The Lets Read Podcast - 173: CUSTOMER SERVICE NIGHTMARE | 29 True Scary Stories | EP 161

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Customer Service, Craigslist, and First Responders... HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsReadCreepy ♫ Background Music & Audio Remastering: INEKT https://www.instagram.com/_inekt/ PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead

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If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Ben MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. To be continued... Since the beginning of recorded history, humankind has entrusted a handful of their number with establishing and maintaining order. From the prefects and magistrates of ancient China and Greece, to the bow street runners of pre-Victorian England or the lawmen of the old west, there have always been a small minority charged with the unenviable task of upholding the law. Yet at the very same instant as the concept of law enforcement was conceived, there came a question that has yet to be answered, even thousands of years later.

Who watches The Watchman? On Sunday, February 28th, 2021, a 48-year-old British police officer telephoned a car hire company in the small coastal town of Dover. He arranged to borrow a white Vauxhall four-door sedan, due to be collected on Wednesday, March 3rd, then, after clocking out of a 12-hour shift at the U.S. Embassy in London, he drove down to Dover to collect the car at around 7 in the morning. At the car hire's booking desk, the officer was asked to confirm the booking. The name he gave them was Wayne Cousins. Cousins had joined the Metropolitan Police just a few years earlier in September of 2018, but in February of 2020, he was assigned to the Forces Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection

Branch, the unit responsible for protection of diplomatic premises and personnel. However, he had not undergone enhanced vetting as part of his recruitment, nor had he gone through the mandatory two-year probation period with the Met before joining the Diplomatic Protection Branch. It's not clear whether this was because Cousins was a trusted member of the police force or if it was sheer incompetence, but what's clear is that a person who had yet to prove themselves worthy was handed far more power than would otherwise be permitted. At the Dover car hire outlet, Cousins was handed the white Vauxhall car keys before he made the two-hour journey back to London, where CCTV cameras captured him traveling through Earl's Court and across Battersea Bridge. Since he'd just worked a 12-hour night

shift, there's a good chance that Cousin's disappearance for the next eight hours or so is down to him getting some sleep somewhere, possibly in the region of Earl's Court. But the fact of the matter is that Cousin and his white Vauxhall then reappear in South London district of Clapham at around 9.20pm. London is one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the world, with almost 700,000 CCTV cameras perched on roadsides and street corners. That's one for every 13 people, with your average Londoner being caught on camera almost 300 times a day. Therefore, it's very possible to use the footage of these cameras to paint a picture of Cousins' movements that evening. And when we do, something chilling becomes apparent. Cousins was off duty on the evening of March 3rd,

but the route of his journey around Clapham suggests that he was in some kind of patrol pattern, almost like he was looking for something, or more accurately, hunting for someone. Then, just before 9.30pm, Cousins parked his white Vauxhall on the pavement outside of Pointer's Court apartment complex and began to wait. Just four minutes later, he saw a woman, dressed in a turquoise coat and a beige woolen hat, walking towards his car. Cousins opened his driver's side door, climbed out, and confronted the woman on why she was out of doors during a strict COVID lockdown. He showed her his warrant card, explained that he was a police officer, then repeated his question. The woman had apparently been drinking wine with friends, and the officer deemed this to be a flagrant breach of quarantine guidelines and told her she was under arrest.

But before Cousins put the handcuffs on her, he asked the woman her name. Sarah Everett, she said. 33-year-old Sarah was born in the English county of Surrey in 1987, but grew up in the small Viking settlement of York in the country's northeast. She studied human geography at Durham University from 2005 to 2008, then later moved down to the Brixton Hill area of South London, where she worked as a marketing executive for a digital media agency. This is how she ended up in the path of Wayne Cousins, who placed Sarah in the back of his hired Vauxhall then began the 90 minute drive southeast to Kent. It's more than likely, at some point, Sarah asked where she was being taken. She probably suspected she'd been taken to a police station in central London,

so realizing she was being driven into the countryside would have almost certainly confused her. The exact excuse given to her by Cousins is unclear, but a safe bet would be that he told her that there were no cells free in the local area, and was therefore being taken somewhere she would be adequately detained. Given that this is both standard procedure and a believable excuse, we can understand why this might have allayed Sarah's concerns, if only for a short while. However, at some point on their journey, Cousins parked up the hired Vauxhall, took Sarah out of the backseat, then transferred her over to his personal Black Seat Leon station wagon. If Sarah hadn't realized something was wrong before then, she certainly did afterward. Cousins was clearly a serving police officer. His mannerisms, lexicon, and official Met Police warrant card all attested to it. But by the time of the vehicle's switchover, Sarah must have known

what he was doing was wrong. Perhaps there was a shift in his demeanor, a moment where he dropped all pretense, and I dread to think of the horror Sarah felt when she realized that she was not being arrested. She was being kidnapped. Between the hours of midnight and 1am, Cousin's cell phone pinged its sights at the village of Shepherdswell in eastern Kent. The full story of what he did during that time might never be told, but it's clear that he and his vehicle remained stationary in a secluded, woody area for at least an hour. Then, at exactly 2.34am, Cousins can be spotted on the CCTV of a Dover petrol station, where he's thought to have purchased a number of soft drinks. The security cameras captured images of the interior of his black Seat.

Sarah Everard is nowhere to be seen. Sarah had arranged a date with her boyfriend for the following afternoon. When she didn't arrive, he discovered her phone was switched off, and he immediately contacted the police. Around the same time, Wayne Cousins was returning the white Vauxhall to the car hire company in Dover. The next day, he was spotted at a hardware store near the town of Ashford, where he apparently purchased two large rubble sacks. Around the same time, Sarah was formally declared missing, and a number of dedicated police search teams began the delicate process

of tracking her last known whereabouts. It's not clear what exactly led police to the small spot of woodland near Ashford. Perhaps it was a tip from a member of the public, or perhaps it was the very distinct smell that had been drifting through the trees during the previous day. But what's clear is that while searching a place known as Hodes Wood, police found a large refrigerator which appeared to have been set alight. It would turn out to have been used as a makeshift Hodes Wood, police found a large refrigerator which appeared to have been set alight. It would turn out to have been used as a makeshift crematorium, as just a few yards away was a soot stained rubble sack, one containing charred human remains. Less than a hundred yards from where this rubble sack was found is a piece of privately owned land. Police sought to identify the owner

of this plot, hoping they might be able to shed some light on the foul deeds committed on their doorstep, and they discovered the owner's name was none other than Wayne Cousins. By this time, Cousins' fellow police officers had noticed he was acting very, very strangely. He had been a firearms officer, what amounts to elite status in metropolitan police, and was something that Cousins prided himself on. Yet he'd suddenly requested some urgent time off of work, citing stress and a desire to no longer carry a firearm. Then, when homicide detectives tried to get in touch with him regarding the grisly discovery near his Haote Wood property,

Cousins seemed reluctant to talk to them. This behavior would be seen as suspicious even as a civilian, but for a serving member of the Metropolitan Police to basically refuse to assist in a criminal investigation is extremely dubious. However, it wasn't until forensic investigators examined the dental records of the Hodes Wood cadaver that they began to piece together what had happened that night. The burned body was that of Sarah Everett, and as police began to piece together her movements from March 3rd, they made a horrifying discovery that Sarah could be placed in the company of none other than Wayne Cousins. On March 9th, 2021, Kent police arrived outside Cousins' home in the small Kentish town of Deal. Although they arrived outside at around 5.45pm, the officers in

question didn't attempt to enter the home until around 7.50pm. At some point during that time, Cousins tried to erase all incriminating data from his cell phone and although there have been accusations that Cousins was tipped off, it's more likely that he knew it was just a matter of time before he was interviewed and that he correctly identified the car outside as belonging to homicide detectives. Yet it's also not clear why the officers on scene would take so long to make their move. It's possible that police feared the fallout of arresting a serving officer on suspicion of kidnap and murder and wanted to make sure that they were correct in their suspicions before putting him in cuffs. But regardless, Cousins was arrested that night and taken to a nearby police station to be

questioned. Initially, when confronted with a photograph of Sarah, Cousins claimed not to recognize her. This was the first real sign that he'd done something unspeakable, as the officers interviewing him knew well that the pair had met. Cousins tried to make the excuse that he didn't recognize Sarah because she had been wearing a COVID mask, but it seemed highly unlikely that he'd forgotten her brightly colored coat after spending more than an hour in a car with her. When it became evident that he couldn't lie his way out of his predicament,

Cousins admitted he'd taken Sarah under the pretense of an arrest. Yet he claimed his motive was purely financial, and that he hadn't actually hurt Sarah following her kidnap. He told officers he was in dire need of money after a gang of Eastern European pimps had accused him of underpaying an escort. Cousins asserted that the gang had threatened to kill his family if he didn't deliver another girl to them. Sarah had been the one unlucky enough to be chosen. Cousins claimed that after Sarah was delivered to this gang, he had no knowledge of her fate, but following the arrest and subsequent release of a presently unidentified woman, Cousins was re-arrested on suspicion of murder and formally charged by the Crown Prosecution Service. The day after his arrest, while still

in police custody, Cousins appears to have made a frenzied attempt at taking his own life. News broke on March 11th that Cousins had been taken to a hospital after receiving a serious head injury. Some speculated that this had been caused by an attack from another prisoner, appalled that Cousins had been accused of such a heinous murder. But it later became apparent that Cousins had sustained an injury to the top of his head while alone in a cell, leading us to believe that he'd attempted some kind of swan dive off of his cell's two-foot-high bed. Obviously, this attempt at rendering himself unfit for trial was unsuccessful, and Cousins appeared at the Central Criminal Court of England in Wales via video link from Belmarsh Prison on March 16th. Those in attendance

noted the rather painful-looking wound on Cousins' head and observed that the man himself appeared to be in very poor health. When it was confirmed that Cousins was of sound mind and fit to stand trial, he pled guilty to the kidnap, violation, and murder of Sarah Everett. Speaking outside the courtroom, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police stated that she felt sickened, angered, and devastated by the killing. Everyone in policing feels betrayed, she added. Sarah was a fantastic, talented young woman with her whole life ahead of her, and that had been snatched away. Jim Sturman, Cousin's barrister, asked the presiding judge to consider

a sentence that would allow his client parole in around 30 years. This judge then publicly stated that he had considered the request, but had still decided on what's known as a whole life tariff, a rare instance in the British legal system where a person is sent to prison without the possibility of parole. The judge added that his decision was influenced by the fact that Cousins abused his power as a police officer to detain Everett, stating that it was the vital factor which in my view makes the seriousness of this case exceptionally high. Never was a truer word spoken. When those we trust to protect us are the ones kidnapping, violating, and killing us,

it makes a sick joke of the very concept of guardianship. As you can imagine, Sarah's murder had sparked a huge and very volatile debate on why Wayne Cousins wasn't properly vetted before being allowed into a position of power, and the flames of this outrage were only fanned when it emerged that Cousins had apparently been involved in two uninvestigated incidents of indecent exposure, one of which was at a branch of McDonald's in a place called Swanley. More and more information came out in the weeks that followed. One accusation was that he'd hired an escort to accompany him to a party attended by colleagues, and had openly joked

about the fact with close associates. Twelve of his colleagues were served notices of misconduct after they gave positive character references during the aftermath of the murder, and one was suspended after he was found to have shared grossly graphic and offensive material with cousins via social media. Such scandalous revelations rocked British society and left the spokesman for the Metropolitan Police grasping at straws in a September 30th statement which read, if people are scared or doubt the person is a police officer, they should consider shouting out to a passerby, running into a house, knocking on a door, waving a bus down, or, if you're in the position to do so, calling 999.

It was essentially an admittance that there was nothing they could do about it. A complete breakdown in trust between a citizenry and its law enforcement would mean complete anarchy, but at the same time, there's no failsafe if an officer is suddenly compelled to abuse their power, possibly even with murderous intent. What's more, the immediate response of the authorities demonstrated a shocking lack of ideas on how to keep women safer on Britain's streets. North Yorkshire Police Fire and Crime Commissioner Philip Allitt faced a torrent of criticism when he suggested that people should be more streetwise, and British government's call for more police funding was shot down

when it was politely pointed out to them that Cousins was a member of the police. On October 4th, the head of the Metropole and Police announced that there'd be a full review of professional standards, telling the press, We will look at our training, leadership, and standards of behavior, and examine cases where officers have to let the public down. We'll also re-evaluate our leadership on standards, corruption, misconduct, and how the Met responds when things go wrong. But talk is cheap, and in the wake of such a horrifying tragedy, the public wants action. People from a variety of backgrounds seek to become police officers, and it's a comfort to think that the majority wish to do so as a means of making the world a better place.

