The Lets Read Podcast - 12: Episode 012 | Highway Stalker & Haunted Hotel Stories | 35 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: November 19, 2018

Welcome to the twelfth episode of The Lets Read Podcast! This podcast includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Highway Stalkers, Haunted Hotels, & Near Death Experiences. HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON- ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsReadCreepy ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ♫ Background Music: Iron Cthulhu Apocalypse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFvrqVSJE8E PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead

You can't rely on blind faith to get the pregnancy support you deserve. Ritual's Essential Prenatal Multivitamin is the only leading prenatal backed by its own human clinical trial. Essential Prenatal is proven to deliver key nutrients, including folate, biotin, and vitamin D during pregnancy. Get 25% off when you visit ritual.com slash clinical. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Did you know that many products for pregnant women do not have their own clinical trials for safety or efficacy?

That's because pregnant women are often excluded from clinical studies. Ritual is aiming to set a new standard with their Essential Prenatal Multivitamin. It's the number one best-selling prenatal and the only leading prenatal backed by its own human clinical trial. Essential Prenatal is proven to deliver key nutrients, including folate, biotin, and vitamin D during pregnancy.

Moms taking Essential Prenatal had a lower overall cortisol level during pregnancy than those taking a leading prenatal. Plus, it's designed to be gentle on the stomach. Ritual doesn't just have your back. They have the receipts. Get 25% off at ritual.com slash clinical. These statements have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration this product is not intended to diagnose treat cure or prevent any

disease this happened only a couple of months ago so i'm still quite on edge i had a group of friends that lived about an hour and a half away from me and I would frequently go hang out with them. The drive never really bothered me, but after this particular night, I dread it. I first noticed the car about 20 minutes into my trip home. It was about 2am, so not many cars were on the road. This guy was practically riding my bumper which I thought was strange because there were no other cars out. I quickly rode it off and tuned back into my music. The time on the freeway is about 55 minutes and he was behind me the entirety of it.

When I saw he was getting off at the same exit I got a little anxious but I told myself I was just being paranoid. I was heading home as I normally would until I noticed that this car was making every turn right behind me. I started turning down random roads to test my theory of them following me and just as I suspected they were trailing behind. I stopped going towards my house and started driving randomly, trying to think of what to do. I tried whipping down roads at the last second, but that didn't work. I was driving through red lights and stop signs because I was scared of what would happen if I stopped. I was so desperate at this point, so I called the police and told them I was being followed for over an hour. I gave them a description of the car and my location.

The dispatcher told me to drive to the police station and there would be officers waiting in the parking lot. As soon as I turned into the parking lot, the car sped off. One of the police cruisers immediately flipped on their lights and followed them. I stayed at the station and gave my statement but I never got a call or anything like that. After that night, I only drive during the day. I don't want to know what would have happened if I were to go home. This happened to me five years ago when I was studying abroad in Italy. The school year had ended so my friend and I, both women, decided to travel to the Italian seaside. We went to a really cool little city called Pestum.

Creepy experience aside, a beautiful place to visit and I recommend going there if you ever have the chance. After visiting the Greek ruins that stand there, we made our way to the beach to get some sun and relaxation. When we arrived, we passed by a group of four men. When we walked by them, they all stopped talking and stared at us as we went by. That was the last interaction we had with them, but it put us on edge. To get some space from them, we walked a fair distance until we found a nice private area. Aside from the group of men, my friend and I were the only two people on the beach. After tanning for not too long, maybe 15 minutes, I noticed a man walk down the shore in front of us,

not from the group from before. He glanced up at us and kept walking. I didn't think anything of it until he turned back, walked past us again and continued this for a while until he sat down about 10 feet in front of us facing the beach. He could have sat anywhere else on the empty beach but of course he decided to sit in front of us. My friend and I were both creeped out at this point but hadn't been to the beach in months and decided to ignore him and hope that he goes away. We were too hopeful. Eventually he came up to us and started to speak to us in Italian. We pretended we couldn't understand him so he continued in broken English. I told him to leave us alone, that we were not interested in

talking to him. I started to walk away but before leaving he took a photo of our butts on his phone. We had been lying on our stomachs and in bikinis. I jumped up and told him to delete it immediately but he just hurried away and I didn't feel like chasing after the creep. I felt violated but relieved he had left. After that we were in a bad mood and decided to just give up on the beach. We walked back to the small town and went to a bar to have a drink. Once again we were the only people with the exception of a female bartender. Sitting on the patio we finally started

to relax when a disgusting looking red sedan pulls up in front of the patio and sits there with the engine running. My friend and I look at each other, dread setting in. After a few minutes the car pulls away and we hope it was just a random person. Five minutes later the car returns. This time the window rolls down and the same man from the beach starts to shout something at us. My temper flared up and I shouted something stupid. All he did was laugh and then sped away. Not long after that he returned and stared at us with the creepiest smile on his face. I got up and got the bartender. When he saw this he drove away and didn't return. My friend and I wanted to just go back to our hotel at this point. The bartender asked us if we wanted her to walk us to the train station, a 30 minute walk through wheat fields over dirt roads.

We declined, thinking he had been scared off and that we were okay to walk back. We were wrong. After walking down the quiet dirt road we hear a car pull up behind us. We look back and lo and behold it was the red sedan. Not knowing what to do we keep our eyes down as he followed us and just kept walking. Fortunately for us a tourist bus drove down the road. In the sedan's attempt to avoid the bus, he accidentally sideswiped it and then zoomed off to avoid dealing with that situation. We were so happy to finally be rid of him. We walked another

ten minutes down the road. We start to approach a fork where we were going to turn left. On the fork to the right, there were a few trees in a shaded area underneath. As we got closer, we saw the red car parked under the trees facing our direction. My stomach dropped to my knees. He had been waiting for us, and now maybe blamed us for the accident. We didn't have anywhere to hide and nothing to protect ourselves with, and there was no reception to call for help. I remember the awful feeling when he pulled out of his spider hole and started driving down the road towards us.

All of the sudden, another car came down the road from the opposite fork. Terrified and with no other options, we ran in front of the new car and started waving our arms for it to slow down. The driver stopped and in our poor Italian we asked for a help and a ride to the train station. The driver was the owner of a local hostel and gave us a ride back to the train station in the opposite direction he had been headed in. I don't know what higher power exists, if there even is one, but we were saved that day from something that could have been very bad. I was working register at a Dollar General at the time. I had a steady flow of customers so I was

fairly busy. One customer stepped up to the register and wanted to look at a portable AM FM radio that was behind the counter. He was in his 20s, maybe early 30s, hard to tell because he was so rough looking. He had a tattoo on each cheek. He was acting really weird and obviously on something. He wanted to see what kind of batteries it took. He opened the package. He couldn't get the battery cover off because he would need a screwdriver so he starts banging the thing on the counter and breaks the battery cover off. He asked me to help him figure out what batteries he needs. Meanwhile, I have a line building up and I can see the customer behind him looks nervous.

I was very calm and patient with him because he made me nervous as well. I think that might have been what could have saved me from possibly ending up a victim myself. He eventually paid for the radio and left after me taping the back of it back on for him. After he left, me and the customer who was next talked about how uncomfortable the guy made us, and that was the last time I saw him. In person person anyway. The next time I saw him was on Facebook on a link to a news article. I can't remember if it was the same day I saw him or the following day that it had happened but I saw his unmistakable face on the mugshots. He robbed and shot a local pizza delivery guy to death and then called 911. He was sentenced to

40 years in prison. I honestly feel that if I had reacted or treated him differently or if there weren't as many customers in my store at that time, I could have been a potential victim. He was so nervous and he was trying to stall at my register, which he did for about 15 minutes. I think he got spooked and changed his mind on robbing me. This story seems like the perfect place for one of my grandmother's things were very different in the 50s stories. This story is from her perspective of the event as she told me. Some background information before we get into it. This was February of 1956. My grandma was 18 at the time and in her freshman year at a large well-known

state university in the northeast division of the midwest in the United States. She describes this time in college as the most freedom she had ever had, even with very strict curfew for girls in particular and an upsetting amount of racism and sexism that fueled school culture both from faculty and from students. The school also had a very secretive approach to matters of crime on campus. As my grandma said it, I was in my first few months of winter semester when I had come down with the Hong Kong flu that had been going around campus. I remember hating every second of it, especially because I had to get my first ever shot of penicillin. We had a lot more

space on campus than there is now, so in order to prevent my roommate from getting sick, they had me boarding in the convalescent room that was on the first floor of my actual dorm room, only in a new wing that was still having the finishing touches added to it. I had unpacked my belongings for my stay until I was no longer contagious and decided to do some homework since my stomach ache was keeping me up. From my room, I could see maintenance workers doing their jobs and getting the additional rooms ready due to the fact that the flu was running rapid on campus and there was going to be a greater need for convalescent rooms for students to recover in without getting others sick.

I had been sitting at my desk doing homework with hair in curlers and in my jammy shirt and underwear. After a few hours of homework I realized it was about 10 so I decided to get some rest and continue tomorrow. I'm not sure how long I was asleep but out of nowhere my locked door was opened and the lights were turned on. I immediately woke up thinking that there was some sort of fire or campus emergency. I held the cover up to my chin, sitting up to see this man who seemed to be in his late forties, closing the door behind him as he walked in my room. As I heard the door shut and lock, I then realized that an emergency alert was not on this man's agenda for the night. I thought it was so odd that he had turned the lights on because it allowed me to notice every single detail about

this man. He walked towards me, putting his finger to his lips, which led me to notice how awful his complexion was and how bright red his hair color was. He was wearing a suede rust colored bomber jacket and these green corduroy pants. As he was walking towards me, the only thought that could form in my brain was how I was not about to let this man see me in my jammy shirt and undies. He seemed to walk towards me in slow motion. As he got near me I realized he was carrying an unusually sharp screwdriver with him. For some reason in my panicked state all I could think about was him seeing me in my jammy shirt and underwear so I decided to engage with this man. What are you doing here? I'm very sick,

you're going to get sick. Just be quiet, you won't get hurt. At this point he is right beside me in a twin-sized bed holding the screwdriver to my throat. I held the covers as close to my face as possible because, you know, my jammies. I kept going on about my Hong Kong flu saying that he was going to get sick when all of a sudden he snapped at me pushing harder into my neck with his screwdriver. He interrupted my speech on contagious airborne illnesses with a harsh shut up stupid little girl be quiet and let me see your body. I don't know why but for some reason I decided to stay on course with my original strategy of not screaming but instead just talking his ear off about all the different ways he could be getting

sick right now and how that would be such a shame. He looked at me with this puzzled look on his face as to why I wasn't letting him get a single word in of his shut up interjections regardless of how many times he threatened me. I then noticed his grip on me began to slowly loosen and he eventually made his way walking backwards before dashing out of my room. I knew for a fact that I had heard him exit through the fire door next to me but found it odd that the alarm hadn't gone off. At that moment the seriousness of the situation flooded me and I burst into tears, running and screaming towards the RA who had been napping in the office. From there the campus

police were called, but because of their blatant disregard for my account of the events, they told me I was being hysterical and that it was only a bad dream. As soon as I told them that he had escaped through the fire door but the alarm hadn't gone off my story was chalked up to me being over emotional over a bad dream. I didn't expect to hear anything else regarding this and I hadn't told my parents out of fear that they wouldn't let me finish for my degree. They were never happy about me attending college because they felt that they were spending money for me to just become a housewife. However, about a week later I had a campus police come to me asking me to come with them. I had no idea why they needed me and hardly spoke to me the entire time. All they told me to do was walk

up to a bench full of men, identify the one that I had dreamt about and leave. It wasn't until nearly a year later that I found out what that was. Apparently a week later a young woman had been found dead assaulted and covered in stab wounds specifically around her neck. Me identifying my dream assailant was the confirmation they needed to link him to her murder. This man had been a hired electrician for the school's new building's wings so he had access to the keys of the newly renovated room I had been in which explained how he got into my locked room. This also explained how he was able to exit the fire door with no alarm sounding. I'm guessing he did what electricians do and found a way to disarm it. I was left in the dark about all of this and only found out from begging

my RA to explain at least some details regarding the case. All I know now is that this man was found guilty and was sent to the state hospital for the criminally insane. I know nothing else. Looking back, I guess I was lucky that, in the moment, my only concern was that I didn't want this man to see me in my jammies. Because had I recognized the real danger I was in, who knows how I would have reacted or how he would respond. Anyways, my grandma was unable to answer any more questions regarding the details of what happened to him because the school was very strict about keeping this quiet. They didn't want the word getting around that it was someone they had hired. They did their best to handle this as secretively as possible

so that other students or parents weren't alarmed and my grandma was sent on her way. Never really informed on the case after this and was never updated on the whereabouts of her little visitor for the remainder of her time at the university. I had a closing shift tonight so I had to take the last bus home. When I got off I usually cut through a train station that is right in front of my apartment complex. Usually there's no one

waiting on the track because the last trains come at 9pm but tonight there are two men who were just talking and smoking. I paid them no mind and walked faster than I usually did. If I had taken another way the street would have been way darker and it would have taken a lot longer to get home. While I was walking I was on the phone with my significant other and didn't notice anyone around me as my part of the street had no lights so the only ones visible were the lamps in my apartment complex. As I get into the walkway I saw a shadow behind me and assumed that it was someone else who lived in the same complex. I usually bump into neighbors who also have closing shifts on Wednesdays so I kept going until I reached my doorstep and turned around to get my keys for my backpack. When I did there was

this tall skinny guy from the train station wearing all black with a bike asking me if I was single. I was still on the phone with my significant other and said no. Do you have a boyfriend? Are there any female friends you don't like? I said no and quickly got my keys and opened the front door and closed it as fast as I could and ran upstairs. I'm checking to see if anyone is still downstairs from my balcony but so far I don't see anyone. I'm still a little shaken up and I'm going to talk to my GM tomorrow about letting me work during the days from here on out. It was 11.30pm on a Saturday, a week before sophomore year when this all went down. I was walking along the sidewalk with my best friend.

