The Lets Read Podcast - 193: WE MET ON 4CHAN | 18 True Scary Stories | EP 181

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about 4Chan, Bars, & Bounty Hunters... 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 & Bonus Content!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead

Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making a weird sound? I've got a pro. So who's that pro? The pros at Tread Experts. From tires to auto repair, Tread Experts is always there, helping you with Toyo tires you can trust. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires, like Toyo's open country family of tires. Find your pro at your local Tread Experts. From tires tires auto repair we're always there Let me tell you about the worst day of my life. Or more accurately, how the first worst day of my life led directly into the second worst day of my life.

The first worst day of my life was the day that I got caught stealing coke from the evidence locker at work. I'm not about to tell you exactly where or what my job was, but I reckon most of you can figure that out. I'm sure some of you out there will be pleased to hear that I was immediately fired and charged, then not so pleased to hear that I managed to get away with nothing but rehab and a suspended sentence. I paid the price, though, in a big way. My wife became an ex-wife, and with time, my kid learned to call another man dad.

I don't blame her. I wouldn't want to be married to me either. But feeling my kid growing more and more distant, that was a physical kind of pain, you know. I left Maryland not sure of where I was headed, but somehow I kept rolling past state lines until I was in Arizona. Part of it was wanting to be as far away from Baltimore as I possibly could without needing a teach-yourself Spanish book, but it was mostly knowing there was a guy out there willing to overlook my legal baggage and give me work. That work being what we called skip tracing. Not many of you will know what skip tracing is, as it tends to be known by another much more loaded title. Those in the job call it skip or contact tracing. Others might

call us stalkers or fugitive recovery agents. But I suppose the most recognizable term, the one that gets thrown around the TV a lot, is bounty hunter. If you'd asked me back when I was a cop, I'd have told you that Dog the Bounty Hunter was the dumbest show on TV and that every idiot who rolled around in a vest chasing meth heads is nothing but a cowboy with a death wish. Then a couple of years later, there I was, gearing up with the same crew of freaks and rejects that I'd once looked down on for my ivory tower. And the worst part, I really was one of them. A reject through and through. Divorced, recovering addict, a stranger to my daughter. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. But then, after about two or three

weeks on the job, I saw how those guys weren't so dumb after all. And not only were they not the brainless yokels I thought they were, they were just about some of the bravest people I ever worked with. I knew cops back in Quincy who'd rather just discontinue a chase or call in SWAT rather than actually pursue a dangerous suspect, whereas some of the skip tracers out in Pima County would bolt at a fugitive scrambling for his pistol just for a chance at getting him alive. I remember asking the guy what he was thinking, and in the movies, you'd have him saying something like, just doing my job, or taking out the trash, or some other nonsense line. Instead, the guy just sat there on the curb,

shaking while he smoked a cigarette, just laughing to himself while saying, I don't know man, I have absolutely no idea. That guy was gone within a month, then the next, so was I. Skip Tracers aren't known for their loyalty, they go where the money is, at least that was my policy. I don't know what happened to that guy, I mean I can't even remember his name, we only worked together twice, but I suppose I'm getting a little off track here. I should be telling you about the second worst day of my life. After bringing in an American-born cartel affiliate and adding such a high-profile recovery to my resume, I basically walked into

a job at a very well-paying skip tracer based in Tucson. The salary and bonus schemes were enough to cover my alimony and child support payments, with more than enough left over for me to at least live comfortably. The only catch was that, due to their reputation as better than the average, this particular skip trace company tended to get a lot of high value bounties, and with high value came high risk. You might assume that the scariest job involved the cartel or at least those affiliated with them, but the Sinaloa has more money than it knows what to do with and they know it's easier to throw money at bondsmen or attorneys than to

bury the bodies of cops or skip tracers. They're hard to find, but they're easy to bring in. In reality, the people I learned to fear the most were the meth heads, and the top of the pyramid was cooks. I'm no chemist, so I don't know exactly what it is about the whole cooking process that does this to them, but cooking meth basically rots your brain. It's a whole other level of crazy. And unlike cokeheads, who are paranoid in the extreme and terrified of law enforcement, meth heads somehow end up on the polar opposite. It's like they relish any kind of confrontation with law enforcement. I mean, they try and keep themselves out of jail for obvious reasons,

but they're sure ready for a fight if a fight is coming. I ended up getting a phone call late one night, telling me to stop by the office first thing in the morning for a briefing. When I showed up, you could feel the tension in the briefing room ramp up a notch when the boss mentioned that they were going after a cook. Obviously, he'd skipped bail, and word was that he was cooking up some uber-batch of meth for some one-percenter club so he'd be able to pay for some top tier phoenix attorney to haggle down his time in the county. Obviously that wasn't something anyone wanted to happen and the guy's bondsman wanted him back bad. Bad enough to put a bounty out on the guy that would have been a cool ten grand each for a team of four guys and that was money that I sorely needed

at the time. I knew the risks and so did the other three guys who volunteered, and in the end, we paid the price. It took us a couple of days to pin the guy down, and it was only through one lucky break that we managed to get info on his location. Another skip tracer actually picked up one of the guy's associates, who knew well that the cook had skipped on an extremely high bail amount. Although it wasn't exactly lawful, the tracer kept the guy with the info as collateral, telling him he'd let him go if the info turned out to be good, and if it was good, then he'd be cut in on the bounty. We didn't like having to lose a couple of hundred just to get info we might have gotten through less expensive techniques, but the longer it takes to catch a fugitive, the less chance we got of actually bringing them in. On top of that, we were only a few hours drive from the Mexican border, so time wasn't a luxury we were afforded. As soon as we got the location information, we saddled up and drove out to look for some

old trailer park outside of a small town called Arivaca. We were reliably informed that the guy had been driving an old Dodge flatbed and that if we found the truck, we'd find our man along with it. But almost as soon as we found the place, I started to get a bad feeling about it. The trailer park in question was in a pretty secluded spot, one you need to turn down an old dirt road to get to. It must have been an old dry gulch or mining spot from a long time ago because the road was basically carved out of the rock which opened up into a small clearing capable of holding only five or six trailers. And blocking the entrance to the old trailer park was that Dodge flatbed, meaning we have to park the van that we were

riding in and advance into the park on foot. That had alarm bells ringing in my head, and it wasn't even the first thing I'd seen that bothered me. Almost as soon as we turned down the dirt road, one of the other guys thought that he'd spotted a flash of movement way up on the ridge above us. It could have been nothing but a coyote or a piece of trash or something, but then again, it could have been a lookout on their way to tell our fugitive that this hiding place had been made. Everyone was intense, but everyone felt ready. We were some of the best skip tracers in the state, probably the whole country, but we had no idea what we were coming up against. The place looked mostly deserted as we walked in and only two of the dusty old trailer spots had anything on them.

We started moving on one that looked like it had been recently occupied and as usual, we announced our presence along with who we were to minimize any chance of violence. 90% of the time, that worked. When the fugitive knows they're dealing with law enforcement, they're way much more inclined to just give themselves up. But after calling out who we were and telling the fugitive we knew he was there, we didn't hear anything in reply.

Again, that's not unusual. A lot of guys take their chances and just hide in closets or whatever. Plus, there was the chance that the guy's lookout had given him the heads up and he was running off into the desert while we stood around his trailer like idiots. We knew we had to clear and search the trailers, because even if they were empty and our guys were long gone, we might find stuff that'd tell us where to find him next. We had this guy, Javi, stack up at the front. A scary Mexican dude covered in tats who always gave our fugitive second thoughts about putting up any kind of fight. He hammered a fist on the trailer door a few times, shouting at the guy that he had one last

chance to come out peacefully, but again, we heard nothing in reply. Javi then put the boot to the trailer's door, but the second he did, we heard this much louder bang, and six-foot, two-hundred-pound Javi went flying back into the dirt. We figured someone had opened fire from the inside, and no one goes flying like that unless it's a shotgun. So, we backed up a little, and then just started unloading into the trailer to put down whoever had fired the shot. When the lead tracer had called a ceasefire, we were clear to check on Javi. I remember ducking my head into the doorway a few times to check if anyone was down on the inside.

And that's when I saw the shotgun rig clamped into a vice with what looked like fishing line wrapped around the trigger and leading towards the door. The sight put the fear of God into me, not because of the whole evil genius of it, but because it meant that the person who rigged it up might still be a threat. With someone still applying pressure to Javi's gunshot, which was making him sound off some of the most blood-curdling groans of pain I've ever heard, we backed up into a rough circle to cover all approaches, scanning the area for any signs of attackers. It was always a bad spot to be in,

but just then I realized how screwed we really were. All it would have taken was a few guys appearing on the ridges above with a few ARs, and we'd have been mincemeat. All we had was small arms and one guy with a pump action, and they'd taken one of us out of the fight before one was even started. If they'd only stuck around to finish us off, it would have been sickeningly easy. It still feels like a sick cosmic joke that no one appeared to take us all out, like the devil was just dangling our deaths right in front of us saying, I can take you whenever I want. And that's what sticks with me even all these years later, almost like how the four of

us cheated death. Avi survived, barely at first, but he did. And in the end, the cops were able to find the cook that we were looking for and charged him with attempted murder on top of all the other charges he had hanging over him. He won't get out of prison until he's a very, very old man, if he ever gets out at all. And honestly, I hope he dies in there. Anyone could have walked into that trailer, some civilian or god forbid a kid. The fact is, he didn't care. He cared more about his own evil cooking operation than anyone's life. And that, I just don't understand.

And maybe that's what scares me so bad about the whole thing, how I just can't understand what goes on in these people's heads. How some chemical can screw a person up so bad that they just turn into an animal or, no, really a monster, willing to almost orphan a man's kids instead of ending up where they belong, dead or in jail. I quit not long after and ended up living in my brother's garage back in Massachusetts while taking night school classes and phone and tablet repairs. It's not something I ever thought I'd see myself doing, fixing phone screens for bratty teenagers and clumsy drunks. But it pays the bills, it pays the child support, and most importantly,

it keeps me away from the closest things to demons on God's green earth. Meth cooks. The invasion of Afghanistan was one of the longest and most painfully complex conflicts in American history, and for many members of the military, their tours were the defining events in their service to their country. But for one man, the time he spent in Afghanistan meant torture, death, and madness for some of those he encountered. This is the story of Jonathan Keith Adema. Born on May 30th, 1956, in the New York City of Poughkeepsie, Adema enlisted in the United States Army at the age of 21. Adema would later state that he'd served 12 years in the Army Special Forces, but in reality, his military career was short and contained several reports of poor performance. One of his commanding officers, Captain John D.

Carlson, once claimed that Adima was, without a doubt, the most unmotivated, unprofessional, immature enlisted man I had ever known. And four years before he finally left the military, Major Paul R. Decker wrote that Adima consistently displayed a disregard for authority and grossed immaturity characterized by irrationality and a tendency towards violence. Not long after he departed the U.S. Army, Adima found a private military company known as the U.S. Counterterrorist Group, also known as Countergroup. According to the website, the company specialized in expert training for counterterrorism, assault tactics, and other security-related services. The company was active for around 10 years,

but in January of 1994, Adima was arrested and charged with almost 60 counts of wire fraud, totaling at almost $300,000. He was convicted of the charges and sentenced to six years in prison, but was paroled after serving just three. Over the years that followed, Edema was charged with assault, impersonating a police officer, passing bad checks, and possession of stolen property. He was clearly going off the rails, but like so many others around the world, the events of September 11th, 2001 would change his life forever. Adima first traveled to Afghanistan in November of 2001, claiming he was there to conduct humanitarian work. In reality, he was actually providing security for National Geographic, whilst aiding author Robin Moore in the research for his book, The Hunt for Bin Laden.

After entering Afghanistan, a number of different humanitarian organizations soon became wary of both Adima's reputation as well as his less than wholesome intentions. The director of one such organization, Knightsbridge International, warned U.S. Special Operations Command that Adima was up to some very shady things. One section of a written letter states that Adima is a very dangerous person by virtue of his carelessness and stupidity, and before he gets someone killed, he needs to be removed from the area.

I feel that, given the amount of time that he's been allowed to run around telling people that he works for the Pentagon or the CIA, he has garnered or brought enough contacts to pose a real threat to not only me and those near me, but the overall mission of the United States. Once he was established in Afghanistan, Adima founded a group he called Task Force Sabre 7, which included two other Americans and several Afghans. He told several journalists that he was a former member of an unspecified covert operations unit, reactivated and positioned in Afghanistan to hunt for Osama bin Laden, and that he was being armed and supported by the anti-Taliban resistance group known as the Northern Alliance.

The truth was that Adima's group was nothing but bounty hunters. They had absolutely no connection to the CIA or the US military as a whole, and the activities he engaged in were not just unauthorized, they were downright evil. At one point, at a press dinner in Kabul during December of 2001, a Stars and Stripes reporter revealed to the attendees that he was very familiar with Adima and his criminal past. Adima reportedly pulled his pistol from his holster and openly threatened to kill the reporter while dinner was being served. It then became evident that Adima was involved in illegally detaining Afghan civilians,

as in May of 2004, Adima presented coalition forces with a prisoner he claimed was closely associated with the Taliban. This prisoner was quickly transferred to U.S. officials, but upon further examination, it was discovered that the man had absolutely no links to the Taliban whatsoever. Not only that, but the man claimed that Adima had held him in a private prison, hidden away somewhere in the Afghan mountains. The prisoner described hellish conditions in which prisoners were forced to stay awake for days, as well as being subjected to routine and brutal torture techniques. Adima was said to have employed a dedicated team of Afghan torturers,

men who not only specialized in some of the most horrifying torture methods known to man, but seemed to relish in the task of inflicting terrifying amounts of pain. The prisoner claimed that one such man kept the nails and teeth that he'd ripped from his victim's fingers and mouth, and that another kept prisoners in bedchambers, violating them on a nightly basis under the guise of an advanced interrogation technique. Night after night, a demon and his men would raid compounds in the greater Kabul region. on a nightly basis under the guise of an advanced interrogation technique. Night after night, Adima and his men would raid compounds in the greater Kabul region, sometimes detaining every male who looked old enough to fight.

