The Lets Read Podcast - 122: Halloween & True Crime Stories | 15 True Scary Horror Stories | EP 110

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

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

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Find your pro at your local Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca A few years ago I was part of a True Scary Stories server on Discord. It was a place where people would share their own personal stories of scary or spooky things that happened to them in their lives, and for a while it was honestly a lot of fun. Sure, a lot of the stories sounded made up and generally involved stuff like I saw a shadow figure at the end of my bed and other stuff that sounded like they were lifted straight out of a bad horror movie. But every so often someone would share a story that didn't have a hint of the supernatural in it, something that was actually believable and, occasionally, these stories were genuinely terrifying. I've read a lot of seriously spine-chilling stuff on that server,

but a lot of it I've forgotten over the years, probably because although they were creepy, they just weren't disturbing enough to actually stick with me. But there was one story in particular that I've never forgotten, because it's genuinely made me shudder to read. I hope the user in question doesn't mind if I share their story and if they happen to read this, I'd like to think that they could let me know in the comments and maybe correct anything I got wrong because I'm telling this from memory. But anyway, here goes.

The poster began their story by assuring us that their story wasn't just some fabrication, and although they were pretty young when it happened, just thinking or writing about it as an adult was a pretty stressful experience for them. They went on to explain that their early years were marred by tragedy, how their dad had died when they were real young from a drug overdose, so they were raised by a single mom living in a small apartment just down the street from their grandma's place. Mom did some dating though, obviously trying to do the right thing and find them a stepdad to give them some kind of father figure in their life. The incident in question happened while she was out on a date.

Usually speaking, their grandma would babysit for them anytime mom needed to go do anything that meant she couldn't bring them along. But on the night of her date, the grandma was working, so although it wasn't ideal, 9 or 10 year old storyteller was left unsupervised in their mom's ground floor apartment. Sounds kind of irresponsible at first, but the storyteller was quick to reassure the members of the server that this was back when Yu-Gi-Oh was popular. As long as they had their cards and a box set of cartoons to keep them occupied, being left alone for like an hour or two certainly wasn't an issue for them. It's not like they were going to wander out of the apartment or get up to any mischief while their precious Yu-Gi-Oh was keeping them busy. But at some point during the

evening, they're sitting there playing with their cards and watching TV when they heard a tapping on the window. Remember, they lived in the ground floor apartment, so pretty much anyone could have just walked up and started tapping on the glass. No climbing or levitating or any of that stuff was involved, so there was nothing inherently worrying or creepy about someone knocking on the glass. The storyteller then gets up, walking towards the window before drawing back the curtains, only to reveal the face of a complete stranger. Not their grandfather, not their uncle, but a complete and utter stranger. Surprised and confused, they back off from the window, letting the curtains slide back into

place before this horrendous crash sounds. Broken glass tumbles onto the carpet at the foot of the curtains, before another smash sends more glittering shards onto the floor in front of them. At that point, they said they just tossed their Yu-Gi-Oh cards onto the floor and bailed. Rushing out of the back door of the apartment and over to a neighbor's house, pounding on the door in a state of abject terror as they looked over their shoulder every so often to ensure the mysterious predator wasn't hot in pursuit. But thankfully, the neighbor answers the door, lets our storyteller in, before taking the time to calm them down to get the full story out of them. Naturally, they call the cops immediately who rushed over since they were given

the description of the home invasion and progress. The neighbor then gets in touch with the storyteller's mom to let them know the awful news, who immediately rushes home to comfort their terrified son. Then after that, both the neighbor and storyteller's mom accompany them back to the apartment where the cops are still searching the property and surrounding area for any sign of the attempted intruder. Apparently one of the cops approaches the mom at this point and shows her something in a clear plastic evidence bag. Mom stares at it, turns pale, then kneels down and hugs her storyteller tight, fighting to hold back tears as the neighbor guy is just like, my god. They both ended up staying at the grandma's place for like a week after while the window was repaired, and if that seemed like a bizarre amount of time to fix a window and that something else

might be behind them staying away from the apartment for a while, you'd be right in thinking that. Our storyteller had their suspicions for a little while, but they were too young to really understand the implications of what had happened. The kind of danger they'd been in wasn't clear until many years later, when their mom explained to them just what happened that evening. You see, it wasn't just the window that was being replaced. The entire apartment was being fitted with new, incredibly sturdy locks, CCTV cameras, just about everything short of a panic room, all being paid for by grandma and grandpa. The whole family was absolutely terrified and it was all down to the piece of evidence that the cops showed to the mom that night, the little thing in

the clear plastic evidence baggie that made her turn ashen and squeeze our storyteller in a big, trembling bear hug. What was in that plastic bag was a photograph. A photograph of a young boy curled up in bed, sleeping soundly, and that boy was our storyteller. The mom told a much older storyteller that the photo couldn't have been taken long before the attempted break-in. Something about the sheets on the bed being fairly new or something, I can't quite remember. Or maybe it was a new haircut storyteller had gotten. But either way, it was some detail in there that made it clear that the attempted intruder had broken into the apartment somehow, maybe only a week prior, and taken a photograph

of our storyteller while they slept. I can only imagine they had done so to several other children too, making a little catalog of potential victims, perusing them for hours on end before finally deciding on one they liked the most. I think that's what made my blood run cold back when I read their story. The idea that the intruder had taken this perverse liking to them, one that was strong enough for them to be unable to resist their urges or whatever kind of sick twisted desires had them smashing that window in that evening. The family only felt safe again when they heard the news that the creeper whose MO was eerily similar to their own experiences, was caught by police and jailed after being extradited to another state. But they kept the whole thing a secret from our storyteller until he was in his late teenage years.

There was no more details after that. There wasn't any grand conclusion, just that it was something that had haunted him for years. I never read anything as horrifying as that on that Discord server. It made everything else seem tame in comparison, and I stopped reading shortly afterward. It's weird how we seek out scary stories sometimes, just to give ourselves a little thrill but end up being genuinely traumatized, not by the spoopy skeleton stories, but by things that we know could have easily happened for real. As a girl, the scariest thing about playing video games online is most definitely the weird interactions I have with random guys.

Like a lot of my friends who play online, we'll deliberately obscure their gender with a nondescript username and profile picture and we'll never ever talk in party or game chats if there are guys present, which as you can imagine, there pretty much always is. But I've never been too concerned with presenting my real personality online. That and I won't allow any creeps to force me into hiding who I am. But that doesn't mean I don't have some interactions or get some messages that genuinely creep me out. And here are a few of the weirdest or most disturbing I've come across so far. So I'm part of the PC gaming master race. Over the past few years, there has been an increasing amount of use of the Microsoft Party Chat thing for games purchased using the Microsoft

Store. But generally speaking, the app we use to organize and communicate is Discord. Discord is nice in that you can't just get random messages from users at any time, but if you share a server with someone, they can pretty much DM you whenever they want. And since I'm in a lot of servers for the games I play, this leaves me pretty vulnerable to random DMs from creeps with less than innocent intentions. I suppose it doesn't help that one of my favorite games to play is Dead by Daylight. For those that don't know, it's a horror game in which one person plays as the killer, while the other players take on the roles of their victims, having to complete various tasks

while evading the killer so they can escape whatever environment they're trapped in. This obviously attracts its fair share of online sadists who love nothing more than to terrify and traumatize the people they're hunting. They go so far as to insist on always being the killer, never ever playing as a survivor, and naturally this means they get really really good at hunting people with their characters of choice. That's how I came across one particular player who specialized as a dead by daylight killer known as The Clown. Now I hate clowns with a passion, to the point where I couldn't bring myself to go see that

It movie even when my Stephen King fanatic boyfriend was so excited about seeing it. They just absolutely terrify me. Probably because, and my mom never gets tired of telling me this story, I had a pretty traumatizing encounter with a party clown at a kid's birthday party when I was younger. The clown in Dead by Daylight is like all of my circus nightmares come to life. It kind of looks like a combination of a clown and a ringmaster, but has allusions to other circus stuff on him too. The face is all this worn out grease paint smeared over a flabby mess of folds, but perhaps the most horrible are the fingers dangling from the thing's belt, the trophies he takes from his unfortunate victims.

So, when this player happened to prefer the clown over others, I was kind of reluctant to play at first, but the group of reluctant to play at first. But the group of survivors I usually play with adored him for the effort he put into roleplaying the character, and therefore how much more intense and scary he made the whole experience. Like he kept putting this super creepy clown voice on over voice chat while he was chasing us, to the point where these big tough guys, self-confessed horror junkies, are just squealing in terror whenever he was chasing them. I think that's about the one thing that made it bearable for me,

how funny it was when they were wailing like scared little girls. But let me tell you, it wasn't so fun when he was chasing me, and boy did he chase me a lot. At the end of the night, when a few of us were like, alright that's enough terror for me, better log At the end of the night, when a few of us were like, alright, that's enough terror for me, better log off before I give myself nightmares, I got a Discord DM from the guy saying, you were really fun to chase. I try to be polite enough, just replying with something like, cheers dude, not too much fun to chase I hope, with a little laughing emoji. Then he follows up

with what seemed like was going to be a really long message, like the typing notification thing was going off for like a good few minutes, while I'm like, please don't be creepy, please don't be a creep. Then instead of some big long message, he only sends me a few words, I wish this was real. It was creepy enough sentiment on its own, but the thing that got me was that there was absolutely no way he spent so long typing out just five words. What else did he want to say to me that he ended up deleting and retyping over and over again for a minute straight that only ended up with five little words? I seriously dreaded to think what it might have been.

The following night, we were all getting ready to play Dead by Daylight again, voice chatting on Discord when one of our party chat was like, oh, Clown Guy's online again. Should we invite him in? My initial reaction was like, god no, but I'm not one to be a killjoy. The other guys really seemed to enjoy him, so I just found myself acquiescing to the idea and letting them invite him into our voice chat. Everyone greets him like a clown guy and instead of being polite or whatever, his first words are, is Ruby playing tonight? He must have known well that I was playing. I was in the same voice chat as him for god's sake so

the idea that he was asking so he could like hear my voice or something got the session off to a nice creepy start. As weird as the dude was, he had been a great killer. He was passionate enough to bring energy to the character but not skilled enough as to make it completely unfair on us. He also spent fairly equal time chasing each of us, not partaking in the act of tunneling as it's become known and focusing on one particular character. But that night, all he did was chase me. He would simply ignore any other survivor, searching for me and me alone to chase, torture, and kill. And once he'd achieved that, he'd just sort of waste time, letting the other survivors get the generators going so they could escape the stage and get a new round going. The first time around,

his behavior went unnoticed by everyone but me. I think my fellow survivors were just too focused on their tasks and too elated with the victory to really notice what he was doing. But the second round, it became obvious, and by the third, my usual crew was starting to confront him on it. Hey, stop tunneling Ruby, dude, you're ruining the game, they'd say. But Clown Guy just ignored them and started breathing heavily down the mic. Now this wasn't just him having it too close to his face, which is a problem a lot of people have, and is generally remedied by a quick heads up followed by them apologizing and moving the microphone. But clown guy was breathing heavy because he was enjoying chasing me a little too much.

It was like you could hear all this gross satisfaction in his breath whenever he caught up with me. And it got so bad at one point that the other party members started to make some pretty crude jokes about his state of arousal. After one particular bad round and me basically pleading with the other guys to kick him from the game and from the voice chat, they conceded and clown guy got kicked. Relief doesn't cover it. This idiot had gotten me frustrated, angry, and eventually verging on upset. I was just so freaking relieved that the others had finally seen what a toxic, horrible individual he was. We only had one or two more games after that, with some random killer we'd been hooked up with via the game's matchmaking system, then after that I went to bed. But as I was reveling in affection for my regular gamer friends, I forgot to do one little thing that would separate

me and Clown Guy forever. The next morning when I woke up, I found the little red iPhone notification marker for Discord that had a number on it in its high 50s. I should have guessed what it was, or rather who it was, that had caused so many notifications overnight, but I guess it just didn't quite register in my half-asleep brain. So I opened the app and read the messages. I know I shouldn't have, but it was like seeing a slow-moving car crash or something and I just couldn't quite peel my eyes away from it, no matter how bad it got. I'll try to type out some of what they said from memory whilst cleaning up the language used a little and I apologize to anyone in advance who's triggered, offended,

or upset by what they say. I bet you're happy now. Can't take on a good killer like me, so you just got your little simp friends to kick me. You shouldn't flatter yourself either. I've seen your profile picture and you're not even all that. You shouldn't be one to refuse any male attention either because it's not like you have the pick of the bunch. Keep acting like that and you'll die cold and alone, with no one around to care for someone like you. You shouldn't go thinking you're safe either. I spend my life hunting down people like you, both in real life and in that dumb game. I asked enough questions

about you when you were offline to figure out exactly where in the UK you live, and if I wanted to, I could be in your city and tracking you down tomorrow. I got the money, the time, and the patience. I will find you if I want to. And when I do, you'll pray for death before the end. Scholars will tell stories of the horrors I subject you to for generations. I'll put the names of Bundy, Dahmer, and Geen to shame. People will remember your name as a synonym for pain, suffering, and weakness, and my sons and daughters will touch themselves over the trophies I take from you and your broken, bleeding body. You should have blocked me when you had the chance, Ruby, but it appears you've been too dumb to do so, and now it's too late.

I see you don't have a VPN either. It was far too easy for me to find your IP address and now it's just a matter of time before I have your exact location, your full name, your family's name, and your friend's names. I will know your neighborhood like the back of my hand by the time I make it there and you'll never escape me, no matter how hard you try. It went on and on like that, just a tirade of terrifying threats and misogynistic abuse. And the worst thing is, I couldn't help but picture him doing it, all in that horrendous clown outfit that his character wore. And what I just wrote wasn't even half of it. The language he used, the things he threatened to do with me, got way, way worse,

and I don't want to repeat any of it. I don't want him having the satisfaction of knowing he got to me so badly, to the point where I just stayed offline for a few days after having blocked him. I got myself a VPN almost right away and I'm hoping that's going to protect me, along with hoping all of his threats of hacking were just a bunch of bluster. But yeah, there it is. The most terrifying thing that ever happened to me while I was using Discord. In fact, it's probably the scariest thing that's happened to me online. Full stop. Probably the scariest thing that ever happened to me actually.

