The Lets Read Podcast - 138: TALES FROM THE MAFIA | 19 True Scary Horror Stories | EP 126

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Gamer Girls, Mafia & Ireland... 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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If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Ben MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. East Belfast in the 1980s was quite a place to grow up. It was a time of bombings, balaclavas, and British Army checkpoints. That was all just the violent backdrop of an upbringing that was remarkably similar to that of any other kid my age. I wanted the same things that teenagers everywhere wanted. Drink, girls, nights out. All the sinful adult entertainment that was only barely out of my reach, both figuratively and literally when it came to

certain top shelf magazines. Obviously lots of lads my age were getting into sectarian stuff, following fathers or brothers into the IRA or the UVF or whatever other three-letter acronym thugs were terrorizing our communities all across Northern Ireland during that time. But I can't remember ever giving a monkey's bottom about prods or tegs or venians or huns. If you were alright with me, I was alright with you. I gave even less of a toss once I realized that the only thing sectarianism had to offer were prison or premature death. Back then I didn't care about Irish freedom. All I wanted was the freedom to stay out past half eleven acting like a buck eejit without my da tanning my hide. But whether or not you subscribed to such ideas

was irrelevant. Even if it wasn't your business, the small but vocal militant minority made it your business. You just didn't have a say in the matter. The troubles meant there was no shortage of angsty young men around to write loud shouty songs about rampant injustices, and I'd like to think that's why Belfast produced a disproportionately high amount of great punk bands. The Outcast, Starlight 17, The Defects. Me and my mates would go to as many of their gigs as we could, and that whole scene meant drink, drugs, and liberal young ladies. Most of my pals were into the drink, drugs, and liberal young ladies. Now most of my pals were into the drink, but me and this lad Stacky liked to smoke too, and it wasn't easy to get your hands on it in Belfast at the time, for a number of reasons. But two people shorten the road, as they say.

So one day, me and Stacky are trying to get hold of some smoke when we hear from a mate of ours that this St. Lucian bloke he knew was selling a load of Moroccan hash he'd smuggled in on a boat. We were up to high dough hearing this. Only problem was that his flat was over in West Belfast. For those who are out of the loop, I'll try to keep this simple. I was from East Belfast, the mostly Protestant side, and this bloke's flat was in East Belfast, the mostly Protestant side, and this bloke's flat was in West Belfast, the mostly Catholic side of the city. Under most circumstances, it would not be good form for a young Protestant lad like me to go wandering round the West End, but we were desperate for a joint, so we hatched what we thought would be a genius plan to cheat the system.

Only way we were going to be able to get across the city was by taxi, but we'd be hard pushed to get a taxi company from either area to drive into enemy territory and back again. So, we have a dander down towards Botanic, which was still quite a mixed area at the time, then called a taxi company near Glen Road, saying we needed to get to Ardine and back. Taxi driver thinks we're Catholic, gives us a lift, we get our smoke and there's no drama. I'm 17 at the time, less than a year out of school and still looking for work. Wednesdays consisted of me begging for a few quid off my ma for lunch on my job search, then spending the day in a pub that we could get served at because one of the

lads was second cousins with the barman. Those were good days they were, getting bandjacks and then stumbling back to one of our parents' houses to listen to records until they kicked us out. Great stuff. Point being, I was a regular in this one pub in Ravenhill. People knew my face there. I used to think that was a good thing. Turns out that there was a bad side to it too. Because one day, these blokes walk into the pub and immediately we know something is dodgy because they walk straight past the barn into the center of the room. They're scanning all the tables which are backed up against the walls, looking for someone. And it turned out that someone was me and

Stacky. They walk up to us, lean over the table and then in these hushed voices they put the fear of God into me, say five little words that made me want to throw up. Jimmy McNamara wants to see you. I've changed some names here to protect the innocent but let's just say the bloke I've changed some names here to protect the innocent, but let's just say the bloke I've named Jimmy was a feared senior member of the Ulster Defense Association, probably the biggest Protestant paramilitary organization operating at that time. They called him Mad Dog, I'm not even joking, and it was a nickname he'd done more than enough to earn, given that he had a reputation as being one of the most brutally violent psychopaths ever to have graced the streets of Belfast. The thing you've got to remember is that most of these paramilitary groups weren't shy about hurting the same people they claimed to be protecting, and happened on both sides. The IRA kidnapped, tortured, and killed

a Catholic mother of eight because they thought she was passing information to the British army. And the Schenkel butchers ended up killing two of their brother Protestants because they mistook them for Catholics. You see now why I thought the whole thing was a load of bollocks? The point is, if Jimmy McNamara was really all about defending good Protestants from evil bloodthirsty Catholics who had to stuff their devil tails down the back of their trousers, I shouldn't have been soiling myself about having to meet him, which I most definitely was. Me and Stacky were given an address to go to right away, one that was only about 20 minutes walk from the pub. There was no point trying to run or hide, the UDA had people everywhere and the kind of fear

they spread among the communities meant you couldn't really blame anyone for giving you up. The kind of punishments they doled out were horrific and I was always terrified of getting kneecapped. For those fortunate enough not to know what that is, sorry, maybe skip this next part if you're a wee bit squeamish. Kneecapping is where a bloke shoots you in the back of the knee to basically blow your kneecap out. The damage can tend to vary depending on the kind of gun and the kind of bullet, but best case scenario, you're going to have a horrifically painful injury that takes a good long while to recover from. But worst case scenario, you get severe nerve damage and walk with a limp for the rest of your life, have to have your leg amputated or you bleed to death because everyone's too scared to call you an ambulance. And if you really, really annoyed the paramilitaries, they'd shoot you in the ankles and elbows too.

And I'm sure I don't need to tell you how claustrophobic that can be for any future Olympic gymnast out there. Those kind of punishment shootings were sickeningly common when I was a lad so as you can imagine, I was scared out of my wits. It was a good thing me and Stacky had a pint or two down us, otherwise I don't think we'd ever have had the courage to face our fate like men. After we had the address and the blokes walked off, we just necked our pints, walked out of the pub and started walking off in the direction of what we assumed was going to be a UDA safe house. A lot of neighborhoods had places like that, abandoned houses that a group used as a weapons cache or a place to hide out from the cops. Sometimes the house didn't even need to be abandoned. Blokes with guns marched into your gaff and told you what was what.

You didn't dare say a word on the contrary. And so, after a walk that felt like it went on forever, we finally get to the house and knock on the door. At first, the bloke who answers doesn't seem to know why we're there and we were made to sit on the wooden floor of a room that looked like it was in the process of being redecorated. After a while, two blokes start coming down the stairs and when they walk in the room, I see one of them. It's Jimmy McNamara. You two, upstairs, now, he says to us, and we didn't dare disobey. Once we reach the top of the stairs, Jimmy and his mate separate me and Stacky into different bedrooms which, again, are totally bare rooms where the windows are covered up with newspaper.

Sit, Jimmy says. Then he and his pal leave me alone for a moment, before both reappear to tie my wrists behind my back and my ankles to the chair. I was shaking so badly when the other fellow was tying my hands, he started talking to me like he was an uncle or something. Here lad, it's not that bad, calm down. Jimmy just wants to talk. Be honest and you'll be fine. There's a good lad. That kind of weird fatherly tone knocks me sick even today, knowing what they were planning and what kind of people they were. I mean, they really were psychopaths to think that they could go around acting like that and still be the good guys.

After that, I'm left alone again. Alone in this barely lit, absolutely boggin' room with nothing to keep me company but the stink of my own sweat and fear. After a while, Jimmy walks back into the room alone and shuts the door behind him. He stares at me for a solid minute or so, just in complete silence. There was no soul behind his eyes at all. They were just dead. He looked like a man who never slept. Do you know who I am? He asks me. I just nod. Good, he says, and that saves us some time. Here's the crack. I'm going to ask you some questions now and you're going to answer them honestly. Is that clear? I nod again. What were you doing the other day? An Athenian taxi going

over to Erdain there? He asks. I'm completely and utterly trapped by the question. The one thing that united all the different paramilitary groups was their disdain for drug dealers and drug users. If I admit that I was looking to buy drugs, I'll be shot, no questions asked. But if I lie and tell him something else, he might think I'm a Republican or that I'm at least working with him. I was scared out of my mind, in no fit state to make a rational decision, so I lied. I told him I was looking at buying a guitar from a wee shop there, that I knew I shouldn't have been spending money in Catholic shops, I was really sorry and I'd never do it again, blah blah blah. All lies. Jimmy was a violent, psychopathic thug. But he was good at

his job. And he knew a lie when he heard one. He just sighed and shook his head. Walked over to the wall and banged on it three times. Immediately after he does so I just hear someone screaming bloody murder from the next room. Like a horrible blood-curdling scream for a moment and then silence, then another scream, silence, and repeat ad nauseum. You hear that? Jimmy says to me, pacing around the room like a disappointed head teacher. That's your pal in there taking electric shocks. He lied too, now listen to him Stacky let out a particularly pained cry of pure agony And Jimmy actually smiled when he heard it

So unless you want your bollocks rigged up to a rover battery I suggest you stop telling fibs And at that I told him everything I told him about the smoke The taxi company The bloke selling Everything It all just came out in this big stream of consciousness I told him about the smoke, the taxi company, the bloke selling, everything. It all just came out in this big stream of consciousness.

When I was done, Jimmy banged on the wall again and the screaming stopped. See? He said. Wasn't so hard, was it? Good lad. Let's go see your friend. Jimmy then walked out of the room and I'm left alone again. At this point I know I'm up the creek and what's worse, I've basically grasped Stacky up too. He who keeps his tongue keeps his friends and all that. I like to think of myself as a bit of a hard case, hanging around pubs or banging heads at gigs,

but as I'm tied to that chair waiting on some horrendous corporal punishments that I'm unlikely to ever fully recover from I just start crying like a wee baby. Then out of nowhere I'm completely silenced by a gunshot coming from the other room. Stacky screams out in agony and falls quiet again and for the first time since I was a child I actually just peed myself right there and then. Jimmy and his pal come back into the room announcing that Stacky has had his punishment and that once I've had mine we'll have to hop down the street to a pub that Jimmy will call an ambulance to. The way he used that word hop just so casually, it was horrific how relaxed he was while talking about kneecapping,

about maiming another human being for life. I'm just too scared to do anything but cooperate as they start to untie me. Fight back and make a run for it and I'm dead man for certain. Do as I'm told and I'll be shot in the back of the knee. And again they start using that sickening fatherly tone one of them used before, telling me the punishment is for my own good, how smoking hash is bad for me and how they'll be helping me out in the long run. Be a good lad, keep still, it'll all be over before you know it. One of them said as they held me down on the floor.

I felt the barrel of the gun on the back of my leg and I burst into tears. It was an actual nightmare that I couldn't wake up from. These blokes acting like they were trying to take care of me was making it all more disturbing. Alright son, brace yourself. Jimmy said before starting the countdown of 3, 2, 1. By the time he got to 1, I was just screaming, like gritting my teeth and letting out this growl to try and counteract the fear and approaching agony. Then, click.

Nothing. Jimmy pulls the trigger and nothing happens. No pain, no blood, nothing. Stand up, Jimmy says, and I do as I'm told. Look me in the eye when I'm talking to you. I try, but I can't, so he carries on anyway. Consider this a fair warning, he says, and holds up the pistol. Next time, this will be loaded.

I'll get out. Next thing, me and Stacky are walking back to the pub in a state of pure shock. Just like they tricked me with the fake punishment routine, they tricked him too. Only they really had used electric shocks on him after he'd lied the first time, even show me the wee burns on his ankle where the bloke had touched the wires. I think that was the first time I really questioned whether or not I had a future in Northern Ireland. If I really wanted my life to be defined by thugs and soldiers, bullets and bombs. Didn't take me long to work out that I didn't.

I run a pub in England now, some corporate place with plastic Irish sensibilities, but it puts food on my family's table and I'm happy here. I thought I might move the family back home once things died down, but there are just too many bad memories for me now, things I'd rather leave behind. That and the fact that the bloke who subjected me to one of the most traumatic things in my entire life is just free to walk the streets. Lots of people escaped justice as part of various ceasefire agreements that brought peace to the six counties and Jimmy McNamara was one of them. I don't mean to gurn but I just couldn't live in a place where blokes like

that have just gotten away with the crimes they committed. People who have so much blood on their hands that their used pint glasses have to be washed twice. I get that many people do, that people have chosen to just live with the legacy of the troubles, but me, I just couldn't do it. Too much blood, too many ghosts, too many monsters that don't have to hide in the dark anymore. The Acts of Union They were documents that officially recognized the union of two nations into what would be known as the United Kingdom. But in the 40 or so years that followed the union, successive British prime ministers struggled with the conundrum of governing a country with an appallingly low standard of living. Ireland's farms were few in number, poorly run and extremely inefficient. Couple that with a population swollen by a booming birth rate and

you have a recipe for disaster. So throughout the early 19th century, the British government launched a huge agrarian effort to introduce the humble potato as the sustainer of the great unwashed. The now well-loved vegetable was poorly received at first, as at the time, the diet of Irish peasants was still based on butter, milk, and grain products. But after pressure from landowners and royalty who needed a low-cost food source to fuel their workers and boost their profits, popularity slowly began to rise. By the end of the 1820s, the potato head proved its worth by being a reliable source of food throughout the long and

frigid winters. In the particular variety of potato that was used, the Irish lumper grew consistently large in a relatively short period of time. Yet the farming methods of the day were nowhere near as sophisticated as they are now, and by the middle of the 19th century, almost all of Ireland's abundant potato crop was based around a single, specific genetic variety. The benefits were evident. The Irish were far less likely to rebel with full stomachs and the nation's productivity soared. But the lack of genetic variety in the potato crop would prove a fatal weakness to Ireland's newfound prosperity, with grave consequences for its population.