But what's also clear is that there are those who abuse their power, either out of callousness or outright malice. And the horrifying truth is that there are some that seek to infiltrate the very same institutions designed to protect us, in order to terrorize us. They are the wolves who don sheep's clothing, the monsters who wear masks of men. And as much as more should be done to ensure the power is never entrusted to them, we will never be completely, entirely safe. It's a bitter pill to swallow but the world will always be a frightening and dangerous place one in which we must ask ourselves

who watches The Watchman? I've been a paramedic for almost 10 years now. There are the bad calls, then there are the worst calls, and this one is a real doozy. It's like 11.30 at night and we get a call from a pregnant lady experiencing cramps and bleeding from, well, you can guess where. We get on the scene and we find this lady standing in her driveway, shaking, pale, generally in a real bad way. I start asking her the usual questions, but then I find that not only she won't answer my questions, but there's no one else around who can. Since she was covered in the stuff, I figured she lost a lot of blood, and once we got her in the ambulance, I used a doppler to listen for fetal heart tones, but I didn't hear a thing.

I told my partner that I was going to check back inside to make sure no one else was there, so I grabbed the flashlight and walked towards the open garage. It's only then that I noticed a whole bunch of blood trails leading back inside, so I follow, turning on the house lights as I hit each room. I hit the kitchen, nothing, the TV room, nothing. Then when I finally get to the bathroom I notice it's the only light in the house that's already turned on. I call out saying EMTs and asking if anyone was there but I get no answer. I then open the bathroom door and note that the blood trails are continuing right up towards a bloody toilet bowl that had the toilet seat down I wish I would properly describe the feeling of dread I got while looking at that toilet

like I honestly think you'd have to have been a fly on the wall to really get how horrifying it was plus I think that deep down I kind of knew what was going to be in there, and that's why I didn't want to lift the lid. I had been on the job long enough to hope for the best but expect the worst, as they say, so when I tried to imagine what the worst possible outcome could be, the reality turned out to be exactly how I imagined it. I lifted up the toilet seat and floating among the bloody toilet paper was a miscarried fetus. If I had to guess, I'd say it was at least 28 weeks in, well into the third trimester, and was honestly the single most heartbreaking and terrifying thing I'd ever seen. I'd never had a reaction like this before, but I just walked out of the bathroom, almost like

I had tunnel vision. I just walked out of there and went straight back up to the ambulance, where the mom then asked me, can I have my baby? And what else could I do? Tell her no. There was a canvas bag in the bathroom that had a few little makeup trays in it. I dumped them out onto the floor, got the child out of the toilet bowl, and then carried it back to the mother. She didn't cry. She didn't show much emotion at all, actually. She just held that wet canvas bag in her arms as we drove her to the hospital. I've thought about that night probably way more than I should, but how I'm supposed to just get over seeing something like that, I'm honestly not sure. As crazy as this sounds, for about six months back in the mid-90s, I was the only, yes, the only paramedic in our tri-county area.

This area covered two interstates and a bunch of different highways here in western Ohio. And let me tell you, that fall and winter almost killed me. Don't ask how I ended up being the only paramedic. I think it was a mix of dumb bureaucracy and maybe having angered someone in the upper chain, who knows, but to say it was tough seems like the understatement of a century. One incident happened about 8 miles from home. Two teenage girls lost control of their car and hit a power line, which then collapsed on them, pinning them in the car. Apparently there were serious injuries. They were conscious and coherent, but the power line was live, and for whatever reason, the power company couldn't just turn off the juice,

so we first responders were forbidden from attempting to help until they could get the situation resolved. In the end, we had some local civilian farmer offer to bring his backhoe to remove the pole himself, but both girls died before we could successfully free them, more or less in front of our eyes while we tried to reassure them. Those can be the toughest kind of calls, when some nonsense gets in the way and causes deaths that just didn't have to happen. Another time I saw a driver of a truck, one that had gotten hit by a train, literally cough his lungs out of his mouth after his ribcage was almost completely crushed and shredded. I called the guy on scene. Then not even an hour later there was a huge motorcycle accident on the interstate when a group of four bikers riding in loose formation had attempted to pass an 18- wheeler. I guess they didn't pass far enough away from it and the driver just didn't see them or whatever. I think one of them got drawn in towards the truck, maybe overcompensated by veering the opposite way,

and crashed into one of his buddies. Then when that guy was thrown off of his bike, he managed to get himself caught on either a foot peg or a brake lever and was, and I quote the coroner here when I say this, he was unzipped from his ankle to his armpit like a onesie. The straw that broke the camel's back and had me threatening to quit unless I got some backup was an 8 year old boy that had drowned in his family's frog pond. I got there, pulled the kid out, then immediately started resuscitation efforts, but like so many others, I was just too late on the scene. So many lives could have been saved that winter if there had just been one or two extra bodies. I'm still mad about it, even today. EMT here, and my worst call was easily the result of an 18-wheeler going up against a sedan.

The sedan had a whole family of five in it. Mom, dad, boy, and a girl, with grandma in the back seat with the kids. When we got there and found the bodies, the mom still had the phone in her hands. Can you believe that? She caused the whole accident by texting and driving, eyes glued to her phone and not noticing the huge sweeping curve in the road. They went head on, driver to driver, and I don't think either of them had time to touch the brakes. My partner arrived about 4 or 5 minutes before me. The first thing I saw upon arrival was him, red faced and weeping, carrying what used to be the body of a toddler aged kid away from the car. You could barely tell what you were looking

at until you saw the kid's relatively untouched leg and foot. Otherwise, I swear to you, you could have mistaken that poor kid for roadkill. I approached what remained of the vehicle's passenger side and there was blood, hunks of flesh and brain matter just splattered all over the interior. It looked more like they'd exploded inside the car instead of being hit by something. The mom, who had been driving, was in several different pieces, completely severed arm, the one holding the phone, still trapped between the steering wheel and the mess of twisted metal that used to be their hood and engine. Grandma was pinned behind her, broken neck, broken back, internally decapitated. This is basically when the spinal column separates entirely from the skull base, the mother of all broken necks.

The lights are on, but no one's home. Only the teenage daughter in the front seat survived, which is how we know mom was definitely texting and driving, because this occurred right as dad was trying to take the cell phone out of her hands. I've responded to a lot of gross, gruesome things, but this was easily the most disturbing. My daughter today is about the same age as the little boy who lost his life that day, and I will never shake the image of his lifeless body, my partner crying as he carried him away. Like the others said, generally things involving kids are harder to deal with, so for God's sake, please, don't ever, ever text and drive. I'm a retired EMT, and these are some of the worst calls I got in my 18 years on the job. Mother's Day of 2016.

A young woman pulled out in front of a state trooper that was going 80 plus miles per hour. Cleanest case of internal decapitation I'd ever seen. We cut her out, but removing the little child seat from the back was by far the worst part, knowing those little ones would never see their mom again. An hour later, we got yet another call for a traffic accident, one where a car hit a pole with a person ejected. Turned out to be another young mom. She was so messed up that I could feel organs through her chest. Called it on scene. Some days you're just not as strong as others and the things that make you snap can sometimes be unexpected.

In this case, it was the whole Mother's Day thing. That phrase just kept ringing out in my head like the bell back in high school, and made stuff much harder than it normally was. Christmas of 2008. Guy in his mid-thirties with pancreatic cancer. He was at home. Nice part of town, too. His wife meets us at the door. Her husband's bed was next to the Christmas tree in a room in the back. There are tears in her eyes as she tells us that he needed to go to the hospital. How she had power of attorney papers, DNR forms, everything. Basically he was on death's door and he needed some actual palliative care instead of just pain meds and home comforts. She left the room and from the other room came the most gut-wrenching,

heart-rending kind of half-sob, half-scream I'd ever heard. He tried his best to hang on till Christmas and as a result, he must have been in unimaginable amount of pain. Only rarely do we let people ride in the back back but we let that lady. She held her husband's hand and told him how much she loved him and that it was okay to let go because she knew he was hurting and that she and the kids would be okay. He died before we got paperwork done. I know this one is probably more sad than anything else but seeing how that guy looked in his final days, how he clung to life through sheer force of will, that one stuck with me for quite some time after. My worst call had to be the time that I was talking to a patient who had been called to be taken into a 5150 hold.

Think men in white coats coming for you type of stuff. For a 24 hour psych evaluation by the local police department. The guy was huge, would have made a great defensive lineman, but he was holding a small Hello Kitty flip phone, just a cheap plastic toy, and crying about his daughter. The juxtaposition is something I've never forgotten. When I got to explaining what we would be doing, which admittedly is very unpleasant and may well involve being involuntary administered medication, he started to get this look about him.

I can't quite put into words how frightening it was to see a grown man put on the expression of a frightened child. It was like he really was just a little kid, trapped in the body of a heavyweight boxer. I think that's what gave everyone the impression that the guy wasn't violent. So when the guy reaches into his plaid jacket he was wearing and pulls out this little Taurus 22, I thought to myself, my god, this is it. I'm about to be murdered by an upset man-child. It sounds messed up in retrospect, but the feeling of relief I felt when he stopped, put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, I just remember saying thank god out loud. It was one of the worst of all possible outcomes, but

it wasn't the worst. Not for me anyway. In which case, something tragic became something to weirdly celebrate. That feeling didn't last long though. Not when I realized that I had gotten a mouthful of brain and skull ricocheted from the cargo container he was leaning against. That flip phone he had is just stuck in my head. How red the blood looked against it, and how many times it sang its two-toned song after the guy was dead. I also remember the smell of puke on his plaid jacket and not knowing where it came from. Weird little details, I guess. It was not as chaotic as most of my scenes. PD had two vehicles on scene. It was

away from any busy streets, no interfering passerbys either. They were good folks, all of them, but someone dropped the ball on that one, and it almost cost me my life. To be continued... violent the inner city is. In one incident, we were called out to some scene involving a dude wandering around in the middle of the freeway, completely unclothed and he's threatening passing cars with a knife. When they arrived, a cop told them that when they got there, the guy was trying to drag two kids out into the middle of the freeway and was trying to throw them into the path of oncoming cars. Thankfully, the kids weren't hurt and managed to get away, but the guy stayed on scene and carried on yelling at the cars. So the cops called for more backup to confront the crazy naked guy,

and my brother called the fire chief to get more bodies and to help him handle the kids, not to mention to stand by for any injuries incurred by the officers on scene. In about ten minutes there were five officers, my brother, his partner, the fire chief and a few more paramedics, so around ten men in total. The cops managing to coast the guy into walking near the ambulance by telling him he was going to bleed out. We didn't even know how much of the blood was his, but it was the only thing they said that seemed to make it through to him. The guy was then strapped to a litter and put in the back of my brother's ambulance and my brother, a cop, and

my bro's partner all sat in the back to check this guy out. Bearing in mind that they're all still stationary at that point, the guy's just in the back so they can examine him, but literally the moment they close the doors behind them I guess the guy started to feel trapped or whatever and he starts getting super aggressive. He's not strapped down or anything so he just rears up, punches my brother in the nose, then makes a lunge for the police officer's gun. My brother said he and his partner hit their panic buttons as soon as they heard the cop scream. He said it was nothing like he'd ever heard before. Like even in some of the worst calls he'd gotten he'd never heard before. Like even in some of the worst calls he'd gotten, he'd never heard anyone so terrified as that cop when the blood-drenched

psycho lunged for his pistol. Thankfully, the cop managed to fight the guy off and he's trying to get his cuffs on the guy, but it's just not working. My brother said the cop had at least 50 pounds on the guy and was at least a few inches taller too, but the guy was either so frenzied or methed up that it was seriously touch and go for a while as to who was going to come out on top. My brother and his partner actually had to get involved or they might have all been shot to death in the back of their own ambulance. Then suddenly, the back doors fly open and there's all the other cops who then just pounce on the guy and only then with like 10 dudes on this guy only then were they able to actually get him restrained somehow in all the chaos the psycho managed to give our fire chief the old right there fred with the handcuffs and oh my god was that a nasty wound hit him right in the mouth broke a few teeth and split his lip almost right down to the frenum my brother said he had a few wound, hit him right in the mouth, broke a few teeth, and split his lip almost right down to the frenum. My brother said he had a few really bad calls during his time, but only one

where he thought he might actually lose his own life. I got a call to a car wreck involving some street racers. Two groups of teenagers and mustangs both decided to basically drag race each other down the highway at like 1 in the morning. One of the cars ended up losing control as they were doing like a buck and change. Smashes into the other, sending the other off into some trees. Somehow those guys just survived with cuts and bruises but... The other car. That thing went over the guardrail median and careened right into a jeep coming the other way, and both caught fire. We got on scene and found the now extinguished burnt mess of the wreck. The passengers of the unluckier Mustang were nothing more than, I don't know how to describe it, hunks of charcoal. No bodily or facial recognition whatsoever,

just like a big black ashy cheeto, shapes that used to be people. The driver of the jeep was severed in half, torso thrown out of the driver's side window, legs still by the pedals, and organs everywhere in the seat. Worst part about that is that it looked like they tried to crawl around for a minute, like they didn't even know that they were dead yet.

