The Lets Read Podcast - 123: Autumn & Elementary School Stories | 19 True Scary Horror Stories | EP 111

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Autumn, Being Chased In The Woods, & Elementary Schools... 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 Bonfire Night used to be my favorite day of the year. I mean, awesome history aside, what's not to love about a national holiday that's centered around a bloke getting burned alive as punishment for a failed bombing? There was something about the whole toasty bonfires and spectacularly colorful firework displays thing that just captured a kind of youthful excitement in me. Me and my mates would wrap up warm, get a few hot dogs and burgers going on the grill, smoke up to make the fireworks display extra colorful if you get what I mean, then stand around a bonfire getting toasty while downing cans of lager to get a different kind of toasty feeling going. But a few years back,

something hideously unexpected happened that left the time around November 5th filled with bad memories and nightmares. Something that I don't think I'll ever really get over, no matter how hard I try, because honestly it's mostly my fault. So it's the morning of the 5th of November 2016, and it's absolutely pouring down. What we'd normally do if the weather looked terrible was nip down to the field we'd usually build our bonfire on and pile up some old dead wood and whatnot, then whack a tarp over them. That way we'd have firewood to stack to build a bonfire and the night wouldn't be a washout. That year, we'd had a gander at the weather forecast for that week and although it promised to be incredibly chilly, there was no rain forecast. Which I suppose just makes us divvies for having believed nothing in the way of firewood stored up and ready to use

so we were in something of a jam when it came to how we'd get our yearly bonfire going. But with bonfire night falling on a Saturday that year I'd had plenty of time to be able to remedy the situation. All I needed was to get out to the field as quickly as possible with a few choice tools in hand to make a start on salvaging what had become a much-loved yearly tradition for us. I arrived at the field at around mid-afternoon, having gathered up the supplies I needed. In the boot of my car I had a tarp, a broken-up wooden pallet to give me a little of the dry kindling I'd need to get the bonfire going, and one other thing, a large plastic can of petrol.

I hauled them out of the boot and into the field and got to work. It took me a few hours to assemble a large enough pile of wood to make a decent bonfire, and most of it was well too sodden to really be of any use, but that's where the petrol came in. Every so often I'd soak the wood in a few lashings of the highly flammable liquid, letting it absorb as much as possible. The logic being that by the time it came to light the bonfire, there'd be enough saturation and heat to dry the wood out and cause a lasting bonfire for us to drink around. Then, just as the sun started to set, I sent a group text around to the usual lads, letting them know that I'd saved the day and that the bonfire was good to go. I was something of a hero that day, and we went from assuming the evening would be a literal

washout to jumping on the hype train. Those yearly bonfires started as a bit of fun, but as we got older, they were a way for us to keep in touch as careers and relationships got more serious, as changing nappies and weekends with the in-laws came to replace the stable afternoon pub sessions. So as darkness set in, one by one, my mate's cars began to pull up in the lay-by by the field. We were all hugs, back-slapping and catch-ups, helping haul deconstructed BBQs from boots, carrying coolers full of beer and burgers into the open field while waterproof jackets kept the drizzle at bay. Once the food was sizzling away on the grill, we started to set off a few fireworks. Whoever could bring the most spectacular firework has become something of a wiener measuring contest over the years

But it made for an excellent show while we wolfed down hot dogs and corn on the cob But the bright flashing explosions of colored gunpowder quickly lost its novelty And so we turned our attentions to the great pile of drying wood in the middle of the field I was still manning the BBQ at this point so it was two mates of mine that approached the bonfire dousing it in the last of the petrol I'd bought as another one of our number dolled out the tins of lager. Then come the fateful words.

Ready lads? Here we go! I turned to look in time to see one of the boys leaning in to toss a piece of flaming newspaper into the pile, and then the whoosh and flash of flame that followed blinded me for a few seconds. I covered my eyes instinctively, feeling the heat of the fire on my face from all that way away, then when I had covered them, it wasn't just the bonfire that was alight, it was one of my mates. It was honestly one of the most horrific sights I had ever been unfortunate enough to witness.

An actual human torch, arms waving with screams of burning agony echoing around the field. I think he was too panicked to actually do the whole stop, drop and roll routine He just tried to run away from the flames Seemingly unaware that it was his clothes that were actually on fire It took one of us running up to him and shoving him into the wet grass Screaming at him to roll around to put the actual flames out I watched for a moment as the body of my mate actually lay there smoking for a moment before the screams of call a bloody ambulance actually got me to react and pull my phone out. Perhaps the second worst part of the whole ordeal was trying to get an ambulance out to a field in

the middle of nowhere. Not only were we in a fairly inaccessible part of the countryside, but it took far longer than was ideal to actually get emergency services out there. Meanwhile, my friend had suffered burns that extended pretty much from head to toe, and was in a ridiculous amount of pain, judging from the gut-wrenching, mewling sounds they were making. I don't think I'd ever have truly forgiven myself if they died of the burns, but then again, I've not forgiven myself in light of their survival either. Their body is now a mess of burn scars, even with all the skin grafts they went through during the 18 months or so that followed the accident. From what I could gather, it wasn't the oversaturation of petrol that caused the explosion of flames, but the fumes that had become concentrated in the core of the bonfire.

Once a flame was put onto it, it acted sort of like a mini fuel air bomb, the heat and pressure of the fumes expanding to engulf anyone that was close enough. And unfortunately for my friend, the waterproof clothing he had on at the time was dated and not flame resistant, so he'd gone up like a candle when the intense heat and flame had washed over his body. He says it was no one's fault, sort of blames himself actually for being so close to the bonfire, but I know whose fault it was. It was mine. It was obviously my fault that he'd suffered life-changing injuries that night

and had never really lived it down, no matter how much he tried to assure me otherwise. So like I said, that's how my favorite night of the year became something I dread, because every single year without fail, the memories of that night overwhelm me and brings on the most crushingly depressive episodes. I can barely leave the house around that time of year because without fail, seeing a bonfire or hearing fireworks just brings

back the most vivid memories of that night. Even burning wood gives me the shakes. So please, be very, very careful with your bonfires this year, and every year, because what's assumed to be a bit of festive fun can turn into a nightmare which haunts blanketed the skies of Cincinnati, Ohio, and it was raining at around 10.15 a.m. when the principal of Pleasant Ridge School, Thomas L. Zimmerman, rang the bell for morning recess. Zimmerman figured a little rain wouldn't do the children any harm as they scattered into groups and began games of baseball and partook in general tomfoolery. But the principal had seriously misjudged how fast and how strong the rain would come.

And not just the rain either. A full-on storm was quickly approaching. A few minutes later, the wind picked up while a heavy rain began to fall on the schoolyard. Most of the children ran for the school building to save themselves from being soaked through, but a group of about 30 young girls made a break for the outhouse on the opposite side of the schoolyard. The outhouse was a 10-foot square framed building positioned over a 12-foot deep stone vault on the eastern side of the schoolyard. It was only 11 years old, but had to be repaired several times because of shoddy construction. It was designed for maybe only a handful of

students at any one time, but on that day, just over 30 young girls were trying to squeeze into the cramped, dank space. Suddenly and without warning, the floor on one side of the building, rotten from years of moisture, gave way, and the entire floor of the privy crashed to the bottom of the vault, taking all thirty or so of the terrified young women with it. The floor fell almost eight feet vertically and completely shattered, sending children as young as seven into a huge pool of sewage water that was around four feet deep. There was no crash at all, 12-year-old Elsie Ferguson later said. There was no noise whatsoever, the floor just fell. That's all there was to it, not a child's scream that I'd heard.

I felt the floor going and jumped quickly, clutching to the side of the door. I was left hanging on it and with all my strength I pulled myself up and out of that place. A handful of the other girls managed to escape the same way, climbing up onto the toilet seat to make room for the others before making it to a doorway, but not all were so fortunate. Raw panic ensued and the tragic accident quickly became a battle for their lives. The girls were unwittingly pitted against each other in a struggle for survival as they tried to climb out of the four foot deep pool of human excrement, with the weaker girls crushed down by the stronger peers as they were forced under to drown in the mass of filth. You see, a mass drowning is perhaps one of the darkest, most horrifying things a person can experience,

because during a panic like that, survival mechanics in the human brain kick in, and a person will find any kind of leverage at all to stay above water. This means that people will literally drag each other underwater, climbing atop each other's drowning bodies in order to stay afloat in breathing air. This is exactly what happened during the tragedy that day. Girls were actually drowning each other in a desperate bid to stay alive. A young woman by the name of Lorena Ferguson was rushing into the outhouse just moments after the floor gave way, stopping dead in her tracks when she saw the horrific scene below. Seconds later, she turned on her heels and ran back into the schoolhouse to fetch help.

A few minutes later, two of the girls ran into the room and exclaimed that a girl had fallen into the vault. Principal Zimmerman later told a local newspaper, I didn't realize the awful calamity that had overcome us, but hurried in the direction of the outbuilding. On the way, I met a number of others. They were screaming wildly at the top of their voices and it was some time before one of them could compose herself sufficiently to explain what had happened. Another young some time before one of them could compose herself sufficiently to explain what had happened. Another young woman ran to one of the high school classrooms, which was still in session and alerted one of the teachers there of the outhouse's collapse. Then she and four high school boys bolted toward the outhouse, arriving at roughly the same time as Principal Zimmerman,

but nothing could have prepared them for what they were about to discover. The sight of terrified young women scrambling up the walls of the collapsed outhouse, covered in human filth, was almost too much to bear. Others further down were literally swimming in weak old fecal matter, struggling to keep their head above the mass of excrement. The sight alone was bad enough, but the cacophony of screams was almost deafening. All of the girls were screeching at the top of their lungs, their cries intermittent with the sounds of gagging and retching. Two young men were across the street in the Presbyterian church

with a few others when they heard the terrified screeching of the girls running away from the outhouse in the pouring rain. As they exited the church to see what all the commotion was about, they began to hear the faint screams of the girls trapped in the vault beneath the outhouse. They heard the desperate screams of Mama, Papa, help us. Then, without as much as a word between them, the occupants of the church ran out into the rain and over to the girls' outhouse. There they found Principal Zimmerman, standing in a narrow doorway to the outhouse looking half-mad with anguish, pale with panic and unsure what to do. The men shoved him aside and got to work. They began calling out to any nearby to fetch ropes and ladders, anything that could help them fish the girls out from the pile of human waste.

Zimmerman himself dropped to the ground near the open doorway, trying as best he could to reach some of the girls with just his arm, but it was impossible. They were way out of reach. Then some of the men who ran to help grabbed him by the legs and lowered him further down into the recess. This helped him rescue three of the girls before any rescue equipment even arrived and probably saved the man a lifetime of guilt in the process, given that he had panicked so awfully in the initial stages of the rescue attempt.

Especially given that the stepl ladders brought over for the school were far too short and the ropes brought over were nothing but clotheslines which snapped uselessly as the girls attempted to climb up them. While I was waiting for a longer ladder, Zimmerman later said, I begged the children to be quiet and brave, and I would rescue them. Some of the older girls followed his commands, attempted to calm the younger ones but it was no good, panic had well and truly taken hold. The ladders and clotheslines repeatedly failed, and the rescuers were forced to rethink their strategy. Using quick thinking, one of the men climbed into the steeple of the nearby church and unfurled the rope off the church bell. This was much more effective a tool and helped save the lives of two more of the girls. Another one of the rescuers found a long ladder in a

nearby barn and helped Principal Zimmerman dip it into the muck. It was not long enough to reach all the way from the bottom of the vault, but it was long enough for Zimmerman and some of the other men to descend and lift the girls out of the mess. The girls that were pulled out of the mess were almost unrecognizable. Their eyes clenched tightly shut as they wept hysterically, gasping for breath and trying to uselessly clean the stinking waste off themselves. The struggle down there was terrible, said a survivor named Hazel Signore, in the aftermath of the disaster. As long as I could get out of the water and take a breath of air, I felt sure of being saved, but when I fell back into the hole, I thought it was over. The girls about me were grabbing onto me. Everyone grabbed at each other and when we

did get a hold on the wall it was only for a second. I caught hold several times but when I was pulled at by the others my hand slipped. There was only a few taken out when I felt something under my feet. It must have been some little girl that had drowned. All the time I prayed. I said my prayers over and over. I could not see after a while and as I was praying to the Lord to save me I found the rake in my hands. When I came into the light I saw Principal Zimmerman. I crawled up and was lifted out. After struggling in the violent frenzy among the pit of disgusting fecal matter,

14-year-old Edna Gerke again found a purchase among the brickwork and made one final attempt to pull herself out. Far above me it seemed somebody was coming down a ladder and called to me. Suddenly someone took hold of me. I looked back over my shoulder and saw the agonized faces of my friends, then lost consciousness and knew no more until I woke up in the schoolroom surrounded by the bodies of my friends. Gerky's arms were horribly bruised and torn up by deep scratches. Wounds she said were down to the clawing attempts of her classmates to climb over her out of the stinking mess of filth. The rainstorm ceased not long after, but the break in the weather did little to relieve the chaos that was unfolding on the schoolyard. A fair few of the girls passed out not long after emerging from the sewage, adding the fear that they had succumbed to the terrible fumes of the cesspit

they had fallen into. But thankfully, neighbors of the school offered up their homes as treatment centers, with rescuers carrying girls to the safety of houses where they were revived, cleaned up, and comforted after such a harrowing ordeal. After Zimmerman held the nineteenth and final girl off the ladder and watched other rescuers carry her away into the schoolhouse for treatment, he leaned inside the shattered outhouse and peered into the dark, silent cesspit. All he could see were broken pieces of outhouse floor floating around on the surface of the foul water. As he realized the task was over and the adrenaline began to fade, he could have easily fallen into the cesspit himself if it wasn't for other rescuers coming to check on him.

