The Lets Read Podcast - 156: HOTEL OF HORRORS | 28 True Scary Stories | EP 144

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Hotels, Amusement Parks, & Walmart... 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: INEKT https://www.instagram.com/_inekt/ PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. On 620 South Main Street of Los Angeles, California, sits a rather unassuming looking hotel. Opened on December 20th of 1924, the 19-story 700-room hotel had recently undergone something of a makeover. It's now known as the Stay on Main and has been undergoing renovations for the last few years and is due to open again in October of 2021. But whether or not the hotel will see many bookings is anyone's guess as the place has, shall we say, a rather dark past. You see, for almost a hundred years, the stay on Main was known as the Cecil Hotel, and it's most famous for being the site of an inordinate number of murders, people taking their own lives, and otherwise unexplainable deaths. In the early 1920s, American hoteliers William Hanner, Charles Dix, and Robert Shops pulled

together their capital and opened the Cecil as ideal accommodation for travelers and tourists alike. Designed and constructed in the Boo art style, the hotel boasted an opulent marble lobby with stained glass windows, potted palms, and alabaster statuary. Each of the hoteliers brought a vast amount of business acumen to the table, and it seemed the Cecil was destined to be a roaring success. But within five years of its grand opening, America would plunge into financial ruin, as Wall Street would bring one of the darkest days in US stock market history. It's little surprise that this tumultuous event is the thing that seems to have preceded such a morbid decline,

but even for such a depressing period of history, the Cecil seems to have been the center of some kind of grim maelstrom, as the deaths came thick and fast from then on. In November of 1931, 46-year-old W.K. Norton took his own life by ingesting poison. A week prior, he had checked into the Cecil under the guise of a man named James Willies from Chicago. It's not certain why Norton took his own life, but it's been commonly speculated that it was related to the financial crisis of the previous two years. Less than a year later, in September of 1932, 25-year-old Benjamin Dodditch shot himself in the head while sitting on a Cecil Hotel bed. A maid found his body the following morning, but again, it's not clear why the young man decided to take his own life, as he neglected to leave a note. In late July of 1934, former

Army Medical Corps Sergeant Louis D. Borden checked into a room at the Cecil, only to slash his own throat with a straight razor in the hotel bathroom. Yet unlike the previous two, the 53-year-old left several notes, one of which cited poor health as the reason for his actions. A tragic yet perfectly understandable reason to take your own life, but just as terrifying and bizarre was that he too should gravitate to the Cecil and the final hours of his life. In the decade that followed, many more of these unexplained deaths would occur, around a third of them involving military men. But the nature of the deaths at the Cecil would not evolve until September of 1944 when a young woman named Dorothy Jean Purcell seemed to be overcome with

a temporary but terrible madness. Dorothy had booked a stay at the Cecil with her 38-year-old boyfriend, Ben Levine. All was well into the middle of the night when Dorothy awoke in terrible pain. She soon realized that what she was experiencing was contractions and that she was going into labor. Terrified and confused, she dragged herself into the hotel bathroom, quietly giving birth to a tiny baby boy. Dorothy later claimed that she had no idea she was even pregnant and as such, she'd done absolutely no research into what to expect. According to her, the baby was silent as the grave, leading her to believe that it was some kind of stillbirth. Yet, instead of waking her boyfriend or calling for help, Dorothy Purcell opened up the bathroom window as quietly as she could,

then tossed her infant son out into the night. The deceased child was later found on the roof of an adjacent building, yet it was determined that the child had still been alive at the time it had been thrown from the hotel window. Naturally, there was a palpable level of public outrage once the story graced local newspapers and Dorothy Purcell was tracked down and arrested on suspicion of murder. However, after being psychoanalyzed by not one, but three psychiatrists, Dorothy was determined to be mentally confused at the time of the birth, and was acquitted in January of 1945 by reason of insanity. By all accounts, she'd had no history of

mental health problems prior to checking into the Cecil and had absolutely no explanation for the event itself. It seems like a horrible coincidence that such a thing would occur while staying at the Cecil Hotel, but the question remains. Were there other forces at work which induced both Dorothy's labor and the so-called confused state that followed? Between 1944 and 1962, a handful of other people took their own lives at the Cecil Hotel, all of them involving death by falling. One of these was particularly gruesome, given that it didn't just take one life, but two. On October 12th of 1962, 27-year-old Pauline Otten jumped from the window of her ninth floor room after an argument with her estranged husband, Dewey, who had stormed out of the suite just moments before. In a sickening twist of fate, Pauline landed on a passing pedestrian, 65-year-old George Giannini, with the impact killing them both instantly.

As there were no witnesses, police initially believed that Pauline and George had taken their life together, possibly as some kind of bizarre death pact. However, it was soon determined that not only was Giannini wearing shoes at the time of his death, he also had his hands in his pockets. Had he jumped, his shoes would have likely fallen off during the fall or upon, and his hands would have definitely not have remained in his pockets. It's quite incredible that such an unfortunate event could even occur. There was literally not another soul on the street that day, and Pauline just so happened to land perfectly atop her unlikely victim. Again, is this purely coincidence, or was there something else at work that day? The next bizarre death to occur at the Cecil was that of 65-year-old retired telephone operator Goldie Osgood. Osgood was well known around the area and had earned the nickname of Pigeon Goldie because she fed birds in nearby Pershing Square. She was a regular sight around the square, perennially sporting the L.A. Dodgers

baseball that she seemed to cherish so dearly. But on June 4th of 1964, a member of the Cecil's housekeeping staff entered Goldie's room to find the place had been ransacked. Birdseed was scattered all over the room, something Goldie carried around everywhere with her. And her beloved L.A. Dodgers cap was lying in a pool of blood just feet away from her lifeless corpse. She had been beaten, carnally violated and then stabbed almost 30 times with a large serrated knife. Just hours after her murder

29-year-old Jacques Ellinger was spotted walking through Pershing Square with his clothes absolutely soaked in blood. This is at a time when DNA analysis hadn't been invented yet, but since there was a literal trail of blood from Goldie's hotel room to Pershing Square, it was pretty easy to deduce that Jacques had been Goldie's killer. But this is where things get weird. Despite the killing being connected to a handful of other murders in the area, Jacques' claim that he had no memory of any murder and had in fact blacked out for a few hours

led to police dropping all charges against him. What should have been an open and shut case was muddied and crippled by some mysterious internal or external influence and once again, the Cecil Hotel was inextricably involved somehow. Two more mysterious deaths by falling occurred at the Cecil in the years 1975 and 1992, but perhaps the most famous of all the Cecil's enigmatic deaths is that of 21-year-old Canadian college student Elisa Lamb. Enrolled at the University of British Columbia, Elisa decided to do a post-Christmas trip down to California in early 2013. She traveled solo via Amtrak and inner-city buses, taking time out to visit the San Diego Zoo and

eventually arriving safely in LA on January 26th. Two days later, she checked into the Cecil Hotel, opting for one of the hotel's cheaper shared rooms on its fifth floor. However, just a day or two into her stay, her impromptu roommates began to complain that Elisa was exhibiting some rather off behavior. As a result, hotel staff decided to move Elisa into her own private room at no extra cost. It's worth noting at this stage that Elisa had been previously diagnosed with both depression and bipolar disorder and was taking four separate medications to combat the symptoms. However, not a single member of her family said that she had any history whatsoever

of any thoughts of taking her own life. According to them, Elisa had her own struggles but she determined to conquer adversity and lead a happy, productive life. Yet they did admit to one incident in which Elisa had gone missing for a brief period of time. Naturally, her parents were mildly concerned about her well-being during a solo trip down to Cali and asked Elisa to check in with them every day she was there. Elisa was only too happy to comply and called daily to share travel stories and swap I love you's. However, on February 1st of 2013, the very same day she was due to check out of the Cecil, her daily phone call didn't come. Elisa's parents grew increasingly worried until

eventually they contacted the LAPD to report Elisa missing. Police jumped into action, driving down to the Cecil to question hotel staff. A number of the housekeeping team had seen Elisa on the day she disappeared, reporting that she was alone and that nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Police also spoke to the manager of a nearby bookstore that Elisa frequented during her stay, who told them Elisa was outgoing, lively, and very friendly, talking about what books she was getting and whether or not what she was getting would be too heavy for her to carry around as she traveled. In short, it's clear that Elisa was suffering from poor mental health, at least during the morning anyway. As a follow-up, police searched the seesaw and surrounding area as best they could, using sniffer dogs and helicopter support.

But given that no foul play was suspected, the LAPD was unable to search the entire hotel, leaving one detective with the terrible feeling that they were just inches away from finding a girl that was in grave and mortal danger. On February 6th of 2013, a week after she was last spotted, the LAPD circulated flyers with Elisa's image and brought the case to the public's attention through local media outlets. Just over a week later, having still made no progress in the case, LAPD released footage of Lam's last known sighting, taken from an elevator surveillance camera on February 1st. The roughly three-minute video shows a solitary Elisa making unusual movements and gestures while appearing to hide in the elevator. It also appears as if Elisa was trying to get the elevator car to move in order to escape from someone who was pursuing her.

Some speculated that the bout of paranoia may have been the result of her ingesting some kind of party drug, such as MDMA, while others suggest her behavior was that of a textbook psychotic episode. Yet perhaps the most disturbing suggestion was from a self-proclaimed video editing expert, who asserted that the CCTV footage had been tampered with before being released to the general public. Besides the obvious obscuring of the timestamp, this expert claimed that not only had parts of the footage been deliberately slowed down, but almost an entire 60 seconds of the footage had been erased.

If this is true, it's fairly obvious why this might be done, and that's to protect the identity of someone who happened to appear in the video. Yet at the same time, could it be to protect the person responsible for Elisa's disappearance? 19 days after Elisa initially went missing, guests at the Cecil Hotel began to complain of low water pressure in their faucets and showers. This was on top of existing complaints that there was a weird taste and color to the tap water. So on the morning of February 19th, a hotel maintenance worker took the stairs up to the hotel's roof intending to inspect the 4,000 gallon tanks that supplied the hotel's water. Three of the four tanks were completely clear of any debris or blockages, but upon opening the fourth, the maintenance worker let out a blood-curdling scream

as he was faced with the bloated, decomposing body of none other than Elisa Lamb. Two days later, the LA coroner's office released a statement saying that the cause of Elisa's death was accidental drowning, adding that her bipolar disorder played a significant factor in her untimely demise. Although the clothes she'd been wearing in the elevator CCTV footage were found in the tank with her, she'd apparently been stripped naked at some point, with a sand-like substance covering the parts of her body that weren't submerged in the tank with her, she had apparently been stripped naked at some point, with a sand-like substance covering the parts of her body that weren't submerged in the water. This sand-like substance was never identified, and there remains intense speculation as to what it might have been.

