The Lets Read Podcast - 139: THE HILLSIDE STRANGLER | 21 True Scary Horror Stories | EP 127

Episode Date: June 14, 2022

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Serial Killers, Omegle, & Landlords... 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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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. The One of the worst things that's ever happened to me involved a website called Omegle. I was really shy back when I was a junior in high school. I had lots of anxiety and not so many friends. Not through any fault of my own though. My parents used to move around a lot for work so every so often we'd just pick up sticks and move someplace new. This played absolute havoc on my social development for a while and by the time I joined this new school during my junior year, I not only couldn't find the confidence to speak to people, I just didn't want to either. Like what was the point when I was probably just going to

move somewhere else within 12 months? But saying that, I also craved social interaction. I wanted it so bad, but just had no idea how to get it in any way that didn't turn me into a nervous wreck. That's when I found Omegle. At first I only ever used the text option. There was no way I was going to put myself on webcam for some total stranger to see. I talked to random internet people about politics, video games, pretty much anything and after a while I really started to feel myself kind of coming out of my shell. And it wasn't just text chatting with people online, the thing that did it was being able to learn to take rejection. Every so often on Omegle someone would get bored and just ghost me, maybe they didn't like the conversation, maybe they didn't like me. Whatever it was,

they'd just up and disappear. First few times it happened after a decent amount of conversation, it really got to me. Total anonymity brought out some really cruel sides to people, but it somehow also brought out the best in them too. I'd have some real heart-to-hearts with complete and utter strangers, work out complex issues I had with myself. Together we'd set the world to rights and when it was over, poof, gone. I'd never talk to them again. I ended up talking to a handful of girls on Omegle too, at least they told me they were girls. Either way, I got a flutter of excitement the first few times. A couple of them asked if I wanted to talk dirty but I ended up leaving those chats on account of just not being proficient in it. Like I wanted to

but I just couldn't. Anyway, I kinda got over the novelty of it after a while. Hearing that someone was female became kind of a non-issue for me. It was pointless trying to practice talking to them online anyway, I knew I'd freeze up if we ever met in person. But it did happen once more for me, that kind of butterflies in your tummy feeling, after talking to some random stranger for like an hour and a half one night. We didn't talk about one particular thing, we talked about everything, and this long, rolling, intense conversation that was as intelligent as it was amusing. I was actually pretty sure the person was a guy given some of the hobbies they claimed to have, so you can imagine how surprised I was when they said they

were a girl. I was kind of speechless. Only once had I ever gotten the inkling to actually ask someone for their personal contact info so we could keep the conversation going. And that person had ghosted as soon as I asked. I wasn't about to risk any more of my pride like that again, especially when I was certain that this girl in particular would make all the rejection pain come flooding back all anew. So anyways, I find out they're a girl, get excited, but choose to basically ignore it. Not only was I sticking to my never fully believe someone online is a girl until you hear their voice or see a verification picture or video rule, but I really could feel myself getting overly excited that this was actually a girl.

Like if it was a girl, then she was like my dream girl and that wasn't something I thought I could face right then, as weird as that might sound. So I keep the conversation going like it had been, and suddenly I find myself actually kind of flirting. I was probably doing it really bad, but for the first time in my entire teenage years, flirting was something that actually felt sort of natural. The whole thing was going so well that, after we happened to both name Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls as our favorite book, I just thought, screw it, and asked if she wanted to talk over webcam. If it was a dude pretending, or she wasn't who she said she was,

then fine, I'd cut my losses. But if she was, we tried to line up a little text countdown to us flicking on our webcams which ended up being goofy and incredibly inaccurate but it was still kind of cute and helped me get rid of what little anxiety I had left. And when I saw her, wow, she was gorgeous. Legit one of the prettiest girls I'd ever seen to this day. And after some initial blushing and awkwardness we carried on our conversation like it was the most natural thing in the world. Her name was Emily and I've never crushed on a girl as hard as her ever. We spent like another two hours just chatting like that and the whole time I was

terrified of getting disconnected or something. But I was still way too scared to ask for like a phone number or email or something so I was just kind of stuck in limbo like that for a while until I could summon up the courage. She was a senior who lived a few states away but that didn't bother me so I tried to push the conversation towards relationships and whatnot, which gave me a way into asking her if she's single. She replies that she is single, but she might not be for long because she met this really cute guy. Obviously, I'm kind of disappointed to hear that, and I tell her I think whoever he is, he's a lucky guy. She starts laughing and says, I was talking about you, idiot. And I think if I'd blushed any harder I'd have gotten a full body, pins and needles and everything but my face.

By the time I regain my composure I know the time is right to ask for her number. So I think of a smooth way to ask her, one that's witty but genuine, then work up to nailing the delivery. When I think I see something in the window behind her, only it's witty but genuine, then work up to nailing the delivery. When I think I see something in the window behind her, only it's light in her bedroom and dark outside so I can't exactly see what it is. I ask if she lives with her parents, she confirms she does. Then I ask if it's on a ground floor apartment and she says no, that it was a two-story and that her bedroom was on the first floor. And that's when I start to worry. Because if she lived on the second floor,

why did I think I could see what looked like a face just hovering in her window like that? And how do you even tell someone that, oh, we're having this awesome conversation and I'm just going to be a jerk by telling you there's a face in your window even though I'm not 100% sure of anything. I carry on staring at the dark shape for a second or two, trying to make sure it's not just my eyes or my monitor playing tricks on me. Emily obviously noticed my change in expression and asked me if everything's okay. I'm like, uh, sure, I just thought I saw something. She turns around, looks blatantly at the window and then tells me there's nothing there, probably just a smudge on my monitor or

something. I look again, it's just black so I put it down to all the adrenaline going through me and just assume I made a mistake. The conversation carries on for a while then the same thing happens. I'm so sure that I see movement in the window behind her that I actually do just sort of snap and say, yeah I think there's something outside your window. She looks outside again, laughs and says, oh you mean that big branch out there? Yeah, we have a tree in our front yard and it's windy all the time, it's probably just that. We laugh and it breaks the tension, but it also sidetracks my move to ask for her number so I decide to work up to it again. But right when I get there, right when I'm about to be like, so what's your phone number?

I see movement yet again, just over her shoulder. Only this time it's really obviously the window behind her opening. Like I could see the white bars shifting really slowly behind her and I knew well that it was no tree branch and that my eyes were definitely not playing tricks on me. That time I wasn't chill or suggestive about it. I just straight up shouted, Emily! The window! She then spins around to see exactly what I can see, which is a person wearing dark clothing climbing in through the open window.

The webcam on her laptop was super low resolution so I couldn't see much apart from Emily just disappearing from the camera as she screamed and ran out of the room, only to be followed by this dark figure chasing her at speed. I just had to sit there and listen to the most horrific screaming and shouting sounds I've ever heard. She was home alone at the time, so there was just one set of female screams and occasionally this rough bark of the guy who was chasing her. Then all of a sudden there was a really high-pitched wail before everything went deathly quiet. I grabbed my phone and called 911 frantically, not even thinking that I had absolutely nothing to tell the dispatcher other than, I think I'm witnessing a home invasion.

I didn't know where Emily lived other than that she was in New Hampshire. I had no last name, no specifics whatsoever that could actually lead the cops to her location. In the end, I got so frustrated that I hung up. There was nothing I could do. I just stared at the webcam images of her empty bedroom praying she was okay. I'm not sure how long I was sat there so I couldn't tell if the cops showed up quickly or not. Only that they did show up. I knew because I heard the sirens before I saw the flashing lights from the window of Emily's room. I heard them break into the house. Then I heard them shouting stuff like

police show me your hands and other garbled stuff. And I actually heard gunshots. Maybe 15 to 20 in all. It's hard to say for certain, but it was a lot. I actually stayed on camera until I could get a cop's attention and told them that I'd seen the guy breaking in. This ended up with me getting a call from a New Hampshire detective but once I told them that I'd only seen one person break in and that's all I'd seen via the webcam, he pretty much lost interest. Then I asked if Emily was okay. He sighed and I could hear him putting on his professional voice before he even really spoke. I'm sorry to have to tell you this one, kid, but Emily passed away this morning after you two spoke. I'm deeply sorry for your loss, but

be safe in the knowledge that any information you give me will go towards catching the guy who did this to her. Not exactly what he said, but you get the idea. I figured it was just a robber. Someone who wanted to subdue her before he emptied the house of valuables, but he killed her. The guy did things to her and then he killed her. He didn't even run once he'd done it either. He stuck around to carry on doing things to her until the cops showed up to shoot him when he must have rushed them or something. Must have had a weapon.

For days afterwards I searched the internet for articles about a New Hampshire murder and home invasion and god help me I found one. And that's why I know so much about the details of what had happened and how this was about 6 or 7 years ago and they still haven't caught the guy who did it. I do have hope as muster family because guys are getting caught years later when the cops get a lucky DNA match or something, but given how much I got so attached to Emily in that short period of time, knowing that there was so much special spark between us and then hearing her final scream. That's been something that's messed with me for years, and I still take anti-anxiety medication

all this time later. I think my time using Omegle was like the golden years of my social life because now I'm back to just not getting close to people. Not because I can't or I don't want to, this time it's because I just don't have it in me to form meaningful attachments. But I know just how easily people can be taken away from us. I've been matched with quite a few memorable people on Omegle. It's just the law of averages that if you spend enough time on that site, I've been matched with quite a few memorable people in Omegle. It's just the law of averages that if you spend enough time on that site, you're going to meet some pretty interesting folks. Interesting for good reasons and interesting for bad ones sometimes too.

The one that by far sticks out the most in my mind had nothing to do with guys waving their junk around and isn't even necessarily the craziest but it had some pretty serious ramifications to my actual offline life. You'll see what I mean in a moment. So I ended up talking to this good looking guy who seemed pretty cool at first until he just casually slid it into the conversation that he was a functioning psychopath. I thought he was just screwing with me at first so I laughed the comment off. But he actually went into a lot of detail as to how and when he was diagnosed and assured me that he wasn't playing around. I still didn't quite believe him. Like you think psychopath and you picture Hannibal Lecter or something.

