The Lets Read Podcast - 162: SWIMMING IN SHARK INFESTED WATERS | 35 True Scary Stories | EP 150

Episode Date: November 22, 2022

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Summer Vacations, Urban Exploration, & Paranormal Stories... 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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Find a Michelin TreadExperts dealer near you at TreadExperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca. I'm sorry. I used to be into urban exploration in a big way, and growing up in Detroit after the crash meant I had no shortage of places to crack. I knew urbex could be dangerous, you know, some might tell you that's part of the appeal, but my derp days end with a visit to the old Packard plant. Now a little background, the Packard plant is an automobile factory that shut down way back in the 50s, but it was still being used as a general storage facility until the late

90s when business began to die out. Then finally, I think it was in like 09 or 10, and the last remaining businesses threw in the towel, and the site became officially and completely abandoned. I heard of a few all-night raves being held there for a while, but then as the years went by and disrepair made the place more of a hazard than an adult playground, people stopped using it for underground parties. That's when the place became the kingdom of just two kinds of people. Meth heads looking for any leftover copper wiring, and urban explorers such as myself. Since the Packard plant was right on our doorstep, we put it off for a while, figuring we could crack it whenever we wanted. But when we finally did, it proved to be a huge, huge mistake.

Right away, we knew something was up when we started to smell this strong chemical smell coming from somewhere on site. But it wasn't like it was the first time we'd been somewhere that smelled gross, and nothing had managed to turn us back before, so we pushed on. Obviously, we were looking for the best hero shot as we call it, which is somewhere we can get the best photograph of ourselves exploring the ruins. So we're scouring the plant while weighing up our options. That's when we came across all these big old storage warehouses,

and it was there that the stink seemed to increase like tenfold. It was so pungent that I felt like the insides of my nostrils were burning and when we checked the last warehouse, we found the culprit. This huge pile of chemical drums had just been dumped in the middle of the barren space and the concrete around it was drenched in what had to be the source of the smell. I took a few photos, intending to anonymously email them to whatever environmental protection agency wanted to deal with it. Then when I turned to show them to my buddy, he gives me this weird look. Dude, your nose. I knew what he was referring to before I even put a hand in my face,

as I suddenly felt something warm and wet dripping over my lips. A nosebleed. The freaking chemicals in the air were intense enough to give me a nosebleed. We just got out of there, and I felt kind of terrible for the next 24 hours, but I couldn't exactly afford to go see a doctor, so I just kind of forgot about it. I had no idea how bad it was until a few of us were driving to get dinner one night and my buddy farted in the car on the way back.

Everyone but me is acting like he just pooped out a dead raccoon or something, but I'm sitting there in the back like, what are you guys talking about, it's not even that bad. A few more incidents like that actually prompted me to pony up for a doctor's appointment, and what do you know, I'd lost 70% of my olfactory senses, which is medical speak for my sense of smell. The doctor said that judging from the damage done, compared to the length that we'd been exposed, about an hour more on site and I'd have been coughing up blood. The other guys had complaints in the days that followed, but nothing like I had.

I'm just lucky, I guess. It sucks, but it doesn't really affect me too much in my day-to-day life. I can still smell stuff, it's just not as intense. And the silver lining was the pictures we took caused a small-scale scandal in the EPA over toxic waste dumping, forcing the city to actually do something about it so it wouldn't happen to anyone else. The point is, do yourself a favor, folks. If you're out doing urbex, always, always bring respiratory protection. Back when I was about 14 or 15, me and two friends of mine were exploring the forest that surrounds our city. We are from Belarus and our city was basically carved out of the forest during the time of the Tsar.

It was also the center of some very heavy fighting during the Great Patriotic War or World War II to everyone else. So there are parts of the forest that are home to old bunkers, trenches, and even abandoned weapons and vehicles. Most of the more dangerous items have been removed over the years, but there are still plenty for us to explore and loot. But as time went on and our little adventures ate up more and more of the forest, we were forced to go deeper and deeper into the woods in order to get our exploration fix. That's how we found the old military barracks. And unlike many of the other places we found, we never, ever went back to the barracks again. It began when we came across a

rather steep hill. The trees were growing in a way that meant you could grab hold of the roots in order to pull yourself up, and we were very excited because we hadn't been that deep into the forest before. The steep slope became something of a natural boundary for us, and passing it was something of a milestone. We scaled the hill, walked through the trees for about an hour, and then there they were. A collection of large, run-down buildings that were in the process of being reclaimed by nature. In the past, it had only been the odd pillbox or roughly dug trench that betrayed the bloody conflict the area had once seen. But to see some old Soviet military complexes was very exciting. roughly dug trench that betrayed the bloody conflict the area had once seen.

But to see some old Soviet military complexes was very exciting. It took us a while to pluck up the courage to finally wander into the big dark buildings, but when we did, we soon grew more comfortable and began to split up to further explore the barracks. I remember digging through an old footlocker but finding nothing of note as the barracks must have been stripped and abandoned long, long ago. Then out of nowhere, heavy footfalls had me spinning around to see my friend moving quickly through the barracks towards me. I asked him if he was okay, only to see that he had this nervous expression on his face. That's when he says, I don't think we're alone here. You have to understand,

my friend was always doing things like that, pranking me in all kinds of ways before laughing how scared I got. I told him to shove his practical jokes up his backside but he insisted. I swear to God, I think I saw someone in the other building there. Again, I was about to tell him to pull the other one and that I was too old to fall for his ghost stories anymore. But I was silenced by what was undoubtedly a man's scream. It was loud, very loud, and it was close too.

It was a scream that sounded more like one of terror than one of pain, and the sound of it caused all the hairs on our necks and arms to raise before we ran out of the barracks and through the woods. I'd never ran like that before, and I've never ran like that since. It amazes me how strong and how much stamina the body gets when fear enters the equation. That and how haphazardly we treated things that we had much respect for previously. Like the big hill, before we had treated it with reverence, but in fear, we practically slid down the thing in seconds, getting scratched by roots and covered in dirt in the process. We had no idea if whoever screamed was following us, but we were also in no mood to look back and find out. We didn't actually stop running until we could see the buildings of our city again, and even then, I almost vomited from all the exertion. We never found out who was back there,

as we didn't return for many, many years, and by that time it was deserted. But we think it was some kind of vagrant who was living there and simply wanted to scare us off by pretending to be a specter or something. Well, it worked, I know that much, and it made for the scariest experience I've ever had while exploring the area around my hometown. I grew up near this old housing estate that was due for demolition. When I was still a single digit age, people still lived there but as I got to about 14, people were moved out to other estates

and the place was basically just abandoned. Yet this only opened it up for curious teenagers to explore and we carved out a series of little sit-offs as we called them in each abandoned building. Those consisted of maybe one or two rooms where me and my mates would chill, get drunk, smoke up, whatever mischief was the order of the day. It also provided us with a place to go whenever our parents got a bit too much for us, nothing the average teenager doesn't go through. It was just nice to have somewhere to escape to, even if that place didn't consist of rust, splinters, and broken bits of just about everything. So one morning, we're on our way to school when we spot the local cash and carry bloke emptying his boot of some new stock.

Then boom. As we're walking past and he walks inside, we see the six packs of fosters he's got underneath the big wholesale bags of crisps. Then, in one fell swoop, swiped. We each had six cans in our grip and were legging it away from the shop. We were so fast that the bloke didn't even notice us. I mean, he definitely knew it was missing, but to him, about twelve cans of lager just disappeared in a poof of smoke. Trouble was, there was no way we'd be able to go to school with our bags full of beers. We'd be found out. So I volunteered to run down to the abandoned housing estate, stash the beers in one of our littlest dens. Then we could just go back later that day and pick them up. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. So, I told my mates to tell our teacher that my dad had a breakdown or something, then went to drop off the booze at our little stash.

Cut to the end of the school day at about 3.30pm and we're headed down to the abandoned flats to grab our stolen loot. It's just me and this lad Chris who went to grab it all, while we agreed to meet the others on this big sports field that we used to hang out on. We'd have all just gone to the stash, but it was a sunny day, so we were in no mood to just sit in some old dusty derelict. So as we walked into the flats, we had this big long corridor where all the doors had been busted in, and our stash was one of the last ones on the corridor. So we're walking past all these old flats when my mate stops dead and I turn to see what stopped him and he just points into one of the flats. A little bit of light was getting in the dirty windows, just enough to see that a noose

was hanging from a support beam. An actual noose, made out of electrical wire and it's just hanging there, like it's waiting for someone All it took was a little bit of noise coming from down the corridor and we're legging it out of there, totally beerless Needless to say, our desire for underage drinking trumped our fear and we ended up heading back inside Albeit very, very cautiously. It was totally silent and we half expected to go back in to see a body hanging from the noose but when we reached the room again, it was actually gone. Trying to stay as quiet as we could, we grabbed the beers and snuck out again and either there wasn't anyone around or the owner of the noose was hiding because we didn't see anything as we left. Obviously, the first thing we did when we got down to the field was telling everyone what

we'd seen, but they just dismissed it as us trying to make up scary stories or something. I remember me and Chris kind of laughing like, okay whatever don't believe us, we know what we saw. And the takeaway was us just feeling annoyed and amused that they didn't believe us, we know what we saw. And the takeaway was us just feeling annoyed and amused that they didn't believe us. But that only meant that it took a while for what we'd seen to actually sink in. Someone had been looking on, topping themselves, and in a way, we'd stopped it. Or at least, just delayed it. We never found out who it was either. None of us heard anything about anyone being found dead or anything like that so I'd like to think that we helped that person re-evaluate their situation and fingers crossed they decided against it in the end. But still,

I sometimes worry that we didn't help as much as we thought we did and that someone else was unlucky enough to discover someone hanging when we'd be so, so close to those unlucky people being us. To be continued... an old skeleton, or the place I cracked was haunted, that's not actually anything to be afraid of. Not unless you're a dope who believes in ghosts. Whereas me and my buddies found something genuinely frightening and genuinely dangerous that might have actually killed us. And it came in the form of an iron lung. We cracked this old sanitarium a while back and getting up onto the roof made for some incredible hero shots. But then this one room we bust in and immediately one of us is like out, out, out, don't breathe, just out. She also happened to be the most experienced so we listened and good god, it was a good thing we had her with us because if not,

I'd have been all over those things trying to figure out what in god's name it was. She's referring to these big old steel drum looking things that turned out to be something called an iron lung. But she recognized that not only did those things used to treat patients with tuberculosis, one of the gnarliest diseases ever, but that the germs that cause the disease can survive for years in places they're concentrated. After that, we just got out of there. Didn't even bother to hit up the morgue to see if we could get any cool shots,

because as much as those shots and untouched derps are important to us, nothing is more important than safety. So please, if you ever do urbex, do your research, people, and always bring along a more experienced explorer, if possible. This all happened back when I was in 10th grade and I was staying with my aunt and uncle in the country. They lived out on a ranch so sometimes me and my cousins would take their four wheelers out into the trails to do some exploring. One time we came across this old wooden bridge and jumped off the four wheelers to soak up the scene. It was honestly amazing. Even an uncouth little thug like me had to admit how beautiful it was.

