The Lets Read Podcast - 165: THIS GAS STATION CLERK WAS A FREAK | 27 True Scary Stories | EP 153

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Dog Walking Creeps, Gas Stations, & Alabama... 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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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. Ben MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. On the morning of January 17th, 1997, the staff of Atlanta Northside Family Planning Services in the suburb of Sandy Springs were just beginning their day. It was around 9.30am on a Friday and although wary from the busy working week, the staff were looking forward to the well-deserved weekend ahead. The clinic itself was set into a large multi-story office complex that housed a number of other professionals such as doctors, dentists, and lawyers, but one particular employee of the family planning clinic wasn't exactly having the best of mornings. Gerilyn Thompson,

a then 23-year-old counselor at the clinic, was running late. Not only had she failed to wake up for her alarm, but getting caught in the rush hour traffic meant she was uncharacteristically tardy. Yet little did Gerilyn know, but a busted alarm clock in bad traffic would be the very least of her troubles that morning. Because as she parked her car up and approached the office building, a huge explosion tore through the building, sending glass and debris flying through the air. The explosion brought down parts of walls and ceilings and caused a small fire in the large three-story building. Thankfully, it was a fire that was quickly extinguished thanks

to the swift and courageous response of the Atlanta Fire Department, and once the area was secure, investigators from a number of different agencies began to comb through the wreckage in an attempt to determine the source of the blast. About an hour after the blast, cops and firefighters were still in the process of assessing damage, determining the source and ensuring that the area around the building was clear of civilians. Then, out of nowhere, a second explosion ripped through the gathered crowd, sending scores of people flying through the air and causing horrendous wounds to several of them. Only then was it obvious what was going on.

It was a terrorist attack. It almost seemed timed to hurt those coming to the scene to help, Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell later said. And he was right, because what happened is known as a double tap, a bombing technique in which the attacker first draws attention to an area, ensuring a gathered crowd, before a second device is detonated, one designed purely to kill first responders and innocent bystanders. One police investigator is said to have taken a fist-sized chunk of shrapnel while

the cameraman of an attending news crew suffered a fractured skull, landing on his head after the force of the explosion threw him into the air. Hospitals treated and released most of the injured by the afternoon, including two agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and a Fulton County firefighter. But miraculously, despite the plethora of injuries and psychological trauma, not a single person lost their life that day. My guardian angel made me sleep late today, Gerilyn Thompson later said in a statement to the media, and even the most hardened skeptics are forced to

admit that it makes for one heck of a coincidence. But who in their right minds would target a doctor's office with a dual bomb attack? Many believe the answer was to be found in another bomb attack, one that had occurred the previous summer at the Centennial Olympic Park. This is the very same bombing federal investigators initially blamed on Richard Jewell, a security guard who was later exonerated and, at the time of the second blast, the culprit had yet to be identified. Yet despite the Atlanta PD's failure to find their bomber, United States Attorney Kent Alexander assured the public that justice would be swift.

This is probably about the worst place in the country to set off a bomb, he said, referring to the expertise the experience the APD had picked up over the previous year. We are ready to pursue this professionally and expertly. Kent Alexander wasn't bluffing. The FBI had already drawn up a psychological profile of the perpetrator based on the method, timing, and placement of the bomb. The method showed that this man was dangerously intelligent and diligent when it came to bomb making and the placement of such devices. He had evidently studied the techniques of previous terror organizations, particularly on how to cause mass casualties through a protracted bombing campaign. The timing, January 17th,

was only a few days away from the 24th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. So when police connected this to the location of the bombing, the kind of person they were dealing with became terrifyingly clear. The bombing today was one more piece of evidence in a trail of violence leading up to the anniversary, said the Director of Child Defense and Research at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in a later statement to the media. Then there's the type of attack it was, simply horrifying, and Glazier continued. First the bombing of the clinic, and then the follow-up in the dumpster nearby, which would be the normal path for people to come to help, to investigate,

really marks this as the terrorist act that it is. It's designed to instill fear in the community. Americans of all religions, creeds, and political leanings joined in condemning the attack as a cynical and abhorrent act of mass murder. One Atlanta pastor was quoted as saying, I got my opinions on abortion too, we all do, but to take the love of the innocent like that, it's just awful. But others like Paul DePerry, editor-in-chief of Life Advocate magazine was quoted as saying, I think it is a wonderful any time an abortion clinic is closed for whatever reason.

If the toilet backs up and closes the place, that is great. I think it is great when babies' lives are saved through whatever means. I'm not going to try to condemn somebody that God won't condemn. Perry was widely condemned for that statement, and was swiftly reminded by many of his peers that the Bible makes it clear that the murder of innocent people is a deadly sin. If the bomber's intentions weren't clear from the bombing of the Planned Parenthood clinic, the bombing of the Other Side Lounge made them chillingly clear. First opened in 1990 on Piedmont Road, the Other Side was one of the

most prominent lesbian bars in all of Atlanta. It had a large dance floor, pool tables, smaller quieter areas and a fully stocked bar. But the other side was so much more than just a place to hang out and drink cocktails, and other than provide a place for like-minded individuals to meet and hook up, it also provided something of a safe haven for members of the LGBTQ plus community that had been thrown out or disowned entirely by intolerant family members. Co-owners Beverly McMahon and Dana Ford kept the nightclub open on all public and religious holidays, ensuring people had a place to go, and it became a home away from home for those without a welcoming place to go. So on the night of February 21st, 1997, when two bombs exploded

at the bar, injuring five of the patrons, it became clear that a vicious and bigoted pattern was emerging, and that the bomber's motivations were solely political. But his undoing wouldn't come until after he'd successfully bombed yet another family planning clinic, this one in the neighboring state of Alabama. And this time he'd make it personal to law enforcement. You see, despite being so active in his new bomb-making hobby, the bomber hadn't actually killed anyone. Sure, he'd injured people and caused an awful lot of distress, but he'd never actually taken a life before. That all changed with the bombing of the Family Planning Clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, because an off-duty police officer named Robert Sanderson

happened to be present, and tragically, Officer Sanderson lost his life protecting the clinic whilst in uniform in his spare time. In addition, one of the clinic's nurses, a woman named Emily Lyons, received life-changing injuries as a result of the blast. One eye was destroyed and the other damaged, her hand was mangled, a hole was torn into her abdomen that necessitated the removal of 10 inches of her intestines, and most of the flesh was blown off of her legs and hands. She was badly burned, her leg was shattered, and shrapnel had become permanently buried in her body.

Emily spent eight weeks in the hospital recuperating from her wounds, and has had over 20 surgeries to try to alleviate the long-term effects of her wounds. But even after years after the blast, she continued using a wheelchair and had poor hearing and eyesight. The law enforcement community had always taken the bomber seriously, but this time, one of their own had been killed, and a woman's life had been irreparably changed. They had to act, and they had to act fast. Following the bombings of the Alabama Family Planning Clinic,

the FBI was approached by two men, Jeffrey Tickle and Jermaine Hughes. Each man claimed they had witnessed a rather suspicious looking man who appeared to be fleeing the scene when others were rushing towards it. Tickle and Hughes had also made a note of this person's license plate and swiftly provided it to the FBI in the hopes they might bring the perpetrator to justice. Then, in October of 1998, the FBI named a suspect they believed to be responsible for all three of the recent bombings, including the bombing of the Centennial Olympic Park the previous year, Eric Robert Rudolph. Born on September 19th of 1966, Eric Rudolph and his family moved to Macon County, North Carolina after the untimely death of his father. By the time Eric was 18, he was spending time with his mother at a Christian identity compound in Missouri known as the Church of Israel, and after receiving his graduate equivalency degree, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, although he was discharged four years into his service

for smoking cannabis. But it's this military service that could account for Rudolph's potential bomb-making expertise, as well as the determination and discipline it would take to execute three bombings with no material or logistical support from other people. With this information at hand, the FBI released a statement discouraging the public from approaching Rudolph, as he was considered armed and extremely dangerous. Instead, they offered a $1 million reward for any information leading to his capture, prompting him to go on the run. Rudolph's family were extremely vocal in their support of him, claiming he was completely innocent of all charges. This prompted the FBI to conduct

multiple interviews with them, believing they knew of his whereabouts and were regularly in touch with him. As a result, authorities placed them under regular surveillance and routinely subjected them to lengthy interrogations designed to wear them down until they surrendered Rudolph's location. The FBI believed Rudolph to be hiding out somewhere in the hills of Appalachia, using his military survival skills to evade the numerous federal search teams which scoured the area. But they had little success, so time and time again, the FBI would return to the Rudolph family in a campaign which they labeled as State Harassment. This harassment was apparently so intense that it prompted Daniel Rudolph, Eric's older brother, to send a videotape to the FBI, as well as various other media outlets. In it, he records himself sawing his own left hand off with a radial arm saw in order to, as he phrased it, send a message to the FBI and the media.

His hand was later reattached by surgeons, but by that time, the message had been received loud and clear. His family would rather die than give their beloved Eric up to a government they didn't trust. Despite their efforts, it took almost six years for federal authorities to find and arrest Eric Rudall, who had been hiding out in the exact same area they had suspected, the Nantahala National Forest in North Carolina, just a stone's throw from where he grew up. He had survived for the better part of half a decade by gathering acorns and salamanders, pilfering vegetables from gardens,

stealing grain from a grain silo, and raiding dumpsters in Murphy, a small nearby town of just over 1,500 people. But on May 31st of 2003, rookie police officer Jeffrey Postle of the Murphy Police Department spotted a man rooting through a dumpster of a Save-A-Lot store in the early hours of the morning. Thinking he was dealing with a burglary suspect, Postle approached to confront the man and ask what he was doing. But when the man looked up, Postle's heart skipped a beat. He recognized the trimmed mustache,

and the man's camouflaged jacket gave him a distinctly military bearing. It was then he realized that he was looking at none other than the man who had been on the run from the FBI for six long years. Eric Robert Rudolph. As Postol drew his sidearm and ordered the fugitive to show his hands, Rudolph put up no resistance. He knew the game was up. While in custody, the police were horrified to hear that Rudolph still had a 250-pound stash of dynamite hidden somewhere in the hills nearby. In exchange for the federal government dropping the pursuit of the death penalty, Rudolph showed them where the explosives

were hidden. Rudolph then released a series of statements from his jail cell confirming that the bombings were anti-abortion and homophobic terrorism. He also claimed that he'd deprive the government of its goal of sentencing him to death. He also claimed that he'd deprive the government of its goal of sentencing him to death. He also wrote, The fact that I have entered an agreement with the government is purely a tactical choice on my part, and in no way legitimizes the moral authority of the government to judge this matter or impute my guilt. The Washington Post asserted that Rudolph had committed the bombings in support of the Christian Identity Movement, which asserts that those of Northern European ancestry are the direct descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. In other words, they're God's chosen people. In the same article, the Post also reported that Rudolph had claimed responsibility for the bombings on behalf of

the Army of God, a group that sanctions the use of force to prevent abortions. Rudolph firmly denied being a member of any radical evangelical movement, stating, I was born a Catholic and, with forgiveness, I hope to die one. But he continued to use several Bible verses to justify his militant opposition to abortion and relish the praise his actions prompted from several far-right Christian groups. As I go to a prison cell for a lifetime, he said in a letter to his mother, I know that I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith. On January 18th, 2005, Eric Rudolph was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without parole for the 1998 murder of Officer Robert Sanderson.

He was also sentenced for the two bombings in Atlanta, receiving two consecutive life terms before being transported to the ADX Florence Supermax Federal Prison in Colorado. Rudolph continued to release statements from his prison cell, including this comprehensive explanation for the Olympic Park bombing, some of which reads as follows. In the summer of 1996, the world converged upon Atlanta for the Olympic Games to celebrate the ideals of global socialism. Multinational corporations spent billions of dollars, and Washington organized an army of security to protect these best-of-all games. But the conception and the purpose of the so-called Olympic movement is to promote the values of global socialism, as perfectly expressed in the song Imagine by John Lennon, which was the theme of the 1996 games. The purpose of the attack on July 27th was to confound, anger, and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand. The plan was to force the cancellation

of the games, or at least create a state of insecurity in order to empty the streets around the venues and thereby eat into the vast amounts of money that had been invested in them. But as the United States has shown time and time again, terrorism did not curtail the pride, happiness, or the basic freedoms of its citizens. America stood unbowed in the face of religious extremism, a positive that would prove chillingly prophetic over the years that followed. And with a grim reassurance, we stoically remind ourselves that those who wish to change our society with bloodshed, fear, and death will never be successful. Justice will always prevail, and the ideals of tolerance, freedom, and above all, love sich um die Welt dreht. On Halloween night of 2005, 80-year-old World War II veteran and former building contractor Charlie Newman was settling into his evening routine at his home at 3025 Sunnike Boulevard, Limestone County, Alabama.

Charlie was a kind, religious man who lived alone, but was often visited by friends and relatives who assisted him in his twilight years. Yet Charlie had found himself clashing with an increasingly moody and rebellious grandson, who had an apparent disdain for his grandfather's clean-cut Christian way of life. This grandson was also something of a spoiled brat and held a great deal of contempt for a man he believed should be a little more generous with his high finances. Charlie knew better than to just give him any cash, as he'd no doubt spend it on things he shouldn't. Yet little did he know that this very same grandson had hatched a plan to get some money out of Charlie, the method of which would prove disgustingly devious.

Because at around 7.34, a young man in dark clothing was making his way towards Charlie's home, and he did so armed with an 8-inch combat knife and stun gun. Charlie was old, but for an octogenarian combat veteran, his hearing was surprisingly intact. So when this black-clad intruder managed to break into the house, Charlie confronted them with a handgun he kept hanging from a pair of deer antlers. But in doing so, Charlie realized he recognized the home invader, as the young man was none other than a close friend of his rebellious grandsons. Prior to the confrontation beginning,

Charlie had the good sense to call 911 before leaving the phone off the hook, thus allowing the dispatcher to listen in on what went down. According to the same dispatcher, they heard Charlie saying things like, What do you want? Don't do that. And leave me alone. Charlie also invited the home invader to sit and pray with him, but his grandson's friend ignored the invitation, repeatedly asking, where's the vault? It's clear that Charlie Newman made numerous and repeated attempts to calm his potential attacker,

explaining that there was no vault and that the only safe in the home was one he kept his firearms in. But this only enraged the home invader, who was convinced that Charlie was lying to him. In fact, the only person that had lied was Charlie's grandson, who had actually planned the prospective robbery in tandem with his knife-wielding friend. He claimed his grandfather had a safe or vault, one that was stuffed with cash, bonds, and gold bars, the latter of which he apparently recovered from a Nazi gold vault during his wartime service. The idea was that they'd split whatever the friend could rob.

