The Lets Read Podcast - 186: MUGGED IN BRAZIL | 20 True Scary Stories | EP 174

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Sewers, Russia, & Brazil Muggings... 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

Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making a weird sound? I've got a pro. So who's that pro? The pros at Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, Tread Experts is always there, helping you with Kumo tires you can trust. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find your pro at your local tread experts. Conquer rugged terrain with on-road comfort. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumho RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find a Kumho TreadExperts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca Thank you. On March 4th of 2018, at around 4.15pm, a woman and her young daughter were walking through a small park in the English city of Salisbury. As they walked, the woman noticed something peculiar about a man and a woman sitting on a nearby bench. The pair were sitting perfectly still, but there was something about their faces

which horrified the woman and her daughter. Both appeared to be twitching and although their eyes were wide open, their eyeballs had rolled so far back in the back of their heads that they were almost completely white. Not only that, but there was a thick white foam forming around the corners of their mouths. The horrified nursing officer immediately recognized that something was horribly wrong, and she rushed to call emergency services. Not long after, the affected couple were rushed to the hospital, but when it came to identifying the strange shared condition, doctors and nurses were at a complete loss. The only thing that was clear were the identities of the two victims. The older man was 66-year-old Sergei Skripal,

and the other victim was his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia. Both were Russian citizens, but had been living in Salisbury for several years by the time they suffered their terrifying medical emergency. Neither had a medical history of seizures, blackouts, or muscle failure. Not long after, hospital staff contacted the local police force, asking them to conduct a thorough search of the Skripal-Salisbury home in the hopes that it would provide a clue as to why they had taken ill so suddenly. One of the police officers that was asked to search the Skripal's home was Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey. Nick and his partner arrived at the two-story red brick home less than an hour after the first call to emergency services. Both donned forensic suits and slippers so not to contaminate the crime scene,

but after gaining entry to the house, there didn't appear to be anything amiss. It was only when one of the officers found two dead guinea pigs that they realized something was horribly wrong, as the lifeless animals were displaying alarmingly similar symptoms to their owners. The whites of their eyes were showing, and there was a thick foam clinging to the fur around their tiny mouths. Nick was then hit with a harrowing realization that it was not he that was in danger of contaminating a potential crime scene, but it was the crime scene that was in danger of contaminating him. Nick quickly informed his superiors that they might well be dealing with

a complex case of poisoning, all while under the knowledge that he and his partner might be the next to suffer the same horrifying symptoms as the Skripals. Over the next few hours, Nick felt a deep exhaustion begin to set in, and also complained of excessive sweating. The following morning, he visited a local hospital for a quick checkup, but was told that all his vital signs were perfectly normal. Bailey was reassured, but still felt abnormally tired, so he headed back home to take a short nap in the hopes of recovering some energy. It was during this nap that Nick began to suffer from intense and horrifying nightmares. Yet when he awoke, he continued to be plagued by hallucinations.

He later described his skin feeling like it was awash with a tsunami of fire and returned to the hospital the following day after he began to excessively and violently vomit. Doctors took a series of blood samples from him and after a brief analysis, Nick and his wife Sarah were horrified to be informed that he would not only be forced to remain in the hospital for the foreseeable future, but he would be strictly quarantined from his fellow patients. But when Nick and Sarah demanded to know what the doctors had found in his blood, they were told that the medical team didn't want to speculate and only when they were 100% sure of their conclusion would the couple be informed. But in reality, doctors knew exactly what kind of condition Nick was suffering from and they only kept him in the dark due to the highest level of government intervention. Before Nick's doctors shed some light on his ailment, they had to wait until the British

government was ready to make a full and frank statement to the public. You see, Nick Bailey and the Skripals were suffering from no ordinary illness, but rather the effects of one of the most powerful biological weapons known to man. The technical name of the weapon was A-234, but in the weeks to come, it would be better known by another name, Novichok. Developed in the Soviet Union in the 80s and 90s, the series of nerve agents that fell under the Novichok umbrella were designed to be the cutting edge of chemical warfare technology. Not only were they chemically engineered to circumvent contemporary laws preventing the manufacture of such weapons, they were designed to defeat standard chemical

protective gear, as well as being completely undetectable. They were also designed so that even the lowest ranking Soviet soldier would be able to deploy them at a moment's notice, with one Novichok compound requiring nothing but the addition of alcohol to transform it from a harmless pesticide into a weapon capable of killing thousands. We can only imagine the pure horror of British officials once they realized that such a substance had been used to target Sergei and Julius Grippal. They had no idea who possessed such a chemical, how much was in their possession, or if they planned on targeting anyone else. In order to prevent what could possibly be a

gargantuan loss of life, the British government needed to act fast, and they needed to act decisively. It wasn't until a full week after the attack that the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, officially announced that a deadly nerve agent was the attack that the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, officially announced that a deadly nerve agent was the cause of the incident, but until that moment the majority of police and medical staff were kept in the dark. Yet for the people of Salisbury, the dread only increased with each passing day, as unfolding events suggested something was very, very wrong. Imagine it being your own hometown for a second. One moment, two people have been announced to be seriously ill, possibly from nothing more than

overindulging on alcohol or overdosing on drugs. Then the next thing you know, hundreds of military personnel with highly advanced armored vehicles are seen patrolling through the city streets. They begin quarantining people, sealing off entire areas to the public, and even using remote machinery to tow away whole vehicles from certain houses, which are then sealed up in plastic sheeting. It must have been absolutely terrifying to have been a citizen of Salisbury back then, kept completely in the dark, being given abstract commands such as wipe down or wash your clothes and possessions if you've been outside in the past few days.

They must have thought the problem was of apocalyptic scale. By the time the Prime Minister finally announced the cause of the crisis, it was clear that the nerve agent in question could only have been manufactured in Russia. Theresa May announced that there were only two plausible explanations. Either this was a direct act by the Russian state against our country, or the Russian government lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others. Both possibilities were abjectly terrifying, but the latter was without a doubt the most dreadful of the two prospects.

If it was a targeted assassination undertaken by Russian agents, at least they were under some kind of centralized command and would no doubt be under orders to keep casualties to a minimum. But if a substance such as Novichok had fallen into the hands of fanatical terrorists, there was no telling how many more people might be killed. There was simply no way of knowing if those responsible for the attack were planning to strike on a much larger scale, and the incident with the Skripals were merely some kind of test run. If an agent as powerful as Novichok found its way into a British reservoir or river system, tens of thousands of people could be killed in just a matter of weeks. In the days that followed Sergei, Yulia, and Nick's hospitalizations, the Russian government

flatly denied all knowledge of the attack, and as a result, the investigation became a race to identify those responsible. A team of police officers, military intelligence analysts, and members of the British Secret Service began poring over hundreds of hours of security camera footage from all over the city of Salisbury. It took them months to comb through more than 5,000 hours of video files, but there came a point where investigators identified two men whose actions and movements were extremely suspicious. The day before the attack, the two men had arrived at London's Gatwick Airport on a flight from Moscow,

before immediately taking a train to Salisbury. British intelligence agents who reviewed the footage of them immediately recognized their movements as that of a reconnaissance mission, and began to track their movements more thoroughly. They were found to have spent two nights at the City Stay Hotel in Bow, East London, and police then moved to isolate and analyze the room they stayed in. Sure enough, traces of a Novichok chemical weapon were found in the hotel room. Police then demanded that the hotel staff turn over all information on their two short-stay guests. They were given the names Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Bosherov,

names which at first meant nothing to any of Britain's intelligence agencies. But nevertheless, the British government demanded these two men return to the UK to explain their strange behavior and movement patterns. Shockingly, the Russian government announced that it had been in touch with the two men, who claimed to be innocent of all charges. They insisted that they were merely tourists with an interest in cathedrals and that, due to Salisbury's magnificent cathedral, it had been on their bucket list of holiday destinations for quite some time. However, despite asserting their innocence, they refused to return to Britain, announcing they

were afraid of being scapegoated and that the accusations were down to nothing but russophobia. Despite identifying two potential suspects, Salisbury police were still unable to work out why the two men might specifically target Sergei Skripal. And there came a point where officers asked their military intelligence counterparts if there was anything they needed to know. That's when it came out that Sergei was not your average Russian expat and had once been in the employ of Russia's top-secret Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU. In short, Sergei was an ex-Russian spy, and no ordinary Russian spy either. He had been a double agent, working for the British.

After nine years of selling secrets to British intelligence, Sergei Skripal was arrested in December of 2004. At his trial, after being paraded before the court in a cage, Skripal was convicted of high treason and was only spared the death sentence because he cooperated fully with Russian prosecutors. He was disgraced, stripped of his military decorations, and sentenced to 13 years in a high-security detention facility. Yet after serving just four years of his sentence, Skripal and three other NATO-aligned spies were freed as part of a spy swap. The four men were exchanged for ten Russian agents arrested in the United States, and in 2011, Sergei, his wife, and his two children emigrated to the UK to escape the country he had once betrayed.

Sergei seemed to live a relatively quiet life in the UK, and there appeared to be no lasting animosity between himself and the Russian government. Sergei's daughter was even allowed to return to Moscow in 2014 in order to work a sales position at a large Russian corporation, something which never would have been permitted during the Cold War. But then, in 2017, Sergei's 43-year-old son Alexander returned to Russia on a visit to St. Petersburg, but it was a visit he would never return from. Sergei attempted to contact his son, but found his calls went straight to voicemail. He began to fear the

worst and soon his fears were confirmed. Sergei was contacted by the British Home Office, who told him that Alexander was dead. Yet when he inquired as to the circumstances of his son's death, the Home Office didn't have any answers for him. Alexander had died in extremely mysterious circumstances, so mysterious that it wasn't clear if he was murdered or not. The British government concluded that even if there was foul play surrounding Alexander's death, there was no obvious motive and no obvious suspects. But to Serge, the explanation was painfully clear. His ex-comrades in the GRU were responsible, and they had murdered Alexander as revenge for his father's treachery. As far as Sergei was concerned, his son's murder meant all bets were off,

and he once again began playing a role in the Western intelligence community. Once British law enforcement understood Sergei's backstory, as well as his desire to avenge his son's death, it became clear why he had been targeted for assassination. And once the authorities knew which organization might be responsible, they were potentially able to link their two supposedly innocent cathedral enthusiasts to the Russian secret services. Secret Services. This is how they discovered that Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Bushirov were merely the aliases of two Russian espionage agents, whose real names were Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepika, respectively. The passport numbers of their aliases were only three digits different from dozens of other documents which depicted their likeness, with each passport being a different Russian-style name. Despite their willingness to deny responsibility for the chemical attack,

the Russian state was completely unable to deny the existence of the two agents who carried it out. After a series of bomb attacks in the Czech Republic, Mishkin had been declared a wanted criminal by the Czech police in 2014. Once again, the Russians denied any involvement in the attacks and insisted that it was pure coincidence that Mishkin had been awarded Russia's highest military medal shortly after the bombings. But intelligence agencies all over Europe knew this was a weak attempt at concealing Russian involvement. Anatoly Chepika was also involved in these bomb attacks and was also awarded the Hero of Russia medal following his involvement. The attacks targeted two ammunitions factories thought to have been producing ammunition which was destined to be sold to Ukraine for their defense of the Donbass. In light of the recent ground invasion of Ukraine, this is particularly

disturbing as it suggests that the Russians are not only willing to strike out at their more peaceful neighbors, but that in terms of conquests, they've been playing the long game for the better part of eight years. By the fall of 2008, it was painfully obvious that Vladimir Putin himself had authorized the use of an extremely dangerous chemical weapon on the streets of Britain. And it was only by a stroke of pure luck that only one person had lost their life. By some miracle, both members of the Skripal family survived the attack, as did Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey. But a woman by the name of Dawn Sturgis hadn't been so lucky. Towards the end of June,

Dawn and her partner were admitted to the hospital and were noted to be displaying similar symptoms to the Skripals. A few days later, Dawn was dead, but her partner, a man named Charlie Rowley, survived the ordeal. He then gave an interview in which he stated that he and Dawn had found a sealed box of perfume in a nearby park. The perfume appeared to be completely unused, so much so that the plastic dispenser nozzle hadn't even been attached yet. Don had sprayed some of the bottle's contents on her wrist, then noted it hadn't smelled like anything,

which a small quantity of the substance had apparently spilled onto Charlie's hands in the process of attaching the dispenser nozzle. Within 15 minutes of the substance touching her wrist, Don Sturgis was finding it difficult to breathe, and Charlie managed to call an ambulance before the pair passed out. Their apartment was then so contaminated by the substance, later determined to be Novichok, that the entire apartment building was destroyed. The box of perfume was found in a place called Amesbury, a town just seven miles north of Salisbury, meaning that Mishkin and Chepika had obviously used the town as a dumping ground for their supply of Novichok before they made the journey back to London. It was later discovered

that they'd been instructed to spray the chemical on the Skripal's front door handle, the only place that they would both be certain to touch. Sadly, Don passed away a few weeks after being exposed to Novichok, and her partner Charlie was left to mourn her loss. He'll forever remain in the shadow of the knowledge that he lost the love of his life due to reckless evil committed by the Russian secret services. I'd like to tell you that there is some kind of ending to this story, that justice was meted out and that those responsible face consequences for their actions.