I'm talking warm afternoon sun, bird song, the rush of water down the river. To say it was picturesque would be the understatement of the century. Then, all of a sudden, one of us spots this metal wire that had been tied to one part of the bridge. Curiosity got the better of us, so we decided to give it a tug and see what the deal was. Right away, we can feel the weight attached to it, so it's obvious that it's tied to something that's submerged under the water. It took two of us pulling at once to drag the thing up, but when we do, we realize the wire is tied to a deer skull. A pretty big one too and it was only half rotten. We didn't even pull it all the way up and we could see all the creepy crawlies living off its decomposing flesh. It was legitimately one of the most horrifying things I'd ever seen. Then I just hear one of my cousins shouting,

Yo, look! We turn to see what looks like an axe stuck in the middle of a tree stump down by the river. We walk to the end of the bridge and hike our way down to the river and lo and behold, this is not an axe. It was a deer's leg that had been chopped off and stuck in the dead center of the tree stump pointing straight up at the sky. I'd never seen anything like that before, and to say it put the fear of God into me would be a whole nother understatement. We rushed back to the top of the bridge and decided there was no way a deer died by itself and put its leg in a tree stump and tied its skull to a metal wire. So it wasn't long before one of my cousins realized that someone was hunting out of season. Then right as two of my cousins are discussing whether to take the head with them or not , we see some hillbilly looking guys appear through the trees on the ridgeline above us. Then, right when they see us, they shout something before running off,

presumably to make it down the ridge to chase us off. Wouldn't bother me usually, but these guys had rifles slung over their shoulders. We never rode our four-wheeler so fast and we booked it out of there. We made it back to the ranch and told the grown-ups about it who swiftly got in touch with the local park service I've definitely had more dangerous things happen to me but honestly finding that skull and especially the leg I thought I'd stumble into the middle of a wrong turn movie or something Or that we'd found some evil satanic cult out there in the woods. Just childish fears to be fair, but at the same time, we'd have definitely been in for a rough ride if those hillbillies got their hands on us, especially after they witnessed us trying to steal

their trophy. To be continued... I don't want to be too specific with details here, but I'm sure you'll understand why I'm wise to being a bit paranoid by the end of this. I've been into urban exploring, or urbex as people are calling it these days, for just as long as I can remember. I think it all stems from being an extreme introvert, how when other kids were playing together on jungle gyms and swing sets, I preferred being off on my own, exploring some hidden corner of the park or wherever we were. By the time I was a teenager, I was cracking bigger and bigger targets, traveling across town on my bike on weekends to tag derelicts with a can of spray paint. Then in my 20s,

I was traveling across the northeast to hit up some classics, as well as some lesser known derps that hadn't been scouted out all that well. But I definitely had two or three haunts in my hometown I'd hit up once or twice a year, just to see how they were progressing, so to speak. It's more like degressing, actually, but you get my point. Buildings would accumulate filth, become home to animals, maybe people. You'd get graffiti artists coming in and out. It was nice seeing the mage. Of all the places I'd thought I'd come closest to losing my life,

it definitely wasn't in my local toads. I knew them like the back of my hand, and they were my favorite because they were relatively safe. But anyway, on with the story. I'm wandering around this big old industrial complex, marveling at how Mother Nature seemed to be slowly taking it back, one cracked paving slab at a time. I stopped to eat some sandwiches I'd packed with me,

sitting up in the office of an old factory that looked over the shop floor. All the glass was smashed out and I'm just sitting in the filthy old chair trying to eat as cleanly as possible when I suddenly begin to hear voices. At first I start to worry, thinking it might be security or even the cops. I didn't think the place had any active cameras or that I'd been spotted by anyone on duty, so I'm kind of angry at myself for slipping, at least until I hear the voices getting louder and louder. They didn't sound like cops at all, but they were definitely headed into the building that I was in. The only question was, what were they doing there? But unfortunately for me, it wasn't long before I found out. This isn't exactly what they said, just a close approximation from memory,

but here it goes. Guy 1. I'm telling you man, this is bad news. They got him with 12 keys and he's gonna roll on us. Guy 2. We can get him county, that's not the problem. It's the names he drops between now and then, the ones that can get back to us. Guy 1. But do we even know who he's named? We can't just rub out six guys assuming they're all gonna turn states. Guy 2. We don't have a choice. Guy 3 3 He's right. There are almost half a million dollars at stake here. We can't afford to take chances. Everyone has to go.

Guy 1 Wait, wait. You gotta be kidding me. We're gonna rub out six of our own guys? Guy 3 You heard what I said. Get it done. Anyone who said. Get it done. Anyone who knows, get it done.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Some kind of murderous criminal conspiracy. Possibly over drugs or other illegal imports. And it was going down just meters away from me. I'll try to think of the worst thing that could possibly happen at that point. Outside of the world getting hit by an asteroid, what's the one thing you wouldn't want to happen in that situation? For those of you that answered, my phone suddenly going off, then ding ding ding, right answer. Because right as these guys were about to leave, I got a call. I didn't even see who it was, I just mashed the lower volume button to silence the ringtone, then heard,

who's that? Who's there? Before the sound of running. I ran harder and faster than I ever had in my life, and if it wasn't for the fact that I knew the place like the back of my hand, I might not be here telling you all this today. I was so scared that I didn't even go home that night. I just went to another of my favorite toads and hung out there until morning, only leaving when I was certain that I wasn't being followed. In retrospect, I don't think they saw my face or anything, and they probably thought I was an undercover narc or something, I don't know. But nothing ever came of the incident, and I had no idea who the guys were to be able to follow their case in the news or whatever. It was definitely the scariest thing that's ever happened to me while urbexing though, and it's taught me to, overall, expect the unexpected. Years ago, I used to visit this abandoned nursing home not far from my parents' house. It was set into quite a large old complex with run-down buildings, porta-potties, and security shacks dotting the area. I'd mostly

just explore it, enjoying the peace and quiet that was impossible to achieve in a house with four young brothers and sisters. It was every bit as relaxing by comparison as you might imagine, only there were two parts of the old nursing home that used to really creep me out. The first was the infirmary, the other was like a children's area. I know, I'll explain soon. The infirmary was creepy for obvious reasons given that it gave off some serious Silent Hill vibes. But there was also all these old x-rays scattered around the place and almost every single one of them was a patient's head. You could see all their teeth and even their brains and stuff. It was really freaky thinking that each one of them had belonged to an actual person who probably wasn't with us anymore.

I wouldn't say the place was haunted, I don't really believe in that sort of stuff, but it was definitely the closest feeling to having ghosts in the room with you. The other place that used to creep me out was the children's area. What was a nursing home, that's mostly old folks, right, doing with a children's ward? I don't know, but there's no doubt that's what it was. There were faded old pictures of disabled children up on the walls, some with name tags underneath them. Like yeah, they were incredibly worn out but almost every single one had a crutch or a wheelchair or leg brace in it. But that just kind of made me sad. And the thing that freaked me out most was finding a room full of their old drawings.

I think someone must have come along before me, recently I mean, found a folder of them and then just emptied it out onto the floor. But one room was literally plastered in them, and they were some of the most disturbing artworks I'd ever seen in my life. Seriously, even though some of them were just scribbles, they looked like something Charlie Manson might have drawn. Twisted figures and other things that just made me feel on edge just from looking at it. That and the fact that this area had a draft or something, so every so often the door would slam on a windy day and scare the life out of me in the process. The one time I tried to take someone else, they freaked out and refused to go back into the children's area and honestly, I don't blame them.

And on the way back, they pretty much nailed how I felt about the place by saying, it just doesn't feel right in there. Discover the exciting action of BetMGM Casino. We'll be right back. please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. We're going back at least 10 years for this one. But me and my old Urbex crew were exploring an old abandoned hotel at like 2am one night. It was Christmas night, the one time of the year where almost every toad in the country is free to be cracked because almost every seca is at home with their families. It's a guaranteed Christmas present for every urbex nut in the

western world and some of the best shots I've ever taken have been around the holidays. Anyway, the hotel's owners were having some serious squatter troubles so they'd hired tons of security and put razor wire and vandal grease up everywhere. It was way too rough a nut to crack but Christmas gave us the opportunity we needed to get inside. I got my jeans snagged on the wire a few times, but it was all good, so we kept moving until I got caught on one set of razor wire and ended up falling awkwardly while climbing over a wall. I didn't think I'd done too much damage at first, it just looked like it shredded my pant leg above the knee. But then sure enough, I reach under the denim and

my fingers come back with blood on them. I felt kinda cool at first to be honest, before I knew the extent of the injury of course and kinda proud of myself that I got my first urbex wound. People were always showing off bruises or the scars they'd picked up while cracking more prestigious toads. I know it sounds dumb, but I was always kind of jealous. Hero shots are what it's all about, sure, but the wounds had a kind of honor about them, like they showed how tough you were. But I remember that feeling changed when my buddy shines his flashlight to see what the damage is, and one of the girls with us starts retching. A big patch of skin on my thigh was just completely shredded and a scary amount of blood was leaking out of the cuts. Before I knew

it, I could see blood dribbling down my sneaker from where it was running all the way down my leg. I wasn't feeling so proud of myself anymore. The damage was way, way worse than I'd thought, and for a second, I actually wondered if I was going to bleed to death. Especially when I saw my buddy freak out and rustling through his pack for his first aid kit, he looked terrified, and that only made me even more scared. My mind locked in this thought pattern of, I'm going to die here, there's no way I can get out in time and no ambulance is getting in here. I remember panicking when I saw all my buddies had was this cheap first aid kit with nothing remotely suitable to cover the extent of the cuts.

And if it wasn't for the quick thinking of another one of my friends, I honestly don't know what would have happened. I mean, I was legitimately feeling faint and lightheaded by the time he jumped into action and whether that was from shock or just the nausea of seeing so much of my own blood, it definitely wasn't a good sign. He had this long sleeve shirt on under a bunch of other layers and he starts pulling off shirt after shirt before the long sleeve and when that's off, he uses the sleeves to tie a tourniquet right around the top of my leg above the wound. It hurt but it worked. The bleeding slowed and I was still unconscious when the firefighters eventually broke their way inside the hotel and they were able to get personnel to get me on a stretcher.

My parents were just glad I was okay at first and it was only when I was back home that they got mad and asked me what in God's name was I thinking. They didn't punish me though. I guess they realized the scare of thinking I was dying or whatever was enough and it honestly was. Which was equal to the slap on the wrist we got for trespassing since there was some legal gray area the hotel owner was existing in using that razor wire, and since I got hurt on it, who knows where that would have ended up. I was always super careful when it came to urbex after that, and we didn't go anywhere we deemed too risky again. I've been exploring all kinds of places on and off for a long time now. In buildings with structurally questionable stairs or floors you learn very very quickly

to tread carefully. Mainly how to distribute your weight over a wider area so you're less likely to go right through some rotten old floor. I've seen a guy fall right through a floor he thought was solid, thanks to some random leak leaving a patch of moldering timber. His night ended in the back of an ambulance with a huge wood splinter in his leg. EMT said if we'd pulled it out, he'd have bled to death there and then. Then there's the tunnels, catacombs, anywhere underground where you can get what we call bad air. This is when you get spots of concentrated CO2 in underground places with bad ventilation,

and it's super easy to just blunder into the places where you suddenly start feeling out of breath. And in places you're unfamiliar with, or places that are particularly dark, that can be fatal. It's not even the lack of air either. It's the fear response that's elicited from being exposed to high concentrations of carbon dioxide that cause people to panic and get lost. Then by the time they get their bearings, it's too late. I've only ever had this happen to one of the crew I used to crack derps with and thankfully I wasn't there to witness it. But he said he just felt all lightheaded all of a sudden and then the next

thing he knows, he's waking up outside in the dirt with his crew almost crying with relief. Another gas-related hazard is H2S. Hydrogen sulfide sort of isn't as bad as CO2 because you can smell it, and therefore get a warning, but it's arguably just as dangerous. It's caused by rotting organic matter in places there isn't much oxygen, so like anywhere underground or underwater like swamps. Smelling that telltale rotten egg smell means there's a good chance that something has died in your derp and if you do smell it, you need to turn around and get out of there like pronto. Because H2S is highly, highly toxic. So toxic that in higher concentrations, you don't get that rotten egg smell because it's burning out the receptors in your nostrils.

So, if you're urbexing, and you smell rotten egg, then you don't smell rotten egg, it might be because you're literally dying. The H2S attacks your eyes, then your lungs, then your central nervous system. You collapse, then you drown in your own lung fluid. Horrible way to go. And thankfully, I don't personally know anyone who's been exposed to it, but it legit kills people every so often. Just Google it to check out the incidents. Another less common hazard, but one you still gotta keep in mind, is the biohazard side of things. You get these empty houses, especially in places

like Detroit, where the same mortgage brokers foreclosing on houses suddenly collapse so there are these total ghost houses that almost look like the people went on vacation and just never came home. There can also be all kinds of rotten food and all the bugs and bacteria that comes with it. Abandoned farmland can have dead farm animals too and once I stumbled across the corpse of a cow, one that had become so bloated in death that it had exploded. It had corpse flies landing on me before I knew where they'd came from and after that, you can bet that I brought hand sanitizer with me on every run that followed. Obviously, there are all the security and police hazards in play, but they're not the things that scare me. Most you're going to pick up is a trespassing charge, and that's if the cops ever

get involved at all. It's surprisingly easy to get out of situations if you just treat the guards like human beings. Explain why you're there, that you don't mean any harm, and most of the time they'll just escort you off-site with a warning. Same with the cops, just be honest, explain it's a hobby, and don't carry anything they can arrest you for and most you'll get is a slap on the wrist. As for the first few things I brought up, take them seriously. Urbex is super fun, but it's a lot more fun when no one gets hurt. So please take care and look after each other out there. Out where I grew up in North Carolina, there are all kinds of small abandoned mining towns dotted throughout the hills, and I made a habit of exploring them back when I was in

my mid-twenties. I didn't have too many creepy experiences in any of them, I mean aside from the general air of morbid spookiness that you get while exploring an abandoned place, but there was this one time that I definitely got the chills from something I found. So, I'm walking through a patch of woods connecting two smaller settlements, when out of almost nowhere, I see this old VW Bug just totally abandoned, like it must have been sat there, rusting, for 20, maybe 30 years. Most abandoned cars around here get stripped for parts before any tow truck arrives,

but this thing looked untouched. Well, aside from the fact that one of the passenger doors was open, turning the old thing into a handy home for raccoons or other furry critters. With that in mind, I approach fairly cautiously, not wanting to get set upon by some vicious raccoon mama, but when I find it empty, I start rooting through the interior. I ended up finding a few old rolls of film, so I took those to try to get them developed or whatever, but aside from that, there wasn't much else of interest. The only thing that I did think was weird was that no one had shut the passenger door after abandoning it. I mean,

I get that someone just wouldn't bother if they were ditching it, but I don't know, something about it just didn't sit right with me. So I decided to play detective and started walking from point A, being the open door, to point B which was like 100 meters out into the woods just to see if I could find anything. Honestly, I wasn't expecting to find Jack and I still think I might just be being a little overly paranoid or suspicious about it. But as I'm walking, I feel something hard underfoot. Then, after kicking away the dirt and pulling a wooden handle from the soil, I find an ice pack half buried in the earth. The whole thing was giving me seriously bad vibes, so I called the license plate number into the cops,

then took the rolls of old film to the Walmart to see if I could get them developed. No joy on the latter line of inquiry, but get this. The cops told me the VW belonged to a young couple that had gone missing in the area during the 70s. So I'd either found the car they'd ditched to avoid being found by whoever or... I'd stumbled across a murder scene. Maybe even handled the murder weapon too. It's all inconclusive of course. I don't even think the cops were interested in investigating a 40 year old missing persons case, but part of me wonders if I'd explored the area a little more.