But Charlie's grandson had no idea his old veteran grandfather would put up so much of a fight. Because when the invader brandished the knife in his hand and threatened to stab Charlie if he didn't reveal the location of his hidden wealth, Charlie gave him one last warning, then raised his handgun and pulled the trigger. Obviously, Charlie was well aware of the imminent threat to his safety having been confronted in his own home by an armed robber. But even so, Charlie didn't want to kill the boy, just scare him. So the well-aimed shot from his handgun ripped through the fleshy part of the

invader's shoulder, disabling his use of the stun gun, but not the knife. This only sent the home invader into a rage, and as he lunged at Charlie, bleeding from the fresh gunshot wound, he inflicted the first of over 50 stab wounds on the brave old veteran. In the process, he was able to grab Charlie's gun, and to finish him off, the invader shot him once in the chest. After that, Charlie breathed his final breath, and then slipped away from a world he had given almost everything to protect. Following the 911 call Charlie made prior to his murder, Detective Katrina Flanagan was dispatched to Newman's house to investigate. When her knocks went unanswered, Flanagan went to the rear of the

residence and noticed that although the glass storm door was closed, the wooden back door was open. Not only that, but that there was blood on the storm door. Another uniformed officer then told Flanagan that he could see a body inside the house, and after kicking in the back door with guns drawn, they found Charlie Newman's body lying in a pool of his own blood. He had suffered a combination of 54 stab wounds and lacerations to his head, including stab wounds to both eyes, seven cuts to his neck, and a broken nose. It was evident he had also sustained a gunshot wound, the entrance wound being on the right side of his chest, and the exit wound was on the left side of his chest. A forensic pathologist would later testify that the exit wound was surrounded by purple discoloration,

indicating that Charlie was against a hard object, such as the floor, when he was shot. Additionally, the entrance wound was surrounded by gunpowder, indicating that the pistol was at a close range when fired. However, it was determined that Charlie had died as a result of numerous sharp and blunt force injuries of the head and neck, and that he was likely dead prior to being shot. Flanagan then noticed blood shoe prints leading to the back door from the body and could smell the scent of gunpowder, meaning their shooter had only just departed the scene of the crime. Later that night, police officers William

Watson, Bobby McAuliffe, and Clayton Jordan of the Madison Police Department responded to a call coming from a Chevron gasoline station. It was from a young man who claimed to have been shot, but when asked how and by who, he simply responded, I have no idea. I don't know anything. I just know that I've been shot. When the cops arrived, the young man gave his name as Andrew Lakey, a 22-year-old eBay trader, but was otherwise completely uncooperative when it came to both how he'd been shot and how he ended up at the gas station to begin with. Officer William Watson then spotted a white Nissan Altima parked in front of the gas station, its white paint job making the bloodstains on it even more obvious.

On closer inspection, the cops found blood on the steering wheel and front dash, what appeared to be an insulated pizza bag and a radio scanner in the front passenger seat, two pistols in the front passenger floorboard, and a bloody knife with a broken tip in the rear floorboard. Sergeant Jordan telephoned Sheriff's Department and police stations in neighboring counties to determine if there had been any reported shootings that evening, only to discover that indeed there had been. Andrew Lakey was then taken to the nearby Huntsville Hospital to have his gunshot wound treated, but officers remained on standby to take him into custody upon his discharge. was then taken to the nearby Huntsville Hospital to have his gunshot wound treated,

but officers remained on standby to take him into custody upon his discharge. During a subsequent investigation, it was confirmed that Lakey was a close friend of Charlie's grandson, Derek. Derek himself testified at Lakey's murder trial, confirming he had told Andrew of his grandfather's wealth, as well as a supposed vault that could be accessed by a door next to the stairwell. Not only that, but Derek claimed that he and Lakey had been to a Long John Silver's restaurant two days before his grandfather's murder, where they had hashed out plans to loot his savings and split the take. According to Derek, Lakey ordered a chicken sandwich with a side of chili cheese fries. Then lo and behold, on a search of Andrew's bedroom, police found a long John Silvers receipt which corroborated Derek's version of events.

That, along with numerous other pieces of material evidence, tied Andrew Lakey to the shooting in a way that was irrefutable. He was charged with capital murder during a robbery, meaning a guilty verdict would result in him being handed the death penalty. Lackey's attorneys argued that he had a mild form of autism, but the prosecution insisted this implied nothing more than a slight social awkwardness and that Lackey showed no signs of any serious mental disorder. Then on March 3rd of 2008, a seven-woman, five-man jury unanimously convicted Lackey of Charlie Newman's murder, then recommended that Lackey be given the death penalty for a killing that was called heinous, atrocious, and cruel. Both of Lackey's parents made impassioned pleas for their son's life,

but the sentencing judge noted that he found the murderer to be sane and aware of right and wrong, thus upholding the death sentence. Five years later, on July 25th of 2013, Andrew Lakey was executed by lethal injection. His execution was scheduled after he wrote a letter to the Alabama Supreme Court in October, saying that he had an odd request. Please set me an execution date, he wrote. I do not wish to pursue any further appeals for my death sentence. His last meal came from the prison kitchen and included grilled cheese and bologna sandwiches with french fries, and in the final week of his life, he was permitted to receive a visit from his mother.

On the day of his execution, Andrew Lakey was wearing glasses and had trimmed dark hair and was already strapped to a gurney when a curtain opened at 6pm to allow witnesses to see him. He looked around briefly, then laid his head on the pillow. The execution order was read before the prison's warden asked Lakey if he had anything to say. No sir, I don't, was all he replied. His mother, father, brother and aunt all watched the execution in silence, his mother and father holding hands while an unnamed man and two women witnessed the execution on behalf of the victim's loved ones. Shortly after Lakey declined to make a statement, Chaplain Chris Summers approached the gurney,

touched Lakey's hand, and spoke to him. Lakey nodded before Summers knelt to pray at his side and the execution began. The lethal cocktail of drugs seemed to take effect within just a couple of minutes after being administered, and the condemned man's torso convulsed slightly during the several minutes that followed. Yet soon, Lakey began to grow still and, after a few shallow breaths, he passed away at exactly 6.15pm. Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, Sveta, I used to work in a funeral home here in Alabama. Nothing too morbid, don't worry. I mostly worked in the office, so it wasn't nearly as creepy or spooky as you might imagine. But by pure happenstance, I have a pretty horrifying story to tell from my time working there, and it involved a guy whose wife and

baby daughter had been murdered in shocking and mysterious circumstances, and we had to find out from the freaking news too. A person called, I'm assuming the guy's relative, and made the funeral arrangements, and as usual, we took down the names of the deceased so we could get the orders of service designed and printed out. Then a few days later, one of the co-workers sends me a link to some local news website saying like, holy crap, we're doing the funeral. The article was all about how someone broke into the guy's house while he was at work, all just to shoot his wife and kid before leaving. The scary thing was, the guy's business partner had the exact same thing happen to his family like six months ago, and the article read like someone wanted revenge on the two business partners because of some deal gone wrong or whatever.

There was a good chance the same person or people had killed both families. But after the first murders, the cops had been stumped for a suspect. They'd done pretty much the same thing, gone in totally quiet. No witnesses, killed the family, then cleaned up after themselves to erase any potential evidence. Only for the second set of murders, the killer had messed up. Someone saw the guy's face as he fled, across a field to the rear of the guy's house, and it seemed like the cops were closing in on their shooter. Anyway, the funeral comes and goes and was honestly one of the most heartbreaking I'd ever worked. The tiny little coffin we had for the baby daughter was honestly too much to look at, and even after many deeply moving services, I thought I was desensitized to all that.

But no. One look at that little coffin, and I felt a huge lump in my throat. The husband was just distraught too, like a lot of people were, weirdly stoic during the funerals of their loved ones, even when they're lost in sudden tragedies. But this guy was just in pieces, like it was legitimately difficult to watch at times. The worst was when he tried to get up to give a little eulogy for his wife and kid. He tried so hard to get the words out, but in the end, I think it was his brother that came up just to lead him away when he broke down completely. We all agreed it was one of the toughest funerals we had ever had to host

but the story didn't end there and it actually turned out to be one of the most horrible things that I'd ever heard of, let alone been a part of. A few weeks after the funeral, my co-workers sent me another news link. Only, this one doesn't have a message with it, just that blue and yellow horrified face emoji. When I opened the page, I discovered that the cops had actually caught the guy who killed our customer's wife and child, and my jaw was on the floor as I read that the murder was actually the guy's business partner. You know, the same guy whose family had been killed in almost the exact same way. That guy.

The article didn't say much other than that, so we had to keep checking the news and stuff to find out any more info. But then get this. The murderer gets a lesser charge for cooperating with the police, and part of that cooperation was showing them the text between him and his business partner, where they were arranging to kill each other's families so they could run off with their side girls, one of which was actually a secretary at the company they owned and operated. I think the most messed up thing was how you never would have guessed the guy was capable of anything like that.

I mean, I suppose he wasn't. Neither of them was. That's why they arranged to kill each other's families instead of just doing it themselves. Maybe that's why he was so devastated at the funeral. It all just kind of hit him and he realized that no matter how much he tried to distance himself, he was responsible for their deaths. Not only that, but he'd already killed a woman and two little boys himself. Just thinking about it is enough to make my brain boil. I just don't understand how they each came to such a truly monstrous decision. And honestly, I think it really changed how I look at the world. I looked at the guy at the funeral. I stood next to him for a good portion of it, and he seemed truly heartbroken. And he got this impression that he was the most loving,

caring father in the world. But now, he's on death row, making appeal after appeal because he not only had the evil in him to kill two innocent children, as well as their mother, who begged for their lives before he shot her, but he also but for college, I went to Auburn in Alabama. It was a pretty great place to go to school and I still got a whole lot of love for Bama, but once I graduated, I went right back home to Jacksonville to start my career. But that meant that every year or so I'd fly back to Auburn to hook up with my old college buddies for some heavy reminiscing and some equally heavy drinking. So this is back in 2007, but I flew out of there to spend a weekend with the old frat boys and while we're out drinking, one of them pulls out a pack of cigarettes. I hadn't smoked for years by that point, as my ex-girlfriend had hated it, but since she was my ex by that time, I thought, why not? What harm can it do? So we head out, bum a smoke, then feel that sweet, sweet nicotine reintroducing itself to my central nervous system, all the while we get all nostalgic about our college days. Then, as we're standing there, some car just goes zooming past the bar, totally ignoring a red light before driving up this gentle curving hill. All we could do was watch in horror as it veered

over the double yellow before absolutely smashing into a car coming in the other direction. The impact sounded like a bomb went off, and both cars' butt ends were thrown into the air before they landed with a smash. Then, the engine block of the oncoming car just started smoking before we started seeing flames flicking up through the gaps in the hood. And that's when the adrenaline kicked in. It was me and my buddy just bolting back into the bar, grabbing a fire extinguisher and screaming at the bartender to call 911. So there's me, my college buddy, and a few others of the bar's customers running over to the accident.

I try spraying the fire in the engine block, but I don't think it was the right kind of extinguisher for a fuel fire because I just about emptied that thing all over it and it barely made a dent. In the end, the heat and fumes were so intense that we all just had to back off. I mean people were gasping for air after taking a lung full of smoke and besides, the fire was just totally out of control. The thing was we'd been completely unable to rescue the driver of the oncoming vehicle. The driver off the speeding car was just a mess and I kind of figured that there was no saving them. No seatbelt, there wasn't. But the woman in the oncoming vehicle was trapped, and as much as we all tried we couldn't get her free before the flames took hold.

We had to listen to that woman burning to death and let me tell you, it's a million times worse than you can possibly imagine. All those death scenes in movies, they're really just acting. You can't ever get that tone or pitch to a death scream unless a person is actually dying and I learned that on that night in Bama. The fire department got out to us pretty fast, but it was too late. Then the cops walked some of us back to the bar to take statements. My buddy kept me up to date with the case after I flew back to Florida, and I'm sorry to say, it didn't stop being messed up. So the woman who died was only like a block away from her house,

and she was a new mom. While the speeder was some drunk, stupid trust fund kid. Only, remember how I said the kid looked deader than a West Texas salad bar? He actually survived. He lost a leg or an arm, I think, but yeah, he got to carry on living when he had absolutely no right to. So this all happened to my best friend back when she was like 15, way back in the mid-2000s. We live in rural Alabama, like right out in the middle of the sticks, and one Friday night, her dad gets a hankering for a basket of Royal Reds. They want to head out, but they also couldn't get a sitter at such a short notice.

This suited my BFF, who was saying how she didn't need a babysitter, that she was basically a grown-up and could be trusted to be left home alone for the night. Her parents agree, but tell her she better be in bed and asleep by the time they get home, which would be sometime after 11pm. If she wasn't, she'd be grounded, but if she was, her mom told her that she'd take her shopping the next day. Pretty sweet deal, right? Home alone and a shopping spree.