If anything, I'd like to serve as a warning to other gamers who happen to be female. And I hate the term gamer girls. As soon as a guy even shows the remotest signs of being pervy, possessive, or anything like that, hit that block button. God knows it'll save you a whole world of anxiety like it did for me. To be continued... very active on something called Discord, which, from what I understand, is a messaging app for people who play video games. It allowed him to talk to people from all over the world that play the same games as him. So at some point, he broke the news to us that he'd been talking to a girl over in the UK named Lori. She and he had become friends, playing some sort of pirate game, playing together most days and talking pretty much all the time when they weren't at their computers. And eventually he just up and asks her if she

wanted to be his girlfriend and she says yes. It was definitely a new concept for someone like me who grew up at a time when cell phones weren't even a thing, but I understand that we live in the digital age where new methods of dating are coming to the fore so I just tried to be happy for him as any mom should when their kid gets their first girlfriend or boyfriend. Plus with an entire ocean between them it's not like I have to worry about them getting accidentally pregnant or something. However one Sunday afternoon my son emerges from his boy cave for what seemed like the first time in days, walks into the TV room where me and my husband are sat, with a very concerned look on his face. We asked him what the matter was, and he just kind of shrugs, tells us everything is cool,

and then just kind of wanders out again. So as you can imagine, me and my husband give each other a look as if to be like, what was that about? My husband gets up, follows our son into the living room before gently prodding him about anything that might be bothering him. From what he told me, our kid was just doing that typical boyish thing of pretending that everything was fine, but in a way that tells us that he's obviously upset about something. My husband then told me he asked after Lori, with our son responding in almost a visceral way of like, why are you always in my business, blah blah blah. He'd obviously touched on a sore subject, so our general conclusion was that he and Lori had broken up and he just didn't want to talk about it. We weren't about to press him on it, so we kind of just left him to it to get over and

move on to someone new. But over the next month or so our son seemed to get increasingly depressed. He'd spend more and more time up in his room, only ever coming out to go to school or eat dinner and then just retreating back to his little boy cave. Like I said, we figured this was because he'd split up with his internet girlfriend but one time my husband was walking past his room and blatantly heard him talking to someone via his little voice chat discord thing, addressing them as babe and at one point, Lori. So apparently they're still talking at that point, but we still assumed that they were having relationship issues, putting it down to the fact that they were like thousands of miles apart. I know long distance relationships don't work the best of times, even when people were just a few states

away from each other, but these kids had an entire ocean separating them so god knows how hard that must have been on them. Only as we came to learn, that wasn't exactly the problem. It was something much, much darker. So as I said, our son seemed to be getting more and more depressed over the course of the month, and it got so bad that at one point that me and my husband discussed getting him a therapist or something to nip the problem in the bud before it could morph into something less easy to deal with. But suddenly out of apparently nowhere he just perks up. One day he's looking better, feeling perkier, and is considerably more talkative. He actually seemed keener on spending more time with us too which for a 16 year old boy struck us as very unusual. I mean not that we were complaining, it was nice seeing him feeling better about things

and we put it down to him meeting a new girl or just shutting out Lori from his life. This kind of sunny behavior carries on for like a week or so until one Saturday when after coming down for breakfast we don't see her here for him for the rest of the day. Late in the afternoon my husband goes up into his room, knocks on the door and asks our son if everything is okay. He comes back down into the TV room, tells me there was no reply after knocking, then asks me if I had seen him leave the house at all during the day. I tell him now that if he had gone over to a friend's house or whatever that he certainly hadn't let me know. Then my husband just kind of shrugs, tells me he has a headache then walks off to the downstairs bathroom to get an aspirin from the medicine cabinet.

Next thing I know, I can hear him springing down the hallway and up the stairs, his feet like boom boom boom as he rushed up to our son's room. I'm super confused, like what's going on, before walking out into the hallway. From where I'm standing, I can actually see into the downstairs bathroom, and what I see makes my blood run cold. We usually kept all our pain pills and other such medication in a little plastic first aid kit style thing. We kept that thing stuffed to the gills, and there it was, lying on the bathroom floor, almost completely empty. Then, like my husband before me, it hit me what had happened. So I sprint up to my son's room where I find my husband leaning over our boy's bed, shaking him like, wake up, can you hear me, wake up. There's a pool of puke sitting on the bed

next to his head and he's completely unconscious, and there are empty pill trays lying on the floor nearby. As soon as I walk in, my husband runs back downstairs to call 911, and I take over the shaking and the wailing, begging him to open his eyes. Now the only light in the room was coming from his computer monitor, so at one point I look over to it and see one of the most haunting things I'd ever seen in my life. On the screen is a webcam window from the discord thing I mentioned, and it displays the body of a young girl that's just kind of dangling in mid-air. It took me a second to realize what I was looking at but when I did, I almost screamed the house down. She was hanging from something. I tried not to look, I really did.

I just tried to focus on my boy as his dad ran back upstairs with emergency services on his cell. I should have told him not to look, but I was just distraught. I could barely speak as he walks back into the room and starts describing our son's conditions at the dispatcher on the other end of the line. He's frantically talking away when he does pretty much the same thing as me, turns around to see the webcam window open and the girl's body hanging on the screen. He just froze and stops talking, long enough for me to be able to hear the dispatcher say, sir are you there, sir? At which point he snaps out of his daze and carries on talking to the person on the other end. It was he that then had the same

presence of mind to turn off the computer, all the while giving the EMTs their home address and begging them to arrive as quickly as possible. Our son was taken to the hospital where he promptly has his stomach pumped. We stayed all night, waiting in the visitor's area and when a doctor finally approached us with an update on our son's condition, I found my heart racing as I prepared for the worst. But thankfully, we'd gotten him to the hospital just in time and the nurses were able to pump his stomach and administer the necessary medication to counteract the effects of the things he'd taken already.

He survived, barely, but the same couldn't be said for the girl on the computer screen, who we assumed was this Lori girl he'd been in the long distance relationship with. When our son woke up and saw us in the hospital room, he burst into tears. He apologized over and over again and we all just cried it out together. He then proceeded to spill his guts to us about what had happened, and I honestly couldn't believe my ears. It turned out that they'd formed a kind of pact together just the week before, right around the same time he seemed to have perked up and gotten out of the funk he was in. Apparently, that was what did it. That she and he had figured out a way to escape the pain

they were suffering, and that the revelation had been some kind of boost to him, as morbidly insane as that sounds. We went ahead with booking him into therapy and he's doing much, much better now. We don't monitor his online activities as he figured he'd just find a way to subvert us, but we definitely don't allow him to have a computer in his bedroom anymore. And since then, me and my husband have made an effort to acquaint ourselves with the darker corners of the internet, and believe me, there are some days I wish I hadn't. Because my god are there some horrendous things out there, things I wish I'd never seen, and that I'll never be able to get out of my head. worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our tread experts.

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operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. I used to play a lot of Insurgency Sandstorm with a fixed set of guys, and a few girls, and we used to organize using a Discord server. People came and went as time went by, but there were a couple of us that actually stayed in touch quite frequently outside of just organizing gaming sessions and became pretty good friends. Insurgency, for those that haven't played it, is one of those hyper-realistic

military shooters that tends to get really, really intense, and occasionally downright terrifying when it's at its best. I'm not saying we had this proper Band of Brothers vibe going, I know it's only a video game, but like I said, a handful of us ended up being pretty good friends and bonding over the intense level of teamwork required to win rounds, not to mention the sweaty-palmed, adrenaline-fueled firefights. One of these was a lad named Colin. One day, Colin tells us that he wouldn't be playing Insurgency for a little while because he had taken a job teaching English as a foreign language out in Indonesia. He had wanted to do some traveling for a while but just didn't have

the money available to him and getting qualified to teach English gave him an opportunity to see some more exotic areas of the world whilst getting paid for it. We were pretty gutted to hear the news. He was one heck of a sniper and many a time we'd been pinned down by some enemy machine gunner only for the gunfire to stop suddenly, followed by a little laugh from Colin and a have that in his Scottish accent. We absolutely loved him for moments like that, but we were also really happy for him, and since he promised to stay in the Discord server, we'd be able to keep in touch and hear some stories of his adventures out in the tropics. So a few months go by and we're enjoying hearing the stories of

his travels, along with being updated with photos of him exploring some pretty remote parts of Indonesia. It was the photos of him with the school kids he was teaching that really made me smile though. He looked like he was having the time of his life, especially when we saw some videos of him teaching the kids some pretty obscure English phrases. Not only that, but occasionally we'd hear some of the kids actually repeat the phrases back kind of in a Scottish accent, and the idea of a bunch of Indonesian kids learning to speak English with an Edinburgh accent was absolutely hilarious to us. I mean, imagine it. Some American wishing an Indonesia fellow good morning or something only to hear you alright pal? who's it good?

in response this still makes me chuckle even now to be honest then in September of 2018 I woke up to the news that there had been an earthquake in the sea just off the coast of Indonesia causing an earthquake that had resulted in a massive tsunami that had destroyed huge sections of the country. Immediately, I thought of Colin. I jumped onto Discord using the app on my phone and sent him a message asking him if everything was alright and hoping he'd not been caught up in the tsunami.

Obviously, there was a huge 7 or 8 hour time difference between the UK and Southeast Asia and occasionally Colin didn't reply for hours, so the fact that he didn't immediately reply wasn't a massive concern to me. But he didn't reply all that day, to the point where I started expressing concerns to some of the other lads in the server, sharing the news of the tsunami with them and mentioning that I was worried Colin had been caught up in it. We knew from the news stories about which areas of Indonesia had been affected, but we didn't know exactly where Colin was, only that it was in some remote areas and didn't always have immediate

access to wifi, another reason for us to not immediately worry. But he didn't reply the next day either, or the day after that, and it got to the point where a week had gone by and we'd heard nothing back from him. No one had seen Colin even online since we got news of the tsunami. That's when we really started to worry, and as the days went by we got more and more frightened that something had happened to him. It's around then that I started going back through some of the messages he'd been sending over the previous month or so. He'd been all over Indonesia and had spent his first few weeks in the capital city of Jakarta which had remained relatively unaffected by the earthquake and

subsequent tsunami. But then I found out that he'd traveled to a place called Palu to teach English there and as far as I could tell, that's where he'd been at the time of the disaster when it struck. I then cross-referenced the name of the place with any stories about the tsunami, and found out that it had been one of the worst affected by a destructive tidal wave that had apparently reached 23 feet in height, 23 feet of rushing water that had destroyed pretty much everything in its path and caused the deaths of over 15,000 people, and in all likelihood, Colin had been one of them. We were devastated, but the worst part is, even to this day, we still have not had any closure

about it. We knew Colin quite well, but he kept his online and personal life pretty separate. We never knew his last name or the names of any of his family, so it's not like we could get in touch with them to find out if he really had died or not, or to see about any funeral arrangements if he had indeed perished during the tsunami. But I think the fact that even now his Discord account lies inactive is evidence of the fact that he did actually lose his life out there. Maybe he's okay, and he just never bothered to get back on Discord. Maybe his close encounter with death made him realize that video games were just a waste of time or something. But I think that's just wishful thinking on my part. In my heart of hearts, I know he's probably dead.

I just hope he's at peace now, and whatever family he had are okay. Rest in peace, Colin. We still miss you. To be continued... up being drinks, drinks ended up with sparks flying and then boom, we're in the middle of this whirlwind romance. We're texting all the time whenever we're not just spending days at each other's apartments, fantasizing about taking vacations together, all the stuff two young people do when they got that new relationship energy going. But then one day, right when I think things couldn't get any more perfect, she sits me down with the obvious intention of having a pretty serious talk. I figured it was like a breakup type thing so I braced myself for the worst, only it's not quite as bad as I feared. It was just, well, weird.

She tells me she's poly At the time I had no idea what that meant So I just sort of stared back at her with this confused look on my face Prompting her to explain that poly is short for polyamorous For those that aren't entirely savvy with the term It's basically a fancy word for when someone practices open relationships The girl says she can commit to me but That she'd have to be free to see other people Albeit in a less serious capacity

Being young, dumb and totally besotted with her I agreed to it and it ended up being the worst decision I'd ever made I started off by telling her she could do what she wanted But only as long as she didn't tell me about any of it She agrees to this but as the weeks went, I did start to get a little jealous. She sought to remedy this by introducing me to the app that she'd used to find other polyamorous types to hook up with, a little thing called Discord. Now apparently it's primarily used for communicating in video games,

but I learned that people use Discord for all types of weird stuff, including hookups. The girl tells me I'm welcome to join the server she was a part of and look for someone who was open to something casual. Fair is fair, I thought, so I did. I made an account and got her to invite me to a little server that was innocuously called The Farm, despite having absolutely nothing to do with anything remotely agricultural. So upon joining, the girl introduces me as her partner and gets a few of the members to walk me through all the various channels and such. They were actually pretty nice, talking me through some of the elements of polyamory and waxing lyrical about how nice the girl I was seeing was, which, I don't know, kind of warmed me up to the whole idea.

I get talking to another girl on there, we vibe a little, but I can't see anything happening with her. I basically just did it to make the girl I was seeing happy, which apparently it really did. I had gained myself a lot of brownie points from it. So all is well that ends well, right? Nope. About a week into being on the Discord server, I get a message from someone at first I assumed was a girl. We swap greetings and make a little small talk, then I get a picture message coming through. It turns out this was not a girl at all. It was a dude, and the picture was the only thing I really, really did not want to see. What exactly it was, I'll leave up to your imagination. But just imagine the worst possible thing a perverted dude could send you over the internet

and yeah, you got it. He follows the picture up by saying he wanted to hook up with me and my girl at the same time. I just ignore the messages, assuming the dude is going to get kicked from the server for rule breaking or something and eventually bring it up with my girl. She on the other hand vouches for this guy saying she's been talking to him for a while, how he's normally perfectly nice and polite and that I'm making a big deal out of nothing, claiming I'm just being jealous etc. I tell her I'm super uncomfortable with the idea of a three way hook up, how I want nothing to do with it, but again, that she's welcome to do whatever she wants, just as long as I don't have to hear about it. Drama smooths over and I think that's the end of it. Only it's not.

