The Lets Read Podcast - 141: BIG HORROR IN LITTLE MEXICO | 23 True Scary Horror Stories | EP 129

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Mexico, AirBnB, & A Ted Bundy Copycat...  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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and there is a long history of war and violence here. My brother left for the U.S. many years ago, and he still lives in Chicago with a good job and beautiful family now that he has a green card but I will be truthful when I say he did not enter the country properly. He used a Mexican coyote, what they call people smugglers, and I thought I could do the same thing but this turned out not to be true and when I tried to get across the border, my journey turned into a nightmare. I made it through Guatemala quite easily. There was a lot

of movement between our two countries and the men at border control didn't even ask to see my passport. But when we got to the Mexican border, everything changed. There were people, bad people, waiting to help us get across into Mexico but when I say help us, all they wanted was money. Money to get into Mexico and even more money to get into the United States. We had no choice, we had to pay the coyotes. Those who didn't suddenly find themselves being picked up by la policia and sent back the way they came, or worse. The whole thing was like a game, a rigged game, and we never stood a chance. When I was picked up, I was about halfway through Chiapas in the south of Mexico,

walking with another group of migrants. We all tried to run, but I was too tired and too slow. The officer ran me down, put me in cuffs and then threw me in the back of his car. In Mexico they treat us Central Americans even worse than the United States. If I got caught in the US, at least I'd get food and water in jail. But getting arrested in Mexico made jail seem like a luxury. From what I'd heard, sometimes the Mexican police don't even take you to jail. They just drive us back to the Guatemalan border and kick us out onto the

other side. And since this cop was driving me out of town, I figured that's what was happening to me too. But no, we didn't go to any police station and we didn't drive to the border. When the cop finally stopped the car and told me to get out, I started to get really, really scared. We were at what looked like a run-down old farm, crumbling buildings being reclaimed by the land. The people he handed me over to didn't look like regular police. They all wore black military clothes, body armor. Some of them even had hand grenades attached to their chest too, like they were special forces soldiers. But they weren't soldiers, those men were cartel, and they were about to make my life torturous for seven long days.

As soon as they got their hands on me, the torture began. They beat me with wooden planks and the handles of their pistols. Then, when I was knocked out, they shocked me with live wires to wake me up again. And this went on for hours and hours, and the whole time I'm begging them to stop, to at least tell me what I did deserve all this pain. Finally, they began to ask me questions. My name, where I was from, names of my family. I told them everything. By that point I would have done anything to stop the pain. Next morning a man walked into the room that I was being held in and put a cell phone to my ear. I recognized the voice on the other end right away. It was my mother and she was crying. The cartel told me to tell my mother to send $5,000 and as soon as he did, my heart sank.

My family is poor, very poor. My mother and father only make around $400 a month and that's from working six days a week. There's no way they would be able to get that money. But I did as I was told and told my mother that I was being held prisoner and that only $5,000 would pay for my release. Obviously my mother is wailing and crying, telling me she doesn't have that kind of money and she tells the cartel men this as well.

They responded by shocking me with the wires again and putting the cell phone near my mouth so that my mother could hear my screams. She was broken by what she heard and told the cartel that she would do whatever she could to raise the money. She would call back when she had it but until then I would have to remain in the cartel jail. It didn't take me long to realize that I wasn't the only prisoner at this makeshift jail and that as bad as my treatment had been it could have been much worse. I didn't see much of what went on, but from what I heard, many of the other prisoners were members

of a rival group, maybe the golf cartel. They were being tortured for information and every single day I could hear their screams echoing around the old farmhouse. They were doing much worse things to them too, killing them, cutting them up, and then burning their corpses somewhere nearby. I know because you don't forget the smell of burning people, ever. I didn't see any of the carnage really, the sounds were bad enough, but once I saw something when I was being taken out for washing that will stay for me for the rest of my life. You have to understand, these cartel members have seen so much that they were completely numb to death and suffering.

It was like a joke to them. And I only stood that when I saw a cartel soldier with a severed arm of someone he had cut up. He used it to wave to another group of soldiers and all they did was laugh. It was the funniest joke of their lives. Another time, a cartel captain opened up my cell when I was sleeping and threw something at me. It was dark and I couldn't tell what it was at first. The man said, if your family don't get our money, this will happen to you too. And then he left. I reached out into the darkness to feel what it was and felt what I thought was hair on my fingertips.

I traced them down and felt something warm and soft and wet. Then I realized what it was. It was a human head. Two weeks went by before I heard from my family again Somehow, my brother in Chicago along with my family and friends back in Honduras Had managed to put together the ransom money and they had it wired to Mexico I was so relieved that I cried when I heard the news I felt a sensation like nothing I've ever felt before My family had saved my life.

I can barely describe the horror I felt when the cartel told me that I wouldn't be released. They wanted double the amount of money now that my family had proven they could raise the money. After that, the cartel said my family had stopped answering their phones, and I was crushed. The only question then was what they would do with me. At first I was sure they would just kill me. One day the cartel put me in a van and I thought that they would take me somewhere to shoot me but instead they transferred me to a different prison where there was at least a hundred other prisoners. Every day they would take out two or three of us for torture. Sometimes I couldn't think of anything because of the pain.

Other times I would just sit there wondering how people could be that bad. Every week about five migrants whose families had paid nothing were taken away and we never saw or heard from them again. One day I was taken into a room where for the first time in weeks my hands were untied and I was allowed to sit in a chair like a person again. A cartel man wearing a mask offered me a cigarette before explaining that I had a ticket out of prison. All I had to do was join them. They would send me into the jungle for three months of training. After that, I would be paid 5,000 US dollars a month and I'd be a full member of the Los Zetas cartel. All I wanted to do was see my family. That's all I wanted in the entire world, but when I asked if I could see them, even after the training, they said no.

I was told, the only way out of the Zetas is death or jail. I hesitated. I know I should have said yes, but the idea of never seeing my mother or father again was just too much. I couldn't say yes to them and flew into a rage. They beat me longer and harder than they ever had before and I don't remember anything for a while after that. The next thing I remember was someone shaking me awake and asking if I was okay. I had no idea where I was but I knew I was not with the cartel anymore. No one had asked how I was in more than a week. My eyes were so swollen from the beating that I could barely see and I asked this mysterious person where I was and they told me I was in Reynosa, near the border with Texas.

By that afternoon, I was in a hospital that was almost 900 miles from where I had first been picked up. I was vomiting blood. I could barely speak or see and my entire body ached from the beatings. It took me almost a week to recover, almost as long as I spent in that cartel jail. It was the worst time of my life, but things got much better for me after that. It turns out, at least from talking to my nurse and doctors, that they just dropped me off. My debt was paid. I was able to apply for asylum in the United States because I had been tortured in Mexico

and now I live near my brother and his family in Chicago. I hope to be able to bring my wife and children from Honduras too and I worry about them every single day And I hope I can bring them a better life here I know life in the United States is not perfect But I feel safe here I know my family can prosper in a place like Chicago Where there is a large Latino community

A place we can be safe from the horror and the violence that I went through. It's like something out of a horror movie. Strewn among a thick blanket of ash on the floor of a single-story house are all the accoutrements of imprisonment, torture, and slaughter. Bloodstained clothes, plastic cable ties, rusty machetes, scorched bone fragments. The pure horror of the scene punctuated by the bloody handprints on the walls. Outside, just a few feet away, stands a traditional brick oven that was once used to make the traditional Mexican corn dish, Zacahuil.

But after the Los Zetas drug cartel took over the ranch in 2011, its purpose changed dramatically, as the Zetas began using it to incinerate its victims. The practice has become so common in northern Veracruz, where the gore-soaked house stands, that, to Zacahuil, has become a euphemism referring to the incineration of human corpses. And to the forensic investigators, whose job it is to sift through the ashes for fragments of human bone, teeth, and nails, it's just another day at the office. As this particular kitchen in La Gajera is just one of twelve that have been found over recent months.

The Mexican drug cartel known as Los Zetas came into existence when a group of ex-special forces operators who had deserted their post to become enforcers for the Gulf cartel decided they want a bigger cut of the profits. Instead of negotiating with their employers, they broke away entirely, taking all of their brutally effective expertise with them. They randomly massacred entire buses full of innocent people, recorded and distributed videos of them beheading their rivals with chainsaws, and single-handedly perpetrated the worst atrocity in Mexico's war on drugs, the San Fernando Massacre, in which 193 people were executed by the Zetas in just over four days at a ranch out in Tamaulipas. But that number is but a drop in the water compared to the quarter of a million Mexican lives lost since the beginning of Felipe Calderon's campaign against the drug cartels, a conflict that turned out to be a messy soup of shifting alliances,

armed militia groups, and deep-running state corruption that U.S. and Mexican authorities seem to be attempting to eat with a fork. Conservative estimates based on government reports suggest that up to 60,000 Mexicans have been disappeared in Los Zetec kitchens over the past 15 years. Yet there have only been six Mexican federal court convictions on charges of forced disappearance. One of the reasons behind the horrifyingly low number of convictions is that the disappearances aren't the responsibility of just one criminal group and are done so for a variety of reasons. Government forces of cartel groups, sometimes working in tandem,

are thought to kidnap, murder, and vanish people for organ harvesting, slavery, ransoms, or to suppress political opponents. Sometimes in Mexico, local government or police forces are so corrupt that they refuse to investigate cartel charnel houses, and it's down to grassroots organizations such as the 5th National Search Brigade for the Disappeared to uncover the cartel's grisly work all on their own. And it was the 1st National Search Brigade that uncovered the cartel kitchens in Veracruz. Under the protection of a heavily armed police task force, volunteers spent two whole weeks scouring northern Veracruz for hidden killhouses and mass graves.

They found a number of hidden killhouses, but perhaps even more disturbing were the makeshift prisons that they uncovered. Places where those that have offended the cartels are left to rot in deep, dark places, fed only the bare minimum until they simply lose their minds. Volunteer groups also collect DNA samples from willing members of the public, forming a kind of amateur genetic society to combat gross state negligence that is almost certainly exacerbated by bribery and corruption. One of the volunteers who searched the house that day is a woman named Angelis. Angelis was personally affected by the mass disappearances when her own son vanished in March of 2016. He disappeared from the city of Pozarica, and the prevailing theory is that Angel

was kidnapped by state police officers before being handed over to the drug cartels. But why they would do such a thing is complete guesswork for Angelis, who has since explained that she has received no response from the relevant authorities. I have no doubt that those bones are from human beings, she says as she searches the property. Maybe they're from my son, or the children of my comrades, and we'll never find them. Separate searches found six beheaded bodies, children's skulls, femur, pelvic and jaw bones, and hundreds of charred bone fragments. The involvement of actual serving police officers in cartel disappearances and botched or non-existent investigations are a reoccurring theme in the testimonies of Mexican civilians.

A well-known instance of this was the kidnapping of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa College in 2014. An official government report discovered the students were kidnapped by municipal police officers, then handed over to a drug gang before they simply vanished from the face of the earth. Following his 2011 arrest by Mexican Marines, a Losetes capo named Karim gave a signed statement to federal prosecutors. In it, he not only admitted to being an ex-police officer, but also detailed the locations of two other kitchens that the cartel used to cook people. Both kitchens happened to be close to Poza Rica,

the very same place that Angelis' son went missing. Karim also admitted that he and his colleagues paid $22,500 a month to corrupt police officers in the state of Veracruz, and that he had dozens of officers on his payroll. This explains why the local government of Veracruz took very little action against cartel killhouses, complaints, and reports simply weren't being acted upon because it was in their interest to keep the killhouses operating. For Alejandro Alvarez, a volunteer with the search brigade,

the scene at La Gajera was the worst thing he had ever seen, worse than any horror film. But Alejandro is also quick to add that La Gajera kill house is not the least bit unique. Practically the whole country is a mass grave, he said during an interview with the members of the Mexican press. The whole world needs to know that people were dissolved in acid in Mexico because the government allowed it to happen. One day there will be monuments throughout the country, like in Germany. Plaques with faces, names, and stories of the disappeared, as a reminder of what happened in these places, as a way to say, never again. Another volunteer present at the La Gajera house is named Mario Vergara, who has been searching for his brother Tomas.

