The Lets Read Podcast - 114: Episode 102 | Livestreamer & Air Travel Stories | 23 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: November 30, 2021

Welcome to the One Hundred 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 Livestreamers, Air Travel & Best Friend Betrayal... 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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If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. On the afternoon of Easter Sunday in 2017, a man began to broadcast a live video from Cleveland, Ohio via the relatively new streaming service Facebook Live. At first, the broadcast seems harmlessly innocuous, simply a man in a car filming himself with one mobile device while talking to a friend on another. The man is African American, appearing to be in his late 30s or early 40s wearing a blue and black vertically striped polo shirt. It quickly becomes obvious that the conversation is a civil discussion of the man's personal problems,

with him complaining that his friends always seem to blow off his problems, that they ain't nothing. He calmly vents his frustrations before telling his friend that he loves him and that he'll call him back shortly, but for him to tune into his Facebook live broadcast in the meantime. It's then that he tells his friend his username, Stevie Steve. The man's name is Steve Stevens, a vocational specialist at Beachbrook, a behavioral health agency for children and families, and he is about to commit one of the most shockingly brutal acts in the history of the internet.

Before Stephen hangs up the call, he apologizes to his friend before confessing to have just killed 13 people. Despite being such a frank and shocking claim, police would later be completely unable to confirm the veracity of such a claim and could only conclude that it was simply to cause as much hype as possible, a push to secure as many online viewers as he could for what would follow. After Stevens hangs up the phone, he begins to address his Facebook Live audience, claiming he is working on his 14th victim and that he was going around hating on people. He then launches into some vague tirade about the whole thing being something to do with a woman, how he never thought he'd ever let a woman get him emotionally worked up to the point of snapping, as he puts it. I'm 37 and all my life I've been a monster, he says into the camera. Always had to prove myself and now I'm killing people, all because of this woman named Joy Lane. This is the first time we hear that name during the broadcast, completely unaware of the fact

that for one man it would be the last name he ever heard. Stevens explains that he walked out from living with Joy Lane just a few days ago on the Friday just gone and announces that today will be known as the Easter Sunday Joy Lane Massacre, even going so far as laughing as he does so. At around 2pm, Stevens was driving around the 600 block of East 93rd Street in Cleveland's Glenville neighborhood. It is then that he spotted 74-year-old Robert Lee Godwin Sr. as he was walking back from a local grocery store with a plastic bag in his hand. Stevens pulls over his car before exiting the vehicle, then walks up to the elderly man before politely asking him to say the name Joy Lane. Joy Lane, Godwin repeats with confusion, obviously wondering just what was going on. Yeah, Stephen replies, she's the reason why this is about to happen to you. It's then that he produces a.45 caliber Glock 30S handgun

from his waistband and aims it at Godwin's face. The video is extremely distressing to watch. 74-year-old Godwin is powerless to prevent what occurs next. He is far too infirm to run away and is actually so terrified that in his panic, he tries to use the plastic bag in his hand to block the shot. But obviously this does not save him and after a single shot is fired, Godwin collapses to the sidewalk in a lifeless heap. The comments and reactions in the live stream went into frenzy. As Steven said himself at one point during the stream, a lot of people refused to take him seriously on his claims that he was about to take a person's life. Possibly because of the obviously fraudulent claim that he was about to take a person's life. Possibly because of the

obviously fraudulent claim that he just killed 13 others, as surely he'd be in a police pursuit by that point and people definitely have heard about it on the news. But to witness a cold-blooded murder with their own eyes was too much for some people. Those that didn't immediately leave the stream left messages that violently condemned what they'd just seen, with scores of people telling Stevens they were about to call 911 to report him for taking an innocent old man's life in a way that was so hideously confusing to him. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, a number of nearby locations went into lockdown, including Cleveland State University where students were confined to dorms and libraries until they received the all-clear. Since Stevens had actually announced his phone

number on the live stream shortly before the shooting, Cleveland Police Department actually managed to get him on the phone for a brief time, pleading with him to surrender to law enforcement before he took any more lives. But Stevens refused, telling them he could kill many more times in the name of Joy Lane and would never be taken alive. As a result of such a horrifying statement, Cleveland police enlisted the help of the FBI, which expanded the manhunt beyond state lines to Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, and Michigan. Newscasts pleaded with residents in the all-affirmation states to be on high alert and offered a $50,000 reward for any information that would lead to Stephen's arrest on a charge of aggravated murder. It seemed inevitable that Stephen would claim other victims and leave a trail of destruction in his wake.

But two days later, the lives of an untold number of citizens would be saved by the most unlikely of heroes. Just after 11 in the morning on the Tuesday following the initial shooting, the morning crew of a McDonald's in Erie County, Pennsylvania, found themselves facing a terrifying dilemma. One of the workers there believed they'd recognized Steve Stevens from the Facebook Live shooting. Under the pretense of a shift change, they managed to get a few different pairs of eyes on the suspect before confirming that it was indeed him. Taking their lives in their hands,

the drive-thru team managed to stall Stevens by telling him that they had forgotten his order of fries, apologizing and asking if he minded waiting a few more minutes to receive them. Meanwhile, they had quickly called the local police department, telling them that they had Stevens in their drive-thru and were stalling him for time. But the killer managed to get wise to the delay and sped off without his order of fries, but it was too late. The police were almost there and a high-speed chase commenced.

Stevens, hurtled westbound through the streets of Wesleyville, Pennsylvania, determined not to be caught by the pursuing police. The killer then tried to round the corner of Buffalo Road and Downing Avenue in the city of Erie, where Pennsylvania State Police successfully executed a tactile pit maneuver to send Stevens' vehicle spinning to a stop. The officers jumped out of the vehicle with guns drawn, ready to shoot Stephen's dead if he attempted to open fire, but only one shot rang out that morning, when Stephen put his own pistol to his head and pulled the trigger, instantly dying as he splattered his brains all over the interior of the vehicle.

The incident prompted a huge amount of controversy surrounding online censorship and public safety. The incredibly disturbing and graphic video of 74-year-old Robert Lee Godwin Sr.'s killing had remained visible to the Facebook users for more than two hours before it was finally removed by moderators. The delay drew a huge amount of criticism, with many saying Facebook was

unfit to be a public platform given its subpar handling of offensive and violent content. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that a lot more had to be done to prevent such things from happening and paid tribute to Godwin as well as his grieving friends and relatives. Shortly after, Zuckerberg announced that it was bolstering its global community operations team with additional staff who would be trained to actively vet Facebook content for inappropriate content. But the move came far too late for Robert Godwin, whose death had already been seen by hundreds of thousands of people all around the globe and signaled a dark new chapter in the information age, one where humanity's

darker inclinations were not just confined to the dark corners of the internet, but could be broadcast to millions at just the tap of a button. To be continued... emigrated to the United States when she was just a child. She gained notoriety by playing and streaming the real-time strategy PC game known as Dota 2, or Defense of the Ancients 2, and eventually became an integral part of the Dota 2 community, managing one of many professional teams that take part in esports competitions. But back in 2014, Elise was subjected to one of the most terrifying ordeals ever captured on webcam, an incident that would be witnessed by thousands of her fans, and one that would cause them to fear for her life. One night at around 3 o'clock in the morning, Elise was streaming Dota 2 from her home in Tempe, Arizona.

It was a regular chill night of gaming for her as she worked through from round to round, thanking her fans as they resubscribed and commented on her efforts. But suddenly, Elise heard a noise coming from another room in her residence, a loud banging noise that she initially ignored but then decided to investigate. Her viewers waited with bated breath, anxious to know just what was going on in their favorite streamer's residence. Then, a male voice from the other room can be heard aggressively shouting, On the ground, now! Get on the ground! Viewers initially speculated that it was some kind of police raid,

that Elise had been swatted by a jealous rival or a vicious online troll. However, in the moments that follow, an armed, masked man can be seen entering the room that Elise is streaming from. He aims the pistol around the room, ensuring it is clear, before beginning to grab a series of valuables, including Elise's guns, a laptop, some phones, and some credit cards. Only then was it clear that Elise was being subjected to a violent home invasion. The armed man then actually looks up into the webcam and realizes that the entire event has been captured live. Not just that, but it has in fact been broadcast to hundreds, possibly thousands of online fans that have no doubt contacted law enforcement on their favorite streamer's behalf.

He then turns off the lights in the room before approaching Elise's computer and disconnecting the webcam, effectively ending the live stream there and then. Elise later stated that the two gunmen also shouted, where are the narcotics? Where are the narcotics? at her as she kneeled in the hallway and attempted to avoid eye contact. So it's possible that the two robbers were trying to pass themselves off as police in order to deter any resistance and make the home invasion seem legitimate. However, in a statement later given by Tempe police, which was backed up by Elise herself,

the whole thing was actually just a case of mistaken identity. The actual intended target of the armed robbers was a local drug dealer who they wished to rob without recourse. Elise also said that the robbers realized they had the wrong target and vocally expressed their disappointment in the low value and volume of the items that they had managed to take, but that her roommate had told the robbers in a panic that he had $20,000 in the bank that they could have in exchange for their safety. At that point, one of the robbers actually seemed willing to stick around for several hours until local banks opened up at 9am, where he could take the streamers hostage

where they would withdraw their savings. They even went as far as taking off their masks and gloves, stating that it didn't matter if the victims could see their faces or if they left fingerprints behind, that they would be returning to Mexico once the robbery was completed. Elise's viewers, knowing full well the location she was streaming from, alerted local law enforcement that there was an armed robbery in process. Within minutes, officers had set up a perimeter in the area and enlisted helicopter support in order to apprehend the suspects. Tempe police then ran the doorbell of the apartment

and one of the robbers actually went to the front door to try and inform them that everything was okay and that nothing ominous was occurring inside. But that did not convince police officers who began shouting at the man to get on the ground and announcing Tempe police. Elise and her roommate quickly realized that the cops had arrived and bolted back into their bedroom and into the master bathroom, locking the door behind them and climbing into the tub in hopes that if any firefight was about to commence, the thick porcelain would protect them from any stray bullets. At this point,

the robbers tried to flee the scene while the cops cleared the apartment and assured Elise and her roommate that they were safe. Elise actually asked the cops how they knew to make a call to their address and, after taking some statements, the officer in question informed them, to their obvious delight, that someone who was watching their video game stream had called. If Elise hadn't been streaming that night, the ordeal may have continued for much longer, as well as costing them a great deal of money. And after a short foot chase with one of the robbers, they were taken into custody and charged with breaking and entering, possession of a firearm, and aggravated robbery. Once he was caught, the cops walked Elise over to where he was being held so she could ID him. And because he had been

so cocky as to show off the bulletproof vest that he was wearing, despite disposing of the red polo shirt he had been wearing, Elise was quickly able to confirm that it was indeed the man that had tried to rob them that they had in custody. In a statement later given by Lieutenant Mike Pooley of the Tempe Police Department, he informed the press that the person who made the original call was in Europe. They called someone here in the United States. That person then called the Tempe Police Department. One of the two suspects involved in the robbery was later identified by authorities as being 27-year-old Eduardo Martinez.

However, Martinez's accomplice managed to evade the police and is still on the run from the law. Despite the fact that their fans had come through for them, Elise and her roommate were still deeply shaken up by the events and actually moved apartments soon after since the memories of the incident still lingered in their minds. Elise later stated that she thought she was going to die during the event, so it is easily understandable that they would wish to put the event behind them. We can only be grateful that Elise had a fanbase that cared so deeply about her, and that came to her aid in her time of need.

Indeed, the world can be a dark place, full of people that are willing to victimize others, but the events of that night prove that there is a kind of balance, that for every evil person, there are just as many, perhaps even more good people, willing to help their fellow human. Having recently returned from a tour of duty in Kuwait, Air Force veteran Joshua Peters was wearing expensive noise-canceling headphones during perhaps the worst night of his life. Peters, who went by the username

KoopaTroopa787, was using them during a session of playing the extremely popular browser game RuneScape while streaming on Twitch for upwards of 60,000 followers. But suddenly, his viewers heard a panicked voice off camera and had to actually inform Joshua that something was going on in the background. It was his mother informing of the arrival of 10 heavily armed police officers at their St. Cloud, Minnesota residence. At that, Joshua suddenly disappears off camera and was gone for some amount of time. He returned around 15 minutes later on the verge of tears and obviously shaken by the events that had transpired, before he confirmed to speculative viewers that he had indeed been a victim of the phenomenon known as swatting.

A cowardly, anonymous caller had contacted the St. Cloud Police Department, claiming to be someone who had lived at the same address as Peters. They pleaded with police to help them, falsely asserting that Peters had shot their roommates and was now pointing the gun at them. Police later said that they had heard the distinct sounds of two gunshots before the caller hung up and immediately dispatched armed officers to the address in question. The act of swatting is intended to facilitate the dispatch of armed police officers to a victim's house or apartment. The object is usually simply to frighten the victim, but in reality, the risks of swatting are considerably higher. The more dramatic and dangerous the threats that are made via the call, the more likely the cops will respond with a high amount of aggression and violence of action. In the past, SWAT teams have shot and killed a man who called a hotline about ending his life, thrown a stun grenade in a baby's crib, and killed more than one family dog. The increased popularity of such a dangerous act has meant that many police departments have become increasingly savvy to the practice and have instituted a number of measures against it.

However, given that this was way back in 2015, unfortunately for Peters, the attempt worked. Before Peters ended his stream for the evening, the veteran returned to his computer to explain the situation to his viewers and to send a personal message to whoever had called in the swatting attempt. I see you posting my address. I had police point a gun at my little brother because of you. They could have been shot. They could have died. Because you chose to swat my stream.

I don't care about what you have against me or what I did to you. For that I'm at a loss for words. You gripes with me but did not involve my family in this. They don't deserve this. Speaking to a numerous amount of journalists on the day following the swatting incident, Peter said that he had absolutely no clue as to why he was specifically targeted. There's no possible persons who I can think would do something like this to me. I've seen this happen to other streamers. I just never thought I would be the one to get randomly

targeted. Never. My channel's not even crazy big like some of the other mainstream streamers. I just didn't expect that. I was going upstairs and before I knew it, my face was on a tile on the ground, hands wide open and a bunch of police officers with assault rifles. Despite the fact that St. Cloud Police Department had confirmed that Peter's was the first swatting attempt their city had ever seen, the officers were indeed aware of the concept, having seen it covered in the media. And so as soon as Peter suggested that it was an attempt at swatting, the responding swatting officers immediately changed their approach, becoming less aggressive and open to the possibility that it was all just a terrible mistake. When we were all laying down, I spoke out.