Not by a long shot. Cut to like a month later, things are still basically going strong with the girl and I'm out doing some grocery shopping when I notice something that catches my eye. It was one of those things that you just don't really pay attention to unless it happens. Like it's hard to describe. Pretty much every single person who walks into a grocery store either grabs a cart or a basket right? And people just running in to grab one or two items are in and out in like a minute. So I remember seeing this one dude just kind of walking up and down the aisles with nothing in his hands and thinking like, what the heck is this guy doing here? But he's not doing anything too weird, so I just sort of move on. Only time and time again I'm in an aisle grabbing things off of shelves and I see him just kind of

idling and a few times we make eye contact. Nothing too creepy, just like off of shelves, and I see him just kind of idling, and a few times we make eye contact. Nothing too creepy, just like a casual glance, but this happened over and over again, to the point where I was like, is this dude following me? Anyway, I get my shopping done, walk back to my apartment, and forget all about it. A few hours later, and I'm sitting in my apartment alone, just chilling and nursing some big food baby from a local Chinese place I got delivery from. I hear footsteps on the stairs outside my apartment, heavy ones. Nothing unusual as such but then the front door to the apartment just goes boom, shaking from some heavy impact on the other side. At first I thought it was a neighbor or something, so I shout out like,

what are you doing dude? But there's no reply, just another loud bang against the door. They're not trying to get my attention, they're trying to break in, and I just about jump out of my skin, just like instinctively grabbing my phone to dial 911 while I run in my bedroom, kneeling down to the safe under my bed which has my.40 caliber in it. I tell the dispatcher what's going on. She then says the cops are on their way but I have no idea how much time I've got

so I run back into the hallway with my pistol locked and loaded, aiming at the door and shouting that cops are on their way. But this does nothing to deter whoever's on the other side. They just keep slamming against the front door, and each time it seems like the door is closer and closer to just giving way. Only when I'm like, I got a 40 here buddy, don't make me do it, does the banging stop, and this is like perfectly timed to hear approaching sirens too. I then hear more heavy footsteps from the stairs outside, and then all is quiet. A short time later, I'm giving my statement to the cops that arrive.

I have my phone in my hand, and I see a notification come up from the girl that I'm seeing that just says, I'm sorry. I wait until the cops leave to call her to be like, why are you sorry, is this us breaking up or whatever and when she answers she's in tears. Through her sobbing she tells me something that makes my jaw drop and here's basically a summation of what she said. She's been hooking up with the guy who'd sent me the unwanted picture who had apparently gotten super weird once he was in her apartment telling her she needed to break up with me because he wanted her as his main partner.

He went off about how I wasn't down with polyamory, how I wasn't good for her, blah blah blah, and when he's gotten aggressive about it, she'd kicked him out and told him not to contact her again. This guy is from a city on the other side of the state and my girl figured that he'd just drive back home. Only he doesn't and apparently he'd gleaned enough information about me from her, maybe even gone through her phone to get a look at some pictures of me to be able to actually track me down. And that's when it hits me. It was him and the grocery store who had then followed me back to my apartment, waited until it was dark, then tried to break in to do god knows what. Confront me, beat me a little more patient, waited for me to go outside to take the trash out, anything like that, I legit might not be around to type this experience out.

And that scared the life out of me as I imagine it would any of you. Me and the girl broke up shortly afterward. It was kind of sad, sure, but the whole experience had totally soured the relationship way beyond any kind of repair. We never talked again after that, but not before I told her to tell that creepy SOB that we'd broken up, that I wanted nothing to do with any of that anymore, and to leave me alone, or he'd be going back to his hometown in a wooden box. Now just hearing or reading the word discord leaves a bad taste in my mouth as I know the kind of creeps that are out there, using the internet for far worse than just some innocent kink stuff. To be continued... time shoots up like tenfold. Lack of hours at work, social distancing, basically a bunch of

stuff contributes to me playing a lot more than usual. So me and a few mates are using discord voice chat one night while we're on overwatch, just blazing round after round when a mate of ours, Phil, starts doing something really bloody weird. At one point we're like hearing a whispering noise coming from someone's mic. I remember just ignoring it at first until it got so frequent that we start calling it out like, who's whispering down the mic? It's really creepy. No one owns up to it which just sort of makes me laugh at first, partly out of being genuinely amused and partly just out of nervousness because it was legit creepy that no one was owning up to it. But it carries on even after someone calls it out.

So I ended up checking Discord, watching all the little icons until the whispers started up again. It was coming from Phil's mic. And now that I was seeing it for real, it did sound like Phil's voice. So I'm like, yo Phil, stop whispering dude, it's weirding me out. What are you possessed or something? But instead of being like, ah you got me, Phil insists that he's not whispering. At first I just laughed and was like, dude I'm looking at everyone's icon and I can see it's you, you're not fooling me on this one. But again, Phil is insistent that he's not whispering, then actually whispers after he speaks, kind of like he's just doing it to mess with me.

Again, I confront him, laughing like, you just did it again. Only he just gets angry, tell me I don't know what I'm talking about, and he's not doing any whispering that whole time. That's when the mood changes. We can hear in his voice that he's deadly serious, that he himself believes that he's not whispering even though he blatantly is. I mean it was either an Oscar winning performance out of our junk rap playing friend or he seriously believed he wasn't whispering. God love him, Phil is no actor. Either way, the mood got super, super tense in the voice chat and it wasn't brought up again. To this day I have no idea what was going on there. He doesn't play much with us anymore so it's not like we got a chance to hear the whispers again.

I don't know if it was some kind of mental problem or whatever but it honestly was the creepiest moment I've ever had in a Discord voice call. I mean, stomach-droppingly creepy. So wherever you are, Phil, whatever you're up to, I hope you're doing better, mate. I really do. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our tread experts.

Until May 30th, purchase four new Michelin passenger or light truck tires and receive up to $70 by prepaid MasterCard. Conditions apply. Details at Michelin.ca. Find a Michelin tread experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there, treadexperts.ca. On Halloween night of 2011, in the sleepy Canadian city of Armstrong, British Columbia, 18-year-old Taylor Van Deest is full of nostalgic excitement.

A recent graduate of the local Pleasant Valley High School in June of that same year, Taylor had spent the summer reflecting on the nature of growing up and the passage of time. She had also recently learned to drive, finishing her lessons and passing the relevant examinations, and was about to receive her Canadian novice driver end plates. So we can understand why she might be overwhelmed with anxieties about officially becoming an adult, something we all contemplate at some point in our youth. She and her friends had ceased trick-or-treating for the previous few years, instead opting for more mature pursuits. But that year in particular,

it had hit them that it was something they might never be able to do as friends ever again. They reminisced of the costumes they used to wear, the huge candy hauls they used to bring home, and the general sense of excitement and mischief that was always in the air on those Halloween evenings. Then together, they decided on one last trick-or-treating hurrah, committing to donning some spooky costumes one final time, before they would doubtlessly be turned away by homeowners as far too old for such childish activity. During the previous year, Taylor had been enamored with the much-loved AMC drama The Walking Dead. Millions of North Americans had been tuning in,

week in, week out, to keep up with the terrifying stories of Rick Grimes and his fellow survivors, and Taylor was no different. So when it came to her choice of costume that year, like countless other trick-or-treaters, Taylor opted for the slightly derivative but highly effective choice of zombie. All it took was a little pale makeup, some fake blood, and an old torn purple blouse. Then Taylor was ready to roll. She and her gang of trick-or-treating friends had agreed to congregate at one of their parents' houses before heading out into the night. And before she left for the short walk, Taylor called her friend to let her know she was on her way at about 5.45pm,

intending to use the usual walking route down Pleasant Valley Road. Taylor's boyfriend at the time, a young man named Colton, was not attending that evening's trick-or-treating, but was still in touch with her regularly. Taylor had promised to split her night's candy haul with him, a move characteristically generous of a young woman who had a reputation for being fun-loving and kind. But when she reached the intersection of Colony Avenue, Taylor decided to use a quiet shortcut the many locals used which crossed some train tracks. Taylor and her friends continued to exchange texts with her during the ten minutes or so that followed,

but suddenly, Taylor stopped replying. This might not usually be any cause to raise the alarm, but Taylor was a prolific texter and was generally known to reply with near-perfect spelling within mere seconds unless she was asleep. Taylor's friends immediately began to worry. The last message Taylor had sent was to her boyfriend Colton at around 6.02pm. It simply read, being creeped. But Taylor had misspelled the word creeped with two R's and only one E in the middle, as if it was a rushed message from someone who was very, very frightened. It was only a short walk between their two houses,

a journey that should have been quick and uncomplicated, but when Taylor failed to arrive and Colton shared the frightening final text with them, her friends assumed the worst. Maybe it was the sinister nature of the date in question. Maybe it was an extrasensory perception that something was wrong. Regardless, Taylor's friends raised the alarm and immediately began to search the route between their homes for any sign of her. Around two hours later, while searching near some train tracks that ran near their homes, Taylor's friends found a cell phone lying in the dirt. Wondering just who might have managed to lose such an expensive item,

they picked it up and examined it. It was Taylor's. In a panic, they continued their search, calling Taylor's name over and over along the route they knew she would have taken. They stopped shouting out her name only at around 8.45pm when they saw a crumpled body lying in a patch of grass about 10 feet away from the train tracks. Even in the dark October evening, they recognized the shape of their friend almost immediately, but were horrified at the grisly sight that greeted them upon closer inspection. Taylor was lying face down in the long grass, mumbling incoherently and struggling to breathe. There was a heavy discoloration around her neck,

as well as burst blood vessels in her eyes from where someone had attempted to strangle her. But it was the wounds to her head that caused the most alarm. Taylor's skull had been almost entirely crushed with repeated blows from some blunt object. Her hair was matted with drying blood and cranial fluid. She also had cuts on her lips, a large gash on her forehead, and somehow had bruising on the inside of her mouth. Taylor also had a large bruise on her shoulder consistent with the kind of injuries someone might have if they're thrown to the ground and stomped on. She also had bruising on her arms and hands, along with two broken fingers, wounds that are common when a person attempts to defend themselves from a brutal and overpowering attacker. Her horrified companions struggled

to discern where her zombie makeup ended and her true injuries began. Police had been notified of her disappearance long before her body was found, but now an ambulance crew rushed to arrive on scene, transporting Taylor to a nearby hospital for treatment. Taylor's mother, Marie, accompanied her in the ambulance, reportedly repeating to her bloodied daughter over and over again, fight it, you're going to make it, Taylor, survive. Paramedics managed to stabilize her condition while on the way to the Jubilee Hospital, 20 minutes south of the city of Vernon. There, ER doctor Michael Kankanen fought to save her life,

but found that her pupils were large and unresponsive, a common symptom of massive brain injury. A subsequent CAT scan confirmed that things were not looking good for young Taylor. Taylor was placed on an artificial breathing machine in the hopes that it might buy doctors more time to save her life, but by the next morning, their valiant efforts had proved to be in vain. Taylor died as a result of a hemorrhage owed to the massive blunt force trauma she'd suffered as a result of the violent attack she'd been subjected to. A subsequent forensic examination found that Taylor's fingernails had skin and blood tissues trapped under them, evidence that she had made a brave attempt at fighting off her attacker. Although she might have passed on as a result of the horrific wounds she had

suffered, the attempts that she had made to save her own life, scratching and tearing at her mystery assailant's flesh, were about to contribute to bringing them to justice. Along with the substance trapped under them, her nails were clipped and bagged as evidence by a forensically trained nurse. With a sizable amount of DNA evidence collected, all the police had to do was conduct a thorough enough investigation. Once they'd bagged their man, the DNA evidence would do the rest and secure a lengthy conviction for whichever predatory monster committed such a heinous act of violence. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were hard at work with their investigation when Taylor's

obituary was published on the Vernon Morning Star's website. Taylor had not yet decided on a career path, the obituary read, but doubtless she would have made us all proud, whatever she would have chosen. We can only imagine the raw grief the small community felt at such a sudden passing, compounded by the fact that her life had been taken away in such a cruel and callous attack. Taylor's funeral was held on the evening of November 7, 2011 at Hassan Memorial Arena. Her murder had rocked the small town she once called home, so there were many in attendance who wished to pay their respects.

But there was more than just a sense of love and loss in the air that evening. Many people wondered just who exactly in their community was responsible for her death, if the person was known to one of their number, or even if they were actually present. The RCMP began their investigation by canvassing the houses surrounding the place where Taylor's body was found. They discovered that people actually had heard screaming around the time the attack was thought to have taken place. One woman in particular was checking on her Halloween decorations when she had heard two distinctly female screams coming from the direction of the train tracks. But tragically, the woman simply put the scream down to lively Halloween antics from local youths. One can only imagine how haunted this lady will have been during the revelation that what she was hearing was far more than just youthful exuberance with the sounds of an actual murder taking place.