I'm swooning just thinking about it. Anyway, it comes to the night of her parents' little dinner date, they give her some money for pizza, and she basically has the time of her life, watching whatever she wanted on the TV, pigging out on pizza and ice cream. She had the entire place to herself. All she had to do was be in bed by like 11.15, and she'd have herself half a whole new wardrobe. So the time comes and she has the whole kitchen clean and tidy. Ice cream away, pizza boxes chucked in the trash and she's all up in her PJ's, mission accomplished. Then out of nowhere, she hears the front door

to her home open and close and footsteps down in the hallway. So she jumps into bed, turns off the lights, then lies in bed with her back to the bedroom door and footsteps down in the hallway. So she jumps into bed, turns off the lights, then lies in bed with her back to the bedroom door and pretends to be asleep. Sure enough, she hears her parents climbing the stairs quietly, shushing each other and giggling as they went. Obviously, they've been a little too liberal with their drinks and in hindsight, maybe that's why they wanted her to be in bed by the time they came home, so she wouldn't be able to poke fun at them for being drunk. Anyway, she's still lying there, not making a sound, when she hears the handle of her bedroom door begin to turn. They're obviously checking to see if she's actually asleep, so she lies real still and doesn't make a sound. Then whoever it was who opened the door, either her mom or dad, they started

creeping across the carpet towards her. Then when they reach her bedside, they lean over, stroke her hair a little, then give her a kiss on the side of the head. That confirmed that they had been drinking because all she could smell was booze as whoever it was crept out of the room, and then there was silence again. Mom and dad must have just gone right to bed to sleep off their margaritas because she barely heard a thing after that. Maybe some stumbling to and from the bathroom, but apart from that, silence. She's actually kind of sleepy by that point, so she just lays there, drifts off, then wakes up bright and early the next morning, ready for her shopping trip reward.

She rolls over, checks her phone, only to discover she has a bunch of texts from her mom, all timed for an hour or so after she'd fallen asleep. She opens them, half expecting a bunch of you're an amazing daughter I love you xoxo drunk texts, but in her half asleep haze, what she reads makes no sense to her whatsoever. The message read something like, Honey, I'm sorry if we worried you, but we saw Aunt Barb and her new boyfriend and we totally lost track of time. We're staying in a motel tonight, but we'll be back tomorrow around 12. Promise. Then we can go to that shopping trip. I can only imagine what that must have been like

at the time, but my friend said the information was a square peg and her brain was a round hole. It just wouldn't fit. Her parents had come all the way home, then gone back out again. But why? She texts her mom like, did you come home last night? And as she does, she said she felt her heart begin to pound in her chest Because if she said no, she was either lying or it wasn't either of her parents in the house the night before It was a complete stranger As soon as that horrible penny really dropped for her, she called her mom in a panic, who obviously then told her to call the cops ASAP.

But when they got there, there was nothing to tell them how this stranger had gotten in, if anything was taken, or how they'd gotten out. My friend swears that she'd heard the front door close quietly, but if that was the case How did the guy get a copy of the front door key? Even scarier is their security cameras didn't record anyone walking up their driveway And there's literally no other way to get to the front of the property without being caught on it It 100% wasn't some kind of dream either

Because someone had evidently, and very quietly, gone through her mom's clothes at some point during the night. No one was ever caught over it. The cops didn't even have a suspect, and I don't believe my friend would just make something up like that. Like she was really, actually upset about it for a really long time, and unless the whole thing is an elaborate cover story for something else, then it really did happen. It just freaks me out thinking the guy is still out there, and that he's that good at being a freaking creep that he can do all that stuff and stay totally undetected. Just the thought of it makes my skin crawl. I'm an ophthalmologist.

That's a fancy pants speak for eye doctor, by the way, here in Alabama. And because we have a heck of a lot of agricultural workers in my district, I get an awful lot of quite weird and wonderful medical issues to diagnose and deal with. One day a polite young man with an infected eyelid comes into my office and he's been having a miserable time. He'd been to see another eye doctor who put him on a course of antibiotics but other than bring down the swelling a little, it didn't get rid of the infection entirely. Obviously, I'm very intrigued by this because an antibiotic resistance is a very serious and potentially deadly problem that we're inevitably going to face in the future. So, initially I asked the young man to tell me exactly what happened to him in the days leading up to the infection, as well as hitting him with a bunch of questions regarding his previous treatments. I'm ready to get all house MD to diagnose the undiagnosable, so to speak, but

when I asked the guy if his previous doctor had conducted a physical examination of his eyelid, he told me, uh, not really. I asked him for a clearer answer and the patient elaborated that, to quote, that old sawbun's done plenty of poking and prodding but then he'd just give me some pills and kick me out of his office. Sounded like pure embellishment on his part as I know all too well that unsatisfied patients can needlessly call your qualifications into question. But still, I entertained him, gave him a local anesthetic and numb his eyelid, then did the old flippy inside out to get a look at the interior. The more squeamish among you are going to wish for a TLDR, but I'm afraid there's simply no easy way to say this. There appeared to be a visible abscess inside the tissue, surrounded by a thick material of viscous fluid. I thought I'd give it a nudge and what do you know? It moves. This wasn't an abscess or anything resulting from an infection. It was something else entirely and it was only when I managed

to remove it in one whole piece that I realized what I was looking at. It was a fly larva. This tied into the part of the patient's story where he told me that he'd had a bug bite her in the eye a few days before this mysterious infection began. Not just bit her either, it had been stuck on his eyeball for a millisecond before he'd managed to bat it away. But when I asked him if he'd bothered to wash his eye afterward, he said no. That if a worker ran off to wash their face every time a bug flew into him, that nothing would ever get done. Makes sense, I suppose, but please, folks, cleanliness is next to godliness in so, so many ways. Years ago now, my cousin was going to school in Tuscaloosa and was living in a small off-campus apartment on her lonesome. One night, she's in her bedroom studying with no company except a

cat that she had recently adopted. I say recently, and I mean recently because she said she'd literally only signed the papers maybe a week before and she still wasn't even 100% sure on what she was going to name her yet. Anyway, she's sitting there, working through whatever she was studying when the cat starts acting all crazy and stuff. She's pacing the floor, yowling constantly, then occasionally hissing at the bedroom door. My cousin keeps telling her to chill, giving her treats and pets and just assuming the whole thing is just all part of the cat getting used to her new home. In the end she kind of gave up and opened up her bedroom door so the cat could explore the rest of the apartment. But the cat goes right to the front door of the apartment, stops yowling but just sits there staring at the front door. My cousin said she was

all like, what? But then gets this strong sudden urge to check the peephole on her apartment door just in case there was anyone standing outside. Funnily enough, there was. The cat must have been picking up their scent or whatever the whole time and was just so anxious to be in a new place that she was freaking out. But then, as my cousin is looking at the guy trying to work out if she recognizes him or not, the peepholes kind of distort people's faces, the guy pulls something out of his jacket and slides it over his head. A ski mask. Then he knocks on the door. She said her heart was just about jumping out of her chest by that point, and after she started threading all the chain locks, she ran back to her room to grab her phone for a 911 call. She gives them a description, the cops pick the guy up and find

the ski mask on him, and when they arrest and take a DNA sample from the guy, they discover he's a serial attacker responsible for multiple different unsolved attacks over the previous two years. If it wasn't for her cat freaking out, she never would have seen his face and she might not have scared him away by locking the door properly. So really, if you think about it, that new cat saved her life. If she had wasted time over the decision, if she had waited a week, she might not even be alive or in any fit state to give some sweet little kitty a new home. But boy is she glad she did. She and I both. My My dad grew up in Alabama and by his own admission, he was a dumb redneck. It was a pain in the butt for everyone that knew him.

Except of course for his little posse of booze hound redneck buddies. One of their favorite things to do was drive around in a truck one of them owned, passing around a bottle of hooch they'd each take huge pulls from, including the driver. Then, once they were nice and toasty, they'd go tearing it around the back roads where they lived, going 50 or 60 miles an hour down these blind bends and whatnot. He says there was this one time where the driver was way, way too drunk and almost crashed like twice before he asked the guy to let him out. He says he just had this bad, bad feeling that something bad was going to happen and since they wouldn't chill out or slow down, he just

thought, alright, I'mma head out. So my dad gets out and starts walking or maybe more like stumbling back the opposite way in the direction of town. Minutes later he hears this huge metallic boom echoing through the trees behind him and he just knows it was the sound of his buddies having just crashed. Turns out they were less than a mile down the road when they hit this really sharp turn. The driver just didn't react in time and they plowed into a tree doing a buck and change. Two of them died on impact and the only reason the guy in the back seat survived was because they just so happened to crash in an area that was basically the extended backyard of

this married couple of doctors. He still lost an arm, part of his foot, and was in the hospital for the rest of the year, but yeah, he made it though. My dad told me this story on the day I asked him about getting my driver's permit, probably as a way of scaring me out of drunk driving. Boy did it work, because thinking like if he didn't get out of the car, I wouldn't exist. That really freaked me out when I thought about it. Only a handful of people from my personal life know this story, but I figured since Reddit can be pretty anonymous, I'd just make a throwaway and get it off my chest one more time.

You can call nonsense on it all if you like, I really don't care what anyone has to say about it at this stage, because the truth is, I still might actually go to prison for this. You see, more than 20 years ago I used to work the overnight shift at a 24-hour gas station in a major US city, one that'll remain nameless and that I do not live in anymore. As you can imagine, I've got my fair share of crazy stories from my time working there, but only one that still keeps me up at night, And that's the story of Big Sal. One of the things that kind of surprised me about working nights at the gas station was

the number of regulars I'd get to know. You figure an overnight gas station would mostly get a mixed assortment of transient strangers, but for some people, mostly other night shift workers, stopping at the gas station became a regular part of their routine, especially since it was the only thing in the area that was open 24 hours. There were a couple of nurses and a few cab drivers that I used to see on the regular, but without a doubt, my favorite was Big Sal. Sal didn't get his name because he was tall, he got his name because he was wide,

and most nights he'd waddle into the station, pay for his gas, and we'd shoot the breeze for a while. It was kind of annoying at first, being forced to conversate when I felt too tired to even string a sentence together, but after a while it was kind of nice to see a familiar face to break the boredom and kill some time. But then the thing that really made me like Big Sal was when he brought me a little takeout tray of some food that his wife had made. Occasionally he'd stay so long that we'd have to pause so I could serve a customer. Sometimes he'd just stand there and mind his business. Other times he'd make a face at me

like get a load of this guy and I'd have to bite my tongue to keep from laughing out loud. But then this one time, a guy walks in to pay for his gas, so Sal takes a step back from the register and politely apologizes to him. Guy says, no problem. I ring him up, then just as he's going through his wallet, Sal says, hey, don't I know you? The guy looks up, narrows his eyes a little, then innocently says, hmm, I don't think so. Then says something about being up on business from Missouri. Sal just kind of nods for a second, then says, what's your name? The guy stops again, gives his nervous little chuckle, then gives some plain sounding name that I can't for the life of me remember. But I do remember what Sal said next, because that got repeated over and over for the next minute or so. Sal says, nah,

that's not you. You're... And then he says a very, very Italian sounding name and accuses the guy of having worked with a friend of his in another large city nearby. Again, the guy denies it, acting like Sal is out of his freaking mind. Even I thought he was telling the truth, but good God, Sal just went off like a deaf Jack Russell and there was just no getting him back in the car. Then right when I think things are about to get heated, with the guy being like, get out of my face, I told you who I am, don't leave me alone, please sir. Sal backs down.

He says something like, you know what, I'm sorry, you're right. You just look like an old friend of mine and I got offended thinking you were trying to duck me. I apologize. Hey, no problem. The guy replied, obviously still bristling a little. Just, Jesus, listen to what people are telling you for Christ's sake. I don't want to fight anybody, you know? I know, I know. I apologize sincerely. I'm ashamed of myself. I really am. Sal says back.

I used to get stuff like that a surprising amount. Not always from Sal, just weird little interactions with members of the public where it could either be hilarious or incredibly annoying. So I really didn't think too much of it. I just waited patiently, took the guy's money and then wished him a nice night. Sal chimes in too, offering another apology then we watch the guy walk out of the station. The second the door closes, the guy starts walking towards his car. Sal practically jumps into action.

Not exactly Sonic the Hedgehog given his size, but he definitely waddled harder and faster than I'd ever seen before. Right as the guy is getting back into his car, I see Sal reaching into his waistband for something. Then bang, bang, bang, bang. I see muzzle flashes, then the guy's windshield is shattered, and then there's silence again. I just stand there for a second, frozen to the spot, unable to properly compute what I've just witnessed. Big Sal. Nice guy Sal. Sal who brings me leftovers and shoots the breeze with me when we're not roasting customers. He just killed a man, and he did it right in front of me.

Sal didn't even look back. He just slid the gun back into his waistband and started walking over to the guy's car. When he got there, he opened up the driver's side door, shoved over the guy's body, then got in and drove the car out of the lot. The whole thing was said and done in a matter of seconds. I'm thinking, I need to call the cops, as soon as I come to, as soon as I come out of shock, and this is back before I had a cell phone so I ran into the

back to use the gas station's phone. But as I'm running, a little thought pops into my head. Big Sal. Italian name. Works at night. Carries a gun. Just shot a guy as coolly as I'd take out the trash. Holy mother of God. He's in the mafia. I'm standing there, phone in hand, wanting to call 911, but I couldn't bring myself to.

All I could think of was, what if I call and he's gonna know? I couldn't have been a mafia witness, going into witness protection and all that nonsense in my early 20s, are you kidding me? Look, I know I should have called the cops, but I was terrified. I hesitated. What else do you want me to say? The mob was a serious thing where I grew up, not like it is now. And besides, Big Sal had left his car at the pumps. Like, surely he'd be coming back for it and soon, considering what he'd just done. And think about it. He shows back up, sees the cop car outside. He's gonna disappear and have me killed to keep me quiet. He knew so much about me too. Like we'd been talking all summer basically.

He'd have been able to have dudes find me in like days if he wanted to. So I'm standing there at the register trying not to have a full-blown panic attack when Sal finally shows back up in a taxi. He has a change of clothes, his hair is still damp and when he walked into the station, I almost choked on the amount of cologne he was wearing. Then he just walks up to the register, addresses me by name and says, this is a robbery. I just look at him, like what? And he says it again. I said, this is a robbery. Then he pulls out a gun from his waistband and points it at me. Immediately I'm like, holy Jesus Sal, you don't gotta kill me man, I swear I won't say anything. Hey, hey, hey, calm down, I'm not gonna clip you, he replies, just listen to me for Christ's sake, okay? Open the register and give me the money.