But then it was early afternoon, and the sun had finally broken through the clouds, shedding an oddly warm light on such a horrific scene of chaos, filth, and death. The gathered mass of onlookers and rescuers doubled as relatives began streaming in from downtown Cincinnati. It had taken only an hour or so for word of mouth accounts of the fatal collapse to reach the wider citizenry. When they heard the news, Pleasant Ridge residents, who happened to be working downtown, ran back to the village, where they were met with the sight of the frantic children and mothers of the victims, who were congregated in the front of the school. Many of the girls were vomiting blood, and a local doctor in attendance was not sure if they would survive the afternoon. Frantic confusion continued for several more hours as more and

more people arrived from nearby villages, although most of the girls who crammed into the privy lived in Pleasant Ridge. The routes between the school and the train stations were crammed with people. The village telephone system proved inadequate to keep up with the demand, and hundreds of people crowded around every available phone, waiting to find if their daughter was among those affected. When the adrenaline rush of the rescue abated, Principal Zimmerman and his teachers sobbed along with the parents who lost their daughters. Local medical staff looked at the exhausted and emotionally distraught principal and ordered him to a house across the street to rest. One of the doctors remained there the

remainder of the afternoon, suffering from a severe headache brought on by the tension and the hours he spent inhaling the noxious fumes emitted from the caked bodies of the drowned girls. On the Sunday morning of the drowned girls' funeral, every church bell in Pleasant Ridge rang continuously from 9am when the first funeral started until 4pm when the last of the four girls buried that day were put to rest. Four school friends of Emma Steinkamp, the first victim to be buried, had been tapped to be her pallbearers. The girls were bearing flowers dressed in white as they walked alongside, but after carrying the tiny casket to the front of the German Evangelical Church,

they were too grief-stricken to carry on any further, so four local boys took over instead. The reverend of the Methodist church tried to calm the sobbing crowd, but one grandmother fell weeping against the small casket and Emma's mother fainted with a deafening shriek. At that point, two of the girls in white became hysterical and their parents carried them from the scene. The entire town and a fair portion of the rest of white became hysterical and their parents carried them from the scene. The entire town and a fair portion of the rest of Cincinnati followed the hearse to the cemetery. It had been the most horrifying, revolting tragedy in the entirety of Cincinnati's recent history, one that the townsfolk would never forget, and the deaths were made all the more terrible by the fact that they had occurred in a pit of human sewage,

a fate that no single person could ever deserve, let alone an innocent young girl. To be continued... so allow me to take a moment to introduce our American cousins to a great British pastime. Conkers is a traditional kids game here in the UK that's played using the seeds of horse chestnut trees, which are nicknamed conker trees or conkers respectively. Every year, come autumn time, kids all over the UK go out collecting these conkers, hoping to find the biggest, thickest ones around. Once they've found a decent sized specimen, or one that happens to have a particularly acute edge to it, they'll usually soak it in vinegar to make it tougher, which are referred to as seasoners where I'm from. Then, with their seed weapon of choice threaded onto a piece of string, two kids then make turns trying to smash their Conker into

their opponents until one breaks when the bearer of the intact Conker is declared the winner. Now obviously it's a pastime that's dwindled in popularity in recent years and I get why. No need to bother braving the autumn cold and rain when you can stay inside and best your mates in FIFA. But Conker's was dead popular when I was a kid, and it's generally considered to be some wholesome, harmless fun. Only I wouldn't say it wasn't exactly harmless, as a game of Conquerors ended up being one of the scariest events of my childhood. I know that sounds mental.

You'll see what I mean in due course. So the story starts with me winning a conquer fight in school, against a lad who had this undefeated conquer. There was a whole buzz about this kid's conquer, how it was like the strongest conquer ever, and it would take a true behemoth of a conquer to break it. I happened to be lucky enough to find this oddly shaped conquer with a particularly sharp edge, basically like a pyramid shape, which happened to be lucky enough to find this oddly shaped conker with a particularly sharp edge, basically like a pyramid shape, which happened to be the ideal shape to break bigger, rounder conkers. So I harden the thing up, take it to school, and challenge him to a conker fight.

Word got out at registration that I'd challenged him and there was a huge buzz the entire morning, with the hype slowly building until lunchtime when the fight was due to take place. Now I know this all sounds incredibly sad, and it was, but we were an all boys school, and without the calming influence of girls, the place was basically like Shawshank. When the time of the fight came, a huge crowd had gathered to watch, and after a few decent strikes with my sharp edged Conquer, the champion's mighty Conquer cracked into pieces. It wasn't so much because I had some super Conquer or anything but more like that the

champion's Conquer was so weakened and brittle from so many battles that it was only a matter of time before someone came along and knocked him off his perch. A huge cheer erupted from the crowd of pubescent boys and I was basically the school hero for like a day. But the former champion was fuming. I'd humiliated him in front of pretty much the entire school and naturally he didn't take that well at all. The following week, word got around that the former champion had gotten himself a conqueror that would help him to reclaim his crown, and so a rematch was set and the hype began anew. Only when it actually came to battle the kid, it seemed like he wasn't so much interested in destroying my conqueror as he was in destroying my knuckles. You see, generally speaking, kids would swing at each other's

conkers with like a diagonal arc as to avoid smashing each other's hands in the process. But this kid's first swing at me was near vertical, and his new conker smashed into the back of my hand so hard I actually yelped in pain, while the gathered crowd emitted like a collective wince and groan. The former champion assured me that it was an accident but he had the kind of smile on his face that let me know that it was anything but. So he gives me a few token swings to kind of show that he's taking the fight seriously then aims another swing right at my fist that's holding my conker out before me. Jesus, the sound it made when it hammered off my knuckle was unreal, and the pain

that shot through my hand was enough to have me holding back angry tears. But like I said, all boys school. To cry in front of them would be a fate worse than death. My hand is shaking when I give him what amounted to be a final warning. Hit my hand again, and there'd be trouble. The crowd admits like a oh sound, excitedly anticipating violence like it wasn't funny at the time, but in retrospect it makes me laugh how bloody animalistic boys can be. Anyway, the former champion repeats the cycle of making a few token swings of good faith, then once again aims a full powered swing right at my fist. Smack. The pain of him hitting the spot he'd smashed previously was absolutely insane, like I thought he'd legit broken my finger at first. I just snapped, the red mist descending

as I waited until he was positioned to receive my next swing, then aimed a proper powerful arcing blow right at his face. My conqueror plows into the side of his head with a smack that seemed like it echoed around the playground, and again the gathered crowd howled in a collective show of painful empathy. I thought I'd just taught him a bloody lesson, showed him how hard it hurt but, to my horror, I watched the former champ's eyes roll in their sockets before he fell back onto the concrete playground with a thud. My stomach dropped as I watched a little pool of blood begin to collect on the ground beside

his head. I'd split his face open, right near his eye where the bone is nearest the skin. And his eyes themselves. Good god, they were just white slits shining out at where they were rolled up in their sockets. Kid screamed, running in all directions. I should have stayed to help him, to try to fix my mistake, but I'm ashamed to say that I ran too. It was just a gut reaction. I was young, stupid, a kid who knew he'd done something horribly wrong, who couldn't handle the repercussions. Like I legit thought the former champion was dead, that my conker strike to his head had just killed him in an instant, and that I'd kicked off a process that'd end with me going to prison for

the rest of my life. I was so scared of what I'd done that I ran home from school, just straight up escaped during the chaos that followed. But I didn't want to go home. I couldn't face it. I knew that's the first place the police would come looking for me once it was discovered I wasn't at school. I remember hiding out in a park not far from my home, just hiding in a bush and imagining all the things I'd never do in life because I was locked up in some juvenile detention center before heading to an adult prison when I was old enough to be transferred. I stayed put while it rained on me for like two straight hours, getting completely soaked until my school uniform was wringing wet. I tried to hold out for as long as possible, but I knew I couldn't just stay there.

I was soaking, hungry and totally unprepared to sleep in a bush overnight. I had to face the music sooner or later, so I chose sooner, and when I finally got home I saw the police car parked up on the pavement outside my parents' house. So with tears in my eyes, I walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell. My mom answered the door. I was scared she'd be angry but she wasn't or at least that wasn't her immediate reaction. She seemed cold like emotionally and physically withdrawn for me. Something I'd never seen in her before and that was by far the worst part of it. In the moment it seemed to me that she'd accepted that her son was a murderer and that she was ready for the police officers in my house to take me away.

But the reality of the situation was much more complicated than that. Mom told me to go into the kitchen where my dad and a pair of policemen were waiting for me. There, they explained that they understood that there had been some kind of fight on the school playground, one in which another child had been hurt badly. They also heard that I was one of the two involved. I just broke down and told them everything. Told them I didn't mean to kill the former champion, how I was just trying to hurt him like he was hurting me, and how I was well and truly sorry for everything I'd done. But when I wiped my eyes and looked up at the three of them, they looked terribly confused,

and I'll never forget the pure relief I felt when one of the policemen told me that the former champion wasn't dead at all, that he was actually been discharged from the hospital not long before with nothing but stitches and a concussion. I was so relieved that I just burst into tears. In the end, it turned out that the former champion's parents didn't want to press charges. It was something of a minor miracle, but they understood that it was nothing but a playground fight that happened to go very, very wrong. Besides, they probably knew that if I was charged, their own son would be in some capacity too.

But that didn't mean the school wouldn't go forward with disciplinary proceedings and extremely harsh ones at that. And that's how I got myself expelled from St. Margaret's C of E High School. But honestly, it wasn't the worst thing in the world to happen to me. I didn't want to go back to that place where I thought I'd committed murder, and although it hurt leaving my friends behind, I did end up making some new ones at the other school I ended up going to. But no matter how hard I tried to distance myself from the horrors of that day, every autumn, when the conkers start to fall,

I still think of the look in the kid's eyes, seeing the whites of them, like I was watching his soul leaving his body. And thank God that he lived. We'll be right back. 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.

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Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. I've never really been into history. I'm more interested in the natural world than stuff that happened before my time. But last autumn, my dad gave me something that he'd been keeping hold of that would spark off something of an interest in the First World War. It was the 11th of November, Armistice Day,

when my dad walked into my room and handed me a small leather-bound book that looked like it was 100 years old. But I suppose that's because it was, in fact, even older than that. He told me to be very, very delicate with it because it was a family heirloom and incredibly precious. The kind of thing that could easily find its way into a museum one day, but instead we kept it as a close reminder of how our family had a close connection to one of the most horrific events in world history. Before that, history was something of an abstract concept, something that dead old men did that had little bearing on my own life. But in that moment I realized it was just as flesh and blood as I was, that since my family had a deep connection with it, that it was just as much a part of

me as it was for them. My dad explained that the little book was a diary kept by my great great granddad, who had fought with the Northumberland Fusiliers in the Battle of Ypres during the First World War and since it was Armistice Day, that it was a perfect time for me to get acquainted with it. But as I said, it wasn't just an account of his experiences in World War I. It was a record of how he had been present at one of the darkest episodes in the history of humanity. I'll type out what was written down by him because I feel like this is

definitely something you should all hear. It was the 22nd of April 1915. Just after dawn this morning, the Germans opened up with a very heavy torrent. It was a lot of rifle bullets at first, pinging over our heads as he got down in the trenches. But then we heard the machine gun fire kicking off too. This clacker, clacker, clacker of the bullets whizzing over our heads. We didn't know what they were trying to hit. All that fire seemed like a waste of bullets and despite all the racket we actually laughed at how we seemed to have been sent to face a division of blind Germans. But as it turned out, they were all part of their horrible plan. To get us as low down in the trenches as they could, to be fodder for what came next.

Once the fire had petted out, I took a little look over the trench to make sure that there were no German stormtroopers rushing our trenches to toss bombs inside. But just before I did, I heard the strangest noise coming from no man's land, like a kind of sizzling you might expect to hear from a pan of frying bacon or the like. Then when I finally looked, I saw something that made my blood run cold. It was like a yellowy-green wall of mist approaching our position, thick and heavy, almost clinging to the ground it rolled across. And it was ginormous, at least 20 feet up in the air. I really do mean it was like a great wall approaching us, there was absolutely no escaping it.

