The Lets Read Podcast - 144: NEVER WALK HOME ALONE | 20 True Scary Horror Stories | EP 132

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

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

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Find a Toyo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca Thank you. At around 9.30pm on the night of August 29th, 2002, 31-year-old Audrey Herron called home to excitedly announce that she'd gotten a raise. Her husband Jeff congratulated her on the good news, before Audrey told him she'd soon be finishing her nursing shift at the Columbia Green Long-Term Healthcare Facility in Catskill, New York, where Audrey worked part-time. It was fantastic news for the couple, as the extra income would make providing for their two children considerably easier. An hour and a half later at around 11pm, Audrey said goodnight to her fellow nurses, headed out into the parking lot to her 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee, then began the

drive back home. She made the same commute to and from work every single day, driving back and forth along State Route 23 in the Jefferson Heights area of Catskill, and that night was no different. One co-worker claims that Audrey drove behind her for a few minutes after leaving the office. Given that the weather that night was rainy and foggy, it wasn't long before she lost track of Audrey on the dark, rain-slick roads. The drive from the nursing facility to Audrey's home in Freehold, New York is about 12-15 miles, so 20 minutes driving time at the very most. Audrey's husband expected her home at around 11.25, and he usually stayed up to greet her as she came through the door. But that night, Audrey didn't show. It wasn't entirely unusual for Audrey to have her shift extended at short notice,

either to cover another nurse or because a patient required urgent care. So initially, Jeff didn't bat an eyelid at his wife's absence. He didn't even bother to call the hospital to make sure she was actually still there. He just went to bed at his usual time, completely unconcerned. Jeff later recounted that he woke up at around 2am the morning of August 30th and noticed that Audrey was still not home. But again, due to the erratic nature of the job, he simply went back to bed assuming that there had been some kind of emergency. The following morning, Jeff awoke at around 6am to find that Audrey still hadn't returned home. He called the hospital, but was told that she'd left at 11 the previous night.

He then called Audrey's mom, Shirley, and asked if she had stayed over at her place. Shirley had only just returned from a Florida vacation with Audrey's daughter from her first marriage, and naturally her mother was excited to be reunited with her. So it seemed only logical that Audrey had driven to her mother's that night. Only, she hadn't. Shirley said that not only was Audrey not there, but she hadn't heard from her daughter at all since arriving back in New York State. Only then did it become evident that something was wrong. Both Jeff and Shirley became increasingly concerned for Audrey's safety. At 10am, an increasingly desperate Jeff got in touch with Audrey's stepmother and ex-police officer, who helped him file a missing persons report.

However, she also advised him to call around Audrey's friends to check if any of them had seen her. The first 48 hours are crucial in any missing person's investigation, and with any luck, Jeff might be able to locate her before anything untoward occurred. One of Audrey's friends, Karina, recalls getting a voicemail from Jeff at around 1pm that day saying, Hi Karina, it's Jeff Herron. We're having trouble locating Audrey, if you've heard from her, please call me. Thank you. Karina has since stated that the first thing that struck her about the voicemail was Jeff's unusual tone. For a man whose wife had been missing for more than 12 hours by that point, Karina claims he sounded remarkably indifferent.

You'd expect him to be panicking and anxious, she said, but he just sounded all low and sad, almost resigned. It was only a day into the search and he sounded like he'd given up. Karina had been very vocal that Jeff did not sound concerned in this voicemail, just sad. Karina had wondered why Jeff didn't contact her earlier in the morning before Audrey was reported missing, as she was one of Audrey's best friends and Audrey had stayed the night with her before. She also wondered why Jeff sounded low-toned and sat on the voicemail instead of panicked and concerned, considering it was less than a day into not being able to locate Audrey. Karina also noted that Jeff could be rather controlling sometimes,

and that Audrey had talked of him checking up on her frequently if she went anywhere without him. So, according to her, the fact that he was content to remain in the dark regarding her whereabouts for almost seven hours is extremely suspicious. On the evening of the day she was reported missing, Audrey's friends got together to walk the route she would have driven home that night, keeping their eyes peeled for any sign of her or her jeep. Her friends theorized that because it was raining that night, Audrey had taken an alternate route due to the poor weather. But since they knew exactly which short road she would have turned down, they figured that they would find her and her car right away. But not a single sign of Audrey was found along the entire route,

almost as if she and her vehicle had simply vanished into thin air. Law enforcement initially speculated that there had simply been some kind of automobile accident, given that Audrey seemed to have disappeared while driving. Officers were told to keep a sharp eye out for a black Grand Cherokee while they conducted a foot search covering a 12-mile radius. Their search penetrated deep into the woods, covering every home, road, and body of water that Audrey's Jeep could have possibly ended up. Even a helicopter was called in at 1.8 in the search. But not a single shred of evidence could be located, something that mystified officers after such an intensive and rigorous search. Although relatively rare in 2002, Audrey had a car phone installed in

her jeep, but then police officers tried pinging the phone's location and they soon found that the phone had either been disconnected, deliberately switched off, or that it had died. The cops also discovered that Audrey's purse had been left at home, implying she'd forgotten to take it to work with her on the day of her disappearance. This too struck her friends as unusual. Her life was in that purse, and even if she'd forgotten it, she would have probably turned around to retrieve it. It made them suspect that she actually had gotten home that night, and that something had occurred after her arrival at home that has caused her disappearance. Investigators were able to pull only one security camera tape from the area where Audrey was last

seen. We only had one grainy video from Cumberland Farms in which it appears that Audrey's vehicle does leave her place of employment and basically turns left, going west on country route 23B. That's the last of any kind of technological evidence we had, one senior investigator later reported. We can't confirm it's the vehicle, but it appears to be, because the quality of the video was very poor and very grainy, and it does appear to leave at the time that she would have ended work. In the years since Audrey's disappearance, the police have investigated well over a thousand leads, but not a single one of them has ever led to an arrest or court conviction. There are a couple of persons of interest, but no direct link to her disappearance,

stated investigating detectives. At this point, clearly we suspect foul play. It's clearly a very frustrating case for us because there are no solid leads to follow. In 1998, Audrey and Jeff had had their first child together, a bright-eyed baby girl named Katie. But within a year, rumors flew that Audrey was planning on leaving Jeff, taking Katie with her. Yet many have testified that Jeff did not treat Sonsia very well at all, who was Audrey's daughter from her first marriage. They claimed he had a habit of yelling at Sonsia, although the girl later explained that although Jeff was harsh with her at times, she described herself as a bratty child and felt that Jeff was a good stepfather overall.

Jeff and Audrey, shortly after the latter, discovered that she was pregnant with her second child, Quinn, whom she gave birth to in 2000. Soon after this, the couple moved to Freehold, New York and began building the house of their dreams on a golf course that Jeff's father owned. Life seemed serene for the couple after that, but when Audrey vanished, neither Jeff nor his family actively searched for her outside of a few phone calls, and they didn't appear too emotionally shook up about it either. Jeff claimed he was perfectly cooperative during the investigation and contributed financially to a private search effort, but these claims are contradicted by several news outlets who argue that not only did he ignore them, but that his monetary donations to Audrey's friend's PI fund were pitiful. They claim that for a man that came from a very wealthy background,

his donation of just $1,000 spoke volumes about his family's attitude towards his wife's disappearance. Although Jeff claims his reluctance to mount a serious campaign of public appeals was motivated by his desire to protect his children from the macabre maelstrom of rumors and accusations regarding the death of their mother. A few months after the media circus surrounding Audrey's disappearance had died down, representatives of the Montel Williams show reached out to Jeff to book an appearance. Characteristically, he declined, but Aubrey's circle of close friends jumped at the offer of re-exposing her case to the public. After all, anything that might produce new leads or clues was worth the effort,

and they harshly resented Jeff for turning his back on such an opportunity. Then in 2017, Crimewatch Daily attempted to arrange an interview with him at his home. Again, he declined, but the wall of silence had been so prevailing by that point that Jeff's father agreed to participate. In a segment that aired later that year, he told Crimewatch that he firmly believed that his son had no involvement in his wife's disappearance, and that it would have been easy for someone to dispose of the Jeep to erase any evidence of a potential crime. During the same segment, a police investigator revealed that Jeff had partially completed a lie detector test during the initial investigation, but that his father had essentially pulled him out of it under the advice of his attorney. Some have viewed this as highly suspicious, but considering how inaccurate

the test can be, and how a faulty reading could be used to gain a false conviction, Jeff's father could well have been right to stop the test. In the light of the fact that Jeff had permitted full police searches of his home on three separate occasions, it looks less and less likely that he's anything resembling the guilty party. Audrey's daughter from her first marriage, Sonzia, who's not related by blood, has actually been very defensive of Jeff over the years and is a staunch believer in his innocence. She publicly stated that some of the media portrayals of her stepfather amounted to nothing but hit pieces, pieces of hacked journalism that tried to sensationalize something deeply personal to her, and for all the wrong reasons.

At first glance, there appears to have been no financial motivation for Jeff to disappear his wife. He came from a wealthy golf course owning family, she had no life insurance, and she didn't have much in the way of savings either. But as you're about to hear, we can't rule out greed as the motivation for her murder. Jeff's father only partly owned the golf course that had made him rich. The other owner is a Russian national, one believed to be involved in serious organized crime, who also lived on the golf course not too far from Jeff and Audrey. Apparently, when police asked Jeff about the possibility of this mysterious Russian being involved in his wife's murder, he mentioned something curious. Audrey had mentioned

walking in on an argument between the silent Russian partner, Ron, and a number of other men, who were exchanging harsh words and hushed voices. The men grew silent as soon as they detected her presence, and Audrey left feeling very intimidated. It's also been theorized that the golf course was nothing but a front for the Russian mafia, who in turn leached funds from the business until Jeff's father was in their pocket. If this was the case, Audrey's disappearance could have been meant as a warning to him of what would happen if he didn't pay up. Yet whether the murder was intentional or Audrey died in the process of being taken is entirely up for debate,

as police have never deemed the theory worthy an investigation. In 2016, a tip came from a woman whose mother had worked at the very same healthcare facility as Audrey. She claimed that her brother had caught sight of Audrey on a handful of occasions while ferrying his mother to and from the hospice, and had developed a dangerous obsession with her. This man had a long history of indecent assault and attempted kidnapping, and he became one of the prime suspects in Audrey's disappearance. New York State Police ended up draining a pond near the man's Catskill home while corpse-sniffing dogs scoured the nearby countryside. But like countless searches that had taken place before,

not a single shred of evidence was found. However, both Shirley and Sonzia believe this obsessive individual is to blame and purport that he could have been hiding her in her jeep before Audrey got in to leave work that day. And because the back doors in her jeep apparently did not lock, it's then that her abductor struck. Audrey was recorded on CCTV, departing her workplace with no unusual indicators. But what happened after she left the parking lot is anyone's guess. In light of such a theory, it's safe to say the police have ruled out the possibility of a car accident and are focusing on the sole possibility of foul play. They've also ruled out the possibility that Audrey simply ran away, given her promotion at work and how much she loved her job. She was also a devoted mother and led an active social life,

suggesting that if she did run away, that she'd have informed a friend or taken her kids along with her. Over the years, many tips have come in from all over New York and neighboring states from people claiming to have spotted Audrey alive and well, but as you can imagine, nothing has ever come of any of them. What's frustrating about this case is that the number one suspect is essentially incapable of committing the crime. In order to successfully evade detection, Audrey's killer would have had the resources and time to dispose of a huge automobile and essentially disappear it from the face of the earth. This would have been nigh impossible for one single person to do,

unless they had some kind of subterranean body shop at their disposal. But this would suggest a network of motivated, twisted individuals, dedicated on abducting and disappearing those unfortunate enough to be caught on the roads at night. And if that really is a possibility, a rational way to explain this disappearance, then maybe none of us are as safe as we'd like to believe. We're supposed to feel safe in our vehicles, machines built with safety belts, airbags, and roll cages. But Audrey's disappearance shows that we're just as vulnerable as our forebears while on dark country roads. And just like back then, predators stalk the highways in search of fresh meat. In January of 1992, Kelly Day Wilson was just a 17-year-old senior at Gilmer High School.