This guy was quite charming, polite, articulate. It just didn't add up for me at first. It wasn't until I asked him about what it was like growing up with psychopathy that I really began to understand what his deal was. How he just didn't relate to people emotionally growing up. How he'd see other kids get excited or upset over something and just kind of cringe over it because he couldn't imagine feeling anything like that himself. Then he started telling me about how he'd learned to blend, as he put it. And that was the first point I actually started getting a little freaked out. He talked about how he knew he was different, from quite an early age too, and had basically learned to mimic other people's mannerisms and emotional patterns

in order to fit in. The whole time he's talking, he's smiling, occasionally chuckling at some funny metaphor he'd used to explain something, but I started to see what he was talking about. His mouth was doing one thing, but his eyes just weren't following along. It sounds crazy now that I'm trying to write it down, but I hope I managed to actually explain this properly. But it was like he couldn't hide what he was feeling in his eyes, and from what I could tell, there was just nothing there. Nothing behind them, not a hint of genuine emotion. Now I feel like it's at this point that I should explain something that'll have what follows make a little bit more sense. I used the video chat on Omegle, but I also made

my webcam face whatever art piece I was working on at the time. It made for a good conversation starter sometimes and I enjoyed the compliments I got. The point being, no one could see my face, but from my voice, they'd know that I was a girl. I didn't ever show this guy what I looked like and weirdly enough, he didn't seem all that interested in me that way either. But the anonymity made it so I was comfortable asking him weirder and weirder things with basically no repercussions. So when I say I asked him if he'd ever thought about hurting people, you get that I did so under the pretense of being totally safe to do so. This guy was probably on the other side of the country,

our paths would never cross, no harm no foul. I didn't quite know what to expect when I asked him, like he was defying my every explanation so far. I had every reason to believe that he'd never thought about hurting people, like he'd have to actually be interested in them at first, right? But unfortunately, this was one of the few ways in which the guy actually did seem like a psychopath, because right there with his face showing on webcam, he admitted to fantasizing about hurting people. It wasn't even people that had wronged him or made him angry either. The way he explained it, if he went around killing everyone that had

ever done him wrong then he'd be a suspect in the murders. And psychopath or no psychopath, he certainly did not want to go to prison. When I asked him why he wanted to hurt people he told me it was because they deserved it. That people were irritating to him and it would probably do the world some good if there were less of us around. He'd said he'd put a great deal of thought into it and the way he'd planned it out in his head was this. He'd go out one night, pick someone walking on their own, then just bash them in the side of the head with a hammer before getting back to his apartment ASAP. Just bam, job done, don't leave a trace. It was a horrifically cold and calculated plan. Nothing too elaborate, just functional.

I then asked him why he didn't want to see his potential victim suffer, why his chosen method of murder seemed so devoid of depravity or whatever. He told me torture was messy. He'd get a lot of them on him and live little pieces of himself at the scene too. Not only that, but he said the idea of seeing someone beg for their life would be the most awkward thing ever, that he'd be super embarrassed for them. Picture that, someone in tears begging you not to kill them and all you feel is like, ugh, cringe. He then started talking about how he hated the idea of the Hollywood serial killer, that a handful of trophy-taking cannibals had captured the public

imagination. They all wanted to make human skin lampshades out of you after they ate your liver, but he said he didn't need trophies, he didn't want fame or some cool nickname that'll become the title of a movie they make about him. Just knowing he'd killed, or at least knowing he'd given someone life-changing injuries from the acute head trauma, that was enough for him. That would be what kept him warm at night. By that point, I'm suitably convinced that I'm talking to an actual real-life psychopath. And it gives me a weird mix of feelings.

That it's incredible that the internet can connect us with such bizarre examples of our fellow humans but also that I felt deeply uncomfortable having talked this guy's fantasy out with him. Like at no point did I actually stop him and say, you have a twisted view of the world. I just sort of acted like this guy's therapist, which I most definitely wasn't. It was then that I made the point of telling him that he better not be thinking of actually hurting anyone, because it'd be a shame to have to turn him into the police. A kind of joke that's not a joke type thing. He laughs and agrees that they're feelings he'd never act on, and that just randomly talking to people online about it helps him put things into perspective. But then adds a creepy little addendum that,

if it wasn't for the internet, all those feelings might have just bottled up and he'd be forced to take them out. It was creepy comments like that which killed the vibe for me. I started to see the guy as less of a curiosity and more for what he was, a genuine creep who was just making excuses for why he wanted to hurt people. So I chose to end it there, but not before being polite enough to actually tell him I was leaving. He'd been polite enough to give me an insight into his condition, even if it did make me hate him for it, and the least I could do was actually say goodbye. He didn't seem sad that I was leaving, he just carried on smiling, that creepy forced smile he kept on for the entire conversation was

like, okay, no worries. But he did kind of shift in his chair and lean over at one point, maybe to pick something up off of a side table, I don't know exactly why but it gave me a look at the view of the outside of his room. I remember weirdly recognizing something about the facade of the building I could see out of the window, thinking for a moment that it seemed oddly like the facade on the one I lived in. But it wasn't until a few minutes after I closed the chat window that it really sunk in. I had to go outside and look again just to be certain, but there it was, the exact same pattern I'd seen. And lo and behold, there was another set of apartment buildings just to the

rear of the one I was in. The guy I'd been talking to, the guy who admitted to me that he fantasized about coldly and randomly murdering people in the street, he lived less than a football field away from me. In fact, I was pretty sure I could guess exactly which apartment was his too, at least within a couple of units. That was without a doubt one of the single most terrifying moments of my entire life, and in a weird twist of logic I found myself wishing I had shown him my face, so that if or when he finally did decide to just snap and crack someone's skull open with a claw hammer, he might actually show me a measure of mercy. But luckily I never saw the guy around the neighborhood and I didn't hear of any random

hammer attacks ever happening so I'm guessing the guy stayed on top of his urges. But that made life around that area pretty frightening for a while, just knowing a guy like that was out there. And I suppose there's people like that all over the place, hiding in plain sight, just trying not to act upon their darkest desires. Desires. wheel. Wherever you go, you can get it from our tread experts. Toyo's open country family of tires will get you through tough weather in a variety of terrains. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Find a Toyo tread experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TradXpress.ca Y'all remember that thing Omegle?

I don't know if it's still as popular as it used to be or if there's just another version of it that people use, but for those that don't know, it's a website that puts you in a completely random, one-to-one chatroom with people, either just text or with webcams too. When I was in my final year of high school, me and my buddies thought it was like the greatest thing ever after we talked three rando girls into flashing us one night. So as thirsty as it sounds, that's all we did for like a whole summer. Just chilling in one of our friend's mom's basements and just burning through different people all night. It got to the point where I'd go on Omegle sometimes when I got bored at home,

not to talk to girls as such, just to kinda mess around and see who was online. But I don't go anywhere near that site anymore, not after seeing the most messed up thing of my life on there. Something that reminded me that the internet is still a pretty dark place sometimes, and that sometimes you can just happen across something seriously messed up just on accident. So I have my webcam on and I'm on a roll of just closing chat after chat. Everyone on that night was either a dude playing with themselves, a lonely weirdo or someone legit mentally deficient and I was just about to close that browser window out of sheer boredom when I see something that catches my eye. It's a girl, kneeling in a room lit solely with red lights. My first thought is that I might have gotten lucky and that I was in for a little bit

of a show. But then I saw the plastic sheet underneath her. Now as crazy as it sounds, I had seen something like that before, when this older woman in a mask had a plastic sheet down and was urinating on whatever the stranger in the chat asked them to. Me and the guys had a good laugh at that one, but it was obvious that the idea was to make us laugh at that time or some other strange interest. But what I ran into that night was most definitely not designed to be humorous. I'm still watching it, wondering who this girl is, why she isn't wearing a mask when she's basically completely uncovered. Whatever was about to happen though, she sure seemed nervous about it, like she was visibly

shaking and trying her best to hide her face, not that she was doing a good job of it. It seems really dumb in retrospect, like the whole thing was giving off the worst vibes, but my dumb horny brain has me still thinking that this is some kind of weird fetish, and for some reason, when this masked dude appears on screen, that just cemented it for me. Some kind of weird BDSM thing was about to go down and I wasn't mad that I was going to be the rando person to get to watch it. The dude walks up to the girl and puts a black bag over her head. She squirms a little, but other than that I think she's still just nervous or maybe she was acting like that as a show for the audience. I mean heck, maybe the dude liked her to act like that, who knows, people are weird. The dude then disappears from view before reappearing with a cordless drill. He makes a show of this, having a finger on the tip of the drill like a magician would all, this is a real blade type thing, then walks around the back of the girl and grabs her by the head.

Only then do I start to realize that this isn't quite what I thought it was and that, maybe just maybe, I should close the freaking chat before I see something I end up regretting. But there was something about the whole scene. Something about the way the guy was acting and how the girl didn't try to run away. It seemed like a setup. Like it was designed to freak someone out. Even the red lights were sus. Like, I remember reading about how old Italian horror movies would tactically use red lights on set to disguise how terrible their fake blood looked. Something about it meant I couldn't look away. So, I was watching as this hulking, bare-chested dude grabs the girl by the head. She's tiny too and the size difference means his hand is basically wrapped around her entire skull. He then fires the drill up twice to ensure it's working properly and that's when the girl really

starts to panic. It was also coinc when the girl really starts to panic. It was also coincidentally the moment I started to panic too. Either this girl was doing a very good physical acting job or her fear was real. And if her fear was real it meant the whole thing was real too. She starts flailing and struggling so hard that the monster holding her had to like lock a knee into the small of her back to keep her still. The way they fell, you could basically only see her head and her legs kicking behind them both. Like I said, I was almost certain the whole thing was fake, but the part that made me really doubt that was when what happened to the girl's legs when the guy started to push the whirring, spinning drill into the back of her head. First of all, there was the noise.

It was absolutely stomach churning, the sound of what could easily have been metal and bone just grinding against each other. But that could be faked, right? And there was this horrible mix of screaming and the drill's motor whirring, and the girl like grunting as the pain started to hit. But again, could all be acting at the end of the day. What I'm almost certain you can't fake is the way this girl's legs started to spasm when the guy pinning her down started to really push that drill into her brain. They moved in a way that I don't think I've ever seen before, almost like people act in cartoons when they're being electrocuted.

I got this sick feeling in my stomach and I immediately closed the chat window before I saw anything else. The whole thing left me really shaken up. Everyone I've explained what I saw to says they think it was faked too. But then again, I'm almost certain that's because I feed them so much info on how it could have been fake and not really on all the reasons why I think it could have been real. I think I actually just want people to tell me that. Tell me, stop freaking out, you fell for some elaborate prank that'll end up on the internet elsewhere. Because the alternative is just way too messed up for me to quantify, and a part of me still does think that I actually did

watch a live snuff film that afternoon. I want to tell you guys that I later heard the cops found the body with a drill hole in the back of the head, or even that I read somewhere that it was just a prank, or even like a weird kind of viral marketing campaign or something. But the truth of the matter is, I just don't know. I never heard anyone else talk about the kind of thing I saw on Omegle that day and I didn't ever go on that site again so I didn't give myself a chance to catch a repeat performance so to speak. I just try and tell myself that what I saw wasn't real, and that it was just an elaborate show to scare random internet strangers. That's what keeps the darker thoughts at bay when I'm reminded of it, and that's what helps me get to sleep at night.