These men were then taken back to Adima's private prison where they were beaten, tortured, and occasionally executed. Adima didn't care who was hurt, nor how much damage his activities did to Americans' effort to win hearts and minds in the region. All he was interested in was finding people he could claim had links to the Taliban, so he could make money selling them to the Coalition or the Northern Alliance. According to one report, prisoners sometimes had their hands or feet submerged in boiling water, and in cases where fathers, sons, brothers, and cousins were arrested, they were beaten and tortured in front of each other to cause additional emotional distress. One man, who claimed to be an ex-prisoner of Adema's hellish torture chambers, claimed that the screams of the tortured were broadcast to those being held in the compound's various buildings, a method designed to break their will before they too were sent to the torture chambers. During the three years that

the prison operated, the blood and gore left by the torture victims were rarely cleaned, and infections were commonplace. Some said that during the summer months, the entire compound smelled like a slaughterhouse, and thousands of fat, black flies would infest their air around the buildings, feeding on the dead and dying alike. It's hard to imagine a more vivid vision of hell on earth than the illegal torture prison that Jonathan Edema presided over, and one of the few consolations his victims received is that the man himself ended up paying for his crimes. In July of 2004, when news of his nightmarish activities came to light, United States Central Command released a media

advisory that read, U.S. citizen Jonathan K. Adema had allegedly represented himself as an American government and or military official. The public should be aware that Adima does not represent the American government and we do not employ him. Just a day after the advisory was released, Adima and his American colleagues were arrested when Afghan police tracked down and raided his private prison. During the raid, police officers discovered eight naked prisoners hanging upside down in one of the makeshift torture chambers. They were so badly beaten and bloodied that the officers believed the men were dead. And when one of the men awoke from unconsciousness, he began screaming and thrashing, believing the men were there to subject him to additional torture. Following their arrest, Afghan officials charged Adim and his colleagues with illegally entering

the country, running a private prison, and torture. Then just a few months later, all three men were each sentenced to 10 years in Policharki prison. Ironically, Adima ended up inside the very same prison walls as some of the Taliban insurgents he had sought to capture. And once they discovered who he was and what he had done, Adima had to be protected from several different assassination plots, with his potential killers plotting extremely painful ways to kill him. Despite being sentenced to a 10-year term, Adima was released from prison in June of 2007, when the Afghan government effectively granted him an amnesty under the condition that he immediately return to the United States.

Following his return, Adima was greeted by the news that he might well be charged with war crimes by the US government. But for some reason, these charges were never brought against him. Regardless, Adima chose to leave the United States and immediately relocated to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, where he became the owner and operator of Blue Lagoon Boat Tours. He began calling himself Jack, and although it's not exactly clear how he chose to lead his life, the circumstances of his death, as well as allegations made by ex-wives, give us a good idea of how he spent his final days. Shortly before his death, former girlfriend Penny Alessi accused Adima of infecting her with HIV when he knew he had the disease. Adima was also arrested by Mexican authorities on charges of brutally beating his wife, meaning he was obviously guilty of engaging in extramarital affairs.

Some claimed that he had married nine different women while in Mexico, although only one of them was official, and at the time of his death, he was listed as having no immediate survivors. Jonathan Keith Adema died in January of 2012 as a result of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, leaving behind a legacy of deception, torture, infidelity, and death. The world might have almost forgotten what he did in Afghanistan during the early years of the 21st century, but many continue to remember them. It had been reported that a video of Adima personally engaging in the torture of Afghans was included in an al-Qaeda propaganda video that circulated in 2009,

and it's safe to assume that the images on that tape motivated many young men to engage in violence directed at American soldiers. Adima might have restricted his murderous activities to one small compound in the Afghan mountains, but his actions may have caused untold violence and hatred in the wider region, and may continue to do so for years to come. I remember the day I first noticed a dark blue Chevy sitting in the parking lot when I finished work, then seeing it in my rear view for a few miles as I drove home. Pulling into my parking space back at my apartment, I saw the same dark blue four-door idling in the street. That was the first time that I thought that it was being followed. But the thought disappeared as quickly as it came as I got out of the car and it disappeared from view. The next day,

when I saw the same car in the parking lot after work, I tried to rationalize it by telling myself that it was just some guy who started working in the same industrial park. It just so happened to finish his shift at the same time as me. If they really were following me, for sure they'd have been bumper to bumper the whole way back to my apartment, and for sure they'd have been pulled in to check which apartment I was walking into. But they didn't, because it was just a coincidence. Only it wasn't just a coincidence and I learned that when I looked up tracking techniques on some dumb website about spies. Literally everything they did was textbook stalking behavior. The next day when I finished work, I actually prayed that the car wasn't there so I wouldn't have to have the confrontation with whoever was driving it. But again, like clockwork, there it was,

sitting there on the other side of the lot, starting up its engine just as I reached my car. Like I said, I'm not one for confrontation, but I was so determined to get a straight answer that I found myself just marching over to the car almost without thinking about it. I figured the guy would just zoom out of the parking lot instead of, like, giving himself away or whatever. But he didn't. He just rolled down the driver's side window as I got close and gave me this weird friendly smile before saying exactly, can I help you? I just asked him straight up, are you following me? And I don't even know why I expected him to say anything but excuse me,

with a half-offended look on his face, but that's what he did. I've repeated the question, angrier this time, and in the most patronizing, insanity-inducing way, he asked me like, are you okay man? Bad day or something? I told him no, that I knew well that he was following me, and that's when he asked me my name. It was such an odd moment to ask something like that, and it totally gave away that he was most definitely following me for some reason. There's no other reason he'd ask me that and I didn't tell him my name. I just told him to stop following me or I'd call the cops. It makes all the sense in the world to me now why he found that so funny, but at the time, I obviously had no clue. Guy drove off not long after that and I naively

thought that I had the problem dealt with. If he really was following me, for whatever reason, maybe confronting him about it made it look like I wasn't such an easy target for whatever he was planning. But like I said, that was pure naivety on my part. A few nights later, since it was Friday, I was having a few beers since I didn't have to work in the morning. I'm just chilling, watching TV on the couch when suddenly I hear the buzzer to my apartment. I wasn't expecting anyone, so instead of just buzzing them in downstairs, I headed out to the balcony to lean over and see if anyone was down there. Only, there isn't anyone. Right away, I started getting paranoid and I figured that it might have been connected to the whole being followed thing, so I went back

inside and figured if anything weird or happened or if I spotted the guy's car, I'd just call the cops and see if there was anything they could do about it. Maybe 30 minutes later, I get another buzz at my apartment. Only this time I'm thinking, no way am I buzzing anyone in or opening my door when I'm not expecting anyone. The buzzer goes a few more times but I just ignore it and carry on with my evening. Still tense but not exactly frightened or anything. About an hour goes by, then someone starts bashing on my front door before I hear this girl's voice shout, fire, there's a fire. It might sound dumb considering all that was going on at the time, but I was a little drunk. It was a girl's voice and honestly nothing scares me more than the idea

of burning to death. I got a bad burn on my leg when I was a kid after my uncle dropped a cigarette on me and I was seriously scared of fire and burns all throughout the rest of my childhood. So obviously, I jump up, run towards the door expecting to see smoke and flames as I open up but when I step out into the walkway outside, I don't see anything like that. But what I do see is that dark blue Chevy sitting right in the middle of the street outside. It was the pure oh god moment, where I didn't know exactly what was coming, just that it was probably going to be bad. And boy was it bad. I didn't even have any shoes on, so I was in no position to actually fight back when someone rushed into view and tackle

me from the side. I hit the ground so hard it knocked the wind out of me, like I literally couldn't move as whoever it was dragged my arms onto my back and tied them with something. That gave me the strength to struggle a little, I mean the last thing I wanted was to be tied up like that but I heard someone say, try to run, not put a bullet in your spine. Adding something about spending the rest of my life in a wheelchair and going to the bathroom in a bag. The last part actually scared me. Who says that to a person? And after that, two guys dragged me up and tried to look up to see who was actually kidnapping me or whatever. Then bang,

one of the guys hits me right in the face and says, don't look at us, keep your eyes down. I was certain I was being kidnapped at that point, and they just didn't want me to be able to identify them after they'd released me for ransom or whatever. And that gave me a little hope, not much, but it was something. They dragged me downstairs, basically threw me down the last few steps towards the end, and it's honestly amazing I didn't break anything on the way down. They picked me up again, with another reminder not to look at them. Then, when I got to the dark blue Chevy, they pulled out a roll of tape and wrapped it around my eyes so I couldn't open

them. I figured they'd just take me somewhere after that, but instead, they just threw me in the back seat and stood around outside talking for a few minutes. I couldn't hear everything that they were saying exactly, not at first anyway, but I definitely heard another vehicle park close because I heard the door slam, and after that, I started hearing things like, is this our guy? And then there were about three dudes all talking it out and disagreeing if I was the right person or not. And that's about the same time I realized the situation wasn't all I thought it was. And about a minute later, the door opens and I heard a third voice asking me, what's your name kid? I tell him and he asked me if I had ID to prove it.

I told him up in my apartment and he rips the tape off my face before walking me back up to my apartment with my wrist still tied above my back he starts telling me just because he's playing the nice guy doesn't mean he won't beat me if I try to run but by that point I knew things would work themselves out when they saw my ID

and thank god they did because once this older dude said that I was who I said I was from my driver's license, he just about exploded on the guys who I figured worked with him. And it turns out, they were bounty hunters. Actual bounty hunters like that dog the bounty hunter dude on TV. One of those idiots took me for a criminal that they were looking for, spent a few days coming to the wrong conclusion, then they run an operation to detain me before returning me to the cops or whoever. Thank god their superior showed up, otherwise I might have gone even further. The boss bounty hunter ended up apologizing, promising me an

out-of-court settlement for what he called wrongful detention, and he actually showed me the guy that they were actually looking for. Unbelievably, the guy did actually look a lot like me, and as much as I felt resentful to the guys who'd manhandled me, I couldn't exactly blame them for mixing me up with that guy. I was definitely still furious at the time, and I told the guy if he didn't have the guy with the blue Chevy fired for what was definitely incompetence, not to mention being just a total a-hole, I'd most definitely see them in court for way more than just what was being offered. But then, when the check for five grand showed up in my mailbox, it came with a copy of all the paperwork filed showing that the bossman had fired blue chevy guy from his company. I was told I could have gotten way more than five grand but to be honest it was just a bonus on top of getting that idiot fired and in some ways I guess I was kind of lucky because due to the mix

up even though it was completely terrifying and a little traumatic it does feel good to get some money in the bank and And in some weird way, even though I do hope that they find that guy, as unsettling and unnerving of an experience as it was in my life, it actually New Mexico Territory, in the year 1827, Felipe Nereo Espinosa grew up to be one of the most feared killers of the Old West. His story began in February 1848, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed. Following the conclusion of the Mexican-American War, the treaty ceded New Mexico, along with the sovereignty of its Hispanic settlers,

to the United States. In the decade that followed, many Hispanic people lost their lands, as U.S. courts showed an implicit bias towards European settlers. The loss of their homelands enraged Espinosa and his younger brothers, and by his early twenties, they had become an accomplished group of violent bandits who sought revenge for the injustices their people had faced. As a result of his criminal activities, the U.S. Army was given the job of bringing the Espinosas to justice, and as a reprisal for the young bandit's defiance, his family's home was burned to the ground, and their livestock were slaughtered by U.S. soldiers.

This was undoubtedly a huge injustice, but no amount of unfair treatment can excuse Espinosa's response. Instead of targeting those who had put his home to torch, Espinosa began to wage a bloody campaign of murder and torture against innocent civilians in what is now Fremont County, Colorado. His first confirmed victim was found in May of 1863, when a settler was found murdered and mutilated in his mountain cabin. The Espinosas had raided the man's home in the middle of the night and after shooting him dead, the brothers set about making a gory example of him. They hacked the heart out of his lifeless body, then painted the walls of his cabin

with his blood. Before they departed, they left a note stating who was responsible and that their bloody campaign of rampage had only just begun. As his reign of terror continued, Espinosa wrote a letter to Colorado Governor John Evans declaring that he and his brothers would kill 600 settlers unless their homelands were returned to them. If the governor refused, he too would be targeted for assassination. The threat was taken so seriously that hundreds of bounty hunters and lawmen were charged with tracking down Espinosa, but the bandit king of Colorado was skilled at concealing his movements. Even during the closest of calls, Espinosa always

seemed to slip through the net, escaping into the mountains where he would bide his time before relaunching his offensive. As the authorities grew more and more desperate, they began to turn to less conventional means bringing in the Espinosas. Yet contrary to the protests of many high-ranking members of state law enforcement, the solution of Colorado's bandit problem was a man that some considered to be just as villainous. The son of Irish immigrant parents, Thomas Tate Tobin, was a reclusive antisocial mountain man who spent his life hunting, trapping, and drinking. He too had a somewhat flexible relationship with the law and preferred life on America's frontiers,

places where it was almost impossible to hold him accountable for his indiscretions. Tobin spent almost every moment of his life outdoors, and was more at home in the wilderness than he was among civilization. Rumor has it that he learned to track game by hunting with Native Americans, that he could read the land like no other, and these were the exact skills that the governorship of Colorado required to hunt down their most dangerous criminal. Tobin was no friend of the U.S. government and generally only worked for the highest of fees, but when asked to track down Felipe Espinosa, Tobin told the authorities that he didn't want the entire bounty. This confused many lawmen, but those who knew Tobin understood that hunting such a worthy opponent would be reward enough for the blood-drunk mountain man. When Tobin arrived in Fremont County,

Governor Evans provided him with supplies, weapons, and a detachment of 15 soldiers to aid him in his efforts. At first, Tobin rode with the soldiers but mainly used them as a means of carrying his supplies. But when it came to actually tracking down Espinosa and his campsites, Tobin rode with the soldiers but mainly used them as a means of carrying his supplies. But when it came to actually tracking down Espinosa and his campsites, Tobin rode alone. Not only was he far better at tracking than they were, but they made far too much noise on the trail to be an effective hunting party. Some resented the fact that Tobin treated them like childish amateurs, while others were only too happy to stay behind in camp while the booze-soaked savage went out alone. Some said Tobin would never make it, that he'd end up just another victim of Colorado's most vicious killer. But in reality, Tobin's employ marked the end of Espinosa's reign of terror.