Analysis of Elisa's body showed that there was no evidence of physical trauma, carnal assault, or her taking her own life. Toxicology tests showed traces of the prescription medication she was using, along with a very small amount of alcohol. But no traces of other recreational drugs could be found in her bloodstream. The amount of prescription medication was found to be slightly less than the effective dose, yet experts believe this wasn't low enough to spark off any kind of psychotic episode and dismiss this as being to blame for Elisa's death. All of these details certainly make for an intensely morbid mystery. Perhaps one of the

most confounding aspects of the case is just how Elisa got into the water tank in the first place. You see, most of the doors and staircases that led to the hotel's roof were supposedly locked at the time the young Canadian disappeared, and only members of staff have the passcodes and keys to these passages. Any attempt to force them would have triggered an alarm at the hotel front desk, maybe even a hotel-wide fire alarm if any of the entrances were fire doors. Surely, it's entirely possible that the hotel's fire escape would allow her to reach the roof unimpeded, but sniffer dogs only followed

her scent about halfway up the staircase, then indicated that she must have used an open window to scramble onto the roof instead of the door which was just feet away. On top of that, all four tanks were 4x8 foot cylinders propped up on concrete blocks, meaning there was no fixed access to them and hotel workers had to use a ladder to get a look at the water. Each was protected by heavy steel lids that would be extremely difficult to properly replace from within. Essentially, all of this pointed to the idea that someone, or something, had somehow killed Elisa and disposed of her body in the water tank, all without being detected by any of the hotel's security cameras. Of all the mysterious deaths that occurred at the Cecil Hotel, Elisa's

gives us the most detailed and intimate look into what kind of fate might have befallen them. It's clear that over the years many of the hotel guests had suffered psychotic episodes or blackouts during their stays, and at a rate far higher than any other hotel in the country. And in spite of the fact that these deaths had been occurring for almost a hundred years, we're still no closer to offering up concrete explanations for their untimely demises. Perhaps all of the murders, people taking their own life, and enigmatic deaths have perfectly reasonable and logical explanations to them, explanations that modern science would quite easily have explained. But perhaps there's something more sinister at work here,

that the truth behind the Cecil is more akin to Stephen King's The Shining than we'd ever be comfortable admitting to ourselves. To be continued... a whole bunch of different hotels. She's on short flight from New York City to Toronto and she gets talking to a guy who's in a similar kind of job, only he's actually from Toronto and had been visiting Manhattan on business. Mom thinks she can swoop in and undercut the deal he was getting, earning a bunch of kudos from her bosses in the process so she gives this guy her business card and tells him to call her. They land and they say goodbye and my mom heads off to her hotel for the evening. A few hours later she's almost ready for bed when she gets a call from the hotel lobby saying my dad was there to surprise her and would it be okay if they gave him a copy of her room key. Mom hadn't been expecting him and the way she tells it she was actually kind of angry that

he'd apparently left a six-year-old me with a sitter when I'd just gotten over chicken pox. So, she calls to be like, what are you doing, Paul? Only, my dad has no idea what she's talking about. He was at home, taking care of me, and she could even hear me over the line to confirm it. She tells dad she'll call him back and then heads down to the lobby to see what in the world is going on. And who should it be, waiting in the lobby, pretending to be my dad. The guy she gave the business card to. As you can imagine, she was both freaked out and very angry. But she calmly explains to the concierge that the guy was

not her husband, and that if he turned up again, he was to call the cops. The guy tried to play all innocent, acting like he'd just picked up the wrong vibes from her or whatever. But he could have called her. He could have asked the reception to call her. There were a million different things he could have done if he thought she was just looking for some little work trip affair. She didn't do any of that. He just tried to talk his way into getting himself a freaking room key, presumably hoping he could catch my mom sleeping. Obviously, my mom was in no mood to sleep after the little encounter and she remembers that she has a copy of this guy's business card too. She couldn't exactly call the cops and the guy since he hadn't actually committed any crime, but she could contact the company he worked for to maybe get him fired for being such

a creep. But when she calls the number on the card, she discovers it's a dead number, and the company that's listed on the card that she eventually was able to get a hold of never heard of the guy in question. The guy gave her a fake card, presumably just to get hers. He was never in the same business as her, but the fact that he managed to talk a good enough game to convince her is incredibly creepy to me. Like there's only one thing scarier than an evil, psychopathic predator, and that's a smart one. Luckily my mom was able to fly back the following afternoon after her business meeting but it was definitely a close call

and I thank God she was able to get away safely. We'll be right back. Our Tread Experts. Toyo's open country family of tires will get you through tough weather in a variety of terrains. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Find a Toyo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. Treadexperts.ca Discover the exciting action of Bed MGM Casino. Check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer or enjoy over 3,000 games to choose from like Cash Eruption, UFC Gold Blitz.

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This happened on my first trip over to Vegas in the early 2000s. I'm usually based in the UK, but my job in stage production means I sometimes spend long periods of time in the US, usually in New York, but occasionally in Las Vegas too. The Vegas jobs pay insanely well, and working there usually means flying over there in the off-season, then rehearsing until the tourism picks up again. Off-season in Vegas tends to be the summer months of June through August, when the temperatures can reach the low 40s. Us Brits tend to fare poorly in anything above 30, so you can imagine what kind of state I was in when I first landed. I was insanely jet-lagged, sweating my bollocks off and definitely

a bit worse for the wear thanks to all the cheap booze I'd gotten on the Delta flight so I passed out almost as soon as I got to my hotel. A few hours later I'm woken by the hotel reception who tell me there's been a noise complaint filed against me. I actually thought I might have been dreaming at first. The whole accusation made absolutely no sense and here's why. Given that it was the off season, the hotel was practically deserted. I didn't think there was even a single other person on my floor let alone someone in the next room over. And this is on top of the fact that I had been completely passed out for the previous few hours. So I had this proper cartoon moment of rubbing my eyes and being like, huh, what? Noise complaint? I wake up a wee bit, then tell the nice lady I don't know

what she's on about, and then I'm pretty sure if there were any random loud noises coming from the same floor, they'd have probably woken me up. After all, I was knackered, but I wasn't comatose. I think I was just too tired for the significance of the questions to even register. But throughout the course of the call, the lady asked three times if there was anyone else in the room with me. With hindsight, it was almost like they were sure there was someone else there and they were just trying to catch me out or something. It was really bizarre. But like I said, I'm just absolutely exhausted so within a few minutes of the call ending, I'm back in the land of Nod. I wake up the next morning at about

4am, sleeping pattern only partially screwed up from the jet lag and drag myself into the shower. It's only then, once the hot water and steam has awakened my senses a little, that I remember the weird noise complaint call that I got. I get dry, get dressed, and then start heading down to what is undoubtedly the best thing ever about Vegas, which is the 24-7 breakfast buffets. But as I'm walking down the corridor to the lift, I slow my pace and start listening out for any noise that might have prompted any kind of complaint. Nothing. It's dead quiet. But then again, the noisemaker could have been asleep by that point. Anyway, I eat a light breakfast, check out the gym and pool facilities for a while exploring the surrounding area,

generally killing time until I head back to my room at around 8. By that point, the whole noise complaint thing had been playing on my mind for a while, and since the hotel was such a resplendent old place, the last thing I wanted to do was annoy the staff or management. So on my way back, I stop off at the reception and inquire about the complaint. The receptionist told me she couldn't tell me exactly who'd made the complaint, nor which room it had come from, but after me piling on as much British charm as I could, she did reassure me that the complaint hadn't come from any of the rooms on my floor. As it turned out, I was right about being the only one on my floor. No one had been checked in for at least a fortnight by that point,

and no one else was due to check into that floor for another week. It's at that point that I professed utter confusion at that situation. If I was the only person on my floor, who had been making all the noise? That's when the receptionist asked me a fourth time if I'd had anyone else staying in the room with me. The first few times prompted nothing but confusion in me, but this fourth occasion gave me a distinct sinking feeling in my stomach. There was more than one person who seemed convinced that I had an unexpected visitor that night, and as much as I wasn't sure how that was, the feeling of fear I got was very, very real. I took to locking my door at all times for the next few nights I stayed there.

It definitely freaked me out a bit, not enough for me to change hotels or anything, but it still gave me the creeps. I don't believe in ghosts or anything like that, and as long as I had my door locked I'd be safe. But the whole incident definitely played on my mind for a while, at least until rehearsals were in full swing. I suppose I'm posting to ask if anyone else has had any similar experiences or if any hotel staff can clue me into why someone might make a mistake like that. I hope you can all shed some light on this soon. So I've been a football coach here in the UK for almost 30 years now. Once upon a time, I had a decent shot at playing at a professional level, and I even had trials at Man City when I was a teenager. This is before they had the oil money. I don't think I've gotten a sniff these days.

But like so many others, a horrible injury took me out of the picture, and I had to kiss my dreams goodbye. However, that didn't mean that I had to kiss my dreams goodbye. However, that didn't mean that I had to turn my back on football altogether. It's my life, always has been, so I decided to get into a career in coaching instead. A few years later I'm working for Marine AFC on Merseyside, mainly along a bloke that had to be double my age. He had bags upon bags loads more experience and bags load more contacts and one day he comes to me with the offer of a lifetime. An old mate of his had somehow managed to land the head coaching job for the national women's team, Belize.

Trouble was, he needed two blokes to help him out. He'd asked his mate, who had in turn asked me. Eight weeks after that, following all kinds of vaccinations and travel forms, we were flying out to Belize City to become the official coaching staff of an actual national team. Granted, they just so happened to have never played a game before, but we saw that as more of a challenge than a hindrance. But the trip turned out to be much more difficult than just coaching a few amateur footballers. In fact, it turned out to be a bloody nightmare for the entire time we were there. First off, and this isn't all that connected to the Belize thing, but our flights out to Belize City happened to be on the 9th of September of 2001.

So we spent our second full day in Belize not maxing and relaxing by the pool as we should have been, but glued to the telly in the hotel bar, watching footage of the planes smashing into for hours, and if our flights had been booked two days later, we'd have been in the air during one of the most terrible events of our lifetime. So to say that shook us up would be an understatement of the century. Anyways, the main thing happened about two or three weeks later once we'd gotten to the swing of the coaching job. Me and my colleague from Marine were staying in the fairly scabby hotel in Belize City, but the food and the drink were absolutely phenomenal, and it was all being paid for by

Football Federation of Belize, so it wasn't like beggars were about to suddenly become choosers. The only trouble was that it could get a bit wild later on at night. I saw more than one older European-looking bloke going into a room with a much more attractive Belizean girl than leaving maybe half an hour to an hour later. Sleazy, I know, but as long as they didn't put him near us, we weren't fussed. And only a few weeks into staying there, I'm woken up in the middle of the night by a repeated rhythmic banging on the wall near my headboard. Instantly, I know what's going on, and it only makes me extra nauseous when I can hear some deep voice in American accent shouting all these pervy things.

God help the girl he was with, I remember thinking, because she just stayed quiet as a mouse the whole time, and in the end, I ended up banging on the wall back and shouting, keep it down, pal, or something of the sort. He does oblige a bit, not stopping, but at least slowing the tempo while keeping his voice down. Still grim, but better than nothing, I suppose. The next morning, I get a knock on the door and it's the Belize police wanting to ask me a few questions. Of course, I oblige, following the officer into the corridor and that's when I see all the blood on the door of the room next to me. There are bloody handprints

on the door, blood all over the doorknob, and bloody footprints leading away from it. The mad thing is though, that would have all been cordoned off with tape and written, but the cops there just didn't seem to mind us contaminating the scene by standing right next to it. As it turned out, what I'd been listening to wasn't just, you know, that. The bloke had strangled some poor girl before doing that to her body, just feet away from where I'd been trying to sleep. You can bet we'd move hotels after that. About a month later, our women's team took on their Guatemalan counterparts in their

first ever international football match. We got smashed, 12-0. Two days later, after we played El Salvador and the results were much better, we only got beat by six goals to nil. The president of the FFB sacked us after our post-match team talk. We tried explaining that halving the number of goals that we were beaten by was actually quite an achievement for a brand new team. He didn't give a monkey's bare bottom. He just wanted wins, so we were out. We flew back to the UK in time for all the Christmas hype and I just remember spending it trying to forget about the murder. The whole thing was definitely one of the most surreal times of my life and if it wasn't for the actual murder that I tried to sleep through I'd definitely do it all again tomorrow During the year 1887, construction began on a two-story, mixed-use building in the city of Chicago. Five years later, the owner told

investors and suppliers that he intended to add a third floor, one designed to serve as a hotel to the many tourists due to descend into the city for the upcoming World's Columbian Exposition. Celebrating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the New World, the exposition was an influential social and cultural event that had a keen effect on Chicago's architecture, sanitation, and arts. The exposition would further secure Chicago's reputation as America's second city, and the hotel was named to reflect that, becoming the World's Fair Hotel. However, the World's Fair Hotel would become infamous for another reason entirely.

Instead of accommodating visitors from across the world, many of the hotel's rooms would house nothing but pain, suffering, and death, eventually taking on a new name, Chicago's Murder Castle. Herman Webster Mudgett was born on May 16th of 1861 in Gilmanton, New Hampshire. His genealogy showed that he was descended from some of the earliest English settlers to arrive in North America. Being born into a farming family, Herman would often help his father in his duties as a farmer, trader, and house painter. By all accounts, he was a polite and well-adjusted young man who gave no hints of the person that he would grow up to be.