If I hadn't freaked out and gotten out of there, would I have found their bodies too? In my hometown, there's this big old mansion hidden way in a cul-de-sac, the kind of place you end up never seeing unless you know it's there. It's a bit of a local landmark, being abandoned since just after World War II, so basically all anyone remembers of it was being a moldy old husk that no one has the heart to tear down. It's kind of sad that such a grand old place has fallen into disrepair and even sadder that it was basically used as a giant bathroom by the less prestigious residents of our town. So one day, me and a friend decided to explore the place before it got demolished. We broke in during broad daylight and using a back window and as you can probably guess, it was falling apart. Most of the windows and doors had been boarded up and everything creaked when you stood

on it, like it was almost like being in an old ship or something. We also found lots of evidence that various people had used it to squat over the years, including bank statements from 1992 that showed someone was obviously struggling with their finances. In another room, I found a kid's toy, but they didn't look old. In fact, they looked like someone had just been playing with them recently. There was barely any hint of dirt or dust on them. Then, in the kitchen, I found some empty cans of beans that looked relatively new, and in the pantry, there were pee-soaked sofa cushions someone had been using as a bed.

This was when I started to get freaked out, because obviously someone had been there somewhat recently, and that's if they weren't somehow still there, hiding and watching us. And that's about the time we decided to just get out of there. But then in the last room before the end of the hall, literally the last place we looked before we got out of there, I heard movement coming from inside and something almost sounding like a slapping sound. Me and my friend stopped dead. Then all of a sudden, a pair of filthy hands come out of the doorway and a man began to pull himself across the threshold into the hall. He wasn't groaning. I can't think of a

word but it was far more aggressive than groaning. We just turned tail and ran, all the way down the stairs and back out the window we came in. Then once we were sure no one was following us, we slowed down and caught our breath. Now that I look back on it, I don't think the guy would have hurt us, not right away anyway. He was probably just a squatter wanting to scare us off as digs. But dear god dude, seeing those hands appear before he literally dragged himself on his belly into the hallway, it was like a well shot, well executed horror movie scene and it stuck with me ever since. To be continued... bases in Colorado. I've had a few really terrifying experiences down there too. First was when we were held up at gunpoint. While at the end of a really long dark tunnel, we saw a light at the other end. As to not scare anyone, we try to make our presence known when we see other explorers. We yelled down the tunnel and they yelled back telling us that

they were coming to us. When they got there, they all had guns, three in total. One had a shotgun and the other two small pistols. They told us all to drop all of our gear, including lights and phones, and to step away. Not wanting to die in an abandoned silo, we complied. They took everything we had and slowly backed away, guns still drawn. I know the place pretty well because I go there a lot but getting out in the pitch black was very, very nerve wracking and dangerous. If it was anyone else but us, since we knew this place inside and out, they most likely would have seriously injured themselves or even died. I went down there alone once and only once. Adjacent to the circular silos are those circular rooms that are three stories with each floor connected by a ladder.

Outside of one of the rooms was a bunch of water filling a tunnel. Something about this water was off. It was much darker and seemed to be more still than any of the other water there. You would drop things in it and through a greenish haze see them ever so slowly sink to the bottom, sometimes just staying suspended above the ground by whatever nasty chemicals were in that water. Inside the room on the top floor was this huge demonic painting. It depicted a girl with her rib cage exposed and her organs falling out, forming the head of another girl below with arrows going through it.

There were goat skulls and all sorts of creepy stuff. I went there alone just once. I sat in that room in the pitch black for about an hour and just listened to the silence. Nothing really happened, but I had never felt more hopeless, alone, or scared in my entire life. It was like I was cruising around my hometown with my brother and a friend of ours when we decided to go visit this old industrial park on the other side of town. We were bored and the place had been abandoned for years, so we figured, why not, and drove over to check it out. I'm not huge into urban exploring or anything like that but I've seen

the place explored in a few YouTube videos that I looked up afterward but no one has anything like the encounter we had. I think our first major mistake was walking in through the actual front gate, bold as brass. It was the obvious way in and anyone keeping lookout would definitely be watching that area so as we merrily traipse down the road and onto the property, somebody had to have been watching us. Plus, it's the middle of the afternoon so it's bright and sunny, not exactly the best conditions to go stealthing around an abandoned property. Anyway, we pass the silos and end up in the loading dock kind of area. Almost every square inch of the walls are covered in graffiti,

so we wander around there for a minute just checking it out and taking pictures. Only, once we enter the building, there's a pitch black hallway to our right, so we avoid that and stay in the loading area and go up to the second floor. My friend is walking ahead of us, so he takes the stairs up first, but when he gets to the top of them, he looks around, then rushes back down, telling us to go, go, go, move back, move back. Only when we're at the bottom does he bother to tell us, I think I saw someone.

So the whole way back to the main area, we're on edge, thinking someone is stalking us through the buildings. That's when we hear a voice out of nowhere like, I can see you. We bolted. It was seriously one of the scariest moments in my entire freaking life, hearing that sing-song voice of someone who legitimately enjoys stalking us through the dark. My brother said he looked back as we were running back toward the front gate

and swears he saw the dude who was stalking us standing in an open doorway. When he asked what he looked like, my brother said that he barely had any clothes on and looked like he had scars all over his body. But I honestly don't know if that was true. We were so scared we could barely agree on anything we saw or heard. We talked about going back with a few more people and better flashlights but so far no one is that enthusiastic about it. So it looks like we won't be going back anytime soon. And I can't say I'm too upset about that either. There's this old abandoned slaughterhouse outside my hometown that my friends and I used to go screw around in when we were teenagers.

One day, I think it was about noon, we were wandering around the upstairs part when we heard people on the main floor below us talking. Obviously, realizing we weren't alone was very spooky, so we quieted down and looked for some cracks in the very old floorboards to try and spy on the people downstairs. That's when we see these three older guys, maybe 30s or 40s, and they're smoking out of what is clearly a meth bowl. Then I feel a tap on my shoulder, and it's my buddy mouthing out the words, lab, lab, lab, over and over, and it's only then that I realize just how much trouble we're in. Meth heads are crazy at the best of times, but if they think that someone just found their lab, they'll kill you, bury you, and sleep like a baby after a 72 hour binge. They won't think of you at all. Even the stuff they were talking about was nightmarish. Like one was talking about this girl that he was dating or something. At least he knew her pretty well, that was clear. The second was talking about beating her up as a punishment for something,

saying how she made him do it to her. It was actually chilling realizing how much trouble we were in. At that point, we had to stealth it out of there, solid snake style. Our lives actually might depend on it. But as I'm moving out and back to the car, I knocked over a pile of tiling or something which makes a ton of noise, giving us away. I just remember hearing, what was that, before we ran, jumping back into the car and telling our buddy to start the car, start the freaking car already. They were chasing us down as we drove away, dude. It was like a horror movie or something, chasing us down with our meth-head speed and human skull grimaces. I swear to god I've never been that scared ever before in my life. Even all these years later, I can still see that guy perfectly in my mind's eye.

I also have no doubt in my mind that if he'd have gotten his hands on us, he'd just have killed us right there, just to keep his lab a secret. To be continued... abandoned Victorian-era mansion turned mental asylum. It was every part the creepy archetype, complete with a stone ballroom, indoor fountain, dry of course, huge staircase at the entrance that looked straight out of Resident Evil 1, a tower, patients' rooms, the whole spooky works. And what made it even better was that I had stumbled onto the place completely on accident after exploring a nearby building on a whim. Turned out it had connected to the mansion and voila, personal urbex discovery of a lifetime. Anyway, I'd been exploring the place for at least an hour, maybe more, and I only had

a few rooms left to explore and take pictures of. I walked into a big one on the top floor of the place and the first thing I see is a sign that says something along the lines of, warning, extremely high levels of asbestos in this area. Respirators must be worn. If you've been exposed, go to nearby hospital's ER immediately. I immediately sprinted out of there, threw my clothes in the laundry first thing when I got home, and took a really, really long shower. I also never went urbexing again without having a P100 respirator in my pack, as there's a bunch of other air-related dangers

that you never really think you have to worry about. Back when I started teaching full time, I decided to spend three weeks of my summer break traveling solo through Asia. Instagram travel influencers have been fueling my wanderlust for literally years with their Taj Mahal selfies and panoramas of Koh Samui. But I just didn't have the money during my college years, and given how my first year of teaching just kicked my absolute butt, I decided I'd treat myself to a well-deserved vacation. I decided on one week in Thailand, one week in India, and another week in Japan, after which I'd fly back to the US. Thailand was awesome, but it was super chill, so after a week of relaxation, I was ready for a little more excitement, which is how I ended up in New Delhi. The change of pace was so drastic that I found it a little overwhelming at first. I'd grown way too comfortable with the tranquility of Thai beaches, so the hustle and bustle of central New Delhi was nothing short of a sensory

overload. Even so, it was an incredible experience. Yet I'm sad to say that an incident there ended in one of the worst, most terrifying experiences of my entire life. And as much as I have a tremendous amount of respect for the people and cultures of the countries I visited, it was the first I felt lucky to live where I do. So, the market area of New Delhi has a lot of these small, arterial back streets that are surprisingly easy to get lost in. Most of the time that's not a problem, as not only do you make all sorts of marvelous discoveries, but the mostly anglophonic Indians are only too happy to give you a navigational helping hand.

However, in one section, I ended up coming across three young boys, no older than 5th or 6th grade age, who were holding little plastic bags of what looked like spices. They started trying to sell me the spices in broken English, and I have to be honest, they really tugged on my heartstrings. So I started saying like, okay, okay, I'll buy some. What is it? Turmeric? Masala? They kind of look at me quizzically until they hear masala, at which they start nodding and parroting me. Yeah, masala, masala. Very good. Bye, please. One of the kids opens up a small clear plastic bag and reaches inside and takes out a handful of the bright orange powder.

He brings it up to his nose, gives it a whiff, and makes a face like, mmm, yummy, before offering me a turn. Only when I lean in to take a whiff, the kid leans in and blows the handful of powder right in my eyes. I imagine what I felt in the moments that followed is a lot like being pepper sprayed. It was the most unbearable, debilitating pain I've ever endured. I couldn't see, I could hardly breathe, my eyes and nostrils were burning, and all he doused me with was chili powder. And not like Kirkland brand, made in the USA for suburban mom's chili powder, I'm talking weapons grade, uncut, atomic level chili powder from the

land that invented spicy. I was just out of it, but not enough that I didn't feel someone unclip my fanny pack before grabbing my phone out of my hand. I'm screaming, Hey! Hey! Give that back! But all I get in response is this hysterical laughter which gets quieter and quieter as they make off with my valuables. I'm completely blind as I fumble through my backpack to retrieve the

bottle of lukewarm water I'd stashed away as I use it to try and wash some of the chili powder out of my eyes. I'll admit that I did cry a little, just feeling like a naive idiot and wondering how in God's name I was going to get a new passport and credit card. I was due to fly out to Osaka in two days, so it was looking like my entire trip was going to be ruined by three little street urchins. Now, I know what you're thinking. This story wasn't remotely scary, you just got robbed. But please, hold your horses, because the scary part is yet to come. In order to make good on a travel insurance claim, I'd have to at least file a

report with the local police. I didn't have much faith that they'd find the kids, based on my poor descriptions, not their level of competence, but I figured I'd have to show some due diligence on my part in order to secure a payout. So that's what I do. I file a report, hit up an internet cafe to file my insurance claim, then head back to my hotel to get some rest. I was still able to communicate thanks to the hotel reception taking and transferring calls up to my room. I just didn't think anyone would be in touch so quickly. Because I get woken up from a nap by some new deli cop who says, Miss, I believe we've recovered your misappropriated possessions and have arrested the wicked miscreants who stole them from you.