It took weeks of solid hunting and tracking, but eventually, while out riding alone near La Veta Pass, west of present-day Walsenburg, Tobin caught the scent of cooked food on the evening breeze. Espinosa usually stuck to making what were known as cold camps, campsites with no fires to emit light or smoke, both of which would give away his position to those that hunted him. But on the night in question, Espinosa believed he was safe. No one had been able to track him for so long before. No one man had been able to follow him so deep into the maze of mountain pines. And so, for the first time in weeks, he and his nephew started a small fire to cook fresh meat on. Espinosa felt safe, he felt secure, but he was wrong to feel such a sense of invulnerability, and it made him and his nephew all the more susceptible to the ambush that they were about to be subjected to. Upon smelling the campfire, Tobin dismounted, hitching his horse to a tree a few hundred meters away. Slowly but surely, the Irishman crept through the pines, his rifle firmly in his grip.

A few minutes later, he heard voices coming through the trees, the telltale lilt of spoken Spanish confirming he'd trapped his quarry. Tobin kept low, the fringe of his buckskin disguising his shape as he approached, and as he edged closer, he made out the figure of Espinosa and his nephew. Tobin crept a little further through the trees, raising his rifle as he closed in on him. Yet, right at the moment of truth, the grizzled old mountain man made a single, near-fatal mistake. He stepped on a dry twig. The sound drew Espinosa's attention, and in an instant, he realized he was in trouble.

Without knowing quite where the threat was coming from, Espinosa lunged for his Colt revolver, but before he could reach it, Tobin put a bullet into him and sent him tumbling into his own campfire. As Espinosa struggled to keep his clothes from igniting, he screamed for his nephew to flee the camp. But as the young boy did so, Tobin reloaded his rifle, took aim, and sent a bullet tearing through the boy's spine. Espinosa let out a scream of grief as he watched his nephew fall. But as he tried to get a grip on his gun, Tobin rushed in to secure his prey, slamming a boot down on Espinosa's hand before he could arm himself. According to Tobin's testimony, Espinosa offered him thousands of dollars to let him go,

claiming he had a huge stash of gold and dollar bills hidden somewhere in the mountains. But money was never something that swayed Thomas Tobin. The thrill of the hunt and the satisfaction of the kill were the only currencies he abided by. Espinosa begged for his life as Tobin pulled out his bowie knife, his pleas becoming his final utterances as Tobin plunged his knife into his throat, slicing and hacking until the bandit's head came free of his body. Tobin then rode back to the US Army camp from which he'd been dispatched, and reported in to the commanding officer who enlisted him. When asked how he fared on his hunt for Espinosa, Tobin simply held up a burlap sack, replied,

so-so, then emptied the two severed heads it contained onto the floor of the officer's tent. The officer was said to be horrified, jumping back and crying out in alarm as the two bloodied heads rolled across the ground towards him. But a deal was a deal, and Tobin's payment was due. As previously stated, Tobin neglected to collect the full bounty that had been promised for the capture of killing Felipe Espinosa, instead opting for a brand new Henry repeating rifle, an item far more valuable to him than mere wealth. Surprisingly, Tobin outlived his blood-soaked career as a bounty hunter and lived to the ripe old age of 81. He was survived by his wife Maria Bernal and their daughter Pascualita.

Depending on who you ask, Tobin is seen as a titan of the old west, a mountain man of yore who embodied the American pioneer spirit of justice and adventure. But to others, Tobin was naught but a violent drunkard, who shirked his duties to his country in favor of hunting his fellow man. The End Born in the year 1690 in Western Ireland's County Mayo, the story of John O'Maloney began in his late teens when he was arrested for stealing a horse. He was taken to a place called Castlebar where a grand jury sentenced him to hang for his crimes. Yet just days before he was due to be executed, John was offered a second chance. The only catch was that he would be charged with a truly

despicable undertaking, one that no civilized Irishman would engage in, no matter how much money was being offered. So to save his own life, John became a hunter, only instead of hunting animals, John would be hunting people. Those he hunted grew to be deathly terrified of John, and would come to give him the nickname of Sean Nossagar, roughly translating to John the Priest Hunter. You see, the Ireland John grew up in was very different to the one that exists today. The country was under complete control of the English crown, and the oppression of native Catholics was far more extreme than in the years that followed. In the year 1709, the so-called Penal Act demanded that every Catholic priest in the British Isles take what was known as the Oath of Abjuration, a verbal declaration

of faith which recognized the Protestant Queen Anne as supreme head of the church. Any cleric that refused to do so was sentenced to bloody and violent death by the English courts. For the most part, Catholic priests either willingly took the oath and continued to practice their faith in secret, or openly refused and became martyrs for their cause. However, there were some who refused to face the judgment of the English courts, opting instead to go into hiding, and it was these priests, along with their secretly practicing kin, who John Omoloni was tasked with hunting. Given that Omoloni was already a fairly talented criminal, he was able to pour his sinister expertise into his newfound profession.

It also helped that Omoloni was paid handsomely for his work, receiving 100 pounds for the capture of an archbishop or bishop, 20 pounds for a priest, and 5 pounds for a priest in training. His captives were then bound, gagged, and ridden to the nearest courthouse, where upon their arrival, they would be charged with taking the oath of abjuration. If they refused, they would be tried, convicted, and swiftly executed. Naturally, O'Maloney was despised for his actions, not just for how depraved they were, but also because of how proficient he was at catching errant members of the Catholic clergy.

In one instance, O'Maloney had been tracking one particularly wily priest for weeks and saw a local funeral as an opportunity to finally pin him down. O'Maloney also knew that the priest would try and disguise himself as an innocent villager, not daring to wear anything that would give him away as a clergyman. The story goes that O'Maloney hid among the congregation, studying every man present for signs of higher status. He looked for jewelry, those of particularly pale complexion or those who whispered Latin phrases under breath, but none of the men attracted any major suspicion. It was then that O'Maloney noticed something

about one of the black-clad women at the funeral, how she seemed to walk differently than the others, how her stature was larger, and how at no point did she breathe a word during any of the psalms or hymns. She seemed to be far more masculine than any other woman present, and suddenly, Omoloni realized he wasn't looking at a woman at all. When the funeral concluded, he followed the figure until they were separated from the larger crowd. Then, despite the fox protests of those present, Omoloni tore off the so-called woman's headwear,

revealing the very male priest he'd been hunting for for the better part of a month. In another instance, a priest heard that a member of his congregation was on death's door, and desperately required a final confession and the last rites, lest they be damned to an eternity in hell. Never one to neglect their duties, or the needs of their congregation, the priest agreed to travel in secret to the dying man's home, shrouded by the dead of night. Welcoming to the man's home by a seemingly grieving, soon-to-be widow, the priest entered the man's dark, barely-lit bedchambers to find him bundled up in white linen, attempting in vain to keep the biting cold at bay. The priest approached the dying member of the congregation who began to weakly whisper his final confession. The priest kneeled by his side, gently asking the man to

raise his voice so that his sins could be heard and fully absolved. Then, right when the priest had completely let his guard down, the man shot up from his bed, reached under a pillow, and plunged a well-hidden knife into the priest's throat. The man was no dying Catholic in need of the last rites. It was a well-disguised John O'Millaney, having laid the perfect trap to catch and kill such a cautious clergyman. More than any other, it was this murder in particular which outraged the oppressed Catholics of rural Ireland. To hunt a man using wits alone was one thing, but to use a priest's sense of duty against him was more than they could bear. Ironically, it took a trap to catch a trapper, and when word was artificially spread that

a priest was practicing Catholicism in the open, Omoloni showed up like clockwork. But when the priest hunter closed in for the kill, his prey proved to be no mere clergyman, and was far more skilled in combat than any of Omoloni's previous foes. As the man held off the priest hunter in mortal combat, a handful of well-placed assassins closed in for the kill, with one managing to get near enough to Omoloni to stab him to death with a steel dagger. When the priest hunter hit the ground before his attackers, it was as if Satan himself had fallen before his foes. They stabbed him, beat him, kicked him, spat on him, until what remained was barely recognizable as human. Some say that when the corpse collectors arrived to take away Omoloni's body,

they needed a shovel to scrape him off the ground. When all was said and done, the man they called Shan Nasagar was taken to the graveyard at Balintubber Abbey before being dumped into a freshly excavated grave. Some suggested that his final indignity should be to lie unmarked, lost to a world he had treated so diabolically. But the local populace had already plotted their ultimate revenge. You see, Ballintubber is Catholic land, and even though the abbey there was abandoned at the time of Omoloni's death, it was still deeply sacred to the surrounding villagers. Nothing would infuriate and humiliate the priest hunter

more than having him resting on Catholic ground. And unlike the many other graves in the cemetery, his would be more like a trophy. A trophy of an oppressor laid low by the oppression. A trophy of the ongoing defiance of proud Irishmen and women. For though the English may take their lives, they could never take their dignity. I'm a 44- old woman with three kids and some nights I just want to get out of the house and spend time with my girlfriends, away from my husband and away from the responsibilities that come with being a stay-at-home mom. So once a month my girls and I go out to our favorite bar

in Orlando and try to have as much fun as we can without any of our kids or husbands getting in the way. It usually consists of ordering a few too many drinks and stumbling back into the house to an angry husband who's tried calling me throughout the night because he isn't used to handling the kids alone. This night was different. It was the beginning of the most miserable period in my life that lasted months. In retrospect, the steps I took to get to that point were not the smartest, but I didn't deserve the nightmare that came from it. It was a random Friday night and my friends had all decided that tonight would be our monthly get-together. I told my husband and he was of course annoyed that I'd be leaving him alone with the kids again, but I really didn't care at that point. Marriage is a partnership and

it had started to feel like a business transaction between the two of us. He made the money and I took care of the kids and the house. And frankly, I was kind of sick of it. And I was sick of him. I considered filing for divorce and taking the kids but I had no formal education outside of high school and there was no way I'd be able to support myself. My friend Julie texted me that she was outside and I hopped in her car and we were off. We picked up the rest of the girls along the way and made our way to the bar. When we got there it was way more crowded than usual. Apparently that night a big soccer match was on and we had to sit through all the cheers and screaming. The night was not looking like it would be very fun.

We ordered a few drinks and were gossiping like we usually do when a server came up to us and handed me a drink while pointing at a man at the bar and said the drink was from him along with a note. The note read, enjoy yourself, you look so defeated, wanna talk? There was a little winky face at the end and I should have listened to my gut and just said thank you and left it at that. But I enjoyed the intention he was giving me. It was the kind of attention I no longer got from my husband and it made me feel special. I showed my friends the note and they told me to go for it. They knew what I had been going through at home and I'm sure they just wanted me to feel good about myself since I hadn't for so long. I slowly made my way over to the man and took a

seat next to him. The first thing I noticed was the overwhelming smell of cologne coming from his body. I don't really like it but chose to ignore it for the sake of the opportunity I had right in front of me. Now, to be clear, I wasn't planning on cheating on my husband, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to just flirt a little. For all I knew, I'd never see or hear from this man ever again. He was tan and muscular, but not as tall as I would have liked. But at the moment, I didn't care. He liked me and that's all that mattered. He made some slight jokes at how sad I looked when I should be happy and having fun out with friends and he bought me a few more drinks. Over the next couple of hours,

my drunk self stupidly decided it would be a good idea to confide in a man I knew nothing about. I told him everything, how my marriage was failing and how miserable I was, but he listened. After my ranting, he told me he had to go. He gave me a really big hug and asked for my number, which I happily gave to him. I stumbled back over to my friends who told me that they were ready to go, and frankly so was I. Julie drove us all home and I was met once again with an angry husband like usual but I just laid down on the sofa and fell asleep not wanting to hear him lecture me like he does every month. The next morning I got a text from the man at the bar. He said his name was Chris and

asked when he could see me again. I immediately regretted the conversation I had with him and told him that there's no way we could see each other again and that I was married. He responds by saying, are you sure? Would your husband like to know about our little conversation we had last night? Rethink your answer and let me know if you change your mind. I was frozen in shock. Was this guy really trying to blackmail me into seeing him again? I texted him back saying I had no idea what he was talking about and to leave me alone, and I just blocked him immediately. Seconds later I got another notification.