I said, I stream on Twitch.tv, I'm being swatted, and someone probably prank called us. And then the tone shifted as soon as I said I'm streaming on twitch.tv. The situation quickly calmed down, with the police officers apologizing for the mistake and leaving the Peters residence before any further harm could be caused. But unbelievably, the situation was far from over, because just a few hours later, the person who called in the initial swatting actually tried to do it again, calling the very same police department and imitating a member of Peter's family. On this occasion, they tried to convince the 911 dispatcher that Josh was depressed

and potentially trying to end his own life due to the danger he had exposed his loved ones to. But thankfully, the police knew to call Josh in advance to confirm the claim rather than to simply show up with the SWAT team all over again. Peters, who happened to be flown back from his tour of duty in a medical evacuation after a life-changing injury, said the whole ordeal was a horrifying incursion into a personal part of his life where he usually feels content and secure. There's not a lot of things that can get me emotional in this world, but it's been a process getting back in my feet. Today was the first day where everything went smoothly. It was very energetic. Everything was going well in my

stream and then it's like, once again, here's another hurdle to overcome. And this is way worse than anything else I've ever had to overcome. It was like, gosh, let's go back to the other areas I had to deal with that were much more manageable. I'm the oldest of four brothers and to know that a gun was pointed at my little brother, it hits home for me. Minnesota police released a statement saying that a thorough investigation into the identity of Peter' attacker was being undertaken, but Josh Peters himself added in a later stream that there were no clear suspects, and that because of certain VPN services, it was highly unlikely that anyone would ever be caught or charged for the attack.

It seems to be a sad fact that anyone in the public eye these days Even relatively small streamers and YouTubers are open to such forms of abuse Whether it be accusations of behavioral misconduct, swatting attempts, hacking attempts or worse It is depressingly disturbing that a single disgruntled viewer, listener or fan Might be able to take such cheap but effective shots at someone who, more often than not, is simply trying to make a living from entertaining their fellow man. Prentiss Robinson liked to play music. He was one of nine children, and aside from a brief stint living in Atlanta, Georgia while pursuing a career in the arts, he lived in North Carolina his whole life. He would often spend his days playing his guitar around the town of Wingate, which is about 30 miles southeast of Charlotte, entertaining passerby and earning a few extra dollars and tips for his smooth-sounding country blues. But when Prentice discovered Facebook Live, he found that he had a means

of reaching a far wider audience than he had before, with just the push of a button. He could show the entire world what a talent he had, not just for singing and playing, but for the push of a button. He could show the entire world what a talent he had not just for singing and playing but for the storytelling that is the bread and butter of country blues. He could tell stories of sadness and joy of justice, of rights and wrongs because at his core, Prentiss cared for his fellow man. So much so that he couldn't help but notice

the wrongdoings occurring in his own community. Gangsters, prostitution, the drug dealing. All the things that kept his black brother and sisters down in the hole of crime and poverty that they seemed so unwilling to climb out of, in his mind. And then, Facebook Live wasn't just a way to broadcast his music. For Paris, it was a way to broadcast to the entire world the travesties that were being committed in his own neighborhood. He would livestream, as it was sometimes called by him, his walks around his neighborhood, calling people out for their sins. And as brave or foolhardy as it may seem, the number one target for Prentiss' righteous indignation were those that peddled illegal drugs. He would record their activities on his cell phone, broadcasting their sales and activities to the world,

exposing them for the parasites that they were and seemed unafraid of the consequences. And consequences there were. Prentiss quickly became the target for the drug dealer's vengeful wrath. They would often give heavy discounts to addicts for targeting Prentiss in acts of vandalism or robbery, putting out bounties on his personal property or rewarding them for assaulting or harassing him. All they had to do was tune into his Facebook live broadcasts and reward those who partook in the assaults with free or discounted narcotics. Logically, the highest value target for robbery was Prentice's cell phone.

Any drug user who could separate the man from his means of broadcast would be highly rewarded and one day, a drug user was actually successful in their attempt and managed to steal Prentice's phone, robbing him of not only the item itself, but as means to expose the drug dealer's activities. Prentice then turned to the police for help. In February 2018, he walked down to the Wingate Police Department to report the robbery. Robinson can be seen walking through the neighborhood, waving the passing cars, contemplating singing birds, complaining about his stolen cell phone and worrying about the area's elderly residents.

They're afraid of some of the activities going on, he said. I'm trying to keep the neighborhood quiet like this, peaceful. Using a cheaper model of a phone that he had picked up from a local discount store, he recorded the entire exchange with police officers, including an interaction with police chief Donnie Gay who said to the camera, bring his phone back so he can get on with his way today. Prentiss then walked out of the police station still recording using a selfie stick when he was approached by a man who seemed unfamiliar to him who was wearing blue jeans, brown Timberland-style boots, and a black and blue windbreaker. Prentiss turned the camera to record the individual, who asked him repeatedly if he was indeed Prentiss Robinson. Prentiss was something of a local celebrity for his music as well as his broadcasts and had no reason to believe that the man had any

ill will towards him. So when asked who he was, he obviously disclosed that he was indeed Prentiss Robinson, before showing the man his camera and declaring, you live, several times expecting the unfamiliar individual to be pleased to be part of his broadcast. But to his absolute horror, the man pulled out a long gun from under his jacket and fired four shots at Prentiss who collapsed on the sidewalk, mortally injured. Prentiss' camera captured the entire thing including the gunman running off into some trees after having fired the shots.

A car is seen pulling up and drag Prentiss inside in order to drive him to the hospital in an attempt to save his life but he was dead by the time they arrived and dragged Prentiss inside in order to drive him to the hospital in an attempt to save his life, but he was dead by the time they arrived, having bled to death from the massive trauma of receiving four large caliber gunshot wounds at close range. Oh my god, what just happened? One person commented on Facebook, seconds after the shooting as the comment section lit up with shocked users who couldn't believe the brutality that they had just witnessed firsthand.

The local community was devastated. A friend apprentice, Chester Sanders, said the Facebook live broadcasts likely made people upset. If people don't like it, then they get angry. At some point in time it will start and something will happen. I don't know if it was the reason for this tragedy to happen, but it happened. Another of Prentiss' longtime friends, Charles Baker, told local news outlets. That's just unreal. For somebody to have that kind of heart to just walk out in the open like that and kill a man, it's just nonsense. Only being a block or so away from the police department,

if that's not brazen I don't know what is, police chief Gay said, adding, It's heartbreaking. I can't believe it. Godwin's family filed a lawsuit against Facebook in the aftermath of the killing, saying the social network had the ability to alert law enforcement with more than sufficient time to act and prevent the murder of their beloved relative. In a statement, Facebook said it removed the post because the company couldn't have known if Robinson wanted this horrific act to be live-streamed on social media. A spokesperson added,

We will apply a warning screen to future uploads of the video intended to raise awareness or condemn this tragedy and limit accessibility to people over the age of 18. We will remove instances of video from Facebook that are shared supporting or encouraging such acts of violence. The morning after the murder, 65-year-old Douglas Cleveland Coulson, also a resident of Wingate, handed himself in to the police department, apparently aware that he had been caught red-handed in the recording of Prentiss' murder. He had an extensive criminal history, and it was believed that he was an associate of the drug dealers that Prentiss

had so heavily offended. Speculation is that the drug dealers in question had become so sick of Prentiss' so-called do-gooder activities that they had decided to end them once and for all. Coulson was apparently told that if he executed Prentiss for reporting the stolen phone, then turned himself in so that the drug dealers would not be investigated for the crime, he would not only be well looked after in prison, but that his family would be provided for while he was inside. It seems like this was way too good of an offer for Coulson to turn down and so that morning, he armed himself and followed Prentiss down to the police station. He simply waited outside for the man to walk back out, confirmed that it was indeed

Prentiss Robinson, and then shot him down there and then. What is depressingly clear about this whole incident is how the darkness of corruption and greed can snuff out even the brightest lights that shine out in our communities. Prentiss was a man whose only aim was to improve the living situations of those around him and to bring joy into their lives, be it through music or by the means that, in the end, got him killed. But thanks to the brutal, quick-buck mentality and evil of those he sought to bring to justice, Prentiss was murdered before he could ever bring about any real change. We can only hope that the man's story can inspire the greater community to act on his behalf and leave behind a better world than they came into.

Paul Donino, more commonly known by his online nickname of Vice Poseidon, is perhaps one of the most famous livestreamers in the history of the field. Initially rising to prominence by streaming the popular browser game RuneScape, he became a pioneer of the streaming genre known as livestreaming or IRL, which simply involves someone livestreaming their daily lives and whatever events might occur throughout their day. By 2017, Danino had almost a million subscribers, making him a behemoth on the internet streaming site Twitch. However, his streams are also known for their so-called edgy humor, as well as his interaction with his subscribers and viewers through text-to-speech. He is also known for the fact that his viewers often intercept his live streams by using visual clues to determine his location, in a process known as stream sniping. This has led to various memorable incidents, including one such event when a viewer

entered the restaurant he was eating in before proceeding to spray the entire place down with a fire extinguisher. Ice Poseidon has also been unfortunate enough to catch some highly unusual and disturbing things on some of his live streams. For example, on a visit to an Italian restaurant in LA, he has a rather frightening encounter with a member of the management team. Ice Poseidon sat down at Cafe Verona, which describes itself as a small, hidden Italian restaurant off of South La Brea Avenue. Before looking at the menu, he scrolls through his phone,

perusing messages from his audience before a man approaches him from off-camera. Wearing glasses and a beige shirt, the older gentleman leans into Danino's ears so that the other diners cannot hear what's being said, but the microphone captures everything. I'm getting about 30 calls about you on my phone. He says, and I'm a gangster, so you better leave here right now before there's trouble for yourself. His tone is cold and calm, but somehow also brimming with rage, and Danino's face drains of color as the man speaks. Do you understand that? The man continues. You're messing with a mob over here. You better leave now, got it? Danino apologizes and asks what's going on. The sooner you leave the better. The older man states and proceeds to follow Danino into the street outside while the camera records him staring daggers at his back.

But as much as the video is frighteningly intimidating, Danino managed to catch something even more disturbing on film. In another video filmed on Friday, March 3rd, 2017, Ice Poseidon is seen walking through a crowd and showing off some of the sights of a busy Hollywood boulevard when he spots an individual dressed as the comic book hero Spider-Man and attempts to engage the costume hero in conversation. But when he gets a little closer, he spots someone high up on one of the buildings, appearing as if they are about to jump off. A crowd had gathered to watch, with some others filming and another discussing whether it was a prank or an actual attempt. You see, although the person is not captured on film at any point, Ice Poseidon DeNino states that they were wearing a costume of some description.

No details on which particular costume, but one can understand why the situation was not taken too seriously by the onlookers at first. What just as a minute ago was a casual, jovial stream becomes tangibly disturbing as Danino's face drops and he begins to ask over and over again, Dude, what's going on right now? I think it's a prank, responds his white-shirted streaming partner, to which Dino replies, better be a prank. The pair then speculates that it would be extremely unwise for them to be around to film such a tragic event, should it actually occur, as doing so would almost certainly result in them being banned from their streaming platform.

Yet still they stare up at the building, watching nervously as person atop Decides whether or not to go through with the act That's not far enough to die though Danino's partner says It is wishful thinking at its best Dude that is definitely far enough to die He retorts as a visible amount of dread is etched into both of their faces It is then that the pair begin to walk away from the scene not wanting to witness or capture on film whatever will come next. However, just for a brief moment, Danino stops and turns back towards the scene,

audibly expressing how he'd almost like to hang around to watch the person get tackled by the cops or something. But seconds later, horrified screams can be heard from the gathered crowd. It quickly becomes obvious that the costumed person has thrown themselves from the building, crashing into the concrete sidewalk for all to see. Danino walks a block or two, stony face and obviously disturbed before he finally stops and kneels to the ground, almost forgetting his camera is even there. As he raises a hand to his temple, we can see that he is visibly shaking and he confesses to feeling sick at what he just witnessed. Hours after the incident, Danino had not calmed down and tweeted out to his followers, I don't feel good now. I'm shaking. At just past 2am the following morning.

Although the attempt was captured by the Ice Poseidon livestream happened to be purely coincidental, at the time, there seemed to be a trend of people broadcasting their attempts and successfully taking their lives on livestreaming services. A number of people had used the Facebook Live function within the previous two months of Danino's video, with the disturbing trend growing so large that Facebook even prompted a response to make it easier for people to report these videos and get help to the person broadcasting them. One of which includes the death of Caitlin Nicole Davis, who hung herself on Facebook Live in a video that had been seen by hundreds of her friends and peers,

as well as thousands of other people all over the world. Some had demanded that Facebook block these horrendously disturbing videos entirely once they were reported, with some experts saying the viral nature of the videos led other teens to make copycat attempts. But Facebook pushed back against this idea, noting that they could do more to help the individual in question if the video stream is not cut off. Sweet Anita, a Twitch streamer with just shy of a million followers, was at the height of her streaming career when her dream job turned into a living nightmare. For months, a violent stalker shadowed her every move, online and in real life. It's an experience she's been extremely candid about

both on her Twitter account as well as during her streams telling her audience of how her stalker had been continuously ignoring restraining orders put out against him and how he persists in harassing her. She says she has been consistently failed by the police in the matter how they have told her directly that they wouldn't be taking the issue any further until actual violence had taken place. But even then, she says that

continuing problems arising from the harassment has left her scarred for life. Sweet Anita is deeply protective of her private life, so it is not possible to find out exactly where she is located and thus where the problems are occurring, so we cannot contact the relevant police service in order to gain comment from them. Instead, Anita is putting together a collaborative video featuring other streamers and influencers who have had their own problems with doxing, harassment, and stalking, in hopes that it might protect others from going through the same experience as she had, or if they are currently dealing with issues, that it might provide some form of relief or solace from their suffering. I have a stalker that has been stalking me for quite a few months

actually, sweet Anita confessed during a recent live stream. They have been coming to my house, they've been sleeping in my backyard, watching the house, and the other day some shopkeepers had to intervene and kind of hold him back while he chased after me. A clearly shaken sweet Anita told her viewers that the psychopathic obsessive had waited outside her house and followed her to a shop so he could strike when she was vulnerable. When I told him to leave me alone and asked if he had a knife he didn't respond, she said And when I said, are you going to let me walk home alone? He said yes, but when I went across the road he started chasing

It was then that two shopkeepers had to actually step in, she said Having to physically restrain the individual so that they couldn't follow her back home That's not even the worst thing that he's done. He's physically assaulted me. Anita, who is a Tourette's sufferer and who had recently turned 30 at the time of the stalking, first spoke publicly about the stalker via her Twitter account. The stalker was caught and detained last night. He had a knife on him, she tweeted. After taking my screenshots, recordings, a witness statement of the assault from me and a friend, not to mention having his confession to

harassing me, he's been released with a caution. He has also gone from planning a short visit to my town to moving to a place four minutes from me permanently. I'm very used to the lack of protection from the police at this point. I guess I'll have to get used to seeing him around too. In April of 2020, Sweet Anita announced that she had successfully gotten a restraining order put out on the man, telling of how he had been arrested and convicted of stalking. He had also been banned from entering the town where she lived. There's a restraining order and a suspended sentence of two months in prison, she tweeted. I's a restraining order and a suspended sentence of two months in prison, she tweeted. I really hope that he honors this and I will finally be safe.

