The Lets Read Podcast - 169: I SAW HIM THRU NIGHT VISION | 25 True Scary Stories | EP 157

Episode Date: January 10, 2023

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Night Vision Creeps, Thanksgiving, and Hiking & Camping... 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 Update Description

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Find a Michelin TreadExperts dealer near you at TreadExperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca. I'm going to go. I've been a cop for just short of ten years now and a homicide detective for three. I've worked with some good cops and I've worked with some bad cops too. But there's only one guy I ever worked with who was a real blue blood. I understand that term gets thrown around a lot now, given the TV show of the same name, but in reality, there are very few of us who are born police. And no, I'm not talking about some unhealthy desire to boss folks around, although you can bet your butt I've seen a few of those, it was more like he was a natural investigator. He was cold, but curious.

Intelligent, but not egotistical about it. But above all, he was thorough. He would exhaust every single possibility until only one logical explanation remained. Pure deduction. But every so often he pulled off a master stroke and the way he got the ball over the line was his method of interrogation. I only got to see this first hand one time but my god, it was like watching an artist at work. I obviously don't think it's a good idea if I drop his name so we'll just call him Blueblood. And as much as I'll try to save you most of the details,

because I'm not much of a true crime writer as some of you are here, here's the story of the one time I got to see Blue Blood being the box man. Just after Thanksgiving of 2001, a body turned up just outside of Mechanicsburg, PA, out near the White Rocks Trail, if any of you know the area. The body belonged to a 20-year-old girl who'd been traveling back from family visiting with her father late on Thanksgiving night. According to him, they'd gotten into an argument while driving back and she'd demanded that he let her out of the car. Afraid he might cause an accident if he didn't let his hysterical daughter out of the car. He did as she asked, and that was the last time he saw her alive.

The father admitted he was angry with his daughter and had at first intended to drive home without her. But after a few miles he stopped and got out his old cell phone and tried to call his daughter so he could give her a ride home, as it would be quite a walk back to Mechanicsburg. He said she sent all of his calls to voicemail so, figuring she would find her own way home, he left the area. A few days go by and no sign of his daughter, so the guy puts in a missing person's report. Two days later, the daughter's body was found. She appeared fully clothed and had her head wrapped up in a plastic

bag. The search team that first found her body obviously knew better than to touch anything, so their guess was that she'd been suffocated with it. Only when they tried to move her body did they find out that the bag was the only thing holding her skull together. They told us it looked like her skull had been smashed by one strike from an extremely heavy object. Think a fully loaded dumbbell or something. They also discovered she hadn't been wearing any underwear at the time she'd been murdered. Uniformed officers canvassed the area including some fairly secluded homes out near White Rocks. They found one guy with priors for indecent exposure and battery.

They actually admitted to seeing the girl. She'd apparently knocked at his house, told him someone was following her, and asked to come inside. He then invited her in, but she became skittish, changed her mind, and ran off back down his driveway. Almost everyone involved thought it was an open and shut case. We just had to work the guy with priors until we either cracked or we found solid DNA evidence. But old Blue Blood didn't like the guy for it, at least not until he could tie up one little loose end. And when he started pulling on that one little thread, the whole sweater came falling apart to everyone's complete amazement. So what Blue Blood wanted to know was why they were out near white rocks in the first place.

I won't bore you with the nitty-gritty of rural Pennsylvania highways, but the area the father and daughter were in was basically a cul-de-sac. If you were driving from Gettysburg, where the relatives were, from Mechanicsburg, you wouldn't end up on those little back roads. Not unless you were, A, totally lost, which was impossible, by his own admission, the father made round trips to Gettysburg three or four times a year, therefore he knew it well. B, had taken several wrong turns, not likely, but feasible given that they were in a state of distress while driving at night. Or C. The mystery reason. That's not my phrasing, by the way, that's old Blueblood's.

He was convinced there was another reason they were out near White Rocks, and he was determined to find out what it was. Following his lead, we end up questioning a handful of people closest to the father and daughter. As you can imagine, the first person on that list was the girl's mom, but she was out of the picture for some reason. Friends and relatives had no idea why she'd abandoned the family and when we asked the girl's father, he respectfully declined to talk about it. They hadn't spoken in years and he had no contact details for her. All he could say was that her best bet was asking her elderly parents who lived up in Minnesota. But it was during one of those interviews that Blue Blood mentioned something to one of the mom's friends about the father-daughter relationship, as he put it.

Stepdaughter, she said. That was the first time we'd heard that term used. Not a single person either knew or cared to tell us that the father and daughter were not blood relatives. And when the father had married into the family when the daughter was still very young, he'd taken the mom's name instead of her taking his. That was the switch. On the drive back to the precinct, Blue Blood had this look in his eye that reminded me of hunting trips with my grandpa. He was quiet, focused, very visibly tense. Not because he was stalking a deer with a whiny grandchild threatening to screw the whole

thing up. It was because he was thinking. He was thinking about why a man would change his last name to fit the family he just married into. And sure, I wondered that too. I mean, the guy is free to do whatever he wants with and reason, this is America. So as strange as it was, I didn't see how that could ever be a piece of the puzzle. But the blue blood, it was an unturned stone, so to speak. A loose thread that kept getting longer and longer the more he pulled it. He didn't share his initial suspicions with me, and I'm not surprised, because I was dead set on our guy with Pryor as being the guilty party. No, he waited until we had the father in for a second round of questioning to drop his own home-brewed bombshell on him. Like I said, we'd already spoken to the father maybe three or four times before

that point, and each time had been informal and friendly. But then Blueblood makes up some excuse about needing an official statement from him, so we'd have to come down to the precinct so we could tape the conversation. Just a formality. You'd be doing me a personal favor. He said, and the father obliged him. When we were in the interview room, things started as they normally did with a father. All platitudes and well wishes. The father would thank us all for what we were doing and blueod assured him we'd catch the person who killed his daughter. Only that time when he said it, it had this strangely different weight to it and for

dramatic effect he left a little pause after he said it. That's when I realized something was going on. I mean, I already knew because Blueblood had called him in for questioning and something definitely was up, but him using the term daughter instead of stepdaughter kept him in for questioning and something definitely was up. But him using the term daughter instead of stepdaughter kept it in the dark in terms of what we already knew and that's when I realized that something was about to go down. So like I said, the interview started pretty regularly with the father at ease. Well, as at ease as you can get for someone still grieving their daughter. Then, as we're going over the dad's version of events, just one more time for the record, the dad repeats the thing about him stopping to call his daughter's phone.

This was supposed to explain why the 16-17 minute drive from White Rocks to Mechanicsburg had taken him more like 35 minutes. Blueblood presses him on this and makes him state for the tape that he wasn't sure how long he stopped, but he drove straight home when he got back on the road again. Blueblood interrupts him to call him a liar, and in the second that followed, I'm pretty sure I hear the soft thunk of all the jaws in the observation room hitting the floor. The father is obviously pretty outraged and demands an explanation, but all Blue Blood says in response is, you need an attorney, and suspends the interview so the dad could get one. Everyone thought he'd lost his mind, and I remember his ex-partner fishing out his coffee

flask out of his jacket pocket and giving it a sniff on the off chance it had vodka in it or something. Blueblood was a good cop and we knew he thought outside the box sometimes. But to screw up what we thought would be an easy case was beyond the pale for many of us. If it was anyone else, the boss would have suspended the interview and switched up the questioning officer. But because it was Blueblood the boss would have suspended the interview and switched up the questioning officer. But because it was Blueblood, no one said nothing. And when the guy's attorney showed up, they just kept rolling the tape. Obviously because of the implication that the father had lied to us,

I'm pretty sure Blueblood was about to accuse him of having some kind of involvement in his daughter's murder. But the angle he took when the interview recommenced honestly had me questioning reality. Blueblood basically started listing off all the guys that the daughter had been involved with over the past few years. He said he pulled a whole bunch of raunchy messages from a laptop that they confiscated from her after going through her AOL instant messenger, said since the daughter had such an active romantic life that it was entirely possible that it was one of her lovers that murdered her. Blueblood then implied that the father somehow knew this was the case and was wondering why he hadn't mentioned any of the daughter's partners. But there was just one problem with this from where I was standing.

It was all complete nonsense. He hadn't pulled anything like inappropriate messages from the girl's laptop. And aside from a few clues into the conversations that seemed to show some sort of rocky father-daughter relationship, it was completely clean. I thought the gravy had slid off Blue Blood's biscuit, I really did. I kept the faith when he'd accuse the dad of lying and he could just smell a lie sometimes. But coming at the case from a completely different angle now, there was an attorney in the room. It certainly didn't feel like we were singing from the same hymn sheet anymore if you catch my drift. But there he was, just making stuff up about hookups with tailors and chads,

how Bryce liked a drink and Tommy's teachers said he had a violent streak, just lighting up the dad with a barrage of just complete fiction. And although he wasn't saying anything on the advice of his attorney, you could see something twisting up inside of him, but I'd never have guessed in a million years what that thing was. Because out of nowhere, the dad's demeanor totally changes, and he goes from confused and mad to just furious. Furious like he was about to leap across this table because Blue Blood's words had just triggered something inside of him. She was not seeing anyone. The guy screamed it out so loud even his attorney jumped and like I said,

I was getting ready to put him in a chokehold if he decided to lunch for Blue Blood. But he didn't, and as soon as he opened his mouth, Blueblood shut up and didn't talk again until there's a seriously uncomfortable silence hanging in the air. I can't remember what he said next. Word for word, he was way smarter than me and had the gift of gab as they call it, but he basically said, No, she wasn't seeing anyone. And you know that for certain, don't you, Mr. Ross? When Blueblood used this guy's premarital name, the father's face changed completely. You didn't let her see anyone, because you exercised almost complete control over your

stepdaughter's life. Your possessiveness had you initiate a relationship with your adult stepdaughter, and for a while, she went along with it. But she'd been looking at colleges, hadn't she? You were afraid you were going to lose her, and that was something you couldn't let happen. You couldn't bear for anyone to think that she wasn't yours. That's why you changed your name, isn't it? You couldn't stand for anyone to think that she wasn't really yours. Your wife wouldn't change her name, not after her first marriage went so horribly wrong, and nothing would convince her. So you changed your name.

As Blue Blood kept poking and prodding him, the father looked like he was about to explode. He turned beet red, was shaking like a leaf, and just when his attorney was about to step in to shut Blueblood up, he erupted. She was mine. She was always mine. And now she'll be mine forever. Blueblood left another awkward silence on the tape, then concluded the interview. The father never made a full confession, but shifting the focus to him enabled us to get a whole bunch more incriminating evidence, enough to put him away for 50 years. I thought it might be a huge story in southern Pennsylvania at the time, but I guess the massive post-911 news cycle kept it from taking up too many column inches.

I didn't find that too surprising to be honest. I'd known even bigger stories to be kept out of the media for whatever reason, but the case's impact on the public wasn't what preoccupied me in the weeks that followed. It was the case's impact on me as a cop. I realized from my entire career, I'd been letting prejudice and emotion degrade my work. You have to come in matters of law enforcement like a robot. Only the evidence matters, not the past or characters of the people in question. We like to assume that families are good, safe things, and only obviously bad people do bad things. But that's one of the first illusions that's shattered

when you become a homicide detective. After that, you just don't quite see the world in the same way. I'm a nurse, and a few years back I had to work rotation in the burn units around Thanksgiving. As you can imagine, there's a sharp uptick in burn victims around certain times of the year, 4th of July being one of them, and Thanksgiving being another. Accidents with fireworks can be pretty nasty, but they're nothing compared to the kind of things you get around Thanksgiving. Plus, there's the fact that shooting and stabbing victims can be surprisingly chill. Like they're so hopped up on adrenaline that they can't feel the pain yet. So as patients, they can be shockingly cooperative.

Burn victims are another thing entirely, though. The pain caused by extensive second or third degree burns seems honestly nightmarish, and it really makes me grateful that it's something I've never experienced. I've never had a patient look me in the eyes and ask me to put them out of their misery. Not until I work the burn unit. Anyway, now that I've set the tone for how messed up the burn unit can be, on with the story. We suddenly get these two burn victims in our ICU. One guy and one girl.

They're both in terrible states and they're accompanied by police officers who tell us that the male is a pimp and the female is his... I don't know what to call her. I'll just call her his girl. Apparently the pimp, the girl, and a few of the other pimp's girls tried to have their own little Thanksgiving dinner, with the burn victim being in charge of the cooking. I don't know how it went so wrong, but somehow, the girl ended up on fire. But instead of stopping, dropping and rolling, as I'm pretty sure we're all taught to do,

she decided to give her pimp, the same guy who'd set her on fire, this big old bear hug so that he caught fire too. I heard that from another nurse at first and no offense to her but I didn't believe a word of it. But then, I hear this one cop basically confirm the story to the presiding consultant, saying that three witnesses from the scene all corroborated it and this was after having been separated. I guess the guy must have just pushed her too far and when he set her alight she must have just thought, if I'm going down, I'm taking you with me. This might sound unprofessional of me but when I heard the girl coded but the pimp survived, this little thought flashed through my mind like,

God took the wrong person tonight. It was a real shame but I don't think she stood a chance, not when we found out she had inhalation burns anyway. Once your lungs are extensively damaged from something like that, either from breathing in flame or toxic smoke, you're pretty much screwed. The pimp on the other hand had extremely serious burns to his front torso, face, and arms, but it looked like he was going to pull through. And so much so for natural justice, huh? Well, don't speak or think too soon, because that weasel ended up suffering for what he did. Just not in the way you might think. Obviously we had to keep the guy in for like a week afterward, all under police guard while being handcuffed to the bed, and the way he looked at me the one time I changed his bandages made my skin crawl. I wasn't there for this, I just heard about

it, but one night, the night shift crew hears a bunch of screaming coming from the pimp's room. They initially thought he had some kind of intruder because one of my co-workers told me he was screaming stuff like, get away from me, get away from me, as loud as he could. Knowing he was a criminal, they're about halfway ready to call the cops when they burst into his room and find no one there. Only, the guy is still screaming, get out of here, she's gonna kill me, get her off of me, help. I remember interjecting and being like, nightmare, huh? But she just shook her head, saying his eyes were wide open, and the whole time he was staring at this one spot on the wall, right up until they finally got a doctor's order to sedate him. I'm not one to believe in spirits or ESP or any of that stuff, no offense

to the people who do, so I'm not about to claim he was being haunted by the ghost of the girl he'd killed, although that would be pretty sweet, not gonna lie. But saying that, I do think maybe a combo of the medication, not once by mouth, and the trauma of his injuries had him either flashing back or hallucinating that the girl was in the hospital room with him. Like I said, I didn't see any of that, nor do I believe that he was being haunted, but seeing how happy that guy was when he was discharged into police custody, that was honestly one of the weirdest things I've ever seen.

I get the guy was in a bad way, physically and mentally, but the hospital to jail transport switchover has a lot of people thinking they can escape. Not that guy. Not only does he not even try, he thanked the cop coming to get him like they were straight up saving him from something. And that's what had me questioning my sanity for a day or two, thinking, is there something else after we die? It's like Scatman Crothers says in The Shining, maybe there's a lingering after something like that happens, like the way the smell of burned toast lingers in the air for a while after you burn it. I know it's kind of in bad taste, considering how he died, but maybe something of that poor girl like stayed in the air way after she passed. Or maybe I'm just thinking too much into it.