With her well-coiffed curly blonde hair and extravagant jewelry choices and bright blue eyes, Kelly Day was a pretty picture and had no problem making friends after she relocated from Natchitoches, Louisiana to Gilmer, Texas so she could live with her mother and stepfather. She hit the ground running and struck up an on-again, off-again relationship with a young man by the name of Chris Denton, and the two spent a great deal of time together in the lead-up to the new year. It seems Kelly's life was going swimmingly well, and it's clear that no one could have possibly expected what fate had in store for her, something that would raise questions among true crime enthusiasts that pervade even today.

On January 5th, 1992, Kelly finished her shift at the Gilmer Square outlet of Northeast Texas Video, closing the store at around 8.30pm before heading over to a local bank to deposit the store's daily takings. This particular bank branch's security camera showed that an individual did indeed make the night deposit for that evening, but the captured footage didn't provide a clear enough image of the person for a positive identification of Kelly, simply showing an arm in her car. We can presume it was her, but we can't be 100% certain. After locking down the store's shutters with her manager Joe, he wished Kelly goodnight before driving away in his truck. The last he ever saw of her, she was last seeing wearing cut-off stonewashed jeans, a purple rugby shirt with gold trim and brown loafers, and was getting

into her car in preparation for her night drive to the bank. But Kelly didn't arrive home that night, nor did she check in with any of her friends. Her mother became so worried that she sent her stepfather out into the night to aid in the police search that ensued. And like grim providence, it was him that found Kelly's abandoned car in the northeast Texas video parking lot at around 5am. The car was sporting a single slash tire, and all of Kelly's personal belongings, including her purse, were inside of her car. Only she and her keys were missing. At first glance, what happened appeared to be a complete mystery, but it was one that local law enforcement was determined to get to the bottom of. For two years, the investigation into Kelly's disappearance was headed up by a Sergeant James

Brown. One of the first people investigated was obviously Joe, her manager, and the last person to see her alive. However, not only did Jo have multiple alibis, he passed several lie detector tests issued by the police, and as a result, he was rolled out as a suspect. Sergeant Brown oversaw a team consisting of hundreds of police officers and local volunteers, one of which poured thousands of man hours into an intensive search of the surrounding area. Yet despite such a thorough search, as well as hundreds of tips from the general public, not a single trace of Kelly was ever found. Police believe that they were close when they arrested 17-year-old Michael Bibby,

who was taken into custody on misdemeanor charges in an incident of alleged tire slashing. Michael was guilty of many, many things, but as police discovered, slashing Kelly's tires wasn't one of them, and in the end, he too was ruled as a suspect in Kelly's disappearance. Investigators then turned their gaze to another suspect, Kelly's on-and-off-again boyfriend, Chris Denton. The couple were said to have been going through a rough patch at the time of her disappearance, and with people saying that Chris had something of a short temper, there was a period where he became the case's prime suspect.

However, through the course of the investigation, circumstantial evidence would clear him of all wrongdoing, and the police would be forced to look elsewhere for their abductor. Unbelievably, in a number of interviews conducted in the process of their investigation, police had heard a handful of stories alluding to a satanic cult that called Gilmer home. But since the accusations named members of law enforcement as members of the cult, specifically Sergeant James Brown himself, the claims weren't taken seriously by those that heard them. Yet in 1994, the local community was rocked by almost 50 indictments against 10 different people, all on charges of child abuse. And given some of the evidence presented against them,

police proceeded with charges of aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, and capital murder in connection with Kelly Day Wilson's disappearance. It's at this point that Kelly's story seems to intersect with that of the Kerr family, because in 1990, a man named Wendell Kerr told his wife, Loretta, that he wanted a divorce, kicking off a chain of events that would bring prosecutors their one best chance at finding the perpetrator. Wendell Kerr was one of six adult children of Eugene and Geneva Kerr, a couple who were briefly married in the 1950s before a hastily divorce. Geneva Kerr went on to marry two other men, both of whom died before Geneva remarried

Eugene, making him both her first and her fourth husband. According to their children, Eugene and Geneva Kerr abused their children on a daily basis. A relative later confirmed their claims of carnal abuse and spoke of witnessing daily incidents of indecent assault. This same relative also confirmed that they'd witnessed Geneva Kerr's interest in satanic practices, including daily readings from the satanic bible and an interest in both animal and human sacrifices in exchange for law enforcement's help escaping the Kerr family one of their grown-up son's wives offered to tell investigators everything she claimed she was kept as a slave to the family for 10 years couldn't drive a car constantly threatened by Geneva and Danny and her only

form of identification her birth certificate was kept by Danny in Danny, and her only form of identification, her birth certificate, was kept by Danny in his wallet. In her own horrifying words, her role was simply as a breeder. Cut back to Wendell asking his wife for a divorce, Loretta strongly began to suspect that Wendell was trying to ditch her for a younger woman, and if that was the case, she was going to burn his entire life down before she left. She went to the police with accusations, and as a result, Wendell was arrested, placed on the offender's register, and forced to serve out a period of probation. A state welfare worker assigned to the case later concluded that ritualistic, satanic abuse was endemic in all

branches of the Kerr family, and over the next several years, almost a dozen of the clan's children were taken into the care of Child Protective Services. The social worker also mentioned in a horrifying affidavit that in October of 1992, two of the children took us to show us where the devil meet people to abuse and hurt babies. In 1994, the escaped Kerr wife was interviewed by the Harrison County Jail in Marshall, Texas, in which she described in gruesome detail the torture that Kelly Wilson would receive for approximately nine days before she was ritually sacrificed and then cannibalized. She described Geneva as the leader and said that

several of the Kerr clan, along with Sergeant James Brown, were all present during these events. Connie Martin and Wanda Kerr both had stated in interviews that Kelly Wilson was a birthday present for Geneva Kerr and that the matriarch reveled in the poor girl's torment. Yet in light of the accusations, it came to light that information was allegedly coerced from the Kerr children, as well as some of those indicted in the disappearance. Some of the children were allegedly programmed to tell the stories the investigators wanted, while the prosecution tried to coerce a confession by offering life in prison in opposition to the death penalty as long as they confessed to the killing, best summarized in the quote from a state official that reads,

Investigators working on little more than hearsay have created a mythology about a satanic cult, leading to what some describe as a modern witch hunt. They indicted a whole family and even a police investigator, destroying his law enforcement career, straining his marriage and prompting death threats. The Texas Attorney General, finding no evidence any of the charges were true, instead uncovered suggestions that the whole cult theory was the product of coercion by overzealous investigators, even to the point that they physically restrained children to elicit allegations of satanic activity. Ultimately, the Attorney General's office were forced to dismiss every single one of the charges

alleging satanic abuse and sacrificial murder. The satanic cult was found to be a complete fabrication, nothing more than a fantasy concocted by the Kerr children under the influence of police investigators. Chris Denton, Kelly's old boyfriend, tragically died of cancer in 2004, but there were rumors that he had made a deathbed confession. But close family dismissed these allegations as thoughtless, malicious hearsay and maintain Chris' innocence to this day. Joe Henry, the owner and manager of the Northeast Texas video and the last person to see Kelly before she vanished,

stayed mostly under the radar for a number of years. But in a despicable twist in the story, Joe was arrested on charges of possessing indecent images of children. However, police have emphasized that in spite of the nature of the charges against him, he had never been considered a serious suspect in Kelly's case. For all the twists and turns, trials and confessions, finger pointing, and numerous suspects, Kelly Wilson has never been found, despite 20 years of searching. She is presumed dead, but a body has never been found and no valid charges have ever been made in connection with the case. Without a body or Audrey's jeep being recovered,

there's simply no way of coming up with any definitive explanation as to why she disappeared. There must be a rational explanation as to why she vanished, but given the circumstances, for all intents and purposes, Audrey and her vehicle basically dropped off the face of the earth, never to be seen again. So this is way back in the 80s, when we didn't have dashboard GPS or Google Maps or whatever to help us out on the road. All we had was our trusty old coffee stain roadmaps to guide us on our way. But before y'all start thinking that this is me reminiscing about happier, simpler times, don't get it twisted. I wouldn't turn back the clock for a million bucks. Because if I'd had GPS back when I was a young man, I mightn't have gotten into half the trouble I did while driving. I have two incidents to talk about today, and the first one occurred

south of the border, down in Mexico. I was making the 40 mile drive from Morelia to Chiodad Hidalgo, and back in those days, there were only two routes you could take. One was the National Road, which wasn't all that bad, but then there was the Old National Road, which was, I'm pretty sure, designed by an actual sadist. It's a hilly highway known to the locals as Milcumbres, meaning 1,000 curves, and for a good reason too. That thing is like riding a rollercoaster in sections, and I've heard of other drivers getting actual motion sickness when they've attempted to traverse it. But ironically, as horrible as it is to drive, it has some of the best views of any drive you're ever likely to experience.

And if you take it real slow and careful, it can actually be quite pleasant. My grandpa in particular used to love driving up there. People said he was loco, and he probably kind of was, but he was right about Mil Cumbres. Sometimes the rewards really did outweigh the risks. So on this one particular day, me and my grandfather drive up on the Mil Cumbres and we're just cruising while we watch the sun go down over Michoacan. When it was full dark, grandpa decided to take one last run along the highway before we returned home. I'm looking out the window, marveling at the stars in the sky like it's amazing how much clearer you can see the

stars down there and it was always one of my favorite things to do whenever I went to Mexico as a kid. I was just lost in how vast the universe seemed when suddenly, grandpa slams on the brakes of the car so hard I violently lurch forward in my seat. I thought we'd only narrowly avoided an accident or something but when I looked out into the road ahead of us, there was no other cars to be seen. I asked my grandpa what was going on, thinking it might have been a false alarm or something but he looks seriously freaked out as he starts backing up and turning us around. There's my giant, tough-as-nails abuelo, and he's terrified by something, so naturally I start freaking out too. I turn on my seat as he turns the car, trying to get a glimpse of whatever he's

obviously fleeing from, but still, there's nothing in the road. Yet as we're speeding away, I see something move out of the trees at the side of the road. It was only a silhouette, but it was obvious it was a person, and they were carrying something long and heavy, something I only later realized was a gun. I found out years later that bandidos used to operate on those roads. They usually only targeted cargo trucks or the flashier cars of businessmen driving to and from Ciudad Mexico, but when my abuelo saw those dudes just walking out of the trees towards us, he didn't want to take any chances. Definitely the scariest story from when I was a kid, but I think it was rooted in seeing how scared my abuelo was.

