring it back to the door. She asked the girl for the phone number and she hesitated. Then she said she didn't know the number by heart, but remembers the pattern so it's easier to dial it herself. My mom put the phone on the floor between the two doors and told her to stay on the porch because the phone wouldn't work further away. She then unlocked the screen door and quickly closed the main door. We listened to the creaky screen door open, and I watched from the window as she grabbed it and dialed a number.

That's when I turned back to my mom. I asked her why she had grounded me, and she said that I wasn't really grounded. So then I asked why she was acting weird, again, explaining how she was just a young girl looking for help. My mom then said that she was lying, and that something wasn't sitting right. about her story. I asked her to clarify, and she said that it was her motherly instincts. She tried to lighten up by joking how she knows when we lie. She went to the window and watched as the girl paced the porch talking on the phone.

My mom walked back to the door and told me to look at her feet. I was completely confused by this statement, but went to the window and looked. The problem was she looked normal to me. me. Then, we heard her open the screen door. I saw her bend down to put the phone down and close the door. My mom opened the door and grabbed the phone, and the girl asked if she could come in while she waited for her father.

My mom declined, saying that we had a sick dog and that she didn't want to get all worked up, but told her that she could wait on the porch. We didn't have a dog. That was another lie. The girl stood on her. her porch with her arms crossed, now looking out towards the road. My mom closed and locked the door, and it gave her that confused look waiting for an explanation. I asked her what was wrong with the girl's feet, and she said they were completely clean.

Yes, I did notice that, but what of it? She explained that if she had been walking in the rain on the sidewalk or in the grass, they'd be muddy, or at least have some specks of grass. or something on them. She was right, though. She was wearing some pretty standard flip-flops, so her feet should have been dirty. She also pointed out that her car broke down over a block away,

but she chose our house to stop at. Why not any of the other single houses along the block that her car was actually on? Then my mom dialed something on the phone, and she held it up to her ear. Quickly after, she made that clicking sound with her tongue, and shook her head. She handed me the phone, and I listened.

It was one of those automated numbers that you call to get the temperature or time of the area. My mom told me that she had redialed the number the girl called, and that's what she got. She didn't actually call anyone. I was shocked and confused. Everything to me seemed so normal, but yet before my mom even saw the girl she was suspicious. I had no idea how she could tell. While we were talking, the girl knocked on our door again and asked if she could use our bathroom. Now I was understanding my mom's concern.

She lied about the phone call alone. What's worse is if I was home alone, I probably wouldn't have hesitated to let her in. After a couple seconds, she knocked on the door again harder, asking if she could please use our bathroom to dry off. My mom again declined and offered to bring her a towel, but the lady seemed to get fed up. She snapped at my mom. I don't want a damn towel. I want you to let me in. My mom then went back to her kind but firm voice and told her that she didn't want her in because she had lied to her.

She told her that she could wait there or she could go back and wait by her car, but those were her only options. That's when the girl kicked our screen door, so my mother. My mom shut the main door again, locking it. She still had the phone in her hand, and she called 911. My mom was explaining to the person on the other end what was going on, and I peeked through the curtain again to watch the girl pace on the porch, until she finally yelled an expletive and then left, walking off into the rain. I told my mom that she was leaving, and she reported that too. Shortly after, an officer showed up, and my mom explained what had happened.

The officer explained that they had another one driving around, and they saw a girl matching the same descriptions, so they had stopped her. She told the same story at first, that her car broke down, but when they offered to help her, she declined and said that her friend was on the way. They offered to give her a ride back to her car, but she again declined. They drove around and they didn't see any cars that looked abandoned or broken down. Since she really didn't do anything, they couldn't arrest her, but they told my mom that if she tried to come back or do anything else, to call them, and they could try to get her for trespassing. She never did come back, and I'm sure that my mom is to thank for that.

I think she figured out that she wasn't getting anywhere with her, but it was just really strange that of all the houses she chose ours. It wasn't the first one on the street, and it certainly didn't stand out. Nothing else ever happened, and no other weird guests showed up either, but it stuck with me for some time. Thinking about what could have happened, if I did let her in. It all began with a photo showing up on Instagram. It was sometime in the early hours of July 15th, 2019, when the first images began to show up online. At first, for the circles they were appearing in, they didn't really seem out of the ordinary. A prank, doctored photos, are old and outdated ones.

