The Lets Read Podcast - 176: I COULD SMELL HIM IN THE DARK | 23 True Scary Stories | EP 164

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Weirdos, New Years, & Fields Trips... 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

Transcribed by ESO, translated by — To be continued... For a good few years, I was a teacher at Lansdowne Middle School in Victoria, British Columbia. I loved my job. Teaching wasn't something I'd ever really seen myself doing. It certainly wasn't a career I'd talked about with high school guidance counselors. I kind of fell into it by accident. Long story short, I couldn't get into the college I wanted to so I had to basically choose between that and nursing, so I chose the one with less blood and guts involved. Every year we take a bunch of grade 8 students up to a place called Camp Barnard at Otter Point, just west of Sooke. It's a scout camp built on land gifted by Senator George Henry Barnard, who was a prominent advocate of hunting and

outdoor activities in general. There are a lot of fun things for the kids to get up to up at the camp. There's a playing field, a nature trail, a swimming pool, a lake for canoeing and paddleboarding, even an archery range and disc golf course. The kids absolutely adore heading up there for a few days and there's always a palpable feeling of excitement every year in the run up to the field trip up there. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't look forward to it too. That kind of stuff really brings out the big kid in me, you know? It was the last week of the school year when we pawed onto a bus and drove over to the

camp to begin our few days of fun. The weather is normally pretty peachy during that time of year, but last year there were some unusually strong winds blowing through the camp. This was very disappointing, as it meant that some of the activities would be totally out of the question. You can't play disc golf when the winds can effectively blow your disc right off the entire course, and neither can you paddleboard when your board keeps getting flipped over by choppy waters. That only really left a handful of activities open to the kids, one of which was archery, the other was orienteering.

I'll be honest, I was excited to try archery again. I'd tried it the year before the first time and I'd actually fought to get assigned to it again since I'd just found the whole thing so cool. I had my reservations about the wind, but they were purely minor concerns about it affecting the kid's accuracy. It'd really suck if a few of the more talented archers were unable to nail a bullseye or two thanks to the winds, but these were thin polycarbon projectiles. I doubted the wind would have any serious effect on them. But it wasn't the wind I had to worry about. You see, we had this one kid with us who was a real klutz. They sucked at sports,

always seemed to be that kid who ended up in the nurse's office from falling in the schoolyard. Everybody knows a kid like that, right? And this was our clumsy kid. So the kid, who I won't name to protect their future reputations, steps up to the firing line with their bow and arrow in hand, fires off a couple of terrible shots, but I'm quick to offer encouragement. The instructor even takes a little more time to show him the correct stance, how to stand just right so that the arrow flies straight and true towards its target. But when the kid tries to imitate the instructor, he takes up the goofiest pose I think I'd ever seen. Body turn sideways, legs spread way

too far apart, and they even instinctually squat it down as if to try to lower their center of gravity, as if that was going to help in the slightest. Then, just before they're about to shoot off another arrow, this huge, and I mean huge gust of wind starts tearing its way through the camp, and I watched in horror as the kid began to sway, falling backwards, and shooting his arrow way off target. The instructor kept us cool, managed to keep the kids from freaking out, but immediately shot me a look as if to say, time to call it a day. Next came the orienteering, about the only truly safe thing to do during this kind of weather,

at least that's what I thought anyway. Sure the maps were flapping away in our hands as we tried to navigate our way around the course, but it was still pretty fun despite the weather. Fun, right up until I heard a crashing sound coming from just over our eyes. The kids I was supervising looked around in confusion, their eyes full of fear as they wondered loud what the sound was. I told them I wasn't sure, and we'd have to wait to check it out once the course had been completed. But that was a lie. I knew. I knew well what it was. I'd heard it before. It was the sound of a tree falling in the woods. It's frankly unmistakable. A deep, wrenching sound, then the clacking of the lumber hitting other upright

trees before the final crash as it hits the dirt. I had this horrible feeling in my gut. There were kids all over the area, all taking part in the orienteering exercise in small groups, each overseen by a member of the camp or teaching staff, and it was probably the worst moment of my life so far to realize that my worst fears had come true. I saw a kid bounding over the rise, his eyes these big white circles beaming out from his terrified face. I called after him, trying to get him to tell me what had just happened and he didn't say anything. He just sprinted back towards camp as fast as his little legs could carry him. I tried to keep the kids from worrying too much, but they couldn't concentrate

on the task at hand. They seemed to know something was horribly wrong just as clearly as I did. So, after a few more minutes of trying to control the situation, I just walked us all back to camp to try to get them settled in their bunks. I'll just cut to the chase at this point. The fallen tree had landed right on one of the kids, who I won't name to protect their family. And, believe it or not, he was dead just moments later from massive chest trauma and asphyxiation. The school district's critical incident response team was deployed on the Wednesday afternoon to support students, staff, and families But with a yearly graduation ceremony that was only a week away It was completely ruined for a lot of families

And even those that attended felt a sense of pervading sorrow and loss And as for me I've never really gotten over the fact that such horrifically random tragedies can occur to completely innocent children. I took advantage of the free counseling services provided by the school district, but they just didn't seem to help. I found myself looking at kids, wondering what completely random accident would take their lives before they even blossomed into fully grown adults. Back when I was in high school, the history class I was a part of organized a field trip

to an old Civil War fort down in Louisiana. The place was called Fort Randolph and basically the whole thing was built on the edges of a huge swamp. Despite being destroyed by Union forces after the war, there's quite a large facility in place where tour groups can trace the layout of the fort on wooden bridges that snake through the trees. I was 17 at the time of the trip and if I'm honest, I was a terrible student. I didn't really want to go but anything was better than going to school so naturally I took that permission slip home and told my parents that not only was I really excited

to go but that it would really help raise my GPA. They signed and gave me the money to go without so much as a second thought. But the whole thing was so boring. I didn't care at all about Civil War history, I still don't really, so trying to have this swamp-dwelling tour guide teach me was an exercise in futility. It didn't help that he had the most monotone drawl in existence either. Seriously, the guy could have put a meth head to sleep with that voice of his. The only relief was that a buddy of mine from the same class had come down with us, pretty much the same reasons as me.

He hated school, but unlike me, he had the presence of mind to bring some relief. At the lunch break, he opened up his backpack to show me the small bottle of bourbon he'd stolen from his alcoholic father's stash. We planned on sneaking off at one point once we got a chance to, but a few hours after lunch, our teacher gave us the best news imaginable. We're wrapping up a few hours early here, but the bus isn't due for a little while yet, so kids, just explore the site here at your leisure, just don't stray too far into the swamp for your own safety.

And it was music to our ears. We'd finally get to get away from the gaggles of nerds and actually do something fun with the day. So off we went, to a quieter corner of the site, before hopping over the wooden bridge thing and darting away between the trees to find a place to drink in peace. When we found somewhere, my buddy revealed that it wasn't just booze he'd been packing. He'd brought something to smoke too. Something we really should not have been smoking during a field trip. He'd had to wrap it up in a bunch of plastic to stop it from stinking the bus out on the way down. And once we got going, I started to feel really, really uneasy. There's something inherently creepy about that area of Louisiana. All the stuff that hangs from the trees, the bugs, the wildlife.

It's amazing anyone can live out there at all. I mean, no offense, but good God, the humidity. I did not factor that into the whole drinking and smoking thing. I think I was sweating out bourbon before we'd even finished the bottle. My buddy had a few smokes with him and although it didn't look like we had time to light them all up, he gave me one to take home with me. So I had one in my pocket while we were smoking up and here's something in the distance, something that got louder and louder as we strained our ears to listen. Neither of us could quite make out what it was, like this faint buzzing sound. I put it down to the inebriation, and then in one grim moment of realization, I recognized it as a radio,

and what was buzzing over it was the unmistakable sound of police chatter. We actually caught sight of this big burly Louisiana sheriff's deputy scanning the trees for something, and that something being us. They must be around here, deputy. I swear this is where I smelled it. Some freaking Karen's voice, obviously the one to have snitched in the first place, and we just bolted. I remember separating from my buddy almost immediately, getting it in my head that I could circle around the area and be back with our field trip group before they even really knew we were gone. But when I stopped for a second and heard that the deputy was following, not far behind either, he must have caught sight of me as I ran

and was hot on my trail as opposed to my buddies. I was terrified. I had it in my head that I'd spend like a week in some backwater Louisiana jailhouse, getting the snot beat out of me on the daily. I kept running but I was way too messed up to get away, so when I saw a hole in the dirt underneath one of those big old trees, I saw my chance to hide myself away. Looking back, it was probably the dumbest thing I'd ever done in my life, but not for the reason you might expect. Because as I'm in the hole in the dirt, which was only about big enough to fit me to begin with, I start feeling something hitting the top of my head. I figured it might be like swamp water or something, I don't know, I wasn't exactly in a steady frame of mind,

so I start wiping the top of my head, only to see the biggest centipede I'd ever seen crawling on my palm. Yeah it was gross, but I'm not particularly scared of bugs. I know those things have a nasty bite sometimes, but I just brushed it off and waited a few minutes until I figured the coast was clear. Only then did I try to move and only then did I realize that I couldn't. I couldn't get my foot free, my pant legs held in place by something I couldn't see immediately. I tugged a little, but it didn't want to rip my pant legs so I sort of shift a little, grab my phone and turn on the light to see what's snagging them. When I saw it, I pulled so hard that I straight up ripped them, threw myself out of that hole

and bolted back towards our tour group. My buddy later asked how I'd managed to rip my pants escaping from the cop and I'll tell you what I told him. When I turned and switched my phone light on, I saw a skeleton and rags, all twisted up among the roots of the tree like it had him held in place until he starved or died of thirst. I mean, that's impossible. He probably died of a wound or a snake bite or something, but my god, that scared the life out of me. There were bugs crawling in the skull's empty eye sockets, scuttling through the teeth and dropping down into the dirt. I know it was just the effect of the booze and smoke, but I swear in that moment I thought that skeleton was moving or something.

I never talked about what happened that day to really anyone. I even folded my pant legs up into three quarter lengths so that neither our teacher nor the patrolling deputy would have any clue as to what I'd come across. Thousands upon thousands of soldiers and civilians went missing during the Civil War, that much I picked up from history class that year, and I think that day down at Fort Randolph, I accidentally found one. When I was 14, my high school thought it would be a good idea to take a bunch of us New York City kids into the Catskills for a day. The idea was to introduce us to nature since some of us had spent our entire lives living in the concrete jungle that is New York City. Seriously, a lot of us had only ever seen forests and farms on the TV or in movies and now that I'm older, I realize how potentially damaging that is. I honestly feel

like human beings are supposed to be in contact with nature, that it makes us happier, healthier, and gives us a sense of place. But I'll quit my rambling and get on with the story. So one super early morning, we load onto our school bus for the drive out into the Catskills. This isn't like November 2 so it was still dark when I got up and the sun had barely risen when the driver got us on the road. I was excited at the time. I had aspirations to be in the military and the idea of getting to wander around the woods was such a cool concept to me at the time. In the end it actually turned out to be pretty boring and really tiring. We walked for hours and hours with our teacher telling us about different kinds of trees,

animals, and weather systems that the area was home to. But we didn't even really get to see any of those animals aside from the odd squirrel that was squirreling away nuts. It turns out some of them don't hibernate at all, unlike a lot of woodland creatures. Like I said, it was all much more boring than I first thought. That was, right up until I saw something carved into a tree. It was carved in really deep, obviously with some kind of knife or something, right through the bark and into the wood. I'd never seen anything like it before and it wasn't like I wasn't a smart kid. I used to read about different religions and occult stuff quite a lot, so I was pretty

confused as to what it was. To describe it, it looked like a rough figure eight, but with like dots and lines carved around it in certain places, so that it kind of looked like an octopus, only not at all at the same time. I know that makes literally zero sense and I wish this was when camera phones were a thing because I'd probably still have the pictures with me to link people to. Out of curiosity, I call my teacher over and ask her if she recognized it. She gives the thing pretty much the same look as I figured I had, just having no idea what she's looking at, then obviously tells me no, that she's never seen anything like it before.