But to her horror and disappointment, she later told fans of the news that unfortunately, the restraining order wasn't effective and her stalker did not abide by its conditions. He didn't honor it. This means I can't make this morning's stream. I'm sorry, everyone. I'm okay. I'll just be really busy sorting things out with the police, she later tweeted. If anything happens to me, I really hope that I'm the last canary in this coal mine. The law needs to change. No job should have such a high risk of assault or death, especially not live streaming. Anita also went as far as sharing some screenshots of the things the stalker had been saying to her over the chat section of her streams,

using a different account each time to avoid permanent bans. I'll kill you soon, one message said. Not with a cheap kitchen knife I had last time. No, I'm going to bring something special for you. In an even more disturbing and threatening message, Anita Stalker claimed that he would harm her family. She seems to believe absolutely nothing can be done, as the police seem poorly equipped and lacking in motivation

to deal with the growing problem of online persecution. In recent interviews, she claimed to have provided evidence of the messages to the police, but they'd done nothing to deal with it effectively. Since my tweets about the threats went viral, they mysteriously picked up the case again, she said, but they've been telling me that it's not likely or they are uncertain that it will amount to any further action. The police don't even turn up when I call anymore. I have only called them about 4 or 5 times in the past 9 months, which is far fewer times than he has actually threatened me

because I have learned that they won't do anything to help. She told of one instance where her stalker mentioned that he would be at her house in less than 15 minutes to kill her, but that when alerted, the police didn't even show up. I feel like they just don't care. They didn't even know what doxing was or that it was a crime when I spoke to each officer that came to take a statement, nor did they even know what Twitch or live streaming was. It feels as though they didn't even understand what is happening, let alone what to do about it. In 2018, it was reported that 55 women were killed between 2015 and 2017 by men that they had previously gone to the police about,

and that the number of women killed in the UK rose to 10% in 2019 from the previous year. Frankly, I haven't found a single streamer who's escaped this kind of harassment, Anita said. It's insane. From revenge, constant doxing, threatening people's children, to even trying to abduct their children from school. It's horrific. One particular girl that Anita spoke to was threatened and blackmailed with her explicit pictures for years. They had her sit with a male police officer where she had to show him the images the stalker was sharing. She felt humiliated

and the guy got a £100 fine in restraining order. He continues to harass her to this day, nine years after he started. Many different internet personalities have had to live with the nightmare of online stalkers. The platforms simply have no concrete solutions. Twitch confirmed that it is aware of Sweet Anita's case and has attempted to cooperate with her and the police since she reported it. They insisted that action is taken when any incident of harassment occurs, which ranges from permanent bans to contacting law enforcement, but that they

are unable to do anything about real-life behavior. Anita says it is a sad fact that she has to wait until the stalker kills her for her concerns to be taken seriously. My safety is in my own hands, she said. He has threatened to kill my mom and my animals before me, and every day I wake up wondering if it's my last. On Saturday evening of the 26th of October 2019, 24-year-old Jeffrey Antonio Langford Jr. began streaming on Facebook Live video. The live images showed him sobbing with a bloodstain on his left cheek while he repeated the same word over and over again whilst in an apparently intoxicated state. Mom, mom, mom, he said as he wept. Langford then showed the horrified viewers what he was so upset about,

turning his phone to show them something that was completely and utterly terrifying. It was his own mother, or more specifically, his own mother's corpse. She was covered in blood and had a single gunshot wound to her head. When the cops arrived, having been alerted by distraught Facebook friends of his, Langford told them that he had witnessed his mother shooting herself in the face. However, forensic examiners noted that the blood spray and the placement of the fatal wound indicated something much more disturbing, that Langford had in fact murdered his own mother with a small revolver before apparently rushing to livestream the aftermath. In the

moments following the murder of 45-year-old Graciela Laura Holker in North Salt Lake, Utah, Langford streamed three videos of himself and her body. He insisted to all that were tuned in that he did not kill his mother and repeats the claim that she ended her own life in front of him. However, according to court papers, in the very next breath, he seems to reverse himself by saying that his mother isn't dead at all and insists that he needs to finish the job

to prevent her from further suffering. A second video again that Langford livestreamed once again repeats this claim, with Langford promising that he would not be going to jail, because despite what things might look like, he hadn't done anything wrong. A disturbingly revealing statement indeed. Then a further, third clip shows Langford insisting that his mother deserves a good send-off and that he lost her the same way he lost his dad. This could easily be seen as a plea for sympathy

given that Langford was indeed guilty of the crime and wished to deflect any suspicion of himself. It was later confirmed by police that Langford's father died years earlier with comments on Facebook suggesting he fell victim to a shooting accident and that the incident coincided with his mother's death. During a police interview that followed the incident, Langford claimed he and his mother had been drinking to commemorate the loss of Langford's father and that she had taken a Klonopin sedative pill. Then, in a drowsy, disassociated state, she had walked into the living room and

shot herself. But also during the interview, Langford began to make contradictory statements that alerted police to the inconsistencies in the case and drew their suspicions to him. He offered two different versions of what he claims happened that evening, stating that his mother had shot herself inside, whilst then claiming that she'd ended her life outside in the backyard. Then, when the police asked Langford why he hadn't dialed 911, he reportedly claimed that he was scared that she would shoot him, which once again caused them to doubt his story. What's more, his mother was found with the gun in her right hand. However, a subsequent police report stated that the handgun was in his mother's right hand,

meaning that whoever had fired the fatal shot had also been able to re-cock the hammer, and obviously if a person took their own life, they would be in no way able to do something like that. Additionally, the handgun's six-round cylinder was also found to have three unspent rounds and three empty chambers with nothing in them. The rounds had been fired recently, too, meaning that more than one bullet had been killed in one room then dragged into another where Langford had recorded the Facebook videos. As a result of the murder of his own mother, Langford was quickly charged with first-degree felony murder and second-degree felony obstruction of justice over claims he lied about his mom's murder. He was also charged with carrying a dangerous weapon while in possession of drugs or alcohol. Despite insisting that he was not guilty of his mother's

murder, Langford was sentenced up to 15 years in the Utah State Prison. I do not take account for what I've done, he said, but I will not admit to killing anyone. I did not kill her, and she shot herself in the head. I now have two parents dead, both from taking their own life and I'm the last of my line. It was this argument that meant that Langford dodged being convicted of a first degree felony and Langford pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter. But what's clear is that we may never really know if Langford actually did kill his mother or merely assisted her. But it's painful and disturbingly true that he was present enough to make an actual video of what had occurred that evening, making a public event out of one that should have been deeply,

deeply private. Morocco is one of the most beautiful places I'd ever been in my life. From the beaches to the deserts, from the forests to the ancient trading souks and bazaars, it's just a visually phenomenal place. I had no idea the place could even have forests, so if you were surprised to hear that, don't worry about it. Like I said, Morocco is mind-blowing. Only it's not just the sights that I found so memorable. The sounds of traditional instruments, of camels bellowing over the whipping of the riders, and the smells of Morocco are also burned in my memory. Spices, incense, sweet perfumes, but also less wholesome things, things like hashish. I'm not into smoking at all,

really. I've always been really into keeping myself healthy, but I had some friends in uni who smoke so I know what it smells like and Morocco is full of the stuff. Anyway, at the end of our three week trip, my girlfriend and I were typically late for the return flight. We were collectively so badly organized that I'm amazed we even managed to keep our heads screwed on. We were so late in our schedule that we had absolutely no chance of taking the advice of a fellow traveler that was given us the night before. It seemed a bit weird, but he insisted that we get off the bus halfway through, buy fresh tickets, and continue the rest of the journey. When I asked him why, he just sort of tapped his nose with his finger as if to say, that's for me to know and you to find out. He was a bit of a wanker

if I'm being honest. I'm not about to follow advice from someone like that who might have just been messing with us and as if I had the money or spare time to just buy us a pair of new tickets for no bloody reason at all. So we ignored his oh so sage advice and just got the bus that we had been planning on getting. The next morning, we got on the bus from Chefchaouen, the last leg of our journey to the capital, Rabat. It was a very long, very uncomfortable journey in the rickety old vehicle that looked like it had been on the road since the 50s or something. Not to mention it was compounded by the fact that, for the first time on the entire trip, I had managed to have eaten something that didn't agree with me.

Needless to say, I was feeling pretty rough. When we finally got to the airport, we must have only had about an hour's despair before our flight departed, so we ended up hurrying through check-in and must have appeared visibly anxious to all the staff present, which is generally not a good idea when traveling internationally. We also had a lot of Moroccan currency to change back into British pounds, and I remember the cashier looking rather suspicious at the fact that we had so much and that we seemed to be in a big rush to leave the country. In a rush to leave, and in my case, in a massive rush to find a bloody toilet so I could, you know, see to some personal business

resulting from that dodgy lamb tagine I'd had the previous night. Of course, it was Saad's law that the blokes in security pulled us up to one side for a closer inspection of our luggage. It was just what we didn't need, so naturally it's how things unfolded, just our luck. And after clearing out pretty much everything we packed, he decided he should summon another member of security to take a further look. I then made the near fatal mistake of informing him that I really needed to visit a restroom while we waited, explaining in my terrible Arabic that I had an upset stomach, pointing dramatically to my belly and making strained faces. He asked me in broken English like,

Have you swallowed anything? And I take this to mean him asking if I'd taken any medicine for it to which I nod and reply that I'd taken some stool hardener but that they hadn't seemed to help in the least bit. It was only then that it dawned on me that we each had a completely different understanding of what the situation was. Somehow I'm guessing that he'd seen our bus tickets and he knew where he traveled from and starts explaining that Chefchaouen is a big hashish producing region

and that I'd require further inspection before I'd be allowed to board our flight. My heart sank. He thought I was a drug smuggler. I mean, I wasn't worried about them finding anything, as I wasn't what they suspected me to be at all, but all the delay meant that we might miss our flight home, which would be a huge inconvenience at the time when we didn't need any of that at all. Not only that, but them not finding anything meant that the inspection might get very, very thorough if you catch my drift. I had previously been in physical danger of completely

soiling my pants from the tagine, but now it was fear that became a clear and present danger to the integrity of my underwear. I tried to explain that I needed the loo, but by then, two armed police officers with sniffer dogs had appeared and we were pretty much frog-marched into the corner of the security area while we waited, confident if a little nervous for them to check our bags. I was then escorted to an interview room where a Moroccan immigration official literally poked at my stomach whilst asking me a series of questions in perfect English about my drug consumption habits. He asked me if I knew that Chefchaouen was a big hashish-producing region, and I told him that I knew it was made all over Morocco. He asked if I'd ever been offered any whilst in country, and I replied honestly that I had. Big mistake. He turned to his colleagues, smiled, and said something in Arabic which I almost was certain would have translated to, we got one. After a bit of talking

among themselves, the immigration official tells me that I'd have to wait while they brought in a doctor to examine me. Once again, I tried to explain that there had just been a horrible misunderstanding and that all I had was an upset stomach, nothing illegal on me at all. I begged for them to let me go to the toilet but the more I did so, the more certain they seemed that they'd caught me out and that any toilet trip would inevitably be to hide the evidence. My girlfriend was in tears as we waited. The whole thing was grimmer than grim because the officials seemed to be taking a remarkable amount of pleasure in my suffering. I get that it's because they thought that they caught a smuggler and they probably get a commission or something for doing so,

so I can't really blame them for that, but it just made the situation so much worse. Eventually, they announced that the doctor in question had arrived to examine me, but I didn't see any bloke in white and a stethoscope, only the original two security officials who had pulled us aside in the first place. It was horrifying. I asked if they had any medical credentials on them, but they just laughed and told me to follow them, and that if I resisted, I'd be detained in bloody Moroccan jail as a smuggler and charged with some trumped up crime. Obviously, I had no choice but to follow them. I was led to a room deep inside some kind of detention center and was shocked by what I saw. It was something I'd never seen before, but laying eyes on the thing, it made a lot of sense very suddenly.

Perhaps too much sense. It was basically a large stainless steel toilet with no obvious method of flushing what was dumped into it. This was obviously where smugglers would evacuate whatever was inside them before immigration officials could sift through the waste for whatever contraband they suspected of being secreted. Then the English speaking official told me in a very intimidating manner that he was going to find out if I was lying or not. I actually thanked him for finally letting me use the toilet. Call it Stockholm Syndrome or whatever but I was feeling rough as a bear's butt by this point. But when I asked him if it was possible to get a little bit of privacy, his expression turned. He told me in no uncertain terms, as he took out a latex glove and pulled it over his hand,

that it was either I force out whatever was inside of me, or he'd do it himself. I was absolutely horrified. This guy was massive. I mean, a real bear of a man, and his hands were huge. Trembling with fear, I just nodded. He pushed me inside the room with the special toilet inside, closed the door behind him, then motioned through the plexiglass window for me to do my business. It was then that I realized that I would have some manner of revenge on the man,

that I was about to do something truly disgusting, and that he was now the one that had no choice but to suffer through it. I did as I was told, pulled my pants down, and began to fill the bowl with all that dodgy tagine that I'd consumed the previous night. There was a moment when I thought to ask him for some privacy again, but it slowly dawned on me that I no longer cared. If he wanted to hang around to realize the giant bloody mistake he'd made, that was his business. Besides, the pure relief that I'd felt to finally sit down on a toilet, well, that made what happened next so much bloody easier. I actually groaned with relief as an explosive, thundering poo fired out of my behind. My butt temporarily becoming an aerosol of feces and intestinal

mucus. I found myself looking up at him through that plexiglass window with a smug smile that said, I told you so, mate. Didn't I tell you? After a minute or so, he just shook his head, walked off, and let me to it. By the time I returned to my girlfriend, she was repacking our luggage, still shaken and uncertain as to what fate had awaited me in that airport detention center. She burst into tears again when she saw me, threw her arms around me while sobbing something along the lines of, let's just get out of here babe, I don't want to be here another minute. My sentiments exactly. In an instance of unusual fortune for people as disorganized as us, our flight ended up being delayed by a good few hours so we actually managed to get home without

a hitch. But the whole experience taught me a lot. A whole lot. There are always just terrible cops wherever you are. Learning your rights is up there with remembering your passport. And always make sure you carry some emergency monetary notes in case you need to bribe somebody in a disabled toilet in an airport in order to save yourself from a whole world of embarrassment and stress. I hate flying. I've always hated flying. From the first family vacation I took with my parents who insisted it was exciting and fun, I was absolutely terrified of it. And I have been ever since.

