The Lets Read Podcast - 145: MY TEACHER PLANNED TO KIDNAP ME | 19 True Scary Horror Stories | EP 133

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

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

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Find your pro at your local Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca I don't know. I grew up in a small town in North Wales, which will remain nameless for reasons that'll become obvious. It was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone else's business and since there was little in the way of entertainment, gossiping became a lot of people's hobby of choice. Whether it was in the supermarkets, the pubs, the kids' playgrounds, or the rugby stands, people never missed an opportunity to divulge each other's deepest, darkest secrets. And just before I left for university in 2006, the most sensational and most poorly kept secret was that a teenage lad, that we'll call Reese to protect the innocent,

was clinically depressed and had started hurting himself. I'd seen Reese around town a few times, long hair obscuring his face, wearing long-sleeved t-shirts in the summertime. All the old biddies would shake their heads and tut whatever they saw him trudging through town. They'd say, oh there he goes, off to buy drugs or razor blades or what have you. But I only saw him going in and out of the guitar shop. Then, on the day in question, whales were playing New Zealand in the rugby, so one of our neighbors had put up a marquee in their back garden that was complete with a projector. The idea being that anyone not going

to the two pubs in town could congregate at his place, having a drink and watch the dragons. I didn't really care about the rugby at the time, still don't really, so I had to hear this from my sister. But during halftime, that Reese boy's dad popped home for some reason, then rushed back to tell his wife that he thought Reese was trying to take his own life. His room was locked and no one was responding whenever they knocked. Reese's dad had tried to kick the door down but he wasn't exactly a giant or anything so he'd rush back to the party for help. Just about everyone at the party immediately rushed around to Reese's parents' house and the blokes helped bash the door down to find that, whoops, no one was there.

In his carling-induced haze, Reese's dad hadn't thought to check his bedroom window, which a grounded Reese had used to escape his bedroom so he could go hang out with his friends or something. But they didn't know that at the time and everyone still was in a bit of a panic. And I mean everyone. Because like I said, 90% of the people left the party to help possibly save Reese's life. Even the homeowners had ran out after telling their 12 year old son to keep an eye on the baby. They'd only be gone for a couple of minutes and their son wouldn't possibly hurt his baby sister, would he? From what I heard, when the 12-year-old's parents arrived home about a half hour later, the mom screamed so loud and so long that she fainted and just about cracked her head open on a sideboard. While they were gone,

their son, who I'm assuming was a few sticks short of a bundle, had spilled some of his juice on his baby sister and couldn't find any paper towels to dry her off. Instead of using absolutely anything at hand to just wipe his sister off, the kid took it upon himself to put his baby sister in the microwave before turning it on for a couple of minutes. People have tried to say they heard or saw how bad the scene was, and I've heard some seriously graphic descriptions in my time, but I don't think anything could really touch on the pure horror of walking in on something like that. A lot has been made of the kid's intentions too. Since he was 12, not some toddler, some people

argued that he knew exactly what he was doing, and the trying to dry her off story was the family's way of clawing back some small shred of decency, pretending it was all just a horrible accident, when in actual fact, it was something considerably darker. Yet I know this sounds grim, but between you and me, if you knew the kid that had done it, you might not even be surprised. Not evil by any stretch of the imagination, but not all there either. I think the most shocking thing for me, though, is how rumors about Reese had people literally running all over town trying to find him, trying to kick down his door, blah blah blah, when really, the biggest threat to anyone's safety was this seemingly harmless

and perfectly innocent young lad who just shouldn't have been left alone by his mom and dad. They moved him into a psychiatric home for juveniles not long after, and by the following year, his family had moved over to England, I assume to get away from the memory of it. I feel for them, I really do, but the thought of that little girl getting cooked in that bloody microwave makes my skin crawl, even today. I was raised over in Little John Island back in Maine. Little John is a small community of about a hundred people, just off the coast near Yarmouth. Technically speaking, it's long been incorporated into Yarmouth Township, and all the island kids bus across the bridges to the high schools there, but try telling that to the islanders.

We never say we're from Yarmouth when people ask where we're from. We answer, Little John, every time. Maybe it's the fact that we're cut off by the ocean. Maybe it's just the people who live there, but there's a strong sense of togetherness and independence on Little John. Kind of like a siege mentality, only without the siege. As I said, the island kids used to catch the bus across both the Talbot Road and the Sandy Point Bridges in order to get to school, which included me. It just so happened that my favorite teacher, Coach Collins, was also an islander, and he was my favorite teacher for two reasons.

Not only did he teach history and coach the senior ice hockey team, but he was my favorite teacher for two reasons. Not only did he teach history and coach the senior ice hockey team, but he was just an all-around nice guy too, and used to give me a ride home after practice, since walking home during a main winter night can sometimes be downright dangerous. Coach Collins was the kind of guy that kids like me really looked up to. He almost turned pro after playing hockey in college, won a bronze star in Vietnam, and unlike many of his colleagues, had a way of talking to his students that made you feel like he was your cool uncle or something. He was the best, no one had a bad word to say about him, and for a long, long time, Coach Collins occupied some mythical status in the town's collective consciousness.

So it's March 7th, 1989. I remember the exact date because Dino Ciccarelli was traded from the Minnesota North Stars to the Washington Capitals. He was the outlaw hockey player for a while, a complete jerk, but god, could he shoot a puck? And it was all we talked about at practice that night. Then, in the middle of practice, I look up to see my girlfriend's best friend Kelly standing at the edge of the ice. She starts calling me over and when I get a chance, I skate over to see what she wants. Kelly tells me that my girlfriend wanted me to call her as soon as I got home, and from the way Kelly was acting, I knew it wasn't going to be good news. Consequently, I'm totally distracted for the rest of practice.

My shooting sucks, and I'm in a stinker of a mood by the time it comes for Coach Collins to give me a ride home like usual. He does his regular approachable patriarch routine. We talk, he dishes out some wholesome advice and suddenly I'm not catastrophizing so much anymore I thank him, go inside, call out my girlfriend and what do you know, she wants to break up Coach's advice sort of stopped me from having a full blown teenage heartbreak moment but I was still upset Only I couldn't just sit around eating ice cream and feeling sorry for myself have stopped me from having a full-blown teenage heartbreak moment, but I was still upset. Only, I couldn't just sit around eating ice cream and feeling sorry for myself. I was masculine upset.

I was troubled, so to speak. I figured I'd steal one of my dad's beers and go for a walk in the woods. Maybe stand out on Madeline Point, looking all broody and such. So, that's exactly what I did. Looking back on it, it was just puppy love, no big deal. But as I said, it bruised my ego enough to feel like heartbreak, and that's all that mattered I suppose. Either way, I found myself wishing I could talk to Coach Collins about it again. A guy like that had seen and experienced so much, and he'd still manage to come home and start a happy, functional family. He'd know what to say. He'd know what it was I had to do. I'm almost at Madeline Point and I'm right where there's a kind of fork in the dirt

road. One way leads to the water, the other is the overgrown driveway of a long abandoned house. Now the sun hasn't quite set by that time and there's still a little bit of that blue twilight in the sky and it gives the rotting old structure this awesomely creepy vibe. So creepy in fact that I almost soiled my pants when I heard some car horn let out this short sharp honk from somewhere real close by. I had no idea anyone else was around. The whole point of walking out that far towards Madeline Point was so I could be on my own, and since the place was normally deserted during the drizzly Maine springtime, I was kind of spooked that anyone was there at all. But by that point, I'm a little buzzed and

naturally curious, so I start cautiouslyting off down the overgrown driveway trying to find the source of the honk. When I finally saw the truck that seemed to be parked deliberately out of sight among the trees, I couldn't believe my eyes. Remember how I said I wished I had Coach Collins to talk to? That I could have really used some of that wholesome cool uncle advice he always had on hand? Well guess what? Like some miraculous act of God, whose truck should I find parked in the trees but Coach Collins? There's this weirdly comic moment at first when I'm super happy to see his truck, but I also realize I'm carrying the beer I stole from my dad. I dart back out of sight,

toss the beer, then start chomping on the stick of double mint that I've been carrying to get the smell of booze off my breath. I'm just about to come back around the trees for a second time when the passenger door to the coach's truck swings open. I watch as someone basically falls out of it, stumbles to their feet, then leans up against a tree and starts puking. I could tell right away it wasn't Coach Collins. It actually looked like a girl. And it was confirmed when I heard the kind of high-pitched puking sound she made. Okay, I realize that might sound weird, but guys and girls puke different.

It is what it is. But anyway, I start like straining my eyes to see who it is. Light is getting pretty low at that point and without being able to see behind the mess of long hair, it was hard to tell exactly who it was. But then, I hear Coach Collins saying something from inside his truck. Only, it didn't sound like the Coach Collins I knew. Get back in the truck, Maria. Then I realized who it was. Maria and I had chemistry together, so I'd spoken to her once or twice,

and she'd been a cheerleader for like the longest time until recently dropping out of the squad. Her dropping out of the squad had coincided with a decline in her GPA and an overall odd shift in her behavior. A bunch of rumors went around that ran the spectrum of patently ridiculous to sinisterly believable, but the truth had remained in the dark. Yet something was definitely having a negative effect on Maria. And there came a moment when I realized I might have just found out what that thing was. Hidden among the trees, maybe 40 or 50 feet away, I watched Maria wiping her mouth before the coach yelled something at her from the driver's seat.

Don't make me tell you again, Maria. Get back in the truck! Maria seemed to be fighting back tears, like getting back in that truck was the last thing on earth she wanted to do. Then I literally can't believe what I'm seeing as she turns, tugs up her jeans a little, then buttons them closed. I'm glad I don't have to explain the connotations of that because even all these years later, the idea still makes my skin crawl. Only as Maria turns, I must have been leading too far out from the tree I was using for cover because there's this one horrible moment where we both just lock eyes for a second.

I assume I'm busted, so I start edging away before breaking into a run back towards Cousin Street. As I'm running, I keep expecting to hear the truck revving its engine, either to follow me or take off to avoid being seen again. But nothing happens. I just run and run and run until I reach the Talbot Road bridge that led back to Little John and home. Once I was home and I'd calmed down a little, I started to wonder why I'd ran in the first place. I know it sounds horrible in retrospect, the way coach was talking to Maria should have told me everything I needed to know. There was a lack of empathy that she was vomiting, not to mention the question why she was vomiting in the first place. But I was young, scared and embarrassingly drunk off of one beer, so

I tried to rationalize. I didn't even really see Coach Collins, and it's possible that someone else in the area owned a truck the same model as his. Sure, the voice sounded like him, but that didn't mean it was. Besides, if something shady was going on, surely Maria would have told me since she'd seen me and all. But thinking of it, had she seen me? Maybe I just imagined she had. And if they were doing something awful, why not speed off or give chase? There was a lot that I could interpret as being totally harmless, but there was a disturbing amount that indicated that what I'd seen was something very, very wrong. But then, what was I to do about it?

Accuse Coach Collins, the small-town war hero, a father, a husband, the best hockey coach in the Northeast, of being a freaking predator? That was unthinkable to me. What if I accused him, and there was a perfectly reasonable explanation? I'd be a pariah. I wouldn't be able to show my face around town, let alone at hockey practice, the same hockey practice I loved and that he coached. I'm sorry to ramble. It's just, you need to understand my mindset about it, and why I kept so quiet about the whole thing for like a straight week. I know it was the wrong play, and to everyone reading this, especially to Maria, I'm sorry.

You just have to understand. I figured if anything was going to go down, it'd be the next day at school. Maybe Maria would confront me about spying on her or something. I had no idea. Everything was still so unclear at the time, hence my hesitance to act on it. But nothing happened. No one said anything. Coach Collins passed me in the hallway and just said, morning, like he normally did. I tried to act normal about it. I tried to push it all the way in the back of my mind, but I've never been very good at hiding the way I feel. I know to push it all the way in the back of my mind, but I've never been very good at hiding the way I feel. I know people notice the change in my attitude, and by the weekend,

my mom was asking why I was being so quiet. I told her I was just tired, but I guess it's because the one thing I wanted to talk about was off-limits. I especially couldn't act the same around Coach Collins, and it was only when I went to check out his truck after school that I got any sense of reassurance. I noticed that there was this big Support Our Troops sticker on his back bumper, something I didn't remember seeing on the truck in the woods that day. But as much as I tried to ignore it, the fact remained that I simply may not have noticed it at the time because understandably, I was very much distracted by other events. But still, I kept my mouth shut

and it actually took a few more days before I actually did anything about it. The day I broke was exactly a week after the event. For seven nights straight, all I'd thought about before I drifted off into an uneasy sleep was the possibility of Coach Collins being the voice in that truck. Of how if he was doing something seriously evil to Maria right under the noses of everyone in town, then I had to do something about it. I wouldn't be able to live with myself otherwise. So I decided to approach Maria. I couldn't just ask who she was with, promise to keep my mouth shut and live with the consequences. I didn't have to drop Coach Collin's name and I could just gauge her reaction to the question

and when I looked at it like that it all seemed so easy and simple. I mean she'd tell me if she needed help, right? Right? And that's what I did. I caught up with Maria after chemistry one afternoon, asked if I could talk to her in private, apologize for what I was about to ask, then just hit her with it. Who were you out with near the power station last week? The way she looked at me at first made me think she was about to just deny it, this mocking, you're crazy kind of look. I cut her off with, I know it was you, I saw you, and you saw me too. I just need to know who you were with. After that, all her

bluster just melted away, and the confident ex-cheerleader began to look like a scared little girl. No one, she said, and just walked off towards the lockers. I tried one more time to talk to her about it, but as she walked past me in the school parking lot, all she had to say to me was, Leave me alone. That was the crushing moment when I realized that my worst fears had come true, and that nothing about little John would ever be the same for me ever again. The trouble was, I was at something of an impasse. Even if I did tell the cops about the coach, she'd have to actually want to talk to someone about it.

