The Lets Read Podcast - 118: Highway & Backpacking Travel Stories | 21 True Scary Horror Stories | EP 106

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Highways, Backpacking & Twitter Stalkers... HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsReadCreepy ♫ Background Music & Audio Remastering: Simon de Beer https://www.instagram.com/simon_db98/ PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead Update Description

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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. Intro I enlisted in the US Army on my 18th birthday. Both my father and grandfather had the honor of embarking on a military career and had both seen combat in the Gulf and Vietnam respectively. Unlike my dad, whose war had lasted little more than 100 hours, my grandfather had done two tours of Vietnam with the 101st Airborne and had actually lost his left hand during the battle in the A Shau Valley in 1969.

Because of this, he insisted that I do everything in my power to avoid direct combat duty. He told me the stress had almost killed him when my dad went off into the desert to fight the army of Saddam Hussein. He couldn't face losing his son, and he wouldn't have that same stress on his mind if his grandson went off into combat duty either. So, I ended up as an 88M, a motor transport operator. Motor transport operators are mainly responsible for overseeing or driving vehicles to transport either personnel or vital supplies. We are the backbone of the US Army's sustainment and support structure, providing essential advanced mobility both on and off the battlefield. I was sure to avoid direct combat

duty in this role, but that didn't mean I would be exempt from a deployment to one of the US Army's most dangerous and intense areas of operation since the Vietnam War, Afghanistan. My family and I had one last meal at my grandfather's place before I deployed and if I'm honest, it was very emotional. My dad was proud, my mom was a nervous wreck who was only kept together by the fact that she had so much food to prepare but it was my grandfather's little talk that he gave me that really had me falling to pieces. Like my dad, he was proud of me for serving his country but he told me some of the things that he had seen during his time in Vietnam, things that clearly haunted him for a long long time after he rotated

back stateside. He told me that there were no heroes in war, not in the sense that the movies try to make it out. He told me ideas that get men killed in dumb, needless ways, and a lot of the kids he'd seen take a bullet in the Aishaw Valley had sadly mistaken bravery for stupidity. Basically, he told me that there were only two things I should focus on, doing my job and getting home. He told me I would be a hero to the infantry guys who needed the bullets, the bandages, and the beans, and I had absolutely nobody to prove myself to. That the highest reward wasn't medals, or glory, or killing America's enemies, it was about being able to go home to

your family, something that so many of his Vietnam buddies was about being able to go home to your family, something that so many of his Vietnam buddies hadn't been able to do. My story takes place during the third month of my year-long deployment to Nangarhar province, Afghanistan. I was assigned to Troop D, 1st Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, as I had been driving army trucks for about three years by that time and was actually one of the more experienced guys. Troop D was tasked with running combat logistical patrols between FOBs Connolly and Fenty, which was about an hour away near the city of Jalalabad. And although the drive between the bases only lasted a couple of hours, depending on the size of the load we were toting, the preparation time for the convoys made for very long days.

We'd had a few close calls as far as attacks on our convoys went. We'd come under sniper attack at one point. There the bulletproof windows of my 20 ton load handler got cracked from where the sniper's bullets slammed into it. That was a pretty intense day. If it would have penetrated, it'd have hit my vehicle commander right in the face or neck, and that would have definitely ruined both our days. We also had a couple of IED scares, but honestly, those were just more boring than anything else. The lead vehicle in the convoy would spot something suspicious at the side of the road, an unusual mound of earth or a burned out car or something.

Then we'd have to wait hours and hours on end waiting for EOD, the bomb disposal guys, to show up and declare it safe before we could continue. But without a shadow of doubt, the worst and most terrifying thing that happened during my entire tour happened on a supply run one hot summer's day in May. The area we were rolling through was mostly farmland, with the odd small village interspersed throughout the arid rocky terrain. It wasn't unusual to see the farmers working their fields as we passed through, and some of them even gave us friendly waves, with their kids jumping up and down excitedly at the sight of such huge vehicles driving along the dusty dirt roads.

Only this one day, we couldn't see a single person out in their fields, which is usually what we call an atmospheric indicator. This is when a certain detail in the environment lets us know that the chances of a firefight happening is higher than usual, and a lack of civilians in the area is one of those. However, in the distance, I see this one lone kid, pushing a wheelbarrow through one of the fields. This then gets reported over the radio, and it pretty much sets our mind at ease because there's no way the Taliban were about to initiate an ambush with one of the farmer kids working away on his lonesome. After all, they relied on the

approval and good faith of the locals for their insurgency, just as much as we did for our counterinsurgency. Our lead vehicle stops just short of the kid who's trying his hardest to push his fully laden wheelbarrow up a little embankment that connected his farmer dad's, or uncle's, who am I to know, field to the road itself. We watched him straining and pushing at his wheelbarrow but kept on failing as it rolled back down the slope. There were a few moments where I thought it might topple over on top of him and I'd have really hated to see that kid get hurt like that. I think it's why I was so relieved to hear one of our sergeants over the radio telling us to stand by because he

was going to jump out of his truck to help the kid get his barrel over the road. Like I said, we relied on the goodwill of locals for information and whatnot so that kind of aid was very, very essential to our overall success in the area. Our sergeant approaches the kid, gives him a little wave and says his salams and the kid smiles and returns the wave. The sergeant then points at the wheelbarrow and mimes pushing it up the embankment. The kid looks like he's thinking for a moment then gives him a nod. The sergeant gives him a thumbs up, the kid returns it and everything is alright. The kid backs off the barrow and the sergeant steps in,

takes hold of the handles and begins to push it up the embankment but is clearly struggling, not as much as the kid but struggling nonetheless. Whatever was in there must have been really heavy and was covered by a large piece of tarp. Our sergeant let go of the handles of the wheeled barrel and leans over and lifts the tarp slightly. Then he starts to move back towards the convoy, hand on his radio set before his screams start to buzz over all of our radios. Move back! Move the F back! IED! IED! I... His last word was cut off by a huge explosion. One which kicked up a huge ball of dust which engulfed all of

our vehicles and plunged my truck's cab into darkness. We call it a brownout when there's so much dust in the air that you can only see like two feet in front of you, sometimes not even that. In the immediate aftermath, a dozen voices started shouting on our radios demanding to know what had happened and what we were supposed to do. Our lieutenant immediately called for comms discipline, silencing all the panicked voices before declaring that we'd been struck by a roadside bomb. I'm not sure any of us quite knew what had happened in the minutes that followed, even our vehicle, who had one of the best views, just didn't quite want to believe what we'd seen. Our sergeant was KIA the moment the IED went off, which was concealed in the wheelbarrow the kid had been pushing.

The kid had absolutely no idea what was in there either. He had no desire to run away before it went off. He wasn't in the least bit suspicious or contemptuous towards us as we approached. Rumors went around that ended up getting confirmed that the Taliban had paid the kid's family a few dollars to push the barrel towards us so they could detonate it when the kid got close. It's stuff like that which scared me the most during my tour. I met some Afghans when I was over there that were some of the kindest, most gentle souls I'd ever met. Every bit as peaceful and freedom loving as the average rural American.

But the people that fought us, the people that schemed to turn kids into human bombs, and then justified it to themselves like they were doing the right thing, that's what gave me sleepless nights over there. As well as sleepless nights after I got back to the states. The scariest thing to ever happen to me on a road trip or highway happened way back when I was a kid. My mom and dad had arranged a little weekend getaway for themselves so they took us over to my aunt's place so we could hang out with our cousins and what not while they got themselves some wellerved peace and quiet. We spent the first day just playing in a local park, throwing a football around, just doing the things that kids do but the next day my aunt and another aunt of mine decided to drive us somewhere for some activity I can't even remember now.

I mean this is so long ago that I can't even remember where we were driving or why. I remember being in the back seat, bored out of my skull and just watching the road ahead of us through the gap in the sheets. What I find kind of weird is how some details in this incident are burned into my memory while others completely escape me. I suppose that's just how memory works sometimes, so excuse me if this account seems spotty but I think you'll all get the gist of it. On the road ahead of us was a brick red pickup truck, its rear storage space crammed with building equipment. I distinctly remember a bunch of bricks and building sand and balanced on top, secured by some rope or some other kinds of cordage, was a large rusted wheelbarrow. A sheet of blue plastic tarp was flapping violently

in the wind and as the truck drove on ahead of us, I remember seeing the whole load rumbling and shaking in a way that in retrospect should have made me feel distinctly uncomfortable. I remember my aunt commenting on it how they were pretty worried about how poorly the truck's load was secured, but I didn't really think anything of it when you're as young as I was, you just don't consider certain possibilities or dangers. So I had no idea what was about to happen and when it did, the whole thing scared the life out of me in a way that I don't think I'd ever felt.

I watched in absolute horror as the wheelbarrow came loose and fell off the back of the truck. It didn't happen in stages, it didn't slip and slip and then fall so that my aunt who was driving had time to swerve or back off or whatever, it just fell, suddenly and violently right off the back of the pickup and into the road as the car I was in continued to speed towards it. My aunt screamed, one throwing her hands up to her face as she obviously expected the thing to slam into the windshield of the car. We were on the highway at the time, driving at maybe 60 or 70 miles an hour

and at those speeds, there's no telling what kind of catastrophic damage it would have caused. But somehow the wheelbarrow hit the road and actually bounced. It bounced in a way I never thought possible for something made of almost entirely metal. Maybe it landed on its rubber wheel first and that's what gave it a little extra momentum, but somehow it narrowly missed the windshield and scraped against the roof of the car. An orchestra of beeping car horns erupted behind us as we slowed to a stop, but my aunts knew they weren't directed at them for slowing to a stop. I remember a guy from the car behind getting out to see if we were okay and thank god we were,

whereas the pickup in front of us just kept going, probably knowing full well that they'd be subject to arrest or something for not securing their load properly. So yeah, that's definitely the scariest thing I'd ever have happen to me on a car journey by a long-haul truck driver for a good few years now. I find it pretty enjoyable to be honest. It just suits my lifestyle. I've never been the most sociable person so I actually really like the whole thing of it just being me with nothing but my stereo system and the open road for company. My job has taken me to some incredible places too. Things that

regular 9-5 office workers just never get to see from their dusty dimly lit office spaces. Even those with views from skyscrapers and stuff, they never see the landscape change, how the sun frames mountain ranges or the moon shimmers off boundless lakes. Even with all the built up areas, this country really is beautiful in parts. Wyoming and Montana are some of my favorites, the mountain ranges and prairies being like picture postcards in places. But, and I mean no offense here, but the Iowa cornfields get so tedious in places because there's literally nothing but cornfields get so tedious in places because there's literally nothing but cornfields as far as the eye can see.

However, my least favorite place to drive in the entire country has to be Louisiana. Again, I mean absolutely no offense to any native sons of the Bayou State, I've had some of the best fried catfish I'd ever tasted in little roadside diners while rolling through that place. But there's something inherently creepy about Louisiana too. Maybe it's just the humidity, the gators, or the way the Cajuns can just switch from English to French on a dime and shut you right out of a conversation. The whole southern hospitality is as real as I'm surely breathing and I really have met some of the nicest most generous people in the entire country down in Louisiana. I'm talking the kind

of people that would give their last dollar or the shirt off their backs but I guess it just takes a place of extremes because I've also met some of the least welcoming and quite frankly most terrifying people I'd ever met in my whole life down there. And this here is the story of one of those encounters. One that still keeps me up at night sometimes and that takes a few glasses of vodka just to shut the memories out. So this one time, I'm rolling along this highway late in the evening, way behind schedule on a shipment due in Dallas, Texas. The tight timing meant it looked like I was going to have to pull another brutal all-nighter to get my load to the depot on time, but if that was going to be the case, I'd have to

stop at some roadside crawfish shack to fill up on greasy food and coffee so I had the energy to keep going. So I turned my truck off the road at the first place I saw. This place with a glowing luminous sign that flashed with half the letters missing but it was all I needed to see. Ruston Crawfish Shack the place was called and it was little more than a collection of sheet metal shacks at the side of the road. But hey, those are the kind of places where some Cajun mama bear has been making the same delicious po'boys for the last 30 years and god I just love what those people can do with a few shrimp and a slice of lemon.

So I order up some food, get it to go and then sit outside to wolf it down before I'm back on the road when some older black guy comes up to ask me where I'm from. He was pretty friendly and I don't mean to be judgmental here but he had a very very unusual appearance. He dressed normally, had close cropped hair but he was very very skinny like unnaturally skinny. Like he was just skin and bones with no muscle keeping his body upright whatsoever. I tell him up north originally but that I'm based in Arkansas for my job and we start just casually talking about the area and its history. He was a nice enough guy but I had to excuse myself telling him if I didn't get this load to Dallas Depot on time that I'd be in a whole world of trouble. It's the kind of thing that guys lose their jobs over so I couldn't afford to play fast and loose with my timing. And in my case,

the risk was extra high since I had a high value load of electronics, new TVs and such and every day a delivery is late the depot can find a trucking company and dramatically lower their bottom line. He puzzles the thought over for a moment and then told me he thought he could help me out and to wait there for a moment while he fetched something from the back room of the shack. At first I thought it was going to be some pills that would keep me extra wired all night but what he brought out of the crawfish shack was something that sent chills through me even thinking about it today. The guy returned with a piece of cypress wood in his hand, like a bare piece, looking like it had been freshly cut from a tree.

He had me follow him over to my truck, out of sight of the rest of the crowd that was gathering outside of the shack. Once we were alone, he pulls out this huge knife and tells me to carve my name into the wood, my full name or it won't work. I was just about to ask him what it was when he shushes me, hands me the knife and tells me to obey. The blade looks jagged and slightly bent like it's been home forged or something. This was creepy enough on its own but it was only when I take the knife from his hand do I see what the handle is made of. Y'all ever heard of a jawbone knife? It's literally what it sounds like.

The blade is obviously metal, but the handle is made of an animal's jawbone. Some places it can be made of a bear or cougar's jaw with the teeth kind of blunted so that it doesn't rip your fingers up. Sounds weird, but they actually make for great grip and they were actually really popular back in the old frontier days. But this jawbone knife that he passed me was different. There was something horribly familiar about the shape and size of the teeth. The way only one of them was pointed while the others were flat or jaggedly cupped. I thought it might have been a pig's jaw at first.

But the actual jawline was way too thin for that, and it was with terror in my heart that I finally realized what I was looking at. It was human. That jaw had once belonged to a human being. I thought to say something, to ask him where he's gotten his hand on such a thing. I mean, I wanted to shove him away and throw his wooden board right back at him, but I'm telling you, when a guy has handed you a knife that you strongly suspect is made of a freaking human jawbone, you ain't nothing but polite to him. So I did as I was asked, carved my name into the wood, then handed him back the knife,

all the while he seemed to take an immense amount of pleasure in knowing how afraid I was. He then tells me that he's going to bury the piece of wood out in the bayou somewhere and that once he'd done that, I'd get to Dallas with loads of time and that I wouldn't have to worry about a thing. Long story short, I did get to Dallas on time. I was wide awake for the entire journey, made every exit and turn just like I was supposed to. But I was only so focused on the journey ahead because I wanted to keep the thoughts of where that knife had come from out of my mind. So, I suppose, in a manner of speaking, the little ritual did work. Maybe not in the way that he had intended to, where some weird bayou spirits had taken care of me for the remainder of my journey, but it was the thing that spurred me on to get away from that crawfish shack and on to my destination. To be continued... Hey bro, I'm gonna drive up to granddad's for a few hours to check in on him. I think he's been pretty lonely because of this whole lockdown thing and I think we should pay him a visit. I know what you're thinking and don't worry.