He was just minding his own business too. Died because some kids decided to be idiots, then his life was over in a split second. That's probably the worst thing about the job. You just get this daily reminder of how fragile people really are. I'm a paramedic from the UK. I went to a call a few years ago, seemed run of the mill, just a woman saying she felt unwell. I arrived to the house to be greeted by the sight of a woman who had to be 45 to 50 stone. I mean, she was absolutely ginormous. God love her.

At the time, I wasn't sure if it was just lack of bathing or if there was an infection in there somewhere, but the stench coming off of her was just abominable. Because of her size, she was almost completely unable to look after herself, so there was rotten food everywhere, animal droppings all over the show, and from what her husband could make out, she hadn't been able to get off of her bed in months. This meant that she had just been defecating where she lay, and her fat had literally grown around the springs where the mattress had just rotted away, causing wounds that had no chance to heal. Essentially, her bottom was just one big

bed sore, and it was fatally infected. We attempted to get her out of bed, but not without the help of fire service who arrived with some heavy lifting equipment to get her out via some upstairs window. I'm not saying that to be mean or funny, it's just the truth. There was just no way of getting her out of there by hand. And you know what? It didn't work, or rather, the firemen weren't sure that they could get her out without her falling or the bed breaking, so, in the end, a handful of nurses had to travel out to us just to make her comfortable. Palliative care, they call it, when they basically just pump you full of drugs to make your last few hours as painless and minimally terrifying as possible.

She died a few days later of a catastrophic case of septicemia. I binned my uniform after that and handed in a request for a new one. I just couldn't get the smell out of it. The wife said she couldn't smell anything and she reckoned it was just stress or something that had me, well, hallucinating a smell. And maybe she's right. But there's no way that I was wearing that thing again. Not a chance. My flatmate is a paramedic. Saw this thread so I asked her what the worst thing she's ever seen. Kinda wish I hadn't asked to be honest but here's what she said. She got called out to the home of a disabled couple who both used electric wheelchairs. The guy half of the couple had been a heavy drinker and heavy smoker.

Bad combination at the best of times but but in this instance, he basically passed out, lit ciggy in his hand, while wearing a frigging woolly jumper of all things. By the time my mate got there, he was literally cooked. She said it smelled like pork crackling in the flat. The lady half of the couple was absolutely distraught, as you can imagine, but my mate overhears her talking to the police, telling them that she had, helplessly, rolled back and forth between the sink and him, getting a cup of water at a time and throwing it on him in this doomed effort to put him out. She had to watch her husband burn to death. She had to listen to him screaming.

I literally can't think of anything worse than that. Like I said, I really wish I hadn't asked my flatmate about this Now To be continued... real screwed up things. But you know what? It's not really the most violent or bloody crime scenes that revisit you after you climb into bed and turn off the lights. In fact, some of the stuff that haunts you the most are the ones people wouldn't necessarily expect. For me, it comes down to what touches you personally. For example, this thing I'm about to talk about happened to a kid who was almost exactly the same age as my own son when it happened. But anyway, got a call to a wreck where a guy was doing donuts in a gravel parking lot. He was showing his son, who was about 6 or 7 at that time, all the stuff his old jeep

could do. He hit a bump and rolled the jeep onto the roof, and guess what? Neither of them were wearing their seatbelts. Kid had to sit there with his leg pinned under the B-post next to his dad, whose head was crushed, I mean literally crushed, under the dash. He was there at least 20 minutes, had to be clinically dead for at least 19 of them. I still remember that kid asking me in the back of the ambulance if his dad was okay. The guy's head had been pulverized, but with the shock of the whole thing it just hadn't registered with the kid that his dad couldn't possibly survive something like that.

I appreciate that some of you might be asking what kind of moron takes his son on a droid ride like that without putting on some freaking seatbelts? I guess everyone will have their own answer for that, but as a cop, you learn not to ask questions like that after a while. You just shake your head and move on. Anything less and you'll go crazy. I was a volunteer firefighter EMT for a while when I was in college. These are the two weirdest and worst calls I got. So a guy fell off his roof and somehow landed on both feet while tensed up. Don't ask me how, I think he was drunk or something.

It broke both his legs and both bones tore through the skin of his shins. I mean it looked like he had taken a shotgun blast to each leg. It was just a mess. But maybe the most messed up part. He was home alone and his cell phone was back in the house so he had to drag himself from where he fell about 30 feet or something. In order to lie there screaming at a neighbor's house until they came out, saw what had happened and ran to call us. I also went to a call where a girl had a complete nervous breakdown and repeatedly bashed her head into a telephone pole. Eventually she aimed wrong and stabbed herself in the head with a nail left over from some flyer that was there and

she was lucky not to be blinded. Also this wasn't exactly an EMS run as I was investigating a fire but trust me, this one counts. I had a scene where one girl had asked her roommate to watch her dog for the weekend. The roommate got tired of the dog barking, locked him in a room with a lit Yankee candle which the dog then proceeded to knock over. The fire department didn't take the dog's corpse away, insisting it was animal control's job. So when I got there a week later after a week of 90 to 100 degree temperatures, the dog had basically decomposed into the floor. It was the most disgusting thing I'd ever smelled. There really is nothing else like the smell

of hot death. I spent three years as a lifeguard here in Oceanside, then one year as an on-call EMT, and this is the call that made me quit. My unit gets called to a multi-car collision on the interstate We arrive to a sedan that's lying on its side in the right lane and an SUV in the median over the top of the cable stop I immediately spot two men and one woman walking around with what seem to be minor scrapes and bruises But the woman is completely hysterical The men are trying to calm her but she's totally inconsolable. Fire rescue was working on the SUV and when it rolled, it landed on the post perfectly impaling the center car seat. The woman's 5 year old daughter had been sitting right there in a car seat

with her 7 year old brother next to her. The girl just got mushed and the other kid was barely hanging in there, trapped inside the wreck. I talked to them the whole time until the firefighters got him out, but when they did, because of the tension on the cables, the kid was basically sliced in half. Didn't make it even 20 feet to the ambulance before they died in his arms. I never felt a sense of dread going to work until after that. You take certain things in stride going into that line of work, but I guess some people are just better at processing the darker stuff than I am. Because after that, I think I just psyched myself out.

Then once our crew chief told me that hesitation kills, I handed in my resignation. I have no regrets, I just wish that I could have done something. To be continued... strictly fire department or EMT but I do have first responder training in a forestry industry environment. So during one job I was supervising I get a short distress call over my radio and they had to be from one of the lumberjacks so I headed over to the scene arriving before anyone else. A guy is slumped over in the cab of his truck, totally unconscious, forehead resting on

the steering wheel and like all his entrails are in his arms, with some spilling onto his feet. Not able to move the guy by myself, I reclined the seat to tilt him back and tried to gauge just how bad the damage was. Thankfully his chainsaw only cut the skin and muscle of his stomach and no entrails were actually damaged. He just ruptured all the dermal layers, basically opening his tummy up so they could all spill out. Then, making sure to don some latex gloves, I carefully work all this guy's guts back inside of the cavity, using a water bottle to clean off all the dirt I could. Then I use clean gauze, a clear plastic grocery bag, thank god for that thing, and some duct tape to

basically create a huge dressing which kept him alive until the heli evac arrived to get him out. After all was said and done, I checked the guy's GPS. He walked more than a mile with his own guts in his arms, all the way back to his truck to radio for help. I've told that story in bars all over the country and sometimes I wonder if he knows how much of a living legend he truly is. To be continued... experienced, but it's definitely the most bizarre, so it's one of those incidents that sticks with me the most. This guy decided he wanted to take his own life, so he gets in his SUV, leaves one of the rear windows open, ties this huge metal cable around his neck, like the kind you use in construction, then strings it out of the open window and wraps it around a tree. Then he hits the gas, the truck lurched forward and snap.

Internal decapitation. Worst I'd ever seen. Guy's head was almost 180 degrees the wrong way. And of all those sort of scenes and aftermaths I've ever saw, that was the biggest head scratcher. Shotguns are always the worst though. Some are like dismantled,led skull jigsaw puzzles. You're cleaning up a scene and you see a few teeth connected to a section of jaw, maybe even an eyeball. Always a patch of skull with hair still attached.

You have to just detach yourself and pretend it was never a real person. Just a movie prop or something. Otherwise, it's just too sad. On Halloween night about six years ago, I was working third shift with my old partner when we got a run for an unknown medical. Usually the cops get to this sort of thing before us Plus we had no idea a dead body was involved So when some security guard walks into the apartment and I just saw her I got to admit, it gave me quite a scare There she was, reclined in a lazy boy with her feet up Comfiest corpse I'd ever seen

Her eyes were rolled back and mouth agape I mean, almost like the movies Almost like it was fake Comfiest corpse I'd ever seen. Her eyes were rolled back and mouth agape. I mean, almost like the movies. Almost like it was fake. Over her head was a translucent plastic bag taped neatly around her neck. I don't know if this was the combination of being all comfied up in that lazy boy, a nonchalant plastic bag that was duct taped over her head, making it a possible murder,

or the fact that the whole thing was going down on Halloween, but it was by far the creepiest scene I'd ever been to. I think we actually had a shooting and a stabbing on that shift as well. The point is, it was a bad one. Halloweens are always bad. But honestly, in general the creepiest calls for me are the hangings. There's something about the way a body just hangs all listlessly in the dark, making my skin crawl just thinking about it. The last one we were dispatched to without lights and sirens, ending up at a Safeway with a bunch of cops who had no idea where the hanging was. Apparently the guy who called it in was just a customer who'd wandered into the produce section.

We think it's there so we headed into the grocery store but then the guy mentions to us the body was at the construction site across the street. Sure enough, there it was, a welluted hanging about five feet off the ground. Good rope rigged over a facade and tied to cement blocks on the other side of a chain-link fence. Seeing a dead body hanging in the dead of night is one of those things that just stays with you, you know. Like I don't believe in ghosts or anything like that, but hauntings? Hauntings are a very real thing, they're just made of memories, not ectoplasm. I have a few other stories I wanted to share, but this turned out into a giant wall of text faster than I expected. Thanks to anyone who reads this in some weird way, it's kind of weirdly

nostalgic to think about old times and the crazier shifts. You saw some really evil stuff from time to time, but you also knew exactly how much you were helping people, which was a whole lot. I used to be an EMT. Getting out was probably the happiest day of my life. The worst call I ever ran was a shaken baby. Mom couldn't get her one month old baby to stop crying so she shook him so hard that it caused critical damage to his brain. Baby went into what we call status epilepticus which is a non-stop seizure. If this ever happens call 911 immediately. Don't wait for it to be over like this mom did. It was a fatal mistake.

Literally fatal. I'll never forget the filth in that trailer. The smell. Human feces. Old rotting pizza boxes. Cat feces. Overwhelming cat urine ammonia smell. Dirty diapers. Needles. So many cigarette butts I lost count. It all still haunts me to this day. The little helpless infant writhing in this filth while mom made a popped heart in the midst of the suffering that she caused. That call permanently changed me. In October of 2011, when 51-year-old divorcee David Pauley learned his Craigslist job application had been accepted, he was elated. For the past few months, he'd been unemployed and was so broke that he'd been forced to sleep on his brother's couch in Norfolk, Virginia. So, when he got the good news about his job and the prospect of making a cool $300 a week

was nothing short of a godsend. Not only that, but he had been promised a two-bedroom, all-amenities trailer to reside in, completely free of charge. The ad had read, Wanted. Caretaker for Ohio Farm. Simply watch over a 688 acre patch of hilly farmland and feed a few cows. You get $300 a week and a nice two bedroom trailer. Someone older and single preferred but we'll consider all. Relocation a must. You must have a clean record and be trustworthy. Nearest neighbor is a mile away. The place is secluded and beautiful. It'll be a real getaway for the right person. Job of a lifetime. If you are ready to relocate, please contact ASAP. The only drawback was the prospect of relocation. But then David remembered an old high school

friend who'd moved up to Ohio a few years prior and had managed to turn his life around. That was the decider, and shortly afterward, David drafted an email to send to the advertisement's poster, a man who called himself Jack. A few days later, David received a reply back from Jack saying that he had narrowed his list down to three candidates. Shortly after that came the confirmation call. David's older brother, Richard Pauley, remembered how happy he was when the call finally came. He was yelling, I got it, I got the job, Richard later said. Then he immediately called his buddy of his up in Ohio, Mal, and started talking a mile a minute. He swore that this was the best thing that had ever happened to him and said he couldn't wait to pack up and go. Chris Maul, David's buddy up in Ohio, found himself in tears when he got the news. He's long taken to calling David his brother from another mother and had been deeply concerned for his old friend following what had been a messy, bitter divorce.