Otherwise, all I had was a baseless accusation that might ruin my life completely. If I was going to do anything, it needed to be well planned and delicately executed. But just what that was, I had no idea at the time. In the week since I saw Maria in the woods, I'd skipped hockey practice twice and the times I showed up, I ducked Coach Collins when he asked me about my usual ride home. But that evening, when I fumbled for some excuse about going over to a friend's house to study, he said something that made my stomach tie itself into a knot. Get in the truck. The tone was almost exactly the same as it had been in the woods previously.

If there was any doubt still left in my mind, there wasn't after that. Part of me wanted to just get in the truck, to go back to pretending like I hadn't seen anything, or if I did, it was all perfectly explainable. But the other part of me, the rational part, told me that getting in Coach Collins' truck was a very, very bad idea. I told him no. Nothing else. Just one solitary no. And what followed were a few moments of silence as I saw a look come over the coach's face that I'd never seen before. He became cold, expressionless. And only later did it occur to me that what I was looking at might have been the last thing one or two Viet Cong gorillas saw before. You know.

Then he spoke. Have you got something you want to ask me son i just shook my head good because being so close to graduating it would be a shame if anything were to keep you from your studies wouldn't it he said and waited for a response and I didn't say a thing in reply. Kid like you has a lot of potential. You could enroll in some fancy college across the country, get some well-paid big city job and just leave little John behind. Never look back. You understand me? The horrible thing was, I did understand.

I heard what he said and I saw the appeal. But I hated him. I felt betrayed and I wanted everyone to know he was a liar, a cheat, and a predator. So after a week of doing nothing, I finally went home and told my mom. I know it was something I should have done a week prior. It was obvious just from how tactfully she knew how to handle the situation. She drove over to Maria's house, talked to Maria's mom. In private, she was quick to add.

Then the pair of them approached Maria and just, I don't even know, used their mom magic to just coax it out of her. By the time she got home at around 10, just three hours after she left, she said Maria and her mom were ready to go to the police. Only the thing is, unlike Hollywood movies, where there's usually some big resolution and everyone gets their just desserts, etc., this story doesn't have a real end to it. Coach Collins was questioned by police, but since the DA or judge or whoever didn't think there was enough evidence to push for a trial, the coach was never arrested or charged with anything.

Maria, on the other hand, died in a car accident where the other driver was twice over the legal limit, just smashed into her and her sister while they were coming back from Portland one night. It was a horrific tragedy, and it meant that whatever secrets Maria had went to her grave with her. But the cherry on top is that not only was Coach Collins never punished for what he did, but he was right about me. I went into a college out in Seattle, ended up getting a job here in Oregon. Mom and dad moved into Portland as they got older, so I've not been back to Little John in almost 20 years now. And honestly, I'd like to keep it that way. I can't stand small towns in general anymore.

My wife thinks they're cutesy and kitsch, but only because she grew up in Chicago. Me, I know how small towns work. I know they all have dark secrets buried just below the surface. But unlike big cities where bad things happen all the time, people just don't see it. In small towns, people know all about the bad things, and it's not that they can't see it. They just choose not to. Shop with Rakuten and you'll get it. What's it? It's the best deal.

The highest cashback. the most savings on your shopping. So join Rakuten and start getting cashback at Sephora, Uniqlo, Expedia, and other stores you love. You can even stack sales on top of cashback. Just start your shopping with Rakuten to save money at over 750 stores. Join for free at rakuten.ca or download the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N, Rakuten.ca. In northwestern Missouri, there is a small, unassuming town, much like many others that dot the highways of the central United States. Established in 1840, it is the home of St. Oswald's, one of the oldest Protestant Episcopal churches in the country. But other than that, there is not much to the place and it would be easy to just drive through the one stop light town without so much as a second glance

But in actual fact, the main drag of that small Missouri town was the site of one of the most shocking and sensationalized crimes in American history And its name is one that is now associated with the murky web of revenge, murder, lies, and intimidation. Skidmore. The crime that made Skidmore famous occurred in July of 1981, but to properly tell the town's story, we have to go all the way back to June 1st of 1934, the day when a baby boy by the name of Ken Rex McElroy was brought into the world. Ken and his 15 brothers and sisters grew up in a small run-down house just outside of Skidmore, the son of a poor tenant farming couple named Tony and Mabel. For many years, they had traveled back and forth between the Ozarks and Kansas City,

depending on where the work was. But after a while, they tired of the exhaustive wandering lifestyle and settled in Nottoway County. Ken's upbringing was troubled to say the least and by the time he was 15, he had dropped out of the 8th grade to become a small-time thief and cattle rustler. And so began a criminal rampage that would last the better part of twenty years, with Ken allegedly dabbling in the theft of grain, gasoline, alcohol, antiques, and livestock. As a result of his criminality, Ken was arrested and charged on a whopping twenty-one occasions, but managed to dodge every conviction the law threw at him through a combination of shrewd practices and witness intimidation. Skidmore

residents frequently complained that Ken would stalk those that sought to testify against him, parking outside their homes in a flagrant and menacing display. But Ken wasn't just a prolific criminal. He was also a prolific lech, rumored to have fathered more than ten different children with around four or 5 different women. And it's this aspect of Ken's character that reveals him as not simply some small town rascal with sticky fingers, but a deeply wicked and monstrous predator. Because horrifyingly, when Ken met his wife, Trina McLeod, in the late 1950s, she was just 12 years of age. For obvious reasons, Trina's family despised Ken and warned him to leave their daughter alone. Ken responded by driving over to the family home and executing

their beloved foxhound with a single shell from his 12-gauge shotgun. When Trina's family held firm and attempted to keep their daughter safely out of Ken's reaches, he doubled down and set fire to their house in the middle of the night. Thankfully, Trina's family survived the arson attack, but they couldn't take anymore. They finally relented and allowed Ken to date their underage daughter. Not long after, Trina came home and announced she would be dropping out of school. She was pregnant with Ken's child. A shotgun wedding was held soon after. After the child was born, Trina was so afraid of her new husband that she attempted to escape to her parents' house. Ken just showed up at their door, racked his shotgun, and told them that if he wasn't reunited with his wife,

the dead dog and the arson attack would look like child's play. When Trina's parents once again surrendered her to Ken, he shot the house up anyway. Ken was separated from Trina all over again in 1973 when he was arrested for arson and assault, and for a man with no visible sign of income, he was able to get his hands on the $2,500 bail cash very, very quickly. Meanwhile, while Ken was locked up, Trina and the baby were placed in a foster home over in Maryville just 14 miles away. The authorities were confident that they were finally safe from Ken's clutches, but somehow he tracked them down anyway. The foster family were puzzled to see a man camped

outside their home in his car and reported that he just stared at their house all day until they finally went out to talk to him. But what he had to say absolutely horrified them. The man said his name was Ken Rex McElroy and that the woman and child in their care were his. He told them that he could just walk up to their house, kill them both, and then walk out with what was his. Yet he claimed to be a reasonable man and proposed a trade. Girl for girl, McElroy supposedly said. When the foster asked him what he meant by that, Ken explained that he knew the name of their biological daughter, that he knew the name of their biological daughter, that he knew her school and the bus route she took to it. If he could get his girl back safe,

they could get their girl back safe too. Trina was back living with Ken in a matter of days. The next few years were pretty quiet, evidence that Ken was trying to keep a low profile to avoid Trina and his child being taken away again. But on July 27th, 1976, a farmer named Romaine Henry heard gunshots echoing around his property. He tracked down the source of the gunfire in his tractor, only to find a half-drunk Ken Rex partaking in some target practice with his 12-gauge. Romaine asked Ken Rex just what he thought he was doing, never once believing that Ken had it in him to turn the gun on a human being. But he was wrong. Ken turned on the spot, sized Romaine up, then let off a round of buckshot right at the cab of his tractor. The spray of lead chunks burst Romaine's belly open like a piñata, and as Ken left him bleeding to death and far from a telephone,

Romaine was certain he was about to die. But by some miracle, a passing driver noticed the mortally wounded farmer slumped in his tractor seat and rushed to call the EMTs. Against all odds, Romaine Henry survived the attack, and despite Ken Rex denying he was even at the scene, he was arrested and charged with assault with attempt to kill. Everyone in town knew he was guilty, yet the lack of actual eyewitnesses meant further evidence would have to be gathered in order to properly seek a conviction. Romaine Henry later said that once he had recovered from his wounds and been discharged from the hospital, Ken Rex McElroy camped outside his home with a shotgun on his dash for three

months. He stayed there every night, right up until the day of his trial. When Ken unveiled an unexpected alibi, two raccoon hunters he'd frightened into testifying on his behalf. What's more, Ken had somehow found the money to hire one of Kansas City's sleaziest but most accomplished defense attorneys, who discovered that Romaine had lied about a petty theft conviction from 30 years prior. To the shock and horror of everyone in Skidmore, the jury found McElroy not guilty, and he walked free that same day. McElroy's reign of terror continued for five more years and the patients of Skidmore's residence began to reach breaking point. One incident saw

Ken respond to an accusation of theft by driving into town with a World War II era semi-automatic rifle. In front of a small crowd of gathered townsfolk, Ken attached a bayonet to the end of the rifle and threatened to butcher the next person who dared accuse his family of stealing. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. Perhaps it was seeing that bayonet, something purely made for war that made the citizens of Skidmore realize that something had to be done about Ken Rex McElroy. But in the morning of July 10th, 1981, a handful of townspeople gathered in Skinmore's Legion Hall to decide how to protect themselves from McElroy once and for

all. Only right as this meeting is going on, who should roll down Main Street and park up in front of the small D&G tavern but Ken Rex himself? Ken got out of his truck with his wife Trina, walked into the D&G, then sat smugly at a table while he ordered a beer. He was smug because he wasn't supposed to be there. The townspeople had warned him to keep away from Skidmore until the result of his court appeal, so Ken being there that day was an insult and affront. And when word that Ken Rex was in town finally reached the Legion Hall, a chain of events was set in motion that could never be undone. By all accounts, Skidmore Sheriff Daniel Estes was everything you could wish for in a small town police officer. He was a well liked, well respected Vietnam veteran who actually cared about the community and justice.

So when Sheriff Estes is asked about what happened that morning, there's every reason to believe he's telling the truth. And according to him, when the Legion Hall meeting heard McElroy was in town and suggested confronting him, he strongly advised them not to do so. He instead suggested they form some kind of neighborhood watch program, one that could liaise with local police to ensure Ken's behavior was kept in track. But then, despite being faced with a potentially violent confrontation with a suspected attempted murderer, Sheriff Estes got into his police cruiser and drove out of town. Estes insists he was on an important police business, but

others have suggested this was him giving the green light for what was to occur. With Skidmore's only sheriff now gone, those gathered in the Legion Hall gathered up their things and headed over to the D&G, where Ken Rex McElroy was still sat, sipping at the neck of a beer bottle. There was no immediate confrontation. Instead, the D&G began to slowly fill with customers, all keeping to themselves, all avoiding eye contact with the man who'd terrorized them for almost 30 years. Ken must have felt a smug satisfaction that morning. There he was nursing a cold one, bold as brass, and no one had a thing to say about it.

Ken finished his beer, took Trina by the arm, and walked her from the bar. But as he and his wife got into their truck, they noticed that many of the bar's occupants seemed to be leaving with them. In fact, they lined up behind Ken's truck, blocking him in as they stared him down. Then as Ken started up his truck, a single shot rang out, smashing through the rear glass window of his truck and grazing the flesh of his neck. Ken must have let out a scream, something to alert those gathered behind him that the shot hadn't put him down, because what followed was a torrent of highly accurate gunfire that riddled McElroy but left his wife unscathed.

Trina climbed out of the car, trembling and crying, and stumbling towards the men who shot her husband to pieces. You, you killed him! She wailed, eyes wide with shock and disbelief. We did, one of them replied. Now get out of here, before we kill you too. But as you can imagine, Ken was hit several times, but the bullets that killed him were fired from one centerfire rifle and one.22 rimfire rifle. These are long rifles. A person can't just brandish one and have it gone unnoticed.

But one of 46 potential witnesses, including Trina McElroy, not a single person was able to identify those that had fired their weapons that day. And it's also interesting to note that again, out of almost 50 people who'd heard or seen the shooting, not a single one called an ambulance. It was clear from the get-go that a homicide investigation conducted by local law enforcement was going to be problematic, for a number of reasons. As a result, the case was quickly handed over to the state police, who promised a swift and unbiased resolution to Kent's killing. But they too came back empty-handed, citing tight-lipped townsfolk and a distinct air of vigilante intimidation. One Skidmore resident even brazenly told investigators that, although he didn't witness the incident, McElroy needed killing

Three years after Ken's murder, with police having made no progress in catching his killer Trina McElroy filed a $5 million wrongful death lawsuit against the town of Skidmore and a man named Del Clement. Trina accused Del of committing, and if not masterminding, what she described as the lynching of her husband, an innocent man who was murdered on a hunch by cowards who wouldn't own up to it. Skidmore Town Council met with Trina, who agreed to an out-of-court settlement of $17,600, but on the condition that the payment wouldn't imply guilt towards any party. Trina took the money and moved to Lebanon, Missouri, where she tried to leave a traumatic part of her life behind, while Skidmore residents were quick to assure outsiders that the settlement was made to avoid any costly legal fees that defending the accusation

would incur. Others point to it as a clear sign of guilt. Seventeen grand to buy a man's life. Seventeen grand to make it all go away. It's almost been forty years exactly since Ken Rex McElroy was executed by neighbors that he'd known all his life, and not a single person has been charged, tried, or convicted of his murder. What Ken Rex put the people of Skidmore through could frankly be described as hellish. He was violent, volatile, and he preyed on children. And when the once good and honest folks of Skidmore asked the law to protect them, the law failed them, spectacularly, on more than 20 different occasions.