He has that glad porch built so we can sit in his front garden while he sits inside and we can have a little chat. I'll bring a flash of coffee and some cake for lunch. Are you up for joining me? I was snowed under with work and it had bled into my weekend so despite the fact that I should have just stayed home, I knew I needed to get out of my apartment for a while. So I agreed to join her. It was unusually nice weather out even for a British summer so I thought why not? Besides, I hadn't seen my granddad in like two or three months at that point so I really missed him and as long as we kept from getting too close to him physically I didn't see the harm in paying him a visit. So my sister arrives in her beat up old

Volkswagen Golf at around noon and we start the drive out to our granddad's. We're having our own little catch up. Talks range from the stuff surrounding the virus to YouTube channels we've been binging since we've been cooped up at home. I recommend Let's Read to her, whoop whoop. All is going well and I'm using my phone map app to help her navigate so I've got my eyes glued to my phone screen whereas she's obviously watching the road. She's a very chatty person so I did think it was unusual when she stopped talking altogether for a few minutes but nothing to worry about too much. I mean I just figured she was concentrating. I only realized something

was actually wrong when she said something like, what's wrong with that car? I look up and ask which one she was talking about but as I looked up and ask which one she was talking about. But as I looked it was obvious which one she was talking about. We're stopped at some traffic lights as this is happening and at the head of one of the lines of cars I see this grey Vauxhall estate. It's entire back window is blocked from all kinds of stuff filling the boot which is dangerous enough on it's own. But it's also sat there stationary doing that peep and creep thing you can make a car do from just gently pressing on the clutch. At first I just thought it was kind of funny that it seemed to me like they were just trying to make their

boring old dad car bounce like some kind of Compton lowrider and made a comment to my sister about why this is why dads should put away their Dr. Dre 2001 records after they turn 40. So the light turns green and we start moving again, but the gray Vauxhall at the head of the line next to us just sits there, not moving. So this actually gives me a chance to get a look into the car's front seats and catch a glimpse of the driver. I don't know what I was expecting, maybe some white dude in wraparound shades lip syncing to explosive or something relatively humorous like that, but what I actually saw was anything but amusing. This dude had shades on alright, but the way he was just slumping in the driver's seat, head slopping off to one side, it was obvious that he was drunk. And not just, I've just had

a few too many in the pub drunk. I mean, this fella was absolutely bladdered. Like so drunk he looked barely conscious. We hear a few beeping horns as the people behind him are evidently annoyed that he's just sat there, not paying attention to the lights, and I honestly thought that, since we'd gotten gotten past him that'd be the end of it. But nope. We hear this massively aggressive revving engine noise as the dude zooms past us again all before he just switches lanes so that he's right in front of us. Then he slows down, right down, so that I had to tell my sister to slow down too so we could maintain a safe distance between us. He then starts swerving from side to side ahead of us as we pass onto a smaller road,

so badly that cars coming the other way are swerving and beeping their horns at him for fear of him slamming into them. I know this isn't the scariest idea ever, he wasn't a bloody vampire or a skinwalker or whatever else seems to dominate all those creepypasta forums, but I cannot overstate how unnerving it is to see such a dangerous driver on the roads like right in front of you. It was how unpredictable he was acting too, like my heart was pounding, considering that he could just swerve into oncoming traffic or slam on his brakes at any moment when it might be way too late for us to stop ourselves and turn. We made sure to keep a safe distance as the road opened up in front of us again, into a full on dual carriageway, but he switches lanes yet again, again risking causing a bloody accident but again making it so that he's on our right hand side as

we come up to a set of traffic lights. Don't look at him. Just be cool. Don't look into his car. I tell my sister who is like doubly nervous as me because she's actually the one at the wheel and it's her car we're driving in. But here's the thing. My sister is blonde and she gets quite a lot of attention from boys, something that has always been stressful for me. Those of you with younger siblings will probably understand exactly what I'm talking about, you just feel super protective of them. So when I heard that doon doon doon sound and looked to see the dirty drunk driver banging on his passenger window, I knew what was about to happen. I instinctively turned up our car's radio, and again reiterated for her not to look at the car at all, but she was well practiced at ignoring

thirsty guys, so that wasn't really an issue. But there was a new concern now, that he was going to follow us, and follow us he did. As the lights turn green, the drunk driver keeps level with us as we all start moving. He winds down his passenger window and starts shouting over the din of the engines and traffic, but thank god for the car radio, we could only faintly hear him. My sister is keeping her eyes on the road and I'm staring the guy out at this point, like I'm scared but I'm only just really bloody angry now. He's shouting at her, making disgusting gestures with his fingers and tongue. I was ashamed that another grown man could ever

act like that. He's not paying attention to the road and he's not paying attention to his own driving either so I watch in absolute horror as he starts drifting over to us slowly but surely. His passenger door is getting closer and closer to my sister's side of the car as he notices me staring and switches his attention towards me, instantly becoming extremely aggressive as the expression behind his sunglasses changes radically. I could hear him clearly over the car radio now, screaming through his passenger window stuff like what are you looking at? Along with other stuff I don't think would be appropriate to write out for polite company.

I start warning my sister to edge off to the side of the road, which she does, and we're moving off the dual carriageway into a small road this time, so she ends up slowing down and stopping behind the van of a dude who was working on an electrical box just a few meters away. The drunk driver follows us though, and actually has to swerve hard to avoid smashing into the parked van, which causes yet more beeping from the cars behind the drunk driver as he's pretty much forced to carry on off down the road. I'm thanking god out loud that we've lost the dude at this point, and I turn towards my little sister to see if she's okay, and she just bursts into tears, leaning her head onto

the steering wheel and sobbing. I can't even blame her. She finds driving stressful at the best of times, let alone when some drunk, dangerously driving pervert is giving her all kinds of unwanted attention. She was crying so loud that the electrician fella who was working away, whose attention was drawn away anyway because the drunk driver that nearly just smashed into his car, earning himself a torrent of beeps, ended up coming over to ask if she was okay. I was giving my sister little pats on the back as I wound down my window and explained what the guy was up to, and how he'd almost just caused a serious accident through being a drunk in a perv. And when the electrician asked if I made a note of the guy's number plate, I was just kicking

myself. I had been so intensely scared of what might happen that it didn't even occur to me to make a record of the guy's number plate. I felt like a moron, but I was somewhat consoled by the idea that someone else might have had the presence of mind to do what I'd neglected to, and I sincerely hope someone did. That fella shouldn't have been on the roads at all, and I really, really hope he didn't cause an accident further on down the road. We ended up being late to our granddad's, but he didn't mind at all once we explained why we were so late and he was just as outraged as we were that such a thing could even occur in the first place. Well, that's my story. I know I wasn't nearly as scary as some of the others that get posted here, what with all the stalkers or catfish psychos that people have the misfortune to run into,

but I literally can't remember a time when something has had me literally shaking with adrenaline like that did. We all tend to feel safe while on the roads, to the point where some people find driving to actually be kind of a boring experience, but it only takes something like that drunk driver to remind us all how vulnerable we really are. So my trucking route is from here in Connecticut all the way down to Kentucky and Tennessee. It's a pretty good run, I get to see pretty much all the sights the east coast has to offer but there's one area of the country that gets pretty wild and that's the area around the Appalachian Mountains. You guys probably know that it's one of the poorest areas of the country,

one that got really screwed over as the coal mining jobs started to dwindle and the local economy went down the pooper. I really feel for the people down there, seeing how entrenched in poverty some of the families are is just heartbreaking. So I was rolling through an area of the state that I hadn't previously been through, thanks to my usual section of highway being blocked off by some huge traffic accident that had unfortunately left a few people dead. It was having some trouble navigating the roads after my phone ran out of battery and wouldn't you know it, the plug charger decides to give out too. Worst timing ever. But I was an

experienced truck driver and I wasn't driving on an 18-wheeler on that particular run so I was free to take some of the smaller roads to find my way around but despite the fact that I consider myself pretty good on the roads there was a point that I found myself hopelessly lost and I started to worry that I wouldn't make my shipping delivery deadline. That would mean disciplinary proceedings and whatnot and I just couldn't afford those at all. Anyway, I happen to see this one guy wandering down the side of the road so I slow my truck, wind down the window and ask him for directions. The guy seems friendly enough and is more than willing to take a few minutes to give

me all the information I need on how to make it back onto the main highways that headed south. But then I start asking him if there's anywhere nearby that I'd be able to get some lunch as it was getting towards one in the afternoon and I'd only managed to get myself a pretty meager breakfast. The guy seems to think for a minute, scratching his head, taking an unusually long time to think of an answer to a question that usually takes like seconds to answer. It's rare to be anywhere in West Virginia where there isn't a cracker barrel within a few miles so why he didn't just point me in the direction of one of those was beyond me. When I pressed him, he told me he knew of an old family

run place that did the best chicken fried steak in the entire county, maybe even the state. Suddenly, all was forgiven. I might be a northerner but I'll be darned if I turn down a good chicken fried steak. All that was taking so long was for him to try and remember the best way there that wouldn't take me down some run down old dirt road, one which might get my truck stuck on it which really would have left me screwed. So after a minute, he gives me some pretty detailed directions towards an old strip mall. He told me it was mostly abandoned but that that restaurant was still there along with a few other small businesses and not to pay any mind if the place seemed quiet during lunch as it did the majority of its business in the early to late evening. I was

happy enough, thanked the guy then set off following the directions he'd given me. It took me a little while to find the old strip mall the guy was talking about. It was honestly a little frustrating to drive past a couple of chain restaurants and what not given that I was so hungry. But man, if I wasn't craving some of that country style chicken fried steak and if it was a family run place then all the better. That chain restaurant stuff just doesn't cut it compared to a real homestyle cooking. But eventually I actually find this run down old strip mall the guy seemed to be talking about and it was little wonder the place was in such a state of disrepair. It was way off any highway, there was absolutely no signage for it, literally

nothing to let anyone know it was there. But even worse, I saw zero indication that there was any kind of restaurant open in any of the units. I wasn't about to give up so easily though, as I did see one place that had a big old sign over it saying something like Mama J's Country Kitchen or some variation on that, so my hopes were restored. That's when I see a guy open up the door of the place, stepping out into the afternoon heat and staring over at my truck. I gave him a wave from the driver's side, overjoyed that I was finally about to get some decent food on what had been a long, lonely drive from Connecticut. I figured he hadn't seen me do it, that the sun was obscuring his vision or something just because he continued to stare back at me. Anyway, I get out of my truck, lock the doors and start walking over to the restaurant.

I call out to the guy like halfway across the parking lot asking if they were indeed open for business. Again, the guy doesn't react, he just keeps staring at me in a way that I now notice is distinctly unwelcoming. Something in my gut just told me to stop walking. I had this creeping feeling all over my body like something was telling me that something was horribly wrong with this whole setup. And no sooner had I started feeling distinctly vulnerable than the guy reached behind his back, pulls something out of his back pocket and puts it on his head. I thought it was like a woolly hat at first but then he pulls it down, it's like a balaclava. Then I notice something else in his hand, a small revolver. I turn and

start running back towards the truck and as I do, I see a few other guys emerging from the derelict units each running towards my truck to try and cut me off. Each had some kind of weapon in their hand, be it a knife or an iron bar and seeing those just made me run even faster. Thank god I'd caught in that gut feeling when I did otherwise they'd have definitely made it to my truck before I did. I threw the door open, jumped inside and locked the cab behind me, trembling as I rummaged in my pocket for the keys.

The bandits surrounded the cab of my truck, hitting the chassis with their weapons, demanding I get out. Then the guy with the gun aimed that thing right at my face through the windshield, screaming for me to get out of the truck. I had no choice but to do what I did. I gunned the engine and plowed the whole bunch of them, knocking down those that didn't jump out of the way in time. I leaned down in my seat as I gripped the wheel out of pure instinct really and again. I thank god that I did, because when I hit the guy with the gun, he let loose a single shot that shattered the windshield and struck the seat just above my head. I circled around the parking lot expecting

the next shot to come at any moment, but only the bandits that had gotten out of the way of my initial truck charge were chasing me. Two or three were just lying on the concrete, rolling around in pain whilst holding onto their limbs. I think that's about the only thing that saved me, having the presence of mind to just ram them instead of trying to reverse out of there. If that had been my choice, I might not be around to tell you all this. I got out of that parking lot, speeding off blindly in the first direction I could, until I found somewhere to safely park up and call the cops. The sheriff's deputy I spoke to told me to swing on by the department when I was next able to so I could give a statement and I did so, but not until I actually managed to get myself some lunch as not even the terror of almost getting hijacked could dull my

appetite. I guess that makes me sound pretty fat or whatever, but you guys need to appreciate just how hungry I was. Done at the department, however, I learned that I was not the first truck driver to have run into these bandits, how I'd been just unlucky enough to ask directions from one of their kinfolk who had directed me to the run-down strip mall just before calling his buddies to let them know I'd be there. At least, that's the only conclusion we came to once I described the guy I'd asked directions from. The deputy just seemed to nod knowingly when I related this guy's physical description. I guess I'm just warning you guys to be very, very careful when you're out on the roads.

And although it seems like some tired old cautionary tale from your Facebook posting aunt, be careful when you're talking to strangers. There's no way of knowing just who they really are. I drive trucks for a living here in England. It was one of the only jobs I could pretty much just walk into after being medically discharged from the army. The Royal Logistics Corps to be specific, with some pretty intense back problems. I'd tried physiotherapy, yoga, acupuncture, all sorts of things, but sitting in the cab of a military truck for such long periods had really done a number on my spine. It was horrible that I was basically forced into the same line of work only in the

civilian world, and I had no choice but to take a daily regimen of pretty strong pain medications just to make it through the days and nights of long distance truck driving. But that's neither here nor there I suppose. I'd only been working for the company I'm at presently for about 6 or 7 months when I was driving down this lonely stretch of road just outside of Rotherham in South Yorkshire. There I see this young woman at the side of the road, bags in hand with her thumb out like she was looking to hitchhike. It's not like I don't see a few good hitchhikers on my routes, there's much more common than you might expect, especially during the summer months when people can afford to be standing at the side of the road, sometimes for hours at a time, waiting for lifts. I never normally stop for them. I've seen enough horror movies to know that

you're inviting trouble on yourself if you just let a total stranger into your truck for long distances. But there was something about this girl that actually had me slowing down and stopping at the roadside for her. I don't know if it was how young she was or how desperate she looked, and she definitely didn't look like the kind of scruffy hippie types or dodgy cardboard sign holders that I normally see standing out there. So there I was, actually opening up my cab door and helping her climb inside. I asked her where she was looking to go, only to have her reply something like, anywhere, just drive. This bothered me a bit, I'll be honest,

as I didn't really like the idea of having someone just sat in the passenger seat for the foreseeable future. I'm not exactly the most sociable person and awkward silences are annoying for me at the best of times, let alone when it's some girl that's half my age. God knows what people would think if they saw that I was stopping for random girls, probably that I was some sort of perv or whatever. So I asked her again, only rephrasing the question so that I make it clear that I can't just have her sitting in my truck for the foreseeable future as I'd be looking for somewhere to stay overnight at some point. I know it sounds a bit mean and I didn't want

to have to properly look after this girl, paying for her food, it sounds a bit mean and I didn't want to have to properly look after this girl, paying for her food, paying for a hotel room and all that. I'd never picked up a hitchhiker before but they're usually set on a certain place that you can just drop them off there, right? And after a bit of awkward silence and I made it clear that I loathe those, I asked her why she was on the road. She didn't give too much away in the way of specifics, just that she was having trouble at home and needed to get away. I asked if it was a fight with her parents or a boyfriend or something and that maybe she shouldn't just run away from her problems, but go back and fix whatever it was, you know, like address the issue or whatever instead of just straight up avoiding

it. But she immediately took issue with the issue or whatever instead of just straight up avoiding it. But she immediately took issue with the fact that I'd asked after a potential boyfriend, saying that she'd get out immediately if I had any funny ideas about where this was going. That made the whole thing feel even more awkward, and I reassured her that I did in fact have a long-term girlfriend at home, and that I certainly wasn't in the habit of picking up young girls from the side of the road. I'm basically explaining that I'm not a perv when I see a police car pass us on the road. Nothing unusual so it barely registers other than for me to make sure I'm not over the speed limit or anything, you know, the usual I just saw police car anxieties.