But I can't do that, because as we've seen with the invasion of Ukraine, the story of Vladimir Putin's dictatorship and the evil it has committed has yet to reach any kind of conclusion. It's a tale that continues to unfold as I record and post this narration and there's no telling when or if those that unleashed a chemical weapon on the United Kingdom will ever face the punishments they deserve. During the 20th century, few nations on earth suffered more than the Ukraine. Not only did they endure the terror of Nazi occupation during the 1940s,

but they were also forced to live under the yoke of the Soviet Union for almost a hundred years. The former group are famous for their vicious atrocities, and while the Holocaust is without a doubt one of the greatest crimes in world history, the latter group are responsible for perhaps one of the least talked about horrors of the 20th century, the Holodomor. Roughly translating to the Great Starvation, the Holodomor was a man-made famine caused by Soviet policies that took place between 1932 and 1933, with the death toll believed to be around 3.5 million. It left the Ukraine a desolate wasteland of unburied bodies and desperate survivors, and the country was only barely back on its feet by the time Hitler unleashed the savagery of the Waffen-SS on it. Some might call it hell, but for children like Andrei Chikatilo,

they called it their childhood. Andrei was born on October 16th of 1936 in Ukraine's Sumy region and was the son of two collectivized farm workers who lived in a small one-room hut. In line with Stalinist Soviet policy, Andrei's parents weren't actually paid for their labor and instead worked for the right to cultivate a small plot of land behind their home. This obviously meant that Chikatilo's family were often short of food, and it's said that Andrei and his family were sometimes forced to eat grass and leaves in order to avoid starvation. Before Andrei was born, his parents had given birth to another child, Stepan, but at the age of four, the young boy had been kidnapped by ravenous neighbors

who apparently killed, cooked, and ate the child due to their lack of food. Andrei claims he was almost constantly reminded of this by his mother, Anna, and that it had a profoundly dark effect on his nascent attitudes. When the Nazi invasion of the USSR commenced in June of 1941, Andrei's father was forced to fight in the Soviet Red Army and would later become a prisoner of war after being wounded in combat. This meant that for the entirety of the Second World War, Andrei and his mother would have to endure the horrors on their own. They witnessed devastating aerial bombings, an incident in which German soldiers fired machine guns into a village full of nothing but civilians, and at one point,

they cowered in a nearby ditch while watching Nazi soldiers set fire to their home. The stress of such experiences caused Andrei to commonly wet the bed while sleeping, but instead of showing her traumatized son compassion, Anna would violently beat him every time he did so. It's also believed that Andrei was present when German soldiers forced themselves on his mother, a common event during the invasion of Ukraine. Then around nine months after this horrific incident, Anna gave birth to a girl, who she named Tatyana. Tatyana's arrival meant Andrei's mother had even less time and food for him, and by the time he started school in September

of 1944, he was so weak from hunger that he regularly fainted during classes. His small stature and meek demeanor also meant that he was the victim of vicious school bullies, so no matter where he was, Andre's life was characterized by incessant, violent abuse. In order to escape such hardship, Andre escaped into books and became an excellent student as a result. He later said the only people who ever gave him any praise were his school teachers, which made a deep impression on him and by his teenage years, he was by far the best student on the collective farm he resided on. Yet, the starvation André had suffered in his early years proved to be devastating to his physical development and after emerging from a difficult puberty,

André discovered he was mostly impotent. This caused him to feel deep self-hatred, and he was extremely awkward around female peers. However, in the mid-1950s, when André was 17 years old, he discovered something else about himself, that physically overpowering a girl and seeing her struggle caused him to become extremely aroused. This is most likely due to witnessing the assault of his own mother by German soldiers, something which definitely had a disturbingly Freudian effect on his developing psychology. Still, André made an effort to form regular romantic relationships, but after fostering a relationship with the young divorcee in his early twenties, he found he was completely unable to perform in the bedroom. The shame of this failure drove him to attempt to take his own life, but he was discovered and rescued by some of his neighbors. This only compounded the shame he felt and in 1961, he fled the village of

his birth to seek a new life in the Russian city of Rostov. Andrei's family followed him to Rostov shortly afterward and his younger sister helped set him up with a woman named Feodosia whom he married in 1963. Andrei once again committed himself to forming a healthy romantic relationship and actually had two children with Feodosia. By the early 70s, Andrei was working as a teacher in a city not far from Rostov. Yet despite his apparently stable married life, his desire to overpower and assault young women remained ever-present. It seems it was only a matter of time before André acted on

these evil urges, and in May of 1973, he would commit his first series of crimes. During a swimming session with some of his pupils, André swam over to a 15-year-old girl and grabbed her. He then became feverishly excited when she struggled against him and tried to swim away. Just a few months later, Andre locked another of his pupils in a classroom before attempting another assault. Yet when he failed to achieve rigidity, he resorted to subjecting her to a violent physical assault. This became a hallmark of André's psychology and is a common trait among many psychopathic killers who conflate certain urges with physical violence with terrifying frequency. André was also thought to have taken advantage of his role as a warden of the girls'

dormitories and on several occasions he intruded on them in the hopes of catching them in a state of undress. Then, after moving to the coal mining town of Shakti in September of 1978, Andrei's perverted behavior escalated to the point that he finally committed his first murder. On the evening of December 22nd, Andrei lured a nine-year-old girl named Yelena Zakotnova to an abandoned house he'd secretly purchased for the sole purpose of slaughtering young girls. Once again, after failing to become aroused, he began venting his frustrations on his hapless victim, choking her before stabbing her repeatedly in the chest and stomach. When she was dead, he picked up her corpse, carried her to a nearby river, and tossed her in the water.

Despite a mountain of evidence indicating that Andrei was the killer, a 25-year-old laborer named Alexander Kravchenko was charged with Yelena's murder. Kravchenko had a history of similar crimes, but the local police were extremely reluctant to indict a member of the Communist Party, which Andrei had joined several years previously. Kravchenko actually had a solid alibi for the night of the murder, with his wife testifying that the pair of them had been at home all evening. However, the police then threatened to charge her with being an accomplice and essentially forced Alexander to confess to a crime he'd not committed in order to avoid having his wife put on trial. He was later convicted of

the Yelena Zakotnova's murder and was executed by firing squad in July of 1983. There's little doubt that this result emboldened Andrei to the point that he believed he was invulnerable from prosecution. In his eyes, Russian law enforcement was so corrupt that they'd rather discount evidence than accuse a member of the Communist Party as being a criminal. Communists were selfless, upstanding members of this new society, people incapable of immoral or predatory actions, as they put it. But this couldn't be further from the truth, as by this point, Andrei was more monster than he was man. Three years after he murdered Yelena, Andrei spotted a 17-year-old schoolgirl standing at a bus stop in Rostov city center. He approached her, discovered her name was Larisa Tachenko, then invited her to drink some vodka with him in some nearby woodland. Exactly why Larissa followed an older man to such a

secluded place is unclear. Perhaps he played on the natural teenage spirit of rebellion, or perhaps she found herself attracted to such a confident older man. Either way, it would prove to be a final, fatal mistake. Once they were suitably alone, Andre threw the girl to the ground, tore off her clothes, and attempted to assault her. Predictably, he once again found himself unable to perform and flew into a rage as a result. In order to prevent Larissa from screaming for help, he stuffed her mouth full of mud before beating her about the head with his fists. Then, once she was unconscious, he strangled her until she was no longer breathing,

then began mutilating her corpse with his teeth, tearing out chunks of flesh before Lee finally came to his senses and buried her in a shallow grave. Nine months later, while walking home from grocery shopping, Andre happened across a 13-year-old girl named Lubav Baryuk. Andre initiated polite conversation and the two walked and talked for around a quarter of a mile, chatting until they found themselves in a particularly secluded area. That's when Andrei suddenly turned feral, dragging Lubov off the road before stabbing her to death. Lubov's murder was one of Andrei's most disturbing, as he later confessed to stabbing the girl in a manner that constituted a sick parody of romantic intercourse. Her body was found with 22 knife wounds in the pelvic region,

and her eyeballs were said to have been repeatedly and carefully sliced with the murder weapon. What followed Lubov's murder was nothing short of a frenzy of child murder, and between July and September of 1982, Andrei took the lives of five more young people between the ages of 9 and 18. He developed something of a behavioral standard, focusing on runaways and homeless children at either railway or bus stations. That way, he could almost guarantee that they were desperate enough to follow him, especially if he offered them relief in the form of money or alcohol. Yet the morbid detail that confirmed to the authorities that they were dealing with a serial killer were the cuts to the victim's eyeballs.

Forensic analyst Viktor Burakov later stated that it was such a rare and bizarre detail that the prospect of there being multiple perpetrators was almost impossible. Despite his savage inclinations, Andrei refrained from killing again until June of 1983, when he took the life of a 15-year-old Armenian girl named Laura Sarkeesian. Laura's murder prompted yet another killing spree, and by late September, Andrei had murdered another five victims. The sheer quantity and savagery of the murders caused heavy speculation among the citizens of southern Russia. Some suggested that the murders were the work of a group harvesting organs to sell in the black market, while some purported that they were

the work of a satanic cult. Several young men who'd been previously convicted of certain assaults and attempted murder were questioned by police. By the beginning of 1983, a handful of them had actually confessed the crimes. Yet their confessions were quickly discarded by investigators who noted that they'd only been attained through the use of brutal interrogation techniques such as stress positions or sleep deprivation. The interrogations were so unbearable that three of those subjected to them were said to have taken their own lives following their release. Andre continued to kill unimpeded until September of 1984 when he approached two young women at the Rostov bus station. Little did he know, but a number of undercover detectives had been assigned to patrol routes that focused on his unusual haunts.

They spotted Andre displaying the behavior pattern of the killer they'd been tracking for the better part of five years, and decided to follow him for a while. Not only that, but Andre's physical appearance matched the description of the man seen walking alongside one of the murder victims prior to their untimely death. As Andre reached the city's central market, and the detectives feared they might lose him in the crowds, they rushed to detain and search him. On his person, they discovered an 8-inch blade and several lengths of rope, and due to the obviously suspicious nature of these items, Andre was promptly arrested. Yet unbelievably, due to a mismatch with Andre's blood type and fluid samples recovered from crime

scenes, he was determined not to be the killer. However, this mismatch didn't mean that Andre was released scot-free. It was discovered that he was guilty of theft from a previous employer, yet despite being sentenced to a year in prison for the crime He was released after just three months to continue his murderous campaign After keeping a low profile following his brush with the Soviet justice system Andrei resumed killing in August of 1985 Just over a month later he killed again And Soviet law enforcement were

met with renewed public demands to catch the man who'd been continually preying on them. By November of 1985, the investigation had expanded to include a team of 29 dedicated detectives. Plainclothes female officers were even ordered to loiter around bus and train stations in the hopes that the killer would make a move on them. Also, in a move that was unprecedented for the Soviet Union, law enforcement took the step of asking a psychiatrist to produce a psychological profile of the killer. The psychological profile produced by Dr. Alexander Bukhanovsky makes for an incredible read. If its complete authenticity is to be believed, then Dr. Bukhanovsky predicted almost everything about Andrei's life, down to his impotency and what kind of job he would have worked based on the days of the week the killings took place. There was only one major mistake, and that came in the form of the USSR's increasing journalistic freedom.

In the past, whenever Andrei had killed, there had been a huge incentive to cover up the murders, both from a political and a law and order perspective. But as the USSR came closer and closer to collapsing, freedom of the press increased. And so did the reporting of Andrei's crimes. He therefore knew how close he was to being caught and began radically switching up the locations of his crimes in order to throw the police off his trail. He began tempering his malevolent urges, unleashing his beastly desire to kill only on business trips that took him far away from Rostov. However, Andrei couldn't contain his murderous addiction for long and he found himself unable to resist when he spotted an 11-year-old boy standing

outside a theater in Shakhty, one of his old hunting grounds. He lured the boy away from the location by promising to show him a collection of Hollywood movies he had smuggled into the country and it seems the offer of such forbidden fruit was impossible to resist. Once they were alone, André stabbed the boy to death, then took grim trophies from the boy's body. The discovery of the boy's corpse prompted a huge outpouring of rage from the local populace, who had been assured that the killer had been apprehended years earlier. What followed was a huge setup in police operations involving more undercover detectives,

cameras hidden in train stations, and the random stopping and searching of lone men in secluded areas. This is how Andre ended up being the target of extensive police surveillance and in several instances he was observed approaching young lone women or children and engaging them in conversation. Then, on November 20th, after six days of surveillance, Andre was arrested by four plainclothes police officers after having exhibited the same predatory behavior in a cafe. Afterrei's questioning, homicide detectives took a very unusual approach. They contacted the author of Andrei's psych profile, Dr. Bukhanovsky, and invited him to read extracts from it directly to Andrei. Dr. Bukhanovsky focused on areas which touched on

Andrei's traumatic childhood, and within just two hours of the interview commencing, Andrei was a blubbering mess, confessing to each and every one of his crimes. Andre went into great detail with his interrogators, telling them that he would regularly sit or squat beside his victim until their hearts had stopped beating, adding that the victim's cries, the blood and the agony gave him relaxation and a certain pleasure.