Either way, it was most definitely a Thanksgiving to remember and one that made me ultra grateful to spend it with my family the following year. I've actually had stalkers ruin two separate Thanksgivings, each about five years apart, and the first was at an alarmingly young age, too. I was 13 while he was 12, and we had math class together. Pretty much everyone knew he had this huge crush on me, which wouldn't have been a problem on its own, but this kid was also the biggest perv I've ever met in my life. I know that's quite a bold claim for a 12 year old but it was a huge problem at our school for a while. He used to try to look up girls shorts or grab them in the hallway. He once got caught sneaking into the girls locker room with one of those old style flip phones with a camera too and I had no idea how he managed to get away with just a few weeks suspension over it. Needless to say it was no

surprise that he began to harass me when he asked me out and I rejected him. He would wait for me in my locker every day and whisper creepy stuff to me as I walked past. Stuff I definitely wouldn't be able to type up word for word because it'd 100% get this taken down. He then started following me to class. Like I have no idea how, but he worked out exactly what my timetable was, so he was able to basically just track me around school. I told my teachers, the school counselor, the vice principal, but nothing was done against this kid. The best they could do was switch my classes so he'd have trouble tracking me, and that worked for about a week. After that, he escalated and started

following me out to the bus. After a while, he'd managed to figure out my schedule, my bus number, my student ID, and was in the process of finding my home address and phone number. Then right when I was at my breaking point, he asked me out again. Like it wasn't just to get back at me for rejecting him, he honestly thought that harassing me would like bring me around to the idea of dating him. This went on from the beginning of the semester and right around Thanksgiving time I actually screamed no in his face. I was just so scared and tired and mad by that point. He actually looked kind of shocked for a second but then the ugly little worm in him came out and he told me he was actually going to come over to my house on Thanksgiving itself and he was going to bring a gun to kill me

and my whole family. I didn't believe him at first but he did have a gun but I had already told my math teacher about it and cops came over to his house a few days prior to check his thinking as they put it. Thank god it was just an airsoft gun and he was obviously just intending to scare me but if he'd have shown up with that thing I know for a fact that my dad would have just blasted him without checking if it was real or not. I thought the school would finally expel him after that and thankfully that was the final straw for the principal who had him transferred to a school for kids with behavioral problems shortly after. That was nearly almost 20 years ago now and I live on the other side of the country

so I'm not too worried about him finding me. But it definitely stuck with me for a long while and seriously colored my opinion in men in a distinctly negative way. My second stalker was a guy I dated in high school. Since we were headed to different colleges, I broke up with him just after graduation and he basically just went nuts over it. Like actual clinical nervous breakdown type thing. I think that was just leftover stress from the SATs or how I sort of started to compartmentalize it at first. It got worse and worse as the months went by though and finally, when I traveled home for Thanksgiving, he tried breaking into my mom's house while we were both asleep upstairs. He stalked me almost

everywhere I went and till I could put together some actual evidence of what he was doing, the cops couldn't do a freaking thing. When I got a new car, he called my work from the business next door and told me my new license plate. He was just relentless. One night he called my house like every minute, on the minute, for almost an hour straight. My parents had to unplug all the phones to get some peace and my dad called the cops from his cell phone. This all came to a head when he attacked me one day when I was walking downtown that same Thanksgiving weekend. I was with a friend at the time and he must have gotten a visit from the cops and assumed it was me that called them. He hit me so hard that he almost fractured my orbital socket.

And finally, he went to jail for a few months and that gave me a way out. I moved an hour away, changed my number, got a new job, and blocked him on any social media I had, in addition to lockdown privacy settings. He's moved to a different town and is still wildly unstable. My life has gotten so much better and I've had so many positive changes and I hope he never hears about any of it. But there's definitely a little piece of my trauma that I'm not able to let go of. Stuff that just changed you and you're left constantly looking over your shoulder, carrying a taser, always ready to fight if that one nightmarish person

turns up in your life again. Because I know that if he does find me again, he won't give me another chance to get away. He'll kill me. I know he will. So I always have to be ready. up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find a Kumo TreadExperts dealer near you at TreadExperts.ca slash locations.

From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca On Thanksgiving weekend of 2016, like many families in America, the Guy family of Knoxville, Tennessee, convened to have dinner, spend some quality time together, and be thankful for all they had in life. 61-year-old Joel Michael Guy Sr. made his living as a pipeline engineer while his 55-year-old wife Lisa worked as a human resources admin over in Oak Ridge. Their 28-year-old son Joel Jr. had attended Honville High School and had later graduated from Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts in 2006. Yet despite his extensive education, Joel Jr. had never once held down a paying job.

Instead, he had bounced from college to college, directionless and indecisive, with vague aspirations of being a plastic surgeon. In November of 2016, the guys had recently sold their Knoxville property and had plans to retire to neighboring Sir Goinsville. Thanksgiving weekend of that year would be the final time the guys held a family event at their Golden View Lane home, and as you can imagine, this gave the occasion a certain weight to it. Joel Sr. and his wife knew that Thanksgiving would be a special one, but instead of being a joyous reunion, it would prove remarkable for completely different reasons. On Saturday, November 26th, with Thanksgiving leftovers dwindling, Lisa Guy went out to pick up some groceries from the local Walmart. Joel Sr. was in a room on the home's second floor, one they used as a kind of exercise

room containing a Bowflex, an elliptical, and a few free weights. We can assume he was up there trying to burn off the excess calories that came from double heapings of turkey or pumpkin pie, but what's clear is that the guy's Thanksgiving weekend was about to be cut short. All of a sudden, the door to the exercise room swung open, and the threshold stood Joel Jr. with a terrifying look of intensity in his eyes, and in his hand, he held a knife. I can only imagine Joel Sr.'s terror as his only son lunged at him, thrusting wildly as he plunged the blade in and out of his father's chest.

And although we can't be sure of what his last words would have been, a good guess would be, why? Once his father was dead, Joel Jr. cut the clothes from his father's lifeless body, then arranged them in a pile nearby. Then when he was done, he simply walked downstairs, sat in the TV room, and waited for his mother to come home. Lisa walked through the front door of her home about an hour later, not having the faintest idea of what had occurred upstairs. She called out to her son and husband, but neither replied. Joel Jr. was no longer in the TV room and no sound from her husband upstairs. It appears as if both father and son had departed the residence for some reason, yet both of their cars were still parked in the driveway.

Confused but not alarmed, Lisa Guy began to walk upstairs to see if her husband had finished working out. It would be her final act on this earth. When she got to the top of the stairs, her son thrust a knife so deeply into her ribcage that it actually severed several of the bones. Joel Jr. then stabbed her again and again until his mother finally lay still on the carpet beneath him, blood pooling and oozing from the multitude of wounds. Then, just as he'd done with his father, Joel Jr. cut the clothes from his mother's body before her body was placed next to his in the exercise room. It was then that Joel Jr. began the extensive mutilation of his own parents. Joel Jr. took one of the knives in hand and began to cut off his father's hands at the wrists. Once they were severed, he tossed them into the pile of shredded clothes.

Joel Jr. then attempted to decapitate his mother, but according to the coroner's report, this was done in a particularly horrifying fashion You see, the knives that Joel Jr. was using were fantastic at cutting through flesh, but not so great at cutting through thick bone As a result, it appears that Joel sliced through a huge section of his mother's neck and then proceeded to tear it from its moorings with force. Joel then picked the severed head up, took it downstairs into the kitchen, and began to boil it in a large pot of water. Joel then walked back upstairs to continue the dismemberment. He cut off his parents' limbs, then placed each of their disarticulated body parts into a series of large chemical drums that he'd filled with industrial-strength cleaning chemicals. Yet before he did this, he made sure to partially disembowel each of his parents, which would allow the corrosive chemicals into their abdominal cavities and aid in the rate of decomposition. It's at this point that we realize that this was no spur-of-the-moment crime of passion.

Joel Jr. had obviously been reading a great deal about how to quickly and effectively dispose of dead bodies, and given he'd gathered the materials to do so, he'd obviously been planning to kill his parents for quite some time. Yet as much as Joel had taken the time to research his bloody endeavor, he would come to make a grave, singular error. During the attack on his father, Joel Jr.'s hand had slipped on the blade, resulting in a deep cut to his left thumb. At around 3.30pm on the day of the murder, Joel was spotted in the first aid section of the nearby Walmart, buying a variety of medical supplies as well as some isopropyl alcohol and hydrogen peroxide, which he presumably planned

to use to hide the evidence of his crimes. The following day, Joel Jr. went back to his home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, visiting a student medical clinic there to have the wound to his thumb examined. Both trips would ultimately be used against Joel in a court of law, and it seems that no matter how much planning and research he'd done, his was far from the perfect murder. A few days after she was killed, Lisa Guy failed to show up to her shift at Jacobs Engineering. Her supervisor recognized this as extremely out of character, and when she was unable to contact her at home, called 911 to report Lisa as missing. Long after the 911 call was made, Knox County officers Stephen Ballard and Jeremy McCord pulled up outside 11434 Golden View Lane.

The home appeared to be deserted, and there was even a sold sign on the front lawn, but officers noted that there was no real estate lock on the front door. With the officers' curiosity piqued, they walked around to the rear of the home to discover that the back door's handle had been removed, and it appeared that someone then attached it to the front door's handle, possibly in an attempt to render both impassable. The officers then attempted to peer through a window at the front of the house and discovered something strange. The glass, which should have been chilly to the touch, was actually warm. Everyone likes to be cozy during cold winters, but it was so hot and humid in the Guy family home that, if anyone was

still inside, they'd be horribly uncomfortable. Some of you might be able to guess why Joel Jr. might have cranked up the thermostat before fleeing to Louisiana. But for those of you that can't, part of his research had told Joel that turning up the home's central heating would aid in the decomposition of his parents' dead bodies. And needless to say, when one of the officers began to detect a very distinct odor coming from inside of the house, he knew something foul had occurred. The first thing the officers saw upon gaining entry to the home were money, a sledgehammer, and some firearms laid out on the table. It was only after entering the kitchen that they realized that something was

gently simmering on the stove and upon approaching it they discovered Lisa Guy's head bloated and swollen from having spent two days in the huge pot. They then discovered Joel Guy's senior's dismembered hands on the floor by looking down a hallway

with a further search revealing the corpse-filled chemical drums in an upstairs bathroom. Investigators also found sewer line cleaner, a bag of baking soda, liquid fire brand drain cleaner, muriatic acid, drain opener, lye, food-grade hydrogen peroxide, bleach, and a bleach sprayer, all of which made up the cocktail of chemicals which now ate away at the couple's remains. Investigators also discovered a note in an open suitcase that depicted the name and Louisiana address of an Ace Hardware store, along with a notation about sewer line cleaner. The toxic fluid required biohazard equipment for removal by the KCSO hazmat team, and due to the volume of evidence in such a disturbing discovery,

KCSO's forensic unit worked throughout the night Monday and into the following day, processing the crime scene. Some said it was the most horrifying crime scene they'd ever come across, and as you can imagine, the discovery generated a huge amount of media attention Naturally, local law enforcement sought to close the case as quickly as possible But as forensic investigators combed through the crime scene, they came to a harrowing conclusion The killer was most likely the couple's own son Over the days that followed, the FBI, the Knox County Sheriff's Office,

and the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office placed Guy Jr. under surveillance. They also sought to build a picture of Joel Jr.'s actions in the days leading up to the murder, and what they discovered horrified them. Through analyzing the security camera footage from several local stores, the police were able to identify Joel Jr. as purchasing the very supplies he would use to murder and dispose of his parents. He used cash for every transaction and stuck to self-checkouts to avoid any memorable interactions with staff members. The earliest Joel began to purchase these supplies was November 7th, proving premeditation by at least two weeks.

Sometime later, Joel bought a U.S. Marine-style K-bar knife from a business known as Academy Sports, the very same knife he would later use to stab his father to death. Then on November 21st, just a few days before the murders, he can be seen at a Knoxville Walmart buying a plastic blue tote large enough for the dismembered bodies to dissolve in. But perhaps the most disturbing piece of evidence was the notebook police found in Joel Jr.'s possessions after he was arrested at his Baton Rouge apartment on November 29th. Not only did Joel have a meat grinder in the trunk of his car, he also had a journal in which he'd written down numerous notes pertaining to the murder. Some of them read as follows. Get carving knives, killing knives, quiet, multiple. Get sledgehammer,

crush bones. Bring blender and food grinder, grind meat to make small pieces, get bleach, denature proteins, get plastic sheeting for disposal process, get plastic bin for denaturation process, get hollow point bullets, just in case. Joel then seems to correct himself and writes, we'll be seen buying bullets, just use computer room gun. Check to make sure there are bullets. Last resort. Does not matter where they're killed, just get rid of the bloody spots to prevent evidence of time of death.

Not the mattress or couches. Don't have to get rid of body if there is no forensic evidence on the body. Get rid of bodies inside house. Are DNA already there? Flush chunks down toilet, not garbage disposal. Open up doggy door to provide entryway. Random intruder, needs to be blamed. Flood the house,

covers up forensic evidence. Turn heater up as high as it goes, speeds up the decomposition. Bleach reacts with luminol just like blood, douse the whole area with bleach. Body gives time of death, confuse the time of death and my alibi will match. Dad's not alive to claim her half of the insurance, this means the money, all mine, 500,000. Joel had provided the police with all the evidence they needed to send him to prison for the murder of his parents, and his writings provide a terrifying insight into the malicious greed of an ungrateful child who'd rather kill those who brought him into the world instead of just getting a job. Shockingly, even with the weight of the evidence bearing down on him, Joel Guy Jr. pled not guilty to capital murder, yet at the same time he filed a motion

via his attorney that, if convicted, he immediately would receive the death penalty. Joel also refused to allow either of his defense counsels to prevent evidence on his behalf, meaning that from start to finish, the trial lasted just four days, extremely unusual for a multiple murder trial. Despite his wish, following Joel's conviction, a judge refused to hand him the death penalty, assuring him that a more fitting punishment would be to force him to live with the guilt of knowing he'd taken the lives of his own parents. I was house-sitting for an older neighbor who had gone off to visit her grandkids a few states over for Thanksgiving. I wasn't going anywhere for it. Long story, no sympathy please, I prefer spending it alone, so...

I agreed to do it since she had this really sweet cat, so getting to give the thing belly rubs was basically my payment. It turned out to be a pretty nice couple of days too. I poured through all of her old cookbooks, tried out a few of the recipes, and generally just chilled. But one night was pretty intense, because I thought my good deed might have ended in me losing my life. So, on Thanksgiving night, I was just relaxing on the couch with the cat when I must have just dozed off, because the next thing I know, I'm waking up to the cat going crazy and yelling at one of the back rooms. I start smiling to myself at first, because I'd never before seen a cat be so aggressive in asking to be fed. So I get up, head over to the kitchen, and that's when I start hearing voices in the back of the house. I'm already pretty on edge,

since the neighborhood we lived in wasn't exactly the best in terms of crime states, and this was basically prime time for petty thieves. If they'd seen my neighbor's car wasn't there, they might just think the whole place was empty and not even double check. In which case, if I happen to startle some armed intruder, that could be the end of me. All the rental properties are laid out the same. You walk in the front door and you're in the living room with the attached kitchen, which was separated by a kitchen counter. Off to the side you go into the hallway and you have two bedrooms on either side with a bathroom or laundry room at the end of the hallway of the

house. So I grabbed a knife out of the holder on the counter, pulled my phone out to start dialing 911, then started creeping down the hallway to where I could hear the voices. As I get closer, I hear one of the people freaking out in a whispered voice, which obviously had me even more scared because it meant that they were in a volatile state. I could barely make out what they were saying since they were behind a closed door in one of the bedrooms, but I remember the moment I realized that the voice sounded like it belonged to someone real young, and it sounded like they were holding back sobs. This whole new instinct took over.

I flung the door open and flipped on the light, more to see if anyone was hurt or needed help by that time. Then I'm suddenly greeted by the sight of two kids in the room, middle school kids who went to school across the street. It turns out they were in the process of robbing the place when I showed up and they didn't want to go to jail. They thought that they'd be able to sneak away when I went to the bathroom or something but chickened out because they didn't want to risk getting caught. They sat in that room for hours until nightfall so they could sneak out. It made me kind of sad though. They were kids and their life is going to be a lot more difficult now just because they wanted to be thugs. Still, it scared me a lot though and it gave me a whole new meaning to Thanksgiving for me.