Towards the end of 1844, newspapers all throughout the British Isles began to receive reports of a strange disease that had been ravaging crops over in the United States. Potato crops from all over the eastern seaboard had been affected by a blight so virulent and destructive that in some cases, not a single edible potato could be harvested from a farmer's field. The blight was said to turn potatoes as black as coal and cause them to give off a stench so vile that it would turn the stomachs of all who encountered it. British optimism, conflicting reports and general misinformation stifled what might

have been an organized effective response. British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel wrote a letter to a colleague in 1845 saying that he found the reports to be deeply alarming, but also reminded him that there was, in his words, always a tendency to exaggeration in Irish news. But by mid-August 1845, this devastating new variety of potato blight had reached the shores of northern and central Europe, and only when the crop was harvested in October did the scale of destruction become apparent. Reports from the continent came pouring in, horror stories of how the potato harvest had been catastrophically low. What's worse, no one had the slightest idea what this new kind of blight was and actually referred to it as potato cholera during the early days of the outbreak. One farmer reported that

a strange mist came over the Irish Sea and the potato stalks turned black as soot. The fields were a wide waste of putrefaction, giving off an offensive odor that could be smelled for miles. During the harvest of 1845, farmers found that around one-third of their entire potato crop had been consumed by the blight. A devastating loss by any means, but one that paled in comparison with the losses of the following year. As in 1846, the situation was worse than anyone could have possibly imagined. Within 75% of all Irish potatoes were rendered completely inedible. By December of 1846, more than 350,000 Irish peasants were completely unable to feed themselves, and as the number of people unable to obtain food rose, news began to trickle in of the

first deaths from starvation. However, the greatest number of deaths were not directly from nutritional deficiency diseases, but from diseases brought on by malnutrition, as starving people were extremely vulnerable to viral and bacterial infection. The immune system is devastated by the effects of starvation, increasing the likelihood of death to diseases like measles, diphtheria, diarrhea, tuberculosis, whooping cough, intestinal parasites, and cholera. What's more, as starving people descended on soup kitchens, food depots, and overcrowded workhouses, they inadvertently created conditions that were ideal for spreading infectious diseases such as typhus, typhoid, and relapsing fever. In essence, the variety of terrible conditions each acted as their own ingredient that, when added to the

already simmering political situation, created a cauldron of suffering and death that wrought havoc on the Emerald Isle. Survivors' accounts of the period are truly harrowing. Due to the lack of scientific understanding, those who lived through the famine essentially had no idea what brought the blight to Ireland. It's most likely that trade ships returning from the US were the source of the spread, but to those living in 19th century Ireland, it was believed the blight was caused by some hideous, cursed fog that rolled in from the ocean.

Even respected and trusted members of the clergy propagated this idea, which must have absolutely terrified the local populace. The 1846 testimony of Reverend Robert McGowan stated that, I was descending the mountain when I saw a thick white fog gradually creeping up the sides of the hills. When I entered it, I was pained with the cold. I had once feared some great disaster. The next morning I found the whole potato crop everywhere blighted. The leaves were blackened and hanging loosely on their stems and a disagreeable odor filled the air. And at a time when religion played a central role in the lives of almost everyone, members of the church must have struck terror into the hearts of the Irish peasantry by making claims like, surely God is angry with this land. The potatoes would not

have rotted unless he sent the rot into them. God is good, and because he is, he never sends a scourge upon his creatures unless they deserve it. But he is so good that he often punishes people in mercy. When he sees them going in a bad way, he chastises them. The suffering through such atrocious events is one thing, but to have pillars of your community tell you that you basically deserve it, that must have had a calamitous effect on the national psyche. The Illustrated London News commissioned Irish artist James Mahoney to create a series of

sketches depicting the horror and scale of the disaster and report on his findings as he toured the country. Today, his horrific account remains one of the most powerful and visceral records of the famine. While he describes many extreme incidents, his visit to the town of Clonacilty was typical of what he found in Irish towns. In 1847 he wrote, We came to Clonacilty where the coach stopped for breakfast, and here for the first time the horrors of the poverty became visible, and the vast number of famished poor who flocked around the coach to beg alms. Amongst them was a woman carrying in her arms the cadaver of a fine child and making the most distressing appeal to the passengers for aid to enable her to purchase a coffin

and bury her dear little baby. The Marquis of Waterford was haunted by some of the things he saw, and wrote in 1846 that the faces of these people were subdued with hunger, pale or rather of a ghostly yellow, indicative of utmost destitution. They are starving. We hurried with horror from these frightful visitations which are permitted by Providence for his own wise ends, feeling sick at heart. Their demonic yells are still ringing in my ears and their horrible images are fixed on my brain. A group of English Quakers sent a charitable mission to Ireland,

hoping to alleviate the suffering of the starving. What they saw shook them to the core, and in 1846, a Quaker man named William Foster described the horror he felt after coming across a group of starving children. They were like skeletons, he wrote. Their features sharpened with hunger and their limbs wasted, so that there was little left but bones, their hands and arms in particular being much emaciated, and the happy expression of infancy gone from their faces, leaving the anxious look of premature old age. A reporter for the Telegraph newspaper visited Castle Barn, County Mayo in 1847, and observed that the people there had been driven to a brutal kind of apathy by the constant and crushing misery. A few days ago I entered a miserable cabin, dug out of the bog.

A poor woman sat, propped up against the wall inside. The stench was intolerable and, on my complaining of it, the mother pointed to a sort of square bed in one corner. It contained the putrid, the absolutely melted away remains of her eldest son. On inquiry why she did not bury it, she assigned two reasons. First, she had not the strength to go out and acquaint the neighbors. Next, she waited till her other child would die, and they might bury both together. In some areas, people were so desperate for food that they resorted to feeding on seaweed, grass, or even rotten potatoes, which further exacerbated their wretched condition. And in some grisly cases, the starving were driven so mad with hunger that they even ate each other. Professor Cormac Ograda of University College Dublin discovered one documented report which involved a man named John Connolly,

who came before a court on theft charges in one of Ireland's westernmost counties. In the course of the prosecution, it emerged that the family was in such desperate straits that his wife had eaten some of the flesh off the leg of the dead body of her son. The son's body was exhumed and it was discovered that his flesh was indeed missing. Connolly was immediately discharged as the desperate condition of the Irish famine victims was taken into account. Another case of cannibalism was reported in the Times on May 23rd, 1849. In County Mayo, a starving man was reported to have extracted the heart and liver of a shipwrecked human body

cast on shore, before roasting them over an open fire and wolfing down the meat. The mass immigration to the United States that was sparked off by the Great Famine gave rise to another chilling phenomenon, that of so-called coffin ships. Thousands of desperate Irish people poured on the ships which promised to take them to the Land of Opportunity, a place they would never be hungry again. But in doing so, with hundreds of poorly fed, disease-carrying migrants concentrated together in small cramped living quarters, they created a hellish island of infection and destitution. And throughout no fault of their own either, as the owners of such transport ships charged extortionate prices

while packing their vessels with as many would-be migrants as was physically possible. The owners then provided measly food rations and very little in the way of sanitation, and as a result, thousands died in transit. Some coffin ships had a mortality rate of up to 50%, meaning that in many cases, the vessels that arrived in American and Canadian ports were little more than floating cemeteries that contained little but misery, disease, and death. It was said that sharks could be seen following the ships because so many bodies were thrown overboard. All in all, we don't actually know how many people died as a result of the Great Irish Famine. Death by malnourishment might well have been overshadowed by the deaths that came from

the accompanying diseases. State registration of deaths had yet to begin in Ireland, and records kept by the Catholic Church were unreliable. A census taken in 1841 recorded a population of just over 8 million. A census immediately after the famine in 1851 counted 6.5 million, a drop of 1.5 million in 10 years. So, by all accounts, the Great Irish Famine killed an estimated 1 million Irish people over the course of a decade, with another half a million emigrating to the US or the UK to escape a slow, painful death by starvation. The Great Potato Famine has proven to be one of the most horrifying, haunting events that Ireland has ever experienced. An event which turned a lush green island into a hellscape of disease, hunger, and death. A place where ghost stories abound, and where the scale of the suffering might never be fully understood. You know what I like to do here at Let's Read?

Law you into beautiful nightmares. However, it's not often that I get lawed into beautiful nightmares myself. That was until I listened to Red Handed. At first, Hannah and Saruthi seemed to be just talking everything and nothing to me in their fantastic British accents. Two minutes later, I had unknowingly stumbled into some of the most creepy, spooky, and downright terrifying true crime I'd ever come across. Every week, Hannah and Saruthi cover a new true crime case sure to give you the shivers.

And if you enjoy Let's Read, then I know for a fact that you'll love Red Handed. They have everything from true crime classics like the recent coverage of the infamous Casey Anthony case to their utterly creepy Halloween story swaps where they talk about black magic sorcery and even cannibals. You can listen to all 200 plus episodes of Red Handed by searching for Red Handed, all one word, anywhere you listen to podcasts.

That's R-E-D-H-A-N-D-E-D, anywhere you listen to podcasts. That's R-E-D-H-A-N-D-E-D, anywhere you listen to podcasts. Or you can find out more about the show by searching for at RedHandedThePod on Twitter and imagine, made for quite an uneventful upbringing. It also meant my back garden was bloody massive, so I had plenty of space to run around outside, playing make-believe with my two sisters. And without a shadow of a doubt, our favorite toy was the little Wendy house that dad had built for us at the end of the garden. I don't know if they have those in the rest of the world, but basically a Wendy house is like a little miniature playhouse for kids. And I say little but dad had built us a massive one with like a little hallway and a kitchen and a little ladder going upstairs to a little loft. It was absolutely adorable,

me and my sisters just loved it. So much so that one summer's night when it was warm enough we asked mom and dad if we could sleep out in the Wendy house one night. They were understandably reluctant to give us permission at first, but we pestered them and pestered them until they finally relented. We could have a sleepover in the Wendy house, but we had to be on our best behavior, not fight, and promise not to go walking around in the dark. It was a deal. You can understand our parents' reservations too because the end of the garden I mentioned was probably about 100 meters away from the actual house, near this old shuck that backed out into some woodland.

Not the ideal place to leave your kids alone overnight. So that's how three girls under 10 years old ended up in a dimly lit wooden playhouse in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. And for some reason, my older sister Kathleen decides it would be a good idea to tell ghost stories. Kathleen has always been a bit strange. She always had a fascination with ghosts and ghoulies and witches and whatnot ever since she was young. And since she got in her hands on a book of Irish ghost stories, she thought she might regurgitate one of the stories she's read to us. She started telling us about a ghost that actually originated in Ireland,

that unlike a Dracula or a Frankenstein which come from other countries, as nine-year-old her put it, we actually had banshees in Ireland, since that's where they originated from. Our minds are absolutely blown. Ghosts lived in graveyards, old houses, and other haunted places. You had to go to the haunted place to see one. But here's Kathleen telling us about a ghost that actually comes to you. To tell you that something's going to die in your family. And the way it lets you know it is by screaming in the middle of the night,

like a ghostly, ear-piercing wail. Kathleen goes on to tell us that these banshees are women who have died in terrible, painful ways, hence the screaming, and that they look like shriveled old women with red eyes who carry bowls of blood. We were just about trembling in our pajamas by the time Kathleen finished describing the nightmarish appearance of the banshee by torchlight. But somehow, when dad came out to interrupt and tell us it was bedtime, we managed to get comfy and drift off to an uneasy sleep. The next thing I know, I'm wide awake in total darkness and everything is deathly quiet. Then I hear something that was so frightening that at first, I think I just froze up in

complete terror. It was a shrill, ear-piercing shriek, almost gravelly too as if it had come from the throat of an old lady. When I finally found the courage to move I shot up from my makeshift bed, shaking my sisters awake and telling them to listen. We just sat there in the darkness for a moment all three of us terrified until we heard the screech again. Hearing it for a second time had me just about out of my mind with fear, but my little sister took it even worse. It's a banshee! I remember her crying. We have to tell mom and dad. Then my big sister, god bless her, decides that even though she's terrified, she's gonna run to mom and dad so they can rescue us from the banshee.