The police then asked Andre why he would slice the eyeballs of his victims and he replied that he had initially believed in an old Russian superstition that the image of a murderer is left imprinted upon the eyes of the victim. Andrei also confessed to tasting the blood of his victims, saying it gives him chills and that it had eaten the tongues of some of his victims. All in all, Andre confessed to killing 56 people between December of 1978 and November of 1990. Yet his behavior at his trial was anything but cooperative. Not only did Andre repeatedly expose himself during the proceedings, but he also engaged in discordant, unhinged rants that sometimes included singing old socialist anthems. Upon passing the final sentence, the presiding judge made the following remark. Taking into consideration the horrible misdeeds of which this man is guilty, this court has no alternative but to impose the only sentence

that he deserves. I therefore sentence him to death. On February 14th of 1994, Andrei Chikatilo was taken from his death row cell to a soundproofed room in Novotorkovsk prison and executed with a single gunshot behind the right ear. His death was quick and painless, something which he had denied his victims during their final moments. Andrei was, without a doubt, one of the most brutally evil and prolific serial killers of the 20th century, and is remembered in Russia in the same way the Green River Killer is remembered in the United States. Yet there seems to be an added brutality and madness to Chikatilo. Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making a weird sound?

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at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. treadexperts.ca Back when I was in year 10, I went on a school trip to Russia with our school's history society. We all thought it would be the adventure of a lifetime, but it turned out to be a complete nightmare for two different reasons. Firstly, we were on the way to our hotel in St. Petersburg and it was terrible. We were basically on a coach for 36 hours straight with a stop only every 12 hours or so so we could get some food and stuff. A trip to one country ended up being a trip to like 7 different countries. But then almost as soon as we crossed

the border over into Russia, weird stuff started happening. All of a sudden, and this is right at dawn too so most of the other kids were asleep, but the bus driver started raising his voice with our teacher, who then started to sound really scared. And that's when the beeping started. Two cars were on either side of the coach, one front, one back, and they were flashing their lights and beeping their horns. Our teacher is telling the coach driver, who was a Russian guy, not to pull over because he's scared of what the guys in the cars are going to do. But then the coach driver is saying that if he doesn't slow down and stop then, there might be a crash, because the car in front kept dangerously

slowing down, trying to force our coach to a stop. As we slowed to a stop, we thought we were about to be kidnapped by the Russian mafia or something. It was honestly so scary. But then the guys that stopped us turned out to be people sent to warn us of that exact thing. Apparently, rumors had gone around that we were being targeted for kidnap, but the guys that were beeping had been sent by the hotel to protect us. There was a big argument between our bus driver and the protection guys because they had guns with them, but the driver and our teacher didn't want them to be on the bus with guns in front of us kids. In the end, we had no choice but to have the guys with guns, not

Kalashnikovs but smaller ones, sharing the bust with us until we got to our hotel in St. Petersburg. The next thing was that when we were in our hotel at night, none of us were allowed to leave our rooms. If anyone did, the guys with guns would shout at us in Russian to go back to our rooms. I mean, we couldn't understand what they were saying, but it didn't take a genius to work out what they meant. We went out sightseeing for two days with the same isolation at night, but then one day there was a switchover with the security team that was guarding us. All the guys we had come to recognize disappeared and then a new team took over of entirely new people. Then, that night, and I didn't hear or see this because it happened on another floor in the hotel, our bus driver must have come back from going somewhere and one of the security team challenged him in the hallway. Our teacher later told us that

he tried to explain that he was the bus driver and that he was part of our group, but the security guard who stopped him demanded to see some kind of proof of this. Obviously he didn't have any proof other than showing him his driver's license and uniform from the coach company he was from. Then get this, instead of just letting him go past to get to his room, the security guys started beating him up. A few of the kids came out of the rooms to see what to get to his room, the security guys started beating him up. A few of the kids came out of the rooms to see what was going on and literally saw the security guy just beating the life out of this bus driver. The driver then basically just disappeared after refusing to drive us anywhere else.

We were basically stuck in the hotel for another day and we were supposed to drive on to Moscow to see some of the sights there. So by the time we got to another coach driver we were already a day behind. Then we got the bad news that we wouldn't be going to Moscow at all and our teacher had basically arranged for us to go back to England early. We were all gutted about that but we also noticed something else. Our teacher seemed really shaken up about something and we all thought it was the whole battered coach driver situation but it later turned out to be something else. He didn't tell us until we got back home as he didn't want to scare us but then one day in our history society, the very last one before our exams,

he told us what he thought was happening and what the battered coach driver had told him. He gave us a little side note, saying he didn't know anything for certain, but the one thing that was clear to him is that he didn't want to put us in any danger. The bus driver had told him that the guys guarding us were all Russian secret agents and that there was never any threat of being kidnapped by the mafia. They were basically sent by the Russian government to keep an eye on us in case we were some sort of spy group disguised as a school trip. When he was being beaten up, the driver said that one of the agents had called him a traitor who was in bed with the English and that if he didn't make himself scarce then next time he'd be taken somewhere secret and shot. And that's why he refused to drive us anywhere else, and why he refused to come back to the hotel. Now, as our teacher said, it could have been

the bus driver being all dramatic, but our teacher also confirmed to us that when the security team had been asked to show their credentials, any kind of document or card to confirm that they were a private security company, that they basically refused to show us anything. They'd also refused to tell us any of their names, where they were from and any questions were just met with a wall of silence. Our teacher said the whole thing was probably one of the most unnerving experiences of his life and it made it all the scarier to think that he had to protect 20 plus kids from the Russian secret service and he was terrified that they'd choose to detain us or lock him up if he didn't do exactly what they told him. The whole thing caused a big drama in our school and loads of

parents of kids who went on the trip were up in arms about how he could be put in such danger. It was definitely the craziest thing that happened to me in all of school. And that's my scary story about the time we visited Russia. To be continued... Russia. I'm sorry if some of my English is not perfect, but I am learning more and more every day. But the point of my email is to tell you a story, one I hope very much you'll read on your YouTube channel because it's something I will remember till the day that I die. I wanted to tell you about the day I thought the world was ending. It was in the morning of the 15th of February 2013, and since I was still in school back then, I was in classes that morning. We were studying old Russian writers and on that morning we were reading a book by Maxim Gorky while discussing the themes of his writing. It was a nice clear weather outside but even at past 9am in the morning it's still almost dark in the winter time where I live.

So when our classroom started to light up very quickly, almost like the sun was rising very fast, some people looked to see what it was. Then all I heard were people gasping, my god, my god, again and again. Then I looked too and this is what I saw. It was a huge ball of fire flying through the sky and as it got closer to the earth in the distance it got brighter and brighter until it flashed so bright and went out. A few seconds later we heard a huge explosion sound and then everything went very quiet. The next thing I remember our teacher was telling us to get away from the windows but

no one listened. And suddenly she began screaming about how the glass could break and slice us up. So we all backed off and tried to shield ourselves behind our desk. And she was completely right. As the next thing, we felt as if though we'd been hit with a huge shockwave and all the glass from the windows shattered and flew inward at us. There was so much screaming and shouting. We were all so scared. People in my class were asking, was that a nuke? Are we at war now? Our teacher tried to keep us all calm, but even he was very shaken and scared by what had happened. We were all wondering what we should do, and so our teachers told us very calmly to leave the upper floors of the building we were in and to all meet up at the school sports

area since it was a very strong brick building. When we all walked outside we smelled this very strong burning smell and this scared us even more because one of the boys in our class was saying it's definitely an American nuke because you smell this when one explodes. He had no idea what he was talking about but at the time it made all of us so scared and we were all having our eyes on the sky expecting more of the fireballs to fly over our heads. We were all so scared. Some people were asking if it was the end of the world and I actually thought it was the end of the world too for a few moments but I know now that it was just my fear talking.

All the students met in the sports area and we listened to the radio to find out what was happening, and that's how we found out that we were safe and it was just a meteor having exploded in the atmosphere. But some other people in Chelyabinsk and other areas had not been so lucky, and the meteor's explosion had hurt people and even destroyed some buildings. I later heard that more than a thousand people had to go to the hospital because of injuries caused by the meteor's explosion. When it exploded, it exploded like a hand grenade, sending pieces of space rock flying everywhere. Some people were hit by these pieces or they crashed through windows or roofs and people were cut by glass or slate. One person even had a broken back from being hit by a larger piece. I don't know if they died or

not. More than 200 people were either blinded by the flash or suffered from a burning in their eyes for a short time because they had been looking at the sky when the ball of fire exploded. These people were much closer than we were and so I think me and my class were very lucky that morning. People that were closer to the exploding meteor also had sunburn from how brightly it shined when it exploded. They called those flash burns and we were told the very same thing happened when the USA dropped nuclear bombs on Japan. So, although it wasn't a bomb, it had very similar effects. We also heard that a school that was much closer to the meteor's explosion was hit by a blast wave, which is again very much like a nuclear bomb.

One teacher was cut up by flying pieces of glass but thank God that she survived. Some people say that she'd saved all of her students' lives by shouting at them to get under their tables. I think she also thought that it was an American missile and her students were a lot younger than us and they must have been terrified. Afterwards, people in the government suggested working with the Americans to invent some kind of early warning system for meteors, because it is a very alarming thing that they can strike completely without warning. So far, I think this won't happen, and people are so concerned with fighting each other on the earth that they don't often look

up into the heavens to see what's coming for us there. That new movie Don't Look Up reminds me of this. I know that the movie is not literal but for me the threat of meteors is very literally real as my home region had actually been hit and scarred by this. I hope this kind of event never happens to you or your viewers. It is something I would hope no one ever suffers from again. And please look it up on Google if you don't believe my story. You'll see it's true and I'm not making this up. You might have even heard it on the news. I hope you enjoyed this story and I can only tell it because nobody I know was hurt or died because of it. Maybe if I had been really hurt or my family was killed, I might not be

able to tell it so easily. And I also hope that there is peace between our two countries, as you and lots of other Americans seem friends went to Russia for a Christmas vacation. First thing we did after such a long flight was head out to a bar, and we started trying out the different flavors of vodka. When it was our turn to get drinks, we start to try to speak Russian, but the bartender immediately smiles at us and asks, American? Turns out his English was really good, so we reply like, yep, American, don't hold it against us please.

He just laughed and made a peace sign with two fingers then asked us why we were in Russia. I told him we were on vacation then asked him for five shots of the chili vodka. Two European guys at the bar started talking to my friends and I and we suggested playing the I never game. Both the guys were bragging saying how much they could drink and how pretty we all were. They even joked that since there were no boys with us that they can pretend to be our boyfriends to keep the creeps away. We excused ourselves to the bathroom then instead of finding generic male and female

toilets, we were greeted with just one individual bathroom. Then when we looked inside we found ourselves staring in on five guys all dressed in suits and sitting down at a small table like an actual toilet. They straight away turned their heads towards us and said something quickly in Russian and that's when I noticed the gun on the table. Oh wait, I'm so sorry, we were just trying to find the toilets. I remember saying and we tried to make a quick getaway. Another guy kinda did a half smile and says in perfect English,

I'm sorry for my friend here, but the real toilets are the way you came. I could show you if you like. My friend Deb is now still holding my hand and slowly edging backwards where we came from. Thank you, but I'm sure we'll find it. We just wanted to get out of there, and we rather shakily left that area and was engulfed by people again. We went back to the bartender and explained that we couldn't find the toilet and that we nearly got shot while trying to find them. I explained how the guys looked and it was very odd that there wasn't anyone else but them in there. Oh, that's fine. Don't worry about them. He said I'll chill. So I asked, who are they?

Oh, it's the local mafia. Nothing to worry about. Then asked, another vodka? Me and my friends were just standing there with our mouths open. And after hearing that, I wanted to leave and go to the hotel bar. How could the bartender be so casual and laid back about this? I know it's not much of a story, but who can honestly say that they nearly got shot by some Russian mafia guy? On the outskirts of the German city of Frankfurt lies a small sewer outlet.