I literally jumped from joy when I hung up the phone. My trip wasn't going to be ruined after all. Only that wasn't quite the case. It was still about to be ruined, well, partially anyway, but it wasn't in the way I'd first imagined. I get to the police station and there he is, the little idiot who blew chili in my eyes, and the cops had got my phone and purse. There's just one problem, all the money is missing and my passport is gone. I relay this to the cops and adding that there were two other kids who took part in the robbery and that it was them who most probably had my passport and money. Let me be clear, I didn't care about the money. It was only a few thousand rupees, no more than 40 or 50 bucks. It was my passport that I needed. Now, from what I understand, the cops then start talking to this kid in Hindi,

telling him to call his friends and order them down to the station. The kid shrugged and shook his head, so I didn't need a translator to know he was just playing dumb with them. I'm telling them to translate for me like, Keep the money, kid. I just need the passport. The passport. Bring that back and you can keep the money. I don't know if they translated that for me like, keep the money kid, I just need the passport. The passport. Bring that back and you can keep the money. I don't know if they translated that for me, but the kid just kept shaking his head, getting increasingly agitated until he seemed to be begging the police officers to let him go. It was about then that one of the officers turned to me and said,

madam, rest assured, we will secure your passport by hook or by crook. I swear those Indian cops still spoke like Victorian-style English. I found it super cute and quaint for the most part, but that night, it only made what he said seem extra ominous as he dragged the kid off to an interrogation room for questioning. This left me and his partner in this little waiting area and we could hear every single thing that happened. Talking turned to shouting, shouting turned to screaming. Then all of a sudden, I could hear furniture spilling over before the kid started wailing. Then we could hear like thwack, thwack, thwack. Each strike followed by a blood-curdling scream as the cop beat the life out of the kid who robbed me.

I turned to the guy's partner like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't just beat it out of them, that's police brutality. The partner just looked confused. Madam, this boy stole from you. Do you not wish to return your belongings? I don't mean he was being facetious or anything either. Like he seemed genuinely puzzled at my indignation. Yes, but you... you can't treat people like that. He's just a boy.

That's when the cop's partner leaned over his desk, looked me dead in the eyes and said, Better him than you. I don't think it was an outright threat, but in that moment, I realized just how far away from home I really was. I'm not saying we don't have problems with our police here in the US, but at least I have the power to do something back home, where I at least have rights, I shot at due process. But there, in that little New Delhi police precinct at 1.30 in the morning, there was nothing to do but shut my mouth and hope to get my passport back. Which I did, by the way. The kid's friends showed up with my stuff, handing it over before the cops dragged them into the interrogation room.

I got out of there before I heard the next set of screams. I'd heard more than enough for one night, but that didn't stop me from rehearing the one kid's wails, over and over again, through a long and sleepless night. I went to a fairly small Christian college out here in the Midwest. It had a really small student body, everyone knew everyone, and I had this really close-knit group of friends. We'd all stayed in the same dorm and by the end of our freshman year, we were practically sisters. We all went off on summer break, hoping to keep in touch and knowing we'd all miss each other horribly despite being back home with all of our old friends and family. This was back before group chats and Zoom calls, so we used to have to just text each other individually if we wanted to communicate. I was exchanging texts with all the girls, but

then at some point, replies from one girl dropped off completely. I didn't take it personally or anything so I obviously didn't make a big deal about it nor did I start complaining to the other girls that she wouldn't reply to my texts. But after like three weeks of not hearing from her and having her duck my calls I decided to ask one of our friends if there was anything I should know about. That's when she told me that the same girl hadn't been replying to any of her texts either, and that's when we started getting worried. The trouble was, we didn't have any contact details for her other than her cell phone. We only knew that she'd live near Aurora, and the college

wouldn't tell us her address for data protection reasons or something. We get back from summer break and the girl is nowhere to be found. We tried to find out if she dropped out or something but nope, she was still enrolled. So what in God's name happened? Some of us suggested she just ghosted and that we shouldn't be so morbid by suggesting she suddenly died or whatever. But I swear, I knew something bad had happened. I just knew in my gut. I know two semesters isn't exactly a lifetime, but I felt like I knew her well enough to know that her absence meant something bad. About a month of our sophomore year goes by and one of our friends gets a call from a woman claiming to be the mom of our missing friend. She wanted to know if she could stop by our dorm to talk to us about why her daughter wasn't attending college that year.

Obviously, we really did, but because it was her calling, not her daughter, that she must be dead. So, she just blurted out the question and discovered that the answer was more complicated than any of us had thought. The girl was alive, but she couldn't come visit. She couldn't talk about what happened, but her mom could. Apparently, she felt terrible about not keeping in touch and she missed us just as much as we missed her. But there was a reason she couldn't tell us it all in person, so she sent her mom. Next day, her mom shows up at our dorm, we welcome her inside, and she gives us the bad news. What followed was a lot of tears, a lot of hugging, and a lot of information we found hard to process. During summer break, our girl had gone to a party with a group of her old high school

friends. One of them had volunteered to be the designated driver so they could all safely get to and from the party, but when the time came for them to leave, our mutual friend was nowhere to be found. The designated driver tries calling her only to find her calls go to voicemail every single time. She leaves a voicemail, sends some texts, but eventually has to just collect up who she can to make the drive home. Her mom said her friends were worried, but she was a big girl and could look after herself. They try calling her again the next morning, but again they get no response. Her mom then gets a call and soon the cops are involved as the mom

files a missing persons report. As she's telling us this, one of us pipes up and asks if she can remember the date of the party. She could, and it'll come as no surprise to most of you that her lack of replies to us coincided with the date of that party. But then came the really horrifying details, things I'm not sure we could have ever been ready for. At least two whole weeks after she had initially gone missing, a homeless man in a city 80 miles from where the party was saw a girl crawling up to a bus stop. According to him, the girl had broken limbs, had been severely beaten, and was otherwise in an awful state. She begged him for help and in turn, he ran to get a passerby to call 911. When the EMTs asked her name, it turned out to be none other than her missing friend.

In an interview with the cops, our friend said that she had been partying with friends when at some point she totally blacked out. The next thing she remembered was waking up in a room full of guys who were each taking turns doing terrible, evil things to her. When they realized she was awake, they forced a wet cloth over her mouth and after that, she couldn't remember anything else. And this is where it gets even worse. At one point, our friend came to in a small locked room with nothing but a mattress and a bucket to use as a bathroom. She said she panicked, tried to break her way out of the room, but when whoever was keeping her captive got wind of it, he beat her so badly she thought she'd lost sight in one of her eyes. She said she was so sure that she was going to die, at least if she didn't escape,

and I can't even imagine how traumatic that realization must have been. But then at some point, she overheard three or four men discussing selling and moving something, and she assumed that thing was her. She knew she didn't have much time left, so she came up with an incredibly ingenious plan. When someone came up to deliver her some stale bread and water, she started telling the guy about how she'd gotten her period. The guy responded by tossing some baby wipes into the room with her, but she started telling the guy how she needed an actual bathroom. If she didn't get clean, she'd get an infection, and she'd use the baby wipes, she might get into toxic shock and maybe even die. She later told her mom that she could practically

hear the cogs turning in the guy's head, out she'd be of no value to anyone unless she was in fairly decent condition. The guy then drags her from the makeshift prison cell, leads her to a bathroom in what was evidently a small apartment, then guards the door behind her while she does her thing. She knows this is her one chance to escape, and silently rejoices when she sees no bars on the window. But then she sees why they didn't need bars. The apartment was like four or five stories up, and any attempt to escape via the bathroom window would be tantamount at best. And this is the thing that really messes with me. Our friend thought, if I stay here, I'm dead or

worse. If I jump, I either live and go free, or I die and escape a fate worse than death. So she jumped. She climbed up onto the sink, shimmied her way onto the window ledge until she was just hanging there, looking down, then eventually found it in her to just drop. That's how she broke her leg and fractured her elbow. God knows how she managed to crawl away in time or how far she had to crawl before she found that homeless guy. But hearing that someone I love was forced to endure something like that, it just broke me. Then by the time she was able to direct the cops back to the apartment building, none of her captors were anywhere to be found and would actually take another 18 months

before they caught any of them. Unbelievably, one of the guys who had been in the apartment had left his DNA on a toothbrush. This dumb idiot then files a police report because someone tries to steal his car. The cop takes his prints and DNA to eliminate his profile in the car so they can secure the thief's fingerprints, and boom, they get a match. But not for the car thief, for the owner himself. And the cops then can place him at the prison apartment to round the time our friend's abduction. He's doing 60 years in maximum security prison, and will only be eligible for parole in 30, meaning some of us might well have grandchildren before he ever sees the light of day. Personally, I hope he dies there. I've seen enough prison dramas to know that people like him tend not to be too popular, even among murderers and gangsters.

That's just about the end of the story. But there is a little piece of good news to end on. A year after we graduated, our friend ended up going back to the very same school to basically pick up where she left off. She graduated, and she's now a nurse who specializes in tending to victims of indecent assault, just like she was. We keep in touch from time to time and we're planning a reunion whenever all this pandemic stuff blows over. I just hope this story reaches the right people and teaches them the valuable lesson of always partying safely

and sticking together. That way, they might never have to endure what she did all those years ago, I was a child living in the Western African Republic of Cameroon. My parents had relatively well-paying jobs in the city of Bamenda, where most of our family lived, but we also had relatives in the small rural town of Puebla, which is about a three hours drive to the north. Every year, during the summer break from school, me, my parents, and my little brother would drive up there to spend a week or

two with our aunts, uncles, and cousins. Those trips made for some very happy memories for the most part. But the year of 1986 brought something that would become the biggest memory of all. A memory that would come to haunt me for the rest of my life. One of the reasons we were going to see our relatives was because my grandfather was sick. So sick that he sometimes had to use an oxygen mask to breathe properly. Naturally, my mother nor my father believed he had very long left to live, so it was very important that we see him one last time before he passed away. Unfortunately, they were right, but that oxygen tank would play a critical role in what followed,

and it wasn't just my grandfather who passed away. Many, many others would too. We arrived in late August intending to return home in early September. Then one night I went to bed as carefree as can be, only to wake up in a living nightmare. I woke up suddenly to feel something covering my mouth and nose, yet when I tried to breathe I found I wasn't being suffocated. The air was cool and strangely exhilarating but seconds later the thing was pulled away and I found myself choking. I start to panic and I try to speak but nothing will come out and then I see my father putting my grandfather's oxygen mask back on my face and suddenly I can breathe again. It was like a bad dream, I was so confused.

Was this really happening or was it a nightmare where I imagined I was my grandfather? I wish I could tell you the latter but tragically, what was happening to me was very, very real. The next thing I remember my father is telling me, Omuru, we have to leave. Take a deep breath and then hold it for as long as you can. I did as he told me and then he picked me up and carried me as he ran and ran through the darkness towards our truck. This was back before Boisbois had any proper electricity but each home had its own generator and the odd light fixture inside or outside the house, so the place was not very well illuminated. However, there was just enough light for me to see people

outside their homes, their chickens lying lifeless in their coops, with their animals having keeled over where they stood. I just knew they were dead. It was the awkward positions in which they had fallen. Images of that scene haunted my dreams for a long time afterward. After that, I remember my father and I taking turns on the oxygen mask as he drove through the night. Sometimes I would run out of breath and breathe in just a little bit out of habit and that's when I noticed the disgusting smell that seemed to be in the air. Almost like the world outside was rotting before our very eyes. Through his headlights, I could see all kinds of animals lying dead at the side of the road, birds and monkeys that had fallen out of trees, their lives taken by some silent,

invisible murderer. I was so scared, so confused. I had all these sore spots in my arms, small wounds almost like burns, and I had no idea how I'd gotten them. I was aware of a slight mist in the air, and it somehow gave me the feeling that we had arrived in the end times, the time when all the things are called back to God. But if that was the case, why were me and my father still alive? And why was breathing my grandfather's oxygen mask saving us from sharing the fate of those animals? We had to drive slowly on the way to the nearest town, a place called Womb, because it wasn't just dead animals littering the road. At one point, we drove rather quickly around a bend in the road and my father

nearly crashed because around the corner, there was a dead man and his truck just slumped over the wheel. When we arrived in Womb, the sun was already rising and people were out of their houses, all making a fuss over something. I remember passing out from exhaustion a short while after my father carried me from the truck and I didn't wake up again for 24 hours. When I did, I was in a hospital and my father had some very bad news for me. Every single member of our family was dead. My mom, my little brother, all my aunts and uncles, and all my cousins. One cousin would turn out to be alive later on, but at that time he believed that they were all dead.

