The Lets Read Podcast - 149: A WITCHES COLD BREW | 19 True Scary Horror Stories | EP 137

Episode Date: August 23, 2022

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about New Jersey, Starbucks, & Plenty Of Fish Creeps... 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

The When Tiffany Taylor woke up in the backseat of the car and felt a stranger's hand wrap around her throat, she tried all she could to push him off. But it was only then that she realized in horror that a pair of steel handcuffs had secured her wrists behind her back. Not only that, but what could only be duct tape had been wrapped around her head, almost completely sealing her mouth and nostrils. The stranger held her down, brutally violating her in a way that caused Tiffany to scream, cry, and bite her tongue. The tears which streamed down her face, along with the blood from her bitten tongue, caused the duct tape to loosen slightly, just enough for her to be able to say, Please don't kill me. I'm pregnant.

She didn't expect the man to reply, but what he said in response was more horrifying than she could have possibly imagined. I know you are, the stranger said. Don't worry, I've done this before. It'll be over soon, it'll be quick, and when I'm done with you, no one will ever find you. The attack took place during the summer and fall months of 2016, a time when a brutal, merciless serial killer turned inner-city New Jersey into his own personal hunting ground. In the space of just less than three months, he attacked four different women after using his cell phone to research the most efficient ways to kill and dispose of human corpses.

He also used his cell phone to research not only the fastest route to his target, but also alternate routes that cops might not take should they be contacted. He was shrewd, cruel, and calculating, and for a hot minute, all law enforcement could do was hope that their man slipped up somehow and handed them a lucky break. But for four women who bore the scars of this man's evil, hope wasn't enough, and patience wouldn't cut it. So incredibly, they hatched a plan to catch one of the most dark-hearted murderers New Jersey has ever seen. Robin West had an awful upbringing. As a result of severe mental illness, she spent a long spell of her youth at Wordsworth Academy, a treatment facility in West Philadelphia for young people with behavioral and mental health issues.

It was supposed to be a place where Robin could escape from a dangerous and abusive home life, but the rundown academy and its over-strict, under-caring system proved no better for her. Yet despite such hardship, Robin developed a strong character and an effortless style of charm and humor. It was the style that helped her win clients at the club where she worked as an exotic dancer. But Robin also earned money on the side as a call girl, placing ads on websites which proposed discreet meets in Philly hotels. In August of 2016, one of Robin's friends suggested a trip to Newark, New Jersey, where they would visit a run-down neighborhood where call girls are known to ply their trade.

It was a surefire way of making a quick buck when work back in Philly was slow, so the two booked a room at a small motel before heading back to look for potential clients. Then, at around 11pm on August 31st, Robin and her friend headed over to Nye Avenue, a derelict collection of burned out homes punctuated by overgrown yards and an abandoned train yard. One of the first cars to slow to a crawl alongside them was a silver sedan. Most men tend to be awkward and nervous when interacting with call girls in an illegal setting, but this one seemed polite and charming in comparison. When asked which of the girls he wanted, the driver pointed to Robin, who was wearing a red

Nike hat, sultry black shirt, and black shorts with sparkling orange sandals. Be careful with my sister, because I love her, Robin's friend said, watching as she climbed in the passenger seat. As a precaution, she saved the vehicle's license plate number as a contact in her cell phone, just in case she'd need to contact law enforcement. But the provision did her no good. She'd never see her friend again. As the very next day, Robin's scorched remains would be found in the smoking ruins of an abandoned home in Orange, New Jersey, with one veteran firefighter saying hers were the most charred cadaver he'd ever come across in all his years of service. She was so badly burned that she had to be identified by her dental records,

with the day of her death being only eight days after her 19th birthday. Due to the positioning of the body and the way in which the fire had spread throughout the building, authorities were almost certain of foul play, and with the help of Robin's friend, who provided the suspects a vehicle's license plate, they were almost certain that they could find the killer. Yet a major concern was that he might strike again before being apprehended. If the media got whiff of a serial killer, all chaos would break loose. But the killer would strike again. The only question was, when and who? Born in Augusta, Maine, 33-year-old Joanne Billy Joe Brown was raised

in a loving family and was popular among her peers. But after being diagnosed with bipolar and schizophrenia, she understood why she was so unhappy when she had so few reasons to feel that way. By all accounts, proper diagnoses and treatment enabled Joanne to get a grip on her mental illness, and she showed an admirable amount of positivity and determination in her quest to conquer her condition. But she still felt different from other people. Not apart, just different. She couldn't see herself holding down regular hours or some routine job, instead putting to use her passion for fashion and hairstyling by becoming an exotic dancer. It was through her employment as an

exotic dancer that Joanne became an escort. And it was through her escort work that she ended up meeting a man in the parking lot of a Popeyes on Newark's south side in October of 2016. Several weeks later on December 5th, a group of construction workers pulled up outside 354 Highland Avenue near Branch Brook Park. The homeowner wanted the property renovated with a view to making it a rental and had asked the workers to inspect the house before sending him an estimate. A pair of the workers decided to take a look around the first floor, but as they arrived at the landing, they stopped dead in their tracks. One of the men called back down the stairs, telling his boss that it looked like someone was asleep on the dusty wooden floor.

But they weren't asleep. It was Joanne Brown, and she was dead. Someone had wrapped her head in duct tape from her eyes down to her chin and strangled her with a jacket. The killer's next victim was a young woman named Sarah Butler. A competitive dancer with a passion for ballet, modern, jazz, and African dance, Sarah worked hard to pursue her passion. She worked multiple jobs, eventually saving enough money for a used car. Then following her high school graduation, she drove the 15 miles to New Jersey City University, becoming the first member of her family to enroll in college. But college life wasn't nearly as social as she imagined, so Sarah found herself creating an

account on a social media site known as Tagged, a kind of platonic Tinder with more emphasis on companionship than Netflix and chill, so to speak. It's there that she found the profile of a guy whose username was LittleYachtRock. LittleYachtRock also immediately began asking if Sarah wanted to make some money. She wittily responded that she was not into the credit card scams, lol. But Little Yacht Rock assured her he was serious and that he'd pay $500 to sleep with her. $500 was a lot of money to a broke college student like Sarah, and Little Yacht Rock had a very handsome profile picture, but after arranging a meeting that same

evening, she changed her mind and stood him up. Yet for some reason two days later, Sarah sent Little Yacht Rock the following message. Sorry about the other day, I got really nervous, Sarah's message read. I felt terrible, but your voice and your pic don't seem like a match. I'm a really cool guy when you get to know me, Little Yacht Rock replied. Let's meet up tonight if you're free. Sure, but you're not a serial killer, right? This particular message of Sarah's has a sick resonance to it today. Little Yacht Rock assured her he wasn't, and the couple arranged to meet on the first day of Thanksgiving break. On the day of her date with Little Yacht Rock, Sarah messaged him on tag to confirm the meeting

place. Then that evening, Sarah borrowed her parents' minivan and drove out alone into the clear, windy night to the address she'd been given, 354 Highland Avenue in Orange, New Jersey, the very same house that Joanna Brown had been murdered in just weeks before. When Little Yacht Rock greeted her with a smile and climbed into the minivan, Joanna Brown's cold, dead face was still wrapped in duct tape, and soon, so would Sarah Butler's. When he was done, he dragged her body behind a trailer on the wooded hillside of Eagle Rock Reservation.

But on this occasion, he was careless in the disposal, simply covering her body with leaves and twigs with her lifeless limbs sticking out from underneath. Sarah had promised her parents that she would be home by 8pm, but when the hour came and went, a close friend of Sarah's became concerned. She began texting around mutual friends to check if any of them had seen her, and as the trickle of replies came in, it became quite clear that something was wrong. The following morning, Sarah's mother, Laverne Butler, called her daughter's cell phone to find it went immediately to voicemail. This was extremely out of character

for Sarah, who was famous for carrying her charger on her person wherever she went. A panic rose and Sarah's family hastily contacted the police. Three days later, on November 25th, a friend of Sarah's happened to spot her mom's blue minivan tucked away behind the derelict factory building. But Sarah was still nowhere to be found. It was obvious that their friend was in danger, and there was only so much the local law enforcement could do to find her. It was with growing frustration that Sarah's friends decided to take matters into their own hands. They drove to the Butler's family home, where Laverne was only too happy to give them access to Sarah's laptop.

The friends spent the following few hours searching through Sarah's post history, logging into her various social media profiles, and perusing the message section for any clues to her whereabouts. Obviously, one of these profiles was Sarah's tagged account, and it was there that they found her messages with Little Yacht Rock, paying particular interest to the fact that they'd obviously arranged some kind of meetup, one that was scheduled for the night before she went missing. They saw everything. The offer of cash for intimacy, the man's apparently desperate desire to meet her as soon as possible,

and they saw something was hideously wrong. At this point I think we can all agree that Sarah's friends showed an astonishing amount of character and fortitude when they made a decision to catfish the man who had potentially kidnapped or killed their friend. One of Sarah's friends, Samantha Rivera, created a fake profile untagged using a generic hot girl display picture, then sent Little Yacht Rock's profile a thumbs up. It didn't take long for him to take the bait, and just like with their missing friend, he began offering money if Samantha would sleep with him. The money, the rush, all of it mirrored his text to Butler before she disappeared. Immediately, the women were suspicious.

As messages progressed to a call, Rivera pressed a button to place Little Yacht Rock on speakerphone. Thinking on the fly, the friends opened the camera on their own phone and recorded the conversation on video. Little Yacht Rock wanted to meet Samantha and soon, he was completely unaware of the net that was slowly closing around him. After a prolonged back and forth while the girls stalled for time, Samantha agreed to meet Little Rock Yacht at Panera Bread in Montclair. The location was everything, as it was situated in a strip mall just minutes away from the local police headquarters. Instead of meeting up with Samantha, Little Yacht Rock found himself confronted with two homicide detectives sent to intercept him. However, Little Yacht Rock had told Samantha his only had a rough idea of his age and gender, they found themselves unable to take the man into custody,

given that he seemed to have a perfectly innocent reason for being at the Panera Bread. They were forced to let him go, but, thanks to the net laid out by Samantha Rivera and friends, his time and his luck were running out. Five days after Sarah Butler's body was found, lying in the weeds near the Eagle Rock Reservation parking lot, Khalil Wheeler Weaver was in police custody. Sarah's friends are the first true heroes in this case, the lead Essex County prosecutor was quoted as saying. He also made it clear that although Khalil Wheeler Weaver

left enough of a trail for police to catch him, their efforts might well have been impossible without the amateur investigation conducted by Samantha and company. Without them, a cunning and deadly serial killer might still be walking the streets, and there's no doubt that Khalil would have killed again. He researched ways to kill people using relatively undetectable household items such as bleach and drain cleaner. He plotted ways to murder his victims while remaining almost completely undetected, and using a variety of social media profiles and a plethora of different aliases to stay one step ahead of law enforcement.

Yet still, he was brought low by the effort of a few concerned and loving friends, along with one more woman, the pregnant Tiffany Taylor. Cut back to her being strangled in the basement of her own car. The man who's about to murder her used many usernames while talking to women online, but his real name was Khalil Wheeler Weaver. Yet just as he was about to finish her off, he remembered something. Where's your phone? He asked suddenly. It's back at the Ritz, Tiffany replied, room 32. As she spoke, she felt his grip around her neck slacken. Oh no, Khalil replied, a hint of fear entering his voice. We gotta go back and get that phone. Tiffany knew she'd found a weakness, a piece of evidence he couldn't allow to exist,

and as he drove them both back to the motel to retrieve the cell phone, Tiffany was presented with an opportunity to save her own life. As long as she can remember, Tiffany had been double-jointed, and as she sat in the back seat of the car she was now captive in, she folded her left thumb into her palm and silently retched one hand free of the cuffs. Her prospective killer neither saw nor suspected the thing. Her plan was to wait until he hit his stoplight, then hook the handcuff chain around his neck from the back seat, strangling him before he had a chance to kill her. There was every chance he would put his foot down and send the vehicle plowing into oncoming traffic at breakneck speeds,

but Tiffany already accepted she was going to die if she didn't do something. If she could take her captor with her, so be it. Yet in a stroke of bad luck, the vehicle didn't hit a single red light on its way back to the motel. But as it pulled into the parking lot, Tiffany had another idea. She slipped her hand back into the handcuffs and played the helpless victim for a few more moments to lull her captor into a false sense of security. Khalil opened the back door and tore the duct tape from her face. He then draped a jacket across her shoulders to hide the handcuffs and explain the plan. She was to walk upstairs while he would trail a few feet behind. After she retrieved the phone,

they would leave together and he would find a place to kill her. Tiffany followed the plan to the letter and soon arrived at the mustard yellow door of room 32. But room 32 wasn't empty. Inside was a companion of Tiffany's, one who had a rampant, long-term heroin addiction. Tiffany had promised to return with heroin following her date with Khalil, and the person inside was practically watching the doorknob in anticipation of her return. All Tiffany had to do was kick the door once and it opened almost instantly. Khalil was under the impression that he'd have to open the door himself and had no time to react to Tiffany as she dived into the motel room. When officers from Elizabeth Police Department responded to Tiffany's 911 call at 9.28pm, Khalil was still there, watching police from the shadows. Taylor isn't fond of courthouses, nor is she a fan of law enforcement, but she swallowed her pride to help put a vicious serial killer behind bars. During his trial, she sat in the witness box and faced Khalil Looking him in the eyes despite him refusing to return her gaze

I wanted them to see me, Taylor said I wanted them to know that it was me Every word of that final statement is true It was her who helped put him away The police might have filed the charge against Khalil Wheeler Weaver But it was Robin West's friend whoil Wheeler Weaver, but it was Robin West's friend who recorded Wheeler Weaver's license plate. Joanne Brown's friend helped police connect Khalil to the spot where she was kidnapped, along with the abandoned house where

her body was found, while Samantha Rivera and her friends established Wheeler Weaver's methodology, using his phone to track women, offering cash, then rushing them to meet. After being pronounced guilty by a jury of his peers, Khalil Wheeler Weaver has yet to be sentenced for his crimes, but it's more than likely he'll receive multiple life sentences along with additional time for kidnapping and other crimes. By finding Wheeler Weaver online and luring him into a trap with police, these women risked their lives. He believed he was hunting his next victim, but in reality, they were the ones hunting him. The End On August 24th of 1940, Richard Biegenwald's Staten Island upbringing was the stuff of nightmares. His father was a violent alcoholic and beat his son brutally on a daily basis.

