The Lets Read Podcast - 131: CRAZY INSTAGRAM STALKERS | 22 True Scary Horror Stories | EP 119

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

Special thanks to "Odd Trails" for their guest narration on today's episode! Check them out here or wherever your listen to podcasts -- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/odd-trails/id1598762965 This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Instagram Stalkers, Yakuza Gang Members & Roadside Traps... HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsReadCreepy ♫ Background Music & Audio Remastering: Simon de Beer https://www.instagram.com/simon_db98/ PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead Update Description

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If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Before we begin, I just want to give a big thanks to Brandon Lanier for guest narrating on today's episode. You can check out his podcast, Odd Trails, where he and Andrew Tate tell chilling tales of true encounters with the paranormal. I think it'll be right up your alley. Enjoy. so so Juzo Itami was a Japanese film director born in the city of Kyoto on May 15th, 1933. From an early age, Juzo's profound intelligence and natural talent was obvious to the adults around him, and towards the end of World War II, educational authorities local to Kyoto selected him as a designated prodigy.

This meant he was transferred to the Tokubetsu Kagaku Gakkyo, part of a government program to foster academic genius. The goal of this class was to produce scientists capable of inventing and engineering superweapons that would be used to defeat the allied powers. Essentially, the Japanese government wished to create a class of evil geniuses, and Juzo was one of them. But thankfully, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the war to an end, and the special scientific education classes were eventually dissolved in March of 1947. Yet as he grew older, Juzuso found himself growing less and less interested in science and increasingly drawn to the medium of cinema. He started his career as an actor in the 1960s Ginza no Dora Neko, but quickly found himself much more comfortable behind the camera,

going on to direct the 1984 hit comedy The Funeral. His movies became something of a phenomenon in the late 20th century Japan and were lauded as being funny and insightful while remaining delightfully subtle. They often told stories that were central to the Japanese character, culture, and way of thinking, such as 1985's Tampopo, which tells the tale of a woman who set out to make the perfect noodle. But after establishing himself as Japan's premier comedic film producer, Juzo turned his attention to more serious subject matter. In 1992, Juzo held a mirror up to Japanese society when he made the film Minbo, a satire which poked fun at the traditional Japanese crime families known collectively as the Yakuza. The name Yakuza comes from a traditional Japanese card game known as Oicho Kabu.

It is a game where the aim is to draw three cards which add to a total score of nine. The rules of the game are fairly complex, but the worst possible three cards to draw are 8, 9, and 3, pronounced yakuza in Japanese. The implication being that if you're in a situation where you're dealing with the yakuza, you're in the worst situation possible. In the film Minbo, Juza wrote the yakuza as being big dumb bullies with a ridiculous dress sense and a perverse set of morals. A set of morals which they believe made them as appearing as chivalrous samurai but actually made them look archaic and foolish. The film culminates in the Yakuza family in question being completely outwitted by a timid but intelligent female attorney, played by Juzo's wife, Nobuko Miyamoto. The film made a national laughing stock of the much feared Yakuza,

and sparked off something of a judicial revolution in which the police stepped up their prosecutions of Yakuza members, while media outlets began to refer to them only as Boryokudan, a disrespectful term meaning violent gangs. Naturally, Yakuza clans all over Japan were thoroughly outraged by the humiliating depiction of them, and some even sought direct revenge against Juzo. Then, on May 22nd, 1992, less than a week after the film's initial release in theaters, Juzo was accosted by several members of the Gotogumi, a Shizuoka-based Yakuza clan who demanded he apologize for the offense that he'd caused. However, instead of groveling, Juzo was defiant in the face of their threats and refused to be intimidated. The Yakuza then attacked, beating him senseless before slashing

his face and shoulder with a traditional Japanese sword known as the Wakizashi, one that is similar in design but not nearly as big as a katana, used for close quarters fighting, to behead a defeated opponent, and sometimes to commit seppuku, a form of ritually ending your own life. The brutal attack left Juzo with a large scar on his left cheek, one that would become a symbol of his rebellious defiance, and made the director instantly recognizable when in public as the attack quickly became national news. As you might expect, the attack didn't silence Juzo, and he went on to become a hugely vocal critic of the Yakuza's flagrant disrespect for Japanese laws and society.

The attack on him by the Gotogumi only caused the Japanese government and police to intensify their crackdown on the Yakuza, and a series of high-profile raids saw several hundred Yakuza arrested and charged with offenses ranging from murder and extortion to tax evasion. For the next five years, Juzo was a thorn in the Yakuza's side, and it reached the point where several rival Yakuza families actually put their differences aside and met to discuss a permanent solution to the problematic celebrity nemesis. Then, on December 20th, 1997, the then 64-year-old director was found dead just outside of his home, after apparently jumping off of an eight-story roof in what was deemed to be a tragic event of him taking his own life. A popular Japanese celebrity gossip magazine had recently published an article alleging that Juzo was having a secretive

affair with a much younger actress with whom he had worked with on several occasions. Juzo denied the accusations in his note that he had left and wrote that he would prove his innocence in a grand display of protest by taking his own life. This was viewed by some as highly suspicious and although Japanese homicide detectives puzzled over the circumstances, it wasn't entirely unlike Juzo to react so passionately to a perceived injustice. However, in an interesting turn of events, Juzo's wife, Nabuko Miyamoto, was subsequently placed under police protection, apparently to keep her safe from the Yakuza. But just why should she require police protection after her husband taking her own life was a mystery that would only be solved after an investigation by an American journalist, Jake Adelstein.

Adelstein grew up in Columbia, Missouri, but moved to Japan at the tender age of 19 to study Japanese literature at Sophia University, one of the country's top private colleges. In 1993, Adelstein became the first non-Japanese staff writer at the Yamiuri Shinbun newspaper, where he worked for 12 years. After leaving the Yamiuri, Adelstein published a series of articles on how Yakuza boss Tademasa Goto made a deal with the FBI to inform on Yakuza incursions into the US in exchange for a liver transplant at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2019, Adelstein published a memoir about his career as a reporter in Japan, Tokyo Vice, in which he accused Goto of threatening to kill him

over the story. It was a shocking expose of just how deep the Yakuza's influence still ran in Japanese society, and one part of the memoir proved to be a terrifying insight into just how much they hated director Juzo Itami. An anonymous source told Adelstein that Tadimasa Goto, the same Yakuza boss who had ordered the scarring attack on Juzo in 1992, had visited him on the day of him apparently taking his life and ordered him to the roof of the building at gunpoint. He then gave Juzo a choice, jump from the eight-story building and give himself a slim chance of survival, or receive a bullet to the brain, which he most definitely would not recover from. According to the source, Juzo chose the former, and leapt from the roof, unfortunately dying as

a result of his injuries. In the aftermath, the Goto Gumi clan faked the note from Juzo, then leaked a false rumor to Japanese tabloids detailing the alleged affair that was referenced in the bogus note. It was the perfect murder, as there appeared to be no foul play whatsoever and no proof that Juzo had been forced from the rooftop as opposed to jumping voluntarily. As a result, no one has ever been charged with his murder, and the Goto Gumi one has ever been charged with his murder, and the Goto Gumi clan has apparently gotten away with the murder of one of their greatest nemesis. Not by being brutal enough to actually murder him, but by being devious enough to make him

end his own life. Junko Furuta was born in Misato Saitama Prefecture on January 18th, 1971. She lived at home with her parents and two brothers, one elder and one younger, and could often be found watching her favorite drama series, Tonbo, whenever she wasn't studying. During her teenage years, she attended Yoshio Minami High School and had a part-time job during after-school hours at a plastic molding factory. It was this job that helped her gain enough experience to be offered a job at an electronics retailer where she planned on working after she graduated high school. She was also offered the job because of her almost flawless academic performance as she had extremely high grades and very infrequent absences. She also saved up money from her part-time job so that she could go on a post-graduation celebration trip around the

Japanese home islands. But Junko would never get to go on this trip, as she was about to have a hellish encounter with members of the Japanese criminal organization known as the Yakuza. On November 25th, 1988, a teenage boy named Hiroshi Miyano, joined by his friend Nobuharo Minato, was wandering around his hometown village of Musato with mischief on his mind. It was then that they spotted Junko riding her bike home after finishing her shift at the plastic molding factory. Together they hatched a devious scheme. Nobuharu suddenly gave chase and kicked Junko off her bike before being chased away by Hiroshi, who acted the good Samaritan and offered to walk her home in safety. The whole thing was a ruse designed to win her trust and it worked like a charm. Junko accepted the offer and followed Hiroshi, who said he knew a shortcut to the neighborhood she lived in. But unbeknownst to her, Hiroshi was leading her to a nearby warehouse, and once he led her inside,

he told her he was a member of one of the world's most feared criminal organizations, the Yakuza. Hiroshi then told Junko that if she did not do everything she was told, he would have her killed. He then indecently assaulted her in the warehouse, then again a nearby hotel, with Junko so terrified that she dared not raise a peep to anyone she saw as they walked between the two places. While they were at the hotel, Hiroshi called his friends from the telephone there, bragging to them that he had procured his own personal plaything. The group of friends had a history of kidnapping girls and carnally attacking them, so his friends pleaded with him to share his new prize.

Sickeningly, Hiroshi agreed. Just before 3 AM the following morning, Hiroshi forced Junko to follow him to a local park, where three of his friends were waiting for them. The boys went through Junko's belongings, finding that her home address was written on one of her notebooks. Now they had the ultimate leverage over her, claiming that if she disobeyed or tried to escape, a team of Yakuza hitmen would murder her mother, father, and brothers in the family home. Junko was then taken to an empty house owned by Nobuharu's parents,

where each of the boys took turns beating and defiling her. Junko believed every word of the boys' threats and took each beating without complaint, purely out of love for her family who by this point were becoming extremely concerned about her absence. On November 27th, Junko's parents contacted the police regarding her disappearance. Word went around town that she was missing, word that soon reached the boys who'd kidnapped her. They argued over letting her go or killing her and disposing of her body, until one of the boys came up with an appalling, shrewd plan. With the same threats of having her family killed, they made Junko call her parents by phone, telling them that she had run away, but was safe with friends and that the police should stop investigating her whereabouts.

Whenever Nobuharu's parents came over to check on their son, Hiroshi forced Junko to act like his girlfriend, but since Nobuharu's parents were well aware of Hiroshi's status as a Yakuza and were terrified of him, it wasn't a pretense he had to keep up for long. Nobuharu's brother also seemed to be aware that Junko was being held captive and did absolutely nothing about it out of fear of any Yakuza reprisal. Junko was kept as a Yakuza prisoner for over 40 days and nights and over the course of this period, she was beaten, tortured, and indecently assaulted by more than 100 other Yakuza members that Hiroshi had invited over. They starved her, hung her from the

ceiling, and used her as a human punching bag. They dropped barbells onto her stomach, forced her to eat live cockroaches and drink her own urine. She was also forced to dance and sing the songs while being beaten before being forced to commit numerous lewd acts. On some occasions, she was cut open and objects were inserted into the wounds, some of which included a lit lightbulb and ignited fireworks. Junko was burned with cigarettes and lighters and hot wax was dripped onto her eyelids to seal them shut. The boys also tore off her left nipple with pliers and pierced her breasts with sewing needles. Whenever she passed out from the pain, the boys dunked her head in a bucket of cold water that kept her at the ready, keeping her awake so that the torture could continue. By the end of the forty days, Junko had been beaten so hard and for so long that her face

was almost completely unrecognizable, and as a result of the repeated violations, she had become pregnant. 16 days into Junko's ordeal, Hiroshi invited a boy named Koichi Ihara around to the house. Koichi postured as a tough, young, prospective Yakuza but was actually horrified by what he saw, how Junko was being treated. When it was his turn to violate her, Koichi found that he didn't have it in him to commit such an atrocious act. He was mocked by the other boys, who bullied him into going through with it, questioning his masculinity and telling him that if he didn't assault her, that he would be kept prisoner too, doomed to suffer similar treatment.

