The Lets Read Podcast - 188: HIGH SCHOOL WAS CURSED | 35 True Scary Stories | EP 176

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

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

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🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 I've finally gotten around to writing down a pretty frightening event that happened to me when I was in secondary school, which is what us Brits call high school. It's a bit of a wild one, and it's definitely a long one too, so I hope it's not too tough to get through. I had a pretty rough time in high school.

Well, all my little circle of friends did, but for reasons that will become obvious, I'd say that I had it a little worse than even they did. We were like the goth skater crew that grew their hair long, listened to heavy music, wore flannel and Marilyn Manson hoodies, you get the idea. And this obviously meant that, being the alternative kids, we ended up getting picked on an awful lot. The main group of bullies we had to deal with were, ironically, not the jock rugby players who were actually capable of beating us to a pulp. it was a group of three girls who we used to not so affectionately call the three witches. This caused some consternation in our little group as to us, being called a witch was hardly an insult. But I suppose that once a few of us referred to them by

that name a few times it just stuck. Given that they were girls and no offense to any ladies listening, but they weren't exactly capable of physically overpowering us. So instead, they had to get way more creative with their harassment and emotional torture. Think like pouring cafeteria food or milk in our bags, spreading rumors about us and that sort of thing. They also liked to dole out a fair bit of verbal abuse too, which we'd mostly just ignored out of not wanting them to escalate their little hate campaign. But one day, I got particularly sick of it and decided to give one of them what for. Not physically, obviously, because the girl in question was five foot who knows what, only verbally. The main perpetrator, and by that I mean the gobbiest one, started giving it loads one day about how we were all losers and loners and stinking skater trash, so I just looked

up at her and said something I'd been saving for a particularly rainy day. You Dennis must make an absolute fortune off you, I said, and the way I completely silenced her was absolutely golden. She asked me to repeat myself, I think genuinely because she couldn't believe that I'd actually given her a bit back for once. I didn't repeat myself, I just said the next thing that came to mind. Did your dad shag a great white shark or something? Because I swear you have more teeth in your head than the rest of us. My mates are just soiling themselves laughing at this point, and I think mainly out of pure shock that I actually had the bollocks to say it.

I'm not going to pretend it was pure wit that had me coming out with stuff like that, as I'd literally been fantasizing about knocking her down a peg or two for months, so those were some carefully crafted insults that I honestly never thought I'd ever use on her. She went bright red, and even her friends were completely stunned that one of us had dared to defend ourselves. Feeling good about it only lasted like a millisecond though, as I suddenly realized that she might just start retaliating with nuclear intensity. She didn't though, she just marched off in a huff and left us to celebrate our small victory.

I had a feeling though, a horrible feeling in my gut that the retaliation would come later and would still be atomic in scale. And I was right, I just had no idea how effective or how psychotic it had turned out to be. It happened during lunch break the next day, right at the end of it too. I was separated from my little crew having been stuck in detention for the majority of the lunch break. Then when it was over, we had a 20 minute window to go get some lunch before the cafeteria closed. I remember getting out, walking out of the Languages area where the detention had been held then making my way towards the dinner hall. I'm sorry to get all geographical on you all of a sudden but you need to understand

that there were two corners between me and the dinner hall. If it had been a straight path I'd have seen what was coming a mile off, but it wasn't so I rounded one corner and walked towards the other. I was walking right into the middle of an absolute maelstrom of trouble. Right as I was getting to the other corner this huge gang of kids from my year came around the corner and all I heard was there he is. As the head of the pack was the toothiest of the three witches and she's pointing right at me Not with an angry look on her face because of what I'd said to her the day before

But with like this evil looking satisfied grin She might have just had her lunch, but she found what she was hungry for And her expression perfectly reflected it But in taking note of her expression, I noticed something else about her face. She had this little cut just above her eyebrow, and there was a little trickle of blood that had run down just to the side of her eye. I didn't have time to really take it in though, because almost as soon as she'd shouted and pointed, and I'd noticed the cut, the pack charged me. I didn't exactly want to hang around to find out what was going on, and as it didn't take a genius that they were angry and for some reason,

I was the target of their anger. I just legged it. Not sure where I was legging it to, I just wanted to get away from the mob. Then in pure stupidity, I ran behind the back of the languages block where there was a little alley type thing, thinking I might be able to hide from them. Obviously, they'd all seen me running back there and all I'd done was trap myself into a corner. When the mob descended on me, the lads at the front didn't immediately start hitting me. Instead, they said something that had me crying out in confusion. They were shouting things like, hit a girl did ya? And why don't you try and hit me eh big man? Why don't you hit someone your own size? And all this other stuff. While I'm crying out that I have zero clue what they're on about, the realization hits me like a

ton of bricks. I don't know what happened to the toothy witch girl but something had obviously happened to her and she was blaming it on me. The lads only got a few kicks and punches in on me before I heard the sound of a teacher's voice shouting at them to get off me and to disappear as she put it. I thought that was me rescued but then once the mob had dispersed under the threat of expulsion, the teacher basically grabbed me by the arm and carted me off to the head teacher's office while saying, you've got a lot of explaining to do. I had a good idea of what I was about to be accused of, but I reckoned that it was pointless protesting until I was actually in front of the head. Minutes later, I found out that my assumptions were right and that I was formally being accused

of having punched the toothy witch girl so hard it had split her eyebrow open. They were probably expecting me to deny it, innocent or not, so my initial protest didn't seem to make a dent. They just took their time explaining to me that a full investigation would be undertaken, which would involve the police and that in the meantime, I'd be suspended while they waited for the results of said investigation. And so, that was that. I was escorted to my locker, told to get what I needed to complete homework, etc., then escorted off the property. I had to get updates from my little group of mates via phone, but the news was all stuff you can probably guess. The three witches were all insisting that I just walked up to them, out of the blue,

before punching toothy one right in the eye. If they'd given a reason for the punch or what led up to it, we certainly didn't know about it, but they were saying that there had been no other witnesses but them and that the punch had occurred in the place where there were no cameras and somewhere down by the school playing field. I remember a friend of mine saying, it looks like you're screwed, mate. And the worst thing was, I got the impression that some of them genuinely believed I'd done it. One or two were on my side with the whole thing and didn't doubt that she was horrible enough to have done it to herself or whatever, but proving it was a completely different story.

Three days into my suspension, my mom got a phone call which she took in the kitchen. It was the same deal with my parents too, by the way, they obviously didn't want to believe that I'd hit a girl, but they were all so clever enough to keep an open mind about the whole thing until they had the facts. That was the part that really got to me. The idea that my mom was thinking my son might be a woman beater. Emphasis on might, but you could tell she abhorred a few grains of doubt when I swore blind to her that I was completely innocent. So she gets the call and I can hear her talking downstairs when I was up in my room. Then she hangs up the phone, she walks upstairs and says, get dressed and showered, the police are on their way around.

I won't go into too much detail about the police interview, but I could tell things were starting to look up. One of them, this nice policewoman, seemed to be completely on my side once I'd explained the whole thing. How I'd insulted the girl the day before, how there had been a long-running feud between us, how they were complete bullies and as much as I hated them, I'd never raised my fist to a girl. But even she said that unless I could provide an alibi concerning where I was at the start of lunchtime, I'd look like a proper villain if the whole thing went to court, which by the sounds of things, the toothy girl was very keen on. I knew I just left class and was on my way to detention, but I'm not sure who saw

me or who would actually be up for saying that I couldn't have hit her because I wasn't where she said I was. The policewoman made me a promise though, and that was how she'd be going into the school to talk to an assembly which the whole school would be attending. She'd make a plea on my behalf for anyone who'd seen me at the start of lunch break to come forward as it was obviously a very serious matter and that someone needed to do the right thing. But she also said she'd be asking anyone who'd seen me punch the girl to come forward too and that really did scare me because if toothy witch girl could convince someone else to lie for her, I'd be done for. Thankfully,

it didn't come to that, and what happened next I honestly consider it a kind of miracle. Literally the same day that the policewoman made her address to the assembly, someone who wished to remain anonymous went to the head teacher's office with a kind of confession. They'd witnessed the punch that had caused the wound over the girl's eyebrow, but it wasn't me that had done the punching. It was a boy that didn't even go to our school. The person had been walking through the school's car park around the back of the school, one that was open to the public because the school's gym was also open to the public. She'd seen the witch girl getting into someone's car, that someone being an older boy she didn't even recognize. Being a bit

of a nosy gossip, she slowed her pace to see who the guy was, if witch girl was about to engage in a bit of necking or whatever and that way she'd have the gossip on if witch girl had an older boyfriend or whatever. Only instead of, you know, doing a bit of knob the gossip on if the witch girl had an older boyfriend or whatever. Only instead of, you know, doing a bit of knobbing, she watched the witch girl say something all animated to the guy, like she was pleading with him to do something. Then he hit her, and then from what I understand, she motioned for him to do it again. He hit her over and over again until she finally brought a hand up to her eye, obviously when it had split the skin above her eyebrow. Now, this was on the school's security cameras, not the actual punch, but they caught the girl wanted him to hit her so she could fake it like it was me or if he was actually abusing her and she just

conveniently pinned it on me so she'd have an explanation for her parents. The last update I got before I was allowed to come back to school was that which girl had been expelled for making the false accusation as obviously it could have literally ended with a spell in a young offender's institution for me. Her mates, who'd backed up her lie, were just suspended, I think because they claimed she just talked them into it and were really sorry and all that jazz. I'd like to have seen them expelled too, but hey ho, that's life. After that, all I heard were rumors, so as much as I can't confirm any of this, I'll share them with you anyway. We heard that the toothy witch girl changed her story,

told everyone that the boyfriend was hitting her and she said she was so scared of him that she'd been forced to blame me just to protect herself. The police then went round to this bloke's flat, nicked him, then took him down to the police station where he claimed she'd talked him into it and that he never wanted to hit her in the first place. I don't know if they believed him or not, but I'm pretty sure the girl's parents wanted to press charges and I believe that bit because I mean, I'd want him charged too if he hit my daughter, whether he was talked into it or not. We didn't see anything about it in the papers though, and by that point, we didn't really care what happened to either of them, as me and my mates were too busy reveling in the fact that she'd been expelled and was out of our hair. I remember being a bit scared that she and this fella would end up tracking me down or waiting for me outside of school or whatever,

but nothing like that ended up happening, so after a while, we all just moved on. For me, the hero of this story is obviously the anonymous person who came forward with the truth about what they'd seen in the car. I went through my last 18 months in that school just never knowing who it was. I mean, I have my suspicions about who it might have been, but they never actually revealed themselves to me. I always figured they might do, like right at the end of school or something, just to get a little bit of glory and appreciation, but they never did. They just kept quiet and remained my silent savior. And that's the end of my story.

Not exactly terrifying, but I'm sure you can understand why the whole thing was so bloody scary for me. It was a harrowing, s of the former Yugoslavia. Following the fall of the former Yugoslavia. Following the fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent downfall of European communism, the unity of the multinational Yugoslavs began to slowly unravel. There had always been a degree of animosity between Serbs, Croats, Albanians, and Bosnians, but as ethnic tensions simmered away following various political confrontations, a violent, xenophobic conflagration seemed almost inevitable. One particular event that preceded this inter-ethnic conflict was the segregation of

high schools in an area known as Kosovo. Serbian political leaders believed they needed to protect the integrity of their culture and language, insisting it was superior to the region's ethnic groups. Therefore, in their minds, the decision to exclude other nationalities from Serbian schools was the only possible course of action. Yet shortly following this decision, a series of bizarre and terrifying events began to occur. Events that continue to remain shrouded in mystery even all these years later. On March 20th of 1990, in the Kosovan city of Pudujevo, the students of the Jurojakovic High School filed into their class to begin their daily lessons.

The morning was mostly uneventful but as the day wore on, more and more the children began to complain that they felt unwell. Suddenly, a rapid onset of horrifying symptoms began to affect the children, especially those that had noticed a fine white powder on their desks at some point during the day. They began to suffer cramps, with some even passing out before frothing at the mouth. When they woke up again, they complained of having vivid and terrible nightmares and were quickly admitted to the hospital. Then as the days went by, school absences increased dramatically as more and more of the Kosovo's schools began to notice identical symptoms among their students.