Say what you like about Kathleen, but she believed in her own hype. She thought there was a banshee out there just as much as us. I mean, what else could have been making those ungodly noises out there? We're frantically looking for our torches, but in our panic, we can't find them. And when the banshee screams for a third time, Kathleen decides she can't afford to wait any longer. She gets up, and in complete darkness climbs down the little ladder, opens the Wendy House door and runs off to fetch us rescue. While Kathleen was gone, me and my little sister managed to find one of the torches. So we flick it on and point it down at the Wendy House door from the loft.

I don't know what the logic was about that, but that's what we did and then we cuddled together, cried and waited for the banshee to get us. After a minute or so we hear rustling outside the Wendy house. Something was moving outside. We're so scared of the thing hearing us that we've got our hands over our mouths. We still can't stop crying and we still don't turn the torch off. Suddenly the door opens and what stepped inside made me and my little sister scream in pure horror. Blood was pouring down the mouth and chin of my big sister. And now she's back in the light. And now she too can see that she's bleeding.

She smears a bit of blood on her fingers, looks at it, then promptly collapses. We are absolutely inconsolable at this point. Me and my little sister are begging, screaming, crying for our parents to come and save us. To us, Kathleen just ran out to get help, and the bloody banshee's only gone and gotten her before she could make it. We're trapped, and the banshee's getting closer. We're doomed. Then there's more footsteps outside the Wendy house. Heavier footsteps now. Banshee footsteps. The door swings open again, only this time, the face that appears is our dad, wanting to know what's going on here. We're screaming,

dad, there's a banshee, be careful, it's got Kathleen behind you, Dad He's obviously skeptical at anything at first, but when he sees Kathleen's face, it's his turn to be terrified He turns ashen, grabs Kathleen's little body up in his arms and then rushes back to the house with her So keep in mind that even at this, the point of parental intervention, dad has not taken the time to tell us that there definitely isn't a banshee. And if anything, his reaction at Kathleen's face confirmed that. Not only is there definitely a banshee outside, but he's completely abandoned us. Seriously, just try and imagine being 7 years old and that being your truth. We didn't calm down for hours. Mom and dad said we were still up crying at 1 o'clock in the morning with the whole incident going on at about 10. Even when we knew everything was okay, we just cried because it's been so bloody traumatic.

Obviously, there was no banshee and we didn't find this out until years later for obvious reasons, but what we'd heard was the sound of foxes making love. As me and my sisters know all too well, when they do that, the lady fox screeches at the top of her lungs, producing what is a rather unsettling and otherworldly sound. Kathleen, being the brave big sister she was, had ran out to protect us. But maybe if she was as nimble as she was courageous, she wouldn't have run directly into that tree in her blind panic, almost knocking herself out in the process. Best she could do was then retrace her poor befuzzled steps back to the Wendy house and passed out at the sight of her own blood. It's a story we tell every Christmas now, especially whenever there's a new boyfriend or husband making an appearance and it always gets a giggle from those that hear it. But I think if you put a gun to my head

and asked me for the scariest moment in my life, I'd say the banshee was when I was seven. I'm deadly serious. Scarier than childbirth. Scarier than finding the lump in my breast. Scarier than confronting my first husband about his drinking, because I believed something I didn't understand was coming to get me. Something mythical, something supernatural, something that even dad was scared of. Needless to say, there were no more sleepovers in the Wendy house that summer, and the whole thing went arseways and fell down a few years later. But me and my sister will always have that story to make us laugh, even though at the time,

we were scared for our lives. To be continued... freight all over Ireland, in the North and in the Republic. I managed to collect a number of good stories after driving around the country for the better part of ten years, some good, some bad. But this one is by far the most hair-raising for me. So one day I was driving from Derry to Belfast across the Glenshin Road at about lunchtime. Back in those days it was a particularly quiet stretch of road and you're about to find out why. But nevertheless my job required me to be driving down it so there I was. I hadn't seen another car for about an hour. The countryside is very open and barren out there and there hadn't been a building since miles back. Then suddenly I can see these two little specks on the road in front of me in the distance.

I realize it's two vehicles moving toward me side by side, only that meant one vehicle is driving on the wrong side of the road. So I'm thinking, I don't like this, and I slow down just a tad to err on the side of caution. Lo and behold, it's two Saracens, a kind of British armored car that they had back in those days, and they're speeding toward me on this long stretch of deserted road. I'm already worried by that point. The aggressive driving, the speed they're coming at me, absolutely zero witnesses around. Everything about the situation is giving me the jitters in a big way. I get about a quarter of a mile closer to them when both armored cars suddenly veer off to the edge of the road. Their bellies open and with rifles

in hand about a dozen soldiers come pouring out of each, forming a line on each side of the road before pointing their weapons in my direction. I'm slow to about 20 by that point, sweaty palms gripping the steering wheel, feeling all the blood drain out of my face as my heart starts going a mile a minute. I hear one of the soldiers shout so loud that I can well hear him over my truck's engine, and I'm just thinking, this is it, time for the big sleep. But no one shoots. There's just these horrible few moments of me slowly rolling my wagon towards them, expecting them to open fire or at least stop my vehicle for a search. See, the firm I

worked for was based down in Wexford, so the wagon had a Republic of Ireland number plate on it. Enough to attract some mild suspicion, I suppose, but I'd never been presented with my own firing squad before. I'm absolutely bricking it, getting closer and closer to the British soldiers all lined up with rifles pointed. Only as I get closer I realize they're not really pointing their guns at me, they're pointing them down the road behind me. In fact, as I slowed to a crawl I saw they weren't paying any attention to me whatsoever. It was like I was invisible. It was honestly quite surreal.

I had to make some nervous eye contact with their sergeant or officer or whatever he was and give him a nod to see if I was allowed to pass. He just waved me through like it was the most normal thing in the world. I don't think I exhaled until I got to Belfast 20 minutes later. I remember just parking my wagon up in the depot and just sitting there for a minute or two, staring into space before I got out. I was really shaken up by it, being relatively new on the job, but when I told my boss about it, he just shrugs his shoulders and tells me to crack on. Apparently stuff like that happened to loads of fellas and I was lucky not to get stopped and searched.

Another bloke told me that a gang of power hungry little corporals held him up for half an hour one night, had him kneeling in the rain while they ransacked the contents of his wagon. Only good thing about the Irish number plates was that RA, that's the Irish Republican Army to all ye uninitiated, gave me no bother. In all fairness, I should mention that most of the times I had to deal with the Brits, they treated me relatively fairly. You didn't make a problem for them, they didn't make a problem for you. You had to be really unlucky to get that one bugger who had himself a bad day and wanted to take it out on you. I reckon the soldiers on the road that day were taking part in some kind of training

or exercise or maybe the people they were looking for were coming up the road behind me. But regardless, it didn't happen again. And thank Jesus too because I'm not quite sure my heart could have withstood another run in like that. It's a different kind of fear, you know, when you really think you're about to cop it and I hope I never have to feel it ever again. Because as they say here in Ireland, may the good Lord take a liking to you, but not too soon. When my nana was very young, she was fortunate enough to have been able to meet her great grandmother. The women in our typically Irish family tend to have their children at a young age,

so it's not unusual for one of the older members of our clan to be able to meet their great-grandchildren before they shuffle off their mortal coil. Now, her great-grandmother, my great-great-grandmother, always wore black. She was a scathing but witty old dear and, if she didn't like you, she would say things like, may the cat eat you and the devil eat the cat. She was also a widow, lost her husband early on in their marriage and stuck to her vow of perpetual mourning. The experience made her a deeply religious woman too. I mean every Irish person has a little of the church in them anyway but she took her faith very, very seriously after losing her husband and I think a lot of that is down to the circumstances in which she lost him.

You see, my great-great-grandfather was a sailor in the Royal Navy, which wasn't unheard of back then since we were still subjects of the British Empire, and the ship he sailed on was named the HMS Wasp. Early one morning in the year of 1884, the crew of the HMS Wasp were given the task of ferrying a gang of bailiffs and police to this place called Anistrahal, a little island off the coast of Donegal. The police had nasty business to attend to as on the island, three poor families were no longer able to pay rent to the landowner and were due to be kicked out of their houses. When the sailors found out that they were abetting such cruelty, their hearts sank. The HMS Wasp has visited them previously, delivering a few sacks of potatoes when the islands were on the verge of starvation.

They knew how hard life was for the poor islanders, who somehow eked out an existence on a rock that's less than half a square mile in size. The way my nana tells it, it was so early in the morning that the sun hadn't yet risen, but the crew of the wasp had sailed those waters many times before and the veil of darkness was no hindrance to them. Yet somehow, the ship managed to collide with some rocks just off of a place called Torrey Island. The ship went down fast, with only six of the boat's passengers and crew surviving the freezing cold waters. 52 sailors, policemen, and bailiffs drowned that morning, with my great-great-grandfather being one of them. The incident was a huge scandal, and mainly because it emerged that the HMS Wasp had sunk directly within sight of a lighthouse.

This meant that, by all accounts, they should have been well aware of their positioning in relation to rocks they knew well were there. So, as you can imagine, a great deal of rumor and mystery shrouded the ship's sinking, and one particular explanation seemed to capture the imaginations of the mainlanders. It was said that the folk who lived on Anistrahal Island had long been isolated from the Irish mainland and viewed mainlanders with contempt and suspicion. Hundreds of years before, Christianity had been slow to make its way over to Anistrahal, and legend speaks of a massacre that occurred there after many of the islanders refused to renounce their old gods. People said that there was still some who lived on the island that worshipped pagan deities, invoking ancient curses and performing blood sacrifices.

So, when a ghastly theory emerged that the islanders had used a kind of cursing stone, known as a clock to ray, to sink the wasp before it could land bailiffs on the island, people actually believed it. What's worse is that the story then tells of a local priest who heard of such ungodly practices and sailed to Anistra Hall. There he located the clock to ray and promptly hurled it into the ocean to cleanse the taint of paganism from the island. The same priest then safely made it back to the mainland where, by some horrible twist of fate, slipped and fell on a walkway one day and drowned in the river Thin. People were absolutely convinced it was the curse of the clock Ture and my grey grey grandmother was one of them.

Until the day she died, she believed something unholy had risen up from the ocean to take her husband away from her. Now obviously I know that's just a silly old story my family tells, despite all my aunties swearing it's the god honest truth. And I know because I actually did some research into the sinking of the HMS Wasp, but that didn't make what I found any less horrifying. The Royal Navy held an inquiry into the incident of the HMS Wasp, but that didn't make what I found any less horrifying. The Royal Navy held an inquiry into the incident and were looking to court-martial the surviving sailors for negligence. Only one of the survivors had been on deck at the time of collision, and this man swore that the lights of the Tory lighthouse went dark not long before they hit the rocks. Since it was a routine journey for the crew,

a junior officer was placed at the helm to gain some experience but was so lacking in that department that he was unable to navigate in the dark, hence the ship hitting those rocks. To me, the idea of the lighthouse going dark is much more feasible than any cursing stone or what have you, but that means that the people of Torrey Island colluded with the people of Venistra Hall to plunge the ship carrying their tormentors into darkness. The islanders killed 52 men that morning, all to avoid being evicted from their homes. Whether or not you can blame them is another question entirely and given that I actually lost a relative in the incident I don't think I can give you an unbiased answer.

But the fact remains that 52 people found themselves plunging into the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean on a freezing winter's morning in complete darkness. Imagine the horror of slowly hearing the cries of your shipmates gradually falling silent until you yourself are taken by hypothermia. You certainly don't need a belief in the supernatural for that tale to give you the shivers. To be continued... For almost 20 years of my life, I lied to all but a handful of people about what I did for a living. My story was that I worked as a consultant for a big cleaning company. I'd explain that I basically got paid very handsomely to do what we called benchmark cleans, which was when an expert would scrub a place down to show the owners how clean it could be. That way they'd know if their janitorial staff were slacking off or cutting corners.