Traumatized by what he'd seen, and wracked with guilt over the things he'd done, Koichi confessed his crimes to his brother as soon as he arrived back at his home. The police were soon contacted, and two officers were dispatched to the house where Junko was being kept prisoner. When they arrived at the address, Hiroshi and Nobuharu played dumb, acting outraged that such an accusation had been made. They even had the gall to invite the officers inside to take a look around, calling their bluff in a way that seems absolutely outrageous in retrospect. To the police officers, the invitation was all the proof they needed to believe that the two boys were telling the truth and that there were no crimes being committed inside the house. If they had bothered to search, Junko would still be alive today,

as it is widely accepted that despite some serious mental trauma, she would have recovered from the wounds inflicted on her and gone on to live something of a relatively normal life. But as the month of December rolled around, Junko actually found the courage to sneak downstairs to the telephone to call the police. But to her horror, Hiroshi discovered her trying to summon help, smacking her away from the phone and slamming the handset down into the receiver. When the police dispatcher called back, Hiroshi apologized, informed them that the call was an accident, and told the police not to worry. Hiroshi was furious that Junko had attempted to contact the police and savagely beat her as punishment for the perceived offense. At one point during this particularly savage assault,

Hiroshi doused Junko's leg with lighter fluid and set them on fire. Junko was in so much pain that she actually started having a seizure, but the boys believed she was faking it to gain sympathy and set her legs on fire all over again. It was about this point in her captivity that Junko reportedly asked her captors to kill her so that her suffering might be over with, but they mocked her for this request and refused, thinking of more imaginative ways to kill her so that her suffering might be over with, but they mocked her for this request and refused, thinking of more imaginative ways to torture her, such as forcing her to sleep outside at night when temperatures would dip below zero. Somehow, despite being on the verge of death, Junko didn't die of hypothermia, but by the time the torture got that severe,

it was having a catastrophic effect on her body. Weeks of abuse had caused Junko to lose control of her bladder and bowels, but she was only beaten harder when she urinated on the floor. She was also rendered incapable of drinking water or consuming food, and would vomit profusely after each attempt. But again, instead of slowing down or attempting medical aid, Hiroshi and his minions only beat her harder for making a mess. Such sustained beatings and torture also had a horrific effect on her personal appearance too.

Her face became so swollen that she barely resembled a human being anymore, and her body was so crippled and infected from untreated wounds that she started giving off a sickly rotting scent that caused Hiroshi and his friends to lose any kind of carnal interest in her. On January 4th, 1989, after a humiliating loss during a game of Mahjong, Hiroshi hurried to take his frustrations out on Junko. Taking place over the course of two hours, this was perhaps the most brutal, sustained, and cruel beating that she had ever been subjected to, and the details are honestly not worth going into. Given how vile the previous assaults on Junko were, you can imagine how despicable this last one was, and as a result, Junko finally succumbed to her wounds and died later that day. When the boys discovered that she was dead, they wrapped her body in bedsheets and stuffed what remained of her into a travel bag. They then shoved her body into a 55-gallon drum and poured wet concrete into it, driving

the drum out into a suburb of Tokyo before dumping it in a secluded area. A few weeks later, on January 23rd, Hiroshi was visited by Japanese police officers and arrested, but as it turns out, this was for an assault on a different girl than Junko, one that had occurred back in December of the previous year. The officers then bluffed Hiroshi into thinking that they knew he had committed more serious crimes and, out of the blue, he suddenly confessed the killing of Junko and told them where they could find her body. Horrified by the impromptu confession, the police drove out to the secluded spot that Hiroshi had described and found the steel drum that contained Junko's body. Her hands were so badly burned that she couldn't be identified by her fingerprints.

So many of her teeth had been knocked out that police initially didn't think she could be identified by her dental records, but a partial match turned out to be enough to confirm that the body did in fact belong to the missing Junko Furuta. In light of the fact that they were juveniles at the time of the offense, the identities of all those confirmed were kept a closely guarded secret by the Japanese courts. However, outraged by the severity of the crime, journalists worked to uncover their names and subsequently published them in national newspapers. Their reasoning was that no one who could commit such horrific acts of carnal violence deserved to remain anonymous, and that they should be named in shame for the horrendous

things they'd done. Not only did Hiroshi Miyano deny that he'd actually murdered Junko, only pleading guilty to the crime of committing bodily injury that resulted in death, but when he finally was convicted of murder in July of 1990, he actually appealed the sentence. Appalled by such a juvenile and cowardly display from Hiroshi, Tokyo High Court Judge Ryuichi Yanase not only denied the appeal, but gave Hiroshi an additional three years on top of his original 17, publicly scolding him for his apparent lack of remorse. During Hiroshi's trial, the High Court judge commented that exceptionally grave and atrocious violence had been inflicted upon the victim and that Junko Furuta had been

murdered so brutally that her soul must be wandering in torment. Upon hearing the details of the brutal assault and torture that ended her life, a spectator in the gallery actually passed out from shock. Junko's mother also reportedly had a complete mental breakdown when she learned of her daughter's treatment, which required intense psychiatric treatment to overcome. Hiroshi's parents were so ashamed by the whole ordeal that they sold their home and donated the fee of almost half a million US dollars to Junko's mother and father. Junko's funeral was held on April 2nd, 1989. One of her friends read a memorial piece that stated, Jun-chan, welcome back. I have never dreamed that we would see you again in this way.

You must have been in so much pain. There must have been so much suffering. The traditional coat we all made for the school festival looked really good on you. We will never forget you. I have heard that the headmaster has presented you with a graduation certificate. So we graduate together. All of us.

Jun-chan, there is no more pain for you now no more suffering please rest in peace the electronics retailer that was due to give junco a job upon graduation presented her parents with the uniform that she would have worn during her employment long with their sincere condolences they placed the uniform in her casket, saying it's what she would have wanted given how proud she was that she'd secured such a prestigious position at such a young age. What happened to Junko is something that will shake all those that hear it to their core. Yet what happened to her is something that the Yakuza subject young women to far more regularly than will ever be publicized. Yet the Yakuza are still romanticized in a similar way how the Italian-American mob had

been idealized in the past. We must be cautious not to put criminal organizations on a pedestal, and we must be quick to remember that it might have been our own sisters or daughters that were subjected to such horrendous treatment by a man who saw Junko as little more than an object that he toyed with, then disposed of. May she and all other victims of wanton criminal violence obtain the peace and death that was denied to them in life. We've all seen enough gangster movies to know that when a certain person breaks the rules of a criminal organization, there is a price to pay. This might come in the form of being whacked, as the Italian mafia of the east coast put it, but it may also involve some kind of monetary restitution. Paying a little extra to a capo or mob boss as a way of avoiding the other form of punishment mentioned.

But in Japan, the Yakuza clans have another method of atoning for certain transgressions, what is known as Yubitsumi. Yubitsumi can literally be translated to finger shortening in English and is the act of amputating one's little finger. It is a Japanese ritual undertaken by those who wish to apologize for offenses to one another, just as much a method of punishment as a way to show sincere guilt and remorse to an offended party. It is an ancient and storied ritual of atonement, but these days, it is primarily performed by the Japanese criminal groups known collectively as the Yakuza, one of the world's most infamous mafia groups. The act of Yubitsumi is believed to have originated

with a group known as the Bakuto. Commonly acknowledged to be the predecessors of the modern Yakuza, Bakuto plied their trade in towns and highways in feudal Japan, playing traditional dice games such as Hanafuda. They were considered social outcasts, living outside the laws and norms of society, but were often hired by local governments to gamble with laborers, winning back workers' earnings in exchange for a percentage. If a person was considered unable to pay off a gambling debt, yubitsume was sometimes considered an alternative form of repayment, a message to other debtors to pay back the money they owed, lest they suffer a similar fate. But what made the little finger so significant? The answer is quite simple. In Japanese swordsmanship, known as kendo in Japanese, the little finger's grip is the tightest on the hilt. Therefore, someone who had lost their little finger was unable to grip their sword

properly, making them much easier to defeat in a stand-up fight and in turn, making them something of a burden, much more dependent on the protection of others. On top of being intensely painful, the act would mean a lasting humiliation for those that endured it. It was not just a temporary means of punishment, it was something that would affect a person for the rest of their lives. In order to perform Yubitsume, a person lays down on a small clean cloth and lays their left hand onto the cloth facing down. Then, using an extremely sharp knife, often a Japanese tanto, the person cuts off the section of his left little finger above the top knuckle on the finger or the tip of the finger. Then they wrap the severed portion in the cloth and submit the contents graciously to the godfather of this particular clan,

known as the Oyabun in Japanese. If a more grievous offense is committed, then the person moves on to the next joint of the finger to perform the ritual. Multiple transgressions might well mean cutting off portions of the right little finger too, if no more joints of the left finger remain. The practice of Yubitsume can also be very common among the Yakuza. Their strict hierarchical code means clan members are often found to have broken certain rules, and the Yakuza can be just as recognizable by the absence of sections of their little fingers as they are for the full body tattoos they sport under their well-pressed suits.

Only unlike the tattoos which are only inked in places that can be covered up by their clothing, thus essentially concealing their identities from those around them, the absence of their little finger can be extremely noticeable to those around them. And in recent years, since many Yakuza have sought to leave their various clans or at least disguise their membership of the organization. And so one Japanese doctor has found himself serving a rather dangerous clientele with very unusual product. 39-year-old Shintaro Hayashi is a prosthetics maker who built a career making

silicon body parts for patients with breast cancer or legs and arms for those injured in serious accidents. But a decade ago, he started to notice a change in the type of person that patronized his Tokyo-based company, Aiwagishi. He started to see a steady increase in men who were asking for custom-made prosthetic pinky fingers. Dr. Hayashi says that there are three main reasons that Yakuza visit his business. Some clan members are dragged into his office by girlfriends worried about their reputations. Some are former Yakuza who are eager to move up the corporate ladder but worried about the repercussions of their past being exposed. Others are lifelong Yakuza who are eager to move up the corporate ladder but worried about the repercussions of their past being exposed. Others are lifelong Yakuza who have no intention of escaping a life of crime but need to cover up their identity for some kind of sensitive family-based event

such as a wedding or a funeral. The doctor molds silicon prosthetic pinkies made to seamlessly mask the amputation, making for a smoother transition to the outside world. Priced at nearly $3,000 each, the fingers are carefully painted to match the exact skin color of the client. Former Yakuza members who make up 5% of Hayashi's business often keep several sets of fingers for different seasons, a light-skinned version for winter or a tanned look for summer. Hayashias also produce more than 300 prosthetic fingers and savors the positive transformation each one brings to the lives of those that wear them. Some Yakuza who have only been made to cut off a small section of their pinky finger

are able to hide their lack of appendage by making a permanent fist when in public. But after being forced to commit yubitsumi so many times, there comes a point when certain men can no longer hide their identities. The increasing demand for prosthetic pinkies coincides with an aggressive push to crack down on the yakuza. Gang member numbers have steadily declined since the anti-organized crime law went into effect in 1992, but there are still more than 70,000 gang members according to the National Police Agency. In recent years, police have clamped down on cash flows, gang activities, and past measures aimed at pressuring legitimate businesses to cut ties with the mob,

which as we have come to learn, has caused excessive levels of Yakuza violence in some areas of Japan. One ex-member of the Yamaguchi Gumi had to undergo Yubitsumi a total of four times during his 20-year career in the clan. On the first occasion, he was made to slice the joint of his pinky to atone for causing a bar fight in which a civilian was beaten up, one which drew unnecessary police attention to the clan. Another was punishment for when one of his underlings was caught taking drugs. As the drug user's superior, the Yakuza member had to share some of the blame for his actions and was forced to sever his left pinky even further. He was made to slice off the remainder of his finger when he decided to cut

ties with his former clan completely. The former Yakuza's current wife convinced him to try and turn his life around after spending years in a Japanese prison, but because he was missing his pinky, his criminal past was there for all prospective employers to see, so it was almost impossible for him to secure a decent job. The first time I applied for a job, I got cut after the interview. I couldn't write the truth in my resume because I had been in the Yakuza for 20 years, he said during an interview. If you don't have fingers, there's no way to get a sales job. If you put on the finger, you can turn your life around.

The anonymous former Yakuza managed to hear of Dr. Hayashi after an exhaustive online search for an artisan prosthetics manufacturer and says his artificial fingers have aided him in his efforts to change his life for the better. He is currently employed by a company that remodels homes and says he's only once been asked questions regarding his prosthetic fingers. He has to visit Dr. Hayashi at least four times a year for what he refers to as touch-ups, a procedure that comprises a repainting of certain discolored parts of the prosthetics. He's amassed more than 100 fingers over the years and keeps extras stored away in case of emergencies. I take off the prosthetic fingers as soon as I get home, the ex-accuser adds, and I never wear them on my days off.

And so when you find yourself traveling around Japan, you may find yourself sitting next to someone on the Tokyo metro who has a slightly odd look to one of his pinky fingers. And if you do, it would be extremely advisable that you're excessively polite to such a man, because there's no telling just what horrendous acts of violence he's committed in the past. Acts of violence he's not just inflicted on other people, but those he's inflicted on himself. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our tread experts. Until May 30th, purchase four new Michelin passenger or light truck tires and receive up to $70 by prepaid MasterCard. Conditions apply. Details at Michelin.ca.

