The Lets Read Podcast - 103: Episode 092 | Caving & High School Stories | 30 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: July 13, 2021

Welcome to the ninety-second episode of The Lets Read Podcast! This podcast includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Caving, High School & Urbex Encounters... HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON - ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsReadCreepy ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ♫ Background Music & Audio Remastering: Simon de Beer https://www.instagram.com/simon_db98/ PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. There was nothing John Edward Jones loved more than caving with his beloved family. Along with his younger brother Josh, his father often brought him along on caving expeditions in the state of Utah when they were just young children. From an early age, the Jones boys grew to adore the subterranean depths and their shadowy, otherworldly beauty. But unfortunately for John, his first trip into the Nutty Putty Cave, southwest of Lake Utah and about 60 miles from Salt Lake City would be his last. John entered the Nutty Putty Cave just after 8pm, Mountain Standard Time, on the evening of the 24th of November 2009, not long before Thanksgiving. John was 26 years old at the time of the incident and along with nine other friends and members of his family, decided to explore

Nutty Putty Cave as a way to build bonds with each other ahead of the holidays. Being in his mid-twenties, John was without a doubt in the prime of his life. He was recently married, had an 18-month-old daughter, and was in the process of attending medical school in Virginia with a view to becoming a certified medical doctor. And like most years, he had headed back home to Utah to spend some quality holiday time with his family and friends. Yet a seemingly routine caving trip was to turn into an outright nightmare. It had been many years since John had been caving, and at 200 pounds and 6 feet tall, he wasn't the same small child that used to accompany his father. After about an hour of exploring the vast caverns and tunnels of the Nutty Putty Cave,

John decided to find the formation called the Birth Canal, an extremely tight passage that cavers must crawl through carefully if they're feeling brave enough. John located what he assumed was the Birth Canal and began to inch his way into the restrictive tunnel, head first, shimmying forward using his stomach muscles, hip flexors, and fingers to grip. But it only took a minute or so before he realized he'd made a horrible error of judgment. Josh Jones, John's younger brother by three years, was the first person to find him that way. Josh tried desperately to get a grip of his brother's calves so he could pull him out of the tunnel but had little success. In fact, Josh only succeeded in allowing his older brother to slide down further into the passageway,

meaning he was trapped even worse than his previous predicament. John's arms were now pinned beneath his chest, and he couldn't move an inch in any direction. The Jones family were and still are devoutly religious, and at this point, both John and Josh began to pray. Lord, guide us as we work through this, John prayed. Please save me for the sake of my wife and kids. Before long, Josh had rushed back into the direction of the cave's entrance in search of help,

but even once assistance arrived, John was still trapped more than 400 feet below the earth's surface. Getting equipment, supplies, and personnel down that far took more than an hour to accomplish. Susie Mottola was the first rescuer to reach John, arriving at just after midnight on the 25th of November. By this point, John had been stuck inside the tunnel for more than three and a half hours. Susie said hi to John and introduced herself as a rescue worker, even though all she could see of him was a pair of darkly colored sneakers. Hi Susie, thanks for coming, but I really, really want to get out. John is reported to have said. And so over the course of the following 24 hours, more than a hundred rescue volunteers worked tirelessly to free John from his rock prison.

From records and eyewitness reports, the method they were banking on involved a system of pulleys and ropes to try to pull John free from his dangerous predicament. One of the rescuers on the scene, a man by the name of Sean Roundy, explained the difficulties facing anyone who went into Nutty Putty Cave, even those with lots of previous caving experiences. Most of the passages were dangerously narrow, even at the entrance, where warning signs had been placed. Warning signs that John Jones had apparently ignored or simply failed to notice. But this was not the first incident of this nature that the cave system had seen. Five years earlier in 2004, two members of a local Boy Scout troop had almost lost their lives in separate instances in the exact same area of the cave that John was trapped in.

Two Boy Scouts had become stuck in the Nutty Putty Caves within just a week of each other, and in one of the cases, rescue worker Cruz took over 12 hours to free the 16-year-old Scout, who was much smaller than John, using a complex series of pulleys. It is interesting to note that the cave had only been reopened for six months in 2009 when John and his family made their caving trip. Officials had closed the Nutty Putty Cave system back in 2004 soon after the incidents with the Boy Scouts. The place had been closed off to the public for five whole years after a risk assessment had concluded that the caves were simply not safe for unguided exploration. But for some reason, be it political or environmental, the caves were reopened to the public,

with only a few warning signs posted around to clue people into the danger that they faced. But now, with John trapped inside a cave that he arguably should not have been afforded access to, time was rapidly running out. The downward facing position at which John was trapped was putting immense stress on his body. This was due to being in a position which requires the heart to work ferociously hard to continually pump blood out of the brain. As when the body is right side up, gravity does the work and the heart doesn't have to shoulder that load. Much like the Boy Scout rescued five years earlier, volunteers tied a rope around John, which was in turn connected to a series of pulleys. When everything was in place, the rescue volunteers then pulled as hard as they could. But suddenly, without warning,

one of the pulleys catastrophically malfunctioned. Sean Roundy, the man leading the rescue operation, believed that a pulley came loose at its anchor point in the cave wall, which contained a large amount of loose clay. The rope and pulley operation was a complete failure. The rescuers had no other feasible schemes to get the trapped man out of there. Essentially, John was doomed. Even years after the incident, Roundy had confessed to mentally revisiting the rescue over and over in his head, torturing himself with his own greatest failure.

I reviewed the whole mission. He's reported to have said, Wishing we would have done this tiny detail differently or done a little sooner, but it's no use second-guessing things. We did our best. With all hopes of rescue dashed, and his heart having suffered hours upon hours of strain due to his downward position, John was pronounced dead of cardiac arrest

shortly before midnight on the evening of November 25th, 2009. Rescuers had spent just over 24 hours trying to save his life, but to no avail. And in a show of emotional strength that I could not imagine having personally, John's family actually thanked rescuers for their help, even if their failure meant his untimely demise. Nutty Putty Cave lived up to its reputation on the night of John's death. No one will ever go in the cave again. State officials sealed off Nutty Putty Cave permanently just a week after John's death. They never recovered his body, which remains inside to this day, for fear of more deaths that might result

from such an operation. Now sealed up, Nunny Putty Cave serves as a natural memorial and gravesite to John Edward Jones. I'm a qualified caving instructor and honestly, it's not very often at all that I actually get frightened during a caving trip. Now, it's entirely possible that I've never gotten spooked because I'm simply not claustrophobic, nor am I afraid of the dark. I mean, asking someone who likes caving to describe really scary moments in a cave could, but if you ask people who hated caving but were somehow roped into it anyway what was scary about it, those stories might prove a little bit more fruitful. Having said that, there's definitely a few caving trips I presided over that haven't exactly gone according to plan. I used to do a lot of solo

caving and rappelling down vertical caves was one of my favorite parts of the whole process. I must have dropped into a cave maybe 300 times or more. Last month I took a small group of boy scouts from Michigan into a vertical cave. Being slightly out of practice and not trusting my well-worn gear to keep the kids safe, I ended up borrowing one from a buddy of mine. It was a slightly smaller bundle, slightly narrower in diameter, but it was infinitely more flexible than mine was. I thought this might prove to be a boon, but it turns out I didn't quite think this through,

and problems that didn't occur to me at the time began to manifest quickly. Once I was in the cave itself, I figured out pretty quickly that I didn't have nearly the amount of control I was used to when rappelling. I found that I was able to stop but only barely, sitting over a 200 foot drop while hardly being able to keep myself from sliding, I decided to abort the rappel at the first ledge I arrived at, which was about 30 feet down. I had to lock off my rack and call on those who came with me to help me swing over to the ledge and climb back out. Imagine that, having your life in the hands of a bunch of boy scouts. No offense to the little guys, they did did the job but I was pretty worried for a minute or two. I did have climbing gear with me and I suppose I could have switched over to the other rack

but that would have been a lot more trouble so I took the easy way out. No not that one since I was able to lock off the rack I could simply rest there and think about my situation and the thoughts were not good. The boy scouts had their troop leader with them, so it wasn't like there wasn't a strong, full adult there to add some extra pull, but I'll admit that I couldn't help but imagine what would have happened if something went wrong. If I were the panicking type, I suppose I would have been deathly afraid that I would lose my life right then and there, but that doesn't mean the prospect didn't make me feel extremely nervous. I was literally dangling like 30 foot into a pit with gear that wasn't right for the rope I was on,

with absolutely no way to control my descent. The only thing is, I'm careful enough that when I decided that the rappel wasn't a sure thing, I chose to call it all entirely rather than risk that I'd have enough control to descend it safely. That's the type of care that keeps you alive in caves like that. But if you want to hear about something that really has the pucker factor, then how about a vertical cave with pull downs? You take your rope with you, and an unexpected increase in water levels. There's a cave out in Tennessee where there are three vertical drops of over 100 feet, but people typically only take one rope because the bottom of the cave is open and you can pretty much walk out of it unless it's flooded.

There is always water in the cave, anywhere from ankle deep to about 18 inches. Between the second and the third drop there is a long 400 foot crawlway with low ceilings and high water levels. When I bent there was about half a foot of water with about the same amount of airspace above. It's a really nice crawl through with pretty river petals on the floor and lots of small but clean formations along the walls. White chalcite formations, stalactites, stalagmites, and soda straws mostly. Some of the formations are beige, yellow, or tinged with red, showing impurities of course, which leads to a lot of vegetation during the 400 foot crawl. If, for example, a caver was in a small party who were exploring this particular cave and dropped into it expecting a typical through trip, but happened to have a problem during the second 200 foot rappel, the party could decide to float him through the crawlway and lower him down the rope and move him to where the entrance to the crawl is

Only to discover that the water levels are too high and there is a very small air gap in the crawl But with water that high, the movement of the water would be very swift And it may be too much for someone attempting to navigate it to fight their way back upstream That person would have to contend with just a few inches of oxygenated air at the top of a passage that has razor sharp rocks all along the cave ceiling, and at the end of the passage the water jets out over to a drop that's more than almost half a mile down. The immense water pressure would try to push them out of the passage, and it would take a great amount of strength and effort for a sustained period of time to be able to resist that water pressure.

And honestly, it would not take long to exhaust someone. And when they run out of strength, then it's time for the big sleep. It's likely that the fall would not kill the caver overnight since the bottom of the drop would be completely flooded. He'd hit the bottom and, in all likelihood, break a bone or sprain an ankle, but the water could essentially break his fall, potentially saving his life. But that's only assuming that he could breathe the whole way down the passage without getting his face torn up by the rocks on the ceiling, and as you can imagine, that's very, very unlikely. If there's one thing you take away from this dumb story about caving, it's that you never, ever go alone. And generally

speaking, you don't try to take an injured person out of the cave with small numbers. It's better to leave one person with the injured party and let two people go out and get help. That's why the smallest safe party is no less than about four people. But with one person staying back and two people trying to make it out of a flooded passage, there is the potential for lots of drama. I think I can give a good answer to this as I've been caving as a hobby for several years now. Nothing really supernaturally creepy ever happened during any of my caving events but I have been in some dangerous situations which have either left me questioning my sanity

or the sanity of those around me. So I used to go caving with a group of people from a university club but I've been out of university a few years and just been doing my own thing. Well, one weekend me and my friend Josie decide we should go on a little trip to a cave with these guys, you know, to see how the old club was doing. The club that taught us how to cave and we in turn taught the new guys when we were the old breed. So anyway, the trip is going according to plan and me and Josie go off caving on our own. But one evening, we decided to join the whole group and cave with them in a tunnel system near to our communal campsite. Now, at the time, it was raining a little and I was beginning to feel uneasy about the whole thing.

But to be honest, I never voice my concerns and just went with it. Big mistake. And so it was that a large group of 12 people arrive at this cave system, spending about 20 minutes checking their gear before entry. The particular cave system we were exploring is normally just a subterranean river on the inside, but it has a few levels of corridors that you can explore high above the water itself. The entrance is really tight, though, and requires you to climb down this tight pipe extremely cautiously, using only your feet to feel for stable footholds. There is absolutely no way to see what is below you, and basically if you lose your footing, there is a nasty fall that could leave you seriously injured if you fell victim to it. However, manage to keep your head together and you'll be fine. So much of caving is winning the battle in your own mind.

So anyways, we get to the cave and the guys in the club are doing their thing, me and Josie are just the old salty veterans coming along to relive the old college days. Once we're inside, we realize that there's this one younger girl who's got herself somehow stuck in the entrance at the very rear of the group. Turns out it was only her second caving trip ever and for some reason, her buddies thought it would be a good idea to bring her into this one. Even though she had panicked whilst in a much larger, easier cave system earlier in the week. So one of the team leaders stays behind to help the panicking girl calm down and to get her to advance further into the cave while the rest of us move deeper, down some of the long corridors before we can start exploring the cave properly. Then I went and asked one of the leaders of the group, a girl I had taught

how to cave just a few years before, what time it was. And to my absolute shock and horror, she straight up tells me that she doesn't know, because she's not wearing a watch. Shocked, I ask her how she expects to know what time to leave the cave to be on time for the callout. For those that don't know, the call out is arguably the most important aspect of serious caving. It's where you let someone on the surface know, even if it's just a friend who's not even on the trip, exactly who is going to be present on a caving trip as well as what time you plan on leaving. Without a call out, if something goes wrong, no one will know you are missing for days or even weeks

and will then have potentially hundreds of caves to look over in the hopes of finding you. And in that time it's entirely possible that you could have died of deprivation by that point. Remember, it takes just around 72 hours without water for a person's heart to just pack up and cease beating. Anyway, the leader of all these sweet innocent beginners tells me that she did not leave a call out or bring any first aid kit or safety equipment. I'm literally furious that she's put us in this situation, but I hold my cool long enough because I don't want the others to panic. Because to panic in a cave system is a straight up death sentence on occasion. But still, I tell her quietly that I am now the call out, and tope out of the cave by 1.30pm.

I reluctantly give her my watch, trying not to snap and straight up call her reckless and dumb before I start back towards the cave entrance. Back near the entranceway, the other leader guy was sitting with the girl who got stuck earlier, the same one who managed to get her into the cave entrance. Back near the entranceway, the other leader guy was sitting with the girl who got stuck earlier, the same one who managed to get her into the cave. Turns out she just couldn't handle it and they'd abandoned the attempt entirely. I go through the situation with them and tell them I'm leaving the cave to be the call out guy. They ask me to go get an SRT kit, basically just ropes and a harness, in case any of the other caving club needed it to climb back up. So I do just that.

A little while later I head back with gear, which they didn't have all of and I had to borrow off of other cavers who were luckily at the same campsite. I get back to the cave and the others are leaving, albeit rather slowly as it is a difficult entrance and climbing out is incredibly harder than climbing in. They all manage to get out but lo and behold, the panicking girl gets stuck. And with the two leaders trapped below her, she is blocking the entrance. We harness her up and I rig up an anchor to try and secure her on a rope in case she falls, but she is wedged in there tight and it isn't in the right frame of mind to get moving. Then I get the news from the others below that the cave is starting to fill,

because of rain. After what seems like eternity of them nicely talking to this panicking girl, telling her that she's doing great and she'll be fine. She's getting worse at this stage. I freak out. I shout at her that she needs to get herself together and get out of the cave because two others are stuck behind her. It kind of works and she nearly stops having a panic attack. Not entirely, but stops hyperventilating which just makes her more stuck. She still won't climb out though. So against all common sense I lie down into the hole and grab her by the harness and pull her up and out of the cave. After that I told the club that they needed to get their stuff together and stop being cowboys but I haven't gone back to them since. Because their foolishness straight up nearly got two team leaders killed.