But that in all likelihood it's something a hunter carved into the trees so they wouldn't get lost. I'd not really heard of anyone doing that before, but I kind of figured she'd do best, so I dropped the whole thing and just followed the group as we walked on. After a little while, we ended up walking right to the edge of a cliff face near a mountain. It was this huge wall of rock that just seemed to rise up out of the earth, covered in moss and stuff. Our teacher starts pointing at the rock and telling us how we can tell how old it is by the different kinds of rock that the thing was made up of, but few of us were really listening. I only really started paying attention myself as we walked along the cliff face and I saw something familiar on it, something big too. It was the same symbol we'd seen carved into the tree, only like I said, this one was much, much bigger. Again, I showed our teacher, only this time,

she didn't seem so calmly curious, and she seemed as freaked out as I did. Not only that, but the entire class saw it this time, but with it being the first time seeing it, they weren't nearly as scared, just the same curious I was. I asked the teacher quietly who might carve something like that into the rock, who might have the time or the skills or the equipment. She just told me she didn't know, but not to mention the ones that we'd seen carved into the trees. Plural. She used the plural, and it honestly scared me more than it should have. I'd only seen the one carved into the tree, but she'd obviously seen a lot more than I had. I just found myself hoping we'd be heading back soon. It was early afternoon by that time and I wondered just how scary the woods would be after dark.

Thankfully, I started heading back towards the bus not long after eating lunch. A little while into our walk, one kid stops the teacher and tells her he needs to go to the bathroom. It wasn't an ideal situation by any means, but with the kid being a dude, it was pretty easy to remedy. Teacher just tells him to go into the bushes nearby and deal with it, so he does. A few minutes later, we hear him tearing through the bushes back towards us, panting as he ran. He emerges with this terrified look in his eyes, like I've never seen anyone so scared before, not in real life. The teacher runs over and starts asking him what the deal is, but he can hardly get his words

out. He just keeps breathing real fast, in and out, like rocking back and forth on the spot like he was losing his mind. The teacher is telling him to breathe, calm down and focus and tell us what he saw. What he said shook our group to the core. There was a man, a real old man, not so old, he had white hair and a beard and he didn't have any clothes on, but he was covered in like tattoos. Oh my god. What if he saw me? What if he's following us? The teacher had to quiet the kid before a full-blown panic attack took over the group,

and we hurried back to the bus without stopping to look at anything at all. Nothing else happened on the walk back to the bus, but thank God. But I remember being really curious as to what the kid thought he saw when he went to the bathroom, and I foolishly asked. He told me exactly the same thing, only went into a little more detail about the tattoos and stuff. I asked him if he remembered what they looked like to draw one of them if he could. He took out a notebook and pen, closed his eyes for a moment so he could really recall,

then he drew something rough that I couldn't quite make out at first, but when he showed it, it was clear. It was a bunch of dots and lines with a clear figure eight in the middle. My story takes place in August of 2011, a time that has burned into my memory and will be for the rest of my natural life. From the ages of 13 to 18, I attended Eton College here in England. It's an independent boys' boarding school near Windsor here in Berkshire where I was born and raised. Founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as a sister institution to King's College, Cambridge, it's one of the oldest and most prestigious schools in the entire UK, perhaps even the world, and charges up to £42,500 a year, which is $53,480 for any Americans reading this. Following the old public school tradition,

Eton is a full boarding school, which means pupils live at the school seven days a week. Eaton has educated prime ministers, world leaders, Nobel laureates, and generations of the aristocracy. Naturally, we're a very privileged bunch. I understand that term has become something of a thinly veiled insult over the past couple of years, but I really don't mind applying it to myself. I know how lucky I am to have grown up in such extraordinary circumstances and what is essentially a Harry Potter film come to life. I had many opportunities to great things to eat in,

some of which are organized by the BSES, the British Schools Exploration Society. They're an organization that organizes school trips to various explorative expeditions to many far-flung regions of the globe. But I imagine you all could have figured it out for yourselves. The point being, one year the BSES announced that it would be taking pupils to the Norwegian Arctic Circle to explore the frigid wastes accompanied by a group of professional Arctic trekkers who would teach us the tricks of their rigorous trade. It was something I dreamed of doing ever since I had read of the

polar expeditions of Captain Scott when I was a much younger child. So naturally I jumped at the opportunity. I begged and pleaded with my parents to allow me to go, and despite their reservations at permitting their only son to take part in something so dangerous, they eventually agreed. I was ecstatic. I was set to follow in the footsteps of some of my all-time heroes, and I literally counted the days off on a specially bought calendar until the day finally came when we embarked on the adventure of a lifetime. We arrived on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard on the first day of August 2011. I don't think words can even describe how cold it was. I, for one, had never felt anything like it. It made even the most frigid Scottish nights seem relatively balmy in comparison.

It was a dry cold, one that shocked your lungs when you first breathed in the air there. We received a great deal of orientation before we eventually embarked on the trek north, with the professionals among us breaking down everything we needed to know to survive in the frozen north. I know it was a very necessary part of our journey, but I found the whole process somewhat of a frustration. Half the stuff they told us were things I already knew. But for the good of my fellow junior trekkers, I kept my mouth shut and retained my patience. The things we saw on that great march northward, they are things that I am glad I can never unsee.

In that area of the world, it is so cold that the ice isn't just white. It's almost like a light blue, such is the intensity of the frost. It's a beauty that is quite unlike anything else. Witnessing the palette that nature is able to paint with is as humbling as it is enlightening. On the fourth day of our trek, we found ourselves near the Van Post Glacier, some 25 miles from the settlement of Longyearbyen. Ah yes, it was the 5th of August when we made camp just near the Van Post Glacier. We put up our tents and set about preparing for another insanely cold night, heating up rations, repairing our gear, and fortifying ourselves against the

frost with schnapps and scotch. Some of us were under the age of 18 at the time, but the laws of man barely apply in places like Svalbard, where it is better to become comfortable and alive than law-abiding and miserable. I remember sharing a nip with my friend Horatio, who attended Eaton just as I did. He was a big lad, strong and tough. I always resented the accusations that public school boys were just posh southern ponces. It was our forefathers that were the first over the top of the trenches at Somme, Yeap, and Passchendaele, and Horatio was cut from the same cloth. We chatted for a while, shared our thoughts on the trip thus far, then bid each other goodnight before returning to our tents to get some well deserved rest. It was the last time I saw him alive. That night, we woke to the sound of

screaming. There were screams of fear, screams of rage, but what cut above them all were the blood-curdling, stomach-churning screams of pure, mortal agony. I'll never forget what I saw when I unzipped that tent that night, what was illuminated under torch beams. It was a nightmarish vision. A huge, haggard creature was half-buried in one of the tents, the fabric of which billowed as the thing inside thrashed and ripped and tore at the tent's occupants. Shoot it, Spike. Shoot it now, came a cry I remember hearing. I can't, for Christ's sake, the bloody safety's jammed. And that was the voice of Spike Reed, one of the pros accompanying us in the expeditions, a second in command. When he finally got the safety catch on the rifle off,

he trudged through the snow towards the great lumbering beast to get a clear and perfect shot, who somehow detected his presence and backed out of the tent to greet him. And only then did I see what it was. It honestly looked like a monster, right out of the horror film. It was emaciated, half-blind, a torn-up face with jagged teeth exposed. But it was clearly a polar bear. And it rushed, Spike, with alarming speed and agility from something on the verge of death. It swiped at his upper body, connecting with one wicked strike that sent him flying backwards. Maybe it was the horror of the moment that's tainted my recollection,

but I'm almost certain I saw his blood spray in that torchlight to be honest with you. But Spike handled that rifle well, even though he'd been almost torn open by a single swipe of that polar bear's powerful arm and razor sharp claws. Afterwards he told us it was almost like a happy accident, that the ground underneath his back made it easier to aim, made it so he wasn't shaking quite as much as he brought the barrel up to the bear's head and fired. We tried to tend to the wounded, but my god, the injuries that they'd suffered. One of the lads in the tent that was attacked had been literally torn apart, limb from limb. I'd never seen such a horrifying mess of shredded flesh, blood, and guts in all of my life. It was like the floor of a butcher shop, and

around them, the snow soaked up the blood. I could barely recognize the victim, but I slowly realized in horrified disgust who it was, purely from looking at the lad's clothing. It was Horatio. A rescue helicopter was dispatched from Longyearbyen that arrived within about 40 minutes of the initial attack, transporting the wounded to Tromsø on mainland Norway for extensive emergency medical treatment, but Horatio was killed in mere moments from massive trauma to his essential organs.

I thought I might take a moment to explain to you all why things went so horribly wrong. A tragedy like that should have been entirely preventable for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is common practice for groups like ours to host night watchmen to ensure that there can be no approach by predatory animals or people with malintent. However, the night in question was so foggy that it would have been pointless to do so. There's no point keeping watch when you can only watch about 5 meters in front of your face. In lieu of a night watchman, we set tripwires with deterrent explosives attached. The idea being if an animal triggers them,

the loud bang both wakes us up to prepare to defend ourselves, as well as scaring the predator or predators away. But we discovered that the tripwires had indeed been triggered, that the polar bear had indeed been triggered, that the polar bear had indeed stepped on them, but the fog in the air meant the explosives were basically sodden, so much so that they completely failed to fire off when triggered. There was talk of suing the manufacturer, but I'm not sure any legal suit was ever filed against them, not with how occupied everyone was with the investigations that followed.

But it was a farce, conducted by people who had probably never been on a country walk, let alone ventured into the frigid wastes of the Arctic. For example, following an inquiry by Norwegian investigators, officials ruled that the attack could have been prevented if the expedition members had stayed in cabins instead of tents. Cabins. We were supposed to have had the time, resources, or energy to pull a bloody log cabin out of our collective butts. Bollocks. It was almost a slap in the face to hear them come out with something like that. I think I've talked enough by this point. I think this is the place to leave it before I get too angry or upset

about how the whole thing unfolded, about how bloody well preventable the whole thing was. But I suppose that's how life happens sometimes. A life seems to find a way for the absolutely tragic to become horribly possible. First things first, English is not my first language. I am in fact from Sweden, so if there are any mistakes in my writing, I'm very sorry.

This is also not the easiest thing to talk on because this story is of one of my worst days of my life so far. As I said, I'm Swedish and I'm also a teacher at a high school here in Ongskolen High School in Høyena, a town about 100 kilometers southeast of the city of Gothenburg. As you probably know, we have a lot of snow here in Sweden and everyone knows what the best thing to do in the snow is, right? That's correct. Skiing. We love skiing here in Sweden, as sometimes it is too cold and snowy to do anything else. So what many schools do during the winter and the spring, when the weather is too bad to play other sports outside, is organize regular skiing trips to various resorts that help helped build bonds between the students and teachers as well as keeping us all fit and healthy.

