The Lets Read Podcast - 124: Florida Man & Home Intruder Stories | 23 True Scary Horror Stories | EP 112

Episode Date: March 1, 2022

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

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What exactly causes him to commit some of the most bizarre, hilarious, and profane acts known to man? So much so that the entire concept has become internationally renowned. Is it the heat, the humidity, the close proximity to dangerous wildlife, or even wilder weather? It's a question that may never be answered, but what's clear is that a man certainly doesn't have to be born in Florida for that state's particular kind of madness to slip into their psyche. Which brings us to the case of the infamous Karl Tanzler. Karl Tanzler went by many names. Born on February 8th, 1877 in Dresden, Germany, he was listed as George Tanzler on his German marriage certificate. Yet when he emigrated to the United States in 1926, he was listed as Carl Tanzler von Kossel, which some of his hospital records were signed Count Carl Tanzler. After a brief stop in Havana, Cuba, he settled in Zephyr Hills, Florida, where his sister had settled just a few years prior.

In 1927, Carl was later joined by his family, consisting of his wife Doris and two young daughters, Ayesha and Clarista. But Carl was unsatisfied in his married life, and later took a job as a radiology technician at the U.S. Marine Hospital in Key West, leaving his young family behind in Zephyrhills. It was there he worked without incident for three years, until a young patient arrived at the hospital that changed his life forever. Ilana Miagro de Hoyos was a young Cuban-American woman who spent most of her life in Miami. But in April of 1930, Ilana complained of feeling unwell and, after seeing a doctor in Miami, was referred to the radiology department in Key West. Her appointment was scheduled for April 22nd and it was that fateful day that brought her to first meeting with Carl Tanzler. The moment he laid eyes on her, Carl was smitten and throughout the course of his initial examination of her he found himself falling madly in love. Yet he was

completely heartbroken to discover that Ilana was suffering from tuberculosis, a disease that was almost invariably fatal at the time of her diagnosis. Tanzler tried everything he could to save her life, using all of his medical knowledge along with a variety of treatments, medicines, x-ray, and electrical equipment, some of which he personally transported to Alana's home. In the last days of her life, Carl showered Alana with gifts. He brought her flowers, jewelry, clothes, and chocolates, each time declaring his undying love for her. It could have been the case that he believed that such affection would give her the will to fight her affliction, but his efforts, both personally and professionally, proved to be in vain.

On October 25th, 1931, Alana de Hoyos died of tuberculosis at her parents' Key West home. Carl Tanzler paid for her funeral, and then sought permission from her family to have a lavish above-ground mausoleum built in a Kiwa cemetery. The family was bemused by his unrequited adoration for their young daughter, but did not refuse the request. And so, Tanzler essentially had a shrine constructed to Alana, one that he visited almost every night for two years, weeping openly at her gravesite as he mourned the loss of the love of his life. But Tanzler's love for Alana combined with his deep, boundless sense

of loss twisted and distorted his grief into something much darker. And in April of 1933, he made the decision to do something that would haunt Florida folklore for almost 100 years. In the dead of night, Tanzler crept through the Key West Cemetery, pushing a small wooden wagon in front of him. He arrived at the mausoleum where Alana was interred and broke the seal on her tomb with a hammer and chisel. Undeterred by the stench of death that greeted him, Tanzler wrapped her body in a sheet, placed it on the cart, and then pushed it all the way back to his home. He was undoubtedly driven mad with grief, later saying that Alana's spirit would appear to him as he wept by her gravesite, singing her favorite Spanish language song to him before giving him

permission to take her body from the grave so her spirit could occupy his home and be closer to him before giving him permission to take her body from the grave so her spirit could occupy his home and be closer to him as a result. When he arrived home, Tanzler took Alana's skeleton and attached the bones together with piano wire. He had also taken the time to pick out a pair of glass eyes with irises of the same brown shade that Alana had, slotting them into her and gluing them in the place. Since Alana's eyes had rotted away over the two years she had been buried, Tanzler went about replacing it, using a mix of silk cloth that had been soaked in plaster of Paris and wax. Somehow, Tanzler had also managed to collect a sizable amount of hair from Alana's mother. Although there are no records of exactly how he did this,

he apparently had a large enough collection to be able to create an extremely lifelike wig out of it, which he then attached to Alana's lifeless skull. He also stuffed the corpse's chest and abdominal cavities with rags to maintain the integrity of her body's shape while in life. Once his amateur version of human taxidermy was completed, Tanzler dressed up his morbid project in some of the jewelry he had bought her, slid stockings onto the legs and pulled gloves over the hands. He then applied a large amount of disinfectants, preserving agents and perfume to slow the rate of decomposition and mask the rotten smell that emanated from his beloved Alana.

When he was done, Tanzler took the body to bed with him. It wasn't long before employees at the Key West Cemetery discovered that Alana De Hoyo's body was missing. They raised an alarm, telling police that the most likely culprit was Carl Tanzler. Yet Tanzler straight up denied the accusations, and despite being the main suspect in the corpse robbing, he managed to convince the investigating officers that he would be the last person to desecrate the lavish tomb he himself had paid so handsomely for. But as time went on, rumors abounded. Terrifying rumors that were only reinforced when a neighbor was said to have witnessed Tanzler dancing around his front room

with an inanimate figure. It was instantly assumed to be the deceased Alana and words soon reached her sister, Florinda. It took her until October of 1940 to build up the courage to confront him. Tanzler arrogantly invited Florinda into his home, and after trying and failing to belay her concerns, she searched his house herself. She burst into his bedroom and was confronted with a scene of pure horror. The visage was rough, the form distorted, but the resemblance and the smell was enough to confirm her worst fears. That Tanzler had stolen her sister's body and reconstructed it in a sickening parody of her former self. She ran from the house and straight to the local police department informing them that she had seen her sister's corpse in Tanzler's home with her own eyes. Police arrived at the property with a search warrant, arresting and detaining Tanzler when they too discovered the hauntingly morbid

scene that greeted them in the bedroom. It was initially believed that it was simply insane, and therefore unfit to stand trial, but after a psychological examination, the heartbroken radiologist was found to be mentally competent and was subsequently charged with wantonly and maliciously destroying a grave and removing a body without proper authorization. On October 8th, 1940, a preliminary hearing was held at the Monroe County Courthouse in Key West. Tanzler faced the full set of charges, but unbelievably, they were completely dropped when Tanzler's lawyer correctly asserted that the statute of limitations for grave robbing had, in fact, expired, since the crime had been committed over seven years prior. To the general public's deep shock and horror, Tanzler was released from custody. After the corpse was seized by the relevant authorities, physicians marveled at Tanzler's ad hoc attempt at amateur taxidermy. His methods were crude and shoddy, but somehow effective.

However, they did make an alarming and disturbing discovery upon further examination of the corpse. There was evidence that Tanzler had committed necrophilia with Ilana's body. Two physicians, Dr. Dupu and his colleague Dr. Foraker, who had attended the 1940 autopsy of Ilana's remains, recalled in 1972 in an interview that a vaginal tube had been inserted into the pelvic region of the corpse, and pathologists made the bizarre decision to place the corpse on display at the Dean Lopez Funeral Home, where it was visited and viewed by several thousand morbidly curious Floridians. After a brief stint as an exhibit, Alana's body was eventually returned to Key West Cemetery where, instead of being re-interred in the expensive opulent mausoleum, it was buried in an unmarked

grave, the location of which remained a closely guarded secret for many, many years to prevent Tanzler from stealing it again, and there's no doubt that, after putting in such hard work to restore his lost love, he would try once again to be reunited with her. The details surrounding the case made it perhaps the most infamous case of grave robbing that the modern world has ever seen. Publications such as the Miami Herald and the Key West Citizen obsessed over the story, pumping out headlines that generated a huge amount of interest in the state of Florida, as well as all over the rest of the United States.

The general public was gripped by the ins and outs of such a sensational case, but bizarrely, instead of viewing Tanzler as the monster that he was, Americans mostly regarded him as something of an eccentric romantic. Later in 1944, Carl Tanzler relocated to Pasco County, close to his former home of Zephyr Hills where his estranged wife Doris lived. It was there that in 1947 he wrote an autobiography, one that was commissioned for the pulp magazine Fantastic Adventures. The account of his morbid and perverted misadventures was his only source of income

since he could not find any medical work due to his infamy and in his twilight years he was fully supported by his apparently forgiving wife. What's just as unbelievable is that despite all he had done, 1950 saw Tanzler actually receive United States citizenship in Tampa. And what's more, Tanzler's obsession with Alana had not been sated. It was in Tampa that he used a death mask taken from Alana's face in the moments after her death to create a life-size recreation of his deceased lover, living with a woman-sized doll until his eventual death in 1952 at the ripe old age of 75. Some say that Tanzler's dead body was found wrapped up in the arms of his morbid creation, and that he died in the embrace of Alanna's effigy, only too happy to join her in eternity.

But there are some who even claim that Tanzler secretly had the body switched, so that when he passed away, he did so while in the grip of the real Alanna's corpse. Regardless of the final truth of the matter, we can safely conclude that Karl Tanzler was a dangerously insane person, one that had showed no signs of madness until he had graced the shores of the Sunshine State. So as the question remains, what is it that makes a Florida man act the way he does? Perhaps in Karl Tanzler's case, it was something deep in the psychosphere that seeped into his consciousness, something that made a harmless infatuation morph into something truly disturbing and haunting, and perhaps it is this same toxic presence that continues to infect the minds of Florida's population, both male and female, even to this day.

Rudy Eugene was born at the Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida on February 4th, 1981. His parents emigrated from Nigeria but were divorced shortly after his birth and Eugene's father sadly died when he was just six years old, so growing up he had no true paternal figure in his life. Rudy was a student at North Miami Beach High School. In the 10th and 11th grades, he exceeded academically, but was focused and healthy enough to earn a place on its football team in the late 90s. After his graduation ceremony, Rudy earned a meager living from such sources as selling CDs and jobs at McDonald's, before landing a more stable and well-paying job in telemarketing. However, his last known employment was washing cars at a local automobile dealership, a sign of the deterioration that marred his later years. However, despite his run of bad luck, Rudy had expressed interest in establishing his own mobile car wash business. Every Sunday during his boyhood, Rudy accompanied his family

to the Bethel Evangelical Baptist Church. His mother had hoped that, since there was no fatherly role model in his life, that religion might fill the void in Rudy's moral landscape. And for a while, it worked. But that moral stability was not to last. By the age of just 16 years old, Rudy had been arrested a total of eight times for offenses ranging from possession of marijuana to assault. At one point, he was even taken into police custody for a domestic abuse incident involving his own mother. He had smashed a table, destroyed household items, and even laid hands on his mother, shoving her around and telling her, I'll put a gun to your head and kill you.

The incident at home led to him serving an extended probation for resisting an officer without violence. Despite the instability of his early years, Rudy managed to get married in 2005, marrying his longtime girlfriend before the pair moved in together. However, the marriage only lasted three years before a series of domestic abuse caused his wife to file for divorce in late 2007, one that was eventually granted on January 8th, 2008. His wife had cited his abusive and violent nature and told a judge that it was the reason she had been so reluctant to commit to having children with him, having refused the suggestion multiple times before she could find it in herself to divorce him.

The pair never reconciled, nor did they stay in touch, and remained estranged right up to the incident that became nationwide news and put Rudy's face on the TV screens of Americans everywhere for some incredibly disturbing reasons. Rudy was 31 years old in May of 2012 when he drove down to Miami Beach to participate in Urban Beach Week. He was driving a purple Chevrolet Caprice which began to break down at some point, at which time he pulled over to the side of the road. According to footage taken from security cameras, Rudy spent 30-40 minutes attempting ineffective repairs before he eventually abandoned the vehicle around noon. It's then that Rudy's behavior takes a bizarre turn. He begins to move west, crossing the three mile length of MacArthur Causeway, tossing away his driver's license before beginning to take his clothes off. Multiple eyewitnesses saw him doing this but naturally were disturbed by his weird behavior that they didn't attempt any kind of confrontation.

Miami Beach police officers eventually discovered the abandoned Caprice. Although they were confused by its presence at the side of the road and the absence of a driver, they didn't treat the incident as particularly suspicious and simply towed the vehicle to a local impound lot. Inside the car, officers found that there was a bible, along with five empty water bottles, with a receipt that made it clear that they had been bought earlier that day. Whatever Rudy Eugene was doing, it sure made for thirsty work. By the time that the cops had impounded Rudy's car, Rudy Eugene was walking around southern Florida in the early afternoon completely naked. He'd even taken off and thrown away his shoes and socks and was seemingly

unbothered by the discomfort of walking around the hot roads and gravelly side roads in his completely bare feet. Then, around 1.55pm, Rudy bumped into Ronald Popo, a 65-year-old homeless man who had been lying beneath the elevated Metro Mover-People Mover viaduct near the headquarters of the Miami Herald in the Arts and Entertainment District neighborhood of downtown Miami. Ronald was raised in Brooklyn, New York, where he actually attended Manhattan's esteemed Stuyvesant High School. After he graduated, Ronald enrolled at the nearby City College, but dropped out in 1966 before becoming part of the burgeoning hippie movement, officially becoming homeless in the mid-70s.

Just days prior to meeting Rudy Eugene, Ronald had been offered assistance by the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, but he had refused. It seems he was something of a free spirit, proud of being self-reliant and unwilling to submit himself to the mercies of the local government. Ronald must have been extremely surprised to see a completely naked man approaching him, but there could have been no possible way he could have foreseen what was about to happen. Ronald made eye contact with

Rudy, greeting him nervously then, out of nowhere, Rudy accused him of stealing his bible. Ronald denied doing so in utter confusion but Rudy went on a rant about how it didn't matter and that they were both going to die. Then, without another word, Rudy began to brutally attack the elderly homeless man without so much as an ounce of provocation. He beat him mercilessly, then bizarrely began to try to strip Ronald of his pants, who became terrified that the naked man's intentions were to indecently assault him, when in reality, the direction the attack would take was far, far worse. In the middle of the attack, Rudy Eugene mounted Ronald Popo, pinned him to the ground and began to bite his face

He locked his teeth into the man's flesh and began to rip and tear over and over again Pulling off chunks of flesh and spitting them out, using his teeth as pure offensive weaponry A man named Larry Vega, who happened to be riding a bicycle near to the the scene was horrified when he saw the attack unfolding and immediately called 911. The phone call was so frantic and terrifying that it only took a matter of minutes for Miami PD officer Jose Ramirez to arrive on the scene. him was like something out of a zombie horror movie. A man cannibalizing another man's face, blood pouring from both the victim's head and the mouth of the wild-eyed stark naked aggressor. Officer Ramirez pulled out his service pistol, aimed it towards Rudy Eugene and screamed at him to show him his hands. Eugene turned, blood soaked his face. His eyes filled with rage and madness and actually growled at the police officer before resuming his attack on the already savaged Popo. Then at 2.13pm, Officer Ramirez fired his first shot at Rudy Eugene, who shockingly enough barely reacted to the 9mm bullet penetrating his body. He actually carried on biting Ronald Popo, tearing at his

flesh and continuing to growl until the police officer fired four more shots, killing Eugene and ending the vicious assault. Ronald Popo then was rushed to the nearby Jackson Memorial Hospital in a horrendously serious life-threatening condition. In his interviews with police following the attack, Popo thanked Officer Ramirez personally for saving his life. It was reported afterward that around 80% of the facial flesh above his beard was missing, and that his left eye had been gouged out and eaten by his rabid attacker. Popo lost his eyebrows, his nose, parts of his forehead and cheek. Doctors undertook hours upon hours of highly advanced facial reconstruction surgeries over the course of three months, but they couldn't save Ronald's eyesight and he remained permanently disfigured.

His plight reached social media and a crowdfund was set up that since raised over $100,000 to help with surgery costs and other expenses. As a result, he was granted permission to stay at the medical facility indefinitely. Following his intensive course of rehabilitation, Ronald put on 50 pounds of weight and had to relearn how to dress, feed himself, shower, and shave as a result of such extensive and permanent wounds. At the time of the attack, Popo's family, including his daughter, had not heard from him in over 30 years. During that time, they assumed that Ronald was dead, strongly suspecting that he had ended his own life due

to his past troubles with depression and substance abuse. They actually discovered he was still alive as a result of the attack, and naturally the whole thing came as a huge shock to them. Popo has since completed treatment and was last residing in a Medicaid facility. He received nutritional and occupational therapy and took up learning the guitar as a way to cope with the trauma of the incident. As for Rudy Eugene, the reasons for his behavior have remained shrouded in mystery. Despite the autopsy on his body revealing no human flesh in his stomach, a number of undigested pills were discovered that pathologists were completely unable to identify. Although spokespeople for law enforcement had released statements saying that the street drug bath salts might have been to blame for Eugene's behavior,

initial toxicology reports showed that there was only the presence of cannabis in his bloodstream. However, investigators didn't necessarily find the negative results entirely conclusive. Broward County Sheriff Al Lamberti told reporters that he believed that some new and unknown narcotic was to blame, one that had proved impossible to test for and was therefore undetectable. However, renowned toxicologist Barry Logan said that Rudy's behavior was entirely consistent with Bass' thoughts and it was completely unfeasible to test for every drug under the sun. This was backed up by Dr. Bruce Goldberger of the University of Florida who said, We are not incompetent. We have the tools.

We have the sophistication and know-how. But the field is evolving so rapidly it is hard for us to keep track. It's almost as if it is a race we can never win. Regardless of the reasons behind Rudy Eugene's savage, inhuman attack on Ronald Popo, the incident has since passed into Florida folklore, often being referred to in such ways as the Miami Cannibal or the Florida Face Eater. It is without a doubt one of the most harrowing real-life incidents of our time, a testament to the destructiveness of drugs

and mental illness, and I'm sure it's something none of you will forget for quite some time. A few years back, my husband brought home one of those video doorbells from a local gadget store. We'd had some problems with porch pirates in our neighborhood here in Lake Worth, Florida, and we figured it'd help us to catch the culprits. The whole thing with the video doorbell was that as soon as anyone steps onto the porch, the built-in camera started to record. So basically anyone who came close enough to our front door would be caught on camera and if our Amazon packages continued to get stolen, we'd have a clear image of whoever had taken them. Long story short, it worked.

