The Lets Read Podcast - 189: LOST IN THE WOODS | 21 True Scary Stories | EP 177

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about being Lost in the Woods, 4Chan & Prison... HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsReadCreepy ♫ Background Music & Audio Remastering: INEKT https://www.instagram.com/_inekt/ PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead

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If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Ben MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Back when I was in university, I joined the Walking and Hiking Society, and in stark contrast to the rather boring name, they oversaw some of the most exciting trips abroad the uni had to offer. Every year, they'd organize trips to some of the best hiking spots in the world, and during my second year, the destination happened to be the Carpathian Mountains. For those that don't know, the Carpathians run through several different Central European countries, but the vast majority of them are in Romania. The Carpathians are home to some of the wildest forests in all of Europe and are also home to

some rather frightening wildlife. There are brown bears, wolves, lynxes, all things you definitely wouldn't want to bump into while taking that early morning bathroom break. But it wasn't the wildlife that made our Carpathians trip so creepy. It was a group of people we ran into after getting ourselves lost in the Rodna Mountains National Park. So, you're never really lost in the woods, not if you're a good enough navigator. If you have a map and a compass, some food and some water, you can always just push on until you figure out where you are based on landmarks and whatnot. That's why when the leader of our hiking group, a younger professor we called George, said we might have taken a wrong turn down one of the trails, we weren't

panicking or anything like that. In fact, it actually felt quite exciting thinking that we were venturing into the unknown. After all, you never improve your skills unless they're actually tested, and there's never any real growth without true discomfort. We knew we had to cross one particular mountain, and the key to do it was finding this one particular mountain pass. And as you can imagine, that's easy enough to do. All you have to do is find the spot where the mountains dip low enough, and Bob's your uncle, there's your way through. So it was simply a case of finding an elevated position,

finding where the range dipped, and just orienting ourselves towards it. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, I thought. Then off we marched in the direction of the pass. There was just one little problem, and that was the issue of sustenance. Because we all focused on having an ultra light kit, we'd taken minimal food and water with us and planned to stop off at various little villages along the route in order to take on supplies. And given that we'd missed one of our village stops due to getting ourselves a bit lost, we ended up running out of our substantial food supplies. This wasn't a huge problem as we still had a few cereal bars and

glucose gel packs to keep us going and finding fresh water from mountain streams was surprisingly easy. But on the day before we planned to navigate the pass, we were all starting to feel pretty hangry as a result of the shortage. So, at one point we all decided to take a break while George and another member of the group decided to scout the area to see if they could find any sources of food, wild or otherwise. About two hours after they departed, they returned with some good news. They'd spotted what looked like a small village up in the mountains, one that wasn't on our maps but was definitely populated since there was smoke coming from various chimneys and whatnot.

The plan was to show up, be very polite, and offer them some cash in exchange for whatever food they could give us. We didn't give a monkey's butt if we had to pay over the odds for it. We were that hungry, and we would have paid triple the going rate for a decent hot meal. So, that was all it took to get us on the move again, and with the promise of full stomachs, we found ourselves with renewed energy to walk a few miles up to the mountain village. It was definitely a bit nerve-wracking. I mean, what if they weren't friendly or just straight up refused to sell us anything despite us offering them a fistful of

cash? If we took the gamble and it didn't pay off, we'd have a terrible time crossing the mountain pass. A person can go a long time without food and we had enough water to last us, but we'd definitely be in a bad way once we got to the next village after the pass. Passing out from hunger is bad enough at the best of times, but pass out and tumble down the mountainside and that could be the end of you. So you can imagine how elated and grateful we were when we reached the village and they were actually quite welcoming to us. I say quite because as much as the bloke we offered money and seemed over the moon to have us trudge into his village, some of the other villagers

seemed less than impressed at our presence. I really don't mean this to sound too mean or ungrateful because they literally saved our butts out there, but a lot of them just didn't look right, if that makes sense. I wouldn't have been surprised if there was a bit of inbreeding going on, to put it that way, and some of them had this far away glassy look in their eyes like there wasn't too much going on between their ears if you get my drift. So, as much as we were happy to be eating some proper food for the first time in like 24 hours, we were quite keen on getting out of there too. We were offered goat milk and goat meat, a few baked potatoes, pretty basic food like

that, and my god did it taste amazing, even with what little seasoning they used. After that, we spent about an hour just relaxing and digesting with full-on food babies until we realized, in a bit of a panic, that sunset was fast approaching. But then, when it came to asking the village headman to help us find the mountain pass, he casually refused, then kept making hand gestures that we interpreted as tomorrow or in the morning. A quick show of hands showed that almost no one was focused on bedding down in the village overnight, and given that some of the other girls complained that some of the village boys had been giving them some rather unsavory looks, they'd rather take their chances

camped out on the mountainside than stay in the village overnight. And given how we could literally hear wolves howling on the preceding nights, that was really saying something. So, that's how we ended up packing up our gear, thanking the village head guy after giving him a big chunk of change, and heading off into the twilight to find somewhere to camp. Once we'd walked a fair distance away from the village, we all started setting up our little tents and whatnot, got a few fires going going and after warming ourselves and laughing about the close call we had, we all tried to get some sleep before the busy day ahead of us. We really did need to get all the sleep we could get as traversing the mountain pass was going to be a heck of a lot of work even with the food in our bellies.

It turns out no one would get any decent sleep, on account of the visitor we received in the middle of the night. I remember being shaken awake by the girl I was sharing a tent with, who told me in this really shaky, scared voice to put my boots on. The next thing I know, I can hear George, the professor leading our group, calling out to someone. He was saying things like, do you speak English? Are you from the village? We're leaving in the morning and we don't want any trouble. Whoever he was talking to wasn't saying anything back and it was around then that I put my boots on and stuck my head outside of the tent to see if I could get a look at the person.

Only it wasn't just one person. It was about four or five different people, stood on a rise above our campsite, shining flashlights down onto us. At least, I think it was only that many, because that's how many torches that they were shining down on us. There could have been a lot more that we couldn't see. We didn't know who they were or what their intentions were. We had no idea if they were or what their intentions were. We had no idea if they were from the village or not, if they intended to rob us and take the rest of our money or something even worse. Like I said, there were a few of the village boys who seemed to have taken an unhealthy liking to some of the girls in our group, and my own personal

worst fear was just that, that they'd found our camp and were intent on dragging one or two of us away for you know what. Thankfully, a few of the guys came out of their tents to see what was going on. Their torches switched off and we heard the sound of boots on rocks, then silence, meaning whoever it was had retreated. And we all breathed this collective sigh of relief, but like I said, sleep didn't come easy after that, and that's if you were able to get any sleep at all. At first light, we packed up our things and headed off in the direction of the mountain pass. It was seriously tough, on next to no sleep, but thankfully the food in our bellies and the fear in our chests motivated us sufficiently to make it all the way to the other side by the early afternoon.

We were all elated by the time we made it across and down onto the lush green fields on the other side. It was like a little slice of paradise right before our eyes, and the best thing, we could clearly see quite a large village just a mile or two away, one that would certainly have access to food and more importantly, alcohol. I personally needed a strong one after the day that we'd had and luckily, there was a small bar in the village square that was only too happy to provide us with these big bottles of plum brandy they called palinka. The owner of the bar was quite proficient in English too, which certainly made our lives easier, and he ended up asking us about our trip.

Obviously, one of the first things we told him about was our run-in at the mountain village. It started out as a rather nervy encounter that turned into a seriously creepy midnight confrontation. When we told him, he gave us this rather bemused look, before telling us that we must have been confused. According to him, there were no villages around the mountain pass, and that they had all been demolished during the communist era with the occupants being moved onto collective farms. We all sort of gave each other these funny looks as if to say, well that can't be right, before informing him that he was mistaken. If the government had

deported all those mountain people, it looked like they'd move right back up there as soon as the iron curtain fell, so to speak. The conversation then moved on to S asking why the government had done something so cruel as to deport entire villages away from their homes, and shockingly, the bar owner seemed to have very little sympathy for them. He launched off into some speech about it being the best thing for them, how they were all illiterate and they needed to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world. We thought this was a bit harsh, honestly. I mean, everyone

is entitled to live the way they want to. At least, that's the way I see it. But he disagreed. He said if we knew the truth about what they did up there, we wouldn't be so sympathetic. Then, without a hint of jest or hyperbole to his words, he tells us that they're cannibals, and that they eat the weakest of their own number in order to conserve resources. Not only that, but they steal the breast milk of their pregnant women to distribute among the men of the village. That's when one of us piped up that one of the first things they'd shared with us was meat and milk. Of course, they'd claimed it was goat milk, but none of us had ever drank it before, so how would we know the difference? The man looked absolutely horrified when we told him

this, then promptly walked away from our table before disappearing behind the bar. Our group looked equally horrified, at least until a few of the older members spoke up that the bloke was either seriously misinformed, horrifically bigoted, or was just playing some elaborate joke on us that he could share with his regulars for a good old laugh. This one guy named Adrian was saying something like there was absolutely no chance, that they were a bit backwards, but cannibals, no bloody chance. And I'm very much inclined to agree with him on that. We were in Romania, not some random isolated island, and given the grinding poverty they were suffering it was almost an impossibility that they'd share anything as precious as milk with us.

Even if they were bloody pain. After all, there were tons of goats trotting around the village, plenty of females with swollen udders too, so I can almost categorically say that we didn't engage in cannibalism, nor did we drink any of the women's milk, so to speak. The only thing that really still scares me to this day is the gang of mysterious people who we encountered, the ones who shone torches down on us from the ridgeline above. No one with any innocent intentions just rolls up on a camp of sleeping people like that. They didn't say a word to us, didn't greet us in Romanian, and you'd think they'd at least say something to us to ensure their good intentions,

even if it was in a language we couldn't understand. After all, that's all in the tone of voice and not so much exactly what you're saying. It makes me wonder what would have happened if there hadn't been so many of us, if it had been just all girls or the lads hadn't come out of their tents for an unintentional show of force. Sometimes I don't think they were just curious about us. Sometimes I think that they had something very, very bad in mind for us and we're all extremely lucky that they didn't go ahead with whatever they were planning. I don't think it was the nicer guy who fed us either. I don't think it had anything to do with him. I think it was the younger lads who had been

ogling the girls in our group and I think they'd have been anything to do with him. I think it was the younger lads who had been ogling the girls in our group, and I think they'd have been monsters given half the chance. All in all, it was a wonderful trip, just one that was slightly marred by a rather unpleasant nocturnal encounter. The people we met in Romania were, for the most part, some of the kindest, most welcoming people one could ever wish to meet. But there were a small few, and I say this in no uncertain terms, that might have done things to us that meant we

never made it home alive. On April 5th of 2017, 22-year-old Californian cyclist Jacob Gray set off from Washington State's Port Townsend intent on cycling through the Olympic National Park. The bike he was riding was a specialized hard rock that some believe was slightly too small for Jacob. It was just an inch below six foot. Yet the bike had sentimental value, as it was a promotional model that his father had won at a contractor's show raffle. Attached to the rear of the bike was a used red and yellow child trailer, one that Jacob had loaded with the camping gear before setting off into the wilderness. Jacob was later sighted in Indian Valley in a long crescent lake on April 5th,

while on the morning of April 6th, a woman drove past him as he rode down the Soul Duck Hot Springs Road. Then, later that afternoon, she noticed his distinctive red and yellow trailer on the side of the road. It wasn't a good place to camp or stash a bike for long as it was highly visible among the foliage. Jacob was nowhere to be seen but little did the woman know, Jacob would never be seen again. A few hours later his abandoned gear was found by park rangers who noted something odd about the setup. A bow was lying on the ground next to the abandoned bike and trailer and not only were arrows jammed into the dirt near the bike itself,

but arrows seemed to have struck the red and yellow trailer which held Jacob's possessions. The ranger in question, a man named John Bowie, then proceeded to search the immediate area believing the bike's owners may have stopped in the nearby spring to collect water. But again, Jacob was nowhere to be seen. Bowie then contacted a fellow park ranger and asked him to recheck the area the following morning. He expected the bike's owner to have returned to remove his gear, but the frame and trailer were still there on the morning of April 7th. A park ranger then searched Jacob's abandoned gear and found a list of phone numbers which identified the gear's owner as Jacob. He then contacted one of the people on the list who turned out to be Jacob's sister,

Mallory. Then once Jacob's parents were informed of his abandoned gear, the grave nature of the situation became clear. At that point, Jacob Gray officially became a missing person. The next day, the Clallam County Sheriff's Department combed over the area using around 30 different deputies and sniffer dogs to try to track down the missing cyclist. Yet even with all the manpower, they failed to locate him. A few days later, the Sheriff's Department enlisted the help of volunteer trackers from the Olympic Mountain Rescue. This team of dedicated specialists were much more adept at tracking the movements of missing people and as they searched, they made a series of curious discoveries.

