The Lets Read Podcast - 137: I WAS NEARLY KIDNAPPED | 22 True Scary Horror Stories | EP 125

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

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

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Until May 31st, save up to $ always there, helping you with Toyo tires you can trust. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Like Toyo's open country family of tires. Find your pro at your local Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca Thank you. In November of 2015, our family got the devastating news that my grandpa had lost his battle with cancer. And the grief we felt was made all the worse because of a decades-long rift between his two children, my dad, who's also deceased, and my aunt. I won't bore you with the grimly tedious details of their squabble, but it basically meant in a time when we needed it the least,

various family members were trading petty insults and bickering over his estate. The lowest point came when my aunt's side of my family basically looted his house, then rented a U-Haul to drop off boxes of all the stuff they didn't want, which amounted to anything they didn't deem financially valuable. My mom was so mad at first, but the boxes turned out to be an absolute goldmine of journals, photo albums, and pieces of miscellaneous memorabilia. It was a lot of work going through it all, but boy was it worth it. You see, my grandpa served in the U.S. Navy for 25 years and had sailed all over the world on various warships.

His photo albums and journals told an incredible tale and included the story of how he'd met my grandma in Honolulu during a break in the fighting. Like I said, it was an heirloom gold mine but there was also a lot of random stuff in there too. Old records and little knickknacks that we figured someone else might find valuable. I'd actually sold some stuff using Facebook marketplace before so I proposed to sell everything I could and split the money three ways between me, my brother and my mom. They were happy enough with the apartment so I boxed up what I thought I could sell and drove home to my apartment. I took some photos, posted some ads and was quite surprised at how quickly some of the stuff sold.

The old records were especially popular and someone even bought my grandpa's old bottle cap collection. The one thing I didn't think I'd be able to sell was this ugly little statuette, one that I assume came from the time he was stationed in the South Pacific. About the size of an old Nokia phone, it looked like it was carved out of some kind of black volcanic rock, shiny in places but rough in others. The craftsmanship was admirable, but the details were hideous. It looked like a mix between a frog and a man that was in the middle of giving birth to a pineapple. Seriously, and aside from that, it just gave me the creeps. Like I said, it was shiny and there was a slim chance someone

might see it as some kind of collector's item so why not at least try and sell it. Needless to say, when I got a message from a user who was willing to pay my $3 asking price, I was over the moon. We arranged a pickup time and then I thought that was that, matter over and done with. But I was wrong. I told the nice lady I'd sell it to her and we'd swap phone numbers, but I didn't actually take the listing down. So on the exact same day she was due to pick it up, I ended up getting another message from a different user. I didn't think that I'd get even one offer for the frogman, let alone two. Only this new guy's message wasn't polite and inquiring.

It was verging on frantic. The first message simply said, Do you still have the idol? And that was the first time I heard anyone use that word regarding the little carving or figure or whatever it was, and the use of the word idol struck me as distinctly odd. A technical term with sort of sinister connotations, I thought. I responded honestly, telling the guy I had already made a deal with someone for the statuette and that I was sorry for wasting his time. But if I'm honest, I only replied that way to try and coax him into making a bigger offer.

And that's exactly what he did, albeit in the most dramatic way possible. Call me and name your price, his next message said, along with his phone number. Those words, name your price, really got their hooks into me, and although the nice lady I'd spoken to already was due to stop by that day, I gave the guy a call. First thing he asked me is how much I agreed to sell his idol for. His. Now he was claiming ownership on it too. When I told him just a couple of dollars, how I just wanted to get rid of it, he acted like I had just peed on the Mona Lisa. It got to the point where I politely asked him to make an offer before I

ended the call. It was business, not the antique roadshow, I thought. And oh, did he oblige me. Like I said, I put that little statue thing on Facebook marketplace for like three dollars and I thought I'd be lucky to get that for it. This guy straight up offers me a grand to take it off my hands. And when he mistook my grasp of surprise for a rejection, he doubled his offer. $2,000 in cash for something I thought I ended up having to throw in the trash. I was practically shaking by the time we ended the call, and I had to take a moment to compose myself before calling the prospective buyer, apologizing profusely but

canceling the deal. I just couldn't turn that amount of money down and I know that most other people would have done the same in my position. We arranged to meet in a Whole Foods parking lot, one that just so happened to be across the street from my apartment. It was somewhere I'd used for public meetings before, a well-lit place that I knew well was covered by security cameras. It was a place I usually felt pretty comfortable meeting internet strangers, but for some reason, on this particular occasion, I was anything but chill. Maybe it was the fact that I'd never sold anything for $2,000 before, and just that amount of cash made me nervous. But in retrospect, I know it was something

else. What made things worse is that I had no idea when he was due to arrive either. He just said that he'd give me a call whenever he was five minutes away. Couldn't give me an exact time, he just kinda told me he'd be there whenever he could manage it. I figured maybe 7-8pm would be the latest he'd arrived. It was a weekday evening after all but those times came and went, as did 9 and 10 at night and the guy still hadn't arrived yet. It was almost 11 at night when I finally got the call saying he was on his way. By that time I'd basically convinced myself the whole thing was some elaborate prank. I figured I was more likely to see myself appearing on impractical jokers than end up

$2,000 richer. Point being, I was primed for disappointment. But despite being tardy, the guy was true to his word, and called me saying he was a few minutes away from the Whole Foods parking lot. And that's when the whole thing went from seeming silly to just downright dumb. Every single other time I met a buyer, it had been in broad daylight, with plenty of people around, not in a barely lit deserted area. But god, that two grand was just too good of a prospect to ignore. I ended up watching the parking lot from my window,

telling myself that if the guy's car looked too sketchy or whatever, then I just turn my phone off, take the listing down, and forget the whole thing ever happened. But when this Lincoln Town car rolls into the lot, I'm thinking, hmm, if this guy really is some eccentric wealthy collector. And a quick phone call confirms that it actually is him down there. So I put some shoes on, throw on a jacket and walk downstairs to meet the guy. It's not like he could see me leaving my apartment so for all he knew I'd walk like 10 blocks to be there and like I said if it seemed sketchy I could, right? Anyway, I give the buyer a little wave as I approach his car, before having to politely decline, taking the passenger's side. Never get into cars with strange men, obviously.

But he's only way too happy to get out. He didn't look quite like I expected him to either. Fancy car and all, but he looked like a history professor with some sort of meth habit, that's really all I can describe it as. Un-shaven, barely washed, tweed jacket and crazy hair. The whole thing went down like a sketchy drug deal. I basically demanded to see the cash so I knew he was for real and he was only too happy to show me.

I could barely hide the delight on my face when I actually counted the cash but that excitement paled in comparison to his own when he saw the little statue. From the way he was acting I actually started to think I could have driven the price up by at least a couple of thousand and in the end I broke. I just had to ask why the little statue was worth so much to him. He looked at me like I just asked the most naive question imaginable, then said something that sent chills running down my spine. If you only knew what this thing is capable of, the blood that has been spilled for it. He said, holding the little statue tight in his grip like it was a cure for cancer or something. His eyes looked all wild like he could

barely contain himself and his lips looked curled like he might burst into a fit of giggling at any moment. I told him I'd keep an eye out for more statues like it, that maybe my grandpa had more of them stashed away somewhere. And he just smiled and told me it was the only one that existed, how no one would ever find or create another like it. And then just like that, before I had the chance to ask him anything else, he just gets back into his car and takes off. And that was the end of it. I didn't ever learn anything else about the little statue or the guy who bought it, and honestly I don't think I want to know anything else. The encounter in that parking lot was one of the most unnerving things that's ever happened to me. I don't think that little statue has any sort of powers or anything and I don't doubt it

was some kind of rare native art piece, something to justify the crazy price tag but the thing that actually scared me was how that guy seemed to feverishly believe in whatever perceived power the thing had, and what he'll do as a result is obviously far more dangerous than any little carving or statuette. I just hope he doesn't do anything too crazy, like hurting other people or even himself, because then that two grand I made will be little more than blood money in my eyes, and I'll have played a part in something truly terrible. I just try not to think about it too much. It was a while ago now and I didn't see anything about occult sacrifices in the paper or whatever,

but every so often I think about that little black statuette and how it made me feel when I looked at it, and I wonder if there wasn't something more going on beneath the surface. Okay, so back in 2016, the Xbox One S came out, which was basically just an Xbox that was 4K capable. Now this isn't to be confused with the Xbox Series X and S that just came out last year. This is a couple of years ago when that Facebook Marketplace had just started. I picked up one of the newer editions of the console, so I was looking to get rid of my outdated one. Facebook marketplace seemed like

the easiest place to do that since I didn't have an eBay account at the time, so yeah. Long story short, that's how I opened myself up to one of the creepiest experiences of my entire life. So I posted an ad for my vanilla Xbox One, set a reasonable enough price for it at about $100, then just sit back and wait for the inquiries to come in. As you can imagine, the internet didn't fail to bring out all the anonymously abusive weirdos who told me $30 would be more than a reasonable price. And could I drop the console off at their house which, in one specific case, happened to be in the next state over. Basically no one made any serious inquiries which I figured, it was a 4 year old console at that point, I was going to be pretty

lucky if I could manage to sell it at all. Which is why when I got a message from a kid's mom saying their kid was really sick and could I perhaps work in a discount for them I just thought sure why not. The first message from the kid's mom was incredibly long and was basically this big sob story about how their 10 year old had this rare disease that they only had a slim chance of surviving. I forget the name of the disease but I I copy-posted the word into Google and it was actually a legit disease which has some pretty grim sounding symptoms too. I probably shouldn't have called it a sob story, but that's exactly what I thought it

was at first, but when I messaged back and forth with the lady, then I realized how something that was a throwaway thing for me might actually make her entire family's life so much happier. I went from weirdly indifferent to being seriously invested in this kid having a Christmas he'd never forget. So, after a couple of days of talking back and forth with this lady, I decided, screw it, I'm just going to give it to her for free. I didn't really need the money and besides I could just sit pretty on all the good karma I'd earned. It's kind of embarrassing to admit how far down the rabbit hole I was with the whole thing. Like I even went out and bought some bubble wrap and some upmarket cardboard packaging designed for shipping electricals. I wanted to be that kid Santa that

year and it's crazy to admit but my charitable little scheme really did have me feeling good about myself. Which I suppose is why, when it started to unravel, I just didn't want to believe it. When the time came for me to get this lady's mailing address, there was a couple of inconsistencies that grabbed my attention, but that still didn't raise my suspicion right away. For example, at first she gave me one address, then she gave me another when I asked her to confirm. I did actually confront her on it, but she said she was living in an apartment complex where people would steal packages. Obviously, neither of us wanted to risk the Xbox being stolen, so she'd given me an address for a

friend of hers who could safely deliver it to them. Totally believable excuse, right? She was a single mom, living in a rough neighborhood, and I was lending her a helping hand. Or maybe I should have seen the red flags right there, but I was just feeling way too saintly and smug to do so. The thing that tripped it up was that the lady had mentioned her kids starting some kind of medical treatment for their illness. She mentioned a particular date that it was starting and that turned out to be the very same day I was about to post the package. I have the console all boxed up, along with the controllers, the wiring, and a few games that'll be suitable for that kid's age, I thought. I figured it must have been a stressful time for

her. Seeing her kid getting poked and prodded by all kinds of medical professionals was probably weighing on her mind, and I thought mailing the console on that particular day might really cheer her up. I tried to keep the whole thing a surprise, but I've never been very good at keeping my mouth shut. And what can I say? I wanted to bask in the glory of my own generosity a little. So I send the single mom a Facebook message like, hey, posting the package today, just wanted to make sure I have the right address. She then replies, oh my god, you've just absolutely made my day, you're such a sweetheart. Cue some blushing for myself and I reply, no problem, hope it makes it over to you okay.

Then she replies, the timing is amazing because Franklin starts his therapy next month. Next month. I go back through the conversation to find the message where she said it was on the 25th of the month, that same day we were texting. Obviously I'm pretty confused by this and I still don't have any major suspicions so I'm like, oh I thought he was starting his therapy today. She explains no, it's next month, almost like she hadn't told me the 25th at all. Only when I confront her about it is she like, oh yeah we had to move some dates around, my bad for not telling you. But my spider senses are actually tingling at that point so I decide to ask her if there's anything she for not telling you. But my spider senses are actually tingling at that point

so I decide to ask her if there's anything she's not telling me. She obviously responds no to that but I decide it'll be better to just talk to her on the phone so I insist on calling her. She answers her phone so I know she's a real person and she sounded kind of busy and impatient so I figured I'd just gotten her out of bad time. Everything would have gone out without a hitch if she hadn't made one fatal mistake. Right as I'm about to hang up after apologizing for taking up her time, she says, Freddy would be so happy with the Xbox. Freddy? She's been calling her kid Franklin for a week now and suddenly it was Freddy.