That's what most people assumed at first. But as they began to spread and people began to look closely, well, it became clear that these photos were genuine. and what they showed was graphic and very disturbing. The account originally posting the images belonged to a 21-year-old man named Brandon Clark. And what they depicted was graphic, enough that people quickly started to understand that something horrible had just happened, and had just been broadcast across the internet. People on the internet don't really react in one single unified way,

They do, however, react all at once. Some people were trying to report the images. Others were trying to warn people about them. A lot of people still thought that it was a hoax, and worse yet, some people continued sharing them. That's maybe the most uncomfortable part to sit with, the part that most people don't like to think about. Not the original posting, which is horrific in and of itself, yes, but other people actually sharing them. Of course, within minutes, screenshots were making their way around.

By the time moderation systems could catch up, they were gone from one place, and had already appeared in ten other places. Discord servers began to light up. Links and re-uploads were being posted. Fragments of the original post were also circulating. Everyone was asking the same question. Is this real? followed almost immediately by

Do not click this. Then someone else would post it again anyway. The more people saw the images, the more people began to examine them, and people realized that these weren't old photos and they weren't something plucked from the dark corners of the web. These were evidence of something horrible going on right now. And so, before anyone knew her name, Before the police had even arrived on the scene,

a 17-year-old girl from Utica, New York had already been reduced to an image file being passed around on the internet. That girl was Bianca Devons. Who was Bianca Devons? Well, we're going to tell you about her, because most people on the internet met her as an image. A frozen moment of the literal worst parts of her life. but Bianca was obviously so much more than that.

I could sit here and tell you that Bianca was a creative and caring girl, but that feels lackluster, or that she was planning her college days, having thrown the idea of going into psychology, but that's not really where the heart of this story lives. This is an internet's true crime after all. Bianca's web presence was not insignificant. She had circles of internet friends that she was interacting,

with regularly. She was on all the platforms you would expect, Instagram, Discord, etc. So her presence wasn't larger than life. She was active and present enough that she was a recognizable person in the circles in which she moved, and Bianca leaned very much into an alt-girl kind of aesthetic, was very expressive and emotionally transparent online, and she was very active in places where relationships can develop fast, become intense, and very quickly blur lines between online and real life. Now, we do have to do the thing that we despise most, and that is talk about Brandon Clark. So, this way we can explain just how he slots into this entire situation.

Clark was a bit older than Bianca at 21, but he moved through those same kinds of online bubbles as Bianca. Places where connections happen, people talk, and relationships are built often quickly. And at first, that's what it seemed like this was. A normal connection, a friendship that developed in a place where such relationships form every day

thousands of times over. The problem wasn't that they met online. The problem was that they were experiencing that connection in different ways. For Bianca, it was something casual and fluid. For Clark, on the other hand, him, it was something much more, fixed.

More intense, really it came down to it being more important to Clark than it was to Bianca. And that's where that drift starts. Quietly, in the beginning, in these kinds of spaces, it's really easy for that imbalance to hide away at first. Messages and interactions come quickly and are constant, all without the boundaries of a face-to-face interaction. And it can become very easy to misread what something is or what it's supposed to be.

What might feel like a conversation to one person feels like a commitment to the other. And from what we understand, Clark's feelings grew fast and more intense than Bianca's ever did. There were always signs of that imbalance. Jealousy was the first thing to really emerge. There was tension over who Bianca was interacting with. That doesn't sound alarming on its own, but it's the kind of thing that over time can blossom into something very ugly if someone's expectations continually fail to line up with reality. And that gap between what one person believes a relationship is and what it actually is doesn't always stay harmless. Eventually, as things do, everything shifted.

At some point, since Clark was also from the Utica area, Bianca and him met up in the real world. By the time July 14th, 2019 rolled around, the pair had already met up multiple times. What had started as an online friendship had moved into reality, and they actually shared space. On this particular night, they went to a concert together. Nicole Dalinganger was an artist that Bianca was

fond of, and so the night really kind of started off being about Bianca, and was tailored to her interests. Then comes a moment of disconnect. Bianca gives another man a moment of her attention, and to Clark, that's just unacceptable. In his mind, what she did violated some kind of boundary that existed. And so this moment becomes a confrontation. That confrontation leads to something far more horrible later when the pair are alone along a roadside in Utica. The arguments resurfaced, only this time it didn't stay verbal.