Find a Michelin tread experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. Tread Experts.ca Around the world, different criminal organizations are known to use different varieties of weapons to terrorize their enemies and secure their illicit business dealings. In the 1990s, the gangbangers of America's west coast managed to make the Tech Nine a household name. Street gangs in the English capital of London have been known to favor kitchen knives to brutally carve up those they have beef with, while mobsters in 1920s Chicago put the words Tommy Gun on everyone's lips. But the Japanese Yakuza clans favor an even

deadlier and more terrifying form of weaponry, which they refer to as pineapples. You see, the Yakuza use knives, they use guns, but their true weapon of choice is the hand grenade. The southern Japanese region of Fukuoka, also known as Kyushu possibly even the world, to offer cash rewards to those who turn in any hand grenades they find in what is essentially a grenade amnesty. For a good many years now, a war between rival Yakuza clans in Fukuoka have caused ripples of terror among the civilian population due to the liberal use of hand grenades by warring clan members. Since the crackdown on the Yakuza in the mid-90s, many clans have had their revenue streams slashed to a fraction of

what they once were, and thousands of clan members have been arrested, tried, and imprisoned. This means that the competition between clans has become even fiercer, and those who remain fight tooth and nail over what remains of the spoils. This means that the competition between clans has become even fiercer, and those who remain fight tooth and nail over what remains of the spoils. The first in a series of ferocious fights began in the summer of 2007, when the head of the Kurame-based Dojinkai clan, a man by the name of Yoshihisa Onaka, was brutally assassinated by a member, the Saidukai, who were perhaps the Dojinkai's

biggest rivals. But during the years that followed, it wasn't just Yakuza killing Yakuza. Traditionally speaking, the various clans kept their violence away from the civilian population, but the crackdown on so-called violent gangs marked the beginning of a new era of Yakuza terror. When their economic livelihoods were threatened to such an extent, the Yakuza turned their fury onto the legitimate businesses that were trying to cut ties with them. In November of 2011, Toshihiro Uchino, the elderly president of the Hakishin Construction Company, was trying to cut ties to local Yakuza clans. In response, clan members showed up outside

his home, ambushing him with gunfire and hand grenades, murdering him in a shower of shrapnel and bullets in a show of force designed to send a message to all those who sought to begin a new chapter in their lives, free of Yakuza influence. By far the most violent of the Yakuza clans, and the group considered to be the primary user of hand grenades, is the previously mentioned Saidokai clan. Previously based solely in Kyushu, the Saidokai aggressively expanded into Tokyo during the crackdown, getting up several front companies and joining forces with Tadamasa Goto, the Gotogumi clan leader who is said to have masterminded the elaborate murder of film director Juzo Itami, before attempting to escape the public gaze by masquerading as a Buddhist monk. Upon learning of the collaboration between the two criminal groups, Tokyo police were terrified that hand grenades would be thrown around the capital, which is one of the most populated in the world, noting publicly that a coalition

between Goto and the side okai doesn't bode well for the public safety. But hand grenades don't just drastically increase the possibility of civilian casualties, they've also proven lethal for the Yakuza members who choose to use them. In April of 2011, two members of the Doshin Kai headed out to attack the Saidakai headquarters building. The Doshin Kai had been subject to several grenade attacks already and sought revenge using the same variety of high explosive weaponry, with two members of the clan driving over to the Saidokai HQ with a box of hand grenades procured from a Tokyo arms dealer. It's unclear exactly how it occurred, but on the way over, one of the

hand grenades in the clan members' possession prematurely exploded, setting off a chain reaction which blew the Yakuza and the car to smithereens, engulfing it in flames before it smashed into an electrical pole at the side of the road. The explosive incident sent shockwaves through Yakuza clans up and down the country, and rumor has it that it prompted Yakuza bosses to implement a series of hand grenade handling courses in order to keep clan members safe when using the weapons. Following six grenade attacks during the summer of 2011 alone, the Fukuoka police announced that there would be a $1,200 cash reward to anyone who reports any suspects in possession of a hand grenade. If the report leads to the arrest of the owner

or to the seizure of the hand grenades, the informant would receive a bonus payment of $12,000 for each grenade. The police announcement also stated that if the owner of the hand grenade happens to be a gang boss, the reward would be proportionately higher. During the same year, they released a large warning message on their website acknowledging a recent rise in crimes committed with hand grenades. Although we think of Japan as a place with an extremely low murder rate, and a place that is largely without firearms, there are a few gun-related crimes every once in a while, not to mention their disproportionately large incidences of hand grenade attacks.

The Fukuoka police website was accused of stating the obvious, warning in large red letters that hand grenades are designed for killing people. It lists the dangers of being within a certain range of a hand grenade blast and advises people that if they happen to see a hand grenade, do not step on, touch, or throw it. Get away from it as quickly as possible. Hide behind something and protect yourself. In 2008, the war between rival Yakuza clans became so bad that in Yurume alone, there were seven murders along with more than 20 separate shooting and bombing incidents. This might not seem like a lot, but in a country where the annual murder rate is one for every 200,000 people, this amounted to an outrageous amount

of violence. What followed was a monumental act of collective courage. Almost 2,000 residents of the Urumay banded together and decided to take the Yakuza clans to court in an attempt to close down their offices. The Yakuza are using weapons like the kind you see in the Iraq war. Grenades, bombs, and guns that can shoot people from 500 meters away, the lawyer of the plaintiffs told a judge. But unfortunately, this did nothing to curtail the violence. On April 10th, 2011, in the city of Omuta, two people lost their lives and 12 more were injured in the middle of the night

when a hand grenade somehow exploded inside a parked car. The shrapnel killed the driver and passenger with shards tearing through the chassis of the car and slicing their way in the passers-by. Then, just a month later in May 2011, a horrifically close shave saw a 9-year-old child find a hand grenade in a rice field in Azuka. He took it home to the absolute astonishment of his father, who promptly handed the object over to the local police station less than two hours after he discovered it. According to the police, there were no Yakuza gang headquarters where the grenade was found, and the child was extremely lucky not to have blown themselves up with it,

as the grenade in question was old and in extremely poor condition. In a testament to the iron will of the Yakuza clans that in a country with an extremely low crime rate, that they would be willing to use something as volatile as hand grenades to settle disputes. Even the most violent American criminal gangs would be hesitant to use explosives, given their unpredictable nature and the capacity they have for unnecessary civilian casualties. Yet the Yakuza apparently have no issue with that, and are more than willing to employ one of the world's most terrifying forms of weaponry against one another, all in the pursuit of wealth and power. 48-year-old Mami Kitamura was a member of the Kitamura Gumi, a Yakuza clan that is affiliated with the Dojinkai Syndicate. Back in 2004, Mami borrowed money from a 58-year-old woman named Sayoko Takami, but was slow to pay the money back. Sayoko then apparently then paid her a visit and was rather disrespectful and insulting regarding her tardy repayment schedule.

Mami kept her calm, apologized for the lack of repayments, then assured Sayoko that she would pay the money back on time in the future. Then on September 18th, 2004, Mami and her two sons drove over to Sayoko's home, apparently to make a repayment. Sayoko welcomed them into her home and was dismayed to hear that they had no money to pay back. Instead, Mami strangled the life out of Sayoko while her boys went about shooting Sayoko's 18-year-old son to death. They also shot a friend of the son's, 17-year-old Junichihara. Once the killing had subsided, they put each of the victims in a car, then dumped the vehicle in the nearby Suwa River in Omata. Two days later, they tracked down

Seiko's other son, 15-year-old Joji, and strangled him too, with his body being found dumped in some scrubland by a dog walker the following day. Mami was arrested for the murders the very next day and she immediately confessed to the killing of the Takami family. Not only that, but she also confessed to murdering three other people just a few years before. Police discovered that other accomplices in the murders included none other than 64-year-old Jitsuo Kitamura, Mami's husband and the leader of the Kitamura Gumi, as well as her two sons from previous marriages who turned out to be former sumo wrestlers. During the police raid on Jitsuo's home, he attempted to end his own life with a handgun that he kept in his desk drawer, as the shame of being captured by police was too much to bear. But the gun misfired,

and the Yakuza godfather was doomed to face judgment for his crimes. However, Jitsu made a second attempt to end his own life by grabbing an armed police officer's pistol at the police station. Officers initially believed that he would try to shoot them but were horrified to see him attempt to put the barrel of the gun in his own head. Yet, officers managed to wrestle the gun from his grip before he had the chance to pull the trigger. Jitsuo then tried another method of keeping his honor intact by claiming in his initial trial at the Kurume branch of the Fukuoka District Court that he had committed all of the murders alone. But the ploy didn't work, and the police still considered Mami to be the primary instigator and perpetrator of the crimes. During their trial, the Kitamura family were not only completely remorseless regarding their guilt, but they were extremely disruptive of the court

proceedings. 27-year-old Takashi Kitamura actually bolted from the courtroom at one point during his trial in a foolish and fruitless attempt to avoid justice, but was once again apprehended by police shortly afterward. You chose lust for money over human life in a cruel and inhumane manner that makes correction difficult, the presiding judge ruled as the death sentences were issued to the mother and son. On October 17th, 2006, Mami and one of her sons were sentenced to death, with her husband Jitsuo and their other son sentenced to death the following year. Mami appealed her death sentence in a court appearance on Christmas Day of 2007, but the original sentence was upheld.

Upon hearing the judgment, Mami's son, Takehiro, stood up and screamed Merry Christmas in English in a bizarre display of defiant protest in the face of his own death sentence, one that had the entire courtroom aghast at his unhinged demonstration. The Omuta murders are yet another example of how the Japanese Yakuza value money over human life, and due to their outsider status, not to mention the perceived discrimination against them by the rest of the Japanese population, they barely consider those who are not Yakuza to be human or worthy of respect. This discrimination stems from the fact that many Yakuza belong to a specific Japanese social caste known as the Burakumin. The Burakumin are a group whose recorded history goes back to the Heian period in the 11th century. They are descendants of outcast communities of the feudal era,

mainly those with occupations considered tainted with death or ritual impurity Such as butchers, executioners, undertakers, or leather workers They traditionally lived in their own secluded hamlets Away from the wider Japanese population It is said that the Burakumin account for around 70% of all Yamaguchi Gumi clan members who are the largest Yakuza syndicate in Japan. It is this deep-rooted disdain for the general population that makes the Yakuza so dangerous. The fact that they are raised from birth to believe that it is essentially them against the world, instilling the Yakuza with an us-versus-them mentality that seems to permeate

their every action and business venture. As long as this kind of social discrimination exists in the world, there will always be groups like the Yakuza. There will always be groups whose self-imposed victim status means that they are exempt from society's moral norms. So in the end, it might prove the case that alienation is far more dangerous than any physical weapon on Earth. You might well be familiar with the story of D.B. Cooper, the unidentified man who hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in the United States airspace between Portland and Seattle on the afternoon of November 24th,

1971, absconding with over $200,000 in ransom money in the process. But three years before, in December of 1968, an incident in Japan preceded Cooper's death-defying feat and almost topped the amount of money stolen, too. On the morning of December 10th, 1968, four Kokobunji branch employees of the Nippon Trust Bank transported almost 300 million yen, about 817,520 dollars at 1968 exchange rates, in the trunk of a company car. The metal boxes were stuffed with the monetary bonuses for the employees of Toshiba's Fuchu factory. The company car was stopped in the street next to Tokyo Fuchu prison by a young uniformed officer who was riding a police motorcycle.

This young police officer informed them that their bank branch manager's house had been blown to pieces in a bomb attack and that the police had received some very serious terrorist threats that sticks of dynamite had been planted in the transport car. Terrified, the four bank employees rushed to exit the vehicle while the officer crawled under the company car in a brave attempt to locate and disarm the bomb. Just moments later, the employees noticed a great deal of black smoke, as well as licking flames coming out from under the car. The officers scrambled back out from underneath, screaming at them to get to a safe distance as the bomb was about to detonate. The employees rushed to take cover, expecting the car to erupt in a fiery conflagration at

any moment, but no explosion came. Then suddenly they heard the car to erupt in a fiery conflagration at any moment, but no explosion came. Then suddenly they heard the car's engine rev and watched as the supposed officer simply got into the car and drove away. As it turns out, it was not a bomb attack at all. It was one of the most cunning robberies in Japanese history. Those driving the money-laden company car totally believed the thief was a police officer and accepted his story about the bomb unquestioningly because threatening letters had indeed been sent to the bank manager beforehand and all company employees were aware of the apparent terroristic threats. The smoke and flames that had been seen turned out

to be that of a warning flare that he had cleverly ignited while under the car. The thief then abandoned the company car and transferred the box containing the money to a different car entirely. That car was also abandoned and the boxes transferred once again to another previously stolen vehicle, completely masking the thief's trail. There were numerous pieces of evidence left at the crime scene, including the police motorcycle which turned out to be a civilian model that had simply been painted white. However, this apparent abundance of evidence turned out to be nothing but common everyday items, scattered around on purpose to confuse the police investigation.

