As The Raven Dreams Podcast - Scary Stories For Dark Dreams - Vol 43 | ATRD Podcast

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Today we have more than 2 hours of true scary stories with a late night ambience. Scary Stories For Dark Dreams is a collection of older stories, remastered and put together in a long form episode. This Collection includes the following stories; Crazy Ex Stories (2024), Gas Station Stories (2022) and Creepy Neighbor Stories (2023) So, turn down the lights, tune in, and let the haunting tales of everyday people take you down that dark and creepy road. Remember, these aren't just stories... these are true experiences that remind us that our world can truly be scarier than fiction. 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 own 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 TIMESTAMPS One Ad After the First Story, No ads after that Story 1: 00:17 Story 2: 12:42 Story 3: 24:15 Story 4: 32:31 Story 5: 40:28 Story 7: 1:08:41 Story 8: 1:24:06 Story 9: 1:32:12 Story 10: 1:47:13 Story 11: 1:55:29 Story 12: 1:58:52 Story 13: 2:06:04 ----- 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. #ScaryStories #UnexplainedMysteries #GlitchInTheMatrix ➤ And Remember; You are loved, you are important, and you are valid. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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If you have a true scary story you'd like to share with the podcast, go to as the raven dreams.com and click the button to send it my way. Also, if the platform you're on has the option to rate the podcast or leave a comment, please consider doing so. And as always, thank you. I want to preface this first by saying that this story may not be for everyone. It does include abuse and talks of my own death, but I'll keep those details to a minimum,

but I did want to include the trigger warning. I met this guy Jordan one night while out with some friends having a few drinks. We made eye contact after my friend pointed out that he'd been staring at us. All it took was me smiling at him, and he came over and bought a solid drink. After chatting with him that night,

I got his number, and since I was interested in him, I texted him the next day. Little did I know how much this would change and even shape my life. We started dating shortly after, and for a while there, everything was great. It was good enough that I let him convince me to move in with him. I found myself staying over there many nights, so I didn't renew my lease and just moved in with him officially. Some people, including my mom, thought that it was way too fast, and was reasonably concerned. but I did my best to assure her.

I mean, I thought that I loved him. I thought that we loved each other. But once I moved in, he showed a whole different side of him. He became incredibly controlling and possessive. He wanted to know where I was at all times. I had to call him when I got to work and when I was leaving. If I took too long, either way, he would call and ask where I was. I used to stop at the store.

or occasionally run errands after I left work, but I couldn't do that anymore. He was suspicious, and I would either have to pick him up to go with me or wait until he got home. I had to start planning dinners way in advance or have groceries delivered because, otherwise, it would be late before I got done,

which he would also complain about. He never made dinner. I always did. I don't even know what he did for full, food before we got together or on the nights that we didn't go out and have dinner before I moved in. And if he didn't know where I was at all times, the accusations would fly. I must have been out there messing around with someone else, and that name-calling and other verbal abuse, it was degrading.

I wasn't seeing anyone else. Hell, I didn't even have time to consider it with how much I had to do for him. I slowly became more and more reclusive, feeling like it would just make things easier if I stayed home. He would know where I was at all times this way. I did have some friends, and even my mom come visit me, but if they were unexpected, he became even angrier. Usually he would hold it in until they left, but he would still make passive aggressive remarks while they were there, which would then make them uncomfortable enough to leave. and that's when I noticed him becoming physical.

Anytime I had company over, or if we went out with others, like to dinner, he would keep one arm under the table and pinch my leg. And it was never just to play around or get my attention. He would leave large red marks and bruises all over my legs. I liked wearing a lot of skirts and dresses, but if we were with others, I started wearing jeans to make it hard on him. which only angered him more. My life quickly went from bad to living a nightmare,

and I didn't know how to get out of it. There were days that I called into work because of how bad I looked. I had all but given up as he watched my every move. He had even put a camera in the living room, saying it was for security, and if I so much as touched it to do things like dusting, he would lose his mind. I honestly felt trapped and thought that this would be my life until I died there

Hell, I even considered ending my own life to just put me out of my own misery But then I thought about my mom And my younger sister who looked up to me And what would Jordan do or say to them What would he do to me if he found me first? Between that and calling myself a coward I couldn't bring myself to do. do it. Yeah, just another fun side effect of being with Jordan. But then, out of nowhere,

Jordan came home with news that I never would have expected. He told me to pack my bags because I had to leave. I was confused because I lived there. It wasn't like I had my own place anymore. He then reiterated that he was done with me, that I wasn't the same girl that he got with just a few years earlier, and that he no longer loved me. He just flat out was kicking me out. I was stunned. I didn't know how to react. In fact, I was happy to finally be able to leave, but I knew him well enough to know this

couldn't be true. It had to be a test, and if I didn't beg him to let me stay, what danger would I be in then? So I started crying out of fear and confusion, asking him to let me stay, and he never changed his stance. I even asked him if he was seeing someone else, but he wouldn't answer. It wouldn't surprise me if he was, though. So, as he stood over me watching me pack a few bags with my clothes and other essentials, I sniffled as a few tears fell. I hated myself for this part, but I was still fearing it was a little.

a test. I stood at the door with my last box and asked if he was sure about this, cringing that he would change his mind. He angrily told me that he was, and shut the door in my face. I got into my car and I burst into tears, but that time, they were out of relief and happiness. I was finally free from Jordan, and I had my life back. My mom didn't really know what all was happening, in that apartment, other than she was suspicious of him. I'm sure that she knew something was wrong, but I always told her it was fine, and I even pleaded with her to not get involved. Usually I would get defensive saying I was fine so that she would let it go, fearing what he might do to me if he found out that I told her. I don't blame her one

bit for any of this, and I never would, so please don't judge my mother either. She would have done all that she could for me, but I made sure that she thought everything was fine, so nothing would happen to her or my sister. Anyways, that was the only place I could go. I hadn't physically seen her in months, and when she saw me, we both started crying. I still had bruises all over me, and I know that I looked like hell. I couldn't bring myself to even take care of myself, thinking that none of it mattered anyways.

I broke down and told her everything. After a lot of talking and crying, she helped me to unload my car and bring it all back to my old bedroom. My little sister was 17 and was still in school. My mom pretty much kept my room as I left it. I didn't have a bed in there anymore, but my shelf, dresser, and a few other items were still in there. She, of course, told me that I could stay as long as I needed. And, in fact, I know that she preferred it. She loved having me back home.

To speed things up, Jordan never contacted me after that day. I didn't understand his reasoning, but it was just like a breakup and he never spoke again. I tried to continue my life as normal as possible, and no, I never pressed any sort of charges thinking, if this was it, then so be it. And I would never have to deal with him again. I also didn't know if anyone would believe me, that, He just let me leave. That's not something a normal abuser would do, right? So, again, call me stupid or selfish for not thinking about another girl getting with him,

but it's all I could do to get my life back at the time. I did start therapy to teach myself that it wasn't my fault, and that I was worth the effort, and between that and my mom and sister, I was healing. But that would all come to a screeching halt when I was leaving work, late one night. It had been about three months since Jordan left me, and I was genuinely happy. I was still single, wanting to focus on me, but I was enjoying my life with my friends and family again.

As I unlocked my car, I didn't notice anyone around me, which is why I was caught off guard when I felt someone come up behind me and slam me into my car. Once they started talking, I knew that it was Jordan. I was too terrified to speak, which caused him to turn me around forcefully, and that's when I saw the knife. He was holding it against my throat. He then confirmed my worst nightmares. He said that the breakup was a test. He said that I failed since I didn't fight hard enough to stay with him, and that I was going to pay,

as he slowly poked me with the tip of the knife. I thought that was it, that I was going to take. dive right there in the parking lot. But as I started crying and pleading with him to let me go, I heard another voice shout. Hey! As Jordan had previously ingrained in me, I instantly stopped crying and held my breath. Jordan backed up, dropping the knife, and started walking away nonchalantly. Then I spotted another man walking toward us, which got Jordan to actually run off.

The man stopped by me to ask if I was okay. I was shaking and crying, but this time when the guy offered to call the cops, I didn't refuse. I was terrified, but I was also fed up. I was getting my life back, and I refused to let him win anymore. When the cops arrived, I told them everything. The bruises from Pryor were healed by now, but I had a witness for that night. I got a restraining order and I pressed charges. Going to court was difficult, and I almost backed out, but my sister convinced me that I needed to do this, and I knew that I had to.

I wanted her to see that I was strong enough, and that hopefully I could still be a role model to her. We lost our dad when she was six, and I was 14, so I needed to make sure that she understood that this was not what a relation to. was about. Overall, he was charged with assault that night, and spent some time in jail, but not nearly as long as what he should have gotten. I do still have a restraining order, but thankfully I have not heard nor seen him since that night. I've become a much stronger person now, and I'm actually happily engaged to a great man. I've known him and have been dating him for years. And my mom and sister also approve of him.

So, I think that I am doing much better. So to those of you out there that are in similar situations, just know that you are not alone. And even if it feels like no one cares, I promise you that someone does. I know I do. And thank you for sharing my story. There's something else here now.

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From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. My boyfriend, Luke, and I have been together for well, over a decade now, and we've lived together for a majority of that time. We'd found a quaint, albeit slightly worn, little duplex. That was in a good spot and was easy to get to from anywhere. And they were willing to rent it to us right away. So we took it. Our neighbors were a bit of an eclectic mix, but none of them stood out more than Dan.