It was like maybe this is the turning point, and things are finally going the right way, Maul later said. The two friends arranged to meet up during David's first week in Ohio, with Chris promising to help him settle in. After that, all that was left was to pack up his belongings and hit the road. David arrived at the Red Roof Inn in Parkersburg, West Virginia on the night of Saturday, October 22, 2011. His journey was almost over and, just before bedding down on the roadside hotel, David called his old friend Chris, who told him to give him a call when he was all settled into his new living quarters. Yet when the next day came and went, Chris hadn't heard back from David, and he began to grow concerned. He contacted David's brother, Richard, who in turn provided him with the landline number for his friend's new employer, the mysterious Jack.

To Chris' relief, Jack answered his call to warmingly assure him that David had arrived safely at the farm. In fact, he'd only just parted ways with him and his lack of contact could be explained by the fact that the farm was out of reach of cell phone towers. Jack added that he supposed David hadn't called because he'd been busy familiarizing himself with the vast surrounding farmlands, an excuse which made perfect sense to Chris. Jack then assured him that he'd get David to call as soon as possible, and the men ended the conversation on good terms. When a few more days passed and David still hadn't called, Chris Mall began to worry. He called Jack on his farm's landline again, only to be informed that David had apparently packed all of his things into his truck before taking off for Pennsylvania, apparently to work

on a drilling rig for a more generous salary. Again, it was an excuse that made all the sense in the world, but for some reason, it just didn't sit right with Chris. The two men had been best friends since high school, and despite living in different cities and states over the years, they always kept one another informed of their whereabouts. David had been beyond excited to hook up with his old drinking buddy, so the idea that he'd just taken off without a word just seemed odd. Around two weeks after Chris Small's last contact with his old friend, he contacted David's twin sister to see if she'd heard from him. He was told that not only had Debbie not heard from David, but she'd been practically glued to her laptop for the past two weeks, conducting what amounted to an amateur investigation into her brother's disappearance.

She went on to tell Chris that she'd made an incredibly disturbing discovery. She'd discovered that, although it was indeed in an isolated area, there was a small town named Cambridge a few hours drive from Jack's farm She then poured through articles from the town's news website, the Daily Jeffersonian Only to find something that made her blood run cold The November 8th headline read Man says he was lured here for work, then shot. The article didn't mention the name of the victim, but it did mention that he'd been hired to work on a 688-acre ranch, and that the Noble County Sheriff, Stephen Hanum, was working day and night to find the perpetrator.

Debbie had called the Sheriff's office immediately and was waiting patiently to hear back. Five days before Debbie's call, deputies had been contacted by the shooting victim from the headline she'd read, a man named Scott Davis. Davis told the deputies that he'd seen the ad for the job on Craigslist, but when he'd arrived at the farm, his prospective employers had tried to murder him. Stephen Hanum was terrified that David Pauley hadn't been so lucky, and so the next day, the sheriff's office called an FBI cybercrime specialist that helped them get information about who had written the Craigslist ad. They also sent a crew with a cadaver dog back to the woods where Davis had been shot, just in case the worse had already happened. On the day of the search, one FBI agent recalled what he described as a torrential downpour and how the howling of nearby coyotes gave the search an ominous feel. Shortly before sunset, the search team found a patch of disturbed soil covered with broken twigs.

They scraped away some of the dirt with their hands, and they discovered blood seeping from the wet earth, and before long, they unearthed a socked foot. The body was face down, and around one wrist was a corded black leather bracelet with a silver clasp. A police officer contacted David's sister and described the bracelet, and that's how she found out that she'd never see her brother ever again. Next to the site at which David was buried was a second, empty grave, one that had surely been meant for Scott Davis. Just days later, law enforcement was studying security camera footage taken from a roadside diner. In it, they observed Scott Davis meeting a man for breakfast. They knew it was the same man that had offered him the farm job, and possibly the same man that had killed him. Shortly afterward, the FBI's cybercrime specialist managed to scrape

together enough information from Craigslist to trace the original post's IP address to a small house in Akron, Ohio. When the investigators arrived at the house, the homeowner told them he'd never been on Craigslist in his life, nor did he know anyone named Jack. However, when the FBI agents showed him a picture of the man they believed to be Jack The homeowner recognized him He told the agents the man had rented a room from him for $100 a week And that his name was Ralph Geiger Real nice guy, the man reportedly said Didn't cuss, didn't smoke, didn't drink

Went to church every Sunday The agents asked if the man had a contact number for this Ralph Geiger, and he did. The same homeowner then called Geiger and kept him on the line as the FBI traced the call. This led the November 16th SWAT raid on the house in Akron, Ohio, yet when their target was detained, they discovered his name wasn't Ralph Geiger, and that in fact Ralph Geiger was already dead. The man they now had in custody was named Richard Beasley, but Beasley hadn't been working alone. Scott Davis had mentioned that Beasley had been in the company of a young man named Brogan. This Brogan turned out to be a junior at the nearby Stowe-Monroe Falls High School

named Brogan Rafferty. The FBI intercepted Brogan while he was at school, interviewing him in the principal's office while partnered agents searched the boy's home. Brogan later told his mother that before he left school that day, he had found a girl he liked and kissed her, even though her boyfriend was nearby. He had been worried that he'd never see her or anyone else from his high school again. He was right to worry, but not because he'd kissed anyone, because that evening, police arrived with a warrant and he was promptly arrested. Meanwhile, other FBI agents dug up everything they could on the mysterious Jack. Jack turned out to be none other than Richard Beasley himself.

Richard was born in 1959 and raised primarily by his mother, who worked as a secretary at a local high school. He married and had a daughter named Tanya, who was about the same age as Brogan Rafferty, and held down various machinist jobs over the years in between prison spells. He'd done five years on burglary charges in Texas and another seven in the federal prison for a firearms violation. One FBI agent later said that Richard looked like an evil version of Santa, with his wild eyebrows and bushy white beard. He also seemed to have mobility difficulties, which apparently stemmed from an incident in the mid-2000s when a dump truck hit Richard's car, leaving him with head, chest, and spinal injuries. After the accident, Richard told people he'd found God and began to spend a lot of time at a local

megachurch known as The Chapel. He also became heavily reliant on opiate-based medications and his addiction wreaked havoc on what was already a chaotic lifestyle. Acquaintances had described Richard as lazy and a scam artist, but assured police he was relatively harmless and had never once lost his temper in the time they'd known him. But it seems Richard had a dark side, one that he revealed to very few people in his life. Amy Saller, a self-described former crack addict and escort, knew Richard after meeting him at a halfway house. He told me his mission was to save all the girls that are on the streets,

she later stated. I pictured him as a savior, somebody that was trying to help me, but he didn't want to help. All he wanted to do was use us. Richard bought cell phones for many of the girls at the halfway house, but instead of using them to touch base and keep them on the right track, Richard essentially became their pimp. He began advertising their services online before driving them to meet Johns. Amy added that Richard would do anything in his power to keep the girls at the house, including having them relapse on their addictions just to keep them pliant. Amy said that although she never saw Beasley get violent, all the girls feared him.

He was a manipulator, a man who implied violence, and although he generally kept his cool, they knew he was perfectly capable of inflicting serious harm. In early 2011, Richard was arrested in Ohio on narcotics charges. While he was locked up, investigators began building an additional case against him, but when he was released on bond in mid-July, he went on the run from the law. Richard desperately needed to disappear and when he realized his ticket was to assume a new identity, his deep-seated predatory nature had him coming up with a deeply sinister plan. Instead of vulnerable young women, he would target vulnerable older men. Men with so few connections to the world around them that, once he'd robbed them of their lives, he could rob them of their names. One week after arresting Brogan Rafferty,

investigators offered the 16-year-old suspect a deal. If he agreed to testify against Richard Beasley, he would be charged only with complicity to murder. Bizarrely, Brogan would later renege on the deal, but the initial conversation was recorded, and a judge later allowed it to be presented to the jury during his trial. According to Brogan, Richard had been open about the fact that he was on a lam and needed this help to keep him from going back to prison. And the first thing he needed for that was a new identity. Richard began hanging around local homeless shelters, hunting for someone who bore a close resemblance to him. But in the end, he decided that working remotely and anonymously

would yield both effective and discreet results. And so, he turned to the internet. Richard presented himself as a wealthy, hands-off, but demanding employer who was offering the job of a lifetime. It was the perfect bait in a country that was still very much in the grasp of a grinding recession. And the way his Craigslist ad painted a picture of a cowboy-esque lifestyle led to him receiving literally hundreds of applications. One of these applications was from a man named Ralph Geiger, a 56-year-old man who had recently been down on his luck.

He'd also grown up on a farm which he believed made him ideal for the job. Beasley quizzed him on his size and his looks, but we now know that this wasn't so much for the purposes of recognizing him as a potential meeting. It was so Beasley could be sure they bore a resemblance so he could steal his identity. Brogan Rafferty would later claim that he had no idea what was coming, and was completely horrified when they drove Geiger out to the same spot in the woods where they would later take David Pauly and Scott Davis, only to shoot him in the back of the head. It was as if somehow I immediately slipped into a dream or something, Rafferty told the FBI,

like I had ice in my veins. From then on, Rafferty claimed that he lived in an almost constant state of fear and panic Terrified that Beasley would hurt his family if he told anyone what had happened FBI agents later found a poem saved to his computer's hard drive Some of the lines read as follows We took him out to the woods on a humid summer's night The loud crack echoed and I didn't hear the thud He threw the clothes in a garbage bag along with the personal items. I dug the hole. We put him in with difficulty.

They called them stiffs for a reason. We showered him with lime like a satanic baptism. It was like we were excommunicating him from the world. Felt terrible until I threw up. When I got home, I took a hot shower, and I prayed that night. While Brogan was trying to process the murder through poetry, Richard Beasley was busy transforming himself into an entirely different person. He dyed his hair brown, then used Ralph Geiger's credentials to rent an apartment, order prescription pain meds, and apply for several machinist jobs.

But work no longer suited Richard, and he believed that the murder had gone so smoothly that he could turn it into a career of sorts, preying on other men who'd fallen on hard times. So, he placed yet another job ad up on Craigslist, one that would lead to David Pauley filling up a U-Haul and driving his stuff up to rural Ohio. About the same time he was hitting the road, Richard and Brogan were digging the man's grave. Richard Beasley had firmly believed that no one would come looking for the divorced,

lonely middle-aged men whose lives he sought to steal. But not everyone was unloved and unwanted as he, and in the end, it was the love of a twin sister that brought down one of the most monstrous killers who ever stalked the Midwest. In November 2012, a jury convicted Brogan Rafferty of two dozen criminal counts, including murder, robbery, and kidnapping. The judge told Rafferty that he had been dealt a lousy hand in life, but that he had embraced the evil and sentenced him to life without parole. The following year, Richard Beasley was also convicted of murder and was sentenced to death. Throughout his trial he maintained that he was innocent, but for a man who was willing to kill over and over to maintain his freedom, what are just a few more lies on top of a bill for murder? murder. I used to use Craigslist a whole bunch and I only ever had one weird or creepy thing happen to me.

To this day I still don't know if it was real or just some elaborate prank, but it definitely left me with a feeling of unease for a few weeks after. So I grew up here in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, and my parents were fresh off the boat from Kazakhstan. I'll give you a minute to make the Borat joke I know you're dying to make, but once it's out of your system, understand that as Kazakhs growing up in Brighton Beach, I grew up hearing a wide variety of Slavic and Central Asian languages. I knew Kazakh from mom and dad, I learned a lot of Russian due to our neighbors. Heck, we even had a Uzbek landlord who lived on the ground floor and my dad worked with a guy from Turkmenistan who used to sing me old Turkmen nursery rhymes. Needless to say, when it came to being a broke college student at NYU, and I heard

people would pay for translation services on Craigslist, I was desperate enough to post an ad. I was surprised how many people needed translation work done, but it was mostly inquiries stemmed from the Russian to English ad I posted in Russian, and only a handful of emails or calls came from people wanting the reverse. Then, one day I get an email from a random email address asking if I could translate some Russian into English. I replied saying sure, and they ended up emailing me two paragraphs of what looked like handwritten letters. I say they were letters, but they didn't have any names or addresses attached to them. Maybe there was an address and the guy just didn't show me the envelope or whatever But either way, I noticed something was wrong almost right away

First of all, the paper was filthy I could barely make out the lettering but the sender assured me that he'd pay for whatever I could translate Secondly, although the letters or notes were written in Cyrillic characters, it most definitely wasn't Russian. I told the person it'd take me a few days to get the translation done, making up some lie about being busy with college, but really, I was asking around my neighbors to see if any of them recognized the language. Eventually, a neighbor of mine recognized that the language was Serbian. They didn't speak any Serbian, but they knew enough to recognize it and more importantly, they knew

someone could translate it. I printed out two black and white copies of the photos, the lettering was more pronounced that way, then headed over to this old Serbian guy's apartment on Neptune Avenue. The guy was super friendly at first, inviting me in and offering me tea. I accepted, offering him a little box of bundavara, which are Serbian pastries, in return mainly as a thank you for doing the translation for me. We sit down, he puts on his glasses, I hand him the printouts and he begins to study them. He stops at one point to point out the obvious, very difficult to read, but as he continues his happy little expression fades and he begins to look very, very serious. I'm just sitting there, notebook and pen in hand,

ready to jot down what the notes say, but the Serbian guy isn't saying anything. I have to actually press him for even just an idea of what the notes said, and at that point, he just looks up at me and says, I don't know, I think it's something about the war. I assumed the war he was referring to were the series of conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. These were particularly cruel conflicts that often had an ethnic or religious slant to them, so as soon as he said that, I got a particularly bad feeling in my gut. When the guy had finally stopped reading, he looked at me from over his glasses and asked, where did you get this? I was honest and I told him I'd been sent it as part of a small translation business I ran through Craigslist.