So one early Sunday morning in April, we all met up outside of the high school to get onto a bus that would take us to the ski resort he had picked out for the kids and ourselves. There were 52 of us all in all, including the driver, with six teachers to supervise roughly 8 children each. With skiing being a rather hazardous activity, this kind of supervision is essential to ensure safety. We were on a main highway south of Svijeg, a small rural town, when we began to notice a lot of icy road ahead of us. Usually we are very good at dealing with the cold weather here in Sweden, but the further out into the countryside you get, the scarcer some of the de-icing infrastructure can be. One of the teachers mentioned it to the driver, telling him to be careful,

that the speeds he was driving at were definitely not safe on the icy roads. He grumbled something obscene about being a better driver than we give him credit for and carried on going at the same speed The teacher quieted down after this, not wanting to anger the bus driver any further But looking back, we should have said something more It might have avoided what had happened Because just a few miles down the road, we felt the bus begin to skid This happens from time to time on icy roads, yes, but the driver was not nearly as skilled as he claimed to be. He wrestled with the wheel,

but it was no good. The bus tipped onto its side and sent children flying out of their seats. We had warned them to wear seatbelts, but some of them didn't listen, choosing instead to sit on top of the seats on their knees to talk to the children behind them. And it was chaos. Complete and utter chaos. The bus spanned almost 180 degrees on the road, sending bodies toppling over seats and children alike before finally coming to a stop on the side of the road. In the end, three children were dead and twenty others were varying degrees of injured. The worst part was seeing the children trying to wake up their dead friends, begging and pleading with them to open their eyes or talk or sit up. But they couldn't.

The impact had cracked some of their skulls, broken their necks, smashed broken ribs into lungs and caused them to fill with blood. It was the worst thing I'd ever seen in my entire life. And in the aftermath of the crash, our country went into mourning. Our prime minister, Stefan Lofven, said the accident leaves me and the whole country in sorrow. There was extensive outreach between the teacher staff of our school and the parents of the children killed or injured. One of the children's parents told me his daughter had called him as soon as she was able, that he had woken up to the sound of her screams on the phone.

He also said that he could still hear her screams if he listened hard enough, clear as day, many weeks later. Back when I was just 13 years old, my secondary school organized a big school trip across the English Channel to Brittany in the north of France. I was really, really excited to go, because my family wasn't exactly the wealthiest of the bunch. I'd never been out of the country before, not to mention that French was probably my favorite subject in school. I loved it. I loved that I was learning a new way of talking to people that I wouldn't be able to communicate with normally, that it opened up a whole new way of thinking about things too. I still love the language, and especially the idioms or sayings that the French have. When speaking French, if something is overly sentimental, romantic or sappy, you might say it's

a l'eau de rose, which means with rose water. Or when you got loads of energy and you're really excited about something in particular, you might say avoir mangé d'oignon, which means to have eaten a lion. You see what I mean? It's just such a cool language, but despite being an average francophile, I must change my tone dramatically because the story I'm about to tell you is not a happy one. In fact, it might be the worst thing that had ever happened during my childhood. So as I said, every year my school organized an all-expenses paid school trip to a place called Plaine Fougere in Brittany. It's a small village of just less than 2,000 set deep into the countryside where students could really get to grips with the lives and cultures of everyday rural French folk.

So as you can imagine, I absolutely loved it. We'd visit a small café most evenings to try traditional French food, and a huge part of that was ordering food en français. It was quite a challenge, but oh my word, the food was absolutely amazing, and after every meal we'd languidly wander back to the hostel and spend a few hours just chilling in the dorm rooms, watching French TV before we went to sleep. It was honestly a dream come true for me, until one faithful morning when that beautiful, gallic dream turned into a nightmare, the likes of which none of us could have ever imagined. Even today I remember it all like it was yesterday. When I think about it, it plays out in my head like a movie, like I can watch myself in every scene.

It all started very early in the morning, just after six, and the summer months meant that the sun lit up the hostel in such a beautiful way and stark contrast to the mood that pervaded throughout the morning. I heard a faint sound coming from the corridor outside, a gentle hushed voice that descended into quiet sobbing as the muffled conversation between what was obviously a teacher and a student progressed ominously. I sat up in bed, straining my ears to listen, but soon found myself creeping toward the door, trying not to wake my classmates as I tried my ears to listen, but soon found myself creeping toward the door, trying not to wake my classmates as I tried my best to find out what was going on.

Their words were whispered, but I knew something terrible had happened. The girl wasn't just homesick, she hadn't had a nightmare or accidentally hurt herself somehow. She was distraught, completely and utterly distraught. I only managed to discern two words of their entire conversation when the higher, younger voice of a fellow pupil rose in volume for a moment before it was swiftly shushed by the teacher she was talking to. I'll never forget the way she said, she's gone, she's gone. Eventually the conversation died down and the girl was obviously ushered away by the teacher to be consoled and comforted somewhere much more private. I got back in bed, but I couldn't sleep. In my mind, a girl had obviously ran away, gotten so homesick that she'd ran from the hostel in some misguided attempt to, like, hitchhike back to England or something.

It wasn't completely out of the question. If I remember rightly, the channel tunnel had been constructed and was being used frequently by French and British drivers alike. Either that, or the girl had been kidnapped. Abducted by some predatory French psychopath who had dragged her out of her dorm room during the night. But that would have woken up the entire room, surely. At least five girls were sleeping in the room at any one time, so there was surely no way that was possible. I found the thought reassuring, but only slightly because, whatever had happened, someone was still gone, as the girl had so horrifyingly phrased it. By the time we'd all gotten up for breakfast, I was visibly frayed around the edges,

exhausted but wired, and the girls in my dorm knew that there was something amiss just from my behavior and the big black bags under my eyes. Sitting down for breakfast in the hostel's dining area, I immediately noticed that the teachers were all looking pretty shaken. Teaching staff, who were normally calm to the point of boredom, seemed to have transformed into downright nervous wrecks. And I also noticed nervously that four of our number were missing, with four telltale empty chairs denoting their absence. Something had definitely happened in one of our rooms overnight, but just what that thing was, I never could have imagined. Or maybe it was just the

case that I could have imagined, but 13-year-old me just couldn't bring herself to consider it as a possibility. I expected our teachers to make some sort of announcement at breakfast, explaining that some of the girls had been sent back to England or something, or at least to ask us if we had any information to come forward with regarding a girl's disappearance. But they didn't. It was eating me up inside, and as the morning went on, a lot of the other girls on the trip started to notice the five absences of our number. Rumors began to spread. Cruel or mean girls began to make wild speculations like they were pregnant from copping off with French boys in the village. But the truth was far, far worse. We were all left in suspense for the entire day until finally, that evening,

all the pupils were called into the hostel's common area in front of the entire teaching staff, some of which looked pale as ghosts to be told the bad news. Girls, one teacher began, her voice breaking as she spoke. I don't know how to tell you this, and I'm so, so sorry that I have to, but Caroline is gone. She... she died during the night. But that wasn't quite the truth, and we didn't learn of what really had happened until we got back to England and the media frenzy began. You see, Caroline hadn't simply died during the night. She had been assaulted and murdered. And some of the other four girls sleeping in her room at the time of the attack had actually witnessed her killing,

despite the fact that they hadn't been able to properly discern what was going on. A classmate of ours who was sleeping in the bottom bunk opposite the door says she woke up at 3am, disturbed by a noise that was coming from Caroline's bunk. She said it sounded like a soft wailing or moaning. In the dark, she glanced over towards Caroline's bunk and saw what she thought was her kicking in her sleeping bag. But when she heard what sounded like the zip of her sleeping bag being undone, she concluded Caroline had woken up from a nightmare and unzipped her sleeping bag due toone, she concluded Caroline had woken up from a nightmare and unzipped her sleeping bag due to the heat of the summer night.

The police investigation that followed was traumatic to say the least, mainly because so many of us had close encounters with her murderer who had apparently just slipped away into the night, never to be seen again. Another girl who was staying in the room just opposite Caroline's said that she had gotten up in the night to go to the toilet and had bumped into an older man with straggly hair and bushy eyebrows on the stairs. She later told us that she remembers the glare of the man and how he snickered quietly before disappearing from view. She also mentioned hearing heavy footsteps outside

on the gravel, which was obviously the man escaping the scene of the crime. There were so very many opportunities for us to prevent what had happened, or to at least catch the guy that had done it, but we didn't. Out of ignorance and naivety, we didn't, and Caroline was dead because of it. It took five long years for justice to be done, but in March of 2001, the case was classed as unsolved until an immigration official at Detroit airport named Tommy Onko read about the story in a British newspaper, who were marking the five-year anniversary of the murder. The article named a man named Francisco Montes as a possible suspect, and for whatever reason, Tommy Onco decided to do an immigration search to see if a man by that name had ever traveled

to the United States. He found that Francisco Montes had indeed traveled to the States, was in fact still there, and happened to be in police custody down Miami Beach. Onko contacted the French and British authorities and was able to confirm Montez's date of birth and hometown. Montez had been arrested in Miami Beach for a lewd and lascivious assault on a female Irish tourist at a youth hostel, and the crime had a remarkably similar modus operandi to Caroline's murder, as Montez was able to enter the girl's bedroom quietly enough for the victim or her roommates to remain oblivious to his presence. Montez was arrested by Sergeant Angel Vasquez of the Miami Beach Police Department.

Vasquez obtained a DNA sample from the suspect which was then matched to sample DNA from the youth hostel attack on the Irish student. In addition, Major Vasquez linked Montez to four other similar incidents on Miami Beach and then to the DNA sample from Caroline's murder scene. The prosecution in America was then halted so that Montez could be extradited to France to stand charges for Caroline's grisly murder. And I later read that Francisco Montez told French investigators that he had a miserable childhood. Apparently he was born the only son of middle class parents who ran a small grocery store in Spain. During his teenage years and as a symptom of his deteriorating mental health, he began to obsess over his personal hygiene, doing things such as operating doorknobs and

light switches with a handkerchief. And in 1970, at just 20 years of age, Montez exposed himself to a neighbor. He was arrested for this exposure and as a part of his processing, was diagnosed with depression and progressive schizophrenia. But his urges were uncontrollable, I guess. Because later, in 1981, Montez broke into the room of a girl in a youth hostel in the Netherlands and touched her inappropriately and against her wishes. Montez was actually jailed in Germany during the mid-1980s for armed indecent assault, but still, he was unable to control his maniacal urges, leaving a swath of other offenses across Europe. At Montez's first trial in the French city of Rennes during June of 2004, where he was jailed for 30 years, Montez barely spoke. Yet after an appeal that resulted

in a second trial in June of 2005, he stated that he had no intention of killing the girl when he entered her dormitory at the youth hostel. He had put his hand over her mouth to stifle her cries when he assaulted her. He said he had no intention of killing Caroline, that it was an accident, a misfortune, I guess. Montes, described to the appeal court as a predator, said he had not demanded the second trial for his own sake, that he merely wished to tell Caroline's family what had really happened that night. Yes, it is true, I killed her, but I had no intention of killing her. It was an accident, a misfortune. It was the result of the assault. I didn't go into her room to kill her. I didn't cover her mouth to kill her. First, I'd like to say that I am appealing because I want to explain what

happened on that day and the previous days. That wasn't the case in Rennes. I didn't give any explanation. Montez said that after taking tranquilizers and alcohol, he had gone to a youth hostel at Saint Lunaire where he had tried to assault another English girl. He fled when her companions woke and went to the hostel at Plaine Fougere where he had found Caroline. Caroline's father, John, who I had seen around parents' evening and sports day, took the stand to tell the courtroom that he would be haunted all his life by the memory of seeing his daughter's body in the morgue. Life is stuck at the same page for nine years, he tearfully said. He was followed by Caroline's younger sister, Jenny, who spoke in public for