We caught the porch pirates on the doorbell cam, took the footage to the cops and within a week we got in the news that they'd been arrested. It was a huge win for us. Those idiots had stolen almost $300 worth of stuff from us over the course of about three months or so. And it had caused a bunch of problems with Amazon before we figured out that the stuff was just being stolen. Point being, the doorbell cam was a huge success and despite the hefty price tag, it was well worth the investment. But then last year, on Thursday morning of January 24th, I woke up to a notification on my phone. We were so pleased with our doorbell cam that we ended up

getting a better model in late 2018, one which came with very interesting features. The camera came with an app you could download for free on the Google App Store, one which came with very interesting features. The camera came with an app you could download for free on the Google App Store, one which would beam live images from the camera direct to your phone or tablet. It also had a feature if you weren't able to open up the app to check out the live feed, it would make a little recording which you could then stream whenever you had the time to do so. It's a neat little feature, right? Well, I didn't think it was so neat that morning. The app was telling me that a video had been recording at around 6am, one that was a good few minutes long. The last time it had done that was when the neighbor's cat was chilling on her porch for a while in the middle of the night,

which was frankly amazing to wake up to and had me and my husband like aww for a while when we woke up. Only this video was not so cute. I open it up and press play and the first thing I see is this shadowy figure silhouetted on the porch. The doorbell cam emitted a certain amount of infrared light or whatever so it could pick up directly what was in front of it, even in the dark, but the figure was just out of range of this, so all there I could see was this big old dark shape. But then the shape got nearer to the camera, closer and closer until a face was slowly illuminated by the infrared light. Those of you who know what a person's face looks like when it's lit up like that know how disturbing it can be. How inhuman that kind of light makes a person look. It makes light colored eyes seem almost pale white like they're undead or something. It just generally gives the person an ethereal ghostly look. It looked like a

ghost but it was most definitely just a man. Not that it made the idea of him hanging around our porch any less creepy. This guy has this rough, scraggly beard, a bandana on his head, and was wearing what appeared to be a really dirty t-shirt. In his left hand he had like a stack of mini newspapers or something, or maybe it was a phone book, I'm not completely sure. Whatever they were, at one point he brought them up to his face and appeared to sniff them before moving in much closer to the camera like darting close and away close and away over and over again. I had no idea what he was doing at first until up at one point that he leaned in close to the camera and gave it a big old lick. Like yes he actually licked it and it was absolutely disgusting. You could see right inside the guy's mouth how much slobber was on his tongue and knowing this stuff ended up on my doorbell. Ugh, gross. He knew he was being recorded too.

Like as crazy as this guy was, he knew enough to realize that it was a doorbell cam and must have some idea of how they function too. Because after he's done licking the camera and assumedly the doorbell, the guy starts showing off the phone book or the newspapers, pointing to different words and stuff like he wanted us to read them. Then after a few more licks or kisses of the doorbell, he begins to walk away with a string of drool just hanging from his chin. I mean he was obviously high on something but what exactly his drug of choice was I have no idea. Maybe he was just drunk, I'll never truly know. But what I did know was that it was intensely

creepy to know that he had been so close to me while I was asleep. Like our house at the time was only kind of small and the bedroom was pretty close to the main hallway and therefore the front door. If he'd really wanted to, he could've just bust open our bedroom window and have been in our bedroom in like a few seconds. But thank god he wasn't in a violent mood that night or things could've been very, very different. But perhaps even weirder and probably pretty sad too is that when I showed my husband the video, he actually knew the guy. According to my husband, he used to live in the

neighborhood and had lost his home there somehow and ended up on the street. Apparently he still came around the old homestead from time to time, looking at what he used to own, probably remembering a time when he was much happier and much safer. My husband knew his name too and said the guy asked him for a few cigarettes a few times but he doesn't smoke so all he could do was offer him a few dollars and some well wishes. The whole thing just pendulums between creepy and sad for me. Like yeah it's creepy that he was hanging around her house at night but the other thing that really creeps me out is how he used to just be a regular guy My husband said he was a family man

Knew he at least used to have a wife and kids and a model little life at one time That just somehow went downhill Maybe it was the drugs A divorce that just fried his mental health at some point Either way, at one time he was just like me and you, and I suppose the same thing could happen to any of us given the right kinds of circumstances. And I think the very real prospects of a slip in mental health, a slide into drug addiction to ease the pain of heartbreak, that scares me more than any ghost or ghoul. I mean, we have no idea what's around the corner, so I try my best to count my blessings these days and to not take anything for granted because you really don't know when you're going to lose things. You never truly know when it's

your last time hugging a loved one or seeing a friend. You never know when that happiness is just going to slip away from you and never return. So back when I was a kid, growing up in Jacksonville in Florida, I used to do a lot of skateboarding. I sort of fell into it when my buddies started buying decks and getting into skate culture. I mean, it kind of comes as a whole package. All the clothes, the music, the attitude, and then if you're ballsy enough, then you actually get into the sport itself. And you do have to be ballsy because Jesus Christ does it hurt when you bail. Like after a while you kind of learn how to fall properly, how to land in a way that doesn't break anything or roll as you hit the concrete so the shock of the impact doesn't do too much damage. Perhaps the biggest hazard that skating can bring is the random people who just take a

disliking to you because you're doing it. Like to this day, it's still sort of a mystery to me as to why people used to take such objections to what was basically just a bunch of kids having fun in various parking lots and playgrounds. But still, it was a thing, a major thing, and more than once it caused us a lot of trouble. But without a shadow of a doubt, the worst time was an encounter with someone I can only describe as the archetypical Florida man. I mean, he looked like Dog the Bounty Hunter's mentally ill cousin, only instead of dressing like a cool lawman, he wore flip-flops, an American flag wife beater, and a pair of tiny denim shorts that would have put Daisy Duke to shame. We were skating in an empty section of a strip mall parking lot one Saturday afternoon,

just doing our usual thing of trying to master our ollies and attempt the old kickflip. The entire parking lot was mostly empty, and anyone who drove into it tended to park well away from us, just out of courtesy I suppose. But Dog's cousin drives his truck all the way down the empty lot just to park up right next to us, right in the way of where we were trying to skate. We can immediately sense the passive aggressive nature of this and it puts on a damper on the whole mood. One moment we're all nailing our ollies, the next we're just stood there in line, decks in hand, watching this guy back his truck into a parking space. The guy then gets out, stares us down and says something like, you know you kids can't do that here. We argue back a little, the guy curses us out, then walks

off to pick something up from one of the stores at the strip mall. There's a little more in the way of dirty looks and cursing when he walks back to his truck, but after he drives off, we're back to enjoying ourselves. Then like half an hour later, we see the same truck pulling into the parking lot again, only this time, we can really sense a confrontation coming. The dude doesn't bother pulling into a space this time though. Dog's cousin jumps out after stopping his truck like directly in front of us. He's cursing us out even harsher than last time, telling us he's about to teach us a lesson in respect and all this other boomer stuff. Then he walks to the back seat of his truck, pulls them open,

and we start getting ready to run thinking he's about to pull out some kind of weapon or something, which he kinda did, only it most definitely wasn't the kind of weapon we were expecting. Because out of the back seat of his car, he pulls out a freaking gator. Yup, a North American alligator He's walking towards us with this thing in his arms Like it wasn't huge but it was a gator I don't care how big it was Anything larger than a baby scares the life out of me And then he's like putting his hand on the muzzle

That was sealing that thing's mouth shut Like he's ready to whip it off and just hurl the gator right at us. We obviously didn't stick around to find out, but only in Florida can a guy just drive around with a gator in the backseat of his truck. And only in Florida. One evening, me and my mom were just sitting around watching TV when we heard some shouting coming from the street outside. At first, my mom just shakes her head and makes some comment about the neighbors being noisy again and we just carry on watching our show. But as the shouting gets louder and we start to hear this

revving engine sound, she turns down the TV a little and we start to listen in to what it was. It sounded like shouting was coming from the right outside of her house by that point and so I got up to take a peek around the TV room curtains to see what it was. In the street outside is a kid in his underwear who's just facing down a truck. He's shouting at the driver who's shouting back and from what I could make out, the argument is over the truck driver wanting the kid to do something and the kid refusing. I could tell from the way the kid was addressing the driver that it was some kind of family argument, a gut feeling that was confirmed when the kid eventually called the driver dad at one point. The argument peaks in intensity at one point, and the two people are just screaming at each other with the driver kind of leaning out of

the driver's side window, when all of a sudden the driver leans in, revs the truck engine, and legit tries to run the kid over in the middle of the street. Luckily, the kid reacted just in time, dodging the truck and running into one of our neighbor's front yards as it sped past him. My mom, who was also watching by that point, gasped like oh my god and we watch as the truck does a U-turn in the street, preparing to make another pass on the kid. But the kid isn't about to let that happen and runs across some yards in the direction of our house, banging on the front door and screaming for help. We just reacted, running to the front door and letting the kid inside as the truck screamed past again, the driver shouting out the window as it came to a stop. We slam the door closed and my mom runs to call the cops as I try to comfort the kid, even though he's basically in his underwear and I'm in no mood

to be hugging a half-naked teenager no matter how panicked he is. The kid's dad starts banging on her front door now, shouting about how he knew his son was in there and for him to come out so he could face the music or whatever. Trying to ignore all the commotion, I remember asking what had happened to cause such an intense family argument and you will seriously not believe what the kid said next. He tells me straight up that basically no matter how much his dad wants him to, he will not take a bath. He keeps ranting about how he's a grown up and he can do what he wants and he won't just do what people tell him to do. How he's perfectly capable of looking after himself and he doesn't need anyone to keep tabs on his personal hygiene. It's only then that I start to notice just how bad this

kid smells. How his breath smelled so bad and his skin was all greasy looking. He obviously hadn't bathed in quite a while and although there's obviously no excuse for trying to run someone over for something like that, I started to understand with his dad having gotten so frustrated. Now this whole time the dad is banging on the door, saying he's not going to leave until his son comes out, but my mom had come back to tell us that the cops were on the way and that everything was going to be okay. But as she's talking to the kid, she had pretty much the same reaction as me. And there's a moment where she stops talking for a second and her nostrils flare from where she started to get an idea of how bad the kid smelled too.

And again, with the same air of indignation, the kid tells my mom that no one's going to be the one to tell him to take a bath, how he's a grown man, obviously he was not, and how he can make his own decisions. My mom's face when he was telling her this was just a picture, like mine. She could literally not believe what she was hearing, nor could she believe the kind of situation we had gotten ourselves into. Eventually the cops showed up and tried to talk to the dad as he was screaming profanities at our front door. We watched from the window as he gets into a seriously heated argument with them to the point that they had to wrestle him to the ground before they detained him. This gave us an opportunity to talk to the cops ourselves and as crazy as the whole situation was, we had to tell them the truth of the matter that the dad had actually tried to run his kid over which was basically

attempted murder. Naturally the cops agreed and arrested the guy, but not before asking him if he had in fact tried to run his own kid over. The guy's all like, he's my son, my son, I'll raise him how I want and if he doesn't do what I tell him I'm gonna whip him. Basically confirming that he had tried to hit him with his truck. He was slurring his words the whole time and it hit me at one point that this guy was pretty drunk from the way he was shouting and slurring at the cops, definitely not a wise move on his part.

That was all the cops needed apparently so they put him in the back of the patrol car and took him to jail. That was most definitely one of the craziest things that's ever happened to me. I suppose it doesn't help the whole Florida man thing that a guy might try to run over his kid for not having taken a bath. I suppose given the behavior of his kid, that this might be more like a Florida men's story or like a Florida family story, but I promise, not everyone here is totally crazy no matter how much the media makes out that we're all just nuts. But saying that, since I moved out of state for college, it's definitely something that I've noticed about living further up in the east coast. Sure, there's crazy people everywhere,

but the concentration of crazies in Florida is definitely higher than most other places. I'm just glad the situation that night got resolved, and as weird as it was, the outcome was considerably more preferable to just watching a half-naked kid getting murdered by his own father. I'd much rather just smell some body odor than watch someone die, that's for certain. The history of humans keeping animals as pets is a rich and storied tale, with some archaeologists suggesting that human ownership of dogs as pets may date back to at least 12,000 years ago. There is physical evidence of the ancient Romans openly grieving for their cherished canine companions, with inscriptions in marble

tombstones commemorating the life and death of a furry friend. Those who rode warhorses into battle also developed a deep bond with their mouths, often becoming as famous as their owners, such as Alexander the Great's beloved Bucephalus. The ancient Egyptians were known to keep even more exotic animals such as lions or baboons as pets, and as time progressed, mankind's collection of animal companions only grew larger, stranger, and indisputably more deadly, culminating in one Florida man who would live to regret his choice of animal acquaintance in a big, big way. For 75-year-old Marvin Hayosh, the animal he chose

to keep on his property just outside of Gainesville, Florida, was the cassowary. Cassowaries are large, omnivorous, flightless birds that are native to the tropical forests of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and northeastern Australia. They have an almost prehistoric appearance. Their bright blue faces are topped with a horn-like ridge and their bodies are covered with dark feathers. At full sprint, they are capable of reaching speeds of up to 30 miles per hour and can use their powerful legs to jump up to 5 feet in the air. Adult females have been known to reach over 6.5 feet in height, weighing over 130 pounds which makes them some fearsome feathered foes when angered. But perhaps the most terrifying aspect of the cassowary's physiology are their razor-sharp, five-inch claws that adorn their three-toed feet, eerily similar to that of the long-ext extinct velociraptor. The cassowary will throw kicks that bring those

slashing claws across the face and throats of those that stray into their territory. These claws can inflict devastating, even fatal wounds, giving rise to its nickname of the world's most dangerous bird. So as insane as it may seem, it was this kind of animal that Marvin Hayosh adopted to keep as a pet. Marvin didn't just keep the cassowaries as pets though, he also raised them and bred them, auctioning off the exotic birds as a way to make a living. So his property just outside of Gainesville was equipped with several large enclosures, mostly constructed right next to one another so that his beloved birds wouldn't get too lonely.

Then on April the 12th, 2019, Marvin was undertaking one of the riskiest activities in his entire calendar. It was breeding season, and during that time of year, Marvin would have to make regular checks of his cassowaries' eggs, ensuring they were at the right temperature, of the right size and shape. But naturally his cassowaries were extremely protective of their eggs and would throw a fit every time Marvin ventured near them, attempting to rip him to shreds with their daggered claws through the bars of their cages. All was going well with the egg checks, until while moving between a narrow passageway between two enclosures, Marvin began to lose his footing. His foot dragged against fencing of one of the cages,

causing him to crash into the dirt, winding him in the process. Marvin lay there for a moment catching his breath, but before he could bring himself to his feet, he felt an intense pain on the back of his neck. One of the cassowaries, boiling with rage that the man had just molested their beloved eggs, had rushed to the edge of the cage, stuck its leg through one of the narrow gaps in the fencing, and was using its razor-sharp claw to slash at Marvin's head, neck, and shoulder. Marvin tried to use his hand to cover himself, but the cassowary slashed them

so deep that it exposed the bones in his fingers. He tried to bring himself to his feet, but the sheer force of the bird's blows sent him crashing down into the dirt again, and when he tried to crawl away down the long, narrow passageway, the cassowary simply followed him, sticking its legs through the gaps in the fencing as it continued its vicious, visceral attack. All Marvin could do was scream and scream and scream. A couple of ranch employees eventually heard his cries for help, but by the time they were able to scare the cassowary off of their employer and contact emergency services, the damage was already done. Marvin had more than a dozen lacerations across his face, neck, back, abdomen, thighs, legs, and right arm, including catastrophic damage to his brachial artery, the major blood vessel of the upper arm.

Emergency workers rushed to try and retrieve his bleeding, dying body, but were unable to do so for quite some time as the cassowary that had attacked Marvin also tried to injure them too. In the end, Marvin was transported to a nearby hospital, but died of blood loss after being admitted. Paramedics found him unresponsive and barely breathing when they began treating him a mere 14 minutes after the attack was thought to have commenced. Twice over the next 28 minutes, as paramedics applied chest compressions, Marvin's pulse didn't register, and eventually it gave out altogether. Bill Grotchen, a representative of the medical examiner's office who headed up the investigation into Marvin's death, told news outlets that he had died from the trauma inflicted in the attack, calling it an unusual situation. I've been doing this for 18 years and I've never had a thing like

this. I've had them killed by alligators and snakes but never by a bird like that. I know ostriches and emus have their moments but cassowaries are an extremely, extremely dangerous bird. You don't want to fool around with them. They have no sense of humor. The female cassowary, which is the larger of the two birds, saw he was messing with the eggs and you know how that goes. It was like a mama bear protecting her young. But perhaps one of the most confusing things regarding the whole attack is the fact that the cassowary that killed Marvin was not put down, either during or after the incident. In fact, the very same bird was to be auctioned off as normal in order to pay for Marvin's funeral costs. The owner of Gulf Coast Livestock Auction

in Madison, Florida said the auction of the cassowary in question would be open to the public, but on Facebook they insisted that the news media would be excluded from the event and risk the destruction of their equipment if they attempted to document the proceedings. Jamie Wilson, the group's office manager, said that the Hayosh's family had asked them not to release any information to the news media. Ms. Wilson said the group organized the auction of the bird, along with hundreds of other animals kept on the ranch because Mr. Hayosh wanted them to be sold after his death. Elsewhere on the group's Facebook page, condolences poured in from the Hayosh family.