Tomas disappeared on July 5th, 2012, not far from where the 43 Ayotzinapa students went missing. Mario explained to a gaggle of local journalists that those who search for their disappeared relatives face a mammoth task, as some methods of extermination leave no traces of the victims behind. We once went to an area where they were feeding them to crocodiles. Of course there wasn't a trace, Vergara said. So how are we going to make the government understand that people disappear when there's nothing left? The cartel have also been known to dissolve bodies in acid, or to cremate them at extremely high temperatures so that not a single fragment of bone remains. The horror of dissolving corpses

in sulfuric acid or murdering hundreds at a time is obvious enough, but perhaps the most terrifying soul-crushing aspect of these cases is that the very people that should be trusted to protect the public are either complicit or refuse to act on the tens of thousands of disappearances. In the majority of the western world, we trust that the police have our best interests at heart and are shocked and appalled whenever this proves to be false. But in Mexico, it seems the police are just as much a threat to happiness and prosperity as the drug cartels they claim to fight. The End In 1910, a revolution kicked off ten years of political and cultural turmoil that transformed the Mexican state. But much like any other revolution, such drastic change was paid for in blood, and a series of violent conflicts tore through the Mexican countryside. As a result, Mexican refugees poured into Texas in the hopes of escaping a brutal civil war that

didn't discriminate between soldier or civilian. So many Mexicans sought refuge north of the border that the Mexican population more than tripled from 1910 to 1920, and it didn't take long for that chaos of the revolution to spill over the border into the United States. From around 1910 to 1914, a group known as the Carancistas launched a series of raids into the U.S., violent forays onto ranch lands to steal livestock and valuables to ride back over the border with. Tensions escalated as Texas Rangers retaliated with a sequence of counter raids, seeking vengeance for the spilt blood of innocents, and by January of 1915, a Mexican group known as the Los Sedicionistas was baying for blood.

They came up with what was called the Plan of Santiago, a scheme which called for a race-based conflict that would rid the American border states of their Caucasian population, paving the way for eventual annexation by the Mexican government. Although a full-scale invasion of the United States never took place, the seditionistas were steadfast in their commitment to causing chaos north of the border and actually took on companies of United States Army infantry who attempted to repel their attacks. Naturally, such escalating violence led to increasing tensions between the two nations and that tension wasn't just confined to governments or militaries.

And increasingly, Mexican-Americans and refugees alike found themselves being hunted down by shadowy gangs of hateful vigilantes, beginning a period that would come to be known in Spanish as La Matanza, The Massacre On November 2nd, 1910, 20-year-old migrant worker Antonio Rodriguez was returning home from his day's labor. He has recently moved to Rock Springs, Texas in search of work and was said to be grateful to have escaped the chaos of the Mexican Revolution for a better life in the U.S. But on a cool November evening, Antonio found himself under arrest for the murder of an American citizen. Furious local Texans were so enraged by the murder that they didn't even wait to give Antonio a trial, and during the night, a lynch mob sprang him from his jail cell, then walked him out to a bonfire they had built in the street outside. Then, to the horror of all in attendance, the mob threw the young migrant worker onto the flames,

watching him burn as his screams echoed through the dusty frontier streets. Antonio was the first victim of La Matanza, a young man who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The following June, another young Mexican named Antonio Gomez was walking through his hometown in Thorndale, Texas, when he was approached by a group of angry-looking men. They accused Antonio of being a seditionista raider, something the 14-year-old was entirely innocent of. After all, he was American born and raised, the son of two first generation immigrants. But the mob wasn't interested in his side of the story, and as they tried to take his life right then and there, Antonio chose to defend himself. In doing so,

he ended up killing a German man by the name of Charles Zeeschung. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, accuse the boy of murder, and put him in a position where he had to kill in order to save his own life. Local law enforcement saw that the townsfolk were ready and willing to dole out their own brand of mob justice, so they were quick to place Antonio under arrest so they could keep him safe in a jail cell. Yet as the sheriff and his men attempted to move Antonio to the county jail over in Cameron to further ensure his safety, they found themselves being intercepted in an ambush by a masked mob, who forced the lawman to hand over the captive Antonio at gunpoint.

The mob then put a noose around Antonio's neck and hanged him from a nearby tree. The poor boy's family only got the news when they were chased out of town the following day of the same men that had taken their son from them. La Montanza peaked in January of 1918 when B Company of the Texas Rangers surrounded the village of Port Veneer in Presidio County. Led by Captain James Fox Monroe and accompanied by a detachment of the 8th Cavalry Regiment, the Texas Rangers roused the most Mexican-American residents from their bed at around 2 a.m. The men were separated from the women, with the fighting age males being led away to a secluded spot on the edge of the Pueblo. There, the Rangers massacred them,

firing off every single round they had into their victims until all fifteen were lying bullet-ridden in puddles of their own warm blood. Word of the massacre spread quickly, and as news of the poor veneer massacre reached the ears of Mexicans all over Texas, they decided they'd had enough. There they were, trapped between the violent civil war that had engulfed their homeland and the hatred and suspicion of those north of the border, with many Mexican immigrants deciding that it would be better to die on home soil instead of being hunted down in a foreign land. But the terrifying thing about La Montanza isn't so much the horrendous violence that the innocent were subjected to, but that the same sour sentiment seems to have been echoed in recent years. During the summer of 2019, descendants of those murdered during La Montanza spoke of their concerns regarding the anti-Mexican sentiment they felt

was re-entering American discourse. Just a few months later, Patrick Crucius walked into the El Paso branch of Walmart, killing 23 people in just six minutes. Police believe a manifesto with white nationalists and anti-immigrant themes posted on the online message board 8chan shortly before the attack was written by Crucius. It cites the years earlier Christchurch mosque shooting in New Zealand and the right-wing conspiracy theory known as The Great Replacement as inspiration for the attack. 100 years after La Montanza, and the same poisonous hatred still persists among those fearful enough to believe that simple migrant workers constitute some kind of dangerous invasion. And in doing so,

they play into the hands of those on both sides of the border who wish to exploit and divide us. In early 2010, the Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas violently split from their parent, Golf Cartel, kicking off a violent conflict between the two groups that left hundreds dead. The first set-piece battle occurred in the border town of Reynosa, kicking off a violent conflict between the two groups that left hundreds dead. The first set-piece battle occurred in the border town of Reynosa, but the fires of war quickly spread to nearby Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros. In the midst of violence and panic, authorities and media initially attempted to downplay the situation. But it wasn't long before the Gulf cartel began to string up the bodies of slain Zetas from light poles, and it wasn't so easy to sweep the gang wars under the rug.

The Zetas hit back hard, and the Gulf Cartel knew that if they wanted to end the war quickly and relatively bloodless, they would have to launch a critical strike deep in the heart of the Zeta stronghold, San Fernando. The Zetas were suddenly on the back foot and losing the prized territory of San Fernando would be a huge blow to their fledgling operation. The municipality of San Fernando is a virtual spider web of dirt roads that connect with Monterrey, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa and Montemoros. Making it a prized territory for drug traffickers. The Zetas were primarily low on manpower and so, drastic measures had to be taken to find new recruits. The first signs of the Zetas' brutal new recruitment tactic came to light in August of 2010. Mexican naval infantry made a horrifying discovery at the rural compound in the San Fernando area The dead bodies of 72 migrant workers 58 men and 14 women appeared to have been straight up executed

And the reason behind such a slaughter was a complete mystery Up until an Ecuadorian survivor showed up at a nearby military checkpoint He had faked his death in order to escape from what he described as a cartel training camp. Kidnapped individuals would be held to ransom, but once their families paid the money owed, the Zetas would simply deny their captives freedom and instead force them to join their ranks. Those who could not raise any ransom money or refused to join them would be murdered in cold blood The Zetas routinely targeted undocumented migrants since they had little recourse or ways to defend themselves

Authorities believed that such drastic, brutal actions would be short-lived given their horrific nature and the ongoing cartel conflict but, as it turned out, the horror had only just begun. Throughout March of 2011, several public transportation buses that were heading to Reynosa were hijacked in the San Fernando area. Authorities found a few of the buses completely abandoned and burned out in a few isolated spots in the surrounding countryside, but what happened to the passengers was a complete mystery for several weeks, at least up until April 6th when Mexican authorities found 59 bodies

and eight clandestine mass graves, with most being identified as the missing passengers. This discovery led officials to acknowledge that the Mexican drug cartels had begun to inflict fear through a new and terrifying method, stopping random buses and removing passengers, some never to be seen again. Two weeks before the bodies were found, there were reports of buses being hijacked by the cartels near San Fernando, where cartel members would stop the bus, select passengers, take them hostage, with the goal being recruitment, extortion, and terror. By the time the death toll reached 72, bus lines in Tamaulipas refused to

take people to San Fernando until the situation was resolved. Investigators began to mention that those killed were not immigrants, like the previous massacre of the 72 migrants in 2010, but fellow Mexican citizens. Houston Chronicle journalist Dane Schiller interviewed an alleged cartel member who explained Los Zetas had been using an ancient Roman gladiator blood sport to groom new assassins and to find recruits for their organization. The kidnapped victims were forced to fight to the death with other prisoners. Men were given knives, hammers, and machetes, and were ordered at gunpoint to fight for their lives like a gladiator-style contest. The winners were ordered to go on missions and shoot at rival drug cartel members elsewhere.

The dead were buried in mass graves, with almost all the corpses found in the mass graves had evidence of blunt force trauma. A cartel member on trial in Laredo, Texas testified that the fighting contests between the kidnapped victims were ordered by Miguel Trevino Morales, a high-ranking Zeta lieutenant, and that they were used to make the killers lose their fear. The situation is so bad that Mexican Federal Highway 101, which extends from the border city of Montemoros to Ciudad Victoria, is known by local residents as the Highway of Death. Those who traveled through this highway in 2010 and 2011 used to see burned vehicles,

bullet shot trucks on the side of the road, and dead bodies often decapitated that the cartels would leave behind. Others who have traveled through this highway and have survived carjackings and checkpoints the organized crime groups have installed from Padilla to San Fernando have reported what happens on the highway. A survivor saw four SUVs all gray and with tinted windows, adding that everyone was armed. The violence and constant carjackings were so frequent that bus lines avoided Highway 101 by driving miles out of their way. Another survivor stated that heavily armed men would stop buses at roadblocks and then force women and young girls

at gunpoint, strip them naked, violate them, and then drive away in trucks, leaving the passengers traumatized. One bus driver, who said he had avoided being stopped thus far, claimed that another bus driver at the station had said that 12 people were pulled off the bus just 30 minutes before him. Other witnesses claimed that once the buses were stopped, gunmen would storm the bus and point at certain passengers and say, you, you're coming down, and take them at gunpoint. The buses were then ordered to leave. Highway 101 is the biggest and most important transportation system in the state of Tamaulipas,

and it connects the state with Montemoros and Texas with the rest of Tamaulipas, and it connects the state with Montemoros and Texas with the rest of Tamaulipas. Local residents mention that there's only traffic on this highway during daylight. As of 2012, they mention that the cartels still kill people in San Fernando, leading to the US issuing travel warnings south of the border. On June 17, 2011, federal police captured Edgar Montillo, a high-ranking boss in Los Altos and the man responsible for the killing of 72 migrants in 2010. He confessed during interrogation that more than 600 bodies were buried in the clandestine mass graves near San Fernando, unconfirmed by Mexican authorities. Members of an anti-kidnapping group suggest that the mass graves in San Fernando contain more than 500 dead, but that the government of Tamaulipas has not released such information because of

the political troubles it may instigate. Just a few months prior, Mexican authorities captured Martin Luna, a sub-boss of Los Zetas in San Fernando, and responsible for at least 217 killings in that locality. Along with Luna, 11 additional Zeta gunmen were apprehended, men linked to the killing of a policeman and investigator who were covering the maskers. In addition, Estrada Luna was one of the masterminds of the massacre of the 72 migrants and of the mass graves found. He was regarded by the DEA as one of the most aggressive leaders in Los Zetas organization. Yet no matter how many Los Zetas gunmen or bosses are arrested or killed, the organization and the ideals it stands for live on without them. The cartels operate in an environment where narcotics, money, and brutal violence rule all, and unfortunately, there's no shortage of people willing to use one to get the others.