But a moment later I hear sirens behind me, looking into the rear view to see what appeared to be the very same car, having turned around to follow me with a view to pulling me over. I groan, saying something about hoping my brake lights aren't out, something along those lines, and slowly begin to pull my truck over to the side of the road. This is right when the girl in the passenger seat freaks out and starts pleading with me not to pull over. I mean, not just pleading, she's begging. Obviously getting really panicked at the idea of the police seeing her. Now this made me feel really bloody nervous. What had she done that made her nervous around the police and how would that reflect on me if I was caught with her in the cab of my truck? These questions are whirling around my head as I tell her to calm down and that I had absolutely no other choice than to pull over, that I was hardly about to get into a

high speed police pursuit on account of a complete stranger. She bursts into tears at that point, just sinking her head into her hands and weeping. But she doesn't try to run away, nothing like that, so that sort of reassured. But she doesn't try to run away, nothing like that, so that sort of reassured me that she hadn't committed some sort of violent crime, or at least she wasn't some hardened criminal on the run from the law. I watch the policeman that had pulled me over get out of his car and walk up to the side of the truck, which also happened to be the side that the girl is sat on. As soon as he looks through the window, I hear him say something like, get out of the truck Natalie. This obviously had taken me aback. Who is this girl that the

police were on bloody first name terms with her? She's crying and sobbing but looks up and screams no through the glass. The policeman motions for me to wind down my window and I actually hesitate for a moment. The girl, this Natalie to wind down my window and I actually hesitate for a moment. The girl, this Natalie, is obviously terrified of being arrested or whatever was about to happen. The policeman then says something over his radio, something I didn't catch because of the glass in the way so in order to better hear what he's saying I start winding down the window. It was too late to hear what he said on the radio but I did hear what he said next. Your parents called again Natalie. They're tired of you running away like this and quite frankly I'm tired of having to come and fetch you every time this happens. I suppose I knew all I needed

to from what he just said then but I looked on in a kind of grim fascination as what unfolded next. They're not my parents. Why won't any of you understand that? The girl started to scream. Every time you drag me back there, they do worse and worse things to me and call it punishment. They say it's for my own good, but it's not. It's not at all. She then turns to me, pulling her sleeve and showing me all kinds of burns and scars up her arm, ones that were so pronounced and gross that I recoiled in disgust and horror. Please, I'm begging you don't let them take me back. I'll do anything. Just please don't let them take me again. What was I supposed to do?

Drive off with this girl and get chased by the police? She could have been mentally ill or something, severely delusional with a self-harm problem and I'm just going to drive her off into the middle of nowhere so she can run away from her care home or something? Besides, I was terrified, absolutely terrified. Police backup arrived and when there was enough of them, they dragged the girl out of the truck, kicking and screaming before they threw her in the back of a police car and drove away. I tried to ask one of the police what had just happened and I expected to get an answer along the lines of one of my previous suspicions, but they actually just waved me away, told me it was none of my business and that I shouldn't have been picking up young women

from the side of the road anyway. I still don't know what happened to that girl, and I hope she's gotten the treatment she needs, but part of me wonders if I'd help prolong some horrible cycle of abuse, one in which the actual police were complicit. As part of his import-export business, an old friend of my dad's had a place out on the island nation of Sri Lanka. Located in the Indian Ocean southwest of the Bay of Bengal, Sri Lanka is remarkably similar to its neighbor India in many ways, but is also considerably more chill, making it a great holiday destination. More relax and enjoy instead of the mind-expanding experience of India with all of its temples, festivals, and bustling market districts. So back in 2012, my dad's mate told me his house over there would be empty for a few months during the winter. He usually rents it out to tourists, but there was a little gap in the bookings and suggested that for a considerable discount, I could rent that place out and get some long overdue traveling done.

Obviously, I jumped at the opportunity and blew all the meager savings I had on plane tickets and the rent. I knew I was in for the adventure of a lifetime but I had no idea how truly memorable it would turn out to be for me, and not for the right reasons either. So a little bit of background, the place I ended up staying in, a little town called Hikaduwa, is a huge tourist destination. It's full of backpackers from all over the western world, like you can't swing a cat in Hikka without hitting some white dude with dreadlocks who's playing Bob Marley from a bluetooth speaker. As a result, I found myself eschewing all the hippie haunts and the Starbucks ripoff that

dotted Hikaduwa's main drag, in favor of the little rotty shops and curry houses that only ever seemed to cater to the local Sri Lankan. That's how I met Lassie. One of the things I noticed about the local food was how mild it was. I actually commented on this to a waiter in one of the swankier tourist places I went to on my first night there, and he laughed before saying something along the lines of this is just for the tourists. Real Sri Lankan food is much spicier. So when I ended up in this little curry place where I was the only white guy to be seen I made the mistake of asking for what they call over there home style. When it arrived at my table I realized that everyone in

the entire place was staring at me with grins on their faces, just waiting for me to try the food. Not wanting to back down from a challenge, I tucked in early, spooning a few mouthfuls of rice and curry sauce into my face before all of a sudden, the heat kicked in. It was like nothing I'd ever felt in my entire life, like a bomb had gone off in my mouth. I was coughing, spluttering, reaching for my glass bottle of coke, but the sugary liquid only seemed to wash the taste around my mouth, making it worse. I'm not joking when I say my actual eyebrows were sweating by the time this long-haired Sri Lankan guy, one about the same age as me, starts patting me on the back and asking if I'm okay. I give him a wordless nod just trying not to embarrass myself any further, listening to the gentle teetering of the locals around me who were clearly very amused by the woeful display of western weakness. The guy then says something in Sinhala at the guy manning the

counter who swiftly brings over a glass of what looked like milk but turned out to have the consistency of yogurt. This drink has my name, the guy said in almost perfect English as he sat down opposite me. It's called Lassi, try it. I took a drink of it and instantly felt the pain in my mouth start to ebb away. Apparently something about dairy counteracts the spiciness of things and in a state of absolute relief I thanked him profusely. That's how me and Lassie started hanging out. He introduced me to his friends who played pool together most nights, showed me the surf school they ran together and taught me a few words in Sinhala, the local language. Then one day, Lassie tells me that there's this beach party going on over the weekend

and says since he knows the owners of the bar it's taking place at that he could get me in for free instead of having to pay the ludicrous ticket prices that were given to tourists. It did sound like a good laugh, so I agreed to go. So, cut to a few nights later, when I head down to the pool hall where Lassie and his mates were hanging out. We sink a few cheap lion beers, I mean insanely cheap, 75 cents for a pint bottle cheap, play a few games of pool, then head down to the beach bar. The police was jumping. Tourists and backpackers from all over Hickaduo had just descended on the place for the night and the air thumped with the bass that came

from the set of huge speakers near a DJ booth. Because he was cousins or friends with the owner, Lassie and his mates got us in for free just as he promised. But aside from that, the disparity between the locals and the tourists mounted considerably. Anyone with a white face was allowed past the line to pay for tickets, which amounted to a month's wages to a Sri Lankan person, so not many of the locals could get in. The only Sri Lankans that could afford to pay for tickets were those rich kids that had come

down from the capital, Colombo. These guys were instantly recognizable compared to Lassie and his mates. They wore surf shorts and old hand-me-down t-shirts while the rich kids from Colombo had expensive shirts and jewelry on. Idiots, Lassie said at one point, gesturing to a group of Colombo kids throwing money around near the bar. They looked down on us like we're rats. I would not have invited you if I had known they were going to be here. Why not? They're just some dumb rich kids. We got those two in the UK. I told him. Wait and see, Lassie replied, then said something that started off a kind of tension that grew and grew as the night went on.

There will be trouble. So I feel like I should make a disclaimer at this point. In my experience, every Sri Lankan I had met aside from these rich idiots from Colombo were perfectly nice and polite. None of the girls I spoke to while I was there complained of being harassed by Sri Lankans or spoke to in any way other than gentlemanly, but these Colombo kids were different, and the explanation of their behavior is something I'm pretty much quoting from Lassie. Despite being Buddhist, Sri Lanka is still quite a conservative society, like you never saw any young Sri Lankan girls anywhere other than the markets when they were doing their shopping.

They were never at any of the bars at night except for when they were working and they didn't hang around the beaches like their male counterparts were allowed to. Sri Lankan girls are chaste but the view among certain sections of Sri Lankan was the western girls were not. Lassie and his friends knew better than to go creeping on white girls on the beaches wearing their little bikinis, but the same could not be said for the rich kids from Colombo. They weren't just overly flirtatious with the western girls, they were downright pervy with them. At one point I see this drunk, jewelry dripping idiot just straight up pinch this western girl's bottom. It was seriously gross. He didn't just pinch it, as the expression goes, he actually groped her. She gave the guy a dirty look and

the guy just laughed. I'm kind of ashamed to say it now, but I didn't say anything to Lassie or his mates. The mood was getting pretty tense by that point and I didn't want anything to kick off. But it seems by that time, that ship had sailed. We're just sitting around a table drinking at one point when one of Lassie's mates, this guy Dinesh, stands up and starts shouting something in Sinhala over the Columbo kids. He'd just witnessed one of them groping a western girl again and had absolutely lost his cool at the sight of it. Yo, they give us a bad name, he said to me at one point, turning back to the Columbo kids and shouting something in his language at them.

They made some insulting gesture back to him and brushed off his reproach, and after that, the situation just got worse and worse. Eventually, some western girl actually starts shouting in the face of one of the Columbo kids. There had been another incident, only this time she hadn't taken it lying down. I think the girl was German or Norwegian or something as she was proper screaming in this lad's face but I couldn't quite make out what she was saying. A little crowd gathers to watch the German girl shove the rich Columbo kid in the chest which would normally go without a response back in the west, but the whole crowd gasps when the rich Columbo kid in the chest which would normally go without a response back in the

west but the whole crowd gasped when the rich kid just straight up slaps the girl. I turned to Lassie and his mates to be like, what is going on, did you just see that? But they're already sprinting over to the rich kids. I run after them to try and stop what was about to unfold but it was way too late. The biggest bar fight I'd ever seen was about to unfold but it was way too late. The biggest bar fight I'd ever seen was about to kick off. It was like something out of the film. I mean it went from 0 to 100 in a few seconds. The good vibes over the sandy dance floor went from chill to tense and straight up violent in just a few moments as the Columbo kids and the Lassie group just all started fighting each other.

Not a single Taurus tried to do anything about it, which I understand, no one wants to get thrown into a foreign jail. Only there was one big problem from my perspective. Lassie and his mates were only about 4 or 5 in number whereas there was at least 12 to 15 of these Columbo kids and they seriously outnumber the lads I'd gotten friendly with. I had two choices, not get involved, watch them get the life kicked out of them and have to live with being a complete coward for the rest of my time there, or get involved, get my butt kicked and potentially face getting arrested and thrown into a Sri Lankan prison for assault. I chose the latter and seriously suffered for it. You see, I'm not much of a fighter,

never have been, so not only did I take a few serious punches during the brawl, but I wasn't prepared for the level these guys were willing to take it. Not only were these lads hurling beer bottles at each other, but there was this big pile of wooden sticks that were fueling this big bonfire on the beach. They started grabbing those and just swinging them at each other. I remember rushing in to grab one of the sticks from one of the Columbo kids then taking a whack on the head from what I can only assume was another. It was like a cartoon. My head was literally spinning from the impact,

and I staggered away for a few paces, like literally seeing stars, having to shake off the impact before I could turn around and get involved again. Only by the time I do, Lossie was just laying there on the sand with the other Hicca guys just trying to fight off like three guys each, putting up a good fight but eventually being overcome. That's when I see one of the Columbo kids with a bottle in his hand. He hands over Lassie and just brings the empty bottle down on his face as hard as he could. Jesus, the sound of that thing shattering on his forehead, I can still hear it crystal clear to this day.

They're not done there either. They start smashing him in the head with the wooden sticks while he already has this broken glass all over his face and head. I remember the sick feeling I felt at the time, thinking they're actually gonna try and kill him. Not like the fights in the UK, which are pretty posturing, these guys were legit trying to finish Lassie off as he lay there in the sand, covered in glass. I didn't know what else to do. I just kind of put myself in between their sticks and Lassie's head, letting the blows rain down on my arms, which I was using to cover my head. It was probably the dumbest thing I'd ever done. I know I could have come off so

much worse and it was honestly the most incredible stroke of luck that right as I'm thinking these dudes are going to beat me to death, the Sri Lankan police turned up and had the Colombo kids running away. The aftermath was just absolutely horrific, like something out of a war movie or something. There was broken glass everywhere, blood soaking into the sand. The music from the DJ was off at that point so the whole thing was soundtracked by the sobbing of the girls who'd witnessed such an extreme display of physical violence. I could barely keep a straight thought in my head. The adrenaline was still coursing through me. The only thing I could think of was the word ambulance,

which I repeated over and over to the Sri Lankan policemen that viewed the scene with a disturbing kind of apathy. It was like they saw this kind of thing all the time, or at least so many times that it didn't move them in any way. No ambulance, Tuk Tuk, one of them said, meaning that we'd have to carry the wounded to one of the waiting rickshaw taxis that floated around the bars every night, waiting to ferry drunken tourists back to their hostels. I started trying to wake Lassie up to at least get him onto his feet, but even as he roused back into consciousness, he couldn't move. I tried to lift him up, tried enlisting the help of others when I failed to do so but

for some reason they were huddled around another of Lassie's friends. I was furious. Lassie might be blind from the impact of that glass bottle yet they were crowded around another for some reason. Only when they lifted him up and ran across the sand with his body hoisted up did I realize that he was hurt far, far worse. The mob that held him aloft left a trail of blood in their wake. I've never seen blood trails like that before and I never want to again. Eventually they came back for Lassie and we trudged across the sand with him held up in our arms. Jesus Christ, the sand made it so much harder to carry him. It would have been hard enough on the road, but the lack of resistance made my thighs burn by the time we got outside

the bar and to a waiting tuk-tuk. It took until we were in the streetlights of the road outside the bar to see how bad the damage was really done. There were shards of glass wedged all up and down the right side of his face, the shards that glittered in the bright white roadside lights. I had no idea if any had gotten into his eye which was swollen shut from the impact of the wooden sticks. I had no idea if the impact of the sticks had caused a skull fracture or a brain bleed or any other number of things that might mean he wouldn't make it through the night. I tried to go to the hospital with him, but the other Sri Lankans pushed me away from the tuk-tuk,

so there was room for those that knew him better. I didn't even speak enough Sinhala to be able to properly ask where any of the wounded were headed. I was a lost, frightened boy in a place I didn't belong, and I'd never felt so alone in my whole life. In the end, it turns out that Lassie got lucky. None of the glass had made its way into his eye and he had somehow avoided any kind of skull fracture from the impact of the huge wooden sticks. The doctors were able to remove some of the larger glass chunks from his face, but he would be left permanently scarred. One of his friends however, the guy called Dinesh was not so lucky. He had been stabbed in the throat with a piece of broken bottle and lost so much blood that it took him three days to wake up in the hospital.

The events of that night consumed the last few days of my trip in Sri Lanka, discussing how it went down, talking about wounds and recovery times. I felt guilty for having gotten off so slightly and I thought my new Sri Lankan friends might resent me for having escaped worse injuries. But the friendship wasn't soured, quite the opposite in fact. It was only strengthened by what happened that night. Me and Lassie still keep in touch. He ended up marrying a Swedish girl and moving over to Sweden with her and they have a little girl together now. Occasionally we reminisce about that night and he thanks me for saving him but I don't think I did anything of the sort. I just regret not doing more to defend him.