The RCMP also released images of Taylor wearing her Halloween costume to the public in hopes that somebody who recognized her might come forward with information regarding anyone who may have been acting suspicious in the same area. They also set up a roadblock near the site of the murder, stopping any cars that passed in order to question them and potentially collect a few witness statements They then held a press conference on November 3rd, 2011, in order to update the local and national media on the progress of their investigation Both Taylor's loved ones and the gathered press were both disappointed to hear that there was no suspects in the case, but the RCMP assured them that every lead available would be followed up so that they might deliver swift justice to those that demanded it. However, they did not release any details on the nature of the murder or Taylor's cause of death, the reason being that only a handful of

people knew of such information, one of whom was the person responsible for Taylor's death. Clued into the fact that investigators might be hot on their tail, the murderer could flee the area or even the country and might never face justice for their dreadful crimes. However, some bizarre events hampered the investigative process. Canadian police actually received a letter, the author of which claimed to be Taylor's murderer. But there was little in the letter's contents that indicated that they had any intimate knowledge regarding the details of the crime, and it was dismissed as hoax correspondence. It is an absolute mystery to me as to why anyone would wish to claim responsibility for such a killing, and only evidences the fact that there are some truly sick and disturbed people in the world, and perhaps the most

concerning thing is that these kinds of things happen far more than we'd care to believe. In the last week of November 2011, another RCMP press conference was held, one in which some shocking new information came to light. It was announced that, thanks to the DNA pulled from under Taylor's fingernails, a genetic profile had been put together of the person thought to be responsible for her death. Police confirmed that the perpetrator was male, and his DNA matched that which was taken from the investigation following an unsolved assault against a massage parlor escort in the same geographical area, which took place around 2005. The man's stored DNA had no name attached to it,

their identity remained a mystery, but regardless, a pattern was starting to emerge, an image of a predator who targeted lone women in order to get indecent gratification. And given the nature of the crimes committed, there were likely dozens of unreported incidents that stem from this man's reckless and predacious behavior. However, there was something of a breakthrough, one that was thoroughly welcomed by Taylor's friends and family. Thanks to witness statements taken after the 2005 assault, police now had a rough physical description of the offender and a sketch artist was asked to draw a composite image based on this information. He was apparently a Caucasian male

with a slightly darker skin tone than most Canadians, approximately 19-20 years of age in 2005, which would obviously make him 25-26 at the time of Taylor's murder. He had dark eyes, most likely brown and had short dark hair and thick eyebrows with an estimated height of 5'8 to 5'10. He was also said to possess a rather stocky build but was apparently not athletic or muscular. He was also believed to be native to the area with intimate enough knowledge of the surrounding area to be able to make a quick escape once he realized Taylor was not the easy target he had expected her to be. Police also released a brief psychological profile suspecting him to be quick to anger and highly emotionally unstable. After all, he had essentially thrown a temper tantrum when he couldn't get what he wanted,

one that manifested itself incredibly violently. Since he couldn't have Taylor, no one would. In light of this, police appealed to the general public to come forward with any information regarding anyone who had experienced conflict or emotional pressure in the days before Halloween, including things like financial misfortune or trouble in a romantic relationship. They also asked anyone who had noticed a friend, relative, or neighbor show up with visible scratches on their face, neck, or arms to come forward for obvious reasons, or for information regarding anyone who made a sudden departure from the Armstrong area in the days following the attack. After the press conference, information poured in from almost 1,300 individuals who claimed to have pertinent information. Given that the population of the area surrounding Armstrong was about 10,000 people, that's a huge percentage of people

that stepped up to try to help out with the investigation, speaking to the impact the murder had on such a close-knit community. And speaking of the impact the murder had, there was a pervasive sense of fear in Armstrong given that the killer was basically still on the loose. In a community that spent rather a lot of time walking from place to place, foot traffic dropped off to almost nothing, and those that did walk places did so in groups. What was evident was that Taylor's murder was most certainly not the first time her killer had acted out, and it was more than likely that it was only a matter of time before he did so again. In December of 2011, the RCNP task force set up to investigate Taylor's murder traveled and forced to Cherryville, British Columbia. There had been over 30 reports of a man

residing there fitting the exact physical description they shared with the public during the last press conference, a man by the name of Matthew Stephen Forster. Not only did Forster fit the physical profile, but he was known to be somewhat erratic and over-emotional. On top of that, Forster had fled his rented apartment in a hurry just a few days after Taylor's murder. His landlord confirmed that Forster had asked for the damaged deposit back, but abandoned the request once he had learned that it would take a few days to get cashed, and left all of his belongings behind in the apartment.

Forster's father later came and collected said belongings, and CCTV footage shows him acting extremely skittishly as he did so, almost as if he knew why his son had fled in such a hurry. Forster Sr. was later contacted by RCMP and questioned as to why his son had secured a high-paying job at some oil field up in the north of the country, but had to leave quickly since the job offer was at extremely short notice. But Forster Sr.'s word wasn't taken as gospel by the police, since he himself had a criminal history that stretched all the way back to 1969, when he was arrested for stealing a car. There were other convictions for possession of controlled substances as well as escaping custody. Needless to say, Matthew Forster became

the number one suspect in Taylor's murder. Not only was his alibi proving to be somewhat shaky, but other evidence soon came to light that he was definitely worthy of investigation. A search warrant for the Forster's cell phone records dating back to Halloween was issued, and the cell carrier that he was a customer of provided the relevant information to the police. Unsurprisingly, cell tower records showed that he was indeed in the area of Pleasant Valley Road on the night of the murder. Although we have no idea how the RCMP managed to get hold of Forster's DNA material, an analysis showed that it was a dead match for the DNA found under Taylor's fingernails,

as well as the DNA gleaned from the 2005 indecent assault. They had their man, but where exactly was he hiding? The key to that was his father. Forster Sr. was hiding something that was painfully obvious to RCMP investigators, but they never could have guessed how heavily he was involved in his son's attempt to avoid justice. Not long after Matthew Forster was named as the main suspect, a man came forward claiming that Matthew's father had paid 500 Canadian dollars for a bunch of his personal IDs, obviously so that he could forge a fake identity for his murderer son, promising he would return the IDs after a few months.

Police then commenced to tap Forster's senior's cell phone, only to discover that he was indeed in contact with his fugitive son and was working on obtaining yet another fraudulent identity from Matthew so that he might seal his escape from justice for good. In late March of 2012, police were listening in to a phone call between Matthew and his father when they finally let slip about his current location. Matthew had managed to secure a fairly well-paying job at a glass factory in Collingwood, Ontario, using the fraudulent documents provided by his father. On the phone call in question, he even bragged about his new photo ID provided by his employer, boasting that it would only increase his chances of getting off scot-free for the

murder of an innocent young woman. Ironically, it was this phone call that forced her senior advised his son to stop using the cell phone he had been provided as he had a bad feeling their calls may be being tapped. Police knew this was the time to strike, moving in to arrest Matthew Forster on charges of first degree murder. They also took Forster Sr. into custody on charges of aiding and abetting a wanted fugitive. It was while in custody that Forster Sr. boasted to another prisoner about how he tried to help his son escape justice. There was just one problem with that though, as the prisoner in question happened to not be a prisoner at all, but an undercover cop. Matthew Forster was immediately extradited back to British Columbia after his arrest

so that he could be charged with the murder of Taylor Van Deest. His initial police interview went on for hours and hours until finally, in the face of overwhelming evidence of his guilt, he confessed to Taylor's murder. A homicide detective asked Forster to look him in the eye before asking, Do you feel bad for killing Taylor? Yes, Forster simply replied. He went on to say that he felt sick about what he had done, and admitted to having some serious anger issues as well as problems with indecent desires.

Forster continued his confessions by admitting that he had driven into Armstrong on the afternoon of October 31st with the intent to find a young woman to assault, and for this, his charge was upgraded from second-degree murder to first. According to his confession, after he found Taylor walking near the railroad tracks, he tried to stop and talk to her for a few minutes, but once he realized they were alone, pushed her to the ground and told her to keep quiet. When she didn't comply with his demands, Forster admitted that he just freaked out. But the fact that he admitted choking Taylor with a shoelace, one the prosecutors argue he had on him for the express purpose of tying someone up,

showed a distinct premeditation to his actions. In March of 2014, Forster finally stood trial for the crimes he had committed. After a few weeks of harrowing testimony from Taylor's friends and family, Matthew Stephen Forster was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for at least 25 years. Taylor's mother and father told the courtroom that they would never have full closure when it came to their daughter's untimely passing, but were grateful that justice had finally been served. We're sad that we'll never be able to bring her back, but we're also happy that animal is going to be off the streets,

Taylor's mother told reporters at a press conference following the trial. Matthew's father also received a prison sentence for his part in aiding his son's attempts to escape justice But with a sentence of just three years, some felt that he too had, to some degree, escaped justice Since then, Halloween has become a night when Armstrong residents remember the bright shining light that Taylor Van Deest brought into the lives of all that knew her. A time when they try to forget the occasion when the scariest night of the year was made all the more terrifying by a dangerous and very real monster. Early on Halloween morning of 1981, Sister Tadea Benz was asleep in her bedroom at the St. Francis Convent in Amarillo, Texas. The 76-year-old nun had resided at the convent for most of her life, and it had been many, many years since the sister made a permanent commitment to God by pronouncing perpetual

vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. On an average morning, Sister Tadea would awake at 5am sharp, fetch herself some coffee, and then visit with the convent's cat, Chloe. At 6.30, she would then walk down on the on-site chapel to attend morning prayer according to the Liturgy of the Hours, which was one of Sister Tadea's most favorite prayers. She believed that although they were divided by continents and time zones, the structure provided by the Liturgy of the Hours was something that helped nuns of all different cultures feel part of the wider network of faith. But on the morning of October 31st, Sister Angela Martinez, one of Sister Tadea's closest friends, noticed that she was not in

attendance. This was obviously unusual despite her advanced age. Tadea never closest friends, noticed that she was not in attendance. This was obviously unusual, despite her advanced age, Tadea never failed to miss a single morning service. I missed her and was concerned because she seldom missed chapel, Sister Angela later said. So at around 7.30am, as soon as morning service had finished, a handful of nuns gathered together and walked over to Sister Tadea's bedroom in order to check up on her. When they arrived, they found that the door to Sister Tadea's convent room was closed. It was very much unusual to see that door was closed, Sister Angela added, because Tadea was hard of hearing and always left her door ajar to hear the morning buzzer. But when they opened the door, they were completely unprepared for what they found.

On the floor of her bedroom, Sister Taddea lay nude and alone, with her arms outstretched by her sides and clotting blood surrounding her uncovered head. One of the nuns rushed over to revive her, but her body was cold. They checked her pulse but there was none. Sister Tadaya Benz was dead. To all observers, it appeared that Tadaya had risen at her usual time, only to take a nasty fall which resulted in a traumatic head injury. It was heartbreakingly unexpected.

The sister had not appeared unwell or weak in the days prior to her death, but the sisters took her passing in their stride. Taddea had led a good life and had dedicated herself to Christ. They had no doubt that she now resided in heaven at God's right hand. Sister Angela was in complete shock. The grief was almost overwhelming and she could not bring herself to be around her late friend's body any further. So she enlisted the help of four other nuns who promptly went about wrapping Sister Tadea in a sheet before diligently cleaning up the spots of blood from the otherwise pristine bedroom floor. Once the work was completed, the nuns simply left their deceased sister in peace and went about planning her funeral

arrangements. But later in the day, a sister Florentine expressed her desire to visit Tadea's bedroom, where her body still lay, in order to pay her final respects to her departed sister. And it was while sitting near the body, praying that her soul would be lovingly received by the god she had incessantly worshipped for most of her adult life, the Florentine noticed something that would come to cause shockwaves among the pious community of the St. Francis convent. One of Tadea's bedroom windows had been broken. How this went unnoticed by the previous visitors of the room is something of a mystery, but there is every chance that since the nuns were so absorbed by their sister's passing and the morbid sight that greeted their entry,

that they simply failed to observe such an unusual detail. Whatever the reason, the decision was made to call the police and inform them of a potential break-in. When deputies from the Armadillo Sheriff's Department arrived at the convent, Sister Tadea's body had been removed from her bedroom and driven to a local funeral home, so their investigation focused solely on the possibility of a break-in. It was only when one of the deputies overheard a conversation among the nuns regarding Tadea's passing that they became aware that a death had occurred. Eager to rule out foul play, a deputy asked to

briefly examine her body and quickly discovered bruising around the dead nun's neck. Sister Florentine, like the other nuns who discovered her lifeless body, had taken it for granted that Taddea had died a natural death, and the revelation that she had in fact been murdered caused an outpouring of shock and horror among the convent's occupants. But the truth surrounding her death would only become more horrifying after sheriff's deputies transported Sister Tadea's body to a nearby mortician for further examination. A nun being strangled to death in the middle of the night was appalling and disturbing on its own, but the coroner who

performed the post-mortem on Tadea's corpse discovered something even more atrocious. Before her life had been snuffed out by what would have to be someone of unspeakable evil, she had been indecently assaulted. Sister Tadea's bedroom was officially declared a crime scene and forensic investigators were called in to gather evidence. They gathered up Tadea's bedroom was officially declared a crime scene and forensic investigators were called in to gather evidence. They gathered up Tadea's bed linens and nightclothes to analyze them for bodily fluids, and it was during this process that police discovered a large steak knife that had been hidden under her bed. This had been used to cut away the screen on her window, but it was confirmed that the cause of death were not stab wounds or loss of blood,

but asphyxiation by manual strangulation. Police were able to lift fingerprints from the handle of the knife, as well as from the bed's headboard, which had apparently been used for leverage by the murderer as he assaulted the 76-year-old nun as she slept. When deputies moved into question those who lived in the homes neighboring the convent, they discovered that one or two of the residents, who happened to be awake in the wee small hours of October 31st, had seen a youngish-looking man running away from the convent. The reports of the murderer being somewhat young were corroborated when fingerprint analysis

brought back a match. That of a 17-year-old boy named Johnny Frank Garrett, who was already known to Amarillo's Sheriff's Department given he had previously been a suspect in a burglary case. Garrett initially denied all charges, but the evidence against him was almost overwhelming. It was gathered by a unit that combined deputies from Potter and Randall counties, as well as Amarillo Police. It was the first multi-agency cooperative law enforcement investigation in the history of Amarillo, and led to the creation of a flagship special crimes unit. It was discovered that Garrett's fingerprints were a match to those found at the crime scene.

Amarillo Police Sergeant Claude Stevens testified that fingerprints found in the room of the slain nun could quote-unquote not have been made by any other person than Garrett. Hairs taken from Sister Tadea's bed linens were determined to have the same individual characteristics as Garrett's. Not only that, but the steak knife found under the nun's bed was of the same manufacturer, design, and make as another steak knife recovered from Garrett's home address. However, Garrett countered that he had not been at the convent in the early hours of Halloween, but had in fact broken in a few days previously with the intention of stealing valuables. He told police that he had entered the convent not via Tadea's bedroom window but via the front door at around noon. His route took him from the medication room to the cafeteria,

which is where he claimed to have picked up the knife. Garrett then claimed that he snuck into several of the bedrooms, one of which was Sister Tadea's, which is where he found her sleeping. He said his fingerprints on the headboard of her bed could be explained by the fact that he used it to lean on whilst reaching across her bed to take an expensive looking cross which was mounted on the wall. After he'd received the cross, he'd heard a noise at the convent, then simply fled, seeking refuge from the law in his mother's house at around 10pm on October 30th, where he insisted he had remained until the following morning.