the first time about the loss of her best friend. Jenny was only 11 years old when she died and said it had taken six long years before she could bring herself to talk about her loss. Montez appeared to wipe away at tears. She finished giving her testimony. And that's the story of the worst time of my life so far. It's something I've followed in the news almost obsessively after the news of Montez's arrest hit the airwaves. The fact we didn't know what had really happened or who had murdered her was something that almost destroyed our young lives, not to mention the existential guilt of knowing we could have stopped it. Some of you may be pleased to hear that Montes' appeal was not upheld and that the judge determined

that he will serve a minimum of twenty years in a French prison for Caroline's murder. Some might argue that such a prolific deviant should serve much, much longer. And I shall end this by saying something I was unable to say for nine long years of my life. Repose en paix, Caroline. May you rest in peace. To be continued... is a commercial logger for most of my life and it's taken me to some pretty remote places here in Canada. I don't have much of a family either since I grew up in foster care so it's always suited me to work over the holidays. I don't say that for sympathy or anything, you make crazy money working those times of year so I was always pretty handsomely compensated for time that had

otherwise be spent alone. For nine years straight, working the holidays became a godsend, and it got to the point where I'd actually come to look forward to it. And then came one year where what was once all peaceful and quiet became something I grew to fear. This was winter of 2009, and I'd already worked Christmas, so I was the natural choice to work New Years too. I was asked and obviously I accepted so it would just be me and this other guy, Jerry, taking care of the logging camp over New Years. Even better, it was overtime rates, to do no work, so we were getting paid just to sit around and drink for like 24 hours. It seemed like the deal of a lifetime to

be honest, and that couldn't have been further from the truth. Because on New Year's Eve, right when me and Jerry were nice and toasty from a few bottles of Molson, some really weird stuff started to happen. The first thing happened when I discovered my phone charging cable was busted. Luckily I had another in the form of my car charger which I could just unhook then bring inside so I throw on a jacket and head outside to my truck to get it. But as I'm heading back inside I see Jerry running through the darkness towards the woods. A little side note here and in contrast to what other people have said, the person I saw running into the trees was 100% Jerry.

Same clothes, same movements. Heck, he even looked back at me when I called out his name and it was Jerry's face looking back at me. So obviously, I'm real confused at what he's doing and given that he seems panicked by something, I follow him to see if he's okay. That's when I see something dark staining the snow behindicked by something, I follow him to see if he's okay. That's when I see something dark staining the snow behind him, something that I soon discovered was blood. As you can imagine, this sent me into a panic. The last time I had spoken to Jerry was literally a minute or two before, when I told him that I was going out to my truck to grab the spare

charging cable. So, the question of how he'd managed to get himself hurt that bad in like seconds was something that was equally scary and confusing. I took off after him, calling out his name as I went, but for some reason, Jerry wouldn't stop running. One time he looked back at me with this look of fear, like he figured I was chasing him or something. So again, I'm screaming, Yo Jerry it's me buddy stop. But still, Jerry kept on pushing forward, dodging trees and leaving a blood trail the whole way. And it was quite a lot of blood too,

which obviously had me even more worried because he needed treatment and it was obvious he needed it fast. Then, as I'm chasing Jerry, I thought I heard something running through the snow, just over a rise about 50 yards to our right. My first thought is something like, oh god, that's the person who hurt Jerry. So I just stopped dead, finding myself caught at a kind of crossroads. Either I could carry on chasing Jerry and face being intercepted by the person who cut him or shot him or whatever, or I could run back to the cabins and get help.

Besides, there's no catching up with him, not at the speeds I was getting, always been on the heavier side, so you know how that goes, and I definitely wouldn't have been able to carry on dragging him back to the cabins. I expend the very last of my stamina heading back to the cabins, like I was almost ready to puke by the time I got to the entrance. I just about fell inside, pushing my cell phone to find my phone so I could contact emergency services.

But then, as I stumble down one of the hallways, someone steps out from one of the rooms, blocking my path. It was Jerry. He seemed a little confused by the state I was in, but other than that, he seemed fine, and before I could ask how in God's name had he gotten back before me, why he wasn't bleeding, or any of the other hundred questions I had, he says, uh, are you okay man? I was freaking out, and I think I just about put the fear of God in him when I shouted back something like, dude, am I okay? I'm fixing to call the paramedics out here for you. He replies exactly with, why? And after that I got to explaining everything I'd just seen. And as you can probably guess, Jerry just looked at me like I was crazy for the whole time I was

talking and when I was done, he actually looked a little freaked out himself. The way he spoke to me afterwards wasn't all that patronizing, but I could tell he thought I was having some kind of manic episode or something. He responds, whoever that was, it couldn't have been me, might have looked to make me but it wasn't me. And all I could think to do was take him outside and show him the blood trails which were still plain to be seen in the snow. Now when we run back inside and call 911, making sure to use the wifi connection so we'd get a relatively stable connection. And once things started to calm down a little, me and Jerry got to speculating over who the guy could have been and,

more specifically, what could have happened for him to get all cut up. Jerry was about 20 years older than me, definitely more level-headed, and after mulling it over for a minute or two, he came up with a pretty definitive answer. He figured the guy had been trying to steal one of our saws, maybe even just the blade, and had cut his hand or arm in the process. Then the whole him looking like Jerry thing could have just been pure coincidence. Older guy, light colored ski jacket, and in the low light of dusk too, it was an easy mistake to make. After that, only thing left was to wonder what our potential thief's fate would be.

I mean, they'd been bleeding pretty bad from the look of the blood trails, and as much as he might have been trying to screw us over, we didn't want anyone to lose their life out there in the cold. Anyway, midnight came and went and we celebrated the new years with a few more bottles of Molson. Then as we're flicking through TV channels, talking amongst ourselves, I hear this faint noise over the sound of the TV. Jerry heard it too, only he was the one to actually say it. Is that your truck alarm? I thought we both might have been mistaken and that the noise was on the TV, but then Jerry mutes the TV and boom, it is my truck alarm. We kept two rifles in the cabins in case of an animal attack and never once in my career had I needed to go for the gun cabinet.

But the second I heard that alarm clearly, I ran for the cabinet's keys. Jerry might have insisted on being his rational self, but that was the moment I knew something weird was going on. I loaded the rifle, shouting for Jerry to wait until I had it ready before going outside. Then with me at the lead, we walked out of the cabin, me with the hunting rifle, and Jerry with a flashlight. My truck's lights were flashing, so Jerry knew where to point the flashlight right away. I'm just trying to aim where Jerry's pointing, keeping an eye out for whoever had been messing with my truck, but there was no one to be seen. Jerry then starts calling out into the darkness saying stuff like, Hey, better come out now, we're armed.

But again, no one made a sound and no one showed themselves. After a few moments of nothing but a blaring alarm, I hear Jerry say, You think it was just a deer or something. I had no idea at the time. I just remember hoping it was a deer as I slowly reached for my keys and praying it was just a deer when I realized the flashing lights were messing with my natural night vision. If anyone wanted to reach out of the darkness and grab for me, or the rifle, I'd have been none the wiser till it

was too late. Once the alarm was off, we made sure to call out a few more times before going back inside. I remember Jerry saying something like, If you're hurt out there, we can help you. I figured that might be the right angle, so I followed up by saying, Hey, we don't care what you're up to no good, we just... Listen, there's no need for anyone to get hurt over it. Right after, I got this weird sensation.

Like how weird it'd look if we were just out there talking to no one. But at the same time, we knew someone was out there. I decided not to drink anymore after that that and we had the following day off, but I intended to use the daylight to find out just what in God's name was going on. But even with the beer I'd already drank, it wasn't easy drifting off to sleep and I kept the rifle next to my bed the whole time.

The next morning my first thought was to go follow the blood trail since I'd have a much better view on account of the daylight. I followed them for about a mile, still a fairly bright red on account of being preserved by the cold, and they definitely started to loop back around in the direction of the cabins. But at some point, they just sort of stopped. I figured the person might have stemmed the bleeding, maybe got a tourniquet on their wound or something like that, and thankfully there was still boot prints in the snow to follow so I was able to confirm that the wounded person had indeed looped back around to the

logging cabin. After following the prints, I determined that the person had come back to try and break into my truck. This obviously set the alarm off and the prints leading away from the truck must have been when we scared the guy off. Seemed like nothing more than a case of attempted theft and the only scares we'd gotten had come out of our beer bottles. But then Jerry noted something that sent all our theories into chaos. Just picture it. Just when we thought we'd worked out what had happened, Jerry is looking at one of the boot prints with this focused look on his face.

I ask him if he's coming back inside as I was fixing to make some bacon for breakfast but instead of replying to me, he started doing something really, really weird. He stood on one leg, took off his right boot, and then started to study the pattern of the sole. I knew exactly what this implied, and he didn't need to tell me why he suddenly turned as pale as the snow around us. The pattern in the boot prints in the snow was exactly the same as those on Jerry's boots, like 100% identical. Again, it's not out of the question that he just had the same make and model of boot as Jerry, who, by his own admission, had picked a sort of middle-of-the-road, cheap and cheerful pair. But same clothes, same face, same boots, all at once. I'm sure you can

agree that makes for one heck of a coincidence. But how even bring that up with Jerry? How could I even entertain such a bizarre idea with someone dead set on being incredibly rational? Well, the answer is to that, I didn't. January 2nd saw the first few returning employees, and once there were other people to talk to, the story went right back to some idiot hurt themselves trying to rob us and then they tried to steal my truck. I dropped the whole thing about the guy being Jerry's doppelganger, both in looks and clothes. I mean, would you want to be that guy walking around talking crazy,

having everyone think you're a few logs short of a cord? I think that'd have been the second fastest way to ensure my contract wasn't renewed second only to punching my crew chief in the face. And besides, I didn't even trust myself regarding what I'd seen. Like I was convinced that I had just maybe drank too much or something even though I had exactly one and a half bottles at the time of the incident. So I just tried to forget about it, finished up my three months then signed up to posting elsewhere come the start of the next logging season. Almost ten years have gone by since

that New Year's Eve and you'd think that time would be the best thing to have something like that settle, but it hasn't and even all these years later i'm still left with the question of can everything that happened that night be explained in a simple and logical way or was there something else going on something that only someone much smarter than myself could possibly explain So So back when I was in high school, I used to be huge into something we called urbex. Apologies in advance if you know all this, but urbex is short for urban exploration and is an umbrella term for a bunch of different stuff you do in abandoned and derelict buildings. One time a friend and I decided

it would be a good idea to explore a farmstead that hadn't been in use for years. We've been exploring buildings downtown for years so the idea of getting into the sticks to get some urbex in seemed pretty cool. My only excuse in this case was that it was New Year's Day and on that day almost everything in our town used to shut down for a day. If we hadn't been so freaking bored, none of this would have happened in the first place. Anyway, the farmstead was accessible by a long gravel road that brought you to a cluster of dilapidated buildings across the central barn. We parked at the end of the gravel road near the turnoff to the main road so we could walk around the property and just pull out quickly later.