I mean, it was as good a story as any and it at least explained why I was often spotted loading cleaning supplies into the trunk of my Cadillac Elante. And in a way, a cleaner was exactly what I was only I was occupied with a very particular kind of cleaning that sometimes takes place after a very particular event. You see, I worked for the Italian mob in Boston and my job was cleaning up murder scenes. As you can imagine, the profession that I fell into is not something you go to college for, and I do mean that I fell into it. It's not like I went out looking to get myself work purging crime scenes of any biological evidence. It just sort of happened that way. When I was 19, I was working in a bar owned by a very mobbed up guy who will remain nameless for obvious reasons. I was working the

end of a real slow shift one night and the manager had gone home early having left me with the keys to lock up. As I was doing so, three guys came in saying they knew the owner and I just assumed they were interested in a little after hours drinking, which did occur often. Two of the men led a third into a back room and then the next thing I heard was this voice shout, wait, before one of the guys comes back out and tells me to bring a mop into the back room in exactly 15 minutes. I do as I'm told and walked into the back while one of the guys comes back out and tells me to bring a mop into the back room in exactly 15 minutes. I do as I'm told, and walked into the back while one of the guys explained to me that there'd be a spillage that I needed to clean up. There was this huge puddle of what was really obviously blood,

and I got this mob guy telling me, Hey, don't worry about it, it's tomato juice, just get it cleaned up already. I was terrified I'd go to prison in connection with that murder, should these two guys get found out. Look, I was the one who let him into the bar after hours anyway. Like, there's no reason why a jury wouldn't believe that I had something to do with it. So I cleaned better and faster than I'd ever cleaned anything before in my life. I mopped and scrubbed that floor thoroughly, twice, and when the two mob guys had finished off one of the expensive

bottles of grappa, they came back to check my work. Needless to say, they were impressed. There wasn't a speck of blood anywhere, not on the walls, not on the floor, nowhere. This one guy is so happy with the job I did he slips a couple of dollar bills into my pocket and pats me on the back. I was way too scared to check the amount until I got home that night but when I did, I found that they were two crinkly hundreds. And to 19 year old me, that made me a very rich man for the night. It was only about a week when the same two guys

appeared during a closing shift I was working at the bar. The manager was there at the time and we were pretty busy since there had been a Red Sox game on but he didn't say a word in protest when these two guys told me to follow them out to their car. I was absolutely terrified and I was almost certain that they were going to have me killed because I could turn witness against them. They took me across the north end to a little house with a bunch of blood all over one of the back rooms. I thought it was like an abattoir for people at first that I'd be killed there and then disposed of in whatever way these guys did their work but to my surprise they asked me to clean up and to just do as good a job there as I did back in the bar.

Again, I do as I'm told, scrubbing every iota of blood and human tissue from that back room. It was way worse than the bar that time, as the blood had really seemed to soak into a section of the carpet. But a mix of Clorox and pure elbow grease dislodged all of the discoloring, so even though it took a good few hours, by the time I was done, the room looked as good as new. This time I was paid the full amount a mafia cleaner would normally get, two grand, and I couldn't believe it. It was more than double my month's pay at the bar for just a few hours of work. And somehow the disgust of cleaning up all that blood was somehow overridden

by my fear of the local mob. If I refused to clean, they'd most likely just off me. Or I could just go along to get along and get rich doing it. Twenty years of service I put in. I stopped counting the number of cleaning jobs I worked for the mob back around 100, but I must have cleaned up thousands of places in those 20 years. Every so often I'd negotiate a raise from the various crews, charge extra for larger crime scenes. Basically I made myself a very rich man by just relinquishing any kind of moral compass I had and cleaning what needed to be cleaned. I kept my business quiet.

I never had a run in with the cops and never had any kind of problems or disagreements with any of the bosses or capos. They just called when they needed me and paid me when I asked but aside from that we never spoke. So when one of the guys I'd worked for called me up to say that me and him needed a sit down, I immediately knew something was off. When I met the capo and a few guys from his crew at a diner on the edge of town, I figured there'd at least be an agenda. But all they seemed to want to do was eat lunch and shoot the breeze. In the end, I actually had to ask the guy why he'd call me out there if it wasn't just to eat waffles.

He responds by asking a bunch of cryptic questions about how many years I'd worked for them, how many jobs I'd done for them, basically my entire mafia resume. I'm just nodding along the whole time, almost certain that the conversation wasn't going anywhere good. You see, at the time the police department was really putting the squeeze on this guy's crew and the Kappa was having people whack left and right just to keep his name out of their mouths and I was pretty sure I cleaned up some of their blood too. The way I saw it, the guy talking about how long I'd been working for them could have been a compliment to my loyalty but also an indictment of how much

I knew. And it put me in a very delicate situation because I knew he was going to try to secure my silence in one of two ways. Paying my family off to keep me quiet if I was looking at a conviction or putting a bullet in me to keep me from saying anything at all. I basically put my wife on standby to get out of there for like 2 or 3 weeks after that. The stress of it really did a number on her too having some bags packed at all times just waiting to get a call from me like we gotta get out of here if I thought the crew were gonna make their move on me. Sure we were worried about what was going to happen to us but it was worrying about

what was going to happen to our kids which really messed with my head. For the first couple of weeks I didn't have to make that call. Everything seemed like it was going to be fine. I even worked a couple of jobs for the same people I thought were going to kill me just trying to play like everything was cool. If I started acting shifty they'd think I was a, and then I was definitely done for. But the moment finally came when I got a call from one of the crew to come clean up a body, only the location was basically out in the middle of nowhere. Now what gave it away was that most of the cleanups were in inner city high traffic areas, close neighborhoods, people who might see things, smell things. Those were my bread and butter. If a group of guys whack someone in the middle of nowhere, they can basically just kick some dirt over the body and get gone. So I give the guy a call and start probing for details about

what kind of job it was and long story short, his responses were incredibly suspicious. I actually text my wife while I was still on the phone with a guy like, take the kids to a motel now. I just had this gut feeling and I wasn't about to take any chances. So I tell the guy I'm on my way, but really I drive home to see if the wife got out okay. When I cruise past the street we lived on to scope out the driveway, the first thing that gets my attention is this big black SUV just sat across from the house. My wife's car was gone and that was a plus, but she must have barely gotten out of there in time, and I knew well that whoever sat in that SUV was there to do us harm. Given the distance between us, I managed to just back off and drive away before they noticed me, but the whole time I was in complete, full panic mode.

I was texting my wife, making sure she drove way outside of the city before she found somewhere to stay, all the while bluffing the mob guy, telling him the traffic was terrible but I was still on my way. I hadn't been that scared since I was a teenager, and I first had my run in with those mob guys in the bar I worked at. I'm sweating through my shirt in the driver's seat of my car, taking calls from this guy and having to pretend that it was just a regular day at the office. Those guys were brutal, but they weren't too smart and me and my wife managed to get the kids out and disappear over the next couple of days. I changed my phone, bought a different car. Basically my

life as I knew it had just gone up in smoke and we'd have to just start again somewhere new. But the last thing that guy said to me over the phone when he finally realized I was jumping ship still makes my skin crawl to this day. At first he asked after my kids in this nice polite way, asked how they were doing in school, all this other stuff. Then he starts telling me that if I just do the right thing, then they'll all be okay. But when I told him I just couldn't do that, he finally lost his temper. Jesus Christ, the things he said he'll do to my wife were enough to keep me up at night, but the things he'd said he'd do to my two young daughters made me feel physically sick even today. I got rid of my phone after that and never spoke to the guy again.

Like I said, my life is completely different now, and I'm sure you'll understand if I spare you the details. Even submitting this story, I'm really doing it as anonymously as I can. I just wanted to get it off my chest because it's been weighing on me. I wanted to tell somebody. But the way I feel about my time working for the mob is kind of like this old saying I once heard about appeasing people. How you feed the crocodile, hoping that it'll eat you last. That's exactly what I did with the mob. And in the end, it really did try to eat me, too. For most of us, learning a second language in high school or college wasn't exactly a high point in our academic careers. For me, I took German, as I told you before, but all I really remember is Wienerschnitzel. But now, thanks to Babbel, the language learning app that's sold more than 10 million subscriptions,

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I mean, I should clarify a little that I wasn't like some big-time criminal dropping bodies or moving weight. Me and my homies were young when we joined, and we were considered shorties to the actual grown men over in East Chicago. But if we stuck around and did as we're told, we had a chance to be jumped in and marked at 16. Not going to lie, we were nothing but a bunch of wannabes. There were a couple of older kids who were our mentors, but for the most part, it was a bunch of teenagers playing hard until they were old enough to be actual corner boys. It was dumb and actually pretty dangerous, but it gave me what I needed during that time, a sense of belonging. My family had just gotten out of the projects of Gary, Indiana to a little neighborhood right outside of Gary.

Living there as a mixed-race Dominican who looked all white, that was not fun at all, let me tell you. So I was really glad to get out, but it just didn't really change anything. When we landed in the new neighborhood, I had no friends. We were still poor and on top of it all, my dad had just found out that he was dying of lung cancer. Life sucked. But being in a gang changed all that. At least for a little while anyway.

I mean, I finally had friends again. After years and years of almost everyone in the old neighborhood treating me like some piece of dirt because of my background, having friends and being part of a group was just a phenomenal thing to me. I'd have done any amount of low-rent gangbanging for that kind of buzz. It didn't matter that I had very little in common with any of these people besides the fact that we were all poor. I was into some pretty nerdy stuff. Star Wars, D&D, that sort of thing. They were all into boxing and stuff which I thought was kind of lame but it didn't matter. It was us against the world. I'll admit, we did some pretty scumbag things. Broke into a few houses and beat the life out of this old guy who caught us stealing from

him. Like yeah, we did our fair share of dumb stuff, but for the most part we just hung out together and acted like stupid kids who dreamed of being big time gangbangers. And that same summer I first joined ended with me doing a two month long stint in the Lake County Juvenile Center, which made living in the project seem like paradise by comparison, but didn't quite put me off to the whole lifestyle. In hindsight, I had realized that we were all just ghetto runts who had banded together, but at the time it was like a brotherhood that I didn't know I desperately needed until I had it. They were there at my pap's funeral, and they showed up to my grandpa's funeral too. They were actually there for me, you know, and they showed up to my grandpa's funeral too.

They were actually there for me, you know. And for a long time I didn't think there was a thing in the world that could make me turn my back on it. But as it turns out, there was something that could make me leave that life behind. Something that made me realize that what we were doing wasn't a game. And something that made it clear to me that I just didn't have what it takes to live that lifestyle. So we had this little homie, Louis, and Louis was smart. If there was anyone who was actually going to make some money and get anywhere in life, it was Louis. He was a grade above us in school too, so he was getting involved with girls, going on little dates with them. He was a good looking

kid so he was popular like that. Anyway, Louis is playing it cool with all these sophomore girls and Tilly gets real stuck on this one particular chick called Vanessa. They start dating and after that we barely saw Louis. He spent pretty much all of his time hanging out with her. Not long after, he started getting more responsibility in the gang. He was putting in work for the big homies in East Chicago, so he had barely any time to hang out with us in general. I mean, I was happy for him, but it sucked that he wasn't around as much. Then, around Halloween time, I got a call from Louis asking if he can stay at my house for a few days. I said yeah sure.

Like my mom works so much that she barely noticed if he was there and it would be a great opportunity to catch up. But when Louis gets to my house he wasn't exactly in a catching up kind of mood and to be honest he looked terrible too. Like he looked like he barely slept and when I offered him something to eat, he tore into it and tried to give me a $50 bill afterward, like I just saved his life or something. I asked him what was wrong, but he tries to pretend like everything's cool. I figured he would just tell me what it is when he was good and ready so I didn't chase it, but later on, when he lifted up his shirt a little and showed me the gun tucked into his waistband, I demanded to know why he was acting so weird and if the gun had anything to do with it.

It came as no surprise when he said that it did and that he had it on him to protect himself. I asked who he might need protection from and he just says, the big homies. The whole story that came next was pretty long and complicated so I'll try to make it simple. Basically Louis had to go grab a package for one of those big homies who then said whatever was in that package was short and their conclusion was that Louis had stolen from them. I asked Louis if it was true, if he actually did steal some money or some drugs or something and he said no but I don't know if I really believed him.

But whatever he did or didn't steal anything, these bigs were looking for him and Louis seemed absolutely terrified of what they might do if they got their hands on him. He stayed at my house a couple of days but he mostly spent all his time either looking out my bedroom window or texting his girlfriend Vanessa. What I figured would be a good chance to catch up turned into an episode of The Fugitive. The next thing I know he's asking if this Vanessa girl can stay at my house for a couple of days too because he can't be out there just walking around and he said he missed her. I'm pretty sure that's where my mom would draw the line but being the good friend that I was I agreed to hide her in my room for a night or two so they could hang out. So my mom goes out to work her 12 hour shift down at the hospital and that was Louis' signal to invite Vanessa over. He calls, they talk and she was due over at my mom's place in like 30 minutes.

Half hour goes by and there's no sign of Vanessa. Then an hour goes by and there's still no sign of her. And as you can imagine, Louis is getting pretty worried. He's calling her, she's not picking up. He starts freaking out and I try to reassure him. In the end, we'd come to an agreement that her parents had grounded her for trying to sneak out at night and had confiscated her phone. It was nothing he could do anything about and there was no point panicking. It was only when he had that in his head that I could actually get any sleep. The next morning my mom's making us breakfast before she goes to sleep off her night shift. She's cooking pancakes and she has the radio on while she's doing it. Louis is acting all chill at first but then he heard something on the radio that made him go white as a sheet.

All I heard was that some guy had set a fire somewhere in East Chicago and at first I didn't understand why Louis was so freaked out about it. It was only later when we heard that the fire department had pulled a charred body out of the burned out car that I really started to get it. Lewis broke down crying, telling me he knew in his gut that the body belonged to none other than his girlfriend, Vanessa. I tried to comfort him, telling him there's no way he could have been sure of it. The corpse was so badly burned that they had to examine the person's dental records to work out who it was. But work it out they did and guess what? It was exactly who Louis thought it was. It was Vanessa.