It was a text from a different number with my full name and address along with a message, would your husband like to know why you smell like another man? I was confused, but then I remembered the cologne smell that emanated from him and the big hug he had given me at the end of the night. I didn't know what to do, so I texted him back asking him what it was that he wanted, and he said if I wired him $3,000, I would never hear from him again and my husband would never know I wanted the divorce and custody of the children. To say I was terrified was an understatement. I considered going to the police but that would mean having to tell my husband about the text

messages and there's no way he could know about what I had told Chris at the bar. I agreed and wired him the money hoping that it would be the last time I ever heard of him. But the texts and calls didn't stop. For the next three months, he requested more and more from me, and when I refused, we would get knocks on the door while we were sleeping, and I constantly felt like I was being watched. I became paranoid and began to think every car behind me was Chris following me wherever I went. I lived my life in fear and was ten times more miserable than I had ever been in my life. And finally I couldn't take it anymore. I confided in my husband,

who read the text messages. He was sad and angry, but he told me to go with the police before he discussed anything further. The police said that they would keep a car outside of our house to try to catch the person stalking us, but no one did ever show up. The second I filed a report, the text messages stopped and calls stopped and I hadn't heard from Chris since. But sadly, the nightmare never ended and my husband ended up divorcing me and taking the kids. Cause apparently making deals with your stalker doesn't look good in custody court. I get to see them on weekends but I do miss the life that I hated for so long. Ladies, take it from me. Don't reveal all your deepest, darkest secrets to a random man at the bar.

And you may think that something like this could never happen to you, but who knows just how many Chris's are out there, waiting for vulnerable women to take advantage of. This happened back in 2015 in my hometown, Ventura, California. It's a relatively small beach town about an hour north of Los Angeles. I grew up here and as the years have gone by, the crime has gotten worse and the comfortability factor has decreased while the homelessness population has skyrocketed. For reference, I'm 22 and a relatively small-statured woman with a very petite frame. My 8-year-old brother could pick me up if he wanted to, and I'm commonly mistaken as somewhere around 15 or 16, but to be completely honest, that usually works in my favor to ward off the creepy guys who are actually deterred by the thought of pursuing a minor.

The gross part is when the young age actually doesn't turn off a guy. I worked at a bar in the downtown area of my city and really liked my job. I mainly just picked up empty glasses and wiped down the tables between customers, so I didn't have much contact with whoever came in. Every now and then a drunk guy would try to hit on me, but they would usually give up when they realized I had zero interest or paid them no attention. We'd have our occasional bar fights when people got too drunk to handle a bad joke or women got into those cat fights with their so-called friends. But nothing could have prepared me for what happened that night. It's something I'll never forget and is the reason I'll never work in a bar ever again.

This specific night was my first time working the late shift. I came in at around 8pm and everything was pretty normal for most of the night. This is until about 2am when a man came in dressed in torn up clothing, already reeking of alcohol. Usually the bar won't serve a man who's already drunk, but our bartender was new and he felt bad for the guy, we all did. He looked completely disheveled and we could tell that there was about a 99% chance that he was homeless. He was probably around 40 years old so when he ordered a drink no one asked for an ID.

For the next hour or so I could feel the man's eyes on me, and I mean I really could feel them. Whenever I was out in the bar he would stare at me. He wasn't even deterred by me looking straight at him. From the moment I stepped foot in the bar to the moment I re-entered the kitchen, his eyes were on me. I got the feeling that he probably stared at the door waiting for me to come out for as long as I was in the back. I had noticed he had around four or five empty glasses sitting next to him, so I walked over to collect them. That's when he very roughly grabbed my wrist and asked in a deep, raspy voice,

How old are you, honey? I was caught off guard as no one had ever actually put their hands on me while I was working before. I didn't feel like dealing with a drunk man asking me questions, so I quickly replied as I walked away. Old enough to be working here. He didn't seem to like that answer. He yelled after me in a very harsh tone while standing up out of his chair. That isn't an answer. Tell me now. The last part of what he said, he yelled so loudly it actually stopped me in my tracks and had me kind of scared.

I looked at the bartender with wide eyes hoping that he would see my fear and get this guy out of the bar as quickly as possible. Now our bartender was not a small guy, he was probably around 6'5 and went to the gym religiously, so when he saw the genuine terror on my face it seemed like it only took him seconds to get around the bar and escort this man out. The rest of the night went by normally and was so uneventful I almost forgot about the creepy strange man from earlier. Almost. My shift ended at 4am and at that point I was completely exhausted. It was still in the back of my head what happened a couple of hours before,

but it had never occurred to me this same man would be waiting for me outside of the bar a whole two hours later. But he was. I stepped out of our building into the darkness of the night and began walking down the street toward the bus stop. I was too poor to afford a car, and I don't mind taking the bus since I only lived about 10 minutes away and the bus was cheap. I noticed a man following me as I got closer to the bus stop, but he never got too close for me to make out his face or what he really looked like at all, so I thought nothing of it. I wasn't too worried about it as there was still a good distance between us and I'd be getting on the bus soon anyways. Except I wasn't. When I

reached the bus stop, the words that almost made me pee my pants read, bus hours, 6.30am to 8pm. See, it had never occurred to me that the bus wouldn't be running by the time I got off of work since I usually got off around 7pm. I guess I was just excited for more hours and better pay that I completely forgot to account for transportation at such a weird time. I didn't live too far from the bar, probably only a 15 minute walk, but I also didn't usually have a creepy man following me home. I stood at the bus stop and took a deep breath deciding to call my roommate to pick me up, praying that he would answer my call even at four in the morning.

It rang and rang and he never picked up. I gathered myself and started walking in the direction of my apartment, fully expecting the guy who had previously been following me to have given up by then. But he didn't. For every step I took, he would take two, and the large gap we had once had between us became only around 10 to 15 feet. I was completely panicking. I picked up the pace to try to get further away from him, but that only made him walk faster behind me.

By the time I had turned the corner onto the street of my apartment, I was in an all-out sprint trying to outrun this guy. I had my keys in my hand, ready to unlock the door and get inside as soon as possible. I ran up the stairs to the second floor and could hear his footsteps pounding up the steps not too far behind me. I shoved my keys in the lock so fast and within seconds, I was in my apartment and locked the door. I was completely out of breath and in pure shock at what I was going through. I heard a loud thud as my door vibrated from what I quickly realized was the impact of the man charging at my door. After around five minutes of silence, which felt like

forever, I decided to look through the peephole to see if he was still there. Then I let out a scream of terror, when who I saw was the man who grabbed me earlier in the bar, standing still in front of the door, staring straight at the peephole, staring at me. He had this scary smirk on his face as he stood there making no sound at all. I ran to my roommate's room to wake him up to maybe deal with the guy or even just so I didn't have to be alone. But when I opened his door he wasn't there. I sunk to the floor in defeat and started to cry and shake from all the emotions that I was feeling in that moment. And that's when I began to hear a scratching sound coming from the door that lasted

for what seemed like hours. I reached into my bag to grab my phone to call the police but it wasn't there and my heart sank again when I realized that it must have fallen out while I was running for my life away from that obviously insane man. I've never wanted a landline so much as in that moment in my life. At this point there was nothing anyone could have done. I was not moving from that spot until my roommate came back and I knew he was gone. Sometime during the morning I must have fallen asleep because I was woken up by my roommate shaking me awake asking me what happened and why I was sleeping on the floor. I explained to him what happened and when I was finished he looked at me with wide eyes

and told me that there was something on the door I needed to see. Carved into the door's wood with what I assumed was a knife was something that still scares me to this day. O-P-E-N. Open. We called the police, but they said there wasn't much they could do because there was no way of knowing his identity and a basic description of a homeless man wasn't enough and that we should just move if we were that worried about it. It was insane how incredibly unhelpful they were.

I never did find my phone and I quit my job at the bar that same day. They obviously are aware of his likeness and I hope they would know to call the police if they see him again. And I've never been back. I've since moved out of that apartment and now just work from home so I never have to experience an insanely terrifying night like that ever again. To be continued... My girlfriend and I had just gotten engaged and we wanted to take a short road trip to celebrate. It was something we'd been talking about doing for a while, but with work and trying to find somewhere to house our pets during the short trip, we just never really got around to actually doing it.

Finally, during spring of 2019, we made the plans and figured we'd drive from Southern California, where we lived, to Western Montana. My mom and dad moved to Montana after retiring, so we figured it would be the perfect place to drive to since they'd been begging us to visit for a while. We mapped out our drive and decided on the more scenic route up the 101 North. Then eventually passed through Oregon, Washington, and Idaho to get to Montana. What we weren't expecting was to not even make it halfway, after the fright of our lives. The night before we left, we spent packing and talking about how excited we were to actually be getting on vacation. We decided to leave pretty early the next morning to try and get as far as possible since driving during the night wasn't something either of us wanted to do.

We packed our car with our bags then first headed to drop off our dogs at our friend's house. We made sure to tell multiple close friends and family members where we were going and how exactly we were getting there, just in case something were to happen. We weren't planning for such an event, but you hear stories all the time about people who could have been saved had they just told people where they were going to be or how long they were going to be gone. We were not going to be those people. At the time I was 29, I'm 6'4 and I pretty regularly attend the gym. I'm not a small guy by any means, and my fiancé on the other hand was 23, tiny and just under 5 feet. Safe to say that if either of us needed protecting, it would have been her. She always said having me around made her feel safer in a world where vulnerable people

are preyed upon. After dropping our dogs off at our friend's house, we started the long drive up to Montana. We made some casual stops along the way, first in a small city only about an hour into the trip called Camarillo. We got some snacks and drinks at the grocery store, then hopped back into the car and we were on our way. The drive along the California coastline is one I recommend to everyone. It's absolutely gorgeous. My fiancé kept begging me to pull over to get pictures, so we weren't exactly making it as far as we had originally planned for our first day driving. What should have taken us about six hours to get to San Jose had eventually taken ten.

We got off the freeway in San Jose and the sun was starting to set. I was tired and I knew my fiancé absolutely did not want to drive, so we settled on finding a place to eat and looking for a hotel. We drove by a sports bar and both agreed this would be a fine enough place to eat considering we were both tired and eager to get out of the car and eat real food, not just chips and soda. We pulled into the parking lot and the first thing I noticed was a large pickup truck parked right out front. Only a few other cars were in the parking lot but we took that as a good sign, thinking the place would have been packed and we'd be able to get our food faster. We hopped out of the car and quickly locked it behind us before we walked inside.

I quickly realized this wasn't your typical fun-loving football night sports bar. This was a locals only spot. From the second we walked in, it felt like every pair of eyes in the building were on us. And not just because new people had just walked in, but because outsiders had just walked in. It had the same vibe as we had just walked in on a major drug deal. The bar itself wasn't too nice either. You know the saying, never judge a book by its cover? Yeah, well think of that but backwards. The outside said fun and inviting atmosphere within, but the inside said clutch your purse and don't look anyone in the eyes or else. We sat down in the far corner of the bar and checked out the very short menu that we picked up off the counter on the way in.

It consisted of nachos and hot dogs and to be honest we both had started to feel our appetites disappearing by the second. We were sitting directly next to a window where we could see our car parked right across the lot. Two of the men that were hanging out in the bar began whispering while occasionally glancing in our direction. I couldn't push away the uneasy feeling in my stomach telling me to get out of there as soon as possible. And just when I was about to tell my fiancé that I wanted to leave, the two men I had mentioned earlier walked out of the bar. I started to feel a little bit better, but I still really wanted to leave and I could

tell by the look on my fiancé's face that they did too. I shook my head in a way that said let's go. When she looked at me with this look I'll never forget and motioned to look out of the window. I looked outside and saw the same two men grabbing a bat and crowbar from the trunk of the large pickup truck, then headed towards our car and began looking inside. I quickly whispered to my fiance to come with me to the bathroom immediately. She never questioned me once and did exactly what I told her, which in this situation was a huge relief. We get in the bathroom and lock the door behind us looking for any window we could make our

escape through. We opened stall after stall and there was nothing we could make our escape through. We opened stall after stall and there was nothing we could find and we started thinking that there'd be no way out. But the last stall all the way at the end of the corner actually had a tiny window placed just above the toilet. The only problem was there was no way I was going to fit. And I made the quickest plan in my head and it was really the only option we had. I gave my fiancé the keys to the car and told her to climb out of the window, but only approached the car once she noticed the guys were distracted or had gone inside.

I told her the second she got in the car, start it, then meet me at the back entrance, which was only a few feet from the bathroom door we had just entered. In retrospect, we should have just gone out the back entrance to begin with, but I was a little distracted at the time. She slipped through the window and just as she was turning the corner into the lot, she saw the guys go back inside the bar. I slightly opened the bathroom door and saw the guys questioning the other people in the bar. And the next weird part was nobody was even fazed by these two men with a bat in a crowbar standing directly next to them. Like this was some regular occurrence or something.

Suddenly a person that they were talking to pointed directly at the bathroom door. I knew they saw me when they started running towards me, weapons raised and shouting at me to stay right where I was. But I was in fight or flight mode, and I chose flight. I opened the door as fast as I could and was on the back exit within seconds. Thankfully my fiancé was there in the car waiting for me and let me tell you, I never jumped in a car that fast in my life. She started speeding away before the door was even shut. The men had just gotten outside when we were pulling out of the parking lot, and their shouts were drowned out by the distance growing between us.

The whole situation was just so incredibly fast, bizarre, and traumatizing. My fiancé and I actually just turned around and drove all the way back home. We felt we were safer in our own hometown than on the road for another two days, paranoid that something like this would happen again. And all I can say is that if you're ever in an area that you don't know, maybe be a little bit more cautious than we were that night. Before I really get into it, I want all of you who are about to hear my story to know that I'm a decent man. I care for and about other people, but we all get down on our luck sometimes. When this took place, I was a single father and on the verge of losing my home.