Dan was in his early 50s. He was tall and wiry, with scruffy hair that looked like it had seen better days. It was one of those haircuts where you could tell that the person was in denial about going bald, so they did everything they could to make it look like they weren't bald. Dan was, as I said, in his 50s, but I would frequently see him skateboarding up and down the sidewalks. I mean, good for him. It was neat to see someone his age wheeling it like that, but he would literally be skating around at all hours of the night. I would wake up to go to the restroom in the middle of the night at, like, three,

and I would glance out the window and see him trying to kick-flip off the curb at the corner. A bit weird, but whatever. One Saturday afternoon, Luke and I were out on the park, porch enjoying the sun when Dan approached us. In a strangely eager tone, he said, Hey, do you know who I am? Luke and I both kind of looked at each other in confusion, until Luke said,

uh, I mean you're Dan, right? Dan responded with, No, I mean, who I am, what I've been through. We both kind of shook us. our heads in a way to say, no, sorry, we don't know your history. This, of course, seemed to be an invitation for Dan to tell us literally everything about himself. He began sharing stories about his childhood, about how he was physically abused by his parents, how he'd been kidnapped once when he was ten. He kept going on telling us all about his teenage years, and how he had even once

gotten into a fight with the police officer and was shot because of it. He had a scar on his stomach, and he was sure to show us, and tell us that that was where he was shot. This guy went on and on, telling us everything he could think of over that hour and a half at least. Then he paused, like he was trying to remember anything that he hadn't yet told us. and then said, Oh, I'm an artist.

You want to see a painting I made? Luke, unfortunately, is a very compassionate guy, and he engaged with him about his art. Dan then skated down the road, went into his place, and then immediately ran back out, and back to our place with a decent-sized canvas in hand. When he got back, Dan's attention completely shifted from us to just Luke.

It was like he decided that Luke was the person he wanted to talk to, and that I was just a third wheel to this conversation. Dan showed Luke the painting, and Luke nodded, saying, Wow, that's interesting. And then motioned towards me, motioning for Dan to show me the painting. No lie, this painting? It was this really nice landscape. Very well painted, really gorgeous.

And then overlaid with a group of stick figures having a crudely painted picnic. As I looked at it, it kind of clicked what I was looking at. This beautiful painting, it was a print of a real painting. And Dan had painted the stick figures over it. I nodded. I'm stifling a bit of a chuckle when I realized and said that it was nice. After a few more minutes of talking about literally nothing, Dan said that he had to go because he needed to help his mom,

whom he'd earlier said was actually dead. We said okay, and he skated off down the road again. Luke and I had a bit of a chuckle about the whole thing, and he confirmed my thoughts about the painting. It was a print that he had painted stick people, over. Definitely weird, albeit mostly harmless, and we had just accepted that maybe Dan was a bit weird. That weirdness got a bit extra about a week later, when we were in bed and were woken up by the doorbell going off at literally two in the morning. I got out of bed and went down to check the

door and was surprised to see Dan standing there on the front porch, skateboard and hand, canvas, and the other. I asked him what it was that he wanted, and he said, Oh, I wanted to show Luke my newest painting. I was a bit rattled by the fact that he'd had the audacity to wake us up to show my boyfriend a quote-unquote new painting, but I stepped back into the house. and yelled up to Luke, saying, Hey, your friend is here, and he wants to show you his newest painting.

As I was stepping back from the door and yelling up, I noticed that Dan had grabbed the door and was holding it open, and kind of starting to step into our home. I just stared at him as he walked through the door, and at the same time that Luke had come down the stairs to see him standing in our entryway and holding the painting. I shrugged and told him that I was. was going back to bed and then went back upstairs.

I could hear the conversation, and I was a bit upset to not hear Luke tell Dan that he needed to go away. He engaged him and listened to him discuss the painting for a solid 45 minutes, until Luke finally said, Hey, Dan, this is really interesting, but I have to be at work in the morning, so I gotta get back to bed. Dan seemed to be okay with this and told him that he was sorry to have bothered him so late, and that he would just talk to him later. Luke came back up, and I could tell that he was not happy.

I asked him about the painting, and he told me that it was more of the same, a really nice print of a landscape, with stick figures painted in random places. I shook my head and told him that he needed to be. to discuss boundaries with his new friend, and Luke agreed. Then, the worst of the events happened. About two weeks later, once again, it was the middle of the night, and we were in bed. I was struggling to stay asleep, a common issue with me, unfortunately, and as I was laying there half asleep, I thought I heard something coming from downstairs.

but I was half out of it, so I just assumed that it was the cat or some sort of normal house sounds. I went from a bit unnerved by the strange sound to hitting a sense of terrified realization within a few minutes. When I started to hear what I thought was labored breathing. I knew that it wasn't Luke, as I could hear him snoring next to me, so this breathing, was coming from someone or something else. I laid there still for just a moment, making sure that it wasn't my brain doing that weird, half-a-sleep thing that it can do.

But my eyes shot open when the bedroom light turned on. I jumped up, Luke jumped up, and we both sat there just staring at Dan, now standing in our bedroom and holding a canvas. This guy had somehow gotten into our house, was in our bedroom in the middle of the night, and was saying that he wanted to show Luke his newest painting. Luke had clearly had enough, as he started yelling asking what the hell Dan's problem was. Dan just kept saying, I made a new painting. I wanted to show it to you.

Luke got up out of bed and kept shouting at this man to get out of our house. house. The whole time, Dan could not understand what he had done wrong. I heard Luke telling him to get out and to not bother us in the middle of the night about his paintings, and then he slammed the door. At that point, I don't think either of us were really able to get back to sleep, and Luke was incredibly upset. The next morning, when we got up, we saw that Dan had left the painting on our front porch with a note that said, you could have this one, I'm sorry. We also found that he'd actually broken in through the living room window. He had pulled the screen out, gotten the window open, and crawled in.

Interestingly enough, we never saw Dan again. We didn't see him skating down the sidewalk. He never showed up again to show us a new painting, and after a few months there was a moving truck at his place down the road, and new people were moving in. I have no idea about what happened to him, and I know that Luke feels bad about how he'd reacted, but also, screw that. This man had broken into our house in the middle of the night. I don't care if his intentions were innocent.

We actually still have the painting. It's a prince of a man fishing in a boat on a lake. lake, and there's, of course, a stick figure painted next to him, so it's his normal work, and it's actually hanging up in our garage. Now that all is said and done, I do kind of feel bad for Dan, and I'm sure that he had something wrong with him, and he had taken a liking to Luke for whatever reason. But he had absolutely crossed boundaries that no one should ever cross.

I work at a small convenience store in a fairly small town in Kansas, and have been on the overnight shift for what feels like forever. It's typically pretty busy, and most of you in the Midwest would know the place if I told you the name. Just know it's the one that sells the mediocre pizza that hits differently in the middle of the night. Anyways, I've worked at this particular location for several years, years, and because I'm the only employee that doesn't have any children, I've had to pretty

much work every single holiday we've been open, including Christmas, Independence Day, and of course Halloween. Honestly, I don't mind it. We typically aren't too busy on these days, but Halloween can be a bit of a hassle, because people like to walk in the store in full costume. This may not sound like a big deal, but people walking into a convenience store, a type of store that's well known for being robbed, with their face covered by a latex Freddie Krueger mask, is definitely not ideal.

Because of this, when people would enter wearing a mask, I would politely ask them to take them off while they were in the store. Most people were okay with the request, though there were the author. odd few that just ignored me and went on with getting their items. Annoying, sure, but there wasn't anything I could really do about it. The whole situation actually took place on Halloween, obviously. It was a fairly standard night with a good number of people coming in,

mostly out of costume until around eight when all the costumed people started coming in. Then, business overall just kind of tapered off around 9.30. and there were only a few people coming in to buy soda, energy drinks, and various mixers for their parties. As the night went on, most people that came into the store and costume were cool with it when I asked them to remove their masks. A few of them just walked past me and ignored my request, but again, nothing I could do to enforce the rules, so I just let it go and kept my eyes on them as best as I could. Then, sometime around 10, a group of people walked in, all in costume. There were a few college-aged girls, and a couple guys with them all talking rather loudly as they came in the door.

They were all in costume, but only one of them had a mask that covered their face. It was a Jason Voorhe's style hockey mask, with a cloth on the back that covered the person's hair. And they were wearing the mechanics jumpsuit. Of course, it was all covered in fake blood and painted to look dirty, and it did look good, but I was a bit nervous with the guy covering his face like that. As he walked by, I mentioned that I did like his costume, but I asked that he please remove his mask. Not to my surprise, he ignored me and walked back to the cooler section of the store.

I shrugged it off, and I figured that since he was with a group, of at least four other people, he wasn't likely to do anything stupid. I waited up at the register for them to finish up their browsing, and after about five minutes or so, the group of people came up to the register and bought an uncodly amount of Red Bull. I rang them up, they paid and left. Thankfully, it was a quick and painless transaction. It wasn't until they had gotten outside that I realized the group that had been a group that had checked out were only the ones without their masks. Mr. Vorhees did not leave with them.

This didn't quite rub me the right way, mostly because I had been banking on him being with the group of people as a justification for being okay with him covering his face in the first place. My first thought, and again I was trying to rationalize it and make it okay in my head, was that he had just gone back to the restroom and was probably going to exit the store within a few minutes. Well, that few minutes passed and still no Vorhees. There was a certain level of nervousness about the situation. I wasn't keen on being stuck behind the register with this guy doing, God knows what, in the small section behind me,

mostly because I couldn't see anything in the section where he went, which was a really bad design flaw to these stores. Sure, there were cameras, but having a blind spot in a store like this was a really bad idea. I decided that my best course of action was to go ahead and make sure this guy wasn't loading a bunch of soda into his pockets or something. Thankfully, I was out of water, so I had an excuse to walk away from the counter for a moment. So I stepped down from the raised area and took my cup back to the fountain to fill it. I slowly went around the corner towards the fountain and glanced over to the coolers. There was no one there.

I walked over to the other side, and once again, nobody. I was confused, but I just accepted that it was possible that he had walked out at the side door, and I just didn't notice it at some point in time. I shrugged it off, and I went to fill my cup, and then I started my way back toward the register, which is the last thing I remember doing before waking up to a paramedic, asking me if I could hear him. I was incredibly confused as to why I was staring at the ceiling of the store, why the sky was asking me if I knew what year it was, and why the hell the back of my head was in so much pain.

as it was explained to me, and then also later shown to me on the security footage, walking over to the fountain was a terrible idea. Apparently Mr. Voorhe's had remained in the store and was looking for me to do something to leave me vulnerable. In the footage, this guy seriously crept around the corner when I was filling my cup, and when I turned away to go back to my register, he smacked me in the back of the head with some, some kind of club. This guy had a clean shot of me, and he took it, completely knocking me unconscious. What's worse, watching the footage, this guy did this for seemingly no reason.