On the other hand, I have a story from my 30s that happened when I was driving alone, and I didn't need any sense of childish wonder to get the complete life scared out of me. This isn't nearly as long as the Mexico story but as you'll see it doesn't need to be. I'm driving over to my parents place in rural Illinois and this is a drive I've made countless times before so I'm completely on autopilot. So when I catch the glimpse of a deer in my peripheral vision, I slam on the brakes, trying to avoid plowing into this thing while doing 60. My heart is pounding while I'm just sitting there waiting for the thing to run out into the road. Only nothing shows. Now since the light in my car happened to be busted, I kept a small flashlight and a map on

the passenger seat next to me. So, wondering where the deer disappeared to, I grab the flashlight and a map on the passenger seat next to me. So, wondering where the deer disappeared to, I grab the flashlight and start shining it out into the trees at the side of the road. After a second I see the deer's eyes reflecting some of my flashlight back at me, so I know it's still there just staring at me. Only when I actually light the thing up, I see it's not a deer at all. It's just a deer's head, staked into the dirt facing the road. I have never hit the gas so hard before in my entire life, like I raced away from that thing like it was a nuclear bomb about to go off. I was burning rubber man, and as hard and fast as I pushed that old truck,

it still didn't feel fast enough. I don't know if it was just a case of some local hunters playing a pretty grisly prank, or if it was something, I don't know, evil. But you can bet your butt I never drove that road on autopilot anymore, cause I didn't want to meet, whatever cut that poor thing's head off. Wherever you go, you can get a pro at Tread Experts. Toyo's open country family of tires will get you through tough weather in a variety of terrains. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Find a Toyo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. Trade experts, not CA.

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gambling or someone close to you, please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. I feel like I should preface this by making it clear that I'm not one of these paranormal obsessed ghost hunting loons that think there's orbs in all their photos. And when I tell you that one of my favorite TV shows is Penn and Teller's BS, where they debunk all those nonsense conspiracy theories and whatnot, I think you get an idea of what kind of person I am. And for years, I went around thinking that science and logic could account for everything, with the only restrictions being the limits of our own knowledge. That was until something happened to me that I genuinely can't explain, and no matter how hard I tried,

I couldn't come up with any legitimate explanation. The whole thing freaked me out so much that it kicked off a kind of hyper fixation in me that lasted for months on end, to the point that my rational skeptic friends started to think that I was losing my mind. But I haven't lost my mind, it actually happened. And as much as people try to tell me that it was nothing but my mind playing tricks on me, I know what I saw, and it just about put the fear of God into me. We're going back to early spring of 2017 here. The time of the year when it's still getting dark fairly early here in the northeast. It's around 9pm and I'm driving back to Narragansett from my buddy's

place in Newport when I decide to take a shortcut through Saunderston. It's a drive I'd done like a hundred times by that point. I felt like I could do it with my eyes closed at a push. But maybe that's what made me so complacent, a self-assured cockiness that's gotten me into trouble on more than one occasion, because about halfway into the journey, I must have switched off and taken a wrong turn. Next thing I know, I'm having to turn into a residential cul-de-sac to make a complete 180, and I'm so embarrassingly lost that I find myself reaching for my phone to check Google Maps. I check my position, mentally make a note of the turns

I have to make to get back onto the highway, then start turning off the street as I put my phone away, when bam, there's a car in front of me. I slam on the brakes, let out a string of curse words and prepare myself for at the very best, a few scolding honks of their horn. I then start like mouthing apologies at the driver, taking my hands off the wheel and being like, dude, I'm so sorry, my fault, my bad. When I noticed something really unusual about the car they're driving. It was a legit classic car, and don't go thinking 70s Camaro or something. This thing was a Buick, like one from the 30s or 40s or something. The kind of car you'd expect to see Al Capone climbing out of in Prohibition era Chicago.

And it was crisp too. The guy must have sunk some serious cash into that thing because pretty much everything looked brand new. I suddenly realize that while I'm checking this guy's old car out, I'm actually still blocking him in So I start backing up after giving him a nice car kind of thumbs up after pointing to his hood The guy doesn't react though, like at all The whole time he's just smiling at me through his windshield And as I start backing up to let him pass I remember how he almost looked like one of those old

ventriloquist dummies. Something about his hair or how waxy and pale he seemed to just trigger the association. Then right as I'm about to give him enough space, my car just shuts off. The engine, the battery, everything. I jiggle the keys around, kind of frantically by that point, because I figured I'm making a total idiot of myself in front of the dude with the cool vintage car, but nothing happens. Lights won't turn on, engine won't fire, and my first thought is, god, of all the times for my battery to die, why now? My car was a piece of garbage back then, making it disappointing but not a total surprise. But I'm still blocking in Buick guy, who's surely getting mightily angry after sitting there for a solid few minutes. So I roll my window down, lean out a little and start

yelling over to the guy's car that he has to go around, but he doesn't respond. And all I can hear is this creepy old music coming from his car. I can't see a thing of him because of high headlights, he's not saying a thing, and that freaking song is making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Now this is the part that really freaks me out to recall. As the situation with the guy is turning into something of a standoff, I'm sitting there in the driver's seat wondering why the guy isn't talking, moving, or doing much of anything for that matter. I don't want to honk at the guy, everything had basically been amicable so far,

so I'm just sort of sitting there, waiting, getting more and more anxious as I do so. That's when the lights on my dash start flickering a little and I think my battery might be coming back on. I don't know much about cars, but I'll take it. So I get all excited thinking I'm going to be getting away from what had been an incredibly awkward situation. I start jiggling my keys in the ignition again, but again, nothing happens. Right until my car radio bursts into life and starts playing the exact same creepy song as the one playing in the other car. It didn't have any lyrics.

It was this creepy tri-tone loop with something playing over it. But somehow it managed to fill me with this feeling of dread as I realized something seriously weird was going on. The whole time I'm basically being blinded by the Buick's headlights while it just sits there. Then suddenly, the thing's headlights cut out, right at the same time my radio does, and I'm plunged into darkness again with my natural night vision having been totally ruined for a few seconds. While I'm half blinded, I try the ignition once again, and I breathe a huge sigh of relief when my car comes back to life again. But that little moment was severely short-lived because, as my own headlights turn on, the old Buick is nowhere

to be seen. It came as such a shock that I actually screamed out loud, spinning around in my seat like I might catch a glimpse of it driving away. But no, there was absolutely no sign of that Buick anywhere. It was like it had just straight up vanished into thin air. You think with a big old engine like that, I'd have heard it driving past me even if I was distracted by other things. And the time between the headlights cutting out and me getting my car running again couldn't be anything over 30 seconds. It would have had to zoom past me to disappear from my view so quickly. Have you ever felt super stoned and you don't even smoke? That's what it felt like. I'm putting the entire thing on myself trying to explain it

away as like a mini stroke or something and it even occurred to me that my buddy back in Newport might have dosed me with something groovy so to speak. But no, sober as a judge the whole time. And you can bet I didn't drink anything because those Rhode Island state troopers just love hunting DUIs. So like I said, because I couldn't find any way to explain what happened, it kicked off something of a hyper fixation in me. I revisited the cul-de-sac where it happened, looked up potential classic car owners in the Narragansett area and researched medical papers on blackouts and time loss. The latter had me convinced that I was suffering from syncopal attacks, basically when your heart doesn't pump enough oxygen to the brain,

a pretty serious condition so, as you can imagine, I was only too willing to pony up for a medical checkup. Doctor listens to my heartbeat and checks my blood pressure, then, without any further further examination declares there's nothing wrong with my heart. He did say that the blackouts can be caused by stress, but at the time I wasn't particularly stressed about anything, so I ruled that out as an explanation. One point I went far out and ended up researching those UFO encounters where people experienced time loss but

I figured I'd gone far too down a weird rabbit hole with that one. But as for the thing that people really pick up on with my story for some reason is the fact that I did actually have a bit of luck when it came to my classic car search. There was a guy out in Middleton who had been trying to sell a 1937 Buick Special for years. The thing was a wreck, but he figured it might catch the eye of some vintage car enthusiasts who'd find the time to fix the old beauty up. I played it off like I was interested in making a purchase and still feel guilty about how excited he got, and he got his nephew to text me over some pictures of the old thing

so I could take a good look at it. I'm not saying it was the same model or shape as the one I saw on that cul-de-sac, but I'm not gonna lie, it looked pretty similar. But it's an absolute impossibility that it's the same car, right? A coincidence if ever there was one. Yet some of the people I talk to about this will always point out the connection and tell me I should have asked where he'd gotten it, if the old thing had been involved in a murder or hit and run. Truth is, the guy didn't know. He said his dad picked it up at a police auction and died before he could get a chance to fix it up, and obviously, anything he knew about the car was buried with him. I suppose I've rambled on enough about this now, and I've already made my

point that I can't explain what happened to me that night without sounding like a complete fruitcake. So, I guess I'll just do what I always do, and leave it up to you guys to decide what it was. But please, don't tell me ghost car or whatever because I've been hearing that nonsense for like 4 years now and I'm sick to death of hearing it. And besides, hypothetically I did believe in ghosts. I think it would mess me up pretty bad to think that I got so close to one, but still drove away, unscathed. In April of 2011, 86-year-old Patrick Karnes was living in the biggest little city in the world, Reno, Nevada. Known for its casino and tourism industry, Reno is the county seat and largest city of Washoe County with a population of just over 200,000 people. Despite being well into his 80s, the World War II veteran was described by those that knew him as being sharp as a tack,

who still had a lust for life despite his advanced years. And although he's lost his wife several years earlier, Patrick had adopted a dog named Lucky, who he said kept him accountable and responsible. On April 13th of 2011, Patrick and Lucky were driving back to Reno after a visit to family members living in Toledo, Ohio. Patrick was driving his green Subaru Forester when he approached the town of Wells, Nevada at around 9 at night. As he happened to be approaching a Nevada Highway Patrol officer, he failed to properly switch lanes, resulting in him being pulled over by that very same officer. The cop warned Patrick that what he was doing was dangerous, and only agreed to hold back on a ticket when Patrick assured him that he was simply following a truck driver ahead of him. He assured the officer

that he wouldn't be driving at night anymore, and the officer's dash cam filmed Lucky wagging his tail in the back, suggesting that there was no tension of confrontation between the two men. The officer later testified that Patrick seemed perfectly composed and sober, giving him no reason to prevent him from driving away. Yet the following morning, just before 6am, Patrick's car was found completely abandoned near a place called Winnemucca, more than 150 miles away. The vehicle was stuck in a nearby sage bush and was facing oncoming traffic, but there was still gas in the tank and it was still basically drivable. There were no signs of any kind of conflict or struggle with only a single set of footprints visible in the dirt leading away from the car. What's more, nothing was missing from the car, and it seemed Patrick had walked away from it with nothing but the clothes on his back. One of these abandoned possessions was a map of rest stops on his route back to Reno, the only thing police had to Patrick's planned route. Winnemucca is nowhere near them, so what was it that caused such a radical diversion,

and what happened to Patrick's faithful furry friend, Lucky? Three days later, a witness reported seeing a dog matching Lucky's description near the Pumpernickel exit out near Winnemucca, but a thorough search of the area turned up no signs of the brown Labrador mix. It's interesting to note that five years earlier, another abandoned vehicle was found near the Pumpernickel exit, in almost exactly the same spot that Patrick's was found. Judith Casita, a 62-year-old resident of Reno, was last seen driving her 1991 Mazda pickup truck away from her home on Valentine's Day of 2006. Her truck was found

just over two weeks later on March 5th, abandoned yet still in working order. There is little information available in Judith's case, but it's reported that she had left behind a note stating that she was depressed at her life and her marriage. Although Valentine's Day seems an apt occasion to commit some kind of marriage-related taking of your own life, it seems very coincidental that Judith's car was found in exactly the same spot and in exactly the same condition as Patrick's. While some suggest that the disappearances amount to nothing more than a lost senior and a woman who took her life, others argue that both Judith and Patrick's disappearances are the work of a Nevada serial killer. Although it's not clear why police or journalists might come to such a theory, there are numerous articles outlining missing person cases that

originate in the area. One article describes Patrick's case as the latest in a string of missing person cases, citing the disappearances of Rita Cretan, who was later found alive, and those of Albert Cretan and Grant Modell. No matter what you choose to believe, Patrick was officially declared deceased by the state of Nevada in late 2014. But it seems the key to solving his disappearance is connected to many, many others. If we find out what happened to people like Judith, we'll find out what happened to Patrick. Whether or not it's a serial killer or some other more sinister phenomenon, the truth lies in finding their