I'm not even sure she could like blame autocorrect it was a freaking phone call. I called back and just straight up called her bluff. I didn't know 100% at the time but I sure acted like I did. I just told her that I knew she was a scammer and that I'd be reporting her to the police. There was some mild resistance at first, a few weak denials here and there, but I could hear the thin veil of her wholesomeness beginning to slip with every accusation. And eventually, she snapped. And when she did, it was so vicious that it actually shut me up for a minute. It was a complete Jekyll and Hyde transformation from the sweet single mom character she obviously just invented to the soulless fraud

she really was. Even though I'd just figured her out, she called me a gullible moron for believing her in the first place, called me sad and pathetic and a bleeding heart for wanting to give away my stuff to a kid that probably wasn't going to live to enjoy it. In this savage tirade, she told me people like me would always be worthless and pathetic. Dumb saps that were nothing but marks. I just tried to keep calm and told her I'd be reporting her to Facebook along with sending a screenshot of her profile and display pictures to the police, all before circulating her profile around some of the more populated Facebook groups I was a member of to warn them of potential scams. But of course it wasn't a real profile. Of course she had like 20 more, at least that's what she said. But my profile was real. Everything I told her about myself was true. The psycho knew what I

looked like, she knew where I lived, she knew all sorts of things about me and I knew absolutely nothing about her other than she was willing to stoop lower than low to get things she wanted. And on top of that, she wasn't above making some hideously graphic threats of violence against me and my family. And stupidly enough, this was back when I had my sister and my cousin listed in my profile as immediate family. And that's what got me the most, that I'd been dumb enough to serve up some pretty intimate family connections on a silver platter. The scammer told me I was truly stupid if I thought the cops would be able to do anything about her,

and on the off chance that she did hear from the police she'd send her boyfriend after my family. Now I don't know how genuine of a threat that was but just the fact that she had access to their profiles made me feel anxious and incredibly guilty. If they ended up getting hurt because of something I did or didn't do I don't think I'd have been able to live with myself. Obviously, the whole thing ended when I blocked the scammer and got in touch with my cousins and sister, telling them to make their profiles private. I was honest with them, told them how I'd fallen victim to a scammer and that I was worried their personal information might be compromised. After all, this scammer had just assumed someone else's identity in terms of their profile pictures, possibly even their name too, and the idea of them using any of our pictures to set up a new scam profile made my skin crawl. That whole thing was by far the worst experience I've ever had online, and not only am

I really, really careful now when it comes to interacting with internet strangers, but I seriously advise all of you to be too. We'll be right back. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Find a Toyo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca When you want to bet on sports, play it on a field or ice or course. Bear Rivers is the place. Over, under, money, line. Same game, parlays, it's all fine. We'll be right back. please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. A couple of years ago, me and my girlfriend, now wife, were selling some of our old stuff after moving into another apartment.

And one of these items happened to be our big old TV. We put one ad up on eBay and another on that Facebook marketplace thing, since it was kind of new at the time and just decided to wait and see what kind of offers we got. My wife was pretty sure she'd found a decent enough buyer who'd come pick the TV up from our apartment and save us a job. But I've gotten a message from someone who, although they couldn't quite afford our asking price, made us an offer we couldn't refuse. It was from an older guy, who seemed to be living on his own with his dog, whose TV had recently broken and he couldn't afford a new one. He said that he could pay about 70% of our asking price and would make the rest of it up to us in

plumbing services, should we ever need it. I ended up getting into a long, touching discussion with the guy. He kind of reminded me of an old uncle of mine and I just instantly liked him. He'd fallen on hard times and through no fault of his own, if anyone deserved a little kindness, it was him. After a brief discussion with my wife, we decided that we just go drop it off at his house for free. However, we also knew that there's no way this guy would accept our charity right off the bat, or at least very little chance of that happening anyway. So when he politely asked us to wait three weeks to drop it off at his house, since it had taken him a little time to get the cash together, we were only too happy to oblige him. But still, we make a note of his address and whatnot, then tell him we'll call in a few weeks.

A few weeks goes by, and we decide we'll drive the TV over to the guy on a Saturday morning. Before we leave, we give the guy a call to tell him we're on our way, but there's no answer. We try once or twice more but still the guy isn't answering his phone. Now this might sound kind of selfish, but the TV was all boxed up and just taking up space in our hallway, so even though the guy wasn't picking up his phone, we decided to drive over anyway and possibly leave the TV with a neighbor of his. I mean, that method seemed kind of preferable to us too. If we left it with a neighbor, we wouldn't have to go through all the potential awkwardness of refusing to take the guy's money. Anyway, so we drive over to the guy's address,

keeping the TV in the car while we ensure that there's definitely no one home. I get out of the car, walk up this guy's driveway, and knock on the door, which gets no answer. Right then is when I lean back and look into the guy's front room, you know, to check if there are any lights on or anything. God knows the guy might have been a little deaf and just couldn't hear his phone or the door. But as I look at his front windows, I see all these little black spots all over the blinds and on the windowsill. I'm like, what is those? Thinking they might be bits of dirt or something. Then one of the little dirt pieces just straight up moves in that lightning quick stop start way that insects do and that's when it hits me.

I'm looking at about 50 house flies, big fat ones too, that are grouped together on his window. It's weird how we can see one house fly on a window pane or a window ledge and be like that's a fly, but when we see so many in one place, it's like our brains just don't quite compute what our eyes are seeing. That kind of brittle sense of perception that humans have never fails to creep me out. Like most people reading this, I instantly knew what was wrong, and this horrific sense of dread came over me. I think I might have involuntarily let out a, oh god, oh no, when the penny dropped. You only ever get a concentration of flies like that when there's either a massive buildup of garbage or

something had died. And in that case, someone had died. And horrifically, it was the older guy we'd grown so attached to throughout the saga of getting rid of our old TV. The whole thing was just horrifying, from having to call the cops to the fire department showing up with them to bash the guy's door down. When they did, the smell started to drift out into the street and it was just about the most stomach-churning thing I'd ever experienced. I know the guy wasn't exactly my best friend, but I feel like even though we only swapped a few texts and calls with the guy, we got to know him pretty well. He was good-natured, independent, and pretty sure he was a veteran too. The whole thing really shook me up.

Those flies, man. Those fat, carrion flies that were so big and engorged that I barely even recognized them for what they were. They'd been breeding and feeding in the rotting flesh of the same guy I'd been having heart-to-hearts with just weeks before. It's just scary to me how death is sometimes. Like yeah, the prospect of what happens to us when we die is daunting enough, but it's how sudden and seemingly random death can be, with all its grim little details. Like I couldn't shake the image of those flies on the window, like they were his ghost or something. Maybe we do leave a little something of ourselves behind when we die, but that thing happens to be so very, very ugly. One of the creepiest things I'd ever heard in my life is the story of a woman who had her life ruined by Facebook Live of all things. Of all the social media horror stories you hear, this is one that's affected me the most, without a shadow of a doubt. And you'll have to forgive me if I get any details wrong,

I'm pretty sure this happened a while ago and it's been years since I read anything about it. So, this couple have a horrendous divorce. This whole nightmarish maelstrom of pettiness and malice that turned them both into nasty, vengeful people. The way I heard it, the wife basically rinsed the husband for all he was worth, got custody of the kids, got a whole bunch of financial stuff on her side. She even took her ex-husband's dog. He tried all manner of messed up things to get revenge, but by far the most brutally effective thing he ever did to terrorize her involved an ad he posted on Facebook marketplace.

Basically he pretends to be his ex-wife and posts a bunch of ads saying how she wants to make cuddle puddles with random guys and that she'll pay for it. Not exactly the wording used in the ads obviously but you get the idea. But the ex-wife doesn't hear about this. The first she heard of it was when dudes actually started turning up at her house. At first she just tells one or two of the guys to get out of there, obviously, and that they made a mistake, but it just keeps happening. Guys show up at her house, with every single one expecting something R-rated. The final straw came when a guy turned up at her house with a crowbar and actually tried to break in. Cops came, arrested the guy, and he actually shows the

cops the advertisement the woman was supposed to have left on Facebook Marketplace. The angry ex-husband hadn't just posted one ad, he'd posted several, and each one was a step up in intensity. From what I read, the ads started out kinda seedy but relatively harmless, but then went on to include some seriously graphic stuff along with her dress and contact details. Somehow the cops managed to prove it was the ex-husband posting the messages, and I'm pretty sure he got charged with some of those new revenge type laws they introduced. It just scares the life out of me that someone can use the internet to do you harm like that and most of us have big enough of an online presence to make that legitimately possible. That and it's crazy how two people who once loved each other enough to get married

can grow to hate each other so much that they'll do things to put each other's health in jeopardy. But I suppose that's just the world we live in. To be continued... A little while ago I saw an ad on Facebook Marketplace where a woman claimed to be giving away free gerbils. Apparently the boy-girl pair she owned had produced a huge litter of little gerbil babies and since there was way too much for her to handle, she was just going to give them away to a handful of loving homes. The ad didn't include the grim little factoid that the gerbil mom would probably eat her babies if she didn't think she could take care of them but I figured so I got in touch. The woman turned out to be a widow who had originally bought the gerbils to keep her company. I did think it was kind of unusual that she didn't just get herself a cat or dog if loneliness was the issue but hey, different strokes for different

folks right? I'm not one to judge. And she seemed so sweet when I called her to arrange a date and time to go pick up two of the gerbils. Needless to say, I did not expect her to be living in the conditions she was. Because when me and my dad arrived at her home with a little straw bedded cage to take the gerbils home in, the whole exchange took a turn for the worse. So we called over at the gerbil lady's place, and at first there was no reply. Then when she finally answers the door we can see she is in quite a sorry state. One of her eyes is swollen and bloodshot with some super gross looking yellow gunk collecting in the corner of the eye. But we remained polite and just ignored it. The last thing me and dad wanted to do was offend or upset the lady by pointing out what was an already obvious medical

condition. But when she invites us inside, we get a clue as to how she got sick in the first place. Her little house reeked like it was the single worst stench that ever graced my nostrils and there were gerbils everywhere and I mean everywhere and much like their owner they were not in good condition. Just from the gerbils that were skittering around the kitchen I could see that many of them were missing fur and patches or had painful looking growths around their legs or backs. Then when she invited us into her TV room for a cup of tea, we could see it was even worse in there. We had to make up some excuse about how we couldn't stay for long after me and my dad shot each other a telepathic look that basically said a giant nope.

And with the amount of gerbil poop that clogged up every little corner and skirting board, it was absolutely no wonder that she had some kind of infection. And when I caught sight of an actual tiny rodent skeleton behind one of her curtains, I went into full improv mode to get us out of there. I turned to my dad, named some piece of important gerbil habitat that we hadn't picked up from the store yet, wink wink, but then agreed that, oh, we can't possibly bring from the store yet, wink wink, but then agreed that, oh, we can't possibly bring home the gerbils without insert name of doodad here and we'll

have to call by again in a couple of days. I remember us both sitting in the car afterward, just kind of in shock at what we'd just seen. The fact that someone could live like that was just depressing and terrifying to me. She obviously had no one coming to check on her, and anyone who thought it was okay to keep a home like that must have been losing their marbles. It sucked having to make a decision like we did. I felt really mean basically snitching, but we just had to call animal rescue for her benefit more than anything else. The ASPCA rep we spoke to said that they'd investigate and let us know what their call was going to be and, in the end, they got back in touch, thanking us for the tip. Not only was the gerbil lady now in touch with a local charity that would help check up on her

in her twilight years, but her house was considerably cleaner and safer after they've cleared out almost a hundred gerbils from her property. They said the situation was so bad that the only thing that kept the infestation from spreading were the neighborhood cats. I did remember seeing a bunch of strays hanging around outside, but I figured it was just because she was the local animal lover who would routinely feed them treats or whatever. Turns out she was breeding treats for them, just not in the way she might like to think. The creepiest thing about it was that from standing outside her home, you'd never have guessed at the horror show waiting for you on the inside.