After I was knocked unconscious, he just stood over me and stared at me without moving for several moments, and then walked away. He didn't take a single thing from the store. He just attacked me and walked off. Even crazier, he was the one that actually called 911 from the payphone outside. From what I was told, he called them and told them that the person in the store was unconscious on the ground, and then hung up. From there, the paramedics arrived, and sure enough, found me on the floor. To the best of my knowledge, the guy was never found or arrested, and nobody has any idea why this happened.

The thought of what he could have done scares the hell out of me, but I guess I'm glad that he was just looking to knock someone out for fun, and not rob or worse, murder somebody. This was also the last shift that I closed alone, and we now have three people that work the overnight shift on Halloween. When I was a teenager, I liked to bike places around our area, and when my parents always told me to be careful. They never really set a boundary on where I could or couldn't go. This typically meant that, during the summers, when I was home with my friend Josh, we would ride around and go places further from home than we probably should have gone. There were a handful of places that we would just go to ride, but one of the places that we would ride too frequently was a local gas station.

We would typically bike that way and buy candy, soda, gatorade, just random things like that, literally anything we could afford with our allowances. This gas station was more or less right in the middle of everything in our town. It was about a block away from a highway exit, but it was also across the street from a towyard in less than a mile from residential areas. It was also on the edge of the town that most people would avoid, because it was filled with rentals that were basically drug houses. Even being 14, I was told about what they were.

My parents decided that I needed to know about it all so it was imprinted in my brain that I should avoid them. And I did. We never went that way. We stopped at the gas station and never went further in that direction. Unfortunately, that didn't always mean that we were able to avoid the people. There was one day that I remember very vividly because it was one of the creepiest things that had happened to me up to that point in my life.

Josh and I decided that we wanted to head up to the station, so we got on our bikes and made the trek at around 9 in the morning. We rode up to the station and started to walk over to the side of the building to park our bikes, as we always did. But as we started walking to the side, I told Josh to hold up because I heard something. We both just stood there and listened, and sure enough, there was someone out back of the station that was singing.

This alone is a bit weird, but not creepy, but it wasn't just the singing. The voice was feminine, but also really hoarse, like she needed to drink water really badly. She was singing a few lines from what I would guess was an old jazz song, but then after she would finish, like two of the lines, she would just start talking. And what she was saying really wouldn't make any sense.

I remember exactly what she said that scared me. I don't want to be in my skin anymore. It's too tight. Then she started singing out the same two lines from earlier. She would sing the two lines, say something weird, and then start singing again. And that was enough to make me think that we should go ahead and just park in the front of the store and make our trip quick. In reality, we probably should have left, but we were 14 and I wasn't willing to abandon our mission. We went into the station, and I immediately told the guy that was working there that there was some creepy lady singing out back.

He didn't seem to care. My guess was that he saw us and thought that we were just two brats that were saying something stupid or making a joke about something. I shrugged and went to get my soda and candy, and then we got to the registered and paid, basically making the transaction as quick as we possibly could. We finished up and stepped out of the store, and I noticed that Josh's bike wasn't where mine was. Then I looked over to the side and saw the lady that was singing. She was, to put it nicely, a mess. Her hair was a mess, and it looked like she had shaved small spots out of it, but not all of it. And she was wearing a tank top and a pair of underwear, and that was it.

Her legs looked like they were cut up and dirty, and she was sitting on the ground with Josh's bike upside down on its handles. She had her hands on the pedals and was basically rotating them with her hands, and still singing that same song from earlier. We went over to her, and I mentioned that that was Josh's bike and that she needed to give it back. She looked at me and kept singing the lines, and then when she finished, she smiled and said, it's my bike now now obviously this woman was not all there and she needed some serious mental help and in hindsight

I should have been nicer to her or we should have had the man in the station call the cops or possibly an ambulance for her but I was 14 years old and I admit that I was an asshole I will absolutely admit that I grabbed the wheel of the bike to stop her from being able to move the pedals, and I pulled on the bike as hard as I could,

while yelling that it was our bike and not hers. She jumped up, but then stared at me and then said, Then take it. I pulled it and flipped it over, back to hand it to Josh, and she once again said, then take it. Then she stood up and started screaming at us. She started yelling, Then take it.

Take it before I decide to eat your skin off. Take it before I kill you. And she was yelling this over and over while standing up and walking toward us as we started to walk away. As we got on our bikes and started to pedal, she began running after us. And I feel like she was running at crazy speeds, considering we were on bikes. The whole time she was screaming at us to. leave before she killed us. And then she stopped and ended her whole

episode with, I will effing find you, Josh. I will find you and I'm going to take your skin. And then she let out a blood-chilling screech. Needless to say, we got home in record time.

And we decided that we needed to not go back to that station anymore and well, we never did. That was literally the last time that we ever went there. I have no idea what happened to that lady or what she was on or what was wrong with her, but considering the location, I have to assume that she was probably on something. She also probably had other issues than just that.

Like I mentioned before, I was a jerky teenager, and I hope that I can be forgiven for being the person I was. but at the time I really had no understanding of these things and this just scared the hell out of me I do hope that she got help sure but

I also hate that she ruined the thing that we had going for us in the end we got away and it could have gone much worse but it definitely still scared the both of us a lot of growing up is learning

that when you get what you want you need to be prepared for it to be nothing like what you expected. I was raised on horror and paranormal encounters. The books, the Discovery Channel documentaries, and the tales told late at night I would hold on to for years. I had always wanted to have that defining moment to show me that there was more to the world than meets the eye. There were small brush-ins, knocks on doors, odd noises, seeing things out of the corner of my eye, but...

But all that could have been my mind playing games on me late at night. I didn't count these as proof. When the paranormal made itself known to me, it was not a small knock or an unexplained whisper. It was a roar that dared anyone to ignore it. I no longer questioned the validity of others' experiences. This world has never been as it seems. I would like to preface this with a brief trigger warning.

The story deals heavy with an abusive relationship and mentions suicide and addiction. When I met G, I was a barback at a local club. I had made myself a profile on Meet Me to find a community after high school had brought old friendships to a head. Anyone who has any experience with this app knows that it's shady. But at the time, I was a good. extremely new to online relationships. I didn't have the slightest bits of self-preservation. That being said, one night after a shift,

I allowed this stranger to take me out to the desert to watch the stars. He was soft-spoken and sweet. He was attentive to my words with his intense stare. I was enamored by his tattoos, and how he smelled of musky cologne. He told a gripping story of how he had just, returned to the state after being left for dead by a gang he used to work for. He was a bad boy.

I eat it up. Before long, G. was my boyfriend. I learned he lived with his grandparents while he got his life together. He spent his time off volunteering for the elderly, because he felt he owed the world more after being a delinquent in his gang years. He told me his grandmother wouldn't appreciate me staying the night with him, so I would always head home after we spent time together. One night as I got off work,

I offered to stop by and get a good night kiss. When I pulled up, G came bolting out of the house, asking me if he and his cat Todd could stay at my apartment. He said that something was wrong in his room, and he didn't feel like it was safe to stay. Confused, I agreed. He told me to wait in the car as he gathered his things,

but I wasn't about to stay put. Despite his arguments, I followed. His room was in the basement of the house. We made a right at the front door, down a first set of stairs that landed in his grandpa's small man cave. Another right turn took us down the stairs into the computer room, his bedroom, and a supply closet came off of. As my foot left the steps, touching the linoleum floor,

all of the oxygen available turned to molasses. Breathing felt like drowning. Walking felt like fighting the persistent current in the waste-deep river. It felt like quicksand encased me with no kind of slow descent. A cloud of doom rested on my shoulders. I was sick with the urge to cry and run all at the same time. The light fixture wiggled and flickered on and off. A primal fear.

struck my heart. G and I searched for Todd as quickly as we could, finding that he had stuffed himself into a pile of quilts in the storage room. Todd was placed in his carrier, and we left immediately. On the 15-minute

drive to my apartment, I was speechless. The presence of evil on this plane of existence had slapped me in the face. Gia told me his house was haunted, but everyone says that. We stayed at a moment.

at my house that night and did not speak of the basement. Though it plagued my thoughts, things stayed that way. We didn't discuss it. I left the home before night and didn't encounter anything out of the norm. That was, until his grandma moved across country. She was making a nest for her and her husband in South Carolina to move and would not be returning for a while. She told G that it would be all right for me to me to move.

move in for a while, if I agreed to help care for her flowers that she grew in her large yard. Wanting to be closer to G, I agreed. I packed a duffel and told my roommate where I'd be. They were happy to have the apartment to themselves for the time. The first day that I moved in, G set me down to have a talk. He informed me that his grandfather suffered from sundowners syndrome. He explained that at night, you would have a talk. He explained that, at night, you would have a talk. He informed me. He informed me that his grandfather suffered from sundowner's syndrome. He almost become someone else. He would believe wholeheartedly that he was a Nazi in the throes of World War II. I had never heard of this, but I listened to his warning. He explained that they didn't really know if Grandpa could see the other people in the home, and that it was honestly best

to just stay out of the way. They had never bothered him, and didn't plan on seeing what might happen. The thought made me nervous, and I had a million questions, but I just... nodded. As the days passed, I got to see firsthand what he meant. At around 10 p.m., the old man's voice would slip into a transatlantic accent.

Picture the announcer at the beginning of the courage the cowardly dog show. He would announce Hitler died at 9.45 this morning, over and over. He would march the house and make other random announcements, before

retiring to his man cave to watch cops and bark slurs at the screen. During this time, he would sit in his recliner and eat an entire head of lettuce, dumping a bottle of red vinegar over the leaves. He'd grunt and chomp, lettuce dripping down his chin and across the floor. We would stay in his room from that point on. I got used to the routine, and I felt bad for the man. Eventually, G. grew jealous of my job at the club, and he made him.

made me quit, meaning that I was spending all of my time tending to the house and the gardens. My contact with the outside world became more and more limited, as G. became more comfortable restricting me. The house became my everything. I would wake up in the morning, feed the dog and cat, clean up his grandpa's messes, tend to the garden, then watch TV. I soon found that his grandfather came home sometimes in the middle of the day. The first time, he came to the door yelling and scatting like a jazz singer in his transatlantic accent. I hid in the garage, not knowing what to do as this voice was associated with him drifting to

those back corners of his mind. I waited and hid until the house fell quiet. My mind raced. I was made to believe that this only happened at night. I carefully stepped to the garage door back. into the house, closing the door too soon. I was not alone. Grandpa stood at the top of the stairs to the man cave, his broad shoulders upright at attention. "'Do you know the enemy?' he growled, his voice gravel. My mouth opened and closed silently.