By the time Richard was just five years old, the abuse had gotten so bad that he tried to burn down the family home. Following the dangerous outburst, so rare in one as young as he, Richard was sent for observation at the Rockland County Psychiatric Center. He was released shortly afterward and returned to the guardianship of his parents, but Richard's home life didn't improve any. In fact, it only got worse. By age eight, Richard claimed he was drinking alcohol and gambling, and that his parents chose to deal with his behavioral problems by forcing him to undergo electroshock therapy, a term that is something of an oxymoron. Used as a treatment for major depressive disorders, catatonia, or prolonged mania, side effects of electroshock therapy can include confusion, loss of motor function, and severe memory loss.

The long-term memories of those subjected to ECT have been known to suffer dramatically, with famous examples being that of Townes Van Zandt, a legendary country singer who lost most of his childhood memories as a result of the treatment, and it had almost exactly the same effect on Richard. Rare memories of a mostly miserable childhood were now gone forever, and all he was left with was the pain of abuse and abandonment by a family he barely knew. Following the electroconvulsive therapy, Richard's behavior took a sharp turn for the worse. He was moved to the State Training School for Boys in Warwick, New York, an institution

designed to curb his darker inclinations before they could take root. Yet none of the treatments prescribed by the teams of highly experienced child psychologists did anything to properly socialize young Richard. He regularly stole from other students, routinely started fights, and instigated multiple escape attempts involving himself and other students. Needless to say, he was a handful, and his behavior remained atrocious even on trips home to his mother's place in Staten Island. He held an incredible amount of resent for her, and saw his enrollment at the training school as evidence that he was unloved and unwanted. In response, he stole his

mother's money, defied her curfews, and at one point, in an attempt to prevent his return to the training school, an 11-year-old Richard set himself on fire with lighter fluid and matches. After recovering from the burns, Richard spent another five years at the training school, transferring to high school at 16 but dropping out shortly afterward. Richard then lived in Nashville, Tennessee for a couple of years but returned to the northeast in 1958 after a conviction for vehicle theft, whereupon he settled in the state of New Jersey. It's there in the city of Bayonne that Richard decided to rob a grocery store of the night of December 18th, 1958. It was the week before Christmas and Richard was broke, but he knew that the local grocery stores would be fat with cash thanks to the marked uptick in holiday sales.

He hit one mom and pop grocery store with an accomplice known only as Frank, and in order to gain access to the on-site safe, he came face to face with the owner and proprietor, Stephen Slodowski, who also happened to be an attorney and public prosecutor. According to witness statements, Slodowski appeared to have made the mistake of assuming he could reason with a man like Richard. He used his experience as an officer of the court to assure the men that if they quit before anyone got hurt or any money was stolen, they'd receive leniency from a judge who might well take pity on financial hardships during the holiday season. He poked and prodded at Richard's fragile ego until he snapped, putting a bullet in Slodowski's head before he could even open the

safe. Richard and his accomplice went on the run, but were picked up a few days later in Maryland. He was extradited back to New Jersey, convicted of murder, and spent the next 17 years of his life in one of the Garden State's maximum security prisons. At his parole hearing, Richard assured the authorities that he was fully rehabilitated. He told the board that he was deeply ashamed that the behavior of his youth had culminated in the murder of an innocent father and public servant, and that he'd spent the last 17 years wishing he could take it back. Satisfied he'd paid his debt to society, Richard was then released from prison where he worked various odd jobs over the years that followed. He generally kept a low profile, adhering to his parole conditions, and only once missed a meeting with his parole officer.

He was arrested in 1980 on suspicion of a serious assault, but when the victim failed to pick him out of the police lineup, he was released without charge. To outside observers, it appeared that Richard was actually changing his ways for the better, and he even managed to find himself a wife, moving into a small Asbury Park home with her shortly afterward. It's here that the Beganwalds befriended their neighbors, who turned out to be the only people with the insight on just how little Richard had changed. At first, the neighbors found Richard to be a quiet and unassuming man. He knew he'd spent some time in prison, but were too polite to ask what the conviction was. To him, Richard was a reformed criminal,

one who deserved to be given a second chance. Sure, he had some unusual interests, but otherwise he seemed harmless. But one day, on a visit to the Beganwald's home, Richard showed one of his neighbors something that took their breath away. The neighbor woman had made fast friends with Richard's wife and when he asked if she wanted to see something in the garage, she had no reason to suspect it was anything untoward. But after leading her into the garage and pulling back a large sheet, Richard revealed the dead body of a young woman, saying he had gotten her out on the boardwalk at the Jersey Shore. His wife's friend was utterly

horrified, but somehow played it cool enough to escape the residence without raising Richard's suspicion before hastily contacting the police. The cops surrounded Richard's house on January 22nd of 1983, where they found him hanging out with an old prison buddy of his, Darren Fitzgerald. Given that he had a history of shootouts with police, they knew there was a good chance he'd opt to die in a firefight than come quietly. So, rather than risk the lives of innocent civilians in the surrounding homes, a police SWAT team came up with a rather cunning plan. A plainclothes police officer essentially faked a collision with Richard's car,

then caused enough of a scene outside to cause Richard to step out of his house to investigate. Once he'd stepped off the porch, the SWAT team made their move, tackling the ex-con before taking him into custody. Darren Fitzgerald was also arrested, suspected of being an accomplice in the murders, and in a manner of speaking, he was. But when questioned by police, Darren told them any assistance given to Richard was purely the result of terror and coercion. He had no idea his old jail buddy had taken to killing again, especially not defenseless young women. And if detectives hadn't swooped in to

capture him when they did, there's no telling how many more he would have killed. Darren said Richard was stockpiling a variety of conventional and not-so-conventional weaponry that he planned to use in scores of additional murders, and that was backed up by evidence taken from the Beganwald's home. Officers seized a large cache of weapons and illegal drugs from Richard's residence, which included several pipe bombs, handguns, rifles, shotguns, a machine gun, large amounts of marijuana, and floor plans for several of the area's notable residencies and businesses. Police also made the disturbing discovery of a rohypnol and chloral hydrate stash,

two sedatives with memory-erasing side effects. But even more terrifying was the live puff adder that Richard kept in his basement, along with a collection of syringes and venom-collecting equipment. The puff adder probably accounts for more deaths than any other snake in Africa, with an adult having enough venom to kill five grown men. It's terrifyingly clear that Richard Beganwald was planning on injecting people with snake venom, a silent and potentially untraceable crime that would be the calm before the pipe bomb and machine gun storm. The people

of New Jersey can thank their lucky stars that Richard was caught before he could subject them to such a horrifying and deadly ordeal. During his trial, the media dubbed Richard the Jersey Shore Thrill Killer, after it came to light that he'd lured a girl off of the Adesbury Park boardwalk, shooting her in the head just so he could watch her die. After five hours of deliberation, the jury found Richard guilty, recommending a sentence of death by lethal injection. But over the years, Richard was on and off death row as a series of appeals came to a fluctuating set of conclusions as to what his punishment should be. In August 1991, the death sentence was overturned for good, and Richard was locked away in the New Jersey State Prison, never to taste freedom again. Then on March 10th of 2008, Corrections Department's

spokeswoman confirmed that Richard had died from a combination of both respiratory failure and kidney failure at St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton, New Jersey. It was a whimpering end to a man whose lifestyle meant that he had been more than likely to go out with a bang. And we all owe a debt of gratitude to the brave neighbor woman who contacted the police, as well as the police officers who took him into custody. The extent of Richard's conventional and biological arsenal of weapons is truly terrifying, and there's no doubt he was planning something that would result in a catastrophic loss of life. And the whole snake venom aspect meant New Jersey

was lucky enough to dodge perhaps its most infamous serial killer. One as evil as he was original. SOS So I saw yesterday from a few people in the horror community who were showcasing creepy landmarks in their hometowns. I had so much fun reading all of the lore behind these places and it reminded me of something creepy near my own hometown of Somerville, New Jersey. If you take Liberty Corner Road out past the private school then turn off onto Mountain Road, you come across this huge oak tree that's far bigger and far older than its brothers and sisters nearby. It's so ancient that only half the limbs of the wizened old thing are actually alive, giving it a half-dead, half-alive zombie tree look that's just inherently creepy and distinctly eye-catching. The old thing is spooky enough on

its own, but then you learn all the weird and frightening history the tree has, and you start to understand why the locals call it the Devil's Tree. If you ask most people in town about the Devil's Tree, they'll just give you some vague answer about it being cursed. Others will be a little bit more specific, saying how those who damaged or disrespect the tree have come to a bad end. People have stories of how such and such a person peed on this tree or someone carved their name onto it, only to go on to suffer a breakdown or brush with death as they try to drive away. They claim this is because hundreds of years ago, a farmer had a particularly bad harvest and hung himself from the tree after killing his family so they wouldn't have to starve.

Because of that, his tortured soul still lingers around the tree, wreaking revenge on those who would do it harm. One guy in town swore that once he stopped to take a look at that old thing on his drive home from work, when he did, he heard voices behind him talking, but when he turned, there was no one there. He also swore that on his drive back into town, a black Ford pickup began to chase him for a stretch before disappearing down a country road. I don't really believe any of that though and I think the bad vibes around the tree came from the fact that the clan used to use the tree for lynchings back when they were still a thing around here. Apparently those idiots killed quite a few people too and always left them hanging from the tree. So maybe parents told

their kids to stay away so they wouldn't see the bodies or whatever. Either way, I'm not sure why the town council don't just have it cut down. Because this is the other thing that kind of creeps me out about the Devil's Tree. There's also a rumor that if the tree ever dies or gets serious damage, that a terrible fate will befall Somerville. Now it's probably just the town wanting to preserve it for historical reasons, but they actually put a chain link fence around the old thing to protect it from vandals. And every time someone proposes cutting it down, the town planner rejects the idea without so much as entertaining it. It doesn't matter the reason, new homes, a strip mall, a park, every single idea

from 1979 to 2007 has been shot down on sight. Like, what are they even protecting? People were lynched from that tree, just cut it down, I think to myself. There's one final clue that I feel might help us solve the mystery of the devil's tree. The heat rock. In winter, the ground beneath the tree stays free from snow, no matter how much has fallen or how recently. On top of that, there's this old boulder close to the tree called the heat rock, which stays weirdly warm like all year round, even when it's freezing outside.