I did as I was told, but I can't even really describe how confused I was. First he shoots somebody and then he comes back to rob me. Why? Now, because I just robbed you, I'm gonna need the tapes too. He catch my drift. He says. And suddenly I get it. He's trying to cover his tracks. I was visibly relieved, trembling as I led him into the back.

See, kid? Now you're getting it. And this is your money too. I'm going to come back and give you your cut when this all blows over. I didn't say anything in response, I mean, what do you say to something like that? As I said, I'm calmed down a little bit, but I'm still screwed up for having just witnessed a shooting. Sal can obviously detect this, and I don't know how much of what he told me next is true, but this is what he said. He tells me everything's going to be fine and I shouldn't worry about covering for the guy he shot. According to Sal, this dude was a rat, turned state's evidence against his old capo back in the early 80s.

Obviously that meant the mob wanted him dead, but there was a twist too. They wanted him dead way before he went all Benedict Arnold on them, because one of his associates ended up catching him at home with a 13-year-old girl. This made its way up to the boss of the family and boom, the guy gets greenlit. He finds out, so to save his life, he turns into the star witness in a Rico case. After that, poof, he disappears. What was he doing back home, I don't know. Presumably he lost some weight or dyed his hair, maybe lost a little of his accent after living away for so long, but that didn't fool Sal, and it cost the guy his life.

I didn't stick around to take my cut. I called on my boss to quit the very next day. I also kept my mouth shut when the cops came around to talk about the robbery. Well, I talked, but I gave Sal's version of the events. Guy in a mask came in, took the money, took the tapes, left. That seemed good enough for them, so after a while, the whole thing just went away. And I'm hoping it stays away too, because as much as I feel a weird longing sense of guilt over the whole thing, I just want what's dead to stay buried. A few years back, my wife and I were driving through the Midwest on a trip to visit her parents in Rapid City, South Dakota. It might sound crazy to some, but we find ourselves enjoying the journey a lot more if we take much more scenic routes around the country. And with the vast plains of South Dakota being particularly breathtaking in the spring, we decided to take more of the minor highways across the state. But on this occasion, we were having such a blast that I completely neglected to check my gas gauge for the better part of an afternoon. As a result, I suddenly see my gas light flick on and both me

and my wife have a minor panic attack, thinking we might be late to our parents after having been stuck in the middle of nowhere with an empty tank. They already thought that I was a dud, so I was in no rush to prove them right. I must have driven for five or six miles on nothing but fumes, and I'm sure I don't have to tell you how relieved we both were when we saw what looked like a small town coming into view. I can't tell you what it was called, we didn't see any kind of signage for it and when I later checked my road map, there was nothing marked on the stretch of highway where it should have been. But at the time, me and my wife didn't give a hoot what the town's name was.

All we were interested in is if they had a gas station or not and sure enough they did. We pulled into this tiny little place called Pop's Trail Services and only when I got out of the car did I realize how run down the place was. I think we were both so relieved that we just didn't take any notice at first but as we got out and began to look around, I noticed that this place wasn't like any town I'd visited before. It's hard to describe honestly but to keep a long story short, let's just say this whole place looked like it was dying. Cars rusting in driveways, lawns overgrown, broken windows on houses that people were still living in. I think I'd felt sorry for them if they weren't so, well,

unwelcoming. Pop's Trail Services had only a single pump to it, one with a scruffy looking handwritten sign that just said, cash only. Since no one had appeared to assist me I figured it was self service, but when I tried to get the pump to work I couldn't get a drop of gas out of it. I then walk up to the little shack where I assumed the attendant was, only to find it was empty. Not only that, but it looked like it hadn't been used in years. Everything had this thick film of dust on it,

yet the old fashioned pump showed that there was actually gas in it. As you can imagine, I have this moment where I think, okay, hang on, just what kind of country setup is this? So I turn around to my wife to give her a look and notice that almost everyone in the area has walked out of their house, trailer or shack to come stare at us. My wife has already seen this so she gives me this look that says, I don't like this one bit sonny. And let me tell you, neither did I. There are about five or six single-story houses in our line of sight and every one of their front doors is wide open, with the homeowner watching us from their front porch. No one was smiling, no one was waving, no one looked particularly hostile either, they were just…staring.

You're staring at us, Sunny? I remember my wife saying under her breath. I told her I was well aware that they were staring at us. Then I raised a hand to wave at one of them. It was an older guy in denim overalls and a grubby old trucker hat with more jowls than face. He didn't wave back. He just carried on staring at us in silence. Uh, hey there. I called out.

We're just looking to get some gas and we'll be on our way. The guy just carried on staring at me for a second then walked back inside his house without saying a single word. We were left to watch even more people gathering to stare at us, women and children creeping out of their houses like rabbits from a burrow, all to watch us curiously from a distance. It was very, very intimidating. I know it might not sound that way, but please take my word for it. There was a distinct tension in the air and it was not pleasant. A minute later, the jowly guy re-emerged from his home and shouted, Jeb's on his way. Jeb? My wife asked rhetorically under her breath, who's Jeb? I told her I didn't know, but we were more

than likely about to find out. And so we did. Jeb rolled up in his truck, got out, and walked over to us, eyeing us suspiciously. Once we confirmed it was him, we repeated our story about being out of gas and asked him if he could get the pump working for us. Obviously, I told him he'd be properly compensated and we wouldn't take up any more of his time than we had to. In my heart of hearts, I hope he might soften up a little. I appreciated that people all over can be wary of strangers, especially in smaller, more rural communities, but he didn't. The offer of money didn't seem to sway him either, and his response to our story was, What brings you two folks out here to our little town?

I tell him we're on the way to see my wife's parents in Rapid City and immediately he gives me this look. I knew exactly why too. If I wanted to get to Rapid City, I'd have to be the worst navigator in history to be all the way out where we were. And when I told him that, we like to take the scenic route, you know? He responded by spitting on the ground in front of him. It was so sudden that my wife gasped a little and when he looked up at us again, I could tell he didn't believe us and seemed to be pretty livid as well. Yeah, I see what's happening here, Jeb said. You two city folk think we're just about dumb as rocks, don't you? I was shocked.

I practically jumped to try to explain that wasn't the case, but he told me to shut up. We don't like folks like you out here, mister, Jeb continued, and I suggest you get out of here before we decide you're not welcome anymore. Again, I tried to explain we're not federals, but he just shushes me and points over towards the gathering crowd. I wouldn't want you to make those people angry, he said. They're sick and tired of being harassed by vermin like you. To this day, I have no idea what he was talking about. Like I said, I couldn't even find the place on any map, nor did I catch the name, so there was no way of me finding out what happened to make them detest outsiders so much. But from the way

that he was talking to me, whatever it was, it must have been bad. I remember my wife edging back towards the passenger seat of my car, but I'm not even sure the thing will start again. And if it doesn't, if we get in and we can't get that thing started up again, we'd be in a handy little prison and the town folks would be able to pour their wrath onto us at their leisure. But what else were we going to do? Run? Fight? I was done reasoning with the guy, or rather, he was done reasoning with me. I just didn't see any other choice. We got in the car, and I began trying to start the engine. At first we had no such luck as I kept twisting my key in the ignition and the crowd outside began to wander closer and closer. The guy kept shouting

things at me as I tried over and over to bring the engine to life, and for a minute, it seemed like we were screwed. But then, vroom, the single sweetest sound I'd ever heard in years preceded us, barreling down the dirt road and back towards the main highway. How in the world we even had enough vapor in the tank to get us going I don't know and I actually believe there had been a little divine intervention at play to be honest with you. That being said, we still only had enough to trundle to a shop just shy of the main highway, but by that point we were at least a mile and a half down the road and well out of sight of the main highway. But by that point, we were at least a mile and a half down the road and well out of sight of the gathered townsfolk. As soon as we stopped, my wife burst into tears and honestly, it was a struggle not to join her. I hadn't felt that vulnerable and scared since I

was a child. The whole incident took us completely by surprise and it was an experience that left us considerably shaken for some time afterward. To this day I still sometimes remember that little rusty town with no name, the one we almost got mobbed in for some inexplicable reason. I still don't know what happened to make them so mad either. In my darker moments I have ideas that they were some kind of extremist religious cult or kind of like those people in Waco or something but then the way he said you folks so bitterly it's more likely that there was some kind of land dispute or something of that nature. Something that turned them against whatever government body or private entity draws their

ire. I feel bad for them if something like that happened, I really do, but the way they treated us is no way to treat strangers, because I didn't just feel unwelcome, I felt unsafe, and for a moment back there, I didn't think we were ever going to make it out, at all. I used to work part-time at this crummy old gas station in the middle of nowhere. I'd start my shifts at 7am, taking over from the lady who used to work the night shift. We'd do a little shift changeover, have a coffee, then she'd head off to take her kids to school. But one day I arrive at the gas station to find a guy waiting at the counter, and as soon as he sees me he's like, well it's about time. I'm like, excuse me? I just got here and I'm on time.

He just comes back with, I've been waiting here like 10 minutes to pay for my gas, lady. I figure Dora, the night shift lady, must be in the back using the bathroom or something and when I explain that to the guy, he's still irritated but he calms down enough that I can get him his change so he can leave. Once that's over, I head into the back calling out for Dora but I get no reply. I search the entire back area of the gas station but there's not a soul to be found. Dora's car is round back which is why I figured she was there. But then aside from the guy waiting at the register, the place was deserted.

I walk back behind the register, confused, and I pluck up the courage to call our boss at home. I knew he'd be angry that I called so early, but to be honest, I just knew something weird was going on. Like, have you heard that story about that old ship they found just totally abandoned? Or the old English colony where the people disappeared after scratching the word Croatoan into the sediment walls. I swear it straight up reminded me of that. So, once I was sure there was nothing I should know regarding Dora, I called the cops. Two cops arrived to search her car and asked me a few questions and by around 10am, our boss showed up to give the cops access to the CCTV footage. They were all in the back office while I was working, so I didn't get to see any of it myself. But when the cops left and my boss walked up to the register, he looked shook.

I asked him where Dora went because obviously the security cameras would have at least caught which direction she headed off in or if she was kidnapped or anything scary like that. And I remember the look of scared confusion on his face when he said, I don't know. I asked him what he meant by that because like I said, the CCTV had to have captured where she went. But that was just the problem. My boss said the CCTV captured Dora walking into the back of the store, opening up the back door, then walking out of it.

But the camera recording the small parking lot round back only caught the door opening, but no Dora appears. Now that doesn't mean she just disappeared into thin air, it just means she exited the real door Then instead of walking out into the lot She shimmied along the right side of the wall out of the camera's sight At least that was the only logical explanation for it But it meant that for some reason

Dora had made a concerted effort not to be caught wandering into the woods at the side of the gas station But what in the world would she do a thing like that for? a concerted effort not to be caught wandering into the woods at the side of the gas station. But what in the world would she do a thing like that for? Unless, of course, someone was waiting for her just outside of the cameras that scared her enough that she'd run off into the forest. All we could do was hope that the police investigation turned up some answers, hopefully finding Dora safe and sound in the process. But he heard nothing back. I mean my boss literally had to call the local sheriff's department just to be told that no, they hadn't made any progress and were still waiting on witness testimony. But there were no witnesses. Unless Dora really had been stalked or intimidated off camera,

there wasn't a single other soul on site at the time she wandered off. It's been years now, and there's still been no sign of Dora anywhere. In fact, I think in a few years she'd be eligible to be declared dead in absence, or whatever fancy legal term there is for it. I don't know if they're quite ready to give up hope yet because I know I'm not. I just hope that Dora is somewhere safe and happy, having just gotten sick of her dumb night job and decided she wanted something better for herself. That's what I try to think about anyway because the alternative,

well, I just don't want to think about that. At all. My first real job was working at a gas station when I was just 17 years old. The station itself was this run-down old building just outside of Mount Vernon, Illinois, well off the beaten path. The owners barely cleaned the place and were too cheap to maintain anything other than the gas pumps. The ceiling leaked, the entire rear room was a mess, and the employee's bathroom barely worked. It was like it was screaming out to me, hey kid, don't work here, it sucks. But what can I say, I needed the money. What's worse, the other two members of staff were some of the creepiest people I'd ever met. I strongly suspected one of them was a meth head, but I never get proof on that.

But I literally know the other dude had been to prison for manslaughter. I mean, I never asked him about it. I'm not that stupid. But between you and me, if his personality was anything to go by, he must have had a pretty good lawyer to have gotten off with just a manslaughter conviction. But surprisingly, the scariest thing I ever experienced while working there wasn't anything to do with either of them. It actually involved my worst and most irrational fear. So my least favorite part of the job was taking out the trash at the end of

a graveyard shift. Every single time I did it I used to get the creeps thinking something was going to burst out of the dumpster and grab me, then drag me down to the garbage realm or something. That or how someone might be waiting for me, crouched among the trash bags and I'd never see them until it was too late. Like I said, just one of those dumb irrational fears you get when doing something all alone and late at night. But then this one night I walk out the rear exit, full trashbag in hand when I hear, hey you. I freeze, turning to see nothing in the parking lot but a few sleeper trucks. It didn't help that it was almost pitch black out there and I realized I can't see who's apparently talking to me. I start to get

really nervous. I'm too anxious to say anything and I simply start heading back inside when I hear it again. Hey. Hey you. Someone was definitely calling out to me while also trying to remain as quiet as possible. It was the trying to stay quiet part that really gave me the willies. No one whose intentions are innocent talks like that. Not usually, anyway. My gut is just telling me, this is bad. This is really bad.

And I'm smart enough to listen to it. The last thing I heard before I got back to safety was like, hey, hey, wait a minute, come here. Then I just shut the door, bolted, and started to close up for the evening. Instead of driving back, I called my dad and told him some sketchy guy was hanging around the parking lot and that I was scared. So, being the great father he was, he drove down to make sure I was safe and to give me a ride home, leaving my car in the parking lot until the next day. The following morning I get a call from the manager telling me I don't have to go into work that afternoon.