They found compelling evidence that someone, most likely Jacob, had swapped a pair of hiking boots for running shoes before walking to the edge of a nearby river. There, they appeared to have slipped and fallen, leaving a distinct mark on a mossy rock. At about 30 yards downstream, there were signs that this person had managed to pull themselves out of the river, eliminating the prospect that Jacob had drowned before being carried downriver. They doubled down on this theory by having team members search the log jams further down the river, but no trace of any body was found and the search continued. Yet despite the ongoing efforts, on April 14th,

the status of the search for Jacob Gray was changed to that of limited continuous search. This meant that rangers were no longer looking for a living person, as it was believed to be impossible for Jacob to have survived almost two weeks without protection from the elements. Search and rescue teams moved on to other tasks, leaving the search for Jacob to be headed up by volunteers only. This was extremely demoralizing for Jacob's family, but they refused to give up and over the coming months, they personally organized at least a dozen searches of the Olympic National Park. Flyers were posted on park kiosks and gas stations in the Port Angeles area,

and a team consisting of Jacob's friends and relatives handed out leaflets to people hiking through the park. This culminated in a huge hundred-man search along the Sawduck River in July of 2017, but only a pair of Burnside branch shorts in Jacob's size were recovered, a pair that matched an item he'd been given as a Christmas gift that previous year. This briefly renewed the family's hope of finding Jacob alive, but over the year that followed the lack of any additional findings meant that the searches had to be scaled back, and a grim acceptance set in that they'd never see their beloved Jacob alive again. More than a year later, on Friday, August 10th of 2018, a team of biologists ventured

into the Olympic National Park in order to study marmots. They found themselves atop a ridge above Ho Lake, and it was there that they made a horrifying discovery. Along with his clothing, some of his gear, and his wallet, the team of scientists found what remained of Jacob Gray's lifeless body. This spot was more than 15 miles from where Jacob abandoned his bicycle, so what exactly prompted the young man to abandon his things before climbing up so far into the mountains? Despite the discovery of a bow and arrows near his abandoned bicycle, and after identifying Jacob via his dental records, a coroner argued that there was very little evidence of foul play. He had a cigarette lighter, insulated clothing, and plenty of food with him at the scene where the body was found,

yet it was soon determined that the only rational explanation was that Jacob had somehow succumbed to hypothermia, as during the April he went missing, the terrain had been covered in a thick blanket of snow. However, this completely ignores the fact that Jacob's remains were little more than skeletal by the time they were found. There could have been any number of fatal wounds to Jacob's biodegradable tissues that would have been impossible to identify. It's also worth noting that when lost in the wilderness, most people know well enough to head downhill sides instead of climbing them. The last thing you want to do is end up stranded on a mountain when you

could hike down to more temperate climates. But a person being pursued by someone or something might well climb up a mountainside in order to escape something chasing them, especially if that thing had previously fired at them with a bow and arrow. There's something else worth noting too, and that involves the items found in the vicinity of Jacob's skeletal remains. He was carrying a Bible with him. It seems when he abandoned his bicycle, he grabbed only what was completely essential for his survival.

The lighter, the food, and the warm clothing. What would possess him to bring the Bible along? It's possible that he wished to use the pages as kindling, yet despite how badly degraded they were by the elements, the Bible's pages showed no signs of being ripped or torn. Just what was it about a Bible that Jacob saw as being essential to his survival? What was chasing him that he believed a holy text might be a salvation? There have been many that argued that Jacob's intention was to take his own life and that carrying the Bible with him was an attempt to counterbalance the mortal sin that he perceived himself to be doing. But this raises the question, if Jacob intended on taking his own life, why bother bringing

so much survival gear on a trip that would ultimately end in his death? It's entirely likely that Jacob wanted one last biking trip before going through with the act. But that theory completely ignores the fact that a bow and arrow were found at the site of his abandoned vehicle. It's not out of the question that Jacob brought these items along with him and intended to use them as some part of survivalist style exercise. Yet if that was the case, why were arrows shot into the ground at an angle which would suggest they were being fired at Jacob? And if he was being attacked, he could

have at least tried using the bow to defend himself. Only, he didn't, which leads us to believe that an attacker was wielding the bow. But what kind of psychopath stalks from the forests of Washington hunting for human game? Who could have terrified Jacob so much that he'd have preferred to risk the freezing mountainside than risk walking back down into the woods? Did Jacob really get lost in the woods, as some people contend, or rather, was he stalked, attacked, and then chased up the mountain by someone who still walks among us today? today. Born on October 10th of 1954, Juliana Kopka was born in the Peruvian capital of Lima to German biologist Hans Wilhelm Kopka and his wife, ornithologist Maria Kopka, who were in the employ of Lima's Natural History Museum.

When Juliana was just 14 years old, her parents departed Lima to establish an Amazon jungle research station known as Panguana. According to Juliana herself, she became a jungle child, learning more about survival techniques than mathematical equations. Her schoolhouse was Panguana and her playground was the jungle itself. Despite such an unorthodox education, the Kopkas took their daughter's education very seriously and ensured that she both studied the correct materials and took the proper examinations. So when she was 17, Juliana was scheduled to fly back to Lima in December of 1971 in order to take her school's

leaver's exam at Lima's German school. She passed with flying colors and became an official graduate of the school on December 23rd of 1971. The following day, Juliana and her mother flew back to Panguana via a Peruvian airline known as Lanza. Due to the holiday season, every other flight was booked, and despite Hans' objections to them using an airline with a poor reputation, Juliana and her mother had very little choice if they wished to be back in Panguana for Christmas. Yet they had no way of knowing what a monumentous decision it was,

and how it would lead to catastrophic consequences for young Juliana. In the middle of the flight, Juliana's plane was struck by lightning, and unlike modern aircrafts, the Lanza airplane was both poorly designed and poorly maintained. The lightning strike caused cataclysmic damage to the plane's hull, and as it began to disintegrate in midair, the plane took a nosedive and plummeted to the ground. The craft separated into pieces during the descent, and Juliana's seat was torn from its moorings. Within seconds, she found herself falling two miles down into the rainforest below. It seems impossible that anyone could survive such a fall, but incredibly, Juliana somehow endured. Many have credited the fact that she remained strapped to her seat as it absorbed much of the impact, but even so, Juliana suffered a broken collarbone and sustained a severe gash to one of her arms. She was the flight's only surviving passenger,

as every single other person aboard perished in the crash. Yet, even though she just survived a 10,000-foot fall, her hellish feat of endurance had only just begun. For the next nine days, Juliana was forced to limp through the humid, insect-infested forest, surviving on nothing but rainwater and half-rotten fruit that had fallen from the surrounding trees. She was practically eaten alive by blood-sucking insects, and as maggots began to infest her

wounded arm, the pain was almost unendurable. Anyone else might have died within just a few days, but thanks to her experiences growing up in a jungle environment, Juliana was able to utilize the skills she'd learned as a child in order to sustain herself, as well as avoiding the many death traps that such terrain presented. After just over a week of dehydration, starvation, and barely any sleep, Juliana finally stumbled across an empty encampment. She rummaged through the camp supplies, giving herself basic first aid, but there was still the matter of ridding her

wound of the maggots that had infested it. She found some antiseptic whites that were soaked in pure alcohol, but they weren't enough to reach the deeper portions of her wound. However, Juliana did find a can full of gasoline, and despite the immense pain it caused, she poured the flammable substance into her open wound in order to rid it of the flesh-eating maggots. The agony just about pushed her over the edge, and as she found a cot to lay down in for her first real rest in just over a week, her life teetered in the balance. Miraculously, with timing that was nothing short of divine providence, the missionary party who had constructed the camp returned within just a few hours of Julianne's arrival, and upon finding her, immediately called

in a helicopter airlift so that she could be taken to a hospital. It took weeks for Julianne to recover from her injuries, but once she'd fully recovered, she assisted search parties from the Peruvian government in locating the Lanza Plains crash site. She helped recover almost all the bodies of those lost in the plane crash, but there was only one she truly wanted to find. That of her mother, Maria. Juliana finally found her mother's corpse

on January 12th of 1972, and with her father's help, repatriated it back to Germany for a proper burial. It was an incredibly emotional affair for both father and daughter, and naturally, it left an indelible impression on young Juliana. Over the years that followed, she opted to follow in her mother's footsteps. She studied biology at the University of Kiel and went on to receive a doctorate from the University of Munich. Following that, Juliana returned to Peru to conduct research in mammology, specializing in bats. Then, following the death of her father in the year 2000, Juliana took over as the director of the Panguana Research Station, carrying on her parents' legacy and overcoming the trauma she suffered as a result of her nightmarish experiences.

Juliana's story was documented by world-renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog in a picture he titled Wings of Hope. Herzog was interested in telling Juliana's story not just because of how enthralling it is, but also because of how deeply personal of a connection he had to the tale. You see, Herzog himself was actually scheduled to fly on the very same flight that crashed in the Amazon back in 1971. And it was only a last minute change of plans that saved his life. Herzog was haunted by that fact, and if he had indeed taken that flight, it would have been his body that Juliana helped recover following her convalescence. Such a detail amounts to another chilling twist to an already horrifying tale of loss and survival, and reminds us that our own end might just be a twist of fate away. On the night of November 14th, 2015, two Welsh brothers named Andrew and Mark Middle were out camping in the Clocaenog Forest

in northern Wales. They were there to watch the 2015 Wales Rally, an annual off-road car racing event which both brothers were extremely enthusiastic about. So enthusiastic that they would opt to camp out in almost sub-zero temperatures in order to maintain the perfect vantage point to watch the powerful vehicles hurtle past them. Given how cold it was, the brothers would naturally need to maintain a campfire in order to keep warm and, as anyone who's had to keep a campfire going overnight, it requires a lot of firewood. The brothers had collected an ample stack of dry kindling that afternoon but, as the night set, and a brisk November chill set in, they found their supplies of firewood dwindling.

Apparently, it was Mark's turn to go out and collect some, so he grabbed his flashlight, threw on his woolly gloves and hat, and set off into the pitch black forest to gather firewood. It's more than likely that, given the time of year, the forest floor was very cold and damp during the night, and we can quite safely assume that Mark Middle's search for sufficiently dry kindling took him much further from his campsite than he would have liked. Then, before he knew it, all of the trees started to look the same, and among the dense, verdant foliage, he realized he'd lost sight of the warm glow of his campfire. Realizing he'd gotten himself lost, Mark called out to his brother, who immediately responded. Then all Mark had to do was follow the sound of his brother's voice and he'd soon be back at camp. Yet the Clocaenog forest is so dense and wild in places that a few blind footsteps might send him crashing into the dirt below. So to ensure this didn't

happen, Mark shone his flashlight on the ground beneath him to make sure that he was clear of trip hazards. Back at camp, Andrew Middle was only mildly concerned about his brother calling out to him. Although it was very dark, Mark hadn't walked far and he would most definitely be able to find his way back to camp from the sound of his voice. What followed was a variation on the famous pool game Marco Polo. Mark would call out to Andrew and Andrew would call back, until suddenly, Mark went quiet. Then, through the pitch darkness, Andrew Middle quite clearly heard his brother, and a voice that sounded both astounded and horrified say, Oh my God. Andrew recognized the fear in Mark's voice immediately and asked his brother what the

problem was. Mark stayed quiet for a second, staring in disbelief at the object at his feet, then called out to his brother, I think you better come and see this. Andrew grabbed his own flashlight and rushed out to find his brother white as a sheet and staring at the ground. Andrew then looked down to see what he was looking at, then muttered his own exclamation of Jesus Christ. Half buried in the earth, caked in moss and filth, was a human skull. Mark and Andrew quickly made their way back to their campsite and immediately contacted police. Emergency services received the call at approximately 8.35pm, and by 9 that night, a local police officer had arrived at the scene to confirm the discovery.

The officer was quickly followed by a forensics team who sequestered the area off before searching for additional human remains. Hidden just beneath the earth, the team discovered a complete human skeleton that they believed had been deposited there between the years of 1995 and 2005. It was only then that the Middle Brothers were informed of something truly horrifying, that the ground they'd been camping on had been once used by notorious serial killer Peter Moore as a dumping ground for men he had murdered. They hadn't just pitched their tent on any old patch of forest. They'd made a camp on a veritable graveyard. What followed was a five-week-long investigation that involved combing missing persons' databases, pathological examinations, and intensive DNA profiling.

It was determined that the man died from blunt trauma to the head, and that he had been murdered in an unknown location between 2004 and 2010. The victim was said to have been a well-built man in his 60s at the time of his death, standing between 5'8 and 5'10. Some items of clothing were found near the body consisting of a dark green Pringle jumper and some dark red decomposed Marks and Spencer underwear, but it could not be confirmed that they were associated with the victim. Numerous attempts to identify the man via his DNA and teeth were unsuccessful, and in March of 2017, police confirmed that they had approached Peter Moore with questions regarding the man's identity. Moore claimed that the body did indeed belong to one of his victims, a 46-year-old mature student at Aberystwyth University who had disappeared in 1996. Moore refused to reveal the victim's name, but journalists identified a Roger Evans of Bradley

near Stoke-on-Trent as a mature student who had indeed gone missing in 1996. However, police later announced that this theory had been discounted due to conflicting dates, and to this day, the identities of both the victim and his murderer remain a complete mystery. However, the prevailing theory is that Peter Moore is indeed the man's killer, and simply fed the police a string of false information in order to throw them off the scent. Moore was famous for claiming that his murders had actually been committed by a fictitious homosexual lover he nicknamed Jason, after the killer in the Friday the 13th movie series. He might have found a great deal of satisfaction in finally having deceived those that sent him to prison on a whole life order.