Brandon Clark produced a knife, and the resulting attack was fatal. And here is where we come full circle, because even while Bianca's life had ended along that roadside, Clark did something that ensured that the events that happened wouldn't remain unlawful. isolated there. Because in the aftermath of him killing Bianca, he took photos of her and posted them to Instagram. In essence, he began to create some kind of confession and curated it on the internet.

At some point, after the slaying, Clark attempted to take his own life on the roadside as well. Authorities were alerted about that as well, as about the images, and he was later found alive at the scene. Clark was arrested for what he had done, later charged and sentenced. But what about those images that had gotten free onto the wilds of the internet? Well, they continued surfacing. The system has never been quite able to catch up to them.

And they still pop up from time to time on platforms and get circulated for a bit before the moderation teams can stop them. Even after everything was over and done, those images of Bianca Devons are still the thing that most people remember, or think of, when they hear her name. And as always, may you rest in peace, Bianca Devons. Hey there, I have a quick story to share about something that happened to me as a kid. It may not seem like a big deal these days, but back then it was pretty scary,

especially because everything that happened was my fault. First off, I think it's important to say that I didn't really understand the bigger problem with what I was doing in this story. To my younger self, I took this process as just a way to get free stuff, but as we know, nothing is ever free. So with that, I do not condone what I did and would heavily suggest others to not try and do the same. Anyway, let's get back to it. Back in 2006, file-sharing programs like LimeWire were pretty popular. Everyone I knew used it. I watched my friends use it on their own computer at their homes,

so I wrote down the instructions to do it myself. After getting permission from my parents, who also didn't know too much about computers, they allowed me to download it onto our family computer that was in the living room. We had a few shared rules when it comes to using the computer. No inappropriate content, obviously. Ask before downloading anything that could take up a lot of space, like games or other software, and no longer than an hour at a time on the computer.

I followed these for the most part because I didn't often do much other than listen to music and play games on it. Once I downloaded LimeWire, I was using it like it was going out of style. I downloaded everything I wanted. Movies, music, games. I had the process down too. That's where I ran into problems. One Saturday afternoon, I was sitting at home alone. My parents were outrunning errands and had dropped my younger sibling off at her friends to stay the night for a party.

I had the whole house to myself, which was not unusual, and I liked those days. I had been wanting to watch this movie for a while, but we didn't have a physical copy, so I figured I could just find it on Limewire. I found one on there pretty quickly. It had a few people seating it, and the file name looked fairly normal, too. I started the download and walked away to make myself a sandwich for lunch. When I came back, the file was ready, so I clicked on it like I normally did to download it. A pop-up appeared, asking for different permissions, and being the kid that I was, I agreed to them without even reading what it was asking.

All I knew was the ending was dot EXE, which was different from what I normally saw, but the name of the download was the movie, so surely it was legitimate. I mean, who would lie about the title, right? I know that you can probably see where this is going. Finally, something open that looked like a media player, one that I was not familiar with, and the movie started. There wasn't a pause or play button or even moving. options, it just went right into it. I just figured that it was the file that I chose to download. Otherwise, I recognized the opening credits, which were clearly the film in question,

so I settled into the computer chair enjoying my sandwich in the movie. Then it cut out. It seemed to pause, and I checked to see if maybe it was buffering, but there was nothing there to check. There was a bar across the bottom to show you how far into it you were, but I couldn't even move or adjust it. I just seem to have to wait. Now, I won't go into detail what it showed next, but across the bottom was a short

sentence that slowly scrolled by like on news channels. It seemed to be some kind of signature. I won't put what it said, because the last thing I need is for someone to be inspired by it or recognize the name and try to copy it. And while the scrolling text was a bit odd, the bigger problem was that the photo that was now on my screen was certainly not kid-friendly, and I immediately freaked out.