Giving thanks that no one got hurt that night. This might seem kind of tame compared to some of the other stories here, but this is literally one of the most traumatic and terrifying memories of my childhood, and it just so happened to have taken place on Thanksgiving. I remember me and my little brother were upstairs playing in our room while all our relatives were catching up downstairs. Dinner was said to be ready any minute and we were starving. So as we're sitting playing Hot Wheels and we get the call that dinner is ready, we just about bolted out of our room and headed for the stairs. My brother was in front of me but as he started to descend the stairs I remember his legs just giving out from under him. I remember him reaching up to grab the banister but it was no good. He tumbled all the way to the bottom, literally just rolling all the

way. I think it was so noisy that my parents had come running out of the TV room before he even hit the bottom and I have this really vivid memory of when he was finally lying still. His eyes were wide open, just this terrified stare in them and there was this little trickle of blood running out of his ear and down his face. Obviously everyone went into a blind panic, calling 911, asking what happened, trying to wake my brother up as I sat on the stairs and cried. I say cried, it was probably more like wailing because I swear to god, I thought my big brother had died right there in front of me.

Thankfully he was fine. He just knocked himself out and damaged something in his ear on the way down but when they kept him in the hospital overnight I was so scared he was done for. It was that look in his eyes. That sort of half scared, half vacant look. I'd never seen anyone get knocked out like that before and as anyone will tell you, it's pretty scary the first time you see it. Then imagine like you're four or five and it's your big brother getting slept by a staircase. The moral of the story, don't stand up too fast if you've been sitting down for a while and

if you do, stay away from old wooden staircases. One Thanksgiving when I was a kid, my drunk uncle spilled hot gravy on my sister. We were all sitting down to dinner and my uncle straight up sticks his finger in one of the gravy boats and starts complaining that it's cold. My mom tells him she's busy and that if he wanted it hotter he could microwave it himself. I watched the whole thing happen. He got up, nuked the gravy, staggered back over to the table then basically emptied out entire bottle of steaming hot gravy all over my sister's leg. She was only 5 years old at the time and the noise she made as it started burning her was something I'll never forget. People just jumped into action, pulling my sister's chair back from the table while another rushed to fill up a bowl of cold ice water to douse on the burn. That's how I saw the wound and it was every bit as hideous as you can imagine.

The gravy had basically just burned some of the flesh away like you could see patches of red but the burn wasn't bleeding like a cut might do. It looked like a zombie's skin or something just this big patch of it on my sister's leg. She screamed so loud the neighbors called the cops and like they didn't even come over to check on us. The screams just scared them so bad that they called the cops instead of EMTs. When the ambulance arrived they drove my sister to the hospital, and they ended up doing some kind of skin graft too. She healed up okay in the end, but for like a year after, she had this patch of skin that was like a shade lighter than the rest of her.

And given that we're like half Latino, moms from Puerto Rico, it looked extra jarring around the pool that summer. Oh, and we don't talk to that drunk uncle anymore. Not just because of gravy gate, but my mom said that was definitely the beginning of the end for him. And just in case anyone is going to be like, meh, he had a disease. He was still an idiot after he sobered up. Booze didn't seem to have anything to do with it. 11 years ago, back when I was just 17 years old, we went to visit some out-of-state relatives for Thanksgiving. This was at a time when I was dying my hair a lot and I'd been experimenting with different shades for at least 18 months. Some were pretty wild, others pretty tame, but my meemaw always used to complain at me, saying I was damaging my hair, making it brittle, all the stuff you'd usually expect.

I know she was just saying it out of love, she wasn't trying to be mean or anything, but I always used to just roll my eyes and be like, okay meemaw, I'll be more careful, then just change the subject. So anyway, we have a nice dinner, fall into various food comas, then I'll head up to bed after a few hours in front of the TV. But before I head to bed, I decide to take a shower to wash my hair since I swear that helping my meemaw cook left about a gallon of grease in my hair. So with the house completely silent, I head into the bathroom to wash. At first, I just experience the pure bliss that is a hot shower after a long day.

Then I browse through my meemaw's collection of shampoos, pick one out, then I get on with washing my hair. At some point, I ran my fingers through my hair only to find the action met with a little resistance. Not entirely unusual, my hair used to get tangled up a lot, but a hard tug doesn't just magically undo tangles in your hair. I clear the water from my eyes, look down, just to see this huge clump of my purple hair between my fingers. Obviously I'm concerned at this but I'm not freaking out, not until I carry on washing my hair and yet another huge clump comes out. At that point I'm panicking and I just start wildly tugging at the rest of my hair to see if it's just as brittle or damaged as the other clumps. I can't even really describe the horror I felt when almost all of my hair just seemed to fall out of my scalp in a matter of minutes. It didn't hurt or anything, but don't let that fool you. The emotional pain was more than enough

to make up for the lack of physical. I remember being in my blind panic, stepping out of the shower and looking in the mirror. Apart from a few loose strands, I was completely and utterly bald. I barely recognized myself. I felt actually physically sick, and by the time I felt like my soul had come back to my body, I just let out this long scream. Half my family came bursting into the bathroom in the seconds that followed, each of them shouting a mixed bag of, what's wrong, what happened, are you okay, what did you do to your hair? I just cried for like an hour straight, shaking and wailing and just totally unable to compute

what had happened. It was honestly like a living nightmare and when I realized it was probably an indication that I was in poor health, I became convinced that I was dying. I was so depressed that my mom had to basically drag me into the shower, force feed me tea hose, then take me down to the doctor's office to get me checked over. We found out what the issue was and although it wasn't life-threatening, it took me literally months to come out of what was the darkest and most crushing depression of my life. An acute, sudden autoimmune reaction, the doctor said. Pretty much overnight alopecia. Well, not so much overnight. I'd noticed I was losing a bit more hair than usual, but like

Meemaw said, the almost constant cycle of bleaching and dyeing had definitely damaged my hair a little, but having it all come out in almost one fell swoop was crushing. I lost almost all my body hair too, which wasn't nearly as rough as the hair on my head, but I still felt like a total freak in the months following Thanksgiving. As horrible as this all sounds, I'd like to reassure everyone that there's definitely been something of a happy ending, or rather, that there's some serious silver lining in my condition. Good wigs are expensive, sure, but I can now have a different hair color for each day of my legs, among other things, and as much as the whole losing my hair thing sucked, I basically looked at it like nature's laser hair removal. The point being, our bodies can scare the life out of us, but whatever you're going through, this too shall pass. You just gotta be strong and find those silver linings. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find a Kumo TreadExperts dealer near you at TreadExperts.ca slash locations.

From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca The End Chris. It wouldn't be until I went off to college that I'd find out how fun it actually was. During my four years at North Texas, I would go from a diehard city boy to borderline survivalist. Then, just like that, something occurred that has tainted my love of the woods to this day. As I said at the start, me and the outdoors never saw eye to eye. Before I moved to Denton, if there was a spider web, I'd always seem to run into it. If the mosquitoes were hungry, they'd pick me to feast on. You get the idea? Just by chance, I ended up rooming with this kid from around Nacogdoches. He'd grown up

in the woods. A few of his friends from back home were attending North Texas with us. They would camp all around the state on our holiday breaks. As my first spring break approached, they invited me along to Lake Ray Roberts. If you don't know already, Ray Roberts is this famous lake near Denton. It's world famous for its bass fishing, among other things. I wasn't looking forward to hanging out in Dallas and I didn't know any of the cool kids, the ones who were heading for one of the places on the coast. So, Ray Roberts it was. With no prior experience of camping, I had to rely on the suggestions of my companions. I borrowed, bargained, or improvised everything I needed. The only thing I didn't skimp on was bug spray. Deepwoods Off and I would become intimate friends.

An amazing thing would take place on that trip. Since I'd bathed myself in bug spray, I was free to focus on the actual experience. Everything was going well, then I caught my first fish and I was hooked, so to speak. The remainder of that trip was spent learning everything I could about the outdoors. After that adventure, I made myself a member of every trip for the next two years. I even got to see the ocean that following summer. When I wasn't in class or sleeping, I walked from one end of the town to the other. Despite being a university city, Denton still has that small town feel. There wasn't a tree or animal track I couldn't identify.

During the warmer months, I'd spend as much time as possible practicing my newly acquired skill at the nearby Louisville Lake. I don't think my friends from East Texas knew half as much as I did after a while. My friends back in Dallas said they didn't recognize me anymore. I didn't care though. I was determined to never be separated from nature again and, in a way, I'm still deeply connected to it. But when it comes to stepping foot back in the woods, I may never be capable of that feat again. It was spring break by my final year. By now, some of my fellow campers had flunked out or transferred. One or two of the guys were still around, but we didn't keep in

touch. I'd been planning a big trip to a well-known national forest in the eastern part of the state. I'd rather not say the name here. I fear my experience may turn some off from seeing the place themselves. It's truly beautiful, regardless of what shady things may be going on there. And before leaving, I'd been warned to watch out for overzealous hunters. This trip however wasn't going to take place during any hunting season that I knew of so I felt relatively safe. After doing one last quick scan of my checklist I threw my jeep into drive and began the three plus hour drive. I pulled into my camping area just after 3pm and set up everything just the way I'd liked it.

I decided to take a quick look around before dinner. This was the first time I'd noticed them. Well, I didn't actually see anyone but the feeling I was being watched never left me. I cut my hike short and returned to camp. Although bears were not known to live in this area, I had read a few stories online and the idea of being eaten my first day there sounded very uncool. I had dinner and hit the sack just after dark. Nothing out of the ordinary happened that night as far as I know. The next morning was something out of a fantasy.

The crisp, clean air was the best I'd ever inhaled. Breakfast was something quick and easy. I don't remember exactly what it was, and you'll soon see why. The beauty of the morning made me eager to explore. I threw a small day pack with all my emergency supplies and a little food and hit the trail. The next few hours were quiet. The occasional snap, twig, or shuffling sound was heard, but I never got the feeling anyone but myself and the animals were present. Just after 11am, I stopped for a snack. As I waited for my Trangia to heat up some water, I lounged lazily against a pine tree.

I must have been dozing off when an especially brave mosquito plunged her mouth into my neck. I jerked awake and swatted the little pest into a red smudge and this was when I caught sight of a flash in the distance. It wasn't more than a quick movement and for a moment I questioned my eyes. However, the loud cawing of a crow soon after told me I wasn't alone. Although I wasn't scared yet, I wondered why someone would be watching me. I'm sure you can see how creepy that would be. Eventually the crow moved away and I was left in peace to enjoy my coffee. I figured if my creepy stalker hadn't yet shown himself, he likely meant me no harm.

I spent maybe another ten minutes at that location before packing up and moving on. Another half hour or so passed and it soon became obvious that my stalker was still with me. He didn't seem to know about staying quiet in the woods either. A constant distant sound of shuffling leaves could be heard behind me. A strange smell began to drift from up ahead of me. I chopped to sniff the air and the woods went completely silent. A chill shot through me. Something wasn't right. My curiosity was getting the best of me and against my instincts, I started walking in the direction of the smell. I made it about three steps before a puff of dirt and needles shot up next to me. Not a second later, a crack came from behind me. I turned to look for the source just in time for another crack. This was about the time I realized I was being shot at and hit the ground. I didn't dare move now. Frozen in place, I listened for any movement. The internet's

warnings of overzealous hunters began echoing in my head. I figured if I yelled out, the shooter may realize his mistake and hold his fire. I did just that, but no answer came. I couldn't hear any movement and assumed that I was safe. The sounds of the forest slowly began to come back. This was the verification I needed. I was shook, but no worse for wear. I jumped back up to my feet and brushed myself off. The strange smell hit me again. For some reason, I hadn't learned my lesson yet and

began walking toward it. And within about five steps, another quick series of shots came from the direction of the smell. I didn't think or reason. I just turned tail and ran back in the direction I'd come from. My only goal was to make it back to civilization alive. I prayed to God over and over begging him to deliver me from this. One or two more shots rang out behind me but I was too focused on escaping to see where they hit. My flight continued for at least ten minutes. It wasn't until my body gave out that I stopped. Although I hadn't heard any shots for some time, I didn't dare remain where I was.

I chugged a canteen full of water and continued my escape, but now at a much slower pace. Within an hour, I was back at my camp. I wanted nothing more than to get back to Denton as soon as possible. No time was wasted properly packing anything. I didn't even bother to make sure the fire was fully extinguished. A crime I would have never committed otherwise, as I had no intention of notifying the police. My biggest fear was that I'd be made to return to the scene of the crime. This very idea made me wretch. Nonetheless, the further away I got from the National Forest the more guilty I started

to feel. There was a very real possibility that another camper would bumble into whatever I had. I knew I'd never be able to live with the guilt of a preventable death on my conscience. About twenty miles from the National Forest I finally found a police station and made a report. The officer didn't seem very surprised at what he'd heard. He suggested the overzealous hunter theory but after having some time to think about it, it didn't fit in my mind. Had the shooting stopped when I identified myself,

it would make sense. The truth is, I had no idea what had happened. The officer promised me that they would check it out and for a moment I thought he was going to ask me to show the officers the exact location but he stopped mid-thought and thanked me for coming in. I had no faith the cops would find anything let alone contact me if they did. To be honest I didn't care. There was no way I was ever returning to that place. I must have looked like a big idiot,

kissing the ground outside my house, but the relief I felt was immeasurable. A little time passed and things were starting to get back to normal. Despite the terrifying incident, I was fully intending to return to the woods, just not those woods. I stopped off at the 4chan slash outboard and a particularly on-point post grabbed my attention. The LP had been hiking in an area he thought he knew well. Stories about massive pot fields being guarded by cartel members had been passed around for years, but he chalked them up to fear-mongering. Then, by chance, he stumbled onto one of those mythical growing patches

He hadn't heard or seen anyone around He hoped he could slip away undetected And no sooner had he begun backing away than gunfire opened up all around him He was grazed on his cheek and sighed as he ran back toward his house The whole thing had him terrified Too terrified to report, in fact. The story did seem a bit too convenient for me, but the seed had something fully planted into my psyche. I'd never once considered something like this to be possible in my instance.

It didn't matter if it was true or not. The longer I stayed from the woods, the more real it became. After some point, I pretty much accepted my days in the woods were over. Nine years on, life is much like it was before I left for college. The only difference is I'm older and a lot more educated about the natural world. I catch myself occasionally staring out into the woods near my home and feel that call of the wild I once felt but it'll never be as it once was. I'm well aware that the odds of something like that happening are minuscule. It's not fear that lies at the root of my avoidance, at least not all these years later. To be honest, now that I know

things like that are going on in the woods, a place I still love so deeply, I can't see them quite as I once had. They've been tainted for me, the things that they do poison the forest and the wildlife that call it home. Their very existence has been seared into my mind forever. Now, I'm content with my memories and pass on my knowledge to any who seek it. Instead, I prefer to remember things as they once were. Crisp. Clean. Beautiful. To be continued... After divorcing my father, my mom dated a long string of losers. She even moved a few in, and around 14, she married a guy named Frank that she had met in the bar that she worked at.