The identity of Moore's apparently murderous lover was never uncovered, and despite jurors having decided that his claims were complete fiction, he might have found a great deal of satisfaction in finally having deceived those that sent him to prison on a whole life sentence. The identity of Moore's apparently murderous lover was never uncovered, and despite jurors having decided that his claims were a complete fiction, they might have been very, very wrong. Moore was not only aware of someone who had gone missing in the year following his string of killings, but the victim was found mere yards away from where Moore's other victims had been found. There's a very good chance that Moore was indeed involved in the murder in some capacity,

but if he didn't personally murder the victim, who did? Is it possible that Moore wasn't lying when he spoke of this Jason character? Is it possible that he'd been part of some kind of kill team back in 1995 when he committed his crimes? Or did the body simply belong to Moore's uncredited fifth victim? One, his record will forever remain untainted by this fifth body thanks to a well-thought-out deception. As frustrating as it may be, these are questions that might never be answered, and with Moore rapidly approaching his 76th birthday, the time to get concrete answers is quickly running out. So, next time you're camping,

and you're out collecting firewood, be careful where you tread. Instead of finding something to warm your bones, you might find something that will became a pescatarian. I had a very privileged upbringing in New England. I'm talking very privileged. The old stereotype is that every little girl wants a pony for her birthday, and my reality was that I actually got a pony for my birthday. My twelfth, to be exact. It was a Cremelo Welsh pony, and it was love at first sight.

I named him Custard, and during the summer of 1997, I rode him almost every single day. I mostly rode him around land my family owned just outside of Norwalk, Connecticut. But most weekends, I'd ride him further afield with my mom, who owned her own house and knew the best riding trails in Fairfield County. I got to become a regular thing, and as I learned more and more about Custard and how to take care of him, the more I became convinced that the rest of my life was going to involve horses and ponies in some shape or form. It became my dream job, something I thought would fulfill me and sustain me until retirement. But one day, someone took that dream away from me in an event that changed my life forever.

For the longest time, mom would always ride ahead on her prized Andalusian, saying that she'd only let me lead once I had proper control of Custard. But there came a point when I asked for her, like the thousandth time, and she finally looked back at me and nodded with a smile. I was so excited. All I ever wanted was to feel free like that, cantering with Custard through the woods, feeling like we could ride all the way down to Mexico, just like the cowboys in the movies my dad loved. Half the reason I called

my pony Custard was because it was what I used to call General Custer when I was only half out of my baby talk years. And although we always rode in the prim and proper hard hats and jodhpurs my mom always wore, in my head, I was always in a plaid shirt and jeans minus the spurs but always topped off with a well-worn Stetson. I guess I rode a little too far ahead at some point because when I slowed down and brought Custer to a stop, I looked around and didn't see mom behind me. I know I should have just turned back to meet her, but it felt so good just being alone out there in the woods, just me and Custer alone in the wild frontier. So instead of turning around

and cantering back to meet her, I just kept Custer trotting along the trail nice and slow, soaking up how quiet and still everything was on that unseasonably balmy fall afternoon. I guess that should have been my first warning. There was no bird songs, no sounds but those of custard's hooves padding through the soft dirt below us. Then, just as I was about to call out for my mom, my whole world ended in the space of maybe only half a second. For long stretches of our rides, I looked down at the back of Custard's neck and at the top of his head, just completely and utterly smitten with him. I loved his ears and the way they twitch and tense as he listened to different distant sounds, how his blonde mane glowed golden whenever sunlight hit it. I was doing exactly that just as I was about to call out for mom, so my eyes were right

where they shouldn't have been when his just disintegrated before my eyes. The loud bang in the near distance barely even registered as he fell over to one side and hit the dirt hard, mainly because he'd trapped my left leg under him and the pain that shot through it was like nothing I'd ever felt before. Then, because I was trapped, I was held in place and basically forced to witness what remained of my poor custard's head. That was the only mercy, really, knowing he hadn't suffered at all when the bullet that killed him passed through his skull. But my god, the mess it made. Seeing all that raw flesh and brain matter spread across the trail, it literally scared me for my life. The hunters made it over to me before mom caught up,

obviously terrified by the sounds of my screams. We later found out that they'd gotten lost in the woods and had lost track of where their hunting grounds ended and where the horse trails began. terrified by the sounds of my screams. We later found out that they'd gotten lost in the woods and had lost track of where their hunting grounds ended and where the horse trails began. I don't know what their problem was, if they were just dumb or in some way malicious, but they claimed they thought Custard was a deer or something, that their hide made it hard to tell, but they just took the shot anyway. Mom made sure that they faced the full force of the law for what they did, had them arrested, sued them for damages the whole nine yards. She remained convinced that it was no accident until the day she died and honestly,

I'm inclined to believe her and I'm glad that they had their various licenses revoked for life. People like that don't deserve second amendment rights. Either they're too dumb or too evil to be allowed to own guns. It just sucks that they didn't receive any prison sentences or anything. They took a life. They deserve to be locked up in my opinion. But the laws in this country basically turn animals into property and killing one that belongs to a person is basically no different than breaking one of their car windows. I had to go through a lot of therapy just to be able to go outside again following Custard's death, and I still find it extremely triggering to see horses anywhere,

hence why I was never able to follow up on my dream of working with them or ponies. I also found myself extremely adverse to almost all kinds of meat afterwards as it just reminded me of all of that. I'm okay with almost all kinds of seafood except for tuna steak as things like shrimp or crab are so far removed from mammalian flesh that I'm actually able to stomach the sight of them. I still think about custard far more I should, considering he died 25 years ago now and I also think of how those hunters got away with their lost in the woods excuse when I think in now, I've gone on long runs over the weekends to keep up with my fitness. Last June I decided to go for a long one along the cliffs and through the forests of Bulberry Down and Overbeck's Gardens. I'd never

been before and I've heard it's a really beautiful place with the sea air really invigorating you as you run. But just as I was getting closer and closer to the 10th kilometer mark, the old brain fog started to descend. I got myself a bit lost and ended up missing the turn I needed to go back on myself so I could get back to my car. The next thing I know I'm seeing signs for a little town called Solcombe, but since it was coming up to about 4.30 and it was still bloody roasting out, I thought I'd just head into the village, maybe grab some water then ask directions back towards a place called

Marbra so I could run back towards the place I'd parked my car. Anyways, as I'm running down this hill into Solcombe, I suddenly find myself really needing a wee. Just one of the problems you face when on one of those long runs, the water you drink just comes right out the other end in like half an hour. But luckily, there was this wooded area where I thought I could just hop off the road to drain the main vein behind a tree. So as I said, I took a quick look around to make sure no one was watching, then I ran up this little grass verge and into the woods.

I'm still thoroughly lost at this point, having never been anywhere near Sulcum before, but I thought I'd be relatively easy just to ask for directions and be on my way within the hour. Little did I know, I wouldn't be running back towards Marlboro or my car. I'd be headed back to it in a police car, after stumbling across something truly horrifying after taking a whiz. So I take my leak, then as I'm walking back towards the open road, I see something lying in the dirt, wrapped in bin bags. As weird as it sounds, my first thought was that I'd stumbled across the dumping ground of some local serial killer But it was just a bit of melodrama in my head talking Just a dark joke that I thought would remain exactly that

Besides, it wasn't shaped like a body It was more just like a jump covered in a bin liner More likely to be someone's fly tipping than anything else But then as I got closer to pass it on my way out of the woods, the smell hit me. I'd never smelled death like that before, but I knew what it was. If you've ever left some chicken in the fridge a bit too long,

and there's that gag-inducing ammonia smell, it was just like that. That's what I was hoping it was anyway, as I walked over and nudged the opening of the bin liner wider with my running shoe, just someone's rubbish they decided to dump somewhere after missing bin collection day or something like that. The first thing I saw was like a cut of meat, like perfectly sliced too. But then I saw what was obviously the stump of a person's neck on top of their shoulders. They'd been decapitated. I started to gag and I ran back onto the road, puked up the water I'd finished off on the way into Sulcombe then immediately called the police.

Given that I was the person who found the body, the police told me to wait where I was so I could answer a few questions and it was honestly even scarier when I realized they thought it was me that might have dumped it there. It was easy enough to clear myself of suspicion though once I told them my story and when all was said and done and the forensics team had showed up and put tape around the woods, the officer was nice enough to give me a lift back to my car which was parked all the way back near Hope Cove. I was actually a bit worried that I'd get a fine for public urination or something but the police weren't in the least bit interested in such a petty crime when they had an actual

murder on their hands. They also ended up getting back in touch with me a few days later, asking if I'd seen any suspicious activity in the area on the day of my run Anyone hanging around near the little bit of woodland Anything leaving in a hurry after I showed up But obviously, I already told them that the place was empty when I jogged to relieve myself So I just reiterated that old point and that was the last I heard from them. I later found out that the victim was this poor old Malaysian lady. I think she was in her 60s when she was killed. I haven't heard about any killer being arrested so it must have still been

an ongoing thing over here. It took me quite a while to get over this whole thing. Like I still get a bit nervous about being near clusters of woodland, wondering what other poor sods have been found in such sorry states over the years. Just dumped somewhere, wrapped in bin bags like somebody's unwanted rubbish or something. And it's horrible to think about, really. I hope if you read this out on your channel, someone in the UK might be able to look this up and realize that they know something about the victim or her final days. Whoever did those things to her deserves to be in prison for a long, long time. And the fact that they're still just walking the streets is enough to turn my stomach. To be continued... In the words of the infamous and multiple prison escapee Richard Lee McNair,

Thank God for prisons. There are some very sick people in them, animals you would never want living near your family or the public in general. I don't know how corrections staff deal with it. They get spit on, abused, and I have seen them risk their own lives and save a prisoner many times. Never was a truer word spoken, and the United States has had its fair share of vicious and dangerous prisoners, and arguably none were more bloodthirsty or more deadly than a monster by the name of Thomas Silverstein. Silverstein was born to a divorced mother in Long Beach, California on February 4th of 1952. His mother, Virginia Conway, divorced Silverstein's biological father while he was still in the womb, then married and eventually divorced another man before settling with a one Sid Silverstein, from whom Thomas inherited his

surname. Silverstein grew up as a shy, awkward, and timid child who was often severely bullied by his middle-class neighbors. Not only was he singled out as a lower-class child of divorce, but his adopted second name meant that he was often mistaken for being Jewish, which meant that Thomas became the victim of some unforgivably vicious anti-Semitic comments. When Silverstein would arrive home in tears, seeking comfort from his mother, she would rebuke his innocent vulnerability and demand that he take violent revenge on those that had wronged him. Then, when Thomas refused to partake in such hideous retribution, she told him that if

he ever came running home to her again, crying because he had been beaten up by a bully, she would be waiting to beat him up even worse than they had. Silverstein later said that, it's how my mom was. She stood her mud. If someone came at you with a bat, you got your bat, and you both went at it. Following this cruel ultimatum, Silverstein committed his first act of violence, beating one of his bullies to a bloody pulp in the street outside his home. When she found out, his mother actually expressed approval of the act,

and once the young man felt the warmth of his mother's pride in him, a life of violence was simply inevitable. At the tender age of 14, Silverstein was sent to the first of many correctional facilities after a conviction for violent conduct. It was there, at a California Youth Authority reformatory, that his attitude towards violence was harshly and definitively tempered. Life inside was dog-eat-dog, a constant fight for survival, and as Silverstein later put it, anyone not willing to fight was abused. Later in 1971, a 19-year-old Silverstein was sent to San Quentin Prison in California for armed robbery. It was around this time that he fell under the influence of his mother's second husband,

Thomas Conway, himself an accomplished armed robber who schooled him in the tricks of the trade. Just months after he was paroled for his first armed robbery conviction, Silverstein was sent back to prison with his father and cousin after being convicted of three separate armed robberies that netted a paltry $11,000. The cycle repeated itself in 1977, and just months after he was paroled from that second conviction, Thomas was convicted for his part in an even more violent and terrifying armed robbery. And given that he was an unrepentant recidivist, he was sentenced to 15 years in Leavenworth's federal penitentiary. It was at Leavenworth that Silverstein first met members of the infamous Aryan Brotherhood,

and being the viciously violent and hardened criminal that he was, the Brotherhood's leadership was deeply impressed with him. When the year 1980 rolled around, Silverstein was offered full membership to the Aryan Brotherhood, but he was required to prove his loyalty by spilling the blood of another prisoner. The Brotherhood had asked a young man named Danny Atwell to serve as a heroin mule for them, which would require him secreting drugs inside himself in order to transport them to another part of the prison. The drug trade was extremely lucrative to the Brotherhood and they mostly relied on narcotic sales to fund their operations both in and out of the penitentiary.

Few prisoners ever refused the wishes of the Brotherhood. To their surprise, Danny Atwell flat out refused to run the risk of an extended sentence for them. Such a refusal was a grave insult to the Brotherhood's leadership, so in response, they decided that Atwell had to be killed, and the man to do the job would be none other than Thomas Silverstein. Silverstein knew that the chances of him being caught and convicted of murder were extremely high, but given that, by that point, he saw no other life for himself outside of prison, he accepted. He then talked his way into Atwell's cell on the pretense of getting him out of trouble, then cut the poor soul's throat with the homemade knife that the Brotherhood had provided him with.

As he expected, Silverstein was quickly apprehended, and after a swift trial, he was sentenced to life before being transferred to a United States penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. While incarcerated at Marion, Silverstein's behavior took a distinct turn for the worse. He was now a full-blooded member of the Aryan Brotherhood, one of the most violently racist prison gangs in American history, and his behavior reflected that enormously. He became so violent and disruptive that prison staff were forced to house him in the penitentiary's control unit, a sequestered area of the prison with a regimen that verged on constant solitary confinement. After tricking prison staff into thinking that he had somewhat reformed himself,

Silverstein used his newfound freedom to assassinate an African-American prison gang member named Robert Chappelle, who was a veteran of an organization known as the D.C. Blacks. Once again, Silverstein's involvement in the murder was swiftly uncovered by the prison staff, and he was handed yet another life sentence. When word reached the leadership of the D.C. blacks that Silverstein had murdered one of their own, it came to pass that the national leader of the gang, Raymond Cadillac Smith, ended up getting transferred to Marion Penitentiary, specifically to the control unit that housed Silverstein. It's not clear whether this was

pure coincidence or some deliberately antagonistic power play instigated by federal penitentiary staff, but what's clear is that two men who shouldn't have been anywhere near each other ended up just a few feet apart. As prison logs would later confirm, Cadillac Smith spent most every hour of every day either plotting or attempting to murder Silberstein. Thomas, on the other hand, chose to sow seeds of doubt and conspiracy in Smith's mind, insisting he was completely innocent of the charge and that internal strife with the DC blacks was to blame for Chappelle's murder. But Smith wasn't fooled, and as Silberstein would later state, everyone knew what was going on and no one did anything to keep us apart.