By March 22nd, over 200 students of the Podilievo's various schools had displayed symptoms of the illness, and a deep panic had set in among the residents as more and more of them began to suffer from the mysterious and terrifying illness. That same day, the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Pristina, Kosovo's capital city, convened to address the public with a prepared statement. They announced that they believed the region was in the grip of an epidemic, but refused to give any information until they had properly analyzed blood and urine samples that had been taken from the victims. Yet when the

test results of the samples came back, they failed to provide a solid conclusion on what was occurring. According to Pristina University's Faculty of Medicine, came back, they failed to provide a solid conclusion on what was occurring. According to Pristina University's Faculty of Medicine, the only thing they could rule out was the possibility of some kind of poison being to blame. However, this struck some medical professionals as being very strange indeed. A doctor named Baron Cohen, who was a member of a human rights organization known as the Helsinki Federation, said it was impossible for the doctors of Pristina University to come to such a conclusion so quickly. According to him, it would take a properly staffed laboratory up to six weeks to correctly analyze such samples,

while it seemed to have taken Pristina just a matter of days. Dr. Cohen's statement was then refuted by a Serbian doctor by the name of Balosevic, who went on local Serbian TV to make a rather eerie statement. He claimed that the events in Kosovo were all about acting for the Cannes Film Festival, and accused the Albanian doctors who had noticed the illness of participating in a children's masquerade. This sentiment was echoed by other Serbian doctors who asserted what had occurred was nothing more than mass hysteria. Later that year, Kosovo's chief of epidemiology fiercefully denied that the disease had a psychological basis. As a result of these denials, he was arrested and was held by Serbian police for five days. When he was finally released,

he claimed to have discovered a secret microphone which had been hidden away in his office and became convinced that some kind of dangerous conspiracy was afoot. Two other doctors who had similarly asserted that something deliberate and frightening was occurring, received death threats from anonymous members of the public. Another was arrested for echoing their concerns and was only released after heavy international pressure. The poisoning theory then seemed to be confirmed by a French doctor by the name of Bernard Benedetti, who confirmed the presence of poison in the victim's blood during an interview with the newspaper, the La Corse. He claimed to have

visited the same Serbian-run laboratory which performed the initial tests, secretly obtaining his own set of victim's blood samples in the process. After attempting to raise the alarm with French authorities, Dr. Benedetti claimed that he was completely ignored by the relevant public bodies and believed their reluctance to take action was motivated by their fear of soaring diplomatic relations with Serbia. Another non-governmental organization, Commission of Geneva, dispatched representatives to Kosovo to find out the truth. And although they didn't take blood samples, their findings were highly disturbing. Instead of taking or analyzing tissue samples directly,

they instead compiled a list of symptoms shared by the Kosovan victims. This is how they discovered that many of the students seemed to smell like vinegar when they arrived at various hospitals. According to them, this was an indication that the poisoning had been caused by some kind of organic phosphate, in other words, nerve gas. This prognosis was reinforced in February of 1992 when a chemical weapons expert released a statement to the press. He agreed that some kind of poison had been deployed against innocent schoolchildren, but that it had a chemical structure more in line with an herbicide than with a weapons-grade nerve agent.

As more and more attention was drawn to the poisonings, Serbian officials rushed to label the entire affair as a case of mass hysteria, and that spurious evidence had been concocted by Albanian separatists. Yet instead of producing their own evidence with proof of anything of the contrary, Serbian police not only obstructed medical services, such as confiscating drivers' licenses from ambulance drivers, but they ordered the medical records of the poisoned patients to be destroyed. Some patients and physicians were even interrogated and mistreated while in police custody, and despite Albanian doctors appealing to the government to establish an independent and impartial international investigation,

their demands were rejected. Then, something equally disturbing occurred. A few months after the poisonings, a medical symposium was due to be held in Zagreb, the capital city of neighboring Croatia. It was here that a famous Croatian biochemist, Dr. Franko Plavsic, was due to present the results of his analysis of the blood and urine which he had taken from patients of the mysterious affliction. Yet, just before he was due to arrive at the symposium, Dr. Plavsic seemed to drop off the face of the earth and has never been heard from since. One of his colleagues admitted that Dr. Plavsic had received a number of death threats as a result of his research into the poisonings

and openly stated that he feared the man had been killed. After Dr. Plavsic's disappearance, talk of the poisonings finally abated, as it seemed his colleagues had been suitably intimidated into silence. Then, over the 18 months that followed, regional headlines were swallowed up by the outbreak of the Yugoslav Civil War, a series of ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies that resulted in the deaths of around 140,000 people. War crimes were rife, the international community was forced to intervene on a number of different occasions, and the huge effect the war had on the European community is almost immeasurable. After events like the Srebrenica massacre, people simply moved

on from the Kosovan poisonings and they became a footnote in a much larger, much more brutal conflict. Yet I think we can all agree that it's important that we remember some of the first victims of the war, a group of innocent high schoolers who only ever wanted to get an education, but instead of learning about math, science, or the arts, the only lesson they received that day was how cruel and vicious mankind can be. In Collinwood, Ohio, there's a beautiful old memorial garden where the Lakeview High School had once stood. Constructed in the late 19th century, the school hosted hundreds of local teenagers, whose daily attendance was their ticket to productive, successful lives. Yet one faithful day in 1908, a terrible incident occurred which meant that scores of them would never return home again.

That event has gone in history as one of the deadliest school disasters ever recorded, an event which has come to be known as the Collinwood School Fire. What caused the conflagration remains somewhat unclear, yet in the aftermath there was a great deal of speculation among local citizens and local media. Some of the newspapers suggested that the building's janitor, Fritz Herter, was to blame for running the boiler too hot. Others blamed girls smoking in a basement closet near flammable materials. Yet a coroner's inquest concluded that heating pipes running next to exposed wooden joists ignited the building, which meant that no one could be held legally accountable for it.

However, many parents were suspicious of how quickly the inquest was carried out and violently objected to its refusal to hold the school board, the architects, or anyone else responsible. Ohio's chief inspector of public buildings explained the problem in his annual report to the governor and citizens, saying that the cause of the fire cannot be determined. Many believed it originated from the heating systems or boilers, but proof has been offered to the contrary. The only thing we know for certain is that whatever caused the fire, it transformed the Lakeview High School from a place of learning into an inferno. You see, with regards to how it was designed and constructed, the school was nothing short of a deadly fire trap. During the course of the blaze, the school's masonry exterior acted as a kind of chimney, sucking the flames upwards as the wooden interior burned. Open stairways in the absence of fire breaks enhanced the chimney effect,

effectively roasting escaping students with white-hot temperatures as they attempted to flee. On top of that, the school had only two exits, and it's thought that the fire quickly blocked one of them off, leading to a mass crush near the only functioning means of escape. As children rushed to the rear door of the school, they were greeted by a lobby that was narrowed by partitions, causing a horrific bottleneck effect. As they struggled and screamed, students began stumbling and falling, forcing others to climb over them in order to escape. Some accounts described children being pinned against inward swinging doors, meaning that no matter how much they pushed, the crush meant that there was simply no means of escaping the smoke and flames. names. At the time of the fire, Collinwood's small volunteer fire department were equipped with nothing but horse-drawn engines, meaning they arrived too late to battle the inferno.

In less than an hour, the three floors and the roof of the Lakeview School collapsed into the basement, leaving only a hollowed-out, scorched-brick ruin. And by the time it was over, over 170 students, two teachers, and one first responder had been roasted alive or suffocated. In the aftermath, the town of Collinwood paid for the burial of 19 unidentifiable bodies in a shared grave at Cleveland's Lakeview Cemetery. After crews tore down the ruins of the school, disputes over the use of the land soon flared up. The school board had initially planned to build a new school on the site of the tragedy,

arguing it was the most efficient and financially conservative course of action. Yet mourning parents were outraged by the proposal, and some also filed lawsuits to prevent this from happening. The dispute lasted more than a year, but by the end of it, the state of Ohio pledged to pay for the land where the Lakeview School had stood before turning it into a memorial garden. The new Collinwood Memorial School, built to the highest standards of contemporary fire safety, was constructed on an adjacent lot, overlooking the place where the smoldering ruin had once stood.

All in all, the fire needlessly took the lives of an obscene number of young people, and it was an event which need never have occurred if the school had been constructed in the manner we're accustomed to today. We can only imagine how utterly terrifying it must have been to be trapped in the school that day, trying with all your might to escape, but knowing your efforts were useless. Faced with the hellish visions of flame and smoke, all a person could do was scream, panic, and had this really weird, kinda of creepy kid in our grade who was always a real loner. Sometimes you'd catch the kid talking to himself while going through his locker, and not like casually commenting on things to himself like we all do sometimes. I'm talking like just standing there, staring into the darkness of his locker, just mumbling

things non-stop to himself, creepy stuff like that. Anyway, I'm not sure if kids still do it today, but back when I was in high school, we used to dissect frogs in biology class. I remember really, really not looking forward to it, but I didn't want to fail the class, so I figured I'd just kind of suck it up and get it over with so I wouldn't have to repeat the whole grade and do it again. So we're there, cutting up the frogs, removing the organs and then making a note of which ones they were. You know, like heart, liver, lungs, the whole shebang. Then out of nowhere, this one girl starts screaming.

Like this real blood-curdling scream, as they say. The kind that runs right through you just to hear it. Everyone looks around and there's the loner kid with blood on his lips. I swear to god. I watch with my own two eyes as the kid reached down into the open chest of his frog, pulled out one of the organs, not sure which one, then put it in his mouth and started to chew. It wasn't even that he was eating the frog's insides, it was the look on his face as he was chewing. I mean, he looked like it was the tastiest thing he'd ever had on his tongue. One kid threw up, another one fainted, like it was a complete freakout of everyone in class, including the teacher who went totally pale before she barked at him to get his butt down to the principal's office. We never saw that kid again after that.

He just disappeared into a puff of smoke basically. Probably because he needed some serious mental help. I still think about that kid from time to time too and as much as I hope he's doing much better now and has gotten past whatever demons he was dealing with from his childhood I assume, part of me thinks he just kind of stayed like that and is probably a little bit dangerous to the rest of society. I mean, like I said, hopefully not, but knowing how some people just never mature after high school, I have my doubts. Okay, so a lot of really weird, really messed up stuff happened back in my high school, but this is probably the most messed up thing because of how it could have ended.

We heard this rumor going around one day that someone had brought in a bunch of sleeping pills and had ground them up before putting them in their most hated teacher's lunch. Seemed like some total nonsense to me, like how could you even do that without getting caught or whatever. But then as the morning went on, we heard more and more stuff which made it actually seem true. Like how the kids snuck into the teacher's lounge when there were no teachers around, which was unlikely but kind of plausible. Then we heard exactly what kind of sleeping pills it was, which was triazolam. I'd never forgotten that word. Then there was a bunch of other stuff too and in the end, one of my buddies decided, screw it, I can't let this happen. If it was fake, whatever,

no big deal, but if it was real, you can do some serious damage to someone with enough sleeping pills, especially if you put them into something that might mask the flavor, like someone's terrible homemade chili or whatever. Didn't expect to hear anything else about it, cause it's high school, home of where dumb rumors fly around. But then the cops got involved and we got a big plea for whoever knew who it was to come forward so they could be arrested and charged with attempted murder or whatever. Then that's the thing, no one came forward. It was all true, like they tested the food for the drug and yeah, it was triazolam.

And no one either admitted to it or snitched on the other person that did it. So basically, the rest of junior year, we were all walking around, going to classes, with an attempted murderer. I say the rest of the year because there was this one kid who didn't come back after summer to complete senior year and a lot of this figured it was them for some reason. It's still pretty scary to me that a dumb rumor turned out to be a legitimate murder plot and even scarier that I could have been playing field hockey with that same person and just never have known it. Now, you gotta keep in mind I didn't transfer in until after this happened, so I only hear about it from a friend later on, but they were right there in the room when it happened. During our 9th grade year, one of the guys in the theater drama class had been threatening

to take his own life and to hurt friends and classmates. She and all her friends went to the teachers and the principal about the guy, but were told they couldn't do anything because he had no history of that kind of bad behavior and therefore, he had to actually do something first before they did anything about it. This is the 1987-1988 year too, so way before any of the safety or counseling stuff that came after Columbine. Anyway, time goes by and things get more and more intense and then one day, he actually did it. The kid just walked in mid-class and took the entire room hostage, including my friend and her friends who had reported as threats. He brandished his dad's gun around over and over, pointing it at people and stuff. And then, when one kid tried to talk him down, they pointed the gun at him, and actually shot him. The way my

friend tells it, it looked like the kid got shot in the face and everyone just started screaming like they'd watched someone instantly die in front of them. Luckily, the kid just lost his ear, but not his life, thankfully. She was still giving legal depositions about the guy about two years later when I first met her, which is how I hear the story. Some kids were just straight up traumatized by it and had to transfer schools because they couldn't go to where they'd seen it all happen. It makes me feel very lucky that I wasn't there that day or had transferred to that high in my freshman year. My high school had this open campus policy for lunch and one time, a senior girl left

to go get lunch from a mall nearby but never came back. At first the whole thing was treated as a missing persons case and as you can probably guess, there were a whole bunch of rumors swirling around concerning what happened to her. People kept insisting that they saw her different places, that she'd run off with her boyfriend, that she was pregnant and her parents were ashamed so they were hiding away. All this crazy stuff so I didn't know what to believe. We also had all these sick prank calls with kids calling the girl's house pretending to be her.