I was devastated, completely and utterly heartbroken, but the one question I had in that moment was, why? And I think the explanation horrified me just as much as all the deaths. In the early hours of the 21st of August, some kind of ecological event caused hundreds of thousands of tons of CO2 to be released from the nearby Lake Nyos. Some have said it was an earthquake that triggered the release, but neither myself nor my father remember any kind of tremor the night before. But either way, the CO2 was thrown up into the sky. Then, because it's heavier than oxygen,

it fell to the earth and covered all the surrounding towns and villages for miles around. I still have no idea what caused the wounds on my arms. Some think it was because of superheated volcanic gases, but that's never been fully proven. And although humanity now understands a lot more about the incident, Some think it was because of superheated volcanic gases, but that's never been fully proven. And although humanity now understands a lot more about the incident, some things still remain unexplained to me. Scientists called it an event which occurs just once every thousand years, and that we were just unlucky to be in the area on the night in question. Bad fortune. It seems like a sick joke to just put it down to that,

because for me, and the loved ones of the 1600 other people who died that night, it'll prove to be the defining event of our entire lives. To be continued... My dad's mate used to own a cottage in Anglesey, North Wales, and would rent it out to holiday makers during the summer. It made him a few good quid apparently, and he used to let us stay there for free sometimes whenever bookings were sparse. Some of the best memories of my childhood were in that cottage, walking to and from the beach nearby to build sandcastles or hunt for crabs. But for some reason, we just stopped going, and I never questioned it until years later when I was a teenager. I remember asking my dad, and he told me that Griff just sold the place on because he couldn't afford to keep it anymore. Shame really, but I took him at his word, so that was that.

Not long after that, I get back from rugby practice to see who else but Griff sitting in my parents' kitchen, having a glass of wine with my mom and dad. I pop in to say hello, then make myself scarce to get a shower and get some Modern Warfare 2 in. Then the next time I pop back downstairs to get a bite to eat, the grown-ups are nice and toasty, all pink in the cheeks and laughing at bloody anything and everything. So being a bit cheeky, I say, Hey Griff, whatever happened to your little college, eh?

I used to love going up there when I was a kid. Eh, sold the place, son, he said. All good things must come to an end. But you made yourself a few quid off that. Dad said it paid for your Range Rover. I replied, smirking at my dad who shot me this look that said, shut it, you. But then it turned out that dad wasn't staring daggers at me because I was being lippy about Griff's flashy car. It was for a different reason altogether.

So Griff looks a bit nervous, gives my mom a look and says, Should I tell him? Mom returns the nervous glance, looks at me like she's thinking about it, all before dad says, Diane, he's gonna find out eventually. Better us than his friends telling tales. As you can imagine, I'm just going, what, what, tell me. Wanting to be in on the gossip. Only it wasn't really gossip. It was horribly serious. Emphasis on the horrible part too. I'll tell you what they told me. The same year he sold the cottage, Griff takes a week's booking from this lovely newly married English couple.

They're an absolute delight to deal with. They seem quiet and calm and most importantly, they pay their security deposit in full and on time. Week of their stay, Griff goes out to meet them, confirms they're safe as houses, then gives them the keys and buggers off. He doesn't even get so much as a peep from them for the next seven days. At one point he even called to ask how they were getting on, but no one answered their phone. Summer is about the only time you can safely go outside in North Wales, so it only seemed logical that the lovely English pair were out and about exploring Anglesey.

That, or, you know, doing what newlyweds do. He calls the neighbours, asking if they've heard or seen of them, and they said that they've heard a bit of music but hardly a rave or anything. So, presumably, nothing to worry about. The following Monday, Griff drives up to the cottage to collect the keys and as soon as he arrives, he knows something is horribly wrong. As he's walking up the garden path, he can see the front door is ajar and that one of the front windows has smashed.

Thinking something might have happened to the English couple, he starts calling out to them as he walks into the house, but there's no sign of either. Needless to say, the place had been absolutely trashed. Everything was broken, vintage wallpaper had been ripped down, food was left to rot in a fridge that had been disconnected, but worst of all, Griff said he could see flecks of blood almost everywhere. Small amounts, but blood nevertheless. Since he didn't hear anything in reply when he was calling out, he figured the English couple had left at some point before their stay was up, probably after whatever violent confrontation had occurred. But when he walked into the bedroom, he got the fright of his life. There, crouched in the corner of the room, each completely naked, was the English couple.

When we walked in, each raised a single finger to their lips, making only one sound. Shh. They had cuts all over their body, presumably self-inflicted, and had scrawled unintelligible words, phrases, and symbols into the wall using whatever stationary they could find. He says it was the one thing he's ever seen that's actually replayed in his nightmares like a movie. And then in the worst versions, they come to visit him and his wife in the middle of the night, leaning over their beds and hushing. He said he ran out of the cottage, locked himself in his car, and went to phone the police. Then an ambulance turned up to take the couple away once it was determined they weren't a threat to anyone.

Apparently, they stayed as quiet as mice until they were in the ambulance, then the woman started wailing as they drove her away. Both ended up in psychiatric hospitals, no other DNA was found in the house but theirs, and neither has anyone ever talked about what happened to them that week. Griff wasn't interested in finding out either, it just wasn't his remit, and he ended up selling the college at a loss instead of forking out for it to be cleaned and renovated. I suppose he'd made enough money from it over the years and finally just wanted to get rid of it, but part of me is awfully tempted to head up there to the old

place, just to see what kind of nick it's in now, and maybe I'll book an overnight to stay and see if I can get to the bottom of our very own local mystery. But then again, maybe I'll just stay far, far away from it and keep my sanity intact. Back when I was a teenager, every summer break from school resulted in my sleeping pattern getting dangerously askew. I gradually started staying up later and later and sleeping later until I was waking up at like 3pm and going to bed hours after dawn. As much as that lifestyle suited me for a while, I'd eventually get bored of missing out on everything that happens in the day, so I tried to fix my pattern. Whenever I'd reach my nocturnal limit, I'd just put on some jogging clothes then run circles around the block whilst listening to music on my old mp3 player. Most of the route was just small residential streets, but the longest

stretch was down a section of the highway that was fairly open and well lit. This was by far my favorite section to run, but ironically, it also posed one major hazard. People. A surprising number of late night drivers either shouted something at me from their window, usually some variation of run fat boy, or worse, they threw something. Don't worry, I only got hit once and it was a takeout cup full of ice and what smelled like peach iced tea, so as much as I was sticky afterward, it sure did cool me down a little during my run. Then there was the time when the passenger of one vehicle almost scared me half to death. I learned pretty quickly that if a car slowed down near me, I should ready for trouble. Usually if they were going to throw

something, they'd slow down to the side of the highway and get dead level with me. This obviously gave me a chance to react as I could pretty much just assume malicious intent. But the car I'm talking about didn't drive up close and it barely even slowed down. One minute I'm running along, the car breaks suddenly and then all I see is a woman opening up the rear passenger door before tucking and rolling out of the vehicle. Naturally, seeing this makes me stop dead in my tracks and I immediately pull out my earphones so I can hear what's going on. The car breaks violently, then starts backing up toward the girl who's obviously severely hurt, but she's screaming out at me, help, please help me, call the cops.

I just froze up. She was a complete mess. I'm not sure how much of the damage done to her was before or after she basically jumped out of the car, but she was bleeding from all kinds of places. Then, before I even had time to process what I was seeing, the car she was in backs up right up next to her and a guy in dark clothes and a ski mask jumps out. She's still looking me dead in the eyes screaming, go get help please, when the guy just scoops her up and drags her back into the vehicle. Once the door slammed, the driver gunned the engine and they were gone as quickly as they'd appeared.

I ran so hard and fast to my house that I thought I was going to puke by the time I was dialing 911. Luckily the operator was patient with me as I struggled to get my words out, but when she asked me the license plate number of the car, I realized I had almost no idea what the model or tags of the car were. All I could tell them was it was a black 4x4 and was headed down a particular set of highway and a girl had thrown herself out, begging for help. The dispatcher assured me it was okay and that she could route units exactly where they were needed and that I'd done the right thing to call the cops. But after that, I heard nothing

about it for weeks, not until a detective called me asking if I could remember anything distinguishing about the vehicle or the men inside. Again, all I could give them were the sparsest of details and I could tell the guy was getting frustrated with me. I can barely describe how much that screwed with my head afterward, like he was relying on me for any incriminating detail so he could nail a conviction or something and all I'd done is let him down. I get it though, it must have been really frustrating, a tough case and I'm willing to bet it haunted anyone who learned of it, because it sure haunted me for a long time after. To be continued... My dad used to own a gas station on the Philly section of the I-95, and during summer breaks from college, I'd work the night shifts to earn a few extra bucks in beer money. It was awesome for a bunch of reasons, as I was usually up at those times anyways,

and the solitude gave me a chance to either smoke up or read books whenever I wasn't cleaning or cycling stock. On the rare occasion I did get a customer, they were usually pretty chill and since we had a pay-before-you-pump system in place, we didn't have to put up with any driveaways. But then this one night, I noticed a guy driving up to one of the pumps and right away I can tell there's something wrong. He swerved in way too fast, had to straighten up to even get his butt end near the pump, and his car seemed to be lurching before he finally got out. Most customers see the pay before you pump sign and just walk inside right away, but this dude

is screwing around with the pump trying to get it to work, obviously drunk out of his skull. I have to call out to him over the intercom like, dude, pay, before you pump. He looks around, finally gets the hint and walks inside the store. It's only then that I saw the blood on the guy, blood that was coming from one of the most serious looking head injuries I've ever seen. I swear to god I could see sections of this guy's skull from what looked like repeated strikes from a blunt object. Immediately I'm like, dude, oh my god, let me call 911. Because if it was a brain injury that was making him act all drunk, then that was definitely bad news. But then the second I mention 911, he suddenly forgets about buying gas, thanks me for

my time, whatever that meant, and walks back out towards his car and drives off. I call 911 anyway, I mean, not even just for his well-being either, he was in serious danger of causing an accident the way he was driving. I file a report, hang up, and think that's the last I'll hear about it. About a week later, a cop car pulls into the gas station, only it doesn't stop at the pumps. It pulls into the side next to my own parked car. The cops hadn't stopped for gas. They'd stopped to ask me if a Caucasian male with a head injury had stopped by about a week prior. Of course, I told them he had, and then I asked if he was okay. I was kind of relieved to hear that he was, but then not too relieved to hear how he'd gotten his head injury. He'd been attacked with a blunt object alright, but his wounds had been inflicted by a homeowner defending their

property after the guy had tried to break into his young daughter's bedroom in the middle of the night. He was wanted in connection with three other attacks on young girls in the same area, attacks he'd been a lot more successful in. It made me sick to my stomach thinking I tried to help a guy like that, and it suddenly made all the sense in the world why he ran when I mentioned calling 911. It did come with a little piece of good news though. The guy was in custody and the cops were just in the process of mapping out his movements on the night of his fourth attack. Last I heard, he went to prison for a long, long time and I'm not shy in my opinion that they should just bury that dude in concrete under

the freaking prison. To be continued... festival here in Florence, Italy during the summer break from school. It's supposed to be a religious festival, something to do with a saint or martyr, but we just use it as an excuse to get drunk, eat lots of food, and put on a lot of shows and performances. It's really a lot of fun, but I remember one year when something very scary happened to me that I've never forgotten about. I remember me and my mom stopped to watch a puppet show and I was totally fixated by all the amazing decorated puppets. They were very beautiful and detailed but also I couldn't see how or by who they moved. It was like watching a magic show and a puppet show all at once. So when I felt something take my hand and lead me away, I just followed them

thinking it was my mom. But then, something doesn't feel right with her hand. It's hard to say in English, but for me, I know it's not my mom. I look up to see a woman with blonde hair and my mom had dark hair. This woman had a lot of makeup on too, she almost looked like a clown, definitely not my mom. So I say to her, non sei mia mamma. But she just laughs at me like I said something funny and says in Italian, oh you're so silly, always joking around. So I said it again, non, non sei mia mamma. You're not my mom. I was screaming it. Her hand all of a sudden gets very tight on mine. So much it hurt me. And she began to drag me harder and harder into a very big crowd.

Shut it, she shouted at me. I was so scared I thought I was going to lose my mom and dad forever and have to live with this puntana clown woman as my new mother. So I call out for my dad saying, Papa, Papa, Savami, Savami. And suddenly, he grabbed me, took me away from the woman while shouting for the police. But the clown woman very quickly walked into the crowd

and she just sort of disappeared very quickly. I remember this every single year, at the same time as the festival and I thank God that my papa was there to save me. Many years later I asked them if the woman was arrested and they say no, that they never saw her again and the police didn't find her. But they talk about it like it's not a big deal. She didn't take their daughter so it's not a problem for them. But for others, it could still very well be a problem. And I pray to God she's arrested and not taking children all these many years later. I actually stopped telling this story a few years back since people usually accuse me of being a

liar or a crazy person. And since I'm neither, I figured I better just shut up about it. But I can promise you, it's true. It wasn't a dream, I wasn't disoriented. My entire immediate family can back me up on it. I know it sounds crazy, I know it sounds impossible, but I was there and I know what I saw. When I was 11 years old, my mom and dad were driving me out to summer camp. They planned on dropping me off and carrying on up to Lake Tahoe for a week, after which they'd drive back and pick me up on the way back home. The week goes by, camp was pretty good, and we start driving back on a Sunday morning. I'm telling them all the different stories I had from the time there when all of a sudden,

I just hear, Peter, look out! I look up to see a car coming right at us, my dad swerving to avoid a head-on collision. Then the car abruptly smashed into the side of us, forcing us and skidding off the road. It's honestly a miracle that none of us picked up anything worse than cuts and bruises, but I thank God every single day that he protected us from harm that day. Once it was confirmed we were alright, I remember my dad running up onto the highway to check on the driver of the other vehicle, but the car was empty. Not like the guy had been thrown out from the vehicle because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. Neither am I saying that the guy somehow jumped out and ran because he was joyriding or whatever. There was no one

in that car, because there had been no one in the car at the time of the crash. Before you ask, I know for a fact that both doors were closed and that when the cops turned out, not a single one of them was able to find the rogue vehicle's ignition keys It was like someone had started the car up, gotten out, and somehow found a way to drive it down the highway until it crashed into us Police ruled out some kind of remote control device too They took the car apart and found absolutely nothing to suggest that the acceleration or steering had been manipulated from a remote location So what happened to us that day? The short answer? We have no idea Obviously we were in a car accident but one involving a ghost car?