My wife died of cancer and my two children really needed me to be that strong, stable parent that they knew would never leave them and always take care of them. When my wife passed, I dove head first into a horrible, depressed episode. I stopped eating and didn't even bother going into work. This of course resulted in me being fired and at one point or another, Child Protective Services was called and the threat of having my children taken away was very serious and absolutely terrifying. I knew my wife would have been so disappointed in me and frankly, I was disappointed in myself. After losing my job, the money I had saved began to drain, very quickly. By my fourth month of unemployment, I found myself shoplifting bread and lunch meat from the store

just so I could feed my children and make ends meet. I had stopped making payments on the house and the bank told me that they were going to foreclose if I didn't pay up within a month. I tried getting my job back, but they pretty much wanted nothing to do with me. Finding a job was hard in those days too. It was around 2009 and I looked everywhere. On top of possibly losing my house, I had CPS telling me that without a job and without a home, my children would be taken away and placed with people who could house and care for them properly seeing as I would be considered an unfit parent. I was not about to let anyone take my children from me, so I did what any desperate man would

do to keep his children. I robbed a couple bars. I know that sounds insane, but at the time I figured I had nothing left to lose with the threat of losing my children looming over me at all times. I had to do something. I made a plan to go into this upscale bar only a couple of cities away and get whatever money I could. I knew that there would be threats involved coming from my end but I never planned to intentionally hurt anyone in the process. The day finally came. It was the middle of summer around

noon when I figured not too many people would be in the bar. I had a knife on me and brought a duffel bag to put in whatever money I managed to get. I parked my minivan directly outside the double doors of the small building and entered quickly. I brandished my knife and screamed at everyone to get down and stay calm. And the screams were immediate. I could see the terror on these people's faces. But the worst part about this whole ordeal was I hadn't realized this wasn't just a bar. It was a restaurant too. And my original plan to

rob a place I knew no children would be present suddenly turned into traumatizing the multiple children I had no idea would even be there. And perhaps in my haste I overlooked the whole researching aspect that I know probably goes along with planning out a robbery, but the place had a bar in the name so I figured it was what it was called and in the moment I couldn't let the small detail bother me. I came in with a purpose and I wasn't leaving without the money I needed. I instructed everyone to take out their wallets and put whatever cash they had on the tables closest to them as well as any watches or jewelry of substantial value.

I rushed to the register and threatened the worker to open it or I would have to hurt someone in the room. She did as she was told and I pulled out whatever money was within. I collected all the loose money and valuables from the tables and quickly exited the bar without a single person trying to stop me at all. It was exhilarating. The only issue was, after counting the money and pawning the jewelry, I only made out with around $3,000. And that just wasn't enough.

I eventually saw this on the news, and the story broke about a robber, but no one ever came to my door and arrested me, so... I figured over time, maybe I was clear. And I knew I had to do it again. This time I deliberately researched the next bar I'd be hitting and made absolutely sure that there'd be no children. The bar was about an hour away and not so upscale. I parked my car with my supplies and headed out while the kids were at school. It was around one in the afternoon when I entered the bar in a ski mask with a knife in hand. I honestly thought this time it would go just as smooth as the last but of course nothing ever does.

The first thing I noticed was the rough crowd in the place. Large men who looked like bikers and women who had clearly been through it in their lives. I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared. I knew there was no backing out at this point. I went up to the register and the worker didn't hesitate to give me the money inside. That's when I felt it. This sharp pain in my side began to burn with each small step backwards I took. I looked down and saw a knife sticking into my stomach with a man grinning next to me, still holding the handle of the blade,

clearly proud of himself for what he had just done. Instinct told me to pull it out, and when I did, the blood started gushing. I knew if I didn't get out of there, these men would kill me. I quickly began making my way to the front door, but was being pushed and pulled along the way. I remember swinging my knife at these people, but I never thought I'd actually made contact with anyone. was being pushed and pulled along the way. I remember swinging my knife at these people, but I never thought I'd actually made contact with anyone.

I was able to make it out and into my van with the stab wound being my only injury. I knew that I couldn't go to the hospital, though otherwise the police would know I was the one trying to rob that bar. I pulled up to a drugstore and got bandages and rubbing alcohol to clean and hopefully seal the wound to stop it from bleeding. The pain was incredible and I thought I was going to pass out a few times but I pushed through it. For the next month I could barely walk without any pain but I was able to keep my children and finally find a job soon after. I was grateful that the stab wound didn't end up being serious. I did end up finding out that I had stabbed someone in that bar during the scramble to get out of there. It was a man with kids of his own, but he thankfully recovered okay.

I felt horrible about it at the time and still do to this day. My kids are grown now with their own families and I don't recommend anyone go down the route that I did. But it felt like my only option at the time. I knew this whole story makes me seem like a terrible person, but ask yourself, what would you do to keep your children? Desperation makes you do crazy things, and I would do it again relatively laid back guy. I mind my own business and I've never really been interested in socializing too much. I like my privacy and keeping to myself has always seemed to work out just fine in my life. But I really, and I mean really, wanted to see the Grand Canyon.

Ever since I was a little kid I wanted to go so bad. But keeping to myself for so long also meant that I didn't have many friends. And the friends I did have weren't at all interested in a road trip to the Grand Canyon. So I decided to go by myself. Only I took a plane instead. Road trips are only really fun when you're with another person. And this was just over a year ago and at the time I honestly had never even thought of telling anyone that I was even leaving. I touched down in Flagstaff and I was just so excited.

I picked up my rental car and made my way to my hotel. My plan was to spend a day or two just hanging out in the city then spend a few days during the weekend exploring the Grand Canyon. By the time I checked into the hotel and got to my room, it was only around 3pm. I watched TV for a few hours but decided I wanted to go out and see what the city had to offer. I was alone so the initial awkwardness I felt was pretty intense. I just kept telling myself to get out of my comfort zone and just try to have a good time. When I stepped into the lobby, I noticed the woman who checked me in hours before was just leaving. She was around my age, so I figured she should know of the places to go that might be fun.

I walked up to her and she was really nice and offered to show me around the city and maybe even take me to a few of the local bars that she thought were worth going to. I was totally down and she seemed nice enough. The first bar we went to was fun. It had a more nightclub vibe but I was into it. After a few drinks I started to loosen up and actually enjoy the time that I was having with this really cool girl. We went to another bar only around a couple of hours after that and that's when the night started to go downhill. We walked inside and immediately the girl I was with started acting differently. She grabbed onto my arm and kept rubbing herself up against me.

I was pretty drunk at that point and I thought she was too. Maybe that she was even a little into me. She pulled me towards the table and we ordered more drinks. She was laughing at all my jokes and let me tell you, it was a total ego boost and I started to really like this girl. That's when I saw this big guy and his friends walking straight towards us. He immediately grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and loudly asked where I got off touching his girl like that. I was pretty drunk at that point and very confused. I must have sounded like a

complete idiot trying to explain to him the situation. He kept asking the same question over and over again until I finally felt myself being dragged across the bar and then outside. There was an alley beside the bar where I was shoved to the ground. The guy and his friends proceeded to kick me in the ribs more times than I can count, especially in the state I was already in. After a few swift punches to the face and a few broken teeth later, he told me to never talk to his girlfriend again, and if I did, there would be further consequences. He spit in my face, and I laid there until I blacked out soon after.

I woke up the next morning in the same alley in agonizing pain. I could only remember bits and pieces of the night before, but I did distinctly remember what the hotel girl had put me through. She used me to make her boyfriend jealous, and clearly didn't care at all about what would happen to me in the process. I picked myself up off the ground and ordered an Uber back to my hotel. After what had happened the night before, I figured it would be best to switch hotels. I didn't want another run-in with the guy who had just beat me senseless.

I took a shower, packed my bags, and hobbled out to my car while wincing in pain from my injuries. I got out of there as quickly as possible and I made it to my new hotel and I remember sighing in relief that I'd never have to see those people again. I check in and when I got to my room I basically passed out from pure exhaustion. Throughout the night I could have sworn I heard light knocks on the hotel room door but I chalked it up to possibly hearing knocks from down the hall. The door handle would also jiggle here and there but I again made excuses for it. But I assume it was just housekeeping, right? This continued for the next couple of days and

nights that I spent resting in my room. There was one morning where I woke up and somehow the door was slightly opened and only caught by the security chain. That freaked me out quite a bit, but again I just thought it must have been housekeeping trying to get in during the night to clean. I woke up at 8am Saturday morning and was super excited to finally see the Grand Canyon in person after wanting to for so long. There was still a faint taste of blood in my mouth, but I had finally started feeling better, and the pain had begun to subside, so I figured it was now or never. I got dressed, carefully put sunscreen over my massive throbbing bruises, and made my way out of the hotel and into the parking lot toward my car.

Except in the parking lot where my car should have been, was instead a mangled mess of metal that was once the rental car I had just parked there a couple of days before. All the windows were smashed, the headlights broken, and the doors and windshield looked like they had been beaten with crowbars or sledgehammers or something. I was shocked and scared and I didn't know what to do. I ended up calling the police and filing a report and nothing came of it. The girl at the hotel denied everything and even claimed to not be in a relationship with anyone at all. Thankfully, I had an insurance plan for the rental car so the damage was covered, but I did have to fork over around six grand to fix my teeth. I spent that one day

at the Grand Canyon Tourist Center because I knew I couldn't afford to come back anytime soon. And to be completely honest, I didn't really want to come back. I was terrified of that place. It really sucked how the one time I tried to break out of my shell, it ended in disaster and disappointment. My only advice for people who romanticize traveling alone, don't. A little bit of background about me so you can understand where I'm coming from when I tell you I resorted to bar hopping to find love. I was born and raised in a small town in Kansas that I was dying to get away from since pretty much the moment I was able and raised in a small town in Kansas that I was dying to get away from since pretty much the moment I was able to speak.

There was never anything to do and the boys there never really liked me. I haven't ever been conventionally pretty or even attractive in any way that got a guy's attention, or anyone's attention for that matter. I moved out of Kansas to New York City in 2008 when I was 18 to pursue fashion. At the time, I thought I would have no problem meeting a man in a city as big as that one. But let me tell you, it was still very hard. It seemed like I was invisible. Like even if I was in a crowded room, I was still somehow invisible to everyone there. After months of feeling sad and alone, I decided a decent place

to meet a guy was at a bar. The first few weeks, I was too nervous to talk to any men, but eventually I was able to take a deep breath and start a conversation. Only problem is, it seemed like all any guy wanted was a quick hookup and I guess I can't act that surprised. Until one guy. He was in his early 30s and with me being only 21, I figured this gave me an end to a more adult-like relationship. He was tall and muscular, probably around 6'1". He was so far out of my league that I was confused why he even began talking to me to begin with. For the sake of the story, we'll call him Jake. Jake texted me the same night we had met and immediately started showering me in compliments. He told me I was gorgeous and how he didn't understand why I didn't have men lined up

to be with me. I should have seen right through his flattery but I had never gotten this kind of attention before and it made me feel so good in a time in my life where all I felt was sadness. He would text me and call me every day for weeks to tell me how amazing I am and how much he wanted to see me again, but that he was out of town for the next month. He said he had business to attend to upstate. By the time the month had gone by, Jake was still there texting and calling me just as much, so we made a plan to hang out at the same bar where we first met. He told me he was taking care of everything. When he picked me up, he hugged me and opened the door for me while again showering me with compliments

and telling me that we were going to have so much fun. He shut the door behind me and climbed into the driver's seat, pulling into what seemed like would be endless traffic. After around 10 minutes in the car with him, his demeanor changed. He started to act really nervous, but I didn't think much of it because people do get nervous on dates. We pulled up to the same bar and he paid for the valet. We walked inside and he led us to a table pretty far towards the back of the bar where a woman was waiting for us. I was so confused. I turned to Jake and said, this can't be our table. He assured me it was and I was even more confused when he went and sat down next to the woman asking me to sit across from them.

I sat down not really sure what to think when the woman started talking to me. She told me how excited she was to finally meet me and that Jake had told her so much about me. I tried to be as polite as possible but I ended up just blurting out, Who are you? I distinctly remember her laughing a little, whispering to Jake, I like this one, and telling me she was in charge of the outreach program for what she said was a sanctuary for people not sure about where their life was going. She said Jake had told her how insecure and unsure I was about myself and that she could help. All I

needed to do was trust her. She told me that she would take me to their farm upstate and I would have no contact with what she said was the toxic world outside of the sanctuary. I remember getting annoyed at the word sanctuary after the tenth time she said it. I asked her how exactly she could help me. She said the only way to live a happy life was to cut all contact from the outside world. There would be nothing to drag me down or make me sad anymore. And throughout our whole conversation she would look at me like she was judging me, like she was trying to determine if I was worthy. She said that if I

agreed to join them I would never have to feel alone again, that the world was a cruel place but with them it didn't have to be. Now I might have been young, but I could spot a cult from a mile away. I told her that I would think about it but that I wanted to go home. Jake got up and offered to drive me but I assured them a taxi would be fine. I was thoroughly creeped out and wanted to get as far away from them as possible. I thought about going to the police but it's not like I can tell them some creepy people offered me a place to live who also had no issue with me saying no. The next few weeks were strange. I would get letters left on my doorstep telling me to meet them back at the bar and join them,

and that they were always watching. That they cared about me. I had no idea what was going on or why they were so persistent. I continued to ignore their letters and messages and eventually they stopped, but the feeling of being watched never really did. I've passed by the same bar many times in the past decade or so, and once in a while I'll see the same woman sitting in the same table with an older man and a young girl and all I can do is hope she doesn't fall for the trap they're setting for her.