But who sent this? I had to tell him I didn't know. The email address was just a hotmail account, some non-English word and some numbers for a username. And it wasn't like I pressed my clients for any personal information. All I was interested in was their PayPal ID. The guy began shaking his head. I don't like this, he said. This is very bad. Very bad people sent you this, do you understand? At that point, I was so desperate to know what the notes said that I was just about ready to strangle him and in the politest way possible, I asked him to cut

the nonsense and tell me what he'd read. I wrote all this down and it's fragmented and the translation might not be the best, but here it goes. In a large house found near Bostahavin, all the phone lines have been cut. No other means of communication. Don't believe the commander if he says we're doing fine. We finished off everyone in Fajar. But everything since then, the situation has been worse and worse. It started after we marched into the hills near

Bracovici. During the march, totally disappeared. We sent out a small patrol but they too stopped answering their radios and we haven't heard from them since. Dragan thinks, afraid, but no one shows it. Found salvation when we came across the house. There were Turks inside and we took them outside. We had to cut off the girl's head to shut her up. The other bodies were still moving when we carried them away and tossed them. So many bullets, more didn't help. We buried them deep, but in the morning the pit had been dug up. They were gone. The Turk fighters here are different. Kolha, they only come at night. It's like they can see in the dark. You must ask a man to send everyone, everyone they can, Kolha, or I'm afraid we won't live to see the dawn. I remember the chill that ran through the air when the guy stopped talking and I suddenly understood why he was so agitated after reading through the notes. I thought he might be able to provide some insight into what he thought was happening to the author, but apart from a brief primer of the Yugoslav civil wars, he couldn't say much.

What he did say was that the Turks the author was referring to were most likely, probably Bosnian Muslims as the Serb paramilitaries used Turk as a pejorative for them. But without any information on dates and units, it was almost impossible to discern who wrote the note and when it was written. However, it's quite clear that it was written to a person named Kolia or Kolha. Maybe a relative of the author or this Kolia person was looking for them years after the war. Maybe they weren't holding out hope of finding a live person either, and maybe one of them had crossed the war. Maybe they weren't holding out hope of finding a live person either, and maybe one of them had crossed the Atlantic at some point since the early 90s,

hence why it was me that got an email stemming from my Craigslist ad. These were all things that were running through my head at the time, and for the most part, the Serbian guy agreed, but he did have something to add before I left. Many bad things happened during the war, he said, and this too was very bad, but he did have something to add before I left. Many bad things happened during the war, he said, and this too is very bad, but it's also, how do you say, proklet. He used a Serbian word, but it was one with its roots in the Russian word of the same meaning, so it didn't need any translating. Cursed. I'm not going to lie, I was definitely freaked out by whatever vague story the notes told, but I just thought it was some small piece, a clue even,

in some wider, more tragic tale. I just went home, sent the original email or their translation, got paid, and went about my business. It wasn't until much later on that I started to really mull over what the notes said, and there was this one week where I basically obsessed over it, trying to interpret meaning, filling in the gaps, and even googling a couple of the place's names. But I think it's that line that reads, bodies were still moving that sticks with me the most. They talked about decapitating someone, and the body was still moving? I'm not saying anything supernatural was happening. I imagine a headless person is a lot like a headless chicken.

But then I start to consider the part where it said, it's like they can see in the dark, and my imagination really starts to run away with me. For quite a while I'd have done almost anything to know what happened to the person who wrote those notes, but I think I'd be better off not knowing. There are two main components to this story. One, I used to make money on the side by selling the loot from storage unit auctions on Craigslist. Two, my brother spent some time in prison for almost killing a guy in a car accident while he was under the influence. Part one of the story takes place while my brother was in prison,

and part two is the weekend of his release about 6 or 7 months later. Part 1 I bought the keys to this one storage unit that had a whole bunch of cool stuff in it. We're talking a big flat screen LED TV back when those were still brand new, a laptop computer and three vintage motorcycles. As you can imagine, I was pretty much over the moon and after I posted the Craigslist ads and the replies started pouring in, I knew I was on track to make a ton of money. The only trouble was I didn't really have any place to keep the bikes, so much to my wife's anger, I kept one in the garage, one in the TV room, and the smaller dirt bike in the hallway of our house.

The only thing that kept her off my back was the promise that they'd fetch us a lot of cash. And in the advertisement I posted on Craigslist, I promised to knock 20% off the total asking price if someone bought all the bikes together, even more if the offer came fast enough. And what do you know? It seemed to work. I got a call a few days later from a guy who was offering cash for all three bikes. He could also bring his own bike trailer over to transport them away, which really was the answer to my prayers. So the guy arranges a trailer

then calls me again one evening to confirm my address. I pass on my details and he says he'll be stopping by in the morning. But during the call, every so often I had to stop giving the address so I could shush my two-year-old who was apparently still discovering just how loud they could yell. So more than once I had to apologize and start over. The guy looking to buy the bikes seemed like a little annoyed. Like the kind of annoyed when you know someone doesn't have kids of their own But he still said he'd be over in the morning to pick them up The next morning comes I've got the bike all ready to go but 10am comes and goes and there's no sign of the buyer

10.30am rolls around and there's still no show so I try giving the guy a call only to find the phone had been disconnected. He wasn't just ducking me, he didn't try to make an excuse, the phone was just straight up dead. Don't get me wrong, my little craigslist deals went sideways all the time. People tried to haggle you down at the last minute or simply change their minds so it wasn't like it was anything out of the ordinary. But a totally disconnected phone line. Very weird and you can understand why that particular cancel stuck in my mind.

Part 2 Like I mentioned previously, about six months after this little incident, my brother gets out of prison. As you can probably guess it was a real intense time for our whole family especially since he asked to move into my place until we could find a place to stay long term. I told him if he touched a drop of alcohol he was out on his butt but other than that he could stay as long as he wanted. About two weeks into his stay I was having a beer out on the porch after the kids had gone to bed when my brother came out to join me. I was a little apprehensive, thinking he might just be trying to get my guard down so he could ask for a beer or something. But I was just being paranoid, and we had a little heart-to-heart that night.

Me drinking Pabst and him drinking Faygo. We talked about stuff he'd missed, how mom and dad really felt about his conviction, but most relevant to this story, we talked about his time in prison. It was a long, meandering conversation that honestly is a little hazy on my part thanks to the beers, but I remember mentioning something about how I felt bad for him, being locked up with all those scumbags. My brother's a jerk, but he's not a bad person. He was torn up after the accident, almost took his own life, and he took his jail time on the chin because he knew he deserved it. I just hated the idea of him being locked up with actual evil

people. People that might hurt him, manipulate him, or coach him into being an actual criminal and not just some idiot who'd like to drink too much. His reply kind of caught me off guard for a second because instead of telling me some story about talking to murderers or bank robbers, he says something like, there's actually some pretty good guys in there, you'd be surprised. I guess maybe I would, I mean my brother ended up inside. All he made was one dumb but dangerous mistake. But still, I just guffawed and told him to give me one credible example. Then, I swear to God, he started telling me this story about this biker guy he'd shared a cell with for a few months. He wasn't just any old biker dude either.

He was president of the local chapter of quite a well-known one-percenter club. Not the kind of guy you want to mess around with, but apparently also a man with a code. He once told my brother a story about how one of his associates found a guy selling a bunch of motorcycles. He planned to get the guy's address, roll up in the middle of the night, kill the guy selling them, then steal the bikes. The only reason they called the job off was because the associate had heard kids on the other end when he was talking to the seller on the phone. It took a minute for the penny to drop,

but I remember interrupting my brother to ask where they'd seen the bikes advertised, and when he said online, I swear my heart rate went into overdrive for a second. I threw out a flurry of questions, asking him what website, what models the bikes were, where their prospective victims could have been located. My brother didn't have any answers to these questions, just a few vague answers before he hit me with a question of his own. I just straight up told him I thought the biker's mark was me, and I told him all about the bikes I'd won in the unit auction, how the buyers seemed to just drop off the face of the earth. To this day, I'm convinced it was me, and that the only thing that kept me and my family safe were the whales and my toddler. My brother doesn't seem to think that was the case, and insisted that the bikers only targeted other bikers,

kind of like the way the mafia only kill and rob other mafia guys, but I'm not so sure. Like I said, even these days I have this feeling in my gut that screams, you dodged a bullet. I was always told that having kids would change my life. They just didn't tell me that it had saved my life at some point too. The End Born February 12th of 1986 in Syracuse, New York, Philip Markoff was the second and youngest son of Susan and Richard Markoff, the latter of which was employed as a dentist. From an early age, Philip proved an exceptional student. He was bright, well-mannered, and outgoing, gaining membership of the National Honor Society while attending Vernon Verona Sherrill High School.

After graduating in 2004, Markoff enrolled as a pre-med student at State University of New York at Albany, then went on to attend Boston University School of Medicine in 2007. By this time, he was also engaged to be married to a woman named Megan McAllister. then went on to attend Boston University School of Medicine in 2007. By this time, he was also engaged to be married to a woman named Megan McAllister. Philip and Megan had met while volunteering at Albany Medical Center Hospital Emergency Room and had planned their wedding for the date of August 14th, 2009. But the couple's wedding would never arrive, as Philip was harboring a dark, dark secret. You see, by day, Philip wore the mask of a young, upwardly mobile medical student.

But by night, he took on another persona, one woman named Tricia Leffler made her way to the Weston Copley Place Hotel in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. Tricia was an escort and had arranged a date with a man over Craigslist who'd given her what she assumed was a false name. But fake or not, that name was her ticket to a room on the third floor of the hotel where a man had promised her a generous amount for a night of her company. She later said that he seemed genuine, a little skittish perhaps but nothing out of the ordinary for a first timer. But when she knocked on the hotel room door and the man welcomed her inside, he proved to have a very different kind of fun in mind. Tricia remembered being told, don't look at me very different kind of fun in mind. Trisha remembered being told, don't look at me, as soon as they were alone.

She then felt what turned out to be the barrel of the handgun being shoved in the back of her head before the man forced her to her knees. When he did so, she believed she was going to be killed, but when she felt him securing her hands behind her back with electrical tape, it seemed he had something even worse in store for her before the end. Luckily for Tricia, Tricia was relatively unharmed, as all her John cared to do that night was rob her of her valuables. But Tricia was no novice, she'd been robbed before, only this time, it was different. She later told police that unlike previous robberies, this perpetrator had seemed to take their time over the affair.

He was obviously new to armed robberies, but she added that he exuded a sense of gratification while he restrained her, almost like he was getting off on the sickening power dynamic. She was later found bound and gagged on the hotel room floor by terrified housekeeping staff, who immediately alerted the Boston Police Department. 25-year-old Jalisa Brisman was a young model who lived in New York City, but her career had her taking trips all over the country. Most were legitimate modeling jobs, some were slightly less than wholesome. She used to tell me she would do these topless or bikini parties all over the country,

said friend and photographer 34-year-old Matthew Terhune. They would pay her a thousand dollars to go to these really expensive parties and give drinks or pass out food. But she never said anything about being a call girl or an escort. When we questioned her about whether there was anything shady, she said, oh no, that's gross. Regardless of her reasons, Jaleesa's work brought her to the Boston Marriott Copley Place on the night of April 14th, 2009, and it would prove to be her last night on Earth. Much like Tricia Leffler, Jaleesa had been given the false name of Andy, but it's likely she understood the need for discretion and headed up to the hotel room without a thought.

But unlike the incident with Tricia, there seemed to be something Jaleesa didn't like about the man she saw when he opened the hotel room. Perhaps he looked different from a picture he'd shown her, or perhaps it was because he was holding a pistol in his hand. Security cameras later showed that Jalisa had attempted to run, but had been dragged back into the room by the man inside. She was later found by housekeeping, but unlike Tricia Leffler, she was a bloody, lifeless mess, lying in a pool of her own blood on the carpet. Her attacker had dragged her into the room where she had apparently continued to resist him, enough for him to strike her with the base of his pistol.

Jalisa went down, but came up swinging, so the man struck her again, and again, and again, until she lay bleeding and twitching on the carpeted floor. How in the world the hotel's occupants didn't hear the shot is a mystery. But when Jaleesa Brissman's body was later found by police, she had a single bullet wound to her head, executed after her attacker fractured her skull. She only had a zip tie around one of her wrists, which means she'd fought valiantly until the very end.