A video posted there showed a man identified as Mr. Hayosh riding a camel in a gravel parking lot under a cloud sky in February of 2018, something one might typically expect of a Florida man. He was a great friend, the video's caption read. Even after the deadly attack, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission enacted no new rules or restrictions about owning cassowaries. If the animals are being used for commercial breeding, they are considered domestic animals and aren't required to have a permit. Only in the state of Florida, it seems, could a large and deadly bird be

classed as a domestic animal in the same way a cat or dog would be. And it almost comes as no surprise that Florida Man's choice of pet would be something distinctly related to one of the deadliest creatures to have ever walked the earth. a creature that's arguably put Joe Exotic's choice of furry friends to shame. But regardless, what happened to Marvin Hoyosh is a tragedy, and even with regards to the Florida Man meme, should not be taken lightly. May he, and the rest of the Hoyosh family, find some semblance of peace. So I want to start off by saying I still work for this company and I still have anxiety every time I go into work. The company is huge and one of the biggest names in the world. For privacy reasons,

I'm going to call it the Big Cheese or Big C. I also want to mention that I have crippling social anxiety. I credit it to being homeschooled most of my life. This will also make sense later. Well, September of last year, I was fresh out of high school and looking for work. I needed this job immediately because I was living with my significant other and we were barely getting by. My father, my grandfather, they both either work or work for this company for a long period of time and it's something that garnered a lot of respect to my family. So of course I was thrilled when I got my first interview. It went great and I was all set to start training which involved a

few classes and on the job training. The classes were awkward to say the least but nonetheless informative. After the classes we had our first task, join a group of fellow trainees and tour the work environment. This is when I first met creepy coworker. He was in the very back of my group, seemed a little shy and didn't really talk to the rest of the group unless he was trying to make an awkward joke to join in. At first, I kind of just felt bad for him. He seemed harmless, but definitely awkward and out of the loop. Knowing as much as I did going into the company, I made the effort to inform him and keep him updated with what the trainers were asking of us. He just seemed so lost and confused. I thought I was doing a good

thing by helping him out, even my significant other thought so at the time. The training went by without any hiccups and soon we were given the location of where we'd start out. Ironically enough the only person I had gotten to know, creepy coworker, had the same area I did. Realizing that we'd start out together and both didn't know anyone we decided to exchange phone numbers. This was so that we'd start out together and both didn't know anyone, we decided to exchange phone numbers. This was so that we could both meet up the next week, starting day, so we wouldn't get lost. I thought nothing of this when he asked for my number and just assumed it was more because he was nervous and didn't know anyone besides me. And boy did I live to regret that.

The first day of training we met up at basically a flagpole so that we could wait for our on-the-job trainer, Christy. When he got off the employee shuttle, he started texting me asking where I was. I was in the smoking section a little ways away, killing my fears with a cigarette. I texted back telling him where I was and he asked if he could join me. I didn't like how nervous I felt so I wasn't very comfortable with anyone joining me during this time of reprieve but I saw him coming over anyways so I scooted over to make room on the bench. This didn't matter because apparently he was going to sit as close as possible to me anyways. I hate touch or people being in my personal bubble. Being a victim of either trauma, touch was something only people very close to me had permission to do.

Creepy coworker then proceeded to ask me if he could bum a cigarette, and I'm not good at saying no, so I gave him one. After he lit up, he handed me my lighter, that I didn't even notice that he took from the top of my bag, back to me. Again, I kind of just ignored the unwarranted invasion of my space. We talked since we had about 30 minutes to kill. We talked about the normal stuff like, how do you feel about the company, where do you want to end up in it. I noticed he was wearing tattoo covering sleeves, and so I asked him about his tattoos.

He pulled down the sleeves and started going over almost each and every one. All something to do with either a love interest or something geeky. I listened out of mild curiosity but quickly got uncomfortable when he started pulling out his phone to show me pictures of ones he drew. I was uncomfortable because he kept showing me pictures of himself as well, mostly photos of him shirtless and I didn't really find that appropriate. He mentioned that he was a marine and that he had gained too much weight after his last tour. I apologized out of sympathy and suggested that it was nothing to be ashamed of. Unfortunately, after that, he kept smiling at me

in a way that I deemed to be admiration. I had seen this look from my fiancé, so I knew somewhere I had effed up. I quickly turned the conversation to more appropriate stuff like music taste. He seemed interested in what music I liked a little too much and decided he should make me a playlist. I said it really wasn't necessary, but he insisted. Later into that very day during training he kept purposely doing kind things like taking heavy boxes from my hands or taking the odd jobs he deemed too grueling for a lady. I was a little annoyed but mostly just glad most of the jobs meant that he'd have to go to a different area and give me some space. He'd always find a way

back to appear beside me and scare me. I hate being scared and he laughed it off every time. I was more than uncomfortable at this point and a nervousness had settled in the pit of my stomach. At the end of the night after we'd been sent to go home and come back the next day, he decided to walk me out. We'd walk back through the maze my workplace actually is all the way to the employee costume center and lockers. It was there we had gotten our work costumes and stored our regular clothes in lockers. Well, I was having trouble remembering the combination and I couldn't find the little slip of paper that told me it. Creepy coworker came up and smirked at me,

seemingly waiting for me to finish up. I thought he had left by this point so I wasn't expecting him to show up. After a few tries he reached over and put the combination of my lock in for me. This was a serious red flag for me. He had already memorized my combination and now I felt as though my privacy was completely gone. Again, I'm awkward and unsure of what to do in any situation like this so I thanked him but suggested that he let me figure it out next time. I was hoping he would so that he would forget my combination and remember this for later. After changing back into my regular clothes in the girls locker room I came out and he was still

waiting for me. I asked him why he had waited when he could have just gotten home sooner to which he replies because I'm a gentleman and a lady should be walked to her car so she can be kept safe. I told him my significant other was waiting to pick me up. He asked where and I told him down the street like an idiot. I still don't know why I complied with this creep as much as I did but I had never been in a situation like this. He told me that was too far for me to walk and that it wasn't safe so he offered to drive me over to my significant other's car. Due to how tired I was and how much I ached from the day I just didn't have the strength to argue. I mean he was creepy but

nice. I chalked up the creepiness to him just being awkward. So without anything else weird happening, he took me to my significant other whom I had been texting the entire time just to let him know where I was and what was going on. I had a deep gut feeling that I should text him everything I knew about the guy, so I did. When we pulled up, I immediately got out of the car. My boyfriend sat there leaning against the car with his arms crossed. He wasn't very happy about him giving me a ride but nonetheless thanked the creepy co-worker for getting me over to him safely. The co-worker nodded, seeming to smirk at my boyfriend the whole time. This is when my

boyfriend first got a bad feeling about the guy. So we got home and my boyfriend the whole time. This is when my boyfriend first got a bad feeling about the guy. So we got home and my boyfriend warned me about the guy, telling me he wasn't getting a good vibe from the creepy coworker. It was not even three minutes after that I got a text from the coworker. He started sending me songs and memes, telling me things like, I really feel like you get me. Now I was deeply concerned. What did I get myself into? Why did I have to be so nice to people? The following day at work I was on the last day of training and I had a massive panic attack. I have a chronic illness and the situation ended with none of my managers listening to me when I told them that the pain doesn't last and comes and goes.

They proceeded to rush me to the emergency room. A stretcher carried me through work while I was trying to hide my face. The customers were quick to take out their phones and film the whole thing. It was one of the worst experiences of my life, but what happens next is worse. I received about 20 texts from a creepy co-worker asking me how I was. At this point I was done, I just didn't respond. After a few random memes he started texting me that he was drunk and thinking about not going home to his wife. This was the first time he'd ever mentioned to me he even had a wife. I was dumbfounded. Why was he so concerned about me when he had someone he obviously loved enough to marry? I didn't respond. I went to bed. In the morning, I woke up to my boyfriend looking at my phone in anger. My heart sank and I could only imagine what creepy coworker had sent now.

My boyfriend showed me the only text I had gotten since the night before. It was from my wife texting me from his phone. She wrote me a message explaining that creepy co-worker had a problem getting attached to women. She warned me that I should stay away from him and then told me her name. My name. It was after that that she had explained my name was a thing for him. All of his exes had the same name. Now at this point, my boyfriend was telling me not to go back to this job, that it wasn't worth it. But that's not me. I wasn't going to let one creep ruin this opportunity for me. This job meant the world to me and I never wanted to let it go.

So I told him this continues, that I'd go to HR. But in all honesty I didn't really want to go to HR. I was the new girl. I didn't want the first month on the job to be me fighting a harassment case. Biting my nails the whole way I went to work. Suddenly creepy coworker wasn't hovering anymore. I thought this might have been him being embarrassed. I was pretty convinced I wasn't going to have a problem after that. Big mistake. On my lunch break he made sure to go on his lunch early and come find me. His normally enthusiastic attitude was gone, replaced by what felt like anger. I was scared. He came up to me and let me know that his wife was full of it and just angry

because he was divorcing her. At this point, I didn't want anything to do with him so I just kept quiet, hoping that he'd take the hint. Nope. He told me he had a gift for me and that he'd give it to me after the shift, quickly walking away before I could respond. After my shift, I go outside the work area to the lockers. I had waited an extra hour and a half, even taking a closing position from a co-worker just so he'd go home before me. Well my lock wasn't locked all the way and I was now freaked out. I opened the locker and grabbed my bag and go but noticed it. A rolled up piece of drawing paper. I know what kind it was because I myself am an artist. Unrolling it, it was a naked girl. A naked girl that resembled my video game character on World of Warcraft. I had briefly mentioned my WoW addiction to my group on

the first group training day. I didn't even realize he had heard any of that, much less memorized the information. Suddenly he walks up, even though he should be long gone by then, and confronts me. He asks me if I like it and because he seemed angry I said yes. I suggested he didn't do it anymore as my boyfriend wouldn't like this kind of gift at all. He rolled his eyes and playfully giggled at me like I was joking with him. I wasn't.

Not only did he follow me the whole way out of the work grounds, he got in the employee shuttle that I got onto to have witnesses. He sat right next to me, leaning on me. I felt like a deer in headlights, mentally begging someone to suggest that he shouldn't be that close to me. No one paid any attention. Instead, I spent the whole drive trying to get this man to pull his arm off of my shoulders. I felt nauseated and my head was spinning. After we got off, I practically dashed off the bus and

ran to my boyfriend who parked the car at the entrance to the employee parking zone. I got in the car and told him to go. He took off and I started crying. I told my boyfriend and he was livid. He wanted to turn around and punch creepy coworker but I talked him out of it through my tears. I promised that I'd talk to my managers after that. I kept looking for the right time to pull a manager aside but never got a chance the next night I went in. Now creepy coworker's attitude did another 180 and he was being extremely, weirdly playful. Then he crossed the final line. He grabbed my butt where customers could easily see him. My co-workers kind of laughed and thought it was some sort of game. Because this time I was angry and pushed to my limits. I went after him.

I legitimately punched him in the butt and shouted in his face, how do you like that, huh? Seething, he seemed unfazed by my anger. Instead, he laughed it off and winked at me. I went down into the basement for the employee bathroom and quickly threw up the contents of my stomach. I cried in the stall, praying to God that this would stop. I quickly made an excuse, used my chronic illness illness and went home. So fast forward a few weeks, he had completely swapped out his shift so he wouldn't work with me. I felt like I had won the battle. I sent a message and he realized he'd crossed boundaries. Until the night before Christmas Eve. I had a terrible feeling as my boyfriend was driving

me to work that night. I mean, I felt gross. I got to work and there he was, flirting with other girls, suddenly having this big ego I had never seen him display before. Like I said, when I met him, he was shy and awkward. It's like his personality flipped every time I had to see him. I never knew which side of CC that I was going to get. That night he actually stomped off as all of the other co-workers including myself closed the joint. We were scrubbing like normal and he didn't seem all together so he clocked out early and I relaxed. I figured that he had gotten into trouble since one of our four managers seemed to be upset that

he'd clocked out without permission. I was there extra late. The evening festivities were done with for the night and my zone was pretty much closed off from customers. So I walked through the massive property that is my work to get to the street. I had started taking new ways to meet my boyfriend who picked me up just so I couldn't be followed. This time I was going to walk straight out of the grounds and onto the street where the bus stops were and my boyfriend would be waiting at the curb. I was about halfway through my approximately 12 minute walk and I was in a dark area. Out of nowhere, as I'm sure you've already guessed, creepy co-worker shows up. He starts yelling my name

and following me from behind. I pretend to not notice and walk faster. He yells my name again and seems angrier. So, I sprint for it. I sprint all the way across the shuttle zone and end up crashing into someone's chest. And thank god it was actually my boyfriend who had a really bad feeling and wanted to be as close to my work exit as possible. I looked back and creepy co-worker got on a shuttle but was staring from the window, smiling like a Cheshire cat the whole time. Never in my life had I been so terrified. After that, the next night was Christmas Eve and I was supposed to work,

but I just knew if I went in, something bad was going to happen to me. So, crying the whole time because I knew I had earned a bunch of points for calling out to avoid him. I cried asking the lady on the phone if I was going to get fired and she said she honestly couldn't say. I respected that but knew I wasn't done. I wasn't going to let this effing creep make me lose my job that I had worked so hard to get, even changing my appearance to fit their strict standards? No. So I wrote to the only person I could think of, my trainer Christy. She was a lead and she was the kindest girl you'd ever met. Heart of gold, you just knew being her friend meant that you'd have a trusted confidant for life.

I told her everything. I sent her the screenshots of the text sent to me. I finally told someone with an ounce of leadership that I was scared to go to work. Immediately she responded and asked if she could tell the managers and even though I was incredibly nervous I told her yes. The next day I was pulled in and God bless my ex-manager Christopher because he was shocked at everything that had happened to me and quickly helped me write a report for HR. He led me through the steps and even changed the schedule so I wouldn't work with creepy coworker unless he specifically traded shifts.

Two months go by. I am well acquainted with the responsibilities for my work at this point and I'm comfortable but of course there's no stopping a stalker. He had traded his shift and was working the night shift with me. He was angry every time he looked at me and I avoided him at all costs. Then, around halfway through my shift, I'm down in the basement coming back from the restroom. I'm walking up the steps that lead back to my work area and I then feel someone behind me. Before I could think a clear thought I was pushed against the wall, hand beside

my head. He leans in and says, you should smile more. Then he chuckles and walks away. I feel pretty hysterical at this point and run to the closest lead, crying and trying to explain what happened. It was at this point that my manager Christopher was angry that HR was taking so long to investigate my case, that he went to them and sped things up. Well after four months of an interview process with HR, finally the case was resolved and not only was he let go, but I was doing really well in my job, finally. Nothing to worry me into not paying attention to my duties. Creepy coworker has left me alone ever since, but sometimes I get random requests from guys with no pictures and always similar names, always close to his name. Creepy coworker has left me alone ever since, but sometimes I get random friend requests from guys with no pictures

and always similar names, just after the lockdown ended. I was, and am still, 19 at that time. After the lockdown ended, I went to my grandparents to spend a few weeks. I got tested before and no problems there. My grandparents live in a small city in the north of France and they have a dog who's quite a big dog. When I was really young I lived in my grandparents for a year and at that time the dog was only a puppy. Her name is Chippy in French which kind of means little devil in English but in an affectionate way. Considering when I was living there I played with her a lot, we were both really

close and that will be important for later. Two of my hobbies are having long walks and running. Thus every evening I was going out for a long walk with the dog. There's a track that follows a path through the forest, then there's a small hill, and on top of that, a big place with lots of fields there. I run there a lot, so I know the place. The air is fresh, and the view is quite beautiful. And I was going there with the dog every day. I was also helping my grandparents to have her dog do lots of exercise, so that was good. The first time we went there, nothing special happened. We just enjoyed our walk. It was about 7 to 6 kilometers, so basically an hour long walk. The next day, when we arrived on the top of the hill in the field, it was probably around 10pm,

but there was still some light because it's summer. There was three other persons walking in the fields they were younger than me probably about 15 to 16 i also noticed that they were smoking so my guess was that they used to come here so they couldn't be seen by their parents we went past them i greeted them and they greeted back once again nothing special for a whole week i did this walk around the same time around 10 p.m and passed by those three guys with nothing special happening and it was perfectly fine to me this way. The second week, as usual, I went for the walk with the dog Chippy and arrived at the fields. There was only one of the three boys. He wasn't smoking this time though.

When he saw me I was at the entrance of the field just after the little hill climb, so the entrance of the forest was just behind me. He did a sign with his hand to catch my attention and asked if I had a lighter which I actually had in my pocket. I told him yeah sure so he walked to me, the hand in the pocket of his hoodie. When he came near for some reason I felt a shiver. It's crazy how sometimes your instincts know there's a problem but you don't listen to it because nothing looks weird to you superficially. I handed over the lighter when he passed by. At that moment my dog was staring at him. Then everything happened really fast. He did a really fast movement with his hand,

coming from the hoodie and I only saw something shining. I just had a reflex of throwing myself back, so hard that I fell down, and I just realized it was a knife that he was holding, and he just tried to stab me. What saved me is my dog, god bless her. When she saw the guy trying to stab me, she jumped on him and he fell down. As I said before, it's a really big dog. I immediately got up on my feet and heard something in my back. From the entrance of the forest, I saw two guys wearing animal masks running towards me and they were probably his two friends. In this moment, your brain acts for yourself. You don't think at all and in this case, the answer he found was really

simple. The other guy was still on the ground. I just watched my dog and told her to run. I started running and she followed me but I heard the worst possible thing from the guy who got up as well. Catch him. Don't let him go. At this moment I was totally terrified. I was just running and running. I heard them running behind me. I was only thinking how long will they follow me? Who are these people? This was the first time I was really happy to be a runner. I was clearly better than those guys and that completely saved me because they chase for something that felt like an eternity to me.

Fortunately, at the end of the field, there's another entrance to the forest and this time its descent was to the road at the end of the field there's another entrance to the forest and this time its descent was to the road at the end. I heard the steps of the three guys vanishing as I arrived at the end of the forest, though I didn't stop running until I arrived at my grandparents' house and locked myself in. I caught a big breath and gave my dog a huge hug. I saw in her eyes that she totally understood what happened and I had never been so happy to have her in my life. After that, I told everything to my grandparents and we called the police but they were unable to find anyone there. I don't know what those guys wanted but the animal mass

really made me think about some kind of sataness. I really don't know anyway. I still go on long walks with my hero dog Chippy, but now I go earlier and to places with much more people. To be continued... 18 or 19 when it finally went to court. Picture a Norman Rockwell-esque suburban family. Parents, three kids, a yard and a dog, in blink and you'll miss it USA. One random day a neighbor man had a mild dispute with his neighbor. As a totally warranted response, neighbor man takes every hose he has and floods their yard. Solid decisions led to solid consequences so naturally he was fined for water waste. My parents run the water in small town USA and because neighbor man lived a block from us he decided to drive over to the water district shouting that he is an acquaintance of my parent. Second solid decision of many to come from Neighbor Man. Absolutely no one takes kindly to name dropper

folks so tuck that gem away under life facts. My parent comes in and tells him even if his kids did this they would have the same repercussions. Gracefully glossing over the fact that other than maybe driving by one another none of us actually had ever interacted with Neighbor Man. Neighbor Man repeats the name of the man working the front desk as well as my parents' name and claims it's now personal and storms out. My family members and I begin to see Neighbor Man at random places, constantly the DMV, the grocery store, our respective jobs. Apparently when you're cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs and your parents pay for your house, you have all kinds of time to stalk. It went from random sightings while out and about

to phone calls, the cliche 90s type of call, breathing, and hangups, and I can see you variety. At this point, Neighbor Man was more of an annoyance than scary. But as I have stated, when you underestimate crazy, you lose every time. Neighbor Man began parking across from our house, staying from 6pm to 4am, literally just sitting in his car, blasting music, staring at the house. Fool must have had the determination and bladder of a racehorse because who in the world just sits there for ten-ish hours? His music was trash too. Maybe he was a masochist and into self-harm, seeing how long he could suffer through terrible music and a full bladder.