The guards wanted one of us to kill the other. Silverstein believed that someone high up in the ranks of the penitentiary's leadership had engineered his and Smith's close proximity, and that it was only a matter of time before mortal combat ensued. They proved him right. Somehow, Silverstein and Smith ended up face to face, with each in possession of improvised weapons. It's not clear if Smith finally found a window of opportunity to attack Silverstein, or if the guards arranged for them to be alone together.

But after a lengthy struggle, Silverstein came out on top, having stabbed Smith more than sixty times in the torso, neck, and face. Only once Smith was dead, Silverstein didn't try to remove himself from the situation. After all, it was a hard-fought victory, one that had been a long time coming. He ended up dragging Smith's bloodied corpse up and down the cell block, showing off his trophy to his fellow prisoners, and hallowing about how he'd just slaughtered the D.C. Blacks' long-time leader. The murder ended up with Silverstein receiving yet another life sentence,

and this time, it was without the possibility of parole. By 1983, Silverstein had firmly established his reputation as one of the worst prisoners in the entire country. He hated the correctional officers, and they hated him in turn. But one officer in particular despised Silverstein with a passion, and dedicated a great deal of his time to making his life torture. Some say that correctional officer Merle Klutz deliberately harassed Silverstein for almost a year, doing anything and everything he could to make his life harder than it had to be. In one instance, Klutz was said to have entered Silverstein's cell while he was painting,

Silverstein's only creative outlet, and one he seemed to treasure beyond words. After making a few derisive comments on his artistic skills, Klutz apparently took down a few of Silverstein's paintings and tore them up right there in front of him. Silverstein was apoplectic with rage, yet he had no recourse whatsoever. If he killed a prison guard, he would surely get the death penalty, and although Silverstein feared very little in life, he feared death. Yet as the harassment continued, day after day, week after week, Silverstein found that he had less and less to lose.

If Klutz was determined to take everything away from him, then he'd find a way to take everything from Klutz in turn. Then, on October 22nd of 1983, Klutz let Silverstein out of his cell to take a shower. As they walked, Silverstein began limping and complained to Klutz that he was in serious pain. Klutz harbored no sympathy and kept on walking, telling Silverstein that he had a set amount of time to wash and would not be waited for. Yet as Klutz passed Silverstein in the hallway, he fell into a carefully planned trap of the murderer's creation. Silverstein stopped outside the cell of another inmate, who unlocked his handcuffs with a homemade key and handed him a prison shank, all in one fluid motion. Silverstein then kept

his hands firmly behind his back as he continued to limp towards an ever-impatient Klutz. Then in one fell swoop, he pounced. Klutz was stabbed so many times that he was dead before his fellow correctional officers could even restrain his attacker. Then minutes later, the entirety of Marion Penitentiary was placed on an indefinite lockdown, which ultimately lasted for 23 years. Klutz's murder had sent shockwaves through the prison staff community, and tens of thousands of them wrote letters to the Department of Corrections demanding safer working conditions for themselves and their colleagues.

As a result, a brand new kind of federal prison was designed, one that would be christened Super Maximum Security. The first of its kind was Florence Penitentiary in Colorado, and one of the first inmates transferred there was none other than the prisoner who inspired its design, Thomas Silberstein. Following Klutz's murder and prior to his transfer to Florence Supermax Prison, Silberstein was transferred to a United States penitentiary in Atlanta, where he was placed in complete solitary confinement. A note on this file specified that he was to have no human contact due to the danger he presented to the correctional officers. Silverstein later claimed that this no human contact status was basically a form of legalized torture reserved for those who had killed correctional officers. This prompted a Bureau

of Prisons official to publicly state that, when an inmate kills a guard, he must be punished. We can't execute Silverstein, so we have no choice but to make his life torture. Otherwise, other inmates will kill guards too. There has to be some supreme punishment. Every convict knows what Silverstein is going through. We want them to realize that if they cross the line that he did, they will pay a heavy price. If this story hasn't quite made it clear how completely evil Thomas Silverstein was, let this last anecdote put it beyond all doubt. During the 1987 Atlanta prison riots, Cuban prisoners released Silverstein from his isolation cell as a method of terrifying the correctional officer hostages they'd taken. As a result, Thomas was able to roam freely about the prison and threatened to execute the Cubans' hostages

on a number of separate occasions. When they refused him access to them, Silverstein threatened to kill them too and hurled racial abuse at the Cubans until they turned on him and took him as a hostage too. As a show of good faith, the Cubans then handed Silverstein over to the FBI's hostage rescue team, who considered Silverstein's recapture as a landmark moment in the quelling of the disturbance. Just consider how abhorrent an inmate has to be for their fellow prisoners to attack them, tie them up, and hand them over to the federal government during a prison riot. When that type of contempt is comprehended, then you have an idea of how other hardened criminals felt about Thomas Silverstein, who was without a shadow of a doubt one of the most vicious and violent prisoners in United

States history. In the end, Silverstein's life would end as the result of a sharp implement, just not in the same way you might expect. He died on May 11th of 2019 at St. Anthony's Hospital in Lakewood, Colorado after suffering complications following heart surgery. He spent an incredible 36 years in solitary confinement, but shockingly, that's not even the record for the longest a U.S. prisoner has spent in such conditions. There are plenty of debates over who served the longest in solitary confinement, and many of these arguments hinge on whether the confinement was cumulative or concurrent. But one thing is clear, Thomas Silverstein deserved every moment he spent deprived of human contact. Those who relinquish their humanity deserve nothing less. To be continued... Perhaps you'd say Ian Brady, Dennis Nilsen, Fred West, or even Victorian London's own Jack the Ripper.

There are most definitely other names which belong on that list, but one that seems to be continuously neglected, unknown to even the most ardent true crime aficionados, is that of Robert John Maudsley. Robert was born on June 26th of 1953 into a family of 14 in the English city of Liverpool. Due to the immense number of siblings he had, Robert's parents were almost completely incapable of feeding or clothing him due to crushing financial constraints. This led to him being placed in a Catholic orphanage in the nearby village of Crosby, as local authorities quickly established that not only was Robert being maltreated in his parents' care, but he was also being abused by his father and older siblings. Around the time of Robert's eighth birthday, his father approached the orphanage with proof that he was financially capable of caring for the boy.

He had recently been promoted at work, and the additional income made him eligible to apply for custody. A short time later, the orphanage returned Robert to the care of his family, but this only meant that the disgusting abuse could resume, and this time, it was far worse than it had been previously. The abuse soon came to the attention of Liverpool's Department of Social Services, who intervened on Robert's behalf and once again removed him from his parents' care. Mouldsley would later state that this constant instability,

coupled with incessant abuse at the hands of his own parents, would leave him with deep psychological scars. Robert escaped Liverpool as soon as he could and moved down to London in the late 1960s. But work was not easy to come by, and even when he could find work, his behavioral problems meant his employment rarely lasted long. Robert's lack of employability was also exacerbated by his increasing reliance on hard drugs, which he used to stave off a deep and debilitating depression. It wasn't long before Robert turned to illicit means in order to support his habit. He became a male escort, frequenting London's Soho district where he propositioned those who visited the areas at many of the gay bars.

Given his heterosexuality, this took a heavy toll on Robert's already failing mental health, and after several botched attempts at his own life, he was forced to seek psychiatric help. In one lengthy chat with a London-based psychiatrist, Robert confessed to hearing voices in his head, some of which implored him to murder his own parents. Naturally, the doctor talked him out of such a hideous act of violence, but it seems that Robert's thirst for a bloody revenge against a society that had continually mistreated him continued to fester within.

In 1974, Robert was still selling himself in and around London when he was propositioned by a man named John Farrell. They arranged to meet in the suburb of Woodgreen and after picking Robert up in his car and driving him to a secluded area John began to show him a series of photographs depicting distressed young children. When Robert asked him what the purpose of this was John Farrell replied that they were all children that he had abused at some point in the past and that he carried photographs of them

as grim trophies of his exploits. Himself a victim of abuse, Robert Maudsley flew into a murderous rage at this revelation and strangled Farrell right there in his own car. Following the murder, Robert handed himself in to the local police, confessing to the murder and pleading for psychiatric care. It was later determined that, due to his past traumas and shattered psyche, Robert was completely unfit to stand trial and was therefore sent to Broadmoor High Security Psychiatric Hospital in the English county of Berkshire. You may be forgiven for thinking that Robert was genuinely remorseful over the murder he committed. After all, he did hand himself in over to the police. Yet the reality was that the

murder had provided Robert with a deep satisfaction. It was the revenge he'd been craving for years by that point, and afterwards, he only wanted more. In 1977, Robert discovered that he was sharing one of Broadmoor's wings with a convicted child abuser by the name of David Francis. He then spent around two or three weeks befriending Francis, sharing cigarettes and sweets with the man until his trust was earned. Then, after luring Francis into a cell, Robert attacked him, and after restraining him with a length of torn bedsheet, Robert proceeded to torture Francis to death over the course of nine long hours. Incredibly, Robert managed to completely avoid an outright murder charge, citing his past abuse at the hands of his siblings and parents. Instead, he was convicted of manslaughter, but with a special addendum stating that he would never be released from prison.

This was probably on account of the fact that Robert was completely remorseless when faced with the charge, and stated that he would kill any and all abusers of children that he encountered either in prison or on the outside. It seems this claim, while perversely righteous, was not strictly true as, by that point, Robert's thirst for blood extended well beyond those he perceived as abusers. In 1978, Robert took the lives of two of his fellow prisoners in the space of just a few hours. His first victim was Saulney Darwood, a man convicted of murdering his wife. And just like with David Francis, Robert lured the man into his cell under the false pretense of sharing luxury goods with him.

Once the pair were alone, Robert garroted Darwood with a piece of wire, stabbing him to death while unconscious, then attempted to hide the bloody mutilated corpse under his bed. Robert then attempted to lure a second prisoner into his cell, but not a single other person walked into his trap. His bloodlust was so great that he was no longer content to simply bait another prisoner into his room, and he began prowling the wing for more victims. Most knew to stay well enough away from Robert, whose reputation often preceded him. But one William Roberts wasn't nearly savvy enough to keep out of his way. And when Robert cornered William in the wing's recreation room, the only solace came in a quick and relatively painless death. But Robert didn't

just cut William's throat and leave him to bleed out on the floor, as once he was dead, a shockingly perverse act of mutilation began. Robert began smashing William's lifeless head into a nearby wall, so many times that it cracked the man's skull wide open. It's then thought that Robert began using a makeshift knife to scoop out some of his victim's brains from his fleshy open skull before eating them raw. Robert then calmly walked into the wing's office, placed the bloody dagger on the table of the attending correctional officer, then told them that he had shortened the prisoner's roll call by two.

Despite the press circulating that Robert had eaten a part of William Robert's brain, the British Press Complaints Commission cited the dead man's autopsy and claimed that this simply wasn't true. However, it's important to note that this was essentially just cover to prevent further public outcry. Not only did the autopsy reveal that the victim's skull was in such a terrible state that it was impossible to determine if the brain-eating element was true, but at least three other inmates claimed that they had personally witnessed Robert eating his victim's brains, and stated as such to the prison's warden in an attempt to keep Robert segregated from the rest of the prisoner population. Not long after the brain-eating

incident, Robert was deemed too dangerous for a regular prison cell. So, in order to keep the rest of the prison population safe from him, a specialized cell was constructed in the basement of Wakefield Prison, and whenever he was outside of it, it was never to be escorted by any less than four prison officers. To keep him placated, his cell is almost double the size of a regular one, but instead of steel or concrete walls, his cell is constructed almost entirely of bulletproof glass so that his behavior can be observed at all times. The only furnishings are a table and chair, and both are made of compressed cardboard. This is because Robert has repeatedly attempted to take his own life,

and anything that he could possibly use to hang himself or open a vein is strictly prohibited from being in his cell. In light of that, a solid steel door opens into a small cage within the cell, encased in thick thick transparent acrylic panels, with a small slot at the bottom through which officers pass him food and other items. The toilet and wash basin are bolted to the floor, while his bed is nothing but a concrete slab. Robert remains confined to this cell for 23 hours a day and is not allowed contact with any other inmates. Then, during his daily hour of exercise, he is escorted to the yard by six prison officers, each ready to restrain him if he suddenly attempts to take his own life in some way.

In March of the year 2000, Robert begged prison staff for the terms of his solitary confinement be relaxed, but thankfully for his fellow prisoners, his request was denied. He then asked for permission to take his own life via a cyanide capsule, and again, this was denied. In a last gasp to maintain what was little left of his sanity, he asked for a pet parakeet, but prison officials were so suspicious that he might eat the poor thing alive that this request was also denied. Prisoners like Robert remind us of the quote from Richard Lee McNair, the one where he mentions prisons being a blessing on society. The idea that Robert could be free to walk among us, a man said to have eaten another's raw brains, is far more terrifying than any movie monster or campfire ghost story. Because Robert is real, and he is very, very dangerous. Back when I was 19, me and a few mates decided on a little lad's holiday to Malaysia.