We had no earthly idea what it was that was approaching us but it put the fear of God into us regardless. I suppose because the fear of the unknown is as natural as human beings as eating or drinking. When it began to roll over us that's when men started to choke. I started coughing and spluttering, this thick mucousy saliva cascading from my lips. My eyes burned and my nostrils did too. Any bit of exposed, fleshy skin the stuff touched turned to burn horribly. I didn't quite see it at the time, but some men tried to escape the cloud of death by lying down in the trenches, which was definitely not the right thing to do, as it was heavier than air and concentrated near the ground. Those who tried that were suffocated where they lay, snuffed out by something we had

absolutely no understanding of. We had no form of protection from it. All we could really do was wet out handkerchiefs in the muddy water at the bottom of the trench and put it over our mouths, same as you do to stop yourself inhaling smoke. We were ordered to hold our position at first, but after a few minutes, even the officers in other parts of the trench, more badly hit than us, started to run from the gas. In the end, we two escaped the trenches and ran back towards the mine and road. There, you could see these chaps just laying there gasping for breath.

There had to be thousands of them, as far as the eye could see, and they were dying in one of the worst ways imaginable. But worse for us was that we had absolutely no idea how to alleviate their suffering. It was so confusing that one of our sergeants took this big jar of Vaseline and started applying it inside the throats of some of these poor young blokes. It didn't help of course, but I think the point was to help him feel like he was doing something, anything to help the poor buggers. And my god, the state of them. They were swelling up. Swelling and changing colors, they asphyxiated on their own lung fluid,

just rows and rows of men turning purple and blue before they died. Some others that had only breathed in a little were desperately trying to drink muddy water from ditches at the side of the road, but didn't do them any good, it just made them sicker. Our eyes were streaming with tears, burning like the devil, but luckily for me, I could still see. There was nothing we could do for those that were blinded, but they needed some kind of comfort, something to at least give them an idea that their wounds could be treated. All we had were rolls of bandages from our first aid kit which we carried in the corner of our tunic.

So we unrolled the bandages and wrapped them around the heads of those that were blinded before we marched back towards Ypres for treatment. I was put at the head of the column of ten or twelve blind men, each with a hand on the shoulder of the man in front. All you could see around you was columns of blind men being led back from the front lines. It was truly haunting. But perhaps the most haunting part was that on our way back, we marched near the riverbank. It was there that I saw hundreds of bodies floating in the water. Men had gone down into the river trying to drink

the water to soothe the burning in their throats. They then died in the water because of the bloating effect of the gas. They just floated up to the surface and started floating downstream. It was a river of bodies, and it's an image I don't think I'll ever forget as long as I live. I have to go roll call soon to see just how many are left, but I don't think there are many left at all. God help those of us that are well enough to carry on the fight because I know we'll have to face this new and terrible threat again, and soon. That's all there is in that particular section of his diary regarding the Battle of Ypres, but I sat there and read it in one more sitting, totally engrossed. I had no idea I had a family member that had been involved in something so

utterly terrifying, something that I think would have driven me mad if I'd been forced to witness it. Reading that diary was more terrifying than any Stephen King novel I've read because I know it was real. I knew the river of bodies was actually a real thing and not drawn from the imagination of some dumb writer. After that I couldn't stop reading about World War I, knowing my great-great-grandfather was a part of it. A lot of it is pure horror, but nothing disturbed me as much as reading about the first gas attack. I'm sure you'll all agree, being subjected to that sort of new and terrifying technology would have truly been hell on earth. So, many years ago, before the magical invention of cell phones,

we used to wear these things called pagers strapped to our hips. For those that don't know, the way they worked was someone would page you with their phone number and you could call them back when you got to a phone. Given that I worked as an on-call technician for a company in the audio-visual field, my pager would go off like all the time. if they followed up their number with a 911, that would indicate to whatever technician that was on call that they had to stop whatever it was they were doing and call them back right away. Side note, it didn't actually have anything to do with emergency services, it was just like a little code meaning that the situation was an emergency. But although I was always busy, I rarely if ever got 911 codes popping up on my pager.

On one afternoon in late October I'm working down in Florida, traveling from Orlando to St. Petersburg via Interstate 4 when my pager goes off with a number I don't recognize, but one that was also followed by a 911 code. So naturally I find the first exit and then pull into a little truck stop looking joint just outside of Plant City with the intention of finding the nearest payphone to use. This takes maybe only 4 or 5 minutes tops as there are plenty of places to pull into that general area. I park up, get out of my truck and walk into the place, asking the clerk for some change before I head to this wall

where there are like maybe six or seven different payphones to choose from. I pop a few quarters before proceeding to check my pager, dialing the number displayed on the screen and obviously excluding the 911 code. It rings and it rings and it rings, but no one bothers to pick up. Now this had to be the first time this has ever happened as like I said that was an emergency call which usually meant some live music venue owner was in dire straits with some faulty sound equipment or something and my services were desperately needed. So there I am thinking to myself what is this who would page me with a 911 code and they just not bother to answer their phone? It's right about then that I notice another ringing sound in addition to the one in my ear.

So I pull the headset away from my ear, only to notice that two of the phones over on the other end of the wall are ringing from receiving incoming calls. Now to this day I'm not quite sure why I did this but I hang up my handset having gotten it into my head that the person that needs me is somehow calling one of the other payphones even though like I said it's two of them that seem to be going off. But as soon as I put my phone down the ringing from the other payphone stop altogether. So as you can guess it was my payphone calling the other payphone stop altogether. So as you can guess, it was my payphone calling the other payphone, and maybe the other one was going off on coincidence. That was the closest thing I could figure. But here's where the story starts getting seriously weird. I walk a few paces over to the other phone, pick up the handset, and check the phone number

printed above the buttons. You guessed it, it was the same number that I got on my pager. But my head was so fried from the whole thing that I had to like double and triple check the numbers before I finally got through my skull what was going on. Someone had used that pay phone to call my pager from the exact same truck stop I had opted to pull in in order to call them back. There was no way they could have known I was going to do that, right? It was pure coincidence, maybe even some sort of technical glitch, but it seriously put the zap on my head. I then walk over to the girl at the counter and politely, if not confusedly, ask her if she saw

anyone use the payphones that I had been using the past 10 or 15 minutes or so. This time it's her turn to look all confused before telling me that I was the only person in the store in the last hour. I pressed on her, explaining the whole thing with the phone call coming from the payphone but she just shrugged it off, telling me that sure there could have been someone using the phone, she just happened not to notice. Somehow she was but this was pretty late at night so I don't blame her entirely for not being so observant. So the story had gotten weirder but now this is where it gets downright scary. I get back in my truck, still pretty freaked out from what had just happened

and drive off about 10 minutes down the highway before I see something truly awful. I mean it's like a missile had hit the highway or something. This huge 7 car pileup involving a tractor trailer that was hauling a bunch of scrap metal or something. There were state troopers and paramedics all over the place, with dead bodies lying on the tarmac covered in white sheets that were stained with red blood. I slowed a little to rubberneck for a second, contemplating how, if I hadn't gotten that pager call, that it could well have been me lying there on the tarmac, dead as a doornail. The timing was just too perfect.

From a place I was heading in the direction of, none of it made any sense at all. But it somehow made too much sense also, if that makes any sense. Jesus, I can feel myself weirded out just thinking about it all these years later. To this day, I have absolutely no idea who called me off of that payphone or why. It had to have been a wrong number, a technical glitch, or some other perfectly rational explanation for what had happened. I don't believe in the supernatural, I don't believe in fate, and I certainly don't believe my mom's explanation that it was my guardian angel or whatever, but one thing is definitely clear to me, if it wasn't for that mystery pager call, I could most definitely not be alive today writing this. The End Years ago, back when I was about 8 or 9, my folks and I lived in this huge, weird old house that was like right on the edge of this small town in rural Pennsylvania. The local school districts also happened to be in the middle of this big restructuring,

so even though me and my little brother were only a couple of grades apart, we went to different schools and took different buses. This meant that I was the last person to leave the house every morning but also the first person to get home every afternoon since my school was much closer than his. But this also meant that it was also my job to make sure all the lights were off and all the doors were locked when I left every morning to head off to school. So this one morning I caught on to the fact that the light was on in the basement and also the door was open so before I left I saw to it that the light was off and the door was locked. Then later, when I got home that afternoon, I saw that the light was on and the door was open again.

I remember thinking I was losing my mind or something and that I totally just imagined locking up. I mean, I was pretty tired most mornings after staying up late playing Overwatch, so it wasn't out of the question that I'd just forgotten to do so. So I went over to turn off the light and close the door, but when I got to the top of the basement staircase, I looked down to see there was a big shadowy male figure standing at the bottom. I just wig out, slam the door and push a cabinet against it then bolt to hide upstairs in my room. For months I didn't tell my family because I was positive what I had seen was a ghost and didn't think anyone would believe me. A little explanation, it was Halloween time frame, I was young and dumb and happened to have fostered a firm belief in the paranormal. Then about six months after that weird little incident,

my mom and dad realized that things had been going missing around the house. They blamed me and my brother at first, but after we insisted that we were innocent, we all walked around the place with flashlights trying to figure out how anyone might have gotten inside without actually breaking in. Turns out, the thing I'd seen in the basement was an actual dude, and he'd been climbing in through a small hole on the outside of the house, worming his way through a crawlspace, then coming up into the house through the basement. Recognizing I'd been alone in the house with him on at least one occasion was one of the worst, most terrifying realizations I've ever had in my entire life.

Needless to say, I don't believe in ghosts anymore. 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 This happened a few years ago, but I still think about it to this day. I was on holiday in a city on the other side of the country celebrating my 21st birthday with my best friend. We were having an amazing night out with a few too many drinks and ended up meeting two guys, Andrew and Billy.

They seemed like really cool guys and we were into them so when they asked us back to their hotel room we said yes. Obviously a silly idea but we were young and drunk. Things were great on the way back to the hotel room, we said yes. Obviously a silly idea, but we were young and drunk. Things were great on the way back to the hotel room. We were all laughing and having a great time. When we got to the hotel room, there were two other men there as well. Ricky and JD, who were at least 10 to 15 years older than us. They gave us creepy vibes, but we brushed it off. We asked Andrew and Billy who these guys were and they said that they were colleagues as they were in the city for work and the company paid for their rooms. So Andrew and Billy were in different rooms but we were all partying in

Andrew's room that he shared with Ricky. I got a little too drunk and my friend put me to bed. She said that she was going to Billy's room and asked if I would be okay with Andrew and I said yes. Keep in mind, my friend didn't have a phone either so we basically had no way of getting in contact with each other. Another stupid thing I know. So I've been in the bed for a while with Andrew just talking and chilling when he says, I just have to pop out, I'll be right back. I assumed he meant just out to the bathroom, not out of the actual hotel room, but he left the hotel room to get something from Billy's hotel room. Anyway, I was just watching TV in bed when the bedroom door opens and I assumed it was Andrew, but my heart sank when it was Ricky, the weird colleague. He walked into the room and sat on the bed. Keep in mind,

I'm very naked at this point trying to cover myself with a blanket. He said, You do realize that everyone has left you alone in here, right? It's just you all alone. No one is here, and no one can hear you. And continued edging closer and closer to me on the bed. At this point, I was completely speechless and absolutely terrified. I was completely frozen in fear, and I had no idea what to do. I tried to say something but nothing came out. He definitely

sensed my fear and for some reason he just got up and left. A sense of relief flooded me and I felt silly for overreacting. That was until I heard JD, the other random colleague, shouting, get the F back in here, what are you doing? This isn't what we discussed, get back in there and do what you were meant to do. Who cares what that girl thinks, just get back in there and do what you need to do. I ran to the bathroom and locked myself in because I was so scared but there was no way out and the only way out of the hotel room was through the front door and I had to walk past Ricky and JD to get there. I was just so terrified I had a million thoughts rushing through my head and I had no idea what to do but I knew that I had to escape. I decided my only option was just to leave the room and be ready to defend myself if things were to go pear-shaped. I threw my clothes on and grabbed my shoes.

I opened the door and Ricky and JD were sitting on a couch close to the bedroom door. JD said, Hey sexy, where are you going in such a rush? Come on and join us, come here right now. I said no thanks and ran to the front door and ripped it open. When I got out I was so relieved but I was still in a random hotel in a random city with no way to contact my friend. But I thought my best option was to go to the lobby and just wait. As I was walking I heard two men yelling down the hallway.

Where are you? We know you aren't too far away. Come back and join us. You know you want to. It was Ricky and JD. I was absolutely terrified by this point. I began sprinting to the elevator. I could hear them gaining on me. I never knew I could run so fast, but I just continued and didn't look back. I felt like I was running forever until I reached the end of the corridor and my worst nightmare had come true. I missed the turn off of the elevator. So I had to turn and run back towards where I could hear Ricky and JD still yelling down the hall. I found the elevator and got in. I could hear their voices getting louder and louder and I didn't want to imagine what would happen if they got into the elevator with me. The door finally closed after what felt like a lifetime. I thought I would go down to the lobby and just wait there because at least there would be people there so there would be some form of safety. I got to the lobby and realized that there was no one in sight. No one at all, not even behind the desk. I sat

there on the couch and didn't know what to do with myself. I was absolutely terrified that Ricky and JD would come to the lobby. Then I heard the elevator ding and the door open. My heart dropped, but it was Andrew. I told him what had happened and he was outraged that his colleagues did that and he took me to where my best friend was. Everything turned out to be fine, but it truly could have been a lot worse. I never thought that I'd have anything to post on this subreddit, but here I go. This literally just happened, so I'll try to keep this as short and as organized as possible.