In the hours that followed, Boston PD homicide detectives found themselves poring over the Marriott's security camera footage when one of them noticed someone familiar. It was a man who looked remarkably similar to the suspect of their Weston Hotel robbery of just a few days prior. Naturally, the police became very interested in apprehending the suspect before he could strike again. If he'd escalated from robbery to murder so quickly, there's no telling what havoc he might wreak in the near future. It took just 48 hours for their man to strike again. Cynthia Melton was an exotic dancer who danced at the Cadillac Lounge in Providence. But Cynthia had a side gig advertising laugh dances on Craigslist. She was surprised how popular the ads were and found the private dances could sometimes be incredibly lucrative. On April 16th of 2009, she arranged to meet with a client she had met through the erotic services section at the Warwick Holiday Inn Express.

The man had scheduled her meeting for 11pm, but once inside the room, a man wearing a baseball cap pulled a gun, made her lie face down on the floor, and bound her with the same type of plastic ties used on Brissman. The attacker then attempted to silence her with a ball gag, stuffing it into her mouth before securing the ties to the back of the head. Cynthia later told police that the tall, blonde young man had been extremely nervous, and that he was visibly shaking as he ransacked her purse for cash and credit cards, telling her, Don't worry, I'm not going to kill you, just give me the money. Thankfully at that point, Cynthia's husband happened to knock on the door as he became concerned at the dead silence inside the room. When he opened it, the tall blonde man pointed

a gun at him. Both men fled the scene in terror, but it was yet another opportunity for the police to gather evidence on their suspect. They somehow managed to trace the phone he was using to a nearby Walmart and later discovered their attacker had purchased a baseball cap that was worn during the robbery. That was how the police discovered the killer's name, and his name was Philip Markoff. On April 20th, Philip Markoff was apprehended during an apparent routine traffic stop in Walpole, Massachusetts, while he and his fiancée were on their way to Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut. During his 70-minute police interview,

Megan McAllister vehemently defended her boyfriend, denying he had anything to do with the Boston Hotel murders. Oh no, no, no. He tells me everything. He doesn't go on Craigslist, she said. offended her boyfriend, denying he had anything to do with the Boston hotel murders. Oh no, no, no. He tells me everything. He doesn't go on Craigslist, she said. I mean, he's not going to find work or anything, you know. When asked if he seemed to be spending a lot of nights away from their apartment, McAllister found the idea absurd. He doesn't have any great friends, she said. He has a couple friends at BU that I don't even know that well, but we don't hang out with people that much. We don't have money to go out, so it's like we're in the apartment 24-7.

He doesn't have a life because he's in medical school. When detectives showed her surveillance photos of Markov taken on one of the nights of the crimes, she began to realize they believed that her fiancé resembled the suspect. Yet still, she defended him. He complains about money all the time, that, you know, we have no money, so he's not going to rob somebody, she said. He'll go to the casino to try to win money, he's not going to rob somebody. Markov also denied being the Craigslist killer, but by then, police had tracked emails he had sent Brisbane to his Quincy apartment, and one of his victims had identified him from a picture. When police took him in for questioning that day, he was so arrogant that he was wearing the shoes he wore the night of Brisbane's killing, with her blood still splattered on them.

Detectives asked if he had been at any downtown hotels in recent weeks, if perhaps he might have been meeting with women behind his fiancée's back and was too ashamed to admit it. Sometimes, Philip, when things like this happen, cheating I mean. It's a pretty ugly situation. Detective Dennis Harris is purported to have said, We don't mean them to happen. It doesn't make you a bad person, but it only makes things worse if you lie about it. After repeated questioning about where Markov was on the night of the crimes, Detective Harris asked if he was getting frustrated.

Yeah, because you keep on asking me the same questions, Markov said. I didn't tie up and rob anybody. I told you I don't know what you're talking about. So can you get me an attorney? Markov was still insistent on his innocence when the police chose to detain him on grounds he was a flight risk. His fiancée, on the other hand, was beginning to doubt him. Is there any reason for me to be, like, scared to go home with this person? she asked. Do you have any reason to fear him? one of the detectives replied.

Megan told him no, that she wasn't scared of Markov. But what we also know is that she didn't go back to their Quincy apartments that evening, instead heading back to her native New Jersey to be with her parents. Clearly, she knew something terrible had happened, something Markoff wasn't innocent of. On April 21st, when Markoff was arraigned in the case of Brisma's murder, the prosecutor stated that a semi-automatic handgun, wrist restraints, and duct tape had been found in Markov's apartment, all of which matched the varieties used at the crime scenes. Markov made several attempts to take his own life while being held at the Nashua Street Jail. One attempt was made three days after his arrest, and this seems to have been the incident that confirmed his guilt in most people's minds.

Even after the gun and duct tape was found at his apartment, Markov's fiancée was insistent on his innocence. She called him beautiful inside and out, but after him attempting to take his own life, she seems to have accepted his guilt. Markov then made an additional attempt at taking his own life after his fiancée called off the wedding, and another attempt on the day his wedding was to have taken place. On June 11th, she visited Markov a second time and told him she did not plan to see him again for a long period of time, if ever. At various times he was on watch or in the jail's psychiatric unit,

but it seems Markov wouldn't let anything stand between him and the abyss. On August 15th of 2010, exactly one year and one day after his wedding was to have taken place, Philip Markov was found dead in his jail cell. He had somehow crafted a knife using a pen, an open flame, and a piece of metal, a common method for creating what's known as a prison shank. He then used this makeshift blade to open up arteries in his ankles, neck, and legs. Philip had also blocked off his own airway with a wad of toilet paper before placing a plastic bag over his head, tightening it with a roll of gauze that had been smuggled out of the prison's infirmary. The correctional officers who discovered Markov's body were horrified to discover that he had written his former fiancé's name and their pet names for each other in blood in the cell wall. Photographs of Markov and Megan McAllister were scattered all around his lifeless body,

almost like they were the last images Markov wanted to see before clinical death set in. Some of us might be glad to hear that a predator killer, who targeted some of the most vulnerable people in society, met his end in a miserable, painful way. But spare a thought for Megan McAllister. Markov taking his own life was highly publicized in the weeks following his demise, and we can safely assume that Megan got word of how her name was written in blood on Philip's cell wall. Perhaps this was his own messed up way of apologizing, but it's also clear that the act is one that will haunt Megan for the rest of her natural life. A reminder of the man she wanted

to marry, a man who turned out to be a monster, who wrote both her name and his story in blood. To be continued... We know how he died because he passed away in our parents' spare room. There's just a big gap between him deciding to backpack around Mexico and the state he was in when he finally returned. So, he saw an advertisement on Craigslist for a job on a ranch down in Mexico and since he was taking a year out before college, he figured it'd be the perfect way to expand his mind a little before heading off to lose himself in books. Anyway, I think it was June, he packed up his stuff and headed off to the bus station where a bus would take him down to El Paso. My mom and dad get a phone call a few days later just letting them know he'd arrived safely on the ranch. There were a bunch of other Americans there apparently, hence why the ad mentioning something about fluency in Spanish not necessary and he was

settling in nicely after getting a general orientation. He then promises to call back every week or so just to keep our parents updated on what's going on, if he needed anything mailed to him and stuff like that. Then one week, the phone call stopped. Mom and dad tried calling the ranch he was working at only to be told my brother had moved on. They'd exhausted trying to call his little prepaid cell phone. It used to just ring out but one day it was disconnected so there was basically no reaching him. Not long after, mom and dad reported him missing and this grim realization set in that we might not ever see him ever again. About four or five months after he'd first departed for Mexico and with the police

still having no idea where he was, mom and dad got a knock on their door. Dad says he was terrified it'd be the cops with the news that they'd all been terrified of getting, but he says he was so happy that he burst into tears when he saw that the person at the door was none other than my brother. Only he wasn't like how he remembered. He'd gone out there looking healthy and feeling happy, and he came back skeletal, with a crippling addiction to opiates. We never really got to the bottom of Howie gotten hooked. He only talked about his time in Mexico once, and it was super vague and nondescript. Mom and dad got him on a methadone program, hoping it would help him get clean, but it turned out to be the thing that killed him.

Swallowed too much of the stuff one night and just never woke up. I try not to wonder about him too much, like I'm not really sure I want to know what changed him so much, what he saw or did to cause such a drastic transformation. I just try to remember him at his best. How the best big brother ever went down to Mexico for a summer, but how someone completely different came back. This story occurred during the 2017 Christmas holiday. I was living in a city about 700 miles away from where I'd grown up. Every year for the last five I'd return to my parents' home to celebrate the holiday with them. This year would be no different.

My job at the time was to provide customer service for a global computer software company based in my state. Five days a week I spoke to customers, some furious and some clueless. The call that spawned this mess started like almost any other. The gentleman on the phone had a few questions regarding his warranty. I answered them as well as I could. Once or twice there was a brief gap in the call as I waited for the computer to give me the information I needed. As you do during periods of silence, the caller began making small talk. I joined in, not thinking anything bad would become of it. Over the course of the discussion he made note of my accent and asked what state I was from. I answered and it turned out that he lived in that state.

Before I knew it we were discussing our hometowns and he turned out to live just a town over from the one I'd grown up in. The entire conversation seemed innocent. When he asked if I ever went back home I said I did every Christmas. Nothing more was said after that. He thanked me for my help and hung up. The call was so ordinary that I'd forgotten about it by the end of my shift. A few weeks would pass and I would take a flight back home to celebrate with my parents. The scary part of the story begins here. It was December 23rd and I was helping my folks put up the tree. The doorbell rang and when I opened the door, a man I didn't recognize stood on the porch.

I kindly asked him if on the porch. I kindly asked him if I could help. He looked at me, puzzled and said something like, Mike, come on, it's Daryl. These are not our actual names, of course. When I talked to you on the phone, we made plans to hang out. I honestly had no idea what this man was talking about. He reminded me, and the discussion slowly came back to me. I did remember some vague talk about us possibly getting together, but no vital information had been shared. I was just trying to be nice like you do to strangers with common connections. I never had any intention of meeting the guy. Most men understand this silly game, but he obviously didn't. He hit me

back into a corner. I didn't want to be rude so I made up a story about being needed around the house. This wasn't a complete lie. I suggested we could possibly meet up the next day and asked for his phone number. This answer seemed to please him and he left. I'm ashamed to admit, it took me a few hours for the oddity of the situation to hit me. First and foremost, how in God's name did he get my parents' address? I know for a fact I never gave it to him. I'm still not sure how he got my last name. The creepiness of the situation made me shiver. Now I found myself at a crossroad. Did I call him and ask how he found me

or do I just ghost him and hope I didn't hear from him again? After a long night of tossing and turning I chose the latter. Call me a wuss all you want but I very much dislike confrontations. This path just sounded easier to me and it's too bad it didn't work. Christmas Eve arrived and I planned to spend it with my extended family. Things went well until my phone began to ring at around 10.30 that evening. No one I knew would call me that late or so I thought. I answered with a bit of a curt tone in my voice and Daryl came at me with an attitude from the start. Hey, I'm the one that should be mad. We were supposed to go out tonight, and you bailed on me.

His tone set me off. I told him I never promised him anything, and he shouldn't assume someone would be free to drop everything on Christmas to meet up with a stranger. He began to talk, but I cut him off. I continued by asking him how he got my personal information and told him I didn't appreciate him showing up unannounced. Uh, you told me your last name when we talked about hanging out. Don't you remember? I just looked up your parents address in the phone book. I was at a loss for words. I still insist I never gave him my last name but somehow he got it.

Him saying I did made me even madder. There was no way I was going to let this dude gaslight me. I'd had enough of his games. And as calmly as possible I told him to never contact me again and hung up. As far as I was concerned it was over. Only after I calmed down did I begin to wonder how he got my cell number. And this made me furious. So furious I threw my phone against the wall as hard as I could in a fury, and now that I think about it, it was probably the right idea.