I was hysterical on that first flight. Feeling such a huge heavy thing just lifting off the ground felt so unnatural and it still does. Not to mention the feeling I got when the plane banked to one side and all I could see were clouds on one side of us and the ground on another. Jesus, we were up so high. I still can't get over how tiny everything looks when you're taking off and that just makes me imagine the feeling of a plane just stalling and plummeting back to earth. I'm pretty sure I really embarrassed my parents that day and I feel horrible about that, but my dad assured me it'd get easier with every flight, that eventually flying would be as mundane and boring as traveling by car. But it never did. It never got any easier.

The only thing that got easier was suppressing how I felt about it. Like I can't take a window seat at all, and if I'm assigned one, I spend my time on the runway pretty much begging anyone who will listen to switch seats with me. I remember a time when I had a seat next to an emergency exit. You know the ones where the flight attendant has to ask if you're cool with having that level of responsibility. They didn't have to ask. I found her and pretty much told her straight up to move me. So in March of last year I had a relative die in a car accident. It was sudden, it sucked and the funeral was arranged pretty quickly.

Thanks to work commitments, I couldn't do my usual thing of taking the bus or the train across the country. I was forced to book a flight. It was that or skip the funeral, and there was no way I was about to do that, so I reluctantly pack a small bag, get a taxi to the airport and board the flight to Philly. I usually just booze it up in the terminal bars then continue to fortify myself on the flight. It always helps a little, just never quite enough, you know. And it was on this flight back home that I experienced the worst turbulence of my entire life. The kind that started out kind of gentle, just a little shaking on the plane while the

fearful flyers like me gripped our armrests and prayed for it to end. But it got worse and worse and worse. The rougher it got, the more worried the passengers got and that feeling of dread. My god, I just soaked it up as the plane continued to shake. It got so bad that the flight attendants started to look worried and that's about the point that I felt myself having a full on panic attack. It always kind of reassured me when there's turbulence but the flight attendants look all chill like this isn't anything, we get this all the time. But looking up and seeing the girls in those crisp uniforms looking terrified themselves, Jesus, that put the fear of God right into me.

At one point the plane was shaking so bad that one particular flight attendant had to grab seats either side of the aisle just to make her way down the plane. Babies were wailing. People were literally crying and praying for God to keep us all safe. The whole time I'm just white-knuckling it, downing the booze bottles I had set up in front of me and I'd be lying if I said I didn't say a few silent prayers myself, despite not being religious in the slightest. Then something happened that I'd never seen before or since.

The plane hit some pocket of air so intense that it sent a jolt through the plane that was so heavy that it literally took the flight attendant off her feet. It threw her into the air and slammed her head off the top of the ceiling of the cabin. Passengers are screaming at this point as blood starts dripping off the poor girl's scalp, and she tries and fails over and over to find her feet. People tried to help her from the seats, leaning over and reaching out to her, but she was visibly stunned by the impact, to the point that she looked drunker than I must have been. I was convinced that plane was going down. I'd never heard of or seen anything like that kind of turbulence, and in a moment of horrible clarity, I accepted that I was going to die. I pictured my relatives at the funeral,

getting the double whamming news that one of our kin had died only for another to perish on a flight back home. That was the worst part, considering the heartache they'd suffer, and as cheesy as it sounds, by the time the pilot came over the intercom to tell us that they were looking free and clear until Philly, the cabin I was in broke out into applause. I don't know what happened to the flight attendants, I mean, I imagine she got medical treatment as soon as we touched down, but I remember looking down the aisle and seeing her head all banged up with blood having leaked down her face, mixing with the thick mascara she was wearing. Jesus, it really was like a scene from a horror movie. After another hour or so of flying, we touched down in Philly, and as we all departed the flight,

pretty much every single passenger thanked the flight attendants for their professionalism and service. It was crazy how such an experience had created such a tight bond between all of us in such a relatively short space of time. I mean, some people were even hugging the flight attendants as they departed. Some had tears of relief in their eyes. Some were laughing and high-fiving each other, even making jokes about it being the most expensive rollercoaster they'd ever been on, and how Six Flags was going to suck after this. I admit, I laughed hard at that last one. Not because it was particularly funny or true, but

just as like a release of tension. I'm serious when I said I'd come to terms with my own death, how it was the most painful and soul-crushing feeling I'd ever felt, but I'd still come to terms with it. And I can't even describe the new lease on life coming out of that mood that it gave me. Even today, I'm still a slightly different person than I was when I got on that flight. I'm much more positive. I make the most of the free time I have. I live every single day to the utmost. But one thing hasn't changed about me. Something that will never change no matter what happens. I still hate flying. I work as an air traffic controller over at Sky Harbor International in Phoenix, Arizona.

It's a career I dreamed of ever since I was a kid and my dad used to take me to the exact same airport I work at now to watch the planes roar over our car before landing on the runway. I wanted to be a pilot at first. Flying those things would have been the coolest thing ever, but I didn't have the 20-20 vision required to be one. It was heartbreaking at first, but my dad, being the wonderful father that he was, reassured me that there was more than just one career for a plane-obsessed kid like me. So I worked hard in school, got into college, worked even harder there, then many years later landed a job working my beloved aircraft as an air traffic controller. What I'm about to tell you is the story of an incident which occurred in July of 1997, when I was still relatively young and inexperienced.

In order to make the tale more understandable to the layman, I will try to avoid as much technical aviation jargon as possible and keep the narrative clear and concise as to not bore the pants off of you all. But please understand, this is something neither myself nor my colleagues have ever been able to fully explain, so if it seems like there's a lot of holes in the story, that's because there are, for me as well as for you. So I'm sitting in the air traffic control tower one night fighting off the fatigue with cups of strong black coffee. I think I used to drink about 7 or 8 cups some nights just one after the other on occasion when the tiredness began to really take hold. One of the things that majorly sucks about starting off in that particular profession

is that you basically have no choice but to be on night shifts for months and months at a time. Since air traffic is generally slower at night, it gives new employees a chance to really get used to the whole routine of guiding in aircraft. That is until they're experienced and confident enough to take day shifts when things can get much more intense with holding patterns, basically a queue to land that happen to be about 20,000 feet up, and multiple simultaneous landings. People's lives are at risk in a job like this, and it's kind of scary how much power is put into the hands of just individual men and women. Anyone who's seen the whole of Breaking Bad will know that we can cause

or prevent the most wanton acts of destruction ever seen by human eyes. And I'm sure you won't be surprised when I tell you that we undergo regular fitness and psych evaluations to ensure that we're all at our best while performing our jobs. But anyway, one night I'm sitting there with my supervisor on break when I get a blip on the radar console in front of me. Usually when this happens, you see the little blip pop up on your screen along with a little label that basically gives you the first flight number and thus all the information on where the aircraft has come from, its size and model, stuff like that. Only instead of saying AZ-104B, this thing has like XAX000X001. That's not exactly how it is, but it'll give you an idea of how unusual it was and how I immediately recognized that something was very different about this approaching aircraft.

So I do my usual thing of tuning my radio set onto the frequency that I suspect the approaching aircraft will hear me on, then just about throw the headset off myself when this horrendous, high-pitched whine, only a few pitches lower from making my ears bleed. I immediately tune out and ask one of my available colleagues if they are picking up that tinny sound on the same channel. They check, get the same thing, just about throwing their headset off with a yelp before telling me something must be up with the aircraft's communication system to try to talk over it and guide them in regardless. If we didn't, there might be an accident and in air traffic control, one or two little slip-ups could mean hundreds,

maybe even thousands of deaths. So as a dumb trainee, I start doing as I'm told, running through the usual protocol and giving them their range and direction to the nearest available runway. Only there's absolutely nothing coming from the aircraft. In fact, the only thing that I can hear over the metallic screeching is a slight change in the pitch and tone of the whining noise, with the occasional metallic clicking sound being heard throughout the general din. That's about the time that I realized that whatever is out there in the sky isn't moving at a steady speed. It's moving and stopping, moving and stopping, over and over again,

or at least that's the picture I was building up from watching it on the radar. There are no aircraft that I was aware of at that time that was capable of doing that, and I found myself peering out of the tower in the direction it was, trying to catch a glimpse of the aircraft's lights. Only there were none. It was like there was nothing there at all, just empty sky where flashing lights should have been. Ours isn't the kind of profession you can just ask for help with either. With a skeleton crew that means the towers at night,

it's not like everyone else isn't busy with their own thing. I certainly couldn't ask the colleague I had previously. Besides, I was determined to prove myself as being worthy of such a position. Then something truly bizarre occurs. The aircraft starts moving laterally, as in to the side. Either it was some kind of military fighter embarking on some kind of emergency maneuver, a helicopter, or something else entirely. And it does so at alarming speeds, like my closest estimation is that it moved at over a thousand miles per hour, which would have generated some

kind of sonic boom. Only it didn't, which honestly is something that confuses and scares me even today. The blip disappeared from the radar shortly after and I was forced to focus on another incoming aircraft that was as regularly labeled as any other. I didn't bring the incident up with anyone. I didn't want them to think that I was crazy or that the night shifts were affecting me too much. I did file a report however, but nothing came of it. It was simply filed away and forgotten about. But I've never forgotten about it and all my years as an air traffic controller, it's something that's never been repeated. I'm not saying it was a UFO or anything

like that, I don't really believe in that sort of thing, never have, never will, but it is firmly filed under unexplained and, quite frankly, I'd do anything to find out exactly what it was, be it an advanced military craft, a radar glitch, or something else entirely. A few years back, I was taking part in a college exchange for six months, where myself and a Japanese student swapped places to get a taste of life in each country. It was honestly one of the most incredible experiences of my life. Japan is really weird by western standards, but it's also full of some of the most wonderful, gracious people I'd ever met in my life.

The way they think about life, even down to some minute details, is as fascinating as it is thoughtful, and going over there changed my life for the better. But something happened on the flight home from Japan, and although it didn't mar the experience entirely for me, it left a huge black stain on what should have been a very fond memory. The flight home was a long one, a really long one, like nine and a half hours followed by another ten hour flight. It's not easy being sat there in the same seat for that long at a time. I'm sure some of you know that, it feels claustrophobic, constrictive, and the fact that you can never really relax is just horrible. I suppose that's why people pop pills or plow through those mini

liquor bottles just to gain some semblance of relaxation. So I'm in the middle of the second flight, 8 to 9 hour one that's going from Southern California to my hometown of Newark. I'd worked my way through most of the in-flight movies and I'm sort of half watching this dumb sci-fi thing with Tom Cruise when I hear something over my headphones. I slide from off of my head to hear a woman, a few rows ahead of me, getting all panicky in a foreign language. I'm no expert but I'm almost certain it was Chinese but don't quote me on that. Anyway, she's clearly very frightened or upset about something and keeps hammering on the little button above her head that someone's a flight attendant. A flight attendant comes by, trying to stay as calm as possible,

but obviously can't understand what the woman is saying because of the language barrier. It takes a moment for the woman to find some medium of communication and I watch as the flight attendant kind of leans into the middle seats for a moment before jolting back up and rushing off down the aisle with this look of horror on her face. Moments later, she emerges, calling out something that I'd only ever heard in movies up until that point. Is there a doctor on the plane? Are there any medical professionals on the flight? That's when I knew the situation was actually serious,

that it wasn't just some poor Asian lady having a panic attack or something. The look on the attendant's face had told me enough, but this just made everything concrete. Something terrible had happened in those middle seats. Eventually, the flight attendant emerges from the business class section of the plane with a professional looking man in a polo shirt, white hair, and glasses. This was obviously an English speaking doctor she'd managed to find. He does the same thing the flight attendant did at first, leans in to obviously give the person a brief examination before suddenly bursting into action. He looks around for the biggest, strongest men he can find, then doesn't so much ask them for help as tells them to help.

I know that might come across as him being rude, but the authority with which he spoke, it was powerful. No one questioned him, they just got up to help, like it was their duty. People are amazing when it comes to an emergency like that. The bigger guys start working on lifting someone out of their seat, pulling them from the middle row and carrying them towards the back of the plane. I got a glimpse at the person as they passed. An elderly looking Asian man and he was as pale as a ghost, completely unresponsive by the looks of things too.

I look back to see the doctor performing CPR on the guy after they laid him down, working on chest compressions, blowing it into his open mouth. That was distressing enough, but one of the big dudes starts saying things like, come on buddy, come back to us, open your eyes man. You could hear the distress in his voice when it sank in that that guy was dead, that he had no pulse and was not coming back at all. Some of the passengers were crying, others praying. It was one of the most intense situations I'd ever been in in my entire life. So it's at this point that I look back to see the flight attendants had produced some kind of body bag from somewhere on the plane.

I didn't even know they had those things on board, I mean, it was exactly the kind of thing you normally see in some Vietnam movie, this big plastic looking bag with a zipper running up the middle. The doctor and the bigger guys help put the man inside before zipping it up, while some of the flight attendants start reshuffling people for some reason. They move everyone behind me further up the plane, actually asking a few if they'd like impromptu business class and first class upgrades, but no one asked me. So in the end, it's me with a row of window seats to myself, with two free rows behind me, and then it's the back of the plane. I really should have seen it coming and asked the attendants to move me too, but the whole thing was so intense, and everyone had so much to deal with that I decided it would be better to just not make a fuss.

But like I said, when it dawned on me what was about to happen, I really wish I hadn't been so reasonable about the whole thing. Because suddenly, the guys are lifting the armrests on the second row behind me, leaning the seats back a little before hoisting the poor man's dead body up and lying it over the seats. I can't even describe how incredibly uneasy the whole thing made me. There was no smell. I mean, the body was fresh, but just the idea that maybe less than two or three meters behind me laid the body of a dead man. If it was impossible to relax before, it was now impossible to keep myself from feeling incredibly anxious. I tried to ignore it, but as you can imagine, that's just impossible. I found myself looking back between the seats every so often, just peering back at the shining material and just knowing that that poor guy inside was just without a pulse. It was horrific.