I'm a 29-year-old female and my partner is a 23-year-old female. We are back in her hometown visiting her family for about a week. It's a very small, isolated town in the middle of nowhere and basically in the middle of the woods. While we were here, she wanted to meet up with an old high school friend who still lives in the area. We'll call him Kyle. So we meet Kyle at the beach and right away he's acting super weird, making jokes about a three-way with us and just making a bunch of just unwelcome gross comments. Obviously, we're unfortunately used to this stuff to a certain extent, but coming from someone who was supposed to be her good friend, it was extra annoying. So, my girlfriend and I are shooting

each other panicked looks the whole time. Once he's out of earshot for a second, she says that she's sorry that he's never been like this before and we can make an excuse to leave. When he comes back we tell him we want to get dinner at a local bar but he just asks to join us. We felt awkward so we end up saying yes. He says he doesn't know quite how to get there so he follows us. We get there, order drinks and food then head out to their patio with the drinks. He makes a few more gross comments, but is generally being way more cool and normal than he was at the beach. We're smoking some weed on the patio and chilling. The food comes quick and we finish it quicker. Now, here's where it gets really messed up.

So halfway through my first drink, I'm feeling really tired, which makes sense as we've had a long day. I give my girlfriend the signal that I want to go. She makes an excuse that we need to go, and he keeps trying to get us to come to his house. I've got some good weed and dabs there, and you can meet my cats. Blah, blah, blah. He's being really pushy. We keep saying no and making excuses. We need to check on her grandpa, etc.

So finally we get in the car and say goodnight. We park next to each other and walk up and into the cars together while saying our goodbyes. When we get into the car my girlfriend informs me that she wants to stay at the bar but fake it like we're leaving because she doesn't want to chill with him anymore, understandably. So we're sitting in the car waiting for him to leave first when he signals for us to roll down the window. We do, he says. GPS is being kind of funny. And can we lead him to the main road? To be fair, we're in the middle of nowhere, so this didn't seem too outlandish.

So obviously staying behind at the bar was out of the question. So in the car, we were talking about how pushy was being and she admitted she feels weird driving right back to her grandpa's house. So we should drive into town until we lose him. He's behind us for a long time. Even way after he should have gotten off on his exit. We think it's weird but we weren't sure what to do. So finally we get on a two lane road and he pulls up next to us and he's waving a phone which is clearly my girlfriend's phone in the window. We pull over. He gives her the phone back, chats just a few seconds then leaves in a hurry. Here's the part that makes my skin crawl.

We know we had her phone. I saw her put it in her fanny pack which was on the table, along with my phone and her bud, a few minutes before we left the bar as we were preparing to leave. She didn't take it back out. There's literally no way she could have left it at the bar. More importantly, he got in his car and left the bar at the same time as us, meaning he had to have already had the phone when we were leaving. It's not like we left the bar first and he saw it left on the table or something. He literally had to have been walking to the cars with us and calmly said goodnight with the phone already in his possession.

Now the kicker, apparently, unbeknownst to me, my girlfriend had tasted a very weird bitter taste in her straw at the bar and was already suspicious, especially without he's been acting. This is why she wanted to stay back at the bar, to get away from him and stay in public where she felt it was safer. So when he walked up to the car to return her cell phone, she very casually and deliberately flashed the knife that she kept for protection in her jacket. I didn't know at the time that she had done this, so that's why he had left so quickly. Obviously, I was annoyed with her for not telling me her suspicions sooner, but she just didn't want me to panic.

I'm really shaken up. A few things are clear. One, he stole my girlfriend's phone, and it seems like he did so so that we would be forced to pull over on a dark road in the middle of nowhere. Two, he quickly ended the conversation and left when my girlfriend flashed her knife. They've been good friends for almost 10 years. If he wasn't planning on doing something malicious, I feel like he would have acted confused about the knife or said something like, what's up, why would you flash a knife at me? Is this some sort of bad movie or something? But instead he just booked it, which tells me he knew exactly what she was doing,

reacting to a threat and preparing to protect herself and me. And three, he probably spiked our drinks. My girlfriend noticed a weird taste in her straw right away and chose not to finish her drink. I finished half my drink and I felt relatively tired. A few more things, I just don't know how he managed to nab the phone without us noticing or knowing. It doesn't really make any sense, but he did. Me and my girlfriend both remember her putting it in her fanny pack perfectly. We also had no idea how he could have spiked our drinks unless he was working with the bartender, but we were the ones who suggested that bar.

I don't know exactly how he did it, but I think I know why. And for that reason, my girlfriend's now ex-friend who made creepy comments probably tried to drug us and stole her phone in order to get us alone on a dark road. Please, keep your distance. I grew up in Texas. I still live here along with my family that will be mentioned in the story. When the 2007 recession hit, my father lost his job. It was a management job that paid well. We lived in a comfortable but slightly country area outside

of Lockhart, Texas. With our income at a halt, we lost our home and had to move. My parents found a trailer park with a two-bedroom for rent, a little cramped for our family of five, but we had no other choice. The man we rented from was crooked for other reasons, but he's not the disturbed landlord this story revolves around. We lived in that trailer for a few years before needing to move out for reasons I was too young to remember. I was 11 years old and my parents began house hunting again. Down the road from the trailer park was a cul-de-sac of land. There was a business in the center of this land called the Why Not Party House. That was a bar or wannabe club I suppose. Considering I was a business in the center of this land called the Why Not Party House. That was a bar or a wannabe club, I suppose.

Considering I was a child, I never entered the building. There were a few houses and trailers scattered around different parts in this secluded circle. A worn-looking trailer was for rent. The man renting it, Mr. Dahl, was an elderly man who couldn't have been younger than 65 or so. A few things to note about this trailer, it had old stone steps leading up to the front door. There was a bunk bed in one of the bedrooms and a somewhat functioning air hockey table. The master bedroom had a queen sized bed and there was a carpet in the kitchen which I always found strange. The back door was nailed

shut and completely unusable. If that wasn't enough to make you say nope, then let me also say it had a mouse problem. My family is working class, my mother is disabled, and my father out of work, we only relied on her disability check. We had no choice but to rent out his trailer or be homeless. The entire deal was strange and honestly sad this was the position we were in, but my parents rented out this trailer on the agreement of words only. There was no official lease that was signed or any sort of legal document that proved we were renting from this man. Before we moved into the trailer, Mr. Dahl took it upon himself to build a new deck for us to replace the old steps. He even built a little picnic table for us to sit outside. As a child, it completely blew my mind this stranger could be so kind to craft

these things without being asked or wanting money. It seemed like an act of pure kindness. A bad person wouldn't do that sort of thing, right? The first few weeks of renting from him went by without a hitch. The master bedroom had no light bulbs and we weren't there long enough to change them. So my family and I all slept in the living room. Something about the bedroom with the bunk bed seems scary to me. I'm unsure how my brothers felt but they never slept in there either. As I mentioned previously, we relied on my mother's disability check. Sometimes we were late on rent and had to pay late fees. Other than that, Mr. Dahl would be very understanding about everything despite being a little irritated. My mother's check hit every first of the month which is also the month for bills.

Here my father and my older brother got into the car and drove into the city to take care of bills and get a money order for rent. I was left with my older brother. It was a time when we had no internet or cable, just VHS movies. I was in the hallway, come to find out the trailer was flipped and the front door was the one nailed shut, playing my Wii, Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess to be exact, something I need you all to note. We had no keys to this trailer. The only person with a set of keys was Mr. Doll, so we were unable to ever lock the trailer when we left. As I was playing my game, right in front of the door that was locked I

saw the knob turn. No knocking. The knob jiggled and our landlord tried to pry the door open twice but was unable to do so successfully. I just froze and realized it was him and he must have assumed no one was home because the car was gone but the door was locked and I thought it was fine to continue playing my game. 11 year old brain I suppose. My brother was in the living room. We both heard this noise. At first I thought it was a dog barking and my brother heard it too but the longer we listened we realized it wasn't an animal but the sound of people yelling. My brother went to the front door to investigate the noises and me being a scared child I followed right behind him. Both of my parents were standing out in the yard. My mother was shouting at our landlord who was sitting on a farming vehicle,

not sure what the name of it was, I remember it had a very long piece attached to it. She was visibly angry and her voice was laced with rage. My father was yelling at him too, but I don't remember anything that was said exactly. My oldest brother asked what had happened and here's how it goes. My parents pulled up to our trailer with the money order for rent. When they did, they caught Mr. Dahl backing up the farming vehicle against the door, the only exit in that trailer. My mother went into full protection mode knowing her two children were stuck inside. She confronted him immediately. Luckily, he backed away from the door, but he was still operating this farm vehicle. I believe she threatened him. They had an exchange of words, and he whipped the vehicle around fast and aggressively close to my mother, and he almost hit her with it.

My parents were bewildered about what they just witnessed. They didn't know what to do so they called the police. When the police showed up and my parents explained the situation, it was no use because we had no legal agreement of renting out the trailer. The officers shrugged it off and said that there was nothing they could do about anything because no one was injured. Apparently trapping two children inside a trailer that's a fire hazard isn't illegal. We only spent one last night in that trailer. We no longer felt safe there. We packed up as many things in our car as we could, but unfortunately didn't have the money to rent a moving truck for the rest of our furniture. We stored the belongings we took

with us at my grandparents' house and we rented a motel room. It was about a week later after this happened when we tried to go back for the rest of our belongings. We wanted no confrontation with Mr. Dahl so we showed up to the trailer at night. It was dark inside and the porch light was off. My father and oldest brother went inside the trailer casually. Me, my mother and my older brother were waiting out in the car. It was no less than 5 minutes when my father and oldest brother ran out of the trailer with speed I'd never seen before. They hopped in the car and pulled out of there like some scene in an action movie while my mom was terrified and demanding answers. Apparently, they went into the master bedroom first, which was an immediate right

when you walked inside. They were going to grab a box of paperwork we had to leave behind when we left. They noticed something lying in the bed, not just lying there asleep, but completely naked. It was Mr. Dahl, and right beside him was a gun. We never went back to that trailer. We never recovered the rest of our furniture that had sentimental value. It's been almost a decade since this happened. My mother and I discuss it every now and then, but we're thankful that time is behind us. I can't help but wonder if all that abandoned furniture was the result of some other unfortunate family who had to leave everything behind, or had it taken from them forcefully.

When I was 25, there was a short time I was staying at my aunt's. It was her, my two cousins, and I. She lives in a nice apartment complex and her unit is on the lower level. Her living room has a lot of windows that she keeps open for fresh air and for her cats to people watch. Her unit happens to be on the corner near a grassy courtyard path. When I first moved, I noticed a man who gave me an off vibe. My cousins and aunt said he lived upstairs and two units over, recovering from hard drugs that permanently messed him up. His parents paid for him to stay there as they didn't want him with them. They also said other than hearing him mumble and say weird things, no one

had ever had an issue. My aunt works nights and leaves at 3am. My younger cousin works nights and leaves at 2am. That usually left my same aged cousin and I the only two there until we left for work at around 8. For context, it is a very open living room to dining room plan. My aunt always had people staying over, so she has a second couch in the dining room in place of a table. This was where I slept. She stayed on the one in the living room. My aunt has also never been one to lock her doors until this incident. One night I'm on my phone trying to sleep at about 1am and hear a man yelling. He's yelling don't shoot and banging

on the door to the right of ours. Two male college students live there and just told him he had the wrong apartment and to leave. He says sorry and walks off. I'm looking through the kitchen window which is in direct line of sight from my couch bed and it's the weird neighbor who sees me and grins. He then walks back to his home. I was unsettled but not enough to wake anyone else up over it. Told my family nonchalantly the next day in a lol that was weird sort of way. My cousin and I watch a movie and head off to bed. I have a very hard time staying asleep but

I woke up this time to the feeling of someone watching me. I check my phone and it's around 3.30am so I know it's not my aunt or cousin. I sit up and figure I'll go watch TV on my aunt's couch since she was gone already. The feeling gets stronger as I'm in the living room. Then I see the shadow of a person standing still in the grass courtyard looking in. I froze. I immediately go back to my couch to get my phone. As I do, the person is gone. I'm now trying to calm myself down and think of waking my cousin up when I hear the creepy man's voice. He is now at the kitchen window which looks out directly in front of her front door. I drop to the floor out of his line of sight and start frantically trying to call my cousin.