A massive investigation was launched, one of the largest in Japanese history at that time. Police posted over a quarter of a million montage pictures throughout Japan, and the list of suspects included over 100,000 names. Almost 200,000 policemen participated in the investigation in what was a gargantuan concerted effort. In the immediate aftermath of the robbery, the 19-year-old son of a police officer was listed as the prime suspect. He had no alibi but died of cyanide poisoning just five days after the robbery. So according to official record, his death was deemed him taking his own life and he was considered not guilty. An associate of the 19-year-old suspect was

arrested on an unrelated charge on November 15th, 1975, just before the statute of limitations. He had a large amount of money and was suspected of the robbery. The police asked him for an explanation for the money, but he did not say anything and they were able to prove that his money had come from the robbery. Despite just being 18 years old, he was heavily connected to a local Yakuza clan and had the means and the allies available to organize and execute such a daring robbery. It is theorized that the young man managed to blackmail the police officer's son into committing the crime for him and then prompted him to end his own life when he threatened to release the humiliating information anyway. It is a scheme that bears all the devious hallmarks of a Yakuza operation, forcing another

person to commit a crime to avoid implication altogether, and this is exactly why the Yakuza are some of the most feared and infamous criminals on the face of the earth. My name is Honey. I'm almost 30 and I use Instagram to share pictures of my art. Okay, I know what you're thinking. Honey is a weird name, so please don't tell me what I already know. No, it's not a nickname. My parents are from California and they're like uber hippies, so go figure. As you can probably guess, I grew up in this overly loving, peacenik environment which I'm sure sounds cool at first, but let's just say it left me wholly unprepared to deal with

some of the darker things in life. Needless to say, I really struggled with my mental health in my mid to late 20s. I don't want to totally blame my parents for that, I think they did the best that they could, but they seriously didn't help with their just fill your heart with love nonsense, when what I needed was actual therapy and antidepressants. I got access to professional help in the end, but what really helped me keep it together in the meantime was my art. Before I started to suffer with depression and stuff, I used to paint and draw some pretty basic stuff. Landscapes, portraits, floral displays, stuff like that. But when I started to really suffer, I let out all my stress, anxiety,

and sadness on the paper, and as weird as it sounds, that's when my art really started to really suffer. I let out all my stress, anxiety, and sadness on the paper, and as weird as it sounds, that's when my art really started to flourish. It was probably the only silver lining to ever come out of my poor mental health. The more I posted my newer, darker art on Instagram, the more attention it got. My follower count shot up, I got offers for commissions, I actually managed to hook up with a t-shirt merch company and make a few sales that way too. Like I drew this pizza demon thing one time and that made me a few hundred bucks from people wanting that thing on a t-shirt too. So when I say dark, I really do mean I started drawing some really messed up stuff. The pizza demon thing was probably the lightest hearted thing I put out there in that time and even then, people said it was super messed up stuff. The pizza demon thing was probably the lightest hearted thing I put out there in that time and even then people said it was super messed up. So as you might imagine,

my new followers included some pretty messed up people. I don't say that to be like I'm complaining or mean or anything, I say that because one of them in particular made my life pretty difficult. So I get a direct message off of this guy who says he really loved my work and wanted the piece commissioned. Of course I say yes. So he follows up by asking what my rates are. I had no idea what I was doing in terms of dollar amounts at that time so when I quoted him like 80 bucks for a picture, he started explaining that I needed to value my art more, how my work was just as valuable as any other and how I should be charging a whole bunch more for my art.

I had no idea what to up my amount to so I kind of threw out a few ballpark figures before the guy makes my jaw hit the floor when he offers me a straight grand for an A3 size picture of whatever I wanted to draw or paint. I couldn't believe it, a thousand dollars for a picture? Which was more money than I'd ever made in my whole life. I got to work straight away and within a week I had poured my heart and soul out on the paper and sent it off and got my money via PayPal. Having that kind of affirmation actually lifted my mood to the highest it had been in months. I felt valued, like I could contribute something to the world. I was still dealing with

my demons, but when I learned that I could actually profit from them, that I could make use of something that plagued me, it was a great feeling. I stayed in touch with the guy. I'd never been so grateful to anyone in my life until that point and I'd be lying if I said I didn't think I'd be able to get more money out of him if he wanted something else commissioning. We used to talk back and forth a fair bit and he shared that he too was an artist. I asked him what kind of artist he was and he told me that he worked in some very unusual mediums. Naturally this only got me all the more curious, as I got super dark with my art too, but he seemed pretty timid to talk about it. I get that people can be shy about showing

off their artwork, I was pretty shy too at one point, but this guy needed some serious coaxing in order to show me anything. When he finally agreed to show me anything, he told me that he'd do it via one of those self-destructing messages that Insta now does. I to show me anything, he told me that he'd do it via one of those self-destructing messages that Insta now does. I didn't question anything, like I knew he'd send one of those self-destructing pictures maybe so he could protect his intellectual property or something. I was a little confused as to why he didn't seem to trust me but hey, I pretty much adored this guy so like I said, I didn't ask too many

questions. I waited patiently for him to send me a picture of some of his work. It took a minute or two but he sends me this 3 second self-destructing picture that I was honestly super excited to see by that point. But when I actually saw what it was, even if it was for a real brief time, I really, really wish I hadn't. It looked like a goat's head in a jar of some kind, and the fluid it was floating in looked sort of greenish black, and I'm pretty sure it was formaldehyde. But it wasn't just that. The guy had opted to make a few little additions to the goat head, additions that I couldn't all catch because of how quick the picture flashed before my eyes, but the ones that I saw were horrible. It looked like he'd carved the lips away so that all the creature's teeth were showing, and on each one was carved or written a little symbol. I'm also pretty sure he either chemically changed the creature's eyes or replaced

them entirely with a kind of metal or semi-precious stone. They had this weird glint to them. Like I said, there wasn't enough time for me to drink the whole thing in, but there was plenty more about the creature's head that had been messed with. It wasn't the details which really got to me. It was the idea that the corpse of an animal had been so horribly disrespected just so he could try to make some kind of art out of it. I had questions, a lot of questions, but the first thing I had to ask him was if it was really real or just some kind of mock-up of a skull. He told me it was real, very real, and that he'd gotten hold of a goat's head from a butcher, preserved it,

and then basically surgically edited the thing over time, mostly using dental tools, apparently for the sake of precision. I personally thought the whole thing was a disgrace. I'm vegan and I try to stay as ethical as possible, but at the same time, I didn't want to go imposing my own worldview on the guy, especially since I liked him so much. I also didn't want to offend him, so I told him his work was interesting and jaw-dropping. Then asked if he worked with ink and paper or any variation on that. He told me no, that he only worked with skulls. How they were the capsule that held all the hopes and dreams and fears and needs of the once living creature they belonged to, and that working with him was kind of sacred.

I didn't really know what to say to that. He was right in a way. He sounded absolutely crazy for saying it out loud, but I couldn't entirely refute his point. It was like talking to some kind of insane genius almost. Not long after, he asked me if he thought he was cruel to work in such a medium. I told him people might find his work provocative, maybe even objectionable, but that it was fascinating nevertheless. Then he asked if I wanted to see more. Unlike the first time, there was no doubt in me that I most definitely did not want to see any more of this guy's work,

but like I said before, I also really didn't want to offend him. So what could I do? It took me much longer to reply to his message that time, but in the end, I told him sure, and he replied saying that he'd use another self-destructing message. Again, I waited a minute or two for the message to come through, and when it did, I opened up the message thread and tapped the little reveal message thing with some reluctance. The first time around for that goat heads thing, I at least had some degree of curiosity, but at that time, I was just plain horrified by what I saw.

It was a monkey's head, or at least it looked like it was some kind of primate, and if I thought the goat's head had received some disturbing additions, this latest one turned out to be a thousand times worse. It was so bad I only caught the briefest glimpse of it and just had to look away and lock my phone screen to get it away from me. I was a little more confrontational with him after that, telling him that one was considerably more disturbing than the first and I thought I was maybe a little too sensitive to see any more of his work. He asked why and I broke it to him that I'd been vegan for a few years, that I was a real animal lover and although I could stomach the goat thing's head,

I really couldn't handle the monkey head as it looked far too human to me. That's when he replies to me all like, hmm, it's interesting you should say that, and goes on to explain that it's his dream to work with a human skull. How he's put up a few ads on 4chan and stuff asking if anyone would be willing to donate their head should they die but hadn't gotten any replies then he told me that he was getting really impatient and that he was worried he wouldn't get a chance to realize his dream the whole exchange had reached peak creepiness by that point as you can imagine and it was fast getting to the point when I was reaching for that block

option as I just didn't feel safe talking to him anymore so by the time he actually messaged me another self-destructing message asking if I'd be willing to help him get hold of a human head I just noped out of there and stopped replying to him like I'm not sure he was actually asking me to like kill anyone with him or for him but just the idea of going about procuring an actual human head? God no. But I couldn't bring myself to block him. Like he was a potential source of sales after all and I could make a lot of money from the guy if I kept him interested in my work. I try not to think about it, but I get these really bad feelings from time to time. Like what if he catches on to the fact that I just ignore him, and what if he decides that my head is the one he'd like to use to complete his magnum

opus? I try very careful with what I post now, making sure it's only ever pictures of my art, and that the handful of landscape photos I'd post on my profile had been deleted just so whoever it is can't get an idea of where I live. Because if they do work out where I'm at, there's just no way I'd be able to go around feeling safe. Not with someone whose ambition is to work with severed human heads, knowing where I lay mine at night. Let's go back to October 1995, five months before I was born. My mother was living in British Columbia when she received news that her mother, my grandmother, was missing all the way in Ontario where we live now. My grandmother was a very kind woman from what I've been told, but she struggled with her mental health, sometimes to the point of losing contact with reality

and just overall making very risky and unexplainable decisions. She lived in a small town in northern Ontario where most people knew her or at least recognized her. When she was reported missing by my aunt, a search party was deployed. Her truck was found sunken in the mud down a snowmobile trail that eventually led to a small lake. As my aunt recalls, her purse was dumped out onto the passenger seat and there was a pile of clothing strewn about nearby. The lake was thoroughly searched along with the surrounding area, but she was never found. As of 2004, a piece of her femur was found that was confirmed to belong to her through DNA

But the rest of her remains have not been located Most people theorized that she had a psychotic break And either ended up lost in the wilderness or had drowned in the lake What makes this odd is when I asked my aunt to tell me more, she explained that my grandmother had grown up in the British Columbia mountains and had been quite passionate about outdoor survival, even from a young age. At one point, she had been a lifeguard and was considered a strong swimmer and athlete throughout most of her life. My aunt went on to say that there were several people who had something to gain from her disappearance, the main person being my

grandfather who was still alive. My grandfather was a very abusive husband and began an affair with his mistress a few years before my grandmother went missing. It later came out that his mistress's husband at the time went missing in either 1993 or 1994, although I don't know many details about this. According to my family, my grandmother was a burden to them, especially when her mental health began to deteriorate and her drinking became worse. My grandmother had tried to move on and began dating a man by the name of Ken, whose last name is unknown. He never reported my grandmother as a missing person, and to add insult to injury, contacted my aunt asking her to remove all of my grandmother's

belongings from his home. There wasn't much there except for her journal and some other random items. It later turned out that Ken was married and had been telling my grandmother that he was going to divorce his wife but it's unclear now if he ever did. My other aunt, just a few years older than my mother, was also a shady character. She accompanied my eldest aunt, who shared all this with me, to Ken's home and during the initial search. The journal that was found at Ken's home was never turned in to police, and it was never seen again after that day. My aunt shared with me that my grandmother was the type of person to jot down everything, even on scraps of paper, and that she always kept a journal. It's believed that my aunt, the shady one, had a lot to hide and disposed of my grandmother's journal. To this day, I wonder what kind of memories I have missed out on having never met my grandmother. To be continued... Sharkey was born in Houston, Texas in the year 1994 to her father, Mike Robinault, and her mother,

Stacey. After graduating high school, Alexis initially studied biology education at a university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But after gaining her diploma, she seemed to be in no rush to get a teaching job and found work at a premium hair and skin care company named Monat. She was still working for Monat when she began to gain a great number of followers on the photography-based social media app, Instagram. A combination of her natural beauty and her champagne lifestyle had users hooked. She and her husband, a wealthy West Texas consultant who was 26 years her senior, were accustomed to vacationing a lot, and Alexis wasted no

opportunity to document her travels, sharing pictures with her followers on a daily basis. Not to mention sharing images of the couple's extravagant life around Houston, the place that they'd made their home. Her posts would be seen, liked, and shared by tens of thousands of people, and by December of 2020, Alexis had over 69,000 followers. Now as you may know, Instagram users with large amounts of followers are often contacted by private companies and offered large amounts of money in exchange for advertising their products, and Alexis was no different. Within a relatively short period of time, whilst still working full time selling products for Monat,

which has since been accused of being nothing more than a multi-level marketing company, Alexis was getting sponsorship deals which made her income swell to even higher levels than her consultant husband. But all was not well in the Sharkey home. A close friend of Alexis confessed that she had recently confided in her that she was filing for a divorce. Some had always doubted their relationship given that Tom was considerably older than her and aside from an intense attraction, the couple seemed to have very little in common. Yet for some reason Alexis didn't move out of the apartment they shared even though she and Tom were apparently separated.