That's a terrifying concept, I think we can all agree. It sounds like some kind of Kafka-esque nightmare detailing a crushingly inept state bureaucracy that allows monstrous crimes to go unpunished. But we could argue that there's another read of the McElroy murder, one that's considerably more frightening. And that's that the people around us, those we've known all our lives, could simply turn around and murder us in broad daylight before erecting a wall of silence so thick that it can enable a man to get away with murder. We're not held accountable by the law, we're held accountable by those around us, and either that's a very reassuring thought, or a distinctly terrifying one. We'll see you next time. and start getting cash back at Sephora, Uniqlo, Expedia, and other stores you love.

You can even stack sales on top of cash back. Just start your shopping with Rakuten to save money at over 750 stores. Join for free at Rakuten.ca or download the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N, Rakuten.ca. The city of Baraboo is the largest city in Sauk County, Wisconsin. But with a population of little over 12,000 people, Baraboo has much more of a small-town vibe, especially in comparison with the much larger Madison or Milwaukee. Named after the nearby Baraboo River, the town is home to the awkwardly named Circus World Museum, a building which was once the home of the Ringling Brothers Circus. The circus founder, Al Ringling, is perhaps Baraboo's most famous former resident,

and a handful of streets and landmarks still bear his name. But Baraboo is famous in other circles, for entirely different reasons, as the town was also the home of a young man whose horrifying crimes earned him the chilling nickname of the Bonebreaker. On the 4th of July 1994, 14-year-old Christopher Steiner's parents came home to find his bedroom empty. Chris didn't say he was planning on going anywhere, nor had he left a note explaining where he'd gone. His parents were only mildly concerned at first, but once they discovered muddy shoe prints that led from outside his bedroom window and into his room, they began to panic. Even an amateur detective could deduce that someone had walked up the

muddy front path of the house, climbed the roof, then somehow gotten into Chris' bedroom. Police determined that the best case scenario was that Chris had simply run away from home and would be back home shortly. Chris' parents denied he was the type to do that and refuted any suggestion that tensions at home were to blame. On the other hand, if there was some kind of hostile home invasion, Chris could have escaped the intruder before getting himself lost in the woods just outside of town. The horrifying alternative was that the intruder's goal wasn't to pilfer the family's valuables, but to take Chris himself as his prize. For each day that passed since their son's disappearance, Chris's parents' hope waned steadily. But even as they edged towards a

acceptance of his fate, hearing the news that Chris's dead body had been found broke them. A member of the public had stumbled across his corpse, caught in some tree roots along a bank of the Wisconsin River. Chris was then transported for autopsy, with a coroner declaring that the cause of death clearly was drowning. However, the circumstances surrounding his death, be they accident or otherwise, remained a mystery. A huge part of the coroner's job is determining not just the cause of someone's death, but also the mechanism and manner of their death too. For example, the cause of death might be strangulation but the mechanism details the physiology behind it such as oxygen deprivation, Whereas the manner of death tends to fall into one of four

classifications. Natural, accidental, them taking their own life, or homicidal. But in cases such as Chris Steiner's, the manner of death is considered undetermined. Some have stated that around 15% of deaths in the United States occur in a manner that is classed as undetermined. And so there exists a haunting void of knowledge surrounding their passing, a gap in a timeline, a lost hour, so that we might never understand just how their final moments on this earth came about. Perhaps just as tragic as it is terrifying, most cases of undetermined death simply turn cold and are filed away in some archive somewhere as an unsolved mystery.

And this is exactly what happened with Chris' death. Although no one in his family could work out how he drowned, forensic investigators could detect no signs of foul play. So, since it wasn't listed as a homicide, there was no search for a killer, and the case was never solved. One year passes in Baraboo and although Chris' death is not forgotten, the town's residents are finally beginning to coalesce with the circumstances of his passing remaining a mystery. Around 10pm on the night of July 28th, 1995, 13-year-old Baraboo middle schooler Thad Phillips went to bed after an exhausting day of school, but excited for the weekend to come. But as Thad was awoken later that night,

and groggily felt himself being picked up from the TV room couch, he assumed it was one of his parents taking him up to bed after he had fallen asleep in front of the television. felt himself being picked up from the TV room couch, he assumed it was one of his parents taking him up to bed after he had fallen asleep in front of the television. Instead, the boy began to feel the cold night air on the skin of his cheeks. He was still half asleep when whoever was carrying him set the boy down on his feet before whispering three short words to him. Run with me. Thad had no idea who it was, but in his confused and disoriented state, did as he was told, and it wasn't until he was fully awake and present at a rotten old two-story home about a mile away that Thad realized he might have gotten himself in a whole lot of trouble. After getting a good look at the man he had run

away with from home, it dawned on Thad that he'd never seen the man before in his life. When asked who he was, the man replied, I'm Joe. Before dragging young Thad into an upstairs bedroom, before he could ask any more questions, Thad was pushed into a filthy soiled mattress, after which Joe grabbed one of his feet and began to vigorously twist his ankle. Thad screamed so loud the distant neighbors a half mile away later said they heard what sounded like a pig being slaughtered. Joe twisted and retched at the boy's ankle until it snapped and splintered, and both heard the sickening crunch of shattered bone ends grinding together.

Yet somehow, imbued with the pure spirit of survival, the half-crippled Thad managed to fight his way out of Joe's grip and attempted to limp downstairs and out the door to freedom. But Joe was fast. He pushed Thad down the last third of the staircase, relishing the sickening thud and grunting expulsion of wind as the boy landed. Furious at the unexpected escape attempt, Joe approached the prostrate Thad, who was lying on his stomach on the splintered wooden floorboards. He took his left leg in his grip and forced his foot up towards his head, leaning in until Thad's femur snapped with a nauseating crack. The torturous abuse carried on long into the night, but bizarrely, once Joe seemed to be satisfied with the crippling agony he'd inflicted, he actually cleaned the boy's

wounds, then patched up his broken leg with a crude mix of ace bandages, textile glue, and socks. And once he was certain that Thad was no longer a flight risk, Joe left his victim alone on the grubby stained mattress and simply disappeared. But as it turned out, even having suffered the most horrific physical injuries, Thad Phillips was not ready to lay down and die. In an inspirational show of bravery and fortitude, young Thad found an old heavy guitar and battered the bedroom door down with it. Crippled, dehydrated, and weakened, he then slowly and painfully dragged himself down the stairs, passing out repeatedly from pain and fatigue until he reached the kitchen phone.

Thad managed to shake the cord until the receiver fell from the hook. He grabbed it and dialed 911, explaining the nightmare he had endured to a horrified police dispatcher who promptly sent over the nearest police patrol unit. Officers quickly responded and rescued a terrified Thad before Joe could return to do more damage. By that time, he had been held prisoner and sporadically tortured for almost two days straight, and the wounds that Joe had inflicted resulted in fractures that would require several surgeries to fix, and even then, Thad was cursed to walk with a permanent limp. Using the detailed description given to them by Thad, police officers were able to track down the Joe that had kidnapped him.

Joe turned out to be a 17-year-old high school student by the name of Joe Clark, and Thad claimed that during his torture sessions, his captor would boast of having done the exact same things to two other boys. The cops asked if Joe had dropped the names of any of these boys, and after a few moments of thought, Thad spoke. Chris. He said the kid's name was Chris. While one of the cops ran Chris' name through the missing persons database to see if there were any local matches, another team of police led an intensive search of Joe Clark's home, and what they discovered was truly horrifying. In Joe's bedroom was a notebook with three lists, all written in his handwriting that

included the names of 18 local boys. Their headings were Get To Now, Can Wait, and Leg Thing. These were apparently referencing the urgency with which he wanted to kidnap each victim and what he wanted to do with them once they were his prisoner. Only then did it become evident just how significant Thad's escape had been, because if he hadn't alerted law enforcement to Joe's terrifying kill list, there really is no telling how many victims Clark would have claimed. Police discovered that the pathologist who had examined Chris Steiner in the aftermath of his death had found no sign of injury. Nevertheless, the case had been mysterious and the body had

been bloated from being in the water, the pathologist could have overlooked something. It was only then that police learned that no x-rays had been taken. There was only one way to discover whether Chris Steiner had been subjected to the same bizarre treatment that Thad had endured, and thus to link the two crimes to a single perpetrator. Police would have to exhume Chris Steiner's remains. In other words, they had to reopen his grave, remove the casket in which he lay, open it up, and remove the body for a closer examination. Once this was done, the forensic pathologist went over the small boy once again, and this time, armed with more information, he identified four separate breaks in Chris

Steiner's legs. It was apparent that that boy had been thrown into the water in this condition. He could not have used his legs to swim and could easily have drowned, as he actually did. Coupled with the details of Thad's torture and Joe's apparent penchant for crippling his victims, the conclusion was obvious. Joe Clark first appeared in court over his attack on Thad Phillips and entered a plea of no contest to attempted homicide among other charges. He was sentenced to a hundred-year prison term, but claims to have no recollection of the Thad Phillips abduction and torture. However, the Chris Steiner case was a different story and

Joe pled not guilty, though an exhumation of Steiner's body had revealed that the sustained injuries to his ankles were identical to those Thad suffered. Joe Clark's parents' testimony that their son was home asleep in his room on the night of the killing did not line up with other witnesses who claimed Clark regularly snuck out of the house via an upstairs window. So on November 7th of 1997, Joe Clark was found guilty of homicide, then sentenced to life in prison, plus 50 years. Yet he still maintains his innocence in Chris Steiner's murder to this day. We can only conclude that a violent young man was confronted with what a monster he was and simply couldn't handle it, and evidently, neither could his mother.

But neither point matters because the bottom line is that Joe Clark, the Bonebreaker, will likely die in prison in a peaceful, painless manner that he so cruelly robbed his victims of. To be continued... huge into mountain biking, and one of our favorite places to ride was the Cascade Foothills here in Washington State. Sonia was a huge character in the Seattle biking community, and a few times a year I was blessed enough that they'd join me in a drive out to a city called North Bend, right at the base of the foothills. David Lynch fans might well be familiar with North Bend, as it is where some of the Twin Peaks was shot and sometimes you'll catch sight of something oddly familiar while you're driving around. It's like the Lynchian show made the town itself Lynchian, Sonia used to always say.

We parked the car then ride up into the hills and back, before stuffing our faces full of carnitas over at taco time. And boy did you feel like you earned that meal. Those hills could be rough, but good god do they make for some great biking. But as much as I love the Cascades, I haven't been up there in a couple of years, nor can I see myself going back there anytime soon. And by the end of this story, you're gonna understand why. So, this one particular Saturday in May of 2018, me and Sonia drive out to North Bend for what was to be one of our first bike rides of the summer.

I was so excited to be back biking again, as unless you're partial to being soaked, frozen, and battered with gale-forced winds, biking in coastal Washington is pretty much off the table during the winter and early spring. The first couple of hours go by and we're having a ball, just burning off all the stress of the working week and soaking up all of nature's goodness. Like I said, we've been at it for a few hours so we're just sort of meandering along an easier section of the bike track and taking a breather when suddenly I hear this weird growling sound coming from behind me. I'd never heard of anything like it before so I had no idea if it was a mountain lion unless I looked over my shoulder and saw the thing just

following us up the track. Sonia must have heard the thing too because they kind of slow up a little and look over their shoulder as well. Only instead of speeding up and trying to make a break for it, Sonia stops dead on the track, hops off their bike and then turns it sideways to act like a kind of barrier between them and a potential attacker. It was kind of genius really, like I had no idea they'd just know what to do during something like that and oh my god, did it impress me quite a bit. Sonya then tells me to do the same as them, then to start yelling really loud so the cougar will get scared and run away. I felt much more scared than scary at the time but I did as they told me anyway. The cougar reacted, sure, but no matter how much we hollered,

it just didn't seem to deter it from edging closer and closer to us. Even tossing rocks didn't seem to do much and when it actually started charging us, I just about lost my mind with fright. But Sonia, right as the thing is about to start clawing at them, grabs their bike, lifts it slightly off the ground, then shoves the frame right at the cougar. They hit it so hard that it actually lost balance, backed off, and then ran away into the trees. I couldn't believe what I'd just seen. Sonia fought off an actual cougar. They'd saved my life, our lives even. But that wouldn't be the last time Sonia would save my life that day, and the second time didn't feel nearly as celebratory. We're breathing a collective sigh of relief, still a little in shock at what just happened.