The man is now saying things at the window front door like, I'm not going to hurt you, and I'm unarmed over and over again. His face is up against the window. Then he starts talking about wanting to pet the cats he saw through the window. I can't get a hold of my cousin. It's been 20 minutes of this, at this point. In this complete crazy situation, I didn't have many options. I could jump up and run for a knife, but I'd need to go to the kitchen. I could try to respond and ask him to leave, but I've learned when you underestimate crazy, you lose every time. I now hear him knocking and knocking while repeating his nonsense. I'm doing that ridiculous looking army crawl snake slither across the floor down the hall. I see the door handle start to turn. I'm about to jump up when

my cousin bursts out of his room directly across from the front door. Now he's not the biggest guy. Boy was he intimidatingly mad at the circus show taking place at his front door. He starts yelling at the guy that needs to get get the F off his porch and that he's calling the cops. The man tries to say, I'm unarmed, I'm not going to hurt you, don't be afraid. My cousin goes off and yells, that's dandy, it's 4am, you need to leave or I'll call the cops, what's wrong with you? So the guy backs up with his hands in the air and leaves. Needless to say, we didn't go back to sleep. My aunt was called, who called the apartment manager. The next day when I come home from work, his parents were there packing moving

boxes and a truck from his place. Maybe he was trying to get me to open the door by seeming friendly. Maybe he had a bad trip and really wanted to pet a cat to feel better. I suppose we'll never know. This story takes place in 2005. I was 12 years old at the time. My family wanted to take a vacation and my mom and ex-stepdad decided it would be fun to take a cruise along the California coast with my three younger siblings and myself. As our ship made its way under the Golden Gate Bridge, my mom and I stood out on her balcony to see San Francisco and the ocean beyond us. On the balcony to the right of her, a teenage boy emerged, presumably to take in the same views we were.

My mom gave him a polite hello when they made awkward eye contact and he struck up a conversation with her. I wasn't paying any attention at first, but when I heard him ask my mom, Do you have any sisters? I saw him peer over at me, clearly taking interest. Me being a shy 12 year old tried to hide from his gaze behind my mother's side. My mom joked that she had two sisters, but they're probably much too old for him. They exchanged some polite small talk after that which I didn't listen to, instead taking in the view of the sunset over San Francisco

and the Pacific. We went about our separate ways for the evening. Over the next couple of days, we always seemed to be running into this boy and his family. My mother is an extremely friendly person so she always would talk with them and his parents seemed nice enough. The boy would always look at me intensely. By that point in my life, I was still developing my first crushes on boys in school. I sure didn't know what to do about that. I didn't even know what his fixation on me implied, just that it made me feel as if though he was seeing right through me. I avoided his stares by staying near my siblings, almost out of an instinctive protectiveness.

On the fifth day of our trip, my mom came in and said this boy wanted to meet and hang out with us. She said his name was Asher. I thought he was weird and didn't really want to, but I was always taught to give people the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps my discomfort was me being judgmental, I thought. I reluctantly agreed and eventually he was in our hotel room. My mom gave me this smile and raised her eyebrows as if she was playing matchmaker then she went into her room which was connected to ours. Asher was very odd right off the bat and immediately my siblings and I were extremely uncomfortable. We were watching Scary Godmother on Cartoon Network and I awkwardly asked if he wanted to watch something else.

He probably thought our cartoons were stupid. He said he didn't mind as long as he got to talk to me. My oldest brother, who was 10 at the time, immediately picked up on my body language and what he said, so he joined in on the conversation to put me at ease. Asher had an accent. I couldn't tell if he was foreign or if it was a speech impediment. A lot of what he said I couldn't quite pick up on and he would sometimes lean over to me and say something quietly that, although I couldn't hear or understand, I knew I didn't like it. We spent the next while making awkward small talk about school and he told me about his graduation coming up next summer. I asked if he was graduating junior high.

No, he meant high school. He then revealed to me that he would be turning 18 that December. Sirens immediately started going off in my head and then he hands me a note he said that he had written for me earlier. With my hand shaking, I open the note that read, I love you. You're hot. I guess my brother saw the note from over my shoulder and went over to my parents' room, then came back and said, hey, our parents said we had to go to dinner. Asher took this as his cue to leave, but told me he loves me one more time before his exit. I gave him a very shaky okay. My brother went to

make sure I was okay and told me he had only pretended to go to our parents' room because he didn't want to get our mom in trouble with our ex-stepdad for inviting him. I know this logic seems weird, but please remember we were all just kids. I was trembling and silent for a while. I didn't really understand what had happened. All I knew was that I felt violated and confused. We later told her mom what had happened and she then looked extremely guilty. She thought he was younger and that he had good intentions. She thought it would be a good idea for me to meet friends closer to my age because I was stuck babysitting all the time. Turned out,

for some dumb reason or another, my mother had given him our phone number before he had hung out with us. I was livid but too timid to speak up. I'd managed to avoid Asher for the rest of our trip aside from the loading docks on the final day. He said goodbye, that he loved me, and would call me every day before leaving. He left before I could tell him not to. He called almost every week for four months after that, leaving strange and cryptic messages on our answering machine. Every time we would block his number, he would manage to call from a new one. I accidentally picked up a couple of times not knowing it was him and would immediately hang up,

only for him to call three more times and leave the same strange messages. After a year, he finally gave up and stopped calling. To be continued... man was, what he was trying to do, or if he still is where I saw him. I was back home for the summer for the first time in a year after starting uni. Our home was, still is, just outside of a small town with forests all around. There was also a small man-made lake which was diverged from a river that ran for miles through the forest and ramified into a few streams east of the lake. Near my home, there was a small grassy path that led to the river following a stream. It was a long walk, but one I used to go on often as a child. I knew the forest there well. I knew where I could cut through dense trees to meet the stream. The walk I would go on always led off the path which turned northwest slowly, so away from the stream and then took a sharp turn to the west after a few miles walk, at which

point the stream was hidden quite deep into the forest. I'd continue to walk north and follow the stream through the forest to get to the river, then follow the river west to get to the lake. It's easy to get lost in this forest because the terrain isn't just a slope down to the water. It goes up and down and you end up completely surrounded by trees. I'd spend many days wandering around there alone or with my dad over the span of 18 years. Never saw anybody else in the forest. I went there twice that summer, both times alone. The first time I left in the morning, I walked along the path away from the stream to the sharp bend, then cut back into the forest. I reached the

stream after an hour or so. As I was running my hands in the water, I heard a bell from far away, coming from the north. Something was making a bell ringing, fervently and periodically, which I found strange I listened, wondered if it was a lost hunting dog and started moving towards the sound I bloody know I'd be the first person to die but I was heading north anyway so whatever I realized it couldn't have been an animal I could tell the bell was too heavy because of how clear the sound was to be on a collar. I kept moving and the bell was moving away from me. It stopped completely after five minutes. The stream wasn't big enough or strong enough to carry a bell. That could have

been enclosed in a tin or something and the river was too far still. I thought of everything but nothing explained the sound apart from one obvious, which I just didn't feel comfortable with for some reason. I knew it had to be a person. I stopped thinking about it and just walked on normally. Until I found a badger. A blooming dead one, carefully decapitated. It had obviously been done with a knife. It was fairly fresh, the body was still limp, and there wasn't too much smell coming from it. The wound was full of maggots, but I knew

that happened soon after exposure. The sound of the bell had been following the stream, so had I, so the badger was put there, maybe killed there, at least decapitated, while I was walking that way. I suppose, I really didn't know. And nothing else happened that day. One week later, I went back for the second time that summer and the last time ever. I left home at around 6pm. I made it to the stream, then walked to the river in an hour, then decided to go back the way I came because it was getting late and it was raining quite heavily. The sun set at around 9pm. I was walking as fast as I could.

The sound of the rain in the leaves was surreal and loud. I was somewhat trotting with my head down for a while through the clearest and most open part of the forest when I bumped into something heavy. The smell was sickly. It was the decomposing body of the badger, with his head strung to his front paws. That area looked a bit like ham because of the way it was tied, just swinging from a tree, like an almost literal load of bollocks. It was this putrid bag of stench, wet and dripping green liquid. I started gagging. I had some sort of mucus textured fluid in my hair. It was repulsive.

At first I just stared at it, slightly gobsmacked. Then I started fidgeting violently because I felt like I was drenched in its juices. I was soaked from the rain. My senses became confused. It felt like a bucket of ice-cold water had been thrown over me when I realized that I walked the same way to get to the river so someone had strung the body up after I'd passed it on the way there. Someone knew I'd see it.

So, was someone watching me and running around the forest? Were the faint sounds of branches breaking around me, not animals? I looked around and started jogging. I was half running, half walking away from the stream back towards the path for a while when I heard the bell again. I proceeded to call my dad while running. I told him to meet me on the path where it sharply turns west. It was the closest part of the path to me, to go as fast as he could and that someone was in the forest. I can't explain the feeling I had, it was like I just completely let out my intestines and stomach. I literally

felt the hairs on my neck raise despite being soaked. It was dark, I jogged as fast as I could. I was panicking because the path was still a bit far away, just too far to feel safe. It was still raining. Every single sound was muffled. I felt like everything was further away than ever before. The bell went on for way longer than the last time, on and off. I felt like it was surrounding me at one point. The fear combined with my compromised hearing and the fact that I couldn't flip and breathe properly was making me slightly lose my sense of direction. I was automatically heading southwest, but I wasn't really sure what

I was even doing. I was breathing like a freaking horse, coughing my lungs up, kind of crying out loud like a toddler does, tripping over leaves and twigs like an idiot. I stayed on the phone with my mom who was on her way with my dad. I kept hearing sounds but I wasn't sure what they were. My mom was screaming on the phone at the same time that they were on the path and that I needed to run, that my dad had gotten out and was heading east from the path bend. I was terrified so I went into survival mode. I was doing the half running half speed walking thing again because I was out of breath. Then I heard branches break, clear footsteps for the first time from down in the

forest and the bell ringing louder. I didn't want to but I looked over my shoulder. And that's when I saw what was in the forest with me. A tall figure, creeping in my direction at the very end of the clearing, ringing this bell slowly in front of his stomach. I could tell he was staring straight at me. Now, I don't know if I had a hidden secret sprinting ability or instinctual adrenaline induced super human powers but when I tell you I ran for my life, I didn't look back once. I screamed as much as I could. I lied. I'm on the phone with the police. They're on the path. Dad, I can see you. I'm here. I was yelling. I wanted to yell, Dad, please, where are you? But I kept that to myself. I felt like something awful was going to myself. I felt like something awful

was going to happen. I felt like the man was right behind me. I kept telling myself not to look. I was gasping and wheezing, crying so hard and screaming for my dad. I felt shivers on my neck and then switched off. I just ran. I even dropped my bag and only realized I didn't have it anymore when I was in the car. I felt like my phone was my only way home. Things no longer felt real. It was like my legs were moving by themselves. I didn't know if the man was still following me. I could only hear my heart beating and my ears and the bell. I finally heard my dad shout my name and I knew he was coming my way and that he could see me because of the intonation of his voice. I pretty much lunged at him when we got to each other. My dad heard the bell too. My mom could hear it over the phone. She was waiting

with the car ready to leave fast. We went directly to the police station and I got medical attention soon after. My dad burst into tears in the car, said he could hear the bell and thought he wouldn't be able to see me. Asked what if I didn't have my phone, what if he hadn't picked up. They were almost as terrified as me because they witnessed everything through the call. They could hear me trying to run and they could hear the danger, they just couldn't see it. The police couldn't really do much. They searched the area and the only thing they found was a folded t-shirt placed under a rock.

I didn't really question that at the time. And my bag was not recovered. They said it was probably some homeless man living in the forest but failed to realize what could have happened if my dad didn't know that part of the forest like I did and where to find me. I'm not blaming anyone. The entire thing was my fault. There was just so many what-ifs. I want to believe it was just someone who decided to live in the woods and hunt or something. Maybe they were a bit mentally unstable and they felt angry that I came into their territory, but what if it was more insidious? The way he moved towards me was abnormal. It was perverse because of how slowly he was ringing the

bell. It was like he had me trapped. I didn't see any more details, I just ran. To this day, I can't bloody go anywhere where I'll be alone and the sound of bells are a real problem as well as the smell of moss. It was the summer right after I graduated from high school. A good friend and I decided to try our hand at camping. We grew up in the greater Los Angeles area, so our knowledge of the great outdoors was nothing beyond the couple of years we had in Cub Scouts of America when we were in elementary school. In other words, we had almost no idea what we were doing. We packed a tent, a couple of sleeping bags, supplies, etc. and headed off in his car. So I grew up in the 80s, so this is a time before the wide prevalence of cell phones

and the existence of other portable digital devices. We drove north on the 395 for about 6 hours and then headed westward into the mountains in the area of Inyo Canyon The first mistake, we didn't plan on which place to camp We played it by ear, i.e. like fools Second mistake, we left in mid-afternoon It was pitch black darkness when we arrived in the general area We had driven off the main road and onto a dirt road in order to find a spot to camp. The dust from driving on the dirt road overwhelmed the headlight high beams

when we finally decided to pull over and set up camp. It was around 2330 around this time and we were exhausted and famished. Any place was a good spot to camp for us given our only reason to do so at that point was our hunger and exhaustion. Third mistake, we didn't bring flashlights. We only had Bic lighters for our cigarettes. We tried to set up the tent using our lighters and the headlights of the car which were parked about 10 to 15 feet away. The wind was blowing so the lighter constantly went out after a few seconds either directly because of the wind or indirectly because the wind would push the flame onto our thumb. Clearly, we were complete idiots. We finished setting up the tent, but at that point, I was too tired to eat.