Did he know I was here? Do you know the enemy?' he repeated. His head turned slowly until I could see his eyes peering back over his shoulder, not quite at me. I didn't move a muscle. He drew a large breath. You are the enemy! His voice boomed. I jumped and flinched against the garage door, closing my eyes tight. I only opened them when I heard the thump of his feet down the stairs, and the bathroom door slammed.

I took the opportunity to run to G's room in the basement. I was only at peace for a few moments before I heard the basement door creak open. I sat out of view of the doorway just in case. He came down the stairs, and I heard the squeak of the computer chair followed by the click-clack of the keyboard. I turned the doorknob all the way to open, silently peeking through the crack. Instead of a regular monitor, there was a large TV screen that allowed his grandparents to easily see. The screen was on Google, and the search bar read, Why does it hurt to die?

At that unsettling sight, I closed the door again, and laid down to nap until G came home. From that point on, I stayed very aware of when Graheps came home and avoided him at all costs. I told G what had happened, and he told me to never watch him on his computer, that he had seen things he didn't want to. Gramps worked for the local high school getting troubled teens into jobs.

But G confessed that he thought he had seen him looking up CP late one night, but wouldn't tell me anything else. I began to realize that I had jumped the gun living with this man. Days went by faster and faster. I knew how to maintain the house and limit interactions with Grandpa. Gee started being short with me. He didn't want me talking to friends and convinced him. me, they weren't good for me.

I sunk into isolation. I only knew G's friends. I smoked a lot of weed to forget I was basically a house pet. Gee drank all the time. I asked continually if he still loved me, if he wanted me around. He would lose himself in the drink and talk of the heinous things he had done in his gang era. His confessions made me fear him. One night we sat at the table.

table in the backyard. His bottle of fireball and my bowl accompanied us as we listened to music. G. ran his fingers along the tiles set in concrete that made the design of two lizards on the table. I could feel his energy shift as he softly began to recount other dark seeds of his past. The table had a large crack that had been repaired. It hadn't been the result of a clumsy move or a windstorm. G. confessed that this table had been a gift his first. He confessed that this table had been a gift his father made for his lover, who had rejected him. In response, his father had dumped it into the girl's driveway and shot himself. I knew his father had passed. Gee had a tattoo of his name on his chest, but I had never known how. Tears filled his eyes, and my stomach felt like an empty pit.

I placed my hand on his and rubbed his leg with the other, opening my mouth to speak. Though I never had stumble through the words you say after being told something so awful. Without warning, our ears were filled with what I can only describe as a 16-bit train whistle. It was so incredibly loud that it felt as if my head was surely to burst. We both grabbed our ears and bolted for the house. The noise only doled slightly as we ran through the living room and out the front door where it appeared to amplify tenfold. We looked around the neighboring yards.

No one else appeared to hear it. No one was reacting. There was at least five neighbors out and about, but no one could hear it. This house was in the middle of town, nowhere near train tracks. I backed away from the house until my foot slipped off the curb. As I stumbled into the road, all irregular sound disappeared. The birds and the trees returned to chirping, kids yelled over frisbee games.

It was as if nothing ever happened. We talked about it non-stop for the rest of the day, trying to find an explanation that didn't exist. I think of this event as the catalyst for all the madness that followed. That night, G and I were in bed. It was long past Grandpa's sundown rambles of the night. The house lay quiet until we were torn from sleep by the sound of a drill. You know how you can hear a drill's motor run hard as it makes its way through wood,

then it slows as it bores through and completes the job? It was that sound. Over and over. G and I froze momentarily before he sprang into action, retrieving a gun from his nightstand and rushing quietly out the door. I sat up in bed listening for what was to happen. The drill abruptly stopped as I heard G paced the upper floor. The silence made the unknown worse, and after a good 20 minutes of footsteps, G returned.

His brow crinkled in confusion. He told me there was no one there. Nobody outside, no signs of any disturbances, and Grandpa was sound asleep. This started happening every single night. Between 2.10 and 2.30 every single morning, the drill would rip into action. It got louder and louder. seeming to get closer to our room. No matter how fast we reacted, there was never anything there.

Though it never stopped being unsettling, I did get used to it. I would stay awake through the event every night and then slip into an uneasy sleep until morning. At some point, G ended up not having to work for a few weeks, so we started helping me tend to the garden. As we went to either end of the backyard taking care of our individual tasks, I heard the distant sound of G whistling and humming a tune. As we met at the center of the yard, he grinned at me. What were you whistling over there, babe? he asked. It was very sweet.

I tilted my head in confusion. I wasn't whistling. I laughed. I don't even know how. You were whistling. I heard it. We both stared at each other for a second. Both of us heard whistling coming from nearby.

even the same tune, but in two different voices? This event continued to happen as we worked every day. The whistling would quiet as we would come nearer to each other until it would disappear. It brought a cold chill to my spine every time. As the number of unexplainable events stacked on each other, my sanity declined. I felt as if there was no way this could be real. just as I learned to accept one thing, another would come at me and set me at unease. One night, I lie sleepless in bed waiting for the drill to interrupt the silence,

when instead a sound that I can only relate to an avalanche rocked the house. It sounded as if a million bowling bowls were unleashed across the hardwood above us. G jumped out of the bed and bolted up the stairs. As expected, he returned with his house. no explanation. As he sat on the edge of the bed wringing his hands, the thump, thump, of tiny children's feet running

upstairs rocked the shelves in the walls. We didn't move. We didn't check. We knew nothing had changed in the two seconds since he had checked the upper floor. I found my way back to sleep eventually, though it didn't last long.

I woke up after however long later to a full body panic. I found. I couldn't move, I couldn't draw in any air. My eyes snapped open to G's dark glare boring into me, almost threw me. Hot tears welled out of my eyes as I realized the reason I couldn't move was that G was on top of me. His hands were firm around my throat, and he was trembling.

His grip tightened and a dry groan escaped my throat. As blackness started to cloud my vision, he let go. He got off me and laid down as if nothing had happened. I sat up and gasped, breaking into sobs, and G tilted his head like a puppy with his furrow-browed. What happened to you? He cooed in a sickly sweet tone. I couldn't respond. My body was overtaken with shock as he kept talking.

Hey, hey, baby, what's wrong? What happened? Are you crying? I finally croaked out. You heffing choked me. You were trying to kill me. G denied remembering any of it, comforting me and reassuring me that he was sorry and didn't know what happened. I said that we needed to get out of the house, and G agreed.

He suggested going to the desert where we first hung out, and he would teach me to shoot his guns, and maybe even ride dirt bikes. I agreed. By that afternoon, we had bikes, guns, drinks, and safety. snacks loaded in the truck and were parked at a dirt hill designated for these activities. G set up cans along the hills and showed me how to shoot. He shot four and I shot the other four. The state was doing its job of taking my mind off of the events of the night prior. I was proud of my aim for a first timer, knocking back a swig of pop while he reloaded. He pointed to the

hill and told me to go ahead and set the cans back up. I gave him a kiss before trotting down the way to the hill. As I bent down, I glanced back over my shoulder. G stood by the truck, the pistol in his hand raised to aim, and his finger resting on the trigger. I dropped to my knees and screamed, burying my ears in my palms and anticipating anything that could come. When nothing happened, I glanced back. Gee was leaning on the hood of the hood of the head. of his truck taking a swig from a flask of fireball. The gun now in his holster on his hip. I jumped to my feet and stomped back to him,

demanding he tell me what the hell was wrong with him. He acted as if nothing had happened. Once again, feigning concern. My head buzzed with doubt and confusion. Was I really so stressed that I hallucinated that? It made no sense. Gee said that we should put the gun away and unload the bus. bikes. I had never

ridden before, and it took me a while, but I was eventually able to go about ten miles per hour behind him. He took me up and around hills and showed me some pretty places. We would stop to chat and take sips from our drinks, and I was beginning to really enjoy

myself. G kept leading me, going easy for a few hours before coming up on a hill, and taking off down the other side where I couldn't see him. I laughed to myself, and my heart thumped with excitement. Was he challenging me?

I sped up the hill after him and realized as soon as I hit the top that there was basically nowhere to go but straight down. Before I could evaluate the situation further, the sand under my tires slid as it began down the hill. My head snapped up as I panicked. I couldn't remember how to stop. I held on with white knuckles as I bounced uncontrollably down the slope. As I thought my fear couldn't get any worse, two men came into my peripheral vision from behind a large bush with guns drawn.

I was soaring right through the range of another shooting area. The men's hands flew in the air as they yelled out in surprise. I'm so sorry, I screamed, finally finding the brake as my bike went up the next slope where G waited. His helmet was off and his face was beat red with laughter, not the concern I had expected. I looked behind me to see his tracks in the sand. They went around the edge of the range, and he knew right where he had led me. I took off as fast as I could back to the truck, climbing in and sitting silently as G prepared us to leave.

This man was not who I had previously known. Not at all. His once endearing and gentle voice was now unsettling. The calm way he spoke about everything in the past day made me nauseated. I wanted out, and G knew it. After that day, G started taking my phone when he left the house. I didn't have access to anyone. My messages were monitored.

The drilling bit sounds at night started interchanging with the bowling ball like rumbles. Grandpa bellowed through the night about war and Hitler. G dipped back and forth between being loving and being a monster. I didn't know what to do. One day I found myself trapped in the kitchen as Gramps came home from work. He seemed to be in a normal headspace, so instead of hiding away, I decided to talk. I asked him if he had ever experienced anything paranormal in the home. The old man froze as he stared into the fridge.