And the whole thing just reminds me that we don't really know what's going on behind closed doors, even the ones closest to us. Behind the facade of normalcy, we have no idea what our friends and neighbors are up to, or what nightmarish conditions they're living under. To be continued... My dad was a guitar player. It was the only real skill he had, but I suppose that suited him because music was his entire life. He made his living playing in various bands all over Kalamazoo and to this day I ain't ever seen no man pick bluegrass like my daddy. You'll have to excuse my phrasing there but my dad grew up in Kentucky and he brought all that southern up with him when he and my mom moved up here. I was in the metal and stuff as a kid. Used to go to Detroit to catch cannibal corpse shows but it was my dad that gave me a love of bluegrass. But as you can

imagine being a lifelong musician meant that my dad went through some pretty hard times financially. And at one point, it looked like we might actually lose the house. We were saving every penny, my mom was working double shifts, and my dad even got a part-time job tending bar, but it just wasn't enough. Now, my dad's favorite guitar was this old Martin that looked about as old as the hills. Like steaks and whiskey, acoustic guitars are always better when you age them, so to speak. That kind of character or soul gets all up in the body, something that gives the sound a richness. It's kind of hard to describe but my dad's Martin had it in spades.

I've never heard a guitar make as sweet a sound as that old Martin and he adored it. But the thing was, nothing else we had would fetch as good a price as that guitar. And as much as it broke his heart to do it, it was either sell the guitar or put his family at risk. So, my dad being my dad, he sells the Martin, case and all, for like five grand. After that, things started looking up. We managed to keep the house, dad started getting gigs again, mom got a promotion at work. It took like two years before we were back on our feet, but we managed it. It was around this time that dad started getting these headaches that we just put down to stress. He was

working his butt off trying to put food on the table so it was no wonder he was beginning to feel the effects. The headaches got so bad that he finally agreed to go see a doctor. Then right when we needed it the least, right when things are actually looking up for the family, boom, my dad gets diagnosed with a brain tumor. An aggressive one too. Doctor gave him two months to put his affairs in order. And after he passed, I missed him real bad. So bad that I actually started pestering my mom for who he'd sold his old Martin to. I felt like getting the guitar back would bring me a little piece of dad back but to my disappointment mom had no idea who he'd sold the thing to. It had been years and it wasn't like dad kept much in the way of records.

It sucked but eventually I just sort of resigned myself to never seeing it again and I suppose that was just part of the whole grieving process for me. Years after I'm living in Detroit and trying to make a go of my own music career. Me and a few friends are out drinking just stumbling from dive bar when we come across this lady who claimed to be a psychic. When I heard that I just took it to mean some old bar fly who'd thought of a novel way to talk her way into a free drink or two by tickling your palm and telling you you're going to be rich. But this lady wasn't some scam artist. She seemed to genuinely believe she could read us, as she put it. She starts telling my friend how he's going to hurt a lot of people, more than we'll ever be able to forgive him. We just kind of make a joke out of the whole thing. The guy was a

pussycat. The last person to ever get violent or whatever. Then to keep the joke kind of rolling along I ask her to read me instead. She looks me up and down. Seems to study my hairline intently for a moment then says, what you're looking for is in your pocket. Only things I had on me were my keys, my phone, and a pack of smokes. That's it. The only thing I was looking for about then was a lighter, and I certainly didn't have one in my pocket. Next morning, I had a hangover so bad it could have killed a small child. I just lay in bed for like an hour, scrolling through social media on my phone, checking out the photos from the night before and trying not to hurl.

Then as I'm scrolling, I see the little tab for Facebook Marketplace and think, huh, I'll check it out. Then when I start browsing musical instruments for sale, it only takes me about a minute before I come across something that almost knocks me out of bed. A guy was selling a guitar that was the exact same make and model as my dad's old favorite. I'm lying there, looking at all the photos of it, noticing all the little dents and details that are just screaming, I'm your dad's guitar. And then I see the case and I swear to god, my freaking head just started spinning. Anyways, the guy was selling it for way more than I could afford, but it didn't take much to convince him to arrange a kind of payment plan with him given that it was of massive sentimental value. Getting it back was like having dad's ghost floating around whatever room you played it in and my mom burst into tears the first time I played her one of his old tunes on his old Martin.

But how is all of this creepy? I'm probably hearing you asking. The whole psychic lady thing is pure coincidence and besides she wasn't right anyway because your friend didn't turn out to be a serial killer right? Right?, yes and no. But it's this part that makes that old crazy lady's prediction seem so horribly prophetic. About the same time I'm being reunited with my guitar, my drinking buddy got into a little accident at work. Nothing too heavy, but he did need to be prescribed some painkillers so he could get back to work before his comp ran out. He was never quite the same after the accident, but we figured that was down to the pain and being out of work for so long. Over the next six or seven months that followed, he started losing weight, taking random days off of work, disappearing over the weekend.

Money started going missing out of his and his wife's bank account, then jewelry and electronics started vanishing. We should have known what was happening but at the same time, I'd never have pegged this guy to have that kind of personality and his wife actually had to catch him using for us to realize that he was addicted to opiates. Over the next few years, my buddy fulfilled the crazy lady's prophecy by wronging or pushing away almost every important person in his life. I let him stay on my couch for a couple of days after his wife finally kicked him out for emptying their savings account. But after he stole from me too, I just had to show him the door like

everyone else had. Last I heard from him, he was shacked up with his new junkie girlfriend somewhere in Chicago. Couple of months later, I hear from his ex-wife that he had a warrant out for his arrest. Cop said his girlfriend had OD'd and he just dumped her outside of the hospital. She died right there on the sidewalk. When that crazy lady said, what I was looking for was in my pocket, there was no way she could have known about my dad's old Martin guitar, and there's no way she predicted I'd use Facebook of all things to find it. She was kind of wrong about my pockets that night, but she was kind of right too.

But with regards to what she said about my buddy, she was exactly spot on. I'd only assume that she was wrong because I couldn't see him hurting anyone on purpose, he was just too gentle of a dude. I was fixated on deliberate physical violence to realize that he was playing out her predictions to the letter. I don't believe in the paranormal. I don't believe in psychics or ghosts. Heck, I'm not even religious by any description. But that night we were drinking, a crazy old lady told us our future, and whether I want to believe it or not, her predictions came true. You can get it from our tread experts. Toyo's open country family of tires will get you through tough weather in a variety of terrains. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Find a Toyo tread experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations.

From tires to auto repair, we're always there at treadexXpress.ca Worst thing I ever bought off the internet, hands down, was this coffee machine I bought using Facebook Marketplace. The thing was an absolute steal, so I expected it to have a few flaws or whatever, but Jesus Christ, it was barely functioning by the time UPS delivered it to our house. Yet still, it was made in Italy and it would do for making my coffee for the time being. But over the next couple of days, I started to be able to hear something weird going on in the machine. A kind of low ticking noise that

I'd never heard any other coffee machine make before. I could have just called a repair guy out but I figured I'd just buy a new one come next paycheck. So I just ignored the problem and figured I'd throw the coffee machine in the trash once the new one arrived. Then one morning I'm making coffee when I could have sworn I saw something moving on top of the machine. I just put it down to a sleepy brain and drank my coffee, but the thought kept bothering me as I went about my morning, so I finally decided to actually's outer casing off, yet when I pull it up to reveal the machine's guts, I scream so loud that I swear it could have cracked the kitchen windows. Inside the coffee machine is the biggest nest of cockroaches I'd ever seen in my life to this day. The little monsters absolutely disgust me and seeing so many of them in something I'd been using to drink my coffee.

Ugh, the thought makes me want to hurl, even all this time after. As soon as I scream and drop the lid onto the kitchen counter next to the machine, they all get spooked and scatter in every direction. Just a storm of skittering legs that, I swear to God, had me literally traumatized for like a week afterward. I just bailed. My husband had to deal with pretty much everything, but you can guess that I was infinitely grateful for it. Getting roach eggs in the house meant that we needed to have the whole kitchen fumigated, but it was a small price to pay to get those evil little things out of my kitchen. Still, with the few hundred we had

to spend on exterminators, turned out to be the most expensive coffee machine I ever bought. Don't try and cheap it out people, because sometimes you get what you pay for, with a nest of cockroaches thrown in as a creepy crawly Freebie. I bought a Nintendo Switch off a guy I met on Facebook Marketplace and he acted so horribly after the fact that it almost put me off playing the thing entirely. He didn't really give off that nice guy vibe at first, like it was only when I'd actually met him and bought the thing that he started getting weird. He kept trying to talk to me over whatsapp, asking me how the switch was, if I needed any help with it. Dumb patronizing stuff like that. I politely decline at first but it quickly gets to the point where I'm just leaving the guy on read and hoping that he'll get the message. He goes quiet for a bit but then he

starts the whole flirting routine again after about a week and I have to kind of put my foot down and tell him that I'm not interested in him that way. Again I kind of naively think he's going to just take it on the chin and move on but nope. He starts off this big long message because all I can see is the little such and such a person is typing thing for about half an hour every time I go back to check the message thread. When the message comes through, it's this big tirade about how he'd been kind enough to give me a discount as it is. The least I could do was have some friendly chat with him. He actually accused me of flirting with him to drive the price down too, something I categorically deny. I'm not even into guys.

Then came the threats of what he'd do to me if he ever ran into me on a dark street. By that point I'd stopped reading entirely and just blocked his number. But he knew my name and it's not like I can just go and change my name because of one psycho on social media. But still, I worry he'll make good on his threats one day. What knocked me sick was how he made it clear that he was bigger than me, stronger, and faster, and that no matter how much I tried, he'd easily overpower me. The fact that he rubbed that in my face is just unbelievably scummy, but what frightens me is that he's actually right. It happened last year between Christmas and New Year's Eve. I'm from the French Caribbean, so it's not unusual to scuba dive during Christmas holidays.

My family and I, a 25-year-old female, booked a few dives. They're all really good scuba divers, better than me. They passed a few scuba diving levels that allowed them to participate in way more technical dives than I'm allowed to do. I enjoy scuba diving as well, and I'm able to do almost every casual dive, but I don't feel safe diving without an instructor yet, even more if it's a dive with decompression stops required. If anyone isn't familiar with scuba diving, here's a quick explanation. You can dive safely into a certain depth before the pressure becomes dangerous. If you dive below that point, which is roughly 20 meters or 65 feet, you have to do decompression

stops during your ascent. It means that you have to stop while going back to the surface a certain time to let your body adapt itself to the pressure. If you ride up too quickly, you may catch decompression sickness which can lead in a worst case scenario, to death. So, we decided that I could manage a little private lesson with my instructor first prior to more exciting dives with my family. So the first day, my family was enjoying a dive on a technical spot that I wasn't feeling up to while I was alone with my instructor and retrieving my old scuba diving reflexes. Everything went okay.

We were on a beautiful coral reef, there were many beginners on the boat and I was by far the more experienced here. So finally my instructor decided that he could manage me with another student which was truly a beginner. And after a small briefing with every safety rules and hand sign which is the only way to communicate underwater, we began our descent. I quickly retrieved all of my old reflexes and was enjoying myself, going back and forth to the instructor and the beginner diver during at least 20 minutes. Everything was perfect beside one thing. It was a windy day and there was a heavy swell. It's less of a problem under the water than it is for surface swimmers. The only thing was is that it requires more

physical effort to swim and so my air bottle was emptying a little quicker than usual, which was normal. I signed to my instructor that I was running thin of air and he nodded. It was at this level far from being critical. It was at this moment that I saw a young man swimming towards me. It wasn't the instructor nor its student. I've never seen him before but he was in full scuba diving gear and we were the only dive boat on the spot so I assumed he was with us and I just didn't pay attention to him on the boat. He was swimming fast towards me and then signed me that he was out of air. When an air failure happens in scuba diving, there is a very strict

procedure. You have to help the person, no questions asked, because every second is vital. You faint underwater, you drown. On your gear, you have two breathing devices, regulators, octopus, I'm not sure about the English word, a main device, and a spare device. So I handed the guy my spare breathing device which means that we both were breathing on my gear, consuming twice as much air as I was consuming alone. I waited till the guy seemed calmed down and tried to hand sign him to go see my instructor. He nodded a no and signed me to start our ascent. I understand this is the procedure, I was a little low on air and above the decompression stop level so the right thing to do was going up to the surface before having an air

failure but I've had to tell my instructor first. This guy was very reluctant and it was strange because it would have taken us like 30 seconds to tell the instructor and he would have started an ascent with us. During this time, I was panicking at seeing my own air level going down and I saw that our instructor was staring at us quizzically and swimming towards us. It was at this moment that the guy let go of my spare air device and started swimming away, breathing again in his own breathing device. I was totally lost and started my ascent with my instructor. Once at the surface, because of the tides, I was totally lost and started my ascent with my instructor. Once at the surface, because of the tides, I was feeling dizzy and nauseous so my bizarre encounter wasn't the first thing that I debriefed. It was after I calmed down and the boat driving

us towards the beach without the strange guy that I asked my instructor about what happened. Uh, I don't know, maybe a guy who lost his group and needed some time to calm down? They replied. Okay, why did he tell me that he was out of air though? My instructor told me that I probably misunderstood his hand signing, that he was probably not telling me he was having an air failure because he left breathing in his own device. I'm sure I saw him

do the air failure sign but it was okay I guess. The next day I joined my family during my dive and the instructor was different. It was a girl this time, Charlie. I've had time to think about that guy and I was worried about him. So I told everything that happened to Charlie and asked her if she knew the guy and if he was okay because I didn't see him going back to the surface. She asked me to describe him which I did and she told me, Oh, that's Marvin. No, don't worry about him. He's preparing himself to become a scuba diving instructor. Every time he has a day off from the restaurant he's working here.