At Garrett's trial for Sister Tadea's murder, one of the other nuns who resided at the St. Francis convent testified that his story was impossible. A Sister Bernice Nagler asserted that there was no way Garrett would have been able to enter the convent through its front door, since it was kept locked and only open for scheduled visitors. Not only that, but given that noontime was one of the cafeteria's busiest times of the day, there was absolutely no way that Garrett could have entered unnoticed, let alone be able to steal a steak knife undetected. She also added that Garrett's claim of bending a knife whilst prying open a locked drawer was complete nonsense. He broke into a convent, a place where theft was considered a grave sin

so there was no need for any nun to lock away her belongings nor did they have anything to hide from each other. Sister Bernice also added that the suggestion of Sister Tadea owning any kind of valuable, gold-plated cross was utterly ridiculous. She had taken a vow of poverty, an essential part of becoming a bride of Christ, and actively eschewed such pointless trinkets in favor of true wealth, God's love. The state prosecutor also called several eyewitnesses who lived in the same neighborhood as Garrett's mother, one of whom said that they had seen Garrett stalking around the property of

an elderly neighbor of theirs during a few hours before the time when Sister Tadea was murdered. Another neighbor testified that he had seen Garrett on his own property at around 11pm on the 30th of October, again, just a few hours before today his life was violently snuffed out. A look into Garrett's personal history provides many clues as to why he might commit an act of such pure evil. One of the psychologists who interviewed him pending his trial confirmed that he was severely mentally impaired, describing him as chronically psychotic and as having one of the most virulent histories of abuse and neglect I have ever encountered in 28 years of

practice. When he was just a boy, Garrett was repeatedly assaulted by his stepfather, who also loaned him out to other child abusers to be used for their gratification. From the age of 14 onwards, he was forced to perform bizarre acts and even made to participate in the recording of certain films in which he starred with much older men. At the age of just 10 years old, he was introduced to drugs and alcohol by members of his own family and subsequently developed severe substance abuse problems, which culminated in heavy use of brain-damaging substances such as paint thinner and amphetamines. Garrett was also regularly physically abused, and on one occasion was picked up and sat upon the burner of a stove, resulting in hideous, permanent scarring to his

backside and thighs. The severe physical abuse resulted in some pretty serious head injuries and brain damage Resulting in some shockingly paranoid delusions Including the belief that the lethal injection Texas' preferred method of execution at the time Would not actually kill him Despite such a psychological profile That information was not shared with the jury at his trial Who were only presented with the relevant physical

evidence and witness testimonies. Garrett's trial ended in September of 1982 when a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and the presiding judge found no difficulty in sentencing him to death. For the next ten years of his life, Garrett was held at Ellis Unit, north of Huntsville, Texas, which at the time held men on the state of Texas' death row. He led a miserable existence, portrayed as an absolute monster by the media, despite his insistence that he was innocent of the crime he was convicted of. The date of his execution was set to be the 6th of January 1992, but just before he was scheduled for the lethal injection, there came an unlikely intervention from someone that caused something of a media frenzy around

the world. An appeal for clemency came in from none other than the head of the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II. The Pope contacted the governor of Texas at the time, a woman by the name of Ann Richards, with a deeply convincing argument for mercy. It was in his opinion that not only was it in the interest of the Catholic Church to forgive Garrett for his crimes, but it was also against Christ's teachings to take the lives of any living person, especially as a kind of revenge for a crime, wrath being one of the deadly sins. The Pope also argued that there was a considerable amount of information coming to light which suggested that Garrett

was actually innocent of the crime he was accused of, and that his pleas were not just those of a guilty man afraid of his own death. In light of the phone calls she received, as well as a letter campaign initiated by Catholics around the world, Governor Richards relented and granted Garrett a temporary reprieve. After Governor Richards' reprieve, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles communed to hold a hearing on whether or not Garrett should receive a commutation to merely life in prison instead of death. The 17 board members held a simple vote. When the votes were counted, it was found that not a single one of them had chosen to commute Garrett's sentence.

All 17 believed he was guilty and should be executed for murdering Sister Tadea. And so, as a result of the failed vote for mercy, Johnny Frank Garrett was finally executed by lethal injection on February the 11th, 1992, at the age of 28. Local and national news sources discovered that his final meal request was ice cream, nothing more, and that he had declined to make a formal final statement regarding the murderer or his supposed innocence. However, APB News claimed they had a source that was present inside the execution chamber when Garrett was let in, one who insisted that he had spontaneously said, I'd like to thank my family for loving me and taking care of me. The rest of the world can kiss it. The indecent assault and murder of a woman of God is perhaps one of the most obscene and disturbing crimes we can possibly encounter.

But what is most disturbing about the case of Johnny Frank Garrett is that he might actually have been innocent of the crime, despite the overwhelming evidence against him. 22 years after jurors convicted him, and 12 years after Garrett was executed for the slaying, an Amarillo attorney attempted to prove his innocence. No reasonable mind would believe otherwise, Jesse Quackenbush said. The old and newly discovered evidence of Johnny Frank Garrett's innocence is so compelling, it will cause even the most bloodthirsty proponents of the death penalty to shake their heads in doubt. Quackenbush noted in a letter to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles that there were links between Sister Taddea's slaying and that of 77 year old Narnie Box Bryson, who was killed just three months before Sister Taddea in the same

part of town and in a very similar manner. The similarities were so striking that a district attorney at the time was convinced the same man killed both women. A man by the name of Leoncio Perez Rueda remains in jail in Bryson's slaying, and Quackenbush was quick to point out that during a recent interview, Rueda described assaulting and beating a nun on Halloween night in 1981. But given the finality of the death penalty, we might never find out the truth behind Sister Tadea's slaying, and we can only assume that given the mountain of evidence against Garrett, that he was in fact guilty of the crime. But still begs the question, which is more horrifying, the murder of a nun,

or the fact that we may never get to know what really happened that night? What's clear is that the only two people who really know are the poor nun that was murdered on August 9th, 1990. She lived in Dickinson, Texas and had a large loving family, which included her parents, two sisters, one brother, grandparents, and a dog named Tinkerbell. According to Teresa's sisters that they loved doing each other's hairs and nails, all the girly things one might expect from a trio of close-knit female siblings. Both of her sisters were quoted as saying that they were each pretty envious of her long, wavy hair, but still took a lot of joy in styling it and making their younger sister look as pretty as can be. Teresa was also very close with her grandmother, Betty, who saw her home as a kind of sanctuary, a place she could escape to whenever life in her own busy family home grew too hectic.

Halloween of 2006 began much like any other for Teresa, a typical Tuesday where she would head off to the nearby Dickinson High School for class and study before heading to a friend's house after school to hang out and watch scary movies. She was a good student and was a gregarious young lady, so it wasn't unusual for her to head right to her friend's place after school Before returning home fairly late But that night, Teresa was planning to meet up with a guy three years older than her A 19 year old And has merely told her parents she was visiting a friend as cover for meeting this mystery guy Teresa reportedly met him through a website,

dopehouserecords.com, about three months prior to the meeting, and a subsequent investigation showed that he had traveled from Albulene in Texas, a six-hour drive from Dickinson. Teresa had obviously been hoping for romance, but all she found was death. Her body was discovered in a shallow grave by a dirt bike rider on Friday, November 3rd, just a few hundred meters away from her high school. According to investigations into her cell phone records, Teresa reportedly met him through a website, dopehouserecords.com, about three months prior to the meeting and a subsequent investigation showed that he had traveled from Abilene in Texas about an eight-hour drive from Dickinson. Teresa had obviously been hoping for romance, but all she found was death. Her body was discovered

in a shallow grave by a dirt bike rider on Friday, November 3rd, just a few hundred meters away from her high school. According to investigations into her cell phone records, Teresa reportedly called the record guide around 10pm that night, as she had told him she was having trouble finding a ride to his house. There is no information on how long that call was, but a record of her sent text messages revealed that told him that she was going to try and find a map at a convenience store. However, police subsequently located and interviewed the guy in question after naming him as the number one suspect in her murder. He denied her being in his parents' house with him, and a forensic examination discovered that he was most likely telling the truth. Not a single trace of Teresa's DNA was found in the home.

Police then found multiple witnesses who stated that Teresa was in fact at a Halloween house party, specifically sighted at around 11pm on California Avenue. However, there is record which indicates that another witness saw her at a different party, in Bramble Lane perhaps as late as half past midnight. This is entirely feasible given that the two addresses are only about a mile from each other with Dickinson High School, where her body was found, being almost dead in the middle of the two. So despite the contradictory sightings, it's possible that Teresa could have been at both parties that evening. However, the one thing that unified the different sightings, it's possible that Teresa could have been at both parties that evening. However,

the one thing that unified the different sightings was that Teresa was spotted talking to an older man at both parties. However, it's not clear who this person was or if it was in fact the same person present at both parties. What was clear is that Teresa didn't return home that night. The next morning, upon finding her bedroom empty, Teresa's worried parents reported her as missing. In an interview with local news stations, her grandmother said that she assumed Teresa was still with her friends, and it wasn't unusual for her to disappear for a couple of days to hang out with those friends. This prevented an initial panic for a short while, but once her

body was found in a drainage ditch on an unused practice field for the high school soccer team, her family and friends were devastated. Despite not releasing many details of Teresa's death, the police made it clear that foul play was suspected. It came out later that she had been badly beaten and had somehow received cuts on her hands, but when it came to her funeral, it was a closed casket funeral. This could be down to the water damage her body endured as a result of being dumped in a drainage ditch, but it's also possible that her injuries were so gruesome that it was simply not feasible to show her body to the public.

However, other sources state that Teresa's body had some of the worst signs of strangulation they'd ever seen, and that when her body was found, a belt was still tied tight around her neck. Another source revealed that almost all of Teresa's hair had been cut off, implying some kind of personal motive to the crime, or at least someone psychopathic enough to take her hair as some kind of personal motive to the crime, or at least someone psychopathic enough to take her hair as some kind of trophy, and that she was naked from the waist down. In the days following the discovery of her corpse, and in response to an appeal by local police for any witnesses to come forward, several people reported seeing a Caucasian man with long dark hair around the

high school on Halloween night. Police also found her glasses and a hair clip belonging to Teresa, not too far from the drainage ditch, concluding she had been killed in that same area following some kind of struggle. The state of her body was most definitely in line with the theory that she had been murdered where her body was found, with the killer then fleeing the scene as quickly as possible. DNA was recovered from her body was found, with the killer then fleeing the scene as quickly as possible. DNA was recovered from her body, which is believed to be that of the killer, but almost exactly 15 years later, it has still not been linked to any known criminal or suspect. More than 45 people have been interviewed in relation to the case, but not a single person had been charged. Exactly 10 years to the day since her disappearance, on November 1st, 2016,

the Dickinson Police Department posted on Facebook regarding her unsolved murder. The police has some interesting phrasing, saying, There have been significant developments during that time. However, investigators are looking for additional information that would help them gather enough evidence to make an arrest and give Teresa's family closure. However, it isn't clear whether this meant that they had a new suspect and need more evidence or that they were in the process of gathering evidence in order to officially charge a long suspected individual. On October 29th of 2006, just a few days before Teresa disappeared, a close friend of hers named Kimberly Ramsey was reported missing by her parents. In the aftermath of Teresa's body being found, there were serious concerns that there was a significant connection

between the two disappearances. Yet thankfully, Kimberly was found safe and sound on November 9th, staying with her boyfriend in Rusk, Texas. Kimberly was questioned by police regarding Teresa's murder, but this was the first she'd heard of it, and she became hysterical with grief. So it was determined that Kimberly's disappearance was merely a coincidence. It turns out that Kimberly had somewhat of a history of being a runaway, and had actually made an appearance on Dr. Phil during an episode on Teenage Runaways. It has also been noted that Teresa had issues with running away from home, so there is still a connection between the two girls' behavior, albeit a tenuous one. The following year, on July 15, 2007, the body of Bridget Gearan, a woman from Beaumont, was discovered on Crystal Beach. Crystal Beach is only an hour and a half's driving time from Dickinson, Texas,

and is easily accessible through Galveston Island. The crime scene was eerily similar to Teresa's. Bridget was brutally beaten, strangled, and indecently assaulted, and was found dead, half naked, near a body of water. But unlike the former, Bridget was much older at 28, was Caucasian, and a legal assistant. On the other hand, Teresa was just 16, Hispanic, and a student. It is also on record that four suspects were linked to Bridget's murder. While we have no information about the number of suspects in Teresa's case, if indeed there were any at all. Despite there being no official law enforcement connection made between the two murders, it is possible that the similarities in the murder mean they were committed by the same person,

given the relatively close time frame and the geographical proximity. Coincidentally, the two women also share the same middle name, Lynn. Teresa's murder is often associated with the Texas Killing Fields, a 50-mile stretch of land close to Interstate 45 between Houston and Galveston. The Killing Fields became infamous after four corpses were discovered near a 25-acre plot of land located near to the Calder Oil Field, which were only about six miles away from where Teresa's body was found. Since the 1970s, the cases of over 30 murders and disappearances of young women have been associated with this patch of land, which has been described as a serial killer's burial ground due to the area's distinct desolation. There are some who theorize that multiple serial killers are operating in the area, but few cases have been officially connected, and only one seems to match up with the timeline of Teresa. The book of 23-year-old Sarah Trusty was discovered in the Texas City dike of July 28, 2002. Sarah was

attacked four years before Teresa, with the dike being only 16 miles from Dickinson High School. It is entirely possible that whoever killed these girls might well be the same person that killed Teresa, but due to time constraints and dwindling evidence, it is also entirely possible that we may never, ever know who murdered the young Hispanic student, and that her murderer, and perhaps the murderer of many others, is still living attraction in the United States today. Yet what makes McKamey Manor so different from the others is that there are no zombies, ghosts, or werewolves to frighten visitors. Instead, members of staff are permitted to bind, gag, and push visitors to

their physical and emotional limits. Obviously, it's not something the average horror fan is going to enjoy, and there are several entry requirements. Visitors must be at least 21 years of age and must pass a physical exam, a drug test, and a background check. McKamey Manor operates all year round, although interest tends to peak during the Halloween season and actually offers visitors a hefty $20,000 if they are able to survive for more than 10 hours. According to the manor's founder, Russ McCamey, not a single visitor has ever managed to endure the full experience. The reason why the manor is so controversial is because nobody is saying what's actually happening in here and that's out of respect for the manor and myself and what we're trying to produce here, he said during a recent interview.