On the way off, a flight attendant took my name down and told me that I'd be entitled to money off of my next flight for being so incredibly nice and quiet about the whole thing that it hardly ever happened and that they were so, so sorry that it had to be me that the body was sat nearest to. It was the least they could have done, but honestly, I don't feel like I want to ever fly again. Not for a long, long time to come. It is a slow night at the Sarasota Bradenton International Airport in Florida. The night team are used to quiet nights, but this one is particularly subdued, with not a single traveler walking the terminals or lounges. Staff manning baggage claims or rental car company desks are

bored out of their minds, making small talk while they catch up on what little work there was to complete. It's a Thursday morning around 3am, with it being the 19th of December. The place is abuzz with festive cheer, albeit slightly muted by the time of night. Staff will no doubt have been discussing holiday plans, looking forward to spending time with their families after being on such a grueling schedule of night shifts. But meanwhile, something is speeding towards them, something reckless that'll put their lives in extreme danger. The staff manning the National Car Rental and Alamo Rental Car Company desks are completely unaware of what is about to happen. There are no warnings.

They see nothing coming at them. There is only the faint rush of noise from outside the building to indicate anything is about to happen at all. They are completely unprepared to protect themselves from the impending danger. Then in one horrifying moment, a huge white General Motors pickup truck slams through the exterior wall of the terminal like a bullet from a gun, destroying the wall completely and sending a shower of wooden plastic debris into the interior of the building. It was traveling with such speed that the impact with the wall barely even slowed it down and it continued to hurtle towards the rental car desks at terrifyingly high speeds as the staff manning it jumped from their seats and rushed to safety.

Luckily for them, their desk station was built incredibly sturdily and withstood the impact of the truck thanks to its hardiness and the slightly slowed speed of the truck, but there's no doubt that the lives of the staff manning it flashed before their eyes for a moment before the truck thankfully came to a complete stop. The truck, which had been traveling on Florida's nearby U.S. Highway 41, reportedly left the road and crashed through the airport's perimeter fence, then crossed part of the tarmac before plowing through a cinderblock wall and entered the baggage claim area where it eventually stopped upon hitting the desk of a rental car service. Incredibly, only the driver was injured in the chaos. By some stroke of incredible fortune, no one was stood at the desk in hope of renting a car.

As if they had been, there was no doubt that they'd be pinned between it and the truck, suffering horrific abdominal injuries in the process. We actually had a late flight, but no one else was here in the baggage claim area except a couple of workers, said Frederick J. Pachalo, the president and CEO of the airport. If this happened during the day, it would have been a much different story. The driver, Juan Macivas, was later transported to hospital, but the crash caused major damage in the baggage claim area to conveyor belts, the ceiling, windows, doors, and the walls, totaling around $250,000 in damages.

Prior to the airport crash, Macivas was seen driving recklessly on US Route 41, according to a Florida Highway Patrol release. The cause of the crash was unknown at the time, but incredibly, alcohol did not seem to be a factor, according to a press release from Florida Highway Patrol. But further research showed that Mr. Maceevis had been charged with a number of DUIs in the past, as well as for driving on a suspended or expired license. It's a miracle that no one was hurt,

but that doesn't take away from the fact that, for a few moments, in the wee small hours of December 19th, absolute terror struck the airport's occupants. Stephen Sylvester and Pradeep Sangha were two men who were very familiar with airports and air travel. Each worked long days as taxi drivers, ferry travelers via the exact same routes to and from Heathrow Airport in London during the early 1980s. Whether the two men actually knew each other is unknown, but there is no doubt that they must have crossed paths at some point. However, there is no doubt that the two drivers

have something in common, and not something that will have brought the pair closer together. Both men were murdered in separate attacks within six months of each other, each stabbed to death in cases that remain unsolved to this day. Here we will examine the facts of both incidents and see if we can't come to our own conclusions regarding their tragic, untimely deaths. Steven Sylvester was 39 years old when he died, and was working as a minicab driver for a company called Skyway Minicabs, which was located on Kingsley Road on Hounslow Underground Station, just four miles from Heathrow Airport. Steven tended to work the night shift, and in the wee small hours of the 17th of November 1983,

he drove back to the company's offices after driving a passenger from the airport nearby Feltham. Around 2.30 in the morning, a dispatcher and other drivers returned home to get some rest, leaving Stephen alone to work his shift. At some point over the next hour, police reports state that Stephen will have left the office, presumably pick up another fare. Whether or not he responded to an actual phone call or someone visited the office is unclear, but we do know that this is the last fare Stephen would take before he was murdered. I can only think of a few reasons why a taxi driver would get into the backseat of his own vehicle

but for whatever reason that's exactly what Stephen did and when he did, a bloody struggle ensued that ended with the driver being stabbed multiple times until the life left his body His murderer then proceeded to pull his body from the backseat before placing it in the trunk of the car and driving to the airport and abandoning the vehicle in the short stay parking lot at Terminal 3 sometime around 4 o'clock that same morning. But at the time, only the ground floor of the short stay parking lot is accessible and is mostly used by night shift workers employed by the airport itself.

Whether or not the killer was one of these employees or simply used it to escape justice by flying out of the country is another unknown in this case, but the fact of the matter remains that this was not a place to leave the vehicle and body if the killer wished it to be undiscovered. Regular checks are performed in this type of parking lot to ensure the right tickets and charges have been incurred. Drivers in violation of the parking rules are subjected to fines before the vehicle is quickly towed away. So it's clear that whoever murdered Stephen then placed his body somewhere would be quickly discovered. He wanted people to know what he had done. Whoever Stephen's killer was, they would have certainly been soaked in the

blood of their victim. Knife murders tend to be quiet and relatively discreet, but they are messy, and any potential witnesses would have certainly noticed blood-stained clothing, unless, of course, they were wearing all black clothes. There's a chance the killer could have visited a public toilet to wash the blood off, and using a disabled toilet would have given him all the time and privacy he needed, a terrifying thought that one could do so with near impunity. The police only began their search for Stephen four days after he initially went missing, obviously having to have waited for a missing persons report to have been filed by his employers or his relatives.

But it didn't take long to find his vehicle and subsequently his blood-stained corpse, crammed cruelly into the trunk of his own taxi cab. Police were baffled by the seemingly random and isolated murder, but that was only until it became apparent that the killer had struck again. Just half a year after the first murder, there was yet another slaying in the exact same area of London. The victim was a man named Pardeep Sangha, a South Asian driver who was employed by the company Blue Star Minicabs, located in Martindale Road near Honslow. Pardeep was an unselfish man and actually helped supplement his father-in-law's income by driving his cab for a few hours during weekday evenings. Back in the 80s, most private hire taxis in the UK were not equipped with shortwave radios, so after completing each journey, they had no choice but to return to the company offices to wait for another fare. It was a Friday evening, the 30th of March 1984.

Pardeep Sangha had already been occupied with about a dozen fares that evening and had returned to the company offices to await additional calls. Around midnight, someone called the Blue Star offices from a payphone located close to some traffic lights on the Great West Road. This particular payphone was only a short walk from the office, and it makes little sense that someone would waste the money calling when they could have simply made their way to the minicab company on foot. But what we know for certain is that the caller asked for a cab to drive them to Feltham, which, again, was not all that far from the offices themselves,

maybe a 20-minute walk at the most. Around this same time, a man of large stature, who turned out to be a soldier as well as two young women, arrived at the offices, who coincidentally were also interested in catching a taxi to nearby Feltom. This, also with minor inconsistencies in the cab's company log sheet, confused police as to which fare Pradeep took first. Near to the payphone that made the initial call was a small wine bar known as the Boom Boom, as well as the South Asian restaurant called the Heathrow Tandoori, and it is entirely possible that whoever placed the call had been patronizing either one of those two businesses. But despite the close proximity and the number of potential witnesses in the area,

not a single soul saw Pardeep arrive to pick up the passenger. What happened next is unclear. Neither the vehicle's supposed route nor the time frame made sense, but what we know is that Pardeep's vehicle was found completely abandoned and almost completely out of gas on a slip road just off of the A30, near to Heathrow Airport's southerly security fence. Someone had taken the keys from the ignition and attempted to wrench open the car's trunk, but had been unable to do so thanks to a mechanical failure. This all occurred most likely between the hours of 12.30am and 2am on Saturday the 31st of March, on a particularly busy stretch of highway that is frequented by very many lorries and trucks.

Therefore, it is likely that someone at some point noticed the stranded vehicle and called it into the local police force. Then, just after 2am, Pradeep Sanga was found slumped behind the passenger seat of his vehicle by police that arrived on scene. He had been stabbed to death in a frenzied, sustained attack that left his body with more than 30 individual stab wounds. They also observed that a few of Pradeep's credit cards were missing, along with a small amount of cash from his wallet. Pertaining to his last detail, it's entirely possible that the motive could have been a robbery gone wrong, but it's much more likely, given the murder had almost the exact same modus operandi as the Sylvester murder,

and that the killer simply wished to mix up the details a little in order to throw potential investigators off of his scent. But regardless, the Metropolitan Police puzzled over the motives of the killer. Given that Steven Sylvester was of Afro-Caribbean extraction and Pardeep Sangha was South Asian, could it be possible that the motive was racism? A slim possibility, but one to consider nonetheless. A police statement regarding the murders stated that they wished to question a man of larger stature and connection with the murders, but would not elaborate on why they wanted to do so. However, we know from further investigations that a replica of Fairbairn Sykes commando dagger was deliberately left under the passenger seat of Stephen Sylvester's cab.

Police quickly ruled out the possibility that this was Stephen's own knife, as it bore none of his fingerprints and such items are relatively rare, and often seen as purely collector's items. It appears the killer had deliberately left it there, possibly as some kind of calling card to clue investigators into his identity or to throw them off the scent. Knives quickly became the factor that united both cases, not just because they were the murder weapon of choice. In the case of Pradeep's murder, a U.S. Army trench knife commonly issued to U.S. Army Green Berets was found just over two miles away from the A30 highway, hidden behind a GPO junction box. Police tested blood samples and quickly confirmed that this was the murder weapon used to take Pradeep's life. But there's another interesting fact surrounding the man's murder. You see, Pradeep was of the Sikh religion, and one of the pillars of the religion is the idea that men should always carry a small ceremonial knife, known as a kirpan. This one in particular had a blue band around it,

which was never discovered and evidently taken as some kind of trophy. As stated previously, both cases remain unsolved to this day, but there are a few questions and interesting details that, if explored, could shine light on the killer's identity, whereabouts, or true motives. For example, there were a bunch of small keys found in the rear of Steven Sylvester's car, and the Met Police could not seem to fathom why they had been left there. When taken to a locksmith, the expert keycutter present was certain that they were for a clock, either to wind an old one, but there was no doubt in my mind that if they had found the particular clock that these fit,

that they'd have some kind of break in the case. Another key question would be just who exactly used the payphone to call in Pardeep that evening, the one so close to the cab office that it made very little sense for them to use it. Like I stated previously, the cab offices were just around the corner. The only reason I can think that that person didn't walk there would be to avoid being identified by potential witnesses, as well as avoiding any CCTV cameras present on the way or in the offices themselves. However, in the aftermath of Hardeep's murder, a few truck drivers who were using the A30 in the wee small hours of the 31st of March

came forward with information. Witnesses told of a man standing near a vehicle with taxicab markings and was described as being in his late 30s to early 40s, wearing a grey two-piece suit with grey or sandy colored hair. There's a possibility that he was merely a passerby, a man who had pulled over to simply offer to help someone in need, but if that was the case, where was his vehicle? No eyewitnesses reported an additional car parked up at the side of the road, so we can deduce conclusively that this man was indeed the passenger at the time,

and if he was the passenger, he was also the man that murdered Perdip and took his ceremonial knife as a trophy. It has been 37 years since Steven Sylvester was murdered whilst working his night shift and police are no closer to uncovering the truth of his killing than they were back then. There are many, many uncertainties surrounding such a case, but one thing is terrifyingly uncertain, that a cold, calculated individual, who was psychopathically obsessed with knives, was able to plan and execute two murders and get away scot-free. In all likelihood, there is a man walking around London today going about his daily life who has fond memories of those two nights in 1983 and 1984 when he indulged in his murderous fantasies and made them a reality. There's every chance that every so often

he opens up a small, locked cabinet hidden away in his home and takes out a small ceremonial Sikh dagger and feels the cold brass in his palm, taking him all the way back to that night when he took Pardeep's life. And there's also a distinct possibility that the man takes an immense amount of pleasure in knowing that he's walking around with impunity, even given the fact that he took trophies, left clues and was actually spotted by witnesses. For all intents and purposes, he outsmarted one of the oldest, most effective branches of law enforcement the world has ever known.

He has taken his place alongside the likes of Jack the Ripper and Jill Dando's murderer, who were able to commit some of the worst crimes in history and remain completely undetected. We can only hope that the families of the slain can find peace in some manner, even when their relatives died in such grisly, mysterious ways. I don't fly anymore. I used to. A whole bunch, actually. It was a big part of my job to fly around the country to pitch investment prospects at meetings held for wealthy hedge fund managers. It was a cushy job. I mean, it paid far, far more than it was worth. But now I work from home and I drive everywhere. I'm talking everywhere. I live in New York City, but my parents lived down in Florida since they retired and yep, I drive down there to see them,

three times a year sometimes. It's pretty terrible, but I'd rather drive all the way there and get the stomach flu from bad roadside tacos than fly. And now I'll tell you why. It was a regular flight from LaGuardia down to Houston, another business trip to finance flirt with oil-rich investors down in Texas. I was sat in a window seat in business class. Takeoff was perfectly normal, everything was peachy keen, nothing I hadn't done a hundred times before as I thumbed through the in-flight magazine and browsed the drinks menu. I had to get up at like 5.30 in order to make the flight and I've never been a morning person so as soon as I was able, I shut the window flap next to me, closed my eyes and tried to catch a few Z's so I'd be fresh as possible for the afternoon meeting.