If my parents walked in right when that was on, I would have been grounded on the spot. I quickly closed it in the few pop-ups asking if I was sure. I deleted the file, empty the recycle bin, cleared the download history and lime wire and then shut down the entire computer. I was terrified that my parents would somehow find out what I had been watching, even though I hadn't meant to download it on purpose.

It was supposed to be a movie. I went and watched TV until my parents got home for dinner, and I avoided the computer for the rest of that day, and all of Sunday. I kept myself busy in my room or watching TV and acted like I wasn't interested in being on the computer. I thought that if I just didn't use it for a while, it would be forgotten. Everything would pass, and I would be in the clear. My dad did use the computer on Sunday, and I kept walking by and looking at it, but nothing seemed off. I thought maybe deleting it when I did took care of everything. That was until later on on Monday.

My sister was trying to play one of her games on the computer, and I was watching TV in the living room. I could hear her getting frustrated, and I asked her what was wrong, and she mentioned that something was popping up and blocking her game, making her lose. I went to look at it and tried closing them, but each time that I closed it, another one popped up shortly after. It kept happening, so my sister shouted for my dad. My dad came in and tried to do the same, but he had the same results. He asked about the game that she was playing, but it was one that we'd had on the computer for a long time. He told her that she couldn't play it anymore because he had to try to fix it,

and I remember him being there for a while. I heard him talking to my mom about it too, and I remember them being fairly frustrated. Over time, I saw my parents get more and more mad and confused about what was happening. They couldn't figure out why it was happening. My dad was upset, saying that my sister probably downloaded something, but my mom said that she only ever clicked on the few icons of her games, which was true. Then they got into a small argument about them downloading something,

my dad accusing my mom and vice versa. I felt bad that they didn't even consider me because I hadn't been on the computer for a couple days as far as they knew. The three of them all had, but they didn't see me using it since Friday night. I was still too afraid to tell them, so I just kept my mouth shut. About a week later, my dad actually took the tower somewhere, and we didn't see it again for a couple weeks. When he brought it home and was setting it back up, he had us in the living room and was talking to us about it. He explained that we were not allowed to download anything on the computer and that we had to ask them for permission. He also told us that we're not allowed to use Limewire or any other programs that was not allowed to download.

like that going forward, and then he explained why. We asked why, and he explained what malware and viruses were. He told us that something was downloaded that was malicious, which is what was wrong with the computer. He said that he had to take it to get it fixed, and they explained to him that the computer had been completely compromised with a rat, or remote-access Trojan, along with adware, spyware, and various other malicious programs. A rat meant that someone somewhere had complete remote access to our computer. They could see everything we typed, access all of our files, pretty much anything they really wanted to.

And the worst part was that, in order to get rid of it, the tech told my dad that he had to wipe the entire PC. All of our family photos, all of my parents' important stuff for their work, Tax documents, etc. Were not only stolen and compromised, but then just gone. We lost all of it, along with the $500 or so dollars it cost to have it fixed. At the time, that was a lot of money for my family. After hearing about everything wrong with the computer, the guilt overwhelmed me.

I finally confessed to my parents what happened and apologized. I was expecting them to be really mad at me, but more so, they were just disappointed, but I guess fair about it. My dad said based on what the computer guy told him, he had a feeling it was something downloaded from there, but he didn't fully know what LimeWire was. That's why he didn't allow it back on the computer. I did get in trouble for downloading something without permission, and not telling them immediately, but I felt it was justifiable.

I had messed up, pretty big. I may not have fully understood the severity, at the time, but the older I got, the more I learned my lesson. That impact was lasting. My dad's identity was stolen a few times, and while they may not have all been my fault, I'm sure at least one of them was. I also understood better what malware and viruses are, and I shuddered to think how much worse it really could be nowadays

if someone were to do something similar. So while the threat may have been, quite a bit smaller back then. I hope someone can learn from my lesson and think twice before downloading anything or providing any of your personal information to someone or something online. Hey there. So this is something that happened to me last spring and I wanted to share. I hope no one has to experience this, but if they do, I hope what I did may help.

I live in a mid-sized city. where the houses are close together. There isn't much of a yard, but I've always loved the structure of the houses. I just could never afford one on my own. I did, however, find someone looking for a roommate, so I followed up and we actually clicked. We're both females, close in age.