His head bowed for a second as he sighed, and he pulled up a chair to the table. Did G ever tell you that we thought he? his father was possessed, he asked. I couldn't fathom those words coming from his mouth. I had never known G's grandparents to believe in anything of the sort. I shook my head. Well, before we lost him, he was in with the bad crowd. He continued, hurt becoming clear behind his eyes.

He'd become someone else. He wasn't our son. He was evil. We watched our son disappear while his body wanted. wandered our home. He housed that spirit. He was violent. He was angry.

We reached out to anyone in the community to help him. Four different priests visited our home. Every single one gave us the same name, and every single one said they couldn't or wouldn't help. The man's lips trembled as he pulled a sticky note from the stack on the table. He wrote a name with a pen taken from his shirt pocket. briefly showing it to me before turning on the gas stove and burning it to ash. We promised we would never speak the name.

I hope that you understand, and it appreciated if you followed suit. The letters on the paper danced through my mind over and over as I nodded. It took our son. He stared out the front window as the smoke from the charred note cleared the area. I don't know why it's still here. It took our son. I didn't know what to say Grandpa turned from the conversation and back to the fridge

I sat at the table with this new information stirring my brain to a mush Is G possessed? Is his family just full of nuts? Days passed and I became more and more afraid I wondered if G would do to me what his father had done to his ex if I left I didn't want to be responsible for someone else's life

I slipped into an autopilot and tended to my chores. I avoided G when I could as I racked my brain for a way out. I didn't know what to do. The nightly sounds of drills and avalanches kept me awake. I had begun roaming the house to try to find my sanity in an explanation that I'd never find. G slept peacefully as though we could no longer hear it, and I was thankful as I didn't find his presence comforting.

As I lie in bed one morning, after a night of failed ghost hunting, I drifted to a troubled sleep plagued with nightmares. I woke to what sounded like an ocean's waves swishing in my ear. I lay still, my eyes flicking back and forth as I tried to figure out what I was hearing. It was only in my left ear. I shook my head and the noise persisted. I had to wake G up as I needed help. I called his name, shaking his shoulder until his arm.

eyes opened. I need you to look in my ear. There's something wrong. He sat up and grabbed his phone, turning on the light, as I tilted my head for him to see. He took one glance, and gasped, telling me to hold still. My heart raced as he grabbed a tool from his nightstand and slowly poked at my ear. The sound abruptly stopped as I felt tiny feet crawling across my cheek and up my temple. I screamed and soared to my feet.

slapping away at my hair. There were earwigs in my ear. Not one, two. I ran up the stairs and threw myself on the couch, knees to my chest as I heaved and cried. I stared straight ahead of me as G laughed it off and went to take a shower. I stared out the sliding glass door in front of me as I sat alone. A Vanta black figure shot across the yard and up the tree in front of the wind. It was broad daylight.

There was no explanation for it. The sight made my stomach sink. Until now, everything that happened had been auditory. It wasn't so much fear that I felt anymore, but resignation. With all the chaos I was endearing daily, I had almost hoped that whatever was doing this would just take me away. But I was stuck. I wish that I could say that there was a big resolution to that.

this, but here's how it ends. G's grandma returned soon after I saw that figure. After a week of living back home with me there, she went on a rampage and kicked me out. I pretended to be upset when it all happened. I packed my bag that I had come with and went back to my apartment. As soon as G. was back at his own place, I broke up with him. G. lost his mind very briefly, and then exited my life. life. To this day, this brief period of my life leaves me with a million questions that I'll be

fine never knowing the answer to. I learned firsthand that evil exists in many forms, and that there is more to the world than everything that we can see. There appears to be no shortage of creeping neighbors, and living in some cities high in crime and weirdness, from NYC to L.A. and beyond, You would think I would have chosen the Buddhist stalker, the bathrobe man, or even the most distressing peeper who tumbled as a landlord. No joy. But no. In all these decades, and I mean decades of moves, there is one who stands out above the rest. Timeless.

And the memories are imprinted, flawless. It goes way back. way into the deep recesses of a childhood that was already old somehow. We had lived in Seattle. My dad had transferred to L.A. to a big job, a golden job, dripping with celebrities and parties. I was only four or five. It was the mid-60s at the time. He was a minister to Andorra on Bewitched, to Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies, the cast of gun smoke

some of the monsters the list really went on it was a new thought church sort of a precursor to the new age movement there was only one problem I would wake in the night not breathing

I have such strong memories of not breathing and trying to move out of my room to get to my parents and my mom would always turn on the shower while my dad got dressed, and then we would go to the hospital. I would always black out and have no memory of anything until after the hospital, while it was still dark. My dad would drive us all west and north along the coast.

We would disembark from our car and hear the waves crashing on the rocks, taking in deep breaths of air. I never wanted to leave, because the air was so pleasant and cool and pure. door. We had to move, though. I had too many near deaths, and he grabbed the first church opening he could find. I recall not even knowing where we were going, but it was beautiful. We had flown there in the night. It was Atlanta, and from the second-story cafe at the hotel, all I could see was the green below, the green of the treetops. There were still asthma attacks, but they were less. We had a scare on a trip to the Bahamas. I recall the Cinderblock Hospital Corridor.

Atlanta was like moving into the past. It was not hipster L.A. It was embroiled in civil rights struggles, and as a minister, my dad knew Martin Luther King. For ministers, priests, and rabbis will often get together as chaplains, except for the more extreme ones who hate all others. So when Martin Luther King was shot, and Robert Kennedy, who had come out and we had all met, and that's a long, intense story, was killed as well, my dad needed a break, I guess,

because before I knew it, we were in Wisconsin, where he was again a minister, but only for a moment. And then he dropped out of the church for a time and went back to college in a small town, and we rented a house in an old neighborhood there. Sorry to give such a long-winded introduction, but I felt it was important to show that we had been around a bit, and we'd seen plenty. We'd cruise down Sunset Boulevard, and we had been there for Martin Luther King's March, the first one.

So this new move seemed like a breather. Small town, quiet homes, some very nice Victorians with smaller 50s homes as well, the eclectic jumble of a downtown living area. There was a hippie couple who owned a head shop living above us in the renovated attic. There was an East Coast couple who wore tie-dye and gave me pet gerbils in the biggest, coolest aquarium, outfitted with Mr. Zimmerman's hand-carved cedar tunnels and bridges.

In a ginormous house, catty corner behind, was a family of ten kids, which was pure heaven for me, an only child. And they were fun kids. We had the best time in the leaves when they fell, and we would build forts and houses, or even pirate ships, singing, X marks the spot with a dash and a dot. There was an old penny candy store still in business on the corner. It was dark and the paint had come off of the little building. In the summer, when we would come in from the light, it was impossible to see. It was easy to bump into jars of candy on the long counters. It was funny that across the street was a dentist who only gave out balloons on Halloween,

next to the degenerate who gave out joints and pennies in his underwear for trick-or-treaters. And then, there was that neighbor on the other side of us, directly. It was a family, but the person who stood out, the one that you saw the most, was the father. And my dad,

who never gossiped about neighbors, he was a busy guy, even began to notice him. This was a college town, so casual. Yet, from our many-windowed place on the corner, you could see him. I am sorry that I can't recall his name now. He walked in a perfect gray suit with a fedora hat.

Again, all so neat and of another era. There was something anachromatic about him. He was on the thinner side, pale, sharp features. He would walk alone, but as if on a mission. And he was never without a cigar box that he held on too tightly as he walked. Years later, stories would come out about the men in black, and he looked so much like those images. An expressionless face with some sort of determination. Men in gray?

And what was in that cigar box that accompanied him on each walk? What's in that box? Why is he dressed like an undertaker just to walk around the neighborhood? It's 80 degrees out, and he has on a tight tie. It had such an unsettling Cold War vibe, and our big window, with inadequate coverings, just added to the creepiness. You could be lost in thought, looking at goldfish or waiting for a pie to be baked, and absentmindedly look out the window, and there he would be,

staring right back in from across the way, as if he had been there, unnoticed, for hours. He would not turn away upon discovery either. My dad's OCD would kick in over the curiosity about who this man really was. Were the contents of the cigar box drugs or mini flasks of booze? Or was there a transmission device inside of it? Like spyware from Get Smart, the innovative covert operations comedy. Would we ever have a gotcha moment watching him talking into it? He did not appear to have a job, or maybe walking around and looking creepy was his profession.

Was he a paranoid delusional? Was he a German war criminal? Our interactions with him consisted mainly of what has already been mentioned, a through-the-window affair of him on his solitary strolls that were eternal and insidious, purposeful and mysterious. He walked around the neighborhood, but he was, was not of the neighborhood. Sometimes, my dad would shrug and say that he didn't even look like a Russian or German spy,

more like some wax creature from outer space. Our only close encounters with him, and more broadly, his family, would come after a trip. Our house was a rental while my parents went back to school. It was a big place, but not beautiful. just utilitarian, with a plain grass yard in the front, and only scotch thistle grew along the front border of the house, blooming purple. We had gone on a microbus camping trip in Canada,

and upon return, saw the thistles had been cut down. Several days later, the neighbor walked by when we were outside, and he said that he had done it. It was eerie, because he had waited for us to go on holiday, day and then trespassed. He seemed gleeful in his own alien way, and he wanted to get pleasure from getting us upset, it seemed. Just such a weird ambush to get all fired up about.

To go after eight thistle plants? He really was proud of himself. He sent a message to us. Now, this part I will never fully make sense of. There was a family. I had mentioned, though mostly unseen. There was a wife who we never saw speak, and only come out the back door without looking so much as up,

to the car and the detached garage for grocery runs. And they had a daughter, a few years ahead of me in school. I feel that she was in the fifth grade. She was, of course, more than welcome to play with the rest of the kids who jumped in the leaves out back, but she never came out. and she was pale. She never showed emotion and seemed more like a little adult, unlike that giant Catholic family with the kids who were always making faces and laughing,

especially the little boy who was only about a year younger than me. He would always be sticking out his tongue or making his eyes pop out. This was so odd, but I was invited to spend the night at her house. house. At the house of the fedora-hatted cigar boxmans. I have no idea why my parents said yes. I recall being sort of uncomfortable with the whole thing. Did I really want to be in the clutches of that cringe mystery man, in his layer, on his turf? And why was I invited after he trespassed and beheaded the purple flowering thistles? We moved soon after this to Canada. Their house was smaller.