He asked us to dive him on the coral reef that morning and to pick him up in the afternoon. I ate at his restaurant this noon and saw him. Don't worry about him. I was feeling relieved and told myself that it was just a comprehension issue with Marvin. The rest of the week went without any incident. I was doing more and more technical dives and everything went very smoothly. Charlie was a wonderful instructor. Never saw Marvin again, that being said, until the last dive. It was on New Year's Eve. We planned the best dive on that day.

It was on a shipwreck and I felt trained enough to try it without any instructor. Just my family and I, and it was Charlie's day off. It was fairly deep for a beginner like me, 30 meters at its down point around 98 feet. My first day male instructor was there and told us that he would be exploring the shipwreck too, so we would cross him and he would help me if he saw that I needed it. It was very comforting to know and my family felt comforted too when I told them that. So we began our descent and started swimming around the shipwreck. We crossed our old instructor twice but every time I signed him that everything was okay. It was at that moment that I saw Marvin swimming toward me. At this moment I was about 5 to 10 meters above my down point, still staying

under my decompression stop level though. I was a little surprised and even more surprised when he signed me again that he was out of air. I was distrustful but if there was any chance that it would be true I couldn't not help him so I handed him my spare breather. But this time I had a lot of air left so it wasn't really an issue. He took it, started breathing in it and took my arm. I reached to see his air level instruments but he prevented me from seeing it. Then he signed me to start an ascent with him. I immediately signed no. I wasn't at my deepest when he reached but I had been deeper during this time and I've had a decompression stop to do. I saw that my father saw us and he quickly looked away, probably not understanding what

was going on. I tapped at my diving computer, a device which calculates when and how long to decompress to signify it to him. He shrugged, smiled at me and started swimming up, still holding me. I was paralyzed for a few seconds, and the thing that helped me react was that my diving computer was telling me to stop and decompress now. I then understood that I was in danger, and that if I let him do what he wanted, I would die from the bends. I then started screaming, only to remember that no noise can be heard underwater. I started wriggling frantically as I saw my father and sister way below me,

my diving computer alerting me more and more intensely. At that moment, my father saw us and he reacted. He swam very quickly towards us and I managed to hit the guy as my dad grabbed my ankle and suddenly dragged me deeper. The guy then quickly swam away. My dad dragged me deeper again and then we waited for a very long decompression stop to ensure that I would be okay, then started heading towards the surface very slowly and cautiously. Once we reached the surface, I started crying frantically and went back to the boat. My father then told me that he thought Marvin was my old instructor, and this was why he wasn't surprised at first. I then told it to my old instructor, who took it more seriously this time,

and told me to show him Marvin when we would go up to the surface. Thing is, he never did. The next day, on New Year's, we went a last time to the scuba diving club because my little sister had a diploma to collect and we saw Charlie. Still choked up, I told her what happened with Marvin and then she stiffened. She told me that Marvin was at the restaurant yesterday for New Year's Eve and he didn't go scuba diving. Which means that this guy wasn't Marvin. And to this day, I still don't know who he is, or what he wanted, or why he tried to kill me.

Maybe twice. Me and my mother were driving through our small town in southwest Virginia. My mother and father are divorced and he lives in Tennessee. They had very different viewpoints on helping out hitchhikers as my dad was very much into hiking, camping, etc. But there was a woman walking down the road. Mind you, it's very hot outside. It's the summertime and I noticed she was carrying a child swaddled up in a blanket, which struck me as a poor choice considering it was the middle of summer. Just seems too warm for a swaddle. So I say to my mom, we really need to pick that lady up. Surely she isn't far from where she needs to go, but she's got a baby.

And to my surprise, my mom pulls into the gas station parking lot, tells me to go in and get a large bottle of water, and we'll ask her if she'd like a ride. So, we pull out of the gas station and approach the thin, almost sickly looking woman, and she very quietly just grabbed the door handle and got inside. Not saying anything at all, not even a thank you, which really didn't sit right with me because this is the south, everyone is friendly and approachable for the most part. So we ask where she's needing to go and me being in the passenger seat, I turn to look at her and she's looking down at her baby and cooing at it she replies without ever looking up from the swaddle

being about two miles past the dollar general on jeb stewart and we were very close to that area i decided to turn and speak to the woman maybe maybe get a conversation going, but as I get a better look at her, baby, it actually was a drywall hammer wrapped up in a blanket inside another blanket. I froze. It was like I walked into a deep freezer. I told my mom that I really think we should stop because I hear what sounds like knocking and was very adamant we needed to stop at the upcoming Dollar General. As we pull in I told my mom to get out of the car that I needed

her help to locate the noise and we met each other at the hood of the car where I told her mom that's not a baby she's got a hammer in that blanket, to which my mother advised me that we should walk inside to see if they had anything to help close that up, and told the woman we would be right back. We walked inside and told them to call the police so they could help this woman that we could no longer have in our vehicle and explained why. My mother gave her some vague reason as to why we couldn't take her further and she got out of the vehicle very angrily but almost confused and we left her in that parking lot. She very well could have just been a really confused woman, maybe with some mental issues,

but I don't know what was going on with her, but I do know that I don't think she had good intentions for us. Just to give some context, I'm currently in the UK and the town where I live in is known for its drug scene, but doesn't have a violent crime problem to speak of. I think that's why I found what happened so shocking because I lived in London before and while some messed up stuff did happen to me there, it was nowhere near the level of what happened to me earlier this year. My partner and I live together in our flat which is in a relatively busy residential area. I work from home however and he's out of the flat quite a lot so I guess it might look to an outside observer like I live alone. Our flat complex was once an old factory and we have these huge

industrial windows so people walking on the street have a pretty clear view of our dining room which is where I work during the day. It all started in July of this year. I'm ashamed to say that I can be a major rubbernecker and a lot of drama occurs on the road outside of our flat so I look out of the windows often during my work day for some light entertainment. The best was a two hour breakup I got to watch unfold in the car just below our window but that's besides the point. One day I got up to make myself a cup of tea, looked out of the kitchen window and saw this guy just staring at me I was struck by how intense it was and how he didn't look away, even when it was obvious that I was looking back at him

I felt creeped out by it and I tried not to let it bother me We have a lot of drug addicts and other weird characters that hang out around here so it didn't seem like such a big deal. I went back to work and by the time I'd sat down at the table, he was gone. About a week later, my partner had gone to visit his dad for the weekend so I was excited to hunker down and catch up on some of my favorite shows alone. After about 30 minutes, the buzzer to the flat went. The buzzer is so loud and and scared the heck out of me. I was lucky my popcorn didn't go flying out of my hands. Now our flat complex has this big porch where teenagers and addicts love to hang out because it provides shelter from the rain and about four people can sit down inside of it. Sometimes people lean up on the

buzzers by accident when they're hanging out on the porch, so I assumed that was what happened. After a few seconds, however, the buzzer went again, and again, and again. Someone was pressing it in this rhythmic pattern. It's something I know my partner does when he's forgotten his keys, and it's kind of our code for me to let him in, which is why I found it so disconcerting. At first I was worried he might have missed the bus to his dad's house and had decided to come back to the flat. I was nearly about to buzz him straight in when I thought it would be a good idea to pick up the phone first and check who it was. As soon as I picked up the phone, the person standing near the intercom

must have heard because they said, hello? It was definitely not my partner. I asked who it was and why they were buzzing the flat so late at night, but all they said was, can you let me in? I asked them why they wanted to come in and they said, You invited me, remember? While they were talking, they kept kind of laughing under their breath and the whole exchange put me on edge. I told them I had no idea who they were and just hung up. I was expecting them to start pressing the buzzer again, but they didn't. After a few minutes, I crept out of the flat to have a look at who was on the porch but they were gone. My partner has to get up early for work whereas I'm more of a

night owl. Most nights I'm up until about 2am or 3am working on my laptop while he's asleep. A few nights after the intercom incident I was on my laptop watching YouTube videos and realized that we'd forgotten to take the trash out. This happens a lot and it's not uncommon Two nights after the intercom incident I was on my laptop watching YouTube videos and realized that we'd forgotten to take the trash out. This happens a lot and it's not uncommon for me to take the trash out at around 1am or 2am. At least it wasn't until all this happened. I put my slippers on, grabbed the bag of trash and took it out to the curb outside the flat's

main entrance. When I looked across the street, there was this guy standing on the opposite street corner. He was watching me and his eyes followed me all the way from the front door to the curb. I noticed he was smoking so I assumed he lived in one of the houses across the street. I remember even thinking, wouldn't it be creepy if he tried to come over here? As I put the trash bag down, I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked up and saw him walking in a straight line across the road towards me, with his eyes fixed on me the entire time. I don't know how to describe it, but the look on his face

filled me with this instinctive sense of dread. It felt like someone had just turned my stomach inside out. I pulled my keys out of my hoodie pocket, turned around and ran to the front door. I've never felt that kind of fear before and it was like my body was compelling me to get as far away from this man as possible. I got into the building, slammed the door behind me and rushed to my flat without looking back. I didn't want to know whether he followed me or not. I told my partner about the whole thing the next day and how shook up I was. We agreed that we'd be more proactive with trash and I've never taken it out late at night again. Fast forward to the beginning of

August, about two weeks after the trash incident and I'd pretty much forgotten all about it. I was still too scared to go out late at night on the road but nothing weird had happened since then. I went to bed at about 2am but I felt restless for some reason and struggled to get to sleep. By about 3am I was contemplating whether or not to give up and go do something else when I heard the scream. The sound cut right through me. There was something visceral about the terror in that scream. I knew it was bad because my partner went from stone cold asleep to being up in the shot. He asked me what it was and I said I didn't know. I went to the window straight away and looked out. Down one of the side roads near our flat, I could see headlights, but I couldn't get a clear view

of the car. The screaming continued in bursts and after a while, I could see headlights, but I couldn't get a clear view of the car. The screaming continued in bursts and after a while, I could make out words. It was a woman, and she was saying something like, get out, get out, over and over again. I'm used to hearing all kinds of domestic arguments take place on the road outside of our flat, particularly since we're near the university and several popular bars. But this is different. There was this raw fear in her voice that made the hairs on my arm stand up. I turned to my partner and said I had to call the police. When they picked up and I explained what was happening, they seemed disinterested at first, but the operator's tone changed when I told them where it was. I think they must have been

getting calls from all around the area about it. It was sometime during this phone call that I heard a screech of tires and the screaming stopped. The operator asked me to go to the window and describe to them what was happening. When I looked down, there was this black car sat on the road. One of the neighbors from across the road was speaking to the two guys in the car. I had to twist to get a good look at them but one of the guys in the car looked uncannily like the guy who had been watching me when I was putting out the trash that time. At first, the conversation seemed congenial but it took a turn when the neighbor asked them some sort of question that I couldn't quite hear clearly and they sped off down the road. With no less than 10 minutes, three police cars arrived and had

blocked off the roads leading to our flat, a residential area on a grid system. They were knocking on doors and asking to speak to all of our neighbors. I told my partner that we should go out and speak to them and since we saw a lot of what happened and my partner had had the foresight to write down the license plate of the black car. When we went out, there were these two girls talking to one of the police officers. They were both shaking and one of them looked as though they had been crying. I decided to stand nearby and wait for the girls to finish before speaking with the officer myself. What they said made my blood run cold. They were from one of the houses that looked out directly onto the road where I had seen the headlights so they had a clearer view of what had happened. Like us,

they had been alerted by the screaming and gone straight to the window. From what they could gather, the black car had cut off a small red car on the road. I pulled right in front of it and that's what had caused the girl driving the red car to scream the first time. They thought it might have been some kind of misunderstanding but then they watched as one of the guys from the black car got out, walked to the red car and jumped in through the window. That's the point when the girl must have been screaming, get out, get out. There had been a struggle and the girl watching said they assumed the guy was just trying to steal the car, but then he forced the driver into the backseat and that's when he drove off.