I doubt anyone with a semi-rational concept of social interaction could fathom why. This went on from three to four times a week to a nightly occurrence. Imagine being a 16 year old female that doesn't even feel comfortable to changing her room because of the prospect he might see through the blind somehow, trying to sleep knowing he's out there. We were prisoners in our own home. He began to get bolder. Neighbor man drove his car speeding up and down onto the sidewalk at my sibling and her partner while they were sitting on the sidewalk out front coming home from a date. They both had to physically jump out of the way to avoid being hit. He made lewd gestures at me when I brought my dog out for a walk and was waiting for my sibling to come out and join us on the walk.

It was so bad I ended up crying and going inside. This had been going on for a year at this point. The cops always said the same thing. There's nothing we can do unless there is a threat made against you or someone is harmed. My parent confronted, meaning tired of this and asking him what he thinks he is doing, neighbor man in the street after my incident to which neighbor man called the cops and they came asking us why we were harassing and threatening neighbor man. I will never understand why the system waits until you are a victim rather than prevent someone from being victimized. Almost two years in and it's Christmas time.

My parent had a brain aneurysm fortunately they made it through without any lingering effects which is extremely rare i convinced my other parents who had been living at the hospital with their sick partner to come home and shower and eat about 9 p.m we get a knock at the door a random man in ratty clothes holding a Christmas present says he is there to deliver to our family name. We ask who sent him and he says he can't say. We ask who he works for and he shoves the gifts at my parent and leaves. We are obviously uncomfortable to open it. Parent decides they need to know what it is and opens the present. Inside is a 17 page document of the

grounds on why neighbor man is suing my parent that was currently in the hospital. Even I could tell it was fake with the grammatical errors and typos. Neighbor man took the time to sit and type this up himself thinking it would scare us. The document and fake details he put in did not. The fact that this 40-something year old man was so fixated on our family that he sat and typed a 17-page fake document did scare us. Things progress and neighbor man began pacing in front of his car and pretending to have phone calls where he talked about pushing my parents down the stairs or knowing where we kids went to school and worked and how easy it would be to access us at any time. At the time I worked a closing shift

that let me off at about 1am. He would be parked next to my car and follow me home. One time I even tried to take random roads and he still stayed right behind me, pulling up to the house with neighbor man parked across the street, think the neighborhood street with maybe 5 feet between a car parked on one side and one on the other, and having to get out and run to the door was an absolute nightmare. We were all exhausted from not only the aneurysm scare but also living and looking over our shoulders. My parents friend told her friend who is a district attorney about the situation. She called and came over and took our case on pro bono. Testifying was a wild ride.

We had to put in official statements prior to being called to the stand. We were not allowed to be in the room when a family member was testifying, nor were we allowed to talk in the halls as we waited for our turn. Imagine reliving two plus years traumatic experiences, being cross-examined where you are made out to be a liar, then not able to have your family comfort or support you afterwards was not ideal. There was enough to put him away for a year and a half, as well as grant a felony restraining order.

We moved while he was still incarcerated. My sister passed while he was in prison and he immediately tried to sue her estate. She was 21 at her death when he was released. He claimed that her testimony from him running his car at her and her partner was false and the only reason he was locked up, not the case as there were harassment and stalking charges, and that the money people donated to a GoFundMe for her accident, that he was entitled to that. There's so many more details, but this was already long enough. So, neighbor man, let's never meet again. You've made us prisoners in our home for years, clearly are still the same, and have not learned a thing from the time you're locked up. You are truly insane. To be continued... I was driving from my hometown in the Chicago suburbs to the University of Missouri, which is about a six hour drive.

I made the drive about every four to six weeks to see my family and my long distance boyfriend. There are two main ways to take to the town my university is in. Stay on the interstate system through central Illinois and St. Louis or branch out to back roads after Springfield, Illinois until picking the interstate back up about 30 minutes from my college. I usually took the back roads simply because it kept me awake with the constant speed limit changes and occasional towns but this particular time I took the interstate system because there was a high potential for winter weather. I was minding my own business, listening to one true crime podcast episode after another when, about an hour from my exit, traffic came to a standstill. Great, I thought. It was

already way beyond dark at this point. It was also a Sunday night and I just wanted to get home and catch a decent night's sleep before my Monday classes. After a while, emergency vehicles flew past this traffic on the shoulder, indicating that there must have been an accident up ahead. After what felt like forever, traffic slowly started crawling again and eventually started moving a little as we all passed the accident. This is when it started. I will admit I like to drive fast on the interstate, especially on this particular drive, what college kid doesn't. I was in the right lane with a decent amount of space between me and the car in front of me. That is when I noticed someone right on my bumper.

Seriously? I muttered aloud. Traffic was no longer super heavy and the person could easily pass me in the left lane. Suddenly the car began flashing their brights at me and honking. I was extremely confused. I turned off my podcast and kept a close eye on my rear view. The person continued to flash their brights, half blinding me in the darkness through the mirrors. God, I said, flooring it into the left lane. I maneuvered in and out of a few cars attempting to get away from whatever issue this person had, except they followed my every move. Being a 21 year old female, I began to get a sick feeling in my stomach.

I had listened to enough true crime and general horror stories to be just the right amount of paranoid. I had read on social media recently about girls from my school encountering human traffickers in my town and along the interstate that runs through it. One of the town's papers had even ran a series of stories regarding multiple human trafficking rings that use this interstate to traffic victims because it basically runs the length of the entire country. I shook the disturbing thought out of my head and continued doing about 85 miles per hour in the right lane unless I had to go around someone. The car continued following me, flashing its lights and barely letting themselves ever get more than a few cars behind me or beside me.

I finally took the exit to my university. I looked back and the car had followed. It seemed as though the person was trying to get me to pull over. Is there something wrong with my car that I can't see? I wondered silently. Even if there was, there was no way I was pulling over on the side of an interstate in the middle of a dark rainy night. This is exactly how urban legends or teenage slasher movies start. At this point, I had no idea what to do. Looking back, I really should have driven straight to the local police station, but I was too flustered and scared to think straight. I tried to think back on the last hour or so of my drive. Did I cut anyone off? I didn't think so. I didn't think I had done anything to make any drivers around me this

angry. I'm a relatively good driver and tend to mind my own business on the road, not engaging in road rage or anything stupid like that. I stupidly began driving to my apartment. The car continued to follow, still flashing their lights every so often but no longer honking. They continued to stay glued to my bumper, and I began to panic. What if they follow me all the way to my home? What should I do? Call the police and send them on a wild goose chase to look for me in this car as I'm driving around town? As I approached another small exit off a local highway onto a smaller street that ran past campus and towards the

apartment, I had no idea. As I got closer to the exit, I did not get into the far right lane to turn off. At the very last second, I jerked the wheel and careened across the gravel shoulder so close to the grass that I barely missed driving off the road. As I gunded down the exit ramp, I glanced up at the overpass. The car had screeched to a halt and was honking its horn maniacally. I cried the rest of the way home, calling my boyfriend and explaining what had just happened. I never got a good enough look at the car to get a license plate number or really even a good description of the vehicle, so I never reported the incident to the police. To this

day I have no idea what exactly it was that happened that night. My best guess is that whoever this person was, they saw me when we were all stopped on the interstate waiting for the emergency vehicles to clear the scene. It's very clear from the stickers I have on my car, one of my university's name and one that said dog mom that I was a likely college aged female. All this person had to do was end up next to me, see that I was a female driving alone on the interstate in the middle of the night, and have just the wrong intentions. To be continued... We're both around 14 years old when this happened. We live in the rural area so we both had a lot of land. Me and Sally decided to go camping on her land. We bought cheap hammocks and went through the bushland. The days prior we spent clearing some of the razor glass with a cane knife to make a path.

We probably should have worn long pants because we ended up with little cuts all over our legs and some of our arms. We set up our hammocks and brought quite a few blankets because it does get pretty cold at night even though you're sweating through the day. We were still on her property and hadn't gone to her neighbor's boundary. Her neighbor had just leased the land to new tenants. Me and Sally were sitting on our hammocks talking and laughing and this was around 9pm. We heard something in the bush. We just thought it was a wallaby, there's plenty of wallabies around there.

Then we could see the figure of a man. We were whispering to each other trying to see who it was. At first we thought it was her brother, as he's scared us when we were camping previously. Then as the person got closer we were thinking it could have been her dad. It was dark and the bush looks the same from every angle. We realized the man was coming from the other direction than her house. We didn't dare move and covered our torches under our blankets. The man came up and said hi and introduced himself as Ben. Now Ben was extremely drunk. He staggered around and

reeked of alcohol. He started saying how we had a nice little camp here and said something pretty unsettling. I'll have to come and sunbake naked here on one of these hammocks. Me and Sally gave each other worried looks but didn't say anything. It only got worse from there. I can't remember everything he said because it was a while ago and he was mumbling on for what felt like forever. But some of the things that stuck out were like, I'll have to kill you Wolf Creek style and said, you're nearly legal then when he asked us our age. Ben was probably in his 40s. Me and Sally were texting each other while he was talking and coming up with an escape plan. He also offered us a puff

on the magic dragon and pulled out a glass pipe. We declined. Sally said that we were leaving back to the house to make food. He told us to come back. we left our blankets and most of the stuff there and legged it. We told her dad what happened and we slept inside. The next morning we went back to our campsite to find everything burnt. A circle with probably a 20 meter radius was all burnt. Coming from that circle was a line of burnt grass going towards the neighbor's house. I'm not a firefighter, nor do I do forensics, but it seemed obvious that some kind of fuel was used. Me and Sally were talking and it dawned on us that possibly that Ben may have thought we were in the hammocks due to the pile of blankets. Ben was definitely drunk enough not to be able to tell

the difference. We went and told Sally's dad who then checked it out and then went next door. Ben's roommate answered the door and said Ben wasn't home and apologized. He even gave Sally's dad $50 for the blankets and hammocks. Nothing more happened for a few months. Sally told me at school about how Ben had been caught on camera sneaking around her yard. I went to her house after school because she was going to be home alone after her dad finished work. I ended up sleeping over there that night and that's when he came over. Ben was drunk and came out of the front of Sally's house and started yelling. He accused Sally of stealing his dog. Sally's dad called the

police. They arrested him. The next day we found a knife in the yard. It wasn't from Sally's house. The police came and we told them about the knife and they got the footage from the cameras as well. I don't know what happened to Ben but thankfully he no longer lives next to Sally. I'm a 27 year old woman, and this happened to me 9 or 10 years ago when I was a senior in high school. We lived in a pretty large house but my siblings were all away at college or boarding school so it was only my parents and I in the house. I'm a crazy light sleeper so when I woke up in the dark and saw my alarm clock flashing 3.11am I wasn't too surprised. However, I was wide awake, not just groggily stirring in my sleep. I lay there, wondering what had woken me when I heard very soft footsteps on the stairs outside

my bedroom. The door to my room was parallel to the left side of the bed, and I happened to be laying with my back to the door. When the footsteps approached my door, I thought it must be one of my parents checking on me for some reason. Then the doorknob was turned, so, so slowly. Still, I thought that they were just trying not to wake me. The door began to open again, slowly and carefully. It made a creaking noise, no matter how slowly it was opened, so the person finally just shoved it the rest of the way to silence the creak. Still, my naive brain thought it was one of my parents until they clicked on the flashlight. I froze. Terror flooded me and I remember I instantly broke out in sweat. They were behind me and I was facing away so they couldn't see my

eyes wide open as they shone the beam straight on me. I always used to think that if something like that ever happened I would be really hard and just whip out of bed and punch them, attack them, shout, scream, do something. But I could do nothing at all. All I could do was try to keep my breath deep and even, despite the pounding of my heart, so that the intruder wouldn't know I was awake. After about ten seconds, they finally moved the light away. I prayed and begged and bartered with anything that would listen to me as the intruder walked around my room, looking at my things. I could vaguely see their shape, large and bulky, like they were wearing two coats. They had a baseball cap on. They didn't shine the flashlight

on me again and after a few minutes, which felt like an eternity, they left my room. I could still hear them though, walking around the rest of the second floor through my siblings' empty bedrooms. I was still sweating, still frozen in terror, not knowing what to do. I wanted to grab my phone and call my dad, sleeping downstairs. I wanted to call our landline so that the phone would ring and wake my parents up. I wanted to call the police. I wanted to get up and run from my room. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't do any of those things.

I was afraid that they would hear me and I didn't know if they had a weapon and would try to hurt me or my parents. I wouldn't wish such helpless terror on my worst enemy. I don't know how, but I must have passed out from fear or the adrenaline wore off and I fell asleep somehow. Because the next thing I knew it was 6am and I could hear my parents downstairs. I ran downstairs and as calmly as I could I asked them if one of them had been in my room last night. Their faces went blank and they said no they hadn't. That was the last straw. I broke down in sobs and told them that someone was in my room last night. Even as I typed this, my hands have begun shaking and I've teared up.

The police were called and even though there was little they could do at that point. Apparently when my parents woke up, all the doors to the outside were standing wide open and there was a duffel bag at the bottom of the stairs. All that was inside was a coil of nylon rope and an empty USB flash drive. I don't want to think about what it was for. The intruder hadn't taken anything and we have no idea why they left in what appeared to be a hurry. It took me about a week to be able to sleep in my own room. A sanctuary which felt violated and frightening to me now.

I carry pepper spray, sleep with a machete next to my bed, and double check my locks every night. Hopefully this will never happen again, but if it does, hopefully I won't freeze in fear. It's been ten years, and my most common nightmare is that someone is in my room, standing in the shadows, watching me. I met Brad when I was 18 years old and in a pretty low part of my life. I'm not changing his name because he doesn't deserve it. Brad was a manipulative, lying narcissist. I had a lot of low self-esteem issues and I was desperate to feel loved. He zeroed in on this weakness instantly. We became inseparable and we jumped right into the I love you's. Brad saw me for the gullible idiot that I was and

that I would accept any behavior from him as long as they offered me love. He lied constantly. He told me he had a car, a very fancy car but it was in the shop in one of the nearby bigger cities. He said he worked on a farm as a helper. For a while, he would leave for the day, claiming to be going to work. However, he quit pretty much as soon as we started dating. I don't think he had a job at all. He was just cruising, looking for girls that he could sponge off of, and I fit the bill. My roommates hated him, which I wish I had seen those red flags too,

but at the time, I just thought that they were being unsupportive. They found a new place to rent without me and stole my portion of the security deposit. I thought I really only had one choice, move in with Brad even though we had only been dating a month or two. Early in the relationship, I got a message from a fake Facebook account. I could tell it was fake because there was only one picture and no friends on the profile. It was a girl asking me if Brad had ever hurt me. I was confused and asked him about it. He said it was an ex that was out to ruin his life and sabotage any relationship he had and I stupidly believed him and ignored the warnings. We rented a really terrible basement suite it was

really all I could afford. Once we were actually living together he let all the red flags fly. I tried my best to ignore them hoping that this would work out. I couldn't afford to live alone. I was in college my parents lived in a different town so I couldn't move back in with them. We had a very strained relationship and I didn't ever want to ask them for help or admit to them that I had made a mistake. Brad made me think it was completely normal to have no privacy. He could look at my phone anytime the urge hit him and he became enraged if I was in contact with any guys. He had huge blowups over everything. He had this job and he would borrow my car and leave the house for a full 8 hours. He drove my car hard, doing break stands and drifting in empty parking lots.

He warped my brake pads so badly that they would skip when you tried to stop at a stoplight. One time I was driving him somewhere before class. I was telling him that even though I could drop him off, I could not come pick him up because I had a group project to work on and my group was meeting after class. He wanted me to leave the car but I couldn't do that because the college was very far from where I was dropping him off. We got into it and he started punching my dashboard over and over, cracking and breaking it. I was so scared that I bailed on my group to pick him up. All my group members were really mad at me but I was too scared to not do what he asked.

A few nights he went missing with my car. He had excuses that his phone died and he had been drinking so he couldn't drive. Despite leaving every day for work he always had some excuse for why he couldn't chip in on rent. He couldn't help me pay for food. His boss either messed up his check or was just about to come. At one point, he had had some money. I insisted he needed to give me some of it to help me pay for rent and food. He gave me $40 and it was a huge fight. I started keeping a running tally on our fridge of how much money he owed for his portion of the bills. This was a focal point for

daily fights that we had. For his birthday, his grandma got us a $200 gift card for our local grocery store. I was so hopeful to actually be able to afford food, real food and not just canned soup. Unfortunately, this store also sold cell phones at the time. They spent the entire gift card on getting a new phone. This was before smartphones so phones were not as expensive back then. I was in college and I worked a lot. One night he called me. Babe, someone broke into our house. I just got home and everything's a complete mess.

All our stuff is thrown everywhere. And I rushed home. Everything was exactly as I left it. He said he had cleaned up everything because he didn't want me to worry. The only thing that was missing was the $40 he had given me towards the month of free rent and food that had been sponging off of me. I didn't have much value to be stolen but the TV, the outdated game system I had and all my games and CDs were still there. I was instantly suspicious but I refused to believe that the love of my life would do this to me. I just willed everything to get better.

I kept telling myself soon things would work out and he would help me with the bills. This was all temporary, I told myself. The fear of being alone outweighed my suspicions. He would send me threatening texts throughout the day. I was in class and I got a text, where are you? I'm in class, I responded. I don't are you? I'm in class, I responded. I don't believe you, I'm coming to school looking for you. I looked everywhere and I didn't see you.