The trap they once set for me. First, I'd like to start off the story by saying I'm a relatively open-minded individual, and I have no issues going to places where I know that I would otherwise stand out, but that's what makes it fun. I like to surround myself with people who don't all look and act like me. It keeps things interesting and ensures there's always a new thing for me to try or a new place for me to visit. I'm kind of a thrill seeker, so when I found myself going to a gay bar with my friend Eli, I figured all I was in for was a night of fun and partying. That is not what I ended up getting. I'm currently 29, but this took place in 2017 when I was 24 and a mostly careless guy when it came to ensuring my own safety in sketchy situations. I just like to

have fun and if I'm sometimes getting hurt, that was the fair price to pay for a good time. The worst injury I've gotten from a wild night out was a broken wrist, but even then I laughed it off and didn't take it too seriously. My motto has always been, never be afraid of life. Eli picked me up from my apartment in Santa Monica, California and we started the god-awful drive to West Hollywood and his favorite gay bar. Now, I'm not gay myself, but Eli is and I figured anywhere he liked to go had to be a good time because he knew how to party. We found a place to park a few blocks away and started walking toward the bar, both excited for the fun night ahead of us. We had to wait in line for about an hour, but when we finally got inside, it was even better than I ever could have imagined. There were men and women in the coolest outfits all dancing with each other.

The drinks looked amazing and everyone seemed to be having a good time. I found my way to the dance floor with Eli and we showed off our horrible moves for everyone to see. The vibe was incredible. I asked myself why it had taken me so long to go to a gay bar when there is so much more fun. I sat down at the bar and ordered a beer as I tried to catch my breath from dancing. An older man, probably in his late 50s sat next to me and asked me if it was my first time in a gay bar. I was confused how he knew that and he seemed to pick up on my confusion when he said, Eli comes here all the time and I've never seen you so I just assumed. I remember awkwardly laughing and confirming his suspicions. He told me his name was Jeremy and offered to buy me another beer which I happily agreed to considering he was a nice enough guy

who was making an effort to talk to me. We talked for around 30 minutes when I started feeling lightheaded and dizzy. I figured I had probably had too much to drink throughout the night so I said my goodbyes to Jeremy and began making my way throughout the bar to look for Eli to take me home. I only managed to get a few feet before I started to fall over. Jeremy put his arm around me to hold me up and told me that he saw Eli had left only 15 minutes before and he could give me a ride home no problem. I started feeling a little worried at that situation, but Jeremy had been nothing but nice to me,

so I told him that would be great, so long as I could get a hold of Eli first to make sure he was okay and to tell him who I was leaving with. Jeremy agreed and began to help me outside while basically carrying my body as if it got more and more numb with each step I took. When we got outside I realized soon enough that I was no longer able to walk and my speech had become slurred while I started to black out. This is when I began to panic.

I knew this wasn't from drinking too much. This was a problem. I looked at Jeremy who only seemed to be focused on getting me to his van across the lot. At one point I remember feeling my feet skidding across the pavement while Jeremy was basically dragging my limp body. I tried reaching for my phone in my pocket but when I looked down toward my hand it wasn't even moving. My thoughts started to become foggy when I heard a man's voice come from behind us saying,

Hey man, is he okay? He doesn't look too good. I knew I was in trouble when Jeremy replied, Yeah, yeah, he's okay. My boyfriend never did know how to hold his liquor. I was internally screaming, but no sound was coming out of my mouth. I knew if I got into this man's van, I probably would not be getting back out. Thankfully, my savior didn't give up and offered to call an ambulance, which of course Jeremy refused. By then, a crowd had started to form. They forced Jeremy to lay me down on the cold cement and then everything went black.

The next thing I remember is being in the back of an ambulance with Eli asking me what happened and how I got outside in such a bad state. Apparently when the ambulance and officers arrived, Jeremy was nowhere to be found. Eli had never left the bar and I genuinely believe that the only reason I'm still here, able to tell this story is because of that brave man who had the courage to speak up on my behalf when I couldn't. Turns out Jeremy had spiked the beer he ordered for me with Rohypnol, probably the most well known roofie, and I had carelessly accepted it from him. I filed a police report and this Jeremy or whatever his name actually was still hadn't

been found and I'm scared for all the people out there who might be victimized by his cruelty and genuine lack of human decency. I also asked Eli how he knew him and he told me Jeremy had asked his name only minutes before taking a seat next to me. Everything he did was calculated and he did it with such ease while acting completely calm. This hasn't discouraged me from going back to that same bar and I don't want it to discourage anyone else but to anyone out there who takes their life and safety for granted, don't. You never know how quickly you can find yourself in a situation where

you have no control over what happens to you. Please be careful. For this story I'm going to need to divulge into my high school life a bit. This is mainly to talk about David. David was one of those kids. Creepy, unkempt, and very awkward. But many hung out with him due to him always having the money to buy friendship. No one ever had anything good to say about him. Always smelled, never seemed to wash, and never seemed to be able to not make things awkward. Nothing too crazy at first, but around senior years when he became very unhinged. He had always been creepy when it came to personal space, walked way too close

sometimes, accidentally touched either me or a friend of ours regardless of who we were. He always did it with an air of, if you say yes, we do it, if you say no, it's a joke. But now, he went out of his way to make it clear what his intentions were around us. At one point, he got punched by one of my friends when he accidentally touched her breast. At one time, he got full-on expelled for sneaking into the women's locker room and gave the excuse that he was too high to know where he was. No, really, that was his excuse. And once he got expelled, I only heard about him here and there.

Nothing wild, but more like Bigfoot. It was like sightings and rumors. So let's just fast forward to the story at hand. Be me, working at a call center, get put in charge of a trainer's room. Think of it like teacher's aid, but for trainers to see who would be good to take a spot as a trainer once they or someone else leaves the position. The main thing I need to do is be like the hip fellow the trainees talk to since many who come in are usually straight out of high school and I was still 21 at the time. Nothing out of the usual but we have people closer or older than I am this time around. They're all around nice people,

chill enough to even go out and have a drink with I suppose. But among them I see a familiar face. The same fat unkempt creeper I knew back in high school. Oh no. I try my best to conceal my identity. I was very fat back in high school but over that time I slash fitted up so it wasn't hard to conceal who I was with so much of the weight gone. Trainer then yells, yo, Aynon, can you help me out with this? Oh god. David's eyes immediately lock onto mine and he bolts towards me. I try to get away and pretend like I didn't see him and luckily that was enough to get away. I think maybe he's just young, dumb,

and full of hormones back in high school and he's changed. No. No less than a week goes by before one of my female trainees comes to me. Uh, Aina, um, can I talk to you in private? Sure, let's go to the room, and we sit there for a good five minutes in silence before she finally tells me that another trainee has made her feel uncomfortable. Ah, great I think. Can I know who it is? David, she says. Said that earlier in the week she was sitting next to him when she asked if she could borrow a pen for some paperwork she needed to fill out. She continues by saying he not only took a pen out of his pocket whilst making lewd gestures, but as he gave her the pen he slightly rubbed his hand on hers. Tells me that she got very uncomfortable but didn't know who to talk to.

I tell her that I'll speak to David and to leave it to me. The next day I call David to a meeting and tell him to stop jacking around and that this isn't high school. If some stuff happens, it's on my and the trainer's head, and it can get him arrested. David just tries to say, she wanted it, man. She was so into it, I saw how she got. For Christ's sake. David, if you do this again, I'm going to have to not only write you up, but suspend you without pay. And he just says, lol, okay.

I decide maybe that that's all he really needed and move on. The next couple of days, I get complaints from both the men and women in the class about how creepy he is. Tell them if you want him out, please make a report about this. The company has a policy where you can't complain on someone else's behalf no matter how much evidence you may have on the person. Over the next few days, everything from complaints about his smell to his dress to even his work ethic was sent to me. For example, he vomited on his jeans and came to work with the same jeans unwashed for a week. He smelled like urine for three days straight and got very close to people when they told him that fact. He kept slightly touching or poking people when they told him to stop multiple times. He full on reached for

someone's junk at some point. All these complaints and not one report from anyone. Fast forward two months into training and a trainee comes to me and says that she wants to file a complaint on him. The lady goes on to tell me that David followed her to her car that night before. He was asking her for a ride and she refused more than three times. Finally she got in her car and was about to go when she saw David put his backpack on her hood. He then proceeded to try and open her car door. Let me the F in. I want a ride home. I'll die without a ride home. He yelled along with other less than classy words according to her.

She finally just decided to drive off but not before he hit her window and cracked it. Okay, this is where it ends.jpg. But wait, there's more. As I'm writing the report to turn it into PR, another woman came in. Oh, hello Anon, what can I do for you? She begins to cry her eyes out. Uh oh. Goes on to tell me how David had cornered her during the previous week's team meeting outside. Says he looked like a man possessed and looked up and down at her like he was just waiting. She got so scared she ran out of the room and just left. She did in fact leave early that day

without a word until later that night where I got a text telling me that she had an extreme emergency and I just shrugged it off and let it go. She also wants to file a report and I say okay whilst I get the paperwork and she asks me, is he going to get fired? I tell her that since he now has a report and I say okay whilst I get the paperwork and she asks me, is he going to get fired? I tell her that since he now has a report to his name it's a very real possibility but just in case to keep your distance and tell me right away if anything happens. She leaves and I'm now stuck with having to write two reports for this guy and some way I'm relieved because it just means I won't have to deal with him much longer. I turn in the reports and notice David outside, thinking about talking to him and maybe,

just maybe, making him understand how screwed up he really is. I decide to not and just walk off. All of a sudden I feel a hand on my shoulder and realize from just the smell it's David. Now what? Turn to David and he is looking at me like he wanted to stab the first thing he saw. What did those people freaking tell you? Did they stalk me? Did they go behind my effing back? I didn't answer his question but I did tell him that he has to make sure to watch himself from now on unless he wants to be put on some sort of registry. A month passes, and the brass doesn't deem it enough to fire this creep. I'm just as surprised as anyone. And finally the faithful day comes. David's finest hour. Starts off normal, but for the past month we had David in a separate cubicle away from the class at the behest of our PR department.

Finally lunchtime comes and of course my job is to keep a lookout for David. If anyone here has worked for the certain company I worked for, you know they run their company like they do the mob. Real shady and no one outside usually gets involved and people on the floor or in management get used for say unusual secondary tasks. Go about my lunch having to make sure David doesn't leave my sight or go near anyone. Most of the team I was helping train felt bad and ate with me during that time even though they knew they weren't supposed to. Anyways get to about 3 30 almost time to let the trainees go home. All of a sudden David comes up to me and looks me in the eye, like he tried telling me something with only his gaze.

Uh, can I help you, sir? I need you to teach me something again, sir. Okay, what do you need help with? He takes me to his cubicle. I see him reach into his bag bag and he takes out a list. It has written on it the names of people who have either filed a report or just generally complained about him. David, what is this? Just a list, sir. I just want to make sure they get what comes to them someday. What? You know, I have a gun or two.

Not mine, but I can use them. David, you do know that what you're telling me can be taken as a threat. Well, so what? You're my friend. If I kill them, you can help me, right? Remember I gave you a dollar in high school. I scratched your back. I'll scratch mine.

I decide that enough was enough and immediately went to the HR person. I tell her the stuff that happened and she tries to make every excuse as to why it may not have been so bad or why we can't just fire him. I tell her that besides me, two other people filed official reports and everyone has complained more than once about him. Finally, she gives way and says that she'll investigate it. I tell her if she wants to see it then her best option would be to get him to show you his bag right now. She reluctantly decides to go and check his bag along with some security guards. David, knowing that he's screwed, tries to make up any excuse he can. Now they're all just bullying me. They're hating me because I'm gay. I have bipolar depression and need help. I'm a virgin with rage. I'm not kidding. He really said this. Literally anything he can to try and get out of it. David, knowing he can't get out of this,

snaps and lunges at the PR woman. He actually gets a few good hits in before the security guards and I pride him off of her. The whole thing makes enough of a scene to get people to look at what's going on. David continues to try and fight his way out of all of it and even takes a swing at me before the head trainer, who was a former military sergeant, comes and just chokes him out. We toss David outside and call the police. The PR lady files a report that he went and assaulted her. The police also found about three bags of cocaine in his bag. He was arrested on assault and possession charges and he gets hauled off hopefully to never be seen again. After the dust settles, I finally decide to rest at my desk.