The two girls were both hysterical by this point and you could tell they felt guilty for not intervening. I could feel that same guilt seeping into my thoughts as well. After the guy had driven off in the red car, the two men in the black car had gone the opposite way and turned the corner onto our road, but had been stopped by another neighbor. Although this neighbor had been alerted by the screaming, he hadn't actually witnessed what happened, so he had stopped the black car to ask the guy what was going on without knowing they were involved, and that was the exchange we saw. When the guy started acting suspicious, he asked them if they would wait for the police to arrive, and that's the point when they took off. It wasn't until we got back to the flat that I started to put two and two together. I have a small red car, just like the one that the girls had described, and I normally come back at night on that day of the week since it's the day I go to visit my parents. I had only come back early on this particular occasion because I needed to let a plumber in to do some work on the flat. What if they had been waiting for me, and they had gotten the wrong car. Over the next few days I contacted the police several times and checked

the local news but I never heard anything about the girl who was kidnapped. I still have no idea what happened to her and all I know is that they found her car abandoned somewhere not far from where she was taken but she wasn't in it. It still gives me chills just thinking about it. This happened nearly a decade ago. At the time of this story I was 15, male, 5'5 and 132 pounds. I was a wrestler so I always knew my exact weight and kept myself extremely lean but still had a fairly muscular build. I lived in a fairly small town of about 50-60k people and in my off season I did whatever I could to be somewhat active and outside.

I had a friend, we'll call him Blaze, who was really into disc golf and always asked me to come play with him and smoke a doobie while we were in the more secluded parts of the course. He was a couple years older than me but no bigger than I was, just not so great of an influence for me at the time. This small town only had two disc golf courses, one at a very public park near our middle school or one at the edge of town in an older park that was much bigger. Obviously we weren't smoking for everyone to see. Little did I know on that Thursday afternoon that this park happened to be my town's hotspot for people meeting and hooking up in the parking lot. I live in the Midwest, in the US, so there weren't a lot of like young, stylish, pretty guys.

It was mostly guys aged 30 to 50, pretty big and bulky and country looking. So we finished the course in the joint, walking out of the woods, anything but sober. We typically either just chilled in the grass or played catch after we finished up until my buddy was more normal and ready to drive back. We noticed that there were way more cars in the parking lot than we got there and a lot of older guys sitting on trunks of their cars or on tailgates, loosely grouped together. This very large hairy man in a tank top and his tall thin friend dressed like a biker gang member started to do the wolf whistle towards me and my friend.

I got pretty uncomfortable, not because a man whistled at me but because we had to walk in their direction and I could feel the eyes of way more guys on me than I wanted. For a testosterone filled weight room junkie teenager I did not feel very safe here knowing that there were at least 30 guys in this group and I can see in my peripheral that a very large portion were eyeing us closely as we walked towards the parking lot. I'll make it clear that I'm not a fighter and I would never intend to hurt anyone aside from self-defense, but I was definitely confident in myself to hold someone off. Us two were just so outnumbered and not in a sober state of mind, so anxiety made things much worse. A couple of them said some gross catcall things, and more whistles, and then woo-woo noises that rednecks like to make when they're excited about something or instigating,

similar to woo but if Eric Cartman screeched it. I think they had the idea that we were some people that met online and were coming to meet up. Being high, I didn't care what was going on, I just wanted to be safe and not the center of attention. When we got closer, the big hairy man who did the first wolf whistle said something like, You think you can handle this? I just mumbled no thanks and tried to keep walking. He yelled back, What was that boy? To which I just said clearly,

No thanks. Not into it. He seemed offended and angrily said, Not into what? All I said was, Sorry, I'm not gay, and he seemed to be offended by that word, again asking me to repeat myself in a very aggressive tone, so I corrected myself and said I'm just not into guys.

Things escalated from here very quickly. The man stepped forward from leaning against the truck and grabbed my wrist. He said, we can fix that real quick. Don't get excited. I didn't do some cool fight move to attack him. Just a simple wrist roll and using that momentum, a quick push of the elbow to turn him around so that he would have his back to me and I could get by without anything more. He responds, touch me like that again and we'll get the both of you. Another guy made his way over to Blaze who was much less the calm and chill type of stoner that I was. I can only describe what he did as one of those kicks or sidesteps off of a wall but to that guy's chest and abdomen. He started to run and yelled F off as

loud as possible. Very quickly bunches of guys began to stand up from their seats on the outside of their cars and motion our direction. I started booking it for the car too and the Mr. Skinny biker type man was running right after us. Thank god it was just him running and not multiple chasing us or this story might be different. I was faster than Blaze so I got ahead of him and pictured us running across a parking lot to his truck that was facing us, backed into a stall. I got around to the passenger side quickly with Blaze still about 100 feet from the truck. He tried to cut to the right and make it to the driver's side of his little S10 but skinny guy cut him off and sent him to the left passenger side. I ran around the back of

the truck as fast as I could to the driver door and Blaze slid his keys around the roof towards me. I hopped in, well aware that I did not want to be driving right now in that state of mind, much less in such a crazy situation and even more or less someone else's vehicle. Still without thinking, I started it and skirted out of the parking lot while Skinny banged on the bed of the truck chasing. But that wasn't the end. A truck and a car are on their way right behind me. Skinny jumped into the car that was in the back and the chase began. Terrified and still high, I cut through the grass of the park to get to the main road more quickly, thinking I would lose them

that way. These guys raced over the speed bumps and around the bends in the park road right up to the main road and they were driving so fast I would have gotten t-boned if I didn't smash the pedal to the floor at the right time. I'm so stressed I started silently crying while driving, thinking of how horrible the possibilities could be. Contact wearers know that when your eyes are dry from the smoke, then they rapidly get moist, contacts tend to drift a bit until they find their place again. This is definitely not ideal for someone with awful vision driving twice the speed limit down a road in the middle of town. So I started turning down residential streets and weaving in and out, being tapped on the shoulder by Blaze to keep my speed up because the two were still right on my rear bumper. I even made some risky u-turns and they

followed right along. This chase lasted over ten minutes of me frantically driving through main streets, residential, back alleys, and everything I could try to get away. I was so scared that the best case scenario ended in us getting pulled over and myself obtaining a permanent record for DUI by the ripe age of fifteen. Luckily, a stroke of luck and a surprisingly quick reflex came to my aid. Blaze yelled cop and pointed to a parking lot to our left where there was a police cruiser probably just waiting to catch someone speeding or running red lights on the semi-busy road we ended up on. I whipped into the parking lot and parked a couple of stalls down from the cop.

The truck prepared to turn but stopped in the middle of the road. So quickly once he realized what was going on that the car followed him had to swerve and pop a curve catching the officer's attention. He backed out and the two vehicles split different ways and were out of sight before he got out of the parking lot. Never went back to that park any time other than the mornings after that. So thankful that nothing bad came out of the incident and we made it out completely unscathed. No idea what they would have done. But people engaging teenagers in a car chase could not have had good intentions in mind. It was my first time in my life being harassed like that too.

You would think being in a car chase might be fun or exciting, but I just felt so powerless and like I had no control. Like nothing I could do would both get these guys away from us and simultaneously not get me arrested. My wife and I travel often, city to city, and at one point we settled down in Vegas for a few months. There was one night we were arguing after work, headed towards Henderson, a city outside of Vegas, lots of isolated streets out that way. I was sitting reclined back in the passenger seat when we ran over something and the tire definitely popped. My wife got out to check and confirmed it. Within seconds, a woman in a very nice car pulls up behind us. I saw she was a woman and I laid back in the seat, still mad, still stubborn and figuring she was just checking on my wife assuming

she was alone. The woman said she had a brother-in-law with a tow truck. He could definitely tow the car for free of charge to a shop. My wife asked why she was being so kind and she said something like, us sisters gotta stick together. I'm helping you out. She then got back in the car and my wife told me she was going to follow us with her hazards on in this empty and dark parking lot in front of some grocery store nearby to get us out of the road. I still didn't think it was weird at all. My wife was very confident this woman was genuine and really wanted to help. So we pull into the parking lot and my wife got out. I'm still laying back. This woman doesn't even know I'm here yet. She starts talking to my wife about how she changed her life within a year. She could put her on to what she does.

It seemed believable. She looked very nice and her car was definitely expensive. My wife keeps insisting she can just call a tow truck. She felt bad she was taking time from her, we could afford it. The woman kept insisting her brother in law was coming, to be patient, it really doesn't mind. She even offered at some point to drive my wife around the area looking for a shop that was open but my wife had already googled some places. She told her that's smart and they kept talking. No suspicion, honestly. She then starts asking my wife why she's in Vegas. We had New York plates.

She says for adventure and doing something new, blah blah blah. The woman asks if she has family she's close to or a boyfriend and she could introduce her to some friends to help her get well acquainted or whatever. She motions over to me and says, well, I have a husband. And the woman looked like a deer in the headlights. I politely waved. She leans over and finally sees me, stares for a few seconds and immediately gets in her car. Instantly. I never saw someone look at me like that, like she had to get away from me. She tells my wife she has to go to a store that's opening soon, her brother-in-law is taking too long but he will be there in an hour at least. She told her not to leave, he'll come help.

One hour, okay honey? My wife was confused and tried to ask her if she'd be there too but the woman just drove off. We knew then that something was wrong with that situation. We both just stared at each other in confusion. I have no idea still of why that happened. We called the towing company and fixed the car within 40 minutes. Drove back to wait because my wife was persistent in believing the woman was going to come back or her brother-in-law would and she would have to let them know that she didn't need their help.

I told her I don't think they're coming back but we did wait no one came for nearly two hours before we drove home i did some research and found out a lot of traffickers use women because they seem more trustworthy vegas obviously has a large presence of these things as well. The woman was almost desperate to keep my wife there. It was all so weird. Now when I look back, it seems more obvious that there was danger there but in the moment, the woman was so charming and endearing that it seemed like she was genuinely trying to help. I still don't know but I'm pretty sure she ran off because I was there and she didn't anticipate a man to actually be there. About five years ago, I was living at a home with my parents and my twin brothers were there too. Every morning at 7am, we would both head out for a run.

We had mapped out this giant loop that we would run. To make it a bit of a competition I would run it in one direction and my twin would run in the other direction. That way we could run and stay focused. Part of this loop was on the main street of the city my parents lived in. On this main road there were these shady apartments kind of hidden by a bunch of trees. The direction I was running, the views of these apartments were skewed by giant hedge bushes and I couldn't see the apartments until I was right in front of them. Out of my peripherals, I see a woman standing among the trees, staring at me. I sort of immediately get chills and don't

turn to face her because I didn't want to be rude. So I run on and forget about this a few minutes later. I pass my twin about 10 minutes later. He's going in the opposite direction as I was. I get home and my twin isn't back yet so I go about the rest of my morning routine including taking a shower. I get out of the shower and my twin hasn't come back yet and I'm starting to get a little bit worried. An hour after I had gotten home he's still not back and I call him. He tells me he's on his way back and he has something he needs to tell me and my parents. He finally gets home and tells me that as he's running in front of these apartments, he saw a woman hanging from the trees in front of this apartment.

As soon as it's obvious he sees her, a man comes sprinting from the apartments wailing and screaming, no, I can't believe she did this, and grabs her body and lays her on the ground and starts performing CPR. It was obvious that it was her husband. My brother calls the local police and they dispatch an ambulance and police officers. My brother has to stay for questioning as a witness to this report and the whole process there and he's obviously troubled by it. Since he was going the opposite way that I was running, he didn't have a hedge obscuring his view and got a straight on view of this woman hanging there. It's still hard for me to believe that the woman I saw staring at me out of my peripherals was dead the entire time. I do find it very sketchy that the husband came running out as soon as it was obvious that someone had discovered the body.