According to Louis, the big homies must have worked out that she was his girl and picked her up right as she was leaving to come over to mom's place. Vanessa knew where he was hiding out that night and the fact that we didn't get a visit from her while she ended up dead in a car fire is a testament to the fact that she didn't open her mouth. She kept Louis and probably me too safe that night and she paid for it with her life. Louis couldn't even go to her funeral. He figured the big homies would send some people to watch it, see if he turned up, and from what I heard,

that's exactly what they did. The day of the funeral, I went down to the corner store to pick up some garrets, thinking it might help Lewis pick himself up a little. I get back to my house, he's not in my room. But out of the window, I can see him on on the kids jungle gym in the park across the street. So I start walking over with his garrets, not thinking I'd need to announce myself and all the while he's just sat there on the swing set with just this broken look on his face. And that was the last time I saw Louis alive. Because the next thing I know he's got the barrel of a pistol on his chin.

And he pulls the trigger. I had to watch one of my best friends take his own life. Lewis had only just dipped his toes in the water when it came to rolling with the big homie, so to speak. And it cost him his life and that of his girlfriend. I was ready to be done with the whole gangster dream. It was actually pretty easy for me to get out given how young I was. I know for some of the older guys it's much harder to get out, and a lot of the time your so-called homies would rather see you dead than free.

But I just knew that couldn't be my life. I couldn't lose people like that, and if Louis couldn't handle it, I knew well I couldn't be my life. I couldn't lose people like that, and if Lewis couldn't handle it, I knew well I couldn't handle it either. I graduated college with a degree in business management a few years back, and I run a home renovation company over in Detroit now. I make okay money, hardly fat stacks or whatever they call it,

but it'll do. It's worth it to know that I'd never end up like Louis, and it's worth it to know that neither will my kids, either. To be continued... live out in Brooklyn. In 1992 I moved from rural Ohio all the way out to the Big Apple to pursue my dreams of being an artist. It was one of the scariest things I've ever done but I have very few regrets. Living in NYC was one of the happiest, most exciting times of my life and although I had like no money at all, I have a wealth of great friends and good stories because of my time living there, as well as some not-so-great stories too. Anyway, I live in a place in Brooklyn called Brighton Beach. A lot of you will be familiar with the area because according to my kid anyway, it's a place you start off in the video game GTA 4. It's right next to Coney Island, has a bunch of above-ground railways over the streets,

same place where the car chase takes place in that old French Connection movie too, I think. But what Brighton Beach is more commonly known as these days is Little Odessa, or Little Russia, because of the large amount of Eastern European immigration the area got. Russian speaking people have been flocking there since the 1970s, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union, that level of immigration went through the roof. Nowadays, it's not entirely uncommon to see stores or restaurants in Brighton Beach with Russian characters on them. Cyrillic, I believe it's called. And much like any group of people who emigrated to the United States, they brought along their customs, their religions, and most significant to this story, their organized crime. So I had this buddy when I lived out in Brooklyn, one I used to hang out with a whole lot.

One day we're walking past this Russian cafe when a fight spills out into the street. These Russian guys are kicking the tails of these American guys, like really putting the hurt on them. Me and my buddy are just watching from across the street, just gawping like people normally do whenever there's a street fight. The American guys start running away, and this one Russian guy actually hulks out of his shirt. I think it was a button up though, so not a true hulk moment,

and starts shouting after the fleeing American guys. He had these tattoos all over his chest and back. Pictures of those domes they have on Russian churches, all this other religious iconography and he also had these two stars on each of his shoulders. Like an old style design that reminded me of the directional pointers on old maps. Anyway, we just kept walking before the Russian guys caught us staring and thought that that would be the end of it. But as it turns out, my buddy was pretty fascinated by the tattoo designs and in a spur of the moment decision decides to get himself a pair of shoulder stars similar to the kind the Russian guy had on him.

Admittedly, they did look pretty cool and I understood when my buddy wanted to show them off during the summer that followed. But when he did, we found some pretty weird things that would happen whenever we were out in public. For example, one time we went to this little Pelmeni place we used to visit all the time. Pelmeni are these little dumpling type things, really cheap, really filling. So they made up quite a big chunk of our diet when I called Brooklyn home. Anyway, we eat a bunch of dumplings, drink a few shots of cheap vodka and then go to pay the check. The service had been extra good that day and we intended on tipping what little we could.

But the owners wouldn't take our money. No matter how much we insisted, the guy behind the counter just laughed nervously and kept pushing our hands away while talking to my buddy with the tattoos in Russian. We were most definitely broke enough not to refuse a free meal, so we went on our way and didn't think too much about it. But as the weeks went by, stuff like that kept happening. People would randomly speak Russian to my buddy, people acted real skittish around him and while we didn't really know why, I remember having a hunch that it had something to do with the tattoos. A hunch that was confirmed when one of the Russian speaking incidents turned pretty nasty.

This big bear of a guy walks up to my buddy and greets him warmly in Russian. My buddy's all like, sorry man I don't speak Ruski. And the dude's expression changes entirely. He starts like poking my buddy real hard where his tattoos are, speaking angrily in Russian the whole time. Whoever was with him only barely restrained him from kicking my buddy's butt right there and we were left confused and frightened. After that my buddy didn't show off his tattoos so much anymore and in fact he didn't have them for much longer. Not because he had them removed either. That whole tattoo removal was expensive as heck back then and wasn't anything like the exact science it is today. He didn't have them for much longer because,

one night, he got a knock on his apartment door. He answered, and these big guys in tracksuits burst through his door before grabbing him and forcing his shirt off. And then, with the help of a hot clothes iron, they burned and cut those stars off his shoulders until there was nothing left but raw flesh. I remember going to visit him in the hospital and he told me the gist of what happened. Not too much detail, I just put that together myself.

It was the most horrifying thing I'd ever heard and as you can imagine, my buddy was severely traumatized. His parents had to pay his hospital bills and he moved back to Vermont to live with them not long after. And after that I stayed well away from many of the Russian cafes where large men in tracksuits seemed to hang out all day, doing very little. Knowing that I lived so close to people who were capable of such horrific violence, it seriously gave me the creeps. I live in Columbus now, a long way away from the Russian mafia on Brighton Beach, but what happened to my Bright Beach buddy still haunts me and it explains why I'm so vehemently against any of my kids getting tattoos. Roy Albert DeMeo was born on September 7th, 1940 in Bath Beach, Brooklyn. His immediate family were all immigrants from Naples who had left a life of crushing poverty behind in their native Italy to pursue the American dream.

When he was a child, Roy's family only ever spoke Italian in the small apartment they shared and as a result, he found it difficult to fit in with his elementary school classmates. His formative years were characterized by alienation, poverty, violence and cruelty and given that he didn't excel academically, Roy quickly began to see organized crime as being his only path to wealth and power. When he was in his late teens, an uncle of his asked him if he was looking for work. Roy had no idea what the job was, only that his uncle had connections with the Gambinos, one of the five families that dominated organized crime in New York City at the time. He accepted, and so began a descent into the shady, blood-soaked world of Italian-American organized crime.

Roy proved that he had a penchant for brutal, methodical violence and thorough discretion, and this quickly began to turn the heads of the Gambino family's capos, senior members of the criminal gang who were in charge of its day-to-day operations. Roy was reliable, punctual, and a stone-cold killer, everything they could possibly want in a young soldier. It wasn't long before word reached acting boss Paul Castellano, who was so impressed with Roy's loyalty and enthusiasm that he began to give him more and more responsibility. By the time he was just 31 years old, Roy's meteoric rise in the ranks of the Gambino crime family meant that he was put in charge of his

very own crew, one that was both feared and respected all throughout the five boroughs of New York. The DeMayos, as they came to be known, were the only crew trusted to deal with some of the grislier work that Castellano needed doing, and as a result they became notorious for the macabre ways in which they killed and disposed of the people marked for death by the heads of the family. The De Meos were thought to have racked up a body count well into the low hundreds, with the vast majority of the killing actually committed by Roy himself, and the fact that they got away with so many

murders was down to Roy instituting a very specific process of murdering and dismembering victims, one that they began to call the Gemini Method. Named after the Gemini Lounge, a nightclub which members of the DeMayos frequented for both business and pleasure, the Gemini Method was a set of established procedures that ensured their victims would simply vanish from the face of the earth. Multiple former crew members detailed the same grim method to FBI agents when they entered various witness protection programs in the early 1980s, all taught to them by Roy DeMayo himself. The victim was first lured to the side door of the Gemini Lounge,

then into an apartment in the rear of the building. Hiding in this apartment would be a DeMeo executioner, sporting a silenced pistol and a large towel. The victim was shot in the head before the executioner would quickly wrap the towel around the dead man's skull, soaking up the blood which flow quickly wrap the towel around the dead man's skull, soaking up the blood which flowed from the bullet wound. As soon as this was done, another mafioso would take out a large knife, stabbing the victim in the heart to further stem the flow of blood from the original head wound. Then, once the victim was confirmed dead and any bleeding was under control, the crew

members would drag the body into a nearby bathroom after stripping it of any and all clothing. In the apartment's bathtub, all possible blood was then drained from the body in preparation for what came next, the complete dismemberment of their poor, unsuspecting victim. The crew would carry the body back into the apartment's main room and lie it out on a large plastic sheet. There they could saw off the victim's head, and lie it out on a large plastic sheet. There they could saw off

the victim's head, arms, and legs, placing each into a trash bag which in turn was placed into a large cardboard box. The next trick was to take these cardboard boxes over to the Foster Avenue dump in Brooklyn, a place where thousands of tons of garbage was processed every single day, and one where the gruesome fruits of their labor was unlikely to be discovered. At the height of the FBI's efforts to target members of the DeMayo crew, a huge amount of time and resources were poured into trying to find the bodies of those they had killed. But a plan by federal agents to excavate sections of the Foster Avenue dump was deemed far too expensive, as well as being unlikely to yield any usable evidence. The Gemini method was so effective that it forced the federal government to concede a defeat in the single most important area of their investigations, finding actual dead bodies.

The dump, located outside the Starrett City apartment complex on Pennsylvania Avenue, was eventually shut down in 1985 and subsequently concreted over. The site is now public parkland and any traces of the DeMeo's victims are surely lost to us forever. But Roy DeMeo knew how close to perfect his method of murder was, and he relished the kind of terror people felt when they heard his name. By the early 1980s, he started to think he was untouchable, and his lust for wealth and power quickly grew beyond the control of Paul Castellano, the head of the Gambino crime family. Castellano knew that Roy had to be dealt with before he attempted some kind of coup,

and began the process of putting a hit out on him. It was difficult to find someone who'd take the job. The hitmen of New York City were far from excited about the prospect of gunning for one of the most notorious killers in the history of the American Mafia. But money talks, and eventually Castellano found someone willing to rub DeMeo out. And so it came to pass that Roy DeMeo simply left his house one day and never came home. On January 10th, 1983, Roy went to a crew member's house for a meeting with his soldiers. Then that night, he failed to show up to his own daughter's birthday party. Those close to him said that they knew something was wrong almost immediately, as it was totally out of character for Roy to miss a family event like that.

Then, just ten days later, Roy's Cadillac was discovered in the parking lot of the Veruna Boat Club in Brooklyn, with his partially frozen corpse stuffed into the trunk. He had been shot multiple times in the head and had a bullet wound in his hand from where he tried to stop a torrent of lead with nothing but his outstretched palm. It was a sad, pathetic end to a life of a man who seemed more like the Grim Reaper to many of the Italian-American criminal underworld. Roy's death also preceded an FBI sweep in which the remainder of his crew were rounded up and imprisoned for life, convicted of a total of 25 murders, along with car theft and drug trafficking.