Known as the Liederbach Tunnel by residents, the outlet sits underneath an overpass and has a narrow, dimly lit walkway running through it. Even in daylight hours, the outlet has a rather ominous look about it, but its foreboding appearance isn't the only reason it's developed a sinister reputation among the locals. In days gone by, the outlet's walkway provided something of a shortcut between nearby residential areas and adjacent playgrounds. But since 1998, the tunnel has been blocked off to all but city sewage workers. Urban legends abound regarding the reasons for this, and although some of them are decidingly melodramatic, they're very much based on a true story. A story so utterly harrowing that, for 20 years, it continues to chill the blood of all those who hear. Of the Lederbach Phantom. March 26th of 1998 was the final day of school before Easter break, and 13-year-old Tristan Brubach was in no mood to attend. He attempted to convince his father that he had hurt his back, but his father was no fool. He knew Tristan loathed the routine and responsibility of education

and forced him to depart for classes. However, around lunchtime, Tristan tried giving the same excuse to one of his teachers. He must have given a convincing performance because this teacher gave him permission to finish school early at approximately 1.30pm. Tristan then made his way to the Frankfurt-Hust train station, intent on returning home to get an early start on the Easter break. This particular train station is one of the busiest in the whole city, but despite the dense crowds, Tristan appeared on CCTV footage, visiting a small store inside the station itself. The footage showed him to be alone, and he was still alone when sighted a

short time later by a woman walking her dog through a nearby park. Tristan was sat on a park bench, puffing on a cigarette that he most likely purchased from the store in the train station, and when the woman passed him, Tristan leaned down to pet her dog a few times. The pair exchanged words, with the woman later saying that Tristan was a cheeky but charming young man. Then as she walked away, she looked back to shoot him a warm, motherly smile. It's then that she saw two dark-haired men approaching Tristan before engaging him in conversation. This was the last time that anyone would see Tristan, alive.

Around 5pm, a group of children were walking home from school and happened to pass through the Lederbach Tunnel walkway. It was then that they sighted something floating in the filthy, shallow water. It's a human corpse. Tristan's corpse. Not knowing who else to turn to, the children rushed back to school to inform their teacher of what they'd seen. Apparently, their teacher believed that they were simply making the whole thing up and insisted on accompanying the children to the Liederbach tunnel to confirm their story. To their horror, they discovered that every word the children said was true. There really was a young boy's corpse floating in the sewer,

and upon making the discovery themselves, they rushed to inform the police. Frankfurt police officers would later describe the crime scene as one of the worst they'd faced in their entire careers. Tristan's body was in such a terrible state that the officers could only identify him via a name tag inside the boys' school bag. After reconstructing the crime at the scene, investigators deducted that Tristan had been beaten to a pulp before being strangled just meters from where he was found. They also determined that Tristan had tried to fend off his attackers as one of his shoes had come off during the supposed struggle. There's also a chance that the strangling didn't actually kill Tristan,

because whoever had attacked him had followed him into the water before cutting his throat from ear to ear. The cut was so deep that Tristan was almost beheaded, and his killer followed up by plunging the blade into his torso over and over again. After that, the real mutilation began. Sections of flesh from Tristan's arms and legs had been removed, and the killer had taken the time to remove certain appendages from the boy's body. The police noted that an ear was missing, along with a few of his fingers and toes,

and since none of these were found at the crime scene, it's thought the killer removed them as trophies of his grisly act. News of Tristan's brutal murder horrified the local community, and their eyes were glued to TV news in the days that followed as the police investigation unfolded. Frankfurt had a relatively low crime rate at the time, and murders like Tristan's were almost unheard of. As you can imagine, his family was absolutely devastated. His only surviving relatives were his grandmother and his father, Bernd. And since Tristan had no siblings, the Brubach bloodline had essentially been wiped from the earth.

On top of that, Tristan's mother had taken her own life just three years prior, and the two deaths in quick succession condemned Bernd to a grief that he never recovered from. Tristan's funeral was attended by hundreds of local citizens, some of which had never even met him, and as Frankfurt grieved for the rebellious but charming young man, the police investigation continued. German homicide detectives announced that Tristan's murder and mutilation had taken no longer than 15 minutes, and that through the course of their preliminary investigation, they'd found their first major clue. A single bloody footprint had been found at the scene of the crime, and the size suggested that it belonged to the killer. This would prove their single biggest chance at identifying the murderer, but they still sought out eyewitness statements in order to tighten the net around the bloodthirsty child killer.

One statement came from three who had been walking to a nearby soccer field at around 3.30pm. They claimed that as they passed within about a mile of the Liederbach tunnel, they spotted an odd-looking man with dark hair walking away from the area at speed. They also told the police that the man appeared to be soaking wet from the waist down, leading police to theorize that this was none other than Tristan's killer. This sighting was then corroborated by a young woman who had also been in the area at the time of the murder. She too had spotted a man whose pants and shoes looked sodden as they had been wading in deep water, and the two sightings helped paint a physical description of the man believed to be Tristan's murderer.

The man was said to have a long, scruffy blonde beard with a small plate braided into one side. He was also thought to be very skinny and very pale with light-colored eyes while standing at around 5 foot 7 inches tall. Witnesses also mentioned he looked grimy, as if he was averse to bathing and that he either had a hair lip or a very deep scar just below his left nostril. Police then consulted a criminal psychology profiler who told them that the suspect was most likely between 25 and 35 years old and had no close friends or family and most probably harbored some kind of perverse attraction or resentment towards children.

This profiler also stated that there was a big chance that Tristan knew his killer in some capacity, and that the police factored many of these estimations into their investigation in the weeks that followed. Yet barely a week after Tristan's funeral, there was a shocking development in the case that left even the most hardened investigators shaken. On April 7th of 1998, Frankfurt police received a call from a payphone located in the Hoosht train station, in the very same train station Tristan had been sighted in just hours before he was murdered. A police dispatcher answered the call, and when they asked the caller to identify themselves, the caller simply replied, this is Tristan's murderer speaking, and told the officer they wished to turn themselves in. When asked to describe themselves, the caller told the officer

he was a 5 foot 11 inches with long black hair, a detail which contradicted the more recent eyewitness statements, but lined up with the dog walker's description of the two men that approached Tristan while he was smoking on the park bench. The supposed killer then stated nothing but, Arrest me. Then ended the call. Police officers rushed to the train station but failed to apprehend the caller, and due to how busy the Hoost train station but failed to apprehend the caller. And due to how busy the

Hoost train station was, they were unable to identify the caller from CCTV footage or get accurate fingerprints from any of the payphones. When this new piece of information reached the media, some journalists speculated that the killer was trying to confuse investigators by providing contradictory information, but failed to note that the dog walker seemed to provide this exact same description of the suspect. In addition to this, when police released the audio of the call to the general public, many noted that the caller sounded distant and intoxicated. This could have easily been because the call was a prank formulated by mean-spirited drunks,

but it also lined up with some description of the killer as pale, scruffy, and unwashed, potentially lining up with someone with addiction problems. As the investigation grew in scope and scale, it quickly became the largest murder investigation in German history. It was comparable to the Jean Benet Ramsey investigation in the US or the Madeleine McCann investigation in Great Britain. The entire country was positively obsessed with the murder, and the unfolding investigation ate up airtime on the nightly news as well as pervading the dinner table conversations of almost every family in the nation. Police officers took fingerprints from a jaw-dropping 10,000 male suspects in the months that followed, as well

as collating around 24,000 witness statements. They also had a number of composite sketches made, each detailing what they believed the killer might look like, and had these distributed to more than 80 different German prisons. Even Germany's criminals were appalled by Tristan's murder, and entire swaths of criminal organizations promised to do all they could to catch his killer. Police also reached out to various medical clinics, hoping to match up the hair-lip detail with any potential patients. Officers then interviewed almost every single person who'd had a hair lip repair operation during their youth, but none were

considered potential suspects following these interviews. The investigation slowed until March of 1999, and police made their second solid break in the case. Tristan's backpack, a different item to his school bag which had been missing from the scene of his murder, was finally located. It was lying in a wooded area around 16 miles from the scene of the crime, and perhaps most interesting was the fact that it contained a Czech language roadmap of Germany. Tristan didn't speak or read Czech, so it was safe to say it didn't belong to him and most likely belonged to his killer. The release of this new information to the public prompted yet another eyewitness to come forward, one who claimed that she had been walking through

these same woods the day after Tristan was murdered. During her walk, she had been accosted by a man who seemed mentally unstable, one who was ranting about the French Foreign Legion as well as a herd of lost sheep. But more pertinently, she claimed the man not only spoke German with a Czech accent, but he was also carrying what strongly resembled a child's backpack. It seemed the police were only a hair's breadth away from catching the killer, but when the man was tracked down with the help of the French Foreign Legion, it was discovered he had a solid alibi and had to be ruled out of any subsequent investigations.

By that time, an entire year had passed since Tristan's murder, but to the investigator's frustration, they were no closer to solving his murder than they were the year before. Lead after lead took them to nothing but dead ends, and the case was dangerously close to becoming a cold one. Then, in October of 1999, Tristan's grandmother paid a visit to the young man's grave, only to make a truly terrifying discovery. We can only imagine the anguish and horror she felt when she walked up to her grandson's grave to find that someone had tried to dig him up. Whoever it was had laid down a plastic tarp and had excavated so much earth from Tristan's grave that they'd almost

reached his coffin. What's more, a single shovel lay next to the excavated earth, and although a lack of recent rain meant that it was near impossible to tell when the grave had been disturbed, Tristan's grandmother insisted she had the feeling of being watched, the tale and, despite the Brubach's family insisting that the killer was to blame, there was no way of telling who might undertake such a grisly task. In the years that followed Tristan's murder, the lack of a solid explanation led to a number of vicious rumors being circulated, none of which warrant discussion in this video. However, it's clear that the longer the case went without answers, the less funding and focus it received. And as the days went by, the closer Tristan's case got to being tossed on the cold pile. This was further exacerbated by the revelation that one of the case's major tipsters turned out to be an American woman who was trying to implicate her innocent ex-husband as the killer.

It turned out she had been lying to investigators for months on end, meaning tons of potential evidence had to be scrapped from the Frankfurt police. Yet, all was not in vain, as police began to find links between Tristan's murder and the disappearance of two other German children, Annika Seidel and Melanie Frank. In September of 1996, 11-year-old Annika Seidel disappeared from a location just six miles away from where Tristan's body was found, while 13-year-old Melanie Frank disappeared from nearby Wiesbaden just over a year after Tristan was killed. Some investigators suggested that the case was intrinsically linked and if they found the person responsible for either child's disappearance, they would also solve the death of Tristan. It took until 2013

for investigators to take a fresh look at the case and since then, two dominant theories have emerged. The first is that Tristan had been lured to the Liederbach tunnel by someone he knew, possibly with the promise of some kind of material gain. It's possible that the person that did so was someone Tristan's father wouldn't have approved of, hence why he tried to come up with an excuse to get out of going to school that day. One of the worst pieces of evidence for this was a statement provided by one of Tristan's teachers, who described seeing him in the company of a few older men in the weeks prior to his death. One of these men seemed to fit the description of

the suspect seen by other eyewitnesses, the blonde-haired man with the hair lip who was sighted near the crime scene just after the murder. When the police tried to put together a timeline of Tristan's movements in the days prior to his murder, they noted that there were large gaps that no one could account for. Was Tristan perhaps taking drugs with this grimy, pale looking man? Perhaps he owed him money or had stolen something from him. Little else, besides devastating mental illness, could explain the brutal malice of such a grisly attack. The second dominant theory is that Tristan had been targeted by an apparent child predator that had been stalking the area. One of Tristan's former classmates would later describe a man who looked exactly

like the police sketch of Tristan's killer, and added that he was an intimidating individual who was known to stalk and offer gifts to local children. This was then backed up by the testimony of children from a local daycare center who told police of a man lurking in a nearby wooded area. Every time they were offered gifts, the children had rushed to report this behavior, but it wasn't until Tristan was murdered that their teachers began to take their claims seriously. Yet by the time Tristan was murdered, this strange man had disappeared, and any and all searches for him were completely fruitless. Sadly, to this day, Tristan Brubach's murder remains unsolved. Investigators in Germany have attempted to link Tristan's case with murders and assaults in a variety of other European countries, but no concrete parallels have been established. Tristan's only surviving relative, Bernd Brubach,

passed away in December of 2014 at the age of 59, having never remarried or had any other children. At the time of his death, he remained hopeful that his son's murderer would be found, but despite the fact that a 20,000 euro reward had been offered for any information leading to the killer's capture, it seems increasingly likely that hope was painfully misplaced. In the decades that followed, the murder has continued to loom over Frankfurt's citizenry, so much so that the Liederbach tunnel had been completely closed off to the general public, and as times gone by, the murder had transformed from a well-discussed fact into something of an urban legend, something teenagers use to scare each other. Be wary, be watchful, of the Liederbach Phantom. We'll be right back. you can trust. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumho RoadVenture