Then as we got out of the car, we saw just how creepy this place really looked. But not just that, we noticed how big the place was too. I figured it'd make for a good derp, what we call abandoned places, and in a way, it was. I measure that by the potential of seeing the kind of stuff that your average person just doesn't see. Some cool stuff, some creepy stuff. A good example on the farm would be finding the place where they used, hmm, to make baby cows, only without the presence of a bull, if you know what I'm saying. You'd think it'd be more scientific, but nope, literal turkey basters, dude. And creepy

slash gross is definitely the worst combination to stumble across. Anyway, after that little discovery we were grossed out, but not exactly put off exploring the place. Not until we heard the sound of a pig squealing somewhere nearby. We just froze when we heard it, giving each other a look as if to be like, uh oh. I'd driven by the place like three times in the past week and at no point had I seen any people, cars or trucks anywhere. Everything was either boarded up or falling apart. There were weeds growing everywhere. It was the picture-perfect derp. So, how in God's name was it occupied? Now, quick explanation. We know our trespassing law pretty well,

and you're basically entitled to one sorry-I-got-lost before you can actually be charged. Getting lost isn't a crime, but repeatedly and maliciously trespassing is. So, it's not like we were all that worried about getting in trouble with the law, or like scaring some armed security guard into turning that one particular derp into our last. In order to avoid this, our first line of defense, if you can call it that, is simply to announce our presence.

If someone knows we're here, they're less likely to draw on us, so we start calling out made-up stuff on the fly like, Hello? Is this Carson Construction? We're here for the pickup. Just random stuff like that. Anything to make someone think that there's just been an honest mistake. But there's nothing. No one calls back. There's just silence. Interrupted only by another squeal of the pig. My buddy's just like, let's just leave dude. Whatever this is, it's not worth it.

But my dumb self gets all sentimental over the pig, thinking that someone may have abandoned it there. I'm not the pig whisperer or whatever, but its cries didn't sound very chipper, and I'd hate to think that I'd had the chance to intervene, only to nope out out of self-preservation. I'm not some PETA type person or anything like that, but I'm not a heartless idiot either, so I insisted we at least go check on the pig, just in case it needed freeing or whatever. And as I told my buddy, worst thing that had happened was we'd get told to get lost. Best thing was we'd have a brand new pet pig. So, we get to work trying to find the farm's pig pen or barn or wherever the pig was.

The whole farm fell dead silent again as we began looking for the pig and we had to shout out stuff like here piggy piggy piggy. It was kind of funny. This prompted another squeal from the pig. A more excited one this time and that's pretty much convinced me that the poor guy or girl had just been abandoned and hearing a human's voice gave them hope. I know this is all just in my head pure childish naivety on my part and if I had known back then what I know, this is all just in my head, pure childish naivety on my part, and if I had known back then what I know right now, I would have gotten out of there in a hot minute. But we were blissfully ignorant, and so we carried on looking. Eventually we found a building that looked a lot more like an old school crematorium than a barn or a pig pen.

It was made almost entirely of red brick, with these big old cast iron doors that only had a hint of rust to them, despite looking like a hundred years old. We knew the pig was in there because we could hear it snuffling around and rustling a bunch of hay or whatever it was using to sleep on. We called out to it once again, but the squeal wasn't so loud that time. It was more like a few quiet grunts because it knew we were close. The only question then was how to break into the building. There was no getting into the main doors as they were bolted and chained shut. There was a chance we might be able to find some roof access, but that'd involve a pretty hefty climb. But then we noticed what appeared to be

like a side vent, nothing more than a small hole in the brick with an iron grate fixed in, but it'd be enough for us to spy through to get a clue of how to gain entry. I remember walking over to it, kneeling, then peering into the dimly lit interior, then out of nowhere the sight of an eye suddenly appearing in front of me had me just about jumping out of my skin. My buddy burst out laughing, dunking on me for getting spooked by a barn animal, which I suppose he was well within his right to do. But then the more I looked at the eye and the more I looked back at me, the more I realized that there was something

off about it. I'm not exactly a vet so it wasn't exactly obvious what the wrong thing was at first, not until we heard something else coming through that little metal grate. My buddy, still amused from seeing me spooked, comes over to be like, hey there little biggie, we're gonna get you out of there, what's your name little guy? There was some more excited snuffling from the other side of the grate. Then I heard something that honestly made my blood run cold. I know that's a huge cliche, but I can't think of a better way to describe it. The thing that made fear shoot through me was hearing a human voice on the other side of the grate. A human voice that said, Help me. I swear, when I first heard it, I thought it was just my buddy playing a prank.

But when I looked back at him, I swear I could literally see the color draining from his face. I didn't even get the question. I just said like, did, and he just shook his head in reply. Then as I looked back at the grate, the last thing I see before we took off running was a finger sliding through one of the small gaps. Like I said, we just bolted, galloping back towards the car as fast as our legs could carry us. I had my phone out as soon as I was in the passenger seat, and I had to stick a finger in my ear just to hear the dispatcher because my buddy was gunning his engine so hard. I told her everything, even the whole trespassing thing, saying we were urbexers who knew that they were breaking the law but still wanted to do what was right. Like I was pretty confident we wouldn't

be charged with anything if we were helping free a kidnap victim or whatever was going on with that poor guy back there. Once we were safely back home, we told everyone we could what we'd seen and the only comfort was that we'd done a good thing and maybe helped rescue a guy. All we had to do was wait to hear back from the cops or whatever. Heck, I figured I might see it in the news soon anyways. The cops called back the day after next and for the first time ever, I was actually pleased to hear from the police. But boy was I wrong to be, because the little chit chat me and the local sheriff arranged turned out to be anything but the hero's congratulation I thought I was in for.

When he walked into my parents' house, he asked my mom and dad if he could talk to me alone, and he did it with a stern look on his face that gave away that it wouldn't be the talk I was expecting. Then he basically sat me down and told me if I ever filed a false report like that again, he'd personally make sure I spent the night in jail. I was 19 by that time, so he didn't just mean kiddie lockup, he meant legit adult county jail. So obviously, that threat scared me quite a bit, but more importantly, I wasn't lying. The sheriff said that two of his deputies had paid a visit to the farm less than an hour after I'd called 911. They'd found the building I'd told them about, the old brick one with the cast iron doors.

They found the doors open and the inside completely deserted. When he'd finished giving me the little lecture on filing false police reports, I started begging him to believe me. I swore on my mom that every word I told the dispatcher was the truth, and that I wasn't dumb or immature enough to just make something like that up. I told him I wished I hadn't found that guy there, and that the whole pig thing, his squeals, I'd been hearing them in my nightmares for like two nights in a row. That was the closest I'd come to crying since breaking up with my high school girlfriend junior year. The frustration was like nothing I'd ever felt before or since. It's one thing to be

accused of lying, it's another thing when a guy's entire life might be at stake. Again, I begged him to believe me and I think for a second my words actually got through to him a little. I asked him to swear that his deputies hadn't found any signs of human habitation, and that's when he broke eye contact. He sighed, then looked back and told me that there had been signs that livestock had been kept there in the recent past, but nothing more than that. Then as he got up to leave, he said something like, if you saw anything out there, and I highly doubt you did, you didn't see nothing but an animal. And I almost lost it. I told him both myself and my buddy had heard the guy speak,

how it was 100% a man's voice and that we hadn't been mistaken. As he was walking, I called him out on it, asked him just what in God's name I'd seen. You saw a pig, son, he said. You didn't see nothing but a pig. Back Back when I was in uni, me and my mates used to play a kind of drinking game called Hunnic Raiders. It all stemmed from a history module we were taking that detailed the rise and fall of the Visigoths. And as much as it's cringe-worthily nerdy to think back on, it was jolly good fun at the time. Basically, if someone put their drink down for more than a few seconds, one of us was liable to grab it, shout Hunnic Raiders,

before subsequently downing their drink. I think it'd have caused a spot more bother if we weren't all doing it to each other, and thanks to the student union's subsidized alcohol prices, getting your drink pinched didn't sting as bad as it might do otherwise. So this started at the beginning of second year, which was also the first year we were on our own flat. We loved that place. Edinburgh had some magnificent old buildings, so we were basically living in a three-story Victorian with a gothic castle facade. We really made it our own too, like it actually felt like home. So despite going home for Christmas that year, we all agreed to travel back to Edinburgh for a

big New Year's bash. This one mate of mine, Alex, had been courting since the beginning of term. Nothing too serious apparently, but he saw fit to invite his new Belle to the New Year's Eve party. She was gorgeous, sharp as a whip too, a medical student in her third or fourth year. We saw on the New Year, had a drink and a boogie, then as the party was winding down, I found myself sitting outside with Alex and Felicity, his prospective girlfriend, sharing a few drinks and puffing away on cheap cigars. It might have been a bit inappropriate being the third wheel and whatnot, but at one point, Felicity puts an almost untouched drink

down for way too long, and I swoop in for the raid. She almost jumps out of her skin as I scream panic raiders before leaning in, snatching up her drink and downing it in one gulp. I wasn't used to the taste of vodka, so even with a healthy serving of lemonade, I remember wincing from the bitter, almost metallic taste. Felicity looked shocked, but Alex looked horrified. I thought he'd be a bit angrier than he was, but no. He seemed so scared that I'd messed his little date up that he honestly looked like he'd seen a ghost. And that ladies and gentlemen is the last thing I remember. The next thing I remember is waking up with something in my mouth.

I tried to spit it out but it wouldn't budge and roughly about the same time I realized it was stuck there, I realized it was extending right down to my throat too. I think I was on the verge of a full-on panic attack before a nurse suddenly appeared and that's how I realized I was in the hospital. I was told that I was stable and I shouldn't be worried, but that I'd overdosed on drugs at the New Year's party and had been rushed to the hospital as a result. But here's the thing, the only thing that passed by my lips that night were three cans of Stella, a bottle of Magners, and the vodka and lemonade. And this was over the course of a few

hours. I was only a shade past toasty by the time I raided Felicity's Vodka and then after that, nothing. It all started to make some degree of sense when the tests finally came back and the doctors tell me what I actually overdosed on. I was still very much in denial at that point, insisting that I hadn't taken anything and that this was some other, much more frightening medical emergency. But when the doctor told me what was in my system, it all came together in this horrible moment of realization. The substance I overdosed on is called hydroxybutyric acid and is more commonly known as GHB. For those that have never heard of it and for a long time, GHB was basically the number one substance used by male predators to render their female prey pliable and eventually unconscious. So how had it found its way into my drink, you might ask? Like I said, I had four drinks all night. I kept the four cans close to

me and drank them quite fast. Then I poured out the bottle of Magner's myself with some ice, so I'm pretty sure no one got near that. But then there was the vodka and lemonade, the drink Alex had fetched for his date, Felicity. That was the only drink I'd touched all night whose origin I was unaware of, and it's fair to say its owner was someone Alex was trying to sleep with. Then suddenly, I realized what that look of horror on his face meant. Felicity had arrived later at that party, apparently from a family thing, so she hadn't touched a drop until maybe like 11pm. If you give someone GHB on only a little bit to drink, they suffered the disgustingly desired effects. But giving a fairly intoxicated person a dose of the drug, you can actually bloody kill them. So, when I grabbed Felicity's drink, shouted Hunnic Raiders and down it in one, Alex had looked so horrified because he'd known the GHB was in there.

And Alex knew the GHB was in there because he's the one that put it in there. At first, when I was asked where I'd been and who might have spiked me, I gave a few deliberately vague answers, telling both my parents and the police, who's swiftly been summoned, that I'd racked my brains and let them know if anything came back to me. Then, all of the people who came to the hospital to visit me, one person was suspiciously missing. Care to take a guess as to who that person might be?