I don't know about that I'm not one to believe in the supernatural. I believe there's a rational explanation for everything. But I kid you not if I've ever been able to find out exactly what happened to us that day. And if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to drop me a line. I'll be all too happy to listen to your theories. Every so often I hear someone say something like, cell phones were the worst thing to ever happen to humanity. Now all anyone does is stare at their phone instead of socializing with each other. I'd like to formally call nonsense on that because if we'd had commercially available cell phones back in the early 90s,

one of the nicest men I ever met might still be alive today. He was one of my dad's old merchant marine buddies who ran a military surplus store on an old commercial lot out in the sticks. And he was kind enough to give me a summer job to pay for this and that when he was barely making any money himself. I mostly worked Fridays and Saturdays with the exception of Sunday when the store would close for good just over 24 hours. So one Saturday we close up and Donnie is taking out one last bag of trash before he drove home. He tells me I'm good to go. Then the last I see of him, he's standing in front of his car opening up the store's dumpster. Monday morning, I drive into work to see that it's closed.

Donnie would always open up earlier than I'd arrived so I figured something weird had happened for him not to have shown up. But that was just the thing, Donnie had never left. I drove around the back to find him pinned in between the dumpster and his car, which wasn't actually visible from the highway at all. He hadn't put it in park and because he was an older guy, the mild impact still pinned him, broke some bones, caused him internal bleeding and he just bled out over the course of the next 6 or 7 hours. It messed with my head for the longest time after cause if I'd have left just

a minute or so later, I'd have been able to save him. That and they weren't even particularly dangerous injuries. EMTs could have gotten there in like an hour or two afterward And would have still been able to stabilize him But a mix of blood loss and hypothermia took him out in the end With not a single other person hearing his terrified cries for help My dad doesn't blame me for what happened I used to think he did but We had a heart toheart on it a while back and I know he doesn't carry any resentment for me.

That being said, I still think it's my fault. I still think I should have stayed. If I did, there's no doubt in my mind that Donnie would still be alive. When I was in third grade, a guy came to our school and held our class hostage on the last day before summer break. He didn't hurt anyone, and it was so long ago that it almost seemed like it happened to someone else. Like I can remember being scared and all, and I'm so detached from it that I don't mind talking about it. Anyway, it turned out this guy had already gone berserk and killed his wife and showed up to our class to take his kid out too,

who just so happened to be a member of my class. I don't know if he had really gone through with it, but luckily, the cops had followed him to the school and I think that must have thrown a huge wrench into the works, so to speak. But that didn't stop him from tying up our teacher, dragging a few of the kids around, and threatening to kill us multiple times before he attempted to flee using one of the teacher's cars. I think the cops ended up chasing into the state line where the Indiana State Police took over the pursuit and stopped the guy before he could do any more damage. Apparently, he'd been on the way to kill his parents who lived in Fort

Wayne, so it's a dang good thing that they managed to get him off the road. I heard it was because he had a complete nervous breakdown and believed that he needed to save his family from being taken by demons or something like that. But who knows why crazy people do the things they do. Looking back on it, I can kind of see why I suppressed it. instead. I'll say this to start off. I'm an avid Goodwill shopper. Half the furniture in my room and my closet are from Goodwill. That said, nothing like this has happened to me before and in the years that it's been since this happened,

I've had no experiences. I was shopping casually one day when I came across something I thought was cool. A framed pressed flower on an old looking piece of paper with faded elegant handwriting below it spelling out the scientific name for the flower. The picture frame looked like it had been painted over with purple nail polish and was much, much larger than the flower. The picture frame looked like it had been painted over with purple nail polish and was much, much larger than the paper, in a way that was eye-drawing but kind of off-center. I would have put it back down, except the flowers look like forget-me-nots, which are my all-time favorite flower. So I spent the $3 on it, as well as $3 on a smaller, more modern style picture frame. My original goal was to put the flower and paper into the other frame and hang it up,

but as soon as I arrived home, it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen. The brown paper on the back of the purple frame was ripped already, so when I finished ripping it off, I realized the picture frame was not only stapled shut, but nailed. Yeah, I guess I could have spent the extra 45 minutes digging out all the nails and staples, but I didn't. I'm lazy. I just hung it up the way it was. For two straight weeks, every single night, that picture frame would fall off the wall. It didn't matter how I hung it up. Stick on a hook, thumbtacks, actual hooks, even nails. It would be on my floor by the wall. It didn't matter how I hung it up. Stick on a hook, thumbtacks, actual hooks,

even nails. It would be on my floor by the morning, occasionally waking me from my sleep when it fell. Some of the times when I woke up I would hear rustling in the walls, like an animal was moving around in there. I would get up and put my ear to the wall, try to follow the sound so I could tell my dad where to look in the morning. My dad never found anything, but I was so sure something was moving in there, he called a professional pest guy. The pest guy didn't find any droppings or signs of life, but he agreed to leave a couple of traps in the attic. Before I explain this next part, let me lay out my room for you guys. It was a pretty big room and considering I only had a twin bed pressed against the wall farthest from the door, despite me being 5'10", the room seemed even bigger. The window was directly over my bed and I like to keep my blinds open because I like natural

light and looking at the moon when I sleep. There's also a sister bathroom attached to another identical room on the same wall as the entrance. If you go deeper into the bathroom where the toilet is, there's a door to the attic. There's a fair amount of space in there but I only went in there when I had to because there were little tunnels and pockets of darkness that lead into the walls of the house. It creeped me out. That's where the pest guys set the traps and yet I would check them every morning and find nothing. It was even more frustrating when the noises started happening earlier in the day or at twilight, increasing in frequency. And there was this horrible stench I can't explain that seemed to be coming from the walls now too.

And to be honest, about 11 days in, I adjusted and grew nose blind to it and it only bothered me a little. I only remember how bad it was when someone else entered my room because they would recoil or comment on it and they typically didn't stay for long. Around the two week period mark, I realized I wasn't dealing with raccoons in my wall. I'd woken up to a knocking sound this time, like someone was banging on my door in the middle of the freaking night. I yelled out to, just give me a second, and put on some pants and the almost panic sounding banging stopped. I opened my bedroom door to no one, and despite being a scaredy cat through and through, I was so sure it was someone in my family that I checked the whole house, turned on every light, and woke up my dad and sister

who were apparently sleeping soundly to ask what was wrong. Then I double checked the locks in the doors, grabbed a knife, I was a scaredy cat okay, and went back to my room cautiously. Something about even stepping into that room made the hairs on the back of my neck stand, triggered my fight or flight, so try as I did, I couldn't fall back asleep. I sat stock still listening for anything.

I finally allowed myself to lay back and get comfortable. Not ten minutes later I heard it, a fainter knocking. It wasn't coming from my door though, no. It was coming from my walls. I didn't stay there long enough to investigate after that realization. No sirree, I flew out of that room. I went and slept with my little sister in her room. She was freaked out already from me shaking her awake and didn't mind me sleeping in there anyway. The following day before school I had to go back in there to change. It smelled worse than I

remembered, maybe because I hadn't slept there in a while and I just ignored the smell. I ignored the rustling. I spent about three minutes getting ready then booked it. By the time I get back from school I wasn't just scared. I was angry. If that was some kind of spirit, like I thought it might be, it had no business kicking around in my room like it thought it was the boss. It couldn't hurt me if I wasn't afraid. So I thought. So as soon as I got home, I went straight to my room.

I cleaned up for a bit, I rehung my flower, and then I turned off the light and I sat on my bed, waiting. I waited until it started for about an hour until something made me sit up. I couldn't tell you exactly what. It's not like it got colder or even darker. It was only just reaching dusk and my window still illuminated my room completely, and I had fairy lights hanging over a desk in the corner. But it felt darker, if that makes sense. The air felt heavy.

I sat up and strained my ears until I heard a faint knocking. First on one wall, then a second one closer to me, then one further away by my desk. So I did the most stereotypical thing you can do and was like, hello? Nothing. Is anyone there? Nothing. Even the knocking stopped. And then I did something I regret a little, because it confirmed my theory that I wasn't an animal. I said, If someone's there, turn off my lights. I pointed to the fairy lights but didn't see anything happen at first. Then, just long enough to make me roll my eyes at myself, they turned off. I told the spirit to leave, that this was my room and they weren't welcome there. It actually made me feel better, made the air lighter.

I went downstairs and ate dinner. When I came back to go to bed, the picture frame was on the ground. This time the fall had broken the glass and frame pretty bad. I cleaned up the glass, propped the thing by my wall and chilled in there until I didn't feel afraid anymore. Eventually, I went to bed. That night was the first and last time I had ever experienced sleep paralysis. I woke up in the dark, sleeping on my stomach. My face had an angle facing the bathroom door and my desk. I couldn't see the door to my room or the wall where I hung the picture. I wasn't panicked at first. I knew I couldn't move, but I was relieved I'd escaped my dream, though I can't

remember what it had been now. And then I realized I wasn't alone. I couldn't see anything, but I knew I wasn't. I could feel the presence, distinctly male presence, and I could feel the darkness in my room intensify. The shadows cast from the window move onto my wall as it, or him, approached me. I stared at the bathroom door, knowing if I could just move my fingers or my toes, could just jumpstart my limbs into action, I could get away. But I couldn't. The bed pressed in on both sides of my bed by my feet, like something had put their hands on either side of my feet. Then, bit by bit, I felt those invisible hands crawl further and further upward, could feel warm breath on my calves while I lay frozen in terror. I saw the bed move with my own eyes right by my tilted head.

It compressed like someone was putting pressure on it, but there was nothing there. The warm breath expelled straight onto my neck. It touched my hip, its hand bigger than the span of my back, bigger than any hand I'd ever seen. It wasn't inappropriate, I guess you could say, but it was something pretty close to it. It was possessive. I couldn't see the thing, but I could feel it. I could feel its intent. It didn't feel aggressive or violent, but it felt malicious. And most of all, it felt smug. I think if I had seen its face it would have been smiling and that scared me so much that finally I jerked away from its hold, stumbled to the bathroom, to the next bedroom, literally unable to stop screaming until I was down the stairs.

My dad and both my sisters rushed towards me, freaking out and I immediately burst into tears. I told them what happened when I finally calmed down enough. My oldest sister was quick to say it was just a dream, a scientifically explainable occurrence, but my dad and my little sister were a little more willing to believe that it was something paranormal. We'd grown up hearing scary stories about my dad's haunted house and we, to this day, are all believers. I threw away the picture a week later, a solid week of sleeping on the couch. I had thought long and hard about when it started, but it didn't take much deduction to conclude whatever spirit was haunting me was attached to that frame. As I threw it away, I noticed the entire inside of the frame was coated in this sticky, slimy red substance, and it smelled horrible,

just like my room had. It was impossible to wash the stuff off too. It took me a good 10 minutes and a lot of wasted water. Some other creepy stuff happened as well, even after I moved out, but it wasn't nearly that bad. And as much as I hate to be that person, as soon as I got interested in Quakerism and spirituality and I became more religious, all of those problems stopped entirely. What I do think is interesting is why I made this post in the first place. I moved out of my dad's house with a friend and hadn't moved back in at the start of COVID. About four months into it, I became more religious and it was like a weight was lifted off my chest. At the same time, three things happened that I think are worth noting, even though they didn't scare me. The last one I found out today. One, my dad and his employee turned my old bedroom

into an office when I moved out. The same week that I started feeling more like myself, Ben, the employee, came down the stairs looking extremely uncomfortable with a stack of papers in his hand. It was a stack of printed paper that had apparently come out of the printer. It was a slideshow my little sister had made for school back in 9th grade. It was printing out the pages in a loop, over and over again. Ben had turned off the printer multiple times but it just kept turning back on and printing the same pages out. Apparently he had been doing that all week he said and it was starting to scare him. But the funny thing is that printer had been broken for almost a year.