However, she did see an opportunity to get a break away from Tom, as Thanksgiving weekend gave her the chance to stay over at a friend's place for the celebrations. She told her soon-to-be ex-husband that she would be back by the weekend, but on the Saturday following Thanksgiving, Alexis' mother Stacy received a call from Tom saying that Alexis was missing, and that he hadn't heard from her since Friday. A few days later on November 28th, Alexis' mother posted to the social media site Facebook, stating that her daughter hadn't been heard from in over 24 hours, adding that police were involved and that Alexis had last been seen in the Houston area. This was especially concerning for Stacey as she hadn't seen her daughter since the previous

Christmas due to travel restrictions caused by the pandemic. Alexis had planned to return home to her parents back in Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving, but as the number of cases continued to rise all over the United States, the family decided it was much safer for Alexis to stay in Texas. But that very same morning that Stacey posted her plea on Facebook, a sanitation worker employed by the city of Houston saw something unusual lying on the side of the road. At first, he simply believed it was some kind of mannequin, due to the lack of clothes and the stiff positioning of the thing's limbs. But the worker's supervisor, a man named John Richardson, later said that the employee had sounded terrified when he called him, saying he'd noticed the apparent mannequin

looked a little too real upon closer inspection, and that he suspected the situation to be far worse. John drove down to where the supposed mannequin was lying at the side of the road, then rushed to call 911 when he saw that it was no mannequin at all. That it was in fact a lifeless human body. The moment of realization traumatized him and he later told a local radio station that the sight of the body had been playing in his head every day since he discovered it. Two days later, on November 30th, Houston Police Department held a press conference in which they announced that they had identified the body as belonging to none other than Alexis Sharkey. Her soon to be ex-husband got a call from a local coroner's office asking him to drive over

to identify the body of a potential loved one. He knew immediately that it was going to be Alexis, but somehow found the strength to head on over where he found her lying on a mortician's table, dead but with no obvious signs of injury. Yet to his horror, after the news of Alexis' death began to circulate in the news, he began to hear rumors that it was his maltreatment of her that had been the cause of her death. Anonymous accounts from people claiming to be friends of Alexis had told a number of online news publications that the separation from her husband had caused a huge amount of tension in their home, a tension that had soured into hatred. These anonymous friends claimed that Alexis herself had told them that some intense arguments had descended into violence more than once, and that her husband had been putting his hands on her. Suddenly, Tom Sharkey found himself

bathed in the media spotlight, and for entirely negative reasons. In what became a lightning-quick trial by media, one which was fueled by social media speculation, tens of thousands of furious people assumed that it was Tom that was the murderer, and he began to receive a slew of death threats. It certainly didn't help that initially Tom had refused to comment on his wife's death, but as the threats against him became more and more tangible, he reached out to give a statement to a local AVC affiliate. "'She understood me. I understood her. We didn't fight when she left.

I just told her she shouldn't drive under the influence,' he said, overtly implying that Alexis had been drunk the night that she left her friend's Thanksgiving celebrations. He also seemed to insist that there was no trouble in their marriage and that they weren't filing for divorce at all. This was something that was backed up by Alexis' mother who said her daughter would have told her if she was suffering marital problems. When the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences conducted an autopsy on Alexis' body, they told reporters that they couldn't rule out the possibility of foul play. This only cemented her mother's suspicions that

she met a violent end. I believe solely that she was murdered because of the manner in which her body was left, Stacey said. It just drives deep into the soul that something very malicious happened here, and I want to get to the bottom of it. Friends said she confided in them on a recent trip to Mexico that she feared for her life, although she apparently did not say why she held such suspicions. But if this was the case, just who exactly killed Alexis? Police seem to have pretty much ruled out the idea that she was murdered by her husband since he was quick to volunteer his cooperation with them in the aftermath of her death

And has since stated that they believe it to be only a matter of time before arrests are made So perhaps Alexis' murder was related to her career selling beauty products of Monat Not only has Monat been accused of utilizing the techniques of outlawed, multi-level marketing companies, but the quality of its products has also come into question. In the year before Alexis' death, MONAT was allegedly investigated by Florida's Attorney General after hundreds of claims that its products caused a host of hair and skin issues. The company was permanently barred from using false or misleading statements in its marketing and sales of its beauty products, and faced a million-dollar fine on top of class action lawsuits from those that, after using the products, claimed they experienced hair loss, balding, and itching. Alexis was a prolific seller of Monat's products, once receiving a check for $10,000 as the winner of a company sales competition. That would certainly make for a lot of women who might blame her for essentially disfiguring them.

There's also a decent chance that, since Monat's MLM tactics would leave a lot of people out of pocket, that somewhere down the line Alexis had screwed one of her underlings out of a great deal of cash, perhaps just before the news of Monat's subpar products broke in the media, perhaps leaving a person totally unable to shift a hefty amount of stock they'd purchased. This would doubtless leave a person angry, vengeful, maybe even murderous. And besides, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. If this is indeed the case and Alexis' death is intrinsically linked to her Monat sales, then it seems that her status as an Instagram influencer actually led to her murder. The influence she exerted over those that followed her no doubt led to increased sales,

thus increasing the potential pool of victims for Monat's frankly dangerous products. It's very possible that without Instagram, she may not have made the sale to that one person unhinged enough to seek revenge when their skin began to blister, or their hair began to fall out, or their scalp began to itch unbearably. It seems we'll soon find out who's responsible for Alexis' death, but if it is related to social media, it would be very ironic that a medium that has brought opportunity and new beginnings to so many, brought one young woman to her end. The The 24-year-old Russian Ekaterina Karaglonova had a life that many of us can only dream of having. She was young, beautiful, intelligent, and highly educated.

Practicing medicine as a dermatologist after graduating from the Pirogov Medical University, she also held a residency at a prestigious medical school in Russia's capital, Moscow. And to top it all off, she had recently finished second place in a Moscow beauty pageant. Ekaterina was also a prominent social media personality in her native Russia, regularly sharing images of herself with hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers. Known by the handle at katie underscore loves underscore life, she was known to write a blog detailing her luxurious jaunts around Europe, where she posed in locations such as Italy, Austria, and Spain. In her last Instagram photo, it shows her lounging poolside in Greece,

detailing her love for international travel. It was very helpful for a few days to escape from heavy rains and cold to the Ionian Sea. She also captioned the snap of herself holding a glass of wine by a pool. Now I prefer to travel very often, but briefly, study and work do not let go. But the impressions of such short trips remain the most vivid. But one of her close friends, Marina Nicotina, began to notice that all was not well with her seemingly perfect life. She claimed to have observed a drastic change in Ekaterina's behavior during the summer of 2019,

and when questioned on it, the well-traveled young doctor confessed that she had made a rather dangerous enemy and that someone is interested in my private life in the worst possible way. Then, in July of 2019, Ekaterina's family contacted the Moscow police concerned with the fact that they had not heard from her in several days. Friends remarked that she had recently started a new relationship and had been planning a trip to the Netherlands to mark her birthday on July 30th. Most other people might have been busy with travel arrangements or might simply have been too occupied with her actual vacation to get in touch. But as we know, Ekaterina posted to her Instagram account almost religiously,

and the fact that she hadn't done so for several days was the thing that alarmed her family the most. Deeply worried for her well-being, Ekaterina's family contacted her landlord who, after some convincing, allowed them to access her apartment. There they found no sign of anything amiss. Her belongings seemed to be all in order and there was no obvious signs of violence. But in the hallway was a heavy looking suitcase stuffed with something far more than just expensive clothes. Her family were horrified at what they found when they opened it, because what fell out in front of them was Ekaterina's decomposing corpse.

She had been dead for almost a week, with a large slash across her throat and several other devastating stab wounds to her chest and abdomen. Upon examining the crime scene, police were unable to locate any obvious murder weapon, and there were no signs that there had been a break-in or any kind of serious struggle. Naturally, police checked her Instagram account for any clues that might point them in the direction of why she was killed. They saw that Ekaterina had alluded to a potential romance on her Instagram account, sharing photos of bouquets with notes attached to them. Another surprise from Mr. X, she captioned the latest photo, adding, For several weeks now I have been receiving bouquets and little notes from a secret admirer.

I wonder who it could be. It was then speculated that such a public display of romantic interest could have angered a former lover, perhaps someone that couldn't bear to see the young doctor in a new relationship. Police then discovered CCTV footage had captured an ex-boyfriend of Ekaterina's who seemed to have paid her apartment a visit in the few days before contacting her became impossible. Ekaterina had only broken up with 32-year-old Maxim Geryeva a few weeks prior, and she had confided in friends that he had not taken it very well at all, and that he was a wolf. The man enters the Moscow apartment block wearing a baseball cap, apparently to cover his face from CCTV cameras. He is then seen leaving the apartment around

four hours later, wearing a completely different outfit, which police speculated was because the one he'd entered wearing was now covered in blood. Police soon caught up with Maxime, who told police that the breakup had been hard on him, with Ekaterina repeatedly insulting and humiliating him, despite the fact that he had given her a sizable amount of money in the course of their relationship. Maxime said that she had told him he was ugly and that even a plastic surgeon could not help him. Before they departed, Ekaterina allegedly told him that it would have taken a year before he could save up enough money for them to meet again. This had given rise to theories that the young doctor had taken resorting to a kind of selling of herself in order to fuel

her extravagant lifestyle, charging men exorbitant amounts of money to go on dates with her. It was then that Maxime confessed that he could not stand the kind of treatment and had snapped. He then confessed that he stabbed Ekterina in the neck and chest area with a knife at least five times, saying he regretted what happened and promised to cooperate with the investigation. She half turned and I struck her in the neck, he says in a recorded confession to Moscow police. She tried to escape to the bathroom and lock the door. I pulled her out of the bathroom, her blood was dripping down her body. Then in the corridor she started screaming.

I covered her mouth and stabbed her again in her chest with a knife. She then ran to the living room and started fighting me, but I was in a state that I didn't feel any pain. During the fight she fell down and I struck her twice again in the neck. Then she had convulsions and died. Maxime was taken to trial for the murder, and he apparently held his face in his hands in court because he looked bad. Such was the depth of his own vanity. Character witnesses alluded to calling him Ken, a reference to the Barbie doll because he was so obsessed with plastic surgery in his overall appearance. Maxime insisted the murder was not premeditated and told the courtroom it was a spur of the moment thing, something that came about as a result of the rage that he was feeling that Ekaterina had

so deeply insulted him and his looks. I want to apologize to Katya's parents. I am very sorry. He told the Instagram influencer' family before he was taken to a prison outside of Moscow. It seems that the world of Instagram influencers, as well as those who are attracted to its veneer of perfection, are just as prone to becoming victims of its vapid, plastic culture as we are. Here was an accomplished young woman who apparently could not bear to be without the trappings of luxury that she evidently felt she was entitled to, who, as a result, involved herself with a man who she believed was so beneath her that she could verbally abuse and shame him publicly with no repercussions. In no way did Ekterina deserve to die for what she did, but

in delving into the superficial lifestyle of an Instagram influencer, what's clear is that she opened up a kind of Pandora's box that seems to have set her on the path to ruin. To be continued... When 20-year-old Sinead McNamara from New South Wales, Australia received a job offer to work aboard the superyacht known as the Mayan Queen 4, she saw it as the opportunity of a lifetime. So much so that the Australian part-time model sold almost every single one of her belongings to be able to afford a plane ticket to Europe. She was offered the job partly because she had experience working on similar vessels, but the $190 million luxury boat was by far the most extravagant she'd ever had the opportunity to sail on. It was owned by Mexico's second richest man, billionaire Alberto Bayeres,

and it was his home on the high seas as he traveled around Europe, living a life of pure luxury. In August of 2018, the Mayan queen was sailing around the plethora of Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, and Sinead took full advantage of the gorgeous scenery, amassing around 20,000 followers on her Instagram account. Sinead posted plenty of pictures of herself too, and it's plain to see why the young lady was able to gain work as a part-time model. Not to mention how it doesn't take a genius to work out why photographs of a beautiful young blonde surrounded by beautiful Greek vistas attracted so many visitors to her page. But despite presenting an image of a perfect carefree existence, it became obvious to some that the life Sinead was living was far from flawless. At one point, the young woman called her mother back in Australia to complain that she had been involved in an intense argument with another crew member working aboard the Mayan Queen and that she seemed scared for her safety. The very next day, a passing boat spotted the