I'm just pouring my heart out to Sonia about how cool they were, battling that cougar off of us like some superhero or something. But all they're interested in is getting out of there before the thing decides to come back. Agreeing that sounded like the best idea ever, I follow Sonia and climbing back onto my bike and we start riding off back along the trail. I watch as they edge off slightly ahead of me and then, boom, something slams into me from behind and knocks me off my bike. I don't have to look up to know what it is. Sonia's screams are telling me everything I need

to know. That mountain lion had just hidden off the trail out of sight and waited for us to turn our backs. Textbook ambush predator stuff. We were foolish to give it our backs, but we were scared. We just wanted to go home. All we wanted was our real ride of the summer, not to be playing gladiators with big cats. But just for a moment, I need you all to understand what it felt like when that thing locked its jaws around my skull. Like I said, I knew what was happening. It was all terrifyingly clear and weirdly, I kind of accepted it. The mountain lion was going to crush my skull with its teeth that could probably crush rocks if they needed to. Everything would go black and then that would be that. There was no escaping it, no point trying. It was game over, surely. The only thing I didn't want was for Sonia to

have to watch me die. Not like that, anyway. I mean, I don't imagine there's a nice way to watch a friend of more than five years die, but seeing their skull crushed has to be one of the worst. So I remember just screaming for them to run, to get back on their bike and go. If they stayed and tried to help me, they'd get hurt too and as I said in that weird moment of clarity, I was thinking, better just one of us, then both of us die. So that's exactly what she did. I mean, I didn't see it happen, but Sonia jumped back on her bike and started off down the trail, presumably thinking that she could go get help once she was

at a safe distance. Meanwhile, my head is still locked in the teeth of that mountain lion, and at any moment I'm expecting that sickening crunch to start as I feel my own head coming apart in that thing's jaws. Yet suddenly, the feeling of pressure around my skull starts to loosen and then disappeared entirely. I couldn't open my eyes right away. My whole body was tensed up and ready to take the pain and the only thing that snapped me back into action was hearing a blood-curdling scream coming from up the track. Sonja's scream. It's a sound that was burned in my memory for a long, long time after.

This horrible, ear-splitting screech as the mountain lion tore them from her bike and began tearing into them. I did all I could to find my feet as I felt blood dripping down my own scalp and onto my face. I had to wipe it from my eyes to see my bike, which I planned on throwing at the mountain lion to at least get it off of Sonia before it could do any serious damage, but I just wasn't fast enough. By the time I had my bike in hand, Sonia had gone silent. The mountain lion then sank its teeth into their shoulder and began dragging them off into the woods. It had completely lost interest in me, focusing only on Sonia, so it could get her somewhere safe, so it could...

I'm sorry, I can't even finish that sentence. The only way I'm going to be able to finish this is by talking about them. How they saved my life. Not once, but twice that day. Having watched them fight that mountain lion off with nothing but a bicycle, I was ready to die so that they could live. They were 32. Still could have had a family or something, and for that thing to just let me go and attack Sonja. Why? It had me in its mouth. It had its meal. So why did it let me go to chase

after my fleeing friend? It was like a sick joke, isn't it? Just when I accepted the bargain, a life for a life, mine for Sonia's, God just switches up the deal like, you're totally right, there is a fate worse than death, so let's go with that option instead. Even when it was explained to me that it just sort of coded into the big cat's instincts to pursue a fleeing prey. It's like the information just wouldn't compute. I just saw it all as some depraved cosmic joke that destroyed my mental health and pushed me to the very edge of sanity.

When I was found by the EMTs, I was taken to the hospital, where I had to stay for a couple of days while doctors ran tests on my head injury, checking for brain trauma. While I was there, I was visited by a sheriff or something. I wish I could remember exactly who it was, but I was so out of it from the entire traumatic experience and the morphine that I could barely remember a thing. This guy tells me that we did everything right, and that something was wrong with that mountain lion, which I suppose is the nice way of saying that we were screwed no matter what.

It was the first death resulting from a mountain lion attack in 94 years in that area, and that's how rare they are. And yes, the forest rangers, or whoever it was, tracked it down and shot it dead. It was the one thing that felt like justice as I was lying there in that hospital bed. I know that sounds cruel, and I can assure you I am an animal lover, but I make no bones about being happy when I heard the news. My family came to visit me, a few friends too, but the people I wanted to see the most were Sonia's loved ones. I wanted to make it abundantly clear that they had saved my life twice that day, that they were the bravest person I'd ever known,

and that every single day of the rest of my life would be a tribute to them and a celebration of their life. I know that made it easier for Sonia's family because they told me, and it certainly made it easier on me. It makes it easier to say to myself that I'm still walking and talking, living and breathing, loving and laughing, because of Sonia J. Brooks. Sonia, who started Friends on Bikes to foster a community for women of color who love riding bikes. Sonia, who served on the board of directors of Boston's Bikes to foster a community for women of color who love riding bikes. Sonia, who served on the board of directors of Boston's Bikes Not Bombs organization, who provided bikes for underprivileged children in economically deprived areas.

Sonia, who did everything she could to make the biking community a more welcoming and safer place for women, trans, and non-binary cyclists of color. Sonia, who built such a network of love and community that, when they heard about my medical bills, set up a GoFundMe to help me pay them. Just when I thought I'd cried all the tears I could cry, hearing that news set me off all over again. Sonia was strong, smart, kind, and generous, not to mention incredibly funny. And I miss them every single day, and I will for the rest of my life. Or should I say, the life that Sonia's sacrifice has allowed me. The Everglades The Everglades has to be one of my favorite places in the entire world. A lot of people respond by saying that it doesn't sound like you've been to many places then.

But au contraire mon frere, cause I've been to plenty of different places. I spent 15 years in the US Navy, been to just about every country out there that's got itself a coastline, and I didn't spend my shore leave twiddling my thumbs neither. I've been all over, and I'm telling you, there ain't no place in the whole world quite like the Florida Everglades. The glades somehow manage to be both tranquil and wild at the same time. I find it uplifting to see how teeming with life it is, but I'm definitely intimidated by all of the hidden dangers it conceals. Whether it's snakes, gators, brown recluse spiders, or fire ants, put your foot somewhere wrong or disrespect the habitat,

and you'll be lucky to leave with all your limbs attached. I have had close encounters with all the aforementioned, but the devil you know is always better than the devil you don't, and it stands to reason that my most hair-raising encounter in the glades has been with things I can't all the way explain. I'm not going to start telling y'all some stupid skunk ape stories or Bigfoot, I don't believe any of that. Don't get me wrong, I like to keep an open mind, just not so open that my brain falls out. But twice now, things have happened when I've been out fishing or hiking that have left me pretty shaken up, and I don't scare easily. The first time,

we're going back about 10 or 15 years here. Back when I had my boat, I had taken her out into the glades as much as I could, saving money on the old grocery bill by bringing back snapper, sea trout, redfish, even bass or bluegill. Fishing in the glades on a good day is just as close a slice of heaven as you're bound to get, just as long as you don't cast off near the gators. But on this particular occasion, my enjoyment of the beautiful scenery around me was somewhat overshadowed by my terror of whatever was below me. Because I've seen some big old fish in my time, some pretty giant gar and bass that have smashed local records. But whatever rubbed up against my boat that evening, well, it had to be bigger than all of them. I didn't even really realize

anything was wrong until it straight up nudged my boat out of its way. Things will nudge up against your underside every so often, out of either curiosity or stupidity, but nothing I'd ever come across before had the size or strength to actually move me. When it hit me just how big this thing had to be, I turned to try and get as best a look as I could at it but by that time it had dived back down into the muddier, murkier waters. But trust me, I've been fishing all my life and I can tell how big a fish is just from the ripples it makes on top of the water and this thing had to be at least 7 to 8 feet long. But the only thing that really clued me into the nature of this thing

was the feeling I got in the pit of my stomach. Only other times I've gotten it before is when I've been uncomfortably close to a cottonmouth or an expectant momigator. It's this horrible kind of primal fear that you figure we inherited from our monkey ancestors. Ain't no feeling like it in the world, no sir. And I got that very same feeling that evening on the boat. Having had time to think about it, I reckon it could have been some kind of catfish. I've heard about fishermen down in South America pulling catfish out of the water that are

easily as big as a full grown man. But the fact remains, I just don't know what that thing is, only that it put the fear of God into me. Now the second time, back when I was still married, I was out hiking in Big Cyprus after a particularly nasty squabble with my ex-wife. Tempers flared, some regrettable things were said, and a coffee cup may or may not have been thrown at my head. So I grabbed my hiking gear and a fifth of Jack Daniels I had hidden in the garage, then drove out to Big Cypress from my home in Naples. About an hour into the hike,

I'd just about killed that bottle of Jack and I was probably a little drunker than I should have been. I just kept walking and walking, not giving a care which way I was going a little drunker than I should have been. I just kept walking and walking, not giving a care which way I was going. Anywhere seemed better than home back then. So, I'm still walking and after a while, what went in had to come out. So I take a few steps off the trail to find somewhere to take a leak. Then, as I'm draining the main vein so to speak, I'm looking through all that green I was so used to seeing, when I see something not so familiar, the unmistakable pattern of wooden paneling. I'd never seen a building that far out into the glades before, so my curiosity got the better of me, and I walked through the trees and towards what turned out to be an old house. It didn't look like it had been lived in for a

long time, but there it was, still standing, workmanship to be proud of. Since I figured it was abandoned, I didn't see no harm in taking a look around the inside, but that didn't turn out to be the best idea I'd ever had. The inside was filled with all kinds of scrap metal. Almost every wall of every room and corridor was lined with every piece of metal of such variety that I couldn't possibly name them all. I saw car parts, old knives and forks, any kind of scrap metal you can imagine, and it was dotted around this old house. And speaking of the walls, they were all covered in drawings, almost like a kid might do, but sort of a little too good for it just to have been a kid, you know what I mean? All the pictures were jet black and looked like they'd been done with a grease stick or something. I couldn't make out what the words said, but the pictures were quite clear.

They were of happy kids playing in flower beds, but the way they were drawn made them look incredibly creepy. Next thing I see is a picture frame on the filthy old mantle. The photograph inside was of what looked to be a family. Mom, dad, each with a hand on each of their kids' shoulders. Only the faces of the mom and dad are scratched out and just the little kid's face is visible. Before I have time to try and piece any of it together, I'm just about scared out of my wits by a dog barking in the distance. The hound's yaps are getting louder and louder and it probably takes me a little longer than

it should have to work out that this abandoned house I was exploring wasn't abandoned at all. And whether or not they were the kid in the picture is entirely up for debate, but I didn't plan on meeting them either way. At first glance, the place was just a dump, graffitied, moldy, used as a place to dump trash, but I remember this moment of horror when I realized that there was a method to the madness, that whoever called this place home had it just the way they liked it, and only a seriously messed up person could have felt at home in a place like that. Like I said, I didn't stick around. I ran out the way I came in, back onto the trail, and didn't stop until I was back somewhere I recognized. I know I shouldn't have driven my

truck considering the state that I was in, but for one of the only times ever, I was in no mood to be in the Everglades. I know it sounds like I'm tooting my own horn when I was in, but for one of the only times ever, I was in no mood to be in the Everglades. I know it sounds like I'm tooting my own horn when I say it, but I just have an instinct for dangerous predators. I guess it comes from living in South Florida my whole life and trust me, whoever was headed back to that house had me more scared than all the gators and cottonmouths combined. And I can't imagine who could be living out there, miles from anywhere, in such a creepy place as that. Point being, y'all should respect the Everglades a whole lot more, and that goes for all our national parks and green spaces, because it's not just that they're some of the last wild and beautiful places in this ever-changing

country of ours, it's because the Everglades and places like it are home not to just some pretty dangerous and scary animals, it's because they're home to some pretty scary people too, and I know which one of those I'm not taking any chances with. The End The End In June of 2016, 23-year-old Colin Nathaniel Scott was visiting Yellowstone National Park with members of his close family. Raised in Portland, Oregon, Colin had recently made his mother and father extremely proud by graduating as the top student in his program from Pacific University. So we can only imagine how much steam Colin had to blow off, and we can all agree that such a hardworking young man had earned a relaxing, fun-filled summer break.

But on Tuesday, June 7th, Colin and his sister, Sable, decided to visit the Norris Geyser Basin. It was named after Philetus W. Norris, the second superintendent of Yellowstone. The Norris Geyser Basin is the hottest, oldest, and most dynamic of Yellowstone's thermal springs. Water temperatures have been known of reaching more than 450 degrees Fahrenheit at just 300 meters below the surface, making the area a fascinating, albeit dangerous, geological marvel. And although the deeper waters can reach such terribly hot temperatures, the surface waters of many are cool enough for people to swim in. Although technically forbidden by the authorities, swimming in hot springs around Yellowstone and elsewhere has always been a popular activity with

more adventurous visitors, so much so that it's earned the nickname hot potting. Yet the fun isn't without its dangers. In fact, stepping off the designated trails around the basin is strongly inadvisable. Such erupting springs can spray boiling water for a considerable distance and inflict horrendous burns. And for whatever reason, that day saw Colin and his sister wandering off the designated route. Whether this was to find a place to hot pot or simply to get a closer look at the geysers, we can't be sure, but the fact remains. We also know that Colin and his sister got very up close and personal

with one particular geyser. This leads us to believe that the waters of this particular thermal spring weren't all that hot, since it's unlikely the siblings would have approached at all if the waters were churning or boiling. For all intents and purposes, the water must have appeared to be perfectly safe, an ideal location for a spot of hot potting if one were so inclined. Many have speculated that this is exactly what the siblings were hoping for and had walked out to the basin intent on a swim. However, Colin's sister insists that her brother simply slipped and fell into the spring

and that other than stepping off the trail, there had been no horseplay or prohibited activity. But motivations are a moot point by this time, because whether it was intentional or accidental, Colin is now in the water, the same water they must have previously assumed to have been relatively safe and of tepid temperature. So we can only imagine the shock and horror of Colin's sister, watching as her brother surfaces from the deep thermal waters

before letting out a blood-curdling scream. The water hadn't appeared hot at all, in fact only a small amount of steam was rising from the surface. But if that was the case, why was Colin screaming like he was in agony? Why was his skin turning red as he was being boiled alive? Why was his hair shriveling? Why was his flesh blistering? Colin's sister knew she couldn't jump in to save her brother as she'd be burned as well, but neither did she have anything long enough to throw that she could use to drag him out. All she could do was yell at him to swim to the edge, begging him to save himself, but she could barely hear her own cries over Colin's screams. She pulled out her cell phone, but was horrified to find that she