The college I went to wasn't massive, but it was still a good size enough. With enough students in classrooms, it would be very difficult to just randomly find one person out of hundreds. He accused me of lying at being school and that I was actually cheating on him when I said I was in class. Once I had an exam that had to be at the school at a certain time to do. He accused me of lying and that I was just trying to leave to cheat on him. He blocked the door and refused to let me leave. I waited until he calmed down. I think he went to the bathroom or something and I made a break for it. Just as I was in my car and driving away he came running out of the house, chasing me. His eyes were terrifying. The rage was

so intense. I got to my exam, over an hour late and bawling my eyes out. When we had first started dating he told me that he had had a child. In the time that we were together he almost never talked about his kid and I never met the child either. At one point he told me that he had had a child. In the time that we were together he almost never talked about his kid and I never met the child either. At one point he told me that he had gotten a call from the mother and that his child died in some kind of accident. He did a great job of acting distraught and upset. However, I found it weird we never went to a funeral, that he had never had any details of what had actually happened. He completely stopped talking about it right away. I asked his sister about the death and she in no uncertain terms told me that there was no way the child was dead and she talked to the mother very recently. So he was lying about the death on his own kid, probably planning on completely cutting off his responsibilities with this lie.

He got a night job, clearing snow for store parking lots. He would only work if it had snowed. We were out one night and he got very drunk. I asked him if he had to work because the snow was coming down hard. He was pretty much out of commission, unable to walk or hold a conversation. I feared he would lose his job too, so I asked him if he wanted me to check his phone to see if his boss had messaged him. He agreed and handed over his phone. There was no text from his boss. However, there were tons of messages from women. A lot of these messages included pictures. I'm sure without me getting into too much detail that you could figure out what kind of pictures he was being sent. I saw one text from an unsaved number. All it said was, is your girlfriend home? He only sent one response,

no, come over. I was ready to break up with him. He came up with some excuse that girls just sent him photos unsolicited. This was made somewhat believable because he was not responding to the pictures. He said that the girl who texted him was a friend who had a deformity and that she was too shy to meet me, but they had been friends for years. I didn't believe him. He took our block of knives into the bathroom, locking the door. He told me that he would end his own life if I didn't stay with him. And like an idiot, I feared for his life and took him back.

Things did not last much longer though. He started getting mad that when I got home I would say hello to my cats before I'd say hello to him. He started insinuating that I loved the cats more than him and that I could not love anything more than I loved him or they would have to go. His parents dropped off his younger brother at our house for us to take care of while they went on vacation. Brad said that they hadn't given him any money for taking care of him, not even grocery money. On my payday I went out and got some groceries as well as I picked up a pizza for all of us to share. I thought it would be really nice because we had been living off of

ramen and toast for months. I should mention here that I occasionally bought Brad cigarettes because of course he had no money. When I got home he asked me if I would buy him cigarettes and I said no. I had had enough of him always mooching off of me and being the only one to pay for everything. I told him I couldn't afford to pay for his cigarettes anymore and he lost his mind, gesturing to the pizza. You can afford this but you can't afford cigarettes for me. I surprisingly stood my ground and refused. He went crazy. He threatened to leave. I told him to go right ahead. He got angry and threatened that he would take the cat that we had gotten together. I told him there was no way he was taking the cat and that he didn't have a

place and he had no money so how could he take care of a cat? He became livid and kicked the cat. It wasn't that hard. It probably scared her but not enough to really hurt her still this was the last straw for me and i started screaming at him to get the f out my rage finally outweighed my fear of him he got really in my face screaming insults at me i was standing in front of a huge decorative mirror we had hanging on the wall. He had me cornered. He threw a punch and I ducked. He shattered the mirror. A huge hole right where my head had been.

Now I have to say I don't know if he had tried to actually punch me or if he was just trying to frighten me. But I just screamed and screamed until he left. He finally did leave, probably thinking that the upstairs renter would call the police if I didn't stop screaming. Finally, I was free of him. However, I still had a few months on the lease which thank god only had my name on it and I did not have any more to afford the damaged deposit at a new place so I had to continue living there for a few months after we broke up. I threw his shit on the lawn and told him to come get it and to never speak to me again. This didn't really stop him though. I blocked his number and all of his social media. He started calling me from random numbers I didn't

recognize. I picked up the first few calls, my stomach dropping when I found out it was him on the other end. Don't hang up. If you hang up, I'm going to end my life right here and now. I'll really do it. I had his parents' number and his sister's. I called all of them, but they wouldn't answer. Likely Brad had told them that I was the crazy one and did not believe anything I said. I simply left a voicemail, letting them know that Brad was continuously calling me and threatening to end his own life. They never returned my call but the calls from Brad slowed. I started dating a new guy shortly after. I was still living in the same house though and Brad still knew where I lived. One day my boyfriend picked me up in his truck and as we were driving away I got a text from a number I didn't recognize. He looked pretty

today. I froze. I knew instantly it was him and that he was watching me. I ignored the text. A few minutes later I got another. I see you have a new boyfriend. I blocked the number. I don't remember if I told anyone about it actually. I was so happy when my lease was up and I moved to a new place so he wouldn't know where I lived anymore. I haven't seen Bratton in years thankfully. I feel so sad for that version of myself that put up with all of that stuff just so that I would feel like someone loved me. I am mad at that version of myself too for not being stronger. Unfortunately that was not the end of the string of terrible people I dated. I fell for another manipulative narcissist very soon after. I wanted to write this and hope

that if you are reading or hearing this, please know this behavior is not normal in a relationship. There are people out there who only see others for what they can do for them. They don't love anyone but themselves and no matter how hard it is to leave, it's worth it, I promise you. After a lot of bad relationships that I did myself, no favors by staying in, I've found a partner that treats me so well. He doesn't use me for what I can give him. I sometimes think it's so crazy, like this is what a good relationship is. Why couldn't I have seen that before? I would have saved myself a lot of heartache. My name is Courtney Bradshaw.

I'm a truck driver and a single mom. I spend most of my time on the road. I sometimes dream that I'm driving on the highway. Being a woman trucker is rough. I have to transport cargo alone at night. Going to rest stops and roadside diners can be a little nerve-wracking. I get a lot of stares from guys. Sometimes I like the attention and other times it gets annoying. I've never been able to sit down and truly eat

at a diner without being flirted with. I ate at a diner one night without being bothered and that's because the diner was near closing time. I guess it's the way I look. Most people don't believe I'm a truck driver. They see my blonde hair, my so-called pretty face, and my cute little figure, and they assume that I work at a nail salon or I'm a flight attendant. They even think I'm a model sometimes. I met one guy who thought I was a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. I guess it was my southern accent and my Dallas Cowboys baseball cap that I like to wear all the time. My teenage son told me that men flirt with me

because I look like Britney Spears. He knows Britney Spears is old-fashioned, but it's the only way he can describe his mom's beauty. I think it's funny and cute. My son's name is Aaron. He's named after his father. My son misses his father a lot. I can remember watching the two of them playing video games or out in the backyard playing football together. Aaron Bradshaw Sr., my husband, died from a drug overdose seven years ago. I adored my husband and I actually did drugs with him. Both of us would get high on fentanyl and other types of opioids now and then. Every day I feel guilty because I think about how I enabled my husband.

My sweetheart would be alive today if I had stopped doing drugs with him. We both would have gone to rehab together. But it was just me going to rehab after my husband's death. My son is like a spinning image of my husband. He has his father's good looks. He has his square jawline and his father's gorgeous ocean blue eyes. A lot of girls love my son because of his looks. I love him because he's my angel. Every time I look at him it's like my husband never died. My son is 17 now. That means my baby is a man now and he's got himself a girlfriend. Does that make me jealous sometimes since I'm an overbearing mom? Of course. I'm sure you moms out there know what I'm talking about,

especially if you have a boy who's growing up fast. You can't cradle him anymore because he's gotten so tall and bulky. He's the quarterback on his high school football team. You know he'll be going away to college soon. When he was little, you were the only one who got his affection because you were his mother. But soon he'll get married to a woman who's going to steal all his affection away from you. My son's girlfriend has already gotten started, but hey, that's the life of being a mom, and sometimes you gotta let it go. My son still loves me because he calls me while I'm on the road sometimes. If I'm delivering a load at night and my son calls me, I don't feel nervous. I love it when he calls during a lonely drive.

That's when I need his company the most. Two nights ago, I needed my son's company more than anything. I'm a reefer driver. A reefer driver is someone who operates a truck with a refrigerated load. I spend most of my nights delivering fresh food and frozen goods to grocery store retailers. Reefer truckers mostly have to do early morning deliveries. That means you have to do a lot of late night driving. The good part about being a reefer truck driver is you earn more money, especially when you have to do a long haul.

I love my job and my paycheck, but what happened to me two nights ago almost made me quit my job. Have you heard about haunted highways? I'm sure you have. Haunted highways or roads are streets that are subject of folklore and urban legends. You hear reports of ghostly apparitions, phantom hitchhikers, and phantom vehicles being seen on a haunted highway. In my case, I had a run in with a ghostly apparition and a phantom vehicle. It was around 3.15am, I was heading east on a road called Sweet Hollow. Sweet Hollow Road intersects with another road called Mount Misery. Both roads are near a town called Melville in Long Island, New York. I enjoy driving on town roads sometimes instead of

taking the highways because it's quieter. But on this night, something told me not to drive down Sweet Hollow Road. I had that voice in the back of my head that gave me a foreboding and I ignored it. If you make it out of a dangerous situation, you look back and you think, why did I ignore that voice? It's stupid. I've heard stories about Sweet Hollow Road and Mount Misery Road being the two most haunted roads in America, but of course I didn't believe it. The townspeople warned drivers not to go down Sweet Hollow or Mount Misery Road. My smart self here thought the warnings were ridiculous. I laughed off the warnings and the horror stories. I should have known something

was wrong when I saw no other cars on the road. It was just me and my truck that night. It was three o'clock in the morning so I figured that's why there were no other cars on the road. The stories I heard about Sweet Hollow Road involved accidental deaths, murders, and people taking their life. I heard about a young woman who was killed by her jealous boyfriend. They said that her boyfriend threw her out of a moving car and another car struck her and killed her. I don't want to go into all the stories I've heard but it was some really dark stuff. The one tragic story that broke my heart the most was about a group of children who died on a school bus while traveling down Sweet Hollow. I heard a lot of tragic tales and a lot of ghostly encounter stories. My first encounter with something

supernatural happened when I was driving toward the North State Overpass bridge of Sweet Hollow. It was dark and I saw this mist rising from the road. My truck's headlights did the best they could but I still had a little trouble trying to see through this strange mist that intensified when I got closer to the bridge. When I drove under the overpass it got darker and the mist became thicker. I made it halfway into the bridge and that's when it started. I could see the moonlight coming in through the other side of the overpass but I saw the moonlight reflecting off of something. It took me a second to notice that someone was standing under the overpass on the other side, and they were standing right in the middle of the road. I slowed my truck down and brought it to a stop about 50 feet away from the mysterious figure.

The strange part is that the mist cleared, allowing me to get a better look at the figure. Also, my truck's headlights helped me. When I got a better look at that, I saw my truck's headlights helped me. When I got a better look at that I saw that it was a teenage boy. I could say that he was no older than my son. I figured maybe he got lost or separated from his friends. Maybe he was partying a little too hard and got disoriented on his way home. In my mind there was nothing scary about the situation. It was just a kid who needed help. I've always thought of myself as a brave woman. I'm also a mom, so I guess you could say those motherly instincts kicked in when I saw the teenager just standing in the road.

Without thinking about it, I opened the door before climbing down out of my truck's cabin. Are you alright, honey? Did you need some help? Were you lost? I shouted to the boy but he didn't answer me. He never moved. I wanted to approach him but I heard that voice again telling me to stay near my truck. The boy was standing a good distance away from me. I knew I would have to walk far from my truck before I could see face to face with him. I called out to the boy again but he still didn't answer. He stood so perfectly still under the overpass. He looked like a statue. Like I said before,

I've always thought to myself as a brave woman but this kind of gave me the creeps. Seeing the boy standing there under the bridge like a statue isn't what made me get back in my truck. It's when the lights on my truck mysteriously began flickering on and off when I looked at the boy. His body vanished when my truck's lights went out. That pretty much settled it for me and I hurried up and got myself back in my truck. I didn't want to believe what I saw and I also didn't want to believe that my truck's engine had cut off on its own. I couldn't start it back up. My truck was practically brand new so this worried me. While I was trying to start my truck back up again I locked all my

doors. It took a few minutes but I finally got my truck started. When I turned the headlights on my heart went into my mouth when I saw the boy reappear but this time there were two other boys with him. I turned my headlights off and the boy would disappear. I kept thinking that maybe I was hallucinating from lack of sleep and that all my hours of late night driving had finally caught up with me. I kept turning my headlights on and off. Every time I would do it, the three boys would appear under the overpass, staring back at me. But when I turned my truck's headlights off again and turned them back on for the last time, I saw something that I know will give me nightmares for the rest

of my life. I waited for a minute before turning my headlights back on and when I did, I saw the three boys but they weren't standing in the road this time. Their bodies were hanging from the overpass. I watched in horror as their bodies swung from the ropes tied to the bridge. It scared me so badly that I shut off my truck's headlights while screaming. When I turned off my headlights, I thought the horrible sight would disappear, but I still saw the boys hanging from the bridge in the dark. I closed my eyes while gripping the steering wheel, hoping I was imagining it. When I opened my eyes, they were still there, swaying back and forth.

My truck's engine died again but what made me panic was when I looked to see two boys hanging from the overpass instead of three. The third boy was on the ground and it didn't take long to see that he was slowly dragging his feet toward my truck. He was distant in the darkness but I could still see him removing the rope around his neck. I could see that he was creeping in my direction but my eyes kept telling me not to believe what I was seeing. I had to get my truck started. I couldn't believe that I was seeing the ghost of three boys who had taken their own lives and now one of them was alive, edging his way toward my truck. No matter how many times I turned the key, I couldn't get my truck to start. The boy got close enough to where I could make out his clothes. I saw his denim shorts and a grungy

white tank top. What made me lose my breath was seeing what his body would do every time he'd take a step toward my truck. He would jerk and contort like someone having a seizure. My truck's headlights were on and I could see the boy's face. He reminded me of my boy if he was dead. There was no life in his face. He had nothing but a dull and dark expression. His mouth hung open slightly and what scared me the most were his eyes. He had no pupils. All I could see were the whites of his eyes. His movements reminded me of a puppet on a string. It looked like I was watching an evil spirit learn how to walk using a teenage boy's body.

I kept turning the ignition switch praying that God would let me start my truck. I panicked when I heard the truck's doors unlock themselves. I had locked the doors, but they would keep unlocking themselves as if they had a mind of their own. At first, I thought the mechanism that controlled my truck's automatic doors had malfunctioned. I couldn't keep the doors locked, no matter how many times I pressed the button. Now I was torn between getting my truck started and struggling to keep my doors locked, and lord knows I didn't want a ghost or whatever this thing was climbing into my truck started and struggling to keep my doors locked. Lord knows I didn't want a ghost or whatever this thing was climbing into my truck's cabin. At one point I considered jumping

out of my truck and taking to running on foot, but I knew it was too late to run when I saw the boy getting closer to my driver's side door. I knew screaming wouldn't save me, but I did it anyway. I cried out to God when my truck's door opened. I grabbed the door handle and I tried to pull it shut. I couldn't believe I was playing tug-of-war with an evil spirit. I kept yelling the word stop repeatedly. I even said, please stop, ghost. I guess you're in shock and anything will come out of your mouth. The ghost kept pulling on my door and I could see his dull white eyes staring up at me through the driver's side window. It seemed like the more I would yell stop, the harder he would pull on the door.

I was pulling back on the door with my hands but I couldn't keep the door shut. This monster tried to overpower me and at one point he mockingly smirked at me while yanking my door back open. He only needed one hand to pull my door open while I had to use both my hands to keep it shut and I thought the devil was at my driver's side door. All I kept seeing was his dead white eyes and his sadistic smile. I couldn't let him in. I had to keep my door shut. With all my strength I tried to keep my door closed and I refused to let go. I had my hands glued to my door handle because I knew if I didn't keep my hands on the door, something bad would happen to me. I fought with the ghostly apparition and I tried to ignore his dull gaze. Sweat poured down

my face. My bra was sticking to my breasts. I thought my heartbeat was going to fracture my chest bone. I kept telling myself that I would wake up. My fear meter went through the roof when I looked to see that the other two dead bodies that were hanging from the overpass were now on the ground, strolling toward my truck. Now I had all three dead boys to deal with. The other dead boys were walking faster than the first boy and they still had the ropes around their necks. One boy had a broken neck. I could tell by the way he held his head, his forehead touched his shoulder. The other teenage boy walked with his shoulders slumped over and his legs convulsed and twisted every time he took a step which

almost made him look like a breakdancer. Dealing with one was bad enough. I could barely handle one and I knew I wouldn't be able to handle all three of them. Death was on the horizon for me. I could feel it and I kept thinking that maybe God was punishing me for doing drugs with my husband and enabling him to be a drug addict. God was going to let me die at the hands of three ghostly apparitions. Judgment. The other two ghostly boys wasted no time shortening the distance between themselves and my truck They were closer and I could see my death arising with every step they took I kept begging myself to wake up but I couldn't escape from the dead boys They wanted me

I kept hearing the horror stories of people getting killed by something supernatural These were stories I didn't believe were true until now I believed in the paranormal that night, but I knew my belief in the paranormal wouldn't save me. I needed a miracle, some kind of divine intervention. I prayed to God asking him to help me. I never saw a ghost before and it made me question my reality. My arms were getting tired from trying to hold on to the door. I was about to accept my fate until something happened. My phone started ringing. I looked around at my phone which was sitting on top of my purse and I knew it was my son calling me.

When I turned back around the boy at my door vanished. The other two boys vanished too. Even my truck started back up on its own. When I locked the doors they didn't unlock themselves. I didn't know what to do next. I didn't know whether to drive or answer my phone. I planned to do both. I wanted to get away from that bridge.