Australian model hanging from the back of the yacht, tangled up in a series of thick ropes. The crew of the Mayan queen was alerted and the captain of the boat, who asked not to be named, said he discovered Sinead's body at around 1.45am and began screaming for help. Doctors and police tried for around half an hour to revive her, but when she began to slip into a coma, she was rushed to an Athens hospital, but she sadly died in the helicopter that was flying her to the mainland. The man that inspected her body, Greek coroner Ilias Bogiokas, ruled that because of the circumstances in which she died, that he initially speculated that Sinead's death was actually her ending it herself. Since no stimulant drugs such as cocaine or sedatives such as cannabis or heroin had been

found after the toxicology analysis, it means that the girl was not under the influence of such substances, he said. She had mental clarity in that she was most likely facing social problems and found herself at a psychological impasse. However, we don't know if someone brought her into this situation, if there was a moral instigator. The coroner also made it clear that questions still remained about the case, and would need to know much more about the events which led up to her hanging to make a clear definitive judgment on how and why Sinead died. What's horrifying to hear though is that Sinead's body was in such a state that the coroner advised her family against viewing her body, even though this is standard practice to identify a person's remains. What was so messed up about

her corpse that Greek authorities might forgo such a crucial part of the identification process? After an initial investigation by the Greek Coast Guard, the Mayan Queen 4 was then allowed to leave Kefalonia after interviews with the yacht's crew. The Mayan Queen 4 is equipped with CCTV surveillance cameras and footage of the incident was seized by Greek authorities. Footage reportedly showed Sinead moments before her body was found, though the video was not made public, and for some reason it wasn't made available to the coroner either. The footage apparently showed Sinead in a very high spirits before her body was found hanging from the back of the boat, that she was dancing on tables and downing cocktails, hardly the frame of mind someone who was about to take their own life. If this is the case, our attention is then drawn to the argument with the other crew members,

the same one she complained to her mother about in which she confessed to being scared. Was Sinead's murder covered up by somebody who co-opted the Greek authorities into helping them sweep the events that preceded her killing under the rug, is not entirely out of the question that Alberto Belares, who is worth around $10 billion, would have the financial means to bribe government officials in a country so strapped for cash as Greece. Perhaps even more terrifying than the concept of some murderous conspiracy is the casual indifference with which her death was treated by people online. You lived for attention, now you've got it.

While another added, unfortunately the steep price you pay with lifestyles like this. But some have insisted there is plenty of evidence to suggest that her death was indeed her taking her own life. In a cryptic Instagram post written just two weeks before she died, Sinead wrote, My head is all over the shop today, along with emojis of a volcano, a tornado, and a needle with blood dripping from it. There was also many who asserted that Sinead had ended a tumultuous romantic relationship a short time before her death and that this may have contributed to feelings of depression or self-destruction. Her death also occurred on what was reported to be her last day as a crew member on the yacht,

raising the question that perhaps she was so depressed to be leaving the lap of luxury, maybe even being forced to return to Australia because there was no more luxury yacht jobs available to her, that she opted to take her own life instead of biting the bullet and return to a life more ordinary, perhaps. And perhaps this is the most terrifying thing of all, that human beings are capable of reaching such height that we're simply unwilling to go on living if we can't continue to live in the way we've become accustomed to. That there's a possibility that at just twenty years old, Sinead had felt she'd peaked, and that everything else to follow in her life would pale in comparison to the time that she spent on the Mayan Queen. So instead of continuing her life with her days

on the yacht becoming a happy, albeit distant memory, Sinead may have chosen to end her life in order to, as the saying goes, die young and leave a good looking corpse. Jocelyn Canna was born on March 14, 1990 in Anaheim, California, before being raised near Lake Elsinore. Jocelyn first started modeling for local magazines at the age of just 17 years old, but gained the majority of her fame when she was featured on the cover of Lowrider magazine. Hip-Hop's Valentine's Day special video and Gerardo Ortiz's music video for his single Y Me Besa, as well as a number of other magazines and music videos. This fame led Jocelyn to launch her own swimwear brand, using her popularity on Instagram to sell her products to her whopping 13 million followers. Her Instagram is very similar to what you might expect from a so-called influencer A collection of semi-naked pictures of herself Complete with several cataloging her extensive travels around the United States and Latin America

In a private jet, no less Attending various modeling events in New York and Los Angeles She was also famous for her rather rotund posterior Giving rise to her nickname of the Mexican Kim Kardashian. But Jocelyn apparently had the brains to compliment her beauty with her LinkedIn profile stating that she had studied microbiology at San Diego State University. She had smarts and good looks, with conservative estimates of her income suggesting she was making upwards of $100,000 from various sponsorships and swimwear sales. But for Jocelyn, it was simply not enough. So in December of 2020, Jocelyn booked herself an appointment with a plastic surgeon down in

Colombia to undergo what has been referred to as a Brazilian butt lift. During so-called Brazilian butt lift procedures, fat is taken from various parts of the body and essentially molded into the buttocks to give them the appearance of being larger. The procedure has grown increasingly popular in the United States, fast becoming the most popular type of plastic surgery according to 2015 statistics from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. The rate of buttock lift procedures rose over 200% from 2000 to 2015, with the total number of surgeries rising from 1,356 to 4,767 procedures over the course of that time. Yet, injecting fat into the buttocks can lead to severe problems if done improperly,

including fat embolism, a process in which fat enters the bloodstream and blocks a blood vessel. Jocelyn's butt lift was due to take place in early December, but around that same time, news of her tragic death seemed to emerge. The cause of death has not been confirmed by her family, but Instagram influencer Lyra Mercer was apparently privy to the reasons behind her demise, and tweeting out on December 7th, OMG Jocelyn Cano died in Colombia getting surgery. That's wild. A three-hour live stream of what is to be believed to be her funeral was shown on YouTube, which saw loved ones paying their respects to the young woman in a casket beside a large picture of her. Attendance was small and intimate, mainly due to the pandemic, but watching the live stream, we can see that Jocelyn's family was absolutely devastated by the news of her death, and that she is survived by two young children. The estimated death rate for Brazilian butt lifts is 1 in 3,000,

according to PlasticSurgery.com, and it seems likely that Jocelyn's death was a result of complications following the surgery, becoming one of the unlucky few unable to survive such a procedure. Others wonder why representatives for Cano's brand have not confirmed the news, with one follower complaining that, considering the brand is hers, at least it carries her name, y'all should make a statement. I mean, she had over 12 million followers after all. The lack of confirmation has only fueled the rumors that Jocelyn did indeed die as a result of the Brazilian butt lift procedure, and that those now in charge of her company feel that the way in which she died might damage her brand. After all, they too are profiting from the sense

of vanity that has risen as a result of superficial Instagram influencer culture. Last year, an online news publication reported on a shocking rise in black market butt lifts, inspired in part by so-called Snapchat dysmorphia, the condition of being out of touch with one's own physique as a result of constant exposure to highly edited or modified bodies on social media. It's been widely reported that varieties of beauty-based social media have been extremely damaging to female mental health, putting unrealistic expectations on them to look or live in a particular way. But it seems that the same is true for their physical health too,

with surgical shortcuts to certain body types having literally killed a handful of young women over the past few years. I think we can all agree that it is frankly terrifying that such pressures can be felt so deeply by women that they would choose to risk their lives to attain a certain societal standard of beauty. And that smart, successful people can be so heavily affected by what they see online that they opt for what are obviously dangerous surgical procedures. Jocelyn Kano didn't have to die, that much is clear. But the question is how many other young women will have to lose their lives before we learn to love what we're born with naturally, instead of pining after some unattainable standard, and how much blood is on our hands for allowing

such a standard to exist in the first place. so so back when all this islamic state stuff was kicking off in Iraq and Syria, I remember a mate of mine sharing an Instagram account with me that was run by this group called the Peshmerga. They were like this militia made up of Kurdish fighters, ethnically distinct from Arabs but still Muslims. In spite of this, they were being prosecuted by those ISIS guys for some reason so they were basically at war with them. They used to post all these combat videos as well as pictures of themselves with captured ISIS equipment,

weapons, ammunitions, vehicles, all sorts of stuff. They posted some pretty gnarly stuff so I followed the account and naturally their stuff would pop up in my timeline every so often when I was scrolling. So this one day, I see a picture of them with someone I figured was a captured ISIS guy. He was all bloody and looking pretty sorry for himself but the caption of the photo was in Kurdish so obviously I couldn't tell what it all said. Thank god for Google Translate because although the translation wasn't perfect they did actually have a Kurdish option so I could get an idea of what it said. Some of the words must have either been spelled wrong or they were

using Kurdish slang because some of the words just wouldn't compute but like said, I did get an idea of what the captions to the photos said, and as much as those ISIS dudes were or are scumbags, what I read was highly disturbing. I can't remember what the post said verbatim, but the words that did get translated were stuff like vote, mercy, kill, and then like a number of hours. It didn't take a genius to work out what those pershmerga guys were proposing. They wanted their insta followers to decide if that captured prisoner was to live or die. And then as you can imagine, pretty much all the replies were just one word replies that could be translated into yes, kill, do it, and that sort of thing. Only a handful pleaded with them not to do it, giving reasons like, you'd be no worse than they are, we're not barbarians, and other variations on that theme.

I remember being really shocked because the time period they gave was only like two or three hours, and even though the post had only been up for like a half hour, there were literally hundreds of comments all telling them to kill the guy. I remember sharing the post with a mate of mine who'd shown me the account in the first place. We spent hours going back and forth on how messed up it was, whether or not the prisoner deserved to be killed given what his jihadist buddies were doing. I mean, they were taking slaves, bringing back legit open-air slave markets with weeping and wailing women and girls, not to mention killing literally hundreds of innocent people in these mass executions out in the deserts.

But in the end, I suppose it didn't matter a jot what we thought about it because, as we're talking, my mate shares a post with one of the shocked appalled emoji things, you know the ones that are yellow but also kind of blue? It was a photograph, a photo of the same prisoner whose picture had been posted just a few hours previously. He was lying in the dusty dirt with this vacant look on his face, with a puddle of blood pooling under his body. They'd done it. They'd killed him. On the orders of the general Instagram using public. It sent a chill through me. I mean, like I said, I've no doubt that the guy deserved what he got, but knowing it was done in such a savage way, put to a vote. Then when passed, even the people who were supposedly the good guys could prove to just be as bloodthirsty and merciless as the monsters they were fighting.

We can't really judge either. The Kurds were being exterminated out there. How would you react if your people were being murdered or sold into slavery? You'd want to fight back too, and ferociously at that. The posts were taken down and the account was banned not long after, thankfully. Obviously, Instagram couldn't have something like that on their platform, but as quickly as the admins would delete an account, a brand new one would pop up and post the same images and votes. It didn't just happen one time.

I saw execution votes, just like the first one I'd seen, posted time and time again. I don't think I've ever looked at people in quite the same way since. Like I know all that stuff was half a world away, but I think we can all agree that at their core, people are the same all over. We can be kind, generous, compassionate, but we all have it in us to be cold, bloodthirsty, and monstrous too. A few years ago, I started getting into this Italian crime show called Gamora. I must have watched every series of The Sopranos like a zillion times and a friend of mine recommended Gamora to me. Something to me as being like the Italian Sopranos, only a hundred times more brutal and bleak. And needless to say, I was hooked, and I binge watched

the first two series in like a week, usually with my phone nearby so I could text my buddy like, oh god this show's so amazing every so often and thanking him to turning me on to it. Then not long after I'm scrolling through Instagram and I notice I'm getting Italian language sponsored ads. I figured it was just a glitch in the app's algorithm, something like that, and didn't think anything of it. But it kept happening, over and over again. I get all kinds of ads for different products and services that were only available in Italy. I'm a little embarrassed that it took me as long as it did to make the connection between the Italian advertisements and the fact that I'd been watching Gamora. But when I finally did, it seriously gave me the creeps. My phone was

listening to me. My phone had been broadcasting the sound of the TV series to somewhere that was then tailoring the promoted posts in my insta feed to stuff it was assumed that I might buy. But then if it was listening to me and sending whatever I was saying off to some advertising company or whatever, there's legit nothing to say that the government can't access with that same technology. For years we worried about the possibility of George Orwell's 1984 becoming a reality Fretting over a totalitarian government that would put cameras or microphones in our homes That they could then use to listen to us

But do you think Orwell could have predicted that we'd do it all voluntarily? That all you had to do was package the telescreen in a tiny shiny package Cover it with social media and we'd basically hand over our collective privacy on a silver platter. Like I might sound legit crazy 20 or 30 years ago if I was all like, they're listening to us, they're spying on us on our phones. But today, it's a matter of record that our devices record ambient noises before analyzing it and passing on keywords to advertisers. And it's not even the fact that it's happening that's the scary part.

It's the fact that no one really cares. No one really gives a hoot that we have next to no privacy anymore. I've even heard people talk about Huawei phones like, I don't care if the Chinese have all my info, what are they going to do with it? Now I use VPNs on almost every device I own these days and I don't own a smartphone anymore. Just a flip phone that I can turn off whenever I'm not using it. I don't think I'd actually use voicemail in about a decade but now I use it all the time. I just find it extremely creepy that we just sleepwalked into this state of affairs without any more thought than, ooh, my phone now has a camera, or ooh, now my phone has the internet.