bodies. But the fact that it was only a single set of human footprints, unaccompanied by those of a canine, leads us to believe that something must have been very, very wrong if Patrick chose to abandon his lifelong companion, Lucky. Sure, Patrick was almost 90 years old, and it certainly wouldn't have been difficult for a human being to overpower him, but he was also a combat veteran, and also an all-around tough SOB, the likelihood of him being kidnapped or killed without a fight seems very, very slim indeed. So what stopped him that night? What scared him so badly that he'd abandoned his beloved Labrador? These are the questions that might never be answered, and that might just be for the best, because who knows if we're ready for the truth behind such a vast

number of disappearances. I've read an awful lot of spooky night driving stories that involve some kind of dumb urban legend. Guys at the side of the highway with an axe and a fursuit or whatever. Ghostly apparitions that are three spoopy five me. While I'm quick to call out stories like that, I do have a scary night driving story of my own. And although this one doesn't include anything remotely supernatural, I'm willing to bet it was a hundred times more terrifying than anything that does. I'm driving back one Sunday from my mom's place in upstate New York, headed back into Manhattan to get ready for the working week ahead. It had been an exhausting weekend as my family had been celebrating Eid together and I was about ready to pass out by the time it came to

drive back into the city. I thought I had everything down. I had my coffee, I cracked my driver's side window. Everything they tell you to do when you're driving while tired. But still, one moment I'm driving, concentrating on whatever NPR show was on, and then the next minute, I wake up to pure terror. All I can hear is this deep rumbling, so hard and loud it feels like it's vibrating the entire car, and coming right at me at like 70 miles an hour is the freaking highway guardrail. I slammed my brakes on, heard all kinds of honking behind me, and from what I understand, I only narrowly avoided causing a major pileup. But more than just a pileup, if I'd have sped off the road doing 70 like that, there's absolutely no way I'd be around to write this today. Please, take my advice. Coffee and cool air just isn't enough sometimes. Sleep it off.

Don't risk your life. Back when I was 22, in late October of 1996, I went for a few quiet drinks with some mates down in Chingford, which is a small town about half an hour's drive from London. As usual, a few quiet drinks turned into an all-night pub crawl that ended in a visit to a local off-license. We stumbled back to a mate's flat, where we carried on drinking until about 2 in the morning when I decided I'd best be heading off. I didn't have money for a taxi but

that was fine. I'd just walk home. It was only a two hour walk and single digit temperatures while I'm trashed with nothing but a thin shirt on. By the time I realized how up the creek I was, it was way too late to turn back and crash on my mate's couch. I was so drunk I'm not even sure I'd been able to find my way back. It was either carry on up towards Bell Common where I was living at the time or wander around until I got picked up by the police. I must have lost my bearings around Lawton because as drunk as I was, I remembered the distinct moment of realizing I wasn't quite where I thought I was and that it was going to take me even longer to get home. I was knackered, starving, and freezing my bollocks off, so as daft as it

seems looking back on it, I decided to gamble on a shortcut. All I'd have to do was walk through Debden Green, then cut through the top end of Epping Forest and Bob's your uncle. I'd be home again for baked beans on toast and a cup of tea. It seemed easy on paper, but actually managing it was going to be a different kettle of fish. Eventually I hit a road with some signage saying Coppice Row, so I know for a fact that if I just cross the road and keep walking roughly through the woods, I'll be back in Belcommon within about half an hour. But walking through the woods meant it was even darker. There was no ambient light from distant streetlights to guide me, and the cloud cover meant that there wasn't even any moonlight to see by. I started to worry that I was going to actually get myself lost again, which would

have been frankly embarrassing given how close to home I was. But when I see some light through the trees in the distance I breathe a sigh of relief. Now this is the point where what happened becomes something of a morality play. The moral being that when it comes to alcohol you need to be able to know when enough is enough. Because I was so sloshed I saw those lights and immediately just thought, I'll walk towards them. Not, those don't look like street lights, or they seem a little bit too close to be from a road. Nope, I just walked straight towards them like an actual pillock, and ended up changing my life forever. Turns out, the flickering lights in the woods that look like open flames were exactly that.

Then right as I realized what I'm looking at, which was a bunch of hooded people holding flaming torches, they start doing something that makes me freeze my tracks. They actually started chanting. Not like a loud chanting either, not like a football chant or whatever. It was all low voices, just barely above a whisper, like they didn't want anyone to hear. But because there was about 10 or 12 of them all doing it at once, it had this horrible, echoey creepiness to it that I can remember it like it was yesterday. I'm this horrible mix of drunk, confused,

and extremely creeped out, hoping all I'm looking at is a bunch of hackney hippies celebrating the winter solstice or something. But at the same time, I had this gut feeling telling me that it was something entirely more sinister. I couldn't tell what language they were chanting in, but it definitely wasn't English. And as I stood there, dead still, trying to work out what in God's name was going on, I saw two of the hooded figures with things dangling from their robes leading someone into the middle of the little circle they were stood in.

It was a young girl, maybe 15 or 16, dressed in like grubby off-white clothing, nothing like the dark colored hoods everyone else had on. And in her arms is a baby. I'm just scrambling for rational explanations by that point. It had to be a film shoot or something. A small budget horror film, yeah, that's what I told myself. Or some group of West End Wiccans doing some kind of moody but otherwise harmless baptism. Drunk logic is telling me, just ask them what they're doing. Give a smile, get a smile and all that. But I couldn't bring myself to. I'm just tensed up, barely breathing, trying not to make a sound. Pure survival instincts kicking in as I start to get legitimately frightened by what I'm looking at. I suppress the urge to leg it.

They'd have heard me take off and in the state I was in they'd probably catch up to me pretty fast and that's if I didn't knock myself out first by running into a tree. So, nice and slowly, I just start backing up away from the scene trying my very best not to make one iota of a noise. When I think I'm at a safe enough distance, I start turning back around so I can better slink away through the trees. Only right as I do, the chanting starts back up, and the baby starts crying. Hearing that baby crying in the pitch black woods, even if it was just a small piece of parkland like Epping Forest, sent this icicle of fear ramming its way through my stomach.

I'm not joking, I've never had an actual physical visceral reaction to a sound before, but hearing that baby cry makes my guts tense up like I was going to spew. I stopped and did like a half-way turn, hearing the baby's cry getting louder and louder, that I'm not exactly sure what happened, but I just saw this rush of movement from two of the hooded figures before the baby's cries grew unnaturally high-pitched, and then suddenly stopped. I couldn't stop myself. I let out this terrified scream, and then just legged I couldn't stop myself. I let out this terrified scream, and then just legged it off through the trees. I was risking a broken nose and teeth legging it through epping forest in the dark like that, but at the time, it seemed like a favorable

alternative to staying put. I called the police as soon as I could. I didn't even wait to get back to my flat, as soon as I saw a phone box I just called from there. I'd long forgotten about being cold or tired. I was surging with adrenaline and any shivering I had going on was from sheer fight or flight. The dispatcher I spoke to took down my name and address, then said officers would call by as soon as they could. I'm sober by this point and finally am able to get my bearings and walk back home. I make myself a cup of tea and try to calm myself down a bit before the police arrive. It takes about an hour before anyone rings the door on my flat and by that time, I'm starting to come down from the adrenaline so I'm doubly as

tired as I was before the whole woods incident. I look rougher than a bear's bottom, I'm slurring my words still a little bit and I realize that as much as I've sobered up by now, I still smell a little like a brewery. In short, after I gave the policeman a full and detailed account of what I saw, I could just tell he didn't believe me. I offered to take them back to where I thought that I had saw those hooded, torch-bearing figures, but they declined, saying they'd have a look on their way back and there was no need for me to accompany them. But I could just tell they had no intentions of following up my complaint. Even the people close to me didn't

believe a word of it. My mom told me to stop telling fibs. My mates all said that I was just bladdered and seeing things. It got to the point where it was actually a bit humiliating. So in the end, I just stopped talking about it. But that doesn't mean I didn't stop thinking about it. It took almost 20 years before I could even attempt to get answers for what happened that night, which leads me to an obligatory back in my day moment. Basically the only informational sources we had when I was growing up were public libraries, or if you were lucky enough to have one at home, an encyclopedia. 99% of the books relating to cults and witchcraft in my local library were just

pulpy nonsense so I quickly gave up. But then, almost two decades after, I have Google. I now have something infinitely more powerful than a library and I have it on the PC in my living room. So, when I suddenly get the urge to start googling about cults in the greater London area, I don't get back a load of fanciful bollocks. I get back information so pertinent and familiar that it actually terrified me. In 2014, the Met Police here in London interviewed two kids called Alyssa and Gabriel, who both claimed to be victims of satanic ritual abuse. These interviews were the culmination of five years' worth of tireless work from the kid's mother, who had filed a legal

injunction against their father, a man court documents only referred to as Mr. D way back in 2009. She had been keeping her children away from this Mr. D character, who was actually her husband at the time, and as much as the evidence she presented to a judge was worrying, it was still flimsy. This judge then ruled that the dad would be legally permitted to have unsupervised contact with the children every Saturday from 10am to 6pm. According to the mother, whose name I'm still not sure of, the ruling was just a legal sham, with Mr. D still controlling practically every aspect of their lives. This is in spite of him having lived in a rented apartment away from his wife and kids. Then, 2010, Alyssa starts attending Christ Church School in Hampstead with Gabriel joining a year later. Both kids say that while they were at Christ Church, students were regularly groomed and abused by not only their teachers, but their own father too, who told them to keep quiet about it under pain of death.

Both kids kept their mouths shut for four long years until the summer holidays of 2014 when they spilled their guts to their mother about what was going on at that school. I read that in the months building up to everything coming out, the kids' behavior got really weird and disturbing. The mom said Gabriel sometimes had this kind of glaze come over his eyes, as if he was switching off from reality or something. Not long after, a friend of Alyssa's named Millie came over to their home after school to play. The mom was horrified when Millie openly talked about the abuse to Christ's church, almost like it was perfectly normal. The level of abuse that the

children say they endured is horrendous, with Gabriel even saying that those that screamed too much were given medicine so they'd be kept quiet. When a specialist police officer, trained in talking to children about sensitive issues, asked where the nurse had given the children the medicine, Gabriel pointed to his arm. After watching hours of those interviews, I saw a part with Alyssa saying that on Wednesdays, people they didn't recognize would visit the school

and look at all the children before selecting one to go off to a secret place that night, presumably to be abused. She added that sometimes, the selected children had to make a hospital visit after the day they were picked and were absent from school for some time afterward. I just had this penny drop moment when she said Wednesday, the same night of the week that I went out with my mates down in Chingford. I had this horrible feeling I was onto something and I had no idea how right I'd turn out to be. Following these interviews, instead of going back to live with their mother and being removed from the school they were being abused at, Both Alyssa and Gabriel were taken into custody and continued to attend Christchurch. Not only

that, but they quickly retracted the allegations against their abusers, apparently after being told it was the only way to being reunited with their mother. I dug up a statement from Alyssa and Gabriel's mom and trust me, this wasn't easy to find. Almost every mainstream media outlet seems to have just buried this story. And she goes on to say, I believe that most of the information my children have revealed is true. There is no way a child could create a story like that with so many intricate details. It is out of the question that anyone would coach the children to say things like that. Although we know that they have retracted their statements, the children

still, even now, keep coming back to the same story and the details, while in foster care to the degree that it became unbearable for their caretaker Carol to look after them, and she no longer wants to do this. From where I'm standing, the only people to have coached the kids into saying anything are the people who initially took them into custody, who somehow managed to get them to say, oh we made it all up, for five minutes only to have them repeat the same old stories afterward. And trust me, the details these kids come out with are beyond shocking. There are hours upon hours of interview footage available to the public online, and I think all in all I've watched about two and a half hours worth of them.