My twin brother was biking beside us trying to perfect a wheelie. I know it wasn't smart to be outside this late without an adult or a car but it was a relatively safe neighborhood and my brother was always equipped with a knife. The only bad thing I remember ever happening was a bank getting robbed a few years back. Curfew wasn't until midnight which was getting closer so we decided on staying out until then. We'd just be a street away from where my house was. The street we were on was the main road and the only people that had driven past so far were teenagers. My best friend and I sat on a bench outside a bar and restaurant that was closed for the night while my brother was doing wheelies all the way down the street and back. He had gotten really good at doing tricks

on that bike. Me on the other hand had asthma and got out of breath from going upstairs. Now my best friend hadn't had many great experiences with law enforcement so when a police car drove past us slowly she rolled her eyes and said he probably thought we were smoking. She was right. Most of the kids where we lived were getting caught smoking almost daily. The officer continued past us and stopped a good amount of way up the road. He was still in sight but far. As teenager girls do we were talking about all the guys she liked. I brought up my brothers since they used to date in the past. Would you ever go out with him again? I asked expecting a no or an ooh. She hesitated before answering with a yes. I was full of disgust and excitement all at once while I followed up with

an explosion of questions. Me and Mile, my brother had gotten closer and eventually stopped in front of us to brag about his best wheelie yet. His rant was cut short when a small silver car drove past. An old man with what looked like a grey mullet and a red shirt yelled out his window, hey hotties. He turned right at the intersection and out of sight. His voice had sounded weirdly high pitched as if he was purposely trying to sound creepy. I stayed quiet refusing to entertain him. My brother being the idiot he was gave a loud hello and my friend did the same. I asked if they had heard what he said and my brother nodded. My friend had only heard the word hi and got angry when I told her about the extra word in that sentence.

She went off for a minute about how it was disgusting for an older man to say that to two teenage girls. After she was done I remember jokingly saying, watch him come back. Oh, and that he did. Minutes had gone by and my brother was down the road when the same man in the silver car came by again on the opposite side of the road. His window was still down but this time he said nothing. His smile said everything for him. Too shocked to speak I waited until he passed the police officer and went right down a different road that could lead him exactly back to where we were. From far off I could see his car signal. He was turning onto the road to come back towards us. On top of that smile and the fact that he was to come back,

my stomach dropped but I didn't move. My friend on the other hand jumped up and started bawling. Her crying surprised me because of the fact that I didn't have a lot of feelings. It's hard to explain but long ago I was prescribed pills by a doctor that had somehow blocked me from feeling certain bad feelings. I usually don't feel sad or embarrassed even if I should. Seeing her crying I finally moved and stood in front of her. I wasn't sure what to say but my brother sped back towards us to see what had happened. I looked to my left to see if the officer was still around. He had left and the silver car was about to get closer. I tried to get out as much comforting words as possible while pushing

her towards the nearest alley that led to my house. We needed to get off of that main road before he saw where we were going. Soon enough I got them both down the alley where we hid behind a wall and paused. From where we were we could see my house. If we ran straight for about a few parking lot lengths then we'd be there. We listened as a few more cars passed and I remember thinking he saw us running and knew to drive down the alley. Lucky for us nothing happened and the minute it was quiet we booked it. My brother made sure to ride behind us until we got to the house. Everything happened so quickly. He fumbled for his keys as my friend

and I glanced back at the main road a few times. The last time I looked was when I was standing in the doorway. That was the last time I saw him. I wasn't sure if he ever saw me but if he did, he now knows where I live. I work part time at the only grocery store in the town and when I think of it, I try to look out for a customer that might match his description. About three months ago my wife then fiance and I were driving from Oregon to Arizona. We were in a part of Nevada that was in the middle of nowhere. We were on the end of a 70 mile stretch with no cell service and it was midnight. My wife is a small girl, only 5'1", 100 pounds. I often joke when I go to see her at work, oh it must be take your child to work day, she's that small. It was my wife's turn to drive at this

point so I reclined in my seat out of view sleeping. She shakes me awake and says, This guy's been following me for quite a while, I don't know what his issue is. I glance behind us to see this big F350 only about 10 feet behind us. I tell her to speed up, figuring he was just wanting to go faster but he keeps the same distance from us. All of the sudden he shoots into the oncoming lane, overtakes us and proceeds to slow in front of us bringing his and our speed to only about 10 miles an hour. She backs off a considerable distance when he slams on

his brakes and starts opening his door. At this point I sit all the way up. I'm a pretty big guy and roll my window down. He spots me, slams his door shut and takes off. I'm not one to jump to conclusions but I feel that if he didn't see me he would have definitely tried to take my wife. It shook us up pretty bad and at the next gas station we found the attendant called it in. Luckily I got his plate numbers and that's why you don't drive in the middle of nowhere alone in the middle of the night. You never know who's out there. I'm a 25 year old male. When I was younger my dad would tell me this story about something that happened to him and my older brother when my brother was very young.

I've never had a reason to doubt that this was true but you know how it is. You remember something from your childhood and so you dig a little deeper. I independently researched this when I was older and it's completely true. I'm happy to provide evidence to the mods if need be the story went something like this. My aunt had just been physically abused by her husband at the time so my older sister and infant at the time and my mom pregnant with me were with her. My brother was around 5 and stayed with my dad who decided to take him camping on the Appalachian Trail as a special treat. My dad worked in law enforcement at the time which ties back into the story.

Where I live there are multiple roads that access the Appalachian Trail so my dad took my brother to a portion of the trail that leads to a trail shelter no more than two miles in. When the two of them arrived at the campsite they decided to leave the shelter vacant and pitch a tent as is polite to do for through hikers. There was one other camper near the shelter which is not all that uncommon given how close the shelter was to the road. My dad decided to introduce himself to the other single male camper mentioning that he works in law enforcement. The guy was clearly off, but as of yet was in no way nefarious towards them. He did, however, have a very large hunting knife that he left out clearly visible. As it began to get darker, the other camper began to behave more strangely.

He would look over at my dad and brother and stare, as if he had something to say, and then look back. My dad did everything he could to engage the guy in conversation but again the man just behaved oddly. My dad picked up on this so decided to pull out his concealed weapon and place it within view. After about two hours of staring and creeping the guy approaches my dad with a smaller hunting knife not threatening but as if to give it as a present. My dad naturally looks at this gesture with confusion. The man says, hey, take this. My dad says no. No, really, take this. My dad insists no. A few more rounds of this back and forth. I mean it. Take this knife. You gonna need it tonight.

The guy says deadpan locking eyes with my dad. My dad doesn't know what to say but the guy walks away and leaves the smaller knife by the fire ring. My dad has my brother, a young child with him and is naturally terrified. He decides that despite it being dark, it is high time to promptly get out of that camping site immediately. So with my brother close by, he packs up the tent and packs his pack. This takes about a half hour in the dark. My dad is about to leave but the guy sees them. He picks up his hunting knife, holding it as if to attack and approaches my dad. My dad has his flashlight pointed directly at the guy, sensing that something was about to go down.

I want you to fight me. The guy growls, locking eyes with about 10 feet between him and my dad and brother. My dad grabs his gun, aims it and basically tells the guy to step down. He tells my brother to grab the pack which had a seat on it to hold a young child. My dad puts the pack on. He hands my brother the flashlight and tells him to get on his back. At first he backs up the trail with the gun trained on the guy and my brother pointing the flashlight at him. The guy slowly approaches but then stops just before my dad shoots. My dad decides he is going to run and tells my brother to shine the flashlight on the trail and let him know if he sees anyone follow. Clearly dangerous in the near dark on a wooded trail but

it was that or leave my brother with no light. My dad runs all the way back to the car, hightails it out of there and goes home to call my mom and put my brother in bed. He also calls the cops. The next day my dad hears that the guy went to a bar after the encounter and started talking about it. He then, oddly enough, went to the cops to say that my dad had assaulted him with a gun, at which point the police got him for questioning. Upon follow-up and investigation over a few months they found out that the guy was bipolar and wasn't on his meds and didn't actually mean my dad or brother any harm. When the guy saw my dad's gun and heard he was in law enforcement he decided that he basically wanted to end his own life by law enforcement. My dad went through a lot

of counseling for this afterwards which was always interesting to hear because when you hear these dangerous stories from people you never hear about the aftermath. Thankfully the guy wound up in jail for a short period of time. This happened when I was five or six years old. One night I was sleeping upstairs along with my younger sister who was an infant. My parents were downstairs hanging out and watching TV. There's a knock at our door with my stepfather going towards the door. He looks through the peephole to see a guy on the other side of the door. One of them asks, where's Maria? We don't know a Maria. My stepfather tells him that no one named

Maria lives here. The guy keeps banging on the door looking for Maria. My mother says that someone is trying to open our side door as it turns out this guy brought a friend with him. My stepfather retrieves his gun and pumps it so the guy outside knows he's armed. Eventually, these two guys leave and my parents call the police to report the incident. A few weeks later, the police update us on this case that they had found these two guys and arrested them. Sadly, these guys found Maria and her boyfriend, to which they ended both of their lives. Luckily I was asleep during this event so I only heard about it years later. This is the only seriously scary event to occur in my life so I'm fortunate that they were not able to get inside our house. All I really recall of this guy was he had a lazy eye and was dressed pretty dirty and wore

old torn up plaid with long hair and seemed to be in his mid-thirties. The encounter lasted about an hour. I was in a small town, 800 people in the winter, close to 2,000 in the summer, as it's a tourist town in southern Montana next to Yellowstone. We had about a thousand guests in town at any one time and I was in the middle of my second year living there alone, no family. By now I knew everyone. They all knew me and was on the tail end of a crisis where I had to learn how to be a person from being introverted, shy and sheltered. So I felt as if though I owned the town. On my way to the bar I was crossing the bridge at around 11pm and forgot a lighter. I saw a guy across the street sparking

one up and called over if I could have a light. I was about to cross over if he said yes when he came over to me which was a little unnecessary I felt but not weird. He gave me a light and began to talk at about a mile a minute asking me questions without listening to the answer. I felt inclined to listen as he obviously had a lot to say and he gave me a light. It was only polite and I was about being friendly back then. It's important to note I didn't really have a danger radar. I can read people pretty well and if I get a bad vibe I back out but I never felt afraid of 45 minutes he talked more and kept me verbally trapped because I didn't want to be rude or make him mad as he seemed a little volatile in spite of saying I needed to go meet people. The thing was I didn't actually know if the bar was opened. It was the fall and they closed when it got slow which some days was 2am others 10pm. I could see

the smoking deck but no one was outside for any of it which was weird as 80% of the people seemed to smoke in that town and if it was open the deck was usually packed. He talked all about how he was on a trip with his dad and because his mom had just passed away and went into that. When he asked why I was in the town I said I lived there because I too had just lost my mom and needed to sort my life out. He berated me for talking about depressing things and how it wasn't attractive to talk about that sort of thing, which was really hypocritical as he had spent a good while talking about the same situation in that tone that was looking for pity or validation or whatever, whereas I just stated it as a fact. I was pretty numb to it still.

He asked more personal questions. I answered some, others I ignored. He asked if I smoked. I did back then. He asked if I had any. I said no. I did, but I lied. And if I wanted to go smoke, where we could smoke. From our side, it was pretty easy to go under the bridge or down the alley on the far side of the bar. Everyone did that, but I wasn't about to because my mind was telling me to absolutely not be alone with this guy somewhere more private. He didn't know this town. He had no idea that no cars would pass by till morning, so he didn't get weird, but verbally he kept putting me down when I spoke, saying things that were obviously pity ploys, you know the kind to make girls feel bad and be nicer,

but got visibly annoyed when I didn't show much sympathy past what would be normal. He kept trying to get me to go somewhere with him, somewhere private, anywhere private and I was like no, happy to be here, thanks. He kept putting my intelligence down and telling me how he knew so much more than me and that I was a baby and hadn't seen or done anything and I should listen to him. I would have chalked that up to it just being the way he was but how he said it unsettled me. Real grooming questions and tones I've heard from people that ended up screwing over my friends before. Putting them down, making them doubt themselves and swoop in like a guardian. I didn't like that.