If the people who go through the haunt want to spill all the beans and say everything that happens, they certainly could, but they don't and that makes the haters crazy because they don't know what's happening. That's why you hear all the insane rumors because they're just making things up in their mind of what is happening. Since there is no entrance fee, the manor is extremely selective, and just a handful of patrons are permitted to enter each weekend. McKamey also requires that his participants refrain from physically engaging with the actors or from using curse words. Breaking these rules are grounds for an immediate cessation of the tour. Based in Tennessee and Alabama, the manor advertises itself as an audience participation event in which you will live your own horror movie. But critics have described it as a torture

chamber. Even other members of the Halloween haunt industry have leveled some serious criticism at the place, branding Russ McCamey as a psychopath who has managed to find a legal loophole to satisfy an evil, sadistic streak. Upon being granted permission to enter, visitors are required to sign a 40-page waiver prior to the tour. The waiver asks that the visitors understand and agree to the fact that not only were they warned multiple times not to participate in McKamey Manor, but that it is only a game and they are not really being tortured, although they will be roughed up and may well suffer some degree of physical injury during

their visit. One particularly ominous line from the waiver states that McKamey Manor is not for the weak, but that visitors will never be held against their will. The only things off-limits to the staff are explicit situations in which they might be intimate, but visitors may have their heads shaved or even their fingers broken since mouth traps are used to inflict discomfort or pain. There are also clauses stating that dangerous heights or even poisonous animals may well be used to terrify participants, but perhaps most terrifyingly of all, the waiver

states that participants may be buried alive, specifically under 12 feet of dirt, although they are promised access to a limited amount of air. But Amy Milligan, a Californian who visited McKamey Manor, insisted that her experience was more than just a game. She asserted that she suffered injuries that were way beyond cuts and bruises, and was even waterboarded by members of staff while they laughed in the face of her obvious suffering. She only left a positive review of her experience that McKamey would upload footage of her time there to their YouTube channel, which she intended to use as evidence of excessive abuse. Yet when it was uploaded, she found the worst parts had been tactically edited out.

I told them I can't do this, please let me out, she later said, but they told me they weren't done yet. They shoved my head back in a bucket of water. I thought I was going to die in there. Another Californian, Laura Hertz Brotherton, has a similar story to Mulligan's. She too was left with more than just superficial injuries. Brotherton says that before she was allowed to participate, she was asked to prove her loyalty to McKamey Manor by completing a series of tasks, some of which included purchasing an adult onesie and filming a personal visit to a Halloween store before uploading the evidence to Facebook. According to Brotherton, she believed that McKamey was particularly hard on her after she admitted to having become involved in an

extramarital affair. She insisted that, for some reason, Russ McCamey was personally offended by this. I was waterboarded, tased, and whipped. I still have scars of everything they did to me, she later said. I was repeatedly hit in my face, like open-handed, as hard as a man could hit a woman. Brotherton added that she was blindfolded, then held by her ankles and submerged underwater for so long that her body started involuntarily thrashing. She was later forced to dig a hole in the dirt with her bare hands, then made to lie in the fresh hole while they covered her and her face with dirt, giving her only a straw to breathe through. It was then that she repeated her safe word several times, only being freed from her live burial after having screamed it at the top of her lungs. When it was all over, Brotherton visited a hospital but refused to reveal to the hospital staff exactly who or what had caused her injuries. As is standard practice in such incidents, hospital staff called the police, but Brotherton left prior to their arrival.

She later worked up the courage to report the incident to law enforcement, but was told she didn't have a case because of the waiver. Brotherton then took photographs of her injuries. In one photo, she is wearing a neck brace and hospital gown, with her face showing signs of swelling. She also had scratches on her cheeks and small cuts at the corners of her mouth from fish hooking, where a person takes their fingers and puts them inside your mouth before stretching your mouth open. Another photograph shows a large open wound on one of her knees, apparently from where McCamey's staff forced her to crawl on rough ground. According to an article written about her

experiences, Russ McCamey confirmed Brotherton's story, though he did shed doubt on the severity of her injuries. Yet the article also goes on to state that some of McCamey's claims are pure fantasy, that there's no alligator, there's no quicksand, and most of all, there's no 20 grand prize for those that last longer than 10 hours. McKamey himself then posted on Facebook regarding the article, saying it was based on pure speculation and exaggerated stories. He had apparently reached out to the publication in question to offer them access to other visitors who would contradict Brotherton's assertions but was ignored. He also claimed that he had been in touch with other extreme attractions and discovered that Brotherton's assertions but was ignored. He also claimed that he had been in touch with other

extreme attractions and discovered that Brotherton had been banned by them for other salacious claims. According to McCamey, the article was an opinion piece, masquerading as a piece of investigative journalism. It was then he laid out a challenge to the journalist who wrote the piece, stating there was one simple way of her determining what was fact and fiction. Take the tour. What do you have to lose? He wrote. Do you have what it takes? But we know you'll never do that. Instead, you'll sit behind your desk in the comfort of your safe space, writing about secondhand information instead of actually seeking the truth from your own experience. Russ McCamey, a self-proclaimed

cinemaphile, uploaded videos of the tours to the McKamey Manor YouTube channel, but he has since ceased to do so because of negative public reactions. Yet McKamey hasn't stopped uploading footage of the tours entirely. According to Facebook users who are members of the McKamey Manor private Facebook group, McKamey still shares video, even occasionally live streaming some of the tours. These videos boast professional editing, lighting, and props, raising questions as to whether or not some of the tours are actually staged. One video shows a group of visitors reading the infamous waiver aloud before the camera documents them signing it. The people attempting to read the waiver aloud then

have their hair pulled, get smacked in the face, and are choked with rope while trying to read. Footage later shows the individuals having their hair shaved off before being forced to eat it, and being forced to eat raw, dead animals. These acts lead some people to speculate that the video is staged, and that the participants themselves are actually members of the manor's staff. According to McKamey's Facebook post, the chance to win $20,000 is absolutely real, however it is very suspicious that not a single visitor has ever been able to claim the prize. McKamey has stated that although the prize exists, it's impossible to attain, which is arguably the strongest evidence that it doesn't

exist. Perhaps the most interesting question is how McCamey is able to fund the manor. Russ McCamey is a Navy veteran and does not profit off the manor, but was somehow able to invest half a million of his own money into the establishment of the manor in San Diego. According to McCamey himself, he spends almost $300 a night for an on-site EMT and around $20,000 a year on insurance. He also estimates that it costs around $500 per visitor. So just how is the manor funded? According to rumor, McKamey sells footage of the tours on the deep web, as well as taking a cut from a betting syndicate who watched the live streams from a top secret location somewhere in the US. But these contradict McCamey's claims that he

doesn't profit off the manor in any shape or form. McCamey himself has admitted to money troubles after losing his job as a veteran's advocate, and his only source of income is his $800 monthly retirement check. There has also been fiery debate on the legality of operating McKamey Manor. For example, the police have been called to McKamey Manor on more than one occasion, at one point arriving to find a woman locked in a basement, shivering and bruised with duct tape over her mouth. When police asked the woman if the interaction was consensual, the woman said yes, giving the cops no option other than to leave. According to the District Attorney of Lawrence County, Tennessee, McKamey Manor operates well within the law, given their use of waivers.

As long as McKamey participants are there voluntarily, no crime is being committed. admitted. However, a participant can withdraw consent at any time, and if staff were to disregard the withdrawal of consent, a participant would then be classified as a victim who was being held against their will. Russ McCamey also makes clear that the Manor's Tennessee location is far less physically involved than it was in San Diego, being more of a psychological experience than a physical one. There's no torture, there's nothing like that, but under hypnosis, if you make someone believe there's something really scary going on, that's just in their own mind and not reality. He stated in another Facebook post, if you are good enough and you're able to get inside somebody's noggin like the way that I can, I can make folks believe whatever I

want them to believe. I'm like the most straight-laced guy you could think of. But here I run this crazy haunted house, and people twist it around in their little minds. It really is a magic act, what I do. It's a lot of smoke and mirrors. However, that isn't to say people escape the manor unharmed. McKamey stands by the possibility that one may leave with cuts, bruises, or even broken bones as stated in the waiver. In short, McKamey Manor may well be one of the greatest mysteries in the entire entertainment industry, and by the looks of things, it will remain that way, despite incredible pressure on Russ McKamey to shut the place down. People have sent me death threats, even shot at my house, and I'm not going to open it to the masses. I like keeping it a secret, he said. I like the mystery of the manor. If you saw everything, it'd be like any other

haunted house. That's my goal, even when I'm dead and gone, to make sure people are still talking about McCamey Manor. And that's why nobody is really going to ever see Behind the Wall. To be continued... Everything about the spooky season just filled me with a kind of childlike excitement. Like I honestly preferred it to Christmas by a whole lot and as soon as the months ticked over from September to October, it kicked off a whole 31 days of celebratory spookiness for me. I even got a job in a Halloween store that was open all year round just so I could get some of that spooky holiday feeling during the spring and summer. But not anymore. Not since one Halloween brought one of the most traumatic experiences of my entire life with it. And that thing was a visit to an unlicensed Halloween haunt attraction out here in Appalachia.

A haunt, as they've become known, are Halloween-themed scary events that are put on every year from the end of September to October. After the success of more well-known haunts like Halloween Horror Nights and The Netherworld Haunted House, similar attractions popped up all over the country. Some were a little more fast and loose, whereas some, as I found out, are downright dangerous. I've never actually been to one of those things at the time a friend of mine suggested visiting one, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't extremely curious. Erica, my best friend for as long as I can remember, said she'd heard about a haunt over near the big Ugly Wildlife Park. There wasn't much info available about it online, but there were a few reviews of the place on Reddit, some of which were written

by self-proclaimed horror junkies. One of which said they'd been to a bunch of haunts and that the one near Big Ugly was probably the most immersive, intense experience they'd ever been subjected to. Another was from a guy who said that he'd lasted hours on end in other haunts up and down the country who'd laughed more than he'd jumped for the most part, but their visit to the Big Ugly had him tapping out before even an hour had elapsed. I told Erica that it might not be the best idea to go to the haunt if it was too much for even hardened horror fans, but she responded that they were probably just talking up the attraction after being given free entry or something. Like what happens with Instagram influencers only for

gorehounds and not teenage girls. So, somewhat reluctantly, I agreed to go along with her. Only, unlike some of the more mainstream Halloween haunt attractions, this particular haunt didn't just let you walk up, buy a ticket, and stand in line. As far as we knew, it didn't even have a name. Some just refer to it as the Haunt South of Charleston, others as the scariest place in West Virginia. But the most common reference to it seemed to just be the Big Ugly, so that's what we started calling it too.

So as you can imagine, there was no website, no Google info tab, nothing like that. All there was was this weird email address that you had to message in order to receive a date and time when you were permitted to visit. We got the email address from one of the reddit reviews and it was something cryptic looking like 819V9L underscore 33 at protonrocker.onion. I was over at Erica's place when we sent over an email saying like how can we get ourselves a time slot. A reply came in within minutes. We rise from the ocean, with our names burned under our heads.

Our command and control come from the winged one. But how many crowns do we wear? Erica read the reply aloud in pure confusion, wondering just what in God's name such a weird reply could have meant and what it was referring to. She copied and pasted the reply into a Google search bar but all she got was hits on poetry and Shakespeare, nothing about crowns or dragons or anything like that. She had no idea what the email was talking about but something about it seemed oddly familiar to me and for some reason an answer came to mind. I told her to reply

with just the word 10. She was all like, is that a guess? How do you know that? But I insisted it had to be 10. She fired off her reply and again the response came back in minutes. It was the right answer. Erica was astounded and by that point I'd realized how I knew the answer. You see, my grandpa was a preacher out in rural West Virginia, one of the fire and brimstone kinds that screamed at his congregation from his pulpit every Sunday. He knew the Bible off by heart, but there was one section of it that he was particularly obsessed with, and that was the book of Revelations. He always used to bark the same verse whenever he talked about the day of judgment. Something about a great beast

rising out of boiling waters. One that was like a leopard and a bear with the mouth of a lion. Sounds pretty dumb now but when I was a kid it used to scare the life out of me and I never ever forgot the part about it wearing ten crowns upon its horns. We thought the correct answer to the cryptic question would be enough to get us an appointment at the Big Ugly but instead of getting our time slot we only got another weird puzzle as a reply. Go to where the lonely Dutchman did his final dance and paint a welcoming picture. Now it was my turn to be like, what in God's name does this even mean? If they wanted us to go all the way to the Netherlands to get some painting done,

we really were up the creek. But this time, it was Erica who had one of those lightbulb moments. You see, she's really into true crime stuff, so like serial killers, mass murders, all kinds of detective stuff and missing 411 stories. They're just her jam. She said the moment she heard the word Dutchman and Final Dance, she knew immediately who they were referring to. That person being a dude named Harry F. Powers. Born Harm Drenth in Groningen, Holland, Harry Powers baited his victims through lonely hearts ads, claiming he was looking for love but ended up murdering them for their money. He was executed by hanging in Moundsville, West Virginia, hence the part about his final dance,

which apparently referred to the death spasms that occur when somebody dies that way. Moundsville is up in the very north of West Virginia, a four-hour round trip from Charleston. So to save us the time of driving all the way there and back, we took a gamble on just getting a picture of the Welcome to Moundsville sign from Google Images and sending a copy of it to the big ugly email address. It worked.