AT52 tires. Find your pro at your local TreadExperts. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. TreadExperts.ca If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get a pro

at TreadExperts. Conquer rugged terrain with on-road comfort. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumho RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find a Kumho Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. Trade experts, that's EA. Born in 1957 as the only daughter of George Whittle and his girlfriend Dorothy, Leslie Whittle grew up in the English city of Wolverhampton and would go on to enroll as a student at the town's Wolfram College. George Whittle was the owner and operator of Whittle Coaches, a successful transport company that specialized in ferrying miners from the Holmes

villages to the coal pits they employed them at. The coach company earned additional money by hauling coal in between shift changes and, by 1970, Whittle Coaches was one of the most profitable private enterprises in the entire region. However, in that same year, 65-year-old George tragically passed away after a sudden illness. To avoid estate taxes, he gave three houses and 70 grand in cash to Dorothy, as well as over 190,000 pounds to both of his children, which obviously included Leslie. Yet Selina Whittle, his estranged wife, received absolutely nothing from George's last will and testament, and this kicked off some much-publicized legal proceedings that circulated in the nation's newspapers. Tens of thousands of everyday people were transfixed by the sordid details of the litigative battle,

yet one malevolent person was far more interested in the stories than their peers. And in their dark and twisted mind, a plan began to form. On January 14th of 1975, Dorothy, who by then had adopted her deceased husband's second name, returned to her home in Shropshire at around 1.30 in the morning. Shortly after entering the house, Dorothy quietly checked in on her daughter Leslie, and after finding her fast asleep, Dorothy also retired to bed. Yet as she slowly drifted off to sleep, she had no idea of the horrors that were to befall her young family when she awoke the following morning. Not long after dawn on Wednesday, January 15th, Dorothy rolled out of bed, trudged downstairs, and began cooking breakfast for her two children. It wasn't unusual for Leslie to sleep in, even on a school day,

but as she began to get dangerously close to being late for college, Dorothy climbed the stairs with the intention of waking her. But when she walked into her daughter's bedroom, Leslie was nowhere to be found and in her place was a typewritten note. Dorothy knew something was horribly wrong as she read the first few words, which told her that under no circumstances was she to contact the police. Leslie had been kidnapped and the only way to get her back was via a payment of £50,000. In order to facilitate the transaction, she was to wait for a telephone call that evening, one that would come to a payphone near the Swan Shopping Centre in Kitterminster. Dorothy descended into a wild panic and drove over to her stepson Ronald's house. When he heard the news, Ronald completely ignored the ransom note's demands and immediately contacted the local police force.

Late that evening and early the next morning, a team led by Commander John Morrison and Detective Chief Inspector Walter Borum began an investigation into the kidnapping. But somehow, the story was almost immediately leaked to the British press, and a feature on Leslie's kidnapping was featured on the nightly news on the very same day she was taken. By some miracle, the broadcast didn't deter the mysterious kidnapper, but they waited until 1am on January 16th to make the phone call to the shopping center's payphone. During the call, Leslie's voice could be heard, assuring her family she was okay. Yet she also passed along instructions that the family needed to visit another payphone in nearby Kidsgrove in order to retrieve a second message that had been stuck behind the payphone's backboard. It was during the second trip that the family was ordered to bring along full payment of £50,000 or a terrible fate would befall Leslie. After collecting the full cash

amount, Ronald Whittle departed from Bridge North Police Station just after 1.30am on January 17th. Yet Ronald was unfamiliar with the area kids grove and in the search for the correct payphone, he quickly became lost. It took him almost 30 minutes to locate the payphone which was located just outside the Kidsgrove post office. There was indeed a typewritten message stuffed behind the backboard, one that directed him to a piece of nearby parkland known as Bathpool Park. The rest of the message has been paraphrased as follows.

Go to the top of the lane and turn into no entry. Go the wall and flash your car flights. Look for the torchlight, run, then await further instructions. Ronald followed the instructions to the letter. driving down a pathway which was marked with a no entry sign. He drove to the end of the lane, flashed his car lights and exited the vehicle to await fresh commands, yet no one appeared. As it turned out, a young couple had parked their car right next to the proposed ransom

drop and in the confusion, the kidnapper seems to have fled the area. The entire Whittle family was panic-stricken by the failure, and were terrified that Leslie would in turn suffer the consequences. Yet all they could do was wait to be contacted by the mysterious kidnapper, praying all the while that Leslie would survive the ordeal. Police officers assured them that the kidnapper would not harm Leslie, as she was far more valuable alive than dead. But still, the Whittles worried, having no idea if the person they were dealing with was just greedy or pure evil. Around a week after the failed ransom drop,

West Mercia police were contacted by their West Midlands counterparts. They informed them that the same night as the ransom drop, a car had been abandoned near the Freightliner terminal in the back six times and was in critical condition in the hospital, while the car itself contained a pair of slippers that were confirmed to be Leslie Whittle's. The shooting of the security guard appeared to have been a statement from the kidnapper, one designed to assure the Whittles that he was not afraid to use violence to achieve his goals. But as it turned out, the fingerprints and ballistic evidence left behind by the kidnapper were a far louder statement than any bloodshed. The fingerprints were the exact same pattern that were found at the scenes of three other slayings committed by a man who the British press referred

to as the Black Panther. During a series of post-office robberies, the Panther shot dead two postmasters and the husband of a postmistress, and earned his nickname due to his dark clothing and frightening agility. This new information only served to further terrify the Whittle family, who realized that they were dealing with no mere amateur, but a hardened, remorseless killer. Just days after the shooting of the security guard, the police decided to hold a press conference to inform the general public of Leslie's kidnapping. They knew that Leslie's kidnapper had strictly forbidden her family from contacting law enforcement, but seemed convinced that he would refrain from hurting her. In light of this, high-ranking officers ordered a thorough search of Bathpool Park, the site of the proposed ransom drop. The search began on March 6th of 1975,

and since a roll of Dymo tape typing paper had been found stuffed into an old sewer drain, police continued to inspect the other sewage drains present in the park. The deepest of all the drains happened to once serve as an air ventilation shaft for Nelson's coal mine and had to be tested for poisonous gases. But once it was declared safe to enter, officers of the West Merchant Police Force descended into the darkness to search for clues. The drain consisted of three steep landings, and on the second,

the search team discovered a cassette tape recorder, the same variety used to create the proof-of-life tapes of Leslie's voice. Then on the third landing, the search team discovered a rolled-up sleeping bag that was acting as a pillow, a yellow foam mattress, and a survival blanket. Yet it was only near the bottom of the drain that the search team made the most horrifying and heart-wrenching discovery. Hanging from a thick steel wire, a mere seven inches from the bottom of the drainage shaft, was Leslie Whittle's cold and clammy corpse. It was widely accepted that once Leslie's kidnapping was made public and it became obvious that the police were involved, her kidnapper had simply executed her by tying the wire around her neck and pushing her off the third and final landing.

In the aftermath of Leslie's brutal execution, her kidnapper became the United Kingdom's most wanted man. A huge manhunt commenced and soon, the hunter's net began to tighten around this murderous defiler. Towards the end of the year, in December of 1975, two police officers spotted a man acting suspiciously in the large market town of Mansfield. When they approached him, the man produced a sawn-off shotgun, firing it into the air before he rushed off into a nearby fish and chip shop to take hostages. However, the brave patrons of the traditional eatery quickly overpowered their potential captor, and the man discovered to be one Donald Nielsen was taken into custody. In the investigation that followed, Nielsen's fingerprints were found to match those in the drain shaft, and later, at Kids Grove Police Station, Nielsen confessed to Leslie's kidnap, but not to her murder.

During his trial at Oxford Crown Court, Nielsen's defense attorney proposed that Leslie had in fact killed herself accidentally after slipping and falling from the ledge while the metal wire was around her neck. This wire was supposed to secure her, not hang her, and it was argued that Nielsen had showed a great deal of compassion for his victim by feeding her, clothing her, and providing a place for her to sleep. However, this argument failed to convince the jury, and in July of the following year, Nielsen was found guilty of Leslie's murder, with the judge handing him a life sentence of 61 years in prison. It was during this time that he was further identified as the so-called Black Panther, and three weeks later, he was convicted of the murder of three post office workers and handed a further three life sentences. Nielsen was never released from prison, as he died of motor neuron disease in his prison's hospital in December of 2011. It was an apt way for him to die, as just like his victim, his life slipped away while

unable to move, unable to breathe, and I think I have a story you might be interested in. So my dad used to be a builder and in his mid-twenties he moved into a single bedroom flat with his then girlfriend in a place called Muswell Hill in London. The flat was in a house share which is basically a big old house that's been chopped up into individual flats that took up each floor of the house. My dad and his girlfriend lived on the second floor and his neighbors in the flats above and below were friendly enough, but with it being London, they pretty much kept to themselves and minded their own business. Then one day in early 83, he noticed that the plumbing in his flat was playing up, so he called a plumbing company to

come out and unblock the drains. When the plumber arrived, my dad was the one who answered the house's front door to him and after a quick inspection of the plumbing in his flat, he determined that the problem was probably the drains on the exterior of the property. This was bad news for my dad as it meant that it wasn't going to be an instant fix. Then, lo and behold, the main exterior sewer drain was the problem as it was almost completely blocked with something. My dad says he told the plumber that he'd hoped it wasn't anything particularly disgusting blocking the drain, i.e. poo, and around about that same time they were discussing what it was,

the quiet Scottish neighbor who lived in the attic flat came down to see what the problem was. He'd also made calls to a plumbing company but couldn't find anyone to come out, so he thanked my dad for getting the problem sorted. That's when the plumber found the drain was blocked with bits of fat and small bones. And because the fat had congealed the bones in there, he'd have to come back in the morning with more specialist equipment to get the blockage sorted. My dad said this was fair enough, but that he was getting really sick and tired of the problem as it was causing a bad smell in his flat and his girlfriend was basically threatening to move out if it didn't get sorted out. Anyway, the plumber said it looked like

someone was flushing food waste instead of binning it, and the Scottish neighbor, who said his name was Des, said it looked like chicken bones. Everyone was tutting and shaking their head, assuming it was the people on the ground floor that were too lazy to take their bins out or whatever, so they were flushing takeaway leftovers down the toilet. After that, the plumber departed after promising he'd be back in the morning to sort the blockage. But that night, my dad said he'd heard banging and scraping sounds coming from the front yard of the house share, and when he poked his head out the window, Des was out there, wearing nothing but a vest and shorts, and he was clearing out the drains himself. My dad said that he thought that he was mad as a

hatter being out there at night in just a vest when it was bloody freezing, but then again, he was Scottish, and he reckoned that they were better suited to cold weather than the English are. My dad called down to Des, telling him he was an absolute hero and for getting the drains sorted as he was sick of the smell. Des agreed and said it would probably be cheaper all around if he just got it unstuck himself. By his own admission, my dad said he didn't think too much about why Des might be doing that or why he might not want anyone paying too much attention to the bones and fat that clog the drains up. Anyway, the next morning, the plumber shows up again and my dad informs him that Des has dealt with the blockage during the night.

It was only then that it really hit him how suspicious that was, doing something for free that a plumber got paid a few hundred quid to do. The plumber decided to double check anyways, just to make sure it was all dealt with and as much as Dez has done a pretty decent job of clearing the pipes out, he'd left a few scraps of bone and fat behind. My dad remembers leaving for work as the plumber was collecting up some of the bones and fat into a little plastic baggie he normally used for spare fittings. And as he drove off into the misty London morning, he says he thought to himself, maybe I should look for another place to live.

A few days later, my dad got home from work and as he got out of his car, two blokes approached him and asked if his name was Dennis. My dad said no and asked who the two blokes were. When they told him they were policemen, he got a really, really bad feeling. The two policemen then asked if he lived with a bloke named Dennis and my dad said no, but there was a Scottish man named Desmond living in the attic flat. He said the two coppers gave each other this look then asked what time Desmond normally got home. My dad said usually about an hour after him and if they waited they'd probably catch Des when he arrived home from work. It's so creepy to hear him tell the story at that part because as he got into the flat,

his girlfriend was just about ready to leave for her shift in a nearby pub. He actually looked her dead in the eye and said, I think Des has been killing people. Then told her about getting stopped by the police and promised to call her if there were any developments. And my god, were their fast developments. My dad said he basically hung around the window until he saw that Dez had arrived home, then watched as the two coppers approached him, had a quiet chat, and then Dez walked them into the house and up to his flat. Not long after they walked Dez about to the police car and drove him off. Dez never returned to the house at Cranley Gardens, the road the house share was on, and he was later charged with multiple murders,

but not under the name Dez. That was just a fake name he was giving people, God knows why, but his real name, and some of your viewers might have figured this out by now, was Dennis Nilsen. Between the late 70s and the day he was arrested in 1983, Dennis murdered at least 12 young men and boys, some of them while my dad and his girlfriend were asleep in the flat below. He ended up getting sentenced to life in prison and ended up dying there too, though I'm not 100% sure when and why he passed away. Obviously my dad was quick to get out of that flat, as knowing that those bad smells weren't the sewer drains and were something else haunted him horribly. His girlfriend ended up leaving him as she just wanted to get away from all the memories of that place. He says that was hard

on him, but it was a weird kind of blessing in disguise, because if she hadn't dumped him to move on with her life, he'd never have met my mom a few years later. It's not a story he tells very often for obvious reasons, and he didn't tell me or my sister until we were both adults who'd left home. But as you can imagine, our jaws were on the floor when he told us, and it's pretty horrifying to think that my dad was a close part of how Dennis ended up getting nicked. I've actually watched a few documentaries on the Nilsen murders, and it's surreal to hear about the second floor neighbor's involvement as every time I think, that's my dad. My name is Trevor. I live here in my hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina, and today I want to tell you about my encounter with a real-life alien.