But I wasn't sure how to leave because by now when I was telling him I was going, he seemed to want to follow me. And if the bar was closed there was a lot of dark places and no one lived on that end of the bridge. I was absolutely thinking I needed out. Everything was closed and I had bad knees so I couldn't even run from him. I was starting to worry a bit as he was getting more and more insistent to go somewhere with him and was slowly getting bolder in my space with what he said as we hadn't seen anyone. Trying to convince me to go somewhere secluded. He also said that he had to pee so I came up with a plan. I told him we could go under the bridge and walked over the large rockfall that everyone climbed up and down to go there made of large boulders. It was a climb

but one even I could make and had many times with groups of friends. He climbed down first after some goading to make him go before me. He climbed down first after some goading to make him go before me. He tried to get me to go first to show him it could be done. As soon as he was at the bottom he asked if I was coming. I literally bolted out of there and I went to the bar. They were too close together so I would check both and make a beeline for the housing not too far off where I had a smoking buddy if they were closed. Plus side it was open and I knew everyone inside. I told them about the weird guy and I walked with them back across town when they were done partying to my house which was right on the road and I also

lived alone. My closest neighbor was an elderly nearly deaf man. I knew if I wailed my lungs out someone would eventually come but so many people got drunk and shout or scream no one would come very fast and he probably would have stopped me by then. Plus I was a fair fighter due to daily sparring with my closest friend in town. It would have been a lot more frightening if I wasn't so up on myself about being able to take him in spite of the height difference and truth be told I probably wouldn't have stood a chance. I didn't even have a phone. The more I look back on it the more frightening the experience becomes especially because of how stupid I was ignoring all of those

obvious red flags of danger. People get assaulted all the time in the towns around Yellowstone. One of my friends was stalked and in one of the other towns it's just flat out dangerous late at night when drunk guys looking to have a fun holiday start to roam. I knew of seven assaults that were never followed up on by police in the other town because one, they had little info on the guys who did it and they had likely left town and two, it was the sort of small town where cops did what they wanted and it would look really bad or potentially ruin the entire town if it got out girls were being assaulted as it was a 100% tourist based town. Thankfully the sheriff in my town was good but he was across town that night

at the last of the four bars which was always open to about 2. I rarely went because elk had been camping out that season between my house and there and elk 100% did frighten me. A few weeks ago, Labor Day weekend, my boyfriend and I made the journey to go see my grandparents, who live in rural Arkansas. It's beautiful up there and we wanted to spend some time with them and go hiking and kayaking. The trip was going normally until our second night there. When we got there, my grandfather had mentioned something about a guy in his early 30s wandering around the road that they lived on and how he'd never seen him before. They live in a small town, if you want to even call it a town so everyone knows everyone.

Like I said, they are in rural Arkansas in the middle of completely nowhere. They live on a mountain. Technically, it's a few hundred feet short of a mountain, but you get the idea. There's a shoddy cell reception, like an hour and a half drive from the nearest Walmart, and a ton of wild animals, not to mention difficult terrain. It was our second night there and we were all playing cards in their basement. The entrance to the house is on technically the second floor, that's important in a second. It's about 8.30 which is the equivalent to about 1am to my grandparents and the elderly people who lived around them when we hear a knock at the door. My grandfather goes upstairs to answer the door confused as to who was there that late, old people time, and all we hear is him say,

Didn't you just knock on my door? Followed by some talking. He comes back downstairs and we ask who it was. He says he doesn't know but it looked like the guy who had been walking around in the woods a few days earlier. We ask him what he wanted and told us the man introduced himself with his full name and said he was trying to get his life back on track, was living with his mother up the hill. Where he said he was living was over an hour walk up the mountain. It was getting dark and you don't want to wander at night there and he was just ringing doorbells.

My grandfather said he was shirtless and seemed a little off. We were all a little wary and my boyfriend mentioned something about burglars knocking on doors to see who was home so they can rob them. Seeing how a lot of people have vacation homes up there we started getting nervous but continued playing cards. About 20 minutes later my grandmother and I meet eyes. She looked at me and goes, do you hear talking? I said I did but it was probably the TV. She looked a little freaked out and told me the TV wasn't on. My grandfather and boyfriend bowled up. My boyfriend goes outside and my grandfather pulls a pistol out of literally nowhere and follows him. My grandmother and I just stared

at each other and went upstairs to see if we could see anything out the windows. They both come back in a few minutes and say they couldn't find anything. I'm freaking out at this point and ask what the name he gave was so I could google him. When I did, not one but two missing person reports came up about him within the past year. One of them was found last summer when he was filed as a missing person with his girlfriend and her kid. They ended up being found but they didn't know where Crazy Man was but suspected he was lying low because of a police chase he had gotten in the other one was from a few weeks ago and his mother who lives four hours away not down the road like he said had filed for him my grandfather called the sheriff and they ended up finding him still shirtless running through the woods in the dark.

I've been a nurse for seven years. I absolutely love it. Back when I was in school, besides your clinicals where you did a rotation in every unit, such as labor and delivery, psych, etc., you had a month-long unpaid internship if you passed your exams and were, psych, etc. You had a month-long unpaid internship if you passed your exams and were slated for graduation. The internships were given out by the head instructor

and it went alphabetically. My last name ends in T, so I was at the tail end. All the internships I wanted, emergency, med-surg, etc., they had been taken. The instructor told me, hey, we have a psych internship at a major psychiatric facility. You're a big strapping guy I'm sure you'll be perfect. Great. Psych. I wasn't thrilled. I had no interest in psych but I needed the hours to graduate and I figured I'd have stories to tell my buddies over some beer. I had no idea. The hospital I interned at is quite well known so I'm not going to go into many specifics but it has a psych ward that deals with many different psychiatric disorders. There's a few floors, they had a rehab as well as a clinic for eating disorders.

The floor I was assigned to was the children's psychiatric ward so children 18 and under with all kinds of issues. Since I was not licensed yet I didn't distribute medication or really anything to do besides work as a glorified orderly. Some of the kids were awesome. They had severe autism or other issues but they were still great kids. Then there was Adam. He was diagnosed with RAD as well as a bevy of psychological issues. He was 10 and tried to kill his 6-year-old sister, punch his mom so hard he knocked her unconscious, killed the family's cat, among other things.

He was not allowed general access, not allowed to do craft hour, access to scissors. He was allowed an hour of free time where I or another staff member brought him to a small atrium where he'd run in circles or kick a half deflated soccer ball. Well one day it's raining and the atrium is a no go so I was told I couldn't let him in a small nurses lounge. The charge nurse swore she removed any weapons he could have used. So I brought him in there and while he sat at the corner and talked to himself I sat in the chair and waited. I got radioed from an orderly so I take my eyes off of Adam for a millisecond and the next thing I know a chair is violently launched at me. It hits me square in the face and I go down. I was stunned not knocked out and suddenly there's a 10 year old, 80 pound kid on top of me, hell bent on killing me. Luckily he was easily distracted and at the exact moment the charge nurse came in

the lounge probably to get coffee. I was able to flip him over and get him subdued. The charge nurse almost wets herself and starts apologizing. I ended up with a broken nose and bruises. The head nurse was slapped on the wrist and my butt was kissed the next two weeks. Surprisingly besides Adam and a few others, that place made such an impact on me after I graduated and became certified, I ended up working there for four years. So I have many more stories from my time there. Last I heard, Adam was in a long-term facility and with medications. I hope he's doing okay. and cryptos, all commission-free. They strive to make financial services work for everyone,

not just the wealthy. It's a non-intimidating way for stock market newcomers to invest for the first time with true confidence. Simple, intuitive, clear design with data presented in easy-to-digest ways. From my experience with Robinhood, I've noticed other brokerages charge up to $10 for every trade, but Robinhood doesn't charge commission fees. Trade stocks, and you keep all of your profits. The Robinhood web platform also lets you view stock collections, the 100 most popular sectors like entertainment and social media, and curated categories like female CEOs,

and analyst ratings of buy, hold, sell for every stock. Learn how to invest as you build your portfolio. Discover new stocks and track your favorite companies with a personalized news feed. You'll get custom notifications for price movements so you never miss the right moment to invest. Robinhood is giving listeners a free stock like Apple, Ford, or Sprint to help build your portfolio. Sign up at letsread.robinhood.com. That's letsread, L-E-T-S-R-E-A-D,.robinhood.com. The following happened when I was on a school French history trip to France and Belgium back in 2014, which incidentally was the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I.

However, the paranormal events which occurred in this short trip had nothing to do with the many mass grave sites and historical locations we visited. In fact, they all occurred in the first, basic and cheap hotel we stayed in for the first two nights. The hotel, which I have since forgotten the name of, was bordering on a hostel. It was six of us to a room and three bunk beds and I was sharing one with my closest friends. I also knew the other boys fairly well. I remember that on the first day we had been awake for well over 24 hours so upon arriving at the hotel we didn't pay much attention to how it looked. However, we found it surprisingly hard to get to sleep immediately. The first strange

occurrence happened while everyone was casually chatting as we lay in bed, probably at around 11 at night. Each bottom bunk had a light underneath it and they were all controlled from one central wall switch over by the door. I should mention that we had all these lights off as we were meant to be asleep. However, in the middle of our conversation, one of the lights suddenly turned on. It stopped our conversation dead and we were all slightly confused. This happened several more times with lights going on and off under the bunks while the wall switch didn't move. Everyone was getting visibly spooked at this point. However, one of the boys had found

a second switch beside his bed and we soon realized that every bunk had these to control the three lights. With everyone relaxed again, our 14-year-old imaginations calmed down significantly and everyone began to nod off one by one. Later in the night, at what I estimate was about one in the morning, I was still half awake. I have always been a very light sleeper. I was listening to the deep breathing of everyone in the morning, I was still half awake. I have always been a very light sleeper. I was listening to the deep breathing of everyone in the room when I heard an audible click. I turned around and saw the light the walk-in shower was on. I assumed that someone had walked in to play a prank, but after quickly scanning my eyes about the room, I could see that everyone

was in bed. I was confused but not frightened yet. Shortly after the shower turned on seemingly by itself I again turned over to face the walk-in shower. Sure enough through the crack in the door I could see the shower water running. I turned away quickly and lay there for hours unnerved before falling asleep. The next morning was busy, visiting several historical sites and it wasn't until lunchtime in a cafe that a few of us brought up the night before. Several others testified to being awake when the light and shower turned on. We were all slightly unnerved but it wasn't until the next night that things really kicked off. On the second night everyone fell asleep very quickly but as per usual I couldn't sleep.

I lay awake slightly nervous and the main light of the room went on and off at intervals of around 10 minutes for around an hour. Then at around 2 in the morning I heard a huge crash and looked around to see that the shower door had swung open completely hitting the wall. The light was on and shower running. I was terrified. I turned to face the wall and didn't open my eyes till the next morning. The next day we moved to a different hotel and the subject of the hotel being haunted was only brought up once more during the trip.

Although this is one of the smaller experiences I've had regarding the paranormal, it sticks with me due to how unexpected it was. We found out that the original owner of the hotel had died from cancer but I saw no evidence or reason that whatever caused the disturbance was her ghost or spirit. It is an experience that will always stick with me as being strange and spooky. When my husband and I first got married, we lived on a third floor apartment in the back of the complex. Outside our balcony, there was a stream that ran through and connected further down to a river, the Jordan River, which runs through parts of Salt Lake County.

I would often sit on the balcony to watch the ducks and just enjoy the peace and quiet. As long as I can remember I've had experiences with the paranormal, which is another subject but nothing quite like this, and it quite frankly terrified me but also completely blew my mind and was also kind of cool at the same time. So around a month after we moved in there was a woman nearby that went missing. Video from her apartment complex showed her running out of her apartment in a pouring rainstorm in what appeared to be a panic and then she never came home. It was all over the news. It sounds weird but I felt a connection to her even though she was a total stranger. We were around the same age living a

few miles apart. I felt very drawn to the case. Turns out a friend of mine knew her and while I was at another one of our mutual friends houses he stopped by with flyers and asked us to come help with the search for her. I had to go to work so I couldn't help, but I took the flyer and said I would definitely keep an eye out since her apartment where she went missing was just a mile or so from mine. I remember sitting on my balcony one night thinking about the missing woman and the thought came to my mind, she's in the water. By in the water, the Jordan River is what came to mind. I shrugged it off because they were already searching the surrounding area of her

apartment, so I figured, well, the river is part of that, and if she's in the water, they'll find her. Over a month went by, and they still hadn't found her. So again, on another night, I was sitting on my balcony, looking down at the water and the thought of this missing woman came up again, and I had this overwhelming feeling that she was in the water. Not the water behind my apartment, but where the water behind my apartment connected to the river. I didn't know what to think about the feeling because they'd already searched there, I thought anyway, and she hadn't been found. Later that night I was in bed, just laying there thinking about the feeling I'd had on the balcony. My husband was asleep and the apartment was quiet, just the light of the moon barely lighting the

room. I was looking toward the door of the bedroom, simply because that was what was in front of me and in my line of sight. And then in what I can only describe as an instant, this mass came hurling toward me and grabbed me. It didn't move me, but I felt my body how it feels when someone takes both hands and grabs you by the collars, like a wake-up grab. It scared me incredibly bad, so obviously I screamed. I darted out of bed, my husband was also now awake and I turned on the light. There was now nothing there.