After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, Herman entered the University of Michigan's Department of Medicine and Surgery, graduating in June of 1884 after passing his exams. He then traveled back to his native New Hampshire to become the apprentice of Dr. Newham White, a high vocal advocate of human dissection. It's here that Mudgett spent almost all of every day in the company of White, helping him cut up hundreds of human corpses in order to find out exactly what had killed them. It's here that Herman's behavior seemed to take a distinct turn for the worse, as housemates noted that he treated his young wife in an abominable manner. She returned to New Hampshire shortly afterwards and it appears the couple maintained little contact following their separation. Without his marriage tying him

to any one particular place, Herman decided to move to Moors Forks in New York State in the hopes of opening a medical practice there. Shortly after the move, a young boy went missing, one that was said to be last seen in the presence of Herman Mudgett. Naturally, Herman protested his innocence and the local police force seemed to have taken him at his word, as no formal investigation was opened. However, rumors of his involvement in the child's disappearance stuck, and Herman was forced to leave town to protect himself from vigilante reprisals. Herman opted to move to Philadelphia, where he got a job at a drugstore.

It was during his employment that a small child died after taking medicine purchased at the store. This time, police launched a full investigation, and despite once again protesting his innocence, Herman found himself as the case's number one suspect. Again, Herman decided to flee rather than face a false conviction, this time heading for the windy city of Chicago. But in order to avoid any association with the vicious rumors and misfortune that might follow him into the Midwest, Herman decided to change his name. And so, in August of 1886, Herman Mudgett arrived in Chicago, only this time, he was calling himself Henry Howard Holmes, or more commonly known as H.H. Holmes.

Upon an initial exploration of Chicago's South Side, Holmes discovered a drugstore at the northwest corner of South Wallace Avenue and West 63rd Street in Englewood. The owner, Elizabeth S. Holton, offered Holmes a job and he proved to be a hardworking and diligent employee, so much so that it wasn't long before Holmes made her a cash offer for ownership of the store. It was one that was far too generous to refuse, and since Holmes had actually attended Michigan University with Lizzie Holton's husband, they were only too happy to sell. Shortly after, Holmes began construction of the World's Fair Hotel. The ground floor was half shopfront and half hotel lobby, exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from such upmarket accommodation. Yeah, the second floor was anything but comfortable or cozy,

with its design and construction hinting that Holmes might well have been guilty of the child murders he'd been accused of. Because Holmes wasn't constructing a hotel, he was creating something akin to a human slaughterhouse. While the third floor of the hotel did indeed host a number of comfortable apartments, the second floor of the World's Fair Hotel consisted of a number of elaborate torture rooms. All of the doors and some of the steps were connected to an intricate alarm system. Whenever someone stepped into the hall or headed downstairs, a buzzer sounded in Holmes' bedroom. There were over a hundred windowless soundproofed rooms, 51 doorways which led to nowhere, and a maze of hallways, some of which seemed resulting in nothing but dead ends. Many of the rooms were outfitted with chutes that ran directly into the basement,

where Holmes had installed acid vats, a vast quantity of quicklime, and a crematorium to dispose of his victims' bodies. The first of these victims would turn out to be a lover of his named Julia Smythe. She and her family had moved into the World's Fair Hotel after her husband secured himself a job in Holmes Pharmacy. But after her husband discovered the sordid tryst, he abandoned Julia and their young daughter, relinquishing custody of her and leaving his wife to continue her affairs with Holmes. To the outright observer, it seemed like H.H. Holmes had everything going for him. He was in the process of expanding an already successful business, and with the addition of Julia and her young daughter,

he had something of a fledgling family to bring a familial satisfaction to match his financial success. But on Christmas Day of 1881, neighbors noticed that H.H. was alone for the holidays. When they inquired as to the whereabouts of his newfound paramour, H.H. broke down crying, telling them that Julia had died during a termination of her pregnancy, and that her grieving daughter had been sent away to live with relatives. Shocked and sympathetic over his sudden bereavement, his neighbors asked no more questions of him, but it's more than likely that H.H. had subjected both mother and daughter to his preferred method of execution. He would administer a heavy dose of chloroform, then lock his victims in an improvised gas chamber on the second floor of the house. Once he was sure that his subject had expired, he'd simply toss them down the corpse tubes which ran into the basement's acid vats.

What seems to set Holmes apart from many other serial killers is that Holmes applied an almost industrial process to his work. Other killers took pleasure in the process, often engaging in paraphilic acts of depravity, whereas Holmes seemed to prefer being as far removed from the nitty-gritty as possible. Yet despite his apparent squeamishness on account of rarely spilling blood, Holmes' anatomical knowledge gave Holmes a rather unusual opportunity to profit from his murders. Given that he had extensive contacts in the medical profession, Holmes was actually able to sell the skeletal remains of his victims to colleges and medical labs. But such butchery made for a lot of work, and if theories of his squeamishness are to be believed, it only made sense for him to hire a sort of assistant who would aid him in his detestable labors.

This is how H.H. Holmes met a man named Benjamin Peitzel. Benjamin was a carpenter by trade, but one with a rich and varied criminal past. Somehow Holmes convinced Benjamin to assist him in his murderous rampage, with one district attorney later calling him his creature, the Igor de Holmes' Dr. Frankenstein. Yet the pair didn't exclusively engage in violent activity together. They also plotted several less violent criminal enterprises, one of which was a plot to fake Benjamin's death. Swayed by the prospect of collecting on the $10,000 life insurance policy, the scheme would involve Peitzel posing as a wealthy inventor named B.F.

Perry. This Perry character would take out a lucrative policy, then die in a tragic laboratory explosion which would conveniently leave his corpse as a charred, unrecognizable mess. All H.H. had to do was find a corpse that was roughly the same height and weight as his crooked companion than go about suitably disfiguring it. But Holmes had a better idea. He believed the life insurance policy would be much easier to claim on if they used the body of the real B.F. Perry, which meant a death sentence for Peitzel. Soon after, he was knocked unconscious, covered in benzene, then set alight while he was still alive. His suffering must have been agonizing, locked away in one of the World Fair Hotel's vaults, screams soaked up by the soundproof padding that lined the exterior of the room, burning and burning until his life went up in smoke.

Given he had the actual corpse of the fictional B.F. Perry, H.H. easily collected on the fraudulent insurance payout. But by that point, Holmes had manipulated Benjamin Peitzel's wife so heavily that he was not only able to convince her to split the money with him, but he also convinced her to allow three of her five children to live with him in the World's Fair Hotel. One night, two of the girls were awoken by Holmes, who instructed them to follow him into a vacant room. There, Holmes forced the two girls to climb into a large leather storage trunk, one which he'd cut a small hole into.

Once it was sealed up, he attached a gas line to the hole, filled the trunk with lighting gas until both had turned blue from asphyxiation. He then buried the two girls' bodies in his basement, another two additions to his already sizable body count. Bizarrely, Holmes' downfall was rooted in a stolen horse. Down in Texas, a former cellmate of his had an axe to grind, for it was he that devised the life insurance scam HH later used on Benjamin Pitesall. Holmes had promised him $500 to buy the idea from him, but never paid up, and once word reached Texas that a rather devious individual had enacted such a scheme, the erstwhile cellmate was furious. In revenge, the man told Texan authorities all he knew of

Holmes' malevolence, hoping it would be enough to land his former cellie back in prison. While initially the authorities had little evidence with which to convict Holmes, they did have an outstanding warrant for stealing a horse, and it was just enough to get him extradited. Texas law enforcement then sought the help of their northern counterparts, who were only too happy to assist them given the increasing number of suspicious disappearances that seemed to orbit H.H. wherever he went. Chicago police were particularly concerned after two of their officers stumbled into the second floor of the hotel while H.H. was absent.

Naturally, H.H. kept all incriminating evidence behind locked doors, so the officers weren't able to find anything too harrowing. But the endless corridors, false doors, and staircases which led to nowhere all gave the officers the impression that something very unusual and very wrong was happening in the World's Fair Hotel, and that its quiet entrepreneurial owner wasn't quite all he appeared to be. H.H. was eventually apprehended up in Boston, having been tracked down by the Pinkerton Detective Agency. He was held on the horse theft warrant from Texas, which authorities swooped in on his many properties to perform rigorous searches. However, before they could return to the World's Fair Hotel, it mysteriously burned down,

destroying most of the evidence with it. H.H. had been in Boston at the time of the arson, and his ghoulish assistant Benjamin had long since passed. So there's no doubt that even towards the end, even when he was on the run, H.H. Holmes still had one pawn in the game, one that was loyal enough to destroy the hotel before the depth of his depravity could be discovered. In October 1895, Holmes was put on trial for the murder of Benjamin Peitzel. By then, it was evident Holmes had also murdered the two of the missing Peitzel children and was responsible for many other disappearances. A jury of his peers took mere hours to convict him, before a judge wasted no time in sentencing him to death by hanging. I was born with the devil in me, Holmes would explain in the days before his execution. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can

help the inspiration to sing. H.H.'s last request was to be buried ten feet under and encased in concrete, because he did not want grave robbers to exhume and later dissect his body, as he had done to so many others. It's also widely reported that Holmes believed that given the magnitude of his evil deeds, he was quite literally turning into Satan himself. In light of that, there's a good chance that Holmes believed himself to be some kind of supernatural monster, one that would not be contained by a regular human burial. Despite being somewhat odd, the request was granted in the end. On May 7th of 1896, Holmes was hanged at the Philadelphia County Prison,

and perhaps it's fitting that his death was just as painful and violent as his life had been. You see, H.H.'s neck did not break on the drop as it was supposed to. Instead, he strangled to death slowly, twitching over a quarter of an hour before being pronounced dead a whole twenty minutes after the trap had been sprung. It's probably one of the few pieces of solace we get from the story of H.H. Holmes, knowing he spent his final moments in the same kind of terrified agony that most of his victims had suffered. But even in death, the world would never be truly rid of the man who called himself Henry Howard Holmes. Not only have his misdeeds passed into legend, as he regularly makes the top ten worst serial killer lists whenever they should arise, but almost 140 years after his spree,

the rights to books and biographies detailing his life were being bought up by TV and movie companies. And if there really is a hell, and old H.H. is looking up to see his image still terrorizing Americans all this time later, it might well curl his lips into a wicked, but satisfied smile. This probably isn't as intense as some of the more paranormal comets in this thread, but it's a 100% true story and it actually happened to me, and it's without a doubt the most haunting event of my life. During my gap year I decided to stop off in Myanmar, Burma for a few weeks. They just opened up to tourism for the first time in about 40 years which really offered a chance to blaze the trail so to speak and the exchange rate was such that I could extend my trip by about two to three weeks

if I took advantage of the country's weak currency. I ended up getting a pretty decent little hotel in Yangon, and at a rate that was a third of what I'd have paid back in Bangkok or Chiang Mai. The only obvious downside was that the hotel was having maintenance being performed on a couple little floors, so they mentioned that it might be a little bit noisy overnight. I did think it was a bit stupid that they'd be doing DIY in the middle of the night, but at a nightly rate of about two bucks, I was hardly about to freak out over it. Anyway, I have a great night's sleep. The bed was great, the bathroom the same. Then I head down to breakfast. That's when I get talking to this

pair of Spanish hippie types who tell me they'd been awoken in the middle of the night by the maintenance men who'd apologized and told them that they'd have to vacate because they were about to de-louse the room with gas. And no sooner had they said that had there seemed to be a bit of commotion in the hotel lobby. It was a girl speaking French to a receptionist. I had no idea what she was saying but it seemed quite urgent and the girl was obviously frustrated that no one could understand her. I didn't think much of it as I headed out into the streets to explore Yangon. The heat and humidity really got to me that first day, so after picking up a few pieces of rather exotic looking fruit from a marketplace, I wandered back to the hotel to take a nap. But when I arrive, I'm greeted by

the sight of what was obviously some kind of ambulance, along with a French girl sitting on the hotel steps, crying her eyes out. It turned out that there had been a miscommunication between the maintenance men and the hotel staff, and as a result, they'd pumped gas into a room that had a traveler staying in it. They'd been suffocated in their sleep, having gone to sleep all comfy that previous night, totally unaware that they'd never wake up again. I didn't find out who the person was or where they were from, I just saw the body bag being wheeled out of the lobby and into the ambulance, and by that point it was obvious that they wouldn't be going to the hospital,

more like the coroner. I checked out of the hotel the same day, and only spent a week longer in Burma before flying over to Thailand. I just don't think that they were ready to accept tourists at that stage, they just weren't accustomed to visitors in the same way that the Thais or the Vietnamese are, and as much as I tried to just enjoy the rest of my trip, it was something that definitely cast a long shadow over it. I just feel so terrible for whoever was in that room, having gone to some strange new place to learn and grow as a person, only to be killed by someone's pure and absolute negligence. Back in the early 2000s, I had to fly out to Regina, Saskatchewan for a marketing conference.