So many that we had a school assembly where the principal and police officers reiterated the seriousness of the situation and basically begged us not to torture her family who were understandably worried sick. Cut to like months and months later and these kids found her body rolled up in a carpet under leaves in a relatively well-known hangout spot that high schoolers used to hit up. Because of the location, the Suffolk County PD suspected her killer was actually one of us students. Because of that, they ended up questioning a whole bunch of us who knew her, but they didn't actually arrest anyone. Probably one of the most messed up parts is how I hear younger folks from the same town as me

talking about it as if it were some sort of urban legend or whatever. But it's literally in the news for them to read about it, if they just wanted to google it. Back when I was still in high school, us seniors had to do a senior project. It could be pretty much anything we wanted it to be. Back when I was still in high school, us seniors had to do a senior project. It could be pretty much anything we wanted it to be. All we had to do was plan it out and follow through, then show our teacher how we'd planned it, executed it, the difficulties we'd faced, and what we'd learned from it as a result. Or maybe executed is a very poor choice of word for me to use, and you'll see why in

a minute. So there was this one kid, real popular and well-liked, and a part of his project was using the classroom intercom thing to make an end-of-day announcement that the next morning he'd be in the student parking lot for a part of his project, and he needed as many other people to be there as possible. Students, teachers, faculty members, friends and family of all the above, it didn't matter, he just needed as large a crowd as possible. We're all super curious about what he's about to do, so naturally, a bunch of rumors go around and hype keeps building as we're trying to figure out what it might be. The next day, a pretty big crowd is gathered as he drives into the student parking lot,

myself included. We watch as he sets up a tripod and a camera and as he's testing it out and stuff, even more people start showing up because they're curious about what's going on. Then maybe around 15 minutes or so before the first bell, we see him hit record and he lets us know, silently with his big smile, that he just set the camera to record. He thanks everyone for showing up, tells us we're not going to be disappointed, then he starts heading over to his car which was just a few feet from where he'd set his camera up. Literally no one saw what he grabbed out of it, otherwise I'd think we'd all

have panicked and scattered. But I guess he just did a real good job of concealing what was in his hand, because when he stepped in front of the camera, he pulled the gun from behind his back, put it to his own head, and pulled the trigger. We were just completely stunned. As you can guess, chaos broke loose after that. Kids were screaming, calling 911, literally sprinting away from the scene. It was insanity. No one knows why he did it either. He didn't leave a note, and he didn't even seem depressed.

He was a great guy with a bright future too And I'm not ruling it out but We didn't hear anything weird or dark come out about him after he died I guess you don't know what struggles others are going through I think about it frequently and take that into consideration And try to be nice to others because like I said You just never know what's going on inside another person's head. In November 1979, I was a junior in high school. Our school was in an upscale neighborhood and there were many Iranian families here enjoying a wealthy lifestyle while their kids got an American education. I was close friends with three of them, as were my siblings' friends with some of them. That same year, the U.S. embassy in Tehran

was overrun by revolutionaries. They took about 60 hostages and for more than a year, the Iranian hostage crisis was daily news. A few days after the takeover, with no progress in getting the hostages released, the US government revoked more than half of the student visas of more than 90% of the Iranian adults living here in the US. This was announced on TV news, but as a naive junior in high school, I wasn't paying any attention to such things back then. One day, all of our Iranian friends were just gone. No announcement, no explanation from either our school administrators or even parents. No one really knew until word started to get around that they'd been repatriated. As most of those Iranians who

were here in the US were considered to be supporters or allies of the Shah, revolutionary courts executed thousands of them. Many whole families just disappeared when they arrived back in Iran. So, a few weeks later, I happened to catch a news report while sitting down with my mother and siblings at dinner, and mom asked me to turn off the TV. I walked over and they showed a whole bunch of men being hung. Stopped dead when I recognized one of the Iranian students was a senior. I didn't know him but I recognized him and then looking down the row, I realized his father and brother were among the twelve or so being hung. It was then that I realized that it was probably the fate of my friends as

well. I collapsed on the living room floor and my mom got irritated that the TV wasn't turned off and came into the living room to find me in tears on the floor. It's been 35 years and every once in a while I open my high school yearbook and look at the names and faces of my old friends. I get choked up, tightness in my throat, a few tears come to my eyes as I consider the fear they felt as they were pawns and expendables in a political battle they really had nothing to do with. Rest in peace, my friends. There was a total psycho I went to high school with.

We'll just call him Johnny for the sake of anonymity. Johnny had a reputation for being a bad kid. He was always getting into fights, getting suspended, expelled, then readmitted into school, etc. Ours was the only high school for miles around in rural Ohio, and I think the others had some serious behavioral problems of their own, so for some reason he was let back in once he'd been expelled. Anyways, all throughout junior year, his locker was just a few over from mine, and I remember making serious efforts not to make eye contact with him whenever we were in close proximity. One day, another kid, Jamie, and Johnny got into a fight near the lockers. It started out as smack

talking, then turned into a shoving fight, then turned into an actual fight. They ended up getting separated, but for some reason, neither of them were suspended, and they were allowed to just return to school the next day like nothing had happened. For those of you crying out, oh, that sounds like an extremely negligent mistake, you'd be 100% right. And here's why. The next day, Jamie was walking past our lockers while Johnny happened to be there too. I heard Jamie make some petty remark, but never expected Johnny to react the way he did. Because the next thing I know, he pulled an actual claw hammer out of his locker,

ran up behind Jamie, and hit him in the back of the head so hard that blood hit me in the face. I think he hit him with the claw into the hammer too because half of Jamie's scalp literally half folded over the back of his head as he was on the floor. Before he had a chance to start ground pounding, a bunch of other students jumped on him and held him down. An ambulance took Jamie to the hospital. His skull was fractured and he had broken ribs too, I think from where he'd hit the floor so hard. But Johnny might have got a kick or two in that I didn't see or don't remember. Thankfully, Jamie survived. It was kind of a gross add-on here I actually had to get checked out because of the blood exposure. No idea where Johnny went, but I never saw him again after that, and thankfully, they got rid of him for good. To be continued... of high school, I went off on spring break with my family and we went out of state to Orlando for

the week. It was an awesome trip. I love Florida and I still do, so does my family, so a good time was had by all. This was before cell phone, so I had no way of knowing what was going on back at home. And if cell phones had been around, there's no way any of the following would have been able to happen. So we went back from Orlando on the Sunday before school and still everything seems fine. But when I went to school the following day, almost everyone was staring at me like they saw a ghost. I'm a huge introvert too, so having like every kid in school staring at me wide-eyed, it was not a pleasant experience, I can assure you. I had kids literally running up to me and hugging me, saying that they were so glad I was okay,

and a lot of them I didn't really talk to or even get along with. So naturally I'm thinking, oh god, what's going on? And I get it into my head that they'd all heard something had happened to my mom or dad or something, like maybe they'd had a heart attack or a brain bleed or something, and everyone knew it except me. By the time I actually asked what in God's name was going on, I was absolutely terrified, basically just tell me so I can start to deal with it, just waiting for them to hit me with the bad news. That's when they tell me that in the next town over, there was a kid who was struck by a car and killed while we were gone on spring break. His name was identical to mine, except for

one letter in his last name. So everyone who saw it naturally assumed that they spelled the name wrong because that spelling was a very common mistake with my name. I know it sounds crazy to think that they might not know about my dead parents before me but you gotta put yourself in my shoes and understand how weird and nerve-wracking it was to have all that happening to me. It's maybe not the most scariest thing you've ever heard but I can promise you, my anxiety was through the roof that morning and I just feel terrible for that other kid's family. So this one day back when I was in high school, our whole class heard a loud bang come from the room next door. It didn't sound like anything too scary, like it honestly sounded like someone could have fallen into a bookcase or something, but it was followed by a teacher

running into our room to get our teacher who was first aid certified. Some kid in the next class had a blank bullet with him for some reason and had been messing around shaking it and saying it's only a blank. It was, but those things still have powder and all that kind of stuff inside of them, and as he was shaking it, boom, it activated and then blew the whole tip of his finger off. His fingertip then flew into another kid's head, who then looked down and saw a piece of bloody finger on the floor, and then fainted and hit his head. It was honestly insane. The dumb bullet kid gets taken off to the hospital while the

fainting kid gets looked after until he wakes up and then taken off to the first aid room. One of the girls who was sat at the table looked up at the ceiling tiles and saw a blood splatter and upon closer inspection, there was dumb kid's fingernail stuck in the tile. Definitely the weirdest and creepiest event that's ever happened in high school, there was a rumor going around that our principal had killed a woman he was having an affair with and gotten away with it. I remember going home and telling my mom and older sister about it and obviously they were pretty outraged by the whole thing so they started doing some major research on the guy and it turned out to be a false alarm.

The whole affair thing was true, hence why he was a suspect, but it turned out he'd been investigated for it a whole bunch and then been acquitted based on two things. One, there were other suspects as she'd been sleeping around with a few different married men. And two, there was a total lack of evidence. I always figured it was just a nasty rumor as the principal was this super calm, quiet guy who was always nice and smiling. The kind of guy that seemed like he wouldn't hurt a

fly. Years later, after I graduated, there was big news headlines that the guy had been re-arrested based on DNA evidence, as that was a relatively new thing at that time. The case went back to court and he was actually convicted. As it turned out, all the skin under her fingernails was his. He had 100% killed that woman and just went about his life all calm and cool. I guess he figured he'd never be convicted for it. But guess what? He was wrong. Years ago now, when I was a high school sophomore, someone called in a bomb threat to our school. Instead of evacuating both buildings like I figured they would given the potential number of dead, we were in lockdown for three hours and they condensed all of us in a cafeteria of all places. We later evacuated to the gym,

only about 300 feet away, and were stuck there for hours because our parents couldn't get to us. All of our phones were taken because they didn't want us giving information, so there were like 500 moms in SUVs having a heart attack trying to go to the school all at the same time. We learn later that the same threat had been called in to almost every school in the area. There was a robbery at Bank of America while the cops were preoccupied. We were all obviously thankful that it was just a trick and it's actually kind of smart now that I think about it. But let me tell you, it wasn't funny or smart at the time. We were all absolutely terrified. To be continued... Anyway, it started when they were in the bathroom together, right at the same stall trying to have a private conversation about it while just totally screaming at one another. Then they actually started fighting and while they were going at it, one of the girls took

out a pair of scissors and stabbed the other in the eye. The girl who stabbed her was expelled and the other girl lost her eye but she went back to school like everything was normal. Seriously, they wore this flesh-colored eye patch for the rest of her time there. The creepy part was my classroom was the closest one to the bathroom and we didn't hear anything. We just saw the cops. It creeps me out to think that it happened a couple of feet away from me and we seriously didn't even know anything was happening. There must be some seriously thick walls in that place. Born on January 28th of 1971, Dana Yule was the youngest son of Dale and Glee Yule. Dale was a United States Air Force veteran and upon his discharge, he started a company named Western Piper Sales, which specialized in the sale of small aircraft. Being a highly knowledgeable aviation expert with a set of highly specialized skills,

Dale's company became very popular very quickly, and by the time Dana was a young adult, his father's company was worth millions upon millions of dollars. Glee, on the other hand, after working as a Spanish translator for the CIA during the 1950s, had devoted much of her life to philanthropy and public service. She had also held a seat on the State Bar of California, an organization which evaluates the credentials of prospective judges. Naturally, she was very well compensated for her work and this further swelled the Yule family coffers. The Yules accumulated even more wealth off the back of investments in both the stock market and local farmland. Yet despite being extremely well off, the Ewells lived a modest lifestyle and tended to

avoid flaunting their wealth. By 1992, it's believed the Ewells were worth between 7 to 8 million dollars, which is the equivalent to around 14 million dollars today. This meant that the Ewells were able to live very comfortably, yet despite their financial stability, all was not well within the family. During Dana Ewell's time in college, he began to paint a rather deceptive picture of his own personal finances. Around his junior year, Dana began lying to people that his family's financial success was solely due to his extensive entrepreneurial skills. He told his peers that, despite being so young, he'd set up several prosperous companies that made him a very wealthy man. His lies were even swallowed wholesale by a local newspaper in Santa Clara,

who printed a story on Dana in 1990 which described him as a self-made millionaire. However, Dana didn't realize that his parents were closely monitoring his educational progress from afar, and when they stumbled across some of his lies printed in the Santa Clara University's yearbook, they were nothing short of furious. They confronted their arrogant younger child almost immediately, professing their disappointment in his pompous deception. They believed they'd raised him better than that, and decided he needed to be taught a lesson for humanity.

They told Dana that they were going to end almost all of their financial support for him, and told him that if he wanted to wax lyrical in his entrepreneurial skills, he'd have to walk the walk, and not just talk the talk. Upon hearing the news, Dale was beyond livid. He was humiliated that his parents had exposed his lies and was incensed that they'd ended his ability to pretend he was some playboy millionaire. Dale didn't talk to his parents for quite a while after that. Due to his dire financial situation, he was soon forced to crawl back to them on bended knee, begging them to let him live in their Fresno home he'd grown up in until he had the means to properly support himself.