As I was going back to my desk, I found another note that was from David. It said, if you're reading this, it's because I wanted to see your face last. I wanted you to be the final one I shot. I want to be the last thing you effing see, you traitor. I hate you, and I will kill you. I never heard if he's out or still in custody, but I won't lie when I say that I still look over my shoulders sometimes. Where do I even start this? I'm a filmmaker, sort of. Haven't made anything decent in a while and I studied in Ireland from where I grew up. So one day, I was out filming for B-roll in the countryside, quite a decent walk out of town. A guy, let's call him Jack, pulls up as I'm walking home and gives me a lift. Jack's a nice guy, in his 50s, fascinated by filmmaking and is interested

to hear what I'm filming for. I think nothing of this conversation, just simple small town talk. Two years later, I've graduated with my film degree and I'm enjoying my grand journey of being unemployed. I'm out and about, shooting stuff for a mini project and who of all people pulls up beside me? Jack. He reminds me of who he is, says that it's such a strange universal sign that our paths cross again, and then informs me that he is part of a paranormal investigation group. Would you like to make a documentary about us? Is all he needed to say and I was on board. God, how I wish I was not on board. I start going to the group meetings,

hiding my X power level the whole time, acting ignorant and dumb to everyone. I do learn a few interesting things, like, for example, turns out ghost hunters or paranormal investigators are just about as territorial as literal gangs. Such and such place is this group's turf. Back off, is something they would say. I also learned that no one actually fully agrees on what exactly ghosts are or how ghosts communicate, and that everyone is a different

kind of eccentric, with their own special abilities that make them oh so unique. As for the actual group, it's consisted of a French cougar that other female members disliked. Her name was Nikita. There was the head of the group, Ellen, who was a quote unquote seasoned veteran of the paranormal. Another member, Jane, was some sort of pseudo-Wiccan and also one of the sensitives of the group. Turns out, Jane's been doing rituals in the woods by my house for years. We begin doing investigations together, none of which actually displayed evidence. In fact, one of the pictures I had taken was of a literal scam. Wiccans would caretake this castle when it wasn't being used and would host one of their psychics to join the investigation,

where she would then lead us and our equipment under a radio tower to make the meters go off the charts. Anyway, on to the main event. Lacoonine Ghost House, and you can google this. It's quite literally some evil dead-tier abandoned cottage in the middle of nowhere, right on the northern island border where a legit exorcism took place in the 1920s. Lots of other local legends surrounded, but all you need to know is that it's got some seriously dark history to it. I got a tip about it from a Northern Island friend, a possible ex-criminal. We'll call him Brian. He told me about it as soon as I mentioned I was in a ghost hunting group and normally he's

very jovial but he said in a dead set tone that I needed to make sure I stopped by the local pub or call the local police station to tell them that they were going to occupy the place at night. The implication that he was getting at was that if we didn't tell anyone, some Irish Republican army gang would kill us for snooping around their territory. And while it sounds extreme, it is true. There are still all sorts of IRA gangs floating around on border towns, using different words to cash weapons, drugs, and whatever else. The woods around the Cunene Ghost House were no different, so I relay this dire information to the group, hey pals, please god tell the locals that we'll be going there at night. And well,

no surprise that this didn't happen. Oh well, we told Nikita to do it, but she was too busy trying to sleep with the guys at the bar. It's Nikita's fault. Oh well, Ellen was supposed to do it, but she was too busy with blah blah blah. And Jane was supposed to do it, but she was sick at the time, blah, blah, blah. And all of their excuses was just some weird last minute thing. Few people actually knew what was happening, even fewer knew of the lore, and all of a sudden, it's nighttime. We're driving up to a haunted exorcist village in a heavy extremist territory. Jack's driving us in his van, but ends up coming across a large barricade. Tries to drive around it, resets his GPS, and we literally come to the same barricade two more times before Jack

realizes he wasn't changing his route, just turning on and off Google Maps. We're losing some valuable time so once he solves the issue and finds a way around the barricade, he slams on the gas and we're flying over every hill and hump. I'm white knuckled at the time, holding on for dear life, afraid that we're going to crash just from trying to take videos of ghosts. Finally, we arrived. We're three hours late and it's just about to start raining. We park in a little clearing on a back road, cross over and head down the path to the village. We stay for an hour, they do their thing, I take pictures and videos and surprise, surprise,

no ghost activity. We're tired, cold, wet, disappointed and we just want to go home. And as we get to the path to our vehicle, two other vehicles suddenly pull up. By this time, it's about 1am on some back roads, and these aren't strangers, these are IRA members. They step out of their clown cars and I watch them literally put on this tough guy facade. Like they stepped out, took a deep breath and started walking with a weird posture. Cute, I thought. They couldn't be older than their teens that they were trying to just prove themselves as men. So the one goes on a tangent,

acting like he was very surprised to see people in his territory. Just tell them that we're shooting a horror movie. They won't believe us if we say we're ghost hunters. I tell Jack. And Jack just immediately goes, Hello, we're ghost hunters. Sounding like he's said it with a dumb smile on his face too. And so at this point, I've accepted my fate.

We're going to get shot and trafficked by some dumb teenage gang members who are trying to coax us back to the house, saying that we're just looking for some scraps and could use some help. Jack actually almost goes with them too before I finally snap and yell, Just get in the car! Cops are coming! Even when he did get back in Jack's van, he didn't immediately take off. We watch the kids scramble to their cars, taking a moment to stare us down before Jack finally has a flush of logic come over him and we drive off. I asked him why he waited so long, to which he asked about not wanting to

run from cops, to which I kindly informed him that it was a lie to get the kids to panic. He drops me off, I block their numbers and never speak to them again. And there you have it. Don't go ghost hunting in gang territory because you might just be the one haunting the territory in the end. To be continued... I know there's a lot of these, but this one is different. I deliver for a higher-end pizza place owned by an actual Italian family. At this time, I've been working there for about three weeks. Most of the time, I can barely understand them. Even the register was in broken English.

One day, I noticed a sticker in bad English saying, No ask for change for this number. What?.jpg? I asked the owner, Luigi, what it means means and he tells me that my buddy, the other driver on Saturday nights, got into a fight with this old dude after he asked if the customer would like change back. I think that this is odd and continue. By some chance my bud comes back seriously weirded out explaining what happened. Dude, he loves teddy bears. This guy, he lost his mind, he's like fascinated with teddy bears. I'm so confused after he tells me this.

At the time, the sun is still up and the next driver comes in to replace my friend. He had to leave to get home for something so he didn't fully explain what happened. The sun goes down and I'm sitting in the empty store. Slow business. Phone rings and I dash to the register because I need the tip money. The other driver is lazy anyway. I look at the caller ID. It's the same number from the sticker. To my surprise, the caller sounds perfectly normal. Nice older man with a sweet voice tells me his order, and everything's normal. Three large cheese pizzas, one pepperoni, and he tells me his bed bunk doesn't like the

planes. I arrive at his place, and something is really weird. Those construction lamps for when houses are being built line up the lawn, aiming the lights down on a row of something. It's so bright I can't even see what it is. I get out of my car and walk closer. It's a row of teddy bears buried in the mulch. I'm starting to chatter my teeth. It's absolutely pitch black out here besides these lights. I look up to see an old Tudor style house. Top window I see an old man peering down at me. Honestly I got in my car after this and took a breath. I go on X a lot so this really bothered me. I get back out of the car and look at the row of bears. Notice that all of their scalps are taken off, exposing the cotton stuff. Magic markers fill the tops of their heads and I'm so confused now and more confused than scared

I man up and approach the door the second my foot touches the step he opens the door he bounces his arms off of his body over and over doesn't make any eye contact then bounces elbows off his body and comes out in the shape of a V. I laugh nervously and tell him the price while handing over the pizza. He continues to look around, everywhere except my eyes and just won't acknowledge me. I kind of just lay it on the floor for a second and look down. Immediately when I look up, he's sprinting full speed back into the house, down the hallway, and there's a teddy bear. It had to be on fishing wire or something because it was swinging. It swung across the frame of the hallway down to where he ran off to. I hear a crushing screech followed by something toppling over. No change, no change,

no change, no change. This voice doesn't even sound like him, much deeper. I hear sprinting toward me and things falling. I sprint back to my car and turn to see him pressing a teddy bear against the window. I get back and tell the other driver what happened and he actually believes me. He proceeds to tell me that every driver deals with him but says, don't let him get your driver info. I realize he didn't ever pay so I take the hit and give my manager my stub. Fast forward to Sunday night, I get another call from the same number. I suppose it's normal since everyone has seen him so I take it. This time it is way too much food. Six pizzas. He sounds panicked and there are long extended words coming out.

Hello? Yes, I'll have six, six pizzas, please, please, please. Reluctantly, I get to the dark house once again. This time there are no lamps. Teddy bears are different. The bears are buried head first in the ground with hot coals where the teddy's head would be. I genuinely can't believe what I'm seeing. He has them buried head first in a row filled with burning coals.

I can see them glowing. Before I reach the door I hear something. Kind of sounds like one of those movies like Mama or Possession Things. I approach the door and notice the crude drawing of me. I start hearing footsteps on the road. I turn around to see a man, completely naked, wearing a teddy bear mask with eye and lip holes trying to get in my car. While trying to think of what even to do, the door flies open and another man comes running out. I think his eyes and lips were taped up. I'm not sure because I was so terrified at this point I didn't pay attention.

He starts speaking in the same voice I heard earlier. Get in bed with Teddy! I'm in tears at this point with my heart racing. I run to my car and step on a hot coal. My shoes are thin and I feel the hot rubber scalding my foot. The coal must have stuck to the melting rubber. The one man is running away from my car now, goes to the door, locks arms with the other man and they both smile and wave goodbye. I push 60 racing back to the store. I don't even explain to the Italian family because the other driver's gone,

and I quit and just head home. The next morning I noticed my driver's license was gone. I'm seriously flipping up because I know that he must have taken it. I decided to do more research on the buried teddy thing. It's a reference to Dante's Inferno when corrupt people would be buried head first in a tomb of fire with their feet exposed. The next night I'm with my friend in the living room and I start hearing footsteps on my porch. I open the door to peek and there's a mangled up teddy bear on my porch. I immediately report this to the police and they tell me that

they'll set up a patrol in my neighborhood and should call when I hear something. The following Sunday I hear the steps again, call the police and stay inside. The police call me to tell me to stay inside and to not leave. The next morning I get the reports and police cars are lining my street. a teddy bear was hung by a rope filled with actual human tissue. It was reportedly from an elderly man, and police ask me all the details I know and tell them what I've been telling you. They report to the old man's house and the old man answers. He has no idea where his friend went, who's apparently missing, and I have a feeling that he does know. To this day, every few Sundays I receive a little bear. I live in New Jersey and you can check the police records.

I haven't been able to find anything on their website, but I don't really care at this point. Darknet stories. If you weren't aware, should always be treated as jokes. True darknets are not actual nets at all. Clients like Tor create a plausible deniability source. Perhaps you may have seen something on Tor. But if you can access Tor off of Google, there's little chance that what you saw was real. Actual darknets are kept well and truly hidden. They cannot be found or accessed by the average Google user or internet surfer in general. I know I'm coming off as

pretentious, so let me give you an example. I've had, perhaps at most, five experiences with the darknet. Please understand that even with the credentials and skill, it really does involve a great amount of luck. A friend of mine works at a small car insurance broker's office and asked me to fix a problem with his computer. Something about it not recognizing the office scanner on the network. Details aren't necessary, it's just how I ended up in this position. I bring my laptop and immediately notice a wireless net with high signal strength. Out of curiosity I turn on a sniffer to pick out the password while I work on a scanner. Maybe a few hours later he and I get back from lunch and I begin to wrap up my work on

a scanner when I remember the sniffer. Got the password of the mystery signal, connected and began to poke around. Just a basic home network. One system online, internet access, no firewall and apparently no antivirus. Now I'm not saying I'm a good person. I'm just a person who knows my way through a computer. So I drop in a back door before I leave, which pretty much just means that I have a little file

that will allow me to snoop around their files. You never know what goods you can find. I get home and decide, hey, I have the night to myself. And I really start digging through the computer's files and come across your standard stuff. Nothing fancy aside from tax forms and maybe a few text files with what I assume were passwords.

Random characters and random names, but nothing of interest. So I install a worm onto it and leave it be for future use. For those that don't know, a computer worm is a virus that spreads itself to other computers that are accessed by the original host. So if this computer connects to another computer, boom, I can then see that new computer's files as well. Remember to get your antiviruses, people. Weeks later, I'm arranging some proxies from some bots

when I realize that there are additional bots that I hadn't set up myself. What I figured out later is that the owner of that mystery Wi-Fi signal, aka my friend's boss, had shared a file within that system which the worm happily infected and shared it to multiple other machines. This is where the interesting stuff begins. Two of those machines had internet access but apparently were never used to actually access the internet. Both ran Windows 98 and both were completely unpatched. Apparently only had internet access because they were physically networked with other machines that were used for internet access. Each machine had about 3 terabytes of storage, seemingly empty, but I found out that they were actually packed full with encrypted bytes.

The encrypted stuff was easily viewable and contained huge amounts of deeply personal information. Information that could cost people their lives. I'm talking social security numbers, tax IDs, full names and addresses, lists of their family members and even some pets. And some oddly unique data too, like their vehicles, favorite clothing, their height and weight, and recent medical bills. Granted, not every byte listed all of this information, some of them just listed names. But what they all did display were dates, timestamps. Couldn't make too much sense of that, but what I could make sense of were the bank accounts. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of

account numbers, institutions, and safety deposit boxes. All over the world. South Africa, Russia, Brazil. Everywhere. Nothing but the basic ID information along with the timestamp. As I was picking through one of the two machines, I noticed a file being written live. I figured someone was using the computer at the moment, but the only command events that were being registered were coming from my worm. Nobody was using a keyboard or a mouse. Figured it was an automated system process, so I sat and watched what it was doing. That's when I realized the computer was communicating on another network. A network protocol that I didn't recognize. Because I knew when it started writing and when it stopped, I was able to transcribe the entire file, about 78 megabytes. I assumed it was one file and not a chunk of something else, and well,

I was right. Since it was one file, I had a few educated guesses about what a file that size could be, and my first guess was right. MPEG format. It was a movie. The title was just a random string, and the video itself was an overhead view of three men sitting at a table. In the entire 15 minutes of the video, only one of the men spoke. It sounded like gibberish, but I figured it was code, or he was just nuts, you never know. He said things like, broken banana, stung red book. Then he would pause and say another strange sentence, and this kept going on for about 10 minutes. The other two just watched him, one was drinking what I assume was coffee. Finally, he leaned back and asked if they could leave his daughter alone. The guy drinking the coffee just shook his head quickly.

The code talker started crying, like really crying, hard. He leaned forward and said another nonsense sentence, and the video ended. Time stamp was about 20 minutes before the video was uploaded to the machine I got it from. I had a really weird feeling about it, but my guess at the time was uploaded to the machine I got it from. I had a really weird feeling about it but my guess at the time was that it was a clip from some movie I hadn't seen and that it was just a streaming broadcast with a timestamp on the file being the time that it was being sent. And then another began. I unencrypted it and started watching. Again, another string

for a name and can't remember how long the video actually was. I started with the man from before, the one who spoke in code, standing over a table while the other two men were standing beside him smoking cigarettes. The first four seconds, I thought he was seizing and shaking, but the camera moved and that's when I saw the corpse on the table. There was blood all over the man and the table. I won't tell you what was happening between the man and the corpse because I couldn't finish watching it. It was about a minute or so before reality sank in on what I just watched. I've seen a lot in my time. That was not a movie. I cleaned my traces from those systems and haven't looked back. I was at Fort Leonard Wood from 2010 to 2011.