At first, because it's a nine-year-old kid telling the story, the details are fuzzy. The descriptors to an adult, it generally does sound made up. But then she starts coming out with things that a kid really shouldn't know. A lot of deeply disturbing things that really make you think she's not making this up. Either Alyssa has at some point been able to access some pretty questionable online material. There is absolutely no way she could know about some of the things she talks about in her interview, unless they actually happened and she's telling the truth. But I know she's telling the truth, and it's not her compelling story or the obvious corruption in the local government that clued me into it. It's a tiny little detail that the mother wrote in a blog piece I found,

and when I heard it, it was like the final piece of the jigsaw just slotted into place. I won't quote much of what the mom wrote in her blog, as most of it details torture and cannibalism that occurred at some of the cult's rituals, but one repeatable section I found seriously disturbing was the fact that her kids were always pretending to be sick on Wednesdays, and only when she found out that Wednesdays were selection days did she finally understand why. But the mom also mentions that during the rituals, the higher up members of the cult used to wear children's skulls on special costumes, and once I read that, I finally realized what I'd seen dangling from the robes of the two cultists who flanked their girl and her baby.

Skulls. It was children's skulls. And that's when I realized that little Alyssa was telling gospel truth. What I just wrote is just a small example of what I'd learned. I've spent the past six years researching what appears to be a network of satanic ritual abuse operating behind the scenes of several North London primary schools, and I think I'm just about ready to put everything together that I've got into a book or maybe I'll even do a podcast. But what I have to say on the subject has some very far-reaching political and cultural consequences. The likes of Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith are just the tip of the iceberg. I know it seems a little silly of

me to give the game away this early, and the people I'm writing about might very well read or hear this and then know that I'm onto them, but let's just say this is like a post-mortal security system. If I end up with three bullets in the back of my head, and declare that I took my own life, trust me, it's not. The people that stand to lose from what I've learned are some very powerful people who will do anything to keep their secret from getting out. They've killed some very high profile British public figures in the past. They'll have absolutely no problem taking me out if they feel threatened. And they will feel threatened. Because what I have to say is nothing short of explosive. And after it's out there, nothing will ever be the same. Boris Weisweiler was an exceptionally gifted mathematician.

Born into a Jewish family living in the Soviet Union, Boris showed a great deal of academic potential from a young age. In 1970, he received his PhD from the prestigious Steklov Institute in Leningrad. But due to rampant Soviet anti-Semitism, his career stagnated, and he migrated to America in 1975, becoming a Penn State professor the following year. One of the reasons Boris was excited to move to the United States was that he hated the cold. Back in Russia, he vacationed on the Caspian coast to avoid the Slavic snows, and since Pennsylvania became a winter wonderland all of its own in December and January, Boris decided to spend Christmas

and New Year of 1984 in southeastern Chile on a backpacking vacation. He was intensely passionate about hiking, having previously taken solo trips in Peru, Alaska, China, and Siberia, and wasn't remotely phased by the remoteness of his journey or the difficult mountainous terrain of his proposed route. On Christmas Eve of 1984, Boris flew to the Chilean capital, Santiago, landing there at approximately 10pm. From Santiago, Boris boarded a bus headed to the southern town of San Fabian, and it's here that he began his trek to the Andes mountain range. From that point, the exact details of Boris' journey aren't completely clear, as he was hiking through remote forests and sparsely populated hillsides,

either living off the land or by the generosity of the villages he visited. However, we do know for certain that on January 3rd of 1985, Boris was crossing the Nublai River, located about 2,000 miles south of Santiago. Two eyewitnesses in the form of local shepherds said they had met a lone Russian hiker that evening and shared dinner with the man when they saw how few rations he had left. In the wee hours of the morning when dinner was finished, the shepherds offered Boris a placeides, said that Boris insisted on pushing on towards his next destination, insisting that in spite of the darkness, he needed to catch up on time he had missed to make it to the place he was about to call home for a week or two. The shepherds bid Boris farewell and good luck, then watched him wander off into the night. It should have been a jolly occasion,

a happy memory for all involved, but as it turns out, this was the last time that anyone saw Boris Weisfeller alive. A week passed in Chile before anyone noticed Boris was even missing. He was scheduled to arrive back in San Fabian on January 12th, where he had promised to check in with his sister Olga to assure her of his safe passage. But Boris never made that phone call, and when his return flight took off for New York on January 13th, there was only an empty seat where Boris should have been. The following day, Boris' sister still hadn't heard from him. Without fail, every single time he'd return from a hiking trip, he'd make contact to inform her of his safety. So, on the one occasion that he'd failed to do so, Olga knew in her gut that something was wrong. She immediately contacted the local police force,

insisting they begin investigating his disappearance immediately. Yet the police dismissed her concerns at face value, telling her the most likely explanation was that Boris had simply opted to extend his stay in Chile and was probably just without means of contacting her. However, when January 19th rolled around, marking the beginning of the new semester at Penn State, there was still no word from Boris. Desperate and terrified, Olga and Penn State itself commenced legal proceedings that would force the U.S. State Department to begin formally investigating Boris' disappearance. Meanwhile, in Chile, authorities had already gotten the investigatory ball rolling. The very same day that Olga had

attempted to file a missing persons report, Chilean police had managed to locate Boris' backpack, which contained his U.S. driver's license and credit card. Interestingly, his passport, return plane ticket, and money were all missing from his wallet. Yet such important information was only reported to the U.S. Embassy on January 22nd, after the State Department contacted the Chilean government regarding Boris' inexplicable disappearance. It's at this point that a U.S. ambassador traveled from the Chilean capital to where Boris' backpack was found. When he arrived, Chilean police showed him the body of a man who bore a remarkable physical resemblance to Boris. A post-mortem had shown that the man had drowned in a nearby river, but when the ambassador compared the man's corpse to a photograph of Boris

he was carrying, he safely concluded that the dead body was not that of the Russian immigre, and this was confirmed when the body was confirmed to be the brother of a local man who had gone missing just a few days prior. However, when the ambassador was given time to more thoroughly examine the body, he noticed that the skin on the tips of the finger had been peeled away, and that some of the man's teeth had been extracted, leaving very little in the way of clues to the man's identity. It was this discovery that had US officials realizing that something much deeper and darker was going on in southern Chile, and that the disappearance of Boris Weisfeller was just the tip of the iceberg.

Yet bizarrely, even after the body of the drowned man was confirmed to have belonged to a local villager, Chilean authorities reversed themselves and insisted that it was in fact Boris' body after all. They officially declared him dead, stating that the cause of death was accidental drowning after Boris had attempted to cross the Nubil River. The U.S. State Department seemed to accept this official explanation, but behind the scenes, American officials continued to conduct a covert investigation into Boris' death. A number of important questions remained unanswered. For example, the Nubal River is very narrow, with an extremely weak current, so how was it that Boris' body was found so far from the site

of his river crossing? What's more, the section of the Nubal River in which Boris is said to have drowned is barely four feet deep. Boris was an experienced trekker, in great physical shape, and had crossed even deeper rivers just days prior. So how is it he drowned in water he could have easily stood up in? It would be no easy feat to get to the bottom of such an enigma, but the Chilean government didn't even attempt to find the answers that Boris and his relatives so richly deserved. In fact, from 1985 onwards, the Chileans went completely radio silent on the issue, and for almost two decades afterwards, it appeared as if Boris' disappearance would remain a mystery. But then, in 1998, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's luck finally ran out,

and he was brought up on charges of human rights violations by the United Kingdom. In the great tradition of the special relationship between the two countries, the administration of President Bill Clinton began to share hundreds of State Department reports with the UK, all of which detailed a ten-year covert investigation to uncover the truth behind Boris Weisfeller's vanishing. Years upon years of delicate and secretive operations had unearthed clues to Boris's whereabouts that all pointed to the same place, a remote commune known only as the Colonia Dignidad. Shockingly, the Colonia was revealed to be a religious cult-turned prison camp founded by escaped Nazi war criminals in post-war Chile. It was also used by the Pinochet

regime for the torture and execution of their political opponents. It operated as a kind of autonomous zone, exempt from the control of the Chilean government, with a free pass to torture, brainwash, and kill as they pleased. The only condition being that they disappear at Pinochet's rivals when asked to do so. U.S. officials had long suspected that the Colonia played a part of Boris' disappearance, as at the time he went missing, Pinochet was subjecting his political opponents to some of the worst violence and oppression in the country's history. Not only that, but the Colonia was only 25 miles away from the small village in which Boris had shared dinner with the two shepherds. When reading through some of the declassified documents for the first time, US officials tasked with discovering Boris' fate

were stunned at some of the details surrounding the colonialist founding. The story begins with a local Nazi and convicted offender by the name of Paul Schaeffer. In the mid-50s, Paul founded a small commune in western Germany, preaching a message that was highly influenced by the writings of American revivalist preacher William Branham, who would also go on to inspire the infamous Jim Jones of the Jonestown Massacre. Paul was intelligent, ruthless, and extremely charismatic, so much so that one follower said that the charisma seemed to radiate from him like beams of light. As a result, he quickly amassed a large and committed following of about 300 members, who operated a community orphanage for

war widows and their children in a building just outside of Troisdorf. But like many cults, before and since, it wasn't long until there were accusations of child abuse being leveled at the group's leader. Paul Schaefer responded to the accusations by fleeing the country, hopping from continent to continent until he decided to settle in Chile. By 1962, Paul had used funds raised from his most devoted followers to buy a 4,000 acre ranch in the Andean foothills, and when he summoned the faithful, they came in droves. When the commune was 240 strong, Paul gave a speech in which he declared that the place was to be a center for moral revival, a place where they would attempt to restore the dignity of man. And with that in mind, the commune was officially named La Colonia Dignidad, meaning the Dignity Colony.

Yet the kind of lifestyle that Paul had instituted at the Colonia was far different from what he preached. What was promised as a utopia turned out to be an autocratic nightmare, where Paul's followers were forced into a rigorous process of social and mental control. Colonists were forbidden from any kind of private conversation, and a system of confession was in its place, whereby they confessed their sins on a daily basis. Men and women were kept entirely separate, with romantic relationships strictly forbidden. Children were raised communally, having been forcibly separated from their parents, with Paul having the final say on how they were raised. Those who broke any of the numerous rules and regulations were subjected to horrific public punishments

in which they were whipped, tortured, or beaten, a stark warning to the other colonists of the faith that awaited rule breakers. The ideology that Paul claimed to have invented was nothing more than a warped version of Judeo-Christian values, coupled with an added obsession with anti-communism. Given that his followers were largely composed of German war veterans and war widows, who still remembered the devastating march of the Red Army across Germany, the message rang true. To them, communism was the pinnacle of insidious evil, and years of intense hatred for leftist politics made them easy targets for Paul's own

brand of rhetoric. When the Colonia was founded, Chile was under socialist government, something that Paul constantly reminded his followers to develop a kind of siege mentality. However, in 1973, the Chilean political landscape changed dramatically when the country's military seized control of the government. Suddenly the nation's leader was no longer socialist, but a violently right-wing general by the name of Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet kicked his regime off by hunting down no less than 45,000 political rivals, and by the time he was done, Chile's prisons were overflowing with prisoners. Pinochet had a problem, but when he discovered La Colonia Dignidad, it seemed a solution had presented itself. Given their far right tendencies, Paul Schaeffer proved a natural ally to General Pinochet, who had long harbored

an admiration for German military prowess. We can't say for certain if the two ever met in person, but some kind of direct communication seems inevitable given that Colonia's role in the regime's murder machine, because by 1974, political prisoners were being shipped by the hundreds to a special section of the Colonia where they were tortured, interrogated, and executed. The level of violence perpetrated at the Colonia only grew as the years went by, and it lasted a long, long time too, with reports of mass executions in the area as late as 1997. But why are we talking about an oppressive Chilean dictatorship and their new age cultist allies when we're trying to find out what happened to an ex-Soviet hiker.