Dale and Glee were still angry with him, but he was still their son and they wanted nothing more than to help him get ahead in life. So, they accepted, and in late 1991, they allowed Dana to move back in their home, on the condition that he works towards finding a job and getting his own place. As the months went by, Dana seemed to be doing just that.

He not only found himself a girlfriend, but also a job as an investment banking intern. If he managed to prove himself worthy, he'd have been on a six-figure salary from the jump, more than enough to start looking for high-end apartments, allowing him to step back into the lifestyle he'd become accustomed to. Slowly but surely, Dana and his parents began to repair their relationship and soon, everything was back to normal and they seemed to have forgotten his past indiscretions. Around Easter weekend of 1992, the Ewells were looking forward to a peaceful,

wholesome holiday weekend in the company of their 24-year-old daughter, Tiffany Ann. Dana, on the other hand, had arranged to head off on some kind of staycation with his current girlfriend, and on the day of his departure, he wished his loving family well, then set off to enjoy a romantic, private week of intimacy. Yet even though Dana wished for privacy with his girlfriend, he still made an effort to keep in touch with his parents. Yet according to him, two days after Easter Sunday, he found that his calls were no longer being answered. Dana then called some friends in Sunnyside, California, and was said to be incredibly anxious that he couldn't reach his parents.

He then talked his friends into stopping by over the Ewells family home in order to perform a kind of welfare check, and when they drove over to make sure Dana's parents were okay, what they discovered was beyond horrifying. Dale, Glee, and Tiffany and Ewell were all lying dead in various rooms of the house, each with multiple gunshot wounds. And within hours of the friends checking in at the home, Fresno County homicide detectives were on the scene. Over the next four days, detectives John Souza and Chris Curtis combed through the crime scene in search of clues. It quickly became obvious that whoever had slaughtered the family had secreted themselves inside the house

and had ambushed the unwitting Yule family after returning home from somewhere. Glenn and Tiffany had been shot once, execution style, suggesting they had been completely unaware of their impending deaths. Glee on the other hand had been shot four times, which made it clear that she had discovered the killer before attempting to flee, forcing them to shoot her multiple times in order to prevent her escape. There was a complete lack of shell casings on the scene, which meant the shooter had taken the time to retrieve them once the job was done, and out of all the bullets he'd fired during the attack, only one seemed to have missed its target. Even more chilling was the fact that the 9mm bullets used had actually been purchased by Dale Ewell himself, meaning the

killer had taken the time to intimately research the Ewell family, even down to what caliber of ammunition was in the house. Using their own ammunition meant that nothing could be traced back to the killer, meaning a very important avenue in investigation had been completely closed off to the investigating detectives. The killer had also used some kind of silencer on the firearm used to murder the Yules As not only did none of their neighbors hear any gunshots over Easter weekend But the lack of bullet penetration meant something had slowed the velocity in flight The detectives also noticed that the home appeared to have been ransacked

Possibly in the search of valuables But Detective Souza, who had extensive experience in investigating burglaries observed that very little of value had been taken. He suggested that the ransacking had simply been staged a way of throwing investigators off the scent of what had actually occurred. In Detective Souza's eyes, all clues pointed in one direction that a highly professional contract killer had been hired to eliminate the Yule family. The only question was, who would have the motivation or harbor

enough of a grudge to hire such a person? Detective Sousa and Curtis then set about analyzing each of the victims' professional and social lives in order to identify possible perpetrators. And that's how they discovered that Dale Ewell wasn't exactly as squeaky clean as he liked to portray himself. In the late 1970s, Dale had gotten involved with a man named Frank Lambie, a California-based drug smuggler who had been sentenced to prison over his illicit activities. Rumor had it that when Frank had been locked up, Dale had taken over smuggling operations, and when Frank was released, Dale had refused to step aside, essentially muscling his former partner out of tens of millions of dollars a year. This would most definitely provide a motive for murder, and with Frank already having rubbed

shoulders with criminals while in jail, there was no doubt that he had the contacts to get the job done. Yet that wasn't the only dodgy dealing that Dale Yule had been involved in, as he'd also ended up entangled in a shady real estate development deal with his own brother. When Dale backed out and the deal went sour, his brother was blamed for losing millions of dollars of investment money. And while it seemed over the top for there to be a blood feud among family members, stranger things have certainly happened. When law enforcement sought to determine if the family had any potential enemies, one of the first people they got in contact with was obviously Dana Yule.

Dana had a solid alibi, as he had obviously been in San Francisco with his girlfriend, but for the homicide detectives, the fact that he just so happened to be absent on the weekend of the murder was far too suspicious for them to ignore. Detectives had also been in touch with Dana's uncle, who told them that Dana seemed far more interested in what his inheritance was than the fact that he just lost his entire family. They also added that when Dana learned the majority of his inheritance was in a trust fund that he wouldn't have access until his 30s,

he became visibly shaken and angry. It was also noted that one of Dana's old college buddies, a man by the name of Joel Radovich, had suddenly dropped out of school in the aftermath of the murders before going on something of a spending spree. The police decided to observe Joel's movements and lifestyle from a distance, and in the process, they discovered something extremely pertinent to their investigation. Joel was obsessed with the use and maintenance of firearms and was often heard to brag about his accuracy with them. Not only that, but Joel claimed to have several close acquaintances that he was capable of creating homemade silencers using nothing but pieces of metal pipe. Dana and Joel continued to attract suspicion when they both moved in the Ewells Fresno home just weeks after the murders. Any other person might be repulsed by the idea of laying their heads where their own family had been slain, yet Dana didn't seem to mind in the least

bit. They also seemed to adopt something of a party lifestyle, buying brand new pagers and other electrical equipment, as well as drinking an unusual amount of champagne for people who ought to be grieving a loss. Joel even bought himself a set of flying lessons, which definitely set him back a sizable amount of money. Felice had already confirmed that Joel was unemployed, and it was clear that Dana was funding his lifestyle. But why exactly would he be doing

that? It could have been out of the kindness of his heart, but homicide detectives believed there was another, far more sinister reason for it, and they were determined to unearth what it was. All throughout May of 1993, the cops kept Dana and Joel under close surveillance, and at one point, a detective followed Patrick to a payphone while wearing a specialized piece of recording equipment. It was then the detective managed to catch Joel saying something very suspicious into the payphone, most probably to Dana. He was quoted as saying, Look man, they don't have any evidence, okay? What they're probably going to do is try and catch you in a lie.

So just keep your mouth shut and we'll both be fine. With that, the detectives knew for certain who they should focus their investigation on, convinced that if they dug deep enough, that Joel would somehow be intrinsically connected to the murders. This connection was finally identified when law enforcement began to focus on identifying the murder weapon. After a thorough analysis, the bullets recovered from the dead bodies of the Yule family. It was determined that they were fired by a high-end 9mm specialty rifle manufactured by Feather Industries in Trinidad, Colorado. Company records showed one such rifle had been purchased by Ernest Jack

Ponce, a friend of Joel's family, just weeks before the Ewells were shot with it. Jack Ponce admitted buying the rifle for Joel, but was horrified when he discovered it was used in the murders. Jack knew that Joel was a huge firearm enthusiast, but believed he only wanted the rifle for target and competitive shooting. He told police that despite unwittingly disposing of evidence, he had no idea that Joel was planning on killing anyone, and offered his full and unfettered cooperation in testifying against the two men. With a star witness in the bag, the police swooped in, arresting both Dana Yule and Joel Radovich in early 1995.

Throughout the course of their eight-month trial, they were up against two of Fresno County's top district attorneys, who each argued that Dana Yule was a despicable human being, motivated only by greed, who was willing to swap his own family's lives to indulge in a selfish, hedonistic lifestyle. Not only that, but he actually convinced someone equally psychopathic to do the killing for him. Dana's attorney opted to shift the blame onto Joel, making it seem like he intimidated his old college buddy into splitting his inheritance with him. Joel's attorney, on the other hand, believed the evidence was so overwhelming that

a guilty verdict was probable and thus his main goal should be avoiding the death penalty. After 11 days of deliberation, the jury found both Dana and Joel to be guilty of three counts of first-degree murder. Not only that, but they were subject to considerably stricter sentences based on the fact that the murders were purely for financial gain, it somehow both managed to avoid the death penalty. July 20th of 1998 saw each of the men handed life sentences without the possibility of parole, and despite several appeals being lodged on their behalf, all have been denied. It's worth noting that for the majority of his sentence, Dana Yule had been detained in the protective housing unit of the California State Prison.

This is due to the particularly greedy and immoral nature of his crime, and the fact that he had his own family murdered purely for monetary gain, when he was already in an extremely privileged position in life. This has naturally made him extremely unpopular with other prisoners, and he was regularly targeted for reprisal by those that are disgusted by his cruel and callous nature. Consider how abhorrent a person has to be to be singled out by other criminals as being worthy of punishment. But then again, a person who had their own parents killed on Easter, the very people who brought them into the world, loved them and nurtured them, it's hard to imagine a punishment for them that could be described as too harsh. Back in 1943, on the Saturday before Easter Sunday, 55-year-old Patrick Brady arrived back home from his eight-hour shift at the Inland Steel Company in Lansing, Illinois.

He lived on 181st Street with his 14-year-old foster daughter, Gloria Sullivan, who at the time was in the Calvin Coolidge School's 8th grade. Patrick had a tough job, and he worked hard to keep his foster daughter happy. But thanks to his back-breaking, tireless endeavors, he had carved out a relatively happy existence taking care of young Gloria. They were poor, they were struggling, but they were content. Yet as soon as Patrick arrived home that day, he knew something was horribly, horribly wrong. The first thing he noticed was a loud blaring sound coming from inside his home, and when he walked inside, he realized the cause was the radio that they kept in the house's living room. He walked into the room, shut off the radio, then immediately called out to Gloria, but there was no answer.

This immediately struck him as unusual. Gloria should have been home from school hours ago and Patrick operated a strict policy whereby she had to tell him if she was leaving the house. He then realized that she may have walked down to one of the local stores to pick up some groceries for herself. Patrick couldn't always be there to cook due to his long working hours and he often left Gloria a few dollars so that she could feed herself. If that was the case, she would have left a note on the kitchen table for him. Yet when he walked into the kitchen, he was greeted by a sight that scarred him for the rest of his days. Gloria was lying on the kitchen floor, a huge pool of her blood collecting on the linoleum beneath her. She was fully clothed, with curlers in her hair,

and she was dead, with the manner of her death being nothing short of a living nightmare. Gloria Sullivan had been stabbed exactly twenty times, with fourteen deep wounds to her back, five to her chest, with the worst being a stab wound to the base of her throat. There was also a series of defensive wounds on Gloria's arms and hands, meaning that she had tried to fend off her attacker during what had been a brutal and sustained attack involving two separate murder weapons. One was a smaller paring knife that was found broken off the handle, with the blade being discovered wedged in a crack in the kitchen's hardwood floor. The other, a long-bladed butcher's knife, was found lying nearby,

drenched in glorious blood. Upon inspection, Patrick confirmed that both knives had been taken from the home's kitchen. They were knives he paid for out of his own hard-earned salary, and they had been used to end his own foster daughter's life. There were no signs of robbery, and other than the horrific scene in the kitchen, the remainder of the home was in near immaculate order. There were no signs of forced entry and no signs of pursuit through the home. It seemed as if the Gloria had been subjected to a very effective and very terrifying ambush by someone who had been watching her for quite some time. When it came to evidence the police could use in their investigation, there turned out to be quite a lot for them to go on. Aside from the obvious murder weapons, law enforcement located a bloody palm print next to the bathroom wash basin, and they also noticed something

curious about Gloria's hairbrush. Although the girl herself was a brunette, the cops found a series of long blonde hairs tangled up in the bristles. They also found a series of bloodstained towels in the bathroom, obviously from where the killer had cleaned themselves off before escaping the house. After that, it was just a case of identifying possible suspects, yet unfortunately, that proved far easier said than done. Investigators also learned that around the time of her fourth birthday, Gloria and her sister had been placed in the care of the state. Their biological father, Clarence Sullivan, had suddenly abandoned his young family one day, which had left the girl's mother, Viola, to care for the children on her own. Tragically, Viola found herself financially and emotionally incapable of caring for the children, and they were eventually placed

in the state's care. Then, just a few weeks after they were taken, Viola passed away in what can only be described as mysterious circumstances. Patrick Brady and his wife took Gloria into their care in 1935, but were unable to legally adopt her because they were unable to locate her sister Clarence, which, at the time, was a precondition for adopting children of that age. Yet that hadn't stopped the Bradys from caring for Gloria as if she was their biological daughter. And, as we previously touched on, the family managed to carve out something of a peaceful existence for themselves despite all the tragedies of the past. Yet as the years went by, tragedy would once again visit the family as, in 1941, Patrick's wife would pass

away after a painful and protracted battle with cancer. Following her death, Gloria was forced to step up and take on the role of homemaker, which arguably took away what little of her childhood she had left. Despite that, she was said to have excelled at school, and became a pillar of the community by helping out with the child-rearing duties of neighboring families. In light of that, news of her brutal murder rocked the local community, and the furious outcry prompted law enforcement to conduct a rapid and thorough investigation. The town of Lansing spared no expense, essentially giving the police department a blank check to fund their investigation. They wanted justice, but whether or not they would see any remained to be seen.