Frank was an outright a-hole and tried in vain to usurp my father's role. Mom had done her best to keep Dad and I apart, but I knew the whole time he loved and wanted to be with me. Prior to the divorce, he and I would hunt, I knew the whole time he loved and wanted to be with me. Prior to the divorce, he and I would hunt, fish, and camp regularly. This instilled a love for the outdoors I'll never shake, nor would I want to. This made my decision to live in the woods almost a no-brainer. I was 17 when I couldn't take Frank's tyranny anymore. Despite being an unemployed bum for most of the time, he expected me to wake up by 8am every day. Unlike him, I worked 5 days a week. I've been saving to get my own place since my junior year. Getting away from him and my mom were high on my priorities list. So much so,

I quit school at the end of my first semester and got my GED. Dad wasn't happy to hear about it, but he signed the waiver because he understood. On my days off, I felt I'd earned the right to sleep in. Frank disagreed for some reason. I'd felt a lot of pressure at work at the time. When Frank came in yelling for me to wake up, I told him to F off. He drew back like he was going to hit me, and I reacted by knocking him to the floor. This was the breaking point. I knew that little wimp would call the cops, so I packed my backpack as fast as I could and hit the road, and I've never lived there again. With no clear plan or car, I roamed aimlessly for

most of the day. As the sun began to fall, I slipped off into a patch of woods on the edge of town. I walked in far enough to not be seen from the road and made camp. I threw together a fire and fashioned a bed from clothes and leaves. That night was surprisingly comfortable but I had no intent on making it a long term thing. In my arrogant mind I'd have no trouble finding an abandoned place to sleep until I'd saved enough. It didn't turn out to be that easy. Most places anywhere decent enough had security. The one spot that didn't was controlled by a gang. They used it as a shooting gallery, I felt like.

The floor was an inch deep in old needles. Life with Frank was preferable to that. Another weekend was coming to an end. Sleep and safety were on my top priorities, so I returned to my forest camp and did the best with what I had. Sleeping on the ground wasn't going to work for the long term. The middle of that first week, I walked to a Walmart after work and grabbed a few things. A sleeping bag, most importantly. A little time investment made my sleeping arrangements a lot better.

I also made a simple lean-to structure from a tarp and lined it with foil. The foil reflected the heat from the fire back down into my body making the cooler nights much less so. For a long time, I would clean up the best I could in public bathrooms. My clothes were cleaned at our 24-hour laundromat. It wasn't uncommon for me to spend the night there on laundry days. My hygiene did manage to draw a little attention from my bosses, but none of her said anything. And I did eventually find a fork of river that ran near my camp. I'd bathe there as often as I could. Overall, my time there was a lot better than it could have been had I not had a job.

Employed or not, not everything was idealistic as I made it sound. My little patch of woods was bisected by railroad tracks. With railroad tracks come hobos, and about half a mile from my camp and across the track lay the hobos camp. It wasn't really much more than an overnight place for most of those guys. I first stumbled upon it by chance. I used the tracks as a quiet pathway back and forth each day. If the police saw you walking alongside the busier roads, they'd harass you. This isn't something I wanted or needed. I was still technically a minor after all. One evening, as I returned to my campsite, the glow of a fire reflecting off the leaves caught my sight. I walked toward it and began to hear a group of men talking.

I carefully peeked down the hill and saw three older men hunched around the fire. I just watched and listened for a few minutes. Eventually I realized they weren't anyone to worry about and called down to them. They looked up and huddled together. They must have decided I wasn't a threat either. They called me down to join them. At first I just sat there and listened to their stories but after some time they asked me my name and where I was headed. I thought for a minute before just making up that my name was Frank and I live nearby. This spurred an hours long conversation about all types of things. I learned about a life of riding the rails and I told them a little about

my situation. At some point that night I got to taste fortified wine for the first time. It's not something I'd recommend but I came to form quite an affinity for it. Nothing exciting would happen that night and not for a long time. It was with the approach of fall that seemed to bring with it the cold wind, obviously, but not to mention a few ill-mannered hobos too. By this point, I'd almost come to be one of the train-hopping fraternity. The few regulars and I had spent many a cool evening by the fire, listening to the newcomers' stories and passing around a bottle or two.

One of those passing through was an older guy called Tampa. He was quiet at first but became more belligerent the more intoxicated he became. I'm not sure what I said but something set him off and he took a swing at me. Before I knew it, I was on the ground being kicked. The other guys got him to stop long enough for me to get away, and after that night I made sure to keep my distance when someone I didn't know was around. This rule served me well until I allowed myself to be tricked by someone that I thought I knew. The second incident is what ultimately led me finally getting my own apartment earlier than I had planned.

The run-in with Tampa was fading from my mind. Other more important things like staying warm and fed were occupying most of my thoughts. Somehow, despite being a homeless teenager, I managed to get a promotion at work. I may have allowed them to believe that I quit school to invest more time there. True or not, the promotion brought with it a raise. I'd been spending most of my money just trying to stay alive. Now, living would be a lot easier. And I was gathering wood one Saturday and noticed a guy about my age walking toward me with a backpack. Although leery, he seemed normal enough to me. He had just come from a Kansas city, I forgot to ask which one, and he told me his name

was Dallas. We began talking and I told him about the camp. He thanked me and went our separate ways. Later that night we continued our conversation around the fire as a bottle made its way among us. For the next two days I spent my evenings with Dallas and the rest of the guys listening to their amazing tales of riding the rails. All seemed well until that second evening. Earlier that day I'd made a slip up and mentioned it was payday. I'd always been cagey when it came to how much money I made. A few of the guys knew I had a steady job but even with them I never let them see me with more than a few dollars. Since my earliest days, I'd had caches where I'd hide most of my money. I made sure to constantly move it at irregular times and intervals.

Being paranoid was preferable to being robbed. That evening, Dallas and I were discussing a private matter. I hadn't taken the time to stash my money before I left camp and Dallas seemed to have known it. I realized now that he had been spending his days searching for my current cash. When he couldn't find it I guess he assumed I was carrying it on me. During our conversation he asked if he could borrow some money. I told him I had given all I had to pay for the bottle we just had. He called me a liar and produced a long pocket knife. Obviously I was terrified. Nonetheless, losing almost a thousand dollars must have scared me more.

I held on to the lie as long as I could, but the fear overtook me and I started begging. His face had changed to a look of pure evil. I knew he had no problem killing me. My flight response kicked in and was going to run. And just as I began to turn, Dallas took a wide swipe at me. My flight response kicked in and was going to run, and just as I began to turn, Dallas took a wide swipe at me. I was out of range for the cut to be too bad, but I was slashed across my left arm regardless. I was now too scared to turn away, but I knew I couldn't stay where I was. I began jogging backward up the hill watching Dallas the whole time. I'd taken about five steps and watched

as he folded up and collapsed. It didn't make any sense until I made out the shape of another person standing behind him with something long in his hand. I called out and Johnny, one of the regulars, stepped up into the dim light. Johnny was holding his trademark axe handle. I thanked him and he proceeded to tell me he had been watching Dallas all evening. While he and a few others had been in the liquor store, Dallas had made an offhanded comment about me being Mr. Moneybags. He figured Dallas had something planned. Dallas was beginning to stir by now and cursing Johnny. Johnny simply looked down at him and said, Get. And added that if he didn't, he would get an even worse beating. Dallas did as he's told and disappeared into the night, hopefully forever.

And for safety's sake, I spent that night and a few more after at the hobo camp. I made sure to take a different path to and from work for the rest of the week. I didn't see Dallas again, but my second assault in less than a year was too much for me. I had had enough to get a place by this point anyhow. I was hoping to have a little more, but that seems to always be the case in life, right? I spent that weekend at the library going over classifieds on Craigslist, and late that Sunday evening I was sleeping in my very own apartment. It was a tiny little dump but it was mine. A few months later I found a better more

permanent situation and spent a full three years there. I still think about Johnny and the other guys from time to time. They were nothing like you'd expect people in that life to be but even being surrounded by a group of good guys like that, camping or sleeping rough as some call it, isn't something I'd recommend to anyone. In the late spring of 2017, I embarked on my long-anticipated camping trip out west. The trip was almost two years in the planning stage and would be my first chance to camp with firearms. The journey to the location was an enjoyable experience and I learned a lot about that part of our country I wasn't aware of. On arrival, I parked my truck and notified my contact that I had arrived safe. We went over my agenda one last

time and I began the long hike to my campsite. Things went quietly that first day. The weather was so nice I slept under the stars next to my fire. The freedom I felt was refreshing as opposed to all the restrictions we'd had back home. The following day was much like the one before. I walked at a leisurely pace and enjoyed all the wildlife around me. A bit after 1pm I finally found the spot I'd hoped to camp. A quick scan told me that I'd made a wise decision. In no time everything was set up and I was cooking my lunch. I could feel myself dozing off afterwards so I took the opportunity to do some shooting. After all, this is why I was out here. Around 200 yards from camp I found a dry creek bed.

It looked to be the safest place to shoot. I set up a few steel targets and let lead fly. I can't describe the elation I felt. This must have been how the mountain men lived, I told myself. I'd gone through a box of 7.62 and was reloading my SKS when the sound of gunshots echoed through the hills around me. My curiosity drove me to check out their source. The shots continued as I searched. They sounded as if though they were coming from multiple guns, and this made me a bit nervous. I chose to return to

camp and something told me from the sound of the shots that I wouldn't be welcome and it's a decision I still regret and thank myself to this day. Back at camp I began considering what I'd have for dinner. The shooting had stopped soon after I'd returned. I assumed the shooters had moved on and the evening would be quiet. Once I finished cleaning my guns, which took me about an hour, I laid back and stared at the fire. I caught myself nodding off again, so rather than cook something big, I filled up on a sleeve of crackers and bacon-flavored easy cheese. The sun was beginning to slip behind the trees, and I took this as a sign to crawl off to bed for an early night.

It was completely dark when a noise awakened me. I jolted up and peeked out of my tent. Nothing was there. I figured it was a dream and laid back down. Just as I closed my eyes I heard it again. A blood curdling scream echoed through the night. Next to hearing a rabbit being killed by a predator, it was the worst sound I'd ever heard. The screams came again, but this time was followed by a female voice screaming for help.

Things got real in that moment. I felt a shiver through my body. What was I going to do? I briefly considered grabbing my rifle and running off into the dark. It was clear by now where the sounds were coming from, the same direction the shots had been coming from earlier. Common sense won out and I stayed where I was. One more scream for help came and was followed by a single gunshot, and I laid frozen in terror, wondering what to do until the sun rose the next morning. My feelings of freedom and power were gone now. I waited, minute after minute, for the dawn so I could escape the coming death I had convinced

myself was coming. With the sunrise, my kit was packed in record time and I was on my way, back to a place I perceived as oppressive, or anywhere for that matter. Anywhere but there. A trip which had taken me in a day and a half to make just a few days before took less than one to return from. It was a miracle I'd make it back at all. Every few minutes I'd turn around, a rifle gripped tightly in my hand, looking for some imaginary pursuers. I arrived back in my truck just after dark and turned for home, never happier to be returning. After the relief began to wear off, the guilt began to set in.

As far as I could tell, I had hurt a woman in need for help, being murdered perhaps, and I did nothing about it, not a thing. For the entire drive back, a war waged between my ego and common sense. One second I hated myself, calling myself a coward, and the next, you were obviously outnumbered. There's nothing you could do. The undeniable facts are that all those things are true. I was indeed a coward, scared as a child that sees his first horror movie, but at the same time, running out into the pitch dark after an unknown number of assailants would have been very, very stupid. Though it's still the sting of my ego I feel the strongest to this day, any man could tell you why. Coward or hero, none of this amounted to much. The real question was if I was going to report what I'd

witnessed. Witnessed? That was a word that would undo my great act of virtue. I really didn't witness anything. I heard a few screams and shots out in the middle of nowhere. Hardly a groundbreaking indictment. Without any real evidence I'd be no more than a nuisance to the cops and that was it. And my punishment has been this unending shame of picking logic and reason over common decency. It would be some months until I would discover the facts that surrounded this incident and for some time I was too terrified at what I would find. Nonetheless a day came when I was finally able to summon the courage to seek out the truth, and it turned out to be a mixed bag somewhat. To be brief, I just happened to be camping a mile away from an outlaw biker gang. Earlier in that day, they had arrived at the site

that they used in the past to shoot their less than legal firearms. Unfortunately, they had also abducted a female backpacker. After horribly abusing her for several hours, they set her free. She fled from their campsite, this must have been the screams that I heard for help, only to be shot and left for dead. Most of the time this would be where the terrible story would end. However, by some act of God, the backpacker clung to life. Somehow she made her way back to the highway and found help. After a week in the hospital, she was released. The bikers knew that they were caught and took deals that will see most of them serving the remainder of their lives in prison.

Although I was generally happy to hear the victim was alive, the thought of what-ifs haunt me to this day. I never told anyone about this incident. Choosing to use this throwaway account means I probably never will. If you end up reading this and thinking me as a low-life coward, I really don't blame you. I didn't tell this story for folks like you. Rather, this account is for those that believe it's the best policy to not get involved in others' problems. I understand now your desire to avoid conflict. Many have been punished for

doing the right thing. You may end up as one of those people if you assist someone in need. Your life might be ruined because of it. I can tell you from first-hand experience that pales in comparison to the guilt you'll carry around for the rest of your life. It's simple. We're here on this earth together. If able, we should help our fellow human beings in need. Put yourself in your neighbor's shoes. You could be the only thing standing between them living or dying. We'll be right back. MasterCard, when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find a Kumo TreadExperts dealer near you at TreadExperts.ca slash locations.

From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca Although this story is far from over, the majority of what I'll share occurred about 12 years ago. It's around 2009 and I'm still living with my folks. We've moved into the neighborhood when I was 13. Not long after I discovered the woods across the road, I was sort of forced into making the woods my sanctuary because of the bullying I experienced and all the turmoil at home. This neighborhood didn't have many kids living in it and the few there were, were older among other things. All the hostility made me a very nervous kid.

Any free time I had was spent alone. I got curious one day and wandered into the woods. There didn't appear to be anyone but me out there and this gave me a strange feeling of safety, something I'd not felt for a long time. I found this small circle of cedar trees that made a secret open area and made it my clubhouse of sorts. As time passed, I began spending more and more time in the trees. I even accidentally fell asleep and spent the night out there once. I was sure my parents were going to freak out but they hadn't even noticed.

This was the only excuse I needed. I began camping in my clubhouse every once in a while at first. I wasn't missed a single time. I knew I was going to need some camping supplies now though. I tried bringing things from home but they wore out fast. Asking my parents for money was out of the question. I began going door to door and offering my services as a lawnmower. I'd never mowed a lawn in my life but that wasn't important.