Now, I know what you're probably thinking. This guy either has an overactive imagination or he's totally nuts. But please, hear me out. I'm like 90% sure you won't be disappointed. So the thing is, I'm a sewer utility line mechanic here in Raleigh, North Carolina. I know, it's just a dumb, fancy way of saying sewer worker, but at this point, I'll take whatever dignity I can get. I joke of course because I'm actually kinda proud of what I do. If it wasn't for folks like me, all that stuff you want to stay flushed would suddenly start becoming unflushed and nobody wants that. Anyway, back when I was still a rookie mechanic, I used to have to go down into the

sewers with my foreman so he could basically show me the ropes. Let me tell you, you don't really know if you're brave or not until you climb down into the sewers and wade through waste deep toxic waste for hours at a time. I was kind of intimidated by the idea that, and I'll admit, I only got into being a line mechanic because I needed the money. But good god, actually climbing down into the darkness the first few times seriously rustled my jimmies. The first few times my foreman took the lead and I just followed, watching everything that he did, taking mental notes and letting him walk me through the process of checking lines and probing for fat deposits. It was gross, and it never stops being gross.

But after about three or four runs, it stopped being so terrifying and started feeling a lot more like hard work. But then, I started having to take the lead to demonstrate what I'd learned, as well as getting myself some more practical experience. The fear came back a little once that all started happening, but it was more the pressure of actually performing up to standard that was making me anxious. I was still on a probationary period for a few months and I was worried that if I messed up too much, I'd be fired almost as quick as I started. But as nerve-wracking as the whole training process was, I had no idea of the kind of messed up stuff I'd see down in the sewers.

And one of those things absolutely terrified me, and is probably the closest thing I'll ever see to a legitimately otherworldly alien being. I remember turning down one of the shorter tunnels on our route and as my flashlight's beam hit the sharp outer corner, I saw something move. This grabbed my attention for two reasons. Number one, obviously we get plenty of rats down in the sewers but they're long gone before you get close because you make a ton of noise when you wade through the water. So like you hear them skittering around,

which is creepy enough, but you tend not to ever see them unless it's at a distance. Number two, the thing was not only unlike anything I'd ever seen in my life, it actually reacted to the light of my flashlight and sort of tensed up. Okay, so that's kind of a lie when I said that I'd never seen anything like it because I had, only it was in a bunch of different sci-fi and horror movies, so you can imagine why it scared the life out of me to see it with my own eyes. What I saw was shaped like a human heart, kind of the same size too, wider at the top and kind of narrower at the bottom. It reminded me of a heart too, not just from the way it tensed and relaxed, but from the way it was pure blood red. It wasn't beating like a heart though, it only ever tensed up when my

flashlight passed over it and that's how I knew that what I was looking at was somehow alive. Plus, the way it was reacting to my light kind of made it change shape too, like it was scared of the light. I think I stared at it in disbelief for a second or two before finally whispering like, Bob? What in God's name is that? I moved my flashlight over it again a few times, showing my foreman how it wasn't just the ball of fleshy gunk that was moving. The thing that was attaching to the walls was twitching too. He was definitely freaked out because he let out a whispered, My God.

Poor choice of words on his part, seriously, because I figured he'd never seen anything like a before, and that had me even more scared than I had been before. Turns out, he had seen something like a before, and he actually knew exactly what it was too, he'd just never seen one as big as that before. I really wish he'd told me earlier because I swear to god I almost had a heart attack but after promising me that the whole thing was safe and wasn't some kind of dark souls monster, I finally got a hold of myself and pushed past the thing. My heart was literally trying to jump out of my chest and I found I couldn't even look at it as I got closer because my legs just stopped working.

But eventually I got past it and finished the run without passing out or getting eaten or absorbed. Okay, now I bet you're pretty desperate to know just what in God's name I saw by now, so I'll just go ahead and tell you. What I was looking at was a cocoon of tubifex worms. They're like these little blood red worms who are somehow both male and female and when they breed, they breed in these big colonies that then form these blood red egg sacs. I'm probably getting that wrong in some way so biology nerds please don't at me but I swear I've never seen anything so alien looking and scary in my whole entire life. Stuff like that reminds me of some old YouTube video I

watched once where the theme was like we live on an alien planet. There's stuff out there that's actually real that's just as freaky as anything some Hollywood horror movie producer could ever dream up. And to me, that little fact is enough to lose sleep over. We'll be right back. is always there, helping you with Kumo tires you can trust. Until June 15th, receive up to $60 on a prepaid MasterCard when you purchase Kumo RoadVenture AT52 tires. Find your pro at your local TreadExperts. From tires to auto repair, we're

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to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Just after I graduated from college, my mom and dad gave me the graduate gift of my dreams. I remember them handing me the envelope at the graduation ceremony and, at first, I figured it was just a congratulations card from some of the Boricua side of the family who couldn't make it over for the ceremony. But when I actually opened the envelope and looked inside, my jaw almost hit the floor. Inside was a printout of a United Airlines e-ticket to the one place in the world I'd always dreamed of visiting. Brazil. A little backstory, I've always been a

huge soccer fan, and my favorite players were always Brazilian. From Pele to Ronaldinho to Neymar Jr., I've idolized Brazilian soccer players for as long as I can remember, and it was always a big pipe dream of mine to visit the country of their birth. It wasn't something I ever specifically asked for, just something I talked about, but my parents must have picked up on it and decided that there was no better graduation gift. And boy, were they right. And I remember pulling them in for this big three-way bear hug as I thanked them over and over again. The flight was scheduled for two weeks and I'd be landing in Sao Paulo, so when the time came, I packed up my things and hitched a ride to the

airport. The first day was exploring San Cecilia, which is one of Sao Paulo's bigger tourist areas, and more importantly, the home of the Museum of Football. But after walking around some of the safer favela areas, I came up with a little plan. I really wanted to try and get involved in one of the five-a-side soccer games that they call futsal, but I didn't just want to roll up like some obnoxious American tourist like, hey guys, let me play. So I hatched a plan to go buy a bunch of soccer balls to give out as gifts. That way, I could ingratiate myself into getting to play with them, as well as leaving a little piece of myself behind in my most favorite country in the world. It seems like a solid plan, right? Well, it didn't exactly go down that way.

I left the balls behind alright, but parting with them turned out to be the single most terrifying moment of my entire life. So, like I said, hitting up a sporting goods store not far from my hotel, I picked up a huge bag of soccer balls, ten in total, then headed out into a fafella called Santa Amaro. The bus ride took about an hour and I was getting the whole spectrum of looks from my fellow travelers. Some people smiled or laughed when they saw an obvious tourist carrying such a big bag with them, with one saying to me in perfect English, they don't sell those in the United States? Anyway, once I started to recognize places in Santa Amaro, I dragged the bag of balls off the bus and then started heading towards the soccer courts I'd seen the day before. At least, I thought I was heading the direction

of those courts. Because after about half an hour of lugging the bag through these little streets and alleyways, I discovered that I'd gotten myself hopelessly lost. I swear to God, some of the favela neighborhoods are like literal mazes, with nothing in the way of tall buildings or landmarks to orient yourself with. But after a while, I saw this group of kids chilling out next to this half-finished building, so I decided to approach them to ask questions. I remember attempting to use my half-baked Portuguese like, Onde, um, onde el futbol, uh, soccer, courts? The kids were all like, huh?

And then looking at each other and laughing at the big dumb American trying to speak their language. They must have already noticed the bag of soccer balls I was carrying because within seconds, they were practically swarming around me, giggling and pointing at the huge bag, obviously thinking I was crazy for carrying so many. That's when it occurred to me that if I just gave them one, they might actually take a liking to me and be much more willing to listen. So that's exactly what I tried to do. I unslung the bag from my shoulder, talking all slow like, do you guys want a football? One of the kids points at the bag, then points at myself and when I nod, he smiles and starts nodding

like crazy so I proceeded to open up the bag before fishing one out to hand it to him. That's when I heard this really distinctive click. I turned and just to the side of me is one of the kids pointing a small snub nose revolver right at my head. I don't even think I can properly put the kind of terror I felt into words. Like there's all those idiot cliches like my blood ran cold or my stomach dropped, but they just don't cover it at all. What I felt was like a full body sensation. True terror grips your entire body, not just your mind, and the one thing I can really remember clearly is how my heart started beating like it wanted to burst out of my chest. The kid said something to me in Portuguese, something that I didn't understand, then shouted

it again when I failed to do whatever he was asking. Right then, another one of the kids took the bag of soccer balls from out of my hand and ran off around a corner and out of sight. It was a robbery, that much was obvious, but once they'd rifled through my pockets and backpack helping themselves and my money and my phone and whatever else they wanted, I thought they'd just run off after the buddy and leave me alone. But they didn't. As I'm standing there, feeling like I'm about to soil

myself, the kid with the gun starts shouting at me in Portuguese again. Only again I have no idea what he's saying. Just after that, I watch as the kid cocks the hammer of the revolver. His thumb was too small for him to do it with just one, so he had to take the gun in both hands and use both of his little thumbs to do it. I swear dude, that was one of the most messed up things I'd ever seen. Like it seemed to drive home how wrong the whole thing was, seeing him struggle with that instrument of death in his tiny tanned hands. I tried my best to remember all the Portuguese I could, but I know some Spanish accidentally came out with it too

because I remember saying, Por favor, no fuerza, no fuerza hermano, por favor. I'll never forget how hearing me beg for my life just made the kid smile, like this big evil looking grin that lit up his eyes too. Then as I could actually hear my heart thumping in my chest, the kid closed one eye like he was aiming, pointing the gun right towards my head, and pulled the trigger. But nothing came out, but a dull click. There was nothing in the chamber. It was all just a sick prank, and after I flinched and groaned in a way I don't think I've ever heard before,

the kids burst out laughing, then ran after their buddy who'd been dragging away the soccer balls. I remember just standing there for a few seconds, totally unable to move, but also somehow shaking harder than I ever had in my life. My armpits and back felt literally drenched with cold sweat, and I remember feeling so dizzy all of a sudden that, when I finally could move, I had to just stumble over to the same half-finished wall the kids had been sitting on when I first saw them. After that, I was just numb, half overwhelmed with the desire to just fly back home and half determined not to let it ruin my dream vacation.

I'm pleased to say I didn't just pack up and fly home and filing a police report helped me realize just how unlucky I'd been, as well as how friendly Brazilians can be towards foreigners. It sounds kind of dark, but the thing that reassured me was the fact that one of the cops told me in broken English that the kids would probably catch a lot of flack for what they'd done. Not from their parents or the cops, but from local drug dealers who didn't want any undue police presence in their favela. The guy told me, if they catch, no more football, okay? Implying that the

dealers would beat them until they couldn't walk anymore. And in the favela, a kid suddenly showing up at home with 10 soccer balls is going to bring down a lot of attention on them. I didn't want them to be beaten that badly. My kids are cruel and dumb no matter where you are in the world, but to subject a total stranger to a mock execution like that, that's not something anyone should be getting away with. I know this story might be putting a lot of people off from going to places like Brazil, and movies like Elite Squad or City of God, both great movies, can definitely give a person the wrong idea of what to expect. But I can assure you, I was just really, really unlucky and dumb for drawing such attention to myself, then doubly dumb for getting myself lost in a strange neighborhood. I'd recommend Brazil

to anyone as a vacation destination. Just don't go wandering off into the favelas, because just like certain places in the United States, I don't care to name names, but things finally let me start walking to school. It wasn't far and even though they were worried I assured them that I would be fine. I was so excited because my best friend lived next door and that meant that we could walk to school and back together every day. Things were going great the first few weeks and we had so much fun laughing and talking all the way to school and back home. There was a liquor store along the way that we would stop at on the way home to get some snacks and candies, but only on Friday. It was our little treat and the thing we looked forward to at the end of the week.