But what's particularly disturbing about the cartel is that they seem willing to use methods that we might normally associate with a major terrorist organization. The low value these men place on life is the most shocking thing of all, but the power that attitude brings must be far too intoxicating for some to refuse, and as the ranks of the cartel are swelled even by those who hate or fear them, a fear of this cycle of violence is doomed to repeat itself, over and over again, until there are no more people left to kill. Since early July of 2017, there have been reports from almost 200 travelers describing unexplainable injuries, illnesses, and deaths after drinking alcohol at Mexican tourist resorts. Hundreds of vacationers have returned with tales of blacking out after drinking even the smallest amounts of booze before waking up to find that they were robbed, assaulted, hospitalized, or even taken to jail. But when the victims tried to report the incidents,

they encountered unhelpful or downright hostile resort workers, hospital staffers, and police officers. Even the U.S. State Department seemed slow or unwilling to help, but at least they were quick to explain that it was because they were unable to investigate or prosecute crimes on foreign soil. Shockingly, when these tourists attempted to warn others of their experiences using the website TripAdvisor, the company responded by deleting dozens of posts, citing trolling as their reason for doing so. But what exactly was the cause of these mysterious blackouts? Who might be responsible for them?

And why did the victims come up against such resistance when they attempted to report them. In February of 2018, Wisconsin couple Richard and Marion Peterson decided to treat themselves, escaping the frigid north for a week-long cruise in the Gulf of Mexico. At some point, the cruise stopped for a day at Nachi Cocon Beach Club, a private resort in Cozumel, where the Petersons ordered a pair of margaritas from the bar. The drinks were whisked over to the luxury beach canopy the 60-year-old couple were occupying, but no less than 30 minutes after their initial toast, the couple began to feel violently ill. It wasn't long before Richard and Marion were stumbling down the beach and emptying their stomachs into the water.

Resort staff offered to call a paramedic, but the couple declined, fearing that they would miss their cruise ship's departure. But when they managed to make it back on board, they blacked out for about two hours, awaking to find that they had almost no memory of the day's events. It was at that point it dawned on the couple that they might well have been drugged or at least given tainted alcohol. Even earlier in May of 2017, the Drinkwine family of Castle Pines, Colorado took their three children south of the border for a summer vacation. And there was an added bonus for 19-year-old Bobby Drinkwine. Given that the legal drinking age in Mexico is 18,

his parents had given their permission for Bobby to have the odd beer with his dinner. Then one night, after some entertainment at the Averroes La Parisa Del Mar Resort, Bobby decided to hang around the bar after his parents went to bed at around 11. 45 minutes later, Jennifer Drinkwine, Bobby's mother, returned to the bar after getting a bad feeling in her gut Only to find her son to be dangerously intoxicated, stumbling around and completely incoherent Bar staff told Jennifer that Bobby had only had one drink that evening, a shot of tequila An amount of alcohol that would have had little to no effect on the six foot tall, two hundred pound teenager. Bobby's mother called for a golf cart to transport him back to his room given that he could barely walk and resort staff had to hold on to Bobby tightly to keep him from

falling off the cart. We both were just as scared to death, she said. We thought we were going to lose him. By that point, Bobby was turning pale and his eyes were rolling into their sockets. His parents wasted no time in calling paramedics. But when the emergency medical personnel arrived on scene, they refused to give Bobby any treatment, claiming that he was simply intoxicated and there was no medical emergency. Bobby's parents pleaded with them to help but the EMTs refused to even help Bobby onto a stretcher. It was like just touching him would be a death sentence for them. Bobby's parents had to lift their own son into a waiting taxi so they could take him to a nearby hospital for treatment. At the hospital, doctors took the same view as the EMTs and falsely deduced that Bobby was drunk.

However, a subsequent medical exam showed that his blood alcohol content was just less than 0.02%, meaning Bobby was well within the drunk driving limit. For all intents and purposes, Bobby was sober as a judge, so why was he having such an adverse reaction to whatever he drank? Thankfully, doctors had Bobby stay overnight so they could monitor his condition and over the next eight hours or so, he slowly recovered. But Jennifer Drinkwine is convinced that her son would have died if she hadn't gone back to that bar to check on him. They're trying to make out like these kids are reckless, she said,

but they're not. Something else is going on here. Then, just a few months later in July of 2017, Jennifer Santo and her family were staying at an all-inclusive resort in Tulum. Neither Jennifer nor her family had heard any stories of counterfeit alcohol or tourists blacking out and naturally spent their first full day in Mexico sunning themselves by the pool and drinking at the swim-up bar. Not long into their afternoon of doggy paddling and cocktails, the Santel kids noticed that their parents were acting a little out of character. They seemed extremely drunk despite having only had a few glasses of purple rain and began vomiting and blacking out after being escorted back to their rooms. Obviously the incident was pretty much identical to others that had occurred but in this

case Jennifer Santel was able to provide some crucial insight into the nature of the blackouts. When I woke up at 7pm it was an instant awakening, she said. Itouts. When I woke up at 7pm, it was an instant awakening, she said. It was like when I woke up from anesthesia after my gallbladder surgery. It's different than waking up from sleep or with a hangover, and I suspected that we were drugged. The various media outlets reached out to the resorts in question, who admitted they were aware of the incidents given their prolific nature, but they also say that a number of investigations into the potential foul play have brought up nothing. This is in stark contrast with reports that the Mexican police have had to shut down half a dozen black market tequila distilleries owned and operated

by the cartels that are thought to have produced hundreds of thousands of gallons of counterfeit alcohol. But what makes this counterfeit alcohol so dangerous is that it's produced using a substance known as methanol. Sometimes known by its other name, wood alcohol, methanol is a solvent more commonly found in things like windshield washer fluid and even in the smallest of doses can prove to be extremely toxic. What we appear to be looking at is a huge cartel conspiracy to flood the Mexican market with counterfeit tequila, and the unwillingness of authorities to deal with the complaints of tourists is down to the very tangible threat of torture, death, and disappearance. The terrifying truth of the matter is that,

thanks to the Mexican cartels, you could take a shot of tequila in a Mexican resort and not know if it's the real McCoy or something considerably more deadly. I live just outside of Mission, Texas, which is maybe only 30 or 40 minutes drive from the Mexican border and a city called Reynosa. People make a big deal out of border security, but it's actually not entirely unusual for people to take day trips over to Mexico from where I'm from. You and your family can meet up, drive over the border, and all get authentic Mexican food while picking up medication and designer clothes for a fraction of American prices. As for me, I also have family in Reynosa so me and my parents ventured over the border even more frequently than most. Those tended to be all day events too because my mom and my aunt would talk for hours and hours and

it wasn't out of the ordinary for us to drive back to the United States after the sun had set. So, this one trip to visit my aunt back in 2009 started off like any other day. Hadn't heard anything on the news that might have changed our minds about traveling. We didn't have a care in the world. We ended up shopping like all day, having dinner with relatives and it's around midnight by the time we start thinking about heading back. Since I was the oldest, mom put me in charge of getting my little brother and sister into the car then tells us to wait there for her. We're pretty tired by that point so after a few minutes of

sitting in the car I fell asleep, just straight up passed out. Next thing I know I'm suddenly awakened by a blinding light. I'm super startled and confused and it takes me a minute to realize what's going on. But in front of the car I can see what was unmistakably the shape of my mom silhouetted by some really bright headlights. I start trying to calm down my little brother and sister in the back seat as they seem to immediately detect that something is wrong and start freaking out. Shortly after that, my mom is joined by my aunt and as they're standing there, they're visibly shaking, like I can actually see them trembling from a couple of feet away and they were that scared. My eyes finally adjust to the bright light and I can see that the vehicle with the bright headlights is this massive lifted Ford F-250.

This thing was a monster and I had no idea who was driving it, only that my mom and aunt seemed to be terrified of them. The Ford's engine starts revving really loud and in the back seat my siblings were wailing so I had no idea what my mom was saying but her body language told me that she was pleading with the people in the truck, like practically begging them. Whoever is in the truck begins to rapidly flicker his high beams, filling our car with blinding light then immediately thrusting it back into darkness. Slowly it dawns on me what's actually happening. The border cartels use big black off-road vehicles just like that and they're not just

drug traffickers. They'll do just about anything illegal to make money so they're not above kidnapping everyday Mexicans and holding them for ransom. The black Ford begins to rev its engines again almost like it's taunting my mother, daring her to move. I couldn't just leave my mom and aunt out there alone, so I went to climb out of the passenger seat to back them up. I don't know what help I would have been, but I couldn't just sit there and do nothing. Only as soon as I opened the door, my mom and aunt spin around and start yelling at me to stay in the car. Hearing the raw fear in their voices made me all the more terrified, and I was really starting to lose it as I sat back in the seat.

That horrible feeling of helplessness had me panicking so hard and there was this stomach churning moment when I thought I might not make it out of there. I'll never forget what happened next. All of a sudden, my mom and aunt both bolted for their doors. I thought I might not make it out of there. I'll never forget what happened next. All of a sudden, my mom and aunt both bolted for their doors. The second she moved, I heard the truck begin to shift into gear and I knew we were in serious trouble. My mom moved faster than I'd ever seen her move before, ripping open the door and hurling herself into the driver's seat and waiting for my aunt to enter as well. Every one of us is in tears as she fires up our little Nissan and tears past the cartel truck before had a chance to react. But as we speed off down this bumpy, unpaved road, the truck stayed close behind.

I look at my mom, and tears are just pouring down her face. My aunt is in complete shock, and she's praying in Spanish for God to help us as we start reaching speeds well over 70 miles per hour in a residential area. My mom, obviously filled with adrenaline and the motherly instinct to protect her children, drives like I've never seen her drive before. With the truck still in hot pursuit, my mom tells me to buckle up. I turn back to the truck one last time to see the windows rolled down and men peering out, possibly recording or taking photos of the back of my mom's vehicle.

My mom avoided traffic, nearly wrecking twice but was determined to not stop until we reached the US border. Only when we were about 5 miles or so from the border checkpoint did the black Ford stop following us. I felt like I'd held my breath the entire time, and seeing the lack of headlights behind us brought about a kind of relief I'd not felt before or since. My mom actually ran a red light on the way back too. She didn't care either, she just floored it until we were back on US soil. We reported the incident to the US Border Patrol who took statements from us all but really couldn't do much else. The craziest thing was how quickly my brother and sister fell asleep once things had calmed down.

I don't think they knew what was actually happening and I found myself envying their blissful ignorance. We didn't go back to Mexico until 2014 when one of my other aunts passed away. We still go back from time to time, but it's so unsafe that I hate it. Helicopters patrolling the air so low to the ground you can see the officers' fingers on the triggers of their on-board turrets, like something out of a war movie. I wish I could see more of Mexico. I mean, it's where my heritage lies, but I've heard and experienced too many things to want to go exploring anytime soon. I just hope that one day, Mexico solves the problem of the cartels,

and people can live in peace again. The End There was a point a couple of years back where I decided that discovering Airbnb was the best thing that ever happened to me. And the weirdest thing was that the whole thing had blossomed from one of the worst things to ever happen to me. I've known friends and colleagues that have lost a parent and just sort of took it on the chin. Their death came at an advanced age or after a long illness. It was something they could accept. But when I lost my dad out of the blue in 2017, it hit me really hard. He was fit and healthy, a really careful sort of bloke and I doubt anyone could say the same for the drunk driver that plowed into him that Thursday evening. The only thing that was supposed

to cushion the blow were the savings and life insurance payouts that the family got. I mean, it was a lot of money. Dad must have been squirreling it away for years, enough to pay for my little sister to go traveling for what turned out to be a heck of a long time. But I didn't want the money. I just wanted Dad back. I had to wait for the grief to subside before I could decide what to do with it and instead of just splurging it away, I decided to make an investment. It was around that time that a friend mentioned Airbnb and how an uncle of hers was making a killing from renting out a flat they owned in the city center. It was a bit daunting spending that amount of money but I took the plunge. Then after refurbishing the flat and posting an advert on Airbnb,

I had my first booking within a week. The income was unreal. Within six months I'd made half the money back so I invested in another place. A year in I was flush with cash and even though I kept my full time job, it got to the point where I didn't actually have to work anymore. Cue fancy holidays, a huge car upgrade, life was good. Then, boom, COVID hits and my Airbnb income completely dried up. Remember when we all thought COVID would be over in a few weeks or months? What sweet summer children we were and I was no different. I had no idea it'd get so bad that I'd have to straight up rent one of the flats to be able to keep up my lifestyle.