The real problem was finding a lawnmower. I would sneak my dad's mower out and do a job but eventually I was caught and actually caught a beating for it. Fortunately I had enough money by then to buy a really terrible end one of my own. I took all the money I'd saved but it was a much safer way to make it. Once I managed to remake the money I'd lost I hopped on my barely working bike and rode it to five miles to this dinky army surplus place. I emerged with an Alice pack stuffed with various things that I thought I needed. I was so excited to try this stuff out, I skipped a whole week of school and camped out in my

clubhouse. It was an addictive hobby, but something much more for me. It was the only source of safety and happiness I had. For the next however many years I went to school just enough not to cause any trouble. I would go straight from school to my clubhouse every afternoon. By now I'd come to see those woods as mine. Anybody in between would have been seen as an invader in my mind and when that day came I didn't think twice about striking back. It was a Sunday afternoon. I'd been camping out all weekend and was taking the well-worn path to the creek to get water. Across the creek about 50 yards was an almost deserted road. I rarely saw anyone use it. I caught sight of a parked camper. The two men walking in and out of it never seemed to notice

me and when I returned a few hours later they were still there. Only now they were drinking beers and mindlessly shooting guns. This made me furious but when a stray bullet actually struck the water just feet from me, I had had enough. I ran the mile back home and called the sheriff. I assumed my call was anonymous but now I'm not so sure. I made up a story that I had gotten lost and drove up on the men. I lied and said they had threatened me with their guns. I realize how wrong that is now but I was young and angry. One morning as I prepared for school I overheard a news report about a big meth lab bust. Acting on an anonymous tip,

sheriff's deputies found two men shooting guns on a country road. Upon further investigation, the camper the men were driving turned out to be a mobile meth lab. The two men were taken into custody and were being held pending bail hearings, and I knew this had to have been the call I made. The seriousness of the situation scared me, but I was confident no one would know that it was me that had made the call, and for the next year I even followed the case. About three months before their sentencing hearing, I received an unnamed letter in the mail, and it simply said, you mess with the wrong people, kid. A jolt of ice-cold fear shot through me, but I still doubted it was

from the two men. Any doubt I had was removed when another came the next week, this one far clearer. You better pray we get time served. I was too terrified at the time to wonder how they knew that it was me. I'm still not sure how they identified me, but the how no longer mattered. The letters continued to arrive. When the day of the hearing came, the news was not good. Both men were felons, found with multiple firearms. Adding on the manufacturing charge and you get a minimum of 10 years. The judge was not feeling generous. He gave both of the men 20 years. I was sure my days on earth were numbered. I stopped going to school and spent all my time in the woods. I wasn't foolish enough to think that it would keep me safe, but if I was going to die, I wanted to die

somewhere I loved. A strange thing happened though. The death I was expecting never came. Month after month I became more confident that it all had been a joke or more than likely just an intimidation tactic. My life flew by and this last ten years has been a series of ups and downs. The meth heads have been the last thing on my mind. Then, last week, a new anonymous letter showed up at my apartment. You better write a will. The end is close at hand. I involuntarily dropped it, like a hot potato. My girlfriend was with me and witnessed it.

She picked up the letter and read it. I could tell she was concerned, but I played it off as a prank and refused to explain. And just like that, a ghost from my past reappeared into the present. You can probably guess what this unwanted news had done to me. I feel like I'm constantly looking over my shoulder everywhere I go. I'm terrified these monsters may go after my girlfriend and newborn child. Going to the cops was a brief consideration but without any proof of who the sender is, I know there's not much they can do. My options seem to be limited. Without anyone else

to talk to, I'm anonymously emailing this in to tell my story. I'm not sure why. It could be because of the anonymity of the internet, there's not much more I can say other than to tell you all to be careful of the choices you make as a child. Wish me luck and please pray for me and my family. This is an experience my wife and I just had this past year. As soon as the quarantine was lifted in our area, she and I filled our packs and went for a hike at our local state park. It was something we used to do pretty regularly and have since before we got married. Speaking for myself, I was really looking forward to it. The plan was to hike out to a certain lake, spend the night and hike back to the car. It was a clear warm day and the trails were nice and dry. For most of that morning, we had been the only people

on the trail. We decided to stop for lunch at a campsite about halfway to the lake. Another couple must have had the same idea. They were sitting at the concrete picnic table and we asked to join them. Soon, the four of us were discussing what we had seen and where we were headed. The couple turned out to be newlyweds on their honeymoon. My wife, who's a hopeless romantic, loved to hear this. She proceeded to tell them how we'd met and some other sappy stuff I don't bother to remember. Two hours passed and we finally said our goodbyes. We arrived at the lake about an hour before dark, tired and hungry. I got a fire started and Mandy, my wife, cooked us a small meal while I pitched the tent.

We sat around the fire cooking s'mores and eventually called it a night at around 10pm. I got up just before dawn the next morning and got the fire ready to make the breakfast. We repeated our roles from the night prior except I pulled the tent down and repacked it. All the measures were taken to ensure the fire was completely out after cooking and with that, we took to the trail for the return journey. At 10am we reached the halfway point but chose not to stop. Two hours up the trail we ran into the husband of the couple we'd met the day before. Strangely his wife wasn't with him. Mandy asked him about her location and the man said that

she'd become ill the night before and return home. When he said it he'd looked nervous and couldn't look either of us in the eyes. Before either of us could ask anything else, he said that his wife had insisted he finish the trip alone. It sounded a bit strange, but we had no reason not to believe him. A group of people came walking up about that same time and the husband excused himself to talk to them. I wasn't interested in prying any further. Their marriage was none of my business, I thought. Mandy looked like she wanted to stay, but I reminded her of the obligations we had that night. She reluctantly agreed and we went on our way. We got to the parking lot not too long after and packed up our stuff.

There were a few groups of people talking amongst themselves. As we pulled out of the lot, several more cars including a ranger's truck were pulling in. Once again, I thought nothing of it. We made it back home that afternoon and handled some family things. It wasn't until breakfast that we heard the news. I had grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down in front of the TV. I flipped it on just in time to receive a report of a dead female camper. When they showed her face on the screen, I almost choked on my coffee. It was a picture of the woman we had met just two days prior. I yelled out to Mandy to join me in the living room. I wanted to be sure of what I was seeing. I didn't have my glasses on

at the time and I pointed at the TV and asked, isn't that one of the newlyweds we met at the park? She watched for a moment and let out a shocked gasp. Just then a wedding photo of the couple appeared on the screen. Mandy grabbed the remote from my hand and turned up the volume. According to the husband, the couple had been at a cliffside that was a popular lookout. Mandy and I had been there once or twice ourselves in the past. They had watched the sun rise and as they were preparing to turn and leave, the wife lost her footing and fell several hundred feet to the ground below.

It was certainly possible, but something bothered me about it. Why hadn't he mentioned this to us? More so, what was up with the illness story? It couldn't have been more than a few hours after the incident had occurred. None of his behavior made any sense. I know if something such as that happened to me, I'd have been a mess. We had passed at least 15 people that morning and not a soul talked to us. It all seemed fishy to me. I was glad to see that Mandy agreed with me. It looked as if though her instincts had been right once again. Just don't tell her I said that. After a long discussion about our responsibilities

and the like, we agreed that we should contact the law enforcement involved in the case. And as it stood, the husband isn't under any suspicion. Not publicly anyways. I contacted the sheriff's office and told them what we knew. The deputy put us on hold for a moment and when he returned, he said someone may reach out to us in the future. But it's been almost a year and no one has contacted us. And this is what brings me to emailing you here. What do you think? My instincts and my wife's tell us that a crime may have occurred. We, however, have no proof or any real justification for our feelings. And that's just what they are.

Feelings. Certainly if law enforcement believed we had something to offer, they would have already contacted us. Right? I don't want to be a nuisance. Nor do I want to cause trouble for a grieving man who, by all appearances, is a decent person. But help me out here. Should I keep pushing or leave the police to do their jobs? I just can't shake this nagging feeling that a man is getting away with cold-blooded murder. When I was a kid I always wanted to be a boy scout.

In this time it was still a respected group teaching useful outdoor skills. I think I was 10 when I finally convinced my mom to let me join. She was hesitant at first. Back in Russia where she had grown up, scout type groups were really nothing more than military training for children. I asked the den mother to talk to my mom and after a long string of questions, her fears were put to rest. With that one roadblock removed, I became a cub scout. Unfortunately, I soon found scouting in my area was nothing like it was supposed to be. Our den mother turned out

to be a neurotic single mother with little motivation. It was a major letdown for me. Six months in, a small light of hope appeared on the horizon. A scout leader from a county over invited our den on a camping trip with us. This had been a big reason for my joining. I loved camping with my family family but since my parents separated, all those trips had stopped. The scout leader picked us up early on a Saturday morning and drove us all to the campsite. There weren't a lot there, maybe 9 kids in total. He gathered us all together and gave an instruction on setting up our tents. Each tent held two boys but because of the odd number I got a tent to myself.

One by one the leader showed us where to go and we began pitching. A few needed help but the experience went smoothly for the most part. The rest of the morning was spent on first aid and general safety. I was paired with the leader, thus became the visual aid. For the next few hours I was wrapped in bandages and carried on a makeshift litter. It was fun and proved useful in circumstances to come. With first aid completed, lunch was made and we were all allowed to take a little siesta. This lasted until about three when we were all brought together for archery lessons. I was psyched beyond belief. Ever since

I saw my first ninja movie, I'd fantasized about shooting a bow. This was my first and last chance for a long while. The leader gave us a brief instruction on how to shoot. He was naturally very persistent about safety, but you can imagine a bunch of hyped up pre-teen boys weren't really paying much attention to that part. I was the first to shoot. As I drew back the string, I can remember squatting down like a ninja. I was the first to shoot. As I drew back the string I can remember squatting down like a ninja. I was scolded for this and made to stand upright. This made the experience a bit less exciting but seeing the arrow hit where I'd been aiming was exhilarating. The rest of the boys went in turn after me. Only then were we allowed to shoot on our own.

Everyone was chattering amongst themselves trying to out-shoot the kid next to him. And then it happened. A kid named Kevin was talking to another boy next to him named Chris. Kevin had the arrow knocked and the string pulled back about a quarter of a full draw when Chris said something that caused Kevin to turn toward him. Kevin must have lost grip on the string or maybe he let go and lied his way out of it later. Either way, the arrow hit Chris in the chest and penetrated about 8 inches. Panic ensued. The scout leader began yelling out for the first aid supplies. Chris was freaking out and already having a hard time breathing. There really wasn't much the scout leader could do but pack the area around the wound and try to keep Chris calm.

Two boys were given the task of running the half mile to the ranger station and the rest of us just stood around and stared silently. All except for Kevin of course. He paced around saying I'm sorry over and over until the scout leader told him to shut up. The ambulance arrived around 20 minutes later. Probably the longest 20 minutes of my young life. And this was the end of the trip. Everyone packed up their stuff as quickly as possible and we all returned home. During the ride home, the seriousness of the situation must have hit Kevin hard.

I can still remember his horrible wailing to this day. In my opinion, it was nothing more than a terrible accident. There are a few others, however, who remember things differently. According to one boy, Chris had called Kevin the name no boy our age wanted to be called and Kevin shot him for it. Only Kevin knows the truth and he's never spoken to anyone about it. News of Chris' condition didn't reach me until the following morning. He had been rushed into surgery and it had gone well. The arrow had punctured Chris' left lung, just missing his heart by an inch. He did manage a full recovery. Kevin was probably the happiest to hear this news.

All involved agreed it had been an unfortunate accident and no charges were brought against him. And a few months later the two boys had a meeting in which Kevin formally apologized to Chris. And from what I hear, Chris did accept. As far as I know, he's never held a grudge. Not even I got away completely unscathed. The second my mom heard about that incident, my scouting days were over. I wasn't too disappointed though. Instead, I got into BMX and I guess that turned out to be a far safer experience. The story takes place in the summer of 2004.

I've been hiking the trails of a local state park for the last few years. The hour-long trip to the park went as smoothly as it had before. I parked near the ranger station and notified him of my plans. One last minute check of my pack and I began my two-mile hike to my regular campsite. Little did I know, at that moment, one person's life had just taken a grim turn and I was soon to follow. My interest in the outdoors started just after the attacks of September 11th. Although not personally present at any of the attack targets, I did lose someone very close to me. Her and I had been sweethearts in college but lost touch. The internet allowed us to be

reconnected. We were planning on meeting for Thanksgiving and had been sweethearts in college but lost touch. The internet allowed us to be reconnected. We were planning on meeting for Thanksgiving and had been discussing the renewal of our relationship. I was beyond distraught upon getting the news and immediately began planning my own death. I got as far as packing a bag and hiking out to the spot. Something happened when I got there though. The beauty of the place overcame me. Despite the utter grief I felt, the serenity I found on that mountain changed my mind. My grieving process would continue for some time. At any point I felt too overwhelmed, I fled back into nature and always made bearable again.

So now we're back in the summer of 2004. By now my retreats were a regular thing. Nothing of note occurred that first evening. The next day I considered my options and chose to hike down into the canyons. These excursions often yielded a few stone points for my ever growing collection. I knocked back some oatmeal and took to the trail. Almost halfway down the cliffside a glint of light caught my eye. I couldn't locate the source. Soon another flash blinded me. I quickly recovered and caught sight of a pair of arms flailing about around 50 feet further down the cliffside. I jogged further down the trail to get a better view. There was a rocky outcrop off to the side that I jumped onto. I could instantly feel it beginning to give way under my feet.

The fall felt like an eternity. I gritted my teeth in preparation for severe pain, but it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. Surveying my position from the flat of my back, I saw that I'd only gone about 20 feet. I rested there for a moment or two until I remembered what had brought me here. I tried to stand only to realize my left foot was wedged between two large rocks. I pushed on the top rock and simultaneously pulled my leg. I got just enough space to drag my leg free. I returned to my feet and looked around for the rest of the person I'd seen. I saw a woman laying almost motionless off to my right. I carefully stepped down the cliffside until I reached her and she looked dead initially but her lips began moving.

I kneeled down to her and began speaking. Calmly I asked her her name. Her eyes slowly opened and a smile grew on her face. I thought you were dead when I saw that rock collapsed. A scratchy yet kind voice addressed me. I don't mean to be rude, mister, but you wouldn't happen to have any water, would you? I hastily dug through my pack for my Nalgene. The bottle was a little dented but showed no leaks.

Slowly and carefully I placed the opening to her lips and poured a small amount in. I knew she may vomit if I gave her too much at once. For the next few minutes we spoke about how she ended up there. I would occasionally pour a little more water into her mouth. She was obviously in a great deal of pain. And I knew the longer I wasted talking, the longer she was from medical help. I told her of my plan and covered her with a fleece from my pack. Climbing back up the loose rocky hill was harder than coming down. I was beginning to feel a lot of pain myself, especially

my back. At first I attempted a hobbling type of run, but my knees wouldn't allow it. Instead I settled on a fast walk. The journey was long and painful but I reached the ranger's post at just after 12.45pm. To his credit he had a rescue team assembled within minutes. I had to settle for an ambulance ride and an overnight stay in the hospital. I think it was almost 6pm when I saw the ER staff rolling her in. The wait wasn't over, unfortunately. She'd been taken into emergency surgery soon after arriving, and several hours would pass until I'd heard anything, but when the news arrived, it was good.

In spite of having a punctured lung, a concussion, a broken arm, and assorted other injuries, she would go on to make a full recovery. My path to healing is a story for another time, and assorted other injuries, she would go on to make a full recovery. My path to healing is a story for another time, but Shannon, was her name, did reunite with her loving family and go on to start one of her own. Last I heard, she was living in Colorado with her husband and three sons, and I hope everyone will join me in wishing her a long and happy life. I'm just happy I could be there to help her through all that she suffered. So yesterday, the scariest thing to have ever happened to me happened at my local Walmart. It was Black Friday and they had a printer on sale that my fiancé and I really wanted and he wanted to pick up some other Christmas gifts that were on sale.

We entered the store together and went our separate ways to do our shopping. By the time I get to the printer, I know my fiancé should be coming back in soon, so I was going to stay in that general area. So I pulled my phone out to text him where I was going to be and I pushed the cart right in front of the printer display out of the aisle because I knew people were behind me. The guy behind me walks past me and turns around to take a picture of the printer display. Naturally in this kind of situation I move out of the way because I don't want to be in some random person's pictures. I'm not really thinking anything of it until he starts to hover

there after taking the picture and does nothing. Like he stands around with his phone, still looking around, not sure what he wants to do with his camera still on. At this point, I'm just staying aware of what's going on around me because I didn't want to get in people's way just standing there trying to decide if I wanted to wait there for my fiance or go do some shopping. So I'm thinking to myself, man this guy gets me, he doesn't know what to do either. But then he turns around completely to look at a pair of young boys boxers and takes a picture. Like you can see the click when a photo was taken and he acted like he took the photo but he didn't actually. I thought

that was so strange so I was like whatever I'm gonna get out of here to get done with shopping faster. As I turned to leave I noticed that he is now starting to move and he's moving his phone around. So I turn around and start to act like I'm not sure what I want to do or what to do. And what does this guy do? He stops moving and starts to look around like he's unsure of what he needs to do. And this is when I started to get a bit suspicious. The whole time I'm staring this man right in the eyes and facing his direction in case he looks at me. I mean he was a few feet away from me. I know he knew I was looking his way and he wouldn't take the picture.