It was a 50s box, but very much nicer inside with a white carpet, good sunlight, and a perfect area to place Chinese checkers. The girl told me that her parents were older, and they were. Her mother looked like one of my grandmas, with a head of short gray curls. I don't even recall seeing the freaky dad there very much. He must have been out combing the neighborhood. the whole time. But the really weird part, the part that put me on high alert and still makes me wake up sometimes, was when she and I went to her bedroom and got undressed into our pajamas.

She got really embarrassed. She said, oh no, like she had forgotten, and maybe that I would not have even noticed. But then I did. I very much did, and there was no way to unsee what I saw. Her smooth body, her belly, to be exact, was missing a belly button. She had no belly button. She had no belly button. Suddenly she's talking fast and low, saying it's why she avoids swimming and only has a one-piece suit,

and that she never wants to be disgusting. She begs me not to tell, not to tell anyone. I recall just staring, taking it in, knowing that I would never have another chance, and giving myself the space to really see that she did indeed have no belly buttoned. And indeed, she had none. It was so disconcerting, and of course I told my parents when I came home, and they didn't even question me. It seemed to just make sense somehow.

Of course, the progeny of that alien neighborhood cigar box carrying MIB would not have a Pelly button. It made perfect sense. They were hatched. They were from a lab or from space. Or was she some kind of experiment of his? Soon the snows would come, and we would be lifted out of the U.S. and into the frozen canals of Ottawa, dripping on pastries and surrounded by ski resorts. I would miss the faces of that dear town.

Studious Veter, or Tony, whose mom had a car that could drive in water, getting lost in the big family, tearing around their boarding houses like residents or tree-rich yard. We would go on to move again and again and again. New Mexico, Chicago, the northwest, but never in all of these well-traversed years of absorbing people in places, has there been anyone so singularly mysterious as the girl with no belly button, and her father, last scene standing at night in the rain under a light, much like a haunting movie poster that would come out exactly a decade later for The Exorcist,

only staring inside our homes, at us. And for how long? There are so many questions about the nature of life and existence itself, and the voyeur next door just added another confounding set of unknowns in motion. Is there anyone out there who has ever had a similar experience? Thank you so much. This happened a few years back,

when I had to stop at a gas station after work to say, fill up my tank. For a bit of context, I live in a small town that has had a bit of a boom as far as people living here, which is nice, because we've gotten a few new convenience stores and such, but at the same time, this expansion has brought in some questionable people. For the most part, they were probably harmless, but some of them were the kind of people that you try to ignore when you're walking around town, if that makes sense.

The type that we'll be talking to a wall, and then turn to look at you and start yelling at you about how they need your help to do whatever, I don't like to judge people, I really don't, but sometimes that first impression can really make an impact and scare you more than anything. As mentioned, I was leaving work, and as I pulled out of the lot,

I noticed that my gas light had actually come on, which meant that I had two options. Stop at the gas station a block away from my work, or risk it and head home and go to the station where I live. The gas station by my work was not the best, and it frequently had the aforementioned people that would hang around it, but heading home could potentially end with me running out of gas most the way there, and then I would have to figure that out. In the end, I decided that I would just make it a quick trip to the station by my work, would put in a couple of dollars just to guarantee that I could make it home and fill up at the better station.

The less time I spent at the questionable one, the better. So, I head out, drive down the way, and pull into the station. Much to my surprise, the lot was empty. I was actually happy to see this because that meant that I could probably fill my tank there and be okay, and not have to worry about going anywhere else. I get out and I go to swipe my card, and to my surprise, the reader keeps declining it. But the error it kept throwing was basically indicating that it was the the reader and not my card.

I give up and just head in to prepay for $20 of gas. I tell the attendant that the reader doesn't seem to be working, and he just kind of shrugs it off, like, yeah, whatever. I prepay, and as soon as I walk out, I notice another car pull up to the pump right behind mine. The station only had two pumps, with nozzles on each side, so no matter where you parked to fill up, you were going to be within ten feet of another person. I walked back to my car and undo my gas cap, and I get ready to fill it, when I start hearing

yelling coming from the car next to me. I tried my best to ignore it, but it was kind of hard with where I was standing. I heard one guy yell about how much the other guy owed him, and then a woman started screaming something about how they were going to pay them back. I was just pretending to ignore it and pump gas into my car, trying to make the 20 go as quickly as I could. Within a moment or two, I heard the group get out of the vehicle and continue their arguing, while one of the people went through the motions of trying to get the gas pumping in his car.

They were yelling at each other non-stop, and the one guy was clearly getting frustrated, with the reader, and for some reason unknown to me, my dumbass thought it would be a good idea to let him know that the reader wasn't working. I should have just minded my business and stayed out of it, but for some reason I leaned over and said, hey, the readers aren't working, you have to go in and pay him. The guy that was working with the pump, who was the guy that was screaming about how much the other two owed him, leaned over and actually thanked me.

as he walked toward the building. The other guy, the guy that was with the girl that both seemed to once to argue as much as they could, waited for the first guy to go into the station, and then looked at me and asked who the F I thought I was. I just kind of shook my head and said that I was just wanting to help. The reader wasn't working for me either. And the guy then stepped forward and pulled a... a switchblade from his pocket and pointed it at me.

He then started talking about how he should, and this is a direct quote, Skin my face so that he could feed his dog, and then ditched my body in the river so that they never find me. I just put my hands up and told him that I wasn't trying to cause trouble or anything. I honestly had no idea what to do. This guy was obviously flying off the handle over, me helping? Within a few seconds, the knife was against my face,

and this guy just kept staring at me with the craziest of eyes, telling me how much he was going to cut me up. Thankfully, the first guy came out of the station and asked what the hell he was doing, but in a much more forceful way. The guy with the knife started telling him that he was going to cut my throat and all the other stuff, but the first guy was apparently rather unhappy with this situation.

He pulled a handgun from his waistline and pointed it at the guy with the knife. He then yelled at him to drop it before he dropped him. They went back and forth for a moment, but the knife guy eventually just gave up and got back in the car after yelling at me about how he would find me. I was literally just standing there and staring at the concrete with sweat-driched. dripping down my face, most likely visibly shaking in terror. After the knife guy got in the car, the first guy, the one with the gun, told me that he was sorry for his friend, and that he was having withdrawal symptoms since he cut him off for not

paying. I just kind of nodded and said that it was okay, and he actually seemed like he was sympathetic to the situation. Like, he was actually sorry. He told me that he wasn't going to do anything, and then I should probably just finish pumping my gas and go. I did what he said. I finished up, put it all back, and started getting in my car. Right before I left, he stopped me and said,

this is probably obvious, but I would appreciate it if you didn't. tell the police about this, you know, for everyone's safety. I nodded again and told him that I wouldn't call the cops, and he told me to have a nice day. That was the last time I ever went to that station. I now only fill up near my house, and I never let my tank get empty to the point that I would have to go there. I also never saw those people again, thankfully, and I'm glad that the first guy was in the right mind to stop the one with the knife. Because I feel like he was about to make very good on his threats.

I've been listening to your videos for a while now, and I'm one of your older viewers, I guess you could say. I thought that you might be interested in my story about my ex because she was probably the best and worst thing to happen to me, for reasons you will soon understand. as well as the cause for one of the scariest things to happen to me in my life. So, here goes. Rhonda and I attended high school together and had an on and off relationship. Our time was tumultuous, swinging between great days and intense fights, sometimes leading to temporary breakups.

We were both young and immature, struggling to comprehend our emotions. Rhonda displayed controlling and, at times abusive behavior, resorting to slapping and punching me when angry. Despite the physical aggression, I never retaliated. I only tried to restrain her. My communication skills were lacking, which I'm sure did not help our relationship. Then as graduation approached, we mutually agreed to end the roller coaster, parting ways and never crossing paths again, as if that chapter of our lives never existed. but then we had people trying to set up our 10-year high school reunion.

I was working with my dad at his home repair and carpentry business and had inherited my grandparents' home by this time, so I was pretty comfortable with where I was in life. I went to the reunion expecting to reconnect with some old friends, but was not anticipating rekindling old flames. Rhonda showed up as well, and she looked incredible. We started talking, and it was as if no time had passed.

We connected immediately, and as we talked, we both seemed the same, but had obviously grown up and matured. We agreed to meet up after the reunion, and the rest was history. After dating for about a year, I proposed to Rhonda, and we had a fantastic life. We even had two little girls, Rebecca and Caitlin. Rhonda was working as a substitute teacher,

and I was still working with my father. When we married, we moved into my house, of course, as she was living in a much smaller house. There was nothing but love between the two of us and our children, raising them in a very loving and supportive home for many years. But then we could both tell that we were growing apart. Rhonda didn't seem to be happy with where she was occupation-wise. I encouraged her to do what made her house,

happy. If she wanted to do something else, if she wanted to go back to school, whatever she wanted. Because it was my dad's business, I made great money and we were in no way struggling, so even if she didn't work and just focused on school, we would have been fine. But nothing I suggested seemed to make her happy. However, she either refused to tell me what she really wanted, or she didn't know what she wanted, so we were always in this never-ending cycle of her being unhappy, and us not being able to come up with a solution. So, after a long and serious talk,

we decided the best thing for everyone would be a divorce. Rhonda told me that, while she still loved and cared for me, she felt like she settled down too fast, and there was still a lot that she wanted to do. She even mentioned how she loved our girls, but thinks that she became a parent too fast. It was heartbreaking. But I appreciated her being honest and upfront instead of doing something behind my back and hurting me and our girls. But since part of this was her not wanting to be a full-time parent, and since the home was mine,

we agreed that I would keep the girls with me and she could see them whenever she wanted. and they could go see her or stay with her whenever they wanted, as long as it didn't interfere with their schooling. At the time, Kate was six years old and Becca was four when we divorced. I didn't kick Rhonda out either. And, in fact, I offered to move down to the finished basement so that she could have our bedroom until she found her own place. I still loved her, and she was the mother of my kids,

so I wouldn't feel right leaving her homeless. She did end up moving out a few weeks after our divorce was final, but to my surprise, it was with another man. I was upset at first, thinking that she had moved on too quickly, or maybe she found him while we were together, but I guess I'll never know the truth. But regardless of it all, life continued on and I did my best. The girls still had questions and at times expressed how they missed their mom, but I made sure they always had access to her, be it by phone or visiting with her.