We got a reply that just said, 2100 October 30th Which we deduced was them telling us to go looking for the place at around 9pm on the 30th of October Only a few days away from the time we got in touch We were on Cut to the day in question and we set off in the late afternoon It's just less than an hour's drive from Charleston

out to the big ugly wildlife park but we figured we better give ourselves a few hours to actually find the place given that we hadn't been given an actual location only to search the area around Mudlick Hollow. I was pretty apprehensive about the whole thing on the drive out there, having heard some pretty grim stories about people's experiences at these guerrilla style haunts, but Erica told me I was being a big baby that they wouldn't have gotten such glowing reviews if they weren't legit and more importantly, didn't keep people safe. We were on foot around Mudlick for maybe like 40 minutes or so before we saw a trail of smoke rising into the air. Folks aren't allowed to camp anywhere in the Big Ugly, so we figured that the smoke trail had to be the haunt, and if it wasn't, we could at least rule out the location as being the place we needed

to be. But after we hiked up and down steep hills and finally came across a piece of fairly flat land set between two inclines, all we saw was a trio of wooden teepee looking things and not a single living soul around to greet us. We weren't even sure what we were looking for but still we started clambering down this fairly steep slope in the direction of the wooden structures, keeping our eye out for anyone who might look like they were in charge of the haunt. It was deadly quiet as we wandered up to the teepees and I started to get seriously uneasy as the sun was just starting to dip onto the western horizon. It would be dark soon and it wouldn't be easy to find our way back to Erica's car. We had like no food on us at all, with only these cheap flashlights to light our way. But right as I'm about to raise this point to Erica and suggest that we just get out of there before anything bad could happen,

we heard a voice from the slopes above us. You girls lost. We looked up to see this rough looking dude, peering out at us from behind a tree, a black bandana covering his face. I knew things were about to get weird as soon as I saw the face covering. No one who's up to anything wholesome ever covers their face up, like ever. Uh, we're just looking for the big ugly haunt, Erika replied, and I heard it in her voice that she was nervous too. You heard of it? Haunt, the guy replied. Don't know what you're talking about. Right when he said that, I heard something behind us and was so sure that I saw something moving behind one of the other trees. I started giving Erica this look as if to say,

like, let's just scoot, and she nods and the whole thing had been a bad idea, and now she was firmly aware of that too. Erica thanked the man anyway and told him we'd be on our way, but he called back that he had a better idea, and it's then that he produced a crossbow like out of nowhere and pointed the thing at us. His better idea, as he put it, was for us to lie flat on our faces in the dirt, and right as he says that, a bunch of other guys start appearing from behind the trees and walking down the slopes towards us. Run, and we'll catch you, one of the other guys said. Hide, and we'll find you. Scream, and I'll cut your tongues out before I fry them up in their skillet. Apparently, we hadn't found the haunt. We'd found something far, far worse. For what seemed like hours, those masked-up guys subjected us to the most terrifying, traumatic experiences of our entire lives. They stripped us, tied us to the trees, slapped us, fired crossbow

bolts at us, and threatened us with things I don't think I really want to repeat here. The treatment got progressively worse as time went on, and the whole time they laughed and whooped as we begged them not to hurt us and to let us go. We swore we wouldn't tell anyone that they were out there. We promised them that we'd just leave and never come back, but they told us they didn't believe us. They said there was only one way to make sure we wouldn't tell on them, and that was to put us in the ground. We were half naked when they untied us from the trees and dragged us by the hair over to a patch of dirt behind their teepee things.

Then, with crossbow and pistols pointed at us, they made us dig into the earth with our bare hands, telling us we were digging out our own shallow graves. I don't think I cried like that since I was a little girl, but still, I dug, tearing up my fingers on rocks and roots as I thought about what a silly little girl I'd been to even risk trying to find some unlicensed haunt in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly, Erica refused to carry on digging, screaming at the guys if they were going to kill us that she wasn't going to waste any time digging a hole. I remember not being able to decide if she was being stupid or brave, dumb or defiant. She turned her tear-streaked face up to those psychos and just straight up told them no. But they just laughed, hooting and hollering before one of them asked us what we were thinking coming out this far into the woods. I can't remember what exactly was exchanged,

but Eric had said something about how they wouldn't get away with what they'd done, that killing us would be the biggest mistake of their lives. Then one of the guys was like, Wrong on both counts. We are going to get away with this. It's not a mistake mistake Because you're not Gonna die I remember they said that last part for sure

Because I immediately stopped digging and looked up This feeling of hope going through me Like a warm feeling spreading in my chest Congratulations girls The guy with the crossbow said. You just survived the big ugly haunt. We just sat there in the dirt, shivering, unable to believe what had just happened to us. Even Erica, who had been spitting bile at these guys just a minute before, seemed shell-shocked.

One of the guys came along and threw our clothes at us, then offered us some hot coffee from a flask he had, along with a few cigarettes. Erica refused both, but I took the cigarette. I'd quit a few years before, but I just couldn't turn it down. It dawned on us during the car ride back home that they hadn't actually done anything seriously to physically harm us. Aside from the cold, a few slaps and the hair pulling, they barely touched us and they didn't actually strip us naked at all. The whole thing had been a psychological game, albeit one that had scared the life out of us. They didn't even ask us for any money at the end of it. They just let us go. We talked about going to the police or writing up a warning on Reddit about the haunt,

but we ended up doing neither. It was our own fault for looking for something like that, for even considering it to be a good idea or a remotely fun time. Well, I mean, I suppose this is a warning. Written years later way too late and it haunts me how many other people they will have gotten away with mentally torturing. But at the end of the day, we had gone looking for something to scare us. Maybe we were just super naive or whatever, but the point stands. They didn't come to us.

We went to them. We went looking for something truly terrifying and, by God, did we find it. To be continued... pool in the UK. I'm 33 this year so obviously my trick-or-treating days are well behind me. But the times I got to throw on a scary costume and head into the night with my best mates are some of the fondest memories I have from my youth. That's even aside from the free sweets and we all know how stuff just tastes better when it's free. But maybe I'm looking back through rose-tinted glasses to a degree because I do remember one Halloween that was most definitely not all fun and games. In fact, what happened that night was probably one of the most terrifying things that's ever happened to me, even if it did take me a little while to realize the significance of it. So me and my childhood friends are all either 15 or 16 during the Halloween of 2003, we're on the verge of being

too old to trick-or-treat anymore. Saying that, considering most of our voices had broken at the time, us turning up at people's houses was less cute kids begging for sweets and more like moody teenagers extorting people out of their Haribo minis under the threat of egging. People were generally pretty sound about it and only once did we have to actually throw an egg in anger, but there were many, many occasions where a homeowner would take a peek through the living room curtains before just refusing to answer the door. It's not like we could egg everyone, we only had a pack of six and had to use them sparingly. Fun fact, a lot of places around

ours just refused to sell teenage boys eggs during the Halloween season. As one bloke said to me, you don't look like the type to take these home to Spanish Omelette, do you lad? Good point, well made. Point being, there came a point during the evening when we were pretty dismayed at the pathetically low amount of chocolate we'd managed to get our hands on, which is what directly led two of us to make a huge error of judgment. So later on in the evening, maybe at about nine-ish, we're in this fancier neighborhood near the river, knocking on house after house and generally getting the knock back from the owners, until we come to this one house, where an older guy actually answers the door with a smile. We give it the old trick-or-treat greeting to which he responds by laughing warmly and giving us a little clap, which was unusual,

but not entirely unwelcome. He starts telling us how not a single set of trick-or-treaters had knocked at his house all evening and since he finds Halloween a great deal of fun, it had left him pretty dismayed. We get into a casual conversation with him about our costumes, who we were supposed to be and all that, and although I don't think he managed to pick up on a single reference, he was very complimentary. He then goes on to tell us that since it's getting late in the evening and he was unlikely to get anyone else calling at his house, that we were welcome to as much chocolate and sweets as we wanted. He told us that he'd stocked up on like a shed load of stuff, thinking he was going to get many more house calls than he ended up getting, and since he was off to bed soon,

we could just help ourselves. Otherwise all the chocolate would just end up sitting in his cupboards for a year and he wasn't about to give kids year old sweets come next Halloween. We basically hit the jackpot thinking we could just rinse the old fellow of his sweets and make up for the paltry amount we'd collected over what had been an unusually fruitless trick-or-treating session. Only, he said there was one small problem. Since he was getting on in years and didn't get out much, his oldest grown-up son had come by to drop off all the sweets along with his usual weekly shopping. Then, without having thought it through, his son had put all the sweets in the top cupboard of his back pantry, one that was way too high for him to reach without doing his back in.

If a couple of us were willing to help him reach the cupboards and take a few tins of soup for him in the process, the sweets were ours, all of them. Now I know what you're thinking, who in God's name is daft enough to just wander into a complete stranger's house in the middle of the night? Apparently we were, and I'll explain why. Firstly, we were in the middle of our teens and most of us were big lads, hardly in a position not to be able to defend ourselves. Secondly, this fellow seemed pretty old and infirm, hardly a big threat to us, especially since the two lads who volunteered to go inside to help him outnumbered him two to one. And thirdly, the fact that one of us had managed to pilfer a bit

of peach schnapps out of his parents' booze stash, which we promptly shared as soon as we were able, had seriously impaired our judgment. So pretty much as soon as the old bloke laid out the terms, two of us, Sam and Corky, volunteered to go inside and help the fellow get a soup so we could get our sweets. They went inside. The old fellow shuts the door behind him after saying something about keeping the cold out and we wait outside in the street, buzzing about having hit the chocolate jackpot. Like I mentioned, we were all pretty tipsy from having shared that bottle of booze so we're just sitting on the stone wall outside the bloke's house, chatting up and waiting. A few minutes go by, Sam and Corky haven't appeared yet, but I think we're just in too high spirits to really notice.

A few more minutes go by and we start getting a little bit impatient, wondering what's taking so long. It had gotten colder and colder as the night went on and by that point it was actually starting to drizzle and none of us fancied getting soaked on the walk back home. So one of us gets their phone out and starts trying to ring Sam and Corky on their mobiles to which there was no response. We actually started cursing them out now, speculating that they were stashing some of those sweets away in their costumes or something to which there was no response. We actually started cursing them out now, speculating that they were stashing some of those sweets away in their costumes or something so they don't have to share with the rest of us. The lad who tried to ring them does so again,

shaking his head and getting annoyed as the rain started to get a bit heavier. Then right at that moment, we hear a bang of something smashing against the wooden gate at the side of the old fellow's house. It was loud enough to make us all a jump, so we stand and turn around to see what could have made the noise. That's when I see Sam climbing over the wooden gate at the side of the house, like scrambling over it as fast as he could, looking like he'd seen a sodding ghost or something. We're all like, what's going on, mate? Watching him clambering over the wooden fencing near the back gate,

before basically throwing himself over the other side and hitting the concrete driveway with a thud. God, the pure fear in his eyes when he started running down the driveway at us, shouting for us to run. We all start backing off like getting ready to leg it when Sam stops, turning back towards the house and saying something like, God, Corky's still in there. He's still bloody in there. Everyone starts asking him what just went on for him to come running out like that, but he doesn't respond. He just looks up towards the second floor of the house with a gasp. I turn to try to see what he's looking at and watch as one towards the second floor of the house with a gasp. I turn to try to see what he's looking at, and watch as one of the top windows of the house

opens up. It was one of those kinds that opens by, like, rotating from the bottom, like it didn't open like a door, but like a hatch, if that makes any sense. We can't really see what's behind it thanks to the darkness inside the room, but out of like nowhere, we just see Corky emerging from the window, climbing out backwards while gripping onto the ledge. He's trying to edge out, Tomb Raider style, so he can drop feet first into a section of flower beds that were very fortunately placed underneath the window. I say very fortunately because I'm not messing. It must have been a 15 foot drop from the second floor window, like at least 15 feet. Then as we're watching him do this, there's like a flash of movement in the room above Corky, who then screams this proper horrible

blood curdling scream before crashing into the flower beds beneath him. He fell so awkwardly too, like the first thought was that he had to have broken something having fallen that distance in such a way. So I start rushing toward him to help him up and get him moving but to my surprise, he just bounces back up out of the flower bed and starts legging it down the driveway towards us, that same horrible look of fear on his face that Sam had. Then, that was that. We just bailed, sprinting as fast as we could down this long dark road that led towards the river, not stopping until we reached the promenade which was lit up in this

ominous, pumpkin orange streetlight glow. Pretty apt for Halloween, right? Not that it had occurred to me until months after. Only when we were certain we were a safe distance away from the bloke's house did we stop to catch our breath, but it didn't take long for those of us that had waited outside to demand and know what had happened. Only then did we see the blood pouring out of Corky's head. From a cut so deep, we could actually see this pale bit of tissue in the orange light, which turned out to be one of his actual bones. The old fella had stabbed at his hand as he'd been hanging from the window frame, and that's what caused him to scream and drop.

I remember Sam just sitting down on the concrete near the railings, just with his head in his hands. Maybe he was trying to fight back tears, I couldn't quite tell, but it was Corky that spoke up first. Fella pulled a knife on us, got us into the back pantry and pulled a freaking knife on us, he said, hands on his knees, still panting. He had something else too, like his phone or... He was a taser, lad. He had a bloody taser and my auntie had one that looked exactly like it. I'd know it anywhere. Sam interrupted. We were all just in shock and listened as they went on to describe how the nice old fellow we

thought we were dealing with turned out not to be so nice or so old at all. Corky told us as soon as he had gotten them into the back pantry, he'd risen up from behind all hunched over and started to move a bit more limberly, which is right when Corky said he'd started to get the creeps, realizing that something wasn't right about the bloke. The old bloke pointed at the cupboard where the sweets were, told Sam and Corky to help themselves, then just sort of disappeared after telling them that he'd be back in a minute The cupboard was apparently so high up that Sam had to give Corky a boost up to actually open it, and when they did actually open it, there was nothing inside at all No soup, no sweets, no nothing. Then the next thing they knew, the fella was blocking the exit to the pantry, holding a knife and what was, according to Sam,

definitely a taser, and was ordering each of them to go upstairs. But that's not all. Apparently when the fella turned up again, he was bollock naked, with only his shoes and socks on. We didn't get all the grim details out of either of them for a few months, but apparently the fella wasn't suffering from any dysfunction, if you catch my drift. They'd said they'd listened to him at first, heading towards the staircase before they attempted to escape, with Sam heading out the back door, into the yard, and over the fence. But Corky was sort of trapped on the stairs of the bloke blocking his escape, so as I mentioned, he had to run upstairs, find a front-facing window, and just climb out of it.

We considered calling the police right then and there. I mean, he'd obviously just stabbed one of our mates in the hand, but Corky had this other idea. Even with his adrenaline pumping, he explained, and pretty coherently, that there was no way we could complain to the police, that he could see the older fella putting on that innocent old man act again, and just telling the police that we'd forced our way inside and tried to rob him, that he'd defended himself, and that's how Corky ended up with the wound on his hand. I remember the lad was about to phone the police just stopping dead, thinking about it for a second, then putting his phone away. Five lads, way too old to be trick-or-treating, stinking of booze, versus the word of one sweet old man, who was apparently no threat to anyone at all. It'd be an open and shut case for the police, or at least that's what he got into our heads.

I'm sure there's people who might read this and disagree, knowing there was some way of us having evidence in our favor, or I don't know, something to prove we weren't lying. But I suppose we'll never really know, since we didn't act on it to find out. We stayed away from the neighborhood for years. We eventually managed to get it together to enact some kind of revenge, but when we went back to the place, we found out it was some young couple living there. The older fellow apparently being long gone. We didn't get any closure at all, but closure is overrated.