We could never get it to work or even turn on and we even had another printer at that point. My dad just never got around to throwing it away. It was also late summer by that point and my sister was just about to enter 10th grade. Two, not even five minutes after he said that, we hear a loud crash and two screams from upstairs. While my sister and her friend were in the bathroom, somehow her 50 pound giant mirror had crashed onto the floor and shattered into a million pieces. It had been leaning against the wall and it would take a lot of strength to knock that thing over. It's not something that happens on accident. Both Ben and the friend left pretty

quickly after that, freaked out, though Ben did a better job of concealing it. 3. My dad has had sleep paralysis too. Once and only once, he just told me about it and as he told me I got this very unsettling feeling. It was within a two week period of the mirror incident. So what if I never really got rid of the spirit? What if it had followed me, lost its grip on me, and was looking for a new host? My sister is the most depressed she's ever been in her life, just like I had been when I moved out, and I felt like I was going crazy. It's a stretch, but it's worth posting. If you read until the end, thank you, and please, let me know what you think. So before my dad came to North America, he was practicing to become a priest.

In some cultures, it is widely believed that a priest should also learn about and perform exorcisms. It's a very old world thing but still a very prevalent thing. My grandfather used to perform them and so did my great-grandfather. My dad had told me some of his stories. They're pretty fascinating. I grew up in a heavy Catholic household but I'm not very religious. I'd like to believe in ghosts but I've never seen one. So naturally when my dad told his stories I was sort of skeptical. The one thing my dad likes to hammer in is that I take after him. He believes I have a gift like him. He used to tell me he was so successful with exorcisms because he is like a

sixth sense and can feel, hear, and touch the supernatural. He can sort of understand them. I, on the other hand, can't do that. My weird gift is being able to dream about things vividly and have them happen soon right after. It feels like deja vu, but I know what is about to happen. I know it's more common than people think, so I don't really pay much mind to it. One day when I was about 14, my dad received a phone call. It was an acquaintance who knew of my dad and his work back home. Mind you, my dad had now become a therapist, kind of the opposite of a priest in my mind, and hadn't done an exorcism in probably a decade that I know of.

Side note, my dad has also been liberal with parenting. My mom was a nurse and always working so we spent a lot of time with him and between me and my two other sisters, it was a free-for-all. If my mom was there, she would have told my dad no way. So my dad takes the phone call, agrees to the job and then looks at me. He announced I'll be joining because I have his gift and wants me to understand what he does. Fine, I thought. And we pull up to this big house in a more affluent neighborhood in our city and I already feel sick to my stomach. I can't explain the feeling. It's like the moment we drive into the driveway I was nauseous and panicked. For no reason. It was a normal house, nothing out of the ordinary. I told my dad how I was feeling and he quietly told me that we were going to go inside. There was a couple in their mid-forties

that lived in that house. They had no children, just the both of them. The husband opened the door and the first thing I noticed was the bags under his eyes. Second thing I noticed was that the house had no lights on inside. After we entered, I felt like the air in the house was being sucked out of my lungs. I don't know, like if you put your mouth to a low-setting vacuum, it was really weird, I know. I've never felt that way before. My dad sets up a little shrine in their living room and prayed to it. Then him and the husband went upstairs to see his wife. For some stupid reason, they left me alone downstairs in the den.

So it's dark because their lights aren't on and I'm sitting on their couch. I suddenly feel like what would be fingers poking at my back. Like viciously, like people with long fingernails just jabbing my back to get my attention. Now I'm on a couch that is against the wall so my deduction is how can this even be happening? Naturally I'm too afraid to look so I just get up and walk straight out of the room without looking back. I walk into the kitchen and I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I feel as though there are people behind me, talking softly as not to disturb me. It sounds like two men and a woman are speaking, but my dad and the couple are upstairs and it doesn't sound like them anyways. I'm too scared to move and I just stare

at the fridge for what seems like an eternity. My dad comes back downstairs after a while and I tell him what happened. He was sympathetic and told me to pray as he brought me back upstairs with him. I was too scared to be left alone. He brings me into the master bedroom of the house and I see the wife for the first time. She looks small and fragile, laying in a four-post king-size bed. The curtains are all drawn and the only light is coming from the candles my dad has lit. She doesn't acknowledge me. Her husband sits in a corner of the room, quiet. My dad places me in a chair next to the husband and we watch my dad together. He's praying over the wife's body and she suddenly sits up in bed,

screaming. The curtains in the room all fly open at once and my dad and whatever is left of this lady are just staring at each other eye to eye. The husband, in a panic, basically scoops me up and carries me out of the room. I stand in the hallway as he goes back into his wife and my father. After seeing that and experiencing what I did downstairs, I'm just trying not to absolutely soil my pants and angry at my father for thinking it was a good idea to bring a kid to these. I don't feel alone in the hallway, so I basically just sit down on the ground and try to think of being somewhere else. My dad eventually comes out of the room and he doesn't talk. He doesn't really say anything to the husband, only whispered instructions and we left. I didn't see the

lady again after that. My mom was livid at my father that day for bringing me along. I mean, it was irresponsible, and I'd like to think of myself as less of a skeptic. To this day, I'm not even sure what I experienced myself. My dad hasn't done an exorcism since. The End This happened in, I believe, July or August of 2017. My husband, our three daughters, and I were at the beach having a get-together with some of my extended family who lived in the area. It was a really nice time and good to connect with everyone. But after a couple of hours, my second oldest, age 13 at the time, came up to me and asked if I could take her home. I could tell by her expression and tone that she was pretty tired. She and I are both introverts and I'm sure she was less than thrilled to be

spending a nice summer night with her cousins that are all a good deal older than her. I wasn't feeling too great myself, so I found my husband and let him know that I was going to take her home and to let our other girls know. She and I got in the car. We had brought two since my husband came to the beach on his own after golfing and made the short five minute drive back to our house. It was only once we'd parked, gotten up onto the porch and jiggled the door handle when we realized it was locked and we didn't have a key. My husband had the main one and the absence of a fake rock in the garden told me that my eldest daughter had once again used the spare to get inside and had left it in the house. This was all very inconvenient but nothing that hadn't happened before.

So I told my daughter to go around back to try and climb in through the huge window above the kitchen sink. While she was making her way around the house, I tried calling my husband just in case she couldn't get in, but he didn't pick up the phone. Once again, not too out of the ordinary. The reception at the beach is terrible and he was probably way busy anyways. I was in the middle of trying to call my oldest daughter when I looked through the window next to the front door, which allows you to see through to the kitchen in the back, and saw my daughter standing in the kitchen doorway. It was dark thanks to the screen, so I could only make out her silhouette, but it was definitely her. I know my daughter. She's quite short like me and has a very petite figure like my mom, I could recognize her from miles off. Great job, I remember calling out, come unlock the door now. But she didn't move.

By the way she was standing, I could tell that she was staring right at me, but she didn't move a muscle. At first, I thought maybe she was on her phone or something, but I could clearly see her arms on either side of her. She was standing in quite an odd position as well. Her feet were a good distance apart and her arms were slightly raised from her sides. I didn't feel uneasy yet, but I was very confused with her and we continued to stare at one another for several more seconds. Lily? I remember saying again. No more than five seconds after her name left my mouth, my daughter came jogging out from the side of the house and up the steps, telling me she couldn't get inside because there was a screen on the kitchen window and she couldn't

pry it off. I stared at my daughter. My real daughter. For multiple seconds with what must have been a very terrified expression because her face instantly fell and she asked me if everything was okay. I couldn't answer. I remember feeling my whole body start to shake as I slowly looked back at the window and into the house. Maybe I had imagined it. No. house. Maybe I'd imagined it. No, this thing in my house was now in the living room, still standing in that weird position and staring right at me, but now at least ten feet closer. Fear and adrenaline shot through my veins in a way only a mother can know, and I practically yanked my daughter from those steps as we ran to the neighbor's house to get a spare key.

Whatever was in my house was gone by the time we returned, or at least out of sight from the window, but I did not let my daughter leave the neighbor's house until I had inspected every inch to make sure that there was no intruder. When I had more or less calmed down and was positive no one was inside, the whole thing started to seem more and more ridiculous as it played out in my head. The human brain automatically tries to give everything a logical explanation, so the more I thought about it, the more I was feeling like I had been imagined. I barely even considered calling the police. What would I even say to them? Hello officers, I saw something in my house that looked exactly like my daughter, but I don't know what it was because she was standing right next to me when it happened.

Absolutely not. And I eventually chalked it up to me being exhausted or whatever because honestly, what else could it have been? The last thing I wanted to worry about was some random thing in my house acting like the girl from The Ring. I didn't tell my daughter about my experience. I just apologized for losing it a bit and told her I thought I saw a wasp nest. A terrible lie truly, but she was either too tired or didn't care enough to question it, and her and I went straight to the TV room to watch her favorite show, Criminal Minds. That was not exactly my first choice of programs after whatever had just happened, but if it meant getting to keep an eye on my daughter for the night, I was more than happy

to oblige. I know I said I chalked it up to imagination, but I still couldn't shake that feeling that my girl was in danger. It tormented me for the rest of the night and I must have checked on her at least five times while she was sleeping. Over three years later, I still think about it frequently and it seems less and less like a terrifying daydream. I'm almost positive that there was something in my house that night. Let me know your thoughts on this. Am I being dramatic? Nothing has happened since and I never told my husband or anyone else, but it still torments my mind to this day. So they lived in Connecticut and it's where I grew up. This happened when I was like 14.

It was either right after Ed Warren passed away or not too long after. My father and I were staying at my aunt's house one night. It was a two-family house, so her and my uncle, as well as my cousin, her husband, and their two children all lived there. It was a new house that they had just built and moved into a couple months back. I found this part out later. Leading up to that night, my aunt was having crazy dreams where a little boy would appear in her dreams every night, or so she thought they were dreams, and lead her out of bed. My aunt said that outside of the house was a very bright light that shone through the windows to the point where she couldn't see anything outside and the little boy would

try to lead her outside. My aunt would always be found in the morning by my uncle around the house, passed out on the bathroom floor, living room, even the garage one time. They just assumed my aunt was sleepwalking. So anyway, that night at about 2am or so, everyone hears this loud screaming coming from the upstairs living room. Me, my dad, my aunt and uncle all wake up and run upstairs because it sounded like someone was hurt. We get up there and my cousin and her husband are in the living room.

And my cousin's son, who was about two years younger than me, was sitting in a rocking chair. His back was to us. But my cousin and husband were freaking out. So my dad and uncle walked over to my cousin and went to see what was wrong. My uncle touched his shoulder and he turned his head around and it was bright red. His eyes were bloodshot and his skin was starting to turn this weird grayish color. When they tried to ask him what was wrong, he started speaking in this weird gibberish that we later found out was Latin and was rocking in his chair back and forth.

So he was known as kind of a prankster. So my uncle and cousin's husband, thinking he's playing around, yelled at him to stop and went to grab him out of the chair. When they touched him that time, he let out a loud scream again in what was latin and his eyes started to roll back into the back of his head. We were all freaking out at this point not knowing what to do. My cousin went and got a glass of water thinking maybe he's sleepwalking and threw it on him and he just laughed in this terrifying deep voice. My aunt was a pretty religious woman. She would keep crosses and angel statues and even holy water in the house so she ran back

downstairs to get the holy water because at this point we realized something very weird was going on. My dad and uncle grabbed him out of the chair. He was kicking and trying to fight them the whole time and held him on the floor. My aunt brings over the holy water and rubs it on her hands. My cousin lifts up his shirt while he's being held down and my aunt places her hand on his back. It literally starts to burn him. It left a burn mark the exact size of her hand on his back. He screamed and screamed for a couple of seconds before he ended up passing out.

I'm just standing there the whole time absolutely terrified, not moving and just kind of absorbing all of this happening. So he passes out and not knowing what to do, they call the police. It's probably around 3am at this point. So the police come with paramedics and talk to us all and the paramedics check out my second cousin to see if he's okay. He ended up waking up and they said that he was fine, except for the burn mark on his back. Not knowing what to do, the police recommended they give Mrs. Warren a call since she was a famous paranormal investigator and lived right here in Connecticut. So nobody ends up going to bed at all and me and my dad leave later in the morning. Now this next part I wasn't there for. About a week later my aunt gives Mrs.

Warren a call, tells her what happened and invites her to the house. Apparently Lorraine knew what the house was about before she even stepped foot in there. Apparently the newly built house was built on land that housed some kind of portal to the other dimension as she put it. The little boy in my aunt's dream was trying to lead my aunt outside through the portal, because if a human entered the portal, it would be open enough for demons to constantly come and go through. From what Mrs. Warren was saying, apparently one got through and was able to possess my second cousin because he wasn't strong enough to fight it. Well, Lorraine ends up doing this whole seance operation and cleansing of the house to get rid of it all and close it permanently.