I was an entry-level employee at quite a big company, but they had agreed to pay my hotel bills if I found somewhere within a specific budget. As you can imagine, they ended up low-balling me pretty hard, but I still managed to find a fairly nice bed and breakfast type deal that seemed to be this little mom and pop operation. I fly out, check in, take a shower, and then I'm air drying, well, sorting out my outfit for the next day when I get a knock on the room's door. The whole thing was basically just a converted residential unit so there were no phones in the rooms or anything, but I'm also in no position to answer the door, so I just call out to whoever it was like, yes, is everything okay?

I just hear the voice of the owner on the other side say, can you put on some clothes? Thank you. They weren't rude or sleazy about it and the thank you on the end was very polite but nevertheless I'm stood there, still as a stone, thinking, what in God's name? I immediately throw a towel around myself, locking the door, throwing all my stuff back into my travel case. Then I walked right out of that B&B, booked myself into the Ramada Plaza, and immediately called the cops. If you can believe it, the guy denied filming me, spying on me, or anything of the sort, then had the gall to complain that I'd walked out without paying my bill.

I told the cops to ask him how he knew that I was naked in a private hotel room. They said that they'd let me know what the next steps were. Surprisingly, there were none. All of a sudden, the guy didn't seem all that interested in collecting on the bill. He was too busy explaining the cassette tapes in his office that showed naked images of literally hundreds of his guests. Not 100% sure what happened to the guy after that, but I'm hoping he at least lost his hotel license or did some prison time. It's one thing to record people without their consent, another thing entirely to be so brazen about it.

I hope that creep gets hit by a bus. The story happened 15 years ago, but the details of the event have never faded from my mind. I was 13 at the time and I remember it being a hot summer day, Sunday a quarter past 12. I had just dropped my friend off at the edge of my small village in the Netherlands after a morning of sports because she felt uncertain of the way home. I was cycling back to my dad's place going through the little shortcuts only a local would truly know. Eventually I entered a familiar street just off the single main road in the village. A street my mother and I lived on. There was a silver sedan parked on the side of the road and I was approaching it from the back. When I made the cycle past it, a male voice suddenly called out from the open driver's side window. Excuse me, may I ask you something? I stopped and got off my bicycle, noting a bald

Middle Eastern man in his thirties looking at me expectantly. He seemed clean-shaven and very friendly looking. He was wearing a white polo shirt, from what I recall. I just felt that he was very approachable. And naive I was. I approached his car window and asked what I could do for him. Now in my country it is polite to look someone in the eye when speaking to them and being a polite kid I never diverted my gaze from his eyes. Can you tell me the way to the nearest gas station? As I'm typing this I realize this is a bit of a strange question to ask. Parked in a quiet side alley in a tiny town with a single main road, but at the time I saw nothing wrong with it.

I explain the route to the town's gas pump, just a right and follow the road for a minute. He made me repeat it. When finally, after the third time, he grasped my simple instructions. He shook his head and told me he didn't want to go to that specific station but wanted directions to another. Wasn't there another station nearby, he asked me. It was an odd request but perhaps he didn't agree with the station's gas prices or something. It was a small town pump after all, owned by a local family

so I gave him directions to the other one which was literally take a left onto the main road and drive for about 10 minutes, the gas pump will be on your right hand side. The man smiled at me and I hesitantly smiled back, wondering if he got the instructions. He had these very distinct large black eyes and they roved over me, from the top of my head to my sports shoes. You're a very pretty girl, he said, making me shift uncomfortably. Could you explain it to me again? I didn't quite catch that. I mumbled a thank you and grateful that I had kept my bicycle in between this man and me, suddenly feeling very exposed with this strange man.

There was no one else around, yet my shy nature and need to be nice made that I didn't dare leave without a cue from this man. Stupid I know, but that was 13-year-old me. I repeated my instructions again and again, thoroughly and uncomfortably. But this man then said he actually did want to go to the local station. And for the umpteenth time, I gave this man directions. I started pointing and gesturing and just finding this all very strange. I even started to wonder if maybe he was just mentally slow. I thought about leaving. But I also thought and wondered, would he chase me with his car?

Would he try to hit me? I didn't like his eyes anymore. And then, out of nowhere, as I stood bent over my bicycle, straining to hear his soft-spoken and gentle voice, he asked me, Would you like to see me climax? I still remember the feeling of icy panic that exploded in my chest, that breathtaking pressure that froze on my limbs. I stared at him, wide-eyed and numb with shock, before finally my eyes slid off his face and down to his lap. Sure enough, the man had his pants opened, his member blatantly on display and being harshly pumped by his right hand. I had never even seen a man's member before at that point. I just remember feeling ashamed,

thinking that this was my fault. I thought to myself that he must have thought that I had seen him during our talk or had been encouraging him. I had been so close to him after all, but I hadn't even noticed his arm moving, him doing what he was doing. Not noticed as he stared at me intently throughout my silly charades, even though I was but a step away from him. I'd never even looked through the interior of his car. The only thing I had been focused on was the man's face, his own gaze firmly directed on me, on my body, on display in my summer sport outfit. And I felt disgusting. Heart hammering in my chest, I stumbled back and stammered,

sorry, sorry, no, sorry, I'm so sorry. I don't even know why I was apologizing. Thoroughly disquieted, I fled the street I lived on with my mother and raced over to my father's house where I was staying that weekend. At the end of the street, I looked back and saw that he hadn't moved. His car was still turned off. I realized now that he had been finishing his business. Back home I called my friend, upset and needing to talk about it as she was still cycling home. I whispered the words that he had said to me. She comforted me, then sat on the couch and merely stared ahead, going over how stupid I had been over that close call.

The image of the man burned into my brain, and I just felt so utterly disgusting, and disgusted. Eventually, my father came home and I told him about the incident. Not the words, I really couldn't repeat those to him, but about what the man was doing. He laughed it off, believing me but not taking my shock all that seriously. I'd get over it or something. But now in my late twenties I realized I should have called the cops despite my dad saying that wasn't necessary. This man was parked in a residential neighborhood. I knew children that lived on that street. Who knew how many others he had tricked into being the unwitting victims of his sick and depraved fantasies. And I wish the story ended there.

A couple of weeks went by and rumors went around the teens in my town. The girls that had to cycle to school, to the next town over, told me about a man some girls had encountered parked by the side of the woods in a silver car asking for directions. They told me to avoid this man as he was creepy, but nothing major was described to me. I guess it must have been the same man I had encountered on that particular Sunday afternoon. He must prey on cycling school kids during the work days. Sundays he haunted those neighborhoods. Stupidly, I still told no one. And despite all the kids knowing about the man parked in the woods, I suppose no one actually called the cops or told their parents. And life went on.

Now the cycling lane the man had parked alongside, the one we had to cycle, took about 20-30 minutes. At times it cut through a part of the woods, separated from the main road, away from all peering eyes. When it was dark out during autumn or winter, all of us knew that no one was to cycle to and from school alone there. No matter how popular you were, you made sure to cycle alongside others, even if you just followed them from a distance, just to be safe. Now this was early summer coming up, it didn't get dark until around 9 or 10. Eventually, the worst happened. The man no longer was content to talk to young girls, he decided to take one. Now I haven't heard this story personally from the girl, but from a friend who knew the girl it happened to One of the girls in my village, Chloe, had fallen for the same trap that I had

Only this time in a part of the woods The man had ripped the 12 year old girl from her bicycle and thrown her into the back of his trunk He had then torn off into a sandy road into the forest I can only imagine his motivations, but he had made one mistake. He had left Chloe with her cell phone. Chloe immediately called her mother hysterically about being locked in the back of a trunk, being thrown and slammed about as this man floored it. The car bounced like crazy and she concussed herself badly when he hit a particularly rough pothole. Her mother, keeping her hysterical and terrified daughter on the phone, phoned the police.

The only thing the cops knew was that they were looking for a silver car somewhere in those woods. One where 12-year-old Chloe was locked in this trunk. And that if they didn't find her, who knew what this man was going to do. I was told that she had screamed so loudly, so loud in fact that she must have spooked the man, or maybe he realized she had a phone or he found a sliver of his conscience. Whatever his reasons, this man hit the brakes, went to his trunk and threw her out of his car. He then sped off, leaving the concussed and crying Chloe there on that sandy path. I don't know if the cops found her or if she stumbled back herself,

but the man was caught. He had been released from a mental hospital apparently only a few months earlier, but I have no idea for what reason. I can't imagine the utter terror that girl must have felt. Cannot begin to tell you the guilt I felt for not just reporting what had happened to me. Would they have arrested him that day? Or would he have just driven off after doing what he did to himself while looking at me? What that mother must have felt, receiving that call from her child, believing it to be the last moments of her 12-year-old daughter's life. It is terrifying to think what could have happened that day I encountered the same man. Had I not backed away when I did, had I not kept my bicycle between us,

I didn't have my cell phone with me. The only thing I know is that this man went back to that mental hospital. I don't know if he is still there. The only thing I do know is that even 15 years later, I would recognize this man on sight, and I learned my lesson to always be on my guard whenever a stranger asks for directions. I was about 14 years old when this happened to me. I've never had many of these kinds of situations happen to me in my life. I've been fortunate enough to swerve clear of any insane or creepy people. I used to be a swimmer and trained at my local indoor swimming center. Next to the long-length swimming pool where people trained or did their own personal exercise was a waist-length kid pool.

I was seated on a bench in front of the long-length pool, waiting for my swim coach to finish training the younger kids. I was early, as usual, and my other friends who trained with me hadn't arrived yet. I can't remember what I was doing. Either I was on my phone or I was simply watching the younger kids swim, but suddenly this tall 30 year old something man approached me. As a 14 year old girl you'd think I'd know what to do or have been warmed by parents on how to react in this situation but I was shy and too friendly for my own good. So when he introduced himself and held out his hand so that I could shake it, I introduced myself and took his hand and shook it with a nervous and confused smile. He sat down beside me and two things I distinctly remember from this man is that his attitude and the way he acted was very similar to a shy young teenage boy.

Plus the fact that his scent smelled like vinegar and chlorine pool water mixed together. He pressed his knees together and placed his hands on his lap as he straightened his back. He would glance over at me just to quickly look away like some shy high school girl. Being young and attending a catholic high school with a large number of special needs children, I simply assumed that he was exactly like those kids maybe. The way he spoke, sat, his facial expressions, and how he was acting reminded me of this girl with special needs in my school where I would sit in the library and read the newspaper with her while I waited for my mom to pick me up. So I decided to be nice and hear him out, thinking maybe he was here with a family member and that they would come over to retrieve him soon.