The DiMeo crew had been completely wiped from existence, but they left a legacy that persists even today. The so-called Gemini method lives on in the Gambino crime family, and has become a method of murder so effective and widespread that even Hollywood movies depict the process, sometimes in some disturbingly accurate reproductions too. It appears evil is capable of leaving a lasting impact just as much as good is, and Roy DeMeo's life's work has made his name a synonym for the very real horrors of American organized crime. The Brothers Charlie and Eddie Richardson were born in mid-1930s Britain, in a place called Brentford in Middlesex. Their family moved around frequently when they were still children as

their mother and father traipsed around Greater London in search of work. But when the father finally gave up on the family and abandoned them, he plunged his wife and children into utter poverty. Poverty so unbearable that young Charlie and Eddie turned to a life of crime in order to support their mother and younger sister. Maybe it was the desperate desire to care for those they loved that influenced their style of business, but when it came to enforcing their will, the Richardson boys were completely unafraid to employ horror movie levels of torture and violence. Because to them, when it came to taking care of their mom and sister,

nothing was off the table. They quickly recruited a number of like-minded psychopaths and in the 1960s developed a reputation for being some of London's most sadistic, bloodthirsty criminals. Charlie Richardson owned and operated a large scrap metal yard whilst his younger brother Eddie set up a company selling slot machines. These businesses were little more than fronts for much more sinister underworld activity, including fraud, racketeering, and storing stolen goods. But it was the scrapyard that became infamous as a place where the

Richardsons committed some of the most heinous acts of torture and violence that London has ever seen. With their specialities including pulling teeth out using pliers, cutting off toes using bolt cutters, and nailing victims to floors using six-inch nails, the Richardsons quickly became known by the terrifying moniker, the Torture Gang. But arguably even more disturbing than the horrific pain they would inflict were the psychological games frequently employed by the Richardson gang. They used mock trials to mentally break down those they were about to torture, with Charlie and Eddie's goons hauling their victims into a makeshift dock

while their bosses played at being judge and jury. When the verdict came in, the accused was always guilty, but the punishments tended to suit the crimes. Smaller offenses normally warranted being beaten or whipped, but in the case of more serious offenses, the victim might expect to be burned with cigarettes, have their teeth pulled out with pliers, be nailed to the floor, have toes removed with bolt cutters, or to be given electric shocks until they lost consciousness. The electric shocks were inflicted by an old army field telephone with clipped exposed wire, one which included a hand crank powered generator, an ingenious way of creating what was essentially a portable torture device.

The victims were most often placed in a bath of cold water to enhance the electrical charge, with the metal clips being attached to the victims' most sensitive areas. Shockingly enough, any of the Richardsons' victims who were too badly injured to leave the scrapyard would be driven over to a disgraced doctor that was on their payroll. The doctor would then fix them up and in a terrifying display of psychopathic civility, the Richardsons would foot the bill. This bizarre process of trial and torture can be known as taking a shirt from Charlie because of Charlie Richardson's habit of needing to give each of their torture victims a clean shirt in which to return home, since the

shirt the victim had arrived in was usually soaked with gore by the time they had to leave. According to one former member of the torture gang, a money collector in their employ was apparently skimming money off the top of his collections and had to be worn twice already when his counts had come up short. When he was caught gambling some of the money on dog races in nearby Catford, the Richardsons dragged him out to an abandoned warehouse near Tower Bridge that they often used as a hideout. The money collector then had his feet nailed to the floor and was kept as a prisoner for two days, in which time several of the gang members used him as a human toilet. But the gang's reign of terror was short-lived. With all of their victims walking around London, telling their horror stories of the vile torment they were subjected to, the Richardsons began to attract all manner of attention, mainly from those that broke the law,

but also those that sought to enforce it. And so on July 30th, 1966, the day the English soccer team won the World Cup for their one and only championship, Charlie Richardson had his celebrations spoiled by being arrested on charges of grievous bodily harm. Not long after, the rest of the gang were picked up by police on a variety of charges varying from fraud and extortion to assault and attempted murder. During his trial, there were even rumors that Charlie Richardson had a side hustle going with the South African Bureau of State Security, basically the South African CIA, who had given Charlie the job of bugging the British Prime Minister's phone. but very little of the accusation was actually substantiated. What became known as the Torture Trial ended with Charlie and his brother being sentenced

to 25 years in prison for basically running a torture house in the middle of London. Their incarceration brought about the end of the Richardsons, and the London criminal underworld breathed a collective sigh of relief. Hundreds of them bore the scars of the punishments meted out by the Richardson's mock trials. They were missing toes, missing teeth, blinded, fingerless, and sported facial burns, and were all haunted by the way the Richardsons laughed while they screamed in agony, over and over again. When I was a kid, I had a couple of uncles who were middlemen for the mafia in New Jersey. They moved guns around, money, drugs, you name it. They drove it around the state or into New York City.

One of the uncles ended up getting murdered in one of the worst ways I'd ever heard. You see, he had this nasty disease in one of his kidneys that needed a whole lot of medication to keep a lid on it. The guys that got him in the end knew he had it and tortured him until he told them which one was the good one. His killers then got someone with some kind of surgical experience to straight up cut out his one working kidney, then left him in some warehouse to die of organ failure or however having a bad kidney will kill you in the end. That all happened when I was like 10 years old. It was actually related to the guy who died too, just not by blood, and the aunt he was married to hasn't never really gotten over it. She had the idea's body and I think he was in such rough

shape that it just sort of broke her. I get these stories from my dad since all the mafia involvement is on my mom's side of the family and we hardly see these people anymore. Last time we went to any family parties or anything over in Brooklyn was like the late 90s. Then there's the neighbor I had across the street when I was a teenager in suburban New Jersey Apparently he was Carnivale The small time mafia family that was like a subdivision of some bigger, badder family I didn't know that at the time but The guy was a vicious loan shark and ran girls out of his house to various clients

And I should have put two and two together Given that his house was like twice as big as everyone else's on the block. All the decoration both on the inside and the outside was incredibly gaudy too, like real mafia chic I guess you could say. Their kids were pretty nice, we used to play street hockey with them quite a lot but from how weird they were you could tell that they grew up in a very unusual household. The one and only time I went inside was when one of their kids invited me in one summer to grab some Kool-Aid. He showed off some of their super expensive super soakers they had in there then suggested we go get hot dogs after he talked his dad out of five dollars. We go upstairs to his

mom and dad's room and inside is his lone shark dad dressed in some ridiculously garish silk robe, counting piles of cash on the bed with some barely dressed girl who was most definitely not my friend's mom. I mentioned that to my parents when I got home that afternoon and as a result, I wasn't allowed to go over there anymore. I mean everyone knew what a scumbag this guy was. He got arrested from time to time. The cops would even show up at his house while the neighbors watched him getting shoved into a patrol car in cuffs. My mom said it even made the papers from time to time. Freehold loan shark arrested in suburbia and stuff like that. One of my mom's friends even kept a little scrapbook of the headlines, her own little diary of living opposite a member of the mafia I suppose.

I'm surprised I was even allowed to associate with the guy's kids at all, but I suppose people just sought the path of least resistance when it came to dealing with the local mob guy. From what I understand, for years the mob guy was just something of a local curiosity. Despite the debauchery he got up to in his own home, he didn't make it to anyone else in the neighborhood's problem. So for the longest time we all just sort of lived side by side with so much as a hitch. Then one day I noticed that the mafia kids hadn't been out to play street hockey in a while.

So I go up to the house, specifically against my parents' orders and knock on the door. No answer. That was pretty much how we discovered that the mafia family had basically just disappeared. The house was foreclosed on really fast too and whoever took ownership of it put it up for sale almost immediately. They actually did an open house too and since it already had something of a lived in look, the real estate company basically just left it as it was. To other people visiting it mustn't have meant much but to the neighbors, it only gave it this sort of Mary Celeste kind of vibe. Haunted I guess you could say. We knew the people who lived there and we saw how suddenly the dad must have been like, we gotta go, now.

It looked like they'd all been in the middle of their days and had just up and gotten out of there, but whether that was because they were going to be pinched or whacked or whatever you want to call it, we could only guess. All the kids' clothes were still in the closet, video game consoles were still there. I mean, considering the possibilities, it was really creepy. Like, sure, they could have just disappeared for some reason, be it the law or conflict within the Carnevale family or something, but there's also the possibility that, right under our noses, some hitman or team of hitmen had killed and dismembered the family before making them disappear. That being said, it's pure speculation what happened and no one knows for certain if they

were killed or not, but I do know for sure that whatever made them just up and get out of there, it couldn't have been good. And although no one really talks about it anymore, it still kind of haunts the neighborhood. My best friend of 15 years has always dated terrible men. Like her first boyfriend sold drugs in high school. One of six years forced her to hook up with his friends and constantly put her down. Another stole $18,000 from her and beat her. And more, but you get the point. She always dated awful men and hides it all from me because she knows that I'll kick the dude back up into his mom's baby canal.

So she always hides it from me, tells me everything is wonderful till the relationship is finally over. She also can't see any wrong in these men and the more I point it out these dudes are bad she just gets angry and yeah that's me. Calls me a liar or jealous and will always believe the dude over me and distance herself. Thus over the years I've emotionally detached myself from her and just enjoy time together and let her do whatever. Six years ago I was up on the old dating game before I had met my current boyfriend and this guy played League of Legends as did I. Well heaven forbid a gamer girl crossed this dude's path as he did a full blown obsession mode over 9 months and was stalking me. Now I'm tiny and 6 years ago I was 22, 4'11 and 110 pounds. At first he tried to uncover that I was actually underage, asking all kinds of obvious trick questions,

telling me it's okay if I'm underage. We just couldn't tell anyone. Red flag number one. Also, our first date was a hike in the woods. Seriously bad idea, ladies. He consistently tried to get laid in 40 degree weather and was super pushy. He was good looking so I was dumb and caught way off guard by his behaviors. But after the first date he goes on about how he'd lower his standards for me because he wasn't a fan

of thin chicks usually. Well I had another amazing guy I went on a date with and started seeing and straight up blocked this guy. A couple of weeks later I'm at a small family owned coffee shop in my town that I go to so I could study away from my loud life at home. And dumb me actually pointed out 5 minutes away from said hike was my favorite coffee shop. So one morning the guy I'm seeing planned to meet me there because roommate life left alone time and home impossible. A League of Legends guy was sitting there in the far corner as I walked in. He got up immediately to greet me and asked why I deleted Tinder and was hoping to catch me here. I was absolutely speechless, just pure WTF. He blabbered on how I hadn't logged on to League in weeks and he's been trying to contact me. I had picked up another game anyways.

Only thing I could think of saying was, yeah sorry I met someone. Well that goes over well with this raging gaming guy with the temper of a toddler. He starts yelling at me for leading him on. The owner being somewhat of a strong large lady gets tired of this guy real quick and after he tosses over a sugar caddy and throws his mug, she picked up this bat-like paddle thing and threatens him to leave or else. Obviously shaken up, the staff try and comfort me as I had become well known to them and made me some tea to calm me down and they called the police. While I'm in tears, the troopers show up and I tell them who he is and why he was throwing a fit.

About this time, the guy I was seeing walks in with a super concerned look on his face and I explain and we move on. A month passes and I decided to go back to my coffee shop and relieved to be there without a crybaby in my face So I keep going back for a week but during this time at some point this dude tracked me Like literally put a tracker that you pay for monthly in my car tracked me I only found out months after when I needed work done on my car But it'll give you clarity on how this dude was popping up wherever I was at the most random times. At school, Walmart, even the park. My theory was that he hired a PI to follow me or something because no dude has the free time to follow a girl this much.

My theory stemmed a little too much on my love for Veronica Mars to be honest so a tracking device was the furthest thing from my mind. For the first month he didn't approach me, just basically make it known that he was there. But he came by on one of my dates with the guy I was seeing and started telling the guy I was seeing that I was seeing multiple men and such and yelling at me calling whatever names his enraged mind felt. We of course go to the cops after I explain to him then explain to the cops but of course he didn't physically hurt me so what's a cop to do right? Because nothing says protection of the people like nah we only help if he hurts

or kills you first sorry. So this harassment continues and eventually drove the guy I was seeing to be distant and eventually away. About four months in though I left on vacation and I get a text from my roommate that my boyfriend came by and asked to grab some clothes that he had left in my room. Bold right? being smart and aware of the situation and a depiction of the guy, knew something was off and said that he couldn't come in but he'd grab whatever it is from my room for him. I told him thank you and explained definitely it sounded like the creep. Now here's where I get scared. I came home from vacation to find my bedroom trashed, my clothes with bleach on them and the floor absolutely ruined, my gaming PC stolen. I called the cops and obviously only my room had this and I pointed to them to my previous

complaint. They do their CSI thing and leave only to tell me weeks later that they didn't find any evidence to tie him or anyone to it. I had to pay for the floorboards to be torn up, new clothes and a new PC which I had to take a loan out for all of it. I ended up moving back with my parents soon after and my dad has top notch security so I felt a lot safer. Around two months go by and nothing. I begin to feel safe again and met a guy at college, my current boyfriend, and we grew close fast because we had a lot in common. We met volunteering for stray cats on campus, catch and release, building shelters and feeding. We also both enjoyed video games and hiking so it was a good match. But douche league guy wasn't quite done yet. One night we were on a date at sushi and lead guy sits down at our table. Not even kidding you,

I was shocked. He proceeded to tell my now boyfriend how this lead guy and I have been seeing each other and I was cheating on him with my boyfriend. Well my current boyfriend isn't such a smuck and already knew of this guy and asked me right off the bat, is this the guy? My boyfriend stands at 6 foot 2 and lifts weights as he's a field guy for very large wild animals as a wildlife veterinarian assistant. He's very intimidating despite his very gentle nature and it was all a show as he's not a scary dude but he stood up and told the guy to leave. Nothing super clever but it was effective. We called it an early night and we went back to his parents' basement to watch some movies. At 5am before the sun was up, there was loud banging on the door, so of course him, his parents and I ran to the door.