But luckily, it was a seller's market. You wouldn't think that'd be the case during a pandemic, but it suited me just fine. I was inundated with applications for one of the flats. I mean I got literally hundreds of people applying on that open rent website. Finding the right tenant was a lot more work than I thought it would be. Interviewing all the various applicants was a pain. There was some right weirdos applying for the tenancy and the more I dawdled over who to choose the more money I was losing. But then one morning I wake to an email from a prospective tenant telling me they'd be

willing to pay 350 extra in rent every month but that they'd have to move in by the end of the week. They didn't even want a viewing, they were happy enough to move in based on the photos I posted online. 350 quid extra was 50% over the odds and way too good for an offer for me to turn down when I gave the bloke a ring. They seemed normal enough. It was a pretty much done deal. All I had to do was hand him the keys. But when I actually met the bloke last December to do a masked up, sanitizer soaked, socially distanced key handover, they seemed anything but normal. I'm all for wearing masks and stuff, don't get me wrong. I think we should be doing all we can to defeat this, but this guy was completely covered from head to toe. Black gaiter over his face, hat on, hood pulled over, gloves, the works. I had absolutely no idea who I was handing the keys to really, just that they identified themselves as Stefan and the same

name as the account that contacted me. He barely spoke and the whole interaction gave me a bad feeling so I tell him I'll come by in a couple of days to see how he was doing. He'd already paid me two months rent on top of his security deposit so I was basically stuck with him for the time being. I was starting to think my desperation for cash was about to get me in a lot of trouble. About a week later I give Stefan a ring to make sure he's settling in alright. I have to call him like six times before he answers and when he finally does, he seems in no mood to talk, but he still somewhat reluctantly agrees to let me stop by. I start worrying about what sort of state the flat is going to be in,

but little did I know that I wouldn't be seeing it at all. He refuses to open the door to me, citing social distancing and stuff, which I understand and respect, but there are ways to conduct a flat inspection without violating the whole six foot rule. I insist. He refuses. I insist some more. He refuses some more, and by the time it got to him threatening to call the police, any potentially good relationship we might have had goes right out the window. Right when he says that, I whip my mask down to make myself heard more clearly and I catch this horrendous smell in the air, one that's so bad that it actually silences me for a moment. I find myself putting my mask right

over my mouth and nose and the argument with Stefan trundles along with him agreeing to send me a video of the flat's current condition. The conversation ends, but I hang around for a minute to try to work out where the horrible smell is coming from. It seemed to permeate the entire corridor, like it was almost impossible to work out its exact source and with it being so intense, nor did I want to. I just prayed it wasn't coming from the apartment I just rented out. As you can imagine, I'm quite annoyed at that point and as I walk back across the street towards the curtains closed but had opted to hang a weird kind of mask in the window. I think it was a paper mache or something, and it must have been really old because it looked all shriveled with long wiry black hairs framing this pretty creepy looking face. I remember letting out an audible sigh like, Christ almighty, this is going to get so much worse before it gets better.

And suddenly the mask just disappears back into the curtains. It wasn't just some creepy old piece of decor, someone had been wearing it and watching me while they were doing so. Stefan then sends me a video of the flat which looked fine, only there was one corner of the living room that he apparently refused to show me. I pressed him on it. He pretended not to know what I was talking about and I just decided to quit while I was ahead. It took a week before I started getting complaints. Other tenants in the building who must have gotten my number from the management company started calling me up to complain about the noise and the smell coming from flat 20, the one I owned.

But then after a while, the calls stopped being complaints and started being more like warnings. Warnings about the things they'd heard coming from Stefan's flat and how the smells had gotten considerably worse. But still, Stefan refused any kind of formal flat inspection and he still does even now. I drove past the flat about two weeks ago now, one evening when I was driving home from work. I'd had a late one at the office so it was about nine at night when I decided to take a little detour to check out the flat. I was met with almost immediate regret. Apparently Stefan only uses red bulbs to light the flat after dark, and I'm staring up at the window like, what's this freak up to now?

When I see two people like running or jumping around the living room, completely naked by the looks of things. He's obviously not the only one living there now, despite there only being his name on the lease. I suppose this isn't even really a story because it doesn't have an end yet. I've already decided that I'm not going to renew Stefan's lease of the flat and that when his two months are up, I'll ask him to leave or else get the authorities involved. But that's about the only thing I'm certain of right now.

I've no idea what he's doing in my bloody property, what's making that bad smell or who the other person is. Things have gotten pretty bad at this point as I knew they would, but I have a really grim gut feeling that they can get infinitely worse and that getting Stefan out of the flat is going to be much more trouble than I ever imagined it would. It's not even worth the money anymore. No amount of money is worth finding out that he's done something truly awful in there. I'll try to keep you guys updated in the future if I'm still in a fit state to do so, because only God knows what untold horrors await for me in that

flat, and God knows what Stefan will resort to in his efforts to keep me, and everyone else, from finding out. Wish me luck, guys. Things are definitely about to get weird. My family loves Christmas. We're some of the most annoying people that start putting up the Christmas decorations in mid-November. And playing Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You for the first time every year has become a bit of a ritual. My husband and my three daughters always wear their matching pajamas, which I love. And although cooking Christmas dinner can be a bit stressful some years, I just adore being that family that all the relatives flock to when the festive season comes around. There's only one big problem. We're Australian.

Time for a quick explanation. In America and Europe, Christmas takes place during the winter, obviously, but the months surrounding December are some of the hottest in the Aussie calendar. Down under, you are more likely to be sunbathing with your Santa hat on than sipping warm eggnog by a log fire. But just like everywhere else, pretty much all of our festive imagery consists of snow-covered winter wonderlands, fields caked in snow, and little robins red-breasted and nestled in the bough of a pine tree. But where we live, in a place called Darwin, it's a lot more palm tree than pine tree.

Like my two kids have never even seen snow and in 2019 we wanted to change that. So even though people called us crazy for doing it, we booked flights over to a freezing cold Europe in late November. The whole trip was absolutely amazing. I found the flights to be a bit of a pain, but seeing some of Europe's most incredible sights given a festive twist by a dusting of snow, it was worth every minute of being stuck in that cramped demon tube. We saw Prague, Berlin, Rome, Copenhagen, Paris, and London. But what my family seemed to be looking forward to the most was seeing Ireland for the first time. The kids seemed to have it in their heads that it was some magical place full of fairies and such and could barely contain their excitement. While the prospect of

drinking Guinness straight from the tap had my husband almost as giddy as our two little girls. We arrive at this little Airbnb out in the suburbs of Cork, a semi-detached rental that looked like something out of a storybook, and before anyone even puts their bags down, they're clamoring for the Wi-Fi password. Now, my husband works in IT and internet safety is something of a passion of his. Not just because it's his occupation, but because he know it'll help keep our daughters safe from some of the darker things that are out there in cyberspace. You'd have to ask him for all the details regarding the thing he does, but whenever we arrived at an Airbnb somewhere, my husband would like to scan the network to make sure it had parental locks and was otherwise secure. So, he's tapping away on his laptop as I'm having a quick cup of coffee when I notice this

particular look on his face, one I'd come to recognize as meaning, I don't like this at all. I take a seat next to him on the couch, leaning over to take a look at what's bothering him. All I can see is computer nonsense on the screen. I've never been very tech savvy, so much to my chagrin, I have to ask him to explain to me. He points to this line of text and explains that it told him that there was already a device connected to the wifi network when we arrived. He shows how he could account for all our phones and his laptop being connected, but there was one mystery device somewhere. Then he opens up another window and points

towards a little icon, one that was clearly a little picture of a camera. Me being me, I try and see the positive side, suggesting that it's a security camera installed on the exterior of the property, but my husband does a lap of the building and says he couldn't see any kind of device anywhere. It's at that point that he starts trying to work some of his IT magic, and a few minutes later, I hear him calling me back into the kitchen in one of those dad voices like something is wrong but I can't tip off the kids. His eyes are all wide as he points towards his laptop screen again and on it is a video feed of the bedroom our girls were planning on staying in.

Like a top-down view, as if the camera were on the ceiling. We just go running up to the girls room to find that the camera had been hidden ceiling. We just go running up to the girls room to find that the camera had been hidden inside a smoke detector that was directly over one of the beds. We still don't quite know who, but someone had been planning on watching our daughter sleep, which is just about one of the creepiest things that's ever happened to me and the family. My husband calls over the owner of the property right away to ask him why there was a camera installed the owner of the property right away to ask him why there was a camera installed in one of the kids bedrooms. At first the owner denied having CCTV on the property

in the first place and had the nerve to suggest that the video feed was coming from another property in the area as if I wouldn't recognize my own bloody children. My husband had to actually threaten to send them a screenshot of the video feed to get them to admit it and then they came out with a load of garbage about simply wanting to protect their assets. My husband then accused the person of being a voyeur and that he'd be reporting them to Airbnb, at which point they got all tongue-tied and couldn't think of anything to say and Then they just hung up. We called them out on being a creep and they didn't have a word to say in their own defense.

We were absolutely furious and thoroughly creeped out, having only narrowly avoided having that absolute dog staring at our kids all night. And even though it was quite late in the evening at that point, me and my husband got the kids to pack their things while we looked for a hotel nearby. It took us a good few months of emailing back and forth with Airbnb's customer complaints department but we eventually got the refund we were most definitely entitled to. Airbnb also reassured us that they'd banned the homeowner from renting properties using the service which did far more for my peace of mind than any amount of cash would have. I know there are people out there with those kinds of twisted desires and stuff but never for a second did I ever think I'd run into one myself, let alone on our dream Christmas vacation over to Europe. The only thing that

really worries me now is Airbnb's ability to keep this person and people like him off their platform altogether. My husband and I have pressed them on the systems they have in place to ensure their customers' safety, but I simply don't have any satisfactory answers. We made the point that this horrible voyeur could easily set up an account in the name of a friend or relative and simply continue recording people's kids against their knowledge, and the legalese email we received in response basically said, we have no idea what to do about it. And that's the fear I'm left with,

that somewhere out there is a little girl, lying peacefully in her bed, who has no idea that some Irish creep is watching them doing God knows what while he does so. In October of 2017, the 36-year-old Australian Ramis Januzi was going through a rather rough time in his life. He had been working as a bricklayer in recent years, but a long drawn out struggle with illegal substances had resulted in Ramis' lifestyle and health deteriorating rapidly. Drastic measures were needed and fast, but to his credit, Ramis had the presence of mind to understand that he needed to break from his old life entirely. And so, Ramis downloaded the Airbnb app and started browsing affordable,

rentable properties around his home city of Melbourne. Ramis didn't have a particularly large budget, so when he found a room for rent at a very reasonable price, he leapt at the chance to rent it. To Ramis, it didn't matter that the place had a couple of less than glowing reviews. He didn't care if the atmosphere wasn't friendly, he didn't care if the place had a couple of less than glowing reviews. He didn't care if the atmosphere wasn't friendly. He didn't care if the plumbing looked dodgy. He just needed somewhere that was away from his old haunts so he wouldn't be tempted to feed his addictions. What exactly happened during Ramis' first two weeks in the property isn't exactly clear, but it seemed that Ramis' roommates and he didn't exactly see eye to eye.

There was no kind of confrontation or animosity between them, but we know for certain that at some point, Ramis complained to a friend that he didn't like the vibes between himself and his housemates. Yet despite their apparent bad vibes, Ramis chose to extend his stay in the property which added an extra 210 Australian dollars to his bill. Yet on his final day at the property, Ramees was horrified to find that he had no money in his bank account. It was later claimed that this was because his employer had forgotten or neglected to pay him, but regardless of the reason, Rameiz had to face the music and tell the landlord that he didn't have the money to pay him. The landlord, a man named Jason Colton, was no fan of Ramiz. He was apparently extremely suspicious of his demeanor and had long suspected that he would be unable to pay the extra money to stay in the property's spare room.

Yet there's no way that Ramiz could possibly have suspected the extreme nature of Jason's reaction. He figured they'd be able to work something out, delay payment by a couple of days until Ramiz could get in touch with his employer. But it seems that Jason was not in the mood to discuss the matter like a gentleman, and what should have been a simple discussion turned into a living nightmare for Ramiz Januzi. Just as Ramiz was planning on talking to the landlord about his current financial situation, Jordan and the two other young men who lived at the property burst into his room to confront him. They had heard Ramees packing his belongings in the bedroom and assumed he was about to do a runner, as one of them later phrased it, which is why they seemed to be heading him off before he could do so. Ramees apologized profusely before showing Jason a

banking app on his phone, illustrating that he didn't have the money he owed. He offered to get in touch with his employer, and that he could probably get the money over to Jason over the days that followed. As he spoke, Jason's features turned from pale pink to deep red, and as he finished talking, his rage erupted in a fiery display of pure wrath. Jason grabbed hold of Vermice by the throat and pushed him up against the wall, choking the young man violently as he tried in vain to free himself. Jason wasn't exactly a giant, but he still towered over the small stature of Remise, on top of being considerably stronger than him. It was with Remise being in this completely helpless position that Jason began to pummel him mercilessly, throwing his fists into

his face over and over again until his nose and cheekbones were broken. What became clear much later is that Jason simply did not believe that Ramiz didn't have his money. The landlord had gotten it into his head somehow that Ramiz was trying to somehow get one over on him by showing him an empty bank account, when really he had the money stashed somewhere else. Jason continued to brutally assault Ramiz with the help of the two other men that resided at the property, and at some point, the confrontation spilled out into the front yard. The neighbor that had called the police later said that they saw a man limping from the front door of the property,

one who was trying to scream, but was unable to do so thanks to being choked by the enrage to Jason Colton. Ramiz tried all he could to escape, but Jason continually dragged him back onto the lawn, demanding that he check his bank account again to prove he wasn't lying. But when Remis once again showed him an account with less than 10 Australian dollars in it, instead of calming down and figuring something out, Jason's rage was renewed. Only this time, he wanted not just to physically hurt Ramiz, but to humiliate him too. The landlord then took a plastic pencil case from Ramiz's belongings, stripped him half naked, and proceeded to shove the pencil case somewhere it really didn't belong.