When I ask why, she tells me that about 15 minutes after my dad showed up to give me a ride home, a bunch of guys smashed their way into the gas station and basically ransacked the place. When I told him about the guy whispering to me in the parking lot, he just about freaked out, thanking God that I was okay and that they'd timed their raid around closing. Obviously I was relieved too, like they totally smashed the place up so if I'd been there, there's no telling what they would have done to me. But that wasn't what had my manager freaking out so much. It was the fact that the cops had told him how lucky I was. Because this same gang had committed a bunch of other robberies in the

area and this was the only one in which they hadn't taken a hostage of some kind. One liquor store owner was beaten half to death after he refused to tell them where his safe was. Turned out he didn't have one. He just took all his cash home with him every night. Trouble was, they didn't buy that story and he ended up in the hospital for like a month. That could have been me. Really, it could have. And given that I was a 17 year old girl at the time it happened

Jesus I can't even imagine how rough I'd have had it. After that my dad refused to let me work the graveyard shift and I can't say I was too sore about that at all. The End One of the most darkly humorous stories I know is the time my mate almost got his head caved in by an armed robber. He doesn't have Reddit and when I suggested the get one to post this he called me a neckbeard. So I'm posting it for him to be a karma farmer.

It's one of those stories that definitely wouldn't have been anything to laugh about at the time, but as the years have gone by, I find myself laughing at what happened at the very end of it. Maybe it's the pure relief of knowing he got through it without a scratch, something to take the edge off of what was actually a very traumatic event. But enough from me, I'll let you all be the judge of it. So this is back when we were all about 18, 19. Some of us had gone off to uni, whereas others had gotten full-time jobs. One of the lads with the full-time job was Pac-Man, who got in his name by having such a big mouth that he looked like Pac-Man whenever he laughed. So Pac-Man gets a job in a petrol station and it's his first actual full-time job. I think he'd only been there about a week when the armed robber turned up and

I remember him saying most of his job was easy, he was just having a hard time figuring out the till. It's like a hundred bloody buttons, he said. On it and none of them say actual words, it's proper stress. I think he was getting there in the end, like he could work the thing but if someone came in asking to change notes to pound coins for the air pump or whatever, he was screwed. Anyway, his first week or so is that bad that management decided to put him on night shift so he can get to know the till at a much slower pace. I say nights, it was 6pm to 2am and after that the garage shut for 4 hours before reopening at 6. So I think it's his second week at this point but it's about 10-2 in the morning and he's getting ready to close up. He said he was doing

stock when all he heard was glass shattering from someone smashing a hole in the door with a baseball bat. The next thing he knows, there's three lads and balaclavas cornering him before they grip him and drag him behind the counter. They're screaming at him to open the till, smashing stuff with bats when he hesitated. Basically he's in an absolute nightmare situation but he's faced with something of a problem. He doesn't know how to just open the till. I don't know if this was deliberate on the manager's part. Don't tell him how to get to the cash until he's trusted kind of thing. Or maybe he had told him and Pac-Man just forgot.

Either way, Pac-Man has to look these angry robbers in the eye and say, I can't. They just think he's trying to be a hero, so the fella closest to him just smacks someone and then starts repeating himself, open the till, open it or we'll smash your head in. Pac-Man says he was about to try and fight them, but he's not some fanny either, so the punch made him angry enough to shot back,

can you not bloody hear me? I can't open the till. They're going, What are you on about? Just open it. We won't tell you again. To which he replies, I'm new. I can't open the till unless you buy something. He said one of them proper wanted to do him in at that point, but then another stopped the bloke, turned back to him and said, I'll have a pack of blue wrigglies then. Then one of the others stops and thinks and says, 20 Lambert. So the mate gets him his ciggies and his chewies then uses them to open the till. The lads take all the cash, force him to empty the ciggies but fall short of asking him about his safe as I think they'd got the message by that point. After that, they just left and my mate called the police.

Don't get me wrong, I don't envy what he had to go through, it must have been grim as anything, but I wish I could have been there to see three furious armed robbers calm down suddenly only to ask could I have a pack of chewing gum please. I suppose that's just the thing about situations like that, just how unpredictable and volatile they can be. And I understand how lucky or privileged we all are that we can look back and laugh when, on another day, Pack Dude might not be around anymore to laugh about it with us. This probably won't be the scariest story y'all have ever heard and at the time it just made me mad. But afterward when I actually had time to think about it, I realized I basically dodged a bullet and that if I hadn't been a little quicker, I might not be around today

to write this. A few years back, I'm driving home from work one day when I see my gas light on. Naturally, I pull into the next available gas station, fill my tank up, then head into the gas station itself to pay. Then as I'm walking through the door, I accidentally bump into a guy who was walking out while staring at his phone. Even though he was most definitely at fault I offered him an apology. But that didn't seem to be good enough for him. He gives me this look and when I return his gaze he says something like, You looking like you know me homie.

I didn't even really know what he meant by that and I found his overall reaction to be nothing short of infuriating. But my mother brought me up to be the bigger man so I simply told him to be more careful next time and carried on to the store to pay for my gas. He made some comment like, the F you say to me old man? But I disregarded it. He didn't follow me into the store so I didn't think that there'd be any more trouble. I walked to the back of the store, intent on grabbing a pack of those Korean moon pie things, then remember what my wife said about getting started with my diet. I knew she was right and it was either start now or never get started at all, so I decided to forego my imported moon pies and just pay for my gas. Then as I'm walking back towards the pumps, it sort of looks like my

front hood is up for some reason. Then as I get closer, I realize it really is my car that has its front hood up, only I can't see who's behind it, presumably checking my engine. Under normal circumstances, that wouldn't alarm me too much, but considering the interaction I just had with that very rude young man, I get a bad, bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I started calling out before the very same young man darts out from behind my hood and starts walking away as quickly as he can after closing it. I don't move too fast these days but by god did I hustle over to my car to see what kind of vandalism he'd been up to, only to see that he'd cut my brake fluid. My brake fluid of all things. He could have damaged 50 different things

and he went right for my brake fluid. And if I hadn't just paid for my gas and gotten out of there, I might not have caught him doing it. Obviously I called the cops, then a mechanic as quickly as I could, and honestly I could barely believe what I told them, how a young man had taken such offense at the smallest slight that he'd tried to, well, murder me. Because let's face it, that's what he tried to do. I'd have gotten back on the highway, picked up speed, then when it came to brake, that'd be the end of me. It took a tow truck to get my car out of there and the repairs cost me more than I expected.

But on the bright side, the cops caught the kid who did it, and he ended up picking up a charge for property damage of all things. I honestly wish he got more. Hey fans of the Let's Read podcast. This is Booz and Derek from the 90s Nightmares podcast. And right now, we're re-watching every episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? And diving headfirst into the nostalgia of what got us interested in the scary stories we love today. So after this episode of the Let's Read podcast, click the link in the description to be taken to the 90s Nightmares podcast. We'll see you there.

I used to work 10 p. 6am at an Arco station as a cashier back in the day. It was on some old country road off of a main highway so we didn't get too many customers. But locals knew it was cheap and open late so the business just about broke even every month. Since we were in Oregon where people don't pump their own gas for whatever reason, I used to work with a fuel attendant most shifts. But on one shift in particular, he calls in sick and the bosses couldn't get me a replacement. So I'm screwed, doomed to work two jobs for one paycheck for eight solid hours. Then around like 1.30am I start hearing these creepy scratching sounds coming from the storage room out back. We used to get raccoons out there all the time,

scratching away at a piece of exposed drywall in the hopes of getting through to all the snacks inside. The past few times that it happened I just stuck my head to shout out, hey, trash panda, enough! And the sounds would normally stop. As usual, they did, so I just went back to browsing Reddit and trying not to fall asleep. But then, the sounds start back up again, which had never, ever happened before, so I'm like, huh, brave raccoons tonight, huh? So I do do it again i call out and the sounds stop but again they start up again within minutes of me sitting down but this time when i get up to call out i hear some loud bashing sound coming from the storage room and i realize that it's no raccoon making those noises in retrospect i probably should have just slammed the door, locked it, and called the cops, but I'm dumb.

So I looked. And what do I see lunging at me from a dark corner? But the scrabbiest, most demonic-looking meth head I'd ever seen in my life. I just turn tail and run out of the store as he unleashes this hell scream behind me, and not once do I look back as I bolted towards the front entrance to the station. I don't think I'll ever find the words to describe how relieved I was to see red and blue flashing lights outside. A cop was literally pulling up after getting a call from a passing driver that someone was acting all weird around back. Must have been after watching Marky Meth Freak

scratching away at the drywall. Just crazy thinking that he and the raccoons had the same style of thinking. But anyway, thankfully the dude ran off when he saw the cop entering the station and I'm not sure what happened to the guy after that. Management had the hole patched up and after that we didn't get any more scratching or any more meth heads breaking in in the middle of the night. To be continued... I've been a cop for about 10 years now and this is one of those calls that still haunts me. I get a call for a domestic assault that had just occurred and I learn that the victim is at a gas station about a block away from her home. I get there and find the female victim's throat had been cut from ear to ear.

The neighbor is holding a towel up to her slit throat and the victim is struggling to breathe. The paramedics are on their way and I take over holding the towel for the neighbor. I'm trying to apply enough pressure to reduce the bleeding but not so much pressure that I'm strangling her. It's a delicate balance. Quick law lesson. You know that there are laws against hearsay, right? Basically I can't testify in court about the events that someone else told me about and I didn't witness. The person who witnessed it would have to testify to it. One of the expectations is what's known as the dying declaration. If someone is on their deathbed and believes they're about to die,

their statements are exempt from the hearsay rules. I have some serious doubts that this woman is going to live. I want to ask her who slit her throat in order for it to qualify as a dying declaration. I need to be able to testify that she believed she was about to die. So I asked her two questions. The first was, who cut your throat? Which she answered. The second was, you realize that you may be about to die, which she answered, yes. Our eyes were locked and I still remember the emptiness in her eyes. Within a few minutes the paramedics showed up and my partner and I went next door to look for suspects. The door was ajar and we could hear a baby screaming upstairs. We went in with guns drawn and a metallic smell of blood was overpowering. We made our way upstairs,

passed smeared bloody handprints on the walls and found the child upstairs. He was unharmed and the suspect was long gone. Thanks to the excellent performance of the medical staff, the victim survived. I met with her a couple of weeks later and I was very apprehensive to speak with her again. I basically looked at her

and told her she was going to die. When she opened the door I could tell that she didn't recognize me. She had very little memory of what happened after she was assaulted. I told her who I was and she hugged me, crying and thanked me for saving her life. The suspect ended up pleading guilty, so I never had to testify as to what I told the victim that night. But still, it haunts me to this day. Back when I was working part-time at a local gas station, this shy little lady came in through the front door and said she was having a problem out at the pumps. When I asked what the problem was, I listened as she explained that she'd clicked the lever that let the nozzle keep pumping gas, but then had somehow managed to pull the thing

out of her car's gas tank. Not knowing what to do, she walked to the store and asked me what to do. I'm like, but you stopped the flow, right? She looks at me with this sheepish look before I'm just like, oh god, oh god. I run out of the store, praying she'd only managed to spill a little gas. But no, there's not just some little puddle to clean up. The gas nozzle is lying there just pumping out gallon after gallon of highly flammable liquid onto the pad. And keeping in mind that this is just after midday in the middle of Arizona summertime,

it was easily a hundred degrees out and cars are just whizzing out along the highway next to us. All it would have taken was the slightest little spark. And woof, the whole place would have gone up in a big fireball. I shut down the pumps using the manual override behind the register. I told everyone at the pumps to walk, not drive, walk away from the gas station into the little thing on the side of the highway and for any smokers to please refrain from their de-stressor of choice until the fire department arrived. I remember one total Karen being like, you can't talk to me that way young man, as I'm literally screaming at her to evacuate the area. Even when I explained the situation,

she was like, manners don't cost a cent. Like, she could be burning to death and be like, at least he said please and thank you and ma'am. A little while later the situation was contained and most of the danger averted, but even the firefighters who attended said they'd never seen anything that bad, and the whole gas station had to be closed for more than 24 hours while we cleaned up and had all the pumps checked by a certified engineer. The engineer also said he'd never seen anything like it before. Either there was a structural problem with the nozzle itself, which is rare, or the person who broke it had Hulk strength. He looked puzzled when I told him it was some five foot nothing little lady but eventually just shrugged it off and got on with his job. Definitely the closest thing I'd ever

been to death and I'm happy to say that nothing remotely close to that amount of danger ever happened again. To be continued... The scariest thing I ever saw while working at a gas station has to be the time I had this huge Goldberg looking dude rock up to the register, slam down a 50, and shout gas. He immediately walks back out towards pump number 4 and I'm just like, whatever idiot, ring him up for 50 bucks worth and activate the pump for him. That's when I noticed how his car isn't parked at the pump properly, so I decided to watch thinking, this is going to be funny. I thought I was going to watch him struggle with the hose, get all angry about it, a healthy dose of karma to lighten up my shift. But that dude hadn't parked like an idiot by accident. He knew exactly what he was doing.

He grabs the gas nozzle, opens up the passenger door of his car, then starts spraying gas all over the inside of his car. Obviously, I'm immediately like no, no, no, this is not good and I smash the emergency shut off switch before calling the cops. Then while I'm on the phone to the dispatcher, terrified this dude is about to set his car on fire in a freaking gas station, I see something even worse. The driver's side door opens up and some girl comes tumbling out of the car, soaked in gas and goes running towards the highway screaming in terror. By that time, everyone around was watching this whole thing unfold as the dude chases the gas soaked girl

out of sight. This is back when I had to use the gas station's landline as we weren't allowed to keep cell phones with us while on shift so it's not like I could run out to see what's going on. I had to wait until the call was over to run out and see what everyone could see. Thankfully the girl wasn't on fire since the guy didn't have a lighter handy, or if he did, he certainly saw sense with regards to using it. But my god, he was kicking the crap out of her and when the cops showed up, they had to tase the guy to get him to stop. I legitimately thought that I was about to watch a human fireball for a hot minute. I was in a toxic, borderline abusive friendship with a girl from the ages of 9 to 12.