I went back to bed, heart racing and trying to process what had just happened, and then it was like my brain was flooded with the word water over and over. Two days later they found the missing woman's body in the river, same river that the water behind my apartment connected to. She'd been there for quite some time. When I found out they found her and where it was, I got chills. I think whatever grabbed me that night was her, trying to tell me I was right. She was in the water and she desperately wanted to be found. That was in 2014 and I've often wondered why I felt a connection to her, a total stranger. Was it because there was some kind of energy that flowed through the water

and because I spent a lot of time on my balcony I picked up on it? Or was it some other connection? I may never know. I've always been into the paranormal world. Ever since I was a little kid, one of my favorite things to do was watching horror movies or paranormal TV shows. I used to get scared very, very easily, but that didn't matter to me. I guess I just liked the feeling of the adrenaline in my body until I got legit goosebumps. Luckily, or not, two years ago, I went through a lot of personal stuff,

and I stopped being frightened of everything involving paranormal stuff and sorts of that matter. And since I've always loved that kind of thing and I wasn't scared anymore, I started watching, hearing, and reading paranormal stuff at all times, like literally all day, every day. Before I stopped being frightened, I had already experienced some paranormal stuff through the years, but maybe I was just too scared to admit or openly talk about it. Maybe I'll start writing about them as well, but I wanted to start with this particular experience. Since I had been too involved in paranormal stuff for the last two years, I guess I attracted all sorts of energy, but mostly bad energy and worse things. Experiences started happening to me. I know that the more you're involved, the more vulnerable you get.

This happened two months ago. I was in San Diego with three of my closest friends because we were attending a concert so we booked a hotel room for that matter. The night before the show we were pretty tired and we wanted to sleep in early so we could rest as much as we could for the show. So I went to sleep in the same bed as my friend and in the other bed a a nightstand separated them, were my two other friends. In the middle of the night, I woke up suddenly and in the corner of the room, I saw this big black figure that was staring at me. Directly in the eye and I sensed this super heavy dark bad energy around the room. I knew that there was something wrong.

At this point, the energy was so bad that I knew I was in front of the demon himself. My best friend woke up and she was really confused because I grabbed her arm and squeezed so hard she started hurting. I don't recall this act and she told me to calm down and stop accusing her of things she didn't do. She told me I was telling her to stop staring at me and scaring me, to just let me sleep. I don't recall telling her any of that. The only thing I remember was seeing the demon in the room instead and it was staring right into my soul. After all the confusion and shouting we calmed down and got back to bed. At this point none of our other two friends had woken up, they were sleeping deeply.

I was very very scared, I think I've never been more scared in my life but I really didn't want to scare her by telling her I had just seen a demon so I let her go back to sleep. After a few minutes I started telling myself to not let him get to me and that I wasn't scared anymore so he couldn't feed off my fear and he would go away. I know for a fact that if you build up a wall in your mind and don't let it get to you it really won't and it will go away. So I did that with all the energy I had left but as I was telling all of that to myself I sensed a second wave of super heavy dark bad energy if you can call it that way and the energy

was going towards one of my two other friends who were sleeping, the one who was just across the nightstand, and I knew this demon had something to do with her, I don't even know how, I just knew, and their connection was so strong that just looking at her made me really uncomfortable and scared. A few minutes went by and I repeated to myself the things I said before and tried to build a bigger wall in my head and I did and eventually it went away and I went back to sleep. The morning after we were getting ready to go to the concert and I started talking to my best friend about the night before and I told her and my two other friends

that I had seen a demon, and before I got into details about what I had experienced, the friend that had the connection with the demon approached me, and looked me right in the eye and told me that what I had experienced was because of her, that she had a demon with her and sometimes it manifested, and that she was so sorry about it, and that I shouldn't be afraid of it, that she wasn't afraid anymore since she had dealt with it for years. The craziest thing about this experience is that I didn't tell her or anybody at that point that I knew they had a connection. I still can't explain how I knew or sensed the connection between them, the demon and my friend, but the thing I knew is that it was

very strong. Later she told us that since she was 12 years old, she played with a Ouija board by herself, and she thinks the demon follows her since then. It happened two days ago. It was early in the morning when I got the phone call that a friend had passed away. It's not a peaceful passing because she was fatally wounded in the middle of a robbery. I spent quite a lot of time crying before attending the wake on the same day. I spent a good one to two hours after the ceremony ended bonding with the rest of her family,

revisiting old memories of childhood that we spent together. Then the funeral took place today in which I was also present along with my parents and little brother. We got home separately because I needed to buy some stuff along the way for a school project, but when I got home my parents asked me where I'd been this whole day. I was so confused because we went to the funeral and they were beside me the entire time. We only parted ways when I had to buy some stuff, but even that I've told them. Their reply was even more confusing and I'm paraphrasing here.

Who is Joan? What funeral? We've been at home all day, but you left early this morning. I immediately pull out my phone with the intention of showing them our pictures together, but as expected, there's nothing. Did I really attend a funeral of a friend that never existed, or am I just having a very vivid delusion? Update. It's been almost three weeks since I've experienced this. I went for an additional check up since I am scheduled for one every six months due to my physical conditions. The test results show neither new red flags nor abnormal spikes from the pre-existing red flags. With this, I also made an appointment with a psychiatrist to determine whether I am experiencing a delusional disorder. So far, this has shown to be inconclusive.

After checking and reviewing some proofs that I have, like the stuff that I supposedly bought and the missing time I had, I'm leaning more to that this is not a glitch but a memory gap being filled by my own brain's mechanisms or even an overlapping memories of dreams I've had while asleep and one of the reality. That addressed, I wanted to answer some repeated questions in the comments. I can't find anything on the obituaries with the name I remember. No news whatsoever of said break-in. I also asked around neighbors and friends for the existence of said person, still a negative.

I posted here because I thought that this is the right subreddit and I wanted to get the thought out while also having people from their objective point of view take a look on this matter, a differing look. I don't use reddit actively, only reading and scrolling, filling my time. Thus this empty account, but I do follow a lot of other subreddits and scrolling through the timeline. This is the first time I've ever posted anything apart from that one question that got deleted. I'm still kind of at a loss of what I experienced. Has anyone ever been in this situation before? Twelve years ago I bought my girlfriend an antique ring.

It has a unique design, wraps around the finger three times. We've never married so she considers the thing as a kind of de facto wedding ring. It's dear to her. It has disappeared once before when someone we didn't know well stole it from our house. I had an idea of who it was and was able to get it back. This last weekend I was playing a show out of town which had us staying in a bandmate's RV with their family. When we were driving home from there on Saturday my girlfriend realized she didn't have her ring. She checked her bag thoroughly and then said she had a faint memory of taking it off and setting it next to the sink in the RV.

Yesterday, we went over and scoured the RV for it, every nook and cranny, nothing. She went through every pocket in her travel bag again, twice, and nothing. This morning, right before she left for work, I hear her say, what is this? She had stepped on something right in the middle of our bedroom doorway. She picked it up and handed it to me. It was a small plastic black piece of my GoPro. It covers the USB charging port. It had disappeared back in February while at a winter cabin in the mountains, or possibly even while skiing as I was taking videos, and had never been found. I actually replaced it through GoPro but there it was, right in the middle of the floor nine months later. She left for work and I started thinking that the return of the GoPro piece was a signal, a signal that there had been an edit in

my inventory as it were. I suddenly strongly suspected that this meant the ring was back. I went and checked the bag. Right in one of the main pockets, as plain as day, there was the ring. This kind of stuff used to happen to me when I was a teenager, and it seems like it's back. I'm also the guy who posted about the watch that suddenly materialized a few days ago. Needless to say, my reality is feeling pretty fluid right now. I was working as a project manager for an accounting software company. My team had been working with a very difficult client for months. Every time we submitted our work the client decided that they wanted more, they wanted less, they wanted this

change or that changed. We would make suggestions that they ignored, we would submit again and they would then decide they liked our suggestions. It was dragging on far too long and my team was getting fatigued. At the same time, my mother's health was failing. She was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and had about 5 months to live as it turned out. So I stopped at her house on my way home every day to spend some time with her and check on her. She was a feisty old broad, so she took care of herself until she had to start hospice care 3 days before she passed. So one day at work my team submitted our latest coding and sent it off to our client. It was a Friday so I told my team that if this

latest work was finally accepted we would all be leaving work as soon as we heard the good news and we all sat back and waited. Miracle of miracles we got that call before noon and our job was finally done. For the record our software had gone full circle and was 99% the same as our first submission but whatever I don't hold a grudge. So we left early that day just before lunch which was pretty much unprecedented and as I drove to my mom's after some time I found the ultimate best route from work to mom and never varied my route. I spent several hours with my mom that day and we had a glorious time. I remember that day like it was yesterday. I really

felt like our time together that day was significant and blessed. As it turns out, I ended up leaving her house at about the same time I usually left work. To get home, I virtually had to pass my office so I used the same route as when driving from work to mom's only in reverse. I was slowing down for a stop sign about 10 minutes into the trip when I noticed a car stopping at the opposing stop sign. It was exactly like my car. At the time I drove a 2003 Pontiac Aztec. Yep, that sad little car that was cool for a minute before it was blown up in Breaking Bad. And my car was absolutely filthy as I just didn't have the time to deal with it. The car opposing me. Same model, same year, same filth. I even noticed the same dent on the driver's

side rear panel. Of course I was curious so as we passed each other I checked out the driver. She looked exhausted and sad. She stared straight ahead so she never saw me. And she was me. Same hair, same face, same hands on the same places on the steering wheel. I was driving past myself. I was going home but I was also driving to my mom's at the exact time I did virtually every other day. That poor version of me apparently was still being yanked around by a difficult client and was feeling the stress and strain of another hard day while this version of me was finally done and had a great day with my mom. I saw the car in my rearview mirror as I realized I had instinctively started to brake, but almost immediately the other car turned to bend and

was gone. I was shaken so I pulled over to get my wits back. I kept telling myself I couldn't have seen what I saw. This just had to be some crazy coincidence, but I knew better. When I got home I called my mom. I acted cool like I just wanted to tell her I got home safe. She wasn't at all surprised by my call so I knew I wasn't sitting there talking to her but there was no question in my mind that I had just witnessed something extraordinary. extraordinary fifteen years ago I was working part-time at a clothing store in a strip mall in Ohio

I wanted a second job so I applied at other stores on the block while sitting down at a restaurant filling out their job application all the staff gathered about 10 feet from me and stared. I heard them whispering to each other, It's Rebecca. Wow, she's back. My name is Rebecca, but this was the first time I had been in this restaurant. I was confused and then it was awkward walking up to them to give them the application. Yes, they were still all there watching me. The woman I handed my application to looked at it and then looked a bit confused.

Huh, we thought you were the Rebecca who used to work here, but you have a different last name. That was kind of a crazy coincidence, but it was just that, a coincidence, so I forgot about it. At the clothing store I worked at, I was reminded of the coincidence when people from the restaurant who used to work there would come in and think I was the Rebecca they knew. It happened multiple times and people would start conversations with me legitimately thinking I was her and someone told the person she was talking to on the phone, you'll never guess who works here, Rebecca from the restaurant. And this also happened when I would pick up lunch from my bosses from the restaurant. Someone there told me that Rebecca moved to Florida a while ago.

One day I was working at the front end of the store putting security tags and clothes and I saw a woman approach the doors. I can't even explain what I felt when she came in but when I think about it I get chills. I knew who she was the moment I saw her. At the same time we both said, Rebecca? She was in town visiting and her former colleagues told her about me. Then we both agreed that we looked nothing alike and we had no clue what everyone was talking about. She left and the whole exchange was over in a minute. My manager was in the back and she was so mad that I didn't come and get her so she could be a better judge of our similarities. I wish I had done it. I know the story seems

anticlimactic but the thing is, 15 years later I still remember what I felt when I saw her and how cosmic and totally eerie it was without even knowing it was actually her. When I think about it I get chills that last for an hour afterwards and chills feels like a complete understatement. It all feels supernatural. I felt a powerful and bizarre connection. For 17 years, I had a black and white tuxedo cat named Rascal. One of Rascal's favorite hiding and chill out spots was in cabinets. He had learned how to open up cabinets early in his life but you could always tell when he was going into one because of the noise the cabinet door would make when it closed.

They would always take a few times of him opening the cabinet a little bit before he'd go in, so the door would end up closing repeatedly and making the sound a little bit of a bouncing sound. We suspected that he may have also been playing with the door to make the sound on purpose as he also used to like to play with the springy doorstop things. Sometimes he'd hide out in the kitchen cabinets, sometimes the bedroom cabinets. Probably his favorite spot was under the sink in the cabinet of the vanity in the guest bathroom. He chilled out here most often because this was the bathroom that got the most traffic and the sink was how he preferred to get his water. What he would do was wait for

someone to sit down in the toilet, then he'd push the cabinet door open as he'd meow, jump up on the sink, and then he'd give a friendly perr-o as his way of asking for water. If you didn't immediately turn the water on for him, he'd stare at you, give you another purr, and then maybe bat at the faucet with his paw or mark the faucet with his cheeks. He would be very insistent and demanding until you fulfilled his water request. No, it didn't matter that you had other business to attend to in the bathroom. Once the water was turned on to a steady trickle, he put his entire head under the water, then drink it up, whatever fell into the sink from his head.