had no signal, no means of contacting anyone, no means of calling in rescue. And as Colin's yelps of pain died down and he began to tire, all his sister could do was run back to the nearby Geyser Basin Museum to fetch help. It was there that she ran into Ranger Rosa Presser, who in turn contacted the Yellowstone Communications Center by radio to request urgent assistance. Norris Interpretive Ranger Rick Lee and Canyon Ranger George Brecht were the first to reach the hot spring where the incident took place. Ranger Lee immediately noticed that there was a wallet and a flip-flop floating on the surface of one particular spring, with the matching flip-flop stuck into the mud at its edge. However, there was no sign of Colin, and only when he probed the pool with a large wooden stick did

he feel a large object stuck somewhere below. As much as he tried, Ranger Lee was unable to bring what was undoubtedly Colin's dead body up to the surface of the spring, and because the area is so dangerous, it wasn't long before Ranger Command was ordering them to vacate the scene for their own safety. Additional rescue personnel were dispatched to the scene, but due to numerous safety concerns involving a lightning storm and the general hazards of navigating in an active thermal basin, the rescuers did not arrive at the hot spring until about 8pm. Several hours after the incident first unfolded. Team leader Phil Strell, Ranger Lee, and Yellowstone search and rescue member Doug Madsen all reported

seeing only the badly burned upper torso of a male floating on the surface of the pool. Somehow, in the space of just a few hours, the hot spring had managed to almost completely dismember Colin's body. But how on earth could that be achieved with just hot water? The next morning, the body was no longer visible in the hot spring, with Ranger Strel saying that there were no indications that the body had been removed by another human or animal due to the lack of drag marks along the edges of the pool. The waters themselves were probed again, but this time, there was no indication of any human remains in the hot springs. The events were a complete and utter mystery, until one member of Yellowstone's staff heard

of the incident, offering some sage but terrifying wisdom that might just clue us into the bizarre nature of Colin's death. This expert explained that the park's geysers and springs are sometimes extremely acidic. This is because they are fed by thermal waters that come from deep beneath the earth's surface, water that picks up none other than sulfuric acid as it rises to the surface. This sulfuric acid is the product of subterranean microorganisms that break down hydrogen sulfide in rocks and soil as part of its feeding mechanism. If Colin had known what to look for, he'd never have approached that one particular hot spring, with its overly cloudy waters,

with its telltale rotten egg smell. But as it stands, there's no way of him knowing that the spring he was approaching, the one he would accidentally fall into was a pure chemical death trap. Although what happened was obviously a tragic accident and all due condolences go out to the Scott family, it's clear that both Colin and Sable ignored numerous warning signs on their way toward the spring. But given the calm appearance of the water, the brother and sister simply ignored the signs and judged the spring safe to approach. Yellowstone representatives made it clear that such signage is there for a reason and implored the public to be more careful when making visits to such obviously hazardous areas of the park. Because there are always those unknown unknowns, the things we are not even aware we don't know. Things like how a warm looking hot spring, perfect for a summer day's dip, might actually be full of deadly, corrosive,

sulfuric acid. On October 8th of 1976, 16-year-old Trenny Gibson left Bearden High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, on a field trip with nearly 40 of her classmates. The supervising adult, a horticulture teacher by the name of Wayne Dunlap, had essentially surprised his students with the trip, as they didn't even know they were going anywhere until confronted with a gassed-up school bus. With Mr. Dunlap being the only adult chaperone, the students were informed that they would be traveling over 50 miles to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. An hour or so later, the bus parked up in a lot near a gently sloping mountain known as Clingman's Dome, and the students headed out on the two-mile hike along the Forney Ridge Trail

to Andrews Bald Mountain. While out on the hike,mile hike along the Forney Ridge Trail to Andrews Bald Mountain. While out on the hike, the students found themselves separating into smaller groups or cliques that dotted the length of the trail, and Trenny walked the trail alongside a young man named Robert Simpson, who was a trusted friend of her brother. At around 1.30 in the afternoon, the students stopped to eat some quick brown bag lunches at the trailside. Trenny and Robert were spotted eating together with Trenny wearing Robert's jacket. However, the two kids weren't together when the group hiked back, as Robert claims he was off tracking a bear. Right around 3, Trenny was spotted hiking alongside another group of students who were only about half a mile from the parking lot in the school bus. They later said they were exhausted from the day's hike and stopped to take a load off before the final half mile.

Trenny, however, was in no mood to rest and insisted on pushing on for the final stretch, so the group parted ways and each remembers seeing her walking off down the trail in the direction of the parking lot. Yet when the group of resting students made it back to the parking lot about a half an hour later, they found that Trenny was nowhere to be seen. Shortly afterward, Mr. Dunlap's roll call found that all but one of his students were present, Trenny Gibson, and when he discovered that she had apparently gone missing with only a short stretch of the trail to go, he began to panic. Trenny had disappeared right under the noses of her fellow students and somehow, he just knew something

dreadful was to blame. Police and Forest Service personnel launched a massive search operation that covered more than 30 square miles of the Great Smokies, but not a single trace of Trenny Gibson could be found. The afternoon when Trenny went missing was very foggy, so it would have been easy for her to have gotten lost after she stepped off the trail. So for a while, it was speculated that she simply walked off the trail to go to the bathroom or something, then got herself turned around. A partially open can of beer and three cigarette butts were later found near the spot where Trenny stepped off Forney Ridge Trail, but none of the other students admitted to having brought beer on the trip. This left investigators in a predicament. The butts and the beer could well be evidence of a stranger having lurked nearby, but a guilty student would be unlikely to admit bringing such contraband along with them.

Details like this muddied the investigation right from the start, making an already difficult process even harder. Canine units from a local search and rescue unit found that many of their dogs were picking up Trenny's scent at a section of Forney Ridge which intersected with the Appalachian Trail. They tracked her scent trail to the base of the Clingmans Dome Observation Tower, then through some dense patches of woodland for almost two miles before they came to a road. This is where the scent trail ended, and right near this spot were cigarette butts of exactly the same brand as were found back where Trenny banished.

It was now clear to police that someone had led the girl, either deceptively or by force, for quite a distance before bundling her into a waiting vehicle. It was no crime of opportunity. This was something that had been well planned and horrifyingly well executed. Not only that, but the public was horrified to learn that whoever abducted Trenny might well have kept her prisoner in the immediate area for a while before transporting her later on. This meant that as her classmates were filing past her on the trail, Trenny might well have had a knife to her throat or a hand over her mouth, so close but so far from salvation. It was with this terrifying thought in mind that Trenny's family publicly announced their

suspicions regarding one of Trenny's classmates, a boy named Kelvin Bowman. This suspicion was rooted in the fact that just a few months previously, Kelvin had actually tried to force his way into the Gibson home and was only deterred when Trenny's mother shot him in the foot with a small caliber revolver. Kelvin served a measly six months in a juvenile correctional facility, but had apparently vowed to murder Trenny once he was freed. After his sentence, he was freed from the facility and returned to Bearden High School, and it's shortly after this that Trenny suddenly went missing. Some students were adamant that they spotted a car that greatly resembled Kelvin's that was following the bus that day, but the teacher, Mr. Dunlap, insisted there was no one following them on the journey out to the trail and if there was, he would have surely have noticed. The principal of Bearden High also testified that Calvin was

attending classes all day and wouldn't have been able to make it there and back in the time frame suggested by his accusers. Although not formally charged in connection with Trenny's disappearance, Calvin would go on to be arrested in 1978, accused of indecently assaulting a woman in her own apartment. As a result, he was convicted of third-degree criminal conduct and is long considered the number one suspect in this case. However, Kelvin is not the only suspect in the case and the eye of suspicion made its way around to Robert Simpson, the supposedly trusted friend of her brother's whom she ate lunch with that day. A number of people reported

seeing Trenny's comb, which she always carried in her right hip pocket of her jeans, on the dashboard of Robert's car following her disappearance. But the really worrying thing was that when Trenny's parents were participating in the search effort for her, Robert visited the Gibson house and made some odd remarks to Trenny's sister. He said how if Kelvin Bowman had kidnapped Trenny, she didn't stand a chance and was dead for certain. But also, she may have run off with some horny hitchhiker, his words not mine. It was also difficult to account for Robert's whereabouts after he became separated from Trenny at Andrews Bald, but it doesn't sound like investigators ever considered him to be a serious suspect. In spite of multiple searches of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, no trace of Trenny has ever been found, and it seems that Trenny's disappearance will remain

yet another case of a person simply vanishing while visiting one of this nation's great national parks. On August 30th of 2015, 22-year-old Loren Bunner took his 18-year-old girlfriend, Jolie Callen, on a day trip to the Pinhote National Recreation Trail in the Chiahey National Park, Alabama. Set into the southern Appalachian Mountains, the Penhote Trail snakes for 335 miles through Georgia and Alabama, attracting hikers, bikers, and naturalists of all varieties. And under any other circumstances, a couple's hike through such a beautiful, natural wilderness would be a romantic occasion indeed. But unbeknownst to one of them, a brutally vicious attack of violence was about to change both of their lives forever. For the longest time, Loren described his life as basically a bad pop-punk album. He and Jolie had an intense

relationship that bore all the hallmarks of young love. At its best, it was heavenly, but at its worst, it was heart-wrenching, and unfortunately for Lauren, it was at its worst more often than not. During that particular weekend at the end of August, the relationship seems to have been going swimmingly. On his Instagram account, Lauren posted 49 pictures of himself and Jolie, having spent the entire weekend together, and the final four pictures posted were all from the hike that day. In one, she held a dog with her back to the camera while in the next, she appeared to be taking a picture of a cloudy mountaintop while wearing her maroon Warped Tour t-shirt. It was a serene and peaceful moment, shared between two young lovers, but that peace was about to be shattered by a single gunshot. Jolie collapsed where she stood, blood pouring from a wound in the back of her skull. And standing behind her, smoking bear claw 22 still in his grip, was Lauren, who was said to utter just two shaky words

as she laid there dying. I'm sorry. Shortly afterward, a 911 dispatcher over at the Clay County Sheriff's Office received a call from a young man claiming to have shot his girlfriend. It was Lauren. Sounding almost in a state of shock, Lauren explains that he shot Jolie in the back of the head, execution style, then shot her once between the eyes to ensure she was dead, apparently because he didn't want her to suffer. The sight of his girlfriend's limp, bleeding body on the ground before him was apparently too much for him, and Lauren tells the dispatcher that he had to push her body off the cliff she was stood on, down what would turn out to be a 40-foot drop. Jolie's body was already in a terrible state, having suffered two gunshots to the head, but the 40-foot fall, snagging on rocks

the whole way down, did catastrophic damage to her corpse. Police arrived at the scene recovering Jolie's body and finding a large amount of blood at the top of the cliff, exactly where Lauren claimed to have shot her. Then, having safely recovered the murder weapon from him, Lauren was put in cuffs and taken to jail. His case was handed over to a Clay County Grand Jury in November 2015. In the initial court filings, Lauren's attorneys argued he might have Asperger's syndrome and implored the judge to consider that fact before a decision on legal proceedings was made. Then in May of 2016, Lauren was granted youth offender status, meaning that there would be a media blackout of the trial and a maximum sentence of three years in prison. Thankfully, authorities

saw sense and rescinded the privilege just a month later. Lauren's defense chose to paint a rather twisted version of the events of that day. They claimed their client and his girlfriend had made a pact to take their lives together, and had agreed to both jump off the Pinhoti cliffs together, hand in hand, so they could be together in eternity. However, when it came to go through with it, Lauren claimed that Jolie said that she was too scared to jump, and asked him to shoot her before he jumped. Allegedly, Lauren then complied with her request, but was so overcome with remorse and terror once he'd shot her that he couldn't bring himself to follow up with his end of the bargain. But this claim was batted down by the prosecution who correctly countered that Jolie

was a young woman with everything to live for and although she had suffered through some hard times over the years, they were little different to those suffered by almost every teenage girl. Jolie's father, Michael Joe Callen, added that Lauren was no longer his daughter's boyfriend at the time of the murder, and that he'd had trouble moving on with his life after repeated breakups. The jury weren't thrown by the despicable lies of Lauren's defense team and saw the young man for what he was. A violent, possessive, highly disturbed person who was a clear and present threat to himself and those around him. At a time when accusations of misogyny are cheapened by their frequency, Jolie's murder is a clear and horrifying example of it. Lauren Bunner saw his girlfriend as an

object, something that couldn't exist if it wasn't without him. If he couldn't have her, no one could, and that is by far the most selfish sentiment imaginable. Not long after Callan's death, comments began appearing on both her and Brunner's Instagram accounts, with some in different languages. Rest in peace, you poor girl, posted a user known as Breezybee. Another lashed out, he will get what he deserves to rot in prison for the rest of his meaningless existence. At his sentencing on July 13th, 2017, a judge handed down a sentence of 52 years to a distraught Lauren. His defense team condemns such a harsh sentence, highlighting his young age, but I think we can all rest easy knowing that the perpetrator of

such a heinous, selfish crime is where he belongs. In prison. And for a long, long time, too. To be continued... My name is Joseph and I'm from a place called Orem in Utah. I've been into cross-country running ever since high school. Nothing beats the feeling of pure chill that a long run gives me and I swear by it as being the best anti-anxiety drug around. But last year I went on a run in nearby Slate Canyon that proved to be anything but relaxing, and it changed the way I looked at the natural world forever. It was October 10th of 2020 when I decided that I'd spend my Saturday running the Slate Canyon Trail. It's one of my favorite cross-country routes with plenty of sloping hills that give you a great view of the canyon. And since the loop itself is around 8.5 miles, running from my house to the trail and back is like a safe 10 mile run for me, so it's my go-to for a solid distance run. Like a lot of other