I can't exactly remember the whole conversation or how long we talked. I just remember being nervous the whole time. Then, at one point in our conversation, he mentioned he had a friend who wanted to meet me too, then pointed over to the kid pool not too far away from us. If I wasn't already anxious enough, seeing this guy peek over the edge of the pool definitely made my heart drop. I don't even understand how he was peeking over the edge since he was on the pool's steps so his body must have been lying flat over the steps for his head to be so low. He then gets up and steps out of the water. This guy is bigger and shorter. I can't

remember what his face looks like nor do I want to but I remember he was even creepier than the man next to me. Although I don't remember what his face looks like I just remember the feeling he gave me when I reached out to shake his hand. I could feel his eyes staring down at me and it wasn't the same as how the man next to me would stare at me. At that moment I think I felt comfortable with the weird guy next to me would stare at me. At that moment, I think I felt more comfortable with the weird guy next to me than with this creepy guy in front of me. Unlike the other guy, this dude seemed normal and like a typical creepy older guy peering down at a 14-year-old girl. Now, I don't even know if perving on a 14-year-old girl who was sitting alone was ever their

intention in the first place, but it really did feel like it. I can't exactly remember if I had a conversation with him or not. All I remember happening next was my swim coach calling me over saying that I should start getting ready and change into my swimsuit. I obviously took this chance, still being friendly and told the two men that I had to go. I can't remember if they said anything or not but I grabbed my bag and walked over to my swim coach. I knew he only said that to give me an opening to escape those two men because there was still a lot of time before I needed to get into the pool. My coach asked me if I knew those two men and I told him no. He pointed out that he noticed how nervous I was and even pointed at a lady I hadn't even noticed sitting on the other end of the bench I was sitting on and mentioned that she was listening to my conversation and keeping a close eye on me. During that whole situation I don't think I even tried to look

over to my coach for help. Even to this day I think it's because I was scared that if I were to constantly look around at people instead of keeping eye contact, that it would have made it obvious to the person that I'm uncomfortable or scared. Like I've said, I have never before or since then experienced anything so scary and creepy with another person. I did see those two men once more after that. I think it was a few days or a few weeks after my first encounter with them, but I saw them in the kid pool once again just floating around. I no longer sat on those benches anymore. Instead I sat on these sitting steps right next to the long length of pool. So people who are only using that pool usually sit there.

This is nothing compared to the other stories I've heard on here but to me it was the creepiest encounter I've had so far. Now that I'm an 18 year old girl living in a city who works mostly night shifts, I'm sure I'll experience more similar situations and just hope I'll be smart enough to react in a better way. It was a day like any other. My cousins and I decided to go to a western themed amusement park near Anaheim, California to spend some time together as we were all on the cusp of adulthood and haven't been to an amusement park together since we were kids. All was going well. It was hot, the lines were long, and after riding rides all day our feet were killing us. We planned to stay until the park closed, so we were waiting at a roller coaster that

faced towards the children's section of the park while also planning where we would go next. During our planning and waiting in the long line, we heard three distinct pops. We assumed that they were fireworks or general theme park noises, so my cousin's boyfriend made a little bit of a joke that someone just got popped. We thought nothing of it and continued to wait. All of a sudden, a large wave of people came running through the children's section of the park. I figured a ride that had been closed opened up and people were flocking to be first in line. But then an even larger wave of people came after.

I saw parents hiding their kids in the bushes where the rides were, ride operators rushing people off of the rides they were on, and everyone around me asking what the F is going on. That's when the most chilling words I've ever heard in my life came over the ride speakers. Get down. Active shooter. We ducked down and were absolutely terrified. My oldest cousin's boyfriend was crouching down saying that we needed to get the F out of there. But considering the line we were in was elevated and faced directly where everyone was running from, we knew we couldn't stay there. After a minute of sitting there, a girl from above us told us we need to get out of the line and leave. So we ran down the ramps of the line, passing by a crying lady holding her two crying kids who looked me in the eyes and said through

tears, this is not a drill. That's when I knew I had to be serious. We ran to a wall and waited there while crouching. I was praying that me and my family could get out of there alive. My oldest cousin was calling her parents and there were children around us who were just crying. We had to keep moving, so we got up and ran towards the back of the park to find the emergency exits. My cousin's boyfriend asked an employee where we could find one but they didn't respond. They just stared at him blankly. We decided to follow a mob to the horse trails where the stage coach goes around. We ran up a large ramp on the trail so we could get to the front of the park.

Suddenly we were told to go back and get down. People were running back and we all thrashed around until we were all sat down on the floor. I saw the police outside the park and lights of the park were turned off other than the decorative lighting. We were sitting ducks. If a shooter was in the park, we were out in a high, open, visible area. I called my mom and explained the situation but all she could do was tell me to leave where I was but she didn't understand that if I ran back or forward I'd be right in the path of the shooter. I looked around to see hysterical people. A father was having a breakdown because his daughter wasn't with him, a girl was crying

because she was alone with her little brother, and the one that got me the worst was a little boy who came to the park to celebrate his birthday, sobbing and telling me that he just wanted to see his daddy again. I tried to reassure him that he'd be alright and that he'll see his father again, but that he has to stay quiet and behind us. Earlier, my one cousin let her little sister wander off with her two friends while we went to ride the roller coaster and we had no idea where she was, so they ran off by themselves to go and look for her. We were stuck up there for 10 or 20 minutes. My youngest cousin was crying and her sister was going to start crying after seeing her. It was just chaos.

But eventually a group of people came from behind us to cross the bridge. We followed them to the bottom of the ramp, to which we were met by an employee who informed us the shooting was a drive-by and that we were safe to leave the park. We walked out, all shaken up and my mom told me that we should still be careful as they could come back. Once we got to our car, we made sure our one cousin was alright. They found their sister and her friends in a candy shop, hidden with a ton of kids crying. Once we got on the freeway, we were home free, and could finally breathe. The whole experience was traumatic, to say the least. While we may not have been in too much danger looking back, not knowing where the shooter was and the panic of all the people

in the park combined left all of us hesitant to go back to an amusement park for a long, long while. The The year was 2001. I was a very naive 18-year-old female at the time who had grown up in a tiny community in deep south Mississippi. Population at the time was around 411. It was one of those places where everyone went to school K-8 in their respective community throughout the county. Then once high school came, everyone from the entire county either went to the public high school or the small private school in the city within the county. Of course, by this time in my life, I was out of school and working at one of the convenience stores on the outskirts of this little country town.

But as small town USA goes, if you stay in that town, you will always see people you went to school with on a regular basis, whether it's in passing or hanging out with your friends. But anyway, I would work 2pm to 10pm a couple of nights a week and weekends from open to close. I was never left at the store alone. Due to some robberies in the past, my boss, Lee, was always there in the office monitoring the CCTV just in case. Every afternoon around 4, this guy, Chris, that I had grown up riding the bus with, would come in and buy a black and mild and a couple 40s. I never knew him personally. He had a sister and they were both very shy and quiet throughout our school years. Well, I'd be nice and speak to him each day. And each day, like

clockwork, Lee would come out of the office after Chris left and say, something's wrong with that boy. I'd always reply to Lee and say, be nice, he's just shy. He would respond, I'm telling you, something's just not right with him. Well, as months went on, Chris and I would talk a little more until one evening, he'd ask me if I wanted to go ride and smoke with him after work. I said, sure, I'll be done at 10. I mean, it's not like there was a lot more to do back then so why not. I generally got a ride for my sister after work. She worked just across town and our schedules were similar so this night in particular my sister shows up and as I'm about to tell her to go ahead I got this sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach. Something was telling me to get in with my sister and go home so that's what I did.

She asked me to drive so I hopped in and as we were leaving the parking lot Chris was pulling into the parking lot to pick me up. I got out of there before he noticed it was me in that car. It was really strange I'd never had that feeling before but I just knew that I couldn't get in that car with him. The next morning as some kids were coming into school at that small private school I'd mentioned earlier, they saw something strange at one of the gates. Well, curiosity got the best of them, so they went over to check it out. And that's where they saw her.

A half-nude lady who had been mutilated in some very disturbing ways Just tossed out like trash Of course news spread like wildfire in a small town And by noon that day everyone had heard about this poor lady And how she had been dumped like trash for these poor kids to find I went into work that day as usual And my boss comes in a little later He put his stuff down in the office and says to me, I told you there was something wrong with that boy.

It was him. Apparently after I left the store, that night he picked up a lady who was having car trouble, and he did those horrific things to her. He was picked up by police that morning after a local ER doctor called them to report a suspicious incident that happened between he and Chris in the wee mornings of the hour. Chris had come into the ER with a large wound in his hand from a knife. His demeanor was strange and he had actually threatened the doctor. He told him if he hurt him while stitching his wound, he would kill him.

So it didn't take the police long to put two and two together. At that moment, I knew that little voice in my head had saved me from a night of terror and apparent death. Over the years I've thought back to that night and felt guilt because it was supposed to be me in that car. It still makes me tear up as I write this. I can only imagine what those last few hours were like for her on this earth. My advice to any young lady or gents, if your gut tells you don't go, then don't go. Be safe out there. You never know what someone is capable of. This happened to me in 2014, on my way to my great-grandparents' house in Goose Creek, South Carolina. We had left in the late morning at around 11am to try and get there before dinner.

Our whole reason behind going was for a cruise vacation my great grandmother had paid for. It was going to be me, my mother, my father, my aunt, my other aunt, my great grandfather, and my great grandmother, along with a few other friends of my great grandmother's. In the car was my mother and I, along with most of our luggage. My father was coming a few days later due to work stuff, so we decided to drive out that day to get there early and catch up on family drama and the usual. My mother had just finished packing the car and she called me down the stairs to get in the car with a bag of entertainment things. I came rushing down, excited to go on a road trip and to see my family, since at that time they hadn't caused many of the problems that push us apart today.

We started our drive on some scenic back roads before getting towards the inner city and hopping onto the highway. In this story, I was only 7, so I'm still blissfully naive and unaware of many things in the world. I'm also fuzzy on the details of the persons involved so the descriptions of the clothing and what not may be a bit skewed. I was mainly focused on Minecraft and collecting beanie booze at the time rather than the dangers of reality and strange people. After about two hours of us being on the road, I told my mom I needed the bathroom. I had drank about two water bottles and my bladder was complaining. And since we were still near the busy city area, there were plenty of gas station corner stores that we could stop at. My mom asked if I was hungry as well, to which

I excitedly said yes since this meant I got junk food which I didn't get often. So we pull off at an exit and come across a QT gas station not long after. I'm bouncing out of my seat with excitement, ready to grab my favorite chips and candy and a sugary drink, which I know my mom will later regret letting me have. We get out of the car, my mom grabs her purse and we head inside to the bathrooms. My mom waited outside patiently for me to use the restroom and after a few minutes I came out and we walked around grabbing snacks and drinks. I grabbed dill pickles, lays, rollo candies, cheetos, some sausage sticks, beef jerky, and a Sprite and water from the cooler sections. My mom had a handful of things as well and went up to the counter and stood in line. While waiting to check out, I counted the cars in

the parking lots and how many of each brand there were, since I was super obsessed with cars back then. My mom tugged my arm a bit as the line moved up, so I followed her like the clingy seven-year-old that I was. We get up to the counter, greet the cashier, pay for our things, and leave with two bags of snacks and drinks. I was giddy with a big grin on my face the whole time, knowing that I would be set for the rest of the trip with these very rare treats. As we finish up at the counter, a man in a red Nike hoodie, black sweats, black shoes, and sunglasses comes into the station. I took particular notice of him because of the fact that he was wearing sunglasses indoors. He walks casually up to the

counter with a warm smile on his face and rests his arms on the counter. My mom notices him as well and gives him the short hey smile that you give strangers when you don't want to start conversation. He doesn't notice and looks over at the cashier and this is when things go south, real quick. The man playfully smacks the counter and says in a friendly tone, give me all your money. The cashier looks at him confused, since the man acted like he knew the cashier. The guy gives the cashier a few seconds before becoming serious, slamming his hands on the counter, pulling out a gun, and demanding money again.

This time he's very serious, and he demands in no longer a joking tone. My mom begins to drag me out of the store while I stare in confusion and almost awe at what's happening before me. She throws me into the car, not literally, but you know what I'm getting at, and quickly speeds out of the parking lot. The last thing I saw of the gas station was the man putting his gun to the back of the cashier's head and yelling something inaudible to him. It's been seven years since that incident and we did call the cops that day but never really ever got to see closure.

All I know is that gas stations still make me nervous and give me an angsty vibe. The last I saw and heard is that that QT had been torn down and a new building erected in its place. I know, not the dramatic chaotic ending some of you might have hoped for, but this is still a traumatic experience for me, and I often am left wondering, whatever happened to that poor gas station clerk? This happened around the year 2000. About a year after this took place, I started dating one of these friends and that's when I first heard about this dog-wolf story.