Because the fact is that when Boris entered Chile in 1984, he was entering a country that was in the grip of a violent authoritarian dictatorship where New Age cults were free to run torturous little fiefdoms where their leaders played God. It was the very definition of a rogue state, one of the most dangerous, volatile places on earth. It's clear that Boris was aware of some of the risks associated with Chilean travel, but there's no way he could have known that his proposed hiking route would have taken him within spitting distance of one of the world's most notorious death camps. And given the area was probably one of the most dangerous places on Earth, it's safe to

assume that the Colonia had something to do with his disappearance. The question is, how can we know that for certain? As we mentioned, the last person to ever see Boris alive was the shepherd he was having dinner with on the night of his disappearance. The official Chilean story, the same one the United States Department backed as late as 1998, was that the Shepherds had bid Boris a warm farewell in the wee small hours of the morning and hadn't thought of the meeting again until he was visited by Chilean police. However, declassified US diplomatic cables revealed that, after meeting Boris near his village, the Shepherd had filed a report with a group of

Chilean soldiers who were stationed nearby. This report claims that a foreign extremist was in the area, but whether or not this is a direct reference to the Colonia Cultus isn't entirely clear. But what is clear is how a Chilean army officer would have reacted if he'd taken a look at Boris' passport. Although he had earned his US citizenship a few years prior and thus had an American passport, under the section titled Place of Birth, Boris' passport read Moscow. As we know, Boris had migrated to the US many years before and had done so as a defector. He had no loyalty to the Soviet Union, but no Chilean army officer would have known that and, at a time when Chile was in the grip of an anti-communist witch hunt,

this looked very, very bad indeed. It didn't help that Boris had an old Soviet military-issue backpack to carry his things, one that was covered in Cyrillic lettering. Another declassified document gives weight to this theory and confirms that the colonia's involvement in Boris' disappearance. The document contains the account of a confidential military informant known only as Daniel, who claims to have been one of the soldiers who captured Boris alive. He claims that they took off his shoes, tied him up and took him into the Colonia Dignidad, where he was turned over to the chief of security. Daniel goes on to say that Paul Schaefer himself took part in Boris' torture,

repeatedly accusing him of being a Jewish spy sent by the Soviet Union. Just how Paul came to learn of Boris' faith is unknown, but we can only imagine the delight of the former Nazi when he realized he had his hands on a Jew born in Moscow of all places. It's a scenario so horrific that it wouldn't enter a person's worst nightmares. If it was a horror movie, people would say it was exploitative, too on the nose, and bad taste. But this actually happened. An innocent Jewish immigrant from the former Soviet Union goes on a blissful trek in the Chilean mountains and ends up the prisoner

of a Nazi cult leader who's still operating a death camp 40 years after the war ended. The results were worse than you can imagine. Boris was treated like an animal, kept alive by the Nazi colonists so that they could extend his torment. He was everything they had ever hated. American. Soviet. Jew. According to Daniel's account, Boris was kept alive and tortured almost daily for two and a half years.

Before one day, he simply couldn't handle it anymore, and his body just gave out. The declassified document that details this account comes with a note from a CIA analyst that confirms Daniel's story as mostly being true, and only casts doubt on the claim that Boris was kept alive for 30 months. However, another piece of evidence available to the general public is the transcription of a cassette tape recorded by a man named Heinz. Heinz had escaped from the colonia in 1968, but had remained in Chile to set up an operation which aimed to help other colonists escape Paul Schaeffer's brutal Nazi-style regime. On the recording, Heinz says that he helped a high-ranking colonist named Hugo Barr escape the colony's clutches after he grew jaded with the cult's way of life.

Barr told him that, before he escaped, he'd overheard a conversation between Paul and two other colonists in which Paul asked them about a recent intruder to the colonia. References to a Jew were made along with one of the men saying, Don't worry, the problem has been solved. He's already eating potatoes underground. This testimony is supported by a separate CIA informant who claims that after Boris was questioned by Schaefer, he was beaten to death and tossed in the river. This source also states that the first responders to his missing persons report were the CNI, the Chilean secret police, who instead of looking for Boris, scrubbed all evidence that he had ever been in the area, then found a patsy with which to fake an accidental death. Both of these are deemed solid sources, so it's most likely that Boris was killed shortly after his abduction.

It also indicates a large-scale cover-up of the murder by Chilean authorities, which means that at some point, they were well aware that he wasn't a Russian spy, but an American citizen. Yet by the time he'd been taken to the Colonia, he had already seen too much of the Chilean regime's murder machine that he could be allowed to just walk away. At that point, Chilean authorities had every reason to immediately execute Boris. They had to keep their operations secretive from the United States, and any immediate release could have kicked off a major diplomatic crisis. Leaving him alive would only have increased the chances of an escape. To them, Boris had to die. All the signs of an unlawful governmental

sanctioned execution was there, but US officials didn't quite have all the evidence they needed to file a complaint with the UN. So in 1986, they reached out to Luis Benavides, the shepherd who had last seen Boris alive, and the same man who had apparently reported him to the Chilean army. But to their surprise, investigators found that Luis was dead. They were told that he had been found hanging on one of the cable posts of a bridge across the Nubile River, not far from the area that Boris is said to have been murdered. Investigators were told that Luis's death occurred on May 5th, 1985, just four months after Boris went missing. Officially, his death was ruled him taking his own life, but as we know from this whole tale, there are plenty of official explanations that are anything but truthful.

Just like another witness to the crime, who was found floating face down in a lake not far from the Colonia, not long after Louise was discovered hanging. The official explanation was that he had accidentally drowned, and it seems that all these witnesses had a simultaneous run of bad luck after meeting Boris, something we can all agree is highly suspicious. In 1998, after the declassified US documents were released, the Chilean government finally reopened the Weiss-Feller case and built a criminal case against Schaefer and the Colonia. A last-ditch attempt to launder the Colonia's reputation saw Schaefer launch a subsidized boarding school for local children on Colonia grounds. It was an initial success, until one 12-year-old student managed to smuggle a note out to his mother.

It simply said, Take me out of here. He did things to me. The boy's mother took him to a doctor who in turn contacted the local police, leading to a warrant being issued for Schaefer's arrest. Police raided the colonia shortly after but couldn't find Paul Schaefer as he was apparently hiding from them in an underground bunker. It wasn't until 2005 that justice finally caught up with him when he was discovered to be living in a wealthy gated community in the Argentinian capital, Buenos Aires. Yet Paul's arrest didn't bring any fresh answers to the questions surrounding Boris' murder. Paul wouldn't

say a word about his leadership of the Colonia and he took his secrets to the grave, dying in prison in 2010. Unbelievably, the Colonia is still in existence, having rebranded itself as La Villa Baviera and has actually opened to tourists. Visitors can wander streets lined with historic Bavarian-style buildings, enjoying traditional German holidays such as the Oktoberfest. But as jolly vacationers raise steins of beer, police excavate nearby mass graves, digging and dating hundreds of decaying remains in the hopes of calculating the number of Colonia victims. In the near future, it may well turn out that Boris Weisfeller's body is down there too, buried under the hundreds of bodies of those that fell victim to the world's final Nazi death camp. Back when I was a student, I used to work as a bartender in a nightclub here in Liverpool. Most places kicked out at about 2am, but we stayed until about 6am and just mopped up all the business that came spilling out of the other trendier places. This meant that we got some absolute messes propping up our bar on a nightly basis and you could roughly divide the idiots

that patronized us into four categories. 1. Happy drunks. Occasionally annoying but generally favorable. 2. Sad drunks. Frequently annoying, tend not to tip. 3. Sleepy drunks, occasionally annoying but generally favorable. 2. Sad drunks, frequently annoying, tend not to tip. 3. Sleepy drunks, usually have to rouse these buggers out from the warmer, comfier corners of the end of the night. And last but not least, the rare and mystical blackout drunks. Totally unpredictable, avoided all costs, removed from premises as soon as possible. When I say blackout drunk, I don't necessarily mean people who just got too drunk to stand up and end up passing out. No, blacking out when drinking is an actual medical thing.

Don't quote me on the ins and outs, but from what I understand, some people have a very particular reaction to alcohol, not all the time, just some of the time, and it causes a complete mental break. People can do outrageous things and have no memory of it whatsoever. They have zero inhibitions, zero social cues, the car is driving, there's just no one at the wheel. Now you see how dangerous that can be and why I added the whole remove from premises type thing. So the stage is set for my scariest post-work encounter ever. It's been a quiet night, people are coming and going and dribs and drabs and we get this one guy who comes in dressed in what look like work gear. He seems a bit worse for the wear but more like he just had a rough day so my colleague gives him

the benefit of the doubt and gives him one last pint of lager for the road. Maybe an hour after, he's leaning up against the bar, staring into space, with this glassy, watery look in his eyes. Classic blackout case. Not falling down drunk, still semi-lucid, but there's just no one behind the eyes. We're close to closing anyway so I prompt the door staff to come over and ask him to leave. He seems a bit confused at first but soon complies and he's out the door. No drama. We close, do a really quick clean down and we're all out the doors about 45 minutes later. I usually walk all the way home since it's only a fairly short distance and the area tends

to be completely deserted at the time of morning. Only on this occasion our blackout drunk friend is sitting on a wall on the opposite side of the street, just staring into space like they always end up doing. But as I'm looking at him with a bit of concern, wondering how he's going to get himself home, he looks up at, notices me, and then immediately starts crossing the road towards me. He doesn't engage though, he just stays behind me on the pavement, following at a steady pace. I'm getting increasingly frightened, and I'm trying to keep my cool, but I can actually hear his footsteps getting louder and louder on the pavement behind

me. So I pull out my phone and fake a call with my boyfriend, I was single at the time, saying I was about to catch the bus home. But what's that? You want to come and give me a lift? You'll be here any second because you're already in the area? Okay, thanks babe, you're the best. Then, heart pounding, I walk about 50 meters to the nearest bus stop and plonk my butt down on the bench. Blackout guy hangs around for a bit, not looking like he's doing anything in particular, but I know what he's hanging around for and it's scaring the bejeebies out of me. But thankfully with a bluff of my boyfriend coming to pick me up having apparently worked, he starts shuffling off along the road and eventually out of sight. Only trouble was, he walked the same way I needed to get home but it was no massive issue, I could just hop the first bus, it was due in like 15 minutes, and take the L for the bus fare, but I'd definitely get home safe and sound.