I'm two years older than her, and we had similar interests. She wanted to rent out the room to help alleviate the cost of the home, and it made sense. She had outlined some rules to follow, which weren't hard either. I'm not a crazy outgoing person, so I didn't have people over all the time. I moved in about six years ago, and we have become really good friends since, which has really worked out for the both of us, and I love it there. What's even better about the home is that it's not too far from my work.

I don't have a car. I sold it shortly after finding the house because I wasn't hardly driving, and I was putting more money into it than I was getting out of it. I liked to walk and ride my bike a lot, and with me living closer to work, I decided that I no longer needed it. For longer distant trips, my roomie had a car or I could get a cab or take the bus. No big deal. The day, or rather night, of this event, I walked to work. It was a nice day with a small chance of rain in the afternoon, so I just brought my umbrella in case it did,

and I had my bus pass if it got worse. The walk there was actually really nice. I even got up earlier than normal, so I was ready to go and could take a little time on my way. Then, as expected, it started raining around lunch. Then it downpoured. I was disappointed because I wanted to walk home in the rain. I love the silent street,

at night and that smell of Petricor. But that was going to be too much rain for my umbrella to handle. However, the rain did let up about an hour before my shift was over, so it was looking like I was going to be able to walk it, after all. The rain stayed consistent from there, so I texted my friend letting her know that I was walking home. It's something we just adopted, and neither of us really knew why. It started as a joke when we got home announcing our presence, but,

after that we would share when we were heading home. It did help when it came to preparing for dinner or something of that sort. I was walking down my normal path and about five minutes into it, there's a bus stop. There was a guy sitting on the bench, elbows on his legs, staring down at the ground. It was later, around 8 p.m., so it was getting dark, but certainly not pitch blackout. I always make notes of my surroundings. everyone should, no matter who they are. So simply put, I noticed the guy and that was it.

I kept walking by. As I passed the bus stop, I heard him call out, Hey, miss? I stopped and looked back, and he asked me if I had a cigarette. I apologized and told him that I didn't smoke. He said no problem, and to have a good night. I said the same and then continued on with my walk. It was maybe a block later.

I was watching a bird bathe in a puddle of water when I heard footsteps behind me. They were steady, not moving fast, probably at the same speed than I was going. Again, it was something I made note of, but that was it. It doesn't matter who you are. You should always be aware of your surroundings. But then I stopped to check my boot because something felt off. Sometimes the lining inside gets crooked and I can feel it. I had stopped to see if I could adjust it before continuing,

and I noticed that the footsteps I had heard were also gone. It was a simple thought at first. Maybe they turned, or went into a nearby building or something. So I looked up. There was a person leaning against the wall of a nearby building. It was the same guy from the bus stop. This was immediately weird to me. He was sitting at the stop like he was waiting for the bus, so why was he now walking,

and why was he walking in my direction? It could be nothing, but I was still cautious. I just acted like I was adjusting the strings and then continued on. I didn't want to leave myself in a compromised position like that with one shoe on, so I kept going. Unfortunately, when I began walking, he did. too. I became suspicious. I'm a fairly average-sized girl who's experienced cat calls and being hit on before, so I wasn't going to take any chances. I also didn't want him to follow me home, so I took some detours. At the next intersection, I hit the button to cross, and I waited.

I noticed that his steps slowed down, and when I glanced back, he had turned away from me and looked down at his phone. When the light blinked for me to cross, he was. When the light blinked for me to cross, cross, I just walked down the street again, and so did he. I could see keeping his distance if he also needed to cross, but he continued down the street with me. I was really feeling like I was being followed at this point, and I had listened to enough of these stories to know better. I pulled out my phone, and I called my friend.

I sounded normal, but started the conversation with, Hey, hon, I'm almost home. I'm about four minutes out. My friend laughed for a second and tried to ask what I was talking about. I then said something about turning the light on because I could see the house from where I was and it wasn't on. She certainly caught on from there and asked if I was okay. I told her no.