My friend managed to make some instant ramen. We smoked a cigarette in the car, then crashed out in the tent. We woke to a very cold morning. It must have been around 5.30. Immediately upon exiting the tent we realized that we were camped at the entrance of a hiking trail. There were at least two no camping signs and visible distance from us. We dismantled the tent, cleaned up and cleared out. That morning we ended up buying some cheap flashlights and a nice hot meal in a very small town. It wasn't really a town, but more like a few storefronts and shops on a main road,

about the length of an average city block. We went into some office, though I don't recall exactly what it was. It might have been a park ranger station or the office headquarters for a campground. In any case, we found and reserved a site for the night. The campground was basically a large circle with campsites along its outer circumference, with each campsite being about 50 yards from its neighbor. In the middle of the circle was a common bathroom and shower. We circled around it once and I think we saw one family that was all set up with a tent and camper. We found our spot and set up camp which was quite far from them. That night was when we had a creepy encounter. My friend and I were laying in the tent shining our flashlights upwards and chatting.

Our new flashlights eventually gave out. Yes, they were broken. Our fire pit was about 6 feet from the opening of our tent and it was just a glowing ember. We probably should have completely put it out and we probably shouldn't have had the tent so close. In any case, there we were, chatting away and having a good time. My friend began to be distracted with his foot. After the third or fourth time he got up to check his foot, I asked him what was wrong. He told me that something is tapping his foot from the outside of the tent. His foot was against the side of the tent, so from the outside, you would have been able to see a bulge in the tent's side where his foot was. It was as if pebbles were being thrown at his foot through

the tent. There it is again. Each time it happened, there was a sound like pebbles or a light tap. We sort of laughed it off, assuming that it was a twig or grass moving in the wind or perhaps a loose strap on the outside of the tent. I don't recall exactly how it happened at first, but I do remember we suddenly became silent at the same time. A sound came to be audible to the both of us, footsteps slowly moving towards our tent. We wondered if it was a bear or other non-human animal, but it seemed distinctly bipedal. They were very slow and measured like a step every two seconds. I finally said in a whisper, someone's coming. My friend didn't move. His face had an expression of fear. At some point, my friend bolted up and said, screw this. He grabbed his pipe,

stuffed it full of pot, and took the biggest, deepest drag I'd ever seen a person take. About a minute or two later, he was out. Drugs aren't my thing, so I was alone in the tent as far as conscious bodies are concerned. I was sitting up at this point, and I had taken out the only weapon I had, a Swiss Army pocket knife. I took out the big and small blades as well as the ice pick in the middle and held it like some ridiculous melee weapon. I could see the glowing embers in the fire pit through the sheer nylon material of our tent and I was able to roughly but barely discern some of the rocks around it. I watched and listened intently. The footsteps came closer and at the same slow pace. With each

step, I could hear the dirt and rocks underfoot crunching and grinding. At some point it was clear to me that whoever it was standing between the tent and the fire pit, from my fuzzy line of sight the burning embers through the nylon tent became obscured by something outside the tent. The footsteps stopped right in front of the tent, about 6 to 8 inches from the entrance to the tent. It was silent for about one minute then I heard a click. At exactly the same time, I clearly saw through the nylon tent wall a flashlight turned on. I was able to see not just the flashlight, but the outline of the hand holding it. The flashlight was shining on the zipper entrance into the tent, just inches from the zipper.

Blood drained out of my head, and my palms instantly became dripping in sweat. I yelled, who's there? There was some fear in my voice but it was mostly aggressive in tone. Whoever it was, the person immediately turned off their flashlight. I didn't move but neither did they. The person just stood there inches from the tent tent's only entrance My friend is out, totally unaware of what's going on Nevertheless, I pretended that he was still awake and whispered just loud enough to be audible to our visitor Yes, loaded, there's one in the chamber As if my friend was awake and asked me about our gun And that was my fourth mistake

We didn't have a gun or any real weapon for self-defense. It felt like an eternity but after sitting still for at least 10 minutes I heard feet slowly turning in the dirt, then slowly walking away from the tent. I stayed up the whole night and it wasn't until the light of dawn came through the tent that I crashed out. The heat inside the tent woke us up and it was near noon by this point. We went outside to inspect the site but found nothing missing. However, we did find boot prints leading away from our campsite and outside the campground. That was the last time I camped in a tent. On the afternoon of Friday the 16th, May 1986, 43-year-old former town marshal David Young and his wife Doris

calmly walked into Cokeville Elementary School in the small town of Cokeville, Wyoming. David headed for the school's office where many of the teachers immediately recognized him. He was the only police officer for six months in the town of just over 500 people. But after being fired for misconduct, he moved to Arizona where he met his wife, Doris. Needless to say, he was well known among the locals. The teachers regarded him with confusion and he began to hand out a series of leaflets to them. Upon reading, they found the leaflets were titled, Zero Equals Infinity, and detailed a series of bizarre ramblings and demands. Some of the teachers looked up from the leaflets, asking David Young just what was going on.

His reply was simple, this is a revolution. As he did so, Doris Young was going from classroom to classroom with a pistol in her hand. When she arrived at each, she instructed both teachers and children to follow her, grouping 136 children, 6 faculty, 9 teachers and 3 other adults into a single classroom. Once they were successfully corralled and held hostage, David Young then walked into the classroom with a large gasoline-based incendiary device. The device had been built in a small shopping cart and consisted of one gallon milk jug of gasoline, wired with a single blasting cap. Thrown into the cart were bags of black powder,

along with boxes of bullets and links of steel chain which were supposed to act as shrapnel during the detonation. The detonation mechanism consisted of what is known as a dead man's switch, which was tied to David's wrist. Two metal connectors were soldered to the jaws of a clothing leg with a small piece of wood in between them, forming an incomplete circuit. Once the wood was removed, the mechanism would have to be held open by hand so that if the user was shot by a police sniper, the mechanism would close and the device would detonate. David then demanded to be allowed to use a phone, with which he would contact the police to make several demands. The Cokeville hostage crisis had begun. Both David's reasons for taking hostages as well as his demands are frankly insane. Despite having connections with

several white supremacist groups including the Posse Comitatus and the Aryan Nations, there seemed to be no racist motivations in his plan. Nor did what he was doing seem to stem from a desire for revenge, even though he had been fired as town marshal seven years earlier. Rather, as his manifesto stated, David had noted Cokesville's above-average school performance, and with references to the Aldous Huxley's novel A Brave New World, David Young stated that he wished to David also demanded a ransom of $720 million, $2 million per hostage, and an audience with President Reagan,

who he had also sent a copy of his Zero Equals Infinity manifesto. In a phone call to local police, David told them clearly that any attempt to besiege the school or apprehend him and his wife would end with the detonation of the incendiary device. After hearing David ranting and raving to police officers via the telephone, many of the child hostages began to get upset. Some began to cry, wailing hysterically as they understood the dangerous implications of the unfolding events, which some complained of headaches as fumes from the gasoline-based incendiary device filled the air.

Doris Young tried all that she could to calm the terrified children, at one point telling them to think of this as an adventure movie, or that when it was over, they would each have a great story to tell their grandchildren. She also gave permission for teachers to bring in books, art supplies, and a television to help keep the children occupied and under control, and even joined in with singing happy birthday to one of the children when they mentioned that it was their birthday that day. However, throughout the hostage crisis, David Young became more and more tense and cantankerous.

This may have resulted from the fact that many of the children just sat around and stared at him, something that no doubt made him extremely nervous. Teachers feared that he might snap at any moment, and the crowded classroom was only making the situation worse. They then decided to create an 8 by 8 foot square area using masking tape stuck to the floor, an area that only David was permitted to occupy. Teachers then told the children that this was the magic square, and they were to make a game out of avoiding entering it. As this was happening, police were gathering around the elementary school, careful to keep out of sight from the windows of the classroom in which the hostages were being held.

They had also cordoned off and searched a van parked up outside, which they believe had belonged to the hostage takers. Inside, they made an interesting discovery. Handcuffed in the back of the van were two men, Gerald Depp and Doyle Mendenhall. They claimed to be old friends of David Young and had given him money after he had promised them massive returns on their investments with a plan he called the Biggie. When it turned out that the plan involved hostage taking, they had refused their continued participation so on the day in question, David and Doris had taken them hostage too, in order to ensure that they would not go to the police. As they were freed, both men confessed to being

utterly terrified, asserting that David Young was a dangerously insane human being who would not hesitate to take the lives of others in his unhinged quest to start off a bizarre kind of cultural revolution. After around two and a half hours of waiting for his demands to be met, David Young found that he desperately needed the bathroom. First, he transferred the dead man's switch to Doris' wrist, then left the room to use a small bathroom that ran between the first and second grade classrooms. But as Doris stood near the gasoline-based device, she quickly developed a headache from the heavy fumes that emanated from the shopping cart it was contained in. They had no idea at the time, but a tiny hole in the gallon milk jug was allowing fumes to slowly escape, enough to have Doris raising a hand to her forehead to try to ease the discomfort.

This action somehow caused the little piece of wood, the one in the dead man's switch preventing the device from detonating to slip from between the two pieces of connecting metal. The switch was activated and the device exploded. The door was immediately filled with black flame and smoke, with Doris being horribly burned in the subsequent explosion. In the aftermath of the explosion, teachers began to shove the gathered children into the hallways outside the classroom and through open windows that led to a grassy lawn outside. The explosion also caused a panic among the children's parents, who had congregated around the police cordon of the school. Some tried to break through the lines and had to be held back

by attending officers. David Young heard the explosion from the lines and had to be held back by attending officers. David Young heard the explosion from the bathroom and rushed into the classroom, only to be greeted by the conflagration of smoke and flame. He saw his wife burning alive as she rolled on the floor, screaming in agony. He took out a.45 pistol, walked over to her, and put her out of her misery. He then fired a few shots out one of the classroom windows, striking a music teacher named John Miller, who thankfully was only wounded by the shot. David then looked toward the body that was his dead wife's burning body, put the.45 to his head and pulled the trigger. They were the only two casualties of the hostage crisis

and there would have been far more if it hadn't been for the open windows of the classroom and some loose ceiling tiles which channeled the force of the explosion and saved the lives of hundreds of innocent young children. As fire crews rushed to put out the burning school building, injured children and teachers were rushed to nearby hospitals. A total of 79 of the hostages had suffered injuries ranging from second degree burns to smoke inhalation,

and local medical facilities were so overwhelmed that some of the injured were even taken over state lines to hospitals in neighboring Idaho. The whole day's events were severely traumatic for all involved, but police began to receive some bizarre and chilling reports when interviewing the children who were present in the classroom that day. Several of the children claimed to have witnessed a beautiful lady present in the room, wearing all white, who told them to go near to the windows in the moments before the explosion. Others told police they had seen an angel floating over each of the children's heads. This could have been down to the prayers that were said by teachers throughout the day having stuck in the memories of children present, while some have suggested that the gasoline fumes may have caused them to see hallucinations. Either way, the angelic assertions of the children were profoundly

haunting to the police officers that collected statements from them, and they gave rise to the nickname of the Cokeville Miracle, coupled with the fact that none of the children were killed despite such a large, fiery explosion. A miracle was perhaps the most fitting word to describe what had happened that day. A violent and dangerously insane psychopath engineered a way to kill hundreds of innocent children that day and somehow, thanks to a series of seemingly random coincidences, not a single child, teacher, or faculty member lost their life when the device designed to kill them was accidentally detonated, even in such a confined space. Maybe some of you believe the accounts of the children that were indeed guardian angels present that day. Maybe you don't. But we can all agree that every single innocent person of Cokeville Elementary

was extremely lucky to be able to escape such a terrifying and traumatic event. When I was a kid, my family moved from our home in upstate New York all the way down to North Carolina, all because of something to do with my dad's job. It was a pretty scary time in my life. For someone so young, you have to leave behind their school friends and stuff and settle on an entirely new place. It was deeply disconcerting and saddening. But none of that compared to what I'd face one day during elementary school. To me, it was a morning a lot like any other. Nothing remarkable or ominous about it. I mean the weather seemed pretty terrible so there was no outside recess during the morning but that's not entirely unusual during fall on the east coast.