But Jason wasn't done yet. He began choking Ramiz, demanding he pay the rent money that was owed, but Remise was in no state to form a cohesive sentence. Instead of letting go to give him a chance to speak, Jason continued to keep Remise in a chokehold. Remise passed out, never to awaken again. With Remise in the mortuary, Jason was charged with first-degree murder. A neighbor of his later testified that the disturbance was so loud that she could hear it from a few houses away, the distinct sound of a man screaming at the top of his lungs. It sounded like aggressive male behavior, she told the prosecutor, and I wasn't going anywhere near that. The prosecution had ample evidence of Jason's guilt, as his police interviews are a disturbing mess of lies and counterclaims until he is confronted with the fact that his victim had actually passed away. At that, Jason stated that Ramis deserved everything he got. But Rameez didn't fight back.

He didn't pose a threat to the landlord at any stage. He was mercilessly beaten and choked to death on the front lawn of a small suburban home, all for just a few hundred dollars. The jury saw Jason for what he was, the lowest kind of scum, and convicted him of murder before a judge handed him an 11-year prison sentence. When we use services like Airbnb, we take a great deal of comfort in the flashy website and lose ourselves in the glossy photographs of our potential rentals. We're quick to forget all the company is doing is hooking us up with other regular people,

and that pretty much anyone can post an advertisement. How many other people like Jason are out there? How many other violent psychopaths are renting rooms to unwary strangers who would turn from tenants to victims at the first provocation? We should definitely all be careful who we interact with on websites like Airbnb because we might be renting rooms. We'll never leave. About five years ago, me and my husband went to a couple's holiday to Paris with a few friends of ours. I was awfully excited about the whole thing. A friend of mine had invited us to join her and her husband and some of the links she sent me were just gorgeous. She'd booked a two-bedroom Airbnb in this place called Palaisou, a quaint little French village about 15 minutes drive from Paris, which meant we could soak up a bit of French country living

in between a full day's shopping and dying in Paris itself. It seemed like it would be a dream weekend break for me. I mean, there's no place more romantic than Paris, right? So we get the Eurostar over to Paris, have a bit of lunch there, pick up a rental car, then drive out to the Airbnb. I was just buzzing. I'd be practicing the little bit of French I'd learn in school, and although I was a bit terrible, the French people were so nice about it. I'd heard that they'd be really rude and it was just lovely how that turned out to be just a

myth. Lunch was lovely and the house was just gorgeous. Me and a friend had a nice catch up while we explored the house and we let the boys be boys for a little while, fawning over how adorably French everything was. The back garden was amazing too, this big green lawn that just opened up into a dense patch of woodland at the end. I was in heaven. It was still a bit chilly out but the place was just serene and it really was so romantic. I had no idea that our little bubble of romantic bliss was about to be so horribly ruined.

We had this really lovely dinner in a little local brasserie, then wandered back to the Airbnb in the dark, admittedly a little drunk. Grateful to be back in the warmth, we carry on drinking in the Airbnb's kitchen for a while, and my friend's boyfriend is messing around and exploring all the cupboards and drawers in the kitchen. This is how he finds a flashlight, quite a cheap one from what I could tell but it prompted him to want to explore the dark woods at the end of the garden. We were all just joking about how he'd obviously be the first one to die in a horror movie but unfazed and a bit tipsy, he goes out nonetheless to explore the end of the garden. He's out there for about 10 minutes and meanwhile we're all just

chatting away, planning our little day trip into Paris the following morning and we just hear this scream. We all go quiet, realizing it's my friend's boyfriend who just screamed at the top of his lungs. He then comes running into the back door and starts asking, Who speaks the best French? Because we need to call the police right now. My boyfriend accused him of trying to pull a prank at first, but you could just tell he was genuinely scared and he honestly went white as a sheet. He's like, I swear on my mom's life, this is not a joke. We need to call the police. A bit of panic ensues before he finally blurts out that we're not in any obvious danger but we still need to get the police out to us because there's an actual dead

body in the woods at the back of the house. Our jaws are on the floor at this point and my boyfriend was still in such a state of disbelief that he demanded to go out and see it for himself. My friend's boyfriend, who was the one who found the body, starts saying, you don't want to do that man, honestly, she's not in a good way. The reason he was so freaked out is that it wasn't just a dead body, some poor elderly person that had fallen over and hit in their head or something. The guy said it was really obvious that this person had been killed, like they were a mess. We got the police out and thankfully one of them spoke really good English so my friend's boyfriend could tell them how he found the body. While that's going down, the rest of us are just

looking for somewhere else to stay for the night, settling on a four-star hotel in central Paris. The entire trip was ruined. We thought we could just duck out and enjoy the rest of the weekend, but the police wanted to talk to us the next day too. Apparently, if it wasn't for the obvious foul play, we'd have been free to leave. But basically, we'd wanted a romantic weekend away and ended up sort of being suspects in this random French person's murder. Obviously, we were finally cleared and we were able to travel back home, but the whole thing was just terribly horrifying. Weirdest thing was is that the owners asked us for good reviews afterwards, even though we found a dead body on their property. Of all the surreal, insane aspects of that trip, that took the cake. Okay, so this might sound like a bit of a weird one, because it's not like a spooky story. Our Airbnb wasn't haunted or anything, and I don't believe in stuff like that to begin with.

But when me and my girlfriend stayed at an Airbnb in Belgium, something happened that creeped us out so much that we had no choice but to leave the apartment and check into a hotel. I've had a mate of mine tell me I overreacted over this but just put yourself in my shoes. First proper morning of our little weekend getaway to Bruges. Me and the old ball and chain are getting ready to go out for breakfast when we realized that neither of us had packed any toothpaste. It was one of those I figured you'd do it kind of things. But it was no big drama since we could just brush our teeth and help ourselves to sketchy mints the owners had left for us.

But I do remember my girlfriend looking around in the bathroom just in case the owner had left us any and saying some throwaway thing like, I wish they'd left us some toothpaste. Boring, I know, I'll get to the point. We go out for breakfast, have a wander around Bruges, grab some toothpaste, then head back to the Airbnb. That night, I go to take a shower before bed and saw that my girlfriend had picked up the weirdest toothpaste that I'd ever come across in my entire life. Honest to god it looked like something you'd get out of a second world war ration pack with this eye-watering old-fashioned menthol smell to it. I have my shower, walk back into the bedroom

where my girlfriend is half asleep and I kinda poke fun at her for buying vintage toothpaste. She's knackered and half asleep like what are you on about, telling me to shut up and go to sleep etc etc. I had a wee giggle to myself then got into bed and tried to get some sleep. It was the weirdest thing because how did she not realize she'd picked up such weird old toothpaste? And that's when it hit me.

She didn't. She didn't realize because she didn't buy it. Which means someone else bought it and then put it in our room. Which meant that someone was listening to my girlfriend when she was in the bathroom. And it's not like the place was small and the bathroom was near the front door to the apartment or something. God forgive anyone who wake up my missus in the middle of the night but I decided the circumstance was warned at waking her up. She was annoyed at first telling me to leave her alone but once I explained the situation she just sat up rigid in bed like completely freaked out. We racked our brains as to how someone might

have heard us but couldn't come up with anything. Like I said the place wasn't small and the walls were pretty thick so how had someone heard us? The landlord lived miles away and as far as we knew no one else had keys. It's something that bothers me to this day to be honest. They still can't work out how someone heard us and I did ask the landlord about it who told me no one had been in the apartment. We were convinced it was him though, enough to just pack our stuff and leave. I know he hadn't exactly brandished a knife at us or anything. What happened would most likely make for a terrible horror movie but like I said before, put yourself in my shoes. Someone is listening to you when you go to the toilet and for all you know,

they're watching you too. And God knows why they're doing it but it can't be a good wholesome reason. A thousand nopes, seriously. Just thinking it over had me and my girlfriend getting out of there. It didn't ruin the trip too much, like we realized early what was going on so I think we got off quite lightly. The extra hotel money was the real scary part though. To be continued... budget Airbnb for a weekend in Berlin. It wasn't the nicest place we'd seen, but to us it was just going to be a place to get some sleep in between hours of exploring Berlin. We'd hardly be there basically, so we figured we'd go for it. When it comes to paying for the rental stuff, there's a problem with my boyfriend's card details, so we decide to use mine. Then there's a problem with my card details too, so we try using PayPal. That doesn't work either.

And we can't work out what's going on because we definitely had the money in our accounts. It must have been a problem with Airbnb's payment services or something. But tell that to the owners. Who ended up getting really annoyed with us because we'd already basically agreed to rent the place via verbal agreement. By the time we got our bank stuff sorted, turned out it was fraud on both our accounts. They weren't interested in renting to us anymore, so we missed out. Or so we thought. Ages and ages later, my boyfriend sends me a link to an article from a German newspaper telling me to get it up on my iPad so I could use Chrome to translate it. But before I actually used the translate feature I scrolled through the

whole article like, why did he send this to me for and lo and behold, there's a picture of the Airbnb we wanted to rent. Only then did I translate the text so it was only after that that I read that two parents and their young baby had died in a carbon monoxide leak that occurred overnight in the bloody Airbnb we were going to stay in. I'm not religious or anything, never have been, but I kinda get what people are talking about now when they mention guardian angels or whatever. If it hadn't have been for that annoying fraud we'd have rented the flat and it might have been us that were there when the gas leak happened. I was just absolutely horrified when I read through the story and I was crying like a baby

by the end of it. It said the owner had been arrested over it, that he was going to be charged with some variant of manslaughter or whatever, and rightfully so if you ask me. I still get chills when I think about it though and obviously we just stick to hotels these days. Not that they're any safer, but it just makes me feel safer, you know? Because when I picture that poor family, who went to bed one night and never woke up again, all because some cowboy landlord was too cheap to service the flat. Ugh, it doesn't bear thinking about. Right before COVID hit, I was traveling around Australia with my now ex-girlfriend. We were just hopping from Airbnb to Airbnb, having an amazing time, and all of a sudden, we start getting word of this virus that's spreading from China and that the Aussie government

was actually considering a lockdown. Before Airbnb actually halted their listings, people were pulling their properties off the market. There were a couple of flats that we'd had our eye on, and they all just disappeared over the course of about a week so we were stuffed for somewhere to stay and we were getting pretty desperate. That's when my girlfriend spotted this pretty rough looking place in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. It definitely looked a bit iffy but it was cheap and it was available. A decent enough place to get some sleep while we plan our escape from Australia. We were really stressed about getting out of the country before any travel restrictions kicked in. Like I loved Australia and everything but the start of COVID was an uncertain,

scary time for pretty much everyone and I wanted to be closer to my family. So the kick in the balls that I got when we arrived at a filthy Airbnb was made so much worse, like the place was absolutely minging. First thing we do is have a look around for some cleaning supplies to get the place freshened up a bit, which thank god they did actually have. My girlfriend gets to work looking for fresh bedding while I start sweeping and mopping the kitchen which had all kinds of stuff everywhere. I start sweeping under one cabinet, pulling out all kinds of rotten and dried up food when my girlfriend calls out to me from the bedroom, something about there not being any clean bedding. I sort of look away from what I'm doing to answer her, maybe to direct my voice