It's the same with the trees sometimes, and I can testify to this too. Even when it's snowing or whatever, the devil's tree stays just a little warmer than everything around it. I've heard a lot of nonsense about how there's like a portal to hell underneath the tree, but I'm thinking the real explanation is like a thermal vent or something. But in that case, how far down does it go? And would cutting down the devil's tree and tearing up its roots, would that like do something bad with the land? Poison it maybe? Or something more catastrophically destructive? I'm definitely not a geologist, but maybe someone in the comments knows a little bit more about that sort of stuff and can enlighten me on it. Anyways, I found the more I

learned about the Devil's Tree, the creepier it got. It went from a local curiosity to something I find genuinely a little frightening. Like I said, I don't believe in ghosts or any of that paranormal stuff, but there's enough mystery surrounding the Devil's Tree for it to definitely top my list of creepy local attractions. I was born into an Italian family in Newark, New Jersey, in the late 1950s. Given the chance, most of us bridge and tunnel crowd will aggressively tell you how The Sopranos is the greatest TV show ever made, myself included. And my favorite ever scene is where Dr. Melfi's family is talking about how Italians get a bad name in this country because of the mob, how there are 20 million hardworking Italian Americans in this country who aren't criminals. Well, my family weren't part of the 20 million. I had more uncles than you could shake a stick at,

and spoilers, not a single one was a blood relative. They looked, acted, and talked almost exactly like the guys in that Goodfellas movie. Like I think that's why it's such a popular movie among guys like that to begin with. It held a mirror up to them. It was sort of authentic. My only problem is that it leans on the glamour a little too hard, instead of giving you the reality. Mobster movies, especially those Scorsese ones, they're sleek and quotable with these killer oldie soundtracks, and they only briefly give you an idea of how violent they can be. From what I gathered over the years, some of the stuff my uncles did was more like out of a horror movie, better scored by the Halloween theme than Gimme Shelter. I only had one little encounter

of note, but it's enough that I find it genuinely haunting. This is the story of Uncle Patsy's Labor Day BBQ. So it's Labor Day weekend of 1966. I'm 8 years old and my dad is driving me over to my grandma's house for dinner. He intended to man the grill while my grandma made eggplant parm and the rest of her usual spread. We stop off at the pork store, picking up all kinds of cold cuts and sausage. Only just before we get back in the car, my dad calls one of my uncles on the payphone and had something of an argument with him. My dad wasn't one to raise his voice, but whenever he got particularly angry, he started breathing out of his nostrils real hard, like audibly hard. Since I heard nostrils breathing, I knew it couldn't have been good.

But dad hangs up, turns back to me with a big smile on his face and asks, who wants to go see Uncle Patsy? Oh man, did I want to go see Uncle Patsy? He was one of my favorite uncles, given his magical ability to pull folded up dollar bills from my ear. The man must have had some practice too because for all the digging I did, I could never seem to find one myself. So we jump in the car and I think we're on the way to Uncle Patsy's place, only we're not. Dad tells me Uncle Patsy has a place out in the country and we're headed there instead. Okay, I think, makes sense. So I think nothing of it as we drive like an hour out into the country and we're headed there instead. Okay, I think, makes sense. So I think nothing of

it as we drive like an hour out into the sticks and pull up at the pathway to some old hunting lodge looking place. Where we're parked isn't exactly close to the cabin itself, but I can still see the smoke from Uncle Patsy's barbecue trailing up from behind the old place. Instead of getting out to see Uncle Patsy inside, Dad winds the window down and beeps the horn a bunch of times until my uncle appears in the doorway of the cabin and comes walking out towards the car. When he sees me in the passenger seat, he's all, hey, oh, how's it going, kid? You got a little something behind your ear, let me get that for you and boom I'm a dollar richer

so I'm just sitting there happier than a pagan slop while dad and uncle Patsy have some nondescript conversation that just went something like how's it going with the barbecue taking longer than I expected you heading over to your mom's house Julia's over there helping with the man ago driving the kid over now. As my dad and uncle are wrapping up their conversation, I started to get a whiff of whatever Uncle Patsy was barbecuing back there. And it smelled great. A little burned maybe, but still pretty good. So from that point, I'm practically salivating over the idea of the big Neapolitan feast I'm about to be diving into. Next thing I know, dad hits me with a, say goodbye to your uncle Patsy. So I do, and we're

back on the road again in a matter of minutes. I remember asking dad why uncle Patsy wasn't coming with us, and got a sad feeling that he was being left out of the fun when dad said that Patsy had work to do. That and the smell of what was cooking made it quite a standout memory from my childhood. But it's one I wouldn't understand the significance of until many years later and when I did, I'd feel a sense of horror that I'd never felt before and that I haven't felt since. Sometime in my teenage years, Uncle Patsy went to Canada for work for a shipping company there, only he wasn't in Canada at all. He was in East Jersey State Prison for first-degree murder and kidnapping. From what I heard, someone had taken money from him in some kind of white-collar financial racket. Patsy found out about it, drove the guy out to his cabin

in the Barrens, shot him in the head, then tried his best to burn the body. I say tried his best because crematoriums got to get their burners up to a real high temperature to properly incinerate a human corpse. But there's Patsy using little more than a freaking campfire to burn that poor guy to ashes. I heard it took days to get the job done and even then, he was forced to bury a bunch of charred bones in the woods near the cabin. Remains that would eventually be found by a team of forensic investigators. When heard all this, I was shocked, sure, but not all that surprised. My mid to late twenties had been all about learning the dark truth surrounding my family.

It's the timing of the murder that really got me. Because you see, Uncle Patsy had killed and burned this guy around the Labor Day weekend of 1966. So that smell, that kind of smoky, slight charred, barbecued meat smell I'd found so enticing. That was a person, or parts of a person, that Patsy had thrown on the fire. In some horrendous childhood ruin and cannibalistic twist, I realized that the smell of human flesh had once made me salivate. And maybe even the worst thing, the guy had only skimmed like $700, pocket change compared to the amount of money that was being siphoned off some nonsensical dental plan they were selling.

For less than a grand, they killed him and disappeared him. For a while, anyway. The guy I loved so much as a kid, who I was always excited to see. He was a monster. A violent, greedy psychopath, who along with my dad, exposed me to things that no child should ever be exposed to. It's honestly something I've yet to forgive them for, but since I started going to therapy, I can see myself reaching that level of acceptance in the next couple of years. I mean, I hope so anyway. Because there's a reason they call it baggage. It gets incredibly tiring carrying it around. A few years back I was going through something of an existential crisis.

You see, I run a fairly small horror review channel, and it's something I really dream of turning into a full-time career. Horror movies and the horror genre in general are the absolute passion of my life, and for reasons I'd rather not go into on a post, being scared can be very, very therapeutic for me. Which is why it was a huge help for me when one day I found that nothing really scared me anymore. I say scared, but what I really suppose I mean is spooked, because I was still scared of all the obvious stuff like death, family members dying, etc. What I wanted was a kind of fear of the unknown. The chills you get when you hear a really good ghost story.

Maybe wanted is the wrong word. I needed it, and my career might have depended on it. I ended up barring my soul to a close friend about it who, after mulling it over, suggested we head up to this old campsite in the New Jersey Pine Barrens we used to frequent in the summer following graduation. We'd share some stolen booze, maybe some cigarettes, tell ghost stories late into the night. Those were legit some of the most fun nights of my life, when each of us would take turns having a mini freakout to the absolute delight of everyone else around. Since I had a birthday coming up, my friend suggested we turn it into like a birthday thing.

We could all drive up on the evening in question, and although it wouldn't get dark until quite late because summer, that really didn't matter to me. I figured being back up there would give me some of that childlike sense of wonder, and maybe that was the key to feeling spooked again. So about a week before, I texted everyone to let them know the meeting time and place, getting back a handful of thumbs up emojis in response. I thought we were all in for the trip and that everyone would be as psyched as me, but apparently not. When I got to the parking lot we agreed to meet at, there was no one there. In fact, mine was the only car in the entire lot. But still, didn't mean I had been completely forgotten about, right? Maybe the gang had

walked up the trail already and were setting up camp. I mean, they would have at least called or texted to cancel or something, right? Right? Again, apparently not because as I walked a few hundred meters along the trail to the old campsite between the pines, I realized I'm completely and utterly alone. It was probably one of the more heartbreaking moments of my adult life, thinking I'd been totally forgotten about like that. I suppose that people were right when they said the childhood friendships just naturally dissolve over time even if you do put all the work into nurturing them.

Just standing there, looking at the empty campground, it was the purest Guts-themed sad boy moment ever. And it sucked. So, it was with a heavy heart that I began walking back down the trail towards my car. I felt like the king turd of Poop Mountain and I couldn't believe I'd been stood up like that on my birthday of all days. I even thought I heard something up the trail at one point, spinning around expecting to see the guys there like, hey we got you. But no, nothing. Just trees and birds. I'm under the impression that I'm so depressed that I'm mentally blue-balling myself, imagining things in the trees around me

in the hope that maybe, just maybe my friends didn't forget. I even check my phone, which, granted there was no cell service, but still, no messages or voicemails from buddies. Nothing. Then I'm about a third of the way down the trail when, again, I hear something in the trees behind me. This time I'm certain I just heard something, and it sounded big. You can get some pretty gnarly black bears up in the Pine Barrens, and if they're hungry enough, a low-dopamine jerk like me would almost definitely make for an excellent evening meal, so I legit start getting worried when I turn around and still don't see anything. I've always sucked at anything athletic,

so the idea of having to run away from something is seriously like one of my biggest nightmares. As I'm continuing to edge along the trail, my heart is pounding and I'm rubbernecking like crazy so nothing can sneak up on me. But just as I think I'm safe, I see some dark shape moving through the trees about a hundred yards away. I just think, bear. My adrenaline starts pumping, only I have absolutely nothing to fight it off with. The best thing I could do was crack open the packet of pork roll in my backpack, toss it in the bear's direction, and hope it'd go for the easier option. So, I kinda swivel my pack onto my front, fish out the pack of processed meat, then start preparing to toss it in the direction of the bear next time I see it.

It only took a few moments before I saw it moving again back in the trees, only this time, it wasn't some dark shape moving low in the ground on all fours. It was on its hind legs, moving much faster and with much more purpose than I was comfortable with. I tossed the pork roll, but as I did, the realization hit me that I wasn't dealing with a black bear. I was dealing with something altogether more sinister and frightening. I don't know if you guys have heard of the Jersey Devil, but given it's pretty much the patron cryptid saint of New Jersey, it's something of a personal favorite. According to the legend, the Jersey Devil was birthed in the very same Pine Barrens

I was on that day. A woman known as Mother Leeds had 12 children, but after getting pregnant for the 13th time, the highly superstitious woman became terrified that the child would be cursed by the devil. The kid comes out normal at first, but slowly but surely it starts to transform, growing hooves, a goat's head, bat wings, and a forked tail. When Mother Leeds couldn't bear the sight of her kid having gone all mutant like that, she sent the kid out into the woods to die. Only it didn't die. The kid didn't ever die, and it became the Jersey Devil, spawn of a witch and the devil himself.

Only that was nothing but a dumb story, right? But if it was just a dumb story, and it became the Jersey Devil, spawn of a witch and the devil himself. Only that was nothing but a dumb story, right? But if it was just a dumb story, why was I completely gripped with fear when I saw something moving through the trees on its hind legs? It had to be a black bear, and if it was circling me, I was definitely in trouble. Having that thought triggered the most intense fight-or-flight reaction I've ever experienced, and flight was most definitely the safest option. So I go tearing it down the trail back towards my car, hoping the bear goes for my pork roll before me when I hear this ear-splitting guttural screech echoing through the trees behind me.

It was terrifying, like nothing I'd ever heard before and if I thought I was running my fastest before, I was dead wrong. I was so scared that I found it in me to beat feet even faster than before, all with the certainty that whatever was back there sure wasn't a bear. By the sounds of it, it was big, much bigger than a bear. I'm just sprinting as fast as I can back towards the parking lot, but like I might have mentioned, I'm just not a great runner. So as much as I'm trying, I can hear this thing's screeches getting closer and closer until it sounds like it's almost level with me in the trees. I'm deadly serious when I say I was so scared I was in actual tears. Like this perceived reality where I was about to be ripped apart by the freaking Jersey Devil of all things had set in as hard as concrete. Right when I'm absolutely certain I'm about to lose my life in the worst possible way,

all I hear is, happy birthday. But I actually don't stop running. I actually keep going for a couple of seconds until my slow, scared brain is like, cryptids don't wish people birthday greetings, dude. Stop running already before we puke. I slow down, turn around, and who was standing there on the trail behind me? All the friends I had arranged to meet out in the Pine Barrens. As it turned out, I wasn't about to be ripped apart by the Jersey Devil. I had the best friends ever.

The moment I'd finished complaining to my buddy about not being scared anymore, plans had been set in motion that could not be undone. They decided to give me a birthday present that a guy like me could actually appreciate, the feeling of being effing terrified again. I'll admit, I spent the first minutes or two after the reveal saying things like, I hate you guys, I'm never talking to any of you ever again, I just about soiled my pants back there. But in the end, I saw the funny side too. They even managed to capture some of my reactions on camera and were nice enough to post it in a very private group chat so I wouldn't be totally humiliated by

legions of YouTube comment trolls we ended up having a great time getting drunk out in the Pine Barrens with a designated driver to cart our butts back to Red Bank. And it's something I don't think I'll ever stop thanking them for, because you can't put a price on helping a horror fan get his spooks back. I totally forgot about this story until my girlfriend reminded me of it a few days ago. I started dating my girlfriend at the end of my senior year and before we started dating, I used multiple dating apps. In many of my dating app profiles, I had my Snapchat listed so that people could add me. This is important. Nothing led to anything with the dating apps. I'd talk to people for a bit and eventually the conversation would die out. When I began dating my girlfriend I had deleted the apps but never

deleted my account, meaning people could still see my profile and my snapchat in it. I realized this after a few people would add me but it didn't go anywhere because I'd tell them I had a girlfriend. As you would imagine, the conversation would end there. But there was this one guy that added me, let's call him Adam, and he asked me if I was available. Being straight, I was used to guys adding me so I gave him the usual response, sorry I'm straight and I have a girlfriend. I expected him to leave me alone, but he didn't. At first the message was normal. How was your day?