We did our training in those woods too. I often talked about drill sergeants and how they told us not to wander around at night, how we had to radio in for an escort in the bathrooms, etc. All the drill sergeants have live M4 carbines and we have Beater M16A3s with blanks. I never told anyone the story about the odd things that happened to us on nightland navigation in those woods. Nightland navigation is when you walk navigation in those woods. Nightland navigation is when you walk around in the woods at night in full battle rattle or fully suited gear and look

for certain pre-decided points that each have a code word. Different groups get different points, so every group has their own phrase, and that way you can't cheat. I get sent in the woods with my squad consisting of myself, my buddy Walters, and this 30-something Air Force sergeant from a night nav course. The course starts right after sundown, and it's February, so that's around 7-8pm maybe. It feels like we spend forever wandering through the woods until we get to our first point, and begin hiking toward the second. Tell Walters to let me know when his pace beads hit 3km as we hike for a while. Sergeant Cheriforce takes the map as everyone

kinda zones out. At some point we cross a stream and I ask to see the map as it's only a mini map with a few grid squares. And of course, there is no stream on the map. I ask Walters what his pace count was and I'm met with a lovely, oh god, I forgot I was supposed to be tracking. Great, we ended up reaching near a large hill and began going up this deer trail along the hill. Suddenly Sergeant Chair Force grabs me by the collar and pulls me backwards. I'm sleep deprived, hungry and super stressed, so now I'm very mad and start to lose my cool. Before I can even begin to insult him, he makes a shushing motion, looks dead straight ahead and points. A few meters in front of me,

there is a trip wire going between two saplings on either side of the trail. He brushes away some dead leaves carefully and I hear him swear under his breath softly. There's an 81mm mortar buried in the soft dirt. We circle in close and begin to have a quiet and intense discussion on A. What to do now? And B. Where exactly were we? We decided to try and back our current location to where our first point was, and at this point I asked how we missed our second point, as they were all marked by little chemlights. Well turns out Sgt. Cheriforce had been resting the compass on the butt plate of his M16, so now we are hyper

aware that we are completely lost, and probably several clicks from anyone in our company. We have three more hours to the night land nav course before the drill sergeants will even begin to look for us. We decide that we should head in a direction roughly opposite to the booby-trapped hill, as we don't want to encounter another mortar and all die. Tell Waters to watch his pace count this time time and we hike for about a kilometer. We end up coming to a misty clearing about 50 meters across with chest-high grass. We make it about halfway through the field when we suddenly hear something and we stop. As we stare through the mist I watch as four non-humanoid figures rise out of the grass.

We raise our useless plank filled weapons and at this point I've come to terms with my own death. Suddenly they begin yelling, Drop your weapons! Drop them now! We yell the same thing back and also yell the challenge of the day and we all realize that we were both military and both sides lower our weapons. We yell the same thing back, and also yell the challenge of the day, and we all realize that we were both military and both sides lower our weapons. They approach us and talk to us and ask us why we're in this area, what unit we're with and who was our first line, etc.

The reason they all look so non-human-like is because they're all wearing ghillie suits, face paint, and are armed with high-grade M4s with PEQ-15s with what look like thermal optics and suppressors. One of them goes off to make a radio call as the other three stay with us. They begin to make small talk about how they remember Basic, and give us cigarettes because they remember Nick fiending. They also ask us if we've seen anything out of the ordinary, and they won't judge us if it seems weird or stupid, and so we mention the IED that we actually almost just tripped on. They seem surprised about us saying this,

and tell us to forget about it as they give us a pack of smokes and repeatedly remind us to forget about anything we saw out there. Suddenly, a convoy of two Humvees arrive, two sergeants in each. They make us drive on the way back while they ride in the turrets and passenger seats. Every once in a while, like on cycle, they tell us to keep our mouth shut about this. This IED incident is not mentioned by our sergeants or anyone involved for the rest of my military career. And so, that's the story of how I accidentally led my squad into a squad of special forces doing some real world secret stuff with IEDs in the middle of the woods in Missouri. I don't know

if I got the feeling across very well, but I feel like the special forces dudes were out looking for something as they had live rounds and were setting gnarly booby traps. To be continued... patrol security company I used to work for. We would primarily run security for Section 8 complexes. I was OIC of this in a major US city. The adrenaline rushes are addicting, so these Section 8 complexes get pretty ominous at night. The freedom of patrol is being able to respond to calls and really stretch your legs during a shift. If one area was calm, you could head out to an area that you needed to. Around 2am, patrolling in a complex of multiple 3-4 story buildings, sometimes this place was so bad that we would roll gun in hand sometimes. Roll around to the rear of this building and notice one of the boards of a dilapidated building as ajar. We would clear these buildings for vagrants

and other illegal activities. Get out of the patrol car and look around the area. It's dead quiet. Figure that I'll clear the building, something to do at least. Once I get inside, I look around. The regular once-occupied dwellings have signs of previous life. Always wondered who lived inside, what decisions in their life led them here and what exactly happened that caused their building to be taken over by gangs and them forcefully moved out. I would always find the odd legal letter here and there, the odd children's drawing of their family or the sun and flowers. We're on the corner of one unit and I find something interesting. I find a hole. I figured I can get through there pretty easily and I'm curious about what's on the other side.

I'm getting drywall all over myself, inhaling the good old asbestos, and I'm now a dog on the hunt. I find a series of holes, one leading to the next. This building is pretty big. Mind you, had to have been maybe 50 units inside. Honestly, I'm having fun in this ghetto labyrinth, still going deeper into the abyss. You would find constant graffiti around. Sometimes it was a menu of services in the area, sometimes it was just a child screwing around. I figured I had to be getting closer to the end, shouldn't be that many units left. I would always stop and read what I came across.

Sometimes it was intel, but I would always think of myself as a ghetto archaeologist of sorts and absorb everything I could. Finally reached the end of this whole journey. The end has a bigger room attached to a smaller one to the side. Clearly this is the sin room. Find a bunch of smashed phones in one corner, trashed litter about. Signs of people that were in this room not too long ago. Then I started to find a lot of bullet casings around the area and made sure to document one. See the last room I haven't looked into yet. Go into the last room and that's when I see it.

The danger bone zone. I.e. I have found the mattress room. I make sure to take a pic when I realize I'm deep in a labyrinth that no one knows I'm in. Radio is out of signal range and I have no backup. I see a bunch of stuff in front of me. I think there's blood on the mattress. When I go in for a closer look, I hear a series of footsteps in front of me. Immediately know that I'm deep behind enemy lines and I need to get the f out of there. I'm not a cop, I don't really care what happened here, I need to get out of here.

I book it out of the holes and get back to my car. I light a ciggy and hit the road to calm my nerves. This place had murders at least every month. It was honestly the worst I'd ever been to. It's been demolished now but I find myself thinking about that ghetto maze from time to time and wondering what terrifying stories happened there. I have one to share. It's not spooky as much as unsettling. But be me, a 22-year-old security guard on their last ship. Been working this job since I left the Air Force. Finally getting around to going to college so I'm getting a new job in the campus library. I basically work as a gate

guard for some snobby rich neighborhood. Place is honestly the worst. People scam literally everyone they can. 75% of my job is turning away pizza guys who were given bad checks or letting cops in to serve court orders. Last part of my shift, my replacement was supposed to be there at midnight, but now it's 30 after. Screw you, Kyle. Gray Nissan pulls up to my gate. God, dude, I just want to leave. And instantly something just felt off. A woman gets out, keeps ducking low or glaring when the occasional car passes us, just residents coming and going. I ask her if she's okay.

She says that she's being followed by someone who just assaulted her. I immediately tense up and go into high alert, ask her if they're close and start looking for anyone or any cars loitering around. She claims the car that just passed us was the abuser and before I can say anything says that he's coming back. It's a totally different car and she says another car is following her. Starting to realize she was on something. Maybe you could call the police ma'am. They're all in on it. This is before I knew what gang stalking was and this carries on for a while as she keeps indicating car after car

as a pursuer. She claims when they stop at a stop sign that's them passing off their stalking duties to the next car. Finally her boyfriend shows up. Dude walks out of the bushes on the neighborhood side, scares the life out of me. He starts trying to calm her down, gives me this slow, I already know, nod before I say anything. Eventually he's able to get her into her car and they drive away. Other guard shows up as my butthole begins to relax. I tell him about it and go home. The next day I get to work to find my boss and a sheriff waiting. They ask me about last night. I answer everything and show them the report I made of the thing. I found out that the boyfriend

was stabbed multiple times and was currently in the ICU. The woman I made of the thing. I found out that the boyfriend was stabbed multiple times, and was currently in the ICU. The woman was still on the loose. I finished giving my statements, turn in my uniform, shake my boss's hand, and go home. Officially no longer my problem.

I still think about it occasionally. No idea if that guy died, or if they caught that girl, or even if she was on or off something. Like I said, nothing spooky like skinwalkers or anything, but just very unsettling. I truly believe that if we kept talking and I let her get closer, she probably would have eventually attacked me. So I guess I'm just lucky. I used to know a 60-year-old ex-aviation engineer in Bozeman. He was a math professor before becoming a contractor for the government.

Apparently he learned a ton about physics and material science from some of the other guys he worked with and helped with some calculations on some obscure hydrogen bomb. I don't know if he was always deranged, but I wouldn't be surprised if he lost his sense after working for the government. For example, he once rambled on about how he used to have a shape-shifting car he'd use to kidnap people in middle America. He'd go around, crash into someone's car, and kidnap them as his car would be untouched and he wouldn't leave a trace. And as he'd drive back to his home, he'd change the shape of his car numerous times. He also said once how he'd had a key that could unlock any door.

He demonstrated on a couple of cars, but I just assumed it was a neat party trick. There was another instance where he ranted about different types of networking cables and how difficult it was to set up a surveillance system for his farm. Not for his animals, but instead so he could track human movement. Not too weird, I suppose, but he said that he would use it for his basement if he could figure it out. He owned about 40 acres and also owned a massive underground private bunker. The creepiest thing I remember about him is that he would always vehemently disagree about the existence of aliens. Even if he made a passive offhanded comment,

he would argue with you that there was nothing in the sky, nothing but humans. I lost touch with him after I left, but some of the stuff he used to say would get you thinking. He was probably a regular old kooky man I suppose. I remember that he owned a number of clothes that was about twice the size of XXL despite being very stout for his age and if I recall correctly one of his old friends had something like gigantism. And so he kept some of their favorite clothes, but I can't exactly remember what he said he did with the car. I want to say that it was stolen, but I really can't remember the details. Also, some small tidbit ramblings that he'd shared. He had a gun that had an infinite cartridge. It didn't use bullets, but instead,

he'd scoop up a load of dirt and it shot compressed dirt balls. He owned cyanide teeth with individual cyanide teeth within them. He even popped a pair of cyanide dentures into his mouth just to show me that they fit. He and another guy had come up with their own secret language and it sounded like nothing like common languages I've heard before or since. He would occasionally even write in it. He claimed he was a Freemason and actually tried to get me to join, but also told me how all they did all day was make small talk and plan donations to schools,

so I didn't take him up on his offer. Also, I described him as a regular old man because that's just how he came off to me. Like an old man with a ton of wisdom and experience, but also a sense of humor and exaggeration to come up with crazy stories to justify his knowledge. Looking back, I do hope that he's doing well nowadays. To be continued... A friend of mine was a marine and a former army guard. He'd tell us interesting stories, things he'd seen in Iraq, with crazy plots and whatnot. But one day he pulled me aside as we were out for drinks and he just blurted out asking me if I believe in ghosts. Now, he's a very manly man and I could tell he was embarrassed to ask me this, probably not wanting to be ridiculed for getting scared.

I tell him of course and he lightens up with me almost instantly as he begins to tell me of his one experience. In 2005, he was on his battalion commander's tactical team as a squad leader and because of this, was usually excused from guard duty. However, there was a night where he couldn't get out of duty for some reason or another, and this is where it all began. He goes to post one night, but his other guard doesn't show up. One of the two guards, who we'll just call Joe, that my friend was relieving from their shift, had decided to stay until the new guard showed up. But not too much later a soldier that neither my friend nor Joe recognized had walked up and relieved Joe of his shift. My friend begins trying to make conversation with the new soldier, but he seems quiet and to himself, grunting occasionally. Finally my friend starts feeling the pull of the night and can't stop yawning.

The soldier looks over and goes, go ahead man, I'll keep watch, there's the least I can do. My friend's like, thanks bro and the soldier replies, no problem man, I know what it's like to be tired. And so my friend goes to sleep. Morning comes and the new relief starts kicking the life out of him for 1 being asleep on shift and, two, for being by himself. Obviously, this means my friend was in deep trouble.

He begins explaining his story to his commander, to his XO and whatever NCO would listen. Turns out, the original guard never shows up. Some random soldier relieves Joe and then relieves him. They all ask the name of the soldier and he tells them. He said every single one of them appeared almost disgusted with him and every single one of them asked him if this was some sick joke as that soldier had died in combat months prior. He then tells them all to talk to Joe about it as proof and Joe tells them the exact story, detail for detail. Soldier that Joe doesn't know appears, relieves him and assumes the post with my friend. My friend still got punished but not as crucified as he would have. After this experience the rest

of the tour had several accounts of meeting this random soldier. He never did tell me the soldier's name but he said that multiple guards encountered a soldier walking up to relieve them, but nobody took up his offer. The role became to just tell the ghost of the soldier that his watch was done and that he can go ahead and rest. Eventually, he stopped showing up, and perhaps he finally got the rest that he deserved. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations. I release new videos every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7pm EST.

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