down the hallway so she could hear, I don't know, but either way, I took my eye off what I was doing for a second. See, the only way I knew something was wrong is because I can feel the handle of the broom shaking in my grip. Now obviously I'm thinking, why is my broom moving on its own? So I instinctively look back around to see the biggest effing spider I had ever seen in my life running up the handle of the broom directly at me. I'm not even ashamed to say that I let out one of the biggest screams I've ever done in my life. Honestly, I was like a banshee in that kitchen. I threw down the broom and legged it out of the room at full pelt. I just cannot deal with big spiders. Rats and other crawlies, I'm fine with them. But spiders? Nope. Just nope. By the time we each

had the courage to peep back into the kitchen, we couldn't see it, but it was just horrifying to know that it was there. Lucky for us, we were only there for a couple of days but I couldn't spend any time in the kitchen without my skin crawling. I found out later that it was a huntsman spider and they're supposed to be relatively harmless. The bite doesn't kill you and they'd rather run away than be aggressive. I must have just trapped it in a little nook down there and was forced to run up the broom handle to escape. But like I said, it was absolutely massive, a monster of a spider and I just absolutely cannot stand them. I know that's not exactly your typical scary story. The place wasn't haunted and my host wasn't some serial killer or anything but that Airbnb stay included the single most terrifying moment of my life, like sweaty palms

scary. Our home can be a terrible place to live sometimes, but if I had to pick somewhere else to live, definitely not Australia. Those spiders down there are just too big. To be continued... Me and a close friend of mine decided to get an Airbnb in New York for a week's worth of birthday celebrations one year, and we were both really excited about the whole thing. The listing my friend had managed to find us consisted of the two top floors of an old townhouse, and it looked absolutely stunning. I think people are so focused on the sleek skyscrapers and other modern amenities that we associate with NYC that we forget how old it is too, and how a lot of that history is written into the architecture of some of the city's oldest buildings. So, we catch a flight over, arrive at the Airbnb, and it's everything we could have wished for. Even better,

the owner lived on the ground floor of the building so if we needed anything he was just downstairs. Brilliant, right? Nope, wrong. Like most things, you don't really know what you're dealing with until you're actually rubbing noses with it. The guy's checking us in, asking if we have any questions or anything and otherwise being perfectly welcoming. Then all of a sudden, just as we're saying thanks and all that, he's like, Oh, girls, by the way, there should be a large duffel under one of your beds. Under no circumstances are you to touch it.

A little awkward silence follows where me and my friend are kind of like, WTF? And then we ask him if he doesn't want us to, you know, grab the bag before we settle in since it's obviously something quite private. He then responds with, no, that's where it lives. Where it lives? What the actual F is that even supposed to mean? What is it anyway? It sounds stupid now, but we just sort of laughed it off. We were in New York after all and a city where everyone was a little bit crazy we thought. Why let a little bit of kookiness ruin what would otherwise be an amazing birthday week I thought. So, first night, I did actually take a peek under the bed and discovered that it was actually my bed that had the bag sitting under it. Lucky me. It looked perfectly clean. No weird smells coming from it, so no dead body. Winning, I thought. It didn't seem particularly stuffed with anything, but there were definitely things in it.

Nothing that jingled or ticked like one of those old cartoon clock bombs so whatever was in there couldn't be all that bad. And besides, it wasn't any of my business. Second night and I'm a little bit more curious but still, I can control myself and I just leave the bag be. Third day, me and my friend actually talk about it a little bit, trying to imagine what it could be in there. I mean, there was no way he really and truly didn't want us to look in the bag, or he'd have taken it out of there before we ever checked in, right? But the question remained, what exactly was in that that he either did or didn't want us seeing? I started feeling really uncomfortable about the whole thing, especially since it was under my bed

and not hers. My friend can read this in me easy peasy and start saying stuff that it's all the fella's murder weapons and that I'm going to be his next victim. Maybe that had gotten a response in the past but under those circumstances not funny in the least bit. And as you might have guessed by the third night the horrible curiosity had been gnawing away at my gut and getting the better of me. I'm lying there in bed totally unable to sleep and I can hear my friend snoring from the other room. Not that the walls were thin or anything, she just snores that loud. All I'm thinking is, I can take one look, one little peek and the guy's never gonna know, is he? I don't bother to wake my friend up, I'm just thinking, in and out, pretend it never happened, job done. So I slip off the bed as quietly as I can, reach for the bag.

I'm honestly like a ninja with how quiet I'm being, like pulling the zipper open super slowly so it doesn't make any noise, and the whole time the tension is rising for me like, God, what's in the bag? When I finally saw, I had to bite my fist to stop from laughing. The first thing I see when I look into the bag are toys. Toys of an adult nature. And that's all we'll say about that. I think it was just the break in the mood for me, worrying it was the mummified corpse of his mother or something when it was just a rubber knob. But looking back on it, even that was super creepy. But the thing that actually made me wake up my friend to be like, I think we need to get out of here, were the clothes that I found in the duffel. I'll be honest, my curiosity got the better of me and in for a penny, in for a

pound as they say. I shouldn't have just started going through this guy's stuff but oh my god am I so glad I did. Because aside from the toys was stuff that actually made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Pacifier, adult diapers, oversized adult pajamas with a colorful childish pattern on them. There was a lot of other stuff too but lots of it was honestly too upsetting and messed up for me to want to write about. Thinking about what this fella got off to knocked me sick. Look, I'm not one to king shame or anything but I think we can agree that that kind of stuff is just wrong. Weird at the very least. So there I am. It's about half past one in the morning and I'm wide awake with my mind going a

mile a minute. The thing that swung it in the end for me was the fact that he brought the bag up in conversation to us. It's not like I was just being nosy and happened to be going through his stuff. No, like my friend said, if he really didn't want us to go through it, he wouldn't have mentioned it and he wouldn't have stashed the thing in one of the rooms we'd be staying in. I just didn't feel safe there anymore and I knew my friend wouldn't either once she knew what was in the bag. Cut to an hour later and we packed up all of our stuff, again being as quiet as possible. The plan was just to leave the keys on the kitchen table, sneak out and then just explain the situation to Airbnb and hope

for a refund. We could just get out of there, clean break, never have to see him again. But that would have been way too easy, wouldn't it? Because right as we start carrying our heavy bags downstairs, we make way too much noise. I remember how hearing the bolt on his front door working just made my blood run cold, but we were trapped on the stairs. We couldn't leg it. We just had to walk past him, trying not to make eye contact. Leaving early, are you?

He said to us. I just had to grit my teeth and nod. Then he said, He looked in the bag, didn't you? As soon as the words left his lips, I had to make eye contact with him. Something about how brazen he was about it. How he just knew what was going on. It was so freaky. I think he must have read it in my face too, like the shock of how hard what he'd said hit home. He knew I had. He knew I hadn't been able to help myself. And he just smiled.

This smug, sickening grin just stretched across his face and he didn't say another word to us as he filed out of the apartment building and started off down the sidewalk. The whole thing actually ruined our trip for a couple of days. It was all we could talk about, all we could think about, and even when we just tried to forget about it and enjoy ourselves, it followed us around like a dark cloud. It wasn't until we got in touch with the police and told them what I'd found that we were able to regain any peace of mind. Obviously the police couldn't do anything about it. Owning stuff like that wasn't a crime no matter how perverse. Like he didn't have any pictures if you catch my drift so all they could do was recommend that we take it up with Airbnb. I do still worry about it though and I really hope he hasn't hurt anyone. We got him kicked off

Airbnb after he wrote a really rude review about us. I emailed a member of the customer service team back and forth and explained exactly what had happened. So there was some small silver lining. It's the only time it happened too. All the other hosts we've dealt with on Airbnb have been fantastic. But that being said, it only takes one bad experience to really paint your opinion of something, doesn't it? To be continued... I was 20 at the time. The first time I met the guy who would become my grocery store stalker, he was standing outside the store collecting money for the Salvation Army Christmas time donations. A fairly friendly person, so I like to say hi to people who work at places I frequent to be nice. This guy was a kid around my age, very tall, with a mild resemblance to Lurch from the Addams Family, dark circles under dark eyes,

short black hair, kind of vacant look in his eyes as well. I chatted with him for maybe two minutes, just idle chit chat about the weather and what not, nothing particularly memorable or interesting and then waved goodbye and went home. Little did I know that single moment would be the start of something that would have me genuinely afraid. About 4 or 5 months passed and I hadn't seen him again. Then one day as I was grocery shopping with a friend when as we were chatting she suddenly got really quiet and kind of recoiled backwards looking behind me. I turned around to see this guy who had to be at least 6'4", towering over me not 8 inches from my body. He said hi and told me he remembered me from that

December I had talked to him and then asked for my number. I, being young and never having experienced this type of interaction before, told him I didn't have my number memorized but that I would write his down and text him later. I kind of half-waved my phone at him, pointing out my, at the time, boyfriend whose picture was my wallpaper, making a point to say oh look, that's my boyfriend to the guy, hoping he would clue in, but no luck. He told me his number which immediately upon getting I blocked with out letting him get my phone number. However, what made my blood run cold was what he said after I put my phone away. He leaned in real close and in a low voice he told me, whatever I text you is for your eyes only. At this point I started to feel genuinely uncomfortable.

I responded, yeah, sure, um, nice talking to you but we gotta get back to shopping. And I grabbed my friend and dragged her off, shooting a panicked look at her and asking why she didn't bail me out. Apparently he scared her too with his getting so close to me and she didn't know what to do. I want to make it clear, I'm not exactly a small girl, I'm 5'8 and solidly built. I can certainly handle myself and I very rarely feel intimidated or small in the presence of anyone, male or female. But this guy made me feel tiny and scared. In the months that would follow, he would make me feel truly frightened. I had hoped that creepy interaction would be the last time I saw him, but

that was unfortunately not the case. After that initial meeting with him saying that creepy thing about his texts being from my eyes only, it seemed like I would run into him every single time I got to that store. No matter what checkout lane I was in, he always seemed to appear at the end of it when I was finished shopping, and every time I was in the store I would notice him out of the corner of my eye, watching me, no matter what area I was in. One time I even caught him following me out to my car. At that point I got scared and decided to say something to the managers. After letting the managers know what was going on they assured me that they would tell him to

not talk to me. After that he wouldn't speak to me but I would continue to see him following me around the store at a distance every time I went up there. It got so bad and I felt so frightened that I started to be afraid to go to the store at all. But I'm one of those stubborn people who refuses to be intimidated by someone to the point I'll stop doing something. I'd hope that maybe it was a coincidence that he was following me. After all, it was a big store and maybe he just had things to do that just so happened to be in the areas that I was shopping in, so I started to pay close attention to my surroundings. Once I started paying really close attention I realized that every single time I was up there I would constantly notice him in the areas of the store I was in. During my last encounter with him I went up to the store to grab just two or three items I needed for dinner that night

and I first saw him standing outside the store when I got there. And with his back to me I quickly ran inside, hoping he didn't see me. Unfortunately, a few minutes later I saw him at the very back of the store and items in hand, I immediately made a beeline towards the front. As soon as I got near the checkout, I ducked behind one of the shelf displays and watched carefully at the front of the store to see if the creeper would appear and he did. I watched as he looked up and down the checkout and when he didn't see me there, I saw him step outside. At this point, I quickly ran into the nearest open cashier, rang up my items and stuck my head out the door to look for him. I didn't see him there immediately so I started trying to make my way

back to where I was parked. I had parked a ways away near the side of the store where a bunch of other small stores and restaurants were lined up and as I was walking towards my car I realized I saw him standing by the entrance that I had first entered the store through and ducked behind a pillar immediately hoping he didn't see me. I watched carefully from behind the pillar and as he scanned the parking lot he obviously couldn't find me. After a minute or two he started walking out towards the direction of the parking lot in front of the store and so I took that opportunity to make a run for it to my car as soon as he was far enough away that I felt safe. As soon as I got into my car I locked the doors and to my horror

when I looked up he was standing there about 15 feet away from my car with a shopping cart in front of him. I knew that he followed me, he knew I knew. I fully believed he had chased after me and when I made it to my car he grabbed the nearest cart to make it look like he was collecting them from the parking lot and I just remember feeling absolutely terrified at that moment. I went home and immediately told my grandfather what had happened. I began crying and shaking and my grandfather told me to get in the car and we were going to settle this. He and I drove up to the store in his car and he walked me into the store and demanded we speak with the managers immediately, both of them. When the managers arrived at customer service, he asked me to tell them what had been happening and demanded that they ensure he left me alone or that he would involve police.