For a few years there, Omegle and Chatroulette were like the best things ever. I know it sounds dumb, but the idea of coming face to face with random internet people absolutely terrified me at first. I wasn't the most confident of people when I was younger and believe it or not, using stuff like Omegle actually helped me come out of my shell a little and learn how to talk to people. And naturally, like anyone who's spent a lot of time on Omegle, I have a lot of stories detailing some of the weirder encounters I've had on there. I mean, I've had some pretty amazing ones. I met one of my long-term gaming buddies on Omegle, and you'd be surprised at the number of girls who just want to show themselves off so to speak

every once in a while. But I've also had my share of gross, sad, irritating and downright scary encounters on Omegle too. And what I'm about to tell you is by far the most disturbing. And it's not some dumb creepypasta either. Every word of this is true. So I'd just gotten home from this terrible part-time job I was working in 2012 and at the time, my routine was like, get home, sneak one of my stepdad's beers from the garage and see how palpable the mental illness was on Omegle that afternoon. I was actually having a good run at one point. I had a guy singing that Call Me Maybe song, another dude who did a magic trick and a handful of pretty girls and I think one dude was on acid or something.

So all in all, I was in a pretty good mood by the time I hit end and knew for what turned out to be the final time of that night. Because when I do, I just see this dude sitting at his desk, staring blankly into the webcam. Immediately this hits me as unusual because most people are looking at their screens to see who you are and not straight up staring into the camera. I said like, Hey, what's up? Or something. But the dude didn't reply, so I figured that there was just something wrong with his audio. Now I should add that it was usually around this time that I'd just end a chat and start a new one. If the person on the other end seemed too weird or like they wouldn't be much fun, I'd just skip them entirely.

So as you can imagine, coupled with all the other weird stuff you're likely to see during an Omegle session, I ended up doing a lot of skipping. But something about this dude really got my attention. At first when I saw him, he looked like he might be in his early to mid-teens, dark hair and eyes, kind of a baby face with scrawny shoulders. But the more I looked, the older he seemed to be. The guy had crow's feet, deep bags under his eyes, pretty sure he had flecks of grey at his temples too. Like if he was as young as I thought he was then he must have had the most brutal paper route in history. So for some reason at a time I'd normally just ghost him, I said, uh, are you okay dude? Can you hear me?

He nods, he could hear me, and it hit me that this might be another case of someone browsing Omega while they're high. It might sound a little mean or whatever, but I figured that I'd just mess with him just a little bit, maybe see if I could guess what kind of drug he was taking. I start talking real slow to him, trying to make him think time is slowing down or something, but he barely reacts. And it's then that I realize that he hasn't looked at his screen or monitor. The whole time he was literally just staring at this little lens on his webcam. I break from the play acting and just ask him straight up, What kind of stuff are you on, dude?

He just shakes his head. So I ask him if he means he isn't on any drugs at all and to that he nods. Now I'm torn between laughing because of what could have been a blatant lie and kind of freaking out because if he wasn't lying and that was him sober, that Made for one real creepy guy. Then out of nowhere this guy reaches up towards his mouth like he's about to take out some gum or something. At first I think he's going to show me some weird root he's been chewing on that made him look all sleepy. I mean, if there is such a thing I was just kind of speculating. I know people can get some pretty weird South American plants and stuff from shady websites, but then it becomes obvious that he has hold of his own tooth. His front tooth, I think. Like in the grip of his thumb and forefinger.

And then he starts to pull. I respond, dude, what are you doing? All calm at first, and then he starts really getting a grip on his tooth, pulling it and twisting it, and I respond, uh, stop! What are you thinking, man? This all escalates until I hear like a deep cracking sound coming from this guy's mic. He twists the tooth free from his gum as blood starts to pour out of his mouth, then holds it up to the camera like he's all proud of himself. I am full on squealing at the computer at this point, stuck between wanting to cover my eyes and turn it off, and not being able to look away because of what this guy is even doing. I asked him, in like a hundred different ways.

Why did you do that? Was it rotten? Can't you go to the dentist? He doesn't say a word. He just spends a few more seconds smiling with this gap-toothed grin, mopping at the blood on his chin and holding up the tooth in front of the webcam. Then he disappears and I'm left on the new chat screen. Just shell shocked. Nothing has ever topped that for me in terms of just

pure creepiness. Like I have so many unanswered questions about that guy and each time I think I get close to figuring it out, it just opens me up to a hundred other questions. I mean, he would have had to have been on drugs to be able to pull his own tooth out like that. I don't think anyone could stand the sheer agony. And it's also the whole idea that it wasn't his first time doing it. As crazy as it sounds, he seemed to just know what he was doing. That he had to twist it and wrench it, he knew exactly how to grip it. And then the sense of pride at the end, it all just gave me this distinct feeling that he'd done that kind of thing before. I didn't see anything else that ever made me react so strongly and after that, all the random guys just sort of playing with their junk that you'd see

didn't seem to faze me at all. Like as long as there wasn't any tooth pulling, it was just water off the duck's back. So, I guess I have something to thank Mr. Toothpoller for, although saying that it's not something I want to see again. In fact, I hope I never meet Mr. Toothpuller online, or in real life, ever again. To be continued... wanting to basically show anyone who would watch him how he did it. Apparently we were the first people to actually stick around and talk to him. Most other people closed the chat window as soon as they saw that he had a needle but I suppose we were just morbidly curious as to how someone actually takes it. Like we'd seen it in films and stuff but to see it actually happening that was a different kind of feeling entirely.

So as the guy is like getting his hit in a spoon, boiling it up with some kind of citric acid so it melted faster, we ask him why he was choosing to broadcast his drug use online. He says he's not long been out of prison, and that he was about to piss away 18 months of sobriety, so he might as well turn it into a bit of a spectacle and educate some people in the process. I mean, I'd never say I respected a junkie or anything. They can be some really scummy people, but I... I don't know.

The balls of the guy to just broadcast it to anyone who'd watch. I suppose I had a kind of weird respect for that. The guy had his laptop next to him on the couch, and he's doing all his junky stuff on the coffee table in front of me while he's guiding us through the process. And then the time comes when he's got a needle full of this juice stuff and tied his arm off with a belt and he's about to shoot up. Now unlike the films, the fella didn't just keel over right away and become totally unresponsive straight away. It was like this slow descent. At first, he was fine.

Just talking away, sniffing and working his elbow to make the drug circulate faster. And then, like a minute later, his eyelids are drooping. He's going all pale. He's not responding to our questions anymore. Me and my mate were just watching this like, whoa. It was kind of a rush at first if I'm honest. Like we knew we were watching something that we shouldn't be. We were seeing something forbidden. Eventually he does just sort of pass out, only he's still kind of making noises like he was trying to talk so I guess he was in kind of like some type of stupor. He's totally silent, leaning back into the couch, head back and he's

breathing fine but he looks terrible. Only then he does start groaning and kind of wincing a little bit. We ask him if he's alright but we don't get a response. He just slowly starts sliding onto his side, groaning the whole time. And that's when it hit us. I think he was having an overdose. By the time he was actually lying on his side on the couch, his breathing sounded terrible. He was making these noises that sounded like snoring and wheezing mixed together, and that's about the time me and my mate started to properly freak out. We started shouting at him over webcam, telling him to wake up, asking him where he lived but we got nothing. He was totally unconscious. Not just that,

he was dying. We couldn't call 999, we had no idea what his name was or where he lived and that was out of the question. had no idea what his name was or where he lived, and that was out of the question. My mate suggested getting his IP address or something and I had absolutely no idea how I'd go about something like that, but I googled it anyway, and in this mad panic we tried and failed to find a way to get this guy's IP, slowly realizing that there was just nothing we could do for him. I even found out later that even if we

did get his IP, it wouldn't have really helped. It would just show a rough location and not like an exact address. I just remember sitting there, head in hands, listening to this guy's breathing getting weaker and weaker until I just couldn't listen to it anymore. I just made this sudden decision to simply close the chat window. It was nothing to do with us. We didn't make that bloke do anything. We didn't make him put that stuff in his arm. But even then, closing that chat window just felt like I'd killed him myself.

We were this bloke's last lifeline and I still sort of feel like we just gave up on him too soon. It didn't keep me off Omegle. Like I still went on it from time to time after we saw that. A little because I hoped that we'd see that bloke alive and well, even if he was still using drugs. But I didn't see anything that crazy or scary ever again and thank god I haven't either. I definitely couldn't handle seeing something like scary ever again and thank god I haven't either. I definitely couldn't handle seeing something like that ever again. Back when my daughter was 12, her father and I made the huge mistake of not properly vetting her internet access. We had all the sites you might expect to be blocked

by certain providers automatically filtered out, but there were lots of sites that kind of fell through the cracks. That's how Emma managed to get herself into a horrible situation when she was surfing the internet one evening when she came across a website called Omegle. From what she told me, it's a website that randomly pairs people up who can then chat by either typing or talking to each other with their webcams.

I get why meeting new people might be fun, but I also understood that certain bad actors tend to use these kinds of things too. Because one night she came into the living room in a flood of tears. I mean, she was inconsolable. Hadn't cried like that since she was a little girl. Her father and I asked her what the matter was and it took her quite a while to compose herself enough to tell us. For a good few minutes, she seemed to get just on the verge of being able to say what it was and then just burst into tears all over again. When she finally told us, we understood why. I had expected her to

have a falling out with a friend, maybe even broken one of her favorite toys, but when I heard what had happened, our jaws dropped. In her own childish way, she explained that a man had tried to groom her on the internet, using this website called Omegle. She told us that she'd been too freaked out to turn the computer on, and sat there in horror while this complete pervert did things to himself right there on his bed. Only after a few minutes did she find it in herself to switch the thing off at the wall and come running downstairs to us. We made a huge deal out of it, told her it wasn't her fault, called the police so she could give a description of the guy, anything and everything to make her feel better about what

had happened. She seemed down in the dumps for a few days and she stayed off the computer for almost two weeks afterwards. But in the end, she seemed to get over it pretty quickly and her father and I were definitely happy about that, even if the whole thing definitely left us very concerned. Cut to about three months later and we're taking a trip down to Florida to visit my husband's parents. We make something of a road trip out of it every year and one of our little rituals when we're on the way down there is to stop at this little roadside Mexican place that does the most amazing tacos. So, we're at our favorite taco place, sitting outside to soak up some sun and my daughter says she's going to use the bathroom. She gets up, goes inside the restaurant and leaves

my husband and I alone to eat. Less than a minute later, she comes running back out, looking like she's seen a ghost. We ask her what the matter was, and her only response is, I saw him. From the way she was acting, there was only one him that she could have possibly been talking about. But at first I'm thinking that it can't possibly be the same guy that had done that to her earlier just so happening to be hanging out at our traditional roadside taco place. I ask her where she'd seen him and she said he was just sitting at the bar and that they'd actually exchanged a glance as she was walking by. My husband goes in to check it out and get a measure of the guy because no offense but I know Emma was really shaken up about it and there's no telling if it was just trauma bubbling up after months of repressing it. She might have just been seeing things, I thought. Only now I realize that's just what I wanted it

to be and not the reality of the situation before us. My husband then returns from inside the restaurant looking really stony faced. He said he didn't like the look of the guy at the bar at all and that he matched the description our daughter had given the police to a T. After hearing that her father believed that it could really be the same guy, our daughter starts freaking out. I can tell she's trying her best to keep it together and she did a really great job of it too but she was controlling her breathing pretty hard and I could tell she was at a breaking point.