They end up living in that house for about another eight years without any problems ever again before selling it and moving out of state. But I never stayed over there again. To this day, I really don't have many details beyond what I was told, but that night still haunts me beyond belief. I grew up in an eight bedroom farmhouse with my father until I grew up and moved out. We always had extra rooms not being used and because of the age of the house plus all this extra space, there was always a sort of eeriness, like someone looming in the shadows. If I had to get a drink in the middle of the night, I looked at the ground the whole time because I was scared of what may be looking back at me from the dark corners, rooms, and hallways. Even the windows and mirrors were avoided because I wasn't sure what I'd see looking back at me. When I was around

12 years old, I questioned why the room that used to be my nursery was locked from the outside. I didn't think it was weird before then. My dad needed a room for storage and I figured he just wanted to keep me out. I brought it up to him one day, asking what's so important in there that he needs to keep me out even though I'm not a child anymore. It was a typical 12 year old mentality I had. Turns out, I was not entirely correct about the lock. My dad dad with a very serious demeanor sat me down and answered my inquiry when i was a baby around one to two years old i slept in this nursery room on the second floor next to my dad's room this room was painted by my sister especially for me with winnie the pooh characters and fluffy clouds the type of thing I think back on and appreciate.

The effort and creativity was so admirable. I had a photo of me smiling at Pooh Bear on the wall while we were setting it up, but I'm not the most tech-savvy to figure out how to link this photo. But anyway, I was in this nursery in my crib, again right next to my dad's room, the perfect age to be on my own. Every night though, my dad was woken up by me sort of scream crying. He had raised four children before me so he was not making first time parent mistakes that would otherwise be in question. He thought it was probably the switch to being in my room rather than being in his room that caused my nightly discomfort. He considered

bringing my crib back into his room but of course the nursery was all ready to go. I had just graduated. For a while when I cried in terror he would come in and check on me, only to find that nothing was wrong in the sense of present stressors like temperature, diaper change, hunger, or thirst. He would stay with me until I would fall back asleep or keep the lights on to make me feel safer and then return to his room to get some actual rest. One night, after finally having enough of my distress, he decided to camp out on the floor of my nursery to see if he could figure out what was the matter, but mostly to try and sleep through the night. This was the last time anyone slept in there. I was able to doze off now that I wasn't alone.

He on the other hand was tossing and turning on the hardwood floor, not comfortable enough to sleep. As he lay there on the floor, mulling over the situation, boom, boom, boom. He was jolted to his feet by a few massive blows to the floorboards beneath him centered directly on his back, as if someone on the first floor had a battering ram aimed at the ceiling. His first instinct was to rush downstairs and check for intruders. He's a man of logic, brave and ready to defend his family. However, when he got down there, the lights were off, there was no one downstairs, front door locked, windows locked, no sign of forced entry, no one else lived there with us. Our closest neighbor was down the road a quarter mile and why would they break in just to bang on the ceiling, let alone have it mapped out where my dad would be sleeping in my

nursery and the force of the blows. This wasn't normal. After this event, my dad brought my crib back into his bedroom and I was able to sleep without screaming or crying beyond needing a diaper change or something normal. He brought the bible into the nursery for extra measure and casted out any evil that may have invited itself in there. He locked up that nursery and only used it for storage after that and only went in during the daytime. To this day, that old lock is still on the door, as if a lock will keep spirits locked in. And short of pretending that experience never happened, he couldn't rationalize it enough to do anything else. We think the entity was evil and malicious and when my dad tried protecting me,

this only made it more angry. As I grew up in that house, I had a hard time sleeping in any room on my own. Many nights I ended up rushing to the couch in the living room, turning the TV on and watching Disney until I fell asleep. But even then I was not fully comfortable. There always felt like there were eyes on me. There were many more unexplained events from that farmhouse. But this was the more direct encounter with evil that my dad has ever had. My girlfriend and I moved into a bigger place about a week ago. It was not a bad price for the size and the extra room is great considering we both have cats.

The first few nights were great, no issues. We spent the first few nights stressing over every house settling noise and trying to keep the animals calm due to them both being in a brand new place. Well, about three nights ago we both started noticing odd behavior from our older cat. She's two, as she started sleeping at the foot of our bed and just looks out into the hallway all night. We have both woken up to her with her hair raised, hissing at the empty hallway. My girlfriend noticed it first. The first night anything started happening, she woke up to go to the kitchen to get something to drink and she said she heard talking from the kitchen. Not thinking anything of it, she kept going in there and when she got close, she said that she heard a

loud shh noise and then the house became dead quiet. The second night, I couldn't sleep due to stress from work. I got out of bed to use the restroom and noticed our older cat at the foot of the bed again, same stance as before and just making this deep meowing growl. Did my business and went and lay back down and eventually passed out. The next morning my girlfriend and I had to be up early and she asked me how many times I got out of bed because she kept waking up off and on to footsteps down the hallway. She described it as boots on wood flooring. Last night, I finally heard it myself. I woke up to the cat hissing and heard what sounded like someone pacing up and down the hallway for what felt like ten minutes. I know being tired could be a factor, but it was audible enough to hear it clearly.

I decided to share this because whatever this is decided to make some noise about an hour or so ago. We were folding laundry in the room and it sounded like a large pot hit the ground and someone sighing really loud and pounding on the wall from the kitchen. When we went to investigate, nothing was disturbed. And before anyone asks, no, I'm not a skeptic. Yes, we check the crawl spaces, a habit I do because most people fail to mention any water damage. No signs of squatting, just bugs. The one above the house is clear and the one under the house is just full of plumbing because we winterized the pipes the first day. No drugs or alcohol between either of us, no history of mental

illness either. Not sure exactly what's going on or whatever it is, it's extremely active and has been for the past few nights. Last night was uneventful, or we both slept too hard to notice. I'm up getting ready for work at the moment. Only thing that was strange is that I woke up to my older cat kneading my head, which is out of character for her. She's sweet when she wants to be, but never goes out of her way to do so. I've always been told that cats keep evil spirits away. The Egyptians praise them and makes you wonder why. To answer any questions, yes, there are sensors and alarms in my house. I have checked every nook and cranny in this house. Apart from bugs and dust, there is not any signs of human

or animal life in the tight-to-fit spaces. The bottom crawlspace in my house is locked up tight and no signs of possums or raccoons. The house was built in the 70s. We got a great deal on the place because we agreed to rent to own. The only history I know of is that the older lady who lived here before was a bit of a hoarder. The baseboard heaters were put in right before we moved in, so they were new models and barely make a peep. The fridge doesn't make ice and there is only one soft spot on the floor, but it's so out of the way you really have to try to step on it. My girlfriend has always been sensitive to hearing things as I have unfortunately been given the sight side of it. Yay for me. I've never messed with anything of the occult, no ouija boards, no rituals, nothing of the sort. I've had experiences as far back as I can remember

and could give some backstory on them. My girlfriend's experiences that triggered it and her was when a friend of hers and her did that radio static thing. She told me it was when you turn a radio on to a station that plays nothing but static and you ask it questions, and she swears up and down that something had told her about the passing of a family member that actually came true about a month after the fact. I haven't tried smudging the house yet either, as some of you have suggested. I always felt like cats were a nature-girlfriend and my sister and her husband in an old house not far from town. Within the first few weeks of living there, strange things were happening regularly.

Lights going out randomly, noises upstairs. At one point one of the windows at the back of the house was cut, like someone went at it with glass cutters trying to break in but gave up on it and left. Just creepy stuff like that. That was bad enough but things got pretty severe as time went on. One week in particular was nuts. The first thing that happened that week was on a Tuesday night. Everyone was working and I was home alone watching television when I noticed our cat was acting really weird. Backed into a corner and arched up like it was scared. When I went to get up, the electricity went out in the house and it

was pitch black inside. The second that happened, I heard really loud footsteps running down the stairs to me. I got up and braced myself for whatever it was, but there was nothing. I gathered myself and went outside to the front garden to check if other houses lights were on but my house was the only one that was dark. I went to the fuse box and reset the trip switch and all was back to normal. A few days later, I think on a Thursday, we were all in the sitting room watching a movie with a pizza, lights on and a good atmosphere in the house, when out of nowhere a massive bang happens upstairs. We go up to check it out and I went into our bedroom and saw my bedside table in the middle of the room. But the worst and last thing that happened to me was on a Saturday night and I'll never forget

this and it still gives me chills when I think about it. We go to bed, everything normal, watch a bit of a movie and fall asleep. I wake up facing the wall and glance at the alarm clock. It read 3.13am. I turn over to go back to sleep and I see my ex standing in the middle of the room. Confused, I begin to sit up and ask her what's up. But as I start to sit up I realize my ex is asleep in bed next to me. A surge of fear runs through me and I'm frozen on the spot. My eyes adjust and I barely make out the figure. A young girl in a nightdress with a cartoon character on it, soaking wet with

her head down looking at the floor. I can hear the water drops on the carpet and I'm just sitting there, completely shocked. I couldn't believe it. After a couple of seconds it kind of just melts away like fades out of sight. I got up and turned on the lights and tried to tell myself that it was just a night terror or something, but the problem with that was, there was a freaking wet patch where she was standing. I moved out shortly after that, and I can still picture her to this day though. It's the creepiest thing I've ever experienced. When I was 13, I babysat a little girl named Emma, one of the sweetest kids you could think of. I was a regular babysitter for her so much so that when I couldn't babysit for a few months, she called all her other babysitters by my

name. This happened after I came back to be a regular babysitter for her. It was about 10.30 at night. I had already put Emma to bed and had been channel surfing. The house was set up so that the front half was open concept. The living room, dining room, and kitchen were side by side. In between the living room and dining room was an open doorway to the back half of the house. At one end was Emma's room, the other end was her parents' room with the bathroom connected to the parents' room. While sitting on the couch, I heard something run down the hall to the bathroom. Assuming it was just Emma going to the bathroom, I let it be for a few minutes, and I heard the feet heading back down the hall eventually I turned to tell her to go back and make sure that she flushed as I hadn't heard it

But I only saw the tips of black hair that had ran past the open doorway Here's the problem Emma is blonde I quickly jumped up and rushed to Emma's bedroom, throwing open the door. Her nightlight was bright enough to make her out as she sat up and looked at me, rubbing her eyes in confusion. I asked if she had went to the bathroom. When she shook her head, I did a once-over of her room, checking under her bed and a quick peek in her closet. I didn't see anything and

I just told Emma I was double checking for monsters. I tucked Emma back in saying goodnight as I headed out of her room again, leaving it slightly open. I began to walk away but stopped when I hear Emma speaking. Thinking she was going to ask me something, I turned to listen only to hear, you should have said something. Don't scare her. I really like her. I didn't say anything to the mom about it and continued to babysit Emma until they moved away. I always made an effort after that to include the being.

If Emma was drawing, an extra spot was set up. It seemed to make Emma happy and thankfully, nothing else ever startled me again. To be continued... Now I'm not sure if I shared this here before but it was interesting and one of the reasons my wife and I don't go to the drive-thru late anymore. Years ago our McDonald's was a 24 hour store. As my wife worked until 3 am and I was on her sleep schedule so she wouldn't get lonely. About 4 am we were hungry and decided to grab some food. We ordered and were waiting at the window when we saw this guy walk up. I'm getting the nastiest feeling coming over me. Dread, despair, terror.

I wanted to bolt from our car and run for my life. The guy just casually walked to the restaurant and when he passed under the streetlight, I saw this thing floating behind him. It was freaky, about six feet tall, all black except for a large white face. The face had dark sunken eyes and multiple sharp teeth poking out between its lips. It had long arms with clawed hands on the man's shoulder, and below the hips it just dissipated, so it didn't really have any legs. My wife hasn't said anything and usually isn't sensitive to the paranormal,

so I didn't expect anything. But as the man walked out of the light, the thing vanished from sight and I heard our car doors lock. I looked at my wife, who was pale, with wide eyes, and she just goes, tell me you saw that. I confirmed and we just watched the guy continue walking into the restaurant. Seeing it was scary, but the fact that my wife could as well was absolutely terrifying. Terrifying. I was kind of an idiot as a kid. I did a lot of ridiculous stuff, but this encounter?

Just let me tell you, I learned my lesson about breaking into places that really should be left alone. It was in the middle of the summer. Me and my friends sat on a wooden fence smoking cigarettes, thinking about what to do with ourselves. One of my friends suggested an abandoned hospital up the road from my house. We were unsure at first as we'd heard a lot of stories from people who had previously went years ago before it was boarded up again. After much discussion, we went and it was boarded up with wood nailed to the windows.

The doors were sealed shut so there was no way we could have gotten in that way. We were going to walk away and just go home but luckily I remember I had something at home that I could get the boards off with. As we climbed through the window we finally got in. It was like going through almost a time warp I guess you could say. The place wasn't heavily damaged and the interior looked like it was from the 70s or 60s. There were still stale bloody towels there too. It was very eerie. Anyways, we messed around and freaked each other out for a few hours until we had to go.

Before we left, we messed around with the fire extinguisher that had been left there. While everyone was in the center of the hospital, I stepped out for a breather in the hallway with the window we entered through I was at the bottom of the hallway and I saw a pale, slender figure in a blue hospital gown climb out of the window while looking at me He looked tired and sick I froze and screamed. We left as soon as it appeared. I didn't really know what to make of it, but I'll never forget how incredibly freaky it was. To be continued... Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 7pm EST. If you got a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit r slash let's read official 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

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