What did you do today? Simple stuff like that. Being the nice guy I am, I responded because I thought this guy just wanted to be friends and having a gay friend is fine with me. Then the message progressively got more creepier. He started asking questions about my girlfriend and not basic questions. Questions like, do you guys get intimate a lot? Does she think you're good in bed? I simply responded with, those are kind of personal questions. I don't feel like it's

right for me to share my dating business. Adam would always apologize and not talk to me for a few days. Then he would hit me up again and ask creepy questions again. I eventually told my girlfriend about the situation and for those who don't know, my girlfriend is super sweet but she is also very aggressively protective over me. So she adds the guy and basically tells him that he needs to leave me alone. Unfortunately, this enraged Adam who responded with saying that I should dump her and calling her all types of expletives. Naturally, I defended my girlfriend and blocked Adam immediately. Everything was cool for a week and to another account added me.

The guy's name was Tyler and he was super chill. He was super nice to me and respected my relationship with my girlfriend. As the days go by, I start to notice that Tyler's vocabulary was very similar to Adam's. I wasn't sure about it so I didn't make any assumptions that it was him. So I gave Tyler's snap to my girlfriend who adds him to investigate. As soon as she adds Tyler's snap, Tyler flips out on her which confirmed that it was Adam. As soon as this realization is made, I block him again. From here, everything goes quiet from Adam for about a month. So I live in the suburbs of Chicago and both my girlfriend and I live down the street from each other. Naturally, we do see each other a lot and both our families are really good friends.

On top of that, our families would also house sit or pet sit for each other. A month goes by until I get a letter with no address or name on it, just my name on the front. I open it and to my shock and horror, it is basically a love letter from Adam. The premise of the letter was basically him saying that he loves me and wants me to run off with him. The letter also takes a very inappropriate turn halfway through, with him describing what he wants me to do to him and him to me. At this moment, two horrifying realizations hit me. One is that he knows my address, and two, he dropped that letter off himself, meaning that he is in my town.

I immediately call my girlfriend who was equally as shocked as I am and after consulting my parents, we call the cops. Unfortunately, since I had blocked him as well as removed Adam's social media information and that letter had no return address, there was nothing we could do about it. Day after day, letters would keep appearing in my mailbox until they also started appearing in my girlfriend's mailbox as well. Her letters were far worse than mine. Adam wrote of how much he hated her and how much he wanted to hurt her. He also stated many times of the ways he would inflict pain on her until she broke up with me. Like me, she took this to the cops and again, they said they could do nothing about it. My girlfriend's family had plans to go to

Hawaii for a vacation and I was to house sit for them. The first couple days went fine, until around 1 on the last nights of the week. As per usual, I was over at their house watching TV on the couch when the power went out. Mind you, it was around 1am and it was pitch black when those lights went out. The next few seconds were silence when I heard a window smash from the office. To understand this more, let me give you the layout of the house. When you enter the front door to your left was the living room, straight ahead was both the kitchen and stairs, and to the right was the office and dining room. On the upstairs level as soon as you reach the top of the stairs a bathroom was straight ahead and my girlfriend's room was on the right and the other bedrooms were on the left. Immediately I

shot up grabbed a kitchen knife and ran upstairs to hide while I called the cops. I quickly got into my girlfriend's room and slipped into the closet. As soon as I was able to contact the operator, I heard the pounding of the intruder running up the steps. Thankfully, I had relayed all the information to the operator in time who then stayed on the phone as we both remained quiet. The intruder took a left when he reached the top of the stairs which gave more time for the cops to arrive and for me to get ready just in case I needed to defend myself. A few minutes go by until I heard the intruder start walking toward my girlfriend's room. In the only few precious seconds I had, I slipped out of the closet and positioned myself next to

the door. As soon as he opened the door and started to enter the room, I took the kitchen knife and drove it into his shoulder. A young man screamed in pain as I heard a heavy metallic object make a large thud as it hit the ground. From there I bolted out of the house where I was met by four squad cars and cops with their guns raised. I threw my hands up shouting that he was upstairs in the right room. A few minutes go by and the intruder was dragged out, still screaming in pain. With the siren lights flooding the streets, I got a glimpse of his face. It was Adam, and I was informed later by an officer that that metallic thud was made by him dropping a handgun. Adam was from Texas and had traveled up to my state to be with me. He had rented a room at a local motel and would put letters in both my girlfriend's and my mailbox daily,

and he would do this in the early hours of the morning, which was confirmed by the security footage of the motel that he was staying at. That night, Adam had plans to kill my girlfriend and her family so I could choose to be with him. He managed to pry open the power box to switch off the power to her house along with neighboring houses, and broke in with the intent of her being there. Well, unfortunately for him, she was enjoying a tropical vacation. To be honest, I had no idea how this outcome would be different if they didn't go on vacation, and I am grateful that I still have my girlfriend as well as her family alive. Please, Adam, stay away from us forever. Forever. When I just finished college I was living in a one bedroom townhouse split.

I met a guy on Plenty of Fish and at that time I wasn't exactly smart about my online digital footprint. Not like I've really changed but at least now I'm not as ridiculous. Anyways, he seemed like a decent guy. He was really good looking, said he had a good job, nice teeth, don't judge me, and looked like he cared about his personal health. All things I would typically look for in a guy. I'm not a shallow human, but I like to be presentable and if I'm with someone, I would like them to care about being presentable in a business environment also. After about a week of chatting online we agreed to meet. We met at a restaurant downtown which was really far from where I lived.

When I got there I noticed him standing at the door. We sat down to eat and the evening went great. At the end of the date we said bye and I got into my car and began to drive away. I realized right away that he was following me. Because of the distance to my house I was immediately scared because it's a big city, maybe he'll turn off the freeway. But he didn't. My exit was coming up and I decided not to take it. I kept driving. I circled the entire city on the freeway and he stayed right behind me. I was starting to panic a bit so I decided to go to my friend's house instead of mine and when I pulled out the exit I noticed he didn't. So I had a little bit of a

moment of breath and decided, okay, screw it, I'll just go home. I took the off-ramp back onto the freeway and began going back to my exit. I got home and showered and was getting ready for bed and started feeling dumb because I was like, was that really him? Am I overreacting? Do I ask him if he was following me? Like just a number of things were racing through my overactive imagination. Or so I thought. I decided I was going to message him and just say, I had a good time tonight. And when I started typing, all of a sudden a message came through my phone of a picture of my car outside my house. I nearly died. My heart jumped out of my chest. I started shaking. I didn't know what to say and he texts me and says,

I didn't know you lived across the street from me. I've met my neighbors and not once have I ever met him. There's a huge apartment complex caddy corner to my townhouse so maybe that's where he lived. I didn't know. I popped up and went to look outside and there he was just standing there outside like he was waiting for me. I opened the door and he asked if he could come in and if I wanted to still hang out. I told him I was exhausted and I'd rather just crash as it had been a long day.

The next morning I woke up to go to work and my windshield had been smashed. My car was keyed, my back two tires were slashed. And as I was noticing the damage to my vehicle, the guy comes out of his car with two coffees and is like, oh, I thought I surprised you with morning coffee. Again, I'm completely freaked out and frozen. I come to and call the cops and reported the damage to my vehicle. This guy offered to drive me and something on my gut was just like, do not get in that car. I called my boss, told him the situation and explained I wasn't going to be there until after the police came. This guy just hung out the whole time by the way. When the police finally got there, this guy was acting really suspicious.

He walked away and was like hiding on the other side of his car. I filed the report and the police basically said, hope you have insurance and were on their way to leave. They pulled around the corner and all I heard was the siren on the cop's lights turn on and the cop screamed, freeze, put your hands in the air and get down on your knees. I look and the cop has his freaking gun drawn at this guy and this dude's on the ground actually getting arrested. I spoke with the cop after he got into the back and he explained that someone recognized him and that he was wanted for stalking, breach of probation,

assault with a deadly weapon, fraud, and aggravated assault. I was completely shook. It took me a couple of days to get over the hypothetical situation that could have happened. About a week later I was on my way out the door to work and guess who was sitting in my driveway? We live in Canada so essentially you're released on conditions until you go to jail. I told him I was late for work and that I'd call him when I was done. I never went to work that day. I went and found a new apartment on another area of the city. I also changed my phone number and hired my friend's husband and his friends to go pack my apartment up and move it to their place for a month and then move it to my new place because I was so scared the stoop would follow them while moving.

And that's my horror story of the first time I used plenty of fish. Субтитры создавал DimaTorzok When I was 17, I wanted the au pair. An au pair is a helper from a foreign country working for and living as part of a host family. Typically, au pairs take on a share of the family's responsibility for childcare as well as some housework and receive a monetary allowance for personal use. And the only place close to me that I could go to as a 17-year-old was England. So I found this family, a mother with two kids, a boy and a girl. I messaged them and talked with the mother, and she seemed very interested and very nice. We set up a date for me to go, and that was that. When I got to the airport, I was very confused that they weren't there to

pick me up. I messaged the mother to ask her where they were and if it would be long for them to get me. She told me that she was on her way and was just stuck in traffic. I thought, okay, that's fair. She told me to go to the exit and wait. Then not long after she told me that she was there and that she was in a blue car. I was looking around very confused since I couldn't see any blue car there. When I finally found it, some other woman, than the one I had been talking to, walked out of the car and towards me. The instant I made eye contact with the other woman, I got a long text from the woman I was supposed to work for, where it basically said that her husband had come home from the country he worked in, and that they had fought because he didn't want an au pair in the house.

And for some reason, she didn't want to tell me that, so she just gave me to her good friend who needed an au pair. I was very confused and by that time a bit scared. It all seemed very weird, as if someone was watching me and had been waiting for the right moment to send that text. The woman seemed very friendly, but was hurrying with taking my things and pulling it into her car while talking to me. I'm a bit nervous and non-confrontational by nature so I didn't really know what to do or say other than just follow her in what she was doing. When it was all done she told me that we should get going and I told her that I wasn't really comfortable with it all. She told me that she understood but that she really needed the help and also only had two children at home We had to move fast because of the place she was parked so we got into the car and started driving out of the airport pickup spot

The second we started moving I told her that I was very uncomfortable with this and I really wanted to get out and stay at the airport She seemed a bit upset by this and told me that sure she could drop me off but she had to get out and stay at the airport. She seemed a bit upset by this and told me that sure she could drop me off but she had to get out of where we were because she could get a ticket for letting me out there or something. I don't know if this is true, just what she told me. We drove for a few minutes, still in the airport grounds and we stopped a bit away so I could get out and call my parents. I talked to them, sobbing the whole time. I noticed that while I was talking to them, the woman was inside her car talking to a woman, the one I had been talking to, I presume.

I didn't understand the language, so I can't say what they were talking about. When I was done talking, I got into the car again, and I told her that I really want her to let me out, and she kept asking me if I was sure. I didn't want to go and I told her that I really want her to let me out and she kept asking me if I was sure. I didn't want to go into town with her, etc. If I didn't want her to drop me off by the shopping center, it was so weird the random questions she gave me.

I of course told her no, that I really want her to just let me out by the airport. She did, thankfully, and I went inside and talked with my parents. After this happened, I got some weird voice memos from her and two other people. I couldn't understand them, but it was very strange. My parents also tried contacting her, and she blocked them both. If you don't know, a lot of us au pairs are being treated very poorly, so for us to feel safe and secure and sure that we don't get cheated out of pay or working more than we are allowed, we have to sign a contract. Later on I found that the contract she had sent me was fake and not really binding.

I don't know how but it wasn't legitimate. Plus her addresses she had sent me were also fake and she apparently didn't live there either. I found out later on that the city I was in was a bit of a hotspot for human trafficking. I didn't know this until after this had happened. A lot of very sketchy stuff. You know, I might be overthinking this one. It might not be as bad as I think it was, but in the moment of it, I was a Pokemon Go player. I was a mild fan of the franchise as a kid, and now, in my mid-twenties, I find that it allows me to get out of the house as a kid and now, in my mid-twenties, I find that it allows me to get out of the house more often and do something that doesn't involve, well, my house. If you've played the game, you know that there are all these places called gymnasiums,

where you can place one of your Pokemons to earn a max of 50 in-game coins per 24 hours. These coins can buy important in-game items as well as cosmetic items and, as you may have guessed, it's quite the popular feature in the game. However, since I live in a huge European city, there are many, many players to compete with in order to secure a spot at these gyms. The reason I'm telling you all of this is to let you know why in the world would I brave the cold winter of my metropolitan city at 3am. You see, it's not just that I'm stupid. It's also because I know most folk are asleep, which in turn allows me to quickly defeat all the Pokemon in a gym and place my own. I have been doing this for a few months and have been quite successful.