Then, just as I'm about to drift off, I hear a loud pop noise. In my weary state, I actually thought it was a champagne bottle being opened by some celebratory suit who was opting for the fizz breakfast. I look around and no one has a bottle. There's no attendant with an ice bucket, nothing like that. Then some horrible idea pops into my head, and in order to belay my seemingly irrational fears, I slide open to check on the plane's left wing engine. I remember expecting it to be fine, nothing had ever happened on a flight before even though I've had those little flashes of fear previously, but it was not fine. The popping sound had been exactly what I feared. There was smoke billowing from the engine and thick stream of dark vapor that trailed along as we flew. I grabbed an attendant and silently pointed out the window, not wanting to raise too much of the cockpit. Moments later, others were noticing what I'd seen. Cries of panic

sounding from all along the plane as more and more people noticed the danger we were in. People were rushing over to the left side of the plane, looking out the windows and screaming. All the while, the air hostesses aboard were trying everything they could to both keep calm as well as keeping the passengers calm. Right before the terror reached fever pitch, the pilot comes over the intercom. I think that was the weirdest, most surreal moment of my life when people were losing their freaking minds, but the captain was calm enough to the point of seeming almost bored. I suppose that's just the level of training they receive.

The captain tells everyone to keep calm and to go back to their seats and that the plane will be making an emergency landing at the nearest airport, training they receive. The captain tells everyone to keep calm and to go back to their seats and that the plane will be making an emergency landing at the nearest airport, which by that point was an airport in Norfolk, Virginia. They actually landed just fine, and the only remotely bad thing to really happen that day was that I had to rearrange the investment meeting, but I swear to god, part of me thought that the plane was about to become a fireball as the engine exploded and we plummeted towards the earth at like 500 miles an hour. It was probably the most terrifying experience I've ever endured, and despite me trying to, I was never able to get on a plane ever again.

So like I said, I drive everywhere now and as much as it sucks, it's better than getting the cold sweats and panic attacks from sitting on a runway somewhere, just waiting for the engines to go up in flames. This incident happened to me on St. Patrick's Day of 2020. To give a bit of context for later on in the story, I'm relatively short. Only 5'2", not that strong, and of Mexican descent. Back in my freshman year of high school, I met a guy who, we'll call him Brick, was really sweet and always had a gentle heart for me and my group of friends. He was tall, about 6'2", was fair-skinned, and had thick curly blonde hair. The dude was the best person I could have had as a friend.

Our group of friends all knew he had an almost obsessive crush on me, given the fact that he would let me out of his sight and would lavish me in gifts every chance he got. He only stopped when I started dating my current boyfriend in the beginning of 10th grade, Sonny. Brick backed off, but he still would flirt with me and give me extremely long and uncomfortable hugs, but I was blind to all of this. That and he backed off because my boyfriend is on the chubby side and knew how to handle guns since he was a kid. Everything was fine until Rick opened up to me about his home life. Apparently his parents were verbally and mentally abusive to him. He wanted to sneak out of his house and find a place on his own when he turned 18. Of course me and my friends were shocked and helped him out the best that we can to move out.

We found him a place to stay and offered up money and food to help him, but he declined. As soon as his 18th birthday came, he said that he would leave that day, but later on we all found out that he never left. He told me it was because he'd only stayed for financial purposes and he would just take the abuse, I guess. This was the first sign of something changing him into another person unlike himself. He slowly started to become more angry, depressive, and reclusive to our friend group. Rightfully, we all wanted to check up on him, but the only person he wanted to talk to was me. He ranted to me about how much of a terrible world this was, how the abuse was affecting his

brain and how he was thinking of ending his own life. I not only sent him numerous phone numbers on abuse hotlines and adult protective services, but the next day I took him to a counselor at a high school to talk about the situation. After the meeting, Brick convinced me that he was going to change for the better, but now halfway into 2020, our senior year, he only got more aggressive and depressed. I even told him that he was a legal adult that can get away from all of his pain and was even offering him to move in with me and my family, but he also declined and wanted to stay with his abusive parents. Quarantine finally broke his mental state and the night of St. Patrick's Day he snapped. He was messaging me about his life and how cruel it was and horrible. How he wanted to end his own life because he couldn't stand being away from me.

Now personally, I've dealt with these kind of thoughts and actions in the past and have recovered from it and he knew I turned a new leaf from it. But in the frenzy of text he typed, why don't we just end our lives together? We could go out and have the time of our lives and go into the woods and just end it all. It made me break down and I called Sonny about what Brick was saying to me and he was furious and hung up to now message him. Brick kept messaging me, you're worthless, but I am too. It's not a big deal no one loves us. We could die in each other's arms.

Sonny doesn't love you and he wants you dead too. Of course, I asked Sonny this and he said Brick was just manipulating me into doing it with him. I finally messaged, I won't do it. I went through these thoughts and it was torture. I'm not going to be dragged down with you. At the time, Sunny was messaging him in a furious message just saying, what right do you have to say this to my girl?

Then Sunny sent me screenshots of what Brick really thought of doing to me and seeing these words made me fear for my life. Brick's message simply said, you know, I could just kill her, right? I know where she lives. She's so small and helpless. A small dark girl like her doesn't deserve to be in a white man's palace. All that hugging we did, I could just break her like a twig. I could take her out into the forest, chop her up, and nobody would miss her. After this, we both contacted the police and they went to his house. My boyfriend's last message to him was, If you come anywhere near her, our families, or myself, I'll shoot you dead on the spot.

Before this incident, I had never seen my boyfriend so furious and surprisingly scary like that, but it was for a good reason. We alerted our friend group not to message him, for he seriously needs help, and nobody had heard from him since April. In fact, his last message to us wasn't even a sorry. It was him explaining how he was happy to spend time with his family and how he looked forward to seeing me in college. We were both enrolling in the same community college. It makes me livid to know that he or his family didn't even say sorry, but I'm just so thankful that he's out of my life. To the viewers who are listening to this, please, whoever's being verbally, mentally, or physically abused, just get them help. Be aware of what happens behind closed doors.

And Brick, if you ever see this, be glad I didn't use your real name. You become this sick monster that is a shell of my now closest ex-friend. I never want to see you again, and if you contact me, Sunny, or our family ever in person, expect danger to be brought to your face and a warning shot. Stay away. To be continued... pretty quickly. This event happened to me in the summer of 1977. I remember because the original Star Wars had just come out a few weeks before and I was obsessed with it at the time. In 1977, the town I lived in was actually just a series of roads and off-roads. Most of the people there commuted to Anchorage for work. That's what my parents did. They both worked nights, meaning I

spend most of my time alone at home. I don't have any siblings. Our house was about a half mile in from the nearest paved road and surrounded by woods. I didn't have any real friends that lived close by. I knew a kid who lived at the end of my road. His was actually the next closest house and was still about 300 yards from mine. One afternoon that summer, I was watching TV when there was a knock at our side door. I looked outside and saw it was the kid from the end of the street with someone else. I opened the door and he told me this kid was his cousin whose family had flown up from wherever they were from to visit.

I can't remember the kid's name. I do remember immediately being nervous around this guy. He had blonde hair down to his shoulders, wore a t-shirt under a thin leather vest. He also had one of those wallets on a chain. This kid's eyes were incredibly dark. I was 11 and hadn't ever seen evil before but this kid set off something in my brain. The boy from down the street even seemed nervous around him. He said he had told his cousin about my BB gun and how cool it was. I had recently been given a BB gun as a gift. I told him to wait outside and I would get it.

I just knew I didn't want that kid in my house. I got the BB gun and went outside and handed it to the weird kid. He rolled it over in his hands and looked it up and down without his expression ever changing. Without handing it back to me, he asked me, How much do you want for it? I can't remember my reaction after all these years, but I didn't really need money and the gun was a gift, so I told him it wasn't for sale and I remember apologizing for some reason. Unfazed, the kid hands the gun back to me then reaches behind his back and pulls out the biggest knife I'd ever seen. I remember thinking for a second that it was a sword. If you've ever seen the movie Crocodile Dundee where he tells some robbers,

that's not a knife, this is a knife. And pulls out a huge. Well, that's the knife this kid had. The kid said, well, how about a trade then? I shot the BB gun at cans. What was I going to do with this thing? Hunt a grizzly bear? I declined the offer nervously and the kid turned away and started walking in the direction of their house. I went back inside and watched some more TV. About an hour later, there's another knock on the door. I go to our side window where I can see the door. I peek out and sure enough, it's that kid again. This time he was alone. The second time he knocked, it was louder. He called my name. I stayed quiet. He left the door and started walking around our house.

My mother had a sunroom where she grew plants. It had large windows all along the wall. I saw him go to those windows, press his face against the glass and cup his eyes, trying to see deep into the house. I stayed out of sight. Luckily there were no lights on and I had turned the TV off when I heard the knock. When he couldn't see anything, he continued around the house. He took out that huge knife and began tapping the butt of the handle along the outer wall as he circled. Then he started saying,

I know you're in there. I almost soiled myself. Of course he knew I was in the house. I was eleven, home alone. How could I have left the house? Hop in a car and take off? Both our cars were gone anyway. I continued keeping low and quiet, hoping he might think I went to a friend's house somewhere else. How long could this psycho just circle the house? He was maybe 14. He'd get bored pretty quickly. No such luck. This kept up for about an hour.

The tapping and his voice telling me to come out and that he had another trade for my gun. Screw that. I had gone all in on the I'm not home tactic, so I stayed quiet and made my way to the kitchen where our one telephone was. This was 1977. No cell phones and our phone was attached to the wall in the kitchen. Luckily, it had a super long headset cord. I got it, stayed low to the floor and called my mother at work. She took me seriously but there was no way she could get home. My dad was in the Air Force and they sure wouldn't let him skip out early to handle his son's crisis. I'd have to

ride it out. The sun had gone down and by that I mean it was barely peeking above the horizon. In the summer the sun never went completely down in our area. The kid kept pacing around for another 30 minutes or so and then was suddenly gone. Not being an idiot in a horror movie I just stayed down and quiet. Eventually my parents got home. I was still awake. They brushed it off as if to say, see, nothing to worry about. I never hung out with a kid down the street again and I pretty much stayed inside the remainder of that summer.

There was something wrong with that kid. Maybe it was in my head. Or maybe he would have done something absolutely brutal to me just for that BB gun. Due to lockdown measures, our city is introduced to curfew. This implies you can only leave your house at night for essential trips such as going to the hospital, coming and going to work, and coming from and going on vacation also falls under this category. The last one was the reason I was outside after curfew.

I had a vacation planned for months to Spain and had to take the 3am night bus to the airport. I do travel a lot. I travel with a friend, with my parents or alone. This time I was traveling alone. The place where I had to take the bus was a 20 minute walk away from my apartment. The walk was very uneventful and as expected I didn't see anyone wandering the streets. I did expect to see some police patrolling the streets to catch and find and send home people who were outside without any reason, but none of them were anywhere to be seen. After reaching the bus stop, I still had to wait another 15 minutes for the bus to arrive. I was listening to some music and just looking around to see how empty the streets of the normally very busy city were.

Suddenly I saw two men walking in the distance. They flagged down a taxi which was driving by and had a brief conversation with the driver only for them to curse at him, slam the door of the car and walk away. I thought, please don't come this way, I'm not in the mood for that in the moment. And you guessed it, that's exactly what they did. I'm going to describe these men for you guys to better understand the rest of the story and my convenience telling it. One of the men was about 5'9 and stocky build. He was also wearing a facial mask. The other was a bit taller at about 6'2 and rather muscular. I was hoping for them to just pass by the bus stop and go

wherever they needed to be, but unfortunately they came straight at me. The masked man broke the ice with, Hey dude, do you have one euro for us? We need to get to... He proceeded to name a city which was about an hour drive away from where we were. We don't have enough money for a taxi. I told him I did in fact not have any change for him, which was true because due to the convenience and safety I only paid with cards and he didn't seem to believe me he continued the conversation

with saying come on we only need like 10 euro for the taxi I told him again I didn't have anything from and if I didn't have one euro I definitely wouldn't have 10 euros for them this seemed to anger him and the muscular guy which was just standing to my side staring me down the whole time. Once again I told them sorry and hoped that they would just leave. But suddenly the masked man signed the muscular dude and he proceeded to grab me by the collar and then he spoke up. Listen, we can use force if we need to. It doesn't have to go this way if you just give us everything you got. Then the masked man added,

Yeah, he can bash your skull through the glass of this bus stop if he needs to. Just empty your pockets, kid. At that moment, I realized that I was getting robbed. But I'm not someone to just give up my belongings to some thugs. I asked the guy holding me to please take his hands off me and again told him I had no cash on me. I saw them look me over and looking at my headphones which I was wearing. Very expensive ones I might add, they did cost me about 500 euro. They insist on me giving them all the money and belongings

and we're not having any of my I don't carry cash please. The buff dude said, well if you don't have any cash, why don't you just show us your wallet? I knew if I would take it out, they would see my bank and credit card, which can do some contactless payments with, and I knew for sure that they would be satisfied doing exactly that. My suspicions were immediately confirmed when one of them asked by what bank I was with and what kind of cards I got. I just told them the name of my bank and kept silent. All this time they were still holding me and I was frantically looking around hoping someone or at least some form of law enforcement would show up. They did notice me looking around and started laughing in my face and the masked man said, you're looking for the cops, aren't you? Trust me, they won't show up here. We can do whatever we want.

After that, they let go of me and said, well, forget about everything that just happened. We're just going to make a deal. I'm going to sell you something right here and now. Then the buff dude lifted up his shirt only for him to take out a tablet from his belt. They showed me the tablet like an employee of an electronics store would, and I politely declined their offer. And once again, I reminded them that I didn't have any cash to pay them with, even if I wanted to. Then they started to talk about my headphones and phone, and they said, So those headphones, are they good quality, right? I lied to them and said, laughing,

No, these are bootleg ones. The real deal's too expensive for me. But they told me I couldn't fool them. They knew that I was a rich, spoiled brat which got everything I wanted from rich, filthy parents. And they told me to take them off and also hand over my phone and wallet with. I told them that I was not just handing over my stuff, and if they so badly wanted to rob me that they indeed had to use force on me. They once again grabbed me by the collar and started to shake me just like a bully would do in cartoons. I knew this was a losing situation for me.