One Friday afternoon after school we began our walk to the liquor store, talking about school as usual. It was just like any other time we went to the store. We would rush in laughing all the way to the candy, pick our favorites, and hop in line to pay. This time, there was a man with a pack of beer and he looked like he worked in construction or something. He was in line before us with another man, but when he saw us, he let us go first. We thought he was just being nice, so we happily obliged and as I talked to the cashier, my friend stayed behind me. I could hear the two men behind us speaking in Spanish and laughing so I turned around to look and see my friend with a nervous look on her face. She grabbed my arm hard after I paid and practically pulled me out of the

store. I kept asking her what was wrong and she said she didn't feel safe and we should just run home. I was confused and I wanted us to enjoy our candy on the way back like we always did until she told me what she heard. I don't speak Spanish but she did and apparently the two men were talking about me. She said that one of them pointed to me and said, she looks like the one. They both laughed and agreed and the one with the beer said, let's follow them and we can grab around the corner. She's small, won't put up a fight. I froze in fear. We were still in the parking lot of the store and didn't know what to do.

We looked around us and saw the two men get into a big work truck. They didn't even glance our way. So I told my friend that they were probably just joking and we were just being paranoid for being so scared. But boy was I wrong. My friend didn't agree with me and said that they were definitely serious and we should start running. I was hesitant at first until I turned around and the truck was right behind us. I took one look at my friend and we grabbed hands and ran as fast as we could. Our hearts were racing and we didn't dare turn around. We were both crying and I ended up dropping our bag of candy. We turned the corner and there was the truck. My heart dropped. The man in the passenger seat hopped out and began to approach us. He didn't say a single

word, but his eyes were locked on me. I've never been that terrified in my life. I was absolutely frozen in fear. My friend, however, started yelling at the man in Spanish and he seemed to get angry because of that. There was a busy road to the left of us and it was our only way out. We knew what we had to do without even saying it. We didn't look left or right, we just ran for our lives across traffic. A car almost ended up hitting us but they slammed on the brakes and started honking like crazy. We just kept running until we were about a block from our houses. We were out of breath and hysterical. We thought that we had made it but when we heard a whistle and we look

and there's the truck. The men were on the other side of the street with windows down, whistling at us. We had no option but to run as fast as we could to our house. My mom was in the front gardening and she was shocked to see us running, screaming and panting. We couldn't get the words out right away. All we managed to say was, truck following us. She immediately ran to the street to see the truck peeling away. As soon as she calmed us down, she called the cops to take a report, but unfortunately nothing ever came of it. And I was never allowed to walk to school.

Again. And I was never and totally reckless. I was with my best friend Alice and her neighbor Emily. We decided to try to enter clubs with fake IDs after discreetly going out of the house by the window. After getting rejected by the security guards at the clubs because obviously we were not looking like 18 plus year old girls, we were wandering the streets not knowing what to do. It was around 1am, the subway was closed and we didn't have enough money to get a cab. Plus we really wanted to party and Alice wanted to find a new guy because she was heartbroken from her past boyfriend.

The last club we tried to enter into was in one of those areas that had a famously bad reputation in the city. It was in Lyon, France. Then suddenly, a car stopped next to us. The door opens and there's three guys inside. Two of them turn their heads and tell us, hey pretty girls, come with us. We got everything you need to get some pleasure, we got drinks, and we can smoke too. The one at the back looked really muscular and really insistent. Alice then said, let's go girls, it could be super fun. Then she whispered, please, I need some fun, I need a guy to turn the page. She grabbed Emily's arm and went into the car laughing. At this point I was like,

what am I doing? I would rather die with my friends than die alone in the streets, so we all entered. In the car they're trying to flirt with us, but I'm petrified. We say that we're 17 and they tell us that it's the perfect age to party with them. After 15 minutes of them driving, I don't know where around the city, they say that they want to get some drinks and they want to find a cool place. Alice is super happy. Emily and I are relieved that they're going to drop us off in a public place like a bar or club, but they park the car in a car park in the middle of nowhere. We get out of the car and the guy takes some bottles from the trunk,

mixes a lot of stuff inside the glasses and then gives them to us. The one who was driving stays in the car, hands on the wheel, and he's not saying anything. The other two guys start to tell us really inappropriate things, that they're going to take us to a hotel, that we're all going to look like stars. Obviously for them I look like Katsuni because I'm Asian. They were around 35 and we were all 15. They insist on saying and on how they would be the best hit of our lives, how they would be in bed. Emily whispers to me that we shouldn't drink but act as if they were drinking because there might be something inside. Alice starts flirting back and telling me that it's kind of dangerous but apparently she

liked it. At this point they tell us that they're never going to let us go unless we stay with them the entire night. I feel trapped and they ask me to drink, insistently. I finally do it, and I start to feel dizzy really fast. Everything is blurring around me. I think in a very incoherent way and my stomach starts to hurt. The guys are looking at me as though I was prey and they were on the hunt. After 10 or 15 minutes of feeling like this I tell Alice that we need to go and she doesn't look worried at all. I then think that I should just sit inside the car waiting for my fate to just play out.

I open the front door and there's still the guy who drove inside. He's listening to the radio and doesn't even look at me when I enter. I ask him, why aren't you with your friends? He turns and looks at me, upset, and says, hey, I don't know who you are and I don't want to know. You told us you were 17, but you look like my younger sister and she just entered high school. I don't know why my stupid friends are stupidly flirting with you, but I'm just waiting for them to stop and drop the three of you off in a public place. Once it'll be done, I hope I'll never have to see any of you again in my entire life. I was shocked, but also kind of relieved. We stayed there, both of us, just listening to the

radio and hearing the laughs of Alice and all the terribly inappropriate jokes from the muscular guy. I was so dizzy that I was starting to feel like I was melting into the seat. After maybe 30 minutes, the driver guy said that he wanted to go somewhere, so everyone got in the car. We sat in the car and went for another 10 minute ride, while the two guys were saying what they were going to do to us once we got to the car. We sat in the car and went for another 10 minute ride while the two guys were saying what they were going to do to us once we got to the hotel. Then the driver told them to shut up and that he was dropping us off at this big place with lots of people. We gave the two guys some fake names for Facebook and some fake phone numbers and we finally got out of the car. The muscular guy who was at the back tried to grab Emily's arm

but she managed to run outside. They left. The driver guy looked at me just before and just gave me a friendly nod. I was still super dizzy and eventually threw everything up. Emily didn't believe what just happened and Alice was still laughing saying that it was insane and she was excited. It was like 3.30 or 4am by this point, and we finally found a real party after. But to these two guys that wanted to do I don't know what in a hotel, let's not meet again. Or like the driving guy said, I hope I'll never have to see you guys again in my entire life. Some quick context before I start explaining what happened to me. I live in the middle of nowhere, and what I mean by in the middle of nowhere is that my town is three hours away from the capital city of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. My town is very small and the police are usually

called during the day so there's hardly ever someone on duty during the night. I'm a 16-year-old girl who's a big video game addict so I never leave my house other than for school or for work. My father and mother are divorced and my father works for the military. My mom, however, works from home and my stepdad works in the oil field so he wasn't home at the military. My mom, however, works from home and my stepdad works in the oil field so he wasn't home at the time. My parents both live in separate houses and due to the past between me and the father, I permanently live with my mom and visit my father twice a month. On to the actual situation though now. Everything started in October 2021. On a Wednesday afternoon, every two weeks I get an early

dismissal from school and get to leave at 1.30pm instead of 3.10pm. My bus never did come to pick me up or my sibling up on time so our mom came to pick us up instead. She drove us home and as we were going home, our neighborhood had police officers all around with police dogs and police officers were stopping every car in the neighborhood to see who was in them and they were looking for somebody. They gave us no context of who they were looking for and because we had multiple issues with missing children, we didn't really care. We did what they asked of us and we went on our way.

Me being me, as soon as I got home I went to my room and started playing video games and chose to worry about my homework later. Around 6 o'clock my mom came in my room telling me dinner was ready so I came out of my room and grabbed my food and brought it to my computer room and chose to start my homework. I transitioned my bedroom to the computer room and about 20 minutes later, my mom barges in the room screaming my name. In a panic, I barge out of the computer room yelling what's going on and ran towards her instinctively. She told me to cover up my windows and to make sure every door was locked. As I was doing that, my brother heard the commotion and asked my mom what was going on.

Turns out, my mom had been messaged by one of our neighbors that there was video of police in front of our neighbor's duplex, and they were trying to break down the door because a man was shooting around his house, and he was trying to push the police away, and we lived right beside the duplex. Turns out, the police officers left after being shot at, even though the guy was considered missing since he had kept his family hostage and hadn't appeared to work within the past week. After a few hours of the police MIA missing in action, it was about 9 o'clock when my dad called me frantically asking what was happening since my mom thought the situation had calmed down and chose to text my father about the situation. I told him I had absolutely no clue what was happening since the screaming, shooting, and any other loud noises had

now all stopped. My dad being him, he put on his military clothing and went down to the police station and told them to get back there and stop that situation. But it turns out, the police called the Edmonton SWAT team and they were called out towards my town and hence why they were MIA and silent because they were trying to be stealthy in their operations. That situation had been dragged out all night and the SWAT team had brought in drones. Because we had police officers around our house, we were told to stay inside and we chose to head to bed. I had woken up at 2am to more screaming and shooting. In the morning, my mom had received up to 10 videos from our neighbors and the Edmonton SWAT team had gassed the entire duplex, broke into the house and managed to get everyone out safe and sound. And as for

the guy, he was caught with an illegal weapon and put on trial. We don't know what happened since the trial and we never thought about checking. My stepfather came home from his job early and actually quit so that he could be around to keep us safe, or try to if anything struck up again. My dad and I started talking a lot more and he's stayed in close contact with us since. We've had plenty of kidnappings in my area recently and he's kept us up to date on it. We think it might have had something to do with the guy's friends or the dealers in the area or whatever, since apparently he had been doing many illegal things. But I am happy to say that nobody was hurt, and we've all moved on from this incident. About eight years ago, I stayed downtown. Back then, if you remember Craigslist, it had a personal section. I never really dabbled in that, but being curious, I often look at it. So I made an ad, nothing spectacular, and I just sort of waited. Not much went down, just some scammers and bots, married people, etc. I get this one message from a young woman telling me how I sound interesting and

would love to get to know me more. We exchanged pictures. She exchanged an older picture but she looked pretty cute. They had a bright smile and big blue eyes. She was nice, I just wasn't feeling her like that. She was 18 and I was 24 at the time but also she was apparently 7 months pregnant. We enjoyed the conversations for a few days and decided to link up. She didn't stay far from me. She stayed more on the northeast side just on the edge of downtown. This day it was a festival going on. I asked if she wanted to go but she couldn't because her legs were pretty tired and kind of sore. So I agreed to meet her at her own place. She stayed in a northern slum.

Not a ghetto, but an actual slum. The house was big, but also you could tell off the bat that it was used as an apartment. It wasn't an appealing house, but there weren't many other appealing ones around there either. When I told her that I was outside, I see her come on the front porch. She was a small little thing, only about 5 feet tall. And she had dark hair, she couldn't have been more than 90 to 110 pounds and that was only because of the pregnancy. Her baby bump was very noticeable. She had a small chocolate Labrador puppy with her too. They both were happy to see me. When I got close to her, I was surprised.

She didn't have the same bright smile I saw in her pictures. Her teeth were grey and her face looked like someone who was very much into heavy drugs. Her eyes still had the light to them, but overall she looked like a tired human being and not in the fatigued sense. I gave her a hug, made sure to watch my strength and we went into the place. There wasn't nothing sketchy about it. It did stink, just like animals and weed. We went upstairs and I saw a couple up there. They shut their door and it seemed like they were arguing. All the rooms upstairs seemed small

and the ceilings were slanted. Her room was fitted pretty nice. She was a smoker and I smelled the ashtray stench. We decided to watch the movie Pineapple Express and that was the first time seeing that movie. She complained about her legs a lot. I'd seen some little swelling on them so I gave her legs a rub. I used her body lotion. She loved it a lot and appreciated it big time. We talked and it was getting late and I wanted to head to downtown to catch the heat of the festivities. She looked like she enjoyed my company a lot and as we were waving goodbye, for some reason I just said to myself, man, that chick seems like trouble. I thought of burning

sage when I got home to be honest. Like two days later she hit me up saying her ex-boyfriend got kicked out of his place and he needed somewhere to stay. So me and her hanging out couldn't happen again. Which I didn't care I just told her I understood and make sure she stays safe. I left to Chicago and spent some time with my family. I came back a week later and after getting my hair retwisted, I saw a realty sign with her last name on it when I was out for a walk. She had a unique last name. I decided to check on her.