Do you know how it feels when the muscles in your body lock up after you've had a traumatic experience? That's what happened to me for a minute. For about a minute I just sat there holding my ringing phone like a moron. That voice in my head yelled at me and it told me to get moving because something else was coming. To make it easy on myself I answered my phone and I put my son on speaker so I wouldn't have to hold my phone. I shifted my truck into gear and got out of that bridge. It felt so good to hear my son's voice. I could hear his rap music playing in the background and it also felt good to feel my truck moving again. When I finally drove out of the overpass, I looked into the side mirror and saw the boys again, hanging from the bridge. I quickly turned my eyes away. I kept both my hands on the steering wheel

and my eyes locked on the road. My son could hear the fear in my voice. He asked what was wrong and I lied to him and told him that I was just tired. I couldn't tell him what happened. I didn't want him to think his mom was a lunatic. There was a strong temptation inside of me though. I wanted to tell him but I thought it would be better to wait and tell him while we were together. Maybe he'd believe me if I told him over the dinner table instead of telling him over the phone. I couldn't figure out how to tell him what I saw. How could I explain it to him? Hi baby, how was school? Oh yeah and by the way, your mother got attacked by ghosts while she was driving her truck last night. Yeah, that sounded credible. He'd believe that, wouldn't he? Yeah, sure he would.

He'd never suspect that his mother might be mentally ill. My god, I couldn't drive my truck fast enough. I wanted to get off a sweet hollow road. There were no streetlights, no traffic lights, no cars. There was nothing but fog and a long, dark and narrow road that seemed to go on forever. Tree branches hung over the road like giant claws with leaves on them. I kept talking to my son. His voice was my therapy. I loved listening to him tell me his dreams of becoming an NFL star and that he planned to buy his mom a new house and a nice car.

Listening to my son's dreams calmed my nerves. Talking to my son made me forget that I was driving down a haunted road and after a while I forgot about the three boys near the overpass. I forgot about sweet hollow road and my mind made me believe that maybe I hallucinated the whole thing or that I fell asleep at the wheel and just had a terrible, terrible nightmare. This happened in 2018. My girlfriend at the time and I decided to go camping in Patrick's Point. As we rolled up to pay for our site, we saw these signs warning against mountain lions in the area and what to do. We were just joking about how funny they look and captioning them to say moonwalk or attempt to fly away, offer your first born child, stuff like that. This was our first big mistake. We chose a heavily wooded site with a cove and lots of tree cover. We then hiked wedding rock,

came back, made a nice fire and cooked grilled cheese and soup. All in all, a great evening. As we were chilling by the fire, a fat skunk waddled out. My girlfriend is terrified of skunks so I'm trying to shoo it while she hunkers in the car but this plump little guy was not afraid. Eventually, after eating some gr grubs it waddled past our tent into the bush. My girlfriend was dead set on sleeping in the car but I convinced her everything would be fine and shown my flashlight all around our tent proving this smelly little guy was gone for the night. So we curl up in our one man coffin tent, have some loud fun and after we close our eyes to sleep, lulled by the roars of waves crashing off the surrounding cliffs, just as we're about to sleep, we hear cracking of twigs.

No big deal, probably the skunk dude, followed by a bone chilling scream coming from a few feet away. We are now frozen, completely silent except for our ridiculously loud heartbeats. Did you hear that? I whisper. Yeah, what do we do? She replied. We held each other thinking maybe if we are still it will lose interest and move. No luck, as now we hear it circling our large sardine can of doom. Should we scream? She peeps. Before the words can leave her mouth, I yell in the manliest voice I can, trying to be intimidating. She joins me. Our voice is louder than a foghorn. Now, this cat is thinking tasty snack all wrapped up and sounds like an injured deer. Yay. So the circling has tightened around us and

we can see shadows of its silhouette above us. We need light, we agree. So with one arm over her stomach I slowly reach over my head in this claustrophobic space, grab the flashlight while clicking it on and as I bring my arm back down to my side, my elbow grazes its nose pressed against the tent. Dear God. Without pause or thought, I flipped around, my back pressed on top of my girlfriend, and kick as hard as I can, shouting. The first kick blindly landed right on the side of the lion's face, and the two subsequent kicks hit nothing, just tore the tent open. Faced by darkness and the uncertainty of whether I would be mauled, I rose out of our mangled doggy bag, pulling my girlfriend behind me back to back. There was nothing in the clearing, so we slowly walked back to the car, illuminating

the brush around us. This all started around 1.30 and we made it to the car at 2.15. We did have to go back for our phones after maybe an hour of pure adrenaline pumping through our veins. Nothing came of it so once we were chill enough to lie down we did, falling asleep by around 5am. Next morning we got our food out of the bear box, grabbed our remaining stuff and looked for tracks. Right next to the tent, about a foot from where my head was, there was a scuffle print in the dirt. We packed up, made our exodus, and stopped by the ranger station where we finally noticed the other less amusing sign next to the aforementioned one warning of a problem mountain lion in the area. We filled out our reports and got home safe, but dear god, two small women against a 200 pound cat. We're lucky we didn't get mauled. I live in New England, and Salem is a huge tourist attraction up here.

I used to go every year with my parents. My parents were Christian, but my mom dabbled in Wicca for fun. My dad would get upset about us seeing her books, but my mom raised us as Southern Baptists, never really defined herself by one religion. She always seemed to believe them all, even ancient religions. She was a big fan of Egyptian history. She was also a psychiatrist and found every religion had a form of healing mentally which is why she studied many religions in the first place. Most of her documented work was about the fine line between healthy ways of health through religion and creating harmful

disillusion. She worked with troubled teens. Every year we would go see this one psychic as my mom really liked her She liked her ability to read people on a psychological level more so than magical We would explore the historical parts of Salem for my dad Whose interest has always been math and history A few degrees in engineering and math but one in history because he could He would teach us the history during daylight hours And at night my mom would take us the history during daylight hours and at night my mom

would take us around to the creepy mysterious and magical stuff. This divide often left us with only my mom at night as my dad would sleep in the car to prepare for the hours long drive home. At the point this starts I was 15. I played online video games and just got into World of Warcraft. As a female I got a lot of weird attention. Frame reference, I'm now 30. It was the last year we'd visit Salem as my mom was getting sick though I didn't know it yet. I told my guild I was going to Salem and one guy chimed in that he'd live near it and would love to meet me. I explained that I was going to be with my parents and be weird if some guy I'd never met showed up and thought nothing more of that. I played with my

two older brothers and they were in the same guild. Neither of them said anything either. What I didn't know is this guy was actually a Facebook friend with my brother and I just joined Facebook as it was recently open to high school students too. I didn't know but he knew what we looked like. So the day arrived, we packed up for the day trip to Salem. We were excited as usual as both my parents always took extra care to make the trip exciting and my brother brought his new girlfriend and other brother brought his best friend that I had a huge crush on. We didn't get to do much as a family as my brothers were in college and my parents worked a lot. None of us knew the day would be much scarier than jump scares and spooky stories. We did our usual routine there, showing off our costume, got tasty food from vendors and just having a good time.

My mom at the time was taking our younger brother who was nine to do the kiddie stuff so I wandered off with my brothers. For those who have never been to Salem it's mostly the downtown and turned into a giant witchy fair basically but with historical buildings instead of barns. My parents gave us a hundred dollars each to go shopping and have fun. My oldest brother brought beer and let me try it but it was gross so I got some apple cider. My dad had gone to the car and my brother was commenting on all the hot girls with his friend and my other brother distracted with his new girlfriend. I had no friends in my high school so I just sat alone on a rock wall nearby as they chatted and played around.

I decided to go off and get a snack and these fake tattoo art nearby. My brother's girlfriend said she'd join me soon and stay at the artist's if I finished early, leave it to a girl to be maternal I guess. As I hit my apple fritter in line, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I immediately thought that it was my brother and his girlfriend, and turned around to find a 20-something year old, nerdy obese guy with curly long greasy hair standing over about a foot taller than me. He was wearing a Warcraft 2 shirt, and he greeted me and asked me if I played WoW. I assumed he was looking at my backpack, which I drew all over, and it had World of Warcraft written on it. I always

carried my backpack with my laptop full of sketching supplies as I get bored easily. P.S. the laptop I had then was about $2,000 HP and incredibly heavy. He explained he played too and was excited to meet a girl who played WoW. Going to a small school myself, the only people I knew who played WoW were my brothers, their friends and their friends' younger brothers who weren't my friends. Despite not having friends, I was a friendly extrovert. I lost popularity due to a fallout with friends where I was made out to be a bad person, but that's a long story. So I greeted him kindly as I would anyone. Honestly, I just got the vibe that he was looking for a friend.

Currently lost all my friends and a small school of 200 people total for all high school, it's easy to have your whole grade of 54 people against you. It was a prep school too, so clicks were absolutely toxic. I felt sympathy for him as it sucked not having friends and I was absolutely more vulnerable as a result of losing all my friends and having an entire school hate me essentially. So we chatted. I didn't even pick up creepy vibes until he mentioned my brother's names. It seemed like a mistake as he tried to cover it up after. Only then I started feeling nervous and it showed. Stupid me just kept nodding to his questions but I had chills, too much to answer anymore verbally. As it was my turn to get a fake tattoo, the lady doing my tattoo obviously saw my discomfort and whispered if I was okay. I didn't want to say anything so I simply shrugged.

Immediately this guy goes off, asking what she whispered to me a huge red flag went off as he became possessive of me saying stuff like i shouldn't talk about people behind their backs and it's rude he said something along the lines of me being a tease and stormed off after bike cops started coming over to see why this guy was yelling now wouldn't that be a fine ending? I wish. The cops asked who he was and I told them I didn't know him. They asked me my age and name etc and the lady quickly finished up my tattoo and rejected my payment as I was swiftly taken away by police to a tent that they had set up. There I called my mom who rushed over like the end of the world had just happened. I got scolded of all things and

my brothers were about to get their butts handed to them on a platter. She was told by the female officer that a man had been harassing me and it was lucky they showed up. FYI, cops are in plenty around Salem, especially in October. About 30 minutes had passed by the time I met up with my mom and the creepy guy stormed off. She frantically called my brothers but neither picked up. My mom was fuming so I ran over and bought her an apple cider, a family thing, and it seemed to cool her off for a bit while we looked for my brothers. So after another 30 plus minutes she sees my brother and his girlfriend frantically looking for me around the tattoo booth I was originally at, and off my mom

went, and I was left behind holding my baby brother's hand. At least the confused look on his face made me smile. My mom is overly protective of me as we lost my little sister 11 years before this due to choking. She was a baby and choked while no one was looking, so she would get extra mad on my account going as far to get a teacher, rightfully fired for keeping me in class during an asthma attack from an idiot spraying perfume in my face. Another teacher overheard and pulled me out of class but not without embarrassing me by screaming at her during school hours. So here are my mom screaming at my brother and his girlfriend for being reckless. My mom's worst nightmare is kidnapping, probably as are most parents. It was quite the scene honestly, but I tried to focus on

my baby brother and make him laugh instead. He was everything to me those days anyways. Now he's pretty rude and mean, but different events transpired to turn him from a sweet kid to a mean adult. I didn't think about where my other brother went till the drama unfolding I guess lured him and his friend to my mom, but as he was walking to my mom to seemingly break up the fight, he was always the calm one. I saw a creepy wow guy in tow with him and his friend. I simply did what every dumb sheltered girl does. I froze. My brother calmed my mom down and eventually told my mom the creepy man was his friend from video games and was just making sure I was safe since

I was seemingly alone. During all this time I guess he found my brother and spun the story to being a white knight though at the time I was simply clueless to that level of manipulation. My mom turned around to thank him and said sorry for the misunderstanding. They all talked for what seemed like forever but eventually my baby brother pulled me out of my frozen state by needing to pee. I took him to the bathroom after telling my mom. Honestly I was just stunned and didn't think people would believe a 15 year old over a college student. But suddenly this creepy guy runs up to me and my baby brother saying he can take him to the boys room so he doesn't have to go to the icky girls room as an apology for catching me off guard. He was just worried about me. I don't know why but I yelled at him simply, no he's going with me. I think that's where cog starts moving for my mom, that this

guy wasn't all there. My little brother insisted on going to the boys room now though but thankfully my oldest brother stepped in to take him. The creepy wow guy followed in saying he had to go pee anyways and that's all. I think my mom picked up on my discomfort after this and asked if I wanted to join my dad in the car. Honestly I wanted to but I also wanted to see a certain tent we passed by before and we still didn't see my mom's psychic yet. So we gathered back up as a family and creepy guy tagged along to see a few more things and wrap the day up with my mom's psychic. In one store I saw a cool dragon statue that was two dragons in a heart shape written on it, Eternal Love, but it was 200 plus dollars and didn't really go with my pink room

with cat figurines and real cats everywhere. I simply thought it was cool. Creepy guy kept asking me small questions about my school every so often and World of Warcraft, but the one thing that stuck out to me that only my brother's friend overheard was if I liked anyone at school or had a boyfriend yet. My brother's friend actually was a senior at my high school, my brother a freshman in college. He chimed in saying, I don't know but she's going to prom with me. We actually ended up going prom together long after this as friends under strange series

of events but at the time we never talked nor had any plans to go to prom together long after this as friends under strange series of events but at the time we never talked nor had any plans to go to prom together. I think a light bulb turned on for him and saw that this guy was creeping on me. At this point we knew his age and he was 27 in community college. No judgment for those going to community college or older in college but that was a red flag as he bragged how he was wealthy, how he turned down Yale and was going to graduate top of his college and so on. And my brother's friend was very uncomfortable with a 27 year old asking a 15 year old about her love life. My brother's friend was 17. But being dumb teens we never made a point to tell my mom or my brothers, we both just

bottled it up I guess. I won't lie though, I crushed harder on him after this. We got done with the psychic and we headed back to the car to my dad after Mr. Wow creeped and tagged along. By the time we reached the car, my mom had tried to get him to say bye a few times but he insisted that he park the same way as us. It should have been a red flag but we were all tired of walking all day. At the car he gave me that $200 statue. I never saw him buy it. I think he stole it truthfully. My mom kind of just said it was nice of him and he didn't have to but I could tell that she thought it was weird. Eventually we make it to the car and he insisted on meeting the daddy of such a wonderful family,

is what he said. Now that gave us all a chill down our backs. My dad stands at 6 foot 9 inches and by no means someone that you should mess with. He did college football for two years till a certain injury took him out. He limps a lot more now that he's in his late 50s due to it. My mom and I are only about 5'2", so it's quite a difference considering only my 18-year-old brothers, the tallest brothers standing 6 foot compared to my dad, were all small to him. My dad is one of those guys who always dresses in a suit too.

Typical businessman. Our family was well off due to both my parents being well-paid professionals. I don't know why my dad always wore suits, though, even on holiday, businessman. Our family was well off due to both my parents being well paid professionals. I don't know why my dad always wore suits though even on holiday but it definitely made him more intimidating to this nerd guy who before this projected confidence. My dad immediately picked up on my discomfort as this guy mentioned my name saying, oh and with my name you raised such a beautiful daughter too. After he was done saying how nice my dad's family was and bragging how his sons are great blah blah blah. Now my dad's not just an engineer for fighter jets but a businessman and boss so he handles himself with decorum,

usually, unless it's with his friends and they're joking around. My father responded to him sternly, probably making most people freeze because he has a really deep, authoritative voice. FYI, it sucks when you're his kid because this voice is truly scary when you're in trouble. That same voice he uses when we've done something wrong, he projected on this guy saying, if you would please back away, I would like to take our family home, pointing at my mom. My dad was a conservative, but he gave full credit to anyone who worked hard regardless of their religion, color, or status, and was apparently already peeved by him constantly saying it was my dad's family. When my mom puts just as much effort and money into it, but mentioning me and creepy vibe was

my dad's last straw. He kept saying goodbye and he'd see us online, waving till we were out of sight. So yeah, still not the end. Sorry, in the car we all joked a little about how weird he was, but quickly cheered up with food and TV. If you've ever been to Salem or most any historical towns in New England, a bunch of one-way streets and mazes to get anywhere in the center of town. In this time, a car eventually got behind us that took every turn we did. Everyone but my dad was too tired to notice. We were eating treats and watching TV with a VCR and DVD my dad installed in the back. Honestly, it was pretty cool back then. While we watched scary cartoons recorded off of Cartoon Network

about an hour away from home, I noticed my mom and dad whispering and mumbling stuff. Usually this was my parents' sort of intimate talk, incoherent but usually obvious on body language, so at first I just wrote it off. A few towns away from home though I noticed the body language as did my brother's wasn't that kind of talk at all but stressed and worried. My mom mumbled something about police and told my dad to pull off the highway to the rest stop. The car went quiet and we pulled off. My mom got out and my younger old brother asked what was going on as we were probably 20 minutes from home. Wasn't long till we looked at what my dad was looking at intensely. Old,

beat up, off-white, dirty car and in the driver's seat was the creepy World of Warcraft guy and a kinda older, druggie looking guy in the passenger seat. The wow guy quickly leaned back to hide his face as we all turned to look at him but it was definitely him. My brothers at this point were all so confused and trying to figure out stuff as my dad was sitting there silently staring and angry. My brother's girlfriend was obviously nervous and my other brother's friend was obviously unsettled but both were quiet. My oldest brother opened the car door and got out standing outside the car. My dad yelled at him to get back in and close the door. I should mention the car we had

was a large SUV that was very white that stood out so probably not hard to follow in the dark either. Eventually, cops pull in and Word of Warcraft guy pulls out with another vehicle following him as the police pull up to my dad's car. Now on an action movie, cops would probably have taken off and followed them but he just asked my dad questions which I found disappointing but I guess we had no proof or anything. My mom soon joined and my dad got out of the car as they talked and eventually it was all over. We got home and I went straight to bed. My older brother stayed up a bit talking but I was just worn out and my little brother was already asleep in the car in a candy coma so he was carried in like the rest of the day trip luggage.

I usually stay up until about 1-2am on weekends gaming but I couldn't today. Plus I had school projects to finish the next day so I fell asleep at around 11pm. Around 2am my AOL instant messenger went off. I slept with my laptop on usually, not very environmental but I used it for music to sleep. It immediately woke me up. Anyone old enough to know that AIM Messenger's sound knows it wakes you up. Now, my AIM screen name was the same as my character in World of Warcraft, so easy for people to add me.