Homicide detectives began by building up a detailed picture of the hours which preceded Gloria's murder. After Patrick had departed for work at around 8am, Gloria had called a school friend to ask if she wanted to go shopping for new Easter outfits in nearby Hammond, Indiana. This school friend traveled over to the Brady's place just in time to see a local delivery man dropping off some laundry, and naturally, this man quickly became a suspect in Gloria's murder. However, when 37-year-old Howard Dozier was questioned in relation to her murder, police were soon forced to clear him of all suspicion. Howard had stuck to a strict delivery route that day and had a number of alibis that made it impossible for him to have been in the area at the time of the slaying. A magazine salesman was also questioned by police

after the Brady's neighbors informed them that they had spotted him in the area at the time Gloria was murdered. Yet he too was released after establishing a solid alibi. A bunch of Gloria's school friends were also questioned in connection with her death, but only one could provide any helpful clues as to the identity of her killer. Gloria's friend claimed she had checked over at the house at around 10.20, but when she attempted to enter the home, she found the screen door was locked. She knocked almost continually for around 5-10 minutes, but no one came to the door. When asked, the friend said that she hadn't heard the sound of the radio blaring, but the little detail about the locked screen door was nothing short of chilling to the investigators. When Patrick had returned home, it had been unlocked, meaning there was a high probability

that at the same time Gloria's friend had stopped over, Gloria was in the process of being murdered, just feet away from her. As the list of potential suspects grew shorter and shorter, police made a general appeal to the public for any and all assistance they might be able to offer. That's when one credible witness came forward, claiming to have seen 50 year old Clarence Sullivan, Gloria's estranged biological father, riding on a local bus right around the time of the murder. The thought of a biological father murdering his own daughter was almost too horrifying to bear, but he still needed to be eliminated as a potential suspect.

Yet this proved difficult, as law enforcement efforts to track him down were fruitless. Even Gloria's sister, who by then was a 20-year-old telephone operator in Chicago, had no idea where her father was, and claimed they hadn't spoken since he'd walked out on the family back in the 30s. Clarence, who investigators once named as their prime suspect, was never, ever tracked down, and eventually he was declared legally dead in absentia. Police then recovered Gloria's diary from her bedroom and, during an analysis of the entries, found that someone had apparently tried to flirt with Gloria in the previous few days, and that the incident had made the young girl feel deeply uncomfortable.

Yet frustratingly, Gloria had neglected to include a name for the man, nor had she added any kind of written description. This left law enforcement in the painful position of knowing exactly who their murderer might have been, while being completely unable to identify them. Sadly, even though a heavily funded police department had once promised swift justice for Gloria's murder, the case eventually went cold. Patrick Brady, having lost the one remaining member of his family, fell into a deep depression, and over the years that followed, he regularly visited the local

police department to check if there was any progress in the investigation. Four years after Gloria's murder, when Patrick dropped dead from a catastrophic heart attack, those who knew him blamed the stress of his foster daughter's murder for his death. Patrick died the same day Gloria did, they said. It was just a matter of time before it caught up with him. Gloria was laid to rest on April 7th at St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Lansing. A crowd of almost a hundred of her fellow students, neighbors, and family members all attended the funeral. And apart from the obvious inscriptions, Patrick wished just one word to be chiseled into the stone. Daughter. Patrick could never have known that just four years later he would be laid to rest in the plot next to it,

but it seems only fitting that he should spend the rest of eternity next to the young woman that he had once cared for so deeply. Eighty years later, Gloria's murder is no closer to being solved than it was a month after her life was snuffed out by the cruel and callous actions of a pure predator, and it's more than likely that her killing will remain a terrifying and confounding mystery until the end of time itself. On April Fool's Day of 1988, just two days before Easter Sunday, the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana was the site of one of the most frightening and unsettling murders in American history. Of all the true crime stories this channel has covered, many are infamous for their brutal and terrifying nature, but few have disturbed me as thoroughly

and absolutely as the abduction and murder of April Tinsley. On Friday, April 1st of 1988, 8-year-old April Tinsley arrived home from school and asked her mother if she could go over to play at a friend's house. Her mother agreed and gave April a bag of Easter candy to share once she'd arrived. We know that April arrived at this friend's house safely, but once she was there, the heavens opened up and a torrential downpour began to soak the Fort Wayne streets. Once the rain cleared up a little, the two friends suddenly wished to play outside, but knowing she'd been soaked through in no time if she did,

April decided to walk over to a second friend's house to retrieve an umbrella she'd left there in the days prior. When April walked out of the door, she told her friend that she'd return soon, possibly even with this second friend so she could join in the fun with them. But April was never seen again. Once her loved ones realized that she was missing, they scoured the streets of their south-central Fort Wayne neighborhood, but April was nowhere to be found. They quickly alerted the local authorities, and this prompted both police and volunteers to conduct a massive, immediate search.

To their horror, one witness reported seeing a Caucasian male in his mid-thirties dragging a terrified April into a blue pickup truck, but this report proved fruitless as no such vehicle was located in the immediate aftermath. Both the police and April's parents took part in several widely publicized appeals for information, but no one else came forward with any pertinent particulars. Then, just three days later, April's parents received the worst news imaginable. The news that every parent prays they never hear. They were told their daughter had been murdered April's cold, lifeless body was discovered at the bottom of a ditch along the rural DeKalb County Road April's cold, lifeless body was discovered at the bottom of a ditch along the rural DeKalb County Road

She had been dead for around 48 to 60 hours, meaning she'd been murdered just hours after being kidnapped. Although she was discovered wearing all of the clothes she had disappeared in, the subsequent autopsy revealed that she had been violated before being suffocated, possibly with some kind of rag or piece of cloth. Yet even more disturbing was the fact that an adult marital aid was discovered not far from her body, one that was said to have April's DNA on it. The police managed to recover some of the supposed murderer's DNA from April's body, and coupled with the possible suspect description that they had already received, it seemed that it was just a matter of time before the killer was located and arrested.

Yet somehow, even with all the evidence and manpower law enforcement had at their disposal, the case went cold and no arrests were ever made. Just over two years later, in May of 1990, a teenage boy made a call to local police saying that he made a bone-chilling discovery near the intersection of St. Joe Center and Schwartz Roads. The message had been scrawled on a barn in either pencil or a dark-colored crayon, and when the police arrived, they saw that it read, I kill April Tinsley. I will kill again. The discovery reignited the investigation into April's murder, albeit only for a brief time, and after another fruitless search for clues and leads, the search for her killer once again went cold. Then, in 2004, more than 14 years after the murder had occurred, a series of terrifying handwritten notes were discovered having been stuffed in the mailboxes or stuck to the bicycles of innocent children. The notes contained grammatical errors and misspellings that were identical to what was found scrawled on the barn

twelve years earlier, and investigators were united in their belief that the notes, as well as the graffiti on the barn, had indeed been the work of April's murderer. Of the four messages located both in Fort Wayne as well as in the surrounding area, three were left attached to bicycles that belonged to young girls and only had been stuffed into a mailbox. All were written on lined yellow notepaper and had been placed into transparent plastic bags. Some of these plastic bags included a Polaroid picture depicting the nude lower half of a man the police believed to be April's killer, and some even included a used contraceptive.

DNA samples were taken from those which were then compared to those taken from April's body 14 years earlier, and they were an uncontested match. One of the handwritten notes, which had been placed in the basket of a young girl's bicycle, read as follows, Hi honey, been watching you. I am the same person that kidnapped and killed April Tinsley. You are my next victim.

If you don't report this to police and I don't see this in the paper, I will blow up your house. As you can imagine, this caused a huge stir in the local media, and April's grief-stricken parents were forced to relive the pain and torment they had felt on the day her body was found. Disgusted and horrified, local law enforcement promised to do everything they could to find the man who was now taking pleasure in taunting the residents of Fort Wayne. But just like so many years before, they had absolutely no luck in bringing April's killer to justice. Thankfully, this incredibly sick and disturbed individual had remained silent ever since and had never again attempted to remind the local populace of the horrifying acts he'd taken such pleasure in committing.

In 2016, the police announced that, thanks to the advancements in DNA profiling technology, they had been able to construct a rough image of what their suspect looked like. He's said to be a white male with dark hair and brown or hazel eyes, and based on the witness descriptions from 1988, it's thought that he could be well into his 50s. That's what's particularly horrifying about this case. It's bad enough that April was killed in such a horrific manner, and that her killer took the time to anonymously but publicly gloat of what he'd done. It's the fact that whenever you see a middle-aged man in Fort Wayne, who just so happens to have dark hair and dark eyes, you might just be looking at one of the sickest, most depraved murderers who's ever stepped foot on American streets. I think I got a story you might be interested in, and it's from when I was in the Philippines

a few years back around Easter. So, being a really Christian country, Filipinos take Easter very, very seriously. There are tons of celebrations everywhere, feasts and special markets and stuff. It's a pretty amazing experience to be there during that time of year. I ended up eating some incredible food and seeing some incredible things too, but then one of the things I saw was literally one of the single most terrifying things I've ever seen. Legitimately like something out of a horror movie. No disrespect intended to the Philippines as I love that country and I can't wait to go back sometime but some get really crazy during Easter. I was just walking around enjoying all the amazing food on offer especially the pork

skewers, dompa shrimp and this kind of cake thing called mango float. Picture it like I'm walking down the main drag and down each of the little streets to my left, there's little parties going on. Shirtless guys drinking in the streets, generally a good time being had by all. Then the next thing I know, I look down one of the streets and I literally see Jesus. Or rather, not the actual Jesus, son of God from 2000 years ago. I see a Filipino guy dressed as Jesus. Not just that though. He has a red robe on, the crown of thorns, and is carrying this huge looking cross, like the whole Passion of the Christ getup. He wasn't the only one dressed up though. A bunch of guys are dressed up as Roman soldiers and they're playing the part too, shouting at the crowd if they get too close,

whipping them with these sort of cat-o'-nine-tails style flails. It was pretty amazing to watch, but some Pinoy, that means Filipino dude, must have noticed the look on my face, kind of how amazed I was, and comes over like, first time? I told him, yeah, that we don't really have anything like that where I'm from, and he just smiles and tells me to walk a few streets over if I want to see something really mind-blowing. I couldn't really have imagined anything crazier than that at the time, but boy was I wrong to think it couldn't get any crazier. But as I walked out in the direction he pointed, and looked left down the street, the first thing I notice is tons and tons of what appeared to be blood. There had to be like 15 to 20 guys, all walking around in a loop and they're

like whipping themselves with whips with dried palm fronds on the end. They're like the leaves on a palm tree and when they're dried out like that, I imagine they really hurt. But the fronds weren't what was causing all the blood to pour out of their backs, that much was clear. Because every so often one or two of the guys would drop out of line and head over to this guy who looked like he was holding something small in his hand. They turned their backs to him, and he just started jabbing them with what I later found out was a freaking razor blade. Then once there were maybe two dozen heavily bleeding wounds on their back, they'd rush back into line and carry on whipping themselves. I think I suddenly understood what the palm frond whips were for too once I saw

how they flicked blood all over the place. They weren't to hurt so much as like spread the blood all over the street. It was hitting the spectators too. I saw this one kid, had to be like younger than 10, and his beige colored t-shirt was covered in these little red flecks of the guy's blood. I asked one of the bystanders what in God's name was going on and they told me in broken English that it was like they were punishing themselves for their sins or something. I grew up in an Irish neighborhood, lots of Catholics as you can imagine, and all they did to pay for their sins was go to confession and say a bunch of Hail Marys.