My name is Tom Kinski and I am the Vice Chair of the Boston Grotto, a caving club affiliated with the National Speleological Society. We meet the first Wednesday of every month on MIT campus and regularly send out open invitations in the hopes of attracting new members. There are always people who show up interested. I'd like to think this wasn't just due to the pizza we ordered and from the upper crust on Charles Street, but who am I kidding? Everyone loves pizza. The Boston Grotto also organizes yearly caving trips to some fascinating far-flung places. Last summer, we planned a deep cave expedition in the Karstik limestone plateau of southern Turkey, and we actually helped to map out the lower reaches

of the cave system. Extending the depth of the Morka Cave from negative 919 meters to negative 1240 meters is now officially the third deepest cave in Turkey, all thanks to our hard work and dedication. It's a very, very fulfilling hobby, but caving is neither easy nor is it really relaxing. In fact, on occasion, caving can be hazardous, terrifying, or even fatal. I have plenty of stories detailing brushes with danger and death, but the one I'm about to tell you is the one that sticks with me the most. So a few years back, a ranger from the Glacial National Park in Montana got in touch with the NSS regarding a previously unexplored cave system. Christy Starr, the office manager of the NSS, then referred the ranger to us due to our expertise in mapping out unexplored sections of cave systems

The ranger then got in touch with the Boston Grotto and then basically offered us an all-expenses-paid caving trip to the Glacier National Park Needless to say, we were ecstatic. You see, whether we're talking about Francis Dark, Magellan, or even Lewis and Clark, we can conclude that most, if not all, of the Earth's surface has been roughly thoroughly documented and mapped out. There is very little in the way of land left to explore, but the same cannot be said for what lies beneath our feet. The National Speleological Society alone estimates that only 10-15% of the world's cave systems have been documented and mapped out And I'm not sure people realize just what an opportunity that presents people like us We have the chance to explore places that no man or woman has ever set foot in before

To truly be the next generation of explorers Carrying the torch in places of ancient sailors 19th century African adventurers, or even the space-faring astronauts of the 60s and 70s. I mean, there is the very real possibility of being able to name something the Kinski Caves, or something along those lines. The very real possibility that some of us could be immortalized in the way that Stanley or Abbott had been, giving their names to Port Stanley in Africa or Abbottabad in British India. And so it was, that myself and two other members of the Boston Grotto ended up driving all the way out to Montana in a van filled with caving gear, snacks, and beer. Given that the drive

took a couple of days, we made something of a road trip out of it, stopping off at Chicago to stretch our legs and take in the sights of the windy city. Accompanying me on the trip was Paul Hutch Hutchinson, coordinator of experience-based training here at Boston University, and another member of the grotto, Nestor Ramos. Previously employed by Lynchburg College, Virginia, Hutch had expanded the outdoor leadership group to include backpacking, rock climbing, horizontal caving, vertical caving, and canoeing, as well as creating an academic minor in outdoor recreation To others, caving and other outdoor activities were just a hobby, but for Hutch, it was more of a vocation, something he was compelled to do, something that was in his blood. And he brought that same passion to almost everything he did. Nestor, on the other hand, was a relatively newer member of the grotto, but what he lacked in raw experience, he made up for in enthusiasm and competence. He was a natural in ways that made the younger me very envious

indeed. After almost five whole days worth of driving, we finally made it out to Browning, Montana. We stopped to get a bite to eat and then headed further down Highway 2 until we reached where we'd be staying, the Traveler's Rest Lodge, a set of log cabins that were every bit as charming as rustic as I imagined. We slept like the dead that night, and after sleeping in a van for four nights, I had never been so appreciative of the divine human invention that is the mattress. The next morning came the trip out to Glacier National Park itself. We packed up our gear which included our very specialized helmets, light, thin, comfortable, with a four-point suspension that will stay on in a fall,

as well as being safe to mount batteries, flashlights, and brackets to. We threw extra batteries and flashlights into small, utilitarian backpacks, along with extra layers of warm clothing as well as food and water. But then came perhaps the coolest part of the trip so far. Given that the Glacier National Park is pretty much inaccessible to anyone but experienced hikers, the rangers out there had planned something a little special for us to save us exhausting ourselves before the exploration even began, a helicopter ride into the park itself. We were told to be in a certain field at a certain time, which we were, and seeing that chopper coming in from a distance, the thudding

of its rotor blades shattering the early morning tranquility was just incredible. I'm a huge fan of old war movies and if it wasn't so chilly that morning, it might have felt like we were back in Vietnam or something, special force guys being airlifted behind enemy lines or something. Despite being ferried deep into the national park via helicopter, finding a safe place to drop us off was another thing entirely. We landed about a mile's hike from the cave system itself, with one of the park rangers guiding us up a set of steep paths which led to the tiny restrictive entrance on the mountainside. We arranged a call out time for 20-30 that evening, enough time for us to get out of the cave and back down the mountainside. We arranged a call out time for 20-30 that evening, enough time for us to get

out of the cave and back down the mountain to the landing site before sunset. After that, the park ranger left us to hike back down to the chopper and our journey began in earnest. I immediately understood why the cave system was previously unexplored. The entrance was barely traversable, even to us experienced cavers, and more than once I had to completely exhale to make my torso fit through the narrower gaps. Hutch was the point man as he headed in, and each little cranny he had to shimmy through was probably assessed for danger. A larger man might have become stuck, stuck to suffer the same fate as that guy in Utah about ten years earlier, something I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. After about a half hour of serious anxiety

that verged on claustrophobia, the tunnels began to open up a little, and I really do mean a little. They were still narrow enough that we could do nothing but crawl on our hands and knees, occasionally just our bellies, in order to get deeper inside a place that apparently no man or woman had tread before. It was terrifying, but thrilling in a way that I don't think I could put into words. It's like one burst of adrenaline, and knowing you're the vanguard of subterranean exploration, and you can almost feel it buzzing in your fingertips. So the last thing I was expecting when we found ourselves crawling into a larger, more open cave was to hear Hutch's disappointment. As you can imagine, you can't make loud noises in a cave system, and you have to be as quiet

as possible given the reverberations and echoes can quite easily cause a cave in if the rock isn't of a certain density. So at first, I couldn't quite make out what Hutch was getting at. I mean, I seriously thought he was injured or something at first. He started hissing and whispering curses, bawling his fists in frustration at something he'd seen illuminated by the lamp on his helmet. After he crawled through, I watched him sit down, leaning back against a cave wall with his face obscured by his hands. I asked him what the matter was, but he just shook his head, a melancholy to his body language that I'd rarely seen before as he pointed over toward the opposite side of the cave. There, lying on the cold stone floor, was a burlap sack, a small leather-bound notebook sitting just nearby.

Only then did I join him against the cave wall, sorely lamenting the fact that this wasn't going to be the virgin expedition that we'd imagined it to be. But that didn't mean that we were about ready to give up. Not by a long shot. Whoever had been down in this place previously had obviously never officially recorded their findings, so the door for us to map out and name the place was still very much a possibility. Before we pushed on, we decided to search the burlap sack and inspect the small book for clues as to what we might be up against as we moved deeper. As I kicked open the sack, I could see there were the remains of some old food container along with an old style water flask, both of which were empty. They looked old, extremely old, and

I hurried to inspect the small books so to see if it had any trace of date inside. The thing fell apart in my hands. Moisture and time have long eroded the page's bindings but we did find a page where the date was partially legible. It read 1860 something, the last number completely worn away by the damp cave air. The book had been sitting down there for the better part of 200 years and although we couldn't read a single full sentence of what was written in it, I'd have given anything to know what the cavers of yore thought of their subterranean experiences. As we advanced further into the cave system, I couldn't help but wonder just what would

cause an explorer to just abandon their notebook like that. But we soon discovered the reason. Two caves over, we found them. Hutch called it out as soon as the beam of headlamp passed over the dome of rib bones that jutted out from the rock. It was nothing short of terrifying, knowing they'd come down here one day, never to return, never to see their loved ones again, and all the while their reasoning for being down here eluded us. After that, here were three things we saw before we turned tail and got out of there. The first were the skeleton's finger bones. Basically, a person's finger bone is divided up into three distinct sections known as phalanges, the smallest sections being in a person's fingertip. These have a really distinct shape.

Go ahead and google it and you'll see what I mean. So it was pretty evident to us that something traumatic had occurred that wore the tips of the bones away. It felt intensely creepy, speculating on how this guy had potentially lost his way in the caves, probably going mad in the darkness and began to scratch at the walls of the cave until his fingers were worn down to the bone and even then he hadn't stopped scratching. But we couldn't find any sections of the cave wall that bore the marks he would have made which led us to the second thing we saw before we got out of there. It was a skull. There were scratch marks on his skull, right around the

orbital sockets. None of us said a thing about it as we studied the yellowing bone under his headlamps before it was obvious what had occurred. Down in the dark almost 200 years before, he had scratched out his own eyes. We were already backing out of the cave at that point, praying we wouldn't get lost on the way back as this poor soul had obviously done. I tried not to think about the moment that poor soul's lamplight had run out, condemning him to spend what little time he had left in absolute darkness. I tried to show Hutch and Nestor, but they weren't in the least bit interested in hanging around any longer, and to be honest, I totally understand why. As we sat around the open field we'd landed at, waiting for our helicopter taxi to arrive, we agreed not to talk about what we'd seen until

we got back. There was a good chance that if we told the rangers what we'd seen, they'd ask us to go back in to retrieve the body of the old caver, something none of us were particularly keen to do. And as much as we agreed not to talk about it until we got back home, there never did come a time when we discussed what we'd seen down there, ever. I mean, when the rangers asked us how the cave had gone, we just told them that it was unsafe to be down there there and there was no chance of turning the cave system into a tourist trap, let alone a place for experienced cavers to go when they wanted a challenge. I suppose I've waited long enough to get this whole thing off my chest, so now I suppose everyone knows about the body down there in the caves of Glacier

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We'll put a smile on your face. Bet on the sports you love with BetRivers Sportsbook. Take a chance. Must be 19 plus. Available in Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600 A few years back, I was really into caving. Or to give it a stupid name that no one uses anymore. Spelunking.

I really didn't think I'd be into it when I first tried it. Like I'd have considered myself mildly claustrophobic, the kind of guy who always felt a little anxious zipping a sleeping bag up all the way. I don't know whether it just woke something up in me or it was the rush of getting over a fear or something to that effect, but I took to it like a duck to water. You're somewhere you shouldn't be, exploring parts of the world that very few people see, relying on people, truly relying on them, to ensure your safety and theirs. It's a rush, that's for certain, but it's not without its dangers. So every year my family and a few close friends head out to a national park or something along

those lines to spend some time with nature. And one particular year I managed to convince them to go out to Mammoth Cave National Park over in Kentucky, which is home to the more than 400 miles of passageways, making it the world's largest known cave system. The cave system is located within the Green River Valley and its winding chambers, pools, and limestone labyrinths are equal parts beautiful and eerie. Ten different tours offer guests the opportunity to explore the decorated historic and dripstone areas. The cave complex is especially well known for its natural entrance and gothic avenue, a passageway filled with historic stone monuments and signatures from 19th century visitors. So that was just about enough history and photo ops for my mom and aunts. The river could provide hours of fishing for my dad and uncles, all the while myself and my cousin

could enjoy the caving there. All went well with the vacation, right up until the second to last day when my cousin and I decided to get a little too explorative during a visit to the caves. My cousin was fairly new to caving so for the first few days we didn't go too deep or too far. Last thing I wanted to do was freak him out before we'd even done anything worth writing home about. But as the week drew to a close, there was no way I was going home without finding something a little more extreme to traverse. So as we were heading back to civilization after an afternoon's caving, we found a slit just less than knee high in the rock wall of a cavern. You had to get down on your stomach to fit into such a tight squeeze, but if you did, it led to a small crawlspace that cut through the entire rock. After a few meters, I noticed that quartz was growing on the passageway ceiling, and in the light of our headlamps, they glittered in a way that I can't even really describe in words.

I mean, it's like something out of a fairy tale. A still from one of those weird Jim Henson movies. It's just magical. So, we entered one at a time, given that the tunnel was only wide enough for one person. The old claustrophobic me would have thought this place was a living nightmare. For real. I'd have straight up had a panic attack and probably died of a heart attack before deprivation never set in. Every single time you took a breath in some places you'd feel the ceiling of the tunnel on your back, it was that narrow. But the new me just found it thrilling. Once you get it into your head that these things can't just up and collapse on you, you get this feeling of calm and then one of exhilaration when you realized you were conquering your fears and going places other men dared not tread. The deeper inside the tunnel we went,

the more incredible the scenery became. It was like a whole other tiny world tucked away with a solid rock. But eventually, like most small subterranean tunnels, it just kind of petered out. At one turn there was a dead end, the other was host to all kinds of stalactites and stalagmites. Those are those like rock spike things that you usually see on the roofs of caves, only you get them on the bottom too in most places. I'm checking out the stiles to see if there's a possibility of us twisting through them to get to the deeper sections of the tunnel, when I hear my cousin whisper something behind me,

something that honestly made my blood run cold. He said he could feel water on his back, something was dripping on him. As it turns out, while everyone was having a good time outside, checking out the statues and whatnot, it had started to rain. Only they neglected to tell us that. Thanks guys. It's also worth noting that the tunnel we were in had sank down into the rock for a little while before sort of flattening out at the bottom.

And to save you all a little geology lecture, I'll get to the point. The tunnel we were in was filling up with water. Granted it was filling up slowly, but The tunnel we were in was filling up with water. Granted, it was filling up slowly, but the position we were in meant that only a few inches of water could effectively drown us. And that's a real bad position to be in if you don't own a pair of gills. Needless to say, we turned around as fast as we could, which took like the longest time when you factor in how narrow the tunnel was, then began the long, slow crawl back along the flat part of the tunnel. It was absolutely horrific.

I tried to keep calm, as calm and collected as I could, but hearing my cousin almost cracking up in front of me is something that still makes me shudder to think about. My biggest fear was that he'd just lock up, which scared people are prone to do during particularly grueling caving sessions. For some reason the brain just decided it doesn't want to take the body any further and that's that. They can be stuck in the rock for hours before they're calm enough to keep going. I was terrified he'd just lock up, not move and be the reason we both drowned down there Dying while our family laughed and joked in their marquee tents But he didn't That magnificent idiot kept his cool, relatively speaking anyway, and just pushed on

That doesn't mean it didn't get pretty close It was horrendous feeling the water slowly rising around us Seeing little drops turn into trickles, each new one causing my heart rate to speed up and my adrenaline to surge. By the time the tunnels started to turn upward, back towards the main entrance the water was almost up to my lips. Moving made these splashing noises and both of our sets of clothes were completely soaked through. This little incident caused a ton of chaos for the remaining two days. My aunt and uncle blamed me for almost getting my cousin killed and they pretty much took it out on my parents for allowing me such a dumb hobby. We didn't go back into those caves at all and to be honest, it took me a few

months before I even thought about caving again. It hasn't put me off entirely and I think it did me some good to become a little more safety conscious. But you can bet that I check the weather before caving now, every single time, and if it even looks like it's going to rain, don't do it. It's just not worth losing your life over, no matter how amazing it is. So at my old high school, there were these maintenance tunnels that snaked for hundreds of meters underneath the building itself. There were the newly built ones, and then there were the old ones that the school didn't use anymore. My friend Katie and I found an entrance to the old tunnels in a classroom that had long since been abandoned.

We had to bust the lock on an old trapdoor, unscrew a round metal top layer, and lower ourselves into a square, dirty tunnel. The main tunnels were about two feet wide by maybe only six feet tall, with maybe a few inches of dirty, stagnant water flooding the bottom. Now these tunnels were very dark and very cold, with the utterly disgusting stench of stagnant water and old mold. It was gross, but we began exploring the tunnels a little more every day.

One time, we were in there for maybe 20 minutes tops when Katie almost passed out from the smell. At least, that's what I thought it was. Turns out that there was some dangerous gases down there. What I found out later were methane sinks that were actually pretty dangerous to those without safety equipment. I had to pretty much drag her out. But the next time, we brought respiratory masks, waterproof footwear, and flashlights, then set about mapping out pretty much the entire system. All in all, we mapped out more than 700 feet of twisting, turning tunnels. It became something of an underground lair for us.

They went up, down, and turned to the sides, so much so we had to use chalk to mark the walls so we could find our way back. After a particularly long expedition, maybe like three hours, we headed back to where we came in, only to find the opening was actually locked. We pushed and turned on the metal cover, becoming pretty frightened when we found it wouldn't budge. We were basically trapped inside and realizing that did not feel good at all. We pushed through the tunnels, trying to open each of the three openings that we had found over time, but not a single one of them would open. Any panic that had been simmering away before had now bubbled to the surface and to say the least, we were completely freaking out.