runners, I use a running app on my phone and I love listening to music when I run. I'm constantly tweaking my playlist to see what songs give me the best boost, so I always have my phone handy, and it also allows me to take pictures of cool stuff I see on the trail. So as I'm about 6 miles into this run, I see a pair of what look like bobcats ahead of me on the trail. Perfect photo opportunity, right? So I pull out my phone, take a knee, and start zooming in to get a clearer picture. As I'm looking at them through my phone screen, I start noticing that these little critters didn't look like any bobcats I'd ever seen before. I take a few pictures and start slowly edging closer to them when I suddenly hear this deep, feline growl from behind me. The little bobcats scatter off the trail and I turn around

to see an actual cougar emerge from the brush at the side of the trail. They weren't bobcats I had taken pictures of, they were cougar kittens and I had mistakenly gotten in between them and their mother and mama was seriously ticked off. She's got her ears tucked back, bounding towards me and smacking these giant paws on the ground hissing all the while. It was a terrifying display of raw power, like I just don't think we appreciate how jacked animals are until we're up close and personal with them. I remember being taught as a kid that if you're confronted with any animal like that, you're supposed to make yourself big. Like, exaggerate your size and make loud sounds so

the predator thinks you're more trouble than you're worth. So, that's exactly what I did. I started yelling at the top of my lungs, waving my arms in the air. I remember shouting curse words at her, like that would make a difference, as if this hundred and forty pound cougar mama was going to be like, well, I never, such awful language, I shall refrain from eating your face now sir, good day to you. At first, my little freak out seems to have worked and cougar mom backs off for a few meters to make sure her cubs are alright. I feel this huge wave of relief wash over me, and I find myself pulling my phone out to text someone,

call someone, really anything. I just needed to share such a hair-raising encounter with somebody. But right then, I see Cougar Mom a doubling back, tearing out of the brush and right back along the trail at me. I'm absolutely soiling my pants by this point, pretty much begging her to just leave me alone as I slide my phone back into my pocket and start making myself big again. That was probably the scariest thing, how the one way I'd been taught I could protect myself from situations like that was rapidly failing me. I waved my arms faster, screamed louder, but all the while the cougar mother seems to be less and less intimidated by me,

and as I continue to work my way backwards along the trail, the cougar is getting closer and closer, following me the entire way. I know she just wanted to drive me away from her babies, but how far she was willing to go both literally and figuratively to ensure their safety, that was the burning question. For all I knew she was looking to mess me up just so the big scary human wouldn't ever creep towards her babies again and I'm not sure I can blame her. I must have looked really sly just slinking towards her kids with that weird shiny thing in my hand, but enough victim blaming. After a while, I started regaining some of my senses so to speak and realized that the ground that I was walking on was covered in loose rock.

I realized I could have bent down, grabbed one and tossed it at the cougar mama in the end. That's exactly what I did, but it took me quite a while to summon the courage to do so. Seriously, I knew as soon as I crouched, as soon as I made myself small, cougar mama would rush me. So, I had to put a little distance between us so I could buy myself the time to crouch. Only every single time I tried, mama would just bound along the trail, kicking up dust and hissing like a wild cat, which I suppose is exactly what she was. One time she got less than about five or six feet from me and I thought, this is it. She's gonna pounce.

And it's going to really, really hurt. Bracing for that kind of pain, for what I was sure would be permanent, life-changing injuries. They were the most horrifyingly scary few moments of my life, dude. I'll never forget them, I'm sure of it. They'll be with me for as long as I live. She must have only been following me for a couple of minutes at the most. We didn't make it very far down the trail together, but my god did it feel like an eternity. Like there was a time when I legit thought that she was going to follow me completely off the trail together but my god did it feel like an eternity. Like there was a time

when I legit thought that she was going to follow me completely off the trail, just waiting for me to turn my back or trip over and then boom, she'd be all over me in a flash, ripping and biting and generally ruining my freaking day. But as I said in the end, I managed to find the perfect window to crouch down, grab a rock, and hurl it at her. I missed, but the rock must have smacked against another as it landed just to the side of her because this awesome big cracking sound had her running for cover immediately, and that time, she didn't turn back around. But I wasn't out of the woods yet because in order to literally get out of the woods and off the trail, I had to actually go back the way I came. Like I said, the whole trail is in a loop

and because of the direction the cougar mama had pushed me back, I had to head right back up towards her to escape. I started arming myself like a caveman dude. A big stick, rocks in my pockets. All my uncles are big gun guys and as much as I'd never been into that, man, do I wish I had one on that trail that day. Once I'm sufficiently armed and ready to defend myself, I start moving forward, terrified I'm going to be ambushed. And who knows, maybe there's even a cougar papa. But the only thing I run into are

these two hikers heading in the opposite direction. I ask them if they've seen a cougar and they're all like, no why? Maybe thinking I was joking or something. I had to give them the entire story just so they'd believe me and the guy reassured me that cougars only rarely attack people, so that I must have done something really bad to make her that mad. But either way, I got off that trail without a scratch, headed home, and then told my mom and dad about the whole thing. It makes for one terrifying story, and I'd probably tell it more than I should, but... Would I want it to happen again? In God's name, no. Absolutely not. Never in a

million years. For all it's worth, stay away from cougars and their kittens. Okay, so for some background, I'm a female and when this story takes place I was a junior in high school, so I was about 16-17 throughout the story. I'm now a sophomore in college so this was about 4 years ago. I get to school on the first day and my Italian teacher is new. He wasn't old, maybe only about 25 or 26 and he looked nice enough, not visibly creepy. He was pretty short, maybe only about 5 foot7 and I'm 4'11 and 100 pounds, so basically everyone is bigger than me. We'll call this teacher Mr. C. Fast forward a month or two, I remember it was just starting to get cold out. Everything in this class has been pretty

normal. I do notice he basically only calls on girls and stands a little too close but nothing too out of the ordinary. I did the musicals in high school so I would often be there until about 9 or 10pm rehearsing. This one particular day there were parent-teacher conferences so basically all the teachers were there very late. For musical nerds like me we were doing Legally Blonde and I was playing Margot, one of Ellie's friends. My costume for this scene was a little raunchy. It was a short white tennis skirt with an athletic tank top and some converse. I also had on a little pink bow in my hair. That part is important.

So I have to pee really badly, so I walk quickly to the closest bathroom which was up a floor and down the hall. Mr. C's room happened to be a few doors down from the girls bathroom. Most of the teachers had finished their conferences by the time and had left. I saw a light on in Mr. C's room so I glanced over and he was sitting in there by himself, packing up his stuff. I didn't think he noticed me, and I kept walking till I got to the bathroom. I did my business, and as I was finishing up, I heard the bathroom open. I thought it was weird, but just assumed it was one of my castmates. But the footsteps sounded a little too loud to be a high school girl's. So I walked out of the stall, and literally just standing there in the bathroom was Mr. C.

I was just standing there frozen. This was so weird. I tried to say something but nothing came out. I was honestly freaked. After a few seconds of just staring at each other, he hands me my bow and says, You dropped this cherry. I just gave him a little smile and a quick thanks, grabbing it and got out of there. I didn't even wash my hands. I was honestly so incredibly freaked

out. It wasn't until a few seconds later that I realized he had called me cherry. This made me stop dead in my tracks. Only my dad calls me Cherry because I had red hair as a little kid. It's brown now. Literally no one knew about that nickname, not even my friends. My dad had passed away 8 years ago. I started running until I got back to my castmates. My friend, Ava, noticed that I looked shaken up. She asked me what was wrong and I just broke down crying.

It wasn't really about my creepy teacher, more about the memories of my father, I suppose. She quickly took me into an empty classroom and sat with me while I cried. After I had gotten out most of my tears, I told her everything that had happened. She was livid, but I convinced her not to tell anyone because I was embarrassed. I know, I'm an idiot. She didn't have Mr. C, but stopped by my class with him once to grab my car keys when her art project was in my car. She told me later when we were driving home that he had looked at me really weirdly. She said it was the way a predator looks at its prey. Yeah, huge red flags everywhere, but I was super innocent and just generally naive at the time.

After this, nothing happened for another month or two. I had honestly forgotten about everything, but I still remember the day my life changed forever. The day everything started. January 16th. I had just gotten home from school and went on Facebook. I had a friend request from a guy named Jake. He was super attractive and a few people from my school were friends with him so I assumed he went to a school in a nearby town. I shrugged and accepted his request. What I did notice was weird was that he had about 5 photos, all posted in the last 2 days, but I ignored it.

So basically 5 seconds after I accepted, I get a message from this Jake kid. He says, hi cutie, with a winky face. I was shocked that this cute guy was messaging me, so I messaged back saying hi and asking if he lived in my town. He said he did, but went to private school. We talked for hours and we both had so much in common. We loved to draw, had two older siblings, our parents were both remarried, our favorite color was both periwinkle. We both loved Billy Joel. The list went on and on, it was honestly pretty strange. He asked me if I wanted to hang out and I said yes, but that I had cheer practice and then rehearsal right after. He sounded pretty angry and told me that I was lying and then called me a derogatory term.

He sent me about a hundred messages about how I was disgusting and I started panicking and just blocked him. It's like something flipped so quickly in him and it was honestly terrifying. I tried my best to ignore it and went to cheer practice. Cheer was from about 5.30 to 7 and then I had rehearsal from 7.15 to 9.30. Ava and I planned to grab something from McDonald's in our 15 minute break. In the middle of cheer, Ava sprained her ankle so her mom came to pick her up. After I finished cheer practice, I decided I would just go to McDonald's by myself. It was freezing and I was in a tiny

cheer uniform so I ran to my SUV and hopped inside. I clicked to push the start button and nothing happened. What? That was strange. I tried again a few more times with no success. I called my stepdad and he said I should just leave my car there and go back inside and he would pick me up from rehearsal and check out my car. I was honestly so angry about not getting my chicken nuggets that I hadn't even realized that I never unlocked my car. I know 100% that I locked it but I didn't have to unlock my car to get back in. I didn't figure this out until weeks later and actually cried when I realized because that meant that someone had actually messed with my car.

I bought this car myself so it was kind of my baby. I was so angry and stomped my way back inside having no clue why my car wouldn't start. I kid you not, the second I walk inside, I slam right into Mr. C. I had no idea why he was still at school. The only other teacher here was my drama director, so he really shouldn't have been there. Sorry, I murmured, quickly walking away when I felt a hand grab my arm, like honestly really tight and I even winced. He pulled me back to him and asked if I was okay. I said I was fine but my car wouldn't start and his face literally lit up. It was actually really creepy. He said, I was actually headed to McDonald's if

you wanted to come with me. This is when I started to freak out. How did he know I was going to McDonald's? Why was he asking me, a child, to come with him to McDonald's? That was not normal at all and I felt pretty scared. Um, I actually have rehearsal. Thank you though. His face quickly changed from happiness to extreme anger. I really got terrified of what this man was planning. His grip was still on my arm and I felt trapped. He took a deep breath and said, well I'll be waiting here after your rehearsal and we can go after. I have a black pickup truck. He quickly walked away to make sure I didn't have time to answer.

I just stood there in shock, not knowing what was going on. My friend, Maya, suddenly appeared saying my director was looking for me and I needed to come to rehearsal. I quickly sped off with her, trying to figure out if I was going insane or if that had actually happened. After rehearsal, I was so genuinely terrified that I asked my stepdad to come to a different entrance because I said I was exhausted and asked if we could go get my car tomorrow. He reluctantly agreed. On the way home, we passed my car and sitting right next to it was a black pickup. I just about stopped breathing but tried to calm down not to show my stepdad. Again, a dumb move on my part, I should have just came straight forward. The next day I received a text from an unknown number when I woke up. It said it was from Jake and he apologized, everything saying he was having girl troubles

and was so sorry. Like the idiot I was, I accepted it and we began talking again. After a little bit, I mentioned the school that I went to and he said his uncle worked there. I was shocked and asked who. I don't even know what I was expecting, but of course he said Mr. C. He then sent a blurry picture of a man and a teen boy fishing at a lake and the man was obviously Mr. C. But the boy was not this Jake kid. Like it was someone completely different and even at a different ethnicity. And then I realized that this person I was talking to was Mr. C.

I immediately powered off my phone and just started crying. I was so freaked out. My mom walked into my room with my laundry and saw me sobbing. She asked what was wrong and I broke down and told her everything. She flipped her lid, called the cops, talked to my school. And the next day, Mr. C wasn't in class. I found out a few weeks later that they found a ton of illicit images of children on his computer and when they asked what his intentions were with me, he flat out said that he was in

love with me, wanted to get me pregnant, steal me, and marry me. Yeah, I'm still very traumatized after a few years. I know my story isn't as crazy as some people's, but it could have been much, much worse. Some people may not think this is scary, and when compared to being stalked or a house invasion, this isn't scary, but for my life, it was 18 years of torture and still haunts me to this day. When I was born, my parents were part of a Christian church in a small town in Alabama. So from day one, I was part of the fundamentalist church, attending services three days a week. And when I turned five, I was enrolled in the school the church was in charge of. It's a very small private school with ages 2 to 18 in one school building.