I have since asked each friend over the years and miles apart and they all remember the same exact encounter. Before my ex was even my boyfriend, let's call him Jay, he and our other friends were about 17-18 years old. At that age I remember it being an adventure to find a place to smoke. Let's hike to blank and go puff. Ah, the good old days when we got away from parents and planned a day around smoking. It was Jay and his best friend Bea and their girlfriends S and M. The four of them decided to drive to Mount Pisgah, a beautiful wooded area outside of Eugene, Oregon. It's more of a hill but it's nature and it's prime for sure. I've been out there many times growing up and I know exactly what trail they were on, the main one that connects the parking lot to the river. They had driven in B's little white

sedan, parked in the parking lot and then walked to the river. On the way to the river from the lot there is a very small bridge that crosses a small creek. The group spent the day out there, swimming and puffing, puffing and swimming, just being typical Oregonian teens. I can imagine the hunger is what drove them to go home after a few hours as the sun began to set. Either activity alone is bound to get someone hungry, let alone both. So, they walked along the well-worn main dirt path to the parking lot. This path has since been paved according to Google Maps. It doesn't take them but 20 minutes or so for them to get back to the little footbridge by the parking lot that they had crossed when they hiked in.

When they reached the small footbridge near the parking lot, Bea looked out into the vast field between them and the wooded mountain and noticed a huge dog near the tree line, about 100 yards away. They all later described it as the biggest dog they had ever seen. The dog was just sitting there, not looking scary, just looking like a humongous friendly dog. It was starting to get dark and from M's and J's descriptions and the drawings she did for me later in 2005, it was very shaggy and furry. I may even still have that notebook where she drew the dog thing, if I ever find it I'll post it. My friends continued to walk across the small wooden bridge and one of the girls

screamed. The big dog was now on its hind legs, standing much closer than when they had seen it just a couple of seconds earlier. It had traversed most of the large field in the seconds it took to get across this ten foot long bridge. Whatever this thing was, it was fast, quiet, and stealthy. My four friends ran to the car and they had the classic cliche, I can't get the keys in because B was fumbling madly for the keys. At this point, the dog was standing, on its legs legs at the very edge of the parking lot looking at them. Still had the dog face, still had the dog body, it just was standing up. They never saw it walking on all four or just two. It was like every time they looked up it was just standing there closer.

As Jay had said, every time they looked up, he was just closer but never completely moving. All of them recounted how surreal it was to see a dog standing on its hind legs. I don't know if it ran for a few ticks and then stood up again at intervals in the field, but that's the way they described it. Many times I asked them, are you sure it wasn't just a bear? No, it was definitely a dog standing on hind legs. A big dog that was stalking them. Also, this was in Lane County, Oregon in the year 2000. There are few if any bears out there.

It would be odd, but then again, I wasn't there. The kids got into the car and sped off, leaving the pisgah dog to his own business. I've never had a reason to doubt any of their stories. In fact, S doesn't like to talk about the incident at all because it's just apparently too creepy for her to recall. It was around this time last year, the prime time of the pandemic. I didn't want to do schoolwork so I went with my mom to go grocery shopping. But of course, like almost every teenager, I went into one store and got bored. So not wanting to go shopping anymore, I just told my mom that I wanted to stay in the car and that I could watch my sister.

Although my mom said yes, my sister didn't want to stay in the car and that I could watch my sister. Although my mom said yes, my sister didn't want to stay in the car with me and started to throw a fit. Not wanting to have to listen to my sister complaining on the ride home, my mom just said whatever and took her in the store. After about 30 minutes in the car, my mom finally comes out of the store. I was about to say, geez, took long enough as a joke, but I was cut off by my mom saying, you should have come in. Thinking something funny happened, I asked her why. And what she said next froze me to the core and sent a chill down my spine. I think human traffickers are trying to steal Mary. I asked what happened, my eyes wide and looking at my sister, oblivious to this fact. And following is what my mom said happened. They were strolling down the part of Walmart where sports balls and stuff were. There wasn't anyone other than them in the aisles, or so my mom

thought. My mom got the feeling as if she was being watched. So my mom, being smart not to alert her watchers, she stops stops the cart pretending to look at the things on the shelf. Out of the corner of her eye she saw two men that were around 5'10 with hoodies and baseball caps on. She thought it was creepy and started to walk away. That's when she noticed one of the men was really close to Mary and the other less than two inches behind her. My sister was just six so my mom thought they were being creepy towards her. My mom was about to spin around to slap the dude behind her but just before she does, she thinks to herself not to let Mary out of her sight. Mom picks up the pace and gets to a part of

the store where a few more people are. She turns and notices that they both stopped and were walking away but they weren't purchasing anything and were just leaving the store empty-handed. My mom sighed in relief and checked out. I asked her where she got the idea that there was going to be some type of human trafficking, but apparently there had been a slew of kidnappings occurring in that specific area and potentially even at that Walmart. We do live right on the border. I thought to myself if I had gone in there with my mom and sister that they would have been more safe and I really wish I had gone. But because of my selfishness, I could have been the reason my sister wouldn't be here now. My mom after that day also changed in some way because she actually bought a gun to

protect her and us. As I said, this might not be as scary as other ones, but it's just more the connotation of what could have happened. But nonetheless, it's kept me away from Wally World, especially in that area, for quite some time. My mom worked at Walmart and she was being harassed by an employee. Guy was your typical idiot who offered my mom to quote unquote whoop my brother and I and kick us out. When he learned she was widowed and my brothers and I were struggling to find work. This probably would have already been a bad gamble on his end since my older brother and I worked in the woods frequently and did lots of heavy moving for people. He would often make comments that creeped my mom out. I told her to report him to her boss, to labor and industries and to the police. One night my mom let me borrow her truck and I dropped her off

and went to pick her up later. We were going to do a range day with my friends and teach a friend of mine's fiance gun safety and how to shoot. I'm also a licensed concealed carrier. I rarely carry other than hunting or going to the range. I pull up to pick my mom up and I see the dude she was talking about. He was smoking and looked at us as he stood. My mom then handed me money and told me to grab a few things. I threw my jacket on to cover up my holster and walked in. I noticed he immediately followed me around, glaring at me and snarling, like as if he was about to fight. And every section of the store he was there, so I just decided to move

through a few others. I talked to a young female associate, just some nonsense with her to catch his reaction. He was clinching something and staring. The associate felt uncomfortable as she kept looking at him. I moved and he followed until I cut off to the checkout. I got my things and left and as soon as I got back my mom unlocked the door. Meanwhile I was burning up as my jacket of choice was my heavy car heart so I was unzipping it and my mom looked worried as I heard footsteps coming. I turned to see him aggressively walking at me but then he sees the holster and he stops. Excuse me, can I help you with something? I inquire, kind of forgetting I got my holster on still. He zips over to this rusty truck and

gets in and waits. My mom is very scared. I see a cigarette light up and he's still just sitting there waiting. My mom immediately tells me, go to the passenger side. I sit down and pull my phone out and I'm ready to call the police. My mom starts driving. He immediately cuts us off and drives off down the road. We see his truck sitting on the side of the highway as we drove by, like he was just waiting there. My mom immediately floored it and had me pump gas for her when we got to the station. I left my gun in there for her as she locked the doors. Unbeknownst to my mom, I called the night manager and told her about the aggressive, threatening employee. He was shocked and I made it clear that if I see that employee again, or if I'm followed or harassed, I'm suing the store and its management

for allowing dangerous behavior in their store by employees. And apparently this was the final straw since Walmart managers let employee-on-employee harassment slide, but if it's employee-on-customer harassment, the employee is immediately dropped. I got back in the pickup and my mom drove until we got home. The next morning I filed a follow-up complaint on this guy to the staff and they said he's fired and banned from the property and threatened legal charges. My mom came back and seemed even happier. She informed me that the creep had been fired. Apparently this had been an ongoing thing for him, I don't even have the full context to the degree in which he had been harassing other employees,

but the fact that he tried to follow my mother and me on the highway and only stopped whenever he saw that I had a firearm, it just truly makes you wonder, what did he have planned? So a few years ago, I, a 17-year-old female at the time, would attend community college at the outskirts of my hometown. I would take an hour and a half long bus drive because both my parents worked and my other siblings were too young to drive. The outskirts of my town, despite being the literal outskirts, are more populated than you'd expect, with strip malls and apartment buildings. The bus would drop me off about four blocks from my university, which isn't too far. I always enjoyed those few minutes I had to myself. Gave me time to dissociate, I suppose you could say. Anyway, this one time I left my phone at the library, like a true idiot. Using my brother's phone, I called a friend who

worked at the school library during the late evening shift about 7 to 9, and he'd said he'd bring my phone to me. But he lived closer to the college than I did, so I told him I'd just meet him at his shift and pick it up myself. He said okay and I boarded the bus at around 6. Now I get off the bus at my usual spot and the place looked deserted. I'd never been there that late at night and maybe it was because it was a weekday that people were home or I'm not really sure. I had my brother's phone in my pocket and I just clutched it tighter and tighter, picking up my speed until I was practically jogging. I'm nearing to a corner when a flash of light goes off to my right. There in the shadows is a slimy grimy looking man.

He's balding with a tourist shirt unbuttoned halfway, showing off his chest hair. He was balding with a tourist shirt unbuttoned halfway, showing off his chest hair. He was wearing sunglasses at night, was wearing some gold jewelry, and was probably borderline morbidly obese. Just picture the word sleazy as a person. And most importantly, he had just taken a picture of me. In the instant that I saw the flash go off, I knew it was coming from his phone. Now, I think it's important to understand our positioning. He was pressed against a building to my right, right at the corner I had to turn. I was about 10 feet away from him. To my left, on the same side of the street, was a car with blacked out windows and no license plates,

directly across the sidewalk from the man. The car was parked with the driver's seat facing me so it was on the wrong side of the road because America drives on the right side as opposed to the left. I had slowed down at that point as I began to debate my next move. Cross the street and continue walking, make a break for the school, turn 180 and leave my phone at the library, or approach the potentially dangerous gentleman. I did the stupidest possible thing and approached this man. I'm not going to sit here and give you street advice, but maybe don't do what I did. I'm alive, but I definitely got lucky. Anyway, I demanded to know what he was doing. He looked taken aback. I could see his brain short-circuiting because this tiny young girl was red in the face demanding

to know what he was doing. He eventually sputtered about how he was just standing there. I said, no, I saw you take that picture of me. His face fell. He started saying no, he hadn't done that. Why would he take that picture of me. His face fell. He started saying no, he hadn't done that. Why would he want a picture of me? I had imagined it. I asked to see his gallery, which is extremely risky because who knows what it could have seen. He slowly pulls up his gallery and as it's opening, I see a blurry picture of me in the distance.

I didn't think I'd get that far. Granted, I had been running on adrenaline during our whole interaction, but this really made me pause. I told him to delete it. Then a door slammed shut, and I just knew that it was the park car. My brain cleared up, and I hightailed it to school. I could hear a single pair of footsteps behind me, but I sure wasn't it to school. I could hear a single pair of footsteps behind me but I sure wasn't going to turn around and check who it was. The car started but they would have had to do a u-turn on a relatively narrow street just to be able to follow me and I think that's what saved my life. The fact that the car was parked facing the wrong direction. I reached the school out of breath and in tears.