She asked if I was hurt and I said no. She asked if she just needed to stay on the phone with me and I said yes. I couldn't really see our house, but I was hoping that knowing I was close to home with somebody waiting for me, that my follower would give up. I was in a residential area at that point and approached a house that had a light on. Part of me was hoping that someone would open the door, and then part of me hoped they wouldn't. I walked up to the door and grabbed the doorknob and said in the phone, Babe, you didn't unlock the door.

I turned to look at the guy who was now quickly walking down the street. When he was far enough down, I quietly told my friend what was happening. She said that she was going to come pick me up, and I didn't decline. When the guy reached the corner, he looked back at me once more, and that was when I saw his face for the second time. He looked at the street sign and then walked down out of sight. I was confident at that point that he had been following me. He didn't seem to really know where he was.

My friend stayed on the phone with me the entire time, and the people at the house that I stopped at never came out. They did have a camera doorbell, so I probably looked like a weirdo, too, trying to get into their house. Once my friend picked me up, she told me that I should report it in case he was up to something, and I agreed. People walk down that street all the time. I know that I certainly did, and that shook me up. I no longer felt safe walking alone. She took me to a police station, and I did file a report, giving as much information as I could about the guy and the route that I walked. Thankfully, I never saw anything on the news about someone being stopped, kidnapped, or worse, so I'm hoping the guy was just never successful with whatever his plans were that night.

From then on, I would walk to work, but I never walked home. I take an Uber or my friend will pick me up. I have ridden my bike a few times, but I avoid that street with the bus stop. I really didn't want to take any chances of running into him again, and thankfully, I haven't. So, to the guy following me from the bus stop, thanks for ruining my once serene walks. And let's never meet again. Hello, Raven. And in the off chance that you have patience reading this, hello to you two, patience.

No, she usually pops up in the early. Beck's stories. I truly hope you're both doing well. I'm finally at a point where I could write all this out and this experience that I'm about to share was both scary. And it oddly reminded me of a part of myself I thought I had long forgotten. This is a true story, and for any naysayers, I've also sent the proof of this story to Raven, who if he chooses to can verify that this happened. He did, and I can.

So here goes. There are a lot of scary sensations in life that we all recognize. Sensations that make your heart race, mouth tastes like copper, breathing intensify, and so on. One of those experiences that you truly have to experience in order to understand how scary it is, is sitting at your home PC, the one filled with priceless photos of family, videos of vacations, personal tax data, and irreplaceable projects and work, watching as someone anonymous tries to force their way into your system in real time. The moment you realize that you should have been more vigilant,

less careless about your messy file system or cluttered desktop, and for someone like me, the moment I realized I slacked off from some of the very things I learned about in college years ago. It started with an email from a company that I've been corresponding with about potential grants and such, for myself and my wife's outreach. I received an email response for an application that I requested, with a simple PDF attached, and a one-line body that said something like, here's the form to fill out,

respond if you have any questions, and then the company's custom signature. The attachment wasn't flagged or anything, and I had no reason to believe that it was, so I downloaded it and attempted to open it. When I did, it gave me a link to fill out the grant application form, but when I clicked it, I got a message saying that the attachment failed to open. So I sent an email back stating that the PDF file wasn't working.

I felt something odd about it, and I tried changing the PDF format, and eventually I looked in my downloads folder and saw an unfamiliar file that I didn't download with a .VBS extension. It was named the same as the PDF, so I googled the extension and found out that it was a type of script file, Visual Basic specifically for those that don't know, and also saw that I could turn it into a text file or open it with a browser of viewer, and when I did, I noticed that the script had some unusual things in it. I reached out to a friend of mine who was also worked with the same company, and I asked him if he had gotten the same email. He said that he did, but the owner told him not to open it or any other emails from their company.

They'd been hacked, and were dealing with their computers sending out emails to people. I ran deep scans, used my antivirus to the fullest, and took a copy of the script, and sent it over to one of the few people I know that could really help me figure out what it was trying to do. It looked basic, but I wanted to know exactly what I was up against. I sent a screenshot of the script to Raven. That's right, the guy reading this story right now. Hey, yeah, that's me. He was able to do the biggest thing for me

and identify the type of attack that I was dealing with, a ransomware attack. For those that don't know, I'm going to cut into the story a little bit, sorry. I do have a master's degree in information system security, so I kind of know my stuff. Anyway. As I read his messages,

I saw new icons for programs that I didn't install. all pop up on my computer as well as several attempts from a remote computer to connect to mine, using a hacked version of a remote desktop software. I remember how sick I felt, denying the connection, deleting the files, and then eventually I turned off the Wi-Fi altogether, isolating that computer from the internet. I was sitting in my chair, heart-pounding, scared of all the work, projects, the irreplaceable content that I hadn't backed up yet, and overall just trying not to panic.