Here's a little background information to give you a little understanding as to what my life was like back in the late 2000s, early 2010s. I grew up in a very tumultuous household. My parents hated each other and my extended family along with my immediate were plagued by mental illness and drug addiction. Needless to say I was a very anxious girl who was drawn to unstable people and suffice it to say they were drawn to me. I was a shy 11 year old girl who like who, like many others before me, used the internet as a way to vent my frustrations and anger about my home life. This was the time where

AOL was the main source of communication used between friends, and I was no stranger to this along with MySpace and Facebook. However, I wasn't like the typical preteens of this era, or so I thought. I kept my profiles private, never accepted a follow or a friend request that I didn't know, and never shared my location on these said profiles. This is the part where I introduce Tanya. Tanya isn't her name of course, as I don't want to use her real name in case she just so happens to read this thread, watches the YouTube channel, or listens to the podcast. So we'll just call her Tanya. Tanya and I met in elementary school, one of the points in my life where my family's situation was quite volatile and in retrospect,

I think she sensed this. I was vulnerable and Tanya took advantage of my innocence. She never really displayed any signs of her true intentions in the beginning as they never usually do. She would do shady things every now and again, manipulate me into begging my mom to stay on the computer until the wee hours of the morning so we could go on not-safe-for-work websites, ghost me when I didn't give her my favorite pen, or yell at me when I couldn't perfect a guitar solo on Guitar Hero. She did some things to me that I believe my brain blocked out due to trauma. My mom didn't like her either. Parents always have weird intuition when it comes to friends and I wish to God I would have listened to my mom before Tanya did what she did to me.

Tanya's behavior changed for the worse when we turned 11. Tanya was openly jealous of my success in school. Granted, she was incredibly smart herself, but she always made it a point to mock me for having great grades and would always comment that since I wasn't pretty enough, having good grades would be a nice balance. Nice, right? It took me a while to build my self-esteem up after all the snide remarks she would make about my weight and my face and only now as a 22 year old do I think that I'm beautiful and have a wonderful figure. Anyways, back to Tanya. As a result of her

jealousy and growing resentment towards me, she began to plot my downfall. I make no exaggerations either. This girl literally tried to ruin my self-worth even more than she already had. It started in 6th grade. Tanya and I were remarkably close that year and I wanted to do everything with her. We would talk all day in school and would chat all night on AIM. One particular evening Tanya and I were talking about boys. Being that we were hormonal pre-teens, our conversations would usually turn into who we liked in school

that day. Being that I had a horrible relationship with my father, I didn't really trust boys, even from an early age, so it was rare if I developed a crush on one. I remember Tanya and I's conversation going a little something like this. Her saying, do you know Mark? And me replying, the kid in my class, yeah, why? I heard he likes you. What? No way. Totally, he told me. You want me to talk to him and give him your username? Of course. Oh my god, thank you, Tanya. My heart was racing. A boy liked me? Impossible. When Tanya told me that she would give Mark my username for AIM, I nearly exploded in my seat. 11-year-old me couldn't believe I was going to have my first real boyfriend. But how wrong I was.

Fast forward to the next night, I was getting ready for bed when I heard the famous AOL ding sound off on my iPod Touch. You know the sound I'm talking about. When I checked the notification, it was a message from Markyboy99. I turned red. Tanya really had talked to Mark and gave him my username. She was truly the best. He messaged me with the usual, hey, emphasis on the three y's and I responded hey. I didn't want to come off as desperate so I only used one Y. Not even one minute later he messaged me back. We talked all night about everything, our days, how school was, what type of silly bands we liked, typical 11 year old stuff. I have to admit I was smitten right off the bat. I think it was partly because I'd

never really had a boy like me before and the other part being that my self-esteem was so low that I never thought a boy would be capable of liking me. Also, it could have been because Mark was one of the most popular boys in school at the time. He played football, was mouthy to the teachers and was extremely outgoing. All the things a young girl would be attracted to. He talked for months, my puppy love growing for him more and more every time we chatted. Of course I never spoke to him on the phone, nor did I get his phone number because why would you do that, right? All the while I was speaking to him, Tanya would be gassing me up, telling me how proud she was of me and that I deserved a boyfriend. My suspicions of Mark only began to grow when I

attempted to approach him during school hours. Again, I had anxiety so I'd never really speak to Mark outside of AIM. When I went to talk to him, Mark looked confused, as if though he's never had a conversation with me before in his life. He turned away from me on the playground and walked to be with his other friends. Huh, weird. This wasn't like him. He was usually so chatty with me online that I expected him to welcome me with open arms in person. My ego was bruised. My little 11 year old mind tried to rationalize his behavior by chalking it up to him not wanting to talk to the nerds since he was so popular and that he just preferred to keep our relationship online.

I told Tanya the news and she seemed to be genuinely heartbroken for me. She was just as angry as I was and vowed to confront Mark later that day during music class. I was happy. Tanya had my back and as far as I knew she was going to tell Mark off about being a total jerk to me. Well, it worked. Later that night, I got a message from Mark telling me how sorry he was for ignoring me and that he was just going through some family things. Back in love I was. I didn't care that Mark ignored me during school. I didn't care that he rejected my advances in person as long as I had him to talk to online and Tanya's support. I was fine. I even told my mom about him and she was extremely happy for me as well. Another month passed and it was March 31st, 2011. Mark messaged me and told me that he had

something very important to tell me the next day. The anxiety began. What was it? What did he have to tell me? At that point I considered myself and Mark to be dating so I was anxious that he was either going to break it off with me or that he was going to make us public in school the next day. I told my mom and Tanya, almost on the verge of tears of how excited and nervous I was. Well the next day, April 1st, 2011 rolled around and this is what followed. It was around 7pm and I was on Club Penguin as I usually was until I heard a familiar ding. It was Mark. It was time for the news I'd been waiting for all day. Hey babe. Winky face. Oh my god, hey, I've been waiting for you to chat with me all night.

Sorry babe, I was at practice. Are you ready for the news? I was shaking with anticipation at this point. Even writing this now, a whole swell of emotions was resurfacing. Yes, of course, I said. It was then that Mark sent me a picture. I opened it, but only it wasn't Mark. It was Tanya, and she was holding a handwritten sign that said, Happy April Fool's Day. At first I started laughing and I mean it was an ugly laugh. Of course it was a prank. Tanya had gotten me so good, right? Right? Well, wrong. It was then when the realization hit me that I started to sob. I felt betrayed and like a loser. Tanya had been behind Mark all along and she had been planning this big joke since October of 2010. She had been so jealous that she pretended to be someone else and string along my emotions when she knew I was already in a rough place mentally.

She told me that I was stupid to even think that Mark would even like me in the first place and that I was dumb for not asking for his number. Tanya had been at this for six months. An 11-year-old girl plotted Mark, used him to make me think that a boy liked me, and tricked me into believing that I had a boyfriend, all the while telling me when we hung out that she was happy for me and that Mark and I were a cute couple. I told my mom, who then called her mom. My mother was livid, to say the least. She told Tanya's mom to tell her daughter never to speak to me again.

I was crushed. My best friend of three years had catfished me because she simply wanted to play a joke. I was loyal to her and she toyed with my emotions because she could. Tanya had tried multiple times to guilt trip me into being her friend again in the months that followed leading into 7th grade. One of the more memorable and honestly messed up times being when she messaged me a few days after my birthday in August to tell me that her mother had just died in a horrible car crash. Her body was dismembered and they could only find her head and wedding ring. As anyone would be, I was in tears. Tanya's mother was nothing but lovely to me and learning that she died in such a violent way was

crushing to my soul. I started talking to Tanya again, asking her when her mother's funeral would be. Tanya then revealed to me seconds later after speaking to her about the grisly details over her mother's passing that she was kidding and was pranking me again and that I was stupid to believe her. She even sent a video of her laughing at me. I was disgusted. Who would even say something like that? What now 12 year old would message someone that their mother was dismembered in a car crash? She then revealed her ugly and quite frankly evil intentions when we were at the beginning of 7th grade and she became friends with a girl named Kaylee. They both invited me to sit with them at their lunch table and because I was desperate for friends, I stupidly accepted.

Only to be met with hordes of insults and laughter behind my back every chance I wasn't looking. Tanya then messaged me one night telling me to take my own life and that the world would be a much better place without me in it. She had Kaylee tell me to go jump off of a bridge. Tanya told me that she hated me and was never really my friend to begin with, that I deserved all the pain she put me through the year prior. I again told my mom, who then called the police. She had had enough of Tanya and so had I. For four years I had put up with Tanya's malicious behavior and I just couldn't handle it anymore. My mom made me delete my AIM account and Tanya's mom told her to never contact me again or else. My mom also advised

me to move lunch tables but I was focused on not letting Tanya win. For the entirety of 7th grade I sat at the same table as Tanya, only I spoke to my friends at the other side of the table. I never spoke to her, looked at her, or gave her any sort of attention. Kaylee was scared to death of me afterward too as the police had gotten in contact with her and her family as well. It's been 10 years and I still haven't spoken to Tanya. I'm now 22 years old, have two bachelor's degrees, one in psychology and the other in history and I'm now working towards a master's in clinical social work. Tanya did other things to me too that I could write a whole other story about but I think writing this one helped me give closure on that part of my

childhood that scarred me for years. I thank God for my mom stepping in when she did because I don't know where I'd be without her. As for Tanya, I don't know where she is or what she's doing and I really rather not. On the off chance she stumbles upon this story, I don't know where she is or what she's doing and I really rather not. On the off chance she stumbles upon this story, I have a message for her. Your jealousy and wishes for death upon me didn't win. And I truly hope that karma does not come around one day to bite you where the sun don't shine. This happened literally a month ago, back in February, when my boyfriend and I had decided to try out an open relationship for a little while for various reasons. We live separately in one of the larger cities in the north of middle America. And there's a decently sized population of college students, like me, to keep the gay community fresh, so I was doing pretty well for myself.

One night I was bored and scrolling through Grindr, looking for an easy hookup, when I got a message from a guy who was barely 800 feet away. He wasn't terrible looking, and I was a little little desperate so I agreed to go to his place. He lives quite literally down the street from me. I can see his building from my window so I walked over and he let me up and into his apartment. We made small talk and I mentioned where I lived. Heck, I even pointed out my window from one of the windows in the stairwell. From the first get-go, I thought that there was something off about the guy. Unnecessarily bad, just very different. An odd twitch in his hands when he gripped the banister.

The vacancy of his eyes when he smiled. I'm not so cliche as to say he felt evil or anything like that, but I wasn't exactly surprised that after he got to his apartment, the first thing he did was to tell his very pretty and friendly cat to say hello, and the second thing he did was walk over to the kitchen counter, grab a needle, and shoot up. I hadn't even closed the door behind me. I stood there, staring, and he turned around, dropped the needle on the counter and went, Oh, shit ass, you cool with that? I am not a good Christian boy.

I have broken into a church while tripping on LSD. I've had an intimate relationship on a headstone back in high school, but I have my standards. So I shook my head mutely, pulled my hat back on, and opened the door to leave. The guy rushed over and put a hand on my shoulder. Yo, I'm sorry. You don't gotta go. We don't gotta do anything. Do you wanna watch Transformers 3 with me or something? Nope, I said bluntly, hustling away down the stairs. I bundled up my scarf against the early February chill and hurried back down the street to my apartment. He followed me downstairs, barefoot, in pajama pants and a t-shirt, until I stepped outside into the whipping winds.

I turned back briefly to look after a moment and he was still standing there in the doorway, watching me. I didn't have any premonitions of doom or weirdness. I grew up in Missouri. Junkies barely register as odd to me by this point, so I went home and went to bed. Now you might have guessed it, but I'd never seen this dude around the neighborhood before. Truthfully, I hadn't seen this dude around the neighborhood before. Truthfully, I hadn't seen most of the neighbors because my neighborhood is an odd mixture of white-collar suburbia, college housing, and low-income housing like my paramourist building, all on one street. So it didn't really register when I started seeing him more. I would leave for work in the afternoon and he'd be on the other avenue across from my building, strolling along. Or he'd cut across my building's parking lot like all the kids in the neighborhood did. A couple of times I saw him walking across the campus mall. My apartment

building is directly adjacent to my campus, but he'd always swerve to avoid me. Once or twice I'd notice him in the grocery store I worked at as a barista, but it's the only one within walking distance and he mentioned he didn't have a car. This went on for the entire month of February. Eventually I started noticing. He'd always be walking down the street opposite my building when I left for work at my usual time and he was only ever at the store when I was working. He'd never approach the coffee stand within the store where I work but he'd look at me. A couple of times I noticed him enter, look at me, pretend to shop and leave without buying anything. I was starting to feel

creeped out but he hadn't done anything yet to make me feel particularly unsafe. One day, late February, I worked an early shift. When I got off, I felt a little crazy from lack of sleep and I reached my place about 20 minutes before I usually leave for work. And on the corner of the sidewalk opposite me was the guy. He was checking his watch over and over and looking up. I did a bit of brilliant deductive analysis and followed his gaze up to my living room window. Then I looked back down at him. He looked right at me. There was a moment of tension as we stared at each other in the eyes. Like I said, this dude didn't give off any evil or dark vibes. I've met people that do that. No, what I saw in this guy's eyes, in his face, was much more human and much scarier.

Desperation, loneliness, pain, and anger. He hurried after me, but I'm 6'3 and a former sprinter whereas he was a 5A junkie wearing flip-flops on ice. I made it to the first set of doors to my apartment, scanned myself in through the second and locked them behind me. He walked through the unlocked first set, tried to open the second, tried pushing the handicap button to open them, and then gave up. Look man, I'm sorry, he shouted, laying a hand on the glass of the door. Can we just talk about it? I shook my head.

Absolutely not. Leave me alone. Then I whirled on my heel and stomped over to the elevator. When I turned back, he was gone out into the snow. I didn't see him for a couple of weeks afterwards, which is nice because my boyfriend likes to walk down the street past the dude's apartment when he stays over and needs to go smoke. One night my boyfriend was over at my place. He'd just gone out to smoke before we went to bed and he mentioned that he wanted me to come with him the next time he went out. Why? I asked, pulling him in close to me while he shivered. It's dark and cold and I get paranoid out there sometimes.