So tonight, the routine was the same. Got dressed, got my coat, my scarf, and my black leather gloves. I went out and made my way to the first of three gyms in my area that I usually conquer in the game. It's actually quite fascinating to observe the people that wander the city at these hours. Well, tonight I was going to meet a special guy. I arrive at my first gem which is in a smallish street that curves to the right for quite a stretch. I empty it and place my own pokemon inside. Afterwards I linger around the area taking off a glove to scratch my hand but overall

just managing the game and looking things up. Some cars go by and that's when I see him. This guy, clearly over 180cm, making his way down the street. Now these are just my country standards but everything about him screamed, thug, ready to knife you. Sporting a black cap at night, concealing his face with a shadow. Padded black jacket with dirty blue jeans and ripped off Timberland boots. My immediate reaction was to keep it cool and neutral and just

calmly place my cell phone back in my pocket. As he went past me, he gave me this what the eff are you looking at look and I couldn't help but give back a small sideways glance as I put my glove back on my hand. I started walking towards the next gym which happened to be in the same direction he was walking towards and he, to my surprise, started speeding up. Then he pulled out his cell phone and tried to phone someone. This immediately reminded me of my girlfriend as this is a common tactic she uses when she feels she's being followed by strangers. Whoever he tried to phone, however, did not pick up. He looks back at me, keeps walking, increasingly faster.

He switches sides and starts walking in the middle of the road, effectively distancing himself further and allowing the parked cars to get between me and him and then abruptly he stops. He turns around and asks, Hey friend, you know I can find transportation at this hour. I'm kind of weirded out and freaking out at the same time so without even looking at him, I just said, This hour? Only Uber. He starts walking, only when I walk past him. Then it hit me. From my perspective, he was a thug looking dude that could have very well tried to rob me and potentially harm me. But from his perspective, I'm a 171cm dude in his mid-twenties that for some reason decided to

pocket his phone on the moment he went past me, then gave him a sideways what the F are you looking at glance as I put on a black leather glove and started following him, with not a single person awake around, looking like some sort of hitman or serial killer. As anxious as I was, he must have been terrified enough to try to phone someone, or pretend to, and then initiate dialogue with a total stranger at 3am, just to be sure that I wasn't some psycho about to knife him.

We walked together in the same direction for almost 10 minutes after that, without looking or talking to one another. Just two awkward guys who did not want to meet one another ever again. I know California gives off the whole sunset and palm trees vibe, but I've never experienced the type of stuff I have since moving here three years ago. While it's beautiful and I hope to get a house and be here for life, I've never been forced to take my rose-colored glasses off so quickly. This is the second run-in I've had with a creepy man that had me realizing that in an instant, everything could change forever. This actually happened to me a few hours ago and I'm still shaken up about it. Hopefully by sharing it, it will help me feel more at ease.

I've recently started taking aerial silks classes, and I absolutely love it. This is my first time going on a Saturday. The area is a bit rural, especially with so many of the local businesses closed during quarantine, but it didn't strike me as dangerous by any means. As I'm leaving my second class ever at this location, I notice a guy walking past. He's wearing all black but nothing about him just screams danger.

I'm talking to my husband on the phone trying to decide if I wanted to go jog on the beach or if I just wanted to join him at home since he's off early for the first Saturday in months. We wrapped up the conversation and I decided to just go to the grocery store and then go home since my muscles are beginning to ache as well. Thankfully, I'm an avid listener to Let's Read and one of the main habits I picked up from others' experiences is to lock your car door as soon as you get in. I forgot to mention that I did that as soon as I saw the guy in black walk by but I waited for him to pass so he didn't get offended.

Going forward, I don't care, I'll lock my door immediately no matter who's nearby. So I'm looking up recipes on my phone trying to compare what I have at home versus what I need to pick up. My endorphins are going after an awesome workout, it's a sunny day, my man's home early, I just feel good and in the moment. Until suddenly I get this feeling to look up. As I look up at my driver's side mirror, I see a black shirt and jacket move from lying flat against my car to standing straight. I automatically know who that is and I start my car yelling, let me get on because I'll run the city over if I have to. As I'm saying this, he's just standing at my window slowly lifting his finger.

It seems like he was trying to say something along the lines of, can I just talk to you for a minute? But in reality, it looked like he was trying to phone home like E.T. As I was pulling out, I immediately called my husband and as I'm trying to process what happened, I get this strong feeling in my gut that he was pulling on my car handle, but I had it locked and that's what gathered my attention and made me look up. I consider myself to be a nice person and will try to give the benefit of the doubt to most people, but there's no denying his malicious intent. From walking past the first time, to seeing I'm still there, to being pressed against my car,

to the weird, what I took as him being nervous he got caught, finger pointing, to the fact that as I was pulling off, he didn't look back at me or anything. He looked over into the building my class was in, then walked back behind the building as though it never happened. I know this is not as big as other experiences on this thread, but this still has me shaken up hours later, and I hate it because I genuinely enjoy this class, but I don't want to catch old boy again, especially since every other class is at night, only Saturdays is midday. I'm trying not to think about what creepy people like him have in mind or what their next steps are, but I can't help but wonder, and it terrifies me every time, that one day if I get caught slipping, that could be

the end of my story. I will say once I got home, I gave my husband the biggest and longest hug and prayed to God, thanking for him to allow me to just take this experience as a lesson learned as well as expressing gratitude for being able to return home at night. Please, always lock your car doors as soon as you get in your car and don't just linger around in your car especially if you're in an unknown area. I've gotten a bit better about doing this but let my guard down since it was midday and the door to my aerial silks class was literally 300 feet away. To be continued... This happened 15 years ago when I had just come home from college on winter break. Home this time was not the house I grew up in. My parents had just moved closer to our smaller city, so it just didn't feel the same to be in a different space.

Maybe that's what triggered my worry. In my family, I'm always the one thinking of worst case scenarios, generally distrustful and mostly seeming like the annoying worrywart. Call it what you will, but it's also the gift of fear, am I right? One cold night, my parents had gone to bed upstairs and the dog had followed suit. I thought I'd watch TV in the living room for a bit before going to sleep and settled in on the couch. The living room was on the front of the house and with the recent move, the shutters on the windows weren't there at the time, only see-through curtains that weren't really drawn. I noted this but was used to our rural setting when the only ones who could see in were the neighbors we knew pretty well, so. I'm watching TV for about a half hour when the screen cuts out. It just goes snowy.

This was back in the days when you watched whatever your local cable channels brought you. I looked up from whatever I was doing, texting, maybe with a flip phone, at first thinking, well, that sucks. But something felt off. I tried the remote but no other channels work so was just sitting there thinking what I should do instead when my cat jumps up onto the windowsill and starts wailing. Weird. This may seem innocuous but anyone who knew my cat knew this was not par for the course. He was pacing and wailing at the window. A feeling of

dread washed through me and I was frozen. That feeling of dread is so fiercely visceral. What is going on? What's out there? I tried to settle myself down in this unfamiliar dark house and felt a bit better because what are the chances? But then there it was. I swear on all I have that this cold waft of air blew through and that I heard the side door. I didn't realize that door was there at the time. I heard a door on the side of the house and felt cold air. I became unfrozen and I bolted. I run upstairs to wake my parents and slumbering dog and frantically tell them someone is trying to get in the house. They, I think, were annoyed. I'm a worrier, remember?

Still, they get up and I think they try to placate me by looking around the house. They go checking all the rooms including the basement while I'm scared and exasperated. They are sleepily roaming around into dark rooms unarmed when God knows who has probably made it inside already. Well, they didn't find anything. They verbally patted me on the head and said goodnight and I felt foolish. That is, until the next morning. I don't know what prompted my parents to call the police, but they showed up and asked me how I knew someone was out there. Well, hold up, what?

I start answering, well, the cat was meowing a lot on that windowsill and my voice trailed off, waiting for the reaction I usually get, which I got. The cop smirks. Cat, huh? K, bro, get on with it. He goes on to say that someone cut the cable wires on the side of the house. That either the someone or someones thought they were disarming some alarm, or they saw me sitting while watching TV and wanted to mess with me. In the side door, muddy grounds gave us the ability to see the fresh tracks right up to it. It didn't look like I had been fooled with, but I know what I heard, whatever it was.

I knew it, I said to my parents. The triumphant feeling was short-lived when I started to maul over what I was so sure about had been true. True, I did know someone was out there. I also knew that I would always check that side door and take some cues from the cat, just to be safe. To be continued... So when I was about 10, we'd recently moved into a new home in a sparsely populated rural area. We set up motion sensing lights and cameras with door alarms at every entry point. So there were a lot of stray dogs around my area and I took to feeding them two to three times a day. My parents didn't like dogs but let me play with them anyway. I ended up forming a close bond with this tall big white dog who I

called Ghost. He followed me on my walk to school. So one day at around 7 to 8pm, I was home alone since 4pm until 10pm, I had a bag of dog biscuits and a cell phone in my hand when I walked out to put out dinner in the bowl outside my house for the stray puppies in the nearby field. I noticed a car parked exactly outside my house a few feet down from my compound wall. Once I emptied the biscuits, I turned around to find the car pulled up next to me and the driver asking me if my parents were home. He was their friend and wanted to talk to them. I innocently replied, saying that they weren't and they'd be home soon and asked for his name. He got out of the car and walked towards me, talking all the while. I felt nervous and walked into the main gate. This man wedged his shoe between the metal gate and said,

you're home alone, aren't you? With a creepy smile. I was frozen with fear and made a mad dash into the main door, slamming it shut behind me. He stood outside of my yard, looking straight into my eyes with that smile. I panicked and started running around and shutting all the doors in a frenzy. I didn't have a phone and the landline hadn't been set up yet as it was a newly constructed house so stupid 10 year old me thought my parents would be home soon anyway. Now the cell phone I mentioned earlier didn't have a sim card, I'd just been given a hand me down phone to play games on. I saw him get into his car and go away in a few minutes,

so I relaxed and sat in my hall playing Minecraft on my PC. There was this huge glass window, a French window I guess they call it, behind where I was sitting. After another half an hour, I had that weird feeling, like someone was in the house with me. I turned around to see a creepy man standing outside the French window with a long stick and pole looking dead straight into my eyes. I let out a scream and pressed the alarm button in the hall. The alarms went off outside the house

and it seemed to trigger the weirdo at my window and he started attempting to break the window with his stick. I was crying in fear and ran and hid under my dining room table. This creep had jumped the compound wall and would have broken the glass windows in less than five minutes to gain entry to the house. I shut my eyes and ears and hoped my parents would be home soon. Stupid childish me. I heard a growling noise and I looked to the window to find that stray dog, ghost, with his jaws around this guy's leg and dragging him off balance. He began beating the dog with the stick that he'd been carrying, terrifying me further. Hearing the commotion, the neighbors, who probably called the cops, arrived and managed to restrain this weirdo. I was barely coherent at this time and refused to

communicate with them, hiding under the apparent safety of my dining room table. My parents arrived at around 9pm accompanied by the police who arrived almost an hour late. They took him away and we still don't know who or why he attempted his antics that night. I was never left alone at home after this incident, and my parents became dog lovers overnight. We even adopted Ghost, and he lived a good long life at our farmhouse, at a different location, but to this day I still love dogs and strays around my neighborhood, and I do my best to take care of them. So just a little background so you guys have an idea of who I'm talking about.

There's me as me, my boyfriend as G, my beefy male friends as M and L, the kids as kids, and the creepy van guy is CV. It was a summer evening and me, G, M, and L were all hanging out at G's mom's place. He lived on a dead-end street nearly at the end with a forest and some satellite maintenance buildings. The street had a bunch of young kids, probably ranging from 4 to 14, probably about a dozen kids in total. They would conglomerate at the end of the street and play all day long. They were really cute kids. Now on to the story. I don't know what led up to it, but I remember looking out the front bay window as a pet cheese cat. I often admired the kids playing outside. It always filled me with happiness and nostalgia of my childhood. I saw them playing at

the end of the street. As I'm watching these little rascals play outside, I see a creepy van pull up in front of G's house. I didn't really think anything of it. I mean, it's just a van driving. The van parks in front of G's house, facing away from the kids and end of the street. I keep watching just to be sure. I didn't remember seeing this van before. I saw two people in the front, a man and a woman. They sat there for what felt like ten minutes before turning around and facing the kids, and this started to worry me. Going ever so slowly, the creepy van crept up to the unsuspecting children. At this point, I was scared something might not be right.

I hollered downstairs to the boys and had them come up. The four of us went outside. Now G, M, and L are all large men, strong, tall, and in their twenties. Like these aren't the kind of guys you want to mess with. So we were standing at the end of the drive and hoping at this point to make the creepy van aware that there are grown men here and we won't let any shenanigans of theirs occur. But what happened next made me physically sick. The creepy van, still creeping up on the kids, has finally garnered their attention. The kids just stop and stare like deers in headlights. They're not far away at all. I can hear them talking. The kids don't know this van either. Creepy van keeps going, pushing them to the edge of the road.

We don't want your candy, the kid screams. Dear god, these people are trying to kidnap these kids, I think. My group starts walking towards the creepy van yelling, Hey, hey, but... Before we could reach them, the van turns around in the driveway and pulls back out. They drive past my group slowly. They stare into our eyes and we stared right back. The van gunned it as soon as they passed us, and it had not a single license plate number on it.