We ended up rushing down a tunnel we hadn't actually been down before, hoping it would lead us to an exit. After a while, I kept hearing noises behind us. I told Katie, who was crawling in front of me. We froze, turned off our flashlight and listened. Sure enough, a steady splashing sound was actually following us. We just freaked out and just made a run for it. Now please bear in mind we had absolutely no idea where we were going at this point. It was just pure blind panic. After what felt like an hour of frenzy

dashing through the tunnels, tripping over pipes and scraping our knees, we emerged into a bigger room. We realized it wasn't a room, but sort of a down section of a much bigger room. As it turned out, there was someone doing maintenance down there with us. We hid behind some old metal stairs and when the guy left for more tools, we scrambled up the stairs, out the door, and hid in the girls' locker rooms for the rest of the day. We never did find out who locked us down there or what that splashing noise was, but you can bet we never went into those tunnels again. I've told this one before, but it's definitely worth retelling, especially if I include a bit more detail. A long time ago I happened to be on a visit to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico with

two of my college buddies. So this one particular small cave we decided to explore began with a narrow 15 meter belly crawl. At the open there was a buttload of cobwebs spread across the cave entrance but they seemed to clear up after a few feet. Pretty creepy but generally nothing to worry about. Although I really hate that feeling of them when they touch your face and there are a few dead flies in there or whatever. Anyway, I was the most experienced caver so I went first and did the belly crawl pretty quickly, pretty much making myself the human shield for those big clumps of old cobwebs. As the tunnel ended, I came out in a small domed room, about a meter and a half tall and about four or five meters across.

I had some time before my friends made it, so I was describing the room to them whilst dusting the spiderwebs from my clothes. I looked up at the ceiling and gasped a bit. I'm not afraid of spiders, but the sheer volume of them caught me off guard. It must have been a minimum of like a thousand, all crawling around each other. Now that I think about it, it was probably more like two or three thousand, all hanging from the ceiling with egg sacks all around them. I mean, they were a legion, like there wasn't a speck of rock ceiling to be seen as the entire thing was just a mass of eight-legged crawlies. Hey guys, there's a lot of spiders hanging from the ceiling.

Don't stand up when you get here. I called to my friends. My friends were considerably more cautious of the spiders and began to ask a few questions about them. How big are they? What color are they? How many are there? And that kind of thing. They're not that big. They kind of look like black widows, but they're not.

They're the wrong color. It almost seem like they're brown. Their legs look a little lighter than the body. I said, studying them as best as I could with my headlamp. I was no spider expert, but I knew a black widow when I saw one. But then, a friend of mine, who was a big animal expert at the time and actually went on to be a Wisconsin DNR warden, yelled out, Really? Do they have a small pattern on their back, sort of like a violin? Uh, yes, I replied, already getting a really bad feeling in my gut. Our buddy, the DNR warden, burst into the room,

looked up, shuddered, then forced himself to look at one of the spiders as close as he could manage. The color in his face drained out and he hissed, Get out! Everyone get out of the cave! He didn't say any more. He just rushed to get out of the cave as quickly as he could. It took us all about 10 or 15 minutes to get into the room and it took us about a whole 2 minutes to get all the way out of the cave. When we finally got out, the other two of us were confused. My warden friend told us that what we were looking at was a nest of brown recluse spiders, some of the more poisonous arachnids on the entire continent, and we had been unlucky enough to stumble across their lair.

Apparently when they bite you, you go through excruciating pain for a few days, skin necrosis, and you could possibly die. We didn't go any more caves with cobwebs in them for the variety of terrains. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Find a Toyo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. Treadexperts.ca Hiya, y'all. So my name is Alex and I went to high school here in Liverpool in the UK.

Our school was a bit different than some of the others in the area in that it offered us a chance to partake in the combined cadet force. The CCF started for us once we hit 14 and you got the choice of either the Army, navy, air force or community service. Being a red-blooded male with a liking for all things military I chose the army and it was honestly one of the most fun times I've ever had in my entire time at school. Every Thursday we got to dress up in camouflage clothing to go to school in. This included boots, berets, all that stuff and my god it felt cool getting into that gear and marching off to school in. This included boots, berets, all that stuff, and my god it felt cool getting

into that gear and marching off to school, with like every other kid in the area who went to other schools thinking we were incredibly cool as well. But it didn't come without its hazards. You see, like most high schools, there were a few bullies that made life for the rest of us pretty much unbearable, and I was no different. One kid was intent on making my life as terrible as possible, and I'd be lying if I said he didn't succeed on a few occasions. But little side note here, I wasn't nearly as tall or as strong as this kid. However, once I got super sick of the maltreatment and decided to get a little payback, we were playing football one afternoon during PE, which is physical education, and me and my bully were on opposite teams. I ended up marking him, basically trying to make sure he didn't get the ball, or if he did, he wouldn't have it much longer. At one point he gets the ball, kind of chuckles when he sees me,

as if to be like, what are you gonna do, short stuff, then tries to jink past me. I just throw myself into, if I may say so myself, a near perfect slide tackle, taking the ball out from under him and felling him like a freaking oak tree. He smashes into the ground, wind knocked out of him, appealing for a foul, but our teacher just tells him to get up, as it was a fair tackle, albeit a little rough. I can't even tell you how amazing that felt, seeing that look on his face. But that feeling paled in comparison to the anxiety I felt when I realized he wasn't about to just let this slide, no pun intended. He was clearly out to get revenge, in a big, bad way, and that was something I was

definitely not looking forward to. Anyway, we ended up going on this big field trip to an army base just north of Liverpool at this place called Altcar. All the army kids are there, since there had been a lot of hype about the trip. We were due to have an actual live firing session, fieldcraft exercises, stuff like that, but we were all really, really excited about the paintball session that they'd promised us at the end of the day.

So all is going well until the fieldcraft lesson. We were given these little pallets of camouflage face paint, get split up into two big teams, then get told we'll basically be playing a giant version of hide-and-seek among this big wooded area that was contained in the base perimeter. All good, right? Nope. Big nope. Because I'm on the hiding team first,

and my bully is on the seeking team. So off we go, into the woods to hide. Me and a mate of mine manage to find these really, really thick bushes to hide in, pretty much impenetrable and just chill there, keeping as quiet as possible, as we start to hear the seeking team, like, looking around the woods for us. It was such a rush, hearing people wondering where we were, being totally oblivious to the fact that we were just feet away from them. So you can imagine our absolute disappointment when someone comes stumbling through the bushes

to check if there's anyone there. Now, I know what you're thinking. It just so happened to be the bully that found us. Yes, but actually no. It was one of his mates, and while my friend just legged it out of the bushes to find a new hiding place, the bully's mate sees me and pounces. These are all the rugby players, so he doesn't have much trouble gripping a short little goblin like me and holding me in place while he starts shouting for the bully that he's found me, he's found me, over and over again. I struggle, I fight, but it's no good. The kid pretty much has me in a vice-like headlock, and I'm not going anywhere.

But the bully appears. Just so we're all clear on what's happening here, we all pretty much are completely alone in these woods, no one can see us, and the bully guy, who's completely bent on revenge at this point, has me right where he wants me. I honestly thought I was about to die for a moment. He starts punching me in the stomach while his mate holds me still and as much as I'm kicking and swearing and trying to break free, it's just no good. The punches start landing on my face soon after and I begin to taste blood in my mouth and he lands punch after punch around my head and face. Right when I think it can't get any worse, he picks a stick up off the ground, snaps it in two so that he's basically made a little spear, then starts saying how he's going

to take one of my eyes out to teach me a lesson for trying to be the big man during football practice. I start doubling my efforts, kicking and screaming, and the guy holding me has to put a stinking sweaty hand over my mouth to keep me from making too much noise. It was horrendous, literally the worst experience of my entire childhood, watching the sharp end of that stick creeping closer and closer towards my eye. I could still close them over, but that sort of makes it worse. Now I'm just stood there, struggling away, waiting for the moment that sharp stick starts to push against my eyelid. Then, out of nowhere, I hear a shout.

Like an oi oi, followed by a load of rustling leaves. It was one of my fellows who had been assigned to teach us fieldcraft, like this actual regular army bloke who was obviously in no mood to deal with spoiled posh kids. He throws the bully to the ground, and I feel the arm around my throat loosen and disappear as his mate turns tail and flees the scene. The bully got absolutely beasted for the rest of the day, wasn't allowed to do anything else including paintball and had to go for these horrible punishment runs. It caused a ton of stuff at my school with parents complaining about the loose discipline even though it was supposed to be the military. But after that, he never picked on me again. Maybe getting picked on himself made him think twice about the whole bully thing but either way, school got a lot easier to deal with after that whole incident. I'm totally about to give my identity away 100% if anyone here knows me, but whatever. Hopefully I can rejig a few details to salvage my anonymity.

So throughout the entirety of the 9th grade, I was homeschooled. Not for any particular reason, I don't think. Like, it's not as if my parents were super religious or anything, although my mom did attend church occasionally. Myself and my siblings were schooled at home, partly because mom had a master's degree in education, so she was more than proficient in making sure we had the proper syllabus etc. We also moved around a lot when I was a teen so I guess that probably had something to do with it too. It was a pretty cool time in my life. We all learned a lot whilst having a lot of fun, had a good deal of one-on-one time with our teacher and lots of time to be alone or outdoors

or just whatever we wanted so long as we weren't watching TV. I remember those years quite fondly. But by the time I hit the 10th grade, I was sent to an all-boys private school. It was the sort of place where you had to wear a shirt and tie every day. There was a country club across the highway. It was way out in the suburbs. I'm pretty sure you know the kind of place I'm talking about. But anyway, on my first day of school, I was sent through orientation, which included an audition of sorts with a choir director. The school was very small, you see, and with such a small pool of applicants, the choir director was pretty much free to choose whoever he liked for the boys'

choir, a group of about 20 ninth to twelfth grade boys who were taught to sing all the super grim Gregorian stuff. As my mother was a church going woman, I had actually sung in one or two choirs previously, so I had a fair bit of vocal training and range. So it kind of goes without saying, the director of the choir thought I was it. He accepted me into the choir on the spot. I was flattered, but soon realized that I was somewhat unique for more than my talent. My voice had yet to drop.

I was the only 10th grader in my school who was an alto. Yeah, I know, I was a really late bloomer, but I'm over it now and so should you be. So as you can imagine, I was more than a bit embarrassed for a boy trying to fit in a new school. Anyway, I soldiered on through the 10th grade until sometime around Christmas break when the choir was in full swing with the 7,000 days of Christmas and decked the halls when it was announced that the boy choir would be putting on a play, and that play was to be The Wizard of Oz. When it was announced during assembly one day, it barely took a few moments for me to understand where it was going. The entire grade knew the cast before it was announced. Four months into my first year of real school ever, I was informed I would

be playing the role of Dorothy, ruby slippers and all. And despite me refusing at first, play Dorothy I did. Ruby slippers, pigtails, necessary alternative lifestyle implications, and third grader dressed as Toto and all. In front of the entire school. You don't know embarrassment until you sing somewhere over the rainbow to a crowded auditorium of all-male squash players. It was the most terrifying, humiliating event of my entire life so far. I puked beforehand out of pure nervousness, and I puked afterwards out of pure shame. Not long after, I dropped out and continued to be homeschooled until I was able to take the pre-college SATs. I just couldn't carry on at that school.

I didn't have a proper girlfriend until I was in 11th grade. I had messed around with a few girls at middle school and high school dances and stuff, swapped numbers with a girl at a buddy's birthday party one time, but I'd never had anything serious. Nothing I was really emotionally invested in until then. Then, just after the start of the 11th grade, a girl transferred to our high school from out of state. She was the cutest girl

I'd ever laid eyes on in my entire life. I mean, she honestly still might be. Her name was Noor. She was born in Malaysia but moved here to Greater Boston when she was like 5 years old. She had these big dark brown eyes. I mean, so dark they looked almost black, that darted around whatever room she was in, just shyly observing all that passed. Her hair was so thick too, like, I don't know if this is all Asian girls, but there just seemed to be so much more of it growing on her head than other girls. I can still remember how it used to sit on her shoulders, almost impossible to tame, no matter how hard she tried to do so. It had this weird kind of bounce and curl to it too. Like most Chinese, Japanese, or Korean girls

tend to have this super straight hair, you guys know what I mean, but Nora's was like wavy almost. God, it was so gorgeous. Her nose was super wide and flat and she always mentioned how she didn't like it but I just thought it was cute Then her lips, my god, they were so plump and pink like this gorgeous contrast between her golden brown skin and these soft rose pink peaches Other guys in our grade used to make fun of her acne and she did have a lot of scars from it along her cheeks but I didn't care. I thought they were beautiful. She was imperfect but still I think I was smitten with her from the get-go. She was also a super nice girl too. Humble, smart, funny, the works. So it didn't take her long at all to find a little friend group that she could integrate herself into. And to top it all off, she was on the track team too. Usually a person is either super athletic or super bookish, but Noor managed to be both all at once. I'll just never ever forget the moment one of her track friends came over to me by the

lockers and asked if I was seeing anyone. She was cute, sure, but not exactly my type. All I wanted was Noor, but I had absolutely no idea how to approach her. Then, to my absolute shock, before I could even answer, the girl made it clear it wasn't her that was interested. It was the new girl. The Malaysian girl. The one on the track team with her. She asked if I knew who she was talking about and I tried to keep my cool but the look on my face just totally gave it away. The girl just giggled, nodded and walked away smiling. She was happy but me, I can't quite describe how I was feeling although that's not going to stop me from trying. You know that feeling of when you super like someone and it's like butterflies? Well, take that feeling and times that by like a thousand. I was so excited I felt sick, like physically sick, and I swear to God, as I tried to put the padlock back in my locker,

it took me a good few tries before I managed it because I was shaking, straight up shaking from the adrenaline. So I won't bore you with all the courtship details, but I ended up being with Noor for a while. It was a dream teenage romance, everything a guy like me could have ever wished for, and for like 18 months of our lives, I think we were both truly happy and truly in love. But as the SATs approached and we each started looking at colleges, I realized I might not get the grades to be able to get my preferred major at Boston U. I mean Harvard was pretty much out of the question for me, but not to Nor. She was pretty much on track to ace her way into the place on a partial to full arts scholarship. Not only that, but I'd kind of had my heart set on going to

college down in Florida. There were some dang good schools down there, and that's not even covering the weather. I played a lot of soccer in Florida as an excellent place for that, since the weather is superb and there's a sizable Latin community. So, now that you know that, picture the scene, it's just another day of high school, and happy-go-lucky me walks into school one morning, only to be pulled aside by a teacher and told I was wanted in the principal's office. Whatever for I couldn't possibly imagine but I knew I hadn't done anything wrong so I wasn't worried. Even though maybe looking back I really should have been because the moment I walk in there first thing I see is the uniformed police officer standing just next to the principal's desk.

He had his shades on, indoors. Who does that? But even without seeing the guy's eyes, I knew he was staring daggers at me. The principal asked me to take a seat, in the most Chris Hansen type I know you're guilty way ever. So I do. I manage to keep my cool for about 30 seconds while they spew a bunch of vague nonsense about wishing they didn't have to talk to me like this, how it's such a shame, blah blah blah. I snap, telling them I'm pretty much a legal adult and they should just come out and tell me what the problem is. Then the cop says it something that made my jaw drop you think you're a man laying hands on a

woman like that so here's the thing this all came to light in the week after one of Nora's friends had a conversation with her about college she told her friend that she had her heart set on Harvard and she would definitely not be moving down to Florida with me. She then apparently burst into tears and said something along the lines of, Sam is going to be disappointed with me. I'm scared to tell him. The friend then somehow interprets this as a confession that I was hitting her in private and within about 24 hours, the entire school seemed to think that I was some kind of woman beater. You should have seen the looks I got around school that day. There were guys with full-blown yellow fever that straight up wanted

to kill me. I remember walking through the school parking lot towards my car at the end of the day and as I walked past this one kid's car, he started revving the engine really loud then let his car lurch forward before throwing on the brakes as if to say, I could have, but I didn't. We ended up breaking up before moving away, and it was the worst thing ever. My heart was completely broken, but that wasn't even really the worst part. Some people in our little North Shore town just didn't seem to believe that I was innocent, and honestly, I don't think I'd have survived the year if I didn't move down to Florida for college. I know that's not your typical ghost spooky skeleton

horror story, but that stuff just isn't scary compared to an accusation like that and all the fear and loathing that results from it. When I look back at my high school years, I always seem to remember one thing more than anything else. It's not the classes or the football or the fact that I had to transfer a lot because of my parents' jobs or the terrible cafeteria food. It's meeting a girl. Like I said, I was and am an army brat and thanks to my dad having to move around the country a bunch, I had to chronically transfer between high schools, sometimes a year at a time. According to the therapist I visit these days, this was pretty bad for me, but I digress. Because it was during my senior year at high school out in Oregon, that's when I met Sophie. She was shy, reserved, to the point that some people just straight up called her old

and ice queen. But she was so much more than that. She wrapped up her idealism in stone and the way the world is these days, I don't blame her. We had a lot in common. I mean, an incredible amount in common, despite the an incredible amount in common despite the fact that we lived on opposite sides of the country for almost most of our lives. But we were different too. Different in all the right ways if you ask me, like complimentary if that makes sense. I was super passionate about things, she was not. She was dead inside, as she put it at one point, and I was convinced that I would breathe life into her. But I didn't care what she said. She was honestly the most incredible young woman I'd ever met in my life, and part of me thinks she still is even like 20 years later.