Ding ding ding, that's right, Alex. In the end, I had to call him to get him to come to the hospital, once all the tubes were out of course, and he gave me some crock about having lost track of my messages due to all the happy new year messages from family when he arrived i basically told him he could either go to the police himself or i'd tell them what he tried to do he tried to deny it at first but i told him the test results had come back and it was officially ghb in my system he then gave me a second crock of nonsense about having a problem and needing to get help over it. And being the trusting fool that I am, I believed him. But the absolute scumbag actually attempted to go on the run and get a flight to Amsterdam. Where he was planning on going from there, God only knows, but the Dutch police simply picked up him when he stepped off the plane and sent him right back to the UK in handcuffs and under guard.

What followed was one of the trials of my life, no pun intended, because I literally had to testify at Alex's trial for actual bodily harm, among other charges. His date Felicity also appeared at some point, but not on the same same day as me so I didn't bump into her. I know it might sound strange but I think she's the one I really feel sorry for. I know I ended up in hospital and take it from me, it was a traumatic experience to say the least. The passing out was just about where my suffering ended. Alright, I felt a bit grim for a day or two but there's nothing compared to what Alex would have subjected his date to had she actually drunk the vodka. I think that was the first big teachable moment with regards to the question of how much do you really know someone. I'd known Alex for almost a year and a half.

I thought he was a good guy. Turns out, I was dead wrong about that, and now he's got a criminal record to show for it, as well as being listed on a certain register that means for all intents and purposes, his life as he knew it was gone forever. I'm a cop. In the early hours of New Year's Day, about ten years ago now, I ended up running silent to a call with additional units in tow. The caller reported hearing footsteps on her second floor while she was in the kitchen below. She lived alone, middle-aged, divorced, no kids, and had no expected company. So obviously this was very concerning to us since she was quite obviously a very vulnerable person. She was outside across the street when we arrived, obviously frightened by what had happened and as in the process of being calmed by her neighbor.

Other units showed up almost as I did and set up a perimeter at the corners of the property. We talk with her, get permission to enter, so we decide we'll announce ourselves and clear the house. Three of us stack up on the front door, announce, then make entry while the other officers are viewing the windows from some distant cover. She was in the midst of making a really late dinner, so the house smelled really good, like the kind of mouth-watering scent that only hits you when you're hungry. Anyway, we clear the ground level and make our way to the stairs when we hear it. Plain as can be, we can all hear footsteps on the wooden second floor. Not the kind of panicky, oh god I'm caught, footstep kind of footsteps,

running to hide or escape. More like the calm, methodic pace of someone unconcerned by the arrival of the police. We announce ourselves again and no response, except the footsteps just start to sort of fade away. Quietly I make my way up the steps, adrenaline pumping, and concentrating on pying the corner at the top. Excuse the jargon, but pying is basically the right way to round a corner to increase the chance of you getting the drop on someone. My CQB instructor would probably crucify for oversimplifying it that much, but you get the idea. I stop a few stairs shy of the corner, take a breath, then proceed the rest of the way up. The hallway at the top

was pitch black and after successfully clearing the top corner we make our way down the hallway clearing rooms. We weren't even at the final room of the hallway yet when we realized there was someone inside of it. Once all the others were cleared, we had them cornered. But once we stacked up on the room and heard someone talking inside, we realized we were dealing with a kid. A kid just talking to themselves like they were playing with toys or something. Still cautious, I knocked on the door and announced that we were the police, then said something like, I don't think you're supposed to be in this house, come out. I made sure not to sound too aggressive or anything. Last thing I wanted was to scare them and if they had gotten in through

an upstairs window there's a chance they'd try to flee out of it, get themselves hurt and you get the idea. So like I said I called out to the kid but when they replied saying I'll be out in a minute, something sounded slightly off about the kid's voice. They sounded older. I couldn't tell by how much, but like I mentioned already, something just wasn't right. I told the kid I was going to enter the room and with my weapon pulled close into my torso, I reached for the doorknob. And it was a push-in door, loose and light on the frames too, and I remember just how slowly pushing it open, and stepping back to assess who was in there. It was not a kid. It was a grown man, but with a kid's voice, who turns and says like, hey, I said I'll be out in a minute. I didn't even really know how to accurately describe it either. Like it actually sounded kind of genuine, not a put on, but like it could have been a medical condition or something.

But that wasn't even the craziest thing about this guy. From what I could tell, the guy had broken in, stripped down to his undies, and appeared to be shaving in this lady's vanity table or something. Only he wasn't shaving any hair off. He was shaving his skin off. I have this really clear memory of how white the vanity was and how almost luminous red this guy's blood was in comparison. Jesus Christ, there was so much of it too. Like they say facial wounds bleed the most.

I watch a bunch of MMA and that's how those guys end up all bloody from fairly small cuts. Then imagine maybe a hundred of them all over a guy's face. It was carnage. I pushed over to the right hand side of the door, giving the other officers room to cover and that's when one of my guys is like, Whoa, stop, what are you thinking buddy? The guy turned to him and his face is just a freaking mess and he says in his little kid voice, this isn't my face, this isn't me. By some miracle we managed to take the guy in without a single struggle, although we did have to put on our blue surgical gloves because of all the blood and I still think I got some on me. We got him down to lock up,

got the EMTs to him, then breathalyzed him, but it all came back clean. Chief then wanted his blood to test for narcotics and the guy reacted exactly like a kid would, non-violent, just all squeamish and whiny. Some lady EMT had to talk him up like a mommy and I'm not kidding when I say he literally said owie when the needle went in. Not long after, he went under psych eval and the doc was with him for about 10 minutes before he emerged from the interview room, saying the dude had severe learning difficulties and would soon be under the custody of State Psychiatric Hospital. After that, the guy was out of our hands, and the last I heard he was fast-tracked for indefinite detention and being pumped full of just about every psych med you can imagine. Everyone who was on that call said it was the

worst thing they'd ever seen on the job. Everything about it was just awful. From the neglect that poor disabled guy suffered to what he ended up doing to himself. No other call has ever even gotten close to it. And God willing, they'll stay that way for the rest of my career. On New Year's Eve of 2018, Bart and Danielle Yancey of Vestavia Hills, Alabama, received a rather unexpected guest at their quiet suburban home. They'd enjoyed a warm, fun-filled holiday season, packed with visits to relatives, hearty meals, and heartfelt gifts. It had been joyous, but it had been exhausting and the advent of a new year brought the Yanceys a chance to rest and recuperate. But little did they know that, for them, 2019 would begin with a mysterious and terrifying encounter. In the final few hours before the couple planned to sleep, Bart walked out front

to take out the trash. Just as he was about to return inside, Bart caught a glimpse of a shadow in the garage. It appeared to be a person trespassing on their property. Yet when Bart managed to get a good glimpse of him, he roared out in a mix of rage and fear. You see, this wasn't your average case of trespassing. The man in question was completely nude, save for a mask of former President Ronald Reagan. By his own admission, Bart was terrified to see a naked masked man sneaking onto his property. But this was his family home, a place of sanctuary and protection, a place where the love of his life laid her head at night. As such, Bart's defensive instincts completely overshadowed any desire for self-preservation,

and he violently shouted at the man while advancing aggressively. Thankfully, the man ran off when spotted by Danielle's husband, and 911 was contacted shortly afterward. However, it was clearly a very close call and footage of the man caught on their home security video was later posted on Facebook as a warning to others, stating, I know a lot of people are laughing about it and honestly, I gotta chuckle from it later, but at the same time it's very concerning, Danielle Yancey later said. I don't know what he was planning on doing, and if it wasn't for my husband spotting him, there's no telling what he could have gotten

away with. Eustavia Hills police responded to the scene but weren't able to locate or apprehend the creeper. It was so cold outside, Danielle Yancey added. Police said he wouldn't last long outside with no clothes on. They said he probably had someone waiting for him in a car close by or that he might even have been a neighbor. That last idea really creeped me out. Danielle also mentioned that multiple theories have been discussed, including more innocuous pretexts such as a dare, a lost bet, or perhaps a teenage New Year's Eve party gone out of control. He could have been messed up on drugs or alcohol, and in that mindset,

you don't know what he might do to someone else, Bart Yancey said. He could have potentially hurt us, or we could have hurt him. Even if it was a prank, it could have become very scary and dangerous quickly. In the days that followed, Vestavia Hills Police publicly stated that they'd received another call, this one at about 11pm, regarding another naked person prowling through the neighborhood in the direction of Vestavia Hills Baptist Church. Given that it was a repeated incident, they rushed to the scene, but the creeper was unable to be found. In the aftermath, the Ancy family stated that they simply want their neighbors and community to be aware and safe, in the hopes that any threat the trespasser poses can be adequately countered. I hope he never does it again, because next time, someone might not be as lucky as us, she said.

Maybe we spooked him off enough to go to another house and not do it again, but after I heard he did it the next time, I don't think we've heard the last of him. It's clear that if it wasn't for the intervention of Bart Yancey, his wife Danielle might have been in the gravest of danger. As we previously speculated, there's a chance that the creeper only targeted the Yancey home because he believed Danielle was alone. And what actually saved her was the presence of her much larger, much stronger husband, who surprised the creeper so badly that he simply fled the scene. Realistically, women can't be around a male bodyguard 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and

while freedom and independence remain just as important as safety and well-being, this remains a continual problem for females everywhere. The world will never truly be rid of evil. Malevolence will always exist. Therefore, women must afford themselves extra protection, and not necessarily in the form of weapons or gadgets. If Danielle's creeper had gotten his way, there's a big chance he'd have ambushed her before she had a chance to aim a pistol or activate an alarm. Therefore, one of the only

practical methods of self-defense would be some kind of grappling-based martial art, such as judo or sambo. Don't worry guys, I'm not about to go all Joe Rogan on you by waxing lyrical about the benefits of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but maybe in 2022, more women should be arming themselves with practical self-defense skills, allowing them to terrify those who seek to terrify them in return. Happy New Year's, friends, and please, be safe. I lost my Uncle Jack recently. Technically, his name was Great Uncle John, but for some reason, we all just called him Uncle Jack. Yet this unusual name switch was probably the least unusual thing about him.

Uncle Jack was obsessed with old western films and was once arrested for trying to buy a six-shooter from an undercover policeman. He didn't end up doing any time for it and just got away with a slap on the wrist and lifetime firearms bans. But till the end of his days, he acted like the whole thing made him a bona fide outlaw. And in a way, I suppose it did. Uncle Jack was also half-deaf and terrified of the dentist. He had dentures by the time I really got to know him but my parents mentioned him having a terrible time with his teeth right up until the day the hangers-on were extracted and replaced.