You didn't catch anyone asking the neighbors to cut them before whipping themselves, that's for sure. That whole scene was a little too much for me. Like I wouldn't say I was particularly squeamish or anything, but having a stomach full of food meant that I was dangerously close to puking it all up again, seeing all that blood splattering around the street. I walked off, intent on finding the guy cosplaying as Jesus again, as that was considerably more interesting without being in the least bit nauseating. People were pretty welcoming too, saying stuff like

hey Joe to me all the time, which is like a thing Pinoys say to Americans or white people in general, just like a funny way to say hello. I made a few videos on my phone and people seemed genuinely happy that a foreigner was so invested in their little procession. It's about then that I asked someone where Jesus and his Roman boys were headed, and someone just replied, Jesus is going to be crucified. I mean, of course he was. That's how all the passion plays in, so that wasn't exactly a massive surprise to me. I just never figured that the person meant that the cosplay Jesus was about to get literally crucified. If I'd have known that, I'd have never have followed, but in my ignorance, I just kept on going. I remember how we left the open streets until we came across this hill, and

as we started walking up it, I remember thinking about how legit the whole thing was. They really were reenacting the whole crucifixion thing, taking Jesus out of the town to crucify him on a hill. They even had two other guys waiting up there next to their own crosses, but since they weren't actually mounted to them or whatever, I still thought the whole thing was just play acting. But then, as we got to the top of the hill, and Jesus got laid down on his cross with his arms extended, I watched as one of the Roman soldier guys produced some big nails from a leather pouch that he was carrying. What happened next was like in slow motion, as the whole time I'm thinking,

no, no, don't do it, don't do it. But he did. The guy lined up the nail with Jesus' palm, then after producing a hammer from somewhere, he started carefully nailing Jesus' hand to the cross. As soon as the first hammer blow came down and blood burst up from cosplay Jesus' hand, I was forced to not just look away, but walk away from the whole thing too. People were just in raptures though, some squirming and grimacing, but others smiling like it was the best thing they'd ever seen. I was just numb for the rest of the afternoon, like I'd never seen anything like that in my whole life up until that point. It was nuts. I mean, I understand why they do it, how that kind of devotion is revered.

I mean, it was definitely kind of impressive that the guy would put himself through that kind of punishment just for a cause or whatever. I never do it myself. I don't think I'd ever be able to carry the cross up the hill, let alone actually lie still while someone put a freaking nail through my hand. But anyone who's got that kind of determination in them, a lot of respect for them, man. Gotta be honest. I ended up asking another Filipino guy back at my hotel what the deal was with the whole crucifixion thing and he broke it down for me. The guy getting crucified does it about every year and I don't know how true that is but apparently he's basically just got scar tissue all through the palm of his hand by

that point and as long as the Roman dudes work the nail through the scar tissue, it barely hurts him anymore. Like I said, I don't know how true that is, like surely it's still gotta be agony no matter how many times it's happened, but then, if that's the case, that guy is crazy dedicated to his religion, and like I said, even if it is in a real weird way, you kinda gotta respect something as wild as that. I want to share a story from my childhood with you. One that ended in years of therapy for me. It's not scary in the traditional sense, I don't think think because I don't suppose I was in any real danger but I'll tell it to you anyway and you can be the judge of it if you read it out in one of your videos. It was Easter of 1995 and I had just turned 6 years old a month before so I was still really young and naive to all the darker things in the world. And on Easter Sunday, I remember my mom taking me to an Easter egg hunt that was being held at a local church. I was so excited to get to play with the other kids outside of school. Like,

it seemed like such a novelty to see everyone in their own clothes and their Sunday best at that. That and knowing that we'd all be literally hunting for chocolate treats was something I was so bloody excited for and I remember that really vividly. But that's not the only thing from that day that I remember vividly and the other thing was way, way worse than the prospect of cavities from overeating chocolate. I remember finding a couple of eggs to start with and I ran over to my mom who was standing with the other parents so she could keep them safe for me. But then as the morning went on and more and more of the kids started finding their own eggs,

it got harder and harder to find any. I remember wanting to give up as did most of the other kids as it was just too difficult to find any more eggs, so we basically assumed that they were all gone. But then, the priest announced that he'd counted up all the eggs that had been found and that there were definitely still one or two left out there on the grounds of the church. Myself and the other kids went into a frenzy at hearing that, knowing that we'd somehow managed to miss a couple of the eggs. I remember running off further than the other kids and completely ignoring my mom when she told me not to run off too far. A few moments later, I found myself wandering through some trees, my eyes scanning the undergrowth, looking for the telltale shimmer of the shiny wrapping

paper that each egg was contained in. Moments later, I saw someone standing just behind a small bush, standing perfectly still with their back to me. I could only really see the top half of them, but I remember recognizing that it was a girl from the long hair that she had that was tied back in like this light purple bobble. Are you looking for eggs too? I remember asking, but the girl didn't move. I then took a few more steps towards her. Around the bush she was half concealed behind and I suddenly noticed that her feet were dangling a few inches off the ground. I also suddenly noticed that her tie, what looked like a school tie anyway, wasn't hanging down. It was like

up in the air and was tied around a tree branch maybe a few feet above her head. Being so young and naive, I didn't put two and two together. I just thought it was some kind of game or something. I had no idea what I was actually looking at. It sounds quite silly thinking back on it, but I actually thought she was asleep or something, but then I walked around to her front and saw her face. It was almost the same color as her bobble, this purpley color all over her cheeks and forehead, only unlike the nice pretty shade that her bobble was, this kind of purple looked all wrong to be on someone's face like

that. That's when I remember running back to my mom in tears and whenever one asked me what was wrong, all I could do was wail and point back towards where I had just run from. I remember some of the other adults running off into the trees, maybe thinking some perv was back there or something, but moments later, they came running back out again, shouting all different things and presumably calling 999. I didn't see anything else after that. All the kids got whisked away to prevent them from seeing anything else that might distress them. I do remember that, about a week later, a lot of the other adults went to a funeral. Not that I knew it at the time,

I just went to stay with my grandparents over in Peterborough for a night. It was only many years later that I actually found out what was going on. The girl had been living in our village with her parents, but had been going through a period of depression for quite some time. I don't know exactly what it was, but there was an incident at her school that meant she didn't want to go anymore. But her parents weren't in a position to just pack up and move somewhere else, so they basically just let her take some time off and made her go back to the same school she was having issues in. She was supposed to go in on the Friday before I found her, just for a half day to get her used to things before the Easter holidays commenced. I think it was just supposed to be a nice and casual thing for her,

something to reintroduce her to school without it being too intense or heavy or whatever. But apparently, she'd literally rather die than go back to that school. And instead, she went to the church, as close to the graveyard as she could get without literally being there and did what you can possibly imagine to herself from a tree by her own school tie. It's all an incredibly sad and tragic story and like I said, I ended up going through therapy for a few years because it really damaged my psyche as a kid. Because I didn't understand what I'd seen, I kept asking my mom and dad about it and obviously that meant that they had to basically explain what death was to me.

All of my grandparents were still alive at that stage and none of my pets had gone to heaven yet, as my parents put it, so the whole concept was entirely new to me. Needless to say, the whole thing messed me up massively, and all my parents could think to explain to me was that the girl had had an accident, as they couldn't bring themselves to explain what it was of taking your own life to a six-year-old girl. Can't even blame them really though, can you? The whole thing was bad enough without having to explain something like that. Anyway, it took me a while, but I did manage to get over it after a few years. I suppose kids can be quite resilient like that, and I know for a fact that all the therapy sessions have helped tremendously. I still remember how nice the woman

was, how calm her voice made me and how she didn't really treat me like a baby even though she was still super kind and gentle in her mannerisms. But yeah, that's my story and although I definitely still think about that poor girl from time to time, I'm not nearly as traumatized as I used to be over it. I just wish I knew what the thing was that made her so afraid to go to school. Like I know it could have been a bullying thing, but sometimes I wonder if it wasn't something much darker and eviler. Like maybe one of her teachers was like doing something, something that she couldn't bring herself to tell her parents. I really, really hope that that wasn't the case. But even so, it doesn't matter,

does it? Because she still chose the most horrible solution imaginable to whatever problem she had. And with that, the truth of whatever horrible thing had happened to her died along with her. So back in the winter of 2006, me and my brother both put college on hold to move back in with my mom at her condo. She'd been diagnosed with breast cancer and needed people to take care of her, so we just basically dropped everything to help her out. This story isn't about that though, and as sad as it was, she's since made a full recovery. Anyway, this one night I was sitting at my computer, and this is right in the middle of the whole cancer thing, so I was horrifically depressed. I was listening to super sad music, generally just being all emo, which I'm sure you can understand, and then all of a sudden, my mom came into the room. Out of nowhere, she's all annoyed asking me why I was making so much

noise for her, but apart from the music I was listening to, which was sad and not loud at all, I wasn't making any noise at all. That's when she looked over my shoulder, just about grabbed her chest with this shock look on her face, and screams, what are you doing? Now, you have to understand, my old room has these sliding glass windows that lead to a flat rooftop that was shared with basically all the other condos on one side of the street. so if the person wanted, they could climb up at the end of the street, then walk along the flat roofs and just climb in any window you wanted. And that's exactly what some total psycho had decided to do.

I turned and saw a man in a hoodie looking into my window, and when my mom shouted at him, he looked incredibly shocked and then disappeared from view. My mom is wracked with pain at this point, but she still ran out over to the window, pulled it up, and then started screaming out like, get lost or I'll call the cops, don't ever come back here. It was all pretty shocking at the time as you can imagine, but I was just glad my mom had caught the guy before he climbed into my window or whatever. It wasn't until later that I realized that he could have been sat there for literally any amount of time, just staring at me as I sat there, depressed, while listening to the music. That's when I went from being a little freaked out to absolutely horrified. Because, you know when people say,

I got a feeling I was being watched, things like that? Like there's a kind of ESP that tells you when someone is watching you? No, not real at all. Not in my case anyway. Someone can be staring at the back of your head for God knows how long and you have absolutely no idea. At least for me. Anyway, we called the cops and they basically did next to nothing. But thinking about it, besides posting a cop outside my window 24-7, there was nothing much they actually could do.

Best they could do was to advise us to lock the windows and keep a bar across them in case they tried to break in. And we did just that. But I also decided to start keeping my knife by my bed that was within view of the window, and that was literally the only way I could manage to get some sleep there. The guy never did come back, but for the longest time I'd look at my window and just imagine the guy's face staring back at me. I rearranged the setup in my room too so it could never happen again so no one would ever be able to watch me without me knowing. To be continued... At the time, I was living alone in a first floor apartment. My girlfriend had been sick at the time and ended up in the hospital dealing with a very rare disease. She recovered fine from it, but during those weeks my life was pretty much go to work, go to the hospital to be with her, come back to the house for dinner and then bed. It was a Friday night and I was alone, so I decided to distract myself by reading and watching some videos on YouTube.

Hours passed and at 3am I was in bed with my iPad in my hand almost falling asleep. Then I heard it. I knew that sound pretty well. You see, outside, right in front of my bedroom door there was a long corridor that leads directly to the kitchen. This apartment was in a building built in the 50s and the kitchen door was old and had become slightly bent. That meant that whenever you turned the doorknob to open the door, it would snap out of its place with a distinct clack sound. That was the sound I had just heard. A lot of thoughts ran through my mind in that moment. Had I dreamt it in my semi-sleeping state? Or maybe the sound was real but what happened was that the doorknob's internal mechanism broke and it opened by itself.

Or, of course, maybe someone was in my house and they had just opened the door. At this point my heart was racing and I started considering my options. I had a broomstick next to my bed. You may ask why I had it there and to be honest, I had it exactly because I lived alone and thought one day I might be in a situation like this where I would need some type of weapon. My girlfriend even used to joke about it but I guess that my paranoia was now paying off in the most unfortunate of situations. So I decided I was going to take the stick on one hand and grab my cell phone on the other.

I would open my bedroom door while calling 911 and if no one else was in the apartment, I would just apologize to the operator on the other end of the line and explain the situation. However, back in those days my cell phone wasn't yet a smartphone and it had this feature I found interesting, even though I never used it. If you pressed on a couple of specific keys it would start ringing like someone was calling you. It was meant to be used when you wanted to simulate that you were getting a call to get out of a boring conversation or a tough situation. Clumsily I pressed on those keys and the phone started ringing. I quickly shut it up,

but now it had become clear inside the apartment that I was awake. If someone was outside my bedroom, they certainly heard it. But what was going to happen? I stopped for a few seconds to hear my surroundings. Nothing. It was dead quiet. I decided to continue with my plan. I dialed 911 with one hand, raised the broomstick with the other and quickly opened the door. As soon as I did that, someone sprinted in front of me in the corridor and quickly got into

the kitchen, closing the door behind them. I screamed hey and started pursuing, but a split second later I thought, stop. What if there is someone in the apartment? What if another intruder sneaks up on you from behind? In front of me was the corridor to the kitchen, but on my left was another corridor that led to the living room and office. The office had the light on so the intruder had been there but I didn't know if he had company. I took a step back into the entrance of my room so that I wouldn't be caught off guard. Sir, are you there? The 911 operator was calling me on the phone. I quickly explained to him what was happening, gave him my address and he told me the police

were on their way. They had a patrol car nearby so I should just wait by. And then he hung up. The apartment was dead silent. I was terrified. There were only three things I had been able to notice in the intruder. He had a light colored sweatshirt with horizontal black lines, dark hair and he smelled really bad, believe it or not. In fact, the smell was still in the apartment and I could still kind of sense it in my heightened paranoia. The police arrived after 7 or 8 minutes, what felt like ages. The apartment door was next to the bedroom, so I managed to quickly approach it and lock the door to let them in. I explained what happened to the police and they said that we should go through the whole apartment and check every single hiding place.