But it wasn't smooth sailing, not at all. You see, because I transferred to her school for senior year, I didn't really have any idea of what had gone on at that school previously. Blissful ignorance, I'd call it. Ignorance that was quickly shattered. About a month into seeing her regularly, she started to withdraw, started to kind of push me away. I confronted her about it and the truth came out. At the time we met, she was fresh out of a long-term relationship with a guy a few years older than us. I mean, like maybe only a fortnight fresh out of it and obviously it was still super raw for her. She was hurting and I totally understood why. But god, she was amazing and I made it perfectly clear that I wasn't about to give up on her like that.

This other dude had basically promised her the good life, marriage, kids, the works. Apparently he was a college grad with some lucrative new job in the burgeoning tech industry down in California. He made six figures, he was handsome, tall, pretty much everything I was not. But right when it came to her dropping out of school to start her life with him down in San Francisco, he told her he met someone else. Can you believe that? Talking her up like that, only to let her down. I don't think anyone can blame her for feeling or acting the way she did. She told me she needed space, which I was only too happy to give her.

I was heartbroken, just like she was, and all of a sudden we had something else in common too. I pretty much begged her to give me another chance one night. I sneakily stole the key to my dad's liquor cabinet and drank a few glasses of vermouth. Yeah, I know, I knew nothing about alcohol. The smell that stuff gives off makes me ill even today, enough to get me emotionally lubricated, then ended up pretty much begging her to give me a chance. She agreed too, but on one condition, that I gave her some space for like a week or two, and that we wouldn't be exclusive for a while. How long, she didn't know, but she was freshly out of some sort of nightmare breakup and was just not ready to jump right back into the pool.

So while all this was going on, unbeknownst to me, there was a silent observer. So right in the middle of me feeling terrible over what was going on with Sophie, a 10th grade girl I'd seen around school approached me when I was walking to my car one afternoon. Her name was Josie and she excused herself before telling me she was really sorry about what was going on with me and Sophie, how she totally sympathized with the situation and that she hoped she could help take my mind off of it. It was so dumb of me but I asked her out, like there and then. I think I just wanted to show Sophie that I was entirely capable of finding another girl, like I was demonstrating my value or something. It might sound egotistical or selfish or whatever, but I think some of you might agree that I was definitely not thinking straight at the time. But do you ever think straight during high school? The entire thing is just a mess of

hormones and emotions and pressure and stress. It's amazing any of us make it out of there intact. I ended up going on a couple of dates with Josie and Sophie was well aware of what I was doing. I could tell she wasn't impressed. That she was even less impressed that it was a 10th grader but what else was I supposed to do? Just lie in my bedroom feeling sorry for myself? I had to do something and hearing Josie say those words, I can help you take your mind off of it. Oh my god, you have no idea how comforting that felt, how it was exactly what I needed to hear. So, we dated. I'm not sure if Sophie also dated either. I saw her walking around town with a guy

at one point but she'd been pretty open about her having a lot of guy friends so I wouldn't have been surprised if it was just one of them. But with the time that I spent with Josie it was nice, really nice. She wasn't as mature as Sophie, she wasn't as self-assured but I liked her a lot and she really did help me take my mind off of my heartbreak. Yet, she just wasn't Sophie and no matter how lovely she tried to be, no matter how much she said what I wanted to hear, she wasn't the girl that I had fallen in love with.

It sounds too cruel to say, but Josie just couldn't hold a candle to Sophie. It was little things, like how she couldn't stand horror movies, something that is still a huge part of my life, how she was super into Disney and stuff when, oh my god, I can't think of anything worse than having to sit through another viewing of Cinderella. God, I hate that saccharine whitewashed nonsense. Things kind of came to a head when Josie asked me to be her boyfriend. I had to be brave, bite the bullet and tell her that I didn't want that. That I was still super hung up on Sophie, that I don't think I could commit myself to another girl. And the worst thing was that Josie appeared to understand. She was upset, sure, but she seemed willing to wait for me.

It was only then that I realized what I was doing to her, exactly what Sophie was doing to me. One heck of a love triangle, right? Or if you include Sophie's dumb, beamer-driving rich guy ex, more like a love square, but anyway. One night, as I'm sitting up in my bedroom, chilling and playing PlayStation, my mom comes into my room with me, saying there's a girl on the phone. I assume it's Josie, since she was the one calling me most nights just to talk or whatever. So, me being an absolute idiot, answer the phone like, Hey Jojo, what's up? Silence.

Who was Jojo? It was Sophie. And I know you might expect her to have sounded like annoyed or something She wasn't She almost sounded scared I told her not to worry about that A weak response I know But I just wanted to change the subject and find out why she was calling But more importantly

Why she sounded so afraid I can't remember exactly how the conversation went It's been years, but it went a little something like this. Did you leave something on my windowsill? Uh, no, why? Are you sure? Yes, I'm sure. I'd say so if I did. You swear to god you didn't leave anything on my windowsill tonight. You haven't been around here at all? Yes, Sophie. Why would I lie about that? You told me to give you your space and I have. Tell me what's going on. Well, someone did. Her voice was all shaky like she was on the verge of tears. What are you talking about? What did

they leave? A heart. A freaking pig's heart or a cow's heart or something, I don't know. But it was all bloody and gross and there were flies all over the thing and oh my god, I was so effing scared right now. I asked her if she wanted me to come over but she said no. She just needed me to swear that it wasn't me that did it. So I did. I swore over and over that I would never ever do something like that. That it was the kind of thing an absolute psycho would do and how that just wasn't me. I told her I loved her, how all I wanted was for her to be happy, if that was with me, cool if not

also cool. But I was not about to get all Hannibal Lecter on her no matter how much it hurt that we couldn't be together. She calmed down a little after that but only a little. I told her if anything like that happened again that she should just call the cops or that it might be an idea to do that already. Then an idea struck me. There were a lot of guys in our school who were into Sophie and for obvious reasons. She was smart, hot, adorable, cute, and super approachable despite how introverted people thought she was. If it was one of those idiots, if one of them had dared scare the love of my life at that point, god, they would pay. But the next day I was hanging out with Josie after school when I happened to bring it up in conversation.

I told her the whole thing, every little detail and naturally she was grossed out. Who would do something like that? Oh god, what a psycho, that poor girl. Stuff like that. I was really, really worried but like she'd done before, Josie helped me feel better about the whole thing. How whatever criminally insane monster that had left butchered meat on a girl's windowsill was obviously too cowardly to actually confront or do anything too violent. And like I said, Josie had this way of making me feel so much better about stuff. It's just a shame it didn't last long, and I never expected things to turn out the way that they did.

Because a few nights later I got a call from Sophie again. I happened to have a cordless in my room, something my mom and dad used to get super angry about because it drained the battery, blah blah, but I was a dumb teenager. As soon as I picked up, expecting the call to be for one of my parents, I heard panicked breathing on the other end. Jake, Jake, it's Soph. There's something, there's someone outside my house. Who?

I don't know, but they're just staring up at my window. They wave too in this creepy way and I'm so freaking scared right now. She sounded on the verge of tears. I'd never heard her so frightened before. I'd never heard her so frightened before. I'd never heard anyone so frightened before. What? Are your parents home? No.

They're just out of town for the week and I'm just so scared right now. Please come over. Did you call the cops? No, I mean, I will. I just... I'm panicking right now. Do it. Call the cops. Then call me back. Do it, call the cops.

Then call me back, let me know what the sitch is. A few minutes go by and the call comes back. She did call the cops, but they told her since no crime was being committed, they couldn't really do anything. They promised that they'd send a patrol car by, which they did, but the person stalking Sophie had just hidden when they saw the cruiser and then simply returned when they were gone. That's when I told her to lie, to just call back and tell her the person had a gun, a knife, a bat, anything to get those lazy

idiots just to act. She said okay, that she'd call back when she was done. I hung up. One minute went by, two minutes, then three. I was shaking, straight up shaking by the time I grabbed the phone and called her. I had to know what was going on, but now the line seemed to be dead. Not the kind of engaged dial tone that tells you there's a call on already or one that directs you immediately to answer the machine, the line was straight up dead, like someone had cut the line. I threw on my sneakers so hard it actually caused an abrasion that I didn't even realize was there until the whole thing was over, some big nasty swollen graze thing. I ran out of my parents' house, check that, bolted out of my parents' house without even shutting the door.

I almost fell over myself as I heard my mom screaming at me like, What are you doing, Jake? Where are you going? I didn't answer. I didn't have the breath. I ran and ran and ran the entire way to Sophie's place, just over a mile. I think I might have ran a five minute mile, I'm not even kidding. I was fighting back the urge to puke by the time I got there and saw who she was talking about. A figure in a black hoodie, standing outside her window. Only how Soph didn't see the actual effing knife they were carrying, I don't know.

Or maybe I do. It was one of those combat knives with a black alloy coating. You probably know what I mean. I just slammed into them, trying to focus on holding the knife-carrying arm to the ground while I screamed at the top of my lungs for help. It was a struggle, a real struggle, but I remember the person being considerably weaker than me, smaller than me, almost dainty. I had them on their back, one hand on their arm, keeping it locked down,

and the other kind of like mushing their face. I don't on their back, one hand on their arm, keeping it locked down, the other kind of like mushing their face. I don't really know what I was doing. I've never been a fighter, but when I took my hands away from their face and onto their neck to choke them, I saw who it was. It was Josie. It had been Josie the whole time. Josie had left the animal's hearts. Josie, who had been apparently making hoax calls to her house. Josie, who had gone around to scare the life out of her with that black knife. All the commotion attracted the neighbor's attention and the cries of help they got a knife apparently got the cops there much, much faster and in larger numbers too. Josie was arrested for carrying a bladed weapon with intent to endanger life and the fallout of the whole thing was a

drama that went on for months, finally ending when Josie's family moved her out of state to live with her grandparents. She wasn't a well person and apparently hadn't been for quite some time, even though she was outwardly presented this cute little high school girl vibe. It was all a front. She was straight up manipulative and evil, and I know that now. I'm sorry this was such a long ramble. I wish I could give you a happy ending here and tell you that me and Sophie ended up back together and living happily ever after, but we didn't. Life isn't a Disney film. Half the reason I hate those things, the other half is living up in Washington somewhere, but where exactly I couldn't care less. I just hope I never see her ever again. Hi everyone, my name is Khalid and I'm from the UK.

I lived here all my life, but my parents are from Pakistan, so as you can imagine, I grew up Muslim. I started secondary school, what we call high school here, only it goes for like 5 years and not 4 in 1999, and despite being one of the only desi kids in the entire catchment area, I never had a problem fitting in. The thing was, I was always massively into football and if I do say myself, I was pretty good at it. One PE teacher said I was a natural left winger and if you were good at footy and could set up and score goals, no one cared about what color you were or who you prayed to.

Life was good. I had loads of mates and I cracked on with school work. But that all changed one Tuesday afternoon in 2001 when I got home from school to find my mom and dad sat on the living room couch staring at something on the TV with their jaws pretty much on the floor. The pictures showed some big tall buildings somewhere, smoke pouring out of one side. I thought it was fire and well, it technically was, wasn't it, but I only really realized what was going on when I saw the second plane slam into the other tower. I actually gasped. My dad rose up from the couch, and with a look in his eyes that I hadn't seen before or since,

he shouted at me to go upstairs and get on with my homework. But I didn't. I turned on the little box TV that they'd brought me to play on my PS2 and tried to soak up as much info as I could. The next day in school was one of the worst days of my life. I don't know if any of you can relate, but I can't even really describe what it was like to have people I'd known for years, people I'd have called friends, looking at me like they didn't want to be within six feet of me.

I even caught a bloody teacher giving me a funny look at one point. A teacher. People asked me why those idiots had done what they'd done, and I didn't have an answer for them. I barely knew my own religion at that point, and it was just kind of something I just did, not something I really thought about. I've had friends since that agreed, like, they went to church on Sunday because their parents told them to, because it was like tradition, not because I was like, oh yeah, I'm Muslim and I want to be here. It was super boring listening to some old bearded fella droning on in the language I didn't really understand. My mom and dad did speak a bit of Urdu around the house, but they

brought me up to be English as the next kid. Point being, and I know I might sound silly, but people thought that like we were all in on it or something like it was a big conspiracy that all Muslims were like celebrating or whatever which was absolutely bollocks but try telling some of them that so this all went on for about a week or so and the bullying got progressively worse it wasn't everyone I want to make that perfectly clear my core group of mates never deserted me but like I said things got worse and worse as the weeks went on. I think the worst thing is that from things that I've learned since that a lot of kids felt empowered to give me a

hard time based on what their parents were saying at home. They didn't think it was wrong like collectively punishing Muslims for something a bunch of backward, cave-dwelling wankers thought God was telling them to do. Yeah, there's some weird stuff in that book, but there is weird stuff in every religious book. You just focus on the good stuff about loving people and being a good person, and not how you can be ripped apart by a bear if you make fun of bald people, which is in the bible, go look it up. Come out, you bald head, just google that phrase. But anyway, I'm sorry to ramble, but one day I finished school a little bit later than usual. We all finished at the same time. I had to return some library books I'd rented from the school library that had helped me write an English essay.

School is pretty quiet, the halls are emptying out, but when I walk down the steps towards the front gates I see like a big crowd of kids standing just outside, all congregating near the big iron gates. Mobs of people aren't unusual to see around schools, at home time I know, so I don't really think anything of it while I'm filing out and walking past them. There were kids in uniform, our uniform, but also kids with uniforms from other schools in the area, as well as kids in their own clothes. I walk past them, but as soon as I do, I just feel everyone's eyes on me. It was one of the eeriest feelings I'd ever felt in my life. No one likes being the subject of such attention like that Well, maybe some do, but not me

I sort of look back and see all those moody faces just bearing down on me And in that instant, my heart rate went through the roof They were really obviously not out to be friendly, at all Quite the opposite, in fact My adrenaline was pumping as I started to hear them whisper among themselves There he is, that's. That's the Muslim right there. Hit him. Go on. Do it. I didn't even wait to try and talk my way out of it. I just ran. Not ran. Legged it. Sprinted. Absolutely bloody well bolted across the road, almost getting hit by a car in the process.

The car beeps dead loud, the driver shouts something, and I think the noise then sends the mob into an absolute frenzy. The shouting and screaming at me as I sprint full pelt in the direction of my neighbors. I've been walking home for years, always the same route, so I knew it really well. And thanks to playing footy like three times a day, I was fast as anything. Big shout out to my old roommate David Oakes for chasing me up and down the left wing for years. Without, I think I'd have had my teeth kicked out there and then. But that didn't mean I didn't come close. There was one point where this big lad who was red in the face with rage

actually managed to grab hold of my backpack before I shook him off and darted down an alley. With me being small, I slipped through the metal bollards easily while he had to probably turn side on to get through them. That gave me just enough of a lead to get away from them and I think I just lost them quickly after that as I ran over a railway bridge and down another alleyway. I'm not going to lie, I cried my eyes out when I got home to my mom. It was without a doubt the most scary thing that's ever happened to me. I was 13 for god's sakes, still basically a baby and I was being made a bloody scapegoat for something that happened like a thousand miles away and I can't tell you how horrific that was. My family actually ended

up moving cities not long after to live in an actual Muslim community where abuse like the stuff I'd experienced became a thing of the past. But that's not solving the problem, is it? Retreating to a little cluster was the opposite of what our country needed when people more than ever needed to see that we can be just as British, American, or whatever nationality as anyone else. Okay, so a bit of context is required for this. Here in the UK we have something called Bonfire Night. Those of you that have seen the movie V for Vendetta will know a little bit about it, especially that whole remember, remember the 5th of November gunpowder treason plot. We see no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.