We tried one of those self-watering dishes, both the bottle ones and the cat water slide types, and he just played with the water and made a mess. He wouldn't drink from a bowl unless he was desperate. We assume this was because drinking from a bowl was something that dogs do and it was beneath his status as a cat. So this was the way it was until May of 2015 when Rascal passed away at the age of 17. I tell you that story so that you have the background for the next part of the story. First off, you should know that I'm not a religious person or what you would typically define as spiritual. That is, I've never had much direct experience with anything I could define as being spiritual,

seeing ghosts or paranormal that couldn't be explained away by logic or coincidence. I work in IT and tend to be very logical, analytical, and scientific in my thinking. To be brutally honest, I have Asperger's, a form of autism spectrum disorder. I have a very keen sense of hearing and tend to notice small details that often get overlooked by others. One night, about a month after Rascal had passed away, my wife and I were watching something on TV and I heard the cabinet door in the kitchen trying to be open like the cat used to do. I thought it might be the dog brushing past the cabinet but then as I looked towards the kitchen, I see our dog laying down on the side of the couch fast asleep. It was then that I also heard that distinct meow, exactly like Rascal used to make.

My eyes got really wide and I looked at my wife to see her eyes just as big and a puzzled expression on her face as she asked me, You heard that too, didn't you? Being the skeptic that I am, I asked her, Maybe, but what did you hear? She responds, I swear I heard Rascal meow and try to open the cabinet door in the kitchen. I felt relieved that she corroborated what I heard, but I felt really weird because it was definitely something I could not logically explain. I got up to check the cabinets, mainly out of a last ditch effort to reconcile what we heard with the logical explanation. My thought was, maybe a neighbor's cat got into here while

we had the front door cracked open when we let the dog out. As expected, there was no cat in any of the cabinets. This actually happened again about two weeks later and both my wife and I heard it this time too. She believes it was our cat's spirit and took comfort in knowing he was still around. Though I sort of just accepted the anomaly as something weird happened and I can't explain it. The kicker to the story happened about a year later when we had a guest over. She had to use the guest bathroom and when she came out she asked, you guys didn't tell me you had a cat. My wife and I looked at each other with very big eyes and then I asked her guess, what do you mean? She then said that while she was sitting there

using the toilet she was reading an article on her phone and she heard a cat meow but she made the very distinct sound that our cat made. She said it sounded like a meow but phrased like a question. Then I heard the vanity cabinet door being opened and when I looked up I saw the door closed. I opened the cabinet but there was no cat there. I thought that was pretty odd especially since you never told me that you had a cat. I said to her we never mentioned we had a cat because he passed away last year. The host's favorite hideout was under the sink in the bathroom in the vanity cabinet. Her eyes got really big and could only muster out saying whoa. We then explained how he passed, showed her pictures of Rascal, and told her some other stories about him.

It's good to know that he's still around. My friend and I were driving around the back roads of Ballard County in western Kentucky. It was about 2am. I was driving and turned onto a gravel farm road. As I did, I caught sight of something white and vaguely human crawling in the ditch. As we passed, I hit the brakes thinking it was a person who needed help. Are you crazy? Don't stop! Blake screamed.

My friend. I looked in the mirror and saw that it was standing up. Even though it was still in the ditch, it was as tall as the stop sign next to it. It took a step towards us and I hit the gas. As we drove away, I saw in the mirror that it dropped to all fours and was crawling after us. I didn't start pulling away from it till I got up to about 40 miles per hour. Though we were so close to it, I never got a good look at it. It was fuzzy like it was constantly out of focus.

I'm not sure why, but something about it makes me think of it as male. Maybe the height. When it crawled, it moved like it had lizard hands and feet flat on the ground, elbows and knees up and out, body wiggling side to side. This happened when I was around 22. I'm 40 now and have never seen that thing again.

I've taken many a midnight cruise along those narrow roads, but I've never had the nerve to go near that particular farm road again. Call me a chicken. I'll cluck happily. One time when I was visiting Lake Tahoe in Northern California, me and my buddies decided to make a night journey to Emerald Bay. There wasn't a normal speed limit sign like I'm used to however there was a sign that issued a maximum speed for you not to exceed and from now having experience on this road I would say you shouldn't even approach that speed because it

just isn't safe. Well long story short I was driving and it was pitch black outside and I was trying as closely as I could to maintain the maximum speed as the roads were very curvy and it was fun. As I'm driving around a rather sharp curve in the road we end up behind a street sweeper truck which seemed to come out of nowhere and seemed oddly out of place. It was nearly 2am and the truck was operating as if it was broad daylight. Well as I got closer to the street sweeper I had to reduce my speed by a lot. There was a sign on the back of the truck that said something along the lines of do not follow work truck. Well as I'm driving behind this truck and

about to pass it the letters on the sign start to shift and rearrange themselves and I kid you not the new message said drive slowly and I couldn't believe my eyes that I had just seen this sign change. Well I passed the truck and I'm going about 15 miles per hour because well the sign said drive slowly and I was freaked out. The very next turn we come to I had to slam on my brakes and veer sharply just to make the turn, and had the street sweeper not have been there and had this sign not have changed, I would have been maintaining my speed like a madman and we would have surely driven off the road. After our adventure we return to the hotel and just a reminder, this whole drive was taken in the dead of night. We make the same exact trip in the morning and it's obviously broad daylight.

Needless to say, we were all shocked as to how different the landscape around the road we were driving on looked than we expected because, well, we had driven in the dead of night and now we could see. When we got to the part of the road where I had to slam on the brakes and veer just to make the turn the night before, the road made a u-shaped turn and it was high up on a mountain with no guardrail and we were looking right over the cliff and if we hadn't slowed down we surely would have plummeted to our deaths. Thank you to whoever for saving our lives. I'm getting chills just thinking about this event. I want to preface this by saying that I've had a lot of stuff happen to me on my grandparents land.

It's 75 acres of horror if you're not used to it. I grew up there so a lot of this didn't faze me too much. So if my reactions are odd it's because this is my life and I'm kind of desensitized. No this is not the only thing to chase after me in my car but this one was different. I was 17 years old driving from my dad's house on the before mentioned land. Pretty late, I think it was around 11 or so. I had dropped someone off at my dad's house and was driving back into town to get back to my mom's place. As I was driving down a long driveway, I kept seeing things move in the field. I didn't pay any attention, probably a rabbit or something.

Things moving in the grass as normal. I get out to the road and I see something or someone in the ditch just laying there. Me being a girl in a raggedy old car at a place with terrible signal in the middle of the night with no weapon on me, I floor it. I don't care, I figured I could call my dad later to take care of the possible drunk in the ditch. I'm driving down the road, memory of the ditch person creeping me out. I get this awful feeling of being watched. I'm traveling down this road at nearly 60 miles per hour with no signal whatsoever. Okay, maybe I'm just overreacting. Whatever. I still speed up because I want to get signal to call my boyfriend because it would make me feel safer. Then I see something running alongside my car. Well, I say running. It was more

skittering. Lanky limbs on all fours running and keeping up with me going 60 plus miles per hour down a country logging highway. I think my brain kind of had an aneurysm at this point because I'm just repeating to myself, what, what? I'm getting closer to civilization though so I floor it, getting up to 80 and leaving it behind. I call my boyfriend freaking out about what I saw. I pulled over at a little church with a light out front, trying to logic it out of my mind when I see the thing again. It's on the road, skittering towards my parked car. Before I have time to pull out the lot, it's on me, hitting my car hard enough to dent the rear bumper. I scream, squealing out of the lot and driving like a maniac towards town. I get into town and circle around the main areas a few times, calming down before I go to my

mom's. Further description of this thing, it's weirdly flat, like someone trying to do a back bend but not bending. Its limbs were long and spindly, with pale skin stretched too tight across its bones. Has anyone else ever had an experience with a creature such as this? The first time I lived away from home I was 18 years old and thought I was absolutely invincible, as you do when you first become an official adult. I could buy alcohol and cigarettes and, in general, I just thought I knew it all. I had moved in with my boyfriend at the time, now my ex, and after a few months of living together on just his wage, I got a job to help and make our lives more comfortable. The job was simple, working at a petrol station on the tills,

stocking the shelves, etc. I generally enjoyed working there. I met a lot of friends and enjoyed a lot of banter with the regular customers. I loved everything about that job, except for the fact that it was 5 miles from home. I often didn't finish until 11 p.m. and I had to walk as I didn't drive. My ex did but his reluctance to pick me up is one of the many reasons that he is now my ex. This walk was usually done in the dark and most of the time I listened to music the entire time as I hated to walk in silence. Most of the time I didn't have any issues and the walk was entirely uneventful, actually enjoyable sometimes, until the one time that it wasn't. It's important to mention that at the same time that I started my job, I rescued a dog from a shelter, a massive

Japanese Akita who was scared of everything but extremely protective of me. Anyway, one night in the middle of winter I worked the last shift and finished at 11pm, saying goodbye to my colleagues before putting my headphones in and beginning my long walk home. It was below freezing and I stuffed my hands in my pockets, music drowning out all other noise as I trudged home. I had to cross a busy motorway on the way and it was here that I noticed someone else waiting to cross, a tall guy with a hat and gloves. I distinctly remember being relieved when he smiled at me in a friendly manner and I smiled back before a gap appeared in traffic and I crossed two more miles to go. After a walk that seemed to last forever my house finally came into view and I breathed a sigh

of relief knowing I could sink into a hot bath before getting into bed. The next day was my day off so I very much was looking forward to lay in. As he usually was when I wasn't home my dog was in the garden and when he heard my footsteps he came running to the gate to meet me. That's when the night took a turn. Rather than the tail wagging excitable overgrown puppy that he usually was with me, my dog took one look in my direction through the gate and suddenly turned into something much more fitting of his wolf-like appearance. His teeth were bared, his hackles up and his stance just screamed anger. On top of this he was making a noise that I had never heard him make in all the time that I've had him over two years by this point. I was confused so I held

my hand out to let him know it was just me thinking that maybe he didn't recognize my outline or something. No such luck. If anything he became more and more angry the closer I got. I'd never been scared of him before so I didn't know what to do. Should I freeze or should I keep moving? As I soon discovered, freezing would have been a very bad idea. Careful to keep my hands out of reach of my dog's jaws, knowing that he had one heck of a bite on him from the accidental nips he had given me during our play fighting, I opened the gate and suddenly felt myself pulled into the garden by the bottom of my coat. As I looked back to see what on earth had gotten into

my dog, I saw him running at full speed towards a guy, the guy from the motorway. I began to frantically scream for my dog to come back as he was running directly towards a busy road as my boyfriend at the time decided to come and see what was going on. This was one of the only times I saw him show any kind of protectedness over me and my dog at all. Despite my screaming my dog had caught up to the guy and leapt up, his jaws closing around the dude's arm. I heard the guy yell in agony before the streetlights reflected off of something long and shiny in his other hand as it came down and disappeared into my dog. This guy had just stabbed my dog. As my dog let go of his arm the dude took off in the opposite direction and I ran to where my beloved dog lay in a heap on

the floor. With tears streaming down my face I yelled for my boyfriend to call the police about the guy who had followed me and cradled my dog's head in my lap. He looked at my hand as I used the others to try and stop the blood flowing from his neck where the knife had been plunged into him but it was coming too fast that there was nothing I could do. As my boyfriend told the police as much as he could my beloved best friend and now protector took his last breath in my lap. I was heartbroken and absolutely furious. The police did find the guy. They picked him up at the local accident and emergency where he had gone to get stitches for a dog bite. As it turned out he lived almost directly next to the petrol station where I worked and he had followed me

the entire way home. He admitted to stabbing my dog too. I don't know what happened to that guy as this event played a huge part in the end of my relationship and I moved back to my hometown, back to living with my parents where I knew I was safe. I will never know what that guy planned although I can hazard a guess as to what he wanted to do considering he followed me five miles with a knife in his pocket. I will forever be grateful for my dog. He probably saved my life that night by giving his own. Have you heard the stories of people who have gone into cardiac arrest on an operating table

and experienced the phenomenon of floating above themselves as doctors and surgeons fight to save their lives? Yeah, me too. I always wondered how they could know the details of what happened to them during the entire time that they were technically dead. What was said and who performed which action in reviving them? For most of my life I was massively skeptical about these stories at least until it happened to me. I am now unfortunately among the small number of people who knows what my own corpse looks like and it haunts me. It happened during an emergency c-section when my placenta ruptured and I began to lose massive amounts of blood. I remember being rushed down to theater, oxygen mask on my face and the kindest midwife ever holding my hand the entire way.