The request was from someone I didn't recognize. I groggily accepted and rolled over, but it wasn't long before a few messages popped up that I was half asleep to read. Then my bones went cold. That actually happens when you get scared enough and I felt my body get cold soon after. Long story short, my dad parks the SUV outside as my brother's cars, mom's, and dad's four cars take up the garage. This guy messaging me was the wow creep, obviously at this point, but he was saying how nice it was to meet me and now that he knew where I lived he could drive down anytime and we could hang out. He continued on with paragraphs of how he thought I was cool and his sob story,

constantly bouncing between how he liked that such a beautiful girl played video games to his life is a mess and how successful he is. Like flipping through personalities. It was weird. After like 5 plus minutes, my brain was awake enough to go get my brother. I first went to my oldest brother's room on the third floor, but the sounds I heard in there were basically do not disturb. So I went to my other older brother's room and him and his friends were asleep so I felt guilty. I didn't want to wake up my parents and I debated just waiting till tomorrow to say something. But I looked outside and a chill ran down my back, remembering that he somehow knew where we lived.

It was enough to wake up my brother with tears in my eyes. His friend woke up too as I was telling my brother the guy was messaging me on AIM. They both take a moment and suddenly their expression changed from tired to frantic as they both walked fast to my room. As they read through the messages they got to where he said that he knew where we lived. My brother said that he must have followed us somehow or saw the car outside Both of them tried to think of ways to handle it I guess feeling the same way and not wanting to wake our parents or trying to be strong Eventually they both concluded the cops needed to know but didn't want to call the emergency line

So my brother eventually went and woke up my mom My dad's a heavy sleeper so at first he didn't want to call the emergency line so my brother eventually went and woke up my mom. My dad's a heavy sleeper so at first he didn't come into my room. My mom read over the messages and took my laptop away. Actually took it away for two weeks after this too which sucked. She went into her bedroom and woke my dad as they talked and my brother and his friends sat in my room trying to comfort me in their own ways. I honestly wasn't as scared as I should have been, mostly because I was way too focused on my crush at the time. We also had 10 cats, so I had 4 cats in my bed, all full of threat reduction skills. My mom, I presume, called the non-emergency line and printed the messages. My brother and his friend eventually

went back to his room and I fell asleep in a pile of purring cats in my bed so it wasn't difficult. I woke up late, breakfast was done but I heated up leftovers. My alarm clock was my laptop so partly why. I guess my parents thought it was best not to wake me as they were gone when I woke up. In fact, as I realized everyone was gone. My house was big so it was usual to not see anyone for hours so I didn't know how it was home alone until they all came back. They all went to give statements as my neighbors watched the house and my little brother to make sure that the creep didn't show up. From what I know, my mom didn't want to involve me so much as she was scared of the psychological effects of something of that sort. So many details I only learned from my brothers after my mom passed away. But I guess they searched for the guy but they never found him or the guy in the car with them.

According to my dad, it was two cars following us. The name he had on Facebook wasn't his real name either, so all they had was his one profile picture. That actually wasn't him at all. So, he wasn't caught and a patrol car would go down our street a couple of times that night. Now, it should be the end, but again, he continued to cause problems. He left the guild, a sort of group in World of Warcraft, shortly after and deleted his character a week later. But back then, you had no idea who a character was attached to. At least these days, a WoW account is a wide messenger so you know your friends list characters and can block accounts. But back then, you could only block a character

and someone could make a new one and you'd never know that they were the same person unless they said so. Months later, we got a new guild member and none of us ever thought to change our usernames or more. By this time, my brother's friend had joined us in World of Warcraft and we'd kind of become friends after the drama at school had settled down. Long story short, my friend's cousin had asked me out and we wanted a date and he got really handsy. I mean, he didn't take no for an answer and the guy working the theater saw this and called the police. Then my mom got involved. My mom reported him to the school and he was expelled and I was then the

target of lies and hate as he was really liked at the school. I guess my brother's friend heard my side without the lies and decided to be my friend, kind of since I didn't have anyone. So, he felt more sorry for me though. But we chatted on World of Warcraft and it was obvious I had a huge crush on him, especially as my brothers would point it out in the guild to embarrass me. But never did I think that I would be manipulated through a crush like this. In short, I was catfished into thinking my crush made a secret character to message me. One day this character messaged me pretending to be my crush and love struck me believed it. For weeks we messaged flirty messages and I was over the moon happy. The person told me he

couldn't show it in person as he was scared my brother would stop being his friend. I believed it. I fell into it like an idiot. I thought my 15-year-old self had a secret relationship with my crush. I was very, very wrong. One night he asked to meet up with him in town after my parents went to sleep. I told him to pick me up, but he didn't want to come near my house and fear my brother would see his car. So he told me to pick a place in town and give him the address. So I did. I did but luckily for me I had started connecting with a girl above my grade. Not really friends but not enemies. I offered to give her $50 to drive me to a place in town. He said that he'd be there at 1am and should give me enough time to walk there. I didn't even think

to tell him that I was catching a ride. It was pretty freaking cold so I didn't want to talk. He also said he had a Christmas gift for me and wanted to kiss me so I was over the moon not thinking anything through. Three hours pass and my ride shows up. I give her the money and it seemed to make her friendly enough that the car ride wouldn't be too awkward. She asked why I needed to go out this late in the cold to the park. I told her I was meeting someone from school in secret and I'd give her more money next week if she didn't tell anyone who. I had full awareness that she was involved in a lie or two about me so I was willing to buy her silence if it meant I didn't have to wait out in the cold. So after less than a 10 minute ride we get to the park and I wait for a text. I had a phone and I was showing it to her when the girl asked to see it because she thought it was cute.

While we were talking about phones I got a text that said I'm here. We both looked around and don't see anyone in the park or parking lot. I texted back I didn't see him or his car. I knew what my brother's friend drove as he drove me home a few times. He messaged to go to the other side of the park but again it was cold and I definitely didn't dress for the cold. I told him to come to her car because I wasn't dressed for the cold with a little winky face. He said he didn't want anyone seeing us together so I texted back that I already bought her silence. After this slow texting cat and mouse game it felt weird but I couldn't understand why I felt off. He messaged me saying he had my gift and wanted to give it to me in private.

So I borrowed her jacket and went to the middle of the park where there's always a lit building with bathrooms and they were locked at this hour. But standing under the light I lost my distance vision to see in the dark far away. I could see a figure on the other side and an outline of a car. He started walking towards me and my heart was racing with fear and excitement. I decided to walk towards him too, getting close enough not to see his face but the moonlight on his car. My brother's friend drove a black sports car. This car was light grey or white and not even the same shape. It was like boxy, unlike any sports car I've seen. I stopped walking to stare at it, parked on the side of the road trying to make out

more details, when I saw a person in the car's driver's side. As he got closer, you could see his curly hair. My brother's friend did not have curly hair, nor was he pudgy. All I knew at this point, the guy waving at me wasn't my brother's friend. I turned point and ran back to the girl's car without even thinking. I had no idea what to think, but my body just reacted. I got in her car as I slammed the door. I caught a glimpse of the guy under the light standing there, and it was the creepy World of Warcraft guy. He lost a good bit of weight but still wasn't fit but his hair and face were unique enough that I was pretty certain it was him. My mind was rushing as the girl asked me what was going on.

I couldn't even process it. I was more heartbroken than scared. Typical teenager. I eventually got out what I needed to and told her I needed to go home now. She got out of there fast as I told her he followed us home a couple of months ago and left me creepy messages. She was obviously scared and checking behind her. After getting home, she asked me what was going on. She thought it was my brother's friend. I told her I didn't understand myself, but I was scared. In my mind, about a million different reasons came up to make me

believe that he hacked my brother's friend's character, and that was less painful. Anything that meant his friend liked me back, and it was anything but the obvious. Afterwards, I got inside and cried. I felt like my first breakup and it was all I could think about. Not my safety, but the fact that I had thought all this time my crush liked me back, but it was a creep instead. I ended up falling asleep on the couch and the next morning my mom woke me up all worried. I told her everything, bursting out into tears as I felt her body go tense and embrace. My mom called me down then called the police. I was scared that they would arrest my brother's friend or tell him about the exchange of texts between who I thought was him and I begged her not to.

The cops arrived in quite a quick time but took my phone and laptop. This time it was serious as it was considered attempted kidnapping. I just cried, mourning my relationship that I never really had with my crush. I told them everything. They asked multiple questions over and over too so it was tiring. I ended up missing school that day and the girl who drove me, well, she had her own elaborate story that mostly painted me as a liar and I had an ugly older secret boyfriend or something, just more fuel to the friendless fire. Well, after months, they found nothing on the guy and eventually we all put it in the back of our minds. My dad installed a security system and we went about our lives. I continued to play World

of Warcraft and other online games. I ended up going to prom with my brother's friend because his date cancelled on him and he had a free ticket. We had fun but far as I knew, cops never spoke with him. Eventually I graduated and went off to college, met a new guy who played WoW and dated him through college but we broke up after college as I didn't want kids. My mom died soon after and it all kind of sucked for a while causing a whole series of events making my baby brother's life trouble. I spent years trying to help him, have it blow up in my face and overall not speaking with my family all that much. I started streaming on Twitch for World of Warcraft and a few other games

to pay for extra stuff as I was entry-level job straight out of college, where I started learning makeup and really blossomed, realizing I was actually a lot more attractive than I gave myself credit for and got really into shape. This part of my life was full of let's not need stories itself, but one follower eventually caught my eye as he kept saying something that just made me feel uncomfortable. For about six months a guy would join randomly and talk about how smart he was, got into Yale and turned them down, his troubled life at home and how much he loved Salem, Massachusetts at this time of year, fall. But after I met my now boyfriend he stopped showing up. Part of me wanted to track the guy down but I just wanted to move on with my

life. I currently have a house with my boyfriend of 5 years, 4 cats and a dog. Our anniversary is Halloween as we met at a Halloween party so we kind of celebrate. My current boyfriend and I still play well on and off along with other games and it was a big reason he was attracted to me at a party when I was dressed as Zelda. He is physically my dream guy so it was an instant match. My boyfriend wanted to go to Salem, Massachusetts last year as he's never been and loved my fun stories of my mom and dad there. He took me there as a surprise thinking it would be fun. I had some fun remembering the good times of my mom but the lingering feeling of looking over my shoulder was there. My mom's psychic was still there too so I had to. She didn't recognize me unfortunately but was perceptive enough to say your fear of your past comes back and lingers heavily tonight. I probably looked anxious. All the memories came

back yesterday when a guy in our guild asked if he could meet up with us in Boston for Halloween as he lives there and would love to meet us. My blood ran cold as we didn't really know this guildie and my first thought was what if it's him? What if it's creepy World of Warcraft guy? My uncle was a sheriff's deputy and a search and rescue officer in the northwest United States back in the 90s. This experience is told from my uncle's view with a few explanations from myself. He asked that I keep the location hidden for anonymity purposes. So it was the summer of 1992. I was a couple of years into my job with the county sheriff's office. Summers were busy. A ton of people would go camping up here so naturally people would

occasionally get lost. Search and rescue was something I was voluntold to do as a rookie but I learned to love it. Helping people, especially in life or death situations was the reason I became a deputy. So search and rescue gave me that rush as my normal law enforcement duties were almost always mundane in my small town. We received a call from a lady in Arizona one Tuesday morning. She claimed her husband and young grandson had driven up here on Friday for a weekend camping trip. They hadn't returned Monday as scheduled and she was worried that they were lost. So we geared up in the search and rescue team consisting of myself, four other

deputies, 15 civilian volunteers, and two bloodhound S&R dogs. We made it to their camping site at around noon. Upon first inspection, everything in the camp seemed relatively normal. We made it to their camping site at around noon. Upon first inspection, everything in the camp seemed relatively normal. We searched their tent and found all their belongings sitting inside. Truck keys, wallet, map, water, food, all sat in the tent undisturbed. A small pot filled with water and now extra soggy macaroni noodles sat above a long dead fire pit. It was obvious they had left in a hurry. No tracks were visible to determine what direction they went, so we used a pair of socks we found inside the tent as a base smell for the hounds. They caught the scent and started leading us north of the campsite. As we walked, I looked at my partner and we both shook and lowered our heads.

North of their campsite was tens of thousands of acres of dense woods. We knew this was going to be a long search. As we searched, we used a grid pattern. A grid pattern is roughly an acre-sized square on a map that search and rescue used to determine a more precise direction that someone might have gone. The weirdest part was that the hounds would pick up on their scent in one square, but not any of the squares directly next to that square. This happened multiple times. It was as if someone plucked these guys up from their campsite and placed them in random sections of the forest repeatedly.

I began to get a very bad feeling after this. Something just didn't seem right about the situation. The team had covered roughly three miles of area as the day started to wind down. As dusk began to hit, it was just myself, my buddy Rob, and his hound Russ that stayed behind. The rest of the team made their way back home and would be back out tomorrow morning. I always stayed out overnight when a child was lost. I had a feeling of guilt being in a warm, safe bed while a child was cold and scared out in the wilderness. We eventually found a small clearing to make camp. By the time night

fell we had a fire blazing and our sleeping bags laid out in the grass. Rob and I went over the next day's search plan for a bit, ate dinner and eventually hunkered down for the evening. I laid on my sleeping bag and quickly dozed off. I woke up some time later. I sat up and looked around as my eyes began to adjust to the darkness. I felt like someone was watching me. The urge to look around to ensure no one was sneaking up on me was intense. I called out. Hello? Sam? Frank? Is that you? We're looking for you, are you there? I didn't hear any response so I lay down and tried to fall back asleep. Just a few minutes later I heard it. Somewhere to my left past the tree line came a loud wolf whistle. Uncle does the wolf whistle. A wolf whistle is the whistle you hear in movies or

TV when a man sees a very attractive woman. I sprang up out of my sleeping bag and began frantically scanning the tree line. At this point, Russ was up too. His ears were peeking and he was whining in the direction of the whistle. I called out again. Hello? I'm a deputy with the sheriff's office. Do you need help? Sam? Frank? I'm a deputy with the sheriff's office. Do you need help? Sam? Frank? I received no response. Rob was awake now and as I was explaining the situation,

the whistle came again. Uncle Whistle's but this time to our right. I drew my sidearm and flickered my flashlight as Rob took out his large buck knife and stood beside me. We scanned the tree line but we didn't see anything. We continued scanning the tree line and calling out for another 10 minutes before we decided to get the fire going again and wait until dawn to search the area. We didn't hear another whistle for the remainder of the morning. As dawn broke Rob and I searched the area. We found two pairs of boot prints in the fresh mud. We decided to head back home, get some rest, and return later in the day to continue searching. We were only about 200 feet from the clearing when two simultaneous wolf whistles came from behind us.

As I turned, I scanned the areas, scanned the trees. I didn't see anything at first, but as I looked further back towards the entrance to the clearing, I saw two silhouettes standing out in the trees. I didn't see anything at first, but as I looked further back towards the entrance to the clearing, I saw two silhouettes standing out in the open. We couldn't see any features or clothing as the morning sun was blinding us. I called out and started making my way towards them when they took off running. I was going to chase them when Rob stopped me. I was puzzled. I responded, Rob, what? We're looking for two people and there they are. Stop wasting time, man. He replied, stop and think for a second.

We're looking for one male adult and one male child. Unless that kid is the next Randy Brewer, there's no way he's that tall at age 11. That's when the realization hit me. He was right. Those two silhouettes were not the two people we were searching for. If I was alone or with another deputy, I would have chased them, but I wasn't willing to put a civilian volunteer in danger. We decided to just continue our way back to the trailhead and debrief the team

and sheriff on the events that transpired. The rest of the hike back to the trailhead was uneventful. We met up with the search team and the sheriff when we arrived as they were getting geared up to head back out. We received a few scoffs and eye rolls when retelling the events that occurred but the sheriff surprisingly believed our claims. He had one of the deputies carry an M16 for the remainder of the search. We continued our search for 13 days, never finding the two missing individuals. A few people claimed they heard wolf whistles while out searching but I never did again. This mission still haunts me. I've wondered all these years what happened to those two and if the two silhouettes had something to do with their disappearance. So I'm a 25 year old female from Eastern Europe. Just to give you a bit of background, I live in a country that is classed as a post-Soviet,

as we used to be part of the Soviet Union until it collapsed. Currently I'm in my final year of police training, me specifically training to become a detective in the murder slash organized crime cases. Throughout my training, I've seen a lot of gruesome things and cases, read a lot of past cases that are now solved, so to say, that I'm not breaking any law by talking about. Back in the 1990s, right after the Soviet Union had collapsed, small countries that were now independent were trying to set up their governments and law enforcement systems. People were mostly poor and organized crimes started to

arise. And by that, I mean a lot of mafia groups were forming in various bigger cities, as there was no effective law enforcement to stop them from doing crimes and the units that were formed were mostly corrupted and afraid of the mafia. Lucky me, I was born in one of the cities that had one of the strongest and influential mafia gangs in the whole country. The time from the 1990s until the early 2000s was like one big crime scene in the whole of the country. Daily shootings, corpse in rivers, robberies, carjackings, you name it, it was there. During my early training years in 2018 as part of my studies, I went to the police archive and I came across a few cases from the past that

will stay in my mind for some time. I'll tell you about one of them in my story. So the case story goes like this. In 1992, early autumn when it was still warm, a young man went suddenly missing. Police knew that he had some ties with a local mob but for a week they weren't able to find him or his body. Right then when the search was going on, three teenage boys aged 12 to 14 went fishing at a local river. To give you a better idea of the location, there was a main road, by that main road there was a school, and there was a trail leading through the school's playground right to the riverbank. It was a three minute walk from the playground to the riverbank, so the boys took their fishing gear, and as they were walking

through the playground, they saw him wave hello to the school's principal as he was outside talking to a groundskeeper. Boys being known for their mischievous behavior in school and just wanted to taunt the principal by waving at him, he ignored them and the boys went to the river. It was a warm evening. The sun was still up and it was around 5pm. The boys got ready to fish and cast their rods. 10 minutes passed and nothing. 15 minutes passed, nothing. One of the boys got impatient and decided to recast his rod. Just as he started to reel back, something heavy was on the line. He got excited

and started to shout that he got a bite. A big one. The other boys ran to him and excitedly waited for the huge fish to finally show, but instead as he was reeling their faces went ash pale. There was no fish on the line, instead the fishing hook got stuck on flesh, human flesh. The boy who was holding the fishing rod threw up and when he saw that he had caught a human head, yes, a rotten human head that still had flesh on it, the boy panicked. They didn't know what to do as there were no cell phones and the closest building with an adult was the school. The boys dropped their fishing gear and ran back to the school hoping to find the principal who they saw earlier. He was nowhere to be seen outside, so the boys ran into the school straight into his office. They were panicking and screaming to the principal to come and there was something

horrible in the river. The principal looked at them confused and refused to come as he thought that this was one of their pranks, but when he noticed how greenish pale and panicked they were, he said in a serious voice, this better not be one of your silly pranks. Come on, show me what's going on. They took him right where they dropped their fishing gear and showed him the head which still had this fish hook stuck in it. The principal stood in silence but there was a look of pure terror on his face. Quickly he took the boys back to his office and rang the police. The police came, of course the forensics team was called to the scene. Statements were taken from the boys back to his office and rang the police. The police came, of course, the forensics team was called to the scene. Statements were taken from the boys and the principal. It was the missing

man's head. The 22-year-old man who was killed by the mob because he owed them money, then cut into separate pieces and thrown into the river. Only his head and torso were recovered, and his family was gutted. They couldn't even bury his body properly. Me, now reading their statement after more than 20 years, it brought me to tears. How terrible it must have been for the boys to discover the man's head and for the man's family to hear that their son has been discovered in parts. I'm not a faint-hearted person or anything like that, as I chose my career to be a murder

detective, but some cases and witness statements who are crying their souls out asking to find the people who did that to their loved ones sometimes get me crying also. This just gave me motivation and strength to find and fight these horrible people. Stay safe, everyone. I'm currently a 19 year old girl. The timing of these events span the years of my female development. I want to mention how I grew up because it affects my perception of the story and how for about two years I essentially ignored it so apologies in advance. To start I live and lived at the time of these events in the low country of South Carolina. This story revolves mainly around my neighbor at the time and what I believe he did. At the time of these events I was around 12 to 16. I say this because the

incidents didn't happen one after the other but over time. Anyway, enough with the long-winded stuff but to put it plainly, I physically developed a lot faster than my peers and happened to be, unfortunately, well endowed in the chesticle department and wasn't completely unfortunate looking. That being said, I was not fully developed until I was about 16 in that area, however, being well above average, it didn't matter what was there and what hadn't installed yet, I had already been given enough. Outside of multiple middle school creeps trying to poke at me or others, however, I'm happy to say that outside of these incidents I was relatively ignored. Of course, I wasn't fully ignored though, or else I wouldn't have the need to write this. So with the explanation out of the way, I'd like to say my neighbor was a failure of a man and a pitiful alcoholic. Outside of being a cop from