Violence is a strange thing. Despite its capacity to destroy, it forms bonds between people that can never be broken. But still, I hope I never have to go through anything similar to what happened that night ever again, because next time, I might not be so lucky. On the 23rd of June of the year 2000, at around 1 o'clock in the morning, a guest at Childers Palace Backpackers Hostel in Queensland, Australia found themselves stirring from their sleep. Bleary-eyed and confused, they were initially annoyed that they could hear some kind of banging sound coming from the hall outside, and wondered just who could be inconsiderate enough to make so much noise in the middle of

the night. But as they sat up in bed, they detected the scent of something distinct in the air around them, what might have been comforting if they had known that there were log fireplaces present in the hostel. Only there weren't, and the smell of burning wood was accompanied by thick black smoke trickling into the room from the crack underneath the doorframe. As the guest threw himself out of bed and shook awake his girlfriend who was sleeping in the bottom bunk, the realization only really hit him as the words passed his lips, get up, get up, the hostel's on fire. But as the pair attempted to escape the building, crawling on their hands and knees to avoid inhaling the deadly black smoke,

they pounded on the doors of their neighbors in an attempt to save as many lives as they could. There were no fire alarms blaring to warn the guests that anything was wrong. Guests were only roused from their sleep by the warnings of others, and for some of them, those warnings came far too late. It was later reported that the hostel's owner had actually installed fire alarms in the building, but they had all been deactivated in the weeks prior to the fire due to the system's malfunctioning, which had caused numerous false alarms. To compensate, the hostel's owners had placed fire notes on the walls of the building,

which showed the best escape route, and it was these that allowed the surviving guests to navigate their way out of the burning building. But the Palace Backpackers' hostel was a hundred-year-old, two-story timber building and the fire spread through the old wooden structure with terrifying speed. The guest and his girlfriend fought their way out onto a first-floor balcony and luckily it was not too high of a jump, so they leapt to safety on the ground below, tucking and rolling as they landed to ensure that they were not injured in the fall. They found their feet and looked back onto the chaotic scene behind them.

Those that couldn't fight their way down to the ground floor exits were forced to leap from balconies and windows onto the roofs of neighboring buildings. Some were too weak to make the jumps and landed in heaps of broken bones. The screams of pain only added to the frenzy of flame and smoke. Around 70 backpackers managed to escape the hostel that night, with only 10 of them suffering minor burns. The final escapees only managed to do so by the swift arrival of the local fire department who raised ladders to the top floors in order for those trapped by the flames to climb down.

However, 15 backpackers from all over the world were not so lucky. Immediately after the fire, residents of the local town of Childers donated food, blankets, and backpacks to the survivors. A picnic bench in front of the building became something of a shrine to those lost in the fire, complete with flowers, heartfelt letters from those that survived, and fruit from the local farms. Twenty of the survivors returned a few days later to hold an impromptu memorial service with a local Catholic priest at the shrine. The service was broadcast all over the world and made a huge impact in the news media, so much so that Princess Anne of the British Royal Family

visited Childers on the 2nd of July, just a week after the blaze, to offer emotional support for the surviving backpackers and others involved in the disaster. The surviving backpackers were taken to a nearby cultural center that had the facilities to accommodate them, where they were subsequently questioned by local firefighters as to how the blaze could have started. Many of the survivors told them that they had simply woken up in the middle of the chaos and had no idea how the fire could have started. There were no exposed flames,

no candles or fireplaces in the entire hostel, but one survivor came forward with information regarding a strange figure who had been hanging around outside in the wee small hours of the morning shortly before the flames ripped through the building. The guest told firefighters how he had woken up just after midnight to use the bathroom when they had seen somebody standing outside by a burning trash can. After notice that they were being watched, the figure extinguished the fire and the guest went back to bed, only to be awakened again about an hour later to banging, shouting, and black smoke. The investigation quickly shifted from focusing on an accidental fire to one of deliberate arson, and guests were then questioned by the police

regarding any unusual characters that had been hanging around the hostel. Many then mentioned an aggressive local fruit picker by the name of Robert Long, who had been involved in a couple of run-ins with his fellow guests and was said to have a general disdain for backpackers and tourists. Investigators also discovered that 38-year-old Long had recently been evicted from the hostel after falling behind on the rent and had vowed some form of revenge against the owners although it is assumed that it was all just blustering and that he didn't have it in him to actually seek retribution Police then publicly announced that they wished to question Robert Long regarding with the involvement of the fire and asked the general public to come forward if they happened to know of his whereabouts.

Five days later, an anonymous caller quickly tipped off local authorities that Long was camped out in some bushland less than 20 miles from the town where the blaze took place. Police then drove out to the area, searching with a police dog until they found the suspected arsonist campsite. They approached the man, calmly asking if they could ask him a few questions surrounding the nature of the fire as well as the threats he'd made against the hostel in the days prior. Long denied that he was there on the day of the fire, insisting that he had left the hostel on good terms and the owners were trying to make some kind of scapegoat out of him. But this contradicted the stories of many of the survivors, and police then told Long he was going to be arrested on suspicion of arson.

After hearing this, Long took out a knife and threatened the lives of the arresting officers. The police dog that accompanied them was then set on the suspect, but Long slashed the dog so badly that the dog retreated from him and collapsed into the dirt. The officers then followed up the dog attack, trying to subdue the knife-wielding arson suspect before he could manage to escape. One of the officers was stabbed in the chin during the arrest and was extremely lucky that Long didn't find their jugular vein. It was then that the other officer took out their sidearm, took aim, and put a bullet into Long's shoulder to send him crashing to the ground, disarming him of the knife in the process. He then put handcuffs on the wounded suspect and dragged him to the waiting police car so he could be taken into custody. All the while his colleague tried to stop the bleeding from their own wound while comforting the injured police dog.

Just less than two years later, in March of 2002, Robert Long was found guilty of two charges of murder and arson, and then sentenced to life in prison by a jury of his peers. The trial judge said Long should serve a minimum of 20 years in jail for his callous and cruel crime. Although 15 individuals died in the fire, Long had only been charged with two deaths in order to expedite the proceedings to allow for other charges to be brought in the event of an acquittal. Shockingly enough, and in the face of overwhelming evidence, Long actually insisted on his innocence and quickly lodged an appeal which was thankfully swiftly denied. However, in June of this year,

Long became eligible for parole, although there has been no news regarding any parole hearings or any subsequent release date being confirmed. As a tribute to those who lost their lives in such a senseless act of premeditated violence, Sydney artist Jezonia Palladis was commissioned to paint portraits of those who died in the fire. Jezonia said it was the most technically challenging and emotionally charged portrait I've ever undertaken. Perhaps the artist's greatest challenge was to do the victim's appearance justice, given that all she had were photos of them provided by their families. It was a painstaking process, but Jezonia managed to arrange them in realistic poses while maintaining the precise images from the photos. The background was researched by her to be typical of the Childers area fields where they had worked picking crops.

It was a fitting tribute to the poor, unfortunate souls that ended up trapped in the Childers Palace Backpackers' Hostel on the night it burned down. A horrifying, avoidable tragedy perpetrated by a callous, evil man, who took the lives of fifteen innocents in a selfish, childish fit of rage. I was born and raised here in the UK, but my parents are from Libya. They left in the 1970s, so way before any of the current strife, but every so often we go over to visit extended family who live in the capital city of Tripoli. Since the fall of Gaddafi and the conflicts between rival militias, they have pretty much destroyed the country. Our visits obviously dropped off to almost nothing, but last year, there was a big family wedding being held in the city and naturally we got an invite. I was really unsure about going at first, like the fighting has died down an awful lot in the past couple of years, but the place is still basically a war zone. But to my surprise,

my parents announced that they were fully committed to going. I could stay at home, miss the wedding, and worry about the safety and well-being of my parents, or I could join them and at least be able to keep an eye on them, so I chose the latter. Tripoli is an incredible city. There are Roman ruins, all kinds of Italian-style architecture from during the time when Libya was part of the Italian Empire, and the food is absolutely incredible. But the signs of the recent conflict were everywhere. There were bullet holes and shell craters all over the city that still hadn't been repaired yet. Large memorials to people that had died during attacks in years gone by.

It was haunting, but for the time being, the city seemed safe. So as weird as it sounds, we just sort of forget about the whole thing. As soon as we were reunited with family and I got to see my distant cousins who I hadn't seen in years, all the anxiety and worry about the trip just seemed to sort of fade into the background. The wedding was fantastic. We all had so much fun and after the ceremony we were due to spend a week just hanging around the family and soaking up the atmosphere. Visiting Libya was always a huge part of my youth and I do feel a huge connection with the country so I was just happy that there was enough peace in the country to be able to enjoy

it for the first time in a while. But one night, as we sit down to another huge dinner with our extended family, I start to hear a few pops from outside the window. I remember hoping with all my heart that they were just fireworks, but the way my cousins reacted told me otherwise. Something was happening in Tripoli, something violent and terrible. All the food that was laid out for us was bundled up and taken down into the basement of the house. I hadn't been down there the entire time I'd been staying with them so I didn't see the veritable bunker that they'd set up. There were bottles of water, all kinds of bedding, everything they might need to survive a night or two should anything commence. What followed was the most terrifying night of my entire life. The booms and cracks of bombs and guns going off above us kept us awake all night.

Every minute I just expected a group of armed men to just burst into the basement and drag us out or shoot us. My cousin tried to reassure me that we weren't in much danger of that but the fear in their voices didn't make it any easier to bear. They were actually used to that sort of thing, as much as a person can be, and they were still terrified. Eventually the noises from upstairs died down but we were all too terrified to sleep and after a while, my uncle ventured upstairs to try and get news of what had happened. It turned out that a local militia group who had held the city were under attack from rivals that they had pushed out years before. It was not some minor skirmish and it was likely that

the violence would start again that night. We had to get out of Tripoli. Our family arranged a mini van taxi that would drive us over the border into Tunisia so that we could catch a flight home from the capital Tunis. And that's how we left, a whole week early to avoid the fighting. It was horrible having to leave our family behind in a city that was doomed to descend into violence, and at one point my dad actually offered to fly them back to the UK to seek refugee status, but they refused. They were too proud to leave, and it broke my heart that we had to leave them behind. We've not been back to Libya since, but I kept in touch with my cousins as much as I could to make sure that they were all safe, which thank god they were. I had nightmares about that night for months and I still thank god that we all got out alive. But the fact is that it was just one night for me, but for my cousins, that was their entire life. To be continued... the street to talk to dogs in a weird cartoon voice, asking them how their day was, stroking their little floofs and calling them chonky boys. I get some weird looks from their owners sometimes,

but I don't mind. It's worth it, as it never ever fails to brighten my day. But one thing I've learned is that there's a huge, huge difference in the way we treat animals here in America, probably European countries too, and how they treat animals in the rest of the world. And it's not just people's attitude towards animals that differs either, it's the animals' attitudes towards people too. I've never, ever met a bad dog here in Florida. Like I'm sure they're out there, but I've always been fortunate enough to never have to run into one. But I can't say the same for when I was in Thailand. And this might not seem like a straight up horror story, but it was legit one of the scariest episodes of my entire life. So I was doing some solo traveling around Southeast Asia just after I graduated from

college. It was always a dream of mine to see that area of the world and I was lucky enough to have my mom and dad pay for flights as a graduation present. I didn't even have to save up that much spending money because the US dollar goes a long way in places like that, so I was able to stay for quite a while without worrying too much about finances. Like seriously, you can get a decent bowl of pad thai for like 30 baht in some places which, if I remember right, is just less than a dollar. Anyway, I spent a good deal of time exploring the more metropolitan and tourist places like Bangkok and Chiang Mai so at one point I decided to get off the beaten path and explore a little more of rural Thailand. It was so beautiful and people in the smaller villages might be poor but they are so

very very friendly and welcoming. Plus, if you think the food in the cities is good just try going out to the countryside where you'll find home-cooked meals that have been perfected over generations. That stuff is absolutely mind-blowing. Only this one day in question I'm walking from village to village on this lonesome dirt road when I see a pack of dogs come out from the bushes at the side of the road. Me being me, I am absolutely overjoyed to see this group of like four or five doggos appear out of nowhere like they were a gift from God sent to brighten up what had been a pretty tiring trek at that point. So I basically start squealing like a mad thing, pull out my phone, and start taking pictures of the dogs with a view to getting some selfies with them.

But pretty much as soon as I approach, they start growling. Like this instant hostility came out of them which I was totally not expecting. And not just like low growls telling me to go away. They're baring their teeth at me, barking furiously like I'd never experienced that kind of hostility from a dog in the States before. A little barking at first, sure, but they always calm down when you show them you don't mean any harm. I just start backing away slowly, hands up with flat palms to be like, sorry puppers, I wasn't here to bother you guys anymore. Then, when I've got a fairly safe distance away from them,

I turn my back and start walking away properly. Only, I can still hear them barking and growling a short distance behind me, and when I look over my shoulder, I actually see that the pack of dogs is following me, trailing me on the dirt road and getting closer all the time. That's when I start actually getting scared. First I was just nervous and a little shocked that such good boys and girls could be so aggressive and I was more than willing to just leave them alone, but now it seemed like they weren't quite

willing to return the favor in that respect. Then before I knew it, I heard one of them growling really close behind me. They were testing the limits, seeing how close they could get before I did anything. I turned and shouted at them to leave me alone, clapping my hands and making random noises in the hopes that it might scare them off. It did at first. They backed off a little, but it didn't last long. I tried to keep walking, but two approached from the rear that time and I caught one actually trying to bite at the backs of my exposed legs. I was so scared by that point I was almost in tears

and I started the same routine of shouting and clapping at them to get them to back off but they seemed to just know that I didn't have it in me to just straight up hit them and each minute that went by they got more and more bold. I tried walking off once more but they were on me pretty much as soon as my back was turned. That's when I started running, just sprinting off down that dirt road in the hopes of finding some way to escape them. Then out of nowhere I feel the teeth of one of the dogs rip at the flesh of one of my calves. The pain shot through me like fire and I knew it was bad enough of a bite to make me bleed. There's just this cacophony of barks behind

me when I see this little house at the side of the road and I start screaming for help while running towards it, feeling the dogs nipping at my heels the whole way. I was only a few feet away when this Thai guy comes out of the front yard with a stick in his hand, obviously having heard the barks and yelps as well as my cries for help. He just rushes towards me, skips around and starts wailing on the dogs behind me with a stick, I mean really brutally beating them and shouting at them in Thai. That did the trick. They were yelping and running away with their tails between their legs just a few seconds later and I found myself collapsing in the dirt with relief,

checking the backs of my legs for wounds as I just sobbed. I knew the bite was bad the moment I felt it but it was only when I actually saw how bad I was bleeding that I started to panic. They were wild dogs so they could have all kinds of diseases that were passed on through their saliva and I was seriously panicking about it, begging the Thai guy to take me to a hospital nearby. I don't think he really spoke much English but we didn't need any kind of mutual language to know what it was that I needed. The next thing I know I'm hearing a motorcycle engine starting up and the guy drives out into the road, handing me a spare helmet before helping me clamber onto the back of his bike. I don't know how long the ride

to the hospital really was, but it felt like hours and by the time we arrived there, my leg was so swollen I could hardly put any weight on it at all. Not many of the staff there spoke English, so I was really, really lucky that I had the Thai guy drive me there. I tried to give him some gas money as a thank you but he actually straight up refused it. This might sound super first world of me but that just blew my mind. This guy seemed really really poor but still he wouldn't take any money. I'm assuming just because he knew it was the right thing to do. Luckily I had a rabies vaccination before I went traveling so after the initial treatment I only had to go back to the hospital once more in order

to get the other shot I needed instead of going through the agony of having like four different shots over the course of a month. I mean I heard you even have to get one of them in your stomach with this big needle whether or not that's true, I'm not actually sure, but it's still absolutely terrifying. But the actual effects of contracting rabies make all that seem like child's play. Here, I took this from a website that describes what happens in the first week or so of contracting the rabies virus. Confusion or aggressive behavior, seeing or hearing things, hallucinations, producing lots of saliva or frothing at the mouth, muscle spasms, difficulty swallowing and breathing,

inability to move, paralysis. Once symptoms appear, rabies is almost always fatal. I mean, what kind of evil super virus can turn someone aggressive like that? It's like something out of a zombie movie. And one so powerful that even with being vaccinated beforehand you still need shots after a bite to ensure you don't get the disease. So I hope you all understand why I was so completely terrified of getting such a disease after those dog bites. I know I was vaccinated and thank god that Thai guy drove me to a hospital as quick as he could but all that was in my mind as we were on the way there was the fear of getting such a horrific, brutal and fatal disease. I appreciate this might not be as scary as people who say they saw ghosts at temples or whatever. I understand that must have been absolutely terrifying but getting bit

by that dog was something so tangibly scary that it definitely ranks as the most terrifying thing that happened to me while I was traveling around Southeast Asia. I'm going to take you back to the early 90s for this, just after I did my A-level exams here in the UK. I got the grades I wanted, which was brilliant, but on the advice of my parents I decided to take a gap year and do some traveling before I settled down to study at Manchester University. A few of my mates had made a decision to buy these Europass rail card things that they could catch trains all around Europe on but that seemed a little too tame for me. I had my sights set on somewhere far more exotic, India. I could only afford to go because I worked my butt off at Marks and Spencer's every weekend for almost two years straight, spending very little of that money as I strove to save as much as I could. Being on a 16-hour flight almost drove me mental and