That is a bit too convenient if you ask me, but I don't want to say that this man killed his wife without any evidence. My brother was never followed up by the police, leading me to believe that the death was in fact her taking her own life. I just still can't fathom that if I would have turned to face this woman, I would have discovered her about 20 minutes earlier than my twin had, and it deeply troubles me that I didn't. For context, I'm a preschool teacher and was at work. I was outside on the playground with my kids for recess when I noticed someone staring at us over our gate. Our gate isn't a street view, but it is rather long and steep. You need to walk about 20 feet down from the sidewalk to stand where he was. He was fidgety and acting strange. His face covered with what I assumed were scabs from meth use, which was common

in this area. I asked him if I could help him, pretending this was totally normal as to not risk escalating anything. He asked me for a pamphlet, which I didn't have, pretending this was totally normal as to not risk escalating anything. He asked me for a pamphlet which I didn't have but I offered to write his information down and reach out, anything to get him to leave. He accepted and I reached for my phone when he made a fast movement to unlock and enter the playground. I told him he needed to step away as my kids were out and I can't let him in without an appointment for a tour. He said he'd do his tour now and continue trying. Still remaining calm and cheery to keep my kids calm who by now were taking notice, I told him we were full of appointments for today and he could come back another time. Well, can I just play with them for a little while? He asked.

I told him I cannot allow that, and we were just about to go inside anyways, and he stared at me with narrowed eyes. Without turning away, I told my kids we were having a fun race to the gate on the opposite side of the playground from him, and whoever won got a prize. They forgot about the strange man man and ran for that prize. The man seemed irritated with this but backed down. I told him to have a nice day and watched as he walked away looking into every window up the driveway as he did. I was sitting in my class while my kids nap, thankful he didn't get into the playground and hurt them. Not the worst thing to happen, but definitely oddly terrifying. I'm going to file a police report to document it, in case it happens again, or worse. This happened around 10 years ago now.

I was around 13 to 14 and pretty small at the time. It was during the winter period so at the time I was coming home from extracurricular activities and it was already dark at around 6pm. I stepped out of the bus and had to still walk a 5 minute walk. However, the area we were living in wasn't the best and my older brother always told me to hold my keys in my hand ready to protect myself. Three keys between my fingers like I'd be Wolverine or something like that. I saw a guy walk toward me but he didn't really raise any red flags, just a dude walking home. He didn't look at me or sped up when he saw me, really nothing. After he passed me though, he grabbed me by my jacket and threw me on the floor. He was quite a big dude while I could compare my weight to an

oversized chicken. The dude started kicking me and punching me and after the initial shock, I did the only thing that came to my head. I pulled the keys out of my pocket and stabbed him with all my strength in his thigh, one key right in. He screamed in pain and fell to the ground and I used this opportunity to get out of there. After two minutes of sprinting I was home, bleeding from my face and crying and I told my parents everything. We went back to where he had grabbed me but there was only some blood on the floor and no sign of him We reported the incident to the police and never heard anything back from them My parents decided to buy me a pocket knife after that and my older brother got me a better one which I still have and is pretty cool cool. In the year 1941, the world burned with conflict. World War II was approaching its height, and for the first time in human history,

the combatants rained death on the civilian populations of their enemies from the air. Airwings, sometimes consisting of over a thousand warplanes, dropped hundreds of thousands of pounds of high explosives overnight, reducing cities to rubble and killing thousands of unarmed civilians. It was a new kind of war. Total war, or even innocence were fair game. Nazi Germany traded air raids with the beleaguered United Kingdom, and at some point the bombing was so intense that it seemed only a matter of time before it might force a British surrender. Drastic measures had to be taken to reduce the effectiveness of German nighttime bombings.

The top minds of the British Air Ministry convened to discuss the problem, and their solution was as effective as it was simple. A blackout. It was widely agreed upon that the Luftwaffe bombing capabilities would be much less effective if all man-made lighting on the ground could be extinguished. Without lights on the ground to use as a navigation aid, German aviators would have a much harder time hitting their targets. If the blackout worked, it could save thousands of lives. And so by 1942, a vast array of blackout regulations had been published by the British government. These required that all windows and doors should be covered at night with suitable materials such as heavy curtains, cardboard or paint, to prevent any glimmer of light being spotted by a German aircraft.

External lights such as street lights were switched off or dimmed and shielded to deflect light downward. Essential lights such as traffic lights and vehicle headlights were fitted with slotted covers that would also deflect beams downwards to the ground. Blackouts proved one of the more most unpopular aspects of the British war effort, given how disruptive they were for many civilian activities. This discontent was further exacerbated by the way in which blackouts were enforced. A civilian team of so-called air raid wardens were given carte blanche to hand out fines to those that broke the rules, and repeat offenders were even threatened with jail time.

The sour relationship between the wardens and the general public caused a drop in morale at a time when it was needed the most, but nevertheless, the measures were effective at reducing casualties to German bombing raids. However, there were some serious downsides to the blackouts too. Light restrictions massively increased the risks of driving at night night and deaths in road accidents increased as a result. There were also reports that dock workers had fallen into the water and had drowned because their colleagues simply couldn't find them in time. And as an almost perpetual shroud of darkness fell over the British Isles every night, those that wished to use its cover emerged to prey on their communities. Police saw an increase of all kinds of theft, gang-related activities, indecent assault,

and even serial murder. London in particular saw a sharp rise in nocturnal criminality during the era of the blackouts, one that didn't go unnoticed by a Royal Air Force crewman named Gordon Cummins. Gordon rented an apartment with his wife in the central London district of Southwark, a relatively older part of the city, settled into the south bank of the River Thames. He had dreams of being a fighter pilot, of taking to the skies and dogfighting with the German aces. But Gordon had other inclinations too. Despite being born in Yorkshire, Gordon spent his youth all over North Britain before eventually settling in London. And it was while he was living in the nation's capital that Gordon developed a rather bizarre desire. You see, despite his lower middle class upbringing, Gordon fancied himself something of an aristocrat, and developed a taste to match.

He would often visit the more high-end hotels and clubs in the West End of London and spend outrageous amounts of money on champagne, mainly in an effort to impress those in attendance. Once he had their attention, Gordon would fabricate stories of being the illegitimate son of some wealthy old lord, one who was granted quite a healthy allowance too. He began to tweak his formerly rough Yorkshire accent into one of a well-spoken member of London high society, introducing himself as the Honourable Gordon Cummins to those he rubbed shoulders with. Yet in order to support this lifestyle, Gordon frequently engaged in acts of theft or embezzlement in order to finance his elaborate ruse He told people he was soon to be a fighter pilot too, a hugely admired profession at the time

But this too was a falsehood, Gordon's entire life was a lie And as the war rolled on, the darkness outside seemed to foster a darkness inside too One that boiled up and spilled over into the spring of 1942, turning the dark streets of London into a pitch black hunting ground. On the Sunday evening of February 8th, 1942, Gordon Cummins had dinner with his wife Marjorie in their Southwark apartment. During dinner, he asked her if he could borrow a pound notes since he wanted to have a night on the town. Marjorie obliged him, handing over the money to her serviceman husband and wishing him a good evening.

To her, Gordon was a hero, serving his country in a time of war. She didn't mind that he wasn't home much or that he was distant when he was. He was busy after all, helping fight the Germans. It's only natural that such a loving wife would lend her husband a few quid. And if she'd known what Gordon had planned for the next few days, if she could look inside of him and see the kind of evil that was about to blossom in his heart, she definitely wouldn't have been so eager. And yet she did. Gordon thanked his wife, leaving the apartment at around 6.30 that evening. Marjorie would have smiled and waved goodbye, completely unaware of the terror her husband intended to inflict. The next morning,

a man named Harold Butcher was performing his daily checks of the local air raid shelters. He would ensure that they were in a fit state to withstand German bombing and that there was no one left sleeping in them come morning, as they were often patronized by drunks and vagrants. But during a check of one particular shelter in Montague Place, he saw the shape of a woman lying on the ground. He tried to rouse her, but she didn't respond, and it was then that he noticed the scarf that was wrapped around her face and how her underwear had been pulled down below her knees. He kneeled down to take a hold of the woman's hand only to find that it was cold.

The woman was a pharmacist named Evelyn Hamilton, and she'd had the life strangled out of her on her 41st birthday. Her handbag was found nearby, but had been completely emptied of belongings, presumably by the person that had killed her. Police had hoped to find the culprit's fingerprints on the bag, but found it was completely devoid of any forensic evidence. The only clue they had was the coroner's report that the killer was left-handed, and unless the killer struck again and provided more to go on, they would probably never be found.

But as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for, you might just get it. Because on February 10th, the morning after Evelyn Hamilton's body was found, two electrical workers drove over to a house at 153 Wardour Street in Soho to perform some repairs. No one answered the door to the home, but given that the work was essential, the two electricians let themselves into the unlocked home and set out performing their tasks. For some reason, one of the workers found himself having to go into the master bedroom to check some wiring, but when he entered the room, he yelped in horror at the sight which greeted him. Lying on the bed was the lifeless corpse of 34-year-old Evelyn Oatley. There was blood around her mouth and nose from where she had been beaten mercilessly,

all before her killer had cut her throat from ear to ear. Much like Evelyn Hamilton, this new victim had also been stripped, and on this occasion, the killer had taken their time to extensively mutilate her intimate area with a razor blade and tin opener. The crime scene was even more disturbing, but this time, the killer had left behind some forensic evidence. Fingerprints recovered from the blood-stained tin opener suggested the killer was left-handed and strongly suggested that it was the exact same person that had killed Evelyn Hamilton in the Marlaban Air Raid Shelter. The fingerprints didn't match any of the police records, but interviews with Oatley's friends and neighbors did yield some important clues. One eyewitness mentioned to investigators that night before, Oatley had been approached by

a young mustachioed airman with chestnut brown hair outside a restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue. A neighbor claimed to have seen Evelyn returning home at around 11.40pm, confirming she had been in the company of a strange man. The same neighbors said that sometime after midnight she heard the sound of Oatley's wireless radio being turned up much louder than usual, but chose not to complain to her about it. What's clear to us now is that this mysterious man had drowned out the sounds of Evelyn's terrified cries with the sounds of the radio, and that if her neighbor had only asked her to keep the volume down, she might have survived that night. But even as the police were busy investigating the left-handed killer's latest victim, he was busy planning a fresh hunt.

For the third morning in a row, some unfortunate Londoner stumbled upon the dead body of a murdered woman. This time it was a 43-year-old prostitute by the name of Margaret Lowe, strangled to death in her Marlborough-Benn apartment with her own silk stocking. But much like his previous victim, the left-handed killer had taken the time to ferociously mutilate his prey with a variety of household items. The forensic pathologist who performed her autopsy remarked that the wounds inflicted by her killer were quite dreadful, adding that the perpetrator was a savage maniac who indulged in a wicked lust to perpetrate the most diabolical injuries on the women he killed.

He also confirmed that the extensive stab wounds to Margaret's right hand side confirmed that the killer was left-handed. What's equally as disturbing is that a neighbor of Margaret Lowe's heard a man leaving her apartment in the wee small hours of the morning, one who whistled cheerfully to himself as he walked outside into Gosfield Street. Milobin police were up to their eyeballs investigating the three murders of the previous week. They needed a solid break to catch their man and, as fortune would have it, one walked right into their station on February 12th. Catherine Molokai said she had been drinking with a handsome Royal Air Force man in a local pub and had agreed to take him back to her apartment. She later stated a strange smile appeared on the man's face as she removed her clothing, lay upon her bed and beckoned him to join her.

He removed his clothes, then approached Catherine in a manner that at first seemed affectionate, but to her shock and horror, he slammed his knees into her stomach and attempted to strangle her as he pinned her body to the bed with his own weight. Catherine fought her attacker, kicking him in the stomach and breaking free from his grasp. She then ran screaming from her flat to the house of a neighbor before rushing down to the police station to file a report. Catherine gave the police a detailed physical description of her attacker, something they had desperately needed. But Catherine came with another remarkable stroke of luck, one of her attacker's possessions. In his rush to escape, he had left an RAF webbing belt in her apartment,

one that had an RAF regimental number stitched into it. Police contacted the Royal Air Force, inquiring as to which airman was assigned the number 525987. They discovered that number belonged to none other than Gordon Cummins. Detective Sergeant Thomas Shepard formally questioned Gordon on Valentine's morning of 1942. He admitted that he may well have attacked Catherine McCauley in a drunken haze, but was extremely apologetic and insisted he had attempted to properly compensate her. However, he completely denied murder and explained away the bruising on the knuckles of his left hand by claiming he had gotten his hand stuck in an aircraft engine while performing routine maintenance. Although they couldn't quite charge him with murder yet,

the police could hold Cummins on charges of aggravated assault, which would buy them time to put together a proper case against him, and put a case against him they did. The case against Cummins was so airtight that a jury returned a guilty verdict after just 35 minutes. Each avoided making eye contact with Cummins as they filed back into the courtroom, who displayed no emotion as the verdict was read aloud. Gordon's wife, however, who also believed he was innocent, burst into ugly tears as her husband was pronounced guilty. When asked whether he had any legal reason or cause as to why the court should not impose

the penalty of death, Cummins replied, because I am completely innocent, sir. But the judge was not convinced, and Cummins was then formally sentenced to death by hanging. Upon imposing this sentence, the judge stated, Gordon Frederick Cummins, after a fair trial you have been found guilty, and on a charge of murder. As you know, there is only one sentence which the law permits me to pronounce,

and that is you to be taken from this place to a lawful prison, As you know, there is only one sentence which the law permits me to pronounce, and that is you to be taken from this place to a lawful prison and thence to a place of execution, and that you there will be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and may God have mercy on your soul. Gordon Cummins was executed by Albert Pierre Point at Wandsworth Prison on June 25th, 1942. Newspaper reports of the day indicate Cummins was given a glass of cognac to calm his nerves. He then walked stoically to the scaffold, flanked by two warders, without offering any assistance. The entire execution process lasted less than two minutes, and Gordon's execution became the only one in British history to have been performed during a German air raid. What's curious to note is that very few of Cummins' victims had any kind of defensive injuries when their body were found.