But as the afternoon progressed I remembered looking out the windows of our classroom and seeing the light drizzle of the morning progress steadily into some of the heaviest wind and rain I'd ever seen. Like it was pounding against the windows so hard at one point that our teacher had to actually raise their voice in order to make themselves heard. Not long after, another teacher walks into the classroom, quickly walks up to our teacher standing at the front of the class, and whispers something in her ear. Our teacher immediately goes all wide-eyed and, although we didn't know exactly what had been said or what was going on, the super tense feeling just descended over the class, like we instinctively knew something was wrong. Class continued for a little while,

all the while the weather outside continued to get worse, only this time instead of just ignoring it, our teacher kept looking out of the windows. I remember turning to see what she was looking at and seeing like a bunch of stuff flying across the playing field outside. Nothing major, just a lot of paper and bits of plastic, but I'd never seen anything like that before, and it made me really, really nervous. Then, the inner commoner classroom buzzed into life, saying something about how all teaching staff and pupils needed to take shelter in the hallways immediately. So we did, and with our teacher trying to keep us all calm

and she struggled to keep a lid on her own fears, we filed out into the hallway and were told to sit down on the floor out there. By that point, we could all hear the sounds of the wind howling outside of the building, even through some pretty thick cladding and stuff which was terrifying all in its own. And the louder it got, the more and more afraid we all got as our teachers explained that it was just some nasty weather and it couldn't hurt us so long as we were in the hallways. Things were fine for a little while but our classroom was right next to the library and at one point, just as the mood seemed to be as tense as it could get, we all heard this big crashing sound coming from behind the closed double doors. It was so loud and frightening that all the kids

immediately screamed when we heard it, and it was followed by these horribly loud howling wind noises that seemed to echo down the hallways we were sat in. It honestly sounded like a big old monster had just come smashing its way through the glass and was tearing around the library, knocking things over as it went. Some of the other kids were inconsolable at that point, as the screams turned into sobs and wails that the teachers tried and failed to calm. It was like a rolling choir of fear and misery, with almost every second kid just either quietly sobbing or openly wailing. I admit to crying myself, but it was only upon hearing another kid saying to a teacher,

I want to go home and I want my mom and dad, I need mom and dad. That just made me think of my own parents and how this horrible and bizarre event might be affecting them too. That's when I couldn't find it in me to be brave anymore and I broke down crying as well. We ended up staying in that corridor for hours, way past the time we all should have been filing out of the school for the end of the day. It was actually dark out by the time the howling noises stopped coming from the library, and you can't even imagine the sense of relief that came over us when we were told that our parents would be coming to collect us from school in the next hour or so. I cried again when I saw them near the main entrance,

running up and giving them a huge hug. I was just so thankful that they were safe and that whatever was going on outside hadn't gotten them as I was so terrified that it might. As it turns out, the school had been hit by a tornado. It definitely wasn't the worst kind that could have hit but as I mentioned, it was bad enough to blow out the windows in the library, or maybe it was a tree that was felled that somehow managed to smash through the windows. I didn't actually see what exactly caused the damage. But at that age, I wasn't even sure what a tornado even was.

Like sure, I'd heard the word before, but I'd never been caught in anything as crazy as that, and neither had most of the other kids by the way they reacted. It was without a doubt the single most pant-wettingly scary thing that ever happened to me during my entire childhood, let alone during my time in elementary school. Since then, I've had a profound respect for how awesomely powerful the forces of nature can be, and how they are not to be taken lightly. I know this isn't as gripping or terrifying a story as some of the school lockdown ones I read about from time to time, but for all of us in school that day, it was like a nightmare come to life.

Michael Wayne Donaghy was born on May 12th, 1986 in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. When the boy was just four years old, he accompanied his family to Blanchard Elementary School so they could watch his mother participate in a practice session of flag football. They were a close-knit, loving family who showed plenty of support for each other's passions and hobbies, and Michael's father would often bring the whole family to cheer along their mother during competitive games. The family arrived at the elementary school at around 12.30pm on the Sunday of the 24th of March 1991, about a half hour before the flag football practice was due to commence. Michael's mother, Crystal, walked him over towards the main sports field While his father, Bruce, stayed behind at the family's car to collect a few belongings Including a hamper of sandwiches and snacks that they would consume while watching the practice

But on the way, young Michael spied an adventure playground Complete with a swing set, seesaw, and climbing frame Desperate to spend a little time careening around the play area, Michael begged his mother to allow him a little playtime before they would take a seat in the stands. Crystal was never one to deny her young son a little fun when he'd been behaving himself, so she permitted him to do so, but made him promise to let his father collect him as soon as he arrived to do so. However, when Bruce was told where Michael was and walked over to fetch him, he found that Michael was nowhere to be seen.

Bruce walked around the play area, calling his son's name while checking under the slides and anywhere else Michael might be hiding, but still he couldn't find him. Panic ensued. Bruce ran towards the crowd that had gathered at the edge of the sports field informing them that his son was missing. Around 50 people began scouring the area, looking for the missing toddler while Bruce and Crystal rushed to use a nearby payphone to inform the police that their boy was missing. Since Michael disappeared from a public place in such an apparently short period of time, it was judged to be a case of child abduction, and the investigation

that followed became one of the largest in Canadian law enforcement history. Every single detective from the Victoria Police Department was called in to assist in the search, as the boy's disappearance from a public playground struck fear into the hearts of parents up and down the country. As a result, and compounded by the high levels of publicity that the case received, thousands upon thousands of tips came in from all over North America, which at the time made for extremely time-consuming work since everything had to be written down on actual paper and filed manually. The lack of digital technology hampered the investigation and many have since suggested that technologies such as CCTV cameras, DNA analysis, and computerization may have actually contributed in solving the case.

The initial bulk of the investigation involved Victoria police officers interviewing known child predators and questioning their whereabouts at the time of Michael's disappearance. Police also talked to everyone who had been at the flag football practice. But unfortunately the only piece of pertinent information involved, just a handful of people having seen a man in his late 40s or early 50s, was hanging around a large brown van which was parked near the playground in which Michael had been playing. Yet despite the eyewitness statements, police were unable to secure the license plate number of the van and nor were they able to get a detailed description of the man with the brown van.

The situation got so desperate that a month after Michael had disappeared, local police staged a detailed recreation of the supposed abduction at the very same site it had occurred. Using a brown van and an officer who posed as the apparent abductor, police hoped that the recreation would jog the memories of those that had seen anything, either at the playground or in the surrounding area. The general public was told that on that day that he vanished, that Michael was wearing a blue hooded jacket with red lining and red cuffs, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt, multicolored rugby pants, and blue sneakers. Yet despite their efforts, the recreation failed to produce a single new lead in the case, and over the months that followed, time and resources were exhausted to the point that the investigation was basically abandoned.

Michael's parents were heartbroken. United States after his abduction, many news outlets south of the border asked Americans to rack their brains to recall if they had seen any child fitting Michael's description, who seemed to be accompanied by a sketchy or skittish man. As a result, there were reported sightings of the boy in South New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. In fact, the last reported sighting of Michael Donaghy came on the 19th of June 1991 when there was an attempt to abduct a 7-year-old girl from the street outside her home in Berlin, Borough, New Jersey. The targeted girl screamed so loud that it brought people out of their homes, who subsequently chased away the potential abductor and prevented the girl from being taken. In the aftermath, eyewitnesses stated that not only was there a large brown van present during the failed abduction,

but there was a small Caucasian boy in the passenger seat who had blonde hair and blue eyes. The physical description was an exact match to that of young Michael. Aside from the idea that Michael was abducted, there have been several other interesting theories regarding the reasons for his disappearance, the first being that Michael simply wandered off. Blanchard Elementary School is just a short walk away from the Christmas Hill Nature Sanctuary, which is home to the rather large Swan Lake. It is entirely possible that Michael simply tottered off into the park, fell into the lake, and drowned, before being carried downstream and out into Victoria Bay before his body could be found. It has also been suggested that Michael

was taken by a so-called black market adoption ring. He was young enough to be indoctrinated into believing he was entirely a different person, and given that there were many black market adoptions in the 1980s and 1990s, this theory cannot be entirely dismissed. The phenomenon persisted well into the 21st century too. In 2014, Guernica Magazine reported on a case of a Guatemalan couple that claimed their daughter, who had been adopted by a family in the state of Missouri, had been kidnapped by a myriad of people working in the child trafficking business. In that particular instance, it was deemed that both the child's and the biological mother's DNA reports were falsified

and processing documents were forged so that the adoption appeared legal. The article revealed a sinister side of international adoption, consisting of government involvement and even trafficking for the purpose of organ harvesting. But another, albeit outlandish, theory has been purported that Michael had fallen victim to a satanic cult. In the years that followed his disappearance, some sections of the amateur detective community suggested that it was no coincidence that Michael was abducted on Palm Sunday, seven days before Easter, and seven streets away from Easter Street in Victoria.

These theorists claimed that Victoria, British Columbia, was the satanic worship capital of the world, and that Michael was taken as an offering to Satan. These claims stem from the 1980 publication of a book called Michelle Remembers, which details the assertions of one Michelle Probey, who recalled several months of evil, violent satanic rituals she was subjected to as a child in her hometown of Victoria. She claimed that her memories of the events had been repressed for decades until a psychiatrist by the name of Lawrence Pazder unlocked them using hypnotherapy.

It was while under hypnosis that Probie started to recount a horrifying web of torture, murder, and most relevant of all, abduction. She said she remembered being from her family then groomed to participate in a ritual. The goal was which to summon Satan himself. The ritual apparently included children being locked in cages with snakes, forced cannibalism, and the eventual blood sacrifice of said children. The book was an explosive bestseller and became a kind of template for scores of other claims of satanic ritual abuse and what became known to many as the satanic panic. On the surface, the claims made in the book seemed far too far-fetched to actually be taken seriously, yet Probie was no crank. She seemed to

be perfectly calm and rational, holding down an otherwise unremarkable family life in suburban Victoria. Dr. Pastor was also not an obvious fantasist. He was a family man and respected professional psychologist who had no history of outlandish theories or research. Perhaps we'll never know if there is any truth to such claims, and if there is, they may provide something of a fascinating yet horrifying insight into just how and why Michael disappeared from Blanchard Elementary School on that warm summer morning in 1991. As of 2016, Michael Wayne Dunhees' case remains open and all evidence is available to the public. There are also a handful of retired Victoria police officers who claim they were continuing their investigations outside of a professional capacity. For them, it's no longer a professional endeavor but a personal quest to see justice served

Even in the face of such dire odds All involved are hopeful that someday More information will come to the fore that shed more light on What has been a case that's as baffling as it is tragic And that the many unanswered questions that have plagued Michael's parents And police officers alike will finally be answered. Here in the UK, we don't really have elementary schools, but the equivalents are called junior or primary schools.

The school I went to had a tiny playground, like I think there were only about a hundred kids in the entire school, so the little concrete play area was maybe only like 50 meters across, like it was tiny. So if something happened on the playground, every kid and supervising teacher could see it, which I suppose suited them down to the ground. But it didn't suit me the day something happened to Louis, because one day, we're all just legging it around the playground as little kids do, not a care in the world, when I hear one of the teaching assistants scream really, really loudly,

Lewis! Lewis! I remember it was autumn because I was playing with some fallen leaves when I heard the scream. Don't ask me why, kids are daft, aren't they? I spin around, like every single other kid in the playground after hearing that blood-curdling screech, to see the teaching assistant kneeling down by Lewis, who was just lying on the concrete, with blood pouring out of his mouth. Not a little drip, I mean a steady stream of blood was just cascading out of the corner of his mouth and pulling on the ground beneath him. I mean, that was horrific enough, but the thing that really got to me was that he was totally unconscious and that his eyes had just rolled up in their sockets so you could only see the whites of his eyes while he bled uncontrollably

from his mouth. Lewis was like the only black kid at our school too, so from looking across the playground, the whites of his eyes just seemed to shine out to me as I looked. I just remember that specific sight. I mean, I'd have probably found it just as disturbing if it was one of the white kids, but the color contrast meant that they just stood out even more and I remember that scaring the life out of me as all the kids just started running for this main school building. Loads of us just piled into the cloakroom. Some kids were crying, others were pale and in shock, and I obviously can't speak for any of the other kids, but I 100% thought that Lewis was dead. I'd never seen any kind of injury like that before, at least when my mate Ewan broke his leg when he fell off a swing set.

He'd scream bloody murder until the ambulance came. I knew he was alive, even if it was really distressing. But Louis was out cold, bleeding like a stuck pig, and good god, his eyes. I didn't know eyes could even do that back when I was that age. Afternoon classes basically got cancelled after that and the kids were just distraught, so no one was in a fit state to be concentrating on lessons. We were just kept in our classrooms until we were all called into the main assembling hall to hear the news about Louis. We didn't get all the gory details, only that Louis had taken a fall in the playground and had banged his head. We were told that he'd been

taken to the hospital and that he was okay, but he'd be off school for a week or so while he healed up. Lewis was back before we knew it. We were all super relieved to see him. I remember the first day he was back, we all gathered around him as he showed off the big scar inside of his lip where he'd fallen on his face. He'd also had lost a few baby teeth which I suppose was lucky as he was about to lose them anyway I suppose. That was definitely the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen in my childhood though. I'm 32 now and it's been like 25 or so years since it happened but I remember the whole thing as clear as day. It just burned in my memory. Those eyes. There's something I'll never, ever forget. Beatriz Angelica Mota was born on the 11th of February 2008, the second daughter of Sandro and Lucia Mota.