I couldn't wait to land in Dabalim so I could get to relaxing and exploring, but no such luck. Despite being one of India's sleepier states, Goa proved to be just as mental. To 18-year-old me, the nearest city, Vasco de Gama, might as well have been another planet. I was from some quiet little Manchester suburb and then there I was in the old Portuguese colonial capital and it was honestly mind-blowing. After taking some time to adjust to my surroundings, not to mention having to get over a really bad of gastroenteritis, I ended up making my way down to a place called Kerala on India's southernmost coast. It was a pretty wild place, as far from the Indian capital as it was possible to get and it's also the place where my story occurs. So once I had a little bit of Hindi under my belt and could generally

make myself understood, I decided to do some actual exploring. Adventure tourism as you might call it. Really getting away from the old tourist trails to see parts of India that other people generally didn't. That's how I ended up in the middle of nowhere about 20 miles outside of the city of Kalam. I was wandering around the countryside trying to find an ancient temple known as Mundayur Mahadeva Temple. Don't ask me why I was trying to find it, I think I was on some kind of personal spiritual journey, whatever that means, but I was a daft teenager, I know I was, and I figured that spending time in these little places would bring me some kind of spiritual or emotional enlightenment.

So at one point, I got a wee bit lost and under the baking Indian sun I started to get extremely thirsty. I spy this little village across an open set of grasslands so I start wandering across it, completely and utterly ignorant of the kinds of dangers that could be lurking in the long grass. If I'd have known what I'd run into, I swear I'd have just kept walking. Thirst can't kill you nearly as quickly as what came out of the long grass and stared me in the face. Out of absolutely nowhere, coming out of the grass right in the direction I was walking, rises up the biggest snake I'd ever seen in my life. Not just any old snake either. It was a cobra. A king cobra. And I could honestly instantly tell from the

distinctive hood and the black and white markings below its head. It was like seeing an alien or something. To this day, I've never felt fear like that. Seeing something so utterly deadly looking, so different from any kind of animal we have in the UK, it was like a shard of ice just drove its way through my intestines. When something like that happens, and you're not used to seeing cobras or snakes in general. It's like something deep and primal happens to your body. In the initial moments after seeing it, and I know this sounds mental, but it was like all my ancestors were screaming at me, that thing's gonna kill you, and it's gonna kill you fast. The lessons of hundreds of thousands of snake-bitten souls pass through my DNA or something, like I'm trying my

best to describe the intensity of the fear and still think none of this even comes close. The way it hissed too. Jesus Christ, it was like seeing a mythical creature or something. Like I knew these things existed, but seeing one that close up, knowing it was in striking distance. I went from looking for a religious experience that afternoon, and I found one. Only it wasn't God I found in Royal Kerala. It was the devil, and I was staring it in the face. Then, as absolutely crazy as this sounds, the King Cobra just sort of explodes in front of me, like its hood just sort of ripped open and I saw this little spray of fluid before it collapsed back in the grass. I'm still just about peeing my pants when I see these two Indian lads running through the open towards me and one of them has like this pipe in his hand.

I had absolutely no idea what just happened and they started talking to me in Malayalam, the local language which I didn't understand at all. I tried speaking my terrible Hindi but I could barely remember any and even when I managed to get the words out, they just shook their heads to tell me they barely spoke any of that. But they did understand one word, Danyabad, thank you. Like I said, I had no idea what happened with that cobra, only that the Indian lads had something to do with it. That's when I noticed exactly what one of the lads had in their hand. It was a bloody homemade rifle. From what I could tell, it had a pretty basic firing mechanism and was breech-loaded like an old Napoleonic war musket or

something. It looked all sorts of dodgy, like that thing could have actually just blown up in his face at any time, but in the moment, I didn't give a monkey's bottom what he had in his hand. All I knew was that I was pretty sure that he just saved my life with it. They ended up walking me back to their village and giving me some well water, and I stuck around long enough to try one of their mom's rice and dal. I never ended up finding that temple. But I accidentally had one of the best experiences I had whilst traveling around India.

Getting to stay in a tiny village and live life like a rural Indian for a day before I walked back to the train station to catch the train back to Kalam. And like I said, I didn't need to find that temple to have a kind of spiritual experience. Staring death in the eyes for a moment was all I needed to give me a new and bold appreciation for life in general. I'd recommend anyone get out to India if they can, but I'd definitely recommend against walking in tall grass because cobras aren't the only thing lurking in it that ought to be torn down. They dream only awful things. I grew up in a very, very small farm town with a population below 150 or so people. I won't name drop the town for obvious reasons and even if I did you wouldn't find anything to write home about.

There's a caution light and several abandoned buildings, a barely functioning gas station that will grossly overcharge you and that's about it. You go more than half a mile in any direction and you will officially be outside of the city limits, though there are dozens of people who live in these heavily wooded farmlands that call the town home simply because it's the closest thing in shouting distance, though that would be akin to saying that Mars was within shouting distance of Earth. I've had a few experiences in these woods that I can't fully explain. I can describe them and I will, but I cannot afford any scientific explanation for them. I know that tales of wendigos and skinwalkers and other natural forest demon spooks are popular, but wendigos are a

creature that belong to the tribal legends of tribes centered around the Great Lake regions of the northern United States, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and into the eastern coast of Canada. Skinwalkers are exclusively tied to the Navajo religion and Navajo grounds, which are in the deserts of the far west of the United States. Keep that in the back of your mind as you read this. I first began to notice the presence when I was around 12 years old. Playing in the woods was really the only pastime I had available to me outside of playing video games, but video games got old rather quickly. I was an only child and there weren't any other children in the area so exploring the woods

was a good outlet for my imagination. Prior to my first real experience, the spookiest thing in the woods around here would have been a venomous snake. Even then, the snakes we have aren't likely to kill you unless you just seriously neglect the wound or have an allergic reaction. Aside from them, the largest predators we have are coyotes, which are mostly afraid of humans, and the rare cougar that happens to be passing through, which is so infrequent that it isn't even worth worrying over. So the first day in question was a normal summer day. I was out hiking, collecting rocks, building forts out of sticks, you know, the standard things a 12 year old boy does. It was about sundown and I wasn't quite ready to head home yet when I noticed something was off.

During the summer in North Carolina, the woods are anything but quiet. You hear a cacophony of sounds, cicadas, crickets, frogs, birds. There's a whole chorus of wildlife that all wants to be heard. Heck, you may even get the occasional coyote pack howling or a bobcat screaming. The point of this is that the woods are far from quiet, and sudden silence in the woods in these times is not an accident but that's precisely what I noticed. All of the sounds had stopped. I could hear the wind between the mixture of old growth and pines and I could hear the distant babbling of a creek but that was it. This was strange to me but at the time I didn't realize what an ill omen it was in and of itself. I actually remember thinking that the water

sounded peaceful and walking deeper into the woods to listen to it better. As I did though, I began to get this overwhelming sense of foreboding. It wasn't the standard I feel like I'm being watched. No, I didn't feel eyes on me or feel like I was being followed or any of those standard paranoias. This was like, have you ever stayed at a party too late? You know, you got there at 9 and now it's 2am and suddenly you realize that you don't know anyone who is still there. You also didn't see this new guy come in but he's glaring at you and come to think about it. So was that girl in the kitchen.

You've overstayed your welcome and it's probably time to go. That's exactly what it felt like, even if I lacked the metaphor to express it at the time. The air itself felt heavy. Everything in my mind and body was screaming at me that I needed to leave, that this place was not mine anymore. It had been fine in the morning hours, but now, this was the domain of someone or something else and I wasn't welcome. I remember feeling as if the trees were warning me, leave or else. So I did. Initially I walked but by the time the sun had begun its descent and the sky had begun to darken in the twilight, I was jogging. I never broke into a full-on sprint,

I don't know why, but I felt showing too much fear was a bad idea. Eventually I made it back to the road and looked back to the woods. I didn't see anything, but that's when the feeling of being watched set in. I felt that there were eyes just beyond the tree line and out of sight, and that they were staring right back at mine. I went home and pushed the experience out of my mind as best as I could. From then on I made it a point to always be out of the woods by dark or to have a firearm with me if I knew I was staying later. I should note that there were several times after that that I wound up in the woods at dusk but didn't have this feeling return. There weren't any special circumstances that seemed to summon it, just sometimes things were fine. Others? I all but sprinted for civilization. I didn't have any more overt experiences however

until years later. I don't know what the catalyst was but the activity ramped up dramatically in a year's span The first experience like this was in October of 2018 and since then The woods have gone from a home for the occasional unsettling experience To a place for actual danger and terror I went camping with some college friends of mine during the October in question In total there were just three of us and we were mostly roughing it. We had a tent but we chopped our own firewood and all of that jazz. We camped pretty deep in the woods. It was dark by the time we were fully set up and had finished cooking. We ate and then we

proceeded to get very drunk. I don't know how much we actually drank as we were just sipping out of a handle of vodka and passing it around the campfire as we talked about everything from ghost stories to the more tangible fears in our lives such as our dating lives and the prospect of post-graduation plans. This went on well into the night with the stories growing more nonsensical and the laughter growing louder as the bottle grew lighter. By 1.30am or so, it had grown deathly cold. I decided that was a night for me and that I was going to get into my sleeping bag. The other two weren't ready to sleep yet and one of my friends, we'll call him Frank, decided he wanted to smoke a cigarette. Meanwhile, the other friend, we'll call him Tim,

decided that this was a good time for him to go climb a large rock about 70 or so yards away from the tent. Frank begrudgingly goes to supervise him while he finishes off his cigarette. So they're both a good 70, maybe 80 yards away from the tent. I'm now in my sleeping bag and trying to fall asleep, and I can hear them laughing and talking and it's obviously far away. It's right at this time that something heavy slams into the side of the tent, like heavy enough that I'm surprised the tent didn't collapse. I didn't move, I was drunk, but not so drunk as to not realize that whatever was out there didn't stop to borrow a cup of sugar. That sense of dread filled me at once and even though I had my

shotgun with me, I couldn't bring myself to reach for it. I felt staying still was a safer approach. I heard something breathing. It wasn't human breathing though. This was loud and weirdly wet sounding. It wasn't sniffing or anything like that, just deeply breathing. This only went on for a total of fewer than ten seconds and all at once, it was gone. No footsteps, no banging on the tent, no gradual decline in breathing, nothing. It was gone and Frank and Tim had never seen that it was there let alone what it might have been It honestly probably best that they didn't They stayed up a while longer before turning in

I woke up first and stepped out to see if there were any footprints There weren't But there was something more ominous The entire clearing we were camping in now had scattered throughout the grass and early morning frost, circles of bone. Not large bones, no, but crushed up and arranged bones of small creatures like a rabbit or a small bird maybe. I would assume we were in a predator's hunting ground, save for the fact that the bones were neatly arranged in circles, all of the same sizes and with equal spacing. I woke Tim and Frank up. We packed up and left immediately. This last experience is the most recent and the most intense. There was a meteor shower not too long ago and I

returned to the clearing where my friends and I had went camping to observe it as there is very little light pollution at it. It was stellar and I loved every second of it but I wasn't out there long when my dog, I brought him with me, he's good company and he started acting strange. He had pinned his hair back while lying down and was now staring very intently at the tree line. He wasn't barking or growling, he was silent and just watching. It was strange but I assumed that he'd caught wind of a deer or other prey animal and he was on the hunt, though he was far too lazy to actually go chase it. After a moment, a nearby coyote howled. I felt a wave of relief as

my dog's behavior was beginning to make me uneasy. He was just tense because of the coyote and it would pass. There was something wrong though. First, coyotes hunt in packs. It's extremely uncommon for a solo coyote to hunt and howl like this. Second, my dog had begun to whimper now and was shying back to the edge of the truck as though he were afraid. and the coyote was drawing closer it seemed. My brain began connecting a lot of dots. The woods were silent. That feeling had returned. I was in the same spot as the last encounter, and then I registered the sound of branches breaking. Coyotes aren't heavy enough to do that, I thought, and the second I did, as though whatever was out there had waited for me to realize it, the coyote stopped pretending to be one. Or at least it, I don't know, it stopped howling. It then erupted in the most horrible sound I have ever heard. The coyote was laughing. It wasn't a hyena sort of laugh though

It was this garbled, mangled mess of sound That sounded like an animal trying and doing a terrible job To impersonate the cadence of human laughter And it was on this recording track where after every fourth laugh It seemed to loop It was rapidly growing louder over the sound of breaking branches I frantically jumped up, grabbed my dog And fumbled for my truck keys to get out of there. As I tried to get my keys and get my door open, the laugh stopped only for this guttural and deep scream to resound from the forest.

I say deep to emphasize that it wasn't a bobcat or fox. They have a high-pitched sound. This was very low. It had the same pitch as say, a roar, but it was in that same horribly botched nonsense that the laugh was in. Of course, the laughter resumed immediately, but as I got in my truck and turned the lights on, dead silence. In a moment of stupid bravado and curiosity, I turned my truck towards the tree line before I left to shine my headlights and see if I saw anything. Between the trees I saw what seemed to be a man. He was of average height and wearing a white t-shirt and I assume blue jeans, though I couldn't see a face or arms or

anything of that nature, just his silhouette and his clothes. In hindsight, I think he was only a silhouette, maybe. I blinked, and he was gone. And that's my story. I don't know what is in the backwoods of North Carolina. I don't want to know, and it's probably best you don't try to find out. It doesn't seem too welcoming to strangers. I'm a female and turning 19 this year but this story happened when I was 15. I'm also from France. When I was 15 and just got into my junior year I created my first Twitter account that I deleted because of this story. I didn't tell anyone my username, neither my family nor my friends because I didn't have any. My profile picture was an avatar so no pictures of me on the

account and as far as location I said Paris because I lived in the suburbs. I didn't have many followers, 20 or maybe 30 and I didn't follow that many people, so my timeline wasn't really that interesting. One evening in October, someone sent me a quite strange direct message. It was a 200 followers account and the message was like, Hi, my name is Rob. I just turned 17 and wanted to know if you lived in, stating, my hometown. Because I'll soon move in and go to that town's high school and I'm looking for friends. The town he said was obviously the town I lived in. I immediately thought something was wrong because there was nowhere on my profile I said where I actually live but after some time thinking I remembered of a tweet that I made weeks ago about buses and I mentioned the city so I told

myself that he must have looked up for that town and found my tweet. His age wasn't shocking because I'm two years ahead of my classmates. I was bored and since he was polite I answered him. I told him that I was indeed from that town and I go to the high school there. The discussion was natural and we talked a lot that night, mainly about high school, about the food at the cafeteria, about the teachers, that kind of thing. But as it was getting very late, he tried to interpose some personal questions like, do you live far away from the school? In a house or an apartment?