He mumbled in my chest. There's this creepy dude that sometimes stands in the corner across the way and just stares at the building. One time he asked me for a cig and I told him I didn't have one when I had one literally in my hand. He laughed, kissed my chin and passed out. I laid there awake, troubled. When I was sure my boyfriend was deeply asleep, meaning after about five minutes had passed,

I extricated myself and went to the window. It was a cold, clear night. I could see across the street under the orange glow of the streetlight was the guy. I couldn't make him out clearly but when he saw me he waved. I flicked him off and closed the blinds. I didn't feel like I should tell my boyfriend because he was either going to immediately go to the police, which I hate doing, or he'd try and defend me. And while I love him with my entire heart, I don't want to watch a fight between a junkie stalker and my underweight nicotine addicted boyfriend.

So I kept it to myself and still haven't told him. But I did start accompanying him when he went out to smoke. The guy was usually outside. Sometimes he'd follow us for a bit before ducking away down a side street. Sometimes he'd watch from a distance. Sometimes he'd be up in his apartment. My boyfriend never noticed. I kept my composure and nothing happened. One night though, we went out so my boyfriend could smoke like normal. When we'd reached the

end of the street and turned around, the stalker was behind us, about 50 feet back. I turned my head to check and there he was. He waved at me and something told me I had to get back inside. Hey babe, I said quietly to my boyfriend. Let's get back inside, yeah? I'm cold. Aw baby, he said kissing me on the cheek. Okay, I'm almost done anyway. We walked back to the apartment building and without turning I knew that the stalker was behind us the entire time. I kept my hand intertwined with my boyfriend's and kept up the casual conversation we'd been having about how I hate geese. We got back up to my apartment and he got changed for bed while I grabbed some

water. So I've never lived in an apartment before and I don't know if it's odd or not but this building has a wired telephone to each unit that rings when someone wants let in. Ours never rings unless it's Uber Eats so my boyfriend was surprised when it started ringing late at night when neither of us had ordered anything. Probably just some idiot playing a prank, I said, unhooking the phone from the wall and putting it in the kitchen cabinet. He accepted that without a struggle and we lay down in bed. After he was soundly out, I got up, got dressed and grabbed a couple of things and headed downstairs in my thick winter coat. Sure enough, my fanboy was out there in the parking lot.

He waved at me and jogged over, smiling broadly. Hey, man. What do you want? I said flatly. Look, man. I feel like we ended things awkwardly last time and I just wanted to talk to you. He said.

So you stalked me? What? He started to look angrier, his brows furrowing. No man, I didn't stalk you. I just wanted to know when I could talk to you but you always avoid me. Now you're walking around out here with that skinny little baby boy trying to rub it in my face and I don't appreciate that at all. Look man, he said, smiling again, stepping closer. You want to go talk about this back at my place? Ditch the white boy and come hang out with me tonight. Please? I won't shoot up or nothing this time. He took another step closer to me. I saw on his right hand a dolly, gleaming piece of metal, a folded up switchblade. He smiled at me, and I stepped back, shaking my head. His smile drained away into a deep scowl.

Listen, I'm done asking. You're gonna come over to my place now and finish what we started. He growled, unfolding the knife and pointing it at me. This dude was 5'8", tops and skinny. I'm 6'3", 200 pounds and I regularly lift weights. Also, I had a 12-inch kitchen knife which I drew from my coat pocket and leveled at his throat. He looked at my knife and then back at his and smiled. Bro, bro, I was just playing. We don't gotta, we can just talk right here bro, I don't, leave me and my boyfriend alone. I said very quietly,

or I will cut your face off and eat it. What? I spent eight years in juvie for stabbing a kid in middle school. I lied. He backed up, putting the knife back in his pocket. I took a step closer, holding my knife level. He backed away quickly, almost falling on the ice, until he was fully sprinting back to his place place and I was chasing him down with my knife until he crossed the street and I stopped, slid the knife in my pocket and watched him run back to his building. Then I went back up to my bedroom, told my boyfriend I'd just had to go use the bathroom, and fell asleep. Several years ago I was using a dating app. It was all fun and games. Sometimes I met some people for hookups, sometimes I didn't. And most of the time I didn't even reply to those who only sent me certain types of pictures unsolicited. One day this guy shot me a message on there.

He was and is 4 years younger than me, meaning he was 18 at the time when I was 22. I didn't really consider him my type, but at the same time, I still didn't think it would hurt to get to know him. I mean, looks are just looks and there have been plenty of times where I fell for a guy not for looks but for personality, so maybe that could have been the case too. I just came out of a pretty toxic relationship that involved lots of cheating and trust issues and insecurities, so I wasn't really looking for a new relationship, but it did feel good to get positive attention from guys. We started texting back and forth, nothing out of the ordinary, but I realized pretty soon that the part of his personality that he let me experience consisted of nothing more than

let's hook up. And look, I'm not trying to shame because I wasn't that opposed to it. As I said, I just had a nasty breakup and was just looking for some fun. So I said yes, we exchanged numbers, agreed on a date, time and place and then we went back to our normal lives for now. I had a lot going on at that time, it was only a few months until I moved to a different place so I already started planning for all that and not just that but a friend of mine invited me to come with them on a trip to Amsterdam which obviously had to be prepared as well since that trip was scheduled two weeks before I was supposed to move. Therefore it comes to no surprise that I kind of forgot

about the guy until the day we were supposed to meet up. He texted me a few hours earlier if we were still clear. After I scolded myself for forgetting, I told him that we were meeting as planned, even though that would throw my schedule off a little. So I got ready for the date, and I kid you not, not even an hour before we were supposed to meet, he cancelled. I mean, not too big of a deal. It happens that you can't always make it, so we scheduled another day, which he proceeded to cancel as well. Cancellation after cancellation, week after week, seven different dates. Each time it allegedly was a sick relative or pet. So clearly I took that as he didn't really want to meet me. Which would be fine, I'm not everyone's type either, and he could have at least had the

decency to not lead me on then. So I told him off about his stupid behavior and blocked him. Maybe that was a little of an overreaction, but I just didn't want to waste my time with a guy that seemingly always found excuses to meet me. When I could focus on either the moving process, the vacation process, or with another guy who was actually interested. But then, he messages me on the dating app. How dare I block him? moving process, the vacation process, or with another guy who was actually interested. But then, he messages me on the dating app. How dare I block him? He wanted to meet me, but that I was just unappreciative and called me all sorts of expletives. Obviously, after that, I blocked him on the app as well. I thought that I had heard the last of him, so I went on with my days. I already started forgetting him after a few weeks.

And then another account messaged me. Fake pictures and all, but it didn't take long for me to figure out it was him. He basically admitted it in the first day, so another block followed. Another account, another block. Day after day. I thought, what even was going on? He didn't want to meet me first and now he creates new accounts in the daily to contact me? So I just had enough and wanted to tell him off again when he started to apologize for his behavior, that he was in the

wrong and that he was willing to meet me if I was willing to still meet him. Trust me, I really wanted to blow him off but in my mind, if I just met him and was really bad at hooking up or something, he'd just never contact me again. Stupid but hey, it was worth a try in my mind. So we scheduled a meeting a few days before I was supposed to leave for the trip to Amsterdam which I stupidly told him about. And since I didn't have a car, he offered to come to my place. Now I would never ever give a stranger from the internet my address but back then I did. I mean he couldn't possibly be a creep right? So we met. He came into my house, we sat down on my bed, exchanged basic

pleasantries and then he stopped talking altogether. He didn't even look at me. Just to be safe, I wasn't a catfish. I looked exactly like I did in the pictures I had in the app. Only when I asked him something, he would reply with very few words. Until I asked him directly about if we hooked up or not. Then he suddenly started kissing me and, well, I don't have to go into detail. So when he finished, he just sat next to me, staring at the wall, not saying a word. At this point, I was pretty annoyed. I mean, I get being shy and all, but if it's that intense, how did he muster the courage to go on to a hookup? Anyway, after I went to the bathroom to freshen up, I told him my roommates would be back soon. So he jumped up and said goodbye and left.

I got no other messages from him after. Flash forward to my trip to Amsterdam. My friend, Joe, and I had lots of fun roaming through the streets of Amsterdam day and night, relaxing in our pretty fancy hotel and doing the usual stuff that tourists do. One day we were just walking down a very busy road, very close to the main train station, when suddenly I heard a car honk loudly next to us. The traffic light was on red so the person wasn't driving. I thought nothing of it and didn't even look until the guy started calling me by name. That voice was very familiar and the face that belonged to it was still in my memory. It was my hookup. When I looked back, he smiled widely and called out for me to come over,

but when he saw Joe, who at that point asked me who that was, the smile faded. I was dumbstruck, so I didn't say anything, but that wasn't necessary. The traffic light just turned green. People started getting agitated that my hookup wouldn't immediately go, so finally he focused on the road again and drove off. That was one heck of a coincidence, right? That he would be in Amsterdam at the same time. But why wouldn't he say so when I told him my plans? If he didn't want me to know, why call out to me in the middle of a busy road? I didn't allow my mind to think about him intentionally going there to find me. That was impossible.

He wasn't interested in me anyway, right? Back at home, my phone started to blow up. Calls, angry texts, new profiles. Didn't matter that I told him to stop. Didn't matter that I threatened to block him. He told me that I was terrible for going out with another't matter that I threatened to block him. He told me that I was terrible for going out with another guy despite being in a relationship with him, that I was just like everyone else, that he deserved better than me. And then he said that he had just been coming

to Amsterdam for me, to surprise me. When I tell you I changed my number and deleted the dating app quicker than I possibly could have dreamt of, I mean I sprinted to my car, drove to the closest shop to get a new number. Not long after, I moved into the new place. I had two new roommates that were both in the same college course as I was in. We got along fine and the house was pretty big. One of my roommates inherited it from her mom. The moving went smoothly. I didn't get another text. I didn't get any messages on social media and he didn't show up to my old place. Eventually, a few months go by. I basically had forgotten again. For more context, the house

was in a village. Not even a small town, but a village. There were no shops, no nothing. Shopping we'd have to do in the next town that was approximately four miles away. My room was on the ground floor, the window of that room was right next to the entrance door when you were looking at the house from the outside. And right beside my room outside was the carport. The ground was covered in gravel and once anyone moved, the light of the carport would turn on. It was a pretty hot summer day so I sometimes slept with my window open. I wasn't that afraid because once again it was a small village and barely anybody would drive through here. So one night I was just sleeping, even had my back turned towards the window,

and then I started to hear someone walking on the gravel towards my window. Immediately I turned around of course and I saw a guy walking past my window though he didn't look inside. He walked to the mailbox and seemed to throw something inside then he left again. I was stunned for a few seconds but at least it wasn't a murderer I thought so as soon as I could move I closed the window and kept it closed each night from that point onward. This actually happened in a few nights that someone would walk to our mailbox in the middle of the night but nothing was ever inside, at least that I knew of. It was weird but maybe one of my roommates were receiving something

personal that they just didn't want to share. Cut to a few nights later, I was minding my own business when I suddenly heard some gravel again. My roommates had just gone to bed about half an hour ago and I didn't hear anyone leave so I thought it was just the mailbox guy. But this time, he didn't walk to the mailbox, he just walked to the carport. I know that because the light immediately turned on. I texted my roommates about a guy in the carport. I know that because the light immediately turned on. I texted my roommates about a guy in our carport. One of my roommates, Sarah, who had a room across the hallway from mine while Mary, the other roommate, had hers upstairs, texted back into our group chat that we'd meet with weapons at the bottom of the stairs to investigate. I grabbed scissors I had in my room and went to our meeting point.

Turns out my weapons were the most useful since Mary came downstairs with a ukulele and Sarah thought an empty plastic bottle would suffice. After laughing at the absurdity of our weapons choice, we started getting back in serious mode, going to the side door that led to the carport. Sarah looked through the window of said door but didn't see anyone. The light was turned off too. Just in that moment we heard someone tampering with our mailbox again. Not gonna lie, I probably peed my pants a little bit. Immediately we ran to the front door, opened it and looked outside, but there was no one. At least not that we could see. After a look in the mailbox, which was empty of course, we went back inside. Not even two minutes later I got a text from an

unknown number saying how cute I looked in my nightgown, that no makeup made me look even prettier. He hoped that I'd come out alone so we could have some fun together like before I moved, but he was sad to find two other people with me. Needless to say that none of us slept that night. The police were called immediately and did a sweep but no one was found on the property. He didn't exactly say it, but I know it was that guy, so I filed a report the next day. Nothing really happened with it, but since nothing else happened like that, I thought he got the message when we called the police.

Sometimes I still get messages from an unknown number, but they're pretty harmless and don't really bother any further when I ignore them. But the fear in the back of my mind, that one day he would come back, stays of course. In the meantime, I've taken up self-defense classes. Often, I enjoy walking my dog at night time.

This is due to the fact that my dog is harder to walk when people are around with their own dogs, so we tend to walk around parks in the area when they become somewhat secluded. I'm not a very big guy, I'm just about 5'10 and very lanky, so I wouldn't call myself an intimidating figure. However, my 120 pound black lab boxer mix named Loki would be somewhat considered threatening to most from what I hear. I figured his size would be used as a deterrent for anyone looking to cause nightly troubles. I was dead wrong. On one specific night in the fall of 2016, I could recall of an encounter that reminds me of why I'm so reluctant to walk around once daylight falls. This specific park is one I've been to a couple

of times and from what I remember, this park is usually secluded around 6.30 and later. Aside from a couple of joggers or very few other dog walkers, not many people walk the same path that I take. I also like to put on my headphones and listen to music while I walk, but on this specific night I chose not to wear them since my phone was on low battery and I wanted to preserve it as long as I could. The walk was going as usual. Loki did his business and we continued on our usual path. About midway on our walk I realized that it had started to get really dark. Since he was done with his business I decided to cut the

walk somewhat short and we took a shortcut that kind of led us off the path. This path had a bunch of trees surrounding the area and there were still leaves on the branches. With that being said I felt a weird feeling as if though I were being watched. I have pretty bad anxiety sometimes but since I knew the town was safe I knew that nothing was going to happen. But still, I could not for the life of me shake off the feeling of being watched. I peered back to see if anyone had been following me out of anxiety and every single time, no one was there. In fact, no one was anywhere. This whole shortcut was essentially secluded. Suddenly Loki stopped walking and also looked back. I told him,

Loki, come on boy, we gotta go. One thing I failed to mention was that Loki is a big coward. I noticed his tail was tucked between his legs which is a tell-tale sign that a dog is afraid. I was also curious and a bit nervous but I surely didn't want to find out what he heard or noticed. I just wanted to get out of there ASAP. I pulled a little and he began to walk but every now and then I'd see him peer back.