We packed up some things, booked some flights to Kuala Lumpur, and set off on what we thought was going to be the adventure of a lifetime. We only wanted to stay for a week, do some drinking, see some sights, chat to some girls. It was supposed to be a dream holiday for us. But for me personally, it ended up being an absolute nightmare. I haven't really got a bad word to say about Malaysia. I want to make that clear and everyone but a handful of Malays I met were great folks. And despite it actually being me who's one of the idiots in this story, I'm not evil, but I definitely shared a space with some

people who were. So, like I said, there's a big chance you're not going to have any sympathy for me here because I'm one of the villains of the story. Not nearly as much of a villain as some others, but a villain nonetheless. You see, I got flirting with this Malay girl who turned out to have a boyfriend. And when the boyfriend started giving it the big one, I gave him a slap that would have impressed Will Smith. Wink wink. He hits me back, I throw him over a table, and before my mates got involved and dragged me off the bloke,

I got a few decent hits in on him. I was drunk as a skunk at the time, and I've had plenty of fisticuffs back in Oz with people just going their separate ways after a bit of a scuffle. And then the next thing I know, as we're leaving the bar, the Malaysian cops show up and practically everyone spills out of the bar to be like, Him, he was the one fighting, arrest him. And believe me, arrest me they did. I won't go through the ins and outs of the court case but let's just say that I didn't have a leg to stand on. The whole thing was caught on CCTV, and as much as my lawyer and the bloke from the Aussie consulate tried to barter my sentence down to deportation,

I ended up getting four months in Kajang prison. I cried like a baby that first night on remand, I'd gotten into my head that Khajong would be some kind of torture that I'd never make it out alive from. But honestly, I think it was a bit of prejudice speaking because the prison itself didn't turn out to be all that bad. Yeah, it was grim, but if you kept your head down, behaved yourself, and didn't have sticky fingers, you got along quite well. But if you didn't behave, if you

stole from your fellow prisoners and made their lives difficult, they made your life difficult in turn and that's a lesson that a Nigerian bloke learned a hundred times over. I was probably just as surprised as you are to find out that there was a little Nigerian contingent in a Malay prison, but so there was. All these big scary looking blokes too, you couldn't have wanted to be facing them in a scrum not even on your best day. But from what I came to understand, they were having trouble with one of their own and this one turned out to be a much smaller one who had a habit of going on the take. He'd steal from everyone. The Malays, the Indos in the

kitchen, even his own Nigerian brothers, and in the end, some Malay gangsters got right bloody sick of it and decided to teach him a lesson. They just didn't do it somewhere private either, shanking him in the showers or however they'd like to do it in America. The Malay mafia did it at a time and place where everyone would be able to see what happens to thieves, and they did it in a way that meant no one could touch them for it. I remember the sound of it like it was yesterday. We're all in the canteen, and I was part of the second sitting, meaning the second group of prisoners that were allowed into the canteen to eat. Then out of nowhere, I hear the single most blood-curdling scream that's

ever graced my ears. The only thing I can compare it to was when Andy Durrell broke his femur playing footy in grade 9. It was like a bloody great wail that came from the kitchens in the back, one that rose up in pitch and intensity until everyone in the canteen was grimacing just from the sound of it. It had that real nails on a chalkboard effect too, like it made me want to plug my ears just to keep from hearing it. It just didn't stop either. The screams kept going, on and on, like whatever was going on back in the kitchen, someone was in a lot of pain. The screws basically ran back into the kitchen to see what was going on, and everyone was looking over to the kitchen entrance, and that was at the side of the serving counter wanting to know just what had made someone scream like that.

A few seconds later, they lead the thieving Nigerian bloke out, who was holding his arms out in front of them, and Jesus Christ, I've never seen burns so bad on anyone or anything. Up to about the middle of his forearms, all of his skin was blistered and peeling, like it literally looked deep fried. And the whole time he was being let out of the canteen, he was letting out this horrible mixture of screams and wails, like he was literally crying like a baby shouting, look what they did to me, look what they did to me. It was quickly followed by the head of the

kitchen team who ironically was the least supervised crew in the whole prison. You'd think that they'd have more supervision considering they had access to knives and pans and all that, but no, it was one of the cushiest jobs for that exact reason. The kitchen team were also made up of almost entirely of Malay Mafia guys, mainly because they could organize things to be smuggled into the prison in the food deliveries they received. So, the bloke that headed up the kitchen team, he was pretty high up in the Malay Mafia hierarchy from what I understand, and it was him that came out of the kitchen with a big smile on his face, saying something in Malay to one of the guards.

I turned to the bloke next to me and asked what was being said, and was told the guy was saying, He had an accident, boss. He slipped on some oil. But as any of you can probably guess, the guy hadn't slipped at all. I later heard, and I don't know how true this is, that they invited him into the kitchen so he could get some extra food, and he'd promised to stop stealing stuff if he could get some extras. And little did he know, the Nigerian guys had basically okayed him getting punished from the Malays, probably just to keep them sweet since they had a little smuggling arrangement with them. Then, after getting the guy into the kitchen with the promise

of extra food, they braced him, dragged him over to the deep fat fryer, then forced his arms into it while it was turned up high. Everyone else in the kitchen then swore blind that the whole thing had been an accident and that they had no idea what the guy was talking about when he said that he'd had his arms forced into the fryer. They had said that he'd slipped on some oil that had leaked out of the unit or something and the guards just ate it up. That was without a doubt the most terrifying thing I'd ever witnessed or heard about when I was inside and nothing else even compared to it. I sometimes still have nightmares where I can hear that guy screaming, and at one point, I even had a nightmare where it was me having my arms forced into the fryer,

and a dream when I pulled my arms out of the thing they looked like fried chicken, but all bloodied and melting too, if you can picture it. Even had the nightmares after I got out when my four month stretch was finally over. I think it's because since I was just waiting for something bad to happen the whole time, when it finally did and I saw it, I couldn't help but be like obsessive over it if that makes sense. Getting back to Australia was just a dream, and the reunion with my parents was an emotional one, but intense affair. Mom said that she didn't know whether to smack me or hug me, but dad later said that he knew boys would be boys, and that as much as I deserved to be kicked out with a lifetime ban or a fine or something, making an example out of me wasn't fair in the least bit. But anyway,

lesson learned. And don't mess around in other countries, kids, because they don't mess around either. Ever see the old HBO show Oz? To this day, it's my favorite TV show ever and back in my late teens and early 20s it was solely responsible for me wanting to work as a correctional officer. It might sound a little dumb to you because it definitely sounds dumb when I think about it these days, but I figured those guys were like the toughest SOBs on the face of the earth. They dealt with the worst of the worst every single day of their lives, mad-dogging serial murderers just to keep them in line, literally going one-on-one with some absolute monsters sometimes and being tough enough to come out on top. To me, they seem like the

special forces of the law enforcement world. Not out there helping old ladies cross the street or chasing down kids on stolen bikes, but keeping the likes of El Chapo or Charlie Manson locked up and away from the civilized world. I mean, that's as noble a profession as ever there was one, right? And I still think the same thing today to an extent. But there was a lot about being a CEO that I didn't figure until I was actually doing the job. And let me tell you, it's never the drug traffickers or serial killers that actually keep you up at night. It's guys like the one I have to tell you about in my story here.

So this one night, way back when I was still going through my on-the-job training, I had to go pull a shift in the medical ward. But I have to make something clear here. The medical ward is not the hospital, and a better name for it would be the psych unit or mental health unit or something. Because it's the place we kept the guys who weren't mentally well enough to be around other regular prisoners. Each inmate had their own isolated cell, and were only let out twice a day to eat and to exercise and never around the general population. That night I was shadowing the unit's nurse while she was doing her rounds, which mostly involved doing welfare checks and giving out the appropriate medicines to all the various prisoners. Then we get this one prisoner's cell and the second I unlocked the door and opened it,

I was almost knocked out onto my butt by the most stomach-turning smell I'd ever smelled in my life. Like I knew at the time it was fecal matter, but there's a huge difference between a fresh dump and the kind of stuff that had been plastered on this guy's butt for maybe two or three days at that point. The nurse knew better than to go in without protection too. She told me after that that she always dabbed a little Vaseline in her nostrils before making the rounds, that way she couldn't smell a thing. Anyway, once we were done handing out the medicine, I walked right up to my training officer and asked him what the deal was with the prisoner who smelled like a sewage drain. I expected him to just burst out laughing at me which had so far been his textbook response for almost every dumb or ignorant question that had come out of my mouth. To the older guys it was

fun for them to see a youngster all horrified over all the stuff they'd dealt with for years but then it came to the human sewage pipe for some reason it was nothing to laugh about. My trainer just kind of sighed, spun around in his chair, and said something like, oh, you finally met Marshall then, huh? He then explained that smelling bad was kind of his thing, and that as much as the medical team had tried to coach him out of it, he seemed to despise being clean. Whenever they did manage to talk him into showering or whatever, he acted like he was on the verge of a panic attack until he finally got a chance to soil himself again. Then I made the mistake of asking why he always went to the bathroom on himself.

My trainer explained that in the prison that he was held in before the one I worked at, he was repeatedly attacked and, how do I put this, violated by other prisoners. Lick repeatedly targeted in the showers until he finally found a novel way of keeping his attackers off him. If he made himself a walking biohazard, the people who were targeting him suddenly weren't so keen on attacking him anymore, and I guess he lived like that for so long in the safety of his own filth that it took on like a comforting psychological effect for him. I remember saying something like, poor guy, no wonder he's so screwed up. My trainer almost spat his coffee out before telling me I wouldn't have any sympathy for the guy if I knew what his conviction was. Turned out, he was a serial child abuser, and that was the reason he'd had a target painted on his back in the first place. He was right. I didn't have any sympathy for him after that,

and it made it all the creepier that he'd like to use little kid's language whenever he spoke to any of the staff or COs. Like instead of saying that he, you know, soiled himself or whatever, he would say things like, I went potty on myself. Like if the guy had straight up learning difficulties or whatever, I'd maybe understand, but the CO said Marshall was way more devious and evil than he'd like to make out. He was a master manipulator and a complete psychopath who didn't care about anyone but himself. Worst job in the whole prison was undoubtedly the cleaners who had to hose down Marshall's room every few days. The first year I was there we had six different cleaners just refuse to do the job even when they were offered what amounted to chemical warfare suits to get the job done safely. All six then quit when they were told that they had to do it

or face getting fired. That was six in the first year alone, and by this point I've literally lost count of the numbers of cleaners who've quit because of Marshall and his unique self-defense techniques. Those are the kind of prisoners they never tell you about during the recruitment phase, and when you see them in the movies or TV shows, plenty of psycho prisoners on Oz for example, you always just think it's some kind of dumb Hollywood exaggeration to make the drama more intense or something. But sometimes you meet a prisoner that could be the star of their own horror movie. And to me and most of the other COs too, Marshall was that prisoner. I spent a few years inside on drug-related charges when I was younger. And let me tell you, prison is no joke.

By the time I got out, I was all kinds of messed up and I'm pretty sure I still got some kind of PTSD from some of the scary stuff that I saw. I saw a lot of violence, a lot of guys just being straight up evil to lesser, weaker dudes. But I think the thing that got me the most was how pointless and senseless a lot of it was. This one time I was playing cards with some guys and one of them was smoking a cigarette. This other dude, who wasn't playing with us, comes up to the table and asks the guy for shorts on it. Shorts means before you finish your cig you can hand it off to someone else and they can get the last few drags on it before there's none left.

The smoker agrees but barely even looks up from the game. Then the other guy thanks him and then walks off. I think the smoker was just way too lost in the game and maybe figured the guy would be watching and then would come back once the sig was almost out. So he just carried on with his game then when the sig was finished he just flicked it and carried on playing. Stuff like that starts fights for sure and I remember thinking like, uh oh, that guy ain't gonna be happy. And lo and behold, minutes later, the guy comes back, sees the smoker isn't smoking anymore and just asks him real cool like, he didn't save me no shorts? Again, the guy barely even looks up and just says, yes, sorry, and carries

on putting down and picking up cards after telling him he should come back for the next one. The guy seemed kind of angry, but he just nods like, alright, and then walks off like he's going to look for another guy to call shorts on, as I said. About a half hour goes by, then the smoker takes his pack out, pulls another cig, and then lights up. I look up in time to see the same shorts guy walking over, figuring he's about to ask for shorts again. Only, when he gets behind the smoker, he doesn't ask him anything. He just grabs the guy by the chin, pulls his head back, and starts shanking him in the throat with what I figured was a pen or pencil that he'd somehow managed to sharpen. We only get blunt stuff to

write with, go figure, but somehow this guy must have been sharpening it against something, god knows what, because he was shanking this guy over and over and over again that blood was just bubbling out all down his neck and onto his shirt. Obviously we all jumped up while people were calling out for the COs and then a bunch of them in riot gear showed up and just unleashed the works on him. Pepper spray, tasers, batons. I mean they beat the life out of this guy even after he just got on his knees and surrendered. The medics got to the guy who had been shanked way, way after he needed them. They can't come into an area like that until all the threats have been dealt with. So, honestly, I think the guy bled out before they even got to him because we heard a few days later that he'd been taken to the morgue almost straight from the prison hospital.