There was the daycare, kindergarten, and preschool. And then when you hit the third grade, you were upgraded to the learning center, where all students from third grade to seniors all shared one room, and did their schoolwork together. I'm sure you can imagine how it would be, being an 8 year old child sent into a world of older, immature, and scary teenagers. I was the only young student, the next youngest classmate being 14, so I was essentially 8 years younger than everyone else in class. Our school was very small. Back then, when I first entered the learning center, there were only about 20

students in total from 3rd grade to 12th. So, it was not crowded, but there were a lot of things that went on due to the mixture of ages. Our schoolwork was not taught with textbooks, but with small, magazine-like booklets that had about 30 pages in each booklet. When you finished the booklet, you took a test on the subject taught in that particular pace then moved on to the next. Typically, you had to complete 12 booklets a year in each subject, math, English, science, history, bible, and spelling. If you failed a test, you had to erase all your work from your booklet as punishment for failing, then completely redo all the information until you can pass the test. And the failing grade was 80. Anything under 80 was a failure and that meant you got to erase all 30 to 40 pages that night at home, which took hours and hours to do. And all subjects revolved

around Christianity. You learned about the science of how God created the earth, had to learn dozens of scripture verses every year, and even in our math book God created the earth, had to learn dozens of scripture verses every year, and even in our math booklets, the word problems had something to do with God. For example, Johnny went to the Christian bookstore and bought 16 Bibles and gave 14 of them away to Sunday school friends. How many Bibles did Johnny have left? We were literally suffocated with God, Bible verses, and rules. And that's all we were taught, and that's all that mattered. I was bullied regularly by the upper classes. One day I was force-fed a mixture of Vienna sausages, mashed up pretzels, coke, and mustard, all shoved down my throat in the back

room and made to swallow before they left while laughing at me. Other times I would be shoved against walls, hit and teased, they would throw my backpack across the room, I wouldn't be allowed to play with them and in general I was just an outsider. That caused me to be very lonely and crave the friendship and love of others. But there was no one else. Like I said, I was 8 years younger than anyone else and I was completely alone. Things did change over time. As students would graduate from the school, less and less students were left, and when I entered the 9th grade, I was the only high schooler student left.

So, the school staff decided to put 1st grade students and above into one class. So in one small room there were 4 students, me, a 14 year old, and three 7 year old kids. So instead of being 8 years younger than my classmates, I was 7 years older. I'd like to say things got better at this time, but no, things got so much worse. This same year the preacher's wife became my school teacher, so I did not have a real teacher, just a middle aged woman that was not trained to be a teacher. In fact she went to college to be a secretary so she was not fit at all to be a teacher and coincidentally that same year the preacher of the cult and his wife changed dramatically after all three of their daughters joined the world.

Their oldest, a 28 year old, married another female, of course sending her parents an invitation to the wedding, and no, they did not attend. The middle child, a 26-year-old woman, started going to bars and clubs, drank heavily, and partied. And lastly, the youngest child, a 23-year-old girl, married a boy that her father said she was not allowed to marry because he was sick. In his younger years, he had suffered with seizures, so in the preacher's eyes, he was not fit for a husband. After they became engaged, they more or less disowned their last daughter. All of those things happened to the cult leaders in the same year, so it's an understatement to say they became

bitter and angry. Unfortunately for me, I was the one who received that bitterness and anger. My teacher, the preacher's wife, would blame me when other students didn't behave. Yes, I kid you not, when the seven-year-old students did not behave. Go figure. When she would misplace items, she would accuse me of stealing them. If I didn't finish my work appropriately, then I would be given double the homework as punishment. Now I haven't really gotten to all the rules that we had to obey. These rules have been upheld in the school for years and are still demanded to be followed today. We were actually given rule books at the beginning of the school year every year and were made to read them with our parents so we had no excuse to break a rule. Some of the rules are as follows. Girls cannot wear pants, only knee

length dresses or skirts. Boys have to wear a belt and collared shirt every day to school. No worldly music, which is literally anything but gospel. No drinking, no cussing, no tattoos, no smoking. Girls had to have long hair. Boys had to have their hair cut above the ear. You could not hang out with anyone considered worldly. Girls could not touch boys. Boys could not touch girls. No dating till you're in college. You had to go to a Christian college. Other colleges were considered worldly and would lead you away from God. And the best rule of all, no Disney or Pokemon. Oh yes, no Disney. Apparently Disney taught children at a young age to enjoy rock and rap music and to be disrespectful to authority. And Pokemon? Well apparently Pokemon was devil

worshipping and witchcraft, teaching you to summon demons and call on the devil for evil powers. You just can't make this stuff up. Now that I have explained a few example rules, let me tell you a few things that really let me know that these sorts of things were not normal. First of all, like I said, I was 14 in a classroom of three 7 year old children, all boys. I decided on the first day of school I would protect them so they didn't have to go through what I endured all those years. I would laugh, play, say jokes, help them with their schoolwork and just make school as fun as I could for them. They were like my three younger brothers, I really did care about them. They were all I had as companions so I made the best of our time we had together. But some things were just very silly and

frustrating. For example, I could not help them button their shirt or tighten their belt after using the restroom. One of the boys, V, could not get his belt to tighten right so I bent down and helped loop his belt through and my teacher came up and said, get your hands off him, and that I was not being proper and girls should never touch boys for any reason. I mean, come on. It was crazy. Well, whatever. I still made the best of it. I sang songs with them, played hide and seek, and would even occasionally help them cheat when the teacher wasn't looking. No regrets. 8th grade to 10th grade was definitely hard, but by far my hardest year was my 11th grade of high school. I was just wearing down.

I couldn't take it anymore. I was at the church 6 days a week, 8 hours a day, then homework after that. From the mental abuse I was receiving from my teacher, I became depressed. I just didn't care anymore. I barely studied for tests. I wouldn't finish my homework. I'd zone out. I didn't eat. In three months, I lost 25 pounds. I was just exhausted. I didn't want to go on like this

anymore. It even got to the point where I even thought about taking my own life. I'd leave my sister, who was truly my one and only best friend, behind, but at least I wouldn't have to go through all that anymore. In the end I decided to keep pushing through. I cried almost every night. I was so lonely I felt a deep hole in my heart that I couldn't fill. Nothing was helping. I was at my absolute rock bottom. Then one day my teacher walked up to me and said I needed mental help because I was forcing myself sick to get sympathy. And with that one sentence I decided no matter what, I was going to win. I wasn't going to let the cult beat me. They have worn me down, kicked me, stomped me, threatened me, but I won't let

them win. I refused. And from that day forward I started passing my tests. I ignored the rules. I found happiness for myself. I cut my hair. Screw the long hair rules. I decided I wouldn't be going to a Christian college. I wasn't going to marry a preacher. I was going to be everything I knew I was capable of being. And the icing on the cake, you could say, was the day before my senior year began. My teacher, the cult leader's wife, called me and my mother in for a meeting. And right there, in front of other people, in front of my mother, and straight to my face, my teacher told me that there was no way I would pass 12th grade, and she was going to do absolutely nothing to help me. I could not believe it. I haven't even

started school and she's getting me ready for failure Up until then my mom didn't really understand what was happening She knew I was having a hard time but just didn't have a full grasp on the situation But now she understood Things clicked and I finally had her side I went through my senior year with my three school brothers I made the best of the year I could. I got healthy, I found my happiness, and I passed, all by myself.

Without the helping of my teacher, I passed all my tests. I never failed a year of school and I never gave up. I won. The cult didn't defeat me like they defeated the other students before me. I graduated at 16, I got past school, and I was so relieved. I didn't get free right then. I still had the church to deal with. And after I graduated, things really changed.

I wasn't liked by the staff anymore. They didn't consider me part of the staff. I wasn't trustworthy. In fact, they turned against me completely. I was told I couldn't work with the children anymore. I needed more preaching. So I was forbid to work with my children and on top of that, I was actually told I could not be with the teenagers anymore. I was still 16 to 17 years old, but I could just stay with the adults. They rejected me completely after high school. I played by their rules, I finished my schooling, I was still with the church,

I did everything I was supposed to and they threw me away like trash, just because I said I wouldn't go to Bible college or marry a preacher. That's all it took, and I was nothing. All the adults started looking at me like I was some sort of murderer. Preaching sermons were more heavy on Bible college sermons. That's when I said I'm done. I would no longer take the abuse. I turned 18, I got a job, and I quit the church. It's been a few years since I've been to the church now. I live about one mile from the cult church, I drive past it several times a week, and I still have nightmares about it. Things have gotten so much better since I left the cult.

Found the most amazing man, I got married, I've come out of my shell. I work independently, I'm my own boss, and I'm happy. I want my life story to be a warning to anyone else out there who has gone through similar things. It's hard. I know it's hard. I understand. And you are not alone. It'll get better. Never quit fighting.

You are stronger than they are. And you can win. Like I stated at the very beginning, my story isn't filled with ghosts, ghouls, murderers, or stalkers. But it's filled me with true life horrors that are very real, and very dangerous. I was ready to die because of them. They could have killed me. And that's the true horror in my story. I hope anyone who reads my story can find true joy in their life, because life really is worth living.

You can win. I am a mail carrier here in California. A big part of my job is delivering Amazon packages and as you can imagine, my workload has increased significantly during the pandemic. As per usual, this has increased the number of strange encounters I've had. I have a few to share, but I'll start with one. My current route for the past six months leads me through multiple subdivisions of large, beautiful homes, like swimming pools with hot tubs in every yard. Given the pandemic, I've noticed people, mainly older folks, have really taken to coming outside

to talk to me across their yards. I don't mind at all, but try to keep it short so I don't fall behind on deliveries. One of my favorite residents is an older lady who I'll call Mrs. Lithgow, for the sake of the story. She must be well into her 70s and loves to chat about everything going on in the neighborhood. It's not unusual for her to report back that so-and-so has left their lawn unattended for two months, or that they have strange visitors at odd hours. I usually just nod and smile. The house across the street from Mrs. Lithgow was only listed for sale for a few days when it was purchased really quickly. Shortly thereafter, my truck began to fill up with Amazon packages for

whoever lived there. Mrs. Lithgow noticed right away and told me a week later that packages would stay in their pile until night time and then have disappeared in the morning. This didn't seem strange to me at the time. Mrs. Lithgow became further concerned and began telling me that there always seems to be a lot of screaming coming from the house later in the evening. I hadn't heard anything but my deliveries were always earlier in the morning. My first strange encounter was dropping off a stack of packages. I loaded my arms way higher than I'm supposed to in a rush and was waddling up the path. I felt my foot hit something hard and thought I felt it break. I set the stack down and to my horror realized I had kicked a bag of garbage that had fallen open.

Sticking out of the top was a jar with what looked like animal body parts in it. They had leaked onto the hot stone path and as soon as I had stopped, the smell was unbearable. I also noticed that there was a creepy doll in the bag. I quickly finished my delivery and got out of there. I thought about calling the police, but honestly, I thought maybe it was a fetal pig or something like that, so I talked myself out of there. I thought about calling the police but honestly I thought maybe it was a fetal pig or something like that so I talked myself out of it. Mrs. Lithgow approached me a few weeks later telling me that she had finally met the homeowner. After the whole bottle incident I was pretty

interested to know who lived there. Mrs. Lithgow said it was a petite pink haired woman who said she was living there with her autistic charge. Mrs. Lithgow thought it was so strange and I couldn't help but agree that this young woman lived there alone with this other person, but no one was ever seen coming or going. I chalked it up to the pandemic and went on with my day. Mrs. Lithgow, however, did not. The next day she came racing to the side of the road. I had to remind her to stay six feet away but she was shouting that there had been an incident. Apparently the woman living in the house and the man she cared for had been spotted outside in the backyard. Kids were playing a few houses down and came running in yelling that

the autistic man had threatened to shoot them with arrows after yelling, do you know who I am? I'll admit I wanted to know more, but didn't have the time to ask questions. Another time she told me that pink smoke had billowed out of the house and two people came running out, screaming. After that, I didn't see Mrs. Lithgow after she had left town to visit one of her kids. The house stayed quiet and I continued to leave stacks and stacks of packages there. I began to notice that the names on the packages were often different,

lots of times just being Fat Goblin and other weird things. I once ran into two electricians leaving the house. As I passed by them, one of them said, that house is full of cat feces. Full. When my route was slightly altered so their address was later in the day, I also started hearing the yelling that I think Mrs. Lithgow had been referring to. It definitely was a grown man and he was constantly yelling almost incoherent things like, black, me calls crying. At first, I thought he might have been yelling at me, but several times I noticed he was yelling before I even approached the house. I thought maybe it was linked to his diagnosis. Honestly, none of these occurrences were that weird to me, given some of the other experiences I've had. A few weeks ago, I had to deliver a package that

required a signature. I had never actually seen anyone there myself but I knocked anyways. I heard a small shriek and shuffling about. Concerned I walked toward the side of the house but still in front and yelled, Hello! I need a signature for a package! The shuffling continued. I went back to the front door to knock one last time and leave a note letting them know where they could pick it up. I certainly heard loud and fast stomping from inside the house. I peeked into the glass of the door to see if someone was coming. It was a stocky man dressed in a spandex suit from head to toe. He waved a gun in the air.

I stepped back in shock. I froze just for a second long enough to hear him yell, You're not safe here. That was enough to get me moving again. I turned and began to run. As I raced down the driveway and back into my truck, I could now fully see the man holding his weapon yelling, I shoot the maim. I just took off. I called my supervisor immediately but was told there is nothing we can do about it because technically I was on his property and he never directly threatened me. I still think I should have called the police. I began leaving the packages at the end of the driveway and have not heard or seen anyone in that house again. When I was 13 or 14, I lived in the panhandle of Florida with my mom, younger brother, and my stepdad.