Defensive injuries are those incurred when a person tried to defend themselves from an attacker, and if a murder victim lacks them, it can mean one of two things. Either the victim knew the person that killed them and had no reason to suspect danger, or the killer was able to take their victim completely by surprise. What's horrifyingly clear is that Gordon Cummins used Britain's wartime blackout restrictions to remain undetected while committing some of the vilest acts of murder since Jack the Ripper. Gordon even earned himself the nickname the Blackout Ripper thanks to the similarities between his own crimes and that of Saucy Jack. Gordon had professed to so many that he enlisted in the RAF to protect his country, when in reality, his only interest was preying

on those who were too vulnerable to defend themselves, people who'd been lucky enough to avoid German bombs, only to fall victim to a vicious, shameful predator. I remember the day Hurricane Ike struck Texas. It was a Friday night on September 12th, 2008. I was 12 at the time and my mom and dad were sitting in front of the TV watching as Ike crept closer towards our home in Houston. Before the winds got too intense, my dad drove over to Walmart to get some batteries, flashlights, and dry food. I'm alone with my mom, watching the weather reports, and I remember getting really, really scared. The weather guy said the storm was 450 miles wide, and that was just about the biggest thing I'd ever heard of,

so naturally I start thinking it's going to be the end of the world. Mom talks me down and tells me we'll be fine, but I'm not entirely convinced. By 6pm the winds were about 40 miles an hour. It was pretty intense but definitely not strong enough to do any serious damage to anything but tree branches. My dad comes back from Walmart, unloads the car and then carries on watching the news with mom. There was a call in show on channel 11 where people were asking a guy what kind of damage they could expect and from what I remember the guy was doing his very best to keep everyone calm while also trying to prepare people for what was obviously going to be a pretty

wild storm. An hour or two later the wind was howling at the back window. My dad used an old mattress to cover it up, then reinforced the mattress with the couch in his bedroom. Mom and dad sent me to bed at around 10 that night and I did actually try to fall asleep, but the wind was howling constantly and gusts started to become a little more frequent, so there was no way I was getting any shut eye. At around 11.30pm, the lights in the hallway outside my room started to flicker. I ran to the closet in my mom and dad's room and was quickly joined by my little sister, but we started to cry when my mom didn't want to get in. It wasn't so much she didn't want to get

in the closet, she was just terrified and had no idea what to do. Me and my sister picked up on that pretty much straight away and in no time we were terrified too. I remember we tried to calm her down but another loud gust blew in and the garage downstairs started rumbling around 12.30am. We lost power and the winds got louder, but not loud enough to drown out the sounds of me and my sister screaming when we thought we were about to get blown away. Being in the dark made everything infinitely scarier for obvious reasons, and I never heard wind make noises like that before. It sounded like a train one minute and a wolf howling the next. The winds were probably between 70 or 80 by that time, water was falling from the roof like Niagara Falls. The giant pine

trees were bending at 45 degree angles with branches snapping off. Mom closed the door and finally took refuge in the closet. She was crying at one point and that time it was our turn to tell her everything was going to be okay. At 1.30am, the black window shattered and glass and rain started to come in. I flashed a light to help dad see while he grabbed some trash bags to cover the TV and computer in his room. I heard debris hitting the building and the wind was deafening. The winds were above 75 miles per hour around that time. All night the wind was screaming. We spent 10-12 hours in the closet until noon Saturday. It was a mess outside. Shingles littered the floor and tree branches and twigs were everywhere. My dad's old pair of shoes were still next to the door and the yard was even worse.

Pine trees were snapped in half and entire trees were down on the ground. We were both scared out of our wits and I cried but mom reassured me that we made it and we were okay. By Sunday afternoon the power was restored and we started to learn about the true devastation Ike did to the state. I was thankful we didn't lose our home or lives for that matter. Some areas along the coast were wrecked or wiped out from the storm surge. Watching the wreckage, it ran a chill down my spine but it showed me the true power of these cyclones. I know it's not much of a typical scary story but tropical cyclones are nothing to mess with. It's a story I'll tell my kids one day. My Uncle Andrew has this story from back when he was a commercial airline pilot.

He wasn't piloting the plane this happened to, but he heard the story from a friend of his who used to fly private jets around West Africa. Apparently the gig paid well enough but because the safety regulations and some of the more turbulent politics around the region, the flying could get pretty hairy from time to time. A bunch of crazy stuff happened to him while he was over there but the thing that made him quit makes for quite the yarn. So apparently his friend is co-piloting the private jet of some African ambassador but the plane is basically falling apart. All the dials are faulty, the landing gear was on the fritz, basically you were taking your life in your hands whenever you piloted this aircraft. But since they were coming to the end of their contract they didn't want to quit

early and not get paid their bonus, so they worked with the ground crews to ensure the aircraft was just about fit for takeoff each time. Point being, my uncle's friend is seriously stressed out and the actual pilot has taken to drinking most nights just to keep his nerves together. But the straw that broke the camel's back was this one night flight into Nigeria. The turbulence has been rough on this occasion and apparently the pilots are just about ready to throw in the towel, but the flight is almost over and they're both about to breathe a sigh of relief as they begin their descent into whatever airport they're flying into. The way my uncle tells it, his friend is focusing on the runway, but the entire city is

behind it, this massive metropolis of glittering lights. And suddenly, all the lights just disappear, like the city itself was just swallowed up by the earth. My uncle's friend and the pilot of the private jet just about soiled their pants. With their faulty equipment and complete lack of experience landing in that particular city, they're maybe only seconds away from smashing that plane into the runway, or maybe even a building if they tried to pull away too late. Then to make matters worse, the pilot just seemed to shut down. He has this full-on mental breakdown and just freezes up in his seat. My uncle's buddy had to take control of the aircraft and basically just guess where all the runway and the buildings

were. He said it was the most stressful and terrifying flight of his life, how he was expecting the plane to just burst into flames at any second as it collided with something. He pushed the engine to its absolute limits too, said the plane was shaking at the angle he was turning it at. Miraculously, they don't crash or stall and make it back into the skies above the darkened city. My uncle's buddy starts bawling out the window for freezing up like he did, but the guy was catatonic until they landed and didn't say a thing in response. After that, they went into a holding pattern until the power came back on and they could get in touch with air traffic control and get permission to land.

I hate flying as it is, but imagining that kind of scenario is like a pucker factor of 10. Word was the pilot was so freaked out that he refused to take the return flight, bought a business class ticket back to the US, and was never seen again. My uncle's friend had to wait until his client could hire a new pilot before he could get out of Lagos or Nairobi, or wherever it was. Somehow, he managed to finish his contract without that plane falling apart on him, or any more cities going dark. And he made it out of Africa with a butt load of bonus cash. But after that, he was much more selective of who his clients were.

And I think now he just flies domestic and makes a steady salary that way. Crazy story though, right? Of all the times you don't want to get a power cut, landing a plane is definitely up there. To be continued... Back when I was about 17, I stayed behind after school with a few mates to use the Six Forms LAN network to get a big Counter-Strike game going. This was back before I had a decent enough internet connection or a decent enough computer to actually play online games at home, so you can imagine I had an absolute ball. I mean, we all did, and we stayed so late that the caretakers had to physically start switching all the computers off all the mains in order to get us to leave.

Since it was like November, it was actually dark by the time we were all on our way home, and the only light I had to guide my way was the glow from the orange street lamps at the side of the road. But all of a sudden, as I'm walking down the old half mile long street I used to live on, all the lights in the street just go out at once. It was so alarming that it literally stopped me in my tracks and I find myself looking around to notice that all the lights in the nearby houses were off too. The power grid in this city I live in is pretty reliable and that was the first time anything

like that had happened so naturally I'm a bit freaked out. I try calling a friend of mine to see if the power is out in their neighborhood too, but my phone won't work. I just keep getting this robot voice saying, your call could not be connected, please hang up and try again. So, the phones are out, the lights are out, my parents aren't home yet, and I've got a voice in the back of my head that says World War 3 is about to start. I am way too anxious just to sit at home in the dark, both literally and figuratively, so I go out into the street and start walking over to where my friend lived, same one I tried to call. Other people have come out of the houses too, neighbors talking to one another, wondering what's going on. It was actually really freaky how dark it was outside, like it's a thing that very few of us in the west ever get to see, an urban landscape completely

plunged into darkness. There was a tension in the air, you could feel it, and without a working phone to get in touch with anyone or find out what was going on, that tension just got heavier and heavier. Literally nowhere had power. I walked like 30 minutes over to my mate's house with the only flickers of light being from hand torches and candles. You could see better around main roads thanks to car headlights but it was chaos without traffic lights and whole intersections were jammed up with cars trying to maneuver around each other. I made it to my maid's house and obviously there was no power there either. Only at a time when it was much safer to do so. We

didn't stay inside and I've always thought it was weird how we gravitated back to the only real source of light. Pretty much everyone else did too, and in the course of walking up and down the car-clogged main roads, we just sort of bumped into the rest of our little friend group. And what started as quite an unnerving experience morphed into something supremely exciting. We had no idea when the power was coming back on, or why it had even gone out in the first place. And after a few hours of almost complete darkness, even the grown-ups around us started idea when the power was coming back on, or why it had even gone out in the first place. And after a few hours of almost complete darkness, even the grown-ups around us started to openly wonder if it would come back any time soon. Things started to take on a distinctly apocalyptic vibe, but we were teenage boys and we were together. We had a youthful air of invincibility that made

us think that we could take on anything. It was actually quite euphoric, but that feeling wasn't to last. You see, we weren't the only people to detect a hint of tension in the air, and where other people saw potential chaos and danger, others saw opportunity. The first hint of it came when we saw three lads bolting out of a corner shop, quickly followed by the pursuing owner who barked at them that he'd called the police. Obviously, they'd taken advantage of the darkness to steal from him, and that was the first time it really registered with us just how vulnerable we all were at such a time. No power meant no light, but it also meant no alarm systems, no CCTV cameras, with the police being unable to respond to calls because of the terrible traffic. We started to see things like shop owners with baseball bats and iron bars in their hands, pulling down shutters over their windows,

or drivers who'd have to be physically separated from one another to keep them from fighting. It was a bad scene, and it was foolish of us to stick around on the off chance that anything got particularly heated. To me, my mates decided to retreat to this primary school car park we used to skate on, one that was tucked away near the river and surrounded by trees. Maybe if it wasn't for the power cut, we'd have understood why that might be a bad idea, but whether it was the pitch darkness or just this general lack of awareness, we had no idea what was coming. And dear god, do I wish we had. So we were hanging around the car park, which was normally lit by a few lampposts dotted around, but obviously on that night it's near pitch darkness. The only light was coming from the

moon, or from our phone screens which in like 2005 were not particularly bright. Literally anything could have snuck up on us if it was quiet enough. We had absolutely zero spatial awareness which is what made the events that followed all the more terrifying. At first, one of us is all like, shh, did you hear that? Everyone freezes, listening out for whatever our mate had heard, but there's just silence. A little while later this happens again, and that time our apparently paranoid friend was insistent that he heard something in the trees nearby, but we just dismiss his fears as nothing but an attempt at a prank. So when one of us was grabbed by someone looking to put them in a chokehold,

we all just thought it was another one of our number messing around. And I'll never forget the fear in the air when we suddenly realized that we were not alone anymore. That whoever had done the grabbing was a total stranger who must have just materialized from basically nowhere. One of us tried to wrestle this stranger off of our friend but they seemed to be thrown to the ground by some unseen force. It was hideously confusing. Where these people were coming from and why they were doing it was a complete mystery. But I knew one thing for definite, we were under attack. I'm not even entirely sure what happened after that, I'm pretty sure we were outnumbered because I can remember at least two people kicking me after I was floored by a punch to the face. It seemed to last for ages too and it only stopped when I heard

two voices near me saying something like, I think he's dead. What? He's not moving, I think he's dead. What? He's not moving. I think he's died. God. Let's get out of here, man. Then the kicking stops. I hear hurried footfalls and then suddenly everything is quiet. I should have maybe felt some degree of relief that the attack had stopped, but that guy's words just rattled around my skull. He died. I look up from tucking my head into my chest and shielding it with my arms and see a few dark shapes either crawling or limping towards

another dark shape that was lying motionless on the concrete. That was one of the worst moments of my life, thinking I was looking at the dead body of one of my closest friends. But thankfully, he wasn't dead. He wasn't exactly okay, but he wasn't dead. He must have taken a pretty heavy hit because he was completely knocked out cold. Like one of those bad knockouts too when the person is groggy when they wake up. It was still really worrying, but Jesus, the pure relief I felt when he moved and groaned for the first time. None of us were hurt too bad, just a few black eyes and some busted lips. And despite the fact that we were concerned that the guy who got knocked out might have had a concussion, he didn't complain of feeling nauseous or dizzy over the next couple of days.