Do you live with both your parents? There's five of you? You're not often home alone, right? I never answered because it was way too shady for me and unfortunately he didn't insist. Unfortunately because if he did, I would have probably blocked him. The next day the same thing. We talked a lot and he was still asking personal questions to know me better so I asked him too and he always answered with what seemed like honesty.

I still didn't answer the questions about my house though because he didn't need to know anything. It lasted two or three weeks, but it was enough for me to develop feelings for him. He was handsome, super kind, and it was everything I needed because I had been bullied for years and even today, I still develop strong feelings but most importantly blind trust in people who are friendly to me. In France, in October, we have a two week long vacation and the day before back to school day, he finally told me he was coming to my high school because he had finally moved in with his mom and asked about a place to meet during the morning break. I was so happy and relieved to be able to meet him and told him to join me in the

hall. But when he understood that there would be people around, he said that he would prefer an isolated place because he was afraid he would not recognize me and didn't want to spend the break looking for me. It was a good excuse for me so I told him to meet me in the third floor bathroom because we weren't allowed to stay there during the breaks and no one would disturb us. In my head, even though it was a little bit creepy, I was still in school so nothing could happen to me. Next day, back to school day, I made myself pretty. I wore my best clothes, I counted down the minutes and finally when break time had arrived, I ran to the bathroom and waited. And when he arrived, it was him. He wasn't a catfish. He looked quite like his profile, but I still noticed that he seemed a little bit older than he had told me. I thought 20 years old instead of 17. We talked a lot,

we got along well, and I was so pleased. And at the end of the break, he had asked me to go to the fast food restaurant with him for lunch. I said no because I didn't have any money and I was so pleased, and at the end of the break, he had asked me to go to the fast food restaurant with him for lunch. I said no because I didn't have any money, and I always refuse for people to pay for me. It's kind of my principle. He seemed disappointed, but offered to walk me home after classes. I explained I have to take the bus, but that he could walk me to the bus stop. He looked disappointed again again but finally accepted. And that's exactly what happened and it was so great that it quickly became some kind of routine. We met in the third floor bathroom during the morning break and he walked me to the bus stop

after classes. A surprising fact is that I never saw him in the hallways nor at the cafeteria but I thought that at the time that the building was huge and there was over 1500 students in here so if our schedules didn't coincide there was no way we could meet each other. This little game lasted until December so almost a month and a half. The 14th of December, a Thursday, I complained about how lonely I was going to be that evening because my dad was abroad for work, my brother was always at his friend's house, my little sis was on a school trip and my mom had to work late that very night. It was very reckless of me but after weeks I thought I could trust him.

That evening he walked me to the bus stop. We both waited. I got in the bus, waved at him and put on my earphones. I had two stops before my house. It was about 5.45pm in December so it was already really dark outside and as I got out of the bus I had a really bad feeling. There was that very uncomfortable sensation in my stomach and I felt like I was being watched. I pressed the pause on my music but kept my earphones in so that people thought that I couldn't hear anything and that's probably what saved my life. I lived in a suburban

neighborhood, very silent, especially at night, so there was no visibility on the big road that the bus dropped me off on. When I heard footsteps behind me, I understood that I was right. There was someone following me and he was not well-intentioned. At least, I understood that I was right. There was someone following me, and he was not well-intentioned. At least, I could hear that he was not accelerating, so he was not trying to catch up to me, but I couldn't guess how long it would last. As quietly as possible, I tried to reach for my keys in my pocket, and when I finally pulled them out, I ran, as fast as I could, the best sprint of my life. I don't know how it worked, but I managed to open and close the door before he could reach me. I then deactivated my alarm,

which by the way confirmed that I was home alone, and took a look through the glass panel on the door. It's not a peephole, it's a whole window, so if someone wanted to see what's happening inside they can. And it was Rob. A few meters away looking at me with a really creepy face. He followed me to my home, probably with a car, and he was clearly not here for a chit chat. I still don't know why I didn't call the police then. I was completely paralyzed. We both stared at each other for a few minutes and when I took back control over my body I ran into the kitchen to get a knife and got back to the door. He was there too, banging against the door. I feared for a second that the glass would break but it didn't. That moment when I was pushing against the door praying for it not to break while he was kicking harder and harder was the longest I've ever experienced. After maybe five minutes he stopped and got

around the house, knocking against every shutter and got back to the door. He looked angry but then my neighbor's car reached my house and Rob ran away, probably thinking it was my mom coming home. On Twitter, Rob sent me a thousand messages before I could block him. He then deleted his account, and I thought I was done with this story, but quickly after some accounts which had been created followed me. Their ads were all a series of numbers in the first letter of his name, and as soon as I blocked one, another one would follow me. I chose to delete my account because I couldn't make it stop and it was too hard to endure because they were sending me dozens of insulting DMs. Later I talked to the people who were supposed to be Rob's classmates because I haven't met him again in days but not a single one even heard about a Rob. This guy was never a student in my

high school and that is why I've never met him apart from our daily meetings and that is probably why he seems so old. I never heard about him anymore and I'm still asking myself what did he want and what could have happened that night. I was in my early 20s and I'm 6 foot flat, 200 pounds and as broad as a brick house and this comes into play later. Now my family, just like anyone else's, has its share of dysfunctional members. This one just seems to have an overwhelming amount. Sadly, my dad is the only one that left that type of life behind and was able to make something of himself from an abusive, toxic environment that made everyone else that way. It also made him the lightning rod for emotional drama. That is what brought this about. My uncles are or were all addicts at some point in their life. Some turned around and some still ride the white horse. One of the uncles on the

White Pony express decided that doing coke and chasing it down with booze isn't the best course for a 45 year old with a kid that never sees him. He tried to reach out to my grandmother to get off the wagon but she couldn't be bothered to talk him down off the edge and shoved him off on my dad. He was looking for a way out and my dad did what he could to help him find one because that is what family does. They talk for months, off and on, so on and so forth. My dad keeps doing what he can. However, he remains cautious because he knows addicts are not the most upfront people.

But months pass and my uncle improves. He goes six months sober, reconnects with his son a little, actually gives sobriety a solid shot, the whole nine yards. November rolls around and it is month seven and my cokehead uncle, or CHU for interest of anonymity, is in town, sober, and wants to thank my dad for his help. He finally shows up around Thanksgiving and he spends the day with the family. He buys dinner, he puts up good conversation, does the song and dance. Sadly, he gives off more red flags instead of putting worries to bed. He goes to the bathroom every

30 minutes, gets caught going into bedrooms, studying each and every room and what's in it, seeing semi-valuable items and tries to look at them while you're distracted. The usual behavior. You may hear this and think, well, maybe he's appreciating the rooms or he's showing appreciation for your family's things or maybe he has a bladder infection and that's why he's in the bathroom leaking like a sieve. All are reasonable assumptions, but for anyone that knows addict behavior, and yes, I've lived with people that have done this and that's not what's happening. The evening ends without incident and even though some behavior was highly questionable nothing is leaving a bad taste in anyone's mouth. CHU says goodbye but not without mentioning he has a job coming up in a few weeks and he wants to stop by and say goodbye before he leaves. Time rolls on and November turns into December and things are as normal as ever.

The year is ending, my dad and uncle talk a couple of times and it is now Christmas Eve 2018. My uncle was supposed to be leaving for a job early the next day and he was supposed to come over but never did. It's no surprise no one heard anything from him as it was par for the course. My dad and brother are packing for the mountains. It's a snowstorm that night and we were going to head up for some Christmas snowboarding. I leave for work after making plans to meet them on the slopes for the following day. I work, deal with the usual dumb customer questions, clock out 14 hours later, grab dinner, and go home. I get back home as the snow begins. The cul-de-sac is quiet,

Christmas lights are blinking, and the wind isn't howling. It's a beautiful night. I get inside, go change out of my work clothes, and can begin my my three day weekend. I make dinner, cop a squat on the couch and flip on the news. Everything is going smooth. A nagging feeling begins to creep its way into my consciousness though. I think it's just the excitement for fresh snow and the small crowd turnout for the day and go back to my meal. The feeling keeps growing and growing as the night goes on and I start feeling that it isn't anticipation for fresh pal. As if on cue, the back door creeps open. Mike Nelson's weather report is muffled by the sound of fresh snow being crushed under winter boots. I watch as my uncle

helps himself inside. No knock at the front door, no rung doorbell, not even an awkward moment of shoving his face on the window to look in. Nothing. He walks in, dressed in the latest breaking and entering quarterly, I mean beanie, duffel bag, everything. I failed to mention the back door leads to the dining living room and if you aren't looking you would miss someone sitting on the couch if you aren't looking, which he wasn't. A solid minute passes and he hasn't noticed me. My brain is racing for something to say, but all that comes out is, what are you doing? He whips his head around and sees me. Fear, shock, and regret explode across his face. If he soiled himself in that moment, it would not have shocked me. He drops the black duffel bag, defeated.

Standing there collecting himself, he looks for the right thing to say. Now I get my dad on the phone because if my uncle was coming over he would have said something which he didn't. My dad picks up and I say, Hey, he just came in through the back door, is he supposed to be here? CHU finally finds his words. Please hang up the phone, I got nowhere to go, please, please. My dad is livid, screaming about the situation. He then tells me to put him on speakerphone. CHU gets ripped the biggest new one I'd ever heard. My dad is his older half-brother and he gets into how dare you and you should be ashamed and every older brother phrase in the book.

The situation keeps getting tense and I tell my uncle he's gotta go. He grabs his stuff and I am bigger than he is and he starts getting ready to leave. We start moving to the exit, trying to keep it non-physical, doing what I can to not make a bad situation worse. My dad is still on the phone, continuing his rant. I get him outside and the rant subsides. My dad apologizes to me and tells me he should have told me he might show up. My brother luckily has called the police so I don't have to both usher and get the police on the phone. My dad makes sure I'm

okay and makes sure I get everything locked up. I lock up all the windows, doors, etc. CHU would have had an easier time getting through the great wall than getting in again. Cops show up, go through the routine. What happened? Where'd he enter? Is anything stolen or broken? Is it alright if he stays inside to wait for his ride to pick him up? Not my dad wasn't pressing charges and just wanted CHU gone, so he agreed to have the cops just hold him until he can get a ride to leave. Have that be the end of it. But the last question threw me off quite a bit. I wanted to be sarcastic but thankfully chose not to. I told the officer that

under no circumstances was I letting CHU back in my house. I seemed to dissatisfy the officer but I didn't care. My uncle breaks in and now that he's out you want me to take him back in and off your hands? That's not going to happen. He left and wished me a good night and eventually CHU got picked up and taken to a hotel. The commotion dies down and I go outside to see what I could find in the snow, try to give him the benefit of the doubt. And that fresh snow was the worst piece of evidence of all. I found tracks, my uncle's tracks obviously. They showed everything and it broke my heart. I could see where he got dropped off

and loaded up his stuff and see how he just beelined for the back door. It was disappointing and I was just glad he was gone. I finally relax but I can't sleep. I finally nod off at around 1am and wake up later than expected and head out to meet up with everyone. I get up there, meet up with my dad and brother and head to the mountain that we were going to for the day. We finally get to talking about the night before and my dad fills in some of the blanks. I'd come to find out that my uncle had called my dad before and was trying to spend the night before leaving the next day. My dad said no. He said that it was going to be up in the mountains and my uncle would have to find somewhere else to go.

My uncle said fine and my dad thought that would be the end of it. How wrong he was. The truth wouldn't be found out until a little later. What then happened after my dad got off the phone with my uncle is this. He told his boss that he has a place that he's staying at and needs to be dropped off there for the night and he can be picked up here the next day. As he had no car and was leaving town the next day. My uncle's boss, not having any knowledge of how the conversation my uncle and dad had, just went along with it. He'd taken my uncle from the job they were on to my dad's house. My uncle expected no one to be

home which is insane. Who does that and thinks it's a good idea? Oh yeah, addicts. Anyway, he betrayed my family's trust and went right back to what he does best. He was not counting on anyone being there at all and the choice to exploit that cost him a brother. I haven't seen or heard from him in two years and don't really want to. I hope that he's doing okay and trying to stay sober. I don't wish him any ill will and hope he can pull himself together. It breaks my heart seeing my family like this, but you can't fix something that doesn't want to be fixed. Before we get into this story, let me start by saying I was a 12-year-old female at this time,

and even though I was very mature for my age and knew many things about the world that other 12 year olds didn't, I was lonely, depressed and craving attention and reassurance from someone outside of my family. Because of this I was naive and didn't want to believe that he was just manipulating me. Now that that is out of the way let's set the scene. I was playing a team based firstperson shooter game called Overwatch and I was playing a support character named Mercy. Her job is to keep everyone alive and healed. So this person, who I'll call Jason from now on, was a sharpshooter on my team and he was doing really well and so was I. After we had won the game, we had played together, he invited me to his group that included him and this other girl. Nothing was weird at first and he was acting normal but as soon as his friend left he started saying

slightly creepy things to me. They would range from you're doing so good hun to you're so sweet and pretty and a couple of other slightly alarming things. This was only after about an hour of us even being in a group together. Let me say right here and now, I never once showed him my face, and I never fully talked to him over the mic, just sort of small hey's or goodnights, and the only reason I did that was because he pressured me into it. Let's get into the even more alarming things that he would say and do. So after a couple of hours of just general chatting about random things and him repeatedly calling me things like baby and honey, he would say stuff like, you just make me so happy, I want to stay with you. And as I recall, he even said he loves me, even though it had been like four hours of me knowing him and all the while I was super uncomfortable but didn't want to say anything so I just told him basically what he wanted to hear but I never told him that I loved him.

We were on discord at this point and on a call. I was typing while he was talking over the mic. The cringy little things that he would say would continue on for a while and it probably took me a solid hour to get him to go to bed because he kept saying that he just wants to be with me and he doesn't want to be alone and that he wishes I were there with him and a bunch of other weird things to say to a stranger. Now you may be all wondering, well it's not like he knew you were 12 and you're right, he didn't. But I didn't know his age at the time either and it's still a bit weird to say to a stranger. Let's move on to the even more questionable things that he has said that would raise red flags for anyone with common sense, but I was naive and was really blinded by the way he made me feel. Which is exactly what predators do. They comfort you and they will make you weaken

your defenses around them so then you don't realize that what they're doing is extremely inappropriate. So basically at this time I lied and told him I was 14 because I don't know I guess I wanted him to continue to talk to me and comfort me and he pulled the age is just a number line and continued with, I could make you happy and I could help you with your depression. Around this time, I was feeling worse and worse every day mentally. He was draining me so much more than I realized. He made me feel numb and even more worthless even though he kept spouting compliments and praises. I think the reason it was draining me is because he would get really upset when I told him I didn't love him back and basically try and guilt trip me into saying that I love him but I never did because I knew that if I ever told him to buzz off or quit being a creep that he would say that

I let him on. Jason tried to convince me to be in a temporary relationship. Sure, it sounded nice on paper. It won't be official, just try to think about if you do love me or not. There are no boundaries and if you decide you don't love me then just end the relationship. After a while of him trying his hardest to get me to agree to try to manipulate me into it, I finally broke and agreed. He immediately asked if he could tell people he had a cute girlfriend. I obviously told him no because A, I was uncomfortable and B, I basically only agreed to get him to shut up. So when he asked why he couldn't, I said it was because we didn't know if it was temporary or not.