She grew up on her family's farm not far from the city of Petrolina in northeastern Brazil, in an area known for producing a huge amount of tropical fruit, such as guavas, papayas, and mangoes. Despite the region having a reputation for violent crime, the countryside outside of Petrolina is considered more peaceful, and for Beatriz's parents, it was a place they could raise a family in relative tranquility. Along with her older sister, Beatriz was enrolled at a private Catholic elementary school situated in downtown Petrolina. It was one of the most esteemed educational institutions in the entire state of Bahia, a place that might not have been able to afford to attend if their father Sandro hadn't been employed as a teacher there. Naturally, the

school came to play a huge role in Mota's family's life, but unfortunately, not always for the best reasons. On the evening of the 10th of December 2015, when Beatriz was just 7 years old, the entire Mota family attended a graduation ceremony that was being held at their school. Almost a thousand proud parents were gathered to celebrate an important chapter in their children's lives, and the event featured live music and speeches from both teachers and parents alike. Since Sandra Motta was an employee and was helping run the ceremony from behind the scenes, Beatrice was being looked over by her mother, Lucia. However, sometime around 10pm, while the graduation ceremony was still in full swing,

Beatrice told her mother that she wanted to get a drink at a water fountain close by. Lucia told her daughter to come straight back to her, but when about 10 minutes went by and Beatrice had not returned. Lucia got up to go look for her. She was concerned but didn't panic as the school grounds were fenced off by patrolling security guards. She could have only gone so far. But around 45 minutes later, despite the aid of a handful of the school's security team, Beatrice had still not been found. By that point, Sandro Mota had been notified that his daughter was missing and took to the bandstand using the microphone to notify the audience that Beatrice was missing. He even used the PA system to call out to her personally saying,

Beatrice, my daughter, where are you? Hey, Bea, everyone is looking for you, my love. The parents and teacher alike started to search the school grounds for the seven-year-old, calling out her name until eventually a blood curdling scream could be heard coming from the entrance of the school's gymnasium. The scream was unleashed by one of the school's security guards who had made a horrifying discovery in one of the gym's closets. It was the bloody, lifeless body of Beatrice Mota. Police rushed to the scene as news of the girl's death reverberated around the crowds of parents and children. A handful of families would remain behind at the

school to console Beatrice's devastated parents, but after being questioned by police, the rest were ordered to leave so that a thorough investigation could commence. They were soon joined by high-ranking members of the state police, as well as forensic examiners who immediately began scouring the crime scene for leftover fingerprints and DNA. For some, it was the most haunting crime scene they had ever come across, having never seen a child who had been so violently and brutally murdered. An autopsy of her body later confirmed that she had received a total of 42 stab wounds to her chest, stomach, arms, and legs, which suggested whoever had killed her had done so in a frenzy of violent rage. But who exactly could bring themselves to do such a thing to an innocent 7 year old child?

Initial speculation was that whoever had committed the crime had a personal motive given the ferocious nature of the attack. The wooden handler butcher's knife that had been used to take her life was actually found buried in her abdomen, which suggested that the killer had been in such a rush to escape the scene that they hadn't even bothered to hide the murder weapon. Police also noted that there was no evidence that Beatrice had been indecently assaulted, which was a relief to all involved, but further confused investigators who were completely stumped as to why this crime had been committed. The sheer number of potential suspects also proved a huge problem for investigating police. Not only was there around a thousand people present at the

graduation event itself but given that the school was in downtown Petrolina and any number of people could have snuck onto the grounds of the school to commit a crime of opportunity that involved dragging her into an isolated spot to inflict the horrific attack. As a result, police began a long and drawn out process of gathering up CCTV footage from the cameras of the school, as well as neighboring homes, businesses, and the personal video cameras of parents in attendance. However, they were also furious to discover that the security cameras that covered the entrance to the gymnasium were not functional. This was down to an accidental fire that had been started near the gymnasium's entrance, but police speculated that since this was the one place where the cameras weren't working, that whoever murdered Beatrice may have well been aware of this and had carefully chosen that spot to drag her off to. Despite the vast amount of footage that investigators managed to secure,

they were completely unable to trace the movements of Beatrice after around 10.09pm when she got up to get some water from the fountain. Footage captures her walking off from her mother, but after that, there is nothing, which is presumably the time she was snatched up and dragged off to her doom. Police concluded that whoever killed her had to have an intimate knowledge of the school's layout, having chosen the one place in the entire school that wasn't covered by the vast network of CCTV cameras. The other fact that supported this theory was the killer had also fled the scene without being seen by a single person or being captured on a security camera,

and given that he was likely covered in blood, this would not be an easy feat to achieve. They must have known the school grounds very well to either find an unguarded or a gap in security fencing that no one else was aware of. During interviews with hundreds of witnesses, many had spoken of seeing an unfamiliar man hanging around the area of the water fountain. One of the witnesses claimed to have seen him halted while attempting to enter the woman's bathroom before claiming it was an innocent mistake. Another said they had seen the man walking out from the gymnasium shortly before Beatrice's body was found. This would lead the police to centering their investigation on this individual and releasing a digital composite image of the man after consulting their multiple eyewitnesses.

When shown the composite image, Beatrice's father Sandro would tell police that he saw the individual approach two children that evening, asking both to help him carry some furniture into the place where Beatrice was found dead. This suggested that she had been a willing follower of the killer which would explain why no one's attention was drawn by any kind of violent kidnap. It also suggested the murder was purely one of opportunity, as the murderer had simply taken the life of the first child who had accepted his invitation. The composite image showed a Latino man of tan complexion that was relatively short at around 5.5 feet tall, weighing only 155 pounds who had deep set eyes, a prominent brow and stern looking features

Witnesses stated he was wearing dark blue trousers and a green collared shirt the latter of which would become part of the moniker that the press referred to him as the Green Shirt Man. However, only a few days after the release of the composite sketch, investigators were forced to consider the theory that there had been multiple people involved in Beatrice's murder. This was due to there being not one, but two unidentified DNA samples recovered from the crime scene, one of which came from the murder weapon, the other coming from the skin samples taken from underneath Beatrice's fingernails, with both samples thought to have come from unrelated males.

Then shockingly, in March of 2016, police called a press conference at which they announced that as many as five people had acted in a team in order to carry out the murder, which may or may not have included people employed at the school. The revelation came from the discovery that three sets of keys had disappeared from the school's security offices, allowing the killers access to the school's internal and external doors and gates. The keys had been reported missing around two weeks before the murder, suggesting a nature of premeditation to the crime.

Police would also claim that the lights in the gymnasium had been deliberately turned off around the time of Beatrice's murder and that sections of the CCTV footage from the night in question had been deliberately corrupted. They said that both acts were part of a well-laid out plan to kidnap and murder a child on the night in question. While investigators would choose not to release the names of ages of their five suspects to the press, they did pass on some of their suspicions, one of which was that all except one of their suspects were employees of the elementary school,

who had either lied or attempted to mislead the police regarding certain details when they were being interviewed. One of the suspects were described by witnesses as having been extremely nervous around the time of the murder, while three claimed they were nowhere near the crime scene, claims that were proven false by the analysis of video evidence. Yet despite the police's suspicions, not a single member of the school's staff ended up being charged with the murder or any relating crime. However, all these men would be fired by the school after learning of their status as suspects, possibly simply as damage control to calm the

nerves of distraught parents. In the months that followed, police would release footage to the public of the green-shirted man, who they could now confirm was the murderer. From the footage taken from surrounding businesses, he can be seen walking in the direction of the school with a rather unique lurch or gait in his step. When he reaches the school, he takes out a cell phone, engaging someone in conversation for a moment before hanging up. It is then that he reaches down and retrieves a knife that has been previously hidden in a bush before tucking it into his sock. He then walks onto school grounds, ready to take the life of an innocent child. And aside from a few shots of the green shirt man walking around the school grounds, no other footage of him exists, leaving investigators to only be able to guess at how he escaped the scene of the crime.

As the investigation floundered, public interest in the story began to fade, and it wasn't until three years later that a break in the case was picked up by the national press, and Beatriz's name was back in the news. An outsourced IT worker who was working in the corrupted CCTV footage was down to him having deliberately erasing certain files from the school's computer servers less than a month after the murder had taken place. December of 2018 saw an arrest warrant issued for Henrique who, instead of allowing himself to be questioned, went on the run and became a wanted fugitive. His home was raided by police, but they were unable to find anything incriminating during the search that followed. However, while on the run, Henrique remained in touch with his lawyers, instructing them to

release a statement claiming that he was hiding because he knew police simply wanted to make a scapegoat of him to distract from their own failings. On Henrique's behalf, the lawyer went on to say that it was in fact the police themselves that caused the data corruption, that he had no prior criminal history and, had his IT business, had no history of such glaring errors. Though over time, it would become increasingly obvious that Henrique had no involvement in Beatrice's murder, given that he worked off-site and was not present at the time of the graduation ceremony. No concrete blame could be laid at his feet for the corrupted footage, which would eventually be salvaged with the help of the United States FBI. And so in 2019, a Brazilian judge would revoke his arrest warrant and Henrique would go about his life as normal again.

To this day, not a single person had been successfully charged with Beatriz's murder. Beatriz's parents, Sandro and Lucia Mota, had been so outraged by the authorities' mishandling of the case that in 2019 they began crowdfunding to start their own private investigation into their daughter's murder. They felt they had been so failed by the Brazilian state that they no longer sought help from them at all, convinced they were unable to provide the answers they needed. Beatriz was buried on a plot on the family farm, where a small shrine was built in her honor so the extended family could continue to pay their respects

whenever they visited. And over time, the raw grief they felt has been replaced with anger that despite all the evidence and investigation, not a single shred of justice has been served. We can only pray that, with time, Beatrice's family can finally find the answers they deserve, and that they, as well as Beatrice, can finally rest in peace. To be continued... arriving as usual at around 8am, giving them a kiss, told them I hope they had a good day and off they went to morning class. Nothing out of the ordinary just like any other day.

Only right as I'm about to drive off I notice something that immediately got my attention and not in a good way. There's still a woman stood outside and she's not coming or going or anything she's just standing there. She looked middle-aged, maybe of Latina or Asian extraction and she's just sort of watching all the kids come and go. Now the morning rush is usually just that, parents pull up, drop their kids off, then leave as quickly as they arrive to get their jobs or whatever but there's this woman, super chill, just stood there. Then she gets her phone out and starts like pointing it around like she's taking pictures

or video of the whole scene. I got this bad, bad feeling in my gut. Like she didn't look like as you'd imagine some old creeper to look. She wasn't wearing a trench coat with a ball cap pulled down over her face. She looked kind of motherly actually and if she hadn't just been stood there or recording with her phone, I think I'd have completely passed by her. So instead of driving off to make it to work on time, I just kind of sat in the car watching her. Better safe than sorry, I told myself at the time. And boy am I glad I stuck around because things were about to get weird. As I'm sat in my car watching her I notice that suddenly she seems to take a sharp interest in something. She puts her phone away and seems to be staring over towards the other

side of the school parking lot. I try to spy whatever's gotten her attention but the place is so busy with the morning rush that nothing really stood out to me. So again I just sit there waiting patiently as she starts to walk across the street and over towards this parked car. I have to turn around in my seat to see what she's doing but I'm able to watch clear as day as she walks towards one of the cars and opens the back door before reaching in and like pulling out this preschool aged kid who was sitting in the back seat. She doesn't pull hard or anything just kind of takes the kid by the hand and leads them out of the car. Leaning down to say something to them before she started trying to walk off with them. My spidey senses are tingling by this point so I jump out of my car, locking the doors before I start power walking over to her. I'm all like,

excuse me, excuse me lady, is that your kid? Where are you taking that child? She turned around all calm, smiles at me, then tells me she's a teacher at the school. I mean, it was actually believable for a moment. She had this lanyard around her neck with what looked like an ID on it. Her answer was so confident too and actually called the kid by the name Brian, so for a second I felt like I was going crazy and that I had gotten way inside my own head about it, playing at being some vigilante or something. I'm all like, oh, oh, sorry, and she accepts my apology, then goes to walk away from the school again.

I don't think I'd done anything else about it until I heard another voice behind me shout, hey, what do you think you're doing? I turn around and see this furious-looking dude running towards me and the woman. He runs past me, stops the woman and grabs the kid's arm, pulling him away from her. She then starts giving this guy the same speech she told me, telling him she's a teacher and she's taking Brian somewhere, how he's a student of hers.

What this dude said next made my stomach drop. Brian? Brian? My kid's name is not Brian lady, I'm calling the cops. The guy shouts and in doing so draws the attention of everyone coming and going in the parking lot. Once he realized he'd gotten something of an audience, he starts kind of going off like, this psycho is trying to kidnap my kid,

someone get the cops out here. The mood in the parking lot shifts. Every single parent is basically watching their worst fears played out before them, an unsuspecting person trying to abduct a kid in broad daylight. It was honestly sickening, firstly the whole act of trying to snatch the kid, and then the kind of mood shift as all of these half-awake parents just turn into what was basically a violent mob. But the middle-aged lady was quick, she moved faster than I'd ever have expected to out of the parking lot, Back across the street where she jumped into a car and sped off Parents are taking pictures of her license plate screaming about child abusers Seriously wanting to rip her apart there and then

I stuck around to talk to the cops Gave a detailed description along with the dad of the potential kidnap victim Whose kid was just distraught by that point. There was a PTA meeting called about the incident. It was this whole big drama that rocked the small community we lived in. And now, just in case none of you believe me, I actually screenshotted a bunch of stuff that was in the LA Times a few days ago. The woman's name was Aileen Kerengal. She was 56 at the time of the incident and she ended up getting followed and arrested by the cops at her home in the 700 block of

Christine Drive. The story was sent around to the parents of all the kids attending Cooper Elementary in like a matter of hours and the relief was palpable. I don't think people who don't have kids can really understand just how terrifying something like this is. Like we're all told there are monsters in the world, but knowing they walk among us, looking just like sweet middle-aged women, when they are in fact complete predators, is just chilling beyond belief. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. If you got a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official,

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