In the end, we all just limped home, hoping the power would stay off so we wouldn't have to go to school the next day sporting black eyes and lip scabs. But the power did come back on, so we didn't even get the day off. My big takeaway from the night of the blackout wasn't so much how much it sucked being ambushed like that, it was something entirely more frightening. I had seen with my own eyes the brittle threads that hold society together don't need much pressure before they're stretching to breaking point, and all it takes is a little power outage before we're all feeling that pressure.

But some of us feel something else too, and for some, the darkness brings out a primal, predatory desire to hunt and victimize the same people we call neighbors. And it's those kinds of people, the monsters in human meat suits, that we fell victim to that night. I live in a place called Beddington here in Maine. It's the least populated part of the state state which probably makes it one of the least populated areas in the country and with a population of just over 50 people we're the very definition of a one-stop light kind of town. We all live pretty spaced out too. Nearest neighbor on my right side is about a mile away. Nearest neighbor on my left side is more like three miles away. The sense of community here is really strong but

out here you really are alone in most senses of the word and that kind of isolation is made all the more obvious whenever there's a power cut. It's only happened like twice for the entire time I've been living out here and one time it was only for about an hour. The second time it must have been a serious fault down at whatever power station feeds us juice because the power was out all night. And I don't just remember that night because I couldn't watch the Pats play ball. It's burned in my memory for other reasons too. So like I said, second ever power cut, but thanks to the experience I gained from the first time around, I fare a little better that time.

I have candles stored away, I have dynamo flashlights, I even got a battery powered hot plate that would be good for a few uses, even if it did burn through the batteries. So instead of panicking and bumping into stuff in the dark, that time I just make myself comfortable, pick up a good book and sit down to ride it out on the couch. Now it's at this point that I should bring up my dog, Teddy. Teddy got his name because my grown up daughter thought he looks like a teddy bear, which he kind of does. And given his considerably superior senses, the power cuts never seemed to bother Teddy none. Teddy never bumped into furniture or got spooked at every little noise or shadow. Teddy just stayed curled up by the log fire and warmed his bones.

As I curl myself up, Ted gives me this look at one point as if to say, see now you get it old man, just relax and take a load off, power will come back when it's good and ready to. But Teddy didn't stay so relaxed for long and neither did I. A couple of hours go by and I'm so engrossed by the book I was reading that when Teddy started to bark, it almost scared me out of my wits. You see, Teddy never barked at anything, even when he saw squirrels or raccoons. He just sort of looked at me like, what are you going to do about them, they're critters old man. Nothing fazed him ever so to even hear him yapping like that in the first place was pretty unusual. Then that got me wondering what could possibly freak him out enough to make him bark. I'm all like, what is it boy, what are you smelling? But Ted just gets up, walks over towards

the door to the hallway and starts growling all low in between barks. And as I'm sitting there watching him, I get this real bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. This is the first time I'd ever seen him acting like that, downright aggressive and territorial. Now as much as I respect the second amendment, I don't really believe in keeping a gun in the house. I hate the things, always have. And long story short, I lost a relative in a shooting accident when I was a kid. Now, just being around a pistol makes me kind of sweat and anxious. But what I do have on hand for some defense is an old recurve bow I used for hunting.

Not exactly ideal to stop a burglar, but it was better than nothing. I must have looked like an old, worn out Comanche warrior creeping through my living room with a freaking bow and arrow with only fire light to see what was going on, but I sure didn't feel like one. I'd just turned 55. I was a grown man, but something about all that darkness and being so isolated made me feel like a scared kid. Best case scenario, Teddy had picked up the smell of a bear or lynx in the wild, one that was still way off in the distance. Worst case could be something considerably worse. When I take a peek out from the house through the window of my office, Teddy follows, jumping on the windowsill and

barking a few times after sniffing the air. Whatever he was smelling, I sure wasn't seeing it. So after peering into the darkness for a minute or so, I just take Ted back into the TV room where he stopped his barking. All was quiet again, so I carried on with my reading. About an hour later, the same thing happens all over again. Teddy jumps up from the rug, barking up a storm, only this time he seems considerably more aggressive. He bounds over to the door of the TV room, scratching at the handle and growling in a way that actually kind of frightened me. Like I said, I've never seen Teddy act like that, like he was a completely different

dog. When I let him out of the TV room, Teddy ran through the open door of the kitchen and started barking and scratching at the back door. I mean, he was going back there and there was no way I was about to let him go outside. The mood he was in, he'd probably run off as fast as he could and get up getting himself lost. Besides that, I felt strangely safer with Ted around. He stopped barking for a second, sniffed the air, and then bolted back into the TV room where he started barking even louder at the glass patio doors that led to the backyard. I follow him all like, get him boy, tear him up. But when I catch a glimpse of the sliding glass doors, I'd swear I saw something moving in the shadows outside.

I couldn't even tell you what I saw. It was nothing more than a flash of movement, but it was obvious enough for me to grab that recurve bow that I propped up against the couch. I was so scared that I could barely line the arrow up with the drawstring. Ted was going crazy at this point, acting like he was fixing to smash through the glass windows and chase down whatever he could smell. And like I said, it might even have been just the way the firelight reflected on the glass, but I wasn't willing to roll the dice on something being out there. Then suddenly, Ted stops barking again. I figured it's because he's lost a scent or something because he shut up entirely and stops pawing at the glass in the back doors. But then he went and did the weirdest thing. He backs off from the doors, stands in front of me,

shaking on all fours, and takes a pee right there on the carpet. He hadn't done anything like that since he was a puppy. Ted was hardcore house trained. It definitely wasn't out of fear of some black bear either. Ted's been in the same area as those ever since he was a pup and unless he actually saw one, I can't imagine that he'd freak out the way he did. But the fact remains that animals like dogs have been known to just go to the bathroom on themselves whenever a much larger predator is in the area. Only I can't imagine how much larger it would have been to make Ted forget his house training. After that he almost was

completely silent, just the occasional whimper while I stood there with the flashlight, just waiting for the mother of all black bears to come smashing through my back windows. At least I hoped it was nothing but a black bear. I understand those animals, but I didn't understand what was going on during that power out at all, and it just about scared the life out of me. But by far the worst part of the experience was when I actually heard something in the little side walkway to my house. See, there's a little gravel path where my wife used to grow vegetables, right around the side of my house, and I swear to the almighty that I heard two distinct crunches on the gravel, right as I'm staring out into the darkness for like the hundredth time.

That's when I started to call out, I know you're there, and I'm armed. Now you better get out of here. I listened again, and for the next few minutes there was nothing but silence. And then just when I started to think that I'd just imagined the whole thing, I heard it again, clear as day, footsteps on the gravel. That time I was closer and I had heard people walk up and down that gravel path a hundred times over the years, so I'm telling you right now, whatever was outside my house that night was way, way bigger than a person. If it was a black bear, it must have been the biggest one on the entire east coast.

Now I'm not saying it wasn't a bear or something, maybe it was just a big old dog that got lost and took to wandering into my yard, but like I said, it was big, really big. And you can bet your bottom that I came shaking like a crapping dog as I heard its footsteps getting quieter and quieter as it made its way off my property. I didn't hear nothing for the rest of the night. Ted didn't bark again but it seemed like he'd thrown in the towel with that line of defense anyway. But I didn't hear nothing outside and evidently nothing broke into the house otherwise I'd be rambling on about it. It's just kind of surreal to me that one of the scariest experiences of my life comes across like a second rate campfire tale

I don't scare easy And what happened during that blackout scared the living hell out of me I just hope whatever that thing was Whether it was a bear or the Turner Beast or something else entirely Stays well away from my property in the future Because it'd take far more than just a few arrows to take down a beast as big as that. To be continued... some real scary stuff went down and I thought I was going to lose my life. I live with my mom in California just out of Sacramento and I love her a whole lot because she works really hard to take care of me. I'm much better right now but a year ago I really

wasn't doing so good and I was dependent on an oxygen mask for my breathing. It wasn't like a face mask or anything, it was pretty discreet. I wore what's called a nasal cannula which is like the little clear plastic tube that runs up your nose. It was quite uncomfortable at first but you get used to anything after a while. Anyway, so I spent most of my time hooked up to a PPAP machine and it was super important that it stayed switched on at all times or I might suffocate. But if it ever did switch off or break for any reason, I could just switch over to my battery powered oxygen tank and

voila, tragic death avoided. The system was flawlessly safe, or so I was led to believe, because what that system doesn't take into account is that all of a sudden, PG&E might decide that it's going to switch the power off to my house. I wake up in the middle of the night feeling like I'm about to have a full-on anxiety attack, and it only takes me about a second before I realize that I can't breathe. I brought a hand to my face and felt that my nasal cannula was still in my nostrils but when I rolled over in bed, I saw my PPAP machine was dark. Now under any other circumstances, I could just unplug from the machine, walk into the spare bedroom and plug into the battery powered oxygen tank.

But since I was so tired and whatever had happened to cut the power had happened when I was asleep, I'd lost vulnerable time to make the transition. So picture the scene. I feel like I'm about to pass out. I can't see a thing cause it's dark and I have to make it all the way across the hall and into the spare room when I feel like I can't make it three steps in front of me. It was the most scared I'd ever been in my life. I had a matter of seconds to get to the battery tank. I'm making all these wheezing sounds and I can just feel myself getting weaker and weaker as I made it out of my bedroom and took my first steps into the hallway. I only make it a few paces before I just feel my knees buckling underneath me. I try to crawl but I just can't and that's about

all I'd remember until the next thing I know, I'm sucking air through the cannula like a crazy person, coughing and sputtering with my mom's voice in my ear. I must have made a whole bunch of noise on the way out of my bedroom and thank God too because it woke my mom up. She must have found me lying there, figured out what the deal was and just dragged me far enough toward the spare bedroom that she could plug in my oxygen tube. I just remember lying there, taking these huge deep breaths until I felt sort of okay again, but that only lasted a moment or two, until the memory of that fear came rushing back to me and I just burst into tears. We had to drive to the hospital to get me looked over by a doctor.

You can get some nasty health complications if you're deprived of oxygen like that and it's not just the obvious stuff either. Like it can cause blood clots in your arteries from the strain and those can be pretty fatal. But yeah, I got checked over and although I was pretty shaken up, I was otherwise okay. But then the whole thing comes out about the blackouts and that caused a lot of controversy. For those that don't know, here in California it was discovered that some equipment owned by a bunch of electrical companies was causing forest fires. There was this huge fire where almost a hundred people died and the fire department found it was started by a power line that had fallen over. Then companies then catch a ton of crap from the federal government and as a result they basically made the decision to just cut power off to a bunch of people's homes during wildfire season. Unfortunately for us, our home was one of them.

We got lucky though, like one guy actually died because he was on home life support or something. The power went off and boom, massive organ failure. The power cuts affected other stuff too, like nebulizers, dialysis machines, refrigerators that kept insulin fresh. Power companies said they'd been warning people for months about it and they should make preparations, but I don't remember hearing anything about it. But yeah, scariest moment of my life right there, straight up thinking that I was going

to die. But like so many times before in my life, my mom was there to stop me from slipping away. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. If you got a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official, 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 $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast,

where you can hear all these stories in long compilation form and save huge on data, located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the bio. Thanks so much, friends. And remember, Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.