But for years and years I had no idea that his deafness and his odontophobia were inextricably linked. It was only at a New Year's Eve shindig a few years ago that I finally plucked up the courage to ask him about his ailments, and although I don't regret asking him, his answer was nothing short of horrifying. Uncle Jack was born in 1937, so he was two years old when World War II kicked off. Given that he lived in Coventry, a place that was targeted by German bombers, he actually lived through all the horrifying air raid siren running to the shelter stuff that we call the Blitz. Apparently one night the warnings were so late that not all of his

family got out of the house before the bombs fell and three-year-old Ralph was being cradled by his mom, my great-grandmother, under the kitchen table when a bomb completely demolished the house next door. And by some miracle, both Uncle Jack and his mom survived the hit, but both suffered from damaged hearing for the rest of their lives. Definitely a crazy story, but then the conversation wandered onto why he hated the dentist so much. He said that even though he was only three and a half years old, he had this one particular memory of the bombings burned into his brain. I use that word burned very deliberately, by the way, because it involved German firebombs. I'm not sure if they specifically used firebombs in Coventry,

but one raid apparently started this huge fire, and when it was over, my ancestors had to leg it through the streets to keep from burning to death. The fire created such intense heat that people running out of the burning house got stuck in the molten asphalt on the streets and burned to death, and other survivors said the smell of burning people haunted them for a long time after, and that's where the dentist comes into it. My uncle Jack said the first time he ever got a tooth drilled, the smell that came off of it brought all these memories of the blitz come flooding back. I suppose it was the smell of burning bones that really did it. And then, since whatever your teeth are made of is similar,

the smell was close enough to trigger all those bad memories. He said he started making all these noises since he couldn't talk with all the cotton in his cheeks. And when the dentist backed off, he said he ran out of the surgery and ran all the way home. I think he was only really comfortable telling me those things because we were livid. Because if anyone in the family knew about it, they certainly hadn't seen fit to tell me. All my life I thought Uncle Jack was just a bit weird. But to think it was all because his neighborhood had been bombed, repeatedly, when he was just a little baby. And I honestly can't think of anything more horrifying than that. He'd experienced things in his life that probably

make the worst day of my life look like a walk in the park. And aside from his strange aversion to the dentist and his unhealthy obsession with westerns, I think he got away with minimal trauma. I suppose that's why they call them the greatest generation. So rest in peace, Uncle Jack. You will be missed. It was started the first time I caught the bus to work. I'd been having some major car trouble and it looked like my car was going to be in the shop for up to two whole weeks. That meant that for ten whole days I'd in the shop for up to two whole weeks. That meant that for ten whole days I'd have to take the bus to and from work. It was an inconvenience, sure, but I'm not so stuck up or sheltered that I was dreading taking public transport or anything. My main concern was getting caught in a rainstorm or something, but

investing in a sturdy umbrella pretty much put those fears to bed. If I'd only known that the trouble with taking the bus wasn't the time spent or the exposure to the crazy weather we get here in the Pacific Northwest. It was the people I'd be riding with, or more specifically, one person in particular. So another thing that sucked about having to take the bus was how much earlier I had to wake up. Okay, 30 minutes earlier isn't all that bad, but it still sucked seeing 6.30 instead of 7am. I'd have to be at the bus stop by 7.15 in order to be at work by 8am, and given the area I was living in at the time, this usually meant I had the bus stop to myself. But then either the

third or fourth day I arrived at the stop, I discovered I wasn't alone. At first, the guy just looked like a construction worker as he was wearing heavy boots, jeans, and one of those big warm highlighter pen jackets with reflective strips on it. I didn't pay him any mind. It was way too early to interact with anyone so I just stood there under the shelter just listening to my podcast. Next thing I know, I feel someone tapping on my shoulder. There was literally no one else around so of course it was the guy in the construction jacket. So then I take out one of my earbuds, turn to him and ask him if I can help him, to which the guy repeats

good morning in this passive aggressive way. I assumed he thought I was just ignoring him so I apologized and made it clear that I just couldn't hear him, only right in that moment I swear I smelled one of the single grossest smells ever. It was a mix of the guy's breath and his general odor which I guess I hadn't picked up on at first because it was so cold outside. If I had to guess, I'd say the guy hadn't brushed his teeth in a freaking decade and this was sharply evidenced by the state of his mouth. Honestly it looked like his mouth had died and was just waiting for the rest of him to

catch up. It was truly awful and I found myself severely pitying the people who had to work with him, not to mention myself who had to share a bus ride with this guy. I tried sitting as far away from him as possible, but I swear to God, he literally followed me right to the back of the bus to sit on the opposite seat. And yes, you guessed it, he tried talking to me the entire time. I know what some of you might be thinking at this point, just take an Uber or stagger your schedule to avoid the guy. Well, I already spent $45 on a month's Orca pass and I wasn't exactly in the best financial situations at the time, so that was definitely guiding my poor decision making. That and the

guy wasn't at the bus stop every morning, so not at first anyway, so I figured I'd just suck it up and keep using my card. But then he was there another morning, then another morning, always trying to talk to me until it was on the verge of being harassment. Then one day I get a call saying my car would be ready the following afternoon. I mean, I'd only have to take the bus like one more time. And I was elated, but naturally my not-so-secret admirer was waiting for me that final morning. I had already asked the guy to leave me alone by that point and he just wasn't taking the hint. So to try and get back at him I decided to give his employer a call to see if they knew what he was getting up to while in uniform. And when I say in uniform, he had a company pass hanging around his neck and his jacket had the company name on it too.

So I looked them up, gave them a call and told them one of their employees wouldn't leave me alone. I know that these days that probably seems like a super Karen thing to do, but to me, it was preferable to getting the cops involved and all I wanted to do was just sort of scare the guy, not actually get him fired or anything. But none of that mattered anyway because when I called the company to describe the guy to him, including dropping his name, the secretary hit me with a, oh, we fired that guy months ago, he didn't return his uniform so we took it out of his paycheck. That's when it hit me that after that first chance meeting the first week I was riding the bus, he'd only been there to harass me. He sure wasn't catching the bus to work, at least not to work for the company whose pass he had, so the idea that I was totally

oblivious to the fact that I was being stalked, legitimately one of the worst feelings of my life. Only thing is, as bad as things seemed right then, they were about to get so much worse. So I was back to using my car. About two weeks had gone by since the whole ordeal with poop mouth and I was halfway to forgetting about the whole thing. Then this one evening I finish late at work and get home at like 6.45. It's dark, it's cold, and I'm starving, and all I want to do is just curl up on the couch and go to sleep. My apartment at the time had two locks, each requiring a different type of key. You unlock the first one so you could use the second to actually open the door. But when I go to unlock the first lock, it seems like my key is jammed. It wasn't. It's just that lock hadn't been locked at all.

It wasn't out of the question that I'd just forgotten to lock it that morning, but it was like a built-in part of my routine. It seemed really odd that I'd just neglected to do it. Anyway, I shrugged it off, too focused on my planned pre-dinner of coffee and molten hot Pop-Tarts, and then walk into my apartment. And that's when I smell it. It was that same rotten mouth smell that had clung to the bus sky like a dark cloud.

It's weird how your brain just files those kinds of smells away, and the moment you smell them again, certain memories just come flooding back. Well, it was exactly like that as I stood in the dark hallway of my apartment. Hand on heart, I think that's the most terrified I've ever been in my life. Just like knowing he was close without being able to see him. I just bolted back out of my apartment, back down into the parking lot of my building, jumped into my car and called the cops. The whole time I'm looking up at the second floor windows of my apartment just waiting

to see him moving around my apartment or something but there was nothing. It got to the point where I thought I might be going crazy, that maybe it was backed up sewage or something and I'd just had the dumbest panic attack in the history of panic attacks. But still, the cops show up, I let them into the building, then direct them up to where my apartment was, telling them that the door should still be open. By that point I figured they'd go in, find the dead rat in my toilet bowl or whatever it was, legit happens in the Pacific Northwest, please go ahead and look it up, and then just leave. What happens next will stay with me for the rest of my life. So, if you remember, I'm watching my own apartment windows from my car while the cops are on their way up to search my place. I think the next thing I'm going to see is the cops walking around my apartment, probably complaining about this crazy woman downstairs who's scared of bad smells.

Only, the next person I see turns out to be Poopmouth himself. He's not wearing his jacket or anything, but his greasy gray hair gave him away from a mile off. He literally ducks behind my apartment curtains, probably after the cops had announced themselves, and he tries to stand as thin and still as possible. I couldn't believe he'd done something so incredibly dumb. They were pretty thin curtains too, so it wasn't like he was going to fool anyone. But the moment one of the cops appeared in my window, I watched the guy pull something out of his jacket. I don't know if it was a knife or a gun but the cop was basically wise to the whole thing and immediately tasered him before he could make a move. But the whole time I'm just watching this

whole thing unfold feeling completely and utterly helpless all the while screaming look out he's got something with literally no one able to hear me. I stayed in my car for everything that followed, and I actually watched the cops leading the guy out of my apartment building in handcuffs. It was like an actual nightmare knowing he'd been waiting in my apartment for me, all after I thought I was completely rid of the guy. The only good news was that he'd violated probation and was headed back to prison to finish the latter half of an eight-year sentence for the exact same crime only committed years before. It was a relief knowing that there was no chance of running into him for another four years,

but it was still haunting to know how close I'd come to whatever it was he was planning for me. In a way, I should be weirdly thankful that he didn't take care of himself, because if I hadn't been able to smell him as soon as I walked in, I might not be around to be writing this right now. I used to live in a trailer park for my sophomore year of college. It was a really nice city, super liberal and hippy dippy. My two roommates were off in class, but I took the day off school as our dishwasher just broke and I had to wait for the repairman to show up. It was one of those ridiculous anytime between 11am and 5pm things. I did not want to wait a day longer as my roommates sucked at hand washing dishes and

I would have to wash them all again as I cooked most meals at home and we had a limited kitchen set. Anyway, I sleep in till about 10.45am and my alarm goes off. I probably milled around for a few minutes then got in the shower, not expecting the repairman to be around till afternoon. I was butt naked and had a head full of shampoo when I heard someone knock on the door. I start washing up as quick as I can when I hear more aggressive knocking. Dude is waiting like 5 seconds between each volley of knocks. Thinking he must have been knocking for a while and I didn't hear him in the shower, I was feeling bad for making him wait. As I'm drying off and quickly putting on some clothes,

I hear a very loud boom come from the door. I kind of second guessed myself and thought, did I really just hear that? And stopped for a second. Then I hear another loud boom and I definitely could make out the noise of my door being forced in and opening. I thought about going to my room to retrieve any one of my three guns, then I realized they were still all in their cases after my last range day with the locks on them. I was almost smiling at the irony of all my preparations for this specific scenario and I got caught lacking the one day it all mattered, naked and afraid. I heard some call out, hello?

And I decided to go meet my maker in a t-shirt and a towel wrapped around my ding dong. I figured if there was a fight coming, maybe they would second guess getting my half-washed nuts rubbed all over them. I walk down the hallway and lean out into the kitchen which has a vision of the front door. My door had been smashed in alright and the wood frame was shredded. I caught the gaze of a scrawny man, about my size, 5'10", holding a sledgehammer standing just beside my ruined door. He honestly looked just as surprised as me and he says, I'm so sorry, I didn't think anyone was home.

And just bolts away. Takes off. I'm not even kidding. I'm like as confused as can be, just looking at my smashed in door, half unclothed like an idiot. I finally throw on some pants and go outside to investigate, but it was far too late to catch the culprit. My door had two huge dents in it, but it held up. Just the frame had been beaten in and left two gashes going in, one where my doorknob was and one where my deadbolt was. I had a suspicion that it was not a burglar so I called my dad and asked him if the repairman he had sent just came by and explained what just happened as best I could. He said he would call me back.

I get a ring from him a few minutes later while I'm seeing if I can salvage the door and he sounds livid. The contractor they sent was mistakenly told the job was for an asbestos test. Typically what has to be done before a trailer is taken to the dump. The guy must assume the home was vacant and let himself in after a courtesy knock and got scared when I was home and ran away. The part that made my dad angry was they had tried to say that we had to pay for the damages for some smooth brain reasoning the greaseball manager came up with and ended with a see you in court for my dad. He told me to photograph anything we could use as evidence and he would drive over to help me fix my door as it was

only about an hour's drive. Making a very long and boring story short after that, it all ended with the contracting company deciding to just cough up $200 instead of going to court and the cherry on top was that they sent the man that beat my door in back to give me the most awkward and rehearsed apology. I was reminded of the story as I drove past their office today and saw the doors were shuttered and everything was gone, hopefully out of business and no longer sledging doors in for surprise tests. As a preface, I, a 24-year-old female, am not a big partier.