I ran up to the kids and asked them if the people in the van said anything. Most kids said nothing, but a few spoke up about the mysterious promise of candy which, fortunately, they had all been warned against in school. I told them that they were very smart not to trust those people and that they should all go home, tell their parents immediately, and stay in for the night. Ever since then, I watch those kids like a hawk whenever I'm at G's house. Those kids are a bit older now too. I just hope nothing like this ever happens to them again. It was hands down the freakiest potential kidnapping I've ever witnessed personally. This happened when I was 13. I'm a female and in the 8th grade and the middle school I went to was about a 15 minute walk, not so very far.

For context, my older brother and I grew up in East Los Angeles in a small house that had a metal gate and both the front and back doors had a black metal screen door and a wooden door. During the day we would always leave the wooden door open and have the black metal door closed and locked. Except this day. That day I came home from school and had about an hour before anyone else would be home. I was really thirsty so I rushed inside, grabbed a drink, and sat down at the kitchen table, which was about 10 feet away from the front door. I heard the metal gate open and was surprised as no one should have been coming home that early. I got up to see who it was and I saw an older man, probably in his 60s.

He had short white hair and a long white beard. He was wearing an ACDC shirt, torn jeans and sunglasses. I remember thinking he looked a lot like Santa Claus, but dirty and creepy. He knocked on the metal screen door and asked if my parents were home. I was a dumb kid and said they weren't. He got a smile on his face and said that he collected donations for needy children. I said sorry but I didn't have any money. He said sometimes children donated old toys. I said I didn't have any old toys to donate. He insisted that I must have some toys I didn't want anymore. He was beginning to creep me out and I noticed I hadn't locked the door when I came inside. I tried to keep my cool as I slowly and very carefully locked the door.

I kept on talking so he wouldn't notice. A minute or two later he wouldn't leave so I decided I would pretend to check for toys and then say I didn't have any so he wouldn't leave so I decided I would pretend to check for toys and then say I didn't have any so he would hopefully leave then. I told him I would go check and as I turned and took a few steps down the hall, I clearly heard him yank at the door trying to open it. I didn't want him to know that I had heard so I kept walking down the hall into a room. I didn't have a cell phone and the only phone in the house was in the

kitchen. I thought about what to do and decided to stick with my plan. After about two or three minutes I walked out hoping he had left. No, creepy Santa man was still there. I told him I'm sorry but I didn't find anything and he just sighed and said alright. He would check another time. He left and walked across the street. I watched from the kitchen window peeking through the blinds as he stood there staring at my house for almost 45 minutes. My brother and a few of his friends finally came walking down the street. As my brother came inside and his friends kept walking down the street, the man walked around the corner and finally disappeared. I told my brother came inside and his friends kept walking down the street, the man walked around the corner and finally disappeared. I told my brother what had happened and he walked outside to look, but the creepy Santa man was long gone.

When my mom came home, we told her what happened and she called the police, but they said to call back if he showed up again. Thankfully, he never did show up, and I never had to see that creepy Santa man and whatever nefarious plan he had again. For the past few years or so, I've lived here in Redwood City, California. Back in 2008, some of you might remember that a Philadelphia branch of Starbucks asked two African Americans to leave because they hadn't bought anything. They were accused of racism, there was a whole bunch of fallout from it, and in the end, Starbucks announced that it would no longer ask anyone to leave their stores as long as they weren't causing a disturbance. From what I heard, this prompted a bunch of trouble with homeless people hanging around Starbucks outlets and generally making a nuisance of themselves, but I can't

really speak to that because the only homeless guy that ever showed up in my local Starbucks was Steve. Steve was about as far from the stereotypical idea of a homeless person as you can imagine. I remember seeing him in relatively clean clothes, tapping away on a smartphone that was charging from a nearby power outlet and not giving him a second glance. I walked in, got my coffee, and carried on my way to work. The next morning, Steve is there again, paper in front of him, tapping away on his smartphone. Only this time, as I'm in line waiting to give my order, I see him reaching for a grubby looking backpack that seemed to contain all of his worldly possessions. It dawned on me that he didn't have a coffee in front of him and when I thought about it, he didn't have one that day before either.

And that's when I realized that Steve was in fact homeless. And it was then that I actually noticed how tired he looked, how the skin of his face was stretched around his eye sockets like he'd skipped one too many meals in his time. Steve was obviously taking advantage of Starbucks' new policy in order to get indoors and charge his phone, and although he was technically taking up the space of a paying customer, none who got an inkling of his living situation ever seemed to complain. This was until one day when Steve got himself into some kind of confrontation with a customer. I think maybe one of his bag straps was lying in the way of someone because I only looked up in time after hearing someone apologize. This big guy in a bad suit scoffed as he sat down close by, shaking his head. Shouldn't even be here, the big guy said. I thought it was quite an obnoxious comment, but I'm far too much of an introvert to say anything about it. Steve tried to apologize

again, but the guy started going off on him, telling him he shouldn't be there if he wasn't a paying customer. And in a display of kindness that'll stay with me for the rest of my life, the guy at the head of the line bought Steve a coffee and a red berry cheese danish. There, now he has something, so mind your business. It wasn't one of those, and then everyone clapped, moments. It was still incredibly awkward since no one wanted to get into a shouting match at that time in the morning, especially not me. So after the fat guy was shamed into silence,

he just sort of wrapped his double smoked bacon and walked out, avoiding eye contact as he went. That's when I found out his name was Steve, and every morning after, if Steve was in the Starbucks, I'd always say hi and asked if he wanted a coffee or a red berry cheese. Some mornings he'd accept, some he'd decline, and I came to learn that he used the charger and the free wifi to look for a job. He wasn't a drug addict, he wasn't an alcoholic, he'd just fallen on hard times after a nervous breakdown and was slowly building himself back up and putting his life

back together. Learning that is how me and a handful of other Starbucks regulars developed a great deal of affection for Steve after a while, but our regular cheery encounters with him somehow made it easier to forget that he slept under Redwood Junction every night. And I guess assuring ourselves that Steve would be okay meant we could just walk away and not worry about it. Because one Monday morning when I walked into the Starbucks and saw Steve's seat empty, I automatically assumed it was good news. Maybe he'd found a place to stay. Or maybe he'd struck gold in his job search. And I found myself asking the barista if they'd heard anything from Steve over the weekend.

To my absolute delight, he told me Steve had an interview at a local car wash. He wasn't sure exactly what day, he just knew that Steve had made the announcement the previous afternoon before departing the store. So that was the end of seeing Steve on my morning Starbucks runs. I hoped that he might show up again, buying his own coffee, looking healthier and happier, but he didn't and I guess that was just fine. But at the same time, I'd have been lying if I said I didn't kind of miss him. Like I might have mentioned, I'm a card-carrying introvert, but I do enjoy a sense of community. I still enjoy the comfort of familiar faces, so anyone who makes me comfortable enough to come out of my shell, I appreciate that more than I think I can even describe.

So after a few weeks of not seeing Steve at all, I decided to take a walk down to some of the local car washes to see if I could spot Steve. First place I asked hadn't heard of him, neither had the second place. But the third car wash I tried said that they were hoping I was the one who could give them answers. You see, the third place I tried was indeed the same place Steve had an interview scheduled, but it was an interview he hadn't shown up for. I asked if he'd called ahead to cancel or anything and the car wash boss said no and that he just ghosted. And that's when I really started to worry.

My concern for Steve's well-being grew to the point where I began to entertain the idea of going down to the Redwood Junction to look for him. I hope I don't sound too prejudiced when I say I found it an intimidating prospect. Like as much as I appreciate that a lot of homeless people are just like Steve, good people who've fallen on hard times, I know that there are some people in the streets who are so broken that they do actually pose a danger to the general public. But as I said, my concern grew and grew until I didn't give a good care if the sight of homeless people camp would upset my delicate sensibilities. A man's life was at stake. I needed to act. I wasn't sure I'd be able to live with myself otherwise. That was how I ended up cycling down to the junction one Saturday afternoon where

I began nervously giving descriptions of Steve and asking if people had seen him. People mostly shook their heads at me, looking at me like I'd grown an extra nose or something. I guess having visitors to the camp wasn't exactly a common occurrence. Time and time again I was met with the same response. A shrug, a shake of the head, complete indifference. At least until I spoke to one much older guy who wore a Vietnam veteran baseball cap and a grimy old fatigue jacket. This guy seemed a little bit more with it than some of the other homeless folks and although he had the distinct smell of marijuana about him, he was lucid enough to get

a straight answer from. After confirming we were talking about the same Steve, this vet told me that he knew him well, but that he hadn't been around the junction in a few days. When I pressed him for where Steve might have gone, the vet shrugged, but told me Steve had left behind a bunch of his belongings. According to him, this could be a good thing just as much as a bad thing. When some homeless folks find a way off the street, either moving back in with family or getting a place in a program somewhere, they leave behind all their stuff.

Some just don't need it anymore. A tent and a sleeping bag are useless when you have a room and a bed. But others find that the stuff they had on the street just reminds them of a time they'd rather just forget about. But sometimes, sometimes, leaving all their stuff behind meant something bad had happened. I could see the worry just etched into the vet's face, and he seemed to be racking his brain for a moment before an idea struck him. He mentioned that Steve used to bring food to a girl who stayed on the other side of the camp and that maybe she'd know where he was. Up until talking to that girl, my time at the camp had been unexpectedly uplifting.

Sure, seeing people living like that was upsetting, but seeing how nice some of them were, how they hadn't let their hardships break them down, seeing them purely as the human beings they are, I have to say, it was quite cathartic. Yet the visit to the girl's tent was the point at which the trip became more terrifying than I ever imagined it could be. As we approached the girl's tent, the vet greeted someone nearby and asked if a person called Mouse was home. They nodded but added that she wasn't doing too good. I wasn't sure what they meant by that, but on seeing this Mouse girl curled up in a fetal position in her tent, I was almost certain it was drug related. The vet gently shook the girl awake and I'm pretty sure she was high from the way she lazily opened her eyes and how out of it she seemed. But then as soon as the guy mentions Steve's name, the girl shoots wide open and she gives him this terrified look before saying,

I told him not to go, I told him not to but he didn't listen, now he's gone. The vet asks her where, where did she tell Steve not to go? She replies with, the cemetery, before bursting into tears. The last question we could get her to answer was what happened at the cemetery for Steve to be gone? She replied with, it took him. It. Not he, or they. It. Hearing that word, used like that, caused this sinking feeling in my stomach. Not so much because of what it entailed, but because this girl was so messed up over what happened and that obviously meant bad news for Steve. Before leaving the camp, I asked the vet what cemetery

Mouse could have been talking about. I had my own idea of which one she was referring to, I just wanted to see if he had the same answer, and he did. He said he'd bet his last dime that she was talking about the Historic Union Cemetery on Woodside Road, and I agreed because the Historic Union Cemetery is right across the street from the hand car wash where Steve was scheduled to have his interview. I took all this information to the police, telling them I was a friend of Steve's before I had them file a missing persons report. I made sure to record the reference number I was giving as I'd be able to use it to get in touch with whatever detectives would eventually be assigned to the case, I assumed. I tried all throughout that next week to get the relevant cops on the phone, but

it seemed to take forever before the case was properly assigned. In the meantime, I thought I'd take a ride down to the cemetery to see if anything caught my eye. I don't really know what I was planning on doing. It's not like I knew anything about being a detective, but at the same time, I couldn't just sit on my butt and do nothing. So, for those of you that don't know, Redwood City's Historic Union Cemetery isn't really a cemetery. It did actually function as one until about 1919 or so, but after that it basically became a kind of memorial. From what I can remember, some Civil War soldiers are buried there along with a few famous pioneers, so it's more for tourists and sightseers than grieving families or funeral processions. While walking up and down the gravel paths and checking

out the old graves, it occurred to me that when the girl said like, Steve is in the cemetery, it might have been her way of telling us that he was dead. There was every chance we just totally misinterpreted that and I was in that cemetery on a complete fool's errand, wasting my time looking for something I wouldn't find. And if that's the case, what I found and saw next is completely irrelevant, and is naturally to be disregarded. But, and a big but here, if it is connected to the Steve disappearance, it raises questions that honestly don't bear thinking about. So, as I said, I'm walking down this gravel path, and a handful of people I see are just all checking out the statues, taking pictures, and all that other stuff. Only, I see this one guy, all by his lonesome, and he's walking with purpose,

with a plastic bag in his hand. When I say walking with purpose, I mean like, he wasn't there just to hang around and check out the memorials. He was walking fast, like he wanted in and out in as short a time as possible. Just the sight of him filled me with curiosity, but it's not like if I rushed after him, he wouldn't freak out. So as much as I tried my best to follow him, he slipped away from my view almost as quickly as he had appeared. Only he'd left something behind, the white plastic bag having just dumped it behind one of the bleach white tombstones, apparently in the hopes that it would remain hidden from public view. At first I was just mad, like who leaves their trash in a graveyard or whatever?