He continued to look confused and that's when I decided I'm going to leave. So I turn the opposite direction and start to walk faster and I realize he is also walking behind me so I come to a stop and turn around to face his direction. He proceeds to walk past me a few feet and I have my head turned to see him and then he stops, turns around and sees me looking at him and walks past me to grab a printer. At this point I am silently starting to freak out. I decide to call my fiancé and ask him loudly where he was and when he was going to get back to the printers again. I didn't want to tell him what I thought was happening because I really wasn't sure. Maybe I was being paranoid, right? There was an older lady trying to come down the aisle,

and I'm ignoring her trying to act like I'm not paying attention to them and asking my fiancé where he is. Well, the guy goes to grab the printer and I wanted to point out that the whole time this was going on, his iPhone was still in his hand and his camera was still on and waving his phone around, never once exiting the camera screen. As he is grabbing the printer, he aligns his phone to the edge of the printer box to perfectly leave his phone camera pointing directly at me. If you have an iPhone, you know you can use the volume button to take pictures, and that's exactly where this guy's finger was. He proceeds to try and distract me to tell me that the older lady was trying to get through. All the while, he was laughing and smiling to the lady, talking about how he couldn't believe I was just standing there. He walks away with her and that's when I started to realize fully that there's no way that

what had just happened was a normal situation. It's also interesting that once I was asking my fiancé where he was and when he'd be back there, that he started to gather himself to leave, right? So I followed after the lady and apologized to her saying I was scared the man that was just talking to her was trying to take a picture of me. This lady said the man was talking to her about me and she basically ignored him and he went the other way. That's when it clicked that I should just go ask the guy if he had just taken pictures of me. It shouldn't be that big of a deal if it's a misunderstanding and I'm just in his way. I wasn't in his way at all. Well, when I ask him, he looks at me all shocked, confused and goes on to say, what? Huh? What are you talking about?

What? Huh? I was like, yeah, back at the printers, I thought I'd seen you taking pictures of me. And at the flip of a switch, he lost his mind. He started screaming at me, calling me all sorts of crazy expletives, asking me what's wrong with me, who do you think you are, telling me to do all sorts of terrible things. He went on and started yelling me and at this point I was just like, just show me the pictures to prove you didn't. He refused to do it and again started screaming at me and that I can call the cops if I want to.

Another customer who I'm so thankful for had left to get a manager. So when I tell him that I'm going to call the police, he walks away and disappears for about 5 minutes. I mean it shouldn't be that hard to show me your phone either way. If someone approached me scared or wondering if they took my photo, I'd be confused yes but then apologize if I scared them and I'd have no issue showing them my stuff. At this point, I was having a full-blown panic attack in Walmart and I couldn't breathe, almost gasping for air. All this time I'm on the phone with my fiancé, unable to tell him where exactly I am. All I could say was the clothes by the register, which really doesn't

help because all the clothes are near there. When he comes back, he turns to my fiancé and tells him to shut his mouth and he starts freaking out again. He's doing all this in front of the manager at this point and he says to hold on and makes a call to his apparent girlfriend to come beat me up and my fiance because I said he took pictures of me when buying a printer. He seemed really weird and didn't seem to know exactly what he was saying to her. At this point security comes because he's threatening to hurt us and takes him somewhere else to get his side of the story. When the police actually do show up they take his story and look through his phone and then take mine. They inform me they found nothing in pictures, recently deleted or texts of me. But we all know he probably already deleted whatever evidence he had when he ran away when I threatened to call the cops or any other apps he has.

I'm sorry but no person that is innocent reacts in this type of manner. Like I didn't even approach him accusing him that he in fact took a picture of me. I just asked him if he took any pictures of me and when he didn't understand what I was saying I just explained what I thought I'd seen. The police inform me that he will be charged with disorderly conduct. I'm not sure if this means he was arrested or not because I had no idea where he was when the officer left me. I'm sure some people will think I'm over-exaggerating or something like that, but anyone who knows me in these kinds of situations, I will usually ignore the person and pay them no mind. Like the other day, some dirty gross old man was saying something

really perverted to me as I was bent over doing something to the car's floor mat and I ignored him then left. I'm not one to usually care about this too much and I'm sure we all have at some point felt like someone was following them and never said anything to them. If I notice someone around me a lot in a store and I'm alone, I will of course stay aware. As a woman, I have to pay attention to these small details going on around me. I'm confident that the man never intended to buy a printer, and now that he had a printer in his car tonight confronted him, he can't just go and put it back. So he'll probably end up returning it to the store or his quote-unquote girlfriend will. It was way over 24 hours later.

I still keep having panic attacks where it feels like I can't breathe. I shake and my chest feels like it's sinking in. This is honestly the scariest thing that's ever happened to me in my personal safety and I've never been so scared in my life. And that right there should tell you how odd of a situation that felt to me. I just don't know what to do. I have an 11 month old daughter and every cry and scream she makes is very triggering to me and starts to make me get anxious even more so. I feel like the people around me don't understand why this has had such a large impact on me emotionally. I mean I don't understand it either since I'm technically okay. But knowing how close I came to something so bad is just so scary. And how am I supposed to go

around pretending that that's not traumatic? I'm just so scared that this man was taking pictures of me. I'm not sure why either. It's not hard to hide a picture in your phone by changing apps or fake apps or other messaging apps. I'm scared for my life that whenever I go out in public I may run into him or someone else he potentially sent those pictures to. And either they plan to kidnap me or somehow hurt me. I live in an area that is high in human trafficking rates and this is something that has been happening to a lot of women around here. Multiple times at this same Walmart. A lot of people get it on video but I just couldn't. I know this just happened but I'm so scared this feeling will never go away while I still live in the same area. We'll be right back. Here we go. You can get it from Tread Experts.

Conquer rugged terrain with on-road comfort. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find a Kumo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're like to hunt wild boar specifically. Though I have been a deer hunter and have been known to get a turkey for Thanksgiving, I mostly hunt boar. For those of you that don't know, boar are a big problem in the United States. A sow can have two litters a year and it's not uncommon for a litter to consist of ten or more pigs. Given that pigs eat anything and everything, it's not hard to see why the

Department of Fish and Wildlife make it legal to hunt them with almost no restrictions. In my state, it's illegal to hunt most large mammals with night or thermal vision scopes, with the exception of boar and coyote. I've been saving for a year, mostly fun money. It's hard to explain to your wife that a scope that costs literally twice as much as a rifle I was mounting it on was worth it. But I did it. I took it to a range and sighted it in. There was an area that was peppered with boar activity that I knew would be perfect for a night hunt. It was easily accessible with my truck with easy to find spots that I could set up in that overlooked a large easy to navigate clearing. The night started uneventful,

mostly me tinkering with my new toy, cycling through the settings. I was a little impatient. I'd spotted multiple deer, but they were out of season, and like I mentioned earlier, my current setup wasn't legal for deer. I moved to another spot I'd seen days earlier that probably wasn't much better than my first,

but it gave me something to do and a new angle to look around with my new scope. After an hour or so of glassing the area it dawned on me. This spot doesn't have much animal activity at all. No rabbits or owls. The deer that I'd seen were hundreds of yards from where I was. Why was this pocket of land so dead at night but lively in the day? I'd set up around 10pm and it was almost 2am when I started to think about packing up, maybe setting up a target before I left and taking some practice shots. I heard a crunch come from the direction I came from. I panned my scope over and saw the silhouette of a small bear pushing through the bushes.

It's important to note that my scope isn't exactly night vision per se. It's a thermal scope, kind of like a black and white version of what you see in the Predator movies. I adjusted my range and zoomed in a little bit. I remember jolting a little when I saw that it wasn't really a bear. It was a man. Because he was so low and hunched over I thought I was looking at a young bear. Is that a game warden? It couldn't be. I would have seen the headlights coming up the road from where I was perched. And where could he have walked from?

I was 30 miles away from anything and on public lands. I was about to call out when I adjusted my sights and noticed. He was naked. No shoes, pants, or anything. I remembered being disturbed by his movements, like a squirrel or something. Twitchy and grabbing at the foliage, sniffing around and palming the tree. Was that my tree? The one I'd been leaning against earlier? The thought terrified me. Could he smell me? Then he did something I still have nightmares about today.

He squatted and placed his hands in the dirt between his feet and stared straight up like a dog mid-how. And I heard it. A voice coming from that direction. A very compelling female voice. Help! I'm lost! There was a long pause, but neither of us moved a muscle. The center of my sights was trained at the dirt in front of his feet. I couldn't bring myself to aim directly at another person. It went against everything I've been taught about firearms. Were they lost? Was this some guy that had gone crazy out here?

Why was his voice so feminine? Help! Please! I can't walk! The voice called out. That's when I knew. He was lying. Not only could he walk, when I first saw him he was traversing the land with ease for a naked person. So good I mistook him for a bear. That's a trap. This guy is trying to lure me to him with a damsel in distress routine. Luckily the lack of activity before had caused me to him with a damsel in distress routine. Luckily the lack of activity before had caused me to pack up most of my gear.

I think I may have left behind a hat and a sitting pad but I didn't care in that moment. I took my eyes off him for a moment to get my pack on. I buckled my chest strap and scrambled for my rifle. To my horror, he was in the same position but his face was staring in my direction and I swear I saw a smile. The thermoscope has an effect that makes animals' eyes appear white. How had he heard me get up and put my gear on? He must have easily been 150 yards away. F off, I screamed as loud as I could in that direction.

He stood upright, and it hit me how tall and skinny he was. Easily six feet and very lean. He took a couple of long strides in my direction and I instinctively sent a round sailing above his head into the tree line. He was incredibly freaky, but he hadn't really threatened me. What would I even tell the cops? I was unwilling and unready to actually shoot someone. He stopped dead in his tracks and hunched down on all fours. The next one's gonna mess you up. Go away! He stayed on all fours and this time I had my sights trained on the center of him. His eyes were just above the grass like a large cat or something.

I was trying to stop my trembling and knew that my voice had cracked a little on that last warning. I was terrified. That standoff probably only lasted a minute or two, maybe less, but it felt like forever. In an instant he bolted left towards the tree line opposite the road. So much for not being able to walk. I could barely keep him in my scope, he was moving so fast. He disappeared into the brush and I sent another bullet sailing high in his direction. I racked another round and tried to pocket that mag and swap for a fresh one,

but I dropped it and didn't bother looking for it. I wasn't far from my truck and I wanted to get out of there. I could hear him in the distance, yelling in this weird sound that could only be a laugh or a cry. I scrambled up the trail and arrived at my truck breathless. I tossed my gear into the cab but kept the rifle in the passenger seat and sped off. But the longest time I told that story from the perspective of having spotted some deranged crackhead living off the land like some kind of caveman. I reported it to Fish and Game but all they did was scold me for hunting at night alone. Never received an update.

It wasn't until I told this story at a camping trip that my nephew told me about wendigos and rakies and skinwalkers. My story had him about soil himself because the spot we were camping was technically the same forest I'd seen that monster. Just 50 miles east of it. He was so spooked his mom, my cousin, had to take him home and she was pretty livid. I've gone down the rabbit hole once with these scary stories and I'm not saying what I saw was definitely a wendigo or a skinwalker. I'm saying that if such a thing exists, I may have dodged quite the bullet that night. Or maybe it was just some random tweaker being Donnie Thornberry in the middle of the night. To preface, I typically go grocery shopping at around 7 or 8pm nowadays since the store is less crowded around then. However, I try not to go unless I have to because 1. COVID and 2. Being out after sundown doesn't feel comfortable for my safety.

I'm a 5 foot 110 pound woman. Despite this, the area I live and shop in is what I would consider to be safe, so going for a quick grocery run a little later in the evening has felt okay lately. So about two weeks ago I was at my usual grocery store at around 7pm. I read somewhere online that you should make your trips to the store 30 minutes or less, and being the Gemini that I am, I knew I would have to make a list on my phone to follow or I would dawdle. I began my trip in the produce section, essentially only looking up from my phone to step out of people's way or to grab what was on my list. There were more people in the store than there were usually in

the evenings when I go, so I had to make a few laps to wait for folks to clear certain areas that I needed to get to. I first realized I needed to do this when I was at the carrot section, but since it was too crowded I figured I'd circle back in a minute or two and grab something on the other side of the section in the meantime. Trying to determine where to go, I looked up from my phone and began walking towards the bananas. On my way to get them, I just kind of looked forward blankly, not really thinking of anything besides my task at hand. This was short lived because a man in a grey zip up hoodie and a black baseball hat had caught my eye as we walked past one another. I was going one direction and he was going the opposite.

Nothing really stood out about him besides the fact that he was looking at me and that he was walking really fast. I didn't think anything about it and kept moving towards the bananas. As I gathered my produce and a few things along the way back to the carrots, I passed this man again. He made eye contact with me. Normally I'm not one to really make eye contact with other patrons. I'm a mind my own business kind of person but his demeanor just caught my eye. I also noticed that he was the only person in the section not carrying anything. It had to have been at least three minutes since we first passed one another so to think that he was just kind of perusing around and not getting anything was strange. It's not like he just got there either.

As I finally get to the carrots I make my way to the other bakery section and the man passed me once again. This time I didn't make eye contact but I turned around to see where he was going. This sounds silly but the way he was moving around the store didn't make sense. I was working my way from the front to the back and he was walking erratically in all different directions. There was only one entrance and exit to the store so it's not like he could have come in from the other direction. Might I remind you, he still has nothing with him. As I begin to turn my head to see what this man

is doing, another guy runs past me wearing all black. Okay, strange. But he ran so close to me, the hair that was in front of my left shoulder was blown behind my back from the gust of air he blew past me. Since I was already turning my head I fixate to see where this man was going. He had run over to the man that was passing by me frequently and they were both looking at me and talking to one another. They were about 30 feet away from me so I couldn't make out what they were saying. I also only looked for maybe a second because it was at this point that I started to get pretty anxious. I'd like to mention that I have generalized anxiety disorder, so when I'm in suspicious situations that might flare up anxiety,

I really try to talk myself down from anything that might be illogical. I mean, who would follow me in a grocery store? I wasn't sure what to make of what I was seeing. In an attempt to soothe my anxious thoughts, I decided to continue shopping and tried not to fixate on the other two men. I looked back down at my phone and realized I forgot to grab lemons from the produce section, so I was irritated that I had to go back. I began walking, head down, when a woman knocks my shoulder. I'm already feeling a myriad of emotions at this point and to be touched by a stranger during this, I got really annoyed. I look back up behind me to see who could have possibly been clumsy enough

to knock into my shoulder when my eyes locked with a woman who's bumped me. Now this is kind of difficult to explain but stay with me. It's bumped me. Now, this is kind of difficult to explain, but stay with me. It's a pretty popular thing among women to communicate solely through eye contact and body language. Now, I know that all people of all genders do this, but for women specifically, it's different. I've been out with friends that have told me, save me from this creep without saying a single word. So despite the masks and the distance between us, something in me told me to listen to her. She rolled her eyes downwards towards the floor as if a ball were rolling past our feet in the exact direction of the men that were looking at me and lapping me. She didn't look directly at them but I knew she was indicating she was

about to say something about them. She looked back up at me and in a whisper shout told me, Heads up. My stomach sank. I knew I wasn't just being paranoid. Someone else had noticed that something weird was going on. I walked past her to her right and said, Mm-hmm, to indicate that I understood what she meant. It was at this point that I needed to

get out of the store without looking panicked or raising suspicions. When I told my boyfriend this story, he questioned why I didn't just leave right then and there. First off, I had a basket full of produce that I needed to pay for. Second, I didn't want to raise suspicions or alert these men as to why someone they're following is suddenly making a run for it. So I swiftly began to navigate the aisles to gather a few more things on my list. As I moved through the store and looked down the aisle to see what items were where, one of the men were in each aisle walking towards me. Every aisle I went down, one of them was there, and I started to feel terrified. I decided it was time to go.