Christmas Day was spent with my parents and went by quietly except for one creepy interruption. I'm not sure Daryl was involved, but it's highly likely. About the time we were sitting down for dinner, my parents' home phone rang. My mom answered it and said hello a number of times, but the caller didn't speak. My mom, being busy, shrugged her shoulders and hung up. My guard was up and considered the recent events. I figured it was Daryl trying to intimidate my family. Fortunately, I'd kept my family out of the business and they thought nothing of it. The subsequent incidents I was expecting never came and the remainder of my time there went by

smoothly. My last encounter with Daryl was probably the creepiest of them all. The morning of the 27th was my final day in town. I was scheduled for an 11am flight. My dad and I were heading out at around 8 and I was standing next to the car giving my mom one last hug. I happened to glance over my shoulder and caught sight of someone standing behind a tree. They were about 50 yards away but I could tell it was Daryl. This shocked me, but I was able to hide it from my parents. I insisted to my dad we needed to go. There was no way for me to know what he had planned, but I had a hunch my presence was keeping him there. As we passed him, he stepped behind the tree, but the tree was too small to conceal him,

and our eyes met one another's, and I could see the hate seething from him. It was honestly one of the more surreal experiences of my entire life. My dad noticed me at that point and made a comment about how only a crazy person would be out on a 27 degree morning and he had no idea how right he was. The flight home went off without a hitch. I was relieved to be back to somewhere I felt safe. The possibility of Daryl doing something to my parents stayed with me for several months but things turned out to be just as I thought. I must have been the sole focus of his obsession or whatever you want to call it. There was also the worry that he'd show up in my apartment but that never materialized, thank god. Work was awkward. With every call I

expected to hear a daryl on the other end. That too never occurred and now that I'm working and living elsewhere I'm not as worried. Nonetheless, I'm always aware of my surroundings. You can never be sure when your enemy may decide the time is right to pounce. It may all be a product of an overactive imagination, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. After all, I've got a family to worry about now. To be continued... Over three years have passed since this all played out. In light of this, I feel it's time to share my part with others. I can't think of a better place than this channel. A platform used by millions of complete strangers every day.

Despite hiding behind a burner accountum, sure you do enough digging you'll discover my name. But whatever, you can't hide forever. This all started in mid-2016. I applied for and was hired as a cashier trainee at a local department store. Everyone at the store seemed nice. I got along especially well with another new hire. We'll call her Beth for the sake of clarity.

I believed our shared unsureness with the job was what made us such fast friends. And friends we were. For the better part of the year, we worked the same shifts and often stayed the night over at one another's apartments. I even served as a bridesmaid at her sister's wedding. That's why what happened next just threw me for such a loop. As the Thanksgiving of 2017 approached, the search for a couple of people to move up to customer service began. Both Beth and I put our names into the hat. It never once entered my mind that it wouldn't be both of us that got the jobs. In a move that shocked a lot of people, I was chosen but Beth was not. What I didn't know at the time was she had more than one customer complaint on her file.

Most assumed that this was what stopped her promotion. Although this caused a small amount of dismay, Beth appeared to have taken it in stride. I had no doubt had she kept her nose clean, she would have been working alongside me the next time an opening came up. Even though the job situation was completely out of my hands, it did drive a wedge between us. We were working different shifts most of the time. When we shared a day off, she'd always have some reason to flake out on me. The next string of events would shed a little light on what she had been doing on her off time. The holidays came and went. I was now able to relax a bit since I'd

first taken the customer service job. This is when a 25 year old guy in sporting goods caught my eye. Let's call him Mike. Things went slow in the beginning. We'd swing by one another's departments and flirt a little. A few months passed until we decided to take the next step. All was well until the day I received a text from Beth. It consisted of just three words and left me very surprised and confused. You backstabbing wench, she said. None of it made sense. I contacted her and was immediately hit with a torrent of curses and accusations. I eventually got her to explain the problem. Unbeknownst to me, Beth had been dating Mike when he and I met. According to her, everything was rosy with them until I came along and stole him away. I tried to explain my side. At no time did Mike ever mention another girl. If I would have known about the two of them, I definitely would have backed

off. She refused to listen, so I ended the call. I then contacted Mike, and he had a much different story. He claimed that they had only seen one another a handful of times. There was never anything close to a commitment spoken of. One interesting fact he mentioned was that Beth constantly droned on about a friend at work who had stabbed her in the back over a job. Based on her text, I could only assume she was talking about me. Things were now a lot clearer as to her behavior after I was promoted. Although very torn, I wasn't about to end the relationship at this point.

All I could do was pray that her and I would be able to work things out and I could get my friend back. It all had to be just a big misunderstanding. I was still under the foolish delusion that I could have them both in my life. Then, Beth took a high dive off the deep end, almost taking Mike with her. I still remember it like yesterday. I was working an evening shift as usual. Mike had the day off and was bumming around the house playing video games. About 8pm I got a call from him. Beth had just left a message saying that she was threatening to take her own life if he didn't come talk to her. She had sent him countless texts all day begging him to come over. He had been ignoring her up to this point. I made the mistake

of feeling sorry for her and suggested that he should go see her. This sounded like the perfect chance for all of us to get together to work things out. I would join him in about an hour. We said our goodbyes and hung up. We now moved forward almost 45 minutes. I was making my way to Beth's apartment and I got a text from Mike. I almost screamed when I read it. It was a trick. She tried to kill me. Got away but stabbed a few times. Ambulance to hospital now. Though somewhat overwhelmed with a blend of emotions, I reached the hospital. After a brief panicked search, I found Mike. I was relieved to see him awake and talking.

His hands had several slashes and one strike had punctured his left shoulder. There was also a minor cut on his forehead which bled worse than the others. While the doctors stitched him up, Mike explained what had occurred. Things had started calmly but Beth quickly demanded that he break up with me. The violence began when he refused. She drew a steak knife from her pocket and attacked him. He fought her off and fled from the apartment. At the time he was being transported, she had barricaded herself in her place and refused to come out.

Any hope I had for our friendship was out the window now. I could care less what happened to Beth at this point. It was almost daybreak when Mike was allowed to go home. Our local news outlet was already beginning to report on the incident and Mike and I were curious to hear what had transpired overnight. And it turned out Beth had attempted to take her own life while locked in her apartment. Officers were able to breach the door, found her clinging to life after ingesting a bottle of Vicodin, and against all odds, doctors were able to save her life. She may have been better off dead. After Mike's testimony,

she agreed to a deal which saw her sentenced to 12 years in prison. I can assure you she's not made for it. I wouldn't be shocked if she didn't try to take her life again. I only hope that someone in there looks after her. With Beth finally put away, I expected Mike and I would be able to settle down and maybe make a family together. And I'm sad to say that the stress of the situation along with a few differences in beliefs

proved to be too much for us. We finally threw in the towel this past fall. Although things didn't work out, I wish him a long and happy life. As for the woman who caused all this misery, you can probably guess my wishes for her. Happy Holidays, Everyone To be continued... This problem is still technically going on, but because of recent events I think it'll be safe to share it here. To be brief, I purchased a high chair for an upcoming baby shower. The family member already had a similar chair and I decided to keep it for future births.

A year or more passed before I was notified of a recall of that specific item. Several children had been injured by it. I took it to the store I purchased it from just as the site instructed to get a refund. The young man at the counter greeted me with a kind smile and I informed him of the situation. The encounter got very weird after that. I'm not sure if he was trying to be funny, but the way he said it sounded very vindictive. We wouldn't want one of your little angels hanging himself, would we? It wasn't just what he said. He had a creepy smile as he said it. I became livid and demanded to talk to his manager. She soon came out of the back room

and I explained exactly what had occurred. When confronted, he insisted it was just a joke. I'm unsure of what occurred after that. The manager relieved him and her and I completed the return. I'd go on with my life and things were normal for the next week. The young man had all but completely disappeared from my memory. The following weekend, I found myself shopping in the very same store. My son was riding in the basket seat just like he always did. I happened to run into an old friend from high school. I was very excited to see her. I briefly lost focus on my son. My back was turned for literally no more than a minute. The two of us were talking when she pointed behind me and asked if I knew the boy who was

pushing my son up and down the aisle. This caused me to come unglued. I turned to see the very same young man pushing the cart holding my son back in my direction. As the cart approached I screamed at the man to let go. My son, who had up until that moment been having a blast, saw my reaction and began crying. Much as before the young man had a very casual reaction to the situation, he said something to the effect of,

Oh calm down lady, the kid's just having fun until you started freaking out. Now he's crying. It's no big deal. You should take a chill. A crowd had begun to assemble around us. Among the group was a store manager. He asked if he could help. I explained and demanded the police be called. We all returned to the office to discuss the

incident. Somehow, he managed to convince me the cops weren't needed and assured me the young man was going to be terminated. It seemed like a just punishment. So, I agreed and left the store with no intention of ever returning. Now, we come to this past week. Since the terrifying interaction I had with the young man, I had been staying close to home. Briefly, I thought that he may try to get revenge on me for getting him fired, but a month had passed without any problems. Food was starting to run low. I made my way across town to another store I sometimes shopped at. This place was actually less expensive but I disliked the quality of their products and avoided it. My shopping experience went off with no problems and the cashier was very courteous.

It was looking as if this place wasn't that bad after all. That wasn't until I was loading my groceries into my van. Everything was put away and I turned to return the cart to a nearby corral. As I looked up, my eyes locked with those of a young man, the very same I'd been having so much trouble with recently. It was like he'd appeared out of thin air. He had a smirk on his face and seemed to get a kick out of scaring me. He quietly chuckled before speaking. Your psycho behavior caused me to lose my job. But I wasn't fired like you wanted.

I've been there so long, they just let me quit. And now I'm working here. I was hoping I'd gotten away from you, but it looks like you have some crazy vendetta against me, lady. If you know what's good for you, you won't come back here. When he finished, I turned and walked back toward the store. In a panic, I just jumped in my car and locked the doors. I looked back and forth between the mirrors, half expecting him to just magically appear next to me. The tears came next.

They lasted several minutes until I was able to regain my composure and drive away. I knew now that I had to do something. I decided to stop in at the police station to see if I could get a restraining order. An officer heard my story and told me in not so many words that I had no grounds. No matter what I said, I was unable to convince him. Eventually, he came up with an idea. He promised to talk to the young man about his behavior. It was far from what I wanted, but I was going to have to accept it. A few days passed and the officer called to let me know that they had spoken, and it had gone well. The boy agreed to stay away from me and I assured the officer that I would do the same

And I thanked him and ended the call As I'm writing this, the date is November 8th, a Monday It's been six days since I last spoke to the young man With little other choice, I've returned to shopping at the first store I spoke of There's been no sign of trouble I'm hoping the officer's talk put a little bit of fear of God into him. He sounded very confident in his assessment. I'm sure the police would know better about these things than I do.

Yet there's a nagging little voice in the back of my mind, and something tells me I haven't seen the last of him. No one ever thought to warn me about customer service. I had to learn the truth myself. Over the ten years I dealt with customers, I built up quite a large file of terrible stories. This will be one of the worst. My career started at a home decor and clothing store that had just opened in my city. At the time, I was two months past my 18th birthday. Things had been going smoothly in my life until my dad gave me the bad news.

If I wanted to get my license, I'd have to get a job. It wasn't something I'd wanted to do. At that age, working rated one step away from just living torture in my young mind. I must say my opinion hasn't improved much since then. It didn't matter though. No driver's license rated even closer. It represented pure, unfettered freedom to me and I'd have done anything to get it. A few long weeks of job searching landed me a cashier position selling discount clothes and home goods.

I had no clue what to expect but I soon discovered that my assessment of having a job as being torture wasn't going to be far off. Just my first day I was screamed at by two separate women about an incorrect price. I was close to quitting just then but my mother convinced me to tough it out. Things would get easier, and a year seemed to fly by. I assumed because I had decided to stay when so many hadn't, I got a promotion. This was the day that I became a member of the customer service department. I was about to discover why all the girls in customer service were so miserable. Work was the same for the most part, except I was now full time and nothing stood between myself and every fat housewife who was having a bad day. I'm not being mean, this description will play a part in the story to be honest.

When something got messed up, I could usually calm the customer down and smooth things out. On one particular day, not a single thing I tried would work. I'd only been clocked in for about two hours. I was assisting another customer when I heard a ruckus going on a few registers over. When I heard the cashier say, You need to talk to customer service, ma'am. Every inch of my body tensed up. This customer was someone I'd had to deal with at least three times, and it never went well. She spoke loudly like normally normally but she was angry.

Her voice cut through you like a knife. She waddled her way over to the counter where I was standing and began yelling about us, trying to rip her off. Her fury grew with every word. When the color of her eyes began to darken my blood started to run cold. I didn't know such a thing was possible but I instinctively knew it couldn't be good. She must have known she was getting the result she wanted and demanded to see the manager. Unfortunately for both of us, I was the highest ranking employee available at that time. When I told her this, I made a mistake I still regret.