I used to think those conspiracy theory types were just a bunch of loons, but if they were right about our phones, what else are they right about? It was the summer of 2015 when I moved in, and at first appearances, my housemate and landlord Mike was somewhat normal, if not a bit socially awkward and dysfunctional. When I was signing the papers, he was adamant that I should never go into the basement, which I thought was odd, but I really needed a place to stay and, well, people have their little quirks, so I just chalked it up to that at the time. As I got to know Mike and our cohabitation continued, I learned more about the depths of his dysfunction. Firstly, that he used meth. Now, I don't automatically judge people based on vices, but I was surprised at the extent

of his use. He was probably the first person I knew who used meth and balanced a full time job and joined a decent amount of success. The reason this is important to the story is that when he would be around the house, drinking and using meth, he would start to run off at the mouth. He would often joke that if I smelled lye coming from the basement not to think anything of it. I think it was probably the third time he said this that I asked why he keeps saying that and he responds. I use chemicals to clean up after the bodies. With a wily grin on his face.

I tried to chalk that up to a bad sense of humor but it didn't sit right with me. It was also very particular that I let him know of my coming and going and my work schedule. I remember him being shocked and uncomfortable one day that I ended up taking off of work because he didn't realize that I was home. I remember that day because there was a lot of clanging and what sounded like muffled shouting coming from the basement. His car was in the driveway, but he was not in the main house or his bedroom. Other days he would play very loud music that bumped through the whole house. Sometimes he would even play NPR talk radio at those volumes. In retrospect,

I think he may have been trying to mask sounds. He would make remarks about certain ladies of the night, saying, you can do whatever you want. You can choke them or beat them to death. Nobody cares. I took exception to this. I told him I thought that was messed up. But when he got tweaking, he'd always come back around to alluding to the same kind of violence, talking about how he was a normal white guy who owned a house and had a good career so the police would never suspect him. At this point, I start to think that it had gone too far to simply be a joke. I was in a weird position because money was tight at the time and my options were few. I tried to convince myself that even if he is messed up,

he's probably just engaging in some sort of outward fantasism. I knew that he would acquire these services from certain women on occasion, but again, didn't judge that activity at face value, but started becoming concerned. Then at one point when I was doing laundry, I caught whiffs of decomposition. The house we were in was in southeast Portland. It was relatively new, having grown up in upstate New York. I know that animals can be trapped in walls and die, but this was the garage and there were no animals scurrying in the walls. This was strange and telling to me. I considered carefully what I'd do and decided that I would confront him about the smell.

I decided to poise the question in somewhat of a suggestive way by expanding on his jokes. I told him that he needs to do a better job cleaning up the bodies because I smelled decomposition from the garage. I'll never forget his reaction. His eyes widened and he shot me a sharp glare, somewhere between fear and anger. He stumbled over his words and eventually responded, What? Really? I said yes, really, and there was a few seconds of awkwardness before he said,

Thanks for letting me know, and promptly went into his bedroom and shut the door. A few days after that, he went into the upper crawl space in the garage while I was again doing laundry. He called for me and was trying to convince me to come up into the crawl space. My body locked up and it was like my instincts were screaming at me that if I went up there I would not come back down. I gave some excuse that I can sparsely remember that I had to be someplace, packed up my laundry, threw it in my room, and left. He spent a lot of time in the padlocked basement without a doorknob. The only way in was through the backyard and I wish I would have gone down there in retrospect to either confirm or dismiss the suspicions once and for all. In the last couple of months I had lived there, I was privy to more graphic comments about women

and certain workers and explicit talk of intimate violence, and he was using more and more. He once showed me a video that he made, he is a graphic designer and artist as well, which featured heavy bondage themes interspersed with distorted audio of women screaming and this strange leering figure in a plague doctor costume. It was one of those situations where any one of these things alone may be innocuous, but as they accumulated it

became suspicious to me. It was October of 2016 that I left there, taking off to Oceti Oyate camp during the anti-pipeline protests with Standing Rock Lakota. A mix of feeling called to action and having nothing to lose as I wanted to get out of that house in the worst way. My last night there, I didn't give notice that I was leaving. He was drinking and tweaking again. Started in the same conversation, loosely describing murder and violence in the tone of some sort of edgy joke. I told him that he would get caught eventually, not even holding back my suspicion anymore. He reiterated that he was the last person police would suspect and asserted that they wouldn't catch him. He said this in a very serious and concise way,

dropping the pretense that he had been using before. I left the next morning. This haunted me for months, then a year, then a year and a half. I felt as though I hadn't done anything. The guilt was eating away at me, so I called Portland Crime Stoppers and put in an anonymous tip describing what I described here. When I did, the operator started going back and forth putting me on hold because the call had piqued the interest of the police sergeant who was assigned to the call center, so they were asking me detailed questions about his vehicle, his house, the methods he described, etc. It seemed

like they took interest. I gave them as much information as I could remember and left it at that, feeling just a little bit better that I had at least tried to do something about it. Fast forward to recent times. I told my mother all about this and she became interested, asking what house this was and she ended up pulling it up on Google Maps. She pulled up the street view and I noticed that there was a large enclosed trailer in the driveway that wasn't there when I was. I could theorize why it might have been there, but could not put together a practical reason for it or why I'd be using it,

unless he was moving or using it to haul things to discard. Admittedly, this is pure conjecture, but I couldn't help but wonder. I doubt that I will get closure or have my suspicions validated unless he does finally get caught and arrested and I read about it. I have grown up poor and been around the low life a lot. I've interacted with many sketchy and unsavory people in my time, but none of them have ever made the impression that Mike made on me.

Make of it what you will, but I hope I never meet him again. I moved a lot growing up. By the time freshman year of high school came around, I had moved seven or so times and was about a year and a half into my most recent move. I had found a pretty close group of friends in middle school and we all went to high school together. I met him through one of those close friends. They were in a band together and even though he was almost four years older than us we welcomed him into our group. Sam was easily twice my size, tall and heavyset and originally kind of intimidating, although I was never afraid of large men before him, lesson learned. I had a kind of bad home life and I spent as much time as I could at school,

sometimes hanging around the school campus until about 6 or 7 at night with this friend group. Three of us lived in the same direction and we would walk the half hour trip together until our paths split. One slightly colder evening, Sam offered to walk me home since the others had gone home already. I just thought he was being a gentleman. He mentioned something from a previous move when he lived in California. He didn't walk a friend home and something horrible happened. He left it at that and I let him walk me home. We got a lot closer after that. We bonded over both living in California and exchanged numbers. He would message me late into the night about his depression and self-harm and I just wanted to help. A few months later he tried asking me out.

It was this big romantic gesture. He learned a Disney song on the ukulele and sang it to me in the cafeteria. But I was already dating someone and when I turned to him down he got angry. A freaky, quiet, twitchy kind of angry. I felt so bad. I started seeing him everywhere. We were still friends, we still hang out in groups, but I would pass him on the street walking somewhere and a few minutes later I'd see that he'd changed directions and had started to follow me. He would walk me to classes by following me in passing period at a distance. I started to minimize the group time that we spent together and he would follow me more. I had friends meet at each class and walk

me to the next one because I felt unsafe and he knew where I lived. Then he started to talk, not to me but to mutual friends about the one girl in California who he tried to walk home. At first she just shared my name, some crazy coincidence. Then she had the same brown curly hair and blue eyes and every time he rambled about her she became more and more like me. And then he said what happened. Over literal weeks this fantasy evolved. They were walking home and they were jumped by some guy with a knife. It was a robbery gone wrong on her birthday, January 24th, my birthday as well, and she died horribly and he couldn't react in time. She bled out in his arms. Sarah, who had brown curly hair,

blue eyes, my name, my birthday, and sounds just like me, bled out in his arms. Each retelling added more and more detail and this guy with his sick fantasy about my death would follow me around and knew where I lived. My boyfriend was abusive mentally and physically but I stayed as close to him as I could whenever I could because if the worst happened I knew for sure that he could throw a punch. I never felt safe at school or in our little town walking home from school in the dark. One day at school he had a breakdown, freaked out and ran walking home from school in the dark. One day at school he had a breakdown, freaked out and ran out of the school in a panic. I was sent after him and I found him curled up on the floor. I got closer, I knew about his anxiety and depression and my safety aside I wanted to make sure that he was okay. It was then that he told me this horrifying story that I had been hearing

from mutual friends with added details. We had been walking home from a concert in California. We passed a dark alley and a homeless man came out with a rusty knife and asked for anything valuable. I fumbled for my phone, I didn't have anything else on me, and he thought that I was calling the cops. He stabbed me once, once, twice, again and again, and Sam stood there horrified. He saw red and grabbed a broken glass bottle near my body and attacked the homeless man. He killed him with his own knife. He told me he killed someone. My stalker killed someone. It didn't matter how messed up he was anymore I didn't care if it was a fantasy or real I didn't care how it would affect his mental health anymore

I wanted to go to the police I was scared for my life My friends convinced me to go to the school counselor first And that morning we went and told them everything The stalking, the stories How he admitted to murder and that was the reason they moved from California. How I was afraid for my life and wanted to call the police. The counselor didn't take us seriously though.

She went to the principal and the principal, not a mental health expert, called Sam in to talk about the accusations. The principal then informed me that he didn't think that Sam had any kind of mental illness or that I was in any danger. And that was that. I lost faith in adults, gave up on going to the police. I stayed with my friend walking me between classes, hiding behind my abusive boyfriend and looking behind me every step of my walk home that year. The counselors ended up gaslighting us to the point where this all feels like a fever dream now, and I would think it's made up if it weren't for my journal entries recording the events and my growing panic, and the similar stories from my friend group. The town that I lived in has developed a lot since this story. But when this happened, there was a lot since this story, but when this happened there

was a lot of factories spread out with lots of land in between them. There was a Walmart being built in the area, but it had barely started construction. There was a main highway that ran through there, but my mom didn't like taking it as much as traffic would get bad most of the time. The side streets we would take were desolate and not much light. There was also little to no cars taking these streets. I can't remember where we were coming from that night but in the car that night was my mom, my brother who was three years younger than me, and myself. My mom is obviously driving, I'm in the passenger seat, and my brother is sitting behind me. My mom is the sweetest person ever but is very adamant

that she will never stop to help somebody on the side of the road or pick somebody up especially when her kids were in the car. She does however make sure that she calls the police so they can help. It was around 9pm and we were going home when my mom and I spot someone on the side of the road by the passenger side with their hood up. Nothing out of the ordinary as my mom and I spot someone on the side of the road by the passenger's side with their hood up. Nothing out of the ordinary as a mom slows down a little since it is dark outside and doesn't want to harm anybody that might be fixing their car. As soon as we are close to the car, this guy steps out from around the hood of the car towards the street and is waving us down. I don't remember much of a description because I wasn't paying much attention.

Plus, I could barely see the man, I don't remember much of a description because I wasn't paying much attention. Plus I could barely see the man but I do remember feeling bad that we weren't at least going to stop to see what he needed. The man at this point is in the middle of the road waving his hands but as we come up to the car we don't see anybody else in the car. So my mom swerves around him and tells my brother to find her phone in her purse that was on the floor between the front and back seats. I look at my mom and she looks in her rearview mirror and her face goes white and her eyes get wide. My mom slams her foot on the accelerator. This is highly unusual

for my mom as she is really good at going the speed limit. At this point I know something is wrong. My mom's voice goes high and a panicked voice is asking my brother where her phone is. I'm yelling at her what's going on. All this chaos is freaking my brother out with him being so little he's crying and can't find the phone. My mom keeps her eyes on the road but keeps glancing up continuously at her rear view mirror and finally answers, he's following us. I'm not sure what she was talking about but know that this isn't a good situation. My mom is speeding towards the highway and thank goodness there's no traffic.

I look in the back window and see somebody passing cars trying to keep up with my mother. I ask her where she's going and she told me that she's heading to the police station. As we are getting close my mom tells me to jump out of the car as soon as she stops the car and grab my brother from the back seat while she runs around the car to meet us. My mom stops right in front of the police station and doesn't even wait for the car to fully come to a stop before she puts the car in park. I open my car door as fast as I can and grab my brother who has quickly opened his door. I take off in a full sprint with my brother in one hand and my mom on the other hand. Once we finally talk to a police officer is when I finally understand

the full extent of what happened. My mom told the police officer that once we had passed the guy with a broke down car, he quickly ran to the hood of his car and slammed it. He then got into his car and sped after us. That was when my mom knew that this guy had horrible intentions for us. She said he kept trying to speed up to get on the side of us, but she was able to speed up to avoid that. Once my mom turned toward the police station, she said the guy had stopped following. She gave the best description of the guy in his car but because everything happened so fast she didn't get a license plate number. I'm pretty sure the police never found him. I'm also not

sure what the guy had planned for us if we had actually stopped to help but I know that it was nothing good. Before my mom married my dad, she dated a man named Craig. At first he was sweet, but he slowly became abusive. My mom tried to leave multiple times, but Craig always threatened her. After one violent argument, my mom waited and fled in the middle of the night. Years passed and she got married and had me. After one violent argument, my mom waited and fled in the middle of the night. Years passed and she got married and had me. My dad's work included a lot of traveling so it was mostly my mom and I alone in our big acreage home.