I sent her an email and there was no response. About five minutes later, I opened up Facebook and as I scrolled, I stopped immediately because I saw the very picture she first sent me. I'm like, why is that pic on here? I clicked a link saying that there had been a triple homicide. I sat on the curb and was in complete shock. I couldn't believe it. I read the details and was shocked further. She met a guy on Craigslist to hook up with him. Her ex met up with him too supposedly. He killed the ex-boyfriend and decapitated him, left his body at a park I was familiar with. He took her and held her captive in his basement. He tortured her for a week.

And what made me so angry is that he went to a sports bar down the street from me and told the bartenders how he has someone locked up in his basement right now. Nobody took it serious to call the police and that probably could have saved her. He strangled her and stuffed her in a suitcase. By then the police figured him out and he was on the run. When they stopped his car he decided to just take himself out. They found him probably because of the emails from Craigslist. I know they investigated my email and I deleted it immediately once I took all this in.

About a month later I was on Craigslist and I saw on the miscellaneous section about meeting scammers and such. I posted a reply about people being careful and I posted her story. Also around then I had a guy I went to high school with who was caught robbing people for money on there. When I summarized her story I got a reply. It was from a lady demanding to know what I know and I come to find out that it was her aunt. When I told her she wanted to talk on the phone so I did. I gave her find out that it was her aunt. When I told her, she wanted to talk on the phone so I did. I gave her my condolences and told her about the time that we spent together. She told me her ex was pimping her out and her life was never like that. Her parents were good

people and confused that she took that path in life. That girl was just a baby. I've been around death before but nothing like that. Because what if I kept hanging out with her? The craziest parts are the guy had another woman in his place but she escaped. She was living with him and he had made her a slave. But also, he was supposed to fly to Vegas to meet a lady from some sort of weird site, but there were complications on his end. The day he committed the murder, he contacted the lady and told her that he wanted to meet her ASAP. He was paying for the travel and everything, but she needed his info. She didn't go through with it, but she looked him up and happened to see his connection with the triple homicide. What's even more dark is that they didn't find

her ex's boyfriend's head at the park, just his body. They found his head north of the city in 2019, like 25 miles away from his dead body. Why did he take that head? What did he do with it to travel with it like that? The awkward thing is there was a lady who lived with me a year later after that. Things were complicated and I had to kick her out. She moved into the exact room that that chick was in. I know because I had to come over there to give her something that she left. This is also the girl that played a major part in my sister and her ex-boyfriend breaking up for good. People do come into your life for a reason, I suppose. I used Craigslist for business and some other social events,

but after that my approach became entirely different, and I became very cautious on who I met. Several years ago, I, a female, lived in a pretty nice two-bedroom apartment that was above the veterinary clinic I managed. There were three apartments above the clinic and mine was in the middle. It had a third bedroom, but that was technically my office and it connected to the clinic via a crazy little spiral staircase. I could also go out my heavy steel front door, turn right, and go down a set of stairs around the back of the building to the back door of the clinic. The clinic itself was set back from the main road in a small neighborhood, but the main road was the main road for the interstate to the university campus, so it was heavily traveled.

We were also within walking distance of the proudly converted rails-to-trails system in our state. The location gave a sense of quiet and security that really wasn't there, long story short. So I lived alone, but I knew the neighbors well and wasn't concerned about security because my boss was a type A personality and everything was alarmed, motion sensors, motion lights, steel doors, the works. I also had and still have my 60 pound Australian shepherd who lives to serve. He takes it upon himself to patrol the house at night, going from my bedroom to the front door to the front windows and back. I can tell him, watch the house

or watch the car and leave him alone. He will literally just stand guard the whole time. And he doesn't bark at just anything. There are different levels of, hey that's a cat and it's not my cat, go away, or don't even think about peeing in my yard, strange dog. Then there's what he did this night, which gave me goosebumps and got him many, many treats. I was up late, like so many writers here I'm a night owl, or permanently exhausted pigeon as the meme says. I have ADHD, so my circadian rhythm is way off normal. My pup and I were chilling on the couch at around 2am, you two filling the void in the background. I was on my laptop, mindlessly scrolling, probably Reddit or something. Suddenly my pup hops off the couch and pads to the big front window.

The window spans from about 4 feet wide across the living room. It wasn't down the floor, my dog needed to hop up on his chair to comfortably look outside. On this summer night, the breeze was wonderful, so I had the windows open. I looked up from the mindless scrolling to see my dog on high alert in his chair, muzzle pointed at the road and ears up. Then I heard the woman. Help me. Came from the direction of the rear of the woman. Help me. Came from the direction of the rear of the clinic. Like I said, there's a set of stairs there that goes to the back door.

Very secluded area that backs up to another apartment building. The voice is weak and I'm worried that someone fell back there and needs help. My brain is suddenly going through all the scenarios. I grab my phone and some shoes and plan on going through the clinic instead of outside so I can look out the back peephole in case this isn't legitimate. As I'm getting my shoes on, my dog lets out this hair raising, low rumbling growl. Very quiet, very terrifying. I didn't know he was capable of such a noise. So I stop what I'm doing and look up. Through the window I see a frizzy haired older woman just standing in front of my porch. Again she says, help me. A little bit stronger this time. My dog growled again,

louder this time. I was about to call him down and address the woman, but she suddenly whipped around and yelled, you shut up, at him. Then back to the weak, help me, cry. She must have realized that a dog at an open window meant someone was home, so she lingered in front of my apartment staring at the front window. I immediately dialed the local police and went to my back bedroom to talk to them so she wouldn't hear me. Not that I thought she could get inside but I didn't want her to try. They were there in moments and found the lady at the front door of the clinic trying to get in. They told me later she was hurt physically but possibly mentally ill. We have a fairly large population of homeless and transients throughout the area due to the lack of care

facilities. After they removed her I went and double checked everything outside, dog in tow of course. Nothing was amiss thankfully and he got many treats when he got back inside. I'm not sure I slept that night, but I for sure didn't leave the window open overnight anymore. Before I met my co-worker, he held some sort of managerial position at a store that sold shoes. For over a year, he received phone calls from a man who claimed to be at a store that sold shoes. For over a year, he received phone calls from a man who claimed to be inquiring about women's shoes. Due to this, he was only interested in speaking to female members of staff. Whenever he was able to speak to a female member of staff, he would ask her about the shoes she

wore and how comfortable they felt. According to my co-worker, these calls would take place almost daily. The caller seemed pleased to hear about shoes that were not sold in the store he was allegedly calling to inquire about. Thinking this was strange, my co-worker warned another shoe store in the area about the collar. The manager of that store claimed that they had been receiving similar calls. The caller never seemed to actually be interested in buying any shoes. My coworker blocked his number on two separate occasions, but they would simply change phone numbers. After having his number blocked for a third time, he began actually entering the store and making women uncomfortable, I guess you could say. My co-worker banned him from entering the store

and accused him of involving unwilling participants in his weird fantasies. The man calmly denied making the phone calls. He also claimed that his interest in shoes was not weird like that, that he was genuinely interested. He left the store, but ended up returning about a month later. My co-worker started shouting at the man but he allegedly remained eerily calm. The store closed down less than a year later. According to my co-worker, a strange car began pulling up outside his apartment complex and remaining there for hours. He mentioned this to me a few months ago but

I wasn't sure what to make of it. I have experienced stalking, but it's hard to link the mysterious car to the man from the store. Recently, however, I noticed that this strange man always seemed to follow us around during our lunch breaks. He wouldn't say anything, he would only stare at us. After I pointed out his presence, my coworker informed me that he recognized this individual as the shoe-obsessed man who began calling the store years prior.

By now, it had been two years since my co-worker left the shoe store, but I have only known him for a few months. Earlier today, I received a friend request on Facebook from a name I didn't recognize. I recognized the profile picture as the man who had been following us. I rarely use Facebook and have never been Facebook friends with the co-worker that the man initially started targeting. That co-worker claimed to have deleted his Facebook account upon being made aware that the man was following him again. He suspects that the man had used Facebook to track him down in his new job, but also claims to be certain that his address wouldn't have been on Facebook.

He still remains certain that the car that waits outside his house is the shoe-obsessed stalker, and I believe him. This happened in South Carolina. I saw the last post about this happening to another woman so it seemed like a good time to tell someone. This happened in South Carolina. I saw the last post about this happening to another woman so it seemed like a good time to tell someone. This was one of the worst experiences of my life and I hadn't thought about it for a long time. Someone said I should write a book on all the horrible things that have happened to me in my life because it should be more than a person can handle. But anyways, I was dating a guy for a couple of weeks and we went to one of my friend's homes in the middle of nowhere. It was a run-down older mobile home, but who am I to judge? We went in and there were four other guys. I thought it was odd that I was the only girl, but just shrugged it off. They wanted to play a drinking game and

back then I was a little wild so I was game. After about an hour things got a little weird. I could see them looking at each other like there was an inside joke. I decided to get up to go to the bathroom and when I came out someone pushed me in the bedroom and locked the door. It was completely dark. I banged on the door telling them that this wasn't funny. The door opened and they all came in and shut the door behind them. I could feel them grabbing at me and laughing. I was fighting and hitting but they were too strong. The door opened and they all left. I could hear them outside in the hall and, I'll be honest, it didn't sound good.

They were discussing the order in which they would take turns with me. The door opens and my mind is going a mile a minute on how I'm going to survive this. The guy comes in and sat on the bed and said that he was going to get me out of there. He said that they went too far and he didn't know that they were going to hurt me. He said that he thought it was just a joke at first. There was a back door across the bedroom and he said for me to run through the woods as fast as I could to the road and he would come and find me. And I did. I ran as fast as I could and heard them yelling for me to come back.

I could hear them coming. I got to the road and hid behind a tree and it seemed like an hour and I see a car pull up with him in it and he's all bloodied up. They beat him up for letting me go. He had my purse and ended up taking me home. I didn't know if I should trust him but I had no other choice. I was in the middle of the woods. I heard a couple of months later that he was arrested for killing his girlfriend, and the guy who took me there was arrested for assault of another woman. Maybe if I had went to the police, this might not have happened, but it was the most, dropping off my kids, then I come back for

more neighborhood kids. This morning, my son wanted to wait and go with the neighborhood kids, so he was left behind while I ran my daughter. Daughter and I drove out of our driveway. It was still dark and we're talking torrential rain was coming down. I almost didn't see this man in the street until I was right up on him. Middle of the street, yelling, making wild gestures and just looking angry. He actually looked very clean cut though, healthy, even good looking to be honest. But he gave me an instant bad vibe, especially just one block

from where my son was now home alone. He looked me straight in the eyes and screamed gibberish like he was enraged. I hurried to drop off my daughter then went back for my son and the neighbor kids. I told them about the guy but all was well and there was no sign of the stranger by then. Now fast forward to this evening, I had forgotten all about it. The daughter and I went to the library, my son opted to stay home. After the library, we were sitting in the drive-thru and my son texted me to tell me that there's a man running around the neighbor's yard across the street, screaming his head off, acting just crazy.

Then someone pulled up and started filming the guy. I told him that I was on the way, if he comes near the house call 911. I was home within minutes and apparently the guy was gone, but there were five police cars on my block looking for someone. Obviously a neighbor must have called. My son and I compared descriptions of the man that we saw and it's gotta be the same guy. It's driving me crazy not knowing what's going on, or if he's still out there, or if we're safe. To be continued... When I was a teenager there was one night that I had been hanging out with some friends and didn't have a way home but wasn't allowed to stay. So I ended up just walking around the center of

town. I was walking by this alley in between a church and some other building. It was just a kind of grungy place to smoke and kill some time. The interesting part was that the word paradox was spray painted on the brick foundation of the church. So I sat down and started talking to myself, just kind of thinking out loud to stay entertained and awake. It's important that I express that I was talking out loud to myself, not like an imaginary friend or anything like that. And when I got up I started walking again before I heard the single woo-wee and a police car pulled up next to me. I knew the cop because he was an assistant coach at my school. He asked me why I was out so late and I told him. Then he asked me where my friend went and I'm like, what do you mean? He said that he saw me talking to another kid in the alleyway before he pulled up.

So I said I was just talking to myself and he goes, No, I saw another kid sitting across from you I was watching the whole time. He was serious. It was like he thought I actually had a friend with me and they ran away when they saw a cop car. He ended up driving me back to my house. And looking back I've thought maybe he was just messing with me or that his eyes were mistaken by a shadow or something but at the time it creeped me out. To be continued... future narrations. I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7pm EST.

If you get a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash let's read official, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more, grab early access to all future narrations for just $1 a month on Patreon, and maybe even pick up some Let's Read merch on Spreadshirt. And check out the Let's Read podcast, where you can hear all of these stories in big compilations and save huge on data, located anywhere you listen to podcasts. Links in the description below. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you again soon. you