The managers swore up and down that they would take care of it. As far as I know, he wasn't fired immediately because my friend who first encountered him with me when this whole thing began told me that she would see him from time to time when she was there by herself, but that anytime I went with her, she would never see him. I fully believe he knew whenever I was there, only this time instead of stalking me, he would avoid me. Eventually everyone who knew the situation stopped seeing him there, so I think he may have gotten fired and moved on from that store. Either way I haven't had any issues since but I never in my life felt so afraid of another human being as I did that day seeing him make eye contact with me in the parking lot as I locked my car doors. It still creeps me out to think he was watching me so closely every time I entered the

store and that he could so easily avoid or follow me whenever he wanted. To be continued... Many men can be in the military. We knew he had a sordid past and we knew his upbringing was strange to say the least. He seemed like a harmless man. My husband, Ben, went to the same post-boot camp school as this guy. He and a handful of the boys were bonded by these terrible conditions and even terrible higher-ups while attending the school. Ben married me while on leave. We'd been together a long time and known each other much longer than that. Eventually we moved into an apartment together at his duty station in Southern California. It was wonderful. Ron would come around occasionally and spend

weekends with Ben. Sometimes he even slept in our home on the sofa or on an air mattress in the living room. Eventually we moved to a larger house in the military base and Ron had to deploy to Japan. It was a long six months. Life went on normally without him. Friends came and went. This isn't unique. Eventually it was Ben's turn to deploy. It was hard to cope but fine. We said our goodbyes and smooched and he was off to strengthen his sea legs for the next six months. When Ron came back to California, one week after Ben deployed, he wanted to pick up a box of his things from our home that we had tucked away for safekeeping for him. I was excited to see the familiar face. He picked up his things, shared small talk and left.

Nothing strange at all, honestly. Knowing he was back from his journey and many of his friends were deployed with Ben, I extended some kind and friendly words over Facebook Messenger occasionally, wishing him well and being polite. Unfortunately for both of us, he mistook my kindness as romantic gestures. One night at 2am, Ron called me via Facebook's calling feature. Concerned for him, I answered. I thought the worst. Had he become depressed? Maybe even thinking about taking his own life? I can't in good consciousness deny a listening ear to someone who maybe needed it, especially someone my husband is somewhat fond of. The conversation started somewhat normal, as normal as a strange unwarranted 2am call could be.

He was loud, possibly drunk, and sounded desperate for conversation. He rambled on for a while. They admitted to me that, as a child, he had had a relationship with his young stepsister. He talked in a lot of circles, but a few statements that stood out to me were I just can't trust myself around women, especially alone. I've always liked you. I think you're hot and I remember the way you looked in your bikini at the beach.

During this conversation I should have hung up on him. I made several attempts to keep the content friendly and uplifting assuming that he was having some sort of episode. It was all horrible and made me feel disgusting. He then told me he was near my house at another girl's house. I assume with some poor guy's awful cheating wife. He said she wasn't really anything to him and he wanted to come over to my house. He knew Ben was an ocean away and that I was alone in my house. I told him not to come and he hung up on me. I panicked and closed all of the first floor windows and doors, making sure that they were all locked. I turned off the lights as well.

I took my dog and cat up to my bedroom and locked the door, wedging pieces of furniture into the door to create a barricade of sorts. He showed up. He walked around my house, pulled on the doors, calling my phone, messaging me horrible things. I screamed for him to leave both on the phone and through my upstairs window. It was a nightmare, realized. I could get in if I really wanted to, he messaged me, a clear threat in my opinion. I called the police and then I called my neighbor, a big Navy doc who I feel that I owe my life to. After being chased off by Hunter, my neighbor, and having long talks with PMO, NCIS, and my neighbors, I received a protection order against Ron.

I'm disappointed there wasn't any brig time for this idiot, but I'm pleased I have documented evidence in case he ever tries to contact me or my husband again. You really never know someone. Stay safe, friends, and exercise your right to bear arms, if you so choose. A few years ago I was renting an apartment with a girl I worked with. Our apartment complex was one of those with multiple buildings that all have two units on each side. One upstairs, one downstairs with four total apartments per building, with garages in the center that all looked like they were copies of each other,

and we lived in the top right unit. We worked as managers at a movie theater so our schedules usually alternated so we weren't usually home and awake at the same time. I woke up one Saturday night at around 2am to the sound of voices in our living room. My roommates had closed at work that night and closers almost never leave before 1am so I thought she might have come home and decided to watch some TV before going to bed. After listening for a minute, I realized the voices were moving around and the volume fluctuated too much to be on TV. It sounded like two men talking

to each other and the only phrase I was able to hear was someone saying, they're not here man, in a hushed but aggressive tone, which is never a good thing. I knew that my roommate wouldn't have people over so late without at least sending me a text and we had a team building event the next day at 8am so she wouldn't have anyone over when we had to be up so early. I knew whoever it was was not supposed to be in my apartment. I grabbed my phone and rolled over onto my stomach so I could hide the glow from my phone under my pillow in case whoever was out there decided to open my door and look in. I turned my ringer off and dialed 911.

I gave them my address and told them that I could hear people in my living room. The dispatcher said that there was a car in the area and they were less than two minutes away. She said they found the apartment and the door was wide open and that I needed to go outside and that police were waiting just outside. I was terrified to go outside because I didn't know if these guys were still in my home so I snuck out of my bedroom and then moved as quickly and quietly as I could through the living room and out the front door. The officers met me at the bottom of our stairs and asked if anyone else should be in the

apartment before they went in. I said that my roommate should be the only other person home and that she would be in her bedroom. They came back a minute later and said, So the two guys asleep on your couch shouldn't be there? I said they absolutely shouldn't be there. Police woke up my roommates and brought her outside and we sat in one of the police cars while they handled the guys inside. They were escorted out without incident and when the officers asked if we wanted to press charges, we said 100% yes. After they were taken away, we went back inside and one officer

came up with us and said that one of the men thought he lost his phone. He looked around and didn't find it, but she did point out that there was a big crack in our door frame where they might have tried to force their way in. My roommate notified our landlord about what had happened so that they could repair the door frame. The landlord replied by forwarding an email they had received from another tenant. This tenant apparently lived in the building next to ours and he was also in the top right unit. He had two friends visiting from out of town for the weekend and they had all gone out drinking and ended up back at his apartment. At some point these guys woke up and decided that they wanted to go back to sleep at their hotel instead of crashing at his place.

They left his apartment to call a cab but when they couldn't find one they decided to go back to his apartment. Luckily this neighbor took full responsibility and paid to have our door frame replaced but we didn't renew our lease after that. I developed severe anxiety regarding having people break into my home that lasted a long time. It's been improving through anxiety medication and the addition of a home alarm in the form of a 90-pound pitbull mix. A month or so after this incident, I received an envelope in the mail that contained two letters. They were very non-apologetic apology letters from both men just talking about how they had learned the problem with excess drinking and that they were going to make sure they didn't do anything like that again and blah blah blah.

The crazy thing is, we found out that these guys were med students so I shudder to think about one of these guys being my doctor someday. I never saw their faces, so I'll never know for sure if the man taking care of my physical health one day might be one of the men who caused so much harm to my mental health. To be continued... This happened about 10 years ago while I was in my last year of college. My friend and I were living in a two-bedroom apartment in a very safe and slightly upscale part of town. To give you an image of us, at the time I was about 210 pounds, 5'7 and fairly capable of handling myself as I had been an athlete for a large portion of my life but had succumbed to a food addiction.

My roommate was 5'3", 115 pounds and had never lifted weights in her life. One day I was cooking up something for dinner and my roommate came in and went to her room. We weren't lovey-dovey kind of roommates so it wasn't unusual for us to not make small talk every time we saw each other. I went on cooking and about 5 minutes later there was a knock on the door. I went around the island and opened the door expecting a delivery person. Instead I was gripped with this intense, visceral sense of unease. It wrapped around my body like a vice and every hair on my body stood up. There was a totally normal looking guy standing there.

Medium height, light skin, brown hair wearing a ball cap, casual sweater and pants. To this day I couldn't identify him from a lineup but I just recall he looked totally unremarkable. However, I never in my life felt such a sense of foreboding. My heart was beating out of my chest. I didn't even say a word, I just stared at him, vaguely wondering if I should shut the door in his face. He stared at me for a few moments and turned and walked away, his dog following behind him. I had been so fixated on this guy, I hadn't even realized that he had been holding a dog leash attached to a sweet looking golden retriever. My anxiety abated and I decided I had been overreacting

despite never having that particular feeling before. I had grown up as a tomboy, had mostly guy friends growing up, was in a hugely male dominated career and degree, computer science and IT, and played a male dominated sport most of my life, golf. I was not and have never been in the least bit afraid of men. About 30 minutes later, my roommate came out and asked me who was at the door and I said, uh, some random guy. Wrong apartment apparently. She looked at me frowning and asked, did he have a dog? I replied in the affirmative, he had a dog. She told me that some guy with a dog had tried to chat her up at the mailboxes on the other side of the complex, but she had ignored him and gotten back in her car to come here. She's positive he couldn't have seen her come into the apartment because,

1. He would have had to run at super speed to catch up to her, 2. Our apartment faces away from the section where the mailboxes are. And three, there are at least four buildings obscuring line of sight to our building. What that means is, he scoured the parking lots for her car, and when he saw her car parked in front of our apartment building, he had likely knocked on each door. There are two on each floor, four floors total, to try and find her. Our suspicions were confirmed the next day when there was a phone number, no name, under her windshield.

I have no idea if she ever reported the incident but I was on edge for a good month afterward because I was worried he might keep an eye out for her. I don't know why he turned around and left. Maybe he thought he had the wrong apartment or maybe he assumed she lived alone and didn't want to confront someone else. Maybe as much as my roommate's tiny size enticed him, my larger size made him think twice about doing anything. To this day, I've only ever gotten that sensation one other time while I was out with my boyfriend at the bar about a year ago. A guy who

wasn't even looking at me made me feel super uneasy and the same tension had wound through my body. Dude looked completely ordinary there as well but my instincts were just lashing back at him. Considering the incident with the first guy, I knew to trust my instincts and asked to go to another bar. Maybe I have a sixth sense for crazy people, but I decided I would never question my subconscious instincts again. I hope to never experience that sensation in the future, and I'm curious if anyone else has master's in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. I live alone in an apartment in a building where there are only students.

I'm 22, enjoying life peacefully. To give you a bit of context, I live in a calm, good neighborhood. The only noises I'd hear are the tram or parties in the building since a lot of students are there. One night around 10pm I hear a knock on my door. I live on the third floor and to get to my front door you have to open the main door which needs a key. Then you need to open the door to my corridor with the same key. So people who want to come to my door must have the key, call me or ring at the door so I could open the doors for them from my apartment.

Nothing of this happened. I just hear a knock on my door. I usually open the door without a second thought, whether it's my landlord or a neighbor asking for something. As he told you, I feel pretty safe in the building and I could also take care and defend myself in case anything happened. But this time, for some reason, I had a bad feeling about this. I didn't move at first, I thought the person would just leave. I finished my assignments, however the knocking continued for 30 seconds. I said,

Yeah? In English, the person knocking doesn't say anything. I say in English again, Who is it? The voice answers in English, it's Uber Eats. Which is weird because Dutch always speak in Dutch and I recognize the voices and accents of everyone on my floor who have the key to access the floor. So it wasn't a neighbor, it wasn't my landlord. It was somebody claiming to come from Uber Eats, but the issue is I didn't order anything from Uber Eats that day. The voice was unfamiliar. In case it's a prank or

a neighbor pulling a joke, it was also a deep voice, at least 40 and probably a smoker. I replied that, I didn't order anything. You must have it wrong. After a few seconds, the knocking continues and the same voice says, Pretty sure you did. I have an order under your name. I start panicking. I look around and pick up a knife in case he breaks the door because the knocking was getting a bit louder. I checked if my door is locked. It wasn't. I was literally 10 centimeters away from him. My front door was the only thing keeping him from me and I'm glad it doesn't open from the outside. You need a key to open it even if it's not locked. I step back and ask again. What's the name? He seems to be thinking for a few seconds then a final knock occurs.

It was loud and it translated some anger or frustration. Finally I hear him going down the emergency stairs right next to my apartment. The steps were heavy and the person was clearly in a hurry. I don't know what he wanted or what would have happened to me if I had opened the door as I usually do. I still haven't understood how he got through the two doors and why did he come specifically to the last apartment on the third floor? Did he try others before? I posted a post about it on the WhatsApp group we have in the building.