Some honorable mentions of things this creep had said to me consist of him asking if he could get in the shower with me when I told him I had to go because I had to take a shower. Me almost getting sent a picture of his privates. Alright, let me explain why it was only almost. He had asked if I wanted to see something long and tasty, and I misread tasty and nasty and my slightly innocent brain went to a snake or an actual nasty hot dog I just replied with no thanks

and to say the least I'm so glad that I said this because I didn't want to see some two inch shriveled mushroom and thankfully he respected at least that one thing. I mentally facepalm myself anytime I think about how badly I misinterpreted that. Another was him saying that he doesn't want me telling the police or my parents that I was talking to him because he didn't want me to say, oh, he did this and arrest him. This, my friends, is a classic line for groomers. They try and tear you away from loved ones so that they're the only bond you have and they try and make it seem like if you did come forward about inappropriate behavior that it would be completely your fault. He also called me sexy multiple times. After I had enough of him saying

that he loves me and trying to guilt trip me, I decided to tell my older sister who decided to talk to him pretending to be me and this is basically how their conversation went. This was from my perspective. Hey, I'm sorry but I don't want to be with you. Is it because of our ages? Yeah. Oh, so now you made up your mind. No, I just don't know if I love you.

Would you kiss me? Sure, but I'm a skeleton. This is my way of saying no without being harsh. Would you kiss me? Sure, but I'm a skeleton. This is my way of saying no without being harsh. Would you hug me? Sure, but I'm quadriplegic. Would you sleep next to me? Sleep, who's that? You love me romantically, not platonically, by the way. Notice how he chose for me. Yeah, major red flag. He was either oblivious when not picking up on the fact that I was saying no or he was desperate to get me back so that he could keep manipulating me. After I firmly told him I don't love him romantically he threatened to end his life which

is also common in manipulators, which grooming is a form of. I tried to calm him down and tell him that I can be there for him but not in the way that he wanted and he kept deflecting and started using guilt tactics. Eventually he told me he thought that he might be gay and I just basically said okay good for you and I'm almost positive he said that just to make me jealous but when it didn't work he reverted back and said that he was wrong about being gay. One thing led to another and my sister and I told my other sister, who I was living with at the time, and she ended up saying that I was actually 12 and he still kept up the age as just a number thing. Eventually she posed as me

and called him. Her and her boyfriend yelled at him for talking to a 12 year old in that way and he blamed it all on me saying he didn't say any of those things. He hung up and deleted all of his messages so we couldn't use them as proof and blocked me on discord and overwatch. Seems suspicious for someone who is seemingly innocent. Thankfully my sister managed to get screenshots of what he was saying and I kept them in my phone for a while. Most of you probably don't realize how much this affects you psychologically but it takes a huge toll on your mental health. I'm pretty sure I started self-harming again after this and I had to have two therapists. One for my regular appointments and one for my self-esteem and how I see myself. They were both great therapists but I still

sometimes blame myself even though it's probably been over two years since it happened. I still think about it and I still sometimes wish he wasn't a creep and that he was just lonely and I know that it's not okay to miss him but I do sometimes because I sometimes miss the love and attention he gave me even though I know it wasn't real. Be safe online and don't trust strangers on the internet. They can always lie about their identity. I lived with my girlfriend of seven years for over three years now in a decent apartment complex in a small town in the Iron Range of northern Minnesota. I've talked about my more severe encounters while living here with some sort of entity in another story, but this is about the less impactful but still really weird and creepy things that happen. My girlfriend A and my two friends G and K have experienced here. There's a lot to say as far as noises go. By far the most common one to hear around the apartment

that can be explained is the cats digging in their litter boxes then scratching on the walls to scent afterwards. Annoying sure, but welcome in the face of trying to sleep and hearing some weird stuff only to realize it's just their annoying habit. Something less welcome and one that not just me and A have experienced, but also our former roommate G and almost yearly guests for a week K have heard is the footsteps. It's very identifiable as sweaty or wet bare feet on the linoleum tiles that cover the kitchen and dining area floor just inside the front door of the apartment. The living room is straight ahead of that door and carpeted and is also where our guest bed and couch is. There's a hallway to the right as you come in that goes off of the dining

area that leads to the bedrooms and bathroom which, aside from the bathroom, are also carpeted So no matter where you are in the apartment, you can hear those footsteps as they reach the tiled floor It's the sound of the slap, then the resistance of the wet, sticky skin as it peels away from the floor, only to be followed by another slap. I make this sound when I'm not wearing socks, as I get sweaty feet even when not wearing my boots or socks easily. I'd know it anywhere. K described hearing these almost every night, expecting to either see me or A come out of our bedroom into the kitchen for a drink of water or something, or at the least a cat being loud enough to be mistaken for a person's footsteps. But he never saw anything and on a couple of occasions heard the footsteps trail onto the carpet, making those soft puff noises heavy

bare footfalls make on cheap puffy carpeting. He definitely is not as afraid of the paranormal as I am, but has also been shown to not be as sensitive to atmospheres as me or A, claiming he felt nothing in both our storage room and a room in G's parents' house that has become sleeping in our admittedly open living room with an unseen visitor prowling about. A and I constantly also hear these footsteps and often times they startle the cats if they're out and about in the kitchen or living room. Our younger male tabby Manx has a very wimpy, almost kitten-like meow, and has a habit of doing that sort of chirp or sort of rawl when he gets surprised or touched. And we'll hear it a lot when we hear footsteps in the kitchen while he's in there. It's generally closely followed by him complaining with a long hi meow as he hates attention unless he's seeking it, and him tearing down the hallway into the bedroom, onto the bed and usually by extension, me and A. Inky, our chunky, solid tuxedo female of about 7 or 8 years, just either hisses or growls at it. If whatever it is comes near her, then the same result of her tearing down the hallway and using us as a landing pad on the bed. Major point being, it's as scary to them as it is to us, apparently,

validating that it's not just us going nuts. Another much less welcome thing that we occasionally hear less often is vocalizations. I don't know whether to call them talking or what, but you can never make out what is being said. Now, we live in an apartment building, so you'd think hearing other voices isn't uncommon. Our neighbors are mostly comprised of older folk and only three or four of the units that have tenants are anywhere near our age, we're both 22 currently. That being said, the most noise

we hear from any of our neighbors is footsteps through the floor, the main front door which is right outside her bedroom nonetheless, and rarely the older lady that we share a wall with watching loud TV. And even then, it's all muffled and obviously coming through the wall. When I talk about vocalizations, I don't just mean the usual muffled voices or grunts that a lot of people describe. I mean spatially reasonable, in the apartment, unexplainable noises that people would make. A couple times both me and A have heard a giggle or snippets of a younger girl saying something indistinguishable. It always sounds

weird, like it's been passed through a weird filter on a voice changer but not enough to sound inhuman, just off in some way. This is rare to hear, I personally hate hearing it since it always throws up a red flag in my head about demonic imitation to put people off guard. A thinks it's genuinely a little girl. More than once I've heard a raspier man clear his throat behind me, not like a growl or clearing phlegm, but like he's doing the ahem spiel to get my attention. He has heard it too, but not near her, only when I'm around, and always seems to come from near me. It makes me extremely uncomfortable, and I always get the feeling I've learned to trust in reference to supernatural occurrences. The heavy, almost electrified feeling in the air.

Feeling watched. The tickling in my gut starting, then turning into nausea or pain in my stomach. It's something I've felt around weird stuff since I've been able to recognize it as a child. My not-by-blood grandfather on my dad's side died of a heart attack over a year ago. He wasn't grandpa and his wife wasn't grandma. They were papa and nana. I have a pillow made out of one of the shirts he regularly wore to remember him by as he was really close to his grandkids, even if we weren't really his. He loved us like we were.

It's on the top of a bookshelf on our living room. He never called me by my full name or nickname, that is just a shortened version of my full name, but I was always Nicky to him and Nana. He had a super distinctive old coot type of wheezy voice, kind of high pitched but not weak at all. He and Nana were the only ones to call me by that nickname and nobody ever said it that way they did, which is why it was unmistakable to me when I heard him call my name from the living room almost five months after he had passed. It wasn't the only time either. Many times I'll be home alone and I'll hear his voice call my name or laugh warmly at something from the living room. A has even on one occasion seen his short stocky frame standing next to the bookshelf smiling. It's really sad to think about but oddly comforting to think that he sticks around to visit

his family every once in a while. Less comforting is when you hear the deadbolt lock on your front door being played with. Me and A are the only ones with keys aside from my grandma who is the cosigner and feeds the cats when we're gone for a day or more for us. No one else has a key aside from the landlord and she barely comes by the apartment other than to pick up rent checks or show an empty apartment to a possible tenant. It would have to be someone or something physically playing with the heavy steel turn handle lock for our large steel cord front door. Whatever is doing that also likes the lever handles on all of our household doors. It's definitely common to hear them being jiggled, unlatched, or just turned a few times. The only time I've witnessed one actually move, the door was forcibly slammed, and in a room with no windows, and the way way it shuts it makes it pretty hard to do that.

The whole air vacuum thing when closing a door in an almost sealed room aside from the air vent for mold avoidance pretty much cushions the door from being thrown shut by someone. Trust me, I've tried. It would have had to have been pushed shut by a force that followed through enough to make it rattle on its frame afterwards. I thought it was Pan climbing onto the top of the door since he is a bit special and doesn't realize that doors move when you put force on them. But him and Inky were laying on the bed while I watched this happen. As for other things that visually happen, almost nothing I haven't already discussed in my other post. Occasionally you'll catch a glimpse of something tall and dark poking its head around a corner in the apartment wherever you are relative to the corner and then duck away as soon as you notice it. Creepy but not really scary and I honestly find it more endearing to think about, like

it's shy, or that it took my short speech of not being overbearing on its presence as if it wanted to stay with us after a certain incident. I was 12 years old, living with my dad one summer. I was in the middle of playing Black Ops Zombies with my cousins and we were on a hot streak. It was around midnight and my dad enters the room, bottle in hand, telling me to get some cigarettes from down the street. I didn't tell him no because he always expects me to do it without question. As he exits the room, I get my shoes on and head out the door. It was a pitch black night with only a few stars in the sky and a single street lamp at the end of my block, opposite my destination. We were living on a reservation at the time so I knew the place

inside and out and would occasionally go on a clear your head walk but never at night. It was always a rule of mine to never go outside after dark since it always felt like I was in an abandoned inner city suburb like the kind you see in metropolitan areas but luckily the lady I get cigarettes from only lives a block away so I had no reason to worry. But that didn't last long because when out walking alone I immediately got that feeling of being watched, almost to the point that you feel someone is right behind you. So I walked faster. I got there less than a minute at my speed and immediately knocked on her door. She was an older woman, probably in her 60s, so it took her a minute to open up. But it wasn't her who answered.

He was a large man, about 6 feet tall, 40 years old, and had a beer gut. It was her son, and I've seen him before, inside the living room watching TV, while the cigarette lady, as we all like to call her, was the only one to open up to make exchanges. Only a dollar for two smokes. I had the dollar so I asked him. He wasn't the nicest guy though because he was more than willing to wake up his mother right after shutting the door in my face. At this point I just wanted to get back to my game and call it a night but I digressed. About a minute passed before the door opened up again and it was her this time. The poor woman looked exhausted but she was willing to give me a couple of cigarettes. But before handing them over I looked up at her. She was staring at me like she was staring off

into space with this blank expression. Normally she'd be chewing my ear off but she was unusually quiet. Her stare alone became very unsettling with her mouth opening up a little just to let out tiny breaths of air. She didn't break eye contact with me. I was 12 years old and I didn't know what to do or say in this situation. What was wrong with her? Why is she acting this way? I couldn't think of a good answer, I just wanted to go home. So I reached in my pocket for a dollar bill to give her. When I was looking down at my pants, shuffling through my pockets, I noticed she dropped the two cigarettes. I looked back at her to find her with a frightened expression. Her eyes filled with

so much dread as they widened. Her breathing turned huffing grew more frequent. The way she looked made me feel like she'd never seen anything so severely haunting in her life before. This and my 12 year old eyes scared me because she wasn't looking at me. She was looking over my shoulder. This made me very uncertain of what to do at this point, so I thought that I'd make a run for it. This was too much, but the woman quickly grabs my arm and pulls me in close. Right then, I thought I was going to get abducted by this crazy old woman, but she looks me in the eyes and whispers, Do not turn around.

I was so scared and confused, I couldn't ask a single question. He will get you if you turn around. Come inside the house where you'll be safe. I knew then and there this was a red flag so I pulled myself from her grasp. She yelps and tries to grab me again as I try to run, but I stop dead in my tracks right away because now I realize what the old woman was referring to. At the end of the lawn stood him, the tall man. When you hear stories about him, you know what he looks like. He's ten feet tall with long arms, wears a trench coat and top hat,

and has said that he preys on lonely souls walking alone at night, and he's right here in front of me. He was nothing but a silhouette, a shadow, but the old lady's porch light illuminated the whole front yard, accentuating his presence in full view. I could see him top to bottom, standing in my direction. I didn't know what to do. I was frozen. Just then the old lady shuts her door, leaving me outside to defend myself. It was me and him, and there wasn't a fight I could win. He was just standing there and the thought of being abducted by him just filled me with utter dread. There was only one thing I could do. I ran. I ran back home as fast as I can with tears streaming across my face. Then I heard a burst of wicked laughter screeching from behind me.

He was chasing me and getting closer every second as I heard it getting louder. Once I get back to my house I thought I was safe so I turn around to see, which I now think was the stupidest thing I'd ever done, where I caught a memory of a haunting image of him launching himself forward with his long arms, trying to snatch me with his huge hand wide open. I finally let myself in the house where I quickly locked the door. My dad finds me and sees that I'm in total devastation. He picks me up and hugs me. It took a while for me to calm down and explain

everything. Once I did, he believed me and so did everyone else. That's when my dad made a promise to not make me go out that late again. It took me a while to get over that incident. That involved moving away. I didn't come back for a couple of years, but when I did, it was only for visits. When I was in bed scrolling through my phone one night, I came across this article where a fire was lit on an Indian reservation. My own. The article consisted it was a house fire, and everyone inside was burned alive. One elderly woman, one middle-aged man. I knew the exact house they're talking about.

So I started digging into this story, trying to find out how the fire was lit. There was no answers and only theories. I spent the whole night trying to piece it together, only making weak sauce. I was about to give up. Then I came across a photo. It's the house mid-fire. And right there, I could just hear the screams of that poor, old, friendly woman. I started to analyze the photo.

It was a wide shot, probably snapped on a phone with a clean camera, and it's the middle of the night, nothing that stands out. Then I found something obscured in the darkness, but the fire illuminates it just enough for me to see. It's tall, dark, and wearing a top hat. I have a couple of stories to tell here, all of them involving my family's cabin in Wyoming. For starters, I need to put this into context. I was born and raised in South Dakota, and if you ever look at a map of it, you'll see that it's a great beige almost rectangle with a singular circle of green right on the west side of the state. That's where I grew up. Now the west side of South Dakota has some pretty amazing sights and it kind of makes up for there being next to

nothing to do here but in my opinion nothing here holds a candle to the cabin. The cabin is exactly what it sounds like. A log cabin with no running water, a well, and a creek adjacent. The only modernity it has is electricity and that was added in the 1930s. It's an hour away from my home and if you die up there, there's no chance you'll ever be found. So it's my favorite place to go. It was great when I was stressed from high school and just needed to get away. And now that I'm 25, it's my favorite place to unwind It was great when I was stressed from high school and just needed to get away, and now that I'm 25 it's my favorite place to unwind after a long week, but that being said, it has its quirks. I'm going to start with the most normal of the stories.

Not normal because this happens all the time, but because there was no paranormal, extraterrestrial, ooga booga stuff. I was 13 at my sister's birthday. My sister and I always celebrate our birthday up there. My dad had to leave to take my sister's friend who couldn't sleep over back at their homes. My mom doesn't like to spend the night up there so she left before the sun went down. This left 13 year old me with about 5 10 to 11 year old girls And in short I was miserable I was poking at the fire Planning on dropping some scary stories on them So they would have nightmares when

I heard a distinct rustling noise coming from the dry creek just ahead of us I looked up from the fire and saw a figure approaching us I told my sister to quietly get back to the cabin. She looked at me and was about to definitely say why when she saw that my eyes were fixed in a singular point. She followed my gaze and not long after saw an old bearded man, wide eyed, stumbling toward us. She screamed, prompting her friends to scream and they all ran back to the cabin. The screaming stunned me as I was sure that this man would now proceed to kill me and after he was done, march to the cabin to finish off the girls.