She wanted to just get out of there and we all started walking to the car when my husband pipes up that he needed to go back inside to pay the check. So for not even three minutes my daughter and me were stood by our car alone. And in that time, the pervy guy must have slipped past my husband without him seeing because the next thing I know, my daughter sobs out in audible, oh my god mom. I look up, and there he is, staring at my daughter from across the parking lot. He'd think the guy might just play it cool when a girl's parents were around and he probably did think that we were alone, having not realized my husband was with us.

But there he was, bold as brass, latching over my daughter across that parking lot and... he was smiling too. I get out my phone, showing it to him like do I need to call the cops here? I think I'd have been angrier if I wasn't so terrified too. I doubted my daughter at first and I felt terrible for that, I still do. But after seeing the look in that man's eyes when he stared at her, I believed her.

I believed it was really him. My wordless threat to call someone didn't even make him flinch. He just carried on staring and smiling. I swear he was about to start walking over to us when I realized my husband reappeared from the taco place and basically chased him off. We were okay in the end and we called the cops anyway to give a very long-winded statement about what had happened over the past six months. They'd said they looked into it, but we don't hold out any hope of them catching the guy. I do still wonder sometimes though, what that day would have been like if my husband hadn't been around to chase that guy away. It was a predator, plain and simple. I could see it in his eyes, and if he'd have gotten his hands on my daughter and I,

I probably wouldn't be here writing this now. I just wonder, how did he find her? Was it pure coincidence? Or did he go out of his way to stalk her. In 1978, I was 9 years old. I lived in Bellingham, Washington, a small city about an hour and a half north of Seattle. My parents were the carefree hippie types and pretty much let me roam the streets and visit friends as long as I was home by dark. It was a late summer and I took a bus across town to visit my friend Leslie. We would go buy candy at the corner store and walk to Fred Meyer, a Target type of store,

to watch TV in the electronics section. My parents didn't let me watch much TV so I could spend a whole day at Fred Meyer watching whatever I wanted. It was great. It got to be late afternoon so Leslie and I parted ways. I walked to the bus stop downtown. As I was waiting, a white car slowly drove by and just the way the driver looked at me made me start to shake. I watched him turn the corner. Instinctively I knew that he was going around the block following me and he did. This time he parked across the street. He got out and asked me if I wanted a ride. I remember everything about him. Curly dark hair, thick mustache and the feeling I got from him was nothing I'd ever felt before.

He pretty much paced up and down the block, smiling as he walked, repeatedly offering me a ride. He then walked back to his car and was talking on some kind of CB or walkie-talkie or something. He was talking to someone about me. I could tell by the way he was nodding and smiling at me. He approached one more time about a ride and this time I yelled no. Thankfully the bus came, but I knew he would follow the bus. I went to the back of the bus and watched from the back window. He waited behind the bus at every stop.

My stop was on a corner. I got off and ran as fast as I could. I looked back once and could see the back of his car. He had parked obviously and I ran another half block and crouched down behind a tree and bush. I could see him standing on the corner just staring down the street. After a few minutes he finally left. Fast forward to January of 1979. A news story came on. Two college women had been murdered by Kenneth Bianchi. It was him. His face was all over the news for a while. Only later in life did I find out that he

and his cousin were the Hillside Stranglers. They murdered girls and women in LA. Then Bianchi moved up to Bellingham in the summer of 1978. And I also learned that he had worked at Fred Meyer. The strange part is, Bianche moved to Bellingham without his cousin. So who was he talking to that day he tried to get me? In his car. This happened a long time ago, I'm guessing back in 2006 and I couldn't have been older than 4 years old at the time, yet I vividly remember the fear were practically dead that morning. My mom decided to take my sister, only one year old, seated in a stroller, and I to throw away some garbage at a garbage station. I might add that the garbage station is kind of secluded from nearby houses,

bordering one of these deep, dark forests of eastern Sweden. Since I was only four years old when this happened, the memories from the incident have faded a lot. However, my mom remembers all of it. She says that upon entering the garbage station, she immediately got an eerie feeling of being watched. I remember that feeling too. I felt creeped out, even though I didn't know why I was scared. I guess I could sense my mom's fear.

Walking along that secluded garbage station, my mom suddenly stopped and told me, saying my name, hold on to the stroller as hard as you can and don't let go, no matter what. That's my most vivid memory I have of this and I don't think I'll ever forget those words. I'll at least never forget how they made me feel. It was as if my blood turned to ice. I just froze. My mom sounded stern but even a toddler can sense when someone's scared out of their mind. My mom was definitely afraid of something. The rest is just a blur. I don't remember much apart

from the aforementioned so I'll let the rest of the story be told from the perspective of my mother. This is the recollection of her experience recalled to the best of my abilities but not my own words. Not far from where we were standing a truck was parked with a man seated in the front. Nothing unusual, a lot of truck drivers stop to rest by the side of the road but this man was staring and he wouldn't stop. He stared right at me, examining my body with the determined gaze of a predator. Gluing the three of us in his sight, he truly seemed pleased by the fear he'd instilled in our faces. In his eyes, they were something else, almost as if they didn't belong to a human but rather some sort of creature on the savannah. I felt like prey stuck in the claws of a lion and I just couldn't move.

Then when he smiled at me I remembered that dead smile, those cold calculating eyes, the way he licked his lips, almost as if to say, I could kill you if I wanted to. I believe this was the point in time, into this strange encounter, when my mom told me to hold onto the stroller, to hold on tightly and not let go. My mom was a small woman, 160 centimeters, weighing only about 45 kilos, which is about 5 foot 100 pounds, and she could easily have been overpowered by the overweight man in the truck. My mom later admitted she was afraid he'd jump out of the truck and knock her out, possibly assaulting her or even kidnapping me or my one-year-old sister. We bolted out of there and didn't throw away much garbage that morning. We just turned around and walked home as fast as a mom can do with a stroller and a four-year-old toddler by her side. We've never talked about what happened

that day and up until very recently. That incident has always lingered somewhere in the back of my mind as that weird thing that happened when I was a child. And every time I walk past that garbage station I get a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. As previously mentioned, this happened around 2006. Fast forward to 2008, the face of a 10-year-old little girl called Engla was printed across the front page of every newspaper in sight. She had been abducted, assaulted, and murdered, and the perpetrator was an overweight truck driver named Anders Eklund, now known as one of Sweden's most infamous killers. Anders Eklund was charged with the murder of Engla, alongside the assault and murder of a woman named Pernilla, who's also suspected of abducting another little girl who's still missing,

making him a predator of young children, a serial assaultist and a murderer. My mom says that when she saw Eklund's picture in the paper, especially when she saw those cold, familiar eyes, she knew he was the man from the garbage station that early morning all those years ago. Thinking how my mom or my sister or me or all of us could have been victims, it sends chills up my spine. Anders, even though you're behind bars now, I pray to God I never have to see your eyes again. I'm traveling around the country in my car. I've been driving for over a week from the city I lived in and have so far slept in my car to save money. It wasn't until I got to a big enough city that I decided to treat myself to an actual bed that would be comfortable.

I opted to choose an Airbnb because it's cheaper than hotels. I booked this Airbnb the day before I arrived to the city, so there weren't many options left. I had found this apartment on Airbnb that looked very new and modern and it was in a great location. The price was decent for its location and it almost seemed too good to be true. The downfall was that it was listed as a new listing and had zero reviews. I figured that the price was low because it was a new listing and decided to give it a shot. Must be legit because it's Airbnb, right? When I got to the apartment building it was older looking than I expected. I later found out and realized that my Airbnb was most

likely the only renovated apartment in the building and the building seemed to be in poor condition. It looked more like a dorm hall rather than an apartment building. Anyways, I let it all slide because I wasn't paying too much attention so what could I expect? The apartment itself looked like the pics so that was good enough. Everything went well for the first two days. As a female traveling alone I always make sure to be safe. I don't go out when it's dark and I always lock the door. Every single lock including the chain thing. Anyways on the third day I was out all morning and came back to the apartment to change to head to the beach. I had again

locked the door including the chain. I was in front of the door watching TV while changing when the door suddenly unlocks and someone opens the door. I'm beyond lucky that I had put the chain lock on the door or else it would have opened all the way. I was naked and no one else was supposed to have the keys. My first reaction was, Excuse me? And I closed the door right away, locking it again. I came from the back of the door and did not look or see who was opening it. I sat in front of the door scared and shocked, realized that this person could technically still

get in here since they obviously have the keys to the apartment. At first I thought maybe it was the owner coming back after I checked out, But I was not supposed to check out until the following day so it wasn't possible. After crying for a few minutes I recuperated myself and called the owner and told her what had happened. She told me that no one else should have a set of keys other than her and I. And that she's at work and it wasn't her. I was scared to stay in that apartment because someone could come in. I didn't want to leave because I had all my valuables there. It was a lose-lose situation.

I then called my dad who told me that it was not okay that someone has the keys and that she needs to take care of this ASAP. So we talked to her and she told me that she will be there shortly with a locksmith to change it and give me a pair of new keys. She then proceeded to tell me that she had only had this apartment for six months and that before I stayed there, there was only one other Airbnb booking. She also mentioned that it had been sitting empty other than those two bookings because she had been renovating the apartment, which now makes sense why the building looks like absolute trash and doesn't match the apartment. She told me that the only possibility for who that was could be the previous owners or someone related to them, but isn't that illegal?

That possibility and theory really mess with me. How is it possible that I was gone all day every day and the ten minutes I was home during the daytime someone just tries to barge in? Did they know I was there? What were they coming in for? If this apartment has been sitting empty for half a year maybe they did this frequently or maybe they saw me coming in and tried to do something to me. These questions are constantly on my mind. I just know I'm lucky that I put that keychain on the door or else. I don't even want to know what else could happen. Needless to say, I won't be leaving a good review and I won't be staying in that Airbnb that has no reviews or seems potentially too good to be true. So I'm in my early 20s and female.