I myself am a 21-year-old skinny guy and because I was going to the airport, I had no kind of weapon on me to protect myself. I normally carry a huge hunting knife on me when I go outside at night for exactly this reason. I had to pull my knife once before, but that's a story for another day. So unarmed and not in any shape to fight, how am I going to win against a tall buff dude and a stocky accomplice? Either they ended up beating me up and taking everything they wanted or a miracle had to happen. And lucky for me, the last one did happen. Suddenly the bus which I was waiting for started to approach. When the guys noticed it they let go of me and together said some expletives. Since we weren't the only ones on that street anymore they got spooked of having at least one eyewitness in

front of the bus driver and they told me, you got lucky this time and proceeded to give me a friendly pat on the back and started to walk off. When I got on the bus, I was shaking like a leaf and the bus driver noticed and asked me, So those two guys, they aren't your friends, right? They were bothering you, weren't they? I told him that they were trying to rob me but they had failed due to him showing up one time and thanked him at least a dozen times for doing so. I didn't call the police after this to report this incident because knowing how law enforcement works over here, they would just send over a unit to patrol the area where

things went down for a couple of minutes and that's that. Even if those guys were still hanging around and they did manage to catch them, they would have no evidence against them besides me telling them that they were about to rob me, and because of that, they would still get off scot-free. This situation could have been a lot worse if they were armed themselves or they had more time to start beating me up, but nonetheless, I was shaken up from it for a long while. So if the bus did in fact show up any later, I would have lost everything I had on me. I'm so thankful that it did. And seeing how those guys were acting, I'm pretty sure that this wasn't their first rodeo, nor their last. Stay safe everyone, and don't go outside at night if you don't have to.

I'm a 29 year old female and this happened to me 11 years ago when I was 18 years old. I live in New Mexico and had just left for my first year of college. I had chosen to go to Highlands University which is in Las Vegas, New Mexico. It all started when I met this guy in my art class. Back then I used to smoke and this guy had asked me if I wanted to come to his dorm after class and smoke. I'll call him A. Stupidly I said yes so we get to A's dorm, start to talk, and are hanging out and smoking. There was two other guys in A's room. One of them I had somewhat known because he lived in my dorm building and I had seen him around. I'll call him B. The other guy in the room I had never met or seen before, I'll call him F. So we're all just hanging out when A decides that we should all go on a drive to see the castle in the mountains.

The mountains were only a 10 minute drive from the university. There's also a hot springs a lot of the college kids go to and past there there's also a castle which is actually an international boarding school now. So we all get in F's car and decide to go check it out. So we're driving and a voice inside me tells not to go up to the mountain. I thought I was being paranoid and decide to ignore it. We're passing through the castle when A says that we should take a drive into the mountains. Again I got that horrible feeling not to go up and to turn around but like an idiot I once again ignore it. I've never been in these mountains and had no idea

where we were going. We start up the mountain and the guys start to drink some Crown Royale. I've never really liked drinking so I just have one shot. So we're driving pretty far into where we stopped seeing houses and we're just surrounded by forests. It was late October and as we started reaching higher elevation it started to snow. We pulled over and danced around in the snow just having a good time. During this time F had come up to me and told me if anyone was bothering me he would mess them up. I got a really weird feeling from him and told him I didn't know what he was talking about. I told him that everything was fine and we're all just having fun. We decided to get back in the car and continue the drive further into the mountains.

Finally, we were no longer able to keep driving because there was a pole blocking the path. F gets out of the car and goes up to the pole. On the pole, there was a metal sign. F proceeds to punch and pull the sign with such rage that I instantly got this horrible feeling about him. He gets back in the car and we start on our way back down. I had no idea F, who was the driver, had been drinking or how much. This guy was all over the road and being that we were on a dirt road, it was lightly snowing, the road was pretty muddy and we were drifting all over the place. I was so freaked out that when we made another stop, F had gotten out of the car and I told A to go and get the keys from F and drive us the rest of the way down the mountains. I'm sitting in the car with B,

watching as A goes to talk with F. I start to get out of the car and walk towards them when out of nowhere, F pulls out a black baton like the ones police use and hits A hard across the face. A does nothing just starts to cry. My stomach instantly drops and I realize what a horrible situation I'm in. There's no one around we're in the middle of the woods and this guy just went from 0 to 60 and turned into a complete psycho. On top of that, A isn't defending himself and B was a tiny guy, even smaller than me, so I just knew that they weren't going to stand up to him. As this all goes through my head, I start to hyperventilate and panic. I didn't know what to do, so I just started saying no, no, no as I walk away from the car. F comes charging at me

and raises the baton at me to hit me. I put my hands up and try to calm him down and tell him, okay, I'll get back in the car, let's just get in and go. This seems to work and we get back in and start driving. There's still nobody and nothing around and F is just hauling it all over the road. I thought I really was about to die then and there. I had no idea what F was going to do to us. I've always had strong men in my life and I couldn't believe A and B were acting like defenseless little girls. Like me.

This whole time driving, F is screaming at the top of his lungs at us in the car and taking his rage out mostly on me. I'm sitting in the back with B so F is turned around yelling at me, not even looking at the road. It's honestly a miracle we didn't crash. I'm trying to talk him down but it's not working. This dude has literally turned into Jekyll and Hyde. I tried using my cell phone to call the cops but we were so far in that I had no service. Great. So many thoughts were racing through my head. I started talking to God silently because I really thought that I was about to die. I started praying, asking God to help my mom find my body up here in the mountains

and help her find F, the person who will be responsible for my death. I start to think the next time he stops the car I'll just make a run for it even if there is nothing around. It was snowing and cold but I would rather freeze than stay in this car. I'll run into the woods and hide there till F gives up looking for me then make my way down the road till I hopefully run into something or someone. My heart was pounding so hard the whole time. As we were driving there was a man on the side of the road taking pictures of the forest. I pressed my face up against the window so that maybe he would see me and the terror on my face and know something was wrong and get help.

We were driving so fast and fortunately he never got the chance to even see me. All of the sudden, F slams on the brakes and starts to get out of the car saying he was going to beat up B and came to the door where B was sitting beside me. I had no idea what he was about to do and I was terrified. As I'm watching, I see far up the road, there was a house and a car was pulling out and started driving the opposite way of us. Again, the voice inside me tells me to get out of the car and start running. I was so scared I grabbed my purse, opened the door and made a run for it. Have you ever had a dream where you can barely run even though you really want to? Or a scary movie where the girl is barely running from the killer and you're yelling for her to run faster?

Well that was me. I don't know if it was because of all the adrenaline or I was scared what F would do to me if he caught me but I wasn't really running, more of dragging my body and forcing myself to move. It was truly like a horror movie. I'm screaming and waving my hands trying to get the car's attention. The car doesn't seem to see me and keeps driving. I make it to the house where the car came from and burst onto the property. There was about five dogs guarding the house barking at me viciously but I didn't care. I ran onto the porch and started banging on the door. Luckily as I looked around all the dogs were tied up. I keep banging but no one was answering. There was nobody home. As I'm freaking out thinking what I should do next, F comes driving up in front of the house and stops the car. My heart sinks. I start pacing and panicking. A opens the door, still crying, and starts to get out of the car, telling me to get back in.

In my head, I'm thinking, no way, you're insane. I'm not getting back in. You'll have to drag me from this porch. I yell at him no and start freaking out, knowing that they will have to force me to get back in and who knows what F will do to me. As A has his leg out of the door about to come get me, the car that had driven down the road had turned around and pulled up to the house. At the sight of the car, F takes off. A falls out of the car, crashes to the ground as is nearly ran over by the psycho. A flood of relief washes over me as the owner of the house gets out of his car and asks what's going on. A and I try our best to

explain and ask the man if he would drive us back to campus. We get in his car and as we're driving back I just lose it. From all the adrenaline and trying to keep my composure the entire time of this ordeal I just broke down. I just started to cry so hard I couldn't breathe and started hyperventilating really bad. We tried telling the man driving us what had happened, but having two hysterical teens trying to explain through tears didn't really help. All the man said was we smelled like alcohol and he needs gas money for taking us. To be honest, he was kind of a jerk, but I was just thankful to have a ride and be alive. On our way, B was waiting on the side of the road so we stopped and picked him up too.

He told us when he got the chance F wasn't looking so he decided to jump out of the car when F had slowed the car down enough for him to jump out. Finally shaken up and still crying, we had made it back to campus. I went to the police the next day, but they said they couldn't do anything. So, thanks for nothing. I never talked to A or B after that. I saw F once on campus after that, but just avoided him completely. It took me a few years to get over this incident, and in some ways I never have. If I would see someone that looked like F, the anxiety would overtake me and my body would start shaking. Moral of the story,

whenever the voice inside of you is trying to tell you there is danger and screaming not to do something, always listen to that voice. Don't ignore it like I did. And ladies, don't put yourself in a stupid situation. I'm the only girl in my family with two huge older brothers who would kill for me. To be alone with three guys, one who was a psycho and two others who wouldn't defend themselves or me was absolutely terrifying. I never want to feel that helpless again. Don't be stupid like me. I'm now married to a really hardcore husband who would never let anything happen to me. He bought me a gun which I take everywhere. I put myself in a really bad

situation then that could have ended a lot worse and I'm so thankful that it didn't. To be continued... A mother that had to work so much, she was barely home and my brother had to take care of my sister and I. When we were younger, we were in and out of shelters because of our abusive father. He made our lives torture. My sister and I were left home alone with our father who was abusive and neglectful towards us almost constantly. I was the main focus of his abuse. I was his first daughter but he wanted a, so he always treated me like a boy.

My mother had to protect me the most from him because he was angry that he didn't get a son as his first child. For years, whenever he would take me to my grandmother, he had me stay in the same bed as him. He seemed to focus on me not just with anger. Eventually, the older I got, the more time I spent alone with him, the more that he would touch me. Eventually this led to more explicit abuse. At the time I didn't understand what it was so I didn't know it was bad because I never really saw my mom. I didn't tell her what happened. Don't worry, he spent a long time in jail for this. The older I got, he started telling me

never to tell anyone. I didn't want to lie to my mother because she had started asking questions about what we did when we were alone together. Once it was found out what happened, we went to court and he was in jail for four years. Once he got out, we got a restraining order against him, but that didn't stop him. He started stalking my sister and I. I was in middle school when this began. He kept trying to dismiss me from school, talk to me when I would walk home. Eventually my mom had to get someone to walk my sister and I home since we walked together but that still didn't stop him. He got my cousin to try and talk to me to bring me to see him but I never went with her for fear of seeing my father.

Once my father got fed up enough with trying to have contact with us, he tried to kidnap me multiple times. Mainly it was with friends that I didn't know who they were or what they did. I had to go to therapy for years. I couldn't leave the house without feeling like I was going to be kidnapped and taken away forever and never see my family again. While I was a freshman in high school, my mother had answered the front door as there was a knock. I listened in because I didn't want it to be my father and he had harmed her but it wasn't my father. It was one of his friends who made a death threat to my entire family if he wasn't allowed to see me. We had to go to court for it but it took a year and a half to get a proof for him to see me. Around that time it was confirmed that he had

passed away. I was never told how he died but I was only told that he was dead. Even though he's been gone for almost four years I still have to go to therapy. I can't sleep, I rarely eat and I have horrible nightmares about my childhood, and I've been diagnosed with clinical depression. Nobody from his side of the family or friends have tried contacting my family, but luckily I don't have to deal with him or anyone ever again, and I'll be forever thankful that that part of my life is over. I believe I know what happens when you die. On March 16th, 2015, I was released from prison for the last time. It's what everybody called 12-12. And if you've been to prison or jail, you know what this means. But for everybody who had never

been or know anyone that's been, it's when you finish everything. No more probation or parole, no more being on a run when you don't follow the rules or decide to get hired or just stop reporting it to your parole officer. 12-12 means that you're a 100% free man. Free to do anything you want to do and go anywhere you want to go. You're literally reborn again. If you've ever gotten your freedom taken away, you'll understand my next statement. Finally getting your freedom back feels better than making love, no debate. But know that it feels incredibly good.

Anyways, I was released from prison and I had to go back to my hometown, St. Louis, because that was the closest Greyhound station and I was finally able to go back home to my family in Springfield, Missouri and my first and only son who was three at the time, my stepdaughter and baby mama, who I've been seeing for almost three years because I went back to prison in 2013 and after getting out I was forced to go back to St. Louis Honor Center because she moved to Illinois and they don't home plan people to out-of-state residence. While in St. Louis Honor Center I no longer had family or friend houses to go to on weekends because everybody either moved away or died since I'd been gone. So I had nowhere to go but downtown St. Louis where the Honor Center was located

and I quickly learned where everybody would be and started using what they were using, K2 or Spice. Now, all that said, let me get to the story. After getting released, I ended up back downtown because like I said, that's where the Greyhound station was. And since I had close to five to six hours to waste before the bus leaves, I decided to go around the corner to the old stomping grounds to what's going on. But when I got there, nobody was out. It was like a ghost town. So I decided to head back to the Greyhound station. but as I turned around, I seen my dude D-man rolling up and when he sees me his face lit up and he gave me a big bear hug and then praised me on how good I look now that I'm not on all them drugs.

After a brief conversation he started telling me about how he's the man around there and he's got the best crack in K2 in town as we walked to the library where everybody be now. Not in the library, but around it while everybody sold whatever drugs they got. I let him know that I'm finally going back to Springfield and we might not ever see each other again and he decided to roll a big joint of K2 to take away the pain and hurt of losing a good friend and for better days to come. I know, crazy right? And also noticed that I haven't smoked or gotten high for a really long time, so I still had virgin lungs and my tolerance was low. So we smoke and while we're smoking other people started coming up to buy crack and K2. The ones buying K2 fired up and we started passing joints around like we're at Sno people started coming up to buy crack and k2 the ones buying k2 fired up and we started passing joints around like we're at snoop dog smokehouse and all i can remember is

me starting to throw up like crazy and thinking god i'm fitting to die and then everything went black and then like somebody pushed fast forward i seen everything i'd ever done or thought in my life go by with incredible speed and then I ended up in a parking lot trying to break into somebody's car and then the person whose car was there with a gun and then he shot me in the head. I seen the spark of the gun, felt the pain and then everything went black. I came to the darkest place I'd ever seen. I mean, the darkest of dark. And I couldn't see anything. But I could hear myself think.

I could talk, but only in my mind. Am I dead? What happened? Oh God, is this all I'm going to see for the rest of my days? I can see my hands. Oh God, Lord, please don't let this be it. Is this hell? What happened? Okay, think. What's the last thing you remember? While trying to remember, I remembered my past life. Everything I'd done and said. Everything I thought. And every crime I committed. But for the

life of me, I couldn't remember what got me here. Then it hit me. Prison. Getting released. D-man. Okay, what else? I remember now. Throwing up. Throwing up bad, and thinking I'm gonna die. Springfield. Son. My son. Did I ever see my son again? Did I ever get back to Springfield? See my baby mama? Stepdaughter? Then it hit me. I got shot in the head. For trying to steal somebody's car. Why was I trying to steal somebody's car? Better yet, why was I still in St. Louis? Why didn't I get on that Greyhound bus? My son. Oh God, I'll never see my son again.