I went to the self-checkout and hauled it out of there. I did my best to appear calm, but I know I looked frantic. Since it was dark outside, I didn't feel comfortable walking to my car by myself. Once I was done, I approached these three employees, chatting amongst each other. I luckily got the attention of a female store manager and thought on my feet. I told her that my ex-boyfriend was in the store following me and I needed to be walked out. In hindsight, I probably just should have alerted them on what actually was going on, but I wanted to get out of there, no questions asked. And she

didn't ask questions. She said, oh, okay, I'm getting security walk you to your car. And as the guard appeared from the back of the line waiting to use the self-checkout, so did the two men. They made eye contact and broke left and right. One went left and one went right. When I tell you, I almost soiled myself. My god, my heart was in my throat. Luckily I didn't see the men outside. The last I saw of them was by that self-checkout. The security guard so kindly walked me to my car and made sure I drove away, which I'm so grateful for. I called my boyfriend sobbing since my anxiety was so high at this point and he advised me to take a different route home and make four right turns if I thought anyone was following me. For precaution, I stayed at a friend's house that

night because I was so anxious. I'm so grateful nothing happened to me and that I am here. But I cannot thank the woman who warned me in the store enough for validating my suspicions. If you witness anything that looks sketchy or weird, please tell or warn someone. I haven't heard about kidnappings or crimes towards women in my area recently, thank goodness. It just scares me to think what could have possibly happened and what kind of people were out there. I think it goes without saying that I'm no longer going shopping after sundown nor at that store. I'm blanking on where I heard this but I think it really applies to how I felt that night.

It's better to be safe than sorry and to be paranoid than dead. I was around 15 and when I wasn't too busy with school, I worked at a news agency, mainly selling lottery tickets and newspapers. While I had my fair share of creeps, stalkers, and loonies, this one, for me, has to be the scariest. Among my regular customers was an older woman, perhaps in her late 40s or early 50s, although she definitely appeared older than she was. She had straggly hair that was bleached blonde and wore extremely bright, gaudy makeup. No one knew much about her, but she was often seen around different shady men and from the way she acted and spoke it was understood that she was most likely on something. She spoke to me and my co-workers of angels and heaven and fairies and demons, but I simply brushed it off as an older lady going through a midlife crisis and

dabbling in some sort of new age spirituality. From the very shift I had served this woman when I was around 13 or 14, she was mesmerized by me. From the moment she saw me, she was enthusiastically running up to co-workers and even other customers telling them that I was an angel. From that shift onwards, every time she saw me, she wouldn't stop talking about how beautiful I was, that I was pure and innocent, and I was an angel. Accordingly, she said I should return to the angels. I didn't see it as anything sinister, even though I got extremely uncomfortable vibes. I was extremely friendly to customers and I've always been a naturally talkative, bubbly person. In addition, I was still young, naive, and eager to please my boss with my customer service.

And even though I thought this lady was kind of weird, I'd often just smile politely as she raved on about whatever fantastical thing she thought up. Over time she became fixated with me. She slowly began to learn my shifts. And if I was away or my roster changed, she'd ask co-workers where I was. Whenever I was at work, she'd appear. I told my boss this and how her obsession with me was starting to make me uncomfortable. He told me that I had to put up with it because of the extra income it gave him.

Because of her fixation with me, this lady would spend hundreds of dollars at a time on the lottery, multiple times a week. Once again, I was young and didn't have too much of a backbone, so even though I felt uncomfortable, I just accepted that this situation couldn't be changed. I needed the money, and not many places in my town were hiring, let alone interested in taking on a school student. One day, as I was going to the spot I'd met my parents, they picked me up at a nearby road.

This lady appeared seemingly from thin air. I was so startled that I didn't even notice when she grabbed my arm and asked if I'd like to return to the other angels. They're missing you, darling. I was freaked out, but her words didn't mean much to me and I simply saw it as a strange woman with wacky spiritual beliefs. Luckily that day an older co-worker walked by, saw this, swiftly yanked me away and stayed there until my dad arrived. I wish I could say that that was the last time I saw the customer, but it wasn't. Even though I didn't see her waiting for me again, I often felt uncomfortable arriving at work, leaving, and at work itself as though someone was watching me.

This lady kept coming in and kept spending hundreds of dollars from God knows where. However, unlike when I first started, she didn't come in with a different man each time. She came alone or with one particular man who I hadn't seen before. I always felt extremely uncomfortable around him but I couldn't quite put my finger on why. The lady's ravings got even crazier than ever and in addition to her usual talk about angels, she started to try to getting me to follow her places by claiming the government had tried to poison me just then and she saw them slip cyanide into my food or what they infected my toothpaste with something

that would kill me so I had to follow her now. I never did, obviously. And one time, when I was busy serving other customers, I noticed her in the corner of my eyes lingering around my drink bottle with something I couldn't see clutched in her hand. Needless to say, I moved my drink bottle very quickly and was extremely unnerved, more so than ever. I told my boss everything but he continued to say virtually that I'd lose my job if I just didn't put up with it as she brought in a lot of money. This all came to a climax one day at the end of my shift. I just learned how to cash up the registers and close the shop which was an exciting responsibility for me and made me feel very accomplished. To close up, I would have to lock the roller doors

at the front and exit the back door, which led to a pretty shady concrete area that never had anyone around. It was like a huge concrete jungle, with heaps and twists and turns and tall concrete walls. It was always completely silent and empty. I'd never seen another person in that area outside the back door. And as I exited work and locked the door, I felt incredibly uneasy and thought I could hear breathing behind me. However, seeing no one when I turned around, I thought to myself that it was just paranoia. As I checked my phone to see if my dad had left yet to pick me up, I felt a hand grasp my shoulder, tight. My whole body froze, and before I even even looked I knew who it was.

Sure enough, when I turned around this customer was standing there with a huge grin, her eyes sparkling. She engulfed me in a hug which I wriggled free from. I could see something was very wrong so I tried to run but she grabbed my arm again. She was stronger than she looked. She tried to distract me and start up random conversations, sprinkling in comments about how the angels were so excited to be reunited with me. I had no idea what she was trying to do until I heard something pull up around the corner. A white van, all its windows blacked out, slowly crept across the gravel road towards us,

and I'll never forget the way that lady's face looked. Let's go, she said. The angels have been waiting. You'll be with them again soon. To this day, I have no idea how, but I gained some kind of superhuman fight-or-flight strength. I tugged my arm free just as the van was slowing down beside me, and ran. The lady followed, but thankfully her physical strength didn't extend to running. Thankfully I knew the twists and turns out of this area quite well now so I sprinted through this concrete labyrinth until I reached a pillar I knew to duck behind. I didn't move. I had a metal keychain which made a lot of noise so I

clutched that in one hand so it wouldn't jangle as my body shook. And held myself up with my other hand, ready to launch from the ground and run as soon as I could. I could hear the woman and someone else, a man, I didn't know who but he sounded like the man I'd seen with her recently, run around, checking crevices and corners, searching for me. After about 15 minutes they gave up and I heard the van roll away. After a final check using the van they didn't know I could see them, but I saw them pretend to leave, then turn it off and wait. I think they thought I'd emerged from hiding, but as I could see what their trap was I continued to stay. After what felt like forever, they eventually left.

Not knowing that this was another trap set up to coax me out of hiding, I cautiously peered around the corner. Unsure if they were gone and knowing I was unsafe if I stayed or left, I ran. Thankfully, my dad was parked where we had agreed to meet and I raced to the car. I was scolded for getting to the car late and then we went home. I took an extended leave after that and when I eventually did go back to work, that lady was thankfully gone and I never saw her again. We'll be right back. You can get a pro at Tread Experts. Conquer rugged terrain with on-road comfort. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires.

Find a Kumo Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there at treadXpress.ca Whenever I've been around people in my work industry, we always hear of the horror stories of crazy cults. People getting paid for weird requests and such, but I never thought with my luck that I'd have to worry about being in one of these stories. But boy was I wrong. This is probably going to be a mini-series since it's a bit long. For some background, I'm a very much introverted person. I don't go out much if it's outside my small group of friends. I started doing OnlyFans around this time where it was very popular in quarantine. I had already been on FetLife which is sort of a network like Facebook for the kink community so I was thinking of doing OnlyFans wouldn't be too hard considering I was already involved

in that community because my work at the adult store and my time on FetLife. Usually with friend requests I don't normally accept them if I don't know the person in real life due to past events of issues online. My red flag radar was fairly used to sensing something was off if I was in danger. However, this time it was a silent danger I wasn't prepared for. I had begun posting regular content on my account and was told to make a twitter from my fanbase for my work which made sense at the time. I was fairly new to the idea. I was logged into my FET to check my messages for the day and a new friend request popped up with a message. Thank you, insert my name on FET, for taking the time to read my message. I'm, we'll call him

Wolfie. Excited to help you with your OnlyFans because I see you have potential and I can help. Please feel free to message if interested in working together. Wolfie. I wasn't sure why the message came off so proper with the tagline of something to the effect of join us. It's been a few months so my memory is a bit fuzzy to all the exact details because I mainly wanted to block out as much as I could. I started looking at the profile to see if I could find any reason not to add them to my account because I was fairly new to having people I didn't know as

friends. I saw that he was in a pack with several other women and all different age groups and that we all had an only fans and modeling in common which wasn't something that was alarming to me. I added him back and shortly after that began the introduction into the cult. I slowly started getting more messages in my inbox about how they could help me because I was now one of the pack. I didn't think it meant anything more than being friendly. Something in the back of my mind was telling me to be careful but as stupid as stupid does I paid it no mind and I wish I had now in retrospect. When I was at work Wolfie would blow up my inbox with messages

saying he added me to a group on Twitter that was special because it had all of our pages in it and we had to do a chain off if one girl posted about her OnlyFans. We had to share it and keep the pack happy which seemed harmless in my mind. That became an every hour a new post was made and we had to share and do the same in return for ours. I thought this was normal for Twitter because I hardly ever use it. I was put in two chats, the main chat and the one with just Wolfie and his wife because she wanted to see if I was a good match for their pack. He would often send me photos of them in bed and say things like,

one day you'll be in the middle of us where you belong. Mind you, I am in a relationship with my partner of 8 years at this point so I wasn't sure if he was just kidding or not. He would send me messages of him telling me how to post my pages, my photos, and anytime I had updated my fet life with new modeling photos, he was the first to comment, this is my cub, appreciate her or I'll end you. Things of that nature. I get the whole being alpha thing but it was just getting creepy to me that just seconds after my post went live it was already getting attention. To my knowledge there isn't a way to get notifications of someone's posts on that specific site like Twitter unless he had my page

open. Waiting. I started to feel more strange vibes when he started sending me messages via his wife and her telling me someday we were all going to get a place in the middle of nowhere. No one would find us and we'd all do this work together and live together in this wolf alpha based lifestyle. Which sounds like a cult now that I'm actually writing this. There were four other girls that were all doing the same thing, listening and doing everything their alpha said. A few days went by and Wolfie started making me feel really uncomfortable. He posted a writing of his own on his page and made sure to tell me in the group that I was his favorite new little cub and that this was for my own good.

The writing was about how he loved me and told me to be in his outfit and wait for him in my room for him. He snuck into my apartment and attacked my partner, beat him close to death and brought him up into my room. He wrote I had to choose who I love more. He wrote I chose him over my partner and that he then dominated me and killed my partner and I was stolen away to live with him in his pack forever. My stomach had dropped out of my body as I re-read the story he'd made up. The details of my apartment he couldn't possibly know. The things about my home nobody knew unless they were in my home scared me. I was on edge for days because I didn't have a clue how

he knew these details. My skin was crawling. I told him I didn't know how I felt of this story that he fantasized about me and his world. I knew that this was the reason I had to run. Wolfie kept showing the rest of his pack the story and had me under his list of relationships as his submissive and in a poly relationship with me and his wife. My skin for days was crawling with the fear of me not knowing how he knew all the things he knew. I never posted about my home. He saw a post of me in a bad mood from a disagreement but that obviously couldn't because he just wrote some really messed up fantasy murder about me, was it? The rest of the

week I wore oversized clothes and cried on and off because I was terrified to be alone in my apartment. I showed my partner and friend and they both agreed that this was not something I would be able to handle on my own. I took myself out of the groups on Twitter for a start and tried not to draw attention to Wolfie when the girls started messaging me out of the blue saying they didn't understand why I wanted to be brainwashed by my partner and they loved me and everything would be fine if I went with them. I deleted my Twitter and also my OnlyFans because I didn't know what they could find on me. I blocked them all on all my new accounts, and I also took down my profile on FetLife and made a new one with a completely different name and credentials so they couldn't find me. I even changed my number because Wolfie found out what it was to try and get me to talk to him and explain while I was pulling away.

I made new accounts and made sure everyone was aware that needed to know about this potential stalker so I could maintain my sanity. I thought it was over when a week had passed and I didn't see any new messages on my new profile on FetLife or my messages. But boy was I wrong. My best friend had checked her messages on Instagram where, of course, he found me via her. He asked if she knew where I was and if I was okay because I'd disappeared out of nowhere. I thought I had escaped the nightmare. I went on to my Instagram I had made and had a few different messages from him about him coming to get to rescue and save me. I was terrified about how far this guy would go to get to me. Why couldn't he just leave me alone? I blocked him again and countless times of changing

my names and such, I had finally reached a point of just getting into the habit of bringing my knife to work in my boots and locking my deadbolt when I was alone because I didn't want to be afraid anymore. This was almost a month of me being terrified out of my mind. I made one last post to my fetlife about him so all my following could see that I was in actual danger and I was done being afraid and openly said that if they were wanting to come for me I'd be ready with law enforcement and such.

And thankfully after that post was made public I went to check his profile to see if it was still up and it was gone. It's been a few months since this had happened and thank god I haven't had any weird messages or my friends getting anything weird from this whole thing. I wish I would have listened to my intuition about this in the first place. Maybe then it could have all been avoided. Thankfully I am safe from this insane wolfpack cult. From mid to late 2018, I worked at a grocery store slash deli and worked in the deli bakery area. Towards the end of the year, I had just gotten out of a two-year year relationship. It hit me pretty hard so I was in a funk because of it. We just hired a new employee in the deli who we'll call John. I was scheduled on his first day so I was one of the employees

who trained him. John seemed nice enough and he got on quickly which was great. Fast forward to our next shift, I was pretty close with another co-worker, we'll call her Jane. Jane knew what had been going on with my breakup and would check up on me often and John overheard this interaction. He came up to me on my break and apologized for what I was going through and just generally being sweet about the whole thing. I appreciated it so I thanked him.

I don't think at this time he was trying to be weird but if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have entertained it in the slightest. After our next shift together it was raining pretty heavy. A rainy day in mid-November where I live is typically pretty cold. At the time John didn't have a car but he was within walking distance, about 10 minutes of work. Side note, my fatal flaw back then was that I was and am way too nice to people. I offered him a ride since it was pouring rain and freezing. The ride home was fine. He thanked me and told me he'd see me tomorrow. This is where stuff starts to hit the fan. John began to flirt with me, making really inappropriate jokes and would do

that thing where he would grab my hips and kind of rub against me to get past me, often in front of customers. He also got my number from my boss and his claim for needing it was she's the only one that can cover my shift on X day. He would text me constantly and proclaim his love for me and tell me that he would treat me better than my ex did. We would usually have three people working the deli and on shifts with John when our third would go on break, he would take this as an opportunity to harass me more. At the time I was very soft spoken and scared out of my mind to speak up about it or stand up for myself. I ended up putting in my two weeks but not before sending him a text along the lines of, F you, you're gross, lose my

number and never talk to me again. He texted me back apologizing and invited me over as he wanted to talk to me face to face to make up for it. As I said, my fatal flaw back then was that I was way too nice to people. In my head, I thought that I must have gotten through to him. I mentioned it to my friend who will call Eve and Eve was very adamant that I tell him no and to leave it alone. Unfortunately, I chose not to listen to her advice. Instead, I told him that I appreciated the apology and that I would come talk to him but I was going to bring Eve with me as I didn't trust being alone with him at his house. He agreed.