I moved out on my own for the first time about two years ago. I haven't had much to do with any of my neighbors and I've always been slightly uneasy to the fact that no one around here is looking out for me. If anything seems off, no one would notice or do any investigating to make sure I'm alright. Last year I noticed a man constantly walking his dog in the grass area behind my home. This isn't unusual to see, it is a common area for residents here. His dog is super cute and my cat liked to play with it through the glass door out back. They would just chase each other back and forth and put their paws up to the glass door out back. They would just chase each other back and forth and put their paws up to the glass and such. It was real cute stuff. Well one day I was

outside and his dog came running up to my porch with glee to get pets and say hi to his kitty friend. This is the first time I actually spoke to this neighbor. We'll call him Mark. So Mark seemed decent enough and we got along just fine. We started hanging out pretty often in a short time period because I'm a smoker and he was letting his dog out all the time and it was summer so we ran into each other quite often and would spend an hour or more after work most days talking. This lasted for a couple of weeks. I gave him my phone number and was happy to have a friend in my complex. I will say he was clearly very interested in either having a romantic relationship with me or at least being butt buddies. He said this quite often, not butt buddies but you get what I'm

saying and I was very honest with him that I wasn't interested in either at all and had to tell him this quite often. Frankly I was getting rather irritated that this came up several times every time we spoke. He rather quickly was trying to get me in his house from the first time we talked until the last. He offered multiple times every time I saw him. I always said no and blamed it on being sort of covid cautious so to speak. He quickly got tired of that excuse and invited himself into my home as well. I always said no. One day he came out while I was smoking with a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses saying I had to try this stuff because it's delicious. I instantly noticed that the seal was broken on the screw bottle cap but doesn't

seem like anything was drank. The bottle was filled to the screw bottle cap but doesn't seem like anything was drank. The bottle was filled to the brim which I also thought was a little odd because usually wine isn't filled to the tippy top like that. So he pours us a couple of drinks and doesn't drop a beat in telling me to take a drink. I felt very uncomfortable but didn't want him to feel like he was being accused of anything when he's just trying to be a nice friendly neighbor. After all, he poured himself a glass of this very same stuff, right? Well, my mama still raised me better than that, so I totally faked a sip and said it was good. After any sentence either of us said, he would again tell me to take a drink. I told him I don't really drink so I'm pacing myself

but did say that I noticed that he hadn't drank any and to please go ahead. He didn't reach for his glass right away but in the middle of speaking he reached for his cup and knocked it over spilling the wine into the grass. He brushed it off rather quickly and told me it's my turn to drink now. I said but you still haven't drank anything? You spilled your drink. Pour yourself another glass. I don't want to drink alone. And so we did. He still didn't drink anything. He did tell me a few moments later to drink mine. I told him that he needs to catch up and we basically just kept doing that in circles.

He reached for his glass again and guess what? He spills it again. Wine is all in the grass now. Then he told me to drink. At this point I'm done. So many red flags are literally screaming at me to get out. I'm honest with him that this seemed really sketchy and I didn't trust the drink because he's refusing to drink any but is way too eager for me to drink mine. He told me he was just clumsy, taking it slow because he doesn't drink a lot but he has seen me have friends over taking shots and drinking beers and wine so he knows I'll handle

it better than him. Yet another red flag is raised, so he's been watching me? Huh. I think it's important to mention that our complex is huge. He used to work here and knows the maintenance crew and he doesn't live particularly near me. He's about half a block away from me and cannot see my windows or yard from where he lives and has a few different common area yards closer to him that he could use for his dog. So I told him I'm flat out not drinking anything because of how this all seemed. He once again pours himself a glass and once again spills it. There isn't much left in the bottle at this point. I pour the remaining wine in his glass and tell him to drink with me on three.

We raise our glasses and to my amazement he actually takes a drink and I just spilled mine into the grass. Whoops. He comes out about two nights later while I was smoking and instantly starts complaining to me that I wouldn't date him or hook up with him and he doesn't know why all girls are like this. He starts getting really loud, shouting at me, asking me what the problem with him was that I won't do these things. I told him that I've been honest with him since I met him and that I'm not interested and that it isn't him specifically, I'm just honestly not interested in that from anyone right now. He still shouted at me and started complaining about his ex and her dog. Yeah, her dog.

Then proceeded to tell me that he used to abuse that dog. And went into really graphic detail about how he wouldn't feed or water it because he used the bathroom in the house and how he would kick it really hard. And I'm horrified at this point. I'm sorry if I triggered anyone by mentioning that but it was just so terrifying especially considering this whole time he's telling me this as he's playing fetch with his little dog. His dog always seemed scared of him and I had even pointed that out in the past and he said that his dog's previous owners were abusive so he's just very scared and distrusting. The dog was always very excited to see me though and would cuddle up with me and stay by me so I always thought that I was extra special but

with that knowledge I just think the poor guy is currently in an abusive household. I was so done with this dude that I just cut him off and said I needed to go because my friends were waiting on me. He has sent me several messages of gibberish when he is outside. He will just blow my phone up with, hey, hi, Jeheba, Nisahabada, Jehek, lol, my name, hi, Kudjigek. It's just all nonsense like that and he will keep going. He has texted me telling me that he knows I'm home because he has seen me walking around or that he sees my car in the lot. He'll throw his dog toys on my porch. I think he tries to get my attention to come out because of the cute dog and he will just stand outside my porch for hours.

It's all cold and rainy and snowy these days so it's even creepier. I think in his mind since I'm a smoker he thinks I'll come out eventually. Silly him though because I just go out front when I see him out there. He said several things to me before the wine fiasco went down that were already red flags. I figured it might be a language or cultural difference though because English is the third language he's learned and America is the third country he's lived in. I guess moral of the story is to just trust your gut. He still is bothering me and like I said we only spoke and hung out for a few weeks in the summer of 2020. My last message from him was last night. He asked me what he had done wrong and if I felt

disrespected in any way. I've not spoken to him since he screamed at me for not hooking up with him, sandwiched with admitting horrible animal abuse. I thought about answering his text with the brutal truth about how twisted and creepy he presented himself as and how uncomfortable he made me feel. But I didn't want to give him any ideas on how he should improve. Stay smart, folks. Don't drink things people give you if the seal is broken

He was definitely trying to drug me When I was a child, around 10 years old, female, my parents ran a construction business. They had several employees on the payroll at any given time, mostly to drive gravel and cement trucks for them. My dad is a kind but naive man who often hires friends of friends who are down on their luck to give them a chance to get back on their feet. It never worked out well because my dad somehow always gets linked up with the scrungiest people. They had a lot of creeps over the years but I think the worst one might have been Ben. Ben was a friend of my dad's dad who also worked for us. Ben supposedly had an old work injury that made it difficult for him to work any job where he had to be on his feet all day. My dad's dad begged my dad to give him a job as a driver and my dad finally agreed. From the day she met him,

Ben made my mom extremely uncomfortable. He just had one of those weird vibes that you can't explain and everyone but my dad picked up on it. Like I said, my dad is extremely naive. My mom wouldn't let me and my younger sister around him for any length of time. We were homeschooled at the time and my mom worked in the office so we were around quite a bit. She kept telling my dad that we should let him go, but my dad wouldn't because he said that he didn't have any legitimate reason to fire him. And this is the weird part. Whenever my sister and I were at the office on a slow day, my dad's dad would always try to get us to come over and

sit with him and Ben. He would always ask, don't you want to go for a ride with us in the big truck? Ben himself wouldn't talk to us, he let my dad's dad handle that. We were shy kids so we never agreed to but he was so persistent. They reached a point where it was literally every single time he saw us there. My sister and I would take turns hiding in the bathroom so we didn't have to be around them. They'd always do it when my mom was out of the room and they'd back off whenever she was around. My dad was never around when it happened and I don't think he believed it. I mean, who wants to believe that? My mom eventually had enough and told my dad that Ben had to go.

A few years later we found out that Ben had taken a young girl, my dad's dad had another friend who had a daughter about my age, up for a ride in the truck, and unfortunately had his way with her. My dad's dad was enabling him the whole time. I shudder to think what would have happened if my mom hadn't watched out for us. Yes, I believe that my dad's dad was in fact the same way that Ben was, not just an enabler, and I deep down think my dad absolutely knew. This was just conjecture, but it was a common rumor in my community growing up that my dad's dad had in fact done terrible things to my aunt when she was a child.

None of my family ever talked about it, other than my mom who was a hero and would never let things go. She always asked my dad and he'd just say he didn't know and change the subject. The fact that he didn't immediately jump to defend his father against accusations that serious is an immediate red flag in my opinion. I now have no contact with my dad's dad or the rest of that side of the family and my life is much better for it. I live in Finland in a fairly small city and this happened to me a year ago when I was 14. So it was Friday evening and on every Friday our mom lets us go to the store and buy candy. So me and my 12 year old sister left our house to go to the store and it was already dark outside. We made our way to the closest store which was over a mile away.

While walking at some point there's a man behind us walking the same way but I didn't think much about it at the time. He could just be going to the same store. So I continue chatting with my sister while the man is behind us following at a safe distance. We get to the store with no complications and the man followed us into the store. We take our time selecting our candy and get to the register to pay. While I was packing the candy into my backpack I saw this man buying only a chocolate bar. Pretty far away to go for a chocolate bar I thought and at this point my suspicions start to rise for this guy. I get out of the store with my sister and start making our way back.

We walk for a while and I quickly glanced at my back and the man was still there following us. I took a look at my sister who seemed totally unaware about the man's presence. We continued our walk and up ahead of us was an unlit dirt road that continued for a good part of the trip so I look at my back again and there's the man still about 60 feet away. At this point I was almost certain that he was following us because on our way to the store he didn't walk this part of the way behind us. The dirt road goes through a forest and it had a curve at the start of it. Once we get to the curve I look back and notice that the man can't see us so I pull my sister into the woods

and we duck down behind some brush. My sister is saying something and I just whisper to stay quiet to her as I wait for the man to come. I could see the man's shadow coming down the road and he stopped and started looking for us from the road. He walked back and forth and now I was certain that he was following us that entire time. My heart was racing and I tried to be as quiet as possible. Thankfully this man didn't find us but continued running forwards. We stayed in the forest for a while before getting the courage to come out. We walked the rest of the way home with no problems and get to our house. We eat our candy and have a good evening but that really did bother me for a

while and especially my sister. Thinking about this still gives me the chills and the thought of getting caught in that situation again creeps me new place at least four months before I noticed anything. Things didn't start getting weird immediately. I'd been in my new place at least four months before I noticed anything. At the end of 2017, I was given a promotion and had to move to a new city. I was fortunate in that my company located the duplex for me. They also went as far as paying the deposit and first month's rent. So, once it came down to relocating, a lot of the hard work had been done. On my first meeting with Neil, the landlord, I didn't get any bad feelings.

In fact, he seemed like a normal, nice guy. He didn't lurk around or ask a bunch of questions. I was given the keys and wished good luck. That was it. Two weeks later, I began my new job and was too busy to notice anything was out of the ordinary. However, when that weekend came along, the strangeness started. I'd just bought three new pairs of underwear the week I moved in. For some reason, two pairs were missing from my dresser.