But one day while I was making dinner for us, I had a knock on my door and was served with custody papers. I was blindsided on this, not to mention confused and betrayed. We had agreed that we would share custody, but that was apparently no longer accepted. I tried calling her about this, but all she would say, or rather scream, was that she wanted her girls back and that she would do whatever it took to get them. Attending the hearings, I was told that in order for me to be able to consider custody, a social worker would have to do random check-ins on my home and meet with the girls alone for interviews. All of this because Rhonda claimed my home was not safe, and even worse, said that I was an unfit father. For the first time and a long time, I was livid. I would never do anything to hurt my girls, and the home was always fine.

They even had their own rooms with everything they could need, clothes that fit, a good bed, food, shower, and a solid roof over their head. And I cannot stress it enough, that. that I would never lay a finger on them. I would probably go to jail if I found out anyone had. So where did any of this come from? And why would she do this to me? But I played her games and followed all the rules. I got a lawyer and fought tooth and nail to prove all of her claims were false.

The girls met with the workers and confirmed they were happy and that they liked their home. They even said they didn't want to move, but that they did, want to see their mom more. And I can't blame them for that. Ronda only seemed to want to see them on the weekend. And when they called her, she didn't talk long to them. I can't force her to do more than that, though. Overall, I won custody as she didn't even have a home for them.

She was still living with her boyfriend, which was at his mom's house, so the girls would have to share a room, if anything. She was awarded every other weekend with them, which technically made her lose time with them, but is what it is. I allowed her to have them any weekend she or the girls wanted. When all was said and done, I was pretty upset. I tried to do whatever I could to avoid putting our girls through that.

To avoid them being asked awful questions, but that's not what Rhonda wanted. But after it was over, we moved on to try and have the most normal life that we could. The girls were still happy. It's been a little over a year since our divorce, since all of our lives changed, but this was our new normal. I expected to have to split up weekends, summers, and holidays for the foreseeable future, until Becca was 16. So when they went to their moms for the weekend, the last weekend before school started for the year, I expected it to just be another trade-off. We had a normal meeting spot in time, so when I showed up and didn't see her, I called her.

No answer. It was a bit strange, but I thought that she was just running late. And maybe that was why she didn't answer. I tried the home phone that she gave me and her boyfriend answered. When I asked for Rhonda, he hung up. Confused and annoyed, I tried her cell phone again and it went straight to voicemail. I started to become alarmed. What was happening?

Was she truly ignoring me maliciously? Or did something happen to her? I called her sister to see if she knew anything. Her sister, Charlotte, was not as close to her as she used to be. Her sister actually testified during the custody battle, but she was on my side. She told me that she felt something was going on with Rhonda that she wasn't talking about, and that she did not like her new guy. The odds that she knew anything was slim, but I needed to know what was going on.

Unfortunately, she didn't know where she was either, but tried calling around too. I drove out to their home, but there were no cars in the driveway and no one answered the door. I was starting to panic, and in the back of my mind, I feared that she had left with the girls. Would she really try to run away with her? them. I know how she used to be in high school, but I thought that was left behind. Was the old Rhonda back? Would she really try to do something to them? The only thing I had left was to call the cops and report them all missing. They checked the numbers that I had, and the home with the same results. I had to show them proof of custody, and they then classified this as a kidnapping.

My ex-wife was now being looked at for possible kidnapping. This was my life, and I was terrified. They put a bolo out for her and her car, but that's all we could really do. I had to wait to see if they found her and my kids. I drove around anywhere that I could try to find them with no luck. Three days. I went three whole whole. days, not hearing from my

girls or my ex-wife. I didn't know if they left the state, if they were in danger, abandoned and left somewhere, or, God forbid, even dead on the side of the road. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep,

I could do nothing but drive around or wait by the phone hoping to hear something, anything, to know that they were okay. But then I got a phone call on my landline from an unrecognized, number. I answered it, and I heard a familiar voice. It was Becca. She sounded scared, and said that she remembered our phone number and that she wanted to come home. She told me they

were in a hotel and that their mom wouldn't wake up. I clung to that phone as I helped her try to find something with an address on it. She was seven, so she knew her numbers and could identify the letters, and, with helping to spell it out and filling in the blanks, I had to have to had a location. Just as I feared. They were already two states away. I told her to stay on the phone, not wanting to lose her, and I called the cops on my cell phone. They were able to find the hotel in the room they were in.

They got my girls, and, after a quick check-up at the hospital, they were free to come back home to me. I took the next available flight that I could to get them, and Rhonda's sister actually drove out there to pick a up. The aftermath was just as messy. Becca explained the best that she could what all happened that weekend. The day that I dropped them off, Rhonda told them they were going on a trip. From there, she drove them across Ohio, through Indiana, and Becca called me from a hotel in Illinois. She said that she was scared because her mom kept trying to get the girls to drink something, and she said that it smelled funny, but every time she was, she refused, Ronda would just become angrier.

But when they were in the hotel, she said that she was really mad and yelled at them, and at the walls until she took some medicine, and they couldn't wake her up the next day. They were in that room most of the day with no food, only had the water from the sink to drink, and that's when she tried to use the phone to call me. I was heartbroken. What was she trying to get them to drink? Rhonda did end up waking up and she turned out okay, but she had apparently taken several sleeping pills, which is why the girls couldn't wake her. She denied the whole funny smelling drink thing, though, and claimed that she had no idea what they were talking about.

Ultimately, she was charged with violating a court order, but the kidnapping charges were dropped. Part of that was my choice. I didn't want to see her go to prison and the girls' not. not be able to see their mom anymore. I know a lot of people, like my ex-sister-in-law, would call me stupid, but it's hard to explain if you don't have kids or haven't experienced something like this. She now gets supervised visitations, which is better than nothing. I know that she was also told that she had to go to therapy as part of the deal to see the

girls. So I hope that's helped. I still don't know what caused any of this. I could understand if she wasn't happy with the marriage, but to do this to our kids was unexpected and terrifying. It's been almost a decade since this happened, but thankfully neither of them seemed to remember it. Or at least, they don't seem to hold it against their mom. I just hope that they know how much they are loved and how much I am willing to do to keep them safe. About 20 years ago, I had some pretty sudden life changes

and ended up renting a small house in a small suburban neighborhood. It was nice. It was a major change for me, and I would say that it was a peaceful and fresh start. The house was charming, not too big. Had a comfortable little yard, and I knew the person that was renting it out, so it wasn't too expensive. As comfortable as it was, I will say that some of the neighbors were a bit out there. The majority of them were kind people, but some of them were nosy.

One neighbor, in particular, Mr. Weller, was a very confusing individual. He lived in the house directly across from mine, and the day that I moved in, I saw him standing outside on his front porch, just sipping on a glass of tea, and watching me. He waved. He seemed friendly enough, but we didn't talk, so the only knowledge I had of him was that he lived there and was willing to wave at a neighbor that was outside. I didn't see him for a couple of days after that, but about a week or so later, when I'd gotten home from work, I felt eyes stabbing me when I was walking up to my house. I turned around to see who was staring at me, and I noticed Mr. Weller standing at his front window and just staring.

He wasn't trying to hide the fact that he was staring. He was clearly watching me, with an unreadable expression. I waved, thinking maybe he was just lost in thought and didn't realize. that he was staring, but he didn't wave back, or blink, even. He just held that same deadpan stare. I felt a bit unnerved about the whole thing. I quickly made my way inside, but the eerie feelings did not stop there. When I would come home from work or from a jog, he would be there just staring at me.

When I would step out to get the mail, he would be there at his window. If he was outside doing something, like mowing the grass, and I went outside, he would stop doing whatever he was doing, go back inside, and stand at the window until I went back inside. Then it got worse. Sometimes whenever I would go inside from doing whatever I would need to do, my landline would ring. But when I would answer it, the person would just hang up. no breathing, no voice, just me saying, hello, and then a click as they hung the call up.

I couldn't prove who it was, and the caller ID would always show blocked, but I had this weird feeling that it was Mr. Weller. I had no idea what I had done wrong, or if I had done something that made him hate me. But clearly, this man had something against me. I called up the person that owned the house. They were a friend of my mother's, so I had their direct number. And I asked her if she'd ever had any troubles with Mr. Weller.

She told me that she hadn't personally, and that I was only the second person to rent the house. But the other tenant hadn't mentioned any issues. So, by this point, I knew that it was just me. After a while it started to get to me. The incessant staring, the silent calls, it actually made me feel paranoid. I would actively avoid going outside so that I didn't have to see him standing there and staring at me. I stopped going for my jogs, and when I got home from work, I would just go straight to the house without turning around.

I would get the mail every few days to avoid having to walk to the end of the street. It hit a point where I would wake up, thinking that he was staring in my windows, literally just paranoid. Then I hit my limit. I went outside to get my mail one day, and sure enough, he was there at the window, staring daggers at me. My paranoia shifted to rage, and I started to worry. and I started walking towards Mr. Weller's house. I hate confrontation, but I was done with all of this. As I was walking to the house,

I watched Mr. Weller pull the curtains closed and retreat back into the house, but I wasn't going to just let this go. I stepped on his porch, and I banged on the door, probably harder than I should have. After a few seconds of waiting for him to answer the door, part of me was actually more angry at the possibility of him being a coward and not answering. Then the door unlocks and opens, and the person that answered was not Mr. Weller.

A frail old woman opened the door and looked at me with a big smile and asked how she could help me. I was a bit confused. I had never seen this woman. I mentioned that I was looking to speak with Mr. Weller, and she looked at me. looked at me a bit like she was upset at my request. She then hits me with, Oh, I'm sorry, dear. My brother Kennedy passed away a few months ago. I've been living here for a few months now.