Long story short, these guys tried to blow up Parliament, and if they'd have been successful, it might have changed the course of history forever. So every November on the 5th of the month, we make like a ragdoll of the main dude in question, Guy Fawkes, then throw him on a big wood-burning fire and cheer while he burns. Only as I'm writing this out do I realize how gnarly and brutal that sounds, but yeah, you get the whole thing now. So on with the story. So back when I was in secondary school, we used to finish at half past two in the afternoon. I can practically hear the gasp already since most schools don't kick out until like half three to four o'clock, with some posher schools even going until 5pm. But there was a good reason why this

was the case for us. I lived in a pretty rough area of Liverpool where there were two rival schools within spitting distance of each other. The rivalry and contempt between the two was so bad that they actually had to stagger the home times of each school so that these huge gang fights wouldn't kick off on Mather Avenue every afternoon. Yeah, it was that bad. So one day, a few days after bonfire night, we finish school and head up to Allerton Golf Course to smoke ciggies and share a can of lager one of us had pinched from their parents. So we miss the initial rush of kids heading back home,

and we're the only ones walking back home when this car full of older lads pulls up and starts shouting stuff at us. We're all a bit mad from the few swigs of ale that we had so we get all bolshie back and start giving as good as we get. Big mistake. They tear off in their car, disappearing round a corner and out of sight. We think we're safe. Not only that, we actually got it into our stupid bloody heads that we'd scared them away or something.

So, so wrong. Because as we're further down the road, we hear this horrible revving engine sound. Look back, and it's the same car full of lads who commenced to get out and start throwing lit fireworks at us. It was properly chaotic. We're running for cover while these rockets and spirals lit fireworks at us. It was properly chaotic. We're running for cover while these rockets and spirals are flying at us and spraying sparks all over the show. What happened next was legit like something out of a film. I watch one of these rockets take off

from the pavement and fly through the air like a laser guided missile before hitting my mate, Paul, square in his forehead so hard it just knocks him to the ground. Blood starts pouring out of his face, pooling on the ground beneath him, and honest to god, I thought he was dead. And so did the lads in the car. They looked almost as scared as we did, got back in the car and sped off down the road. He obviously wasn't dead and we realized that really fast when he starts groaning and writhing on the ground. But oh my god, the blood was caked in his eyes. We're asking him to open them and he just can't. When the ambulance arrives, we were just in bits,

like I personally thought he was going to be blind forever, that the rocket had burst into his eyes or something. Fairly happy ending though. He's fine now. Well, he's mad as a box of frogs, but he was mental before that too. He does have this little crescent moon scar like right between his eyebrows though where the rocket hit him. Not to mention a proper little war story to tell every year around the 5th of November. The scariest thing that ever happened to me in high school might not be as traditionally scary as your traditional ghost story. There were no ghost

hauntings in the library, no psycho teacher with skeletons in their closet, no ancient evil living in the maintenance tunnels beneath the earth. The thing that scared the life out of like a thousand kids was very, very human and, in retrospect, so very, very easy to accomplish. I went to a really old school here in Australia, like this old private school that looked more like Hogwarts than the cookie-cutter modern high schools you see in America. It was archaic, to say the least. We had houses, just like the ones in Harry Potter, with your own special colored ties, housemasters, prefects, the works. We also had these big old chemistry labs that were honestly like the kind of stuffy wooden relics where Roger Waters would have been inspired to write the wall. They had everything and honestly they were really really fun to have lessons in once we were old enough to be trusted to handle very volatile chemicals. Dropping magnesium into water was one of the most fun times I've ever had.

So as you can imagine, I grew up really looking forward to chemistry lessons. So one day, we're all congregating outside of the chemistry labs. We're inside as it was one of those rare Aussie rainy days that has people absolutely freaking out like it's acid falling from the sky and not just water. I just stood there yapping away with a few mates of mine when one of them crinkled their nose, sniffing the air like, guys can you smell that? Cue the fart jokes, my mates are being completely juvenile, laughing and wafting their hands near their noses. I mean you have to forgive us, we were all literally 13 at the time, if there's ever a time to have a childish sense of humor it's then. But our mate who brought up the

smell is still like, sniffling the air, our mate, who brought up the smell, is still like sniffling the air, looking around, insisting he can smell something weird that's definitely not a fart. After like a minute or so, our chemistry teacher enters the building with a sour gob on him because he's been rained on. He's all like, excuse me, excuse me, boys and girls, waiting through the sea of kids until he gets roughly where our little group was stood. Then he starts making a similar face to the one my mate was making. Sniffing the air and all that before he suddenly has this look of horror on his face. He opens the door to the chem lab we were supposed to be using that day.

And by god, I will never forget how pale he went after he shut the door again, super, super slowly. Boys and girls, start filing outside please. Make your way towards the dining hall, single file please. He was trying to stay as calm as possible but you could hear the terror in his voice. But sir, it's raining outside. A girl in our class spoke up and the look our teacher then shot this girl like he was going to bloody hip toss her through a window she didn't say anything after that and we all just walked through the rain towards the dining hall for those that haven't worked it out yet i'll break it down someone went into the labs somehow got into a locked room i think went through an open window, and turned on all the

bloody gas taps, all of them, to fill the entire room with flammable gas. All of it would have taken as one little spark, and that would have been like a hundred kids dead, surely. Like I said, this isn't your traditional scary story, I mean, it wasn't even scary at the time, it was just confusing. But I remember knowing something was wrong. I didn't know exactly what, but looking back, it absolutely terrifies me to think how close we all were to a horrible, explosive, fiery death. We'll be right back. to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Find a Toyo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca I'm a 29-year-old female. However, at the time of these events, I was 22 to 24.

I joined the United States Army to help people. I've always wanted to make a difference in the lives of others. So when I got stationed out in Colorado, I was nervous but hopeful. Once I was settled into my new unit and had met my new co-workers, all seemed to fall in place. Everything was good. Until it wasn't. It started out small, like most things do. Sergeant C would snatch papers right out of my hands and then accuse me of not knowing what I was doing. He would ask me to do things for him immediately, although I was already doing something for someone who was of a higher rank than him, and when I would tell him so, he would say, I don't care, do what I told you to. Eventually it progressed to something more like stalking.

Sergeant C would come into work and ask me about my personal plans and appointments for the week. He would then have me ask him if I could keep those appointments or I had to cancel them. Then when I was able to keep the appointment, I had to write the time down on a marker board for him to see. When I went to either an appointment or to get mail for my unit which I did daily because I was the unit mail clerk, if I wasn't back when he thought I should be he would call for me or have a lower enlisted soldier call me to tell me to hurry up and get back. And if I didn't answer right away, he would keep calling and texting me to call him back immediately. When I was at work, he would constantly hover over my shoulder, watching me work instead of doing his own work. He would also call me on the weekend and ask where I was,

what I was doing, and who I was with. When I started dating my now husband, he came into work asking why I didn't ask his permission to date him. Again, I'm an adult woman. He would then require me to call him every night before I would go to sleep and ask him if he needed me to do anything for him, even on the weekends. If I forgot to call him, he would call me. When getting the mail, I needed a license to drive a particular vehicle, which I had to take a class for. I got all of the required documents for it, but Sergeant C refused to let me take the class. So, when I got the mail by driving the vehicle without the proper documentation, he called me up at 8 at night in a Walgreens parking lot to ask how I'd get the mail,

even though he and many others knew how. He kept repeating, Hey, how do you get the mail? Over and over, until I broke down and my husband had to take the phone and talk to him. It was so bad that I would cry every night and every morning. I eventually was told to go to counseling by my captain. When Sergeant C found out that he was the reason I was seeing a counselor, he cornered me in the back of the office where no one could see and he'd made me tell him that I was afraid of him and that I couldn't work with him. Once after already being in counseling for a while,

my first sergeant told me that I would be going to NTC or deployment training with Sergeant C alone. I told him I wasn't sure that was such a good idea with everything that has happened and he eventually sent someone else with him. I had many people tell me they saw Sergeant C verbally and mentally abuse me, harass me and no one did a freaking thing to stop it. I had many panic attacks and had to be admitted to the ER after a verbal altercation with him where he chased me around the office yelling. Eventually I left the army and now work as a civilian worker for an Air Force base. However, the scares still run deep as I'm still attending counseling. I take medication and have been diagnosed with extreme anxiety and PTSD.

I suffer from panic attacks and nightmares about him one day finding me again. I hope that one day things like this are taken more seriously and that no one else has to deal with someone like him. Everything started with me and a couple of my buddies hanging out at my place. For the sake of the story, I will name my two friends Michael and Lucas. Basically, everyone got pretty much wasted from drinking too much bourbon that Michael had brought with him. It was around 2am when Lucas, still a bit drunk, suggested we go and explore the abandoned insane asylum. For the context, we will all live together in and around the same small town.

This is not much going on there, but when you drive about 15 miles on empty back roads, you would come across the old mental hospital which had been vegetating ever since it was abandoned in the 1960s due to unknown reasons. Now back to the story, since there was really nothing better to do, we all agreed to the 30 minute drive. We grabbed our backpacks, some water, three flashlights and a big hunting knife for protection. Lucas also brought a couple of graffiti cans for obvious reasons. Yeah, he was into that stuff at the time. The drive was relatively unspectacular with the exception that Michael almost ran over a rattlesnake laying in the middle of the road. When we arrived, the sight of this huge asylum just standing there for all those years made me feel a little uneasy.

But my doubts quickly evaporated as Michael and Lucas were already going around the place looking for an entrance. We finally found a window that was not completely boarded up with beams and then crawled head first through the small opening. I quickly got on my feet and let my eyes get adjusted to the darkness that completely surrounded us. We powered up our flashlights and began wandering through the corridors with rooms on other sides. The walls were pretty much all covered in graffiti, so Lucas suggested that we should look out for a basement entrance with the intention of finding a free spot for his graffiti. After a 30 minute search we finally found the basement entrance. The stairs were rusty and creaked with every step. The whole basement smelled horrible.

Lucas quickly disappeared down a long hallway with rooms on either side and Michael and I were keeping pace up behind him. As we wandered off further into the dark hallway, which our cheap flashlights only poorly lit up, the terrible smell grew worse. I can only describe it as a mixture of vomit and rotten eggs. What struck me as odd was that all the walls were pretty much clean, unlike the sight that we had made at the first floor. It almost seemed like nobody had ever made it all the way to explore the basement level.

Everything was going relatively smoothly up until the point when Lucas started making so much noise by shaking his graffiti cans in order to prepare them for his act of vandalism. So, he started spray painting one of the nearby walls. Michael and I just watched him do his thing. When he finally finished his piece, the smell of aerosol in the air almost drowned out the horrible stink that was still in the air. As we made our way down the hallway, I could tell that the smell came from a small room further down to the left of us. At this point, we were all pretty much freaking out, unsure of what we would find in that room. I had the hunting knife tight in my hands as I approached the room and shined my flashlight inside. The light beam hit and I kid you not, a circle of burnt out candles appeared.

In the center of the candles was a dark object hanging from the ceiling. At this point I had to vomit because of the smell coming from this room. Michael was the bravest one of us as he stumbled into this room grabbing a metal bar from the pile of junk next to him, poking the object with it. As right then we realized the huge amount of dark brownish stains on the floor under that thing. We all quickly sobered up due

to the situation as we heard several voices and fast approaching footsteps from across the other hallway. I never ran that fast in my entire life. It's really amazing what adrenaline can affect. We finally reached the set of stairs and sprinted through the floor. As we finally reached the window that we had entered from, Michael also vomited onto the floor. Lucas then realized that he had left his backpack full of his stuff in the basement, as he had not enough time to pick it up or realize that he left it. We sprinted out front and got into my car and just hightailed it out of there. As much as I know we only have suggestions of what we saw in that basement,

maybe there was some kind of ritual taking place there, or we just stumbled across some sort of murder scene. We haven't told anyone this story. In fact, Lucas told me that he had not had a good night of sleep since that day, knowing he left his wallet in the backpack there and keeping all his personal information, including his home address, stuck in that asylum. I was a young mother. I had my son at 18 and was trying my best to present myself as put together an adult to combat the near constant scrutiny that my age seemed to attract. Before the birth of my son, his father and I were trying desperately to find a decent home to bring him into. We found a newly remodeled home in the country of Hayward, Wisconsin.

This is a major tourist trap in the summer, but the location was beautiful and was drastically underpriced for the number of rooms it had, the new flooring and devices it now boasted, and the original wood barn in the yard that added up to that up north aesthetic. With time seeming to be of the essence we jumped on the opportunity and contacted the landlord and surprisingly even with how beautiful the home seemingly appeared there had not been any interest. We set up a showing and upon seeing it in person we immediately decided to move forward with theals since it was the perfect amount of domestic and put together that we were looking for in our minds to solidify that we had our stuff together. Once we began moving in and setting up for the baby, we also decided to prepare for a small housewarming party to show off our new mature residence.

Feeling slightly overwhelmed amidst the pandemonium that comes with moving, we had some friends that grew up from around the area come to aid us and simplify the process as much as they could. However, upon arrival, one of the men that came to assist us that was born and raised slightly down a few country roads became as pale as the Wisconsin snow that speckled the ground around us. As we greeted him and snapped him back to reality, he sputtered out an uncharacteristically nervous, Hey, what's up? Nice to see you guys. Well, let's get going, shall we?

As we all continued monotonously unpacking and cleaning, I noticed an edge to him that was not usually present. I approached him to open up the floor to have a conversation about what was troubling him. His face slightly twitched and his frigid demeanor I had been witnessing shifted to agitation. He sat in silence for a few seconds until quietly uttering out, You seriously have no idea where this place is. I solemnly looked back at him and awkwardly chuckled before realizing he wasn't laughing. I responded with, Uh, no, I mean, it's our new home, but...

Before I could finish my sentence, he abruptly added, two people were murdered here Mary. They were shot and killed and drug out to the barn. One of them leaving the bathroom, the other laying in the master bedroom. The messed up thing is that the kid had a party just hours after it all. I was completely awe stricken in the most macabre of ways but managed to retort a shaky, oh, I thought it was just an urban legend. I'm gonna finish with the other room real quick. He left shortly after but the tense mood that surrounded him remained. As days went on and my then partner began working at a factory during the night, I began to feel more and more anxious and restless during the hours I spent alone.

The barn stood as this foreboding, nagging reminder of what our paled, moving companion had warned me of. One day, to alleviate the anxiety that was churning around in my already hormonal brain, I decided to walk through the adjacent field and explore the outlying trees. As I began to approach the end of the clearing, I noticed what appeared to be a large garbage pile. As I neared it, I quickly recognized old laminate flooring, sinks, and furniture. As I gazed down on my puzzling discovery, I noticed other trinkets and personal household items. The more I stared, the more I realized something that sent an icy

spear down my whole spine. The laminate flooring had what seemed to be a dried brownish-reddish paint spattered on it, and say what you will, but this combined with the morbid story and already present morning sickness was enough to make me physically ill. I ran back to the home and locked all of the doors and sat with all the curtains drawn which was my natural state in the home when my partner was gone due to a constant uneasy feeling of being watched or not being as alone as I should have been. I went against my better judgment and decided to do some research when I stumbled across an article I'll attach below. To my absolute utter sickening dismay, this article coldly and factually solidified what our nervous friend had warned me of weeks before. After this gruesome discovery, we promptly contacted the landlord

and chastised her for not informing us of what we had happened on our seemingly perfect new property. She apologized to us and let us terminate our lease early, and we moved out the quickest I've ever seen someone move out of the home. So, in closing, none of us were injured, and there were no horribly disfigured ghosts looming in doorways in the corner of my vision, hissing for us to get out. There was just this heavy, dark feeling that seemed to weigh on me over time. I will never 100% know if the rubble I found across the field was significant to the horrific

history of the home or just some redneck dumping site. However, I do know of the ever uneasy feeling I constantly felt in that home. The burned and jarring image of the silhouette of the barn in the distance and the two innocent people that lost their lives in the place we were trying to make our own. My advice to anyone looking into a new home after this experience is to do your research, check the history of the home, and always be mindful that when something seems too good to be true, that may very well be the case. I work at a small town nursing home. The nursing home is off the main hospital in town and it's a pretty decent job and beats retail any day.