There's a lot to be said for the power of just forgetting, you know? But yeah, anyway, this has gone on long enough, I reckon, so I'll wrap it up. The story of the scariest thing to ever happen to me or anyone I know during Halloween, and honestly, it's probably the most disturbing thing to happen to me in my entire life, too. Me and my buddies used to trick or treat like every year when we were kids without fail. And there used to be this one house that we always used to go to where this horrible family used to live. Like their kid was a huge bully in middle school, got suspended a bunch of times and their parents didn't seem to be any better. Like most kids would just stop going to that house after they'd been told to buzz off year after year, but we grew to kind of relish the confrontation in a

way. Like it's not like the mom who used to answer the door knew exactly who it was each year. We had masks on, more different stuff. We just got a kick out of seeing her get increasingly irate as the years went by. Only one year in particular she gets really really angry with us knocking over and over and actually chases us down her driveway and out into the street, which wasn't nearly as fun as just trolling her and seeing her get all angry. So that year we decided it was time for the nuclear option. You see, we were heavy on the treat side of trick-or-treating, not so much the tricking sides of things. Even houses that told us to get lost or had ran out

of candy didn't get anything bad thrown their way, we just sort of took it on the chin. But that time, getting chased away was a little too much for us to stomach, so we started hatching a revenge plot. One of us runs back to their parents' place, grabs a pack of toilet paper, then meets back up with us like a few minutes walk away from the house we planned to TP. We head back over there like we're on a secret mission or something, all hyped up to strike deep at the heart of Killjoys everywhere. It was dumb, but we were just kids, maybe only like 12 or 13 at the time, so I guess being dumb was just part of the package of being that age. Anyways, we get there, sneaking up the driveway in pairs, hiding behind bushes and their car and whatnot, getting in position to strike.

Then, like some little team of cartoon commandos, one of us gives the signal and we spring into action, hurling the rolls of toilet paper over the house, over the car, into the big tree they had in their front yard, everywhere we could. Then boom, there's a gunshot, and the dad of the family runs around the back of the house, aiming a pistol in the air and hurtling towards us. He looked like a man possessed, sprinting towards us at terrifying speed, despite the fact that he was rocking a big old spare tire in his gut. We just bolt, running back down the driveway and pounding it into the street, splitting off into different directions as we're all just intent on getting out of there. But you know that saying, you don't have to be fast enough to outrun the bear, you just gotta be faster than your slowest friend?

Yeah, that. Because as we're all running, I hear the scream from behind me, then the guy shooting. I turn to see one of my buddies on the floor, getting the snot kicked out of him by the sky, his bag of candy having spilled open with all the contents just glittering in the streetlights. I run back and start begging the guy to stop and he points the gun right at me, at which point I literally pee my pants.

I'm not scared to admit it, I was a kid and it's scary enough having a gun pointed in your face as an adult, let alone when you're like 13. Only when he takes the gun away from me and points it to my buddy's head that I find the will to start screaming, no, please don't, we're sorry, we're really sorry, please don't shoot him. The guy doesn't respond, or even look at me that time. He just whips off my friend's mask and keeps the gun pressed against his temple and growling stuff about how he's going to blow his brains out right then and there. Who do you think you are, creeping up on my family like that? I should waste you right here and now. And all this other stuff that has my young friend basically bawling his eyes out.

It was horrifying. Actually horrifying. Scarier than any horror movie I'd ever seen. Scarier than any super realistic costume or Halloween decoration that any sick horror freak could have possibly dreamed up. I mean, I really did think the guy was about to straight up kill my friend in front of me, and it didn't take long until I was crying too. Then the guy does something to the pistol, cocks it back, puts the barrel to my friend's face again. I'm screaming, don't kill him, don't kill him, over and over. Then he pulls the trigger. But there's no bang, there's just a click. But even the click was enough to send my friend

into absolute spasms of terror and wailing. I didn't know anything about guns at the time and I really did think he'd done whatever you do to prep the thing to fire and I think I was just too terrified to see or realize that what the guy had done, what he must have done thinking about in retrospect, is eject the clip, clear the chamber, then dry fire the pistol into my friend's face. Making it look like he was about to shoot him, but actually not doing so at all. Then once we were good and broken, once we were too scared to do anything but stand or lie there, bawling our little eyes out, the dude says something about us learning our lesson, then walks off back up the street towards his house. I remember my friend sort of lying there in the street for a few minutes, just sniffing and crying while I sat down next to him.

I say sat down, it was more like my wobbly knees just couldn't handle it anymore and I collapsed down onto my bottom near him. We didn't say a thing for the longest time. We just tried to process what just happened. How a dumb Halloween prank could possibly have escalated into something so truly terrifying. Looking back on it, I know we were little jerks tempting faith like that, going back year after year, and we probably weren't the only group of kids who were angering this guy, or deliberately targeting them for not being in the Halloween spirit. But I don't think we deserve that. No one does. I mean, this grown man subjected a tween kid to a mock execution in the middle of the street. After a while, we got up and I walked my buddy back to his house,

where we told his parents everything that had happened. Needless to say, the cops got involved and the whole thing got way, way messy for a while. The guy ended up catching charges and we got visits from the cops too to warn us about playing Halloween pranks like that. I'm not a lawyer and this was like 30 years ago now so don't quote me on any of this. I mean I'd actually be happy to hear from anyone who could paint a more detailed picture of the laws that were broken that night but, we were trespassing on their property and breaking a bunch of other harassment laws or something and if that guy hadn't actually ran after us into the street,

I think he might have actually gotten away with the whole thing. But since he did follow us and did the whole mock execution thing, he managed to pick up charges and for a while it looked like he was facing a brief stint in prison. But the family wasn't exactly in the weeds financially so from what I remember they lawyered up and managed to get away with a suspended sentence. Although I do know the guy was banned from owning firearms in our home state which I suppose was a win for us in some respects. But the lasting effects of that night

stayed with me for a long, long time. I've had a severe fear of firearms ever since. Like I can watch movies with guns in no problem. Something about it just being on a screen kind of separates the reality of it for me for some reason. But in person, I literally get a sweat on if I see a gun which actually posed a serious problem for me during things like your run-of-the-mill traffic stop where I see a cop's gun and get all nervous. Like I've had a canine unit called on me more than once because a cop assumes I get all nervous because I have something in my car that I shouldn't have but I'm sure you guys can't blame me right? That night was one of the most traumatic of my entire life, perhaps the most traumatic, and I'm sure you won't be surprised

to hear that it was the last time I went trick-or-treating. Like sure, my parents banned me from ever going again, but even if they didn't, I never wanted to be out on Halloween night, ever again. I hate Halloween. I'm sorry. I know that makes me sound like a proper buzzkill, but I have to be honest. Halloween is without a doubt my least favorite night of the year, and I really hate how it's gone from just one night of it to like an entire month of dumb spooky fun.

But I promise it's not just me being a killjoy. For me it stems from a deeply personal experience with people who didn't just see ghosts and ghouls as some harmless form of autumn entertainment. Let me explain. I was born in Yorkshire, here in the UK, but my parents are from Libya and North Africa. I'm sure I don't have to explain much about the recent situation in Libya, as it's been in the news an awful lot over the past nine years or so. But I think there's a lot about Libyan and Arab culture in general that a lot of people don't know about, especially when it comes to things that have pre-Islamic origins, since the religion has pretty much come to dominate any news or discussion when it comes to the Arab world. One of these things is the concept of jinn. Jinn is a term

used to describe spirits or supernatural creatures that exist in Arab folklore, creatures that are held responsible for misfortune, possession, and diseases. The word comes from the root word jan which means to hide or to adapt. They're different from demons in the sense that they're not inherently evil and can sometimes be helpful and kind. In a lot of pre-Islamic works of literature, jinn can be summoned and bound to a sorcerer who can then manipulate their powers to their own advantage. Jinn are assumed to be able to appear in shapes of various animals such as scorpions, cats, owls, or even donkeys. Dogs are another animal often associated with jinn, especially black dogs, which explains why a lot of Muslims have a weird fear of dogs. Jinn are also commonly associated

with the wind, often appearing in mists or sandstorms as shadowy ghosts with no individual structure. Now having grown up in the UK, I don't really believe in any of that stuff. I studied medicine at uni, I'm a rather rational person, I know that mental illness is caused by chemical imbalances, etc. and not just bloody spirits. But I can't say the same for my parents, or some of my other extended family, who legit believe that certain illnesses or mental disorders are caused by being possessed by djinn or tormented by a shatan, the word we use for demons or devils. So a few years ago when my mom started to suffer from a deep all-consuming depression. The immediate reaction wasn't to get her an appointment with a psychologist or therapist. It was to start doing all kinds of ancient rituals

on her to remove the gin from her body. In short, my aunts had someone perform a bloody Islamic exorcism on my mom, and having to witness it was honestly one of the worst chapters in my entire life, which, coincidentally enough, also happened to occur during the month of October. I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember driving back from Manchester to my mom and dad's place in North Allerton, worried sick the entire time because I knew that I was about to witness something seriously distressing. I remember the look my aunt gave me when I suggested that what was about to happen maybe wasn't the most effective form of treatment and that my mom needed professional help.

I mean I wanted to tell them they were daft old bents who medically speaking didn't know their butts from their elbows but you don't speak to your elders like that. Not in my culture. They scouted me, told me I was straying from Islam and that I needed to basically get my head together and stop thinking like an English girl even though that's exactly what I was. I feel like I should make it clear that I love my heritage and I love my religion. I'm proud to be Muslim and I wouldn't change a thing about myself even if I don't strictly keep halal. But I'm telling you now, some aspects of my culture really annoy me. Misogyny is one

thing, all those old bearded wankers telling us girls what we can and cannot do while being total bloody hypocrites themselves. But the anti-science thing is just on another level and it baffles me. At one point, the Muslim world had some of the most scientifically advanced societies on the face of the earth, but somehow that all just went completely downhill, but I digress. One evening, pretty much my whole family gathered in my parents' house when a sheikh arrives to perform the exorcism. From what I gathered, the whole process was divided into three stages and wouldn't take place over one evening, but a few days. The first stage involved removing all forms of distraction from the living quarters of the possessed person.

The sheik, with the help of my aunts, removed anything musical from my mom's room, so all the CDs, the stereo, and my mom's oud which is like a little Arabic guitar or mandolin type thing which she always loved to play for me and my sisters when we were kids. They then took away all of her jewelry and stuff. Basically anything pretty had to be purged from their room which obviously my mom found really upsetting since she took a lot of comfort in the things that reminded her of home. The sheik then told my mom and the rest of my family everything that was about to happen was the will of Allah and that it was merely there as a kind of go-between, a mediator of sorts.

The second stage and perhaps the most disturbing for me was when the sheik tried to actually communicate with the possessing spirit directly. Something came over my mom as he started to do this. At the end of the day, she believed in the process too, and she played right into his hands, saying some really horrible, perturbing stuff about being full of hate and loving the process of slowly killing the woman the thing was possessing. My aunt howled when they heard her talk like that. My sisters cried, and my dad had to leave the room to keep himself from showing the women of the family that he was about to burst into tears himself. When my aunt started screaming, so did my mom.

The cacophony of wailing and crying coming from that room that evening was just horrendous, and for months I used to hear it in my nightmares. The sheik demanded to know the most inappropriate things from my mom, the kind of thing a person is never supposed to ask another unless they're actually really really intimate with them. It was absolutely disgusting and in those moments I hated that man. I think I still do. The third stage took place the following day. The sheik came and cleaned the room down with the help of my aunts. Then they used a mixture of honey and water to wash my mom down with, a kind of purification ritual that would cleanse her body and soul of

any sin. She was utterly exhausted by that point. I'm also certain she hadn't eaten a thing in about three days and had barely drank any water. She looked terrible, and I was so, so scared she was going to die as a result of the stress and deprivation. Then, after the sheikh put his white-gloved hand on her head and recited a few verses from the Quran, it was all over. He packed up his things as my aunts thanked him, then he left. My mom was fixed. Only she wasn't fixed. Not at all. She's never really gotten better, and for a long time I think that exorcism bollocks only made her worse. Yeah, religion helped her. Praying and believing helped her to get a little bit better but not anything that old wanker did to her ever made her remotely better. I suppose that's why I hate Halloween

so much. I had to spend the rest of October listening to stories about demons and spirits, seeing people make light out of a subject that had given my family and I so much pain and torment. Because as I said, for some people ghosts and ghouls and goblins are just something make-believe that bring a bit of light entertainment once a year, or for my weirdo boyfriend all year round, but for some people, they're very, very real. To be continued... Rosa. I live up near Edinburgh in Scotland and this is the true story of the scariest thing that's ever happened to me on Halloween. I'm going back a few years but on Halloween night the cinema society at our uni decided to put on an outdoor showing of that movie Alien. I had not seen it before but a few of my pals said it was good and since we were too old for

trick-or-treating but too young to go out drinking that would be a way to have a good time without spending too much money. So we had an alright time watching the film and all of that. It wasn't as good as my palace had made it out but it was still pretty enjoyable. Only the whole time this guy in the same row as me keeps looking in my direction. You know like when you can see the shape of someone's face in your peripheral vision when they're staring at you. Yeah, that. I gave him a few looks as if to say, what are you looking at, but that didn't put him off. He kept staring for like the entire time the film was going on. He seemed a wee bit older than me with dark hair and quite a plain face,

and he had a t-shirt with a little character wearing a blue and yellow jumpsuit type thing that was giving a thumbs up. I'm pretty sure it was from a video game but I'm not sure which one. Anyway when the film was over and me and my friends were walking back towards the bus stop this car pulls up next to us really fast before slamming on the brakes. Then the same fella jumps out of the car, the one with the video game t-shirt, and tries to actually drag me inside. I went absolutely rage and started scratching and biting him while my mates went mental too, scratching, punching him until he gave up, jumping in his car and driving off.

We tried to take pictures of the number plate and all that but they were too blurry to make anything out so we had nothing to tell the police apart from a rough physical description. I don't think anything happened as a result of my complaint, like the police never got back in touch with me. So as scary as this whole thing was, I don't think it compares to the fact that the weirdo who tried to actually kidnap me that night is still out there, and it's probably only a matter of time before he tries something like that again. Only the next time, the girl might not be so lucky. To be continued... a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official, and give and receive feedback from the community, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And join my discord to interact with me and other listeners directly. And if you want to support me

even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all these stories in long compilation form and save huge on data, located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the bio. Thanks so much, friends. And remember to put your honey in your Joel juice. Thank you.