And stuff like that, all combined from my years there, ended up just making me really tense all the time. Constant anxiety. And for a long time any kind of sharp object had me panicking like someone was going to use it on me. I knew they weren't, but it's just my brain was just in war mode all the time, ready to fight or flight even though I knew I was safely, but it's just my brain was just in war mode all the time, ready to fight or flight even though I knew I was safely out of lockup. I guess that's what I mean about prison being no joke. You don't ever really get out, not unless you're one of those psychos who lives for that kind of lifestyle. I knew of a few guys inside who were just like that, just doing dumb petty stuff on the outside just to get back into lockup with their homies.

They said they never meant to get caught but then they used to roll around gangbanging just not caring and then acted all happy when they got back inside with their respective gang. People were crazy man, like seriously crazy and since I got out I decided that lifestyle just wasn't for me. My job sucks now, I legit work at an Amazon center right now and it's incredibly boring and tedious. But man, they pays the bills and working with boring civilians is something that never makes me feel like I'm in danger, really ever. Danger of getting fired sometimes sure, but at least I can sleep at night not having to worry about getting shanked. To be continued... I asked him what the worst thing that happened to him was and he said he didn't want to talk about it but he did tell me this one story that just might be one of the most messed up things I've ever heard. The thing that gets me about it is that it actually starts off kind of funny, I mean

not for the dude it's about but you'll see what I mean, then it goes from something you tell as a funny story to something you tell as a straight up horror story, hence why I'm sending this in. It goes from 0 to 100 in just seconds and I get why he would be shook up about seeing it. So my brother said that a few months into his stretch, the guy across from him has this new cellie move in with him. The guy seemed cool at first, but in work with the woods and stuff, but then one day he starts ripping these powerful farts, incredibly loud too. My brother and his cellmate think this is kind of hilarious and so does the other guy for about a minute. But then, the way my brother tells it, the farting guy was pumping out gas that smelled like a raccoon crawled up his butt and

died. I mean they were so bad that even my brother and his cellmate were telling him to stick a cork up it or something because they were so bad that they were stinking up the whole block. Guys from like four or five cells down were calling out like put some water on that thinking that he'd used the bathroom but they were just legitimately only farts. It got to the point where everyone in the block was walking around with towels or shirts over their faces just to keep the smell out of their noses. It was seriously that bad. At some point, the farting guy's cellie asked him about what the deal was with his butt, and the other guy says that he was on some special dietary needs that

the county couldn't accommodate. Like he tried sticking to just vegetables and stuff, but even then, it didn't seem to help. Dude just keeps ripping these heinous farts all day and all night. Like I said, people just thought it was kind of funny at first. But then after a while, people start getting real sick of the stench and no one was more sick of it than the guy's cellmate. Then, one night, the guy just turns feral on the farter, and my brother said that he woke up to the sickening crunching sound coming from the cell opposite his. He sits up, and he's peering through the darkness trying to work out what he can hear half asleep, and then he just about makes out the guy opposite just like stomping on

something. He knew what was going on but he didn't want to call the guards and be a snitch like that. He just waited until one started walking the roads and raised the alarm. Guy had been literally stomping a hole in his celly's head after pulling him out of his bunk and when he got wheeled out on the stretcher, his head was just a mess of blood and swollen facial features. My brother said that he was certain that the guy was dead, but somehow he actually survived the insane amount of punishment he got. I use that term survived real loose though because my brother said word got back to the block that the guy had brain damage and was being moved to a specialist hospital upstate. He said the even crazier thing was how blood was on the floor of the cell when the medics

came to take the farting guy away. He said it was like all the blood in the guy's body was just sitting there in a pool. It was unreal to think so much of it had just straight up come out of the guy's head and even crazier to think that he actually survived having bled out so much. He said it started to clot on the floor too so when the attacker got carted out of the cell by the COs and the cleaners came in to mop it up, it was thick like sludge on the cell floor. All that just over farts though. I get it, it would get really annoying after a while but the guy couldn't help it could he? Poor dude couldn't handle the terrible jail food and it almost cost him his life. And if he ended up getting really badly brain damaged, that's pretty much his life over,

isn't it? And stuff like that just reminds me of how as tough as I like to think I am, I'd never last in prison or the county. For some people, it's a death sentence without ever getting one, and I think I might be one mother's side of the family. They had basically disowned her after she decided to do the unthinkable and go to medical school at a time, particularly in the deep rural south, where women could never be doctors. My relatives were simply scowling faces that wandered in and out of holiday gatherings, pausing just long enough to pass judgment and leave my dad outraged for about a week.

The only one out of the hateful mob that really made an impression was my mom's older sister. This woman sent me acne medication for my birthday one year when I had started that awkward breakout phase. She once lectured me for 20 minutes about how no man would ever love me since I had inherited mom's desire to work when I got older. I was 10. I only give you this background so that you'll understand how unsettling it was when my grandmother called my mom one evening and asked her to fly down there to see them. My aunt had experienced what they called a severe psychotic break, or something along those lines, and none of the relatives knew what to do, or had the money to do it. My mother dutifully packed her things and I was somehow swept along

for the ride. I was only 14 at the time and still hadn't perfected the art of saying no to my parents. The best thing about that age was that because I was awkward and mousy, people tended to ignore my existence. I got to sit in while the grandparents told my mom everything they knew about this breakdown, as my mom stressed over and over that she wasn't a psychiatrist. The list went on and on about my aunt. Her latest ex was a meth dealer. They had brewed and sampled so many dangerous chemicals together. She was addicted to diet pills. She'd become obsessed with the Ouija board. She had depression which runs in the family. And she was always a little off, etc, etc. All they knew was that after her work had called them asking for her, they found her

completely nude in her living room, curled up and talking to herself. She had covered pages and pages of notebooks with nonsensical symbols and equations about gods and demons. I think I should pause here for a moment. I understand if you think I'm setting up some wild demonic possession story. I'm not. I'm still a skeptic. I have no idea if the events following this had anything to do with the paranormal. Methamphetamine psychosis is scary enough on its own, and there were so many holes in her brain at this point, who knows what she was really thinking. However, the story is a little gruesome either way and I'm finally at a place where I feel like I can tell it. So, with few other options, my grandparents had locked my aunt up in the guest room and called

my mother. Once again insisting that she was not a psychiatrist, my mom told my grandparents that they had to get my aunt sent to some kind of hospital where she could get the proper care. In the meantime, they needed the supplies to hold them over while they decided what to do. Mom called in some prescriptions and got ready to head into town. Unfortunately, the downside to being 14 is that you're old enough to be expendable. So, somehow, I was assigned the task of waiting at the house with my aunt and making sure nothing happened while they were gone. Mom promised they wouldn't be long and assured me waiting at home was better than being trapped on the hour drive into town with my

grandmother. Many southerners will tell you that not all of the south has barren fields and terrifying locals. Some parts have some amazing natural beauty. This is completely true, and anyone close-minded enough to bypass an entire section of the country based on stereotyping is really missing out. Unfortunately, this house was not located in any of those areas. This was miles of red clay, tobacco crops, pine trees, power lines, the family house, me, and my insane aunt in the back room. There was no cable, no internet, and next to no cell reception. I was stuck listening to my CD player and playing Tetris on the couch, counting the agonizing minutes until my mom came back. Because time moves so slowly out there,

I can't really tell you when I was clubbed from behind. The thud was dull but the pain exploded in the back of my skull. I used to think that cartoon characters seeing stars was just cutesy animation, but I swear to god my vision erupted into different colors as I tried to regain my senses. I didn't drop like people in the movies do though. I was vaguely aware of someone grabbing my arms and dragging me from the sofa to a chair. I even stumbled a little in response. Unfortunately, the static wouldn't clear enough for me to stop them as my hands were tied to the arms with something thin enough to cut. It was only after my midsection had been bound and my throat was well on its way that I snapped too. I rocked my head back and forth to get away but it was no good.

What I now realized was brown twine was roped around my neck to keep me upright. I can't look at the stuff anymore without itching. Her work momentarily finished, my aunt moved around the chair to face me. She'd never been an attractive woman but at that point she looked like a literal demon. The meth had left her with open sores, some of which she had scratched in ragged, weeping holes. Her arms were covered in blackening holes, all oozing this type of rot. When she grinned, I got a good look at the infamous meth mouth. I can't even describe the smell.

That wasn't just from her wounds, either. She had caked feces all over her legs, up to the scratches around her sagging breasts. But the worst part was the strange glint in her eyes. There was someone home up there, but it was more feral than person. With my eyes locked on hers, she grabbed a bit of her short blonde hair and tugged hard enough for her eyebrows to raise. You see this? They say I can take your hair for myself. Panic was finally starting to register as I realized just what was happening to me. Too tiny to be much of a fighter, I mostly just started hyperventilating and staring.

I remember realizing that I couldn't remember the word for what Native Americans used to do to their war victims, but it was definitely about to happen to me. I started squeaking a little and trying to yell out as she disappeared into the kitchen for a moment and reappeared with a knife. Thankfully, she just grabbed a clump of my long brown hair and started trying to saw off inches from my head. It still hurt enough for me to finally cry out over it. Likely unsatisfied with her results thanks to a dull knife and thick hair, her attention turned back to my face. That's nothing. She hissed. From behind my back she produced a hammer, probably what she had hit me with in the first place.

The next swing brought it down on my left index finger. The fingernail cracked from the strength of the blow. My sobbing only made my aunt laugh harder, and she tossed aside her tangles of hacked off hair in favor of digging out the nail pieces and ripping them away one by one. The pain was so bad I nearly threw up. The process repeated for the middle finger and my thumb, though for some reason the thumb took three swings to crack thanks to the odd angle it was at. I vaguely noticed through the pain that as she yanked the left bit of nail from the bed, her head was tilted slightly and her mouth was hanging open.

She was listening to something. She finally stopped picking at my fingernails and leaned over to take my index into her mouth to suck on. My mind started desperately pulling itself together and I had to get out of there. There was no way out. No matter how much I screamed, no one was around for miles. I had to survive long enough for my mother to get home. What if this lunatic killed my mother? Somehow I choked out some version of, why are you doing this? My aunt looked up from where she was sucking and narrowed her eyes, as if indignant that I had interrupted her. She sat up and proceeded to spit some of the blood she'd been drinking into my face. They chose you, and I hate you. At this point, she started ranting.

I wish I could reproduce exactly what was said, but the details are blurred half because the memory was so diligently repressed for so long and half because none of it made any sense at all. It was something about a dark lord and people on the walls, but there was also talk of the government and radio waves. What I do recall is that she paused and leaned in so close that our noses were nearly touching. The smell of their breath was so horrible I could taste it in my mouth. I know, she whispered. You can smell my brain rotting. But let me tell you, it's not joking. He wants your skin. They all want you.

Her tongue stretched out of her mouth and wormed itself over the lower half of my face. I started sobbing and gagging at this point. She tried to get her tongue into my mouth but I spat at her which enraged her. She screamed at me to be quiet and swung the hammer at my mouth. One of my front teeth hit the floor and the others weren't in much better shape. The memory now goes fuzzy, mostly a blur of pain and fear. I was completely sure I was going to die an agonizing death and the blood loss now occurring didn't do anything for my thinking. I was aware of her shuffling away. I know she returned, but my next clear memory is

of her using a marker on the old floor to reproduce what I recognized as a Ouija board. Only half of the letters were actually letters, the rest were twisted symbols that must have made sense in her addled mind, but the standard hello and goodbye were obvious enough for the connection to be made in my head. My aunt took great care in creating this, focusing like a preschooler with some sort of demonic macaroni craft. The whole time she muttered to herself, but I never caught a clear sentence out of it. Using a glass coaster as a planchette, she set to work summoning something. By this point, I was silent save the sucking of air in through the narrow gap in my mouth. The room had gone completely still. Nothing happened

for several moments. The atmosphere was suffocating as every nerve in my body stood on edge. Without warning, the coaster slid to its first destination, making a screech as the wood scraped over the glass. I couldn't keep track of what it was spelling out and the nonsense symbols made it all the more difficult, but my aunt watched closely and nodded sagely every so often. I tried to figure out if it was just my imagination that made it look like the coaster was moving without prodding from her fingertips. The dying afternoon had lowered the temperature considerably even in the southern early autumn and shock was beginning

to make me tremble. Each shake shot bolts of pain from my fingers, teeth, and head, but I couldn't take my eyes off the scene before me. I remember thinking to myself, maybe they'll tell her to let me go. A loud crash from the kitchen made me jump, crunching bits of tooth between my molars in the process and caused my aunt to pause. She raced into the other room, yelled something giddily and returned to stalk towards me with feverish delight. There was a sign. This is it. He'll be so happy. She grabbed my breast and twisted it sharply. You want this, don't you? This. This! She scrambled to pick up the knife once more and eyed the pale flesh on my bare thigh. I'd been wearing shorts.

Humming random notes, she began to carve the same symbol into my thigh. At one point, she carefully sliced up and peeled back a circle of my skin. Then she placed it on her nose and grinned at me. Boo! She giggled. You just loved that when you were little. I firmly believe the shock and blood loss as well as the concussion I no doubt had were the cause of what I began to see next. While she carved into my leg, I stared at the far corner of the room. I was convinced I saw a shadow gathering there. In reality, it was probably just the setting sun chasing away light,

but I was so certain that the darkness was taking shape. I'd never experienced sleep paralysis, but the feeling I had was almost exactly the same. Something was watching us. Something evil. It wanted to revel in my torture. The sheer madness of the entire situation convinced me that this was the one my aunt had been babbling about. If there was in fact a creature that wanted my flesh, it was definitely descending upon us. I screamed my throat ragged. I continued to try to get her off, but the wiggling only dug her knife deeper into me. If you stay still, be careful, very careful, she sang.