Bus comes, I get on, take a seat, happy days. Next bus stop comes along, bus stops, only one passenger shuffles onto the bus and drops a handful of change into the little coin tray. I look up, Guess who it is? It's Blackout Guy, who without looking at me walks past and takes a seat just behind me. I'm just absolutely bricking it by this point and I've completely run out of ideas. I know the guy's going to get off at the same stop as me, follow me home. And then what? I lived alone at the time. I'd have been buggered. Out of pure nervousness, I remember checking my watch and that's when I got the idea that saved me. Right by my flat, immediately as you get off the bus, there's a Tesco Metro and since it was just past 7am,

it would have just opened. That Tesco would have been rocking a security guard and possibly an office I could ask him to hide me in It wasn't the best idea but it was definitely worth a shot And it turned out it was the best idea I could possibly have had Like clockwork, the guy got off the bus with me and followed me to the Tesco I was a bit shaky when I approached the security guy but as soon as I explained what the deal was He ushered me off into a security office where they normally detain shoplifters and all that. Police were called and the blackout Jai

actually hanged around the Tesco waiting for me to reappear so he was an easy caller. I'm not sure if they charged him with anything or just gave him a bed for the night. I don't care though to be honest. He was out of my hair, I was safe, and that's all I was arsed about. I don't know if he saw through my fake phone call or something but him working out that I was on that bus was honestly one of the worst moments of my life. Like this proper oh no moment that I've never ever repeated before or since. I just feel bad for girls who don't have anyone to run to when something like that happens. Girls who aren't as lucky as me, who don't get to go home, sometimes,

ever again. I think I was about 19 or 20 when this happened. I was walking home after a night with the homies and since I was feeling jolly, or high should I say, I decided to take the long way home. The long way home consists of walking down this big old boulevard with some really nice big houses on it. I think they were all built around the turn of the century and some of the ornate brickwork could make you feel like you've gone back in time if it wasn't for all the latest model Mercedes parked in the driveways. So I'm walking kind of slow, just sort of moseying down the middle section which has all of these flower beds on it. Like I said, it's a real nice place. So nice in fact that a punk kid like me in skate shoes, a beanie, and a black hoodie doesn't fit in at all. Which is why although I can't condone what happened next,

I can kind of understand it. So as I'm walking, I'm like looking up at all the stuff carved into these strips of stone near the rooftops. Some got dates on them, some got carvings, when all of a sudden I hear this dude like, hey, hey you, what are you looking at? I look down to see this dude sitting on the front steps of what I assumed was his house. I'm just minding my own business, not doing anyone any harm, so I kind of reply defensive like, Nothing, what's it to you? His response to that is to just get up off his butt and start marching towards me. And only then do I see how monstrous this dude really is. He's huge. I must have instinctively started backing up like, whoa dude chill, but

he just keeps coming, gets right up in my face and starts growling these demands that I tell him what I was looking at. I just say like, the house is dude, what do you want? And then for some godforsaken reason, what I thought would be a totally harmless answer turns out to sentiment what I can only describe as a fit of rage. I don't care how big or scary anyone is, I don't have time for drama like that so I just keep backing up until I'm a safe enough distance and then start walking away. But as I'm walking I hear this horrible distinctive click clack that has me stopping dead in my tracks. Guy tells me to turn around and my worst fears are confirmed. He has a gun pointed right at me and he's telling me not to move. I've never been so scared in all my freaking life. Like I legitimately couldn't

stop myself from shaking as the guy launches into a tirade about how his house has been targeted for burglary and blah blah blah. How the cops won't help. How guys like him need to take the law into their own hands. I sympathized. I totally did. I had my bike stolen when I was 12 by a kid that lived on my block. I had to watch him ride that thing around for weeks before he trashed it one day and just tossed it into the river. That guy was obviously at breaking point, ready to snap. The problem was he was about to snap on me and not an actual criminal. Thankfully he calmed down a little and after promising I'd never walk around that neighborhood at night anymore, he finally sobers up, lowers the gun and lets me walk away.

People make a big deal out of bad neighborhoods and how you shouldn't walk through them at night, but no one tells you about the good neighborhoods, cause let me tell you, they can be just as dangerous. This incident happened when I was 14 years old. I'm now 23. My dad was at the time a whitewater raft guide and would often be out of town during peak seasons, leaving me, my older sister of seven years, and my stepmother at her home nestled in front of the Cherokee National Forest in East Tennessee. It was later in the evening of a Friday night and me and my sister decided we wanted to go get Subway before they closed,

so we asked our stepmom and she said sure. So my sister and I get in the car and head to Subway, which was only a couple of miles away. As we pull out from a stop sign at an intersection, I notice the car get behind us. Not unusual, just that we lived in a sleepy small town so maybe we knew them. Anyways, I didn't think much about it. We arrive at a subway which is in a shabby shopping center where an old grocery store was that was right behind the restaurant. It's dark at this point and the car pulls into the dark unlit parking lot where a lot of local high schoolers hung out.

I quickly thought it was just another teen hanging out. And boy was I wrong. We finished our order and leave with our food in our hands and I noticed the car's headlights flick on as we're opening our car doors. I then mentioned it to my sister and she shrugged it off, so we drove away from subway to the exit of the parking lot and the unknown driver of this white Ford Probe floored it across the parking lot running over the curb to keep up behind us. This definitely scared my older sister. There's multiple ways to get to our house, so we took the more intricate and confusing way to someone who doesn't know where they're going. We were scared and just wanted to get home, and the vehicle kept up with us until a few turns

before our neighborhood. As I mentioned before, we lived on top of a hill and the forest was behind us, but in front of us were three streets, forming a valley-like structure. We get closer to our house and since we lost the follower we figured we were just being paranoid. We get into our driveway and walk inside and kind of jokingly tell our story to our stepmom and in the midst of this story we see headlights from a car in front of our house. My sister looks out the window.

It's the white probe. We're scared at this point because this person either was very aware of where we lived or was a neighbor we weren't aware of. They sit outside our house for what seems like a really long time and before my stepmom gets her phone to call my father to ask if he would have any ideas as to who this was, they drive off. Odd, right? We sit and eat our food, uncomfortable but trying to shrug it off. We see the old vehicle outside again, and four more times later my father was called. He wasn't sure who it was, but assured us that we were okay, that we had firearms in the house and we lived in a safe neighborhood that's all he could do through a phone call and in Florida. Maybe it was someone who was lost, or thought that they knew my sister.

We didn't know. My stepmom has to work the next day and since it was the weekend, me and my sister slept in late. We woke up at around 11am and decided to play some video games. Shortly after we started playing, there's a knock on our front door. Nobody should be knocking. We don't answer. It keeps going and is getting harder. Now from our living room you could see into the kitchen. My dad being a nature lover had built a ceiling to floor window in the kitchen to sip coffee and watch nature, this is important to remember. The knocking subsides and my sister is trying to find her

Motorola flip phone to call our stepmom and police. As she's doing that we both see this man peering inside our large kitchen window and as we make eye contact he turns and walks up the hill into the national forest. The police arrive several minutes later and so does our stepmom, who was also beside herself. The police ask if we knew who this could possibly be and why whoever this was would have left a note on our door. A note on our door, I thought. To her reading the poorly written note that was written on a torn corner of a piece of sticky pad paper that read, I wasn't planning on hurting anyone. We told the officers what happened and that he went up the hill into the forest so

they did a quick scan and said they didn't see anyone and that we really just need to keep everything locked up for a while, be vigilant, and if we experience this again, to give them a call. Thank god we move shortly thereafter this event, for other unrelated reasons. For background, I'm an 18 year old female in my first semester of college. I've always seemed to get a lot of attention from guys and tend to attract some pretty creepy ones for some reason. Probably because I'm overly nice and have a hard time just telling people to buzz off even when I get bad vibes from them. Anyway, I decided to get Tinder over the summer due to quarantine. All of my classes for college are online so I'm not able to meet many people.

I thought if I got Tinder I could get to know some people from my university and maybe even go on some dates. I got a lot of matches. Some guys were really nice and cool to talk to and then I obviously got some people just wanting to hook up which I'm not into but nothing too abnormal. That's what Tinder is mainly for after all. After a few months I ended up matching with a guy from out of state. We matched because he was in the area for work. He was 8 years older than me but I didn't mind. First red flag right there. He seemed pretty nice and he asked for my snap so I gave it to him. We talked a little and within a couple of days he became very clingy and obsessive.

I have an extremely busy major and most of my time is taken up from school. Because of this, I'm not always on my phone and cannot answer messages right away. If I didn't answer for an hour or two, he would message me again and again. He said things like, why won't you talk to me? Are you seeing someone else? I wouldn't be surprised, you are so beautiful and I need you. I thought this was very strange as I had just started talking to him and we clearly weren't seeing each other. I explained to him that I am very busy with school and it was nothing personal. He said he respected that and we continued talking. Obviously that didn't last very long

or I wouldn't be writing this story. He continued to text me constantly, telling me he needed me and asking why I was ignoring him. He started talking about driving two hours to see me. I was weirded out, but I assumed that he was just lonely and desperate. I felt bad, so I tried to brush it off and answer when I could because he didn't really do anything too concerning. Stupid I know. This continued for a few weeks and I started getting extremely annoyed.

I had a bad gut feeling about this guy. He started talking very centrally and I told him I wasn't into that. He apologized and said that he would stop. He didn't and no surprise there. So I started ignoring his messages. He apologized and I called him out for it. He continuously apologized and I just left him on read. He started snapchatting me pictures and constantly messaging me so I unadded him. Then he texted me with another apology and said that he had hoped that he could take me on that date we talked about even though I never expressed interest in going on a date. I ignored that message too and moved on with my life. About two weeks later I got a message that simply said I'm sorry. I ignored that too. He didn't message me after that and it soon slipped my mind once again. Later that week I had a dream of him breaking into my house and attempting to

kidnap me. I started thinking about it again so I tried looking him up on Instagram. He didn't have an Instagram which I didn't think was too weird because I know some people who only use Facebook so I tried looking him up on there. He didn't have Facebook either and that was kind of weird. Most people have one or the either if not both. I thought it was so strange that this guy didn't have any form of social media besides Snapchat and Tinder. I wondered if he used a fake name. Then I decided to try one last thing. I searched his name on Google, and what I found made my blood run cold. The first thing that came up was an article for his arrest back in January with his mugshot.

And he was arrested for lewd images of children on his laptop. I found several photos of underage girls on his phone and he was released on bail a few days later. I was absolutely disgusted. This man was a predator and he was free to do as he pleased and prey on younger girls. When I think about it, my guess is that he saw that I was 18 and thought he could still get something from a younger girl without getting into trouble because I was legally an adult. I'm not stupid enough to send any revealing photos or videos.

I'm so glad I stopped being so nice and listened to my gut when things progressed. I don't know what would have happened if I didn't and I wonder if my dream was a sign for me to look into who he was. It still creeps me out that he was so obsessed with me when I didn't talk to him for very long at all. A pretty short tale that will forever be burned into my skull. My mom had me super young at 16 and I guess after I was born she became estranged from her paternal side of the family. I've heard various stories of how it all went down and it's a story for another day. Today I am in North Carolina with my mother but I have started to get to know my maternal grandfather and my grandmother who are wonderful people. A couple of years ago, a cousin who's in his 50s or 60s maybe, found me on Facebook. I'm not sure if my mom told him about me because my grandfather isn't too fond of this particular cousin,

so I'm not sure how I was found. So, gather round and whip out your banjos cause here's the Facebook message that started out friendly enough, but it eventually made me want to change my entire name and move to another country. This cousin responds, Hey Katie, I'm John. I'm in SoCal and wanted to say hi to you. You're my family's second cousin. How are you? Are you still in the SoCal area? Hey, yeah I'm still living in SoCal. Are you here visiting? Yeah, I'm actually in Irvine. I'd love to hug you.

Oh, nice. I live right on the city line. How long are you here for? Actually, leaving in the morning at 8.55. Are you working today? Yeah, I'm at work and I have plans tonight with my roommate. Wish I remembered you were out here earlier in the week. My son and his family go to bed at around 9. I'd love to see you, girl. Where do you work? I work about 30 minutes away from Irvine. Okay, beautiful. I know you're related to me, but... Dang. You're fine, girl.

I love your picture with the angel shirt on. I'm sorry, what? This is a really odd conversation. You can't be that old. You're only what? 27? Uh... Your statement just made me physically ill. Oh, I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Maybe I can see you next visit.