They had seen situations before where a burglar had hidden himself for a long enough period even after the house owners had called the police, only later to attack them. The apartment wasn't that big so it was easy to conclude that no one else was hiding there. In the kitchen it was obvious what had happened. It had these large windows that faced the back of the building where we had a small community garden. I had left one of the windows open and next to it, on the outside, there was a large drain pipe along the wall. The intruder used that pipe to climb to my window and get in. The police left to go look around the neighborhood for someone matching the description of the sweatshirt I described, and while they were gone, I could still smell that horrible odor the intruder had left in the apartment. After around 20 minutes they came back. They couldn't find anyone. The burglar was long gone.

Luckily he didn't have the chance to steal anything while he was in my apartment but the audacity. I mean he must have seen the light on in my bedroom through the edges of the door and still tried walking past it to steal something from the office. I didn't sleep that night, obviously. In the morning, I went to the garden in the back to try to find any further clues of the intruder, but I couldn't find anything. A neighbor in the building next door was at the window, and I called out to her. I told her what had happened, and she just smiled and said, Well, welcome to the neighborhood. We all have stories like that in this place. You should never leave your windows open, and maybe you should consider getting some bars to protect them.

The next day I bought a motion alarm and installed it in the kitchen. I never had another experience like that in that apartment but to be honest, I never slept the same way in that bedroom, traumatized by those events of that night. At night I would fear hearing again the sound of the kitchen door snapping out of its place. A few years later I moved out to a larger apartment in another neighborhood. This time it was on a seventh floor. So much harder for intruders to get in through the windows. In 2016, I had just returned to my home state from college, freshman year, and had gotten an awesome job as a store manager from a local boutique. I loved my job, and even though I had a really young crew, 90% of the time, they worked hard.

We were located in an indoor mall and were on the top level. Lots of people used the mall for whatever, walking, window shopping, hanging out, real shopping, etc. I loved meeting new people, so I honestly enjoyed it. The night it started, I had my favorite two girls with me who were about 17 and 18 and we'll call them A and M. They only worked a few hours a night throughout the week but they were so sweet and fun to be around. So the night started like any other. A was putting out new stock, M was helping a customer and I was fixing up the denim wall. My phone rang and it was my mom which was weird. She never bugs me during work hours. So I answered and asked what was going weird. She never bugs me during work hours. So I answered and asked what was going on.

She replied and told me about how she had just watched this news story about human trafficking taking place around the area of the mall. They had caught a bunch of guys trying to force two girls into their truck and that led them to finding four more girls at a house. She was telling me she just felt like she had to tell me right away so I could keep an eye out but also watch out for younger girls. I remember telling her thank you and I'll call her on my way to my car later. Two hours later, A walks up to me and starts folding pants silently. She's never silent so I asked what's up, thinking maybe she didn't feel well. She looked at me and very quietly said, they won't quit staring. It's creeping me out. I looked in the direction she tipped her head towards to find a group of young men, likely late 20s, just standing outside the shopping window staring, pointing, and talking to each other. I told her I'd keep my eye on them and thank you for telling me.

To get both girls out of their eyesight, I sent them to clean up the stock and cruise room in the back. I started doing nightly closing paperwork when one man came in. He looked around a minute and came up to the checkout and asked me why I hadn't greeted him. I said I simply hadn't heard him come in and apologized and asked how I could help him. He ignored my question and asked where the other two girls went. I lied and said that I sent one home and the other was doing inventory in the back and that I'd be happy to help him with whatever he needed. He just stared at me for a minute before simply smiling. He never wanted to back down. I smiled back and told him

if there wasn't anything he needed, I was going to have to ask him to leave as the time was now 9pm and I was closing shop. He didn't move to leave and instead looked down at my name tag. My name is Ren, pronounced like the bird, and what he did next creeped me out and nearly made me sick. He looked me in the eyes, smiled, and said, aren't birds usually kept in cages? Then said that he would see me later, winked, and left. I texted the girls to stay in the back and I called mall security.

Luckily I knew the officer they sent and he was a good friend of mine. He came in the back door and I explained everything. I had him walk them out to their cars immediately one at a time and he came back to get me. I was finishing paperwork. He was standing next to me when he told me not to look up. I asked him why, not once, stopping my work. He told me that they were walking by outside the shop front again. They freaking waved to the security officer. He told me to just finish up and he'd get me to my car. We were one of the last shops open so I finished around 10pm and then had the security officer walk me out the back way into my car. He told me to get in and lock my doors. He actually followed me out to the highway to make sure that I wasn't followed.

I learned later two other officers had done the same for my girls. I talked to my mom the entire drive home. I got home safe and immediately called A&M and they were home safe as well. I felt so much better knowing that. I told them that they were going to take the next few days off and then would go to our sister's store the town over for a few weeks. And next I called my district manager and other store manager and explained what had happened. I was sent to a different store as well and it ended there luckily. But I have never been so creeped out and worried for my co-workers lives as that night. This happened four years ago when my boyfriend and I were still sort of fresh into the relationship.

My sister had recommended me a snorkeling trip for a fun thing to do with him. It was this quarry surrounded by a campground that is filled with water and it's known for its crystal clear water and its diving. There's apparently a helicopter and school bus that people dive down to see. My boyfriend and I decided to go camping for the night. While we were checking in, we separately both got a bad feeling about the place, but had kept it to ourselves until after we left. So at first, it was a really good time. We snorkeled in this shallowish area of the quarry, and although the depth of the water was a bit uncanny, I still was enjoying myself. The water is 65 feet deep so once you had swam out of the shallow area it immediately dropped off and was pitch black.

This is actually where I realized that I'm terrified of water. Besides the dark deep water while we're swimming there is something very scary about a lake that is perfectly still. I assume because it's a quarry, the water doesn't really have any sort of current. My boyfriend and I are winding down our night and we're back at our campsite. We're camping in a grassy patch down a hill from the road. Our tent is pitched in a wooded area that our campsite is extended to and just across the green is a campsite that looks well lived in but our neighbors were out. We're making hot dogs over the fire when our neighbors get back. It's night time now and

they immediately go to sleep. I'd say 20-30 minutes after they get back is when things started to become spooky. My boyfriend and I were chatting when we noticed a dark figure watching us from the hill. Because of the shadow of the fire, we couldn't actually make out the characteristics of the figure. We knew that he was staring directly at us, almost hiding behind our neighbor's truck. He had watched us for what felt like forever until he started walking down the road again. We both watched him in dead silence, watching him walk behind the trees, the same ones connected to our campsite but that also went in between us and him.

I anticipated each time that I'd see him walk forward, out from behind a tree. It was a good four or five he came out from. It wasn't until after this I noticed that he had stopped walking, or he was behind the tree still. I was totally freaked out. Where did he go? I watched my boyfriend looking at what happened and thinking the same thing, but he had shrugged it off and I naively did too. We actually ended up forgetting about it and went back to the quarry late at night. It was beautiful seeing the stars reflected against the water, but the deep, now completely black. It was beautiful seeing the stars reflected against the water, but the deep, now completely black water was terrifying to say the least.

We walked back to our campsite, lied in our tent, and smoked a joint. I soon began to feel an uneasy feeling, which I was trying to ignore, telling myself it's just because I was paranoiacly high. After some silence between us, my boyfriend says to me, do you feel like we're being watched? I said, why would you say that? Half joking but full serious that I was scared. My boyfriend wanted to get out from the tent so we're standing by my car and I got this stupid idea that being in the middle of the field that's in the middle of the campground is the safest place for us. My logic being if someone was going to come up to us at least we'd be able to see them. So we're in the middle of this field when we see a similar looking shadow figure from earlier staring at us. He must have been about 20 yards away. We both notice him while walking and

he's walking in the same direction as us. We change directions and so does he. We tell one another if we change again and he does too that we're booking it to my car. When we change, he follows and we book it to the car. I watched him from my seat as he slowly walked back into the darkness while still staring into our direction. My boyfriend at this point says to me, let's get out of here. I agree, but all our camping gear is outside. We quietly get our things together, not trying to freak the other one out. The weirdest part of this story in my opinion is the next part. My headlights weren't working and there was a weird fog over my

windshield that didn't go away no matter what we did. We had to drive out of the woods with only low beams and a strange fog over the window. We barely could see but did get out of there. Weirdly enough the fog went away right as soon as we got to the gas station. We got home at around 1 at night. I told my father the story the next day and he said that he's glad that we got out of there or else we potentially could have got murdered, he thinks. Two people have died at this campground while snorkeling, which I find out after I got back.

My boyfriend and I think it was either a person trying to kill us or, who knows, maybe the Wendigo. We've kind of settled on the Wendigo because what happened to us was just almost too freaky to think about. My big love bug of a parrot is well trained and I take him out into the world on his harness. He loves it and it's really stimulating and enriching for him. He's really cool so I don't blame people for it necessarily but he tends to attract a lot of attention. We live in a small tourist town so it's not just regulars and locals that I deal with. I never really know what to expect. Most of the time it's harmless, just someone curious about him. I'm pretty socially awkward and sometimes it's really good for me to talk to the public about him. However, sometimes it puts me in weird,

sketchy, uncomfortable situations. It's not uncommon for people to corner me, block my path, or chase me down yelling things like, excuse me, hey stop, can you stop, come back, I want to see the bird. Please don't do this. The weird ones almost always ask, how much is he worth? And that's a red flag to me, to which I try to change the subject or say something vague. The extra rude ones always keep pushing, yeah, but how much? Anyway, this one particular day I had enough of the harassment. I wanted a peaceful day out for us, so I walk with my bird to this quieter end of town, usually just the odd local walking by. There's a footpath, a grassy hill, and a beach at the bottom.

I'm by myself, so I make sure to have us sit a ways down the grassy hill in a spot where we can see people coming from both directions. We sit down with our smoothie, my bird immediately dives in and starts ripping up the grass. He's in his happy place. I'm hanging out playing on my phone, playing with my bird and watching my surroundings. I'm thinking, alright, this is great. There's been barely anyone. Those that have walked by haven't really noticed us. We're far enough away from the path for anyone to have to be pretty exceptionally awkward to approach us. They would have to walk

well off the path and down the hill to get to us. There's maybe going to be the occasional dog person that walks by. Dogs are meant to be on a leash here, but I know that people don't always listen, so I stay vigilant. We've got some shade and are happily sharing our smoothie and playing in the grass and life is good. Then I notice this man walking along the footpath. He has a schnauzer dog and it's on one of those horrid retractable leashes that no one ever seems to use correctly but alas. I notice him, then he notices me. Usually dog people are pretty good about keeping a distance. He walks along, sweet. Then the dog notices us. He runs towards us, to the very end of his retractable leash, and is jerked to a halt at the end, barking savagely. I think okay,

he's going to pull him back, to which he does. Phew. I look away for half a second, and then lets him off the leash. The dog flies down towards us, my bird lets out an alarm call and backs up to me as it happens, and I instinctively scoop him up and throw him on my shoulder, standing up and dropping my smoothie in the grass. The dog is leaping at me from uphill, scratching me, all the while barking and acting all savage and inconsolable. Amidst protecting my feathered companion and fighting off this tiny bearded idiot, I manage to utter a, what the F, not cool, get your dog. The man is casually walking towards us, laughing hysterically with no intention of stopping the chaos. I'm still being attacked by this vicious little dog, and again I exclaim,

Are you kidding me? Get your dog off of me! This one got his attention. What did you just say to my little girl? He says with some accent, maybe German. I said get the effing dog away from us, this isn't funny! He's directly in front of me now, maybe German. I said get the effing dog away from us, this isn't funny. He's directly in front of me now, stops laughing. You better watch your mouth, you don't know who you're talking to. He says and proceeds to snatch me by the wrist. Also please remember this stupid dog is still savagely jumping on me trying to get to my bird.

I haven't ever been physically grabbed like that by a stranger and I yelled louder and more ferociously than I probably ever have at another human. I screamed get the F off of me and jerked my arm back. I miraculously break free of his grasp and as I did, he geared up to backhand me. He took a swing and I leapt back screaming, get away from me. You need to take better care of your pet, he says. You have no idea who you are talking to. Thankfully, another old man was walking along the footpath now, came out from the corner and saw the commotion. He immediately ran down and intercepted another swinging backhand coming my way and kicked the dog off of me.

The evil old Germanish man continues to threaten me and tells me to take better care of my pet again while the nice man shoos him away. He finally collects his dog and backs off. He slowly trails away shouting insults and yanking his dog along. The nice man sits with me a minute in the grass until we're sure he's gone. I was shaken up, literally shaking, and he kind of talked me down. It was a stressful walk home alone. I stopped for one and was constantly looking over my shoulder. Luckily it seems my bird forgot about the whole incident pretty quickly and was back to his cheery little self that evening.