But I went to check out what the bag contained, it just looked like a bunch of organ meat. Like I 100% saw something dark enough to be liver in there and some of the other pieces looked like chunks of white fat. It smelled real bad too, like he might have been hanging on to it for a couple of days before he'd left it there. To this day it's probably one of the weirdest things to ever happen to me, finding a bag of meat like that just abandoned in the middle of a ceremonial cemetery. And like I said, whether or not it's even remotely connected to Steve's disappearance is anyone's guess. I mean, the detectives treated me like I was crazy when I brought it up with them in the weeks that followed. They'd sent some beat cops out to the cemetery and they hadn't found a thing.

But I also know they seemed totally clueless in their investigation, like they either didn't care about it or just couldn't get a lead anywhere. And that's just how things went. I'd get in touch every so often, only to be told the investigator hadn't progressed anywhere. It didn't help that it had taken weeks for anyone to report him missing, and the fact that it was me that should have acted earlier gave me this horrendous sense of guilt for the longest time. Steve had no family out here, and I barely knew anything about him. The best I could do was share the few slivers of info I had with the cops, then just hope it came to something. But it came to nothing, and now Steve is just one more name on the missing persons register. A missing persons register that stretches a mile long. The rate

at which homeless people go missing around Redwood City is considerably higher than the surrounding areas, and given how difficult it is to conduct any kind of census or research among the homeless, that figure could be even higher than the numbers suggest. The trouble is, people just don't care. Even people who purport to care about social justice are content to focus their attentions on ridiculous niche topics when homeless people are dying and disappearing on the streets of California every single day. I don't know what's going on out here. Whether or not it's just fentanyl killing people off, some kind of serial killer, or something less explainable. But something is killing homeless

people at a totally disproportionate rate, and all kinds of other weird stuff is going on to boot. I just pray that whatever it is can be identified and stopped before more people like Steve are lost. People who try so hard to tread water, only to end up slipping beneath the waves. September 2008. A woman walks into a New York City branch of the coffee chain, Starbucks. Her name is Hannah Up, and like all other customers, her presence is recorded on the small number of CCTV cameras that are present in the store. Yet when asked her name so it can be written on the side of her cup, Hannah doesn't give her real name. But not out of any kind of duplicitousness, you see, Hannah doesn't realize who she is.

In fact, the young woman seemed to have forgotten herself entirely. Hannah grew up in Oregon, the daughter of two Methodist ministers. As a result of their parents' profession, Hannah spent a great deal of her youth in a handful of predominantly Japanese American churches in her native state, where her parents both served as pastors. The family shared a deep connection with the Japanese migrant community to the point where Hannah's mother, Barbara, spoke fluent Japanese after spending a few years teaching in Kyoto.

Hannah had a mostly healthy and happy relationship with her parents, but obviously, both were rigid in their religious beliefs. This made it difficult for Hannah to communicate the fact that as she grew older, she found herself more attracted to some of the other girls at school rather than her male counterparts. This quite possibly motivated her to relocate to the much more liberal New York City after her graduation from the Pennsylvania Seven Sisters College in 2007. It was there that she funded the pursuit of her master's degree by working as a teacher, all the while volunteering for a charity that

provided assistance to those suffering from HIV and AIDS. She was highly intelligent, outgoing, and by all accounts had a great sense of humor, so she was spoken highly of by all that had the good fortune to know her. At age 23, Hannah transferred to a middle school in Harlem named the Thurgood Marshall Academy. She was reportedly very excited at the posting and felt it gave her a chance to make a real difference among some of the city's most vulnerable youth. On the first day of classes in September of 2008, Hannah didn't show up to work, and it quickly became obvious that she had vanished. The disappearance of a beloved middle school teacher quickly became a high-profile case among local and national media outlets. Hannah's face was on almost every local news channel, all of which asked the public for any and all information related to her disappearance. These efforts were reinforced by scores of Hannah's friends and former classmates

who canvassed New York City with thousands of leaflets and flyers in the hopes that it might generate some clues. From what law enforcement could gather, Hannah left her downtown apartment on a jog that she never returned from. Yet ten days later, Hannah's Apple ID was used at an NYC Apple store. Police had employees pull up the relevant CCTV footage, feeling a great deal of relief that the tape showed Hannah to be alive and well. However, the employees had something rather disturbing to report. Although the woman in the footage was quite obviously Hannah Up, when approached by an old high school friend, Hannah apparently

denied being herself altogether. Hey, hey Hannah, it's me. Are you alright? Everyone's looking for you. But instead of offering an explanation for her disappearance, Hannah apparently responded with, excuse me, my name isn't Hannah. The Apple Store employee later said that Hannah's response seemed frustrated, like it wasn't the first time that day where someone had approached her in such a way. The interaction seemed to have irritated Hannah so much that she walked away from the man and out of the store entirely. It was then that she made her way to the aforementioned branch of Starbucks, and then onto a nearby gym, where it's assumed that she worked out and showered. Investigators were hot on Hannah's trail but couldn't quite seem to catch up with her.

Despite the bizarre, forgetful episode, she seemed to be taking care of herself and wasn't acting in a self-destructive manner. Which is why it was so confusing for investigators when members of the New York Harbor Police pulled her out of the Hudson in a severely dehydrated state, with absolutely no memory of the previous few weeks. She once again knew who she was, but offered no explanation for the events of the previous few weeks, nor her disappearance. After a few days worth of recovery in a New York hospital, doctors declared that the most likely explanation for Hannah's bizarre episode was what was known as a disassociative fugue. In a disassociative fugue, people lose some or all memories of their past, and they usually disappear from their usual

environments, leaving their family and job. The word fugue comes from the Latin words for flight and flee. The condition is sometimes given the playful nickname of Jason Bourne Syndrome, in reference to the movies about a CIA agent suffering from a disassociative fugue who remembers nothing but his extensive training. Many of those who experience disassociative fugue states do so because they have suffered from a tremendous amount of trauma. But Hannah's mother later insisted that her fugue episodes don't appear to have any clear or obvious triggers, and when asked, Hannah could not recall any traumatizing events she had endured. The family even paid for an intense hypnotherapy session in which a trained hypnotist attempted

to unearth any buried trauma or memories that may be affecting Hannah on a subconscious level. Yet after zero progress was made after numerous appointments, the hypnotherapist was baffled and nothing in the way of trauma could be discovered. People have been known to not only travel across cities or countries, but also across continents, said Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Indiana University. The explanation behind the fugue is that the person is running away from a bad situation, from a bad marriage or a bad financial situation. According to numerous news outlets, one of Hannah's close friends made an attempt to discuss the 2008 fugue with Hannah,

but said she often just sat in silence, almost like she was completely unable to talk about it. It felt like the words we have in the English language were not sufficient to describe this. This friend later added, and we can only imagine her frustration at her dear friend being unable to properly articulate what had happened. The following year, Hannah sat down with a reporter in a coffee shop and once again attempted to describe her terrifying ordeal in her own words, and this is what she said. It goes from, like, going to a run, to, like, being in the ambulance. For me, that was like ten minutes past but in reality, it was more like 3 weeks. The hardest part is the period right after. You feel shame,

you feel embarrassed or you feel guilt. All things that I've definitely felt, it's weird. How do you feel guilty for something you didn't even know you did. It's not your fault, but it's still somehow you. So it's definitely made me reconsider everything. Who was I before? Who was I then? Is that part of me? Who am I now? My roommates and I have a code word to show that I'm not going to fugue again, Hannah went on to say. My roommate had done this long interview with ABC and the only thing they ended up printing was that I was a friendly vegetarian who likes to try new dishes. So if I don't get home one night, they'll text me like, friendly vegetarian and I'll reply with, who likes to try new dishes, so we know we're on the same page. In early 2010, Hannah left her life in New York behind, moving to Philadelphia for a few months

while she worked at a Quaker study retreat named Pendle Hill. It was here that she met a young man by the name of Patrick Rosal, and the pair had dated for a while before Hannah shared the story of her fugue episode with him. Being the good-natured soul that he was, Patrick didn't seem to be bothered by the revelation and considered it a freak accident. The way I see it, Patrick later said, Hannah gives so much to other people that at a certain point there is literally nothing left and she departs from herself. Hannah spent a few years in Philly before again moving on, this time to Maryland in September of 2013. But it's here that she experienced yet another bout of disassociative fugue that lasted two days. She suddenly came to when she found herself sitting in a creek with a shopping cart beside her.

But despite the confusing and terrifying experience, she noticed a kind of trend that linked her fugue episodes together. One, they tended to happen at the start of the school year. Two, her pattern of behavior tended to focus around wandering whichever city she was living in. And three, she always came out of her fugue when in contact with a body of water. With these in mind, Hannah quickly decided to move somewhere with plenty of water where she couldn't roam too far or into anything too dangerous. So in 2014, Hannah got herself a job as a teaching assistant in the U.S. Virgin Islands, moving to the island of St. Thomas where she embraced a new life and

new friends. By all accounts, Hannah loved her new life on the island and found working with preschoolers to be extremely rewarding. Then, days after a Category 5 hurricane and days before yet another one, Hurricane Irma and Maria, friends noticed something was off. She seemed super out of it. They described her as being almost in a trance. On yet another beautiful September day, 32-year-old Hannah Emily Up disappeared again. On September 14th, 2017, she told her roommates she was headed over to the Montessori school to help them prepare for the incoming hurricanes.

She got in her car and was never seen again. Despite desperate searches for local homeless shelters, beaches, hospitals, and even the morgue, Hannah was nowhere to be found. But given how she always seemed to turn up or reassociate whenever coming into contact with water, the cops figured it was only a matter of time before she showed up. In an attempt to intercept her before she endangered herself, police searched for Hannah around the island's marina, asking various ship captains and crew members if they'd seen an American girl exhibiting any unusual behavior. None had, but it was at one of these marinas, Sapphire Beach to be specific, that the cops found Hannah's abandoned car. Inside were a number of

her personal items, such as passports and purse, which contained a few hundred bucks in cash. Nearby was a small beach bar that served burgers and beer locals and tourists alike. It was there that Hannah's sarong, sundress, and sandals were found, neatly folded on a bar stool as if she'd planned to return to them to collect them after swimming. Terrified that Hannah has drowned, the Coast Guard sent three helicopters to search for her, while Hannah's friends checked the manifests of people evacuated from the island on Mercy's ships. But again, not a single trace of her was ever located,

and the search for her unearthed far more questions than answers. The only logical explanation was that Hannah had gone to take a swim, gotten caught in a strong current, and then drowned. But if Hannah had drowned, her body would likely float to the surface within a few days. An emergency medical technician named Jacob Bradley circled the island in a rescue boat for hours on end in the days that followed, but again, no sign of the missing teacher was ever found. He even paid a visit to the St. Thomas morgue, as well as several others on the surrounding islands. All in all, he inspected ten different drowning victims, and none were Hannah. The situation progressed to the point that Hannah's mother, Barbara Up, moved out to St. Thomas to organize an aid in the search for her daughter.

Her move came just after a devastating hurricane and doubtless this hampered the effort to locate Hannah, either living or dead. It has never been an option to give up. Hope is persistent and many people join me in that hope, Barbara later said. I've heard from many people here that it's very, very rare for people to drown while swimming, and then when they do, the bodies are found relatively quickly. This has been affirmed by local law enforcement who confess to being stumped by the mystery of Hannah's disappearance. But still, they're inclined to go with the most logical explanation, while Hannah's mother is on the record as saying, I don't think she went out into the water.

Everything that goes out comes back this way. She'd have washed up quickly. Hannah seems to be one of the rare missing person cases where even the most logical explanation has glaring holes in it. For all intents and purposes, Hannah waded in the Caribbean Sea that day, slipping beneath the waves, never to return. To avoid detection by the Coast Guard and EMTs in their search boats, Hannah's body would have to have been dragged along the seabed for miles on end, and even then, it would have floated back to land eventually, thanks to the rather predictable currents of the Caribbean Sea. It would be folly to ascribe Hannah's

disappearance to supernatural means, but it's difficult not to imagine the terrifying eldritch fates that might lead a troubled young woman to disappear once and for all, even after years of fighting to contain her psychological disorder. For years, the public had focused on the question of who took Hannah up, but in reality, a much more pertinent question might well be, what took Hannah up? Sintra At around 5.15am on the morning of July 6th, 1997, a Starbucks employee arrived at work to open up the Wisconsin Avenue Northwest branch of the world-famous coffee company, situated just north of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. There was a lot of work to be done before the morning rush, and the employee in question had yet to imbibe their morning espresso to really kick them into gear. So,

by their own admission, they were pretty groggy by the time they headed out back to one of the freezer units, intending to fetch some of the breakfast pastries that would go on sale that morning. But when the overtired staff member cracked open the freezer unit, they saw something that made their heart race. Inside was the frozen, lifeless corpse of 25-year-old night manager Mary Catrin Mahoney, along with the bodies of 18-year-olds Emery Allen Evans and Aaron David Goodrich. Although they weren't always on the same shift pattern, the employees knew his slain co-workers well, and the horror of witnessing their frozen, discolored cadavers was almost too much to bear. They raced out of the Starbucks and flagged down a bus driver who was only just beginning his morning route,

and given how they could have just called 911 from the on-site telephone, running to find the comfort of another living person is very telling of this person's distraught state of mind. Within five minutes of the initial 911 call, police were on scene and taking stock of the situation. All three employees had obviously been herded into the rear freezer units before being shot, execution style. But what initially confused the investigation was that not a single cent was missing from the Starbucks. If the motivation wasn't robbery, then it looked a lot like a brutally well-executed, targeted killing. But why on earth would someone ambush and murder three coffee shop employees during their routine night shift?