I don't really feel comfortable doing that, and I don't feel comfortable with this interaction. You shouldn't act like that towards family. What? Well, maybe don't be an incestuous creep then, yeah? Have a nice flight home. And then I blocked him. So yeah, what a time to be alive. So it was March 17th, 2020. I went with four friends to the sewers. Three of them were drunk. Let's call them John, Jim, and Jack. Me and, we'll call him Joe, were sober. We were going to get weed from a dispensary. We usually take this weird concrete tunnel that goes under the freeway, spits out three buildings away from it. It's about three-fifths of a mile long. You can see a small

ball of light at the other end from where you enter, either side. No one has ever been living there before, nor has anyone ever stayed under there. There is a homeless community about one and a half miles away from there too. My friend Jim enters the tunnel first, then me, then Joe. The rest followed. We were all bellowing and laughing from stupid jokes and references, just friends being friends. We were walking for a bit when we heard incoherent growling and grumbles. John and Jack immediately assume it's a ghost, Joe's suspected mountain lion, actually very likely due to the area.

I agreed. Jim just wanted to punch it for giving him a startle. We all fumbled for our phones and started shining the lights down the tunnel. Jim yelled out at it. As we were shuffling around I hit my foot against something metal and hollow. I shined my light and saw it was a broken pipe about one and a half feet long. I grabbed it because, possibility of a mountain lion I thought, maybe I can use it to defend myself. It had a jagged end, perfect other edge, of course I'm using the jagged edge as the weapon side. I feel a bit safer, but still feel a bad gut feeling. Jim continues to yell towards it, then its growling became mumbling. Jill yells at whoever it is to screw off. We hear some glass break, and then from the darkness came a random person running at us.

Before I could even see what he was going to do, he smashed the rest of an already broken bottle onto Jim. Me being a foot behind him immediately respond with a swift swing at this person's head, making a perfect connected shot. The person I believe hit the wall and flopped down like a bear after a long day. I dropped the pipe, wrapped my arm around Jim, and we all booked it out back the way we came. We got out and find the extent of Jim's face was seriously messed up and needed help now And no hesitation we called 911 Ambulance took Jim, cops took our stories and lots of photos I had two types of blood on my hands

This random guy's and Jim's Now with evidence of self-defense and multiple accounts, it came clear This person was drunk and high on meth. He had a kitchen chef knife in his other hand, and his hand that held the bottle was bloody. This presumably homeless person basically slapped the life out of my friend with the broken bottle. I was told that the adhesive labels were the only thing holding the bottle together. When it made contact, the person opened his hand to slap, sliced his own hand up. The pipe made

contact with his temple and jaw. The momentum from him running carried into the tunnel wall where they believe it finished him off, smashing his nose first into it. Only the city didn't try to do anything and it was an easy win with a public defender. Thankfully, I was able to get off with self-defense, but it was a very scary and complicated matter. I'm just happy it was a person and not a mountain lion, because most likely, we'd all be dead. This happened in August 2014 when I was 19, and whilst I have a pretty bad memory, I remember what happened very well. I'd been out in London for the evening and missed the last train home, as you do. I decided to wait out the next 3.5 hours till the first morning train at the station.

This was before I carried around a portable charger with me, so I shot off a text to my family to let them know when to pick me up before my phone died. I sat on the bench, waited, and the guy next to me started up a conversation. I was a bit apprehensive, but we actually had a decent chat about life and whatever. Got on my train at 5am. The train heading out of London, as you might have guessed, was deserted. I was sat in the window seat trying not to pass out from boredom having been sat around all night sobering up with not even a phone to play games on. Maybe 15 minutes in I hear someone come down from another carriage and suddenly they're sat next to me, blocking me in my seat.

Bit of a panic sets in already but I stay quiet. And now they're talking to me. Some tall guy, maybe 5 to 15 years older than me is asking me my name. I'd have been a bit less worried if they were some friendly looking drunk dude, but this guy seems stone cold sober and the vibes he gave off were not friendly. But me being me, I replied with my fake name. Then he asked me where I live. Only so much I can lie here given the train will stop there in 15 minutes, but I say the stop next door. At some point, he asks me if I have a boyfriend. Of course, I say yes since that usually puts creeps off. Not this guy. He then asks for my number. I press on, saying my boyfriend wouldn't like that. He doesn't need to know, he says. I say he would know because I tell him everything. It can be our secret. I'm getting serious creep vibes.

At this point I can tell my polite strategy isn't working. And I can't even leave because he's blocking me in my seat. I tell him I don't want to give him my number anyway. And that's when he says, You need to cooperate. Chills run down my spine. This isn't just a drunk creep. I'm stuck here, nowhere to run, no phone, on a deserted train at 5am. At this point I'm freaking out and I start crying,

and half scream at him to leave me alone. He asks me why I'm reacting so weirdly, there's no problem here, I just need to cooperate with what he says. My memory is a bit fuzzy here since I was freaking out quite a bit. But by some miracle, there happened to be some other guy right at the opposite end of the carriage tucked away. He must have heard me yelling and told the creep to leave me alone. This creep starts getting belligerent, repeating there's no problem

to stay out of it. Then by another miracle, a ticket inspector shows up. Little middle-aged lady steps into the carriage with a bunch of yelling, me crying in my seat, and by this point creep has finally given up. Yells back at the other dude and the ticket lady, telling them to stay out of it again. I'm just being rude and he wasn't interested in any ways and takes off down the train and out at the next stop. At least I think he got out. The ticket lady asked if I was okay and that was the end of that. It took five years for me to dare to take another morning train again. To give context, I'm a 25 year old male. I started a job at a company that makes lenses for glasses and immediately I was introduced to Nate,

an awkward guy around my age that seemed like he had good intentions. He was nice enough, but I figured that most people humored him when it came to talking to him. I was convinced that he was on the spectrum in the realms of Asperger's. I've had friends in the past who have Asperger's and I didn't really mind. Besides, we seemed to like the same things, including Dungeons and Dragons. My D&D group was small and we wanted more people and knowing that he was into D&D, I invited him to come join. My now wife, then fiancé, immediately grew uncomfortable when he came into our home to make his character, and when it came to actually playing sessions, another girl at our table also expressed that she was uncomfortable. I didn't feel great about it, so after three to four sessions, we kicked him out and continued playing.

But I still had to see him at work, which led to him always acting sad around me, but I wasn't going to give in. Eventually I kept telling him that I was starting another group and he could join that one, yada yada yada. His pity party was starting to annoy me, so I said whatever to keep him at bay. One day at work he had the day off and the following weekend, not me or my co-workers saw this as strange but then when Monday came, he still didn't show up. Tuesday, no show. This was very unlike him because he was practically a teacher's pet. Soon one of my co-workers was moving around the warehouse with a phone in her hand, stopping people and sharing the news. Nate had been arrested in North Dakota as he had attempted to meet up with an underage girl. We were all in disbelief because

that's the first feeling that hits you. You don't want to believe somebody like that could live in your town lest work right beside you. Indeed, he was in contact with a minor over the internet and set up a meeting at a park with the intention of doing some pretty nefarious things. The police were tipped off as a teacher just happened to see the messages on the girl's phone. I nearly puked when I heard the news. He was in my home and made comments about my kids being so cute, especially my daughter, which definitely made me even more sick. He would talk to me sometimes about wanting a girlfriend and how he was just waiting for the right one to come along.

Someone in his church group and now it scares me to think how old this girl was. One of my friends at work mentioned how he went to install a washer and dryer at Nate's house and when looking around, he was yelled at by Nate to not go downstairs. Not in a oh that's my room I'd prefer no one to go up there type of vibe, more like there's something up there I don't want you to see type of vibe. He was arrested and put into prison, like I said, and remains there to this day for as far as I'm concerned. Just goes to show you that you really can't know everybody, and that's what is truly scary. This happened when I was 19. I'm a hairdresser at Great Clips and I see a lot of people every day.

I was also 7 months pregnant at that point. I look like I had a basketball in my belly. I'm 5'2 and thin. This particular day was a Saturday. It was extremely busy. It was right before picture day so back to back to back children's haircuts. There were a lot of families in the lobby waiting for haircuts. I called the next name and it was the dad of the kid getting their haircut next to me. He had two older children, a boy and a girl, and they looked to be about 7 and 9. I escorted them to my chair, introduced myself, and started to ask the normal questions we ask to find out what kind of haircut they want.

He asked for a two on the sides and back, which is about one-fourth of an inch, and finger length on top. His hair was kind of shaggy looking so it was a lot of length taken off. I start cutting his hair and making small talk. He immediately starts asking about my pregnancy and as a naive young woman and first time mom, I excitedly started to answer his questions. His kid that was getting his hair cut next to me was asking for approval from dad then waited in the lobby. The dude's demeanor changed 100% from great dad to Russell Williams. If you don't know who Russell Williams is, look him up. But anyways, he starts telling me how much pregnant women turned him on and how the round of my belly arouses him. By this point, I have only cut the

sides and back with the clippers that were like 4 inches on top, really long and I didn't say anything. I just blushed extremely hard because it was weird and I was really creeped out. I'm in shock standing there looking down at my shears, turned away from him but I could see him in the mirror vice versa. I turned around to face him and he said, please, let me buy you breast milk. I took the cape off of him and kicked him out and his kids. They got their haircuts for free that day. My manager was cutting hair next to me and she heard everything for herself. He tried to come into the shop again about a month later and I was still pregnant. The best part is, the mother of the kids and wife to the weird man thought she was going

to come over to my salon and cuss me out. I pulled her in the back office and told her about the experience. He left with a half haircut, confused kids, and an even angrier, hopefully ex, wife. Let me just start by adding a little info for context. I'm a 29 year old female but often get mistaken for being much younger than I am. Usually people mistake me for being anywhere between 13 to 15 years old as I have a baby face and I'm like 5 foot 2, which I usually use to my advantage if I don't want to talk to someone. Yesterday, Saturday, I went to the mall to pick up a new dress since my cousin is getting married next month. Small ceremony at her house, you know the deal. I wasn't picking anything too fancy since the wedding isn't super big or traditional but dresses I thought would look nice still. As I picked the last of my five options and made my

way to the dressing room, I was approached by a woman who asked how old I was. I told her not to worry about it and went to try things on. I picked out a dress I liked and exited the dressing room. When I returned the unwanted dresses to an employee I was again approached by the same woman who again decided it was her business to ask how old I was. Again I told her not to worry about it and continued on to find some cute shoes to match my dress. In the shoes section I was approached yet again by this woman who all of a sudden decided I was a child and then proceeded to go on a rant about how 12 year olds shouldn't be left in the mall alone and where is your mother?

I, as nicely as I could in that moment, let her know I am an adult, that I was fine, and could she please leave me alone. This I guess upset her and she reported me to a security guard as a lost child. When approached by security I answered all his questions and even showed him my ID to prove I am an adult and let him know she'd been bothering me. As far as I know he told her I was an adult and to leave me alone. The rest of the day whenever I went in the mall this woman followed me into every store I went to. Finally, I got annoyed enough to just leave where this woman followed me to my car where she proceeded to tell me to get into her car and she would drive me home. I let her know again that I am an adult. I had my own car and was going to drive myself home. I then got in my car and drove around for a good hour before going home,

trying to make sure that she didn't follow me. I have no idea what was wrong with this woman. To be continued... subreddit r slash let's read official and give and receive feedback from the community and maybe even hear your story featured in the next videos and if you want to support me even more grab early access to all future narrations for just one dollar a month on patreon and maybe even pick up some let's read merch on spreadshirt and check out the let's read podcast where you can hear all these stories in long compilation form and save huge on data. Located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the bio. Thanks so much, friends. And remember, vegans, let's not meet again.