I unfortunately was not. It really frightens me going anywhere alone now and it's safe to say when I do, I'll be putting up with the annoying Taurus from now on. I had lived in the same apartment complex for two years and across from me was my neighbor Sam. He seemed like a normal guy and a single father of three. Over the two years I had lived there we had engaged in small talk many times and I believed he was a nice person. He felt like a father figure since he was twice my age and always seemed willing to help out if I needed it. Last summer my region experienced an insane heat wave that we simply didn't have the infrastructure to deal with. It's common for apartments and homes in general in the northern United States to not have air conditioning. Temperatures were aiming to reach over 100 degrees and without AC we all

would have had to prepare to basically endure 90 plus degree heat in our homes with no relief. I had purchased a portable AC unit and me being from the southern United States I didn't have the slightest clue how to set it up and all online advice was only useful for windows that slid vertically. I had a unique dilemma given that my window slides open horizontally. After struggling with the air-conditioned vent for a while, I decided to knock on my neighbor's door for help. That turned out to be a big mistake. After leaving my apartment, he started sending text messages that made me feel quite uneasy. The first message was something along the lines of,

I could tell we were nervous around each other. I'm shy. What are you up to tonight? I was honestly grossed out and disturbed by that because it seemed delusional. I wasn't nervous around him at all because I'm simply not attracted to him yet and in his mind I was nervous. I didn't reply. He proceeded to text me and call me every day and was even leaving voicemails. He even blew me a kiss in one of the voice messages. I was starting to get scared because normal people don't continue to call and text someone that's not responding to them yet this guy wouldn't leave me alone. I figured if he was this unhinged then outright rejecting him and telling him I wasn't interested could possibly be dangerous so I continued to ignore him.

If I was coming home at night, I always had a friend on the phone with me in case I bumped into him. I was becoming so on edge by all the unwanted contact I called my cousin, who was a lawyer, to tell him everything that was going on. He asked me for my neighbor's full name After looking him up, he found out that my neighbor was a felon And actually on the offender's list He had been in prison for five years for assaulting a 12-year-old girl He was also able to find out that my neighbor had been arrested back in 1988 for armed burglary These are just the times that he'd been caught I searched for a new apartment and the one with the earliest vacancy would be three weeks out

and I had to wait. I went to the leasing office of my then current apartment and told them everything that was going on and opted to break my lease and move out as soon as the new apartment was available. I'm so grateful I had a male friend over this particular night. The vent for my portable AC had fallen out of the window and I was fiddling with it and trying to get it to sit tight like it was before. While doing so I got another text and it was my neighbor. It said, Upon reading that I realized that he must have been outside and watching me in my window.

I was shaking with fear. My friend saw how scared I was and when I told him what happened he went downstairs to confront Sam, pretend to be my boyfriend and told him to stop texting me. I was so shaken up I called out of work and booked the next flight to my home state to wait the remaining three weeks out at my best friend's apartment far away from the creepy neighbor. I wasn't even going to allow any possibility for things to escalate further. Fast forward three weeks. I had hired movers to get all my stuff out of my old apartment. I was cleaning out the fridge and the neighbor and I ended up coincidentally leaving our apartments at the same time.

When we made eye contact, he licked his lips. This is a story that happened many years ago when I was around 8 or 9. I'm 43 years old now. My parents and I lived in a very beautiful big old house that used to be a hotel in the 19th century. The house had four extra apartments and one of them lived this middle-aged guy who we'll call F. The house was placed on a very small but long road that went between fields and a small forest, all of it going downhill before it ended right by the beach. There was maybe 15 houses and only one other kid my age, so I would sometimes visit the adults in the area. There was a few incidents with F, the guy that rented one of the apartments.

The first one happened when my friend and I were roller skating and we met F, who was out on his bicycle. We asked him if he would tow us because we were tired and he let us hold onto his bike. At first we thought it was great because not all adults would have been okay with that idea, and the ride didn't go very well. Once we held onto the bike, he started going faster and faster, and I mean really fast. It was summertime and we only had on shorts or skirts and back then we didn't have a lot of protective gear so we basically didn't want to fall down. We started out by politely asking him to go slower but he didn't listen or couldn't hear

us at all. Then we started getting near a really big hill where gravity would always make you go way too fast so there we would always zigzag our way down to make it down safely. At this point we were screaming at him to stop but he did the opposite and was standing up on the bike so he could go even faster and then he told us to let go of the bicycle if we didn't like it but there was no way we could have done that without falling and he knew that. Even if he didn't know, he could clearly hear the fear in our voices. But he didn't stop before we were a good bit past that hill and when we confronted him afterwards, he just said he only did what we wanted him to do and that it was our own fault. And the second incident is the real

creepy encounter that I had with this guy but at the time I just thought it was a bit weird. My mother on the other hand got really mad and as an adult I now understand why. I had met F in the driveway and he invited me in to get a cup of tea. I remember sitting on his couch and not liking the tea because it had no sugar and when I asked for some he refused to give me any. Maybe he said he didn't have any, but anyway, I didn't like the tea and he kind of forced me to drink it anyways, saying how I was the one who wanted it and now he went through the trouble of making it and so on. He got kind of mad, so I did what he told me to do because he was an adult

and I was only a child. That evening I told my mom and she right away took the phone and called him and then she yelled at him for endangering us girls when we were roller skating and got even more angry when she told him to never ever invite me to his apartment especially to never force her little girl to do anything whatsoever such as have a drink from a strange person. This could have been the end of the story, but actually I met another guy about ten years later and he told me that F had informed me that I was the kind of girl that just needed to be cornered and pressured a bit and then he could have his way. Thank god my mom stepped in when she did, and it never came to that. So this happened a few months back when I was 20 and still living in Denver.

It was about 8.45 at night on a weekday and I was walking back to my house from the bus stop, which was only about a 5-10 minute walk depending on my pace. I had my headphones on because I hadn't removed them when I got off the bus. The street was completely empty and quiet, so I'm being mindful to check my surroundings, turning the volume down on my headphones and trying to walk as quietly as possible to hear if anyone comes up behind me. The walk is pretty uneventful. This is until I glance behind me, for about the 20th time since

I started walking, and notice the car slowly turning onto the street I'm on. At first, I'm not really put off by it since I know that one of my neighbors that lives further down the block usually gets home right around the same time that I'm coming up on her house. So I keep walking, but I turn my headphones off and tug them down around my neck before pulling my phone out in case I need to make an emergency call. I'm walking for another 30 seconds when I realize that the car still hasn't passed me. So of course I glance behind me again to see where it's gone and find that it's pulled up to the curb a little way behind me just idling. At this

point I'm a little nervous so I quicken my pace since I'm now only a block away from my house. I keep glancing behind me, taking note that I haven't heard any car doors close, which means no one has gotten out of the car. I try to tell myself that nothing is wrong and that the person is probably just taking a phone call or looking for directions. About another minute passes and then I hear the car coming up behind me. It's driving slowly, way slower than the speed limit and rumbles past me at the same pace. I glance over as it does and see that there's three men inside and all three of them are looking right at me. Immediately, warning bells start going off and I unlock my phone, pulling up my mom's contact so I can call her right away, if needed. At this point, I'm literally four houses down from my own and I

think I'm in the clear when it looks like the car is going to continue on its way down the rest of the street, except it doesn't. It pulls up to the curb about 20 feet from where I am. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but they've pulled the car so close to the curb that the front and back tires on the right side are basically up on the sidewalk, which means I'd have to walk onto the grass or brush against their car as I pass. Immediately I'm like, nope, and I abruptly cross the street before calling my mom, even though I'm literally two houses away from my own. I'm watching the car as the phone rings and I notice that the guys are looking at the sidewalk where I was just moments before, like they're waiting for me to pass. I can see the guy in the backseat craning his neck

to look out the back window. It takes a second but they realize that I'm no longer there and start to frantically look around for me. The driver spots me across the street and I make a point to show him that I'm on the phone. He says something to his mates before abruptly spinning the car around and taking off down the street. I hang up the phone and cross the street to my house in a hurry.

I tell my mom what happened when I get inside, but she just scoffs and says that they probably just wanted to ask for directions. This happened around 2003 when I was 12 or 13 years old. My mom had chosen to homeschool me that year and for some reason had also tasked me with walking my younger sister, about 9 or 10 at the time, to school. The walk was just shy of a mile each way. We lived in a very safe, smallish suburb, so I generally felt fine walking around by myself with my younger siblings. On this morning, about two blocks into the walk, I noticed a large, older red van parked on a road next to us, idling with an older man, maybe in his fifties or sixties, in the driver's seat, staring at us. He looked like a creepy Mr. Clean, I guess. I didn't get a good feeling, but he was parked, so we just kept

walking and didn't think anything of it. We walked a few more blocks to another residential area closer to her school and noticed the same red van was now parked on the opposite side of the street. The street wasn't deserted or anything since the school was pretty close at that point, so we just kept walking and, much to my dismay, the van kept creeping closer to the school was pretty close at that point so we just kept walking and much to my dismay, the van kept creeping closer to the school also. Driving and parking, driving and parking, every other block or so. Once we get to the school, I walk her to her classroom and then leave to start walking back home. I had somewhat forgotten about the van until about a block into my walk home I see it parked just ahead. At this point I realized I can no longer justify this as a coincidence.

I felt that I was in legitimate danger. I don't have a cell phone and the streets are now empty because everyone is either at school or work. Looking back I should have just returned to the school but that didn't cross my mind at the time. I walk quickly and notice that he is now following me, slowly. I start changing up my route, and I quickly make a turn I don't need to make in hopes of throwing him off, only to find that he drove back around to cut me off at the end of the street. I'm now terrified and start sprinting as fast as I can. He starts driving slightly faster behind me, clearly staring directly at me. I keep running and duck into an alley with apartment garages in it. I see him looking from where I went and then

driving up the block in the hopes that I went that way. I start running through apartment complexes instead of taking the normal street because I know if he catches me, I'm done. I was a small child. No way I would have been able to defend myself. Finally, I am able to make it to my street using my apartment complex hopping strategy. I see him at the intersection at the end of my block but he hasn't turned yet. I sprint across the street as fast as I can and run into my open garage shutting it immediately. Once I realize I'm safe I start uncontrollably sobbing. My mom emerges and doesn't understand why I'm upset. She didn't see the danger in the situation that I saw. I still ask that we call the police but

they said they couldn't do anything about it since technically nothing had happened at all. And I still think about that day often, even after 19 years. A few years ago, I, a 26-year-old female, used to work at a job where I usually wouldn't get off until around 11pm. I didn't mind it for the most part. I'm a night owl by nature, but I read a lot of let's not meet stories and watch a lot of horror movies. I wouldn't say I'm paranoid, but I'm definitely cautious. This one particular night, I was driving home along one of the main roads. It was late enough that traffic was fairly scarce, but not so late that I felt that I was the only one out, especially because there had been a jeep behind me for a good while at that point.

When it came time for me to make my first turn, the jeep followed. This wasn't particularly unusual. I was still on the big road, so I didn't think anything of it. I needed to get gas and luckily there was a fairly busy and well-lit gas station on my way home. I feel like the layout is important, so bear with me. From the road I was on, you had to turn left onto a side street and then turn right onto a street that runs parallel with the grocery store and then turn right again to get into the gas station. It's a very specific destination and there's no through traffic. When I went to make the first left, the jeep got into the turn lane with me. This is when I started paying attention.

They had already been behind me for a good 10-15 minutes and it seemed unlikely that they were just coincidentally going to the same gas station as me considering how many there were in that area. But like I said, there's also a grocery store that's open 24 hours so I thought maybe they were just going there. However, they still followed after me when I turned into the gas station. I pulled up to one of the pumps in the middle of the lane, put my car in park and watched the jeep in my rear view. There was no way I was getting out of my car until I figured out what they were doing. If they pulled up to a pump and started getting gas, I'd laugh at myself and carry on.

They didn't pull up to a pump. They lurked at the back of the lot, just idling in place for close to a minute I'd say. Finally they started slowly driving around the far end of the pumps until they stopped again in front of my car, maybe 15 feet away. Unfortunately they had tinted windows so I couldn't see who was in the car or what they were doing but after another brief period of time they just drove off. I got gas and drove home, keeping an eye out, but I didn't see them again. Also, I just realized something that honestly made me sick to my stomach. If I hadn't decided to get gas that night, and if they were in fact following me, my next turn would have taken me into a very large, very dark, very empty park. It takes

almost five minutes to drive through and has a million speed bumps, so there isn't any quick escape. I hate thinking about what could have happened if I hadn't stopped. To be continued... of all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. If you get a story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit, r slash Let's Read Official, and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video. And if you want to support me even more,

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