With blood pouring from between my legs and my thankfully full term baby in distress inside my womb. I have vivid memories of changing into a hospital gown while having a catheter put into me with no anesthetic before I was taken into theater and then, well, that's the last thing I remember until... until completely out of the blue I found myself conscious of the fact that I was in a position that shouldn't be possible, almost as though I were glued to the ceiling. I know it sounds strange that this was the first thing I noticed, but in such a situation all rational and logical thought gets completely cast aside in favor of what is happening to me kind of thinking. Then I looked down and gasped at what I saw, except no sound came out of my mouth. My eyes were glued to the form of

myself on the operating table, eyes taped shut and a tube down my throat to help me breathe under anesthetic. As my gaze moved down over my body, I soon came across the single most horrifying sight that I had ever seen in my life or probably ever will see again. My intestines, a part of myself that I had never dreamed of seeing were clearly showing as one of the nurses pushed them aside with a metal tool, allowing one of the surgeons to stitch what I assumed to be my womb. Although these two, the nurses holding my insides and the surgeon fixing the hole in my uterus were calm and collected, I watched on as the other surgeon and another nurse shouted

for them both to stand back. I hadn't noticed before, so focused on my internal organs that they were hurriedly prepping the defibrillator. It was at this moment that I realized I was dead. As they stepped away from the table and the surgeon slammed the pads down on my chest, I felt an intense pulling inside my there but not there floating self, tugging me down in the direction of my body. With each attempt made to shock my heart back into its normal rhythm, I moved closer and closer to my own body. The nurse who had helped set up the defib hooked up a bag of blood, obviously needed to replenish that which I had lost before I felt myself fall and then I woke up. I don't know how long later in the recovery room and found a nurse smiling down at

me with a clipboard in her hand. She seemed quite kind and gently told me what happened during surgery, how I had basically been dead for four and a half minutes, though she obviously didn't word it quite so bluntly. All I could do was nod, not wanting to voice what I had experienced, before I asked for my baby and tried to forget the sight of my own insides, but it just wasn't likely to happen. For months, now years, I had suffered from severe postnatal depression and, unsurprisingly, post-traumatic stress disorder. I spoke to the surgeon when he came to check on me after about a week in the hospital, told him what I had seen, but he told me that my brain had created the scenario to cope with the trauma that had happened to my body.

I asked him how I could have known how many shocks it took, seven by the way, for my heart to start beating again and he just assumed it to be a lucky guess. I'm still not entirely sure whether I actually experienced this or whether, like the surgeon suggested, it is a figment of my traumatized mind. I know what I saw and I am certain that I know things I shouldn't so I lean more towards having actually experienced it. Although the depression has lessened in severity, I still have nightmares almost every night about the sight of my own lifeless body, and I wake up with a deep need to feel my own pulse. I can't watch documentaries or dramas about hospitals, just in case I hear the long, monotonous beep of a flatlining ECG machine and am taken back to that moment.

I know that this might be confusing to some, but it is incredibly difficult to try and explain what happened to me. I just thought that writing it and sharing the experience might help me in some way, but only time will tell. This happened on December 21st, 2016. I'm a 21-year-old Canadian girl, 19 at the time. At this time in my life, I was pretty desperate for attention, so I went on a lot of bad dates and put myself in a lot of bad situations. So when this pretty cute guy started hitting on me and I was pretty flattered and I agreed to go do some mushrooms at his place and get to know each other better. I'm not going to go into details but let's just say that that was a really bad idea. So I ended up leaving his place around midnight

out of my mind with a long and cold walk to the train station ahead of me. They really didn't bother me though to be honest, I was just happy to be out of that situation and on my way home. I also really enjoy the cold and had done mushrooms many times by this point and was really enjoying the walk. It was just a straight walk of mostly residential streets until you came to a busier street that leads to downtown. It separates the residential streets from the mall that I worked at at the time and a Wendy's that was closer to the lights where I had to cross. Just beyond the mall is the train station. You have to walk either through the mall parking lot or through a field where the old high school used to be to get to the train station. So I got to the

lights and was waiting to cross. However, it was quite late and the light was taking what felt like forever for it to change. That's when a big blue pickup truck came driving down the road away from downtown. It slowed right down as it passed me before speeding off. I probably should have sensed some danger, but my mind was worried that he slowed down to let me pass and when I didn't he left making me think that the light wasn't going to change. I now noticed that same blue truck around the block and was now sitting in the parking lot of the closed Wendy's. Now I realized that something was wrong. The light finally changed and I walked across the street.

I planned on just walking past it and going through the mall parking lot to get to the train. I kept my head down as I walked. The man in the truck yelled something at me as I walked past. I looked up and in my state of mind I thought it was a regular customer of mine as I worked at that mall. I raised my arms up in the air like, ah you got me, but as I approached the truck I realized how wrong I was. This was a completely different person and I was now at the side of his truck in an abandoned Wendy's parking lot. I just stared at him. I could feel someone staring at me from the back seat of the truck, right behind the driver's seat, but there

was no one in the front passenger seat. The driver smiled and asked me things straight out of a PSA. Things like, what part of the city do you live in, and do you live alone? I was being polite and actually answering his questions truthfully because for some reason I thought he was a cop. I mean, it had to be why his questions were so forward, right? He obviously knew I was out of it and was trying to make sure I got home safe, right? Wrong. In a matter of maybe five minutes, he knew a part of the city I lived in, that I lived with my dad, and that I had planned on taking the train home. It wasn't until he straight up asked for directions to my house that I played dumb and said that I didn't know. He kind of

raised his eyebrow at me and said, so you don't know where you live? I kind of laughed and was like, nope, I guess not. And I walked around the back of his truck, headed for the field to get to the train station and he pulled away. I had to cross a small street to get to the field. I noticed further down the street was the truck parking facing me and I looked at it. It inched forward a little to make it seem like he was leaving. I turned around and kept walking. I turned around a few seconds later to see the truck still there. I put my arms in the air and yelled,

I see you! He then drove off as he was going to circle around the mall. I ran into the field and I pulled out my phone. He then drove off as he was going to circle around the mall. I ran into the field and I pulled out my phone. I dialed 911 and paused before pressing call. I was clearly on something and there was a good chance that I wouldn't be taken seriously. I was also worried that I was going to have to take the cops back to that guy's house as it had been where I left from and where I got the stuff from. So instead I called

my dad. By the time he picked up the phone I was crying. I explained to him what was happening and he said to get somewhere safe and call a cab. If I had been smart I would have taken the train a couple of stops in the wrong direction and then called the cab. I didn't. Instead I went to the train station that he knew I was going to be at and called the cab. I waited't. Instead, I went to the train station that he knew I was going to be at and called the cab. I waited there for 20 minutes. I kept peeking out to see if he was there, but I didn't see him. My cab arrived and I got in and told the cab where to go. I was looking behind us the whole time. Just before we made it to downtown, I noticed that a large truck was behind us, but I couldn't see the color until we

turned and the truck turned behind us. It was of course blue. I started freaking out and I begged for the cab to pull over. He did so reluctantly and the blue truck slowly rolled by and then turned the corner like he was going to drive back around the block. I yelled at the driver to start going again and he did so, very annoyed. I finally did make it home and collapsed on my bed in tears. I didn't leave the house for two days terrified that he was driving around my neighborhood looking for me. I did see him and his truck one more time but it's not really worth mentioning. Please be safe people. There were so many things I could have done to prevent this from happening but I was too out of it and dumb to think straight.

For a bit of background I got a cell phone at 10. Awesome, I thought. I can text my friends and play games with my phone. Now, one thing I loved to do was do prank calls. Silly boy stuff. Now, I would have gotten company numbers and call and say the classics. Is your refrigerator running? Did the doctor call? Can I borrow your cat? Now, I had a good laugh and didn't mean any harm.

Now, one day, my cousin that I never really see came over for a sleepover. She was a girl, I was a boy, we had different interests. So I gave her an idea to prank call and number and she kept saying no. I finally asked why. Her answer still to this day sends shivers down my spine. A few years back, like 3- four years before this sleepover that happened a long time ago, coincidentally my cousin was having another sleepover with her friends. They were prank calling numbers. When it was my cousin's turn, she dialed the ten digits of what

I like to call horror. She presses the call button. One ring, nothing. Two rings, three rings, four rings as she was about to hang up someone picks up. Silence. She breaks the silence with one of her jokes. She laughs and hangs up. They all have a good laugh and then they call. They pick up and they hang up. After exactly 60 seconds he calls again and again exactly every minute and then the breathing started and then the sinister laughing I imagined him grinning. This was all going on for about an entire solid hour. The creepiest part is that my cousin had blocked that number. So this happened back almost 7 years ago. Around this time my grandmother got extremely ill and we were preparing for tragic news. For context, I don't live in the safest city in California, let alone the safest neighborhood.

We lived in a small but comfortable house for almost 12 years. Although my neighborhood wasn't very trustworthy, I lived two blocks away from one of my best friends, which I will call her Elle. She would always come visit and we would talk about upcoming video games and laugh at memes until my parents arrived home. This particular rainy afternoon, we had received a phone call that my grandmother is at her final hours. My dad, who my grandmother was his mother, wanted to find a travel agent to purchase an airplane ticket to leave the next following morning as she lived in Mexico. As I tried my best to comfort my dad, he prepared to head out because the agency closed within an hour.

He owned a small blue pickup truck and left our chain-linked fence open because of the weather conditions. I watched him drive out and into the road and noticed two hooded young men walking on the sidewalk. One was wearing a red sweater while the other was wearing a black jacket. I didn't think much of it because it was raining profusely and I'm sure that they were just protecting themselves from the rain. I sat in the living room with my sweet dog, Palooza, as we both heard someone coming in from our backyard fence door. I checked out the window and the door was completely wide open. Figured because of the weather, it opened by its own, so I continued to watch TV while cuddling my cute dog.

Soon after, I began to feel this sense of dread that something was not right after all. Now, I'm a really sensitive individual when it comes to stress so I immediately needed to use the bathroom which was located near our backyard door. I entered into the bathroom and began to throw up. As I was emptying my stomach I heard someone knocking at our front door and thought maybe my mom was coming home from work and forgot her keys. I tried my best to immediately clean myself up and once again heard the someone knocking but it sounded as if though they were trying to break the door down. I looked through the front window and noticed it was the hooded man with the red

sweater. I was only 16 at that time and had no experience with self-defense so my first instinct was to try to find something that I could use as a weapon. I went to the kitchen and I grabbed the sharpest knife that I could find. As seconds began to feel like hours I panicked and locked myself in the bathroom, and through the window I saw the other hooded man in my backyard trying to break in through the garage entry door. My poor ankle-biter pup was yelping her life away while I was trying to dial 911. The operator told me to stay on the line as police were only about five minutes away. Soon after, I began to hear police sirens heading to the direction of my house and heard the two men fled from the garage door. I nearly threw up again

out of shock when one of the police officers knocked on the bathroom door. I gave my report and called my friend L to keep me company as I was still trying to wrap my head around what had just occurred. There was nothing stolen but they did damage both of our entry doors and we replaced them immediately after. A few months passed by when none of us were home our home was broken into once again. They took everything in sight and needless to say we had enough and found a new and safer home. Every time I hang out with Elle, I think about that traumatic day, and I can't thank her enough for being there for me. I also want to thank my lucky stars,

because if it wasn't for the fact that my neighborhood had a history, the police wouldn't have made it in time. Number 1. The Pianist. When I was around 11, I joined the choir group at our local church. I was so excited yet shy to make friends, but fortunately the other kids were nice enough to make me feel welcomed. One night, as we finished singing, the pianist approached me. He was mid-40s and had a big gut. He had that leering smile as well that always made me feel uneasy, but I always just brushed it off. He told me, hey, put your name and number in our sign-up sheet for the summer program. I can't exactly

remember what type of summer program it was, but of course I obliged right away, excited to spend more time with the people I'm getting to know a bit better as time went on. A few days later I received a text seemingly from him. It was totally innocent at first, just to ask if I could make it to practice or the service and whatnot, until one day he started to get weird and ask questions like, do you like going to the mall? I didn't want to be rude, I know looking back I realized how that line always seems to get younger girls into trouble, huh? So I said, of course I do. He then went on how he would love to bring me to the mall closest to us,

and would love to take me shopping. Again, I was 11, so what does a mid-40 year old man want from a kid? My mother soon found out about the text because I showed her. I didn't really think much of it. I even laughed when I showed her and said look mom this guy is weird. I thought it was just that. He was just weird. Boy was I wrong. She was furious and demanded to have the pianist fired. It was a big mess. A few days later, I found out that this man would bring young girls to the mall, buy them whatever they wished to gain their trust, and bring them to a dark movie house, and of course, you guessed it. I was shocked when I

found out about this. Definitely dodged a bullet. Apparently, he had been doing that for years and finally got caught. Number 2. The Priest I know, I know. Catholic priests don't have stellar reputations and it's true. Some are pure and some should definitely be behind bars. The same local church I was in, a few months after the incident, one of the priests seemed to be too touchy to all of us, even young boys. He'd been one of the senior priests there. Sometimes he would just innocently pat us on our heads, but most time he would caress our lower backs or our arms for a few seconds while talking to us. It definitely made me super uneasy. I think it did to all of us. No one ever said anything, at least to my knowledge. Then one day he started messaging

me on Facebook saying things like, wow, you are so beautiful, every angle is great, and stuff like that. Seeing you in church brightens my mood every time you are so beautiful. Mind you, I was still 11 years old and I'm pretty sure with all his white hair and thin frail frame he was nearly in his 60s. The touches advanced to him putting his hand on my thigh. On our thighs I wasn't the only one. I told my mom again about this and she suggested I stop attending church altogether since creepy men seemed to surround the place. I did and I don't know what became of that. I do wish young girls and boys are safe from him though. Number three, the trainer. I had a time in my life where I was overweight and it definitely made me insecure. So my mom being ever supportive enrolled me to a gym. I was a teenager

around this point and thought it was going well until one day a trainer I didn't know approached me and asked for my number. He said it was so he can inform me about the classes or events the gym offers because they do it to all their members. Stupid teenager me of course obliged and gave him my number. Again like the pianist it was innocent at first just asking if I'm enjoying the gym and all that. He then suddenly asked if I'm dating. I responded, no, I'm too young. He then asked, are you interested in dating older men? I didn't know what to think of that, but still I answered, I guess, I don't know. He said, I'm 32, would you date me? Well, needless to say, I quit the gym and blocked his number. Number four, the guitarist.