No one saw anything suspicious so no one opened the door for anyone. Either way, I'm lucky for my instinct telling me not to open the door, and I'm glad I listened. When I was a child, I was nearly kidnapped three separate times. I only remember one of them, but my family has two other times that they say happened which I will briefly go over. One of these times was at a barrel racing competition in Camp Verde, Arizona. A lady picked me up as an infant and tried to run away with me, but my dad chased her and she put me down. Another time someone else tried to break into our car when my mom left me inside for a moment to drop the mail at the post office.

Apparently even as a little kid I had the presence of mind to honk the horn until she came out and the guy left. Again I don't remember these specific instances and you know as much as I do now. The one time I do remember I was a little bit older and my brother and his best friend were there too. My mom owned a restaurant and we would go to Costco to buy tons of wholesale food in one stop and she would bring us along mostly because she didn't want to pay a babysitter but also because we were cheap labor and would load and unload the car in exchange for chicken fingers or Costco pizza. This time my brother and his friend and I opted to get paid up front and had Costco pizza

while my mom went around the store and got everything on her list. We ate our food and before we went to look for our mom, went into the bathroom. There were three stalls and my brother and his friend were on either side with me in between them. I think I was singing while I was sat on the toilet and didn't notice when someone else came in. I don't remember much about what he looked like, other than he had a denim jacket and I think he had a skinny clean shaven face. I know this much because he looked under the stall door, right at me. I was scared and stopped making noise and my brother asked if I was okay and the guy stopped looking at me and disappeared.

Nothing happened for a minute then suddenly the man's arms reached under and grabbed my pants which were around my ankles. He tried to drag me out under the door but I screamed to put my hands under both sides of the stall and my brother and his friend grabbed them and held on to me. I think my brother yelled at the guy and we were all screaming, and they kept pulling me until the guy let go and we heard him run out of the bathroom. We tried to run out and get a look at him, but he was gone. When we told my mom, she went to the Costco people to see if they had surveillance tapes, but they said the police needed to be involved and warrants and stuff needed to be gotten and we ended up just going home. It was one of the scariest things that's

ever happened to me and I think it still affects me today. I sleep with my bedroom door locked and have nightmares about home intruders pretty often. This happened at the Costco in Flagstaff, Arizona probably somewhere between 1999 and 2001 and I've always wondered if something else like it has ever happened in that area or if someone was ever caught for kidnapping in that area around that time. I was hoping putting this on Reddit might stir something up. If it doesn't though, I just hope we never meet again. To give some context, every summer I would do some temp work for the company where my dad worked. It was an education company, so they always needed temp workers around in July and August time for all of the exam remarks that they had come in. It was my day to entry work, but it suited me fine and it meant I could earn a little extra cash while I was at university.

I did this every summer from when I was 19 through to when I was 23 and then I got another job at the same company for a bit after I graduated but we'll get to that later. For now, all you need to know is that I was a reasonably familiar face there and everyone knew I was my dad's daughter. The main downside of working there was that I'd clock off work at 5pm but I'd have to wait for my dad to finish work since he was the head of an entire department so he'd end up staying a bit later. Every day I'd bring a book with me and sit in this little foyer area between his department and the department where I worked since it had the most comfortable chairs. I must have been 22 years old when this happened because it was the penultimate summer that I worked there. I had just had my hair cut short for the first time in my life and I'd had it dyed red as well. I was sitting on these couches reading when all of a sudden this guy approaches me. Leon. Leon tells me that he works in my dad's

department and he thought he'd come introduce himself. This is a pretty common occurrence for me and I was aware of this guy. He was young and decent looking so a few of the women in my department had a crush on him. I was dating someone at the time though and I had never actually seen him in person but I could see what they saw on him. We got to chatting and he mentioned that I'd changed my hair so I told him about cutting it short and he cut me off mid-sentence and this is where it started to get weird. He says, no first it was brown and you didn't have a fringe then you went through that phase of curling it then he put the fringe in it and dyed it red. After that you dyed it purple. And now you had it cut short and dyed it back to red.

This guy I'd just met was describing over two years worth of hairstyle changes that I'd had. I felt creeped out, but he seemed like a nice enough guy and I guess I had worked at the company throughout the entire time so it was reasonable to assume that he'd noticed me before. That should have been the first red flag. He asked me if I had Facebook and I told him that I did so he said that he would add me. That seemed pretty normal but then after he'd sent the friend request, he asked me to get my phone out so he could watch me accept the friend request. I'm British, and it's therefore impossible for me to be impolite, so I got my phone out and showed him that I had accepted it. I thought that might calm him down.

Bear in mind, he wasn't a bad looking guy, so I felt a bit flattered at this point that he was so keen on me. That sense of flattery dissolved real fast. After the Facebook thing, he kept asking me if I had MSN and I told him that I didn't. I swear throughout this conversation he asked me if I had MSN about four times. Then the final time he asked he was like, please, can you get MSN messengers so we can chat after work? It was like he had something really urgent he wanted to tell me, but I'd only just met this person. I kind of laughed and said how I hadn't used MSN since I was a teenager without necessarily rejecting him. Then he said something like, well, if you don't have MSN, then you have Skype? This seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring up my boyfriend,

who was a foreign student and went back to his home country during the summer. He was the only person I spoke to on Skype. I said to Leon how I didn't have my own Skype account, but I used my dad's Skype account to talk to my boyfriend. I really thought this might ward him off. I was wrong. Without missing a beat, he said, can you just, please, just get your own Skype account so we can video chat after work.

He said it like I somehow was inconveniencing him, like this was something we'd agreed to do months ago or something. I had no idea how to react so I just sort of smiled and laughed. Thank the heavens someone from my dad's department walked past at that moment and was like, Leon, aren't you meant to be at your desk? He scurried off pretty quick after that but not before reminding me to get my own Skype account and send him the details. I told my dad about the whole exchange and the car ride home, but all he said was that Leon was very friendly and that a lot of women in his department liked him, so maybe I just misunderstood the situation.

I thought he was probably right, so I tried to not let it bother me. Later that evening, however, I was on my computer doing university work when a message popped up on my Facebook. It was Leon. All the message said was, we like the same movies. I don't know what it was but something about this message freaked me out so much. I decided not to respond and logged off Facebook, hoping that he wouldn't notice I had been online. The next day after work I was sat in my usual spot when Leon comes over to me.

His face was like thunder. At first I thought he was just having a bad day and was walking through the hallway but my heart dropped when I realized he was walking directly towards me. Why didn't you respond to my Facebook message? I was stunned. How was I supposed to respond to that? Who says stuff like that in real life? Lucky for me, I didn't have an opportunity to respond because he started off on this tirade. I'm not even kidding.

He started listing all of the movies we had in common that he had seen on my Facebook profile. Batman the Dark Knight, Watchmen, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Fight Club. I just sat there watching him reel off all of these film titles. Once he was finished, all he said was, It's okay. I forgive you. And then walked off back to his department. Over the next couple of weeks, he came and found me in my spot every day and talked at me from the moment I sat down to the moment my dad came to get me. I don't remember many of the other exchanges but I do remember distinctly one day

pretending to pick my nose when I saw him coming to see if it would put him off. It didn't. It got to the point where I'd get so stressed out after work that I'd go and hide in the toilets for as long as I could but the women I worked with started to notice and think I was weird. Eventually I broached the subject with my dad and he gave me his car keys after my shift so that I could go hide out in his car rather than the building. So I'm camped out in his car and I'm still feeling quite tense, but after about 20 minutes I start to feel at ease. Surely he won't come looking for me out here. Wrong. I looked over at the main entrance and my heart drops. He is coming out of the door

and he is scrutinizing all of the cars. I sank down as far as possible into my seat but I wasn't fast enough and he saw me. He comes rushing off and starts tapping on the glass. So I open the door and ask him what's up. I didn't see you in your usual spot. But luckily the doorman told me he saw you come out here. Why are you in your dad's car? Again, what are you supposed to say to that? I told him I'd had a headache so I'd come out to the car to take some paracetamol and see

if I could get some sleep. At least he respected that because he told me to feel better and left me alone. I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that I was only going to be working there for a few more days before I had to go back to university. I told my dad about the car incident and he gave Leon a talking to the next day. Leon would still come find me in the foyer but he'd only talked to me for a few minutes and passing before leaving me alone and it was a big relief. On my last day at work there I was fully expecting him to do something crazy but he didn't even come to chat with me that day. I left the office and thought that I would never

see him again. I found out he was fired not long after I left the company that year because he kept coming into work late and then spent most of his time at work chatting with his co-workers and me apparently. Fast forward to January of 2014 and I was preparing to move to China for a position teaching English. I had graduated from university and I was working at the same company but this time in a semi-permanent capacity. It was my last day at work so I received quite a few gifts and some fuss from my co-workers. It was about 10am when, who should I see, walked through the door but Leon. He had been hired as a temp to do the job that I had done

for so many years. As soon as he walked through the door, he saw me and this flash of recognition crossed his face. I wanted to slide under my desk and die. He came walking over to me and was all smiles, asking about how I was and what I was still doing at the company. It was at this point that one of my co-workers mentioned how I was off to China soon. Leon seized on that and started talking about his friend who was also interested in TFL. His interest seemed genuine so I got to talking about how I got my TFL qualification, who I got it through, what company I was going to be working for out in China, etc. We chatted for about 20 minutes and he wrote down some details for his friend and went off to work. At the end of the day I was packing all my stuff to leave and a few of my co-workers were coming over to say their goodbyes. Don't get me wrong, the Leon incident aside, I had a wonderful time

working at that company and I made a lot of great friends. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Leon approaching but I think, what's the harm? He says goodbye and wishes me luck on my new adventure. Then, as I'm literally walking out the door of the department, I hear him call out, See you in China! For the first two weeks of my teacher training over there, I was like a hawk, keeping a constant lookout for this guy. He never did follow me out to China, but it still remains one of the creepiest encounters of my life. To be continued... This was about an hour ago.

It's not nearly as bad as some of them, but it still has me shaken up. It was roughly 9.30pm, a Tuesday night. Nothing ever happens on Tuesdays. I went downstairs to get my dog so she can sleep in my bed with me. I said goodnight to my parents, got my meds, and got a glass of water. I set the cup down and turned the lights off, totally forgetting about the glass of water. I placed my dog on my bed, turned on my laptop, and realized I left my water downstairs. I went back down to get it and I saw a car pull up through my kitchen window. I thought it was my oldest sister, but she was staying at a friend's

house. I looked out and it was a small compact car with what I could see were two men inside. I had no clue who they were so I began to stress out. I tried to get a closer look making sure I couldn't be spotted. I'm a very small guy, 5'5 and incredibly weak. A 14 year old kid can't take on two tall and buff looking men. I saw something in the back of the car but couldn't quite make out what it was. I snapped myself out of it and grabbed my water. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of them get out and walk towards my house. I lost it at that point and ran to my parents room.

I asked, who's outside? My dad was confused and said, is it your sister? I shook my head, told him that we didn't know them, they weren't our neighbors, plus their houses are walking distance. There's no reason that they need a car. He got up and my mom followed. They looked out the front door and saw a tall man in a gray under Armour hoodie walking up carrying something. My dad instantly went out there and freaked the guy out. My mom rushed me upstairs and had her phone at the ready. I went to my room still holding my water and I have no clue what happened or what those two guys wanted.

I'm just so thankful that my dad was there to freak them out before they did something terrible. First time living alone in my apartment, I was walking out to my car in heels to attend an evening church service. I heard this guy saying, Hey, hello, can you help me? I'm standing about 10 feet away and when I stop to observe it's this man in a wheelchair. He has one sack of groceries in his lap and two on the ground beside him. He had on what looked like veteran attire and combat boots. But what stood out to me the most is I noticed how incredibly built and buff he was. Not just his arms, but his calves.

The hairs on my arms and neck instantly stood up. I guess while silently observing him, he was waiting for me to walk up to him. I took a few steps back and shook my head. His immediate response was, I'm not going to do anything to you. Can't you see I'm in a wheelchair? He then pointed to his door and said, look, I just need help putting the bags inside my door on the floor. That's all. I declined politely and began to walk away. The screaming and cursing and insults was what made me basically run to my car.

Safe in my car with the doors locked, I couldn't shake that awful feeling off of me. Now fast forward to a couple of days later as I'm driving down the street headed home. Who do I see walking without a limp or a cane or without any visible disability? My heart dropped. I stayed in my apartment for a week, too scared to go out in case of any more encounters, and to this day, this strange encounter with this man still haunts me. To be continued... for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. And if you got a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit r slash let's read official and give and receive

feedback from the community and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch and Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast where you can hear all these stories in long compilation form and save huge on data, located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the bio. Thanks so much, friends. And remember, I think we're going to be friends.