His parents not knowing I was there as girls weren't supposed to sleep over in their family. We look out to see an incredibly drunk League of Legends guy pounding on the door saying gumbled garbage and calling me a cheater and what not. Cops are called and he takes off and cops didn't really put up much of a chase. Statements were had, a ton of explaining was given to his parents, long story but they're a religious family. And after all this I tried to get a restraining order but I didn't have enough evidence or even this dude's last name. Yep, I only ever added him on Tinder in a video game so I didn't really have much to go off of. So months go by of me being paranoid and my last encounter with this guy is

month 9 where he came up to me at Walmart at 11pm, telling me he was sorry and hopes we could be friends and get to know each other. You bet I left my cart and went straight to management to walk me to my car. Months later my starter on my car dies and I take it to the shop. While working on my car they found a tracker, asking if I knew it was there because apparently some people put them in their cars in case it gets stolen I guess. I told them no I didn't and I took that thing to the cops. I called a few times but they never gave an answer if they could track the owner or who it was. Just kinda went nowhere. Fast forward 6 years and I'm happily still with the same guy.

My best friend started ghosting me which usually meant she's got a new boyfriend. Now some pretext how much she will believe a guy over me. I told her how her ex tried sleeping with me one night while we were drinking and she still believes him over me and he repeated cheating on her. Yeah, she's not a great friend but more like a sister at this point. Like my parents refer to her as my sister. She is family at this point and I can't help but care about it because she's got a lot more good in her. She's just so insecure that she feels she needs a man to feel worth anything. I poke her if she's seeing someone new and she just hides it for months knowing that I'll likely disapprove of the guy. So finally months pass and she shows me a picture and I swear my blood truly ran cold.

It's the League of Legends guy. And she goes on and on how amazing and in love they are. She's in deep but I had to try. I told her that was a creep from six years ago. He denies ever knowing me and says I must have confused him with someone else. Despite the hair color change and neck beard he grew, the tattoo on his arm is very unique as is the mole under his nose. I tried effortlessly as did my boyfriend to tell her who he is but she's going in deep and told me off by saying I'm finally happy. Why are you trying to ruin it? Stop lying. I can't be alone forever blah blah

blah. And so this is where we're at now. He doesn't have social media so her Facebook says in a relationship with blank but there's no doubt in my mind he knows who she is to me as on Facebook there's hundreds of photos of us together posts about each other and we're listed as sisters on Facebook even her profile picture is of her and I and I'll update if he does more bad stuff I needed somewhere to write this down get advice and most of all sort it all out myself. I'm crying and miss my best friend who's put me on ignore because I won't let this go. I feel lost and without my boyfriend's assurance, I'd probably feel crazy. This was back in the mid to late 2000s when I was attending school in the one place I had gone to where no one was bullied, which in turn left me more safe than myself in exploring and doing

stupid stuff because there would be no one to comment on what I did on my free time. I could play Pokemon cards, talk Yu-Gi-Oh or do whatever. It was a great year in my life except for this one mishap. Without giving away all too much of my location there was a murder but allegedly to people in town a triple murder a house next to the train tracks just next to a bridge over the trains. I was often walking there to get to the pet store and buy fish and fish food or something for my bearded dragons who I spent tons of time with. Now to set the tone this was a little late during the summer so it was slightly dark outside but not dark dark. I go out and on my way to the pet store I see the house by the overpass having police tape around all the doors and windows. I became so curious I thought

maybe I could peek in a window and see what it looked like inside. There were so many rumors but one murder was allegedly confirmed. I wasn't able to see anything through the windows other than a normal looking home. It was a yellow house with wooden outside and white windows and a normal looking wooden door. Not happy with the peeks, I decided to sneak inside for a bit just to see if I could find anything. I looked around, thought no one saw me and climbed in through a cracked window. The first thing to hit me was the stench. It was somewhere in between sweet and muddy. Hard to explain, but if you've ever had buns in the oven and forgot them overnight, about that I suppose.

I was in the living room. The bottom floor also had hallways, bathroom, kitchen, game room, and stairs going up. In the kitchen I was really curious to what a killer eats. However, to my surprise the food was mostly gone. A few packages of scarce strange things spread out in a bit of seasoning but it looked like someone helped themselves. The fridge was full however but as the power was cut the things inside had ruined. You'd always leave an unplugged fridge open not to destroy it. At least the older models you would do that. Nothing out of the ordinary anyway. Game room was mostly board games and video games but I didn't want to

take them as I knew the owners might be taking things when returning. I must have been downstairs about 20 minutes before going to the stairs. It felt like they were taunting me to go up, like as if to say they were waiting. I know the old trick to step closest to a wall not to make noise. I knew I was alone but the sounds could always creak outside I thought. I walked up slowly. The stairs were positioned in the middle of the entire house and I snuck up slowly. On the left were two bedrooms belonging to what I think were children, one with the sign do not disturb or similar and one with flower drawings. I open and to my relief, nothing odd in the beds, like blood or the such. No bedding whatsoever, actually. Toys, curtains,

a little messy, but it looks mostly normal and like someone just vanished from the room. I didn't bother going through the closets or boxes in the children's room, but I knew what was waiting next, the room where the murder had actually happened. I slowly walked up and took a soft breath, opening the door a little, peeking in before opening it fully. It was not 35 minutes into the time, there and at the end of the room, I'll imagine maybe a 26 foot long and 12 feet wide room. The left side when looking in had a ceiling slope, a bed about 18 feet in with the heads to the left and not much before that except mirrors in the right and a spotlight in the wall facing from over the mirror. I thought to myself someone

was busy with taking photos. This was way before social media as well. I walk in at the end of the room the entire wall is made up of mirrors Just top to toe mirrors and mirrors I stood in the opening longer than I'm willing to admit as I walk up closer to see the bed It's got the covers thrown around making me realize the murder wasn't in the bed at least They would have taken the sheets and such I assume I went in a little closer to see a red stain on one of the middle mirrors. It was like a perfectly round button. I stepped closer, looking over the floor for stains before kneeling to look closer, realizing it's a door. I put my

finger inside and pushed to the left, opening a closet. This maniac of a woman had an entire wall of closet with, I kid you not, 900 plus pairs of shoes. Every shelf was shoes, high heels, low heels, runner shoes, more boxes than anything and so many I could not describe to you. Imagine 12 feet in length to the roof with shoes packed so tight it looked insane. I was taken aback and took a few steps back clutching my collar a bit adjusting my hood. Now this detail is important. I was often wearing a black hoodie or some other hoodie on my free time. I have overly sensitive ears in the season so I have to wear earmuffs, hats or hoods depending on the mood and weather. While I took a couple of steps back in the corner of my eye, I saw two guys outside the window walking on the sidewalk. Friends of mine actually. I'm not 45 minutes into this little adventure and

it's become quite dark outside. I smile wide and wave at my friends and one of them see me, look up, looks out a window downstairs and back up again poking his friend and pointing to me before screaming like an insane person and running out of there incredibly fast. Me, thinking I wasn't alone in the house, panic and run to the door of the bedroom, dash down the stairs, run to the closest window, force it open and roll out onto the ground outside before running the fastest possible to the pet store closing in 15 minutes just to spend a couple of hours there with the owners. They were very fond of me actually. I got myself a couple of gibbysips, cool fish,

you can google them, and made my way home. The house stood there, windows still open, and I made my way home as fast as possible without shaking the bag. And once home, I went right back to Smash Brothers and introducing the new fish before sleeping for school the next day. Once in school, the rumors were out. Teenagers speaking of the flying head in the house. I was mortified and asked people what happened, and the two guys I saw, and others, claimed to claimed to have seen a floating pale scary head on the upstairs window smiling at them. I then realized that me and my sweater in the darkness was dark enough for them to not see anything but my head and that my hand had been out of view from waving. They had actually thought that some evil spirit was out to get them, making them run for their lives, and according to one of them, the other one actually soiled himself.

I've never told anyone the truth for over ten years. I kept it to myself, letting the rumor spread, and giggled any time someone made up that they had seen or heard anything. Now, for the record, I am aware ghosts and such are supposedly real but I always pick a reason and logic first. If it is all tested false I'm open to other explanations. People made up stories for multiple heads, multiple chasing them from the house and so on. I found out recently that no one wanted to buy the house and it was torn down for a parking lot. I decided to come clean by that point but no one thinks I was the head in the house or I would have told them. And I actually looked into the actual case very recently and apparently one kid died in that house and the mother took her own life in prison after that.

The dad is living with the other kid very far from the same town if my sources are correct. It's been about 15 years since this happened to me and to this day, I'm still scared to talk about it, as I'm afraid that he may still be looking for me. For the safety of my family and loved ones, I will be changing names, including my own. A little backstory, at the time I played video games competitively. I was a part of an all-girls team that competed in tournaments around the country. Being a little naive, I didn't think I could ever run into dangerous people over Xbox Live, but boy was I wrong. One day I was playing random matchmaking with a friend of mine, we'll call him Jake, and he was teamed up with another guy and his friend, we'll call them Peter

and TJ. Peter and TJ seemed pretty good and we invited them into a party to play with the rest of us that day. We got to talking and at the end of playing we all sent each other friend requests. Over the next few weeks, Peter and myself would play randomly and, on some occasions, just talk in the game lobby. Over time we became closer and got to know each other on a personal level, outside of the Xbox Live world. He started off by asking simple questions. What state I was from, what I'd like to do for fun, simple questions that wouldn't set off any red flags. But over time, his questions became more and more personal, like how old I was, do I have a boyfriend,

what was my MySpace account, what was my phone number, etc. I ended up adding him on MySpace and even though my MySpace contained some personal information, I will say I did not give him my personal phone number just to be safe. One day Peter asked me to join his lobby because he wanted to talk. I joined his lobby and he started telling me how beautiful I was and that he was in love with me. In love with me? I stated, try not to sound mean. How could you be in love with me whenever you've never met me? He replied by stating that he didn't need to meet me in person and that he knew that I was the one for him. The one for you? I replied in shock. Peter replied, I want to be with you forever. You're perfect for me.

Completely freaked out, I told him that I did not feel the same way and that this was just too weird for me. I left the lobby vowing to not talk to him again. I removed him off of my MySpace account and ignored all invites to join his lobby. The more I ignored Peter, the more persistent he became, literally sending me invites to join his lobby every two minutes. Peter started sending me messages through Xbox Live. Lauren, please don't do this to me, I need you. Lauren, why are you doing this to me? Please, I love you more than you know. Slowly, his messages became more threatening.

You better answer me or else. I will make you regret this. And answer me or I will find you. And the one that scared me the most was, I know where you live and I am coming for you. That was it. I had enough and I blocked him. I knew I should have done this sooner but like I said, I was a little naive. The messages had stopped and everything seemed quiet. About two weeks later, Peter's friend TJ, his friend from the beginning of the story, invited me to his lobby and I joined. TJ sounded panicked.

Lauren, have you talked to Peter lately or had any contact with him? I told him no and then proceeded to tell him that I blocked him and the reason why. TJ told me that Peter had left town and nobody has seen him for about two days. To be honest, I didn't care until TJ informed me. Lauren, he has your information and your address. I honestly think he's coming to see you. What? How could he get my address? That's impossible. TJ proceeded to tell me that Peter had a brother that worked for a company that does the billing for all the memberships. What does that mean? My gamer tag was hooked up to my parents' credit card,

which obviously contained the billing address, and I started to freak out. How could this happen? This couldn't be possible. What should I do? Should I call the police? I mean, what could they do? There was no proof that Peter was on his way here. It could just be that he took the stolen credit card information and was planning on spending the money. I had to think this through. Maybe TJ was just trying to scare me, so that I would talk to Peter again. After all, TJ was Peter's friend in real life. Suddenly I remembered that Jake told me that his cousin worked for the billing company also. I know, kind of a small world. So I called Jake and told him about Peter's brother possibly giving out my information and to check and see if someone working there had Peter's last name. Jake called his cousin. About two hours later, Jake called me.

Jake, in a chilling voice, informed me that Peter did indeed have a family member that worked for the billing department. Jake's cousin also uncovered other secrets about Peter's brother. He was banning people for various reasons, basically deleting their gamertag. When Peter got mad or upset with someone on Xbox Live, Peter would ask his brother to delete or ban their account. Well, needless to say that Peter's brother was fired from the company. A few days passed and I got a message from a person that I didn't recognize stating, Join my lobby now. I have information about Peter. Now I know what you're thinking, don't go into that lobby.

But to be honest, I was curious about what happened so I joined. To my shock, it was Peter. Great. Before I could leave the lobby, Peter shouted, you got my brother fired. Trying to be a tough girl, I yelled back, yeah, your brother was doing illegal things and deserved it. And boy, did that make him angry. Don't forget, Lauren, I still have your address and I'm coming for you now. I'll make you regret everything you did. At this time, I didn't know that this was going to be the last thing Peter said to me. Admittedly, I was a little scared, but he said this before and nothing came about from it.