Rhode Island, he was also a terrible husband who verbally abused his kids and wife. My family was never really on good terms with him but things escalated after we called him out for throwing his dog poop in our front yard. Following a lovely display of his minimal intelligence in our front yard as he tried to threaten my 100% disabled dad, our relationship was something similar to the family feud of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. This guy would openly talk about my family to our other neighbors in the cul-de-sac and put what he thought was funny pranks on my family. One such example being burned pallets of cured wood because he knew it made my mom choke.

Something else I should probably mention is that my mother had stage 4 metastatic cancer from about 2011 till her passing in 2019. And because of the chemotherapy she was undergoing at the time, her lung capacity had been drastically reduced. Outside of this, he liked to watch me. Being the naive 13-14 year old I was back then, I had no idea why he did it, only that my friends stopped coming over because it scared them and their parents. Over time, till I was about 15, his continual watching gradually wore me out. I stopped wearing anything tight-fitting and rarely would go outside unless I was with my sister, who was my fraternal twin, or a separate close friend of ours. It was only then that I'd notice specific things happening

only around me. The first of the odd stuff was when I would go outside on my back porch to sit and talk with my dad for hours on end and would get flashed and blinded by a flashlight being shown at me from my neighbor's bathroom window which had clear access to our patio. It got to the point that my mom even sewed curtains to put up around the patio. The last thing I can remember this happening was when I was taking the trash out one night and I was blinded from the right side coming from the direction of his house, directly following the sound of footsteps. A following incident that happened was the neighbor opening our gate closet to his house and letting our dogs loose. It took an hour to notice and I was thankful only my bigger dog got out. I remember seeing her at the opening of the cul-de-sac and

just freaking out because she was still a bit of a puppy and was brindle running around in the dark. This could have been a mistake on our part granted but we hadn't used that gate for a week at that point so it was highly unlikely. The last incident was by far the worst. It was the opening night of the new Star Wars movie in 2015. My dad and I had just dropped off my brother and his girlfriend at the theater. When we had gotten back my dad had gone upstairs to work on a model kit with my mom and he asked me if I could bring my mom a soda. So I did as was told and headed down the stairs to stop by another one of my dogs at the time. She was a half blind old American Eskimo barking her head off at the door. In the moment I remember almost mindlessly looking at the door only to

freeze when I noticed the jiggling handle. Very quietly I remember walking to the door just as it stops. In hindsight what I did next could have really turned to bite me in the butt but my 14 year old wee brain convinced me that taking out our bowie knife we used for gardening and walking out the front door, waving it around was a good idea. Not hearing or seeing anything I turned around and asked my dad to come down and quietly told him what happened in an attempt to not stress my mom. My dad appreciated the thought but ended up telling her anyway and for the rest of the night my dad pretty much watched the door like a hawk. This was the last of the incidents but it didn't really hit me until after my mom passed how creepy my neighbor was.

Though I'm sure my dad telling me that he would talk about me in a perverse way didn't help me dealing with that to be honest. In all honesty, I know the story isn't exactly scary, more so than it is just troubling, but dealing with the side effects of being harassed for a good four years or so while being regularly harassed as well had been interesting and irritating at the same time. I just hope he has a very inconvenient lifestyle with a bunch of little bad things happening to him that he can't do anything about. Thanks for reading. I live in a small town in South Africa. Near my town there's a large patch of woods and since the outbreak of the virus I haven't been in the woods for a long time, until yesterday. So my friend called me to ask me if I wanted to join him and a few of my mates to play a game of paintball in the woods and obviously I was keen. I got my paintball gear and gun and headed off to my mate's place. There was six of us, Chase, Liam, Matt, Joey, Steven and obviously me.

We headed off to the woods but made a few stops to fill up on petrol and get some gas for the paintball guns. When we finally got to the woods we parked the cars, got into our gear and ventured out into the forest to find the perfect spot to paintball. Eventually we got deep enough into an area with sufficient cover and space to play a good game of capture the flag. We played a couple of games and since it was winter it got dark really quickly but we planned for this and brought our flashlights and decided to play a couple of night games which is extremely hard especially in the forest we were in. During one match Joey and I decided to sit out because we were both tired and just needed a quick

breather and the others continued to play from a significantly good distance away from us. While we were chilling I was rolling up a joint and Joey went to go take a pee a couple of meters away from me. While I was busy rolling I had the flashlight pointing towards myself since there was no other light to allow me to see what I was doing and around me. It was completely dark, I couldn't even see two meters ahead of myself because of how dark it was. Suddenly I heard footsteps coming my way but my thought it was Joey and I soon realized I couldn't see any light from his flashlight so now I was more vigilant but still relaxed thinking he was trying to play a prank on me or something. But the footsteps stopped a few meters away from me so I lifted my flashlight and pointed it in the direction where I heard the footsteps and scanned the area but just saw bushes and trees and thought that it might be Joey hiding in the bushes or behind a tree waiting to give me a jump scare.

Then I heard footsteps coming in the opposite direction and when I looked I could see it was Joey because he was holding his flashlight. That's when I stopped what I was doing and picked up my flashlight and paintball gun and when Joey reached me I whispered, Bro, I think there's someone over there. And Joey obviously didn't believe me and just said to stop being a baby but he soon regretted saying that because I decided to do one last scan of where I heard the footsteps and to my horror I saw someone peeking and staring right at me from behind a tree probably 10 or 11 meters away from us. I just shouted and when Joey heard me say this he looked at me and then where the man looked and

instantly jumped up picking up his paintball gun also. We stared at each other for at least two minutes but it felt like forever until he stepped out from behind the tree. He was a large man, at least six foot, was honestly filthy like he hasn't taken a bath in years. He was wearing baggy ripped up jeans, just an old dirty zipped up bomber jacket plus we could see that he was on something or he was just crazy and he was holding something behind his back. He finally said, what are you doing out here when it's so dark? We couldn't even answer him because of the shock we were in. Joey stuttered with fear in his voice. We were just leaving.

But the man nodded his head in disagreement and said, No you're not. Your friends are still playing the game. I felt a shiver down my spine. How about we play a game on our own while we wait for your friends? And this is when he finally showed us what he was hiding behind his back. A large machete. And that's when I knew we had to get out of there. I aimed my paintball gun at him in the toughest way I could muster up and I told him, leave now or I'll shoot. Even though I only had about 6 or 7 paintballs loaded, Joey did the exact same thing by aiming his gun at the man,

even though he had no paintballs in his gun, but he didn't even flinch, but did something that honestly made my skin crawl. He just smiled and said, the game starts now. And suddenly he rushed at us so I told Joey to run while I fired my last bullets at him and luckily I shot him in the head which caused him to fall so that that was our last chance to book it and link up with our other friends. As soon as we started running I heard footsteps again and he actually was gaining on us. We could barely see but we couldn't slow down because we knew what would happen if we did so we just carried on sprinting our hearts out until we heard other paintball guns being fired so we knew we were close. Joey started shouting to get everyone's

attention and all of a sudden I heard a huge thud. Joey tripped and twisted his ankle. I turned around to help him but when I did I could see the man running full sprint towards us. In that moment I thought it was going to be the end for us but our friends heard our screams for help and rushed to us and when they saw the man they all just started firing at him. He knew he wasn't going to be able to take us all and he decided to turn around and disappear into the woods. We helped Joey up, rushed to get our stuff and rushed to the cars. When we got to my friend's place, we helped Joey treat his ankle and I proceeded to tell my friends everything that

happened and they were wildly creeped out even in disbelief. It's safe to say that the next time I'm in 8th grade, I'm 27 now, my friend Kayla and I were giddy with excitement, messing around and getting dressed up in our costumes. I'm not even going to say what we were for Halloween, it's just too cringy. But anyway, this night was a special night for us girls because this was going to be the last year for us to go trick-or-treating. We thought that once we became freshmen in high school, trick-or-treating would be too childish for the new

cool high school students to be participating in. so we were going all out, especially with the amount of candy, grabbing pillowcases that we planned to fill entirely. We practically skipped out my front door ready to begin, in our opinion the greatest night and holiday of the year. We didn't waste any time, going door to door, street after street, that we didn't even realize that hours had passed. Back during this time, the trick-or-treating time was a heck of a lot longer than the two to three hours it is now. Back then it just ended when the kids decided to end it. I can remember one year my sister Kayla and I stayed out to almost 11pm. Most of the houses would have already stopped answering their doors but there was always a few houses still willing to pass out candy. I didn't even think to look at the time until I noticed that

there was less and less kids each street that we came to. So when I looked at my phone I said to Kayla, geez it's 9.30 we should probably get back to the house. We can watch a movie and stuff ourselves with this. Proudly lifting up my pillowcase I was at least more than halfway full. We slowly started walking back towards my house and as we were passing each street we noticed how eerily quiet it had gotten seemingly out of nowhere. People were turning off their porch lights signaling that they were not going to be passing out any more candy. Now I was a paranoid person back then and I'm still a paranoid person to this day, probably even more so now. So when I got that feeling, that chill that runs up your back and your shoulders tense up, something is off I thought to myself.

I look side to side and get an urge to look behind me. I slowly turn my head around looking over my shoulder and what I saw nearly made me pee myself. About four houses down from us was Michael Myers, or someone dressed as Michael Myers I should say who was slowly walking behind us. But to me at the time it might as well have been the real Michael Myers. He stopped, staring back at me, not moving any muscle, just staring. Now this would be creepy to anyone but this, this was literally my worst nightmare. My number one childhood fear just so happened to be Michael Myers. A little backstory, when I was about four, my mom was busy cleaning the kitchen as I sat in the living room playing with my toys

with the TV going in the background. The creepy music had caught my attention so I started glancing up at the movie while playing with my toys. I grew less and less interested in my toys and had my eyes glued to the TV already starting to grow nervous and scared by just the music alone. You know the part in the movie where Michael Myers pops out of the closet grabbing a hold of the victim and lifting him up in the air against the wall as his victim desperately tries to break free but is paralyzed with fear and then Michael pulls back the knife and brutally stabs the guy to the wall, pinning him in the wall and in the air. Well, my four-year-old self had never seen something so gruesome and altogether just absolutely terrifying and at that age I believed it was real. In my four-year-old mind this was really happening to someone. My eyes bulged out of my head, instantly breaking out into tears, literally screaming my head off. His mask, the brutality, seeing someone being stabbed in this heinous murder.

It blew my mind and all at once I felt so anxious, scared, sad, just panicking. My mom comes rushing over frantically trying to figure out what's wrong scooping me up in her arms and I was still screaming and pointed at the TV. By then the movie continued to the part where Michael Myers is dressed up with the sheet over his body with the glasses on over the sheet that he stole off of the body of the victim, obviously pretending to be the guy he just murdered. The sheet freaked me out even more than Michael's mask. Watching the mask killer walk slowly, closer and closer up behind the girl on the phone, and I clung to my mom sobbing and burying my face into her shoulder. She looked over at the TV

saying, oh my god, how did this get on? It's okay, it's okay, it's okay honey, you're okay. Trying to soothe me as she turned the channel off. I cried for at least an hour or more, just absolutely traumatized. After that incident, I couldn't sleep at all, especially alone in my bed and absolutely could not stand the dark. I knocked on my parents' bedroom door for months, begging them to let me sleep in their bed with them or, I swear, in my head I was convinced he was going to come down the dark hallway, silently creeping into my room and stab me in my sleep. I did not get over my fear of Michael Myers until I was in my early twenties, so being in eighth grade walking down a dark street, no one around besides just Kay and I, and seeing my absolute worst nightmare walking slowly behind us,

I swear I thought I was going to pass out. I looked over at Kayla, my voice trembling, and whispered, there's somebody following us. He's dressed as Michael Myers about four houses down. Take the pace, but do not start running. Kayla turned slowly over her shoulder and snapped her head back forward. What? That's so creepy. We got two blocks to go. We'll see if he follows us when we turn. I nod, a million thoughts going through my head.

Maybe I'm overreacting. It is Halloween after all, but why is he alone? And to follow two young girls? When we get to my street, I glance behind me and I swear my heart stopped in that moment. He wasn't behind us anymore. I panic, darting my eyes all around me. Oh my god, where did he go? He's gone. Kayla turns around, stopping in her tracks, squinting her eyes, trying to scan the area. Maybe he turned down the street.

He probably wasn't even following us to begin with. She said as she spun back around, heading down the street again. And then I spotted him. He stepped out from behind a tree but now he was only two houses away. He started walking towards us, gaining on us as I stood there frozen in fear. I screamed go. Kayla whipped around. Oh my god, we streaked. As we started sprinting the rest of the way. But then I feel my legs start to wobble. God, no, this can't be real, it can't be. I thought to myself, somewhat in denial that this was actually happening.

Could this really be happening? In that moment, I knew I had one goal and that was to make it through my front door. We sprint up my driveway, both of us practically crashed into my front door, frantically turning the doorknob and then my heart dropped. The door was locked. I'm pounding and pounding on the door, screaming for somebody to please hurry and open the door. I look behind me and there he is, stepping onto the driveway still heading straight for us. Where is everybody? Please mom help us! I scream and glance back behind me. And he's gone. I went silent, listening intently for any noise when all of a sudden he slowly came around the

side of the house just a few feet away. This means he walked from the left side of the house through my backyard and came around the right side of the house. I screamed while frantically falling through the door. My mom looked at us like we were insane and I yelled, close the door. Kayla slammed it shut and looked out the window. Where is he? Where did he go? Kayla said running to look out the front living room windows. Who are you talking about? My mom said, looking at me completely confused. Someone was following us and it was someone dressed as Michael Myers. No, don't, I yelled as my mom opened the door and stepped outside, peering around the front

yard. She stepped out to the driveway. I nervously watched out the screen door. She turned and yelled back to me. Well, there's no one now. It must have just been someone messing with you. The thought did cross my mind. It is Halloween after all, but to think a grown man, I'm assuming, is walking around alone, messing with two young girls, stalking them for so long is just extremely unnerving. I have to say, since I'm older now and have seen the movies at least a million times, that stalker guy was 100% spot on with exactly how Michael is in the movies. The walking slowly but gaining on us so fast at the same time, disappearing and popping up out of nowhere.

Like I said, it may as well have been the real Michael Myers. But also the fact that this scenario was my number one childhood fear that I've had multiple nightmares about and even though I'm much older now reminiscing that night still gives me chills to this day. It's just I can't help but wonder if it really was actually a prank gone too far or if that person had more sinister intentions in store for us. There was an annual festival in my city. I decided to go with my twin friends of mine. Their dad, two male friends I knew, and two other male friends who came along as well.

It was a fun evening except for the two guys I didn't know. They were sort of friends with the twins. It's a long time ago so I don't remember how they knew each other. I was wearing a long dark blue dress. All throughout the evening these guys gave me a bad feeling to be around. I hung around the twins and the two guys I knew to avoid them. These dudes asked for my Facebook at one point and because I have a little bit of a difficult name to spell they couldn't find me, fortunately. They apparently talked about me because my dress was mentioned as a reference and that started to creep me out. They were sort of whispering to each other and that's something that stood out of the conversation. I knew I definitely did not want to be alone with any of them.

So I avoid these creeps as best I can and it works. I didn't know the twin girls were kind of into them. I wasn't a fan of that since they gave me such a bad vibe. At one point though one of the twins went to get something to eat alone with one of the dudes. I didn't trust it but it also wasn't my decision. They came back a little while later with food and that was the end of the night. Everyone got home safely and had a good time. A few weeks later my suspicions about the shady dudes were confirmed to be true. It came out that the girl who was alone with one of them to get food had apparently been indecently assaulted. It's absolutely terrible that it happened to her, but I'm just grateful that I listened to my gut and stayed away from them. To be continued... 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 and get and receive feedback from the community and maybe even

hear your story featured on the next video. And join my discord to interact with me and other listeners directly. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast where you can hear all these stories in long compilation form and save huge on data, located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the bio. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you again soon. We'll be right back. 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.

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