I've never been hacked before. The rest of the day, I manually went through the process of removing the malware, the hidden tasks, and all kinds of invisible changes the simple little code made to my computer to make it weak. That night, I couldn't sleep. My wife understood what was wrong, and I told her how I didn't like feeling like our network was vulnerable. I also felt like this wasn't over.

I actually had a nightmare that I went to my wife's computer in her office and the virus had stolen all of our sensitive data, bankrupted us, and ruined our credit. I kept feeling like I should have checked deeper. I got up, went into my office, and I sat with a Chromebook that I normally used for projects and began asking questions, reviewing the script, and then I finally had a moment where I became angry.

Day one, I spent in my office. I started with simple PowerShell scripting, seeing what my books and some online forums on security could help me do, and I began writing a program designed to utterly dismantle the ransomware and protect our computers against it. I used an AI tool to help me check my scripts, modified it based on some suggestions, and ultimately created something that would help my computer

where my store-bought antivirus failed. I worked up the courage to run it on my infected computer. The script was a program designed to counteract, nullify, and remove the hidden files, commands, and redundancy tasks the ransomware puts on your computer to make sure that it can keep coming back in the background even if you delete it once. My program, which I named Ghost Fox, worked good enough.

But just like Tony Stark's first Iron Man suit got him free of from captivity, there was room for improvement. Day two, I began to worry about other types of attacks and ways to fight back if our computers were compromised again. Plus, I needed something to fix my colleague's computer network as well. I kept thinking, tinkering, improving, and eventually, when the metaphorical smoke cleared, I ran a final analysis of my program and found that I hadn't just created a tool to fight an infection, Google analyzed my script and found it to be an S-tier bespoke orchestrator, or a very

high-end custom framework tool that not only fights infections, but effectively hunts them down and bites back. I won't give any details on here because it's proprietary now, but it employs different functions designed to defend, neutralize, hunt down, and self-adapt to any attack on a single machine or network. Day three, it fixed my colleague's computers, and it's protecting our home network too now. I've sent the specs to Raven, and he can verify that I'm not lying about this. Again, he has, and he's not. It's quite the tool.

Actually, above my programming skill, to be honest with you, but... I built something to go to war with anyone else who ever tries to hack our network again. Because when I look at my wife working on her personal website, writing her books, and overall becoming more active with her social media content, I don't want her to be a victim. I don't want my friends or business partners to be victims of someone being malicious on the internet either, and I won't let it happen again. I can't.

By day four, the war is over. I've improved my program several times over, and so far it hasn't lost a fight. The program that I built bites back. But I'll never forget how terrified I was. I'll never forget that feeling of being helpless or how my colleague felt until I helped him too. I made a joke to Tom, the guy with the awesome write-ups, that this situation brought back an old version of me,

the college computer version of me. I also told him that I spent four days on this project. Day one I killed it, and days two through four I buried it with its family. That's my story, and I'm very thankful to Raven for him. helping point me in the right direction. It was the key that made all of this possible. Thank you. To everyone else, please don't download or click on any PDFs or random attachments.

And if you're not sure, don't open it. Gut instinct goes a long way. To the hackers who tried to hack me, you just became the reason a powerful new tool is out there. With functions that bite back in a way no antivirus program ever did. I won't tell you how, but my fear will become your own. As a security professional, Raven here, I really got to say, Fox has some valid points. Don't click links you don't know.

Don't open things you're not sure about. Watch creators like Jim Browning and Kit Boga to really get a sense of how some of these things work, some of these scams. Um, yeah, I could go as far as say learn some scripting and some security stuff, but just be diligent, do your best. And I guess in Fox's case, create a destroyer software that most likely does reverse remote connections onto other people's computers that hack you to destroy them. I don't know. 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 this 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. Although 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.