Was he really going to drive across the country just to get revenge on someone he's never met? Two days later, I was upstairs playing online with some of my friends when the doorbell rang. My dad answered the door and said hello, come on in. I didn't think anything about it until my mom called me downstairs and said that someone wanted to speak to me. Okay, now I was scared. My mind immediately went to Peter. God, was he here? What does he want?

Is he going to hurt us? As I walked downstairs I was shaking so hard that I thought I was going to pass out. As I turned the corner into the dining room, I saw that it was two police officers. They told me to sit down and began asking if I knew a Peter Smith. Of course, I told them everything, and if you're wondering, my parents had no knowledge of this, so you can imagine their surprise. The two officers informed me that Peter was caught in New Mexico. He was driving recklessly and under the influence. When they went to search his car, most likely looking for drugs, they had found handcuffs,

rope, duct tape, trash bags, a knife, and chloroform. The police asked Peter what all this was for and since Peter was high out of his mind, he told them that he was going to kidnap and kill that girl. The officers also found printed out directions from his home to my address with a name on top of the sheet that read, Happiness. I froze. He was only one day away from reaching his destination and from here things get a little blurry. Since I was a minor at the time and my parents chose not to let me go to court to testify as their attorney stated that he basically confessed and that Peter was going to be found guilty of

attempted kidnapping and possession of illegal drugs. I don't know what his sentencing was and I know I could easily search his name but I want to leave it behind. My name was kept out of the records because I was a minor and thankfully I prefer it that way. Since then I have moved out of that house to another state and have since gotten married. To this day I feel like I need to keep my guard up due to the anxiety from this incident alone. And to all the gamers out there, male or female, be careful who you talk to because you never know who is on the other end. So I was at my Barnes and Nobles looking for interior design books. A nice looking associate led me to where it was located all the way back in the corner of the store.

As I was looking at some books I see an average looking man abruptly walk right in front of me and turn the corner. A few seconds later he did turn right back around walking in front of me again, only this time very slowly and blatantly looking right into my eyes. I thought to myself, way to make it not so obvious you freaking idiot. Not to toot my own horn but I'm used to men checking me out, being an above average looking female you get kinda used to this kind of attention. I continued my search, thinking little of it, until a minute later he brushed right past me from behind. He did this three more times.

At close proximity, with the same creepy gaze. This man wasn't looking for any books. He wasn't even hiding that fact either. He was there solely to prey on me. He brushed by me without saying a word and kept staring into my eyes and at one point he stopped too close to me before walking the corner again. I tried not to make eye contact and continue with my search but at this point I was too uncomfortable to continue.

Being alone in the back of the store didn't help either. I left that section of the store and looked elsewhere. Not wanting to be followed again I went to the nutrition section. Yeah, I won't find him here I thought. After exhausting my search I waited and looked around. The Barnes and Noble store was pretty empty at this point and it was getting late. Only the associates and a couple people were left and I couldn't see him anywhere. Thinking he had either left the store a while ago or was still somewhere in the store I opted in leaving.

Thinking the coast was clear I let my guard down and exited. I looked to my left, no one in sight, then looked directly to my right only to see him two feet away from me staring at me and walking towards me. He had waited for me to leave this whole time. He didn't say a word to me. Not wanting to get close, I slowed my pace as he walked right in front of me then across me. Slowly with that same creepy stare, he circled back and was right behind me now. The parking lot was completely empty and the only visibility came from a street light directly hitting my car. Keys in hand, I power walked to my car and I felt him close behind me. I basically leapt into my car locking the door shut.

Trying not to be shaken, I started my car and took a second to breathe then pulled out driving right past him. I saw he was next to his black sedan. Being a paranoid person I made a mental note of his car. Black sedan with no license plate. Great, hope this creep won't follow me. Driving away I made sure to look at my rear view mirrors, hoping to not be followed. Before driving home I went to my local grocery store.

While at the store I called the Barnes and Noble about the odd creepy man, noting what he looked like, what he did and how I felt it was important to report it so that potentially this doesn't happen to another female there. While I'm walking out with my groceries, I swear I see the same car. No license plate, black sedan, running with someone inside. I couldn't get a look at the person inside and a huge part of me didn't want to. Pulling out of the parking lot, I had basically locked eyes on my rear view mirrors, something too dangerous and a thing I won't do again. Arriving home, I was locked inside with my thoughts. What did he want with me?

Was his intention to hurt me? Abduct me? Was he at the grocery store parking lot? Had he followed me home? This happened yesterday and nothing had came of it. All I know is I'm never entering that Barnes and Noble again. To give a little bit of background information, I'm a 17 year old boy, and I live in a relatively small city in Greece. In the summer of 2020, me and my two best friends that I had at the time decided to visit an abandoned sanatorium that is located on a nearby mountain.

For those of you who don't know what a sanatorium is, it's a building usually related to treating people, kind of like a hospital. In this case, it was planned to cure people of a specific disease in the second world war. My house is not far from the mountain, probably a two hour walk from it, so we decided to hitchhike our way there. Long story short, a man picked us up. He was around the age of 60 and he was okay I guess, nothing happened worth mentioning. When we arrived there it was pretty awesome. The building was huge but it was not fully structured hence why it was most likely not used at all. We were planning on spending one or two

hours there and then just leaving because one of my friends wanted to sleep over at my house that night and we didn't want to be late. At one time while we were on the roof of the sanatorium, we spotted an old shepherd just passing by with his sheep. For some strange reason we thought it would be a good idea to throw pebbles at him to scare him as we thought that we were somewhat world rulers while standing there. When we did, they probably didn't hit him and he then threatened that he would call the cops on us. He obviously didn't and he kept walking away. One of my friends, we'll call him G, had this idea to go after him to supposedly make him more afraid. We agreed and proceeded to run down the

stairs of the building and then continued running when we got down. The ground around the sanatorium was at a distance from the road to the mountain and hence it was pretty exciting and easy to run there and go goofy. We kept on running and eventually we never found the man and grew tired. While lying there having nothing else to do and almost leaving, we spotted a motorbike nearby sitting all by itself, with a backpack attached to it and the keys in. We were and possibly still are pretty immature and like I said, having nothing else to do, we started searching the backpack. I honestly don't know what was going through our minds doing that on

a motorbike that had the keys in it. Then another man popped out of nowhere in the distance. He looked and shouted at us. One of my friends thankfully saw him and immediately alerted us. It was a dumb idea in the first place. What was dumber though is the fact that I never thought the man owned the motorbike and he would use it to chase us all around the place. So as expected, the thought to take his keys and toss them then just run never crossed our minds. Instead what happened was surely one of the scariest experiences of my life. When he looked at us, we ran and hid in a bush field that was full of thorns.

He then had his dog, which we hadn't seen before, look and smell all over for us while he patrolled riding his motorbike all around. We stood terrified for a good 30 minutes and then took peeks outside the bushes. When he and his dog were gone, we were relieved because we honestly thought that he was going to beat the life out of us since he hadn't called the police. We got lost after we got outside into the field and we were going back and forth like lunatics trying to find the main road. When we did, we started walking and hitchhiked our way back home again and I'm so grateful that two normal people did actually pick us up. I don't know how lucky we were at this point. So many things could have gone wrong. So many

stupid decisions that we made along the way. And my advice to you is don't be afraid to try new adventurous things. Just don't be an idiot like we were. I'm going to recount my most traumatic memory. And what you are about to hear is something that still heavily bothers me to this day. The following events happened five years ago when I was 17 years old. Before we begin, I should also note that I'm a female. One summer night, my best friend Hannah came over to my house for the weekend. Saturday night, we stayed up late, watched some movies, devoured junk food, etc. You know, the typical sleepover stuff. After our final movie of the evening came to an end, I decided to take a shower.

It was around 1am and after our horror movie marathon, I was pretty paranoid. So I asked Hannah to sit in the bathroom with me while I showered. Being the good sport that she was, she agreed. While I showered, Hannah sat on the toilet and played some music on her cell phone. We spent my 20 minute shower session talking about whatever came to mind and singing along with the music. When I was done, I got out and grabbed a towel. Hannah said my name to show me a meme or something on her phone, I can't remember exactly what it was. I faced her and that's when I saw it. There was movement in the bathroom window above her head.

The window distorted it slightly but my blood ran cold when I realized what I was looking at. A face, a man's face, smirking at me from the other side of the glass. The man ducked out of view for a moment and I quickly faced away to wrap my towel around my exposed body. I whispered to Hannah that there was a man looking in the window and she laughed it off thinking I was messing with her. She bravely stands up and to her horror comes face to face with the man, still watching, still smirking. We run out of the bathroom and wake my parents but by the time my dad gets outside this creep is already long gone and for his sake he should be glad. When it comes to his little girl my dad is a force to be reckoned with. The next day my parents investigated outside the bathroom window and what they found still haunts me.

There was a cinder block underneath the window that the man had stood on to get a better look. Insinuating this probably wasn't the first time he's peeped at me. And here comes the worst part. Stuffed between the block and the wall was a ziplock bag of lotion. The window cling was useless as you could see everything inside the bathroom clearly from the outside but we didn't know that at the time. I still can't shower or even sleep without having every window in my house covered. I don't think that will ever change. Many years ago, when I was young and fit, I was out exercising before dawn.

Our local cemetery was high on a hill, and I would walk up the hill, then jog all around the concrete and gravel roads that wound in and around the graves. I had done this many prior mornings, and I was not afraid of being in the graveyard pre-daylight. I had family and friends buried there. It was isolated and I felt safe. One of the individuals interred there was a little girl named Kay. Kay was only 12 and starting junior high when an impatient idiot behind the wheel of a car killed her. On my frequent runs past Kay's well-kept grave, I often greeted her, wished her well, expressed my sorrow regarding her short, sweet life. On this particular morning of which I write, I jogged past Kay's grave and called out my greeting. In my head, she spoke urgently to me.

It's not safe up here this morning. I jogged on, a bit startled. Of course, I glanced about, but all seemed normal. A few minutes later Kay spoke again in my mind. There's a man up here. This time I stopped. Suddenly the dark hilltops seemed fraught with danger. My blood ran cold and the hair on the back of my neck stood up were no longer cliches. Still I saw nothing. No man, no movement.

But by now every nerve in my body was screaming for me to get out of there. I turned and ran. It was no longer a casual morning jog, it was a sprint for my life. I ran past Kay's grave and back down to Steep hill, caring not that my quadriceps complained. And as I fled, I listened for any pursuers, but I heard none. But that did not lessen the overwhelming sense of peril that kept me running hard even after I exited the steep part of my route. The rest of that day and even the remainder of the week, I listened for news of an escaped convict, a murderous madman, or anything that would explain Kay's urgent warning. But there was none.

I had no doubt then, nor do I many years later, that I was in peril that morning. From whom I do not know, but fifteen years have passed and I can still recall the crystal clarity those two sentences from a poor child put much too early in her grave. It's not safe up here this morning. There's a man up here. I just want got married, my parents, my husband and I got married. My parents, my husband and I drove to Indianapolis to meet my two great aunts and two great uncles through marriage. We had a really nice dinner at my aunt and uncle's house. I drank two glasses of wine and my husband wasn't happy. We went back to the hotel and my husband and I had a fight about me drinking. I said I was going outside to have a cigarette but I actually went to the hotel bar. I drank two double shots of vodka very quickly and then the bar was closing. I wanted to keep drinking so the bartender told me that there was a TGI Fridays that was about a literal 5 minute walk away.

I had a cigarette then, walked there and continued drinking. I went outside to smoke and then my memory gets extremely fuzzy. I remember falling in the parking lot. I also remember that there was a group of people when I got there outside but now I was alone. I don't remember what happened next when I left the hotel it was about 10pm. Suddenly a man is helping me into his car. He wasn't talking much, he had his arm around my waist and was pushing me into his back seat. I didn't realize the danger that I was in. I was in a different state. I had no idea where I was and I was almost blackout drunk. Suddenly I heard screaming and it was my mom. She ran over and said I was her daughter and to get away from me. He said something about how does he know that she's not lying.

I was starting to pass out when suddenly a man, it turned out to be an Uber driver and my husband was in the car, practically carried me back to his car. This made the guy livid who wanted proof my mom was actually my mom. She said she was going to call 911 and according to my mom he bolted so fast his back door was still opened. I was taken to the hospital and discharged the next day. My husband told me he went to my room and said he was scared because I was missing. They called an Uber and tracked my phone which they found on the ground in the parking lot and it had 2% battery left. I definitely think the man who took me had bad intentions and I don't know if he dropped my phone or if I did. I'm so lucky my

husband told my mom when he did or else I could be dead. What kind of person takes a super drunk young woman at almost midnight? It's also odd that he refused to let my mom take me at first. It was only after threatening to call the police that he actually got scared and fled. To be continued... r slash let's read official and give and receive feedback from the community and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video and if you want to support me even more grab early access to all future narrations for just one dollar 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 description below.

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