My mom had been married to him for almost 6 years now and I never did feel comfortable alone with him. He was always lazy, smelled bad, and just gave me the creeps. married to him for almost six years now and I never did feel comfortable alone with him. He was always lazy, smelled bad and just gave me the creeps. Sometimes it was just little things like he'd stare a little too long or would go out of his way to get me things I had asked my mom for. I know that doesn't really seem to raise any red flags but my mom had raised me to be very aware of men being a very small girl. Our small house had a weird floor plan. I won't go into details about the entire house, you just need to know my room was in the very center of the house. I had three doors going into my room, one shared by my brother's room, one going out into the second living room type area my mom used as her bedroom,

and the last one going out right next to the bathroom door. Sometimes my brother would go through my room to get to the bathroom when my mom and stepdad were fighting or doing drugs like they usually did. The bathroom was right up against the wall of my closet. My closet didn't have doors on it and the walls were very thin so a lot of the time I could hear when someone was in there and what they were doing. A while after living there, I had discovered that the time I could hear when someone was in there and what they were doing. A while after living there, I had discovered that the bathroom mirror could be slid a few inches to the right or left to reveal a sort of nook, which I thought was kind of weird. But the people who lived in the house before me were extremely weird so I didn't think much of it.

A few weeks go by after I discovered the secret compartment in the bathroom and I was just sitting in my room playing games on my laptop when I heard some kind of scratching noise coming from the closet. I thought it was some kind of rodent because our house really was that bad off. I decided not to pay any attention to it. A few months later I heard my stepdad's footsteps leave the bathroom. Then I started to realize that maybe he too knows about the secret compartment. Curiosity rushes over me and I decided I needed to know what he might have hid back there. I quietly rush into the bathroom and lock the door behind me. At first I thought

maybe he was just trying to hide drugs or money from my mom which wouldn't be surprising. I felt my heart beating out of my chest when I slowly pushed the mirror to the side. Curiosity became shock when I realized what he had done. It was his phone, propped up by a piece of cardboard. The phone's camera was pointed to the small crack between the mirror and the wall, having a clear view of the shower and toilet. Anger took over me and I snatched the phone, quickly unlocking it by looking at the previous fingerprints. It wasn't recording, but taking a series of pictures which I knew he was controlling with

his computer because he was good at computer stuff and hacking. I scrolled through his camera roll to find tons of pictures of me getting into the shower and using the toilet. I was furious. I hid the phone in my pocket, put the mirror back and stormed into the living room looking for my mother. My stepdad was the only person in the living room so I asked him where she was, trying to keep my voice calm and steady. Outside. He said. He made a face like maybe he somehow knew I had found his phone. He could have been watching me from his computer this whole time, but I didn't care. I walked outside to find my mom on the porch. I slammed the door and sat down next to her. I pulled the phone out of my pocket and showed her all of the pictures.

She grabbed the phone and stormed inside to confront my stepdad, who was already panicking. My mom was screaming at him and I started crying. I don't remember exactly how it happened but somehow my stepdad had gotten a hold of his phone and my mom was in my room comforting me. My stepdad had come into the room and was saying that there was nothing on it and I could go through it if I wanted to but I already knew he had deleted everything. I took the phone from him and threw it against the wall. My mom screamed at him to leave the room. It's been six years since then and she never reported or even left him. I've lived with other family for three years already and rarely get to see her because when she does come around, she brings my stepdad with

her and I just hide in my room with the door locked. I never forgave him and I have never trusted another man since. I was 18 and had just gone through my second breakup after finding out that my ex had cheated on me with a girl at school on Valentine's Day. I was and have always been the type of person that wears their heart on their sleeve and doesn't make people earn my love so I felt like I would never find love. I ended up staying up all night scrolling around on Facebook wishing that anyone from anywhere in the world would just love me for me, not caring who they were when a friend request popped up. A guy from Croatia. I don't remember the message he sent with the request exactly but it was something along the lines of, hello, I hope I got the right profile.

If it is, you'll respond. Being the heartbroken naive teen I was at the time, I clicked the accept button and not soon after he responded. We chatted for a while. He claimed to be around my age, 18. He starts flirting with me, telling me, you look like an angel or something like that. And I could feel my heart mending. I was falling for this guy I only knew for a matter of a second and then he started to ask if I had a webcam. Obviously I didn't. At the time I only had an old box computer since my father never wanted a computer in the house. I'm not Mormon, far from it actually. Dad's just one of those people that is against kids having connections online and not in person. So after

months of begging him I get my first laptop and instantly cam this guy from Croatia. When he pops on, he looks like he's more in his late 30s, but my irrational mind thinks, oh, he must just have that weird aging condition. No big deal. We chat again. He asks me to do some things on the cam with him, but I say no. Then I hear some yelling in Croatian in the background. A woman yelling. He yells back in Croatian. I ask who that was and he claims it was his mother. It sounded too young to be a mother for how he looked. I shrugged it off stupidly and he began to tell me of this weird prophecy he has about torturing all humanity and claims he's Vlad the Impaler, reincarnated, sent to do that and that I was to be his queen. Okay, now I decide to listen to the red flags and alarms going off in my head and shut down the cam.

Fast forward to a few months later, I get a message from my best friend from high school saying some guy from Croatia messaged her and was begging her to have me message him, but he was using my profile. He hacked my profile. I had to put up with him hacking my profile for years, until I just started to start talking with him again to keep him away from my friends and family. Things were going okay so far, but anytime I complained to him about my dad being mildly annoying, he'd send me horrifying pictures of decaying corpses on pikes, and him in rather lewd pictures with knives saying if he ever does something like that again I'll butcher him like a cow. So I just stopped talking to him again. Fast forward another

year, I get a girlfriend. I had thought he had stopped bothering anyone I knew, but she calls me up crying and tells me this Croatian guy says you're with him. It's either him or me. I regrettably say him and cry all night long over yet another failed relationship. I eventually stopped trying to date. I stopped talking to my high school best friend and even my other family members. I started to only talk to him. Every time I block him, he'd just make a new account or hack into mine to try to get people I knew to get me to talk to him. It was only in 2018 that I was finally able to get rid of him. But there is one thing I will never forget. Back when I was talking with him, a friend of mine saw him on my profile under

my friends list and he looked at his birth month. He was older than me. All this time I was talking with a psychotic predator. Growing up in a rural Canadian town to a poor family, my father Dean and his siblings never had much in the way of entertainment. Often left unsupervised, the three children were all too frequently left to their own devices, giving them ample opportunity to indulge in interesting and sometimes dangerous activities. After accumulating several injuries this way, rather than putting their foot down, Dean's parents chose a more hands-off approach. The children's misadventures became all too easy to ignore completely. On a warm summer evening, the sun still burning high in the sky,

Dean found himself wandering the neighborhood with three of his good friends who lived nearby. Spending most of the day roughhousing and pulling pranks, the group of kids decided their fun just wasn't over yet and brainstormed on where to play next. One of Dean's friends, Thomas, suggested they go play in the local quarry, as there were plenty of boulders and sand dunes to climb on. Being a year so older than the boys, Thomas' ideas always seemed like good ones, and so they all headed out to the big pit. Upon arriving at the quarry, dunes upon dunes of sand loomed over them, and the group of kids headed straight for the tallest one. They all took turns climbing up and sliding down through the sand. They were having what seemed like innocent fun and had no idea their fun was about to quickly come to a terrifying end.

Atop the dune, Thomas readied himself to slide down to his friends waiting below. Dean and the other two boys, Will and Jason, sat on the lower part of the dune cheering on Thomas, but as it began to slide, their cheers turned into screams of horror. With Thomas came an avalanche of heavy sand, engulfing the three boys entirely. Unable to stop, Thomas rode the wave of sand to the bottom of the dune and quickly realized his friends were all buried alive in his wake. Frantically, Thomas started digging through the sand. A minute passed before he could hear a faint voice from beneath the dirt.

He clawed and clawed until he eventually uncovered Dean, out of breath and pale as a ghost. Having been sat higher up on the dune than his two friends, Dean had been fairly close to the surface after the avalanche. The two continued to dig randomly, not knowing where or how deep Will and Jason were in the piles of sand. Realizing the severity of the situation, they knew they needed help. They separated, each running home as fast as they could. Dean burst through the door of his parents' house, yelling that his friends were buried in the quarry and that he

desperately needed help digging them out. Covered head to toe in dirt and obviously distressed, his parents took one look at him and shook their heads. Rather than help and concern, he got a lecture. They didn't believe his story at all. He continued to beg them for help, but to no avail. Eventually getting impatient, Dean fled the house to head back to the quarry, hoping that Thomas' parents hadn't been so ignorant. He arrived shortly to find Thomas, his parents, and several neighbors digging furiously through the sand. After several minutes, the boys' bodies were found amongst the dirt, completely limp.

It was too late. Ambulances came and officers got details from Dean and Thomas. The two surviving boys never spoke again after the accident. Dean was never given any of the support or resources he needed to deal with the traumatic events that day. He lost his best friends in an instant, and has never, truly, found closure. I'm currently a 24 year old male living in the Midwest. The occurrence I'll be describing in this story happened often in my childhood all the way up until I left home for college. My parents have lived in the same southeast Illinois home ever since I was born. The bedroom that my baby crib was in was on the ground floor just down the hall

from my parents' bedroom. The house is a two-story log cabin with a basement. I am my parents' first child of three, so when my little brother was born born I had to move out of my bedroom and into one of my storage rooms upstairs which my dad cleaned out and made into a bedroom. This is when I was five years old and I was pretty excited to have a whole room to myself on the second floor. I'm not exactly sure when the first occurrence was but I'm sure it wasn't long after I moved bedrooms. It didn't happen every night, but I remember it very clearly, so it must have been pretty often. I would wake up sometime between 3 and 5 in the morning to the sound of country music being played. It sounded like it was coming from downstairs. Keep in mind that the way my parents' cabin was built, when you exited my

bedroom and went left, there was a sort of balcony that overlooked the living room and the kitchen slash dining room. So after hearing the music, I would get out of bed, go to the balcony and look out into the dark rooms to see if my dad was awake and had music on since he loved country music. He never was. When I asked him about it, he said that he never played music if someone was sleeping in the house. So after the first occurrence, I kind of just forgot about it since it didn't really freak me out that badly. This was the only first time of many that this would happen. I would wake up hearing that country music playing very often, but I could never find the source. Usually once I was back in bed, the music would go away and it would be quiet just like any regular house.

You might not think that this story is that scary but I have one more detail I have yet to mention. Around the time I started middle school my parents had had my little sister who now moved into the baby crib room. It was also a chance for me to move bedrooms since my brother also wanted to move. So I actually chose to move into the basement bedroom. Strange choice I know and my brother moved into the second floor bedroom that I moved out of. Fast forward about 12 years. I've graduated college and have my first real job in my career. My brother is getting ready to start college. There was one day that he was visiting me and we were talking about funny things that happened in the past and I brought up the country music I used to hear. When I mentioned the music,

my brother turned and looked at me with a look of pure fear on his face. You heard that too? I told him about the hundreds of nights I would wake up to the music and he said that he had the exact same experience in that bedroom. No other member of my family ever reported this occurrence except me and my brother who were the only occupants of that bedroom. I don't know if this is a supernatural experience or anything, but I can't rule it out. My parents are not the first owners of that cabin and I don't know anything about any of the previous owners. If anyone has any explanation to this, I'd be happy to hear. I moved to a town with my parents my freshman year in high school. There's this alarm that goes off every time the fire department is called.

For those of you in Tornado Alley, you'll know it as a tornado alarm, but up here in New England, just there to alert the town and or volunteers that there's a fire because it's a small town. I grew up in Tornado Alley and the first time we heard the alarm, my family went into full panic mode. It's also the sound from Silent Hill for you horror fans. One afternoon, I was walking home from the park and it got dark fast. As a 14 year old girl I thought I was pretty much an adult by this point and in a small redneck northeastern town I didn't really feel scared walking home 15 years ago now. I was about half a block from the fire station as a red old Toyota truck pulled up and offered me a ride home. I politely said that I was fine as this old greasy guy just gave me the absolute creeps. He kept driving slowly by me till he noticed that I

picked up the pace to a near jog and he began to drive off. Only to drive back towards me minutes later then turn around and drive back up to me. He swung his car door open and started angry walking fast towards me and my heart literally stopped and my body froze like a deer in headlights ready for death. He grabbed my arm hard and started pulling me to his car. I screamed but he covered my mouth with his hands that reeked of sweat and cigars. I wiggled away only to have my head slammed into his truck full force making my ears ring as soon as he got a grip on me again. As he was forcing me into his truck, the fire department alarm blares.

For reference, you can hear the alarm a town over, and being only half a block away, it's extremely loud, disorienting if you're not used to it, as it is a very concerning horn siren like sound. He let go long enough for me to sprint into someone's backyard and I assumed between the sound and possible witnesses now, it wasn't worth it anymore to him. After he drove off, I tried to just sit there and gather myself and my thoughts. A dog in the owner's house started barking at me and a guy in his 30s comes out at some point and asks what I'm doing, Eventually noticing a scared girl with blood on her face and then asked if I needed help. I simply shook my head yes. I don't know how long but eventually cops showed up,

then an ambulance. Next thing I know I'm in the hospital. My parents are freaking out and I told cops what had happened. As far as I know, they never caught the guy. I had stitches in my head, but thankfully no permanent damage. Cops assumed he wasn't from around here as we're the only town with that alarm and probably wouldn't have been startled by it if he was a local. I haven't contacted police in years, but last I checked, they never caught the guy, nor had similar reports, so either he's getting away with it, or his scare with trying to take me scared him off for good from hunting young girls. To be continued... of all future narrations. If you got a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official, and give and receive feedback from the community,

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