Another supposed mentor of mine who took advantage. We signed up for musical lessons for extracurricular and I chose the guitar. The room for the lessons were small, just enough for a few equipments and two persons. To save space, I suppose. The place had a few rooms to cater to other students. I was still a teenager here, too. At first he was a nice dude, probably mid-thirties. Then the touching started to happen. It was only session two when he started caressing my shoulders, seemingly encouraging me that I can do it. Just keep practicing, he said. Nervously, I said okay. I was nervous because, I kid you not, he looked really creepy. He had long,

thin hair that was tied back, had a big gut as well, and some facial hair that was unkempt. I don't want to sound judgmental, but that was what I was thinking when I was a teenager. Next session, he suddenly put his hand on my thigh. At first while explaining our lessons that day he just kept it there like it was a normal thing to do. Then before we started he started to move it up and down. Well guess who never showed up to the next session. I was too scared to go for the third session and to even tell my mom. I just said I was feeling sick. I forget how events transpired from there, but all I know is I never went back.

Number 5. The Chef and the Old Guest By this point, I'm already 18. I did an internship abroad and got close to the chefs at the place I trained at. There was one particular chef though. He was really nice at first. Aren't they all? My shifts start really early, like 4am early. Backstory, I open the place by myself until a chef arrives to help start setting up, then a few other colleagues come. It was around 5am. It was just the two of us then. I was busy prepping. He greeted me like normal, then suddenly he came up behind me and started massaging my shoulders.

At first I laughed and nudged him a good morning. I thought he would stop there, but he literally pushed himself up to my behind and breathed out onto my ear. Hmm, you were good. His English was broken and he was Chinese. I was so scared and just walked away after pushing him away. I pretended that I forgot to do something elsewhere. I tried avoiding him since then and I know I should have told my superiors but there was also an incident where I had an old guest who suddenly grabbed my shoulders and kissed my right cheek while taking a video of himself showing off the view of the restaurant. I felt helpless then and when the chef incident happened I thought no one would do anything like before anyway so why bother.

My last encounter with the chef was during my last day. He caught me alone in the elevator, moved up close to me, grabbed my shoulders, and took a selfie on his phone. My smile was obviously awkward and forced. I was too shocked to say anything. He went out first, and after a few seconds, I got my bearings and went back to my apartment. Number six, young adult. I'm used to catcalls and men who stare, or even who obviously fake accidentally brushing against me just to touch me, or random guys who message me. Facebook and Instagram can be a

dangerous place too. One guy found out where I worked and dropped by and even left food for me. I only replied a few times to him just to be polite, so leaving food and dropping by was definitely not normal. I've never even met him, just had common friends. I blocked him and never heard from him again, thank god. Next, there was also this guy who apparently saves all my pictures on his phone and has an album for me. He sent me a screen capture and would always message me about how beautiful I am. I deleted my Facebook and have my Instagram on private now. Ending with this, I hope young girls or even young boys have people around them to protect them against these types of people.

The world is dangerous. Be safe kids. It was May of 2015. It was around my birthday. I was having a few friends over to spend the night at my house to watch scary movies and go to bed at ungodly hours. Still guilty of all of this. There was a park behind my house, so when it was around dark at around 10 or 11 p.m., we decided to hang out there a little before starting our movie night. The park was empty, so we were laughing, talking, and messing around as usual when we noticed a figure wearing a hoodie, watching us from the fence. It gave us an uneasy feeling,

but we thought nothing of it at first. After a good 20 minutes of still walking, we noticed he didn't move, still watching us from the fence. At this moment, we started to get creeped out. So I, thinking creepy stalkers were just happening in movies I like to watch, not here in my little Canadian town, decided to go ask him what he wanted. As I get closer, I get a creepy feeling. May I help you? I said. He said nothing, but did a creepy feeling. May I help you? I said. He said nothing but did a step behind.

I walked a little closer to him. He stepped back again. At first finding the situation funny and entertaining I was now annoyed and scared. Why are you watching us since we got here? He started walking away so I ran after him. I know, not very smart. As he started running, he got a whistle out of his pocket and started to blow in his whistle. As he did that, two cars came out of nowhere at full speed a few streets away. I started to run, screaming to my friends to run also. The park is behind my house, but we had to go around the block to get there since there was fences separating us from the park, but we could not go back at my house without passing by the cars now slowly looking for us but there was a hole in the fence. Two of my friends went through the hole but me and my other friends were scared we would not pass through so we hid behind a tiny tree which was just fine since it was dark outside.

Seeing the cars by the park got us freaking out, so we decided to give it a shot and go through the small hole. I made my friend go first. I went after, and we ran to my house. We didn't call the police, and I don't know why. Something was really up that night. I couldn't say for sure what this was all about, but it definitely wasn't good. When this happened to me, I was a young woman in my early 20s, but I still don't look my own age.

I don't have my driver's license and never had it, so I would walk to get to and from the daycare center my two kids frequented. That day was a beautiful fall day and I almost arrived at the daycare. I was about to cross a little street but there was a dark SUV that was going to cross so I stopped. The car stopped and the driver opened his window. He wasn't sketchy or anything, he looked like a random 30 to 40 something man. He starts asking me about directions to a restaurant in town that he could eat at. I tried to answer as best as I could, expecting that he would eventually leave, but he didn't. He continued by inviting me to go eat with him. I answered no thanks. He insisted by saying I wouldn't have to pay anything and that he wasn't a bandit. The second he said that was a huge red flag and it went up in my mind.

I told him I had to go get my son now and started walking towards the daycare. I went inside thinking that interaction was weird but decided not to make a big deal of it. I got my son and we started to walk back home. We only had walked a minute or two when I saw the weirdo's car drive by. He gave me a nod and continued on. We continued our walk another few minutes after we had to cross a street. He stopped in front of us and asked me if I wanted to lift home. I refused and continued to walk. At this point I was on high alert. Normally I would let my son push the stroller just a little ahead of me, following him closely but not touching the

stroller. He was always a pain in the butt to walk, my son to and from daycare, this was one of the tricks that made him kind of follow normally. So after the weirdo asked me if I wanted to lift, I went ahead and placed my hands on the stroller handles, placing my son between me and the stroller. At about halfway home, the car passed beside us again, and then he told me that he had to speak with me and if we could stop by the park nearby. I answered no again, and he drives off. Now, I was on high alert and changed my habitual route, just in case he would follow me. This was before a cell phone so I couldn't call anyone. I made it home safely but I checked over

my shoulder for the rest of the trip home. Spotting houses where there would be a sign of someone being home so I could go bang on the door if he came back and making plans in my mind how I could flee if I saw him again. At the time this story takes place, I was 14, almost 15, and a sophomore in high school. I've never had a paranormal encounter in my life, but I still somewhat believed in the paranormal. This is the first close encounter I had ever had in my life. In case you don't know what a skinwalker is, they're people that can morph into an animal of their choice and originate from Navajo legend. I'll go further into depth about why I think this encounter was a skinwalker later in the story. So I was at my cousin's house with both my stepbrothers, and all of us were really into nerf guns at the time.

I'll refer to my cousin as T, my oldest stepbrother as J, and my younger as A. For our entertainment, we decided to split up into two teams and have what we called a nerf war, very creatively. The goal of the game was to knock down both of our opponents by hitting them once with a nerf war, very creatively. The goal of the game was to knock down both of our opponents by hitting them once with a nerf bullet, as it was pretty difficult to accomplish. Once one person had been shot, they were out of the game and not able to be revived. And once both of them had been shot,

the game had been won by the other team. Simple enough. The boundaries were a couple of blocks long, which included a nearby park that we liked to stay at and hide from the other team. Simple enough. The boundaries were a couple of blocks long, which included a nearby park that we liked to stay at and hide from the other team. Because it was getting dark and we had to leave my cousin's house soon, we decided to have another quick round. We watched as T and A ran in the direction of a nearby ditch, so J and I decided to run towards the park, which was behind us. We ran for a couple of minutes until we reached the huge fake rock that had a slide on top, and we decided to camp up there. For a few

minutes we sat there waiting to see them try to sneak up on us because they knew that they were at the park. Jay and I noticed that there was a dog next to the jungle gym, walking around aimlessly and we thought that maybe it was T's chihuahua. However, we heard somebody call its name and realized that there was a guy standing in the nearby garden. Naturally, we didn't think much of him except how it was creepy that he was just standing there. I tried to rationalize and told Jay that he was probably watering the plants, despite the fact that he obviously wasn't. Before we could realize, the man was gone, but again we thought nothing of it. Out in the field next to the park I spotted two figures

lying down next to a hill, T and A. Jay and I split up. I hid behind a row of bongos and he hid behind a nearby rock. After a few moments of silence between us, I told him that we should move into the nearby brush and stalk them from afar, but he refused. Out of nowhere, we heard a loud screech coming from the nearby brush. We thought it was some type of bird, specifically an eagle, but I also suspected it could be a coyote. A few moments later, I was looking up and admiring the sky when I noticed a shooting star which I initially thought was a plane. I'm not sure whether it has any significance to the story but you'll find out why I think it might later. From that point on we both had very strange feelings that we were being watched by someone or something. I had very weird tingling sensations that started at my feet and went up to my chest

multiple times, and Jay said that he had a burning chest pain that lasted for a long while, to the point where he could barely run. After we left our spot and were going to take a back route to T's house, we heard the screech again, but it sounded like it came from where we were hiding. Ultimately we won the match, but our parents were looking for us and we had to leave his house. T decided to spend the night at our house and as we were waiting for him in the car, A asked if we too had heard the screech. We started to discuss what we thought it was and we all agreed that it was some kind of eagle. However, after discussing with T, he told us what he

encountered. When they were in the field stalking us, T had heard the screech right in his ear, which is nowhere near where we heard it. After that, he said it felt like someone was behind him. He turned to see what was bothering him. Right as he did, he said he was drawn to the same shooting star we saw. After we left the park, which they weren't aware of, they said they both heard Jay's voice calling desperately out for A, his brother. Thinking he might have been hurt, T decided that he should go help, but something just felt off. They ultimately decided to go back to the house. Looking back, we learned why if they didn't make that decision, they would have been as good as dead. T said that he had the exact same feeling as we did while making his way back to the house. Because I was a big fan of horror stories and

heard much about skinwalkers, I asked them if they thought it could possibly be a skinwalker, but nobody really thought so. I decided to do some research and we could possibly be a skinwalker, but nobody really thought so. I decided to do some research and we all realized that a skinwalker fits the situation perfectly. First of all, an eagle is one of the most common forms that skinwalkers take which would explain how we all thought the screech came from an eagle. Secondly, both teams heard the screech at different locations and skinwalkers are known to move extremely quick. Third, they can morph into familiar faces and also imitate voices, which would explain how they heard Jay's voice calling out after we left the park. Lastly, they can actually dig through your mind and know what your fears are,

and T was always afraid of people getting hurt while we were playing. That night, we were all extremely scared because all the videos and stories we watched about skinwalkers. However, the final piece of the puzzle was when I woke up to A standing in our doorway crying. Our dog had died the night before in her sleep. According to one of the many sources I found, I read that some skinwalkers are able to poison the loved ones of their victims after an encounter. What do you guys think? Do you think what I encountered was a skinwalker or was it just a huge coincidence? So about two or so months ago I was out and about with my mom and while driving home