My eyes locked on the shadow and I began to plead. I begged her to let me go. I begged her to remember that I was her niece. I promised her I'd let her run free. I said that I'd never tell my mom it would have done this. I told her I'd let her have anything she wanted and if she would just please stop this. In response, she put her finger to my lips and shushed me. Do you hear that? She froze and I held my breath. I strained my ears. Honestly, there could have been nothing but the blood rushing to my head, but my poor brain translated this into faint whispers. My aunt grinned at me. They come. They want you. And he will take it? Yes, yes he will. Yes, he'll take what he wants.

She said this was the sort of reverence that chilled me. She used her legs to force mine apart and pointed the tip of the knife at my crotch. I'll slice you wide enough for them to crawl inside. I'll stuff them into you, all inside. She giggled. Although her eyes became suddenly pained, she moved her face in close and clawed one of the sores on her cheeks. I can feel them crawling out of me. She moaned. She held up one of her arms and shoved the abscess into my sight. Can you see them? Can you? You weren't even looking! In her rage, she shoved the abscess into my face, smearing pus and dead flesh into my eyes. It was vile enough to make me up and renew my struggling to break free.

Why was it so cold? Why did I hear those whispers? My aunt was wailing and clawing at her arm, momentarily taken by the need to dig out whatever was killing her skin. I desperately railed against the bonds enough to make the chair jump. Ceasing this momentum, I rocked from side to side enough to tip over to my right. Unfortunately, my neck had been tied to something else behind me. I was stuck trying to position my legs to keep the chair from sliding further and strangling me. This broke my aunt out of her laps in attention. With a snarl, she kicked at my leg and the jerk left me gasping for air.

My vision was beginning to blur. My gaze moved past my aunt and onto the shadow now. And the darkness had begun to spread out of the corner like an ink drop. There were faces, I'm sure of it. Faces in the thing that was coming to claim me. I was mesmerized as my eyes tried to focus on the shifting form. I forced my burning, bleeding leg to keep me propped up, but the darkness was becoming deeper and moving closer. It would take me. It would seep out my

soul through all the cuts and bruises in my body. This sounds slightly profound now, but at the time, all these thoughts were occurring instantly together as I gave way to pure panic. My heartbeat pounded a thundering cadence in my ears as they seeped towards me. I didn't even hear my aunt slip away before the scream hit my ears and the lights flooded the room. Again at this point my memory dulls. My mother rushed in and found me in that state. She raced me to the hospital with my grandparents while calling the police. While I was recovering overnight, the small force of local cops searched the fields and forests for my aunt. Bulletins were put out.

A deputy even went door to door down the single road by the house and warned the neighbors to stay inside and lock their doors. What I found more disturbing was the fact that my aunt had been tied down to the bed and locked in that room. The officers said that the ties looked like they had been chewed and ripped off but the door wasn't forced open. My grandparents, even my mother, swore that it had been locked before they left. They had double checked it and no one left her out. They did find my aunt. She had hung herself with twine in a barn not far from our land. Though the nails don't grow on my left index and middle finger and thumb, thousands of dollars were able to correct my smile and my legs healed surprisingly well. Not to be overly spooky or dramatic, but I can't lie to you. I still have nightmares.

In them I wake up tied down somewhere with my aunt whispering over me. The markings on my legs sting like they were fresh. She looks exactly like she did that day, down to my blood on her lips. The only thing is, she's just one of the faces in that monster. I'm 24 years old, a programmer who works a lazy 9-5, developing websites for clients that my company picks. It's honestly the easiest money I've ever earned and I'd almost be embarrassed about it, except I got into programming for a specific reason. You see, back in high school, specifically junior through senior year, I had volunteered with an EMT department. Maybe it was an ego boost that my fragile self wanted, I'm not too sure. Like yeah, I wanted to walk around acting holier than

thou and honestly I feel like people don't want to admit that. But I will go ahead and say that for all of those months, I did feel incredible. Because of the volunteering position, I was allowed to cut school pretty much after my fourth period. Or for everyone else in the world, I was allowed to leave it around 11am with our school day starting at 7am. I'd head to the school's office, sign my papers and be dismissed. Honestly, the EMTs treated each other all like a brotherhood. It's very difficult to have a bond as strong as what they had and it's probably because everyone was aware that you can only have so much training and fate can still decide to end a life. Impeccable timing, sharp precision and equipment knowledge still can't stop fate from just

ending someone's life directly under your hands. That brotherly love feeling comes from trauma bonding, I guess. I'll call the other volunteer kid Ronnie. Ronnie knew how to joke, but once on the scene the mission seemed to be wired into his brain. I couldn't even make small talk with the guy while on the way to the scene. He'd just be too zoned in and not respond. So one day, we get a call about a woman with supposed stomach issues, saying her body feels weird. Immediately we're thinking it's just some sort of stomach ache because, yes, that has happened before.

Imagine getting billed several thousand dollars just for us to, yes, that has happened before. Imagine getting billed several thousand dollars just for us to tell you, take some Tums. Okay, bye. But that's America for you. But this, this was not the case. God, how I wish it was. During the drive there, Terry, the guy driving, said she described it as a tickling sensation. A tickling sensation? In your stomach? Hmm, sounds lovely. I ask Ronnie what he thinks, but of course get nothing. We arrive on the scene and her son lets Ronnie and me inside.

The son looked like he easily weighed 350 pounds and must have only been 14 years old. We step inside and it's just pure filth. It smelled like really strong sour milk mixed with dog urine. There's smells that you know you'll never experience again and every day I thank God that I don't ever have to smell that again. I cough and the masks are on. We begin asking for information, all while hearing a woman shrieking from another room. I don't mean she was shrieking in pain. It was like she was, as Terry had said, was being tickled by something. We looked at the son like, what? She called in and sounded fine?

And all he said was, yeah, I think whatever's happening is getting worse. Yeah, no kidding, kid. We walked into what I can only describe as the quote-unquote living room and there she is. A woman I can only imagine must have been 700 pounds, sitting in a throne of fast food bags and cardboard pizza boxes. She was wearing a nightdress muumuu that looked like it hadn't been taken off in months. This woman was living and sleeping in that exact spot on the couch in that exact dress for... I don't really want to know how long. So we get to questioning her, wondering what the shrieking was about. It's because my tummy hurts, she says.

I look at Ronnie and can see that as someone who takes this job as seriously as he does, he did not want to be here any longer than needed. She points to the part of her stomach and Ronnie bends down to inspect. This is based on what he told me, but he said that he swore he saw a patch of the muumuu vibrating. He went to move the dress out of the way before realizing that it appears glued to the grime on her skin. He gets out a thin scalpel and cuts apart where the muumuu was loose and works downwards

to the area. He must have stared at it for about 5 seconds before jumping away and yelling obscenities. I jump from his reaction and the mom starts yelling about her favorite dress being ruined or something. I raced over to see what was wrong, and lo and behold, this woman has a small quarter-sized hole in her stomach, and it's full of insects. I would say that they were probably maggots,

but honestly there was so much movement going on from them squiggling around and all the blood that I can't exactly tell you what specimen was inside her. But there it was. The tickling she was feeling was because she had a small section of what I'll just describe as maggots eating away at her. The reason she hadn't felt them living inside her the entire time was because they were merely digesting her diabetic dead fat cells. The reason she now started feeling them? The maggots had finally punctured through to her system and had just begun eating away at her red fleshy portions. If she had waited any longer, they would have eventually led to her intestines. By this point, I'm absolutely hyperventilating,

and Terry came running in with another EMT, Howard, and told him to just get out. I walked out and saw Ronnie sitting on the curb outside, combing his fingers through his hair and silently sobbing. I could hear myself, what was that? But I think I was honestly in shock. The situation eventually dawned on me and I began dry heaving into the streets. More medics showed up. The woman was taken to the hospital and supposedly struggled to recover because she wouldn't clean her surgical wounds. I believe the EMTs fought to have CPS called for the kids so I can only hope something comes from that. No one deserves to have thatPS called for the kids so I can only hope something comes from that. No one deserves to have that sort of livelihood. Please keep in mind that I was drinking when this happened, but I was only a few beers deep,

so I doubt it had any severe changes to my memory. At the time of this, our country had just relaxed their grasp on lockdown measures, so to my friends, this was a time to party. I got a call one day from them saying that they were going to throw a bonfire party that coming weekend and to come down with a 12-pack. Normally I would come up with an excuse to bail, but at this point, I was having relationship troubles and had been locking myself away for two months. It was time I got back out there. Fast forward to that Friday night. I arrive with a pack of Modelo and I'm greeted with what I can only describe as an uproar of

cheers. Granted I'm sure there were a few drinks in by that point but it made me smile to hearing a whole crowd of people going, hey, Anon's here, so glad you made it. Really warmed me up to the idea of getting out of my shell. So I set the beers down into a cooler and make my way into the circle. The bonfire was being held by a large reservoir so there had to be at least a few dozen, if not a hundred people at this party. Everyone was grouped off doing their own thing, whether it be drugs, a few dozen, if not a hundred people at this party. Everyone was grouped off doing their own thing, whether it be drugs, swimming, dancing, or at the bonfire like I was. As the party continued on, I eventually heard what sounded like Christmas bells jingling,

almost like what an elf would hear on their shoes. I finally turned around to face the sound and see a girl coming out from the darkness, from the direction of an empty field. Now we had a bonfire going sure, but it seemed like she had just stepped out of complete blackness. No one else was around her, but I just chalked that up to it being so dark. As she steps closer to the fire, the first thing I notice is how pretty she is, like drop dead gorgeous. A genuine fox 10 out of 10. Her hair seems sort of messy and it looked like she was wearing pajamas. But somehow she still looked remarkable even though she looked like she had just woken up.

Finally she speaks up and that's what we're all doing. To which we kind of dumbfoundedly tell her that the lockdown's over. Lockdown? Oh, I was wondering where everyone had gone. She said, my friend offered her a seat next to me, but I couldn't really focus on her beauty anymore. How on earth did she not know about a global lockdown? Eventually, the beer does its job and I'm a lot more confident with her, cracking jokes and complimenting her. She's actually really talkative and incredibly funny and I start to have that drunk thought of, am I in love? The night continued on and at one point I made the worst mistake imaginable. I headbutted her. See, what happened is that I saw this flower next to her and it looked super pretty And in my drunken stupor I thought it'd be cute to bend over and pluck the flower and give it to her

Except after I plucked it, I quickly rose back up and the back of my head collided with her chin I shook off the echoing pain in my skull and tried to console her As I noticed she had covered her face with her hands. I kept apologizing over and over again before taking a moment to notice that the rest of the group had drifted off into their other areas of the party, leaving her and me alone. I continued to apologize as she kept brushing it off before finally lowering her hands. I take a look at her face and, quite frankly, jump back. Her face had this pale exterior to it, almost like a porcelain doll, and I mean, honest to god, it actually did look like porcelain. It had a red blemish on her one cheek, similar to a court jester doll, and had very bright red

lipstick. Her face had become bloated, although a part of me keeps saying it was because of the swelling, but it looked like only her cheeks had ballooned up. But the worst part was her eyes. What stared back at me were what appeared to be two black holes, almost hollow. I was terrified, and I was not hiding it whatsoever. She noticed my expression, quickly apologized and put her hands back up to her face. But it looked like she wasn't covering her face but rather trying to push it back into place, like it was a mask. She was this stunning beauty one minute then some sort of doll-like creature the next. Finally she lowers her hands and it's her face again, built with a smile.

She acts like this didn't just happen and continues trying to have the conversation, but I just sat there, completely dazed and confused. After a few minutes, she gets up and tells everyone that she's leaving and that's when I realized that only I had seen this occur. Only I had seen her literally remove and fix her face. A couple people asked if she needed a ride home, but she declined and walked away. After noticing her walking into the field, someone suggested that we should go after her to ensure that she gets home safe, but I outright refused. Two guys jog after her, but return after a few few minutes saying she was nowhere to be found. I eventually sober up and go home, telling everyone I wasn't feeling too well, which I guess wasn't a lie.

I was still completely shell-shocked from that experience. The next day I wake up and meet up with a few friends from the party for coffee and we get to the discussion of the girl. Except that some of the friends had brought girls from the party so when some of the guys were like, yeah man she was really hot, the girls all stopped and looked puzzled. What hot girl? The one girl said. The field girl, the one who just kind of showed up out of nowhere. Another guy tried to explain. Again, the girls looked at each other, puzzled, before saying that they saw a man come out of the fields. Same description and everything. Messy hair, pajamas, but absolutely drop-dead stunning. He had called himself Marigold and was the hottest guy they'd

ever seen. However, among the confusion of everything, I was still the only one who saw what really laid behind Marigold's face. Much like the movies make it out to be. But one particular event happened that truly made me realize that my world is likely different from everyone else's. Back when I was 12 years old, I was sent to my fourth foster home. Not because I was a troubled kid or anything, that's just how the system worked back then. This new foster home was reaching its capacity, but they were expecting these two older kids to be adopted soon. One was a 15-year-old girl and the other was a 17-year-old boy. The thing about these foster homes is that

the majority of the time you always felt like you weren't wanted. You were reduced to being merely a number, another mouth to feed, another body to wash and clothe. You were a nuisance. Again, I was only 12 years old, so I'm sure that the weight of being a disappointment wasn't really resonating yet, but it definitely resonated with the two older kids. It didn't help that the woman running the foster home, who we were expected to call mom, was a raging alcoholic, a loose cannon, always manipulating kids into doing what she wanted and always hitting those who didn't. So during my short time there,

the older boy would make these really deranged jokes about the mom. We'd laugh at first, but then he'd just keep describing what he'd do to her, and the older girl would always have to tell him to knock it off. He'd listen but I could tell that he could go on for hours about the sick treatment he'd give the foster mom. Finally, after one tragic night, we're all huddled in the girl's room and she flat out says, what if we just kill her? I'm sure it's a joke but this lit something in the boy's eyes. He starts laughing really loudly, like it was the funniest joke he'd ever heard, and then just turns stone cold in the face.