What made the murders all the more shocking was that Georgetown has been traditionally a low-crime area of Washington, D.C., with local district council member Jack Evans saying, to have a triple homicide anywhere in the District of Columbia is an unusual event, but to have a triple homicide in Georgetown is extraordinary, and this has never been a place where crime has been a problem. Over the course of that balmy July morning, scores of blue-uniformed officials made their way to the scene to look for evidence outside the split-level brown brick store. Homicide detectives and forensic technicians alike poured over the scene for hours on end after the bodies were found,

working inside and outside the building adorned with the familiar green and black logo. They dusted doors for fingerprints, searched the store and took statements from local residents in the hopes of piecing together what had happened. But it was only when Mary Mahoney's car was examined that further evidence was found, evidence which indicated that the murders were no random attack. Inside, the car was spotless, save for what looked like signs that Mahoney had recently spent time playing with a pet, a dirty tennis ball, a plastic chew toy, a dog's brush and a red towel. The only possible indication that something had gone awry was a flat tire on the front passenger's side of the car, evidence that her attacker had made provisions to prevent her from fleeing. Mary was special, her mother later said. She had an enormous heart. She probably

would have compassion for the person who killed her. When she moved to Washington several years prior, Mary would jog alone an hour before daybreak, never worrying about being attacked or assaulted. She adored animals, particularly horses, and even took in Marlou, her sister Molly's toothless black and white alley cat. She attended various New York colleges before graduating with honors from Townsend State University near Baltimore, and was a loyal and active Democrat interning for Bill Clinton when he was first elected. Yet according to her mother, it was her managerial job at Starbucks that really excited Mary. She had been employed by the company for two years and enjoyed being the manager. She was often seen sweeping the sidewalk in front of the store and obviously took pride in her store.

What she didn't enjoy, though, was disciplining employees, particularly one that Mary had recently dismissed for allegedly stealing several hundred dollars. She struggled with the issue before having to fire him. Her mother said, and for a long time, this became Homicide Detective's main theory regarding the Starbucks shootings. Yet despite their hard work and determination, they came up short at every turn, eventually turning to the televisual law enforcement institution that is America's Most Wanted. After picking the case up, America's Most Wanted staged a thorough recreation of the murders and detailed many of the theories that police were toying with.

They also advertised the number of an anonymous hotline pleading with those with any information to come forward, and it seems this appeal struck a nerve with one member of the public who called in with not only a frightening piece of information, but also a rather courageous proposal. In the hours following the broadcast of the Starbucks shootings, a woman called into America's Most Wanted hotline to inform them that she was dating a man who actually knew the shooter first hand. This mystery person had confessed, even boasted, of committing the murders, and on more than one occasion. The couple had initially taken the man's word as pure bluster, but after seeing the Starbucks shooting edition of America's Most Wanted, it became apparent that

he might just be telling the truth. The woman then left her name and numbers so she could be contacted by DC police, and when they did so, she actually agreed to wear a wire for them, in the hopes that she could catch a confession on tape. It was then that they learned their suspect's name. Carl D. Cooper. Cooper lived in Prince George's County near Baltimore City and just on the outskirts of Washington D.C. itself. He was the son of a church deacon who lived with his wife and son, but at the time, he lived anything but the wholesome life of a family guy. At the time of the Starbucks shooting, Cooper was being charged with attempted murder in a 1996 shooting of an off-duty police officer in Prince George County.

As for his family's complicity in his crimes, it turned out that it was Cooper's wife that purchased the 9mm handgun that her husband used to shoot the officer. It was the combination of this and his alleged involvement in the Starbucks shooting that led DC police to wiretap Cooper's home phone. He was arrested after making reference to several local shootings, but insisted that a friend of his named Keith Covington had joined him in had been recovering from a gunshot wound at the time of the murder Meaning it was highly unlikely that he was even present on the scene, let alone the one to have done the shooting If I killed them, I'd say I killed them, he reportedly said But that's not me I'm not saying I'm a saint, but I'm not gonna go out and just kill people You gotta be a

dummy or a psycho to do something like that. It's pure evil. When confronted with the evidence of his lies, Cooper admitted to lying about his so-called friend's involvement because he killed three people and was afraid to go to jail. In the process of trying to avoid the death penalty, Cooper told the investigators he'd been staking out the Starbucks for about a month, confirming that he acted alone and fired two guns, a.38 caliber snub-nosed revolver and a.38 caliber pistol. Cooperating heavily due to the ever-looming threat of the death penalty, Cooper confessed to shooting the manager, Mary Mahoney, when she refused to give him keys to the safe, which held over $10,000 in cash. When she said no, Cooper shot a warning shot into the ceiling which sent a terrified Mahoney running into the employee hall. Cooper pursued, caught her and wrestled with Mahoney over her keys, but when her resistance looked like it would be too much to overcome,

he shot her dead. He then shot the two other Starbucks workers at the store, executing one as they survived the attack and attempted to crawl to safety. Cooper later stated that he wanted to put him out of his pain and misery, but it's more than likely this thinly veiled attempt at showing he had a conscience was nothing but an attempt to dodge the first death penalty charge in over 30 years. During his trial, even when the relatives of the victims wept openly in court, Cooper remained chillingly composed. He also admitted to murdering a 39-year-old security guard named Sandy Griffin during a botched robbery.

Cooper had helped Griffin at gunpoint before demanding that the security guard hand over their expensive.40 caliber handgun. But then, fearing Griffin would assault him in the process to defend herself, the serial murderer executed the security guard before quickly fleeing the scene. Cooper admitted to then selling the pistol on the street for $300. Once Cooper was convicted of the Starbucks murders and sentenced to life in prison, Griffin's relatives were no doubt pleased that their loved one's killer had been put away, but they expressed frustration that it had taken three more murders, maybe even more, before the killer had been caught. To them, a lack of urgency in the DC police force had cost three young people their lives and raised many questions regarding their competence and command.

If the account of his defense attorney is to be believed, Cooper is nothing more than a career criminal whose shaky temperament and unbridled greed caused him to take the lives of the innocent. But time and time again, Cooper had the opportunity to simply take the money and walk away, yet he chose not to. He chose to kill people he just didn't need to kill, and he did this on more than one occasion. The first time might have been down to a simple rush of blood to the head, and it's a genuine possibility that killing the security guard was not part of Cooper's plans. But there's also a possibility that killing him proved to be something of a thrill.

A thrill that Cooper wanted to replicate in executing the three Starbucks workers. There's no doubt that locking up killers like Carl Cooper for the rest of their lives makes the world a safer place The only worry is that there are many more out there just like him People who have escaped justice for horrific crimes or those with that same darkness in them just waiting to boil over. I used to work at a Starbucks here in Cardiff and I've got to be honest, it's one of the better jobs I've ever had. The manager was brilliant, the other staff were nice and looked out for each other, so for a minimum-ish wage job it was about as good as it gets. The only bad shifts to work were the first halves of Monday and Tuesday mornings,

as the pre-work rush meant people were often at their absolute worst. I mean, don't get me wrong, people could be complete jerks at other times of the day or week, but the highest concentration of them was Monday and Tuesday mornings, without a shadow of a doubt. But rude customers aren't scary. Annoying and frustrating, yes. Chillingly cruel and calculating, not as much. Which is why this particular incident has stayed with me for so long and I always seem to use it as my personal point of reference for how terrible human beings can be to each other. So, it's a Monday morning and we're just coming to the end of the rush at around 9am. 30 minutes more and the caffeine fiends will start to thin out and we can get some coffee and make a smoke break of our own. I heard her before I saw her, like she was only just

trying to get a handle on what had been pure harpy screeches just moments before. Some woman was on her phone, ranting away and not looking where she was going as she tries to find the back of the queue. In doing so, she cuts off this other bloke who politely informs her that she's queue jumping. I don't know if she actually didn't hear him or was just tactically ignoring him but either way, this bloke has to tap her on the shoulder before saying, excuse me, believe I was ahead of you. The woman just shrugs this off at first, giving the guy a gesture like, I'm too busy to listen to you. I remember the look of anger on

the guy's face as she gently but firmly grabs the strap of her handbag and tugs her out of the queue before taking her place. I'm a bit torn about the whole thing. Like yeah, I was righteous, but laying hands on someone, I feel like there could have been a better way to resolve the issue. But it wasn't like the guy had picked her up and thrown her, and due to the size difference, that was definitely a possibility. Anyway, she reacts like this had been the case, like him actually standing up to her with some horrific incident of assault and starts demanding someone call the police, even though she herself was on the phone and simply refused to hang up. A couple of staff members and customers manage to calm the situation down, and we get the guy his coffee before one of my colleagues serves the angry woman.

I didn't serve her but when she got her order, she turns to me like, um, excuse me, this coffee isn't as hot as I asked for. No, I know better than to just argue with customers and especially absolute whoppers like her. So I do as I'm asked and heat the coffee up a little bit more for her. I hand it back, she dips a finger in it and once again tells me, this coffee isn't hot enough. Now bearing in mind, she just watched me run some steam through it but again, I do as I'm asked and give her back some literally steaming hot coffee that she proceeds

to absolutely overload with sugar. No wonder she was in such a stinking mood. Her entire life was probably one big sugar crash, hence why she was such an unbearable person to be around. But little did I realize, that coffee wasn't for her. And on her way out of the store, she took the lid off of her scalding hot syrupy coffee and threw it in the guy's face as he sat reading his newspaper. God, the sound of that guy screaming was absolutely horrific. Like I didn't actually see the woman throw her coffee in the guy's face, so I thought someone had broken a leg or something. That's the only time I've heard someone scream in pain like that,

when my old skating buddy absolutely shattered his leg on this visit to a Bristol skate park one year. But what followed in the coffee shop was pure chaos. People were pouring bottles of water onto this guy's face, ambulance staff and police turning up. I think the woman legged it as soon as she threw the coffee because to my knowledge no one was arrested, but the guy who had the coffee thrown on him suffered life-changing injuries. From what another colleague told me, the gross amount of sugar in the coffee meant that some of it actually stuck to his face like a kind of molten hot glue. He'd been left with terrible scarring for the rest of his life, and all because he stood up to some absolute monster in the queue that morning.

That's what I find really scary, that some people out there are so unhinged that a seemingly normal interaction with them could end up with you suffering injuries you'll carry with you for the rest of your life. Just one moment of misjudgment, one little enough is enough moment, and boom, you're going to look at a very different version of yourself in the mirror for the rest of your natural life. A A secret of mine is that I have always wanted to sass a customer as you read online. You know, the kind where a person asks to see the manager and the staff member does a flamboyant 180 degree spin and says, That's me. I got to live that dream. Although that being said, I think it's nearly got me quite badly hurt too.

A few years back, a customer had come into our branch of Starbucks an hour or so earlier and booked a table for his girlfriend and himself and left some table decor he wanted to set the table up with. It seemed a little weird, but nevertheless, I offered to set up roses, LED candles, and cloth napkins for them so they could leave to get ready. I finish setting up the table when in walks Mr. Businessman. The store is basically empty at this point, it's 4.30 in the afternoon, too early for

any sort of dinner rush and so there are lots of tables free. Mr. Businessman walks up and asks to use the table clearly set up for a romantic night. I politely said it's been reserved but there are many other tables he can take a seat at but he insists that he have that table. I take him to the table directly next to it and say this table is free but he doesn't want that seat. He wants the reserved seat. He starts to raise his voice and at this point I can see he is choosing to be difficult for no other reason but to be difficult. I repeat myself that that table is reserved and that that's when he says it. He asks to see the manager. I feel the moment spread through my whole body,

starting from my suddenly beaming smile all the way to my fingertips and overworked feet. I feel the power I suddenly possess flow over me. This is it. This is my moment. I look around, then down at my name badge and gasp as it says manager under my name. I smile and say, that's me sir, I'm the manager. I was being awful and petty and he is beyond angry at this point and raises his finger, stabbing the air around me and says, what's your name? I'll be reporting you to head office.

And that was honestly the least of my worries. Like for a little while I legitimately thought this guy was going to hurt me. Was it honestly worth it? To make this guy so angry this absolute psycho? To pay for my witty little comment with my health or life? I think I got very lucky because he leaves in an angry huff and says he'll be taking his business elsewhere. He ended up returning an hour later and is now a regular at our store. He greets me by my name every time he comes in. To be continued... I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 7pm EST.

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