After maybe a minute or so of walking he stopped again and this time he began to growl. Despite being a coward, Loki is a bark but no bite kind of dog, so I took this chance to see exactly what he was growling at. It was quite dark so I couldn't see well, so I used my phone's flashlight to see what was up. Trees, just trees. What he heard was probably some kind of small animal. Once again, I turned around and kept walking. It continued to peer back once in a while still, but

this time I noticed it was a lot more frequent. I just said to myself, it's just a squirrel. It'd be a bird. And I ignored it. Then I heard what appeared to be actual footsteps and branches breaking. There is absolutely no way a small animal could have produced a sound like that. Loki turned around quick and, still with his tail tucked, he began to growl and bark at a figure that I could only describe as a man in his early fifties, possibly late forties, appearing from out of the woods. He was dressed in dirty clothing. His hair was long and was graying. He had one hand in his pocket and he said to me,

Nice dog you have there, kid. What breed is he? Um, he's a boxer lab, I replied. Oh, I love dogs. Mind if I pet them? He asked. The man got closer and emerged from the trees. As he got closer, I realized that he was quite tall and a bit burly. Loki instantly got bad vibes and he ran behind me and started to bark at him. Actually, I do kind of mind. My dog here doesn't like strangers. Sorry, but it's probably not best if you pet him. I quickly stated.

It's okay. Really. He seems like a friendly guy. Just a little pet wouldn't harm him. The man retorted as he got closer. I felt extremely uncomfortable as he appeared to get closer and closer. I don't know why this guy couldn't take no for an answer. I mean, I usually don't allow people to pet Loki unless he comes up to them first. If he's scared of you,

then I usually do not want to freak him out by letting him be pet by a stranger. This is especially the case when said stranger came from the woods behind a few trees. I'm really sorry man, I'm scared he might bite you or something. I told him as he began to walk away. Like I said before, I wasn't trying to be judgmental or anything, but the dude came from the woods and was possibly the one trailing us from before. I don't know why you just won't let me introduce myself to him. The guy replied angrily. This time I began to speedwalk. I was very uncomfortable and my flight or fight instincts began to take over.

He followed us and kept muttering curses to himself. I don't know if this man was under the influence of something but he did not let up. I won't lie, I started to get a little angry. Why can't a guy just take no for an answer? He began to match my speed almost as if he was trying to catch up to us. Loki and I both took this as an answer to start sprinting a bit. I don't remember much of the running, it was all just a blur to me but I do remember the spine tingling feeling of hearing his footsteps rapidly increasing behind me. For a man of his stature, he was incredibly fast. I also realized that his intentions may not have just been to pet my dog. No one reasonable would go that far just to pet

a dog that clearly wanted nothing to do with him. I looked behind me and he was definitely in pursuit. Maybe only ten feet behind me and he was literally chasing us. I'll never forget the look in his eyes. I've never had anyone look at me like that. A look of killer intent. And all for what? Just because he couldn't pet my dog.

My instincts told me that he definitely had sinister intentions behind that gaze. And finally, the path led to the park exit and into the busier streets. I only lived about 10 minutes away from the park, and when I looked back, the man was gone. In my mind, I honestly thought that I had lost him. I made doubly sure that no one else was following me, and I even made sure to walk on the populated streets. After what seemed like an eternity, we got home, but I knew for a fact that I was not going to get a minute of sleep. From my window in the porch, I walked all night with Loki, just to see if anyone had followed us home. I also made a police report with my parents. After all, this guy seemed to have been quite suspicious and who knows what his true intentions were.

Had his target been someone who couldn't protect themselves or run away, what would he have done? I also often asked myself, what if I had worn my headphones and the sound of music drowned the footsteps behind me. Ever since I haven't walked Loki in that park. I've also made it a habit of mine to walk on more livelier streets at night. If I could give anyone one piece of advice even if you live in a relatively safe town, don't ever let your guard down. You never know what kind of person might be lurking in the shadows. This story started years ago when I was five. I'm a 27-year-old female now. I lived with my parents and my sister at the time. The average working class family, nothing out of the ordinary.

Happy times. We moved to a different house in the same town but I was sent to a new school because this one was way closer now. It is curious that I have these times pretty blurred out in memory because I was very young but there are some days that I see as clear as water. This is one of them. My first day of this new school, I was very nervous. I wasn't the most extroverted or talkative kid. I was extremely shy and insecure and still am to this day. Once a very sweet and loving woman came and explained that she was my new teacher,

but now it was English time and she took me to this class. There they were, my new schoolmates and my new English teacher, we'll call him LC. A man in his 30s, short, fat, with a big black mustache. If you got closer you saw like food debris and saliva in it, it was disgusting to be honest. We all then agreed that he was kind of a Super Mario lookalike. He welcomed me and introduced me to the kids. I said hi and sat with them on the floor. Many of them introduced themselves, made some jokes, they seemed very nice and easygoing,

and I was somehow relieved. I felt integrated immediately. LC proceeded and he told me to stand up and go in front of the class to practice the basics My name is, I am from, I'm five years old, etc I said it once It makes me say it again, a bit louder I say it twice He tells me to repeat, insisting I must speak louder I say it for the third time and it seems like it was never enough

His tone began to sound angry and he goes again like, again, again. He had me repeating this like six times until I started crying and he finally told me to sit down. My mates told me he was okay and that he was just a jerk. My mom later asked me about my day at school and I said everything was fine except for the teacher LC. I started crying and told her I didn't want to go to his class ever again. There was something about him, something dark. I didn't know what it was but I felt it and he scared the life out of me.

Always trust your gut. As the following weeks I kept whining to my mom in the mornings I had English. But what could she do? She tried to calm me down saying it was okay to have fun with my new friends and that he was just a grumpy teacher. I went to that school for four more years. I got used to him and his peculiar character. For example, he got really angry when a kid was late to his class. He yelled and told them to wait outside, sitting on the floor by the door, thinking. We were actually scared to be late. But there were also days when he was nice and fun. Time passed, nothing out of the ordinary except for one thing. He talked a lot about the FBI. We'd be with computers in class,

visiting the FBI website, reading about the most wanted criminals and stuff. Not the average English lesson for 9 year old kids. He took pictures of us saying that they were for the design of our own personalized FBI identification. A kind of game I suppose. But it never happened. But we didn't think anything weird about it. Around Christmas time he had taken a picture of the class to design a postcard. Years later I was in high school and an old classmate from that school tells me hey did you see the news lc was found dead i looked for it online and i couldn't believe what i was reading police had found that lc had large amounts

of images of children on his computer in In fact, the amount of lewd material found on his computers and hard drives was so vast that it made him one of the biggest ones in the entire country. When Elsie knew police were after him, he took his own life, jumping into the sea near the town's port and drowned. I then remember that day when he didn't stop until I cried. I remember he scared me so much I didn't want to go to school. His FBI obsession, our photos, everything made sense. That darkness I felt around him. I knew I should have trusted my gut. I was living in Abu Dhabi when this happened and I was 17 years old at the time. I've had a number of experiences from taxi drivers out there that could fit on this sub, but this one was by far the worst and creepiest I'd like to share it with you all.

It was Boxing Day 2012 and I was going to my friend's house for his Boxing Day party. He lived in a compound that was a bit of a drive off the island itself and although not rural suburbs by most standards, this area could be classed as such. These residential suburbs were also still mostly in development. Every block had a new building site, plenty of empty shelves of houses, no security cameras at the time, etc. There were no pavements either, just rubble and sand patches split by tarmac roads. Now taxis in the UAE are crazy common.

You just put your hand out and one pulls up. And back then there was less security. There were no cameras or mics in the car, just the meter. I hailed the cab and sat in the front, as a result of a past experience I had, and we set on our way there. Things start normally, we talk as I normally would getting into a cab. How long you've lived here, do you enjoy the place, etc. Eventually we're on the highway after we cross the water to the mainland. He pulls over on the hard shoulder and without saying a word to me,

pulls out his phone and calls someone. He's speaking his native tongue and he's of South Asian descent so I have no clue what he's saying, but I ask him politely to continue driving as the meter is still on. He nods, hangs up and gets going again. This happens a second time, again without word or warning and now I'm suspicious. This time I ask him again to keep going but he ignores me and keeps talking on the phone. We're on the highway so I can't get out for fear of going splat, not being able to hail a cab or being jacked for jaywalking. After a few minutes he gets going again and we pull off the highway, still heading the direction I needed to be. We reach the first roundabout where we need to make a right turn but he goes straight. Everyone knows where this

compound is, it's the biggest one in the city and as a cab driver there's no chance he doesn't know how to get there. So now I'm even more suspicious and I kind of have a feeling of trepidation, like I know this vibe and what might be happening. I ask him to turn around at the next roundabout but he ignores me. Now I'm getting agitated and angry and I ask him to just stop the car and I'll get out and walk. Nope. He literally just ignored me and kept focusing on the road. At this point I'm shouting at him, numerous expletives etc. and it's clear that he's got something else planned. Eventually he pulls off the main road onto a dirt track that led a couple

of hundred yards into a massive building site and he keeps driving down it. He then turns to me and tells me to get into the back seat and repeats this in an increasingly forceful manner to the point where we're shouting at each other. At the end of the dirt track is an old little minibus with roughly five dudes stood next to it. I don't notice this immediately. All I care about is that the car has stopped and I'm in the front so I can get out. I'm not locked in. Inexplicably I threw some money at him, I don't know, and jumped out of the car with my bag and started walking away jogging back down the track. I can only imagine that the earlier phone calls he made were to these minibus men

as when I started getting away they jumped in the minibus and drove down to catch me. As the taxi turns around and does the same, they all pull up in front of me like police do in the movies when they stop a bank robber and jump out. The taxi driver runs right up to me, grabs me and screams point blank at my face to get in the bus. I can still smell and feel the damp heat from his breath as it touched my face and the little bits of spit hitting my cheeks. This honestly just enraged me so much that I grabbed him by the throat and pushed him against his car. I screamed something back at him, I don't remember what, and let go.

They all get their phones out and started calling and messaging and moving towards me, so I just got out of there as fast as I could, running all the way down and back onto the main road and went to my mate's on foot. I know I should have taken the number plate, ID number, etc., called the police even when I was in the cab, let alone after it happened. However, I was a 17-year-old with a bottle of Jack Daniels in my bag on the way to a party with all my mates drinking, in a Muslim country with a drinking age of 21. The paranoia of trouble from that was enough to keep it quiet

from the authorities, although I did tell every family member and friend. So yeah, if I could never meet you and your little minibus posse again, that would be great. When I was around 6 or 7 years old, my mom took me to a family gathering in the province. We live in the Philippines. Now, if you guys don't know how it works here, family gatherings in our country meant a feast for the entire family, including cousins, second cousins, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc. Safe to say it was an overcrowded party in a small rural setup in the province. Anyways, so the venue where it was held was owned by my mom's second cousin's kin. I remember walking around in a sea of people I barely know when I saw a small hut. It was tiny, fit for about just one to two people.

It was old, made of straw and bamboo and looked very unkempt. I asked one of the other kids about it. He said their grandfather lived there and that he was not to be bothered as he was old and cranky. So I went off and did my own thing and I found myself playing near the aforementioned hut. As I was playing, the door slowly opened. It was dark inside but I could hear someone saying, psst, psst, and an old thin man with long grey hair appeared and gestured to me to come near him. He was topless and wearing just boxer shorts that seemed too loose for him. I slowly moved toward the hut and I saw that he was on his bed and he

was patting the bed as if to tell me to sit beside him. I immediately got freaked out and ran away and as I ran I could hear the door squeak close and then shut. I didn't think anything of it afterward but later on after reuniting with some of my relatives, they mentioned that their grandfather, the old creepy guy, was known to do terrible things to children in their province. He would lure kids into his hut with toys or offers to play and once they were in, he'd shut them in, touch them inappropriately or worse. He did this to the neighborhood kids and even to his own grandchildren. Apparently he thought it was his way of showing

affection so no one bothered to say anything until many years later when he passed away. I hope he rots in hell for what he did and in hindsight, I'm glad I got spooked and ran away. So back in the start of the year 2020, everything was as good as I hoped it would be. Well, that's what I thought until one Sunday night. So I'll give you a little backstory which will be important later in the story. My dad had had a bad history with messing around in other people's relationships. Of course I'm not happy about it but anyways a lot of men had gotten so angry at him that we started to have multiple men do such things such as mess around with our cat houses, break lights, and other things which I can't explain sadly. So on that Sunday night, it was 10pm, which means my sister's boyfriend has to leave due to curfew rules and so on.

I can't remember clearly, but it was all chill and quiet and normal. At least that's what I thought. Keep in mind that my parents were not home except for me and my sister. It was time to feed our cats because we were going to lock all the doors to go inside. Then my sister whispers loudly to me to go to our back door which led to our garage. Then we heard a low voice mumbling something as if he were trying to keep quiet. Then this unknown house intruder let out a loud sneeze and that's when we knew that there was someone in our home. So me and my sister ran into her room and locked the doors to keep safe. She tried many times to call my parents and relatives that lived nearby and nobody answered, and that's when I suggested her boyfriend. Luckily he picked up

and she told him the situation so we quickly drove back. As he arrives and checked the garage and house, nobody was there of course. I don't know what would have happened if nobody picked up the phone, but I'm happy we didn't. To be continued... narrations. I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7pm EST. If you get 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 future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all of these stories in big compilations and save huge on data, located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the description below. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you again soon. you