I checked the dirty clothes. They weren't there and neither was my favorite t-shirt. I could recall the exact moment I threw it into the basket. No matter where I searched I came up empty handed. Oh well. I thought and purchased two new pairs to replace them. It wasn't the first time I'd lost clothes. I went on with my life and put it into the back of my mind.

Monday came back around and I returned to work. I paid little attention to the state of my surroundings. Friday evening, I arrived home dead on my feet and crashed early. The following morning, I was making breakfast and noticed a pair of faint footprints on the tile. It looked as if though they had been half-heartedly mopped away. I went to check my mop and couldn't find it. Eventually I found it stuck next to the broom in the pantry. I knew for a fact I didn't put it there. I'd learned from my mom long ago to store it in the mop bucket when I wasn't using it. This was the first instance in which I feared someone was entering my home while I was gone. It would only get worse from there. After that, I looked around the rest of the house

but nothing else seemed different. This caused me to question my instincts again. The tracks could have been there before I moved in, maybe I just didn't notice. As for the mop, I suppose I could have misplaced it when I was moving in. Although at the end of the day I had more or less discounted my suspicions, they never fully left the front of my mind. From now on I would be on high alert for any anomalies showing up around the house. Nothing would pique my interest for the next few weeks. Then, on a Saturday morning as I put things together for the laundry, I realized I was short on underwear again. Now, I was missing three pairs. Two of the new ones and a pair I'd had over a year or more.

All the doubt I'd had before was gone. I was sure somebody was stealing my clothes. There were no signs of forced entry. It had to be Neil or potentially a previous tenant. I hadn't thought to ask if the locks had been changed. I didn't rule out the prior resident, but my gut told me Neil was responsible. Before I went to the police and accused a possibly innocent man, I needed proof. I did some research and found out about motion-activated cameras.

I ordered two from Amazon and placed them in different rooms. These things weren't any bigger than a book of matches, so I was fairly confident that they go unnoticed. All that was left was the wait. A week passed and nothing showed up. Another with the same result. I was beginning to believe that I was imagining it all. At the end of week three, I didn't hold much hope in finding anything. That Saturday afternoon when I plugged it in,

I wasn't even really paying much attention. Then the pictures loaded, and I almost choked on my soda. One by one, my intruder showed himself. When I finally got the clear shot of his face I'd been waiting for, a feeling of extreme disappointment filled me. As I feared, Neil was indeed the trespasser. Not much else really showed up on the first camera. A sickening feeling of dread overcame me as I brought up the photos on the second. The first few didn't show anything I didn't already suspect. I continued to watch as he carefully searched through the drawers. The real bad stuff came when he opened the hamper. I wasn't prepared for what I was about to see. As he began sniffing the first pair of underwear, I was confused. But when he did what he did next,

I almost retched. I fought against this urge for quite some time. Fortunately he didn't go any further if that's even possible. I managed to make it through to the end where he put the now soiled underwear into his pocket and walked out of the frame. I'd gotten what I'd asked for and now I regretted it. Not only was I about to lose my home, I had to let a group of total strangers see perhaps the most embarrassing secret of my life. Regardless of my feelings, I had to finish what I'd started. Monday morning I called in sick and drove to the police station. After filing my complaint, I returned to the house and began transporting my things to storage. Luckily for me, I hadn't yet unpacked most of my stuff so I was finished before midnight.

I checked into a hotel near work and waited for everything to blow up and it didn't take long. I was at my desk that Wednesday when I was notified of Neil's arrest. He made bail that same day and things went quiet for six months or more after that. In the interim, I worked in search for a new place. I was fortunate to find an apartment within the month and moved in on the first of the following one. The day I'd been waiting for had finally arrived just as the first buds broke on the trees. Neil had accepted a deal from the district attorney for a fine and six months in jail. It turned out he had done something similar to another woman and gotten off with a slap on the wrist prior.

I was happy with the result overall. Honestly, I was just happy to get away from him. And in the time since, life has gone back to near normal, except for one thing. My sense of security in my home has taken a hit. In a year and a half, I've lived in three separate places. The day I get my keys, I spend hours searching every nook and cranny for cameras, microphones, and any other peeping device you can think of. I also change the locks almost immediately just to ensure I'm the only person with a key. If a situation comes up that a repairman has to fix something,

I insist on being present during that time. I guess you could say my sense of trust has been destroyed and you might be right. At least this way, I know my underwear will be where I left them when I get home. Ever since I was a small child, I've been entranced by computers. They're in my blood and I learned how they worked as soon as I could. This love led me to a profitable career in programming. At 12, I designed my first webpage for a friend at school. It all grew up from there. I was making over $25,000 a year by 14. I'd been setting aside money for college for some time. However, at 16, I used a hunk of it to buy my first car.

It wasn't anything extreme, just a two-year-old F-150 with all the bells and whistles. When I came home with it, my parents were livid. They thought a dealership had sold it to me, but when I explained I had got it from an ad in Autotrader, they yelled about the cost. Although I still had another $37,000 in the bank, they demanded I return it. I'd bought it fair and square with my own money, so I held my ground and refused. When they realized I wasn't going to budge on the truck, they demanded that I give them my savings for safekeeping, they said. This wasn't going to happen either. They tried to pull the as long as you live under our roof power play,

so I called them on it. I grabbed some clothes and my computer and took off. That first night I pulled off on a deserted back road and slept in my truck. During my breaks at school I looked through a couple of sites like Craigslist and Facebook for any rooms for rent locally. At lunch I found a listing on Facebook that caught my eye. I sent the OP an email. She returned my message and we set up a meeting later in the day. When I arrived I was taken aback at the woman's age. She had said she was a widow in her email so I naturally expected a grandma. The woman that met me at the door couldn't have been over 40. I was concerned she'd know that I wasn't 19 like I said. Fortunately for me, I had bought a fake ID online the year prior and when she asked me for proof, I showed her that.

She must have believed me. When I told her I wanted the room, she gave me a piece of paper to sign and took my money. It was that simple. Just like that, I had a place of paper to sign and took my money. It was that simple. Just like that I had a place of my own. I was elated to be out from under the thumbs of my folks. I went out that evening and bought myself one of those mini fridges and stocked it with Red Bull. In my mind, I was grown up and nobody was going to have control over me ever again. For the sake of the story, I'll call my new landlady Darlene.

Darlene was under the belief that I worked in IT at a national mortgage company. This made leaving for school every morning easier to explain. I'd come back every afternoon and spend the rest of the evening in my room. One afternoon after I'd been there for about a month, Darlene asked if I ever ate. Of course I did, but I was living off of prepackaged garbage that I didn't have to cook. As soon as she found this out, she insisted that I let her cook me dinner. I was missing my mom's cooking to be honest, so I accepted her offer. Before I knew it, she was doing this every day. I felt a bit guilty like I was taking advantage of her offer. Before I knew it, she was doing this every day.

I felt a bit guilty like I was taking advantage of her kindness. She seemed to love doing it so I assumed she missed her son who was off at college so I held my tongue. Then things got weird. One evening, I'd just finished eating and she returned from the kitchen. I was about to get up from the table and she walked up behind me. With no warning she started massaging my shoulders. The situation was a little uncomfortable but the massaging did feel good. After about a minute I tried to thank her and get up from the table.

I stood up and turned to wish her a good evening. She gave me this seductive look and began rubbing my chest. And now I was freaking out. Things had gone way beyond weird. I wasn't sure what to do so I did the worst thing I could have. I pushed her hands away. The hurt registered on her face right away and I felt really guilty now. I tried to soothe her bruised ego by making up some stupid excuse I'd seen on a movie. I said something really cringy like, it's not your fault Darlene, it's me. She saw right through that and demanded I tell her the truth. I could see she was about to cry. In a panic, I told her everything.

I'm only 16. I'm really sorry I lied to you, but it wouldn't be right if we did this. I do find you attractive, but I just don't want to get you in trouble. I was actually more afraid of the act itself than her getting caught. I still hadn't even barely kissed a girl yet. Doing that kind of stuff with a grown woman terrified me. I knew I should have kept my mouth shut but I'd never been able to lie very well especially to my mom. I guess Darlene reminded me of her a little. She pushed me away and I watched in

horror as the bright blue of her eyes morphed into a dark brownish green. She gritted her teeth and started yelling, liar, at the top of her lungs. The louder her voice grew I stepped further away. I had never seen another person that angry in my life. I was literally shaking in fear. I attempted to explain, but her screams drowned me out. Something I said must have angered her even more. Her eyes bugged out and an evil snarl appeared on her upper lip. An object on the table caught her eye. She reached for it and came away with a big carving knife. I knew it was razor sharp. I'd used it less than an hour prior to slice the turkey breast. And I wasn't sticking around after this. She clearly wasn't thinking straight.

The second I saw the knife I turned and ran from my room. I slammed the door behind me and locked it. I knew Darlene had a key so I had to work fast. I picked up a duffel bag from the closet and crammed it full of clothes. With the bag under my arm and my laptop in the other hand, I hopped out of the window and ran for my truck. I sped away, still shivering in terror. So now, I was homeless once more. I pulled over into a nearby park. After an hour of brainstorming, I remembered a senior that had his own place.

I called him and got the okay to crash on his couch. That's where I slept for the next week. At least five times a day my phone would chime with a text or voice message from Darlene. They were terrifying in their bipolarness. One would be begging for me to come back only for the next to be cursing and wishing death upon me. During that week I did a lot of soul searching. I decided to extend the olive branch towards my folks in hopes that we could come to some compromise and I could return home. We were eventually able to make a deal. I would

give them 50% of my income to set back for my college and I would get to keep my truck. It was a small thing in the end. I can understand their concern. They had my future in mind. That first night back in my own bed was like heaven. The entire mess had been a huge wake-up call for me. I've been taking my folks for granted for a long time. When you're a kid making more than most adults around you, it can happen easily. That's probably how I found it so easy to lie to Darlene. Until I saw the damage my arrogance could cause first-hand, I never thought about it. I wish I could apologize for my actions, but I fear that ship sailed a long time ago. The last thing I want to do is tear open a healed wound,

and despite her extreme reactions to my lies, she was a good person and deserved to be treated with respect, and as weird as it sounds, I hope she has that now. Almost ten years ago I had paid off my mortgage and was looking for an area to invest in. I did a boatload of research then forgot it all and bought a two bedroom house around the corner from me. After six months of renovating, I decided to rent it out. I chose a 50-year-old woman and her son to be my first tenants. She was a normal hard-working widow and her son was a quiet but well-mannered young man. They leased the house for a full 10 years and I never once had any trouble with them. Then, out of the blue I received

a phone call from the mother letting me know that they wouldn't be resigning the lease. I inquired if there was anything that I could do to make her change her mind but she said there was not. I wished her and Jeffrey her son good luck and assured her that I would give her a glowing recommendation if she needed it. At the end of that month, her and Jeffrey dropped off the key and said goodbye. After ten long years, I was without a tenant. I headed over the next morning to see what needed repaired or refreshed. As expected, the house was darn near the shape it was when they moved in. All they really needed was a coat of fresh paint and a deep cleaning.