For context, it has a special care area where flight risks and those who are in the worst throes of dementia and Alzheimer's stay in little apartments and receive more personal care. I usually work this area in the hall leading to it which has its own set of apartments. I love all residents. They have their good days and bad days, but all in all they are sweet, good people. I don't work directly with the residents, but I clean their rooms every day so I've gotten to know them and they remember me for the most part. Now, the only downside is when the precious people pass on. Your heart breaks because you grow attached to them and even form some sort of friendship with them. And here's my story.

There's this sweet lady and she is honestly one of my favorite residents. For privacy's sake, let's call her Anne. Anne lives in this special care area. Anne has something sort of like dementia. Not entirely sure, but she tends to hallucinate. She often sees things in people that aren't there. She also dances to music that isn't playing, which is kind of adorable. Anne has told me multiple times that she sees dead people. On the ceiling, out the windows,

under the bed. Sometimes they have wings or halos even, and I tell her that they're angels, and that she has nothing to worry about. But she's still afraid of these things. She pointed behind me while I'd been cleaning and chatting with her and said, and that she has nothing to worry about. But she's still afraid of these things. She pointed behind me while I had been cleaning and chatting with her and said, There, look. I turned and there's never anything there, which has given me the creeps more than once. One day a fellow resident in the special care area passed away.

We were all sad to see them pass and there was a bit of a dark cloud in the special care area passed away. We were all sad to see them pass and there was a bit of a dark cloud in the special care area. As I was cleaning Anne's room, I saw that she was asleep and tried not to disturb her as she napped. She was in her bed and I accidentally bumped the frame with my broom. She woke up and I was startled and apologized, but she spoke before I could and said sadly, they're coming for the other one too. She started to cry. I was baffled but tried to comfort her. I thought maybe she was confused. Maybe she was remembering something or just saying something random as the residents there do sometimes. Unfortunately, a few days later, another resident passed away. I came into the special care area to clean their room after they passed.

As I pushed my car past Anne's room, she's sitting in her chair by the window and muttering and crying to herself. They came for her too. I wondered, can Anne see the dead, the Grim Reaper of sorts, or something else entirely? entirely. In November 2016, I was spending the weekend at my dad's. I was bored and so was everyone else, so my stepbrother said, Hey, you guys want to go do parkour in the woods? To me and my friend, and we said sure. We went to his backyard and in order to get on the path,

we had to climb a tree that was growing slanted out of the ground and since I was too short, my stepbrother climbed up first and then grabbed my hand and then I pulled myself up. My friend had poor upper body strength and couldn't climb so we had to take the long way. We had to take the long way crawling through bushes, walking across pipes on rivers, having to grab thorn bushes to keep balance. We eventually got to the building my stepbrother wanted to climb. He said there was a ladder so I thankfully wasn't worried. But this ladder he was talking about was an old oak tree with eight pieces of three-by-fives nailed to the tree and my stepbrother climbed up in seconds. I climbed the tree to the top, which was the same height as the building, about three stories tall.

I climbed to the top, but the building was about six feet apart from the tree, and me being short, I wasn't confident enough to make the jump and my stepbrother said it's fine you got it. I made the jump and slipped last second and I was dangling my left hand and he had to pull me up. I scared the life out of my friend when he saw I was almost three stories and just said forget that. When it was time to get down, my stepbrothers said, you won't fall. I have fallen, but it took me 30 minutes to get down and by the time we got home, I was covered in cuts with thorn bushes. If I fell, I would have probably hit my head on the bricks at the bottom and could have died. My brother said, I actually fell once but there was a big

bush with leaves so I didn't actually get hurt. The bush wasn't there when we went so if I fell, I would have seriously gotten hurt. This story takes place on July 20th, 2012. The day that the shooting in Aurora, Colorado happened. Me, my friend, and my brother had purchased tickets for the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises. At 11.30, we decided to go to McDonald's a few minutes away so we wouldn't have to spend a fortune on the food and drinks at the theater. After we finished our meal we started our walk back to the theater. When we were about a third of the way there I saw a guy in his mid-twenties who had followed us since we left McDonald's and started to pick up pace. It's important to point

out that I was only 14 at the time but my friend and brother were only 16 so we were not going to be able to fight a guy if he tried to rob us. I told my friend about the guy and he told me not to be worried. I remembered that we were talking about whether or not Batman would die in the movie when all of a sudden we heard loud footsteps. We turned around to see the guy who was following us, pointing a gun at us. He told us he wanted our wallets and phones, and we immediately handed it to him based on what he demanded. My brother had kept the tickets in his wallet that the guy had just taken. The crazy part was that this guy looked me dead in the eyes and said, even the worst things have something good about them.

We all stood there confused until we walked off into an alley. We ran back to the theater and when we got back, they were sold out of tickets. We headed back home and found out in the morning what had happened. Just thinking that we could have been three of the twelve victims of the Aurora Dark Knight Rises theater shooting sent chills down my spine. As for what the guy said, I just don't know if he had a sick sense of humor or knew that we didn't. Even though we didn't get a great look at that guy, I can confirm that he did have a sick sense of humor and knew something that we didn't. Regardless of why he said what he said in my mind, he saved our lives or at the very least saved us from having the experience of that horrific event first hand.

If you have any questions, please do feel free to ask them if you read the whole thing. I thank you for being strong and a trooper through this whole thing. For context, I'm a 14-year-old female. And two days ago, something very creepy unnerving happened to me. I'm on the cross-country team at my school, and our coach wants us to stay in shape during quarantine, so I was going on a run. I tend to run early in the morning, around 5.30 to 6 a.m. because the weather is cooler unless people are out and about. It's also nice to get your run over with so the rest of the day is free.

For you to understand exactly what happened, I need to explain the route that I run. Bear with me. I live in a nicer neighborhood in the U.S. My neighborhood is also near a major road. When I go on my run, I leave my neighborhood, travel down the major road, and enter a different neighborhood that is close to my own. This neighborhood has a low crime rate, is on the richer side, and goes along a big reservoir. It has lots of hills, pretty foliage, and some of the bigger houses near the entrance of the neighborhood are backed up against some woods. I run through it because I like to look at the big houses and

sometimes some of the wildlife, such as deer, makes it way out of the woods. When I run through it early in the morning, I get to enjoy the lack of people and the birdsong. You need to understand that I run this route every morning and no strange occurrences have happened with me being there. Now that you understand the setup, I'll tell you what happened. Like I said, this was two days ago. I left my house and neighborhood per usual and ran along the major road to the entrance of the neighborhood that I usually run in. Almost as soon as I come across the first house on the street, one of the ones that is backed up against the woods, I hear rustling in the bushes. I think, oh cool, it's probably one of the deer, and slow down and try and spot it, but it never came out of the bushes. So I pick up my pace and come along.

Not long after that, maybe two minutes later, I hear someone on my bike behind me. This isn't unusual, so I don't think much about it until the guy on the bike says, Beep beep. I'm like, okay, maybe he doesn't have a bell or something, so I move over to the right to let the guy pass me on my left. But he doesn't. He stays right behind me. I'm not a slow runner, but someone on my bike would definitely be faster than me. If you have ever tried to go really slow on a bike you will understand how hard it is to keep your balance. So I'm thinking okay this is weird. I have a feeling that this guy is bad news and that I need to shake him. So I slow to a stop and get over to the side of the road to tie my shoe and to see if he'll pass me.

But he doesn't. He just stops. It becomes clear that he isn't going anywhere. I get back on the sidewalk and keep running. Bad choice, I know, but I was panicking. Of course, the man on the bike follows. But even though my attempt to shake him didn't work, I got a good look at him. He was tall, thin, with glasses, and he wore a Norvana

t-shirt. He definitely looked like a serial killer. As an avid reader of horror novels and obsessive listener of scary podcasts, I was already thinking of the absolute worst possible outcome. I was going to be murdered when I had been out of my house for less than 10 minutes. Worse I was over 10 miles from my house so I was going to have to continue running. Now I know what I should have done was to go to the closest house and let the family that lived in it know what was going on, but I wasn't thinking clearly, so I kept running, and the man on the bike kept following me at a meticulously slow pace. I was tired, sweaty, and near tears. I wanted to go home. Home was the only thing on my mind. I started looking around for ways to

lose him or hide. Just up ahead of me was a sharp turn. My hope was that I could get around the turn faster than him and then hide. Not a very well developed plan but better than being killed by a rando. I sprinted around the corner as fast as I could, right into a young woman who was out walking her two dogs. Big dogs, German Shepherds actually. I started to apologize profusely, trying to look calm. Apparently I didn't look calm at all because she asked me what was wrong. The man was still behind me, practically breathing down my neck. I stared at the woman, pleading with my eyes and said, How's your walk going on, mom?

I prayed that she would understand, that she would play along and fortunately for me she did she smiled at me and said where are you where were you me and your father were looking for you all over we both then turned to look at the man on the bike who looked extremely shocked he turned around and quickly pedaled away almost running into an oncoming car actually. As soon as he was gone, I broke down crying, telling the woman everything. She was very sympathetic and kind and she ended up calling my parents to come pick me up. I was still sobbing when they arrived and I had to catch my breath before them telling me what happened. Looking back, I'm almost positive that if I hadn't run into that woman

that something awful would have happened. I'm not sure if the rustling in the bushes at the entrance of the neighborhood was the man on the bike or not but I am completely content with never knowing. I have not been back to that neighborhood since and I'm not sure if I ever will. This story still gives me chills and I haven't spoken of it in a while. This is a long story and needs extensive backstory so please bear with me. So flashback to high school. I wasn't the most social guy in school. I had my really close friends, but other than that, I would friend that I grew up with, let's call him T, he called me. He's like, yo bro, I'm meeting up with two women later tonight.

Let's drink and hang out with these chicks. It was one of those classic fork in the road moments. Be a nerd and blow another Friday night playing a video game, or go out with my best friend and see if I can actually finally lose my virginity. Before I get to the next part of the story, I need to give some backstory on T. T was nothing short of a boss and I truly looked up to him. He was a really good looking guy and extremely intelligent. I'm not understating this.

He's the type of guy when he walks into a room all the women just gravitate to him. But T has a dark side. Even though he has everything going for him, it was never good enough. He got expelled from school we both went to for having a couple of grams and aka just trying to flex and got caught by the teacher. So he was sent to another school about 30 minutes away from me. Nothing changed, and it actually got far, far worse. He became the guy. He started messing around with all the chicks and became a massive dealer. He supplied about 4 to five high schools and

colleges in the area and was for sure on the radar of the law and other rivals. Now to the backstory. So after playing mental ping pong for about 30 minutes weighing all the options, potentially getting laid or drunk or nerded up like usual, I finally said forget it. Count me in for tonight, T. I bribe my brother twenty bucks and he agrees to raid me. The night begins. T picks me up from my place and greets me with a big smile and says, we're getting laid tonight, brother. I'm like, whatever bro, we'll see. I'm very used to tea over-exaggerating. So I quickly ask, when are we meeting up with these women? It's about 9.30pm at night.

Under his voice he says around 1am. Unlike WTF, are we supposed to be due for three and a half hours? Tea pulls out a bottle of Bacardi 151 with the metal grate and passes it to me. Thankfully I've been drinking hard that year so my tolerance was decent. We head to this awesome park to burn time and start passing the bottle back and forth. We catch up on life and we're about 6 out of 10 drunk at this point. It's around 11.30ish. So within an hour and a half, still to burn, before we're supposed to meet up with said women,

T says, Let's roll the Taco Bell. We can get some food and sober up. At this point, I'm drunk and we have some time to burn, so whatever. Let's head to Taco Bell. As most degenerates know, Taco Bell was open late and the one we went to is located in a shopping center.

No surprise that around 12am there are no cars whatsoever in the parking lot except for the workers of Taco Bell. T rolls up to buy his food and we just park outside Taco Bell while he eats. While T is eating, I snag a cigarette and get some fresh air. As I puff half on a Marlboro light a white van rolls up with tinted windows and no license plate. The van parks to the west of our car about 50 feet in the empty parking lot. The lights inside and outside the van instantly turn off and no one gets out. I kept smoking but I don't think much of it. I mean, we're essentially doing

the same thing but a car with no license plate was obviously weird. I get back into T's car and I start getting a really uneasy feeling about this van. At this point, I'm all sobered off a little, and I just keep eyeing down this van. Something doesn't feel right. It goes to park three-fourths of the way into the parking lot with a perfect view of the car. I turn to T and tell him it's time to leave. This is where the backstory comes into play. As I mentioned, T is very deep at this point and was at the height of his dealing career, so the exact thought was in the back of my mind when this van was parked inconspicuously.

The next part is not exaggerated in the slightest. T turns on his headlights to his car to leave, and a kitty knot. Almost instantly after our lights are on, the white van lights turn on. My stomach dropped to the floor. At this point, we're both freaking out. T knows he could be busted by the police at any point, and that's not even considering all his rivals and people he's screwed over. So right when we see the light up from the van we turn ours off. No joke the van turns their lights off to mimic our reaction. T reaches to the backseat of his car and pulls out a backpack with a weapon in it. I can't believe this is

actually going down. At this point, I'm inching on crying. This is obviously no coincidence. We were followed to the shopping center. We sat paralyzed in fear and dripping in sweat for the next ten minutes, waiting to see if the van would move, and it didn't. T starts mumbling to himself. This might be a good squad that was hired to hunt me down. I'm speechless to that comment. I was a normal unsocial kid who loved sports and video games and now I'm in this terrible and possibly life-threatening situation. At this point I really wish I just stayed home and played World of Warcraft.

No potential for any girls is worth the heart attack I'm currently going through. I felt extremely nauseous and I'm so close to throwing up. Is this actually happening or am I dreaming? This doesn't feel like the police. They wouldn't go through this type of charade. They would have turned on the lights and arrested us by now, obviously. I can't stand this demented showdown we're currently in, and I'm on the verge of mental breakdown and tears are rolling down my face. I turn to T and tell him to turn his lights on one more time, and almost like clockwork, the van flicks on their lights, but this time was very different. I was able to see multiple shadows of hooded men in the van.

I turn to T and tell him to book it out of there. I've never seen someone go 0-60 out of a shopping center before, but you can bet you're behind we did. T turns his head while exiting the shopping center and sees the van following us at a fast pace. We start cutting down side roads for the next five minutes. Thankfully, no one is following us. At this point, I'm just staring at T and asking,

what was going on, bro? T says with a weak voice that I have no idea other than what you know and I do, but aka some sort of dealing. We take a deep breath, we hit the bottle some more, and the next 20 minutes we sat in silence to come to grips with what was almost being involved in some sort of sting operation, robbed by rivals or even worse. Once our heart rate drops below 250 beats per minute, we finally head to meet the women. T and I never spoke at that moment again. And to the thought of that night, it still sends shivers down to my core. When I was four years old, my family and I used to live in a house located in Queretaro, Mexico.

I'm Mexican, so I'm sorry if my English is not the best. It was a pretty safe neighborhood where many houses and condos were being constructed. I'm Mexican, so I'm sorry if my English is not the best. It was a pretty safe neighborhood where many houses and condos were being constructed. My dad worked in some coffee plantations outside the city most of the week, but he spent the weekends at home, so he was the only one besides my mom who had the keys to the outside gate and the front door. I remember it was Halloween because the afternoon of the day that I had made some carved pumpkins with my mom and after we went trick-or-treating and off to bed. We left them with some lit candles inside them in the dining room and living room area.

We went to sleep and I remember that at some point at night my mom woke me up and told me not to make noise and that someone had entered the house but she didn't know who it was. I grabbed onto her back like a piggyback ride and she peeked up the stairs to see if that she saw someone downstairs. He started calling, Fernando, my dad's name and we could hear a little noise downstairs, like someone didn't want to make any noise, and as soon as my mom spoke, the noise stopped. Immediately, my mom knew that it was not my father, and ran to her room with me on her back. She called the cops and my dad, but by the time they got there, there was nobody downstairs. Just completely smashed pumpkins and the door wide open.