Although I live in a big city, I never have more than a few drinks while out. My parents were both alcoholics, so I really try to set limits. I always eat food beforehand and drink plenty of water. Anyway, I meet up with an old friend, Jay, for the first time in a year and a half. We decided to grab dinner together so she suggests a cute little place where she used to work. Once we get there at around 5.45, we're seated in the back and order a glass of wine and a huge bowl of pasta each. We enjoy our dinner in another glass when Jay's old manager comes over. He offers wine on the house so we decide to stay and grab another glass, a total of three glasses and end up paying a super cheap tab. I felt good and was

planning my commute home. This is the last thing I remember. I woke up the next morning at my friend Jay's apartment completely confused about what had happened the night before. Apparently while drinking our third glass of wine, we were moved and seated at the bar where she left to go to the bathroom. While she was in the bathroom, I somehow made it upstairs into her old manager's office. She found me pretty quickly, I guess, but she said I seemed really drunk and she called a friend to give us a ride up to her apartment. At some point during the ride from this restaurant to her apartment at 9.30pm, I called my best friend in the world, H. And the following day, H tells me that I was completely unintelligible on the phone and J had ended up having to speak for me. J told H that I was safe and headed back to her apartment

where I could stay the night if I wanted or Jay could give me a ride back to my place. The two knew each other so H felt I was safe but knew something was up as I never am obliterated in public especially after 9.30pm. So I guess I ended up passing out at Jay's as soon as we get back and she stays up and orders me food and grabs me water to take care of me. I really don't know what happened. I only had three glasses of wine and I can't remember a single thing happening after signing the bill. Although I did feel good, I wasn't necessarily drunk. I know my limits and I know that I did not black out. I never felt any sketchy vibes at this restaurant, neither with the people working there or the

customers while there. I feel like the only possible solution is that my drink was in college. For months, one year, I was getting these calls. Every time the call came in, I was sleeping, and I had a rather erratic sleep schedule, many times staying up nearly all night. But each time they called, it managed to be when I was actually asleep. I would wake up getting this call every few weeks, of someone on the other end whispering as quietly as possible. I couldn't hear what they were saying, I could just barely hear a whispering sound.

The first few times it happened I was so tired when answering that I just chalked it up to a wrong number. After a few times it finally woke me enough that I registered that someone was on the other end and that this had happened before. It sounded very creepy and like they might be getting their jollies off to waking me up. Just got a super scary vibe. They wouldn't reply to me inquiring who they were or why they were calling so I just hung up. I mentioned it to my significant other at the time and he said that he'd answer

the call the next time. Next time comes around and I answered first but when I realized it was the whisperer I handed the phone to my significant other who yelled at them and told them to quit calling. That didn't stop them. The next time I'm just so livid I threaten to call the cops but I know, what could they actually do about a whisperer? I could tell this whisperer was enjoying this because he continued to call, only when I was sleeping, all at different times of the night. So I decided to ruin his good time when he called again.

I decided to acknowledge his enjoyment and take his taboo behavior to the next level. Well, the phone starts ringing and wakes me up once again and I'm prepared this time. He starts whispering and I respond, Ooh, I'm so glad you woke me up. I'm gonna take some of my warm poop and rub it all over myself. It's gonna feel so good. Do you like that?" He hung up and never called back, and I'm sure if he was in one of my college classes, he was looking at me differently the next day when he saw me. And no, I'm not actually into that stuff. My name is Charles. I'm an assistant manager at a sub shop but back when I was just a shift

manager we had this employee named John. John was only working for us for about a month when he called us in to pick him up from his roommate's house because of some problems they had. We took him to our place and had a couple of drinks with us and we ended up cheering him up. He was always quiet about his social life but he would talk to people on tinder and meet up with a date or would go to a store he liked shopping at that was across the street from us. He stays with us for about two weeks and he tells us that he planned to hang out with a friend. My fiance gives him a huge hug since they became really good friends. He leaves our place and doesn't come back for a couple of days. I get worried and try to get in contact with him,

but somehow we couldn't find his profile on any social media platform and whenever we called, his line was completely disconnected. It was almost like he went poof and disappeared. He left all his personal belongings behind along with his clothes. This was very out of character of John to do so, we were trying to figure out what had happened and hoped he was still with his friend but we eventually just accepted that he just left with no warning. A couple of days go by and I'm at work in the middle of my shift and I see this really tall middle aged man walk in the store to get a sub and as I begin to ring him out he kinda stares at me and I look

back to ask him if I knew him. He asks about John and this creepy vibe just radiates from him and I ask him what kind of affiliation did he have with John and he just looked at me again and said he was a good worker. Then he walked out and I never saw him again. Then we got a call in the store phone which so happened to be his grandmother who filed a missing persons report because she was someone he spoke to every day and ever since then there had been no trace of him and something tells me that that guy had something to do with it.

But something told me to stop asking questions, because I'd never felt chills like I did talking to him in that moment. I lived in the Rogers Park area of Chicago for several years. In 2018, we had a series of shootings within the span of a few weeks that were connected by no other factor other than the method by which the victims were killed. Shot in the head at point-blank range by a man wearing all black. Black ski mask, black shoes, black clothes. Perhaps the creepiest feature he had was a duck-like gait, earning him the moniker Duck Walk Killer. Everyone lived in sheer terror for a short period of time, always walking with somebody and never alone,

and eyeing other people in the neighborhood with vague suspicion. Could that be him? At least I did anyway. One of the victims was an older man walking his dog in the morning. Another was a young fellow shot playing Pokemon Go while walking near the lake at night two blocks from my house. He was the second victim. At night on October 1st, I went down to my car to pick my boyfriend up from work when I heard a loud popping sound from the direction of the beach.

I wasn't yet acclimated with city life and lived in what I thought was a safe area, so I didn't make the connection that it was probably a gunshot. Dumb, I know. Also, no one had yet figured it was a spree killing because only one man had died so far. It was silent out so the sound did spook me just because it was loud and unexpected but I just got in my car and left. The next day is when I read about the second victim. Nothing rang any bells until I read where and when he was shot. Around 11 within two blocks of my house, point blank range in the head. I made the connection that I may have heard the young man get shot when going to pick up my boyfriend. They never caught him despite them trying for a long time. I often wondered who he was and where he went, and if I could have been the one who died

had I been somewhere different that night. I can't post images, but you can go ahead and look him up. There's some really scary photos and videos of him running in broad daylight. When I was little, around four years old, I lived in Okinawa, Japan with my Japanese mother and my American father, who at the time was stationed on one of the military bases on the island. We lived off base in a house and things were great. But before I get into the story, let me just give you a little background information. Before I was born, my mother was dealing with a Yakuza for some time and she ended up owing them money. She managed to get out of that situation without paying them when she got with my marine father and the Yakuza would never hurt an American so my mother knew

she was safe as long as she was with him and on the military base. I have no idea why we lived off base at the time when I was born but we did. So one evening I was in my room upstairs playing when my mother comes in, frantically shutting the door behind her, locking it, and turning off the lights. She tells me to be quiet when I ask her what the matter was. She scoots next to me, and I can hear her silently crying. My father was at work, I believe at the time the incident was happening. My mother and I heard the front door slam and then footsteps walking up the stairs. We see the silhouette of the person walking in the hallway from the light peeking

underneath my bedroom door. My mother, who was panicking like crazy and praying in her mother tongue, gets a hanger to use as a weapon. At this point, I'm crying like crazy. The doorknob starts to jiggle and jiggle and jiggle until it stops. I remember that they're gone, but we didn't dare leave until the police came and that's all I can remember from back then. As an adult now at 23, it took me years to put the story together. My mom still denies it like she does when I ask her about a certain part of her past. My dad doesn't even bother to answer the questions and just disregards it. But I know what happened and even if it wasn't the Yakuza for sure, someone other than my father came into the house and tried to get into my room. I am 12 when I got on the bus three blocks from my house to travel to my friend's house.

It was summer break and my parents are at work. They trust me and my brother to watch ourselves and travel small distances alone. As I get onto the bus, I happily sit in a seat near the middle, excited to be traveling alone, like an adult, I thought. I look around and make eye contact with the man sitting in the back corner. He's all alone, wearing a big coat despite the warm weather. He looks at me with these blank eyes and turns away. Fifteen minutes passed and it's finally my stop. I just have to get off, cross the street and walk

10 minutes up a quiet suburban road to my friend's house. I step off the front of the bus and the man with the blank eyes steps out of the back. As I walk I hear his footsteps behind me. I can hear his footsteps getting closer and closer. He remains two steps behind me but I can hear him now and I hear him mumbling, little girl, under his breath. I stop, he stops. I look behind me, he stares into my eyes and smiles. My heart is beating very fast now. I turn and feel the air move behind me like he stretched his arm out, and I speed walk away, thinking, thinking, anxious. I turn and walk up a driveway pretending I'm going into my backyard. I get to the back of the house and press myself against the brick out of sight. I peek around the corner and the man is standing, staring at the driveway like he's trying to decide if it's worth to follow me. I run across multiple backyards until I reach my friend's street.

I walk to her house, looking behind me every two seconds. I reach her door and I haven't felt safe alone since. Today I took my dog for a walk around the neighborhood. When I came back I noticed a man I had never seen before pacing near the bottom of my street. There seemed to be no home in particular he was waiting out front of and just continued to pace. I went up to my street and when I turned to look behind me, I noticed he was slowly walking up my street behind me, staring at me. I felt uneasy and decided just in case I would do a lap of the block so he wouldn't see where I lived and hopefully leave. As I turned around the block, I noticed him still pacing back

and forth at the bottom of my street. I decided to walk back down towards him. As he saw me walking down the street, he turned and started to walk the other direction then turned back again. We eventually came face to face at the base of my street. I approached him and asked if he was looking for someone. He said no and began walking up my street. I walked behind him. He then began jogging up my road.

He suddenly dipped down my neighbor's driveway and approached them. I saw him hand them what seemed to be a card, turn and walk back down my road. My neighbors looked confused by the interaction, so I got the impression they didn't know him. I found it strange since my neighbors had been outside the whole time. Why did he decide to approach them now? While his back was turned, I quickly ran inside my home. I honestly don't know what to think of the whole situation. My gut feeling was that something was very off but I can't know for sure. I'm curious what everyone else's thoughts are about this. We were arriving at my friend co-worker's house after work.

There were five of us with her boyfriend already at home. It was around 10.30pm. As we entered the small duplex I locked the front door behind me from habit. Not thirty seconds after I made it to her bedroom, five feet away, I hear someone trying to open the front door. I proceeded to ask if she or her boyfriend were expecting anyone else and they said no. Her boyfriend went to the door as the person outside started knocking. We looked outside to see someone with a hoodie pulled all the way over his face and was obscured from the side. Her boyfriend asked through the door what his face and was obscured from the side.

Her boyfriend asked through the door what he needed and he answered that he was locked out of his house and needed to borrow a phone. Her boyfriend told him no and the guy says, come on man, just open the door. We said no and to leave. There was a 24 hour gas station literally across the street. Fifteen minutes later I see someone peek into the living room and someone again tried to get the door open. We all come to the door and yell through telling him to leave and he keeps saying, I don't know why you can't just open the door. Just open the door, let me use your phone.

They said no and he eventually left. While he was outnumbered we didn't know if there was someone with him hiding, he had a gun, etc. It mainly freaked me out that he kept trying the door before knocking though. To be continued... 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.