But that didn't happen. Instead, he stopped and just started mumbling. I could only make out a few words. Deer, rope, crick, and razor blades. Eventually I gathered up the courage to tell him off. I let him know that there were guns in the cabin and if he didn't leave I would go get one. After I said this I began backing towards the cabin and eventually retreated inside. We told my dad when he got back what happened and he wasted no time gathering up people from the surrounding community. The old guy was caught, but not by the police. He was caught by his daughter who thanked my dad. I wasn't there for that.

I guess this guy was just a very old man with dementia who wandered out of his cabin and followed the road to ours thinking it was one of the cut-offs to the creek. As for the razor blades, back in the 70s a group of rednecks got tired of the cutoffs to the creek. As for the razor blades, back in the 70s a group of rednecks got tired of city people swimming in their creek so one of the rope swings they attached razor blades. A bunch of kids cut their hands up. The rednecks were never caught and they all managed to do was get every rope swing along the creek cut down. Ultimately I feel more sad than scared when I remember this however this is only the first story I have from up there. The next one happened when I was 19. My first long-term relationship had just ended and to say I was taking it hard would be an

understatement. Fortunately my childhood friend who I call Josh, was coming back to South Dakota from basic training. This was also around my birthday, so I had already gotten some days off of work. There ended up being a ton of people going up there, so many in fact that there was no room for me to sleep inside the cabin. That wasn't an issue for me though, as at the time I drove a Subaru hatchback and I had no qualms about sleeping in my car. I had a whole system. I blew up an air mattress, put down my back seats, slid it in and I was off. The air mattress took up the entirety of my back seat and trunk leaving no room for me to put my clothes while I slept. So I grabbed some hangers from the cabin and when it was time to go to bed and hung up my clothes up on the inside handle of my trunk door. I kept the door open because I like the night air while I sleep.

The weight and warmth of the blankets mixing with the general feeling of chill that came with a mountain night air was and still is very relaxing. I was even happier when it started to rain. However, that night I woke up with a strange feeling just kind of looming around me. I sat up and got a little disappointed at how deflated the air mattress had gotten before I started to hear the soft squishing noises of bare feet and mud and grass. I looked out the windows to see who was coming to scare me. I was naturally irritated and called out saying something to the effect of F you, I hear you.

But no one made the presence known. I bit the bullet and threw the covers off of me, hopping out of the car into the pouring rain. I looked around my car and didn't see anyone. I was confused and a little scared but decided it was a good idea to just go back to sleep. As I wrapped myself back up, I began drifting off to the sound of raindrops tapping the roof of my car and then as I was about to sleep there was a loud thump that ripped me awake and sent me flying back up. It sounded as though someone had just slapped the back window of the car and thus I didn't sleep that night. When the sun started to come up I donned my clothes which were somehow still dry and began to search the surroundings. Sure enough there were footprints

around my car and a single handprint on the back window. I thought about letting the group know but decided against it as they probably wouldn't have believed me even if I showed them the evidence, but also because I didn't want to ruin the weekend. The only one I tell is Josh, who also said it was a good idea not to tell anyone. He's a very spiritual person and believed then, as he does now, that it was some kind of ghost. I have a few others, but this is already way too long, so I'll just end it on the most recent happening up there. Due to financial irresponsibility that is 100% on me, I now live with my parents again at the age of 25. As such, I've been helping out where I can, doing the shopping, mowing the lawn, and taking the dogs out.

But recently my dad and I started renovating the cabin at the beginning of the summer. We fixed the road, which had collapsed in the 80s and we had been driving around for years on end, and fixed up the well so that it actually pumps water now. We finished the well yesterday actually, some family friends came up after the renovation and we all had a good time. Beers were had and the cabin was full of laughter. Around 3 o'clock I packed up my stuff and left for home. After a few hours my mom got back from work and told me she was heading up to the cabin with dad and the family friends. I assumed that they'd be gone for a couple of hours at most but by 9 I figured that they were spending the night up there. Mom still doesn't like doing that but we'll do so to make dad happy but at 11 i heard the heavy

front door shut when i came out of my room i saw them both quietly walking in like something bad happened i said that i thought they were spending the night and my mom said no very quickly my dad asked for help tomorrow at the time of typing this it's today, to help him fix up his car which quit out up there. Then he said, after that we'll go for a hike and find out what that god awful noise was. He said it sounded like a horse violently dying and my mom backed him up. Apparently everyone up there heard it and the festivities stopped soon after. I was doing some school work at my computer a few nights ago and without realizing it, my mind had dripped it off. Fresh to hours of constant schoolwork and grunge music at its max volume. Hardcore, Tool, Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, Nine Inch Nails, the best of it.

My mind blanked out a short moment and next I knew I was back on the late night grind. Not a coffee pun, but I wished I had that extra caffeine to have kept me awake to prevent the horror that ensued. I still kept typing away at the keys on my laptop, writing an essay or doing school work that I'd been scared of being behind on. I was doing whatever. However I get a text message from my grandma telling me she's coming over. She's been the only grandmother truly in my life, but not someone I would have expected to come alone in the middle of the night as she lived an hour and a half away and my grandfather was always with her. I decided to brush it off as she had business in the area and wanted to say hello to me and my mother. While here, I wanted to show her my essay, the one I recently had to write for my English class as it was still fresh on my mind. You can perhaps see how this is creepy because it took place in the most realistic setting with some eerie familiarity to it.

When my grandma came over I hit pause and it paused like I should have expected. While I started talking to her and handed her my school issuedissued iPad to read over. My music started playing again. Heavy, loud, ear-piercing, unexpected. I'd been talking to my grandma for a solid five minutes and suddenly, unprompted, Marilyn Manson's Kill For Me started blasting. I hit pause on the computer. It didn't stop, so I turned my volume down on my headphones all the way. It didn't stop so I turned my volume down on my headphones, all the way. It didn't stop. Would you kill, kill, kill for me it blasted.

My mind felt numb but in that first moment I felt more embarrassed that my computer wouldn't shut up preaching such explicit music while my grandmother was right next to me. I had gathered nervousness as I unplugged the headphone from the jack. It didn't stop. Kill, kill, kill for me. Incredibly frightened, I threw off my headphones and the words kept playing on as I felt my mind melting. I mouthed something along the lines of, Wait, my grandma, unable to make a sound as the lyrics kept surging my head with loud, shocking violence, and I ran to my parents' room, knocked until the door opened from how hard I hit it.

The room's door handle doesn't work, truth be told. My very real nightmare included all the details, not a single short stop. Without a doubt feeling the door grind against my knuckles as I thrashed it was so heartbreaking as my head felt like it too was shattering. The door swung open as I rushed into the room. My mom was laying with my stepfather and even with my headphones off my ears kept ringing and my brain was telling me to kill. The chorus started again and I mouthed my words to no avail. I didn't know how to speak and it took me a moment, audio still extremely loud and consuming

my mind, sinking into a thick mud. I told her that I couldn't think and I started to burst into tears, holding my head and screaming and babbling. The music won't stop. The music won't stop. I don't want to kill. And on cue, the chorus was saying, kill, kill, kill for me. Realizing my future would be me, alone, sitting in a padded cell as I would never think a straight thought again, I felt a warmth around my ears and a chill on my feet. I shut my eyes while my face slowly shifted from a sharp sting to nothingness. I opened my eyes and saw a dark reddish orange-like glow of the light strewn around my room.

I was horrified and confused but worried because I wasn't in my mom's room anymore. It hadn't struck me that I was in bed, but the music kept playing. I had still not rid myself of the headphones that were on and I hit them off. Finally I was awake and it was all over. I could think, I could hear, and it took me a moment to fully comprehend what had happened after I paused, unplugged, and slammed my laptop, I wasn't going absolutely effing insane. I had a nightmare and I drifted off while listening to my edgy teen playlist at max volume. It was so vivid and I felt every moment of it. Days later I can recall every single second of it. It was a very similar experience to another that I felt when I was 9 or 10, but I was in Boy Scouts then and the dream was only me watching my father, a random no-name girlfriend of his, and myself getting consumed by zombies. So never listen to music when sleeping or you may actually get trauma from it, or maybe not. From word of the internet, enveloping yourself in activity and music while slowly falling asleep is a good way to lucid dream. I've heard that sleep paralysis and lucid experiences while

dreaming means it was an overall pleasant experience, so I guess I can just chalk it up to a lucid dream. To be continued... It started off as me playing a trivia game. There was an option to private message people so the person I was playing up against messaged me. He was innocent and I was young and naive. It was the start of a friendship. After talking for maybe a week we exchanged Facebooks and started talking on Messenger. John was his name. John told me he was 18 and that he lived in America. After talking for a couple of weeks,

he told me that he started to like me, but I never wanted a relationship. I thought this was just kind of a friendship. I get how dumb I was, but by this time we were talking for months already. We had each other's numbers and everything. Sometimes we FaceTimed and texted a lot until everything started to change. I remember once I slept in and woke up to over 30 messages. It was John. He asked me why I wasn't answering him and asked if I was leaving him. I explained that I had just slept in but he was already upset. I had to convince him that I wasn't leaving him in his words. Another day he told me how he was going to leave and how he was going to end his own life. I was scared and I didn't know what to do.

My friend and I thought that it would be best if I told him that I loved him. I didn't but I wasn't about to be responsible for someone's death I thought. John then told me it was a test. A test. I was young and scared so I stayed and it just got worse and worse from then on. Being 14 I had stuff to do, school, youth group and stuff like that so I wasn't always on my phone. He would constantly be mad at me for not answering him and I told him that I was busy. When you're busy, tell me first, he said. I was getting annoyed. No, I said. I told him to relax and that I wasn't leaving,

I was just busy. I didn't get why he was so controlling. One day he told me that he cheated on me. I was surprised considering we weren't in a relationship and I made that clear to him. He sent me messages of him telling another girl that he liked her. And I told John to go for it. And I didn't want him obsessed with me. Like I said, we weren't in a relationship but now looking back it seemed like he thought so despite the number of times I told him we weren't. I told my friend about him and next thing I know we started talking. Again, we were young and innocent and we both saw him as a friend. So one day when me and said friend had a sleepover I had this great idea to have a FaceTime sleepover.

Basically when we went to sleep we would stay on FaceTime. I thought it would be cool because I'd never had a FaceTime sleepover before. I now regret it. Weeks went by and John and I got into a fight. He said he was going to delete all of his pictures of me from his phone. Pictures? Yeah, I was just as confused. What pictures of me did he have? He screen recorded all the pictures and videos of me and selected them all, saying he was going to delete them. That's when I saw something terrifying. He recorded every FaceTime we had, all my pictures from Facebook and Instagram and,

the most scary thing, a six hour long video of my friend and I sleeping. I was horrified. I told him to delete the pictures. I told him I was done. This creepy friendship was over. Or so I thought. He sent me a picture of a bunch of pills in his hand and told me that he had swallowed them and that it was all my fault. I cried. Obviously looking back I realized that this was a way of getting me to stay but I didn't know that at the time. I was scared that he was really going to hurt himself. I really wanted to leave but I didn't want to feel responsibility for someone's death. I made him promise to never do that. In return I had to promise to tell him if anything bad were to happen to me. After that I blocked him on every

single thing. It took me a while to get over it but after that I felt free. I learned my lesson and obviously I never messaged him after that. And after that experience I don't easily make online friends. I now know to be much more careful and that even if they seem really nice, they might turn out to be the opposite. So I'm a woman and I'm currently 24 but was 22 when this happened. Just so you have an idea of the layout, I live in a two-story townhouse, and there is a one-story townhouse right below me. The entrance to their house is on the opposite side of my entrance, but I have a back patio that is located right above their house entrance. It was the summertime and early in the evening around 4 or 5pm. I was hanging out with a friend who I'll call Jay, in my room on the second story of my house. Suddenly I heard distressing noises from outside. There are lots of kids in my neighborhood

and I'm no stranger to rowdy and loud neighbors but this made me worried. I ran to my window and opened it to try to hear better and looked around to see where the noise was coming from. I couldn't see anything but I could hear a woman clearly in distress saying things like stop. Now I'm a domestic violence survivor with PTSD so this immediately put me on high alert. I expressed my concern to my friend and he went outside to try to figure out what was going on. While I went downstairs and onto my balcony to try to get a better view, he came back in and told me that in my parking lot, which was to the side of our row of townhouses and out of view, he had seen glimpses of a young

man and woman arguing. I was still worried and could still hear the distressing noises so I stayed on the balcony watching for what was going on. A couple of minutes later, the man and woman came into view. They were around my age. She had obviously been crying a lot and he had his hands on his shoulders leading her in the direction of the house below me in a way that seemed almost forceful. At this point, I didn't care about being nosy and I tried to ask the girl if she was okay. She kept her head down and didn't answer. I got angry and asked him what he was doing but he ignored me too. At this point Jay had run down to try to intervene. He's had to witness and survive abuse himself so he wasn't taking this lightly but the man had slammed the door on him

before he could do anything. I was freaking out and trying to figure out what to do when my friend told me that he could see a lot of movement through the sheer curtains outside and that it looked like a struggle was happening. I could even hear bumps from the house below me. I decided to just give in and call 911. For reference, this is the only time I've ever called the cops on a neighbor to this day. I told them what was happening and they didn't seem to think it was urgent but said that they would send an officer. I grabbed my taser, I've experienced a lot of harassment and have it to make me feel safe and went down to wait in front of my neighbor's house

for them trying to think of a way I could help the girl. After a few minutes an older man with his young daughter walked up to us and asked what was going on. This man spoke mostly Spanish and my friend Jay did too so most of the conversation happened through him. The man told us that the house was his and that the younger man was renting a room from him. He seemed alarmed when we described what the man was doing to his apparent girlfriend. He offered to let us come inside and wait for the police there while the younger man kept himself and his girlfriend locked in his room. We made awkward conversation in the living room for a few seconds when suddenly the girl came walking down the hallway, grabbing her purse and making the leave. I was so relieved to see her and

asked if she was okay when, before she could answer, an arm shot out from around the corner and hooked itself around her waist, dragging her back into his room. This was the last straw for me. I ran after them but didn't make it before he locked her in his room. I banged on the door with my taser in the other hand, shouting at him to let her go. I then called the police again and told them to hurry, as I could hear the movement in the room and was worried about what he was doing to her. I continued to bang on the door, half hoping to break it down myself, and cussing and screaming at the guy to open it and let her go. I didn't stop until the cops finally got there, and

after he didn't open the door for them either broke it down. Finally the girl was free and I could see that she was for the most part okay. I listened as she gave the cops her statement telling them that he had been holding her down in the room and even choking her while he had her in there. She and the cops thanked me for getting involved and I briefly told them that I knew what it was like and that I wasn't going to not do anything about it when another person was being put through that. This was the only time during that interaction that I had to hold back tears, though granted as soon as I got home I burst into sobs. Before the girl left I offered her my phone number in case she needed

anyone to talk to, but she sweetly told me that it was okay. Sometimes I still wish I had just given it to her just in case she ever changed her mind so I could be there for her. The guy was there for a few more hours getting interrogated and being very uncooperative with the police. I was fine with this because it meant that he would likely get a harsher sentence but after the girl's mom picked her up, I didn't care to stay anymore. I just needed to know that she was okay and safe. The experience actually turned out to be a pretty healing one for me. I never had enough evidence to report my own abuser and always felt guilty about it,

but the fact that I was able to get the cops involved in the situation at the perfect time, when the abuse was actively happening, so there was no way that the perpetrator could deny it, it made me feel a little bit better about that. Even more importantly, the fact that he got locked up for over a year meant that I helped this girl get free, and that means the world to me. I can still think about her sometimes and wish that I could see how she's doing. I wish I could hug her and tell her how strong she is, but knowing that at least she's not under his control anymore gives me so much peace. To be continued... And give and receive feedback from the community and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video.

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