I asked if we could stop by a graveyard we pass when driving down one of our usual routes. It probably sounds weird but to be real I really just like taking pictures. Aesthetically pleasing pictures to be more exact. And as you probably know if you find the right headstone and capture it from just the right angle, you can get a really cool shot. I wanted to just get a few pictures just for kicks and I'd be on my way. My mom liked to take pictures too, so she came along with me to find cool things to photograph. Now, I didn't actually get anything paranormal in the pictures, but the story is strange all the same. This graveyard is a bit small. It's got a

gate surrounding it and it's in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. Strange placement I know. I always wondered what the surrounding residents have seen. The graveyard has a paved road that makes a u-shape and circles back around to the front. We drove down the very very short path and started from the back taking the pictures. This graveyard is pretty old so of course I got caught up in capturing the essence of the time faded gravestones. Some stood up, some lay in the ground. My personal favorite is the one that used to have a carving of the lamb on the top but now is so old you can barely make out the shape. There's also a few graves that simply say infant or baby on them

and some graves that even date back to World War I. It was such an interesting experience, the whole thing melancholy and all. As I approached the front area of the graveyard, I broke off from where my mom was to go look elsewhere. I found a couple of graves that sat in the ground, unkempt and dirty. Then I saw one grave in particular almost completely buried under a layer of dust, dirt and cut grass. That's when the most intense feeling washed over me. It's hard to describe, but I felt scared in some way, almost like someone yelled at me for something I did, and maybe that's what happened. Either way the feeling

I got was not welcoming at all. Whatever was there wanted me gone and it wanted me gone there and then. I lingered for a second feeling confused but then made a fast-paced walk back to my mom. I was on the verge of tears for literally no reason and I said to her, we need to leave. She of course asked why and I didn't really give a coherent response until I calmed down. I felt like something didn't want me there. It wasn't like a random thought that I had, I mean I physically felt fear. My chest tightened up like it does when you get really scared, like you were having a panic attack and trust me, I know exactly how that feels. I've had many panic attacks in my 14 years of living and it sucks. I felt a little dizzy from whatever happened to be honest and I didn't feel scared or anything, it just felt like someone

yelled at me for doing something wrong. At least that's how I feel when I get yelled at for anyone who isn't as sensitive to anger as I am. It can feel a bit like you're being threatened with a knife. This story is probably kind of underwhelming to read but I have to say I was scared out of my mind for several hours. I guess whoever was buried there wanted them pesky kids off their lawn. No hard feelings. I get mad whenever someone wakes me up too. Also a bonus since I always look at the graveyard when driving by it. The other day I saw something weird and I've never seen anything paranormal there before. They have some standard garden hoses around the garden for keeping the grass green

and a few columbariums on the side. When I was driving past there I saw what looked like a transparent pair of legs walking. Once we passed the garden hose and columbariums it was gone and that was in about a second. I didn't think it was just a person that was being partially obscured by the angle of the sun or something but no matter how hard I looked and that time we were in sight of the graveyard I didn't see anyone there. I didn't even see an animal. It's pretty standard ghost stuff, but still, it was creepy and I thought I'd share. I've been working at a retail store for about a year and a half now. I'm 18. That's my supervisor and I say, a grown boy.

I started there when I was 16. I don't want to give any names, so I'll just call the guy Todd. Todd is a middle-aged man who is mentally slow. He lives with his parents still and he, I hate to be mean, acts like a child. Todd doesn't make me fear for my life or anything. This isn't going to be some story where Todd turned out to be Michael Myers and tried to cut my head off. When I first started working there I honestly thought he was just drunk and it shocked the crap out of me that we let this guy come to work drunk, sit in the break room and every once

in a while stumble out and gather carts. He's the longest employee at that location. He's been there since the store opened. When I first started working, he would talk to nobody but my supervisors, and not unless he had to, unless it was, we'll call him Toby. Toby is a pretty nice guy and basically everyone's favorite supervisor, including other supervisors. I think Todd started babbling to Toby about the Simpsons or something, and then put his hand on Toby's shoulder and gave his classic, Welp, I'm going to break.

I learned that after about six months, Todd will start to talk to you. We just don't have cashiers that stick around that long. Plus, Toby and I talked a lot and Todd started to join in. Usually Toby and I just make jokes about customers and other employees and Todd would think they're funny just not the same thing. Another peculiar thing about Todd is that he's diabetic and really loves the candy in the break room and when you see him with it he goes don't tell mom. Associates and customers use the same bathroom. I usually take a pee right after I clock in. Why pee for free? I swear to God I see Todd in the

bathroom more than anyone else. Which one thing you learn is for as handsy as Todd is, he doesn't wash his hands. Ever. Anyways, it's a full house. Three urinals furthest from the door is a customer, then Todd, then me using the lower urinal. I follow the proper procedure of taking a pee in a public bathroom and staring at the wall in front of me. Well, Todd gives me a tap on the shoulder. While he's peeing and I give him an annoyed what look. He gestures to the customers next to him and pretends to be drinking a glass as if to signal the guy is drunk. The customer is not drunk, he's just trying to take a pee. I give him a stop it look and try to finish and get out of there ASAP,

figuring he's not going to try and joke around about this customer if I'm not there. One time I go to the training room, which is just a room with a conference table and a bunch of monitors on the wall to do online training. I'm in the training room doing my monthly online training with the lights off just because I like it that way. Todd comes hobbling in for his 15th break before lunch and he leaves the lights off too. That isn't creepy, tons of people do it. You suck if you turn them on. Todd gives me his regular slap pad on the back thing and plops next to me with a huge sigh. I ignore him because I just want to get done with my stupid training. Then it dawns on me he doesn't have training. Why in the world is he always on the computers in here?

So I look over and he's typing in amazon.com. Just like that. And I'm thinking, not really supposed to do that Todd, but I don't really care. Then I notice what he types into the search bar on Amazon. Playboy. Now I'm shocked and I'm staring at his monitor. This is odd for him, even. First, he never struck me as a guy who looks at dirty magazines. Second, I thought he even would know that he shouldn't be looking at that stuff at work. He scrolls through a little bit and then notices I'm staring. I'm too shocked to hide it. His response. Oh, it's not about the naked girls. No, I'm not interested in that. It's just Hugh Hefner.

I really admire the man, you know what I mean? All I can think to say is, uh-huh. I finish my training and go back into the floor. Find out later that apparently he told a female supervisor of mine that his father bought him a subscription to Playboy for Christmas. Well, Todd, Hugh Hefner is dead, so getting new magazines may be a little more than admiration for the guy. The oddest encounter I had with Todd in the bathroom was while I was taking a leak. He comes in, luckily no customers in there this time, and starts making weird moaning noises. They weren't sexual but they were some kind of odd moaning noises that he was doing quietly as he approached the urinal next to me. It was a long day and I just wasn't going to entertain this right now

so I continue my business and he sees that I'm ignoring him so he takes a peek over the patrician and looks at my junk. I sternly say to him look away. He looks up right away and tries to say he wasn't looking and then does it again with his eyes closed and more sternly and with a greater tint of anger in my voice I say, look away. I finish and leave. Later, as he's clocking out, I explain to him he can't be doing that in the bathroom. He tries to explain he was just messing around, but I can't get him to understand that's exactly the problem. You can't be messing around in the bathroom. You do your business and you leave, Todd. Some of the more concerning parts about Todd is when he gets upset. Having worked there for two years I often get left

in charge when a supervisor goes to lunch or isn't scheduled. Our schedule system sucks and being in charge kind of sucks because I don't get a raise and I don't have the authority to tell people what to do but I'm still expected to do it. One time, Todd comes back from break, and I ask him to take one of the kid carts back, and he does, and he's about to go to break again, literally after doing one basic task. So I inform him that he needs to take some of the regular carts back to the other end. It was really piling up, when he lets me know he's going to take another break. He storms off and clangs the carts around as he takes them back. He comes back and commands that he's going to break.

I wasn't going to fight it. It's no secret that Todd doesn't do his job well. So often we send a cashier out to help him. This particular day I'm in charge while my supervisor is on lunch. We sent, we'll call him Jim, to help him. Well, Todd comes on in to go to break while Jim is out there. We sent Jim out during Todd's last break to catch up and he's been out there since. The conversation goes like this. I'm gonna go on break. Are the carts done? Yeah. Where's Jim?

Oh, he's still out there. Well, I need him in here. We sent him out to help you. I need you to be working until it's clear enough for him to come in. I'm short-staffed and I can't be having the cashiers out there. He's not your cashier, he's Toby's. Fine. We need Toby's cashier in here. That's not my fault. And here's where I messed up. It is your fault. That is literally the dumbest thing I could have said in that argument. The dumbest. Right after I say that, I try to change it by saying, I mean, I don't know what I mean, though it just slipped, but it's too late.

Message received. And with my luck right now, I have a three-people-one self-checkout that I need to be watching and I got another cashier needing me to solve a problem for the customer he's checking out and at this time Todd isn't yelling better he's talking loudly and angrily it's not my fault he's just repeating that over and over again and all I can say to try and quiet him as every head on the front turns to watch as I know Todd I'm sorry but he keeps going and I only have one register open and this customer's question is holding up the line so I need to answer it so I ignore Todd as he continues to throw a tantrum and help the customer then try to comprehend how this escalated so quickly in the last 30 seconds. And thank God, Jim is walking in just then. And all I can say is,

it's fine, Todd. Just go to break. The most concerning encounter I've had with Todd was just on the sales floor during a conversation between Toby, Todd, and I. To give a background, our encounters can still be just plain weird from an outside view. Todd often pretends to stab me or shoot me with an arrow or throw a grenade at me. It's odd, especially the stabbing. Another time he became obsessive over an inside joke he didn't understand. A co-worker he calls that short girl, as Todd refers to her once, tried to explain who I was to someone and describe me as the chubby one. I didn't take offense or anything. I got jacked up in an accident really bad and fell off my workout schedule. It was absolutely hysterical not only the fact that the person she had to describe me to should have known who I was

but that she just flat out called me the chubby one. She started calling me chubby one all the time after that and customers would get all confused. Well Todd overheard and he thought it was funny so whenever I see him he always calls me chubs or some variation. He even once spelled it out to me with the numbers that corresponded to the letter in the alphabet. The joke at the store is the chubby one as in the number and it's for the most part the one girl saying it. It was way over his head. Another time at 6am I said good morning to him and he told me to screw off. I told Toby right after that he'd apologize at the end of the meeting and wouldn't you know it, he did. Another time Toby and I were talking about our ages. It's called a slow night and Todd jumps in

so I ask him how old he is and he goes, Yeah, I'm 34. I still live with my parents. Does that bother you? But the most concerning thing Todd has ever said to me is when Toby and I were talking on a slow night. What he says doesn't make me fear for my life personally, but it does make me fear for him and the people around him. Somehow Toby and I start talking about our favorite colors. I know, very exciting. Anyways, Todd joins the conversation so we ask him what's his favorite color and I'm almost positive this is a direct quote. My favorite color is the color of blood. Sometimes when I'm upset I think of animals hurting. Their blood calms me. And then he stammers off to his break. Todd and I stare at

him for a second as he wanders away. Toby eventually breaks the awkward silence with, I don't care how slow you are, that's just weird. That statement has bothered me for almost a year now. It just concerns me deeply I'm working on this as part of a video I'm doing for October on why I don't do seances anymore I was about 7 or 8 thus my oldest sister was about 16 and so as a birthday gift she got to redo her room with paint and flooring of her liking.

She'd gone with alternating 12 inch black and white vinyl floor tiles that made a large checkerboard pattern and pale lavender walls. The paint had dried for a full day with the windows open and the next day we put up the trim back up so it was the last night that the room would be empty and the furniture would be moved back in tomorrow. So my oldest sister decided this would be a perfect time to hold a seance in the room as there would be nothing but us three girls and a candle, nothing to interfere or cause false positives. And by their reasoning they absolutely needed a third person. So I was drafted and they made me swear I would be serious and not laugh or anything. I agreed because they were my big sisters and I wanted

to do whatever they were doing. We set up and they get started. I'm just being quiet as we are holding hands in a circle around a single tall wide white candle. A few minutes and the flame starts to flutter a little bit and they start asking about who is here and we're all pretty intent on the flame. But then something catches the oldest attention and I see her giving my middle sister's arm jerky tugs to get her attention and they both are looking behind me. I freeze up cause it's a debate of should I look before I get eaten by whatever is behind me or should I just go quietly into that good night, internal struggle. My oldest mouth is dropped open so I start to turn while breaking connection with my sister's hands and

look. It's just my shadow but it's not my, because my shadow doesn't put its arms down as it had done, nor does it turn with me. It has its arms straight out, like a crucifix style, and it's way too thin to be me. I could see the bumps of the emaciated ribs and the shoulders and elbow joints were big compared to the arms. It obviously isn't wearing a loose hand-me-down t-shirt and it's still not moving and it's way too high up on the wall for the light source angle. My sisters are screaming and running out of the room at this point and when they break the doorway my shadow snaps back to my shadow and is low on the wall in the shape of a little girl turned around with arms down. I see it switch back to what it should be. That's what finally snaps me out of my shock and I then start screaming and scramble to run out too

but I lacked traction in my socks and it was more of a shuffle on all fours. Everyone refused to go back in there and dad had to go blow out the candle. I do remember from that point lit candles were never allowed in the house again unless they were on a birthday cake. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe and click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. If you got a story be sure to submit them to my subreddit rletsreadofficial and give and receive feedback from the community, and maybe even hear it featured here on the channel, like today. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick

up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt.com, and you can wear it around for halloween give out candy or you can wear it as a costume and get candy and you know get diabetes don't do that links in the bio thanks so much friends and i'll see you again soon