I let a smirk show on my face. This was when she slapped me the first time. I thought I'd been hit by a truck. Before I got the chance to come to my senses, a flurry of kicks and slaps fell upon me. It was soon to get even worse. I guess my attacker was crouching over me and losing her footing. All 300 pounds plus of her crashed down upon me. All the breath inside my body was knocked out and I started to feel like I was suffocating under her weight. I'm a small girl, just shy of 5 too. At the time I didn't even break 100 pounds. Every inch of my body told me to scream but

I couldn't. This made me panic which just worsened. I'm not sure what the others in the store were doing during this. I do know I was mere seconds away from blacking out when she rolled off of me. A large rush of air filled my lungs. I gulped and gasped for at least a minute. I was looking around, terrified that the attack was going to continue. When I did catch sight of the woman, I freaked out and crawled behind the counter. She was fighting to stand up, finally finding a pair of men to help her. Realizing she made a big mistake and likely a bit embarrassed, she quickly waddled from the store

and I didn't dare come out of hiding until the cops finally arrived. The paramedics checked me out and I was found to be okay. Several witnesses gave their statements but no one could identify her by name and apparently she only ever used cash when checking out. That night the local news showed a clip of the store's video asking for help in doing so but nothing ever came of it. She appeared to be MIA even though she was a frequent shopper for quite a while before that I do believe. It really made me lose a lot of faith in the justice system. It seemed like they just didn't

care after all I'd been through. For a long time, probably a year, I feared she'd return to the store or I'd see her around town. I'm happy to say that was 2012 and I haven't. I was allowed to take a few days off after the attack and my boss even offered to move me to the back. I think she thought I was going to quit. I will admit it was tempting but I didn't want to let that psycho scare me off. I continued doing customer service until this whole pandemic began and I got a job working from home. As I said at the start, this may have been a one off, if not the worst of my customer service stories. Now that I'm no longer working with the public I realize just how crazy some of them are. Let me leave everyone reading this with a

little bit of advice. If you ever find yourself in a situation similar to this, or any in which you don't feel comfortable. Just call the cops or security right away. I've seen men threaten cashiers and had women call me all kinds of disgusting names. The days of chivalry and good manners have passed. Keep yourself safe from the Karens. I guess I should start by telling a little about myself. I'm a 36-year-old female living in a large Midwestern metropolis that is not Chicago, and I'll leave it at that. The employer I'm about to refer to probably wouldn't like what I'm going to write about.

I'll be smart and leave out their name. As I sit down to write this, it is less than a week from Black Friday, the official start to the Christmas season. Myself, I am a big fan of the holiday. I grew up in a large family that celebrated all 12 of those days and those times are among my favorite memories. That's why some of the things I saw during my six or so years working customer service make me so sad. Although the holiday seasons held no monopoly on terrible customer behavior, the ones committed during the season of giving always seemed to be the most senseless. What I plan to do here is share a few examples of the things I saw. While not a list of least to worst, I think you'll agree the last of them is surely the

most terrible of them all. So, probably the first customer-on-customer fight I remember was on Black Friday. I was returning from a break and noticed two women arguing in the electronics section. I do admit I was curious and eavesdropped on their discussion. The gist of the problem was that there were only two remaining models of a certainly highly discounted TV. One of the women only wanted to purchase a single model. The second had to have both because, as she said, the sale is just too good to pass up. I think she had the intent of giving one as a present and keeping the other. The argument was already very heated by the time I had arrived. Some crude names were exchanged, causing one of the ladies to strike the other. She was understandably angry and ran off to find a manager.

The assailant took this opportunity to grab both TVs and run for the registers. She was checked out and halfway to her car before the victim returned. She was livid when she realized she'd been tricked. My next example was less head-shaking and far scarier. I will admit this was something I didn't witness first hand. This happened about a week prior to Christmas. A couple were in the store stocking up on food for their upcoming celebrations. Like the previous incident, an argument broke out over the last available product.

This time it was a frozen turkey. The exchange was heated but unlike some others I'd seen, this wasn't just two Karens slap fighting over a cheap item. The husband was furious from the start. Things got scarier when the small woman pushed the man's wife. He stepped in and punched the small woman, knocking her completely unconscious. To make things worse, she hit her head on the concrete floor when she landed. Everyone around just froze and went silent. From what I heard,

even the husband was shocked at what had happened and went quiet for a moment. He did regain his composure quickly, however, and both he and his wife fled from the store. Paramedics arrived soon after. From what was said on the news, the lady ended up being okay. I'm not sure if the couple were ever caught. The final store was the one that almost caused me

to quit my job. It happened a few days after Christmas of 2019. The store was packed, including customer service. As to what caused the incident, I only know that it had something to do with one of the participants banging their cart into the other. Anyone who's been in a busy store has expected this. It's certainly not a crime worth killing over. Unfortunately, the victim of this didn't think so. I think there had been a previous encounter but the rammer was able to get away. To their dismay however, their path of escape was blocked by the crowd at customer service. And right before her eyes, I watched in horror as the angry party caught up to their prey and stabbed her multiple times. She didn't seem scared afterwards either. She simply threw the weapon down and walked calmly from the store. Luckily for the victim, several of the nearby

customers knew what to do. They were to keep her alive long enough for the par, several of the nearby customers knew what to do. They were to keep her alive long enough for the paramedics to arrive and rush her off. Despite a lot of internal damage, surgeons were able to save her life. I haven't heard any updates on her condition since and I praise she's made a complete recovery. The attacker thankfully was arrested and is serving a sentence in prison. Since that time, the world has gone through a catastrophic illness and many lives have been altered forever, my family among them. I've been unable to return to work after my illness, which was a particularly nasty case. Unlike a lot of Americans, my income was only a small amount of what was being brought into the

home. Therefore, it looks like our Christmas will be a decent one. And as this story draws to a close, I beg you to keep in mind the many who have had their lives ruined through forces they could not control, and a few who are the authors of their own ruin. Just because this time of year may be one of joy and family, not all have much of either. Please, be kind to your neighbor and avoid squabbling over soulless material items. Even a little disagreement can quickly grow into a life versus death exchange. Carry the sentiment of kindness and brotherhood with you. Share it with all you meet. It could be just the thing a stranger has been searching for. Bless you all, and I hope everyone has a joyous and memorable holiday season.

I love Let's Read. To be continued... spent much like every other guy's. I accepted every credit card that was offered and then quickly maxed them all out buying stupid stuff like playstations and booze. As a result, my credit was in the toilet. When I desperately needed a car, it was almost impossible to get one. A lot of the places I tried to rent were denied to me because of it. I wasn't even able to get something as common as a bank account. Within a year, a small overdraft fee ballooned in almost $400 in late fees. Once I lost that account, no other bank was willing to take a chance on me. This meant I was forced to pay to cash my checks at check cashing places and customer service counters. Eventually, I settled in the customer service counter at a nearby Walmart. It was convenient and cheaper than a lot of the other places I'd been to before. They were more than happy to get my money and I was able to shop at the same place.

Basically a win-win for both of us. Around the end of 2009, I got my first real job. What I mean is I worked the usual 40 plus hours a week with the weekends off. The pay was double what I was used to and so was my tax return. I didn't yet become savvy about how and what to withhold, so by the time my check arrived I was sitting on almost $2,000. My first stop was to the Walmart to cash it. Having so much money made me both nervous and excited. For the entire course

of the transaction, I was a ball of nerves. I was terrified one of the people around me, even a cashier themselves, would knock me over the head for it. When the lady started counting the bills back to me, she practically was yelling out, hey, look at all this guy's money. I got scared and asked her to count quieter, which she did. I jammed the envelope into my pocket and fled to the bathroom. Locked safely inside a stall, I silently counted it out to myself. I packed it away in my front pocket and exited the bathroom, and only now did I feel safe enough to spend some of it. My primary purchase was a case of my favorite beer, along with a few of my favorite snacks.

I grabbed a few shirts and assorted other daily needs. With my shopping done, I checked out and headed out the door. I was now $300 poorer, but tonight was going to be one heck of a celebration. Surprisingly, my fear of robbery was all but gone. I was now far more focused on getting home and cracking one open. That's probably why I didn't notice the guy lurking around my car. He had been hidden in the shadows nearby, just waiting for me to come out. Gleefully unaware, I packed my goodies into my trunk. Only when I closed the hatch did he make himself visible. I was unsure of what he had in mind but he quickly removed

all doubt by raising a knife filled hand and demanded my money. I considered denying I had any but I realized that he had been the same man standing behind me in line at customer service. It would be pointless. I was already beginning to shake and trip over my words. My eyes became fixed on the knife. I'd always had a terrible fear of being stabbed and my body was acting accordingly. I was quickly devolving into a state of total panic. He began stepping forward which only made the problem worse. Then, like a guardian angel, a voice boomed out from behind me.

I reflexively turned to see two guys standing with a long line of carts. They were Walmart employees gathering up carts for the night. I stared for a second and the young guy repeated his question. Are you done with that cart? I can take it for you. To this day I'm not sure how it happened but I became capable of speech suddenly and offered to bring the cart to him. I'd estimated the two guys were about 7-10 yards away and this would be the chance I needed. Quickly, I spun the cart around and began running toward them. I wasn't aware if I was being chased at this moment. I was running on 100% fear. As I got within a few feet, I yelled out to them to run.

They paused for a moment but must have seen the knife or sensed my fear and followed close behind. I eventually let go of the cart as I got closer to the store's doors. I didn't dare stop until I reached the very same customer service counter that had created this whole nightmare, and through quick breaths, I blabbed out my situation until one of the associates called 911. I continued looking around for my assailant, but I never saw him again, and the cops did their thing. Only after they had left was I clear-headed enough to thank the guys for helping me. They walked with me as I returned to my car to leave.

We shook hands and I made my way home. I still see one of the guys occasionally when I stop in at a Walmart and remember to thank him, even 11 years later. My would-be robber was eventually arrested on another crime, and I got the satisfaction of seeing him locked up for a few years. I hope he's learned his lesson, and no one else had been victimized by him. However, my life has taught me

people like that rarely reform. Unfortunately, good people like you and me have to suffer for it. This was a few years ago, just after I'd left college. I'd left college. I'd been working at Walmart for a while before moving to the customer service counter. My first holiday season was almost my last. After experiencing the post-Christmas returns period, I'd threatened to quit if my boss didn't move me out. Thankfully, she relented and I was given my own apartment. That's where I would stay until the next year's returns rush. I was doing my regular thing in electronics when my boss came to me for a favor. One of the girls scheduled to work customer service had just quit on the spot.

She couldn't spare anyone else and she knew I'd worked there before. I told her no before she could even finish, but she continued to beg. As one last desperate move, she offered to give me New Year's Eve and day off. It was an offer too good to refuse, and I reluctantly agreed. In spite of the desk being backed up to the doors, my fellow co-worker and I were blowing through the line fast. People seemed to be a bit nicer than they had the previous year. That was until I began assisting this unkempt looking man. He had a car seat for a toddler that he wanted to return. The guy seemed a little out of it. I had asked him twice about the receipt before he pulled this crumpled piece of paper

from his pocket and handed it to me. I unfolded it and began the refund process. As I took the seat from the counter and sat it in a nearby basket, I made a passing comment to a co-worker about the guy returning it because he needed to get high. It was just something that I expected from the area, something to that effect. I know it was in bad taste, but my co-worker laughed and I returned to the counter to give the guy his money. He was staring a hole through me and gritting his teeth. He said, I heard that. I'd watch your back if I were you. I could tell he meant business. I didn't want to draw attention so I apologized under my breath and quickly handed him his money. Before he was able to say anything else I called for the next

customer. He reluctantly stepped away but remained close by continuing to give me a death stare for several minutes. There was something about the look that terrified me. Although I kept working, a feeling of nausea boiled in my guts until he finally left. The next three hours dragged by and because of the incident my mood had taken a drastic downturn. I was overjoyed to see it end but terrified of what may await me outside. There was no way I was going to my car alone. I went to seek out a co-worker that I'd been dating on and off for a while. He agreed to walk me out to my car and we stopped just inside the doors to look out. I didn't see the guy so we continued on. The two of us stopped again briefly but there was still no sign of him

anywhere. Customers were coming and going, driving by us. Nothing looked off and we headed across the lot to my car. I was relieved and beginning to think that I had just been overreacting. I knew it was a stupid thing to say but I didn't know what the outcome would be. Then a car came out of nowhere and began racing up from behind us. The headlights were blinding and I just began to panic and I froze. If it wasn't for my companion, I may have been run down. He pushed me between two cars, following close behind. As the car sped by, the driver hurled a disgusting name at me and disappeared onto the access road. I thanked my hero and slowly got back to my feet.

He insisted that we call the cops, but I refused. As stupid as it may sound, I was afraid involving them could cost me my job. But allow me to explain. I've been chewed out for being rude to customers before. I would have to explain why the man was so angry to me. If my boss heard what I'd said, I'd definitely lose my promise two days off and probably be fired. Rightfully so, I guess. Of course, I could lie and play dumb, but that never works out in the end. I decided to wager on the chance that he was done with me and would move on. And that turned out to be the case, fortunately. Various co-workers continued

to walk me to my car after that shift. Two months passed before I figured I was safe and returned to going solo. To this day, I've not seen that man again and hope never to. Whether I just got lucky or he never intended to kill me, I'll likely never know. Either way, I'm just happy to be alive. My attitude towards strangers changed after that incident and for the remainder of my time working directly with customers, I made a concerted effort to treat them with respect. I suggest you take this story to heart. We may all have our little episodes of disrespect when dealing with our fellow person. Nobody's perfect, I'm definitely not. But keep in mind, however, you never really know what a stranger is capable of. One arrogant little slip could cost you your

life. To be continued... alerted of all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7pm Eastern Standard Time. 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. Thank you.