I had no idea what to say, but after a few moments, she smiled again and said, Were you too close? I shyly just kind of shook my head and mentioned that I was a neighbor, and that I was sorry for her love. She thanked me, and I awkwardly made my exit out of the conversation, feeling like a total idiot. I was walking back to my house, just thinking about how creepy it was that he was dead, and apparently had been for a few months.

I got chills thinking about how I would see him staring at me from the window, even though he was gone. Then, I stopped, and it hit me that the... This was all a load of BS, and that I had literally seen him mowing the lawn the day before. I turned and looked back at their house, and sure enough, he was there at the window staring at me. I actually laughed as I went inside. This jerk was such a coward, and was so unwilling to face me after being a creep for so long, that he had, whoever that woman was, his sister or wife or whatever,

lie and tell me that he was dead. After that, the staring and calls actually stopped. He never bothered me again. I would see him outside doing whatever he would do, and I would wave at him any time we made eye contact, mostly to taunt him. And he would just scowl at me and turn away. In the end, I don't know what the hell Mr. Weller's problem was.

I don't know what I did to make him dislike me so much, and I don't know why he was such a creep. But I was thankful that it all stopped. I only lived in that house for another year, and the whole time I never spoke to him or that woman. And I never had any other problems. Hey there, this happened around 2017 to 2019. Between those times, I was around. 14 to 16 before moving to my mom's place in Pennsylvania. I was living in West Virginia with my dad,

and I was dating this guy who was typically normal. Someone you could call, go on walks, dates, etc. Though about five to six months in, he started to get aggressive real fast, and even made me feel insecure and sometimes crazy. I was on the phone with him in an argument, my sister heard him while she was on the phone with her guy friend and they were talking on speaker and he heard the other guy and then accused me of cheating.

I hung up on him, just crying until my sister comforted me along with her friend. After I hung up, he blew up my phone stating how much of a disgusting person I was and other horrible names. I didn't cheat or see other guys since he wouldn't allow me to see or talk to other. guys. He heard me talk to my brother and his best friend, and even yelled at me for that, while my dad was around. He was accusing me of cheating on him with my family and my family friends. I felt utterly sick that he said that. We did eventually break up. I was living my best life, recovering other friendships, and even creating new ones. I'd gotten close with this one guy, who knew about my trouble, and kind of took care of me in a way to make me feel comfortable and safe.

He was three years older than me, and I felt happy with him, but knew that he wasn't mine. If you know, you know. We never did anything special, except him making me feel special, which I regret dearly. Him and his girlfriend, our ex now, broke up during this time, so it wasn't anything personal to either side. We started doing things at night, causing me to sneak out, and feel eerie about it, always watching my back constantly scared of what my ex would do. My ex did find out about this, and when my fling, we'll call him, tries to come over, he got jumped by four big guys. He barely made it home. He was stabbed, robbed, punched, and other horrible things.

I felt sick and scared that they would be coming. our place. Before he had the other guys jump my fling, my brother and his friends knew about everything, and he called my ex to say a few words, and my ex said that he was going to shoot up our place, rob us, and even kill me. To say that I was scared was not the word to say. I couldn't describe how much fear I felt. Though he didn't do any of that, it still scared me. And, then two months later, he nearly killed one of the people who made me feel comfortable and safe. When I used to work at a small convenience store and gas station, we would get a lot of weirdos that would come in,

and even though some of the customers were less than desirable, we also had some fairly normal interactions. It really felt like we dealt more with the weird people than the normal ones, but after a while you just get used to it and the weird becomes the norm anyone that has worked retail will one hundred percent understand what I just said anyways and because we were in an area that was mostly surrounded by homes and a lot of neighborhoods we had a cork board at the entrance of the store where people could post what was essentially their ass For the most part, people would pin up their business cards for things like lawn mowing and legal services, but we would also occasionally get flyers for nearby concerts,

or people wanting to fix others' computers, things like that. It was basically our own little contained cork board next door or Craigslist. The only requirement that we had with the board was that they had to take. have the manager's approval before they posted anything. So, when they came in to post something, we had to put it in the back office for the manager to hang up. It was, more than anything, a quality control process, so that we didn't get dumb things that had zero benefits to the community posted on the regular.

The story is actually about one of the things that someone wanted posted to the board. I was working a shift, and this older guy and a nice dress shirt came into the store. Nothing weird there. We would get a lot of people that came in just after work to get a drink or something. However, this guy came up to the counter with the flyer and asked me if he was allowed to hang it on the board. I mentioned to him that I'd have to run it by the manager and that he came in first thing in the morning, but I could take the flyer and put it on his desk so he could approve it right away. He agreed, and he handed me the flyer.

It was basically a missing person's poster. There was a picture of a guy in the center, and he was well dressed, and this image almost looked like a headshot for a business. The information was a bit strange. It had his height, weight, blood type, and a number of other things. but there was no name for the man. There was a small blurb that mentioned, if you see this man, call this number,

with what I'm assuming was the man's phone number, and then there was mentions of a substantial monetary reward if he was found. Because I'm nosy, I asked if he was a missing person. The man laughed slightly and said, well, kind of. I asked how someone could kind of be missing, and he responded with, We know that he's around somewhere, but we don't know where. He walked out on a job, and we need to find him so we can go over his exit interview.

I thought that was a weird thing to say, but I just kind of accepted it and told him I would give it to my manager to post. The guy thanked me and left, and that was the end of that. until a few days later. The manager posted the flyer as requested. It was posted front and center on the board since it seemed important. Then, about three days after it was posted, a guy came into the store to buy some beer,

and I know that I awkwardly stared at him for a few moments because I was trying to place him. But then, I realized that he was the guy on the poster. He noticed that I was staring because he was giving me this weird look like he was uncomfortable. I mentioned to him that someone was looking for him, and I motioned towards the board. As soon as I said someone was looking for him, he went pale as a ghost. He walked over to the flyer and pulled it off, and then came back up to me and asked me if I knew who had posted it. I described the guy.

Older man, military haircut. It was gray. He was nicely dressed. Had large-rimmed glasses. Basically everything that I could remember. I then mentioned that he had told me that he needed to do an exit interview. Whatever that meant. As soon as I said that, he started yelling expletives about how screwed he was.

He then looked at me and said, Look, um, I wasn't here. Please do not tell anyone that I was ever here. And he then ran out of the store, jumped in his car, and sped away without his beer. I was so confused. I had no idea what the hell all of that was. But this guy obviously did not want to be found by the first guy. What's weird?

I had never heard another thing about this. Neither man came into the store after. after this. I never saw anything about it on the news or anything, and I never saw his face in any other missing person's listing. I personally do see a few possibilities about this situation. This could have been a prank. Both men could have been in on it, but something about the other guy's face makes me think it was serious. either that or he was a top-tier actor. When he went pale, he seriously looked like his heart had stopped for a moment, or like he was about to puke. Alternatively, if this was a real situation,

the men that were looking for him were not good men, and he had pissed them off somehow, and being found potentially would not have been a good thing for him. Either way, I kind of hope that he was able to get away, and he made it out okay. Because I feel like if whoever wanted to do that exit interview caught him, he's probably not around anymore. I have a weird story from when I used to work at a small gas station in a little town in Nebraska. I used to work the day shift, so for the most part, I got the normal people that were there to get snacks for the day,

or to just fill their tank during their lunch breaks or whatever. Sometimes we would get rowdy kids during the summer, but for the most part, it was an incredibly calm and straightforward job. The situation happened to me about two years ago in the middle of 2019. It was a pretty warm summer. The sun was beating down, and most of the people that we were getting were a bit irritable because of the heat. Which was fine. I can deal with people that are in a bad mood. Around two in the afternoon, a lady comes into the store that seems a bit out of it.

I think the best way to describe her respectfully would be, she looked like she was on something that was making her very, very bouncing. see, like an upper of some sort. But, as I say, to each their own and you do you. She walked into the store looking around in every direction, kind of glancing to see if there was anyone else in the store, and her eyes were very wide open. As she walked in, she looked at me and smiled,

and immediately walked to the front counter. I asked if I could help her, and she started talking. She was saying things at me at a mile a minute about how hot it was and how she needed to use the restroom and then started talking about a dog. At first, I had no idea what she was saying because I honestly could not keep up with her. I told her to take a breath, slow down, and then asked her what was wrong. She took a pause, did what I recommended, and then said, it is really hot out there and I need some water, but I don't want to leave my dog outside.

Can I bring him in here? I immediately wanted to say no, because we did technically serve food in the store on the rollers, so if it wasn't a service dog, it shouldn't be in the store. But then I kind of thought about it and told her that she could. There weren't any other customers in the store, she just needed water, so it was going to be quick, and to be honest, I really didn't care. She said thank you several times and then walked away from the counter,

but she didn't go outside to get her dog. She started walking back to the drink cooler. I watched her walk to the back of the store like I thought she needed to bring her dog in. But at the same time, she wasn't all there, so I just let it care. go. After about five minutes, she came back up to the counter with half a dozen liter bottles of water and dropped them all on the counter, and she started thanking me again saying how much she appreciated it. I started ringing up the water and then asked, I thought you wanted to bring your dog inside. Why didn't you go get him? And she stared at me

confused. She then said, What do you mean? I did bring him in. I paused and glanced over the counter and then around on the floor, and asked where he was. She then unzips her purse and pulls out this small, stuffed animal dog, and starts telling me all the details about him. His name, where he was born, how much she bought him for from the breeder. she then starts telling me all about the memories that she has with him and how difficult it really was to raise him.

Now, I don't know if I was clear about this, but this was a small, stuffed animal, not a real dog. It was small enough to fit in a purse. It had those plastic beady eyes like one of those beanie babies, and it was very clearly not real. As she's sitting there telling me all about her pet dog, she starts literally making a barking sound and thrusting the stuffed animal forward like it was alive. She then apologized and said that it was because he was moody because it was so hot, and that he was normally super sweet,

and then started petting it and shoving it back into her purse. I just stared with a smile on my face, told her that it was a love. lovely dog finished ringing her up and told her her total. That was the whole experience, to be honest. I know that she wasn't all there, obviously, and it wasn't exactly creepy, but this was definitely a bit much for me. I guess if nothing else, her little stuffed dog was pretty cute,

even if he was in a bad mood.