The landscaping was much the same. Jeffrey kept the grass cut and the shrubs well manicured. Unfortunately, the row of rose bushes he planted for his mother had to go. The early freeze from the year before had killed them. I hired a friend to do some painting and a maid service did the cleaning afterwards. While this was all being done, I began digging up the bushes. When I dug up the first one, I was surprised to find the skeleton of a small animal about the size of a cat. I figured it was more than likely once a pet of a former owner. Being an animal lover,

it was a bit of a somber moment. I grouped together all the bones I could find, placed them into a small box and reburied them. I said a short prayer, redone my hat and moved to the next bush. At the bottom of the next hole I came across a black trash bag. For a split second I got a crazy idea that it could be buried money. I cut it open and an awful stench hit me in the face. On closer inspection I saw that it was another small animal, this time a little dog. I figured it couldn't be that old, maybe five years. Now I was starting to grow suspicious. I knew for a fact that Jeffrey and his mother never had a single pet, especially a dog.

Unlike the last, I placed the dog back in its hole with no ceremony. Although it was highly unlikely, I was shooting for a triple. I hastily dug around the bush and yanked it from the earth. It wasn't long before my clawing at the soil paid off. In one big handful, a couple of small long bones came out with the dirt. Another few minutes of digging and I had what looked to be the full skeleton of a cat or small dog. What started out as a calm day in the garden was quickly turning into a horrible slog through a mass animal grave. I wasn't sure what to think of all of this. Was my yard one big giant pet cemetery? Who put them here? Considering what I've already found,

I couldn't stop with the rose bushes. Until the oncoming dark arrived, I dug and dug. I had no particular plan. If a part of grass looked disturbed, I made a hole. 90% of all the holes I dug that day yielded some part of an animal. Most were that of small animals, but one or two looked big enough to be great danes. The next day I surveyed the yard with a clear head. It resembled a field taken over by fire ants. Countless hills of earth stretched out before me. Unsure of what else to do, I had reinterred each skeleton I unearthed. I stopped at 15. Assorted bones and skulls amounted to maybe 25. I sat up that night battling with what I should do with this information.

At first I was determined to return and continue my search but as I turned it over in my mind, I thought the better of it. The longer I kept this up, the more eyes may see what I was doing. That would bring questions, and I wasn't prepared to tell my story. I didn't think my neighbors were ready to hear it. When one or two pets disappeared in a year, people tend to write it off. We lived very near to a large forested area. That forest was teeming with predators like coyotes. Their songs were a familiar part of our late nights. Even I was guilty of blaming our nocturnal neighbors. I'd never had a reason to blame Jeffrey. I'd never witnessed him behaving cruelly to any animal. However, as I think back in retrospect, he did seem to be a tad standoffish towards them. What I wrote off as fear was perhaps a hidden disdain.

This was all supposition at the end of the day. I may know that coyotes didn't kill these pets, but a few of them could have been buried before I bought the property. The house was built before I was born. There's no telling how many pets passed on between 1968 and 2000 when I purchased it. At most I could pin three animals on Jeffrey. And then there's that. I have no proof he was the culprit. Maybe his mother was some nutso behind closed doors.

Alas, I can try to justify everything but we all know what happened here, don't we? I provided shelter to a monster. A monster that preyed upon the most defenseless of our families. Those that some see as children even. He did it right before our eyes. Perhaps for the entire ten years he lived there. What do you think my neighbors will think of me when they find this out? Maybe they'll even try to blame it all on me. It's been five years since that terrible weekend. Without any forwarding address or phone number to contact them, I've never been able to confront the pair about the dead pets. They'd be insane to admit it anyway. I was leery about renting the house out again, but a year passed and people began asking questions. There's been three renters since and I made it annoyingly clear that they

were not allowed to dig anywhere on the property. I've had a lot of time to think about what else may be buried on that lot. People's pets weren't the only creatures to go missing in those ten years. I'm not sure I'd ever be able to deal with finding someone's child under the sod of my own property. That being said, I may be a coward, but I'm not completely heartless. I've had a request to excavate the entire property added to my will. Now that I'm approaching my late 70s, I have type 2 diabetes and this new virus has arrived. There's a possibility you may be discovering my identity sooner than I'd hoped. At this point in life, I don't much care about how I'm remembered. I do, however, hope folks

don't blame my family for my cowardice. Please don't be too hard on them. After all, it was potentially that demented young man who did all of those awful things, not them. After my first divorce, I had neither a home nor job. A weeks long search led me to our local branch of the National Arts and Crafts store. I didn't have much retail experience but they took a chance on me anyway. It wasn't long before my savings were running low. I began panicking that I'd end up on the streets. Just by chance my boss overheard me telling my story of woe to another employee. She just happened to have a big empty house and was looking for a roommate. The position was mine if I wanted it. I'd basically

have a whole side of the house for myself. It sounded like an awesome opportunity but I had my reservations. I wouldn't have that disconnect that most folks have between home and work. I got on with her really well, but there was a chance that we could get sick of one another. I wanted to take some time to think it over, but my present financial situation wouldn't allow it. With no obvious reasons not to, I accepted. That night after work, I began moving in. The house was amazing and big. I'd never lived anywhere near this large ever.

My side was the size of your average single family house. I asked how she could afford such a big place. It turned out that her husband had been an architect and owner of his own company. He planned the place out himself and had built it. Luckily, it got paid off before he passed away. Once her daughter moved out, the place became overwhelming. We sat down that evening and worked out the living situation with a few glasses of wine. She voiced some of the same concerns as I had myself. We decided it would be better if we worked different shifts, and that was where our time as roommates began. The experience was relatively awesome for the most part. We would catch each other in passing as we came and went from work. On the

rare night we were both off, we'd cook a big dinner and get to know one another. In a lot of ways, it was like the early years of a marriage. The time before the monotonies of life get in the way, I suppose. One of these dinners was the first time I met Lawrence. He was her on and off again boyfriend. The two had dated during college only to marry different people. After her husband's death, they renewed their affair. I wouldn't discover until later that Lawrence had a cheating problem that caused big gaps in their relationship. On the surface, he came across as a decent guy. His jokes were a tad blue at times, but he was handsome and charismatic enough not to appear crude. He wasn't around that much,

so I never really got to know him. That would soon change however. Lawrence would often stay the night. I'd run into him on occasion but we didn't say much to each other. For some reason one morning he began flirting with me. It was one of my days off. I'd slept in and was having a late breakfast. He sat down at the table and began dropping hints. I thought he was kidding, and it soon became clear that he wasn't. Rather than throw a big fit, I laughed it off and retreated to my bedroom. This was unfortunately not the last time he did this. In fact, probably five times throughout the next year he repeated his lurid come-ons. Things came to a head one evening when he did it with my boss standing across the room.

I'd had a couple of glasses of wine and it made me much less tactful. I blurted out, F off, sleazebag. I didn't realize how loud I'd been until our guests all turned and gawked at me. I went with my tried and true tactic of laughing it off. Everyone but my boss at least pretended to believe me. Her icy gaze could have cut me down right there and not long after, the party quickly began to wind down. The last guests left at around 1am. I hoped the incident from earlier had been forgotten but within minutes I could hear arguing coming from my boss's side of the house. I assumed they weren't coming out for the rest of the night. So I poured the last bottle into a glass and dropped down in front of

the TV. The arguing soon wound down and I must have dozed off. Suddenly the connecting door opened loudly and my boss staggered out. She seemed cool at first, but her intent soon became obvious. She sat down next to me on the couch and began interrogating me about Lawrence and myself. I hesitated at first, not wanting to cause even more problems. She took my hesitation as an evasion tactic and blew up on me. She began ranting about me being a harlot and how I had taken advantage of her kindness. I tried to stand up for myself but she wasn't hearing any of it. That was until I called her boyfriend a sleazy womanizer. The room went dead silent. Her jaw was hanging open and her eyes were bulging. Something told me that in that moment I should run.

As I turned away, she began screaming at the top of her lungs. Just a few seconds later, I feel a painful thud across the back of my head. Things started to get blurry. I fought the weak feeling in my legs. I strained to take another step and then... Darkness. When I came to, my ears were ringing and my vision was still a bit blurry. Everything came into focus at once.

Standing there was my boss, looking down at me. I threw my hands up to defend myself, only to hear her profusely apologizing over and over. I slowly lowered my hands, still unsure if it was a ploy. She continued apologizing. I sat up and rubbed the back of my head. I guess I thought it would soothe my pounding headache. Instead I found a big wet spot and my hand was covered with blood. My boss saw that and started apologizing even more.

She helped me to my feet and drove us to the hospital. By some miracle we didn't crash on the way. After that, the remainder of our night was spent at the ER. Despite my initial urge, I lied to the nurse and said I'd tripped and hit my head on the table. About the time the doctor mentioned stitches I had decided then and there I was getting out of that house. She may have been sorry that time, but the next time, I may not be so lucky. And I knew that there would be a next time. Lawrence wasn't going anywhere. Neither was he going to change.

I kept my decision to myself until my boss was at work. While she was gone I packed like a crazy person and headed for the cheapest motel I could find. Luckily I had been saving for rent and had a good chunk set back. I left a note explaining my position as I slipped out that day. I went into work like usual that evening. I had considered quitting but I couldn't afford to. Until a problem reared its head, I was going to keep working. The storm I had expected never actually materialized. For the rest of my time working there, we only saw each other twice and neither person spoke to the other. I found a place of my own within the month and hadn't had a roommate since. I mean, really, can you blame me? To be continued... in and out of jail and prison. I'm not going to make some boohoo excuse. I grew up in a rough

neighborhood. The guys that were the most respected were crooks and I wanted to be like them. So around 12, I teamed up with a group of other kids. We dealt a little dope but made most of our cash from smashing grabs. And by my 18th birthday, I'd been arrested more than five times. I was obviously not a good criminal, but I was far from learning my lesson. In the early 2000s, I was bouncing from place to place. My girlfriend at the time constantly complained about how much time I was spending with my friends. I'd live with her for a few weeks, then we'd get into a big argument and I'd crash on a friend's couch. A few days later we'd make up and I'd move back in only to repeat the cycle. Probably after doing this four or five times I've had enough and decided to get my own place.