Eve was very reluctant but insisted I bring her along if I absolutely had to go, just in case. We drove to John's house and when we arrived, he didn't come out. I remember texting him a few question marks and after having no reply I turned around and left. He then texted me apologizing, saying to come back and talk to him in his car. Against Eve's better judgment I turned around. I pulled back into his driveway and got an instant feeling of dread. Something absolutely did not feel right. I threw my car in reverse but before I got the chance to move, his dad and his two brothers hopped out of the car and surrounded mine. They began pounding on my windows, trying

to open the doors and stood behind my car so I couldn't leave. Eve and I are obviously scared out of our minds at this point. I got a surge of adrenaline and didn't care who was behind me. I floored it out of the driveway. Thankfully nobody was hit, but I sped off. I pulled into the parking lot of my work to collect myself and pulled my phone out to block his number. I then noticed a car speeding into the parking lot of my work and they tried to surround me again. I don't know how I managed to get out of this, but I did. I then began getting calls from random numbers. I assume his dad and brothers and they began threatening to kill me and say that they were armed and planned on shooting

my tires. They followed us for quite some time and Eve called the police. We were instructed to pull into a nearby gas station where an officer was already waiting. I did make a report, but they told me that ultimately there was nothing that I could do or that could be done. I did make a report but they told me that ultimately there was nothing that I could do or that could be done. I did end up reporting this to my manager who told me that they couldn't do anything either as it happened off company property, which is only half true. I didn't stay my full final two weeks. John continued to harass me anonymously for months after this and law enforcement refused to help me.ously for months after this, and law enforcement refused to help me. Their excuse was that nothing could be done unless he acted on his threats.

Whenever I would visit the area, he would somehow always find me and follow me until I would get onto the highway. I will admit that this is mostly my fault for being so trusting and thinking that John actually wanted to speak with me and be civil and I should have listened to Eve from the get-go. It isn't my fault for being harassed but I shouldn't have been so trusting because I could have avoided the majority of this problem. It's been nearly two years since this happened and I've not heard from nor seen John since. I just hope that it stays that way. The story happened when I was 17, now I'm 21. I used to live in a small city in France with my mom and my dog in a little neighborhood where almost everybody knows each other. There was mostly old people living around me, but a few weeks before my story happened a family moved in the house next to mine.

I don't remember seeing them, I just heard children laughing and playing in the yard sometimes. Every year in January my mom goes on holiday for a month in different countries so my grandmother, who lived 5 minutes away, used to come and stay with me at my home. But this year I was old enough to stay alone so I did. I wasn't really sociable at this time but my best friend was. She was always trying to make and meet new people so we decided to take advantage of the fact that my mom was away to do a party in my place. It was more like a pre-game than a party because everybody was going to the club after this

but I didn't want to go with them. I never really enjoyed it and the city center was far from home so my plan was to just invite everybody, make some friends, have some drinks, then go to bed. The night came and everybody arrived. We were three girls and five boys. I was having a good time, even though I was a bit stressed that someone breaks into the house or something or gets sick on the carpet, but none of this happened and we were just sitting on the terrace, chatting and drinking with music. Then we heard a knock at the door. It was about 11pm when this happened so I thought it was just a neighbor coming to complain about the noise. I told everybody to stay quiet and I turned down the music. One of the guys opened the door to see who it was and then came

to me saying, hey, there's your new neighbor at the door, he wants to come in and party with us. I was confused so I went to the door to see him. There appeared a man, he seemed like he was maybe 35 years old, bald, glasses, not tall but a bit corpulent, with a bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand. My first reaction was to laugh because I couldn't believe this guy wanted to party with teenagers like us and if it was true, it would have been super weird. But obviously, it was true. He told me he was new here so he didn't know anybody. He was happy to see some young people was new here so he didn't know anybody. He was happy to see some young people and just wanted to share a drink with us. What I could understand because as I said before, there really was a lot of old people around.

I thought maybe we all looked older than we really were so I told the man everybody in the house was under 18 and made him understand that he really wasn't welcome here. But everybody thought he was just trying to be nice and didn't see it as wrong so I was influenced and decided to let him sit on the terrace with us. I still didn't feel very safe so I told him, please just don't go into the house. One of the guys told me not to worry and that he'll keep an eye on him. The night was going on, everybody was having fun, and finally nothing appeared to be that strange. The man was talking with everybody about basic stuff,

making jokes, laughing with the guys. He just seemed like a nice fella, even if a bit lost to stay with underage people when you have your wife and children probably waiting for you next door. That was just my opinion. I started to relax and enjoy our time. Then at about 2am it was time for everybody to go to the club, for me to clean up a bit and then I was going to head to bed. They all left at the same time and the man left too saying he was going home. We'd been on the terrace most of the time so the cleaning was fast.

I closed the windows, locked the door, at least I thought I did at least, and went to bed, watching pretty little liars to fall asleep. One hour later I heard a noise. Remember when I said I had a dog? Well his tiny paws used to make a tip-tap noise when he was walking on the wooden floor, but I was so used to this noise that this time I knew it wasn't him walking on the floor. My room was on the second floor, up on the ground floor, so I went out of bed, ran down the stairs and stopped. The man was here, in the middle of my house, staring at me. This maybe lasted two seconds then he ran out of the house and smashed the door behind him. I called the police straight away to tell them what happened.

They told me to close my door and that was it. I was paralyzed. I didn't know what to do. My mom was at the other end of the world and didn't know I was having a party at home. So I called my dad who was living 10 minutes away but he didn't answer. I took my fluffy shoes, closed my door with a key and decided to run as fast as I could to my grandma's apartment. I barely had clothes on, running in the middle of the night hoping that the guy wasn't following me. When I arrived I didn't want my grandmother to have a heart attack

so I just stayed in the hallway, lying on the floor and waiting for the morning to come. I called my friends to tell her. She was shocked and told me she was coming back to me but she had to wait for the first bus about 6 in the morning. When the sun finally came up I went back to my place and all the people who were there with me arrived too. They were determined to confront this neighbor. They knocked at his door but he wasn't going to answer so they broke his front gate which literally fell on the floor. It was made with some terrible wood so pretty easy to break and then the man came and started shouting and one

of the guys punched him in the face but that felt good to see. After this everybody went home. I put my ideas back to place and went to the police to make a complaint against him. The police officer told me he was going to see him in the afternoon. After this, my dad asked why I called him at this time of the night so I explained what happened and he went to see the man too. The problem is, the man didn't say the same version of my dad into the police. At first, he said he forgot his wallet in the house, which is impossible because I made sure that he didn't put a single foot inside the house. Then he said that he thought the party wasn't over, which is also impossible because he left at the same time as everybody else and knew I was staying home alone. I still don't know why he came back, and I'm not sure I want to know. I've been dating this girl for a while now.

Her name is Isabel and we've been going out for over a year very soon and all's going well in that regard. However, when we first met she told me about a less than ideal ex-boyfriend she had a couple of years before she had met me. They still went to the same school and he ended up going to the same university as us after we graduated high school as well. Apart from that, all three of us went to the same church, meaning there was a lot of opportunity for him to meet us. The creepy encounters with him, Jose being his name, started a little before we graduated high school. After he heard we were dating, he was furious, even going as far as to try and say I was abusive on Twitter. But nobody believed him, given his accusation was complete

nonsense and he was notorious for doing the same in the past in order to keep Isabel from talking to other guys when they were together. That's just the beginning though. It started out small at first, seeing him at the mall whenever we would go out on dates. After a while it seemed like a little too much to seem like a coincidence though. He started showing up to our church which, although wouldn't ever really be abnormal, he all of a sudden joined the same youth ministry as well. It seemed as if though he was trying to get as close to us as possible at times. There was one instance I remember very specifically at a grad party everybody was invited to. Everyone was in the

backyard and I remember looking across the patio and just seeing him staring at me and Isabel from the other side. His eyes didn't move and his breathing was very heavy, as if though he was angry or anxious or both. He didn't try anything that night though, probably because some of the other people that were there that night. After I left the party and dropped off my girlfriend at her house for the night, I saw a black car following me for the majority of the way home, which I didn't really think much of and not to sound like that guy or anything, but I wasn't too worried about it either.

I'm fairly well built and have done martial arts for well over six years. The next day that same car was tailing me almost the whole day while I was running errands. Things got a little heated in the afternoon though. I was sitting in my car outside of a store waiting for a curbside pickup when he parked a few spaces down from me, got out of his car and came up to my window. He started yelling at me, saying I would never be good enough for Isabel and that she still loved him no matter what I thought and that he was going to make sure that she and I were never together. I just tried to ignore him. Starting anything would have

probably been a bad move given that he hadn't even touched me or my car but I was still a little heated. After heading home it was already pretty late so I just played video games for a while till I was tired enough to go to sleep. When I was walking back to my room I saw him from my window, just standing there on the sidewalk looking right at me. The only reason I knew it was him was because of the light from one of the street lamps. My parents had also seen him and asked me to go check it out since they aren't the youngest of people and wouldn't be able to do much other than yell at him to go away. But as soon as I walked out he just got in his car and left. This happened every night for about three nights straight. The last night I ever saw him was unlike the others, except this time he didn't leave when I went outside. In fact, he started walking closer to me. I didn't notice

until he was a lot closer, but he had something in his hand. I couldn't tell what it was, but it looked like a fairly large knife you would use in the kitchen. Adrenaline kicked in, and I ran back into the house and told my mom to call 911, after which I went back outside. He was just there in the front yard waiting. When I stepped outside, he said, Isabella belongs to me and I'm going to make that happen no matter what. He ran at me with a knife, but muscle memory kicked in and I had him pinned down after that. The cops came shortly after and I explained the situation to them, after which he was immediately arrested with a couple of different charges that I don't quite recall right now.

One other thing I do remember however was what was inside his car. When the police came they also searched his car to see if he had anything else I should have been worried about. They found a bunch of tape, rope, another large knife, a handgun, and a camera. I don't know what was going on through his head, but I could at least guess from that kit that he had in his back seat that he planned on hurting me in some way and recording it. I hate to think of what would have happened if he had tried his back seat that he planned on hurting me in some way and recording it. I hate to think of what would have happened if he had tried to come into the house while everyone was asleep, but I'm glad that he was arrested for what he did, or planned to do, anyways. I live in a block of flats.

It's a bit of a rough area in my opinion which occasionally has some sketchy characters going about. There are two buildings and one of them is a washroom where the residents all go to use the washing and drying facilities. I'm a 31 year old woman and I use these facilities not often as I'd like because more often when I go, the same guy just keeps reappearing. The washroom is usually busy, it can take a few visits to go at a time when a machine is not in use, despite that it's very rare to ever see anybody in there. There's no one person I've ever seen there twice, except the man who's always washing his teddies. The first few times I saw him, he didn't say much. He looks like someone you'd give a wide berth. His visible twitches and possible learning difficulties didn't usually say anything.

Until one time after a few run-ins when he took his teddy out of the machine, held it up like Mr. Bean and said, Hello, to me through the teddy. I can't exactly remember my reaction. I know that when I responded, I tried to be as nice as possible, considering he probably has learning difficulties and could need a special approach. By now, I've lived here for over two years, and he's the only person who keeps reoccurring in the washroom,

and this time I'm in there before he is and he's standing at the door. I try to make polite conversation as I'm busy doing my laundry while he stood at the door with his full attention on me. When he speaks he sounds normal, his tone and demeanor is different than the way he normally is. He talks about how awful lockdown is, tells me where he works and that he still has to work, you know, normal stuff. After a moment had passed, he, quite firmly and in an irritated tone, says, I'm just trying to be socially distant.

I apologize and give him plenty of room to get by. He goes to his machine beside me and takes out a teddy from his laundry and again, like before, speaks through his teddy. I was about done filling the machine at this point and told him to take care of himself and left, feeling very rattled by this strange change in character from the man who spends all his time washing his teddies. When I returned to the washroom to put my clothes in the dryer, I'd taken my time to return, maybe two hours or so. I didn't want to run into the guy again by going back at the same time as him. However, when I got there, someone had been in before me and removed my clothes. They had been thrown all down the back of the washer, definitely not accidentally and this really freaked me out. I picked it all back up,

threw it in the dryer and rushed back to my flat and told my boyfriend what had happened. He told me not to go back tonight and that he'd go to finish it off. However, he'd just started cooking so it was a long time before he returned. When he went to the dryer I'd put our clothes in, they too had been removed and thrown all down the backs of the dryers. Nothing else in the washroom had been tampered with and to me this said that I was targeted. The first instance I thought that

maybe someone had a bad day, but with hours between my moves and my clothes being targeted, I felt directly threatened. I know this could be coincidence, it could be nothing, but my instincts tell me something more sinister could be going on and could have been going on for a long time. With no real evidence I can't raise an alarm with the police but I am very scared. I'm going to continue documenting this, but what do you think? I was 14 when this happened and I was with my best friend Holly who was 17. We were both very small ladies and obviously at the time very young. It was a Friday night and Holly and I were at her friend's place for a little get together. Despite being underage we drank way too much and by the time we decided to go home at midnight

we weren't very steady on our feet. We live in a small city in Canada and for the most part it was pretty safe. I was spending the night at Holly's place and since we were both drunk, we took the short bus ride home. The closest bus stop was about a kilometer from her place. The bus stop is a park and ride, so there was a well-lit parking lot and the rest of the walk was a quiet residential road with no street lighting. We walked this route heaps before and didn't think twice about walking it on this particular night. We got off the bus, both still drunk and enjoying our walk back to hers. We walked through the parking lot, which had a few cars parked and started into the darkness. Everything was pretty ordinary thus far but I noticed Holly got quiet and started to walk faster.

I figured she was sobering up and keen to get home so I started walking faster to keep up. She looked at me, seeing I was oblivious to my surroundings and told me she thought someone was following us. I looked back to see a person walking behind us, but a decent distance away. No one else got off the bus with us and no one was around when we got off the bus so we reckoned this person came from the parking lot. We both started to sober up real quick but tried to rationalize the situation against our gut instincts. We looked behind us every few seconds to gauge the situation and could see the person was gaining on us. We looked behind us every few seconds to gauge the situation and could see the person was gaining on us. We could now make out that the person was a full grown male.

We were both starting to panic and run scenarios through our head when Holly told me that we needed to run, because when we looked back, he had a bat. We both started running and as I did, I looked behind to see that this dude did in fact have a baseball bat. I can't remember if he was running too or just speed walking but he was still following us. I remember feeling this horrible urgency and panic overcome me and survival instincts kick in.

Holly and I both knew we could not stop running until we were inside the door, locked. I know from running track that if you look behind while you're running, you slow down. Against all my instincts, I didn't look behind me and after what seemed like ages, we made it home. We ran into the house, shaking and crying, and luckily Holly's dad was awake. We told him what happened and he had us call the cops while they got in his car. He wanted to drive around on the road to see if he could find the dude and get a better description for the police but he didn't see him. I'm not sure when we lost him or if he followed us all the way home but

nothing ever came of the situation. It's now been over 10 years since this went down and I try not to think about what could have happened but the thought of a grown man waiting inside of his car with a baseball bat for vulnerable people to walk by gives me goosebumps. To be continued... 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