This happened to me when I was 17 years old. I'm a female. It was a warm summer night. Me, my sister, and my two cousins were sitting on a balcony that was covered with glass all over, but you can open up the windows and let some air in. I live in a small villa, so to enter the balcony, you have to open a small gate which leads to a small garden, then there is a glass door which leads to a glass balcony. We usually always left the outdoor gate open since we live in a safe neighborhood. We're hanging out there at about 3 a.m., having some food and chatting. My cousin asked me to go get some charcoal from the kitchen

since we had a hookah on. Hookah and shishas are common in our culture. The charcoal I got wasn't well lit so I decided to go outside to air it out and make it light up more. I was wearing mini shorts and a shirt. I went to the garden and I was lighting the charcoal up. My dad was to the trees and bushes behind me and I was looking at a garage. As soon as I got out I had this uneasy feeling that someone was watching me. I looked right and left but there was no one there. So I brushed it off since I thought I was just being paranoid because it was really late at night and the neighborhood was too quiet. I got back into the house and into the balcony and my sister was on her phone.

She lifted her head up and her face went completely pale. She suddenly started screaming, Who are you? What are you doing here? I was shocked. My cousin started screaming. I looked to my left looking at the window and I saw a tall, heavy man running out of the front gate. Moments later we heard our neighbor scream and turns out she was sitting on her front porch and she saw a man running and some girls screaming so she was pretty freaked out by that. Our neighborhood and brother and dad were awoken by our screams and the

police were called. My brother went running into the street looking for him but he wasn't found. When the police arrived, they patrolled around our neighborhood, but they didn't find him. My sister was called out to the police station to describe what he looked like since she was the only one who saw him clearly at first. He had his head peeking at us creepily as we sat down from the corner of the glass window. The police cars advised my parents not to let me walk alone in the neighborhood since they were afraid that he would kidnap me or worse. This is because we live in an Islamic culture where no one is allowed to wear such revealing clothes in public.

And a couple of days later, my mom was driving around the neighborhood and she found a man with the same characteristics that my sister described. He was working on the garden of our neighbor's two blocks ahead of us. My sister was too scared to identify him, so he was not captured. I just can't help but think that if he grabbed me when he was right behind me, and I was oblivious to what was going on, God knows what his intentions were. I have read countless stories about other people's experiences with sleep paralysis, and I thought I would share my scariest ones.

Everyone has heard of the shadow people. I've had an unknown black force pin me down in my bed, suffocating me. However, the other two instances I've had are more bizarre and I still think about it quite often. About four years ago, I was 24 years old and I still live with my mom since I was in my second year of nursing school and it was just easier to live at home while going to school. For context, I'm female. Going to bed one night all seemed well until I woke up for no reason. I couldn't move or talk. I heard almost static mumbling sounds on my left. Scared out of my mind, I listen as I try to desperately move. Slowly, the static starts to get clear and I hear young voices, children's voices. They begin chanting,

You're going to die, and giggling after each chant. It was like they were singing a nursery rhyme to me. They chanted the same thing over and over again, and my heart was pounding on my chest. Logically in my head I was telling myself that this was not real. For all those that aren't religious, this may not seem like it makes much sense but I decided to pray to God in my head to make it stop. It was like I was screaming it in my head because I couldn't physically speak. It felt like an eternity before it went away and I was able to

move. I was so scared that I couldn't even move though I was physically able to. I rushed out of my room to my mom and told her everything. I didn't go back into my room that night. She looked at me in disbelief. I don't know if she truly believed me or understands sleep paralysis and regardless, that's something I'll never forget. My second story was around the same year when sleep paralysis became a reoccurring theme every night or every other night. I just started to sleep with the lights on. For added comfort, my cats would sleep on my bed and cuddle with me until I fell asleep. For a while, no instances of sleep paralysis occurred, so I just assumed that this was what I needed to do each night. Like usual, I went to bed with the lights on and one of my cats, Salem, curled up in my arm while I slept.

I woke up with a feeling of an all too familiar feeling of dread. I couldn't believe what was happening. I feel like I was being watched. To my horror, I can't make this stuff happening. I feel like I was being watched. To my horror, I can't make this stuff up if I wanted to. I disturbingly saw a white figure on the right side of my bed standing very close to me. My heart felt like it wanted to drop to my stomach. I see piercing, bright blue eyes staring back at me. As I stared more, this white figure looked like it was a member of the clan, with a white cloak and the only thing I was able to see was its eyes.

As I was staring at its figure in my lightened up room, I was able to glance down at my cat, seemingly unaware of the figure and sleeping soundly. This eased me up a bit. Seeing this made me remind myself that this was not real. And after a few moments, thankfully, the figure disappeared. My father killed my mother when we were very young. My mother was a drug addict and my father caught her selling herself. He served seven years for manslaughter. And I never blamed him. My mother was a horrible person.

My sister and I were raised by my grandmothers. She was a strict Catholic and made us go to church and learn about the spirit world. She was very sweet to us and let me tell you, her cooking was crazy good. We grew up in the kitchen, laughing and having a wonderful time listening to her stories and laughing at her jokes. My grandmother was funny and she was smart. She taught us all the things we needed to to survive not only in the kitchen but in the streets too. Never show anyone you have money and we laughed because we never had money. La abuelita my sister's elbows me and whispers

nana. I whisper back stop whispering no one can hear you stupid we laughed. Our nana was funny like that always saying things that were silly and strange and weird and she liked to play on her, as my sister says, Ouija board. We scoffed but stayed away about the same. Some Stop it, I say. I'm getting to that part. So one day, Nana says we must go to the market and stand and wait. Will said, wait for what, Nana? Nana says, we wait for the perfect time. So, we wait. Some people bought rice and some people bought alcohol and beer.

Some people bought lottery tickets and some people bought Marlboro because it's cheap here and we got bored. Then all of a sudden my grandma looked all pale and sweaty and I got very scared for her. Then she says, wow, go get the lottery. The Lotería Nacional para la Asistencia Pública is the Mexican lottery and lots of people play it. She pushed a sweaty dollar into my hand and as I was buying the ticket all the hair on my arms stood up straight. Both my sister and I were a little scared for Nana because she looked like she might faint. So we made her sit down for some time before we walked back home. That night we listened on the neighbor's radio

when the lottery was drawn. Grandmother said to us both in a quiet whisper, when we win, do not shout, do not be excited, make no sound my dears. We looked at each other like Nana had lost her mind. I asked my sister, oh that's right, her marbles. When the numbers came out, our Nana took us by the hands, said thank you to our neighbor and walked us home. She looked very sad and so were we sad too, but I never thought that we would win it all, so I don't understand why she was squeezing my hand so very hard. We get inside our thin walled house and Nana puts her finger to her lips and then says when I tell you something so secret you cannot make a sound. You can jump up and down and smile

as wide as you please but please don't make a single sound. We look at each other. Alright crazy lady. She then got stern and said in a sharp whisper, promise me. We both said that we promised simultaneously. Yes, yes, of course. With not a talk like this, we listened. If you know anything about Mexican grandmothers, you shut up and listen when they say shut up. My grandmother is nodding her head, eyes wide. Nana said to me, go get me the ticket. I ran to get the ticket thinking she was going to make a joke and handed it to me. She said, read to me the numbers. We read the numbers and after we did, she gave us the tickets and we checked the numbers and then checked them again. My sister's eyes grew very wide but I was confused.

What was going on? All the hair stood up on my arms and my legs and my sister and I nearly fainted when my dear Nana, our loving and kind-hearted sweet grandmother said the two words I shall forever hear in my mind in my dreams. We won. We all stood there gasping, each other's arms in shock. Nana said, your hairs are standing up. And I nodded. Yes, Nana, they were. And we all started wildly jumping up and down and up and down and round and round. And I didn't know grandma could jump so high. We silently screamed and jumped and then twirled around, swinging our arms. I feverishly whispered, How much? How much? Nana stopped jumping and looked up, doing a quick calculation. 120,601 pesos. And we all fell to the floor. Actually fell down to the floor. The silence was deafening.

I remember the silence being so loud it was staggering. Nana gathered us together and we sat cross-legged facing each other like conspirators. The smile on my face was beginning to hurt so I whispered, how much is that in American dollars? Everyone knew American dollars were king and my sister who was smarter than me at math said, 5,000 American dollars. I could not believe our luck. My nana said to us, listen Ninos, because this is not a game. We must be very careful. We must be very secretive. We must not change a thing. But with careful planning, we can have a better life. Why did our grandma seem like she had been planning for this for a long time? How did she know when to play the lottery? She continued,

tomorrow we'll go to church like normal. On a Monday, we will get our winnings and go to the bank. At the bank, we'll deposit our money. Comprehende? Yes, yes, we nodded. You must tell no one. This is very important. No one must know that we have this good fortune. Good fortune? This was a miracle. When I think about it now as a grown adult it makes sense but as a boy I knew nothing but poverty and the same thing every day and I knew no different. So for years things went on as usual and we grew up pretty much the same. Sometimes we noticed more food and on special occasions some sweets and maybe some new shirts or two but besides that we kept our promises and we kept our mouth shut. On my 18th birthday Nana gave me the bank book and some other papers. She told me that I was

the man of the house now and that I was wise enough to have the full responsibility for the family as she was getting on in years. She said that there was an apartment that we would rent not too far from where we grew up and so we moved into that place. It was honestly a mansion to us, running water, showers that were hot. It was magical. Nana said to me, it is paid for a year and after a year I've made plans for you to go visit America. My eyes wide with, I started to speak but she put her finger to her lips and whispered, don't tell a soul, but you will know the right time to take everything and go to America. So I said not a word to anyone until now of course. We stayed in that apartment for a year but before that year was over grandmother passed away. The church we attended

took care of the necessary arrangements as she was well loved and gave generously to the parish. That day was a very sad day for my sister and I and we adored our sweet Nana like no one can really understand. All the things and experiences we had gone through over the years had bonded us like no human beings have ever been bonded. That was the time of tears, as my sister calls it. She weeps right now as I type this on my Mac Pro. Oh yes, we are living in America now. I cannot tell you where, but I can tell you it's warm and dry and very nice. I even have a car to drive, if you can believe that. I'm sure you're wondering how we got here and my sister is giving me that anxious look that says, get on with it already bro, okay? Okay. It's been 10 years since our grandmother's passing and when we left Mexico all we had was the bank book,

some papers and Nana's Ouija board. My sister took care of it as it was the very bank book that I took care of. Yes, Nana gave my little sister that weird box of the spirit world when she gave me the responsibility of our finances. Anytime we were troubled or didn't know what to do, we would go and have a chat with Nana and the Ouija board, or so she says. It was a bunch of superstitious nonsense to me, but I have to respect her and didn't stick my nose into anything she did. When we were hassled by the cartel when we got our passports and American identification during our travels,

she would talk to Nana and the trouble would just kind of go away. Poof. So sorry. So sad. New passports and IDs? When we needed to find a lawyer in America, Nana found one. Or so my sister said. I did not concern myself with her responsibility, and she did not concern herself with mine. We were a great team. Well, we go to America and meet with our lawyer, a pleasantly cheerful American whom I liked immediately. He sat us down and told us how our grandmother had invested half of our money in a company called Amazon and that we had earned quite a sum of money for this small investment. Nothing outlandish, but to us, $150,000 was a fortune. This time we did scream and jumped up and down and twirled and danced and yelled and laughed,

and so hard even the lawyer joined us. That's when I learned his fee was 25%. Then we were not so happy. I did some research and learned that we should pay the stockbroker a yearly fee to not only buy and sell stock, but to also help us with things like investment advice and rebalancing our portfolio. These full-service stockbrokers usually charge between 1 and 2 percent of the total amount of assets they manage for you. This guy was trying to rob us. My sister did not like it at all and went to talk to Nana. The next day we were notified that a lawyer was in a car accident. He was driving down the road and crashed into a retaining wall and he died instantly. Somehow his briefcase had fallen

and lodged itself between the seat and the headlight switch. The headlights turned off and we were told that he probably was struggling to loosen it when, boom, he died. Oh well. So sorry, so sad. The company he worked for have been investigating him for embezzlement and fraud and gave us back all that he had stolen. Our new lawyer is much better. Now we are not so trustworthy nor naive any longer. Right sis? My sister nods and I see that she has a slight grin on her face which makes the hairs on my arms stand up. We bought a house and the real estate lady named Karen was a bright and overly friendly hyper crazy lady that made us both nervous. She was very flirtatious with me but showed us a wonderful three bedroom house in a very nice neighborhood. She said that her 12% fee was far below market

value. I thought that was a great price, but before we signed, my sister said that she would like to ask our nana if this was the right house for us. I did some research and found that the typical commission is 6%, which is split by the agent for the buyer and the agent for a seller, 3% each, paid only by the seller, not us. My sister had a very stern look on her face as she gathered the Ouija board and went to her room. The next morning, I was making some huevos rancheros, just laughing and joking with my sister as we usually did when I got a phone call. It was the real estate company letting us know that they'll be assigning us a new real estate agent to us.

I had mentioned that we were signing today and they said that new papers would have to be drawn as they found a discrepancy in our contract. I asked him what had become of that obnoxious woman. My sister elbowed me and said shush, I am a other agent. She seems that she was at an open house and was laughing so hard she swallowed a jumbo shrimp and it lodged in her throat and she died. Oh well, so sorry, so sad. That is just terrible, huh sis? Seems she had been overcharging people for years and they would not have ever found out until they looked over my paperwork after her accident. Just now there was a knock at the door.

I'll be right back. Well, it was an immigration officer asking to see our passports. I showed him our IDs and he examined them. My sister said, I'm going to go talk to Nana. The immigration officer nodded, looked up and motioning to my arm said, the hairs on my arms just stood right up. I looked down. So they did. So they did. So sorry.

So sad. This happened to my family in 2005. I was a kid at the time and me and my older sister are my dad's second set of kids from his second marriage. My dad had just returned from Iraq. He was in the army but he was just medically separated from the army after 17 years due to PTSD after a particularly horrific shelling on the base that he was stationed at at the time. When he came home, he was sick with chest congestion and a cough that sounded like a death rattle. After a week home and a round of antibiotics, his chest x-ray said that he had double pneumonia. He was admitted to the hospital and

things went south quickly. He was transferred to the ICU and put on a breathing machine. My mother was a crying mess, so me and my sister knew things were not good with my dad. Later we were told the doctors had told her my dad may not make it and to make funeral arrangements. After not being able to find the correct antibiotic to cure the infection in his chest, my dad had to be revived several times after his heart gave in from the lack of oxygen. Luckily, a new pulmonologist was consulted and took samples of the infection and grew them in a lab and then killed the infection with an older singular spectrum antibiotic. As soon as the medicine was given to my dad, he was quickly recovered and was home before we knew

it. This is where the story really begins. After coming home from the hospital, my dad, he was quickly recovered and was home before we knew it. This is where the story really begins. After coming home from the hospital, my dad began telling stories about his brush with death. He told us that when he died, he saw his first wife, who had died years earlier and she wouldn't let him pass her to go into the light. She just held her hands up like, stop, you can't come in. He also told us he could see the light in the corner of the ICU room. His uncles and grandparents were there. It was all very fascinating, but the stories of dead relatives were nothing compared to what happened next. When we were kids, my dad would load us up in the jeep when he was on leave and we would hit the road to Telluride or some other mountain destination to go fishing. My dad lives to go fishing, and we loved to go. He would sit on the bank of some

mountain lake, and my dad would bait our hooks and toss the line out and set the line. My dad and I would soon start a competition who would catch the biggest rainbow trout? Who would catch more fish? And my dad would settle into his lawn chair with his fishing pole in one hand, a line in the water, and a cold beer in the other hand. My mom would make cold meat sandwiches for lunch. We would watch eagles hunting or fishing, and dive down to pull fish from the water and fly away. And life was good.