I put the word out in the street and within a few weeks I got a call. I'd done business stuff with this guy in the past, fencing stolen stuff and I knew he owned several properties He said he had this house that had been broken into by kids on two occasions and he wanted somebody to live there All he wanted was a couple of hundred bucks to cover the utilities and I jumped on it No way was I going to get a better offer anywhere else. I moved my stuff in and was just getting comfortable when I got another call from this guy telling me I had to move out. I was livid. We made a deal that I could stay there for at least six months. I hadn't been there two. I reminded him of this but he didn't care. His new girlfriend needed a

place to live and I was in the way. I figured it would take him a few months just to get the paperwork required to evict me so I told him to call his lawyers. I blamed myself for what happened next. I should have known he wouldn't take no for an answer. I continued hustling and doing what I needed to pay the bills. I hadn't heard from the landlord in over a week. Then, without warning, I was awakened by a pair of men. I heard this loud banging noise in the kitchen. When I ran out to investigate, I met eye to eye with a man pounding on a pot. Sitting in a chair next to him was another man. When I say men, I'm not accurately describing

them. They were more like giants. Both were easily over 6 foot 3 and 250 pounds. I was furious but still too tired to make a scene. When I inquired as to their purpose in waking me up at 5am, I was told my landlord had sent them. If I wasn't so groggy, I probably would have caught on that they weren't there just to tell me this. Instead, I asked them to pass on a message. Not going anywhere until my lease expires. Except I didn't word it in such a congenial manner. My visitors appeared to be unfazed. In return, they informed me that the landlord had a message of his own. I could vacate the property within half an hour, or those men would take me out to the middle of nowhere and dump me into a deep hole.

And that certainly got my attention, and I knew he meant it. With no other choice, I packed as fast as possible and checked into the first hotel I saw There were a few things I was forced to leave behind but nothing worth my life I'd eventually find a permanent place to crash Unfortunately it was at a state correction center After doing three years of a five year sentence I returned to the streets once again without a home of my own. My brother was kind enough to let me ride his couch for a few months until I got back on my feet.

I was determined never to return to jail and even though finding a legit job was a bit of an ordeal, I managed it going on five years. Since I now move in a much different world, most of those from my past are just that, in my past. My former friend and landlord would be among them. I was recently sitting at the dinner table in my current home reading the paper. About halfway down the page, a familiar name caught my notice. It appears that very same man was on trial for murdering his partner over a business disagreement. Reading this drove home to me how wise my decision was that morning. Had I listened to my ego, I probably would enough of the city and moved to a quiet little place in rural Oregon.

No matter how hard I tried, my cousin Jeremy couldn't be convinced to come with me. All his friends lived in and around Portland and he wouldn't leave them behind. With or without Jeremy, I was determined to get away. In just the past five or so years the city had become completely different than the one it grew up in. Friends of all sorts of backgrounds and beliefs got along but one day I woke up and noticed things had changed. We had broken up into two separate tribes, one that wanted things to remain the way they had always been and another angry and violent group that had a my way or else mindset.

Kids had known each other for 20 plus years were now irrevocably split. This wasn't the worst of it. I've had friends come and go throughout my life. The violence was the deciding factor. More than once I witnessed my friends viciously attacking the elderly and infirm for no reason other than that they thought differently. I struggled with my choice for quite some time. That was until the day I became the focus of their ire. I was downtown and stopped by a group of these activists. When I asked for a reason, I was threatened. A guy I had known since grade school was among them. Rather than stand up for me, he turned and walked away.

And that was the final straw. Just before Christmas of 2019, I made my move to the country. Jeremy no longer had a roommate, so he moved to a smaller efficiency apartment. Throughout the following months, he and I stayed in contact. Then the summer of 2020 ignited and Portland became a living nightmare. My fears had become a reality. Getting Jeremy out of the city consumed me now. We talked almost every day.

He told me of all the carnage surrounding him and then one day, no more Jeremy. I called, texted and emailed with no result. I called all of our mutual acquaintances, but they had nothing for me. A panic grew inside me. Every night the news was filled with stories of rioting and arson. I knew visiting his place in person was the only way to find out his fate. After putting off the trip for almost a week, I found only way to find out his fate. After putting off the trip for almost a week, I found the courage to return to the city.

I don't know what I expected, but what I found wasn't good. There didn't exist a single block where at least one building hadn't at least been torched a little bit. Windows had been boarded up and slogans and curse words covered every surface. Despite the quiet atmosphere of the day, an underlying tension remained in the air. As I got closer to Jeremy's apartment, a sick feeling grew in the pit of my stomach. When I arrived at the address I'd been given, I initially thought it was a mistake. Before me stood the charred skeleton of a large building. Nearby a few people stood, pointing and talking. I asked them what had happened and discovered rioters had burned it the week before. I lacked the courage to ask if anyone had died, but I didn't have to.

A male in the group casually mentioned how sad it was that so many had lost their lives Twelve in fact I couldn't handle it any longer My knees buckled beneath me and I lost consciousness When I came to, I was surrounded by a small group Many the people I'd just been speaking to I attempted to reassure them that I was okay but The ambulance was already on its way.

They took me in just to be safe. While I waited at the hospital, I inquired about the deaths at the apartment. My nurse gave me some information on how I could find out if Jeremy was among the dead. I got a ride back to my car and drove directly there. After waiting 30 minutes, I got what I'd wanted. Now, it was confirmed. Jeremy was indeed among the 12 lives lost in that fire. I'd never been more at odds with myself. He'd been like a brother to me for most of my life. His death was a stab to my heart, but more than than grief I felt an all-consuming rage

This war that we were surrounded by was senseless The only people suffering were the innocent, people like Jeremy He was the kindest and most open-minded man I knew Logic no longer existed in this world and I was happy I was no longer a part of it I returned to the country, my peaceful mountains, with Jeremy's ashes. I no longer had any reason to visit the city. If I could have, I would have destroyed the road behind me. Then, out of the blue, I received a phone call that would turn the world on its head. My life in the mountains was a world away from the disease-ridden bedlam I heard of on the radio.

I'd gotten most of my seeds into the ground and was preparing for the oncoming warm weather. Everything stopped when I got a call from the Portland police. A terrible fact had been uncovered during their investigation of the arson. It was discovered that the landlord of the building was in fact the person responsible for the fire. His hope was that it would be written off as just another fire started by the protesters. He may have gotten away with it had not one of the people he had hired been busted for an unrelated crime, the guy flipped on him for a reduced sentence. When the owner was presented with all the proof, he confessed to the entire scheme.

Twelve people lost their lives for an insurance check. For nothing. With a bit of hindsight, I suppose the identity of the person really doesn't matter. Many more may use this division among us to cover for their own dirty actions. Only by coming together can we foil their plans. With every innocent life lost in this mindless conflict, we grow further apart. Reach out to all those you care about and do everything you can do to find a common ground. Only then can we stop the world from falling down all around us. To be continued... In 2015, I became the owner of my childhood home. I had purchased my own house almost 10 years before, so I was unsure of what to do with it.

I struggled for some time whether to sell or rent it out. Ultimately, I went with the renting option. In this way, I could earn money to pay the taxes at the end of the year. If I wanted to sell later on, I'd be able to. My first tenants were a family of four who stayed for just 12 months. I was very sad to see them go. Their check always arrived on time and they maintained the house like it was their own. With them gone, I put up a new ad on the internet and a few local newspapers. It wasn't long before I found four college students

looking for a new house. I knew I was taking a risk renting to four young men, but I liked the kids. The first test would be whether the rent arrived on time. They had it to me a day early. Every month after that was the same. With no reason to bother them, I left them alone to focus on school. Five months passed before I got a phone call. Mr. Glenn, an elderly gentleman living catty corner from the house, contacted to say that he had concerns about the new residence. He claimed people were coming and going at all times of the day and night and their cars were clogging up the street. I took his complaints with a grain of salt. He was retired with nothing better to do but spy on his neighbors. I also thought a lot

of it had to do with two of the boys not being white. That area has always been overwhelmingly racially homogenous and some of the older residents had a hard time seeing things change. I reminded him that they were students. People coming and going wasn't out of the ordinary. As for the cars, I said I'd talk to them about it. After I got rid of him, I put it out of my mind. Without any real problems from them, I wasn't going to cause trouble. I didn't believe that there was a problem until a younger neighbor sent me an email. A girl I went to school with lived in a few houses down from my renters. She repeated Mr. Glenn's complaint about the

constant traffic. In addition to this, she recounted a run-in that she had had with one of the visitors. The visitor had parked in front of her mailbox. She asked as kindly as she could if they could move. An argument followed in which she was threatened by this visitor. She could clearly see a handgun tucked into his waistband so she backed off. Now I had no choice but to take their concerns seriously. I decided to make an unannounced visit. Rather than confront them directly, I parked down the street and watched the comings and goings of the house. I returned three days in a row and the traffic was almost constant in that time.

From what I knew about college students, being one myself before, I was positive that they were not students. Based on other life experiences, I was almost certain that they were dealing drugs out of the house. It was the only thing that made sense. Even if they weren't selling dope, the people they surrounded themselves with were putting me in financial danger, not to mention the other residents in actual physical danger. I contacted my attorney and he filed the paperwork needed to evict them. Soon after, the constables served them the notice. They called me, of course, to inquire why and I let them know that I was aware of what they were doing. The young man I spoke to put up a half-hearted denial but I was confident I was in the right. Three weeks later I received an email notifying me that they had vacated the house.

Most of it was made up of cursing and clothes with a cryptic threat to my life. I laughed it off and headed over to see the state that they had left the house in. Much as I had expected, holes were in the walls and a couple of windows had been broken. I was relieved it wasn't worse. Nothing a few hundred dollars and some spackle couldn't fix. I did the repairs myself and prepared to put it up for rent again. The very same night I finished repairing the damage, my former tenants paid me a visit. Around 1.30am I was dead to the world and a crashing noise woke me up. The living room was already fully engulfed when I got there. After a brief attempt at putting it

out with a dinky extinguisher, I gave up and called 911. They couldn't save the house, unfortunately. To add insult to injury, I found a hole spray painted on my car that morning, and that removed any doubt I may have had. I suppose in the end I was more fortunate than most folks. I still had a second house. My fingers were crossed as I turned the corner. A real cunning adversary would have burned that place too, but it was fortunately still standing. Just to lower the chances of them coming after me a second time, I parked in the garage to make the place look uninhabited.

With nothing more than a mattress in tow I did my best to make myself comfortable. And comfortable I am. I have yet to move. I'm not sure if I ever will. I've had a lot of time to think and I have come to believe it was all meant to be. Returning here has filled a void inside me. Don't get me wrong, I would have rather not almost been burned alive, but those dopeheads did me a favor. As for those four little deadbeats, all but one of them were arrested for arson. One guy was already inside for trafficking. He just got another ten years slapped onto his sentence. Two others were on probation. They received ten themselves. The one remaining guy snitched on the others and only got five. As long as they stay away from me, I'm fine with the punishment.

I get neighbors that care about me now. If I have a family in my future, I couldn't think of a better place to raise kids. After all, it's where I grew up. And my life's turned out pretty great. Hey friends, thanks for listening. To be continued... featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast where you can hear all these stories in long compilation form and save huge on data, located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the bio. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you again soon.