Just a side note, this kid was expected to be adopted soon, over everyone else. This kid was being chosen. Anyway, we all got tired, the girl kicked us out and we went to our separate bedrooms to sleep I think it was about 5am when I heard the screaming I wasn't the first one to go but I heard the other kids doors opening Because it was a rather thinly built house and decided I'd get up as well We had awoken to strange sounds before Like one morning the foster mother had brought in a guest from a bar, I'll let you connect those dots, but to hear blood curdling screaming,

that was definitely a first. They ran downstairs to see the foster mom crawling against the kitchen floor, which the stairway led into. She was pantsless, and her face was covered in welts from whatever had struck her. And there was the boy, standing over top of her crawling body, just relentlessly whipping her with his belt. I remember looking at her feet and seeing that they were bent in such an inhumane angle, meaning that he must have broken her ankles and probably wrists so that she couldn't get away. She's just screaming for help as he whips her lower back which looked to be soaked in red and unfortunately we all just

stood there watching these two people. I didn't have sympathy for the foster mom, I really didn't. Granted what the boy boy was doing was disturbing, but it was unfortunately not too far off from how she treated us. What he did to her before he started whipping her, I don't want to talk about. Finally, he looks at us and just gives us this look of, Hey, this is fun. You guys want to try? Like to him, it was just hitting a punching bag. This was not a human that was beneath him. His pupils were bloodshot and he had blood splatter all over his body.

So after no one answered, he just shrugged, bent down, took a knife, and finished her. And one stab was all it took. Although I don't know where he stabbed as he was behind the kitchen's island and then he ran out the door. We had to talk to the cops and I was kind of catatonic and must have been asked over a hundred times why we didn't step in but I think they knew about her and her history and I think she had a record or something or that they were aware of how she treated the kids. All we could do was just shrug, say I don't know, and that honestly seemed to be it. I was shipped to a new foster home a little less than a week later and remained as another mouth-to-feet nuisance until about 14 when thank god I was about eight years old at the time of this event.

My sister and I were, to be blunt about it, trailer trash kids. I'm the one saying it, by the way. We lived in a trailer park where the majority of the trailers had their wheels removed and were resting on cinder blocks. There wasn't really much to do nor see around the park as it was just surrounded with empty fields and a small yellow wooden fence. And although the park was relatively large, very few people lived here and even fewer were social. So with that being said, and remember, we were trailer kids, we used to think this empty park was just some type of playground. We would break into the abandoned trailers and raid through the stuff that was left behind, or just to simply graffiti stuff. I'm not saying this was something

to be proud of, but there was a strong sense of utmost freedom that came with breaking into the trailers. After a while, we had broken into the majority of the trailers, all but two or three of them. There was this one trailer that seemed to be left in pristine condition right outside the woods. Normally this meant that someone was arrested abruptly, but I don't know the actual story of why they left. But it was vacant for about two months before we decided to make our move. We chose a day where we knew that most of the park would be empty and struck midday. I prop open the window and fit my little fat self through and proceed in to unlock the door for my sister. She was a few years older than me, so I still had the advantage of being small enough to fit into cramped areas like a trailer window.

I unlock the door for her and it's game time. We do our usual scoping around the place, just figuring out what type of life the person had lived, what books they read. Would you be surprised if I told you that the majority of them only had adult magazines? And sometimes we check for food in the cupboards and shelves. As I inspect the living room, my sister wanders off to the opposite side of the trailer towards the bedroom, and within minutes, I hear what I can only describe as ear-piercing screams. She began yelling for me, her voice trembling and I could tell that she was fighting back tears. I sprinted over towards the bedroom and as I walked through the door, I met with just a spray of gore.

Blood had been smeared against the walls, the floor, on windows, and over the majority of the furniture. It wasn't just like a spritz of blood either, it was an abnormal amount, with chunks of flesh and guts strewn around. On top of the mattress, in the middle of the room, lay a massive dead stag with a huge cavity in its abdomen. Its throat was slit, one of its legs were completely snapped off, and it looked to be that one of the antlers had tried to be cut off, but whoever did this gave up. And the worst part was that it was fresh. Not only was this place only vacant for about two months, but the smell of this dead stag hadn't even resonated in the trailer yet. You could smell the blood and the dead deer, sure, but this thing was massive. If it wasn't fresh, then you would have easily been able to smell this just by walking by the trailer.

After a few seconds, my sister shoved me out of the way and booked it out of there. I don't know why, but that memory always stuck with me. She didn't push me out of the door, no, she shoved me into the room so she could get out. I always thought she was super defensive over me, but this experience made me realize that human instinct really is oftentimes just for survival. Because what if someone was in there? What if whoever had done this to the deer was still in the room waiting to strike? I eventually followed after her and raced home, but we never talked to anyone about it since. That neighborhood was so nice for a trailer park, but I'll never think of it in the same

light anymore. It's no longer my childhood playground but instead it's a home to some deranged lunatic who brutally massacred a deer and they only lived a few feet away from everyone else. This happened five summers ago when I was 15 years old. At the time, I'd just moved to a new area with my family, being my parents and my brother. We moved into a rural town far from any major cities, and the townspeople were flooded with rednecks and farmers. So one night, I couldn't seem to stay asleep, so I went to the kitchen to get myself a glass of milk To my surprise my mother was awake and staring out the window of our lounge Which looked out onto our front garden and the road by our house

He's here again He's here again She kept repeating as she turned to face me But the way it felt it didn't look like she was looking at me or even acknowledging my existence. He's here for you, Martin, she said. And the problem is, my name isn't Martin. In fact, Martin was the name of my parents' firstborn son who had died before turning a year old due to health complications, so it's not like she was just saying some random name. No, she was talking to her deceased baby. I walked into the room to join my mother,

keep in mind it's about 1am, so I can see what she was looking at or what she was referring to. Looking out onto the front garden, I saw nothing out of place, aside from a few long shadows from some trees. There's nobody there. I said to her but she remained insistent that she could see someone in our garden. Eventually I sit her down, bring her a glass of milk and I try to go back to sleep. Over the next few months my mother's mental health started to decline. It got to the point that her living in our house began posing a danger to not only her but to all of us. About six months after the window incident, I was startled to hear a horrific scream mid-afternoon coming from one of the rooms.

Turns out, she had drawn a bath and submerged herself in near boiling water, scalding her entire body up to her neck. After several more incidents, including my mother holding a knife to my younger brother's throat and threatening to sacrifice him to Martin, she was finally institutionalized. I was only 16 years old when this happened, but unfortunately I can only assure you that things got worse. My father refused to let either me or my brother visit my mother whilst she was locked away, saying that he didn't want her to influence us with her paranoia BS. However, this did not mean that I was not contacted by her

throughout the whole ordeal. Several weeks after my mother's departure from our home, I awoke one night in a horrible cold, feeling like I was going to vomit. I walked through the dimly lit corridors in our house to the bathroom and switched on the light. I was taken aback when I looked at the mirror, as someone had written, he is here on it. At first I thought it was written in blood due to its deep red hue but later turned out to be lipstick. My mother's lipstick. I was barely able to make a sound before I staggered in my father's room. Stumbling over my words I was barely capable of providing full sentences to him as I dragged his half sleepy body across the corridor.

Once we got to the bathroom I had seen that the light was still on. But now the door was closed with two feet casting shadows behind the door. I stood behind my father as he now slowly crept towards the bathroom. Suddenly we both felt this awful static like feeling which made our hairs raise and even made his alarm clock go off in his bedroom. The power in the house instantly died, with a pop noise coming from the bathroom before going dark. My father pushed the door open to find the bathroom,

somehow empty. By the time I was 17, my mother had, unfortunately, taken her own life. She somehow had pierced her own arteries when the staff weren't looking and bled out, unable to be revived. Shortly after this happened, my father miraculously was offered a job position across the country, and, California to Albuquerque, New Mexico. For those who don't know, 29 Palms is located in the desolate high desert east of LA.

The shortcut seemed to be only full of empty deserts as it traveled into Amboy, California. Amboy is a nearly abandoned town far below sea level, similar to Death Valley. In the land lies a dormant volcano with a lava field on one side and a salt flat on the other, but more importantly, it was also a hotspot for satanic cult activity. I was driving by myself in the afternoon before stopping in Amboy. I wanted to take a picture of the city sign because I like showing my friends that I went through the shortcut. We often dared each other to take controversial routes, so I was dared to take the route to I-40. So I snapped a picture of the sign, got back in my car, and proceeded up to the mountain range between Amboy and I-40. Once I reached the top, I began driving north through a canyon with high grass on both sides of the road. I couldn't see much of the

land through the thickness of the grass so I was left to just look ahead. But up ahead, I began to see something in the middle of the road. As I approach closer and closer, I press on my brakes as I see a completely abandoned red Pontiac Fiero just sitting in the middle of both lanes. Next to the sports car lay a suitcase with clothes scattered everywhere and worst of all there were two bodies lying in the road next to all of this, a man and a woman. I stopped some ways back and as I looked at the cluster up ahead, I couldn't help but feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Being a marine, I reached under the seat and pulled out

a 9mm pistol and chambered around. The problem with the scenario up ahead is that it seemed too choreographed, if that makes sense. Almost like it was staged. Could this be an ambush? I thought to myself or am I just being too paranoid? But my neck hairs remained on edge and I could just tell something was wrong about this. Getting out of my car seemed unthinkable and almost too dangerous. It was like I was looking at a horror movie from a third perspective. I got the rare chance to witness a horror movie before me, and do I approach these people? What if they severely need help? What if they were victims of an ambush? I scanned the horizon and saw an area in which I could drive through. I'd need to pass the guy in the road on the left, swerve to the right of the woman, get behind the Fiero,

and I'd be able to proceed down the road. I thought to myself for a second and made up my mind. I dropped it into first gear, punched it and drove the line that I planned. I passed behind the Fiero without hitting anyone or anything in the road and continued forward a couple hundred feet. Once I cleared, I slowed down and took a moment to breathe and let my heart take a break. I look in my rearview mirror just to see that the bodies that were laying in the road had gotten to their knees, as 20 or so more people emerged from the grass next to the scene. I didn't think twice as I smashed the gas pedal to the floor and didn't let up until I had to slow down for the I-40 on-ramp. I will never know what would have happened to me had I actually gotten out of the car to check

the scene, or even if I stopped my car closer to them, but I think it's safe to say it wouldn't have been good. Sometimes real life can be scarier than a movie. Have you ever heard about the conservative Christian sect called the Plymouth Brethren? Don't worry, most people haven't. And to be fair, they have remained rather secretive. Similar to the Church of Scientology, the Plymouth Brethren have used defamation lawsuits to silence any criticism against themselves. One of their own, John Nelson Darby, also referred to as the father of the exclusive Brethren movement, has been credited with creating a modern rapture doctrine. The Brethren believe in very traditional views when it comes to marriage and courtship. No physical contact is allowed between men and women before

marriage, and all dating is to be chaperoned at all times. Divorce is very highly frowned upon in the community. While traditional in beliefs, behind the Plymouth Brethren lies an even darker side. There are multiple murder cases that center around the group's extreme beliefs regarding divorce and the shunning of others. In 1973, Roger Paynes, a British member of the Brethren, was shunned for improperly shunning another member of the sect. His punishment for doing so, doled out by the group's leader, was harsh and required that no member associate

with Roger Paynes. This exclusivity was even enforced by his own family. He was banned from eating with them, nor was he allowed to sleep in the same bed as his own wife. In early 1974, Paynes was admitted to a hospital for a prescription drug overdose, but eventually recovered and returned home. We would say it was fortunate that he recovered, except that, on the night of March 4th, 1974, Paynes would brutally massacre his entire family with an axe. He climbed the stairs and entered the rooms of his sleeping kids, ages 7, 6, and 4 years old, and murdered them. After doing so, he proceeded to then butcher his wife with that very axe that was used against her own children. All four bodies were

later found by authorities with Payne's being the last one to be discovered. He had gone back to the stairwell and hung himself from the banister. This wouldn't be the only brutal axe murder within the Plymouth Brethren movement. In 1983, yet another quadruple homicide had rocked the small city of Bloomington, Illinois. David Hendricks was rumored to be out on a business trip when his three young children and wife were all murdered. The initial trial that followed was so chaotic and unprofessional that the case had to be moved from Bloomington to Rockford, Illinois. Despite there being vast debates about the trial, David Hendricks was still convicted for the murders of his family. He would be sentenced to four back-to-back life sentences and would only end up serving

seven years. David would get remarried while in prison and in 1991 was granted a new trial. And during this trial he was acquitted to which he quickly moved out of state and went to Florida, where he divorced and remarried two additional times. After being absolved, no one else in the city of Bloomington was ever prosecuted, and the local police considered the case closed. David's old family lay in graves, with their murderer still running free, whether it was David or not. To be continued... story, be sure to submit them to my subreddit r slash let's read official and maybe even hear

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