My friend opened the building for me and I was crying explaining what had happened. He locked us in while we waited for the police but the sleazy guy and his buddy were never found. Anyway, my mom had gotten out of work by that point and I called her to ask to pick me up. We waited with my friend till the end of his shift and drove him home too. Needless to say, I carry mace with me everywhere I go now and am yet to find a police report

stating a guy matching his description had been arrested. To be honest, I don't think the police believed me fully, but who knows. And to this day I wonder, what would have happened if I hadn't confronted him? Would I be here to write this story out? Or did I put myself in an unnecessarily dangerous situation by doing it? And I still wonder, what was he using those pictures for? before. So a couple of years back I was living with two roommates, both women, Emily and Jenna,

in a three bedroom, three bathroom apartment. Luxury, I know. We knew each other from work and since we were all new to the city we were living in, we figured it would be the most convenient to just live with each other. I was the oldest in the apartment at 26, Emily was 23 and Jenna was 21 and let me tell you, there's a huge difference between 26 and 23 and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I'd essentially partied myself out at this point. Alcohol and I had entered into a relationship where a glass or two of wine or a nice bourbon was amenable, but anything more than that put me on my butt for the foreseeable future. Emily and Jenna still partied like college freshmen and a lot of their weekends were spent getting drunk, going out and bringing guys back

No judgment here, I'm all for empowered women doing their thing Most nights I would hang with them for the first part as they pre-gamed at the apartment and then they would go out I'd wind down and head to bed At 26 I was a card-carrying member of the old ladies society and I wasn't ashamed at all. Some might even say that I was our chapter's president. On one particular night in January, the night played out in its typical way. They headed out to a friend's house in the bars at around 9.30 and I snuggled up with a book and fell asleep at around 11.30. Fast forward to 4am and I'm awoken by some strange noises in my

room. I thought it was my hamster tater tot making noises in her cage but I knew something was very wrong when I felt my duvet being pulled off of me. My boyfriend at the time was living in a different city and he wasn't visiting this weekend so believe me when I say that I was concerned. My eyes popped open to see a pale, skinny, completely naked man pulling my covers off of me and attempting to get into bed next to me. Have you ever had the feeling that your stomach is falling out of your butt? Because yeah, that's what I felt. In that moment I was utterly and totally convinced that this was my end. I would be murdered in my own bed by a strange man all before I was able to pay off my student loans. Sorry mom, here's another $15,000 you have to worry about because our government doesn't

think death is good enough reason to forgive this. But anyways, once the initial instance of sheer terror wore off a little bit, I realized that this guy was probably a guy that Emily had brought home. Jenna was dating a guy at the time who was around fairly frequently, so I knew him, and this pale stick of a man attempting to get in bed with me was not him. Gathering all of my courage and metaphorically picking my stomach out of my butt, I tapped him on the arm. I was very careful not to let my eyes or hand drift any lower because hey, I didn't want him getting any ideas while he was intruding into my most sacred space in the apartment. And I just said, no, no, no, stop, stop.

He looked at me with those eyes that just tell you that someone is drunk out of their minds. You know, lights on, nobody home kind of deal. And cocked his head to one side like a confused puppy. Who are you here with? I said a little more forcefully. Emily? He replied, swaying a little. Yeah, no, this isn't her room.

I'm not Emily, she's across the living room. He looked at me for another second and then with slurred speech but in a tone that told me he was deeply embarrassed said, Oh, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, I'm gonna go. He turned on his heels and walked out of my room, closing the door very gently as he did and his pale butt practically glowing in the moonlight streaming from my window. I bolted out of bed and locked the door behind him. I didn't need any more surprises that night. I crawled back into bed, heart pounding and spent the next 30 minutes doing the deep breathing exercises my counselor taught me to calm myself down enough to fall back asleep. What I think happened is that he got up to pee in the middle of the night and didn't remember where Emily's room was and just so having to walk into mine mistakenly.

It's honestly a weird mistake since Emily's bathroom and her bedroom are literally right next to each other but since this guy had never been in an apartment before and he was drunker than a frat boy named Chet, I guess he got confused. In any case, he slipped out of the apartment before I got up that morning, thank god, and when I told Emily what had happened, she practically broke down she was so upset. I still lock my bedroom door to this day, even though I'm living with my boyfriend who keeps a baseball bat next to his bed just in case we have intruders. I'm glad it was a mistake, and I'm glad I wasn't harmed, but my god, it was the most scared I've ever been in my entire life. To be continued... Let me preface the story with a little background information. I am a college student majoring in engineering. I am currently away from school on a co-op rotation with a major company.

My company is headquartered in a larger city and I am working at a smaller site just north of HQ. I live in a small township in the suburbs, a gated apartment complex and a very nice area with very low crime rates. I regularly go on jogs with my music on full blast and my dog at my side. We walk around at night. It's by all accounts a very safe place to live and I felt very safe here. Until today. I woke up and got ready for work like normal. And when I got into my car, not only was it basically frozen over, but I noticed that I was low on gas. I decided not to risk it and fill up before work. Once my front and back windows defrosted just enough for me to see,

I drove a block down the road to my usual fill-up spot. It has lots of pumps and usually isn't packed and it's super close to my apartment. They also usually have lower prices than other gas stations in the area. I pull into the parking lot and there isn't another car anywhere save for a semi-truck parked by the doors and employee cars around the side. All the pumps are open. I pull up to the farthest right pump and hop out. As I'm swiping my card and doing all that stuff, another car pulls up. I didn't get a great look

at it honestly, but it wasn't shiny or new. I barely paid any attention until the car stopped at the pump on the other side of my own. You know how pumps are double-sided. Of all the open pumps, this driver chose the one connected to the one I was currently using. Not exactly perfect pandemic manners, I suppose. Still, I didn't think much of it, at least not initially. I could hear the other drivers swiping their card and entering their PIN number. I was freezing cold and just trying to hurry. I turned around and put the nozzle in the car and I stood there for a minute. Foolishly, I decided to keep my back turned. I didn't want to have any contact with that person so I tried to pretend nobody was there.

Once I filled up, I removed the nozzle and turned around, still keeping to myself and not lifting my eyes. I finished the transaction and got my receipt. While it was printing, I looked up casually. I almost felt flat on the pavement when I saw a man peering around the corner of the pump, staring at me. You know how people sometimes describe creepy people as having an inhuman quality? I never really understood that until today. The way this man looked at me sent a shiver down my spine. His eyes were cold and unyielding. He was not blinking or moving, but his gaze was growing ever more intense. There was something animalistic in the way he stared at me. I felt like a deer being watched by a mountain lion. The hairs on the back of my neck. My instincts screamed at

me to run. And this all took place in the span of just a couple of seconds but it felt like a lifetime. I quickly opened my car door. When I did, he moved his head, tilting it to the side to peer into my car. I didn't consider it at the time but he might have been looking to see if I was alone. I intentionally blocked my view of the inside of my car with my body and closed the door quickly and I locked it immediately. I mentioned earlier that my car was nearly frozen but by now the front back windows were entirely clear. The side windows however were almost still all icy. There was a single strip of clarity in the driver's side window, a result of me rolling the window down a few moments prior in an attempt to clear it off.

As I hastily buckled my seatbelt, I ventured a glance to my left. Immediately startled, I let out a sudden breath, but was almost paralyzed with fear after. The man was not only still there but he had inched closer. So close that he was directly next to my car slightly bent over like he was peering in. All I could do was stare. He was tall

with dark hair and a well-built frame. He was certainly much larger than me. He seemed a few years older than me as well, and had it not been for those eyes, I might have said that he was attractive. But those eyes were haunting, especially as they gazed at me through my window. He started to mouth words that I couldn't hear through the window, and it snapped me out of my haze, and I immediately locked all my doors. I decided immediately the logical thing to do was to get myself out of there as fast as possible and I bolted in my car.

I didn't want to give him the chance to be able to follow me and though my work has great security, I didn't want him knowing where I worked and I don't know if this man was just a creep, needed something, or something much darker, but I don't ever if this man was just a creep, needed something, or something much darker, but I don't ever want to find out. Ever. To be continued... for when I was 12 years old. It was autumn, the beginning of the school year but the weather was still uncharacteristically warm and the dark nights of northern Europe had not kicked in yet. I was playing outside with my best friend Kirsten. We were sitting and talking on the large rock in front of my apartment complex right under my window. I don't remember how long we'd been there

and till we see a man that we had not seen before walk towards us. I say man, but he had that baby face going on where he could have been anywhere from 18 to 35. At first we didn't pay him any attention, but as he reached us, he came and sat down right next to me, put his arm around me and said, Sarah, finally, where have you been? I've been looking all over for you. At this point, Kirsten laughs, thinking it's a boyfriend of mine that I didn't tell her about. Except obviously it isn't. I'd never seen this man in my life. Yes, we lived in a small town, but it wasn't small enough for you to know everybody there and I was definitely not

popular enough for strangers to know my name. Now a lot of weird things happen often in my hometown from gunfights to explosions. Kirsten and I made friends with a criminal convicted of chopping two people to pieces and we had been chased with an axe by this weird alcoholic guy who lived in the forest so we knew that some people can be extremely dangerous. And if your instincts tell you that something is wrong, you better listen to it. Except in this case, my instincts never kicked in. I didn't see this man as a threat at all. Thinking to myself that perhaps it's someone I met over the summer and made friends with, trying really hard to remember name I just turn to him and say hey how's your summer been praying that he'll say something

that'll jog my memory in regards to him his face lights up and he just starts talking about random things when I can't remember him no matter how hard I try I just say sorry but we really have to go now it's getting late and tomorrow's a school day. I say this while mentally preparing myself that he might not like it but he just smiles and says oh all right I'll see you around then. I basically drag Kirsten by the arm into my place and all the while she's still laughing and asking me why I never introduced her to my boyfriend. I shush her and tell her, enunciating every word, that I had never seen this man in my entire life. Kirsten looks at me for a bit then goes silent and just says, huh, that's really weird. I'd never seen him either.

The next day our geography class took place outside. We had to use a compass or something. I no longer remember the details of the class. Not even ten minutes into the lesson one of the boys in my class walks up to me to tell me there's a man asking for me. For a second I'm confused. The events of yesterday I already forgotten but as soon as I turn around I see the man from yesterday standing among my classmates looking at me and everything that happened the day before comes flooding back to me. Now all my classmates are naturally making fun of me asking me to introduce me to my hot boyfriend to them.

Even the teacher says jokingly that I will have to tell my boyfriend to wait until classes are over. At this point I'm really tired so I just walk up to him and tell him that I'm in class right now and he really shouldn't be on school grounds if he's not a student. He immediately tells me that he's got a car nearby and that he can drive me home. I tell him that I'm planning on walking home as the weather is nice but he's welcome to walk with my friends and I. And sure enough, after my classes end, he's right there, waiting for me. Normally I walk home with a group of four friends, so with an addition of this weird man, we can't all walk next to each other. He walks ahead of us, occasionally looking back and

asking about my school day, about my grades. Completely harmless questions. No weird compliments. No weird anything except for the fact that I still don't know who this man is. Same evening my phone rings. A call from an unknown number. I answer and I hear a familiar voice go, Hey, did you get home alright? I ask if one of my friends gave him my number and this time he sounds almost hurt when he says, no, you gave it to me. How can you not remember? Again, we talked for a little bit, mostly about my grades and school. I'm going to drag the story out too much, but this man called me every single day, followed me to school. In school, he sometimes came into the building and found me in the school corridor just to sit and talk to me.

Walked home with us after school. He found me when I was out with friends. He always knew when my extracurriculars would end. He was always there. Everywhere. Every single day. Until one day in November I left my house to go to school looking around and I couldn't see him. The whole day passed and he was nowhere to be found.

As weird as it sounds I was concerned thinking whether something had happened to him and I never did find out. As I said it's been over 16 years now and I never saw that man and everyone I spoke to about it vowed that they didn't know him either. By the way I did tell family they just told me not to encourage him and that I should ignore him. I suppose 16 years ago on Korora, I answered the question, Have you ever met someone for the first time and got the strangest feeling that the person was bad? Reading through this subreddit had me thinking back to that question, so I figured I'd share my story. Years back, I made a late night stop at a local Walmart on my way home from a friend's house. It was a quiet area, not a lot of people out and about at nearly

1am. I lived around there for years and never run into any truly criminal elements there, so I felt safe going to the store alone as a woman in my early 20s. I made eye contact with a teenage girl the second I walked in the door. She was parked on a bench by the restrooms, hugging a backpack and small purse, checking her phone with a rather desperate expression on her face. When she looked at me, I could tell that she was on the verge of panicking. After a brief second of staring at me, she went back to checking her phone and making phone calls. At the other end of the bench was a white- haired man in jeans and a t-shirt.