My mom was in the kitchen making lasagna while I was sitting in my high chair. It was extremely hot that day so she opened the kitchen door to let in some air. She heard heavy footsteps enter the kitchen behind her. My excited mom assumed it was my dad and she turned around with a hello my love. Her excitement immediately turned to horror. There was Craig standing in the middle of our kitchen with a gun visibly tucked in his pants. Craig smiled at her and asked her what she was making. My mom mustered enough courage to say lasagna. She was physically shaking as Craig sat himself down beside me. He playfully pinched my cheeks and I guess I laughed at him. My mom was

holding back tears as she finally asked what he was doing in the house. Craig said he just wanted to visit my mom and he would leave when he was done eating. When the lasagna was ready she served it to him. My mom took me and sat across from Craig so she could keep an eye on him. Craig said that he still had her things at this house and she was welcome to get them. My mom said she didn't need any of it and he could throw it out. Craig started to get agitated and said she threw him away like garbage too. Craig said that she was acting tough but he knew deep down inside that she was still the stupid girl he had dated. Craig claimed that my mom needed him in her life and that she couldn't function if he wasn't there to help her. He said it needed to be there to raise me because my dad was an idiot who would never be able to protect my mom or I.

Craig said if he was crazy, he could have easily kidnapped us or done things to my mom because my dad was such a weak individual who couldn't protect what was his. My mom started to cry and told Craig to leave the house. Craig said it wasn't her house and that he had the right to be there. My mom said if he didn't leave she would call the police which made him really angry. Craig threatened if the cops got involved he would hire men to cut her up into pieces and film it. My mom started to cry even louder and then agitated Craig through his plate and yelled at her to stop crying and that he loved her. I got scared and started to cry too which caused Craig to stand up and approach my mother. She jumped out of her chair with me

cradled in her arms. She begged for Craig to spare my life. Craig tried to reach over to touch my mom but she got so scared that she fell to the floor sobbing. The phone began to ring and Craig became so overwhelmed that he ran out of the house. The cops in his family found him about to shoot himself in the head. His adult son had to convince him not to do it. My mom was so traumatized that she didn't want to deal with any of it so she got a restraining order against him. Her and my dad moved across the country. I was curious and searched this guy up and was shocked to see that he was dating a college-aged girl who looked just like the woman he couldn't have. So I'm a 13 year old male and I live somewhere in Alabama with my family. My dog Boomer has some good genes in his blood so he is a good dog.

He's a Doberman mixed with some sort of hound so he has good guard dog genes in him and a hunting dog. So Boomer had different sounds for different things. He has a whiny bark for when he needs something. He has his kind of deepish bark for when he needs something, he has his kinda deepish bark that's the equivalent to hey what's that, then he has his aggressive bark when the thing he's barking at gets too close, and then there's the ghost howl, a chilling howl when he finds something. So I'm inside reading some stories on reddit when I hear boomer switching between his whiny bark and his deep bark. I go

outside to check on him because he might be stuck and or sees a dog. So I go outside and boomer is looking at the area behind him while pacing back and forth while looking at me in a field area. I get closer to boomer and his ears go back and the fur on his lower back stand up and he starts barking aggressively. When I stupidly get too close to find out what he's barking at and when I got out of Boomer's chain length, a man lunges at me and out of reflex I jerk backwards back to Boomer. Boomer barks some more but the guy doesn't get the hint and keeps coming at me. Boomer barks a final time before jumping up and biting on his arm. The man screams in pain, alerting my grandma who looks out the kitchen window and sees everything that's happening.

She immediately calls the police while my grandpa comes outside with his gun ready. The man kicked my dog and ran off into the night. The police never found the man, but he knows if he comes back he's gonna get bit and possibly shot. Who knows what would have happened if Boomer wasn't my guard dog. I'm sure a lot of you already know this as it's made its rounds in the news, but a few days ago on October 7th, 2020, there was an FBI raid on a trailer in Michigan. The story takes place the night of the raid, around 7.30pm. My boyfriend was at home sleeping when I came home from work at 6.45. I drove in our neighborhood and turned down the street to our house. All seemed normal as I go inside the house to rouse my sleeping boyfriend and we

prepare to gather our things to go shopping. It takes me a little while to wake him up and we chat for a bit about my day. As we go to leave our house to go shopping we're continuing the conversation we were having as we step out onto our front porch. I notice then that we're much louder than the outside and notice that there were people standing on the end of the road. I stopped mid-sentence and it's then that I realized how eerily quiet it is aside from my boyfriend who was still talking, unaware something was off. I quickly tap his shoulder and try to draw his attention from locking our door to people gathering in the street.

We both look around and I then notice a police car at the other end of the street just barely in view. There were two officers speaking to some men beside their large SUV. The SUV was a state car that was parked somewhat sideways so it was blocking the road but it had its lights off. I took this as a sign that some mild neighborhood scuffle had occurred and someone called the police. A noteworthy thing, but not too uncommon for a mobile home park. We proceeded to our car and I commented, somewhat irritated, that they better move the police car soon as they were really blocking the traffic. As we made our way out of our driveway, another car turned down our street and headed up towards the police car.

This gave us the confidence we needed as sheep to and headed up towards the police car. This gave us the confidence we needed as sheep to follow someone else towards the confrontation. As we slowly crawled up the streets in our car we watched the car in front of us stop and turn at a road that had been left unblocked just in front of the police. We moved to this area somewhat recently and haven't learned the entire ins and outs of every street in the park yet. Unfortunately, this street was a dead end. As we rounded the corner on the dead end street, I caught a glimpse of the police and my irritation immediately melted into confusion and fear when I noticed the large assault rifles that they were carrying. It dawned on me as we made our way toward the end of the road that whatever the police were doing, they weren't here because of some small neighborhood fight.

I felt my anxiety rising as I started rambling about how they had guns and why would they have such massive guns outside our house. We turned the car around and as we came back up on the police blockade, they silently motioned for us to go back down towards our house. We did, but eager to still leave our neighborhood and also hopefully find out what was going on. We passed our house and turned down a different road to try going around. At this time we thought it was weird that there was a cop car with no lights on but heavily armed officers standing by around it but we didn't think that there would be any more and we were wrong. As we rounded the street we were immediately greeted by another police car and two more armed men, this time in full military uniform

with lights flashing. I think my jaw dropped to the floor as the men started towards our car. I started really freaking out at this point and told my boyfriend to turn around and to get us out of there. As we turned around, I noticed out the passenger window that there was someone in handcuffs by the side of the house. He was looking right at us and I felt sick. When we turned around, we finally found a road that led us out of the park and onto the main road. We got to the grocery store and recounted what had just happened on our trip to go grocery shopping. It took me a full hour to finally stop shaking and process what had happened. We thought it was crazy but assumed it was probably some kind of high profile drug raid. We found out the next day when the news

broke that there were multiple people arrested and a thwarted plot to kidnap our state governor. The raid had taken place approximately 15-30 minutes before we left our house and our idiot selves had no idea. The second time we pulled up to the police blockade it was right outside the house the raid had taken place at. It really made me stop and reconsider everything that had happened that night and how suspicious we probably came across. I now have to come to terms with the fact that I live down the street from domestic terrorists, or at least their house since I assume it's still in their name right now. I've made a point of figuring out multiple routes through our neighborhood because

I realized how dangerous that could be in a more immediate emergency. I don't even want to think about what could have happened if they weren't stopped. And how much crazier that altercation could have been, just down the street. Three years ago, in October in Minnesota, I just started dating my now wife. I was obsessed with working out and asked her if she would like to use one of my guest passes at the YMCA. She begrudgingly agreed and we started heading to the closest YMCA near her house. We were about a couple of miles away from the gym, with my wife driving south on the busy street, when I noticed on the other side of the road heading north a woman was walking on the sidewalk while holding something.

Next to her driving slowly on the shoulder of the road was an F-350. The hairs on my neck stood up and I shuddered after seeing them. My whole body had goosebumps. I told my wife that she needed to do a U-turn so that we could see what was going on. We did the U-turn and got behind the F-350. I noticed immediately that the woman was barefoot and holding a baby wrapped in a blanket. I got out of the car and told my wife to stay in the car and call the police if anything happened. When I started walking towards the woman, the first thing I noticed was that she was barefoot With it being October in Minnesota the temperature was around 50 degrees Fahrenheit so

no one would be walking around without shoes and socks on When I got close to her I saw the baby was only wearing a diaper wrapped in a thin blanket As I got closer I could hear the guy in the truck yelling at the woman to please get in the truck, get in the truck now. I finally reached the woman and asked her if she was okay and if she needed help. She said yes and the guy wouldn't leave her alone. Right then a different woman started jogging past. I forgot my phone in the car so I asked the woman jogging if she had a cell phone and if she could call the police which she did immediately. I turned around to face the truck and I see the man getting out. As he is walking

towards us he is now pleading with the woman to get in his truck. I positioned myself between him and the woman and he stopped when he was about 3 feet away from me. I told him that he wasn't going to come any closer and that the police were on their way. Now while the guy stopped walking towards us, he completely ignored me and didn't acknowledge what I just said. This is where the story gets a little weird. The two of them start having a conversation that made zero sense with me standing between them. He said, Honey, just get back in the truck and come home.

She responds, You kicked me out and told me to leave. He says, no I didn't. I came upstairs and you and the baby were gone. And she responds, you never let me leave and never let me do anything and never let me spend any of our money. And he responds, we don't have any money. Our credit cards are maxed out. You don't have any shoes on and our baby's cold. Please, let's just go home. She yelled at him, I'm never coming home with you. You don't let us do anything ever.

At this point, two police cars showed up with four cops. One cop spoke with the man and one with the woman and the other two cops took statements from both both me and the jogger I'm not sure what took place that day with the couple and the baby I stepped in because I had automatically assumed that some sort of abuse was taking place where the woman was trying to escape him Maybe that's what was happening or maybe the woman was having a mental breakdown I'll never know Either way, it was one of the strangest ten minutes of my life. My twin sister and I used to hike in the Northern California woods alone as we grew up. It wasn't a big deal then. We knew where we were most of the time and how to get back home from any point on the mountain range.

One super cold morning when we were around 10 years old, we woke up before our parents and got dressed to go for a hike. I remember getting as far as the stairs on the deck of our house before I froze. I couldn't speak or move. I looked at my twin who had gotten as far as the middle of our driveway and we locked eyes. She read all over my face that I was terrified. I didn't feel anything though, I just knew something was wrong and we were in danger. She bolted back inside and I followed her once she moved past me. Upstairs was a window that faced this big detached garage on our property. We looked up at it without saying a single word to each other the entire time. That's when we saw a giant mountain lion circling the garage.

It was in a hunting stance, sort of squatting down and walking very lightly. I think it was hunting our cat, Rascal. Our parents didn't believe us when we told them what happened, but the same reaction happened to me twice more since. Once more at the same house, but it was a huge family of deer. The third time I was in college and a rabid raccoon was sitting outside my car door at my apartment when I was in the passenger seat. I haven't felt this since and it's been 15 years and all three times I never saw a thing. It was all instinct. Always trust a warning from nature. I was with my parents visiting Florida on a road trip because my dad did a business trip there once a year.

Because he would be there for a week, we'd take as much of an opportunity as we could to sightsee around Orlando while we had the chance. On a day my dad had off of work, we went into a gift shop just to browse through some stuff and we all separated between the shelves. I thought I saw my dad in my peripheral vision while looking at something I found particularly cool, so I walked over to him, still looking at the object in my hands. When I was right in front of him, I said, look at this daddy, isn't this cool? And then looked up to find this was a complete stranger. I immediately got extremely awkward and shy and started to apologize looking around for my actual dad. Then this guy leans

down towards me and says, I can be your daddy if you want me to be. My mom immediately flew around the shelf and grabbed my arm to yank me away from the man then started telling him to stay away from her daughter. He backed away pretty quickly and left the store without saying anything else. I honestly just thought at that age that this guy was trying to actually be my new father, but my mom explained to me years later what really happened. I honestly just hope he never actually got a hold of the kid. To be continued... that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. If you got a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official, and give and receive feedback from the community and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. 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. Michelin passenger or light truck tires and receive up to $70 by prepaid MasterCard. Conditions apply. Details at Michelin.ca. Find a Michelin TreadExperts dealer near you at TreadExperts.ca slash locations.