After my dad was fully recovered from pneumonia, he packed up the sheep one day and announced that we were going up north to tell your ride to go fishing. The Blues Festival was on, and as well, we loved going to the festival, so we happily piled into the jeep. It was a nine-hour jeep ride on a winding road, but my sister and I were excited to go. we happily piled into the jeep. It was a nine-hour jeep ride on a winding road, but my sister and I were excited to go. As the day got late and my sister and I were dozing in the

back seat, only a few miles from our favorite camping spot, we were on one of those winding back roads when my dad suddenly stopped the jeep. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. I was seated behind my mom so I woke up and I saw the look on my dad's face. It looked like he had seen a ghost. The color was gone from his face. My mom asked him, are you okay? Why are you stopping? My dad looked over at my mom and says still looking forward Do you see that? My mom said See what? What my dad said next sent chills down my 8 year old body

He said in a shaky voice I saw a Native American In full war paint and headdress riding on a pony, keeping pace with us on the side of the road. He ran past us and cut us off. The rider and horse stopped, and they're standing in the middle of the road in front of the jeep. Can you see them? The silence in the jeep was deafening. My dad was shaking, staring straight ahead.

The sweat was beaded up on his forehead. My mom finally broke the silence. I can't see him. I see him again. Are you okay? I couldn't see it either and I said so but I could tell my dad could see him and suddenly my dad jumped like someone had snapped their fingers in front of his face and said loudly oh my god he's gone he just faded away to understand how weird this was you have to know how no-nonsense my dad is. He's not one for fantasy. He's always been skeptical of the paranormal and would make fun of my mom for watching ghost shows. He sat there for a few minutes. My dad was obviously trying to pull himself together.

He ran his shaking hands through his grown-out buzz cut and he shook his hands like they hurt from gripping the steering wheel so hard. The rest of the fishing trip and festival went normally but I could tell my dad was shook. He was very quiet and looked like he was often deep in thought. We had been home for about a week in Colorado when one Saturday morning I could hear my dad talking in my parents' bedroom excitedly. I could hear him telling my mom that he had seen a little girl and a big white dog walk through their bedroom. The girl was dressed in a white period gown and had a red ribbon in her short brown hair. She had stopped in front of my dad who was sitting on the edge of his bed. She looked up at him.

Her dog sat down next to her. After a minute, she turned in her heel and her dog followed her out of the bedroom and through the wall. At this point, my dad was probably doubting his sanity. He had been looking for a federal job and soon he was gone again, finding a job that took him to DC several months a year. He never brought up his paranormal experiences again. However, he never made fun of my mom's ghost TV shows again. This happened about two years ago and still scares me when I think about it. First, a little background.

I live in the UK and I'm from a smallish area, nothing fancy. I'm 18 and at the time I was 16 and working at a family friend's pub collecting glasses. I worked from 7 to 11 at night and I lived about three and a half hours to 45 minutes away. To get home I had to walk through a park. Now this park had three entrances and exits, two at the top and one at the bottom which led to the town and center and main shopping area. The top two led to two different areas. One is a skate park and the other is literally right next to a comprehensive school in a big field. This park had a lot of bushes and trees outside each entrance to the park which are very dim. Each entrance was a big gate and they were always open

and this is important for later. I had to walk the path that led towards the school since it was furthest away from home. I worked at the pub for a year and had stuck to the same route going home. Not smart, I know. I'd leave at around 11, sometimes a few minutes before, sometimes a few minutes after. It took about 10 minutes to get to the park, so I'd be walking through the park at around half 11 sometimes or 15 minutes past. Now, the entrance I had to use to get into the park was the one at the bottom, the one that leads to the shopping area. It had one lamppost outside the gate and that was it. That was the only light so I could see about 10 foot into the

park and there were a few benches. No one was ever in the park when I walked through it from work. During the autumn and winter weeks it was always empty even the streets were so you could imagine my shock when I see a man sitting on the bench as I walked through the park gates. Now this was so strange. It was around 45 minutes past 11, almost 12 at night. It's pitch black and freezing and this dude was just sitting on the bench. I couldn't see him too well at first but as I got closer I got a good look at him. He was about 20 to 25, long hair and a ponytail but not scruffy. One tight and one neat. He had a hoop earring and his nose was pierced. I can't remember his eye color. He was so pale and

his hair was jet black with red tips which went past his shoulders. He wore all black. He dressed like an emo, to be honest. Looking past now now he kind of reminds me and looks like Dracula from the movie Van Helsing. He was on his phone and looked up at me as I walked towards him and he just stared at me as I walked past. I gave him a slight nod and kept walking. He just looked up at me and down smirking which kind of freaked me out. He didn't say anything and I managed to get home and didn't think much of him and forgot about it. The next night I went to work, finished my shift and walked through the park and again he was there. On his phone wearing all black and a

ponytail. He looked up and saw me and smiled. I smiled back but walked a bit faster past him again and said nothing. This happened the next night but on the fourth night he wasn't there. I walked through the park as usual but I felt so so uneasy. It was pitch black, no light except the moon and what do I hear? Footsteps. Quick footsteps behind me so I turn around and absolutely nothing. I wasn't taking any chances so I ran through the park and I swear over the sound of my heart beating fast and my footsteps I heard twigs snapping and leaving crunching. After that I started getting a lift home for about two weeks from a friend. Then that friend went on holiday so I had to start walking home to the park again. First night which was Monday night the man wasn't there but I still felt uneasy like I was being watched.

Second night he was there sitting on the bench smiling looking at me but this time he spoke. In a very deep voice he said, Hey baby, love the tights and skirt, god. I was wearing a black skirt and sheer tights with thick black thigh-high socks and Doc Martens with a black biker jacket and thick scarf. I had to wear all black for work. I looked at him, awkwardly smiled, and hurried away. The next week, he was in the park, but made certain comments, but always sat on the bench.

I'd try and get lifts home, but when I could, I'd still have to walk through the park most of the time, and lord, I hated that walk. One night, things escalated. i walked through the park as usual and again he was there sitting smiling at me and i did my best to ignore him as he made comments about my body and what he wanted to do to me as i was walking past him i was out of the light and could see two to three feet in front of me i must have been about 20 feet away from what I heard running behind me and I turned around and bam, someone runs into me full speed and knocks me to the floor. I feel a heavy weight on me and I instantly feel hair on my face and a hand over my mouth. A familiar deep voice tells me not to fight and that it'll be over quick if I don't fight. It's him. He's on top of me and his hands start to wander down to my tummy and he starts to lift my skirt.

I hear his zipper and he's rambling about how he knows I want this and how he's been waiting to do this for so long. He took his hand off my mouth and that's when I took the chance. I bit him hard, real hard and he screamed. He sat up off of me and I could barely see but he was holding his hand and cursing at me so I took the opportunity and pushed him off of me and got up. I started to run and I heard him running after me. I ran towards the first gate, the one that I usually use to leave and was shocked and mortified to see it was locked somehow. I could see it had a lock on it because the lampposts on the other side shone onto the usually open gate. I was so confused but I could hear him shouting and I started to run again and I ran towards the

other gate and it was closed but not out of the way. There was a small gap so I squeezed through. This was the skate park gate. I managed to squeeze through as he tried to grab me and I turned and looked at him for a few seconds catching my breath. He stared at me and then started to try and fit through the gate so I booked it as fast as I could. I ran towards the skate park path. The skate park was full of bushes, and one side of the path that ran through it, it also had a long, dark path, which also was about a 20-minute walk down it,

and it led to a main road, but it's usually completely dead. I ran through the skate park and hid in the bushes waiting for him. Since it had ran onto the long path, I'd been visible and he'd be able to see me and chase me since no one was around and I would stand no chance. The path that led to the roads had very few lights but still had enough and he would see me and be able to find me. He sat in the bushes hiding with his hands over his mouth. I sat for a minute when I see him running through the skate park looking for me. He slowed down near the exit which led to a long path and he literally stood there for a minute sniffing the air. No joke, he was actually sniffing the air. His hair wasn't in a ponytail anymore.

It was all over. He wasn't wearing a coat. He wore a long-sleeved shirt, all black. It was winter, which confused me since it was so cold. He looked around and I felt his eyes scan me. Then he kept looking confused and started walking down this long path. After about 10 minutes I felt it was saved and ran back towards the park and ran into the park and ran to the gate that I usually go through to get home. It was still locked so I climbed over it. I walked towards the school, following the path I always used and had a strange urge to look back and there, at the gate, the man was standing, standing watching me. And he laughed and said, I'll catch you one day, baby girl. Mark my words. And he blew me a kiss and walked away into the darkness.

I've never been so scared in my life. I booked it home and told my mom what had happened. She called the police and council and asked why the fence was locked. The council was just as confused as I had been because they had never locked the gate ever. The police couldn't do much. They put a warning out and that was about it. The creepy thing was that he had to have learned my pattern. He had to have known that I used the park every night to get home. It creeps me out to this day knowing I was being watched and could have been assaulted or worse. I still have nightmares from

time to time about him and wonder what would have happened to me had I not gotten away or had he seen me in the bushes. I quit working at that pub and haven't used the park since. I work at a grocery store about five minutes away from my house as a cashier. It's a big chain of stores throughout the Midwest, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say what company it is. Regardless, I'm 17 and female and have worked there for the better part of 7 months. That may not seem like an insanely large amount of time, but considering most new people who come in end up quitting about two weeks into the job,

it feels like an eternity since I started. This isn't a long story, but it's one that I think about a lot. Sure, I get my fair amount of old weirdos that try to flirt with me when they come through the line, or guys that try to hit on me with the most basic pickup lines. People are rude and cuss me out when I can't give them a discount that they want or when they think I rank something up wrong but this story isn't about those rude or gross people it's about someone else or something else my boyfriend and I love talking about paranormal things he only believes in demons he thinks ghosts are a hoax and if there's something supernatural happening it's responsibility of a demon. I however believe that ghosts and demons both exist and are very different.

One day we were sharing stories and he told me about how one time he thought that he saw someone who was in fact possessed. He used to work at a gas station and I guess one time he had this customer that really freaked him out. I don't remember the specific details but I do remember him telling me about this one man's bright blue eyes, just absolutely piercing and made him super uneasy. So going back to my place of work at the grocery store one day I'm in the middle of one of my shifts. It was just a normal day and I couldn't wait to go on my break. I was on a register and one of my co-workers, Jimmy, was bagging for me. While I was distracted, probably cleaning or with a customer, when Jimmy starts freaking out.

Just like all of a sudden he lost his mind. I look over at him and I'm kind of like, what? He starts asking me, did you see that guy that just came in? He was crazy. Did you see him? I had no idea what he was talking about, as I hadn't seen anyone walk into the store. Now, Jimmy is kind of the village idiot when it comes to our place of work. He's not really smart. He's worked there for about five years and never been promoted and he's just generally lazy. He's funny, don't get me wrong, we all love him, but when it comes to him telling

stories, none of us are really amused anymore. He kept going. Tell me this man came in who looked crazy. He said he looked like someone out of the Men in Black movies. It later came to my attention that Jimmy had never even seen Men in Black, but for the time being I was just kind of picturing someone wearing a tuxedo in the store. Finally, one of my managers told me it was time for me to go on break, and I guess it had been maybe five minutes since the alleged Men in Black came into the store and Jimmy had his little freak out. I clock out and hastily make my way to the break room, knowing every minute counts until I have to be back on the clock. My mind, distracted with thoughts of what food I was going to eat and getting to text my boyfriend back, I turned a sharp corner in the store on my way to the back. I wasn't paying attention and was going as fast as my legs could carry me.

What happened next only played out in a short span of about 15 seconds, but when I think back on it, it feels like it could be hours. I turned the sharp corner and all of a sudden something was towering over me. Now I'm 5'4", which isn't extremely short for a girl my age, but whoever this was had multiple feet on me. I looked up just for a second to see who I almost ran into and my bones went cold. I instantly knew that this had to be the man Jimmy was talking about. I made a mental note to correct him. This man looked nothing like the men in black but more like Neo from the Matrix. He was going into the building and looks up at all the people. He couldn't have

been shorter than seven feet tall and had this pale, pale skin, like white, almost like a ghost. He had a long black trench coat on, one that dragged on the floor with every step he took. I don't know where he found a coat that long to match the length of his body, but sure enough, his coat was taller than he was. To match, he had long, long jet black hair that went easily down to the middle of his back, but what scared me the most about this man, this thing, was his eyes. Pure blue. Not just blue, but piercing, stunning blue, like something I had never seen before. It immediately made me feel uneasy. Now, since this had happened so fast, when I turned the corner and bumped into him, I had merely given him a glance and just kept walking.

But taking a few steps back and processing what I just saw, I turned around to get another look at him. I turned around, expecting him to have kept walking the other way and about to round the corner going the direction I came from. But when I turned to take a second glance at this scary man, he had stopped dead in his tracks in turn two and was staring at me. Like he knew I was going to look at him again. If I didn't feel numb before that, I didn't know how to feel. I've never felt pure terror go through my blood like that. I've never felt pure evil as I looked into someone's eyes before. But this man, who I don't think was a man at all, sure made me feel those things. I felt extremely uneasy and unsafe

and I booked it as fast as I could to the break room to text my boyfriend about what happened. It's been months since this happened but I still can't get that image out of my head. For a long time, after this incident, if I closed my eyes all I could see were two bright blue eyes burning back at me. I don't know who this man was and I hope I never see him again. He's not a regular at the store and I don't know what he

was doing that day I saw him, but a part of me thinks it's better I don't know and I intend to keep it that way. For some context, I am currently a 17 year old female. My family is about to leave for vacation which is why this topic has been on my mind recently. Ever since I can remember, my family had made the longish haul of a 7 hour drive to stay with my grandparents in North Carolina twice a year. One week for the 4th of July in the summer and one week for Thanksgiving in the winter. Now this is the house that my dad grew up in and lived in as a kid so it's been around for a while. The way it works is my family of six sleeps amongst the upstairs since there's two bedrooms. A smaller one that used to be my aunt's and a slightly bigger one that used to be my dad's.

When I was younger, I never really noticed anything strange. I guess I didn't really have a feel for the paranormal or something notable had ever happened to me that stuff just wasn't on my radar. But there was one incident that left everyone in my family speechless and we all squirm a little when we realize that we have to go back and sleep there for vacation. I couldn't have been older than six or seven at the time so my three brothers and I who all are close in age were still fairly young. This particular trip to my grandparents, my mom had decided to sleep alone in the smaller bedroom. The bed in there was only full sized and my dad being 6 foot 2 and close to 300 pounds, well they very well couldn't share a bed. My brothers and I

were all in the sleeping bags on the floor of the bigger bedroom, the one that my dad was in while he was sleeping on the bed. According to my mom's testimony, it was around 12.30am when she heard someone get up and use the bathroom. She could tell it was one of us kids based on the lightness of the footsteps. She listened to make sure whoever it was wasn't getting sick because we were traveling back home the next morning and that just is how things go sometimes. She lay in bed listening and listening but she never heard the mysterious person return back from the bathroom. She brushed it off thinking maybe she drifted off and maybe whoever it was going back to the bedroom and went back to sleep for the night. The next morning we were in the car starting our long descent home. All of the kids were asleep so my dad turned to my mom and said,

the strangest thing happened last night at around 12.30am. My mom, intrigued, asked what had happened. My dad proceeded to tell her that at around 12.30 he saw one of us kids get up and leave the room to go to the bathroom. My mom interjected and confessed that she had heard whoever it was but she had never heard them return to the bedroom. My dad continued saying that he was staying awake listening too to make sure one of us kids wasn't sick. He also waited and waited, checking the clock every couple of minutes to know he didn't drift off to sleep. I guess around 10 minutes passed and he finally decided to get up and go look for whoever

was in the bathroom to make sure that they were okay. But as he got up out of bed and looked on the ground where us kids were asleep, he quickly and fearfully realized that all four kids were laying there, completely sound asleep. Of course, my parents didn't tell us this for years, not until we were older and had come to them, telling them of spooky things that have happened to us in that house. Every time we go, something strange always seems to happen. The most common thing is waking up in the morning to the bathroom light on when everyone swears that they turned it off. We've also heard something whispering our names and my mother swears that she hears something breathing in the room with her.

She even holds her breath to make sure it's not her own breathing. But nothing compares to that experience. And I'm sure this time around on vacation I'll have a new experience to add to this list of scary and unexpl be alerted of all future narrations. If you got a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit or Let's Read official and give and receive feedback from the community and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And join my Discord to interact with me and other listeners directly. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt.

And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all these stories in long compilation form and save huge on data. Located anywhere you listen to podcasts, all links in the bio. Thanks so much, friends. And remember, never trust a fart. you can get it from our tread experts toyos open country family of tires will get you through tough weather in a variety of terrains until may 31st save up to 100 in rebates on select toyo tires find a toyotreadexperts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca locations from tires to auto repair we're always there