If I had to guess, he was probably in his late 50s or early 60s. Altogether, nothing appeared off about him. But what struck me was the fact that he never looked up as I passed. Instead, his eyes were absolutely glued to the teenage girl next to him. Not in a passive way, but like he was sizing her up for something. She was perched on the edge of the bench, angling herself away from his gaze and leaning away from him. Her body language screamed that she wanted nothing to do with him. Something about him set off warning bells in my head and I went about grabbing the items I had stopped for.

I'm normally the type of person that mills about stores aimlessly, making a point to wander each aisle just to see what's for sale. That night, however, I felt a pressing need to get in and out of the store as quickly as possible. Something in the back of my head told me to keep an eye on the man on the front bench. I moved my knife from my purse to the front pocket of my jeans where it would be easily accessible. That's how uneasy I felt being in the same building as this man. As I purchased my items I watched the pair on the front bench. The man had moved halfway across the space between them as he was trying to chat with the young woman. She was shaking her head and offering one word answers, looking like a rabbit about to bolt. As I walked past them again to leave with my purchases, she stopped me and asked

if I was headed anywhere close to my old hometown. Apparently she'd been on her way home from a trip with friends and they had made a stop to grab drinks and use the restroom. She'd gotten separated from the group and they left her at the store. The store was about a 30 minute drive from my old hometown and I knew that to get home she'd have to walk several hours along unlit stretches of rural highway. The man sitting next to her continued to leer at her but refused to look my way. While I would normally have told the girl that I was headed the opposite direction, something in the back of my head told me not to leave her alone with this man.

I agreed to take her home and she thanked me profusely and offered gas money and a cigarette. I refused both and took her home, the logical part of my brain reasoning that the girl weighed maybe 100 pounds max and was a full head shorter than I was, so if it came down to it, I could fight her off. I wasn't stupid either. I texted a few friends to let them know what I was doing and they were not happy with me. The girl mentioned her address and I knew exactly where she was talking about. It was an old quiet neighborhood where I used to play little league baseball down the street and swim in the pool a few blocks away. During the drive she told me that she'd just moved to the area with her mom and younger sisters from a larger city several hours south. She'd taken off with a few of her old friends for the weekend and her mom hadn't expected her back until the following

day so she'd silenced her phone for the night and hadn't picked up when the girl tried to call. I vaguely remember something about her mom having to work early in the morning and none of the girl's sisters were old enough to have their own phones. We arrived at our destination and the girl gave me a handshake and thanked me repeatedly, asking if there was anything she could do to repay me. I told her, yeah, do me a favor, get better friends. Looking back, I have no idea what about that man creeped me out so much, but something about him and the way he was staring at that girl got my hackles up. I thought in passing that he might have been waiting for someone else in the store, perhaps someone using the nearby restroom, but upon checking it out, struck me that I hadn't seen any other customers there, so he really had no reason

to be waiting on that bench like that, almost stalking her. I was still living with my parents at the time, so when I got home I woke my mom up and told her what happened. She hesitated, and I could see that she didn't like the idea of me giving a stranger a ride home. But in the end, she agreed that something had prompted me to take action and that I might have saved that young girl from being harassed or worse. To be continued... This happened to me when I was around 8 or 9 years old in the Philippines and to this day it still haunts me. Every year, my family and I would always go on vacation in our province and we always celebrate Christmas and New Year's there. Our house is somewhere on the mountains so trees and other nature stuff are expected to be seen. One night, me and my mother were arguing about something, I can't remember what it was,

and it was around 11pm to 12am midnight. I was so mad that I decided to run away in tears and I was not paying attention to where I was headed. I stopped on a tree to take away my anger and calm myself. After some time, I decided to go back. When I looked around, that's when I knew that I was lost in the forest. I can't remember how much time had passed, but I was still pretty calm until I heard a sound from behind. It sounds like the ground being shoveled by someone. I look behind me to see nothing. At this point, my heart is still racing. I can feel the adrenaline flowing over me. I was stupid back then, so I called out,

Is anyone there? The sound suddenly stopped. I thought to myself that I was imagining things, so I started to walk again. I then heard the sound again but this time I heard footsteps and was sure that I heard it well. When I turned around and saw a shadowy figure behind the tree and that's when my fight or flight started kicking in. I was so terrified that I froze there watching. Very bad idea. It felt like an eternity standing there in silence when the figure moved I started running for my life and shouting for help. Just like any other horror movie, I fell to the ground. The sounds started to get louder and

louder that it actually hurt my ears. It was a scream from a person. I stand up quickly and run as fast as possible. Fortunately, I found the way back to the house, crying and terrified. When I got home, I told them everything that had happened to me and they didn't believe me at first. Until one of our neighbors a while later rushed into our home to inform us that a dead body was actually found in the forest. A farmer found it when he was about to go home. He immediately called the police and they inspected it. The very next day they continued to investigate the area. They found the dead body in various pieces.

It was never identified since the killer removed the teeth and various other things. After we found out what happened, we left the place as soon as possible. Since then, we never heard from him and I don't know if they found the killer or not. Despite the incident, the place was never a good place to stay after that. Just a bad vibe, so we never returned back to our old home. My parents were so happy that I managed to escape that. I apologized to my mother and vice versa. Thankfully we're living happily now and we stopped talking about it and just allow the past to remain there. For starters, this was exactly a week ago. I was staying at a hotel for a couple of days due to personal problems. This particular day, me and one of my close friends decided to hang out after

he gets out of work that night, which was about 10pm. The distance from his house to the hotel I was staying at was no more than a five minute walk. Literally walk two blocks down two houses on the right and voila, you're there. That's very important for later on. So 10pm came and he tells me to come over and I walk there and go to his house. We smoked some blunts and hit some wax off the bong, played some video games, listened to some music and smoked the night away. Once 1.30am hit, I told him I should get going since I have business to handle later that morning. He was clearly understanding about it and offered to walk me about halfway. I declined the offer since it was only a 5 minute walk. He walked me to his backyard gate and from there he opened the gate and we said our goodbyes and I started heading home.

For more context, this area isn't so bad but it also isn't good. Basically the borderline of the bad and good side of my city. Plus, the streets are beyond lonely at this time of night. On top of that, these streets are already lonely as it is. There are hardly any street lights in this specific street. So I'm on this street turning onto the next street which leads straight to the hotel. As I'm walking down this street I suddenly get spooked off guard by a car engine that was parked right next to me. The engine was so loud I'm sure it had to wake someone up.

I start walking a little faster now. The car is suddenly with the tires screeching and all, full throttle reverse, and does a U-turn. I'm shocked at this point because I don't know what to think. I'm stoned to the bone walking home, and I'm trying my best not to let my anxiety and paranoia take over me. I try my best to play it cool as if I wasn't phased by this, but what happened next is when I lost it. The person in the car with their lights on pulls down the window and yells me,

hey you, where are you headed? I look back and what I saw was two people wearing clown masks. One of them showed me a knife while the other just stared at me. Once I turned around I booked it. I heard the guy screaming still saying stop or I'll die but I didn't care. I ran and ran until I got to the hotel. Once I reached the hotel the car still chased me until the parking lot. I opened the door for the hotel and as soon as I did I heard car doors open. I quickly got inside and clicked the elevator into my unfortunate self. It wasn't on the base floor meaning it took at least 40 seconds for it to come down. I had to think quick. I was at the lobby. The lobby has a diner

patio type thing where it is restricted due to COVID. I dove into that section and hid behind a plant in a tree. This is literally 10 feet away from the elevator. As I'm hiding there gathering my thoughts, I hear the hotel doors open. Two pairs of footsteps can be heard loud and clear. I heard one of the guys say, he can't be far. He has to be here somewhere. The other guy responds, Hey, we should just book it. We know where he stays. We can just get him some other time. The first male voice then says,

Come on, man. We needed to get one guy. That's it. Then they heard the manager talk on the microphone, and the next couple of words is what relieves me. You two better leave right now. The cops are on their way. We have footage of all of words is what relieves me. You two better leave right now, the cops are on their way, we have footage of all of this. You're too stupid. With that, both stormed out and I heard a car screeching their tires and zoom away. The manager then comes out of the front desk office area and comes to where I'm at. He asks if I'm okay, if anything happened to me and I said no.

Police did come and the following morning they asked me questions. I'm familiar with the car, the car was a 2019 Dodge Challenger, black on black with tints on all windows. The cops then told me if I'm 100% sure because this car specifically is linked to a murder about 40 minutes away. A woman was kidnapped and found dead by this train station. The witnesses claimed seeing this car right before the incident was reported and that news shook me to the core. They told me that they would keep me updated but I got no follow up ever since. Do I think the same thing could have happened to me on that lonely 2am night? I don't know, but I'd rather not know. And I'd like to think that I had a guardian angel that night. I live quite a distance off the road in an unremarkable house on private property. My neighbors are all older family members who go to bed extremely early and whose children are already grown and out of the house. In summary, there are no mischief makers to play pranks on us here.

A few months ago, my mother and I stayed up late one evening watching television together. Around 3am, I turned the television off and decided to go to bed. As I was leaving the room, I began to hear what sounded like carnival music playing outside of my house in the front yard. It was loud and close. My mother heard it too and immediately went to the window to investigate. She couldn't see anything but darkness. Everyone else was either asleep for the night or away on vacation. The lights were off in their houses and none of them would be caught dead listening to anything but country music. We were miles from the nearest city so it wasn't the product of noise pollution.

You can hear when a car is pulled up in the yard but there was no sound of a car. The silence where we live is usually deafening. All you can hear is the ringing in your ears. Where did this song come from? Who was playing it and why? I was very unsettled by the idea of a stranger in our yard playing carnival music, as such suggests malicious intent. My father and uncle later mentioned that 20 years ago when my parents first moved in, the electrician had come to install a ceiling light and stopped in the middle of his work, saying he could hear Pink Floyd playing in the front yard. Neither my father nor uncle could hear it. My father is a bit hard of hearing,

my uncle is much older, so they laughed it off and thought the man was nuts. But the electrician was freaked out. He kept opening the door and trying to find the source of the noise to no avail. Then it hit me. The song I had heard that night was Pink Floyd's Cirrus Minor, the part that sounds like carnival music. I played the song for my mother and she began freaking out saying, yes, yes, that's what I heard. Who sits in my yard at night at 3am in the middle of nowhere playing the same song, which isn't even a popular song, 20 years later with no car? Where did they come from? They would have had to have walked several miles to get here.

Aside from this, the only other strange thing we experience that would suggest an intruder is that we feel and hear knocking on the living room window late at night around the same hour, sometimes so intense that the entire wall of the house is rattled and it sends the couch against it into a reclining position. There are no nearby trees that tap the glass, and no animals except a human could possibly reach it. Fortunately, this has stopped over the last few weeks. To be continued... on a single mom. We had a guy quit earlier this week and we thought he skipped town. This guy always gave me the creeps. He was at least 59 to 63 I'd say. For a bit more backstory I am open about being a true crime fan. I listen to true crime podcasts regularly at work.

Well one day he told me to look up a more current missing woman's case. She was a mom, brown hair and brown eyes like me and she went missing right before he moved to my town. I hope I'm overthinking this but last night my mom took my son for the night and this guy knew that I was alone on Thursday nights due to small talk in the office. As I was closing my curtains due to it getting dark and you can see clearly into my house, I saw his van down the office. As I was closing my curtains, due to it getting dark and you can see clearly into my house, I saw his van down the street. I locked the doors and had my gun with me in my chair watching TV. Now, this is a small town that I live in so my friends and family will stop over randomly but they never knock. So when I heard a knock on the door I loaded my gun, looked out the window for a vehicle but there was nothing. Whiskey, my Yorkie, started growling,

which he never growls. Barks like a little dog but I never hear him growl. Something just wasn't right. Even though my ex-husband taught me all sorts of self-defense. I called the police and with snow on the ground there were footprints going along all around my house. He left a gate open and I hadn't heard from the police if they found him yet. I lock my doors more often now and have friends and family call before they come over. To be continued... and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you again soon. We'll be right back. Tires will get you through tough weather in a variety of terrains. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Find a Toyo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations.

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