The whole time I was thinking these things, I couldn't see nothing but blackness. But the thoughts of my son finally brought me back to reality, and I was standing on the curb, still throwing up on myself. I just decided to walk down to the Greyhound, but D-Man put his hand on my shoulder and told me to sit down. Just then the ambulance pulled up. Somebody called but I didn't want to go but D-Man told me to go and get checked out so I did. On the way to the hospital I needed to throw up more so they gave me the throw up bag and I threw up the whole ride there. After getting to the hospital I told the doctor the truth about smoking K2

and after giving me the, you know you shouldn't be doing that speech, they ran the tests and let me go after everything checked out. Before leaving, I took my pants off and washed off the throw-up with paper towels and eventually made my way to the Greyhound station. And even though I still had a lot of hours to wait, I didn't go back around the corner and stay put. Eventually the bus came and I gave my ticket and got on the bus. The whole ride there I had to keep running into the bathroom to throw up,

but finally after five hours I made it. You would think after that incident that my K2 days would be over. Wrong. But something really scary finally happened that made me stop for good, and now you can't pay me to smoke that. Let me know if you want to hear what happened, and until then, have any of you ever seen your life flash before your eyes in darkness? In darkness. Abelita used to tell me stories about her early years at the rural south of Mexico. She used to live in a small town surrounded by fields that would extend to the bottom of the mountains around the valley.

These fields were owned and operated by the wealthy folks of the town and like her parents, the rest would just work on the fields to earn a living. Because her parents were really poor, when she turned 16, she had to join them to work as a picker at their Sarnparsella. Abuelita told me that she was a pretty young woman and for that same reason, her father wouldn't allow the other men to engage her. Anytime one of them would try to get near her, her father would just walk toward her in his menacing face. One day, however, the son of the Parsella owner had come to the fields to check on them and he had stopped right at her to ask her name. Abuelita's father wouldn't dare say a thing. In fact, he seemed rather inclined to the idea of his daughter marrying that kid. But still, to appear unbiased, he approached them in his usual face and asked her to go back to work.

The owner's son simply went to check on the rest. Abuelita said that for a month or so, they would secretly meet by the edge of the field only for a brief moment. She was madly in love with him, or so she thought, and as soon as they realized those few minutes weren't enough, they decided to meet later at night so their parents, especially her father, wouldn't catch them. Excited at the prospect, she gave no second thought to their plan, and when the night fell and her parents were asleep already, she snuck outside and walked the dark unpaved streets to meet her secret lover at

the same spot by the edge of the parcela. Since electricity was reserved only to agriculture machinery, they relied only on the light of the moon to take a stroll around without tripping or encountering a wild animal. For hours, they talked about each other about what a life at the city was like and he would tell her all about it, about the cars, the buildings, and that if they were to marry, he would take her to live there one day. Abelita said after a while, he stole a kiss from her and even though she didn't approve, she liked it. Yet the love spell she was under began to erode when he kept insisting on kissing her more and more.

She kept repeating that she was uncomfortable and tired. Now in retrospect, I fully understand the situation that was unfolding. Abuelita was raised as a hardcore Catholic, and such event was simply not meant to happen in such a manner, at least in her own beliefs. Besides, her parents would be livid had they found out what had happened, even if they were rooting for such a relationship. So, she pushed him. He wouldn't stop insisting. Then, having no other option, she cried out loud in the hopes that some of the valedores, the night-time guards of the field, would listen to her pleas. It seemed that there was no one around and they were, by then, too far away from town

to be heard by her parents or the people living by the outskirts. In desperation, Abuelita said she could only think of praying in her head. She prayed to the Guadalupana, to the saints, and to God. She prayed so much she even believed there would be a divine intervention, that the Virgin Mary would come herself to set her free from his arms. Yet there was no Virgin Mary, she would tell me. What happened next would haunt her forever. From within the fields, lights began to spring from the thin air. The scene appeared as if people with torches were approaching them, thousands of them. The owner's son turned around and stopped forcing onto her, afraid of what they were seeing.

Soon the lights caught up to where they were lying. They saw them. Those weren't torchlights. They were thousands of men and women and kids, all burning in yellow flames. Their flesh was intact, however, but their faces were those of sorrow and misery and fear. There was no eye contact. They simply walked by. They were speaking gibberish while holding their hands as if reciting the Lord's Prayer. Kids and adults alike, Abuelita said. When one of them walked just a couple of feet away,

they felt the temperature go down rather than up, as if the fires were ice cold. The owner's son was in shock. He couldn't move, say, or do anything. Abuelita, on the other hand, kept praying. Now with her eyes closed, she said she knew exactly who these folks were. The souls of Purgatory, she told me, they saved me from, well, they saved me from Miho.

Their fire was to purify themselves to be worthy of heaven, but it didn't matter, because that night they were there for me. So every other night I make my prayers about them so that they can find salvation one day. I owe them. After the fire folks had left, disappearing from the fields and meeting the mountains at the horizon, Abuelita didn't think twice before sprinting back to town, to the safety of her parents. She couldn't speak for hours, until she did, only to alert them about her lover. They found him the next day. His hair was grey, and his sight seemed lost. He was dead. Ambalita said he passed away from fear, but I believe he might have simply been in shock too long and died from exposure. Either way, he was no longer among the living. She pondered upon if he had made it into purgatory or gone straight into the other, worse option.

And if the former, was he going to wander the fields in case some other victim cried for divine intervention? I know, not the most orthodox thing to wander, but that's just how she was and I can't blame her. So that's just how she was and I can't blame her. So that's her story. I know it's a little bit short, but she had many others from that rural town. She said that there's something about living so far from the bigger cities that enticed the paranormal to spawn. Anyways, I always wanted to share them so that they don't die in oblivion. Maybe I'll share the rest some other time. Lastly, Abuelita, thank you for an amazing childhood and for all the experiences you shared with me, even if they kept me awake so many nights. They eventually contributed to my love for scary stories, and for that, I'm truly grateful. This is a true paranormal story of the home I lived in from 13 years old.

The old homestead Glencoe was built in the 1860s by convicts transported to Tasmania for whatever crime they had been found guilty of back in England. It was a huge old place, big enough that we, a family of eight, only used one half of it. The other half was blocked off and used for storage and the like. No one had lived in the old homestead for a quarter of a century before we moved in. It wasn't in the best of condition as a result, but dad is a builder and a stonemason, he did what needed to be done. But we all knew we weren't alone in that old house. We had guests, or perhaps they considered us the guests since they were there long before we moved in. At first, we laughed about Glencoe

being haunted, making light of it and treating it as a bit of a joke. Yet we all knew it was very real, even if we didn't want to take it seriously. Glencoe had four resident ghostly beings that we knew of. The first three was a man called George, a woman called Matilda, and a young girl about seven years of age we'll call Amelia. I'll talk about the fourth shortly. We assumed George, Matilda, and Amelia. I'll talk about the fourth shortly. We assume George, Matilda, and Amelia were the family who built the house. The graves of the original owners were on the property not far from the home. We didn't experience so many things often seen in claimed ghost videos. There were no slamming doors, no flickering lights, no moving curtains

or any of the other things so often shown in ghost videos today. Only occasionally did we hear knocking within the walls. Even then, it was only in one area of the house, an old sunroom. We did however hear strange noises like footsteps and often felt as if someone or something was watching. Things moved on their own or went missing only to turn up in the most unusual places. About six months after we moved in, George, Matilda, and Amelia decided to make themselves known. They weren't just ghostly faces peeking around corners either. They were full-bodied appearances standing in the hall or lounge or by the kitchen door. The child Amelia was often seen running around the house as if playing. All were always

in 19th century clothing and George, who we and visitors saw the most, always had his black top hat on. Yet the house never had a bad feeling about it. To the contrary, there was a friendly warmth within that house. Of course, that doesn't mean the ghost didn't scare the bejesus out of us and visitors when they decided to appear. We grew used to living with them, however, and lived there for more than a decade. In all that time, George, Matilda, and Amelia never felt hostile. Rather, they seemed to be more curious than anything else and seemed happy to have us living there with them. It made it hard to have guests, though.

More than one person entered that house, only to run out and refuse to ever enter it again. Many a skeptic also left her house completely converted into a believer. The fourth entity was a different matter entirely. I say entity because I don't know what the fourth was. It was not the same as the other three and it was not friendly. While Matilda, George and Amelia would appear where and whenever they pleased throughout the house, the fourth seemed to be confined to one particular room, a bedroom shared by my older sister and I.

We called this entity, Thing. Whoever or what it was, I still don't know, but Thing was utterly terrifying. In all the time we lived at Glencoe, no one ever saw Thing, yet we knew it was there. Even during the day, with the sun streaming through the large window, chasing all the shadows out, that one room was a bad place. Whatever inhabited the room was something no one wanted anything to do with. The nights are worse. It seems strange to say a ghost or other entity breathes. After all, they're otherworldly beings and have no need to do so, yet it's the only way to describe what thing did. Lying in bed at night, my sister and I could hear Thing's heavy breathing as it literally filled the room. It sounded as if though it had been running. Unseen eyes bored

into us as we lay in bed, trying very hard to pretend it was nothing more than our imaginations. We could pretend all we liked, however. There was no doubt whatsoever thing existed in that particular room and had no intention of going anywhere. It also seems weird to say something we never saw was far scarier than the actual ghostly apparitions of George, Matilda, and Amelia, but it was. We could live with George, Matilda, and Amelia. They meant no harm and had no problem with us living in the house with them. That didn't mean they liked everyone who came into the house though. One time, George seemed to take exception to a group who came to visit.

He appeared right in front of the man and his two friends telling them to get out. The man actually walked through George, he was so close to them. The group let out terrified screams, racing from the house and refusing to ever enter it again. Yet George and his family seemed to like us and we never felt any hostility from them. The sounds of ghostly parties in the living room, the things going missing, the other weird sounds and strange occurrences in the house weren't bad. After living there for a while while we got used to it, but no one ever got used to thing. Who or whatever inhabited that bedroom was utterly

terrifying and came from hell itself, and that we were sure. One didn't have to see or even hear it to know that, one could just feel it the moment one entered that room. What was it? Another ghost? Who unlike George, Matilda and Amelia was angry for some reason? Perhaps his life was cut short somehow and he resented it. Perhaps he was an evil bugger even in life and remained that way in death. Or maybe thing was something else entirely. A demon perhaps. One time my brother and his friend decided to use a Ouija board to find out. They claimed to have contacted a convict spirit who called himself Rabbit. What he'd done back in England to end up a convict transported to Tasmania was never

discovered but he was apparently hung on the property for murdering somebody. My brother and his friend were only young at the time they contacted Rabbit. It was never ascertained if their claims were true or if it was something they'd simply made up although my brother to this day insists it really happened. Was Rabbit the thing living in that room? Angry because he'd been executed? Perhaps it was the person he'd murdered who was angry because he'd been killed. Even if the claims of my brother and his friend are true and they really did contact a spirit named Rabbit, I personally don't think Rabbit, or his victim for that matter, was the entity we called Thing. Whatever inhabited the bedroom was pure evil and unlike George, Matilda, and Amelia,

we were in no doubt Thing would do us harm if it could. Some nights it felt as if Thing was leaning right over me as I lay in bed, too scared to move. My sister had the same experiences and so did others who spent a night in that room. One evening I walked into the bedroom and stopped as the hairs on my neck stood straight up as something gave a gruff chuckle. It was pure evil and felt as if though someone or something was right behind me but when I got enough courage to turn there was nothing there. I knew it was Thing. I had heard that awful chuckle before during that night. A part of me wanted Thing to appear so I could see what it was. The bigger part of me, though, didn't want to know, fearing what I might see. I was about 18 at the time. I'm in my 40s now, but to this day, remember the feel of Thing in that chuckle. Some years later, we discovered an 8-year-old

girl died in that room after falling into the fireplace and sustaining severe burns. Was it the little blonde-haired ghost child we called Amelia? We never found out, but assumed it was. Was Thing somehow connected to that death? Who knows? I only know Thing lived in that room and was pure evil. We left Glencoe after Dad's sudden death in December of 1994. Without his skills as a builder and stonemason to see to the upkeep of

the house, it was impossible to keep it in livable condition. It was just too big and too old. We said goodbye to George, Matilda, and Amelia in mid-1995. No one has lived in the house since, although I hear the current owners of the property want to renovate the house and turn it into a hotel and conference center. I've no doubt George, Matilda and Amelia still live there and I'm sure Thing is still there in that bedroom as well. If the old place is turned into a hotel and conference center I wonder what the ghosts of Glencoe will think about it. So a word of warning.

If it does become a hotel and you should decide to stay there, say hello to George, Matilda, and Amelia. If they like you, you'll feel welcome there. If they don't, well, all I can say is you'll know all about it and it's unlikely you'll ever be game enough to stay there long. As for Thing, if you stay in the first bedroom on the left next to what was originally an old sunroom, you'll quickly know what I'm talking about when you realize you're sharing a room with a terrifying entity. Are you game enough to stay in a room inhabited by

something from hell itself? I would go back. Despite Thing, I love that old place and I hope one day to return. If I do, I hope I see the ghosts of Glencoe one last time. A part of me still wants to know what Thing is and why it's there. I was in my mid-twenties when we left the house and still after all these years I wonder about Thing. It was a terrifying yet strangely fascinating entity but I'm not sure I'd have the courage to face Thing. It's easy to say I would while not at the house, but to go back into that room would be different entirely. I still remember the feeling of evil and terror in that room. It's not something one forgets, believe me. I firmly believe it would now. If Thing had the power to kill someone, it would.

This story came up when I was talking to my grandma about cattle mutilations. I was talking about a deer skin being found in the woods by some guy while he was camping and my grandmother suddenly gasped. She then went on to tell me that when she was 26, she was home alone sleeping one day while my grandpa was at work and my mom was at school. She said that at some point through her sleep, she was startled awake by a semi-loud boom coming from the highway. She got dressed and went out to investigate and almost immediately noticed a giant red blob right on the yellow line of the road. She said that as she neared closer to it, she realized it was a horse. A skinless horse. She described it as having absolutely no skin at all and said that she could see every nerve, every vein, and all of the muscle on it.

Dead, laying in the road. She said two truck drivers pulled over to stare at the horse as well and that they were so weirded out by it that they just stared at it for a while. My grandmother said she called the police out there and it was cleaned up. My mom recounted the story as well, saying that my grandmother seemed a bit on edge the whole day and my mom remembered being a bit creeped out too. I'm not sure of how real it is, but I hope I never have to experience something like this. And if you've got a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit r slash 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. Links in the bio. Thanks so much, friends. And remember, ghosts are just farts that never got smelt.